Sharpe was announced. Mrs. Mordaunt sent Jenny away in a maid’s escort, and Violet knew that her hour of final yielding was near.
She still held the certificates. “Am I to keep these?” she asked, while her mouth quivered slightly. She was thinking, thinking, all the time, of David and Dibbin and of the queer collapse of Gwendoline which made that little Cockney woman her companion. But what plea could she urge now? She could only ask for a few days’ respite, just to clear away some lingering doubts, and then – But, for mother’s sake, no protests now, nor tears, nor questions.
Sharpe’s ferret eyes took in the altered situation. Yesterday’s clouds had passed. A glance from Van Hupfeldt brought him to business. There was a marriage settlement of five thousand pounds per annum, to be increased to twice the amount in the event of widowhood – and Sharpe explained the legal proviso that Violet was to be free to marry again, if so minded, without forfeiting any portion of this magnificent yearly revenue.
“Most generous!” Mrs. Mordaunt could not help saying, and even the girl herself, miserable and drooping as a caged thrush, knew that Van Hupfeldt was showing himself a princely suitor.
“And now follows a somewhat unusual document,” said Sharpe in his brisk legal way. “Mr. Van Hupfeldt has instructed me to prepare a will, leaving all his real and personal estate to Miss Violet Mordaunt, he being confident that she will faithfully carry out certain instructions of his own. Of course, this instrument will have a very brief life. Marriage, I may explain, Miss Mordaunt, invalidates all wills previously executed by either of the parties. Hence, it is intended only to cover the interregnum, so to speak, between to-day’s bachelordom and the marriage ceremony of – er – ”
“Of this day week?” asked Van Hupfeldt, eagerly.
“Be it so,” said Violet, for she had a plan in her mind now, and whatever happened, a week’s grace was sufficient.
“Mrs. Mordaunt and I are appointed trustees pro tem for the purposes of the marriage settlement,” went on Sharpe. “Mr. Van Hupfeldt will, of course, execute a fresh will after marriage. All we need now are two witnesses for various signatures. My clerk, who is waiting in the hall, will serve as one.”
“The girl, Sarah Gissing, who was here just now, might be called in,” said Mrs. Mordaunt.
“No, no!” cried Van Hupfeldt. “She is a stranger. After to-day she vanishes from our lives. Please summon one of your own servants – the housekeeper, or a footman.”
So Violet and Van Hupfeldt and Mrs. Mordaunt and the witnesses signed their names on various parchments at places where the lawyer had marked little crosses in pencil.
Violet, as in a dream, saw the name “Henry Van Hupfeldt” above that of “Violet Mordaunt,” just as it appeared over “Gwendoline Mordaunt” in the marriage certificate. In her eyes, the tiny crosses made the great squares of vellum look like the chart of a cemetery. Yet there was something singing sweetly in her ears: “You still have a week of liberty. Use your time well. Not all the law in the land can force you to the altar unless you wish it.” And this lullaby was soothing.
Soon the solicitor took off himself and his duplicates, for he handed certain originals to Violet, advising her to intrust them to the care of a bank or her mother’s legal advisers. Van Hupfeldt, with a creditable tact, set himself to entertain the two ladies, and when Violet wished to interview “Sarah Gissing” again, he explained that the girl had been sent back to London by his orders.
“No more tears,” he said earnestly; “no more doubtings and wonderings. When we return from a tour in the States you shall meet her again and satisfy all your cravings.”
Evidently his design was to remain at Dale Manor until they were quietly married, and, meanwhile, surround the place with every possible protection. It came, therefore, as a dreadful shock to him when Violet disappeared for a whole hour after breakfast next morning, and then Mrs. Mordaunt, red-eyed and incoherent, rushed to find him with a note which had just reached her from the station.
It read:
Dear Mother – I suppose I have freedom of action for two days out of my seven. I wish to make certain inquiries; so I am going away until to-morrow night, or, possibly, the next morning. I think Mr. Van Hupfeldt will say this is fair, and, in justice to him, I wish to state that I shall not see Mr. David Harcourt by design. Should I see him by chance I shall refuse to speak to him.
Your loving daughter,Violet.
“It is ended! I have done with her! She has played me false!” screamed the man when he understood that Violet had really quitted Rigsworth. His paroxysm of rage was so fierce that Mrs. Mordaunt was terrified that he would die on the spot; but his passion ended in an equally vehement declaration of sorrow and affection. He would follow her and bring her back. Mrs. Mordaunt must come with him instantly. The girl must be saved from herself. Surely they would find her, even in London, whither he was certain she had gone, for she would only go to her accustomed haunts.
