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Title: The Late Tenant


Author: Louis Tracy



Release Date: March 26, 2011  [eBook #35691]

Language: English

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THE  LATE TENANT

by

GORDON HOLMES

Author of "A Mysterious Disappearance,"
"The Arncliffe Puzzle."







New York
Edward J. Clode
156 Fifth Avenue
1906

Copyright, 1906, by
Edward J. Clode

Entered at Stationers Hall

The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




CONTENTS


          CHAPTER I                          PAGE
 A WHIFF OF VIOLETS                            1

          CHAPTER II
 A SIGNATURE WITH A FLOURISH                  15

          CHAPTER III
 VIOLET                                       27

          CHAPTER IV
 "JOHANN STRAUSS"                             36

          CHAPTER V
 VON OR VAN?                                  45

          CHAPTER VI
 THE WORD OF JOY                              60

          CHAPTER VII
 VIOLET'S CONDITIONS                          70

          CHAPTER VIII
 AT DEAD OF NIGHT                             83

          CHAPTER IX
 COMING NEAR                                  96

          CHAPTER X
 THE MARRIAGE-LINES                          106

          CHAPTER XI
 SWORDS DRAWN                                117

          CHAPTER XII
 THE NIGHT-WATCHES                           133

          CHAPTER XIII
 NO MORE VIOLET                              144

          CHAPTER XIV
 THE DIARY                                   163

          CHAPTER XV
 IN PAIN                                     173

          CHAPTER XVI
 HAND TO HAND                                180

          CHAPTER XVII
 DAVID MORE THAN REGAINS LOST GROUND         197

          CHAPTER XVIII
 FROM THE DEPTHS                             213

          CHAPTER XIX
 VIOLET DECIDES                              227

          CHAPTER XX
 DAVID HAS ONE VISITOR, AND EXPECTS OTHERS   242

          CHAPTER XXI
 THE MIDNIGHT GATHERING                      257

          CHAPTER XXII
 VAN HUPFELDT MAKES AMENDS                   271




_The Late Tenant_




CHAPTER I

A WHIFF OF VIOLETS


"I suppose one becomes used to this sort of thing in time," thought
David Harcourt, as he peered through the dusty plate-glass windows of
his third-floor flat. "At present I can appreciate the feelings of a
Wyoming steer when he first experiences the restraint of a cattle-truck.
Or am I a caged bird? or a menagerie ape? or a mere ass? There is
something in the evolution theory, after all. Obviously, one of my
respected ancestors is kicking."

Then, being a cheerful soul, he laughed, and turned from the outer
prospect to face the coziness of his new abode. He did not understand
yet that in No. 7, Eddystone Mansions, picked almost at haphazard from
a house-agent's list, he had hit upon a residence singularly free from
the sort of thing which induced this present fit of the blues. In the
first place, owing to a suit in chancery, the "eligible" building-site
opposite was vacant, and most of the windows of No. 7 commanded an
open space. Secondly, the street itself did not connect two main
thoroughfares; hence its quietude was seldom disturbed by vehicles.
Thirdly, and, perhaps, most important of all, his neighbors, above,
below, and on three sides, were people who had achieved by design what
he had done by accident--they had taken up their abode in Eddystone
Mansions on account of the peace thus secured in the heart of London.

For London has a stony heart with wooden arteries, through which the
stream of life rushes noisily. To ears tuned by the far-flung silence of
the prairie this din of traffic was thunderous. To eyes trained by the
smooth horizon it was bewildering to see a clear sky overhead and a sun
sinking slowly, like a dim Chinese fire-balloon, into a compound of
smoke and chimneys. In fact, David Harcourt came to the conclusion that
Londoners, as a race, must be purblind and somewhat deaf.

"I wonder if I can stand it?" he commented. "I saw a map of South
Africa in a shop window to-day. It looked wonderfully attractive. Yes,
I am beginning to believe there is neither claw nor feather in my
composition. 'Kicking' is the right word--hoof--ass! Oh! the line of
descent is clear." Then he laughed again, taking a box of cigars off the
top of a bookcase, and any one who heard him laugh would have grasped
the reason why men soon called him "Davie," and women smiled when he
looked at them.

Dame Nature, aided by his less remote ancestors in the evolutionary
tree, had been good to him. It would have needed the worst
"environment" ever dreamed of by sociology to make him a degenerate.
As it was, a healthy upbringing, a fair public-school education, and
the chance that a relation of his owned a Wyoming ranch, joined in
fashioning an excellent specimen of lusty and clean-souled young
manhood. But that same general wet-nurse, who had intended David to lord
it over herds and vast pastures, had complicated matters by throwing a
literary kink into the deftly coiled strands of his composition. Thus,
at the age of twenty-five, he took more interest in scribbling stories
and searching for rimes than in toting up the proceeds of sales at
Chicago stock-yards. Worse than that, having oft imagined and striven
to depict various ethereal creatures typical of the Spirit of the Dawn,
the Fairy of the Dell, or the Goddess of the Mist, he had refused, most
emphatically, to wed the elderly rancher's daughter, his relative, a
lady blessed with more wealth and weight than was necessary for any one
woman in the world.

So, like many another youngster in the far lands, he heard the voice of
London calling through every book and newspaper he read. It was a siren
voice, devoid of accent. The Wyoming wooing, too, became a serious
matter; hence, like one of the dove-eyed oxen he knew so well, he
stampeded in sudden panic, realized his personal possessions, and, in
the vernacular of Sioux Pass, "lit out for the nearest depot, an'
boarded an east-bound train."

He had now been in England a month, in London a week. From the
landing-stage at Liverpool he had gone to visit the country cousins who
superintended his childhood and education after the death of his mother,
that lady having been stricken down by the hand which killed her soldier
husband at Dargai. He found the cousins snug in their Bedfordshire nest.
The squire-like head of the household wondered dully why any man should
quit a place where he could "get on" to seek a precarious livelihood in
a land which was "rapidly going to the dogs." David certainly received
more encouragement from the younger members of the family, especially
from a bright-eyed maiden of eighteen, who thought London "awfully
jolly," and vowed a literary career to be "quite too devey for
anything."

But David was level-headed enough to see that the verdict of squire and
maid were equally unfavorable.

Then followed a few days in a big hotel. He paid a round of useless
calls at the offices of magazines that, to his certain knowledge,
printed all sorts of rubbishy articles about cow-boy life, but opposed
a phalanx of commissionaires against a man who could not only round up
an infuriated herd, but could also describe the feat deftly with a pen.
Ultimately, he resolved to lay siege to the citadel which he was unable
to storm, and pitch his camp over against the tents of the enemy. He
took a furnished flat, "with plate and linen, gas-stove, electric
light, bath H. and C.," for six months.

In thus becoming a Londoner, he encountered the first quaint anomaly of
London life. When he drove up to the door of the most fashionable hotel
in the West End, and deposited a couple of portmanteaus in a bed-room
after signing the register, he was permitted to run a bill for a week,
at least, without let or hindrance; but when he offered to pay cash in
advance for the flat, he met with a demand for "references."

The agent was firm but explanatory. "It is not my client, but the
over-landlord, who makes that stipulation," he said. "In fact, the
letting is wholly in my hands, as the late tenant is dead; but, for
certain reasons, the residuary legatees wish to keep the place in its
present condition until the lease expires a year hence."

"Did the late tenant die there?" asked David.

"Well--yes--fully five months since; there have been other occupants
subsequently, and the terms are so reasonable--"

"What did he, or she, die of?" persisted David. He was accustomed to
reading men's faces, and he had caught a certain fluttering of the
agent's eyelids.

"Nothing to cause any alarm, nothing infectious, I assure you.
People--er--die in flats just the same as--er--in private houses." This,
being a joke, had its chuckle.

But the agent also knew men in his own way, and he felt it was unwise
to wriggle. David had a steadfast glance. He gave others the impression
that he heard and treasured each word they uttered. He was really
wondering then why the speaker's neck was so long and thin--nothing more
serious, but, with a disagreeable disclosure lurking in the other's
mind, David's scrutiny compelled candor.

"The thing is bound to come to your ears sooner or later, Mr. Harcourt;
so I may as well tell you now," said the Londoner. "The late tenant
was a lady, a singer of much promise, it was said. For an unknown
reason--probably some love affair was disturbing her rest--she--er--took
an overdose of a sleeping-draft. She was a very charming woman, quite
young, of highest character. It is inconceivable that she should have
committed suicide. The affair was an accident, of course, but--er--"

"A sceptical coroner thought it a murder?"

"Oh, dear, no, nothing of the kind, not a hint of such a thing. Fact
is--well, it sounds ridiculous to say with reference to a popular block
of flats in the middle of London, but two foolish women--an excitable
actress and her servant, your predecessors in the flat--have spread
reports as to queer noises. Well, you know, don't you? the sort of
nonsense women will talk."

"In plain English, they say the place is haunted."

"Ha, ha! Something in that nature. You have hit it! Something in that
nature. Absurd thing!"

"Who knows?" David had a cold disbelief in spooks, but it amused him to
see the agent squirm; and he sat tight. Those eyelids fluttered again,
and Mr. Dibbin banged a ledger with wrathful fist.

"Look here, Mr. Harcourt," cried he finally. "This is a
five-guineas-a-week flat. I'll make you a fair offer; take it for six
months and I give it you at half price."

"I laying the ghost at two and a half guineas weekly?"

"Put it any way you like. If a man of sound common-sense like you lives
there for a considerable period, the wretched affair will be forgotten;
so it is worth the loss to me, and it is a first-class bargain for you."

"Done!" said David.

The agent was so pleased that his annoyance vanished; he promised to
secure a woman whom he knew to look after the new tenant's housekeeping.
She had probably never heard of the Eddystone Mansions tragedy. He would
have her in the flat within four days. Meanwhile a charwoman might
attend to things generally.

The references having proved satisfactory, David was now passing his
first evening in his new abode. He had purchased some books and
stationery; his charwoman had left him; and, when the door had closed
behind her, he turned from the head of the dead girl in chalks over the
mantelpiece to gaze out of the dining-room window, and back again to
the sweet face in chalks, to return presently to the window.

It was a Thursday evening in the last week of January. The housekeeper
was to arrive on Saturday. David fixed Monday as a good day to start
work. In the interim he meant to loaf, dine at noteworthy restaurants,
read, and go to theaters.

A man accustomed to guide his movements by the position of
mountain-ranges or the stars, and count distances by his days on
horseback, is likely to find himself all unhinged within a four-mile
radius. David was in the novice stage of acquaintanceship with the
magnetic life of the world's capital. Not yet did the roar of London
sing in familiar harmonies; the crunch of the omnibuses, the jingle of
the hansoms, made no music in his ears. There was something uncanny in
the silence of the millions eddying through the streets. Where all else
was clamor, mankind was dumb, save for the shouts of the newsboys, the
jabber of bus-conductors, the cries of itinerant venders.

So David, having dressed and gone out, wandered into another restaurant
than that which he was aiming for; dawdled over the meal until the first
act of the play which he meant to see must have been ended; and decided
then upon a music-hall; finally, he strolled back toward Eddystone
Mansions as early as eleven.

The elevator, placed in the center of the building, ran from the
basement floor; those who used it had to descend a few steps from the
entrance and advance along a passage. Harcourt felt unaccountably
tired--there is a strain of life in London as on the tops of
mountains--so he chose the lift in preference to the stairs.

The hall-porter, who sat within the lift, pondering the entries for the
Spring Handicaps, recognized him, and jumped up with a salute.

"Good-evenin', sir! Fine, frosty night, sir," said he. They began to
ascend. A thought occurred to David. "What was the name of the lady
who occupied No. 7?" he asked.

"Miss Ermyn L'Estrange, sir," was the instant answer.

Even in the wilds of Wyoming one grasps the significance of certain
classes of names. For instance, not even the rawest tenderfoot would
expect "One-eyed Pete" to turn out to be a parson.

"I mean the lady who died here," said David.

The porter stopped the lift. "Your floor, sir," he said. "I've only bin
in these 'ere flats a matter o' two months, sir."

"Good egg!" cried David. "Have a cigar, porter. You are a man to be
depended on. But surely there is no harm in telling me the poor girl's
name. It must have appeared in all the newspapers."

The attendant tickled his head underneath his hat. The new tenant of No.
7 seemed a nice gentleman, anyhow. He looked up and down the stairs, of
which two sections were visible from the landing where they stood.

"I 'ave 'eard," said he, "that a young lydy used ter live 'ere of the
nyme of Miss Gwendoline Barnes."

"Ah, that sounds more like it. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir."

Harcourt, fumbling over the intricacies of the lock, heard the rattle
of the lift as it reached the basement. On his landing were two doors,
his own and that of No. 8; and light shone from his neighbor's dwelling.
That was companionable. The stairs, too, were well lighted.

At last he gave the key the right pressure, and the latch yielded.
He passed within and closed the door noiselessly. The electric
switch governing the hall-lamp was on the wall beyond the short
entrance-passage. He removed his overcoat and hat in the semi-darkness;
the sheen coming through the corrugated-glass panels of the outer door
did not so much as cast a shadow.

All at once he detected a fragrance of violets, faintly, but distinctly.
This was puzzling! He knew that it was almost impossible for that scent
to have been there earlier in the evening when he was at home, without
being marked by him. Even now not one man in a thousand in London that
night would have caught the subtle perfume; but David retained the
hunter's senses. As he stood in suspense, a feeling peeped and grew up
within him that the odor carried with it a suggestion of death; his
muscles grew taut, ready to fight, to defend himself against this world
or the next.

The next instant he smiled, thinking: "Nonsense! It must have been here
before. Each time I came in I was smoking; the air is frosty, too."

He groped inward for the switch, turned on the light, and, without
deigning to give another thought to the smell of violets, turned
to the left along the main corridor, which was rectangular to
the entrance-hall. Passing the drawing-room door, he entered the
dining-room. Opposite the latter was the kitchen and servants'
apartments. Around the other end of the main corridor were disposed
three bed-rooms and a bath-room. The light he had turned on illuminated
entrance and corridor alike.

In the dining-room he found the fire still burning. That was good. The
coal-scuttle was not by the fireplace, but in a corner. He went to get
a shovelful of coal; and as he stooped, again came to him the fragrance,
thrilling, bringing with it a picture of a girl whom he had once seen
lying in funereal state, surrounded by flowers, and clothed in the last
white robes of earth.

David stabbed the coals with the shovel. "What's wrong with me?" he half
laughed. Yet his eyes sought the crayon drawing of Gwendoline Barnes.

Presently he lit a cigar, unfolded an evening paper which he had bought
in the streets, and tried to take an interest in the news of this
new-old world into which he was new-born.

But his mind wandered. Without he heard the distant rumble of traffic;
hansoms were beginning to arrive in the street beneath; he heard doors
slam; the jingling of bells on head-stalls; feet pattering across the
pavement; a driver's tongue-click, and away would jog a horse, to be
stirred, perhaps, into sudden frenzy by two shrills of a far-off
whistle.

A contrast, these sounds, to the twig-snapping and grass-rustling of
a night on the plains! There, lying by the camp-fire embers, he had
heard the coyote slinking past in the dark, while the tethered horses
suspended their cropping to hearken. Here men and streets made a yet
stranger wilderness. He sat over the hearth absorbed by it, already
yielding his tribute to the greatness of the outer ocean of life.

But prairie or city, man must sleep. David rose and went to the
sideboard for a decanter. A certain graceful slowness characterized his
movements. Town-bred men might have been deceived thereby, might reason
that he was lethargic, of strapping physique, certainly, yet a man who
could be hit three times before he countered once. It is this error
of judgment which leads to accidents when town-dwellers encounter
the denizens of the jungle. Harcourt's hand was outstretched for the
decanter when he became aware that he was not alone in the flat. The
knowledge was derived from neither sight nor sound. It was intuitive, a
species of feeling through space, an imperative consciousness that he
shared his suite of apartments with another distinct, if intangible,
being. Many men might not have had it, but Harcourt had it clearly.

Instantly he was rigid. This time he was weaving no fantasy round a
whiff of violets. The sense of nearness to other presences is really
inherent in man. Residence in settled communities dulls it, but in David
Harcourt it was a living faculty. He stood motionless, waiting for some
simple proof of his belief.

The door, veiled by a portière, was not closed, but sufficiently closed
to prevent any view of the corridor, which, otherwise, it commanded
throughout. The flat was carpeted so thickly that movement was silenced.
But David fancied that a woman's dress did brush somewhere against wall
or floor. That was enough. He was about to spring forward and pull the
door open to see, when he heard, or thought that he heard, the switch of
the light outside click, as if it had been carefully raised. And on the
instant, without hesitation, he pushed up the switch in the dining-room,
and hid himself in darkness. There are wolves, too, in the London
desert.

Now, like a bush-cat, he crept to the door, opened it, and peeped out.
Certainly the light which he had left burning had been extinguished by
some hand; the corridor was in darkness.

Nerves, as commonly understood, did not much enter into Harcourt's
scheme of things. But his heart beat quicker. The speed of thought
cannot be measured. Many questions, and one doubt, one question, flitted
through his brain. He stood in deep gloom; near him, he was convinced,
was something in the guise of woman. The face in chalks on the
mantelpiece seemed to crowd the dark, the face of the woman who had been
hovering on the verge of his consciousness ever since the agent had
mentioned her to him.




CHAPTER II

A SIGNATURE WITH A FLOURISH


He was collected enough, though the blood was rather cool in his veins,
and there was an odd sensitiveness at the roots of his hair. "Who is
there?" he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

There was no answer, and now he had a feeling that the presence was
drawing nearer.

He was unarmed, of course. The inseparable six-shooter of the West lay
at the bottom of a cabin-trunk in his bed-room. But his faculties were
exerted to an extent hardly possible to men who have not lived close to
wild nature. He conceived that his safety demanded the exercise not only
of pluck, but of artifice. So he stepped softly to the corner by the
entrance to the servants' apartments, and, standing there, sought a
loose match in his waistcoat pocket, and held it against the wall, ready
to light it at an instant's notice. He did not mean to sacrifice to any
chivalric nonsense about sex the opening move in what might prove to be
a game of life or death. The woman, or whatever it was, showed by her
conduct that she was not there by some mischance capable of explanation;
he would determine by her first move, by the first flash of light, how
to deal with her; and, if there were others with her, her body would
be his shield until he gained the outer door and staircase. And so he
waited, with the alert patience of an Indian, poised on the very tip-toe
of action.

But as time passed, and there was no further sign of life in the
corridor, the situation became over trying. He formulated a fresh plan.
Behind him lay the kitchen, with its fire-irons, and thither he ran,
seized a poker, then rushing out again, had the corridor, the
drawing-room, every room, alight. But he saw no one.

He searched each room with eager haste, but there was nothing out of the
common to be discovered. The front door was closed as he had left it. He
ran into the exterior lobby, and, keeping an eye on the exit, summoned
the elevator. Up it came; but the porter, throwing open the doors,
checked his ready salute in his alarm at the sight of "No. 7" facing him
poker in hand.

"Have you seen a lady go out?" demanded David.

The man drew back, one hand on his lever and the other on a sliding
trellis-work of iron.

"N-no, sir," he stammered.

"Don't be frightened," said David, sharply. "I want you to keep your
wits. Some one has been in my flat--"

"Is that so, sir?"

"Where have you been during the last five minutes?"

"Down-stairs, sir."

"At the door?"

"No, sir, in the back, not five yards from the lift, sir." He thought it
unnecessary to mention that he had been talking to the housemaid of No.
2, in the basement on her way to the post.

"So any one could have gone out without your knowledge?"

"If they went by the stairs, sir."

"Come in and help me to search my place again."

The porter hung back. The man's sheepish face was almost comical.

"Come, come," said David, "there isn't much to be afraid of now, but
I tell you that some one put out the light in the corridor, and I am
almost sure that I heard the stir of a woman's dress somewhere."

The lift-attendant's pallor increased.

"That's just it, sir," he murmured. "The others have heard it, too."

"Stuff!" said David, turning on his heel.

Few Britons can stand contempt. The porter followed him.

"That's a man," said David, and they entered the flat. Harcourt shut and
bolted the door.

"Now," he said, "you mount guard in the passage, while I carry on the
hunt."

He would have disturbed a mouse were it in hiding, so complete was his
second scrutiny of every nook. At the end of a fruitless quest he gave
the porter a whisky and soda.

"I'll tell you wot, sir," said the man, "there's more in this than meets
the heye. Miss L'Estrange, she never saw anythink, but she 'eard all
sorts o' rummy noises, an' twiced she found that all 'er things 'ad bin
rummidged. An' it was no thief, neither. The maid, she acshully sawr
the pore lydy. If I may s'y it in confidence, sir, and you wants ter
be comfortable, there's No. 18 in the next block--"

"I have rented the place for six months, and I shall stay in it," said
David. "Have another? No? Well, here is half a crown. Say nothing about
to-night's adventure. I am going to bed."

"Lordy! Goin' ter sleep 'ere alone?" gasped his companion. "I wouldn't
do it for a pension."

"Yet I am paying for the privilege. However, not a word, remember."

"Right you are, sir. 'Ope you'll 'ave a good night's rest, sir. I'll be
in the lift for another 'arf hour, if you should 'appen to want me."

Left to himself, David bolted the outer door again, and returned to
the dining-room. Obeying an impulse, he jotted down some notes of the
occurrence, paying special heed to times and impressions. Then he went
to bed, having locked his bed-room door and placed his revolver under
his pillow. He imagined that he would remain awake many hours, but,
tired and overwrought, he was soon asleep, to be aroused only by the
news-agent's effort to stuff a morning paper into the letter-box. The
charwoman was already in the flat, and the sun was shining through the
drawn-thread pattern of the blinds.

"The air of London must be drugged," thought David, looking at his
watch. "Asleep at half-past eight of a fine morning!"

Such early-morning reproaches mark the first stage of town life.

After breakfast he went to his bank. He had expended a good deal of
money during the past month, but was well equipped in substantials,
owned a comfortable home for six months--barring such experiences as
those of the preceding night--and found at the bank a good balance to
his credit.

"I will hold on until I have left two hundred pounds of my capital and
earnings combined," he decided; "then I shall take the next mail steamer
to some place where they raise stock."

He called at the agent's office.

"Nothing amiss, I hope?" said Mr. Dibbin.

"Nothing, whatever. I just happened in to get a few pointers about Miss
Gwendoline Barnes."

Harcourt found that in London it was helpful to use Americanisms in his
speech. People smiled and became attentive when new idioms tickled their
metropolitan ears. But the mention of the dead tenant of No. 7 Eddystone
Mansions froze Dibbin's smile.

"What about her? Poor lady! she might well be forgotten," he said.

"So soon? I suppose you knew her?"

"Yes. Oh, yes."

"Nice girl?"

The agent bent over some papers. He seemed to be unable to bear
Harcourt's steady glance.

"She was exceedingly good-looking," he answered; "tall, elegant figure,
head well poised, kind of a face you see in a Romney, high forehead,
large eyes, small nose and mouth--sort of artist type."

"Wore a lot of lace about the throat?"

"What? You know that?"

"Oh, don't be startled," said Harcourt. "There is her head in chalks you
know, over the mantelpiece--"

"Ah, true, true."

"I wonder if it was she or some other lady who was in my flat last night
at half-past eleven."

Dibbin again started, stared at Harcourt, and groaned.

"If it distresses you, I will talk of something else," said Harcourt.

"Mr. Harcourt, you don't realize what this means to me. That block of
buildings brings me an income. Any more talk of a ghost at No. 7 will
cause dissatisfaction, and the proprietary company will employ another
agency."

"Now, let us be reasonable. Even if I hold a séance every night, I shall
stick to my contract without troubling a board of directors. I am that
kind of man. But, meantime, you should help me with information."

Dibbin blinked, and dabbed his face with a handkerchief. "Ask me
anything you like," he said.

"When did Miss Barnes die?"

"On July 28 of last year. She lived alone in the flat, employing a
non-resident general servant. This woman left the flat at six o'clock on
the previous evening. At half-past eight A. M. next day, when she tried
to let herself in, the latch appeared to be locked. After some hours'
delay, when nothing could be ascertained of Miss Barnes's movements,
though she was due at a music-master's that morning and at a rehearsal
in the afternoon, the door was forced, and it was discovered that the
latch was not only locked but a lower bolt had been shot home, thus
proving that the unhappy girl herself had taken this means of showing
that her death was self-inflicted."

"Why do you say that, if a coroner's jury brought in a verdict of 'Death
from Misadventure'?"

Mr. Dibbin's eyes shifted again slightly. "That was--er--what one
calls--"

"I see. The verdict was virtually one of suicide?"

"It could not well be otherwise. She had purchased the sleeping-draft
herself, but, unfortunately, fortified it with strychnine. How else
could the precautions about the door be explained? That is the only
means of egress. Each window is sixty feet from the ground."

"Did she rent the flat herself?"

"No. That is the only really mysterious circumstance about the affair.
It was taken on a three years' agreement, and furnished for her, by a
gentleman."

"Who was he?"

"No one knows. He paid cash in advance for everything."

David was surprised. "Say, Mr. Dibbin," he queried, "how about the
'references' upon which the over-landlord insisted in my case?"

"What are references worth, anyhow?" cried the agent, testily. "In this
instance, when inquired into by the police, they were proved to be
bogus. A bundle of bank-notes inspires confidence when you are a buyer,
and propose to part with them forthwith."

"Surely suspicions were aroused?"

The agent coughed discreetly. "This is London, you know. Given a pretty
girl, a singer, a minor actress, who leaves her home and lives alone in
apartments exceedingly well furnished, what do people think? The man
had sufficient reasons to remain unknown, and those reasons were
strengthened ten-fold by the scandal of Miss Barnes's death. She left
not even a scrap of paper to identify him, or herself, for that matter.
All we had was his signature to the agreement. It is, I believe, a false
name. Would you care to see it?"

"Yes," said David.

Dibbin took some papers from a pigeonhole. Among them David recognized
the deed he had signed a few days earlier. A similar document was now
spread before him. It bore the scrawl, "Johann Strauss," with the final
S developed into an elaborate flourish.

"A foreigner," observed David.

"Possibly. The man spoke excellent English."

"Have you ever heard of Lombroso, Mr. Dibbin?"

"Lombroso? I have seen the name, somewhere in Soho, I think."

"Not the same," said David with due gravity. "The man I mean is an
Italian criminologist of great note. He lays it down as a principle
that a signature of that kind is a sign of moral degeneracy. Keep an
eye on those among your clients who use such a flourish, Mr. Dibbin."

"Good gracious!" cried the agent, casting a glance at the well-stuffed
letter-cases of his office. How many moral degenerates had left their
sign manual there!

"Two more questions," went on Harcourt. "Where do Miss Barnes's
relatives reside?"

"Her name was not Barnes," was the instant answer; "but I am pledged to
secrecy in that regard. There is a mother, a most charming woman, and a
sister, both certainly most charming ladies, of a family very highly
respected. They did not discover the unhappy girl's death until she was
long laid to rest--"

"Then, why is the flat still in the condition in which Miss Barnes
inhabited it?"

"Ah, that is simple enough. Isn't the agreement valid for nearly a year
yet? When that term expires, I shall dispose of the furniture and hand
over the proceeds to the young lady's heirs-at-law, subject to
direction, of course, in case the real lessee ever puts in a claim."

David strolled out into the crowded solitude of the streets, with
a vague mind of Gwendoline Barnes and Johann Strauss, two misty
personalities veiled under false names. But they so dwelt in his mind
that he asked himself if he had fled from the pursuit of a living woman
in far Wyoming to be haunted by a dead one in England? Like most
strangers in London, he turned to the police for counsel, and told to an
inspector on duty at a police-station his tale of the whiff of violets,
of the extinguished light in his corridor, and of the real or fancied
brush of a woman's skirt somewhere against wall or carpet. He was
listened to with kindliness, though, of course, without much faith.
However, he learned from the inspector the address of the coroner's
court where the inquest had probably been held; it was near by, and
David's steps led him thither. There he asked some questions at
haphazard, without picking up anything of fresh interest; unless it
was that "Gwendoline Barnes" lay buried in Kensal Green cemetery.

It was now late in the afternoon. He strolled down Tottenham Court Road
into Holborn, ate a deferred luncheon in Oxford-St., and started to
saunter back home, shirking a theater matinée, which was irksome since
it was the fixed thing on his program. But it struck him half-way home
that his charwoman was gone, that the flat was lonely; he got into a
cab, saying to the driver: "Kensal Green cemetery!"

Some electric lamps were a-flicker already in the streets. It was nearly
the hour at which London roars loudest, when the city begins to pour out
its hordes, and vans hurry to their bourne, with blocks in the traffic,
and more haste, less speed. When he reached the cemetery the closing
time was imminent.

A little snow lay among the graves, through which the grass-tufts
showed, making a ground of black-and-white. Some few stars had ventured
to peep from the wintry sky. A custodian supplied David with the formal
information which he sought. The plot of ground had been bought in
perpetuity; it was in a shaded place a good distance from the entrance;
an Iona cross, erected by friends, marked the spot, bearing the one
word, "Gwendoline."

"It is late, sir," said the man. But mighty is the power of the tip,
even in cemeteries.

David walked down an avenue of the dead toward the little mound that
covered the young actress. He was perhaps twenty yards from it when he
heard and almost stopped at the sound of a sob not far away. He looked
on this hand and on that, but could see no one. The place, with its
silent populace, was more lonesome than the prairie; and a new sense had
been steadily growing up in him since half-past eleven of the previous
night--the sense of the "other world," of its possible reality and
nearness. There was an odor here, strong enough to his keen nostrils,
of flowers, especially of violets, and of the last end of mortal man, a
blend of sweet and abhorrent which was to infect his mind for many a
day. However, he did not hesitate, but, with slower steps, that made
hardly a sound, turned a corner of the path, cleared a clump of trees
which had blocked his view, and now saw the grave of Gwendoline, the
cross, the chaplet of fresh violets at the foot of the cross, and over
the cross a woman weeping.

Weeping bitterly, her face in her hands, she was standing, but her body
was bent in grief, and she was all shaken with it, though little sound
escaped that lonely passion of pity and heartbreak. Harcourt at once
felt that he had invaded holy ground. He gave himself time to notice
only that she was tall, cloaked wholly in black--and he turned, or
half-turned, to retire.

But in his haste and embarrassment he let his stick fall from his hand;
whereat the young woman started, and they looked at each other.

In an instant Harcourt understood that she was the sister of her whose
portrait stood on his mantelpiece; and he felt that he had never seen
woman so lovely and gentle.




CHAPTER III

VIOLET


She looked at Harcourt with wide eyes, seeming frightened, in suspense,
and ready to fly, because he did not know how his eyes devoured her.

"I am sorry--" he began, retiring a step.

"What do you want of me?" she asked, staring fixedly at him.

"Nothing," he said. "Don't be alarmed; I am merely here by chance."

"But why have you followed me?"

"No, I have not followed you, I assure you of that. I did not know that
you were here, even. I beg you not to be alarmed--"

"Why, then, are you here?" she persisted.

"This is a public cemetery, you know. I came to see a grave, just as you
have--"

"This grave?"

"How can you possibly guess that," he asked, "since you have never
before seen me, and do not know who I am?"

"You stopped here, did you not?" she asked. "You stopped, and looked
strangely at me."

"Certainly I looked at you," admitted Harcourt. "I did not realize that
I looked 'strangely.' However, let me be frank. I did come to see your
sister's grave."

"My sister!" said she, shrinking, as from the touch of a wound, "how do
you know? what interest can you have strong enough to bring you?"

"Not such a very strong interest," he answered. "I am here merely to
fill an idle hour, and because I happen to be occupying the flat in
which your sister died. There is that link between her and me; she has
moved in the same little home, looked from the same windows, slept in
the same room, as I, poor girl."

She suddenly looked up from the ground, saying: "May I ask how long you
have been there?"

"This is only the second day," he answered with a reassuring smile.

"Your interest in her has been sudden."

"But her crayon portrait is there over my dining-room mantelpiece, and
it is an interesting one. The moment I saw you I understood that you are
her sister."

"You must have known that she had a sister."

"Why, yes, I knew."

"Who told you that, pray?"

Her manner had now changed from one of alarm to one of resentment, of
mistrust. Her questions leaped from her as from a judge eager to
condemn.

"Surely it was no secret that she had a sister," he said. "The agent
happened to mention it in speaking to me of the late tenant, as agents
do."

"Ah, no doubt," she said half to herself. "You all are ready enough with
explanations. Wise as serpents, if not harmless as doves."

The last words were spoken with a break in her voice and a look that
went to Harcourt's heart. He understood that he was in the presence here
of the strange, of a mind touched to wildness by a monstrous grief, and
needing delicate handling.

"What I have told you is only the truth," he said gently.

"Ah, no doubt," she said again. "But did you know the history of the
flat before you went into it?"

"Why, yes."

"Yet you went. What, then, was your motive?"

"Ah, now, come," said he. "I can see that you are on a wrong track, and
I must try to set things right. Your sister has perhaps been badly
treated by some one or more persons, and the notion has occurred to you
that I may be one of them, or may have some knowledge even of one of
them. But I have been in England only a month; I come from Wyoming, a
place at the other end of creation. See if you can't catch a hint of
an accent in my speech. I never saw your sister alive; I am quite a
stranger in London. It is not nice to be mistrusted."

She thought this over gravely, then said with a moment's openness of
heart: "Forgive me, if I give you pain unjustly"; but at once again she
changed, muttering stubbornly to herself with a certain vindictiveness:
"If I mistrust you, it is not for nothing. I suppose you are all about
equally pitiless and deadly. There she lies, low enough, dead,
undone--so young--Gwen! was there no pity, no help, not even God to
direct, not even God?"

Again she covered her face, and was shaken with grief, while Harcourt,
yearning, but not daring to stir a step toward her, stood in pain;
till presently she looked up at him sharply with all the former
suspiciousness, saying with here a sob and there a sob: "But, after
all, words are only words. You can all talk, I dare say; yet you have
not been able to give me any valid explanation."

"Of what?" he asked.

"Of your strange interest in this lady; of your presence here over her
grave; of the fact that you chose to occupy the flat, knowing what you
know of it. In my mind these are points against you."

He could not help smiling. "Let me reason with you," said he earnestly.
"Remember that I am not the first person who has occupied the flat since
the death of your sister. Did not a Miss L'Estrange have it before me?
Well, my motive is precisely the same as hers--I wanted somewhere to
live. You did not attribute to Miss L'Estrange any ulterior motive, I
think? Then why attribute one to me?"

"I attribute nothing to any one," she sighed. "I merely ask for an
explanation which you seem unable to give."

"Think, now! Have I not given it? I say that I wanted a flat and took
this one. Don't mistrust me for nothing!"

"Oh, I keep a perfectly open mind. Till things are proved to me, I
mistrust no one. But you make your excuses with rather too much
earnestness to be convincing; for you would not care what I thought,
if you had no motive."

"My motive is simply a desire to stand well with you," said David. "You
won't punish me for that?"

Now for the first time she looked squarely at him, her eyes meditating
gravely upon his face, as she said: "If you never knew my sister before,
it was good of you to come to her grave. You do not look like one of the
ruthless ones."

"No, I hope not. Thank you for saying that," said David, with his eyes
on the ground. He was shy with women. Such a girl as this filled a
shrine in his presence.

"And yet, who can ever tell?" she sighed, half to herself, with a weary
drop of the hand. "The world seems so hopelessly given over to I don't
know what. One would say that men were compounded of fraud and ill-will,
so that one does not know whom to trust, nor even if there is any one to
be trusted. You go into the flat without any motive apparently that you
can give. You would never have managed it, if I had had my way!"

"Is it against your will that the flat has been let?" asked David.

"That is not your business, you know!" she said, quickly resentful of
probing questions.

"I only asked," said he, "in order to tell you that if it was against
your will, you have only to breathe a wish, and I shall find the means
to leave it."

"Well, surely that is kindly said," she answered. "Forgive me, will you,
if I seem unreasonable? Perhaps you do not know what grief is. I will
tell you that it is against my will that the flat has been let. My
mother's doing; she insisted because she suspected that I had a tendency
to--be drawn toward the spot; she feared that I might--go there; and so
it was let. But it is useless, I suppose, for you to give it up. They
would only let it to some one else. And whoever was in it, I should have
the same suspicions--"

That word! "Suspicions of what?" asked David. "I am so much in the dark
as to what you mean! If you would explain yourself, then I might be able
to help you. Will you let me help you?"

"God knows what the truth is," she said despondently, staring downward
afresh, for, when David looked at her, her eyes fell. "They are all kind
enough at first, no doubt, and their kindness ends here, where the grass
grows, and the winds moan all night, Gwen. I do not know who or what
you are, sir," she added, with that puzzling sharpness, "or what your
motive may be; but--what have you done with my sister's papers?"

"Papers?" said David. "You surprise me. Are there any papers of your
sister's in the flat?"

She looked keenly at him, with eyelids lowered, seeking to read his mind
as though it was an open book.

"Who knows?" said she.

He recalled his harmless conversational dodge with Dibbin. He could have
smiled at the thought; but he only answered: "Surely all her papers have
been removed?"

"Who knows?" she said again, eying him keenly.

"Certainly, I have seen no papers!" he exclaimed.

"Well, you seem honest."

"I hope so."

"If you did happen to find any papers in the flat, they would not be
your property, would they?"

"Of course not!"

"What would you do with them?"

"I should give them to you."

"God grant that you are honest!" she sighed. "But how would you find
me?"

"If you give me your name and address--"

"My name is Violet Mordaunt," she said rapidly, as if venturing against
some feeling of rashness. "My home is at Rigsworth in Warwickshire, near
Kenilworth; but I am for the present in London, at--"

Before she could mention her London address they were both aware that
a third person was with them. The light carpet of snow would not have
deadened the newcomer's approach to David's ears, were it not that he
was so absorbed in the words, the looks, the merest gestures of his
companion. David heard the girl say; "Oh, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!" and a
man walked past him to the grave with lifted hat. The man and Violet
Mordaunt shook hands. It was now getting dark; but David could still see
that the newcomer was an uncommonly handsome person, turned out with
faultless elegance from his glossy beaver to the tip of his _verni_
boots; of dark, sallow skin; and a black mustache as daintily curled as
those mustaches which one sees in the costumers' windows. David stepped
back a little, and stood awkwardly. Beside this West End dandy he felt
that he was somewhat of a rough-rider, and, like most young men dowered
with both brain and sinew, he fancied that women incline more readily to
the trimly dressed popinjay of society. Yet Violet Mordaunt seemed
anything but pleased at the interruption.

"I am come to look for you by the request of your mother," David heard
the stranger say. "It was feared that you might be here, and I am to
take you home, if you will do me the honor to come in my carriage."

"But I ought not to be tracked," said Violet, with the quick petulance
which already was music for David.

"There is the question of tea and dinner," remarked Van Hupfeldt. "If a
lady will not eat, she must expect to be plagued."

"I prefer to walk home."

"That couldn't be done; it is too far," said Van Hupfeldt. "Oh, come,
come!" he went on pleadingly, with a fond gaze into her eyes.

A minute afterward they left the grave together. Van Hupfeldt, as he
passed David on the path, frowned momentarily; Violet slightly inclined
her head.

He looked after them, and admitted to himself that they made a handsome
pair, tall, like children of the gods. But three yards away after they
had passed him something fell from Violet--a card--whether by accident
or design David did not know; but the thought that it might be by design
sent a thrill through his frame. He picked it up. It had on it the
address of a boarding-house in Porchester Gardens.

He was yet tingling with the hope of meeting her again when a custodian
approached. "Must shut the gates, sir," he said.

And the clang of iron brought David back to the roadway and reality once
more.




