CHAPTER XII
THE NIGHT-WATCHES
David returned home angry with himself in all ways, not least for his loss of self-control in pursuing Van Hupfeldt with no object but to vent himself in mere threats. His suggestion to Van Hupfeldt that other documents besides the certificates might be hidden among the picture-frames in the flat was in the tone of a child’s boasting. One should find first, he told himself, and boast afterward. However, one of Mrs. Grover’s excellent little lunches put him straight, and, though work was a thousand miles from his mood that day, he compelled himself to do it, and the pen began to run.
But first he had said to Mrs. Grover: “I want you to get the steps, and take down every picture in the flat, except the three big ones, which I will see to myself.”
Then, with his flower-pot of violets on each hand, he was soon in the thick of the cow-boy and prairie-flower history which he had on hand. His stories were already known on this side by the whiff of reality they brought from the States, and were in some demand. Already the postman handed him printers’ proofs, and he had proved to himself that he possessed some of the wisdom of the serpent in choosing a reputable abode, because the men whom he entertained went away saying: “Harcourt has private means. He has taken to literature as a hobby,” an idea which made him popular. If certain editors, on the strength of it, wished to pay him half-rates, they were soon undeceived. David was much too hard a nut to crack in that easy way.
Meantime, neither by sight nor sound had he been reminded of the eery experience of his first night in No. 7. True, there were noises during the still hours, such as had twice thrilled Miss L’Estrange and Jenny. But they seemed quite natural to him. The dryness of the interior of the block of flats had loosened flooring-boards and dislocated cross-beams, until the mere movement of an article of furniture overhead, or the passing of a next-floor tenant from one room to another, would set going creaks enough to give rise to half a dozen ghost-panics.
That night he had to be at the Holborn Restaurant for an annual dinner of internationals, so he struck work soon after four, seeing that by then Mrs. Grover’s task of taking down and dusting was ended, and the pictures now lay in a pile by the dining-room sideboard. David procured himself a quantity of brown paper, with gum and pincers, sat on the floor by the pile, and, with an effort to breathe no faster than usual, set himself to work. It was not so slight a task as it looked, some of the pictures being elaborately fastened with brown paper, tacks, and bars; and, since they were not his own, he had to leave them not less trim than he found them. He was resolved to trust not even a workman in this search. However, being handy, a Jack of all trades, he had got some half dozen unfastened and again fastened before six o’clock.
His gum failing, he called upon Mrs. Grover, received no answer, called again, went searching, but could not find her in the flat. Wondering at this, he stepped outside the front door to invoke the services of the lift-man, when a little way down the stairs he caught a sound of voices in low talk. His ready ear seemed to detect the particular accent of his housekeeper, and he went downward, spying out who it might be. He wore slippers, and for this reason, perhaps, approached near the speakers before he was seen. They were Mrs. Grover and a young man. The latter, the moment he was aware of David’s presence, was gone like a thief, so David did not see his face – it was dark there at that hour – but he had an impression that it was Neil, Van Hupfeldt’s valet, and his legs of themselves started into chase; but he checked himself.
“Who was the man?” he asked Mrs. Grover, when they had gone back into the flat.
“I’m sure I don’t know his name, sir,” was her answer.
“You know him, perhaps. Is it the same who came here to speak with the girl I left in your charge?”
“I believe it is the same,” said Mrs. Grover, “though I didn’t see him well.”
“Oh, you believe. What on earth does he want of you?”
“He kept asking me questions. I told him to go about his business – ”
“What did he want to know?”
“Whether I was satisfied with my place, and whether I didn’t think that a woman like me could better herself, considering the wages I’m getting – ”
“That all he wanted to know?”
“That’s about all – things like that.”
David, looking at her, said: “I am sure he was quite right. You deserve five times the wages I am giving you; so if I pay you a month’s wages in advance now – ”
“But, sir!”
“No, it’s no use, Mrs. Grover. You were born for greater things than this. Yet, wherever you go next, do be loyal to the man from whom you earn your bread against all the world. Here’s your money.”
In vain Mrs. Grover protested. The place was good enough for her, the flat not fit to be left as it was, things not washed, something on the fire. It was of no avail. As David’s servant she was suddenly dead. He saw her out with a hearty hand-shake at the door, and his best wishes.
