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The Angel of Terror
"Now Miss Beale, I don't know whether I ought to explain or whether my learned and distinguished friend prefers to save me the trouble."
"Not me," said the elder man hastily. "My dear," he turned to his wife, "I think we'll leave Jack Glover to talk to this young lady."
"Doesn't she know?" asked Mrs. Rennett in surprise, and Lydia laughed, although she was feeling far from amused.
The possible loss of her employment, the disquieting adventure of the evening, and now this further mystery all combined to set her nerves on edge.
Glover waited until the door closed on his partner and his wife and seemed inclined to wait a little longer, for he stood with his back to the fire, biting his lips and looking down thoughtfully at the carpet.
"I don't just know how to begin, Miss Beale," he said. "And having seen you, my conscience is beginning to work overtime. But I might as well start at the beginning. I suppose you have heard of the Bulford murder?"
The girl stared at him.
"The Bulford murder?" she said incredulously, and he nodded.
"Why, of course, everybody has heard of that."
"Then happily it is unnecessary to explain all the circumstances," said Jack Glover, with a little grimace of distaste.
"I only know," interrupted the girl, "that Mr. Bulford was killed by a Mr. Meredith, who was jealous of him, and that Mr. Meredith, when he went into the witness-box, behaved disgracefully to his fiancée."
"Exactly," nodded Glover with a twinkle in his eye. "In other words, he repudiated the suggestion that he was jealous, swore that he had already told Miss Briggerland that he could not marry her, and he did not even know that Bulford was paying attention to the lady."
"He did that to save his life," said Lydia quietly. "Miss Briggerland swore in the witness-box that no such interview had occurred."
Glover nodded.
"What you do not know, Miss Beale," he said gravely, "is that Jean Briggerland was Meredith's cousin, and unless certain things happen, she will inherit the greater part of six hundred thousand pounds from Meredith's estate. Meredith, I might explain, is one of my best friends, and the fact that he is now serving out a life sentence does not make him any less a friend. I am as sure, as I am sure of your sitting there, that he no more killed Bulford than I did. I believe the whole thing was a plot to secure his death or imprisonment. My partner thinks the same. The truth is that Meredith was engaged to this girl; he discovered certain things about her and her father which are not greatly to their credit. He was never really in love with her, beautiful as she is, and he was trapped into the proposal. When he found out how things were shaping and heard some of the queer stories which were told about Briggerland and his daughter, he broke off the engagement and went that night to tell her so."
The girl had listened in some bewilderment to this recital.
"I don't exactly see what all this is to do with me," she said, and again Jack Glover nodded.
"I can quite understand," he said, "but I will tell you yet another part of the story which is not public property. Meredith's father was an eccentric man who believed in early marriages, and it was a condition of his will that if Meredith was not married by his thirtieth birthday, the money should go to his sister, her heirs and successors. His sister was Mrs. Briggerland, who is now dead. Her heirs are her husband and Jean Briggerland."
There was a silence. The girl stared thoughtfully into the fire.
"How old is Mr. Meredith?"
"He is thirty next Monday," said Glover quietly, "and it is necessary that he should be married before next Monday."
"In prison?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"If such things are allowed that could have been arranged, but for some reason the Home Secretary refuses to exercise his discretion in this matter, and has resolutely refused to allow such a marriage to take place. He objects on the ground of public policy, and I dare say from his point of view he is right. Meredith has a twenty-years sentence to serve."
"Then how–" began Lydia.
"Let me tell this story more or less understandably," said Glover with that little smile of his. "Believe me, Miss Beale, I'm not so keen upon the scheme as I was. If by chance," he spoke deliberately, "we could get James Meredith into this house to-morrow morning, would you marry him?"
"Me?" she gasped. "Marry a man I've not seen—a murderer?"
"Not a murderer," he said gently.
"But it is preposterous, impossible!" she protested. "Why me?"
He was silent for a moment.
