Читать книгу Devil's Dice - William Le Queux - Страница 8

As the cheerless morning wore on, I sat after breakfast gloomily smoking, trying to verify my first impression that Sybil had been the victim of foul play in the hope of dispelling it. But it was, on the contrary, deepened.

Either I was wrong to think thus; and at any price I was determined to convince myself by facts that I was wrong, or I was right. The sole resource henceforth remaining to me for the preservation of my self-respect and the unburdening of my conscience was ardent and ceaseless search after certainty.

Each hour as I pondered I was plunged more profoundly into the gulf of suspicion. Yet the very position of the intricate problem which I had before me seemed to forbid all hope of discovering anything whatsoever without a formal inquiry. With foolish disregard for the future, I had taken an oath to seek no explanation of what I might witness within that mysterious house; I had placed myself irrevocably under the thrall of the strange, cynical individual who had acted as Sybil’s messenger! Yet, now that Sybil was dead and everything pointed to a crime, I was fully justified in seeking the truth, and had resolved upon bringing the assassin to punishment.

During this debauch of melancholy the door opened and my old friend and college chum, Captain Jack Bethune, burst into the room exclaiming:

“Mornin’, Stuart, old chap. That ancient servitor of yours, Saunders, told me that you’re a bit seedy. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” I said, languidly grasping his hand. “Sit down. To what good or evil fortune do I owe the honour of a visit at this unearthly hour?”

“Good fortune, old chap, good fortune!” he laughed, flinging off his overcoat and throwing himself back in the capacious armchair. “The best fortune that could befall a man. Congratulate me, Stuart.”

“Upon what? Have you finished a new book, or has your publisher been unduly generous?”

“Neither. It isn’t a book; it’s a woman!”

“A woman?” I inquired, puzzled.

“I’m engaged to be married, old fellow.”

“To Dora Stretton?”

“To Dora Stretton, the most adorable girl in the world.”

I sighed; not because I regretted his choice. Far from it. Truth to tell, I envied him his happiness.

“With all my heart I congratulate you, Jack,” I cried next second, springing up and grasping his hand. “I wish you every prosperity. I have known Dora ever since a child, and although she may move in a smart set, yet I have had opportunities that you have not of observing her true-heartedness and—what shall I say?—her hatred of the hollow shams and artificiality by which she is surrounded.”

“Yes, you know her far better than I do,” he admitted, lighting a cigarette and adding, “I’d take your opinion upon a woman’s character before anybody else’s. As a novelist, I have gained a reputation for portraying female character, yet I assure you my ability in that direction only exists in the imaginations of my reviewers. I can write about women, but, hang it, old chap, I’m absolutely ignorant of them in real life. You, a calm philosopher, can analyse a woman’s nature and lay every fibre of it bare as if by the scalpel; while I, finding my conclusions always hopelessly at fault when attempting to study from life, have written merely what I have believed to be artistic.”

“Your books are popular, so I suppose your confession proves that pure fiction pays better without an admixture of fact,” I laughed.

“Yes,” he said; “I’m afraid that is so,” and then went on smoking with an expression of joyful contentment.

John Bethune, known as the “soldier-novelist,” was a handsome, well-built fellow about thirty-two, with dark hair, a carefully-trimmed moustache, and a pair of merry brown eyes that were an index to the genuine bonhomie which was the chief trait of his character. Though he entertained none of the idiosyncrasies or eccentricities of dress common to many writers, he was, although a smart officer, nevertheless a true Bohemian—always gay and light-hearted and the most popular man in his regiment.

A thoroughly good fellow, he deserved every bit of the success he had attained. The son of a struggling barrister, he had graduated, then joined the army, afterwards becoming an anonymous contributor to a Scotch review of hypercritical trend, edited by the distinguished critic, Mr. Goring. Having turned his attention to novel-writing in combination with soldiering, he had made a brilliant success with his first book, which had been increased by each other that had been issued. On both sides of the Atlantic the newspapers were full of paragraphs regarding his sayings and doings, many of their writers being fond of alluding to him as “one of Mr. Goring’s young men,” and for the past three years he had been recognised as one of the leading “younger novelists,” whose wondrous insight into the complexities and contradictions of woman’s nature had earned for him a world-wide reputation.

