CHAPTER XL.

A LETTER FROM LARRY

Diana had gone home--it was queer how in a few days she had come to regard Larry’s flat as her home--before dinner. Her work was done, and there remained only the stern, grim processes of arrest to be accomplished. At any moment she expected the telephone bell to ring and to hear Larry’s voice telling her that the brothers were under lock and key.

She had a book on her lap, but she was not reading. Her nurse and chaperon was sewing in her room. Sunny was standing outside the door of the flat, which was ajar, discussing certain matters with Louie, the lift girl, in a low voice. Probably Sunny had secrets of his own, but it was certain that the discovery of a person who agreed with him in most of the things he said and most of the statements he made had fascinated this agreeable man.

Diana sat, her head bent, her hand softly caressing her throat, and her mind was on the future rather than upon the tragic past. She rose once and went into Sunny’s little room, where the woman she had called “aunt” was sleeping peacefully; and she smiled as she walked back along the passage at the thought of this female invasion of Larry’s bachelor quarters.

She had taken up the book when Sunny knocked and came in.

“There’s a note for you, miss,” he said, and handed a letter to the girl. It was in Larry’s writing, and she tore open the envelope and read:

Dear Diana:

The most extraordinary mistake has occurred. Dr. Judd has given an amazing version of the death of your father. Will you get into the car which I have sent and come down to his house at once--38 Endman Gardens, Chelsea.

Larry.

She glanced at the embossed note-heading. Larry had written from Endman Gardens.

“Is there any answer, miss?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Tell the chauffeur I will come down at once.”

“Are you going out, miss?” said Sunny dubiously.

“Yes, I am going to Mr. Holt,” she said with a smile.

“Would you like me to come with you, miss?” said Sunny. “The master doesn’t wish you to go about alone.”

“I think I’m all right this evening, Sunny,” said the girl kindly. “Thank you very much for your offer.”

She dressed quickly and went downstairs. The limousine was waiting at the door, and the chauffeur touched his cap.

“Miss Ward?” he asked. “I’m from the doctor’s.” He spoke in a gruff voice, as if he had a cold.

“I am Miss Ward,” she replied, and sprang into the limousine.

The car stopped before a dark and silent house.

“Is this the place?” she asked.

“Yes, miss,” said the man. “If you go up those steps and ring the bell, the servant will take you to the gentlemen.”

It was Dr. Judd himself, jovial and smiling, who opened the door to her and ushered her into a magnificent room.

“You don’t mind waiting here a little while, Miss Stuart?” he said.

The name sounded oddly to her, and he laughed.

“I suppose you’re not used to being called that name, eh?” he said with excellent humour. “Now I’m going upstairs to see our mutual friend, and I will bring him down to you. Perhaps you could amuse yourself for ten minutes. Our little conference is not quite ended.”

She nodded, and settled herself in the chair. The ten minutes passed, and twenty minutes, and the twenty minutes became forty minutes, and nobody came to her. The silver-toned clock on the mantelpiece chimed sweetly.

“Ten o’clock!” she said in surprise. “I wonder what is keeping him?”

Yet she had no fear, and did not doubt for one moment that Larry was in the house.

The room was luxurious, beautiful, more beautiful than any Diana had ever seen. She sat by the side of a great open fireplace where a small fire was burning, for the night was chilly, and she looked round approvingly upon the pictures, the tapestries, the rich hangings, and the soft panelling which was the background for all. There was not an article of furniture in that room, she thought, that had not been chosen with care and judgment. The rugs upon the floor were antique Persian; the carved table might have been looted from an Eastern emperor’s palace.

She lay luxuriously in the depths of a great chair, an illustrated newspaper on her knees, and brought her gaze back to the fire and her thoughts to Larry. She wondered what important matters he was discussing and what was the explanation which the doctor had offered. After a while she looked up at the clock again. Half-past ten! She put down her paper and walked restlessly about the gorgeous apartment, and then she heard the click of a door and Dr. Judd came in from the hall.

“I hope you haven’t been lonely,” he said. “He will be in very shortly.”

She took it for granted that the “he” to whom the doctor referred was Larry Holt.

“I was getting worried,” she smiled. “What a beautiful room this is!”

“Yes,” he said carelessly, “it is beautiful, but one day we will have a more wonderful saloon to show you.”

“Here he is,” said the doctor; but it was not Larry who came in. She sprang to her feet with an exclamation of alarm. The man who had entered was John Dearborn. He made no pretence now. His glasses were gone, and his fine eyes were surveying her with amusement.

