So the Second Act ended.
Turning to the Third Act, Henry looked wearily at the pages as he let
them slip through his fingers. Both in mind and body, he began to feel
the need of repose.
In one important respect, the later portion of the manuscript differed
from the pages which he had just been reading. Signs of an overwrought
brain showed themselves, here and there, as the outline of the play
approached its end. The handwriting grew worse and worse. Some of the
longer sentences were left unfinished. In the exchange of dialogue,
questions and answers were not always attributed respectively to the
right speaker. At certain intervals the writer’s failing intelligence
seemed to recover itself for a while; only to relapse again, and to
lose the thread of the narrative more hopelessly than ever.
After reading one or two of the more coherent passages Henry recoiled
from the ever-darkening horror of the story. He closed the manuscript,
heartsick and exhausted, and threw himself on his bed to rest. The door
opened almost at the same moment. Lord Montbarry entered the room.
“We have just returned from the Opera,” he said; “and we have heard the
news of that miserable woman’s death. They say you spoke to her in her
last moments; and I want to hear how it happened.”
“You shall hear how it happened,” Henry answered; “and more than that.
You are now the head of the family, Stephen; and I feel bound, in the
position which oppresses me, to leave you to decide what ought to be
done.”
With those introductory words, he told his brother how the Countess’s
play had come into his hands. “Read the first few pages,” he said. “I
am anxious to know whether the same impression is produced on both of
us.”
Before Lord Montbarry had got half-way through the First Act, he
stopped, and looked at his brother. “What does she mean by boasting of
this as her own invention?” he asked. “Was she too crazy to remember
that these things really happened?”
This was enough for Henry: the same impression had been produced on
both of them. “You will do as you please,” he said. “But if you will be
guided by me, spare yourself the reading of those pages to come, which
describe our brother’s terrible expiation of his heartless marriage.”
“Have _you_ read it all, Henry?”
“Not all. I shrank from reading some of the latter part of it. Neither
you nor I saw much of our elder brother after we left school; and, for
my part, I felt, and never scrupled to express my feeling, that he
behaved infamously to Agnes. But when I read that unconscious
confession of the murderous conspiracy to which he fell a victim, I
remembered, with something like remorse, that the same mother bore us.
I have felt for him to-night, what I am ashamed to think I never felt
for him before.”
Lord Montbarry took his brother’s hand.
“You are a good fellow, Henry,” he said; “but are you quite sure that
you have not been needlessly distressing yourself? Because some of this
crazy creature’s writing accidentally tells what we know to be the
truth, does it follow that all the rest is to be relied on to the end?”
“There is no possible doubt of it,” Henry replied.
“No possible doubt?” his brother repeated. “I shall go on with my
reading, Henry—and see what justification there may be for that
confident conclusion of yours.”
He read on steadily, until he had reached the end of the Second Act.
Then he looked up.
“Do you really believe that the mutilated remains which you discovered
this morning are the remains of our brother?” he asked. “And do you
believe it on such evidence as this?”
Henry answered silently by a sign in the affirmative.
Lord Montbarry checked himself—evidently on the point of entering an
indignant protest.
“You acknowledge that you have not read the later scenes of the piece,”
he said. “Don’t be childish, Henry! If you persist in pinning your
faith on such stuff as this, the least you can do is to make yourself
thoroughly acquainted with it. Will you read the Third Act? No? Then I
shall read it to you.”
He turned to the Third Act, and ran over those fragmentary passages
which were clearly enough written and expressed to be intelligible to
the mind of a stranger.
“Here is a scene in the vaults of the palace,” he began. “The victim of
the conspiracy is sleeping on his miserable bed; and the Baron and the
Countess are considering the position in which they stand. The Countess
(as well as I can make it out) has raised the money that is wanted by
borrowing on the security of her jewels at Frankfort; and the Courier
upstairs is still declared by the Doctor to have a chance of recovery.
