The Late Tenant

The door opened, Miss L’Estrange fled, and David went into the drawing-room, where he waited some minutes till she reappeared, looking fresh and washed from the night’s stage-paint, with something voluminous wrapped about her.

“Now, what is it?” said she. “Straight to the point – that’s me.”

“You must give me Strauss’s address,” said David.

“That I sha’n’t,” said she. “What do you take me for? I promised the man that I wouldn’t. I have told you once that he isn’t a thousand miles from Piccadilly, and that’s about all you’ll get from me.”

“Good! I understand your position,” said David. “But before you refuse out and out, hear what I have to say. This man Strauss is a man who induced Gwendoline Barnes, whom you know, to leave her home, married her while his first wife was alive, and so caused her to make away with herself. And now this same man, under the name of Van Hupfeldt, is about to marry her sister, without telling her that he even knew the girl whom he has murdered. I don’t know what the sister’s motive for marrying him is – quite possibly there’s some trick about it – but I know that the motive is not love. Now, just think a moment, and tell me if this is fair to your woman’s mind.”

“Oh, that’s how it is!” exclaimed Ermyn L’Estrange.

“All the facts which I have mentioned I know for certain,” said David.

“Then, that explains – ”

“Explains what?”

“I’ll tell you; but this is between us, mind. Some time ago Strauss comes to me, and he says: ‘I have given your address to a young lady – a Miss Violet Mordaunt – who is about to write you a letter asking whether you did or did not find any certificates in a picture in the Eddystone Mansions flat; and I want you in answer to deny to her for my sake that any certificates were ever found.’”

“And you did?” cried David with deep reproach.

“Now, no preaching, or I never tell you anything again,” shrilled Miss L’Estrange. “Here’s gratitude in man! Of course I did! He said it was only an innocent fib which could do no harm to anybody, and if you saw the bracelet I got for it, my boy – ”

“You wrote to say that no certificates were ever found!”

“I did.”

“Then what can she think of me?” he cried with a face of pain. “I told her – ”

“Ah, you are after her, too? I see now how it is,” said Miss L’Estrange.

“But she might at least have given me a chance of clearing myself!” groaned David. “She might have written to me to say that she had found me out in a lie.”

Violet had, indeed, promised herself the luxury of writing one “stinging, crushing, killing” note to David in the event of Miss L’Estrange proving him false. And, in fact, not one but many such notes had been written down at Dale Manor. But none of them had ever been sent – her deep disdain had kept her silent.

“But,” cried David, at the spur of a sudden glad thought, “since Miss Mordaunt wrote to you, and you to her, you know her address, and can give it me!”

“No, I don’t know her address,” answered Miss L’Estrange. “I believe now that Strauss may have been afraid that if I knew it I might give it to you, so he must have prevented her from putting it on her letter. There was no address on it, I don’t think, for when I wrote back to her I gave my letter to Strauss to send.”

“Ah, he’s a cautious beast!” said David, bitterly. “Still – I’ll have him – not to-morrow, but to-night. Quick, now – his address.”

“Well, I promised not to tell it to any one,” vowed Miss L’Estrange in her best soubrette manner, “and I’ll be as good as my word, since I never break a promise when my word is once passed. I’ll just write it down on a piece of paper, and drop it on the floor by accident, and then if anybody should happen to notice it and pick it up without my seeing, that will be no business of mine.”

She rose, walked to a desk, and went through this pantomime in all seriousness. The address was dropped on the carpet, and David “happening” to notice it, picked it up behind Miss Ermyn L’Estrange’s unconscious back. It had on it the number of a house near Hanover Square; and in another moment David had pressed the lady’s hand, and was gone, crying: “I’ll come again!”

“Not even a word of thanks,” said Miss L’Estrange to herself, as she looked after his flying back: “‘Blow, blow, thou winter’s wind.’”

David leaped into his waiting cab, and was off across London.

Light was still in Van Hupfeldt’s quarters, and Van Hupfeldt himself, at the moment when David rang, was poring over the last words of the diary of her who had been part of his life. He was livid with fear at the knowledge just learned for certain from the written words, that there were still hidden in the flat a photograph of him, and his last letter to Gwendoline, when he heard an altercation between his man Neil and another voice outside. A moment later he heard Neil cry out sharply, and then he was aware of a hurried step coming in upon him. The first thought of his secretive nature was the diary, and, with the trepidations of a miser surprised in counting his gold, he hustled it into a secret recess of the bureau near which he had been reading. He had hardly done this when he stood face to face with David.

