Part 55

And so it happened that the ancient magic of fire was invoked in Lexy’s behalf. Probably, if she and Captain Grey had had their supper in the chilly dining room, they would have been a little chilly, too, and more cautious. They might not have said all that they did say.

IX

It was an excellent supper, and Captain Grey and Lexy thoroughly appreciated it. They ate with healthy appetites, and they talked. Mrs. Royce, from the kitchen, heard their cheerful, friendly voices, and their laughter, and she didn’t for one moment believe that they had never met before. Listening to them, she wore that benevolent smile once more, and felt sure that she had encountered a very charming little romance.

It was all Lexy’s doing. It was Lexy’s beautiful talent, to be able to create this atmosphere of honest and happy _camaraderie_. Before the meal was finished, Captain Grey was talking to her as if they had known each other since childhood, and he didn’t even wonder at it. It seemed perfectly natural.

Mrs. Royce came in to take away the dishes.

“Going to set here a while?” she asked, looking at the two young people with a smile of approval. “I’ll bring in some more wood.” She hesitated a moment, and the landladyish glimmer again appeared in her eyes. “If it was me,” she observed, in the most casual way, “the fire’d be enough light. If it was me, now, I wouldn’t want that gas flaring and blaring away--and burning up good money,” she added, to herself.

“You’re right,” Lexy cheerfully agreed. “We’ll turn it down.”

The rain was falling fast outside, driving against the windows when the wind blew; and inside the young people sat by the fire, very content.

“Queer thing!” said Captain Grey meditatively. “Never been in this place before--never been in this country before--and yet it’s like coming home!”

“I know that feeling,” said Lexy. “I’ve had it before. I think only people who haven’t any real homes of their own ever have it.”

“But haven’t you any real home?” he asked, evidently distressed.

“No,” she answered; “but please don’t think it’s tragic. It’s not.”

“You haven’t impressed me as tragic,” he admitted.

Lexy laughed.

“Thank goodness!” she said. “I do want to keep on being--well, ordinary and human, even when outside things seem a little tragic.”

“Miss Moran!” he said, and stopped.

It was some time before he spoke again. Lexy took advantage of his abstraction to study his face by the firelight. When you come to understand it a little, it wasn’t a haughty face at all, but a very sensitive and fine one.

“Miss Moran!” he said again. “About being ordinary and human--of course, one wants to be that; but the thing is--I don’t know quite how to put it, but if you have a feeling, you know--I mean a feeling that something is wrong--” He paused again. “I mean,” he went on, “if you have a feeling like that--a sort of--well, call it uneasiness--the question is whether one ought to laugh at it, or take it as”--once more he stopped--“as a warning,” he ended.

A strange sensation came over Lexy.

“I’ve been thinking a good deal about that very thing lately,” she replied. “I believe feelings like that _are_ a warning. I’m sure it’s wrong--foolish and wrong--to disregard them. Even if every one else, even if your own mind tells you it’s all nonsense, you mustn’t care!”

“I think you’re right,” he gravely agreed. “I’ve been trying to tell myself that I’m an utter ass, but all the time I knew I wasn’t. I knew--I know now--that there’s something--”

An unreasoning dread possessed Lexy. She felt for a moment that she didn’t want to hear any more.

“I’d like to tell you about it, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said. “Somehow I think you could help.”

For an instant she hesitated.

“Please do tell me,” she said at length. “I’d be glad to help, if I can.”

“It’s this,” he said. “Do you mind if I smoke? Thanks!”

He took a cigarette case from his pocket. As he struck a match, she could see his face very clearly in the sudden flame; and, for no reason at all, she pitied him.

“It’s this,” he said again. “It’s about my sister.”

“The sister you’ve never seen?”

The sensation of dread had gone, and she felt only the liveliest interest. She wanted very much to hear about Captain Grey’s sister.

“It wasn’t quite true to say I’d never seen her,” he explained, in his painstaking way. “I have, you know; but not since I was six years old and she was a baby. Our mother died when Muriel was born, out in India. An aunt took the poor little kid to the States with her, and I stayed out there with my father.”

