Carpentaria slipped back into the car with a shiver, as it occurred
to him that Ilam, had he so chosen, might have pushed him into three
hundred and forty perpendicular feet of space. But Ilam had not moved.
“I’ve had enough,” said Carpentaria. “We’ll descend. Ring the bell.”
“No,” said Ilam. “I want to----”
“We’ll descend,” Carpentaria insisted.
“It’s about Juliette,” pleaded Ilam.
“We’ll descend,” said Carpentaria a third time. “Ring the bell.”
He sat down, took his revolver from his pocket, and put it
ostentatiously on his knees.
Ilam sighed, and pushed the white disc that communicated with the
engine-house, and a few moments later a vibration went through the
wheel, and it resumed its revolution. The car came down on the side
nearest the river, and its occupants had a superb view of the final
items of the display of fireworks. Among them were two portraits, in
living flame, of the twin gods of the City of Pleasure, and under each
headpiece was the name of its subject: “Ilam,” “Carpentaria.” The cheers
of the immense multitude greeted their ears. Then there was another
sound, but it came from above instead of from below. Ilam shrank as if
afraid.
“You needn’t be frightened,” said Carpentaria. “It isn’t the trumpet
of the Day of Judgment, it’s only the beginning of a thunderstorm. It’s
just come in nice time to soak everybody through on their way home.”
Rain spattered viciously on the windows.
When they reached the ground a strange sight met their eyes--the sight
of seas and oceans of black, shining umbrellas, surging in waves from
all directions towards the Central Way and the exits from the City, and
as the umbrellas reached the covered footpaths of the Central Way they
collapsed and showed human beings. And then, at all the exits from the
City, all these umbrellas--and it was estimated that there were over
a quarter of a million of them--sprang again into life, and hid their
owners. The tempest was already at its height.
“Come with me,” said Carpentaria, as Ilam sought to leave him, when they
quitted the Amusements Park.
“No,” said Ilam flatly.
They stood side by side in the open, heedless of the rain, while shelter
in the shape of the sidewalks of the Central Way was within a few yards
of them.
The searchlight from the balloon still swept about the grounds, but the
fireworks were finished.
“You shall come with me and see a ghost,” insisted Carpentaria angrily
and obstinately, “or I will make such a scandal in this place as will go
far to ruin it. Let me tell you that I know a great deal more than you
think. I am in a position, for example, to ask you, Ilam, whether
you spend your nights in bed or wandering about the grounds carrying
mysterious burdens.”
A group of visitors hurried past them.
“What do you mean?” muttered Ilam. “I--you must be going off your head.”
“Doubtless I’m a madman, eh? Well, come along with the madman.”
Ilam sighed. They passed into the Central Way, and had to fight for
progress against the multitudes that crowded the footpaths. No one
recognized them.
“I wish we could understand each other,” said Ilam.
“We shall, rest assured of that,” returned Carpentaria. “In quite a few
minutes we shall understand each other, or I am mistaken, and it may be
you that will have to leave this City--and with considerably less than
fifty thousand a year, my friend.” He pictured the moment when he should
confront Ilam with the man whose corpse Ilam had buried. Vistas opened
out before him. He saw the tables completely turned; he saw himself sole
master of the City, and the wielder of such power over Ilam as would
enforce obedience to his wishes. Then there would be no more insulting
requests to abandon his music, no more ridiculous suggestions, and no
fear of foolishness on the part of Juliette. It astonished him that he
had not realized before the enormous latent power which his knowledge of
Saturday night gave him over Ilam.
“You will come with me to my house,” he said.
“Who is there?” asked Ilam wearily.
“Dr. Rivers--and the ghost.”
“What is all this nonsense about a ghost?”
“You shall see him first, and then, when you have seen him--before he
has seen you--you shall tell me whether or not you would like to have a
chat with him. It is a ghost warranted to talk.”
Ilam said nothing. He was naturally at a complete loss.
They entered the bungalow by means of Carpentaria’s latchkey, and they
mounted to the first-floor, and they went into the study. The door of
the bedroom was shut. Carpentaria led Ilam out on to the balcony of the
study window, from which it was not difficult, even for Ilam, to climb
into the balcony of the bedroom.
“Now, you shall look into my bedroom,” said Carpentaria.
And he himself looked first. It may be said that he was astounded.
The room was lighted. There were no signs of Mr. Jetsam, but two chairs
had been overturned, and young Rivers lay prone on the floor, his eyes
shut, and some blood flowing from a wound in his forehead.
Carpentaria sprang into the room, and, strange to say, Ilam followed
him. The fact was that Ilam did really for the moment believe
Carpentaria to be mad, and the bedroom to be the scene of some maniacal
crime. .
Just then Rivers came to his senses.
“That you, Mr. Carpentaria?” he murmured, rubbing his eyes.
“Yes. What’s happened? Where’s Jetsam, as he calls himself? You’re not
seriously hurt, are you?”
At the name of Jetsam, Ilam caught his breath and took hold of a
bedpost.
“Jetsam?” he repeated.
“You evidently recognize the name of my ghost,” said Carpentaria,
“though he isn’t here.”
“He bashed me on the head with a chair,” said the doctor, sitting up and
putting a handkerchief to his head, “and I suppose I must have---- It
can’t be more than a minute or two since----”
“But what was he doing? Where’s he gone?” inquired Carpentaria
impatiently.
“He recovered consciousness quite quickly,” answered Rivers, “and I gave
him something to drink; then he asked me about Mrs. Ilam, and I told him
she lived with Mr. Ilam here, and he grew very excited, and said he must
go to her at once. I said he couldn’t; I said you wouldn’t allow that,
and he pretended to agree; but it was only a pretence. He began to talk
about other things, and then, all of a sudden, he sprang at me, and
that’s as much as I remember.”
Without a word Carpentaria ran out downstairs and into the avenue.
The door of Ilam’s house stood wide open. He entered. In the hall he
perceived that the door of the drawing-room was also wide open, and he
entered the drawing-room..There was no light in the room save that of a
match, and the match was held by Mr. Jetsam. Mr. Jetsam stood staring at
Mrs. Ilam, and Mrs. Ilam sat motionless in her chair, apparently trying
to articulate and not succeeding. An appalling fear shone in her eyes.
No sound could be heard except the rattling of the rain on the French
window.
Mr. Jetsam turned, and in the same second he dropped the match. The room
was in darkness. Then followed a crash of glass and splintering of
wood, and then a heavy fall in the apartment itself. With some trouble,
Carpentaria found the electric switch and turned on the light. Mrs.
Ilam’s lips were still trembling in a vain effort to speak. Her son
lay stretched and whimpering at her feet. Mr. Jetsam had vanished. The
window was in ruins.
Dr. Rivers appeared. He had bandaged his forehead.
“She is paralysed!” said the doctor, when he had examined Mrs. Ilam.
“She will never again have the use of her limbs or her organs of speech.
She will be able to see and to hear, that’s all.”
PART II--THE TWINS
CHAPTER XIV--Entry of the Twins
It is a singular fact that the secondary stage of the drama which I am
relating was tremendously, vitally, influenced by the marriage of Mr.
Luke Shooter, junior partner in Shooter’s, a firm of wholesale ribbon
merchants in Cannon Street. Luke Shooter did not know it. Luke Shooter
had nothing whatever to do with the drama; it is very, probable that he
never even heard of it, except such trifling fragments as got into the
newspapers. Nevertheless, by the mere fact of marrying, Luke Shooter
unconsciously changed the course of events in the City of Pleasure. For
he was a man of broad views, and he liked people to think well of him,
and so it occurred that, at his suggestion, the multitudinous staff of
Shooter’s was given a complete holiday on the day of his marriage, and
that day happened to be Tuesday, May 4.
So much for Mr. Luke Shooter.
Many of the employés spent the latter half of the day in the City of
Pleasure, which was now the rage, the craze, and the vogue of London,
and among these were the twin sisters, Pauline and Rosie Dartmouth.
Pauline and Rosie were typists in the house of Shooters. Their age was
twenty-six. They were tall, and rather slim; only Rosie, the younger,
was not quite so slim as Pauline. Pauline was dark; Rosie was inclined
to fairness. In the partnership between them Pauline supplied the common
sense, while Rosie supplied the gaiety; each supplied a considerable
amount of beauty and charm, and a sum of thirty-five shillings a week.
It is obvious that on a total income of three pounds ten a week, or a
hundred and eighty-two pounds a year, two girls living together in a
small flat, with sense and gaiety and full opportunity for acquiring
ribbons at wholesale prices, may have a very good time and cut quite
a pretty figure in the world. And this Pauline and Rosie certainly did
manage to do.
They were orphans, and had been for a very long time.
They came to the City by the Tube from their flat in Shepherd’s Bush,
and Pauline put a florin down for the two of them at the northern
entrance gates, just as though they had been ordinary visitors; as, in
fact, at that moment they were. A few persons noticed them, but quite
casually, and only because they were dressed--and well dressed--almost
exactly alike. There are so many beautiful young women in London
that Londoners seldom turn their heads to look at one. It is left to
Frenchmen to rave about the blond charm of the Anglo-Saxon “mees.” What
exuberant adjectives the Frenchman would find to express his delight
if he penetrated further north, into Staffordshire, Lancashire, and
Yorkshire, where ugly faces and bad complexions are practically unknown,
it is impossible to guess.
The City of Pleasure met with the entire approval of Pauline and Rosie.
As soon as they found themselves in the Central Way they began to get
enthusiastic. The sun was shining, the flags were flying, the cable-cars
were gliding, and thousands and thousands of visitors made gay the
City. They had never before seen anything like the Central Way, with its
colonnades, and its shops, and its coloured throngs, and its soaring,
gleaming, white architecture.
“It’s just as good as being abroad, isn’t it?” said Rosie.
“Better,” said Pauline.
But then they had never been beyond Boulogne.
They stopped at shop windows, as much to regard jewellery and
knick-knacks, as to observe whether their frocks and chiffons and hats
were in that immaculate order which a sunny day and the presence of
one’s fellow-creatures demand. It may be mentioned here that their
dresses were of dark blue, with blue belts, bunchy knots of white
muslin at the throat, white gloves, brown glacé kid boots, and large
blue-and-black picture hats. It was plain, but it was perfect, and they
knew it was perfect. The consciousness of perfection enabled them to
sustain the judicial gaze of other women, and the passing glance of
innumerable young men, with a supercilious stare. In truth they were
secretly wild with the joy of life, and the attractiveness of the City,
and the sensations of their holiday, but they did not show it. Oh, no!
They did not show it. They were prim to the most advanced degree, as
became them.
“I should just love to go on one of those dear little cable-cars!”
exclaimed Rosie.
“Well, let’s,” Pauline agreed.
“Aren’t they delicious?” said Rosie.
And only in the girlish hop, skip, and jump, which landed them
gracefully on a car, was there a hint of the pent-up vivacity which
surged in their veins--a hint that vanished as rapidly as it had showed
itself. As Rosie smoothed out her skirt, and as Pauline opened the purse
in her gloved hand to give two pence to the conductor, they had the
utter demureness of duchesses.
The car was open to the sky, with crosswise seats, and, as it sailed
rapidly down the Central Way, constantly passing other cars coming
in the opposite direction, and passing fountains and flower-beds
and elephants and camels, and all the strange world of the City, the
pleasure became rather too keen for Rosie’s mercurial heart. She took
Pauline’s hand and pressed it, sitting a little bit closer to her.
“Suppose we meet him?” she whispered.
“What? In this crowd? Never! Besides, he isn’t likely to be outside,”
said Pauline.
She was only a few minutes older than Rosie, but she could not have
played the elder sister more completely had she been ten years older.
“We might meet _her_, anyway!” murmured Rosie.
“Nonsense, Rosie. You don’t imagine she’ll be here, do you?”
“I don’t know,” said Rosie, lifting her chin. “But suppose we do meet
him, or either of them.”
“Well, then,” said Pauline wisely, “we meet them, that’s all.”
“Shall you speak to them?” Rosie asked; “I shan’t.”
“We’ll think about that when we see them,” said Pauline.
“Oh!” cried Rosie.
This exclamation had nothing to do with the foregoing chatter. It merely
expressed some part of Rosie’s joy when the car came to the magnificent
circular place half-way down the Central Way, with the façade of the
Exposition Palace on the right, the stately entrance to the Oriental
Gardens on the left, and the superb vista of the thoroughfare before and
behind.
“Oh!” cried Rosie again, for quite a different reason.
Already she had forgotten the architectural and other beauties of this
scene, and was eagerly directing Pauline’s attention to a tall man with
vivid hair and an individual style, who had just crossed the rails in
front of the car and was proceeding towards the Oriental Gardens.
“There!” said Rosie, pointing frantically, yet primly. “Don’t you see
him?”
“Who? That man with the red hair?”
“Yes; it’s Carpentaria, isn’t it?”
