Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXVI

"Who are you?" asked the poor, wasted creature, looking up into the strange face of the new-comer.

"I am a friend, poor creature—one who will deliver you from your dungeon, and give you liberty," said the detective, advancing into the room.

Joy beamed on the pale, shrunken features of the prisoner. For a moment she could not speak, then she murmured brokenly:

"Thank God for those words! I am starving and dying here. I have not tasted food for two days!"

Mr. Shelton in his frequent excursions had contracted a habit of carrying a flask of wine and paper of crackers in his pocket for his own occasional refreshment.

He took a silver cup from his pocket, and pouring a small portion of wine into it held it silently to the lips of the poor, famishing woman.

She drank it thirstily. He then began to dip crackers into the wine and fed her slowly and carefully.

"You feel better now?" he inquired, after she had consumed a generous portion of the food.

"Oh! so much better," said she, fervently, laying her head back on its hard pillow while the hungry, famished look died out of her eyes and a softer light beamed in them. "I thank you very much, sir. I was on the verge of expiring when you came to my relief!"

"Perhaps you feel well enough to tell me your name now," said he, smiling kindly.

"My name is Fanny Colville," she answered, feebly.

The detective started.

"Are you any relation of Harold Colville, of New York?" he inquired.

"I am his wife," said poor Fanny, simply.

"His wife!" repeated the detective, a gleam of light breaking in on his mind regarding Mr. Colville's visit to this place. "Then why does he keep you chained up here like a dog?" he inquired indignantly.

"He does not know of it," said Mrs. Colville.

"He does not know of it," repeated Mr. Shelton in surprise; "you amaze me, madam. Surely he visited you a few days ago. I saw him leaving the house."

"I do not doubt that he was here. It is more than probable he was, but he did not come to see me. He believes me dead. He hired the old woman here to kill me and my child. He was weary of me and sighed for a fairer face," explained the deeply wronged wife.

"Yet the old woman, more merciful than your husband, spared your life," said he.

"She killed my child and let me live because she loved to have something about her that she might torture at will," said the poor woman bitterly. "She has had me chained in here for two years, fed upon bread and water, and an insufficient allowance of that. Oh! God, how I hate that woman, and how I long to avenge my wrongs!"

"She is beyond the reach of both your hatred and your vengeance, Mrs. Colville. She is dead," said Mr. Shelton, solemnly.

"Dead? Old Haidee Leveret dead? It cannot be true," said Haidee's poor victim, with incredulous joy shining in her eyes.

"I assure you, madam, it is perfectly true. When I came here a few minutes ago I found both her and her husband lying dead upon the floor down-stairs, and the room in flames. But for my opportune arrival in time to extinguish the fire, the house must have soon burned down, and you would inevitably have perished with it."

Fanny trembled like a leaf in a storm.

"It was a narrow escape," she murmured. "And so they both are dead. Did they kill each other?"

"I should say not," replied Mr. Shelton. "They both looked as though they had been poisoned. They certainly died suddenly, for their half-consumed dinner was upon the table. This fact, taken in conjunction with the fire, leads me to think they were poisoned by some enemy who then set fire to the house to cover up all traces of the crime."

"They have met with a fearful punishment for their evil deeds," said Fanny, solemnly.

"And now I wish to ask you a question," said her deliverer, "Do you know of any reason for Mr. Colville's visits here now, since he does not come to see you?"

"The villain," she uttered, indignantly. "Oh, yes, sir. I know full well. He has a young girl imprisoned here whom he is trying to force into a marriage with him."

Mr. Shelton saw that she was growing weak and faint, and poured a little wine between her lips.

"That makes me feel stronger," she said, reviving.

"Mrs. Colville," he said, "you must be mistaken. I have searched the house carefully through, and there is not another living soul here beside yourself."

"Oh, then she has either escaped again or they have removed her to another place," was the confident reply.

"Are you quite sure the lady was ever imprisoned in this house, Mrs. Colville?"

"Oh, I am perfectly sure of that, sir. She occupied the room above me for some time. My groans troubled her so that she sought for me and found me here in my misery."

"And she told you that she was your husband's prisoner?"

"Yes, sir," answered poor Fanny, sighing. "I had her whole sad story from her own sweet lips."

"Was she a New York lady?" inquired the detective, evincing a deep interest.

"Yes, sir, and the daughter of a wealthy man."

"If you feel equal to the task I wish you would tell me all you know about the lady. I am deeply interested in her fate," said he very gently, though he was burning with impatience to learn more of Colville's mysterious prisoner.

"I think I am strong enough. Your coming has put new life and hope into me," answered the grateful creature.