He drew on his cigarette for a minute.

“She’s twenty-one now,” he said. “Last picture I had of her was when she was fourteen or so. A pretty kid--a bit more than pretty--what you’d call lovely.”

He was silent for a little, staring into the fire.

“When I was at school in England, it was arranged that she was to come over; but she didn’t, and we’ve never met again. Twenty-one years--it’s a long time.”

“Yes, it is,” said Lexy gently, for something in his voice touched her.

“We’ve written to each other, on and off. I’m not much good at that sort of thing, but I thought her letters were--well, rather remarkable, you know; but I dare say I’m prejudiced. She’s the only one of my own people left.”

“You poor, dear thing!” thought Lexy, with ready sympathy, but she did not say anything.

“Anyhow,” he presently continued, “I got an impression from her letters that she was rather an extraordinary girl. She was studying music--said she was going on the concert stage--awfully enthusiastic about it; and then she married this doctor chap. She never said much about him, only that she was very happy; but--well, I don’t believe that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Anyhow, she was married about two years ago, and a few months after her marriage she began writing oftener--almost every mail. She was always wanting me to come over here and see her; and lately, in her last letters, I--somehow I fancied she wanted me rather badly. It--it worried me, so I arranged for leave. On the very day when I wrote that I would be coming over this month, I had a letter from her, asking me not to make any plans for coming this year. She said she’d taken up her concert work again, and would be too busy to enjoy the visit, and so on. I’d already made my plans, you see, so I went ahead. Then, about a fortnight later, after she’d got my letter, I suppose, I had a cable. ‘Don’t come,’ it said. I cabled back, but she didn’t answer.”

He looked anxiously at Lexy, but she said nothing. She sat very still, curled up in a big chair, staring into the fire with an odd look of uncertainty on her face.

“You know,” he went on, “I’ve tried to think that she was simply too busy, or something of that sort. But, Miss Moran, didn’t this woman’s manner rather make you think there was something a bit--out of the way?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Lexy, in a casual tone which very much disconcerted him.

“I’ve been making a fool of myself!” he thought, flushing. “Why the devil didn’t I keep my old-woman notions to myself? Now she’ll think--”

But Lexy was not thinking that Captain Grey was a fool. She was only very much afraid of being one herself, and was engaged in a severe struggle against this danger. That dread, that vague and oppressive dread, had come back, and she was fighting to throw it off. She wanted to be, she _would_ be, her own normal, cheerful self again, living in a normal, everyday world.

“All this about his sister, and about Caroline!” she thought. “It’s really nothing--nothing serious. Our both being here in Wyngate--that’s nothing, either. It’s just a coincidence. If the gas wasn’t turned down, I wouldn’t feel like this.”

She would have risen and turned up the gas, only that she was ashamed to do so. The fire was blazing merrily, shedding a ruddy light upon the homely room, the most commonplace room in the world. There was Captain Grey sitting there smoking--just an ordinary young man come to visit his sister. There was herself--just Lexy Moran, well fed and warm and comfortable, with more than a hundred dollars in a bag round her neck. She could hear Mrs. Royce moving about in the kitchen, humming to herself in a low drone.

“I will _not_ be silly!” she told herself.

And just then a train whistled--a long, melancholy shriek. Lexy had a sudden vision of it, rushing through the dark and the rain. She had a sudden realization of the outside world, vast, lonely, terrible, stretching from pole to pole--forests, and plains, and oceans. The monstrous folly of pretending that everything was snug and warm and cozy! Things did happen--only cowards denied that.

“Captain Grey!” she cried abruptly. “What you’ve told me--it is queer; and it’s even queerer when I think what has brought me here to this little place. Both of us here, in Wyngate! I think I’ll tell you.”

And she did.

He listened in absolute silence to the tale of Caroline Enderby’s disappearance. Even after Lexy had finished, it was some time before he spoke.

“I’ll try to help you,” he said simply.