“So it is, I do declare!” agreed Pauline, frankly as interested as her
sister.
It was.
“Oh!” breathed Rosie regretfully, as the car swept them further from the
figure of the popular hero. “Doesn’t he look lovely? He’s just like his
portraits, only nicer, isn’t he?”
“I--I couldn’t see him very well,” said the discreet Pauline.
“Yes, you could,” Rosie corrected her sharply. “You know you adore him.
But you’re always so mum.”
Pauline smiled placidly.
“I do wish we could meet him--be introduced to him I mean!” said Rosie.
“My dear child,” Pauline reprimanded. “Don’t be silly. He’s frightfully
rich.”
“I know!” said Rosie sadly. “But he isn’t married. I think his hair’s
beautiful.”
In common with very many English and other girls, Rosie and Pauline were
capable of displaying brazenly, for a man they had scarcely seen, an
affection the tenth part of which certain males with whom they were
intimately acquainted would have been delighted to receive. Their virgin
hearts had never been touched, not even by the Apollos of the house of
Shooter; they prided themselves on their unapproachableness; yet they
could rave about Carpentaria, and openly profess that they were his
slaves. In Carpentaria’s presence they would doubtless have behaved,
even if they did not feel, differently.
The car whirled them to the other end of the City, and they began
systematically to do everything and to see everything that could be done
and seen, from the captive balloon (not that they did that--they were
content to see it) to the Soudanese native village, from the circus to
the exhibition relating to Woman, from the cricket field to the Freak
Show, and from the Art Galleries to the ladies’ afternoon-tea café. They
were in the ladies’ afternoon-tea café and paying for two pots of tea,
seven cakes, and an extra cream, just as the clock struck five. It then
occurred to them that a concert of military music began at precisely
five o’clock in the Oriental Gardens, and they decided to go and listen
to it, even though, sad to say, Carpentaria never conducted in person
till the evening.
They crossed the Central Way, and were strolling along the avenue to the
Gardens, when Pauline stopped.
“Well, I never!” she exclaimed.
“What is it?”
Coming down the steps of Ilam’s bungalow was the great Ilam himself, and
it was to Ilam she pointed.
“What shall we do?” whispered Rosie. “He’s lots older, isn’t he?... And
you said we shouldn’t meet him!”
They walked on, irresolute and blushing, and just as they arrived
opposite Ilam’s gate, with their eyes gazing studiously straight in
front of them, Ilam called out:
“Hi, there! Young ladies!”
Now, the avenue was generously sprinkled with people, but Pauline and
Rosie happened to be the only young ladies within hail, and to have
ignored such a loud and unmistakable appeal as Ilam’s would have drawn
down upon them more public attention than they desired. They therefore
stopped, still blushing, but delightfully blushing, and smiling with
that innate kindliness of heart which distinguished both of them. Rosie
spoke first. She was a woman, and had positively stated that under the
circumstances she should not speak. Hence, naturally, she spoke first.
“Good afternoon, cousin,” said she.
In her manner of pronouncing that word “cousin,” a non-committal manner,
a more-than-meets-the-eye manner, a defensive manner--in a word, a
family manner--she indicated a whole family history. When relatives who
are distant in more senses than one meet after a considerable period,
that particular manner is invariably employed by the one who speaks
first.
The history of the Dartmouths and the Ilams was quite simple--indeed,
so usual as to be hardly worthy of record. Mrs. Dartmouth, mother of
the twins, had been an Ilam. She was the orphan child of Josephus’ dead
uncle, and therefore niece of Josephus’ father. And before her marriage
she was understood to have “expectations” from that mighty and opulent
soda-water manufacturer. However, heedless of these expectations, she
went and married beneath her--to wit, a solicitor’s clerk. The niece of
a rich soda-water manufacturer has no business to marry a solicitor’s
clerk. The result was a complete estrangement. Mrs. Dartmouth gave all
the Ilams to understand that she and her husband had no need of anyone’s
money--that, in fact, they scorned the Ilam millions. Mrs. Dartmouth met
Josephus at his father’s funeral. Ten years later Pauline and Rosie met
Josephus at Mrs. Dartmouth’s funeral. They shook hands formally, and
made it clear to Josephus that they would stoop to accept no gift from
him, who had scorned their mother, even should he offer it.
That was seven years ago, and Pauline and Rosie were now absolutely
alone in the world, and, moreover, age had taught them tolerance, and
their curiosity had been extremely excited by the news of their cousin’s
partnership with the world-renowned Carpentaria, and the subsequent
birth of the City of Pleasure. So that, in spite of anything they might
have previously said to each other, they were rather pleased to meet
their solemn cousin, who, after all, was a millionaire, and who really
seemed less aloof and stiff than he appeared at funerals.
“So you were going to cut me?” said Ilam, trying to smile.
“No, cousin,” said Pauline. “How are you? You don’t look very well.”
They shook hands over the gate.
“I’m not,” said Ilam.
“And Mrs. Ilam. She keeps pretty well, I hope,” put in Rosie decorously.
“That’s just it. She doesn’t. She’s---- Won’t you come in?”
And he opened the gate.
“Do you live here?” cried Rosie. “Fancy living in the middle of
this place! How jolly! And what a jolly house! Oh! what a delicious
notion--living in the show!”
And they disappeared into the bungalow.
The historic family coolness looked as if it was going to warm itself
into a sort of pleasant acquaintanceship.
CHAPTER XV--Proposal of Josephus
Yes, Ilam was saying when they came downstairs, “she has been like that
since last night, and the doctors--I have had two--assure me that at her
age no recovery is possible. She can take liquid food, and she can move
her eyes slightly--you noticed how her eyes turn?--but otherwise she is
incapable of movement, and, of course, she can’t articulate.”
He had taken his young relatives upstairs to see his mother, and the
picture of her, lying almost in the attitude of a corpse on the bed,
with a uniformed nurse sitting motionless beside her, had made a deep
impression on Pauline and Rosie. In fact, the whole house saddened
them. It was spacious and luxurious, but it was far from reaching that
standard of splendour which one might reasonably expect from the Ilam
wealth. Ilam did not look like a wealthy man. He did not talk like a
wealthy man, and both girls began to perceive, dimly, that wealth is
useless to those who have not sufficient imagination to employ it.
Certainly the City of Pleasure was an expression of the Ilam riches, but
they knew, as all the world knew, that the imagination which had brought
into being the City of Pleasure was Carpentaria’s. Hence, they felt
sorry for Josephus Ilam, partly because of the calamity to his mother,
and partly because of his forlorn and anxious air; they thought he
wanted looking after, and that this heavy pompous man was greatly to be
pitied, despite his opulence.
“You haven’t told us how it happened, what caused it?” said Pauline
sympathetically.
“Oh!” said Ilam, “as to that, who can tell? Probably some fright, some
shock. But we can’t say. She was alone when it happened. And as she
can’t speak--can’t write--can’t---- Well, you see how it is.”
“We are sorry for you,” murmured Rosie.
“And here I am, alone as it were,” Ilam continued. “What am I to do?
What can a man do by himself? I’ve got a nurse. I can get fifty nurses,
if necessary. And there are the servants. But what are nurses and
servants? You understand my position, don’t you?”
“Yes, quite,” said Pauline.
They were partaking of a second tea in the Ilam drawing-room. The
appetite of Rosie for cakes seemed unimpaired, though she did her
best to hide it, and to pretend that she was only eating cakes out of
politeness.
Ilam swallowed his tea in great gulps.
“I’m utterly unnerved,” he said.
“You must be,” said Rosie kindly.
“There’s a vast amount of superintendence to do in the City, as you may
guess. But what am I fit for, with my poor old mother lying up
there? You can’t fancy what she was to me. I depended on her for
everything--everything.”
And then tears showed themselves in the little eyes of Josephus Ilam.
The appearance of those tears in the eyes of a great strong man made
Rosie feel very uncomfortable, so much so, that she was obliged to look
out of the window.
“I wish we could help you,” said Pauline, after a pause.
“We’d do anything we could,” said Rosie.
Ilam glanced up.
“You can do everything,” he said. “I hesitated to ask you, but since
you’ve mentioned it yourselves... and I’ll make it worth your while.
Rely on that.”
“But what?” demanded Pauline, startled, while Rosie put down a fresh
piece of cake which she had just taken.
“Come and live here,” said Ilam bluntly.
“Both of us?”
“Both of you.”
“We couldn’t do that, really,” said Pauline.
“No, of course not. But wouldn’t it be lovely?” added Rosie.
“Why couldn’t you?” asked Ilam. “You are your own mistresses, aren’t
you? What is there to prevent you?”
“Well, you see,” said Pauline judicially, “we have our living to get,
and then there’s our flat, and----”
“I don’t know how much you earn,” Ilam cried. “But I’ll cheerfully
undertake to give you treble, whatever it is.”
“That would be five hundred and forty-six pounds a year, then,” said
Rosie, who was specially good at arithmetic.
“Let us say six hundred,” Ilam amended the figure with a tremendously
casual air.
The girls felt that, after all, perhaps he resembled a millionaire more
than they had at first thought.
“Come, now,” Ilam urged. “Say yes. It’s an idea that came to me all of
a sudden, while I was talking to you. But it’s an idea that gets better
and better the more I think about it.”
“But we couldn’t give up our situations,” objected Pauline.
“Why not?” Ilam asked.
“I don’t know,” Pauline stammered. “It seems so queer. It’s so sudden.
What would our duties be here?”
“Your duties would be to act as mistresses of this house, and to look
after my poor mother. Of course, there’d be a nurse as well. I don’t
know how many servants there are--five or six.”
“And we should have to manage everything?” said Pauline.
“Everything domestic. Come, you agree?”
“But suppose,” interpolated Rosie--“suppose we--you--we didn’t suit
you?”
What she meant was “Suppose you didn’t suit us?”
“Come a month on trial,” said Ilam. “At the end of that time, if you
want to leave, I’ll guarantee you a situation quite as good as you’re
leaving. I can’t say fairer than that, can I?”
There was a pause; the twins looked at each other.
“Just think how I’m fixed!” pleaded Ilam.
“What do you say, Rosie?” Pauline asked primly of her sister.
“Well,” answered Rosie, “as cousin is in such a dilemma, and poor Mrs.
Ilam so--so ill, perhaps----”
“Good!” exclaimed Ilam; “you agree. Good! I’m very much obliged to you.
You’re two really nice girls, and I can assure you you’ll have a free
hand here.”
“You decide for us,” said Pauline, smiling and reddening under Ilam’s
appreciation.
“We’ll begin at once, eh?” said Ilam. “Tonight.”
“Oh, that’s quite out of the question,” objected Rosie. “We shall be
obliged to give a month’s notice at Shooter’s.”
“Nonsense!” said Ilam. “I’ll send ‘em a cheque for a month’s salary
instead; then they can’t grumble.”
“But to-morrow? How will they manage without us?” persisted Rosie.
Ilam laughed--and it was not often that Ilam laughed. Either the humour
of the thing must have appealed to him very strongly, or it was a
symptom that his spirits had mightily improved.
“They’ll manage without you,” he said.
“It’s true they can get substitutes from the Typewriting Exchange,” said
Pauline.
Thus, it was arranged that Pauline and Rosie should take one of the City
automobiles to their flat, and return with trunks and boxes during
the evening. Before leaving the bungalow Pauline wrote to Shooter’s
informing them of the blow that had fallen on Shooter’s, and Ilam filled
in a cheque, and Rosie put it in the envelope and fastened the envelope.
The automobile, ordered by telephone, came round to the door.
“You’ll introduce us to Mr. Carpentaria, won’t you?” said Rosie
smilingly, as she was getting into the carriage.
Ilam frowned, and then cleared his face.
“Do you want to know him?” he asked.
“Why, of course!”
“Very well, I suppose you must,” Ilam agreed.
“Well, isn’t this the greatest fun?” Rosie whispered to Pauline when
they drove off. “We can go where we like in the City. We can save at
least five hundred a year, and perhaps we shall be his heiresses.”
“Hush!” Pauline admonished her.
And three hours later those two extremely practical twins were
thoroughly installed in the Ilam bungalow. They had the air of
having lived there all their lives as they chatted with Ilam in the
drawing-room. Ilam himself was decidedly looking a little better.
“I have been talking to nurse,” said Pauline importantly, “and I shall
sleep on the couch in Mrs. Ham’s room to-night. Nurse needs rest. She
says there is nothing to do, but some one should be there.”
“I don’t want you to begin by tiring yourselves,” said Ilam, “but, of
course----”
They heard a violent ring at the front-door, and presently a servant
entered. Ilam started.
“Mr. Carpentaria,” said the servant.
Ilam turned pale.
“Show him in,” said Rosie calmly to the servant.
“Yes, Miss Rose,” said the servant, who, in common with the other
servants, had already been clearly informed of the names, position, and
authority of the new-comers.