At that moment Van Hupfeldt’s face seemed lit with a lunacy of affright, surprise, and rage. David, with his hat rather drawn over his eyes, and with a frowning severity, said: “I want four things of you – the diary, the key of my flat which you have in your possession, those certificates, and Mrs. Mordaunt’s address.”

A scream went out from Van Hupfeldt: “Neil! the police!”

“Quite so,” said David; “but before the police come, do as I say, or I shall kill you.”

Van Hupfeldt could hardly catch his breath sufficiently to speak. A man so wholly in the grip of terror it was painful to see. David understood him to say: “Man, I warn you, my heart is weak.”

“Heart weak?” growled David. “That’s what you say? Well, then, keep cool, and let me have my way. We must wrangle it out now somehow. You have the police on your side for the moment, and I stand alone – ”

Now the outer door was heard to slam; for Neil had run out to summon help.

“I’m not acting on my own behalf,” said David, “but for the sake of a girl whose life, I feel sure, you are going to make bitter. She cares nothing for you – ”

“How dare you!” came in a hoarseness of concentrated passion from Van Hupfeldt’s bosom.

“No, she cares nothing for you – ”

“You interloper!”

“And even if she did, she is sure to find out sooner or later that you are Strauss – ”

“Oh! had I but guessed!”

“Which would be the death of her – ”

“I never dreamed of this.”

“So, on her behalf, I’ll just make a hurried search before the police comes. The things are not yours. If your heart wasn’t weak, I’d maul you till you were willing to hand them over of your own accord.”

With that David made a move toward the bureau, whereupon Van Hupfeldt uttered a scream and flew upon him like a cat-o’-mountain, but David flung him away to the other end of the room.

Scattered over the bureau were a number of letters in their envelopes ready for the post, and the first of these upon which David’s eye fell was directed to “Miss Violet Mordaunt.”

Here was luck! Even as his heart bounded, before even he had seen a word of the address, he was in darkness – Van Hupfeldt had switched off the light.

And now once again David felt himself outdone by the cunning of this man. The room was large, crowded with objects of luxury, and the switch a needle in a bundle of hay. In which direction to grope for it David did not know. He ran to where he had flung Van Hupfeldt, to compel him by main force to turn on the light. But Van Hupfeldt was no longer there. The suddenness of the darkness made it black to the eyes. David could not find the switch, and fearing lest Van Hupfeldt might snatch away the letter to Violet in the dark, he flew back to the bureau, over-setting first a chair, and then colliding upon Van Hupfeldt a little distance from the bureau. Again he flung Van Hupfeldt far, and, keeping near the bureau, groped along the beading of the wall, to see if he could encounter another switch.

In the midst of this search, his ears detected the sound of a key in the outer door, and understanding that help had arrived for the enemy, instantly he took his decision, felt for the eight or ten envelopes on the bureau, slipped them all into his pocket, and was gone. In the hall, coming inward he met Neil and an officer, but, as if making a deep bow to the majesty of the law, he slipped as easily as a wave under the officer’s hand, and disappeared through the wide-open door. The officer ran after him. This was simple. From the moment when David pitched through the house-door below the stairs, he was never more seen by that particular officer to the day of his death.

Under a lamp in Oxford-St., when he stopped running, he took out Strauss’s letters from his pocket with a hand that shook, for in his heart was the thought: “Suppose I have left hers behind!”

But no; that fifth one was hers: “Miss Violet Mordaunt, Dale Manor, Rigsworth, near Kenilworth.” Remembrance came to him with an ache of rapture. Within twenty-four hours he would see her. He was so pleased that he was at the pains to throw Strauss’s other letters into the first pillar-box. What did it matter now that the diary, certificates, anything or everything, had been filched from him? To-morrow, no, that day, he would see Violet.

CHAPTER XVII

DAVID MORE THAN REGAINS LOST GROUND

Harcourt was now in the position of a man who thinks he has invented a flying-machine – enthusiasm became stronger than knowledge, belief was made to do service as evidence. To meet Violet, to look again into those sweet eyes of hers, that was the great thing he promised himself next morning. Indeed, it is to be feared he deliberately surrendered himself to dreams of such a meeting, while he smoked pipe after pipe in his lonesome flat, rather than set himself to an orderly review of his forces for the approaching trial of strength with Van Hupfeldt.

