rose from the position of fifth housemaid to be housekeeper at the
Castle. Without ever having been definitely assigned to the situation,
I became, as it were by gradual attachment, valet to Lord Trent--eldest
son of the Marquis, and as gay and good-natured a gentleman as ever
drank brandy-and-soda before breakfast.
When Lord Trent married Miss Edna Stuyvesant, the American heiress,
and with some of her money bought and furnished in a superb manner a
mansion near the north-west corner of Eaton Square, I quite naturally
followed him across the Square, and soon found myself, after his
lordship and my lady, the most considerable personage at No. 441. Even
the butler had to mind his “p’s” and “q’s” with me.
Perhaps it was this pre-eminence of mine which led to my being selected
for a duty which I never cared for, and which ultimately I asked his
lordship to allow me to relinquish--of course he did so. That duty
related to the celebrated Cockfosters emeralds. Lady Trent had money
(over a million sterling, as his lordship himself told me), but money
could not buy the Cockfosters emeralds, and having seen these she
desired nothing less fine. With her ladyship, to desire was to obtain.
I have always admired her for that trait in her character. Being an
American she had faults, but she knew her own mind, which is a great
thing; and I must admit that, on the whole, she carried herself well
and committed few blunders. She must have been accustomed to good
servants.
In the matter of the emeralds, I certainly took her side. Strictly
speaking, they belonged to the old Marchioness, but the Marchioness
never went into society; she was always engaged with temperance
propaganda, militant Protestantism, and that sort of thing, and
consequently never wore the emeralds. There was no valid reason,
therefore, why Lady Trent should not have the gratification of wearing
them. But the Marchioness, I say it with respect, was a woman of
peculiar and decided views. She had, in fact, fads; and one of her fads
was the emeralds. She could not bear to part with them. She said she
was afraid something might happen to the precious heirlooms.
A prolonged war ensued between the Marchioness and my lady, and
ultimately a compromise was effected. My lady won permission to wear
the emeralds whenever she chose, but they were always to be brought
to her and taken back again by Susan Berry, in whom the Marchioness
had more confidence than in anyone else in the world. Consequently,
whenever my lady required the emeralds, word was sent across the Square
in the afternoon; Susan Berry brought them over, and Susan Berry
removed them at night when my lady returned from her ball or reception.
The arrangement was highly inconvenient for Susan Berry, for sometimes
it would be very late when my lady came home; but the Marchioness
insisted, and since Susan Berry was one of those persons who seem to
take a positive joy in martyrising themselves, she had none of my pity.
The nuisance was that someone from our house had to accompany her
across the Square. Eaton Square is very large (probably the largest
in London, but I may be mistaken on such a trivial point); its main
avenue is shut in by trees; and at 2 a.m. it is distinctly not the
place for an unprotected female in charge of valuable property. Now
the Marchioness had been good enough to suggest that she would prefer
me to escort her maid on this brief nocturnal journey. I accepted the
responsibility, but I did not hide my dislike for it. Knowing something
of Miss Berry’s disposition, I knew that our household would inevitably
begin, sooner or later, to couple our names together, and I was not
deceived.
Such was the situation when one night--it was a Whit-Monday, I
remember, and about a quarter past one--Lord and Lady Trent returned
from an entertainment at a well-known mansion near St. James’s Palace.
I got his lordship some whisky in the library, and he then told me
that I might go to bed, as he should not retire for an hour or so. I
withdrew to the little office off the hall, and engaged in conversation
with the second footman, who was on duty. Presently his lordship came
down into the hall and began to pace about--it was a strange habit of
his--smoking a cigarette. He caught sight of me.
“Saunders,” he said, “I told you you could go to bed.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Why don’t you go?”
“Your lordship forgets the emeralds.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” He laughed. I motioned to the footman to clear
out.
“You don’t seem to care for that job, Saunders,” his lordship resumed,
quizzing me. “Surely Berry is a charming companion. In your place I
should regard it as excellent fun. But I have often told you that you
have no sense of humour.”
“Not all men laugh at the same jokes, my lord,” I observed.
As a matter of fact, in earlier and wilder days, his lordship had
sometimes thrown a book or a boot at me for smiling too openly in the
wrong place.
The conversation might have continued further, for his lordship would
often talk with me, but at that moment Susan Berry appeared with the
bag containing the case in which were the emeralds. Lady Trent’s own
maid was with her, and the two stood talking for an instant at the foot
of the stairs, while Lady Trent’s maid locked the bag and handed the
key to Berry. Heaven knows how long that simple business would have
occupied had not the voice of my lady resounded from the first floor,
somewhat excitedly calling for her maid, who vanished with a hurried
good-night. His lordship had already departed from the hall.
“May I relieve you of the bag, Miss Berry?” I asked.
“Thank you, Mr. Saunders,” she replied, “but the Marchioness prefers
that I myself should carry it.”
That little dialogue passed between us every time the emeralds had to
be returned.
We started on our short walk, Miss Berry and I, proceeding towards
the main avenue which runs through the centre of the Square east and
west. It was a beautiful moonlight night. Talking of moonlight nights,
I may as well make my confession at once. The fact is that Miss
Berry had indeed a certain influence over me. In her presence I was
always conscious of feeling a pleasurable elation--an excitement, a
perturbation, which another man might have guessed to be the beginning
of love.
I, however, knew that it was not love. It was merely a fancy. It only
affected me when I was in her company. When she was absent I could
regard her in my mind’s eye as she actually was--namely, a somewhat
designing young woman, with dark eyes and too much will of her own.
Nevertheless, she had, as I say, a certain influence over me, and I
have already remarked that it was a moonlight night.
Need I say more? In spite of what I had implied to Lord Trent I did
enjoy the walk with Susan Berry. Susan Berry took care that I should.
She laid herself out to fascinate me; turning her brunette face up to
mine with an air of deference, and flashing upon me the glance of those
dark lustrous eyes.
She started by sympathising with me in the matter of the butler. This
was, I now recognise, very clever of her, for the butler has always
been a sore point with me. I began to think (be good enough to remember
the moonlight and the trees) that life with Susan Berry might have its
advantages.
Then she turned to the topic of her invalid sister, Jane Mary, who was
lame and lived in lodgings near Sloane Street, and kept herself, with a
little aid from Susan, by manufacturing artificial flowers. For a month
past Miss Berry had referred regularly to this sister, who appeared to
be the apple of her eye. I had no objection to the topic, though it
did not specially interest me; but on the previous evening Miss Berry
had told me, with a peculiar emphasis, that her poor dear sister often
expressed a longing to see the famous Cockfosters emeralds, and that
she resided quite close too. I did not like that.
To-night Miss Berry made a proposition which alarmed me. “Mr.
Saunders,” she said insinuatingly, “you are so good-natured that I have
almost a mind to ask you a favour. Would you object to walking round
with me to my sister’s--it is only a few minutes away--so that I could
just give her a peep at these emeralds. She is dying to see them, and
I’m sure the Marchioness wouldn’t object. We should not be a quarter of
an hour away.”
My discretion was aroused. I ought to have given a decided negative at
once; but somehow I couldn’t, while Susan was looking at me.
“But surely your sister will be in bed,” I suggested.
“Oh, no!” with a sigh. “She has to work very late--very late indeed.
And besides, if she is, I could take them up to her room. It would do
her good to see them, and she has few pleasures.”
“The Marchioness might not like it,” I said, driven back to the second
line of fortification. “You know your mistress is very particular about
these emeralds.”
“The Marchioness need never know,” Susan Berry whispered, putting her
face close up to mine. “No one need know, except just us two.”
The accent which she put on those three words “just us two,” was
extremely tender.
I hesitated. We were already at the end of the Square, and should have
turned down to the left towards Cockfosters House.
“Come along,” she entreated, placing her hand on my shoulder.
