An Eye for an Eye

“And a very interesting story he’ll have for publication, it appears to me,” he said, laughing. Then he added after a second’s pause, “One of the oddest facts in the whole affair is that the pair we found dead in Phillimore Place have never been missed by their friends.”

“Or the dead man at The Hollies, for the matter of that,” I added.

“Yes,” he said in dubious tone. “There are yet some facts which we must learn ere we can piece the queer puzzle together and read the whole. Only then can we discover who was the man whom Lady Glaslyn has so carefully hidden. It’s a devilish funny business, to say the least.”

“Has it occurred to you that she may have left not intending to return?” I asked.

“Well, no,” he responded. “I scarcely think she has flown, or her daughter would have secured the contents of her escritoire. She evidently believes her secret quite safe, and is therefore entirely fearless.” The Richmond Road with its many trees was pleasant in that hour when the clear rose-flush of dawn was still in the sky, and as we walked the cool wind rose fragrant with the smell of the wet grass, refreshing after the foetid atmosphere of that closed room and its gruesome occupant.

We chatted on, discussing the startling discoveries we had made, he giving me certain instructions, until we got to the station and entered a compartment. The latter being crowded with workmen, further conversation on the subject was precluded.

Soon after six I returned to Gray’s Inn, and making an excuse to Dick for my absence, snatched an hour’s sleep before going down to my office. My heart was hard; my blood fire. Fate had been merciless.

“I began to think something had happened, old chap,” Dick had said when I had entered his room and awakened him. He sat up in bed and looked at me rather strangely, I thought. Then he added: “You don’t seem as though you’ve had much sleep, wherever you’ve been.”

In my excitement I had quite forgotten that my clothes were dirty and torn, and my face unwashed, and I fancied that his pointed remark caused a slight flush to rise to my cheeks.

How I performed my duties that morning I scarcely knew, for my brain was in a whirl with the amazing discoveries of the past night, I loved Eva, yet the contents of those concealed drawers were sufficient in themselves to convince Boyd of her guilt. A fearful and perpetual dread seized me lest she should be arrested. Boyd’s method of work was, I knew, always bold and decisive. A detective, to be successful, must act without hesitation. In this affair he had obtained evidence which, from every point of view, proved but one fact, and one alone – her guilt. Indeed, I now remembered with bitterness how she had to me openly declared herself guilty; how she had prophesied that one day I should hate all mention of her name. Did it not seem quite clear, too, that this very drug which I had found in the small wooden box, the drug which had been instantly fatal to the poor brute upon which we tried it, was the same which had been administered to me by her hand?

When I thought of that I felt glad that I had assisted my friend of Scotland Yard, and that with my own hands had unearthed evidence which must lead to her conviction. Her arrest was, I knew from my friend’s remarks, only a matter of days, perhaps, indeed, of hours.

“You can’t now seek to shield Miss Glaslyn,” he had remarked when we had been waiting for the train on Richmond platform. “The proofs are far too strong. If we could only discover the author of those type-written letters we would be able to find out what the Silence refers to, and to move with much more certainty. As we can’t, we must fix our theory firmly and act boldly upon it.”

“Do you mean that you intend to apply for a warrant against her?” I inquired, dismayed.

“We shall obtain one against somebody, but who it may be of course depends entirely upon the result of our subsequent investigations. People don’t keep bodies locked up in their houses without some very strong motive.”

It now struck me as exceedingly strange why Eva should have been so anxious to prevent me revisiting Riverdene. She had hinted that the Blains were my enemies, yet was it not more likely that my presence reminded her too vividly of her sin, and she also feared the vengeance of Mary Blain? There was undoubtedly some deep motive underlying this effort to prevent me visiting the Blains, but as I reflected upon it I failed to decide what it might be. She had spoken of it as though it were for my benefit, and as if she had my welfare at heart, yet I could not fail to detect how hollow was the sham, for the Blains were my friends of long standing, and since my visit at Mary’s request my welcome had always been a most cordial one.

