Margaret was sorry to say good-bye to Miss More and little Ida when
the voyage was over, three days later. She was instinctively fond of
children, as all healthy women are, and she saw very few of them in
her wandering life. It is true that she did not understand them very
well, for she had been an only child, brought up much alone, and
children's ways are only to be learnt and understood by experience,
since all children are experimentalists in life, and what often seems
to us foolishness in them is practical wisdom of the explorative kind.
When Ida had pulled Margaret away from the railing after watching Mr.
Van Torp while he was talking to himself, the singer had thought
very little of it; and Ida never mentioned it afterwards. As for the
millionaire, he was hardly seen again, and he made no attempt to
persuade Margaret to take another walk with him on deck.
'Perhaps you would like to see my place,' he said, as he bade her
good-bye on the tender at Liverpool. 'It used to be called Oxley
Paddox, but I didn't like that, so I changed the name to Torp Towers.
I'm Mr. Van Torp of Torp Towers. Sounds well, don't it?'
'Yes,' Margaret answered, biting her lip, for she wanted to laugh. 'It
has a very lordly sound. If you bought a moor and a river in Scotland,
you might call yourself the M'Torp of Glen Torp, in the same way.'
'I see you're laughing at me,' said the millionaire, with a quiet
smile of a man either above or beyond ridicule. 'But it's all a game
in a toy-shop anyway, this having a place in Europe. I buy a doll to
play with when I have time, and I can call it what I please, and
smash its head when I'm tired of it. It's my doll. It isn't any one's
else's. The Towers is in Derbyshire if you want to come.'
Margaret did not 'want to come' to Torp Towers, even if the doll
wasn't 'any one's else's.' She was sorry for any person or thing
that had the misfortune to be Mr. Van Torp's doll, and she felt her
inexplicable fear of him coming upon her while he was speaking. She
broke off the conversation by saying good-bye rather abruptly.
'Then you won't come,' he said, in a tone of amusement.
'Really, you are very kind, but I have so many engagements.'
'Saturday to Monday in the season wouldn't interfere with your
engagements. However, do as you like.'
'Thank you very much. Good-bye again.'
She escaped, and he looked after her, with an unsatisfied expression
that was almost wistful, and that would certainly not have been in his
face if she could have seen it.
Griggs was beside her when she went ashore.
'I had not much to do after all,' he said, glancing at Van Torp.
'No,' Margaret answered, 'but please don't think it was all
imagination. I may tell you some day. No,' she said again, after a
short pause, 'he did not make himself a nuisance, except that once,
and now he has asked me to his place in Derbyshire.'
'Torp Towers,' Griggs observed, with a smile.
'Yes. I could hardly help laughing when he told me he had changed its
name.'
'It's worth seeing,' said Griggs. 'A big old house, all full of other
people's ghosts.'
'Ghosts?'
'I mean figuratively. It's full of things that remind one of the
people who lived there. It has one of the oldest parks in England.
Lots of pheasants, too--but that cannot last long.'
'Why not?'
'He won't let any one shoot them! They will all die of overcrowding in
two or three years. His keepers are three men from the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.'
'What a mad idea!' Margaret laughed. 'Is he a Buddhist?'
'No.' Paul Griggs knew something about Buddhism. 'Certainly not! He's
eccentric. That's all.'
They were at the pier. Half-an-hour later they were in the train
together, and there was no one else in the carriage. Miss More and
little Ida had disappeared directly after landing, but Margaret had
seen Mr. Van Torp get into a carriage on the window of which was
pasted the label of the rich and great: 'Reserved.' She could have had
the same privilege if she had chosen to ask for it or pay for it, but
it irritated her that he should treat himself like a superior being.
Everything he did either irritated her or frightened her, and she
found herself constantly thinking of him and wishing that he would get
out at the first station. Griggs was silent too, and Margaret thought
he really might have taken some trouble to amuse her.
She had Lushington's book on her knee, for she had found it less
interesting than she had expected, and was rather ashamed of not
having finished it before meeting him, since it had been given to her.
She thought he might come down as far as Rugby to meet her, and she
was quite willing that he should find her with it in her hand. A
literary man is always supposed to be flattered at finding a friend
reading his last production, as if he did not know that the friend has
probably grabbed the volume with undignified haste the instant he was
on the horizon, with the intention of being discovered deep in it. Yet
such little friendly frauds are sweet compared with the extremes of
brutal frankness to which our dearest friends sometimes think it their
duty to go with us, for our own good.
After a time Griggs spoke to her, and she was glad to hear his voice.
