CHAPTER II.

CONCERNS A MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE

By many readers of the present narrative, of course, the name of Russell Langford must still be regarded with a large amount of respect and gratitude. For some years, it is true, he was, like thousands of other men in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, nothing better than a briefless and a hungry barrister, but, unlike most of his rivals, he got his chance suddenly one day in a theatrical breach of promise case in which a certain noble lord had been more literary than discreet, and from that time work was showered upon him from all directions--and he now boasted of one of the biggest common-law practices in London.

Unkind critics, of course, said that this success was in no sense due to his merits. One set of them, the really weak and helpless and hopeless, contended that he had been the victim of luck, and owed everything he had to nothing lower than the stars which seemed to fight in their courses for him. The other set, the die-hards of legal life they might be called, contended that just before the Gaiety action came to a hearing he had inherited a fortune which had been spent largely amongst solicitors in need of pecuniary assistance in the most crafty yet effective fashion with the result that these debtors had been compelled to send all their business to him, and with the success seen.

At all events, it is tolerably clear that Russell Langford was in no sense a real popular favourite. His face was against him in that respect, for he had small beady black eyes that might, and did, often look cunning enough but never shone with any frankness or enthusiasm. His dark hair had turned to grey early in his career, but his bearing and words never suggested the man of character, only a certain set legal kind of cleverness that might have been picked up in the Hall of the Middle Temple as he dined with other and more resourceful companions.

In time his wife, who had been the daughter of the rector of a small village in Berkshire, died, and left him with a girl Vera, who now presided over the magnificent flat he had taken in Emperor’s Gate. At first sight Vera Langford suggested the wild vengeful kind of Jewish beauty, for her movements were quick and tempestuous, and her brown eyes and raven tresses shone with a fire that only gathered a glow from contrast with the slow carefully-calculated looks of her father.

In age she was just twenty-three, whereas her cousin, Winifred Pontifex, who had come to reside with her father when Colonel Pontifex of the Guards died and left his girl whom he had always loved most devotedly, most unexpectedly unprovided for, was only just twenty-one. Winifred, however, was a tall, stately-looking girl with golden hair and eyes of the most wonderful blue, sometimes soft and elusive like the most delicate forget-me-nots, at other times large and lustrous like the blue sky above them, and often as unfathomable.

Arthur Hudson who was dark, of middle height, with a long moustache, and, in many ways, a strong contrast to her in looks, had met her first of all at the Hunt Ball in Stamford, and had promptly fallen in love with her. Happily, in this instance, the course of true affection ran quite smoothly; on both sides the match was considered very suitable; and a formal engagement had been entered on, with the result that the date fixed for the marriage was now only three months distant--in the week after Easter.

Altogether it was a charming picture which Winifred presented that night as Arthur and Paul crossed the drawing-room to greet her, clad as she was in a soft girlish gown of dove-grey with black ribbon, and bending playfully over a King Charles spaniel, the pet of the household. Her voice, too, was low and soft, and yet so clear that it seemed instinct with sincerity, purity and truth.

Accustomed as he was to these meetings, even Paul turned away his head as he saw the fervent hand clasp of the two lovers, and the great affection that shone so proudly from the eyes of both. Something in his own heart seemed to stand still just then; almost a feeling of awe came upon him; and then a knowledge of his own desolation so keen, so poignant that, as Winifred turned to him, his boyish features became suddenly quite haggard and drawn.

Another moment, and he was again the smooth-spoken, careless, cynical man of the world, rallying Russell Langford about a case in which he had that day vainly tried to get £1,000 damages against a newspaper for a man who admitted he had done “a bit of dog stealing,” but didn’t see “any call” for anybody to mention it in public!

Vera came in soon afterwards, and a move was made to the dining-room, but not until the three men sat together over their wine did Arthur mention his strange visitor, and then he did it like this:

“By the way, Langford,” he said raising his glass and slowly sipping his port, “I had a curious client to-day, a man who has searched all London over for a particularly shaped room, and has got one at last in Queen Victoria Street of all places in the world, practically a garret for which he will pay nearly £5 a week rent. Says he knows you too, and is coming to see you!”

