CHAPTER X.

WHEREIN VENTRIS BLAKE FAILS

It was then that both Paul and Winifred recognised that, if ever they were to learn the secret of the Three Glass Eyes, that was the psychological moment. Everything, indeed, was favourable to them. Their presence on the far side of the wall was in every sense a complete secret. They could move freely without a sound betraying their appearance, and they had only to keep their gaze fixed on the holes that had been cut in between the laths and the plaster to command a perfect view of the interior of the millionaire’s garret.

None the less, when the strange woman’s shriek broke out with such startling suddenness directly the curtains rolled aside, and those Three Terrible Eyes began to turn with a quick rhythmic movement up and down, they looked instinctively to each other--dumb with horror and apprehension. After all, this weird creature, they were certain, from the blue, pinched look about her nostrils, was suffering, as she had explained to Blake, from serious heart-mischief, and had spoken the truth when she warned the financier that it needed but a small shock to bring about her death. Was it kind, therefore--was it right--aye, even was it human to let Ventris Blake torture her so sorely, even though the result might be they might learn enough from this diabolical ordeal to save Arthur Hudson from all that intolerable burden of shame that was being foisted on him?

They paused. There was, indeed, just one moment of absolute irresolution when their decision for good or for ill hung evenly in the balance, and when there came sharp cracking sounds like the noise of electric sparks flying to and fro, and of whizzing whirling batteries in use in the next apartment, and they caught the hum of a suppressed excitement as though they stood near the curtains of the operating theatre of a vast London hospital when the surgeons were busy with the knife and Death hovered closely over their heads. Then the sense of common humanity triumphed--as indeed it always does where the tempted are leal and loyal of soul.

“We must stop him,” interjected Winifred in a little, broken, tense whisper, and nodding assent, Paul was just about to step noiselessly through the caretaker’s empty rooms on to the landing where he could effect a surprise-appearance in the garret when both of them were astounded to hear the mysterious sounds cease with alarming suddenness, and yet a third voice in the next apartment--that of some bright, eager and impetuous lad!

Hastily they turned and peered again through the holes in the wall.

This time, to their intense surprise, they found that all at once an extraordinary transformation had been effected in the garret, the crimson curtain had once again fallen over that huge Shield of Black, and the reflector on the gas had now swung into its original position, leaving the room lighted on all sides with a soft yellow glow. Even the little red mahogany box stood closed and useless in its old place on the little gate-table, while the wires which connected it with some unseen but diabolical contrivance had dropped to the floor, and were now lying curled in a confused heap by the side of the fireplace.

And Blake--and the strange woman?

Blake had, it was seen, moved from his seat and was now standing near the doorway with his arm upraised, but this time his fury was not directed against the woman at all, who seemed to have sunk on her knees in front of her chair, burying her face in the cushions whilst her frame was distorted by convulsive sobs. It was the newcomer, a boy, that had excited his wrath--one of those sharp, intelligent news-lads of London who had come in covered with snow with a great bundle of papers under his arm, and who now gazed up fearlessly at the millionaire as though he knew him well, and, knowing him, defied him.

“How dare you?” began Ventris Blake hotly; “how dare you come into this room? I have half a mind to send for a policeman and to give you into custody, for you have not come to trade but to rob I am certain.”

“Oh, stow that,” said the boy carelessly shifting the burden of his papers from one arm to the other. “I ain’t dun anythin’ that matters. I jest ’ears a woman hollar, and in I pops, to find you a kind o’ magic lantern ghost show and a Mr. Sequah rolled into one. Besides, I ’ad a right to cum in. I am a friend o’ Miss Kaufmann there--”

“Nonsense,” retorted Blake, and he was just about to catch the lad by the collar and fling him out when he was stayed by the woman herself, who now rose from the chair, her face drawn and swollen with pain.

