Standing in the doorway, grasping the portière tightly with her
right hand, while her left was pressed against her breast, was a tall,
thin woman, dressed from head to foot in white. Seen thus in the dim
light of the darkened room, her clinging draperies of some soft,
semi-transparent material swathed round her slight form and forming
billows of white foam about her feet, her pale face, out of which two
great eyes shone like lamps in the darkness, the slow, swaying
movement of her body in the opening between the two rooms, all
combined to give her an uncanny appearance, to suggest a ghostly
vision rather than a woman of flesh and blood.
Even the hoarse laugh she uttered when Audrey sprang up and turned to
face her, sounded like the unearthly, weird cry of a lost soul rather
than an utterance of living human lips.
Audrey was struck dumb. She saw at once that the strange visitor had
come with hostile intent, she read anger, spiteful, bitter anger in
her thin face, in the convulsive movements of her gloved fingers.
Was she a madwoman? There was nothing indeed of the disorder of
madness about her. From the great white hat, loaded with long white
ostrich feathers, which crowned her golden hair, down to the long
white gloves which hung in wrinkles on her arms, and the graceful
draperies which half-hid, half-revealed, her sinuous and slender
figure, the stranger showed every sign of that studied elegance and
calculated attractiveness which comes only from taste, care and the
long experience of a characteristic but keen feminine intellect.
Audrey, having of late had to study dress as a fine art, acknowledged
herself in the presence of a past mistress of it.
No. The lady in the white draperies was not mad, wild as were her
eyes, and weirdly alarming as was her mocking laughter.
There was a moment of dead, uncanny silence, when, her laughter having
died away on her lips, the stranger, still grasping the dark curtain
as if for support, and leaning forward to fix the gaze of her terrible
dark eyes on Audrey, stood like a tigress ready to spring, panting,
struggling for the breath that came only in painful gasps, preparing
herself for an encounter which Audrey felt would be a terrible one.
Audrey looked round her fearfully, wondering whether she could escape
the trying ordeal with which she knew herself to be threatened. This
woman had, she knew, come to see her, come with some accusation,
unguessed at but evidently serious, ready on her lips as it was
already burning in her eyes.
There was a door nearly opposite to where Audrey stood by the couch;
but it was shut, and there were dress stands and lounges between it
and her.
She had a feeling that, if she were to attempt to fly, the tiger-like
stranger would spring at her, tear her to pieces with those long,
lean, white-gloved hands, that looked claw-like as they moved
nervously with every breath she drew.
And Audrey was encumbered with the weight of a magnificent black
train, glittering with paillettes and voluminous in its folds, which
she put on when she arrived at the showrooms in the morning, and
exchanged for a quiet little tailor-made gown to return at night to
her two modest rooms on the top floor over a small chemist’s shop in a
street off Oxford Street.
This handsome black gown increased the effect of a strong contrast
between her and her weird visitor. The lady in white was tall, thin;
from golden hair and whitened face to sinuous figure, a work of
finished art.
Audrey was in the first freshness of her striking natural beauty, easy
and graceful of carriage, well developed of figure, with golden hair
that lay in natural rings on her forehead, and in a twisted coil,
untidy and loose, on the top of her head.
The contrast was between natural and artificial loveliness, and the
glaring, panting stranger seemed to appreciate this fact.
Long as the time seemed, it was in truth but a few moments that they
both stood silently watching each other, neither ready to utter the
first word.
Then, so quickly that it seemed all to take place in the twinkling of
an eye, there came a rapid step in the inner room, a hand dragged the
white-clad woman roughly away, and at the same time and by the same
movement the curtain was drawn across the opening between the rooms,
shutting Audrey out into the twilight of the darkened room.
Then she heard the woman’s voice, savage, passionate, full of an
emotion so strong that it seemed to strangle her, weak and ill as she
evidently was.
“Madame Rocada! Madame Rocada!” she cried, gasping out the name in
withering tones, hoarse and broken, yet eloquent of rage and scorn.
“Let me see her, let me speak to her, let me see what she has to say
for herself. Do you think you can stop me, you!”
Audrey, bewildered and alarmed, wondering who it was that had seized
the stranger and dragged her away from the door, crept close to the
curtain to learn more of this intrusion and the cause.
She had fancied herself alone in the long suite of rooms; for Marie
Laure, who slept on the premises in a tiny room at the back, had gone
out to do some shopping, and it was in her absence that poor Audrey,
broken down and miserable, had indulged in the fit of tears which had
been so strangely interrupted.
Whose then was the hand that had seized the stranger? A strong one it
must have been, to do so much so quickly!
Surely, thought Audrey, it must be the hand of a man. She crept nearer
and nearer to the curtain, making ready to pull it sharply back, and
to take the two persons within by surprise.
But even as she advanced, she heard by the fainter sound of the
woman’s voice that she was being drawn away, and that she was being
gagged.
The last words that Audrey caught sounded to her listening ears like
the calling of a man by his name:--
“Oh, Eugène, Eugène!”