“Well, you know----” I muttered, but I went along with her towards
Sloane Street. We passed Eaton Place.
“Really, Miss Berry----” I began again, collecting my courage.
Then there was a step behind us, and another hand was placed on my
shoulder. I turned round sharply. It was a policeman. His buttons shone
in the moonlight.
“Your name is Charles Saunders,” he said to me; “and yours Susan
Berry,” to my companion.
“True,” I replied, for both of us.
“I have a warrant for your arrest.”
“Our arrest!”
“Yes, on a charge of attempting to steal some emeralds, the property of
the Marquis of Cockfosters.”
“Impossible,” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” he sneered, “that’s what they all say.”
“But the emeralds are here in this bag.”
“I know they are,” he said. “I’ve just copped you in time. But you’ve
been suspected for days.”
“The thing is ridiculous,” I said, striving to keep calm. “We are
taking the emeralds back to Lady Cockfosters, and----”
Then I stopped. If we were merely taking the emeralds back to Lady
Cockfosters, that is, from one house in Eaton Square to another house
in Eaton Square, what were we doing out of the Square?
I glanced at Susan Berry. She was as white as a sheet. The solution
of the puzzle occurred to me at once. Susan’s sister was an ingenious
fiction. Susan was a jewel thief, working with a gang of jewel thieves,
and her request that I would accompany her to this mythical sister was
part of a plan for stealing the emeralds.
“At whose instance has the warrant been issued?” I asked.
“The Marquis of Cockfosters.”
My suspicions were only too well confirmed.
I did not speak a word to Susan Berry. I could not. I merely looked at
her.
“You’ll come quietly to the station?” the policeman said.
“Certainly,” I replied. “As for us, the matter can soon be cleared up.
I am Lord Trent’s valet, No. 441, Eaton Square, and he must be sent
for.”
“Oh, must he!” the constable jeered. “Come on. Perhaps you’d prefer a
cab.”
A four-wheeler was passing. I myself hailed the sleepy cabman, and we
all three got in. The policeman prudently took the bag from Susan’s
nerveless hands. None of us spoke. I was too depressed, Susan was
probably too ashamed, and the constable was no doubt too bored.
After a brief drive we drew up. Another policeman opened the door of
the cab, and over the open portal of the building in front of us I saw
the familiar blue lamp, with the legend “Metropolitan Police” in white
letters. The two policemen carefully watched us as we alighted, and
escorted us up the steps into the station. Happily, there was no one
about; my humiliation was abject enough without that.
Charles Saunders a prisoner in a police station! I could scarcely
credit my senses. One becomes used to a police station--in the
newspapers; but to be inside one--that is different, widely different.
The two policemen took us into a bare room, innocent of any furniture
save a wooden form, a desk, a chair, some printed notices of rewards
offered, and an array of handcuffs and revolvers on the mantelpiece.
In the chair, with a big book in front of him on the desk, sat the
inspector in charge. He was in his shirt-sleeves.
“A hot night,” he said, smiling, to the policeman.
I silently agreed.
It appeared that we were expected.
They took our full names, our addresses and occupations, and then the
inspector read the warrant to us. Of course, it didn’t explain things
in the least. I began to speak.
“Let me warn you,” said the inspector, “that anything you say now may
be used against you at your trial.”
My trial!
“Can I write a note to Lord Trent?” I asked, nettled.
“Yes, if you will pay for a cab to take it.”
I threw down half-a-crown, and scribbled a line to my master, begging
him to come at once.
“The constable must search you,” the inspector said, when this was done
and the first policeman had disappeared with the note.
“I will save him the trouble,” I said proudly, and I emptied my pockets
of a gold watch and chain, a handkerchief, two sovereigns, a sixpence,
two halfpennies, a bunch of keys, my master’s linen book, and a new
necktie which I had bought that very evening; of which articles the
inspector made an inventory.
“Which is the key of the bag?” asked the inspector. The bag was on the
desk in front of him, and he had been trying to open it.
“I know nothing of that,” I said.
“Now you, Susan Berry, give up the key,” the inspector said, sternly,
turning to her.
For answer Susan burst into sobs, and flung herself against my breast.
The situation was excessively embarrassing for me. Heaven knows I had
sufficient reason to hate the woman, but though a thief, she was in
distress, and I must own that I felt for her.
The constable stepped towards Susan.
“Surely,” I said, “you have a female searcher?”
“A female searcher! Ah, yes!” smiled the inspector, suddenly suave. “Is
she here, constable?”
“Not now, sir; she’s gone.”
“That must wait, then. Take them to the cells.”
“Sorry, sir, all the cells are full. Bank Holiday drunks.”
The inspector thought a moment.
“Lock ’em up in the back room,” he said. “That’ll do for the present.
Perhaps the male prisoner may be getting an answer to his note soon.
After that they’ll have to go to Vine Street or Marlborough.”
The constable touched his helmet, and marched us out. In another moment
we were ensconced in a small room, absolutely bare of any furniture,
except a short wooden form. The constable was locking the door when
Susan Berry screamed out: “You aren’t going to lock us up here together
in the dark?”
“Why, what do you want? Didn’t you hear the cells are full?”
I was profoundly thankful they were full. I did not fancy a night in a
cell.
“I want a candle,” she said, fiercely.
He brought one, or rather half of one, stuck in a bottle, and placed it
on the mantelpiece. Then he left us.
Again I say the situation was excessively embarrassing. For myself, I
said nothing. Susan Berry dropped on the form, and hiding her face in
her hands, gave way to tears without any manner of restraint. I pitied
her a little, but that influence which previously she had exercised
over me was gone. “Oh, Mr. Saunders,” she sobbed, “what shall we do?”
And as she spoke she suddenly looked up at me with a glance of feminine
appeal. I withstood it.
“Miss Berry,” I said severely, “I wonder that you can look me in the
face. I trusted you as a woman, and you have outraged that trust. I
never dreamed that you were--that you were an adventuress. It was
certainly a clever plot, and but for the smartness of the police I
should, in my innocence, have fallen a victim to your designs. For
myself, I am grateful to the police. I can understand and excuse their
mistake in regarding me as your accomplice. That will soon be set
right, for Lord Trent will be here. In the meantime, of course, I have
been put to considerable humiliation. Nevertheless, even this is better
than having followed you to your ‘sister’s.’ In your ‘sister’s’ lodging
I might have been knocked senseless, or even murdered. Moreover, the
emeralds are safe.”
She put on an innocent expression, playing the injured maiden.
“Mr. Saunders, you surely do not imagine----”
“Miss Berry, no protestations, I beg. Let me say now that I have always
detected in your character something underhand, something crafty.”
“I swear----” she began again.
“Don’t trouble,” I interrupted her icily, “for I shall not believe you.
This night will certainly be a warning to me.”
With that I leaned my back against the mantelpiece, and abandoned
myself to gloomy thought. It was a moment for me of self-abasement. I
searched my heart, and I sorrowfully admitted that my predicament was
primarily due to disobeying that golden rule--beware of women. I saw
now that it was only my absurd fancy for this wicked creature which had
led me to accept the office of guarding those emeralds during their
night-passage across Eaton Square. I ought to have refused in the first
place, for the job was entirely outside my functions; strictly, the
butler should have done it.
And this woman in front of me--this Susan Berry, in whom the old
Marchioness had such unbounded trust! So she belonged to the
con-fraternity of jewel thieves--a genus of which I had often read, but
which I had never before met with. What audacity such people must need
in order to execute their schemes!
But then the game was high. The Cockfosters emeralds were worth, at
a moderate estimate, twelve thousand pounds. There are emeralds and
emeralds, the value depends on the colour; these were the finest
Colombian stones, of a marvellous tint, and many of them were
absolutely without a flaw. There were five stones of seven carats each,
and these alone must have been worth at least six thousand pounds. Yes,
it would have been a great haul, a colossal haul.
