Kitabı oku: «The Voice from the Void: The Great Wireless Mystery», sayfa 9
Chapter Seventeen
The Ears of the Blind
The discovery of the watcher at Willowden was most disconcerting to Gray and his accomplices.
They recognised the stranger as a person who had once kept observation upon them in London two years before, and now saw to their dismay that their headquarters had been discovered.
So that night Gray and Claribut worked hard in frantic haste and dismantled the wireless installation, which they packed in boxes, while Freda eagerly collected her own belongings. Then making sure that they were not still being watched they stowed the boxes in the car, and creeping forth sped rapidly away along the Great North Road.
“I don’t like the look of things?” Gray muttered to Freda, who sat beside him. “We’ve only got away in the nick of time. The police might have been upon us before morning. We’ll have to be extremely careful.”
And then a silence fell between them as they drove through the pelting rain. Once again they had wriggled out of an awkward situation.
At a first-floor window of an ancient half-timbered house in a narrow, dingy street behind the cathedral in quaint old Bayeux, in Normandy, a pretty, fair-haired young girl was silting in the sunshine, her hands lying idly in her lap.
It was noon. The ill-paved street below – a street of sixteenth-century houses with heavy carved woodwork and quaint gables – was deserted, as the great bell of the magnificent old cathedral, built by Odo, the bishop, after the Norman Conquest of Britain, boomed forth the hour of twelve.
The girl did not move or speak. She seldom did, because first, her blue eyes were fixed and sightless, and, secondly, she was always strange of manner.
Jean Nicole, the boot-repairer, and his wife, with whom the girl lived, were honest country folk of Normandy. Both came from Vaubadon, a remote little village on the road to St. Lô. After the war they had moved to Bayeux, when one day they chanced to see an advertisement in the Ouest Éclair, an advertisement inviting a trustworthy married couple to take charge of a young lady who was slightly mentally deficient, and offering a good recompense.
They answered the advertisement, with the result that they were invited to the Hôtel de l’Univers at St. Malo, where the worthy pair were shown up to a private sitting-room wherein sat a well-dressed Englishman and a smartly-attired woman, his wife.
They explained that they had been left in charge of the young lady in question, who was unfortunately blind. Her father’s sudden death, by accident, had so preyed upon her mind that it had become deranged.
The man, who gave the name of Mr Hugh Ford, explained that he and his wife were sailing from Havre to New York on business on the following Saturday, and they required someone to look after the unfortunate young lady during their absence. Would Monsieur and Madame Nicole do so?
The boot-repairer and his stout spouse, eager to increase their income, expressed their readiness, and within an hour arrangements were made, an agreement drawn up by which the pair were to receive from a bank in Paris a certain monthly sum for mademoiselle’s maintenance, and the young lady was introduced to them.
Her affliction of blindness was pitiable. Her eyes seemed fixed as she groped her way across the room, and it was with difficulty that her guardian made her understand that she was going to live with new friends.
At last she uttered two words only in English.
“I understand.”
The middle-aged Frenchman and his wife knew no English, while it seemed that the young lady knew no French.
“Her name is Betty Grayson,” explained Mr Ford, speaking in French. “She seldom speaks. Yet at times she will, perhaps, become talkative, and will probably tell you in English some absurd story or other, always highly dramatic, about some terrible crime. But, as I tell you, Monsieur Nicole, her mind is unhinged, poor girl! So take no notice of her fantastic imagination.”
“Très bien, monsieur,” replied the dark-faced boot-repairer. “I quite follow. Poor mademoiselle!”
“Yes. Her affliction is terribly unfortunate. You see her condition – quite hopeless, alas! She must have complete mental rest. To be in the presence of people unduly excites her, therefore it is best to keep her indoors as much as possible. And when she goes out, let it be at night when nobody is about.”
“I understand, monsieur.”
“The best London specialists on mental diseases have already examined her. Poor Betty! They have told me her condition, therefore, if she gets worse it will be useless to call in a doctor. And she may get worse,” he added meaningly, after a pause.
“And when will monsieur and madame be back?” inquired Madame Nicole.
“It is quite impossible to tell how long my business will take,” was Mr Ford’s reply. “We shall leave Havre by the Homeric on Saturday, and I hope we shall be back by November. But your monthly payments will be remitted to you by the Crédit Lyonnais until our return.”