A chill seized Audrey, and she drew back, frightened, asking herself
in a wild impulse of suspicion and dread whether this “Eugène” were
some evil genius, the same that had cast his blighting hand upon the
fate of Gerard and herself?
Then she heard a door shut, and peering through behind the portière
into the inner room, she saw that no one was there.
The building of which this first floor formed a part had been extended
at the back, and behind this second large showroom there were two or
three smaller rooms, one of which was that of Mademoiselle Laure, and
another a private fitting-room. It was this room the door of which
Audrey had heard close, and trying it, she now found that it was
locked.
She heard voices within, subdued, angry, the whispering voices of a
man and a woman, speaking some language which Audrey could not
understand.
She knocked, but there was no reply.
Hurriedly withdrawing, therefore, without speaking a word, Audrey went
out upon the staircase, and into her own private room, where she kept
her walking dress. Changing quickly into this, she had just put on her
hat, with the intention of going downstairs to meet Mademoiselle Laure
on her return and to consult with her as to what she had better do,
when she was startled by the sound of the unlocking of a door, and
then by footsteps running rapidly down the stairs.
She flew to the door and looked out; but she was too late to see more
than this: that the person who was dashing down the stairs and
disappearing by the side door into the street was a man.
Who was it?
And why was not the white-clad lady with him?
Audrey hesitated only one moment, and then, full of fears she could
not have defined, ran up to the fitting-room and went in.
The room was quite dark, but she touched the electric button, and at
once a flood of soft light filled the apartment.
A cry of horror broke from her lips when, turning her eyes at once
towards a big divan which stood under the window, she saw lying at
full length upon it the body of the woman in the white dress.
Her white hat was crushed and bent under her poor lifeless head; one
hand, still in its long wrinkled white kid glove, was outstretched as
if in a last convulsion; one white kid, high-heeled walking shoe lay
on the floor. The white ostrich feather boa which had floated round
her shoulders when Audrey saw her alive was twisted round her thin
throat. The clinging white dress was bound round her motionless limbs.
And over all, dress, gloves, boa, in startling and awful contrast to
the white clothes, were marks of blood: blood which had gushed out
from her mouth and streamed over everything.
Audrey was aghast. Was this a murdered woman upon whose body she was
looking? She could not tell. For the haggard cheeks, the glassy eyes,
the laboured breath, the feeble though passionate movements, all of
which signs she had noticed in the living woman, the husky voice, the
occasional cough, had betrayed unmistakably the fact that the poor
woman was in the last stage of consumption, and her death might well
have resulted from the bursting of a blood-vessel in a moment of wild
excitement.
On the other hand, the sudden disappearance of the man who had met her
and dragged her away from the doorway was horribly suggestive. And the
feather boa which appeared to be bound round the poor woman’s thin and
wasted throat might, Audrey thought with horror, have been the means
of her death.
One long look she gave before she went to call assistance. And in that
look she ascertained that the dead woman must have been of surpassing
beauty, for the features were regular and perfectly formed; that she
was between forty and fifty years of age appeared equally certain, now
that powder and paint could hide the marks of time no longer. And
Audrey crept downstairs shuddering, and wondering what fate was upon
her, that a second and horrible calamity should happen in her
experience within little more than six weeks.
At the foot of the private staircase which led out into the street she
was lucky in meeting Mademoiselle Laure, to whom she related, in
faltering accents, the terrible experience she had just gone through.
By this time, however, poor Audrey, giddy and faint with the scene she
had gone through, could scarcely articulate, scarcely make herself
intelligible to Mademoiselle Laure, who could or would speak no
English.
Audrey, indeed, spoke French well. But excitement either confused her
utterance or affected her voice, for it was a long time before the
Frenchwoman gathered the gist of her words.
Then Mademoiselle laughed at her.
“You dream, Madame,” she answered in her rapid French. “Such things do
not happen. The busy day has got on your nerves, and you have imagined
horrors which have no existence! Bah! A dead woman--all in
white--lying upstairs! No, no. You want your dinner. That is all.”
And she laughed, actually laughed, while poor Audrey, stupefied by
this unexpected reception of her dreadful news, leaned back against
the wall of the narrow passage for a few moments, unable to speak.
At last, seeing that the Frenchwoman remained looking at her in a far
from sympathetic manner, she roused herself, and staggering towards
the door, said in a whisper:--
“I--I shall go for the police!”
“For what?” echoed Mademoiselle Laure incredulously. “The police! A
nice thing for the business that would be, _ma foi_! To have the
police here, to hunt and turn the place upside down in their search
for the effects of Madame’s weak nerves! The police! Oh, no. We will
have no police here, be sure of that!”
And the voluble Frenchwoman, with the same expression of mocking
incredulity on her thin features, seized Audrey by the arm and held
her as she would have gone out.
But the younger woman had a will of her own too.
“Mademoiselle,” said she, “you forget that I am the head of this
business, the tenant of these premises, and that I have a right to do
as I please.”
