Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
“Nothing so funny as this!” contemptuously. “Do talk sensibly. I came
to say something. Do you suppose I came back to this dull hole for fun?”
“I am talking sensibly.” For the first time Ismay looked up, and her
gaze would have made the fortune of a tragedienne. Deep, earnest,
magnetic, her eyes caught and held her mother’s.
“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know about the things there is in
this house?” she demanded. “The thing that moves softly at night,
up and down the stairs, that you can hear if you stand in the
corridor--coming closer, closer every minute, till it passes you with a
cold like snow in your face, and you can’t move for fright----” She was
moving her hands in a strange waving motion to and fro, and a strange
uneasiness caught at Helen Trelane’s wretched soul, even while she gave
a scoffing laugh.
“The thing that is very old and evil, and means no good to any in the
house. Because, if you don’t know, ask Thomas! You saw how frightened
he was the day I told before him my dream about the music at night,”
with a return to her practical manner that was somehow more impressive
than her mother liked.
“What has your dream of a piano being played in the night got to do
with servants’ stories about ghosts?” Yet Mrs. Trelane could not help
glancing at the shut door. With Marcus in the house, with the world
against her on every side, it would be too awful to get nervous terrors
on her brain.
“It wasn’t a dream--and it wasn’t a piano,” said Ismay quietly. “Thomas
can tell you; I’ve had enough without talking about it. And, if I were
you, I’d get to bed before it got much later; I want to get my door
locked. I don’t care much for those dark corridors outside. And if you
get frightened out there it won’t be of any use coming to my door,
for no power on earth would make me unlock it after twelve o’clock at
night. This is a vile, abominable house, and I’m afraid in it. So now
you know.”
“I know I never heard anything so silly,” viciously; yet the cowering,
apprehensive look the girl gave at the corridor, as her mother threw
open the door into it made Mrs. Trelane uncomfortable.
Ismay hesitated for an instant before she locked the door and returned
to bed.
“I never found out why she came back, or why she brought him,” she
mused. “But it would have been no good to ask. She would only have
made up something; she never looked at me except that once, when I
made her. And it would not be wise to go down and listen after telling
her ghost-stories. She didn’t believe them, and she’ll tell him, and
he won’t believe them, and they’ll laugh. But all the same he will
investigate every mouse that squeaks in the passage, and I should get
caught.”
She got into bed, suddenly conscious of being very weary as she nestled
into the warm sheets, but her mind was alert enough.
“I’ll give them time to interview Thomas, and let my tale sink in a
little. I don’t believe they will say anything worth knowing to-night.
And by to-morrow night I shall know more. I’ll probably be able to
frighten her into anything by to-morrow night!”
Yet the next instant she sat up and listened. She had been right; that
was the rustle of her mother’s dress, as she swept by to her bedroom.
Ismay sat perfectly quiet as the light steps paused and Mrs. Trelane
tried the door again.
Not a sound answered her sharp “Ismay!” but the girl did not smile as
she spoke to herself when the steps had passed on.
“I’ve convinced her that I’m not to be got at, at night, from fright,”
she muttered, “if I were not really sick with fright for her life--and
other things--it might be funny!” and as she lay down she shivered.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A GHOSTLY EAVESDROPPER.
Mr. Wray sat by the library fire the next night as the clock chimed
twelve. There was whisky beside him, and soda, but he was not drinking,
only staring at the hearth, and tapping with his finger on his knee,
with the old action of driving in a nail.
The day had been long, hideously long, to every one but Cristiane le
Marchant, who had drunk in specious, covert admiration as a thirsty man
drinks water. To Mrs. Trelane it had been one effort of the nerves not
to give way to her misgivings; to Ismay the hours had dragged, and yet
flown, in her fears that to-morrow might be fraught with danger that
could not be evaded; her longing, that was yet a dread, for Cylmer’s
return. And, come what might, Wray must not see them together.
Marcus, until ten o’clock, had been coldly uneasy, despite all his
careful politeness. Since then the deep lines about his mouth were
drawn less tightly, and yet the look on his face did not reassure Helen
Trelane, as she came noiselessly into the room.
“Well, you have not overexerted yourself to get here!” he did not stop
the tapping that was enough to get on an innocent woman’s nerves.
“Do you know I have been waiting for an hour? Though, of course I
should be at your disposal till four in the morning!” with sarcastic
deference.
“I couldn’t come,” she retorted. “Cristiane came to my room to brush
her hair, and I had to pretend to get ready for bed.”
“Evidently.” For her carefully dressed hair had been changed to a small
coil that made her ten years older. “Well, now you are here, I have
some news!”
“Mark!” she caught him by the arm. “Quick, tell me. Good, or bad?”
“It is always ‘Mark’ when you are afraid of your neck!” his tone was
smoothly uncivil, his action openly brutal as he shook off her hand.
“Good, if one can believe it,” he took a telegram from his pocket.
“And don’t you?”
“I’ve no particular reason to; Van Hoeft was always a liar,” coolly.
“Yet I think he knows it wouldn’t pay to lie to me.”
“Who’s Van Hoeft? Give it to me.” She snatched it from his hand.
“A henchman of mine, in Amsterdam. Be good enough,” peremptorily, “not
to read it at the top of your sweetly penetrating voice.”
“There’s no one to hear.” But she did moderate the strained pitch of
her voice a little.
