Part 6

I cannot tell you why it was, but as we rose together to leave the room I seemed in a moment to realize that the affair had come to a crisis. In that instant, notwithstanding guarantees, references, Margaret Klein's fascinations, and the hundred arguments I had so often used to convince myself of the folly of suspicion, there came to me as distinct and clear a warning as though some human voice had given speech to it. The very silence of the others--for they said no word, and a curious hesitation seemed to come upon them--impressed the conviction of the monition. Once in the hall, my uneasiness became stronger, for there at a table was the footman I had recognized, and as he glanced at me when I passed him his face was knit up as the face of a man thinking; and he let a glass fall at the very moment we reached the stairs. What he wished to convey I do not know; but although I felt there was danger in leaving the ground floor, another force dragged me on behind the Colonel, and kept me advancing unhesitatingly until I had reached the end of the long picture-gallery with him, and he had knocked upon a door in the eastern wing of the rambling mansion. What this force was I do not pretend to explain. It may have been merely the influence of the woman; it may have been my inherent obstinacy and belief in myself; or simple lack of conviction which forbade any public expression of the fears I had fomented. I know only that we waited for some seconds in the passage until a hospital nurse opened the door, and that I found myself at last in a very pretty boudoir, where a pale and sickly-looking man was lying upon a couch, but propped up to greet us. The formalities of introduction were accomplished by the Colonel with great suavity and grace; and the nurse having set chairs at the side of the sick man's couch, and placed a table there, she withdrew, and we were ready for the business.

That you should understand what happened in the next few minutes it is necessary for me to say a word upon the construction of the boudoir. It was a room hung in pink silk and white, and it had two doors in it, giving off to other rooms, whose size I could not see since they were in darkness. For light, we had a lamp with a white shade upon the invalid's table, and two others upon the mantelshelf; while we were seated in a fashion that allayed any fears I might have had of personal and sudden attack. The Colonel lounged in an American rocking-chair, he being nearest to the head of the couch; his daughter leant back against a buhl-work cabinet, she being a little way from the sick man's feet; I had a library-chair, and was alone in an attitude which would allow me to spring to my defence--if that were necessary--without delay. I looked, too, at Hermann Rudisic, the Colonel's partner, and I confess that contempt for his physical powers was my first thought. I was convinced that if it were a question of fight, I could hold the two men until Abel, who was in the servants' hall, came to my assistance; and while the others were present I had no fear of any of those wild machinations which are chiefly the property of imaginative fiction-makers. This knowledge gave to me my nerve again, and without more ado I took the case from my pocket and showed the stone.

The vision of the glorious gem, rippling on its surface with a myriad lights, white, and golden, and many-colored, in the play of radiating fire, was one that compelled the silence of amazed admiration for many minutes. Margaret Klein first spoke, her face bent to the diamond so that its waves of color seemed to float up to her ravished eyes; and with a little cry wrung from her satisfaction she said,--

"Oh, Mr. Sutton, it's too beautiful to look at!"

"I am glad that it does not disappoint," said I.

"It could disappoint no one," the invalid said, stretching out a hand which trembled to draw the treasure closer to his eyes.

"It's the whitest stone I've seen for three years," the Colonel remarked coolly, and then, as with a new thought, he added,--

"I believe it's whiter than the Brazilian stone in my old ring. I should like to compare them, if you'll let me? The other stuff is in my dressing-room there; Margaret, will you get it?"

He gave her his keys, and taking a lamp from the shelf, she passed into the chamber which was behind me. In the same moment Rudisic asked his host to prop him up higher upon the couch, and the Colonel had just begun to place the pillows when I heard Margaret's voice crying,--

"Father, I can't open the drawer--it's stuck; do come and help."

It was an act of consummate folly--that I concede you; but I was so completely unaware of any signs of trickery here, and had so forgotten my fears, that I found it the most natural thing in the world to step into the room, and to enjoy helping the girl in her difficulty. I discovered her before an open door--the door of a wardrobe I thought it was for a moment, but I saw at the second look that it gave access to a tiny chamber, whereof the walls were all drawers. Margaret Klein herself stood within this curiously fashioned safe, built as part of the house, and was still struggling with the refractory drawer; so that I had no hesitation--nor, indeed, thought suspiciously--in going to her side. She laughed slyly as we stood in the semi-dark together, and my hand falling by chance on hers, she pressed it, and put her face very close to mine--so close, that to have resisted kissing her would have been a crime for which a man would have repented until his last day. I cannot tell accurately how long I held her in a passionate embrace, feeling her lips glued upon my own; but suddenly and quickly she pushed me from her with a surprising strength of arm, and before I could regain my balance she had sprung into the room, and the door of the small chamber in which I was left swung to with a clang, striking me backwards as it pressed upon me, and coming nigh to stunning me. So thick was this door, so impenetrable, that its closing was succeeded by the stillness of vault or catacomb. I had scarce realized the whole trick, or the terrible predicament sheer folly had placed me in, when I was plunged into the abyss of utter darkness, shut as it were into the coffin that had been prepared for me. A frightful panic, a hideous terror, an indescribable anger, came upon me from the very first moment of that fearful trial. For some minutes--the first minutes of imprisonment in a room where I could stand my height with difficulty, but whose iron sides my elbows touched as I turned--I think my reason must have been paralyzed. Rage, shame of my folly, yet, above all, unsurpassable fear, drove me to beat with my fists upon the door, which gave me back the touch of solid steel; to cry out aloud as a man in the throes of painful death; to grind my teeth until pain shot into my brain; to forget, in fact, that I was from that time helpless, and that others alone could give to me life.

