The strange countess
“I don’t know, but I am prepared for anything now.”
Lizzy glanced at her comrade. He was staring open-mouthed into the
hall below.
“She is too pretty a daughter to lose. Now, Mrs. Pinder, I am going to
make you an offer. I want you to take your daughter to South America.
I will pay you a yearly sum, more than sufficient for your needs. If
you undertake to do that, you will never be troubled again.”
Mary Pinder smiled and shook her head.
“Madam, your offer comes too late. Had it been made whilst I was still
a prisoner, had it been supported by any efforts to obtain my release
from that cruel punishment, I would have gone on my knees and thanked
you and blessed you. But now I know too much.”
“What do you know?” asked Lady Moron.
And then Mrs. Pinder began to speak, and as she went on, Lizzy gripped
the hand of the man at her side, and laid her face against his arm. He
turned round once during the narrative, his weak face transfigured and
smiled down at her, as though he read in her gesture all that her
heart conveyed. Mrs. Pinder spoke without interruption, and, when she
had finished:
“You know a great deal too much for my comfort, madam,” said her
ladyship’s voice, “and much too much for the safety of my friends.”
“So I realise,” said Mary Pinder gravely.
“I repeat my offer. I would advise you to think well before you reject
your chance of safety.”
“Look here, Leonora----” began Chesney Praye.
“Be silent. I have found one friend to-night--one I can trust. It is
not you, Chesney. The doctor has told me all that has happened. You
thought you would go behind my back and forestall me. To-night you
will do as you’re told. Now, madam--do you accept my offer?”
“No,” was Mrs. Pinder’s reply.
Lady Moron turned to the red-faced doctor. He nodded.
“Now, Mrs. Pinder,” he said, advancing to her, his tone jovial, his
manner friendly, “why can’t you be sensible? Do as her ladyship asks
you.”
“I will not----”
He was near to her now. Suddenly his hand shot out and strangled the
scream in her throat. She struggled desperately, madly, but there was
no denying those relentless hands. Chesney Praye took half a step
forward, but Lady Moron’s arm barred him.
And then came the interruption. A wild-looking, dust-stained man,
unrecognisable to any, leapt from the balcony and gripped the doctor
by the shoulders from behind. As Tappatt staggered back, releasing his
hold upon his victim, Selwyn sprang to the long red bell-cord that
hung on the side of the wall, and pulled. From overhead came a
deafening clang. Again he pulled.
“You fool, you madman, what are you doing?”
His mother rushed towards him, but he pushed her back. Presently he
ceased.
“That’s the alarm bell. We’ll have all the house and half the village
in here in a minute. And I don’t want to say before them what I’m
saying to you now.” He pointed an accusing finger at his mother. “You
think I’m a fool, and perhaps you’re right. But I’m not a wicked fool,
and I’m going to send you and your damnable friend before a judge!”
“Get him away quick!” screamed the countess, as a patter of feet came
along the corridor. “I can say it was an accident.”
“Don’t touch him!”
A girl, almost as great a scarecrow as the panting Selwyn, was leaning
over the balcony.
“You can tell them what you like, but you can’t tell them anything
they’ll believe after they’ve heard me!”
The door was pushed open at that moment, and a man half-dressed came
running in, and stopped dead, gaping at the scene that met his eyes.
Almost immediately the doorway was filled with dishevelled men and
women.
“Is there any trouble, my lady?”
“None,” she said sharply, and pointed to the door. “Wait outside.”
She looked up at the girl in the gallery.
“I think you would be well advised to ask my son to change his plans,”
she said, in the same calm, even voice which Selwyn knew so well. “The
matter can be adjusted to-morrow. Selwyn, go back to your friend and
take this lady with you.”
Mrs. Pinder was sitting on a chair, her frail frame shaking
convulsively, while Selwyn strove to comfort her. At Lady Moron’s
words she stood up, and, with the man’s arm about her, passed into the
crowded corridor, and in a few seconds Lizzy Smith had joined them.
Chapter Thirty-six
Leonora, Countess of Moron, paced her long dressing-room, her hands
behind her, a calm, speculative woman, for emotion did not belong to
her. Chesney Praye and the doctor she had left in the music-room, and
through the windows that overlooked the stone porch at the front of
the house she had, a few minutes before, seen the car pass which
carried Mary Pinder to happiness and freedom.
Lady Moron felt no resentment against any save the weakling son she
had hated from his birth. There was still a hope that the wheel would
turn by some miracle in her favour. All she had played for, all she
had won, was gone. It was the hour of reparation and judgment, not yet
for her the hour of penitence.
Opening a little safe that was set in the wall, concealed by a silver
barometer, she took out a tiny box and shook on to the table a folded
sheet of newspaper and a key. This she put into her bag. From the back
of the safe she pulled to view a small automatic pistol, and, jerking
back the cover to assure herself that it was loaded, fixed the safety
catch. This too went into the bag. Then she rang the bell, and her
scared maid answered after a long interval.
“Tell Henry that I wish the Rolls to be at the door in ten minutes,”
she said, and at the end of that time, with her cloak wrapped about
her shoulders, she stepped into the car, pausing only to give
directions. “Charlotte Street,” she said, and gave the number.
