CHAPTER XXIX.

A NIGHT’S WORK.

White, tense, her nerves like an overstrung bow that goes near to breaking, Ismay ran through the dark to Marchant’s Hold. And as she entered the great hall door any pity that might have lingered in her breast was killed.

Cristiane stood by the fire, dressed for dinner, her bare arms very fair against her black dress.

“What! alone, and so late. Wouldn’t he even see you home to-night?” she laughed, for Ismay’s face was not hard to read.

“He? Who do you mean?” She did not look a thing to play with as she stopped short before the girl who mocked her.

“Miles, of course. Wasn’t he nice to you, Ismay? Or did that card I never got stick in his throat?”

That card! So when she lost it, Cristiane had found it. It was she who had given it to Cylmer. She who had told everything.

“You did it. You!” She could hardly speak.

“Yes, it was I,” cheerfully. “You see, I am not such a baby, after all. But, cheer up. He will come back to-morrow. He won’t mind little things like those.”

“You took him to my door last night.” But it was not a question, only a statement.

“I withdrew him at once, promptly, when I saw it was a mistake,” calmly.

And this was the girl whom only yesterday she had nearly died to save! Well, that was over. She could die now, as she pleased. No more would an arm be stretched out to protect her. Never again would a mock ghost play the spy on Marcus Wray.

Her eyes were very steady, very evil, as she looked up.

“I took that card, and I am very sorry I did,” she answered quietly. “He would have loved me without it. You can think of that for your pains.”

Cristiane was suddenly afraid, but she gave a last fling.

“Did he love you very much to-day?” she asked involuntarily.

Ismay’s face hardened like stone.

“You are what people call good,” she said slowly; “and I was sorry for you. I did my best for you--in a fashion. Stand still and let me look at you--for I may never see you again.”

Something in her eyes made Cristiane cold.

“What do you mean?” she shrieked. “Are you going away?” She sprang forward, and took Ismay’s hand, but the girl shook her off.

“I am going to bed,” she said shortly. “Tell them not to disturb me. I stole your note, Cristiane, but you are revenged. You have stolen from me enough to make me go to bed without my dinner.”

Lightly, pitilessly, she nodded as she turned away. Let Marcus do what he liked, it was nothing to her that he should have one more sin on his shoulders. For if ever a woman was mad with misery, it was Ismay Trelane that night.

Still in her outdoor dress she sat crouched on her bed, motionless as a panther who waits to spring, death-driven, almost hopeless. In the house the gong sounded for dinner; a servant came to the door, and was sent petulantly away. Mrs. Trelane, all silks and rustle, knocked in annoyance.

“Aren’t you coming down?” she cried.

“No. Please go away and leave me alone. I shall be all right in the morning. I’m tired,” with a tearless sob.

She was weary to the bone. The shock of yesterday had borne hard on her vigorous young body; the shock of to-day had withered her very soul. She was faint for want of food, but she could not break bread with Cristiane or Marcus Wray, and yet she must eat, or this night’s work would never be done.

At a tap on her door she opened it, to see Jessie; Jessie, who honestly loved her for many a kind word given when Cristiane had been cruelly sharp with the faithful soul.

“I brought some soup and wine, Miss Ismay,” she said. “Are you sick? You’re that pale.”

At the only kind word she had heard all day Ismay Trelane stooped and kissed the honest, fresh cheek of the servant-woman.

“No, I’m tired,” she said slowly. “Make them let me be till the morning. Promise, Jessie.”

“Will I get you to bed?” confused at the honor done her. “Will I fetch Miss Cristiane?”

“Don’t fetch any one, and I’ll lock my door now. I’m afraid of that ghost.”

“She don’t walk so early,” said the woman, with simple belief. “Good night, Miss Ismay. I’ll not come in the morning till you ring.”

Ismay laughed.

“That’s a good soul,” she said. “Let me sleep--till I ring.”

Jessie would scarcely have known her ten minutes later, as she stood in front of her glass, putting on the old clothes some mood had made her bring with her to Marchant’s Hold.

Shabby, ugly, too short, the dress hung on her, the old-fashioned hat set absurdly on her head. But there was color in her face from the soup and wine, as she put into a safe hiding-place in her coat the scarab that was all the clue she had.

“Vulgar cuff-links are a very small thing to go on,” she reflected; “but I will try, and in the meantime Cristiane and Miles can find out what sort of a house this is without me. I don’t think they’ll have long to wait, either.”

She looked doubtfully at the few coins she had, as she put them into her pocket.

