A LETTER FROM LARRY
Diana had gone home--it was queer how in a few days she had come to
regard Larry’s flat as her home--before dinner. Her work was done, and
there remained only the stern, grim processes of arrest to be
accomplished. At any moment she expected the telephone bell to ring
and to hear Larry’s voice telling her that the brothers were under
lock and key.
She had a book on her lap, but she was not reading. Her nurse and
chaperon was sewing in her room. Sunny was standing outside the door
of the flat, which was ajar, discussing certain matters with Louie,
the lift girl, in a low voice. Probably Sunny had secrets of his own,
but it was certain that the discovery of a person who agreed with him
in most of the things he said and most of the statements he made had
fascinated this agreeable man.
Diana sat, her head bent, her hand softly caressing her throat, and
her mind was on the future rather than upon the tragic past. She rose
once and went into Sunny’s little room, where the woman she had called
“aunt” was sleeping peacefully; and she smiled as she walked back
along the passage at the thought of this female invasion of Larry’s
bachelor quarters.
She had taken up the book when Sunny knocked and came in.
“There’s a note for you, miss,” he said, and handed a letter to the
girl. It was in Larry’s writing, and she tore open the envelope and
read:
Dear Diana:
The most extraordinary mistake has occurred. Dr. Judd has given an
amazing version of the death of your father. Will you get into the car
which I have sent and come down to his house at once--38 Endman
Gardens, Chelsea.
Larry.
She glanced at the embossed note-heading. Larry had written from
Endman Gardens.
“Is there any answer, miss?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “Tell the chauffeur I will come down at once.”
“Are you going out, miss?” said Sunny dubiously.
“Yes, I am going to Mr. Holt,” she said with a smile.
“Would you like me to come with you, miss?” said Sunny. “The master
doesn’t wish you to go about alone.”
“I think I’m all right this evening, Sunny,” said the girl kindly.
“Thank you very much for your offer.”
She dressed quickly and went downstairs. The limousine was waiting at
the door, and the chauffeur touched his cap.
“Miss Ward?” he asked. “I’m from the doctor’s.” He spoke in a gruff
voice, as if he had a cold.
“I am Miss Ward,” she replied, and sprang into the limousine.
The car stopped before a dark and silent house.
“Is this the place?” she asked.
“Yes, miss,” said the man. “If you go up those steps and ring the
bell, the servant will take you to the gentlemen.”
It was Dr. Judd himself, jovial and smiling, who opened the door to
her and ushered her into a magnificent room.
“You don’t mind waiting here a little while, Miss Stuart?” he said.
The name sounded oddly to her, and he laughed.
“I suppose you’re not used to being called that name, eh?” he said
with excellent humour. “Now I’m going upstairs to see our mutual
friend, and I will bring him down to you. Perhaps you could amuse
yourself for ten minutes. Our little conference is not quite ended.”
She nodded, and settled herself in the chair. The ten minutes passed,
and twenty minutes, and the twenty minutes became forty minutes, and
nobody came to her. The silver-toned clock on the mantelpiece chimed
sweetly.
“Ten o’clock!” she said in surprise. “I wonder what is keeping him?”
Yet she had no fear, and did not doubt for one moment that Larry was
in the house.
The room was luxurious, beautiful, more beautiful than any Diana had
ever seen. She sat by the side of a great open fireplace where a small
fire was burning, for the night was chilly, and she looked round
approvingly upon the pictures, the tapestries, the rich hangings, and
the soft panelling which was the background for all. There was not an
article of furniture in that room, she thought, that had not been
chosen with care and judgment. The rugs upon the floor were antique
Persian; the carved table might have been looted from an Eastern
emperor’s palace.
She lay luxuriously in the depths of a great chair, an illustrated
newspaper on her knees, and brought her gaze back to the fire and her
thoughts to Larry. She wondered what important matters he was
discussing and what was the explanation which the doctor had offered.
After a while she looked up at the clock again. Half-past ten! She put
down her paper and walked restlessly about the gorgeous apartment, and
then she heard the click of a door and Dr. Judd came in from the hall.
“I hope you haven’t been lonely,” he said. “He will be in very
shortly.”
She took it for granted that the “he” to whom the doctor referred was
Larry Holt.
“I was getting worried,” she smiled. “What a beautiful room this is!”
“Yes,” he said carelessly, “it is beautiful, but one day we will have
a more wonderful saloon to show you.”
“Here he is,” said the doctor; but it was not Larry who came in. She
sprang to her feet with an exclamation of alarm. The man who had
entered was John Dearborn. He made no pretence now. His glasses were
gone, and his fine eyes were surveying her with amusement.
