completely unaware of any signs of trickery here, and had so forgotten
my fears, that I found it the most natural thing in the world to step
into the room, and to enjoy helping the girl in her difficulty. I
discovered her before an open door--the door of a wardrobe I thought it
was for a moment, but I saw at the second look that it gave access to a
tiny chamber, whereof the walls were all drawers. Margaret Klein herself
stood within this curiously fashioned safe, built as part of the house,
and was still struggling with the refractory drawer; so that I had no
hesitation--nor, indeed, thought suspiciously--in going to her side. She
laughed slyly as we stood in the semi-dark together, and my hand falling
by chance on hers, she pressed it, and put her face very close to
mine--so close, that to have resisted kissing her would have been a
crime for which a man would have repented until his last day. I cannot
tell accurately how long I held her in a passionate embrace, feeling her
lips glued upon my own; but suddenly and quickly she pushed me from her
with a surprising strength of arm, and before I could regain my balance
she had sprung into the room, and the door of the small chamber in which
I was left swung to with a clang, striking me backwards as it pressed
upon me, and coming nigh to stunning me. So thick was this door, so
impenetrable, that its closing was succeeded by the stillness of vault
or catacomb. I had scarce realized the whole trick, or the terrible
predicament sheer folly had placed me in, when I was plunged into the
abyss of utter darkness, shut as it were into the coffin that had been
prepared for me. A frightful panic, a hideous terror, an indescribable
anger, came upon me from the very first moment of that fearful trial.
For some minutes--the first minutes of imprisonment in a room where I
could stand my height with difficulty, but whose iron sides my elbows
touched as I turned--I think my reason must have been paralyzed. Rage,
shame of my folly, yet, above all, unsurpassable fear, drove me to beat
with my fists upon the door, which gave me back the touch of solid
steel; to cry out aloud as a man in the throes of painful death; to
grind my teeth until pain shot into my brain; to forget, in fact, that I
was from that time helpless, and that others alone could give to me
life.
When the first great terror had passed, and a mental struggle had left
me with some sense, I leant against the steel door, and thought again of
my fate. I had little science, yet I knew that the hours of any man,
shut in an air-tight chamber such as that room of steel was, could be
few. I had heard that asphyxiation was a peaceful death, and think I
could have had courage to face it if a little light had been given to
me. But I was in utter weighty darkness; I could not even see that dull
red light as of one's own soul shining, which may come in the gentler
dark of night. There was only upon me that sense of impenetrable
blackness, the grim feeling that I had come to my coffin, had slept in
it, and arisen to this unspeakable terror. My whole being then seemed to
cry aloud for sight, one moment in which living light should again shine
upon me. A great craving for air; a sense of terrible effort in the
lungs, a rushing of blood to the head--these things succeeded, and as I
suffered them flashes of thought came and passed, hope extended a hand
to me, processes of reasoning told me that I should be saved, only to
convince me the more that I should die.
If I could have reasoned sanely I should have seen that my hope was all
bound up in Abel and the detective in the house. Klein, and the invalid,
and the girl--they had been gone long since, unless others had put hands
upon them. My own servant, I knew, would seek for me first; but even if
he came to the safe, how would he open it, how cut through these inches
of steel before death had ended it all? It was even possible that the
door of the strong room was a concealed door--and so afterwards I proved
it to be. In that case, how would they know even of my necessity? These
torturing reflections threw at last a glimmer of necessary activity upon
my despair. I raised my voice, though I had then the strangest sensation
in my veins, and my heart was pumping audibly; and for many minutes I
shouted with all my strength. Once I thought that I heard, even through
the door, some sound from the other room; yet when I cried louder, and
beat again upon the steel, there was no signal. I remained unheeded; my
voice gradually failed me; I could cry no longer, but began to sink
almost into a coma.
How long this coma lasted I cannot tell. I was roused from it, after a
hideous dream of waiting, by sounds of knocking upon some wall near me;
and with a new strength I shouted again, and beat again upon the door
of steel. Yet, I knew that I was not heard, for the sound of the blows
grew fainter and were passing away and life, which had come near again,
seemed to pass with them. Then was my supreme moment of misery, yet one
giving an inspiration which brought me here to write this record.