What are the conspirators to do, if the man does recover? The cautious
Baron suggests setting the prisoner free. If he ventures to appeal to
the law, it is easy to declare that he is subject to insane delusion,
and to call his own wife as witness. On the other hand, if the Courier
dies, how is the sequestrated and unknown nobleman to be put out of the
way? Passively, by letting him starve in his prison? No: the Baron is a
man of refined tastes; he dislikes needless cruelty. The active policy
remains—say, assassination by the knife of a hired bravo? The Baron
objects to trusting an accomplice; also to spending money on anyone but
himself. Shall they drop their prisoner into the canal? The Baron
declines to trust water; water will show him on the surface. Shall they
set his bed on fire? An excellent idea; but the smoke might be seen.
No: the circumstances being now entirely altered, poisoning him
presents the easiest way out of it. He has simply become a superfluous
person. The cheapest poison will do.—Is it possible, Henry, that you
believe this consultation really took place?”
Henry made no reply. The succession of the questions that had just been
read to him, exactly followed the succession of the dreams that had
terrified Mrs. Norbury, on the two nights which she had passed in the
hotel. It was useless to point out this coincidence to his brother. He
only said, “Go on.”
Lord Montbarry turned the pages until he came to the next intelligible
passage.
“Here,” he proceeded, “is a double scene on the stage—so far as I can
understand the sketch of it. The Doctor is upstairs, innocently writing
his certificate of my Lord’s decease, by the dead Courier’s bedside.
Down in the vaults, the Baron stands by the corpse of the poisoned
lord, preparing the strong chemical acids which are to reduce it to a
heap of ashes—Surely, it is not worth while to trouble ourselves with
deciphering such melodramatic horrors as these? Let us get on! let us
get on!”
He turned the leaves again; attempting vainly to discover the meaning
of the confused scenes that followed. On the last page but one, he
found the last intelligible sentences.
“The Third Act seems to be divided,” he said, “into two Parts or
Tableaux. I think I can read the writing at the beginning of the Second
Part. The Baron and the Countess open the scene. The Baron’s hands are
mysteriously concealed by gloves. He has reduced the body to ashes by
his own system of cremation, with the exception of the head—”
Henry interrupted his brother there. “Don’t read any more!” he
exclaimed.
“Let us do the Countess justice,” Lord Montbarry persisted. “There are
not half a dozen lines more that I can make out! The accidental
breaking of his jar of acid has burnt the Baron’s hands severely. He is
still unable to proceed to the destruction of the head—and the Countess
is woman enough (with all her wickedness) to shrink from attempting to
take his place—when the first news is received of the coming arrival of
the commission of inquiry despatched by the insurance offices. The
Baron feels no alarm. Inquire as the commission may, it is the natural
death of the Courier (in my Lord’s character) that they are blindly
investigating. The head not being destroyed, the obvious alternative is
to hide it—and the Baron is equal to the occasion. His studies in the
old library have informed him of a safe place of concealment in the
palace. The Countess may recoil from handling the acids and watching
the process of cremation; but she can surely sprinkle a little
disinfecting powder—”
“No more!” Henry reiterated. “No more!”
“There is no more that can be read, my dear fellow. The last page looks
like sheer delirium. She may well have told you that her invention had
failed her!”
“Face the truth honestly, Stephen, and say her memory.”
Lord Montbarry rose from the table at which he had been sitting, and
looked at his brother with pitying eyes.
“Your nerves are out of order, Henry,” he said. “And no wonder, after
that frightful discovery under the hearth-stone. We won’t dispute about
it; we will wait a day or two until you are quite yourself again. In
the meantime, let us understand each other on one point at least. You
leave the question of what is to be done with these pages of writing to
me, as the head of the family?”
“I do.”
Lord Montbarry quietly took up the manuscript, and threw it into the
fire. “Let this rubbish be of some use,” he said, holding the pages
down with the poker. “The room is getting chilly—the Countess’s play
will set some of these charred logs flaming again.” He waited a little
at the fire-place, and returned to his brother. “Now, Henry, I have a
last word to say, and then I have done. I am ready to admit that you
have stumbled, by an unlucky chance, on the proof of a crime committed
in the old days of the palace, nobody knows how long ago. With that one
concession, I dispute everything else. Rather than agree in the opinion
you have formed, I won’t believe anything that has happened. The
supernatural influences that some of us felt when we first slept in
this hotel—your loss of appetite, our sister’s dreadful dreams, the
smell that overpowered Francis, and the head that appeared to Agnes—I
declare them all to be sheer delusions! I believe in nothing, nothing,
nothing!” He opened the door to go out, and looked back into the room.