When the first great terror had passed, and a mental struggle had left me with some sense, I leant against the steel door, and thought again of my fate. I had little science, yet I knew that the hours of any man, shut in an air-tight chamber such as that room of steel was, could be few. I had heard that asphyxiation was a peaceful death, and think I could have had courage to face it if a little light had been given to me. But I was in utter weighty darkness; I could not even see that dull red light as of one's own soul shining, which may come in the gentler dark of night. There was only upon me that sense of impenetrable blackness, the grim feeling that I had come to my coffin, had slept in it, and arisen to this unspeakable terror. My whole being then seemed to cry aloud for sight, one moment in which living light should again shine upon me. A great craving for air; a sense of terrible effort in the lungs, a rushing of blood to the head--these things succeeded, and as I suffered them flashes of thought came and passed, hope extended a hand to me, processes of reasoning told me that I should be saved, only to convince me the more that I should die.

If I could have reasoned sanely I should have seen that my hope was all bound up in Abel and the detective in the house. Klein, and the invalid, and the girl--they had been gone long since, unless others had put hands upon them. My own servant, I knew, would seek for me first; but even if he came to the safe, how would he open it, how cut through these inches of steel before death had ended it all? It was even possible that the door of the strong room was a concealed door--and so afterwards I proved it to be. In that case, how would they know even of my necessity? These torturing reflections threw at last a glimmer of necessary activity upon my despair. I raised my voice, though I had then the strangest sensation in my veins, and my heart was pumping audibly; and for many minutes I shouted with all my strength. Once I thought that I heard, even through the door, some sound from the other room; yet when I cried louder, and beat again upon the steel, there was no signal. I remained unheeded; my voice gradually failed me; I could cry no longer, but began to sink almost into a coma.

How long this coma lasted I cannot tell. I was roused from it, after a hideous dream of waiting, by sounds of knocking upon some wall near me; and with a new strength I shouted again, and beat again upon the door of steel. Yet, I knew that I was not heard, for the sound of the blows grew fainter and were passing away and life, which had come near again, seemed to pass with them. Then was my supreme moment of misery, yet one giving an inspiration which brought me here to write this record. Recoiling from the door as the knocks without grew fainter, I struck my back against the iron wall, and my pistol, which I had forgotten, pressed into my flesh. Regardless of all thought of consequences, of the path of the bullet, or the effect upon me of the stifling smoke, I fired three rounds from the revolver into the room--and instantly was breathing the densest smoke. Then a sudden faintness took me; and I recollect only that I fell forward into a world of light, and there slept.

* * * * *

"The joke, was, seeing you living, Mr. Sutton, that Abel swallowed the wine that butler gave him, and was made as insensibly drunk as a man who takes stage chloroform. I knew all along that the butler was the one to watch; and while I never thought they'd do you mischief in the room--believing they meant to work after midnight--my men in the grounds clapped the bracelets on the lank chap up by the woods there, and he had the diamond on him."

"And the Colonel and his daughter and the invalid?" I asked, raising myself in the bed of an upper chamber of the Woodfields, on the foot of which sat my old friend, the detective of Hyde Park.

"Got clear away by a back staircase we'd never heard of, through a cellar and a passage to the lower grounds! They knocked old Jimmy, the local policeman, on the head by the spinney, and all they left him was a bump as big as an orange. That girl must have had a liking for you. One of my men nearly took her as she jumped into a dog-cart; but she threw the keys in his face, and he brought them here. I knew nothing about this room, and shouldn't have done except for the ring of your revolver; but the last Lord Aberly built it to take his famous collection of rubies and emeralds, and that lag Klein evidently heard of it, and leased the place furnished on that account."

"How do you know that he was a swindler?"

