MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Sir Frank Tarleton had not given me all his reasons for not taking me
with him to Paris. One of them, as he told me afterwards, was that I
had made an enemy of Sarah Neobard, or, to put it the other way, I had
made her regard me as an enemy. My chief believed that my presence
would prevent him from obtaining any information from her or her
mother. They would think he had come on a hostile errand, and they
would obstinately hold their tongues, for fear lest anything they said
might be used by me against her.
Tarleton’s intention was to appear in the character of a friend of
Sarah’s, who did not share my suspicions and only wanted to be able to
clear her from them. He was quite frank with me about the way in which
he had spoken of me in my absence, and about everything else in which I
was interested.
He put up at his favourite hotel, the Saint Lazare, on his arrival, one
that suited him because it was near the centre of everything without
being overrun by English and Americans. He liked to be among French
people when he was in France. After the “little breakfast,” that first
delicious taste of French coffee and French bread which atones for the
stuffiness of the French railway carriage, he made his way round to
the Rue Jerusalem, where he was received with high distinction by the
head of the French police to whom his name and official standing were
well known.
The Chief presented to him Brigadier Samson, the detective who had the
two fugitives under supervision, and he undertook, at the doctor’s
request, that a formidable-looking gendarme in the showy uniform of the
French police should be stationed opposite the Hotel Saint Catherine,
in full sight from the windows, till further notice.
Another small piece of business was transacted. Tarleton laid before
the Chief the photograph he had obtained from Inspector Charles,
and invited him to find out if it corresponded with anything in his
register of finger-prints.
The hour now being reached at which the ladies might be expected to
show themselves, the visitor next went on to their hotel in the Rue
Tivoli. In the hall he found the English detective who had followed
them from London, and who had taken a room on the same floor, in the
unsuspicious character of a tourist who found himself in Paris for the
first time and was unwilling to venture far from his hotel.
“The birds are in their cage, Sir Frank,” he reported as soon as he
recognized the specialist. “I’ve been hanging about here since the
early morning and I’ve arranged with the management that they shan’t be
allowed to go out by any other way.”
Tarleton, in reply, explained why he had asked for a gendarme to be
posted across the way. “I don’t want them to know that you’re a police
officer, of course; but I may want them to know that they are being
watched by the police.”
He had hardly finished speaking when the representative of French law
appeared on the scene, a truly imposing figure with a huge moustache,
who began pacing the pavement opposite like a man who was not to be
trifled with.
The consultant asked if Mrs. Weathered had taken a private sitting-room
and finding that she had, sent up his card, on which he had scribbled
the words “_Official Confidential_.” When he was handing it into the
office, however, the detective followed him to make a correction.
“She’s not staying here under her own name. She has taken the name of
Neobard.”
He had to wait some minutes for a response. When at length he was taken
upstairs and shown into the room he found, as he had expected, Miss
Neobard alone.
“My mother asks you to excuse her, Sir Frank. She is not yet well
enough to see anyone on business. May I ask the meaning of those words
on your card?”
Sarah spoke with the utmost coolness. If she was frightened she had
evidently resolved to hide her fright under a mask of defiance.
Tarleton’s manner was one of entire friendliness.
“They mean that although I have come to see Mrs. Weathered as a
Government official, on official business, our interview will be
strictly confidential. I shall not make use of any information she may
give me, without her consent.”
The daughter looked at him doubtfully.
“Does that apply to me as well?”
Sir Frank purposely hesitated before answering.
“There is no reason why I shouldn’t have a confidential talk with you
as well, if you desire it. But at present I have only asked to see Mrs.
Weathered.”
The name seemed to irritate the girl.
“My mother has dropped the name of Weathered,” she said sharply. “In
future she desires to be known as Mrs. Neobard.”
Tarleton was struck by her tone. It conveyed to him that the change of
name had not been made with a view to concealment, but was due to some
deeper cause.
Up to now Miss Neobard had made no reference to the whereabouts of
the travellers having been so soon discovered. She now threw out the
question scornfully.
“I suppose the police are on our track, as we came here without giving
anyone our address. Is that confidential?”
“Certainly not.” The doctor was getting a little irritated by this
time. “Your leaving London while the mystery of Dr. Weathered’s death
was still unsolved was enough to provoke the suspicion of the police.