“He is quite right,” said she, as she stepped feebly towards the boy and tremblingly but confidingly took his arm. “He is a friend of mine, and a very good friend too.” Then turning to the millionaire: “You know we Kaufmanns, as a family, don’t trust you, Ventris Blake. You may have thought when I came here with you so willingly from Hart Street that I was fooled by your smooth tongue and oily promises. But I wasn’t--although I admit that you have just now given me a very terrible surprise.

“The fact is,” she added, moving still closer to the door, “I have always someone to watch over me these days, and this lad here, George Heritage, happens to be the one, for he has no doubt just arrived to relieve the private detective that always ‘shadows’ me. The detective agency I employ believes in the London street gamin, and with good reason, I think, don’t you?” And giving the millionaire a look charged with very deep meaning, she passed out of the garret and slowly descended the stairs to Queen Victoria Street, closely followed by Paul and Winifred who promptly took a hansom.

For a time, it is true, it seemed as though these two last would have to go the whole distance to Hart Street to come upon her and her sturdy juvenile protector. For one thing, snow had begun to fall rapidly, in thick, heavy flakes that shut out the faces of pedestrians from their sight and lay in solid masses on the pavement and on the clothes of the men and women they passed, rendering all more or less indistinguishable. For another, a biting wind had also sprung up, whirling the flakes madly up and down, but, as the hansom rattled into Holborn, Winifred clapped her hands with excitement for just then the breeze seemed to die down, the throng in the street to lessen, and, away near the top of Fetter Lane, she caught sight of Eleanor Kaufmann walking steadily onward.

A word to the driver, and the horse was whipped up, and a few moments later they succeeded in reaching a point level with the strange woman. They got out and paid off the hansom, and, taking her courage in both hands, as it were, Winifred Pontifex went and accosted the millionaire’s bitterest enemy--closely shadowed by Paul on the one hand and on the other by the news lad employed by the firm of private detectives.

“Have you forgotten me, Miss Kaufmann?” she asked, holding out her hand as though she would compel the other to be her friend. “If so, I at least remember you, and I want to thank you for your good advice about the people in St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage.”

The woman stopped and gazed searchingly at her. “It is a pity then that you did not take it, Miss Pontifex,” she returned, but all the same she fell into step with her. “If you had, you would have saved yourself that ugly spell of imprisonment you went through. As it was, just when I had arranged for one of the servants to be bribed to bring you to me, Mr. Renishaw slipped in and got you out. Although you must admit you did not deserve it.”

“I admit that freely,” retorted Winifred bravely. “Only I want you to understand my position. The truth is, I am absolutely bewildered by the network of crime and intrigue and duplicity into which I have fallen. Just three days ago I was one of the happiest girls in London. As far as I knew, I hadn’t an enemy--hadn’t a care--and yet look to-night where I stand? People tell me that the man I love has not only been married when he professed to be single, but has murdered the poor creature he is supposed to have wedded and deserted. My uncle and my cousin have turned against me, and I have been driven from the only home and friends I have, to a refuge which, after all, most friendless girls would take--the house of a clergyman who you tell me is a scoundrel and, while knowing Arthur is innocent, will not say the word that will clear his good name. Can you wonder, therefore, that I have fumbled and hesitated--”

“I don’t,” the woman cut in quietly but sweetly. “Only this business of the wedding and murder of poor Aimée Blake is so terribly far-reaching in its evil consequences that none of us could afford to look at the sentiment of our position but the fact. And the grisly fact is like the natural law of the spiritual world; evil sows evil, mistakes are mistakes, and bring in their train injustice as well as pain, and if you fail--well, your lover will be hanged,” and she threw out her hands with a gesture of complete certainty and finality.

“Indeed, I will not fail,” gasped poor Winifred choking down her terror and emotion. “I will be brave. I will be strong. I will do whatever I am bidden. Let me tell you that I was a witness of your recent interview with Ventris Blake.”

“And what did you discover?” cried the woman excitedly, stopping at once and facing her companion.

