Produced by Charles Bowen from pages scans provided by
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Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=ERQNAAAAYAAJ
(Harvard University)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
3. The few instances of illegible words, indicated by[*], do
not influence the flow of the story. These lacunae appear
as a portion of pages 218 and 219 (8 words each).
The Disappearing Eye
BY
FERGUS HUME
AUTHOR OF
"THE SOLITARY FARM," "THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB,"
"THE SACRED HERB," "THE SEALED MESSAGE," "THE GREEN MUMMY,"
"THE OPAL SERPENT," "THE RED WINDOW," "THE YELLOW HOLLY," ETC.
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright 1908 by
G. W. Dillingham Company
_The Disappearing Eye_
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. A WEIRD DISCOVERY.
II. THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY.
III. AFTER EVENTS.
IV. FACTS.
V. AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.
VI. MY RIVAL.
VII. A FRIEND IN NEED.
VIII. THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD.
IX. GERTRUDE'S FATHER.
X. A SURPRISE.
XI. MISS DESTINY SPEAKS.
XXII. GERTRUDE'S DEFENCE.
XIII. LOVE.
XIV. THE UNFORESEEN HAPPENS.
XV. AN EXPLANATION.
XVI. STRIVER'S THREAT.
XVII. LADY MABEL'S VISIT.
XVIII. AN ALARMING MESSAGE.
XIX. A DANGEROUS POSITION.
XX. THE CIPHER.
XXI. THE AIRSHIP.
XXII. THE WHOLE TRUTH.
THE DISAPPEARING EYE.
CHAPTER I.
A WEIRD DISCOVERY
"Adventures are to the adventurous," said Cannington, with the air of
a man who believes that he is saying something undeniably smart.
"Good Lord!" I retorted, twisting the motor car round a corner. "Since
when has the British subaltern given up his leisure to reading
Beaconsfield's novels?"
Cannington serenely puffed his cigarette into a brighter glow. "I
don't know what you're talking about, old chap," said he
indifferently.
"I talk of 'Ixion in Heaven,' or--if you prefer it--of 'Coningsby.'
Beaconsfield was so enamoured of his apothegm that he inserted it in
both tales."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Cannington again, and
his puzzled look proved that he spoke the truth. "A chap called Marr
wrote that in my sister's album, and told her it was his own."
"I daresay; more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs, according
to Balzac. And, after all, Beaconsfield may have cribbed the saying."
"Oh! I see what you are driving at: Marr copied it out of a book."
"Undoubtedly, unless he lived before 'Coningsby' and 'Ixion' were
written--somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century."
"Oh! Marr isn't so old as that," protested the boy, chuckling;
"although he isn't a spring chicken, by any means. What Mabel sees in
him, I can't for the life of me imagine."
"Humph! You were never renowned for imagination, Cannington," I said
kindly, "and in your particular case it doesn't much matter. You're
the man behind the gun, and all you have to do is to fire against the
seen enemy."
"Huh! Why, half the firing is against the unseen enemy. If I haven't
got your rotten imagination, Vance, I've got common-sense, and that's
what you jolly well need."
"Rash youth, to speak thus to the man at the wheel. Don't you know
that, with a little dexterity, I could shoot you into yonder ditch?"
"You'd travel with me," he sniggered.
"Why not? It would be an excellent advertisement for a popular
playwright."
"Playwright be hanged! You only write beastly melodramas."
"Precisely; that is why I am popular. And if I'm not a playwright,
what am I?"
"A carpenter. You collar other people's ideas----"
"Like your friend Marr," I interpolated.
"And knock them into weird shapes for second-rate theatres."
"Not at all," I rejoined tartly, for the criticism piqued me. "I scour
the country in search of flesh and blood tragedies, and improve them
into moral lessons for the British Public. But you're talking all
round the shop, my lad. Who is this Marr, of whom your sister
approves, and why does he write down other people's ideas in her
album?"
