Kitabı oku: «Dangerous Ground: or, The Rival Detectives», sayfa 13
CHAPTER XXXIII.
IN THE CONSERVATORY
Several days have passed since the visit of Mamma Francoise to the Warburton mansion, with all its attendant circumstances; since the flight from the Francoise tenement, and Van Vernet’s rescue from a fiery death.
The Warburton Mansion is closed and gloomy. The splendid drawing-rooms are darkened and tenantless. The music-room is silent and shut from any ray of light. The library, where a dull fire glows in the grate, looks stately and somber. Only in the conservatory – where the flowers bloom and send out breaths of fragrance, and where the birds chirp and carol as if there were no sorrow nor death in the world – is there any light and look of cheer.
Yesterday, the stately doors opened for the last exit of the master of all that splendor. He went out in state, and was followed by an imposing cortege. There was all the solemn pomp, all the grandeur of an aristocratic funeral. But when it was over, what was Archibald Warburton more than the poorest pauper who dies in a hospital and is buried by the coroner?
To-day the doors are closed, the house is silent. The servants go about with solemn faces and hushed voices. Alan Warburton has kept his own room since early morning, and Leslie has been visible only to her maid and to Winnie French.
She is alone in her dressing-room, at this moment, standing erect before the daintily-tiled fire-place, a look of hopeless despair upon her countenance.
A moment since, she was sitting before the fire, so sad, so weary, that it seemed to her that death had left the taint of his presence over everything. Now, that which she held in her hand had brought her back to life, and face to face with her future, with fearful suddenness.
It was a note coarsely written and odorous of tobacco, and it contained these words:
We have waited for you five days. If you do not come to us before two more, they shall know at police headquarters that you can tell them who killed Josef Siebel. You see we have changed our residence.
Then followed the street and number of the Francoises’ new abode. There was no date, no address, no signature. But Leslie knew too well all that it did not say; comprehended to the full its hidden meaning.
She had not anticipated this blow; had never dreamed that they would dare so much. Standing there, with her lips compressed and her fingers clutching the dirty bit of paper, she looked the future full in the face.
Stanhope had bidden her ignore their commands and fear nothing. But then he never could have anticipated this. If she could see him; could consult him once again. But that was impossible; he had told her so.
For many moments she stood moveless and silent, her brow contracted, the desperate look in her eyes growing deeper, her lips compressing themselves into fixed firm lines.
Then she thrust the note into her pocket, and turned from the grate.
“It is the last straw!” she muttered, in a low monotone. “But there shall be no more hesitation; we have had enough of that. They may do their worst now, and – ” she shut her teeth with a sharp sound – “and I will frustrate them, at the cost of my honor or my life!”
There was no timidity, no tremor of hesitation in her movements, as she crossed the room and opened the door. Her hand was firm, her step steady, her face as fixed as marble; but it looked, in its white immobility, like a face that was dead.
She crossed the hall and entered the chamber occupied by her friend. A maid was there, engaged in sewing.
Miss French had just left the room, she said. Miss French felt oppressed by the loneliness and gloom. She had gone below, probably to the conservatory.
Winnie was in the conservatory, holding a book in one listless hand, idly fingering a trailing vine with the other. Her eyes, usually so merry and sparkling, were tear-dimmed and fixed on vacancy. Her pretty face was unnaturally woeful; her piquant mouth, sad and drooping.
She sprang up, however, with a quick exclamation, when Leslie’s hand parted the clustering vines, and Leslie’s self glided in among the exotics.
“Sit where you are, Winnie,” said Leslie, in a voice which struck her listener as strangely chill and monotonous. “Let me sit beside you. It’s not quite so dreary here, and I’ve something to say to you.”
Casting a look of startled inquiry upon her, Winnie resumed her seat among the flowery vines, and Leslie sank down beside her, resuming, as she did so, and in the same even, icy tone:
“Dear, I want you to promise me, first of all, to keep what I am about to say a secret.”
