CHAPTER XXIII.

OUR SINISTER WORLD

Soon after ten o’clock that night Mr. Ashe called at the Grosvenor Hotel, and, inquiring for Mrs. Wilcox, was at once shown up to Etta’s sitting-room.

The handsome woman, in a pale-mauve and silver dinner-frock, was reclining upon a couch near the fire reading the evening paper.

“I’ve seen some of the prices fetched at the sale,” were her first words as her ex-butler entered.

“Yes, fairly high, eh?” he said. “But how did you get on with Rupert?”

“Rotten,” she replied, suddenly raising herself and taking a cigarette from the onyx box beside her.

“What do you mean?” asked the man, who did not take off his overcoat, but cast himself into a chair after helping himself to a drink from the decanter on the sideboard. “Why rotten?”

“I really can’t tell you, my dear Albert, but I’ve one of my psychic feelings that all is not running as we expected it. There’s some grit in the wheels of the machine somewhere.”

“H’m! You’re nervy! That’s evident! You women are so damned unreliable, and you rat when it comes to a real pinch,” he growled, lighting a cigarette which he took from her box.

“I’m not nervy at all, you fool! Only I have an intuition that things don’t go as they should, and they won’t.”

“Funnily enough, as a matter of fact, I’ve the same notion, my dear girl.”

Then he told her of the incident of the telegraph boy’s sudden seizure at the Guest House and the sensation it had caused.

“The paper says nothing about it.”

“I suppose a mere boy who has a fit doesn’t matter to the papers. But there you are--another remarkable and inexplicable circumstance. I’m getting the wind up, I don’t mind telling you!”

“What! that you’ll also be stricken down?” laughed Etta, flicking her cigarette-ash into the fire and glancing up at him with those magnetic eyes of hers. “You’re a bit of a coward, my dear Albert, after all!”

“I’m not. But how are we going to put these turtledoves apart? That’s what I want to know, and that’s what concerns us both,” said the adventurer who had played so many parts successfully on both sides of the Atlantic. “If we don’t act very soon, and with a strong and relentless hand, then the wedding-bells at St. Margaret’s will be playing a requiem to all our hopes and happy aspirations. Oh, it is all too fearful for words! What does old Gordon Routh say?”

“Gordon! He’s a complete wash-out! A fine old sportsman across the tables, I admit, but a white-livered old fossil when there is anything really serious doing,” replied the adventuress, with whom so many men--and girls, too--had had bitter reason to regret acquaintanceship.

Bearing the name of one of England’s oldest earldoms, she had not so long ago been a bedecked decoy of the supergang of trans-Atlantic card-sharpers, blackmailers, and confidence tricksters, and yet only a year before in London she had presented two girls at Court and held three big balls at Claridge’s. How strange our everyday world has now become--our world where honest folk of both sexes are elbowed out by food profiteers, _escrocs_, and adventuresses.

Truly our octopus London is increasingly amazing. Its greedy struggle for Press notoriety at so much a paragraph is astounding, while its open immorality is fast approaching that of the ancient orgies of Rome. Yet nobody cares.

The seasons come and go, “Little” and “High,” in which innocent girls of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are ever sacrificed upon the altar of Mammon--with perhaps a big car thrown in. The invention of the motor-car introduced a new medium for immorality, for the young man’s car is usually a bird-cage, while the rich old man cages his young bird in its beautifully upholstered interior.

The schemers sat silent, smoking, and looking into the glowing fire.

It was upon the tip of Ashe’s tongue to mention having seen that mysterious man of execrations who had given the name of Bettinson. Being a wise person, he resolved to keep his knowledge to himself.

From without, in the rainy night came the noise of taxis and throbbing motor-buses in the station square, that racket and shouting which is always consequent upon railway arrivals and departures.

The comfortable Grosvenor, the jumping-off place for the Continent, patronized by worldly London and the provinces, is a place where, in the hall, everyone of note meets everyone else of note going to and fro to the ends of the earth. The square hall, in which laughter is rife all day and hot tears are shed morning and evening, is the common meeting-ground for those journeying eastward, whether to Paris, India, or Japan.

Ashe glanced at the green marble timepiece and rose. He was uneasy and did not concentrate.

“Going so soon?” Etta asked. “Why? I’m alone. Do remain and keep me company.”

“No, my dear Etta. I’m awfully sorry, but I have a special appointment,” replied the man. “When you’ve seen Rupert again let me know at once. Have you heard from Wyndcliffe?”

“I had a letter last night from Boston. He’s on some wild-goose financial scheme, as usual. It seems that somebody named Schendel is buying up all the candy stores in the States, and wants Wyndcliffe to be chairman of the company. A big swindle, I expect, like that Stream Line Motors, of Detroit. Personally, I don’t trust any of those financial propositions. I like to see cash down on the table,” she said.

