Chapter Twenty Eight
The Unknown To-morrow
Take it from me. It is not pleasant to be wounded, even in a good cause.
To be shot in the back by a man standing upon a roof, with a scatter-gun, is not merely physically painful; it is, in addition, humiliating, because it also wounds one’s amour propre.
At once I decided not to tell Vera what had happened. She was kind, sympathetic, and for many other things I loved her, but instinctively I knew that she would laugh if I told her the truth, and I was in no fit state then to be laughed at.
Indeed, merely to laugh gave me pain – a great deal of pain. It seemed to drive a lot of little sharp spikes into the holes made by the pellets.
Doctor Agnew – for I had returned to town that night, being extremely anxious to see Thorold again – to whom I exposed my lacerated back, made far too light of the matter, I thought – far too light of it. He said the pellets were “just under the skin” – I think he murmured something about “an abrasion of the cuticle,” whatever that may mean – and that he would “pick them all out in half a jiffy.” I hate doctors who talk slang, and I hinted that I thought an anaesthetic might be advisable.
“Anaesthetic!” he echoed, with a laugh. “Oh, come, Mr Ashton,” Agnew added, “you must be joking. Yes – I see that you are joking.”
I had not intended to “joke.”
“Joking” had been the thought furthest from my mind when I suggested the anaesthetic. But, as he took it like that, and spoke in that tone, naturally I had to pretend I really had been joking.
Agnew picked out all the pellets, as he had said he would, “in half a jiffy,” and I must admit that the pain of the “operation” was very slight. I should, in truth, have been a milksop had I insisted upon being made unconscious in order to avoid the “pain” of a few sharp pin-pricks.
Next day I went to see my love, and found her in tears.
Her father was, alas, worse, His temperature had risen. At the hospital they feared the worst. All the previous night he had been delirious. The sister had told her that he had “said the strangest things,” while in that condition.
I tried to comfort her, but I fear my efforts had but little avail.
“Did they tell you what he said while he was delirious?” I asked quickly.
“They told me some of the things he said. He kept on, they declared, talking of some crime. He seemed to see things floating up before him, and to be trying to keep them from him. And he talked about gold, too, they said. He kept rambling on about gold – gold. The nurses didn’t like it. One of them, I saw, had been really frightened by his wild talk.”
This was serious. That a crime had been committed, in which Sir Charles Thorold had, in some way, been concerned, I had felt sure ever since that discovery in the house in Belgrave Street. It would be too dreadful if, while delirious, he should inadvertently make statements that might arouse grave suspicion.
Statements uttered by a man in delirium, could not, of course, be used as evidence in a Court of Law, but they might excite the curiosity of the hospital staff – they had, indeed, already done that – and though I am no believer in the foolish saying that women cannot keep a secret, I do know that a good many nurses are strangely addicted to gossip.
“We must, at any cost, stop his talking,” Vera declared very earnestly. “What can we do, Dick? What do you suggest?”
What could I suggest? How deeply I felt for her. It would, of course, be possible to keep him quiet by administering drugs, to deaden the activity of his brain, but the doctors would never agree to such a proposal. Besides, such a suggestion would arouse their curiosity; it might make them wonder why we so earnestly wished to prevent the patient talking.
They might jump at all sorts of wrong conclusions, especially as they knew Sir Charles to be the man whose name had recently figured so prominently in the newspapers on two occasions.
No, the idea of drugging him, to keep his tongue quiet, must be at once abandoned.
We had just come to that conclusion, when somebody knocked. A page-boy entered with a telegram, which Vera opened.
“No answer,” she said, and handed it to me.
The messenger retired. Scanning the telegram, I saw it ran as follows —
“Just heard terrible news. Also where you are. Returning at once. Engage rooms for me your hotel. – Mother.”
The telegram had been handed in at Mentone.
Vera seemed a good deal relieved at the thought of seeing her mother again. At this I was not surprised, for, in a sense, she had felt herself responsible for Lady Thorold’s evident ignorance of her husband’s mishap and illness. She had felt all along, she told me, that she should have kept in touch with her mother.
“If my father dies, without my mother having heard of his illness, I shall never forgive myself,” she had said to me once.