"When this scheme was mooted we looked round for some one to whom such a marriage would be of advantage," he said, speaking slowly. "It was Rennett's idea that we should search the County Court records of London to discover if there was a girl who was in urgent need of money. There is no surer way of unearthing financial skeletons than by searching County Court records. We found four, only one of whom was eligible and that was you. Don't interrupt me for a moment, please," he said, raising his hand warningly as she was about to speak. "We have made thorough inquiries about you, too thorough in fact, because the Briggerlands have smelt a rat, and have been on our trail for a week. We know that you are not engaged to be married, we know that you have a fairly heavy burden of debts, and we know, too, that you are unencumbered by relations or friends. What we offer you, Miss Beale, and believe me I feel rather a cad in being the medium through which the offer is made, is five thousand pounds a year for the rest of your life, a sum of twenty thousand pounds down, and the assurance that you will not be troubled by your husband from the moment you are married."
Lydia listened like one in a dream. It did not seem real. She would wake up presently and find Mrs. Morgan with a cup of tea in her hand and a plate of her indigestible cakes. Such things did not happen, she told herself, and yet here was a young man, standing with his back to the fire, explaining in the most commonplace conversational tone, an offer which belonged strictly to the realm of romance, and not too convincing romance at that.
"You've rather taken my breath away," she said after a while. "All this wants thinking about, and if Mr. Meredith is in prison–"
"Mr. Meredith is not in prison," said Glover quietly. "He was released two days ago to go to a nursing home for a slight operation. He escaped from the nursing home last night and at this particular moment is in this house."
She could only stare at him open-mouthed, and he went on.
"The Briggerlands know he has escaped; they probably thought he was here, because we have had a police visitation this afternoon, and the interior of the house and grounds have been searched. They know, of course, that Mr. Rennett and I were his legal advisers, and we expected them to come. How he escaped their observation is neither here nor there. Now, Miss Beale, what do you say?"
"I don't know what to say," she said, shaking her head helplessly. "I know I'm dreaming, and if I had the moral courage to pinch myself hard, I should wake up. Somehow I don't want to wake, it is so fascinatingly impossible."
He smiled.
"Can I see Mr. Meredith?"
"Not till to-morrow. I might say that we've made every arrangement for your wedding, the licence has been secured and at eight o'clock to-morrow morning—marriages before eight or after three are not legal in this country, by the way—a clergyman will attend and the ceremony will be performed."
There was a long silence.
Lydia sat on the edge of her chair, her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands.
Glover looked down at her seriously, pityingly, cursing himself that he was the exponent of his own grotesque scheme. Presently she looked up.
"I think I will," she said a little wearily. "And you were wrong about the number of judgment summonses, there were seventy-five in two years—and I'm so tired of lawyers."
"Thank you," said Jack Glover politely.
Chapter IV
All night long she had sat in the little bedroom to which Mrs. Rennett had led her, thinking and thinking and thinking. She could not sleep, although she had tried hard, and most of the night she spent pacing up and down from window to door turning over the amazing situation in which she found herself. She had never thought of marriage seriously, and really a marriage such as this presented no terrors and might, had the prelude been a little less exciting, been accepted by her with relief. The prospect of being a wife in name only, even the thought that her husband would be, for the next twenty years, behind prison walls, neither distressed nor horrified her. Somehow she accepted Glover's statement that Meredith was innocent, without reservation.
She wondered what Mrs. Morgan would say and what explanation she would give at the office. She was not particularly in love with her work, and it would be no wrench for her to drop it and give herself up to the serious study of art. Five thousand pounds a year! She could live in Italy, study under the best masters, have a car of her own—the possibilities seemed illimitable—and the disadvantages?
She shrugged her shoulders as she answered the question for the twentieth time. What disadvantages were there? She could not marry, but then she did not want to marry. She was not the kind to fall in love, she told herself, she was too independent, too sophisticated, and understood men and their weaknesses only too well.
"The Lord designed me for an old maid," she said to herself.
At seven o'clock in the morning—a grey, cheerless morning it was, thought Lydia, looking out of the window—Mrs. Rennett came in with some tea.
"I'm afraid you haven't slept, my dear," she said with a glance at the bed. "It's very trying for you."
She laid her hand upon the girl's arm and squeezed it gently.
"And it's very trying for all of us," she said with a whimsical smile. "I expect we shall all get into fearful trouble."