Then, tapping her cigarette, in its long tortoise-shell holder, she looked up at him with half-closed, alluring eyes, and laughed.

“I agree, Etta, dollar bills or treasury notes are far better than being left by these share-pushers to nurse the baby.”

“Oh! Let’s discuss the future,” she said impatiently.

“Well, what about it?” Ashe asked.

The pretty woman shrugged her shapely shoulders.

“You haven’t rid yourself of your incubus yet,” he said, regarding her.

“Oh, that ass, Rupert! I don’t know really what to do.”

“You surely do. I’ve told you what to do a hundred times, my dear girl.”

“No! Not that!” she cried frantically, with a look of horror on her face. “Not that!”

“Well, you want to discuss the future,” the broad-shouldered man went on. “As far as I can see, we are both completely in the cart with our assets each hour slipping away from us. Think of to-day’s sale--thousands of pounds profit which ought to be ours. And they haven’t yet touched the really good things--tapestries or pictures.”

“I agree, my dear Albert. It’s all rotten and very disappointing.”

“You’ve only yourself to blame, Etta. You haven’t yet got rid of Rupert, and also you’ve let the turtledoves coo too long.”

The woman stirred uneasily from her couch, and, tearing her cigarette-end out of its holder, flung it viciously into the fire.

“Give me a drink,” she said, and obediently he crossed and mixed one, afterwards watching her as she drank it.

“We must have money, Albert,” she said, after taking a good gulp of her brandy-and-soda.

“Certainly we must,” replied the man. “You’ve never been squeamish in the old days, eh?” And he laughed lightly. “You’re a really wonderful woman, Etta, when you put your fine wits to work.”

“Bah! Don’t flatter me,” she replied in a hard, determined voice. “Let us both face the music and just discern a way out,” she went on. “If Sibell died, then all the estate would go to Gordon Routh and----”

“And old Gordon would chuck it all away at Monte in a single season,” Ashe interrupted.

“Agreed. But supposing nothing happened to Sibell--except what might possibly occur in that accursed old house of hers, and there one never knows what might take place--and she married Gussie Gretton? What then?”

“Easy as melting ice,” laughed Ashe. “Gussie is the biggest rotter I know, immensely rich, for his father made hundreds of thousands with his chain of cheap tailors’ shops--reach-me-down, ready-for-service shoddy suits sold at big profits. His headquarters was a brilliantly-lit shop in the Whitechapel Road, where he began life in a back room, a Pole whose name was Grabov. His son, who has washed his hands of all sartorial dealings, is a wealthy and eligible bachelor, a member of the Bachelors’ and White’s, with a flat in Park Lane.”

“I only wish I could see them marry,” exclaimed Etta wholeheartedly.

“We’d have twenty thousand to divide at the very least. Perhaps more. I’d try and push up a bit more of course. Gussie is awfully keen on her, as we both know.”

“Then let’s make another effort, and try to do it,” said the woman.

“You can, my dear Etta, but I can’t. Use all your woman’s wits and your influence to get Otway back to his beloved practice once and for all. Get old Gordon into our swim, as there’s certainly something for him out of it, My great, God-fearing aunt! Fancy letting a cool ten thousand slip through one’s fingers. It’s really criminal!”

“Quite so. But I want to put a serious question to you, Albert,” said the woman, rising to her feet and facing him earnestly. “Have you any idea--or even any suspicion--of the basis of that extraordinary evil which asserts itself at the Guest House? To what can it be due? Now, tell me the truth, for we are both afloat on the same tide, and I admit I’m mystified.”

“I tell you the honest truth,” replied the man who was her associate. “I am just as mystified as you are. I can’t see any solution of the problem. Why should that poor telegraph boy fall down in a fit to-day, for example? The whole affair is most amazing, astounding, and uncanny. You see, even Otway was taken ill, yet no woman has ever been affected! That to me is the most puzzling point in the whole weird affair.”

“If women were affected, then perhaps Sibell might--well, feel its sinister influence,” the woman said after a pause. “The caretaker died after the incantations of that mysterious old stranger, who is apparently the unknown evil genius of the place.”

“I confess that it’s all beyond me,” Ashe declared. “I’m not usually nervy, as you well know. But I admit that I shouldn’t like to enter that accursed house. I’m a bit too sinful perhaps”; and he grinned.

“Nor should I,” laughed Etta grimly, while the man drained his glass and announced that he really must go.

“Look here, Etta,” he added, taking up his hat and buttoning his black evening overcoat. “At all hazards get rid of Rupert. Send him back, bury him, do whatever you like with him. But while he’s here a danger exists every moment--the danger of him finding out that you’re Wyndcliffe’s wife. It isn’t a savory theme, is it?”

