IS IT BLACKMAIL?
Mr. Wedmore repeated his comment: "Curious, isn't it?" before Max could
reply. At last he nodded, and handed back the paper to his father. Then
he turned his chair toward the fire, and stared at the blazing coals. He
had lost his appetite; he felt cold, miserable.
His father could not help noticing that something was wrong with him;
and, after watching him furtively for a few minutes, he said, with an
abruptness which made Max start:
"Did you see anything of Dudley when you were in town?"
Max changed color, and glanced apprehensively at his father, as if
fearing some suspicion in the unexpected question.
"No, sir," he answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I called at his
chambers; but they told me he had gone away for the holidays and had
left no address. All letters were to be kept for him till his return."
Both question and answer had been uttered very softly, but Max saw, by
the look on Doreen's face, as she glanced over from the other side of
the table, that she guessed what they were talking about, if she had not
heard their words.
"Aren't you going to have any breakfast, Max?" asked she, as she came
round to him. "We've kept everything about for you, and we want the
table."
"Well, you can have it," said he, jumping up, quickly, and making for
the door. "I don't want any breakfast this morning."
"Nonsense. You will not be allowed to leave the room until you have had
some," retorted his sister, as she sprang at him and attempted to pinion
his arms. "We allow no ill-temper on Christmas Eve, especially as we've
got a surprise for you--a beautiful, real surprise. Guess who is coming
this morning to stay till New Year!"
Queenie had come up by this time, and the two girls between them brought
their brother back to the table, where the younger sister began to pour
out his coffee.
But Max refused to show the slightest interest in the coming guest, and
would not attempt to guess who it was. So they had to tell him.
"It was all on your account that we asked her," said Doreen, hurt by his
indifference. "You took such a fancy to her, and she to you, apparently,
at the Hutchinsons' dance, that we thought you'd be delighted.
_Now_, don't you know who it is?"
To their great disappointment, both girls saw that he didn't. Mr.
Wedmore, from the other end of the room, was observing this little
incident with considerable annoyance. The young lady in question, Miss
Mildred Appleby, was very pretty, and would be well dowered, and Mr.
Wedmore had entered heartily into the plan of inviting her to spend
Christmas with them, in the hope that Max would propose, be accepted,
and that he would then make up his mind to settle.
"Why, it's Mildred Appleby," said Doreen, impatiently, when her
brother's blank look had given her the wrong answer. "Surely, you don't
mean to say you've forgotten all about her?"
"Oh, no, I remember her," answered Max, indifferently. "Tall girl with a
fashion-plate face, waltzes pretty well and can't talk. Yes, I remember
her, of course."
"Is that all you have to say about her?" cried Doreen, betraying her
disappointment. "Why, a month ago she was the nicest and the jolliest
and the everythingest girl you had ever met."
"He's seen somebody else since then," remarked the observant Queenie, in
her dry, little voice. "When he was in town yesterday, perhaps."
Max looked at his sister with a curious expression. Was she right? Had
he, in that adventurous thirty-six hours in London, seen somebody who
took the color out of all the other girls he had ever met? He asked
himself this question when Queenie's shrewd eyes met his, and he
remembered the strange sensation he had felt at the touch of Carrie's
hand, at the sound of her voice.
Before he could answer his sister, Mr. Wedmore spoke impatiently:
"Rubbish!" cried he, testily. "Every young man thinks it the proper
thing to talk like that, as if no girl was good enough for him. Miss
Appleby is a charming girl, and she will find plenty of admirers without
waiting for Max's valuable adoration."
He had much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And
both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather
in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the
faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat
watching him, ready to spring upon him at the first possible moment, and
to carry him off for the _tête-à-tête_ he was so anxious to put off.
What should he tell his sister of that adventure of his in the slums of
the East End? Would she be satisfied if he told a white lie, if he said
he had found out nothing?
Max felt that Doreen would not be satisfied if he got himself out of the
difficulty like that. In the first place, she would not believe him. He
saw that her quick eyes had been watching him since his return, and he
felt that he had been unable to hide the fact that something of greater
significance had occurred during that brief stay in town. What then
should he tell her? Perfect frankness, perfect confidence was out of the
question. To look back now, in the handsome, spacious house of his
parents, from the snug depths of an easy-chair, on the time he had
passed on and about the wharf by the docks, was so strange that Max
could hardly believe in his own experiences.
Who would believe the story of his adventures, if he himself could
scarcely do so? Would Doreen, would anybody give credence to the story
of the dead body that he touched, but never saw, the eyes that looked at
him from an unbroken wall, the girl who lured him into the shut-up
house, and then let him out again with an air of secrecy and mystery?
