The House of Whispers

"He threatened you?" asked Walter.

"He told me to remain quiet, and that he and Lady Heyburn would do their best to shield me. For that reason, dad," she went on, turning to the blind man, "for that reason I feared to denounce him when I discovered him with your safe open, for that reason I was compelled to take all the blame and all your anger upon myself."

The old man's brow knit. "Where is my wife?" he asked. "I must speak to her before we go further. This is a very serious matter."

"Lady Heyburn is still at Park Street," Flockart replied.

"I will hear no more," declared the blind Baronet, holding up his hand, "not another word until my wife is present."

CHAPTER XXXVII

INCREASES THE INTEREST

"But, dad," cried Gabrielle, "I am telling you the truth! Cannot you believe me, your daughter, before this man who is your enemy?"

"Because of my affliction I am, it seems, deceived by every one," was his hard response.

To where they stood had come the sound of wheels upon the gravelled drive outside, and a moment later Hill entered, announcing, "A gentleman to see you very urgently, Sir Henry. He is from Baron de Hetzendorf."

"From the Baron!" gasped the blind man. "I'll see him later."

"Why, it may be Hamilton!" cried Murie; who, looking through the door, saw his old friend in the corridor, and quickly called him in.

As he faced Flockart he drew himself up. The attitude of them all made it apparent to him that something unusual was in progress.

"You've arrived at a very opportune moment, Hamilton," Murie said. "You have met Miss Heyburn before, and also Flockart, I believe, at Lady Heyburn's, in Paris."

"Yes, but–"

"Sir Henry," Walter said in a quiet tone, "this gentleman sent by the Baron is his secretary, the same Mr. Edgar Hamilton of whom Gabrielle has just been speaking."

"Ah, then, perhaps he can furnish us with further facts regarding this most extraordinary statement of my daughter's," the blind man exclaimed.

"Gabrielle has just told her father the truth regarding a certain tragic occurrence in the Forest of Pontarmé. Explain to us all you know, Edgar."

"What I know," said Hamilton, "is very quickly told. Has Miss Heyburn mentioned the man Krail?"

"Yes, I have told them about him," the girl answered.

"You have, however, perhaps omitted to mention one or two small facts in connection with the affair," he said. "Do you not remember how, on that eventful afternoon in the forest, when searching for us, you first encountered Krail walking with this man Flockart at some distance from the others?"

"Yes, I recollect."

"And do you remember that when we returned to sit down to luncheon Flockart insisted that I should take the seat which was afterwards occupied by the unfortunate Miss Bryant? Do you recollect how I spread a rug for her at that spot and preferred myself to stand? The reason of their invitation to me to sit there I did not discover until afterwards. That wine had been prepared for me, not for her."

"For you!" the girl gasped, amazed.

"Yes. The plot was undoubtedly this—"

"There was no plot," protested Flockart, interrupting. "This girl killed Edna Bryant through intense jealousy."

"I repeat that there was a foul and ingenious plot to kill me, and to entrap Miss Heyburn," Hamilton said. "It was, of course, clear that Miss Heyburn was jealous of the girl, for she had written to her mother making threats against Miss Bryant's life. Therefore, the plot was that I should drink the fatal wine, and that Miss Gabrielle should be declared to be the murderess, she having intended the wine to be partaken of by the girl she hated with such deadly hatred. The marked cordiality of Krail and Flockart that I should take that seat aroused within me some misgivings, although I had never dreamed of this dastardly and cowardly plot against me—not until I saw the result of their foul handiwork."

"It's a lie! You are trying to implicate Krail and myself! The girl is the only guilty person. She placed the wine there!"

"She did not!" declared Hamilton boldly. "She was not there when the bottle was changed by Krail, but I was!"

"If what you say is true, then you deliberately stood by and allowed the girl to drink."

"I watched Krail go to the spot where luncheon was laid out, but could not see what he did. If I had done so I should have saved the girl's life. You were a few yards off, awaiting him; therefore you knew his intentions, and you are as guilty of that girl's tragic death as he."

"What!" cried Flockart, his eyes glaring angrily, "do you declare, then, that I am a murderer?"

"You yourself are the best judge of your own guilt," answered Hamilton meaningly.

"I deny that Krail or myself had any hand in the affair."

