THE MYSTERY THICKENS
When I regained the bridge I crossed to the further parapet and looked
down at the river. I could see nothing of the boat; doubtless it had
passed out of sight behind a string of barges that lay in the tideway.
As I watched, the moon was veiled again by the clouds that rolled up
from the west, heralding a second storm; and in another minute or so a
fresh deluge had commenced.
But I scarcely heeded it. I leaned against the parapet staring at the
dark, mysterious river and the lights that fringed and spanned it like
strings of blurred jewels, seen mistily through the driving rain.
I was bareheaded, for the fierce gust of wind that came as harbinger of
the squall had swept off my hat and whirled it into the water, where
doubtless it would be carried down-stream, on the swiftly ebbing tide,
in the wake of that boat which was hastening--whither? I don't think I
knew at the time that my hat was gone. I have lived through some strange
and terrible experiences; but I have seldom suffered more mental agony
than I did during those few minutes that I stood in the rain on
Westminster Bridge.
I was trembling from head to foot, my soul was sick, my mind distracted
by the effort to find any plausible explanation of the scene I had just
witnessed.
What was this mystery that encompassed the girl I loved; that had closed
around her now? A mystery that I had never even suspected till a few
hours ago, though I had seen Anne every day for this month past,--ever
since I first met her.
But, after all, what did I know of her antecedents? Next to nothing; and
that I had learned mainly from my cousin Mary.
Now I came to think of it, Anne had told me very little about herself. I
knew that her father, Anthony Pendennis, came of an old family, and
possessed a house and estate in the west of England, which he had let on
a long lease. Anne had never seen her ancestral home, for her father
lived a nomadic existence on the Continent; one which she had shared,
since she left the school at Neuilly, where she and Mary first became
friends.
I gathered that she and her father were devoted to each other; and that
he had spared her unwillingly for this long-promised visit to her old
school-fellow. Mary, I knew, would have welcomed Mr. Pendennis also; but
by all accounts he was an eccentric person, who preferred to live
anywhere rather than in England, the land of his birth. He and Anne were
birds of passage, who wintered in Italy or Spain or Egypt as the whim
seized him; and spent the summer in Switzerland or Tyrol, or elsewhere.
In brief they wandered over Europe, north and south, according to the
season; avoiding only the Russian Empire and the British Isles.
I had never worried my mind with conjectures as to the reason of this
unconventional mode of living. It had seemed to me natural enough, as I,
too, was a nomad; a stranger and sojourner in many lands, since I left
the old homestead in Iowa twelve years ago, to seek my fortune in the
great world. During these wonderful weeks I had been spellbound, as it
were, by Anne's beauty, her charm. When I was with her I could think
only of her; and in the intervals,--well, I still thought of her, and
was dejected or elated as she had been cruel or kind. To me her many
caprices had seemed but the outcome of her youthful light-heartedness;
of a certain naive coquetry, that rendered her all the more dear and
desirable; "a rosebud set about with little wilful thorns;" a girl who
would not be easily wooed and won, and, therefore, a girl well worth
winning.
But now--now--I saw her from a different standpoint; saw her enshrouded
in a dark mystery, the clue to which eluded me. Only one belief I clung
to with passionate conviction, as a drowning man clings to a straw. She
loved me. I could not doubt that, remembering the expression of her
wistful face as we parted under the portico so short a time ago, though
it seemed like a lifetime. Had she planned her flight even then,--if
flight it was,--and what else could it be?
My cogitations terminated abruptly for the moment as a heavy hand was
laid on my shoulder, and a gruff voice said in my ear: "Come, none o'
that, now! What are you up to?"
I turned and faced a burly policeman, whom I knew well. He recognized
me, also, and saluted.
"Beg pardon; didn't know it was you, sir. Thought it was one of these
here sooicides, or some one that had had--well, a drop too much."
He eyed me curiously. I dare say I looked, in my hatless and drenched
condition, as if I might come under the latter category.
"It's all right," I answered, forcing a laugh. "I wasn't meditating a
plunge in the river. My hat blew off, and when I looked after it I saw
something that interested me, and stayed to watch."
It was a lame explanation and not precisely true. He glanced over the
parapet in his turn. The rain was abating once more, and the light was
growing as the clouds sped onwards. The moon was at full, and would only
set at dawn.
"I don't see anything," he remarked. "What was it, sir? Anything
suspicious?"
His tone inferred that it must have been something very much out of the
common to have kept me there in the rain. Having told him so much I was
bound to tell him more.
"A rowboat, with two or three people in it; going down-stream. That's
unusual at this time of night--or morning--isn't it?"
He grinned widely.
"Was that all? It wasn't worth the wetting you've got, sir!"
"I don't see where the joke comes in," I said.
"Well, sir, you newspaper gents are always on the lookout for
mysteries," he asserted, half apologetically. "There's nothing out of
the way in a boat going up or down-stream at any hour of the day or
night; or if there was the river police would be on its track in a
jiffy. They patrol the river same as we walk our beat. It might have
been one of their boats you saw, or some bargees as had been making a
night of it ashore. If I was you, I'd turn in as soon as possible.
'Tain't good for any one to stand about in wet clothes."
