BEHIND THE BRONZE DOOR
[Illustration: Thoroughly frightened, she turned away as the sound of
the weird knocker shattered the ghostly stillness.]
BEHIND
THE BRONZE DOOR
BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
AUTHOR OF “THE VOICE FROM THE VOID”
FRONTISPIECE BY
G. W. GAGE
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE EPIDEMIC OF MYSTERY 9
II HUSBAND, WIFE--AND ANOTHER 17
III THE HIDDEN SCANDAL 30
IV THE BRONZE FACE 41
V BEHIND THE DOOR 52
VI CORA HARTSILVER’S CONFESSION 61
VII CONCERNS “DEAR JESSICA” 72
VIII IN WHICH A DISCOVERY IS MADE 81
IX BEFRIENDING A REPORTER 91
X A PARAGRAPH FOR THE PAPERS 104
XI HUSH MONEY 112
XII YOOTHA’S PRESENTIMENT 122
XIII BOX NUMBER THIRTEEN 133
XIV CONCERNS A NECKLACE 142
XV SOME CROOKED QUESTIONS 153
XVI GATHERING CLOUDS 163
XVII “NOBODY MUST KNOW” 173
XVIII WHAT DR. JOHNSON KNEW 182
XIX WITHOUT A STAIN 194
XX CONCERNS A RUMOR 205
XXI THE LITTLE HORSES 215
XXII ANOTHER MYSTERY MAN 226
XXIII A FRIEND INDEED 236
XXIV THE TIGHTENING GRIP 247
XXV THE CITY OF SMILES 257
XXVI SUNSET LOVE 266
XXVII AGAINST THE WIND 276
XXVIII NUMBER FIFTEEN 286
XXIX A MESSAGE FROM YOOTHA 291
XXX BLENKIRON’S NARRATIVE 301
XXXI CONCLUSION 307
BEHIND THE BRONZE DOOR
BEHIND THE BRONZE DOOR
CHAPTER I.
THE EPIDEMIC OF MYSTERY.
“Isn’t this terrible, Henry? Where is it going to end?”
“Isn’t what terrible?--and where is what going end?”
“Why! Haven’t you read to-night’s paper?”
“No.”
“Here it is; read that!” and handing her husband the _Evening
Herald_ Mrs. Hartsilver indicated with her finger a paragraph in the
“stoppress” headed: “Another Society Tragedy,” and stated that a
well-known baronet had been found shot in his bedroom in circumstances
of great mystery.
Certainly the series of tragedies which had taken place during the past
eight months in what is called “Society,” had been most puzzling.
First, Lord Hope-Cooper, the fifth peer, held in high esteem by all
his friends and acquaintances, owner of Cowrie Park in Perthshire,
Leveden Hall in Warwickshire, and one of the finest houses in Grosvenor
Square, had drowned himself in the beautiful lake at Cowrie, apparently
for no reason and without leaving even a note of farewell for Lady
Hope-Cooper, with whom he was known to be on the best of terms--they
had been married eight years.
Then Viscount Molesley, a rich bachelor of three-and-twenty, an owner
of thoroughbreds and well-known about town and in sporting circles,
had been found shot in his bedroom one morning, an automatic pistol on
the floor beside him, and in the grate the ashes of some burnt papers;
apparently he had shot himself after receiving his morning letters.
Following close upon these tragedies had come the sudden death of
the Honorable Vera Froissart, Lord Froissart’s younger daughter, in
mysterious circumstances. She had been found dead in the drawing-room
in her father’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate, and at the inquest the
jury had returned a verdict of “death due apparently to shock.” Then
the death of a rather notorious ex-Society woman, Madame Leonora
Vandervelt, who had been divorced by three husbands--she had thrown
herself out of a fourth-floor window at a fashionable West End hotel.
Then the death by poisoning of an extremely prosperous stockbroker of
middle-age, owner of two financial journals. And after that four or
five more tragedies of the same nature, the victim in nearly every case
being a man or woman of high social standing and large income.
“Exactly the way Molesley made away with himself,” Henry Hartsilver
observed dryly as he laid down the paper after reading the report of
the discovery of Sir Stephen Lethbridge’s body in his bedroom at Abbey
Hall in Cumberland.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You may think me hard and unsympathetic, my dear,” he went on,
addressing his wife, “but these people who make away with themselves
leave me cold. Such tragedies don’t excite my pity--they arouse in me
only a feeling of contempt.”
He paused, then continued:
“Now, look at me. _You_ know how I began life, though I sometimes try
to forget it, as I hope others do. My parents were poor, and I received
only a moderate education; but I had grit and determination and I won
through. And look at me to-day. All who know me look up to and respect
me. I’m a self-made man and not ashamed to own it, though I don’t crow
about it on the housetops as some of these plebeians do. Though I come
of the people, I pride myself on being one of Nature’s gentlemen, and
what can you want more than that--eh? We can’t choose our parents, or
I might have chosen parents like yours, my dear--blue blood through
and through. And that was one reason why I married you. I think I have
told you this before. I made up my mind when I was still a lad that the
woman I made my wife should be a lady in the true acceptation of that
often misapplied word, and the first time I met you--you remember that
day, eh, my dear?--I recognized the type, and then and there I decided
that you were the lady for me!”
He lay back in the big arm-chair, slipped his thumbs into the armholes
of his waistcoat, and looked at his young wife with an expression of
extreme self-satisfaction.