"You will have an opportunity of making that denial in a criminal court ere long," remarked the Baron's secretary with a grim smile.

"What," gasped Lady Heyburn's friend, his cheeks paling in an instant, "have you been so indiscreet as to inform the police?"

"I have—a week ago. I made a statement to M. Hamard of the Sûreté in Paris, and they have already made a discovery which you will find of interest and somewhat difficult to disprove."

"And pray what is that?"

Hamilton smiled again, saying, "No, my dear sir, the police will tell you themselves all in due course. Remember, you and your precious friend plotted to kill me."

"But why, Mr. Hamilton?" inquired the blind man. "What was their motive?"

"A very strong one," was the reply. "I had recognised in Krail a man who had defrauded the Baron de Hetzendorf of fifty thousand kroners, and for whom the police were in active search, both for that and for several other serious charges of a similar character. Krail knew this, and he and his friend—this gentleman here—had very ingeniously resolved to get rid of me by making it appear that Miss Gabrielle had poisoned me by accident."

"A lie!" declared Flockart fiercely, though his efforts to remain imperturbed were now palpable.

"You will be given due opportunity of disproving my allegations," Hamilton said. "You, coward that you are, placed the guilt upon an innocent, inexperienced girl. Why? Because, with Lady Heyburn's connivance, you with your cunning accomplice Krail were endeavouring to discover Sir Henry's business secrets in order, first, to operate upon the valuable financial knowledge you would thus gain, and so make a big coup; and, secondly, when you had done this, it was your intention to expose the methods of Sir Henry and his friends. Ah! don't imagine that you and Krail have not been very well watched of late," laughed Hamilton.

"Do you allege, then, that Lady Heyburn is privy to all this?" asked the blind man in distress.

"It is not for me to judge, sir," was Hamilton's reply.

"I know! I know how I have been befooled!" cried the poor helpless man, "befooled because I am blind!"

"Not by me, Sir Henry," protested Flockart.

"By you and by every one else," he cried angrily. "But I know the truth at last—the truth how my poor little daughter has been used as an instrument by you in your nefarious operations."

"But–"

"Hear me, I say!" went on the old man. "I ask my daughter to forgive me for misjudging her. I now know the truth. You obtained by some means a false key to my safe, and you copied certain documents which I had placed there in order to entrap any who might seek to learn my secrets. You fell into that trap, and though I confess I thought that Gabrielle was the culprit, on Murie's behalf, I only lately found out that you and your accomplice Krail were in Greece endeavouring to profit by knowledge obtained from here, my private house."

"Krail has been living in Auchterarder of late, it appears," Hamilton remarked, "and it is evidently he who, gaining access to the house one night recently, used his friend's false key, and obtained those confidential Russian documents from your safe."

"No doubt," declared Sir Henry. Then, again addressing Flockart, he asked, "Where are those documents which you and your scoundrelly accomplice have stolen, and for the return of which you are trying to make me pay?"

"I don't know anything about them," answered Flockart sullenly, his face livid.

"He'll know more about them when he is taken off by the two detectives from Edinburgh who hold the extradition warrant," Hamilton remarked with a grim smile.

The fellow started at those words. His demeanour was that of a guilty man. "What do you mean?" he gasped, white as death. "You—you intend to give me into custody? If you do, I warn you that Lady Heyburn will suffer also."

"She, like Miss Gabrielle, has only been your tool," Hamilton declared. "It was she who, under compulsion, has furnished you with means for years, and whose association with you has caused something little short of a scandal. Times without number she has tried to get rid of you and your evil influence in this household, but you have always defied her. Now," he said firmly, looking the other straight in the face, "you have upon you those stolen documents which you have, by using an assumed name and a false address, offered to sell back to their owner, Sir Henry. You have threatened that if they are not purchased at the exorbitant price you demand you will sell them to the Russian Ministry of Finance. That is the way you treat your friend and benefactor, the man who is blind and helpless! Come, give them back to Sir Henry, and at once."

"You must ask Krail," stammered the man, now so cornered that all further excuse or denial had become impossible.

"That's unnecessary. I happen to know that those papers are in your pocket at this moment, a fact which shows how watchful an eye we've been keeping upon you of late. You have brought them here so that your friend Krail may come to terms with Sir Henry for their repossession. He arrived from London with you, and is at the 'Strathavon Arms' in the village, where he stayed before, and is well known."