"Wentworth Marr." Cannington lighted another cigarette, and explained:
"He's a well-preserved old buck of--I should say--fifty, and looks
forty. Unmarried, with heaps of tin and no family. Mabel likes him."
"And he likes Lady Mabel, or loves her. Which is it?"
"Well"--Cannington drawled this out reluctantly--"he's in love with
her, sure enough. And, of course, Mabel is as poor as I am, and Marr
having no end of shekels, you see----"
"What about Dick Weston?" I broke in abruptly.
"Oh, he's too much taken up with his inventions to bother about love.
Poor Mab feels it," sighed Cannington, "so she flirts with Marr."
"To keep her hand in, I suppose. She'll burn her fingers. Tell me all
about it, boy, if it will relieve your mind."
"I have told you all. Mabel wants to marry Dick Weston, and I think he
wants to marry her, only he's too much taken up with his airship to
trouble about proposing. Wentworth Marr is wealthy and a gentleman and
all that, and wants to make Mabel his wife. She likes him, but she
doesn't love him. Still there's the money, you see, Vance."
"Weston is also rich," I suggested.
"Well, I know that," snapped Cannington testily, "but he's an
absent-minded beggar, who lives in the clouds along with his bally
airship, and won't come up to the scratch. I say," he broke off,
"don't secure a paragraph for your confounded transpontine plays by
running over that child."
"Little beast!" The child in question was playing "Who's across
first," and I had considerable difficulty in dodging him. However, I
just managed to avoid a Coroner's Inquest and swung the machine along
the straight Roman road, while the escaped infant shouted insultingly
behind.
Cannington giggled, but I was too much taken up with steering the
Rippler through a somewhat crowded village street to tell him that he
was several kinds of ass. I had known the boy since he was a forward
brat at Eton, and we were intimate friends, as can be judged from the
way in which he confided in me. At the present moment I was conveying
him from Gattlingsands to Murchester, as he had been stopping at the
former place for some days and now sought his own Mess. Previously I
had motored from London to remain the night at Tarhaven, which is four
miles from Gattlingsands, and thus was enabled to save Cannington a
train fare. Considering that he and Lady Mabel Watton had about
sixpence between them, he was duly grateful, although pointedly saucy.
I was always sorry for Cannington's poverty, as he was a thoroughly
healthy-minded sporting boy, who keenly enjoyed such good things of
this life as he could lay hands on. A pauper commoner is an object to
be met with everywhere; but a pauper lord is a more unusual spectacle.
Certainly the boy was not yet knocking at the workhouse door, but, for
his position, he was assuredly desperately hard-up. And thinking of
these things, I made a remark when clear of the village.
"You must marry a dollar heiress, Cannington."
"O Lord! what rot. Who'd marry a pauper with a tumbledown family
mansion, next to nothing a year, and several hundred waste acres?"
"You have forgotten one asset," I said dryly; "your title."
"Huh! Who cares for that in these democratic days?"
"Heaps of rich spinsters, American, Colonial, and otherwise.
Besides, you're not altogether as ugly as sin, though you might be
better-looking."
"Thanks, awfully. But would you mind being less personal?"
I kicked his ankles. "If I am to advise you I must quote your looks,
your title, your qualities, and all the rest of it. You've got
precious little money, and as a gunner subaltern it will be ages
before you get promotion. Why not use what advantages you have and
exchange them for an income? A rich wife--"
"Not much," interrupted the boy, with a flush. "I fancy I see myself
living on a woman. Besides, I'm having a jolly time now, and see no
reason to tie myself up. When I do, it will be a girl I can love, no
end."
"Didn't know you had got that far."
"Well, I haven't. But one never knows."
"I agree. At four and twenty one never knows."