We walked the length of the bridge together, and he continued to hold
forth loquaciously. We parted, on the best of terms, at the end of his
beat; and following his advice, I walked rapidly homewards. I was
chilled to the bone, and unutterably miserable, but if I stayed out all
night that would not alter the situation.
The street door swung back under my touch, as I was in the act of
inserting my latch-key in the lock. Some one had left it open, in
defiance of the regulations, well known to every tenant of the block. I
slammed it with somewhat unnecessary vigor, and the sound went booming
and echoing up the well of the stone staircase, making a horrible din,
fit to wake the seven sleepers of Ephesus.
It did waken the housekeeper's big watch-dog, chained up in the
basement, and he bayed furiously. I leaned over the balustrade and
called out. He knew my voice, and quieted down at once, but not before
his master had come out in his pyjamas, yawning and blinking. Poor old
Jenkins, his rest was pretty frequently disturbed, for if any one of the
bachelor tenants of the upper flats--the lower ones were let out as
offices--forgot his street-door key, or returned in the small hours in a
condition that precluded him from manipulating it, Jenkins would be rung
up to let him in; and, being one of the best of good sorts, would
certainly guide him up the staircase and put him comfortably to bed.
"I'm right down sorry, Jenkins," I called. "I found the street door
open, and slammed it without thinking."
"Open! Well there, who could have left it open, going out or in?" he
exclaimed, seeming more perturbed than the occasion warranted. "Must
have been quite a short time back, for it isn't an hour since Caesar
began barking like he did just now; and he never barks for nothing. I
went right up the stairs and there was no one there and not a sound.
The door was shut fast enough then, for I tried it. It couldn't have
been Mr. Gray or Mr. Sellars, for they're away week ending, and Mr.
Cassavetti came in before twelve. I met him on the stairs as I was
turning the lights down."
"Perhaps he went out again to post," I suggested. "Good night, Jenkins."
"Good night, sir. You got caught in the storm, then?" He had just seen
how wet I was, and eyed me curiously, as the policeman had done.
"Yes, couldn't see a cab and had to come through it. Lost my hat, too;
it blew off," I answered over my shoulder, as I ran up the stairs.
Lightly clad though he was, Jenkins seemed inclined to stay gossiping
there till further orders.
When I got into my flat and switched on the lights, I found I still
held, crumpled up in my hand, the bit of geranium I had picked up on the
river steps. But for that evidence I might have persuaded myself that I
had imagined the whole thing. I dropped the crushed petals into the
waste-paper basket, and, as I hastily changed from my wet clothes into
pyjamas, I mentally rehearsed the scene over and over again. Could I
have been misled by a chance resemblance? Impossible. Anne was not
merely a beautiful girl, but a strikingly distinctive personality. I had
recognized her figure, her gait, as I would have recognized them among a
thousand; that fleeting glimpse of her face had merely confirmed the
recognition. As for her presence in Westminster at a time when she
should have been at Mrs. Dennis Sutherland's house in Kensington, or at
home with the Cayleys in Chelsea, that could be easily accounted for on
the presumption that she had not stayed long at Mrs. Sutherland's. Had
the Cayleys already discovered her flight? Probably not. Was Cassavetti
cognizant of it,--concerned with it in any way; and was the incident
of the open door that had so perplexed Jenkins another link in the
mysterious chain? At any rate, Cassavetti was not the man dressed as a
sailor; though he might have been the man in the boat.
The more I brooded over it the more bewildered--distracted--my brain
became. I tried to dismiss the problem from my mind, "to give it up," in
fact; and, since sleep was out of the question, to occupy myself with
preparations for the packing that must be done to-morrow--no, to-day,
for the dawn had come--if I were to start for Russia on Monday morning.
But it was no use. I could not concentrate my mind on anything;
also, though I'm an abstemious man as a rule, I guess I put away a
considerable amount of whiskey. Anyhow, I've no recollection of going to
bed; but I woke with a splitting headache, and a thirst I wouldn't take
five dollars for, and the first things I saw were a whiskey bottle and
soda syphon--both empty--on the dressing-table.
As I lay blinking at those silent witnesses--the bottle had been nearly
full overnight--and trying to remember what had happened, there came a
knock at my bedroom door, and Mrs. Jenkins came in with my breakfast
tray.
She was an austere dame, and the glance she cast at that empty whiskey
bottle was more significant and accusatory than any words could have
been; though all she said was: "I knocked before, sir, with your shaving
water, but you didn't hear. It's cold now, but I'll put some fresh
outside directly."
I mumbled meek thanks, and, when she retreated, poured out some tea. I
guessed there were eggs and bacon, the alpha and omega of British ideas
of breakfast, under the dish cover; but I did not lift it. My soul--and
my stomach--revolted at the very thought of such fare.
I had scarcely sipped my tea when I heard the telephone bell ring in the
adjoining room. I scrambled up and was at the door when Mrs. Jenkins
announced severely: "The telephone, Mr. Wynn," and retreated to the
landing.
"Hello?"
"Is that Mr. Wynn?" responded a soft, rich, feminine voice that set my
pulses tingling. "Oh, it is you, Maurice; I'm so glad. We rang you up
from Chelsea, but could get no answer. You won't know who it is
speaking; it is I, Anne Pendennis!"