“If they’re not enough, looking at them won’t help,” she thought. “They will get me there, and that’s all I care for. If I fail I am not likely to need any. If I don’t fail”--she laughed--“some one else will pay my fare for the last time to Marchant’s Hold.”

She opened her door noiselessly and listened. There was only the cheerful clink that came intermittently from the dining-room. There was not a step or a sound on her floor.

Without a click to betray her, she locked her door behind her, pocketing the key. Her room was in darkness, and no one would know the key was gone till late in the morning; when it did not matter if the whole world knew.

“Marcus may be certain I’ve gone to London, but it will take a cleverer man than Marcus to find me,” she thought, as she went softly down the stairs. The dining-room door was closed, the servants safe inside, the front door swung noiselessly on its hinges as she slipped out unseen, and closed it behind her without one telltale sound.

In the dark she stood looking at the house, with curiously hard eyes.

She was free. She was going to London with that scarab in her pocket, to bring home his crime to the man who did it. Going alone, almost penniless, to the cold winter streets, friendless, powerless, but determined. And she left behind her, at the mercy of the merciless, the girl whose only protection she had been. Left her with scarcely a thought, without pity, with nothing in her hand but the one purpose--to clear her mother before Cylmer and the world, to get out of Wray’s power forever.

A train would leave the station for London at half-past nine. At twelve o’clock she would be there, with just one night’s start of Marcus Wray. One night in which to ruin him. The girl’s lips tightened as she hurried along her lonely road.

“I may have more. They don’t know me at the station, and they will never think it is a girl dressed like this whom he means. He will ask for Miss Trelane, and I don’t look much like Miss Trelane.”

She was right, for the man who sold her her ticket never glanced at her. There had been an excursion to some races, and the station was crowded. The shabbily dressed girl got into her third-class carriage unnoticed. And once the train started and she was safe, she dropped asleep, in utter weariness, never once stirring till they were in the London station.

She got out, and went quickly from the glaring lights and the crowd into the comparative darkness of the streets. It was well they were used to her locked door, otherwise they might have telegraphed and stopped her. But once out of the station she was secure.

Twelve o’clock, and the night before her, fresh and rested with her sleep, but no tangible plan in her head, no notion of what she meant to do. She trudged aimlessly through the streets. Once she passed a lighted music-hall, and thought of her first meeting with Cylmer, but with a curious distance, as if of a man long dead.

Gradually, she left the thronged streets behind her, still unconscious where she was going, till at last she stood in an open square, and knew where she was. Round her were the lights of Onslow Square; at her very feet the steps of Lord Abbotsford’s house.

What had drawn her to that dreadful place, alone in the night? What had guided her straying feet? She could see the windows of that little room where the dreadful thing had been done. They were in darkness, like the rest of the windows, but she knew them.

Oh! why had she come here? Why was she wasting the priceless hours like this? She turned to run, sick and trembling, but something black on the door-step caught her eye. Ismay stooped down and peered at the shapeless bundle.

It was a very little boy, a bootblack, asleep on the homeless stones. His box was clasped tight in his arms, and he sobbed in his sleep.

The pity of the thing came home to the girl who had also nowhere to go, no shelter from the freezing rain that was beginning to fall. She had a shilling in her pocket besides what must pay for her breakfast, and surely it was her guardian angel that prompted her to give it to the boy.

Very gently she touched his thin shoulder.

He started up, awake at once, defiant, yet frightened, like a true London waif.

“Let me alone,” he said. “I ain’t done nothing. Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m sleeping out, like you,” she answered. “But I’m grown up, and you’re too little,” with a kind of reckless fellowship that reassured the boy, who was ready for a run.

“Ain’t you got nowhere to go, either? Oh!” He stared at her with the uncanny wisdom of the streets.

“Do you know anywhere to go if I give you a shilling?” she asked, more for the comfort of talking than for anything else.

“I can go home if I’ve a bob. I daresent without any money. Mother’d lick me, and I’m sick. Will you give me a bob, honest? And no tracts, nor nothing?”

She nodded, ashamed by this time of her impulse.

What had made her such a fool, when she might starve to-morrow for want of that shilling?

The boy stood up and stared resentfully at the dark house in front of them.

“It’s no good staying here. The man won’t let me in. He kicked me down the steps last time I rung.”

“Let you in!” She looked with wonder at the dirty, ragged mite. “What do you want to go in for?”

“I want to tell them something. It’s a shame,” with a man’s oath. “They had Billy Cook in, and asked him things, and gave him half a crown, and he didn’t know nothin’! And it was me that ought to had it. It was my stand opposite, by that muddy crossing, and I took sick that day, and stayed home ever since, and to-day when I come back Billy had my stand, and what ought to ‘a’ been mine--and he didn’t know nothing, only answered silly.”

