HELENE EXPLAINS
And what she heard made her blood run cold.
Mme. Dauvray spoke in a hushed, awestruck voice.
"There is a presence in the room."
It was horrible to Celia that the poor woman was speaking the jargon
which she herself had taught to her.
"I will speak to it," said Mme. Dauvray, and raising her voice a
little, she asked: "Who are you that come to us from the spirit-world?"
No answer came, but all the while Celia knew that Wethermill was
stealing noiselessly across the floor towards that voice which spoke
this professional patter with so simple a solemnity.
"Answer!" she said. And the next moment she uttered a little shrill
cry--a cry of enthusiasm. "Fingers touch my forehead--now they touch my
cheek--now they touch my throat!"
And upon that the voice ceased. But a dry, choking sound was heard, and
a horrible scuffling and tapping of feet upon the polished floor, a
sound most dreadful. They were murdering her--murdering an old, kind
woman silently and methodically in the darkness. The girl strained and
twisted against the pillar furiously, like an animal in a trap. But the
coils of rope held her; the scarf suffocated her. The scuffling became
a spasmodic sound, with intervals between, and then ceased altogether.
A voice spoke--a man's voice--Wethermill's. But Celia would never have
recognised it--it had so shrill and fearful an intonation.
"That's horrible," he said, and his voice suddenly rose to a scream.
"Hush!" Helene Vauquier whispered sharply. "What's the matter?"
"She fell against me--her whole weight. Oh!"
"You are afraid of her!"
"Yes, yes!" And in the darkness Wethermill's voice came querulously
between long breaths. "Yes, NOW I am afraid of her!"
Helene Vauquier replied again contemptuously. She spoke aloud and quite
indifferently. Nothing of any importance whatever, one would have
gathered, had occurred.
"I will turn on the light," she said. And through the chinks in the
curtain the bright light shone. Celia heard a loud rattle upon the
table, and then fainter sounds of the same kind. And as a kind of
horrible accompaniment there ran the laboured breathing of the man,
which broke now and then with a sobbing sound. They were stripping Mme.
Dauvray of her pearl necklace, her bracelets, and her rings. Celia had
a sudden importunate vision of the old woman's fat, podgy hands loaded
with brilliants. A jingle of keys followed.
"That's all," Helene Vauquier said. She might have just turned out the
pocket of an old dress.
There was the sound of something heavy and inert falling with a dull
crash upon the floor. A woman laughed, and again it was Helene Vauquier.
"Which is the key of the safe?" asked Adele.
And Helene Vauquier replied:--
"That one."
Celia heard some one drop heavily into a chair. It was Wethermill, and
he buried his face in his hands. Helene went over to him and laid her
hand upon his shoulder and shook him.
"Do you go and get her jewels out of the safe," she said, and she spoke
with a rough friendliness.
"You promised you would blindfold the girl," he cried hoarsely.
Helene Vauquier laughed.
"Did I?" she said. "Well, what does it matter?"
"There would have been no need to--" And his voice broke off shudderingly.
"Wouldn't there? And what of us--Adele and me? She knows certainly that
we are here. Come, go and get the jewels. The key of the door's on the
mantelshelf. While you are away we two will arrange the pretty baby in
there."
She pointed to the recess; her voice rang with contempt. Wethermill
staggered across the room like a drunkard, and picked up the key in
trembling fingers. Celia heard it turn in the lock, and the door bang.
Wethermill had gone upstairs.
Celia leaned back, her heart fainting within her. Arrange! It was her
turn now. She was to be "arranged." She had no doubt what sinister
meaning that innocent word concealed. The dry, choking sound, the
horrid scuffling of feet upon the floor, were in her ears. And it had
taken so long--so terribly long!
She heard the door open again and shut again. Then steps approached the
recess. The curtains were flung back, and the two women stood in front
of her--the tall Adele Rossignol with her red hair and her coarse good
looks and her sapphire dress, and the hard-featured, sallow maid. The
maid was carrying Celia's white coat. They did not mean to murder her,
then. They meant to take her away, and even then a spark of hope lit up
in the girl's bosom. For even with her illusions crushed she still
clung to life with all the passion of her young soul.