Winnie lifted two inquiring eyes to the face of her friend, but said no word.
“I know, Winnie, that you have ever been my truest, dearest friend,” pursued Leslie. “But now – ah! I must put your friendship to a new, strange test. I feel as if my secret would be less a burden if shared by a true friend, and you are that friend. Winnie, I have a sad, sad secret.”
The young girl turned her face slowly away from Leslie’s gaze, and when it was completely hidden among the leaves and blossoms, she breathed, in a scarcely audible whisper:
“I know it, Leslie; I guessed.”
“What!” queried Leslie, a look of sad surprise crossing her face, “you, too, have guessed it? And I thought it so closely hidden! Oh,” with a sudden burst of passion, “did my husband suspect it, too, then?”
“No, dear,” replied Winnie, turning her face toward Leslie but keeping her eyes averted; “no, I do not believe that Archibald guessed. He was too true and frank himself to suspect any form of falsity in another.”
“Falsity!” Leslie rose slowly to her feet, her face fairly livid.
Winnie also arose, and seizing one of Leslie’s hands began, in a broken voice:
“Leslie, forgive the word! Oh, from the very first, I have known your secret, and pitied you. I knew it because – because I, too, am a woman, and can read a woman’s heart. But Archibald never guessed it, and Alan – ”
She broke off abruptly, wringing her hands as if tortured by her own words.
But Leslie coldly completed the sentence. “Alan! He knows it?”
“Oh, yes. It began by his doubting your love for his brother, and then – the knowledge – that you cared – for him – ”
Across Leslie’s pallid face the red blood came surging, and a bitter cry broke from her lips; a cry that bore with it all her constrained calmness.
“That I cared!” she repeated wildly. “Winnifred French, what are you saying! God of Heaven! is that madness known, too?”
She flung herself upon the divan, her form shaken by a passion of voiceless sobs.
“Oh, Leslie, don’t!” cried Winnie, flinging herself down beside her friend. “We cannot always control our hearts; and indeed, dear, I do not blame you for loving him. Leslie,” lowering her voice softly, “it is no sin for you to love him, now.”
“No sin!” Leslie’s voice was regaining its calmness, but not its icy tone. “Winnie, you can say that? Ah! a woman can read a woman’s heart, and I have read yours: you love Alan Warburton.”
“I? no, no!”
“I say yes; and but for your Quixotic notions of loyalty and friendship, you would be his promised wife to-day. Winnie, listen; having begun another confession I will make my confidence entire. I never dreamed that you or – or Alan, guessed my horrible folly. I did not come to intrust to your keeping that dead secret. You tell me that it is no sin to love Alan now. Winnie, the greatest sin of my life has been that I promised to marry Archibald Warburton without loving him. But, at least, I was heart-free then; I cared for no other. We were betrothed three months before Alan came home, and I – . But let that pass; it is the crowning-point of my humiliation. I did love Alan Warburton. If I loved him still, I could not say this so calmly. Winnie, believe me; that madness is over. To-day Alan Warburton is to me – my husband’s brother, nothing more; just as I am nothing, in his eyes, save a woman who wears with ill grace the proud name of Warburton. This may seem strange to you. It will not appear so strange when you hear what I am about to tell. Alan Warburton’s egotism has cured me effectually. I am free from that folly, thank Heaven, but I shall never cease to hate myself for it. And my humiliation is now complete, since you tell me that Alan knew of my madness. But, Winnie, this is not what I came to tell you. I have another secret, dear, but this one is not like the other, a sin of my own making. It is a story of the craftiness of others, and of my weakness – yes, wickedness.”
“Hush, Leslie,” said Winnie impetuously, “I won’t hear you talk of wickedness. I am glad you no longer care for Alan; and as for me, I just hate him; the detestable, stiff-necked – pshaw, don’t talk as if you had wronged him!”
