A FRIEND INDEED!
While the events described in the preceding chapter were taking place
in Dieppe, Cora Hartsilver was visiting friends who had a place in
Jersey, near Gorey. They were people she had known intimately before
her marriage, friends of Sir Stephen Lethbridge whom she had loved so
terribly even after her marriage, but she had not seen them since her
husband’s death, though several times they had asked her to stay with
them.
She was glad to be out of London at last. The place had begun to pall
on her soon after the Armistice, also her friend, Yootha Hagerston,
seemed gradually to have changed in her manner towards her in a way
she could not exactly describe, but which she felt. She did not blame
Yootha for this change, though secretly she resented it. She attributed
it to her friend’s engagement, and hoped that after her marriage Yootha
would become her old self again, for she could not believe that her
long affection for her could have cooled.
One morning among her correspondence she found a registered letter
which mystified and disconcerted her exceedingly. Unsigned, and with no
address, it ran as follows:
“The writer possesses nine letters written by you to the late Sir
Stephen Lethbridge, and five written by Sir Stephen to you, _after
your marriage to the late Henry Hartsilver_. The former are dated
respectively ----” here followed the dates, also the addresses from
which the letters had been written. “The latter are dated ----” and
then came another list.
“These documents,” the letter continued, “are wholly compromising, and
photographic prints of them all will be posted in registered envelopes
to the whole of your circle of personal friends and acquaintances
unless six thousand pounds is paid to me on or before the first
of October next. This is no vain threat, and if the contents of
these documents have faded from your memory the writer can send you
photographic prints to confirm the accuracy of the statements contained
in this letter.
“Reply at once by advertisement in the personal column of _The Morning
Post_, and sign it ‘A. B.--from Y. Z.’”
* * * * *
Cora stared at the letter for a minute, then read it through again.
Written on a typewriter, it had been posted, according to the postmark,
in the London West Central district. The letters to which it referred
she remembered only too well. They were all the letters she had written
to Sir Stephen and that he had written to her during the time she had
been married and while her husband was alive.
She was alone in her room, and she sat down on the bed and began
to think. Who in the world could have obtained possession of those
letters, especially those she had received? Some servant? Mentally she
reviewed the various servants who had been in her employment during the
past years, but none seemed the sort likely to steal letters or attempt
to levy blackmail.
Then, all at once, she remembered Yootha’s telling her long ago,
one day when they had been talking in confidence about poor Stephen
Lethbridge’s sad end, that her father had told her that strange-looking
men and women had been in the habit of visiting Sir Stephen at Abbey
Hall, in his place in Cumberland, shortly before his death. She
wondered now, as she had wondered then, who those people could have
been, and why they had visited Sir Stephen.
But that, after all, she now reflected, was not of moment. What did
matter was that her letters should be in the keeping of someone
determined to do her an injury which would affect the whole of her
future life if she refused to buy them back at the sum named in the
letter she held in her hand.
For a quarter of an hour or more she sat there, pondering deeply. She
had received in the course of her life several hard knocks, and not
once had her spirit failed her. It came back to her now that Stephen
had more than once warned her to be more careful about what she put in
writing; but then, she reflected, had he not himself been almost as
reckless every time he wrote to her? Both were emotional by nature;
both were highly imaginative, and they became carried away by their
feelings when in correspondence with each other.
That her anonymous correspondent had not exaggerated when he declared
the letters to be “wholly compromising,” she well knew. Indeed, at
the recollection of some of the violent love passages they contained
she shuddered. What would become of her, she wondered feverishly, if
those passages, written in her handwriting, or Sir Stephen’s, were to
become public property? Oh, how mad she had been to write such things,
she exclaimed aloud. The one drop of comfort in her bitterness was the
reflection that Henry no longer lived, that he would never know.
Henry!
As she spoke her husband’s name a strange thought flashed in upon her.
The mystery of his suicide had never been fathomed, nor had she ever
succeeded in puzzling out even a possible solution to the problem, and
now, all at once----
Her brain began to work with extraordinary rapidity. During his
lifetime he had often read her curtain lectures which had bored her
almost to distraction--he had never tired of impressing upon her his
views regarding married women who carried on flirtations, and his
opinion in general upon a wife’s duties to her husband. At first,
when he had spoken thus, her conscience had cried aloud, and she had
believed herself a hypocrite and not fit to be married to any honest
man, seeing that she loved Stephen Lethbridge so madly.