They were bound to keep you in sight.”
Sarah couldn’t very well contradict this. She lifted her head more
defiantly than ever.
“My mother can’t see you,” she repeated. “Anything you want to say to
her can be said to me.”
Sir Frank admired her courage. He tried to soften her.
“My dear Miss Neobard, I wish you would let me speak to you as a
friend. You can’t think I have come here as an enemy. If I had I should
have brought Dr. Cassilis with me. Or rather I should have sent him
instead of coming myself.”
This shot told as he had expected. It was evident that Sarah cherished
a strong resentment against me. It was a new light to her that my chief
might take a different view of the case. For the first time she looked
at him as if she thought it possible that he might be sincere.
“Dr. Cassilis has practically accused me of murder,” she said.
“Dr. Cassilis is a young man without much experience. He has let
himself become interested in the young lady you seemed to suspect. He
spoke in her defence; I don’t believe that he really thinks you had
anything to do with Dr. Weathered’s death. He went too far, of course,
and I have told him so. In fact, I have now taken him off the case.”
The defiance began to die out of Miss Neobard’s eyes. They were fine
eyes and she knew how to use them with effect.
“Does that mean that I am not under suspicion any longer?” she inquired
in a more gracious voice.
“You never have been under suspicion as far as I am concerned,” the
doctor answered a little evasively. “I feel sure you are a truthful
woman, and whatever you choose to tell me in confidence I shall
believe.”
Sarah was fairly conquered. Her voice broke down as she replied.
“I am a wicked girl, Sir Frank. I did have thoughts at one time that he
ought to die. But I never went farther than that. I swear to you on my
oath that I have no more idea how he was murdered, or who murdered him,
than you have--I mean, I have no idea at all.”
The consultant thanked her with a grave bow. “The evidence I have
obtained so far points to suicide,” he said quietly. “But I only tell
you that in confidence, to relieve your mind. Dr. Weathered carried
poison about with him.”
The step-daughter looked even more relieved than Tarleton had expected,
but a good deal surprised as well.
“I knew that he took opium sometimes,” she whispered back, “but I never
guessed that he meant to take his own life. I was afraid....” She
stopped short and shuddered.
The specialist took no notice of the suppressed hint.
“You will see now, I hope, that I haven’t come here to try and get
your mother to tell me anything about you. As a matter of fact, my
business with her has nothing to do with the murder, or whatever it
was, except indirectly. I have come in the interest of some of Dr.
Weathered’s patients and I think Mrs. Neobard may be able to help me to
obtain certain information on their behalf. I am sure you won’t wish
any evil he has done to go on after his death.”
This way of putting it appealed to what was best in Sarah Neobard.
She looked puzzled but not disposed to resist. She made another
half-hearted attempt to extract from the visitor what it was that he
had to ask her mother, but when she found him firm in insisting that he
must see Mrs. Neobard herself, she gave way, and went to fetch her.
A quarter of an hour, half an hour, passed. There must have been a
severe struggle going on in the next room, although no sounds reached
the consultant through the wall. He had laid his hand on the bell to
summon a waiter and send a peremptory message when the door at last
opened and the widow came in.
Tarleton felt convinced from the first moment that she had guessed his
business with her. Her eyes were red and her naturally pale cheeks
showed a feverish flush. She was hardly able to walk and her daughter
supported her tenderly till she was in a chair. Sarah herself was
clearly ignorant of the cause of her mother’s emotion. She glanced
wonderingly from her to Sir Frank and back again, and seemed to
be holding herself in readiness to defend her parent or to back up
Tarleton’s demand, according to her judgment of what was the right
course.
The examiner came to the point quickly.
“Miss Neobard has explained to you that this is a confidential
interview, I hope. Whatever you say to me will be a secret between
ourselves, unless you authorize me to make use of it. It is for you to
decide whether your daughter is to remain in the room, of course.”
The mother stretched out a hand and took hold of one of her
protector’s, who answered for her. “I have promised my mother to
remain.”
“Very good. I had better begin by reading you this advertisement. It
appeared in the paper yesterday.”
He read out the invitation from Messrs. James, Halliday and James to
the patients of the late Dr. Weathered to apply for the return of their
correspondence and continued:
“The solicitor who put in this advertisement refused to give the name
of the client who is instructing him. Will you tell me if it is you?”
