AT TORMOUTH
Furneaux reached Tormouth about three in the afternoon, and went boldly
to the Swan Hotel, since he was unknown by sight to Osborne. It was an
old-fashioned place, with a bar opening out of the vestibule, and the
first person that met his eye was of interest to him--a man sitting in
the bar-parlor, who had "Neapolitan" written all over him--a face that
Furneaux had already marked in Soho. He did not know the stranger's
name, but he would have wagered a large sum that this queer visitor to
Tormouth was a bird of the Janoc flock.
"What is he doing here?" Furneaux asked himself; and the only answer
that suggested itself was: "Keeping an eye on Osborne. Perhaps that
explains how Janoc got hold of the name 'Glyn.'"
When he was left alone in the bedroom which he took, he sat with his two
hands between his knees, his head bent low, giving ten minutes' thought
by the clock to the subject of Anarchists. Presently his lips muttered:
"Clarke is investigating the murder on his own account; he suspects that
Anarchists were at the bottom of it; he has let them see that he
suspects; and they have taken alarm, knowing that their ill repute can't
bear any added load of suspicion. Probably she was more mixed up with
them than is known; probably there was some quarrel between them and
her; and so, seeing themselves suspected, they are uneasy. Hence Janoc
wrote to Osborne in Clarke's name, asking how much Osborne knew of her
connection with Anarchists. He must have managed somehow to have Osborne
shadowed down here--must be eager to have Osborne proved guilty. Hence,
perhaps, for some reason, the presence of that fellow below there in the
parlor. But I, for my part, mustn't allow myself to be drawn off into
proving _them_ guilty. Another, another, is my prey!"
He stood up sharply, crept to his door, and listened. All the upper part
of the house was as still as the tomb at that hour. Mr. Glyn--Osborne's
name on the hotel register--was, Furneaux had been told, out of doors.
He passed out into a corridor, and, though he did not know which was
Osborne's room, after peering through two doorways discovered it at the
third, seeing in it a cane with a stag's head which Osborne often
carried. He slipped within, and in a moment was everywhere at once in
the room, filling it with his presence, ransacking it with a hundred
eyes.
In one corner was an antiquated round table in mahogany, with a few
books on it, and under the books a copper-covered writing-pad. In the
writing-pad he found a letter--a long one, not yet finished, in
Osborne's hand, written to "My dear Isadore."
The first words on which Furneaux's eyes fell were "her unstudied
grace...."
... her walk has the undulating smoothness that one looks for in
some untamed creature of the wild.... You are a painter, and a
poet, and a student of the laws of Beauty. Well, knowing all
that, I still feel sure that you would be conscious of a certain
astonishment on seeing her move, she moves so well. I confess I
did not _know_, till I knew her, that our human flesh could
express such music. Her waist is small, yet so willowy and
sinuous that it cannot be trammeled in those unyielding ribs of
steel and bone in which women love to girdle themselves. For her
slimness she is tall, perhaps, what you might think a little too
tall until you stood by her side and saw that her freedom of
movement had deceived you. Nor is she what you would call _a
girl_: her age can't be a day under twenty-three. But she does
not make a motion of the foot that her waist does not answer to
it in as exact a proportion as though the Angel of Grace was
there with measuring-tape and rod. If her left foot moves, her
waist sways by so much to the left; if her right, she sways to
the right, as surely as a lily on a long stalk swings to the
will of every wanton wind. But, after all, words cannot express
the poetry of her being. With her every step, I am confident her
toe in gliding forward touches the ground steadily, but so
zephyr-lightly, that only a megaphone could report it to the
ear. And not only is there a distinct forward bend of the body
in walking, but with every step her whole being and soul
walks--the mere physical movements are the least of it! And her
walk, I repeat, has the security, the lissome elegance of a
leopard's--her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her neck, those of a
Naiad balanced on the crest of a curling wave....
"Ah-h-h!..." murmured Furneaux on a long-drawn breath, "'A Naiad'!
Something more fairy-like than Rose de Bercy!"
