William Le Queux

“ At this juncture, to my amazement, Faulkner calmly produced his cigarette case, lit a cigarette, topped it and offered me one. I took it without knowing what I did—I, who had so often pretended that in a moment of crisis I should never lose my head!
“What’s to be done?” I gasped, beside myself. “Where is Vera?” I knew that in another moment I should be upon my knees, praying as I had only once in my life prayed before. It is, alas, only at such times that many of us think of our Maker and invoke His aid. ”

“ Vera! Lady Thorold!” I called. “Come—ah! come quickly, he is dying... dying!”
They rushed in from the corridor, where they had been awaiting me. In an access of despair, Lady Thorold threw herself upon her knees beside the bed, moaning aloud in a grief terrible to witness. My love stood beside her, gazing down upon her father—dazed—motionless. Grief had paralysed her senses.
Suddenly, his thin, white lips moved, but no words were audible. Quickly Vera bent over him. The shrunken lips moved again. He was murmuring. For an instant, his filmy eyes showed a gleam of intelligence once again. ”

“ Indeed, my chief reason for remaining in town had been that I believed Vera to be there still, either in hiding for some reason of her own, or, what I had thought far more likely, forced against her will by that blackguard Paulton to remain in concealment and keep me in ignorance of her whereabouts.
Instead of that she was “on her own”—how I hate that slang phrase—at Monte Carlo ‘winnin’ a fortune,’ as Lord Logan had put it.
“A strange world, my masters!” Never were truer words spoken. The longer I live the more I realise its strangeness. ”

“ Speechless with terror we gazed hopelessly at each other. Ah! I can see that picture still. Am I ever likely to forget it?
The Baronne, deathly white, stood there a handsome figure, trembling in her wonderfully embroidered pink kimono, her eyes fixed and starting as though madness were stealing into her brain. Paulton stood with his lips badly cut. Young Faulkner was erect and calm, with set teeth, blood spattered about his pyjamas, and an angry red wound showing at the spot where Paulton in his frenzy had bitten into his shoulder. ”

“ There was bitterness, nay mockery, in her voice.
“Good heavens, yes! Why not?” I cried.
“There is no one in whom I can trust. I can trust you, Mr Ashton, least of all—now.”
Evidently she was labouring under some terrible delusion. Had some one slandered me—poisoned her mind against me?
“How long have you been here?” I asked suddenly, thinking it best to change the subject for the moment.
“Since early this morning,” she answered at once.
“Did you come here alone?”
“Alone? No, he brought me.”
”‘He?’ Who is ‘he’?”
“Dago Paulton.”
“Dago Paulton?” I echoed. “Is he the man Smithson?” ”

“ Dick—Ah! Dick!” she went on with extraordinary force, sighing heavily, “if you only knew the life that man has led—the misery he has caused, the horrors that are traceable to his vile diabolical plots. My father and mother are only two of his many victims. He is a man I dread. I am not a coward, no one can call me that, but—but I fear Dago Paulton—I fear him terribly.” ”

“ Listen to me, Mr Whichelo,” I went on, forcing my courage, “from what I have said, and hinted, you probably guess that I know—well—something. It remains for you to decide whether we are to be friends—or not. Personally, I am willing to be friendly with you. Thorold and I are friends, and have been for years. In addition, I am to marry Vera, so, naturally, I should prefer to remain friendly with her friends. Why not take me into your confidence, and tell me all you know? I’m not a man to talk, I assure you.”
I knew I had done right to take him in that way, and to be quite frank with him. ”

“ Your axe of British manufacture is a clump of block steel stuck on the end of a heavy, clumsy stem. ‘Sound British stuff,’ it is, so the ironmonger will tell you. ‘Last a lifetime. Last for ever.’ And that is just what you don’t want, Mr Ashton. In these days we don’t need axes, or agricultural implements, or machinery, or anything else made to ‘last for ever.’ We want things made to last just long enough to give something better, time to be invented, and some improvements to be made, and no longer. ”

“ Vera is here with me, in her pale pink dinner-gown, and her fair hair brushes my cheek as she bends over me. Now her soft cheek is pressed to mine.
The blood-red afterglow burns and dies. The summer light is fading. The only sound is the whirr of a car going towards the Spaniards. The air outside is breathless, for the day has been terribly oppressive. ”

“ I’m going to discover the mystery of that house. I don’t care what risks I take, or what happens, but I am going to see for myself what all this secret business means.”
To my surprise she began to laugh.
“Dick,” she said, “I sometimes wonder if you are quite ‘all there.’ Why on earth can’t you let people alone, and mind your own business? Supposing Whichelo should turn upon you—good Heavens, he could squeeze the life out of you with one hand.” ”

“ We had got rid of our muddy hunting kit, indulged in hot baths, and, feeling delightfully clean and comfortable and at peace with all the world, were at tea in the great hall of Houghton, a fine, many-gabled country mansion, with rows of twisted chimneys said to date back to a period of Elizabeth, when James the butler, calm and stately—I can see him still—had walked in his slow, dignified manner into the hall, to tell Sir Charles that “a gentleman had called shortly before he returned,” a gentleman named Smithson. ”

“ It was horrible finding Vera here, yet my faith in her never wavered. I knew she must be there against her will, that eventually she would explain all. And seeing what I had seen of Violet, I felt equally sure that circumstances which she too could not prevent were responsible for her presence.
I suppose most men who self-complacently term themselves “men of the world,” would have laughed outright at what they would have called my “blind belief in innocence,” had the circumstances been related to them. ”