There is a movement of the heavy curtains that separate this bower from the library. Some one is approaching, but Leslie, unaware of this near presence, answers sadly:
“Ah, Winnie, you don’t know all. I have dared to unite myself to the haughty house of Warburton; to take upon myself a name old, honored and unsullied, and to drag that name – ”
A sound close at hand causes them both to start. They lift their eyes to see, pale and erect among the roses and lilies and trailing vines, wearing upon his handsome face a look of mingled sadness and scorn – Alan Warburton.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
FLINT TO STEEL
There was a long moment of silence, and then Alan Warburton spoke.
“Much as I desire to hear that sentence completed, Mrs. Warburton, I could do no less than interrupt.”
Leslie dropped Winnie’s hand and rose slowly, moving with a stately grace toward the entrance before which Alan stood. And Winnie, with a wrathful glance at the intruder, flung aside a handful of loose leaves with an impatient motion, and followed her friend.
But Alan, making no effort to conceal his hostile feelings, still stood before the entrance, and again addressed Leslie.
“May I detain you for a moment, Mrs. Warburton?”
Leslie paused before him with a face as haughty as his own, and bowed her assent. Then she drew back and looked at Winnie, who, with a gesture meant to be imperious, commanded Alan to stand aside.
“Will you remain, Miss French?” asked Alan, but moving aside with a courtly bow.
“No; I won’t,” retorted the irate little lady. “I don’t like the change of climate. I’m going up stairs for my furs and a foot-warmer – ugh!”
And casting upon him a final glance of scorn, she dashed aside the curtains, and they heard the door of the library close sharply behind her.
For a moment they regarded each other silently. Since the night of that fateful masquerade they had not exchanged words, except such commonplaces as were made necessary by the presence of a third person. Now they were both prepared for a final reckoning: he with stern resolve stamped upon every feature; she with desperate defiance in look and manner.
“I think,” she said, with a movement toward the portierie, “that our conversation had better be continued there.”
He bowed a stately assent, and held back the curtains while she passed into the library.
She crossed the room with slow, graceful movements, and pausing before the hearth, turned her face toward him.
Feeling to her heart’s core the humiliation brought by the knowledge that this man, her accuser, had fathomed the secret of her past love for him; with the thought of the Francoises’ threat ever before her – Leslie Warburton stood there hopeless, desolate, desperate. She had ceased to struggle with her fate. She had resolved to meet the worst, and to brave it. She was the woman without hope, but she was every inch a queen, her head haughtily poised, her face once more frozen into pallid tranquility.
Standing thus, she was calm, believing that she had drained her bitter cup to its very dregs; that Fate could have no more poisoned arrows in store for her.
Ah, if she had known that her bitterest draught was yet to be quaffed; that the deadliest wound was yet to be inflicted!
She made no effort to break the silence that fell between them; she would not aid him by a word.
Comprehending this, after a moment of waiting, he said:
“Madam, believe me, I have no desire to do you an injustice. I have purposely avoided this interview, wishing, while my dead brother remained among us, to spare you for his sake. Now, however, it is my duty to fathom the mystery in which you have chosen to envelop yourself. What have you to say?”
“That, knowing his duty so well, Mr. Alan Warburton will do it, undoubtedly.” And she bowed with ironical courtesy.
“And you still persist in your refusal to explain?”
“On the contrary, I am quite at your service.”
She smiled as she said these words. At least she could humble the pride of this superior being, and she would have this small morsel of revenge. Her answer astonished him. His surprise was manifest. And she favored him with a frosty smile as she asked:
“What is it that my brother-in-law desires to know?”
“The truth,” he replied sternly. “What took you to that vile den on the night of your masquerade? Are those Francoises the people you have so frequently visited by stealth? Are they your clandestine correspondents?”
“Your questions come too fast,” she retorted calmly. “I will reverse the order of my answers. The Francoises are my clandestine correspondents. My visits by stealth, have all been paid to them. It was a threat that took me there that eventful night.”
“A threat?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are in their power?”
“I was.”
“And their sway has ceased?”
“It has ceased.”
“Since when?”