That had occurred to the girl too, remembering the gloomy picture which Glover had painted in the car.
"Won't this be very serious for you, if the authorities find that you have connived at the escape?" she asked.
"Escape, my dear?" Mrs. Rennett's face became a mask. "I have not heard anything of an escape. All that we know is that poor Mr. Meredith, anticipating that the Home Office would allow him to get married, had made arrangements for the marriage at this house. How Mr. Meredith comes here is quite a matter outside our knowledge," said the diplomatic lady, and Lydia laughed in spite of herself.
She spent half an hour making herself presentable for the forthcoming ordeal.
As a church clock struck eight, there came another tap on the door. It was Mrs. Rennett again.
"They are waiting," she said. Her face was a little pale and her lips trembled.
Lydia, however, was calmness itself, as she walked into the drawing-room ahead of her hostess.
There were four men. Glover and Rennett she knew. A third man wearing a clerical collar she guessed was the officiating priest, and all her attention was concentrated upon the fourth. He was a gaunt, unshaven man, his hair cut short, his face and figure wasted, so that the clothes he wore hung on him. Her first feeling was one of revulsion. Her second was an impulse of pity. James Meredith, for she guessed it was he, appeared wretchedly ill. He swung round as she came in, and looked at her intently, then, walking quickly towards her, he held out his thin hand.
"Miss Beale, isn't it?" he said. "I'm sorry to meet you under such unpleasant circumstances. Glover has explained everything, has he not?"
She nodded.
His deep-set eyes had a magnetic quality that fascinated her.
"You understand the terms? Glover has told you just why this marriage must take place?" he said, lowering his voice. "Believe me, I am deeply grateful to you for falling in with my wishes."
Without preliminary he walked over to where the parson stood.
"We will begin now," he said simply.
The ceremony seemed so unreal to the girl that she did not realise what it portended, not even when a ring (a loosely-fitting ring, for Jack Glover had made the wildest guess at the size) was slipped over her finger. She knelt to receive the solemn benediction and then got slowly to her feet and looked at her husband strangely.
"I think I'm going to faint," she said.
It was Jack Glover who caught her and carried her to the sofa. She woke with a confused idea that somebody was trying to hypnotise her, and she opened her eyes to look upon the sombre face of James Meredith.
"Better?" he asked anxiously. "I'm afraid you've had a trying time, and no sleep you said, Mrs. Rennett?"
Mrs. Rennett shook her head.
"Well, you'll sleep to-night better than I shall," he smiled, and then he turned to Rennett, a grave and anxious man, who stood nervously stroking his little beard, watching the bridegroom. "Mr. Rennett," he said, "I must tell you in the presence of witnesses, that I have escaped from a nursing home to which I had been sent by the clemency of the Secretary of State. When I informed you that I had received permission to come to your house this morning to get married, I told you that which was not true."
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Rennett politely. "And, of course, it is my duty to hand you over to the police, Mr. Meredith." It was all part of the game. The girl watched the play, knowing that this scene was carefully rehearsed, in order to absolve Rennett and his partner from complicity in the escape.
Rennett had hardly spoken when there was a loud rat-tat at the front door, and Jack Glover hastened into the hall to answer. But it was not the policeman he had expected. It was a girl in a big sable coat, muffled up to her eyes. She pushed past Jack, crossed the hall, and walked straight into the drawing-room.
Lydia, standing shakily by Mrs. Rennett's side, saw the visitor come in, and then, as she unfastened her coat, recognised her with a gasp. It was the beautiful girl she had seen in the stalls of the theatre the night before!
"And what can we do for you?" It was Glover's voice again, bland and bantering.
"I want Meredith," said the girl shortly, and Glover chuckled.
"You have wanted Meredith for a long time, Miss Briggerland," he said, "and you're likely to want. You have arrived just a little too late."
The girl's eyes fell upon the parson.
"Too late," she said slowly, "then he is married?"
She bit her red lips and nodded, then she looked at Lydia, and the blue eyes were expressionless.