“Indeed,” observed Langford also lifting his glass; “is it on business, for which a meeting with a madman like that will be rather novel, or on friendship?”

“Oh, on friendship. True to tell, he rather boasted of his intimacy with you.”

“Well, he needn’t. I have no intimates, not one,” retorted the barrister rather pompously. “A man in my position, the repository of a thousand secrets affecting the good names of a thousand persons, cannot afford the luxury of an intimate.”

“Well, at all events, Ventris Blake thinks he’s on those terms with you. Indeed, he is coming to see you!”

To Arthur and Paul’s intense astonishment, the wine-glass fell from the lawyer’s hand with a crash, and he rose from the table, his face deathly white.

“That company promoter Ventris Blake coming to see me as a friend,” he muttered. “Oh! nonsense! nonsense!”

Then catching the look of surprise on his guests’ faces, he tried to recover himself. “I mean,” he added lamely, “I don’t want him to come. It--it must be a mistake. We knew each other once--yes, but we agreed that we would never meet again. We have killed the past. Friendship now is impossible!” And, as though to assure himself of the truth of his own words, he lifted the brandy-decanter, poured out a stiff dose and, without waiting to add any water, gulped the fiery draught down.

“Well, perhaps, he spoke in jest,” said Arthur flushing, for all this mystery had begun to weigh rather heavily upon him. “He may have done it to get my good opinion. I knew he was very anxious that I should do as he wanted.”

“Then don’t,” said Langford sharply. “I can tell you this from five years’ hard and bitter and cruel experience of this man, that nobody ever did him a favour who did not regret it most bitterly. Everything he touches is fortunate for himself; for all others it spells ruin, stark, staring ruin.”

“It certainly did for his wife,” cut in Paul quietly, “for we had a telegram at _The Moon_ offices this afternoon to say that she had been murdered on an open road midway between Filey and Scarborough.”

Russell Langford’s face now was a study in horror. He tried to speak--but the shock had been too much. He could not articulate. Luckily just then a tap on the door made itself heard, and a servant entered, and with a great effort he recovered the semblance of his composure.

“A gentleman, sir, to see you,” the maid announced, “most important. He apologises, but says the affair is so urgent he can’t wait,” and she handed her master a card on which Arthur and Paul saw at a glance was inscribed the hated name of Ventris Blake.

“Tell him I won’t see him,” gasped the lawyer, livid with rage and astonishment. “Tell him we have killed the past, friendship is impossible,” and he pushed out his hands helplessly--as though he would save himself from a meeting he much dreaded by the mere repetition of that mystic formula.

“Very good, sir,” said the maid, and she turned to leave, but just then the door was thrust open and Ventris Blake himself marched in.

“I heard what you said, Langford,” he said coldly, “but you know well enough it’s all no use. A trifle like that won’t stop me. I have need of you, and you have got to answer me fairly and help me frankly.

“No doubt,” he went on calmly, “these gentlemen here have told you that my wife has been found murdered. It is quite true. The police have been to me already, and have made of me all manner of impertinent enquiries, not as to a possible criminal but as to what I do, and have done, so much so, in fact, that I took one of them by the scruff of the neck, and shot him through the window into the area.

“Now you’ve got to stand up for me,” Blake concluded. “The fact is, I want you to go down with me to-night by the late train to York to attend the inquest at Scarborough to-morrow to represent me and other relatives of the deceased, and to show these official ruffians that I am a citizen of a great Republic and they must treat me with respect.”

“Oh that’s absurd. It’s a solicitor’s work. The entire legal profession would laugh at me,” spluttered Langford as he motioned the servant to leave. “It’s--it’s like taking a Nasmyth hammer to crack a walnut. I really can’t do it.”

