An Eye for an Eye Part 37

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. "G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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-a-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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k 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 h.e.l.l 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 circ.u.mstance.

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 gla.s.s 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, a.s.sisted 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 d.i.c.k.

"A very curious one," she responded, pale, yet now firm in her determination to tell us everything. "Their discovery caused me a good deal of thought, especially as the secret consultations with Mr. Blain became more frequent when, after a fortnight or so in London, we returned to The Hollies. One day, however, a further incident happened, which was, to say the least, extraordinary. While alone in Madame's bedroom the cook entered, asking for some coppers to pay for some small article which had been brought. She wanted sevenpence. I had only sixpence in my purse, but remembering that in the little cabinet where Madame kept her jewels I had seen a penny on the previous day I unlocked it and took it out. Strangely enough, this penny was wrapped up in paper. I took it in my hand and turned it over to a.s.sure myself that it was not any rare foreign coin, and was about to hand it to the cook when Madame herself came in. `What's that you have?' she cried, in an instant pale-faced in alarm. I told her that I had taken the penny from the cabinet, whereupon she betrayed the greatest apprehension, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up a piece of paper in which she carefully re-wrapped it.

Then, telling me on no account to again touch it or open it, she gave the cook a penny from her pocket and dismissed her. Almost next instant I felt an indescribable numbness in the hand that had held the forbidden coin. The fingers seemed paralysed, and I had a faint idea that I had felt a strange roughness about the face of the copper, as though it had been chipped. I complained to Madame of the curious feeling, whereupon she flew to her small travelling medicine-chest, which she always kept locked, and took therefrom a phial, from which she poured a few drops of a dark green liquid into a gla.s.s of water. `There,' she said, betraying quite undue alarm, I thought, `drink that. You'll be better very quickly.' I gulped it down. It tasted very bitter, but within a quarter of an hour I felt no further pain. My hand had in a few seconds commenced to swell, but the medicine at once arrested it. Until long afterwards it never occurred to me that upon that penny was one of those insidious but most deadly of poisons known to toxicologists, which, entering by an abrasion of the skin, would have quickly proved fatal had not my employer at once administered an antidote. Later, I succeeded in obtaining possession of that coin, and found upon it a series of almost infinitesimal steel points, a puncture or scratch from any one of which must result in death."

I recollected how we had discovered that coin in her escritoire. We might congratulate ourselves that neither of us had held it in our hands without its wrappings.

"For a long time I was greatly puzzled by these and other circ.u.mstances.

Certain sc.r.a.ps of conversation which I overheard between Madame and Blain, and between my employer and Hartmann, increased my suspicions, and especially so when I found Madame carrying on a series of secret experiments in her own rooms, often boiling certain decoctions over the tiny spirit-lamp used to heat her curling-irons. Several of the liquids thus manufactured she placed in the tiny phials of her medicine-chest.

All this time, while pa.s.sing everywhere as my mother, Lady Glaslyn, she was extremely kind to me, until I even began to believe that my suspicions were unfounded. Only now do I know how subtle was her cunning, how ingenious and how daring she was. One day, in April, I, however, had my suspicions still more deeply strengthened by a strange request she made to me, namely, that if at any time I should chance to witness any uncommon scene in her house, that I would breathe no word to a single soul. This struck me as peculiar, and I demanded the reason, whereupon she smiled, giving me bluntly to understand that my own safety lay alone in my secrecy, and pointing out that by obtaining quant.i.ties of goods and jewellery on credit, as I had done at her request from firms in Regent Street and Oxford Street, in the name of Lady Glaslyn, I had placed myself in grave peril of being arrested for fraud. I saw instantly that this woman who had posed as my friend had most cleverly spread about me a web from which there was now no possible escape. She evidently desired my a.s.sistance in whatever nefarious purpose she had in view."

"What a position!" I exclaimed. "Then the woman had compelled you to obtain the goods by fraud in order to secure a certain hold over you?"