No sooner was he well clear of Van Hupfeldt’s house than he knew that he was safe from active interference by the law. The man whom he now looked on as his rival, the subtle adversary whom he had scorned to crush when appealed to for mercy on the score of physical inferiority, would never dare to seek the aid of authority. Nursing that fact, ready enough to welcome the prospect of an unaided combat, David did not stop to consider that an older head in counsel would not be a bad thing. There was Dibbin, for instance. Dibbin, whose ideas were cramped within ledgers and schedules, had, nevertheless, as he said himself, “been young once.” Surely David could have sufficiently oxygenized the agent’s thin blood with the story told by the hapless Gwendoline that the man should hie with him to Rigsworth and there be confronted with the veritable Strauss. Dibbin was a precise man. It would have been hard for Van Hupfeldt to flout Dibbin.

But no; David smoked and dreamed, and saw a living Violet in the chalk portrait of the dead Gwendoline, and said so many nice words to the presentment thus created that he came to believe them; and so he consigned Dibbin to his own musty office, nor even gave heed to the existence of such a credible witness as Sarah Gissing, poor Gwendoline’s maid.

He left a penciled note on his table that the charwoman was to call him when she came at eight – for in such wise does London conquer Wyoming – and with the rattle of her knuckles on the door he was out of bed, blithe as a lark, with his heart singing greetings to a sunny morning.

The manner of dress, the shade of a tie, the exact degree of whiteness of linen, were affairs of moment just then. Alack! here was our erstwhile rounder-up of steers stopping his hansom on the way to the station in order to buy a smart pair of doeskin gloves, while he gazed lovingly at a boutonnière of violets, but forbore.

It was noon ere he reached Rigsworth, and inquiry showed that the Mordaunts’ house was situated at the farther end of the small village. He walked through the street of scattered houses, and attracted some attention by the sure fact that he was a stranger. At any rate, that was how he regarded the discreet scrutiny to which he was subjected.

“A big house with a lodge-gate, just past the church on the left,” were the station-master’s directions, and David had no difficulty in finding his way. His heart fell a little when he saw the style of the place. The lodge was a pretty villa in itself. Its garden would be of great worth within the London suburban area. Behind it stretched the park of Dale Manor, and the turrets of a mansion among many lordly elms seemed to put Violet on a somewhat inaccessible pinnacle. David did not know that people of moderate means can maintain a good sporting estate by letting the shooting, but he had learned in the free air of the States to rate a man on a different level to parks; if a half-bred rascal like Van Hupfeldt was able to enter this citadel like a thief for one daughter of the house, why should not an honest man storm it for the sake of another?

At the lodge, however, he met with a decided rebuff. “No visitors admitted,” was the curt response of a gamekeeper sort of person who was lurking in a doorway when David tried to open the locked gate.

“My business is important,” urged David, quietly, though his face flushed a little at the man’s impudent manner.

“So’s my orders,” said velveteens.

“But I must see either Mrs. Mordaunt or Miss Violet.”

“You can’t see either. Absolute orders. Your name’s Harcourt isn’t it?”

Then David knew that Van Hupfeldt had over-reached him by the telegraph, and the shattering of his dream-castle caused such lightnings to gleam from within that the surly gamekeeper whistled to a retriever dog, and ostensibly revealed a double-barreled gun which lay in the corner of the porch.

David was likely to have his own way with clodhoppers, even in the hour of tribulation.

“Yes,” he said, “my name is Harcourt. And yours?”

“Mine is no matter.”

“Very well, ‘No Matter.’ You are obeying orders, I have no doubt; but you must be taught civility. I give you notice, ‘No Matter,’ that a little later I shall lick you good and plenty, and if you don’t take it like a man you will probably be fired into the bargain.”

The keeper was for abusing him, but David turned away. And now he was not the well-dressed, gloved, spick-and-span Londoner, but the Indian of the prairie, with a heart from which the glow had gone, with eyes that saw and ears that heard and a brain that recorded everything.

He was instantly aware that the country policeman who had lolled through the village behind him was a forewarned spy. He knew that this functionary watched his return to the railway station, from which, as David happened to remember, the time-table had shown a train London-wards at one o’clock.

