“It is within yours – if anybody’s,” he answered. “It is about your sister, Lady Ferringhall.”
Annabel gave a little gasp. The colour slowly left her cheeks, the lines of her mouth hardened. The change in her face was not a pleasant one.
“About my sister,” she repeated slowly.
Her tone should have warned him, but he was too much in earnest to regard it.
“Yes. You remember that you saw us at the Savoy a few evenings ago?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew, of course, that we were old friends?”
“Indeed!”
“Lady Ferringhall, I love your sister.”
“You what?” she repeated incredulously.
“I love your sister.”
Lady Ferringhall sat with half closed eyes and clenched teeth. Brute! Fool! To have come to her on such an errand. She felt a hysterical desire to strike him, to burst out crying, to blurt out the whole miserable truth. The effort to maintain her self-control was almost superhuman.
“But – your people!” she gasped. “Surely Lady Ennison would object, even if it were possible. And the Duke, too – I heard him say that a married secretary would be worse than useless to him.”
“The difficulties on my own side I can deal with,” he answered. “I am not dependent upon any one. I have plenty of money, and the Duke will not be in the next Cabinet. My trouble is with your sister.”
Lady Ferringhall was conscious of some relief.
“She has refused to listen to you?”
“She has behaved in a most extraordinary manner,” he answered. “We parted – that night the best of friends. She knew that I cared for her, she had admitted that she cared for me. I suppose I was a little idiotic – I don’t think we either of us mentioned the future, but it was arranged that I should go the next afternoon and have tea with her. When I went I was refused admittance. I have since received a most extraordinary letter from her. She offers me no explanation, permits me absolutely no hope. She simply refuses to see or hear from me again. I went to the theatre that night. I waited for her at the back. She saw me, and, Lady Ferringhall, I shall never forget her look as long as I live. It was horrible. She looked at me as though I were some unclean thing, as though my soul were weighted with every sin in the calendar. I could not have spoken to her. It took my breath away. By the time I had recovered myself she had gone. My letters are returned unopened, her maid will not even allow me across the doorstep.”
“The explanation seems to me to be reasonably simple,” Annabel said coldly. “You seem to forget that my sister is – married.”
“If she is,” he answered, “I am convinced that there are circumstances in connexion with that marriage which would make a divorce easy.”
“You would marry a divorcée?” she asked.
“I would marry your sister anyhow, under any circumstances,” he answered.
She looked at him curiously.
“I want to ask you a question,” she said abruptly. “This wonderful affection of yours for my sister, does it date from your first meeting with her in Paris?”
He hesitated.
“I admired your sister in Paris,” he answered, “but I do not believe that I regard her now as altogether the same person. Something has happened to change her marvellously, either that, or she wilfully deceived me and every one else in those days as to her real self. She was a much lighter and more frivolous person, very charming and companionable – but with a difference – a great difference. I wonder whether you would mind, Lady Ferringhall,” he went on, with a sudden glance at her, “if I tell you that you yourself remind me a great deal more of what she was like then, except of course that your complexion and colouring are altogether different.”
“I am highly flattered,” she remarked, with subtle irony.
“Will you help me?” he asked.
“What can I do?”
“Go and see her. Find out what I have done or failed to do. Get me an interview with her.”
“Really,” she said, with a hard little laugh, “you must regard me as a very good-natured person.”
“You are,” he answered unconsciously. “I am sure that you are. I want her to tell me the whole truth about this extraordinary marriage. We will find some way out of it.”
“You think that you can do that?”
“I am sure of it,” he answered, confidently. “Those things are arranged more easily in any other country than England. At any rate she must see me. I demand it as a right. I must know what new thing has come between us that she should treat me as a lover one day and a monster the next.”
She leaned back amongst the cushions of her chair. She was very pale, but she reminded him more at that minute than at any time of “Alcide” as he had first known her.
“I wonder,” she said, “how much you care.”
“I care as a man cares only once in his life,” he answered promptly. “When it comes there is no mistaking it.”
“Did it come – in Paris?”