"Oh, stop your rotting, Vance," said he crossly. "I haven't been
through the Shop and out in the cold world for nothing. One would
think I was an idiot, which I certainly am not. Don't you bother your
silly head about me. It's Mab I'm thinking about. She wants money, as
I do; but I should hate to see her marry a fellow old enough to be her
grandfather, just because he's rich. I wish you'd see her and drop a
hint," he ended hesitatingly.
"My dear Cannington, I know you better than I do your sister. She
might resent my hints. If you really don't want her to marry this man
Marr--I never heard of him, for my part--shake Dick Weston into a
proposal and he can take his wife in his new airship for the
honeymoon."
"It would end in a funeral," grinned Cannington cheerfully. "Dicky's
always having smashes. I don't want him to experiment with Mabel, you
know, old chap. Hi! Here's Murchester, and yonder's a policeman. Slow
down, Vance, you can't romp up the High Street at thirty miles an
hour."
"I don't see why not," I retorted, obeying orders, for the policeman
really looked a suspicious character. "There! We're crawling along
like a condemned snail, if that's what you want."
"I want my tea," said Cannington irrelevantly, "don't you?"
"No! I'll drop you at the Barracks and travel on to Clankton. There I
put up for the night, and go up Norfolk way to-morrow."
"What's your objective?"
"I haven't got one. That is, I am simply looking round to see if I can
poach on real life for a melodramatic plot. 'Adventures to the
adventurous.'"
Cannington nodded. "I thought old Marr wasn't clever enough to have
made that up out of his own blessed head. But, I say, how do you
expect to find your plot in a motor car?"
"The latter-day vehicle of romance, my boy. Formerly your knight rode
a horse, and went into the Unknown in search of the unexpected. Now
he--that's me, you know--takes out his machine and looks for the
expected in the Known. You understand?"
"No, confound you. What do you hope to run across?"
"An adventure."
"What sort of one?"
"How the Charles Dickens can I tell?"
"Yet you said that the Known--"
"Cannington, you wish me to spoil my epigrams by explanation. I
decline to satisfy your morbid curiosity. All I know is, that the
fountains of my imagination are dried up, and that I can't write a
play which ought to be written if I am to earn enough to keep this car
in petrol. I am, therefore--like Balzac--chasing my genius, and who
knows upon what glorious adventure I may stumble."
Cannington laughed scornfully. "All the adventure you'll drop
across will be in running over some old woman, or in exceeding the
speed-limit."
"I care not," was my reckless reply. "I am prepared for anything."
"Don't be an ass," urged the boy politely, as we spun through the
Barrack gates. "Stop here for the night, and I'll put you up. Then we
can go to London to-morrow and have a ripping time. . . . What?"
"It's good of you, Cannington, and if I hadn't an income to earn I
should accept with pleasure. As things are"--I stopped the car before
the Mess door--"you can get down and send out a man to carry in your
portmanteau."
"Have a cup of tea, anyhow," said Cannington, slipping to the ground.
I looked at my watch. "No, thanks. It's nearing six, and I have some
distance to go. Don't delay me, boy."
"Oh, very well, confound you. Wait till I get my baggage and then you
can buzz off. When am I to see you again?"
"The Fates will arrange that. I'll turn up sooner or later."
"If you aren't smashed up, or locked up, meanwhile," said the boy,
swinging his portmanteau off the back of the car. "I'll keep an eye on
the police news for the next few days. I daresay I'll have to bail you
out. Well," he gave my hand a grip, "thanks awfully, old son, for
bringing me over."
"Only too pleased," I muttered, beginning to move away. "Good-bye."
I had been to Murchester before, and knew the locality moderately
well. Therefore, after leaving Cannington I spun through the Barrack
grounds and emerged on to a somewhat suburban road, which led towards
the outskirts of the town. A dampish August twilight filled the air
with rapidly darkening shadows, and a marked chill in the warmth
hinted at the coming night. The sun had already withdrawn behind a
bank of western clouds, before vanishing over the verge of the world.
