Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
“Let her in,” he said resignedly. “Did you say she was a lady?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ismay took her last coin from her pocket as the man came out.
“Pay my hansom,” she said, and heard the second policeman laugh.
“The like of them coming in hansoms!” And for a moment she regretted
her worn-out, ugly clothes.
A lady! As the door closed behind her and the struggling boy, who was
fighting dumbly, too terrified to scream, the inspector looked up in
surprise. The girl was as shabby, if not as ragged, as the boy.
“Please tell him that he is not to be hurt, that he’s safe,” she said
quickly. “He’s so frightened.”
The inspector looked from her to the child.
“Then what have you brought him here for at this hour?” he asked
sternly.
“Because he knows something about the Onslow Square mystery.” Now that
the die was cast and she must speak, she could hardly drag out the
words.
“What! that child?” said the inspector incredulously. But he rose and
went over to the gasping, terrified boy, and put a kindly hand on his
shoulder.
“No one will hurt you,” he said, and the firm touch of his hand quieted
the child like magic.
As he looked up he met Ismay’s eyes, darkly green, but dull as
malachite.
“Mr. Davids, don’t you know me?” And in spite of her quiet voice he saw
she trembled.
“I am Ismay Trelane. Do you remember the night you raided my mother’s
house in St. John’s Wood for a gambling-den? I was a child, and afraid.
You stopped me as I was running out of the house, and you carried me
up-stairs to my bed.”
“Mrs. Trelane is your mother? You are that long-legged child?” He
stood, remembering the utter forlornness of the little girl, her
miserable bedroom in that sumptuous house, her pride that kept her from
crying as she clung to him.
“How do you come here?” he asked. “I heard your mother had--had gone
back to her relations.”
The boy, now that they talked of other things, was relieved; also
that no policemen were in the room was reassuring. He sat down in a
frightened way on the edge of a chair, staring at them.
“I’m going to tell you.” Bravely she held up her small, lovely head,
till he wondered at her beauty and her hard-held agony. “If I’m wrong,
and there isn’t enough to go on----” she caught her breath.
“Sit down.” The inspector pushed a chair toward her, his weariness all
gone.
Slowly, clearly, she told him everything, except that Marcus Wray meant
Sir Gaspard’s daughter to die. Let her die; she would no longer raise a
finger to save her. It was not to prevent Wray’s crimes, but to bring
them home to him, that she was here.
When she came to the scarab she faltered a little, for Davids was
frowning. Yet he could not wonder, looking at her marvelous face, at
Cylmer’s weakness in giving her his secret. He only wondered at the
blindness that had made the man refuse to hear her story. And still,
when it was all done, he shook his head very pitifully.
“I’m afraid it isn’t enough,” he said, looking at the girl who had come
to London in despair to try and save the mother against whom things
looked so dark.
Ismay pointed to the boy.
“Ask him,” she said dully. “I went to Onslow Square. I found him on the
steps, crying because they wouldn’t let him in.”
The child, who had sat dumb and only half-comprehending, shied at
first, then, under the half-teasing questions of the inspector, grew
garrulous, then proud of his importance.
“I’d know him fast enough, if I see him,” he observed cheerfully. “He
upset my box when he passed me, and so I run after him, and I see him
drop that bottle. It was shiny, and I run and grabbed it.”
“Or it would have been ground to powder?” the inspector said musingly.
“It would have been a clever idea if it had worked better.”
He held out the scarab in its broken setting.
“Was the blue thing on his cuff like this?”
“I dunno. I hadn’t time to see. Won’t it soon be morning, mister? I’m
awful hungry.”
“What are you going to do?” said Ismay, very low. For there had been no
change in that imperturbable face.
Davids turned round from a cupboard, whence he produced some biscuits
for the boy, who fell on them ravenously.
“Where does this man Wray live?” he asked, and she told him.
He locked away the scarab and the bottle in silence, and the girl’s
beautiful face grew blank and wan. Was he going to do nothing? Had she
told her story in vain?
“I won’t hide anything from you, Miss Trelane,” he said bluntly. “I’m
going myself to Wray’s rooms, and I must tell you if we find nothing
there, and have only this boy’s story to go on, the case against your
mother will scarcely be improved. The child can identify Wray, perhaps,
but he may be able to clear himself with the greatest of ease.”
Ismay looked at him blankly. Her head ached till the pain numbed her,
her excitement had gone, and instead she felt sick. If she had told
all, only for Cylmer to triumph in her mother’s guilt, what should she
do? Yet her lips never quivered as she nodded in assent.
“I am going to turn the key on you, too,” he said, so evenly that she
did not know whether he thought her an impostor or not. “And you’d
better try to sleep. I may be a long time.”
He wondered afresh at her courage as he left her alone with the boy,
in a suspense that must be like the very grasp of death. He was not
too certain of her, either. She seemed truthful, but she was Mrs.
Trelane’s child. A long acquaintance with that lady’s career did not
lead to confidence in her daughter. Hour by hour the night wore on. The
bootblack slept coiled up on the floor; but Ismay sat bolt upright,
wide-awake, her damp clothes drying on her.
Once she started to her feet at a noise outside. But whoever it was
passed on, and as the dark hour before dawn hung on the earth her head
fell backward on the leather chair. The night was so long, the day so
far off yet, and there was nothing to tell her what the sunrise would
bring.
