CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
THE WHITE COUNTESS
CHAPTER I
“Oh, Gerard, what a long face! What’s the matter? Have you had your
pocket picked?”
It was Gerard Angmering’s beautiful young wife who put these laughing
questions to him, on the threshold of the modest little flat in West
Kensington where, like most young couples of moderate means nowadays,
they had set up their tent and expected to find peace and joy and all
the comforts of home in a jerry-built “mansion” where they paid a
hundred a year for the privilege of hearing the conversation of their
underneath neighbour up the chimney, and being overheard in like
manner by their neighbours overhead and on each side.
Gerard, whose face had instinctively softened at the very first word
from his wife, said “Sh--sh,” pushed her inside their little
drawing-room, and shut the door.
“There’s trouble at the bank,” said he. “I didn’t want to have to tell
you. But since you’ve found me out, why, I suppose I must.”
“Oh, Gerard, what do you mean? What trouble?”
“There, there, don’t look so frightened, child. It will be all right,
all right. At least--I suppose it will, I hope it will. You’ve heard
me speak of Sir Richmond Hornthwaite, the old gentleman who gives us
so much trouble--always sending imperative messages for us to go and
see him, because he’s forgotten something he had to say, or because he
wants to have something done for him in a hurry?”
“Yes, oh, yes, the old man who lives at Chislehurst.”
“Yes. Well, he’s just discovered--or thinks he’s discovered, that
three cheques have been paid against his account which he never
signed, which are, in fact, forgeries.”
“Oh, dear! And the bank people are very much upset about it, of
course!”
Gerard, who was very pale, nodded. There was a long silence, and
Audrey, who was still clinging to her husband, perceived, with a
sickening sense of distress and terror, that she had not yet heard the
worst.
“Well,” she said, quite querulously, “and what else?”
Gerard Angmering turned upon her suddenly eyes in which agony revealed
itself unmistakably, appallingly. He tried to speak, but could not.
Audrey clung more closely to his arm, put her right hand round his
neck, held him close to her, comforting, encouraging, knowing with a
loving woman’s instinctive knowledge that the worst would be
tragically awful to hear.
Not one word did she utter, yet he knew she knew what was coming. So
well did he know it that he prefaced his speech, when he got back some
remnants of husky, audible voice, by a grave, slow nod of the head.
“Yes,” whispered he brokenly, “yes, he accuses me, Audrey. He
says--says--I took the cheques from his cheque-book--says I stole
them. Good God!”
He staggered to the little sofa, and fell on it, still with those
clinging arms tightening round him, with the beautiful appealing eyes
of his wife fixed in passionate tenderness and distress upon his face.
But after the first few moments of dumb horror she rebelled at the
thought that they could misjudge her Gerard so wickedly. She raised
her head quickly, her eyes flashed, she laughed discordantly, angrily,
as she looked into his open and still almost boyish face.
“Gerard, Gerard, why do you trouble yourself about it? It’s
ridiculous, you know! It’s farcical! You a thief! _You!_ It isn’t as
if they didn’t know you! Why, this old Sir Richmond knows you too!
Knows you and likes you! Or why should it always be you he sends for
when he wants some one from the bank?”
The young man looked up. Depressed, downcast, overwhelmed as he was,
he felt the comfort of this indignation, of this amazement. He turned
to her and took her lovely face in his hands, staring down tenderly
into the big blue eyes, at the red, parted lips, at the soft waves of
golden hair which had got loosened round her forehead.
“Bless your little heart, Audrey, your anger does me good! Upon my
word, when they all looked at me as they did, and questioned me as
they did, and put it to me that I _must_ have been to blame somehow or
other in this awful business, I--I--I almost began to think, at last,
that I had!”
“Gerard! How can you?”
“Well, it came upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, you know, that I
felt as if the heavens had fallen, or that I must be somebody else. I
could only stare, and stammer, and behave, I suppose, just as a
thorough-paced rascal would have done!”
“Oh, Gerard!”
“Well, I couldn’t help it. I was struck dumb.”
“You should have been indignant. You should have told them what you
thought of them!”
“Well, I couldn’t. I was too much occupied with what they thought of
me!”
“Tell me just what they said.”