He read on.
Soon I shall see her dance--dance _with_ her! and then you shall
hear. There's a certain Lord Spelding a little way from here
whom I know through a local doctor, and he is giving a dance at
his Abbey two evenings hence--she and her mother are to be
there. She has promised me that she will dance, and I shall tell
you how. But I expect nothing one whit more consummate in the
way of charm from her dancing than from her ordinary motions. I
know beforehand that her dancing will be to her walking what the
singing of a lovely voice is to its talking--beauty moved to
enthusiasm, but no increase of beauty; the moon in a halo, but
still the moon. What, though, do you think of me in all this, my
dear Isadore? I have asked myself whether words like "fickle,"
"flighty," "forgetful," will not be in your mind as you read.
And if you are not tolerant, who will be? She, _the other_, is
hardly cold yet in her untimely tomb, and here am I ... shall I
say in love? say, at any rate, enraptured, down, down, on my two
bended knees. Certainly, the other was bitter to me--she
deceived, she pitilessly deceived; and I see now with the
clearest eyes that love was never the name of what I felt for
her, even if she had not deceived. But, oh, such a fountain of
pity is in me for her--untimely gone, cut off, the cup of life
in her hand, her lips purple with its wine--that I cannot help
reproaching this wandering of my eye from her. It is rather
shocking, rather horrible. And yet--I appeal to your sympathy--I
am no more master of myself in this than of something that is
now happening to the Emperor of China, or that once happened to
his grandfather.
The corners of Furneaux's lips turned downward, and a lambent fire
flamed in his eyes. He clutched the paper in his hand as if he would
strangle its dumb eloquence. Still he glowered at the letter, and read.
But imagine, meanwhile, my false position here! I am known to
her and to her mother as Mr. Glyn; and _thrice_ has Osborne, the
millionaire, the probable murderer of Rose de Bercy, been
discussed between us. Think of it!--the misery, the falseness of
it. If something were once to whisper to Mrs. Marsh, "this Mr.
Glyn, to whom you are speaking in a tone of chilly censure of
such men as Osborne, is _Osborne himself_; that translucent
porcelain of your teacup has been made impure by his lips; you
should smash your Venetian vases and Satsuma bowl of hollyhocks,
since his not-too-immaculate hands have touched them: beware! a
snake has stolen into your dainty and Puritan nest"--if some imp
of unhappiness whispered that, what would she do? I can't
exactly imagine those still lips uttering a scream, but I can
see her lily fingers--like lilies just getting withered--lifted
an instant in mild horror of the sacrilege! As it is, her
admittance of me into the nest has been an unbending on her
part, an unbending touched with informality, for it was only
brought about through Richards, the doctor here, to whom I got
Smythe, one of my bankers, who is likewise Richards' banker, to
speak of a "Mr. Glyn." And if she now finds that being gracious
to the stranger smirches her, compromises her in the slightest,
she will put her thin dry lips together a little, and say "I am
punished for my laxity in circumspection." And then, ah! no more
Rosalind for Osborne forever, if he were ten times ten
millionaires....
"'Rosalind,'" murmured Furneaux, "Rosalind Marsh. That explains the
scribble on the back of the Janoc letter. He calls her
Rosalind--breathes her name to the moon--writes it! We shall see,
though."
At that moment he heard a step outside, and stood alert, ready to hide
behind a curtain; but it was only some hurrying housemaid who passed
away. He then put back the letter where he had found it; and instantly
tackled Osborne's portmanteaux. The larger he found locked, the smaller,
lying half under the bed, was fastened with straps, but unlocked. He
quickly ransacked the knicknacks that it contained; and was soon holding
up to the light between thumb and finger a singular object taken from
the bottom of the bag--a scrap of lace about six inches long, half of it
stained with a brown smear that was obviously the smear of--blood.