CHAPTER IV

"JOHANN STRAUSS"


On Monday morning David made the acquaintance of the _genus_
"housekeeper," when the woman recommended by Dibbin arrived to take him
in hand. He had thought that she would sleep in the place, and had
rather looked forward to the human companionship, for nothing is more
cut off from the world of the living than a flat, if one is alone in it,
especially through the watches of the night. Surely, if there are ghosts
in want of undisturbed house-room, every bachelor's flat must be
haunted.

Mrs. Grover, the housekeeper, however, said that "sleeping in" was not
the arrangement suggested to her by Dibbin, since there were "the
children to be looked after." David, for his part, would not let it
appear that he cared at all; so Mrs. Grover, a busy little fat woman,
set to work making things rattle, on an understanding of "sleeping out"
and freedom for church services o' Sunday.

This Monday was David's appointed day for beginning work. But he did not
prosper very well. Plenty of paper, lots of ink, and a new gold pen make
no Shakespeare. And it is always hard to begin, even when the mind does
not wander. But Violet Mordaunt had brown eyes, so soft, so grave, as
those that beam with pity over the dying. She was more beautiful than
her sister, whose face, too, David could see through the back of his
head. Also, Van Hupfeldt was undoubtedly a more elegant object for the
eye of woman to rest upon than David Harcourt.

David wondered if Van Hupfeldt was engaged to Violet. He had certainly
spoken to her at the grave with much tender gallantry of manner, as if
something was understood between them. And since Violet's mother sent
this man to seek her in his carriage, that must mean that they were on
familiar terms; unless, indeed, the mother was pressingly anxious about
Violet, could not go herself, and had no one else to win the young woman
home from her sister's grave. Such questionings were the cause of long
pauses between the writing of David's sentences. He was glad when
something interrupted--when the bell rang, and Dibbin was ushered in.

"I have looked in for one minute on the subject of that--grate," said
the agent. "Do not disturb yourself, I beg. Well, I see that Mrs. Grover
is duly in her place, and you as snug here as a bird in its nest."

"So snug," said David, "that I feel stifled. It beats me how people can
get so accustomed to this sort of prison as not even to remember any
longer that they are in prison. No air, no room to stretch, coal-dust
in your very soul, and even at night in your bed!"

"Dash it all, don't say it."

"Say what?"

"Were you about to refer to any fresh experiences?"

"Of the ghost? Not a bit of it!" said David. "I have seen, heard, or
smelled nothing more of anything."

"Good, good!" went on Dibbin, softly. "Keep on like that, and we shall
pull through yet. I find you are well stocked with violets, meantime."

David laughed a little uneasily, and said "Yes"--no more. Whiffs
of violets in a lonely flat, for which one can't account, are not
altogether pleasant things. David had therefore surrounded himself with
violets, in order, when he was greeted with a scent of violets, to be
able to say to himself that the scent came from those which he had
bought. He had not admitted even to himself what his motive was in
buying; nor would he admit it to Mr. Dibbin. There, however, the violets
were in several pots, and their fragrance at once drew the notice of a
visitor, for the London florist has an art to heighten dull nature in
violets and much else.

"Have a seat, Mr. Dibbin," said David, "and let us talk."

"I am afraid I must be off," began the other.

"Well, have a B. and S. any way. I only want to hear from you whatever
you can tell me of Mrs. and Miss Violet Mordaunt."

"What? You have discovered their names?" cried Dibbin with a start.

"I have."

"Mr. Harcourt, you are a remarkable man," said the agent with quiet
certainty.

"Oh, not too remarkable. But since I do know something, you might let
yourself loose as to the rest, as I am interested. You have seen the
mother, I know. Have you seen the daughter, too?"

"Several times."

"Pretty girl, eh? Or what do you think?"

"Well, I am getting an old man now," said Dibbin; "but I have been
young, and I think I can remember how I should have felt at twenty-five
in the presence of such a being."

"Pretty, you think her, eh?"

"Rather!"

"Prettier than Gwendoline? Prettier than her sister?"

"Well, I don't know so much about that neither--different type--graver,
softer in the eye and hair, taller, darker, not so young; but that poor
dead girl was something to make the mouth water, too, sir--such a cut
diamond! to see her in her full war-paint, turned out like a daisy!--in
short, lovely beings, both of 'em, both of 'em."

"Fairly well fixed, the mother?"

"You mean financially? Oh, I think so. Got a fine place down in
Warwickshire, I know--not far from Kenilworth. Good old family, and
that sort of thing."

"But how on earth this man Strauss, more or less an adventurer, I take
it, could have got hold of such a girl, to the extent of drawing her
from her happy home, and sending her on the stage. He didn't marry her,
Dibbin? He didn't marry her?"

"How can I say?" asked Dibbin, blinking. "We can all make a shrewd
guess; but one can't be absolutely certain, though the fact of her
suicide would seem to be a sort of proof."

"What do the mother and Miss Mordaunt think of it? Do they assume that
she was married? Or do they know enough of the world to guess that she
was not? I suppose you don't know."

"They know what the world thinks, I'm afraid," answered Dibbin. "I am
sure of that much. Yes, they know, they know. I have been with Mrs.
Mordaunt a good many times, for one reason or another. I can tell how
she feels, and I'm afraid that she not only guesses what the world
thinks, but agrees with the world's view. On the other hand, I have
reason to think that Miss Mordaunt has an obstinate faith in her
sister, and neither believes that she died unmarried, nor even that
she committed suicide. Well, well, you can't expect much clear
reasoning from a poor sister with a head half turned with grief."

Dibbin tossed off his brandy, while David paced the room, his hands
behind him, with a clouded brow.

"Have they no protector, these women?" he asked. "Isn't Miss Mordaunt
engaged?"

"I fancy not," said the agent. "In fact, I think I can say undoubtedly
not. She was not engaged before the death of her sister, I am certain;
and this disaster of her sister appears to have inspired the poor girl
with such a detestation of the whole male sex--"

"Do you happen to know who a certain Mr. Van Hupfeldt is?" asked David.

"Van Hupfeldt, Van Hupfeldt? No, never heard of him. What of him?"

"He seems to be a pretty close friend of the Mordaunts, if I am right."

"He may be a close friend, and yet a new one," said Dibbin, "as
sometimes happens. Never heard of him, although I thought that I knew
the names of most of Mrs. Mordaunt's connections, either through herself
or her solicitors."

"But to go back to this Strauss," said David. "Do you mean to say that
neither the mother nor Miss Mordaunt ever once saw him?"

"Not once that they know of."

"Then, how did he get hold of Gwendoline?"

"That's the question. It is suspected that he met her in the
hunting-field, persuaded her to meet him secretly, and finally won her
to fly from home. To me this is quite credible; for I've seen Johann
Strauss twice, and each time have been struck with the thought how
fascinating this man must be in the eyes of a young woman!"

"What was he like, then, this Mr. Johann Strauss of the flourishy
signature?"

"A most handsome young man," said Mr. Dibbin, impressively; "hard to
describe exactly. Came from the States, I think, or had lived there--had
just a touch of the talk, perhaps--of Dutch extraction, I take it.
Handsome fellow, handsome fellow; the kind of man girls throw themselves
over precipices after: teeth flashing between the wings of his black
mustache--tall, thin man, always most elegantly dressed--dark
skin--sallow--"

At that word "sallow," David started, the description of Johann Strauss
had so strangely reminded him of Van Hupfeldt! But the thought that the
cause of the one sister's undoing should be friendly with the other
sister, paying his court to her over the grave of the ill-fated dead,
was too wild to find for itself a place all at once in the mind.

David frowned down the notion of such a horror. He told himself that it
was dark when he had seen Van Hupfeldt, that there were many tall men
with white teeth and black mustaches, and sallow, dark skins. If he had
felt some sort of antipathy to Van Hupfeldt at first sight, this was no
proof of evil in Van Hupfeldt's nature, but a proof only, perhaps, of
David's capabilities of being jealous of one more favored than himself
by nature as he fancied--and by Violet Mordaunt, which was the notion
that rankled.

And yet he tingled. Dibbin had said that this Van Hupfeldt might be "a
new friend--one who had become a friend since the death of Gwendoline."

David paced the room with slow steps, and while Dibbin talked on of one
or another of the people who had known Gwendoline Mordaunt in the flesh,
vowed to himself that he would take this matter on his shoulders and see
it through.

"Speaking of the Miss L'Estrange who was in the flat before me," said
he; "how long did she stay in it?"

"Three months, nearly," answered Dibbin, "and then all of a sudden she
wouldn't stay another day. And I had no means of forcing her to do so
either."

"What? Did the ghost suddenly get worse?"

"I couldn't quite tell you what happened. Miss Ermyn L'Estrange isn't a
lady altogether easy to understand when in an excited condition. Suffice
it to say, she wouldn't stay another hour, and went off with a noise
like a catherine-wheel."

"Quite so. But I say, Dibbin, can you give me the address of the lady?"

"With pleasure," said the agent, in whom brandy and soda acted as a
solvent. "I am a man, Mr. Harcourt, with three hundred and odd addresses
in my head, I do assure you. But, then, Miss L'Estrange is a bird of
passage--"

"All right, just write down the address that you know; and there is one
other address that I want, Mr. Dibbin--that of the girl who acted as
help to Miss Gwendoline Mordaunt."

Dibbin had known this address also, and with the promise to see if he
could find it among his papers--for it was he who had recommended the
girl--went away. He was hardly gone when Harcourt, who did not let the
grass grow under his feet, put on hat and coat, and started out to call
upon Miss Ermyn L'Estrange.




CHAPTER V

VON OR VAN?


The address of Miss L'Estrange, given to David by Dibbin, was in King's
Road, Chelsea, and thither David set out, thinking in his cab of that
word "papers," of the oddness of Violet's question at the grave: "What
have you done with my sister's papers?"

Whatever papers might be meant, it was hardly to be supposed that Miss
L'Estrange knew aught of them, yet he hoped for information from her,
since a tenant next in order is always likely to have gathered many bits
of knowledge about the former tenant.

As for his right to pry and interfere, that, he assured himself, was
a settled thing. Going over in his mind Violet's words and manner in
the cemetery, he came to the conclusion that she was half inclined to
suspect that he was her sister's destroyer, who had now taken the flat
for some vaguely evil reason, perhaps to seek, or to guard from her,
those very papers for which she so craved. Had she never heard, he
wondered, that her sister's evil mate was a man with a black mustache
and pale, dark skin? Perhaps, if she ever had, she would suspect--some
one else than he! That would be strange enough, her suspicion of the
innocent, if at the same time the guilty was at her side, unsuspected!
But David tried to banish from his mind the notion that Van Hupfeldt
might possibly be Johann Strauss.

At Chelsea he was admitted to a flat as cozily dim as his own, but much
more frivolously crowded with knickknacks; nor had he long to wait
until Miss L'Estrange, all hair and paint, dashed in. It was near one
in the afternoon, but she had an early-morning look of rawness and
_déshabillement_, as if she had just risen from bed. Her toilet was
incomplete. Her face had the crude look of a water-color daub by a
school-girl; her whirl of red hair swept like a turban about her head.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"I am sorry--" began David.

"Cut the excuses," said Miss Ermyn L'Estrange. She had a reputation for
bruskness which passed for wit in her set.

"I am the occupant of the flat in Eddystone Mansions which you recently
left."

"I hope you like it."

"I like it fairly well, as a flat."

"What? Not seen anything?"

"No. Anything of what nature?"

"Anything ghostified?" she snapped, sitting with her chin on her palm,
her face poked forward close to David's, while the sleeve fell away from
her thin forearm. She had decided that he was an interesting young man.

"I have seen no ghost," he said. "I don't believe I ever shall see one."

"There are ghosts," she said; "so it's no good saying there are not, for
my old Granny Price has been chased by one, and there's been a ghost in
that very flat. My servant Jenny saw it with her own eyes."

"It is always some one else's eyes which see the invisible," said David.

"Jenny's eyes are not some one else's, they are her own. She saw it, I
tell you, but perhaps you are one of those people who cower under the
sheets all night for fright, and in the daytime swear that there are no
ghosts."

"What? You know so much of me already?"

"Oh, I know my man the moment I lay eyes on him, as a rule. You're from
Australia--I can tell your twang--and you have come to England to look
for a wife. Can't very well get along without us, after all, can you?"

"There is some truth in that. What a pity you didn't see the ghost
yourself!"

"I heard it; I smelled it."

"Really? What did it smell of? Brimstone?"

"Violets!"

David started, not wholly because he thought Miss L'Estrange would be
flattered by this tribute to her forcible style.

"And I'm not one of your fanciful ones either," she went on, smirking at
the effect she had made.

"How often did this thing happen to you?"

"Twice in three months."

"Daytime? Night-time?"

"Dead of night. The first time about two in the morning, the second time
about three."

"To me this is naturally fascinating," said David. "Do tell me--"

"The first time, I was asleep in that front bed-room, when I suddenly
found myself awake--couldn't tell why, for I hadn't long been in bed,
and was tired. I found myself listening, heard some creaks about,
nothing more than you can generally hear in a house in the dead of
night, and I was thinking of going to sleep again, when all at once I
seemed to scent violets somewhere. I wasn't certain at first, but the
notion grew, and if it had been brimstone, as you said, I couldn't have
been so overcome as I was--something so solemn and deathly in that fume
of violets visiting anybody in the dark in that fashion. As I knew that
Gwen Barnes, who poisoned herself in that very room, was fond of
violets--for I had seen her both on and off the stage several times--you
can guess whether I felt rummy or not. Pop went my little head under the
bed-clothes, for I'll stand up to any living girl you care to mention,
and send her home all the worse for it; but the dead have an unfair
advantage, anyhow. The next minute I heard a bang--it sounded to me like
the lid of one of my trunks dropping down--and this was followed by a
scream. The scream did for me--I was upset for weeks. It was Jenny who
had screamed; but, like a fool, I thought it was the ghost--I don't know
what I thought; in fact, I just heard the scream, and lay me down and
d'eed. When I came to myself, there was Jenny shivering at my side, with
the light turned on, saying that a tall woman had been in the flat--"

"Was Gwendoline Barnes in the flesh a tall girl?" asked David.

"Pretty tall; one would have called her tall."

"And Jenny was certain? She had really seen a woman?"

"Quite certain."

"In the light?"

"No, in the dark."

"Ah, that's not so good. And as to your trunk, had you left it locked?"

"No, I don't think. It's certain anyway that something or somebody was
at it that night; for next day I found the things rummaged."

"Sure now? I don't imagine that you are very tidy."

"The cheek! I tell you the things were rummaged."

"And nothing stolen?"

"Ghosts are not thieves. They only come back to pretend to themselves
that they are still living in the old scenes, and that their bit of a
fling is not all over forever. I can well imagine how the poor things
feel, can't you? Of course, nothing was stolen, though I did miss
something out of the trunk a day or two afterward--"

"What was that?"

"My agreement with the theater. Couldn't find it high or low in the
place; though I was pretty sure that I had put it into that very trunk.
Three weeks after it had disappeared, lo and behold! my agreement comes
to me one morning through the post! No letter with it, not a word of
explanation, just the blessed agreement of itself staring me in the
face, like a miracle. Now, I'm rather off miracles--aren't you? So I
said to myself--"

"But stay, what was the postmark on the envelope which brought you back
this agreement?" asked David.

"Just London, and a six-barred gate."

"You couldn't perhaps find that envelope now?"

"Now, do I look like anybody who ties up old envelopes in packets? Or do
you take me for an old maid? Because, if you do, just let me know."

"Certainly not an old one," said David. "But how as to the second visit
of the ghost?"

"The second time it was about three in the morning. Jenny did not see
her then; but we both woke up at the same moment without any apparent
cause--we were sleeping together, you may bet your last dollar on
that!--and we both smelled something like violets, and we heard a sound,
too, like the top of the piano being shut down. 'Miss L'Estrange,' Jenny
whispered into my ear, 'there's something in the drawing-room.'--'Go,
Jenny,' I whispered to her, 'and see what it is.'--'You go, Miss
L'Estrange,' Jenny whispered to me, 'you being the mistress; and I'll
come after.'--'But you are the servant,' I whispered to her, 'you
go.'--'No, Miss L'Estrange,' she whispered back, 'you are braver than
me, you go, and I'll come after.'--'No, you know that you are much the
bravest, Jenny, so don't be such a coward,' I whispered to her, 'and
I'll come after.' It was like a farcical comedy. At this we heard
something like a chair falling upon the carpet in the drawing-room, and
now we were in such a state of fright that we couldn't move our hands,
to say nothing of our feet. Then a long time passed, we didn't hear
anything more; so, after about half an hour of it, Jenny and I together
made a rush for the switch, and got out into the drawing-room. Then
again we scented a faint something like violets; but nobody was there,
and we neither saw nor heard anything more."

"So, after that second experience, I suppose, you would stay no longer
in the flat?" said David.

"I did stay a few days. It wasn't altogether the ghost that drove me
away, though that may have had something to do with it, but the cheek
and the meanness of the man who put me there."

"Of the--Ah, I beg pardon," said David, with lowered lids.

"Oh, this isn't a Sunday school. If you hem and haw at me I shall
show you the short cut to the front door. It was a fair business
arrangement; so don't you think anything else. The man was named
Strauss, and whether his motive in putting me there was quite square
or not, don't let him suppose that I am going to screen him, for I'm
not. I am straight with those that are straight with me; but those that
are up to mean tricks, let them beware of the color of my hair--"

"So you were put into the flat!"

"Didn't I go into it rent-free? Stop, I will tell you, and you shall
judge for yourself whether I have been shabbily used or not. One
night last August I was introduced by a friend to a gentleman named
Strauss--dark, pale man, pretty fetching, but not my style. However,
next day he turned up at my place--I was living then in Great
Titchfield-St.; and what do you think my man wanted? To put me into the
Eddystone Mansions flat for six months at his expense, on the condition
that I or Jenny would devote some time every day to searching for papers
among the furniture. He said that a chum of his had once occupied the
flat, and had left in it one or more documents, carefully hidden
somewhere, which were of the utmost importance; I was to search for
these, and give them to him. Well, I didn't half like it, for I thought
he was wicked. So I asked him why he didn't take the flat, and search
for the papers himself at his leisure? Well, he made some excuse or
other, and at last, as he talked sanely enough, I struck hands over
it--rent free, six months, an hour's search each day; and Jenny and I
moved in."

"Did you search an hour each day?" asked David with a laugh.

"Hardly likely!" grinned Miss Ermyn L'Estrange. "I can see myself
searching a small flat day after day for I didn't know what, like a
goose. There was nowhere to search. I did look about a little the first
day; but, not finding any documents, I thought to myself, 'Here endeth.'
Of course, I had to tell him that I was busy searching, for that man
pestered me so, you wouldn't believe. He never actually came to the
flat, for some reason or other; but night after night, when the theaters
opened in September, there he was, wanting to know if I had found
anything, if I had probed the cushions with hat-pins, if I had looked
under the carpets, and the rest of it. At last I began to treat him a
bit off-handedly, I admit, and before the third month was up, he says to
me one night that if I didn't find something at once, he would have to
cut off the allowance for the rent. I told him that he had put me there
for six months, that I had made all arrangements, and that he was an
idiot. If he didn't know his mind, I knew mine. Oh, we had a fine
set-to, I can tell you. He said that, since I had proved useless to him,
I should have to pay my own rent, so, what with ghosts and all, I
wouldn't stay in the place another two days; and in going I gave it hot
to that Mr. Dibbin, too--"

"What had Dibbin done?" asked David.

"He hadn't done anything; but still I gave him a piece of my mind, for I
was wild."

"Poor Dibbin! he is still shaky from it. He has mentioned to me that you
went off with a noise like a catherine-wheel. But you never found any
papers at all in the flat?"

"No--except one, or rather two, and those Strauss never got."

"How was that?"

"Because I didn't find them till the day after we had had the row, when
my trunks were ready packed to go, and I wasn't going to give them to
him then, for his cheek. Besides, they didn't concern him; they were
only a marriage certificate, and the certificate of a birth which fell
out of a picture."

David sat up, saying: "How do you mean, 'fell out of a picture'?"

"As we were carrying out the trunks, there was a bump, and one of the
pictures in the corridor came down. The boards at the back of it must
have been loose, for they fell out, and among them was an envelope with
the two certificates in it."

"Now, I bless my stars that ever I came to you," said David. "This may
be the very thing I want."

"How many of you are after papers in that flat, I should like to know.
First there was Strauss, then that young lady, and now you--"

"Which young lady?" asked David.

"Why, I hadn't been in the flat three days when a young lady, a tall,
dark girl came, and practically insulted me. She wanted to know what was
my motive for coming into the flat, and if I was the agent of any one,
and if I meant to purloin any papers which I might find. Well, I'm not
one for taking much sauce from another woman; for I've got red hair, as
you can see for yourself, but somehow I couldn't be hard on her, she
had had some big trouble, I could tell--a bit touched somewhere, too, I
thought, suspicious as a bird, sick at the very name of Strauss! She had
dropped to it all right that I was there to serve Strauss's ends, and
she went on her bended knees to me, asking me not to do it. I couldn't
quite make out what it was all about, or what there was between her and
Strauss, for she wouldn't tell me. It was something pretty strong, for
when I told Strauss about her visit, I thought the man was going to drop
dead. Her name was Violet Mordaunt. I remember it; for Mordaunt was also
the family name of the woman in the marriage certificate--"

"Why did you not send this marriage certificate to Violet Mordaunt?"
asked David, "since you did not give it to Strauss?"

"I would have sent it to her, I'm sure, but I didn't have her address.
She did leave me an address that day she came; but, to tell the truth, I
didn't take the whole to-do about papers, papers, papers, seriously, and
Lord knows what became of the address--"

"Oh, good heavens, how selfish and careless!" groaned David.

"Look here, young man, you come from Australia?" cried Miss L'Estrange,
bouncing up from her chair. "In London people look after themselves and
mind their own business, you see. We are as kind-hearted here as they
are anywhere else, but we haven't the same leisure to be kind. I tell
you that if I had had the young lady's address I should very likely have
sent her the papers; but I didn't, and that's all; so don't preach."

"Well, better late than never," said David. "Just give me the papers
now, if you will, for I know her address--"

"But where are the papers?" said Miss L'Estrange. "You don't suppose
that I keep papers--"

"Don't say that you have lost them!" pleaded David.

"I haven't the faintest idea where the papers are! I was in a regular
flurry, just moving out of the place; I had no interest in the papers. I
glanced at them to see what they were, and, as far as I can remember, I
threw them on the floor, or handed them to Jenny. It's just possible
that they are here now; but I shouldn't fancy so. I'll ask Jenny when
she comes in."

"Ah, you little know how much misery you might have saved a poor girl,
if you had been a little more thoughtful," growled David, and his wrath
seemed to cow the woman somewhat. "This name of Mordaunt was the maiden
name of your predecessor in the flat, who took the name of Gwendoline
Barnes; Violet Mordaunt is her sister; Gwendoline is believed by all
the world, including her own mother, to have been led astray, and the
certificates which you handled so lightly would have cleared her name
and lifted a world of grief from her poor sister's heart."

"Good Lord! How was I to know all that?" shrilled Miss L'Estrange,
staring. "So it was Strauss that ruined Gwen Barnes? And this Violet
Mordaunt was Gwen Barnes's sister? Now you say it, they were something
alike. I always put down that Strauss for a rotter--"

"But why, since he married her?"

"Married whom? Strauss wasn't the husband's name on the
marriage-certificate! Gwendoline Mordaunt was one, and the other, as far
as I can recollect, was a foreign name, von Somebody or other--"

"Von!" David also sprang to his feet. "Are you sure? or might it have
been 'van'? Oh, try now to remember! One is German, the other Dutch!"

"It might have been 'van,' or it might have been 'von'--you can't expect
one to remember after all these names. But I remember the woman's name,
Gwendoline Mordaunt, quite well, because the Gwendoline reminded me of
Gwen Barnes, and the Mordaunt reminded me of Miss Violet Mordaunt; and
the husband's name, I know, was von or van Something, and so was the
name of the child--a boy it was--I think its name was Henry--"

"Hupfeldt?" suggested David, suddenly.

"Hupfeldt? It might have been Hupfeldt. I really can't say now. I'll ask
Jenny."

"At any rate," said David, calming himself with a great effort, "we have
that certain fact that Gwendoline Mordaunt was a wife. Good, to begin;
most excellent, to begin. You can't say where the marriage took place?
No other information at all."

"I'm sorry, since it is so mighty important, but I'm afraid not.
However, I'll do my best for you. I'll see if I or Jenny can remember
anything. When we left the flat, there was a great overflowing with my
torn-up letters, and Jenny may have thrown the certificates on that
grate, or the bits of them, or she may have dropped them on the floor,
or, just possibly, she put them in her pocket and may have them still.
She will be here in less than half an hour, so, if I may offer you a
cigar, and a whisky and soda--"

"You are very good. I won't stay now, as I am in a hurry to do
something. But, if I may come back--may I?"

"Modest request! As often as you please, and welcome. This is Liberty
Hall, you know."

"Thank you, I will, then. There is one thing I have to ask you. Could
you point out to me Mr. Johann Strauss?"

"Of course, if I saw him. But I never knew where he lived, and have
never seen him since the day I left the flat."

"Well, that may come in time," said David, putting out his hand; "and
meantime you will do your best for me in finding out about the two
certificates. Thank you for all your goodness, and I will be here again
soon."

"Good-by," said Miss L'Estrange, "and I do hope you mean to give that
Strauss a sound hiding some day. You look as if you could do it with
one hand and pick your teeth with the other. It would be no more than
he deserves."

David ran down the flight after flight of stairs quicker than he had
gone up.

"Now," he thought to himself as he left the building with eager steps,
"is my chance to give some joy!" Going into the first paper-shop, he
wrote: "A well-wisher of Miss Mordaunt desires to assure her that it is
a pretty certain thing that her sister Gwendoline was a duly wedded
wife; the proofs of this statement may sooner or later be forthcoming."

He put no signature to it, made haste to post it, and drove back to
Eddystone Mansions. It had been wiser had he flattered Miss Ermyn
L'Estrange by returning to her.




CHAPTER VI

THE WORD OF JOY


Not many guests were for the moment at No. 60A, Porchester Gardens, so
that the Mordaunts, mother and daughter, who always stopped there during
their visits to London, could almost persuade themselves that they
were in their own home. In the good old days Mr. and Mrs. Harrod, the
proprietors, had been accustomed to receive three Mordaunts to their
hospitality, when Gwen, the bright and petted, came with Violet and Mrs.
Mordaunt. Only two now visited London, a grayer mother, a dumber sister;
and though the Harrods asked no questions, made no prying into the
heart's secret, nor uttered any word of sympathy, they well divined that
the feet of the angel of sorrow had passed that way, and expressed their
pity silently by a hundred little ministries.

Violet and Mrs. Mordaunt were having tea in the drawing-room on the day
of David Harcourt's visit to Miss L'Estrange, when the postman's knock
sounded, and a minute later Mrs. Harrod herself came in, saying:

"A letter for Miss Violet, and it contains good news; for I dreamt of
soldiers last night, and so sure as I dream of soldiers, so sure are
there letters with good news."

"The good news will all be in the other people's letters, I'm afraid,"
said Mrs. Mordaunt. "Good news is like wealth, Mrs. Harrod, unequally
divided; to some of us it never comes."

"Oh, come now!" cried the hearty Mrs. Harrod. "Never say die, say I!
There's good and bad in store for everybody; and care killed a cat,
after all. Don't I tell you I dreamt of soldiers? And so sure--"

"It is that good heart of yours which makes you dream of soldiers. To
bring healing to some lots in this world, you would have need to dream
of generals and field-marshals--"

"Some more tea, mother?" interposed Violet. She shrank from the
threatened talk of human ills. Mrs. Mordaunt, most excellent woman,
was not adverse to pouring some of her grief into a sympathetic ear.

"Well, you will tell me at dinner whether I was right," cried Mrs.
Harrod, and was gone.

She had placed the letter on the tray, and there it still lay unopened.
Violet handed the tea to her mother. The room was empty, save for them,
the few other guests being out, and in the house reigned perfect
quietude, a peacefulness accentuated by the wheels and hoofs passing in
the dusk outside.

"Vi," said Mrs. Mordaunt, "those flowers at your waist are almost faded;
I think you might give up violets in London. They don't seem to me the
same thing as in the country; but at least let them be fresh. Mr. Van
Hupfeldt will be here presently--"

"How do you know, mother?"

"He mentioned, dear, that he would be coming."

"But why, after all, every day?"

"Is that displeasing to you, dear?"

"It seems superfluous."

"That compels me to suggest to you, Vi, that his coming to-day is of
some special importance."

"And why, pray?"

"Can you not guess?"

The girl stood up; she walked restlessly to the window and back before
she cried: "Mother! mother! Have you not had experience enough of the
curse of men?" Her great eyes rested gloomily on the older woman's face.
There was a beautiful heredity marked in the pair; but seldom have more
diverse souls been pent within similar tabernacles.

"Don't speak so recklessly, dear," said the old lady. "You had the best
of fathers. There are good men, too, in the world, and when a man is
good, he is better than any woman."

"It may be so. God knows. I hope it is so. But is Mr. Van Hupfeldt one
of these fabulous beings? It has not struck me--"

"Please, Violet, don't imagine that I desire to influence you in the
slightest degree," said Mrs. Mordaunt. "I merely wish to hint to
you what, in fact, you can't be blind to, that Mr. Van Hupfeldt's
inclinations are fixed on you, and that he will probably give
expression to them to-day. On Saturday he approached me on the subject,
beseeching me with great warmth to hold out to him hopes which, of
course, I could not hold out, yet which I did not feel authorized wholly
to destroy. At any rate, I was persuaded upon to promise him a fair
field for his enterprise to-day."

"Oh, mother! Really, this is irritating of you!" cried Violet, letting
fall with a clatter a spoon she had lifted off the table.

"But I don't see it. Why so?"

"It sounds so light-minded, at your years!"

"As if I was one of the two parties concerned!" laughed Mrs. Mordaunt
with a certain maternal complacency. She knew, or thought she knew, her
wayward daughter. With a little tact this most suitable marriage could
be arranged.

"No," admitted Violet, angry at the weakness of her defense, "but you
allow yourself to be drawn into having a hand in what is called a
love-affair because it is an event; and it was not fair to Mr. Van
Hupfeldt, since you knew quite well beforehand what would be the
result."

"Well, well," purred Mrs. Mordaunt good-humoredly, looking down to
stroke the toy Pom on her lap, a nervous little animal which one might
have wrapped in a handkerchief, "I will say no more. If the thought of
allowing myself to be bereft of you has occurred to me, you understand
for whose good I gave it a moment's entertainment. Marriage, of course,
is a change of life, and for girls whose minds have been overshadowed by
sorrow, it may not be altogether a bad thing."

"But there is usually some selection in the matter, I think, some
pretense of preference for one above others. Just marriage by itself
hardly seems a goal."

"Yes, love is good, dear--none knows better than I--but better marriage
without love, than love without marriage," muttered Mrs. Mordaunt,
suddenly shaken.

"And better still life with neither, it seems to me; and best of all,
the end of life, and good-by to it all, mother."

"Vi, Vi! sh-h-h, dear!" Mrs. Mordaunt was so genuinely shocked that her
daughter swung the talk back into its personal channel.

"Still, I will not see this man. Tell him when he comes that I will not
see him. He has held out to me hopes which he has done nothing to
fulfil."

"What hopes, dear?"

"You may as well know: hopes as to--Gwen, then."

"Tell me."

"Twice he has hinted to me that he knows some one who knew the man named
Strauss; that he would succeed in finding this Strauss; that all was
quite, quite well; and that he did not despair of finding some trace of
the whereabouts of the child. He had no right to say such things, if he
had not some real grounds for believing that he would do as he hinted.
It is two months ago now since he last spoke in this way down at
Rigsworth, and he has not referred to it since, though he has several
times been alone with me. I believe that he only said it because he
fancied that whatever man held out such hopes to me would be likely to
find me pliant to his wishes. I won't see him to-day."

"Oh, he said that, did he--that all was quite well, that he might be
able to find.... But he must have meant it, since he said it."

"I doubt now that he meant it. Who knows whether he is not in league
with the enemies of her who was cast helpless to the wolves--"

"Violet, for shame to let such words escape your lips! Mr. Van
Hupfeldt--a man of standing and position, presented to us by Lord
Vanstone, and moving in the highest circles! Oh, beware, dear, lest
sorrow warp the gentler instincts of your nature, and by the sadness
of the countenance the heart be not made better! Grief is evil, then,
indeed when it does not win us into a sweeter mood of charity. I fear,
Vi, that you have lost something of your old amiableness since the
blow."

"Forgive me, darling!" sobbed Violet, dropping quickly by the side of
her mother's chair, with her eyes swimming. "It has gone deep, this wild
wrong. Forgive, forgive! I wish to feel and do right; but I can't. It
is the fault of the iron world."

"No, don't cry, sweet," murmured Mrs. Mordaunt, kissing her warmly. "It
will come right. We must repress all feelings of rebellion and rancor,
and pray often, and in the end your good heart will find its way back to
its natural sweetness and peace. I myself too frequently give way, I'm
afraid; the ways of Providence are so inscrutably hard. We must bear up,
and wait, and wait, till 'harsh grief pass in time into far music.' As
for Mr. Van Hupfeldt, there seems no reason why you should see him, if
you do not wish. But you haven't opened your letter--see if it is from
Rigsworth, dear."

Violet now rose from her mother's side, and tore open the letter. She
did not know the handwriting, and as her eyes fell on the words she
started. They were these: "A well-wisher of Miss Mordaunt desires to
assure her that it is a pretty certain thing that her sister Gwendoline
was a duly wedded wife. The proofs of this statement may sooner or later
be forthcoming."

Mrs. Mordaunt's observant glance, noting the changes of color and
expression going on in her daughter's face, saw that the news was
really as Mrs. Harrod had dreamed. Violet's eyes were raised in silent
thanksgiving, and, without saying anything, she dropped the note on
her mother's lap. Going to one of the windows, she stood there with
tremulous lips. She looked into the dim street through a mist of tears.
For the moment, speech was impossible.

There was silence in the room for some minutes. Then Mrs. Mordaunt
called out: "Vi, dear, come here."

Violet ran from the window with a buoyancy of dancing in her gait.
"Heaven forgive us, mother, for having wronged Gwendoline in our
thoughts!" said she, with her cheek against her mother's.

"Heaven forgive me rather," said Mrs. Mordaunt. "You, dear, have never
for a moment lost faith and hope. But still, Vi--"

"Well?"

"Let me warn you, dear, against too much confidence in this note. The
disappointment may be all the more terrible. Why could not the sender
sign his name? Of course, we can guess from whom it comes; but does not
the fact that he does not sign his name show a lack of confidence in his
own statements?"

"Oh, I think not," cried Violet, flushed with enthusiasm, "if it is from
whom you think; but, who, then, do you think sent it?"

"It can only be from Mr. Van Hupfeldt, child, I take it."

The girl was seemingly taken aback for an instant; but her thoughts
bubbled forth again rapidly: "Well, his motive for not signing his name
may simply be a very proper reserve, not a lack of confidence in his
statements. Remember, dearest, that he is coming here to-day with a
certain purpose with regard to me, and if he had signed his name, it
would have set up a sort of claim to my favor as a reward for services
done. Oh, now I come to think of it, I call this most generous of the
man!"

"That's splendid, that's right," said Mrs. Mordaunt. "Your instincts
always scent out nobility where any clue to it can be found. I am glad
that you take it in that way. But young people are enthusiastic and
prone to jump to conclusions. As we grow older we acquire a certain
habit of second thoughts. In this instance, no doubt, you are right; he
could have had no other motive--unless--I suppose that there is no one
else from whom the note may possibly have come?"

At this question Violet stood startled a moment, panting a little, and
somehow there passed like a mist through her consciousness a memory, a
half-thought, of David Harcourt.

"From whom else could it have come?" she asked her mother breathlessly.

"The handwriting is not Mr. Van Hupfeldt's," said Mrs. Mordaunt. "This
is a less ornate hand, you notice."

Violet took the note again, and knit her pretty brows over it. "No," she
said, "this is a much stronger, cleaner hand--I don't know who else--"

"Yet, if Mr. Van Hupfeldt wished to be generous in the sense of which
you spoke," said her mother, "if it was his purpose to conceal his part
in the matter, he would naturally ask some one else to write for him.
And, since we can imagine no one but him--There! that, I think, is his
rap at the door. Tell me now, Vi, if you will see him alone?"

"Yes, mother, I will see him."

"Bless you for your good and grateful heart! Well, then, after a little
I will go out. But, oh, pray, do nothing precipitate in an impulse of
joy and mere gratitude, child! If I am bereft of my two children, I am
bereft indeed. Do find happiness, my darling. That first and above all."

At that moment Mrs. Harrod looked in, with her pleasant smile, saying:
"Mr. Van Hupfeldt is here. Well, did the letter contain good news?"

"You dear!" murmured Violet, running to kiss her, "I must wear red
before you, so that you may dream of soldiers every, every night!"

The steps of Van Hupfeldt were heard coming up the stairs.




CHAPTER VII

VIOLET'S CONDITIONS


Van Hupfeldt bowed himself into the drawing-room. His eyes wandering
weighingly with a quick underlook which they had from the face of Violet
to that of Mrs. Mordaunt, and back again to Violet. He saw what pleased
him, smiles on both faces, and his brow lightened. He was a man of about
forty, with a little gray in his straight hair, which, parted in the
middle, inclosed the forehead in a perfect arch. He stood upon thin legs
as straight as poles. His hands and feet were small. His features as
regular and chiseled as a statue's; he looked more Spanish than Dutch.

Mrs. Mordaunt received him with a pressure of the hand in which was
conveyed a message of sympathy and encouragement, and Van Hupfeldt bent
toward Violet with a murmur:

"I am glad to see you looking so bright to-day."

"You observe quickly," said Violet.

"Some things," answered Van Hupfeldt.

"Our good hostess has been dreaming of soldiers, Mr. Van Hupfeldt," put
in Mrs. Mordaunt, lightly, "and it seems that such a dream always brings
good news to her guests; so my daughter is feeling the effects of it."

Van Hupfeldt looked puzzled, and asked: "Has Miss Violet heard that her
orchids are flourishing in her absence, or that those two swans I
promised have arrived?"

Violet and Mrs. Mordaunt exchanged glances of approval of this speech,
the latter saying: "There are brighter things in the world than orchids,
thank Heaven! and a kind deed may be more white and graceful than all
the swans of Dale Manor."

Van Hupfeldt looked still more puzzled--a look which was noted by the
women, but was attributed by them to a wish not to seem to know anything
of the joyful note, and was put down to his credit. After some minutes'
talk of a general nature, Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet sat in an
easy-chair at one of the balcony windows. Van Hupfeldt leaned against
the embrasure of the window. He seemed to brace himself for an effort
before he said to her:

"This is Monday evening, and since Saturday, when I brought you from the
cemetery, I have not once closed my eyes. If you continue to manifest
this inconsolable grief for your sister's fate, I must break down in
some way. Something will happen. I shall go crazy, I think."

"You mean very kindly, I suppose," answered Violet, with lowered lids;
"though I do not see--"

"No, you cannot see, you do not know," said he, with a certain redness
and strain in the eyes which made it a credible thing that he had not
slept in some time. "But it is so. It has been the craving of my life to
save you from this grief. Let me do it; you have to let me do it!"

"How save me?" she asked, with an upward glance under her long lashes,
while she wondered at the blaze in the man's eyes. "I am not to be saved
from it by any means, though it will be lessened by the proofs of my
sister's honor and of her child's fair name, and by the discovery of the
whereabouts of the child. There are no other means."