I drove the machine at half speed, as there were many country carts
about, and ran down a lengthy sloping hill towards a distant glimpse
of green. Clankton, which is a fishing village rapidly rising into
notoriety as a seaside resort, was over thirty miles away, so if I
wished to be seated at my dinner by seven o'clock, it behooved me to
use all the power of which the Rippler was capable. Hunger forced me
to increase the pace.
Motoring was the one form of amusement which I truly enjoyed, and
which a somewhat limited income earned by hard brain-work enabled me
to indulge in. But the indulgence precluded my partaking in many other
pleasures of this luxurious age, for the Rippler had cost much to buy
and cost a considerable sum monthly to keep going. But motoring is
less expensive than horse-racing and doctors' bills; and the fresh
air, after enforced sedentary deskwork, swept away possible illness.
As a moderately popular playwright I made a tolerably good income,
although less than I was credited with earning. Still by devoting
myself to two machines, a motor and a type-writer, one for play and
the other for work, I managed to keep out of debt and keep my Rippler
at the same time. But because the machine was a smart one, and because
I was constantly on the move between whiles of manufacturing
melodramas, people declared that I was a literary millionaire. As
though any writer ever became a Cr[oe]sus.
I must say that I had greater ambitions than to write cheap
sensational plays, and that I did write them at all was due--as it
would seem--to mere chance. After I left Oxford my parents died,
and--owing to their extravagances--everything was sold. I came to
London with an income of fifty pounds a year. I could not exactly
starve on one pound a week, but I had a sufficiently bad time, and
tried to supplement my income by writing for the papers. An old actor,
boarding at a house wherein I had taken up my abode, suggested that I
should attempt a melodrama. I did so with his assistance, and between
us we managed to get it staged at a small theatre in the East End. To
my surprise, the play was a great success, being sufficiently lurid to
capture the tastes of the somewhat rough audience. Since that time I
had been committed to this particular form of entertainment, and try
as I might I could not escape from the memory of my first hit.
But I did not surrender my earlier ambitions, as I have before stated.
I worked hard at the cheap sensational plays, which were produced at
second-class theatres, and saved all the money I could, in the hope of
gathering together sufficient principal to give me an assured income
of five hundred a year. When independent, I determined to devote
myself to writing really good plays--high-class comedies and poetic
dramas for choice--but meanwhile served my apprenticeship to the
writing craft under the eye of the public. On the whole, I had very
little to complain about, and my portion of the viands at Life's
Banquet was moderately tempting, if not superlatively delicate.
I do not think there is anything more to explain about myself, save
that I was not handsome, that I had never been in love, and that I
occupied a tiny flat in West Kensington, where the rents are moderate.
As a rule I wrote furiously every day until a play was completed, then
attended to the rehearsing and saw the production. Afterwards I took
to my motor, and scoured the country, partly to get fresh air, and
partly because I had a chance of stumbling across incidents in real
life which afforded me material for plots, situations, scenes, and
characters.
At the present moment I was in search of the new and the real,
intending to weave actual facts into the sort of melodrama for
which Cyrus Vance was famous, or shall we say notorious, as the
penny-dreadful success I had won could scarcely be dignified by an
adjective applicable only to the career of Napoleon or Cæsar. But I
little thought when leaving Murchester, that I was also leaving the
long lane of petty success down which I had plodded so soberly, and
that the new road opening out before me was one which led to--but I
really cannot say just now what it led to. And in this last sentence
you will see the cunning of the story-teller, who desires to keep the
solution of his mystery until the last chapter. But I am a playwright
and not a novelist--two very different beings. Destiny is writing this
tale, and I am simply the amanuensis. Therefore you will see how
infinitely more ingenious is the goddess than the mere mortal, in
constructing an intricate scheme of life and in dealing with the
puppets entangled therein.