As he chatted about the woman to whom he had become engaged, I expressed genuine satisfaction at his announcement. The honourable Dora Stretton, although sister of the Countess of Fyneshade, one of the smartest women in England, was altogether sweet and adorable, with a winning manner and a face voted pretty wherever she appeared. She hated town life, for, being a splendid horsewoman, she loved all outdoor sport, and was never so happy as when riding with the Fitzwilliam pack, or driving her spanking bays over the broad level Lincolnshire highways. Outwardly she was a smart woman of to-day, but, as her childhood’s friend, I knew that beneath her tightly-laced Parisian corset and the veneer that she was compelled to assume, there beat a true heart that yearned for the honest love of a man.

So I congratulated Jack, explaining how Blatherwycke, old Lady Stretton’s estate in Northamptonshire, joined that of my father, and how Dora, her sister Mabel, now Countess of Fyneshade, and myself had known each other ever since the time when our nurses gossiped. Cruel-tongued scandalmongers had said that her ladyship, finding her estates impoverished on the death of her husband, the Viscount, gave Mabel in marriage to the Earl of Fyneshade, a widower nearly twice her age, in exchange for a service he rendered her by paying off a certain mortgage upon the property. But, be that how it might, Dora had five thousand a year in her own right, and this, together with Jack’s fair income from his royalties, would suffice to keep them in comfort, if not in affluence.

“I had heard that Dora was likely to become the wife of old Lord Wansford,” I observed at last.

“Yes,” he answered in a low tone. “Don’t mention it to anybody, but her ladyship is simply furious because Dora and I love each other. She had set her mind on her daughter marrying a peer.”

“Then you haven’t yet obtained her ladyship’s consent—eh?”

“No. We love each other, and Dora says she intends to marry me, therefore we have agreed to defy the maternal anger.”

“Quite right, old chap,” I said. “Under the circumstances you are justified. Besides, knowing the unhappiness in the Fyneshade menage, Dora is not likely to marry anybody she does not love.”

“True,” he said. Then tossing his cigarette into the grate he rose, and declaring he had a business appointment, he struggled into his overcoat and, grasping my hand in adieu, said:

“You seem confoundedly glum to-day. Shake yourself up, old fellow. We shall soon be hearing of your marriage!”

“My marriage!” I gasped, starting. His jovial words cut me to the quick. They had an ominous meaning. “My marriage!”

“Yes,” he said. “We shall soon be hearing all about it.”

“Never, I hope—never.”

“Bah! I was of the same mind until a month ago. Some day you, like myself, will discover one woman who is not a coquette. Ta-ta for the present,” and he strode airily out, whistling a gay air, and leaving me alone with my bitter sorrow.

Once or twice during our conversation I had been sorely tempted to disclose the whole of the dismal circumstances and seek his advice, but I had hesitated. He was perhaps too full of his newly-found joy to trouble himself over my grief, and, after all, he might consider me a fool for allowing myself to become fascinated by a mere chance-met acquaintance about whom I knew absolutely nothing, and whose principal efforts were directed towards enveloping herself in an impenetrable veil of mystery. No; I resolved to preserve my own secret and act upon the plans I had already formulated. With bitterness I sat and brooded over Burns’ lines:

Pleasures are like poppies spread.

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.

Or like the snowflake on the river,

A moment white—then gone forever.

At noon I roused myself and started forth on the first stage of a search after truth, a search which I swore within myself I would not relinquish until I had learnt Sybil’s true history; nay, I had resolved to make the elucidation of the mystery of her tragic end the one object in my life.

It occurred to me that from the police I might at least ascertain her name and the nature of the information upon which the warrant had been issued; therefore I walked to New Scotland Yard and sought audience of the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. For half an hour I aired my heels in a bare, cheerless waiting-room at the end of a long stone corridor on the first floor, until at last a secretary entered with my card, and an intimation from the Chief that he regretted he had “no information to give on the subject.”

Argument with the secretary proved unavailing, therefore I left, feeling that I could hope for no assistance from the police.

Next it occurred to me to search the record of special marriage licences at Doctors’ Commons, and, taking a cab there, I was not long in obtaining what appeared to be the first clue, for at the Faculty Office I was shown the affidavit that had been made in application for a special licence, which read as follows:

“Canterbury Diocese, December 8, 1891.