So the pair had gone back by train from St. Malo to quiet old Bayeux, to that dingy, ramshackle old house a few doors from that ancient mansion, now the museum in which is preserved in long glass cases the wonderful strip of linen cloth worked in outline by Queen Matilda and her ladies, representing the Conquest of England by her husband, William of Normandy, and the overthrow of Harold – one of the treasures of our modern world. On the way there they found that Miss Grayson could speak French.
The rooms to which they brought the poor sightless English mademoiselle were small and frowsy. The atmosphere was close, and pervaded by the odour of a stack of old boots which Monsieur Nicole kept in the small back room, in which he cut leather and hammered tacks from early morn till nightfall.
From the front window at which the girl sat daily, inert and uninterested, a statuesque figure, silent and sightless, a good view could be obtained of the wonderful west façade of the magnificent Gothic Cathedral, the bells of which rang forth their sweet musical carillon four times each hour.
Summer sightseers who, with guide-book in hand, passed up the old Rue des Chanoines to the door of the Cathedral, she heard, but she could not see. Americans, of whom there were many, and a sprinkling of English, chattered and laughed upon their pilgrimage to the magnificent masterpiece of the Conqueror’s half-brother, and some of them glanced up and wondered at the motionless figure seated staring out straight before her.
It is curious how very few English travellers ever go to Bayeux, the cradle of their race, and yet how many Americans are interested in the famous tapestries and the marvellous monument in stone.
On that warm noon as Betty Grayson sat back in the window, silent and motionless, her brain suddenly became stirred, as it was on occasions, by recollections, weird, horrible and fantastic.
Madame Nicole, in her full black dress and the curious muslin cap of the shape that has been worn for centuries by the villagers of Vaubadon – for each village in Normandy has its own fashion in women’s caps so that the denizens of one village can, in the markets, be distinguished from those of another – crossed the room from the heavy, old oak sideboard, laying the midday meal. In the room beyond Jean, her husband, was earning his daily bread tapping, and ever tapping upon the boots.
“Madame,” exclaimed the girl, rising with a suddenness which caused the boot-repairer’s wife to start. “There is a strange man below. He keeps passing and re-passing and looking up at me.”
The stout, stolid Frenchwoman in her neat and spotless cap started, and smiled good-humouredly.
“Then you can see at last – eh?” she cried. “Perhaps he is only some sightseer from the Agence Cook.” The woman was astounded at the sudden recovery of the girl’s sight.
“No. I do not think so. He looks like an English business man. Come and see,” said the girl.
Madame crossed to the window, but only two women were in sight, neighbours who lived across the way, and with them was old Abbé Laugée who had just left his confessional and was on his way home to déjeuner.
“Ah! He’s gone!” the girl said in French. “I saw him passing along last evening, and he seemed to be greatly interested in this house.”
“He may perhaps have a friend living above us,” suggested Madame Nicole.
Scarcely had she replied, however, when a knock was heard at the outside door, which, on being opened, revealed the figure of a rather tall, spruce-looking Englishman, well-dressed in a dark grey suit.
“I beg pardon, madame,” he said in good French, “but I believe you have a Mademoiselle Grayson living with you?”
Ere the woman could speak the girl rushed forward, and staring straight into the face of the man, cried:
“Why! It’s – it’s actually Mr Porter!”
The man laughed rather uneasily, though he well concealed his chagrin. He had believed that she was blind.
“I fear you have mistaken me for somebody else,” he said. Then, turning to the woman, he remarked: “This is Miss Grayson, I suppose?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Ah! Then she imagines me to be somebody named Porter – eh?” he remarked in a tone of pity.
“I imagine nothing,” declared the girl vehemently. “I used to, but I am now growing much better, and I begin to recollect. I recognise you as Mr Arthur Porter, whom I last saw at Willowden, near Welwyn. And you know it is the truth.”
The man shrugged his shoulders, and turning to Madame Nicole said in French:
“I have heard that mademoiselle is suffering from – well, from hallucinations.”
“Yes, monsieur, she does. For days she will scarcely speak. Her memory comes and goes quite suddenly. And she has to-day recovered her sight.”
“That is true,” replied the pretty blue-eyed girl. “I recognise this gentleman as Mr Arthur Porter,” she cried again. “I recollect many things – that night at Farncombe when – when I learnt the truth, and then lost my reason.”
