POISON SHADOWS
BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
AUTHOR OF “THE TATTOO MYSTERY”
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
[COPYRIGHT]
Published in England under the title
“THE CHAMELEON”
Copyright, 1927, by
WILLIAM Le QUEUX
CONTENTS
I. A SOUL FOR SALE
II. THE HOUSE AT HAMPTON COURT
III. WHAT POLICE CONSTABLE ASKEW SAW
IV. THE SIGN OF EVIL
V. SHADOWS
VI. MISTRESS AND MAN
VII. THE MAN WITH RED HAIR
VIII. MR. ASHE IS INQUISITIVE
IX. THE LURE OF THE SNOW
X. SKIERS AND “FROTH-BLOWERS”
XI. A VISITOR AT THE GUEST HOUSE
XII. WITHOUT FEAR
XIII. TRUTH OR FANTASY?
XIV. UNCLEAN HANDS
XV. THE SECRET CAVALIER
XVI. MAN AND WOMAN
XVII. EXPLANATION AND APOLOGY
XVIII. THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
XIX. THE DEVIL’S PARADE
XX. THE SHADOW
XXI. THE GREEN BAIZE APRON
XXII. UNDER THE HAMMER
XXIII. OUR SINISTER WORLD
XXIV. UNKNOWN!
XXV. THE DOWNWARD STEP
XXVI. BEFORE THE DAWN
XXVII. BY WIRELESS
XXVIII. A DEADLOCK
XXIX. FURTHER MYSTERY
XXX. THE PLOT
XXXI. REJUVENATION
XXXII. THE MONKEY-GOD
XXXIII. CONCLUSION
ENDNOTE
POISON SHADOWS
CHAPTER I.
A SOUL FOR SALE
“You must be firm, Gordon. It doesn’t matter in the least whether
Sibell loves him or hates him. She must marry him, otherwise we shall
both find ourselves in the cart. So there must be no argument. Don’t
you agree?” asked the woman.
“Of course I agree, my dear Etta. But my ward is stubborn and
absolutely refuses to see him again,” replied the bald-headed,
deformed man who stood at Lady Wyndcliffe’s side at the window of her
private sitting-room overlooking the golden sands and summer sea at
the Grand Hotel on the Digue at Knocke, on the Belgian coast.
“It’s all rot! She must be made to see reason!” replied the slim,
dark-haired, good-looking woman in a flimsy blue-striped frock, which
mutely spoke of the Parisian _couturière_. “Young Otway is all very
well, but he hasn’t a penny, while Gretton inherited over half a
million from his father, who made a satisfactory deal in wool during
the war and by it became Mayor of Bradford. Gussie’s a bit of an ass,
but all the better for us. We both want money very badly. And I’ve so
far worked the cards so that he is madly in love with her. Only we
must at all hazards get rid of Otway. A penniless young doctor is no
good for Sibell.”
“I agree with every word you say,” replied the queer old hunchback,
Gordon Routh, in his high-pitched, squeaky voice. “You and I have had
many deals which have been mutually satisfactory, and now is it not
strange that we should be bartering away the girl’s future?”
“Oh, hang sentiment!” laughed the Countess. “We must have funds at any
cost. Gussie Gretton is rich, and if Sibell marries him we must
squeeze enough out of him to keep us in all we want of this world’s
goods.”
“The Bank of England wouldn’t be sufficient for you, my dear Etta,”
laughed the man. “You’d spend it all, and then try and get an
overdraft. You’re the most extravagant woman I know.”
“What about your own losses at Monte--eighty thousand pounds in one
year--eh?” remarked Lady Wyndcliffe. “I’ve been an infernal fool at
the tables also, I admit. I lost forty thousand francs at the Casino
last night, and have given an IOU to the accommodating old bean who
runs the show.”
“Like myself, you broadcast the handy little slips, scatter them all
over Europe, and they are accepted because of your high title, and the
ingenuity of your press-agent,” remarked the bald-headed, bead-eyed
little man whose humorous smile lit up his countenance always. Then he
looked at her admiringly, and added: “I wonder, my dear Etta, what the
world really thinks of you?”