"Yes, there are! There is the leaving of your present life, the
companionship of one who will have no care but to make you happy, to
redress a little in you the wrong done to your sister. That is my
motive--God knows!--that is my main motive--"

"Surely I do not understand you aright!" cried Violet, somewhat dismayed
by his outburst. "Your motive is to redress a wrong done by some one to
my sister by devoting yourself to make me happy? Certainly, that seems
a most nobly disinterested motive; but is philanthropy of this sort
the best basis for the kind of proposition which you are making me?
Philanthropy most certainly would wear thin in time, if it did not rest
on affection--"

"Do you doubt that I have affection?" he demanded, his voice vibrating
with ill-repressed passion.

"As an afterthought?"

"How as an afterthought, when my life itself depends upon continually
seeing you, and seeing you happy? I tell you that if you were to refuse
my prayer this evening, if anything was to happen now or in the future
to thwart my cravings with respect to you, my mind is made up, I would
not continue to face the harrowing cark of life. Say 'No' to me, and
from to-morrow evening you will be tortured by the same worm of remorse
by which the man who caused the death of your sister must be gnawed and
gnawed. You talk of affection? I have that. I do, yes, I do love you;
but that would be the flimsiest motive compared with this passion which
casts me at your feet."

"I don't understand him," sighed Violet to herself--and no wonder, for
Van Hupfeldt's words came from him in a sort of hiss; his eyes were
bloodshot; he stooped close over her, with veins standing out on his
forehead. It was clear enough that the man's soul was in this wooing,
yet he made so little pretense of the ordinary lover's love. He left her
cold, this woman made for love, and she wondered.

"Tell me quickly," he said, "I think that your mother is not unwilling.
Only let me hear the word 'Yes,' and the 'when' shall be left to you."

"Pray listen, Mr. Van Hupfeldt," said Violet, bending over her
knee, which she slung between her clasped fingers. "Let us reason
together; let us understand each other better. I am not disposed to be
unfriendly toward you--do not think that--nor even to reject your suit
unconditionally. I owe you much, and I see that you are greatly in
earnest; but I am not clear. Your motive seems to be philanthropic. You
have said as much yourself, you know. Still, philanthropy is only warm;
it is never hot to desperation; it never commits suicide in despair of
doing good. That, then, is the first thing which I fail to understand in
you. And, secondly, I do not grasp why you desire any closer relation to
be set up between us for my happiness, when I assure you that nothing
but the rehabilitation of my sister's name could lighten my unhappiness,
and that, this once done, nothing further could possibly be done by any
one to attach me more to life."

"But I am older than you, and know better," answered Van Hupfeldt,
seating himself beside her, speaking now more calmly. "You know nothing
of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Travel alone would
give you a new outlook. I should ever be inventing new pleasures and
excitements for you. Sometimes, already, I lie awake at night, thinking
them out. I am very rich, and all my wealth should be turned into one
channel, to delight you. You know nothing of society in the States, of
the brilliance and abandon of life across the Atlantic. And the Paris
_beau monde_, with its charm and wit and easy joyousness, you know
nothing yet of that. I should find the means to keep you constantly gay,
to watch you in ever new phases, costumes, jewels--"

The thought passed through Violet's mind: "He has distinguished manners,
but a vulgar mind," and she said aloud: "So that is how you would wean
me from sorrow, Mr. Van Hupfeldt? I should prefer a week of Dale Manor
with my birds and flowers to a cycle of all that."

"Then it shall be Dale Manor rather than 'all that,'" he agreed. "It
shall be just as you would have it, if only you will be happy, and will
give me a glance one day which means 'My happiness is due to you.' May I
have another peep at the locket?"

Violet took a locket from her neck, pressed a spring, and showed within
a miniature in water-colors of the dead Gwen. She shivered a little.
Though she was speaking of her sister, the man's sudden request jarred
on her.

"I like to look at it," said Van Hupfeldt, bending closer. "It reminds
me of you--chiefly about the mouth and chin, about the dear little chin.
She suffered, yes, she tasted sorrow, and since she suffered, you must
not suffer, too. I kiss her instead of you, because she was like you."

This, certainly, was an odd reason for Van Hupfeldt's tenderness to the
miniature, but Violet's heart instantly warmed toward him for his pity
of her beloved; and when he replaced the locket round her neck, saying:
"So, then, do we understand each other now?" she found it hard to
answer: "I'm afraid that I am as far from understanding as ever."

"That will come in time, trust me," said he; "but as to that little word
'Yes,' is it to be taken as uttered now?"

"No, not now," she said gently, "though do not go away thinking it may
never be. Let me be frank, Mr. Van Hupfeldt. You know quite well that I
am not at present disposed to worship your sex, and that is really so.
Honestly, I don't think that the human species adorns the earth on which
it lives, least of all the male part of it. If I wished to marry, I
believe I should choose some poor tiller of the fields, who had never
seen a city, or heard of the arts of vice. You see, then, that the whole
notion of marriage must be sufficiently distasteful to me. I wouldn't
and couldn't give myself; but I am quite willing to--to make a bargain."

"A bargain?" He started, and his dark eyes stared at her blankly.

"Yes, it is better to be candid. When you have cleared my sister's name,
or found the child, as you hope to be able to do, then, if you desire me
still the same, you will again speak to me. I cannot definitely part
from my freedom without a certainty that you will be able to do what you
hope; and it is only fair to you to let you know that I should probably
consent to give the same promise to any other man who would and could do
this much for me."

Upon this Van Hupfeldt's brow flushed angrily, and he leaped to his
feet, crying: "But that will never be! Clear your sister's name? You
still talk like a child--"

Now it was Violet's turn to stand up in astonishment, as she saw her
castle in the clouds diminishing. She stared in her turn, with open
lips, crying: "Do you say this? that it will never be?"

"How can you set a man's life on the chance of the realization of such a
mere dream?" asked Van Hupfeldt, irritated, saying more than was wise.

"A dream?" murmured Violet, as if in a dream herself. "Then, who is it
that has sent me this?"

Thereupon she drew from her pocket David Harcourt's unsigned note. She
held it out to Van Hupfeldt, and he, without touching, leaned over and
read it; apparently slowly; more than once, so Violet thought. He stood
there looking at the letter an unconscionable time, she holding it out
for him to read, while the man's face bled away inwardly, as it were to
death, and some power seemed to rivet his eyes, some power stronger than
his effort to withdraw them.

The thought passing through Van Hupfeldt's soul was this: "Some one
knows that she was a 'duly wedded wife.' But who? And how? To him it is
somehow 'a pretty certain thing'; and the proofs of it 'may sooner or
later be forthcoming'; and then he will give these proofs to Violet."

"I see, then, that it was not you who sent it to me," said Violet at
last, and, as she said it, a certain gladness, a little thrill of
relief, occurred somewhere within her.

Van Hupfeldt straightened himself. His lips were white, but they smiled
dreadfully, though for some part of a second he hesitated before he
said: "Now, who told you that?"

"I do not, of course, know the facts," said Violet; "but I should like
to."

"You may as well know," said Van Hupfeldt, turning away from her. "Yes,
I sent it."

Violet flushed. His manner did not carry conviction even to a mind not
used to doubt the spoken word. It was horrid to think he was lying. Yet
an odd sheepishness was visible in his face; his voice was not strong
and brave.

"Well, I am still in a maze," she murmured. "Since it was you who sent
it, and since you say in it that my sister's honor is now 'a pretty
certain thing,' and that 'the proofs will be forthcoming,' why did you
say a moment ago that it is 'a mere dream' to look forward to their
forthcoming?"

Van Hupfeldt was looking out of the window. He did not answer at once;
only after a minute he replied without looking round: "It was I who sent
you the note. Yes, it was I; and what I say in it is true--somehow--true
in some way; but I did not wish you to make the realization of those
hopes a condition of your giving yourself to me. Hence I said that your
stipulation was 'a mere dream.' Now, you understand; now, I think, all
is clear to your mind."

Violet sighed, and made no answer. All was not so very clear to her
mind. One thing only was clear, that the nobility with which she and her
mother had credited Van Hupfeldt in sending the note anonymously, so
that he might not claim a reward from her, was not a deep nobility; for
he had promptly volunteered the information that it was he who had sent
it. She felt some disgust. A woman disillusioned about a man rushes to
the opposite pole. Let him but be detected to be not the hero which she
had thought him, and steep is his fall. Henceforth he is not only not a
hero but less than nothing in her eyes. Violet paced aimlessly through
the room, then went to the window farthest from that at which Van
Hupfeldt stood, and the unspoken words on her lips were: "The miserable
man."

At last Van Hupfeldt almost rushed at her, with the cry: "The promise on
that sheet of paper in your hand shall be fulfilled, and fulfilled by
me, I vow, I swear it to you! But the fulfilment of it must not be made
a condition of our union. The union must come first, and then the
fulfilment; and the quicker the union the sooner the fulfilment."

"No, I will not have it so."

"You must!"

"You are to release my wrist, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!"

"You must!"

"But why hold me?"

"Listen--your sister was a wedded wife. I know it, I have reason to
know it, and I am certain that, if you marry me, within six months
after the marriage I shall be in a position to hand you the proofs of
everything--to tell you truly the whole history from beginning to end--"

"But why six months after? Why not six months before?"

"I have reasons--there are reasons. What I shall have to tell will be a
pain to you, I foresee, a pain; but perhaps not a pain which you will
be unable to outlive. Nevertheless, from what I already know of your
sister's history, I see that it must be told you after, not before, our
union. It is a terrible history, I--gather, a harrowing tale. You don't
even guess, you are far from being able to hear it now, even if I could
tell you now. Violet! say 'Yes' to me!"

"What? Without understanding anything?"

"Yes, Violet, turn to me! Violet, say 'Yes' to me!"

"But what guaranty--"

"My pledged word, nothing else; that is enough. I say that within six
months, not more, from the day of our marriage you shall have all that
you desire to know, even the child shall have been found, for already I
am on its track. But unless you consent, you will never know, the child
will never be found; for I shall be dead, and the knowledge which I am
in course of gathering shall die with me. If you will not give yourself,
then, agree to that bargain you spoke of."

"One gives, in a bargain, for something one receives."

"It is the only condition on which we can come together. I could not
bring you to-day the proofs that you long for, even if I had them. It
must be six months after--not less than six months after--and for then I
promise, calling Heaven to witness. Believe in me! Not all things that a
man says are true; but this is true. Violet, for Gwen's sake, within a
week--the sooner it's done, the sooner you hear--within not more than
two weeks--"

Violet, sore beset, shielded her eyes with a listless hand. Van Hupfeldt
was pleading like a man battling for his last earthly good. And yet, and
yet, he left her cold.

"I don't doubt your promise," she said with a charming shyness; "but it
is a great matter, you give me no guaranties, you may fail, and then all
will have been in vain."

"I won't fail. I shall so manage that there will be no chance of
failure. And to prove my faith, if you say 'Yes,' I think I can
undertake that within only two months after the marriage the child shall
be unearthed, and within six the proofs of his legitimacy shall be
handed you. That's fair--that seems fairer--come, now. Only the marriage
must be prompt in that case, without a fortnight's delay. I can't offer
better terms. What do you say to it?"

Violet, without answering, suddenly cast herself upon the sofa-head,
burying her face in it. A bitter lamentation came from her, so thin and
low that Van Hupfeldt could scarce hear it. He stood over her, looking
at her, his heart in his mouth; and presently, bending to her, he
whispered: "Tell me!"

"God knows!" came from her brokenly.

He put his lips on her hair, and she shivered. "It is 'Yes,' then," said
he; "but pity me still more, and say that it shall be at once."

"No," she sobbed, "I must have time to think. It is too much, after
all--"

At that moment Mrs. Mordaunt entered. Violet, aroused by the opening
door, stood up with a bent head, an averted face, and Van Hupfeldt said,
with a sort of frenzied laugh, to Mrs. Mordaunt: "See how the days are
lengthening out already."

Mrs. Mordaunt looked at Violet with a query in her glance; and Violet's
great eyes dwelt on her mother without answering by any sign that
question of lifted eyebrows. The girl was puzzled and overwrought. Was
it so that men won women, that some man had won her sister? Surely this
was a strange wooing!




CHAPTER VIII

AT DEAD OF NIGHT


David Harcourt, meantime, had long since reached home after his
interview with Miss L'Estrange, whereupon Mrs. Grover had presented him
with her first specimen of housewifery in the shape of a lunch. But, as
if to prove that the fates were against literature that day, she also
presented him with a letter from the agent Dibbin, saying: "Herein
please find address of Sarah Gissing, servant of the late Miss
Gwendoline Barnes, as promised."

David's first impulse was to go straightway after the meal to interview
this Sarah Gissing. Then he set his lips, saying to himself: "The day's
work," and, after lighting his pipe, he walked up to his literary tools
with the grimness of a man about to throttle an enemy. Whereupon he sat
down and wrote something. When he came back to earth with a weary but
taut brain, Mrs. Grover was gone for the day. It was near seven in the
evening, and the prairie-wolf within was growling "Dinner-time."

His mental faculties being now on a tension, he thought to himself that
there was no reason why he should not be prompt, and call upon Miss
Gissing that evening. Though, after dinner, a mortal lethargy and
reaction seized upon him with the whisper, "To-morrow is better than
to-day," he proved true to his high-strung self, and went by bus to
Baker-St., where he took train for the station nearest the village of
Chalfont.

It was a sharp walk from station to village. There was no cab; and when
he arrived at the Peacock Inn, where Sarah Gissing was now a barmaid, he
learned that she was away on leave at a neighboring village. He strolled
about the silent street until Sarah came home at ten o'clock, a thin
girl, with projecting top teeth, and a chronic stare of wonderment in
her eyes.

"You are not to be alarmed," David said to her. "I only came to ask you
a few questions about your late mistress, Miss Gwendoline Barnes, in
whom I have an interest. No one will be harmed, as far as I am aware, by
your telling me all that you know, while you and I may profit by it."

They spoke in the tiny inn drawing-room, and Sarah in her coat, with her
hat on, sitting on the piano-stool, stared and answered shortly at
first. Little by little she was induced to utter herself.

"He was a tall man," she said, "rather thin, dark and pale--"

"Straight nose?" asked David.

"Yes, sir, straight nose; a handsome man."

"Black mustache, nicely turned out?"

"Yes, sir; he had a mustache."

"Well, but all that says nothing. Many people answer such a description.
Was there no photograph of him in the flat? Did you never see a
photograph?"

"Yes, there was a photograph on the mantelpiece of Miss Barnes's
bed-room. In a silver frame it was; but the day after her death the
silver frame was still there, and the photograph was gone, for I noticed
it myself."

"Do you realize that you are telling me a mighty odd thing," said David
with sudden interest. "How soon after the door was forced did you go
into the flat?"

"Wasn't I there when the door was forced? Didn't I go in at once?"

"And how soon afterward did you notice that the photograph was gone from
the silver frame?"

"How soon? Soon afterward."

"It was not one of the men who forced the door who removed the
photograph from the frame?"

"I don't think that, sir. I would have noticed it if that had been the
case."

"When you went in you found the body of your mistress lying dead; the
front door had been bolted inside; so there was no way for any one to
have come out of the flat. And when you left your mistress the previous
night the photograph was in its frame, but gone when the door was forced
the next day. Those are the facts, aren't they?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that seems to say that it was Miss Barnes herself who removed
the photograph, doesn't it? And it follows that the photograph is still
in the flat?"

"P'raps she did it to screen him," suggested Sarah, indulging in the
vanity of thought. "I shouldn't wonder if that was it. No doubt she tore
up the photograph, or burnt it."

"But you didn't see any shreds or ashes of it anywhere?"

"Not of a photograph, although I did sweep out the place the same day,
too. Still, that's not to say she didn't tear it up because there was
no shreds of it, for there are ways and means."

"Were there shreds of any kind about?"

"Yes; she must have torn up a good few letters overnight before doing
what she did. There was no end of litter, for that matter."

"But suppose she did not burn or tear up the photograph," said David,
"where would she have hidden it? Can you suggest a place? Did you ever
know her to hide anything? For, if she hid one thing, she may have
hidden others, mayn't she?"

"I believe there's one letter she must have hidden," answered Sarah,
"unless she destroyed it--a letter that came from Paris four days before
she made away with herself. I saw the postmark and the handwriting, so
I know. It was from _him_, for he was in Paris at the time, and it was
that letter that was the death of her, I feel certain. It came about
eleven o'clock, soon after breakfast. She was at the piano in her
dressing-gown, singing, not ordinary singing, but a kind of moaning of
different notes, practising her voice like--it used to give me the blues
to hear her every morning, it was so doleful like, moan, moan, moan! So
I says, 'A letter for you, mum,' and she first stared at it in my hand,
then she jumped up sudden like, and kind of snatched it out of my hand.
But she didn't read it. She went with it to the front window, looking
out, holding the letter behind her back with her two hands, trembling
from head to foot. So, not having any excuse to stay, I went out, but
didn't quite close the door. I loitered for a little while; but,
not hearing anything, I went about my work, till half an hour later
something seemed to say to me: 'Better have a look,' and when I peeped
into the drawing-room, there she was sitting on the floor with her
face on the sofa, and the letter in her hand. I thought she had the
neuralgia; she looked that much in pain, you never saw. I spoke to her,
but she looked at me, sick like, and didn't say nothing. I don't believe
she could have stood up, if she had tried, and it did go to my heart to
see her struck down and helpless like that."

David's close interest in her story pleased the girl. Such a nice young
man he was! Perhaps he might call again some evening.

"My missus wasn't quite right the rest of her time, I don't think," she
went on. "She wandered about the flat, restless as a strange kitten,
singing bits of songs, and she had a sweet soprano voice, I'm sure,
that pierced you through when she screamed out the high notes. She
didn't go to the theater any more, after the letter. The next day she
comes to me in the kitchen, singing and chuckling to herself, and she
says to me: 'What are you doing here?' says she. 'How do you mean, mum?'
says I. 'Listen, Sarah,' says she, putting her face quite close to mine,
'you shouldn't be here, this is not a place for a decent girl like you.
You are to understand that I am not married. I told you that I was; but
it was a lie. I have a child; but I am not married,' and she ran off,
laughing again to herself, as wild as a bird."

"No, not that!" interrupted David, for the outspoken revelation hurt
him. "It was not so much that which I wished to hear. Let us talk of the
letter and the man. You never saw the letter again? You can't think what
your mistress may have done with it?"

"No, I never saw it again," said Sarah, "nor I can't think where she may
have put it, unless she tore it up. There's only one queer thing which
I can call to mind, and that is, that during the afternoon of the day
before she died, I went out to buy some soda, and when I came back I
found her standing on a chair, hanging up one of the pictures in the
long corridor. I wondered at the time whether it had fallen down or
what, though I didn't say anything. But now I come to think of it--"

David thought to himself: "She was then hiding the marriage and birth
certificates which Miss L'Estrange afterward saw when the picture
fell. She was reluctant to destroy them, and yet wished to screen the
man, having in her mind the purpose to take her own life. The man's
photograph and the fatal letter from him were not hidden in the picture,
but somewhere else, perhaps. I must search every cranny."

"Of course," he said aloud, "you could easily identify her husband if he
was shown to you again?"

"Oh, rather, sir," Sarah answered, "I've seen him dozens of times. He
used to come to the flat anyway twice a week, though sometimes he would
be away for a goodish stretch, mostly in Paris."

"They were an affectionate pair--fond of each other?"

"They were that, indeed," said Sarah with a smile, as one who understood
that sort of thing. "He, I'm sure, worshiped the ground she walked on,
and she was just as bad. It came as a surprise to me that anything was
wrong, though latterly she did use to have red eyes sometimes after he
had been with her."

"What name did she call him by?" asked David. "His name was Johann
Strauss, wasn't it?"

"He was a Mr. Strauss, sir, yes, but not the other name you say. At
least, she always called him Harry."

"Henry is sometimes the English for Johann, you see," muttered David,
with a random guess that Sarah was none the wiser. "Henry, too, was the
name of the child, wasn't it? How about the child? Don't you know where
it is?"

"I only know that she used to go every Tuesday and Thursday by the
seventeen minutes past two train from Baker-St., and be back by six
o'clock, so it couldn't have been very far. 'Pon my word, sometimes
she'd go half crazy over that child. There was a little box of clothes
that she's many a time made me waste half a day over, showing me the
things, as if I'd never seen them afore, everything that was possible
embroidered with violets, and she'd always be making--"

"Fond of violets, was she?" broke in David, ready enough to catch at the
phrase.

"Oh, it was all violets with her,--violets in her hair, at her neck,
at her waist, and all about the place. She had a sister called Violet,
and I came to know the sister as well as I knew herself in a manner of
speaking, she was always telling me about her. For often she had nobody
to talk to, and then she'd make me sit down to hear about her mother and
this Miss Vi and the child, and what she meant to do when her marriage
could be made public, and that. She was a good, affectionate lady, was
Miss Gwen, sir. You couldn't help loving her, and it was a mortal hard
thing what happened."

It was just then that the mistress of the tavern looked in with an
unsympathetic face; so David rose and slipped a gold coin into the hand
of the staring Sarah. The talk had already lasted a long while, and the
inn-door had to be opened to let him out.

He walked the two miles back to the station, and there learned that the
last up-train for the night had just left. Even on the suburban lines
there is a limit to late hours.

This carelessness on his own part caused him to growl. It was now
a question either of knocking up some tavern, or of tramping to
London--about twenty-one miles. However, twenty-one miles made no
continent to him, and, after posting himself by questions as to the
route, he set out.

Throwing his overcoat over his left arm, he put his elbows to his ribs,
lifted his face skyward, and went away at a long, slow, swinging trot.
One mile winded him. He stopped and walked for five minutes, then away
he went again at a steady jog-trot; and now, with this second wind, he
could have run in one heat to Bow Bells without any feeling but one of
joy and power. He had seen Indians run all day long with pauses. He had
learned the art from them, and London had scarce had time as yet to
enervate him. Up hill and down dale he went steadily away, like a
machine. It was dark at first, dismal in some places, the sky black,
crowded with stars, like diamond-seed far sown; but suddenly, while he
was trotting through the main street of Uxbridge, all this was changed,
the whole look and mood of things underwent transformation, as the full
moon floated like a balloon of light into the sky. It was then about
one-thirty in the morning. Thenceforth his way was almost as clearly lit
as by day.

Through dead villages he passed, through dead Ealing to Shepherd's Bush;
there were cats, and there were policemen, and one running man, little
else. Here or there a constable was half-drawn into giving chase, but
wisely forbore--he never would have caught David Harcourt. But at
Shepherd's Bush David came to the foot of a long hill, which he shirked,
and drew up. From that point he walked to Notting Hill, past Kensington
Gardens, toward Oxford Circus. It was near three A.M.

Walking on the south side of Oxford-St. eastward, he stopped to look at
some books behind a grille. The moonshine was so luminous, the sky so
clear, that he could see well enough to read their titles. This was the
only quiet hour of London. There was not a sound, save the echo of a
policeman's tread some way off down Regent-St. Not even a night cab
rattled in the distance. And then, on the other side of the street, his
quick ears caught the passing of swift-gliding feet--a woman's.

When David glanced round, already she was gone well past him, making
westward, most silently, with a steady haste. She gave him the
impression of having been overtaken by, of being shy at, the moonlight.
His heart leaped in a spasm of recognition, almost of fear. And he
followed, he could not help it; as water flows downward, as the needle
follows the magnet, he followed, with the stealthy pace of the stalker,
as silently as if he was tracking a deer, and as keenly.

His breathing, meantime, was as if suspended, his heart seemed to stand
still. That form and motion, his instincts would have recognized them in
midnight glimmer of dull lamps, and now they were before him in light.
Still he could not believe his wits. He doubted whether he was not
moonstruck, chasing a phantom made of the clair-obscure stuff of those
dead hours of the night when dreams are rife in the world, and ghosts
leer through the haunted chambers of the brain. That _she_ should be
walking the streets of London at three in the morning, alone, hastening
secretly homeward like some poor outcast foreconscious of the light of
dawn!--this savored somewhat of limbo and lunacy. For what good reason
could she be thus abroad? A swarm of doubts, half-doubts, queer bodings,
jostled in David's heart. She might, indeed, have come out to summon a
doctor, to obtain a drug in an emergency. But something in her air and
pace, something clandestine, desperate, illicit, seemed to belie this
hope. She turned north when she had gone so far west as Orchard-St.,
little thinking, apparently, that she was being shadowed, and thence
sped on west and north alternately through smaller streets, a region in
which the desolation of the sleeping city seemed even more confirmed.
And David followed, with this thought in his mind, that, though he
had not seen her face, he had a certain means of determining her
identity--for, if the flying figure before him went to 60A, Porchester
Gardens, the address which he had of Violet Mordaunt, then this must be
Violet.

Not that in the later part of his chase he had the slightest doubt. The
long black cloak, like those that nurses wear, inflated behind her, the
kind of toque above it, the carriage of her head, the slope of her
shoulders, all these were hers: and she sped direct, notwithstanding
turns and twists, to Porchester Gardens. David, from behind the corner
of a street, could see her go up the house-steps, bend over something
in her hand, open the door, and slip on what must have been rubber
overshoes. This secrecy revolted him, and again he almost doubted that
it was she. But when she had gone in, he hastened from his street-corner
to the door to read the house-number, and it was 60A.

She was gone now. It was too late to challenge and upbraid her. He
already regretted that he had not dared. He was bitter at it. Something
said within him: "Both sisters!" Some envenomed fang of anger, spite,
and jealousy plagued him, a feeling that he was wholly out of it, and
had no part nor lot in her life and acts; and then, also, like oil on
the waters, came pity. He must home to his haunted flat, where the scent
of the violets which he had bought greeted him on his entrance. It was
near four o'clock. After looking gloomily for some time at the head in
chalks, he read three letters which he had found in the letter-box. One
of them was from Miss L'Estrange, and in it she said:

"I have asked my girl, Jenny, about the marriage and birth certificates
which fell out of the picture, and there's something funny about her."
(A woman never means humor when she uses that word funny.) "She wants to
make out that she knows nothing about what became of them, but I believe
she does. Perhaps she has found out Strauss and sold them to him, or
perhaps she only means to do so, and you may get them from her if you be
quick and bid high. Anyway, I have done my best for you, and now it is
in your own hands. You can come here whenever you like."

But David was now suddenly not so devoted to the affairs of Violet and
Gwendoline Mordaunt as he had been. What he had seen within the past
hour made him bitter. He went foraging in the kitchen for something to
eat, then threw himself into bed in a vexed mood, as some gray of
morning mingled with the night.




CHAPTER IX

COMING NEAR


As for Henry Van Hupfeldt, he, too, at that morning hour lay awake in
his bed. If ever man knew panic, it was he all that night. He had gone
home from his interview with Violet, cringing in his carriage even from
the glance of the passers in the streets, stricken to the heart by that
unsigned note of David's to Violet: "A pretty certain thing that your
sister was a duly wedded wife" ... "the proofs of it will be
forthcoming." Some one knew!

But who? And how? Van Hupfeldt locked himself away from his valet--he
lived in chambers near Hanover Square--and for hours sat without a
movement, staring the stare of the hopeless and the lost. The fact that
he had as good as won from Violet the pledging of herself to him--that
fact which at another time would have filled him with elation, was now
almost forgotten in the darkness of his calamity, as a star is swallowed
up by clouds. The thing was known! That known which had been between the
chamber of his heart and God alone! A bird of the air had whispered it,
another soul shared in its horror. The faintest hiss of a wish to commit
murder came from between his teeth. He had meant well, and ill had
come; but because he had meant not badly and had struggled hard with
fate, let no man dare to meddle! He could be flint against the steel of
a man.

His eyes, long bereft of sleep, closed of themselves at last, and he
threw himself upon his bed. But the pang which pierces the sleep of the
condemned criminal soon woke him. He opened his eyes with a clearer
mind, and set to thinking. The unsigned note to Violet was in a man's
hand. Some nights before in the cemetery he had found a man near the
grave with her, and the man had seemed to be talking with her, a young,
sunburned man. Who he was he had no idea; he had no reason to think this
was the man who had sent the note. There was left only Miss L'Estrange.
She might have sent it, getting a man to write for her--suspicion of
itself fixed upon her. Always he had harbored this fear, that some
paper, something to serve as a clue, had been left in the flat, which
would lie hidden for a time, and then come forth into the noonday to
undo him utterly. Gwendoline, he knew, had wished to screen him; but the
chances were against him. He had never dared to go into the flat alone,
to take the flat in his own name, and search it inside out. The place
was haunted by a light step, and a sigh was in the air which no other
ear could hear, but which his ear would hear without fail. Within those
walls his eyes one night had seen a sight!

He had not dared to take the place; but he had put Miss L'Estrange into
it, and she had failed him; so, suspecting at last that she did not
search according to the bargain, he had threatened to stop supplies, in
order merely to spur her to search, for his heart had always foreboded
that there was something to find.

Gwen, he knew, had kept a diary. Where was that? His photographs, where
were they? His last letter to her? The certificates? Had they all been
duly destroyed by her? Had she forgotten nothing? But when he had
attempted to spur L'Estrange, the woman had flown into a fury, and he
had allowed himself to lose his temper. How bitter now was his remorse
at this folly! He ought to have kept some one in perpetuity in the flat,
till all fear of anything lying hidden in it was past. He suspected now
that L'Estrange might have found some document, and had kept it from him
through his not being well in her favor during the last weeks of her
residence. He groaned aloud at this childishness of his. It was his
business to have kept in touch with her, to have made her rich. But it
was not too late.

So, on the following evening, he presented himself at the stage-door of
the theater where Miss Ermyn L'Estrange was then displaying her charms,
in his hand an _écrin_ containing a _rivière_ of diamonds. He said not
one word about his motive for coming to her after so long, but put out
an every-day hand, as if no dispute had been between them.

"Well, this is a surprise!" said she. "What's the game now?"

"No game," said he, assuming the necessary jauntiness. "Should old
acquaintance be forgot?" They drove together to the Café Royal.

"It was just as I tell you," she explained in the cab, driving later to
Chelsea. "I never saw one morsel of any paper until that last day, when
the two certificates dropped out of the picture, and them I wouldn't
give you because of the tiff. I'm awfully sorry now that I didn't," she
glanced down at the _rivière_ on her palm; "but there, it's done, and
can't be undone--nature of the beast, I s'pose."

"And you really think Jenny has them? Are you sure, now? Are you sure?"
asked Van Hupfeldt, earnestly.

"That's my honest belief," she answered. "I think I remember tossing
them to Jenny, and as Jenny knew that I had gone into the flat specially
to search for papers for you, she must have said to herself: 'These
papers may be just what have been wanted, and they'll be worth their
weight in gold to me, if I can find Mr. Strauss.' No doubt she's been
looking for you ever since, or waiting for you to turn up. When I said
to her yesterday: 'What about those two papers that dropped out of the
picture at Eddystone Mansions?' she turned funny, and couldn't catch her
breath. 'Which two papers, miss?' she says. 'Oh, you go on,' I said to
her; 'you know very well. Those that dropped out of the picture that
fell down.'--'Yes,' said she, 'now I remember. I wonder what could
have become of them? Didn't you throw them into the fireplace, Miss
L'Estrange?'--'No, I didn't, Jenny,' I said to her, 'and a woman should
lie to a man, not to another woman; for it takes a liar to catch a
liar.'--'But what lie am I telling, Miss L'Estrange?' says she. 'I am
not sure,' I said, 'but I know that you ought to tie your nose with
string whenever you're telling a lie, for your nostrils keep opening
and shutting, same as they're doing now.'--'I didn't know that, I'm
sure,' says she. 'That's queer, too, if my nostrils are opening and
shutting.'--'It's only the truth,' I said to her; 'your mouth is
accustomed to uttering falsehood, and it doesn't mind, but when your
nostrils smell the lie coming out, they get excited, my girl.'--'Fancy!'
says she. 'That's funny!'--'So where's the use keeping it up, Jenny?' I
said to her. 'You do make me wild, for I know that you're lying, and you
know that I know, and yet you keep it up, as if I was a man, and didn't
know you. If you've got the papers, say so; you are perfectly welcome to
them, for I don't want to take them from you,' I said. 'Well, you seem
to know more than I do myself, miss,' she says. 'Oh, you get out!' I
said to her, and I pushed her by the shoulders out of the room. That's
all that passed between us."

"For what reason did you ask her about these papers yesterday in
particular?" demanded Van Hupfeldt, thickly, a pain gripping at his
heart.

"I'll tell you. The new tenant of the flat came to me--"

"Ah! the flat is let again?"

"What, didn't you know? He's only just moved in--a young man named David
Harcourt."

"And he came to you? What about?"

"Asking about papers--"

"Papers? What interest can he have in them? And you told him about the
certificates?"

"Yes."

"_Gott in Himmel!_"

"Why, what's the matter?"

"You told him about the certificates? Then it was he who wrote the
note!"

"Which note? Don't take on like that--in a cab!"

"You told him! Then it was he--it was he! How does he look, this young
man? What kind of young man?" Van Hupfeldt wanted to choke the woman as
she sat there beside him.

"Come, cheer up, pull yourself together; it will be all the same a
hundred years hence. I'm sure I didn't know that I was injuring you by
telling him, and even if I had known, I should still have told
him--there's nothing like being frank, is there? You and I weren't
pals--"

"But what is he like, this young man?"

"Not a bad sort, something like a Jameson raider, a merry, upstanding
fellow--"

"It was he who was at the grave with her!" whispered Van Hupfeldt to
himself, while his eyes seemed to see a ghost. "And you told him all,
all! It was he, no other. What name did you give him as that of the
husband on the marriage-lines? Did he ask that, too? Did you tell him?"
With a kind of crazy secrecy he asked it at her ear, panting for the
answer.

"I didn't remember the husband's name," she answered. "I told him it
wasn't Strauss, but van or von Something. And don't lean against me in
that way. People will think you are full."

"Van? You told him that? And what did he say then?"

"He asked if it wasn't van Something, I forget what, Van Hup--something.
I have an awful bad memory for names, and, look here, don't come
worrying me with your troubles, for I've got my own to look after."

Van Hupfeldt's finger-nails were pressed into the flesh of his palms.
This new occupier of the flat, then, even knew his name, even suspected
the identity of Strauss with Van Hupfeldt. How could he know it, except
from Violet? To the pains of panic in Van Hupfeldt was added a stab of
jealousy. That Violet knew this young man he no longer doubted, nor
doubted that the meeting at the grave was by appointment. Perhaps
Violet, eager to find suspected papers of her sister's, had even put
this man into the flat, just as he, Van Hupfeldt, had once put Miss
L'Estrange there. At all events, here was a man in the flat having some
interest or other in Violet and in Gwendoline's papers, with the name
Van Hupfeldt on his lips, and a suspicion that Van Hupfeldt was Strauss,
the evil genius of Gwendoline!

"But there must be no meddling in my life!" Van Hupfeldt whispered to
himself, with an evil eye that meant no good to David.

When the cab drew up before Miss L'Estrange's dwelling, she said: "You
can't come up, you know; it is much too late. And there isn't any need.
I will let Jenny go to you as early as you like in the morning if you
give me your address, or you can come yourself to-morrow--"

"Ah, don't be hard on me," he pleaded. "I mustn't lose a night. Send her
down to me, if I can't go up."

"Go on, the poor girl's asleep," she answered. "Where's the use in
carrying on like a loony? Can't you take it coolly?"

In the end he had to go without seeing Jenny, having left his card on
the understanding that she should be with him not later than ten in the
morning, and that Miss L'Estrange should keep his address an inviolable
secret.

The moment he was gone from her, Ermyn L'Estrange darted up the stairs,
as if to catch something, and, on entering her flat, tripped into her
bed-room, turned on the light, threw off her cloak, and put on the
necklace before her mirror. It was a fine affair, and no mistake, all
lights and colors playing bo-peep in the stones. She made a curtsy to
her image, inspected herself on every side, stepping this way and that,
daintily, like a peacock, keenly enjoying the gift, till the novelty of
possessing it was gone stale. But at no time did she feel any gratitude
to the giver, or think of him at all in connection with it--just the
fact of having it occupied her mind, it didn't matter whence.

And the mere knowledge that it was so valuable proved it to be a bribe,
pointed to a weakness in the giver. Some gifts to women, especially
splendid ones, produce not only no gratitude, but a certain hardness of
heart, contempt, and touch of enmity. Perhaps there is a feeling of "I
ought to be grateful," but being too happy to be grateful, they are
bored with a sense of fault, and for this they punish the giver with the
opposite of gratitude.

At all events, by the time Miss L'Estrange had taken off the string of
gems, a memory had grown up within her of David Harcourt, and with it
came a mild feeling of partizanship and liking for David as against
Strauss. It was a wayward machine, that she-heart under the bodice of
Miss Ermyn L'Estrange--wayward without motive, subtle without thought,
treacherous for treachery's sake. As a matter of fact, before waking
Jenny, it came into her head to "give a friendly tip" to David on the
ground that he was "not a bad sort," and she actually went out of her
way to send him a post-card, telling him that she had expected him to
call on Jenny that day, and that, if he meant business, he must see her
not later than half-past nine the next morning, or he would be too late.

What a web, this, which was being spun round the young adventurer from
Wyoming!




CHAPTER X

THE MARRIAGE-LINES


David had not gone to interview Jenny the day before in obedience to
Miss L'Estrange's first note, because of the sullen humor to which he
relapsed after his experiences at three in the morning in the streets of
London. He resented the visiting of the glimpses of the moon by a young
lady who donned rubber overshoes before re-entering her house, and he
said to himself: "The day's work, and skip the Violets."

Then, the next morning, came Miss L'Estrange's second letter--"he must
see Jenny not later than half-past nine" or he would be "too late."
Again this failed to rouse him. With those lazy, lithe movements of the
body which characterized him, he strolled for some time about the flat
after his early breakfast, uncertain what to do. He saw, indeed, that
some one else must be after the certificates--Strauss--Van Hupfeldt--if
Strauss and Van Hupfeldt were one; but still he halted between two
opinions, thinking: "Where do I come in, anyway?"

Then again the face which he had seen at the grave rose before him with
silent pleadings, a face touching to a man's heart, with dry rose-leaf
lips which she had a way of wetting quickly, and in her cheeks a
die-away touch of the peach, purplish like white violets. And how did he
know, the jealous youth, by what hundred reasons her nightly wandering
might be accounted for? Why did he nourish that sort of resentment
against a girl who was a perfect stranger? Perhaps there was really some
jealousy in it! At which thought he laughed aloud, and suddenly darted
into action, snatched a hat, and went flying. But then it was already
past nine.

When he reached Miss L'Estrange's flat, for some time no one answered
his ring, and then the door opened but a little way to let out a voice
which said: "What is it? I am not dressed. She's gone. I told you you'd
be too late."

"Is she gone?" said David, blankly, eager enough now to see her.

"Look here, why should I be bothered with the lot of you at this ungodly
hour of the morning?" cried the fickle L'Estrange. "_I_ can't help your
troubles! Can't you see when anybody is in bed?"

"But why did you let her go before I came?" asked David.

"You are cool! Am I your mother?"

"I wish you were for this once."

"Nice mother and son we little two would make, wouldn't we?"

"That's not the point. I'm afraid you are getting cold. You ought to
have contrived to keep the girl till I came, though it is my own fault.
But can't anything be done now? Where is she gone to?"

"To Strauss, of course."

"With the certificates?"

"I suppose so. I know nothing about it, and care less. I did try to keep
her back a bit for your sake, but she was pretty keen to be gone to him
when once she had his address, the underhanded little wretch!"

"But stop--how long is it since she has gone?"

"Not three minutes. It's just possible that you might catch her up, if
you look alive."

"How can that be? I shouldn't know her. I have never seen her. We may
have passed each other in the street."

"Listen. She is a small, slim girl with nearly white hair and little
Chinese eyes. She has on a blue serge skirt with my old astrakhan bolero
and a sailor hat. Now you can't miss her."

"But which way? Where does Strauss live?"