Time passed, the candle was burning low, and there was no sign of Lord
Trent. I went to the door and knocked, first gently, then more loudly,
but I could get no answer. Then I walked about the room, keeping an
eye on Susan Berry, who had, I freely admit, the decency to avoid my
gaze. I was beginning to get extremely tired. I wished to sit down,
but there was only one form; Susan Berry was already upon it, and, as
I said before, it was a very short form. At last I could hold out no
longer. Taking my courage in both hands, I sat down boldly at one end
of the form. It was a relief to me. Miss Berry sighed. There were not
six inches between us.
The candle was low in the socket, we both watched it. Without a
second’s warning the flame leapt up and then expired. We were in the
dark. Miss Berry screamed, and afterwards I heard her crying. I myself
made no sign. Fortunately the dawn broke almost immediately.
By this time I was getting seriously annoyed with Lord Trent. I had
served him faithfully, and yet at the moment of my genuine need he had
not come to my succour. I went again to the door and knocked with my
knuckles. No answer. Then I kicked it. No answer. Then I seized the
handle and violently shook it. To my astonishment the door opened. The
policeman had forgotten to lock it.
I crept out into the passage, softly closing the door behind me. It was
now quite light. The door leading to the street was open, and I could
see neither constables nor inspector. I went into the charge room; it
was empty. Then I proceeded into the street. On the pavement a piece of
paper was lying. I picked it up; it was the note which I had written to
Lord Trent.
A workman happened to be loitering along a road which crossed this
street at right angles. I called out and ran to him.
“Can you tell me,” I asked, “why all the officers have left the police
station?”
“Look ’ere, matey,” he says, “you get on ’ome; you’ve been making a
night of it, that’s wot you ’ave.”
“But, seriously,” I said.
Then I saw a policeman at a distant corner. The workman whistled, and
the policeman was obliging enough to come to us.
“’Ere’s a cove wants to know why all the police ’as left the police
station,” the workman said.
“What police station?” the constable said sharply.
“Why, this one down here in this side-street,” I said, pointing to the
building. As I looked at it I saw that the lamp which I had observed on
the previous night no longer hung over the doorway.
The constable laughed good-humouredly.
“Get away home,” he said.
I began to tell him my story.
“Get away home,” he repeated--gruffly this time, “or I’ll run you in.”
“All right,” I said huffily, and I made as if to walk down the other
road. The constable and the workman grinned to each other and departed.
As soon as they were out of sight, I returned to my police station.
It was not a police station! It was merely a rather large and
plain-fronted empty house, which had been transformed into a police
station, for one night only, by means of a lamp, a desk, two forms, a
few handcuffs, and some unparalleled cheek. Jewel thieves they were,
but Susan Berry was not among them. After all Susan Berry probably had
an invalid sister named Jane Mary.
The first policeman, the cabman, the second policeman, the
inspector--these were the jewel thieves, and Susan Berry and I (and
of course the Marchioness) had been the victims of as audacious and
brilliant a robbery as was ever planned. We had been robbed openly,
quietly, deliberately, with the aid of a sham police station. Our
movements must have been watched for weeks. I gave my meed of
admiration to the imagination, the skill, and the _sangfroid_ which
must have gone to the carrying out of this coup.
Going back into the room where Susan Berry and I had spent the night
hours, I found that wronged woman sweetly asleep on the form, with her
back against the wall. I dared not wake her. And so I left her for
the present to enjoy some much-needed repose. I directed my steps
in search of Eaton Square, having closed the great door of my police
station.
At length I found my whereabouts, and I arrived at No. 441 at five
o’clock precisely. The morning was lovely. After some trouble I roused
a housemaid, who let me in. She seemed surprised, but I ignored her. I
went straight upstairs and knocked at my master’s door. To wake him had
always been a difficult matter, and this morning the task seemed more
difficult than ever. At last he replied sleepily to my summons.
“It is I--Saunders--your lordship.”
“Go to the devil, then.”
“I must see your lordship instantly. Very seriously.”
“Eh, what? I’ll come in a minute,” and I heard him stirring, and the
voice of Lady Trent.
How should I break the news to him? What would the Marchioness say
when she knew? Twelve thousand pounds’ worth of jewels is no trifle.
Not to mention my gold watch, my two sovereigns, my sixpence, and my
two halfpennies. And also the half-crown which I had given to have
the message despatched to his lordship. It was the half-crown that
specially rankled.
Lord Trent appeared at the door of his room, arrayed in his crimson
dressing-gown.
“Well, Saunders, what in the name of----”
“My lord,” I stammered, and then I told him the whole story.
He smiled, he laughed, he roared.
“I daresay it sounds very funny, my lord,” I said, “but it wasn’t funny
at the time, and Lady Cockfosters won’t think it very funny.”
“Oh, won’t she! She will. No one will enjoy it more. She might have
taken it seriously if the emeralds had been in the bag, but they
weren’t.”
“Not in the bag, my lord!”
“No. Lady Trent’s maid ran off with the bag, thinking that your
mistress had put the jewels in it. But she had not. Lady Trent came to
the top of the stairs to call her back, as soon as she found the bag
gone, but you and Berry were out of the house. So the emeralds stayed
here for one night. They are on Lady Trent’s dressing-table at the
present moment. Go and get a stiff whisky, Saunders. You need it. And
then may I suggest that you should return for the sleeping Berry? By
the way, the least you can do is to marry her, Saunders.”
“Never, my lord!” I said with decision. “I have meddled sufficiently
with women.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIMA DONNA.
Many years ago the fear of dynamite stalked through the land. An
immense organisation of anarchists whose headquarters were in the
United States had arranged for a number of simultaneous displays in
London, Glasgow, and Quebec. As is well known now, the Parliament House
at Quebec and the gasworks at Glasgow were to be blown up, while the
programme for London included Scotland Yard, most of Whitehall, the
House of Commons, the Tower, and four great railway stations thrown in.
This plot was laid bare, stopped, and made public, and--except a number
of people who happened quite innocently to carry black bags--no one was
put to the slightest inconvenience.
The dynamite scare was deemed to be at an end. But the dread
organisation was in fact still active, as the sixty policemen who
were injured in what is called the “Haymarket Massacre” explosion at
Chicago, on May 4, 1886, have dire occasion to know.
Everyone who reads the papers is familiar with the details of the
Haymarket Massacre. Few people, however, are aware that a far more
dastardly outrage had been planned to intimidate London a few days
later. Through the agency of a courageous woman this affair too was
unmasked in its turn, but for commercial and other reasons it was kept
from the general public.
The scheme was to blow up the Opera House at Covent Garden on the first
night of the season. Had the facts got abroad, the audience would
probably have been somewhat sparse on that occasion; but the facts did
not get abroad, and the house was crowded in every part; for the famous
prima donna Louise Vesea (since retired) was singing “Marguerite,” in
“Faust,” and enthusiasm about her was such that though the popular
tenor had unaccountably thrown up his engagement, the price of stalls
rose to thirty-three shillings. The police were sure of themselves,
and the evening passed off with nothing more explosive than applause.
Nevertheless, that night, after the curtain had fallen and Louise Vesea
had gathered up all the wreaths and other tributes of admiration which
had been showered upon her, there happened the singular incident which
it is our purpose to record.
Vesea, wrapped in rich furs--it was midnight, and our usual wintry
May--was just leaving the stage door for her carriage, when a
gentleman respectfully accosted her. He was an English detective on
special service, and Vesea appeared to know him.
“It will be desirable for you to run no risks, Madame,” he said. “So
far as we know all the principals have left the country in alarm, but
there are always others.”
Vesea smiled. She was then over thirty, in the full flower of her fame
and beauty. Tall, dark, calm, mysterious, she had the firm yet gentle
look of one who keeps a kind heart under the regal manner induced by
universal adoration.
“What have I to fear?” she said.
