Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
“Where does he live?” the girl asked idly, yet with intention. Somehow
she did not like this expedition.
“Not far; he has a house in Onslow Place.”
“Well, if I were you, I would ring the bell and go openly; have the
servant announce you! I wouldn’t creep in with a key.”
But Mrs. Trelane took no notice.
It was a dark afternoon, and Onslow Place was very quiet. No one saw
her as she opened Lord Abbotsford’s door with the little latch-key.
She met no one as she went softly up the carpeted stair to his
sitting-room. She had been there before once, and knew the way.
The room was strangely quiet as she opened the door. It was all hung
with pale pink, and furnished in a darker pink brocade; not like a
man’s room at all. There were bowls of hothouse carnations everywhere,
each great flower a fiery rose; and the silver lamps were already lit
under their rose-colored shades.
Mrs. Trelane shut the door behind her, and as she did so a faint rustle
in the next room could easily have passed unheard.
“Abbotsford,” she said softly, looking very young and handsome in her
plain tailor-made gown, “are you here?”
A screen was drawn round the hearth, with room enough for a sofa
between it and the fire. A table stood by the window, and at first Mrs.
Trelane paid no heed to it, as she walked round the screen.
Abbotsford was on the sofa asleep, his head lying on his arm.
“Wake up, I’m here,” she said lightly. “I don’t wonder you’re asleep.
Your flowers are too strong; they smell just like bitter almonds.”
Lord Abbotsford never moved; and once more the strange quiet of the
room struck on Helen Trelane’s nerves.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said sharply. “Why can’t you wake up?
And what are you doing with all that?” For the letter on the table had
caught her eye; money, notes, and gold, in an open purple velvet box;
diamonds, a necklace, bracelets, a tiara. Her heart gave a leap. Had he
indeed repented and sent for her to give her these?
Something else on the table softened her heart, too: the only
photograph she had ever had taken for years; it had been done for
Abbotsford. She remembered how he had taken the negative from the
photographer and broken it, for fear she might have more printed. He
had loved her then. Oh, if she could only rouse that love again for one
half-hour!
The silk linings of her dark purple dress rustled as she moved toward
him where he slept, and sank on her knees beside him.
“Wake up, sleepy boy, you sent for me, you know.” His hand was
strangely cool as she took it in hers; the next instant she had jumped
to her feet.
“My God!” she cried, trembling like a leaf. “It can’t be.”
She lifted the arm that was over the face, and kept, she never knew
how, from shrieking. John Inglesby, Lord Abbotsford, was dead--dead in
the pink, luxurious chamber where the flowers smelled of almonds, where
there was nothing to tell how he died.
Was it a trap? Had he killed himself on purpose? Sent for her?
Mrs. Trelane, with her skirts gathered up to make no sound, fled
swiftly from the room. The house was quite quiet, the servants all
down-stairs; the woman who had been young and radiant as she came in,
slipped out of that horrible house wan as the man up-stairs. She dared
not hurry away, though the early darkness of London was growing apace,
and she could not if she had tried, for her feet would scarcely carry
her.
Suddenly she stopped short, for quick steps came behind her. Had any
one seen her go out? Had any one found that which lay up-stairs? She
turned, ready to drop.
“Ismay!” The cry was hysterical, uncontrollable, for it was Ismay
hurrying after her. “What are you here for?”
“Why not? I was going for a walk, and I came this way. What made you so
quick? You have not been there five minutes--you can’t have.”
Her mother clutched her by the arm fiercely and whispered in her ear.
“Don’t stop like this! walk on,” the girl said, very low, yet with
authority. “Did any one see you? You’re sure there was no one there?”
“No one.” Mrs. Trelane’s teeth were chattering.
“Is there anything in the room that might get you into trouble? Think,
quick!”
“Oh, my photograph. It’s there on the table.” What a fool she had been
not to bring it.
“Do the servants know you? Does any one know he was a friend of yours?”
“No; no one! I was very careful. I did not want my past to come up--if
he married me.” The words were gasped out under her breath; for once
terror was too much for her. “You don’t think they’ll bring me into it,
Ismay?”
Ismay turned round.
“Go back,” she said, “quick, and get that photograph. It’s risky,
but it’s your only chance. Don’t you see that you might be suspected
through it?”
“I can’t,” but she had turned, too.
“You must! I’ll wait outside.”
She almost pulled the elder woman back to the house she had but just
left; with a steady hand she fitted in the latch-key her mother could
not turn. Sick with fright, but desperate, she pushed her gently into
the dim hall and closed the door softly behind her. Helen Trelane, like
a guilty thing, crept back to that room of horror, and her daughter
strolled quietly along outside in terror. Suppose she had done just the
wrong thing?
Ismay shivered in her thin coat, and then turned back in time to see
what made her blood thicken with a worse chill than the November air.
A hansom cab was stopping at Abbotsford’s door. A tall man in a loose
overcoat, that was like every other fashionable overcoat in London,
jumped out and put his hand in his pocket to pay his fare.
He was going into the house! He would find her mother, find Abbotsford;
he would find out, perhaps, more! With a horrible clearness those words
of her own mother’s came back to the girl.