The two women stood and looked at her; and then Adele Rossignol burst
out laughing. Vauquier approached the girl, and Celia had a moment's
hope that she meant to free her altogether, but she only loosed the
cords which fixed her to the pillar and the high stool.
"Mademoiselle will pardon me for laughing," said Adele Rossignol
politely; "but it was mademoiselle who invited me to try my hand. And
really, for so smart a young lady, mademoiselle looks too ridiculous."
She lifted the girl up and carried her back writhing and struggling
into the salon. The whole of the pretty room was within view, but in
the embrasure of a window something lay dreadfully still and quiet.
Celia held her head averted. But it was there, and, though it was
there, all the while the women joked and laughed, Adele Rossignol
feverishly, Helene Vauquier with a real glee most horrible to see.
"I beg mademoiselle not to listen to what Adele is saying," exclaimed
Helene. And she began to ape in a mincing, extravagant fashion the
manner of a saleswoman in a shop. "Mademoiselle has never looked so
ravishing. This style is the last word of fashion. It is what there is
of most CHIC. Of course, mademoiselle understands that the costume is
not intended for playing the piano. Nor, indeed, for the ballroom. It
leaps to one's eyes that dancing would be difficult. Nor is it intended
for much conversation. It is a costume for a mood of quiet reflection.
But I assure mademoiselle that for pretty young ladies who are the
favourites of rich old women it is the style most recommended by the
criminal classes."
All the woman's bitter rancour against Celia, hidden for months beneath
a mask of humility, burst out and ran riot now. She went to Adele
Rossignol's help, and they flung the girl face downwards upon the sofa.
Her face struck the cushion at one end, her feet the cushion at the
other. The breath was struck out of her body. She lay with her bosom
heaving.
Helene Vauquier watched her for a moment with a grin, paying herself
now for her respectful speeches and attendance.
"Yes, lie quietly and reflect, little fool!" she said savagely. "Were
you wise to come here and interfere with Helene Vauquier? Hadn't you
better have stayed and danced in your rags at Montmartre? Are the smart
frocks and the pretty hats and the good dinners worth the price? Ask
yourself these questions, my dainty little friend!"
She drew up a chair to Celia's side, and sat down upon it comfortably.
"I will tell you what we are going to do with you, Mlle. Celie. Adele
Rossignol and that kind gentleman, M. Wethermill, are going to take you
away with them. You will be glad to go, won't you, dearie? For you love
M. Wethermill, don't you? Oh, they won't keep you long enough for you
to get tired of them. Do not fear! But you will not come back, Mile.
Celie. No; you have seen too much to-night. And every one will think
that Mlle. Celie helped to murder and rob her benefactress. They are
certain to suspect some one, so why not you, pretty one?"
Celia made no movement. She lay trying to believe that no crime had
been committed, that that lifeless body did not lie against the wall.
And then she heard in the room above a bed wheeled roughly from its
place.
The two women heard it too, and looked at one another.
"He should look in the safe," said Vauquier. "Go and see what he is
doing."
And Adele Rossignol ran from the room.
As soon as she was gone Vauquier followed to the door, listened, closed
it gently, and came back. She stooped down.
"Mlle. Celie," she said, in a smooth, silky voice, which terrified the
girl more than her harsh tones, "there is just one little thing wrong
in your appearance, one tiny little piece of bad taste, if mademoiselle
will pardon a poor servant the expression. I did not mention it before
Adele Rossignol; she is so severe in her criticism, is she not? But
since we are alone, I will presume to point out to mademoiselle that
those diamond eardrops which I see peeping out under the scarf are a
little ostentatious in her present predicament. They are a provocation
to thieves. Will mademoiselle permit me to remove them?"