“I do not know,” he answered. “I do not think so. What does it matter? It is here, and it is here to stay. Do help me, Lady Ferringhall. You need not be afraid. No trouble will ever come to your sister through me. If this idiotic marriage is binding then I will be her friend. But I have powerful friends. I only want to know the truth, and I will move heaven and earth to have it set aside.”
“The truth,” she murmured, with her eyes fixed upon him. “Well – ”
She stopped short. He looked at her in some embarrassment.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I want to hear it from your sister. It is her duty to tell me, and I would not have her think that I had been trying to work upon your sympathies to learn her secrets.”
She was silent.
“You will go and see her,” he begged.
“Yes, I will go,” she promised, with a queer little smile. “It is against my husband’s orders, and I am not sure that my sister will be particularly glad to see me. But I will go.”
“I shall always be grateful to you,” he declared.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” she answered enigmatically.
Chapter XXIII
MONTAGUE HILL SEES LIGHT AT LAST
At exactly ten minutes past ten Annabel rang the bell of her sister’s flat. There was no response. She rang again with the same result. Then, as she was in the act of turning reluctantly away, she noticed a thin crack between the door and the frame. She pushed the former and it opened. The latch had not fully caught.
The flat was apparently empty. Annabel turned on the electric light and made her way into the sitting-room. There was a coffee equipage on the table, and some sandwiches, and the fire had been recently made up. Annabel seated herself in an easy chair and determined to wait for her sister’s return.
The clock struck half-past ten. The loneliness of the place somewhat depressed her. She took up a book and threw it down again. Then she examined with curiosity some knick-knacks upon a small round table by her side. Amongst them was a revolver. She handled it half fearfully, and set it carefully down again. Then for the first time she was conscious of an unaccountable and terrifying sensation. She felt that she was not alone.
She was only a few yards from the door, but lacked the courage to rise and fly. Her knees shook, her breath came fast, she almost felt the lurid effect of those tiny patches of rouge upon her pallor-stricken cheeks. Her eyes were dilated – fixed in a horrified stare at the parting in the curtains which hung before the window.
There was some one there. She had seen a man’s head steal out for a moment and draw the curtains a little closer. Even now she could trace the outline of his shape behind the left-hand curtain. She was wholly unable to conceal her knowledge of his presence. A little smothered cry broke from her lips – the curtains were thrown aside and a man stepped out. She was powerless to move from her chair. All through that brief but measureless space of time during which wonder kept him silent, as fear did her, she cowered there, a limp helpless object. Her courage and her presence of mind had alike deserted her. She could neither speak nor move nor cry out.
“Annabel! God in Heaven, it is Annabel!”
She did not speak. Her lips parted, but no words came.
“What have you done to yourself?” he muttered. “You have dyed your hair and darkened your eyebrows. But you are Annabel. I should know you – in Heaven or Hell. Who is the other?”
“What other?”
Her voice seemed to come from a long way off. Her lips were dry and cracked.
“The Annabel who lives here, who sings every night at the ‘Unusual’? They call her by your old name. Her hair and voice and figure are as yours used to be. Who is she, I say?”
“My sister!” Annabel faltered.
He trembled violently. He seemed to be labouring under some great excitement.
“I am a fool,” he said. “All these days I have taken her for you. I have pleaded with her – no wonder that I have pleaded with her in vain. And all this time perhaps you have been waiting, expecting to hear from me. Is it so, Annabel?”
“I did not know,” she faltered, “anything about you. Why should I?”
“At last,” he murmured, “at last I have found you. I must not let you go again. Do you know, Annabel, that you are my wife.”
“No,” she moaned, “not that. I thought – the papers said – ”
“You thought that I was dead,” he interrupted. “You pushed the wheel from my hand. You jumped, and I think that you left me. Yet you knew that I was not dead. You came to see me in the hospital. You must have repented a little, or you would not have done that.”
“I did not come,” she faltered. “It was my sister Anna. I had left Paris.”
He passed his hand wearily over his forehead.
“That is where I got confused,” he said. “I opened my eyes, and she was bending over my bedside. Then, I thought, she has repented, all will be well. So I made haste and recovered. I came to London to look for you, and somehow the figure I saw in my dreams had got mixed up with you. Your sister! Great God, how like she is to what you were!”