"Go on, then," said he. "Did the wicked Colville abduct her from her home?"

"Worse than that, sir. She was a young lady who was murdered by a jealous woman. A Doctor Pratt, the friend and abettor of Colville in all his sins, was called in to view the body of the murdered girl. He pronounced her dead. In reality he discovered that she was in a curious condition known to the medical profession as catalepsy. He suffered them to bury her, then stole her body from the vault and sold it to Colville, who was in love with her. They brought her here, used every means to bring her to life, and at length succeeded. She revived after four days and found herself the prisoner of my husband, dead to all the world beside, and doomed never to see her friends again unless she consented to become his wife."

She paused, overcome by exhaustion.

Mr. Shelton sat white and rigid on the foot of the cot regarding her fixedly. He seemed frozen into a statue. At length he gasped rather than spoke:

"Her name?"

Fanny Colville's wasted hand went up to her brow in painful perplexity.

"I do not seem to recollect it. Strange that I should forget. I am sure she told me," she murmured.

"Try and think of it, Mrs. Colville. Much depends upon it," urged Shelton, anxiously.

She was silent a few moments, lost in troubled thought. At length she said, timidly:

"I am afraid I cannot recall it, sir. My poor brain is dazed by my troubles, perhaps. But I am sure of one thing. She had the name of a flower, sir—a beautiful flower. I remember that, because it seemed to suit her so well."

Shelton's eyes brightened.

"Was her name—Lily?" he asked, impressively.

Instantly a gleam of remembrance irradiated the listener's face.

"Lily, Lily!" she said; "yes, that was indeed her name, sir. How could I forget it when I remembered everything else so well? I recall it distinctly now. It was Lily—Lily Lawrence."

Shelton sprang up with a cry that rang through the dungeon.

He was like one dazzled by the flash of light that broke in upon his mind.

Here was the solution of the dreadful mystery that had baffled him for weary months, the confirmation of the vague suspicion that had haunted him for days.

It was a living, breathing, beautiful woman he sought instead of a cold and lifeless body! No wonder the banker's reward failed of its object!

"She tried to escape from here, did she not?" he inquired abruptly.

Fanny replied by relating the circumstances of Lily's two attempts at escape, and how Colville had carried her off the second time from under her father's own roof.

"The villains! the fiends!" muttered Shelton, crushing an oath between his clenched teeth.

"After they brought her back again she was put into the room above me, but only for a night. She came in to see me after midnight, and promised to come again soon. But she never came, and I concluded that she had been removed to another place. I am confident she has not escaped from them, for had she done so she would have sent someone to liberate me at once."

"Colville and Pratt spent an hour here five days ago," said he, "so it seems probable that she was still here up to that date."

"No doubt of it. I suppose old Haidee put her into another room for fear that she might discover me down here, and also because the trap-door in that room is the only entrance which she had to bring my weekly dole of bread and water through," said Fanny.

It was getting on toward sunset, and just then they heard the loud baying of the bloodhound. Shelton started.

"It is the horrible hound that is chained up in a kennel in the garden," exclaimed Fanny. "He has missed his dinner and is hungry, I suppose."

"I will put a bullet in his brain before I go away from here," said Shelton, curtly.

"Now, Mrs. Colville," he continued, "I must leave you a little while. I will go and report these dead bodies to the coroner, and I must secure some easy vehicle to transport your poor aching body away from here to a comfortable place. Do you think you can wait patiently? I shall be absent but a few hours at farthest."

"Oh, yes, I can wait. But you will be sure to come back again?" she said, anxiously.

He smiled at her pathetic tone.

"Yes, I will certainly return," he answered, confidently. "And I will take you to the house of a good woman who will feed you and nurse you back to health again. I have one favor to ask you," said he, pausing.

"You have only to name it," said she, "if it lies in my power to grant it."

"It is this. When I bring the officers here and they question you, will you withhold the story you have told me—even your name? It will be very easy to do so. Your emaciated condition and feebleness will easily excuse you from giving any evidence at present."

"I will do as you wish me, sir," she answered, in some surprise.

"I do not mean you any harm, dear madam," he explained. "Far from it. My reason is this. If this story gets into the papers (as it certainly must if you relate it to the coroner), it will put those two villains on their guard, and though we could arrest them on your evidence, they might never reveal the place where they have hidden their unhappy victim. But if they are still suffered to go at large, free and unsuspecting, I can track them to their lair and rescue her. So I only ask you to postpone your evidence until such time as I have delivered Lily Lawrence and put these wretches inside of a prison."

"Your reasoning is very clear," answered Fanny. "I will do just as you have told me, sir."