"I promised not to tell, and I'm always as good as my word," cried the
reliable Miss Ermyn L'Estrange, "but between you and me, it's not a
thousand miles from Piccadilly Circus; and that is where Jenny will get
down off her bus; so if you take a cab--"

"Excellent. Good-by! See you again!" said David.

David was gone, in a heat of action. He took no cab, however, but took
to his heels, so that he might be able to spy at the occupants within
and on the top of each bus on the line of route, by running a little
faster than the vehicles. At this hour London was already out of doors,
going shopping, going to office and works. It was a bright morning, like
the beginning of spring. People turned their heads to look at the man
who ran faster than the horses, and pried into the buses. Victoria,
Whitehall, Charing Cross, he passed--still he could see no one quite
like Jenny. He began to lose hope, finding, moreover, that running in
London was not like running in Wyoming, or even like his run from Bucks.
Here the air seemed to lack body and wine. It did not repay the lungs'
effort, nor give back all that was expended, so that in going up the
steep of Lower Regent-St. he began to breathe short. Nevertheless, to
reward him, there, not far from the Circus, he saw sitting patient in
a bus-corner the sailor hat, the bolero, the Chinese eyes, and reddish
white hair of Jenny.

The moment she stepped out, two men sprang forward to address her--David
and Van Hupfeldt's valet. Van Hupfeldt lived near the lower portion of
Hanover Square, the way to which being rather shut in and odd to one who
does not know it, his restlessness had become unbearable when Jenny was
a little late, so he had described her to his valet, a whipper-snapper
named Neil--for Van Hupfeldt had several times seen Jenny with Miss
L'Estrange--and had sent Neil to Piccadilly Circus, where he knew that
Jenny would alight, in order to conduct her to his rooms. However, as
Neil moved quickly forward, David was before him, and the valet thought
to himself: "Hello, this seems to be a case of two's company and three's
none."

David was saying to Jenny: "You are Miss L'Estrange's servant?"

"I am," answered Jenny.

"She sent me after you. I must speak with you urgently. Come with me."

Now, in Jenny's head were visions of nothing less than wealth--wealth
which she was eager to handle that hour. She said, therefore, to David:
"I don't know who you are. I can't go anywhere--"

They stood together on the pavement, with Neil, all unknown to David,
behind them listening.

"There's no saying 'No,'" insisted David. "You're going to see Mr.
Strauss, aren't you? Well, I am here instead of Mr. Strauss in this
matter."

But this ambiguous remark failed of its effect, for Neil, whose master
had told him that in this affair he was not Van Hupfeldt but Strauss,
intervened with the pert words: "Begging your pardon, but I am Strauss."

However, this short way of explaining that he was there on behalf of
Strauss was promptly misunderstood by Jenny, who looked with disdain at
the valet, saying: "You are not Mr. Strauss!"

"Of course he isn't," said David, quickly. "How dare you, sir, address
this lady? Come right away, will you? Come, now. Let's jump into this
cab."

"Who are you? I don't even know you!" cried the perplexed Jenny.

"I didn't say I was Mr. Strauss himself," began Neil.

"Yes, you did say so," said Jenny, "and it isn't the truth, for I know
Mr. Strauss very well, and neither of you isn't going to get over me, so
you know!"

"Don't you see," suggested David, his wits all at work, "that one of us
must be true, and as you are aware that he is false--"

"What is all this about?" demanded Jenny. "I have no business with
either of you. Just tell me the way to Hanover Square, please, and let
me go about my business."

"That's just why I'm here, to show you the way," said Neil. "I dunno why
this gentleman takes it upon himself--"

"Best hold your tongue, young man," growled David. "You must be stupid
to think this young girl would go off with you, a man she never saw
before, especially after detecting you in a direct untruth--"

"As for that, she don't know you any more than me, seemingly," retorted
Neil. "Mr. Strauss sent me--"

"How is she to know that? Miss L'Estrange sent me. Didn't I know your
name, Jenny, and your mistress's name?"

"Well, that's right enough," agreed Jenny on reflection.

"Then trust to me."

"But what is it you want, sir?"

"It is about the papers," whispered David, confidentially. "It is all
to your good to come with me first and hear what I have to say. Miss
L'Estrange--"

"Well, all right; but you must be quick," said Jenny, rushing to a
decision.

David hailed a cab, and he and Jenny turned their backs upon the
defeated valet, got in, and drove off. However, Neil, who had witnessed
Van Hupfeldt's fever of eagerness to see this girl, followed in another
cab. David drove to the Tube Station near Oxford Circus--she would
accompany him no farther--and, while he talked with Jenny in a corner
there, Neil, lurking among the crowd of shop-gazers across the street,
kept watch.

"I propose to you," David said to Jenny, "to give the certificates to
me, and in doing so, I understand that you are a poor girl--"

"That's just it," answered Jenny, "and I must know first how much I am
to get for them--if it's true that I have any certificates."

"Right enough," said David, "but the main motive which I hold out to
you is not what you will receive in hard cash, but that you will do an
immense amount of good, if you give the papers to me. They don't belong
to this Mr. Strauss, but they do belong to the mother and sister of a
poor wronged lady, a lady whose character they will clear."

"Ah, no doubt," agreed Jenny, with the knowing leer of a born Cockney;
"still, a girl has got to look after herself, you see, and not mind
other people's troubles."

"What!" cried David, "would you rather do the wrong thing and earn
twenty pounds, or do the right thing and earn five pounds? You can't
be in earnest saying that."

"It isn't a question of five pounds, nor yet of twenty," snapped Jenny,
offended at the mere mention of such paltry sums, "it's a question of
hundreds and of thousands." Her mouth went big for the "thousands."
"Don't think that I'm going to part with the papers under high figures,
if so be I have any papers."

"Under what?" asked David--"under hundreds, or under thousands?"

"Under thousands."

"Now hold on a bit. Are you aware that I could have the papers taken
from you this minute, papers that don't belong to you, which you propose
to sell to some one other than the rightful owners?"

At this Jenny changed color. There was a policeman within a few yards,
and she saw her great and golden dream dissolving.

"It remains to be seen if I have got any papers. That's the very
question, you see!" she said.

"You might be searched, you know, just to clear the point. Yet you
needn't be afraid of that, for I'm disposed to meet you, and you aren't
going to refuse any reasonable offer, with no trouble from the police
to follow. So I offer you now--fifty golden sovereigns for the papers,
cash down."

"You leave me alone," muttered Jenny, sheepishly, turning her shoulder
to him.

"Well, I thought we were going to be friends; but I see that I must act
harshly," David said, making a threatening movement to leave her.

"You can have them for one hundred pounds," the girl murmured in a frail
voice with downcast eyes; to which David, not to drive a hard bargain
with her, at once answered: "Well, you shall have your one hundred
pounds."

The next moment, however, he was asking himself: "Who's to pay? Can I
afford these royal extravagances in other people's affairs? Steady! Not
too much Violet!"

He walked a little way from the girl, considering it. He could not
afford it. There was no earthly reason why he should. But he might go to
Violet, to Mrs. Mordaunt, and obtain the one hundred pounds, or their
authorization to spend that sum on their behalf. In that case, however,
how make sure of Jenny in the meantime? It would hardly do to leave her
there in the station, so near to Strauss. She would be drawn to him
as by a magnet, and he thought that if he took her with him to the
Mordaunts, she would recover her self-assurance and demand from the
women more, perhaps, than they could afford. In the end, he decided to
take her to his flat, and leave her there in Mrs. Grover's charge till
he returned from the Mordaunts.

"That's a bargain, then," he said to her; "one hundred it is. I take it
that you actually have the certificates on you?"

"I may have," smirked the elusive Jenny.

"That's all right. 'Have' and 'may have' are the same things in your
case. So now I shall go right away to procure the one hundred pounds,
and meantime you'll come with me to your old flat in Eddystone
Mansions--that's where I live now--No, don't be scared, there's some one
there besides myself, and the ghost doesn't walk in the daytime."

They hailed another cab, and again Neil, leaving his lurking-place,
drove after them. He saw David and Jenny go into the mansions, then
stood uncertain whether to hurry home and tell the position of affairs
to Van Hupfeldt, who, he knew, must by this time be raving, or whether
to wait and see if Jenny and David came out again.

He was loitering a little way up the house-stairs, thinking it out,
when he heard the lift coming down, and presently he saw David rush
out--alone. Jenny, then, was still in the building. Neil ran to the
lift-man.

"Gentleman who just come down," he said, "does he live here?"

"He do, in No. 7," was the answer.

"Girl's left in his flat, then," thought Neil, scratching his head, "and
the bloke wot owns the flat don't know I've been spying. I'd better
hurry back and let the master know how things are looking."

Whereat the valet, who was clearer in action than in speech, ran out and
took cab to Hanover Square, to tell Van Hupfeldt where Jenny was.




CHAPTER XI

SWORDS DRAWN


David, meantime, also by cab, was off to Porchester Gardens, a certain
hurry and fluster now in his usually self-possessed bosom. He looked at
his face in the cab-mirror, and adjusted his tie. A young man who acts
in that way betrays a symptom of heart-disease. At 60A he sent up his
card.

Violet knew from Dibbin the name of David Harcourt, but when she read it
she seemed startled, and turned a little pale. "Show him up," she said,
in a flurry.

"You will excuse my calling," explained David, without shaking hands,
"though we have met before--you remember?"

She inclined her head a little, standing, as it were, shrunk from him,
some way off.

"But my visit has to do with a small matter which admits of no delay."

"My mother--" she began.

"Is out, I know," said he, "but as the affair is urgent, I am here. You
know that I am the tenant of No. 7, Eddystone Mansions, and you know
also, that, without seeking it, I have some knowledge of your history. I
wish to ask whether, without troubling your mind with a lot of details,
you care to authorize me to spend at once, in your interests, a sum of
one hundred pounds."

She scrutinized him with a certain furtiveness, weighing him.

"In my interests?" said she.

"Yours and your mother's."

"One hundred pounds?"

"Yes."

"It seems a strange request."

"It isn't a request. If you haven't confidence in me to the extent of
one hundred pounds, I am not deeply concerned."

"But you come like a storm, and speak like one."

"On a purely business matter of your own--remember."

"You were at the pains to come," she said with a smile. "You cannot both
care and not care."

"I used the word 'concern,' you know."

"Is it a gracious way to approach me?"

"Is it charming to be mistrusted?"

"Did I say that I mistrusted you?"

"With your eyes."

"Well, I say now with my lips that I do not. Which will you believe?"

"No doubt they can both deceive."

"Oh, now you are verging on rudeness."

"There are worse things than rudeness, when one thinks of it."

"I have no idea to what you refer."

"That may be because I know more about you than you think."

At this she started guiltily, visibly, and at that start again she
appeared before the eye of David's memory gliding through the moonlight
at three in the morning, a ghost hastening back to the tomb. Yet, in her
presence, the resentment which rankled in him softened to pity. A look
of appeal came into her dark eyes, and a certain essence of honesty and
purity in her being communicated itself to his instincts, putting it out
of his power to think any ill of her for the moment.

He said hurriedly: "I fear I have begun badly. All this is neither here
nor there."

She sat down, slung a knee between her clasped fingers in her habitual
manner, and said: "Please tell me, what do you mean?" Then she looked up
at him again with a troubled light in her eyes.

He walked quickly nearer to her, saying: "Now, don't let that get into
your head as a serious statement. It was a mere manner of speaking, what
I said, and of no importance. Moreover, there's this question of one
hundred pounds, and time is a vital consideration."

"Nevertheless, you were definite enough, and must have had some
meaning," she went on. "Did I not hear you say that you know more about
me than I think? Well, then, have the goodness to tell me what."

"Now I have put my foot in it, I suppose," said David, "and you will
never rest till I find something to tell you. But not now, if you will
bear with me. In a few days I shall, perhaps, call on your mother, or
see you again at a place which you no doubt visit pretty often at about
the same hour, and to which I, too, somehow am strangely drawn. The
question now before us is whether I am to spend the one hundred pounds
for you."

"As to that, what can one say? You tell me nothing of your reason, my
mother is out, and I am afraid that I have not at the moment one hundred
pounds of my own. I am about to be married, and--"

"Married?"

"I am myself rather surprised at it. Yet I fail to see why you should be
immoderately surprised."

"I? Surprised?" said he in a dazed way, still standing with one foot
drawn back a step. "I was merely taken aback, because--"

"Well?"

"Because--nothing. I was simply taken aback, that's all. Or rather
because I had not heard of it before."

"It was only fully decided upon yesterday," said she, bending down over
her knee.

"Oh, only yesterday. And the happy event takes place when? for I am at
least interested."

"Soon. Within two or three weeks. I don't quite know when."

"And the happy man?"

"The same whom you saw come to take me from Kensal Green."

"Mr. Van Hupfeldt?"

"Oh, you know his name. Yes; Mr. Van Hupfeldt."

David chuckled grimly.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked.

"But whatever is your motive?" he cried sharply.

"You are strange to venture to inquire into my motive," she said, with
downcast eyes. Then her lip trembled, and she added in a low voice: "My
motive is known only to the dead."

"Ah, don't cry!" he almost shouted at her, with a sudden brand of red
anger across his brow. "There's no need for tears! It shan't ever
happen, this thing!"

"What do you mean?" she asked, glancing tremulously at him.

"What I say. This marriage can't happen. I'll see to that. But
stop--perhaps I am talking too soon. 'Let not him boast that putteth his
armor on as he that taketh it off.' Good-day, Miss Mordaunt. I shall not
trouble you any more about the one hundred pounds. I will spend it out
of my own pocket pocket--"

"Please stay!" she cried after him. "Everything that you say bewilders
me! How am I to believe you honest when you say such things?"

"What things? Honest? You may believe me honest or not, just as you
will. I told you before that I am not greatly concerned. If I bewilder
_you_, you anger _me_."

"I am sorry for that. But how so?"

"What, is it nothing for a man to hear it doubted whether he is honest
or not? And, apart from that, admit that your sister is not very long
dead, and that you have been easily drawn into this engagement--"

"But what can all this matter to you?" she asked, with a wrinkled brow.
"Why should my private conduct anger you at all? I have not, in fact, as
you think, been so easily won into this engagement; yet, if I had, it is
amazing that you should lecture me. If it was any one but you, I should
be cross."

"What, am I in special favor, then?"

"You have an honest face."

"Then why is my poor honesty constantly doubted."

"Because you say extraordinary things. It is not, for instance, usual
for people to pay one hundred pounds for the benefit of a casual
acquaintance as you just volunteered to do. Either you have some trick
or motive in view, or you are very wonderfully disinterested."

"Which do you think?"

"I may think one thing now, and the other after you are gone."

"Well, it is useless arguing. I should be here all day, if I let myself.
We were not made to agree, you see. Some people are like that. I shall
just pay the one hundred pounds out of my own pocket--"

"You are not to do that, please."

"Then, will you?"

"I think not."

"You have no idea what is in question!"

"Then, give me some idea."

"And lose more time. However, you may as well hear. It is this: that the
tenant in the flat before me, one Miss L'Estrange, found concealed in a
picture a certificate of a marriage and one of a birth, and I wish to
buy them for you from Miss L'Estrange's servant, who has them."

Violet sprang upright with an adoring face, murmuring: "Heaven be
thanked!"

"I didn't tell you before," said David, "because I haven't secured the
papers yet. I have left the girl in my flat--"

"But where--where do you say she found them?" she asked, with a keener
interest than the question quite seemed to call for.

"It was in a picture-frame, between the picture and the boards at the
back," he answered. "The picture dropped, and the certificates fell
out."

"Heaven be praised!" she breathed again. "Was there nothing else that
fell out?"

"Nothing else, apparently."

"That was enough. Why should I want more? Oh, get them for me quickly,
will you?" she cried, all animated and pink. "With these in my hand
everything will be different. Even your prophecy against my marriage,
which you seemed not to desire, will very likely come true."

"So now I have your authority to spend the one hundred pounds?" he
asked, with a smile.

"Of course! Ten times as much!"

"But blessed is she who has not seen, and yet has believed!"

"Forgive me! I do thank and trust you!" She put out her hand. He took
it, and bent some time over it.

"Good-by, Miss Mordaunt."

"Not for long--an hour--two?"

"I am glad to have pleased you. I shall always remember how the brunette
type of angels look when they thank Providence."

"It is not fair to flatter when one is highly happy and deeply thankful,
for then one hears everything as music. Tell me of it some other time,
when I shall have a sharper answer ready. But stay--one word. It is of
these certificates that Mr. Van Hupfeldt, too, must somehow have got
wind. Does the girl say that any one else knows of them?"

"A man named Strauss knows of them."

At that name her eyelids fell as if her modesty had been hurt. "Does not
Mr. Van Hupfeldt know of them?" she asked, with face averted.

"I cannot tell you--yet," he answered, turning a little from her lest
she caught the grim smile on his lips. "Why do you think that he may
know?"

"Because some days ago he wrote me a note--it is this. It can refer only
to these certificates, I suppose."

She handed to David his own note--"It is now a pretty certain thing that
your sister was a duly wedded wife"--and David, looking at it, asked
with something of a flush: "Did Mr. Van Hupfeldt say that it was he who
sent you this? I see that it has no signature."

"Yes, it was he," said Violet.

"Ah!" murmured David, and said no more.

"If it was these certificates which he had in his mind when he wrote
that note," said she, "then he, too, as well as you, must have a chance
of securing them from the girl. So you had better be careful that he is
not beforehand with you."

David looked squarely at her. "So long as you obtain them, what does it
matter from whom they come?"

"Of course," she replied, with her eyes on the ground, "I shall owe much
gratitude to the person who hands them to me."

He took a step forward, whispering: "Must I be the winner?"

He received no answer from her; only, a wave of blood, a blush that
flooded her being from her toes to the roots of her hair all of a
sudden, suffused Violet, while he stood awaiting her reply. He put out
his hand with a fine self-control. "Well, I must try," he cried lightly.
She just touched his fingers with hers, and the next moment he was
striding from her.

His cab was waiting outside. Calling, "Quick as you can!" to the
driver, he sprang in, and they started briskly away. He was well content
inwardly. Something bird-like seemed new-fledged and fluttering a little
somewhere inside. He had tasted the sweet poison of honey-dew.

As for doubt, he had none at the moment. Jenny he had left safe with
Mrs. Grover; he was sure that she had the certificates with her. But
when he reached the middle of Oxford-St., he saw that which made him
start--Van Hupfeldt in a landau driving eastward, and, sitting beside
the coachman, the valet Neil. What spurred David's interest was the pace
at which the landau's horses were racing through the traffic, and also
the face of the man in the carriage, so gaunt and wild, leaning forward
with his two hands clenched on his knees, as if to press the carriage
faster forward by the strain of his soul.

At once a host of speculations crowded upon David's mind. Now, for the
first time, it occurred to him that Neil may have shadowed him and the
girl to the flat, that Van Hupfeldt might have the daring to be on the
way to the flat to win Jenny from him. He felt that he could hardly
prevail against Van Hupfeldt with Jenny--Van Hupfeldt being rich--and
the two high-steppers in the landau were fast leaving the cab-horse
behind. An eagerness to be quickly at his flat rose in David, so without
stopping his cab he stood out near the splash-board and cried to his
amazed driver: "I say! You come inside, and let me drive."

"Mustn't do that, sir. It is more than my place is worth," began the
cabman.

"Two pounds for you, and I pay all fines--quick now!" said David.

The driver hesitated, but pulled up. He climbed down, went into the cab,
and David was on the perch, reins in hand. Though some persons were
astonished, luckily no policeman saw them. The horse, as if conscious of
something from Wyoming behind him, began to run. David bolted northward
out of the traffic, and careered through the emptier streets, while the
old cab-horse wondered what London was coming to when such things could
be, and praised the days of his youth. When David drew up at Eddystone
Mansions, there was no sign of the landau. He ran up the stairs three at
a time. He would not await the tardy elevator. In moments of stress we
return to nature and cast off the artificial. Opening his door with his
key, he made straight into the drawing-room where he had left Jenny.
Then his heart sank miserably, for she was not there.

"Mrs. Grover!" he called, and when Mrs. Grover hurried from the kitchen,
her hands leprous with pastry-dough, David looked at her so thunderously
that she drew back.

"Where's the girl, Mrs. Grover?" he growled.

"She's gone, sir."

"I see that. You let her go, Mrs. Grover?"

"Why, sir, a man came here, saying he had a message from you for the
girl, and I let him in. They had a talk together, then she said she must
be going. I couldn't stop her."

David groaned.

The man who had called was Neil, who, on hurrying to tell his master
where Jenny was, had been sent back with instructions to try and induce
her to leave the flat and come to Hanover Square. Neil had accomplished
this to the extent of getting Jenny to leave Eddystone Mansions; but
she would not go to Strauss, for David's threat of the police if she
disposed of the papers to any one else than their lawful owner was in
her mind, and she now feared to sell the papers to Strauss, as she
knew that she would certainly do if she once went to his rooms. Yet
she was sorely tempted to sell to the lavish rich man rather than to
the bargainer, and so, making a compromise between her fears and her
temptation, she had told Neil that she would wait in a certain café, and
there discuss the matter with Strauss, if Strauss would come to her. She
was waiting there, and Strauss was going to her, led by Neil, when David
had seen him in the landau.

At any rate, the girl was gone. David felt as if he had lost all things.
He had promised the certificates; and Violet had said: "I shall owe much
gratitude to the person who hands them to me."

Now Van Hupfeldt had, or would have, them. While he had been dallying
and bandying words in Porchester Gardens, Van Hupfeldt had been acting,
and he groaned to himself in a pain of self-reproach: "Too much Violet,
David!"

He strode to and fro in the dining-room with a quick step, pacing with
the lightness of a caged bear, his fists clenched, keen to act, yet not
knowing what to do. The girl was gone, the certificates gone with her.

One thing, however, he had gained by the adventure, namely, the almost
certainty that Van Hupfeldt was Strauss--for he had seen the valet,
Neil, who at Piccadilly Circus had declared that he was Strauss's
servant, sitting on the box-seat of the landau in which was the man whom
David had heard Violet at the grave call "Mr. Van Hupfeldt." This seemed
a sort of proof that Van Hupfeldt and Strauss were one. The same man who
had been so bound up with the one sister, and had somehow brought her to
her death, was now about to marry the other! The thought of such a thing
struck lightning from David's eyes.

"Never that!" he vowed in his frenzy. "However it goes, not that!"

And then he was angry afresh with her, thinking: "He can't be much good,
this man--she must be easily won."

He could not guess that Van Hupfeldt had promised to clear her sister's
name six months after the marriage, and that this was her motive, and
not love, for being won. He did not realize that the certificates now
lost by him would have freed Violet from Van Hupfeldt. He believed that
she was entering lightly into marriage with a man of great wealth.
Again, in this unreasoning mood, he saw her in her nocturnal wanderings.

But bitterness and regrets could not bring back the certificates, in the
gaining of which her honor was almost at stake. If he had known where
Van Hupfeldt lived, he would have gone straight there. Nevertheless, Van
Hupfeldt was not at home, was hurrying away from home, in fact. Here,
then, was another point. Jenny had clearly not gone to Van Hupfeldt's on
leaving the flat, or why should Van Hupfeldt be racing eastward? It
seemed that Jenny and Van Hupfeldt were to meet somewhere else, perhaps
somewhere not far from the mansions. If David had only kept the landau
in sight, he might have tracked Van Hupfeldt to that meeting! He felt
now that, if he could come upon them, then, by the mere force and
whirlwind of his will, he should have his way. On a sudden he went out
again into the streets.

He ran southward at a venture. If there was a conference going on in
any house near by, and if the landau was waiting outside, he should
recognize it by the horses and by Neil on the box. But, as it turned
out, even this recognition was not necessary, for, running down
Bloomsbury-St., toward a carriage of which he caught sight standing
before a French chocolate-shop at the Oxford-St. corner, he saw a man
and a girl come out of the shop. The man lifted his hat and nodded
toward the girl with his foot on the carriage-step, and then was driven
off westward. Half a minute afterward David had overtaken the girl.

"You wretched creature!" he said, in the fierce heat of his anger and
haste: "Hand me those certificates, and be quick about it!"

"I haven't the faintest idea which certificates you mean," said Jenny,
as bold now as brass, for she had no doubt been strengthened by the
interview in the shop, and assured of Van Hupfeldt's protection.

This was enough for David. He understood from her words that the papers
were now in Van Hupfeldt's hands; whereat a flood of rage surged within
him, and, without any definite purpose, he rushed after the carriage.
It had not gone far, because of a block of traffic near Tottenham Court
Road, and his hot face was soon thrust over the carriage-door. Van
Hupfeldt shrank back into the farthest corner with a look of blank
dismay.

"Yes, you can have them, Mr. Strauss--" began David, hotly.

"What is it?" muttered Van Hupfeldt, crouching, with his hand on the
opposite door-handle. "That is not my name."

"Whatever your name, or however many names you may own, you can have
those papers now; but there may be other things where they came from,
and if they're there, I'm the man in possession, mark you, and I'll be
finding them--"

"Papers! What papers? Find what?" asked Van Hupfeldt, with a scared face
that belied his words.

"You cur!" cried David, his heart burning hot within him; "make amends
for your crimes while you may. If you don't, I tell you, I shall have no
mercy. Soon I shall have my hands on you--"

"Drive on!" screamed Van Hupfeldt to his coachman, and, the block of
traffic having now cleared, the horses trotted on, and left David
red-faced with fury, in imminent danger of being run over by the press
of vehicles behind.




CHAPTER XII

THE NIGHT-WATCHES


David returned home angry with himself in all ways, not least for his
loss of self-control in pursuing Van Hupfeldt with no object but to
vent himself in mere threats. His suggestion to Van Hupfeldt that
other documents besides the certificates might be hidden among the
picture-frames in the flat was in the tone of a child's boasting. One
should find first, he told himself, and boast afterward. However, one of
Mrs. Grover's excellent little lunches put him straight, and, though
work was a thousand miles from his mood that day, he compelled himself
to do it, and the pen began to run.

But first he had said to Mrs. Grover: "I want you to get the steps, and
take down every picture in the flat, except the three big ones, which I
will see to myself."

Then, with his flower-pot of violets on each hand, he was soon in the
thick of the cow-boy and prairie-flower history which he had on hand.
His stories were already known on this side by the whiff of reality they
brought from the States, and were in some demand. Already the postman
handed him printers' proofs, and he had proved to himself that he
possessed some of the wisdom of the serpent in choosing a reputable
abode, because the men whom he entertained went away saying: "Harcourt
has private means. He has taken to literature as a hobby," an idea which
made him popular. If certain editors, on the strength of it, wished to
pay him half-rates, they were soon undeceived. David was much too hard a
nut to crack in that easy way.

Meantime, neither by sight nor sound had he been reminded of the eery
experience of his first night in No. 7. True, there were noises during
the still hours, such as had twice thrilled Miss L'Estrange and Jenny.
But they seemed quite natural to him. The dryness of the interior of the
block of flats had loosened flooring-boards and dislocated cross-beams,
until the mere movement of an article of furniture overhead, or the
passing of a next-floor tenant from one room to another, would set going
creaks enough to give rise to half a dozen ghost-panics.

That night he had to be at the Holborn Restaurant for an annual dinner
of internationals, so he struck work soon after four, seeing that by
then Mrs. Grover's task of taking down and dusting was ended, and the
pictures now lay in a pile by the dining-room sideboard. David procured
himself a quantity of brown paper, with gum and pincers, sat on the
floor by the pile, and, with an effort to breathe no faster than usual,
set himself to work. It was not so slight a task as it looked, some of
the pictures being elaborately fastened with brown paper, tacks, and
bars; and, since they were not his own, he had to leave them not less
trim than he found them. He was resolved to trust not even a workman in
this search. However, being handy, a Jack of all trades, he had got some
half dozen unfastened and again fastened before six o'clock.

His gum failing, he called upon Mrs. Grover, received no answer, called
again, went searching, but could not find her in the flat. Wondering at
this, he stepped outside the front door to invoke the services of the
lift-man, when a little way down the stairs he caught a sound of voices
in low talk. His ready ear seemed to detect the particular accent of his
housekeeper, and he went downward, spying out who it might be. He wore
slippers, and for this reason, perhaps, approached near the speakers
before he was seen. They were Mrs. Grover and a young man. The latter,
the moment he was aware of David's presence, was gone like a thief, so
David did not see his face--it was dark there at that hour--but he had
an impression that it was Neil, Van Hupfeldt's valet, and his legs of
themselves started into chase; but he checked himself.

"Who was the man?" he asked Mrs. Grover, when they had gone back into
the flat.

"I'm sure I don't know his name, sir," was her answer.

"You know him, perhaps. Is it the same who came here to speak with the
girl I left in your charge?"

"I believe it is the same," said Mrs. Grover, "though I didn't see him
well."

"Oh, you believe. What on earth does he want of you?"

"He kept asking me questions. I told him to go about his business--"

"What did he want to know?"

"Whether I was satisfied with my place, and whether I didn't think that
a woman like me could better herself, considering the wages I'm
getting--"

"That all he wanted to know?"

"That's about all--things like that."

David, looking at her, said: "I am sure he was quite right. You deserve
five times the wages I am giving you; so if I pay you a month's wages in
advance now--"

"But, sir!"

"No, it's no use, Mrs. Grover. You were born for greater things than
this. Yet, wherever you go next, do be loyal to the man from whom you
earn your bread against all the world. Here's your money."

In vain Mrs. Grover protested. The place was good enough for her, the
flat not fit to be left as it was, things not washed, something on the
fire. It was of no avail. As David's servant she was suddenly dead. He
saw her out with a hearty hand-shake at the door, and his best wishes.

Only after she was well gone did he remember that she had forgotten to
deliver up the front door-key.

As it was now nearly time to dress for the dinner, he left his work on
the pictures for the day. In the half dozen or so which he had taken to
pieces he had found nothing, and was disillusioned, cross-tempered,
disturbed by many things.

He sat down and wrote to Miss Violet Mordaunt: "I am sorry to say that I
have failed to receive the documents of which I had the honor to speak
to you. I have reason, however, to believe that your fiancé, Mr. Van
Hupfeldt, has bought them, and from his hand you will perhaps receive
them."

But his conscience felt this letter to be hard, ironical, and not
sincere; for if, as he suspected, Van Hupfeldt's name was on the
certificates as the husband of dead Gwendoline, Violet was little likely
to receive them from Van Hupfeldt's hand. So he tore up the note, and
wrote another which equally reflected his ill-humor. Nor did this go
through the post. In the end, though he knew that she must be anxiously
awaiting a word of news from him, he shirked for the present the task of
announcing his failure to her, and rushed out to the dinner.

He came home late, and as he stepped from the lift to the landing,
something--a light or a fancy--caused him to start. It seemed to
him that through the opaque glass of his door he had seen a light.
Certainly, the impression was gone in one instant, but he had it. He
went in with some disquiet of the nerves. All was dark, all still,
within. He turned on three or four of the lights in rapid succession,
and his eyes pierced here and there without discerning anything save
familiar articles of furniture.

The flat was lonely to him that night. Though Mrs. Grover would not in
any case have been there at that hour, yet the fact that she would not
come in the morning as usual, the fact that he was now the only life
in the little home, made him as solitary in London as a castaway in
mid-sea. The fires were dead. He sat a little while in his overcoat by
the dining-room fireplace, glanced at the heap of pictures, at the face
of Gwendoline. And now again he started. Something in the aspect of the
heap struck him as new, as not perhaps the same as when he had gone out.

But here again he seemed to himself the prey of his own fancies. He
asked himself angrily if he was losing his memory and his grip of facts.
He thought that he had left only two of the pictures in pieces; now
three of them were without their backs. As he sat looking at them, the
clock on the mantelpiece all at once ceased ticking, and this small
thing again, due solely to his omission to wind the clock, had an effect
upon his mood. He seemed to hear the sudden silence, as it were the
ceasing of a heart-beat, and the "all is over" of the bereaved when the
last breath passes. He rose and stretched himself and yawned, and took
in with him to his bed-room one of the pots of violets, so that, if he
scented violets, he should know whence the scent came. And he took care
to turn on the light in his bed-room before turning off all the other
lights. Could this be David, the man who used to sleep beneath the
stars?

Now he lay down in the dark, and all was quiet. Only, from far away,
from some other polygon in the hive of flats, came a tinkling, the
genteel sound of the piano, very faint, as remote from him as was the
life of her who played it. He was listening to it, thinking of the
isolation in which all souls are more or less doomed to live, when the
question occurred to him incidentally: "Am I really alone in this flat?
As a matter of fact, is not some one with me?" He had seemed to hear a
definite click, and if it was not in the flat, then, he thought, his
ears must be losing their old trick of exactness.

He stole out of bed, and, without making the faintest sound, peeped out
along the corridors. Nothing seemed to stir. Minute after minute he
stood patiently, hearing only that shell-music which the tympanum of the
ear gives out in deep silence. Once he caught a Lilliputian rush, and a
screech, an escapade in mouseland. Behind him a small clock ticked in
his bed-room, and presently there was yet another sound, low, but
prolonged, as if paper was being very cautiously torn somewhere.

Instantly the instinct to grip his six-shooter in his hand rose in
David. His former experience in the flat had caused him to have the
weapon ready. Great is that moment when awe rises into indignation and
action, as now with him. Silently, with every nerve strung, and each
muscle nimble for the encounter, he stepped backward into his bed-room,
and drew the weapon from beneath his pillow. No longer careful about
hiding the fact that he was awake, he made a rush along the longer
corridor into the hall, caught up the hall chair and table and threw
them against the door, heaved up the hat-stand and placed it also
against the door, thus blocking the enemy's retreat. And he said to
himself: "Be it ghost, or be it mortal man, let there be a fight to a
finish this time!"

But he kept himself in the dark for safety's sake, and, bold as his
heart was, it beat fast, as he now stood in the farthest corner of the
hall near the door, listening for his life. And anon he sniffed with his
nostrils for a scent of violets, for a wafture from the grave, which
came not.

But this waiting for he knew not what was not long to be borne. Wounds
are not so grisly to the mind as the touch of a hand which cannot be
grasped. He crept back in the dark along the wall, again noiselessly,
into the corridor, into his bed-room, locked the door, and, with finger
on trigger, switched on the light. Keeping his ear alert for whatever
might happen outside, he searched the room. No one was under the bed,
or anywhere there. He turned off the light, went out, and, in a similar
manner, searched behind a locked door, wherever he found a key in the
lock, each of the other two bed-rooms, and the bath-room. In that end of
the flat there was no one, nor a scent of anything, save the perfume of
the violets in his bed-room. And again he began to think that he must
surely be the plaything of his fancies.

Along the corridor he crept again, and entered the drawing-room, locked
the door, turned on the light, looked round to search. At that instant
he heard, he felt, the flight of steps in the flat. It was the merest
sign of something detected by some sixth sense acquired by him in
harkening to the whispers of the jungle. These were steps as light and
swift as a specter's might be. But he had the notion that they fled out
of the dining-room down the short passage between the kitchen and the
servant's room, and, quick as thought, he had out the drawing-room
light, and was after them.

The door of the servant's bed-room was on the left of the cross passage,
that of the kitchen on the right, just opposite the other. He went like
a cat which sees in the night, swift and soft, along the left wall, his
breast pressed to it, until, coming to the servant's bed-room door, he
gave a twist to the handle to go in.

The handle turned a little, but not much. The door would not open. It
seemed to be held by some one within, for it was not locked, since there
happened to be no key in it.

Here, at any rate, was something tangible at last. And, when it came to
be a question of main force, natural or supernatural, David was in his
element. He set himself to get that door-handle round, and it turned.
He put himself into the effort to press that door open, and it opened a
little. But, all at once, it opened too much! and he plunged staggering
within. At the same time he was aware of something rushing out; he had
just time to snatch his revolver from the waist of his pajamas and fire,
when his silent adversary was gone, and had vehemently slammed the door
upon him. Almost at the same moment another door slammed--the
kitchen-door. Then all was still again.

It was as when a mighty momentary wind seizes upon a house in the dead
of night, slams two doors, causes something to bark, and passes on its
way. The two slammings and the bark of the revolver were almost
simultaneous--and silence swallowed them together.

David flew after the thing which had evaded him to the kitchen-door. His
blood was up. During his first experience of something queer in the flat
he had had an impression of a woman, perhaps on account of the scent of
violets. But this time there seemed to be no such scent, and this latest
impression was of a man--an impression hardly perhaps due to sight, for
the servant's room was about the darkest spot in the flat, its one small
window being shrouded with tapestry curtains, and the outer night itself
dark. But he somehow believed now that it was a man, and he flung
himself again and again against the kitchen-door with no good meaning
toward that man. For there could be no doubt that whoever or whatever it
was, his visitant was now in the kitchen, since the door would not open.

After some vain effort to force it, he stopped, panting, thinking what
he should do. There was a little pointed poker in the dining-room by
which he might pick the lock; but before deciding upon this he again
tried his power of shoulder and will against the door, and this time
felt something give within. The door, too, was not really locked, having
no key in it, as, in general, the keys of old flats become displaced. It
was apparently only fastened, if it were fastened at all, by some catch
or hook, for, after two or three more thumps, it flew wide.

David, catching the handle, held it a little ajar, and now again the
stillness of the night was outraged by his shout through the slit:
"Hands up! or I fire!" At the same instant he rushed in, and flooded the
kitchen with light.

But no one was there! A pallor struck from the corners of his mouth to
his cheek, even while his brow was flushed, and he stood aghast, with an
astounding question in his eyes and in his heart.




CHAPTER XIII

NO MORE VIOLET


There was little sleep for David Harcourt that night. After his inrush
into the kitchen, and his long amazement to find it empty, he again
searched the flat throughout; no one but he was in it, and no one had
gone out through the front door, for there stood his barricade of table,
chair, and hat-stand, just as he had left it.

This seemed surely to show that he had to do with that which is beyond
and above natural. Yet there were points against that view, too. There
was, first of all, the spot of blood, for in the passage between the
servant's room and the kitchen he saw what seemed to be a spot of blood.
The carpet was a brown pattern on a pink ground, and in one place the
brown looked redder than elsewhere,--that was all. If it was blood, then
the bullet shot by him, which he now found imbedded in the frame of the
kitchen-door, may have passed through some part of a man; but he could
not assert to himself that it was blood.

There were, however, the pictures. Unless he was dancing mad, the fact
was certain that he had left only three of them with their backs undone,
and now there were five--and he refused to believe that he was indeed
moonstruck.

So, then, a man had been in the flat, since no ghost could materialize
to the extent of picking tacks out of picture-frames. And, if there had
been a man, that man was Van Hupfeldt, and no other. Van Hupfeldt's
motive would be clear enough. Miss L'Estrange had told Van Hupfeldt that
the certificates had fallen out of the back of a picture. David himself
had had the rashness, in his rage at the loss of the certificates, to
say over the door of Van Hupfeldt's landau that there "might be other
things where the certificates came from." Mrs. Grover had been seen
that afternoon talking to Van Hupfeldt's servant. She was evidently in
process of being bribed and won over to the enemy. She may have told how
David had had all the pictures taken down and was at work on them, and
how he was to be out at an annual dinner that night. She may possibly
have handed over to Van Hupfeldt the key of the flat, and Van Hupfeldt,
in a crazy terror lest anything should be found by David in the
pictures, may have come into the flat to search for himself.

All this seemed plausible enough. But, then, how had Van Hupfeldt got
away? Had he a flying-machine? Was he a griffin? Were there holes in the
wall?

But if, as a matter of fact, he or some other had been in the flat,
and had some way got out other than by the front door, here was a new
thought--that Gwendoline Mordaunt may not, after all, have committed
suicide. Suicide had been assumed simply because of the locked and
bolted front door. But how if there existed some other mysterious exit
from the flat? In that case she might have been done to death--by
Strauss, by Van Hupfeldt, if Van Hupfeldt was Strauss.