“I don’t care a Belgian franc what the devil it thinks,” she laughed.
“The public know that the Countess of Wyndcliffe moves in the best
society and is seen everywhere--at Court, at Epsom, at Cowes, at
Deauville, at St. Moritz, and at Monte Carlo. Her photographs look out
upon the suburban buyers of the sixpenny illustrated weeklies, and she
has always one, or perhaps two débutantes under her wing. She is what
the good people of Hampstead, Watford, Richmond, or Felixstowe term
‘in Society.’”
“And thank heaven I’m out of it now,” the man laughed.
His companion drew a long sigh, and her well-arched brows contracted.
“I only wish I were. It’s a wearing life this, with lots of friends,
lots of limelight, and no money. Wyndcliffe is getting quite
impossible nowadays. Billesdon is let to a retired straw-hat maker
from Luton, and I can hardly make enough, or save enough, to live.”
Etta Wyndcliffe--or, to give her her full title from _Burke_, Countess
of Wyndcliffe of Billesdon Hall, Rutland; Cloyne Castle,
Aberdeenshire; 112A West Halkin Street; and Villa Mon Aise,
Cannes--was one of the many bright young Society women of to-day who
lead a reckless, hectic life with the fees they earn by introducing
daughters of rich commoners into the fringe of Society.
Watch your newspaper, and you will often see in the season that Lady
So-and-So gave a dance at Claridge’s for the daughter of Mrs.
Fitz-Allan Smith. It is Mrs. Fitz-Allan Smith who pays Lady So-and-So
heavily for the privilege of shaking hands and dancing with her guests
who go there to obtain a champagne supper gratis.
Etta Wyndcliffe was one of the great crowd of impecunious aristocrats,
with a wide circle of friends, some of whom nowadays open shops, while
others breed dogs, others keep beauty-parlors, and still others manage
to pay their way by taking the womenfolk of parvenus under their wing,
and sometimes presenting them at Court. Etta was young for her age,
slim, refined, with handsome features, dark, penetrating eyes, and a
fine complexion. Though thirty-three, she did not look more than
twenty-five, while she danced and played tennis or golf as actively as
any young girl. She was the second wife of old Wyndcliffe, who went
through Carey Street about a year after he married her, and she had
had to shift for herself ever since.
She lived in West Halkin Street, and managed somehow to scrape along
upon funds provided by the parents of girls whom she chaperoned. The
hectic, adventurous life she led in London during the season, and at
the Continental resorts out of it, had caused her to become greedy and
unscrupulous, for she drove hard bargains with mothers of marriageable
daughters, whom she hawked around in the hope of finding them
husbands. Her enemies--and she had many--said very hard things of
her--how, having grown tired of one particular friend, a hard-up
ne’er-do-well named Eustace Power, she had induced a wealthy American
girl whom she was chaperoning to marry him, and they had actually
split the commission.
As she stood at the hotel window that August morning, the Countess of
Wyndcliffe looked little more than a girl, with a face so innocent and
charming that it gave no index to her insatiable mania for gambling,
or of the fast and vicious circle in which she moved.
“You really can’t be so horribly broke,” the man said. “You got three
thousand when the Clements girl was married in June.”
“And I worked terribly hard for it, I assure you. I also had the
vinegar man’s girl on my hands, as well as Sibell.”
“You got nothing for Sibell, and she’s cost you a lot in lunches,
theatre-tickets, and dances, I know. It was very good of you, Etta, to
take her.”
“And now, just when we’ve played our cards discreetly, the infernal
little hussy--excuse me calling her that, even though I am her
aunt--refuses to see Gussie Gretton again.”
“He hasn’t the best of reputations, she says.”
“What man has until after he’s sown his wild oats?” she asked.
“Well, according to all accounts, Gretton has sown a pretty heavy
crop. He’s already narrowly escaped being cited in two divorce cases,”
said Sibell’s guardian.