"Thanks; I will leave you my wine and biscuits for refreshment," said he, smiling, and putting them by her side. "Keep up your spirits, Mrs. Colville. I will soon return and remove you to a safe and comfortable home."

He hurried away, fastening the door carefully after him, and went out in the garden in search of the howling, hungry brute. He found him tearing madly at his chain in his rage to get away and seek for food. It made abortive attempts to reach Mr. Shelton when he came in sight, but the detective coolly drew a pistol from his pocket, and fired a bullet into the brain of the dangerous creature, who instantly fell dead. He then walked away, mounted his horse and galloped rapidly towards the city.

At Mrs. Mason's gate he stopped and dismounted. The kind woman opened the door and beamed on him smilingly as she invited him to enter. He did so and soon made known the object of his visit.

"My curiosity about the old house we spoke about when I first saw you," said he, "induced me to visit it this afternoon. I did so, and to my horror I found the old people lying dead in the house. While exploring it I discovered a poor, imprisoned woman in a weak and starving condition. She needs to be removed to a safe and quiet place where she may be carefully tended, for she has enemies who would not scruple to kill her if they discovered her whereabouts. Mrs. Mason, you are a kind and motherly woman, and your home is quiet and secluded. Will you receive that poor soul here and take care of her? I will pay you generously for the trouble."

Mrs. Mason promised to do all he asked, her kind eyes brimming with sympathetic tears, and he resumed his journey to the city, reported the case to the coroner, and secured a comfortable carriage for the use of Fanny Colville.

After the inquest the grateful creature was removed to the tiny cottage of Mrs. Mason.

The next day the generous detective took care to furnish wines and jellies and every needful luxury for building up an exhausted frame, and himself conveyed them to the new home of the invalid.

CHAPTER XXVII

My readers are wondering, perhaps, as to the fate of our beautiful and unfortunate heroine.

Let us go back a little in our story and take up the thread of her adventures.

It was the night previous to the day on which the two Leverets came to their death at the hands of Mrs. Vance. Up to that night Lily Lawrence had remained under the guardianship of the wicked old pair.

It was nearly nine o'clock when Lily sat before the fire in her room, her small hands resting on the arms of the chair, her eyes fixed sadly on the glowing coals in the grate. Old Haidee had brought her supper in and departed. She was alone for the night.

The young girl was simply habited in a neat, dark woolen dress. Cuffs and collar she had none, for Haidee, in providing her a winter dress, had had no thought or care for those delicate feminine accessories of the toilet. The thick, dark fabric fastened about her white throat and wrists rendered her extreme pallor and delicacy doubly striking. The earthly tabernacle seemed growing white and transparent enough for the bruised and wounded young soul to glimmer through.

She was thinking of Lancelot Darling—her betrothed husband—and now and then hot tears welled from her eyes and rolled down upon her pale cheeks. She wondered if he still remained faithful to her memory, or if, indeed, the wily widow had won him from her, as Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville had so confidently asserted.

"It is false," she said to herself, through her fast falling tears. "Lance loved me too truly to forget me so soon. What if I did see him bending over that wicked woman, turning the leaves of her music as he was wont to do for me? She had beguiled him to her side by the fascinating arts which a true woman would disdain. It was to win him that she tried to murder me. But though I never see my lover again I will not believe he could love her after having loved me, even though she might try to poison my memory with her false tale of suicide. No, no; I will believe in the loyalty of my lover until my latest breath."

She was sitting near the side of the fireplace, and on the other side of the wall old Peter and Haidee, who had retired to their room for the night, were sitting over their fire and talking earnestly together. She could hear the sound of their voices quite distinctly, for on her side of the room there was a large cracked place in the wall from which the plaster had fallen out, leaving a thin aperture through which voices were distinctly audible. Lily had never felt any desire before to hear the conversation of the old couple, but at this moment a sudden curiosity seized upon her as she heard the sound of her own name distinctly repeated.

Rising noiselessly from her chair she knelt upon the floor, and, placing her ear against the broken place in the wall, listened intently.

Their words and even the tone of their voices were plainly audible to her trained and acute hearing.

Words were being spoken by that wicked old pair that seemed to chill the blood in her veins to an icy current as she knelt there listening to the awful doom she had no power to avert.

"Yes," said the woman's voice, sharply, "I hate the girl so that I could strangle her with my own hands! Ever since the day she knocked me down and escaped from me, I have hated her with the hate of hell!"

"Aye, aye," said old Peter; "then why delay the deed we have long been determined upon. I am in favor of getting it done and over with."