She had grown to like him during the voyage, even more than she had
ever thought probable. She had even gone so far as to wonder whether,
if he had been twenty-five years younger, he might not have been the
one man she had ever met whom she might care to marry, and she had
laughed at the involved terms of the hypothesis as soon as she thought
of it. Griggs had never been married, but elderly people remembered
that there had been some romantic tale about his youth, when he had
been an unknown young writer struggling for life as a newspaper
correspondent.
'You saw the notice of Miss Bamberger's death, I suppose,' he said,
turning his grey eyes to hers.
He had not alluded to the subject during the voyage.
'Yes,' Margaret answered, wondering why he broached it now.
'The notice said that she died of heart failure, from shock,' Griggs
continued. 'I should like to know what you think about it, as you were
with her when she died. Have you any idea that she may have died of
anything else?'
'No.' Margaret was surprised. 'The doctor said it was that.'
'I know. I only wanted to have your own impression. I believe that
when people die of heart failure in that way, they often make
desperate efforts to explain what has happened, and go on trying to
talk when they can only make inarticulate sounds. Do you remember if
it was at all like that?'
'Not at all,' Margaret said. 'She whispered the last words she spoke,
but they were quite distinct. Then she drew three or four deep
breaths, and all at once I saw that she was dead, and I called the
doctor from the next room.'
'I suppose that might be heart failure,' said Griggs thoughtfully.
'You are quite sure that you thought it was only that, are you not?'
'Only what?' Margaret asked with growing surprise.
'Only fright, or the result of having been half-suffocated in the
crowd.'
'Yes, I think I am sure. What do you mean? Why do you insist so much?'
'It's of no use to tell other people,' said Griggs, 'but you may just
as well know. I found her lying in a heap behind a door, where there
could not have been much of a crowd.'
'Perhaps she had taken refuge there, to save herself,' Margaret
suggested.
'Possibly. But there was another thing. When I got home I found that
there was a little blood on the palm of my hand. It was the hand I had
put under her waist when I lifted her.'
'Do you mean to say you think she was wounded?' Margaret asked,
opening her eyes wide.
'There was blood on the inside of my hand,' Griggs answered, 'and I
had no scratch to account for it. I know quite well that it was on the
hand that I put under her waist--a little above the waist, just in the
middle of her back.'
'But it would have been seen afterwards.'
'On the dark red silk she wore? Not if there was very little of it.
The doctor never thought of looking for such a wound. Why should he?
He had not the slightest reason for suspecting that the poor girl had
been murdered.'
'Murdered?'
Margaret looked hard at Griggs, and then she suddenly shuddered from
head to foot. She had never before had such a sensation; it was like
a shock from an electric current at the instant when the contact is
made, not strong enough to hurt, but yet very disagreeable. She felt
it at the moment when her mind connected what Griggs was saying with
the dying girl's last words, 'he did it'; and with little Ida's look
of horror when she had watched Mr. Van Torp's lips while he was
talking to himself on the boat-deck of the _Leofric_; and again, with
the physical fear of the man that always came over her when she had
been near him for a little while. When she spoke to Griggs again the
tone of her voice had changed.
'Please tell me how it could have been done,' she said.
'Easily enough. A steel bodkin six or seven inches long, or even a
strong hat-pin. It would be only a question of strength.'
Margaret remembered Mr. Van Torp's coarse hands, and shuddered again.
'How awful!' she exclaimed.
'One would bleed to death internally before long,' Griggs said.
'Are you sure?'
'Yes. That is the reason why the three-cornered blade for duelling
swords was introduced in France thirty years ago. Before that, men
often fought with ordinary foils filed to a point, and there were many
deaths from internal hemorrhage.'
'What odd things you always know! That would be just like being run
through with a bodkin, then?'
'Very much the same.'
'But it would have been found out afterwards,' Margaret said, 'and the
papers would have been full of it.'
'That does not follow,' Griggs answered. 'The girl was an only child,
and her mother had been divorced and married again. She lived alone
with her father, and he probably was told the truth. But Isidore
Bamberger is not the man to spread out his troubles before the public
in the newspapers. On the contrary, if he found out that his daughter
had been killed--supposing that she was--he probably made up his mind
at once that the world should not know it till he had caught the
murderer. So he sent for the best detective in America, put the matter
in his hands, and inserted a notice of his daughter's death that
agreed with what the doctor had said. That would be the detective's
advice, I'm sure, and probably Van Torp approved of it.'
'Mr. Van Torp? Do you think he was told about it? Why?'
'First, because Bamberger is Van Torp's banker, broker, figure-head,
and general representative on earth,' answered Griggs. 'Secondly,
because Van Torp was engaged to marry the girl.'
'The engagement was broken off,' Margaret said.
'How do you know that?' asked Griggs quickly.