“Oh, thank you!” cried Lexy, with a rush of gratitude. She wanted some one to help her, and she could imagine no one better for the purpose than this young man. He would help her--she was sure of it. Even the fact of having told him most wonderfully lightened her burden. She gave an irrepressible little giggle.

“We have almost all the ingredients for a first-class mystery story,” she said; “except the jewel--the famous ruby, or the great diamond.”

“It’s an emerald, in this case,” said Captain Grey.

Lexy straightened up in her chair, and stared at him.

“You don’t really mean that?” she demanded. “There isn’t really an emerald?”

He smiled.

“I’m afraid it hasn’t much to do with the case--with either of the cases,” he said; “but there is an emerald--my sister’s.”

“It didn’t come from India?”

“It did, though!”

“Don’t tell me it was stolen from a temple! That would be too good to be true!”

“I’m sorry,” he said; “but as far as I know, it’s never been stolen at all, and its history for the last eighty years hasn’t been sinister. One of the old rajahs gave it to my grandfather--a reward of merit, you know. When my father married, it went to my mother. She never had any trouble with it. She never wore it, because she didn’t like it.”

“Why?”

“Well, you see, it’s an ostentatious sort of thing, and she wasn’t ostentatious.” He paused a moment. “My father told me, before he died, that he wanted Muriel to have it when she was eighteen; and so, three years ago, I sent it over to her.”

“But how?”

“You’re a good detective,” said he, smiling again. “You don’t miss any of the points. It was a bit of a problem, how to send the thing; but I had the luck to find some people I knew who were coming over here, and they brought it. So that’s that!”

“An emerald!” said Lexy. “This is almost too much! I think I’ll say good night, Captain Grey. I need sleep.”

As she followed Mrs. Royce up the stairs, she saw Captain Grey still sitting before the fire, smoking; and it was a comforting sight.

X

Lexy slept late the next morning. It was nearly nine o’clock when she opened her eyes. She lay for a few minutes, looking about her. The gray light of another rainy day filled the neat, unfamiliar little room, and outside the window she could see the branches of a little pear tree rocking in the wind.

“I’m here in Wyngate,” she said to herself. “I was bent on coming here to find Caroline; and now, here I am, and how am I going to begin?”

She got up, and washed in cold water, in a queer, old-fashioned china basin painted with flowers. She brushed her shining hair, and dressed, feeling more hopeful every minute.

“One step at a time!” she thought. “The first step was to come here; and the next step--well, I’ll think of it after breakfast. Perhaps Captain Grey will have thought of something.”

But Captain Grey had gone out.

“Jest a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Royce informed her. “He was down real early--around seven, and he waited and waited for you. At half past eight he et, and off he went.”

“Did he say when he’d be back?”

“No,” said Mrs. Royce. “He didn’t say much of anything. He’s a kind of quiet young man, ain’t he? Well, he’d ought to get on with his sister, then.”

“Is she very quiet?” asked Lexy.

“Quiet!” repeated Mrs. Royce. “Set down an’ begin to eat, Miss Moran. I’ve fixed a real nice tasty breakfast for you, if I do say it as shouldn’t. Corn gems, too. Mis’ Quelton quiet? I should say she was! Quiet as”--she paused--“as the dead,” she went on, and the phrase made an unpleasant impression upon Lexy. “An’ her husband, too. I never saw the like of them. They never come into the village, an’ nobody ever goes out there to the Tower. About twice a week the doctor drives into Lymeswell--the town below here--and he buys a lot of food an’ all, an’ he goes home. I can see him out of my front winder, an’ the sight of him, driving along in that black buggy of his--it gives me the shivers!”

“But if he’s a doctor--”

“Don’t ask _me_ what kind of doctor he is, Miss Moran! He don’t go to see the sick--that’s all I know.”

“But his wife--what is she like?”

“Miss Moran,” said the landlady, with profound impressiveness, “I guess there ain’t three people in Wyngate that’s ever set eyes on her!”

“But how awfully queer!”