“Since the receipt of this.”
She took from her pocket the crumpled note, and held it out to him.
He read it with his face blanching.
“Then it was you!” he gasped, with a recoil of horror.
“It was a blow in my defence,” she said, with a glance full of meaning. “It would not become me to save myself at the expense of the one who dealt it.”
His eyes flashed, but she looked at him steadily. “Do you know who struck that blow?” he asked.
“To tell you would not add to your store of knowledge,” she retorted. “Have you more to say, Mr. Warburton?”
“More? yes. Who are these Francoises? What are they to you?”
Her answer came with slow deliberation. “They call themselves my father and mother.”
“My God!”
“It is true. I was adopted by the Ulimans. My husband and Mr. Follingsbee were aware of this. It seems that I was given to the Ulimans by these people.”
She had aimed this blow at his pride, but that pride was swallowed up by his consternation. As she watched his countenance, the surprise changed to incredulity, the incredulity to contempt. Then he said, dryly:
“Your story is excellent, but too improbable. Will you answer a few more questions?”
“Ask them.”
“On the night of the masquerade you received here, in your husband’s house, by appointment, a man disguised in woman’s apparel.”
“Well?”
“You admit it? Do you know how I effected my escape that night?”
“I do. A brave man came to your rescue.”
“Precisely; and this ‘brave man’, is the same who was present at the masquerade; is it not so?”
“It is.”
“Who is this man?”
“I decline to answer.”
“What is he to you, then?”
“What he is to all who know him: a brave, true man; a gentleman.”
“Hem! You have an exalted opinion of this – this gentleman.”
“And so should you have, since he saved your life, and what you value more, your reputation. And now listen: this same man has bidden me tell you, has bidden me warn you, that dangers surround you on every hand; that Van Vernet has traced the resemblance between you and the Sailor of that night; that he will hunt you down if possible. Your safety depends upon your success in baffling his efforts to identify you with that Sailor.”
“Your friend is very thoughtful,” he sneered.
She turned toward the door with an air of weariness.
“This is our last interview,” she said coldly; “have you more to say?”
He made a quick stride toward the door, and placing himself before it, let his enforced calmness fall from him like a mantle of snow from a statue of fire, with all his hatred and disgust concentrated in the low, metallic tones in which he addressed her.
“I have only this to say: Your plans, which as yet I only half comprehend, will fail utterly. You fancy, perhaps, that this snare, into which I have fallen, will fetter my hands and prevent me from undoing your work. I cannot give life to the victim whose death lies at your door, the husband who was slain by your sin, but I can rescue your later victim, if her life, too, has not been sacrificed. As for these two wretches, whose parental claim is a figment of your own imagination, and this lover, who is the abettor, possibly the instigator, of your crimes, I shall find him out – ”
“Stop,” she cried wildly, “I command you, stop!”
“Ah, that touches you! I repeat, I shall find him out. To succeed, you should have concealed his existence as effectually as you have concealed poor little Daisy.”
A death-like pallor overspreads the face of the woman before him. She stretches out her arms imploringly, her form sways as if she were about to fall, and she utters a wailing cry.
“As I have concealed Daisy? Oh, my God; my God! I see! I understand! My weakness, my folly, has done its work. I have killed my husband! I have brought a curse upon little Daisy! I have endangered your life and honor! I conceal our Daisy? Hear me, Heaven; henceforth I am nameless, homeless, friendless, until I have found Daisy Warburton and restored her to you!”
Her voice died in a low wail. She makes a forward movement, and then falls headlong at the feet of her stern accuser. For the second time in all her life, Leslie Warburton has fainted.
One moment Alan Warburton stands looking down upon her, a cynical half smile upon his lips. Then he turns and pulls the bell.
“Mrs. Warburton is in a swoon,” he says to the servant who appears. “Call some one to her assistance.”
And without once glancing backward, he strides from the library.
CHAPTER XXXV.
