Читать книгу The Edge of the Sword - Fred M. White - Страница 8

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LIONEL HARVEY stood there in the velvety darkness, half sorry that he had come at all. He turned his face in the direction of the doorway with an inclination to abandon the whole business. After all, this was rather a mean undertaking of his; it savoured of the spy and the eavesdropper. But Lionel thought of Elsie and his promises to her, and his heart was hardened.

As his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, he began to make out certain objects around him. A little light came from the transom over the door frame. So far as Lionel could judge, the house was well furnished. He could feel the thick pile of carpet under his feet, the dull gleam of great vases caught his eye, the air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers.

All this was very well, but it was not leading to anything. It was not helping in this quest that Elsie had so closely at heart. For Elsie's sake there must be no going back now. Lionel and Elsie had come together in the most dramatic manner, and there must be no separation again.

Lionel boasted no more than an average share of pluck, somewhat disconcerted in his case by a vivid imagination. And it is imagination more than anything else that makes the coward. He could feel that his heart was beating a little faster than it usually did.

But it was no use to stand there speculating. If any secret confidences were going on they most certainly would not take place in the hall. And Lionel had plenty of evidence of the fact that there were at any rate two people in the house. He had seen Miss Ada Moberley, Lord Manningtree's niece, come here, and she had been closely followed by what looked like the figure of a man. It was no discredit to Lionel that he remembered the slender proportions of this individual.

Lionel stood there quite long enough for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness of the place. He could make out now that three rooms led from the hall. Very quietly he tried the doors, one after the other, and all yielded to his touch. Was it imagination, or did he hear something like a woman's dress rustling? Certainly there was a sound like that, which gradually died in the distance.

Lionel dismissed the fancy from his mind. He could see right in front of him the velvet curtain that appeared to veil a passage. He pushed behind the curtain and looked down the corridor. There was a light at the end of it, a shaft of clear-cut light that came from an open door and cleft into the blackness of the night. Beyond the light came the murmur of voices.

"Now for it," Lionel muttered between his teeth. "Now the play begins. I wish that I did not feel quite so mean over it, but here goes. If I get caught it will take all my fertility of resource to pull me through."

Very quietly Lionel crept along the passage. The door of the room from whence the light came was open, and it was an easy matter to see inside. No man's form was visible, as Lionel had expected. Two girls were there, one whose face was familiar to him, and the other a stranger. The taller girl was Miss Moberley.

Even now, at the very last hour, Lionel hesitated. There was no getting away from the fact that he was doing an exceedingly mean thing in an exceedingly mean way, and the only excuse he had, the only salve for his conscience that he possessed, lay in the knowledge that he was doing everything for the best. Still, he was man enough of the world to know that good intentions very frequently lead people into serious trouble.

All the same, he could not find it in his mind to tear himself away since he had gone so far. From where he stood he could see the figures of the girls and dimly follow their conversation. He noticed that the occupants of the room seemed to be in some kind of trouble, so far as he could judge from the expression on their faces; they both seemed white and troubled, and, just for a minute or two, they spoke in tones so low that it was impossible for Lionel to follow, though here and there he caught certain words.

As he stood there he attempted to justify his line of conduct. He had half a mind on the spur of the moment to make himself known and offer his assistance in elucidating the mystery in which he had found himself compelled to act as a central figure. He was greatly taken with the appearance of the taller girl, whom he knew to be Miss Moberley. There was something about her face that he was inclined to trust. He could not imagine her for a moment engaged in any mean or underhand task. No woman with eyes like hers could be guilty of that kind of conduct. Lionel moved a little closer to the door, and as he did so the tall girl rose and advanced towards him. It was only for an instant or two, then she was back again in her seat. Lionel wondered if, after all, he might not be mistaken in his decision that here was "Kate Bradley."

Certainly she had some sort of a likeness to the Kate Bradley of the Daily Record story. Kate Bradley was the millionaire's niece of the tale, and the one who was to be implicated in the loss of the jewels. But Lionel felt that Elsie Armstrong would never have recognised the chance likeness in the theatre had it not been for Dick Armstrong's visit to Miss Moberley's box.

The girl was pale enough, and the dark, shining eyes suggested sorrow and tragedy, care and suffering—eyes of one who would do desperate things if driven too far. But it was not a bad face, and there was nothing of the furtive and distrustful in it. Lionel could easily have imagined the girl as the heroine of some fearful tragedy; he could imagine her making great sacrifices for others and paying the penalty herself alone. He had seen a face like that in a criminal court, the face of a woman who had killed her child to prevent the little one falling into the hands of a bad father. And those eyes were glowing now with some great emotion.

The other girl was different altogether; she was small, but exquisitely moulded, and she had lovely, regular features and brown liquid eyes full of courage. On the whole, Lionel liked the other girl's face.

"Why did you do it?" the girl with the brown eyes asked. "Ada, why did you do it?"

"I don't, know, Gladys," the taller one replied, dully. "You wouldn't understand."

But Lionel did, to a certain extent. The mention of the brown-eyed girl's Christian came came in the light of a revelation. She had been called Gladys. And Gladys was the name of Lord Manningtree's daughter, the one to whom Dick Armstrong was secretly engaged.

"I shall certainly not know unless you tell me," the girl called Gladys said, impatiently. "Why do you persist in treating me like a child? Surely I have come to years of discretion by this time, and if anything happened to you I should be left alone in this dreadful mist with not a soul in the world to advise me."

"I had not forgotten that," the other girl said, sadly. "You ask me why I did it, and I can only reply that I acted on the spur of the moment. I believe that my nerves are in such a dreadful state that I am afraid of shadows, and I am so terribly frightened of that man because it seemed to me that he was aware of everything."