He infected the grief-stricken mother with some of his own frenzy. She promised to be at the station in time for the next train; he tore off to the telegraph office, where he wrote messages in a white fever of action. First, he bade his factotum Neil meet the train from Rigsworth in which Violet traveled, and ascertain her movements, if possible.
The second was to Dibbin:
A client has recommended you to me. Leave by earliest train for Portsmouth and call at offices of (a named firm of solicitors) for instructions. I forward herewith fifty pounds for preliminary expenses.
Henry van Hupfeldt.
The fifty pounds which he thus telegraphed to Dibbin were notes which he had brought for the gamekeeper; so this payment was deferred, at the least.
Then he sent word to the Portsmouth firm that Dibbin was to be dispatched on a secret estate-hunting quest in Devonshire, at any terms he chose to demand. His next telegram was to Mrs. Carter at Pangley:
Take baby at once by train to Station Hotel, New-street, Birmingham. Leave word with neighbors and at station to say where you have gone. I will write you at Birmingham and send money to-night.
Finally to David he wired:
I now know everything. Mrs. Carter is about to take my sister’s child away from Pangley. Please go there at once, find out where she has gone, and follow her. Wire me to-morrow, or next day, what you have discovered. Forgive yesterday’s silence; it was unavoidable.
Violet.
That was all he could devise in the present chaos of his mind. But it would serve, he thought, to give a few hours’ breathing-space. He was hard pressed, but far from beaten yet. And now that Violet and her mother were away from Dale Manor, he would take care that they did not return to the house until Violet was his wife. Perhaps even in this desperate hour things had happened for the best.
CHAPTER XX
DAVID HAS ONE VISITOR, AND EXPECTS OTHERS
David had to rise pretty early to admit his charwoman. Behind her, in the outer lobby, he saw the scared face of the hall-porter, who remembered that a certain loud knocking and difficulty of gaining access to that flat on one other occasion had been the prelude to a tragic discovery, though he, not being in the building at the time, had heard of the affair only from his mates.
David smiled reassurance at him, and went back to his bed-room to dress. He placed the portrait and the letter in an inner pocket of his waistcoat provided for paper money, and, the hour being in advance of breakfast-time, went out for a stroll.
Regent’s Park was delightful that morning. Not spring, but summer, was in the air. Nature, to compel man to admire her dainty contrivances, was shutting in the vistas. Already trees and hedge-rows flung their leafy screens across the landscape. So David wandered on, promising himself many such mornings with Violet; for it passed his wit to see how Van Hupfeldt could wriggle out of the testimony of his own picture and his own handwriting.
Hence, instead of being earlier he was somewhat later than usual in sitting down to breakfast, and he was a surprised young man when, his charwoman having gone to answer a ring at the door, the announcement came of:
“A lady to see you, sir.”
“A lady!” he gasped. “Who is she?” and he hoped wildly that it might be Violet.
“You know her well enough, old boy,” came the high-pitched voice of Miss Ermyn L’Estrange, who now appeared in the dining-room, a pink-faced vision in a flower-garden hat and muslins. “Poof!” she cried. “I have not been out for many a day before the streets were aired. Say, young party, that bacon and egg has a more gratifying scent than violets. I have come all the way from Chelsea on one cup of tea.”
The charwoman, eying the visitor askance, admitted that more supplies could be arranged.
“Hurry up, then, fairy,” said Miss L’Estrange. “And don’t look so shocked. Your master here is the very goodest young man in London.”
David said that even the just man fell seven times a day; but, anyhow, he was delighted to see her.
“You look it,” was the dry response. “I never knew anybody who threw their heart into their eyes as you do. You will never get on in London if you don’t learn to lie better. When you say that sort of thing you should gush a little and leer – at any rate, when you are talking to a woman.”
“But I mean it,” he vowed. “You can’t tell how nice it is to have some frills on the other side of the table. That hat, now, is a picture.”
“The hair is a bad color to suit, you know.”
“Ah, no, it has the gold of the sun in it. Perhaps I may be phrasing the words awkwardly, but you look ten years younger this morning, Miss L’Estrange.”
She turned her eyes to the ceiling. “Ye gods!” she cried, “if only I had those ten back again!” Then she gave David a coy glance. “I don’t mind betting you half a quid,” she said, “that you are only pleased to see me here because I bring to your mind the possibility of another girl being your vis-a-vis at breakfast.”
“Now you would make me dumb when I am most anxious to talk.”
“Oh, you candid wretch! Why did I come here? Don’t you believe that there are twenty men in London who would give quite a lot if I honored them by this morning call?”
