The Black Abbot
clear and had discovered yet another in quest of the treasure. He had
witnessed the interview between the two men and had followed Arthur
back to Willow House with no other intention than to offer his help,
for a consideration, in discovering this mythical fortune. For Mr.
Gilder had heard quite enough that day he surprised his employer with
Mary Wenner, to know that somewhere under the Abbey lay either the
fortune or its key. He had overtaken Arthur on the drive, and Arthur
was in an unpleasant mood: hot with the man at the interruption of his
search, smarting under the sting of Dick Alford’s sarcasm.
At first, startled by the unexpected apparition of his head clerk,
Arthur had snarled round on him, and there and then discharged him
from his service and defied him to do his worst. It was Gilder who had
struck the first blow.
When Arthur was in his more unpleasant moods he said things that no
self-respecting man could endure, and the black eye which the lawyer
nursed was an advertisement of his indiscretion.
Gilder might be a bookmaker, but he was not a thief. At least, “thief”
was rather an extravagant description of his duplicity. He went back
to London half crazy with rage, but a day in bed restored his mental
equilibrium and he sat down to plan how best he could frustrate any
plans which his late employer had formed for gaining possession of the
treasure. By this time Gilder, too, was convinced; his last doubts
removed. He had been sceptical as to the treasure’s existence, but he
knew such things had happened, and he had a natural desire to be in
any scheme which produced immediately and without great labour a vast,
undreamed-of sum.
His cut lip healed in a few hours, though it was still swollen, and
toward the evening of the second day after his retirement from the
firm of Gwyn & Gwyn, he dressed himself with great care, and, calling
a taxi, drove to an address he had once scribbled on his white
shirt-cuff.
Mary Wenner occupied a tiny flat, every compartment of which might
have been contained in one large-sized room. It was perched on the top
floor of an apartment house near Baker Street--37, Cranston Mansions.
She enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the Metropolitan Railway and such
shunting operations as are carried out in that busy centre, and she
was as a rule free from callers; for there were no elevators in the
house, and to climb up four steep flights of stairs was something of
an undertaking.
Mr. Gilder was not strong for physical exertion and cursed the
parsimonious builder who had neglected to put in this easy method of
transportation. Nevertheless, he climbed, and presently was ringing at
the polished bell of No. 135.
Mary had a daily servant, who was a charwoman in the morning, a
parlour-maid in the afternoon, and her own natural self after six, at
which hour she left for the night. This aged woman, with her dingy
white cap askew, opened the door and took the card in to her mistress,
leaving Mr. Gilder on the mat. She came back with an ingratiating
smile, and pointed to the room where Mary was to be found.
“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Gilder,” said Miss Wenner
conventionally. “I’m sure I never thought that you would be as good as
your word. Sit down, won’t you?”
She really was pretty, he observed; in her plain house dress she was
prettier than in a more elaborate attire. The flat, though small, was
well but not expensively furnished. It left him with the impression
that she had bought everything with her own money and he had rather a
nice feeling toward her in consequence. For Fabrian Gilder was a queer
mixture of Puritan and adventurer. Later, Mary had her flat to thank
for certain pleasant developments.
There was only one chair on which he could sit, and this he took.
“You’d like a cup of tea? I’m just going to have mine,” said Miss
Wenner. “I’ve been out all day shopping and everything.”
“Are you--er--working?” asked Gilder delicately.
“No, I’m not in business,” replied Miss Wenner, more correctly. Only
common people “work”: the gentility “go to business.”
She went out, disappearing into a mysterious cupboard, which had just
enough room for a tiny kitchen table and a gas stove, and he heard the
rattle of cup against saucer, the _plomp!_ of a gas ring being
lighted, and after a while she came back, a little flushed and
apologetic.
“Maids are so stupid, aren’t they?” she asked. “You can never trust
these common daily people. I had an awfully nice maid but she went
away and got married, the stupid child!”
She received very few visitors, she told him. Her “sewing woman” came
twice a week. She had a very dear friend--a girl, she hastened to
assure him--who spent Tuesday evenings with her and sometimes slept in
the flat. But a male visitor was the rarest of phenomena.
“You can’t be too careful,” said Miss Wenner primly. “A girl’s
character is her principal asset--don’t you agree Mr. Gilder?”
Mr. Gilder agreed.
“That is what I have always said about my work with Harry--excuse me,
I mean Lord Chelford, only we were such awfully good friends that I’ve
never dreamt of calling him anything but by his Christian name.”
“And did you call Richard Alford by his Christian name?” asked Mr.
Gilder, not without malice.
Her nose went up in the air.
“Him!” she said contemptuously. “I don’t take any more notice of him
than I do of any of the other upper servants! He’s educated and all
that--went to Eton and Harrow” (even Mr. Gilder winced at this) “but
you judge a man by his manners and not by his education. There’s no
doubt at all that Dick Alford has the manners of a pig!”
She said this with feeling and no little vehemence. Mr. Gilder, who
knew something of the circumstances, understood and almost
sympathized.
“I was going to say that down at Fossaway I often felt that it wasn’t
right to be in that big house with no lady there except the
housekeeper, who of course is a servant, and---- Oh! here you are,
Gladys!”