“Well, you must,” persisted Blake, fixing two cold dark scrutinising eyes on his. “I have decided you must--and you must!”

“That’s hardly the way to talk to a gentleman of the legal eminence of Mr. Langford, is it?” chivalrously struck in Arthur Hudson, who saw that for some utterly inexplicable reason his betrothed’s uncle was now absolutely frightened and nerveless. “Believe me, barristers are not to be approached even by financial magnates like yourself in the rough and ready fashion of the miners’ camp.”

“Indeed!” said Ventris Blake, with an open sneer. “However the business is between Mr. Langford and myself, and it calls for no outside interference.”

“Yes, yes, it does,” eagerly interposed the lawyer. “Hudson explain to him that his demand is preposterous. Shew him out.” And he attempted to slip past the financier, but the man turned swiftly and barred his way to the door.

“No, no, Russell Langford,” he said in those full, deep, decisive tones of his. “You musn’t go until I have finished. No doubt this young man Hudson doesn’t want you to hear my story, but you shall: you must, for it affects him quite as much as it does myself!”

“What the deuce do you mean, Blake?” put in Paul, who had often interviewed the magnate for _The Moon_, and knew him exceedingly well. “Has your trouble turned your head? Have you gone mad? Why you know you have never seen Hudson in your life prior to this afternoon.”

“I admit _I_ haven’t seen him before this day,” returned Ventris Blake meaningly, “but somebody else has--my wife!”

“Your wife,” stammered Arthur, crushing down the horror that had again risen unbidden in his heart. “Never! Never, I swear!”

“Then look at that, Russell Langford,” said the millionaire, quietly placing a hand in an inner pocket and producing a carefully-sealed document which Renishaw took and unfolded and then passed to the lawyer. “Read it, and let me explain to you how I found it. At the request of the police and with their assistance I have just searched my wife’s private desks and boxes, including her jewel case. In a secret drawer of the last I have discovered that,” and he pointed significantly to the paper.

“What is it?” muttered Hudson hoarsely. “Tell me quickly--how can it concern me, a stranger.”

“I am afraid it does though,” said Paul Renishaw gently, yet he too was sorely stricken, “for it is a copy of a certificate of a marriage between you, Arthur Hudson, house and estate agent of Cheapside and of 7a Kensington Gore, where you live, and Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne of Meissonier Studios, Peterborough, artist, which was celebrated at the Registry Office in Peterborough five years ago!”

“But who was this Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne?” gasped Langford, with a great effort recovering himself.

“That lady was the one who has just been killed,” replied Ventris Blake. “I thought she was my wife but clearly she was the wife of the man in front of me, your bosom friend, Arthur Hudson.”

“The whole business is an abominable lie,” Hudson cried, throwing back his shoulders and boldly facing his persecutor. “I swear by all that I hold most sacred that I have never spoken to, never even seen, this Aimée Blake or Burgoyne. Some cruel fiend must have personated me.”

“Prove it,” said Ventris Blake coldly, but his tones exhibited all the scorn and incredulity of a man who had no doubt of his guiltiness.

“Yes, prove it,” repeated Russell Langford, like all weak men turning on the friend who had made a fruitless effort to save him to divert all attack from himself. “Remember I owe a duty to society and to my own household, and until you have clearly established your innocence it will be impossible for you to have further communication with my niece Winifred Pontifex.”

Winifred Pontifex! The mere sound of that dearly-loved name brought back to Arthur’s mind all the charm and the magic of the sweet intercourse he had held with her since that fateful ball at Stamford, and with a great groan he could not stifle, he suddenly realised how terrible a barrier would be raised between them now Ventris Blake had produced this document and dragged him right into the centre of a most squalid murder mystery.

For a minute even doubts of Winifred--or her faith in him in this terrible hour of perplexity and shame and darkness, of her love, aye, even of her constancy under this cloud of misunderstanding and suspicion--caught his heart in a grip like iron, and made his lips white and his cheeks tremble.