“That makes the women run after him all the more,” declared the
irresponsible Countess. “Sibell ought to be proud that he, with all
his wealth, wants to marry her. She’s a darned little idiot. I tell
you, Gordon, I’m fed up to the teeth. Gretton is so infatuated that he
has promised me five thousand on the day he marries her, and I’m ready
to split it with you. Then you’ll split with me anything we get
afterwards,” she said, discussing the sale of the girl’s soul as she
would a business deal.
“I’ll try and do my best. But she’s over head and ears in love with
that young Otway.”
“Love! Bah! There’s really no such thing as true love nowadays. Smart
frocks, a pretty face, and proper environment, and girls think that
men fall in love. The idea of real love disappeared with the hansom
cab.”
“But, really, Etta, there is surely some affection left in the world!”
piped the deformed old gambler.
“Among the common folk, I suppose. Not among us. Marriage nowadays
merely means the uniting of money and poverty, or vice versa. The
modern girl does not begin to know what life is until she’s divorced.”
“And to you, my dear Etta, a neat little secret commission comes in
from both sides!”
The pretty Society adventuress grinned.
“Well, when one has to live on one’s wits--as I have, alas! because
Wyndcliffe is such a fool--one must not be too particular with whom
one mixes. Heaven knows! I have sometimes to lunch and dine with most
fearful crooks and howling dagoes. Only a fortnight ago in Paris I
found myself in debt forty thousand francs at ‘chemmy’ at the Bel Air.
It was three o’clock in the morning, and I only had fifty francs in
the world to pay my taxi to the hotel. Old Ducocq, the director, a
decent sort of paternal crook, took my IOU, but next day he came to
the hotel and demanded as the price of its return that I should
entertain at dinner at the Ritz a pair of American financiers whom I
knew to be clever crooks, and two innocent Englishmen, their
‘pigeons,’ whom they were inducing to put money into some rotten
scheme. In return for the bit of paper I signed, I had to carry out
their demand, and I read in the next day’s Paris _Daily Mail_ that I
had asked the pair of share-swindlers to dinner. No, my dear Gordon,
I’m not sailing in smooth waters, just now, I can assure you.”
“My dear Etta, you’re like me! We are merely gipsies in the world.
When our hats are on, our roofs are on. We live for to-day, and
to-morrow may take care of itself. The tables are my curse, just as
they are yours. You’ll admit that?”
“Certainly I do. I’ve nothing to hide from you, my dear old Gordon. Do
you remember that night in the Cercle Privé in Monte, when I was
broke to the world and you helped me out with three _billets de
mille_. I took to you from that moment, and I even tried to save you
from plunging as you did. But you wouldn’t hear me. I don’t blame you,
my dear Gordon. Why should I? I listen to nobody myself. That’s why we
are both so damnably hard up and are kindred spirits--eh?”
“Hard up! Why, at this moment I have only a couple of hundred francs
to my name,” said the hunchback, who had run through a fortune. “I
don’t see how I’m going to pay my hotel bill.”
“I’m in just the same box,” replied her smart little ladyship. “We
must raise it from somewhere even if I have to get a little loan from
Gussie.”
“A bit on account of commission, eh?” laughed the man.
“If you go to the tables you can always ask a friend for a loan,
making a run of bad luck the legitimate excuse. It doesn’t then look
as though you really are hard up--only temporarily embarrassed,” said
the Countess, pulling a wry face. “But,” she added, “I’m chronically
affected that way.”
Suddenly the door opened and a bright-faced, fair, shingled-haired
girl in a flimsy summer frock burst gaily into the room, greeting her
guardian, and then turning to her aunt, she said:
“You’re up early, auntie! Why, it must have been nearly three when we
left Roberts’. I went for a walk by the sea after that. It was simply
gorgeous.”
“With Gussie?”
“No. With Leonard Capel. We’re entering for the tango competition at
the Memling to-morrow night.”
The Countess and the hunchback exchanged glances.