She caught her by the neck and lifted her up. She pushed the lace scarf
up at the side of Celia's head. Celia began to struggle furiously,
convulsively. She kicked and writhed, and a little tearing sound was
heard. One of her shoe-buckles had caught in the thin silk covering of
the cushion and slit it. Helene Vauquier let her fall. She felt
composedly in her pocket, and drew from it an aluminium flask--the same
flask which Lemerre was afterward to snatch up in the bedroom in
Geneva. Celia stared at her in dread. She saw the flask flashing in the
light. She shrank from it. She wondered what new horror was to grip
her. Helene unscrewed the top and laughed pleasantly.
"Mlle. Celie is under control," she said. "We shall have to teach her
that it is not polite in young ladies to kick." She pressed Celia down
with a hand upon her back, and her voice changed. "Lie still," she
commanded savagely. "Do you hear? Do you know what this is, Mlle.
Celie?" And she held the flask towards the girl's face. "This is
vitriol, my pretty one. Move, and I'll spoil these smooth white
shoulders for you. How would you like that?"
Celia shuddered from head to foot, and, burying her face in the
cushion, lay trembling. She would have begged for death upon her knees
rather than suffer this horror. She felt Vauquier's fingers lingering
with a dreadful caressing touch upon her shoulders and about her
throat. She was within an ace of the torture, the disfigurement, and
she knew it. She could not pray for mercy. She could only lie quite
still, as she was bidden, trying to control the shuddering of her limbs
and body.
"It would be a good lesson for Mlle. Celie," Helene continued slowly.
"I think that if Mlle. Celie will forgive the liberty I ought to
inflict it. One little tilt of the flask and the satin of these pretty
shoulders--"
She broke off suddenly and listened. Some sound heard outside had given
Celia a respite, perhaps more than a respite. Helene set the flask down
upon the table. Her avarice had got the better of her hatred. She
roughly plucked the earrings out of the girl's ears. She hid them
quickly in the bosom of her dress with her eye upon the door. She did
not see a drop of blood gather on the lobe of Celia's ear and fall into
the cushion on which her face was pressed. She had hardly hidden them
away before the door opened and Adele Rossignol burst into the room.
"What is the matter?" asked Vauquier.
"The safe's empty. We have searched the room. We have found nothing,"
she cried.
"Everything is in the safe," Helene insisted.
"No."
The two women ran out of the room and up the stairs. Celia, lying on
the settee, heard all the quiet of the house change to noise and
confusion. It was as though a tornado raged in the room overhead.
Furniture was tossed about and over the room, feet stamped and ran,
locks were smashed in with heavy blows. For many minutes the storm
raged. Then it ceased, and she heard the accomplices clattering down
the stairs without a thought of the noise they made. They burst into
the room. Harry Wethermill was laughing hysterically, like a man off
his head. He had been wearing a long dark overcoat when he entered the
house; now he carried the coat over his arm. He was in a dinner-jacket,
and his black clothes were dusty and disordered.
"It's all for nothing!" he screamed rather than cried. "Nothing but the
one necklace and a handful of rings!"
In a frenzy he actually stooped over the dead woman and questioned her.
"Tell us--where did you hide them?" he cried.
"The girl will know," said Helene.
Wethermill rose up and looked wildly at Celia.
"Yes, yes," he said.
He had no scruple, no pity any longer for the girl. There was no gain
from the crime unless she spoke. He would have placed his head in the
guillotine for nothing. He ran to the writing-table, tore off half a
sheet of paper, and brought it over with a pencil to the sofa. He gave
them to Vauquier to hold, and drawing out the sofa from the wall
slipped in behind. He lifted up Celia with Rossignol's help, and made
her sit in the middle of the sofa with her feet upon the ground. He
unbound her wrists and fingers, and Vauquier placed the writing-pad and
the paper on the girl's knees. Her arms were still pinioned above the
elbows; she could not raise her hands high enough to snatch the scarf
from her lips. But with the pad held up to her she could write.
