The Black Abbot
England. But that’s beside the point. Where do you come in, Miss
Wenner?”
She bit her lip thoughtfully.
“I never saw it in that way,” she confessed. “What can I do, Mr.
Gilder?”
He felt inclined to offer the obvious solution, “Get him to marry you
first,” but changed his mind. Mary Wenner married would be a useless
ally.
At the back of his mind he was certain that this rather vulgar
girl--for he had a nice and finicking taste in the matter of
women--had discovered the Chelford millions. If he had not had this
belief he would not have made his call. He believed that by some
accident, or by reason of her close association with Harry Chelford,
she had unveiled the mystery of the lost gold; and his object now was
to discover how far his theory was justified by facts.
“Is there no way of making that agreement more binding, Mr. Gilder?”
she asked. “You’re a lawyer--couldn’t you draw up something he
wouldn’t wriggle out of? Naturally, I’m too much of a lady to want any
man to marry me, if he doesn’t want to marry me. If he just hinted as
much I should tell him to go--I should simply say, ‘Oh, very well, I’m
not at all anxious to marry, thank you very much.’ I think a girl who
throws herself at a man’s head is despicable, don’t you, Mr. Gilder?”
He did not answer this query.
“I could draw you up an agreement that would be legally binding, but I
doubt if even that would help you. Why trust him at all?” he asked
bluntly.
She dropped her eyes at this.
“Who--or rather whom--could I trust?” she asked, and took an invisible
crumb off her dress. “This is such an awful world, and men are so very
deceitful, Mr. Gilder. The young ones are the worst, of course, but
they haven’t experience. I do think that a man isn’t in the prime of
life till he’s about forty-five.” She waited. “Or fifty. He’s sort of
settled down and sowed his wild oats, and he doesn’t want to go out at
nights and all that. And I’ll admit that Arthur is flighty. I wouldn’t
tell it to anybody but you, but he tried to kiss me any number of
times, and he once said the most terrible thing to me at Fossaway
Manor. I said to him: ‘Arthur, you seem to forget that you’re speaking
to a lady,’ and he just curled up and died, if you understand me. I
don’t mean that he actually perished----”
“I understand what you mean,” said Gilder, and went on to make his
most startling revelation. “Now, listen, Miss Wenner. You’re a
sensible girl and I can talk to you as I could talk to very few
people.”
This _cliché_ of intensive flattery, which so seldom fails even when
employed upon intelligent people, produced in Miss Wenner the strained
attentiveness which was called for.
“Suppose I tell you,” said Fabrian Gilder darkly, “that Gwyn is
already trying to anticipate your discovery?”
“I beg your pardon?” Mary Wenner was not very strong on the more
flowery expressions of speech.
“Suppose he’s trying to get ahead of you--trying to find the gold
without your assistance?”
“He wouldn’t dare!” she gasped.
Mr. Gilder nodded very slowly, very deliberately.
“He has already tried,” he said. “Two nights ago I was watching him,
suspecting his plan. He went at three o’clock in the morning to the
ruins of Chelford Abbey, and he took with him a crowbar.…”
Whilst he was speaking, the red in her face deepened and the
wide-opened eyes grew brighter.
“The hound!” she breathed. “The twisting, double-faced monkey!”
It was not a ladylike expression, but for the moment she was superior
to shame.
“The dirty, thieving, twisting sneak! To the Abbey--with a crowbar!
I’ll take my oath on a Bible that I never breathed a word of where it
was hid--I mean hidden. Let him go with his crowbar--ha-ha!” She
laughed shrilly, but gave no other evidence of supreme amusement.
“I’ll crowbar him! Let him search and scrape and dig and see what he
can find.”
He tried to soothe her, but for the moment her soul was breaking in
tumultuous waves upon the muddy flats of Arthur’s duplicity.
“He has deceived me! I don’t mean in an unladylike way--I mean--you
know what I mean, Mr. Gilder? I trusted that man. I gave him all my
heart.” The sob came naturally, but it was largely due to intensified
annoyance. “I gave him all that a woman could give a man--information
I mean, Mr. Gilder. I don’t want you to get any wrong ideas about me,
because I’ve always behaved like a lady, and nobody can point their
fingers of scorn at me.”
She grew calm after a while.
“Who can you trust?” she asked bitterly. “Who--can--you--trust?”
“You can trust me.” Fabrian Gilder’s voice was very gentle, almost
pleading.
He was rather a good-looking man, she observed; his gray hair gave him
distinction.
“You wouldn’t want a legal document from me.…”
“Yes, I would,” she said obstinately. “I don’t trust men.”
“You shall have any document you wish. I will even go as far as
compromising myself hopelessly.”
She coughed.
“I don’t think I should go quite as far as that,” she said,
misunderstanding him.
“I mean that I would take the risk of detection without safeguarding
myself as Arthur Gwyn has done.”
She dabbed her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief.
“Of course, Mr. Gilder--I don’t know you very well, but I’m not going
to say that I don’t like you. I’ve always said to Agatha--my Tuesday
friend, as I call her--‘Mr. Gilder’s a perfect gentleman.’ In fact,
I’m--Mr. Gilder, what is your Christian name?”
“Fabrian,” he said.
She lingered tenderly over the word and smiled, a wistful sideways
smile.
“I should call you Fabe, I suppose? It’s a perfectly lovely name.… As
I was saying, I don’t want to throw myself at any man’s head.”