David, no doubt, was all too ready to think evil of this man.
Nevertheless the question confronted him. Why, he asked himself, should
Gwendoline have committed suicide? She was a married woman--the
certificate, seen by Miss L'Estrange, proved that. True, Gwendoline had
received some terrible letter four days before her death, as her servant
had told David, and she had said to the girl: "I am not married. You
think that I am; but I am not." Still, a doubt arose now as to her
suicide. Her sister Violet did not believe in the suicide. Nothing was
certain.

However, this new theory of the tragedy put David upon writing to Violet
the first thing in the morning. Vague as his doubt, it was a set-off
against his shame of defeat in the matter of the certificates. It was
something with which to face her. He resolved to tell her at once all
that was in his mind, even his shocking suspicion that Van Hupfeldt was
Strauss, and he wrote:

"Mr. David Harcourt has unfortunately not been able to secure the
certificates of which he had the honor of speaking to Miss Mordaunt,
but believes that her fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position
to give her some information on the subject. However, Mr. Harcourt has
other matters of pressing importance to communicate to Miss Mordaunt for
her advantage, and, in case she lacks the leisure to be alone in the
course of the day, he will be pleased to be at her sister's grave this
evening about five, if she will write him a line to that effect."

He posted this before eight in the morning, went off to seek his old
charwoman in Clerkenwell, breakfasted outside, came home, and set to
work afresh upon the pictures.

And that proved a day of days for him. For, before noon, on opening
the back of a mezzotint of the "Fighting Temeraire," he found a book,
large, flat, and ivory-white. Its silver clasp was locked. He could
not see within, yet he understood that it was no printed book, but in
manuscript, and that here was the diary of Gwendoline Mordaunt. He was
still exulting over it, searching now with fresh zeal for more treasure,
when he received a note: "Miss Mordaunt hopes to lay some flowers on her
sister's grave this evening about five."

Her paper had a scent of violets, and David, in putting it to his
nostrils, allowed his lips, too, to steal a kiss;--for happy men do
sometimes kiss scented paper. And he was happy, thinking how, when he
presented the diary to her, he would see her glad and thankful.

At the very hour, however, when he was thus rejoicing, Van Hupfeldt
was going up the stairs at 60A, Porchester Gardens. He was limping and
leaning on his valet, and his dark skin was now so much paler than usual
that on his entrance into the drawing-room Mrs. Mordaunt cried out:

"Why, what is the matter?"

"Do not distress yourself at all," said Van Hupfeldt, limping on his
stick toward her. "Only a slight accident--a fall off a stumbling horse
in the park this morning--my knee--it is better now--"

"Oh, I am so sorry! But you should not have come; you are evidently
still in pain. So distressing! Sit here; let me--"

"No, really," said he, "it is nearly all right now, dear Mrs. Mordaunt.
I have so much to say, and so little time to say it in. Where is
Violet?"

"She is in her bed-room; will soon be down. Let me place this cushion--"

"She is well, I hope?"

"Yes; a little strange and restless to-day, perhaps."

"What is it now?"

"Oh, some little fall of the spiritual barometer, I suppose. She has not
mentioned anything specific to me."

"You received my telegram of this morning?"

"Saying that you would come at half-past one? Yes."

"Well, I am lucky to have found you alone, for in what I have now to
suggest to you, I do not wish my influence to appear--let it seem to be
done entirely on your own impulse--but I have to beseech you, Mrs.
Mordaunt, to return to Rigsworth this very day."

"To-day? Rigsworth? But there are still a host of things to be seen to
before the wedding--"

"I know, I know. Even at the cost of putting off the wedding for a week,
if you will do all that is to be done from Rigsworth instead of in
London, you will profoundly oblige me. I had hoped that you would this
do for me without requiring my reason, but I see that I must give
it, and without any beating about the bush. Only give me first your
assurance that you will breathe not one word to Violet of what I am
forced to tell you."

"Good gracious! What has happened?"

"Promise me this."

"Well, I shall be discreet."

"Then, I have to tell you that Violet has made an undesirable
acquaintance in London, one whom it is of supreme importance, if our
married life is to be a success, that she should see not once again. It
is a man--No, don't be unduly alarmed--I don't for a moment suspect that
their intimacy has proceeded far, but it has proceeded too far, and must
go no farther. I may tell you that it is my belief that letters, or
notes, have passed between them, and, to my knowledge, they have met at
least once by appointment in Kensal Green cemetery, for I have actually
surprised them there. Now, pray, don't be distressed. Don't, now, or I
shall regret having told you. Certainly, it is a serious matter, but
don't think it more serious than it is--"

"Violet?" breathed Mrs. Mordaunt, with a long face.

"The facts are as I have stated them," proceeded Van Hupfeldt, "and when
the knowledge of them came to me, I was at some pains to make inquiries
into the personality of the man in question. He turns out to be a man
named Harcourt."

"Oh, you mean Mr. Harcourt, the occupier of the flat in Eddystone
Mansions? Why, he was here yesterday. Violet herself told me--"

"Here? Yesterday?" Van Hupfeldt turned suddenly greenish. "But why so?
What did the man say?"

"Violet did not seem to wish to be explicit," answered Mrs. Mordaunt;
"but I understood from her that he is interested in Gwendoline's fate."

"He? By what right does he dare? He is interested in Violet! That is
whom the man is interested in, Mrs. Mordaunt, I tell you! And do you
know what this man is? I have been at the pains to discover--a scribbler
of books, a man of notoriously bad character who has had to fly from
America--"

"How awful! But Mr. Dibbin, the agent, had references--"

"References are quite useless. It is as I say, and I am not guessing
when I assert to you that Violet has a penchant for this man--a most
dangerous penchant, which can lead to nothing but disaster, if it be
not now scotched in the bud. I demand it as my right, and I beseech
it as a friend, that she never see him again."

"Yet it is all most strange. I think you exaggerate. Violet's fancies
are not errant."

"Well, say that I exaggerate. But you will at least sympathize, Mrs.
Mordaunt, with my sense of the acute danger of your further stay in
London at present--"

"I think you make a mountain of a molehill, Mr. Van Hupfeldt," said Mrs.
Mordaunt with some dryness, "and I am sorry now that I have promised not
to speak with Violet on the subject. Of course, I recognize your right
to have your say and your way, but as for leaving London to-day at a
moment's notice, really that can't be done."

"Not to oblige me? not to please me?" said he, grasping the old lady's
hand with a nervous intensity of gesture that almost startled her.

"We might go to-morrow," she admitted.

"But if they correspond or meet to-night?"

"Well, you are a lover, of course; but you shouldn't start at shadows.
Here is Violet herself."

"Leave us a little, will you?" whispered Van Hupfeldt, rising to meet
the girl in his impulsive foreigner's way, but, forgetting his wounded
leg, he had to stop short with a face of pain.

"Are you ill?" asked Violet, and a certain aloofness of manner did not
escape him.

"A small accident--" he told over again the history of his fall from a
horse which had never borne him. Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet stood at
a table, turning over the leaves of a book, while Van Hupfeldt searched
her face under his anxious eyes, and there was a silence between them,
until Violet, taking from her pocket David's first unsigned note to her,
held it out, saying: "It was you who sent me this?"

"I have told you so," answered Van Hupfeldt, gray to the lips. "Why do
you ask again?"

"Because I am puzzled," she answered. "I have this morning received a
note in this same handwriting, unless I am very much mistaken, a note
from a certain Mr.--"

"Yes. Harcourt--Christian name David."

"Quite so. David Harcourt--I can say it," she answered quietly. "But
how, then, comes it that your note and his are in the same handwriting?"

Van Hupfeldt's lips opened and shut, his eyes shifted, and yet he
chuckled with the uneasy mirth of a ghoul: "The solution of that puzzle
doesn't seem difficult to me."

"You mean that you got Mr. Harcourt to write your note for you?" asked
Violet.

"You are shrewdness itself," answered Van Hupfeldt.

"I did not know that you even knew him."

"Ah, I know him well."

"Well, then, have you brought the certificates?" she asked keenly.

"Which certificates?"

"Which? You ask that? Surely, surely, you know that a certificate of
marriage and one of birth were found in the flat by a Miss L'Estrange?"

"No, I didn't know. How could I know?"

"But am I in a dream? I have made sure that it was upon some knowledge
of them that you relied when you wrote in the unsigned note, 'It is now
a pretty certain thing that your sister was a duly wedded wife.'" And
she looked at David's letter again.

"No, I had other grounds. I needn't tell you what, since they are not
yet certain--other grounds. I have not heard yet of any certificates--"

"Well, God help me, then!" she murmured, half-crying. "What, then, does
Mr. Harcourt mean? He says in the note of this morning: 'Mr. Harcourt
has not been able to secure the certificates, but believes that Miss
Mordaunt's fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position to give her
some information on the subject.' What does that mean when you never
even heard of the certificates?"

Van Hupfeldt, looking squarely now at her, said: "It means nothing at
all. You may take it from me that no certificates have been found."

Violet flushed angrily. "Some one is untrue!" she cried out.

"I fear that that is so," murmured Van Hupfeldt, dropping his eyes from
her crimsoned face.

There was silence then for a while.

"With what object did this Harcourt come to you yesterday, Violet?"
asked Van Hupfeldt.

"He wished to obtain my mother's authorization for him to spend one
hundred pounds in buying the certificates from Miss L'Estrange's
servant."

"Ah, that was what he said was his object. But his real object was
slightly different, I'm afraid. I know this man, you see. He is poor,
and not honest."

"Not honest?"

"No, not honest."

"You say such a thing?"

"But what is it to you? Why do you care? Why are you pale? Yes, I say it
again, not honest! the miserable ruffian."

"If he heard you, I think he might resent it with some vigor," she said
quietly.

"Why do you speak so strangely? What is it? Do you doubt what I tell
you?" asked Van Hupfeldt.

"I neither doubt nor believe. What is it to me? I only feel ashamed to
live in the same world with such people. If it was not to obtain my
authorization to spend the one hundred pounds for the certificates, why
did he come?"

"There were no certificates!" cried Van Hupfeldt, vehemently. "The
certificates were an invention. What he really wanted was, not your
authorization, but the one hundred itself. He hoped that when he asked
for your authorization, you, in your eagerness to have the certificates,
would produce the one hundred pounds, which to a man in his position is
quite a large sum, whereupon he would have decamped, and you would have
heard no more either of him or of your one hundred pounds. But, as you
did not hand him the money, he now very naturally writes to say that he
can't get the certificates. I know the fellow very well. I have long
known him. He comes from America, where he has played such ingenious
pranks once too often."

Violet sighed with misery, like one who hears the unfavorable verdict of
a doctor. "Oh, don't!" she murmured.

"I am sorry to offend your ears," said Van Hupfeldt, looking with
interest at his nails, for they had nearly dug into the palms of his
hands a few minutes earlier, "but it was necessary to tell you this.
This is not the sort of man who ought ever to have entered your
presence. How, by the way, did you come to know him?"

"I met him by chance at my sister's grave. He told me that he is the
tenant of the flat. He seemed good. I don't know what to do!" She let
herself fall into a chair, leaned her head on her hand, and stared
miserably into vacancy, while Van Hupfeldt, limping nearer, said over
her:

"You ought to promise me, Violet, never again to allow yourself to hold
any sort of communication with this person. You will hardly, indeed, be
able to see him again, for Mrs. Mordaunt has just been telling me of her
sudden resolve to go down to Rigsworth to-morrow morning."

"To-morrow?"

"So she says; and perhaps on the whole it is best, don't you think?"

Violet shrugged hopeless shoulders. "I don't care one bit either way,"
she said.

"So, then, that is agreed between us. You won't ever write to him
again."

"I don't undertake anything of that kind," she retorted. "I must have
time to think. Are you quite sure that all this infamy is the God's
truth? It is as if you said that mountain streams ran ink. The man told
me that there were certificates. They fell out of a picture-frame, he
said. He looked true, he seemed good and honest; he is a young man with
dark-blue eyes--"

"He is a beast!"

"I don't know that yet, I have no certain proof. I was to see him this
evening."

"To see him? Ah, but never again, never again! And would you now, after
hearing--"

"I am not sure. I must have time to think, I must have proof. I have no
proof. It is hard on me, after all."

"What is hard on you?" demanded Van Hupfeldt; and, had not the girl
been so distraught, she would have seen that he had the semblance more
of a murderer than of a lover. "What proofs do you want beyond my word?
The man said that there were certificates, did he not? Well, let him
produce them. The fact that he can't is a proof that there were none."

"Not quite. No--there is a doubt. He should have the benefit of the
doubt. A man should not be condemned before he is tried, after all. If
Miss L'Estrange was to say that there were no certificates, that would
be proof. You must know her address--give it to me, and let me go
straight to her--"

"Certainly, I have her address," said Van Hupfeldt, his eyes winking a
little with crafty thought, "but not, of course, in my head. You shall
have it in a day or two. You can then write and question her from
Rigsworth, and she will tell you that no certificate ever fell out of
any picture." He thought to himself: "for I shall see that she tells
you what I wish, if she has any love of money."

"But couldn't you give me the address to-day?" asked Violet. "That would
settle everything at once."

"To-day I'm afraid it is out of the question," answered Van Hupfeldt. "I
have it put away in some drawer of some bureau. It may take a day or
two; but find it I will, and, meantime, is it much to expect that my
angel will believe in her one best and eternal friend? Assure me now
that you will not see this undesirable person this evening."

"I do not mean to at this moment, but I do not decide. I said that I
would. He pretends he has something to say to me--"

"He has nothing! He is merely impudent. Where were you to see him? At
the grave, I think? At the grave?"

Violet blushed and made no answer. Mrs. Mordaunt came in. "So, mother,"
said Violet to her, "we go home to-morrow?"

"I have thought that it might be well, dear," answered her mother, "in
which case we shall have enough to do between now and then."

"But why the sudden decision?"

"We are not at all moments our own masters and mistresses, dear. This at
present seems the indicated course, and we must follow it."

"May I have the pleasure to come with you, if only for a day or two?"
asked Van Hupfeldt.

"Of course, we are always glad of your company, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,"
answered Mrs. Mordaunt; "but it is such a trying journey, and it may
affect your injury."

"Not trying to me where Violet is," said Van Hupfeldt.

"Violet should be a happy girl to have so much devotion lavished upon
her, I am sure," said Mrs. Mordaunt, with a fond smile at her daughter.
"I do hope that she is duly grateful to you, and to the Giver of all our
good."

Violet said nothing. In her gloomy eyes, if one had looked, dwelt a
rather hunted look. She presently left Van Hupfeldt and her mother, and
in her own room lay on a couch thinking out her problem. "To go to the
grave, or not to go?"

She had promised: but how if David Harcourt was truly the thing which he
was said to be? Her maiden mind shrank and shuddered. It was possibly
false, but, then, it was possibly true--all men seemed to be liars. She
had better wait and first hear the truth from Miss L'Estrange. If Miss
L'Estrange proved him false, she, Violet, would give herself one luxury,
the writing to him of one note--such a note! stinging, crushing,
killing! After which she would forget once and forever that such a being
had ever lived, and seemed nice, and been detestable. Meantime, it would
be too unmaidenly rash to see him. It could not be done; however much he
drew her with his strong magnetism, she should not, and would not. Why
could he not have been good, and grand, and high, and everything that is
noble and wonderful, as a man should be? In that case, ah, then! As it
was, how could she? It was his own fault, and she hated him. Still, she
had promised, and one should keep one's word unless the keeping becomes
impossible. Moreover, since she was to leave London on the morrow, she
should dearly like to see the grave once more. The new wreath must be
already on its way from the florist's. She would like to go, dearly,
dearly, if only it were not for the lack of dignity and reserve.

Thinking such thoughts, she lay so long that Van Hupfeldt went away
without seeing her again; but he had no intention of leaving it to
chance whether she saw David that evening or not. Certain that the
rendezvous was at the grave, his cautious mind proceeded to take due
precautions, and by three o'clock the eyes of his spy, a young woman
rather overdressed, were upon the grave in the Kensal Green cemetery,
while Van Hupfeldt himself was sitting patient in the smoking-room of a
near hotel, ready to be called the moment a sign of Violet should be
seen.

Violet, however, did not go to the grave. About four o'clock one of the
servants of 60A, Porchester Gardens, arrived at the cemetery in a cab,
went to the grave, put the new wreath on it, and on the wreath put an
envelope directed to "David Harcourt, Esq," and went away. The moment
she was gone, Van Hupfeldt's spy had the envelope, and with it hurried
to him in the hotel. Breaking it open without hesitation, he read the
words: "Miss Mordaunt regrets that she is unable to visit her sister's
grave to-day, as she hoped, and from to-morrow morning she will be in
the country; but if Mr. Harcourt really has anything of importance to
communicate to her, he may write, and she will reply. Her address is
Dale Manor, Rigsworth, near Kenilworth, Warwickshire."

"What do you think of this handwriting?" Van Hupfeldt asked of his
she-attendant, showing her the note. "Do you think you could imitate
it?"

"It is big and bold enough; it doesn't look difficult to imitate," was
the critical estimate.

"Just have a try, and let me see your skill. Write--"

He dictated to her the words: "Miss Mordaunt has duly received from her
fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, the certificates of which Mr. Harcourt spoke
to her, so that all necessity for any communication between Mr. Harcourt
and Miss Mordaunt is now at an end. Miss Mordaunt leaves London to-day."

The scribe, after several rewritings, at last shaped the note into
something really like Violet's writing. It was then directed to "David
Harcourt." The young woman took it to the grave, and it was placed on
the wreath of violets where the purloined note had lain.

Twenty minutes later, David, full of anticipation and hope, the diary in
his hand, drew near to Kensal Green. For some time he did not go quite
to the grave, but stood at the bend of the path, whence he should be
able to see her feet coming, and the blooming beneath them of the March
daisies in the turf. But she did not come. The minutes went draggingly
by. Strolling presently nearer the grave, he noticed the fresh wreath,
and the letter laid on it.

He stood a long while by the Iona cross over the violets, while the
dusk deepened to a gloom like that of his mind. How empty seemed London
now! And all life, how scantless and stale now, without the purple
and perfume of her! For she was gone, and "all necessity for any
communication between her and him was now at an end." He went away from
the cemetery whistling a tune, with a jaunty step, in order to persuade
himself that his heart was not hollow, nor his mind black with care.




CHAPTER XIV

THE DIARY


For some time after this disappearance of Violet, David needed the
focusing of all his manhood to set himself to work. His feeling was that
nothing is worth while. He wished to sit in his easy-chair, stare, and
be vaguely conscious of the coming and going of his charwoman. An old
Londoner now, he no longer heard the roar, nor stifled at the smoke of
that torrent that goes up forever. He could have sat over his fire in a
sort of abstract state, without thought, hope, or care, for days. If
he took up the pen he groaned; but he did take it up, and it proved
medicinal. Little by little he acquired tone.

Meantime, he would often re-read the note which had had so powerful an
effect on him, until one day, in the ripening of his mind, the thought
rose in him: "There's something queer here. She must have been very
agitated when she wrote this!"

Then he began to think that it was not quite like Violet's writing.
Presently hope, energy, action burst into blossom afresh within him.
Suppose, he thought, that the whole business was somehow a trick of
that man? Suppose that she was in London all the time? He wrote to her
at Porchester Gardens that day, but received no answer. Van Hupfeldt
had given orders that all letters for the Mordaunts should be sent to
him, nor did he send on David's letter to Violet, for he knew David's
writing. Moreover, he had warned the proprietors at Porchester Gardens
that a certain man, who was likely to make himself troublesome to the
Mordaunts, might present himself there in the hope of learning their
address in the country, in view of which they had better give the
address to no one.

Now, at David's only meeting with Violet at the grave, she had mentioned
to him her country address, but, having heard it only once and that
heedlessly, when his brain was full of new notions, it had so far passed
out of his mind in the course of time that all that he could remember of
it was that it was in Warwickshire. Nor could any racking of his brains
bring back more of it than the name of the county. After some days he
betook himself to Porchester Gardens.

"Is Mrs. Mordaunt at home?" he asked.

"No," was the answer, "she isn't staying here now. She is in the
country."

That much, then, of the note found on the grave was true.

"When did she go?" he asked.

"Last Tuesday week," was the answer.

The note was true!

"I have written Miss Mordaunt a letter," said David, "telling her that
I have in my possession something which I know that she would like to
have, and have received no answer. I suppose you forward her letters on
to her?"

"Yes; we send them to a gentleman who forwards them on."

"Ah? What gentleman is that?"

"A Mr. Van Hupfeldt."

"I see. But can you give me Mrs. Mordaunt's address?"

"We are not to give it; but any letters will be sent on."

"Through Mr. Van Hupfeldt?"

"Yes."

"But suppose I send you one with a cross on the envelope, would you do
me the special favor to send that one on direct, not through Mr. Van
Hupfeldt?"

"We have instructions as to the Mordaunts' letters," said the landlady,
"and, of course, we follow them."

"Well, but you seem very inflexible, especially as I tell you--"

"Can't help that, sir. We were told that you would be turning up, and I
give you the answer which I was directed to give. It is quite useless to
come here making any request as to the Mordaunts."

David went away discomforted. There remained to him one hope--Dibbin. He
ran round to Dibbin's and asked for the address.

"I'm afraid I'm hardly authorized to do that," answered the agent, to
whom such appeals were matters of every-day business.

"Do be reasonable," urged David. "Miss Mordaunt herself gave me her
address, only I have let it slip out of my mind."

Dibbin shook his head like an emblem of doubt. "Of course," he said, "I
shall be happy to send on anything which you commit to me."

"Direct?" asked David, "or through Van Hupfeldt?"

"Direct, of course," answered Dibbin. "I have no sort of instructions
with respect to Mr. Van Hupfeldt."

"Have you ever seen him, Dibbin?"

"Never."

"Don't happen to know his address?"

"No; I merely knew his name quite lately by repute as that of a man of
wealth about town, and as an acquaintance of the Mordaunts."

"'Acquaintance' is good, as a phrase," David could not help blurting
out. "Well, I have something belonging to Miss Mordaunt, and will send
you a letter to forward."

That day the letter was written and sent, a stiff-stark little missive,
informing Miss Mordaunt that Mr. Harcourt had duly received the note
left on the grave, and had once before written her to say so, as well
as to tell her that he had in his possession a book which he believed
to be the diary of her sister. He did not care to send it her through
another, but would at once forward it on receiving a line from her.

After two days came an answer: Miss Mordaunt thanked Mr. Harcourt
extremely for his pains, and would be glad to receive the book to which
he referred at "the above address," that address being: "The Cedars,
Birdlip, Gloucestershire."

David actually had the diary wrapped up to send to this address. Then
he paused. The handwriting of the note was not quite like that of the
note in which she had made the appointment with him at the grave. It
was rather like the writing of the note which he had found with the
wreath--not quite, perhaps, the same. And then again the address
which she had given him by word of mouth that first evening at Kensal
Green was in Warwickshire. He remembered that much, beyond doubt.
Was she, then, spending some time with friends at "The Cedars"
in--Gloucestershire? He thought that it might be a good thing, before
sending the diary, if he took a run down into Gloucestershire to make
sure that she was really there.

This he did the next day, and found that "The Cedars" was a mansion two
miles from the village of Birdlip, old, somewhat dismantled, shut up,
occupied only by a few retainers. No Violet was there.

He learned at one of the village taverns that the place was the property
of Van Hupfeldt. He took the diary back to London with him that same
night.

What seemed certain to him now was that Van Hupfeldt himself or some
agent of Van Hupfeldt's must be in the Mordaunts' house, and that this
letter sent through Dibbin had never reached Violet. So again he was cut
off from her. Not one word could he speak to her. He craved only for one
small word. When that marriage of hers with Van Hupfeldt was to take
place he did not know; but he felt that it might be soon. He had taken
upon himself to say to her that it should never be, and not one word
could he utter to prevent it. He had forgotten, and his brain would not
give up its dead. He beat his brow upon his dining-room table where his
head had dropped wearily on his coming home that early morning from the
country.

To go to her, to tell her all, to stop the indecent marriage, to
cast himself at her feet, and call upon her pity for his passionate
youth--this impulse drove him; but he could not stir a step. A
great "No" bewitched him. His straining was against ropes of steel.
Half-thoughts, half-inventions of every impossible kind passed like
smoke through his mind, and went away, and came wearily again. The only
one of any likelihood was the thought of kneeling to Dibbin, of telling
him that Van Hupfeldt was probably Strauss, and beseeching him for the
Mordaunts' sake to give the address. But he had not the least faith in
the success of such a thing. To that dried man, fossilized all through,
incrusted in agency, anything that implied a new departure, a new point
of view, was a thing impossible. His shake of the head was as stubborn a
fact in nature as any Andes. There was only the diary left--the diary
might contain the address!

David did not wish to open those locked thoughts. He had hardly the
right, but, after a whole day spent in eying the book, he laughed wildly
and decided. It was a question of life, of several lives. He put the
book to his lips, with a kiss of desperation, inhaling its faded scent
of violets.

At once he rushed out with it to a tradesman skilled in locks, and was
surprised at the ease with which the man shot back the tiny lever with a
bit of twisted wire.

"I can make you a key by the morning," said the man, squinting into the
lock, and listening to its action as he turned the wire in his fingers.
"It is a simple mechanism with two wards. Meantime, here it is, opened."

He refused even to be paid for "so slight a thing." David handed him a
cigar--and ran; and was soon deep in it. The first passage thrilled him
as with solemn music:

     O silent one, I must tell my sweets and bitters to you, since I
     mayn't to others. You will treasure each syllable, and speak of
     me as I am, "nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice."

     But please, as you are good, bring not upon me any further
     declamation of the unhappy Moor! Pray Heaven you may not have
     to record the "unlucky deeds" of "one that lov'd, not wisely,
     but too well," nor your pallid cheeks reveal your grief
     because my "subdued eyes,

          Albeit unused to the melting mood,
          Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
          Their med'cinable gum!"

     I was married last Tuesday. As the carriage rolled back along
     the sea front, and my darling husband's arm clasped my waist as
     tightly as a silver arm clasps you, little book, the old jingle
     came into my head: "Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth,
     Wednesday the best day of all." The nasty things predicted for
     the other days of the week do not matter a jot, do they? Well,
     thank God, I am healthy enough, and Harry says that we shall
     have plenty of money by and by. Given health and wealth, there
     remains but happiness, and that is of our own contriving. And I
     am happy. Of that there can be no manner of doubt. Of course, I
     should have enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of marriage in
     the parish church with its joy-bells, its laughing tears, its
     nice speeches, while the dear old rector beamed on me, and the
     good folk of R---- set their eyes a-goggle to see how I looked
     and how Harry carried himself.

     I flatter myself I should have made a pretty bride, and, as for
     Harry, even under the chilling influences of a registrar's
     office he had the air of a man who knows his own mind. How
     often, tittering at my thoughts, have I pictured my wedding-day
     long before Prince Charming hove in sight! And how different it
     all has been to the conceits of girlhood! When he did come, he
     hoisted an unknown flag and bore me off like any pirate.

Then references to life in a hotel, not named, and the good-natured
scrutiny of strangers "who knew us at once as a newly-married couple,
though we tried to be offhand to each other."

Later she described the beginning of housekeeping in London, "where all
is so strange"; then a few phrases which sighed.

     I have come to hate the word "Miss." It is a constant reminder
     of the compact. Harry says it will not be long now before our
     marriage can be proclaimed; but meantime I always catch myself
     smiling graciously when a shop-walker hails me as "madam."
     There is a recognition in the word! "Miss" is only a trifle
     less endurable than the "my dear" of the theater, which I heard
     to-day for the first time.

After some days there was a darker mood:

     It has given me a shock to find myself described as
     "domesticated." I came home to an empty house, after to-day's
     rehearsal, tired and a bit peevish, perhaps. It is so slow,
     this novitiate. Harry says that his influence will quickly
     bring me to the front, that I must have patience, that the
     theatrical world is so compact, yet so split up into cliques,
     that, were our relationship suspected, I should encounter
     hostility instead of the indifference which I now resent. So,
     in unamiable mood, I began to rate my charlady about the dust
     which gives its brown tone to London interiors. Thinking that
     a display of energy might prove a tonic, I cleared out the
     dining-room and made things shine. My help raised her eyebrows
     and a duster in astonishment. "Lor', miss," she said, "you are
     domesticated! You must have had a good mother?" A good mother!
     She didn't know how that word felt.

     How odiously some of the men speak, gaze. If a woman is
     attractive, they ogle her; if she is passée, she is less than
     nothing. Men did not talk and leer in that way at R. Did they
     think so? I cannot say. Even Harry laughed when I lost my
     temper in describing the impudence of a young fop who had
     bought his way into the chorus. "You must get used to that sort
     of thing in town!" he said. Then: "Bear with it a little while,
     sweetheart. Soon the pretense will be ended, and I shall be
     only too happy if you have lost the glamour of the footlights
     by that time. It was no wish of mine that you should become an
     actress." That is quite, quite true. But I wish now--no, I
     don't. I am silly and miserable. Please, diary, don't be angry
     if I weep over you, and if I write foolish things.

Then, some four months after marriage:

     Harry away a whole week now. Telegram from Paris: "Cannot leave
     Mrs. S. for some time yet." He is glad that I have decided to
     give up the stage without delay. So soon, so soon! I am glad,
     too, for some reasons, and sorry for others. Is not that life
     in a few words?...

          Créature d'un jour qui t'agites une heure,
          De quoi viens-tu te plaindre et que te fait gémir?
          Ton âme t'inquiète et tu crois qu'elle pleure:
          Ton âme est immortelle, et tes pleurs vont tarur.

     It is strange that I should regret the passing of the stage,
     now that it becomes a necessity. There I found companionship,
     of a sort. I shall be so lonely. But not for long. Harry
     returns next week, "on the 10th" his second message says, and
     then I think really that I must begin to insist upon seeing my
     mother. He can hardly refuse now. To meet her again! though our
     eyes will be flooded with tears. And Vi! dear, dear Vi! Will
     she be eager to hear all about it? But the reproach in her
     eyes! What did she think when she opened that letter of mine?
     How she would weep over her old flighty Gwen! Oh, darling
     mother, and sweet, ever-forgiving sister, how I long to hold
     you in my arms! If Harry only knew you he would surely trust
     you, and then I would not care if the publication of the
     marriage was delayed another year.




CHAPTER XV

IN PAIN


Hour after hour David read on, dead to all things in the world but to
the soul in pain in that book and to his hope that, if only once, she
had written the name of her home. Every time he came upon that letter
R (by which she meant Rigsworth) he groaned; and anon he looked with
eyes of despair and something of fond reproach at her face over the
mantelpiece.

He read of her leaving the stage, because of the necessity that was now
upon her, and then of the months of heaviness and tears. The worst trial
of all in her lot seemed to be the constant separations, due to the
tyranny of one "Mrs. S.," who ever drew her husband from her. She wrote:

     I actually should be jealous, if she wasn't old! From Paris to
     Homburg, from Homburg to Siena: and everywhere poor Harry
     dragged at her chariot-wheels! I should like to have one peep
     at her in the flesh, just to see what she is really like. Her
     photographs show a fat, cross-looking old thing, but she can't
     be quite like that, with her really good affectionate heart.
     Has she not been the best of mothers to Harry? From the time
     she adopted him, he says, when he was a quite poor boy of
     fifteen, she has never been able to live a month without seeing
     him, even when he was at Heidelburg University. I must be
     content only to share him with her, but just now I think I have
     the stronger claim, unless she is really so very ill. I have
     heard that tale before of her "dying state," but that sort of
     old things don't die so easily. I believe that I write as if I
     wished her to! God forbid! I don't allow all Harry's dreams of
     the grandeurs to be enjoyed after her death to excite me much.
     I hope that I shall take it as coldly as doing up my hair when
     the letter comes, "Mrs. S. is dead! you are a millionaire."

     Mercenariness is not one of my faults, anyway. It is true that
     since I have ceased to earn anything, I do sometimes feel a wee
     pinch of scarcity, and wish that he could send me even a few
     shillings a week more. But if that was only all of my trouble!
     No, Mrs. S., may you live as long as Heaven wills. If I thought
     that in any part of me there lurked one little longing to hear
     of that good woman's death, I should never forgive myself.
     Still, I don't think it right of her to play the despot over
     Harry to the extent to which she carries it. A man thirty-eight
     years old has surely the right to marry, if he wishes to. If it
     hadn't been for her, my marriage could have been made public
     from the first, and all that woe at R. would have been spared.
     Harry says that she hates the very word "marriage," and that if
     she was to get the least scent of his marriage, she would cut
     him off with a shilling.

     He has run a risk, poor old Hal, for my sake, and if now and
     again he can't help longing to be rich and free, it is hard to
     blame him. The day he is rich and free there will be a spree,
     Gwen! It is wrong to anticipate it, but see if I don't make the
     street of R. glow, if not with the wine of France, at least
     with beer, and if I don't teach a certain staid Miss Violet
     Mordaunt how to do the high-kick, girls! I wonder if all will
     be over by then, and if I shall go back to dear old R. not only
     a wife but a mother?

Then again, a month later:

     What a thing! to be a mother! Sometimes the thought hits me
     suddenly between the eyes, and I can't believe it is I
     myself--that same powerlessness to recognize myself which I had
     for fully a week after the marriage. But this is greater still,
     to have something which will be to me what I have been to my
     own mother. Gwen, Gwen, how exquisitely droll! How one grows
     into something else quite different, without at all noticing
     how and when! But will it never be over? It is like heaving a
     sigh a century long. Won't it be nice to dance again, and fling
     one's limbs? But meantime, such a weight of care, strange
     fears, gazings into I don't know what abyss, and never a day
     without its flood of tears. I want my mother. It is no good; I
     want to go back to where I was born. I am not strong enough to
     bear this. But after Tuesday's promise to him, what can I do? I
     have said now that I won't write until after, and I won't if
     God gives me strength.

For two months there was no entry, and then came joy that a son was
born; but from the time of that birth, the diary which had before been
profuse and daily became short and broken.

A deadlock seemed to have arisen. "Harry" allowed one letter to be
written home to tell of the birth; but would not permit any direct
statement as to the marriage, nor any meeting, nor any further letter,
until "Mrs. S.," who was now "near her end," should be dead. She wrote:

     To-day is six weeks since I have seen him, and altogether he
     has seen baby only twice. Yesterday's letter was divided into
     "heads," like a sermon, giving the reason why I may not go to
     him in Paris, why I may not write home, even without giving my
     address, and why he cannot come back yet. But it is a year now,
     and I have a mother and a sister. There is no certainty that
     Mrs. S. may not live ten years longer; and in last night's
     letter I said that on the 4th of July, one month from now, if
     nothing has then happened to change the situation, I shall be
     compelled to risk displeasing him, and I shall go to R. That's
     crossing the Rubicon, Gwen, and I'm awfully frightened now. He
     will call it defiance, and rave, I know. "Be bold, be bold, be
     not too bold." But, then, I can always tame the monster with
     one Delilah kiss. I think I know my man, and can conquer my
     conqueror, and it is time now to begin to assert myself a
     little. . . .

     Isn't there something queerish in his relation with "Mrs. S."?
     He stands in such mortal fear of her! I don't think it is quite
     pretty for a man to have such tremors for any earthly reason.
     One day I asked him why he could not introduce me to her as--a
     friend? She might take a fancy to me, I said, since I am
     generally popular. He looked quite frightened at the mere
     suggestion of such a thing. . . .

     That last night, coming home from the theater, he said
     something about "Anna." I asked him who Anna was. He said: "I
     mean Mrs. S.," looking, it seemed to me, rather put out. I had
     never heard him call her Anna before. . . .

     My voice is certainly not what it was, and not through any want
     of practise, I'm sure. People so hopelessly worried as I am at
     present can't sing really well. For the second time yesterday I
     wrote that I shall really go to mother after the fourth of next
     month, and I mean it, I do mean it! I owe something to her,
     too, and to myself, and I still don't see what harm it can do
     to Harry. Poor dear, he is awfully frightened! "If you persist
     in this wild notion, you will compel me to take a step which
     will be bitter to you and to myself." I don't know what step he
     can mean. That's only talk. I'll do it just to see what
     happens, for one oughtn't to threaten a woman with penalties
     which she can't conceive, or her curiosity will lead her to do
     the very thing. It was an ill-understood threat that made Eve
     eat the apple, my Hal. "Thou shalt surely die"; but, not
     knowing what "to die" was like, she thought to herself: "Well,
     just to see." There's no particularly "bitter step" that he can
     take, and the time is really come for me to assert myself a
     little now. Men love a woman better when she is not all milk
     and honey. . . .

     It is near now, Vi! He has her chin, her hands, her dark grave
     eyes, her very smile. I am on the point at last of seeing him
     in her arms. How will she look? What will she think of me, the
     little girl whom she used to guide with her eye, beating her a
     hundred miles, an old experienced mummie while she is still a
     maid! I can no more resist it than I could fly! I shall do it!
     I am going to do it! I told Harry that I should. There's no
     danger, and I can't resist it any longer. I am just back from
     P. He is looking too sweet now for anything, and can blow the
     whistle of the rattle. I told Mrs. C. that in three days' time
     I shall be taking him from her for at least ten days, perhaps
     for good. Only three days! Sarah is beginning to get things
     ready....

     Yes, it was "a bitter step" enough, poor Hal! God help you and
     me, and all the helpless!...

     I told poor Sarah just now: "I am not married. You only think
     that I am; but I am not. I have a child; but I am not married.
     Sarah, this is no fit place for a girl like you." She thinks
     that I am mad, I know, but I keep quite sane and myself. I am
     only sorry for poor old Hal. He loves me and I loved him when
     I had a heart....

     I thought of seeing the boy once more, but I haven't the
     energy. I don't seem to care. If I should care, or love, or
     hate, or eat, it wouldn't be so horrible. But I am only a
     ghost, a sham. I am really dead. My nature is akin with the
     grave, and has no appetite but for that with which it is akin.
     Well, I will soon come. It shall be to-morrow night, just after
     Sarah is gone. But I must rouse myself first to do that which
     is my duty. I ought, as a friend, to cover up poor Hal's
     traces, and yet I must be just to the boy, too. He ought to
     know when he grows up that, if his mother was unfortunate, she
     was not abandoned, and it is my duty to leave for him the
     proofs of it. But how to do that, and at the same time protect
     Harry, is the question, for I suppose that the police will
     search the flat. It is very wearisome. I doubt if my poor head
     is too clear to-day....

     It shall be like this: I'll hide the things somewhere where the
     police won't readily find them. I'll invent a place. Then I
     shall write to Vi, not telling her what is going to happen to
     me, but telling her that if in a few months' time she will
     thoroughly search a certain flat in London, she will find what
     will be good for her and mother and the boy. And I shall give
     the address; but I won't tell her exactly where I hide the
     things; for fear of the police getting hold of the letter and
     arresting Harry. And I will post it after Sarah is gone
     to-morrow night, just before I do it. That's what I shall do.
     I'm pretty artful, my brain is quite clear and calm. I don't
     know yet where I shall hide the things; but I shall find a
     place, I shall hoodwink them all, and manage everything just
     nicely. Sarah thinks that I'm mad, but I'm not. It is she who
     is raving mad, and people who are mad think that every one is,
     except themselves.

     I'll hide the diary in one place, the certificates in another,
     and the photograph of the boy's father in another. That's what
     I'll do. Then I'll tear up all other papers small. No, I'll
     hide as well the letter in which he says that he is Mrs. S.'s
     husband, and that I'm not his legal wife; for some day I should
     like Vi to know that I did not take my life for nothing, but
     was murdered before I killed myself. Then I'll do it. It isn't
     bitter; it's sweet. Death's a hole to creep in for shelter for
     one's poor head. Harry will be in England in five days' time,
     so I'll write him a letter to the Constitutional to say
     good-by. He loves me. He didn't mean to kill me. He only told
     me in order to stop me from going home. It is such a burden to
     write to him, but it is my duty to give him one last word of
     comfort, and I will.