"Where did she keep her jewels! Quick! Take the pencil and write," said
Wethermill, holding her left wrist.
Vauquier thrust the pencil into her right hand, and awkwardly and
slowly her gloved fingers moved across the page.
"I do not know," she wrote; and, with an oath, Wethermill snatched the
paper up, tore it into pieces, and threw it down.
"You have got to know," he said, his face purple with passion, and he
flung out his arm as though he would dash his fist into her face. But
as he stood with his arm poised there came a singular change upon his
face.
"Did you hear anything?" he asked in a whisper.
All listened, and all heard in the quiet of the night a faint click,
and after an interval they heard it again, and after another but
shorter interval yet once more.
"That's the gate," said Wethermill in a whisper of fear, and a pulse of
hope stirred within Celia.
He seized her wrists, crushed them together behind her, and swiftly
fastened them once more. Adele Rossignol sat down upon the floor, took
the girl's feet upon her lap, and quietly wrenched off her shoes.
"The light," cried Wethermill in an agonised voice, and Helena Vauquier
flew across the room and turned it off.
All three stood holding their breath, straining their ears in the dark
room. On the hard gravel of the drive outside footsteps became faintly
audible, and grew louder and came near. Adele whispered to Vauquier:
"Has the girl a lover?"
And Helene Vauquier, even at that moment, laughed quietly.
All Celia's heart and youth rose in revolt against her extremity. If
she could only free her lips! The footsteps came round the corner of
the house, they sounded on the drive outside the very window of this
room. One cry, and she would be saved. She tossed back her head and
tried to force the handkerchief out from between her teeth. But
Wethermill's hand covered her mouth and held it closed. The footsteps
stopped, a light shone for a moment outside. The very handle of the
door was tried. Within a few yards help was there--help and life. Just
a frail latticed wooden door stood between her and them. She tried to
rise to her feet. Adele Rossignol held her legs firmly. She was
powerless. She sat with one desperate hope that, whoever it was who was
in the garden, he would break in. Were it even another murderer, he
might have more pity than the callous brutes who held her now; he could
have no less. But the footsteps moved away. It was the withdrawal of
all hope. Celia heard Wethermill behind her draw a long breath of
relief. That seemed to Celia almost the cruellest part of the whole
tragedy. They waited in the darkness until the faint click of the gate
was heard once more. Then the light was turned up again.
"We must go," said Wethermill. All the three of them were shaken. They
stood looking at one another, white and trembling. They spoke in
whispers. To get out of the room, to have done with the business--that
had suddenly become their chief necessity.
Adele picked up the necklace and the rings from the satin-wood table
and put them into a pocket-bag which was slung at her waist.
"Hippolyte shall turn these things into money," she said. "He shall set
about it to-morrow. We shall have to keep the girl now--until she tells
us where the rest is hidden."
"Yes, keep her," said Helene. "We will come over to Geneva in a few
days, as soon as we can. We will persuade her to tell." She glanced
darkly at the girl. Celia shivered.
"Yes, that's it," said Wethermill. "But don't harm her. She will tell
of her own will. You will see. The delay won't hurt now. We can't come
back and search for a little while."
He was speaking in a quick, agitated voice. And Adele agreed. The
desire to be gone had killed even their fury at the loss of their
prize. Some time they would come back, but they would not search
now--they were too unnerved.
"Helene," said Wethermill, "get to bed. I'll come up with the
chloroform and put you to sleep."
Helene Vauquier hurried upstairs. It was part of her plan that she
should be left alone in the villa chloroformed. Thus only could
suspicion be averted from herself. She did not shrink from the
completion of the plan now. She went, the strange woman, without a
tremor to her ordeal. Wethermill took the length of rope which had
fixed Celia to the pillar.