"I heard of him in New York when I was there last winter. He was wanted for the great mail robbery near St. Louis. A clever scoundrel, too; deceived a heap of folk by forged letters of introduction, and the banks by leaving big deposits with them. He must be worth a pretty pile; but I don't doubt he came over here from America on purpose to steal your diamonds. He was out at the Cape nine months ago, and got to hear all about the White Creek stone. Then he must have known that Herbert Klein, his supposed brother, and a real rich man of Valparaiso, was away yachting in the Pacific; and so he claimed him, and traded on his undoubted couple of million. A clever forger, and the other two with him nearly as smart. It was lucky for you that one of the grooms here had heard of a mysterious place in that dressing-room, and led me, when I missed you, to tap the walls. You were nearly done for, and though you don't know, you've been in bed pretty well a week."

"And the man's daughter?" I asked, a little anxiously.

"His daughter," he replied; "pshaw, she's his wife!--and we'll take the pair of them yet."

But he never did, although the lank butler is now our guest at Dartmoor.

THE ACCURSED GEMS.

THE ACCURSED GEMS.

The accursed gems lie sedately in the lowest drawer of my strong room, shining from a couple of dozen of prim leather cases, with a light which is full of strange memories. I call them accursed because I cannot sell them; yet there are those with other histories, stones about which the fancy of romance has sported, and the strong hand of tragedy has touched with an indelible brand. It may be that the impulse of sentiment, working deep down in the heart of the ostensibly commercial character, forbids me to cry some of these wares in the market-place with any vigor; it may be that the play of chance moves the mind of the jewel-buyer to a prejudice against them. In any case, they lie in my safe unhonored and unsung--and, lacking that which Sewell called the "precious balsam" of reputation, are merely so much carbon or mineral matter giving light to iron walls which give no light again.

For the stones which have no history I am not an apologist. Some day, those excellent people who now decry them in every salon where jewels are discussed, will give up the hope of attempting to buy them cheaply; and I shall make my profit. Everything comes to him who _can_ wait, and I am not in a hurry. As to the others, which have been the pivots of romance or serious story, they may well lie as they are while they serve my memory in the jotting down of some of these mysteries.

And that they do serve it I have no measure of doubt. Here, for instance, is a little bag of pearls and diamonds. It contains a black pearl from Koepang, so rich in silvery lustre, and so perfect in shape, that it should be worth eight hundred pounds in any market in Europe; a couple of pink pearls from the Bahamas, of fine orient yet pear-shaped, and therefore less valuable as fashion dictates; five old Brazilian diamonds averaging two carats each; a number of smaller diamonds for finish; and two great white pearls, which I find at the very bottom of the bag. Those stones were bought by the late Lord Maclaren a month before the date announced for his marriage with the Hon. Christine King. He had intended them as his gift to her, a handsome and sufficient gift, it must be admitted, yet so did fickle fortune work that his very generosity was the indirect cause of a commotion in the week of the wedding, and of as pretty a social scandal as society has known for a decade.

The matter was hushed up of course. For six weeks, as a wag said, it was a nine days' wonder. Aged ladies discussed it from every point of view, but could make nothing of it. The Society papers lacked enough information to lie about it. The principal actors held their tongues, and in due time the West forgot, for a new scandal arose, and the courts supplied the craving for the doubtful, which is a part of polite education nowadays. Yet I do not think that I make a boastful claim, in asserting that I alone, beyond those immediately concerned, became possessed of full knowledge of the occurrence. It was to me first of all that Lord Maclaren related the history of it, and, despite my advice to the contrary, laid it upon me that I should tell none in his lifetime. He is dead now, and the publication of the story will throw a light upon much that is well worth investigating. It may also help me to sell the pearls, which is infinitely more important, as any unprejudiced person will admit.

Here then is the story. I had a visit from the chief actor in it towards the end of June in the year 1890. He came to tell me that he was to be married quietly in the middle of the following month to the Hon. Christine King, the very beautiful sister of Lord Cantiliffe. She was then staying at the old family place at St. Peter's, in Kent; and she wished to avoid a public wedding in view of the recent death of her sister, whose beauty was no less remarkable than her own. Maclaren's visit was but the prelude to the purchase of a present, and the business was made the easier since he had the simplest notions as to his requirements. He had recently come from America--without a wife _mirabile dictu_--and there had seen a curious anchor bracelet. The wristband of this bauble was formed of a plain gold cable, the anchor itself of pearls and diamonds; the shackle consisted of a small circle of brilliants; the shaft had a pink pearl at either end; the shank had a black pearl at the foot of it, and the flukes were of white pearls with small diamonds round them. I found it to be rather a vulgar ornament; but his heart was set on having it, and it chanced that I had the very pearls necessary. I told him that I would make him a model, and send it down to his hotel at Ramsgate within a week; and that, if he then thought the jewel to be over showy, we could refashion it. He left much pleased, returning by the Granville express to Kent; and within the week he had the model; and I received his instructions to proceed with the work.