“Oh Langford,” he wailed, in a voice broken in emotion, “you cannot mean that! Think for an instant. It suggests I am a villain!”

“And if he does,” quietly cut in Paul Renishaw who had not hitherto spoken, “I can inform him that, although you and I, dear old chap, will soon make him eat his words, he is still a mean cur!”

“Enough of this,” retorted Langford hotly. “I am not to be brow-beaten. I have said what I have said, and I am not the man to depart from it.”

“No, you’re not,” sneered Paul, moving towards the door, “unless Ventris Blake wants it. Still, I tell you flatly Arthur Hudson is not going under whatever the pair of you may contrive to fix upon him at the inquest on that poor creature at Scarborough. He has got a straight life and a clear conscience on his side, and it will be odd to me if those don’t win, even in a wretched commercial Yankee driven country like this!

“Come Arthur,” he went on more gently, stretching out a hand and drawing his old friend towards him. “_I_ believe in you. _I_ know that all this business is some put-up job on somebody’s part which only needs time and patience to unravel. At first, I admit, even my stout and clear faith in you was shaken--but a moment’s reflection told me that the charge was absurd.”

“Even though I know the two witnesses to the ceremony, and can put my hands on them any day I like,” taunted Ventris Blake.

“Aye, even though you do know the two witnesses,” snapped Paul, “for that is just the reason why I should not believe a thing they uttered.”

Without a word, however, Arthur turned and marched out of the drawing-room. The shock of this awful accusation seemed to have left him cold and numb, so that he did not perceive how Paul slipped into the drawing-room and beckoned Winifred out, and finally got the poor girl (who was still unconscious of the dreadful blow that was to be dealt at her happiness) to put on a shawl and to follow him into the square in front of the flats. Then however he brought the two of them face to face, and with something uncommonly like a muttered prayer for their good understanding and happiness, he slipped behind some bushes and was instantly lost to sight.

Then, and only then--did Arthur rally under the weight of the accusation that had been aimed against his reputation so swiftly and so mysteriously, and, pressing Winifred’s arm in his, he told her bravely and simply of this foul treacherous thing that had risen up out of the unknown to ruin him. When, however, he first mentioned Ventris Blake’s name, he felt Winifred start and tremble and then she tried to speak, then checked herself, obviously to wait until he had drawn to an end.

Marvelling, but now quite self-contained, he went on with the terrible disclosures of the millionaire, and he did not stop once until he had faithfully repeated to her all that had passed between them up to the point of his following Paul out of the room.

Still who can measure the capacity of a woman’s heart for suffering, and for sympathy, and for a brave unswerving loyalty that not even a charge that strikes at the root of their own honour can pierce or soften? Surely it is a special gift of the Divine to men, to help them bear the burden and the anguish of the day’s task, and fail not under their own load! Certainly even Arthur, who knew Winifred so well, expected that his tale would momentarily shake her faith in him, and that, for some good and sweet and gracious reason, it might be necessary to submit himself for a time to some gentle cross-examination on her part as to the past, and the possibilities of error.

Only, as it was, nothing of the sort happened. In some extraordinary, even miraculous fashion, Winifred seemed to divine the truth of his position, and to appreciate points that he had only dimly indicated in his hot and eager and impetuous account of the terrible interview which he had just had with the barrister and the financier.

“Indeed, darling,” said she slowly and simply. “I quite understand that this marriage never took place, that you have never met this poor creature, Aimée Burgoyne, and that it is all some hideous error which will have to be disentangled in God’s own good time. Truth to tell, that is not giving me any real concern in the matter, except that my whole heart goes in sympathy to you for what you have suffered this night, and may still have to suffer before you stand out before the world as a most sorely-tried and wronged man. No, my mind runs in another direction. Why has this plot been put upon you at all? I have thought and thought whilst you have spoken, and it has just occurred to me that perhaps I can supply the reason!”