“You are to introduce him to us, you know,” Rosie murmured sweetly to
Ilam, “and I suppose we shall have to play hostesses now.”
Carpentaria came in, evidently hot from his concert.
“I say, Ilam----” he began.
Then he perceived the twins, and Ilam clumsily performed the
introductions. The girls were enchanted with his uniform and with him.
He said little, and he was pale, but then he was so distinguished; all
his movements were distinguished and magnificent.
“We saw you this afternoon,” Rosie ventured timidly.
“And I didn’t see you! The loss was mine,” he returned, gazing at
Pauline.
Ilam had sunk back heavily into a chair. Carpentaria caught sight of his
face, and an awkward silence followed.
“I came on a matter of business,” Carpentaria said to Ilam, “but I won’t
trouble you now, it will do to-morrow. Good-night.”
“We shall hope to see more of you,” said Rosie when Carpentaria had
demonstrated that he really meant to go.
“Yes indeed,” said Pauline very quietly, and the visitor bowed.
And then Carpentaria, that glorious vision, had vanished.
“Cousin’s nerves are simply all to pieces,” commented Rosie, as the
girls were going upstairs; “even a casual visitor upsets him. Did you
notice his face as soon as the bell rang?”
CHAPTER XVI--The Box
Pauline had put the book down on the bed, and was bending over the fire
pulling the coals together with the poker. She performed this homely,
natural, everyday action more to reassure herself, to convince herself
that she was in an everyday world, than because the fire needed
attention. For the strange mystery of the speechless creature on the
bed, helpless as though bound with chains and gagged by the devices of
tortures, had seized and terrified her. She held the poker in the
air and listened. Not a sound save the ticking of the clock on the
mantelpiece! From all the sleeping house, not a sound. She might have
been alone with the living corpse in the house, and yet she knew that
Rosie, and Josephus Ilam, and the nurse, and the halfdozen servants,
were in various rooms of it, perhaps sleeping, perhaps trying to sleep.
There was a sudden sharp noise behind her, near the bed.
She started violently and glanced round in fear. It was merely the
book--the harmless and amusing “The Lady or the Tiger?”--which had
slipped from the bed to the floor. Yet how could it have slipped? Had
the paralytic, who was incapable of the slightest movement, after all
twitched a limb and so shaken the book off the bed? Absurd. She had
merely placed the book too close to the edge of the bed; that was all.
Nothing more natural, nothing more probable. Her nervous fright was
grotesque.
She rose, picked up the book, and looked again at her charge. The
burning, blazing eyes were still dropping tears, and the tears ran in a
deep furrow down either cheek. Softly Pauline wiped them away, her own
eyes moist. The tragedy of the life’s end of this old, old woman, whom
every one had regarded as fierce and formidable, rendered helpless in
a moment by no one knew what horrible visitation, chilled her heart’s
core.
“What can she want? What is troubling her?” thought Pauline frenziedly.
And then she imagined that perhaps she had mistaken all the symptoms of
those eyes, and that Mrs. Ilam had wished her to continue to read.
She resumed the book, and read very slowly in a fairly loud voice. And
instantly the eyes began to blink irregularly--fast, then slow--and
the eyeballs themselves moved slightly from side to side. Obviously the
patient was not content.
Pauline put down the book again in despair.
The eyeballs still moved slightly to and fro.
“She wants something in the room. What can it be?”’ said Pauline to
herself. “It may be she is thirsty.”
She went to the night-table and poured a few drops of water into the
invalid’s cup, and brought it near Mrs. Ilam’s lips. But the eyes seemed
to close as if in refusal, and the face, which could only wear one
expression--that of grief--to deepen its inexpressible melancholy.
And then an idea occurred to Pauline, and shone on her brow like a
light.
“Listen,” she said kindly to the aged woman. “I will ask you some
questions. The answers will be only yes or no. If you mean ‘no’ try to
keep your eyelids still, but if you mean ‘yes’ blink them! as much as
you can. Do you understand?”
The eyelids blinked; and then they continued their terrible entranced
stare at a spot on the ceiling exactly above their owner’s head.
“Good,” said Pauline. “Are you in pain?”
No movement of the eyelids.
“Are you thirsty?”
A slight flickering, which the patient clearly endeavoured to suppress.
“You want something?”
The eyes blinked.
“Is it some person?”
The eyelids were steady.
“Something in this room?”
A violent blinking.
“Is it in a drawer?”
The eyelids were steady.
“Then I can see it as I stand here?”
The eyes blinked again. Pauline set the cup down on the night-table, and
gazed round the room. She went to the mantelpiece, and gave a list
of the things on it: candlestick, clock, matches, vases, keys,
medicine-bottle, a piece of crochet work, a long knitting-needle, a
picture post-card. There was no response from the invalid.
“How foolish I am!” murmured Pauline. “She cannot possibly want any of
these things.” Then she saw a few old letters half-hidden behind the
clock. “Is it there?” she asked, holding the letters near to Mrs. Ilam.
But there was still no response. She put back the letters and went to
the ottoman, on which was a large family Bible. But it was not the Bible
that Mrs. Ilam wanted, nor a spectacle case that lay on the Bible. Then
Pauline catalogued one by one the contents of the dressing-table, and
then the contents of the washstand, still with no result. At last, she
came to a chest of drawers, covered with a piece of white crewelwork,
and bearing some wax flowers, two small vases, a black lacquered box,
sundry folded linen, several books, and a few faded photographs. She
described the photographs and the linen and the books, as these seemed
to be the most likely objects, and then she came to the lacquered box.
And suddenly, the eyes began to blink furiously.
“You want this box?”
The eyes continued to blink.
She brought it to the bed: It was about eight inches square and three
inches in depth, and beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a
design to resemble a bunch of roses--just such a little cabinet as our
grandmothers valued, such as was scorned as being Early Victorian during
the aesthetic movement of the eighties and nineties, but such as we
ourselves are beginning to recognize as beautiful. It had prominent
brass hinges, and a keyhole, and it was locked.
“Do you want me to open it? It’s locked.”
The eyes were moderately still.
“Then you wish it put somewhere else?”
They blinked.
“In a drawer?”
No response.
“On the dressing-table?”
No response.
“Near you?”
The eyes blinked,
“On the bed?”
No response.
“Under the bed?”
No response.
Pauline was at a loss.
“Under your pillow?” she hazarded at length.
The eyelids moved up and down, if not with joy, at any rate with
satisfaction.
And very carefully Pauline raised the pillow, and
Mrs. Ilam’s head, and slipped the box underneath both the pillow and the
bolster.
“There; is that right?”
The tragic eyes blinked, and a slight sigh emanated weakly from between
those thin pale lips. But, slight as it was, it seemed to have come from
the innermost depths of the stricken woman’s being. It might have been a
sigh to indicate that her last wish was realized.
“I shall lie down now,” said Pauline, and turning out all the electric
lights except the tiny table lamp on the table, she stretched herself on
the couch which stood at the foot of the great bed, and she drew a rug
over her and shut her eyes and told herself that she must sleep. But
she could not sleep. Her brain was as busy as the inside of a clock and
electric lights seemed to be burning and fizzing in it, extinguishing
themselves and relighting themselves. What strange house had she and
Rosie wandered into? What was the hidden secret of this paralysis, and
of Josephus Ilam’s worn and worried mien, and of the sudden arrival and
equally sudden departure of Carpentaria? And, above all, what was the
meaning of the old woman’s desire for the box. What was in the box?
Do not imagine that Pauline regretted having come. She did not. Except
under the passing influences of night and of the presence of illness,
she was not a bit superstitious; nor was Rosie. They were not afraid of
mysteries. They were intensely practical young women, incapable of being
frightened or repulsed by what they did not understand. And that Pauline
was a girl entirely without the timidity of the doe, she abundantly
proved in the next few minutes. As she lay on the couch she could see,
without moving her head, the French window. She fancied that the heavy
crimson curtain was somewhat pulled aside in one place, at a height of
about four feet from the ground, and she fancied that she could see the
end of a finger on the end of the curtain. “No,” she said to herself,
“this is ridiculous. There cannot possibly be a finger there. I must not
be silly,” and she resolutely shut her eyes. The next time she opened
them, the fire had blazed up a little and, more than ever, the something
on the edge of the curtain resembled a finger.
Her little heart beating, but courageously, she noiselessly rose up from
the couch and approached the window.
It was the end of a finger on the edge of the curtain--a finger with
a rounded and very white finger-nail I Moreover, the curtain trembled
slightly, as it would do if held by some one who was endeavouring not to
move. Pauline remembered that the French window behind the curtain had
purposely been left slightly open, and that it gave on to a balcony, as
most of the windows of the bungalow did.
She advanced resolutely, and drew aside the curtain.
CHAPTER XVII--The Man on the Balcony
A man was standing behind it. The French window had been opened at
least eight inches, and the man stood partly in the aperture and partly
in the room. He did not flinch. He did not even seem scared, nor yet
disturbed. He was a middle-aged man, with grey hair, and a worn, rather
sad face, and he wore a blue suit of clothes, which showed earth-stains
and other evidences of an exciting and violent life. He was, in fact,
the man whom Ilam had buried, and who described himself to Carpentaria
as Mr. Jetsam.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Pauline, in a low, brave voice.
“What do you want?”
She mastered her fear, though her heart was beating madly. She
determined that, just as she had proved equal to difficult situations in
the past, she would prove equal to this one.
“Now that you have seen me, I want to talk to you,” replied the man.
“You climbed up by the balcony, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the intruder. “Nothing more simple. I found a ladder.”
“Then you had better go as you came--and quickly!” said the girl.
“And the alternative?”
“Of course, I must call the master of the house. In any event I shall do
that.”
“No,” said Mr. Jetsam. “For heaven’s sake don’t call Jos.”
“Jos!” repeated Pauline, astounded at this familiarity.
“I said ‘Jos,’” the man insisted firmly. “What do you take me for?”
“Naturally I take you for a burglar. What else should you be?”
“Now, do I look like a burglar?” Mr. Jetsam asked severely. “Examine me,
and tell me whether I look like a burglar.”
“Whatever you are,” said Pauline, in a tone of decision, “I cannot
remain talking to you like this. I am in charge of an invalid here, and
you must go.”
The man gazed at her fixedly. She thought his eyes were very sad eyes,
and yet dignified, too. They reminded her of the eyes of Mrs. Ilam. And
presently, when they grew moist, they reminded her even more of the eyes
of Mrs. Ilam.
“Miss Dartmouth,” said the man, “I can easily prove to you that I am not
a burglar.”
“Then you know me?”
“I know of you. I know your name. I know you by sight. I know that you
and your sister have come into this stricken and fatal house from sheer
goodness of heart!’
“Do not talk like that,” said Pauline, whom any praise, save of her
personal appearance, made extremely uncomfortable. She endeavoured to
make her voice cold, forbidding, and accusatory, but she could not.
The eyes of the grey-haired man seemed to hypnotize her, to rob her of
initiative, and of the power to decide things for herself.
“I will talk in any manner you like,” returned Mr. Jetsam, “provided you
will let me come into the room and explain to you what I want.”
“Impossible,” she replied.
“Why impossible? It is, on the contrary, perfectly easy,” said Mr.
Jetsam. “All I have to do is to close the window”--and he closed it--“to
come into the room”--and he came in--“and to ask you to be good enough
to listen.”
He put down his felt hat on a chair.
He now stood within the room, a couple of feet from Pauline, in the
direction of the bed, but with his back to it.
Pauline, with a sudden sharp movement, darted to the mantelpiece, by
the side of which was the bell-push. In the same instant he, too, darted
forward and clutched her wrist, just as she was about to touch the bell.
They held themselves rigid for a moment, like statues.
“I understand your feelings,” said Mr. Jetsam in a shaken voice. “I
admire you. But before you ring that bell, let me assure you most
solemnly that if you do ring it you will bring murder into this house.
You will utterly ruin one family, if not two. Believe what I say; you
cannot help but believe it. A man’s character for truthfulness shows
itself in every accent of his voice, and by this time, you must be very
well aware that when I speak, I speak the truth.”
Pauline moved from the mantelpiece and he loosed her arm.
“Well?” she said interrogatively.
She did not know it, but she was breathing very rapidly through her
nose, and her charming nostrils were distended. Still, she probably
noticed the admiration in Mr. Jetsam’s glance.
“Miss Dartmouth,” he began, and then stopped.
Simultaneously they both thought of the invalid stretched moveless on
the bed, and Pauline bent over that form. The eyes blinked irregularly,
and always they stared up at the same point of the ceiling. They were
dry, but Pauline noticed traces of tears on the rugged cheeks, and she
wiped them away--it was her mission.
“Ah!” she murmured. “You can’t advise me what I ought to do.”
And then she faced Mr. Jetsam once more, still standing by the bed.
The table-lamp, with the crimson silk shade, and the bright fire gave
sufficient light.