Lady Thorold arrived at the Grand Hotel next evening. She had travelled by the Mediterranean express without stopping, and had hardly slept at all. Nevertheless, she insisted upon going at once to the hospital, to see her husband.
He was a little better, the doctor told her. He had recovered consciousness for a short time that evening, and his brain seemed calmer. Several times, while conscious, he had asked why Lady Thorold did not come to him, and where she was. Her absence evidently disturbed him a good deal.
On leaving the hospital, I looked in at Faulkner’s club. He was in the hall, talking to the porter, and just about to come out.
“Ah, my dear Dick,” he exclaimed, “you’re the very man I want to see. How is Sir Charles?”
“A very little better,” I answered. “I have just come from the hospital. Lady Thorold is with him now.”
“Good. By the way, have you seen the tape news just in?”
“What news?”
He led me across to the machine at the further end of the hall, picked up the tape, and held it out at arm’s length. The startling words I read were as follows —
“The men whom the police are trying to arrest at Houghton Park to-day, shot three policemen dead, and seriously injured a fourth. A reinforcement of police has been summoned. Thousands of people have assembled in the Park, which surrounds the house, and hundreds are arriving hourly on foot, on bicycles, in carriages, and in cars.”
While we stood there, the machine again ticked. This was the message that came up —
“Houghton Park. Later: A number of bags of gold coin, mostly French louis, have just been found at Houghton Park. They were discovered by the police, concealed between the rafters and the roof. There are said to be several thousand pounds worth of these coins.”
So the mystery was slowly leaking out. I felt that everything must soon be known. How did those sacks of gold come to be hidden in the roof at Houghton? Who had concealed them there? Could it be the same gold I had seen in the house in Belgrave Street? And if so, had Whichelo…
I felt bewildered. What chiefly occupied my thoughts was the news of those policemen. Poor fellows! How monstrous they should not have been allowed to fire upon the murderers.
Too furious to speak, I left the club with Faulkner, and together we walked along Piccadilly, towards Bond Street. As we sauntered past the Burlington, a pair of laughing, dark eyes met mine, and at once I recognised – Judith!
“Ah, mon cher ami!” she cried, revealing her white teeth as she extended her well-gloved hand. She was gorgeously and expensively dressed, in the height of Paris fashion, and I noticed that all who passed us by – men and women alike – stared hard at her.
“Did you come back with Lady Thorold?” I asked – why, I hardly knew – when we had talked for some moments.
“Mais, oui,” she exclaimed. “We were together in Mentone, when I read in a newspaper about this dreadful affair. I had just heard from a friend here that Mademoiselle Vera was staying at the Grand Hotel, so I told Lady Thorold. She was désolée at the news about Sir Charles —pauvre homme– and said she must return at once to see him, and asked me if I would come with her. So I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ And here I am. Do you remember our evening together at the ball in Monte Carlo?” she ended, with a rippling, silvery laugh.
“Where are you staying?” Faulkner asked.
“I? At the Piccadilly Hotel. You must come to supper with me there. What night will you come?”
We made some excuse for not arranging definitely what night we would have supper with her, and I laughed as I thought of the two louis I had given the girl as a bribe to remove her mask, and of the sum I had afterwards paid her to take me to Vera. And now she was staying at the Piccadilly Hotel, and giving supper parties – the girl whom I had once believed to be Lady Thorold’s maid!
How strangely wags the world to-day!
As we all three emerged into Burlington Gardens, boys came rushing past with the latest edition of an evening paper.
“Ah, gran’ Dieu!” she cried, as she caught sight of the contents bills. For this was what we read on them —
HOUGHTON PARK.
SACKS OF GOLD DISCOVERED.
AMAZING STORY.
She snatched a paper from the nearest boy, but it contained only the news we had just read on the club tape.
Judith seemed more upset at the news of Sir Charles’ condition, I thought, than about the “Houghton Siege,” as the papers called it. She said she must go at once to Lady Thorold, and, hailing a passing taxi, left us.
As I looked at the pictures of Houghton Park, in that paper we had bought, I could not help wondering what the Rutland people must be saying.
Only a month or two ago, the sudden flight of the Thorolds from Houghton, and the events that had followed, had brought that exclusive county notoriety, which I knew it hated.