It was a peculiar lace, Spanish hand-made, and Furneaux knew well, none
better than he, that the dressing-gown in which Rose de Bercy had been
murdered, which she had thrown on preparatory to dressing that night,
was trimmed with Spanish hand-made lace. He looked at this amazing bit
of evidence with a long interest there in the light from the window,
holding it away from him, frowning, thinking his own thoughts behind his
brow, as shadow chases shadow. And presently he muttered the peculiar
words:
"Now, any detective would swear that this was a clew against him."
He put it back into the bag, went out softly, walked downstairs, and
passed out into the little town. A policeman told him where the house of
Mrs. Marsh was to be found, and he hastened half a mile out of Tormouth
to it.
The house, "St. Briavels," stood on a hillside behind walls and
wrought-iron gates and leafage, through which peeped several gables rich
in creepers and ivy. Of Osborne, so far, there was no sign.
Furneaux retraced his steps, came back to Tormouth, sauntered beyond the
town over the cliffs, with the sea spread out in the sunlight, all
sparkling with far-flung sprightliness. And all at once he was aware of
a murmur of voices sounding out of Nowhere, like the hum of bumble-bees
on a slumbrous afternoon. The ear could not catch if they were right or
left, above or below. But they became louder; and suddenly there was a
laugh, a delicious low cadence of a woman's contralto that seemed to
roll up through an oboe in her throat. And now he realized that the
speakers were just below him on the sands. He stepped nearer the edge of
the cliff, and, craning and peering stealthily through its fringe of
grasses, saw Osborne and a lady walking westward over the sands.
Osborne was carrying an easel and a Japanese umbrella. He was not
looking where he was going, not seeing the sea, or the sands, or the
sun, but seeing all things in the lady's face.
Furneaux watched them till they were out of sight behind a bend of the
coast-line; he saw Osborne once stumble a little over a stone, and right
himself without glancing at what he had stumbled on, without taking his
gaze from the woman by his side.
A bitter groan hissed from Furneaux's lips.
"But how about this fair Rosalind?" he muttered half aloud. "Is this
well for _her_? She should at least be told who her suitor is--his
name--his true colors--the length and depth of his loves. There is a way
of stopping this...."
He walked straight back to the hotel, and at once took pen and paper to
write:
DEAR MISS PROUT:--It has occurred to me that possibly you may be
putting yourself to the pains of discovering for me the identity
of the friend of Mr. Osborne, the "Rosalind," as to whom I asked
you--in which case, to save you any trouble, I am writing to
tell you that I have now discovered who that lady is. I am, you
see, at present here in Tormouth, a very agreeable little place.
Yours truly,
C. E. FURNEAUX.
And, as he directed the envelope, he said to himself with a curious
crowing of triumph that Winter would have said was not to be expected
from his friend:
"This should bring her here; and if it does----!"
Whereupon a singular glitter appeared an instant in his eyes.
Having posted the letter, he told the young woman in the bar, who also
acted as bookkeeper, that, after all, he would not be able to stay the
night. He paid, nevertheless, for the room, and walked away with his
bag, no one knew whither, out of Tormouth. Two hours later he returned
to the hotel, and for the second time that day took the same room, but
not a soul suspected for a moment that it was the same Furneaux, since
at present he had the look of a meek old civil servant living on a mite
of pension, the color all washed out of his flabby cheeks and hanging
wrinkles.
His very suit-case now had a different physiognomy. He bargained
stingily for cheap terms, and then ensconced himself in his apartment
with a senile chuckle, rubbing his palms together with satisfaction at
having obtained such good quarters so cheaply.
The chambermaid, whom he had tipped well on leaving, sniffed at this new
visitor. "Not much to be got out of him," she said to her friend, the
boots.
The next afternoon at three o'clock an elderly lady arrived by the
London train at Tormouth, and she, too, came to put up at the Swan.
Furneaux, at the moment of her arrival, was strolling to and fro on the
pavement in front of the hotel, very shaky and old, a man with feeble
knees, threadbare coat, and shabby hat--so much so that the manager had
told the young person in the bar to be sure and send in an account on
Saturday.
