Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom

The latter had heard nothing, nor would he have cared if he had. In so old a house night noises were a foregone conclusion. He returned to his neglected whisky and soda, and a cigar. But there was no bite to the whisky, no taste in the tobacco. His mind was not as easy as he liked, in spite of his friend in Amsterdam. There had been a weak point in the underground career of those diamonds, and Mr. Wray knew it. “What has to be done must be done at once,” he said aloud, stretching out his long legs in Sir Gaspard’s chair. “And then I’ll be off to lie low till I can reap the harvest. My old friend here can’t escape me, even if she dared to try. And the weather has turned cold,” his voice changed abruptly, as if something pleased him. “It’s freezing hard. If all goes well the day after to-morrow will see the fair Helen an heiress, after which I shall spend a few months living retired--in Bohemia.” Yawning, he extinguished the light and went up-stairs to bed. This country life was at present convenient; in future it would be profitable; but it was certainly deadly dull. “To-morrow I’ll amuse myself with my dear friend and well-wisher, Ismay,” he reflected. “I like to see her hate me, it adds to the pleasure of having her under my fingers. Hello!” as he stood in his door, candle in hand--the candle he would not give Helen Trelane for pure deviltry--“what’s that?” From somewhere far off a tinkling tune came softly, yet clearly; an unearthly sound in the midnight hush. “Thomas is up to some game, I suppose, and I’m damned if I know why! But I’ll choke him off now, once for all.” He started in search of the mysterious sound, kicking off his patent-leather slippers that he might steal unseen on the erring Thomas. At the head of the stairs the music ceased, not suddenly, but with the curious falling cadence that marked the end of the tune. But music was lost on Mr. Wray. “I’ve got off the track,” he thought, descending once more, somewhat gingerly in his stocking feet. The instant he was in the lower passage the air tinkled out again with a mocking lightness. The sound certainly came from above him, and he ran up again, utterly careless if he were heard or not. There was only an empty passage to be seen, door after door on each side of it. He flung them open, one by one, but only disused bedrooms met his scrutiny. As he threw the fifth door wide his candle went out, not quickly, but slowly, as if something ailed the wick. Dim and blue it faded slowly and the music that had seemed so near was gone. A cloud was over the moon; he could not see a yard into the room in front of him, but the same cold disused air met him that he had felt in all the other rooms. “Thomas and his remarkable ghost seem to be founded on fact,” he thought angrily, jarred, in spite of himself, by that slow fading of his light. “Well, they can play till doomsday for all I care; but first I will make sure of Thomas!” He stumbled down to his own room in the dark, stubbing his toes unmercifully. Then with a relit candle he sought the small room next the butler’s pantry, where Thomas dwelt to guard his silver. The door was ajar, the old man peacefully sleeping. Whoever was disturbing the house, it was not the gray-haired servant. Once more Mr. Wray sought his bedroom, stopping only to try Ismay’s door with infinite caution. It was locked, hard and fast. “The hypocritical little devil,” he muttered, “who told me that she was never afraid of anything, and is terrified by a musical box that some servant winds up at night! It’s just as well, though. I don’t want Miss Ismay’s company of an evening when I am talking business with her charming mother.” Ismay, seated somewhat breathless on her bed, shook with impotent rage at that cautious hand on her door. “Insolent wretch!” she thought furiously. “I hope those doctored library candles were a success. Who would think a schoolgirl trick of a thread soaked in saltpeter and run through with a fine needle would ever come in so usefully. But that was only a side-show. ‘The day after to-morrow,’ he said--and ‘an accident.’ What can he have in his mind? Oh, if I only knew. And if only Miles would come back. I could die with this awful feeling that it is something of my own mother’s that was found in that room.” She was weak with the vision flashing before her of disgrace, of the police, of discovery, of Miles’ face when he knew, and in them she forgot the most important words Wray had spoken that night, though she had heard them well enough. “And the weather’s changed. It is freezing hard.” They carried Cristiane’s life and death, and her own fate hung on them, and, shrewd as she was, Ismay overlooked them. CHAPTER XXIV. “I NEVER SAW IT BEFORE.” The frost still held. The river that ran through Cylmer’s Ferry was skimmed with ice; the lake at Marchant’s Hold was a shining, glittering thing as Ismay passed it on her way to keep her tryst at the stile. Only at one side, where a deep brook ran into it, was there a spot of black ice. Ismay passed it without a glance as she hurried on. Wray had been at her elbow all the afternoon, hideous, revolting, stinging her with veiled hints of the price that she, and she alone, could pay for her mother’s safety. She had broken away from him at last, with the arrival of tea and Cristiane, and before the eyes of the heiress he had made no attempt to detain her. There was nothing she could do down here at Marchant’s Hold. He laughed as he saw her hurrying out through the frozen park, as if to get away from an unclean atmosphere and drink deep of the stainless air. And yet it was then that fate laughed, too, had he known it; laughed even at that luck of Marcus Wray that the agony of a frail girl would presently meet. Cylmer, straight from the station, strode