“I will pay him for it all if I kill him.”
In her sick horror the girl’s breath failed her; before she could draw
it again the man, whose back was still turned to her in the dusk, had
put a key in the door--Lord Abbotsford was evidently generous with
keys--and disappeared within the house.
If Ismay Trelane had thought it would have availed her anything, she
would have fallen on her knees in the street--and prayed!
CHAPTER IV.
“THE MYSTERY.”
Mr. Marcus Wray laid down his morning paper on his lonely
breakfast-table with a queer sound in his throat.
He had taken a deep interest in the affairs, as became a barrister in
fair standing, and now the verdict of the coroner’s jury stared him in
the face. So important a thing had called out a leading article, and
Mr. Wray had read it till he knew it by heart. Yet he picked up the
paper now, and looked at it again.
“The mystery surrounding Lord Abbotsford’s death,” it ran, “has not
been lifted by the verdict at the inquest. The deceased clearly
came to his death by poisoning with cyanid of potassium, which
could not have been administered by his own hand, as no trace of
any bottle containing it was found anywhere in the house of the
unfortunate nobleman. And the verdict of murder by persons unknown
has only deepened the horror of the public, since no trace or clue
to the supposed murderer has been discovered. The evidence of the
servants--who were all able to prove an alibi on the afternoon of the
murder--that no one entered the house, has been rendered worthless
by the statement of Mr. Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry, who swore that he
had entered with a latch-key, gone up-stairs and put down a box of
cigarettes in the very room in which Lord Abbotsford was lying, and
gone out again at once without seeing him, where he lay on a sofa
behind a screen. He had hurried out to join a friend in the street:
half an hour later he went back to Lord Abbotsford’s house, and this
time discovered his body, and sent the servants at once for the
police. That Mr. Cylmer--who was a close friend of the deceased--was
guiltless, was amply proved at the inquest; but the criminal is still
to be found, and a large reward has been offered for his apprehension.
“The only clue so far comes from the evidence of Mr. Cylmer, that, on
laying down the box of cigarettes, he had noticed on a small table
some bank-notes, a quantity of loose gold, some diamonds in an open
box, and a woman’s photograph, which he had not been accustomed to
see there. On his return and discovery of the dead body, the gold,
diamonds, and photograph were gone; the notes only remained.
“Mr. Cylmer stated that he merely glanced at the photograph. Lord
Abbotsford had many women friends whom he did not know; but that he
remembered distinctly its being there. Of the diamonds missing, no
trace can be found, though they had only been purchased that day as
a gift for the betrothed wife of the dead man. But that such infamous
crimes can be committed with impunity in the house of a well-known
nobleman, in the very heart of London, is not to be thought possible,
and every means will be brought to bear to bring the perpetrator to
justice. No motive can be found for the murder, the robbery excepted.
His estates go to a distant cousin, at present a midshipman on foreign
service in the Royal Navy. The deepest of sympathy is extended
throughout society to the lady whose engagement to Lord Abbotsford was
announced only the day before his death.”
“A pack of fools!” said the reader slowly. “And the man who wrote this
is the worst. They may hunt through every street in London and never
find a thread to help them. If Lord Abbotsford had had a clever man
servant”--he shrugged his lean shoulders--“but he would have country
bumpkins from his estate to wait on him, and no others!”
He sat in a brown study for a long half-hour, and then roused himself
to eat his cold breakfast. He had not eaten much lately; his waitress,
when she cleared away, was glad his appetite had improved. He lived
alone in one of the curious rookeries known to the frequenters of the
Inns of Court. He was anything but a briefless barrister, yet his
briefs were usually of a sort another man would have looked at twice.
Not Marcus Wray--the world owed him a living, and he must get it,
somehow. It did not concern him that the people who went up and down
his staircase--after dark--were not the cream of society.
Contrary to his habits, he spent his morning in utter idleness,
smoking; his lean, round shoulders more humped than usual, his ugly,
clean-shaven face wrinkled repulsively.
There was money to be got out of the Abbotsford tragedy, yet just
how would not come to him. His thick, red lips pressed hard on his
cigar, and the lean, knotted hand that lay on his knee never ceased a
curiously light movement, as if he were driving in a nail, carefully,
very carefully. Suddenly the tapping ceased as the man’s face relaxed.
“I think I have it,” he said to himself. “Anyhow, I will go out
and--make a call!”
He folded up his paper and put it safely in his overcoat pocket when he
was ready to start. He might want it--it had interested him.
It had interested two other people in London--Ismay Trelane and her
mother.
Till they read it they had hardly eaten or slept; the days had passed
somehow, that was all. If Mr. Cylmer’s evidence had been given early in
the inquiry they might have suffered less, but it had been kept to the
very last.
Mrs. Trelane, pale and staring, was the first to speak when the morning
paper was read.
“We’re all right,” she said thickly.
Ismay nodded. “When he went in I thought you were lost. But it was
lucky you got that photograph. I suppose it’s Abbotsford’s sovereigns
you’ve been staving off your tradesmen with.”
“They were no good to him”--cynically.
“And not much to us; they’re all gone now.”
Mrs. Trelane, who had scarcely spoken since that day of terror, who had