"Whatever makes you think she is a married woman?" I said.
"This," exclaimed Dorcas, drawing an unworn wedding-ring from her
purse. "I found it among a lot of trinkets at the bottom of a box
her maid told me was her jewel-case. I took the liberty of trying
all her keys till I opened it. A jewel-box tells many secrets to
those who know how to read them."
"And you concluded from that----?
"That she wouldn't keep a wedding-ring without it had belonged to
someone dear to her or had been placed on her own finger. It is
quite unworn, you see, so it was taken off immediately after the
ceremony. It was only to make doubly sure that I asked the Colonel
where his wife's was."
* * * * * * *
I duly repaired to Somerset House, and soon after midday Daddy
Green, the searcher, brought a paper and handed it to me. It was
a copy of the certificate of the marriage of Victor Dubois,
bachelor, aged twenty-six, and Maud Eleanor Hargreaves, aged
twenty-one, in London, in the year 1891. I telegraphed the news,
wording the message simply "Yes," and the date, and I followed my
wire by the first train.
When I arrived at Orley Park I rang several times before anyone
came. Presently Mrs. Peters, looking very white and excited, came
from the grounds and apologised for keeping me waiting.
"Oh, sir--such a dreadful thing!" she said--"a body in the lake!"
"A body!"
"Yes, sir--a man. The nurse as came with you here that day, she was
rowing herself on the lake, and she must have stirred it pushing
with her oar, for it come up all tangled with weeds. It's a man,
sir, and I do believe it's the man I saw at the gate that night."
"_The man with the wild eyes!_" I exclaimed.
"Yes sir! Oh, it is dreadful--Miss Maud first, and then this.
Oh, what can it mean!"
I found Dorcas standing at the edge of the lake, and Peters and two
of the gardeners lifting the drowned body of a man into the boat
which was alongside.
Dorcas was giving instructions. "Lay it in the boat, and cover it
with a tarpaulin," she said. "Mind, nothing is to be touched till
the police come. I will go and find the Colonel."
As she turned away I met her.
"What a terrible thing! Is it Dubois?"
"Yes," replied Dorcas. "I suspected he was there yesterday, but I
wanted to find him myself instead of having the lake dragged."
"Why?"
"Well, I didn't want anyone else to search the pockets. There might
have been papers or letters, you know, which would have been read at
the inquest, and might have compromised Miss Hargreaves. But there
was nothing--"
"What--you searched!"
"Yes, after I'd brought the poor fellow to the surface with the
oars."
"But how do you think he got in?"
"Suicide--insanity. The father was taken to a lunatic asylum--you
learned that at Norwood yesterday. Son doubtless inherited tendency.
Looks like a case of homicidal mania--he attacked Miss Hargreaves,
whom he had probably tracked after years of separation, and after he
had as he thought killed her, he drowned himself. At any rate,
Miss Hargreaves is a free woman. She was evidently terrified of her
husband when he was alive, and so--"
I guessed what Dorcas was thinking as we went together to the house.
At the door she held out her hand. "You had better go to the inn and
return to town to-night," she said. "You can do no more good, and
had better keep out of it. I shall be home to-morrow. Come to Oak
Tree Road in the evening."
* * * * * * *
The next evening Dorcas told me all that had happened after I left.
Paul had already heard it, and when I arrived was profuse in his
thanks for the assistance I had rendered his wife. Mrs. Lester,
however, felt compelled to remark that she never thought a daughter
of hers would go gadding about the country fishing up corpses for
a living.
Dorcas had gone to the Colonel and told him everything. The Colonel
was in a terrible state, but Dorcas told him that the only way in
which to ascertain the truth was for them to go to the unhappy girl
together, and attempt, with the facts in their possession, to
persuade her to divulge the rest.
When the Colonel told his daughter that the man she had married had
flung her into the lake that night, she was dumbfounded, and became
hysterical, but when she learned that Dubois had been found in the
lake she became alarmed and instantly told all she knew.
She had been in the habit of meeting Victor Dubois constantly when
she was at Norwood, at first with his father--her French master--and
afterwards alone. He was handsome, young, romantic, and they fell
madly in love. He was going away for some time to an appointment
abroad, and he urged her to marry him secretly. She foolishly
consented, and they parted at the church, she returning to her home
and he going abroad the same evening.
She received letters from him clandestinely from time to time. Then
he wrote that his father had become insane and had to be removed to
a lunatic asylum, and he was returning. He had only time to see to
his father's removal and return to his appointment. She did not hear
from him for a long time, and then through a friend at Norwood who
knew the Dubois and their relatives she made enquiries. Victor had
returned to England, and met with an accident which had injured his
head severely. He became insane and was taken to a lunatic asylum.
The poor girl resolved to keep her marriage a secret for ever then,
especially as her father had returned from India, and she knew how
bitterly it would distress him to learn that his daughter was the
wife of a madman.
On the night of the affair Maud was in the grounds by herself. She
was strolling by the lake after dinner, when she heard a sound, and
the dogs began to bark. Looking up, she saw Victor Dubois scaling
the wall. Fearful that the dogs would bring Peters or someone on the
scene, she ran to them and silenced them, and her husband leapt down
and stood by her.
"Come away!" she said, fearing the dogs might attack him and begin
to bark again, and she led him round by the lake which was out of
sight of the house and the lodge.
She forgot for the moment in her excitement that he had been mad.
At first he was gentle and kind. He told her he had been ill and in
an asylum, but had recently been discharged cured. Directly he
regained his liberty he set out in search of his wife, and
ascertained from an old Norwood acquaintance that Miss Hargreaves
was now living with her father at Orley Park, near Godalming.