Recoiling from the door as the knocks without grew fainter, I struck my
back against the iron wall, and my pistol, which I had forgotten,
pressed into my flesh. Regardless of all thought of consequences, of the
path of the bullet, or the effect upon me of the stifling smoke, I fired
three rounds from the revolver into the room--and instantly was
breathing the densest smoke. Then a sudden faintness took me; and I
recollect only that I fell forward into a world of light, and there
slept.
[Illustration: "I fired three rounds from the revolver into the door."
--_Page 104_]
* * * * *
"The joke, was, seeing you living, Mr. Sutton, that Abel swallowed the
wine that butler gave him, and was made as insensibly drunk as a man who
takes stage chloroform. I knew all along that the butler was the one to
watch; and while I never thought they'd do you mischief in the
room--believing they meant to work after midnight--my men in the grounds
clapped the bracelets on the lank chap up by the woods there, and he had
the diamond on him."
"And the Colonel and his daughter and the invalid?" I asked, raising
myself in the bed of an upper chamber of the Woodfields, on the foot of
which sat my old friend, the detective of Hyde Park.
"Got clear away by a back staircase we'd never heard of, through a
cellar and a passage to the lower grounds! They knocked old Jimmy, the
local policeman, on the head by the spinney, and all they left him was a
bump as big as an orange. That girl must have had a liking for you. One
of my men nearly took her as she jumped into a dog-cart; but she threw
the keys in his face, and he brought them here. I knew nothing about
this room, and shouldn't have done except for the ring of your revolver;
but the last Lord Aberly built it to take his famous collection of
rubies and emeralds, and that lag Klein evidently heard of it, and
leased the place furnished on that account."
"How do you know that he was a swindler?"
"I heard of him in New York when I was there last winter. He was wanted
for the great mail robbery near St. Louis. A clever scoundrel, too;
deceived a heap of folk by forged letters of introduction, and the banks
by leaving big deposits with them. He must be worth a pretty pile; but I
don't doubt he came over here from America on purpose to steal your
diamonds. He was out at the Cape nine months ago, and got to hear all
about the White Creek stone. Then he must have known that Herbert Klein,
his supposed brother, and a real rich man of Valparaiso, was away
yachting in the Pacific; and so he claimed him, and traded on his
undoubted couple of million. A clever forger, and the other two with him
nearly as smart. It was lucky for you that one of the grooms here had
heard of a mysterious place in that dressing-room, and led me, when I
missed you, to tap the walls. You were nearly done for, and though you
don't know, you've been in bed pretty well a week."
"And the man's daughter?" I asked, a little anxiously.
"His daughter," he replied; "pshaw, she's his wife!--and we'll take the
pair of them yet."
But he never did, although the lank butler is now our guest at
Dartmoor.
THE ACCURSED GEMS.
THE ACCURSED GEMS.
The accursed gems lie sedately in the lowest drawer of my strong room,
shining from a couple of dozen of prim leather cases, with a light which
is full of strange memories. I call them accursed because I cannot sell
them; yet there are those with other histories, stones about which the
fancy of romance has sported, and the strong hand of tragedy has touched
with an indelible brand. It may be that the impulse of sentiment,
working deep down in the heart of the ostensibly commercial character,
forbids me to cry some of these wares in the market-place with any
vigor; it may be that the play of chance moves the mind of the
jewel-buyer to a prejudice against them. In any case, they lie in my
safe unhonored and unsung--and, lacking that which Sewell called the
"precious balsam" of reputation, are merely so much carbon or mineral
matter giving light to iron walls which give no light again.
For the stones which have no history I am not an apologist. Some day,
those excellent people who now decry them in every salon where jewels
are discussed, will give up the hope of attempting to buy them cheaply;
and I shall make my profit. Everything comes to him who _can_ wait, and
I am not in a hurry. As to the others, which have been the pivots of
romance or serious story, they may well lie as they are while they serve
my memory in the jotting down of some of these mysteries.
And that they do serve it I have no measure of doubt. Here, for
instance, is a little bag of pearls and diamonds. It contains a black
pearl from Koepang, so rich in silvery lustre, and so perfect in shape,
that it should be worth eight hundred pounds in any market in Europe; a
couple of pink pearls from the Bahamas, of fine orient yet pear-shaped,
and therefore less valuable as fashion dictates; five old Brazilian
diamonds averaging two carats each; a number of smaller diamonds for
finish; and two great white pearls, which I find at the very bottom of
the bag. Those stones were bought by the late Lord Maclaren a month
before the date announced for his marriage with the Hon. Christine King.