“Take no notice, monsieur,” the woman urged. “Poor mademoiselle! She tells us some very odd stories sometimes – about a young man whom she calls Monsieur Willard. She says he was murdered.”
“And so he was!” declared the girl in English. “Mr Homfray can bear me out! He can prove it!” she said determinedly.
Their visitor was silent for a moment. Then he asked:
“What is this strange story?”
“You know it as well as I do, Mr Porter,” she replied bitterly. But the stranger only smiled again as though in pity.
“My name is not Porter,” he assured her. “I am a doctor, and my name is George Crowe, a friend of your guardian, Mr Ford. He called upon me in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, and as I was travelling to Paris he asked me to come here and see you.”
“What?” shrieked the girl. “Dare you stand there and deny that you are Arthur Porter, the friend of that woman, Freda Crisp!”
“I certainly do deny it! And further, I have not the pleasure of knowing your friend.”
Betty Grayson drew a long breath as her blue eyes narrowed and her brow knit in anger.
“I know that because of my lapses of memory and my muddled brain I am not believed,” she said. “But I tell you that poor Mr Willard was killed – murdered, and that the identity of the culprits is known to me as well as to old Mr Homfray, the rector of Little Farncombe.”
“Ah! That is most interesting,” remarked the doctor, humouring her as he would a child. “And who, pray, was this Mr Willard?”
“Mr Willard was engaged to be married to me!” she said in a hard voice. “He lived in a house in Hyde Park Square, in London, a house which his father had left him, and he also had a pretty seaside house near Cromer. But he was blackmailed by that adventuress, your friend, Mrs Crisp, and when at last he decided to unmask and prosecute the woman and her friends he was one morning found dead in very mysterious circumstances. At first it was believed that he had committed suicide, but on investigation it was found that such was not the case. He had been killed by some secret and subtle means which puzzled and baffled the police. The murder is still an unsolved mystery.”
“And you know the identity of the person whom you allege killed your lover – eh?” asked the doctor with interest.
“Yes, I do. And so does Mr Homfray.”
“Then why have neither of you given information to the police?” asked the visitor seriously.
“Because of certain reasons – reasons known to old Mr Homfray.”
“This Mr Homfray is your friend, I take it?”
“He is a clergyman, and he is my friend,” was her reply. Then suddenly she added: “But why should I tell you this when you yourself are a friend of the woman Crisp, and of Gordon Gray?”
“My dear young lady,” he exclaimed, laughing, “you are really making a very great error. To my knowledge I have never seen you before I passed this house last evening, and as for this Mrs Crisp, I have never even heard of her! Yet what you tell me concerning Hugh Willard is certainly of great interest.”
“Hugh Willard!” she cried. “You betray yourself, Mr Porter! How do you know his Christian name? Tell me that!”
“Because you have just mentioned it,” replied the man, not in the least perturbed.
“I certainly have not!” she declared, while Madame Nicole, not understanding English, stood aside trying to gather the drift of the conversation.
The man’s assertion that his name was Crowe, and that he was a doctor when she had recognised him as an intimate friend of the woman who had blackmailed her lover, aroused the girl’s anger and indignation. Why was he there in Bayeux?
“I tell you that you are Arthur Porter, the friend of Gordon Gray and his unscrupulous circle of friends!” cried the girl, who, turning to the stout Frenchwoman, went on in French: “This man is an impostor! He calls himself a doctor, yet I recognise him as a man named Porter, the friend of the woman who victimised the man I loved! Do not believe him?”
“Madame!” exclaimed the visitor with a benign smile, as he bowed slightly. “I think we can dismiss all these dramatic allegations made by poor mademoiselle – can we not? Your own observations have,” he said, speaking in French, “shown you the abnormal state of the young lady’s mind. She is, I understand, prone to imagining tragic events, and making statements that are quite unfounded. For that reason Mr Ford asked me to call and see her, because – to be frank – I am a specialist on mental diseases.”
“Ah! Doctor! I fear that mademoiselle’s mind is much unbalanced by her poor father’s death,” said the woman. “Monsieur Ford explained it all to me, and urged me to take no notice of her wild statements. When is Mr Ford returning to France?”
“In about three months, I believe. Then he will no doubt relieve you of your charge – which, I fear, must be a heavy one.”
“Sometimes, yes. But mademoiselle has never been so talkative and vehement as she is to-day.”
“Because I, perhaps, bear some slight resemblance to some man she once knew – the man named Porter, I suppose.”