Mrs. Neobard shook her head faintly without speaking.
“Can you tell me if your late husband left a will, and who is his
executor?”
“I can answer that question,” Sarah put in. “My mother is sole executor
and he has left everything to her. She wanted to renounce execution;
but the lawyer told her that it would be no use, as the law would make
her administrator. She is not going to take a farthing of his money, if
there is any.”
“Quite so; then Mrs. Neobard is the only person who is lawfully
entitled to deal with any papers Dr. Weathered left behind him. Can you
explain to me how these letters came to be in the possession of this
solicitor, or the person for whom he is acting?”
The flush had faded from the widow’s cheeks, leaving her very pale.
“I can’t explain,” she said in a whisper.
“Does it matter?” her daughter asked. “As long as these people get
their letters back again, what does it matter who they got them from?”
“They won’t get them; that is what matters,” the physician said
gravely. “There is a criminal behind this advertisement. I must explain
to you and to Mrs. Neobard, if she doesn’t know already, what these
letters were about.”
Very deliberately and keeping his eyes fixed on the agitated woman
all the time, Tarleton outlined the story of his discoveries. He was
careful not to mention names. He explained why the doctor’s case-book
had been taken from the safe, and why that precaution had proved
useless. The dead man’s real hold over his victims had been through the
letters he had persuaded them to write to him; those letters had been
signed with a cipher, and the object of the advertisement was to make
the writers disclose their identity so that they might be blackmailed
by the holder of their secret confessions.
The widow’s distress became pitiable as the explanation proceeded.
There could be no doubt that she was no party to the plot and hardly a
doubt that its revelation had come to her as a complete shock. As for
Sarah Neobard, her fine eyes fairly blazed with indignation.
“I never knew that such things were possible,” she exclaimed. “I don’t
believe--I can’t believe--that my step-father ever meant to use the
letters in such a way.”
At this point the consultant saw Mrs. Neobard open her eyes and look
at him wistfully, as if to ask him to take no notice of her daughter’s
tenderness for the scoundrel who had passed to his account.
“Surely you can’t think,” the girl pursued, “that my mother knew
anything about this? Mother!”--she turned to the shrinking woman--“do
you hear? You must do everything you can to help Sir Frank Tarleton to
stop this iniquity.”
Now Sir Frank knew perfectly well that it could be stopped pretty
easily by the simple step of Mrs. Neobard’s solicitors taking
proceedings in her name for the recovery of the letters. The legal
property in them, of course was vested in the writers, but until they
claimed them the executrix was entitled to their possession; and if the
Chancery Lane sharper refused to give them up or to disclose their
whereabouts he was pretty sure to be struck off the Rolls and stood
a good chance of being indicted for conspiracy. All this the adviser
of the Home Office had known from the first, but he took care to keep
the knowledge up his sleeve. For him the question of the letters was
a secondary one and he was only using it as a means of opening the
widow’s lips.
Miss Neobard suddenly stopped pleading with her mother to say to the
specialist, “I think I can guess who has those letters--Madame Bonnell!”
This was another thing about which Tarleton had entertained no doubt
since seeing the advertisement. But he received the suggestion with
every sign of disbelief.
“Madame Bonnell is the last person to whom I should think Dr. Weathered
would have trusted them,” he answered.
“She may have stolen them,” the girl persisted. “Perhaps he kept them
at the Club and she has found them since his death.”
“He kept nothing whatever at the Club except the disguise he wore at
the Club dances. I have had the premises searched carefully by the
police, and they have questioned the staff. The letters are not there
now, and there is no receptacle in which they could have been stored.”
Mrs. Neobard had been listening anxiously to this discussion. Now she
spoke.
“Who else do you think can have them?”
“That is what I want you to tell me. And I think you can.”
The widow shivered again. Her daughter looked at her with a dawning
comprehension that something was wrong.
“Mother, you must tell if you know.”
“Your husband kept these letters in a concealed cupboard of his
dressing-room,” Tarleton told her. “Your house has been searched for
a secret hiding-place and the cupboard has been found.” It was a bold
shot, but the widow’s face showed that it had hit the mark. “That
cupboard is empty now. The law presumes that you opened it, as you were
entitled and bound to do, after his death, and that you took possession
of its contents as executrix. I am here to ask you in the name of the
law what you have done with them.”