“ But a man and several women had just left the lodge in a motor-car.
“We can do no good by staying here,” Faulkner said at last. “We had better make for Digne. What puzzles me is, where can the servants be? There must have been servants, and they could have told us something. They are not at the lodge. Perhaps Paulton had taken them with him in the car we had seen. The only soul at the lodge is an old woman who is stone deaf, and she is crying so that she cannot speak at all.” ”

“ Men, young and middle aged, who have been educated at the public schools and Universities, who have comfortable incomes, are fond of sport, who travel up and down Europe, who have never in their lives done a stroke of work—and don’t intend ever to do one if they can help it—who live solely for amusement and for the pleasure of living.
What do women see in such men, women who have plenty of money and therefore do not need to marry in order to secure a home or to better themselves? What did—what could Vera Thorold see in me to attract her, least of all to tempt her to wish to marry me? ”

“ They lifted the boards of the upper room to get the mummy out, when the ceiling, rotted by decay, fell down. That’s my belief. You will, I think, find in the end that I’m right, though the idea does not seem, as yet, to have occurred to anybody else.”
Whichelo laughed. It was obviously a forced laugh.
“By Jove! you have a vivid imagination, Ashton,” he said, “only I fear you won’t find many, if any, to agree with your theory. Why should the mummy have been hidden in the ceiling? Who would have hidden it? People usually have some reason for doing things,” he ended, with a touch of malice. ”

“ I exclaimed. “I will get you a room at an hotel, see to you, provide you with money, and take care that nobody objectionable—neither this fellow Paulton, nor anybody else—molests you.”
“Ah, Dick, if only I dared!” she exclaimed fervently, with shining eyes.
“You love me, Vera—do you not?”
“You know that I do, Dick.”
“Then leave here. Who is to prevent you? Where are your father and mother?”
She turned sharply.
“How can you ask that?” she cried, with a quick glance. I pulled myself together on the instant. I was forgetting to be cautious. ”

“ We talked a little longer—we had strolled into the morning-room, and sat down there—when Whichelo said suddenly—
“That discovery of a mummy in Sir Charles’ town house is curious, eh? How would you account for that, Ashton? And for the hole in the ceiling?”
“I don’t account for it at all,” I replied quickly, trying to look unconcerned beneath his narrow, scrutinising gaze. “What is your theory with regard to it?”
“Oh, I never theorise in cases of that kind,” he replied. “What is the use of theorising? One is almost certain to be wrong.” ”

“ I strolled aimlessly up the street to Piccadilly, then turned to the left. Many thoughts filled my mind as I rambled along, and when, presently, I found myself at Hyde Park Corner, I decided I would stroll down into Belgravia and see if a new caretaker had been installed at the house in Belgrave Street in place of poor old Taylor.
To my surprise the house was boarded up. Nearly every window was boarded, even the top-floor windows. It looked like a house in which people have died of some plague. ”

“ I said. “I say we are a pair of fools—I am more to blame perhaps than you—for being coerced by a chit of a girl into promising to stay here, as though we were a pair of schoolboys put ‘on their honour.’ It is downright silly, to say the least. Yet we must not break our parole—eh?”
I liked Faulkner. His spirit, and his way of saying what he thought amused me. One meets so few men nowadays with pluck enough to say what they really think and mean.
The young girl, whose name was Violet—Violet de Coudron—spread the white cloth, laid the table, and herself brought in our déjeuner. ”

“ And the gold—those bags of base coin found hidden so carefully at Houghton Hall, hidden there by Whichelo after their removal from Belgrave Street? And the mysterious body discovered in the house in Belgrave Street? Both had been pounced upon by the police.
But my only thought, my only care was of Vera—Vera, my beloved.
No doubt expert men from Scotland Yard were at that moment using all their intelligence, evolving endless abstruse theories, straining every nerve to pierce the mystery surrounding these remarkable discoveries. ”

“ I am bound to confess that I completely lost my nerve. I sprang to one side almost as he fired. I had just enough presence of mind left to pick up the driver in my arms—even at the risk of my life I couldn’t leave him there—lift him into the car, and slam the door. Then I jumped on to the driving-seat, put in the clutch—in a perfect frenzy of fear lest I myself should be shot at the next instant—and the car flew down the avenue.
Twice I heard reports, and with the second one came the sound of a whistling bullet. ”

“ He may be an exceedingly good and honest fellah, and all that sort of thing, don’t you know, but, after all, we must keep to people in our own station of life, or we shall be dining with each other’s valets next, and one’s friend’s butler will be asking one to lunch with him at his club. I’m cosmopolitan myself, up to a point, but really one must keep the classes distinct, we must keep ourselves aloof from the common people, or where will it end, don’t you know? As I say, a gentleman is a gentleman, and a man who isn’t a gentleman, well, he isn’t a gentleman—you can’t get away from that. ”

“ Good heavens—my portrait! And the one portrait of myself that of all others I detested. Anybody looking at that particular portrait would at once say: “What a villainous man; he looks like a criminal!”
I remembered now, rather bitterly, making that very observation when the proofs had been sent to me by the photographer, and how my friends had laughed and said it was “quite true,” and that it resembled a portrait in a Sunday paper of “the accused in Court.”
There were also portraits of Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, and a pretty picture of Vera, the best that had ever been taken of her. ”

“ You must not forget that I am a modern girl, my dear old Dick. I know a great deal that I suppose I have no business to know, and when I hear things I remember them. Don’t for a moment flatter yourself that I think you perfect. I don’t. My frank opinion of you is that you really are an awfully good sort, kind, sympathetic, unselfish—singularly unselfish for a man—generous to a fault, and extravagant. ”

“ I have shot pigeons at Monte, at Ostend, and here in England at Hurlingham at the Gun Club, also at Hendon, but it has always struck me as being a cold-blooded form of amusement—its warmest supporters can hardly call it sport. ”