“You are Arthur Porter!” declared the girl in French. “When I first saw you hazily last night I thought that you resembled him, but now I see you closer and plainly I know that you are! I would recognise you by your eyes among a thousand men!”
But the visitor only shrugged his shoulders again and declared to madame that mademoiselle’s hallucinations were, alas! pitiable.
Then he questioned the woman about her charge, and when he left he handed her a five-hundred-franc note which he said Mr Ford had sent to her.
But a few moments later when on his way down the narrow, old-world street with its overhanging houses, he muttered ominously to himself in English:
“I must get back to Gordon as soon as possible. That girl is more dangerous than we ever contemplated. As we believed, she knows too much – far too much! And if Sandys finds her then all will be lost. It was a false step of Gordon’s to leave her over here. She is recovering. The situation is distinctly dangerous. Therefore we must act – without delay!”
Chapter Eighteen
Wiles of the Wicked
On the day that Arthur Porter, under the guise of a doctor from Philadelphia, had visited Edna Manners at quaint old Bayeux, Roddy Homfray had, since early morning, been in his wireless-room at Little Farncombe Rectory, making some experiments with the new receiving-set which he had constructed in a cigar-box.
The results had been highly satisfactory and very gratifying. He had been experimenting with a new organic and easily manufactured super-sensitive crystal which he had discovered to be a very delicate detector of wireless waves when an electrical circuit was passed through it, and by dint of long and patient tests of pressure electricity, had come to the conclusion that it was quite as effective as the usual three valves. This meant a very great improvement in the reception of wireless telephony.
As that afternoon he sat at tea with his father he explained the trend of his piezo-electric experiments. The discovery was entirely his own, for though others had experimented with inorganic crystals, quartz and gems, trying to solve the riddle why sugar and certain salts should cool from liquid into different patterns of crystals, nobody had ever dreamed of constructing such a detector or of using such a manufactured “crystal.”
The secret of the new crystals was his own, and, judging from the efficiency of the new portable receiving-set, would be of very considerable value. When, later on, deaf old Mrs Bentley had cleared the table, father and son sat smoking, and Roddy said:
“I’m going along to the Towers to dinner. Mr Sandys has asked me to have a hand at bridge afterwards.”
“Elma is away, isn’t she?”
“Yes. At Harrogate with her aunt. She returns on Tuesday,” the young man replied. “And to-morrow Barclay meets the Kaid Ahmed-el-Hafid at the Ritz to receive the concession. He had a telegram from the Kaid last Friday to say that the concession had been granted in my name, and that he was leaving Tangiers with it on the following day.”
“Well, my boy, it really looks as though Fortune is about to smile on you at last! But we must always remember that she is but a fickle jade at best.”
“Yes, father. I shall not feel safe until the concession is actually in my hands. Barclay has promised to introduce me to the Kaid, who will give me every assistance in my prospecting expedition. It is fortunate that we already hold the secret of the exact position of the ancient workings.”
“It is, my boy,” remarked the old rector thoughtfully. “Possibly you can induce Mr Sandys to finance the undertaking and float a company – eh?”
“That is my idea,” his son replied. “But I shall not approach him until I have been out to the Wad Sus and seen for myself. Then I can speak with authority, and conduct to the spot any expert engineer he may like to send out there.”
Afterwards Roddy glanced at the old grandfather clock with its brass face which stood in the corner, rose, and after dressing, shouted a merry “good-bye” to the rector, and left the house to dine with the great financier, with whose daughter he was so deeply in love.
Their secret they withheld from Mr Sandys. Theirs was a fierce, all-absorbing passion, a mutual affection that was intense. They loved each other fondly and, Mr Sandys being so often in London, they saw each other nearly every day. Indeed, for hours on end Elma would sit in the wireless-room and assist her lover in those delicate and patient experiments which he had been daily making. Roddy, in the weeks that had passed, had regained his normal condition, though sometimes, at odd moments, he still experienced curious lapses of memory.
Old Mr Homfray had not been very well of late. His heart was naturally weak, and the doctor had for several years warned him against any undue excitement or hurrying when walking uphill. Once while conducting morning service, he was seized by faintness and was prevented from preaching his sermon. The narrow, gossiping world of Little Farncombe declared that their rector needed a change, and Mr Homfray had promised his churchwardens that he would take one as soon as he could get someone to lock after the parish in his absence.