“Well, they asked me who it was that took Sir Richmond his last
cheque-book down. I said it was I. Then they asked me when it was, and
if I remembered any of the circumstances of the journey. And after a
little help--for I’ve been down there so often on one errand or
another that it was difficult to find the exact date--I found that it
was on a Saturday that I took the cheque-book, and that I came back
home to have luncheon on my way. Then came a torrent of questions as
to the time I stayed in the flat, and as to the people in it, and so
on. They wanted to know whether any one was in the flat except you and
me. There wasn’t, was there?”
Audrey was too much disturbed to remember. But the two set their
memories to work, and consulted the servant who formed the whole of
their modest staff, and finally they ascertained that, if anybody but
themselves had been in the flat on the particular Saturday in
question, it was either old Mrs. Webster, a neighbour, or Mr.
Candover, a rich friend who had a handsome flat in Victoria Street,
and who sometimes brought his motor-car round on Saturdays to take
them for a spin into the country.
Both these people being beyond suspicion, the young people, after a
few moments of silent dismay and perplexity, turned their thoughts
again to what had happened at the office.
“Go on with what they said,” said Audrey in a frightened whisper.
“Well, it seems that Sir Richmond, in taking out his cheque-book
yesterday, found that a cheque was missing, with the blank counterfoil
left in the book. This made him examine the cheque-book, and he found
that there were two others missing, in different parts of the book.
Then he remembered, or thought he remembered, having noticed, when I
gave it to him, that one end of the long envelope it was in was only
half gummed. Now he thinks that some one must have opened the
envelope--that could be easily done over hot water, of course--and
torn out the three cheques.”
“But what does that matter? Cheques are numbered, aren’t they? Can’t
they be stopped?”
Gerard shook his head.
“Sir Richmond wired up for his pass-book, and found that the three
missing cheques _had_ been paid in, without any doubt being roused as
to the genuineness of the signature. One was for five hundred and
sixty pounds and the other two for more. Altogether he has been robbed
of nearly three thousand pounds.”
“Oh, Gerard, how dreadful! But still he ought not to be so wicked and
unfair as to blame you. How could you help it? Of course it’s some one
in his own house who has stolen the cheques and forged his name!”
“Well, he denies the possibility of that. He’s an old fidget, and his
secretary, a woman, is never allowed to touch his keys, so he says, or
to go near the safe where he keeps his cheque-books and his money.”
“And who were the cheques made out to?”
“The names are all unknown, made up, they think. Not one of the
cheques was crossed; they were all paid in, all properly endorsed. But
the endorsements are not much of a clue, so they say, because they
believe the names to be fictitious.”
“And didn’t the large sums excite suspicion?” said Audrey.
“Oh, no. Sir Richmond is well known for his charities, and we cash
large cheques of his to people we’ve never heard of often enough. The
whole thing is a ghastly mystery, a puzzle from beginning to end.”
“Look here, Gerard, I suppose we’re alarming ourselves too much. The
truth must be found out presently; they’ll have clever detectives at
work, and I daresay they’ll have found out all about it by the time
you go to the bank to-morrow morning.”
“I hope to Heaven they will!” said the poor fellow, putting his head
down in his hands, in an attitude of the deepest dejection.
Audrey passed a loving hand through her young husband’s soft curly
hair. Light hair it was, though many shades darker than her own pale
golden tresses. And his slight figure, which scarcely reached the
middle height, his beardless face and grey eyes, made him look younger
than his age, which was twenty-five. So that he looked absolutely
boyish in his utter despair.
“Listen,” whispered Audrey, as she tucked her hand under his arm, and
nestled against him, “listen, Gerard, I have an idea. You and I are a
pair of great babies, who don’t know what to do, or what to say, or
how to get out of a difficulty. Let us go and see Mr. Candover, and
ask his advice as to what we ought to do.”
Gerard sat up.
“By Jove, you’re right,” said he. “It’s--it’s a nasty thing to have to
go about though,” objected he the next minute, as he began to fumble
with the door-handle irresolutely.
“Well, you don’t suppose _he_ will suspect you!” cried she brightly.
“No, I suppose not. Still--I wish we had some one else to go to, some
one nearer and----”
“You wouldn’t like to go to your uncle, would you?”
“Lord Clanfield! Not likely!”
