The explanation of this other reason, which unhappily was a personal one, brings upon the scene a person who played a brief but pregnant part in this drama of real life, and who is now in his grave. This person was Edward Layton's father.
"What was the nature of the relations," said Mrs. Rutland, "between this gentleman and my dear son Eustace I do not know. All that I do know is that they were in association with each other, and, I am afraid, not to a good end. It came, also, by some strange means, to the knowledge of my husband, and a frightful scene occurred between him and Edward Layton, in which Mabel's lover was dismissed from the house. My husband withdrew the consent he had given to the engagement, and used words which, often since when I have thought of them, have made me shudder, they were so unnecessarily cruel and severe. 'If from this day,' my husband said to the young gentleman, 'you pursue my daughter with your attentions, you will be playing a base and dishonorable part. If you wish me to turn my daughter from my house, you can by your actions bring about this result. But bear in mind, should it come to pass, that she will go from my presence with my curse upon her-a beggar! I am not ignorant my duties with respect to my children. I have not been sparing of love towards them. Hard I may be when my feelings are strongly roused, but I am ever just. In the secrets that are being hidden from me there is, I am convinced, some degrading and shameful element otherwise, it is not possible that you should conspire to keep them from me. If the matter upon which you are engaged were honorable, there would be no occasion to keep it from my knowledge. Do not forget that you have it in your power to wreck not only my daughter's happiness, but her mother's and mine, if that consideration will have any weight with you.' There was much more than this, to which Mr. Edward Layton listened with a sad patience, which deepened my pity for him. He bore, without remonstrance, all the obloquies that were heaped upon him by my unhappy husband, who soon afterwards left the room with the injunction that Mr. Layton was on no account to be allowed an interview with my daughter. Then Mr. Layton said to me, 'I must bear it. If the happiness of my life is lost it will be through the deep, the sacred love I bear for your child. I devote not only the dearest hopes of my life, but my life itself, to her cause. Fate is against us. A man can do no more than his duty.'"
From that day to this Mabel's mother has never seen Edward Layton. When she heard of his marriage into a family whose position in society was to say the least equivocal, she was in great distress, fearing the effect the news would have upon her dear daughter. Mabel Rutland suffered deeply, but during that time of anguish she appeared to summon to her aid a certain fortitude and resignation which served her in good stead. It astonished her mother, one day, to hear her say,
"Do not blame Edward, mamma he is all that is good and noble. Although he is another lady's husband, and although our lives can never be united, as we had once hoped, I shall ever love and honor him."
"Time will bring comfort to you, my darling," said the mother, "and it may be that there is still a happy fate in store for you. You may meet with another man, around whom no mystery hangs, to whom your heart will be drawn."
"Never, mamma," replied Mabel. "I shall never marry now."
What most grievously disturbed Mrs. Rutland was the circumstance that, even within a few weeks of Edward Layton's marriage, he corresponded with her daughter. Her father was not aware of this. He usually rose late in the morning, and it devolved upon Mrs. Rutland to receive the correspondence which came by the first post. The letters that Edward Layton wrote to Mabel were invariably posted at night, from which it would appear that the young man was aware that they would fall into the hands of Mabel's mother, and that Mr. Rutland, unless he were made acquainted with the fact, was not likely otherwise to discover it. When Mrs. Rutland gave her daughter the first letter from Mr. Layton, Mabel said to her,
"Do not be alarmed, mamma. This letter is in reply to one I wrote to Mr. Layton. I may have other letters from him which I beg you to give me without papa's knowing. It may appear wrong to you, but it is really not so. Everything is being done for the best, as perhaps you will one day learn."
Sad at heart as Mrs. Rutland was, she had too firm a trust in her daughter's innate purity and sense of self-respect not to believe what she said, both in its letter and in its spirit, and thus it was that the secret of this correspondence was also kept from Mr. Rutland. By pursuing the course she did, Mrs. Rutland preserved, to some extent, peace in the household.
Thus matters went on for two years, until Eustace Rutland's wild conduct produced a terrible disturbance. His absences from home had grown more frequent and prolonged; he became dreadfully involved, and Mr. Rutland received letters and visits from money-lenders (a class of men that he abhorred) in connection with his son's proceedings. Incensed beyond endurance, he banished Eustace from the house, and forbade him ever again to enter his doors.
"It seemed to be fated," said Mrs. Rutland, "that there should be always something in our family that it was necessary to conceal from my husband's knowledge. He banished Eustace from home, but that did not weaken my love for our dear lad. Three times during the past year I have seen Eustace, and I have not made my husband acquainted with the fact. What could I do? Had I asked his permission he would have sternly refused it, and had I told him that I could not resist the impulse of my heart to fold my dear boy in my arms, it would only have made matters worse for all of us."