“Miss Dartmouth,” Mr. Jetsam recommenced, “a great crime was committed
long ago in the Ilam family, one of the most cruel crimes conceivable.
It can never be atoned for in full, or nearly in full: but, even now,
after many, many years, it can be partially atoned for.”
“Who committed this crime? and what was it? Murder?” gasped Pauline in a
breath.
“I cannot be sure who committed it,” replied the man; “and it was not
murder. It was worse than murder.”
“How do you know it was worse than murder? How does it concern you?”
“I was the victim,” said the man quietly. And then he raised his voice
and repeated: “I was the victim. I am the victim.”
“Hush!” she warned him. “Not so loud.”
He turned to the bed with a strange expression on his face.
“Why not so loud?” he demanded. “She can hear, even if we speak in a
whisper. She has heard everything, and she can do nothing.”
He spoke bitterly, and held a pointing finger at the old woman. And her
eyes remained ever fixed, blinking irregularly, regardless of the two
beings near her.
“You are cruel,” said Pauline. “You torture her.”
“Far from being cruel,” said Mr. Jetsam, “I am kind. Justice is always
kind, for it alone produces peace, and peace alone produces happiness.”
“You would not talk like that if you had ever been happy,” said Pauline.
“If I have not been happy, it is because justice has been denied me. If
this old woman and her son have never been happy it is because they have
denied me justice. But justice may now be done, and you yourself may be
the first instrument of it.”
“Tell me how,” said Pauline.
“You will be the blind instrument,” he said.
“Tell me how,” Pauline repeated.
“I have been watching a long time at that window,” said the man, always
with the utmost respect--“and what I saw convinces me that you know more
of this affair than you care to seem to know.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the girl defiantly.
“Well,” said Mr. Jetsam, “Mrs. Ilam cannot talk, cannot give
instructions of any kind. Yet I saw you take a particular box from off
the chest of drawers, and hide it under the invalid’s pillow. In order
to hide it, you actually disturbed the invalid. You lifted her head to
enable you to conceal the box in the bed beneath it. That is strange,
Miss Dartmouth. But I have no desire to pry into your secrets. You are a
friend of the family, nay more, a relative, and you had the right to do
all that you have done. But let me tell you at once that I have come
in search of precisely that box. I hoped to get it while everybody was
asleep; but I was prepared for emergencies. If your cousin Ilam had
been here in your place I should have obtained possession of it without
asking his leave. But you--well, I humbly ask you to give it to me.”
Pauline gazed at the poor organism on the bed.
“Is he to have the box?” she asked. “Is he to have the box, Mrs. Ilam?”
The staring, sad eyes did not move. There was not the slightest flutter
of the lids.
“Why do you put questions to her?” asked Mr. Jetsam moodily.
“She means that you are not to have the box,” said Pauline, and then she
addressed Mrs. Ilam anew. “You mean that he is to go away without the
box?”
The eyelids wavered and then blinked rapidly.
“That means ‘Yes.’ You must now go--at once. I have listened to you too
long,” said Pauline.
“It is impossible that you should refuse me,” argued the man.
“Impossible! I don’t suppose that motion of the eyelids means anything,
but even if it did, naturally she does not want me to have the box.
Still, I must have it. Miss Dartmouth, everything depends on my
obtaining that box. Its contents are essential to the bringing about of
justice. I entreat you most urgently and most solemnly to give it to me.
You cannot doubt my sincerity.”
“I will admit frankly,” answered Pauline, “that I do not doubt your
sincerity. But, all the same, you cannot have that box--at least from my
hands. It belongs to Mrs. Ilam; she evidently treasures it highly. I put
it under her pillow to satisfy her. Mrs. Ilam is helpless, and I am in
charge of her. You must go, I repeat--and at once. We have talked too
much.”
“Suppose I take it by force?” suggested the man.
“You would never dare,” said Pauline angrily, and she rushed again to
the bell. “If you attempt to take it I will ring the bell, and I will
hold you till some one comes, even if I die for it.”
“Mad creature!” he exclaimed acidly. “I could kill you. It is almost
worth while; but I won’t. You tell me to go, and I go; but my resources
are not yet exhausted. Good-night. I can’t leave without expressing the
opinion that you’ve got both sense and grit, and plenty of both. But
you’ve made a mistake to-night. Good-bye.”
And while she stood with her hand on the bell-push Mr. Jetsam passed
very calmly out of the window, and the curtain fell in front of him and
hid him.
It was the most curious adventure of Pauline’s life, which, indeed, had
hitherto been entirely free from the unusual and the mysterious. After
a short period of hesitation she went to the window, drew aside the
curtain boldly, and looked out into the night of the City. There was no
sign of her late visitor, but the ladder rested against the balcony,
a proof of his recent presence; otherwise, she might have persuaded
herself that what she had been through was a dream. She shut the window
and bolted it, and came back into the room. The old woman, with her dark
burning eyes staring always at the same spot on the ceiling, seemed now
somewhat easier. Pauline gazed at her, and, after having stirred the
fire, lay down again on the couch.
And as she closed her eyes, the strange enigma of Mrs. Ilam and her son
and the nocturnal visitant filled her mind with distracting and futile
thoughts. Who was this grey-haired man, at once so masterful, so
dignified, and so desperate? What could be the justice that he demanded?
what the contents of the lacquered box? She would have a real good talk
with Rosie in the morning. That prospect comforted her. Rosie--Rosie----
Suddenly she started, and gradually she perceived that she had been
asleep a long time--two hours, perhaps--and that something, some
presence, had wakened her. Looking round, she noticed that the door,
which had been closed, was now open.
She jumped up and went out of the room to the passage, but she could
neither see nor hear anything. Then, as her eyes became accustomed to
the obscurity, she detected a very faint, thin pencil of light at the
other end of the passage, and on approaching it she found that it came
from her sister’s room. She crept forward, pushed open the door and went
in. Rosie, fully dressed, was sitting on a chair near the window, which
was not quite closed, and her face was hidden in her hands, and she
appeared to be crying.
“Rosie,” exclaimed Pauline, “whatever’s the matter? Why aren’t you in
bed and asleep?”
And Rosie subsided into her sister’s arms, weeping violently.
“I haven’t been to bed at all,” she said at last. “I’ve never slept in
a room with a balcony before, and I couldn’t resist going out on to this
balcony to see how beautiful the night was. And I began to think what a
splendid time we were having, and I watched the stars, and I heard
the clock strike in the tower over there, and the gardens looked so
beautiful in the starlight, and a long, long time must have passed. And
then I saw a man standing under my window. He was a man dressed in blue,
with grey hair, and he began to talk to me.”
“And why didn’t you tell him to go away, my dear?”
“He seemed so sad, and he said such interesting things. Pauline,
darling, there’s something very, very wrong in this house--some mystery!
He told me. No one could help believing what he says, and he has such a
beautiful voice. I cried, almost, in listening to him.”
“But who was he?”
“I think he must be some relative,” said Rosie. “I think so. He didn’t
say. What he did say was that there was a black box which it was
absolutely necessary he must have. Oh, Pauline, I’m sure he isn’t a
thief! He’s a man who has suffered a great deal, and he asked me to get
the box for him, and his face was so sad--well, I said I would. And he
told me exactly where it was.”
“Where did he say it was?”
“He said it was under Mrs. Ilam’s pillow; and it was, true enough.”
“How do you know?” cried Pauline, aghast.
“I crept into your room, and lifted Mrs. Ilam’s head, and took the box.
You were fast asleep. He asked me to see if you were asleep, and, if you
were, not to wake you. So I came as quietly as a mouse.”
“And you obeyed him like that?” murmured Pauline, astounded.
“I couldn’t help it. I felt so sorry for him. And his voice was so----”
“Rosie!” said Pauline. “You used to be sensible enough!”
“I couldn’t help it!” moaned Rosie again.
CHAPTER XVIII--An Arrangement for a Marriage
Juliette D’Avray had a small sitting-room of her own in the Carpentaria
bungalow. It was on the first floor, and it looked west, whereas
Carpentaria’s study and bedroom both looked north, on the avenue. Three
days after the affair of the black box, Carpentaria ran hastily up
the stairs of his house and touched the knob of the door of Juliette’s
sitting-room, and then he drew back his hand, nervous and hesitant. He
was evidently perturbed, and he pulled his fine beard in a series of
quick twitches, and then he rapped smartly on the door and coughed.
“Juliette!” he cried. He was very much surprised to discover that he
had not got complete control of his voice. It broke in the middle of his
half-sister’s name. “I must do better than this,” he thought, trying to
command himself.
There was a pause.
“Juliette!” he cried again, more firmly.
The word was scarcely out of his mouth when the door opened wide, and
Juliette stood before him. They gazed at each other for a fraction of a
second, as if inimically.
“Why don’t you come in, Carlos?” she murmured softly, and her eyes fell,
“instead of knocking and making such a noise. What’s the matter?”
Carpentaria was certainly astonished at the nature and tone of her
remark. She seemed to wish to run away. Then he gathered himself
together, with an immense show of force, as a man will when confronted
by a woman who is helpless before him, but of whom he is afraid.
“I don’t want to come in,” he said.
“Why?” she demanded.
“You know why,” he said.
“Indeed I don’t,” she asserted; and she laughed--a curt laugh.
“You promised me you wouldn’t see Ilam again at present,” said
Carpentaria stoutly.
Juliette tossed ever so little her charming head, with its admirable
coiffure.
“I did,” she admitted.
“Well,” said Carpentaria, “he is at this moment in the sitting-room.”
Juliette’s dainty nostrils began to dilate.
“Carlos,” she said disdainfully, “do you know what you are saying? To
me! Mr. Ilam is not here. I have already asked you to come in!”
“Yes,” said Carpentaria, “but you don’t make way for me. You keep well
in the doorway, Juliette!”
She moved aside with a gesture of the finest feminine scorn.
“Is there space for you to enter?” she said, bitterly sarcastic.
Carpentaria stepped forward one pace. His foot was on the door-mat.
“Stop a moment, Carlos,” she said warningly, lifting her arm. “I repeat
that Mr. Ilam is not here. I cannot imagine what put the idea into your
head. But whatever put it in, let me advise you to put it out again at
once. Under the circumstances, if you come into this room, now that
I have distinctly told you that Mr. Ilam is not here, it will be
equivalent to calling me a liar. I could not suffer that, even from you,
Carlos. I should leave you. We should quarrel for ever. Think what you
are doing.”
Tears stood in her eyes.
Carpentaria shuffled his feet in an agony of uncertainty.
“Come in if you doubt me,” Juliette continued. “But if you do, it will
be the end.”
Carpentaria turned slowly away, and passed down the corridor.
“Of course I don’t doubt you,” he called out.
Juliette made no response. She waited till her half-brother had
descended the stairs, then she shut the door quietly, and ran to the
Louis Quinze sofa, with its gilded borders, that stood a little way from
the window.
“You can come out,” she whispered.
And from behind the sofa emerged the bulky form of Josephus Ilam.
“Great heavens!” he muttered, searching in his pocket for a
handkerchief.
Juliette sat down on a chair and burst into tears. The contrast between
their two handkerchiefs--Ham’s enormous, like himself, and Juliette’s a
fragment of lace no larger than a piece of bread-and-butter--was one of
those trifles which put an edge of the comical on the tragic stuff of
life.
“You are an astounding woman!” exclaimed Ilam, wiping his brow.
“I have lied to him--I have deceived him. You heard what I said?”
whimpered Juliette.
“You behaved superbly,” said Ilam.
“I behaved shamefully,” said the woman. “But I did it for you!”
And she looked at him over her handkerchief, with wet eyelashes.
Ilam would have gone through unutterable torture for her in that
moment. It was a highly strange thing--this late coming of love into the
existence of Josephus Ilam. It transformed him. It made him feel that,
at fifty, he was only just beginning to grasp the meaning of life. It
made him see that hitherto his days and his years had been wasted on
vain things, and that the only commodity really worth having in this
world was such a look as Juliette gave him out of her impassioned
eyes. He could not understand what so bewitching and lively a woman as
Juliette could see in a heavy, gloomy fellow like him. For the matter
of that, probably no other person, save only Juliette, could understand
that mystery. But then, when a woman loves a man, she sees him in a
radiance shed from her own soul, and it changes him.
“My poor friend,” said Juliette, composing herself, “why do you put
me in such an awkward position, coming upstairs like this, and in the
middle of the day, too? You must have bribed one of the servants.”
“I did,” said Ilam.
“Well, don’t tell me which,” Juliette put in quickly.
He bent down and kissed her. Yes, this heavy and rather creaky person,
who had laughed at love for several decades, bent down and kissed a
pretty woman sitting on a Louis Quinze sofa; moreover, he put his arms
round her. He did it clumsily, of course, but Juliette did not think so.
