CHAPTER XV

.

THE SECRET OF WYVERN TOWERS.

To return to Drelincourt. As has been said, he had the unstoppered vial to his lips, and was about to drain the contents, when the door was thrown open and Roden Marsh rushed into the room.

With one sweep of his arm he dashed the bottle from Drelincourt's hand, crying out: "Thank God, I am not too late!"

But Drelincourt gazed at him with reproachful eyes.

"Why have you thwarted me, Rodd?" he said.

"Because you would have made the most frightful mistake of your life; because there is no need of your sacrificing yourself for Gumley; because the real murderer has been discovered!"

Rodd got out all this in a breath and then dropped into a chair, panting from the haste with which he had come and the excitement which possessed him.

"The real murderer has been discovered!" Drelincourt gasped. "Then I----"

"Had nothing whatever to do with it, as Mrs. Jenwyn will tell you. She is here now, waiting impatiently to see you."

"But what has she----"

"That she will tell you herself. I will bring her at once;" And Rodd started up.

But Drelincourt laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.

"Wait," he said. "Give me a few moments. I can scarcely realize yet that--that I am not in another world."

It was ten minutes later that Mrs. Jenwyn and Drelincourt were left alone.

They had shaken hands, and, at her host's request, she had seated herself on a chair opposite his own, on the other side of the hearth.

Drelincourt lost no time in coming to the point.

"Roden Marsh tells me that you are the bearer of some very remarkable news," he said, "and, in point of fact, that your visit here tonight was on purpose to make it known to me. Is that so, may I ask?"

"It was that, and nothing else, which brought me to Fairlawn."

"I am given to understand that the information you wish to impart to me is concerned with the death of my first wife."

"That is so."

"You know already from Roden Marsh that I have all along laid her death at my own door. I had every reason for believing that I had killed her while in a somnambulistic state, but Roden tells me you assert most positively that my belief was utterly baseless."

"I do assert it, Mr. Drelincourt."

"Such an assertion presupposes a knowledge on your part of the guilty person."

Mrs. Jenwyn bowed.

"Are you prepared to name the person in question?"

"I am."

"Yes?"

Mr. Drelincourt sat up in his chair. A hectic spot burned in either cheek. His whole frame was a-tingle with excitement.

"The person to whom your first wife owed her death was none other than your half sister, Anna Drelincourt."

Slowly, clearly, and unhesitatingly fell the words. Mrs. Jenwyn had come purposely to declare the truth, and the more simply she put it the better.

"Great Heavens! You don't mean to say that!"

"I have told you the simple truth."

For a little while they sat in silence. Drelincourt seemed utterly overcome. Anna's name was the last he would have picked out with all the world to choose from. And yet----

"Go on, please. Tell me all you know of the dreadful affair," he said, after a time.

"Anna, poor girl, was no more mistress of her actions at the time it happened than you, Mr. Drelincourt, had reason to believe yourself to be master of yours. Just then she was laboring under one of her recurrent attacks of mania. At such times, as you are aware, in all her actions, thoughts, and habits, she became again as a child of ten.

"But there were occasions when darker symptoms would betray themselves, when I caught little glimpses below the surface which caused even me who knew her so well and loved her so dearly to tremble and ask myself what still darker fate the future might have in store for her. Of such symptoms, however, I said nothing to any one. Where would have been the use of my doing so? No one could help her, nothing more could be done for her than had been already done. The future must be left to care for itself.

"To come to the fatal morning.

"Anna and I slept in separate rooms, with a door between, which, by her wish, was always kept open at night. I may add that it was my practice to sleep with my bunch of keys under my pillow. On the morning in question I awoke earlier than usual, and while the day was still very young. There was upon me an uneasy sense of something being wrong.

"Instinctively I felt for my keys. They were gone. I was out of bed in an instant, and, crossing to Anna's room, I looked in. It was empty. Then I noticed that the outer door of my room, which opened into the anteroom, was slightly ajar. Only giving myself time to thrust my feet into a pair of slippers and to wrap a shawl round my shoulders, I started to look for Anna, dreading I knew not what.

"The first thing I saw was my bunch of keys hanging from the lock of the baize covered door, one of which had been used to open it. From the anteroom I passed into the corridor, the doors opening into which were all shut, and so went swiftly forward till I reached the gallery at the head of the great staircase. Still there was no sign of Anna.

"While hesitating what to do next, I perceived that the door of Mrs. Drelincourt's dressing room was partly open. It seemed to me a most unlikely thing that I should find Anna there, yet it was impossible to answer for her actions while she was as she was. Before descending to the lower parts of the house I would satisfy myself so far. (I knew that you, sir, were away at the Cot.) Pushing wider the dressing room door, I went in and then paused. A slight noise in the bedroom drew me forward; on the soft carpet my footsteps were inaudible.