"Flockart," demanded the blind man very seriously, "you have papers in your possession which are mine. Return them to me."

A dead silence fell. All eyes save those of Sir Henry were turned upon the man who until that moment had stood so defiant and so full of sarcasm. But in an instant, at mention of Krail's presence in Auchterarder, his demeanour had suddenly changed. He was full of alarm.

"Give them to me and leave my house," Sir Henry said, holding up his thin white hand.

"I—I will—on one condition: if I may be allowed to go."

"We shall not prevent you leaving," was the Baronet's calm reply.

The man fumbled nervously in the inner pocket of his coat, and at last brought out a sealed and rather bulgy foolscap envelope.

"Open it, Gabrielle, and see what is within," her father said.

She obeyed, and in a few moments explained the various documents it contained.

"Then let the man go," her father said.

"But, Sir Henry," cried Hamilton, "I object to this! Krail is down in the village forming a plot to make you pay for the return of those papers. He arrived from London by the same train as this man. If we allow him to leave he will inform his accomplice, and both will escape."

Murie had his back to the door, the long window on the opposite side of the room being closed.

"It was a promise of Sir Henry's," declared the unhappy adventurer.

"Which will be observed when Krail has been brought face to face with Sir Henry," answered Murie, at the same time calling Hill and one of the gardeners who chanced to be working on the lawn outside.

Then, with a firmness which showed that they were determined, Hamilton and Murie conducted Flockart to a small upstairs room, where Hill and the gardener, with the assistance of Stewart, who happened to have come into the kitchen, mounted guard over him.

His position, once the honoured guest at Glencardine, was the most ignominious conceivable. But Sir Henry sat in gratification that at least he had got back those documents and saved the reputation of his friend Volkonski, as well as that of his co-partners.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

"THAT MAN'S VOICE!"

Stokes the chauffeur had driven Murie and Hamilton in the car down to the village, where the last-named, after a conversation with the police inspector, went to the "Strathavon Arms," together with two constables who happened to be off duty, in plain clothes.

They found Krail sitting in the bar, calmly smoking, awaiting a message from his accomplice.

Upon Hamilton's recognition he was, after a brief argument, arrested on the charge of theft from Glencardine, placed in the car between the two stalwart Scotch policemen, and conveyed in triumph to the castle, much, of course, against his will. He demanded to be taken straight to the police station; but as Sir Henry had ordered him to be brought to Glencardine, and as Sir Henry was a magistrate, the inspector was bound to obey his orders.

The man's cruel, colourless eyes seemed to contract closer as he sat in the car with his enemy Hamilton facing him. He had never dreamed that they would ever meet again; but, now they had, he saw that the game was up. There was no hope of escape. He was being taken to meet Sir Henry Heyburn, the very last man in all the world he wished to face. His sallow countenance was drawn, his lips were thin and bloodless, and upon his cheeks were two red spots which showed that he was now in a deadly terror.

Gabrielle, who had been weeping at the knees of her father, heard the whirr of the car coming up the drive; and, springing to the window, witnessed the arrival of the party.

A moment later, Krail, between the two constables, and with the local inspector standing respectfully at the rear, stood in the big, long library into which the blind man was led by his daughter.

When all had assembled, Sir Henry, in a clear, distinct voice, said, "I have had you arrested and brought here in order to charge you with stealing certain documents from my safe yonder, which you opened by means of a duplicate key. Your accomplice Flockart has given evidence against you; therefore, to deny it is quite needless."

"Whatever he has said to you is lies," the foreigner replied, his accent being the more pronounced in his excitement. "I know nothing about it."

"If you deny that," exclaimed Hamilton quickly, "you will perhaps also deny that it was you who secretly poisoned Miss Bryant in the Pontarmé Forest, even though I myself saw you at the spot; and, further, that a witness has been found who actually saw you substitute the wine-bottles. You intended to kill me!"

"What ridiculous nonsense you are talking!" cried the accused, who was dressed with his habitual shabby gentility. "The girl yonder, mademoiselle, killed Miss Bryant."

"Then why did you make that deliberate attempt upon my life at Fotheringhay?" demanded the girl boldly. "Had it not been for Mr. Hamilton, who must have seen us together and guessed that you intended foul play, I should certainly have been drowned."