She turned over in her mind the events of the past few weeks, striving
to discover the key flaw of her plan. Some force had been working
against her. Dorn was the instrument, but behind that was a power the
identity of which she could not imagine.
The car ran through the deserted streets of Reading along the long
road to Maidenhead. Still her problem was not solved. Who was behind
Dorn? She had for him a certain amount of admiration. She had known,
the moment he came into the case, that the little men who had seemed
so big, Chesney Praye and the doctor, were valueless.
The car came noiselessly to the door of Lois Reddle’s home. She looked
up at the lighted windows and was slightly amused. Selwyn would be
there, basking in the approval of the bourgeoisie. Even her feeling of
bitterness towards him had been blunted on the journey. This was to be
the last throw.
Old Mackenzie, on his way up to Lizzy’s kitchenette to brew more
coffee, heard the knock and called to Lizzy:
“There’s somebody at the door, miss: will you open it for me?”
A transfigured Lizzy, dustless and tidy, ran down the stairs two at a
time and pulled open the door. At first she did not recognise the
woman, and then:
“You can’t come in here, ma’am,” she said.
“I wish to see Miss Reddle,” said the countess. “Please don’t be
ridiculous!”
She had still an overawing effect upon Lizzy, and the girl stood on
one side, and followed the leisurely figure up the stairs.
The door of Mackenzie’s room was open, and as she walked into the
chamber, a sudden silence fell upon the gathering. She looked from
face to face and smiled. But the smile faded when her eyes rested upon
the man who sat by the plain deal table near the window.
“Mr. Shaddles!” she faltered.
He nodded.
“So it was you? I might have guessed that.”
“Yes, madam, it was I. My family have been the Moron lawyers for
hundreds of years, and it was not likely that I should cease to study
their interests.”
“It was you!” she said again. “I should have guessed that. You opposed
my marriage to Lord Moron.”
He nodded.
“I should have opposed it more if I had known what I know now,” he
said. “Will you be seated?”
She nodded and sat down, her bag on her knees, opened. Michael Dorn
stood by the lawyer’s side, and his eyes never left her face.
“Well, I suppose everybody knows now?” said the countess pleasantly.
“Nobody knows--yet. I particularly asked Miss Smith, when she called
me on the ’phone, not to tell the story until I came. It is not a long
story, madam, if you will permit me?”
She nodded.
“The late Earl of Moron married twice,” said Shaddles. “By his first
wife he had a son, William. By his second wife--which is your
ladyship--a son, Selwyn, who is with us to-night. William was a
high-spirited, honourable young man, who served Her Majesty Queen
Victoria in a regiment of Highlanders. He was a thought romantic, and
nothing was more natural than that, when he met Mary Pinder----”
“Mary Pinder!” gasped Lois, but he did not notice the interruption.
“----when he met Mary Pinder, who was then a very beautiful girl of
seventeen or eighteen, he should fall in love with her. He did not
reveal his identity. He had a craze for walking tours, and at that
time was travelling through Hereford--not under his own name, which
was Viscount Craman, but under the name of Pinder, which was his
mother’s maiden name. He met the girl several times without telling
her who he was, and married her by special licence, in the name of
Pinder, intending to reveal his status after the marriage. They had
been living together for a month, when he was suddenly called home by
the illness of his father, and arrived in Scotland to find the late
Earl dying of malignant scarlet fever. By a cruel fate, William was
infected with the disease and died two days after his father, leaving
his widow, ignorant alike of his identity and where he was staying.
“As he was dying, he told his stepmother, the present Lady Moron, the
story of his marriage, and begged her to send for his wife. This she
refrained from doing, especially when she learnt that the girl did not
know where or who he was. Lord Moron, as of course he was then, was
buried. Some time after the countess went to Hereford to seek out the
widow. Mrs. Pinder was living in the house of an eccentric woman, a
drug-taker and slightly mad. The woman had threatened to commit
suicide many times, and it happened that on the morning her ladyship
arrived in Hereford and made a call at the house to satisfy her
curiosity about her stepson’s wife, the landlady took the fatal step,
and when the caller walked into her room, she found her dead, with a
letter on the table announcing why she had committed suicide.
“Lady Moron is a woman of infinite resource. Here, she thought, was an
opportunity of removing for ever a possible claimant to the Moron
estate. On the table were a number of jewels and some money, which the
woman had put there in her madness. Gathering these, her ladyship went
into the girl’s room. She guessed it was hers when she saw the
photograph of William on the mantelpiece, a photograph which was
afterwards left in Lois’ room to discover if she knew her father. Lady
Moron placed the jewels and the poison in an open box, locked it,
taking away the key, and also a letter which would not only have
established Mrs. Pinder’s innocence, but if the part Lady Moron played
became public property, would also establish hers! That is the
explanation for what would seem at the most to be an indiscretion.
“As you know, Mary Pinder was tried, sentenced to death, and her
sentence commuted. In the prison her baby was born and taken in charge
by a neighbour friend--though for some reason it was announced in the
newspapers that the child of the ‘Hereford murderess’ had died. That,
at any rate, satisfied Lady Moron, and she made no attempt to verify
the story until she learnt by accident one day that Lois Reddle was
the missing girl. How she discovered this I do not pretend to know--I