Meredith had disappeared. Lydia looked round for him in her distress, but he had gone. She wondered if he had gone out to the police, to make his surrender, and she was still wondering when there came the sound of a shot.
It was from the outside of the house, and at the sound Glover ran through the doorway, crossed the hall and flew into the open. It was still snowing, and there was no sign of any human being. He raced along a path which ran parallel with the house, turned the corner and dived into a shrubbery. Here the snow had not laid, and he followed the garden path that twisted and turned through the thick laurel bushes and ended at a roughly-built tool house. As he came in sight of the shed he stopped.
A man lay on the ground, his arm extended, his head in a pool of blood, his grey hand clutching a revolver.
Jack uttered an exclamation of horror and ran to the side of the fallen man.
It was James Meredith, and he was dead.
Chapter V
Jack Glover heard footsteps coming down the path, and turned to meet a man who had "detective" written largely all over him. Jack turned and looked down again at the body as the man came up.
"Who is this?" asked the officer sharply.
"It is James Meredith," said Jack simply.
"Dead?" said the officer, startled. "He has committed suicide!"
Jack did not reply, and watched the inspector as he made his brief, quick examination of the body. A bullet had entered just below the left temple, and there was a mark of powder near the face.
"A very bad business, Mr. Glover," said the police officer seriously. "Can you account for this man being here?"
"He came to get married," said Jack listlessly. "I dare say that startles you, but it is the fact. He was married less than ten minutes ago. If you will come up to the house I will explain his presence here."
The detective hesitated, but just then another of his comrades came on the scene, and Jack led the way back to the house through a back door into Rennett's study.
The lawyer was waiting for them, and he was alone.
"If I'm not very much mistaken, you're Inspector Colhead, of Scotland Yard," said Glover.
"That is my name," nodded the officer. "Between ourselves, Mr. Glover, I don't think I should make any statement which you are not prepared to verify publicly."
Jack noted the significance of the warning with a little smile, and proceeded to tell the story of the wedding.
"I can only tell you," he said in answer to a further inquiry, "that Mr. Meredith came into this house at a quarter to eight this morning, and surrendered himself to my partner. At eight o'clock exactly, as you are well aware, Mr. Rennett telephoned to Scotland Yard to say that Mr. Meredith was here. During the period of his waiting he was married."
"Did a parson happen to be staying here, sir?" asked the police officer sarcastically.
"He happened to be staying here," said Jack calmly, "because I had arranged for him to be here. I knew that if it was humanly possible, Mr. Meredith would come to this house, and that his desire was to be married, for reasons which my partner will explain."
"Did you help him to escape? That is asking you a leading question," smiled the detective.
Jack shook his head.
"I can answer you with perfect truth that I did not, any more than the Home Secretary helped him when he gave him permission to go to a nursing home."
Soon after the detective returned to the shed, and Jack and his partner were left alone.
"Well?" said Rennett, in a shaking voice, "what happened?"
"He's dead," said Jack quietly.
"Suicide?"
Jack looked at him oddly.
"Did Bulford commit suicide?" he asked.
"Where is the angel?"
"I left her in the drawing-room with Mrs. Rennett and Miss Beale."
"Mrs. Meredith," corrected Jack quietly.
"This complicates matters," said Rennett, "but I think we can get out of our share of the trouble, though it is going to look a little black."
They found the three women in the drawing-room. Lydia, looking very white, came to meet them.
"What happened?" she asked, and then she guessed from his face. "He's not dead?" she gasped.
Jack nodded. All the time his eyes were on the other girl. Her beautiful lips were drooped a little. There was a look of pain and sorrow in her eyes that caught his breath.
"Did he shoot himself?" she asked in a low voice.
Jack regarded her coldly.
"The only thing that I am certain about," and Lydia winced at the cruelty in his voice, "is that you did not shoot him, Miss Briggerland."
"How dare you!" flamed Jean Briggerland. The quick flush that came to her cheek was the only other evidence of emotion she betrayed.
"I dare say a lot," said Jack curtly. "You asked me if it is a case of suicide, and I tell you that it is not—it is a case of murder. James Meredith was found with a revolver clutched in his right hand. He was shot through the left temple, and if you'll explain to me how any man, holding a pistol in a normal way, can perform that feat, I will accept your theory of suicide."
