_The Portrait of Beethoven._
Betty held her breath as the tall figure in flowing white threaded its
way unerringly among the grouped furniture and passing her so closely
that she might have stretched forth her hand and touched it, glided
through the doorway and up the stairs. The light she carried glimmered
with diminishing radiance until it was suddenly extinguished and there
came the echo of a softly-closing door.
The girl waited motionless, her very heartbeats stilled for an
interminable length of time, but the house remained wrapped in utter
darkness and no sound disturbed the eerie silence.
At last, convinced that the somnambulist had settled once more to rest
and that no eye but her own had witnessed the weird visitation, Betty
ventured from her hiding place, and groping her way to the smokers'
stand, procured a match. Its flame sputtered angrily in her fingers as
she applied it to her candle and she glanced about her in fresh terror
lest its stroke had been heard, but the shadows were empty.
With faltering steps she approached the portrait and stood for long
gazing into the benign eyes which seemed to meet hers with an almost
living response. What was there about the huge picture which had so
impressed itself upon her employer's unquiet mind that her subconscious
instinct drew her to it? Surely not the subject alone, for Mrs.
Atterbury had never evinced the slightest interest in it in the girl's
presence.
Betty stepped back a few paces and regarded the portrait critically.
Including the massive gold frame which surrounded it, the space it
occupied was approximately five feet by eight or ten, and it had been
hung with no consideration of the lighting effect, either from window
or chandelier. The spacing, too, was bad, and its position was far too
low upon the wall.
Had there been some special design in placing it there? Was it merely
for ornamental purposes, or did it serve as a screen for something
behind? Betty thought of the bookcase in the library which swung out,
masking the safe that had been built into the wall; could it be that
within a few paces of her another and more secret repository was
concealed?
The frame appeared as though it had not been moved from its place for
years, its dull burnished gold seemingly embedded in the wall and the
ivory tint of the paper behind it was unsullied by even a finger mark.
She approached the portrait again and held her candle so that its rays
swept the oiled surface of the painting, bringing out each brush stroke
in clear relief. No crevice showed in its broad expanse and it seemed
as securely fastened in its frame as though a part of it.
The portrait in its entirety was too heavy and cumbersome to be moved
without tackle. If it were indeed a blind for something which lay
behind, it must be turned by means of leverage on some secret mechanism
operated with a touch upon a spring or button, but no such article was
visible.
Betty turned her attention to the frame. It was old-fashioned and
heavily carved with a continuous scroll-work with innumerable
protuberances, but none stood out more prominently than the rest and no
flaw or disjointure appeared to the most minute scrutiny. The raised
edges of the scrolls and high convex points of the decoration between
were brightly burnished, the background lustreless and deepened to a
brownish shade resembling bronze.
The candle had burned low and was guttering in her fingers when Betty
suddenly observed that one of the smaller knob-like anaglyphs which
projected from the lower right hand corner of the frame was more highly
burnished than the others and the gilt seemed worn as if by friction.
Impulsively she pressed it.
It gave beneath her hand and she stepped back quickly as the portrait
itself lurched and swung widely out from the frame, grazing her
shoulder before she could spring aside from its path. At the same
instant a bell shrilled loudly through the sleeping house and its echo
had not died away before a hubbub of voices arose from above.
Betty paused only to give a maddened push with all the strength of
her terror behind it, to the picture which yawned from the wall, then
turning, she fled wildly to the stairs.
Her candle was extinguished in the sudden draught, but she had found
the banisters and glided up as swiftly and silently as a ghost. Lights
appeared behind her as she rounded the corner of the hall, but she
reached her room without encountering anyone and turned the key softly
in the lock behind her.
The steady gleam of the live coals in the grate illuminated the
room with a rosy glow and Betty thrust her candle end deep into
the smoldering embers. Then, taking a fresh, unused one from the
many-branched sconce above the mantel, she placed it in the candlestick
upon her dressing-table from which she had taken the first.
Loosening her robe, she jumped into bed, and pulling the covers about
her, lay listening to the hubbub outside. She could clearly distinguish
in the general uproar the high-pitched staccato voice of Madame
Cimmino and Welch's deep-throated bellow of rage.
The sounds came nearer and she heard a thundering knock upon a door
down the hall. A startled cry from Mrs. Atterbury answered it and a
door was slammed back. An excited babel arose once more, and high above
it Madame Cimmino shrilled:
"It was you! You have walked again! See, here is your candle half
burned and still warm, and there are drops of wax upon the floor before
the picture. Would you ruin us all that you will not have a guard at
night?"