Then there had been the mystery of old Taylor’s death in the house in Belgrave Street, and quite recently the mystery of the mummified remains, both of which events had again brought Rutland indirectly into the limelight of publicity, the Thorolds and myself being Rutland people.
Now, to cap everything, came this “Siege of Houghton Park,” to which the newspapers, one and all, accorded the place of honour in their columns. It was the “story of the day.” This final ignominy would give Rutland’s smug respectability its deathblow. Never again, would its county families be able to rear their proud heads and look contemptuously down upon the families of other counties and mentally ejaculate – “We thank thee, O Lord, that we are not as these publicans.” Henceforth, proud and exclusive Rutland would bear the brand of Cain, or what “the county” deemed just as bad – the brand of Public Notoriety. Yes, there is amazing snobbishness, even yet, in our rural districts. Yet there is also still some sterling British broad-mindedness – the old English gentleman, happily, still survives.
Faulkner had asked me to go to a theatre with him. He knew, he said, he could not ask Vera, with her father so ill, but Violet de Coudron would be there. He would try to get a fourth, as he had a box. There was no good in moping, he ended, sensibly enough.
I returned to King Street to dress, intending to telephone first, to the hospital, to inquire for Sir Charles. On the table, in my sitting-room, a telegram awaited me. Somehow I guessed it must be from Vera in her distress, and hurriedly tore it open —
“Father sinking fast,” it ran, “and beseeching for you to come to him. Come at once. Most urgent – Vera.”
I rang for my man. The telegram had been awaiting me about half-an-hour, he said.
Telling him to telephone to the hospital, to say I was on my way, and also to Faulkner, to tell him I couldn’t go to the theatre, I hurried down the stairs, dashed out into the street, and hailed the first taxi I met.
Was the actual truth at last to be revealed?
Chapter Twenty Nine
A Strange Truth is Told
I went straight up to the side-ward in the hospital where Thorold lay, the hall-porter, in his glass-box, having nodded me within. At the door of the ward I met the sister, in her blue gown.
“I am so glad you have come, Mr Ashton!” she exclaimed. “He wants so much to see you, and I fear he has not long to live.”
The dark-eyed woman, with the medal on her breast, seemed genuinely distressed. Thorold, for some reason, had always attracted women. I think it was his sympathetic nature that drew women to him.
I waited in the corridor. Suddenly Vera came out, a handkerchief saturated with antiseptic before her mouth, to avoid infection.
Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes red from weeping. On seeing me, she began to sob bitterly; then she buried her face in her hands.
I did my best to comfort her, though it was a hard task. At last she spoke – “Go in to him – go in to him now, dear,” she exclaimed broken-heartedly. “He wants you alone – quite alone.”
The invalid was quite conscious when I entered, a handkerchief similar to Vera’s having been given me by a nurse. He was propped up with pillows into almost a sitting posture. The other bed in the side-ward was unoccupied, for it was being used for isolation. After what I had been told, I was surprised at his appearance, for he struck me as looking better than when I had last seen him. A faint smile of welcome flickered upon his lips as he recognised me. Then he grew serious.
Without speaking, he indicated a chair beside the bed. I drew it near, and seated myself.
“We are quite alone?” he whispered, looking slowly about the room. “Nobody is listening – eh? Nobody can hear us?”
“Nobody,” I answered quickly. A lump rose in my throat. It was dreadful to see him like that. Yet, even then, I could hardly realise I was so soon to lose my valued and dearest friend, who had been such a striking figure in the hunting-field.
He put out his thin hand – oh, how his arm had shrunk in those few days! – and let it rest on mine. It felt damp and cold. It chilled me. The moisture of death seemed already to be upon it.
“Listen, Dick, my boy,” he said very feebly. “I have much to tell you, and – and very little time to tell it in. But you are going to marry Vera, so it – so it’s only right that you should know. Ah, yes, I can trust you,” he said, guessing the words I had been about to utter. “I know – oh, yes, I know that what I say to you won’t make any difference to our long friendship. But even if it should,” he said, grimly, “it wouldn’t matter – now we are so very soon to part.”
I felt the wasted hand grip more firmly upon my wrist.