Only after she was well gone did he remember that she had forgotten to deliver up the front door-key.
As it was now nearly time to dress for the dinner, he left his work on the pictures for the day. In the half dozen or so which he had taken to pieces he had found nothing, and was disillusioned, cross-tempered, disturbed by many things.
He sat down and wrote to Miss Violet Mordaunt: “I am sorry to say that I have failed to receive the documents of which I had the honor to speak to you. I have reason, however, to believe that your fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, has bought them, and from his hand you will perhaps receive them.”
But his conscience felt this letter to be hard, ironical, and not sincere; for if, as he suspected, Van Hupfeldt’s name was on the certificates as the husband of dead Gwendoline, Violet was little likely to receive them from Van Hupfeldt’s hand. So he tore up the note, and wrote another which equally reflected his ill-humor. Nor did this go through the post. In the end, though he knew that she must be anxiously awaiting a word of news from him, he shirked for the present the task of announcing his failure to her, and rushed out to the dinner.
He came home late, and as he stepped from the lift to the landing, something – a light or a fancy – caused him to start. It seemed to him that through the opaque glass of his door he had seen a light. Certainly, the impression was gone in one instant, but he had it. He went in with some disquiet of the nerves. All was dark, all still, within. He turned on three or four of the lights in rapid succession, and his eyes pierced here and there without discerning anything save familiar articles of furniture.
The flat was lonely to him that night. Though Mrs. Grover would not in any case have been there at that hour, yet the fact that she would not come in the morning as usual, the fact that he was now the only life in the little home, made him as solitary in London as a castaway in mid-sea. The fires were dead. He sat a little while in his overcoat by the dining-room fireplace, glanced at the heap of pictures, at the face of Gwendoline. And now again he started. Something in the aspect of the heap struck him as new, as not perhaps the same as when he had gone out.
But here again he seemed to himself the prey of his own fancies. He asked himself angrily if he was losing his memory and his grip of facts. He thought that he had left only two of the pictures in pieces; now three of them were without their backs. As he sat looking at them, the clock on the mantelpiece all at once ceased ticking, and this small thing again, due solely to his omission to wind the clock, had an effect upon his mood. He seemed to hear the sudden silence, as it were the ceasing of a heart-beat, and the “all is over” of the bereaved when the last breath passes. He rose and stretched himself and yawned, and took in with him to his bed-room one of the pots of violets, so that, if he scented violets, he should know whence the scent came. And he took care to turn on the light in his bed-room before turning off all the other lights. Could this be David, the man who used to sleep beneath the stars?
Now he lay down in the dark, and all was quiet. Only, from far away, from some other polygon in the hive of flats, came a tinkling, the genteel sound of the piano, very faint, as remote from him as was the life of her who played it. He was listening to it, thinking of the isolation in which all souls are more or less doomed to live, when the question occurred to him incidentally: “Am I really alone in this flat? As a matter of fact, is not some one with me?” He had seemed to hear a definite click, and if it was not in the flat, then, he thought, his ears must be losing their old trick of exactness.
He stole out of bed, and, without making the faintest sound, peeped out along the corridors. Nothing seemed to stir. Minute after minute he stood patiently, hearing only that shell-music which the tympanum of the ear gives out in deep silence. Once he caught a Lilliputian rush, and a screech, an escapade in mouseland. Behind him a small clock ticked in his bed-room, and presently there was yet another sound, low, but prolonged, as if paper was being very cautiously torn somewhere.
Instantly the instinct to grip his six-shooter in his hand rose in David. His former experience in the flat had caused him to have the weapon ready. Great is that moment when awe rises into indignation and action, as now with him. Silently, with every nerve strung, and each muscle nimble for the encounter, he stepped backward into his bed-room, and drew the weapon from beneath his pillow. No longer careful about hiding the fact that he was awake, he made a rush along the longer corridor into the hall, caught up the hall chair and table and threw them against the door, heaved up the hat-stand and placed it also against the door, thus blocking the enemy’s retreat. And he said to himself: “Be it ghost, or be it mortal man, let there be a fight to a finish this time!”
But he kept himself in the dark for safety’s sake, and, bold as his heart was, it beat fast, as he now stood in the farthest corner of the hall near the door, listening for his life. And anon he sniffed with his nostrils for a scent of violets, for a wafture from the grave, which came not.