Then, as time went on, she had succeeded in smothering her conscience
by reminding herself that Henry had married her in reality against
her will, therefore that she had a right to love Stephen if she
chose. Later, she had gone a step further by cultivating the habit of
analyzing her feelings calmly and dispassionately, and contrasting
her lack of affection for her husband with her all-consuming passion
for Sir Stephen, and more than once when so engaged she had secretly
wondered what would happen to Henry, and for that matter to herself,
should Henry by any terrible mishap discover her deep secret.
“I believe,” she recollected saying to herself once, “he would either
kill Stephen and me, or end his own life.”
And now in a flash the thought had come to her--could Henry have,
by some means, become aware of her hypocrisy, of the mental double
life she had been leading, and in a moment of frenzy at his sudden
disillusionment deliberately have ended his existence? And if so, was
it possible the writer of the anonymous letter she had just received
had been the person to impart that information to her husband,
presumably in the hope of extorting blackmail by threatening to make
the facts public, and that Henry had in consequence taken his life?
A terrible thought, yet the longer she dwelt on it the more plausible
the theory appeared to her to be. Quite likely, too, she reflected,
that if this were so the scoundrel, foiled in his first attempt to
extort payment for the letters, would presently make another attempt,
but that before doing so he would let a reasonable period elapse.
This discovery, as she believed it to be, and the reflection that
now she must either pay the sum demanded or stand disgraced before
everybody she knew, drove her almost frantic. In her agony of mind she
began to pace the room, trying in vain to evolve some means of escape
from her unknown persecutor.
Then she began to ask herself whom she could consult, of whom she
could take counsel? And again there was nobody. Had the matter been
one of less delicacy, less secret, she knew several people, intimate
friends others, to whom she would readily have unbosomed herself. But
to admit to anyone, even her dearest friend, that she had virtually
been carrying on an intrigue, even an harmless intrigue, while married,
she felt would be impossible. Besides, would anybody, not excepting her
dearest friend, believe the intrigue to have been harmless?
Suddenly she stopped pacing the room. She had read in the Jersey paper
that morning that on the previous day a Doctor Johnson--the Doctor
Johnson whom she had before consulted on very secret matters--had
arrived from Weymouth by the ss. _Ibex_ and gone to the Brees Hotel.
The news had afforded her extreme satisfaction, and she had said to
herself at once that they must meet again. Now she remembered how kind
and considerate he had been on the occasions when she had sought his
advice. Also he was a doctor, and doctors were accustomed to receiving
confidences which they never, in any circumstances, disclosed, she
reflected. Supposing she were to approach him with reference to this
dreadful affair, tell him exactly what had happened, how, though
married, she had been hopelessly, though harmlessly, in love with the
late Sir Stephen Lethbridge, and if then she were to show him the
letter she had received that day threatening her with blackmail----
Somehow she felt she would be able to trust him implicitly, and that
his advice would be sound, so on the following afternoon, after
telephoning that she wished to see him particularly, she called at the
Brees and was at once shown up.
The doctor was frankly glad to see her, and gratified when he found
that she wished to consult him on an unprofessional matter.
“I had a letter from Preston the other day,” he said, when they had
conversed for a few minutes, “and he seems to have recovered his health
and spirits considerably. I suppose you know that Jessica and her
inseparables are staying at the hotel in Dieppe where he is; but you
may not have heard that they and Miss Hagerston succeeded between them
in breaking the bank at the Casino some nights ago.”
“I had not heard that Jessica was there at all,” Cora answered. “But
then I have not heard from Yootha since she went there--she wrote to me
last from Monmouthshire. But surely you are mistaken, doctor, in saying
that she helped Jessica and her friends to break the bank? Yootha was
barely on speaking terms with Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson the last time she
wrote to me.”
“Indeed I am not mistaken, Mrs. Hartsilver,” Johnson replied with an
odd look. “Between ourselves, I rather wish I were, because, as you
know, I am not partial to that woman. Preston told me in his letter
that she and Miss Hagerston had suddenly become extraordinarily
friendly, and he seemed a good bit upset about it. They all met by
accident at the Royal Hotel, it seems, and Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson
induced Miss Hagerston to play with her at the tables at the Casino,
and they had the most amazing luck--even before they broke the bank.
