THE FACE IN THE GLASS.
From Harley Street, Cavendish Square, to Ormond Square, Bayswater, is
but a short distance as the crow flies, but it was enough to transform
the John Pomeroy of one place into the Gerald Warburton of the other.
And such transformations were very frequent with Gerald just at this
time. Now that he had learned to love Ambrose Murray's daughter,
Ambrose Murray himself had acquired a fresh interest in his eyes, and
he very rarely let more than two days pass over without finding
himself in Miss Bellamy's sitting-room. From Miss Bellamy he had but
one secret--his love for Eleanor. Everything else he told her: but to
Ambrose Murray nothing was told. Murray had not the slightest idea
that his daughter was in London; and so incurious was he respecting
her, that he never even asked the name of the friends with whom she
was living; and yet it was impossible to doubt that in his strangely
constituted heart he loved her passionately. He still adhered to his
first determination--not to see her, nor even to let her become aware
of his existence, till he could stand before her, a man whose
innocence the world was now as eager to proclaim as it had been before
to swear that he was guilty.
Miss Bellamy felt it as a great deprivation that she could not go to
see Eleanor, whom she had known and loved from infancy. But had she
done so, Eleanor would have certainly been seen in Ormond Square
before many hours were over--and then, what a meeting might there not
have been! It was requisite that Eleanor should believe that Miss
Bellamy had gone abroad for a short time, and the latter lady went out
less frequently than she would otherwise have done, so great was her
dread of unexpectedly encountering Miss Lloyd in the street.
"What are we to do now that we have found Jacoby?" said Gerald to
Murray the day after their expedition into the City.
"That is just what I want you to tell me," was Murray's complacent
rejoinder, as he took one of Gerald's hands between his thin palms and
patted it gently. "Your knowledge of the world will enable you to say
what the next step ought to be."
"I am afraid that my knowledge of the world, as you call it, is
altogether at fault in this instance," said Gerald, with a dubious
shake of the head. "To find a man, even in the great wilderness of
London, is an altogether different thing from working up a chain of
evidence strong enough to convict him of a crime committed twenty
years ago.
"But don't you see, Gerald," argued Murray, in his quietly earnest
way, "that the very fact of our having found this man constitutes the
first link in the chain? All the proofs in the world would have
availed us nothing had we not been able to find him. But now that we
have got the first link complete, you may depend upon it that the
forging of the second will follow in due course."
He spoke with an air of such thorough conviction, that for a moment or
two Gerald hardly knew how to answer him.
"I am certainly at a nonplus," he said at last. "I was never more in
the dark in my life. Have you any objection to my consulting Byrne?"
"No objection in the world. Consult anybody and everybody, as may seem
best to you."
"Should I find it necessary to do so, have I your permission to tell
him everything?"
"You have: my full permission."
"Mind you, I don't build any hopes on my interview with Byrne. I don't
see how he can possibly help us; but still I will consult him."
"And out of that consultation the forging of the second link will be
accomplished," said Murray. Again Gerald shook his head. Slightly
exasperating to him was Murray's air of thorough conviction, unbacked
as it was by the least fragment of proof, or even the vaguest
suggestions as to either how or where such proof might be forthcoming.
Two days later, having an afternoon to spare, Gerald chartered a
hansom for Amelia Terrace, Battersea, and picked up Ambrose Murray by
the way. He had seen enough of Byrne to make him believe that he was a
man who might be thoroughly trusted, and he had made up his mind to
lay the case before him in its entirety. He left the cab with his
companion in it at the corner of the terrace, and three minutes later
he was closeted with Mr. Byrne.
That gentleman was smoking his long-stemmed pipe with the china bowl.
He squeezed Gerald's outstretched hand, and greeted him with one of
his expansive smiles, which came and went as suddenly as though
produced by a clock-work movement inside his head.
"That was a neat stroke of business that we did the other night, sir,
though it is I who say it," remarked Mr. Byrne.
"Yes; you managed it very cleverly, and it is on that very subject
that I have come to see you again."
"I am yours to command, Mr. Warburton."
"If I recollect rightly, when I saw you before, you gave me to
understand that you were in Court on the day that Ambrose Murray took
his trial for the murder of Paul Stilling?"
"I was in Court at the time, and I retain a very clear recollection of
the different features of the case."
"Can you tell me what impression you formed at the time as to the
guilt or innocence of the prisoner?"