ALAN “EVOLVES” A PLAN OF ACTION
Kind hands brought Leslie back to life, and to a new sense of pain, for even the hands that love us must sometimes hurt, when they hope to heal.
Every servant of the household loved its fair mistress. And while those who could, bustled to and fro, commanded by Winnie, each eager to minister to so kind a mistress, and those who were superfluous went about with anxious, sympathetic faces, Alan Warburton, the one unpitying soul in all that household, paced his room restlessly, troubled and anxious – not because of Leslie’s illness, but because of the revelation just received from her lips.
Could this thing be true? Had his brother Archibald, a Warburton of the Warburton’s – that family so old, so proud, so pure; that family whose men had always been gentlemen whom the world had delighted to honor; whose women had been queens of society, stately, high-bred, above reproach —could Archibald Warburton have made a mesalliance? And such a mesalliance! The daughter of a pair of street mendicants, social outlaws; an adventuress with no name, no lineage, no heritage save that of shame.
“Of all the notable things of earth
The queerest one is pride of birth.”
For the moment it outweighed his grief for Archibald, his anxiety for Daisy, his very humanity. Later on, he might be Warburton the friend, and the truest of friends; Warburton the lover, and the tenderest, the most chivalrous of lovers; Warburton the champion, as on the night when he rescued Leslie; but now he is only Warburton the aristocrat; the aristocrat, insulted, defied, betrayed; brought into contact with mystery, intrigue, base blood, and in his own household. Could he ever forgive Leslie Warburton? Would he, if he could?
He had accused her as the cause of his brother’s death, as the source of the mystery which overhung the fate of little Daisy; and in his heart of hearts he believed her guilty. And now, her daring, her cool effrontery, had made some hitherto mysterious movements plain. Her father and mother, those wretches who lived in a hovel, and smelled of the gutter! But she had betrayed herself. These people must be found at whatever hazard.
Thus meditating, he paced up and down, up and down. And before he finally ceased his restless journeyings to and fro, he had evolved a theory and a plan of action. A very natural theory it was, and a very magnanimous plan.
Having first catalogued Leslie as an adventuress, he endowed her, in his theory, with all the attributes of the adventuress of the orthodox school – cunning, crafty, avaricious, scheming for a fortune; unscrupulous, of course, and only differing from the average adventuress in that she was the cleverest and the most beautiful, as she had been the most successful of her kind.
“Granted that these two old wretches are her parents,” he reasoned, “the rest explains itself. They incite her to plot for their mutual welfare. She marries Archibald, and even I discern that she does not love him; but he is wealthy, and an invalid. Only one thing stands between her and an eventual fortune, and that is poor little Daisy. Possibly she may have still some tenderness of heart, and for a time Daisy is spared. But after a while, the mysterious goings and comings begin; the arrival of notes by strange messengers; and a new look dawns upon my sister-in-law’s fair face. Then comes the masquerade. A man is here, in this house, by appointment with her. He follows her to the abode of the Francoises and so do I. Who is this man? A gentleman, she tells me. Her lover, doubtless, and all is explained. With Archibald removed, what would stand between her lover and herself? With Daisy removed, she would possess both lover and fortune. And to remove Daisy was to remove Archibald. The shock would suffice. She planned all this deliberately; and on the night of the masquerade the Francoises aided her, and Daisy was stolen.”
Thus reasoned Alan. And then he formed his plans. He would spare Leslie all public disgrace, but she must cease to call herself a Warburton of the Warburtons. She must give up the family name, and go away from the city; far away, where no gossiping tongue could guess at her history, or connect her with the Warburtons. For Daisy’s sake, for his brother’s sake, for the honor of the name, she must go. She might take her fortune, left her by her deceived husband, but she must go.
“I will institute a search for the Francoises,” he muttered. “Everything must be done privately; there must be no scandal. If I require assistance, I can trust Follingsbee. I will see Leslie again, in the morning. I will make terms with her, haughty as she is, and – first of all she shall tell me the truth concerning Daisy.”