He watched Dr. Weathered’s relict very closely while he was speaking.
She seemed to be wrenched by conflicting fears. At one moment her lips
parted as if to speak, at the next they closed again more tightly than
before.
“Tell him, mother!” pleaded the girl.
The mother turned to her despairingly.
“I can’t! I daren’t! Don’t ask me to,” she cried hopelessly.
The representative of the law looked at his watch.
“If that is your last answer you must be prepared to take the
consequences, Mrs. Weathered.” He pointed dramatically to a window of
the room. “Look out of that window, Miss Neobard, and tell your mother
what you see.”
Sarah rushed to the window and gave a sharp cry. “Mother, there is
a gendarme watching the hotel!” She looked reproachfully at the
physician. “And you told me you came here as a friend!”
“I am trying to act as one. Your mother has only to tell me the truth
and I will open the window and send that man away.”
“Do you hear, mother? You won’t let me be arrested?”
Mrs. Weathered--Tarleton had meant to remind her that she was passing
under a name not legally hers--had merely shivered again when she heard
who was outside. Now she sprang out of her chair, a different woman.
“You! Arrest you! What do you mean, Sarah? What have you to do with it?
The police have come for me.”
Sarah was not less amazed and horrified than her mother.
“Nonsense; they can’t touch you,” she exclaimed. “You weren’t at the
dance that night!”
“And you were? My girl, my poor girl, what have you been doing?”
“Sir Frank Tarleton knows. I have told him everything. I think he means
to be friendly, but he can’t save me unless you speak out. She can
speak safely, can’t she?” the daughter asked imploringly. “My mother
isn’t in any danger?”
It was a question difficult to answer either way. Tarleton felt the
eyes of both women searching his face, each with the same anxiety,
though each on the other’s behalf.
“It is only right that I should let you know that Mrs. Weathered may be
in danger. The letters which ought to be in her possession may contain
the clue to your step-father’s murder.”
And now the scene became painful indeed to witness, as the mother and
daughter stood facing each other with the questions in their eyes that
they were too terrified to put. Both of them at some time had loved
the murdered man; both of them, perhaps, had come to hate him. And now
each had been shaken by a sudden revelation of the other’s hidden side.
The mother had just caught an appalling glimpse into her daughter’s
unknown relations with her step-father; the daughter had been staggered
by the suggestion that her mother might have been his mortal enemy. And
all the time, beneath these mutual dreads and suspicions it might be,
these unconscious jealousies, there prevailed, stronger than any other
feeling, that blind, unselfish love between mother and child which made
both of them eager to thrust themselves into danger in the other’s
place.
The parts had been reversed. It was Sarah who was now anxious to close
her mother’s mouth and Mrs. Weathered who showed herself determined to
speak. The skilful manipulator of human nature who had wrought up this
dramatic situation knew that he had only to wait for the _dénouement_
at which he had aimed.
He had not to wait long.
“If you have trusted Sir Frank Tarleton I can do the same,” the elder
woman said at last. “I have more to tell him than he knows. He thinks
that I only found those letters in the cupboard after my husband’s
death. I have been reading every one of them for more than a year.”
If the consultant had not quite expected to hear this he had been
expecting something more than he thought it wise to indicate just
then. He let no sign of his thoughts appear outwardly. The two women,
exhausted by the tempest of emotion they had passed through, sat down
side by side; but they kept their eyes averted from one another,
and only raised them from time to time to watch the effect of Mrs.
Weathered’s narrative on him.
“You mustn’t think that I am an inquisitive woman, Sir Frank. I didn’t
discover my husband’s secrets by prying. I never knew the existence of
the cupboard or the letters till one of the women who had been led into
writing to him came to me.”
This was news to the doctor. He pricked up his ears for the name.
“She was a Miss Sebright--Miss Julia Sebright.”
“Ah! She is dead.” Tarleton thought it sound policy to show that he
was able to check the statements made to him.
“Yes. She died soon afterwards, of a broken heart, I think. She came to
me in despair and appealed to me as Dr. Weathered’s wife to protect her
from him.”
Sir Frank got up, walked to the window, opened it and waved his hand.
The gendarme outside saluted respectfully and marched away.