A GHOSTLY EAVESDROPPER.
Mr. Wray sat by the library fire the next night as the clock chimed
twelve. There was whisky beside him, and soda, but he was not drinking,
only staring at the hearth, and tapping with his finger on his knee,
with the old action of driving in a nail.
The day had been long, hideously long, to every one but Cristiane le
Marchant, who had drunk in specious, covert admiration as a thirsty man
drinks water. To Mrs. Trelane it had been one effort of the nerves not
to give way to her misgivings; to Ismay the hours had dragged, and yet
flown, in her fears that to-morrow might be fraught with danger that
could not be evaded; her longing, that was yet a dread, for Cylmer’s
return. And, come what might, Wray must not see them together.
Marcus, until ten o’clock, had been coldly uneasy, despite all his
careful politeness. Since then the deep lines about his mouth were
drawn less tightly, and yet the look on his face did not reassure Helen
Trelane, as she came noiselessly into the room.
“Well, you have not overexerted yourself to get here!” he did not stop
the tapping that was enough to get on an innocent woman’s nerves.
“Do you know I have been waiting for an hour? Though, of course I
should be at your disposal till four in the morning!” with sarcastic
deference.
“I couldn’t come,” she retorted. “Cristiane came to my room to brush
her hair, and I had to pretend to get ready for bed.”
“Evidently.” For her carefully dressed hair had been changed to a small
coil that made her ten years older. “Well, now you are here, I have
some news!”
“Mark!” she caught him by the arm. “Quick, tell me. Good, or bad?”
“It is always ‘Mark’ when you are afraid of your neck!” his tone was
smoothly uncivil, his action openly brutal as he shook off her hand.
“Good, if one can believe it,” he took a telegram from his pocket.
“And don’t you?”
“I’ve no particular reason to; Van Hoeft was always a liar,” coolly.
“Yet I think he knows it wouldn’t pay to lie to me.”
“Who’s Van Hoeft? Give it to me.” She snatched it from his hand.
“A henchman of mine, in Amsterdam. Be good enough,” peremptorily, “not
to read it at the top of your sweetly penetrating voice.”
“There’s no one to hear.” But she did moderate the strained pitch of
her voice a little.
“‘The parcel cannot be traced beyond Paris. Will wire if any news of
it.’”
“The parcel. Does he mean the diamonds?” she cried, raging at his
sullen calm. “Why don’t you answer?”
“Of course he does, else why would it be good news?”
“And you think he may be deceiving you?”
“I think he may be fool enough to try to keep me quiet while he saves
his own skin.”
“Then why don’t you go and find out,” her voice was harsh, ringing.
“Are you going to sit here and let us both be ruined?”
“I am going to sit here, because I am afraid to be seen in either Paris
or Amsterdam,” he returned as carelessly as if he spoke of avoiding a
draft of air. “And because I’ve a good thing here, and the sooner it’s
managed the better.”
Twice the woman tried to speak and could not.
“What was in that paragraph, exactly?” she said at last.
“Exactly this.” He drew out a clipping from his pocketbook and read it
aloud.
“There is at last some clue to the mystery surrounding the death of
the late Lord Abbotsford, whose tragic end our readers will remember.
Some of the missing diamonds have been found at Amsterdam by a
clever detective, and the tracing of their whole history since their
disappearance can now be only a matter of time.”
“You’re sure that’s all?” she moistened her lip with his full tumbler
of whisky and soda.
“It’s enough, isn’t it? Oh, pray keep my drink!” as she handed it to
him. “I prefer a clean glass.”
“Mark, you must see,” she wailed wretchedly, “that it’s no time to have
a nine days’ wonder here. It would be madness to draw attention to
either of us, now.” She leaned forward, haggard, imploring. “I’ll give
you anything, all I have, if you only go away and let the girl be.”