"Now you put a very difficult question to me. Anyone who has seen much
of criminal trials will tell you what an exceedingly unsafe thing it
is to form an opinion from a prisoner's demeanour as to his guilt or
otherwise."
"Never mind the prisoner's demeanour in this case. I simply want to
know what your own impression was, as a result of what you saw and
heard at the trial."
"Well, the weight of evidence, as no doubt you are aware, was dead
against the prisoner, and that very fact will, as a rule, go a long
way in the formation of a person's opinion. Still, in spite of that,
at the time it was my impression that, whoever else it might have
been, Murray was not the murderer."
"I am glad to hear you say that," said Gerald, heartily. "Because,
after being shut up for twenty years, Murray has escaped from prison."
"Phew! That's good news, Mr. Warburton, very good news! I never could
see my way to believe that man guilty."
"That man it was, and no other, who made the third in our little party
the other night."
The china pipe had never been so near being broken as it was at that
moment. It slipped from Byrne's nerveless fingers, and only the
hearthrug saved it. This brought back his presence of mind.
"In telling you this," said Gerald, "you will understand at once the
amount of confidence which I am placing in your discretion."
"Not undeservedly, Mr. Warburton--of that you may rest fully assured!"
said Byrne, warmly. "I feel honoured by your confidence in this
matter, sir: and if I can be of any further assistance either to you
or Mr. Murray, my services are entirely at your command."
"That is just the point to which I am coming," said Gerald. "We do
want your further assistance. It is for that very purpose I am here to
see you to-day: it is for that very purpose Mr. Murray himself has
come to see you."
"Mr. Murray here--to see me!"
"He is waiting in a cab at the corner of the street. I will go and
fetch him."
Presently Ambrose Murray entered, ushered in by Gerald. Byrne regarded
him with mingled feelings of respect, curiosity, and pity. It was
characteristic of the man that during the few minutes of Gerald's
absence he had found time to put on a better coat, and also, if the
whole truth must be confessed, to impart the very slightest extra
suspicion of rouge to his cheeks. The pipe was not again visible
during the interview.
Gerald introduced Mr. Murray in his real name to Byrne, who had hardly
spoken half a dozen words to him at their previous meeting.
"I am proud to see you, sir, under my humble roof," said Byrne, "and I
should have been proud to have entertained you during my days of
prosperity. But that was not to be," he added, with a melancholy shake
of the head.
"And now to business," said Gerald. "Mr. Murray is firmly convinced
that Max Jacoby was the murderer of Paul Stilling."
"Aye, aye!" interjected Byrne.
"As a matter of course, the great desire of his life is to prove his
innocence of the terrible crime of which in the eye of the law he is
still adjudged to be guilty. He can only do this by bringing home the
guilt to the real murderer. Assuming Mr. Murray's view of the case to
be the correct one, the question is, by what means is Jacoby's guilt
to be brought home to him?"
"And that is the problem you have come to me to help you to solve?"
said Byrne.
Murray answered by a grave inclination of the head.
"I don't know that I ever had such a poser put to me before," said
Byrne.
"It is the very difficulty of the problem that has induced me to seek
your services," said Gerald.
"I must put on my considering-cap," said Byrne. "I must sand-paper my
brains."
He was silent for a little while. Then he said, "I see no light at
present--not the faintest gleam. You must let me have time to think
about it--to smoke over it. My old pipe has made many a difficulty
clear for me; perhaps it may help me in this one."
"Take your own time, Mr. Byrne," said Murray. "When the light you seek
is ready to come to you, it will come."
"Yes; but I don't know where to look for it," said Byrne.
"It will come of its own accord."
Byrne shook his bead.
"Poor fellow! he's just a bit touched yet," he said to himself.
After a little more conversation, Gerald and Mr. Murray went. It was
arranged that Byrne should write and let them know when he was ready
to see them again.
It was about a week later when they all met again by appointment.
"Has the light come yet?" was Murray's first question.
"If it has, it is only a tiny ray indeed," said Byrne. "Something like
that of a farthing rushlight, liable to be blown out by the first puff
of wind."
"In such cases as the one before us," resumed Byrne, when they were
all seated, "it often happens that several abortive-attempts have to
be made before the proper channel for exploration is discovered. The
plan which I am about to propose to you will, in all probability,
prove an abortive one, and will result in some other effort in some
other direction having ultimately to be made. The plan in question is,
however, the only one I can think of at present which seems to possess
the least degree of feasibility. Very few words will suffice to lay it
before you."