Miss Hagerston, he says, has become bitten by the gambling mania, and
you know what that means--or perhaps you don’t; I hope you don’t.”
It was some time before Cora could brace herself to broach the subject
on which she had come to consult Doctor Johnson. She had been silent
for a minute, feeling extremely embarrassed, when suddenly she said:
“I have come to see you, Doctor Johnson, to ask your advice on a matter
I feel I couldn’t speak about to anybody else, and of course you will
treat what I am going to say as strictly confidential. Doctor, I am in
very great trouble.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” he answered quietly. “I take it you mean
mental trouble.”
“Yes. Perhaps before I say more you had better read this,” and quickly
producing the anonymous letter from her bag, she handed it to him.
He read it through calmly, his face immobile. Then he read it again.
After that he folded it and handed it back to her.
“An unfortunate incident,” he observed as he lit a cigarette. “Have you
any idea who the writer is?”
“Not the slightest.”
“A woman, I should say, possibly in league with some man. You won’t
pay, of course.”
“But then what am I to do? Think what will happen if I don’t pay,
doctor!”
“Am I to conclude from that that the allegation is true? Did you write
the letters, and were the others written to you?”
Cora colored violently, and looked down.
“Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“That is a pity,” the doctor answered. “Still Mrs. Hartsilver, even the
best of us make mistakes at times, and when a mistake has been made the
only thing to do is to think of the best way of avoiding unpleasant
consequences. I know perhaps better than you do how on occasions a
woman’s heart can temporarily overrule her brain and better judgment,
and for that reason I look leniently on what I call ‘heart influence.’
Did your husband know anything of this? You will, I am sure, in the
circumstances forgive my asking.”
“So far as I know, he knew nothing,” Cora answered quickly. “But since
receiving that letter I have wondered if he could, by some means, have
found out, or if someone can have told him, and whether--whether it can
have been that knowledge which drove him to end his life.”
“I think that is possible, Mrs. Hartsilver; yet I don’t consider you
are to blame. I have learned several things concerning your marriage,
why you married a man you never loved, and why----”
“Who told you that?” Cora interrupted. “Oh, Doctor Johnson, how did you
find out?”
“That is not of consequence, nor is the fact of your husband taking
his life of consequence now. The past is finished and done with. What
matters to-day--the only thing that matters--is what is going to happen
in the immediate future.”
He paused, and then continued:
“You say you want my advice, but if I give it I shall expect you, mind,
to follow it.”
“You may depend on my doing that.”
“Good. My advice, then, is that you do not, in any circumstances, pay
this hush money, or pay any hush money at all. The writer of the letter
you have shown me is almost for certain a professional blackmailer,
perhaps the only class of criminal to get, in this country, what
he deserves when caught. What we must do then is set a trap for
him--or her. And that I think I can do successfully, because I did it
comparatively recently with most satisfactory results in a somewhat
similar case. Do you remember Lord Froissart’s suicide, and before that
his daughter’s suicide, Mrs. Hartsilver?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Blackmail in each case, though it was never made public. I am speaking
to you now in strictest confidence; both are dead, or I should not tell
even you. Poor Vera Froissart fell madly in love with a scoundrel,
who wronged her and subsequently attempted to blackmail her. Afraid to
tell anybody, she let terror of exposure prey upon her mind until in a
moment of actual madness she made away with herself. Some time after
her death the same scoundrel approached her father, Lord Froissart,
told him why his daughter had ended her life, and threatened exposure
if Froissart refused to pay.
“Froissart paid. He paid again, and then a third time. He was not a
man of much backbone, or of strong mentality. When the blackguard to
whom he had already paid thousands came to him again for a further sum,
Froissart, believing that he must in the end be reduced to beggary
through the man’s extortions, went down to Bournemouth and threw
himself off the cliff.
“The night before he had written a number of letters at his club--the
Junior Carlton. One of those letters was addressed to me--I was his
medical adviser. In it he told me everything, and directly I had read
the letter I burnt it, as he wished me to do. This is the first time
I have revealed his secret, and it is the last time I shall speak of
it. I have revealed it to you that it may serve as a warning of what
may happen if ever you are so unwise as to pay hush money to anybody.
Froissart had mentioned the name of his persecutor, and with some
trouble I got the man arrested and convicted. He is in penal servitude
to-day, and will be for some years.”