The station-master was affable enough, gave him some bread and meat and a glass of milk, and refused any payment. When the train came in, David, sourly smiling, saw the constable loll onto the platform. He could not resist the temptation to lean out of the carriage window.

“Good-by, P. C. 198,” he said.

Now, he was traveling first-class, and, in England, even a villain demands respect under that circumstance.

“Good-by, sir,” said the man, surprised.

“You will know me again, eh?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“I am glad of that. Tell that chap at the gate of Dale Manor that I shall keep my fixture with him soon.”

P. C. 198 scratched his head. “Funny affair,” he muttered as the train moved off. “Looks an’ talks more of a gentleman than van Wot’s-his-name, any day.”

At the next station, four miles away, David slipped out of his carriage quickly and waited in a shed until the train had gone again. Then he interviewed the station-master, and somewhat astonished the official by tendering a return ticket from Rigsworth to London.

“Can’t break your journey,” said the regulations.

“But I’ve done it,” said David.

“It’s irregular,” complained the other.

“And the train is half a mile distant.”

“Well, if you pay the fare – ”

David meant to forfeit his ticket. This was a new light. He paid a few pence, took a receipt, and promised himself some fun at Rigsworth.

He asked for no information. From the train he had noted a line of telegraph posts in the distance, and he stepped out smartly along a by-road until he gained the main thoroughfare. Then, being alone, he ran, and the newly bought gloves burst their seams, so he flung them off.

When less than a mile from Rigsworth he heard the whistle of a train. Springing to a high bank, he made out the sinuous, snake-like curling of an engine and coaches beyond the hedge-rows – a train coming from London. “Van Hupfeldt is in it, of course,” he decided. “I must make sure.”

It needed a fine sprint, aided by the exercise of quick judgment when he neared Dale Manor; but he was hidden in a brake of brambles in the park as Van Hupfeldt, exceedingly pallid this glorious day of spring, walked up the drive, accompanied by the gamekeeper, dog and gun. The dog came near to undoing David; but a rabbit, already disturbed, ran out of the thicket, and a sharp command from the keeper brought the retriever to heel.

Van Hupfeldt entered the gardens; the keeper made off across the park. Green and brown buds, almost bursting into leaf, were already enriching the shrubs and trees of Dale Manor, especially in a sheltered hollow on the left front of the house where nestled a pretty lake. There the cover was good. The hunter instinct sent him that way.

“That Dutchman will make Violet bolt just as the dog started the rabbit,” thought David, and he took a circuitous route to reach a summer-house on the most distant side of the ornamental water, whence, he fancied, he could command a fair view of the house and grounds. He waited with stubborn patience two long hours. At last he saw a man arrive in a dog-cart, and it was the coming of this person which apparently drove Violet forth, as, five minutes after the newcomer was admitted, a tall graceful figure in black, a girl wearing a large black hat and draping a white shawl elegantly round her shoulders, stepped out of a French window to the smooth lawn, and looked straight at the sheet of water beyond which David lay ensconced.

No need to tell him who this was. His heart did not beat now. He was glad, and something warmed his whole body, for it was chill waiting there in the shade after his run, but neither man nor water could interpose further barrier between him and his Violet, so he was calm and confident.

The girl glanced back once toward the room she had quitted, and then strolled on, ever coming nearer the glistening lake and the summer-house. She crossed the fine stretch of turf and stood for an instant near a marble statue which guarded a fountain. The distance was not great, and David thought his eyes were deceiving him when he saw that the white marble and the black-garbed girl were singularly alike in feature. It was not surprising, since the sculptor had taken Violet’s great-grandmother, a noted beauty of early Georgian days, as his model for the face of the dryad, and it was one of the honored traditions of Dale Manor that this figure should be promptly shielded from inclement weather, even from the dew. Just then David was not inclined to cavil at any discovery of fresh charms in Violet, but he set aside this fanciful idea, as he deemed it, and bent his mind on attracting her attention without causing a flutter either to her or to the other occupants of the house.

But she came on again, reached the lake-side path, and made him hope for a moment that she would pass by the door of his retreat. If that was so, he would reveal himself to her soon enough to save her from being unduly alarmed by the unexpected apparition of a man in that secluded place.

Now she actually passed abreast of him, with the lake between, and soon she would round the curve of the water and face him again. Her figure was mirrored in the silver and blue of the reflected sky. So light was her step that the living, moving body seemed to be as impalpable as its spirit image.