“I was obliged to see you,” he told her. “I couldn’t go without seeing
you. Why have you so persistently kept out of my way? You were so kind
that morning--when Carpentaria surprised you. Has he been bullying you?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Juliette, suddenly excited. “I cannot tell you what he
said to me. You know I love him best in the world--next to--you. But he
said such things to me--such things!”
“He said--oh, my dearest!--he said his life was not safe--he said no
one’s life was safe in this City--he said he had been shot at in the
bandstand; and, you know, that business of the milk was dreadful. The
strange thing is that Carlos won’t consult the police about it.”
“But how does this affect us--affect you and me?” demanded Ilam
bravely.
“Dearest,” said Juliette, “poor Carlos thinks--he actually thinks----”
“That I am trying to kill him?”
“He thinks you have something to do with it.”
“But why? Why should I want to kill your brother--your brother?”
“Yes, indeed!” agreed Juliette. “And why should you want to kill
anybody’s brother?” she added.
“Of course,” he said hastily. “Why should I want to kill any person at
all?”
“Carlos says that he is not the only person you have tried to kill.”
“Ha! And who is the other? Give me the full catalogue.”
“I don’t know. He says you have buried a man in the grounds, and that he
saw you do it.”
“Juliette!” Ilam stepped backwards. Then he stopped. “Juliette,” he
repeated, “I swear to you most solemnly that I have never tried to kill
anyone.”
“Dearest, you shouldn’t have said that!” she remonstrated. “You
shouldn’t have sworn to me. It is an insult to my love. Do you imagine
that I believed Carlos for a single instant? Do you imagine it?”
She looked at him proudly, gloriously.
“How splendid you are!” muttered Josephus Ilam, son of the soda-water
manufacturer. The admiration was drawn out of him. He had not guessed
that women could be so fine. And then he perceived that he, too, must
be splendid, that he must be worthy of her; and so he proceeded:
“Nevertheless, it is true that I did bury a man in the grounds a few
nights ago.”
The perspiration stood afresh on his brow as he made the confession.
“You!” she murmured.
“I thought he was dead,” said Ilam, speaking quickly. “I thought I
should be accused of his murder. And so I--the fact is, I was mad. I was
off my head. I must have been. Until yesterday I actually fancied I was
being haunted by his ghost. Yes! me! me--thinking a thing like that! But
I did; and yesterday I was in that big crush, during the shower, in the
Court of the Exposition Palace, and he, too, was in the crowd. I saw
him; I touched him; he didn’t see me, thank Heaven! Then I knew that
what I had buried was not a corpse.”
“Who is this man?” asked Juliette calmly.
“My angel!” said Ilam, driven to poetry by the stress of his emotion,
“you mustn’t inquire; there are some things I can’t tell you--at least,
not yet. When we are married, when matters are settled a bit, I will
tell you everything, but not now.”
“Why not now?” she persisted.
“Look here,” he said, “if you persist I shall simply go and kill
myself.”
She paused.
“My friend,” she resumed, “you do not love me as much as I love you. The
measure of love is trust, and you do not trust me completely.”
“I love you in my way,” said Ilam doggedly; “men are not like women.”
“That is true,” she admitted philosophically.
“I would tell you everything if I was free to do so,” he said.
“Dearest”--she addressed him in quite a new tone--“you know something
about those attacks on Carlos’ life.”
She spoke with an air of absolute certainty.
“I have had nothing to do with them,” he said.
“But you know something about them.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I can tell from your manner,” she said triumphantly.
“I know nothing for certain, nothing precise,” said Ilam--“nothing that
I can tell you--nothing that I dare tell you.”
“Dearest,” she remarked, with a faint acidity, “it seems to me that you
have come here to-day in order not to tell me things.”
He deprecated her tone with an appealing gesture.
“I can tell you, at any rate, this,” he said, “that your brother’s life
is no longer in danger--of that I am sure.”
“You are atoning,” she smiled.
“Which is more than can be said of my life,” Ilam proceeded, not heeding
her smile.
“Your life is in danger?” she questioned, rushing to him as though she
would protect him.
Ilam, without a word, led her to the window, from the corner of which a
glimpse of the avenue could be caught, and walking to and fro there in
the avenue was the Soudanese.
“You see that man?” said Ilam. “It’s the fellow they call ‘Spats’ in
the native village. I don’t know why. He is devoted to me; he is fully
armed; he follows me everywhere. I have only to blow this whistle”--and
Ilam produced a whistle from his pocket.
“Darling”--and Juliette clung to him--“is it so bad as that? Who is it
that threatens you?”
“The man that I buried,” said Ilam quietly.
“But what are you going to do?”
“Well,” said Ilam, “I’m come here to see you. We must get your brother
on our side.”
“I’ll force him to understand at once,” cried Juliette.
“No,” said Ilam, “perhaps you would fail, as things are, but if you were
my wife, you would not fail then. Carpentaria, once the thing was done,
would do everything in his power to protect your husband; he likes
you well enough for that. He might be angry at first, but he would see
reason.”
“Dearest, you want me to marry you secretly?”
“I merely want you to go with me to the registry office at Putney.”
“Is that what you came for?”
“That is what I came for.”
“My love!” she murmured.
Yet, with that cold and penetrating insight which women have, she saw
clearly that, though Ilam’s idea of getting Carpentaria’s assistance in
a moment of grave danger was doubtless quite serious, it was somewhat
fanciful, and that Ilam’s professed reason for their instant marriage
was also fanciful, and was not a real reason, but only an excuse. He
merely wanted to marry her at once, that was all, and although his life
was threatened, he thought little of that. She loved him the more.
“I can make the arrangements pretty quick,” said Ilam. “You will agree,
my angel?”
And she nodded, and the compact was sealed. They heard a scurrying in
the passages of the house.
“Juliette! Juliette!”
It was Carpentaria’s voice, and other voices mingled with it
indistinctly--the voices of the servants. “Yes!” she answered loudly
and, whispering to Ilam, “Get out of the window; whistle softly for your
Soudanese. You can get on to the roof of the outhouse. He will help
you.”
And noiselessly she opened the window, and Ilam, struck by her
tremendous resourcefulness, passed out. She heard his low whistle, and
then she ran to the door and into the passage.
“The house is on fire,” said Carpentaria, meeting her.
“Is it?” she answered calmly. “Are the firemen come? where’s the
fire?”--She sniffed--“Yes,” she said, “I can smell it.”
She was amazingly calm. “No woman with a man concealed in her
sitting-room,” said Carpentaria to himself, “could behave so calmly upon
being informed that the house was on fire. Her first thought would have
been to secure the hidden man’s safety.” And Carpentaria ran downstairs
with a great show of activity. He was baffled, disappointed, for he had
deliberately set fire to his own house in order to drive Ilam from the
sitting-room, where he felt sure Ilam was. And the trick had failed.
After all, he had been mistaken. He had been convinced of his sister’s
deception, and lo! she had not deceived him. Carpentaria could have
killed himself.
Happily the fire was of no importance, and it was extinguished before it
had done more than about five pounds’ worth of damage and alarmed more
than about five thousand visitors to the City.
CHAPTER XIX--The Heart of the City
The situation of the heart of the City was one of the secrets of the
City. It was not located, perhaps, exactly where you might have expected
it to be, and for a very good reason. The magnificent building which
housed the managerial, clerical, and inspectorial staff of the City was
near the south end of the Central Way. It comprised four floors, and
more than a hundred clerks spent seven hours a day there. On the first
floor was the President’s Parlour, where Ilam held consultations with
Carpentaria and with the heads of departments, from the department of
catering to the department of road-cleaning. On the floor above was the
Manager’s and Musical Director’s Parlour, where the august Carpentaria
held consultations with Ilam and with the heads of other departments,
from that of music, with its subsections (a) open-air bands, (b) theatre
and other bands, (c) restaurant bands, (d) vocal music, (e) pianolas,
gramophones, and mechanical orchestras, to the procession and fêtes
department. But the heart of the City was nowhere in this building.
There were also scattered about the immense grounds, various other
executive buildings of a smaller size, where sectional managers,
viceroys of Ilam and Carpentaria, held their mimic sway. But the heart
of the City was not in any of these, either.
Very few persons, even among those on the salary-list of the City, did
know where the heart was; for it was not talked about. Talking about it
was discouraged; the hearts of such places are never talked about. And
it is a most singular thing that visitors to the City scarcely gave a
thought to the question of the situation of the heart of the City. The
most interesting of all the many secrets of the City seldom aroused
public curiosity, so strange is the public.
The heart of the City, as I propose to reveal, was situated beneath the
Storytellers’ Hall, near the northern end of the Central Way, on
your left hand as you passed down from the north entrance-gates. The
Storytellers’ Hall was an invention of Carpentaria’s--one of his best.
Between two o’clock and four, between five o’clock and seven, and
between half-past eight and closing-time you could pay sixpence to go
into the Storytellers’ Hall and listen to a succession of American and
Irish and English performers, whose sole business it was to sit in
an armchair on the diminutive stage and tell funny stories. The
entertainment consisted in nothing else. It was the simplest thing in
the world, and yet one of the completest successes of the City. It was
a success from the very first hour of its existence. The little hall was
nearly always crowded, chiefly by men. One is bound to admit that women
were not enchanted by it; either they laughed in the wrong places, or
they turned to their husbands, sweethearts, uncles, nephews, at the end
of the story, and asked if that really was the end of the story, and,
if it was, would their husbands, sweethearts, uncles, nephews kindly
explain the joke to them.
Well, the heart of the City was beneath that gay and mirthful structure.
While storytellers told stories above the level of the ground, the most
serious business of the City was being transacted a few feet away, below
the level of the ground. Let me explain.
Take an average intelligent visitor to the City. He approaches, say, the
northern entrance, and among the twenty patent turnstiles which confront
him he chooses the nearest one that is empty. He puts a shilling on
the iron table of the turnstile; an official in the livery of the City
scrutinizes the coin to make sure that it is what it pretends to be,
and then pushes it down a little hole. The shilling disappears--not only
from the sight, but from the thoughts of the visitor.
It is a highly remarkable fact--as he squeezes through the turnstile he
actually forgets all about his shilling, forgets it for evermore!
Yet shillings are being poured in a continuous stream into the mouth of
that turnstile and into the mouths of scores of similar turnstiles, all
day. What becomes of them? Surely this question ought to interest the
average intelligent visitor! What becomes of them? The turnstiles won’t
hold an unlimited number of shillings; nevertheless, shillings are
falling into them eternally and they are never emptied; they are
never even moved; they could not be moved, since they are imbedded in
concrete. Here _is_ a puzzle for the average intelligent visitor.
It will occur to anyone that when four hundred thousand people have each
paid a shilling entrance, quite a nice little lot of money must have
accumulated somewhere in the City by nightfall; for, besides the
entrance shillings, there is the vast expenditure of the visitors after
they have entered.
The nice little bit of money runs to the heart of the City. That is what
the heart of the City is for; that is why it is called the heart.
Now, the heart was a long, wide, and low apartment, lighted by
electricity, and lined with concrete. In the centre, its top level with
the floor, was a huge safe, which by hydraulic power could be raised
till its top was nearly level with the ceiling, and its doors bared to
the persuasions of keys. Round about were large wooden tables, furnished
with large and small balances, copper scoops, bags, and steel coffers. A
few chairs completed the apparatus of the apartment.
The shillings of the clients of the City dropped through the mouths of
the turnstiles right down to a small subterranean chamber, which could
only be reached from a tunnel beneath each entrance. Thus, the officials
in charge of the turnstiles had no control whatever over the coins once
they had been slipped into the orifices. The coins were checked and
collected by an entirely separate set of officials, who visited the
underground chambers every three hours and brought back the booty,
enclosed in coffers, in specially constructed insignificant-looking
carriages, to the solitary door of the heart. And the door of the heart
was by no means in the Central Way; it gave on a back entry running
parallel to the Way and just wide enough to permit the passage of one
carriage. The coffers were received, and receipted for, by an official
of the heart, and handed by him into the interior. Neither he nor the
collectors were ever allowed to enter the heart.
On the evening of the day of the secret interview between Juliette and
Ilam, the inconspicuous door of the heart was guarded, not by its usual
official, but by a tall Soudanese, and waiting close to him was an
automobile with chauffeur on board. The automobile was one of several
employed specially to transport the riches of the City to the head
offices of the London and West-End Bank in King William Street. The
journeys were made at night, twice a week, and the offices of the London
and West-End were specially opened to receive the coin. Automobiles
laden with vast wealth are less apt to be remarked when they travel at
night.
Within the heart itself were three people--Ilam; a middle-aged man named
Gloucester, who spent all his days in counting and weighing gold and
silver, and who was the presiding genius of the heart; and, thirdly, a
clerk from the London and West-End Bank.
Gloucester was weighing sovereigns, the clerk was counting coffers and
piling them up in a corner near the door, and Ilam was idly inspecting
the doors of the huge safe, which had been raised out of its well and
stood open and empty.
