CHAPTER IV.

“THE MYSTERY.”

Mr. Marcus Wray laid down his morning paper on his lonely breakfast-table with a queer sound in his throat.

He had taken a deep interest in the affairs, as became a barrister in fair standing, and now the verdict of the coroner’s jury stared him in the face. So important a thing had called out a leading article, and Mr. Wray had read it till he knew it by heart. Yet he picked up the paper now, and looked at it again.

“The mystery surrounding Lord Abbotsford’s death,” it ran, “has not been lifted by the verdict at the inquest. The deceased clearly came to his death by poisoning with cyanid of potassium, which could not have been administered by his own hand, as no trace of any bottle containing it was found anywhere in the house of the unfortunate nobleman. And the verdict of murder by persons unknown has only deepened the horror of the public, since no trace or clue to the supposed murderer has been discovered. The evidence of the servants--who were all able to prove an alibi on the afternoon of the murder--that no one entered the house, has been rendered worthless by the statement of Mr. Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry, who swore that he had entered with a latch-key, gone up-stairs and put down a box of cigarettes in the very room in which Lord Abbotsford was lying, and gone out again at once without seeing him, where he lay on a sofa behind a screen. He had hurried out to join a friend in the street: half an hour later he went back to Lord Abbotsford’s house, and this time discovered his body, and sent the servants at once for the police. That Mr. Cylmer--who was a close friend of the deceased--was guiltless, was amply proved at the inquest; but the criminal is still to be found, and a large reward has been offered for his apprehension.

“The only clue so far comes from the evidence of Mr. Cylmer, that, on laying down the box of cigarettes, he had noticed on a small table some bank-notes, a quantity of loose gold, some diamonds in an open box, and a woman’s photograph, which he had not been accustomed to see there. On his return and discovery of the dead body, the gold, diamonds, and photograph were gone; the notes only remained.

“Mr. Cylmer stated that he merely glanced at the photograph. Lord Abbotsford had many women friends whom he did not know; but that he remembered distinctly its being there. Of the diamonds missing, no trace can be found, though they had only been purchased that day as a gift for the betrothed wife of the dead man. But that such infamous crimes can be committed with impunity in the house of a well-known nobleman, in the very heart of London, is not to be thought possible, and every means will be brought to bear to bring the perpetrator to justice. No motive can be found for the murder, the robbery excepted. His estates go to a distant cousin, at present a midshipman on foreign service in the Royal Navy. The deepest of sympathy is extended throughout society to the lady whose engagement to Lord Abbotsford was announced only the day before his death.”

“A pack of fools!” said the reader slowly. “And the man who wrote this is the worst. They may hunt through every street in London and never find a thread to help them. If Lord Abbotsford had had a clever man servant”--he shrugged his lean shoulders--“but he would have country bumpkins from his estate to wait on him, and no others!”

He sat in a brown study for a long half-hour, and then roused himself to eat his cold breakfast. He had not eaten much lately; his waitress, when she cleared away, was glad his appetite had improved. He lived alone in one of the curious rookeries known to the frequenters of the Inns of Court. He was anything but a briefless barrister, yet his briefs were usually of a sort another man would have looked at twice.

Not Marcus Wray--the world owed him a living, and he must get it, somehow. It did not concern him that the people who went up and down his staircase--after dark--were not the cream of society.

Contrary to his habits, he spent his morning in utter idleness, smoking; his lean, round shoulders more humped than usual, his ugly, clean-shaven face wrinkled repulsively.

There was money to be got out of the Abbotsford tragedy, yet just how would not come to him. His thick, red lips pressed hard on his cigar, and the lean, knotted hand that lay on his knee never ceased a curiously light movement, as if he were driving in a nail, carefully, very carefully. Suddenly the tapping ceased as the man’s face relaxed.

“I think I have it,” he said to himself. “Anyhow, I will go out and--make a call!”

He folded up his paper and put it safely in his overcoat pocket when he was ready to start. He might want it--it had interested him.

It had interested two other people in London--Ismay Trelane and her mother.

Till they read it they had hardly eaten or slept; the days had passed somehow, that was all. If Mr. Cylmer’s evidence had been given early in the inquiry they might have suffered less, but it had been kept to the very last.

Mrs. Trelane, pale and staring, was the first to speak when the morning paper was read.

“We’re all right,” she said thickly.

Ismay nodded. “When he went in I thought you were lost. But it was lucky you got that photograph. I suppose it’s Abbotsford’s sovereigns you’ve been staving off your tradesmen with.”

“They were no good to him”--cynically.

“And not much to us; they’re all gone now.”

Mrs. Trelane, who had scarcely spoken since that day of terror, who had not gone out lest some one should know her, seemed turned into another woman by the reading of that newspaper article. She looked at Ismay almost triumphantly.

“Very nearly gone, but--they’re not all!”