Another murmur, and then the voice of Wolvert, smooth and silky,
dominated the others.
"It is all right, Marcia. The portrait is back in its place. You must
have closed it before you came upstairs, although it is a mystery to
me how you reached your room so quickly. I thought somnambulists moved
step by step, but you must have fairly flown. I wonder that the alarm
did not awaken you, or our lights and yells, but at least no harm has
been done."
His last words conveyed a swift suggestion to the girl's mind, and
lest she court suspicion by effacing herself, she sprang from bed, and
switching on the lights, opened the door.
"What is the matter? Is anyone ill?" She blinked realistically in the
sudden glare and her clear, young voice rang out above the others.
Madame Cimmino turned like an avenging fury.
"What is it to you?" she screamed. "Go back to your bed and do not
meddle! _Sancta Maria!_ Must we find you always at our heels? This
comes of admitting an outsider--"
"Speranza, you are beside yourself!" Mrs. Atterbury's voice, poised
and dominant once more, broke in sternly. "You have been startled, I
know, but that does not excuse your lack of self-control. Everything is
quite all right, Betty. Welch happened to touch one of the wires of the
burglar alarm and aroused the house. Don't allow it to disturb you, it
was just a stupid mistake."
Betty closed her door with a little sigh of relief for her narrow
escape, and the confusion of voices in the hall gradually subsided
until silence reigned once more. Mrs. Atterbury's burned candle and
the wax which had fallen from her own combined to form unassailable
if falsely corroborative evidence that her employer alone had been in
the music room, and Betty breathed a prayer of thankfulness for the
fortuitous chance which had saved her from exposure. The portrait of
Beethoven was before her eyes when she at length fell asleep, and in
the darkness, as her heavy lids closed, she seemed again to see it
swing from its massive frame and in the aperture loomed that which she
had scarcely noted in the excitement of the moment; the dull sheen of
a sheet of steel, with the combination knob in the center. The safe was
there as she had suspected, but would chance, which had served her so
well that night, enable her to glimpse what lay within it?
Her first waking thought reverted to it in the morning, but when she
descended at the sound of the breakfast gong she sensed a new tension
in the atmosphere which put her instantly on her guard.
Mrs. Atterbury was in her accustomed place at the head of the table but
she avoided the girl's eyes as she bade her good morning and her level
tones were oddly shaken. Welch turned from the sideboard at the sound
of her voice and the silver dish-cover which he held clattered to the
floor. His face was pasty and gray and he stared at Betty in a sort of
horror until a sharp word from his hostess sent him hastily about his
duties.
Madame Cimmino pushed back her plate abruptly and swept from the room
as the girl seated herself, and Wolvert glanced up with a nod, but his
usually facile tongue was stilled and his eyes seemed to blaze as they
rested upon her. Into his expression Betty read a shadow of that terror
which had lurked there on two previous occasions and when she turned in
growing wonder to her employer she found stamped upon her face also a
look of dazed consternation akin to fear.
She drank her coffee and essayed to eat with her face averted, feeling
that their eyes were fixed upon her in an intensity which seemed to
burn into her consciousness. Had they discovered some clue to her
presence in the music room on the previous night? Did they know that
it was she who had tampered with the portrait and were they even now
planning her punishment?
The food choked her and the ghastly pretense of a meal seemed unending,
but at last Mrs. Atterbury rose.
"You need not attend to the mail this morning, my dear." She tried to
speak casually, but the odd quaver persisted in her tones. "I shall be
too busy to dictate replies, and it will have to wait until another
time. There is a pile of mending in the sewing room, however, which I
wish you would go over carefully."
Betty accepted her dismissal and ascended to the secluded room on the
top floor, where she spent a lonely and anxious morning. The hours
dragged and the silence wrought upon her nerves until she bit her lips
to keep from shrieking out in the sheer agony of protracted suspense.
Why were they waiting to visit their vengeance upon her if they were
assured of her guilt? Anything would be better than this hideous
uncertainty.
That the task which had been arranged for her was the most transparent
of subterfuges for getting her out of the way became apparent when
she examined the work laid out upon the table. The linen was of the
coarsest variety, evidently from the servants' quarters, and it had
long outlived its usefulness. It was yellowed, too, and creased, as
though it had been laid away, forgotten in some musty recess, and she
made but little progress, her thread tearing through the frail, worn
fabric with each stitch.