“But, Henry,” she said, wincing, “what has all that to do with this
calamity? You forget that I knew poor Stephen Lethbridge. Abbey Hall is
close to my old home, and Stephen and I were children together. I can’t
help feeling upset.”
“I understand that quite well, but the feeling is one you ought to
fight against, my dear Cora. A man who deliberately commits suicide,
no matter what his social status may be, and no matter what the reason
or reasons may be which prompt him to commit the rash act, is guilty
of a grave wrong, not to himself alone, but to the whole of the
community. Heaven knows I have had difficulties, almost unsurmountable
difficulties, to contend with in my time, yet the bare thought of
self-destruction never entered my imagination.”
Henry Hartsilver had been married three years. A common, self-centered
person, endowed with exceptional shrewdness and with considerable
commercial acumen, he had begun life as a jerry-builder in a small
country town. Then war with Germany had been declared, and realizing at
once what so many failed to realize, namely that such a war must last
for years at least, Hartsilver had seized the opportunity he saw spread
out before him of amassing money quickly and in large lump sums by
securing by divers means building contracts for our Government.
Thus, long before the war ended, he found himself a rich man. Then,
anxious to gratify his second ambition, he set to work to look about
for a woman of good social standing to become his wife; the thought
that any woman to whom he might propose might decline the honor of
marrying him did not occur to him.
Consequently he was not surprised, nor did he appreciate the
honor conferred upon him, when the only surviving daughter of a
well-connected country gentleman accepted his offer of marriage. True,
the war had reduced her already impoverished father almost to penury,
and in addition both her brothers had been killed in action early in
the war, so that when she accepted him she felt that she did not now
much care what became of her. Her mother had been dead many years, and
her father she literally worshipped. What she never admitted, even to
herself, though in her heart she knew it to be the truth, was that by
marrying Henry Hartsilver she would be able to provide her father with
a comfortable income in his declining years. And since his sons’ death
he had aged very rapidly.
Hartsilver was now in his forty-sixth year, his wife just
seven-and-twenty. They had no children, but that did not prevent
Hartsilver’s everlasting complaint to his wife that he considered
himself deeply aggrieved at the Government’s neglect in failing to
confer a title upon him.
“Just think, my dear,” he had said to her more than once, “what you
would feel like if I made you ‘my lady!’ Shouldn’t we be able to crow
it over our friends, eh? And to think of the sums I gave to war
charities! Well, we must live in hope!”
Fortunately his wife’s tact, possibly also the sense of humor which
she possessed, prevented her from becoming annoyed with him when he
spoke like that, and making the sarcastic rejoinder which she sometimes
longed to utter. Though she could not accuse herself of having married
him for his money, that being the last thing she cared about, she yet
felt that she had in a way married him under false pretenses, for
certainly she knew that, but for her anxiety to add to her father’s
happiness and comfort, this common, self-satisfied, and self-righteous
person was one of the last men she would have linked herself to for
life.
Presently he spoke again.
“You know, my dear Cora,” he said, linking his fingers across his ample
chest, “although of course, it distresses me that you should grieve for
this man Lethbridge, yet I don’t quite appreciate your feeling what I
can only suppose is a sort of affection for the fellow--you, a married
woman. Somehow it seems--it seems not quite the right thing. A woman,
when she marries, should have no thought for other men, at least of all
thoughts of a--er--friendly nature. Now, consider for a moment, and
tell me if your better nature does not tell you so itself.”
Cora Hartsilver winced, but her husband did not notice it. He did
notice, however, when a moment later she smiled.
“You seem amused, my dear,” he said dryly. “May I ask what amuses you?”
“Oh nothing, Henry, nothing at all,” she answered quickly, then bit her
lip. “It was only something I happened to think of just then.”
“Ah, then it was something. Then why say it was ‘nothing?’ You should
always be truthful, Cora, always absolutely truthful, in even the
smallest matters. And what did you ‘happen to think of just then?’”
“I can’t remember now. It’s gone. Anyway it was nothing of consequence.
May I have that paper again, Henry?”
“Certainly,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then, as he handed
it to her, he said:
“Tell me what you know about Sir Stephen Lethbridge. I know him only by
name.”
“Well, I have not seen him for a year or two,” she replied carelessly.
“Indeed, I think not since our marriage. He came to the wedding, if you
remember.”
“I don’t remember. But go on.”
“He was in the Gunners. He went out to France in 1914, and was home on
sick leave when we were married. He used to be rather fond of me, I
believe.”
Henry’s mouth opened. He stared at his wife in astonishment.
“Really, Cora----” he began, but she went on without heeding him.
“I heard not so long ago that he had got into rather a bad set.
Somebody told me that the things he had seen out in France seemed to
have unsettled his brain--I know that happened in other cases too.
But he was a man who would never, I am quite sure, have done anything
dishonorable. Oh, I wish I knew,” she exclaimed, carried away by a
sudden emotion. “I do wish I knew what made him kill himself!”
“I wouldn’t worry about him, my dear Cora, if I were you,” her husband
remarked coldly. “Probably he was mentally unsound, mad--‘potty’ as the
boys say, Those scenes in the trenches must have been extremely trying.
And yet--had I been younger and able to join the colors----”
He stopped and stared. Cora, lying back on the settee, was laughing
hysterically.