“Then,” said Ismay slowly, “you did take the diamonds! How did you find the courage? You were almost too frightened to walk when I pushed you in the door.” Once more that horrible suspicion sickened her.

“I don’t know,” said her mother simply. “You see, the shock of it was over; after all, he was only a dead man, and I had seen dead people before.”

“But you were mad; they’re no good to us,” the girl gasped; “we daren’t sell them.”

“We do, to one man in London.”

“As they are?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, he won’t dare ask questions. But once they are sold we can get away from here; go somewhere and start fresh. I won’t be comfortable till we are out of London. The sale of the diamonds will pay nearly everything, and leave us money in hand.”

“Are you wise?” Ismay asked hardly. “Or are you running into a trap?”

“Not I! I am too old a resident in ‘underground London’ for that, Ismay.” She stopped suddenly and listened. “Did I hear a bell ring?”

“It’s the door-bell; some one has come for money. I’ll go.”

Ismay left her mother huddling over their scanty fire--for the coal-merchant was like every one else, unpaid--and went to the front door. The shabby black gown that was her all was not even neat, and she had no collar on; her wonderful flaxen hair was coiled anyhow round her small head, but to the man who stood on the door-step her strange beauty was a revelation. Was this the ugly child Helen Trelane had shoved into a convenient boarding-school and forgotten? Instinctively he took off his hat, as if he had seen Circe herself.

“Is it possible that you are Ismay?” he said.

The girl looked at him with somber dislike, his ugliness repelled, almost sickened, her. And at the cold oiliness of his voice she recoiled as at something tangibly evil. Who was he that he knew her?

He held out his hand, but she would not see it.

“You don’t remember me, of course,” he smiled. “Is your mother in? I came to see her.”

“I don’t know; she went out, but she may be back.” Some instinct made her lie, and the man knew it.

“Tell her,” he said, “that Marcus Wray has come to see her.”

And before Ismay could shut the door he stood beside her in the little white-paneled, turquoise-tiled hall, that felt so cold.

Mrs. Trelane started when her daughter came in breathless from she knew not what.

“A man who wants you,” she said; “his name is Wray. And he called me Ismay! Mother, who is he?”

If she had spoken truly, Mrs. Trelane would have said her evil genius. Instead, her eyes glittered for one instant in surprise. What had brought him, whom three years ago she had shaken off forever?

“Marcus Wray?” she said unbelievingly. “What could he want?”

“You. Oh, what a hideous man! He is like a toad, a snake!”

“Hush!” The woman whispered angrily. “He might hear, and he’s the man I meant; the only man in London who will buy those diamonds. Bring him here, it’s the only warm place in the house.”

Ismay glanced at the untidy breakfast, not cleared away, the disorder of the luxuriously furnished room; and Mrs. Trelane laughed.

“He has seen worse,” she remarked quietly. “Bring him.”

“I won’t stay in the room with him! He makes me sick.”

“No one wants you to,” said her mother, yet as she looked in the glass at her own worn beauty she felt a tinge of uneasiness. There was something uncanny about this visit from a man she had not seen for three years; his coming just when she had need of him. She wished she could know what it meant. But as he entered, immaculately dressed as she remembered him, Mrs. Trelane greeted him as if he were her dearest friend.

“You don’t mind my having you in here?” she said simply. “It is the only fire. And where have you been all this time--do you know it is years since you have remembered me?”

“It is years since I have seen you,” he corrected her, “but you are just the same. But the girl, your daughter”--the door had banged behind him when he entered, making him smile covertly--“is not the same. She is beautiful, though not like you; nor”--thoughtfully--“like Trelane.”

Mrs. Trelane bit her lip.

“Did you come to compliment me on my child?” she said prettily. “How nice of you!”

Marcus Wray took a chair by the fire, though his hostess was standing.

“No,” he answered carelessly, his sharp, narrow eyes wandering round the dusty costliness of the room. “No, I came--because you needed me.”

“Needed you. I?” Every bit of color left her face; her uneasiness had been well founded then; it was not chance that brought Marcus Wray.

He nodded.

“I thought so; perhaps I’m wrong. But this morning I felt certain that if I did not come to see you, you would come to me; so I saved you the trouble. By the way”--he pulled something from his overcoat pocket and held it out to her--“have you seen this morning’s _Herald_?”

Mrs. Trelane, standing by the table, put a sudden hand on it, as if her strength had failed her.

“You have, I see. Well!--sit down, you can talk better.” He pushed a chair to her with his foot, contemptuously.

“I have seen the paper--yes, of course! But what of it?” She had not stirred to take the chair. The last time she had seen Marcus Wray she had dictated to him--had he waited all this time to avenge himself?

“I thought you’d like to sell them. It’s not safe, you know, to have them.”

“Sell what? Have what? I don’t know what you mean!” she panted.