Mary had certainly no cause for jealousy, for she and I had on several occasions, when alone on the river, spoken of the past. She had, indeed, ridiculed my boyish love for her, and observed that we were both older and more discreet nowadays. I had long been assured by her words and her attitude that her affection for me – if she had really ever entertained any – had entirely passed away.

No, I could not understand Eva’s present attitude. It was entirely an enigma. She seemed filled with some nameless terror, the reason of which our discoveries seemed to prove up to the hilt.

Day followed day, each to me full of anxiety and bewilderment. On parting from Boyd he had told me to remain in patience until he communicated with me. I was not to return to Riverdene, neither was I to mention a single word to Dick regarding recent occurrences.

I wandered from end to end of London day after day, reporting the events which daily crop up in the Metropolis. It seemed to me as if those days would never end. I saw nothing but the face of Eva. The world which had seemed to me so beautiful had changed; Heaven was cruel. It created loveliness only to pollute and deform it afterwards. Out of my dreams I was brought face to face with facts that sickened me. The old landmarks of my faith were gone. Whatever happy hopefulness of nature I possessed was crushed. I was bewildered and sick at heart. Yet through it all I could not thrust away from me Eva’s wondrous beauty. Her form, her gaze, her smile, her sigh – I could think of nothing else. Yet the mockery of it all stung me to despair, and despair is man’s most frequent visitor.

A week thus passed. I saw her in the air, in the clouds, everywhere; her voice rang in my ears; she was so lovely – and yet she was so vile – a poisoner!

One afternoon I had returned to Gray’s Inn unusually early, about three o’clock, put on my old lounge-coat, a river “blazer,” and sat down to write up an interview for publication next day, when I heard a ring at the door, voices outside the room, and a few moments later Mrs Joad entered, saying – “’Ere’s a lady wants to see you, sir.”

“A lady?” I exclaimed, turning quickly in my chair. “Ask her in.”

I rose, brushing down my hair with my hand, and next moment found myself face to face with Eva.

She advanced with her hand outstretched and a smile upon her face, that countenance that was ever before me in my day-dreams.

“How fortunate I am to find you in,” she exclaimed, half breathless after the ascent of the stairs. “I’ve been to your office, and they told me that you were probably at home.”

“It is I who am fortunate,” I answered, laughing gaily, placing the armchair for her and drawing out a little oaken footstool, a relic from some bygone generation of men who had tenanted those grimy old rooms.

With a sigh she seated herself, and then for the first time I noticed the deathly pallor of her cheeks. Even her thick veil did not conceal it. She was in black, neat as usual, but her skirt was unbrushed and dusty, and her hair was just a trifle awry, as though she had been travelling about some hours.

“I have called upon you here for the first and for the last time,” she said in a broken voice, looking seriously across to me, as the unwonted tears sprang into her eyes.

“The last time!” I echoed. “What do you mean?”

“I have come to wish you farewell,” she said in a low, faltering voice. “I am leaving London. My mother and I are going abroad.”

“Abroad? Where?” I cried, dismayed.

“My mother’s health is not good, and the doctor has ordered her to the South immediately. He says that she must never return to this climate, because it will hasten her malady to a fatal termination. Therefore, in future we must be exiles.” She was looking straight into my face as she spoke, and those great wondrous eyes of hers that I had believed to be so pure and honest never wavered. “I leave to-morrow and join her,” she added.

“Then she has already gone!” I exclaimed, the truth at once flashing upon me that Lady Glaslyn had actually fled.

“Yes. The doctor has so frightened her that I could not induce her to stay and pack. I shall join her in Paris,” she explained quite calmly. “There is no help for it. We must part.”

“But surely,” I said in desperation, “you will not leave me thus? You will return to England sometimes.”

“I really don’t know,” she answered in a strained, hoarse voice.

“At least you will give me hope that some day you will be my wife, Eva,” I said, tenderly grasping her hand, which seemed limp and trembling. “You know how fondly I love you, how – ”

I started quickly and turned, puzzled at the unusual sound of voices, without finishing the sentence. One voice I recognised speaking in deep tones to Mrs Joad, and dropping the hand I held I rushed out, closing the door behind me.

As I did so, I came face to face with Boyd, accompanied by two plain-clothes officers.