     Then, when all this world of business is over and done, I'll do
     it. It isn't bitter; it's sweet. God, I couldn't face them!
     Forgive me! I know that it is wicked; but it is nice, is death.
     Things are as they are. One can't fight against the ocean. It
     is sweet to close one's eyes, and drown.

That word "drown" was the last. David closed the book with a blackness
in his heart and brain.

The reading of it had brought him only grief and little light for
practical purposes. That "Mrs. S." meant "Mrs. Strauss" he had no doubt,
nor any doubt that "Harry" meant Henry Van Hupfeldt. Still, there was no
formal proof of it. The name of her home, to learn which he had dared to
open the diary, appeared only as "R." The only pieces of knowledge which
the reading brought him were, firstly, that there were a photograph
and a letter still hidden in the flat--certainly, not in any of the
pictures, for he had searched them all; and secondly that "Harry" was a
member of the Constitutional Club. As for the child, it was, or had
been, at "P.," in the care of one "Mrs. C."




CHAPTER XVI

HAND TO HAND


The necessity that was now strong upon David was to act, to fight for
it. To hunt for the still hidden photograph and letter was far too
slow a task in his present mood of turbulence and desperation. The
photograph, indeed, would furnish certain proof as to whether Strauss
and Van Hupfeldt were one. So might the letter. But of what use would
proof of anything whatever be, when he was all shut out from access to
the Mordaunts? He thought, however, that if he could come within earshot
and striking distance of Van Hupfeldt, then something might result, he
was not clear what. He put on his hat and went out, as grim a man as
any on the streets of London that afternoon. He did not know where Van
Hupfeldt lived, but he turned his steps toward the Constitutional Club.

He meant at least to discover if Van Hupfeldt was a member there, and he
might discover more. But he was spared the pains of inquiry, for he was
still at a distance of thirty yards from the club when he saw Van
Hupfeldt come out and step into a carriage.

David cringed half under a dray, till the carriage began to move, then
followed some way behind at his long trot. He thought now that perhaps
he was about to track Van Hupfeldt to his house.

The carriage drove straight to Baker-St. Station, into which Van
Hupfeldt went, and took a ticket. David, listening outside the outer
entrance to the small booking-office, could not catch the name of his
destination, but when Van Hupfeldt had gone down into the gloom and
fume, David, half-way down the flight of stairs, stood watching. He had
no little finesse in tracking, and ferreting, and remaining invisible,
and when Van Hupfeldt had taken his seat, David was in another
compartment of the same train.

The dusk of evening was thickening when their train stopped at the
townlet of Pangley, twenty-five miles from London, where Van Hupfeldt
alighted.

David saw him well out of the little station before he himself leaped,
as the train began to move. He then took the precaution to ascertain the
times of the next up-trains. There would be one at quarter past eight
and another at ten P.M. While he asked as to the trains, and paid the
fare of some excess charge, he kept his eye on the back of Van Hupfeldt,
walking down the rather steep street. And, when it was safe, he
followed.

At the bottom of the street they crossed a bridge, and thenceforward
walked up a road with heath on both sides. David was angry with his
luck, for the road was straight and long, and there was little cover
in the heath, where he walked some distance from the road. Once Van
Hupfeldt turned, and seemed to admire the last traces of color in the
western sky, whereat David, as if shot, dropped into gorse and bracken.
He hoped that Van Hupfeldt, being a man of cities and civilization, was
unconscious of him; but he felt that he in Van Hupfeldt's place would
have known all, and he had a fear. The light was fast failing, but he
could clearly see Van Hupfeldt, who swung a parcel in his hand; and he
thought that if he could see Van Hupfeldt well, then Van Hupfeldt might
have seen him dimly. Van Hupfeldt, however, gave no sign of it.

David saw him go into the gateway of a pretty dwelling, and a big hearty
countrywoman ran out to meet him, her face beaming with good cheer.
Carrying a child in her arms, she escorted Van Hupfeldt into the house
with, it was clear, no lack of welcome, and, when they had disappeared,
David, vaulting over a hedge into the orchard, crept nearer the house
and hid behind a shed in which he saw a white calf. He waited there for
a long time, how long he did not know, for once, when he peered at his
watch, he could see nothing. The night had come moonless and black. The
place where he lurked was in the shadow of trees.

Meantime, within the house, Van Hupfeldt sat with the child on his knee.
He was so pale that Mrs. Carter, the child's foster-mother, asked if he
was well. Some purpose, some fear or hope, agitated him. Once, when the
countrywoman left the room to fetch a glass of milk, the moment he was
alone he put down the child, sped like a thief to the grandfather's
clock ticking in its old nook by the settee, opened it, put the
minute-hand back twenty minutes, and was seated again when the milk came
in.

These visits of his to the child, of which he paid one every week,
always lasted half an hour. This time he stayed so much longer that Mrs.
Carter glanced at the clock, only to be taken aback by the earliness of
the hour.

"Bless us!" she cried. "I thought it was later 'n that. You still have
plenty of time to catch the quarter past eight, sir."

But Van Hupfeldt stood up, saying that he would go. Putting on his coat,
he added: "Mrs. Carter, I have been followed from London by a man who, I
fancy, will present himself here presently when I am gone. He wishes to
know more about my affairs than he has a right to know. If he comes, I
have a reason for wishing you to receive him politely, and to keep him
in talk as long as he will stay. But, of course, you won't satisfy his
curiosity in anything that concerns me. In particular, be very careful
not to give him any hint that my name was Strauss during my wife's
lifetime."

"You may rely on me," said Mrs. Carter, in the secret voice of an
accomplice.

"Now, little one, to bed," said Van Hupfeldt, a thin and lanky figure
in his long overcoat, as he bent with kisses over the boy in Mrs.
Carter's arms.

Five minutes after he was gone David was at the farmhouse door. He, too,
would like a glass of milk.

"You're welcome, I'm sure," said Mrs. Carter. "Step inside."

His first glance was at the clock, for he did not wish to lose the
quarter past eight train, since that would mean the losing of his
present chance of tracking Van Hupfeldt to his address. But the clock
reassured him. He indolently took it for granted that it was more or
less near the mark, and it pointed to twenty minutes to eight. He
would thus have time to strike up an acquaintance with Mrs. Carter,
as a preliminary to closer relations in the future.

"And where is baby?" he asked.

"Oh, you know about him?" said Mrs. Carter. "He's in bed, to be sure."

"I saw him in your arms as I was passing up the road half an hour ago."

"What, you passed along here? I didn't notice you."

"I came up from the station. Now, this is something like good milk. You
have a nice little farm here, too. Do you manage it yourself?"

"Yes; my husband died a twelvemonth come May."

"It must be hard work with baby, too, as well, especially if you've got
any youngsters of your own."

"How can you know that this baby isn't my own?"

"Oh, as to that, I'm not quite so much in the dark about things. Why,
I'm living in the very flat which its poor mother occupied. I know its
aunt, I know its father--"

"Oh, well, you seem to know a lot. What more do you want?"

"I only know the father by sight--that is, if he was the father who was
in here just now. I take it he was."

"Ah, there, now, you're asking."

"Oh, there's no secret, Mrs. Carter. Mr. Johann Strauss is a well-known
man."

"Is that his name--Strauss? Well, well, live and learn."

"That's his name, and that's his writing, Mrs. Carter!"--words which
David uttered almost with a shout, as he caught an envelope out of the
coal scuttle, and laid it on the table, pointing fixedly at it.

Mrs. Carter was startled by his sudden vehemence. The envelope was one
directed to her in the same flourishing writing which Dibbin had long
since shown David as that of Strauss.

"You are bound to admit," said David, imperatively, "that this envelope
was directed to you by the gentleman who was just here."

"Well, so it was; what of that?" asked Mrs. Carter, in a maze as to what
the row was about.

"That's all right, then," said David, quieting down. "I only wanted to
be sure."

This, then, settled it. Van Hupfeldt was Strauss. David kept the
envelope, sipped his milk, and for some time talked with Mrs. Carter
about her cows, her fruit, and whether the white calf was to be sold or
kept. When it was ten minutes to eight by the big parlor clock he rose
to go, said that he hoped to see baby next time, if he might call again,
and shook hands. But in going out, from force of habit, he glanced at
his watch, and now saw that it was really ten minutes past eight.

"Great goodness!" he exclaimed, "your clock is all wrong!"

"No, sir--" began Mrs. Carter.

David was gone. He had five minutes in which to run a good deal over a
mile, and he ran with all his speed; but some distance from the station
he saw the train steaming out, and pulled up short.

At that moment Van Hupfeldt in the train was thinking: "It has worked
well. He is late, and there is no other train till ten--an hour and
three quarters. He has only a charwoman. She will not be in the flat at
this hour. No one will be there. Will it be my luck that the diary is
not under lock and key?"

As a matter of fact, the diary was lying openly on the dining-room table
in the flat, caution of that sort being hardly the uppermost quality in
David's character.

David strolled about Pangley, looked into the tiny shop-windows, dined
on fruit, wished that he had not been born some new variety of a fool,
and found that hour and three quarters as long as a week. Not much given
to suspicions of meanness and cunning, it did not even now come into his
head that he was where he was by a trick. He blamed only destiny for
imposing upon him such penal inactivity in the little town that night
when a thousand spurs were urging him to action. But at last ten o'clock
came, and when he stepped into the train he asked himself why he had
been so impatient, since probably nothing could be done that evening. He
reached London before eleven, and drove home weary of himself and of his
cares.

It was too late then, he thought, to go hunting after Van Hupfeldt. On
the morrow morning he would again try at the Constitutional. Meantime,
he lit himself a fire, and sat over it brooding, cudgeling his brains
for some plan of action. Then the diary drew him. He would re-read that
tragedy throughout. He put out his arm, half-turning from over the fire
to get the book.

It was no longer on the table.

He stood up and stared at the table. No diary was there. Yet he seemed
to remember--He set to work to search the flat.

Suddenly, in the midst of his work, a flood of light broke in upon him.
He thought that, if the letter which he had written to Violet, telling
her that he had the diary, had already fallen into Van Hupfeldt's
hands, then Van Hupfeldt knew that he had the diary; in which case, it
was Van Hupfeldt who had put back the clock's hand in the farmhouse at
Pangley! Van Hupfeldt knew all the time that David was shadowing him,
had put back the clock, and now held the diary, for which both he and
David would have given all that they were worth, and all is everything,
whether ten pounds or a million.

"Is that it?" thought David to himself. "Oh, is that it? All right, let
it be like that."

He lost not two minutes in thought, but with a lowering brow went out
into the streets, high-strung, his fingers cramped together.

An hour before this he had said to himself that the hour was too late
for action. Now, an hour later, such a thought did not occur to him in
the high pitch of his soul. That night, and not any other night or day,
he would have it out with Van Hupfeldt.

He jumped into a cab, and drove to the flat in King-St., Chelsea.

"But what on earth can the man mean," said Miss L'Estrange, peeping
through the slit of her slightly-opened door, "coming to a lady's flat
at this hour of the morning?"

In reality it was about half-past twelve.

"No, it's no use talking," said David, "you must let me in. I know you
have a right good heart, and I rely upon its action when I tell you that
it is a matter of life and death this time."

"But I'm alone."

"So much the better."

"Well, I like your cheek!"

"You like the whole of me; so you may as well own up to it, and be
done."

"Rats! You only come here when you want something done. It isn't me you
come to see."

"I'll come to see you some other time. Just throw something on, and let
me in."

"'Throw something on,' indeed! I'll throw something on you, and that'll
be hot water, the next time you come bothering about at this hour. Oh,
well, never mind; you're not a bad sort. Come in."

The door opened, Miss L'Estrange fled, and David went into the
drawing-room, where he waited some minutes till she reappeared, looking
fresh and washed from the night's stage-paint, with something voluminous
wrapped about her.

"Now, what is it?" said she. "Straight to the point--that's me."

"You must give me Strauss's address," said David.

"That I sha'n't," said she. "What do you take me for? I promised the man
that I wouldn't. I have told you once that he isn't a thousand miles
from Piccadilly, and that's about all you'll get from me."

"Good! I understand your position," said David. "But before you refuse
out and out, hear what I have to say. This man Strauss is a man who
induced Gwendoline Barnes, whom you know, to leave her home, married
her while his first wife was alive, and so caused her to make away with
herself. And now this same man, under the name of Van Hupfeldt, is about
to marry her sister, without telling her that he even knew the girl whom
he has murdered. I don't know what the sister's motive for marrying him
is--quite possibly there's some trick about it--but I know that the
motive is not love. Now, just think a moment, and tell me if this is
fair to your woman's mind."

"Oh, that's how it is!" exclaimed Ermyn L'Estrange.

"All the facts which I have mentioned I know for certain," said David.

"Then, that explains--"

"Explains what?"

"I'll tell you; but this is between us, mind. Some time ago Strauss
comes to me, and he says: 'I have given your address to a young lady--a
Miss Violet Mordaunt--who is about to write you a letter asking whether
you did or did not find any certificates in a picture in the Eddystone
Mansions flat; and I want you in answer to deny to her for my sake that
any certificates were ever found.'"

"And you did?" cried David with deep reproach.

"Now, no preaching, or I never tell you anything again," shrilled Miss
L'Estrange. "Here's gratitude in man! Of course I did! He said it was
only an innocent fib which could do no harm to anybody, and if you saw
the bracelet I got for it, my boy--"

"You wrote to say that no certificates were ever found!"

"I did."

"Then what can she think of me?" he cried with a face of pain. "I told
her--"

"Ah, you are after her, too? I see now how it is," said Miss L'Estrange.

"But she might at least have given me a chance of clearing myself!"
groaned David. "She might have written to me to say that she had found
me out in a lie."

Violet had, indeed, promised herself the luxury of writing one
"stinging, crushing, killing" note to David in the event of Miss
L'Estrange proving him false. And, in fact, not one but many such notes
had been written down at Dale Manor. But none of them had ever been
sent--her deep disdain had kept her silent.

"But," cried David, at the spur of a sudden glad thought, "since Miss
Mordaunt wrote to you, and you to her, you know her address, and can
give it me!"

"No, I don't know her address," answered Miss L'Estrange. "I believe now
that Strauss may have been afraid that if I knew it I might give it to
you, so he must have prevented her from putting it on her letter. There
was no address on it, I don't think, for when I wrote back to her I gave
my letter to Strauss to send."

"Ah, he's a cautious beast!" said David, bitterly. "Still--I'll have
him--not to-morrow, but to-night. Quick, now--his address."

"Well, I promised not to tell it to any one," vowed Miss L'Estrange in
her best soubrette manner, "and I'll be as good as my word, since I
never break a promise when my word is once passed. I'll just write it
down on a piece of paper, and drop it on the floor by accident, and then
if anybody should happen to notice it and pick it up without my seeing,
that will be no business of mine."

She rose, walked to a desk, and went through this pantomime in all
seriousness. The address was dropped on the carpet, and David
"happening" to notice it, picked it up behind Miss Ermyn L'Estrange's
unconscious back. It had on it the number of a house near Hanover
Square; and in another moment David had pressed the lady's hand, and was
gone, crying: "I'll come again!"

"Not even a word of thanks," said Miss L'Estrange to herself, as she
looked after his flying back: "'Blow, blow, thou winter's wind.'"

David leaped into his waiting cab, and was off across London.

Light was still in Van Hupfeldt's quarters, and Van Hupfeldt himself, at
the moment when David rang, was poring over the last words of the diary
of her who had been part of his life. He was livid with fear at the
knowledge just learned for certain from the written words, that there
were still hidden in the flat a photograph of him, and his last letter
to Gwendoline, when he heard an altercation between his man Neil and
another voice outside. A moment later he heard Neil cry out sharply,
and then he was aware of a hurried step coming in upon him. The
first thought of his secretive nature was the diary, and, with the
trepidations of a miser surprised in counting his gold, he hustled it
into a secret recess of the bureau near which he had been reading. He
had hardly done this when he stood face to face with David.

At that moment Van Hupfeldt's face seemed lit with a lunacy of affright,
surprise, and rage. David, with his hat rather drawn over his eyes, and
with a frowning severity, said: "I want four things of you--the diary,
the key of my flat which you have in your possession, those
certificates, and Mrs. Mordaunt's address."

A scream went out from Van Hupfeldt: "Neil! the police!"

"Quite so," said David; "but before the police come, do as I say, or I
shall kill you."

Van Hupfeldt could hardly catch his breath sufficiently to speak. A man
so wholly in the grip of terror it was painful to see. David understood
him to say: "Man, I warn you, my heart is weak."

"Heart weak?" growled David. "That's what you say? Well, then, keep
cool, and let me have my way. We must wrangle it out now somehow. You
have the police on your side for the moment, and I stand alone--"

Now the outer door was heard to slam; for Neil had run out to summon
help.

"I'm not acting on my own behalf," said David, "but for the sake of a
girl whose life, I feel sure, you are going to make bitter. She cares
nothing for you--"

"How dare you!" came in a hoarseness of concentrated passion from Van
Hupfeldt's bosom.

"No, she cares nothing for you--"

"You interloper!"

"And even if she did, she is sure to find out sooner or later that you
are Strauss--"

"Oh! had I but guessed!"

"Which would be the death of her--"

"I never dreamed of this."

"So, on her behalf, I'll just make a hurried search before the police
comes. The things are not yours. If your heart wasn't weak, I'd maul
you till you were willing to hand them over of your own accord."

With that David made a move toward the bureau, whereupon Van Hupfeldt
uttered a scream and flew upon him like a cat-o'-mountain, but David
flung him away to the other end of the room.

Scattered over the bureau were a number of letters in their envelopes
ready for the post, and the first of these upon which David's eye fell
was directed to "Miss Violet Mordaunt."

Here was luck! Even as his heart bounded, before even he had seen a word
of the address, he was in darkness--Van Hupfeldt had switched off the
light.

And now once again David felt himself outdone by the cunning of this
man. The room was large, crowded with objects of luxury, and the switch
a needle in a bundle of hay. In which direction to grope for it David
did not know. He ran to where he had flung Van Hupfeldt, to compel him
by main force to turn on the light. But Van Hupfeldt was no longer
there. The suddenness of the darkness made it black to the eyes. David
could not find the switch, and fearing lest Van Hupfeldt might snatch
away the letter to Violet in the dark, he flew back to the bureau,
over-setting first a chair, and then colliding upon Van Hupfeldt a
little distance from the bureau. Again he flung Van Hupfeldt far, and,
keeping near the bureau, groped along the beading of the wall, to see
if he could encounter another switch.

In the midst of this search, his ears detected the sound of a key in
the outer door, and understanding that help had arrived for the enemy,
instantly he took his decision, felt for the eight or ten envelopes on
the bureau, slipped them all into his pocket, and was gone. In the hall,
coming inward he met Neil and an officer, but, as if making a deep bow
to the majesty of the law, he slipped as easily as a wave under the
officer's hand, and disappeared through the wide-open door. The officer
ran after him. This was simple. From the moment when David pitched
through the house-door below the stairs, he was never more seen by that
particular officer to the day of his death.

Under a lamp in Oxford-St., when he stopped running, he took out
Strauss's letters from his pocket with a hand that shook, for in his
heart was the thought: "Suppose I have left hers behind!"

But no; that fifth one was hers: "Miss Violet Mordaunt, Dale Manor,
Rigsworth, near Kenilworth." Remembrance came to him with an ache of
rapture. Within twenty-four hours he would see her. He was so pleased
that he was at the pains to throw Strauss's other letters into the
first pillar-box. What did it matter now that the diary, certificates,
anything or everything, had been filched from him? To-morrow, no, that
day, he would see Violet.




CHAPTER XVII

DAVID MORE THAN REGAINS LOST GROUND


Harcourt was now in the position of a man who thinks he has invented a
flying-machine--enthusiasm became stronger than knowledge, belief was
made to do service as evidence. To meet Violet, to look again into those
sweet eyes of hers, that was the great thing he promised himself next
morning. Indeed, it is to be feared he deliberately surrendered himself
to dreams of such a meeting, while he smoked pipe after pipe in his
lonesome flat, rather than set himself to an orderly review of his
forces for the approaching trial of strength with Van Hupfeldt.

No sooner was he well clear of Van Hupfeldt's house than he knew that he
was safe from active interference by the law. The man whom he now looked
on as his rival, the subtle adversary whom he had scorned to crush when
appealed to for mercy on the score of physical inferiority, would never
dare to seek the aid of authority. Nursing that fact, ready enough
to welcome the prospect of an unaided combat, David did not stop to
consider that an older head in counsel would not be a bad thing. There
was Dibbin, for instance. Dibbin, whose ideas were cramped within
ledgers and schedules, had, nevertheless, as he said himself, "been
young once." Surely David could have sufficiently oxygenized the agent's
thin blood with the story told by the hapless Gwendoline that the man
should hie with him to Rigsworth and there be confronted with the
veritable Strauss. Dibbin was a precise man. It would have been hard
for Van Hupfeldt to flout Dibbin.

But no; David smoked and dreamed, and saw a living Violet in the chalk
portrait of the dead Gwendoline, and said so many nice words to the
presentment thus created that he came to believe them; and so he
consigned Dibbin to his own musty office, nor even gave heed to the
existence of such a credible witness as Sarah Gissing, poor Gwendoline's
maid.

He left a penciled note on his table that the charwoman was to call
him when she came at eight--for in such wise does London conquer
Wyoming--and with the rattle of her knuckles on the door he was out
of bed, blithe as a lark, with his heart singing greetings to a sunny
morning.

The manner of dress, the shade of a tie, the exact degree of whiteness
of linen, were affairs of moment just then. Alack! here was our
erstwhile rounder-up of steers stopping his hansom on the way to the
station in order to buy a smart pair of doeskin gloves, while he gazed
lovingly at a boutonnière of violets, but forbore.

It was noon ere he reached Rigsworth, and inquiry showed that the
Mordaunts' house was situated at the farther end of the small village.
He walked through the street of scattered houses, and attracted some
attention by the sure fact that he was a stranger. At any rate, that was
how he regarded the discreet scrutiny to which he was subjected.

"A big house with a lodge-gate, just past the church on the left," were
the station-master's directions, and David had no difficulty in finding
his way. His heart fell a little when he saw the style of the place. The
lodge was a pretty villa in itself. Its garden would be of great worth
within the London suburban area. Behind it stretched the park of Dale
Manor, and the turrets of a mansion among many lordly elms seemed to
put Violet on a somewhat inaccessible pinnacle. David did not know that
people of moderate means can maintain a good sporting estate by letting
the shooting, but he had learned in the free air of the States to rate
a man on a different level to parks; if a half-bred rascal like Van
Hupfeldt was able to enter this citadel like a thief for one daughter
of the house, why should not an honest man storm it for the sake of
another?

At the lodge, however, he met with a decided rebuff. "No visitors
admitted," was the curt response of a gamekeeper sort of person who
was lurking in a doorway when David tried to open the locked gate.

"My business is important," urged David, quietly, though his face
flushed a little at the man's impudent manner.

"So's my orders," said velveteens.

"But I must see either Mrs. Mordaunt or Miss Violet."

"You can't see either. Absolute orders. Your name's Harcourt isn't it?"

Then David knew that Van Hupfeldt had over-reached him by the telegraph,
and the shattering of his dream-castle caused such lightnings to gleam
from within that the surly gamekeeper whistled to a retriever dog, and
ostensibly revealed a double-barreled gun which lay in the corner of the
porch.

David was likely to have his own way with clodhoppers, even in the hour
of tribulation.

"Yes," he said, "my name is Harcourt. And yours?"

"Mine is no matter."

"Very well, 'No Matter.' You are obeying orders, I have no doubt; but
you must be taught civility. I give you notice, 'No Matter,' that a
little later I shall lick you good and plenty, and if you don't take
it like a man you will probably be fired into the bargain."

The keeper was for abusing him, but David turned away. And now he was
not the well-dressed, gloved, spick-and-span Londoner, but the Indian
of the prairie, with a heart from which the glow had gone, with eyes
that saw and ears that heard and a brain that recorded everything.

He was instantly aware that the country policeman who had lolled
through the village behind him was a forewarned spy. He knew that this
functionary watched his return to the railway station, from which, as
David happened to remember, the time-table had shown a train
London-wards at one o'clock.

The station-master was affable enough, gave him some bread and meat and
a glass of milk, and refused any payment. When the train came in, David,
sourly smiling, saw the constable loll onto the platform. He could not
resist the temptation to lean out of the carriage window.

"Good-by, P. C. 198," he said.

Now, he was traveling first-class, and, in England, even a villain
demands respect under that circumstance.

"Good-by, sir," said the man, surprised.

"You will know me again, eh?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"I am glad of that. Tell that chap at the gate of Dale Manor that I
shall keep my fixture with him soon."

P. C. 198 scratched his head. "Funny affair," he muttered as the train
moved off. "Looks an' talks more of a gentleman than van Wot's-his-name,
any day."

At the next station, four miles away, David slipped out of his carriage
quickly and waited in a shed until the train had gone again. Then he
interviewed the station-master, and somewhat astonished the official by
tendering a return ticket from Rigsworth to London.

"Can't break your journey," said the regulations.

"But I've done it," said David.

"It's irregular," complained the other.

"And the train is half a mile distant."

"Well, if you pay the fare--"

David meant to forfeit his ticket. This was a new light. He paid a few
pence, took a receipt, and promised himself some fun at Rigsworth.

He asked for no information. From the train he had noted a line of
telegraph posts in the distance, and he stepped out smartly along a
by-road until he gained the main thoroughfare. Then, being alone, he
ran, and the newly bought gloves burst their seams, so he flung them
off.

When less than a mile from Rigsworth he heard the whistle of a train.
Springing to a high bank, he made out the sinuous, snake-like curling of
an engine and coaches beyond the hedge-rows--a train coming from London.
"Van Hupfeldt is in it, of course," he decided. "I must make sure."

It needed a fine sprint, aided by the exercise of quick judgment when he
neared Dale Manor; but he was hidden in a brake of brambles in the park
as Van Hupfeldt, exceedingly pallid this glorious day of spring, walked
up the drive, accompanied by the gamekeeper, dog and gun. The dog came
near to undoing David; but a rabbit, already disturbed, ran out of the
thicket, and a sharp command from the keeper brought the retriever to
heel.

Van Hupfeldt entered the gardens; the keeper made off across the park.
Green and brown buds, almost bursting into leaf, were already enriching
the shrubs and trees of Dale Manor, especially in a sheltered hollow on
the left front of the house where nestled a pretty lake. There the cover
was good. The hunter instinct sent him that way.

"That Dutchman will make Violet bolt just as the dog started the
rabbit," thought David, and he took a circuitous route to reach a
summer-house on the most distant side of the ornamental water, whence,
he fancied, he could command a fair view of the house and grounds. He
waited with stubborn patience two long hours. At last he saw a man
arrive in a dog-cart, and it was the coming of this person which
apparently drove Violet forth, as, five minutes after the newcomer was
admitted, a tall graceful figure in black, a girl wearing a large black
hat and draping a white shawl elegantly round her shoulders, stepped out
of a French window to the smooth lawn, and looked straight at the sheet
of water beyond which David lay ensconced.

No need to tell him who this was. His heart did not beat now. He was
glad, and something warmed his whole body, for it was chill waiting
there in the shade after his run, but neither man nor water could
interpose further barrier between him and his Violet, so he was calm
and confident.

The girl glanced back once toward the room she had quitted, and
then strolled on, ever coming nearer the glistening lake and the
summer-house. She crossed the fine stretch of turf and stood for an
instant near a marble statue which guarded a fountain. The distance was
not great, and David thought his eyes were deceiving him when he saw
that the white marble and the black-garbed girl were singularly alike in
feature. It was not surprising, since the sculptor had taken Violet's
great-grandmother, a noted beauty of early Georgian days, as his model
for the face of the dryad, and it was one of the honored traditions of
Dale Manor that this figure should be promptly shielded from inclement
weather, even from the dew. Just then David was not inclined to cavil at
any discovery of fresh charms in Violet, but he set aside this fanciful
idea, as he deemed it, and bent his mind on attracting her attention
without causing a flutter either to her or to the other occupants of the
house.

But she came on again, reached the lake-side path, and made him hope for
a moment that she would pass by the door of his retreat. If that was so,
he would reveal himself to her soon enough to save her from being unduly
alarmed by the unexpected apparition of a man in that secluded place.

Now she actually passed abreast of him, with the lake between, and soon
she would round the curve of the water and face him again. Her figure
was mirrored in the silver and blue of the reflected sky. So light was
her step that the living, moving body seemed to be as impalpable as its
spirit image.

Then David's heart did jump of a sudden, for a faint hail of "Vi!" twice
repeated, caught his ears, and he saw Mrs. Mordaunt, outside the French
window, calling to her daughter.

The girl turned, facing David, almost. He made up his mind without a
moment's hesitation.

"Violet," he said, softly but clearly, "Violet, don't go! Come here. It
is I, David." The cheek of him! as Miss Ermyn L'Estrange would have put
it. Violet! David! What next?

Violet was bewitched for a second or two. She looked wildly toward the
house, and at him; for he stood so that she might see him plainly,
though to her mother he was invisible.

"Please come!" he pleaded. "I am here for your sake, for Gwen's sake,
too, and they have kept us apart so long by lies!"

That the girl was greatly excited was obvious. She pressed her hands
together on her bosom, though the action might pass as a simple
adjustment of her shawl.

"I must go," she murmured brokenly. "They want me there to--to sign some
documents. And I cannot meet you."

"Violet, sign nothing until you have heard my story. I appeal to you for
a hearing. If you refuse I shall come with you to the house. But hear me
first. Make some excuse."

There was ever that in David's voice which won belief. Some men ring
true, some false. David had in him the clear sound of metal without
flaw.

And no woman is worth her salt who cannot act more than a little. "Give
me ten minutes, mother," shrilled Violet, excitedly. "Only ten minutes;
then I shall be with you."

David, peeping through the rustic timber-work, noted with satisfaction
that Mrs. Mordaunt waved a hand of agreement and reëntered the
house. What then, of devil's work was Van Hupfeldt plotting in that
drawing-room that Violet should be wanted to sign documents, and that
the girl's mother should recognize the need of her daughter being
allowed some few minutes of grace if she so desired?

But here came Violet, all rosy now with wonder, for her blood was
racing, though in her eyes, which reflected her thoughts, was an anger
which David missed in his joy. She stood framed in the narrow doorway of
the summer-house, and half turned as though to leave it quickly. "Now,
what have you to say to me?" she breathed hurriedly.

David, who thought he was shy with women, soon found winged words to
pierce the armor of a disdain he did not yet understand. "If I obeyed my
heart, Violet," he said, and she thrilled a little under the shock of
hearing her Christian name so glib on his lips, "I would begin by
telling you that I love you, and so throw to the winds all other
considerations."

She turned and faced him, palpitating, with a certain deer-like
readiness to fly. "How dare you?"

"I am not daring. Daring springs from the heart, you know. Moreover,
though the knowledge of my love is old to me, old as weary days and
sleepless nights can make it, it may be new to you, unless, somehow, my
love has bridged the void, and made you responsive to my passion. Ah,
don't be afraid, now," for David thought she shrank from him--though in
very truth this maiden's soul was all a-quiver with the conviction that
not so had Van Hupfeldt spoken, not so had his ardor shaken her. "I am
not here to-day as your lover, as your avowed lover I would rather say,
but only as your self-appointed guardian, as one who would save you from
a fate worse than death. Listen now, and believe me, for I can prove the
truth. Van Hupfeldt, who would marry you, is none other than Strauss,
the man who married your sister."

Violet's eyes dilated. Her lips parted as if to utter a shriek. David
caught her by the wrist and drew her gently toward him. Before either of
them knew what was happening, his arms were about her.

"Be brave, there's a dear girl!" he whispered. "Be brave and silent! Can
you listen? Tell me you are not afraid to listen."

Again Violet was conscious that the touch of David Harcourt's arms was
a different thing to the impetuous embrace of Van Hupfeldt. A sob came
from her. She seemed to lose a little of her fine stature. She was
becoming smaller, more timidly womanlike, so near this masterful man.

"He married your sister," went on David. "He married Gwen in his own
name of Van Hupfeldt, and the birth of their child is registered in that
name. I wrote and told you of the certificates being in existence. He
obtained them by bribery and a trick. That is nothing. Even if they are
destroyed, they can be replaced by the proper authorities. I know where
the child is living. I can take you to it. I can bring Dibbin, the
agent, here, to face Van Hupfeldt and prove that he is none other than
Strauss, your sister's husband and slayer. I can bring Sarah Gissing,
your sister's servant, to identify him as the man whom poor Gwen loved
as her husband and the father of her child. Were it not for my own
folly, I could have brought you her diary--"

"Her diary! Has it been found?" gasped Violet, lifting up her eyes to
his in sheer amazement.

"Yes. I found it."

"But where, and how?"

"It was fastened into the back of a picture, a mezzotint of Turner's."

"In the back of a picture!" she murmured, with a certain strange
dejection which David found adorable; nor should it be forgotten that
the only time David possessed absolute and undeniable evidence of the
presence of some unseen person in his flat, he had shot at and wounded
a man.

"Yes, dear--may I call you dear?"

"And you have it?"

"No."

"No!" He felt a spasm of doubt in her very shoulders, a slight
withdrawing from him, for Violet was ever being denied proof, the
actual, tangible proof which alone can banish suspicion from a
sorely-tried nature.

"Van Hupfeldt stole it from the flat during my absence."

"How could that be?"

"He has duplicate keys, I suppose. Once before I have reason to believe
he was there. We struggled together, one on each side of a door. It was
in the dark, and he managed to dodge past me, but I fired at him and
drew blood, I think."

"When was that?" she demanded with a quickness which did not escape him.

"On the morning of the day you were to have met me at the cemetery, but
sent such a bitter little note instead."

"A bitter little note!"

And thus were the words said which, pursued for another sentence, must
have unmasked Van Hupfeldt wholly; but they were both so excited, so
carried out of all bounds of reasoned thought, that Violet flew off at a
tangent, and David doubled after her, so delightful was it to hear the
words coming from her lips, to watch her eyes telegraph their secret
meanings.

"He was lame that day," she whispered. "He is not quite free from
stiffness in his walk yet."

"Ah! I hit him then?" And David smiled a different kind of smile to that
which Violet was learning to like.

"But if all that you say is true, the man is a monster," she cried in a
sudden rage.

"I am coming to think that he is not in his right mind," said David, a
surprising charity springing up in him.

"And do you know what they are waiting for now?" she asked vehemently.

"I cannot tell, save that it is for you."

"They want me to sign a marriage settlement. Oh, what a vile world!"

"Not a vile world, dear; nor are its humans altogether bad. Even this
Van Hupfeldt, or Strauss, seems to have loved your sister. And she did
love him. Poor girl! She meant to kill herself on his account, owing to
some secret he revealed to her, something about another woman who had
adopted him as her son. That was not clear in her story. She purposely
kept the definite things out of her diary."

The girl's mind was driven back, with quick rebound, to the memory of
her sister's fate. The mere mention of the name of Strauss touched a
poignant chord. Strauss was a blacker, more Satanic creature in her
imagination than Van Hupfeldt. She wrenched herself free and sprang
toward the door.

"Do you swear that you are telling me the truth?" she cried.

"I swear it."

"Then I go now to meet him, and his lawyer, and my mother. Poor mother!
How she will suffer!"

"Shall I come with you?"

She blushed. She began to remember, more vividly each instant, how long
she had been there in his arms, almost clinging to him.

"Better not," she said. "I shall drive him away, and when mother and I
have cried together we shall see you. Are you staying in the village?"

"Yes. At the inn, the Feathers I think it is called."

"Then I shall send for you to-night, or perhaps to-morrow morning."

"Make it to-night, if possible. Tell your mother I will not add to her
sorrows, and it is best she should know all.

"Good-by, then, Violet."

"Good-by, David."

He held out his hand, so frankly that she placed her white fingers
within the grasp of his strong ones. He was tempted to draw her nearer,
but her color rose again, her eyes dropped, and she tore herself away,
breaking almost into a run.

David, careless whether he was seen or not, walked off towards the
lodge, glancing every now and then over his shoulder to watch Violet
hastening to the house. Once, when crossing the lawn, she looked around
and waved a hand to him. He replied. Then she vanished, and David
walked on, the happiest man in England.

What a pity it is that ignorance should so often be an essential part
of bliss. David should either have gone with Violet, or, failing that,
he should have let Van Hupfeldt believe that he was well on his way to
London. As it was, Van Hupfeldt saw him crossing the park, and such a
man forewarned is forearmed.




CHAPTER XVIII

FROM THE DEPTHS


Violet entered the drawing-room with the air of one who rejoices in
good news. Consider that she had just learned the certainty of her
sister's fair fame, and that, in the same breath, she was freed from Van
Hupfeldt's pestering: was it to be wondered at if, since the dread day
she received a letter from a loved one already dead, she had never once
looked so light-hearted, so full of the wine of life, as when she danced
into the house after her interview with David. And this quickening of
her pulses boded no good to Van Hupfeldt.

A lawyer-like man was arranging parchments on a table--a large, square
table which had evidently been brought from a library for the purpose,
as the day was chill indoors and the drawing-room was cozy with a
log fire. Van Hupfeldt, who had turned from the window before Violet
appeared, affected to be examining the great red seals on the green
ribbons laced into the vellum. That weak heart of his was knocking hard
at his ribs; but his lips were tight set: he was fighting with his back
to the wall, for that interloper, David Harcourt, must have told Violet
everything. So, really, Van Hupfeldt deserved some consideration for
his splendid nonchalance.

Mrs. Mordaunt sat in an easy-chair, stroking her toy Pom. She was
anxious for these preliminaries to be done with. Dale Manor was an
expensive place to keep up; Van Hupfeldt's millions would restore the
Falerian order. So she hailed her daughter pleasantly, after one
critical glance.

"Your little walk did, indeed, bring out the roses, Vi. But you were
rather beyond the ten minutes, and Mr. Sharpe is a business man, dear;
we must not detain him unduly."

Mr. Sharpe coughed with deference. He was open to be detained or
retained for the rest of his life, at the price _per diem_.

"Ah, yes," said Violet, softly, giving Van Hupfeldt a queer look which
he alone understood. "There are things to be signed, something about
some one of the first part and some other person of the second part. Why
do you use such odd terms, Mr. Sharpe?"

"It is the jargon of the law, Miss Mordaunt. Every line adds a mite to
the small incomes of us poor lawyers."

"But who are these people?"

Sharpe looked puzzled. "The first deed recites the marriage contract
between you and Mr. Van Hupfeldt," he began to explain.

But Violet said, and her words had the cold clink of ice in a glass:
"Who is Mr. Van Hupfeldt?"

"Vi!" This from Mrs. Mordaunt.

"Mother, better not interfere. You don't seem to understand, Mr. Sharpe.
You spoke of a Mr. Henry Van Hupfeldt. Who is he?"

The lawyer, smirking at the hidden joke, pointed to the man standing by
the table. "Of course, that is he," he said.

"Oh, no. That is Johann Strauss, the man who married and, it may be
found, killed my sister. You must look further into your papers, Mr.
Sharpe. There is some terrible mistake. Perhaps, if you went on your
knees and prayed to God for guidance in your work, it might be better!"

"Vi!" shrieked her mother again, and the dog in her lap sprang off in
alarm.

The solicitor stood dumfounded, still thinking that some bizarre piece
of humor was toward.