“I told you before that was abject rot,” he exclaimed icily. “I’m not
playing for the few pounds you would forget to send when I was out of
your way. I mean to have all this”--glancing around him--“and Ismay,
in a satin gown, to take off my boots.” For once his calm was gone; he
breathed sharply. Mrs. Trelane rocked to and fro in her chair, with
fear and loathing.
“She’ll never have you,” she said through her teeth.
“Then you can swing,” said Mr. Wray, with a significant finger at his
own throat.
And this time she made no protestation of her innocence. Any one
listening might well have believed in her guilt. When she spoke again
her voice was hollow, like a dying woman’s.
“You can’t poison her without being found out.”
Mr. Wray threw back his head and laughed noiselessly, as was his habit.
The joke, for some unknown reason, was apparently an excellent one.
“Dear lady, how your mind reverts to a groove,” he said, surveying
her with half-shut eyes that made him more hideous than ever. “Your
method is not going to be employed again,” and he laughed once more,
unmercifully.
“Mark,” she was crying hysterically, “don’t laugh like that! You’ll
kill me if you laugh. You frighten me--I could scream”--her sobs broke
her words. “Tell me what you mean, and let me go.”
“I mean an accident, then; a common or garden accident. There couldn’t
be any fuss about that; it might happen to every one. And the less you
know about it the better. If you knew you’d do something foolish, and
the whole thing would be made a mess of.”
“It will put us both in our graves, never mind what I do.” She turned
on him fiercely.
He got up coolly and pulled up the blind, staring out into the
moonlight night.
“Does it interest you to know that it’s freezing hard? And there’s not
a breath of wind on the lake,” he asked.
“Nothing interests me while you live to curse my eyes,” she said with
unutterable bitterness, and in the silence of the room he laughed to
himself.
“Then let me advise you to drink that whisky and go to bed,” he said,
dropping the blind and turning around. “Also to rejoice that you will
not encounter any one in the passages,” glancing distastefully at the
channels her tears had marked through her powder.
“You have prepared me for a good night’s rest,” she returned heavily,
opening the door and making a few steps into the dark hall outside.
The next minute she flew back again.
“Mark, quick--for Heaven’s sake! There’s some one, something, there. I
can’t go.”
“You don’t mean you are believing in that crazy lie of Thomas?” he said
after a contemptuous survey of the empty hall, lamp in hand. “There
isn’t a creature stirring.”
“He believes it; Jessie believes it.”
“And in spite of that they also believe that when any one dies they go
either to hell or to heaven,” he jeered. “Can’t you see the thing’s
absurd?”
“But I heard something. I did, indeed. Oh, I’m nervous, unstrung. I
can’t face those dark stairs and passages. You will have to go up with
me.”
“Because Thomas is hanging round to see that all the lights are out,”
shrugging his shoulders. “I suppose neither of those two girls would
come down for anything.”
Mrs. Trelane shook her head. “Thomas thinks we are all in bed. He
hasn’t left a light anywhere. Jessie sleeps in a room off Cristiane’s;
she would never let her get out of her bed. And Ismay--oh, Mark! even
Ismay is afraid here at night. She locks her door and won’t open it
till daylight--for fear.”
“Then she has her weak side, for all her airs.”
He moved, lamp in hand, to the foot of the stairs.
“There, I’ll stay here till you are in your room,” he said resignedly.
“I wonder why women were created cowards.”
But she did not answer him. As quickly and almost as lightly as Ismay,
she had sped up the stairs and was groping through the dark hall above
their own room. When she reached it she was breathless; for just as
Ismay had said, she had heard that faint footfall, coming closer every
minute; inexorable, ghostly, in the silent house where no one waked
save she and Marcus Wray.
The latter had heard nothing, nor would he have cared if he had. In so
old a house night noises were a foregone conclusion.
He returned to his neglected whisky and soda, and a cigar. But there
was no bite to the whisky, no taste in the tobacco. His mind was not as
easy as he liked, in spite of his friend in Amsterdam. There had been
a weak point in the underground career of those diamonds, and Mr. Wray
knew it.