“We’ve followed her here,” he explained. “She means to get away abroad, therefore we must now execute the warrant. I regret it, for your sake.”

A loud piercing shriek from within told me that she had overheard those fateful words.

“No,” I cried. “By Heaven! you shan’t arrest her!” and I resolutely barred his passage to the inner room. “As I love her you shall never enter there! She shall never be taken as a common criminal!”

Chapter Twenty Three

Her Ladyship

Boyd, seeing my fierce determination, held back, a look of undisguised annoyance upon his face.

“I have a duty to perform. I beg of you not to obstruct me, Mr Urwin,” he said coldly. “It is quite as unpleasant to me as to you.”

“Unpleasant!” I echoed. “I tell you that you shall not arrest her,” and I stood firmly with my back to the door of my room.

“Come,” he said, in a tone of persuasion. “This action of yours cannot benefit her in the least. She has made every preparation for flight. Her trunk is in the cloakroom at Charing Cross Station, and she means within an hour to get away to the Continent. Let me pass.”

“I shall not,” I roared.

“In that case I shall be compelled to use force, however much I regret it.”

As he uttered these words the door was suddenly flung back, and I saw Eva’s tragic, almost funereal, figure in the opening. She was white to the lips, her countenance terribly wan and haggard.

“Enough!” she cried hoarsely. “Let the police enter. I am ready,” and she tottered back, clutching at the corner of my writing-table for support.

Her outward purity and innocence were a rare equipment for the committal of a crime. Who, indeed, would have suspected her of guile and intrigue? When Love is dead there is no God.

We were standing together in my sitting-room, Boyd being our only companion. A dozen times I had implored her to speak the truth, but without avail. She stood pale and trembling, yet still silent before us. Terror held her dumb.

“Those who turn King’s evidence obtain free pardon,” the detective gravely observed, speaking for the first time.

She laughed a little to herself.

“You might have striven for ever in vain to solve the mystery,” she answered at last, apparently bracing herself up for an effort. “Those who aimed that terrible blow, so swift and so fatal, were not the kind of persons to be ever caught napping. They never made a false move, and always took such elaborate precautions that to solve the enigma would be impossible to any one unacquainted with previous events.”

Her breast rose and fell quickly in her wild agitation. She was stirred by emotion to the depths of her being.

“I was weak and helpless,” she faltered. “God knows how I have suffered; how deep has been my repentance. Hear me to the end,” she urged, turning her fine eyes to mine. “Then, when I have told you my wretched if astounding story, Frank, judge me as you think fit – for I am yours.”

“Speak!” I said anxiously. “My justice shall be tempered with mercy.”

By that sentence she had acknowledged her love for me, but now I hesitated. She was accused of murder.

“Then I must begin at the very beginning, for it is a long and most complicated story, a story of a deep-laid intrigue and conspiracy, and of a duplicity extraordinary,” she said, her thin, nerveless hand trembling in mine as I held her with my arm about her waist. “In the days when I had reached my sixteenth year I lived with my mother abroad, in Italy for the most part, because it was cheap, and further because my father, who had been guilty of certain shady transactions, had been compelled to fly from England. He had treated my mother shamefully, therefore they were separated, and mother and I lived economically in these cheap pensions in Florence and Rome which seem to exist as asylums for the well-bred needy. A few days after I was sixteen, while we were at an obscure pension in Siena, my mother took typhoid and died, leaving me absolutely alone in the world, and practically penniless. Nearly a year before we had received a letter from my father’s solicitors in London stating that he had died in poverty in Buenos Aires, therefore I was utterly alone. The position of a friendless girl on the Continent is always serious,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “Acting upon the advice of some English people in the pension I went to Florence and saw there the Consul-General, who not only gave me money from the British Relief Fund, which is supported by English residents in that city, but also interested himself actively upon my behalf and obtained for me a post as governess in a wealthy Italian family living near Bologna. In their service I remained nearly three years, until, by the death of the head of the house, the family became scattered, when I took a fresh engagement with a lady who advertised for an English companion. She was a Madame Damant, a good-looking woman of forty-five, whose father, I understood, had been Italian, and whose mother English. She spoke English quite as well as I did, and had a fine apartment in Florence, where she received a good deal, for she was well-known there. With the winter over we travelled first to Paris, where we stayed several months, and then to Switzerland. Our life was pleasant, as Madame had plenty of money and we always lived at the best hotels.”