“Vengeance,” the detective answered simply. “I have arranged to have
you shadowed, in case----”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” she said. “The idea is intolerable
to me. I am not afraid.”
The detective argued, but in vain.
“It shall be as you wish, Madame,” he said, ultimately.
Vesea got into her carriage, and was driven away. The pair of chestnuts
travelled at a brisk trot through the dark deserted streets of Soho
towards the West End. The carriage had crossed Regent Street and was
just entering Berkeley Square when a hansom, coming at a gallop along
Struton Street on the wrong side of the road, collided violently with
Vesea’s horses at the corner. At the same moment another carriage, a
brougham, came up and stopped. A gentleman jumped out, and assisted in
disengaging Vesea’s coachman and footman from the medley of harness and
horse-flesh. This done, he spoke to Vesea, who, uninjured, was standing
on the footpath.
“One of your chestnuts will have to be shot,” he said, raising his hat.
“May I place my own carriage at your disposal?”
Vesea thankfully accepted his offer.
“Where to?” he inquired.
“Upper Brook Street,” she answered. “But you are sure I do not
inconvenience you?”
“Curiously enough,” he said, “I live in Upper Brook Street myself, and
if I may accompany you----”
“You are more than kind,” she said, and they both entered the brougham,
the gentleman having first thoughtfully taken the number of the peccant
cabby, and given some valuable advice to Vesea’s coachman.
The brougham disappeared at a terrific pace. But it never went within
half a mile of Upper Brook Street. It turned abruptly to the north,
crossed Oxford Street, and stopped in front of a large house in a
remote street near Paddington Station. At the same instant the door
of the house opened, and a man ran down to the carriage. In a moment
Vesea, with a cloth wrapped round her head, was carried struggling
into the house, and the brougham departed. The thing was done as
quickly and silently as in a dream.
The cloth was removed at length, and Vesea found herself in a long bare
room, furnished only with chairs and a table. She realised that the
carriage accident was merely part of a plot to capture her without fuss
and violence. She was incapable of fear, but she was extremely annoyed
and indignant. She looked round for the man who enticed her into his
brougham. He was not to be seen; his share of the matter was over. Two
other men sat at the table. Vesea stared at them in speechless anger.
As to them, they seemed to ignore her.
“Where is the Chief?” said one to the other.
“He will be here in three minutes. We are to proceed with the
examination; time is short.”
Then the two men turned to Vesea, and the elder spoke.
“You will be anxious to know why you are here,” he said.
She gazed at him scornfully, and he continued:
“You are here because you have betrayed the anarchist cause.”
“I am not an anarchist,” she said coldly.
“Admitted. But a week ago a member of our society gave you a warning
to keep away from the Opera House to-night. In so warning you he was
false to his oath----”
“Do you refer to Salti, the tenor?” she asked.
“I do. You perceive we have adherents in high places. Salti, then,
warned you--and you instantly told the police. That was your idea of
gratitude. Did Salti love you?”
“I decline to be cross-examined.”
“It is immaterial. We know that he loved you. Now it is perilous for an
anarchist to love.”
“I do not believe that Salti is one of you,” she broke in.
“He is not,” the man said quietly. “He is dead. He was in the way.”
In spite of herself she started, and both men smiled cynically.
“The point is this,” the elder man proceeded. “We do not know how much
Salti told you. It is possible that he may have blurted out other and
more important--er--schemes than this of the Opera House which has
failed. Have you anything to say?”
“Nothing,” she answered.
“Ah! We expected that. Now, let me point out that you are dangerous to
us, that there is only one possible course open to you. You must join
us.”
“Join you?” she exclaimed, and then laughed.
“Yes,” the man said. “I repeat there is no alternative--none whatever.
You must take the oaths.”
“And if I refuse?”
The man shrugged his shoulders, and after a suggestive pause murmured:
“Well--think of Salti.”
“I do refuse,” she said.
A door opened at the other end of the room, and a third man entered.
“The Chief!” said the younger of the men at the table. “He will
continue the examination.”
The new-comer was comparatively youthful--under thirty--and had the
look of a well-born Italian. He gave a glance at Vesea, stood still,
and then approached the table and sat down.
“This is Louise Vesea,” the first speaker said, and rapidly indicated
how far he had gone. There was a long silence.
“Thanks, brothers,” the Chief said. “By a strange coincidence I know
this lady--this woman, and I feel convinced that it will be better, in
the interests of our cause, if--if I examine her alone.” He spoke with
authority, and yet with a certain queer hesitation.
The two men silently, but with obvious reluctance, rose and left the
room.
When they were alone, the great singer and the Chief fronted each other
in silence.
“Well?” said Vesea.
“Madame,” the Chief began slowly and thoughtfully. “Do you remember
singing in Milan ten years ago? You were at the beginning of your
career then, but already famous.”
His voice was rich and curiously persuasive.
Without wishing to do so, Vesea nodded an affirmative.
“One night you were driving home from the opera, and there was a
riot going on in the streets. The police were everywhere. People
whispered of a secret revolutionary society among the students of
the University. As for the students, after a pitched battle near the
Cathedral, they were flying. Suddenly, looking from your carriage, you
saw a very youthful student, who had been struck on the head, fall
down in the gutter and then get up again and struggle on. You stopped
your carriage. ‘Save me,’ the youth cried, ‘Save me, Signorina. If
the police catch me I shall get ten years’ imprisonment!’ You opened
the door of your carriage, and the youth jumped in. ‘Quick, under the
rug,’ you said quietly. You did not ask me any questions. You didn’t
stay to consider whether the youth might be a dangerous person. You
merely said, ‘Quick, under the rug!’ The youth crept under the rug. The
carriage moved on slowly, and the police, who shortly appeared, never
thought of looking within it for a fugitive young anarchist. The youth
was saved. For two days you had him in your lodging, and then he got
safely away to the coast, and so by ship to another country. Do you
remember that incident, Madame?”
“I remember it well,” she answered. “What happened to the youth?”
“I am he,” the Chief said.
“You?” she exclaimed. “I should scarcely have guessed but for your
voice. You are changed.”
“In our profession one changes quickly.”
“Why do you remind me of that incident?” she asked.
“You saved my life then. I shall save yours now.”
“Is my life really in danger?”
“Unless you joined us--yes.”
She laughed incredulously.
“In London! Impossible!”
He made a gesture with his hands.
“Do not let us argue on that point,” he said gravely. “Go through that
door,” he pointed to the door by which he himself had entered. “You
will find yourself in a small garden. The garden gate leads to a narrow
passage past some stables and so into the street. Go quickly, and take
a cab. Don’t return to your own house. Go somewhere else--anywhere
else. And leave London early to-morrow morning.”
He silently opened the door for her.
“Thank you,” she said. His seriousness had affected her. “How shall you
explain my departure to your--your friends?”
“In my own way,” he replied calmly. “When a man has deliberately
betrayed his cause, there is only one explanation.”
“Betrayed his cause!” She repeated the phrase wonderingly.
“Madame,” he said, “do you suppose they will call it anything else? Go
at once. I will wait half an hour before summoning my comrades. By that
time they will have become impatient. Then you will be safe, and I will
give them my explanation.”
“And that will be----?”
He put her right hand to his lip and then stopped.
“Good-bye, Madame,” he said without replying to the question. “We are
quits. I kiss your hand.”
Almost reluctantly Louise Vesea went forth. And as she reached the
street she felt for the first time that it was indeed a fatal danger
from which she had escaped. She reflected that the Chief had imposed no
secrecy upon her, made no conditions; and she could not help but admire
such a method of repaying a debt. She wondered what his explanation to
his comrades would be.
Half an hour later, when Vesea was far away, there was the sound of a
revolver shot. The other two plotters rushed into the room which the
prima donna had left, and found all the explanation which the Chief had
vouchsafed.
THE EPISODE IN ROOM 222.