XXVIII
She rose as Gladys brought in the tea tray and laid it carefully on
the table. Gladys was sixty, toothless, and more or less chinless. She
wore most of her hair in a bun, which overflowed, drooping over her
neck in picturesque confusion. Gladys had the smile of one who enjoyed
the privilege of entertaining a visitor. She smiled at the girl,
smiled at Mr. Gilder, and smiled herself out of the room. Fabrian
Gilder thought he had never seen a more ghastly exhibition.
“You’re a good friend of Gwyn’s, aren’t you?” he asked, as he sipped
his tea.
She dropped her eyes in maidenly embarrassment.
“We are rather good friends, but no more. We may be something
closer--who knows? He has always behaved like a perfect gentleman and
treated me like a lady. I must say that for Arthur. But he’s a little
trying; don’t you find him so?” she asked, with a girlish naïveté
that was a little overdone.
“I have left him,” said Mr. Gilder briefly. “He and I disagreed over a
question of policy and I retired. In fact, we had a very bad row and
came to blows--I tell you this because you’ll probably learn the facts
from him sooner or later.”
Mary was shocked; and when Mary was shocked she covered her rather
generous mouth with her two small white hands.
“You don’t tell me!” she said in a hushed voice. “Blows! Is that it?”
She nodded her head to his lip.
“That’s it,” said Gilder shortly.
“Blows!” repeated Mary Wenner. “How perfectly disgusting and vulgar!”
“I wanted to talk to you about Arthur Gwyn,” Gilder broke in upon her
horrified wonder. “We’re not good friends, but that doesn’t mean I
bear him any malice. But, naturally, as we are parted, I don’t feel
called upon to protect him and stand between him and his dupes”--he
emphasized the last word--“as I have done in the past. You know him as
well as I do,” he went on, as she was about to speak. “You know his
vanity; you know how perfectly unreliable and insincere he is; you
know, too, that he’d get out of any promise he ever made, even if it
was in black and white.”
He was watching her narrowly all the time he spoke, and now he saw her
eyebrows arch.
“Indeed?” she said coldly. “I don’t know anything about the law, but I
can’t see how a gentleman, or a common man for the matter of that,
could get out of--what is the expression--legal obligations?”
“Then you don’t know Arthur Gwyn as well as I do,” he said. “But that
is beside the point. I haven’t come here to blackguard him or to make
him look smaller in your eyes. Not that I could,” he said,
anticipating her protest a little ambiguously. “But I believe in a
girl having a square deal, especially a working girl who may have
nobody in the world to look after her interests. And I tell you that
that fellow couldn’t go straight if he was fired from a gun. Now, what
about the Chelford treasure?”
At the words she sat bolt upright, and a look of blank astonishment
came to her face.
“Do you know?” she gasped.
“Of course I know! You’re going to help him find the gold, and in
return----” He paused.
That was exactly what he had come to find out. What obligation had
Arthur undertaken in return for the information she would give him?
And he was pretty sure of his ground. He knew the girl; had had some
dealings with her when she was with Chelford; and since he lived on
his knowledge of human beings, he had analyzed her with more or less
accuracy. He knew her vanity, her ambition; had heard something of her
summary discharge from Fossaway Manor. There was only one reward that
Arthur Gwyn could offer.
“He has promised to marry you,” he said, and he was not altogether
drawing a bow at a venture.
“Did he tell you that?” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “I
hope you don’t think, Mr. Gilder, that I’ve thrown myself at his head?
That I wouldn’t do for the best man in the world.” She looked at him
thoughtfully, and added: “Old or young. I trust Arthur as a gentleman
to fulfil any promise he has made. I am going to do something for him
that will make all the difference in the world----”
“When is he going to marry you? After the treasure is discovered, I
suppose?”
She nodded.
“He will have to marry me then,” she said.
“I realize that. You’re a girl that has to make her way in the world
without influence, and possibly without friends.” Mr. Gilder knew he
was on the right tack here. “He can offer you a position and you can
offer him money. After all, that is exactly what his sister is doing,
and nobody thinks any worse of her for that.”
“Exactly,” murmured Miss Wenner, who had never seen the matter in that
light before.
“The point I want to make is this,” he went on: “What bond has he
given you?”
“His word of honour,” said Miss Wenner dramatically.
“I daresay. But what valuable bond has he given you?”
“I’ll show you.”
She went into the next room, which was evidently her bedroom, and,
returning with her bag, placed it on her knee, opened the flap, and
took out, amongst other things, a slip of paper, which she passed
across to Mr. Gilder. He read it at a glance, noted the careful
emendation which Arthur had made, and passed it back.
“That is valueless,” he said, and her face fell. “What is to prevent
his going to Chelford and striking a bargain with him? Where do you
come in then? Besides, this is what is known in law as a promise under
duress--that is to say, under compulsion. If he is acting in the
interests of his client, he can plead that he had to make this promise
in order to secure information which you were illegally withholding.”
She stared at him.
“It’s not illegal to know and not to tell?”
He nodded.
“To know of the existence of hidden treasure and to withhold your
information is a crime in some countries, and I daresay it is in