“And you’re going to leave me to face everything, eh?” she cried suddenly, her eyes flashing.

“Not at all, my dear girl. I’m going to work at once in our mutual interests as I’ve always done. You are an English peeress, and I’m only your abusive butler. Funny, isn’t it? How the people in the States would laugh if they knew how you and I have pulled the legs of exclusive London Society, and you at Court too!” And he added: “Well, good-night, Etta, dear. We’ve always been pals, and we always will remain so”; and then, suddenly taking her slim, white hand, he bent over it with a studied courtesy and kissed it.

“Good-night, Mrs. Wilcox,” he said, laughing. “But do get a move on and in the direction we are agreed. Get the lovers back and play chess with them--as you’ve done before”; and he went out.

Otway and Sibell had delayed their return to London for a week, for he had arranged with his locumtenens to carry on until the date of his arrival back at Golder’s Green. To both it was a great disappointment that Lord Wyndcliffe’s beautiful villa was not to be reopened that season. On several occasions they had been up to it, and had taken tea upon the great, broad terrace, with its climbing flowers and gorgeous views of the green Estrelles and the ever-changing Mediterranean, sometimes sapphire-colored, sometimes grey, or at other times the deep color of lapis lazuli. The two old French servants, husband and wife, had served them with tea, and in the gardens they had picked the orange-blossoms--emblem of marriage--and the violets, daffodils, and yellow mimosa to carry back to the hotel. Life for them was certainly one of exquisite bliss, their hearts beating ever in unison, and their own little world confined to their own whims and pleasures of the moment.

One day, having been over to the Municipal Casino at Nice to an afternoon dance, Sibell, on her return in the evening, suddenly discovered that she had lost a little chain-bracelet set with turquoises, a birthday present from her mother in her school-days.

Next morning Brinsley left to go back to Nice to try and recover it from the lost-property office at the Casino; when, on descending into the lounge, Sibell met a girl she instantly recognised, Marigold Ibbetson, one of her old schoolfellows at Cheltenham College, whom she had not seen for three years.

Their meeting was cordial, and they took their _petit déjeuner_ together.

“I’ve been here over a week,” laughed the auburn-haired, rather good-looking girl. “Auntie is not very well to-day, and she’s not coming down till luncheon. I thought it was you, but only last night I asked the concierge your name, and he told me. Well, and how has the world been treating you, old girl?”

“Oh, not so badly. I’ve been travelling a lot,” Sibell replied. “My aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, who has a villa here, was to meet me, but she hasn’t turned up--gone to America instead.”

“Meet you, eh?” laughed the slim, well-dressed girl. “You mean both of you--you and your fiancé?”

“How did you know?” inquired the girl quickly.

They had just left the hotel and were out in the flower-garden.

“Because I’ve watched you, and it is obvious. I congratulate you, Sibell. Who is he?”

Her friend told her, speaking enthusiastically as may be well imagined. And as they walked down the gravelled drive to the road, they were joined by a tall, long-limbed, plain girl, to whom Sibell was introduced. Her name was Moyna Lascelles, who had been at Cheltenham after Sibell had left.

As they took a pleasant stroll along the Croisette together, Moyna suddenly turned to Sibell and congratulated her upon her engagement to Brinsley Otway.

“As a matter of fact, I know Brinsley quite well,” the girl said. “When he was at the Hospital School he was an intimate friend of my brother Fred, and very often he spent week-ends with us at Thames Ditton. But please don’t say a word, because of a very tragic circumstance. Promise me you won’t, eh?”

“Yes, I’ll promise of course,” Sibell said.

“Well, one evening he took out to a dance at a riverside hotel a girl named Peterson, who lived opposite in a house-boat with her parents, who were music-hall artistes. On the way back the boat capsized, and the poor girl was drowned. He swam to save her, but the current proved too strong, and he narrowly escaped with his own life.”

“He has never told me that,” Sibell said.

“Perhaps not,” laughed the girl. “That’s why Brinsley is such a good fellow. My pal Jack Cranston, the cross-channel air-pilot, who is here with my mother, is his friend, and he tells me what a fine fellow he is. I hear he’s a good dancer too.”

Sibell only smiled at hearing such laudation of her fiancé. It comforted and gratified her, as it certainly would any girl whose lover was her ideal. And what girl of any class exists who has no ideal of a gallant and strong lover who will hold her in his arms and fight for her until death?

Men may be deceivers ever, but a woman’s heart, once won, is the great and incomparable gem which crowns human life, true and unbending in adversity or prosperity until the parting by death.

Alas! that men are so egotistical, so self-confident, that they so frequently leave women to weep over the burden of their overbearance, and their illogical misunderstanding of woman’s heart.