“I do believe it,” said David, gravely, “and that is just why you are here, and not with one of the twenty. You are a far more upright little lady than you profess to be, Miss L’Estrange.”
She actually blushed, for, like most women who are compelled to make up professionally, never an atom of grease or rouge was on her face at other times. “David,” she said, “you are a nice boy. I wish you were my brother.”
“You would be fine and dandy as a sister.”
“Well, let’s be friends. And the first sign of friendship is a common alliance. I’ve taken your side against Strauss.”
“What of him?” demanded David, warily; for Miss Ermyn was a slippery customer, he fancied.
“Now, no fencing, or the alliance is off. You were down at Rigsworth yesterday, remember, and you came back in a mighty temper. Not even your pretty Violet was all perfection last evening, was she?”
“Things did go wrong, I admit,” said he, marveling at this attack.
“Well, I am not here to pump you, or else I would surprise you a bit more. No, David, I’m here just because I’m a woman, and as full of mischief as an egg is full of meat; so that I can’t help interfering in a love affair, though it isn’t my own. Did you know that Strauss brought Jenny to Rigsworth yesterday?”
“Jenny? Why Jenny?”
“That is what I wanted to know. And she wouldn’t tell me, the cat, until I got my Irish up and offered to drag her over the furniture by the hair of her head. And it was no use her lying to me, either. Every time she tried to think of a plausible tale I told her it would hurt to cross the chiffonier head first. At last she owned up, and then I opened a small bottle – she wanted it, I assure you – and I got the whole story while we finished it.”
“But, for goodness’ sake – ”
“Whoa, my boy! Don’t rush your fences. I’ll tell you everything, so keep calm. First, the night before last, Strauss comes to me – ”
“One moment,” broke in David. “Is this Strauss?” and he handed her the portrait.
She looked at it and laughed. “Why, of course it is!” she said. “Fancy you keeping his picture over your heart! Now, if it had been Violet, or me – ”
“Sorry to have interrupted you,” he said.
“Funny idea! Anyhow, Strauss turned up the night before last and wanted to borrow Jenny for the whole of next day. It was beastly awkward, as she was helping me to re-hem this dress and put new sleeves in the bodice; but he badgered me so that I could hardly refuse,” and she thought for an instant of certain notes crumpled up in the gold purse which was slung from her neck; “so I packed Jenny off about eight o’clock next morning – yesterday, that is. I was in a temper all day, and tore two flounces out of my frock, and scraped my shin on the step of a hansom; so when the minx came smirking home about midnight, to find me making my own fire, I let her have it, I can tell you. But it fairly gave me the needle when she wouldn’t say what Strauss wanted her for, and then the row sprang up. Guess you want to smoke, eh? I would like a cigarette myself.”
David was most docile outwardly when all of a boil within. He awaited her pleasure, saw her seated in a comfortable chair, joined in her own admiration of a pair of really pretty feet, and lit a pipe. Then she continued:
“There was poisonous trouble for about five minutes. I might have let her off if she hadn’t said things. Then I frightened her. I believe I did yank her hat off. At last, she confessed that Strauss told her that his name now was Van Hupfeldt, and he wanted her to go down to Rigsworth to be introduced to two ladies as Sarah Gissing, Gwen Barnes’s maid.”
“What?” yelled David, springing to his feet.
“Oh, chuck it!” said Miss L’Estrange in a voice of deep disgust. “You nearly made me swallow my cigarette.”
“But the man is a devil.”
“Sit down, boy, sit down. You men are all six of one and half a dozen of the other where a woman is concerned. Poor things! I wonder how any of us escape you at all. Still, Strauss is pretty artful, I admit. You see, Jenny, having been in service here, could lie so smoothly about Gwen Barnes that it would be hard to find her out.”
“Did she do this?” asked David in a fierce excitement.
Miss L’Estrange laughed again as she selected a fresh cigarette to replace the spoiled one.
“Did the cat steal cream? Fancy Jenny being offered twenty pounds for a day’s prevarication and refusing it! Why, that girl lies for practise.”
“Oh, please go on!” he groaned.
“Queer game, isn’t it? I often think the ha’penny papers don’t get hold of half the good things that are going. Well, Jenny, according to her own version, spoofed Mrs. Mordaunt and your Violet in great shape. What is more, Strauss and a lawyer man wheedled them into signing all sorts of papers, including a marriage settlement. Will you believe it? The Dutchman had the cheek to give your Violet the certificates which Jenny sold to him.”
David said something under his breath.
“Yes,” said Miss L’Estrange, “he deserves it. I can’t abide a man who goes in for deceiving a poor girl. So, at my own loss, mind you, I determined to come here this morning and give you a friendly tip.”