Annabel looked around her nervously.
“These are her rooms,” she said. “Soon she will return.”
“The sooner the better,” he answered. “I must explain to her. Annabel, I cannot believe it. I have found you.”
His eyes were burning. He advanced a step towards her. She held out both her hands.
“No, no,” she cried. “You frighten me!”
He smiled at her indulgently.
“But I am your husband,” he said. “You have forgotten. I am your husband, though as yet your hand has scarcely lain in mine.”
“It was a mistake,” she faltered. “You told me that your name was Meysey Hill. I thought that you were he.”
His face darkened.
“I did it for love of you,” he said. “I lied, as I would have committed a murder, or done any evil deed sooner than lose you. What does it matter? I am not a pauper, Annabel. I can keep you. You shall have a house out at Balham or Sydenham, and two servants. You shall have the spending of every penny of my money. Annabel, tell me that you did not wish me dead. Tell me that you are not sorry to see me again.”
Her passion conquered for a moment her fear.
“But I am sorry,” she exclaimed. “Our marriage must be annulled. It was no marriage at all.”
“Never,” he exclaimed vehemently. “You are mine, Annabel, and nothing shall ever make me give you up.”
“But it is too late,” she declared. “You have no right to hold me to a bargain which on your side was a lie. I consented to become Mrs. Meysey Hill – never your wife.”
“What do you mean – by too late?” he demanded.
“There is some one else whom I care for!”
He laughed hardly.
“Tell me his name,” he said, “and I promise that he shall never trouble you. But you,” he continued, moving imperceptibility a little nearer to her, “you are mine. The angels in Heaven shall not tear you from me. We leave this room together. I shall not part with you again.”
“No,” she cried, “I will not. I will have nothing to do with you. You are not my husband.”
He came towards her with that in his face which filled her with blind terror.
“You belong to me,” he said fiercely; “the marriage certificate is in my pocket. You belong to me, and I have waited long enough.”
He stepped past her to the door and closed it. Then he turned with a fierce movement to take her into his arms. There was a flash and a loud report. He threw up his hand, reeled for a moment on his feet, and collapsed upon the floor.
“Annabel;” he moaned. “You have killed me. My wife – killed me.”
With a little crash the pistol fell from her shaking fingers. She stood looking down upon him with dilated eyes. Her faculties seemed for a moment numbed. She could not realize what she saw. Surely it was a dream. A moment before he had been a strong man, she had been in his power, a poor helpless thing. Now he lay there, a doubled-up mass, with ugly distorted features, and a dark wet stain dripping slowly on to the carpet. It could not be she who had done this. She had never let off a pistol in her life. Yet the smoke was curling upwards in a faint innocent-looking cloud to the ceiling. The smell of gunpowder was strong in the room.
It was true. She had killed him. It was as much accident as anything, but she had killed him. Once before – but that had been different. This time they would call it murder.
She listened, listened intently for several minutes. People were passing in the street below. She could hear their footsteps upon the pavement. A hansom stopped a little way off. She could hear the bell tinkle as the horse shook its head. There was no one stirring in the flats. He himself had deadened the sound by closing the door. She moved a little nearer to him.
It was horrible, but she must do it. She sank upon her knees and unbuttoned his coat. It was there in the breast pocket, stiff and legal looking. She drew it out with shaking fingers. There was a great splash of blood upon it, her hand was all wet and sticky. A deadly sickness came over her, the room seemed spinning round. She staggered to the fireplace and thrust it into the heart of the dying flames. She held it down with the poker, looking nervously over her shoulder. Then she put more coal on, piled it over the ashes, and stood once more upright.
Still silence everywhere. She pulled down her veil and made her way to the door. She turned out the electric light and gained the hall. Still no sound. Her knees almost sank beneath her as she raised the latch of the front door and looked out. There was no one to be seen. She passed down the stairs and into the street.
She walked for a mile or more recklessly, close veiled, with swift level footsteps, though her brain was in a whirl and a horrible faintness all the time hovered about her. Then she called a hansom and drove home.