It is necessary, I think, to say a word here about this curious character. At the time I knew him, Maclaren was a man in his fortieth year, though he looked older. He was once vulgarly described in a club smoking-room as being "all hair and teeth," like a buzzard; and his best friend could not have ranked him with the handsome. Yet the women liked him--perhaps because it was a tradition that he made love to every pretty girl in town; and it was surprising beyond belief that he reached his fortieth year, and remained single. When he went to America in 1888 the whole of the prophets gave him six months of celibacy; but he cheated them, and returned without a wife. True, a copy of an American society paper was passed round the club, where the men learnt with surprise that New York had believed this elderly Don Juan to be engaged to Evelyn Lenox, "the lady of the unlimited dollars," as young Barisbroke of the Bachelors' called her; and had been very indignant when he took passage by the _Teutonic_, and left her people to face the titters of a triumphant rivalry. But for all that he was not married, and could afford to laugh at the malignant scribes who made couplets of his supposed amatory adventures in Boston; and dedicated sonnets of apology, "_pro amore mea_," to E---- L---- and the marrying mothers of New York generally. Such a man cared little for the threats of this young lady's brother, or for the common rumor that she was the most dashing girl in New York city, and would make things unpleasant for him. He had twenty thousand a year, and for _fiancée_ one of the prettiest roses in the whole garden of Kent. What harm then could a broker's daughter, three thousand miles away, do to him? or how mar his happiness?

But I am anticipating, and must hark back to the anchor with the flukes of pearl. I sent the model down on Wednesday; on the Friday morning I received the order to proceed with the work. Early on the following Monday, as I read my paper in a cab on the way to Bond Street, I saw a tremendous headline which announced the "sudden and mysterious disappearance of Lord Maclaren." The report said that he had left his hotel on the Saturday afternoon to walk, as the supposition went, to St. Peters. But he had never reached Lord Cantiliffe's house; and although search had been made by the police and by special coastguard parties, no trace of him had been found. I need scarcely say that the murder theory was set up at once. Clever men from town came down to wag their heads with stupid men from Canterbury, and to discuss the "only possible theory," of which there were a dozen or more. The police arrested all the drunken men within a radius of ten miles, and looked for bloodstains on their coats. The Hon. Christine King was spoken of as "distracted," which was possible; and the family of the missing nobleman as "plunged into the most profound grief." Nor, as an eloquent special reporter in his best mood explained, was this supposed tragedy made less painful by the knowledge that the unhappy victim of accident or of murder was to have been married within the month.

For a whole week the press had no other topic; the police telegraphed to all the capitals; a reward of a thousand pounds was offered for knowledge of Lord Maclaren, "last seen upon the East Cliff at Ramsgate at three o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, the fifth of July." A hundred tongues gave you the exact details of an imagined assassination; ten times that number--and these tongues chiefly feminine--told you that he had shirked the marriage upon its very threshold. But the mystery remained unexplained--and as the day for the wedding drew near, the excitement amongst a section of society rose to fever heat. Had the body been found? Had the detectives a clue? Were the strange hints--implying that the missing man had quarrelled with his _fiancée's_ brother, and thrown a glass of wine in his face; that he had a wife in Algiers; that he was married a year ago at Cyprus; that he was bankrupt--merely the fable of malicious tongues, or had they that germ of truth from which so vast a disease of scandal can grow? I made no pretence to answer the questions--but they interested me, and I watched for the development of the story with the keenness of a hardened novel reader.

The day fixed for the wedding now drew near; and when the bridegroom did not appear, the vulgar, who do not believe scandals though they like to hear them, declared that the murder theory was true beyond question. The rest said that he was either bankrupt or bigamist--and having consoled themselves with the reflection, they let the matter go. It is likely that I should have done the same had I not enjoyed a solution of the mystery, which came to me unsought and accidentally. On a day near to that fixed for the wedding I was at Victoria Station about eight o'clock in the evening when I ran full upon the missing nobleman; and for some while stood speechless with astonishment at the sight of him. His beard was longer than ever, recalling the traditions of Killingworthe or of Johann Mayo; his Dundreary whiskers were shaggy and unkempt; he was very pale in the face, and wore a little yachting cap and a blue serge suit which begarbed him ridiculously. He had no luggage with him, not even a valise; and his first remark was given in the voice of a man afraid, and in a measure broken.

"Ah, Sutton, that's you, is it?" he cried. "I'm glad to see you, by Jove; have you such a thing as half-a-crown in your pocket?"

I offered him half-a-sovereign, still saying nothing; but he continued rapidly,--

"You've heard all about it, of course--what are they saying here now? Do they think I'm a dead man, eh?--but I won't face them yet. Upon my life, I dare not see a soul. Come with me to an hotel; there's a good fellow--but let's have a cognac first; I'm shivering like a child with a fever."