to meet Ismay as she reached the stile. The place was silent, deserted, and he took her in his arms. She felt the cloth of his coat under her cheek, felt his arms tighten once more about her, steeled herself to meet his kiss. Oh, God! In ten minutes, in five, would there be that between them that would stop his kisses forevermore? “You’re pale.” He held her at arm’s length to look at her. “You’re cold. I was a brute to bring you out in this freezing weather.” “No, no, I don’t feel it.” She led the way to the stile. “I think I am tired. Let us sit down,” with a smile that was not like her own. “I thought I’d never get back,” he said, sitting down beside her, his arm round her to draw her close. “You were right, Ismay. It was an awful business. Don’t draw away from me, sweet! There’s not a soul to see.” “Why was it awful?” For once her scarlet lips were dry. “Do you mean you’ve found the murderer?” “No. But we shall; and the awful part is that it must have been a woman who poisoned him. But let us talk of something else, of you and me. I’m sick of the ugly side of life.” Sick? What would he be when he knew it all? “Tell me first. I like to know all you do, you know.” Would her heart ever beat again, would he feel her strained breathlessness as she sat within his arm? “What an exacting child it is,” he said. “I’ll tell you, and then we’ll leave the whole hateful subject. When Kivers made that last search he found where the carpet stopped at the threshold just inside the bedroom a jewel, or a piece of one, wedged into the little crevice. It looked as if it might have been a charm.” “A charm!” Mechanically she forced out the words. Oh, that tinkling bunch of golden toys her mother always wore on a chatelaine! Why, had she not long ago gone over them one by one? “I think so. For it isn’t a thing a man would be likely to wear. What do you think?” Before she could draw her laboring breath he had laid something in the frightened, relaxed hand that lay on her knee. “I got Kivers to lend it to me. I wanted to look at it under a microscope.” “This!” She was bolt upright, clear of his embrace, staring at the thing in her hand. “This!” relief that was agony in her voice. “I--I never saw it before.” “Saw it before?” He stared at her. Then he laughed. “Saw one before, I suppose you mean, little silly! It is an Egyptian scarab, one of their sacred beetles that are so precious. Look at its color in the sunset.” Golden green, turquoise blue, in its gold setting; the beetle that was older than Christianity glowed dully in her ungloved palm. But it was not its beauty that made her eyes shine, nor anything but the rapture of knowing that never, never had her mother possessed a thing like it. Had she been wronging her all this time? Had she been speaking the truth, and Abbotsford been done to death by another hand before ever she entered the house? If she had dared, she would have laughed out wildly, flung her hands out in delirious joy; but she must even turn her face from her lover, that he might not see the triumphant blood mantling in her cheeks. There had been some one else in the room! It was all she could do not to shriek it aloud. “How excited you are!” he laughed. “Do you think you would make a good detective when a little thing like this turns your head?” “Why should the thing have belonged to a woman?” she said irrelevantly. “Because a man could only wear it set in a ring, and this was never in a ring. Don’t you see the light setting of gold round it and the broken catch of a tiny chain? It has been a pendant, hanging for luck on a woman’s bracelet. For deadly luck for some poor soul,” gravely. “You are sure it wasn’t Lord Abbotsford’s own?” with a persistence that might make him wonder. “Certain. If you had ever seen Abbotsford you would see the absurdity. He was never known to wear even a jeweled stud. He told me once that he always thought of the money that was sunk in women’s diamonds, and groaned inwardly at the waste of capital. He was never very free with money, poor chap. He was a man’s man, not a woman’s.” “Yet you said he had a photograph that was not his fiancée’s?” wonderingly. “Oh, that’s different.” Cylmer grew red under his bronze. “But you wouldn’t understand, and I don’t want you to. Come home, darling mine; it’s too cold for you here.” Home, to Marcus and his evil plots; to the mother she had wronged in her thoughts ever since that awful day, but who, innocent or guilty, was putting her head blindly into another noose. “I wish I were going home with you,” she cried, with a shyness that made her hide her face the second the words were out. “I hate Marchant’s Hold!” “You could come to-morrow if you would let me have my way,” rapture at her avowal in his voice. “Look up, Ismay. Don’t be ashamed. There is nothing that can’t be said between you and me.” “I wish I thought so,” she murmured with sudden significance. “Perhaps I shall some day. What are you and the detectives going to do?” she asked, holding the little beetle tight. “Find out who the woman is who was in his rooms that day--and then, I suppose, I’ll strain every nerve to keep her from being hanged as she deserves,” with a laugh at his own weakness. “Women have always been kind to me, my Ismay,” simply and without the least conceit, as though such kindness were a debt he must repay. But she guessed shrewdly that many a woman had loved Miles Cylmer, and worn sorrow at her heart for her folly. “Miles, if I had done it could you love me still?” she said, on an impulse. “You? Don’t even in fun class yourself with a woman like that!” sternly. “Well, then, my mother!” It was almost a cry. “If she had done it would you marry me? Tell me.” Cylmer was absolutely truthful. For a moment he looked away from her, awkwardly. “Ismay, don’t ask me,” he answered very low. “I--I don’t know.”