She paused and drew a long breath. There was a hardness about her mouth, and tears were in her eyes.

“It was in Zurich that I had my first misgivings, for there one day in late autumn we were joined by a strange old gentleman, Hartmann by name, whom I understood was Madame’s brother, a curious old fellow, whose main object in life appeared to be the carrying out of certain scientific experiments. He remained with us in the same hotel for nearly a fortnight, during which time Madame, who was extremely well-educated, held frequent consultations with him upon scientific matters, until one day I was overjoyed when she announced that we were all three to go straight to London.”

“Then the Lady Glaslyn at The Hollies was not your mother?” I gasped, profoundly amazed at this revelation.

“I am about to explain,” she went on in a hard voice. “On the night before our departure from Zurich I chanced to pass the door of Madame’s bedroom after everybody had retired to rest, and seeing a light issuing from the keyhole was prompted by natural curiosity to peep within. What I saw was certainly strange. In one hand she was holding an unopened bottle of Benedictine liqueur upside down, while with the other she took a hypodermic syringe filled with some liquid, and with the long thin needle pierced the cork, then slowly, and with infinite care, she injected the liquid from the tiny glass syringe. Afterwards she withdrew the hollow needle, glanced at the parchment capsule beneath the light, and having satisfied herself that the puncture made was quite unnoticeable, she shook the bottle so as to thoroughly mix the injected liquid with the liqueur. Then I saw her wrap the bottle carefully in a number of towels and place it in her trunk. Next day, when packing, I glanced at the bottle with some curiosity, examining the parchment covering the cork, but so tiny had been the puncture that I failed to discover the hole. The parchment had, I think, been touched with gum, which had caused the tiny hole to close.”

“That liqueur was evidently poisoned,” Boyd remarked, his brows knit in thought.

“Yes,” she answered. “I have every reason to believe so, although the true state of affairs did not dawn upon me until long afterwards. When alone in our compartment in the wagon-lit between Basle and Calais, Madame, however, made a very extraordinary proposal to me. She confessed that her husband had been made the scapegoat of some financial fraud in England and was in hiding somewhere near Paris, therefore, in going back, she feared that if she went under her right name – Damant – that the police would begin to make active inquiries regarding monsieur. She wished, she said, to avoid this and set up a house in some pleasant suburb of London, so as to have a pied-à-terre in the country she so dearly loved. Now my mother was dead, and no friends in England knew her, so many years had she lived on the Continent, why should she not pass as Lady Glaslyn and I as her daughter? At first this proposal utterly staggered me, but when she pointed out how much more I would be respected as her daughter instead of her companion, and told me of the manner in which she intended to live – a manner befitting her assumed station – I at length gave my consent, for which she made me a present there and then of a very acceptable bank-note.”

“Then that woman only posed as your mother!” I exclaimed. “She was not the real Lady Glaslyn?”

“Certainly not,” answered my beloved frankly. “At first I was very indisposed to be a party to any such transaction, but she had shown me so many kindnesses, and had always been so generous, that I, a friendless girl, felt compelled to accede. Ah! if I had but known what lay behind all that outward show of good feeling and sympathy I would have cast her accursed money from me as I could cast the gold of Satan. I would rather have made matches for a starvation wage, or slaved at a shop-counter, than have remained one day longer beneath her roof. But she was full of cool ingenuity and marvellous cunning, and on my acceptance of this proposal instantly set to work to bind me further to secrecy. This was not difficult, alas! for I was entirely unsuspicious of treachery, and least of all of my generous friend and benefactor. After some search and many interviews with house-agents we found The Hollies, which she purchased, together with the furniture just as it stood, and ere long neighbours began to call upon us, and we soon entered local society. Many times in those dull winter days I pondered long and deeply upon what I had seen in Zurich, wondering for what reason she had so carefully prepared the bottle which had passed the customs at Charing Cross undiscovered, and still remained locked in the travelling-trunk, surrounded by the wrappings she had placed upon it.”