“Well, then, who _are_ we to go to? Who is older and cleverer than we
are, I mean!”
Gerard nodded.
“You’re right, Audrey, your brains are better than mine. But I tell
you, I was so knocked on the head, as it were, by what they said
that--that I don’t feel as if I should ever be able to think again!”
“Poor boy, poor boy!” she said softly.
She had bravely kept back the tears, but now she had a hard struggle
for it, and she dashed out of the room to fetch hat and cloak to avoid
breaking down.
Two minutes later they were in a hansom, driving to Victoria Street.
Audrey indeed suggested the Underground, for they had been awakened
rudely of late to the fact that they were exceeding their income; but
Gerard was in no mood for small economies, and indeed every minute was
precious, for Mr. Candover was a man of money and of pleasure, and
they would be lucky if they caught him at home.
So they drove along fast in the pleasant April evening, not noting the
fresh breeze or the soft sunset light, indeed, but each holding the
hand of the other furtively, tightly, with a resolute endeavour to
keep down ugly doubts and anxieties, and to believe that all would
come right.
This Mr. Candover, whom they were going to consult, was their most
intimate friend. Meeting him about eight months before, when they were
enjoying their honeymoon abroad, they had attracted the older and
rather blasé man of the world by their delight in life, by their
devotion to each other, by the boyish high spirits of the young
husband, the surpassing beauty of the wife.
For Audrey was no ordinary pretty woman. Tall, but not of an
unmanageable height, with a good and well-developed figure, she was
gifted also with a lovely face, of which the most striking feature was
a pair of big blue eyes which made her look a good deal more artless
than she was. With hair so fair that all the other women said it was
dyed, and a complexion that had no fault save that it was a trifle
pale, Audrey had been acclaimed a beauty everywhere, and Mr. Candover
was one of the most enthusiastic and open of her admirers.
With the superiority given by his forty-five years, which he only
admitted--so he said--because he had two great girls growing up at
home who would “give away” any attempts at juvenility on his part, Mr.
Candover had taken the young folk under his wing, introduced them to
his friends, given luncheons and dinners in their honour, and driven
them about in his splendid motor-car, proceedings which the bride and
bridegroom found pleasant enough, but which had undoubtedly led them
into spending more than they were quite justified in doing at the
outset of their married life.
For Gerard had only his salary as clerk at the bank, and a small
patrimony of seven thousand pounds, into which matrimony was making
great inroads.
Audrey, the orphan daughter of a Lancashire manufacturer who had lost
a fortune by unlucky speculation, had indeed two or three thousand
pounds of her own, well invested and at her own disposal. But that,
Gerard said, was to be looked upon as a nest-egg, not to be touched
even when creditors pressed and times grew anxious.
They were lucky in finding Mr. Candover at home. He was dressing for
dinner, so they were told by the man in livery who opened the door,
and they were shown into the drawing-room, where, even at that anxious
moment, Audrey could not forbear casting an admiring glance round at
the priceless pictures, the exquisitely harmonious tapestries, the
grand piano in its painted case, and the old French furniture which
looked, as she said, “as if it had come out of a glorified museum”.
Mr. Candover’s taste was exquisite, and his wealth was enormous, a
combination which had produced the best results.
They felt their spirits rise on finding themselves in the
neighbourhood of their powerful friend; and when the door was thrown
open by the valet, and their host came quickly in, handsome, perfectly
dressed, and with a smile of welcome on his face, both felt their
hearts beat faster with the certainty that he would be as willing as
he would be ready to help them in their trouble by sound advice and
counsel.
“This is a delightful surprise,” said he, as he took Audrey by the
hand, with a certain gentle courtesy of manner which was cosmopolitan
rather than British, and met her eyes with chivalrous admiration in
his own. “I was going out to dinner. But I shall now stay at home and
you must dine with me. I hope it is some pleasant errand that brings
you here, as pleasant as the sight of you is to me?”
And he looked from the one to the other with the smile dying away from
his face.
His very courtliness, his perfect manner, checked the two blunter,
less sophisticated young people on the threshold of their confession.