"If I were not afraid of the vengeance of Pratt and Colville," said she, hesitating. "It's a terrible risk to run."

"Ten thousand dollars is worth running a considerable risk for," answered the old miser. "Now, here is the way we are placed, Haidee: Harold Colville will give us a few paltry hundreds for keeping the girl here, but her father will pay ten thousand dollars to the person who delivers her dead body, and no questions asked. How can you hesitate which to choose?"

"My God!" thought the wretched girl, with a wildly beating heart, "they are planning to murder me."

"I would not hesitate a moment—you know that, Peter—only that I see the difficulties in the way more plainly than you do," said the cautious Haidee.

"Difficulties—now that is the way with women, the silly geese," snorted Peter in angry contempt. "They always make mountains of mole-hills! What difficulties can you see, I wonder."

"How could we account to Pratt and Colville for her disappearance?" answered she.

"Easily enough; I have told you that twenty times before, old dunder-head! Say that she has escaped from us again."

"They would not believe it when they know that we both guard the door—they would not believe such a tale in the face of our united strength," returned she, rather shortly.

"Say that I was ill—say that I was drunk—or that I fell down in a fit before the door, and while you were assisting me she rushed past and escaped. Say anything you please to account for it—only tell them that she has given us the slip. They cannot help but believe it, knowing that she has made two desperate attempts before."

"That is true," she admitted; "still, when they find the body has been returned to the banker, and the ransom paid, what will they think then?"

"They will think that some designing person has palmed off a spurious body on them at first, and before they learn better we can be off and away to another city, Haidee. It all seems so plain and easy to me I wonder why you hang back so."

"My God! this is horrible," breathed poor Lily to herself, but a dreadful fascination held her immovable to her post.

"And then, the body itself," pursued Haidee. "It would have the look of one lately dead. How could we account to her friends for that? Remember, she is supposed to be dead these five months."

"Haidee, you are an old fool! You are getting into your dotage—what silly questions you ask, to be sure," panted the old man, in a furious rage with his hesitating wife.

"Oh, yes, I hear all that. But you have not answered my question yet," returned she, pertinaciously.

"I have answered it twenty times before—every time that we talked the matter over. We can say that we had it embalmed so that her friends might make sure of her identity when we claimed the ransom."

The old witch sat silently pondering a few minutes.

"Perhaps that would do," she said, rousing herself at last. "It may be that I am over cautious; I confess that I wish the girl dead."

"You consent then?" said Peter eagerly.

"Yes, I consent," she answered, with a ring of fierce joy in her unwomanly tones.

"Now that's my sensible wife," said Peter, transported with joy. "I thought you would come to your senses after a while. Well, since you are willing I say the sooner the better."

"Yes, the sooner the better," his wife repeated after him.

"Let it be to-night then," suggested Peter, who did not want to give Haidee's cautious fears any time to change her resolution. He believed in the old adage: "Strike while the iron is hot."

"Yes," answered Haidee readily, "let it be to-night."

The listener's heart gave a great fluttering bound and then sank like lead in her bosom.

Through all that she had suffered the desire of life, and the hope of ultimate release had remained strong in her breast. How could it be otherwise with one so young and lovely, and for whom life held so much? Now all her hopes were blighted in the dreadful knowledge just come upon her. Death in the horrible form of murder was about to blot out her young and tender life forever from the earth. She clasped her hands together, and repressing a strong desire to shriek aloud, lest that cry of anguish should precipitate her fate, listened on.

"Who will do the deed?" asked Peter, who was a coward in spite of his braggadocio.

"I will!" said Haidee, fiercely. "I will get my revenge upon her thus. Presently, when she is asleep and dreaming perhaps of her home and her lover, I will steal in upon her and clasp my hands around her white little neck and strangle her to death."

"It is settled, then," said old Peter, with a fiendish chuckle of delight. "Get our pipes, now, Haidee, and let us sit up and wait till the time comes."

Lily Lawrence dropped down upon the floor and lay there like one already smitten with death.

"Oh, God!" she thought, "if I only had not listened I might indeed have been asleep, and death might have stolen on me unconsciously. How dreadful to lie here and wait for death each moment."

She lay there shuddering and trying to pray as the fatal minutes crept on, each one bearing away on its swift sands the brief span of precious life yet left her.

At each movement in the next room she shivered and started, thinking that old Haidee was about to come forth to execute her murderous task.

How long she lay there weeping and praying she never knew, but at length she heard the clock in the lower hall strike ten.

The next instant stealthy steps came gliding through the hall to her door.

Already she seemed to feel the horrible clutch of old Haidee's hands about her warm, white throat, pressing out the life.