“Appeared personally, Sybil Henniker, spinster, of Hereford Road, Bayswater, and prayed a special licence for the solemnisation of matrimony between her and Stuart Ridgeway, bachelor, of 49, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, and made oath that she believed that there is no impediment of kindred or alliance, or any other lawful cause, nor any suit commenced in any Ecclesiastical Court, to bar or hinder the proceedings of the said matrimony according to the tenor of such licence.

“Sworn before me—

“John Hatchard (Registrar).”

The special licence had, it appeared, been granted on the following day, but the clerk said the applicant had been seen by his colleague, now absent.

Feeling that at least I should know the whereabouts of the strange company who held in their charge the lifeless form of the woman I loved, I drove rapidly to Bayswater, but when the cab turned from Westbourne Grove into Hereford Road, and I saw that the house for which I was searching, the number of which appeared in the licence, was a small tobacconist and newsvendor’s, my heart again sank within me.

I alighted and made inquiry of the shopkeeper, but she knew of no young lady named Sybil, nor of any person named Henniker. Once again, then, I was foiled; the address given in the affidavit was false.

For hours I drove aimlessly about the streets and squares lying between Praed Street and Oxford Street, vaguely looking for a house I had never distinctly seen, until at last it grew dark; then, cold and wearied, I returned to my chambers.

As day succeeded day I continued my search, but could not grasp a single certainty. At Somerset House I could discover no facts regarding either the marriage or the death, and advertisements I inserted in various newspapers, inquiring for the cabman who drove me home on the fatal morning, elicited no reply.

Jack Bethune dropped in to see me daily and pestered me with inquiries regarding the cause of my gloominess. Little, however, did he imagine that I had been engaged through a whole fortnight in searching patiently and methodically the registers of the great metropolitan cemeteries. To Kensal Green, Highgate, Abney Park, Nunhead, Dulwich, Brompton, Norwood, Crystal Palace, Lee, and elsewhere I went, always searching for the names of Sybil Henniker or Sybil Ridgeway. This investigation proved long and, alas! futile. I could obtain no clue whatever, all trace of her had been so carefully hidden as to defy my vigilance.

At last, however, a month after that fatal night and just when the prospect of misery which my future offered seemed too terrible for endurance, I suddenly made a discovery. It was in the London office of the Woking Cemetery Company that I found in the register an entry of an interment on the second day following the midnight ceremony, of “Sybil Ridgeway, wife of Stuart Ridgeway, of Shaftesbury Avenue.” The address whence the body was removed was not given, but, taking the next train from Waterloo to Woking, I was not long in finding, by aid of the cemetery-keeper’s plan, away in a far corner of the ground a newly-made grave.

Overcome with emotion, I stood before it in the fast-falling wintry twilight, and saw lying upon the mound of brown earth a magnificent wreath of white immortelles. Attached to it was a limp visiting-card. Eagerly I took it up and inspected it.

Upon it, traced in ink that had become blurred and half-effaced by the rain, there appeared some words. As I read them they seemed to glow in letters of fire; they held me spell-bound.

I lost courage to pursue my cold, calm, reasonable deductions; a kind of hallucination came upon me—a mental picture of her tragic end—and I felt my reason reel.

A vertigo of terror seized me, as though the breath of destiny swept over my brow.

The card secured to the great wreath was my own—the one I had given Sybil on the first evening we had met in the Casino Garden—but the words written upon it amazed me. I stood breathless, dumbfounded, holding it between my trembling fingers, utterly unable to realise the truth.

A portion of the writing upon it was in a well-formed man’s hand, the remainder in a heavy calligraphy totally different. The rains had rendered the writing faint and brown, yet in the fast-falling gloom I was enabled to decipher that one side bore the inscription—

“From your heart-broken husband—Stuart.”

Then, turning it over, I read in a distinctly feminine hand the strange exhortation—

“Seek, and you may find.”

What did it mean? Was it an actual message to me from the grave? Did it not appear like a declaration from my dead love herself that some mysterious crime had been committed, and that she left its elucidation in my hands? I became lost in bewilderment.