“Miss Pellissier,” Brendon said gently, “I am afraid that some fresh trouble has come to you.”
She smiled at him cheerfully.
“Am I dull?” she said. “I am sorry.”
“You could never be that,” he answered, “but you are at least more serious than usual.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “I am superstitious. This is my last week at the ‘Unusual,’ you know. We begin rehearsing on Monday at the ‘Garrick’.”
“Surely,” he protested, “the change is all in favour of your own inclinations. It is your own choice, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Yes. But I believe that Mr. Earles thinks I am a little mad, and between ourselves I am not sure about it myself. It is easy enough to sing these little chansons in an original way – it requires a very different sort of ability to succeed on the stage.”
“You have it,” he declared confidently.
She laughed altogether in her old manner.
“I wonder how it is,” she exclaimed, “that my friends have so much more confidence in me than I have in myself.”
“They know you better,” he declared.
“I am afraid,” she answered, “that one’s friends can judge only of the externals, and the things which matter, the things inside are realized only by oneself – stop.”
She laid her fingers upon his arm, and they both stood still. They had turned into the street, on the opposite side of which were the flats where Anna lived. Glancing idly up at her own window as they had swung round the corner she had seen a strange thing. The curtains which she had left drawn were open, and the electric lights were turned on. Then, even as they stood there, the room was plunged into darkness.
“There is someone in my rooms,” Anna said.
“Is it your maid?” he asked.
“I have given her two days’ holiday,” Anna answered. “She has gone down into the country.”
“And no one else – has a key?”
“I believe,” she said, “that that man must have one. I am safe while I am there, for I have had bolts fitted everywhere, and a pane of glass in the front door. But I am always afraid that he may get in while I am away. Look! Is that some one coming out?”
The front door of the flats stood open, and through it a woman, slim and veiled, passed on to the pavement and turned with swift footsteps in the opposite direction. Anna watched her with curious eyes.
“Is it any one you know?” Brendon asked.
“I am not sure,” Anna answered. “But, of course, she may have come from one of the other flats.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “you had better let me have your key, and I will go up and explore.”
“We will go together,” she answered.
They crossed the street, and entering the front door passed up the outside stone steps of the flat. Anna herself opened the hall door. They stood for a moment in the passage and listened. Silence! Then Anna clutched her companion’s arm.
“What was that?” she asked sharply.
He had heard nothing. They both listened intently. Again silence.
“I thought that I heard a groan,” Anna whispered.
He laughed reassuringly.
“I heard nothing,” he declared, “and my ears are good. Come.”
He threw open the door of the sitting-room and switched on the electric light.
“There is no – Good God!” he exclaimed.
He turned round to keep Anna out by force if possible, but he was too late. She was by his side. She too had seen. The thin stream of blood on which her eyes were fastened with a nameless horror reached almost to her feet.
Chapter XXIV
A CASE FOR THE POLICE
After that first horrible moment it was perhaps Anna who was the more self-possessed. She dropped on her knees by his side, and gently unbuttoned his waistcoat. Then she looked up at Brendon.
“You must fetch a doctor,” she said. “I do not think that he is quite dead.”
“And leave you here alone?” he asked, in a hoarse whisper. “Come with me.”
“I am not afraid,” she answered. “Please hurry.”
He reeled out of the room. Anna was afterwards astonished at her own self-possession. She bound a scarf tightly round the place where the blood seemed to be coming from. Then she stood up and looked around the room.
There were no evidences of any struggle, no overturned chairs or disarranged furniture. The grate was full of fluttering ashes of burnt paper, and the easy chair near the fire had evidently been used. On the floor was a handkerchief, a little morsel of lace. Anna saw it, and for the first time found herself trembling.
She moved towards it slowly and picked it up, holding it out in front of her whilst the familiar perfume seemed to assert itself with damning insistence. It was Annabel’s. The lace was family lace, easily recognizable. The perfume was the only one she ever used. Annabel had been here then. It was she who had come out from the flat only a few minutes before. It was she —
Anna’s nerves were not easily shaken, but she found herself suddenly clutching at the table for support. The room was reeling, or was it that she was going to faint? She recovered herself with a supreme effort. There were the burnt papers still in the grate. She took up the poker and stirred the fire vigorously. Almost at the same moment the door opened and Brendon entered, followed by the doctor.
