The Woman in White
light-haired foreigner with the scar on his cheek, and I thought he
recognised me. He said nothing, and instead of stopping at the house,
as I did, he slowly walked on. Was he in the Forest Road by accident?
Or had he followed the Count home from the Opera?
I did not pursue those questions. After waiting a little till the
foreigner had slowly passed out of sight, I rang the gate bell. It was
then twenty minutes past eleven—late enough to make it quite easy for
the Count to get rid of me by the excuse that he was in bed.
The only way of providing against this contingency was to send in my
name without asking any preliminary questions, and to let him know,
at the same time, that I had a serious motive for wishing to see him
at that late hour. Accordingly, while I was waiting, I took out my
card and wrote under my name “On important business.” The maid-servant
answered the door while I was writing the last word in pencil, and
asked me distrustfully what I “pleased to want.”
“Be so good as to take that to your master,” I replied, giving her the
card.
I saw, by the girl’s hesitation of manner, that if I had asked for
the Count in the first instance she would only have followed her
instructions by telling me he was not at home. She was staggered by
the confidence with which I gave her the card. After staring at me,
in great perturbation, she went back into the house with my message,
closing the door, and leaving me to wait in the garden.
In a minute or so she reappeared. “Her master’s compliments, and would
I be so obliging as to say what my business was?” “Take my compliments
back,” I replied, “and say that the business cannot be mentioned to any
one but your master.” She left me again, again returned, and this time
asked me to walk in.
I followed her at once. In another moment I was inside the Count’s
house.
VII
There was no lamp in the hall, but by the dim light of the kitchen
candle, which the girl had brought upstairs with her, I saw an elderly
lady steal noiselessly out of a back room on the ground floor. She
cast one viperish look at me as I entered the hall, but said nothing,
and went slowly upstairs without returning my bow. My familiarity with
Marian’s journal sufficiently assured me that the elderly lady was
Madame Fosco.
The servant led me to the room which the Countess had just left. I
entered it, and found myself face to face with the Count.
He was still in his evening dress, except his coat, which he had
thrown across a chair. His shirt-sleeves were turned up at the wrists,
but no higher. A carpet-bag was on one side of him, and a box on the
other. Books, papers, and articles of wearing apparel were scattered
about the room. On a table, at one side of the door, stood the cage,
so well known to me by description, which contained his white mice.
The canaries and the cockatoo were probably in some other room. He was
seated before the box, packing it, when I went in, and rose with some
papers in his hand to receive me. His face still betrayed plain traces
of the shock that had overwhelmed him at the Opera. His fat cheeks hung
loose, his cold grey eyes were furtively vigilant, his voice, look, and
manner were all sharply suspicious alike, as he advanced a step to meet
me, and requested, with distant civility, that I would take a chair.
“You come here on business, sir?” he said. “I am at a loss to know what
that business can possibly be.”
The unconcealed curiosity, with which he looked hard in my face while
he spoke, convinced me that I had passed unnoticed by him at the Opera.
He had seen Pesca first, and from that moment till he left the theatre
he had evidently seen nothing else. My name would necessarily suggest
to him that I had not come into his house with other than a hostile
purpose towards himself, but he appeared to be utterly ignorant thus
far of the real nature of my errand.
“I am fortunate in finding you here to-night,” I said. “You seem to be
on the point of taking a journey?”
“Is your business connected with my journey?”
“In some degree.”
“In what degree? Do you know where I am going to?”
“No. I only know why you are leaving London.”
He slipped by me with the quickness of thought, locked the door, and
put the key in his pocket.
“You and I, Mr. Hartright, are excellently well acquainted with one
another by reputation,” he said. “Did it, by any chance, occur to you
when you came to this house that I was not the sort of man you could
trifle with?”
“It did occur to me,” I replied. “And I have not come to trifle with
you. I am here on a matter of life and death, and if that door which
you have locked was open at this moment, nothing you could say or do
would induce me to pass through it.”
I walked farther into the room, and stood opposite to him on the rug
before the fireplace. He drew a chair in front of the door, and sat
down on it, with his left arm resting on the table. The cage with the
white mice was close to him, and the little creatures scampered out of
their sleeping-place as his heavy arm shook the table, and peered at
him through the gaps in the smartly painted wires.
“On a matter of life and death,” he repeated to himself. “Those words
are more serious, perhaps, than you think. What do you mean?”
“What I say.”
The perspiration broke out thickly on his broad forehead. His left hand
stole over the edge of the table. There was a drawer in it, with a
lock, and the key was in the lock. His finger and thumb closed over the
key, but did not turn it.
“So you know why I am leaving London?” he went on. “Tell me the reason,
if you please.” He turned the key, and unlocked the drawer as he spoke.
“I can do better than that,” I replied. “I can SHOW you the reason, if
you like.”
“How can you show it?”
“You have got your coat off,” I said. “Roll up the shirt-sleeve on your
left arm, and you will see it there.”