The inscription, purporting to be written by myself, was not in my handwriting, and I was puzzled to divine its meaning. That it had been penned at a date prior to the mysterious woman’s words appeared certain, as the lines were almost obliterated. Yet on reflection I saw that this fact might be accounted for if that side of the card had been uppermost, and thus more exposed. But the mysterious words, “Seek, and you may find,” were written in a different ink, upon which the action of the weather had had but little effect. The exhortation stood out plainly before my wondering eyes. By whose hand had it been traced? True, it was not addressed personally to me, yet so ominous were the words that I could not rid myself of the conviction that they were meant as an appeal to me.

Why the wreath had been so carefully placed upon the grave, as if it were a tribute from myself, was an inscrutable mystery; and the five firmly-written words on the reverse of the card contained a mystic meaning that I could not follow.

For a long time I remained there until night closed in and the wintry mists gathered; then, detaching the card and placing it in my pocket-book, I wended my way between the white, ghostly tombs towards the cemetery gate, plunged deep in thought.

Suddenly, as I turned a corner sharply, I came face to face with an ill-dressed man, who had apparently been lurking behind a great marble monument. In the gloom I could not distinguish his features, and as he turned and walked in the opposite direction I concluded that he was a grave-digger or gardener, so dismissed the incident from my mind. Yet half an hour later, while waiting on the platform of Woking Station, a man who passed me beneath a lamp gave me a swift inquisitive look. His strange expression attracted my attention, and as I turned and watched his retreating figure it seemed familiar. Then I remembered. It was the same individual who had apparently been watching my movements beside Sybil’s grave. Was he “shadowing” me?

Again I passed him, but he was wary, and bent feigning to eagerly scan a time-table, thereby hiding his features. Nevertheless, before the train arrived I managed by means of a ruse to obtain an uninterrupted view of his pale, sad-looking countenance.

At first I was prompted to approach him boldly and demand the reason he watched my actions, but on reflection I became convinced that my suspicions were groundless, and that after all he was merely a lonely mourner like myself. Perhaps he, too, had come from London to visit the last resting-place of some dearly-loved friend; perhaps, even while I viewed him with unjust suspicion, he had actually been sympathising with me. No, I felt certain that my apprehensions were absurd, and that the man had no sinister motive.

Alone in my room some hours later I placed the card carefully in the fender to dry, and sat smoking and thinking over the strangely ominous words upon it.

I could not rid myself of the conviction that my well-beloved had been the victim of foul play. The words “Seek, and you may find” rang for ever in my ears, yet in face of the declaration of the doctor I had no proof that murder had actually been committed. I could discover no report of an inquest having been held, and as the police had declined to assist me I knew that I must work single-handed and unaided.

Noticing that the card was now dry, I knocked the ashes from my pipe, then slowly stooping, picked it up. I turned it over to re-read the mysterious words of entreaty, but a cry of dismay escaped me when next instant I found the back of the card a perfect blank. On that side not a trace of writing remained.

The puzzling mystic sentence had faded. The words had been wholly obliterated as by some unseen hand.

The card fell from my nerveless fingers.

Presently it occurred to me that by again damping it the mysterious entreaty might be rendered visible, and, taking the ewer that Saunders had placed beside the tantalus stand, I dipped the precious document in water. For half an hour I alternately wetted it and carefully dried it with my handkerchief, but all effort to restore the writing proved unavailing. The surface became rubbed by continued immersions, but the words had utterly vanished, as if by magic.

Some hours afterwards I found myself doubting if I had ever actually seen those strange words, and wondering whether after all they were not a mere chimera of my disordered imagination. So strangely ominous were they that I could not help feeling a trifle uncertain that they had actually existed, and I remember that as I sat brooding over my sorrow I feared lest I had been the victim of one of those strange hallucinations which I had heard were precursory of insanity.

Twice I visited the grave of my dead love, but inquiries of the cemetery-keeper elicited no clue. Times without number I felt prompted to explain the strange circumstances to Jack Bethune, but always hesitated, deeming silence the best course. Whether this secrecy regarding my heart-sorrow was beneficial to my interests, I cannot say, but the occurrence of at least one incident caused me self-congratulation that my friends were unaware of the strange drama that wrecked my happiness and overshadowed my life. It is, alas! true, as François Coppee has said, “Pour le mélancolique, le soleil se couche déjà le matin.”