What was going on below? Her window opened upon a rear view and from it
she could see only the tops of the cedars, and the garage roof, but no
sound of a motor approaching or leaving the house came to her in her
solitude and she felt cut off from all the world.
The silence within doors remained unbroken, save once when she fancied
that the echo of faint, hysterical sobbing reached her ears, but she
could not be sure that her overstrained nerves were not playing her
false.
Gradually the conviction grew within her that the ill-suppressed
excitement and dismay were due to some cause other than the event of
the night before, yet something which concerned her vitally. She could
not forget the glances of horror and fear which had been directed
at her. What could it be? What contingency had arisen of which she
herself was in ignorance, yet which wrought the others to a condition
bordering on panic? Was it that through her they dreaded interference
and possible disaster from an outside source?
Betty anticipated that her lunch would be brought to her and her
virtual isolation continued indefinitely, and she was surprised when
Welch came to summon her to the meal. He still regarded her furtively
and his huge, hairy hands clenched and unclenched as he stood before
her. She gazed at them, repelled yet fascinated as if she could feel
them already closing about her throat. Had they wielded the knife which
had slain Breckinridge? She passed him with a shudder and descended.
A further surprise awaited her; there was a marked change in the
attitude of Mrs. Atterbury and her guests. The former was again her
well-poised self, serene and calmly detached. Madame Cimmino exhibited
a volatile gayety of temperament bordering on hysteria and Wolvert was
in his most reckless, brilliant vein.
Sheer amazement held the girl dumb before his raillery, but she made
a supreme effort to flog her failing spirit into a response to the
general lightness of mood, forced though she instinctively knew it to
be. The hour passed more easily than Betty could have dared to hope
and at its conclusion as she paused in the doorway, uncertain whether
to return to her task or await other instructions, Mrs. Atterbury came
and slipped her arm in the girl's in a rare gesture that was almost a
caress.
"Come up to my sitting-room, my dear. I have a suggestion to make to
you which I think will please you very much, and we will have an
opportunity to talk privately there."
Betty turned obediently and side by side they went up the stair. In
spite of the indulgent tone, the girl was filled with foreboding, but
Mrs. Atterbury was still smiling as she closed the door and motioned
Betty to a low chair near the window.
"I want to speak to you, Betty, about the birthmark on your cheek."
She began without preface. "I am afraid that you must have thought me
needlessly tyrannical in ordering you to go unveiled, but it was the
only way to put a stop to the self-consciousness which was growing upon
you and would only have increased until your life became a burden.
When I engaged you, you assured me that you did not mind the mark, and
scarcely ever thought of it, but you were unaccustomed to the city and
did not realize that strangers will stare at anything unusual in your
appearance. Have you ever made an attempt to have the blemish removed?"
Betty gazed at her in wordless astonishment for a moment before she
found her voice.
"Oh, yes, but it could not be done, and the doctors tell me that only
a worse disfigurement would result from tampering with it. I did try
once, but I hurt myself dreadfully. I really don't mind going unveiled
now, Mrs. Atterbury."
"But you would be glad if the blemish did not exist?" Her tone was
beguilingly insinuating. "It cannot be wholly eradicated, of course,
but I have learned of a method of treatment by which it could be
rendered almost invisible. I was interested on your account, child, and
procured the necessary materials. I have them here."
"Oh, please, no!" Betty cried in genuine alarm. "I would not dare use
acids or anything of that sort! When I attempted it before, it nearly
caused blood-poisoning. Nothing could induce me to expose myself to
such danger a second time."
"But, my dear, this is absolutely harmless. Do you think I would
suggest or even permit you to run any risk of injury?" She opened a
drawer of her dressing-table and took from it several small jars and
a camel's hair brush. "It does not act upon the birthmark itself and
would not irritate the most sensitive skin. It is merely a covering
which almost defies detection. This solution of wax forms a sort of
enamel and the other jars contain merely paint to produce a natural
effect. I do not approve of cosmetics for young girls on general
principles, but this is a different matter, and you will marvel at the
result. The birthmark will seem to have disappeared absolutely."
"But won't that militate against my usefulness, Mrs. Atterbury?" The
girl looked unflinchingly into her eyes. "The people you send me to
meet identify me by means of this mark. How will they recognize me if
it is covered?"