“Don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you! I was in a house in Onslow Square, across the way from Lord Abbotsford’s, one afternoon last week; I was dull, and looked out the window. You came, you went; you came, you went”--moving his hand to and fro like a weaver’s shuttle--“the last time you were agitated, but not your daughter; she pushed you in.” He paused, looking deliberately at her. “The second time you came out you hurried--needlessly.”

“Mark, Mark.” She was beside him, clutching his arm hard with her slim white hand. “He was dead when I went in, I swear he was dead! I went back to get----”

“Your photograph, and the--other things. Well, you got them! I congratulate you. But as for his being dead”--he shrugged his rounded shoulders, heedless of her desperate hold on his arm.

“My God, do you think I killed him?”

The words came bleakly after a silence, when the slow dropping of the coals from the grate had sounded loud.

“Would you like to stand your trial if I told all I saw? If you could convince the jury, you could convince me afterward, you know.” The hand on his arm relaxed suddenly.

“Mark, Mark,” the woman said bitterly, “once I trusted you, when all the world condemned you----”

“And kicked me from your door afterward like a troublesome dog,” he interrupted her quietly. “Well, it’s my turn now! Give me the diamonds, and your dog holds his tongue.”

“Do you mean sell them to you?” She had sunk into a chair as if she could never rise again.

“No, I mean give,” he said relentlessly. “Don’t you understand? It’s my price; the price of silence.”

“But I’m ruined! If you take them we are beggars on the street, the girl and I. I took the diamonds because--look round you”--breaking off desperately--“don’t you see we have nothing? There is a bill of sale on the furniture, the lease of the house is up--do you want me to starve?”

“You have never starved yet,” he retorted. “But if you prefer to hang, keep the diamonds. I, too, want money, and if you don’t pay me, some one else will. Look!” He held to her a printed paper, that swam before her eyes.

“I can’t read it,” she muttered.

“No? It is that five hundred pounds reward is offered for the discovery of the murderer of Lord Abbotsford. Your diamonds are worth eight hundred, so you will pay me best. Only if you fail me--well, if one can’t have cake, one takes gingerbread!”

He leaned toward her threatening, sinister, yet smiling.

“You had better give me the cake.”

“How do I know”--after all, she was brave in her fashion, he could not help wondering how she found courage to bargain--“how do I know that you will not take my cake and their gingerbread? Giving you what you say I have will not make you faithful.”

“Nothing will make me faithful,” said Marcus Wray, with a noiseless laugh. “But the diamonds will help, and if your daughter is a sensible girl she will do the rest. I am coming to see her--very often.”

He rose as he spoke and walked to the mantelpiece, where a heavily framed picture hung.

“I have not forgotten your ways,” he observed, drawing out a purple velvet box stuck behind the picture and putting it carefully into his breast pocket. “I thought they would be there.” He took up his shining hat airily.

“Au revoir, dear lady,” he said. “Tell your little girl to open the door for me.”

At the words a last hope dawned on Mrs. Trelane’s misery. Marcus admired the girl--then, perhaps, she could manage him where her mother had failed.

“Wait here, I’ll find her,” she faltered; and hurried out.

Ismay, sitting on her bed, wrapped in the coverlet to keep warm, started at her mother’s livid face; started once again at her quick, whispered sentences.

“You let him frighten you! You let him know you had them!” She stamped her foot.

“What could I do? Oh! go to him, try----”

Mrs. Trelane threw herself on the bed, broken with tearless sobbing that she could not control; and her daughter, with a bravery that sprang from ignorance, went down to try her strength against that of Marcus Wray.

Half an hour later she stood alone in the room she had entered with her head high and her eyes blazing. Now she shivered as she heard the front door close behind the strange visitor.

Yet he had been perfectly civil.

“The diamonds--since you insist these are diamonds--are quite safe. So is the reputation of your mother while you take an interest in it. Suppose you go to the theater with me to-morrow night?--it would do you good,” he had said to her.

His words rang in her ears, the tone had been perfectly polite, but the veiled threat in it had staggered her. The next moment she had found her courage.

“With you? No, never!”

“You had better think of it,” he said quietly. “I assure you I am a good friend and a bad enemy. If I have taken a liking to you, why be angry? You can’t get away from London, you know, without any money--nor from me.”

He was gone now, out of the house, yet a sudden terror of him shook her. She turned and ran, as if she were hunted, to where her mother lay shivering on the bed.

“Mother,” she cried desperately, “think quickly! Isn’t there some way we can be rid of that man?”

“I’ll try--but I don’t think I can find one.”

Mrs. Trelane shivered as she rose and went to her writing-table.

Ismay, watching her haggard face, was terror-stricken afresh. How had her mother been terrified into giving up those diamonds? Was there something that Marcus Wray knew?

Ismay could not finish that thought. She sat motionless, as Mrs. Trelane, without even showing her the address of the letter she had written, went out and posted it.