"I don't agree with you at all," Gladys said. "Surely it is no more than a curious combination of circumstances. One hears cases of this kind happening every day. When you come to consider the hundreds of men who write stories for a living, and the hundreds of stories they publish, it is not very remarkable that one of them should hit upon a scheme which embraces a series of incidents which comes in our daily life. Of course, I know I am talking a little like a book at present, but I think you know what I mean."

"Impossible," the other girl cried. "The thing is too real, too absolutely true to life for one to try and close one's eyes to hard facts in this way. I shall not rest till I have got to the bottom of this thing. I shall know no peace until I have seen the author of this story and had it all out with him."

"You would never do that," Gladys cried. "He would regard you in the light of a mad woman."

"I shall risk it," Ada said. "You don't quite know even now why I am here this evening. But that we can discuss presently. You do not really understand exactly how things are."

Assuredly the plot was growing thicker. What was Miss Manningtree doing here so far from home at this time of night?

"It you tell me I will try to understand," Miss Manningtree said.

"I am not quite sure that I understand myself," Ada Moberley said, wearily. "All my lifetime I have been a creature of impulse. I do things on the spur of the moment and repent them afterwards. Sometimes my instinct plays me fairly, sometimes it plays me false. And I was so desperately afraid of that man. He seemed to know everything. Day by day, as I watched that story unfolding in the Daily Record, I felt quite sure that the author knew all of us, that he had learnt our secret. When he told of the loss of those jewels I felt certain of it. He was going to blackmail us, he knew that I had the emeralds in my possession. Oh, don't tell me that this is one of the stupid things we call coincidences! That man was—and is—an enemy in the guise of an author.... A sudden terror gripped me. I found out who the man was, and where he lived. And yesterday, when I had satisfied myself that he knew everything, I sent him the emeralds."

Lionel followed every word with the most breathless interest. So his surmises and anticipations had proved to be absolutely correct. This was more or less the scheme of the tragi-comedy that he had worked out in his mind. Ada Moberley had read with avidity every word of the Record story. She had sent him the jewels as the price of his silence. It was a strange tangle, but things quite as strange happen every day in real life. And in Ada Moberley he had the real passionate poetic nature to deal with.

"Ada, you must have been mad," Gladys Manningtree said.

"Mad! Of course I was mad. How could anybody with a nature like mine undergo all the hideous torture of the past few months without at least a temporary loss of reason! I felt that I was being followed, that all my movements were being observed, that there was some dreadful power near me reading my secret thoughts. Yet it might have been no more than coincidence. I have heard of two musicians composing the same piece of music, though they had been hundreds of miles apart and were total strangers. It might have been that the author had, by some strange chance, evolved from his brain a set of characters and circumstances that had a parallel in real life. But when those gems came into my hands, as they did into the hands of the girl in the story, I became frightened. I acted on the spur of the moment, and I sent those gems to the author of the story. They were to be the price of his silence."

"It sounds like a dream," Gladys Manningtree murmured. "And yet all the time you never told me a word about the Daily Record story."

"My dear, I was afraid to. I was fearful lest it should get on your nerves as it has gripped mine. I watched it develop, aroused at first, then curious, then alarmed, then frightened to death. And I only tell you now, when I have to account for the loss of the emeralds. If Mr. Harvey is an honest, man——"

"What did you say the name of the author was?"

"Harvey—Lionel Harvey. It is not possible that you are acquainted with——"

"Not possibly, Ada. But it so happens that I know a great deal about him. I have heard Dick—I mean Mr. Armstrong—speak of him. They were at school together, they were in a bank together. From what I can gather Mr. Harvey at one time was engaged to Mr. Armstrong's sister Elsie. Then there was something wrong over some money, and Mr. Harvey tried to fasten the guilt on to Dick. It was a dreadful business altogether, but finally it was hushed up. There was no prosecution, mainly because Mr. Harvey's father had been in the bank for over forty years. Ada, you might have found somebody more worthy of your folly, somebody with honourable ideals, at any rate."

Lionel clicked his teeth together. He was feeling very bitter against Dick Armstrong at that moment. Armstrong's conduct had been bad enough all along, but there had not been the slightest occasion to repeat the lie for the benefit of a stranger. It seemed to Lionel that it had been better had he not met Elsie again. And here he was now, working on behalf of the man who had so disgracefully traduced him.

"Perhaps I might have done better," Ada Moberley said, wearily. "As I said before, I acted on one of my uncontrollable impulses. And I am not altogether prepared to accept Mr. Armstrong's verdict on the question. I can give a very good guess what your feelings are, Gladys, but I do not like Mr. Armstrong. There is something furtive, about him. But we are wasting precious time staying here. If you were followed!"

"Oh, I was not followed. Nobody could have recognised me in that long Chesterfield coat and the bowler hat. I looked quite like a man as I came here. As I came to the top of the road a policeman touched his helmet and said, 'Good night.' I have no fears on that score, Ada."

Lionel began to understand that he had made a mistake. He saw that the slender figure he had taken for a man was Gladys Manningtree, after all. But what was she doing here, and why had she come so disguised? The conversation between the two girls so far had not thrown any light on that important point.

"We shall have to tell mother," Ada Moberley said.

"Of course," came the prompt reply. "Poor little gentle mother! What a shame it is to drag her into this sorry business. I'll go and fetch her."

The speaker turned suddenly and left the room with a light, swinging step. She came quick and agile as a fairy, so quick that Lionel had not time to get out of her way or avoid her. The widely-flung door shot a stream of dazzling light into the passage. It fell full upon Lionel's anxious, eager face!