The transition had been so abrupt from the gloomy wharf, with its
suspicious surroundings and the heavy, fog-laden air of the riverside,
back to the warmth and light and brightness of home, that already his
adventures had receded into a sort of dreamland, and he began to ask
himself whether Carrie, with her fair hair and moving blue eyes, her
vibrating voice and changeful expression, were not a creature of his
imagination only.
He was still under the influence of the feelings roused by this dreamy
remembrance, when he snatched the opportunity afforded by Doreen's being
called away by Mrs. Wedmore, to go out into the grounds, on his way to
the stables. A ride through the lanes in the frosty air would, he
thought, be the best preparation for the trying ordeal of that
inevitable talk with Doreen, whose wistful eyes haunted him as she
waited for a chance of speaking to him alone.
In the garden a scene of desolation met his eye.
The lawns were torn up and trodden down; the gravel path from the
stables looked like a freshly plowed field; every tree and every bush
bore the marks of the marauder.
The head gardener was in a condition of unapproachable ferocity, and it
was generally understood that he had given notice to leave. The
under-gardeners kept out of the way, but could be heard at intervals
checking outbursts of derisive laughter behind the shrubberies. The
story of the Yule log and its adventures was the best joke the country
had had for a long time, and it was bound to lose nothing as it passed
from mouth to mouth. And poor Mr. Wedmore began to dread the ordeal of
congratulations he would have to go through when he next went to church.
Max felt sorry for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was
a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which
were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all
enjoying the story of the master's freak.
The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids
taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy
with yard-broom and leather.
Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.
"There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the
garden? You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?"
"Well, no, sir. But it brought a lot of people up as had no business
here. There was a person come up as we couldn't get rid of, asking
questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir. She
wouldn't believe as he wasn't here, an' she frightened some of the
women, I believe, sir. They didn't know where she'd got to, an' nobody
saw her go out of the place, so they've got an idea she's hiding about.
A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir," added the man, who wished he
had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the
young master was affected by this story.
The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman
"who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at
the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending
Christmas at The Beeches.
He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that
the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it
gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man
whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the
object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail.
Or was it--could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object
was to warn Dudley? To associate Carrie herself with the levying of
blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state
of his feelings toward her.
And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a
meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house
by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an
ambush on the stairs.
"I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she
ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been
trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use!
No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will
just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me--tell me what you
_know_, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have
the truth."
"Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself
to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a
fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling
up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.
Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.
"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you
mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."
Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known
till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big
brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger
against the man seized him, and he frowned.
"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way
he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given
you up!" said he, ferociously.
"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found
out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"
"Well, then, I'll tell you. He _is_ off his head. He has got mixed
up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with
for half an hour, and--and--and--well, they say--the people say he's done
something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"
He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way
out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She
stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her
hands. Then she said in a whisper:
"You don't mean--murder?"
Her brother's silence gave her the answer.
There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her
breath:
"Poor Dudley!"
Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly.
"Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't
you?"
"Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the
story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if
there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must
remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses
for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You
see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have
done anything mean or underhand or unworthy."
"Don't you call murder, manslaughter--whatever it is--unworthy?" asked
Max, irritably.
"Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think
there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than
for any other criminal. And--and"--her voice gave way and began to shake
with tears--"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I--I want
to help him, or--or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!"
Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister,
he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself
on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily:
"He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps
I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself
again, and--and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and
see."
But this lame attempt at comfort met with no warm response from his
sister. She looked at him with a poor little attempt at a contemptuous
smile, and then, afraid of breaking down altogether, sprang up from the
arm-chair in which she had been sitting and left him to himself.
Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else
was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea
of Mr. Wedmore's, which was to be a feature of the evening. And after
that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss
Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew
where, and did not return home until dusk.
Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great
yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge
barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other.
And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were
still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this
was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.
So he pushed open the great, creaking door of the barn and went in. It
was very dark in there, and the air was cold and damp. A musty smell
from old sacks, rotting wood and mildewed straw came to his nostrils, as
he made his way carefully over the boards with which the middle part of
the barn had, for some forgotten purpose or other, been floored.
Little chinks of light from above showed great beams, some with ropes
hanging from them, and stacks of huge lumber of fantastic shapes to
right and left.
Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound. But
he heard nothing. Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which
he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.
Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the
panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then
gave two taps more.
There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the
stack, followed by the striking of a match.
Max was around the obstacle in a moment. Holding a piece of candle in
her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.
"Hello!" said he.
She said nothing. But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy
look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this
woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead
man, had never expected to see him again--alive.