“It was all too bewildering, too incomplete,” muttered Winifred with a low wail. “I learned this much--Ventris Blake has a past of crime the facts of which you are acquainted with and which he would risk his fortune and his life to hide from the world that simply thinks he is one of the most wonderful financial magnates that ever sprang up in America and came to London to solidify their paper riches. What that past is I cannot even guess at. But oh! I do beg you in that we two are women, born to love and therefore alas! it seems to me born to carry the burdens of life and to suffer with our newly sensitised hearts, to tell me at least one thing you seem to know the truth of: who did that cruel crime on the Filey Road for which Arthur has been arrested?”

“And would you act on my word? Would you take up this pursuit of the guilty one for me? Would you explain to Mr. Renishaw how important it is not to lose another moment over the Three Glass Eyes, as we, who know, call them, but go at once to--”

Apparently, but only apparently, alas! in the excitement of the moment poor Eleanor Kaufmann stepped off the pavement on to the horse-road. By this time the snow had fallen to a depth of nearly an inch in thickness and had quite deadened the sounds of all passing cabs and omnibuses. The flakes too were continuing to descend so that the drivers had much difficulty in seeing any distance in front of them--and hence, before Winifred could stretch out a hand to drag her back, the woman swayed and was suddenly caught by the shaft of a quick-trotting hansom and hurled against the old-world entrance to Gray’s Inn.

In an instant Paul rushed up and raised her in his arms.

In an instant the inevitable crowd surged up and closed about them.

Some stranger struck a light and held it close to the woman’s features.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I am a doctor and I am anxious to render all the assistance I can to the poor sufferer.”

But even he drew back with a shudder. “Poor thing,” he cried. “I can do nothing here. She is quite dead.”

“Dead,” repeated a tall man in a whisper to himself, looking from his semi-military bearing like a policeman in plain clothes, but who was really a spy of Blake’s. “That is good. Then her secret dies with her.” And with a quick turn of the elbow he forced a passage through the crowd of terrified onlookers and tore off as hard as he could in the direction of the nearest telegraph office.

None the less Paul again bent over her and tried to find some sign of life in the frame that lay so still in the snow that continued falling lightly over her. Again there was a movement in the crowd, and another medical man appeared, and examined the corpse and shook his head. Only the gruff voice of a police sergeant raised Renishaw from his painful reverie. “Does anybody know the deceased?” he queried as, throwing off his waterproof cape, he bent down and reverently covered up those wide, staring drawn features of the dead.

The newsboy employed by the firm of private detectives, officiously pushed his way forward, and, taking advantage of the movement of the mob who pressed to hear what the lad had to say, Paul caught Winifred by the arm, and deftly drew her on one side, out of the shadow of the street lamps.

“It will never do for us to be mixed up in this accident,” he said in a low tone as they struck out in the direction of the Inns of Court Hotel. “We should have to give our names and addresses and to hang about London until the inquest is over, and, if police court proceedings follow, we might be detained over the business quite a fortnight, to say nothing of the unwelcome publicity we should get from the different newspapers that report the affair. The fact is--I must run down to Scarborough to-night as I promised. Arthur is there alone, without a friend, and hard as it may seem, we may have to pursue independent investigations about the murder of Aimée Blake. If this poor creature and Ventris Blake really discovered who killed her, we ought to be able to find out too: and, with that charge clear and Arthur free, the establishment of the poor old fellow’s innocence in the widest sense, may be easy enough.”

“But may I not come with you to help you?” Winifred queried with a sudden resolution. “It is true I am not Arthur’s wife yet, but in three months I should have been--and I might, loving him so dearly, be able to aid him much.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said Paul eagerly, anxious that she should not realise how difficult a task lay before them; “but I do not think you could really do anything there just now, except provoke your uncle. My idea was to leave detective matters to detective minds, and now that your situation at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage has proved such a delusion, you should return to Emperor’s Gate.”

“I can’t,” moaned Winifred, clasping her hands tightly to check her sobs, and then she stopped. All at once she saw the part Paul would have her play in this grim contest for her lover’s life--the part of a girl who loved and suffered and waited on, in hope that nothing could quench. Perhaps, in spite of Vera even, it might succeed; it might turn her uncle from an active partisan of Ventris Blake to a friend of the man she loved, one who was determined to rescue him and to put him right with the world.