“Know nothing about what?” she echoed involuntarily, with no thought of the answer that was to make her heart leap.

“About the man that was in that house the day they said there was no one in. I say, couldn’t you knock at the door, and I’d tell them. And p’haps they’d give me ’arf a quid, and mother could get too dead drunk to hit me?”

“What man? Tell me, quick. I’ll get you more than half a sovereign.”

She did not know how fierce her voice was till the boy started back from her.

“It ain’t no business of yours,” he cried. “I say, you ain’t got nothing to do with the coppers, ’ave you?” he was on the defensive instantly, all ready to flee.

“No; no!” she said, so gently that he believed her. “But if you’ll tell me, instead of them,” nodding at the big silent house, “I’ll get you more money than you ever saw in your life.”

“Girls like you don’t have none,” he retorted, with a distrustful shiver.

“I’ll get it for you in the morning. You needn’t let me out of your sight all night, not till it’s in your hand, if you’ll tell me all you know.”

The boy gave a cheerful whirl.

“Golly! I bet Billy Cook’ll be sick,” he exclaimed. “Do you mean it; hope you may die?”

“Hope I may die,” she asserted gravely, her marvelous eyes, that even the child saw, bent on him. “But not here. Let’s walk on somewhere out of the rain. I’m cold.”

“I’m always cold,” returned the small bootblack.

“It ain’t nothin’ when you’re used to it. But we’d better keep movin’; cops comes round when you stands.”

“Go on about the man,” she said shortly. “How do you know it was the day of the murder?”

“Ho! I’m not blind. Why, you never see such a how d’ye do in your life. Cabs, and perlice, and reporters, and the cook screaming in the area. I knowed right enough, but I never knowed they were looking for no man till I come back to-day, and Billy Cook said so. He punched me, too, because he’d got my stand, and I wanted it. And when I said that ’arf-crown was mine, he punched me again. So I went to the house, and the man told me to get out with my lies. They’d had the square bootblack in a’ready. Billy Cook,” scornfully, “that never see the square in his life till I got took bad with brownkeeters. He didn’t see no man come out of the house, any day.”

“Did you?”

The great clock on the church-tower struck one. If the boy did not hurry it would be too late to-night for what was in her mind.

“I saw him go in about half after one. I saw a woman go in and out twice, too; but that was after three. The last time there was a girl with her, and they whispered, and while the woman was in a gentleman went in and come out again quick. Him that raised the fuss afterward. But my man he never come out till half-past four. I heard the clock, when it was dusklike. He never see me, and he walked quick. And he was crossing the street by my stand when he drops something out of his hand, quick, right in the middle of the road, in the traffic. So I jumped to get it before a bus went over it, and it was just a little blue glass bottle that smelled funny.”

“What did you do with it?” She was exultant, treading on air, the rain falling unfelt on her thinly clad shoulders. And yet she dreaded that at a question the boy’s story would fall to the ground.

“Put it in my box. It’s there now. You bet I didn’t tell Billy Cook anything about it to-day, when he was smelling round! I was sick when I went home, and I never thought of it till to-day, and the man wouldn’t let me speak.”

“What did he look like, the man you saw come out of the house?”

“He was big, and ugly, without no mustache. I’d know him if I see him. Say, do you suppose there was stuff in that bottle to kill a man?”

“I don’t know. Let me see it.”

The boy yawned; but he took it from his box as they walked. In the light of a street-lamp Ismay looked at it, shaking with excitement. An ordinary chemist’s bottle, of blue glass, without a label. She pulled out the cork, and a faint odor of bitter almonds met her nostrils.

Prussic acid! And the bottle had held enough to kill ten men!

In a wild fit of laughter that made the boy start, she shook from head to foot.

“Can’t you remember anything else about him?” she gasped, at last.

“Dirty cuffs,” said the boy doubtfully. “I saw ’em in the lights when he passed the shop at the corner. Oh! and blue things on them, on the one next me.”

“Blue things! What like?”

“Oh, I dunno! They were blue. Studs, I guess. He was awful ugly, and thin.”

Ismay stopped short on the soaking pavement, and whistled to a belated hansom.

“Come on; we’re going to get that money!” she said, and before the boy could object she had jerked him adroitly into the cab.

But as she gave the driver an address that made him stare, her bold heart was quailing. In another hour she might have given her own mother over to be hanged! At best it would be touch and go. She caught the bootblack’s dirty hand and clung to it despairingly, as if to her only friend. Something not herself was driving her; something she must obey. She shook in her terror, sitting close to the dirty little boy.