The date was the fifth of November, a date easy to remember; not that I
could ever fail to recall it, even without the aid of the associations
which cluster round Guy Fawkes. It was a Friday--and yet there are
people who affect to believe that Friday is not a day singled out from
its six companions for mystery, strangeness, and disaster! The number
of the room was 222, as easy to remember as the date; not that I could
ever fail to recall the number also. Every circumstance in the affair
is fixed in my mind immovably and for ever. The hotel I shall call by
the name of the Grand Junction Terminus Hotel. If this tale were not a
simple and undecorated record of fact, I might with impunity choose for
its scene any one of the big London hotels in order by such a detail
to give a semblance of veracity to my invention; but the story happens
to be absolutely true, and I must therefore, for obvious reasons,
disguise the identity of the place where it occurred. I would only
say that the Grand Junction Railway is one of the largest and one of
the best-managed systems in England, or in the world: and that these
qualities of vastness and of good management extend also to its immense
Terminus Hotel in the North of Central London. The caravanserai (I have
observed that professional writers invariably refer to a hotel as a
caravanserai) is full every night in the week except Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday; and every commercial traveller knows that, except on
these nights, if he wishes to secure a room at the Grand Junction he
must write or telegraph for it in advance. And there are four hundred
bedrooms.
It was somewhat late in the evening when I arrived in London. I had
meant to sleep at a large new hotel in the Strand, but I felt tired,
and I suddenly, on the spur of the moment, decided to stay at the Grand
Junction, if there was space for me. It is thus that Fate works.
I walked into the hall, followed by a platform porter with my bag. The
place seemed just as usual, the perfection of the commonplace, the
business-like, and the unspiritual.
“Have you a room?” I asked the young lady in black, whose yellow hair
shone gaily at the office window under the electric light.
She glanced at her ledgers in the impassive and detached manner which
hotel young ladies with yellow hair invariably affect, and ejaculated:
“No. 221.”
“Pity you couldn’t make it all twos,” I ventured, with timid
jocularity. (How could I guess the import of what I was saying?)
She smiled very slightly, with a distant condescension. It is
astonishing the skill with which a feminine hotel clerk can make a
masculine guest feel small and self-conscious.
“Name?” she demanded.
“Edge.”
“Fourth floor,” she said, writing out the room-ticket and handing it to
me.
In another moment I was in the lift.
No. 221 was the last door but one at the end of the eastern corridor
of the fourth floor. It proved to be a double-bedded room, large,
exquisitely ugly, but perfectly appointed in all matters of comfort; in
short, it was characteristic of the hotel. I knew that every bedroom in
that corridor, and every bedroom in every corridor, presented exactly
the same aspect. One instinctively felt the impossibility of anything
weird, anything bizarre, anything terrible, entering the precincts of
an abode so solid, cheerful, orderly, and middle-class. And yet--but I
shall come to that presently.
It will be well for me to relate all that I did that evening. I washed,
and then took some valuables out of my bag and put them in my pocket.
Then I glanced round the chamber, and amongst other satisfactory
details noticed that the electric lights were so fixed that I could
read in bed without distressing my eyes. I then went downstairs, by
the lift, and into the smoke-room. I had dined on board the express,
and so I ordered nothing but a _café noir_ and a packet of Virginian
cigarettes. After finishing the coffee I passed into the billiard-room,
and played a hundred up with the marker. To show that my nerves were at
least as steady as usual that night, I may mention that, although the
marker gave me fifty and beat me, I made a break of twenty odd which
won his generous approval. The game concluded, I went into the hall
and asked the porter if there were any telegrams for me. There were
not. I noticed that the porter--it was the night-porter, and he had
just come on duty--seemed to have a peculiarly honest and attractive
face. Wishing him good-night, I retired to bed. It was something after
eleven. I read a chapter of Mr. Walter Crane’s “The Bases of Design,”
and having turned off the light, sank into the righteous slumber of a
man who has made a pretty break of 20 odd and drunk nothing but coffee.
At three o’clock I awoke--not with a start, but rather gradually. I
know it was exactly three o’clock because the striking of a notoriously
noisy church clock in the neighbourhood was the first thing I heard.
But the clock had not wakened me. I felt sure that something else,
something far more sinister than a church clock, had been the origin of
disturbance.
I listened. Then I heard it again--It. It was the sound of a groan in
the next room.
“Someone indisposed, either in body or mind,” I thought lightly,
and I tried to go to sleep again. But I could not sleep. The groans
continued, and grew more poignant, more fearsome. At last I jumped out
of bed and turned on the light--I felt easier when I had turned on the
light.
“That man, whoever he is, is dying.” The idea, as it were, sprang at my
throat. “He is dying. Only a dying man, only a man who saw Death by his
side and trembled before the apparition, could groan like that.”
I put on some clothes, and went into the corridor. The corridor seemed
to stretch away into illimitable distance; and far off, miles off, a
solitary electric light glimmered. My end of the corridor was a haunt
of gloomy shadows, except where the open door allowed the light from
my bedroom to illuminate the long monotonous pattern of the carpet.
I proceeded to the door next my own--the door of No. 222, and put my
ear against the panel. The sound of groans was now much more distinct
and more terrifying. Yes. I admit that I was frightened. I called. No
answer. “What’s the matter?” I inquired. No answer. “Are you ill,
or are you doing this for your own amusement?” It was with a sort of
bravado that I threw this last query at the unknown occupant of the
room. No answer. Then I tried to open the door, but it was fast.
“Yes,” I said to myself; “either he’s dying or he’s committed a murder
and is feeling sorry for it. I must fetch the night-porter.”
Now, hotel lifts are not in the habit of working at three a.m., and so
I was compelled to find my way along endless corridors and down flights
of stairs apparently innumerable. Here and there an electric light
sought with its yellow eye to pierce the gloom. At length I reached the
hall, and I well recollect that the tiled floor struck cold into my
slippered but sockless feet.
“There’s a man either dying or very ill in No. 222,” I said to the
night-porter. He was reading _The Evening News_, and appeared to be
very snug in his basket chair.
“Is that so, sir?” he replied.
“Yes,” I insisted. “I think he’s dying. Hadn’t you better do something?”
“I’ll come upstairs with you,” he answered readily, and without further
parley we began the ascent. At the first floor landing the night-porter
stopped and faced me. He was a man about forty-five--every hall-porter
seems to be that age--and he looked like the father of a family.
“If you think he’s dying, sir, I’ll call up the manager, Mr. Thom.”
“Do,” I said.
The manager slept on the first floor, and he soon appeared--a youngish
man in a terra-cotta Jaeger dressing-gown, his eyes full of sleep, yet
alert and anxious to do his duty. I had seen him previously in the
billiard-room. We all three continued our progress to the fourth floor.
Arrived in front of No. 222 we listened intently, but we could only
hear a faint occasional groan.
“He’s nearly dead,” I said. The manager called aloud, but there was
no answer. Then he vainly tried to open the door. The night-porter
departed, and returned with a stout pair of steel tongs. With these,
and the natural ingenuity peculiar to hotel-porters, he forced open the
door, and we entered No. 222.
A stout, middle-aged man lay on the bed fully dressed in black. On the
floor near the bed was a silk hat. As we approached the great body
seemed to flutter, and then it lay profoundly and terribly still. The
manager put his hand on the man’s head, and held the glass of his watch
to the man’s parted grey lips.
“He is dead,” said the manager.
“H’m!” I said.
“I’m sorry you’ve been put to any inconvenience,” said the manager,
“and I’m much obliged to you.”
The cold but polite tone was a request to me to re-enter my own
chamber, and leave the corpse to the manager and the night-porter. I
obeyed.
* * * * *
“What about that man?” I asked the hall-porter early the next, or
rather the same, morning. I had not slept a wink since three o’clock,
nor had I heard a sound in the corridor.
“What man, sir?” the porter said.