There was something remote from trivial worries, from sordid cares,
about this genial, gentle, low-voiced, kindly gentleman, whose trim
figure, small fine features, gentle brown eyes and slight dark
moustache all seemed to belong rather to a prince who passes his life
in cotton-wool than to an ordinary citizen of this work-a-day world.
“Come, what is it? You alarm me!” said he, after a moment’s pause,
during which the cloud on their usually bright faces had made itself
evident.
Gerard broke into his tale without ceremony, baldly, stupidly,
incoherently, as he felt. Audrey listened mutely, sitting on a sofa,
very upright, clasping her hands.
Mr. Candover, who remained standing as Gerard did, heard the story
with deep attention, but without the amazement and distress they had
expected. When Gerard paused, Mr. Candover pulled aside a heavy
portière, went into the next room, and returned with a spirit
decanter and a glass.
“Drink that,” he said, as he poured out a wine-glassful of brandy.
“You’re shaken, upset, not yourself.”
Gerard obeyed, swallowed the brandy in gulps, frightened beyond
measure at the way in which his story had been received. Audrey tapped
her foot impatiently.
“Well, what do you think?” she said.
“I think,” said he, “that you have no need to worry yourselves about
this. This Sir Richmond is a very old man, and is, as you admit, full
of crotchets. My own idea is that the cheques were genuine, and that
he has forgotten all about them and who he gave them to. If I’m right,
it will only take a few days to find out the truth, and to trace the
money to the people to whom he’s given it. Secretaries of real
charities, or charitable impostors, very likely.”
“I never thought of that!” cried Gerard, with sudden relief.
Audrey shook her head.
“The cheques were not all together,” said she. “They were torn out of
different parts of the book. And he wouldn’t forget all three, you
know.”
Gerard’s face fell again. Mr. Candover filled up the glass again; but
Audrey, rising quickly from her seat, shook her head and gently
checked her husband’s hand.
“No,” said she. “No more, Gerard. You’ve had nothing to eat and you
want your best brains. Mr. Candover,” and she turned to him, with a
new dignity and peremptoriness surprising in such a young woman,
“you’ve disappointed me. I thought you would have something better to
suggest than--brandy.”
Gerard was rather surprised, even alarmed, by his wife’s daring.
“I’m afraid, Audrey, it’s because there is nothing to be done that Mr.
Candover suggests nothing,” said he.
Audrey leaned over the little table by which she was standing.
“Can you tell us,” she said earnestly, “whether it was on Saturday the
third of last month, or Saturday the tenth, that you were with us just
after luncheon?”
He looked surprised.
“I don’t remember without looking at my diary. But I’ll find out if
you like,” said he.
“Because,” she went on, “the bank people are very anxious to know who
was at our house that day, when Gerard was carrying the cheque-book
down to Sir Richmond. If we could say that you were the only person
who was in the flat while Gerard was there, it would help.”
“I see.” Mr. Candover went over to a writing-table, unlocked a drawer
and turned over the leaves of a small diary.
“It was on the third,” said he, “that I was with you.”
“And it was on the tenth,” said she, “that Gerard took the cheque-book
down. Well then, it was Mrs. Webster who was with us. And there was
nobody else.”
“No, I don’t think poor old Mrs. Webster would be accused by anybody
of stealing blank cheques and forging Sir Richmond’s signature,” said
Mr. Candover, smiling. “And my dear Mrs. Angmering, do calm your
fears. Your husband is no more likely to be seriously suspected of
such a thing than I or Mrs. Webster. Depend upon it, in the morning,
when he gets to the bank, he will find that poor Sir Richmond has
wired again to say he’s solved the mystery. If not, the bank will set
a detective to work, and the crime will be traced to its perpetrator.
Do, do be persuaded not to pucker up that lovely face into such sad
little frowns. Angmering, comfort your wife; don’t let her worry
herself. And look here: I’ve got to go to Paris the first thing
to-morrow morning. But if you want any help or advice, wire to me at
the Hotel Bristol, or get my secretary, Diggs, to do anything you may
want done.”
They thanked him, rather dolefully, refused again his entreaties that
they would dine with him, and went away, trying to feel comforted, but
not succeeding very well.
And after a weary night of fears and doubts, neither husband nor wife
was much surprised when a police-officer arrived at the flat, the
first thing in the morning, with a warrant for Gerard’s arrest.