Anna turned round with a start, which was almost of guilt, the poker still in her hand. She met the keen grey eyes of a clean-shaven man, between forty and fifty, quietly dressed in professional attire. Before he even glanced at the man on the floor he stepped over to her side and took the poker from her.
“Forgive me, madam,” he said stiffly, “but in such a case as this it is better that nothing in the room should be disturbed until the arrival of the police. You have been burning paper, I see.”
“Are you a detective or a doctor?” she asked calmly. “Do you need me to remind you that your patient is bleeding to death?”
He dropped on his knees by the man’s side and made a hurried examination.
“Who tied this scarf here?” he asked, looking up.
“I did,” Anna answered. “I hope that it has not done any harm.”
“He would have been dead before now without it,” the doctor answered shortly. “Get me some brandy and my bag.”
It was nearly half an hour before they dared ask him the question.
“Will he live?”
The doctor shook his head.
“It is very doubtful,” he said. “You must send for the police at once, you know. You, sir,” he added, turning to Brendon, “had better take my card round to the police station in Werner Street and ask that Detective Dorling be sent round here at once on urgent business.”
“Is it necessary to send for the police?” Anna asked.
“Absolutely,” the doctor answered, “and the sooner the better. This is a case either of suicide or murder. The police are concerned in it in either event.”
“Please go then, Mr. Brendon,” Anna said. “You will come back, won’t you?”
He nodded cheerfully.
“Of course I will,” he answered.
The doctor and Anna were left alone. Every moment or two he bent over his patient. He seemed to avoid meeting Anna’s eyes as much as possible.
“Does he live here?” he asked her presently.
“No.”
“Far away?”
“I have no idea,” Anna answered.
“Who is the tenant of these rooms?” he inquired.
“I am.”
“You will have no objection to his remaining here?” he asked. “A move of any sort would certainly be fatal.”
“Of course not,” Anna said. “Had he better have a nurse? I will be responsible for anything of that sort.”
“If he lives through the next hour,” the doctor answered, “I will send some one. Do you know anything of his friends? Is there any one for whom we ought to send?”
“I know very little of him beyond his name,” Anna answered. “I know nothing whatever of his friends or his home. He used to live in a boarding-house in Russell Square. That is where I first knew him.”
The doctor looked at her thoughtfully. Perhaps for the first time he realized that Anna was by no means an ordinary person. His patient was distinctly of a different order of life. It was possible that his first impressions had not been correct.
“Your name, I believe, is – ”
“Pellissier,” Anna answered.
“Allow me,” the doctor said, “to give you a word of advice, Miss Pellissier. A detective will be here in a few moments to make inquiries into this affair. You may have something to conceal, you may not. Tell the whole truth. It always comes out sooner or later. Don’t try to shield anybody or hide anything. It is bad policy.”
Anna smiled very faintly.
“I thank you for your advice,” she said. “I can assure you that it was quite unnecessary. I know less about this affair perhaps than you suppose. What I do know I shall have no hesitation in telling anyone who has the right to ask.”
“Just so,” the doctor remarked drily. “And if I were you I would keep away from the fire.”
Brendon reappeared, followed by a tall thin man with a stubbly brown moustache and restless grey eyes. The doctor nodded to him curtly.
“Good evening, Dorling,” he said. “Before you do anything else I should advise you to secure those charred fragments of paper from the grate. I know nothing about this affair, but some one has been burning documents.”
The detective went down on his hands and knees. With delicate touch he rescued all that was possible of them, and made a careful little parcel. Then he stepped briskly to his feet and bent over the wounded man.
“Shot through the lungs,” he remarked.
The doctor nodded.
“Bad hemorrhage,” he said. “I am going to fetch some things that will be wanted if he pulls through the next hour. I found him lying like this, the bleeding partly stopped by this scarf, else he had been dead by now.”
The doctor glanced towards Anna. Considering his convictions he felt that his remark was a generous one. Anna’s face however was wholly impassive.