Giving one near, clear, piercing glance into the newcomer's face, round
which trembled a colonnade of iron-gray ringlets, Furneaux was
satisfied.
"Marvelously well done!" he thought. "She has been on the stage in her
time, and to some purpose, too."
The lady, without a glance at him, all a rustle of brown silk, passed
into the hotel.
The same night the old skinflint and the lady of the iron-gray ringlets
found themselves alone at a table, eating of the same dishes. It was
impossible not to enter into conversation.
"Your first visit to Tormouth, I think?" began Furneaux.
The lady inclined her head.
"My name is Pugh, William Pugh," he told her. "I was in Tormouth some
years ago, and know the place rather well. Charming little spot! I shall
be most happy--if I may--if you will deign----"
"How long have you been here now?" she asked him in a rather mellow and
subdued voice.
"I only came yesterday," he answered.
"Did you by chance meet here a certain Mr. Furneaux?" she asked.
"Let me see," said he--"Furneaux. I--stay--I believe I did! He was just
departing at the time of my arrival--little man--sharp, unpleasant
face--I--I--hope I do not speak of a friend or relative!--but I believe
I did hear someone say 'Mr. Furneaux.'"
"At any rate, he is not here now?" she demanded, with an air of
decision.
"No, he is gone."
"Ah!" she murmured, and something in the tone of that "Ah!" made
Furneaux's eye linger doubtfully upon her an instant.
Then the elderly lady wished to know who else was in the hotel, if there
was anyone of any interest, and "Mr. Pugh" was apparently eager to
gossip.
"There is first of all a Mr. Glyn--a young man, an American, I think, of
whom I have heard a whisper that he is enormously wealthy."
"Is he in the room?"
"No."
"Why is he--invisible?"
"I am told that he has made friends in Tormouth with a lady--a Mrs.
Marsh--who resides at 'St. Briavels' some way out of town--not to
mention _Miss_ Marsh--Rosalind is her name--upon whom I hear he is more
than a little sweet."
He bent forward, shading his lips with his palm to conceal the secret as
it came out, and it was a strange thing that the newly-arrived visitor
could not keep her ringlets from shaking with agitation.
"Well," she managed to say, "when young people meet--it is the old
story. So he is probably at 'St. Briavels' now?"
"Highly probable--if all I hear be true."
The ringleted dame put her knife and fork together, rose, bowed with a
gracious smile, and walked away. Five minutes later Furneaux followed
her, went upstairs with soundless steps to his room, and within it stood
some time listening at a crevice he had left between the door and the
door-post.
Then he crept out, and spurting with swift suddenness, silent as a cat,
to Osborne's room, sent the door open with a rush, and instantly was
bowing profoundly, saying: "My dear madam! how _can_ you pardon me?"
For the lady was also in Osborne's room, as Furneaux had known; and
though there was no artificial light, enough moonlight flooded the room
to show that even through her elaborate make-up a pallor was suggested
in her face, as she stood there suspended, dumb.
Mr. Pugh seemed to be in a very pain of regret.
"I had no idea that it was your room!" he pleaded. "I--do forgive
me--but I took it for my own!"
Oddly enough, the lady tittered, almost hysterically, though she was
evidently much relieved to find who it was that had burst in so
unceremoniously.
"The same accident has happened to me!" she cried. "I took it to be my
room, but it doesn't seem----"
"Ah, then, we both.... By the way," he added, with a magnificent effort
to escape an embarrassing situation, "what beautiful moonlight! And the
Tormouth country under it is like a fairy place. It is a sin to be
indoors. I am going for a stroll. May I hope to have the pleasure----?"
He wrung his palms wheedlingly together, and his attitude showed that he
was hanging on her answer.
"Yes, I should like to take a walk--thank you," she answered. Together
they made for the door; he fluttered to his room, she to hers, to
prepare. Soon they were outside the hotel, walking slowly under the
moon. Apparently without definite directive, they turned up the hill in
the direction of "St. Briavels," nor was it many minutes before Mr. Pugh
began to prove himself somewhat of a gallant, and gifted in the saying
of those airy nothings which are supposed to be agreeable to the
feminine ear. The lady, for her part, was not so thorny and hard of
heart as one might have thought from the staidness of her air, and a
good understanding was quickly established between the oddly-assorted
pair.
