River Boyne

“ The annexed engraving represents a celebrated locality. It is the ruin of the little church on the hill at Donore, in the county of Meath, the spot where James II. was stationed when he beheld the overthrow of his army and the ruin of his cause at the battle of the Boyne, Tuesday, July 1st, 1690. The Boyne is a very beautiful and picturesque river; it winds through the fertile valleys of Meath, and from its richly-wooded banks the hills rise gradually; there are no lofty mountains in the immediate neighbourhood. ”

“ Boyne admitted, still gazing over the sea. "We've all of us made thousands out of it—haven't we?"
"Yes. I can see no loophole by which the truth might leak out—save one," she said very seriously.
"And what's that?"'
"Your visits to your wife," was her reply. "Suppose somebody watched you, and saw you leave your frowsy little house in Hammersmith, go to Lilla in Pont Street, and blossom forth into a gentleman of means; it would certainly arouse a nasty suspicion. Therefore you should always be most careful." ”

“ Mr. Boyne could have achieved the highest local honours, aldermanic and otherwise, had he cared for them, but notwithstanding his great popularity, he was ever retiring, and even anxious to efface himself.
When that night he descended the stairs of his house in Bridge Place, all unconscious that he had been observed ascending them, he entered his little parlour, where he divested himself of the ugly white overall and locked it away, together with the woman's muff and the photograph. Then he paced the room in indecision, ignorant that Marigold had only vacated it a few minutes before. ”

“ You are not fit to mix with us, you know. And you exist upon my charity. I am always good to you! Understand that!"
"I—I know," squeaked the figure, whose white cloak was soiled and stained, while those two long slits for the eyes under the pointed hood gave it a most weird and forbidding appearance.
"I hope you appreciate all I've done for you," Boyne went on. "If I had not risked all this, where would you have been—tried and executed in the hangman's noose. But I have done my best—though often you don't appreciate it."
"I—I do!" cried the voice from behind that strange disguise. ”

“ He's a most pertinacious person, it seems. We have, I think, more to fear from him than from the girl," Boyne said.
"Didn't I express doubt a week or so ago, but you assured me that it was all right?" retorted the handsome woman. "Well—what are you going to do?"
"Do! Why, there's only one way—put an end to their inquisitiveness," he replied.
"Do be careful."
Oh, I will be—never fear. But I shall want your assistance, Lilla, and perhaps Ena's too. Neither the man nor the girl is acquainted with either of you, which is one point in our favour." ”

“ You are both growing very nervy!" laughed Boyne derisively. "It is so foolish. Nothing serious can happen. Even when the French girl grows greedy, we can always settle with her. Between us we have laid up a nice little nest-egg for the future. I reckoned it out yesterday. The game is one of the few which is worth the candle."
"And the people in their graves are better off!" laughed Lilla, who was utterly heartless and unscrupulous.
Boyne rose and obtained a fresh cigarette, while his wife rang the bell for tea. ”

“ In all London no scene in broad daylight could have been more weird than that at noon on a summer morning in Bridge Place, Hammersmith.
Boyne, the mystery man, held in such high esteem from Addison Road to Kew, sat there with the poor crouching figure as his victim. Behind those long narrow slits in the white fabric showed a pair of dark, deep-sunken eyes—eyes that were inhuman and unnatural.
The voice from behind the mask was metallic and squeaky. Whether the person was a man or a woman could not be conjectured. The high-pitched note was feminine. ”

“ A guttering candle stood on the inner sill of the small window and afforded a vague view into a mean interior. Boyne held up the lamp so that its rays fell full on the door. As he did so, an exclamation broke from his lips and he hurried forward, followed by the others. A man’s body lay huddled together on the snow by the threshold. He was dressed like a peasant, in old corduroy trousers and rough coat, and a handkerchief was knotted round his neck. In his hand he grasped the neck of a broken bottle. Boyne set the lamp on the ground and the three bent down together over the man. ”

“ A confoundedly hard place to get lost in! That had been her husband's phrase. And now, with the whole machinery of official investigation sweeping its flash-lights from shore to shore, and across the dividing straits; now, with Boyne's name blazing from the walls of every town and village, his portrait (how that wrung her!) hawked up and down the country like the image of a hunted criminal ”