“You know,” I returned, rather angrily. “The man who died in the
night--No. 222.”
“I assure you, sir,” he said, “I haven’t the least notion what you
mean.”
Yet his face seemed as honest and open as ever.
I inquired at the office for the manager, and after some difficulty saw
him in his private room.
“I thought I’d just see about that man,” I began.
“What man?” the manager asked, exactly as the porter had asked.
“Look here,” I said, as I was now really annoyed, “it’s all very well
giving instructions to the hall-porter, and I can quite understand you
want the thing kept as quiet as possible. Of course I know that hotels
have a violent objection to corpses. But as I saw the corpse, and was
of some assistance to you----”
“Excuse me,” said the manager. “Either you or I must be completely mad.
And,” he added, “I don’t think it is myself.”
“Do you mean to say,” I remarked with frosty sarcasm, “that you didn’t
enter Room 222 with me this morning at three a.m. and find a dead man
there?”
“I mean to say just that,” he answered.
“Well----.” I got no further. I paid my bill and left. But before
leaving, I went and carefully examined the door of No. 222. The door
plainly showed marks of some iron instrument.
“Here,” I said to the porter as I departed. “Accept this half-crown
from me. I admire you.”
* * * * *
I had a serious illness extending over three months. I was frequently
delirious, and nearly every day I saw the scene in Room No. 222. In the
course of my subsequent travels, I once more found myself, late one
night, at the Grand Junction Terminus Hotel.
“Mr. Edge,” said the night-porter, “I’ve been looking out for you for
weeks and weeks. The manager’s compliments, and he would like to see
you in his room.”
Again I saw the youngish, alert manager.
“Mr. Edge,” he began at once, “it is probable that I owe you an
apology. At any rate, I think it right to inform you that on the night
of the fifth of November, the year before last, exactly twelve months
before your last visit here, a stout man died in Room No. 222, at three
a.m. I forgot the circumstance when you last came to see me in this
room.”
“It seems queer,” I said coldly, “that you should have forgotten such a
circumstance.”
“The fact is,” he replied, “I was not the manager at that time. My
predecessor died two days after the discovery of the corpse in Room
222.”
“And the night-porter--is he, too, a new man?”
“Yes,” said the manager. “The porter who, with the late manager, found
the corpse in Room 222, is now in Hanwell Lunatic Asylum.”
I paused, perhaps in awe.
“Then you think,” I said, “that I was the victim of a hallucination
on my previous visit here? You think I had a glimpse of the world of
spirits?”
“On these matters,” said the manager, “I prefer to think nothing.”
SATURDAY TO MONDAY.
So at length I yielded to repeated invitations, and made up my mind to
visit the Vernons again. And it was in June. I had not been for nearly
two years. The last visit was in the month of August: I remembered it
too well--that year, that month, that day!
Under the most favourable circumstances, it needs enterprise and energy
for a Londoner to pay a week-end visit to a friend’s house in the
country. No matter how intimate the friend--and the Vernons, though
charming and full of good nature, were not really very intimate friends
of mine--there is always an element of risk in the affair; I will go
further and say an element of preliminary unpleasantness. It means
the disarrangement of regular habits; it means packing one’s bag and
lugging it into a hansom; it means a train-journey; it often means a
drive at the other end; it means sleeping in a strange bed and finding
a suitable hook for one’s razor strop the next morning; it means
accommodating oneself to a new social atmosphere, and the expenditure
of much formal politeness. And suppose some hitch occurs--some trifling
contretemps to ruffle the smoothness of the hours--where are you then?
You are bound to sit tight and smile till Monday, and at parting to
enlarge on your sorrow that the visit is over, all the while feeling
intensely relieved; and you have got nothing in exchange for your
discomfort and inconvenience save the satisfaction of duty done--a
poor return, I venture to add. You know you have wasted a week-end, an
irrecoverable week-end of eternity.
However, I boarded the train at St. Pancras in a fairly cheerful
mood, and I tried to look on the bright side of life. The afternoon
was certainly beautiful, and the train not too crowded, and I derived
some pleasure, too, from the contemplation of a new pair of American
boots which I had recently purchased. I remembered that Mrs. Vernon
used to accuse me of a slight foppishness in the matter of boots, at
the same time wishing audibly (in his hearing) that Jack would give
a little more attention to the lower portions of his toilet; Jack
was a sportsman, and her husband. And I thought of their roomy and
comfortable house on the side of the long slope to Bedbury, and of
their orchard and the hammocks under the trees in the orchard, and of
tea and cakes being brought out to those hammocks, and of the sunsets
over the Delectable Mountains (we always called them the Delectable
Mountains because they are the identical hills which Bunyan had in mind
when he wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress”), and of Jack’s easy drawl and
Mrs. Vernon’s chatter, and the barking of the dogs, and the stamping
of the horses in the stable. And I actually thought: This will be a
pleasant change after London.
“I do hope they won’t be awkward and self-conscious,” I said to myself.
“And I also must try not to be.”
You see I was thinking of that last visit and what occurred during
it. I was engaged to be married then, to a girl named Lucy Wren. Just
as I had arrived at the Vernons’ house in their dog-cart the highly
rural postman came up in his cart, and after delivering some letters
produced still another letter and asked if anyone of the name of
Bostock was staying there. I took the letter: the address was in Lucy’s
handwriting (I had seen her only on the previous night, and of course
she knew of my visit). I read the letter, standing there in the garden
near the front door, and having read it I laughed loudly and handed
it to Mrs. Vernon, saying: “What do you think of that for a letter?”
In the letter Lucy said that she had decided to jilt me (she didn’t
use those words--oh no!), and that on the following day she was going
to be married to another man. Yes, that was a cheerful visit I paid
to the Vernons, that August! At first I didn’t know what I was doing.
They soothed me, calmed me. They did their best. It wasn’t their fault
after all. They suggested I should run back to town and see Lucy; Jack
offered to go with me. (Jack!) I declined. I declined to do anything. I
ate hearty meals. I insisted on our usual excursions. I talked a lot. I
forced them to pretend that nothing had happened. And on Monday morning
I went off with a cold smile. But it was awful. It stood between me
and the Vernons for a long time, a terrible memory. And when next Mrs.
Vernon encountered me, in London, there were tears in her eyes and she
was speechless.
Now you will understand better why I said to myself, with much
sincerity: “I do hope they won’t be awkward and self-conscious. And I
also must try not to be.”
As the train approached Bedbury I had qualms. I had qualms about the
advisability of this visit to the Vernons. How could it possibly
succeed, with that memory stalking like a ghost in the garden near the
front door of their delightful and hospitable house? How could----?
Then we rumbled over the familiar bridge, and I saw the familiar
station yard, and the familiar dog-cart, and the familiar Dalmatian
dog, and the familiar white mare that was rather young and skittish
when Lucy jilted me. “That mare must be rising seven now,” I thought,
“and settled down in life.”
I descried Mrs. Vernon waiting on the platform to welcome me, with
the twins. Alas! I had forgotten the twins, those charming and frail
little girls always dressed alike. Invariably, on my previous visits, I
had brought something for the twins--a toy, a box of sweets, a couple
of bead necklaces. Never once had I omitted to lay my tribute on the
altar of their adorable infancy. And now I had forgotten, and my
forgetfulness saddened me, because I knew that it would sadden them;
they would expect, and they would be disappointed; they would taste the
bitterness of life. “My poor little dears!” I thought, as they smiled
and shouted, to see my head out of the carriage window, “I feel for you
deeply.”
This beginning was a bad one. Like all men who have suffered without
having deserved to suffer, I was superstitious, and I felt that the
beginning augured ill. I resigned myself, even before the train had
quite stopped, to a constrained and bored week-end with the Vernons.
“Well?” I exclaimed, with an affectation of jollity, descending from
the carriage.
“Well?” responded Mrs. Vernon, with the same affectation.