Davids, coming in before the first gray light began to make the lights
pale, stopped on the threshold and looked pitifully at the boy and
girl. Both were asleep; the boy with a tear-stained face; the girl
like a lovely marble image, an image of a woman who has drunk deep of
a bitter cup in her youth, and must remember the taste of it till her
dying day. The inspector was a hard man, and this was his trade, but
something in the sight touched his heart.
“Poor children!” he said softly. “Poor babes that have never been
young,” and, with a gentle hand, he touched Ismay’s shoulder.
“Wake up!” he cried softly. “You must catch the early train back to the
country. You can’t do any good here.”
She started to her feet; wan, haggard, with black rings round her eyes.
“Me alone?” she said. He noted approvingly that she showed no symptom
of screaming. “Yes, alone. It is our only chance. Can you get into your
room without being seen?”
“I think so, if there’s time.”
Her eyes widened like a cat’s as she looked at his face. She was awake
now to the new day. And at what she saw there she cried out aloud, her
icy calm shattered at last.
“You’ve been very brave. Can you be braver still?” the man said slowly.
And the girl, whose strength was nearly done, said “yes.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
“SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!”
The conversation had been exciting enough, yet Mr. Wray was bored.
“Where is Ismay?” he asked shortly, as he finished his very late
breakfast.
Mrs. Trelane shrugged her shoulders.
“She’s in bed. She told Jessie she wasn’t to be disturbed till she
rang.”
Wray’s eyebrows went up. Truly, these were airs in a girl who had been
used to cooking her own breakfast, and been glad to have it to cook.
“I’ll go to her.” Mrs. Trelane rose quickly, reading his face
anxiously. She had watched him open his letters, and she had seen
annoyance in his face.
“What do you want Ismay for?” Cristiane inquired coquettishly.
Wray suppressed a bad word. All the previous evening Cristiane, whose
successes had gone to her head, had fairly flung herself at his head.
She had sung to him, talked to him, bored him, till he could have
strangled her. And now she was hammering the last few nails into her
coffin.
“I don’t want her, especially,” he said coldly, wishing the little fool
would hold her tongue.
Cristiane laughed.
“Do you know what I think?” she asked. “I think you are in love with
her.”
Under the table he shut one hand hard.
“Do you? Why?
“Ain’t people in love when they kneel down beside a girl, and kiss her,
once, twice, twenty times?” nodding her head knowingly at each number.
Wray was for a moment taken back.
So the little fool had seen him! Now she had begun to suspect; the next
thing she would begin to talk, perhaps to Cylmer; and if he carried out
his schemes it would be with a light on them that would make them plain
to the world.
Cristiane had signed her own death-warrant. She was no longer innocent,
but dangerous and in the way. To-night she should be no longer one nor
the other. He looked at her with that frank gaze that always cloaked
his worst deceits.
“When a man dare not ask for what he wants, because it is so far above
him, do you blame him for taking--what he can get?” His voice, full of
hopeless longing, made the blood of triumph spring to her cheeks. Here
again she would defeat Ismay!
“Yes,” she said, her eyes on the table-cloth. “You could have--tried!
You need not have kissed her,” pettishly, “before my very eyes.”
“Cristiane!” he was on his feet at her side, his voice thrilling with
simulated joy and passion; “you’re angry because I kissed her? You
care?”
She did not care, beyond her vanity that was piqued, but she was afraid
to say so. Somehow the man dominated her till she sat an arrant coward.
She trembled before his eyes, that were full of a passion that she
thought was love; she had no intuition to tell her that it was hatred
and the threat of death.
“I--I don’t know!” she stammered.
“You shall know!” he retorted, knowing better than to plead with her.
His hand, softly brutal, was under her chin. “Kiss me,” he ordered.
“Tell me you love me.”
Like a frightened child, she repeated the words, and he knew she
lied as she spoke. He was right, she was dangerous; weak, obstinate,
self-willed, with an utterly unbridled tongue.
“Kiss me,” he repeated, longing to choke her instead, and having
nothing but distaste for her peachlike cheek, her parted lips. He was
relieved that she sprang away from him--and she never dreamed that he
let her go.
From the door she looked back provokingly. “Not now--perhaps to-night!”
and she went off singing.
Mrs. Trelane heard her, as, having been in a hurry despite her hasty
retreat, she stood leisurely at Ismay’s door. Her shrewd ears caught
the excited note in the girl’s voice.
“He’s been making love to her,” she thought astutely.
“Marcus making love at this hour in the morning! Can he mean to go that
way for his money, after all?” She knocked, this time with earnestness,
at Ismay’s locked door. It opened on the instant.
Ismay, dressed as usual, stood inside, her eyes a little heavy, her
face unnaturally flushed. She had got back by the early train, driving
from the station to the gate in a fly, moneyless no longer, thanks to
Davids; by eight o’clock had gained her room, unseen by any one, since
the servants were at breakfast, and the rest of the house waiting till
half-past eight should bring their tea and hot water.
As the girl bathed and dressed herself it almost seemed to her that
it was a dream, that she could never have been in London and got back
again in those few hours while the house slept. Only the instructions
she had from Davids told her it was no dream, but reality. At the sight
of her mother, for the first time in all her life she flung her arms