She related to Dr. Daincourt a circumstance which had deeply angered her husband. Among the presents the father had given to his daughter was a very costly one, a diamond bracelet of great value, for which Mr. Rutland had paid no less than five hundred guineas. One evening a dinner-party was given at the house, and Mr. Rutland particularly desired that Mabel should look her best on the occasion. He said as much to his daughter, and expressed a desire that she should wear certain articles of jewellery, and most especially her diamond bracelet. He noticed at the dinner-table that this bracelet was not upon Mabel's arm; he made no remark before his guests, but when they had departed he asked Mabel why she had not worn it.
"I have so many other things, papa," she replied, "that you have given me. It was not necessary."
"But," said her father, "I desired you particularly to wear the bracelet. Is it broken? If so, it can be easily repaired. Let me see it."
Then the mother saw trouble in her daughter's face. Mabel endeavored, to evade her father's request, and strove to turn the conversation into another channel. But he insisted so determinedly upon seeing the bracelet that she was at length compelled to confess that it was not in her possession. Upon this Mr. Rutland questioned her more closely, but he could obtain from her no satisfactory information as to what had become of it. Suddenly he inquired if her purse was in her room. She answered yes, and he desired her to bring it down to him. She obeyed; and when he opened the purse he found only three or four shillings in it.
"Is this all you have?" he inquired.
"Yes, papa," she said, "this is all."
"But it was only yesterday," said Mr. Rutland, "that you asked me for twenty pounds, and I gave it to you. What have you done with the money?"
Upon this point, also, he could obtain no satisfactory information. He was greatly angered.
"I thought," he said "when Mr. Layton married into the family of a professional sharp-a fit connection for him-that the conspiracy in my house against my peace of mind, and, it seems to me, against my honor, would come to an end. It was not so. I perceive that I am regarded here as an enemy by my own family, not as a man who has endeavored all through life to perform his duties in an honorable and straightforward way. Go to your room, and let me see the diamond bracelet before this month is ended, or let me know what you have done with it. If you have lost it," he added, gazing sternly upon his daughter, "find it."
Before the month was ended Mabel showed him the diamond bracelet; but her mother was aware that there were other articles missing from among her daughter's jewellery.
Mrs. Rutland having come to the end of her narrative, Dr. Daincourt began to question her.
"Your daughter," he said, "was taken ill on the 26th of March, and I understand that she has been confined to her bed since that day. Were there any premonitory symptoms of a serious illness, or was the seizure a sudden one?"
"It was quite sudden," replied Mrs. Rutland. "I went into her room early in the morning, and found her in a high state of fever."
"Has she been sensible at all since that time?"
"No."
"Not sufficiently sensible to recognize any one who attended her?"
"No; she does not even know me, her own mother."
"What did the physician whom you first called in say about the case?"
"He said that she had brain-fever, and that it had been accelerated by her having caught a violent cold through wearing damp clothing."
"Do you think she wore that clothing in the house?"
"No."
(Dr. Daincourt has certain ways and methods of his own. He is in the habit of keeping in his pocket-book a tablet of the weather from day to day.)
"If your daughter did not wear damp clothes in the house," he said, "she must have worn them out of the house."
He took his pocket-book from his pocket and consulted his weather-tablet. "I see," he said to Mrs. Rutland, "that from the 12th till the 25th of March there was no rain. The weather was mild and unusually warm during those days, but on the evening of the 25th of March it began to rain, and rained during the night. Your daughter must have been out during those hours in the bad weather. What were her movements on that evening? Remember, you must keep nothing from me if you wish me to do my best to restore your child to health."
Still, it was with some difficulty that he extracted from Mrs. Rutland the information he desired to obtain. Obtain it, however, he did. Mrs. Rutland informed him that Mabel had gone out on the evening of the 25th of March, and did not return home until nearly one o'clock in the morning. Mr. Rutland was not aware of this. Mrs. Rutland had stopped up for her daughter, and had let her in quietly and secretly. The young girl was pale and greatly agitated, but she said nothing to her mother. She kissed her hurriedly, went to her bedroom, and was found the next morning in the condition Mrs. Rutland had described.
"Being in a fever from that day," said Dr. Daincourt to the mother, "your daughter has seen no newspapers?"
"No."
"And she is ignorant of the peril through which her former lover, Edward Layton, has passed, and in which he still stands?"
"She is ignorant of it," said Mrs. Rutland.
"Have any letters arrived for her during her illness?"