But this waiting for he knew not what was not long to be borne. Wounds are not so grisly to the mind as the touch of a hand which cannot be grasped. He crept back in the dark along the wall, again noiselessly, into the corridor, into his bed-room, locked the door, and, with finger on trigger, switched on the light. Keeping his ear alert for whatever might happen outside, he searched the room. No one was under the bed, or anywhere there. He turned off the light, went out, and, in a similar manner, searched behind a locked door, wherever he found a key in the lock, each of the other two bed-rooms, and the bath-room. In that end of the flat there was no one, nor a scent of anything, save the perfume of the violets in his bed-room. And again he began to think that he must surely be the plaything of his fancies.
Along the corridor he crept again, and entered the drawing-room, locked the door, turned on the light, looked round to search. At that instant he heard, he felt, the flight of steps in the flat. It was the merest sign of something detected by some sixth sense acquired by him in harkening to the whispers of the jungle. These were steps as light and swift as a specter’s might be. But he had the notion that they fled out of the dining-room down the short passage between the kitchen and the servant’s room, and, quick as thought, he had out the drawing-room light, and was after them.
The door of the servant’s bed-room was on the left of the cross passage, that of the kitchen on the right, just opposite the other. He went like a cat which sees in the night, swift and soft, along the left wall, his breast pressed to it, until, coming to the servant’s bed-room door, he gave a twist to the handle to go in.
The handle turned a little, but not much. The door would not open. It seemed to be held by some one within, for it was not locked, since there happened to be no key in it.
Here, at any rate, was something tangible at last. And, when it came to be a question of main force, natural or supernatural, David was in his element. He set himself to get that door-handle round, and it turned. He put himself into the effort to press that door open, and it opened a little. But, all at once, it opened too much! and he plunged staggering within. At the same time he was aware of something rushing out; he had just time to snatch his revolver from the waist of his pajamas and fire, when his silent adversary was gone, and had vehemently slammed the door upon him. Almost at the same moment another door slammed – the kitchen-door. Then all was still again.
It was as when a mighty momentary wind seizes upon a house in the dead of night, slams two doors, causes something to bark, and passes on its way. The two slammings and the bark of the revolver were almost simultaneous – and silence swallowed them together.
David flew after the thing which had evaded him to the kitchen-door. His blood was up. During his first experience of something queer in the flat he had had an impression of a woman, perhaps on account of the scent of violets. But this time there seemed to be no such scent, and this latest impression was of a man – an impression hardly perhaps due to sight, for the servant’s room was about the darkest spot in the flat, its one small window being shrouded with tapestry curtains, and the outer night itself dark. But he somehow believed now that it was a man, and he flung himself again and again against the kitchen-door with no good meaning toward that man. For there could be no doubt that whoever or whatever it was, his visitant was now in the kitchen, since the door would not open.
After some vain effort to force it, he stopped, panting, thinking what he should do. There was a little pointed poker in the dining-room by which he might pick the lock; but before deciding upon this he again tried his power of shoulder and will against the door, and this time felt something give within. The door, too, was not really locked, having no key in it, as, in general, the keys of old flats become displaced. It was apparently only fastened, if it were fastened at all, by some catch or hook, for, after two or three more thumps, it flew wide.
David, catching the handle, held it a little ajar, and now again the stillness of the night was outraged by his shout through the slit: “Hands up! or I fire!” At the same instant he rushed in, and flooded the kitchen with light.
But no one was there! A pallor struck from the corners of his mouth to his cheek, even while his brow was flushed, and he stood aghast, with an astounding question in his eyes and in his heart.
CHAPTER XIII
NO MORE VIOLET
There was little sleep for David Harcourt that night. After his inrush into the kitchen, and his long amazement to find it empty, he again searched the flat throughout; no one but he was in it, and no one had gone out through the front door, for there stood his barricade of table, chair, and hat-stand, just as he had left it.
This seemed surely to show that he had to do with that which is beyond and above natural. Yet there were points against that view, too. There was, first of all, the spot of blood, for in the passage between the servant’s room and the kitchen he saw what seemed to be a spot of blood. The carpet was a brown pattern on a pink ground, and in one place the brown looked redder than elsewhere, – that was all. If it was blood, then the bullet shot by him, which he now found imbedded in the frame of the kitchen-door, may have passed through some part of a man; but he could not assert to himself that it was blood.