Mrs. Atterbury drew her breath in sharply between her teeth, and her
fingers tightened about the little jar, but she replied coolly:
"You will not be called upon to go on any errands of that sort for some
time to come. In describing your appearance the scar was naturally
mentioned but it is not essential for your identification. Remember
I am not asking you to hide it solely for your own benefit, Betty. I
find that it has a disagreeable effect upon my guests and those about
us in the household and I am considering their feelings as well as
yours when I insist that you disguise it as much as possible. This may
seem brutally frank to you, but you know that the blemish makes no
difference to me personally, nor to anyone who really cares for you.
Come, sit here, and let me show you what a magical change I can effect."
Betty drew back and stood very straight and tall before her employer.
"I am sorry, Mrs. Atterbury, but I cannot allow anyone to touch my
face. You are very kind to have taken this interest in me and I
appreciate it. I will gladly accept the preparations and use them
myself if you will give me the directions, but if anyone else attempted
it I should go mad with nervous torture. I hope you understand; I may
seem abnormally sensitive to you, but I really could not endure it."
Mrs. Atterbury, with a shrug, capitulated:
"Very well, my dear, you must do as you like, of course. The directions
are upon each jar. Use it this afternoon and let me see at dinner how
much it has improved your appearance."
Betty took the articles murmuring her thanks and went to her own room.
There she carefully extracted a small quantity of their contents from
each of the jars, wrapped it in paper and burnt it in the grate. This
done she seated herself before her dressing-table, and with cosmetics
of her own applied herself to her task.
She worked long and painstakingly, but at length the result was
achieved to her satisfaction and she sat back and surveyed herself in
the mirror.
The mark was almost obliterated, only the faintest shadow of deeper
color showing beneath the rose-pink glow which tinted her cheeks from
brow to neck, and with the disfigurement banished her whole expression
changed. It was as if a different personality were reflected before
her, and Betty's first gleam of pleasure at her handiwork gave place to
a little frown of doubt and uncertainty, not unmixed with trepidation.
What motive lay behind this suggestion from Mrs. Atterbury?
At dusk when Betty descended the stairs she discovered a man standing
in the shadowed doorway of the drawing-room. At first she though it
was Wolvert, but a second glance showed that the intruder was of more
slender build and younger, and his face seemed overspread with an
unhealthy greenish pallor.
He stood motionless staring glassily at her and when she was half way
down he stepped forward.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" His high-pitched quavering
voice shrilled just as the firelight fell full upon his face, and Betty
recognized him at once. It was the pale, overdressed, foppish youth
of the dinner party on the night when Wolvert had uttered his strange
toast.
"Mr. Ide! Don't you remember me? I am Mrs. Atterbury's companion."
"Oh--er--of course! Stupid of me, but my nerves are a bit on edge and
seeing you so suddenly in the half-light--"
His voice trailed off into silence and he still stood with his eyes
fixed in wondering perplexity on her face.
"It was a natural mistake, Mr. Ide. You are waiting for Mrs. Atterbury?
I will go to her--"
"Thank you, Welch has taken my message." He spoke as if dazed. "It is
extraordinary, but do you know I fancied for a moment that you were
someone else? There was something about you, Miss--Miss--"
"My name is Betty Shaw," the girl interrupted quietly. "I happen to
be of quite a usual type, I believe, except for this birthmark on my
cheek. I have powdered it over tonight, so it is no wonder you did not
recognize me at once. No doubt Mrs. Atterbury will be down in a few
minutes."
She nodded and turning abruptly entered the library, leaving the young
man gazing after her with vacant eyes, and jaws agape.
The library was empty and in darkness, even the hearth fire having
died, and a chill dampness pervaded the air. Betty switched on the
lights and looked about her. The morning's correspondence was still
heaped untouched upon the desk, but the rest of the room was in order
save that a huge mass of fluffy charred fragments, as of burned paper,
choked the chimney opening, smothering the logs beneath.
What could have been destroyed there in such quantities? The whole
contents of desk and safe combined would not have produced such a
mound of ashes. She took up the poker and stirred them about idly, her
thoughts reverting to the strange manner of the young man in the hall,
when all at once a scrap of paper fluttered from the rest which showed
a gleam of white. It was part of the upper half of a news-sheet; the
date of that morning was plainly visible at the top and just beneath it
the fragment of a sentence in double heading type caught her eye:
"Police Find Promising Clue to B--
Looking For Girl With Scar--"
Betty dropped the paper as if it burned her.