"Yes, two. One in the handwriting of Mr. Layton, the other from my dear boy Eustace."
"Have you those letters?"
"Yes."
"Have you opened them?"
"No. My daughter made me give her a solemn promise that I would never open one of her letters, and I have not done so."
"But," said Dr. Daincourt, "this is a matter of life and death. I must ask you to give me those letters, and I will take upon myself the responsibility of opening them. I must ask you for something more. Your daughter has a desk?"
"Yes."
"The key of which is in her room?"
"Yes."
"Bring down the desk and the key. Ask me no questions concerning my motives. I am in hopes that I shall be able to discover the true cause of your daughter's illness, and that will enable me to adopt towards her the only treatment by which it is possible she can recover."
Mrs. Rutland brought down the desk and the key. In the mother's presence Dr. Daincourt opened the desk. There were in it no letters from Edward Layton, but it contained two of what Mrs. Rutland called the mystery-letters which Eustace was in the habit of writing to his sister. These letters were in their envelopes, the post-marks upon which indicated their order of delivery.
Dr. Daincourt could make nothing of them, and Mrs. Rutland could not assist him. They were written upon small single sheets of note-paper, and appeared to be a perfect jumble of incomprehensible words; around the margin of these words were a number of figures and alphabetical letters as incomprehensible as themselves. Searching further in the desk, he made a startling discovery-three playing-cards, each of them being the Nine of Hearts. He asked Mrs. Rutland-who appeared to be almost as startled as he was himself by the discovery-whether she could give him any explanation of the cards, and she said that she could not. Then Dr. Daincourt said that he would take the playing-cards and the letters away with him.
"At the same time," he observed to Mrs. Rutland, "if it is any consolation to you, I undertake your daughter's case, and will do the best for her that lies within my skill and power."
He then went to see Miss Rutland in her bed, wrote out a prescription, gave certain instructions, and left the house.
"I have come to you," said Dr. Daincourt to me, "with these letters and the playing-cards; I will leave them with you. You said that the Nine of Hearts was a tangible link in the chain of Edward Layton's innocence. Is it not most mysterious and strange that three of these identical cards should be found in Miss Rutland's desk, and that one should be found in the pocket of Edward Layton's ulster which he wore on the 25th of March? Does not this circumstance, in conjunction with what you now know of Mabel Rutland's movements on that night, go far to prove that the lady whom Edward Layton met in Bloomsbury Square was none other than his old sweetheart? Heaven knows what conclusions are to be drawn from the coincidence. I will make no comments indeed, I almost tremble to think of the matter. Your legal mind will, perhaps, enable you to deduce something from Eustace's letter to his sister which may be of service to you and Edward Layton. To me they are simply incomprehensible. Before I visit Miss Rutland to-morrow I will call on you. You may have something to say to me. I sincerely trust I shall not be the means of bringing fresh trouble upon her and hers."
With that he wished me good-night, and I was left alone. I set myself sedulously to the task of discovering the key to these mysterious letters. Dr. Daincourt had not opened the two sealed letters which had arrived during Miss Rutland's illness, and I did not immediately do so. I felt a delicacy with respect to Edward Layton's letter to the young lady which he had given me in prison to post for him. I put them aside, and selecting the first of the two letters from Eustace Rutland which had been found in Mabel's desk (judging from the post-marks on their envelopes which of the two she had first received, for they bore no date), I devoted myself to a study of it. This is an exact copy of the singular communication, the size of the paper and the arrangement of the words, and of the figures and alphabetical letters, being faithfully followed:
It appeared to me that the first thing I had to consider was the relation, if any, that the alphabetical letters and figures bore to the words to which they formed a frame. I did not lose sight of the suggestion which immediately arose that this framework of figures and alphabetical letters might be placed there as a blind, although the evident care and pains which had been bestowed upon them was opposed to the suggestion. But then, again, the care thus exercised might be intended to more deeply mystify any strange person into whose hands the missive might fall. In order not to deface or mutilate the original, I made two exact copies of it for my own purposes, using as a kind of ruler one of the playing-cards which Dr. Daincourt had also found in Mabel Rutland's desk.