“Was any of the liqueur given to any one?” asked Boyd grimly.

Ere she could respond the door was thrown open, and Dick entered with Lily Lowry. He had, it transpired, gone that day and besought her forgiveness.

In a single glance he realised what had occurred, and without a word he closed the door, and both stood in silence to listen to her statement.

How strange a thing is this life of ours! We are in hell one hour, and in heaven the next.

Chapter Twenty Four

The Truth Revealed

“Remain patient and I’ll explain,” Eva answered, glancing at the new-comers. “First, however, let me relate a very curious circumstance. Hartmann, who lived somewhere in London, we saw seldom, but very soon after taking possession of The Hollies, there one day called an old friend of Madame’s, accompanied by her husband. They were the Blains. Mrs Blain afterwards came frequently to us at The Hollies, and we often spent the day at Riverdene, while so intimate did the two women become that Madame took the house next to that rented by Mrs Blain in Kensington.”

“Next door?” I gasped, astounded. “In Upper Phillimore Place?”

“Yes, the house next to the one you entered on that fatal night was in the occupation of Madame,” she explained. “We seldom went there, however, although I personally preferred the bright life in Kensington to that at Hampton. From the many private conversations, meaning looks and mysterious whisperings exchanged between Madame and Mrs Blain there was soon aroused within me a vague suspicion that something secret was in progress. I liked old Mr Blain exceedingly, and Mary became my best friend; nevertheless, my misgivings were strengthened, when one day Hartmann, unusually shabbily dressed and accompanied by the Blains, arrived at The Hollies and the trio were closeted for quite an hour with Madame. At length there also arrived a youngish good-looking man with a lady of about his own age, and they were at once admitted to the drawing-room, being enthusiastically welcomed. After half an hour or so we all dined together, but in the drawing-room before dinner I noticed two tumblers half-filled with dirty water, in one a tiny glass rod evidently used for mixing, as though Hartmann had been exhibiting some of his secret experiments. On entering the dining-room, Madame introduced her new guests to me as Mr and Mrs Coulter-Kerr, and sitting beside the husband I found him a most interesting and intelligent man, who literally adored his wife. In the course of conversation it transpired that the newly-arrived pair were from India, and had taken the Blains’ town house for the season, and further, that Hartmann, who had apparently become one of their most intimate friends, had established his laboratory in one of the top rooms of that house.”

She paused and glanced across to the detective, who was listening attentively with folded arms. As she related her story her great clear eyes became more luminous.

“A week later,” she continued, “we went to London and there saw a good deal of our next-door neighbours. Madame was on terms of the closest intimacy with them, and frequently we would dine there, or they would dine with us, while one evening Hartmann – who did not live there, but only came to continue his scientific studies, assisted by Mr Kerr, who took the keenest interest in them – invited us up into his laboratory, and after showing us Mr Kerr’s collection of pet Indian snakes, which I confess I did not appreciate, he exhibited to us an experiment which he told us had never been successfully accomplished by any other man except himself, namely, the liquefaction of hydrogen. To succeed in this, he told us, all his efforts had been directed for years, and now that he had successfully solved the problem he would one day launch it upon the scientific world as a bolt from the blue. Our friends gave excellent dinners, were evidently possessed of almost unlimited means, and were never so happy as when the Blains and ourselves were at their table or playing cards with them. Soon, however, another matter caused me deep reflection. One evening at The Hollies, after the Blains and Hartmann had been closely closeted with Madame, discussing, as they so often did, their private affairs, I found lying beneath a book upon the table, and apparently overlooked, several plain cards, and others with devices, lines and circles roughly-drawn in ink. Then two or three days later, when I chanced to call in at the Kerrs, I noticed, stuck behind a mirror over the mantelshelf, some cards exactly similar. I was alone, therefore my curiosity prompted me to examine them. Upon them I found exactly similar devices!”

“Ah! what connexion had those cards with the affair?” interrupted Dick.