It was Van Hupfeldt who saved Mrs. Mordaunt from imminent hysteria.
"Violet has been talking to that fellow Harcourt, of whom I told you,"
he said coolly. "She is, unfortunately, only too ready to believe him,
and a further wall of distrust is built between us at a most inopportune
moment. I am sorry, Mrs. Mordaunt; it is not my fault. And I would have
saved you from this, Violet. I knew he had left London, so I wired
precautions. But he is a scamp of unparalleled audacity and resource.
Surely you have given him no money?"

Violet, scarce trusting her ears, listened to the calm, smooth
sentences with rising indignation. But she mastered herself sufficiently
to say: "He has told me everything--about the certificates, the diary,
all. The time of lies has passed. Did you, then, kill my sister?"

"Why condense the tale? Of course he assured you that Dibbin, the agent
who let the flat to your sister's husband, will readily identify me as
Strauss; that Sarah Gissing, her servant, will hail me as her former
master?"

"Yes. He did say that."

"Why did he not bring them here?"

"He will bring them to-morrow."

Van Hupfeldt smiled wearily. It seemed as though he could not help
himself. "Forgive me, Violet," he said. "It is I who will bring
them--not Harcourt. He dare not. His bubble bursts the moment you ask
for proof. Indeed, I am beginning to think the man is mad. He must have
conceived an insane affection for you, and you are committing a great
wrong in giving him these clandestine meetings."

This was too much. Violet advanced toward him with eyes aflame. "There
were days in the history of the world when men were struck dead from
Heaven!" she cried.

"That is yet possible," he answered with a strange humility.

"Do you deny all, all?" she almost screamed.

"Not only do I deny, but I affirm, and I have my proofs. I have known
for some time, not very long, it is true, that a man named Johann
Strauss did assume my name when he married your sister. There is nothing
remarkable in that. I am a rich man, known to many. The adoption of a
pseudonym is a common device of actors. There was no real resemblance
between this person Strauss and myself. Of that fact those who were well
acquainted with him--Dibbin and Sarah Gissing--will assure you to-morrow
in this house. I have your sister's marriage certificate, and the birth
registration of her child. I know where the child is. I will bring the
foster-mother to tell you that I was not the man who intrusted the
infant to her care. I have your sister's diary, which this Harcourt did
really secure. I got it from him by a trick, I admit, but only to save
you from becoming his dupe. Now I have placed all my cards on the table,
by the side of your marriage settlement. Can David Harcourt do as much?"

The girl's lips quivered a little. What was she to believe? In whom was
she to trust? She wanted to cry, but she dug her nails into her white
hands; for the encircling clasp of David's arms still tingled on her
shoulders. "Why do you tell me all this only when I force it from you?"
she asked.

"You answer your own question. You force it from me. Exactly I would
prefer that my promised wife should have trust in me. I wished to spare
you certain sordid revelations; but because some American adventurer
happens upon a family tragedy and uses it for his own purposes--whether
base or not I do not stop to inquire--you treat me as the one quite
unworthy of belief. Violet, you hurt me more than you know." The man's
voice broke. Tears stood in his eyes.

The girl was nearly distraught under the stress of the struggle going on
with her. "Henry Van Hupfeldt," she said solemnly, looking him straight
in the face, "may the Lord judge between me and you if I have wronged
you!"

"No, sweet girl, you cannot wrong me; for my conscience is clear, but it
is a hard thing that you should incline rather to this blackmailer than
to me."

"Blackmailer!" The ugly word came from her lips in sheer protest; the
lash of a whip could not have stung as cruelly.

"Yes, most certainly. Did he not demand a hundred pounds from you? Let
me go to him and offer five hundred, and you will never see or hear of
him again."

"Oh, if that is so, there is no faith or honesty in the world."

"Is _he_ your world, then?" demanded Van Hupfeldt, bitterly, and even
Mrs. Mordaunt broke in with her moan:

"Oh, Vi!"

"Let us end this distressing scene," went on Van Hupfeldt with a
repressed indignation that was exceedingly convincing. "Mr. Sharpe, you
see, of course, that Miss Mordaunt cannot be expected to complete these
agreements to-day. Please be here to-morrow at the same time. Before
that hour I shall be back from London with all the witnesses and
documents which shall prove to Miss Mordaunt's complete satisfaction
that she has been grossly misled by a cleverly concocted story. Indeed,
I would be glad if, subsequently, you interviewed this David Harcourt.
It seems to me almost credible now that he himself believed the
extraordinary tale he has made up."

"Whatever you please shall be done, sir," said the lawyer. "And may I
add, for the benefit of these two ladies, that--er--my own knowledge of
your position and--er--career completely excludes such a
preposterous--er--"

"Thank you, Mr. Sharpe," broke in Van Hupfeldt. "You mean that kindly,
I know; but this is a matter between Miss Mordaunt and myself at the
moment."

The solicitor gathered up his papers and withdrew. For a little while
there was no sound in the room except the mother's sobbing and the
daughter's labored breathing; for unhappy Violet was so torn with doubt
that her breast appeared to be unable to harbor its agitation. A few
minutes ago she deemed herself free from a compact hateful to her soul;
yet, here was Van Hupfeldt more convincing, more compelling, than ever.
To her terrified eyes the man assumed the shape and properties of a
python, a monstrous snake from which there was no escape.

And then the sibilant hiss of his voice reached her dulled ears. "Mrs.
Mordaunt, may I appeal to your authority? Surely this Harcourt will not
be admitted here in my absence? I do not ask much, only a respite of
twenty-four hours. Then I return, with all the proofs."

"Why have they been withheld so long?" came Violet's agonized protest.

"I do declare, Vi," broke in her mother, "that you would try the
patience of Job! Have you lost all your fine sense of honor and
fairness? What more can Mr. Van Hupfeldt do to please you? And where do
you meet this young man who so unwarrantably thrusts himself into our
affairs, I should like to know?"

Poor Violet knew that the British matron instinct was fighting against
her now. And there never was a girl more bound up in her family ties
than this one. "Forgive me, mother," she said wearily. "The long
struggle is at an end, now. Let Mr. Van Hupfeldt keep his promise, and
I shall not cause further difficulty."

"Well said!" cried Van Hupfeldt, eagerly. "That is a brave resolve. I
accept it implicitly. Mrs. Mordaunt, I trust you will not be angry with
my Violet while I am away. I know how she has suffered. It is for me to
make amends for all that. And I promise her happiness, a full cup. And,
meanwhile, Violet--"

"I agree. I neither see nor speak to nor send any message to David
Harcourt, as far as lies in my power, until your return to-morrow."

"I kiss my hand to you both!" cried Van Hupfeldt with the gallant air
which came natural to him, and he went out. His preparations were soon
made. A carriage took him to the station; but before he quitted the
manor, he sent for the gamekeeper.

"You were remiss in your duty," he said sternly to the man. "The person
of whom I warned you has been in the park and has spoken to Miss Violet.
Now, listen carefully to what I say. Obtain any help you require and
guard this house and its grounds so that not a bird can fly over it nor
a rabbit scamper among the bushes without your knowledge. Do this until
I return to-morrow and I give you fifty pounds, but fail in the least
particular and you will be dismissed instantly." He was gone, with a
rush of whipped horses.

Velveteens took thought. "Twiced in one day!" he growled. "A licking or
the sack, an' fifty quid or the sack--which is it to be?"

It might be one, or all, or none. Of such firsts, seconds, and thirds is
the acrostic of life made up. But the promise of money stirred the man's
dull wits. No watch-dog could have been more faithful to his trust, and,
by lavish offers of silver and beer--deferred luxuries, of course--he
secured the aid of certain local poachers, his lasting enemies, but his
friends for the night. In a word, if David had crept again into the
park, he would probably have been beaten to a jelly.

But David attempted nothing of the sort. He was loyal to his pact with
Violet, never dreaming of the ordeal to which the girl had submitted.
Nevertheless, having no sort of occupation, he kept his eyes and ears
open. He saw Sharpe drive through the village, and was told that the
lawyer was head of a trusted firm in the county town. He saw Van
Hupfeldt pass toward the station, and the ostler learned from a railway
porter that the "gentleman from the manor" had gone to "Lunnon."

This gave David cause to think, seeing that there was no news from
Violet. But he waited, with much hope and some spasms of miserableness,
through the long dull evening; heard nothing from her; went to bed;
tossed restlessly until the sun rose; met the village postman at the
door of the inn; and still received no tidings. He breakfasted, hung
about, watched the road, sauntered as far as the lodge, nodded affably
to velveteens behind the bars, and caught no glimpse of Violet. Then he
determined to break the spell of silence. He returned to the inn and
wrote a letter, which he intrusted to His Majesty's Postmaster-General
for express delivery.

Sure enough, the postmistress's young sister refused to be turned back
by the Cerberus at the gate, nor would she tell her business. The man
knew her, suspected her errand, but dared not interfere, having a
wholesome regard for the law; so all he could do was to note her coming
and going, and report to his briber, for he was Mrs. Mordaunt's servant.

And this is what David wrote:

     MY DEAR ONE--Can it be that some newly conceived lie has kept
     you from sending for me? I only ask your full inquiry: I stand
     or fall by that. But spare me this silence; for I am eating my
     heart out.

               Yours,
                    DAVID.

The messenger tripped back. "No answer, sir," she said, and the words
smote David such a blow that his cheek blanched, while the girl
wondered.

"To whom did you hand my note?" he managed to ask.

"To Miss Violet, sir."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Gave it to her myself."

"And she read it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did she say anything?"

"Just that, sir; no answer."

Then David, in a mighty wrath and fume, dashed off another note.

     Very well, be it so. I return to London. God help you if you
     marry that man! You will sink to the pit, and the angels alone
     will be able to lift you therefrom. Let there be no error this
     time. I leave for London at one fifteen, P.M. If you want me
     you must either detain me now or come to me in London.

Back went the postmistress's sister, marveling at the strangeness of
these one-sided missives between the young woman of the manor and a
handsome young man at the Feathers. Being seventeen, she took David's
side as against Violet. So she added, on her own account, when she saw
the white-faced aristocrat in the house, the explanatory statement that
"the young gentleman seemed to be very much upset at receiving no
reply."

Poor Violet, in whom loyalty was hereditary, could not break her word.
But she did say: "I have no message to-day; but I know Mr. Harcourt's
address."

That was the only crumb of comfort vouchsafed to David. Away he went at
quarter-past one, nor did the volcano in him show any sign of subsidence
when he reached the gloom and shadows of No. 7 Eddystone Mansions.

For a little drop of acutest poison had been poured into his ear by the
gossip of the village. In the bar overnight he heard yokels talking of
the need of money at the big house, how Van Hupfeldt's wealth would make
the flowers grow again in Rigsworth. He smiled at the conceit then; now
he knew that deadly nightshade was sown in the garden of his hopes, for
he imagined that money had proved more potent than love.

It was a remarkable thing that of all the pictures in the flat he had
left untouched the portrait in chalk which hung over the dining-room
fireplace. It savored too much of sacrilege to disturb that ethereal
face; but David was in far too savage a mood to check at sentiment
during those dark hours. He surveyed the portrait almost vindictively,
though had he been less bitter he might have seen a reassuring smile in
the parted lips. So it came to pass that, after eating some dry bread,
which was the only food he found in the larder, he lit a pipe, looked
at the picture again, and yielded to the impulse to examine it.

Strong as were his nerves, he had to force himself to apply a knife to
its brown-papered back. And then, with a queer vindictive howl of
triumph, he drew forth a curiously insipid portrait of Van Hupfeldt,
inscribed "To Gwen," with a date, and, folded behind it, a terrible
little note, merely dated "Paris; Tuesday," which read:

     MY POOR GIRL--At last, then, you force the miserable truth from
     me. Mrs. Strauss is my wife. She is twice my age. She forced me
     to marry her ten years ago for her money. She is, indeed,
     dying, and then I can fly to you. For the sake of our boy,
     forgive me.

               HARRY.

"Ah!" There was something sadly animal in David's triumph. He felt like
a dog which has seized the rat after which it has been straining, and,
in a minute or two, he had the grace to be ashamed of himself. Then he
thought of Violet, and he broke down, crying like a child. Those tears
were good for him; they brought him back to sanity and garnished the
dark places of his heart.

But what to do? That was more than ever the problem. He bolted and
barred his door that night, and the photograph and letter lay beside
his revolver under his pillow. Not forty Van Hupfeldts nor a legion
of ghosts should reave him of those telling pieces of evidence!




CHAPTER XIX

VIOLET DECIDES


Violet, waked from broken rest by the cooing of doves, had rue in her
soul. She met her mother at breakfast, and the good woman, thinking her
daughter not altogether in her right senses, was disposed to be somewhat
snappish. So the girl was driven back on her sad imaginings, nor were
they dissipated by David's two little notes. When she sent the messenger
away the second time she was in a strange state of calm. Despair had
numbed her: she thought persistently of her sister, and wondered if the
only true rest was to be found in that dark nook of the grave.

She saw a carriage depart for the railway station to bring Van Hupfeldt.
In half an hour its wheels grated on the gravel of the drive, and a
servant came to her room to summon her to the fateful conclave. She was
on her knees, in dry-eyed prayer, and the frightened maid, who loved
Miss Violet, had a little catch in her voice as she said:

"You are wanted in the drawing-room, miss, and please, miss, I do hope
you won't take on so. Everybody says you ought to be happy; but
I"--sniff--"I know yer ain't, miss."

Violet rose and kissed the girl. It was good to have such honest
sympathy.

In the big, cheerful salon beneath she found her mother, stiff and
self-conscious, wondering what people would think if Violet persisted in
her folly; Van Hupfeldt, collected and deferential, wearing a buttonhole
of violets (of all flowers in creation!), and, seated gingerly on the
edge of a chair, a quietly dressed young woman with "domestic servant"
writ large upon her. But Dibbin, for whom Violet's eyes searched
dreamily, was not there.

Van Hupfeldt, who seemed to have an uncanny trick of reading her
thoughts when they were hostile, explained instantly: "Not all my
persuasions could bring Mr. Dibbin from his office to-day. He had some
business engagement which was imperative, he said. But I have done the
next best thing. Here is a letter from him. He will substantiate its
statements in person some later day."

He held out a letter. The girl took it mechanically. The envelope bore
her name, typed. She broke the seal and began to read; but her mother,
resolved to have "no nonsense this time," interrupted, with an unusual
sharpness:

"Aloud, please!"

So Violet read:

     DEAR MISS MORDAUNT:--For some reason, not explained to me, a
     gentleman named Van Hupfeldt has asked me to assure you that he
     is not Johann Strauss, who rented the flat No. 7, Eddystone
     Mansions, some two years since. Of course, I do that readily.
     I much regret that I cannot travel to Rigsworth with Mr. Van
     Hupfeldt to-day; but I do not suppose that the odd request he
     makes is really so urgent as he would have me believe. Please
     convey my respectful regards to Mrs. Mordaunt.

               Yours faithfully,
                    JOHN DIBBIN.

Excepting the signature, the letter was typewritten. Violet knew the
old agent's scrawling handwriting very well. He had never sent her a
typewritten letter before. She laid the document on the table which
had borne the parchments of yesterday.

"Well? Is that satisfactory?" said Van Hupfeldt.

"Quite conclusive," murmured Mrs. Mordaunt.

"Who is this?" asked Violet, turning toward the nervous young person on
the edge of a chair.

"That is Sarah Gissing, poor Gwen's maid."

It was not Sarah Gissing; but Jenny, loaned by Miss Ermyn L'Estrange for
the day at a stiff figure paid to both--Jenny, schooled for her part and
glib enough at it, though her Cockney pertness was momentarily awed by
the old-world grandeur of Dale Manor and its two "real" ladies.

So Van Hupfeldt was playing with loaded dice; he had discarded the
dangerous notion of trying to buy Dibbin for the simpler expedient of
a forged letter. The marriage ceremony was now the great coup; let
that be an irrevocable fact and he believed he would be able to manage
everything.

"Ah!" said Violet, with a pathos that might have touched even a
calloused heart, "you are Sarah Gissing. You knew my dear sister?
You saw her in her last hours? You heard her last words?"

"Yes, miss," sniveled Jenny, "an' this gentleman ain't Mr. Strauss,
though he do resemble him a bit."

Now, this assurance came too quick on the heels of a natural question.
It had not been asked for as yet. Violet was ready to bare her heart
to this common-looking girl for sake of the knowledge that she was
Gwendoline's only confidante. But the exceeding promptitude of Jenny's
testimony forced back the rush of sentiment. Violet even recoiled a
little. Could it be possible that her sweet and gracious sister, the
laughing sprite of bygone days, had been driven to make something of a
friend of this coarse, small-faced, mean-eyed wench? How pitiful, how
sordid, was each fresh chapter of Gwen's hidden life!

Van Hupfeldt saw that a check had occurred, though his seething brain,
intent only on securing an unalterable verdict, was unable to appreciate
the delicate poise of Violet's emotions. "Question her," he said gently.
"She will tell you all about her mistress, to whom she was very greatly
attached. Were you not, Sarah?"

"Oh, yes, sir. She were such a lovely lady, and so nice an' kind in her
ways, that nobody could help lovin' her."

That was better. Violet thawed again. "I hardly know what to ask you,"
she said wistfully. "Did she ever speak of us, of my mother and me?"

"She would talk about you for hours, miss. Many a time I could hardly
get on with my work, she was so anxious to have some one to gossip with.
Bless your 'eart, miss, I know your name as well as my own."

Strange, most unutterably strange, thought Violet; but she said, with a
sad smile: "You were much favored, Sarah. I would have given all I have
in the world to have changed places with you. Tell me, was this
man--this Mr. Strauss--kind to her?"

"He must have been, miss. He--"

"Must have been? But you saw and heard!"

Jenny kept her head, though she flushed a little. "People often do put
on a different way before servants, miss, to what they have in private.
Not that I have reason to think anyways bad of Mr. Strauss. He was a
very generous sort of gentleman, always free with his money. What I
meant was that Miss--er--Miss Gwendoline used to speak of him as a
lovin' husband."

Jenny caught her breath a trifle. She did not dare to look at Van
Hupfeldt, as he had specially warned her against doing so. Like most
of her class, she was prepared now to cover any mistake by excessive
volubility.

"Did you address her as 'Miss Gwendoline,' then?"

"Yes, miss. That is the way on the stage, you know."

"But this was not on the stage."

"Quite right, miss, only ladies in the profession mostly uses their
stage names in private."

"My sister never appeared on any stage, to my knowledge."

Jenny became a little defiant. "Of course, miss," she answered tartly,
"I didn't know much about my missus's comin's and goin's, but she used
to go regular to rehearsal. The call was for eleven and two most days."

Violet found herself in a new world. What could have come to Gwendoline
that she should have quitted her home and gone away among these strange
people? And what had she said that this servant-girl should suddenly
show the shrew in her?

She glanced toward her mother, who, indeed, was as greatly perturbed as
herself. The old lady could scarce comprehend that the talk was of her
darling Gwendoline. Then Van Hupfeldt, thinking to lead Violet's ideas
into a fresh channel, broke in:

"I was sure that these things would distress you," he said in the low
voice of sympathy. "Perhaps you would prefer to send Sarah to the
housekeeper's room while you look at the documents I have brought."

Violet, in whose brain a hundred wild questions as to her sister's life
were jostling, suddenly faced Jenny again. "What was my sister's baby
called?" she asked.

"Henry, miss, after its father."

"But why 'Henry,' since the father's name was Johann?"

"That is a puzzle, miss. I'm only tellin' you what I know."

"And what became of the child? Why was it spirited away from its mother?
or was it not taken away until after her death?"

Jenny had been told to be close as an oyster on this matter. "I don't
know why the baby was sent out to nurse, miss," she said. "I can only
tell you it was never in the flat."

Violet passed a hand across her eyes as though to clear a bewildered
brain. This domestic lived in a small flat with her sister, who
"gossiped" for "hours" with her, yet the girl knew little about a
child which Gwen must have idolized.

"Then you never saw the baby?" she asked.

"No, miss; that is, once, I think," for Jenny did now venture to look at
Van Hupfeldt, and his slight nod came at the instant of her denial. He
thought the infant a safe topic, in regard to its appearance, and the
mother's love of it.

Mrs. Mordaunt, who had been listening intently enough, caught Jenny's
hesitation. "It is odd," she said, "that you should have forgotten, or
be uncertain of, such a definite fact as seeing my daughter's child."

A maid entered with a telegram which she handed to Violet. In a quiet
country mansion the advent of a telegram is a rare event. People in
rural England regard this curt manner of communication as reserved only
for important items. Mrs. Mordaunt was a little alarmed. Her mind
quickly reviewed all her relatives' ailments.

"What is it, Vi?" she asked anxiously, while Van Hupfeldt wondered if
any unoccupied fiend had tempted David Harcourt to interfere at this
critical moment.

Violet opened the buff envelope and read the message slowly. It was a
perfectly marvelous thing that she retained her self-control, for the
telegram was from Dibbin at Dundee.

     Have just concluded sale, after three days' private negotiation
     here. Your moiety five hundred pounds. Letter follows.

It referred to a long-deferred bequest from a cousin, and was a simple
matter enough. But Dibbin realizing an estate in the north of Scotland
and Dibbin writing typewritten testimonials of Van Hupfeldt in London on
one and the same day was a Mahatma performance, a case of psychic
projection which did not enter into the ordinary scheme of things.

Nevertheless, Violet, save for one flash of intensest surprise in
those deep eyes of hers, maintained her self-control. She had been so
tried already that her mind could withstand any shock. "It is nothing,
mother--merely a reference to the Auchlachan affair," she said, crushing
the telegram into a little ball in her hand.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Mordaunt, greatly relieved. "I dreamed of Aunt Jane last
night."

"Well, now," said Van Hupfeldt, after a bound or two of his heart, "what
do you say? Mr. Sharpe will be here soon."

"You have the certificates and the diary?" said Violet.

"The certificates, yes; not the diary. On calm thought, I have decided
irrevocably that the diary shall not be placed in your hands until the
lapse of our six months' agreement. I have yielded every other point;
there I am rigid."

"Do you assign any reason?"

"Yes, my right as your affianced husband to preserve you from the grief
and morbidness of reading a record of suffering. I would not have you a
weeping bride. When we return from our wedding-tour I shall hand you the
diary, no sooner."

"The certificates, then," said Violet, composedly.

Van Hupfeldt took two papers from a pocket-book. One recorded the
marriage of Henry Van Hupfeldt to Gwendoline Mordaunt at the office of
the Brighton registrar. The other was the certificate of the birth of
the child in the same town a year later.

It was a fine piece of daring for the man to produce these documents.
His own name; his age, thirty eight; his occupation, gentleman, were set
forth on the long narrow strip, and the address was given as No. 7,
Eddystone Mansions, London, W. Even Mrs. Mordaunt was startled when she
glanced over her daughter's shoulder at the papers.

Suddenly Violet thought she saw a ray of light. "Was this man a brother,
some near relative, of yours?" she asked.

"No, no relation." Van Hupfeldt was taken aback, and the negative flew
out before he realized that this might have been a good card to play.
But no; Violet would never have married him then.

"What a mystery! To think that he should adopt your name, be of your
apparent age, and yet that you should come here to Rigsworth and make
our acquaintance!"

"No mystery at all. You drag everything from me like a skilled lawyer.
Strauss did more than borrow my name; he forged it. There was a police
inquiry. I was called into it. My curiosity was aroused. I learned
something of your sister's story, and I took steps to meet you."

"Introduced by Lord Vanstone!" murmured Mrs. Mordaunt.

"Yes, some one. I quickly forgot all else when I was granted the
privilege of your friendship."

And he took Violet's hand and kissed it, with a delicate grace that was
courtly in him.

Sharpe was announced. Mrs. Mordaunt sent Jenny away in a maid's escort,
and Violet knew that her hour of final yielding was near.

She still held the certificates. "Am I to keep these?" she asked, while
her mouth quivered slightly. She was thinking, thinking, all the time,
of David and Dibbin and of the queer collapse of Gwendoline which made
that little Cockney woman her companion. But what plea could she urge
now? She could only ask for a few days' respite, just to clear away some
lingering doubts, and then--But, for mother's sake, no protests now, nor
tears, nor questions.

Sharpe's ferret eyes took in the altered situation. Yesterday's clouds
had passed. A glance from Van Hupfeldt brought him to business. There
was a marriage settlement of five thousand pounds _per annum_, to be
increased to twice the amount in the event of widowhood--and Sharpe
explained the legal proviso that Violet was to be free to marry again,
if so minded, without forfeiting any portion of this magnificent yearly
revenue.

"Most generous!" Mrs. Mordaunt could not help saying, and even the girl
herself, miserable and drooping as a caged thrush, knew that Van
Hupfeldt was showing himself a princely suitor.

"And now follows a somewhat unusual document," said Sharpe in his brisk
legal way. "Mr. Van Hupfeldt has instructed me to prepare a will,
leaving all his real and personal estate to Miss Violet Mordaunt, he
being confident that she will faithfully carry out certain instructions
of his own. Of course, this instrument will have a very brief life.
Marriage, I may explain, Miss Mordaunt, invalidates all wills previously
executed by either of the parties. Hence, it is intended only to cover
the interregnum, so to speak, between to-day's bachelordom and the
marriage ceremony of--er--"

"Of this day week?" asked Van Hupfeldt, eagerly.

"Be it so," said Violet, for she had a plan in her mind now, and
whatever happened, a week's grace was sufficient.

"Mrs. Mordaunt and I are appointed trustees _pro tem_ for the purposes
of the marriage settlement," went on Sharpe. "Mr. Van Hupfeldt will, of
course, execute a fresh will after marriage. All we need now are two
witnesses for various signatures. My clerk, who is waiting in the hall,
will serve as one."

"The girl, Sarah Gissing, who was here just now, might be called in,"
said Mrs. Mordaunt.

"No, no!" cried Van Hupfeldt. "She is a stranger. After to-day she
vanishes from our lives. Please summon one of your own servants--the
housekeeper, or a footman."

So Violet and Van Hupfeldt and Mrs. Mordaunt and the witnesses signed
their names on various parchments at places where the lawyer had marked
little crosses in pencil.

Violet, as in a dream, saw the name "Henry Van Hupfeldt" above that of
"Violet Mordaunt," just as it appeared over "Gwendoline Mordaunt" in
the marriage certificate. In her eyes, the tiny crosses made the great
squares of vellum look like the chart of a cemetery. Yet there was
something singing sweetly in her ears: "You still have a week of
liberty. Use your time well. Not all the law in the land can force you
to the altar unless you wish it." And this lullaby was soothing.

Soon the solicitor took off himself and his duplicates, for he handed
certain originals to Violet, advising her to intrust them to the care of
a bank or her mother's legal advisers. Van Hupfeldt, with a creditable
tact, set himself to entertain the two ladies, and when Violet wished to
interview "Sarah Gissing" again, he explained that the girl had been
sent back to London by his orders.

"No more tears," he said earnestly; "no more doubtings and wonderings.
When we return from a tour in the States you shall meet her again and
satisfy all your cravings."

Evidently his design was to remain at Dale Manor until they were
quietly married, and, meanwhile, surround the place with every possible
protection. It came, therefore, as a dreadful shock to him when Violet
disappeared for a whole hour after breakfast next morning, and then Mrs.
Mordaunt, red-eyed and incoherent, rushed to find him with a note which
had just reached her from the station.

It read:

     DEAR MOTHER--I suppose I have freedom of action for two days
     out of my seven. I wish to make certain inquiries; so I am
     going away until to-morrow night, or, possibly, the next
     morning. I think Mr. Van Hupfeldt will say this is fair, and,
     in justice to him, I wish to state that I shall not see Mr.
     David Harcourt by design. Should I see him by chance I shall
     refuse to speak to him.

               Your loving daughter,
                    VIOLET.

"It is ended! I have done with her! She has played me false!" screamed
the man when he understood that Violet had really quitted Rigsworth. His
paroxysm of rage was so fierce that Mrs. Mordaunt was terrified that he
would die on the spot; but his passion ended in an equally vehement
declaration of sorrow and affection. He would follow her and bring her
back. Mrs. Mordaunt must come with him instantly. The girl must be saved
from herself. Surely they would find her, even in London, whither he was
certain she had gone, for she would only go to her accustomed haunts.

He infected the grief-stricken mother with some of his own frenzy. She
promised to be at the station in time for the next train; he tore off
to the telegraph office, where he wrote messages in a white fever of
action. First, he bade his factotum Neil meet the train from Rigsworth
in which Violet traveled, and ascertain her movements, if possible.

The second was to Dibbin:

     A client has recommended you to me. Leave by earliest train for
     Portsmouth and call at offices of (a named firm of solicitors)
     for instructions. I forward herewith fifty pounds for
     preliminary expenses.

               HENRY VAN HUPFELDT.

The fifty pounds which he thus telegraphed to Dibbin were notes which he
had brought for the gamekeeper; so this payment was deferred, at the
least.

Then he sent word to the Portsmouth firm that Dibbin was to be
dispatched on a secret estate-hunting quest in Devonshire, at any terms
he chose to demand. His next telegram was to Mrs. Carter at Pangley:

     Take baby at once by train to Station Hotel, New-street,
     Birmingham. Leave word with neighbors and at station to say
     where you have gone. I will write you at Birmingham and send
     money to-night.

Finally to David he wired:

     I now know everything. Mrs. Carter is about to take my sister's
     child away from Pangley. Please go there at once, find out
     where she has gone, and follow her. Wire me to-morrow, or next
     day, what you have discovered. Forgive yesterday's silence; it
     was unavoidable.

               VIOLET.

That was all he could devise in the present chaos of his mind. But it
would serve, he thought, to give a few hours' breathing-space. He was
hard pressed, but far from beaten yet. And now that Violet and her
mother were away from Dale Manor, he would take care that they did not
return to the house until Violet was his wife. Perhaps even in this
desperate hour things had happened for the best.




CHAPTER XX

DAVID HAS ONE VISITOR, AND EXPECTS OTHERS


David had to rise pretty early to admit his charwoman. Behind her,
in the outer lobby, he saw the scared face of the hall-porter, who
remembered that a certain loud knocking and difficulty of gaining
access to that flat on one other occasion had been the prelude to a
tragic discovery, though he, not being in the building at the time,
had heard of the affair only from his mates.

David smiled reassurance at him, and went back to his bed-room to
dress. He placed the portrait and the letter in an inner pocket of his
waistcoat provided for paper money, and, the hour being in advance of
breakfast-time, went out for a stroll.

Regent's Park was delightful that morning. Not spring, but summer, was
in the air. Nature, to compel man to admire her dainty contrivances, was
shutting in the vistas. Already trees and hedge-rows flung their leafy
screens across the landscape. So David wandered on, promising himself
many such mornings with Violet; for it passed his wit to see how Van
Hupfeldt could wriggle out of the testimony of his own picture and his
own handwriting.

Hence, instead of being earlier he was somewhat later than usual in
sitting down to breakfast, and he was a surprised young man when, his
charwoman having gone to answer a ring at the door, the announcement
came of:

"A lady to see you, sir."

"A lady!" he gasped. "Who is she?" and he hoped wildly that it might be
Violet.

"You know her well enough, old boy," came the high-pitched voice of Miss
Ermyn L'Estrange, who now appeared in the dining-room, a pink-faced
vision in a flower-garden hat and muslins. "Poof!" she cried. "I have
not been out for many a day before the streets were aired. Say, young
party, that bacon and egg has a more gratifying scent than violets. I
have come all the way from Chelsea on one cup of tea."

The charwoman, eying the visitor askance, admitted that more supplies
could be arranged.

"Hurry up, then, fairy," said Miss L'Estrange. "And don't look so
shocked. Your master here is the very goodest young man in London."

David said that even the just man fell seven times a day; but, anyhow,
he was delighted to see her.

"You look it," was the dry response. "I never knew anybody who threw
their heart into their eyes as you do. You will never get on in London
if you don't learn to lie better. When you say that sort of thing you
should gush a little and leer--at any rate, when you are talking to a
woman."

"But I mean it," he vowed. "You can't tell how nice it is to have some
frills on the other side of the table. That hat, now, is a picture."

"The hair is a bad color to suit, you know."

"Ah, no, it has the gold of the sun in it. Perhaps I may be phrasing
the words awkwardly, but you look ten years younger this morning, Miss
L'Estrange."

She turned her eyes to the ceiling. "Ye gods!" she cried, "if only I had
those ten back again!" Then she gave David a coy glance. "I don't mind
betting you half a quid," she said, "that you are only pleased to see me
here because I bring to your mind the possibility of another girl being
your vis-a-vis at breakfast."

"Now you would make me dumb when I am most anxious to talk."

"Oh, you candid wretch! Why did I come here? Don't you believe that
there are twenty men in London who would give quite a lot if I honored
them by this morning call?"

"I do believe it," said David, gravely, "and that is just why you are
here, and not with one of the twenty. You are a far more upright little
lady than you profess to be, Miss L'Estrange."

She actually blushed, for, like most women who are compelled to make
up professionally, never an atom of grease or rouge was on her face at
other times. "David," she said, "you are a nice boy. I wish you were
my brother."

"You would be fine and dandy as a sister."

"Well, let's be friends. And the first sign of friendship is a common
alliance. I've taken your side against Strauss."

"What of him?" demanded David, warily; for Miss Ermyn was a slippery
customer, he fancied.

"Now, no fencing, or the alliance is off. You were down at Rigsworth
yesterday, remember, and you came back in a mighty temper. Not even
your pretty Violet was all perfection last evening, was she?"

"Things did go wrong, I admit," said he, marveling at this attack.

"Well, I am not here to pump you, or else I would surprise you a bit
more. No, David, I'm here just because I'm a woman, and as full of
mischief as an egg is full of meat; so that I can't help interfering in
a love affair, though it isn't my own. Did you know that Strauss brought
Jenny to Rigsworth yesterday?"

"Jenny? Why Jenny?"

"That is what I wanted to know. And she wouldn't tell me, the cat, until
I got my Irish up and offered to drag her over the furniture by the hair
of her head. And it was no use her lying to me, either. Every time she
tried to think of a plausible tale I told her it would hurt to cross the
chiffonier head first. At last she owned up, and then I opened a small
bottle--she wanted it, I assure you--and I got the whole story while we
finished it."

"But, for goodness' sake--"

"Whoa, my boy! Don't rush your fences. I'll tell you everything, so keep
calm. First, the night before last, Strauss comes to me--"

"One moment," broke in David. "Is this Strauss?" and he handed her the
portrait.

She looked at it and laughed. "Why, of course it is!" she said. "Fancy
you keeping his picture over your heart! Now, if it had been Violet, or
me--"

"Sorry to have interrupted you," he said.

"Funny idea! Anyhow, Strauss turned up the night before last and wanted
to borrow Jenny for the whole of next day. It was beastly awkward, as
she was helping me to re-hem this dress and put new sleeves in the
bodice; but he badgered me so that I could hardly refuse," and she
thought for an instant of certain notes crumpled up in the gold purse
which was slung from her neck; "so I packed Jenny off about eight
o'clock next morning--yesterday, that is. I was in a temper all day, and
tore two flounces out of my frock, and scraped my shin on the step of a
hansom; so when the minx came smirking home about midnight, to find me
making my own fire, I let her have it, I can tell you. But it fairly
gave me the needle when she wouldn't say what Strauss wanted her for,
and then the row sprang up. Guess you want to smoke, eh? I would like a
cigarette myself."

David was most docile outwardly when all of a boil within. He awaited
her pleasure, saw her seated in a comfortable chair, joined in her own
admiration of a pair of really pretty feet, and lit a pipe. Then she
continued:

"There was poisonous trouble for about five minutes. I might have let
her off if she hadn't said things. Then I frightened her. I believe I
did yank her hat off. At last, she confessed that Strauss told her that
his name now was Van Hupfeldt, and he wanted her to go down to Rigsworth
to be introduced to two ladies as Sarah Gissing, Gwen Barnes's maid."

"What?" yelled David, springing to his feet.

"Oh, chuck it!" said Miss L'Estrange in a voice of deep disgust. "You
nearly made me swallow my cigarette."

"But the man is a devil."

"Sit down, boy, sit down. You men are all six of one and half a dozen of
the other where a woman is concerned. Poor things! I wonder how any of
us escape you at all. Still, Strauss is pretty artful, I admit. You see,
Jenny, having been in service here, could lie so smoothly about Gwen
Barnes that it would be hard to find her out."

"Did she do this?" asked David in a fierce excitement.

Miss L'Estrange laughed again as she selected a fresh cigarette to
replace the spoiled one.

"Did the cat steal cream? Fancy Jenny being offered twenty pounds for a
day's prevarication and refusing it! Why, that girl lies for practise."

"Oh, please go on!" he groaned.

"Queer game, isn't it? I often think the ha'penny papers don't get hold
of half the good things that are going. Well, Jenny, according to her
own version, spoofed Mrs. Mordaunt and your Violet in great shape. What
is more, Strauss and a lawyer man wheedled them into signing all sorts
of papers, including a marriage settlement. Will you believe it? The
Dutchman had the cheek to give your Violet the certificates which Jenny
sold to him."

David said something under his breath.

"Yes," said Miss L'Estrange, "he deserves it. I can't abide a man who
goes in for deceiving a poor girl. So, at my own loss, mind you, I
determined to come here this morning and give you a friendly tip."

"Heaven knows I shall endeavor to repay you!" sighed David, in a perfect
heat now to be out and doing, doing he knew not what.

"Is she very beautiful, your Violet?" asked his visitor, turning on him
with one of her bird-like movements of the head.

"That is her sister," said David, flinging a hand toward the portrait.

"Ah, I knew Gwen Barnes. Saw her in the theater, you know. A nice girl,
but nothing to rave about. Rather of the clinging sort. You men prefer
that type I do believe. And now that you have heard my yarn, you want me
to go, eh?"

"No, no. No hurry at all."

"You dear David! Mouth all 'No,' eyes all 'Yes.' That's it. Treat me
like an old shoe. Bless you! we women worship that sort of thing, until,
all at once, we blaze up. Well, you will give Strauss a drubbing one
of these days, and I shan't be sorry. I hate pretty men. They are all
affectation, and waxy like a barber's doll. Well, ta-ta! You're going to
have a nice, pleasant day, I can see. But, fair play, mind. No telling
tales about your little Ermyn. I have done more for you to-day than I
would do for any other man in creation. And some day you must bring your
Violet to tea; I promise to be good and talk nice. There, now; ain't I
a wonder?"

And she was gone, in a whirl of flounces and high heels, the last he
heard of her when she declined to let him come to the door "with that
glare" in his eye being her friendly hail to the lift-man: "Hello,
Jimmie! Like old times to see you again. How's the wife and the
kiddies?"

Left to his own devices, David was at his wits' end to know how to act
for the best. At last he wrote a telegram to Violet:

     The girl you met yesterday as Sarah Gissing was not your
     sister's maid, but another woman masquerading in her stead. I
     implore you and your mother to come to London and meet me in
     Mr. Dibbin's office. He knows the real Sarah Gissing, and will
     produce her.

This was definite enough, and he thought the introduction of Dibbin's
name would be helpful with Mrs. Mordaunt. Then he rushed off to see
Dibbin himself, but learned from a clerk that the agent would not
arrive from Scotland until six-thirty P.M., "which is a pity," said the
clerk, ruefully, "because a first-rate commission has just come in for
him by wire."

"Some one in a hurry?" said Harcourt, speaking rather to cloak his own
disappointment than out of any commiseration for Dibbin's loss.

"I should think so, indeed. Fifty golden sovereigns sent by telegraph,
just to get him quick to Portsmouth."

David heard, and wondered. He made a chance shot. "I expect that is my
friend, Van Hupfeldt," he said.

"The very man!" gasped the clerk.

"Oh, there is no harm done. Mr. Dibbin comes to King's Cross, I
suppose?"

"Yes. I shall be there to meet him."

