A GRAY-LINED CLOAK.
“I’m going to win!” said Hester Murray to herself breathlessly. “Oh,
I’m going to win!”
For her case had been taken up by the cleverest barrister in London,
and, as he showed it to her, faultlessly dovetailed together, there
was not a flaw in it. Maurice Davidge, even, who, for his own reasons,
had posed this ten years back as John Davidge, was in London, and in
self-defense had chosen to stand his chance for false impersonation and
misappropriation of money rather than take John Davidge’s sins on his
shoulders.
For John Davidge’s father had had excellent cause to pension off his
son. A long-gone-by agrarian riot and murder in Ireland had been John
Davidge’s work, and by a queer chain of circumstances had come home to
him now.
Maurice, to save his neck, which he had ignorantly ventured in London,
was glad enough to have Hester Murray corroborate his tale. And,
indeed, there was no doubt about his identity. Witness after witness
cropped up to establish that, and the death and burial of the true
John Davidge, who had lived long enough to make Hester’s marriage to
Murray null and void, and died just in time to legalize her union with
Levallion.
But it was queer that, as she looked at her lawyer’s triumphant,
confident letter, a shiver took her; the shiver old women call
footsteps on your grave. She got up and drank some brandy, nearly neat.
At the bungalow she had got into the way of keeping her heart up with
spirits, but she would break that off now. Yet she took another glass
before her shivering-fit would pass.
“It was that dream!” she said to herself. “It unstrung me. I wish I
knew what it meant. But dreams”--the brandy was warming her now--“are
rubbish! Only thoughts, after all.”
Yet that dream had made her wake up, crying out till Adrian--that
Adrian who had Levallion’s blood in him--came to her from the next room.
“What’s the matter?” he cried, a bonny figure in the half-light, with
his ruffled head and his tumbled nightgown.
“I dreamed I was on a swing!” She caught him to her.
“That wasn’t anything,” climbing into her bed.
“No, of course not.” But she did not tell the child her whole dream.
There was she, Hester Murray, sitting on a swing that hung high over
the heads of a great crowd of people. In front of her, so that as she
swung, she must touch it, was a flower-covered platform. On it she
saw herself--yes, her very self--in widow’s weeds, holding her boy by
the hand, among a group of people who were crying: “Long live Lord
Levallion!” cheering for the new heir.
The swing began to move forward, and something made her look over
her shoulder. Behind her, precisely as far away as the flower-decked
platform, so that as she swung back she must touch him, stood the dead
Levallion, in his grave-clothes. He smiled, that smile that had cut
her many a time, and pointed. At his right hand was the gallows, and a
hangman with a black mask.
The swing flew through the air, touched the platform. The dreamer tried
to jump to it, and found she was tied by a cord. Back, back went the
swing toward the dead man, whose outstretched hand would catch and
hold it fast. Back--with a shriek of torture Hester Murray woke, and
trembled at her child’s touch.
“I’m a fool!” she thought, now. “It was nightmare. I had nothing to do
with it. I never was in Levallion’s house.”
But apprehension had her by the throat. If she had dared she would
almost have thrown up her claim and her child’s. But to dare that was
out of her power this three weeks past.
“I must go out. The air may steady me. I’m nervous.” If it was not too
late she would go to the hospital, for Bob Murray, by some miracle, was
lingering still. Quite gratuitously his quondam wife wished he would
die. Not that it would really matter to her case; she would be rid of
him effectually when she was proved to be the Countess of Levallion,
but if he died quietly, he would not be able to air some small
details that shed no glory on her life in Eaton Place. He might deny
Levallion’s going there till he was black in the face, no one would
believe him. And still she wished feverishly that he was dead.
But she was too late at the hospital, or too something. The hall
porter informed her that the house surgeon was busy at an operation,
and--having vainly expected a tip at her previous visits--could get her
no information on the case she inquired about, except that the man was
alive.
Mrs. Murray walked slowly toward Regent Street, that the lights and
the crowd might cheer her. At Berry’s she went in and had dinner, with
reckless extravagance. There was nothing to go home for to-night, and
it would pass the time.
It had been five o’clock when she started; it was nearer ten than nine
when she got back to Starr Street, her causeless apprehension utterly
gone, and her small, dainty face quite gay.
“A gentleman is waiting to see you, madam!” The landlady was in the
entry as Mrs. Murray’s latch-key let her in. There was no secret about
her being the Mrs. Murray whose case had electrified London, and the
future Countess of Levallion had everything she chose to ask for in the
squalid lodgings.