On the previous day he had received a letter from Gray’s solicitors informing him that the mortgaged property at Totnes had been sold, and enclosing the paltry sum of fourteen pounds twelve shillings as the balance due to him. This fad had irritated him and caused him the greatest indignation. Gordon Gray had defied him and had foreclosed the mortgage after all! He had, however, made no mention of it to Roddy. The matter was his secret – and his alone, for it so closely concerned that closed chapter of his earlier days.
To Roddy his own strange experience following the tragic discovery in Welling Wood was still a mystery. Only a few days before he had, out of sheer curiosity, taken train to Welwyn and walked out to Willowden. But the house was closed and the garden neglected, and on inquiry in the neighbourhood he had learnt that the people from London had taken the place furnished, and that their lease being up they had left. Where they had gone nobody knew.
To Park Lane Mr Rex Rutherford – as Gordon Gray called himself – had accompanied his friend Porter, alias Harrison, on two occasions, and had endeavoured to make himself extremely affable to Elma, by whose extraordinary beauty he had become greatly attracted. The girl, however, instinctively disliked him. Why, she could not herself tell. He was elegantly-dressed, and his manners were those of a gentleman, yet he had an oleaginous air about him which annoyed her on both occasions. Once she had been compelled to dance with him, and he had been full of empty compliments. But on subsequent occasions when he requested “the pleasure” she managed to excuse herself.
Indeed, she went so far as to suggest to her father that he should not invite Mr Rutherford again. Mr Sandys was rather surprised, but said nothing, and obeyed his daughter’s wish.
Roddy had left the Rectory about an hour and the dusk was gathering into night, when a closed car with strong headlights, coming from the direction of London and driven by a middle-aged man, drew up outside the village, and from it there alighted a short, stout man wearing a green velour Homburg hat.
“I won’t be long,” he remarked to the driver, and at once set out on foot in the direction of the Rectory.
Old Norton Homfray was in his study looking up a text in his big well-worn “Cruden,” when he heard a ring, and knowing Mrs Bentley to be upstairs – and that if downstairs she would never hear it – he went to the door and threw it open, expecting his visitor to be one of his parishioners.
Instead, he came face to face with his enemy, Gordon Gray.
For a second he was too surprised for words.
“Well,” he asked with dignity, “why are you here?”
“Oh! – well, I happened to be near here, and I thought I’d just pay you a call. I want to see you. May I come in?”
“If you wish,” growled the old clergyman, admitting him and conducting him to the study where the lamp was lit.
Then when his visitor was in the room, he turned to him and said:
“So you have carried out your threat, Gray, and sold my houses in Totnes – eh? You’ve taken my little income from me, as that woman told me you intended.”
“I had to; I’m so hard-up. Since the war I’ve been very hard hit,” replied the man. “I’m sorry, of course.”
“Yes. I suppose you are very sorry!” sarcastically remarked the old man, pale with anger. “Once, Gray, I trusted you, and – ”
“And I befriended you in consequence,” interrupted the other. “I lent you money.”
“You did – to your own advantage,” said the old rector bitterly. “But let all that pass. I want you to tell me – nay, I demand to know! – what occurred in the wood outside this house on the night when Freda came here in secret.”
“How do I know? I was not here.”
“You were here. I saw you in church.”
“I came to listen to the excellent maxims you put before these yokels – you, who have been in a criminal dock. A fine moral leader you are, Norton?” he laughed scornfully. “You ought to be hounded out of the parish as a hypocrite and a black-coated humbug. And if you don’t take care you will be!”
“And you! I – ”
“Take care. I know too much for you, remember,” said Gray seriously.
“You ruin me, and now you would blackmail me – as you and that woman Crisp have blackmailed others. I know your game. It has been played too long.”
“You are making allegations that may prove as dangerous to yourself as to me, Homfray,” said the adventurer coldly, gazing straight into the other’s eyes.
“What do you mean?” cried the rector fiercely. “I know something – and I suspect a good deal more. Edna Manners died in Welling Wood on that fatal night, and my boy Roddy, because he discovered her, fell into your unscrupulous hands. Now, confess it – or, by Heaven! I’ll tell the truth concerning young Willard!”
“Really, Homfray,” the visitor remarked, quite unperturbed. “You’re a very nice, delightful parson – eh? Fancy you preaching in that pulpit, as I sat and listened to you on that Sunday night! You – of all men!”