"Rather an adventure, this, for people of our age...." she tittered, as
they began to climb the winding road.
"But, madam, we are not old!" exclaimed the lively Mr. Pugh, who might
be seventy from his decrepit semblance. "Look at that moon--are not our
hearts still sensible to its seductive influences? You, for your part,
may possibly be nearing that charming age of forty----"
"Oh, sir! you flatter me...."
"Madam, no, on my word!--not a day over forty would be given you by
anyone! And if you have the heart of twenty, as I am sure that you have,
what matters it if----"
"Hush!" she whispered, as a soft sound of the piano from "St. Briavels"
reached them.
Before them on the roadway they saw several carriages drawn up near the
great gates. The tinkle of the piano grew as they approached. Then they
saw a few lantern lights in the grounds glimmering under the trees. Such
signs spoke of a party in progress. For once, the English climate was
gracious to its dupes.
The lady, without saying anything to her companion, stepped into the
shadow of a yew-tree opposite the manor-close, and stood there, looking
into the grounds over the bars of a small gate, beyond which a path ran
through a shrubbery. On the path were three couples, ladies with light
scarves draped over their décolleté dresses, men, bare-headed and
smoking cigarettes. They were very dim to her vision, which must have
been well preserved for one of her age, despite Mr. Pugh's gallantry.
The overhanging foliage was dense, and only enough moonlight oozed
through the canopy of leaves to toss moving patterns on the lawn and
paths.
But the strange lady's eyes were now like gimlets, with the very fire of
youth burning in them, and it was with the sure fleetness of youth that
she suddenly ran in a moment of opportunity from the yew to the gate,
pushed it a little open, and slipped aside into a footpath that ran
parallel with the lawn on which the "St. Briavels" diners were now
strolling.
With equal suddenness, or equal disregard of appearance, Mr. Pugh, too,
became young again, as if both, like Philemon and Baucis, had all at
once quaffed the elixir of youth; and he was soon by the young-old
lady's side on the footpath. But her eyes, her ears, were so strained
toward the lawn before her, that she seemed not to be aware of his
presence.
"I did not guess that you were interested in the people here," he
whispered. "That man now coming nearer is Mr. Glyn himself, and with him
is Miss Rosalind Marsh."
"_Sh-h-h_," came from her lips, a murmur long-drawn, absent-minded, her
eyes peering keenly forward.
He nudged her.
"Is it fitting that we should be here? We place ourselves in a difficult
position, if seen."
"Sh-h-h-h-h...."
Still he pestered her.
"Really it is a blunder.... We--we become--eavesdroppers--! Let us--I
suggest to you----"
"Oh, _do_ keep quiet," she whispered irritably; and in that instant the
talk of Osborne and Rosalind became audible to her. She heard him say:
"Yes, I confess I have known Osborne, and I believe the man perfectly
incapable of the act attributed to him by a hasty public opinion."
"Intimately known him?"
Rosalind turned her eyebrows upward in the moonlight. Seen thus, she was
amazingly beautiful.
"Do we intimately know anyone? Do we intimately know ourselves?" asked
Osborne as he passed within five yards of the two on the path. "I think
I may say that I know Osborne about as well as I know anyone, and I am
confident that he is horribly misjudged. He is a young man of--yes, I
will say that for him--of good intentions; and he is found guilty,
without trial, of a wrong which he never could have committed--and the
wrong which he _has_ committed he is not found guilty of."
"What wrong?" asked Rosalind.
"I have heard--I know, in fact--that in the short time that has passed
since the murder of Miss de Bercy, Osborne, her acknowledged lover, has
allowed himself to love another."
Rosalind laughed, with the quiet amusement of well-bred indifference.
"What a weird person!" she said.