There were, however, the pictures. Unless he was dancing mad, the fact was certain that he had left only three of them with their backs undone, and now there were five – and he refused to believe that he was indeed moonstruck.
So, then, a man had been in the flat, since no ghost could materialize to the extent of picking tacks out of picture-frames. And, if there had been a man, that man was Van Hupfeldt, and no other. Van Hupfeldt’s motive would be clear enough. Miss L’Estrange had told Van Hupfeldt that the certificates had fallen out of the back of a picture. David himself had had the rashness, in his rage at the loss of the certificates, to say over the door of Van Hupfeldt’s landau that there “might be other things where the certificates came from.” Mrs. Grover had been seen that afternoon talking to Van Hupfeldt’s servant. She was evidently in process of being bribed and won over to the enemy. She may have told how David had had all the pictures taken down and was at work on them, and how he was to be out at an annual dinner that night. She may possibly have handed over to Van Hupfeldt the key of the flat, and Van Hupfeldt, in a crazy terror lest anything should be found by David in the pictures, may have come into the flat to search for himself.
All this seemed plausible enough. But, then, how had Van Hupfeldt got away? Had he a flying-machine? Was he a griffin? Were there holes in the wall?
But if, as a matter of fact, he or some other had been in the flat, and had some way got out other than by the front door, here was a new thought – that Gwendoline Mordaunt may not, after all, have committed suicide. Suicide had been assumed simply because of the locked and bolted front door. But how if there existed some other mysterious exit from the flat? In that case she might have been done to death – by Strauss, by Van Hupfeldt, if Van Hupfeldt was Strauss.
David, no doubt, was all too ready to think evil of this man. Nevertheless the question confronted him. Why, he asked himself, should Gwendoline have committed suicide? She was a married woman – the certificate, seen by Miss L’Estrange, proved that. True, Gwendoline had received some terrible letter four days before her death, as her servant had told David, and she had said to the girl: “I am not married. You think that I am; but I am not.” Still, a doubt arose now as to her suicide. Her sister Violet did not believe in the suicide. Nothing was certain.
However, this new theory of the tragedy put David upon writing to Violet the first thing in the morning. Vague as his doubt, it was a set-off against his shame of defeat in the matter of the certificates. It was something with which to face her. He resolved to tell her at once all that was in his mind, even his shocking suspicion that Van Hupfeldt was Strauss, and he wrote:
“Mr. David Harcourt has unfortunately not been able to secure the certificates of which he had the honor of speaking to Miss Mordaunt, but believes that her fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position to give her some information on the subject. However, Mr. Harcourt has other matters of pressing importance to communicate to Miss Mordaunt for her advantage, and, in case she lacks the leisure to be alone in the course of the day, he will be pleased to be at her sister’s grave this evening about five, if she will write him a line to that effect.”
He posted this before eight in the morning, went off to seek his old charwoman in Clerkenwell, breakfasted outside, came home, and set to work afresh upon the pictures.
And that proved a day of days for him. For, before noon, on opening the back of a mezzotint of the “Fighting Temeraire,” he found a book, large, flat, and ivory-white. Its silver clasp was locked. He could not see within, yet he understood that it was no printed book, but in manuscript, and that here was the diary of Gwendoline Mordaunt. He was still exulting over it, searching now with fresh zeal for more treasure, when he received a note: “Miss Mordaunt hopes to lay some flowers on her sister’s grave this evening about five.”
Her paper had a scent of violets, and David, in putting it to his nostrils, allowed his lips, too, to steal a kiss; – for happy men do sometimes kiss scented paper. And he was happy, thinking how, when he presented the diary to her, he would see her glad and thankful.
At the very hour, however, when he was thus rejoicing, Van Hupfeldt was going up the stairs at 60A, Porchester Gardens. He was limping and leaning on his valet, and his dark skin was now so much paler than usual that on his entrance into the drawing-room Mrs. Mordaunt cried out:
“Why, what is the matter?”
