WHAT FLOCKART FORESAW
The following afternoon was glaring and breathless. Gabrielle had taken
Stokes, with May Spencer (a girl friend visiting her mother), and driven
the "sixteen" over to Connachan with a message from her mother--an
invitation to Lady Murie and her party to luncheon and tennis on the
following day. It was three o'clock, the hour when silence is upon a
summer house-party in the country. Beneath the blazing sun Glencardine
lay amid its rose-gardens, its cut beech-hedges, and its bowers of
greenery. The palpitating heat was terrible--the hottest day that
summer.
At the end of the long, handsome drawing-room, with its pale blue carpet
and silk-covered furniture, Lady Heyburn was lolling lazily in her chair
near the wide, bright steel grate, with her inseparable friend, James
Flockart, standing before her.
The striped blinds outside the three long, open windows subdued the
sun-glare, yet the very odour of the cut flowers in the room seemed
oppressive, while without could be heard the busy hum of insect life.
The Baronet's handsome wife looked cool and comfortable in her gown of
white embroidered muslin, her head thrown back upon the silken cushion,
and her eyes raised to those of the man, who was idly smoking a
cigarette, at her side.
"The thing grows more and more inexplicable," he was saying to her in a
low, strained voice. "All the inquiries I've caused to be made in London
and in Paris have led to a negative result."
"We shall only know the truth when we get a peep of those papers in
Henry's safe, my dear friend," was the woman's reply.
"And that's a pretty difficult job. You don't know where the old fellow
keeps the key?"
"I only wish I did. Gabrielle knows, no doubt."
"Then you ought to compel her to divulge," he urged. "Once we get hold
of that key for half-an-hour, we could learn a lot."
"A lot that would be useful to you, eh?" remarked the woman, with a
meaning smile.
"And to you also," he said. "Couldn't we somehow watch and see where he
hides the safe-key? He never has it upon him, you say."
"It isn't on his bunch."
"Then he must have a hiding-place for it, or it may be on his
watch-chain," remarked the man decisively. "Get rid of all the guests as
quickly as you can, Winnie. While they're about there's always a danger
of eavesdroppers and of watchers."
"I've already announced that I'm going up to Inverness next week, so
within the next day or two our friends will all leave."
"Good! Then the ground will be cleared for action," he remarked, blowing
a cloud of smoke from his lips. "What's your decision regarding the
girl?"
"The same as yours."
"But she hates me, you know," laughed the man in gray flannel.
"Yes; but she fears you at the same time, and with her you can do more
by fear than by love."
"True. But she's got a spirit of her own, recollect."
"That must be broken."
"And what about Walter?"
"Oh, as soon as he finds out the truth he'll drop her, never fear. He's
already rather fond of that tall, dark girl of Dundas's. You saw her at
the ball. You recollect her?"
Flockart grunted. He was assisting this woman at his side to play a
desperate game. This was not, however, the first occasion on which they
had acted in conjunction in matters that were not altogether honourable.
There had never been any question of affection between them. The pair
regarded each other from a purely business standpoint. People might
gossip as much as ever they liked; but the two always congratulated
themselves that they had never committed the supreme folly of falling in
love with each other. The woman had married Sir Henry merely in order to
obtain money and position; and this man Flockart, who for years had been
her most intimate associate, had ever remained behind her, to advise and
to help her.
Perhaps had the Baronet not been afflicted he would have disapproved of
this constant companionship, for he would, no doubt, have overheard in
society certain tittle-tattle which, though utterly unfounded, would not
have been exactly pleasant. But as he was blind and never went into
society, he remained in blissful ignorance, wrapped up in his mysterious
"business" and his hobbies.
Gabrielle, on her return from school, had at first accepted Flockart as
her friend. It was he who took her for walks, who taught her to cast a
fly, to shoot rooks, and to play the national winter game of
Scotland--curling. He had in the first few months of her return home
done everything in his power to attract the young girl's friendship,
while at the same time her ladyship showed herself extraordinarily well
disposed towards her.
Within a year, however, by reason of various remarks made by people in
her presence, and on account of the cold disdain with which Lady Heyburn
treated her afflicted father, vague suspicions were aroused within her,
suspicions which gradually grew to hatred, until she clung to her
father, and, as his eyes and ears, took up a position of open defiance
towards her mother and her adventurous friend.
The situation each day grew more and more strained. Lady Heyburn was,
even though of humble origin, a woman of unusual intelligence. In
various quarters she had been snubbed and ridiculed, but she gradually
managed in every case to get the better of her enemies. Many a man and
many a woman had had bitter cause to repent their enmity towards her.
They marvelled how their secrets became known to her.