“I demand to know the truth. Poor Edna was engaged to marry that boy whom you, with that accursed woman, fleeced with such audacity. And you had the further audacity to ask me to assist you in your vile plans.”
“Why not? You live askew, just as we do – only you are slick enough to put on a clerical collar, as to six-tenths of the world the ‘cloth’ can do no evil,” he laughed.
“Edna Manners knew too much for you. I recognised her from Roddy’s description. And then Roddy himself was drugged – or something.”
“It is a matter which neither of us need discuss, Homfray,” said the other. “There is six of me and half a dozen of you. Your son is all right again, deep in his wireless experiments and, I hear, in love with a very charming girl. What more do you want?”
“I want justice and fair play!” said the old rector in desperation. “You, whom I believed to be my real friend, have played a deep and crooked game. Place your cards on the table for once, Gray, and tell me why. I have never been your enemy – only your friend!”
The stocky, beady-eyed adventurer paused for a few seconds. The question nonplussed him. Suddenly he blurted forth:
“You didn’t play a straight game over young Willard. We might have shared equally thirty thousand pounds, but you wouldn’t. I confess, Homfray, your refusal annoyed me.”
“Oh! Then that is the secret!” he said. “I recollect it all. I told you that if you attempted to make that coup and divest the poor boy of everything so that he could not marry Edna, I would go to the police. You pretended to withhold your hand in fear of my threat. But Freda and your unscrupulous friend ‘Guinness’ managed to get the money from him and afterwards close his mouth so that the poor lad could tell no tales.”
“It’s a lie! A damnable lie!” cried Gray, fiercely indignant.
“I have only spoken the truth, and you know it,” declared the old rector calmly. “As a minister of the Gospel, I am not in the habit of lying or being, uncharitable towards my fellow-men.”
“Oh! stop that silly rot! You are on a par with us. Don’t pose as a saint?”
“I am not a saint by any means, Gray. But I try to live honestly and in the fear of God.”
“And the fear of man also, I hope!” the other laughed. “Look here, is it to be war to the end between us? Or will you consider a little proposition I have in mind? Remember that I can very easily go to your bishop and have you kicked out of this little snuggery of yours. And what would your dear son think of all your past adventures – eh?”
“Do it. Go to the bishop!” cried the poor old rector in desperation. “I tell you that I will never lift a finger to aid an assassin.”
“Whom do you call an assassin?” asked Gray, putting forward his dark face threateningly to the rector.
“You – Gordon Gray!” replied the elder man fearlessly. “I know the truth concerning that poor boy Willard’s death, and now that you have ruined me I have determined to risk my position here and reveal the truth!”
Gray, never at a loss for words, stood silent. Homfray’s pale determined countenance told him that he meant what he had said. He realised, for the first time, that in attacking Roddy he had taken a false step. The boy’s father suspected the truth. Nay, he knew it.
But there was the concession – and Elma! He was determined, at all hazards, to possess himself of both as the crowning point of his marvellously adventurous career.
“I defy you to utter a single word!” cried Gray, with clenched fists. “If you do, it will be the worse for you! Remember that!”
“I repeat what I told your accomplice, Freda Crisp. I will rid society of you both as social pests – vampires who prey upon the unwary and inexperienced,” shouted the old clergyman in a frenzy of anger. “You have attacked me and mine, and now I will, in turn, retaliate. Get out of my house this instant!”
Gordon Gray glanced keenly at the old rector with his shrewd dark eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
“Homfray, you are a fool?” he declared. “Why can’t we arrange matters? I came here to put a little proposition to you – that I should join your son in that mining concession he is obtaining from the Moorish Government.”
“Join my son!” shrieked the old man. “I would rather that Roddy grasped hands with Satan himself than with you! I – I – ”
And his face became crimson as he gasped for breath, and suddenly clutched wildly at his throat.
“I – I – ”
But he uttered no further intelligible word. Next second a seizure, due to the violent excitement, held him rigid, and a few seconds later he sank into the arm-chair and expired in the presence of his enemy, thus carrying with him to the grave the secret of Hugh Willard’s tragic end.
Gordon Gray stood there in silence and watching with interest, amused rather than otherwise, realising that Nature herself had, by a strange freak, effected still another coup in his own interests.
The one enemy he feared had been swept from his path! Of Roddy he took no heed.
The road to fortune and to Elma was now rendered clear for him.