“I have known you for half your life, my boy,” he said, after a pause, “and I’ll tell you this. There is no man I know, whom I would sooner Vera married, than yourself. You have your faults, but – but you will be good to her, always good to her. Ah! I know you will, and that is as much as any woman should expect. And Gwen is glad, too, that you are going to marry Vera. But now, Dick, there is this thing I must tell you. I – I should not rest after death, if I died without your knowing.”
Again he paused, and, in silent expectation, I waited for the old sportsman to speak.
“You have lately come to know,” he said at last, “that there is to do with me, and with my family, a mystery of some kind. Part of my secret, kept so well for all these years, I believe you have recently discovered. The rest you don’t know. Well – I’ll tell it – to – you – now.”
With an effort, he shifted his body into a more comfortable position. Then, after coughing violently, he went on —
“Dick, prepare yourself for a shock,” he said, staring straight at me with his fevered eyes. “I have – I have been a forger, and – and worse – a murderer!”
I started. What he said seemed impossible. He must suddenly be raving again. I refused to believe either statement, and I frankly told him so.
“I am not surprised at your refusing to believe me,” he said, calmly. “I don’t look like a criminal, perhaps – least of all like a forger, or a murderer. Yet I am both. It all occurred years ago. Ah! it’s a nightmare – a horrible dream, which has lived with me all my life since.”
He paused, then continued.
“It happened in the house I had then just bought – my house in Belgrave Street. The governor had left me money, but I was ambitious – avaricious, if you like. I wanted more money – much more. And I wanted it at once. I could not brook delay. I had travelled a good deal, even then, and I was still a bachelor. During my wanderings, I had become acquainted with all sorts and conditions of people. In Mexico I had met Henry Whichelo, and on our way home to England on the same ship, we became very intimate. Another man on board, with whom I had also grown intimate, was Dan Paulton – or Dago, as his friends called him. A man of energy and dash, and of big ideas, he somehow fascinated and appealed to me. Well – he – he discovered my ambition to grow rich quickly and without trouble. He was a plausible and most convincing talker – he is that still, though less than he was – and by degrees he broke it to me that he was interested in, and in some way associated with, a group of ‘continental financiers,’ as he called them. Later, I discovered, when too late, that really they were bank-note forgers! He talked to me in such a way that gradually, against my will, and quite against my better nature, I became interested in the operations of these men. And, as he had thus ensnared me by his insidious talk, so, in the same way, he had ensnared our companion, Whichelo.”
And he paused, because of his difficulty in breathing.
“It was about this time that I married. Within a year after my marriage, I found that blackguard Paulton was doing his best to steal Gwen from me,” he went on, in a half-whisper. “He was talking her right round, I found, as he seemed able to talk anybody round. By this time, I had discovered him to be a far greater scoundrel than I had ever before suspected. Then came a revulsion in my feelings. I had come suddenly to hate him. My mind became set upon revenge. Already I had become actively interested in Paulton’s continental schemes for making money, the forgery of French bank-notes, and by manufacturing coin. My fortune was already more than doubled. Alas! It was too late to draw back. Some of the base coin had actually been moulded and finished in my house in Belgrave Street. The rest was made abroad. The coins, perfectly made by an ingenious process, were nearly all French louis and ten-franc pieces, these being the coins most easy to circulate at the time. Paulton’s plan for issuing the coin we made, was ingenious and most successful. It seemed impossible – of – of – discovery. And – ”
Once again he was compelled to pause, drawing a long and difficult breath. Then he continued —
“It was the year before I met you that the tragedy occurred. Paulton, Whichelo, Henderson, and also a half-brother of Paulton’s named Sutton, who was nearly always with him, and myself, were gathered in the room on the second floor, in my house in Belgrave Street, the room that was found recently with a hole cut in the floor. It was late at night, and the place was dimly lit. We worked in silence. The work we were engaged upon I need not trouble to explain to you – I expect you can guess it. My mind was in a whirl. I was thinking all the time of my wife, wondering how far her intrigue with Paulton had already gone. Then and there I would have assaulted Paulton, turned him out of the house, but I had so far compromised myself that I confess, I dare not. I could not do anything that might incur his enmity – he had the whip-hand of me completely – I, who had recently bought a knighthood, just as easily as I could have bought a new hat.