During that day and the previous two days, what with a monster Y.M.C.A.
fête then in progress, and what with the weather, over a million
shillings had been taken at the turnstiles. Now, a new shilling weighs
eighty-seven grains, and about seven thousand average current shillings
go to the hundredweight. A million shillings, or fifty thousand pounds
in silver, will weigh, therefore, something like seven tons. Nearly
the whole of this treasure had already started on its way to the famous
vaults of the London and West-End Bank; only a few coffers remained. But
there was, in addition, about ten thousand pounds in gold, which weighed
about a couple of hundredweight, and it was chiefly for this gold that
the last automobile was waiting.
“Seven coffers of silver, Mr. Gloucester,” said the clerk; “two of
gold.”
“I shall be ready with the others in a few minutes,” replied Mr.
Gloucester.
“Then I’ll be making out the check-sheets,” said the clerk.
“Do so,” said Mr. Gloucester, who was a formal old person, and wore
steel-rimmed spectacles. And he continued his weighing of the gold.
At this interesting and dazzling juncture, the unique door of the
apartment, an affair of solid Bessemer steel, swung slowly on its
hinges, and disclosed the figure of a man in a blue suit, with grey hair
under his soft hat. Mr. Gloucester, being just a little short-sighted
and just a little hard of hearing, neither saw nor heard the visitor.
Nor did Mr. Ilam, who was actually within the safe, measuring
its-shelves. But the bank-clerk, who was quite close to the door, most
decidedly did see the man. And the clerk started, whether with fear,
surprise, or mere nervousness, will probably never be known.
The man shut the door.
“What----” began the clerk.
“Go to the other end of the room,” said the man commandingly.
“Mr. Ilam!” the clerk called out respectfully, alarmed.
“Go to the other end of the room,” repeated the man.’
The clerk perceived then that he had a revolver. Mr. Gloucester also
perceived the man and his revolver, and Mr. Ilam came out of the safe
rather like a jack out of a box.
CHAPTER XX--What Jetsam Wanted
Hullo, Jos! said the intruder in a light, careless and rather scornful
tone.
It was a stroke of genius on his part to address Mr. Ilam as “Jos.” That
curt and familiar monosyllable, directed like a bullet at the formidable
Ilam, the august President of the City, made such an impression upon
both Mr. Gloucester and the L. and W. E. Bank-clerk that they took
no part whatever in the immediately subsequent proceedings. They were
astounded into silence. They trembled lest lightning should descend and
utterly destroy the intruder.
And Ilam himself was plainly at a loss. He was about to say to the
intruder: “You have no right to speak to me in such a way,” and to order
him out of the place, when the ridiculousness of protesting and the
futility of ordering presented themselves vividly to his mind.
Besides, there was the revolver.
So Mr. Ilam said merely, in a sort of pained surprise:
“Jetsam!”
“Exactly,” said Jetsam.
And the imperturbable fellow, with his grey hair and his shabby suit
and his weary eyes, nonchalantly sat down on the edge of one of the
counting-tables, his legs dangling, and his body leaning forward.
The two employés were by this time convinced that the new-comer must be
either the Shah of Persia in disguise, or else some extremely intimate
and life-long friend of Ilam’s, perhaps richer than Ilam himself. The
bank-clerk knew by sight several chairmen of banks who were quite as
badly dressed as the man on the table. Nevertheless, they did not carry
revolvers. The revolver was certainly rather disquieting. However, they
bent to their work, as though both eyes of the Recording Angel were upon
them.
Ilam closed the door of the safe.
“The doorkeeper let you pass?” he ventured.
“No, not at all,” replied Jetsam.
“He isn’t at his post?”
“Not just at the moment. I’ve had him removed for a bit. He’ll doubtless
return as soon as I’ve gone. I thought it would be simpler to have my
own doorkeeper.”
“What did the Soudanese say, though?”
“Which Soudanese?”
“The Soudanese who is outside the door.”
“Oh, him? He didn’t say anything.”
“This is a serious breach of rules for you to be here, you know,” said
Ilam. “And I must ask you to go.”
“I really can’t go just yet,” said Jetsam.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing,” said Jetsam; “except nursing this revolver. I’m going to do
something soon.”
Both the bank-clerk and Mr. Gloucester looked up. They even went so
far as to glance at their employer for instructions; but their employer
seemed to avoid the eyes of the underlings. Then Mr. Gloucester spoke
in a low tone to the clerk, and the clerk replied, and some bags of gold
were bundled into a coffer and the coffer locked and double-locked, and
the bank-clerk murmured respectfully:
“These are the lot, sir. Shall I take them and go?”
“Yes,” said Ilam.
“Will you help me?” said the clerk to Mr. Gloucester.
“Yes,” said Mr. Gloucester.
And Mr. Gloucester and the clerk each picked up several coffers.
“Good-night, sir,” said the clerk.
“Good-night,” said Ilam.
“Stop that!” Jetsam exclaimed, turning his head slowly behind him to
follow the movements of the pair.
“I beg pardon?” murmured the clerk interrogatively.
“I thought I told you to go to the other end of the room,” thundered
Jetsam.
“But Mr. Ilam----”
“Go to the other end of the room, up there at that corner,” Jetsam
commanded sternly, adding, “or I’ll blow your idiotic brains out! Do you
hear?”
The clerk was in love with a girl who lived with her mother in a pretty
little semi-detached villa at Weybridge. He thought of her; he thought
of all the evenings he had spent with her; he conjured her up in all her
different dresses; he heard her voice in all its tones--and all this
in the fraction of a second. Then he put down the boxes and discreetly
betook himself to the corner indicated by Mr. Jetsam, thinking obscurely
and slangily that to be a bank-clerk was not all jam.
“And you, too!” ordered Jetsam, raising a finger to Mr. Gloucester.
Mr. Gloucester was not in love with a charming young thing at Weybridge.
He never had been in love; he had never lived with anyone except
himself and a bull-terrier; but he was fond of playing chess at night at
Simpson’s; and he suddenly saw Simpson’s and the chess-boards, and
the foamy quart, and the bull-terrier lying under the table. Life and
Simpson’s seemed infinitely precious to him in those instants. And he
put down his boxes and followed the bank-clerk to the suggested corner.
“I must really----” he began protestingly.
“Silence!” exploded Mr. Jetsam; and there was silence.
You must picture the large, low room, with its concrete lining and its
half-dozen sixteen candle-power electric lights burning in the ceiling;
and underneath these lights the four men--Ilam leaning against
the gigantic safe which rose out of the floor in the middle of the
apartment; Jetsam still nonchalantly swinging his legs as he sat on
the table, facing him directly; and the democracy, somewhat scared and
undecided, in a corner. Jetsam had his back to the door, and since the
two piles of coffers were near the door they were out of his field of
vision.
Jetsam winked at Ilam--deliberately winked at him.
“Simple as a, b, c, isn’t it?” he pleasantly remarked.
“What?” demanded Ilam.
“What I’m doing now--holding up a strong room and its staff.”
“You’ll suffer for this,” said Ilam.
“That remains to be seen,” was the reply. “I gravely doubt if I shall
suffer for it. Up to now, what have I done? I have asked those gentlemen
to go into a corner and not to indulge in desultory and disturbing
conversation; and they have been good enough to humour my caprice; and I
have winked at you, Jos. Is there anything illegal in winking at you? A
few days ago you did more than wink at me--you nearly killed me!”
“I must go,” said Ilam. “I have an appointment--I----”
He moved slightly.
“Let me advise you not to move,” Jetsam warned him, raising the revolver
an inch or so. “It mightn’t be very good for your constitution. You must
grasp, the fact that you are being held up. A worn-out operation, you
will say--a trick lacking in novelty! Yes; but one, nevertheless, based
on the fundamental human instincts, and therefore pretty certain to
succeed. Indeed, I am surprised how simple it is. You might fancy from
my easy bearing that I had devoted a lifetime to holding people up. Not
in the least. I have never held anyone up before. And yet, how well I am
succeeding! The thing works like a charm; merely because you can see in
my eye that I mean to be obeyed.”
“I suppose you want money?” said Ilam savagely.
“I don’t want impudence!” retorted Jetsam. “Apologize, if you please, my
friend!”
“What have I said?”
“It isn’t what you said--it’s your manner of saying it that was unworthy
of you. You mean to apologize for wounding my feelings, don’t you?”
Jetsam smiled. “No, don’t move; merely express your regret!”
“I’m sorry,” muttered Ilam.
“There--you see!” cried Jetsam to the men in the corner. “Let that be
a lesson to you. And remember, that only great men like Mr. Ilam have
sufficient moral force, when they are in the wrong, to admit the fact.
Well, Jos, I accept your apology in the cheerful and generous spirit in
which you offer it; and I shall not deny that I do want money. That is
part of what I came for.”
“How much do you want?” asked Ilam.
“Well,” said Jetsam. “How much have you got handy?”
Mr. Ilam intimated that there was a small sum in gold.
“A thousand in gold?” queried Jetsam.
Ilam nodded.
“Probably more,” Jetsam commented. “But a thousand will suffice me. If
I need a fresh supply I can always come again, can’t I? And besides, all
that is yours is mine, eh?”
Ilam maintained silence.
“Eh?” repeated Jetsam persuasively.
“Yes,” growled Ilam, and his eye caught the eye of the young bank-clerk
by pure accident.
At that moment the young bank-clerk, fired by martial valour, a thirst
for glory, and the thought of what a splendid thrilling tale he would
have to tell to the charming young thing at Weybridge, sprang furiously
forward in the direction of Jetsam.
“Stop!” said Jetsam, slipping off the table and facing the youth,
revolver ready.
The youth hesitated for the fifth of a second.
“No,” said the youth, and came on.
Jetsam fired almost point-blank at the hero’s face, and the hero started
back and sank to the ground. And there was a great hush in the room and
a smell of powder and a little smoke. The youth lay still.
“Get up!” said Jetsam fiercely. “Get up, or I’ll kick you up!”
And, strange to relate, the youth discovered the whereabouts of his
limbs and got up, and returned to the corner.
“A singular example of what imagination will do!” commented Jetsam. “The
first chamber of this revolver was loaded with blank. I expected to have
to use it for theatrical effect, to begin with, and I was not wrong. Let
me add that the other five chambers are most carefully loaded, and that
I once earned my living in a music-hall by shooting the pips out of
cards with this revolver.” He then addressed Mr. Gloucester. “Now, old
man,” he said, “how much gold is there in one of those boxes?”
“Two thousand five hundred!” answered Mr. Gloucester politely.
“And it weighs?”
“About sixty pounds.”
“It isn’t worth while breaking into it,” said Jetsam smoothly, looking
at Ilam. “I’ll take the lot. In our final settlement it shall be brought
into account.” His glance shifted to Gloucester. “Thank you,” he added,
“for this information so courteously given.
“Perhaps you are satisfied now!” said Ilam.
“Why don’t you go? You think you won’t get caught, but you will.”
“Surely, you won’t give me away, Jos!” protested Jetsam. “I’m convinced
you won’t; because you see, if you begin to talk about me I should
probably begin to talk about you, and think how dreadful that would be.”
“Keep it up! Keep it up!” said Ilam.
“Hence,” Jetsam proceeded, ignoring the interruption, “I shall
confidently rely on you to see that these excellent gentlemen here in
the corner keep their elegant mouths shut. I shall rely on you for that.
You understand, gentlemen, Mr. Ilam wishes you not to prattle, even in
the privacy of your own homes.”
“Are you going?” said Ilam doggedly.
“Yes,” said Jetsam; “and so are you.”
“Me!”
“Yes, you. The money is a mere incidental. What I came for was your
distinguished self.”
“I’m not coming with you. I haven’t the slightest intention of coming
with you.”
“You may not have much intention, but you are coming,” said the suave
Jetsam. “Besides, who is going to carry this box outside for me? I can’t
carry the box and a revolver, too. Obviously Providence has designated
precisely you to carry this box. Come.”
“Not I!” Ilam defied him.
“Come!” repeated Jetsam. “I have a vehicle awaiting outside, and we
shall see what we shall see.”
“No!” insisted Ilam.
Mr. Jetsam advanced two paces.
“Listen!” said he angrily and yet calmly. “If you don’t come, I’ll shoot
you where you stand. You ought to be able to perceive that I mean what I
say.”
Ilam’s reply was a mute surrender. He dropped his eyes, and the next
moment the two underlings had the spectacle of the corpulent Mr.
Ilam lifting a sixty-pound weight and struggling with it to the door,
followed by the revolver and Mr. Jetsam behind the revolver.
“Stop in the doorway a second,” ordered Jetsam. He addressed the clerks
again. “If I were you, I shouldn’t hurry out of here. You might catch
cold.”
And then they saw Ilam disappear, the box in his arms, and Mr. Jetsam
follow him. Mr. Jetsam closed the door. The clerks were alone.