“I don’t think, Sibell, you should go for nocturnal rambles with a
stranger,” said the Countess reprovingly.
“Why not, auntie? Several other girls went for walks with their
dancing-partners,” remarked Sibell. “Besides, it isn’t any worse than
dancing in a night-club with some dago you’ve never set eyes upon
before and allowing him to pay for your supper,” she added meaningly.
Etta knew at what the girl hinted. They had both danced with a rich
young Argentine, whose name they did not know, at the Florida Club in
London one night a month before, and he had paid sixteen pounds for
supper for the three.
But Lady Wyndcliffe led a hectic life paid for by those she took
beneath her aristocratic wing, and, after all, in the course of her
butterfly career she had done much more risky things than that.
Sibell Dare was extremely pretty, with a sweet, intelligent
countenance, big, wondering eyes of childlike blue, a small mouth with
full, red lips that required not the application of lip-stick, and a
slim, supple figure the grace of which had been improved by constant
dancing. After Cheltenham College, she had been two years in Paris,
and now she was as smart and attractive a girl as could be found in
all London. Her aunt, the Countess, had taken her from Routh’s home at
Cookham and introduced her into Society, where she had many admirers,
of whom Augustus Gretton was the most ardent.
She, however, cared for none of them, being devoted to Brinsley Otway,
a struggling young doctor practising out at Golder’s Green. They had
met at the house of a married school-friend up at Hampstead two years
before, and had been lovers ever since.
“Leonard Capel wants me to go to Ostend to spend the day. I’m going,”
said the girl, feeling somehow that she had interrupted a conversation
between her deformed guardian and the Countess.
“My dear child! Why, you hardly know the man!” Etta chimed in quickly.
“If you want to go to Ostend, why not accept Gussie’s invitation to
motor you there? I heard him ask you yesterday.”
“Well, just because Gussie doesn’t interest me at all. He’s such a
he-haw, superior person that I have no patience with him. I tell you
frankly he bores me stiff, for he regards himself as very superior,
and, after all, his father only started life as a cheap tailor. My
father was, at least, a man of independent means.”
“I’m glad you are proud of your birth, child,” said the old man in his
curious voice. “But nowadays you must remember that men are judged
only by their pockets, not by their ancestry. Personally, I think
Gussie a very excellent and worthy fellow.”
“When I have a husband--if that time ever comes--I shall want him all
to myself, uncle, and not share him with half a dozen women, as
Gussie’s wife must,” replied the high-spirited girl frankly.
“A man, when he marries, gives up all his feminine entanglements,”
declared Etta. “Look at old Lord Ushaw, one of the worst _roués_ in
all Mayfair. He married little Ena Urquhart, to whom I introduced him,
and now there’s no happier pair in all England.”
“An exception does not make the rule,” laughed the girl. “But I want
you both to be reassured upon one point--that I shall never marry
Gussie Gretton--even if there isn’t another man in the world.”
The Countess pursed her thin carmine lips at the girl’s open defiance,
while her guardian turned away to conceal his annoyance.
“Well, I think you’re a little idiot!” declared Etta, who always spoke
her mind to the girls she chaperoned. “You may never have the chance
to marry such a charming and wealthy man. Brinsley Otway is not to be
compared with him; besides, he has only the few guineas he earns by
doctoring. It wouldn’t buy you your shoes.”
The girl paused for a few moments, and, noticing her guardian’s head
turned away towards the sunlit sea, exclaimed:
“Well, auntie, we shall never agree upon the point, so why discuss it
further? I’ll be back to dinner. We’re lunching at the Continental in
Ostend, and going to the Casino afterwards. Bye-bye, uncle! Cheerio!”
And the girl went out, closing the door after her.
“That seems farewell to all our hopes, Etta, doesn’t it?” remarked the
old hunchback despairingly.
“I don’t know,” replied the well-dressed woman in a hard, determined
voice. “We must assume different tactics. I, for one, don’t intend to
be beaten, and I’m sure Gussie doesn’t.”