“ No one but the kitchen-maid had seen Boyne leave the house, and no one else had seen “the gentleman” who accompanied him. All inquiries in the neighbourhood failed to elicit the memory of a stranger’s presence that day in the neighbourhood of Lyng. And no one had met Edward Boyne, either alone or in company, in any of the neighbouring villages, or on the road across the downs, or at either of the local railway-stations. ”

“ Lilla laughed at the grimace her husband made.
Boyne left her at once, and ascending to his bedroom, shaved, exchanged his clothes for a smart evening suit, and carefully brushed his hair, until, when he descended, he presented the ideal man-about-town whose evening clothes were well worn and who wore his soft-fronted shirt as one accustomed to it every night. The man unused to the claw-hammer coat is always to be noticed in a crowd, just as is the woman who, putting on an evening frock occasionally, hitches it up on the shoulder and is palpably uncomfortable in it. ”

“ A pity the sum is not larger," he added.
"I was only thinking the same the other day," said Ena. "But how about that girl Ramsay?"
"Oh, the end ought to be to-day, or at least to-morrow. I've made secret inquiries in Wimbledon Park, and I hear that the doctor gave her up a day or so ago," he said grimly.
"That will be another distinct peril removed," remarked Lilla. "It serves the girl right for being too inquisitive."
"And the man Durrant cannot be back yet, eh?" asked Ena.
"No," was Boyne's reply. "I see by the papers that the ship has arrived at Cape Town. ”

“ Boyne laughed.
"No, Lilla. You are always alive—you are amazingly clever!" he declared. "I did my best with that French girl, Céline, but—well, I'm not quite certain whether she won't go to the police and make a statement."
"Ah! I see," Lilla said quickly. "So we ought to clear out—and quickly."
"Out of London, but not abroad. But not yet. If all of us left suddenly, the insurance company might get scent of a mystery, especially if Céline says anything about old Martin to the police."
"But what of Marigold? Has she any suspicion that Durrant is on the sea?" ”

“ Pollen!" echoed Boyne. "Whom do you mean?"
"Why, Ena Pollen, the friend of Lilla. You know the woman—tall, handsome, red-haired. She worked a dirty trick upon some man she met. They had supper at the Ritz. He died, and nobody suspected. Ugh! Isn't it funny how one can lead a crooked life and everyone think one perfectly honest?"
"Well, you're not honest, my dear Lionel," laughed Bernard Boyne. ”

“ Boyne has, no doubt, done so with some ulterior motive."
"And that motive we mean to find out," said the girl decisively.
"We will," he said, in a hard voice. "I feel confident that we are on the track of some very sensational affair."
"Who can be the person who is hiding?"
"Ah! that remains to be seen. It is evidently someone who dare not show his face—not only in the light of day, but even at night."
"But why does Mr. Boyne wear that hideous robe with slits for the eyes?" asked Marigold, bewildered, as they walked to the stairs. ”

“ There the boy grew to manhood. After his marriage, at twenty, he built himself a hut far out in the lonely forest, beyond the homes of the other settlers.
But he was a restless man and looked with longing toward the rugged mountains on the west. Along the foothills other pioneer settlers and hunters had taken up their 96abode. And young Boone’s imagination leaped to the country beyond the mountains, where the forest stretched for miles upon miles, no one knew how far, to the Mississippi River. It was an immense wilderness teeming with game, and he wanted to hunt and explore in it. ”

“ It was to sit, in the thick December dusk, by just such a wide-hooded fireplace, under just such black oak rafters, with the sense that beyond the mullioned panes the downs were darkening to a deeper solitude: it was for the ultimate indulgence in such sensations that Mary Boyne had endured for nearly fourteen years the soul-deadening ugliness of the Middle West, and that Boyne had ground on doggedly at his engineering till, with a suddenness that still made her blink, the prodigious windfall of the Blue Star Mine had put them at a stroke in possession of life and the leisure to taste it. ”