Was it worth it? she asked herself. Could she not do more with her freedom? Then she caught Paul’s eyes fixed on her with a pleading expression that she felt she could not resist--but, womanlike, she temporised. “Then you think I did wrong to leave the flat when Vera said such dreadful things about Arthur?” she retorted, bending down to hide her face and pretending to brush some snow flakes off her cloak.

“Not wrong,” corrected Paul, “but I fear it wasn’t wise. You see in life none of us can afford to do what other people want. If we did, we should be in a series of endless difficulties, that inevitably would end in our ruin. That is true indeed, in matters of common, honest, every-day existence, and, if it is so in those affairs, how much more is it in manœuvres where you expect treachery and falsehood, and perhaps positive villainies?”

“Then, to apply your maxims,” pursued Winifred, “you believe Vera got up that quarrel specially with me to get rid of me for some ulterior, but wicked motive of her own.”

“I do,” returned Paul promptly.

“And if I had stayed I should have defeated that wickedness?”

“I hope so,” observed Paul gravely, “why not try it and see? At present, unkind as it may seem of me to remind you of it, you have no home. You have no relations to go to. Now, why not return to your uncle, and try to soften his heart towards Arthur and to nerve his brain to resist the infamous promptings of Blake, and the sly treachery of your cousin Vera?”

“And you think I could do good by that ruse?”

“I am certain of it.”

Winifred appeared to waver for a moment, but she had been won. “I will do it,” she cried brightly, holding out her hand.

Paul took the pledge. “And I,” he added, “will help you now, at once.” And turning sharply to the left, he led the way through Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the direction of The Temple Station, from which point, they were rapidly whirled to South Kensington.

Luckily, as Winifred entered the flat, her uncle happened to be crossing the hall. Now, if the reader has got the idea that this man was wholly bad, one object of this story has not been gained. Russell Langford was bad, but he was not wholly bad; he was more weak than wicked. Indeed, had his career taken a turn for success at the start--had he not had to wait until his heart was sick and his principles had died from starvation--he might have been a creditable member of the Middle Temple. But, as it was, he had seen shady tactics pay and shady tactics answer, and so perhaps whilst he was never exactly immoral, his life was non-moral, and he would never have grieved at his sister’s child being turned adrift had not Vera played him false afterwards.

As it was, however, his mind was softened now towards Winifred, and, with almost a creditable show of emotion, he now advanced towards her and took both her hands in his. “My child, welcome home,” he said with great graciousness. “And you too, Mr. Renishaw, I am glad to see you too, because you have brought her, and in spite of the hard things we said to each other on that fated night you came here to dine!”

“And my cousin?” questioned Winifred quietly removing her wraps. “Where is she?”

The lawyer’s face clouded. “Vera is out at present,” he said, “but left a note to say she would not be more than ten minutes late for dinner, but that I was to begin without her. Now you, my child, hurry up and come and take her place. I suppose you heard about that Jules Prendergast business,” he added, turning to them both, the gloom on his brow deepening, “most persons, I find, did. That is how rogues flourish--the right people never hear of their villainies until it is too late. Luckily, the man showed himself in his true colours before much harm was done, and is, I see from to-night’s papers, to marry that old curmudgeon, Lady Desborough, at an early date. But Vera deceived me about it, and relations between us are now very strained, so if Mr. Renishaw will stay to dinner, he may do us both a favour--greater than he can guess.”

“I wish I could,” said Paul frankly, “but the truth is, I am just off to Scarborough to back up Arthur Hudson.” And he looked the barrister straight between the eyes.

Almost instantly, the professional mask fell and hid all the man’s true feelings and expression--but not before Paul had seen something that made his heart give a sudden bound of joy. Just for one second he had caught a look of terror in the eyes of Russell Langford, real, sheer physical terror of the future and the revelations it might hold for them both! Then habit asserted itself, and he was once again the cool calculating man of the world.