“What gentleman?” The door half-closed, the latch-key half-way to her
pocket, Hester stood.
“I couldn’t say. I think he was here yesterday.”
“Oh, yes!” with a little relieved laugh. “My lawyer.” And she went
into the sitting-room with her oddly boyish step suitably adjusted to
smoothness. The door slipped from her hand and banged.
A tall man, clean-shaven, except for a heavy dark mustache, was pacing
irritably up and down the room. His plain blue serge was exquisitely
cut, but oddly narrow in the chest, as if it had been made for some
other man.
“How dare you come here?” she said, her clear voice low with fury.
“It’s enough to ruin me.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You talk nonsense. Have I no sense? If I run any risk it is because
you were out. Did I not say,” angrily, “stay in, stay in, stay in?” His
uplifted hand seemed to threaten her, for she cowered under it. “For
you, there is no risk at all.”
“You said last night you could not come again. That there was risk!” As
she looked at him her dream came back to her, though he had not been in
it, and her voice came harsh and sudden.
“What brings you, and where have you been?”
His hand fell on her slight shoulder.
“Last night was last night!” he said. “It’s none of your business where
I’ve been, but I don’t mind telling you. Down at Levallion.”
“Well?” she said, as if it were no news to her.
“If I hadn’t gone it would not have been well--for you,” he said.
“Though I don’t know. Did you do”--curiously--“what I told you to?”
“I couldn’t,” carelessly. “I’ve had no chance.”
“What!” savagely.
“I couldn’t do it in daylight!” she cried. “I don’t see how I can do it
at all. There’s always some one looking at me. If that’s what you mean,
you were a fool to come here! The thing is safer here than anywhere; it
doesn’t matter in any case.”
“Get it,” ordered the man, and his face had grown ten years older.
“Since you can’t make yourself safe, I must. Go!”
“I won’t do anything in the dark,” she said. “How do I know what you
want it for--other people may trust you, I don’t.”
His hands opened and shut, as if for one second it was hard work to
keep them off her, though he loved her in his way.
“You can trust me--better than yourself,” he said, close to her ear.
“Listen! I went down to Levallion. I told you I should not, but I did.
And there in broad daylight, with a field-glass, I see Captain Gordon
appear--that black little beast, Sir Thomas; the lawyer. I have no
field-glass for my ears, I cannot make them like my eyes. But----”
“They’d nothing of yours?” she gasped.
“No,” softly, but his nails were hurting her shoulder. “But they had of
yours. Had you no sense--did you not know that accursed dog tore your
cloak that night in the wood?”
“I never looked at it!” she said wildly.
“Look now, then; for they had a piece of it in their hands. May the
devil burn them for not showing it at the inquest! I’d have--and now
you’ve got it still! Even though I told you to take no chances, to get
rid of it if you had to burn this house down.”
“They can’t think of me,” hardily. “I was in Boulogne.”
“How do I know whom they think of?” with sudden fury. “They have gone
back for some reason to the woman they could not trace. I hear from
people that all this time Captain Gordon has been in London. What
brought him back to-day to look at that black-and-gray rag? If I had
not gone down, the police might have fitted it to your cloak.”
“How dared you come, with Gordon there?” she broke in furiously. “You
should have watched him. He----”
“He is there, and not here--that is why I came.” And as if her
slowness, her distrust, maddened him, he shook her viciously. “Get the
cloak!” he cried, “and I’ll save you yet. The police may be on you
to-morrow. You will only have me and my field-glass to thank if they do
not find it.”
“If they do, I didn’t do--it,” she said, and then ran, for his eyes
were full of murder.
“Take it!” she gasped, coming back again, throwing down a black satin
cloak, lined with chinchilla. “I wish I’d never seen you!”
“I dare say you do--Lady Levallion!” he said sardonically. “Hester
Murray told another story. Good night, and thank me you dare to sleep.”
But when he was gone she had no thought of sleep. For two days she had
loved the man who had just gone out; and now she hated him, because
she knew she would never get rid of him till she died. She ran to the
window to see where he had gone; stared out; dropped the half-raised
blind and staggered, more than started back to the middle of the room,
as if the quiet street had been the pit of hell.
“The dream!” she thought wildly. “But I’ve time!” Something took her
at the throat. The man held everything in his hands, her money, her
position, her---- But it was not being Countess of Levallion that was
in her thoughts as she ran from the room, but life--bare life--that
garbled lie could take away from her.