“And I,” retorted the Frenchwoman, always using her native language,
and speaking fast and with determination, “have a duty to do in
protecting you from your own folly. Look here, Madame. I knew when I
went out that something would happen to you. You looked as white as a
ghost, you were trembling, and on the verge of tears. The worry and
fatigue of the busy day, during which you have eaten and drunk
nothing, has made you ill. I see the marks of tears upon your face;
your hair is in disorder; your hat is not pinned on properly. You are
not yourself. I did not like to leave you, and I wish to Heaven I had
not done so. You are nervous, unstrung. Come across the road with me,
to the confectioner’s opposite. You shall drink a glass of wine and
swallow a mouthful of food, and then we will come back together.”
“Back! Oh, no, no,” cried Audrey, shuddering.
The reaction after intense excitement had set in, and she was weak,
tremulous and almost hysterical. Still, with all this, she knew what
she had to do, what she must do.
“Well,” said Mademoiselle Laure, speaking with more kindliness as her
companion showed signs of increasing weakness, “will you promise me to
stay quietly at the shop while I go for a doctor?”
“A doctor! Oh, yes, yes,” said Audrey.
“Come then, quickly. I’m afraid of your fainting on the way.”
Audrey shook her head. Supported by her companion’s arm, she was now
outside, and the fresh air of the evening revived her. They were only
just in time, for the shop opposite was closing. They begged
permission to enter, and Audrey drank a glass of wine and obediently
tried, though she did not succeed in the attempt, to eat a biscuit.
For on no other terms would Mademoiselle Laure consent to leave her.
“I will be back, Madame,” said the Frenchwoman, with an encouraging
smile, as she went quickly to the door, “in five minutes. There is a
doctor round the corner. I will fetch him. Wait for me.”
Audrey was indeed thankful to have the task of taking the necessary
steps transferred to the shoulders of another. At first, in the dazed
state which succeeded her first white heat of excitement, she had
almost let herself be persuaded by the Frenchwoman into wondering
whether she had not been the victim of her own imagination. But before
Mademoiselle Laure left her, she had recovered her wits, and
recognised that, in fetching a doctor, which was, after all, the most
sensible thing that could be done, the woman was acknowledging the
fact that there was something in what her employer had said.
The time seemed very long while she waited, but she dared not go back
alone to the showrooms, and she now realised that it was not her place
to send for the police, but the doctor’s.
The woman in charge of the shop grew impatient too, and they both
watched the clock until five, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour,
twenty minutes had passed.
Then Mademoiselle Laure suddenly appeared at the side-door, on the
opposite side of the street, which led to the showrooms. She ran
across the road, and beckoned excitedly to Audrey.
She was laughing.
Audrey trembled and could scarcely stand as Mademoiselle Laure took
her by the arm and, without a word of explanation, beyond saying that
the doctor was there, led the trembling woman back and up the stairs.
“Don’t take me in again, don’t, don’t,” whispered Audrey, whose nerve
had given way completely under the long and terrible strain.
“But you must come, you must. Don’t you want to see the doctor?” said
Mademoiselle Laure, whose voice and manner was as derisive as ever.
Audrey let herself be led, reluctant indeed, but submissive as a
child, up the stairs and into the first of the two big, handsomely
furnished showrooms.
The doctor, an elderly man of strictly professional aspect, who wore
gold spectacles and spoke in a quiet and authoritative manner, bowed
to her with a keen but kindly look.
At once he offered her a chair, and making a sign to Mademoiselle
Laure to draw back the muslin curtain that veiled the nearest of the
electric lights, he took Audrey by the wrist.
She drew a breath of amazement. Evidently he looked upon her as a
patient.
“Oh, there’s--there’s nothing the matter with me, doctor,” said she
breathlessly. “All I want to know is whether the--the poor woman died
naturally, or--or was----”
Before she could get any further, she saw the doctor look up and
exchange a grave glance with Mademoiselle Laure. Perceiving at once
that he appeared to doubt her sanity, angry with the Frenchwoman, and
determined to put an end to the misunderstanding, Audrey darted across
the room towards the door of the fitting-room. “You have been
misinformed, doctor,” said she quickly. “It is not to see me that you
were called in, but an unhappy woman who----”
She had tried the door of the fitting-room, and it had opened in her
hand. Audrey looked in, stopped short, turned giddy, fell back. Then,
passing her hand across her eyes, and waiting a moment to recover
herself, she went boldly into the room.
For a whole minute she stood staring round her, clenching her hands,
trying to understand, to believe the evidence of her eyes.
Not only was the white-clad lady no longer there, but not a sign of
her presence, a trace of a tragedy, was to be seen.
“Where--where is she? Where have you put--the body?” hissed she in a
hoarse, peremptory whisper.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, and spoke soothingly.
“Madame,” said he, “there has been nobody there. It is the result of
an overactive imagination, upon a stomach left too long without food,
and an overwrought system. I will write you out a little prescription;
you must take a sleeping draught, and I will come and see you in the
morning.”
And he looked round for paper and a pen.