“ He won't trouble us any more."
"The next person to be silenced is that girl," Lilla said in a hard voice.
"Yes," was Boyne's slow reply. "I think I've formed a plan which will be just as successful as that we carried out concerning her too inquisitive lover."
And as he spoke, he blew a cloud of smoke from his lips and watched it curl towards the ceiling.
Suddenly—it was then about ten o'clock—almost as the words fell from his lips, the telephone bell rang sharply.
All three started.
"Ah!" gasped Ena, springing up. "There you are! At last!"
"Yes," she replied, taking up the receiver. ”

“ Boone had kept close to the Ohio while stealthily moving eastward, while Kenton took the same course, gliding more deeply among the shadows of the Kentucky forest until, disturbed by the evidence of danger, he trended to the left and met Boone near the river.
The two sat down on a fallen tree, side by side, and, while talking in low tones, did not for a moment forget their surroundings. They had lived too long in the perilous wilderness to forget that there was never a moment when a pioneer was absolutely safe from the fierce or stealthy red man. ”

“ It was the old guide, as large as a saucer, that Lord Dunmore gave Boone when he sent him out to call in the surveyors from the Falls of the Ohio thirteen years before.
Mounted on his pony, with a wallet of corn and a rifle on his back, Boone rode straight on westward thirty days without meeting a single human being. Pausing on the river bank opposite St. Louis he hallooed for an hour before any one heard him. ”

“ She was at Piccadilly tube station quite early, and it was fully ten minutes before Boyne put in an appearance, smiling and happy.
"I'm so glad you've been able to come, Miss Marigold," he exclaimed, as he shook hands with her warmly. "Now, we'll just go and have a little dinner together, and talk about your aunt, eh?"
And he placed his hand upon her arm in a paternal manner, and started to cross the road to Coventry Street. "There's a little Italian place in Wardour Street where they do you excellently. ”

“ Boyne only smiled grimly. He was not the kindly man of other days.
"It probably is so," he replied, turning away from the door. "But it's our insurance business; and business is business, after all!
"Yes!" retorted the poor woman. "You people are robbing the poor—that's what it is! And after fifteen years! Why, I've paid your company more in that time than what they would have paid to bury my Bertha!"
At a small house in the Loftus Road he knocked three times, and a dwarfed, red-eyed girl at last opened the door.
"Poor mother's dead, Mr. Boyne! Didn't you see the blinds?" she asked. ”

“ Next night they met by appointment at Hammersmith Broadway station at half-past eight, and after a consultation, it was arranged that Marigold should call on her aunt on some pretext, and having ascertained if Boyne had returned, she would rejoin Gerald at a spot in King Street.
Hence he lounged about the busy thoroughfare for a quarter of an hour until she returned with the news that Boyne had been home since six o'clock, he having returned unusually early.
"Ah! That's a good sign," said Gerald. "He'll certainly go out again to-night!" ”

“ Boyne crumpled the paper into a bunch, and then inconsequently turned back with it toward the lamp.
“Lord, no! I only meant,” he explained, with a faint tinge of impatience, “is there any legend, any tradition, as to that?”
“Not that I know of,” she answered; but the impulse to add, “What makes you ask?” was checked by the reappearance of the parlor-maid with tea and a second lamp.
With the dispersal of shadows, and the repetition of the daily domestic office, Mary Boyne felt herself less oppressed by that sense of something mutely imminent which had darkened her solitary afternoon. ”

“ She was startled to find, when the colloquy ended, that it was nearly luncheon-time, and she half expected, as she hurried back to the house, to see her husband coming out to meet her. But she found no one in the court but an under-gardener raking the gravel, and the hall, when she entered it, was so silent that she guessed Boyne to be still at work behind the closed door of the library. ”

“ And, turning abruptly upon his heel, the master-criminal walked back towards Hyde Park Corner, leaving mademoiselle and her companion utterly perplexed.
Bernard Boyne, as he hurried up Park Lane on his return to Upper Brook Street, muttered to himself:
"I've given them something to think over! They'll hesitate—and while they hesitate, we must act. It would have been fatal for them to have met Ena—and especially to-night—of all nights!"
Ten minutes later he was back in Ena Pollen's room, where she was sitting with Lilla. ”