"He believed that you knew his secret, and he intended, both on his own behalf and on Flockart's also, to close your lips," Murie said. "With you out of the way, their attitude towards your father would have been easier; but with you still a living witness there was always danger to them. He thought your death would be believed to be suicide, for he knew your despondent state of mind."

Sir Henry stood near the window, his face sphinx-like, as though turned to stone.

"She fell in," was his lame excuse.

"No, you threw me in!" declared the girl. "But I have feared you until now, and I therefore dared not to give information against you. Ah, God alone knows how I have suffered!"

"You dare now, eh?" he snarled, turning quickly upon her.

"It really does not matter what you deny or what you admit," Hamilton remarked. "The French authorities have applied for your extradition to France, and this evening you will be on your way to the extradition court at Bow Street, charged with a graver offence than the burglary at this house. The Sûreté of Paris make several interesting allegations against you—or against Felix Gerlach, which is your real name."

"Gerlach!" cried the blind man in a loud voice, groping forward. "Ah," he shrieked, "then I was not mistaken when—when I thought I recognised the voice! That man's voice! Yes, it is his—his!"

In an instant Krail had sprung forward towards the blind and defenceless man, but his captors were fortunately too quick and prevented him. Then, at the inspector's orders, a pair of steel bracelets were quickly placed upon his wrists.

"Gerlach! Felix Gerlach!" repeated the blind Baronet as though to himself, as he heard the snap of the lock upon the prisoner's wrists.

The fellow burst out into a peal of harsh, discordant laughter. He was endeavouring to retain a defiant attitude even then.

"You apparently know this man, dad?" Gabrielle exclaimed in surprise.

"Know him!" echoed her father hoarsely. "Know Felix Gerlach! Yes, I have bitter cause to remember the man who stands there before you accused of the crime of murder."

Then he paused, and drew a long breath.

"I unmasked him once, as a thief and a swindler, and he swore to be avenged," said the Baronet in a bitter voice. "It was long ago. He came to me in London and offered me a concession which he said he had obtained from the Ottoman Government for the construction of a railroad from Smyrna to the Bosphorus. The documents appeared to be all right and in order, and after some negotiations he sold the concession to me and received ten thousand pounds in cash of the purchase-money in advance. A week afterwards I discovered that, though the concession had been granted by the Minister of Public Works at the Sublime Porte, it had been sold to the Eckmann Group in Vienna, and that the papers I held were merely copies with forged signatures and stamps. I applied to the police, this man was arrested in Hamburg, and brought back to London, where he was tried, and, a previous conviction having been proved against him, sent to penal servitude for seven years. In the dock at the Old Bailey he swore to be avenged upon me and upon my family."

"And he seems to have kept his word," Walter remarked.

"When he came out of prison he found me in the zenith of my political career," Sir Henry went on. "On that well-remembered night of my speech at the Albert Hall I can only surmise that he went there, heard me, and probably became fiercely resentful that he had found a man cleverer than himself. The fact remains that he must have gone in a cab in front of my carriage to Park Street, alighted before me, and secreted himself within the portico. It was midnight, and the street was deserted. My carriage stopped, I got out, and it then drove on to the mews. I was in the act of opening the door with my latch-key when, by an unknown hand, there was flung full into my eyes some corrosive fluid which burned terribly, and caused me excruciating pain. I heard a man's exultant voice cry, 'There! I promised you that, and you have it!' The voice I recognised as that of the blackguard standing before you. Since that moment," he added in a blank, hoarse voice, "I have been totally blind!"

"You got me seven years!" cried the foreigner with a harsh laugh, "so think yourself very lucky that I didn't kill you."

"You placed upon me an affliction, a perpetual darkness, that to a man like myself is almost akin to death," replied his accuser very gravely. "Secure from recognition, you wormed yourself into the confidence of my wife, for you were bent upon ruining her also; and you took as partner in your schemes that needy adventurer Flockart. I now see it all quite plainly. Hamilton had recognised you as Gerlach, and you therefore formed a plot to get rid of him and throw the crime upon my poor unfortunate daughter, even though she was scarcely more than a child. In all probability, Lady Heyburn, in telling the girl the story regarding Murie and Miss Bryant, believed it, and if so she would also suspect my daughter to be the actual criminal."