“Suddenly, some one knocked. Ah! How we all started! I was the first to spring to my feet. In a few moments all tools and implements we had been using, had been spirited away. They had disappeared into receptacles in the floor and in the walls, made specially for their concealment. Then I unlocked the door. Gwen entered. She had been dining out with friends, and had returned much earlier than she had expected. Her bedroom was far removed from the room in which we were at work, but she had noticed a faint light between a chink in the shutters, and so, on entering the house, she had come up to that room.”
And he was seized by another fit of coughing, and pointed to a glass half-filled with liquid, which I placed to his lips.
“How surprised and startled she looked, at finding us all there, apparently reading newspapers and smoking!” he went on. “That was the first time she began to suspect – something. The glance she exchanged with Paulton, brought the fire of jealousy to my brain. I believe at that moment I went mad, for I loved her. I have a furious, a most awful temper. You have never, in all these years we have known each other, my boy, discovered that – and yet I say the truth. Yes – it – it got the better of me that night. Without an instant’s forethought, I sprang across the room, crazed, beside myself with jealousy. I slammed the door and locked it. Then rushing at my wife – God forgive my having done it – I seized her by the arms, and flung her to the ground, charging her with infidelity, vilifying her most horribly, hurling blasphemy upon Paulton who, pale as death, glared at me. Then – ah, shall I ever forget that moment!” he cried, in agony of mind. “Then he sprang at me. I dodged him, and he slipped and fell. Instantly recovering himself, he made a second rush. This time his half-brother, Sutton, came at me, too, with a drawn knife. In my frenzy I picked up the nearest thing handy, with which to defend myself. It was a short iron bar, used for opening boxes, the only tool we had, in our haste, overlooked when hiding the implements. With one bound, Paulton was upon me, his half-brother just behind. As I aimed a terrific blow at him with the iron rod, he ducked. The blow meant for him struck Sutton just below the ear. The man collapsed in a heap upon the floor. He never spoke again. He died without a cry!”
The dying man moaned again in mental agony, and moved feverishly upon his pillow.
“Don’t – don’t tell me any more,” I urged in distress, seeing how it upset him to recall what had happened.
“I must. By Heaven, I must!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You must know everything before I die. I shall never rest unless you do. Never!”
He breathed with increasing difficulty, then went on —
“And – and seeing what had happened, Paulton, I truly believe, went mad,” said the prostrate man. “It took Whichelo, and Henderson and myself, all our strength to hold him down. Gwen was on the sofa, in hysterics. What surprised me was that nobody in the street outside was attracted by the uproar. I suppose they couldn’t hear it through the double windows. I won’t go into further details of that awful night. I can’t bear to think of them, even now. But from that night onward, Paulton had me in his power. It was Whichelo who suggested embalming Sutton’s body and hiding it in the house. He would himself perform the embalming. He had embalmed bodies in Mexico, and understood the process.”
He remained silent for some seconds.
“And so that was done,” he continued. “Paulton and Henderson had left the house, the former satisfied at the thought that he could now use me as his cat’s-paw – and by Heaven! he has done so! The coin we had in the house, some genuine, but most of it base, we hid away with the body between the ceiling and the floor. None knew our secret but my wife, Gwen – who almost revealed it during an attack of brain fever, which resulted from the shock she had received – Paulton, Henderson and myself. Vera was not old enough to know, but when she reached her seventeenth year, we decided to tell her the whole story, deeming it wiser, for various reasons, to do so. And now you understand.”
“And during all the years I have known you,” I said, “where has Paulton been? What became of Whichelo, and of Henderson? I met Whichelo for the first time in my life, just after you had left Houghton so mysteriously. Yet you say you have known him all these years.”