There was a dead silence.
"Besides," Jack went on, with a little shrug, "poor Jimmy had no pistol."
Jean Briggerland had dropped her eyes, and stood there with downcast head and compressed lips. Presently she looked up.
"I know how you feel, Mr. Glover," she said gently. "I can well understand, believing such dreadful things about me as you do, that you must hate me."
Her mouth quivered and her voice grew husky with sorrow.
"I loved James Meredith," she said, "and he loved me."
"He loved you well enough to marry somebody else," said Jack Glover, and Lydia was shocked.
"Mr. Glover," she said reproachfully, "do you think it is right to say these things, with poor Mr. Meredith lying dead?"
He turned slowly toward her, and she saw in his humorous eyes a hardness that she had not seen before.
"Miss Briggerland has told us that I hate her," he said in an even voice, "and she spoke nothing but the truth. I hate her perhaps beyond understanding—Mrs. Meredith." He emphasised the words, and the girl winced. "And one day, if the Circumstantialists spare me–"
"The Circumstantialists," said Jean Briggerland slowly. "I don't quite understand you."
Jack Glover laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh.
"Perhaps you will," he said shortly. "As to your loving poor Jim—well, you know best. I am trying to be polite to you, Miss Briggerland, and not to gloat over the fact that you arrived too late to stop this wedding! And shall I tell you why you arrived too late?" His eyes were laughing again. "It was because I had arranged with the vicar of St. Peter's to be here at nine o'clock this morning, well knowing that you and your little army of spies would discover the hour of the wedding, and would take care to be here before. And then I secretly sent for an old Oxford friend of mine to be here at eight—he was here last night."
Still she stood regarding him without visible evidence of the anger which Lydia thought would have been justified.
"I had no desire to stop the wedding," said the girl, in a low, soft voice. "If Jim preferred to be married in this way to somebody who does not know him, I can only accept his choice." She turned to the girl and held out her hand. "I am very sorry that this tragedy has come to you, Mrs. Meredith," she said. "May I wish you a greater happiness than any you have found?"
Lydia was touched by the sincerity, hurt a little by Glover's uncouthness, and could only warmly grip the little hand that was held out to her.
"I'm sorry too," she said a little unsteadily. "For you more than for—anything else."
The girl lowered her eyes and again her lips quivered, and then without a word she walked out of the room, pulling her sable wrap about her throat.
It was noon before Rennett's car deposited Lydia Meredith at the door of her lodging.
She found Mrs. Morgan in a great state of anxiety, and the stout little woman almost shed tears of joy at the sight of her.
"Oh, miss, you've no idea how worried I've been," she babbled, "and they've been round here from your newspaper office asking where you are. I thought you had been run over or something, and the Daily Megaphone have sent to all the hospitals–"
"I have been run over," said Lydia wearily. "My poor mind has been under the wheels of a dozen motor-buses, and my soul has been in a hundred collisions."
Mrs. Morgan gaped at her. She had no sense of metaphor.
"It's all right, Mrs. Morgan," laughed her lodger over her shoulder as she went up the stairs. "I haven't really you know, only I've had a worrying time—and by the way, my name is Meredith."
Mrs. Morgan collapsed on to a hall chair.
"Meredith, miss?" she said incredulously. "Why I knew your father–"
"I've been married, that's all," said Lydia grimly. "You told me yesterday that I should be married romantically, but even in the wildest flights of your imagination, Mrs. Morgan, you could never have supposed that I should be married in such a violent, desperate way. I'm going to bed." She paused on the landing and looked down at the dumbfounded woman. "If anybody calls for me, I am not at home. Oh, yes, you can tell the Megaphone that I came home very late and that I've gone to bed, and I'll call to-morrow to explain."
"But, miss," stammered the woman, "your husband–"
"My husband is dead," said the girl calmly. She felt a brute, but somehow she could not raise any note of sorrow. "And if that lawyer man comes, will you please tell him that I shall have twenty thousand pounds in the morning," and with that last staggering statement, she went to her room, leaving her landlady speechless.