There were two words in the missive which soon attracted me. These were the third word, "diamond," in the fifth line, and the second word, "bracelet," in the sixth line. "Diamond bracelet." I did not doubt that this was the diamond bracelet which Mr. Rutland had presented to his daughter, and which she could not wear at the dinner-party because it was not at that time in her possession. Here, then, was a clew, but here I stopped. No ingenuity that I could bring to bear enabled me to connect other words with "diamond bracelet." I cudgelled my brains for at least half an hour. Then all at once it occurred to me (what in the excitement of my pursuit I may very well be excused for not having thought of before) that the playing-card, the Nine of Hearts, must bear some relation to the missive. I placed it upon the paper. Every word was hidden by the surface of the card; only the figures and the alphabetical letters were visible. "Doubtless," thought I, "if I cut out the pips of a Nine of Hearts, and place it upon the paper, I shall see certain words which will form the subject-matter upon which Eustace Rutland wrote to his sister." In that case the mystery was confined to nine words which, whatever their arrangement, would not be too difficult to intelligibly arrange. I would not mutilate Miss Rutland's playing-cards. I had packs of my own in the house, and from these I selected the Nine of Hearts and cut out the pips. It was not an easy matter, and in my eagerness I pretty effectually destroyed the surface of my table; but that did not trouble me. My interest was now thoroughly aroused, and grew keener when, placing the Nine of Hearts upon Eustace Rutland's mystery-letter, I found these words disclosed:
Face-stares-in-send-money-death me-instantly-the.
Here, then, in these nine words, was the communication which Eustace Rutland intended his sister to understand. I copied them on a separate sheet of paper, and arranged them in different ways until I arrived at their correct solution:
"Death stares me in the face send money instantly."
Congratulating myself upon my cleverness, I came to the conclusion that Eustace Rutland, being banished from his father's house, and not being able to obtain from his father the funds necessary for his disreputable career, was taking advantage of his sister's devoted affection for him, and was in the habit of calling upon her to supply him with money-which, no doubt, the young lady did to the best of her ability. Curiosity led me to the task of endeavoring to discover whether the alphabetical letters and the figures in the framework bore any relation to this communication. With only the nine words exposed through the pips of the Nine of Hearts which I had cut away, I saw that the first word, "death," was the sixth, and the second word, "stares," was the second, and the third word, "me," was the seventh. The sequence of the figures, therefore, was 6, 2, 7. Now, how were these three figures arranged in the framework? The figure 6 came after the letter M, the figure 2 came after the letter X, the figure 7 came after the letter H. Satisfied that I had found the key, I began to study how these figures from 1 to 9, representing the nine words in the communication and the Nine of Hearts in the playing-card, were arranged in the framework in such a manner as to lead an informed person at once to the solution. There must be a starting-point with which both Eustace and his sister Mabel were acquainted. What was this starting-point? One of the letters of The Alphabet. What letter? A. Starting, then, from A in the framework, I found that the figures from 1 to 9 ran thus: 6, 2, 7, 3, 9, 1, 4, 5, 8. Upon following, in this order, the course of The words which were exposed by the playing-card with the nine pips cut out, I came to the conclusion that I had correctly interpreted this first mystery-letter. I was very pleased, believing that the key I had discovered would lead me to a correct reading of Eustace's second and third letter to his sister.
So absorbed had I been in the unravelling of this mystery-letter, which occupied me a good hour and a half, that I had lost sight during the whole of that time of the two words which had at first enchained my attention-"diamond bracelet." "Death stares me in the face send money instantly" had appeared to me so reasonable a construction to be placed upon the communication of a man who must often have been in a desperate strait for want of funds, that the thought did not obtrude itself that these words might be merely a blind, and that, in the words that remained after the obliteration of this sentence, the correct solution was to be found. The longer I considered, the stronger became my doubts: with "diamond bracelet" staring me in the face, I felt that I had been following a Will-o'-the-wisp.
I had asked Dr. Daincourt the date of the dinner-party at which Mr. Rutland had detected the absence of the diamond bracelet on his daughter's arm. That date was the 8th of September. I examined the post-mark on the envelope of Eustace Rutland's first communication; it was the 26th of September. Mr. Rutland had laid upon his daughter the injunction that the diamond bracelet was to be shown to him before the end of the month. What month? September. She had produced it in time, and her brother's missive must have conveyed to her some information respecting the missing article of jewellery. The elation of spirits in which I had indulged took flight; I had not discovered the clew.