He had intended them as his gift to her, a handsome and sufficient gift,
it must be admitted, yet so did fickle fortune work that his very
generosity was the indirect cause of a commotion in the week of the
wedding, and of as pretty a social scandal as society has known for a
decade.
The matter was hushed up of course. For six weeks, as a wag said, it was
a nine days' wonder. Aged ladies discussed it from every point of view,
but could make nothing of it. The Society papers lacked enough
information to lie about it. The principal actors held their tongues,
and in due time the West forgot, for a new scandal arose, and the courts
supplied the craving for the doubtful, which is a part of polite
education nowadays. Yet I do not think that I make a boastful claim, in
asserting that I alone, beyond those immediately concerned, became
possessed of full knowledge of the occurrence. It was to me first of all
that Lord Maclaren related the history of it, and, despite my advice to
the contrary, laid it upon me that I should tell none in his lifetime.
He is dead now, and the publication of the story will throw a light upon
much that is well worth investigating. It may also help me to sell the
pearls, which is infinitely more important, as any unprejudiced person
will admit.
Here then is the story. I had a visit from the chief actor in it towards
the end of June in the year 1890. He came to tell me that he was to be
married quietly in the middle of the following month to the Hon.
Christine King, the very beautiful sister of Lord Cantiliffe. She was
then staying at the old family place at St. Peter's, in Kent; and she
wished to avoid a public wedding in view of the recent death of her
sister, whose beauty was no less remarkable than her own. Maclaren's
visit was but the prelude to the purchase of a present, and the business
was made the easier since he had the simplest notions as to his
requirements. He had recently come from America--without a wife
_mirabile dictu_--and there had seen a curious anchor bracelet. The
wristband of this bauble was formed of a plain gold cable, the anchor
itself of pearls and diamonds; the shackle consisted of a small circle
of brilliants; the shaft had a pink pearl at either end; the shank had a
black pearl at the foot of it, and the flukes were of white pearls with
small diamonds round them. I found it to be rather a vulgar ornament;
but his heart was set on having it, and it chanced that I had the very
pearls necessary. I told him that I would make him a model, and send it
down to his hotel at Ramsgate within a week; and that, if he then
thought the jewel to be over showy, we could refashion it. He left much
pleased, returning by the Granville express to Kent; and within the week
he had the model; and I received his instructions to proceed with the
work.
It is necessary, I think, to say a word here about this curious
character. At the time I knew him, Maclaren was a man in his fortieth
year, though he looked older. He was once vulgarly described in a club
smoking-room as being "all hair and teeth," like a buzzard; and his best
friend could not have ranked him with the handsome. Yet the women liked
him--perhaps because it was a tradition that he made love to every
pretty girl in town; and it was surprising beyond belief that he reached
his fortieth year, and remained single. When he went to America in 1888
the whole of the prophets gave him six months of celibacy; but he
cheated them, and returned without a wife. True, a copy of an American
society paper was passed round the club, where the men learnt with
surprise that New York had believed this elderly Don Juan to be engaged
to Evelyn Lenox, "the lady of the unlimited dollars," as young
Barisbroke of the Bachelors' called her; and had been very indignant
when he took passage by the _Teutonic_, and left her people to face the
titters of a triumphant rivalry. But for all that he was not married,
and could afford to laugh at the malignant scribes who made couplets of
his supposed amatory adventures in Boston; and dedicated sonnets of
apology, "_pro amore mea_," to E---- L---- and the marrying mothers of
New York generally. Such a man cared little for the threats of this
young lady's brother, or for the common rumor that she was the most
dashing girl in New York city, and would make things unpleasant for him.
He had twenty thousand a year, and for _fiancee_ one of the prettiest
roses in the whole garden of Kent. What harm then could a broker's
daughter, three thousand miles away, do to him? or how mar his
happiness?
But I am anticipating, and must hark back to the anchor with the flukes
of pearl. I sent the model down on Wednesday; on the Friday morning I
received the order to proceed with the work. Early on the following
Monday, as I read my paper in a cab on the way to Bond Street, I saw a
tremendous headline which announced the "sudden and mysterious
disappearance of Lord Maclaren." The report said that he had left his
hotel on the Saturday afternoon to walk, as the supposition went, to St.