And as their words passed beyond hearing, a hiss, like a snake's in the
grass, rose from the shrubbery behind them, a hiss of venom intensely
low, and yet loud enough to be heard by Furneaux, who, standing a little
behind the lady of the ringlets, rubbed his hands together in silent and
almost mischievous self-congratulation.
The house end of the lawn was not far, the words of the returning pair
were soon again within earshot. The fiery glance of the watching woman,
ferreting, peering, dwelt on them--or rather on one of them, for she
gave no heed to Osborne at all. Her very soul was centered on Rosalind,
whose walk, whose lips, whose eyes, whose hair, whose voice, she ran
over and estimated as an expert accountant reckons up a column of
figures to ascertain their significance. She missed no item in that
calculation. She noted the over-skirt of Chantilly, the wrap of Venetian
lace on the girl's head, the white slippers, the roses disposed on her
corsage with the harmless vanity of the artist's skill, all these that
fixed stare ravenously devoured and digested while Rosalind took half a
dozen slow steps.
"But seriously," she heard Osborne say, "what is your opinion of a love
so apparently fickle and flighty as this of Osborne's?"
"Let me alone with your Osborne," Rosalind retorted with another little
laugh. "A person of such a mood is merely uninteresting, and below being
a topic. Let the dead lady's father or somebody horsewhip him--I cannot
care, I'm afraid. Let us talk about----"
"_Ourselves?_"
"'Ourselves and our king.'"
"I have so much to say about ourselves! Where should I begin? And now
that I have a few minutes, I am throwing them away. Do you know, I never
seem to secure you free from interruption. Either yourself or someone
else intervenes every time, and reduces me to silence and despair----"
Their words passed beyond earshot again in the other direction; and, as
the lawn was wide between house and screen of shrubbery on the road
front, it was some time before they were again heard. At last, though,
they came, and then Rosalind's low tone of earnestness showed that this
time, at least, Osborne had been listened to.
"I will, since you ask, since you wish"--her voice faltered--"to please
you. You will be at the Abbey to-morrow evening. And, since you say that
you so--desire it, I may then hear what you have to say. Now I'll go."
"But when--where----?"
"If the night is fine, I will stroll into the gardens during the
evening. You will see me when I go. On the south terrace of the Abbey
there is a sun-dial in the middle of a paved Italian garden. I'll pass
that way, and give you half an hour."
"Rosalind!"
"Ah, no--not yet."
Her lips sighed. She looked at him with a lingering tenderness
languishing in her eyes.
"Can I help it?" he murmured, and his voice quivered with passion.
"Are you glad now?"
"Glad!"
"Good-by."
She left him hurriedly and sped with inimitable grace of motion across
the lawn toward the house, and, while he looked after her, with the rapt
vision of a man who has communed with a spirit, the two listeners crept
to the little gate, slipped out when a laughing couple turned their
heads, and walked back to the hotel.
The lady said never a word. Mr. Pugh was full of chat and merriment, but
no syllable fell from her tight-pressed lips.
The next day the lady was reported to have a headache--at any rate she
kept to her room, and saw no one save the "boots" of the establishment,
with whom during the afternoon she had a lengthy interview upstairs. At
about seven in the evening she was writing these words:
MISS MARSH:--Are you aware that the "Mr. Glyn" whom you know
here is no other than Mr. Rupert Osborne, who is in everyone's
mouth in connection with the Feldisham Mansions Murder? You may
take this as a positive fact from
"ONE WHO KNOWS."
She wrote it in a handwriting that was very different from her own,
inclosed and directed it, and then, about half-past seven, sent for
"boots" again.
Her instructions were quite explicit:
"Wait in the paved rose garden at the Abbey, the square sunken place
with a sun-dial in the center," she said. "It is on the south terrace,
and the lady I have described will surely come. The moment she appears
hand the note to her, and be off--above all else, answer no questions."
So the youth, with a sovereign in his pocket, hurried away to do Hylda
Prout's will--or was it Furneaux's? Who might tell?