The same livid leaden change passed over his face which I had seen pass
over it at the theatre. The deadly glitter in his eyes shone steady
and straight into mine. He said nothing. But his left hand slowly
opened the table-drawer, and softly slipped into it. The harsh grating
noise of something heavy that he was moving unseen to me sounded for a
moment, then ceased. The silence that followed was so intense that the
faint ticking nibble of the white mice at their wires was distinctly
audible where I stood.
My life hung by a thread, and I knew it. At that final moment I thought
with HIS mind, I felt with HIS fingers—I was as certain as if I had
seen it of what he kept hidden from me in the drawer.
“Wait a little,” I said. “You have got the door locked—you see I don’t
move—you see my hands are empty. Wait a little. I have something more
to say.”
“You have said enough,” he replied, with a sudden composure so
unnatural and so ghastly that it tried my nerves as no outbreak of
violence could have tried them. “I want one moment for my own thoughts,
if you please. Do you guess what I am thinking about?”
“Perhaps I do.”
“I am thinking,” he remarked quietly, “whether I shall add to the
disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fireplace.”
If I had moved at that moment, I saw in his face that he would have
done it.
“I advise you to read two lines of writing which I have about me,” I
rejoined, “before you finally decide that question.”
The proposal appeared to excite his curiosity. He nodded his head.
I took Pesca’s acknowledgment of the receipt of my letter out of my
pocket-book, handed it to him at arm’s length, and returned to my
former position in front of the fireplace.
He read the lines aloud: “Your letter is received. If I don’t hear from
you before the time you mention, I will break the seal when the clock
strikes.”
Another man in his position would have needed some explanation of
those words—the Count felt no such necessity. One reading of the note
showed him the precaution that I had taken as plainly as if he had
been present at the time when I adopted it. The expression of his face
changed on the instant, and his hand came out of the drawer empty.
“I don’t lock up my drawer, Mr. Hartright,” he said, “and I don’t say
that I may not scatter your brains about the fireplace yet. But I am a
just man even to my enemy, and I will acknowledge beforehand that they
are cleverer brains than I thought them. Come to the point, sir! You
want something of me?”
“I do, and I mean to have it.”
“On conditions?”
“On no conditions.”
His hand dropped into the drawer again.
“Bah! we are travelling in a circle,” he said, “and those clever brains
of yours are in danger again. Your tone is deplorably imprudent,
sir—moderate it on the spot! The risk of shooting you on the place
where you stand is less to me than the risk of letting you out of
this house, except on conditions that I dictate and approve. You have
not got my lamented friend to deal with now—you are face to face with
Fosco! If the lives of twenty Mr. Hartrights were the stepping-stones
to my safety, over all those stones I would go, sustained by my sublime
indifference, self-balanced by my impenetrable calm. Respect me, if you
love your own life! I summon you to answer three questions before you
open your lips again. Hear them—they are necessary to this interview.
Answer them—they are necessary to ME.” He held up one finger of his
right hand. “First question!” he said. “You come here possessed of
information which may be true or may be false—where did you get it?”
“I decline to tell you.”
“No matter—I shall find out. If that information is true—mind I say,
with the whole force of my resolution, if—you are making your market
of it here by treachery of your own or by treachery of some other man.
I note that circumstance for future use in my memory, which forgets
nothing, and proceed.” He held up another finger. “Second question!
Those lines you invited me to read are without signature. Who wrote
them?”
“A man whom I have every reason to depend on, and whom you have every
reason to fear.”
My answer reached him to some purpose. His left hand trembled audibly
in the drawer.
“How long do you give me,” he asked, putting his third question in a
quieter tone, “before the clock strikes and the seal is broken?”
“Time enough for you to come to my terms,” I replied.
“Give me a plainer answer, Mr. Hartright. What hour is the clock to
strike?”
“Nine, to-morrow morning.”
“Nine, to-morrow morning? Yes, yes—your trap is laid for me before I
can get my passport regulated and leave London. It is not earlier, I
suppose? We will see about that presently—I can keep you hostage here,
and bargain with you to send for your letter before I let you go. In
the meantime, be so good next as to mention your terms.”
“You shall hear them. They are simple, and soon stated. You know whose
interests I represent in coming here?”
He smiled with the most supreme composure, and carelessly waved his
right hand.
“I consent to hazard a guess,” he said jeeringly. “A lady’s interests,
of course!”
“My Wife’s interests.”
He looked at me with the first honest expression that had crossed his
face in my presence—an expression of blank amazement. I could see that
I sank in his estimation as a dangerous man from that moment. He shut
up the drawer at once, folded his arms over his breast, and listened to
me with a smile of satirical attention.
“You are well enough aware,” I went on, “of the course which my
inquiries have taken for many months past, to know that any attempted
denial of plain facts will be quite useless in my presence. You are
guilty of an infamous conspiracy! And the gain of a fortune of ten
thousand pounds was your motive for it.”
He said nothing. But his face became overclouded suddenly by a lowering
anxiety.