Peters. But he had never reached Lord Cantiliffe's house; and although
search had been made by the police and by special coastguard parties, no
trace of him had been found. I need scarcely say that the murder theory
was set up at once. Clever men from town came down to wag their heads
with stupid men from Canterbury, and to discuss the "only possible
theory," of which there were a dozen or more. The police arrested all
the drunken men within a radius of ten miles, and looked for bloodstains
on their coats. The Hon. Christine King was spoken of as "distracted,"
which was possible; and the family of the missing nobleman as "plunged
into the most profound grief." Nor, as an eloquent special reporter in
his best mood explained, was this supposed tragedy made less painful by
the knowledge that the unhappy victim of accident or of murder was to
have been married within the month.
For a whole week the press had no other topic; the police telegraphed to
all the capitals; a reward of a thousand pounds was offered for
knowledge of Lord Maclaren, "last seen upon the East Cliff at Ramsgate
at three o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, the fifth of July." A
hundred tongues gave you the exact details of an imagined assassination;
ten times that number--and these tongues chiefly feminine--told you that
he had shirked the marriage upon its very threshold. But the mystery
remained unexplained--and as the day for the wedding drew near, the
excitement amongst a section of society rose to fever heat. Had the body
been found? Had the detectives a clue? Were the strange hints--implying
that the missing man had quarrelled with his _fiancee's_ brother, and
thrown a glass of wine in his face; that he had a wife in Algiers; that
he was married a year ago at Cyprus; that he was bankrupt--merely the
fable of malicious tongues, or had they that germ of truth from which so
vast a disease of scandal can grow? I made no pretence to answer the
questions--but they interested me, and I watched for the development of
the story with the keenness of a hardened novel reader.
The day fixed for the wedding now drew near; and when the bridegroom did
not appear, the vulgar, who do not believe scandals though they like to
hear them, declared that the murder theory was true beyond question. The
rest said that he was either bankrupt or bigamist--and having consoled
themselves with the reflection, they let the matter go. It is likely
that I should have done the same had I not enjoyed a solution of the
mystery, which came to me unsought and accidentally. On a day near to
that fixed for the wedding I was at Victoria Station about eight o'clock
in the evening when I ran full upon the missing nobleman; and for some
while stood speechless with astonishment at the sight of him. His beard
was longer than ever, recalling the traditions of Killingworthe or of
Johann Mayo; his Dundreary whiskers were shaggy and unkempt; he was very
pale in the face, and wore a little yachting cap and a blue serge suit
which begarbed him ridiculously. He had no luggage with him, not even a
valise; and his first remark was given in the voice of a man afraid, and
in a measure broken.
"Ah, Sutton, that's you, is it?" he cried. "I'm glad to see you, by
Jove; have you such a thing as half-a-crown in your pocket?"
I offered him half-a-sovereign, still saying nothing; but he continued
rapidly,--
"You've heard all about it, of course--what are they saying here now? Do
they think I'm a dead man, eh?--but I won't face them yet. Upon my
life, I dare not see a soul. Come with me to an hotel; there's a good
fellow--but let's have a cognac first; I'm shivering like a child with a
fever."
I gave him some brandy at a bar, and after that we took a four-wheeled
cab--he insisting on the privacy--and drove to a private hotel in
Cecil-street, Strand. They did not know him there, and I engaged a room
for him and ordered dinner, taking these things upon myself, since he
was as helpless as a babe. After the meal he seemed somewhat better, and
I telegraphed to Ramsgate for his man, though it was impossible that the
fellow could be with him until the following morning. In the meantime I
found myself doing valet's work for him--but I had his story; and
although it was not until some months later that another supplied some
of the missing links in it, he telling me the barest outline, I will set
it down here plainly as a narrative, and without any of those "says I's"
and "says he's," which were the particular abomination of Defoe, as they
have been of many since his day.
The complete explanation of this mystery was one, I think, to astonish
most people. It was so utterly unlooked for, that I was led at the first
hearing to believe the narrator insane. He told me that at three o'clock
on the afternoon of July 5th, he had left his hotel on the East Cliff at
Ramsgate--the day being glorious, and a full sun playing upon the
Channel and many ships--and had determined to walk over to St. Peters,
where his _fiancee_ expected him to a tennis party. With this intention,
he struck along the cliff towards Broadstairs, but had gone only a few
paces, when a seaman stopped him, and touching his hat respectfully,
said that he had a message for him.