It was lamentable, simply lamentable, the way in which that tragic
memory stood between us and prevented either of us from showing a
true, natural, simple self to the other. Mrs. Vernon could say little;
I could say little; and what we did say was said stiffly, clumsily.
Perhaps it was fortunate, on the whole, that the twins were present.
They at any rate were natural and self-possessed.
“And how old are you now?” I asked them.
“We are seven,” they answered politely in their high, thin voices.
“Then you are like the little girl’s family in Wordsworth’s poem,” I
remarked.
It was astonishing how this really rather good joke fell flat. Of
course the twins did not see it. But Mrs. Vernon herself did not see
it, and I too thought it, at the moment, inexpressibly feeble. As for
the twins they could not hide their disappointment. Always before, I
had handed them a little parcel, immediately, either at the station
if they came to meet me, or at the house-door, if they did not. And
to-day I had no little parcel. I could perceive that they were hoping
against hope, even yet. I could perceive that they were saying to each
other with their large, expressive eyes: “Perhaps he has put it in his
portmanteau this time. He can’t have forgotten us.”
I could have wept for them. (I was in that state.) But I could not for
the life of me tell them outright that I had forgotten the customary
gift, and that I should send it by post on my return. No, I could not
do that. I was too constrained, too ill at ease. So we all climbed up
into the dog-cart. Mrs. Vernon and I in front, and the twins behind
with the portmanteau to make weight; and the white mare set off with a
bound, and the Dalmatian barked joyously, and we all pretended to be as
joyous as the dog.
“Where’s Jack?” I inquired.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Vernon, as though I had startled her. “He had to go to
Bedbury Sands to look at a couple of greyhounds--it would have been too
late on Monday. I’m afraid he won’t be back for tea.”
I guessed instantly that, with the average man’s cowardice, he had run
away in order to escape meeting me as I entered the house. He had left
that to his wife. No doubt he hoped that by the time he returned I
should have settled down and the first awkwardness and constraint would
be past.
We said scarcely anything else, Mrs. Vernon and I, during the
three-mile drive. And it was in silence that we crossed the portal
of the house. Instead of having tea in the orchard we had it in the
drawing-room, the twins being present. And the tea might have been a
funeral feast.
“Well,” I thought, “I anticipated a certain mutual diffidence, but
nothing so bad as this. If they couldn’t be brighter than this, why in
heaven’s name did they force me to come down?”
Mrs. Vernon was decidedly in a pitiable condition. She felt for me so
much that I felt for her.
“Come along, dears,” she said to the twins, after tea was over, and the
tea-things cleared away. And she took the children out of the room. But
before leaving she handed me a note, in silence. I opened it and read:
“Be as kind to her as you can; she has suffered a great deal.”
Then, ere I had time to think, the door, which Mrs. Vernon had softly
closed, was softly opened, and a woman entered. It was Lucy, once Lucy
Wren. She was as beautiful as ever, and no older. But her face was the
face of one who had learnt the meaning of life. Till that moment I had
sought everywhere for reasons to condemn her conduct towards me, to
intensify its wickedness. Now, suddenly, I began to seek everywhere
for reasons to excuse her. She had been so young, so guileless, so
ignorant. I had been too stern for her. I had frightened her. How
could she be expected to know that the man who had supplanted me was
worthless? She had acted as she did partly from youthful foolishness
and partly from timidity. She had been in a quandary. She had lost her
head. And so it had occurred that one night, that night in August, she
had kissed me falsely, with a lie on her lips, knowing that her jilting
letter was already in the post. What pangs she must have experienced
then! Yes, as she entered the room and gazed at me with her blue eyes,
my heart overflowed with genuine sorrow for her.
“Lucy!” I murmured, “you are in mourning!”
“Yes,” she said. “Didn’t you know? Has Mrs. Vernon said nothing? He is
dead.”
And she sank down by the side of my chair and hid her face, and I could
only see her honey-coloured hair. I stroked it. I knew all her history,
in that supreme moment, without a word of explanation. I knew that she
had been self-deceived, that she had been through many an agony, that
she had always loved me.... And she was so young, so young.
I kissed her hair.
* * * * *
“How thankful I am!” breathed Mrs. Vernon afterwards. “Suppose it had
not turned out well!”
Jack Vernon had calculated with some skill. When he came back, the
constraint, the diffidence, was at an end.
A DINNER AT THE LOUVRE.
The real name of this renowned West-End restaurant is not the Louvre.
I have christened it so because the title seems to me to suit it very
nicely, and because a certain disguise is essential. The proprietors of
the Louvre--it belongs to an esteemed firm of caterers--would decidedly
object to the coupling of the name of their principal establishment
with an affair so curious and disconcerting as that which I am about
to relate. And their objection would be perfectly justifiable.
Nevertheless, the following story is a true one, and the details of it
are familiar to at least half a dozen persons whose business it is,
for one reason or another, to keep an eye upon that world of crime and
pleasure, which is bounded on the east by Bow Street and on the left by
Hyde Park Corner.
It was on an evening in the last week of May that I asked Rosie Mardon
to dine with me at the Louvre. I selected the Louvre, well knowing that
from some mysterious cause all popular actresses prefer the Louvre
to other restaurants, although the quality of the food there is not
always impeccable. I am not in the habit of inviting the favourites
of the stage to dinner, especially favourites who enjoy a salary of
seventy-five pounds a week, as Rosie Mardon did and does. But in the
present case I had a particular object in view. Rosie Mardon was
taking the chief feminine rôle in my new light comedy, then in active
rehearsal at the Alcazar Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. We had almost
quarrelled over her interpretation of the big scene in the second act,
which differed materially from my own idea of how the scene ought
to go. Diplomacy was necessary. I prided myself on my powers as a
diplomatist: I knew that if I could chat with Miss Rosie in the privacy
of a table for two at a public restaurant (there is no privacy more
discreet), I could convert her to my opinions on that second act.
“Have you engaged a table upstairs?” was her first inquiry, as with the
assistance of a stout and gorgeous official I helped her to alight from
her brougham at the portico of the house. (She looked lovely, and half
the street was envying me; but unfortunately Rosie’s looks have nothing
to do with the tale; let me therefore dismiss them as a dangerous
topic.)
“No,” I said; “but I expect there’ll be plenty of room.”
“Plenty of room!” she exclaimed, with a charming scorn and a glance
which said: “This young man really has a great deal to learn about the
art of entertaining ladies at the Louvre.” I admit that I had.
“Oh, yes!” I insisted with bravado. “Plenty!”
“Ask the booking-clerk,” she commanded, and with all her inimitable
grace she sank like a fatigued sylph into one of the easy-chairs that
furnished the entrance-hall, and drew her cloak round her shoulders.
The booking-clerk, in faultless evening-dress, with a formidable silver
chain encircling his neck, stood at the foot of the grand staircase,
which was very grand. The booking-clerk politely but coldly informed
me that he had not a table upstairs; he said that every table had been
booked since a quarter to seven.
“Well, I suppose we must be content with downstairs, but I much prefer
the balcony,” said Rosie when I told her. And Rosie was obviously
cross. My dinner was beginning ominously.
I returned to the booking-clerk, who was then good enough to tell me
that he had no table downstairs either. I felt rather an ass, but I
never permit my asininity to go too far. I assumed an attitude of
martial decision, and ordered one of the pages to get me a hansom.
“We will dine at the Savoy,” I said, very loud. Every official in the
neighbourhood heard me. Rosie smiled, whether at the prospect of the
Savoy or at my superb indignation I know not.
Just as we were emerging into the street the booking-clerk, his silver
chain clinking, touched me on the shoulder.
“I can let you have a table upstairs now, sir,” said he. “A party that
engaged one has not arrived.”
“I thought they wouldn’t let us run away to the Savoy,” I remarked to
Rosie _sotto voce_ and with satisfaction. I had triumphed, and the
pretty creature was a witness of my triumph.