They did not know the power behind her--the sinister power of that
ingenious and unscrupulous man, James Flockart--the man who made it his
business to know other people's secrets. Though for years he had been
seized with a desire to get at the bottom of Sir Henry's private
affairs, he had never succeeded. The old Baronet was essentially a
recluse; he kept himself so much to himself, and was so careful that no
eyes save those of his daughter should see the mysterious documents
which came to him so regularly by registered post, that all Flockart's
efforts and those of Lady Heyburn had been futile.
"I had another good look at the safe this morning," the man went on
presently. "It is one of the best makes, and would resist anything,
except, of course, the electric current."
"To force it would be to put Henry on his guard," Lady Heyburn remarked,
"If we are to know what secrets are there, and use our knowledge for our
own benefit, we must open it with a key and relock it."
"Well, Winnie, we must do something. We must both have money--that's
quite evident," he said. "That last five hundred you gave me will stave
off ruin for a week or so. But after that we must certainly be well
supplied, or else there may be revelations well--which will be as ugly
for yourself as for me."
"I know," she exclaimed. "I fully realise the necessity of getting
funds. The other affair, though we worked it so well, proved a miserable
fiasco."
"And very nearly gave us away into the bargain," he declared. "I tell
you frankly, Winnie, that if we can't pay a level five thousand in three
weeks' time the truth will be out, and you know what that will mean."
He was watching her handsome face as he spoke, and he noticed how pale
and drawn were her features as he referred to certain ugly truths that
might leak out.
"Yes," she gasped, "I know, James. We'd both find ourselves under
arrest. Such a _contretemps_ is really too terrible to think of."
"But, my dear girl, it must be faced," he said, "if we don't get the
money. Can't you work Sir Henry for a bit more, say another thousand.
Make an excuse that you have bills to pay in London--dressmakers,
jewellers, milliners--any good story will surely do. He gives you
anything you ask for."
She shook her head and sighed. "I fear I've imposed upon his good-nature
far too much already," she answered. "I know I'm extravagant; I'm sorry,
but can't help it. Born in me, I suppose. A few months ago he found out
that I'd been paying Mellish a hundred pounds each time to decorate Park
Street with flowers for my Wednesday evenings, and he created an awful
scene. He's getting horribly stingy of late."
"Yes; but the flowers were a bit expensive, weren't they?" he remarked.
"Not at all. Lady Fortrose, the wife of the soap-man, pays two hundred
and fifty pounds for flowers for her house every Thursday in the season;
and mine looked quite as good as hers. I think Mellish is much cheaper
than anybody else. And, just because I went to a cheap man, Henry was
horrible. He said all sorts of weird things about my reckless
extravagance and the suffering poor--as though I had anything to do with
them. The genuine poor are really people like you and me."
"I know," he said philosophically, lighting another cigarette. "But all
this is beside the point. We want money, and money we must have in order
to avoid exposure. You--"
"I was a fool to have had anything to do with that other little affair,"
she interrupted.
"It was not only myself who arranged it. Remember, it was you who
suggested it, because it seemed so easy, and because you had an old
score to pay off."
"The woman was sacrificed, and at the same time an enemy learnt our
secret."
"I couldn't help it," he protested. "You let your woman's vindictiveness
overstep your natural caution, my dear girl. If you'd taken my advice
there would have been no suspicion."
Lady Heyburn was silent. She sat regarding the toe of her patent-leather
shoe fixedly, in deep reflection. She was powerless to protest, she was
so entirely in this man's hands. "Well," she asked at last, stirring
uneasily in her chair, "and suppose we are not able to raise the money,
what do you anticipate will be the result?"
"A rapid reprisal," was his answer. "People like them don't
hesitate--they act."
"Yes, I see," she remarked in a blank voice. "They have nothing to lose,
so they will bring pressure upon us."
"Just as we once tried to bring pressure upon them. It's all a matter of
money. We pay the price arranged--a mere matter of business."
"But how are we to get money?"
"By getting a glance at what's in that safe," he replied. "Once we get
to know this mysterious secret of Sir Henry's, I and my friends can get
money easily enough. Leave it all to me."
"But how--"
"This matter you will please leave entirely to me, Winnie," he repeated
with determination. "We are both in danger--great danger; and that being
so, it is incumbent upon me to act boldly and fearlessly. I mean to get
the key, and see what is within that safe."
"But the girl?" asked her ladyship.
"Within one week from to-day the girl will no longer trouble us," he
said with an evil glance. "I do not intend that she shall remain a
barrier against our good fortune any longer. Understand that, and remain
perfectly calm, whatever may happen."
"But you surely don't intend--you surely will not--"
"I shall act as I think proper, and without any sentimental advice from
you," he declared with a mock bow, but straightening himself instantly
when at the door was heard a fumbling, and the gray-bearded man in blue
spectacles, his thin white hand groping before him, slowly entered the
room.