"Well, my man, what is it?" Maclaren asked--I had the dialogue from the
seaman himself--being in a hurry as those who walk the ways of love
usually are.
"My respects to your honor," replied the fellow, "but the ketch
_Bowery_, moored off the pier-head, 'ud be glad to see your honor if
convenient, and if not, maybe to-morrow?"
"What the devil does the man mean?" cried his lordship, but the seaman
plucking up courage continued,--
"An old friend of your honor's for sure he is, my guv'ner, Abraham
Burrow, what you had the acquaintance of in New York city."
"Well, and why can't he come ashore? I remember the man perfectly--I
have every cause to"--a true remark, since Abraham Burrow then owed the
speaker some two thousand pounds; and had shown no unprincipled desire
to pay it.
"The fact is, my lordship," replied the seaman, whose vocabulary was
American and strange, "the fact is he's tidy sick, on his beam ends, I
guess with brounchitis; and he won't be detaining you not as long as a
bosun's whistle if you go aboard, and be easin' of him."
Now, although this comparatively juvenile lover was in a mighty hurry to
get to St. Peter's, there was yet a powerful financial motive to send
him to the ship. He had done business with this Abraham Burrow in
America; the man had--we won't say swindled--but been smart enough there
to relieve him of a couple of thousand pounds. To hope for the recovery
of such a sum seemed as childish as a sigh for the moon. Maclaren had
not seen Burrow for twelve months, and did not know a moment before this
meeting whether he was alive or dead. Yet here he was in a yacht off
Ramsgate harbor, desiring to see his creditor, and to see him
immediately. The latter reflected that such a visit would not occupy
half an hour of his time, that it might lead to the recovery of some
part of his money, that he could make his excuses to the pretty girl
awaiting him--in short, he went with the seaman; and in a quarter of an
hour he stepped on board an exceeding well-kept yacht, which lay beyond
the buoy over against the East Pier; and all his trouble began.
The craft, as I have said, was ketch rigged, and must have been of
seventy tons or more. There was a good square saloon aft, and a couple
of tiny cabins, the one amidships, the other at the poop. When Lord
Maclaren went aboard, three seamen and a boy were the occupants of the
deck; but a King Charles spaniel barked at the top of the companion; and
a steward came presently and asked the visitor to go below. He descended
to the saloon at this; but the sick man, they told him, lay in the fore
cabin; and thither he followed his very obsequious guide.
I had the account of this episode and of much that follows from two
sources, one a man I met in New York last summer, the other, the victim
of the singularly American conspiracy. Lord Maclaren's account was
simple--"As there's a heaven above me, Sutton," said he, "I'd no sooner
put my foot in the hole when the door was slammed behind me, and bolted
like a prison gate." The American said, "I guess the old boy had hardly
walked right in, before they'd hitched up the latch, and he was shouting
glory. Then the skipper let the foresail go--for the ketch was only
lyin'-to, and in ten minutes he was standing out down the Channel. But
you never heard such a noise as there was below in all your days. Talk
about a sheet and pillow-case party in an insane asylum, that's no word
for it."
The fact that the "illustrious nobleman," as the penny society papers
called him, was trapped admitted of no question. He realized it himself
in a few moments, and sat down to wonder, "who and why the devil, etc.,"
in five languages. I need scarcely say that the thing was an utter and
inexplicable mystery to him. He thought at first that robbery was the
motive, for he had the model of the bracelet upon him; and as he sat
alone in the cabin, he really feared personal violence. He told me that
he waited to see the door open, and a villain enter, armed with Colt or
knuckleduster, after the traditional Adelphian mood; but a couple of
hours passed and no one came, and after that the only interruption to
his meditation was the steward's knock upon the cabin door, and his
polite desire to know "Will my lord take tea?" "My lord" told him to
carry his tea to a latitude where high temperatures prevail; and after
that, continued to kick lustily at the door, and to make original
observations upon the owner of the yacht, and upon her crew, until the
light failed. Yet no one heeded him; and when it was dark the roll of
the yacht to the seas made him sure that they stood well out, and were
beating with a stiff breeze.