Mr. Byrne here paused to refresh himself from his daughter's
smelling-bottle, which stood on the chimney-piece. Then he resumed--
"In the course of my various reconnoitrings about the house of Max
Jacoby, or rather Van Duren, as we ought now to call him, I discovered
a card in one of the windows, on which were the words, 'Unfurnished
Apartments to let.' From what I can make out, Van Duren occupies no
more of the house than the basement and ground-floor, the two upper
floors being empty and to let, and having a private side-entrance of
their own. Now, what I propose is, that I and my daughter shall go and
take these empty apartments. Mr. Warburton here shall be my son for
the time being. In that capacity he will be able to call upon me as
often as he may think well to do so. By these means I shall become an
inmate of Van Duren's house--he and I will be under one roof. Should
there be anything to discover, I shall thus be more likely to discover
it; should any clue develop itself by means of which this man's crime
may be traced home to him, I shall be on the spot to follow it up. In
any case, to get near the man seems the first thing to do; away from
him we can do little or nothing."
"I think your idea a most admirable one," said Murray. "As you say,
the first thing to do is to get near the man."
"Will it be essential that you should take your daughter into your
confidence?" asked Gerald. "Will it be requisite that you should
explain to her your reasons for taking up your residence in Van
Duren's house?"
"I have no secrets from Miriam," answered Byrne. "But you need be
under no apprehensions on that score. Miriam can keep a secret as well
as I can; she is no commonplace, talkative school-girl. Besides
which, her presence and co-operation are essential to the scheme I
have in view. Without her, it would be impossible for me to carry it
out. What this scheme is in all its details, you will excuse me from
explaining to you now. I have told you what the first step is to be.
With your permission, and if you can place full confidence in me, we
will leave the remaining steps to develop themselves in the natural
course of events."
"You have our fullest confidence, Mr. Byrne," said Murray. "We leave
you to conduct the case entirely in the way that may seem best to
you."
Gerald, unperceived by Mr. Murray, passed a slip of paper into Byrne's
hand, on which was pencilled these words--
"Say nothing to Mr. M. about money matters. I will call to-morrow and
arrange with you."
Murray and Gerald walked home together arm-in-arm. The former was in
unusually high spirits.
"Did I not tell you, Gerald, that a way would be found out of the
difficulty before long?"
"We are not out of the wood yet, sir," said Gerald, drily.
"Certainly not; but we have got a glimpse of daylight. But I cannot
hope that you will see with my eyes; I cannot hope that the faith that
burns within me will more than faintly warm you."
Gerald walked with Murray as far as the corner of Ormond Square, and
then stopped the first empty cab that passed him, and hurried back to
Harley Street.
Murray did not go straight home, but wandered back to a favourite
second-hand book-stall, where he was well known. His purchases, it is
true, were never of a very extensive character, being always confined
to the threepenny, or, at the most, to the sixpenny box. But he was a
frequent visitor at the stall, and he always made a point of turning
over the entire contents of the box before making up his mind which
particular treasure he would ultimately choose for his own. On the
present occasion, after half an hour's diligent search, he decided on
the extravagance of a double purchase. He bought "Althazar," an
Arabian romance, for which he paid sixpence; and a "Treatise on
Conic Sections," for which he paid threepence. This done, he walked
quietly home, hugging his treasures under his arm, and promising
himself a good long read that very evening, in either one volume or
the other--it did not matter in the least which.
Mr. Murray's small stock of books, all selected from the same
receptacle as his present purchases, was indeed a somewhat
multifarious one. Nothing modern, nothing frivolous, was to be found
there. They were all books that had seen service in their time, and
the authors of which were not only dead, but forgotten. "Musings in a
Churchyard," and "Travels in Africa in 1755," jostled each other on
the same shelf. "A Treatise on the Steam Engine" had heaped a-top of
it, as though there were some danger of an explosion, "An Essay on the
Measurements and Construction of the Great Pyramid," and a thin volume
of elegiac verse "by Mary M.," whoever she may have been.