“I would to heaven that you could, dearest,” replied Arthur earnestly, but his voice shewed no real belief in her words for, bachelor like, he had yet to learn the wonderful spaces to be bridged by a woman’s intuition.

“Arthur,” proceeded Winifred slowly, “did I ever tell you that I too have met this man Ventris Blake?”

“By Jove, you didn’t,” he cried, instantly all eagerness.

“Well, I did--that time I saw you first at the Hunt Ball at Stamford you must know that a lot of private dances were given during that fortnight, and at one of them, given by Lady Desborough at The Towers, Ventris Blake was present, and paid me so much odious attention that I went to my uncle, Russell Langford, who was present, and complained of being ill and so was promptly driven home.”

“But the brute was married!” exclaimed Arthur, clenching his hands tightly to keep down his rage and excitement. “He had no right to pay you any attention.”

“I know, dearest,” said Winifred sadly. “Unfortunately, men of the stamp of Ventris Blake don’t trouble about sacred obligations like those. They are rich, and they fancy with wealth they can do anything they like. There are too many men of that stamp in the ball rooms of England.

“As it turned out though,” she proceeded swiftly, “he was not content with the snubbing I gave him during the dance. He ventured to call at the Stamford Hotel where we were staying, and asked to see me on the plea that he was an old friend of my father, and then, when I refused, he actually sent me a lot of flowers which I took to my uncle who returned them at once!”

“I should think so! I wonder he didn’t give him a horse-whipping in the bargain,” hotly ejaculated Arthur. Then all at once he remembered Russell Langford’s own craven fear of this adventurer, and bit his lip.

“He took more stringent measures than those even,” added poor Winifred, who little knew the extent of the intrigue into which both of them had fallen. “He gave orders for us all to pack at once, and so we came straight away to Emperor’s Gate. My cousin Vera, I remember, was horribly annoyed at this, and that reminds me of another thing I ought to confide to you. Do you know that this man Ventris Blake and Vera are very intimate friends?”

“Intimate friends!” repeated Arthur incredulously. “Are you quite certain?”

“Quite,” persisted Winifred with a grave inclination of the head. “They meet very often at Lady Desborough’s town house in Prince’s Gate, and once when Vera wanted to make quite a lot of money on the Stock Exchange he helped her to do so, for she shewed me the cheque; it was for £3,500.”

“But he has not troubled you again?”

“Not personally,” said Winifred reluctantly, “but indirectly. You see with Vera such a staunch champion of his, I am bound to hear a lot about him, and indeed she has done her best to make me go round to Lady Desborough’s to meet him again on the plea that he is ‘such fun,’ but I have always stoutly refused to encounter him. Then when he sent me a diamond bracelet worth quite a lot of money with a card ‘From an old friend of Colonel Pontifex,’ I wrote him the sharpest letter I could pen, and told him that you as my future husband could provide me with all or any jewellery I might need. But Vera has been very nasty since, and,” with something uncommonly like a sob, “I have--have looked forward eagerly to the time when I was no longer dependent on her and could leave Emperor’s Gate in peace!”

“Please God the time won’t be long now,” returned Arthur gravely, bending over her hand and pressing it, for this news of Ventris Blake’s villainy had steadied him like nothing else, and now he saw stretched out before him a conflict in which no quarter of any kind could be given. “For the present I fear I must obey your uncle’s command and hold no communication with you until my good name is quite clear, for if I do, injury may be inflicted on you.

“None the less, dear heart,” he added quickly, “it cannot be long before this scoundrel will be unmasked. Let us both be brave and patient, and I am certain all will come right in the end. Now, run in before your absence is discovered. Good-bye! Good-bye!”

And so with a quick embrace they parted--Winifred to hide her grief in the seclusion of her bedroom, Arthur to find Paul, and to drive rapidly homeward to concert plans to meet the scheme that now, alas! threatened to ruin very quickly and completely the happiness and good name of both lovers.