“What has to be done must be done at once,” he said aloud, stretching
out his long legs in Sir Gaspard’s chair. “And then I’ll be off to lie
low till I can reap the harvest. My old friend here can’t escape me,
even if she dared to try. And the weather has turned cold,” his voice
changed abruptly, as if something pleased him. “It’s freezing hard.
If all goes well the day after to-morrow will see the fair Helen an
heiress, after which I shall spend a few months living retired--in
Bohemia.”
Yawning, he extinguished the light and went up-stairs to bed. This
country life was at present convenient; in future it would be
profitable; but it was certainly deadly dull.
“To-morrow I’ll amuse myself with my dear friend and well-wisher,
Ismay,” he reflected. “I like to see her hate me, it adds to the
pleasure of having her under my fingers. Hello!” as he stood in his
door, candle in hand--the candle he would not give Helen Trelane for
pure deviltry--“what’s that?”
From somewhere far off a tinkling tune came softly, yet clearly; an
unearthly sound in the midnight hush.
“Thomas is up to some game, I suppose, and I’m damned if I know why!
But I’ll choke him off now, once for all.” He started in search of the
mysterious sound, kicking off his patent-leather slippers that he might
steal unseen on the erring Thomas. At the head of the stairs the music
ceased, not suddenly, but with the curious falling cadence that marked
the end of the tune. But music was lost on Mr. Wray.
“I’ve got off the track,” he thought, descending once more, somewhat
gingerly in his stocking feet. The instant he was in the lower passage
the air tinkled out again with a mocking lightness. The sound certainly
came from above him, and he ran up again, utterly careless if he were
heard or not.
There was only an empty passage to be seen, door after door on each
side of it. He flung them open, one by one, but only disused bedrooms
met his scrutiny. As he threw the fifth door wide his candle went out,
not quickly, but slowly, as if something ailed the wick. Dim and blue
it faded slowly and the music that had seemed so near was gone.
A cloud was over the moon; he could not see a yard into the room in
front of him, but the same cold disused air met him that he had felt in
all the other rooms.
“Thomas and his remarkable ghost seem to be founded on fact,” he
thought angrily, jarred, in spite of himself, by that slow fading of
his light. “Well, they can play till doomsday for all I care; but first
I will make sure of Thomas!”
He stumbled down to his own room in the dark, stubbing his toes
unmercifully. Then with a relit candle he sought the small room next
the butler’s pantry, where Thomas dwelt to guard his silver.
The door was ajar, the old man peacefully sleeping. Whoever was
disturbing the house, it was not the gray-haired servant. Once more
Mr. Wray sought his bedroom, stopping only to try Ismay’s door with
infinite caution.
It was locked, hard and fast.
“The hypocritical little devil,” he muttered, “who told me that she
was never afraid of anything, and is terrified by a musical box that
some servant winds up at night! It’s just as well, though. I don’t want
Miss Ismay’s company of an evening when I am talking business with her
charming mother.”
Ismay, seated somewhat breathless on her bed, shook with impotent rage
at that cautious hand on her door.
“Insolent wretch!” she thought furiously. “I hope those doctored
library candles were a success. Who would think a schoolgirl trick of
a thread soaked in saltpeter and run through with a fine needle would
ever come in so usefully. But that was only a side-show. ‘The day after
to-morrow,’ he said--and ‘an accident.’ What can he have in his mind?
Oh, if I only knew. And if only Miles would come back. I could die with
this awful feeling that it is something of my own mother’s that was
found in that room.”
She was weak with the vision flashing before her of disgrace, of the
police, of discovery, of Miles’ face when he knew, and in them she
forgot the most important words Wray had spoken that night, though she
had heard them well enough.
“And the weather’s changed. It is freezing hard.”
They carried Cristiane’s life and death, and her own fate hung on them,
and, shrewd as she was, Ismay overlooked them.