“Do not distress yourself at all,” said Van Hupfeldt, limping on his stick toward her. “Only a slight accident – a fall off a stumbling horse in the park this morning – my knee – it is better now – ”
“Oh, I am so sorry! But you should not have come; you are evidently still in pain. So distressing! Sit here; let me – ”
“No, really,” said he, “it is nearly all right now, dear Mrs. Mordaunt. I have so much to say, and so little time to say it in. Where is Violet?”
“She is in her bed-room; will soon be down. Let me place this cushion – ”
“She is well, I hope?”
“Yes; a little strange and restless to-day, perhaps.”
“What is it now?”
“Oh, some little fall of the spiritual barometer, I suppose. She has not mentioned anything specific to me.”
“You received my telegram of this morning?”
“Saying that you would come at half-past one? Yes.”
“Well, I am lucky to have found you alone, for in what I have now to suggest to you, I do not wish my influence to appear – let it seem to be done entirely on your own impulse – but I have to beseech you, Mrs. Mordaunt, to return to Rigsworth this very day.”
“To-day? Rigsworth? But there are still a host of things to be seen to before the wedding – ”
“I know, I know. Even at the cost of putting off the wedding for a week, if you will do all that is to be done from Rigsworth instead of in London, you will profoundly oblige me. I had hoped that you would this do for me without requiring my reason, but I see that I must give it, and without any beating about the bush. Only give me first your assurance that you will breathe not one word to Violet of what I am forced to tell you.”
“Good gracious! What has happened?”
“Promise me this.”
“Well, I shall be discreet.”
“Then, I have to tell you that Violet has made an undesirable acquaintance in London, one whom it is of supreme importance, if our married life is to be a success, that she should see not once again. It is a man – No, don’t be unduly alarmed – I don’t for a moment suspect that their intimacy has proceeded far, but it has proceeded too far, and must go no farther. I may tell you that it is my belief that letters, or notes, have passed between them, and, to my knowledge, they have met at least once by appointment in Kensal Green cemetery, for I have actually surprised them there. Now, pray, don’t be distressed. Don’t, now, or I shall regret having told you. Certainly, it is a serious matter, but don’t think it more serious than it is – ”
“Violet?” breathed Mrs. Mordaunt, with a long face.
“The facts are as I have stated them,” proceeded Van Hupfeldt, “and when the knowledge of them came to me, I was at some pains to make inquiries into the personality of the man in question. He turns out to be a man named Harcourt.”
“Oh, you mean Mr. Harcourt, the occupier of the flat in Eddystone Mansions? Why, he was here yesterday. Violet herself told me – ”
“Here? Yesterday?” Van Hupfeldt turned suddenly greenish. “But why so? What did the man say?”
“Violet did not seem to wish to be explicit,” answered Mrs. Mordaunt; “but I understood from her that he is interested in Gwendoline’s fate.”
“He? By what right does he dare? He is interested in Violet! That is whom the man is interested in, Mrs. Mordaunt, I tell you! And do you know what this man is? I have been at the pains to discover – a scribbler of books, a man of notoriously bad character who has had to fly from America – ”
“How awful! But Mr. Dibbin, the agent, had references – ”
“References are quite useless. It is as I say, and I am not guessing when I assert to you that Violet has a penchant for this man – a most dangerous penchant, which can lead to nothing but disaster, if it be not now scotched in the bud. I demand it as my right, and I beseech it as a friend, that she never see him again.”
“Yet it is all most strange. I think you exaggerate. Violet’s fancies are not errant.”
“Well, say that I exaggerate. But you will at least sympathize, Mrs. Mordaunt, with my sense of the acute danger of your further stay in London at present – ”
“I think you make a mountain of a molehill, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” said Mrs. Mordaunt with some dryness, “and I am sorry now that I have promised not to speak with Violet on the subject. Of course, I recognize your right to have your say and your way, but as for leaving London to-day at a moment’s notice, really that can’t be done.”
“Not to oblige me? not to please me?” said he, grasping the old lady’s hand with a nervous intensity of gesture that almost startled her.
“We might go to-morrow,” she admitted.
“But if they correspond or meet to-night?”
“Well, you are a lover, of course; but you shouldn’t start at shadows. Here is Violet herself.”
“Leave us a little, will you?” whispered Van Hupfeldt, rising to meet the girl in his impulsive foreigner’s way, but, forgetting his wounded leg, he had to stop short with a face of pain.