So in this life-story, which starts in the middle, as it were, and
travels both ways to beginning and end, blame Destiny for whatever
does not please. I merely recount what happened--simply describe the
various scenic backgrounds and rough out the characters. But Destiny
weaves the happenings, brings about the unexpected, and solves the
mystery, which is of her ingenious contrivance. And throughout I am
only the clay which she, the potter, moulds at her will.
In a motor car it is much easier to go wrong on the outskirts of a
town than amidst any other surroundings that I know of. When in the
open, one can rise in the car and see one's way; but bewildered by
streets and houses and traffic and wary policemen, and misled by those
who do not know their own locality over-well, one finds a town
somewhat perplexing. Making for the west, you get twisted round and
emerge into open country towards the east. A single wrong road in the
suburbs will lead the complete motorist astray, and will introduce him
to a new country of whose geography he is entirely ignorant. Therefore
some miles beyond perplexing Murchester I became aware, by questioning
an intelligent rustic, that I was going away from Clankton. After some
swearing and a close examination of the map, I lighted the lamps and
turned on my tracks. Having gone so far out of my way, I had
unnecessarily used up a lot of power, and then the inevitable
happened--I discovered, to my dismay, that I was short of petrol in
the tank. I had no further supply, worse luck! and unless I could
obtain some, I began to see that I should have to camp in the fields,
or at all events in the nearest village. But, thanks to motoring,
petrol is fairly plentiful in unexpected places. If I could discover
some village, I made sure of chancing upon a shop wherein to purchase
petrol, and therefore was hopeful.
But as I drove the machine slowly on--for the motive power was
dwindling rapidly--I found that the necessary village was conspicuous
by its absence. I crawled up narrow lanes, the twists and turns of
which necessitated careful steering; I dropped down the inclines of
wide roads; I skirted stagnant ponds, weedy under dank boughs; and
worked my slow way past mouldering brick walls, which shut in lordly
parks. It grew darker every minute and was long after six o'clock, so
I soon became unpleasantly aware that I needed food as much as the
Rippler needed petrol. I seemed to be in for some kind of adventure,
and as I had come out to look for one in the interests of the British
Public, I had no reason to be dissatisfied. But I sincerely trusted
that it would be a romantic one, out of which I could weave a
sufficiently good plot to recompense me for the damnable circumstances
in which I found myself.
The Rippler feeling hungry, as I did, groaned complainingly up a
gentle ascent, topped the rise, and stopped dead after proceeding a
few yards. And now mark the cunning of Destiny. If she had not brought
me to my goal, she had at least led me to a place where I could obtain
motive power, for in front of me I beheld a tiny old-fashioned house
of weather-board walls shaded by a mellow red-tiled roof. It stood
directly on the road, and was backed by a circle of high trees--elms,
I fancy they were; a quaint, odd, dreary-looking cottage, which had
been awkwardly converted into a shop. Taking one of the lamps I
flashed the light on to a narrow door, which stood open, on to a small
window to the left of the door, and on to a right-handed wider one,
behind the glass of which were displayed the various goods which one
usually finds in these village stores. But the sight amazed me,
especially when I saw the name of Anne Caldershaw inscribed on a broad
board over the window, for I could espy no village. Why did Anne
Caldershaw set up her stall here, where there was no one to buy; and
why was her shop not lighted up, seeing that the door was open for any
chance customer? I could not answer these questions, and became aware
that here was the start of a promising adventure. I felt like Alice in
Wonderland, for such a shop in such a lonely woody locality was just
such a thing as Alice would have chanced upon.
However I had no time to bother over the romance of things, for I
wanted petrol, and luckily saw a red board on which it was announced
in black lettering that petrol was for sale. Stepping into the dark
shop with my brilliant lamp, I rapped on the mean little counter. No
one came. Although I called out as loudly as I could, there was still
an eerie silence, so I walked towards a small door set in the inside
wall and knocked. As there was still no answer I tried to open the
door, and found that it was locked. A flight of steps, narrow and
rude, ran up the side of the wall to some upstairs rooms, and I sang
up the stairs. As this final shout produced no better result than the
others, I made up my mind to waste no further time, but to fill my
tank with petrol and leave the money on the counter. But even as I
searched for the liquid, I kept marvelling at the strange silence of
Anne Caldershaw's shop. There was not only no one to buy, but there
was not even anyone to sell. The circumstances were odd in the
extreme, and I scented the unexpected in the damp air.