'Mr. Van Torp told me, on the steamer. They had broken it off that
very day, and were going to let it be known the next morning. He told
me so, that afternoon when I walked with him.'
'Really!'
Griggs was a little surprised, but as he did not connect Van Torp with
the possibility that Miss Bamberger had been murdered, his thoughts
did not dwell on the broken engagement.
'Why don't you try to find out the truth?' Margaret asked rather
anxiously. 'You know so many people everywhere--you have so much
experience.'
'I never had much taste for detective work,' answered the literary
man, 'and besides, this is none of my business. But Bamberger and Van
Torp are probably both of them aware by this time that I found the
girl and carried her to the manager's room, and when they are ready
to ask me what I know, or what I remember, the detective they
are employing will suddenly appear to me in the shape of a new
acquaintance in some out-of-the-way place, who will go to work
scientifically to make me talk to him. He will very likely have a
little theory of his own, to the effect that since it was I who
brought Miss Bamberger to Schreiermeyer's room, it was probably I who
killed her, for some mysterious reason!'
'Shall you tell him about the drop of blood on your hand?'
'Without the slightest hesitation. But not until I am asked, and I
shall be very glad if you will not speak of it.'
'I won't,' Margaret said; 'but I wonder why you have told me if you
mean to keep it a secret!'
The veteran man of letters turned his sad grey eyes to hers, while his
lips smiled.
'The world is not all bad,' he said. 'All men are not liars, and all
women do not betray confidence.'
'It's very good to hear a man like you say that,' Margaret answered.
'It means something.'
'Yes,' assented Griggs thoughtfully. 'It means a great deal to me to
be sure of it, now that most of my life is lived.'
'Were you unhappy when you were young?'
She asked the question as a woman sometimes does who feels herself
strongly drawn to a man much older than she. Griggs did not answer at
once, and when he spoke his voice was unusually grave, and his eyes
looked far away.
'A great misfortune happened to me,' he said. 'A great misfortune,' he
repeated slowly, after a pause, and his tone and look told Margaret
how great that calamity had been better than a score of big words.
'Forgive me,' Margaret said softly; 'I should have known.'
'No,' Griggs answered after a moment. 'You could not have known. It
happened very long ago, perhaps ten years before you were born.'
Again he turned his sad grey eyes to hers, but no smile lingered now
about the rather stern mouth. The two looked at each other quietly
for five or six seconds, and that may seem a long time. When Margaret
turned away from the elderly man's more enduring gaze, both felt that
there was a bond of sympathy between them which neither had quite
acknowledged till then. There was silence after that, and Margaret
looked out of the window, while her hand unconsciously played with the
book on her knee, lifting the cover a little and letting it fall again
and again.
Suddenly she turned to Griggs once more and held the book out to him
with a smile.
'I'm not an autograph-hunter,' she said, 'but will you write something
on the fly-leaf? Just a word or two, without your name, if you like.
Do you think I'm very sentimental?'
She smiled again, and he took the book from her and produced a pencil.
'It's a book I shall not throw away,' she went on, 'because the man
who wrote it is a great friend of mine, and I have everything he has
ever written. So, as I shall keep it, I want it to remind me that you
and I grew to know each other better on this voyage.'
It occurred to the veteran that while this was complimentary to
himself it was not altogether promising for Lushington, who was the
old friend in question. A woman who loves a man does not usually ask
another to write a line in that man's book. Griggs set the point of
the pencil on the fly-leaf as if he were going to write; but then he
hesitated, looked up, glanced at Margaret, and at last leaned back in
the seat, as if in deep thought.
'I didn't mean to give you so much trouble,' Margaret said, still
smiling. 'I thought it must be so easy for a famous author like you to
write half-a-dozen words!'
'A "sentiment" you mean!' Griggs laughed rather contemptuously, and
then was grave again.
'No!' Margaret said, a little disappointed. 'You did not understand
me. Don't write anything at all. Give me back the book.'
She held out her hand for it; but as if he had just made up his mind,
he put his pencil to the paper again, and wrote four words in a small
clear hand. She leaned forwards a little to see what he was writing.
'You know enough Latin to read that,' he said, as he gave the book
back to her.
She read the words aloud, with a puzzled expression.
'"Credo in resurrectionem mortuorum."' She looked at him for some
explanation.
'Yes,' he said, answering her unspoken question. '"I believe in the
resurrection of the dead."'
'It means something especial to you--is that it?'
'Yes.' His eyes were very sad again as they met hers.
'My voice?' she asked. 'Some one--who sang like me? Who died?'
'Long before you were born,' he answered gently.
There was another little pause before she spoke again, for she was
touched.
'Thank you,' she said. 'Thank you for writing that.'