“You may well say ‘queer,’” said Mrs. Royce. “There she stays, out in that lonely place--never seeing a soul from one month’s end to another. She’s a young woman, too--young, an’ just as pretty as a picture.”

“Then you are--”

“I’m one of the few that has seen her,” said Mrs. Royce, with a sort of grim satisfaction. “That’s why I take a kind of special interest in her. I seen her the night the doctor brought her here to Wyngate a young bride. That’ll be three years ago this winter, but I remember it as plain as plain. There was a terrible snowstorm, and he couldn’t git out to his place, so he had to bring her here, and she sat right in this very room, just where you’re sitting.”

Instinctively Lexy looked behind her.

“I feel that same way myself--as if she was a ghost,” said Mrs. Royce solemnly. “Near three years ago, and her living only three miles off, an’ I’ve never set eyes on her again. I’ve never forgotten her, though, the sweet pretty young creature!”

“But why do you suppose she lives like that?”

Mrs. Royce came nearer.

“Miss Moran,” she said, “that doctor is crazy. I’m not the only one to say it. He’s as crazy--hush, now! Here’s that poor young man!”

The “poor young man” came into the room, with that very nice smile of his.

“Good morning!” he said. “I say, I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you a bit longer, Miss Moran.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Lexy. “I’d have felt awfully guilty.”

“I went out to telephone,” he explained. “Thought I’d tell Muriel I was here, you know; but they have no telephone. Dashed odd, isn’t it, for a doctor not to have a telephone in the house?”

“I don’t think he’s a real doctor--a physician, I mean,” said Lexy. She glanced around and saw that Mrs. Royce had gone. Springing up, she crossed the room to Captain Grey. “Has Mrs. Royce--has any one said anything to you?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“No!” answered the young man, startled. “Why? What’s up?”

“Mrs. Royce says--I suppose I really ought to tell you.”

“No doubt about it!”

“Mrs. Royce says Dr. Quelton is crazy!”

Captain Grey took the news very coolly. Lexy observed that he suppressed a smile.

“Oh, that!” he said. “But you know, Miss Moran, in these little villages any one who’s at all out of the ordinary is called crazy. I’ve noticed it before. I can soon find out for myself, though, can’t I? I thought, if you didn’t want me this morning, I’d go over there--pay a call, you know. I understand it’s three miles from here, so I shouldn’t be very long. I’d come back here for lunch.”

“But, Captain Grey, you mustn’t think I expect you to--”

“It’s not that,” he said. “Only you said you’d let me help you in your little job, and I want to!” He smiled down at her. “So,” he said, “I’ll be back for lunch;” and off he went.

Lexy went to the window and looked out. She saw Captain Grey striding off up the muddy road, perfectly indifferent to the rain, and curiously elegant, in spite of his wet weather clothes. She was thinking of him with great friendliness and appreciation; but she was not thinking of him in the least as Mrs. Royce imagined she was thinking.

Mrs. Royce stood in the doorway, watching Lexy watch Captain Grey, smiling and even beaming with benevolence; but she would have been disappointed if she had suspected what was in Lexy’s head.

“He’s awfully nice,” thought Lexy, “and awfully handsome, and I’m certain that he’s absolutely trustworthy and honorable, but--”

But somehow he wasn’t to be compared to Mr. Houseman. She knew practically nothing about Mr. Houseman. She had talked with him for five or ten minutes in the park, and his conversation had been entirely about Caroline Enderby. He had shown himself to be quick-tempered and sadly lacking in patience. He had written Lexy a stiff, offended, boyish letter, and then he had disappeared. There was no sensible reason in the world why she should think of him as she did, no reason why she should hope so much to see him again; but she did.

“Well, now!” said Mrs. Royce, at last. “You’ll be wanting a nice quiet place for your writing.”

“Writing!” said Lexy. “I never--” She stopped herself just in time, remembering her shocking falsehood of the night before. “I never care much where I write,” she ended.

“Well, I’ve fixed up the sewing room for you,” said Mrs. Royce. “I’ve put a nice strong table in there with drawers, where you can keep your papers an’ all.”