My part of the adventure--as it seemed--was to fill my tank and get
the Rippler ready to start. Whether Destiny, who was arranging
details, would permit her to get under way, or me to reach Clankton in
time for dinner, was quite another matter. However I was actor and not
author, so I fulfilled my part--my appointed part, I presumed--by
searching for the petrol. I soon discovered the orthodox red case, and
having unscrewed it with some difficulty, I walked back to the car,
which stood, some little distance away, directly in front of Anne
Caldershaw's shop. It took me some minutes to fill up, but during that
time I did not hear a single sound. And yet, as I conjectured, while
replacing the cap of the tank, there must be some house or houses
about, since the shop argued customers. Perhaps when I turned the
corner--for the shop stood just on the angle of the road--I would find
a collection of cottages, not likely to be so deserted as Anne
Caldershaw's emporium.
Shortly the tank was filled, and after seeing that all was ready to
start, I took the empty can back to the dark house and placed the
necessary money on the counter. I would have shouted again, but that
it seemed useless, as apparently no one was about, for my former cries
would have awakened the dead. For one or two minutes I stood in the
darkness listening for some sound in the house, and stared through the
open door at the streams of light from the acetylene lamps of the
Rippler. There was something very weird about the situation.
Suddenly I heard a soft faint moan, which seemed to come from behind
the locked door at the back of the shop. On the impulse of the moment
and with rather a grue--as the Scotch call it, for the sound was
sinister and unexpected--I sprang forward and gripped the handle of
the door. To my surprise, the moment I twisted it the door opened at
once, and yet I swear that it was locked when I had last tried it. I
looked into a dark room, and could see faintly to the right a barred
window, which showed against the fast darkening evening sky. No
further moan could I hear, although I listened with all my ears.
Wondering if I had been mistaken, and yet uneasy about the now
unlocked door, I stepped into the back room, holding on to the inside
handle. As it afterwards turned out the floor of the room was lower
than that of the shop, and reached by three shallow steps. I therefore
stumbled, and pulling the door after me with some violence, so that it
clicked to, I fell sprawling, and bruised my elbow somewhat painfully.
Still I heard no sound, but seated on the floor to collect my
senses--somewhat dazed by the unexpected fall--I put out my hand to
explore the darkness. It fell on soft flesh, warm to the touch, and on
rough tangled hair. Thoroughly startled, and with every excuse, I
withdrew my hand, and fumbled in my pockets for a match, regretting
that I had not brought one of the lamps. I had half a mind to go out
and fetch it, but my curiosity was so great and--to be plain--my nerves
were so unstrung, that I struck the lucifer, anxious to know the best
or the worst at once.
As the pale tiny light grew stronger, I beheld the form of a woman
lying on the stone floor, face uppermost. And that face--I shuddered
as I looked, for it was distorted into an expression of pain, with a
twisted mouth and glassy, expressionless eyes. Framed in loose masses
of iron-grey hair, it glimmered milky white, and bore the stamp of
death on every feature. The woman was dead, and judging from the moan
I had heard and the still warm flesh, she had just died. While I
stared the match-light went out, and I fancied that I heard a faint
click. I lighted another match hastily looking towards the door
leading to the shop. It was still closed, and I turned again to gaze
at the dead woman, who was old, ill-favoured, and eminently plebeian.
At that moment I heard the buzz of the Rippler. At once, in
astonishment and alarm, I sprang towards the door. It was locked, and
I was a prisoner. While I was still trying to grasp this astounding
fact, the drone of my motor car died away in the distance.