Maud begged him to go away quietly, and she would write to him. He
tried to take her in his arms and kiss her, but instinctively she
shrank from him. Instantly he became furious. Seized with a sudden
mania, he grasped her by the throat. She struggled and freed herself.
They were at the edge of the lake. Suddenly the maniac got her by
the throat again, and hurled her down into the water. She fell in
up to her waist, but managed to drag herself towards the edge, but
before she emerged she fell senseless--fortunately with her head on
the shore just out of the water.
The murderer, probably thinking that she was dead, must have waded
out into the deep water and drowned himself.
Before she left Orley Park Dorcas advised the Colonel to let the
inquest be held without any light being thrown on the affair by him.
Only he was to take care that the police received information that a
man answering the description of the suicide had recently been
discharged from a lunatic asylum.
We heard later that at the inquest an official from the asylum
attended, and the local jury found that Victor Dubois, a lunatic,
got into the grounds in some way, and drowned himself in the lake
while temporarily insane. It was suggested by the coroner that
probably Miss Hargreaves, who was too unwell to attend, had not
seen the man, but might have been alarmed by the sound of his
footsteps, and that this would account for her fainting away near
the water's edge. At any rate, the inquest ended in a satisfactory
verdict, and the Colonel shortly afterwards took his daughter
abroad with him on a Continental tour for the benefit of her health.
But of this of course we knew nothing on the evening after the
eventful discovery, when I met Dorcas once more beneath her
own roof-tree.
Paul was delighted to have his wife back again, and she devoted
herself to him, and that evening had eyes and ears for no one
else--not even for her faithful "assistant."
_V. THE DIAMOND LIZARD_
I had received a little note from Dorcas Dene, telling me that Paul
and her mother had gone to the seaside for a fortnight, and that
she was busy on a case which was keeping her from home, so that it
would not be of any use my calling at Oak Tree Road at present, as
I should find no one there but the servants and whitewashers.
It had been a very hot July, but I was unable to leave town myself,
having work on hand which compelled me to be on the spot. But I got
away from the close, dusty streets during the daytime as frequently
as I could, and one hot, broiling afternoon I found myself in a
brown holland suit on the terrace of the "Star and Garter" at
Richmond, vainly endeavouring to ward off the fierce rays of the
afternoon sun with one of those white umbrellas which are common
enough on the Continent, but rare enough to attract attention in a
land where fashion is one thing and comfort another.
My favourite "Star and Garter" waiter, Karl, an amiable and voluble
little German, who, during a twenty years' residence in England, had
acquired the English waiter's love of betting on horse-races, had
personally attended to my wants, and brought me a cup of freshly-made
black coffee and a petit verre of specially fine Courvoisier,
strongly recommended by Mr. James, the genial and obliging manager.
Comforted by the coffee and overpowered by the heat, I was just
dropping off into a siesta, when I was attracted by a familiar voice
addressing me by name.
I raised my umbrella, and at first imagined that I must have made a
mistake. The voice was undoubtedly that of Dorcas Dene, but the lady
who stood smiling in front of me was to all outward appearance an
American tourist. There was the little courier bag attached to the
waist-belt, with which we always associate the pretty American
accent during the great American touring season. The lady in front
of me was beautifully dressed, and appeared through the veil she was
wearing to be young and well-favoured, but her hair was silvery grey
and her complexion that of a brunette. Now Dorcas Dene was a blonde
with soft brown wavy hair, and so I hesitated for a moment,
imagining that I must have fallen into a half doze and have dreamed
that I heard Dorcas calling me.
The lady, who evidently noticed my doubt and hesitation, smiled and
came close to the garden seat on which I had made myself as
comfortable as the temperature would allow me.
"Good afternoon," she said. "I saw you lunching in the restaurant,
but I couldn't speak to you then. I'm here on business."
It _was_ Dorcas Dene.
"I have half an hour to spare," she said. "My people are at the
little table yonder. They've just ordered their coffee, so they
won't be going yet."
She sat down at the other end of the garden seat, and, following a
little inclination of her parasol, I saw that the "people" she
alluded to were a young fellow of about three-and-twenty, a handsome
woman of about five-and-thirty, rather loudly dressed, and a
remarkably pretty girl in a charming tailor-made costume of some
soft white material, and a straw hat with a narrow red ribbon round
it. The young lady wore a red sailor's-knot tie over a white shirt.
The red of the hat-band and the tie showed out against the whiteness
of the costume, and were conspicuous objects in the bright sunlight.
"How beautiful the river is from here," said Dorcas, after I had
inquired how Paul was, and had learnt that he was at Eastbourne in
apartments with Mrs. Lester, and that the change had benefited his
health considerably.
As she spoke Dorcas drew a small pair of glasses from her pocket,
and appeared very much interested in a little boat with a big white
sail, making its way lazily down the river, which glistened like a
sheet of silver in the sunlight.
"Yes," I said, "it's a scene that always delights our American
visitors, but I suppose you're not here to admire the beauties
of the Thames?"
"No," said Dorcas, laughing. "If I had leisure for that I should
be at Eastbourne with my poor old Paul. I've a case in hand."
"And the _case_ is yonder--the young man, the lady, and the pretty
girl with the red tie?"
Dorcas nodded assent. "Yes--she is pretty, isn't she? Take my
glasses and include her in the scenery, and then, if you are not too
fascinated to spare a glance for anybody else, look at the
young gentleman."
I took the hint and the glasses. The young lady was more than
pretty; she was as perfect a specimen of handsome English girlhood
as I had ever seen. I looked from her to the elder lady, and was
struck by the contrast. She was much too bold-looking and showy to
be the companion of so modest-looking and bewitching a damsel.