“You’re a dear!” said Lexy warmly.

She said this because she thought it, and without the least calculation. She liked Mrs. Royce, and when she liked people she told them so. That was what made people love her.

Mrs. Royce was completely won.

“I’m real glad to do it for you,” she said. “I won’t bother you, neither, while you’re working. I know how it is with writing. My cousin, now--her husband was writing for the movies, an’ he was that upset if he was disturbed!”

Still conversing with great affability, Mrs. Royce led the reluctant writer upstairs to the small room prepared for her, and shut her in. Lexy sat down in a chair before the workmanlike table, and grinned ruefully. She had said she was a writer, and now she had to be one.

“Well,” she reflected, “here’s a chance to write to Mr. Houseman, anyhow.”

She never had the least difficulty in writing letters. For one reason, she never bothered about them unless she had something to say, and then she said it, briefly and lucidly, and was done. She told Mr. Houseman all she knew about Caroline’s disappearance, and explained that she had gone out to Wyngate in the hope of picking up some trace of her.

“Of course,” she wrote, “I don’t know whether I’ll still be here when you get back. If I’ve gone, I’ll leave my address with Mrs. Royce, in case you should want to communicate with me.”

This was admirable, so far; but, reading it over, Lexy was not satisfied. She remembered the misery, the trouble and anxiety, in Mr. Houseman’s blue eyes. She imagined him sailing the seas, bitterly hurt because he thought Caroline had changed her mind. She thought of him coming back and getting this letter, to revive all his alarm for Caroline. This wasn’t, after all, a business letter. She took up her pen again, and added:

I think I can imagine how you feel about all this, and I am more sorry than I can tell you. I hope we shall meet soon.

This last phrase rather astonished her. She hadn’t meant to write just that. She picked up the letter, intending to tear it up and write another; but she thought better of it.

“No!” she said to herself. “Let it stay. It’s true; why shouldn’t I hope that we’ll meet again?”

So she addressed the letter and sealed it, and then sat looking out of the window at the rain. It was a hopeless sort of rain, faint and fine--a hopeless, melancholy world, without color or promise.

“I’d better take a walk!” thought Lexy, springing up.

Before she reached the door there was a knock, and Mrs. Royce put her head in.

“He’s here!” she whispered. “He’s asking for you.”

“Who?” cried Lexy.

“Hush! The doctor!” answered Mrs. Royce. “You could ’a’ knocked me down with a feather!”

XI

Feathers would not have knocked down the sturdy Lexy, however. On the contrary, she was pleased and interested by this utterly unexpected visit. The sinister doctor here, in this house, and asking for her! She started promptly toward the stairs.

“Miss Moran!” cautioned the landlady, in a whisper. “Don’t tell him nothing!”

“Tell him!” said Lexy. “But I haven’t anything to tell!”

“Well, you’d best be very careful!” said Mrs. Royce.

With this solemn warning in her ears, Lexy descended the stairs. She saw Dr. Quelton standing in the hall, hat in hand, waiting for her. The doctor was rather a disappointment. He was not the dark, sinister figure he should have been. He was a big man, powerfully built, with a clumsy stoop to his tremendous shoulders. His heavy, clean-shaven face would have been an agreeable one if it had not been for its expression, but that expression was not at all an alarming or dangerous one. It was an expression of the most utter and hopeless boredom.

He came toward her.

“Miss Moran?” he asked.

Even his voice was listless, and his glance was without a spark of interest.

“Yes,” said she.

“My brother-in-law, Captain Grey, told us you were here, and I did myself the honor of calling,” he went on.

“You certainly were quick about it!” thought Lexy. “Captain Grey couldn’t have reached his sister’s house an hour ago, and it’s three miles from here. Won’t you come into the sitting room?” she asked aloud.

“Thank you,” he replied, and followed Lexy into the decorous and dismal room.

He sat down opposite her in a small chair that cracked under his weight, and he smiled a bored and extinguished smile.

“A writer, I believe?” he said.

“Well, yes, in a way,” answered Lexy, growing a little red.