“Heaven knows I shall endeavor to repay you!” sighed David, in a perfect heat now to be out and doing, doing he knew not what.
“Is she very beautiful, your Violet?” asked his visitor, turning on him with one of her bird-like movements of the head.
“That is her sister,” said David, flinging a hand toward the portrait.
“Ah, I knew Gwen Barnes. Saw her in the theater, you know. A nice girl, but nothing to rave about. Rather of the clinging sort. You men prefer that type I do believe. And now that you have heard my yarn, you want me to go, eh?”
“No, no. No hurry at all.”
“You dear David! Mouth all ‘No,’ eyes all ‘Yes.’ That’s it. Treat me like an old shoe. Bless you! we women worship that sort of thing, until, all at once, we blaze up. Well, you will give Strauss a drubbing one of these days, and I shan’t be sorry. I hate pretty men. They are all affectation, and waxy like a barber’s doll. Well, ta-ta! You’re going to have a nice, pleasant day, I can see. But, fair play, mind. No telling tales about your little Ermyn. I have done more for you to-day than I would do for any other man in creation. And some day you must bring your Violet to tea; I promise to be good and talk nice. There, now; ain’t I a wonder?”
And she was gone, in a whirl of flounces and high heels, the last he heard of her when she declined to let him come to the door “with that glare” in his eye being her friendly hail to the lift-man: “Hello, Jimmie! Like old times to see you again. How’s the wife and the kiddies?”
Left to his own devices, David was at his wits’ end to know how to act for the best. At last he wrote a telegram to Violet:
The girl you met yesterday as Sarah Gissing was not your sister’s maid, but another woman masquerading in her stead. I implore you and your mother to come to London and meet me in Mr. Dibbin’s office. He knows the real Sarah Gissing, and will produce her.
This was definite enough, and he thought the introduction of Dibbin’s name would be helpful with Mrs. Mordaunt. Then he rushed off to see Dibbin himself, but learned from a clerk that the agent would not arrive from Scotland until six-thirty P.M., “which is a pity,” said the clerk, ruefully, “because a first-rate commission has just come in for him by wire.”
“Some one in a hurry?” said Harcourt, speaking rather to cloak his own disappointment than out of any commiseration for Dibbin’s loss.
“I should think so, indeed. Fifty golden sovereigns sent by telegraph, just to get him quick to Portsmouth.”
David heard, and wondered. He made a chance shot. “I expect that is my friend, Van Hupfeldt,” he said.
“The very man!” gasped the clerk.
“Oh, there is no harm done. Mr. Dibbin comes to King’s Cross, I suppose?”
“Yes. I shall be there to meet him.”
Certainly things were lively at Rigsworth. David had a serious notion of going there by the next train. But he returned to Eddystone Mansions, in case there might be an answer from Violet. Sure enough, there he found the telegram sent in her name by Van Hupfeldt. The time showed that it was despatched about the same hour as his own. At first, his heart danced with the joy of knowing that she still trusted him. And how truly wonderful that she mentioned Pangley, a town he had not named to her; there must, indeed, have been a tremendous eruption at Dale Manor. Yet it was too bad that he should be forced to leave London and go in chase of Mrs. Carter and the baby. Why, he would be utterly cut off from active communication with her for hours, and it was so vitally important that they should meet. Of course, he would obey, but first he would await the chance of a reply to his message. So he telegraphed again:
Will go to Pangley. Tell me when I can see you.
He was his own telegraph messenger. While he was out another buff envelope found its way to his table. Here was the confusion of a fog, for this screed ran:
Miss Violet Mordaunt traveled to London this morning by the nine-eleven train. This is right.
Friend.
There was no name; but the post-office said the information came from Rigsworth, and the post-office indulges in cold official accuracy. Somehow, this word from a friend did strike him as friendly. It made him read again, and ponder weightily, the longer statement signed “Violet.”
He could not tell, oh, sympathetic little sister of the Rigsworth postmistress, that you wheedled the grocer’s assistant into writing that most important telegram. It was a piece of utmost daring on the part of a village maid, and perhaps it might be twisted into an infringement of the “Official Secrets Act,” or some such terrifying ordinance; but your tender little heart had gone out to the young man who got “no answer” from the lady of the manor, and you knew quite well that Violet had never sent him to Pangley to hunt for a missing baby.
Anyhow, David was glowering at both flimsy slips of paper, when a letter reached him. It was marked “Express Delivery,” and had been handed in at Euston Station soon after twelve o’clock.