“Well, of all the----!” exclaimed the younger man.
“I wonder how soon it will be safe for us to leave!” said Mr.
Gloucester.
CHAPTER XXI--Interrupting a Concert
That evening the nightly concert of the “Carpentaria Band” was held
in the great court of the Exposition Palace, partly because the weather
was threatening, and partly because the Y.M.C.A. wished it so. The
stalwart members of the Y.M.C.A. were prominent and joyous, and they
pervaded the City to the number of some fifty thousand. They were nearly
all young, and they were all, without exception, enthusiastic. They had
taken possession of practically the whole of the tables on the three
tiers of balconies that surrounded the court, and there was also
a considerable sprinkling of them on the ground floor. They liked
Carpentaria; they liked his music; they liked his way of conducting.
They admired him when he split the drums of their ears, and they equally
admired him when he wooed those organs with a hint of sound that was
something less than a whisper. They violently cheered his marches, and
with the same violence they cheered his serenades and his cradlesongs.
Consequently Carpentaria was content. He was more than content--he
glowed with pleasure. He was the centre of the vast illuminated court,
with its ornate architecture, and its wonderful roof, and its serried
rows of lights. All eyes were centred on him. He swayed not only his
band, but the multitude, by a single movement of the slim baton--that
magic bit of ivory which he held in his hand. He said to himself that he
had never had a better, a more appreciative and enthusiastic audience in
the whole of his glorious career. The result was, that-he conducted in
his most variegated and polychromatic manner. He did things with his
wand that no conductor had ever done with a wand before; he performed
gyrations, contortions, and acrobatics beyond all his previous exploits.
In a word, he surpassed himself.
He was in the very act of surpassing himself, in his renowned “Cockney
Serenade,” when he observed, out of the tail of his eye, a middle-aged
man, who was forcing his way at all costs across the floor of the hall
towards the bandstand.
When seven thousand people are packed on chairs on a single floor, it
is not the quietest task in the world to penetrate through them. And
the middle-aged man was not doing it quietly, in fact, he was making
decidedly more noise than the “Cockney Serenade,” and attracting quite
as much attention.
A number of ardently musical young men on the grand balcony leaned over
the wrought-iron parapet and advised the middle-aged man to lie down
and die, in a manner unmistakably ferocious. (It is extraordinary how
ferocious a youth can be on mere lemonade.) But the middle-aged man
continued his course, and he arrived at the bandstand, despite official
and unofficial protests, simultaneously with the conclusion of the
serenade.
Gales of applause swept about the court, and Carpentaria bowed, and
bowed again--bowed innumerably, all the time regarding the middle-aged
man with angry and suppressed curiosity. The middle-aged man had lifted
up a hand and pulled the triangle-player by the belt of his magnificent
uniform, and the triangle-player had bent down to speak to him.
“What is it? What is it?” asked Carpentaria, his nerves on edge.
“A person insists on speaking to you, sir,” replied the triangle-player.
“He cannot,” snapped Carpentaria.
“He says he shall,” said the triangle-player.
“I’ll----” Carpentaria began an anathema, and then stopped. He went to
the rail of the bandstand and leaned over to the middle-aged man.
“At your age,” he said grimly, “you ought to know better than to
interrupt my concerts in this way. Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Gloucester, sir,” was the answer. “Doubtless you recollect.”
“I do nothing of the kind,” said Carpentaria.
“I’m in charge of the--er----” Here Gloucester stood up on tiptoe in
an endeavour to whisper directly into Carpentaria’s ear--“the
strong-rooms.”
“Well,” asked Carpentaria, “what do you want?”
“Been robbed, sir.”
“Great Heavens, man!” Carpentaria exploded. “You come to interrupt my
concert because the strong-rooms have been robbed!”
“Two thousand five hundred pounds, sir.”
“I don’t care if it’s two thousand times two thousand five hundred
pounds. Go away! Go and worry Mr. Ilam.”
“That’s just it, sir. Mr. Ilam has been taken, too.”
By this time the multitudinous eyes of the audience were fixed on
Carpentaria and his interlocutor, and everybody was sapiently saying to
everybody else that something extraordinary must have occurred.
“What do you mean--Mr. Ilam been taken?” Carpentaria demanded.
“He’s been carried off--he carried the money off--he was forced to, sir.
Revolver, sir. Can’t you come, sir?”
“Can I come? Ye gods! Man, do you know what a concert is? Can I come? Of
course I can’t come!”
“Mr. Ilam may be dead, sir.”
“We shall have leisure to bury him after the concert,” said Carpentaria.
“Go away. Go and consult Lapping, head of the police department. Or,
rather, don’t. You’ll upset the audience making your way out. Sit
down. Sit right down there, and don’t move. We’re going to play my new
arrangement of the ‘Glory Song’ with variations. You’ll see it will
bring the house down. It will be something you’ll remember as long as
you live.”
“But, sir,” pleaded Mr. Gloucester pathetically.
“Sit down--and listen,” Carpentaria repeated sternly.
He returned to the centre of his men. He rapped the magic wand on his
desk, and the next moment the band had burst deliriously into the now
famous orchestral arrangement of the “Glory Song.” The audience was
thrilled by the waves of sound that emanated from the instruments,
especially when the variations began. So the entertainment continued,
while Mr. Gloucester, consuming his middle-aged impatience as best he
could, ruminated upon the strange caprices of employers. He had been an
employé all his life; he had never commanded; and his conclusion, at
the age of fifty odd, was to the effect that the nature of employers is
incomprehensible, and that you never know what they will do next.
“Excuse me, sir.” He timidly touched Carpentaria when the concert was
over.
Carpentaria, it appeared, in the rush and fever of the music, had
forgotten all about him, and was on the point of leaving the court
deafened by applause.
“Ah, yes!” said Carpentaria. “That thief. Two thousand five hundred
pounds. And you say that Mr. Ilam has been carried off. Tell me all
about that. Come this way. Come into the street--it is always the most
private place.”
And in the Central Way, near the fountain, upon which coloured
lights were reflected from below, Mr. Gloucester related in detail to
Carpentaria the episode of the theft.
“You say it was a man dressed in blue, with grey hair?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And there were three of you, including Mr. Ilam, and you could not
manage to disarm him?”
“It might have meant death for the first of us, sir.”
“Well,” said Carpentaria absently, “what if it did?”
Mr. Gloucester grunted.
“You said I was to consult Mr. Lapping, sir. Shall we go there?”
“No,” said Carpentaria, “not yet. I will look into it myself first. The
principal mystery is that of the doorkeeper. What is his name?”
“Wiggins.”
“And he has disappeared?”
“He was not there when I left, sir. And he could not have been there
when the thief entered.”
“Why not?”
“Because he would not have allowed the thief to enter, sir. He has
strict orders.”
“Humph! Come along.”
They hastened up the Central Way, in a northerly direction. The rain had
kept off, and the illuminations, which were superb, evidently met with
the ecstatic approval of the Y.M.C.A. adherents, who paraded to and fro,
and filled the flying cars, with the hectic enjoyment of people who
feel that closing time is near. The progress made by Carpentaria and his
companion was therefore not of the quickest.
“It’s more than an hour since,” said Mr. Gloucester, daring to show his.
discontent.
“What is?” asked Carpentaria.
“Since the crime occurred.”
“The fellow must have calculated on my concert,” replied Carpentaria.
“He probably knew that everybody in this City runs to me when the
slightest thing goes wrong.”
“The slightest thing!” repeated Mr. Gloucester bitterly--but not aloud,
only in his secret soul.
They hurried round by the side of the Storytellers’ Hall, and so to
the passage at the back. And standing at the entrance to the vaults,
underneath a solitary jet of electric light, was Wiggins, the doorkeeper
of the heart of the City. He was a man aged about thirty-five, six feet
two high, and not quite so broad.
“So you’re here!” exclaimed Carpentaria.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where have you been since--since Mr. Ilam arrived here?”
“I did what you told me, sir,” said Wiggins, with an air of
independence. Wiggins was not a Mr. Gloucester.
“What was that?” demanded Carpentaria, mystified.
“Why, your note, sir.”
“What note?”
Wiggins pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket and handed it to
Carpentaria, who read:
“Come to me in my office at once. If I am not there, wait for me. The
bearer will take your duties meanwhile.
“C. Carpentaria.”
“Oh!” said Carpentaria. “And who brought this?”
“A Soudanese, sir.”
“Which Soudanese?”
“I don’t know. They’re all alike to me.”
“And it didn’t occur to you that this note was forged?”
“No, sir. Why should it?”
“It didn’t occur to you,” Carpentaria continued, “that I was conducting
my concert, and that therefore I couldn’t possibly be in my office?”
“I didn’t know anything about any concert, sir. I’m doorkeeper here----”
“Not know about my concert!” cried Carpentaria. Then he calmed himself.
“Mr. Ilam came before the Soudanese brought the note to you?”
“Yes, sir, but only a few seconds before. He had but just gone in when
the Soudanese came. I was talking to the driver of the motor-car as was
waiting, sir, here in front of the door.”
“Oh. So there was a motor-car?”
“Yes, sir. It was one of the City cars. No. 28, sir. To take the money
away, sir.”
“Good. Who was the driver? Do you know his name?”
“I think his name’s Pratt, sir.”
“Then you left immediately and went to my office and waited for me, and
then?”
“Then I got tired of waiting and I came back here, sir.”
“Good,” said Carpentaria. “Mr. Gloucester, the garage is indicated as
our next resort.”
The immense garage of the City was close to the northern entrance gates.
And it, too, was guarded by a doorkeeper, hidden in a little box near
the double-wooden doors.
“I want to know if Car No. 28 has come in,” said Carpentaria.
“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “Came in twenty minutes ago.”
“Did you see it?”
“Yes, sir,” said the doorkeeper.
“Who was driving it?”
“I didn’t notice, sir.”
“Show us the car, if you please.”
They passed into the desert expanse of the garage, where a few men were
cleaning cars. Car No. 28 was in its place. In shape it was rather like
a police-van, but smaller. Carpentaria noticed that its wheels were very
dirty.
“Open it,” said he.
The key was found, and the interior of the car exposed to the light of
a lantern. And at the extremity of the car could be seen a vague mass, a
collection of limbs and clothes on the floor.
“Get in,” said Carpentaria, “and see what that is.”
The next moment two men were dragged out of the car in a state of
stupor. One was the Soudanese entitled “Spats,” who had become Ilam’s
bodyguard, and the other wore the uniform of an automobile driver.
“Who is this?” Carpentaria asked.
“It looks precious like Pratt, the man as usually drives this car, sir,”
answered the doorkeeper.
All the attendants in the place had now gathered round.
CHAPTER XXII--Carpentaria as Detective
You will now relate to me, as accurately as you can,” said Carpentaria
somewhat peremptorily to Pratt the chauffeur, “exactly what were the
circumstances which led to your ceasing to be master of your car.”
Carpentaria had had Pratt and the Soudanese carried to the strong-room,
the heart of the City, where a chemist and Dr. Rivers had united to
treat them for the effects of the narcotic which had evidently, by some
means, been administered to them. Rivers repeated that, so far as he
could judge, the narcotic employed was chloral hydrate, a drug more
powerful than morphine, more effective in its action on the heart, and
less annoying to other functional parts of the body. When Rivers and
the chemist had finished their ministrations, Carpentaria had
politely intimated to them that he did not absolutely insist on their
remaining--a piece of information which surprised the doctor, who,
having been let into one of his director’s secrets, expected, with the
confidence of youth, to be let into all of them. The three men, two
white and one Ethiop, were thus alone together in the chamber.
“Well, sir,” said Pratt, who was a fair man, talkative, with, just at
present, a terrific sense of his own importance as the central hero of a
mysterious drama. “It was like this: After I’d had the drink----”
“What drink?” demanded Carpentaria sharply. “The drink the other driver
offered to me, sir.”
“What other driver?”
“There came up another driver, sir.”
“In the City uniform?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who was he? What was his name?”
“No idea, sir. I seemed to remember his face, like, but I couldn’t
recollect his name. I asked him his name, and he said: ‘Don’t try to be
funny, Pratt; you’ve had a drop too much.’”
“And had you?”
“Not I, sir--of course I hadn’t. I’d made two journeys to the Bank with
full loads, and the next one was to be the last, and----”
“And you hadn’t had anything to drink at all?”
“Nothing to speak of, sir. A glass of port at Short’s as I was coming
back the first time, and a pint of beer--or it might have been a pint
and a half--at the Redcliffe as I was coming back the second time.”
“That was absolutely all?”
“Yes, sir, except a drop of whisky which was left in my flask.”
“But how came the other driver to be in a position to offer you drink?
Was he carrying casks and other things about with him?”
“No, sir, only a flask. Every chauffeur has a flask. Necessary, sir.
Cold work, sir. And you’ll recollect it hasn’t been exactly sultry
to-night.”