"I'll follow," he said, and as he turned he stumbled over the body of
Mme. Dauvray. With a shrill cry he kicked it out of his way and crept
up the stairs. Adele Rossignol quickly set the room in order. She
removed the stool from its position in the recess, and carried it to
its place in the hall. She put Celia's shoes upon her feet, loosening
the cord from her ankles. Then she looked about the floor and picked up
here and there a scrap of cord. In the silence the clock upon the
mantelshelf chimed the quarter past eleven. She screwed the stopper on
the flask of vitriol very carefully, and put the flask away in her
pocket. She went into the kitchen and fetched the key of the garage.
She put her hat on her head. She even picked up and drew on her gloves,
afraid lest she should leave them behind; and then Wethermill came down
again. Adele looked at him inquiringly.
"It is all done," he said, with a nod of the head. "I will bring the
car down to the door. Then I'll drive you to Geneva and come back with
the car here."
He cautiously opened the latticed door of the window, listened for a
moment, and ran silently down the drive. Adele closed the door again,
but she did not bolt it. She came back into the room; she looked at
Celia, as she lay back upon the settee, with a long glance of
indecision. And then, to Celia's surprise--for she had given up all
hope--the indecision in her eyes became pity. She suddenly ran across
the room and knelt down before Celia. With quick and feverish hands she
untied the cord which fastened the train of her skirt about her knees.
At first Celia shrank away, fearing some new cruelty. But Adele's voice
came to her ears, speaking--and speaking with remorse.
"I can't endure it!" she whispered. "You are so young--too young to be
killed."
The tears were rolling down Celia's cheeks. Her face was pitiful and
beseeching.
"Don't look at me like that, for God's sake, child!" Adele went on, and
she chafed the girl's ankles for a moment.
"Can you stand?" she asked.
Celia nodded her head gratefully. After all, then, she was not to die.
It seemed to her hardly possible. But before she could rise a subdued
whirr of machinery penetrated into the room, and the motor-car came
slowly to the front of the villa.
"Keep still!" said Adele hurriedly, and she placed herself in front of
Celia.
Wethermill opened the wooden door, while Celia's heart raced in her
bosom.
"I will go down and open the gate," he whispered. "Are you ready?"
"Yes."
Wethermill disappeared; and this time he left the door open. Adele
helped Celia to her feet. For a moment she tottered; then she stood
firm.
"Now run!" whispered Adele. "Run, child, for your life!"
Celia did not stop to think whither she should run, or how she should
escape from Wethermill's search. She could not ask that her lips and
her hands might be freed. She had but a few seconds. She had one
thought--to hide herself in the darkness of the garden. Celia fled
across the room, sprang wildly over the sill, ran, tripped over her
skirt, steadied herself, and was swung off the ground by the arms of
Harry Wethermill.
"There we are," he said, with his shrill, wavering laugh. "I opened the
gate before." And suddenly Celia hung inert in his arms.
The light went out in the salon. Adele Rossignol, carrying Celia's
cloak, stepped out at the side of the window.
"She has fainted," said Wethermill. "Wipe the mould off her shoes and
off yours too--carefully. I don't want them to think this car has been
out of the garage at all."
Adele stooped and obeyed. Wethermill opened the door of the car and
flung Celia into a seat. Adele followed and took her seat opposite the
girl. Wethermill stepped carefully again on to the grass, and with the
toe of his shoe scraped up and ploughed the impressions which he and
Adele Rossignol had made on the ground, leaving those which Celia had
made. He came back to the window.
"She has left her footmarks clear enough," he whispered. "There will be
no doubt in the morning that she went of her own free will."
Then he took the chauffeur's seat, and the car glided silently down the
drive and out by the gate. As soon as it was on the road it stopped. In
an instant Adele Rossignol's head was out of the window.
"What is it?" she exclaimed in fear.
Wethermill pointed to the roof. He had left the light burning in Helene
Vauquier's room.
"We can't go back now," said Adele in a frantic whisper. "No; it is
over. I daren't go back." And Wethermill jammed down the lever. The car
sprang forward, and humming steadily over the white road devoured the
miles. But they had made their one mistake.