“Whichelo joined his brother in Mexico City, and remained there for many years,” he replied. “Paulton and Henderson continued their clever work of money-making, though mostly in Rome, and in Barcelona, where they had a number of accomplices. And I was bled – blackmailed by Paulton to the extent of nearly all my fortune – month after month, year after year. My wife, as you know, has her own fortune, and there were reasons why he could not touch that without incriminating himself, so for years I have had to live almost entirely on her means. Some years ago, Paulton and Henderson were both arrested in Paris on a charge of forgery of Russian bank-notes. They were tried, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. At the end of seven years, they were released. Paulton returned to England, and began once more to blackmail me. Worse, he had seen Vera, and at once told me he should marry her. If I refused my consent he would, he declared – ”
The poor fellow who had once bought a knighthood, stopped, gasping for breath. I laid my hand upon his arm, as I thought to soothe him, but he pushed it off quite roughly.
“Some months ago he sent me an ultimatum. If I still refused to let my girl marry him, he – would call before the last day of – March – and – ”
“Yes? Yes?” I exclaimed, unable now to restrain my curiosity.
“He declared he would disclose all he knew, take Vera from me by a plan that he explained, and that I saw I could not frustrate, and encompass the death of any persons to whom he thought I might have revealed the secret concerning him. Also he would tell the police the truth about the murder of his half-brother. He believed that you and I being such intimate friends, I had told you about him. Also he believed, for some reason, that my butler, James, knew something. He said he would kill you both. One of his accomplices was Judith, whom, a year ago, Gwen unsuspectingly engaged as maid. She, it seems, had kept Paulton posted in all that was happening in Houghton. I was driven to my wits’ ends – entirely desperate – though – you – you never suspected it.”
“But the photograph,” I exclaimed, as I noticed a curious change suddenly come over him, “that photograph of Paulton – why was it at Houghton?”
“We always kept it there, that Vera might never fail to identify Paulton, should she ever meet him. When we told Vera, in her seventeenth year, all that had happened years ago, we showed her that portrait for the first time. It was my idea to set it in the morning-room recently, so that my poor girl might never forget what the man looked like who had sworn to take her from me.”
“Could you not have removed the – that hidden body?” I exclaimed, anxious to get from him as many facts as possible, in the short time he had still to live. “What proof could he then have had – ?”
“Don’t – ah! don’t!” he interrupted. “There were reasons – of – of course, had it been possible, I – a water-pipe had burst in my house – it had caused the body to stain the ceiling – and – also there were – ” and his thin, bony fingers clutched at the air in frantic gesture.
His sentences were now disjointed, their meaning could not be followed. Now he was straining terribly his mouth gaped, his dry throat emitted a strange, rasping sound. I seized his wasted wrist. His pulse was almost still. Now his face was growing ashen, his eyes were staring into space – their intelligence was fading.
The nurse entered, and glanced at me significantly.
I sprang to my feet, and ran to the door.
“Vera! Vera! Lady Thorold!” I called. “Come – ah! come quickly, he is dying… dying!”
They rushed in from the corridor, where they had been awaiting me. In an access of despair, Lady Thorold threw herself upon her knees beside the bed, moaning aloud in a grief terrible to witness. My love stood beside her, gazing down upon her father – dazed – motionless. Grief had paralysed her senses.
Suddenly, his thin, white lips moved, but no words were audible. Quickly Vera bent over him. The shrunken lips moved again. He was murmuring. For an instant, his filmy eyes showed a gleam of intelligence once again.
“Dick – be good – to her – you – you will be good —to her!”
The voice was now, so faint, that I could barely catch his words. His dull gaze rested upon my eyes. I stooped down. My hand was upon his. Ah! How cold he was!
“Always,” I said aloud, with an effort, a great lump rising in my throat. “I promise that – I promise I will do all possible to make Vera happy – always —always!”
By the expression, that for an instant came into his dull, filmy eyes, I saw that he had heard and understood. Slowly the eyelids closed. He was turning paler still. The light died from his face.
A few seconds later his countenance was ashen, and I knew that he had breathed his last.
Speechless, motionless, I still stood there.
My hand was still upon his, as it lay upon the coverlet, slowly stiffening. The only sound audible was the bitter wailing of his widow – and of Vera. I made no attempt to comfort them. Better, I knew, let the passion of their sorrow read! its flood-tide, and allow the fury of their misery to exhaust itself. Words of sympathy, at such a time, would only be a mockery.
Later, I would do all possible to help them to recover from the awful blow which had so suddenly fallen upon them.