"Peeping cautiously through the divided portière, I beheld Anna standing by Mrs. Drelincourt's bed, still grasping the stiletto with which she had just accomplished her dreadful purpose. Her face was towards me, and the expression it wore just then I can never forget; my dreams were haunted by it for months afterwards. While gazing thus at her handiwork, a low maniacal laugh broke from her lips. A moment later she tossed the stiletto away, and made for the portière. I had barely time to shelter myself behind a screen before she passed me, going straight out of the room.

"Scarcely had she disappeared before I was in the bed chamber. I quickly satisfied myself that Mrs. Drelincourt was dead. For her nothing could be done, and my one thought now was how I could best screen the culprit. When I got back to my rooms, I found her fast asleep in bed, a lovely color mantling her cheeks, and her lips parted with a childlike smile.

"That morning, I remember, she slept a little later than usual, but when she awoke she was as gay and as full of innocent fun as, at such times, she nearly always was. She had slain Mrs. Drelincourt (whom, I have reason to know, she secretly hated) in a temporary access of homicidal mania, but her memory, on awaking, retained no recollection of it whatever."

Mrs. Jenwyn ceased speaking, and Drelincourt was slow to break the silence which ensued.

At length he said: "You have succeeded in astonishing me more, Mrs. Jenwyn, than I was ever astonished before. But that is a point on which I will not expatiate at present. May I take it that you never said anything to my poor sister about what you had witnessed in my wife's bed room?"

"Not a hint nor a syllable about it ever passed my lips to her."

"So that she lived and died in utter ignorance of that terrible morning's work?"

Mrs. Jenwyn bowed affirmatively.

"From the bottom of my heart, madam, I thank you for your wise reticence. While it would have benefited nobody to have revealed what you knew to Anna, it would have distressed her infinitely, and, in all probability, would have tended to shorten her life. For her sake I shall always hold myself your debtor. But tell me this, please. In case Gumley, after his arrest twenty years ago, had been brought to trial and found guilty, as he has been now, what action would have been taken by you? Or should you have taken any at all?"

"I should have done at that time precisely what I have done today: I should have sought an interview with you, and have revealed to you everything that was known to me."

It was evident to Drelincourt that Mrs. Jenwyn had been actuated by precisely the same motives that had prevailed with himself.

To the widow it seemed that the time had now come when she might ask a question on her own account.

"And now, sir, that I have told you all this," she said, "will you kindly inform me, in return, what step it will be needful for me to take."

Mr. Drelincourt considered for a few moments. Then he said: "As it seems to me, the proper thing to do will be for both of us to put in an appearance in the morning before the Sunbridge magistrates, when you can depose on oath to the truth of what you have told me here tonight. What will happen after that I cannot tell. The joint wisdom of our friends on the bench will decide that point for us."

After a little further conversation, the housekeeper was summoned, and Mrs. Jenwyn given into her charge. Breakfast would be on the table at nine, her host told her, and at ten the brougham would be in readiness to drive them into Sunbridge.

The arrangement made by Drelincourt overnight was duly carried into effect next morning. The brougham conveyed Mrs. Jenwyn and him into Sunbridge, where they presented themselves before the bench of magistrates.

At Drelincourt's request he was sworn first. To recapitulate his statement would be superfluous, what he had to tell being known to us already. Then came Mrs. Jenwyn's turn, the nature of whose evidence is equally known to us. After that the magistrates retired to their private room in order to consult together, with the result that the case was adjourned for a couple of days to allow of their taking legal opinion in the interim, bail being accepted for the reappearance of Drelincourt and Mrs. Jenwyn.

At the adjourned inquiry no charge was preferred against the former, but the widow was committed for trial at the autumn assizes, on the count of being accessory after the fact to the murder of the first Mrs. Drelincourt. That such a charge, bearing in mind the peculiar character of the case, should involve any more severe penalty than a very limited term of imprisonment was what nobody believed or expected. Meanwhile, Mrs. Jenwyn was released on bail, the surety for her appearance at the assize bar being no other than Felix Drelincourt.

Long before this the latter had told everything to his wife. With what passed between them on the occasion we have nothing to do. This, however, may be said; that, woman-like, Mrs. Drelincourt thought far more of the lack of confidence in her as a wife which her husband's confession revealed than she did of anything else he had to tell her.

When the Sunbridge autumn assizes came on, Mrs. Jenwyn failed to put in an appearance, nor was she anywhere to be found. As a consequence, Mr. Drelincourt's bail was estreated, for which he was by no means sorry. He would rather have forfeited the amount twice over than have had the details of poor Anna's unhappy story related in a court of justice.

Some time before this Gumley had been released under an order from the Home Office.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Secret of Wyvern Towers, by T. W. Speight