“What name, sir?” asked the clerk.
“John Delf,” I replied.
His gesture showed that he recognised that name, and this pleased me
too. Had not my first farcical comedy run a hundred and sixty nights at
the Alcazar? It was only proper that my reputation should have reached
even the clerks of restaurants. Another official recognised Miss
Rosie’s much-photographed face, and we passed up the staircase with
considerable éclat.
“You managed that rather well,” said Miss Rosie, dimpling with
satisfaction, as we sat down in the balcony of the Grand Hall of the
Louvre. The dinner was not beginning so ominously after all.
I narrate these preliminary incidents to show how large a part is
played by pure chance in the gravest events of our lives.
I ordered the ten-and-sixpenny dinner. Who could offer to the unique
Rosie Mardon a five-shilling or a seven-and-sixpenny repast when one
at half-a-guinea was to be obtained? Not I! The meal started with
anchovies, which Rosie said she adored. (She also adored nougat,
_crême de menthe_, and other pagan gods.) As Rosie put the first bit
of anchovy into her adorable mouth, the Yellow Hungarian Band at the
other end of the crowded hall struck up the Rakocsy March, and the
whole place was filled with clamour. Why people insist on deafening
music as an accompaniment to the business of eating I cannot imagine.
Personally, I like to eat in peace and quietude. But I fear I am an
exception. Rosie’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the sound of the
band, and I judged the moment opportune to ascertain her wishes on
the subject of wine. She stated them in her own imperious way, and I
signalled to the waiter.
Now I had precisely noticed, or I fancied I noticed, an extraordinary
obsequiousness in this waiter--an obsequiousness surpassing the
usual obsequiousness of waiters. I object to it, and my attitude of
antagonism naturally served to intensify it.
“What’s the matter with the fellow?” I said to Rosie after I had
ordered the wine.
“He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?” was her only reply, as she gazed
absently at the floor below us crowded with elegant diners.
And the waiter was indeed somewhat handsome. A light-haired man, and,
like all the waiters at the Louvre, a foreigner with a deficient
knowledge of English.
“I expect he’s lost on his bets to-day,” Rosie added. “They all bet,
you know, and he’s after a rousing tip to make up.”
“Oh, is that it?” I said, wondering at the pretty creature’s knowledge
of the world. And then I began to talk about my play in my best
diplomatic manner, inwardly chafing at the interruption of that weird
Yellow Hungarian orchestra, which with bitter irony had hung over the
railings of its stand a placard bearing the words, “By desire.”
The meal proceeded brilliantly. My diplomacy was a success. The
champagne was a success. We arrived at the sorbet, that icy and sweet
product which in these days of enormous repasts is placed half-way
through the meal in order to renew one’s appetite for the second half.
Your modern chef is the cruel tyrant of the stomach, and shows no mercy.
The fair-haired waiter’s hand distinctly trembled as he served the
sorbets. I looked at mine for some moments, hesitating whether or not
to venture upon it. I am a martyr to indigestion.
“It’s delicious,” said Rosie. “More delicious than the second act of
your ‘Partners.’”
“Then I must risk it,” I replied, and plunged the spoon into the
half-frozen greenish mass. As I did so I caught sight of our waiter,
who was leaning against the service table at the corner of the balcony.
His face was as white as a sheet. I thought he must be ill, and I felt
sorry for him. However, I began to swallow the sorbet, and the sorbet
was in truth rather choice. Presently our waiter clutched at the sleeve
of another waiter who was passing, and whispered a few words in his
ear. The second waiter turned to look at me, and replied. Then our
waiter almost ran towards our table.
“Excuse me, sirr,” he murmured indistinctly, rolling the “r.” “Are you
not Count Vandernoff?”
“I am not,” I replied briefly.
He hesitated; his hand wavered towards the sorbet, but he withdrew it
and departed.
“Mon Dieu!” I heard him exclaim weakly under his breath.
“Possibly he’s been taking me for an aristocratic compatriot of his
own,” I said to Rosie, “and that explains the obsequiousness. You were
wrong about the betting.”
I laughed, but I felt ill at ease, and to cover my self-consciousness I
went on eating the sorbet very slowly.
I must have consumed nearly a third of it when I became conscious of a
movement behind me; a mysterious hand shot out and snatched away the
sorbet.
“Sir!” I protested, looking round. A tall, youngish man in evening
dress, but wearing his hat, stood on my left. “Sir! what in the name
of----?”
“Your pardon!” answered the man in a low hurried voice. I could not
guess his nationality. “Let me beg you to leave here at once, and come
with me.”
“I shall do no such thing,” I replied. “Waiter--call the manager.” But
our waiter had disappeared.
“It is a matter of life and death,” said the man.
“To whom?”
“To you.”
The man removed his hat and looked appealingly at Miss Rosie.
“Don’t let’s have a scene in here,” said Rosie, with her worldly
wisdom. And, impelled by the utter seriousness of the man, we went out.
I forgot the bill, and no one presented it.
“I solemnly ask you to take a little drive with me,” said the man, when
we had reached the foyer. “I have a carriage at the door.”
“Again, why?” I demanded.
He whispered: “You are poisoned. I am saving your life. I rely on your
discretion.”
My spine turned chilly, and I glanced at Miss Rosie. “I will come with
you,” she said.
In five minutes we had driven to a large house in Golden Square. We
were ushered into a lavishly-furnished drawing-room, and we sat down.
Rosie’s lips were set. I admired her demeanour during those moments.
The man who said he was saving my life poured some liquid from a phial
into a glass, and handed it to me.
“Emetics are useless. Drink this. In an hour you will feel the first
symptoms of illness. They may be severe, though that is improbable,
since you ate only a portion of the stuff. In any event, they will not
last. To-morrow you will be perfectly well. Let me advise you to go to
bed at once. My carriage is at your service and the service of this
lady.” He bowed.
I drank the antidote.
“Thanks for all these surprises,” I said coldly. “But does it not occur
to you that some explanation is due to me?”
He pondered a minute.
“I will explain,” he replied. “It is your right. I will explain in two
words. You have heard of Count Vandernoff, attached to the Russian
Embassy in London? You may have seen in the papers that the Count has
been appointed by the Tsar to be the new governor of Helsingfors, the
Finnish capital?”
I nodded.
“You are aware,” he continued suavely, “of the widespread persecutions
in Finland, the taking away of the Constitution, the Russianising
of all offices, the censorship of the Press? This persecution has
given rise to a secret society, which I will call the Friends of
Finnish Freedom. Its methods are drastic. Count Vandernoff was known
to be violently antagonistic to Finnish freedom. He dines often
at the Louvre. He had engaged a table for to-night. The waiter in
charge of that table was, like myself, a member of the society, but,
unfortunately, rather a raw hand. The Count, quite unexpectedly, did
not arrive at the Louvre to-night. The waiter, however, took you for
the Count. The sorbet which I snatched out of your hand was---- Need I
say more?”
“Poisoned?”
“Poisoned. The affair was carefully arranged, and only a pure accident
could have upset it. That accident occurred.”
“What was it?”
“The Count’s coupé was knocked over by an omnibus in Piccadilly two
hours ago, and the Count was killed.”
There was a pause.
“Then he will never be governor of Helsingfors,” I said.
“Heaven helps the right!” the man answered. “You English love freedom.
You cannot guess what we in Finland have suffered. Let me repeat that I
rely on your discretion.”
We left, Miss Rosie and I; and the kind-hearted girl delivered me
safely into the hands of my housekeeper. I was ill, but I soon
recovered.
A few days later I met Miss Rosie at rehearsal.
“Did you notice?” she said to me, with an awed air, “our table was No.
13 that night.”
THE END.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
ESTABLISHED 1798
[Illustration]
T. NELSON
& SONS, LTD.
PRINTERS AND
PUBLISHERS
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.