This time there could be no doubt whatever that Violet was the writer. Here was the identical handwriting of the first genuine note he had received from her. And there was Violet herself in the phrasing of it, though she was brief and reserved. She wrote:
Dear David – I am in London for the purpose of making certain inquiries. I must not see you if I can help it. I must be quite, quite alone and unaided. Please pardon my seeming want of confidence. In this matter I am trusting to God’s help and my own endeavors. But I want you to oblige me by being away from your flat to-night between midnight and two A.M. That is all. Perhaps I may be able to explain everything later.
Your sincere well-wisher,Violet Mordaunt.
Then David ran like a beagle to Euston Station; but Violet had been gone from there nearly an hour, because he found on inquiry that the nine-eleven train from Rigsworth had arrived at noon. Yet he could not be content unless he careered about London looking for her, first at Porchester Gardens, then at Dibbin’s office, at which he arrived exactly five minutes before she did, and he must have driven along Piccadilly while she was turning the corner from Regent’s. London is the biggest bundle of hay when you want to find anybody.
Amidst the maelstrom of his doubts and fears one fact stood out so clearly that he could not fail to recognize it. Not Violet alone, but some other hidden personality, most earnestly desired his absence from the flat that night. In a word, Van Hupfeldt, who knew of the photograph and the letter being hidden there, had the strongest possible reason for seeking an opportunity to make an absolutely unhindered search of every remaining nook and crevice. But how was Violet’s anxiety on this head to be explained? Was she, too, wishful to carry out a scrutiny of pictures, cupboards, and ornaments on her own account?
Then, with a sort of intuition, David felt that it was she who had already visited her sister’s latest abode at such uncanny hours of gloom and mystery that her presence had given rise to the ghost legend. And with the consciousness that this was so came a hot flush of shame and remorse that he had so vilified Violet in his thoughts on the night of his long run from Chalfont. It was she whom he had seen standing at the end of the corridor on the first night of his ever-memorable tenancy of this sorrow-laden abode, and, no doubt, her earlier efforts at elucidating the dim tragedy which cloaked her sister’s death had led to the eery experiences of Miss L’Estrange and Jenny.
Well, thank goodness! he held nearly all the threads of this dark business in his hands now, and it would go hard with Van Hupfeldt if he crossed his path that night. For David resolved, with a smile which had in it a mixture of grimness and tenderness, that he would obey the letter of Violet’s request while decidedly disobeying its spirit. She wished him to be “away from the flat between midnight and two A.M.” Certainly he would be away; but not far away – near enough, indeed, to know who went into it and who came out, and some part of their business there if he saw fit. Violet, of course, might come and go as she pleased; not so Van Hupfeldt or any of his myrmidons.
Thereupon, determined to oppose guile to guile, he dismissed his charwoman long before the usual time, and called the friendly hall-porter into consultation.
“Jim,” he said, when the lift shot up to his floor in response to a summons, “I guess you want a drink.”
Jim knew Harcourt’s little ways by this time. “Well sir,” he said, stepping forth, and unshipping the motor key, “I’m bound to admit that a slight lubrikytion wouldn’t be amiss.”
“In fact, it might be a hit, a palpable hit. Well, step lively. Here’s the whisky. Now, Jim, listen while I talk. I understand there is to be a meeting of ghosts here to-night – no, not a word yet; drink steadily, Jim – and it is up to you and me to attend the convocation. There is nothing to worry about. These spirits are likely to be less harmful than those you are imbibing; indeed, we may be called on to grab one or two of them, but they will turn out to be ordinary men. You’re not afraid of a man, Jim?”
“Not if ’e is a man, sir. But will there be any shootin’?”
“Ah, you heard of that?”
“People will talk of bullet-marks, sir, to say nothing of drops o’ blood.”
“Drops of blood? Where?”
“All round our front door. They wasn’t there overnight, an’ next day there was a revolver bullet stuck in your kitchen skirting-board.”
“Excellent! Clear proof that our sort of ghosts will bleed if you punch them hard enough on the nose. Now, I want your help in three ways. In the first place, I am going out about seven and will return about nine. I want you to make sure that no one enters my flat within those hours. Secondly, when I come back, I wish to reach this floor without coming in by the front door. You understand? If any one should be watching my movements, I would like to be seen leaving the mansions but not returning. Thirdly, I want you to join me on guard when you close the front door at midnight, hiding the pair of us somewhere above, so that we can see, without fear of mistake, any persons who may possess keys which fit my front door.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said the porter, setting down his glass. “Well, I’m your man, sir. Leave everything to me. When you comes home at nine just pop along the other street until you sees a door leadin’ to a harea. Drop down there, an’ you’ll find yourself in our basement. At twelve sharp I’ll come up in the lift and fix you up proper.”
“Jim, you’re a treasure!” said David.