“Yes,” he resumed, “there is one thing I believe in. My wife has
committed a breach of confidence—I believe Agnes will marry you. Good
night, Henry. We leave Venice the first thing to-morrow morning.
So Lord Montbarry disposed of the mystery of The Haunted Hotel.
POSTSCRIPT
A last chance of deciding the difference of opinion between the two
brothers remained in Henry’s possession. He had his own idea of the use
to which he might put the false teeth as a means of inquiry when he and
his fellow-travellers returned to England.
The only surviving depositary of the domestic history of the family in
past years, was Agnes Lockwood’s old nurse. Henry took his first
opportunity of trying to revive her personal recollections of the
deceased Lord Montbarry. But the nurse had never forgiven the great man
of the family for his desertion of Agnes; she flatly refused to consult
her memory. “Even the bare sight of my lord, when I last saw him in
London,” said the old woman, “made my finger-nails itch to set their
mark on his face. I was sent on an errand by Miss Agnes; and I met him
coming out of his dentist’s door—and, thank God, that’s the last I ever
saw of him!”
Thanks to the nurse’s quick temper and quaint way of expressing
herself, the object of Henry’s inquiries was gained already! He
ventured on asking if she had noticed the situation of the house. She
had noticed, and still remembered the situation—did Master Henry
suppose she had lost the use of her senses, because she happened to be
nigh on eighty years old? The same day, he took the false teeth to the
dentist, and set all further doubt (if doubt had still been possible)
at rest for ever. The teeth had been made for the first Lord Montbarry.
Henry never revealed the existence of this last link in the chain of
discovery to any living creature, his brother Stephen included. He
carried his terrible secret with him to the grave.
There was one other event in the memorable past on which he preserved
the same compassionate silence. Little Mrs. Ferrari never knew that her
husband had been—not, as she supposed, the Countess’s victim—but the
Countess’s accomplice. She still believed that the late Lord Montbarry
had sent her the thousand-pound note, and still recoiled from making
use of a present which she persisted in declaring had “the stain of her
husband’s blood on it.” Agnes, with the widow’s entire approval, took
the money to the Children’s Hospital; and spent it in adding to the
number of the beds.
In the spring of the new year, the marriage took place. At the special
request of Agnes, the members of the family were the only persons
present at the ceremony. There was no wedding breakfast—and the
honeymoon was spent in the retirement of a cottage on the banks of the
Thames.
During the last few days of the residence of the newly married couple
by the riverside, Lady Montbarry’s children were invited to enjoy a
day’s play in the garden. The eldest girl overheard (and reported to
her mother) a little conjugal dialogue which touched on the topic of
The Haunted Hotel.
“Henry, I want you to give me a kiss.”
“There it is, my dear.”
“Now I am your wife, may I speak to you about something?”
“What is it?”
“Something that happened the day before we left Venice. You saw the
Countess, during the last hours of her life. Won’t you tell me whether
she made any confession to you?”
“No conscious confession, Agnes—and therefore no confession that I need
distress you by repeating.”
“Did she say nothing about what she saw or heard, on that dreadful
night in my room?”
“Nothing. We only know that her mind never recovered the terror of it.”
Agnes was not quite satisfied. The subject troubled her. Even her own
brief intercourse with her miserable rival of other days suggested
questions that perplexed her. She remembered the Countess’s prediction.
“You have to bring me to the day of discovery, and to the punishment
that is my doom.” Had the prediction simply faded, like other mortal
prophecies?—or had it been fulfilled on the terrible night when she had
seen the apparition, and when she had innocently tempted the Countess
to watch her in her room?
Let it, however, be recorded, among the other virtues of Mrs. Henry
Westwick, that she never again attempted to persuade her husband into
betraying his secrets. Other men’s wives, hearing of this extraordinary
conduct (and being trained in the modern school of morals and manners),
naturally regarded her with compassionate contempt. They spoke of
Agnes, from that time forth, as “rather an old-fashioned person.”
Is that all?
That is all.
Is there no explanation of the mystery of The Haunted Hotel?
Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own
life and death.—Farewell.