It was characteristic of Mr. Murray that he seemed to like any one of
these books as well as another. From each and all of them he seemed to
derive either amusement or information, or perhaps both. And then he
was one of those rare readers who will read the same book contentedly
five or six times over. If he happened to be wakeful in the night, he
would light his candle and pick up the treatise on Steam Engines, if
that happened to come first to his hand, and read himself quietly to
sleep again over matter that he had probably, perused attentively only
some three or four days before.
He had not been at home more than five minutes to-day, when he heard a
clatter of little feet on the stairs, and then came a knocking at his
door, followed by a request that "Uncle Greaves" would go down into
the garden and turn Alice's skipping-rope. So down he went, and turned
the skipping-rope dutifully for half an hour. Then came a whisper from
Frank, who was on thorns to know how the big kite was getting on, that
Uncle Greaves had promised to make for him. It was getting on
famously, he was told. "And will it really be as big as me?" asked
Frank, eagerly. "Bigger--ever so much bigger," was the blissful
answer. Then, with a troubled face, up came little Will. His waggon
and horses had somehow come to grief; would Uncle Greaves try to mend
them? Uncle Greaves would try to mend them, and would not only do
that, but would give Dobbin a new coat of paint, and make an
altogether superior animal of him.
When the afternoon grew dusk and chilly, and tea-time was at hand, the
children would not let their darling uncle go till they had kissed him
all round; and little blue-eyed Kitty, out of sheer love, slipped her
old sawdust doll into his tail-pocket, and so made him a present of
her dearest worldly possession.
"Take that card out of the window," said Mr. Van Duren, a few
afternoons later, to his clerk, Pringle.
"Rooms let at last?" asked Pringle.
"Yes, at last."
"To ancient deaf old party and young lady, I suppose," muttered
Pringle to himself, as he removed the card from the window. "Make this
dead-alive hole a bit more lively, maybe. It needs it bad enough."
A strange thing happened to Max Van Duren that night. It was nearly
midnight when he let himself in with his latch-key. His housekeeper
had gone to bed long ago, and all was dark and silent. He lighted his
bed-candle, and tramped slowly upstairs to his own room. He had put
his candle on the dressing-table, and was proceeding to divest himself
of his cravat, when, happening to glance into the large oval glass in
front of which he was standing, he was startled to see there the
reflection of another face beside his own. It was peering over his
shoulder, and its eyes met his in the glass. Black and full of menace,
or it might be of warning, were those eyes; and but for them, the
face, with its thin line of black moustache, would have looked like
that of a corpse, so death-like was its pallor.
Involuntarily Van Duren wheeled quickly round; but he was alone in the
room. Involuntarily his eyes travelled back to the glass; but there
was only the reflection of his own white face to be seen there now. He
staggered back, and sat down in the nearest chair. But he was a man of
very powerful nerve, and it did not take him long to recover himself.
Presently he rose and crossed the room to a little cupboard. From this
he drew a bottle of some cordial, out of which he poured a few drops
into some water, and then drank the mixture.
There was a writing-table near the fire--when he was restless of a
night, and could not sleep, he would often get up and work for an hour
or two. At this table he now sat down, and drawing from a secret
drawer a book of private memoranda, he proceeded to make the following
entry in it, having first written down the day, month, and year of the
occurrence:--
"At five minutes before twelve to-night I saw once again, and for the
fourth time in my life, the Face in the Glass. It is some years since
I saw it last, and I had begun to flatter myself that I should never
see it again. Never have I seen it except as an omen of ill to follow.
The first time it appeared to me was a few hours before I set foot on
board the cursed 'Albatross.' The second time was the night before
Katrinka tried to poison me, and all but succeeded. The third time was
just before I heard the news of the great smash at Amsterdam, by which
I lost half my fortune. Always as a presage of quick-following
misfortune has that face appeared to me. And always his face! I shall
dream of this for a month to come, and wake up every night shivering
with horror. But what is the misfortune that is about to overtake me
now? Vain question! Never did the horizon look fairer to me than it
does at the present moment. Not the faintest cloud or sign of tempest
anywhere visible. And yet, that something is about to happen--that
some great crisis of my life is near at hand--I feel but too well
assured. If only I knew where to look--if only I knew what to expect!
But I am like a man who is condemned to fight a phantom in the dark.
"To-day I let my empty rooms to a deaf old gentleman and his daughter.
What a bewitching creature the daughter is! Were I only twenty years
younger, I know not into what folly I might be led by the sorcery of a
face like hers."
END OF VOL. I.
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BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.