He was not unmindful of his own peril, not regardless for his own safety, but he was determined to know the truth concerning the disappearance of Daisy Warburton, and if need be, to face the attendant risk.
“I will write to the Chief of Police again,” he mused. “I must have additional help. But first, before writing, I will see her once more.”
And then he ceased his promenade for a moment, to strike his hands together and stare contemptuously at his image reflected from the mirror directly before him.
“Fool!” he muttered half aloud; “that letter, that scrawl which I gave back to her so stupidly! It contained their address. It would tell me where to find them, if I had it; and I will have it.”
In the anger and astonishment of the moment, he had returned the threatening note to Leslie, mechanically and without once glancing at the directions scrawled at the foot of the sheet.
While Alan paced and pondered, Leslie, having recovered from her swoon, went weakly and wearily to her own room, tenderly escorted by Winnie and the good-hearted, blundering Millie.
When she was comfortably established upon a couch, and the too solicitous Millie had been dismissed, Winnie’s indignation burst out in language exceedingly forcible, and by no means complimentary to Alan Warburton.
But Leslie stopped the flow of her eloquence by a nervous appealing gesture.
“Let us not discuss these things now, dear; I think I have been overtasked. I cannot talk; I must have quiet; I must rest.”
And then Winnie – denouncing herself for a selfish, careless creature with the same unsparing bitterness that, a moment before, she had lavished upon Alan, – assured herself that the curtains produced the proper degree of restful shadow, that the pillows were comfortably adjusted, that all Leslie could require was close at her hand, kissed her softly on either cheek, and tripped from the room.
Left alone, Leslie lay for many moments moveless and silent, but not sleeping. The softly-shaded stillness of the room acted upon her over-wrought nerves like a soothing spell. She had passed the boundaries of uncertainty. She had writhed, and wept, and shuddered under the torturing hands of Doubt and Fear, Terror, and Surprise. She had bowed down before Despair. But all that was past; and now she was calm and tearless, a brave soul that, having abandoned Hope, stands face to face with its Fate.
After a time she moved languidly, and then lifted herself slowly from among the pillows.
“Not to-night,” she murmured, lifting her hand to her head with a sigh of weariness. “I must have rest first.”
But she did not return to her pillows. Instead, she arose slowly, crossed the room, and drawing back the curtains let in, in a glowing flood, the last brightness of the afternoon sunshine. Then seating herself at a dainty writing-desk, she penned three notes, with a hand that moved slowly but with no unsteadiness.
The first was addressed to Mr. Follingsbee; the second to Mrs. French, the mother of Winnie; and the third to Winnie herself.
When the notes were done, she still sat before the desk, watching the fading-out of the golden sunlight with a far away look in her eyes. She sat thus until the last ray had died in the West, and the twilight came creeping on grey and shadowy.
Some one was knocking at the drawing-room door. She arose slowly to admit the visitor. It was Alan’s valet, with a twisted note in his hand.
Leslie took the note, and bidding the servant wait, she returned to the inner room.
Madam:
As you manifested no hesitation in exhibiting to me the note received by you this morning, you will, I trust, not object to my giving it a second perusal. Please send it me by bearer of this. I will return it promptly.
Alan Warburton.
This is what Leslie read, and when she had finished, she took from her pocket the crumpled note of the Francoises. Over this she bent her head for a moment, murmured something half aloud, as if to impress it on her memory, and went back to the dressing-room with the two papers in her hand.
Going slowly toward the grate, she stirred the smouldering fire until it sent up a bright blaze, and with another glance at the crumpled note, she dropped it upon the glowing coals, and watched it crumble to ashes. Then she turned toward the valet, folding and twisting his master’s note back into its original shape as she advanced.
“Return this to your master,” she said, “and tell him that the paper he asks for has been destroyed.”
As the valet turned away, she closed the door and went back to the grate.
“Alan Warburton has canceled my debt to him with an insult,” she murmured, with a cold smile upon her lips. “From this moment he has no part in my existence.”