“Where is Mr. Holt?” she asked.

Dearborn laughed softly.

“You would like some supper,” he said, and slipped back one of the panels by the side of the fireplace, revealing a silver tray on which a meal for one had been laid.

“We do not eat at night.” He carried the tray to the table and spread a lace cloth.

The girl’s colour had gone. She was in mortal peril, but her voice did not quiver.

“Where is Mr. Holt?” she asked again.

“Mr. Holt is quite happy.” It was the doctor who spoke. “We will let you see him later.”

The strange words and the stranger tone frightened her, and she got up from her chair and picked up her wrap.

“I don’t think I will stay any longer, if Mr. Holt is not here, Dr. Judd,” she said, addressing that jovial man. “Can you take me home?”

The doctor did not reply. He had pulled open a drawer of a lacquer bureau and had taken out a thick pad of papers and handed them to Dearborn with a broad smile.

“You’re going to have a delightful time, Miss Stuart,” he said. “Really, David, it is most good of you. I thought you would be too tired to-night.”

The girl looked from one to the other, not daring to credit her own senses. Dr. Judd, who had hitherto been polite to a point of obsequiousness, was ignoring her.

“I don’t think you heard me, Dr. Judd,” she said steadily. “I want you to take me back to my--to Mr. Holt’s flat.”

“She is thinking of her clothes,” murmured the doctor, addressing his brother. “You will see that they are sent for, won’t you, David?”

“Sent for?” gasped the girl. “What do you mean?”

David Judd--already she had ceased to think of him as “Dearborn”--had settled himself in the chair which she had lately occupied, and was turning the leaves of his manuscript book.

“I think you had better eat first. You must be very hungry.”

“I will eat nothing in this house until I know what you mean by saying that my clothes will be brought here,” she said hotly. “I am going back alone.”

“Dear young lady,”--it was the doctor who laid his big hand on her arm--“please do not distract David. He is going to read one of his beautiful plays to you. Do you know that David is the greatest dramatist in the world--the supreme force in modern drama, rivalling, and indeed excelling, the so-called genius of Shakespeare?”

David looked at his brother and their eyes met.

He was so earnest, so self-convinced, that she had no words for a moment. Then:

“I am not in a mood to hear plays read, however beautiful they are,” she said. She had to keep a tight hold on herself, for instinct warned her that her plight was desperate.

“I don’t think she will go back to-night,” said the doctor, almost regretfully. “Perhaps to-morrow, when you are married to her?”

He spoke timidly, pleadingly, and there was a question in his statement.

“I shall not marry her,” said the man called Dearborn sharply. “I thought we had arranged that, brother? Jake is dead, but there are others. Does it matter who marries her?”

Diana was dumb with indignation and horror. They were discussing her marriage with one of them, each trying to induce the other to wed her with a calmness and an assurance which left her speechless. At last she found her voice.

“I do not intend marrying either of you,” she said. “I am engaged to--Larry Holt.”

Both men were looking at her, and in the doctor’s rubicund face there was an expression of distress.

“It is a pity,” he said. “The whole thing could be arranged if Mr. Holt were with us. Unfortunately, though he is with us in the body, we are spiritually as far as the poles apart.”

“With us in the body?” she repeated, and was seized with a violent fit of trembling. She had realized that the letter which lured her to this terrible house was a forgery, and her hope of rescue was centred on the certainty that Larry would discover her absence and come after her.

And then the two men exchanged glances, and Dearborn rose and put down his book with an air of resignation. He beckoned her and passed to the other end of the apartment, and there found a door which Larry had overlooked; for the edge of the panels which covered it so overlapped that no crevice was visible.

“I designed this house myself,” he explained simply, “and built it myself with only twenty workmen from Tuscany.”

Later she was to find much of that was true. The chamber in which she found herself, led by the fascination of a growing horror, was unfurnished and unadorned. She heard a strange humming sound and a curious vibration beneath her feet. Then David stopped, fumbled with something on the floor, and opened a little trap-door less than a foot square. It revealed a pane of glass, and when her eyes had become accustomed to the unexpected perspective, she saw beneath her a small room, evidently lighted from the ceiling.

She had no time to take in the details of the room; her eyes were focussed upon the figure that sat on the edge of the bed. With his handkerchief he was binding a wound in his hand, and at first she did not recognize him. Then he looked up, for, though he could not see the occupants of the room above, he had heard the sound of the trap opening.

She stared and screamed, for it was Larry Holt who sat there, and he was chained by the ankle.