“‘The parcel cannot be traced beyond Paris. Will wire if any news of
it.’”
“The parcel. Does he mean the diamonds?” she cried, raging at his
sullen calm. “Why don’t you answer?”
“Of course he does, else why would it be good news?”
“And you think he may be deceiving you?”
“I think he may be fool enough to try to keep me quiet while he saves
his own skin.”
“Then why don’t you go and find out,” her voice was harsh, ringing.
“Are you going to sit here and let us both be ruined?”
“I am going to sit here, because I am afraid to be seen in either Paris
or Amsterdam,” he returned as carelessly as if he spoke of avoiding a
draft of air. “And because I’ve a good thing here, and the sooner it’s
managed the better.”
Twice the woman tried to speak and could not.
“What was in that paragraph, exactly?” she said at last.
“Exactly this.” He drew out a clipping from his pocketbook and read it
aloud.
“There is at last some clue to the mystery surrounding the death of
the late Lord Abbotsford, whose tragic end our readers will remember.
Some of the missing diamonds have been found at Amsterdam by a
clever detective, and the tracing of their whole history since their
disappearance can now be only a matter of time.”
“You’re sure that’s all?” she moistened her lip with his full tumbler
of whisky and soda.
“It’s enough, isn’t it? Oh, pray keep my drink!” as she handed it to
him. “I prefer a clean glass.”
“Mark, you must see,” she wailed wretchedly, “that it’s no time to have
a nine days’ wonder here. It would be madness to draw attention to
either of us, now.” She leaned forward, haggard, imploring. “I’ll give
you anything, all I have, if you only go away and let the girl be.”
“I told you before that was abject rot,” he exclaimed icily. “I’m not
playing for the few pounds you would forget to send when I was out of
your way. I mean to have all this”--glancing around him--“and Ismay,
in a satin gown, to take off my boots.” For once his calm was gone; he
breathed sharply. Mrs. Trelane rocked to and fro in her chair, with
fear and loathing.
“She’ll never have you,” she said through her teeth.
“Then you can swing,” said Mr. Wray, with a significant finger at his
own throat.
And this time she made no protestation of her innocence. Any one
listening might well have believed in her guilt. When she spoke again
her voice was hollow, like a dying woman’s.
“You can’t poison her without being found out.”
Mr. Wray threw back his head and laughed noiselessly, as was his habit.
The joke, for some unknown reason, was apparently an excellent one.
“Dear lady, how your mind reverts to a groove,” he said, surveying
her with half-shut eyes that made him more hideous than ever. “Your
method is not going to be employed again,” and he laughed once more,
unmercifully.
“Mark,” she was crying hysterically, “don’t laugh like that! You’ll
kill me if you laugh. You frighten me--I could scream”--her sobs broke
her words. “Tell me what you mean, and let me go.”
“I mean an accident, then; a common or garden accident. There couldn’t
be any fuss about that; it might happen to every one. And the less you
know about it the better. If you knew you’d do something foolish, and
the whole thing would be made a mess of.”
“It will put us both in our graves, never mind what I do.” She turned
on him fiercely.
He got up coolly and pulled up the blind, staring out into the
moonlight night.
“Does it interest you to know that it’s freezing hard? And there’s not
a breath of wind on the lake,” he asked.
“Nothing interests me while you live to curse my eyes,” she said with
unutterable bitterness, and in the silence of the room he laughed to
himself.
“Then let me advise you to drink that whisky and go to bed,” he said,
dropping the blind and turning around. “Also to rejoice that you will
not encounter any one in the passages,” glancing distastefully at the
channels her tears had marked through her powder.
“You have prepared me for a good night’s rest,” she returned heavily,
opening the door and making a few steps into the dark hall outside.
The next minute she flew back again.
“Mark, quick--for Heaven’s sake! There’s some one, something, there. I
can’t go.”
“You don’t mean you are believing in that crazy lie of Thomas?” he said
after a contemptuous survey of the empty hall, lamp in hand. “There
isn’t a creature stirring.”
“He believes it; Jessie believes it.”
“And in spite of that they also believe that when any one dies they go
either to hell or to heaven,” he jeered. “Can’t you see the thing’s
absurd?”
“But I heard something. I did, indeed. Oh, I’m nervous, unstrung. I
can’t face those dark stairs and passages. You will have to go up with
me.”
“Because Thomas is hanging round to see that all the lights are out,”
shrugging his shoulders. “I suppose neither of those two girls would
come down for anything.”
Mrs. Trelane shook her head. “Thomas thinks we are all in bed. He
hasn’t left a light anywhere. Jessie sleeps in a room off Cristiane’s;
she would never let her get out of her bed. And Ismay--oh, Mark! even
Ismay is afraid here at night. She locks her door and won’t open it
till daylight--for fear.”
“Then she has her weak side, for all her airs.”
He moved, lamp in hand, to the foot of the stairs.
“There, I’ll stay here till you are in your room,” he said resignedly.
“I wonder why women were created cowards.”
But she did not answer him. As quickly and almost as lightly as Ismay,
she had sped up the stairs and was groping through the dark hall above
their own room. When she reached it she was breathless; for just as
Ismay had said, she had heard that faint footfall, coming closer every
minute; inexorable, ghostly, in the silent house where no one waked
save she and Marcus Wray.