“What did he say? Are you in the habit of accepting drinks from men
whose names you can’t call to mind?”
“He was in the profession, sir, and in the uniform; besides, he said
he’d got a new cordial, fresh from Madeira, that would keep anyone warm,
even in the depth of winter, for at least two hours.”
“But this isn’t the depth of winter.”
“No, sir; but, as the cordial was handy, I thought I might as well try
it.”
“And when you had tried it?”
“I felt rather jolly, sir. I never felt better in my life, and thinks I
to myself: ‘I’d better write down the name and address of this cordial
before I forget it.’ So I says: ‘What’s-your-name,’ I says, meaning the
other driver, ‘what’s the name and address of this cordial, before I
forget it?’ And I was just taking a pencil out of my pocket to write
it down when I felt a bit less jolly and the pencil wouldn’t stop in my
hand.”
“You were on your driving seat?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that is all you remember?”
“Yes, sir. Except that once, dreamy like, I thought I was in prison for
exceeding the legal limit, and that all the lights in the prison were
turned out, and an earthquake was going on.”
“The other driver stood in the road by the car, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How was he dressed?”
“I’ve told you, sir. This uniform. Blue and white cap, same as this, and
long overcoat.”
“You couldn’t see what he wore underneath the overcoat?”
“No, sir.”
“And you?” Carpentaria turned swiftly on the Soudanese. “Did you drink
too?”
“Yes, sah.”
Spats smiled.
“And after you had drunk?”
Spats shook his head, still smiling.
“You remember nothing?”
“Yes, sah.”
“What?”
“He means he doesn’t remember anything,” Pratt explained.
“You mean you remember nothing?” Carpentaria questioned.
“Yes, sah.”
“Why did you drink?”
“Yes, sah.”
The Soudanese looked at Pratt, smiling.. “Because Pratt drank?”
“Yes, sah.”
“You have been waiting on Mr. Ilam lately, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sah.”
“When he came to the outer door there, and entered in here, did he tell
you to wait outside?”
“Yes, sah.”
“You can both go,” said Carpentaria. “Come to me at eight o’clock
to-morrow, Pratt, in case I should want you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Pratt. “Yes, sah,” said the Soudanese.
“No, not you,” Carpentaria explained.
“Yes, sah.”
“One moment,” said Carpentaria to the Ethiopian. “Did Mr. Ilam or any
other person give you a note to hand to the doorkeeper outside there?”
The Soudanese shook his fierce and yet amiable head.
“What!” cried Pratt, addressing him in surprise, “didn’t you come up
and give a note to Wiggins and then go away again, and return a second
time?” The Soudanese shook his head once more.
“Then there must have been two of ’em, sir,” said Pratt to
Carpentaria. “This chap’s honest enough.”
“Me have brother,” said the Soudanese, “same me.”
“Where is your brother?”
The Soudanese shook his head.
“In the native village?”
“Yes, sah.”
“Go and fetch him,” ordered Carpentaria.
And the next moment he was alone in the great chamber, and he felt
tempted simply to go to the regular police, of whom a few were
constantly employed by the City, and tell them what had happened, and
leave the whole affair entirely in their hands. And then the strange
attraction which always emanates from a mystery appealed to him so
strongly that he determined to probe a little further into the peculiar
matter of Ilam’s disappearance, without the aid of professional
detectives. He didn’t imagine for an instant that Ilam was dead. He was
capable of believing that Ilam had disappeared willingly; and yet such
a theory, having regard to the recitals of Mr. Gloucester and of the
bank-clerk (by this time doubtless on his way to Weybridge, and the
young thing) was to say the least exceedingly improbable.
He unlocked the door and went outside. Wiggins was at his post, actuated
by the exaggerated alertness which characterizes one who has been caught
napping.
“Anything happened, Wiggins?”
“No, sir. Nothing whatever.”
“I shall return soon. If the Soudanese comes, keep him.”
“Yes, sir.”
He passed into the Central Way, which was almost deserted. The last
visitor, the very last stalwart of the Y.M.C.A., had departed, and
the sole signs of life in the great thoroughfare were a lamplighter
extinguishing the gas-lamps which were provided in case of a sudden
failure of electricity, and a road-sweeper in charge of a complicated
machine with two horses. The clock in the tower of the Exposition Palace
showed half an hour after closing time. The moon was peeping over the
eastern roofs.
Carpentaria went to the garage, and, not without difficulty, for it
was shut up, made his way into the interior and procured some light. He
wished to make a thorough examination of the car which had been employed
as the instrument of the plot. He had it drawn out to the centre of
the garage, under the full flare of an electric chandelier. A sleepy
attendant hovered in the background.
“Get a ladder and see if there’s anything on the roof of the van--any
tyres or boxes or anything,” said Carpentaria.
“There’s only this, sir,” replied the attendant when he had climbed up,
and he produced a cap and overcoat of the City uniform.
“Well, I’m----!” exclaimed Carpentaria, and a notion struck him.
“Doorkeeper gone to bed?” he queried.
“Yes, sir.”
“Wake him and tell him I want him.”
While waiting for the doorkeeper, Carpentaria scrutinized attentively
the wheels of the vehicle; those wheels, even on his first visit, had
put an idea into his head. Then the doorkeeper arrived, not quite as
spruce and perfect as a doorkeeper ought to be.
“No one can enter this garage except under your observation?”
Carpentaria asked him.
“No one,” said the doorkeeper, positively.
“But you don’t keep such a careful eye on the people who go out?”
“Naturally not, sir. They can’t go out till they’ve been in, and if
they’ve been in they’re all right.”
“Just so. Now try to remember. Soon after this car returned to the
garage to-night, did any one leave the garage who was unfamiliar to
you?”
“I don’t remember, sir. You see, sir----”
“Exactly. I see. I am not blaming you. Your theory, though defective, is
a natural one. Now, do you remember, for instance, a man in a blue suit,
with grey hair, going out?”
“Upon my soul, I believe I do, sir.”
“You are certain?”
“Oh, no, sir. I’m not certain. But I have a sort of a hazy idea----”
“Look at these wheels,” Carpentaria cut him short. “That’s clayey mud,
isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where could the car have been to get that?”
“There’s that passage down under the embankment, sir, that way as leads
to the river.”
“Doorkeeper,” said Carpentaria, “you are brilliant. I also have thought
of that spot, where just such clay exists. But why should the car go
down there?”
“Ah,” said the doorkeeper. “There you beat me, sir.”
“Then perhaps you are not so brilliant after all,” said Carpentaria.
And having minutely examined the interior of the car, with no result, he
left the garage, and returned to the strong room.
The Soudanese was awaiting him at the door, and there were evident
signs of a quarrelsome temper on the part of Wiggins. Wiggins had not
forgotten the colour of the messenger who had handed him the forged
note.
“Well?” Carpentaria asked of the Soudanese. “Where’s your brother?”
The man shook his head, but not smilingly.
“Has he gone?”
“Yes, sah.”
“No one knows at the village where he’s gone?”
Spats shook his head.
“Wiggins,” said Carpentaria. “Is this the man who brought you the note?”
Wiggins hesitated.
“No, sir,” he said at length’, resentfully. “But they’re all alike, them
folk are.”
“H’m!” murmured Carpentaria. “Since there is nothing to guard here, you
may as well go, Wiggins. You, too, Spats.”
Two minutes later he was crossing the Oriental Gardens in the direction
of the Thames. And when he had travelled two hundred yards or so he
heard footsteps behind him, light, rapid, irregular. He turned quickly,
his hand on the revolver in his pocket, to face his pursuer. His
pursuer, however, was Pauline Dartmouth and no other. So he left the
revolver where it was.
CHAPTER XXIII--The Talk in the Garden
She was so out of breath that at first it seemed as if she could not
speak. He could hear her hurried breathing, almost like the catch of a
sob, and in the moonlight he could see fairly clearly her flushed face,
under the hat, and her tall, rather imperious figure. But he could
not make out the expression of her eyes. Nevertheless, as he peered
curiously into them, the thought suddenly struck him: “She is angry with
me.”
“Mr. Carpentaria, I want to have a word with you,” she said at length,
stiffly.
“My dear Miss Dartmouth,” he answered in his courtly and elaborate
manner, “I shall be delighted. What can I do for you? I regret very much
that you should have had to run after me like this.”
“I’ve been following you up for quite a long time,” she remarked, in a
more friendly tone. It appeared as if his attitude and greeting had
made some impression on her, in spite of herself. “First I went to
your office. Then to the strong-rooms, then to the garage, then to the
strong-rooms again, and now I’m here. I saw you crossing the gardens.
Nobody seemed to be inclined to give me any information about you.”
“No?” he murmured, in a cautious interrogative. “Now tell me; how can I
be of service to you?”
She scanned his features. They were alone together in the midst of the
immense gardens. A hundred yards away was the bandstand, the scene of
the greatest triumphs of his life. And yet in that moment his triumphs
seemed nothing to him as he stood under her gaze. Her personality
affected him powerfully. He said to himself that no woman had ever
looked at him like that. There was no admiration in her glance, no
prejudice either for or against him; nothing but a candid and judicial
inquiry. “I hope I shall come well out of this scrutiny,” his thoughts
ran. And the masculine desire formed obscurely in his breast to make
this girl think favourably of him, to make her admire him, love him,
worship him. He felt that to see love in these calm, courageous,
independent eyes of hers would be a recompense and a reward for all he
had suffered in the forty years of his existence. In a word she piqued
him. He little knew that up to that very evening she had worshipped him
afar off as women do worship their heroes.
“Nobody ill, I hope,” he ventured.
She ignored the observation, and said:
“Mr. Carpentaria, what have you done with Cousin Ilam?”
“What?” he cried, amazed both by the question, and by the cold firmness
with which it was put.
“I think you heard what I said,” she replied. “What have you done with
Cousin Ilam? Where is he?”
“Miss Dartmouth, do you imagine for one instant that I know where Mr.
Ilam is? I should only like to know where he is. I’m looking for him
now. But I was not aware that the fact of his disappearance was known.
Indeed, I meant it to be kept as secret as possible. I----”
“No, no,” she interrupted him. “I was hoping you would be frank. I
thought you had an honest face, Mr. Carpentaria, and it is because of
that that I have come--like this. I have just left your poor sister.
She is in despair. She has told me all.” Carpentaria did not reply
immediately. At last he repeated:
“Told you all? All what? You have soon become fast friends, you and
Juliette.”
“It is possible,” said Pauline drily. “I have met your sister three
times, but in seasons of distress we women are obliged to cling to each
other. As for Miss D’Avray and me, we live next door to each other. What
more natural than that I should call on her this evening? And finding
her in a condition of--shall I say?--despair, what more natural than
that I should ask her what was the matter, and what more natural, seeing
that she has no women friends here, and is of a nature that demands
sympathy, than that on the spur of the moment she should confide in me?”
“I assure you, Miss Dartmouth,” said Carpentaria, “that I was entirely
unaware of my sister’s despair--as you call it. What precisely has she
confided to you?”
“Why, about her engagement to Cousin Ilam, and your opposition.”
“Pardon me, there has been no engagement,” said Carpentaria.
“Pardon me,” said Pauline, “there has been an engagement, because my
cousin and your half-sister made it. Is there anybody better qualified
than them to make an engagement?”
She lifted her chin.
“Well,” said Carpentaria. “Let us assume that there was an engagement.”
“They were to be married to-morrow,” remarked Pauline calmly.
“To-morrow!” Carpentaria exclaimed, aghast. “Secretly?”
“Why do you pretend to be surprised? As for the secrecy, your opposition
has forced them to secrecy, because your sister is afraid of you.”
“And now that your cousin has disappeared, of course, they can’t be
married to-morrow,” mused Carpentaria. “Hence this woe.”
“Why have you taken such extreme measures, such cruel measures, such
wicked measures?” asked Pauline, full of indignation. “I can understand
well enough that you, as a great artist, cannot be expected to behave
like other people; I can understand you doing mad things, original
things. I can understand you defying the law, and taking the most
serious risks on yourself. But I can’t understand you being so cruel to
your sister, and so utterly beside yourself, as to carry off Mr. Ilam by
force.”
Her cheeks had flushed.
“By force?” murmured Carpentaria.
Then he laughed loudly, violently, magnificently, after his manner. His
laugh resounded through the deserted gardens.
“Juliette thinks I have removed her betrothed by force?” he queried.
“Naturally she does!” said Pauline. “The most extraordinary rumours are
about. It is even said that you have had a quarrel and killed him.”
“Tut-tut!” said Carpentaria, and after clearing his throat he proceeded:
“Miss Dartmouth, will you kindly fix your eyes on mine. I tell you I
have had nothing whatever to do with your cousin’s disappearance,
and that I was entirely unaware of his intention to marry Juliette
to-morrow.”
She gazed at him doubtfully.
“On your honour?”