“Where is Mr. Holt?” she asked.
Dearborn laughed softly.
“You would like some supper,” he said, and slipped back one of the
panels by the side of the fireplace, revealing a silver tray on which
a meal for one had been laid.
“We do not eat at night.” He carried the tray to the table and spread
a lace cloth.
The girl’s colour had gone. She was in mortal peril, but her voice did
not quiver.
“Where is Mr. Holt?” she asked again.
“Mr. Holt is quite happy.” It was the doctor who spoke. “We will let
you see him later.”
The strange words and the stranger tone frightened her, and she got up
from her chair and picked up her wrap.
“I don’t think I will stay any longer, if Mr. Holt is not here, Dr.
Judd,” she said, addressing that jovial man. “Can you take me home?”
The doctor did not reply. He had pulled open a drawer of a lacquer
bureau and had taken out a thick pad of papers and handed them to
Dearborn with a broad smile.
“You’re going to have a delightful time, Miss Stuart,” he said.
“Really, David, it is most good of you. I thought you would be too
tired to-night.”
The girl looked from one to the other, not daring to credit her own
senses. Dr. Judd, who had hitherto been polite to a point of
obsequiousness, was ignoring her.
“I don’t think you heard me, Dr. Judd,” she said steadily. “I want you
to take me back to my--to Mr. Holt’s flat.”
“She is thinking of her clothes,” murmured the doctor, addressing his
brother. “You will see that they are sent for, won’t you, David?”
“Sent for?” gasped the girl. “What do you mean?”
David Judd--already she had ceased to think of him as “Dearborn”--had
settled himself in the chair which she had lately occupied, and was
turning the leaves of his manuscript book.
“I think you had better eat first. You must be very hungry.”
“I will eat nothing in this house until I know what you mean by saying
that my clothes will be brought here,” she said hotly. “I am going
back alone.”
“Dear young lady,”--it was the doctor who laid his big hand on her
arm--“please do not distract David. He is going to read one of his
beautiful plays to you. Do you know that David is the greatest
dramatist in the world--the supreme force in modern drama, rivalling,
and indeed excelling, the so-called genius of Shakespeare?”
David looked at his brother and their eyes met.
He was so earnest, so self-convinced, that she had no words for a
moment. Then:
“I am not in a mood to hear plays read, however beautiful they are,”
she said. She had to keep a tight hold on herself, for instinct warned
her that her plight was desperate.
“I don’t think she will go back to-night,” said the doctor, almost
regretfully. “Perhaps to-morrow, when you are married to her?”
He spoke timidly, pleadingly, and there was a question in his
statement.
“I shall not marry her,” said the man called Dearborn sharply. “I
thought we had arranged that, brother? Jake is dead, but there are
others. Does it matter who marries her?”
Diana was dumb with indignation and horror. They were discussing her
marriage with one of them, each trying to induce the other to wed her
with a calmness and an assurance which left her speechless. At last
she found her voice.
“I do not intend marrying either of you,” she said. “I am engaged
to--Larry Holt.”
Both men were looking at her, and in the doctor’s rubicund face there
was an expression of distress.
“It is a pity,” he said. “The whole thing could be arranged if Mr.
Holt were with us. Unfortunately, though he is with us in the body, we
are spiritually as far as the poles apart.”
“With us in the body?” she repeated, and was seized with a violent fit
of trembling. She had realized that the letter which lured her to this
terrible house was a forgery, and her hope of rescue was centred on
the certainty that Larry would discover her absence and come after
her.
And then the two men exchanged glances, and Dearborn rose and put down
his book with an air of resignation. He beckoned her and passed to the
other end of the apartment, and there found a door which Larry had
overlooked; for the edge of the panels which covered it so overlapped
that no crevice was visible.
“I designed this house myself,” he explained simply, “and built it
myself with only twenty workmen from Tuscany.”
Later she was to find much of that was true. The chamber in which she
found herself, led by the fascination of a growing horror, was
unfurnished and unadorned. She heard a strange humming sound and a
curious vibration beneath her feet. Then David stopped, fumbled with
something on the floor, and opened a little trap-door less than a foot
square. It revealed a pane of glass, and when her eyes had become
accustomed to the unexpected perspective, she saw beneath her a small
room, evidently lighted from the ceiling.
She had no time to take in the details of the room; her eyes were
focussed upon the figure that sat on the edge of the bed. With his
handkerchief he was binding a wound in his hand, and at first she did
not recognize him. Then he looked up, for, though he could not see the
occupants of the room above, he had heard the sound of the trap
opening.
She stared and screamed, for it was Larry Holt who sat there, and he
was chained by the ankle.