Certainly things were lively at Rigsworth. David had a serious notion
of going there by the next train. But he returned to Eddystone Mansions,
in case there might be an answer from Violet. Sure enough, there he
found the telegram sent in her name by Van Hupfeldt. The time showed
that it was despatched about the same hour as his own. At first, his
heart danced with the joy of knowing that she still trusted him. And
how truly wonderful that she mentioned Pangley, a town he had not named
to her; there must, indeed, have been a tremendous eruption at Dale
Manor. Yet it was too bad that he should be forced to leave London and
go in chase of Mrs. Carter and the baby. Why, he would be utterly cut
off from active communication with her for hours, and it was so vitally
important that they should meet. Of course, he would obey, but first he
would await the chance of a reply to his message. So he telegraphed
again:

     Will go to Pangley. Tell me when I can see you.

He was his own telegraph messenger. While he was out another buff
envelope found its way to his table. Here was the confusion of a fog,
for this screed ran:

     Miss Violet Mordaunt traveled to London this morning by the
     nine-eleven train. This is right.

               FRIEND.

There was no name; but the post-office said the information came from
Rigsworth, and the post-office indulges in cold official accuracy.
Somehow, this word from a friend did strike him as friendly. It made him
read again, and ponder weightily, the longer statement signed "Violet."

He could not tell, oh, sympathetic little sister of the Rigsworth
postmistress, that you wheedled the grocer's assistant into writing that
most important telegram. It was a piece of utmost daring on the part of
a village maid, and perhaps it might be twisted into an infringement of
the "Official Secrets Act," or some such terrifying ordinance; but your
tender little heart had gone out to the young man who got "no answer"
from the lady of the manor, and you knew quite well that Violet had
never sent him to Pangley to hunt for a missing baby.

Anyhow, David was glowering at both flimsy slips of paper, when a letter
reached him. It was marked "Express Delivery," and had been handed in at
Euston Station soon after twelve o'clock.

This time there could be no doubt whatever that Violet was the writer.
Here was the identical handwriting of the first genuine note he had
received from her. And there was Violet herself in the phrasing of it,
though she was brief and reserved. She wrote:

     DEAR DAVID--I am in London for the purpose of making certain
     inquiries. I must not see you if I can help it. I must be
     quite, quite alone and unaided. Please pardon my seeming want
     of confidence. In this matter I am trusting to God's help and
     my own endeavors. But I want you to oblige me by being away
     from your flat to-night between midnight and two A.M. That is
     all. Perhaps I may be able to explain everything later.

               Your sincere well-wisher,
                    VIOLET MORDAUNT.

Then David ran like a beagle to Euston Station; but Violet had been
gone from there nearly an hour, because he found on inquiry that the
nine-eleven train from Rigsworth had arrived at noon. Yet he could not
be content unless he careered about London looking for her, first at
Porchester Gardens, then at Dibbin's office, at which he arrived exactly
five minutes before she did, and he must have driven along Piccadilly
while she was turning the corner from Regent's. London is the biggest
bundle of hay when you want to find anybody.

Amidst the maelstrom of his doubts and fears one fact stood out so
clearly that he could not fail to recognize it. Not Violet alone, but
some other hidden personality, most earnestly desired his absence from
the flat that night. In a word, Van Hupfeldt, who knew of the photograph
and the letter being hidden there, had the strongest possible reason for
seeking an opportunity to make an absolutely unhindered search of every
remaining nook and crevice. But how was Violet's anxiety on this head to
be explained? Was she, too, wishful to carry out a scrutiny of pictures,
cupboards, and ornaments on her own account?

Then, with a sort of intuition, David felt that it was she who had
already visited her sister's latest abode at such uncanny hours of gloom
and mystery that her presence had given rise to the ghost legend. And
with the consciousness that this was so came a hot flush of shame and
remorse that he had so vilified Violet in his thoughts on the night of
his long run from Chalfont. It was she whom he had seen standing at the
end of the corridor on the first night of his ever-memorable tenancy
of this sorrow-laden abode, and, no doubt, her earlier efforts at
elucidating the dim tragedy which cloaked her sister's death had led
to the eery experiences of Miss L'Estrange and Jenny.

Well, thank goodness! he held nearly all the threads of this dark
business in his hands now, and it would go hard with Van Hupfeldt if he
crossed his path that night. For David resolved, with a smile which had
in it a mixture of grimness and tenderness, that he would obey the
letter of Violet's request while decidedly disobeying its spirit. She
wished him to be "away from the flat between midnight and two A.M."
Certainly he would be away; but not far away--near enough, indeed, to
know who went into it and who came out, and some part of their business
there if he saw fit. Violet, of course, might come and go as she
pleased; not so Van Hupfeldt or any of his myrmidons.

Thereupon, determined to oppose guile to guile, he dismissed his
charwoman long before the usual time, and called the friendly
hall-porter into consultation.

"Jim," he said, when the lift shot up to his floor in response to a
summons, "I guess you want a drink."

Jim knew Harcourt's little ways by this time. "Well sir," he said,
stepping forth, and unshipping the motor key, "I'm bound to admit that a
slight lubrikytion wouldn't be amiss."

"In fact, it might be a hit, a palpable hit. Well, step lively. Here's
the whisky. Now, Jim, listen while I talk. I understand there is to be
a meeting of ghosts here to-night--no, not a word yet; drink steadily,
Jim--and it is up to you and me to attend the convocation. There is
nothing to worry about. These spirits are likely to be less harmful than
those you are imbibing; indeed, we may be called on to grab one or two
of them, but they will turn out to be ordinary men. You're not afraid of
a man, Jim?"

"Not if 'e is a man, sir. But will there be any shootin'?"

"Ah, you heard of that?"

"People will talk of bullet-marks, sir, to say nothing of drops o'
blood."

"Drops of blood? Where?"

"All round our front door. They wasn't there overnight, an' next day
there was a revolver bullet stuck in your kitchen skirting-board."

"Excellent! Clear proof that our sort of ghosts will bleed if you punch
them hard enough on the nose. Now, I want your help in three ways. In
the first place, I am going out about seven and will return about nine.
I want you to make sure that no one enters my flat within those hours.
Secondly, when I come back, I wish to reach this floor without coming
in by the front door. You understand? If any one should be watching
my movements, I would like to be seen leaving the mansions but not
returning. Thirdly, I want you to join me on guard when you close the
front door at midnight, hiding the pair of us somewhere above, so that
we can see, without fear of mistake, any persons who may possess keys
which fit my front door."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said the porter, setting down his glass. "Well,
I'm your man, sir. Leave everything to me. When you comes home at nine
just pop along the other street until you sees a door leadin' to a
harea. Drop down there, an' you'll find yourself in our basement. At
twelve sharp I'll come up in the lift and fix you up proper."

"Jim, you're a treasure!" said David.




CHAPTER XXI

THE MIDNIGHT GATHERING


When the train from Rigsworth brought Violet into Euston Station, she
hurried through the barrier and asked an official to direct her to the
nearest post-office. At this instant a slight accident happened which
had a singular bearing on the events of the day. Neil, the valet, who
had driven to Euston just in time to meet the incoming train, had seen
her, and was pressing in close pursuit when he tripped over a luggage
barrow and fell headlong.

He was not much injured, but shaken more than a little, and when he was
able to take up the chase again, Violet had vanished. Hence she was
freed from espionage, and Van Hupfeldt could only curse his useless
emissary. The man Neil certainly did rush about like a whirlwind as soon
as he recovered his breath; but Violet was in the post-office writing to
David, and securely hidden from his ferret eyes.

Oddly enough, the first person she wished to see was Miss Ermyn
L'Estrange. She remembered the actress well, as she had visited her once
(Jenny, the maid, was out on an errand at the time), and it was one of
the many curious discrepancies in the tissue of mingled fact and
fiction which obscured her sister's fate that such a volatile and
talkative woman should have written the curt little note sent at
Hupfeldt's bidding. Violet could not understand the reason, but she saw
a loophole here. The long journey in the train had enabled her to review
the information she possessed with a certain clarity and precision
hitherto absent from her bewildered thoughts. In a word, there were
several marked lines of inquiry, and she was resolved to follow each
separately.

She felt that she had gone the wrong way to work in the first frenzy of
her grief. She was calm now, more skilled in hiding her suspicion, less
prone to jump at conclusions. All unknown to her, the little germ of
passion planted in her heart by David's few words in the summer-house
was governing her whole being. From the timid, irresolute girl, who
clung to unattainable ideals, she was transformed into a woman, ready to
dare anything for the sake of the man she loved, while the mere notion
of marriage with Van Hupfeldt was so loathsome that she was spurred into
the physical need of strenuous action to counteract it.

So it was in a restrained yet business-like mood that she climbed the
stairs leading to Miss L'Estrange's flat and rang the electric bell. The
door was opened by Jenny.

Not all the resources of pert Cockneyism availed that hapless domestic
when she set eyes on Miss Mordaunt. She uttered a helpless little wail
of dismay, and retreated a few steps, as though she half expected the
wonder-stricken young woman to use strong measures with her.

"Well, what is it now?" came her mistress's sharp demand, for in
that small abode there reigned what the Italians call "a delightful
confidence," Jenny's scream and rush being audible in the drawing-room.

"Ow!" stammered Jenny, "it's a young lady, miss."

"A young lady? Is she nameless?"

"No," said Violet, advancing toward the voice; "but your maid seems to
be alarmed by the sight of me. You know me, Miss L'Estrange. I only wish
I had discovered sooner that you employed my sister's servant, Sarah
Gissing."

Ermyn was accustomed to stage situations. She instantly grasped her
part; for she was fresh from the interview with David, and there could
be no doubt that the unmasking of Van Hupfeldt was as settled now as the
third act of the farcical comedy in which she would play the soubrette
that night.

"Sarah Gissing!" she said with a fine scorn. "That is not her name. She
is Jenny--Jenny--blest if I have ever called her anything else. Here,
you! what is your other name?"

"Blaekey, miss," sobbed Jenny, in tears.

"But you said only yesterday that you were Sarah Gissing?" cried Violet.

"Y-yus, miss, an' it wasn't true."

"So you have never seen my sister?"

"No, miss."

"Why did you lie to me so shamelessly?"

"Please, miss, I was pide for it."

"Paid! By Mr. Van Hupfeldt?"

"There is some mistake," broke in Miss L'Estrange, who was a trifle awed
by Violet's quiet dignity. "It was a Mr. Strauss who came here and asked
permission for Jenny to have the day free yesterday in order to give
some evidence he required."

"Are you quite sure it was Mr. Strauss?" asked Violet, turning away from
Jenny as though the sight of her was offensive.

"Positive! I rented, or rather I took your sister's flat from him, and
he has been plaguing my life out ever since about some papers he
imagined I found there."

"But you wrote to me a little while ago," pleaded Violet.

"Strauss is a plausible person," countered the other woman readily. "He
came here and spun such a yarn that I practically wrote at his
dictation."

"There is no mistake this time, I hope."

Miss L'Estrange's color rose, and her red hair troubled her somewhat;
but she answered with an effort: "There has never been any mistake on
my part. Had you come to me in the first instance, and taken me into
your confidence, I would have helped you. But you stormed at me quite
unjustly, Miss Mordaunt, and it is not in human nature to take that
sort of thing lying down, you know."

Then, seeing the sorrow in Violet's eyes, she went on with a real
sympathy: "I wish we had been more candid with each other at first. And
I had nothing whatever to do with Jenny's make-believe of yesterday. The
girl is a first-rate cook, but she can tell lies faster than a dog can
trot."

This poetic simile popped out unawares; but Violet heard the kindly tone
rather than the words.

"I may want you again," she said simply. "May I rely on you if the need
arises?"

"Indeed you may!" was the impulsive reply. "I have wept over your
sister's unhappy fate, Miss Mordaunt, and I always thought Strauss was a
villain. I hope that nice young fellow, David Harcourt, who has been on
his track for months, will catch him one of these days, and give him a
hiding, at the very least."

"Oh, you know Mr. Harcourt?"

And then Ermyn L'Estrange did a thing which ennobled her in her own eyes
for many a day. "Yes," she said. "He found out that I occupied your
sister's flat after her death; so he came to see me, and, if I may
venture to say so, he betrayed an interest in you, Miss Mordaunt, which,
had such a man shown it towards me, would have been deemed a very
pleasing and charming testimony of his regard."

It was only a line out of an old play; but it served, and they kissed
each other when they said "Good-by."

Although Violet was startled at alighting on such ready confirmation of
Van Hupfeldt's duplicity, there was a remarkable brightness in her eye,
a spring-time elasticity in her step, when she emerged into the High-St.
of Chelsea, which had not been visible a little while earlier. In truth,
she felt as a thrush may be supposed to feel after having successfully
dodged the attack of a hawk. Were it not that she was treading the
crowded streets of London she would have sung for sheer joy.

And now, feeling hungry after her long journey, she entered a restaurant
and ate a good meal, which was a sensible thing to do in itself, but
which, in its way, was another tiny factor in the undoing of Van
Hupfeldt, as, thereby, she missed meeting David at Dibbin's office.

When she did ultimately reach that unconscious rendezvous, she found
there the clerk who had given David such interesting information.
This man knew Miss Mordaunt, and had some recollection of the dead
Gwendoline; so he was civil, and assured Violet that his master would
return from Scotland that evening.

"Mr. Dibbin has been at Dundee for some days?" asked Violet.

"Let me see, miss; he went away on the fourth, and this is the ninth;
practically six days, counting the journeys."

"Then he certainly could not have written to me on the seventh from
London?"

The clerk was puzzled. "If you mean that he wasn't in London, then--" he
began.

Violet did not show the man the letter which she had in her pocket.
Perhaps it was best that Dibbin himself should read it first. But she
did say: "He could not have had an interview with a Mr. Van Hupfeldt,
for instance?"

"Now, that is very odd, miss," said the clerk. "That is the very name of
the gentleman who wired instructions to-day for Mr. Dibbin to go at once
to Portsmouth. And, by Jove! begging your pardon, but the telegram came
from your place, Rigsworth, in Warwickshire. I never thought of that
before."

"It doesn't matter," said Violet, sweetly; "I shall endeavor to meet Mr.
Dibbin at King's Cross. And will you please not mention to any one that
I have called here?"

The knowledge that Van Hupfeldt was striving to decoy Dibbin away from
London revealed that the pursuit had begun. For an instant she was
tempted to appeal to David for help. But she had given her word not
to see him, and that was sacred, even in relation to one whom she
considered to be the worst man breathing.

The clerk promised readily enough to observe due discretion anent her
visit. He would have promised nearly anything that such a nice-looking
girl sought of him. Suddenly Violet recollected that the house-agent
might know the whereabouts of the real Sarah Gissing. She asked the
question, and, Dibbin being a man of dockets and pigeon holes, the clerk
found the address for her in half a minute, told her where Chalfont
was, looked up the next train from Baker-St., and sent her on her way
rejoicing.

Violet, like the majority of her charming sex, paid small heed to time,
and, indeed, time frequently returns the compliment to pretty women. It
was five hours ere Dibbin was due at King's Cross, and five hours were
sufficient for almost any undertaking. So she journeyed to Chalfont,
found the genuine Sarah, and was alarmed and reassured at the same time
by the girl nearly fainting away when she set eyes on her.

Here, then, at last, was real news of her Gwen. She could have listened
for hours. The landlady of the little hotel charitably let the two talk
their fill, and sent tea to them in the small parlor where David had met
Sarah. Like David, too, whom Sarah did not forget to describe as "that
nice young gentleman, Mr. Harcourt," Violet outstayed the train time,
and, when she did make an inquiry on this head, it was impossible to
reach King's Cross at six-thirty P.M.

Amid all the tears and poignancy of grief aroused by the recital
of her sister's lonely life and tragic end, there was one strange,
unaccountable feature which stood out boldly. Neither by direct word
nor veiled inference did Sarah Gissing attribute deliberate neglect or
unkindness to Strauss. If anything, her simple story told of a great
love between those two, and there was the evidence of it in Gwendoline's
latest distracted words about him. Of course, had Violet read the
diary, this would have been clear enough; but, in view of the man's
present attitude, this testimony of the servant's was hard to
understand.

At any rate, Violet, sure now beyond the reach of doubt that Van
Hupfeldt was Strauss, and that he was engaged in an incomprehensible
conspiracy, nevertheless felt a sensible softening toward him. Perhaps
her escape from the threatened marriage had something to do with this;
and then, the man seemed to have almost worshiped Gwen.

Assuredly the gods, meaning to destroy Van Hupfeldt, first decided to
make him mad. When he reached Dibbin's office, the clerk recognized him
as Strauss, and was rendered suspicious by his reappearance, after this
long time, within an hour of Violet's call, seeing that the first person
he inquired about was Violet herself. Hence, being of the same mind as
Miss Ermyn L'Estrange as to the secret of success in London life, he
failed to recognize any young lady named Mordaunt as among the list
of Dibbin's visitors that day. Further, when Van Hupfeldt, goaded to
extremities, was fain to confess that it was he who had telegraphed
from Rigsworth, the clerk became obtuse on the matter of his employer's
whereabouts. All he could say definitely was that Dibbin would be in his
office next morning at ten o'clock.

The outcome of these cross purposes, seeing that David was in no hurry
to meet the agent, was that Dibbin met only the clerk at King's Cross,
and had a mysterious story poured into his ear, together with a bag of
gold placed in his hands, as he tackled a chop prior to catching a train
for the home of the Dibbins at Surbiton.

Van Hupfeldt took Mrs. Mordaunt to her old residence at Porchester
Gardens, enjoining her not to say a word to Mrs. Harrod about Violet's
escapade.

That was asking too much of a mother who had endured such
heart-searchings during a day of misery. Not even the glamour of a
wealthy marriage could blind Mrs. Mordaunt to certain traits in his
character which the stress of fear had brought to the surface. She began
to ask herself if, after all, Violet were not right in her dread of the
man. She was afraid of she knew not what; so kind-hearted Mrs. Harrod's
first natural question as to Violet's well-being drew a flood of tears
and a resultant outpouring of the whole tragedy. But, lo and behold!
Mrs. Harrod had dreamed of clear water and a trotting horse the previous
night, and this combination was irresistible in its excellence on behalf
of her friends. Mrs. Harrod's prophetic dreams were always vicarious;
her own fortunes were fixed--so much _per annum_ earned by keeping a
first-rate private hotel.

The manifold attractions of town life did not suffice to while away
the weary hours of that evening for at least three people in London.
Violet, returning from Chalfont, took a room in the Great Western Hotel
at Paddington, and, when asked to sign the register, obeyed some
unaccountable impulse by writing "Miss Barnes." It gave her a thrill to
see poor Gwendoline's _nom de théâtre_ thus resurrected, and there was
something uncanny in the incident too; but she was aroused by the hotel
clerk's respectful inquiry if she had any luggage.

"No," she said, somewhat embarrassed; "but I will pay for my room in
advance, if you wish."

"That is not necessary, madam, thank you," was the answer; so Violet,
unconscious of the trust reposed in her appearance, took her key and
went to rest a little before undertaking the last task she had set
herself. She carried in her hand some violets which she had bought
from a poor woman outside the hotel.

Van Hupfeldt, tortured by want of knowledge of the actions of those in
whom he was most interested, was compelled to enlist Neil's services
again after reviling him. The valet went openly to Eddystone Mansions
and inquired for Harcourt.

"He's bin aht all d'y," said Jim the porter, speculating on Neil's
fighting weight, if he was one of the ghosts to be laid after midnight.

Neil brought back this welcome information, and Van Hupfeldt hoped
uneasily that his ruse had been successful. If it had, David would be
somewhere near Birmingham, and would there await a message from Violet,
which Van Hupfeldt would take care he received next day.

As for David, he smoked and mused in Hyde Park until after night had
fallen. Then he returned to his abode by the way indicated by the
porter, and smoked again in the dark, and without a fire, until a few
minutes after midnight, when he heard the clank of the ascending lift,
followed by a ring at the door. In case of accident, he had his revolver
in his pocket this time; moreover, his right hand was ready when he
opened the door with his left.

But it was his ally; Jim pointed to the lift with a grin. "Everybody
else is in, sir," he said. "Just step in there an' I'll take you to the
next floor. We'll switch off the light inside, but leave it on here as
usual. Then we can see a mouse comin' up the stairs if need be, an'
there's no other way in, unless a real ghost turns up."

They took up their position, leaving the door of the lift open. Thus
they could step out without noise if necessary. They had not long to
wait. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed before the porter, with an ear
trained to the noises of the building, whispered eagerly:

"Some one has just closed the front door, sir."

They heard ascending footsteps. It was Van Hupfeldt, panting, darting
quick glances at shadows, hastening up the stairs with a sort of felon
fright. In front of No. 7 he paused and listened. Apparently not daring
to risk everything, he rang the bell; he had not forgotten that a bullet
had seared his leg at one of his unauthorized visits. Again he listened,
being evidently ready for flight if he heard any answering sound. Then,
finding all safe, he produced a key, entered, and closed the door behind
him.

"Well, I'm--" began the porter, in a tense whisper, this unlawful entry
being a sacrilege to him.

But David said in his ear: "Let him alone; we have him bottled."

Nevertheless, seeing that Violet had undoubtedly stated her intent (or
it seemed like that) to visit the flat that night, he began to consider
what he should do if she put in an appearance. What would happen if she
unexpectedly encountered Van Hupfeldt within? That must be provided
for. The unforeseen difficulty was an instance of the poverty of man's
judgment where the future is concerned. In keeping his implied promise
to Violet, he would expose her to grave peril; for, in David's view,
Van Hupfeldt had done her sister to death in that same place, and there
was no knowing what the crime a man in desperate straits would commit.
David was sure now that, actuated by widely different motives, both Van
Hupfeldt and Violet were bent on searching for the photograph and letter
reposing securely in his own pocket. He smiled grimly as he thought of
that which Van Hupfeldt would find, but, obviously, he ought to warn
Violet beforehand. Or would it suffice if he followed quickly after her,
thus giving her the opportunity of scaring Van Hupfeldt into the right
mood to confess everything?

There was a slight risk in that; but it seemed to offer the best
solution of a difficulty, and it would avoid the semblance of collusion
between them, which Van Hupfeldt was adroit enough to take advantage of.
So, when Violet did run lightly up the stairs, though his heart beat
with joy at the sight of her, he restrained himself until she had opened
the door. She applied her key without hesitation.

"She trusts in me fully, then!" thought David, with a pang of regret
that he should be compelled now to disobey her.

He gripped the porter's arm as he stepped noiselessly out on to the
landing above, and thus lost sight of Violet. The man followed, and
David, leaning over the stair-rail, saw the door of his flat close. He
had never before realized how quietly that door might be closed if due
care was taken. Even his keen ears heard no sound whatever.

And then he heard that which sent the blood in a furious race from his
brain to his heart and back to his brain again. For there came from
within a cry as from some beast in pain, and, quickly following, the
shriek of a woman in mortal fear.

David waited for no key-turning. He dashed in the lock with his foot
and entered. The first thing that greeted his disordered senses was
the odor of violets which came to him, fresh and pungent, with an eery
reminiscence of the night he thought he saw the spectral embodiment of
dead Gwendoline.




CHAPTER XXII

VAN HUPFELDT MAKES AMENDS


Violet's first act, on entering the hall, had been to turn on the light.
She did this without giving a thought to the possibility of disturbing
some prior occupant. The day's events demonstrated how completely David
was worthy of faith; she was assured that he would obey the behest in
her letter. How much better would it have been had she trusted intuition
in the first instance!

But it chanced that David had written a little note to her, on an open
sheet of paper, which he pinned to the table-cloth in the dining-room
in such a position that she could not fail to see it when there was a
light. And this note, headed "To Violet," contained the fateful message:

     I have found the photograph of Strauss, or Van Hupfeldt, and
     with it the letter in which he announced to your sister that he
     was already married to another woman.

               DAVID.

Van Hupfeldt, of course, had seen this thrice-convincing and accusing
document, which proved not only that he and his secret were in David's
power, but that David had expected Violet to visit his dwelling. He was
sitting at the table in a stupor of rage and terror, when he fancied he
heard a rustling in the outer passage. Beside himself with anger at the
threatened downfall of his cardboard castle, strung to a state of high
nervous tension by the horror he had of that abode of dreadful memories,
he half turned toward the door, which had swung back almost into its
place.

Through the chink he noticed an exterior radiance; nevertheless, he paid
no heed to it, although his wearied brain seemed to remind him that he
had not left a light in the corridor. Yet again he heard another rustle,
as of a woman's garments. This time he sprang up, with the madness of
hysteria in his eyes; he tore open the door, and saw Violet near to him.
She, noting the movement of the door, stood stock-still with surprise
and some fear, ungovernable emotions which undoubtedly gave a touch of
wan tragedy to her expression. Moreover, the glow of the hall lamp was
now behind her, and her features were somewhat in gloom; so it was not
to be wondered at that Van Hupfeldt, with his conscience on the rack,
thought he was actually looking at the embodied spirit of Gwendoline. He
expected to see the dead woman, and he was far too unhinged to perceive
that he was face to face with a living one.

He threw up his arms, uttered that horrible screech which had reached
the ears of David and the porter, and collapsed limply to the floor,
whence, from his knees, while he sank slowly, he gazed at the frightened
girl with such an awful look of a doomed man that she, in turn,
screamed aloud. Then she saw a thin stream of blood issuing from between
his pallid lips, and, the strain being too great, she fainted; so that
David, after bursting in the door and finding the two bodies prostrate,
one on each side of the entrance to the dining-room, imagined for one
agonizing second that another and more ghastly crime had been enacted in
those haunted chambers.

He lifted Violet tenderly in his arms, and guessed at once that she had
been overcome by the sight of Van Hupfeldt, who, at the first glance,
seemed to have inflicted some mortal injury on himself.

The hall-porter, aghast at the discovery of two people apparently dead
whom he had seen alive a few minutes earlier, kept his wits sufficiently
together to stoop over Van Hupfeldt; then he, too, noticed the blood
welling forth. "It's all right, sir," cried he, in a queer, cracked
voice to David; "this here gent has on'y broke a blood-vessel!"

David said something which had better be forgotten; just then Violet,
who was not at all of the lymphatic order, opened her eyes and looked
at him.

"Thank God!" he whispered, close to her lips, and she, scarce
comprehending her whereabouts yet, made a brave effort to smile at him.

He had carried her into the little drawing-room, and he now placed her
in a chair. "Have no fear," he said. "I am here. I shall not leave you."

He ran to the door. "If that man's condition is serious, you had better
summon a doctor," he cried to the porter, whom he saw engaged in the
effort to prop Van Hupfeldt's body against a chair. David was pitiless,
perhaps; he had not recovered from the shock of finding Violet lying
prostrate.

"He mustn't be allowed to fall down, sir," said Jim, anxiously, "or he
will choke. I've seen a kise like this before."

David, though quickly subsiding from his ferment, was divided between
the claims of Violet and the demands of humanity. Personally, he thought
that the Dutchman would be no loss to the world; but the man was
helpless. And now Violet, recovering strength and recollection with each
more regular breath, knew what had happened. She stood up tremblingly.

"Let us go to him," she said, with the fine chivalry of woman, and soon,
kneeling on each side of Van Hupfeldt, they supported him, and
endeavored to stanch the outpouring from his lips.

The porter hurried away. David, wondering what to do for the best, held
his enemy's powerless body a little inclined forward, and asked Violet
if she would bring a wet towel from the bath-room. She did this at once,
and wrapped it round Van Hupfeldt's forehead. The relief thus afforded
was effective, and the flow of blood had ceased when the porter returned
with a doctor who lived in the next block of dwellings.

The doctor made light of the hemorrhage; but he detected a pulse which
made him look up at the others gravely.

"This is a bad case of heart failure," he said. "The rupture of a
blood-vessel is a mere symptom. Has he had a sudden shock?"

"I fear so," said David. "What can we do for him?"

"Nothing, at present," was the ominous answer. "I dread even the
necessity of moving him to a bed-room. Certainly he cannot be taken
elsewhere. Is he a friend of yours? I understand he does not live here."

David was saved from the difficulty of answering by a feeble indication
of Van Hupfeldt's wish to speak. The doctor gave him some water, then
a little weak brandy and water. Violet again helped David to hold him,
and the unfortunate man, seemingly recognizing her, now turned his head
toward her.

"Forgive me!" he whispered, with the labored distinctness of one who
speaks with the utmost effort. "I have deceived you vilely. I wished
to make reparation."

"I think I know all you wish to tell me," said Violet, bravely, "and,
even so, I am sorry for you."

"You heard what the doctor said?" he muttered.

"Yes, but you will recover. Don't try to talk. You must calm yourself.
Then the doctor will help."

"I know more than he knows of my own condition. I am dying. I shall be
dead in a few minutes. It is only just. I shall die here, where Gwen
died--my Gwen, whom I loved more than my own soul. May God forgive--"

"Oh, don't!" cried Violet, brokenly; the presence of gray death, that
last and greatest adjuster of wrong, obliterated many a bitter vow and
stifled the cry for vengeance in her.

"It is just," he whispered again. "I killed her by that letter. And now
she has summoned me to the grave, she who gave her life to shield me.
Ah! what a punishment was mine! when I flew here from Paris to tell her
that all was well, and arrived only in time to see her die! She died in
my arms, just as I am dying in yours, Vi! But she suffered, and I, who
deserve all the suffering, am falling away without pain."

Truly, he seemed to gain strength as he spoke; he still fancied he had
seen Gwendoline; the gathering mists clouded his brain to that extent.

Violet's eyes were dim with tears; her lips trembled so that she scarce
could utter a word. The doctor, who was watching Van Hupfeldt narrowly,
said to her in a low tone: "Take my advice, and leave us now."

But Van Hupfeldt heard him, and roused himself determinedly for a final
effort. Yet he spoke with difficulty and brokenly. "I escaped down the
service-lift that night--once again when Harcourt shot at me. I only
wished to atone, Vi! I made my will--you know--the lawyers will explain.
The boy--Mrs. Carter--New Street, Birmingham. See to the boy, Vi, for
Gwen's sake. Ah, God! for her sake!"

And that was all.

Violet, weeping bitterly, was led away. From over the mantelpiece the
wild eyes of a portrait in chalk of a beautiful woman looked down in
pity, it may be, on the dead face of the man lying on the floor. And so
ended the sad love story of Henry Van Hupfeldt and Gwendoline Mordaunt.
In the street beneath, hansoms were jingling along, bringing people home
from the restaurants. London recked little of the last scene of one of
its many dramas.

Yet it had its sequel in life and love, for Violet and her mother, as
the result of a telegram to Birmingham, took into their arms a happy and
crowing infant, a fine baby boy who won his way to their hearts by his
instant readiness to be fondled by them, and who retained his place in
their affections by the likeness he bore to his dead mother; though
his hair was dark, and he promised to have the Spanish profile of his
father, his eyes were Gwen's blue ones, and his lips parted in the merry
smile they knew so well.

But that was next day, when the fount of tears was nearly dry, and the
shudderings of the night had passed. Lucky it was for Violet that David
was near. What would have become of her had she regained her senses and
found herself alone in the flat, alone with a dead man?

David, somewhat hardened by his career in the turbulent West, quickly
hit upon a line of action. The doctor, a good soul, volunteered to drive
to Van Hupfeldt's residence and summon Neil, who would probably bear
the porter company during a night vigil in the flat. David, therefore,
made Violet drink a little brandy, and, talking steadily the while,
compelling occasional answers to his questions, he led her to a cab,
which he directed to Porchester Gardens. He knew that in Mrs. Harrod she
would find a friend, and it was an added relief to him to discover,
after repeated ringing had brought a servant to the door, that Mrs.
Mordaunt was there, too.

To save Violet the undue strain of an explanation, he asked that her
mother might be aroused. There was no need for that. She was down-stairs
promptly, having heard the imperative bell, certain that news of Violet
was to hand.

So he told of the night's doings to a tearful and perplexed woman who
had never previously set eyes on him, and it was three o'clock ere he
turned his face toward Eddystone Mansions again. Arrived there, he found
that the porter and Neil had carried the unfortunate Van Hupfeldt to
the room in which Gwendoline died. That was chance; it must have been
something more than chance which caused David to pick up the bunch of
violets, torn from the breast of their wearer when she fell in a faint,
and place them on the pillow near the pallid head. David was sorry for
the man, after all.

In one matter, the sorely tried mother and daughter were fortunate;
there was no inquest. The doctor who was present at Van Hupfeldt's
death, after consulting the coroner and a West End specialist who had
warned the sufferer of his dangerous state, was able to give a burial
certificate in due form. Thus all scandal and sensation-mongering
were avoided. The interment took place in Kensal Green cemetery. Van
Hupfeldt's mortal remains were laid to rest near to those of the woman
he loved.

Violet was his sole heiress under the will he had executed. A sealed
letter, attached by him to that document, explained his motive. In case
of accident prior to the contemplated marriage, he thereby surmounted
the legal difficulty and inevitable exposure of providing for the child.
He asked Violet to take the requisite steps to administer the estate,
bidding her reserve a capital sum sufficient to provide the ten thousand
pounds _per annum_ given her by the marriage settlement, and set apart
the residue, under trustees, for the benefit of the boy.

At first she refused to touch a penny of the money; but wiser counsels
prevailed. There would not only be a serious tangle in the business if
she declined the bequest, but Van Hupfeldt was so rich that nearly five
times the amount was left for the child, the value of the estate being
considerably over a million sterling.

The requisite investigation of the sources of his wealth cleared up a
good deal that was previously obscure. Undoubtedly he had been helped
in his early career, that of a musician, by a Mrs. Strauss, widow of
a California merchant. She educated him, and, yielding to a foolish
passion, offered to make him her heir if he married her and assumed
the name of Strauss, she having already attained some notoriety
in Continental circles under that designation. She was a _malade
imaginaire_, in the sense that she would seldom reside more than a few
weeks in any one place, while she positively detested both England and
America.

He was kind to her, and she was devoted to him; but unlimited wealth
cloyed when it involved constant obedience to her whims. Yet, rather
than lose him altogether, she agreed to his occasional visits to England
during the season, and when hunting was toward. Eager to shake off the
thraldom of the Strauss régime, he then invariably passed under his real
name of Van Hupfeldt.

Hence, when he fell in love with Gwendoline, and resolved to make her
his in defiance of all social law, he was obliged to tell her that he
was also Johann Strauss, and under an obligation to the Mrs. Strauss
who had adopted him. Gwendoline's diary, which, with the certificates,
was found in a bureau, became clear enough when annotated with these
facts. Van Hupfeldt himself left the fewest possible papers, the letter
accompanying the will merely setting forth his wishes, and announcing
that he desired to marry Violet as an act of reparation to the memory of
her sister. This had become a mania with him. The unhappy man thought
that, this way, he could win forgiveness.

And then the bright world became a Valley of Despair for David Harcourt.
During many a bitter hour he lamented Van Hupfeldt's death. Alive, he
was a rival to be fought and conquered; dead, he had interposed that
insurmountable barrier of great wealth between Violet and one who was
sick for love of her. Poor David! He sought refuge in work, and found
his way up some rungs of the literary ladder; but he could neither
forget his Violet nor follow her to Dale Manor, the inaccessible, fenced
in now by a wall of gold.

Once, he was in a hansom on the way to Euston, telling himself he was
going to Rigsworth to give the gamekeeper that promised licking; but he
stopped the cab and returned, saying bitterly: "Why am I trying to fool
myself? That is not the David of my acquaintance."

So he went back, calling in at a florist's and buying a huge bowlful
of violets, thinking to reach Nirvana by their scent, and thereby
humbugging himself so egregiously that he was in despondent mood when he
sat down to a lonely tea in his flat. He had not seen or heard of Violet
in three long months, not since he took Mrs. Mordaunt and her to the
train for Warwickshire, and, walking afterward with Dibbin from the
station, learned the fateful news of her intolerable inheritance.

He had promised to write, but he had not written. What was he to say?
That he still loved her, although she was rich? Perhaps he dreamed
that she would write to him. But no; silence was the steady scheme of
things--and work, fourteen hours a day work as the solatium, until his
bronzed face began to take on the student's cast, and he wondered, at
times, if he had ever caught and saddled a bronco, or slept under the
stars. Or was it all a dream?

Wanting some bread, and being alone, the charwoman having believed his
statement that he would be away until next midday, he went into the
kitchen. It was now high summer; hot, with the stable-like heat of
London, and the kitchen window was wide open. Some impulse prompted him
to look out and examine the service-lift by way of which Van Hupfeldt
had twice quitted the flat, once when driven by mad fear of being held
guilty of Gwendoline's death, and again to save his life from David's
revolver.

Given a steady brain and some little athletic skill, the feat was easy
enough. All that was needed was to cling to two greasy iron uprights and
slide from one floor to the next, where cross-bars marked the different
stories and provided halting-places for the lift. It was typical of Van
Hupfeldt that he had the nerve to essay this means of escape and the
cunning to think of it.

David was looking into the well of the building a hundred feet below,
when an electric bell jarred over his head. Some one was at the front
door. It was a porter.

"You are wanted down-stairs, sir," said he, his honest face all of a
grin.

"Down-stairs?" repeated David, puzzled.

"Yes, sir. There's a hansom waitin', sir."

"Oh," said David, wondering what he had left in his cab.

He went down, hatless, and not a word said Jim, though he watched David
out of the corner of his eye, and smiled broadly when he saw David's
sudden recognition of Violet through the side-window of the hansom.

She, too, smiled delightedly when David appeared. "I want you to come
with me for a little drive," she said; "but not without a hat. That
would be odd."

David, casting off three months' cobwebs in a second, was equal to the
emergency. Somehow, the damask of Violet's flushed cheeks banished the
dull tints in his.

"Jim," he said, "here's my key. Bring me a hat--any old hat--first you
can grab."

Then he climbed into the vacant seat by her side. "Do you know," he
said, "I was nearly going to Rigsworth to-day?"

"I only know," she replied, "that you were to write to me, and I have
had no letter."

"Don't put me on my self-defense, or I shan't care tuppence if you are
worth ten thousand or ten millions a year," he said.

Violet leaned over the door. "That man is a long time going for your
hat," she said. "By the way, can you spare the time to drive with me to
Kensal Green? And then I am to take you to Porchester Gardens, where
mother expects you to dine with us, _en famille_, so you need not return
here." She was a little breathless, and spoke in a fluster.

Jim arrived, with the missing head-gear. The driver whipped up his
horse, and David's left arm went round Violet's waist. She bent forward,
astonished, with a sidelong glance of questioning.

"It is a reasonable precaution," said David. "If the horse goes down,
you don't fall out."

Violet laughed and blushed prettily.

A bus-driver, eying them, jerked his head at the cabman. "All right, the
lydy," he said, and the cabman winked. But the two inside knew nothing
of this ribaldry.

So, you see, David simply couldn't help himself, or rather, from another
point of view, he did help himself to a remarkably charming wife and a
considerable fortune.

Miss Ermyn L'Estrange insisted on an invitation to the wedding, which
took place at Rigsworth as quietly as the inhabitants of the village
would allow. The volatile actress won such favor from a local land agent
in a fair way of business that he goes to town far too frequently,
people say, and it is highly probable that her name will be changed soon
to a less euphonious one, which will be good for her and excellent for
the land agent's business.

Sarah Gissing found a new post as Master Henry's nurse, and Mrs.
Carter was well rewarded for the care she had taken of the boy. The
postmistress's sister received a fine diamond ring when David, by dint
of judicious questioning, found out the identity of the "friend" who
sent that most timely telegram, and, strangely enough, the surly
gamekeeper never received either the fifty pounds, or the thrashing,
or the sack; but was minus the silver paid to his poacher assistants
for their night watch.

So, even this little side issue, out of the many grave ones raised by
David's tenancy of an ordinary flat in an ordinary London mansion,
shows how often the unexpected happens, even in ordinary life.




      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber's note:

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
intent.



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