“Are you ill?” asked Violet, and a certain aloofness of manner did not escape him.
“A small accident – ” he told over again the history of his fall from a horse which had never borne him. Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet stood at a table, turning over the leaves of a book, while Van Hupfeldt searched her face under his anxious eyes, and there was a silence between them, until Violet, taking from her pocket David’s first unsigned note to her, held it out, saying: “It was you who sent me this?”
“I have told you so,” answered Van Hupfeldt, gray to the lips. “Why do you ask again?”
“Because I am puzzled,” she answered. “I have this morning received a note in this same handwriting, unless I am very much mistaken, a note from a certain Mr. – ”
“Yes. Harcourt – Christian name David.”
“Quite so. David Harcourt – I can say it,” she answered quietly. “But how, then, comes it that your note and his are in the same handwriting?”
Van Hupfeldt’s lips opened and shut, his eyes shifted, and yet he chuckled with the uneasy mirth of a ghoul: “The solution of that puzzle doesn’t seem difficult to me.”
“You mean that you got Mr. Harcourt to write your note for you?” asked Violet.
“You are shrewdness itself,” answered Van Hupfeldt.
“I did not know that you even knew him.”
“Ah, I know him well.”
“Well, then, have you brought the certificates?” she asked keenly.
“Which certificates?”
“Which? You ask that? Surely, surely, you know that a certificate of marriage and one of birth were found in the flat by a Miss L’Estrange?”
“No, I didn’t know. How could I know?”
“But am I in a dream? I have made sure that it was upon some knowledge of them that you relied when you wrote in the unsigned note, ‘It is now a pretty certain thing that your sister was a duly wedded wife.’” And she looked at David’s letter again.
“No, I had other grounds. I needn’t tell you what, since they are not yet certain – other grounds. I have not heard yet of any certificates – ”
“Well, God help me, then!” she murmured, half-crying. “What, then, does Mr. Harcourt mean? He says in the note of this morning: ‘Mr. Harcourt has not been able to secure the certificates, but believes that Miss Mordaunt’s fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position to give her some information on the subject.’ What does that mean when you never even heard of the certificates?”
Van Hupfeldt, looking squarely now at her, said: “It means nothing at all. You may take it from me that no certificates have been found.”
Violet flushed angrily. “Some one is untrue!” she cried out.
“I fear that that is so,” murmured Van Hupfeldt, dropping his eyes from her crimsoned face.
There was silence then for a while.
“With what object did this Harcourt come to you yesterday, Violet?” asked Van Hupfeldt.
“He wished to obtain my mother’s authorization for him to spend one hundred pounds in buying the certificates from Miss L’Estrange’s servant.”
“Ah, that was what he said was his object. But his real object was slightly different, I’m afraid. I know this man, you see. He is poor, and not honest.”
“Not honest?”
“No, not honest.”
“You say such a thing?”
“But what is it to you? Why do you care? Why are you pale? Yes, I say it again, not honest! the miserable ruffian.”
“If he heard you, I think he might resent it with some vigor,” she said quietly.
“Why do you speak so strangely? What is it? Do you doubt what I tell you?” asked Van Hupfeldt.
“I neither doubt nor believe. What is it to me? I only feel ashamed to live in the same world with such people. If it was not to obtain my authorization to spend the one hundred pounds for the certificates, why did he come?”
“There were no certificates!” cried Van Hupfeldt, vehemently. “The certificates were an invention. What he really wanted was, not your authorization, but the one hundred itself. He hoped that when he asked for your authorization, you, in your eagerness to have the certificates, would produce the one hundred pounds, which to a man in his position is quite a large sum, whereupon he would have decamped, and you would have heard no more either of him or of your one hundred pounds. But, as you did not hand him the money, he now very naturally writes to say that he can’t get the certificates. I know the fellow very well. I have long known him. He comes from America, where he has played such ingenious pranks once too often.”
Violet sighed with misery, like one who hears the unfavorable verdict of a doctor. “Oh, don’t!” she murmured.
“I am sorry to offend your ears,” said Van Hupfeldt, looking with interest at his nails, for they had nearly dug into the palms of his hands a few minutes earlier, “but it was necessary to tell you this. This is not the sort of man who ought ever to have entered your presence. How, by the way, did you come to know him?”