“Let us go down to-night.”
Her face changed.
“To the Abbey--to-night?”
He nodded.
“My car will get us down in an hour and a half, and we can wait till
it’s dark; and unless there’s a lot of digging to be done----”
“There is no digging,” she said. “But to-night?”
“Why not?” he demanded. “My cottage is less than a mile from the
Abbey. If the gold is there and reachable, we could get away with
enough to make us rich for life.”
She pondered this, and then:
“I know you’ll think it horrid of me, Mr. Gilder--Fabe--that does
sound familiar, doesn’t it?--but I would like something in black and
white.”
There and then Mr. Fabrian Gilder produced a document that was enough,
as he observed jocularly, to hang him, and, reading it, even Mary
Wenner, with her keen instinct for safeguards, was impressed. He wrote
the agreement with his own fountain pen, on paper which he provided,
and he had brought along that pen in his pocket with a view to such a
contingency. It was a new pen, filled with an ink that he had
purchased at a novelty store in Wardour Street, and which was
guaranteed to fade within six hours of writing.
Miss Wenner read it through, folded it, and put it into her bag, and
disappeared into her bedroom. She came back with the bag, but he
guessed that the agreement was disposed in some safe place.
“Now, Fabe, what time do you want to start?”
“At nine-thirty?” he suggested, and she nodded.
“And don’t trouble to bring a crowbar,” she said a little viciously,
as she remembered Arthur Gwyn’s rank treachery. “I’ll carry all the
tools we want in my bag.”
XXIX
The weather had changed that afternoon. Big black clouds had come up
from the west; a steady drizzle of rain had set in when Fabrian Gilder
brought his car to the rendezvous in Marylebone Road. He had pulled up
the hood, and, as a matter of precaution, he had cleared out every
portable thing from the tonneau. If there was gold he must find room
for it, and he made a careful calculation as to the weight he could
carry on each journey.
He was surprised at himself that he had accepted as a fact so readily
that there was gold to be taken. From the girl he learned for the
first time the extent of the treasure. He had inquired casually of his
garage man the amount of strain the back axle would stand. That was
unnecessary, for he had once driven four fairly heavy men a
considerable journey. Supposing they weighted 170 pounds, that would
be the equivalent of twenty bars of gold.
It was nearly ten before the girl appeared. She was wearing a long
raincoat and stepped into the seat by his side with a voluble apology.
“I nearly didn’t come,” she said. “I only just remembered after you’d
gone that awful Black Abbot.”
He was a little amused.
“You don’t believe in that kind of hokum, do you?” he asked, as the
car went swiftly down Baker Street.
“I don’t know.” She was dubious. “He did appear once or twice when I
was at the Manor, but we used to believe that these were villagers’
stories. According to the newspapers, they’ve seen more of him
lately--ugh!” She shivered.
He tapped his pocket significantly with his hand.
“I’ve got something here that’s mighty bad for abbots black or white!”
he said. “Don’t you worry, little girl.”
“No, Fabe,” she said meekly.
Very delicately he suggested that she might call him by the Christian
name his parents had given him. There was no diminutive, he explained,
and excused his correction by telling her that there was a possibility
that she might address him and he would not know to whom she was
speaking.
“I don’t believe in long engagements, do you?” She went off at a
tangent.
“No, I don’t. They should be short--and sweet!”
They both laughed together, and were in excellent humour by the time
they reached the deserted streets of Dorking.
“I only have one anxiety,” he told her. “Mr. Richard Alford has got a
habit of prowling round at odd hours. On a night like this he’ll
hardly leave his comfortable apartment.”
“Comfortable apartment!” she scoffed. “Why, he’s only got a tiny
little office, and his bedroom’s not much bigger than mine. I simply
detest the man. He gives himself more airs in a day than dear Harry
gives himself in ten years--you don’t mind me saying ‘dear Harry?’
You’re not jealous, are you?”
He assured her he was not at all jealous.
“I should have married Harry if it hadn’t been for him. Harry was
simply crazy about me, but Dick hated me--how that man hated me! Mind
you, I’ve always snubbed him when he got a little too fresh. I don’t
say that he was chasing me--I hate girls who think every man is after
them--but he was certainly very attentive once or twice. After lunch
or dinner he’d get up and open the door for me, and that’s a thing
that Harry never did. But of course I saw through it. It was all
deceit and artfulness.”
She chattered at rare intervals, except during the five miles of
driving rain that forced its way under the cover and lashed her face.
“It’s a horrible night,” she complained.
“On the contrary, it’s one of the best nights I could have chosen even
if I had the ordering of the weather,” said Mr. Gilder.
When they reached the secondary road that led to Chelfordbury he
proceeded with greater caution, extinguishing the flaming headlamps
and relying upon the two small lights that were placed on the front
mudguard. He knew the road so well that there was no danger of mishap;
his chief anxiety was that he should not, by the reflected rays of the
bigger headlights, be recognized.
A mile from Fossaway Manor he switched out the remaining two lights,
for he had a shrewd idea that this section of the road was visible
from Lord Chelford’s house. To the nervous girl riding at his side, it
seemed that they were in imminent danger every minute of colliding
with one of the telegraph posts which ran along the side of the road.
Happily she was not aware that the smaller lamps had been
extinguished.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I know every inch of this road; I’ve
driven up it a hundred times. My cottage lies just beyond Willow
House.”