I set myself again to work. I felt now as a man feels who is hunting out a great mystery or a great criminal, and upon the success of whose endeavor his own safety depends. It seemed to me as if it were not so much Edward Layton's case as my own in which I was engaged. Never in the course of my career have I been so interested. I determined to set aside the words, "Death stares me in the face, send money instantly," and to search, in the words that remained, for the true meaning of Eustace Rutland's first communication. I copied them in the order in which they were arranged, and they ran as follows:
I counted the number of words; there were twenty-two. Now, was the true reading of the communication contained in the whole of these twenty-two words, or in only a portion of them, and if in only a portion, in what portion? In how many words? There lay the difficulty. The words "diamond bracelet" gave me a distinct satisfaction, but there were other words which I could not by any exercise of ingenuity connect them with, such as "birds" – "trees" – "river" – "gayly" – "cherry" – "singing." Undoubtedly the communication was a serious one, and these words seemed to be inimical to all ideas of seriousness. How to select? What to select? How to arrange the mystery? What was the notation? Ah, the notation! I had discovered the notation of the sentence I had set aside for the time. What if the same notation would lead me to the clew I was in search of? The arrangement of the figures from 1 to 9 was arbitrated by the first letter in the alphabet, A. I would try whether that arrangement would afford any satisfaction in the twenty-two words that remained. It would be an affectation of vanity on my part if I say that this idea occurred to me instantly. It did not do so. It was only after long and concentrated attention and consideration that it came to me, and then I set it immediately into practical operation. The first figure in the sentence I had discovered was 6. I counted six in the present arrangement of the words. It ended with the word "Got." Crossing out the word "Got," and placing it upon a separate sheet of paper, I proceeded. The second figure in the sentence I had discarded was 2. I counted two on from the word "Got," and arrived at "Your." I crossed out this word "Your" and proceeded. The third figure in the sentence I had discarded was 7. I counted seven words on from "Your," and came to "Diamond." I treated this word in a similar way to the last two, and continued the process. "Got your diamond." Now for "Bracelet." The next figure was 3. I counted on three words from "Diamond" and came to "Bracelet."
I was more excited than I can describe. There is scarcely anything in the world that fills a man with such exultation as success, and I was on the track of success: "Got your diamond bracelet." The following figure was 9. I counted on nine and came to the word "Back." "Got your diamond bracelet back." I continued. The next figure was 1. This was represented by the word "I." The next figure was 4, represented by the word "Won." The next figure was 5, represented by the word "Four." The next figure was 8, represented by the word "Hundred." I continued the same process and came back to the figure 6, represented by the word "On." The next figure was 2, represented by the word "Cherry."
I stopped here, for a reason, and I read the words I had crossed out and written on a separate sheet of paper. They ran thus:
"Got your diamond bracelet back I won four hundred on Cherry."
It was not without a distinct reason that I paused here. Mixing with the world, and moving in all shades and classes of society, I must confess-as I have no doubt other men would confess if they were thoroughly ingenuous-to certain weaknesses, one of which is to put a sovereign or two (seldom more) upon every classic horse-race, and upon every important handicap during the year. I nearly always lose-and serve me right. But it happened, strangely enough, that in this very month of September, during which Eustace Rutland sent his mysterious communications to his sister Mabel, one of the most celebrated handicaps of the year was won by a horse named Cherry, and that I had two sovereigns on that very horse. It started at long odds. I remembered that the bet I made was two sovereigns to a hundred, and that I had won what is often called a century upon the race. I was convinced that I had come to the legitimate end of Eustace Rutland's letter: "Got your diamond bracelet back. I won four hundred on Cherry."
This young reprobate, then, was indulging in horse-racing. His sister Mabel had written to him an account of the scene between herself and her father at the dinner-party. She had given him her diamond bracelet to extricate him from some scrape, and he had been luckily enabled, by his investment on the horse Cherry, to redeem it most likely from the pawnbroker-in time for his sister to exhibit it to her father. So as to be certain that I had got the proper clew, and had arrived at the gist of Eustace's communication, I wrote down the words that remained, which were,
"Birds-the-the-in-are the trees-runs-rivers-gayly-singing."
It was an easy task now for me to apply the same test to these remaining words, and I found that they formulated themselves in this fashion:
"The river runs gayly. The birds are singing in the trees."
I was curious to ascertain whether there were any special sign in the framework of Eustace Rutland's communication by which the person engaged with him in the mystery-letter could be guided. I counted the words in each sentence. The words in the first sentence were nine-the Nine of Hearts. The number of words in the second sentence was eleven. The number of words in the third sentence was eleven. After the alphabetical letter A in the framework I saw the figure 11, and I was satisfied, the last eleven words being meaningless, that it was the second sentence of eleven words, referring to the diamond bracelet and to his winning on Cherry, that Eustace wished his sister Mabel to understand. At the same time I was satisfied in my own mind that, without the Nine of Hearts to guide him, a man might spend days over the cryptograph without arriving at the correct solution.
I had taken no count of the passing time. Engrossed and absorbed in my occupation, I was surprised, when it had reached what I believed to be a successful termination, to find that it was nearly six o'clock in the morning.