Then David’s heart did jump of a sudden, for a faint hail of “Vi!” twice repeated, caught his ears, and he saw Mrs. Mordaunt, outside the French window, calling to her daughter.

The girl turned, facing David, almost. He made up his mind without a moment’s hesitation.

“Violet,” he said, softly but clearly, “Violet, don’t go! Come here. It is I, David.” The cheek of him! as Miss Ermyn L’Estrange would have put it. Violet! David! What next?

Violet was bewitched for a second or two. She looked wildly toward the house, and at him; for he stood so that she might see him plainly, though to her mother he was invisible.

“Please come!” he pleaded. “I am here for your sake, for Gwen’s sake, too, and they have kept us apart so long by lies!”

That the girl was greatly excited was obvious. She pressed her hands together on her bosom, though the action might pass as a simple adjustment of her shawl.

“I must go,” she murmured brokenly. “They want me there to – to sign some documents. And I cannot meet you.”

“Violet, sign nothing until you have heard my story. I appeal to you for a hearing. If you refuse I shall come with you to the house. But hear me first. Make some excuse.”

There was ever that in David’s voice which won belief. Some men ring true, some false. David had in him the clear sound of metal without flaw.

And no woman is worth her salt who cannot act more than a little. “Give me ten minutes, mother,” shrilled Violet, excitedly. “Only ten minutes; then I shall be with you.”

David, peeping through the rustic timber-work, noted with satisfaction that Mrs. Mordaunt waved a hand of agreement and reëntered the house. What then, of devil’s work was Van Hupfeldt plotting in that drawing-room that Violet should be wanted to sign documents, and that the girl’s mother should recognize the need of her daughter being allowed some few minutes of grace if she so desired?

But here came Violet, all rosy now with wonder, for her blood was racing, though in her eyes, which reflected her thoughts, was an anger which David missed in his joy. She stood framed in the narrow doorway of the summer-house, and half turned as though to leave it quickly. “Now, what have you to say to me?” she breathed hurriedly.

David, who thought he was shy with women, soon found winged words to pierce the armor of a disdain he did not yet understand. “If I obeyed my heart, Violet,” he said, and she thrilled a little under the shock of hearing her Christian name so glib on his lips, “I would begin by telling you that I love you, and so throw to the winds all other considerations.”

She turned and faced him, palpitating, with a certain deer-like readiness to fly. “How dare you?”

“I am not daring. Daring springs from the heart, you know. Moreover, though the knowledge of my love is old to me, old as weary days and sleepless nights can make it, it may be new to you, unless, somehow, my love has bridged the void, and made you responsive to my passion. Ah, don’t be afraid, now,” for David thought she shrank from him – though in very truth this maiden’s soul was all a-quiver with the conviction that not so had Van Hupfeldt spoken, not so had his ardor shaken her. “I am not here to-day as your lover, as your avowed lover I would rather say, but only as your self-appointed guardian, as one who would save you from a fate worse than death. Listen now, and believe me, for I can prove the truth. Van Hupfeldt, who would marry you, is none other than Strauss, the man who married your sister.”

Violet’s eyes dilated. Her lips parted as if to utter a shriek. David caught her by the wrist and drew her gently toward him. Before either of them knew what was happening, his arms were about her.

“Be brave, there’s a dear girl!” he whispered. “Be brave and silent! Can you listen? Tell me you are not afraid to listen.”

Again Violet was conscious that the touch of David Harcourt’s arms was a different thing to the impetuous embrace of Van Hupfeldt. A sob came from her. She seemed to lose a little of her fine stature. She was becoming smaller, more timidly womanlike, so near this masterful man.

“He married your sister,” went on David. “He married Gwen in his own name of Van Hupfeldt, and the birth of their child is registered in that name. I wrote and told you of the certificates being in existence. He obtained them by bribery and a trick. That is nothing. Even if they are destroyed, they can be replaced by the proper authorities. I know where the child is living. I can take you to it. I can bring Dibbin, the agent, here, to face Van Hupfeldt and prove that he is none other than Strauss, your sister’s husband and slayer. I can bring Sarah Gissing, your sister’s servant, to identify him as the man whom poor Gwen loved as her husband and the father of her child. Were it not for my own folly, I could have brought you her diary – ”