"This is all utterly astounding, dad!" cried Gabrielle. "If you knew who it was who deliberately blinded you, why didn't you prosecute him?"

"Because there was no witness of his dastardly act, my child. And I myself never saw him. Therefore I was compelled to remain in silence, and allow the world to believe my affliction due to natural causes," was his blank response.

The sallow-faced foreigner laughed again, laughed in the face of the man whose eyesight he had so deliberately taken. He could not speak. What had he to say?

"Well," remarked Hamilton, "we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that both this man and his accomplice will stand their trial for their heartless crime in France, and that they will meet their just punishment according to the laws of God and of man."

"And I," added Walter, in a voice broken by emotion, as he again took Gabrielle's hand tenderly, "have the supreme satisfaction of knowing that my darling is cleared of a foul, dastardly, and terrible charge."

CHAPTER XXXIX

CONTAINS THE CONCLUSION

After long consultation—Krail having been removed in custody back to the village—it was agreed that the only charges that could be substantiated against Flockart were those of complicity in the ingenious attempt upon Hamilton's life by which poor Miss Bryant had been sacrificed, and also in the theft of Sir Henry's papers.

But was it worth while?

At the Baronet's suggestion, he was allowed freedom to leave the upstairs room where he had been detained by the three stalwart servants; and, without waiting to speak to any one, he had made his way down the drive. He had, as was afterwards found, left Auchterarder Station for London an hour later.

The painful impression produced upon everybody by Sir Henry's statement of what had actually occurred on the night of the great meeting at the Albert Hall having somewhat subsided, Murie mentioned to the blind man the legend of the Whispers, and also the curious discovery which Gabrielle and he had made earlier in the morning.

"Ah," laughed the old gentleman a trifle uneasily, "and so you've discovered the truth at last, eh?"

"The truth—no!" Murie said. "That is just what we are so very anxious to hear from you, Sir Henry."

"Well," he said, "you may rest your minds perfectly content that there's nothing supernatural about them. It was to my own advantage to cause weird reports and uncanny legends to be spread in order to preserve my secret, the secret of the Whispers."

"But what is the secret, Sir Henry?" asked Hamilton eagerly. "We, curiously enough, have similar Whispers at Hetzendorf. I've heard them myself at the old château."

"And of course you have believed in the story which my good friend the Baron has caused to be spread, like myself: the legend that those who hear them die quickly and suddenly," said the old man, with a smile upon his grey face. "Like myself, he wished to keep away all inquisitive persons from the spot."

"But why?" asked Murie.

"Well, truth to tell, the reason is very simple," he answered. "As we are speaking here in the strictest privacy, I will tell you something which I beg that neither of you will repeat. If you do it might result in my ruin."

Murie, Hamilton, and Gabrielle all gave their promise.

"Then it is this," he said. "I am head of a group of the leading financial houses in Europe, who, remaining secret, are carrying on business in the guise of an unimportant house in Paris. The members of the syndicate are all of them men of enormous financial strength, including Baron de Hetzendorf, to whom our friend Hamilton here acts as confidential secretary. The strictest secrecy is necessary for the success of our great undertakings, which I may add are perfectly honest and legitimate. Yet never, unless absolutely imperative, do we entrust documents or letters to the post. Like the house of Rothschild, we have our confidential messengers, and hold frequent meetings, no 'deal' being undertaken without we are all of us in full accord. Monsieur Goslin acts as confidential messenger, and brings me the views of my partners in Paris, Petersburg, and Vienna. To this careful concealment of our plans, or of the fact that we are ever in touch with one another, is due the huge successes we have made from time to time—successes which have staggered the Bourses of the Continent and caused amazement in Wall Street. But being unfortunately afflicted as I am, I naturally cannot travel to meet the others, and, besides, we are compelled always to take fresh and most elaborate precautions in order to conceal the fact that we are in connection with each other. If that one fact ever leaked out it would at once stultify our endeavours and weaken our position. Hence, at intervals, two or even three of my partners travel here, and I meet them at night in the little chamber which you, Walter, discovered to-day, and which until the present has never been found, owing to the weird fables I have invented regarding the Whispers. To Hetzendorf, too, once or twice a year, perhaps, the members pay a secret visit in order to consult the Baron, who, as you perhaps may know, unfortunately enjoys very precarious health."