"Of course," she answered in a low, firm tone. "But that's not half the craft and cunning she displayed, as you will perceive later. I know I have acted wrongly, and should have long ago placed my suspicions before the police, but I feared to do so, lest I should be arrested for the fraud. From day to day I lived on in anxiety and breathless wonder, Mrs. Blain or Blain himself being constant visitors to The Hollies, while now and then Hartmann would come down from London, as if called in for consultation. At length, one day in early June, we returned to the house in Upper Phillimore Place, Madame announcing her intention to remain there a month. Our neighbours, the Coulter-Kerrs, were delighted at our return, for they seemed to know hardly a soul in London. After we had been there about a week Mrs. Blain and Mary called one afternoon, and while I chatted to the latter in the dining-room, Mrs. Blain talked privately with Madame in the room beyond. The door was closed, as usual, and they were conversing only in low whispers, when suddenly their voices became raised in heated discussion. A quarrel had arisen, for I heard Mrs. Blain exclaim quite distinctly: `I tell you I have never dreamed of any such thing; and I'll never be a party to it. Such a suggestion is horrifying!' Then Madame spoke some low words, to which her companion responded: `I tell you I will not! From this moment I retire from it. Such a thing is infamous! I never thought that it was intended to act in such a manner.' To this Madame made some muttered observation regarding `absurd scruples' and the impossibility of detection, whereupon Mrs. Blain flounced forth from the room in a high state of indignation, saying, `Mary, it's time we should go, dear, or we shan't be home for dinner.' Then she made a cold adieu to the woman who had been her most intimate friend, and with her daughter departed."

Eva's breath came and went rapidly in the intensity of her emotions, her thin nostrils slightly dilated, and as she paused her lips were firmly pressed together.

"Next morning, at about eleven, almost before Madame was ready to receive, Blain himself called," she went on. "He was grey-faced and very grave, but after a rather long interview he left in high spirits, wishing me farewell quite gaily. On the following day the Coulter-Kerrs were in great distress about their servants, for both were dishonest, and upon Madame's declaration that she could immediately find others they had been discharged at a moment's notice. About five o'clock that afternoon both husband and wife, with whom I was on the most friendly terms, came in to chat with Madame about the servants, and after we had conversed some time tea was brought, of which we all partook. Then Madame invited them in for whist after dinner, as was our habit, for we were all inveterate players. About six o'clock, while I accompanied Mr.

Kerr next door in order to prepare their makeshift meal, Mrs. Kerr-- Madame always called her Anna--remained behind to make some arrangements for one of our servants to go in temporarily. Suddenly, about twenty minutes later, while I was in the kitchen washing some salad, I became conscious of a strange, sharp pain which struck me across the eyes, followed almost instantly by a kind of paralysis of the limbs and a feeling of giddiness. I ascended to the hall, calling loudly for help, and from the drawing-room heard Mr. Kerr's voice, hoa.r.s.e and strange-toned, in response. With difficulty I struggled up the second flight of stairs, but on entering the room where the tiny red light burned--some curious Indian superst.i.tion of Mrs. Kerr's--I saw in the dusk that Kerr had fallen p.r.o.ne on the floor and was motionless as one dead. Then, helpless, I tottered across to a chair, and sinking into it all consciousness left me."

Both Boyd and myself stood breathless at these startling revelations.

"When I came to myself," she continued, "I was back in Maclame's house next door. She had forced some liquid between my lips, and was injecting some other fluid into my arms with a hypodermic syringe. I was amazed, too, to notice that she had changed her dress, a.s.sumed a grey wig, and wore a cap with bright ribbons, in most marvellous imitation of an old lady. While I thus remained on the couch in the back sitting-room, dazed and only half conscious, there came a loud ring at the door and I overheard a police-officer making inquiries of `Mrs.

Luff' regarding the people next door. Then I knew that Kerr's body had been discovered, and that Madame was personating the previous occupier of that house. I was not, however, aware at that time of how Hartmann had called upon Madame and had carried Mrs. Kerr through a small breach made in the fencing of the garden at the rear into her own house, or that I had been brought back by the same way into ours. Madame, when all was clear, went that night down to The Hollies, leaving me alone with the servants, who, having apparently been sent out upon errands during the events described, knew nothing. I therefore kept my own counsel, and recollecting having overheard Blain, when taking leave of Madame on his last visit, refer to an appointment he had with Hartmann in St. James's Park, I resolved also to keep it. I did, but instead of meeting him," she said, addressing me, "I met you."

"I recollect the meeting well," I answered. "Continue."

"Well, I returned to The Hollies, but it was evident from Madame's manner that she was in deadly fear. I was not, of course, aware of what had actually occurred, although I entertained the horrible suspicion that both my friends had fallen victims. She took me partly into her confidence later that day, for the police, she said, would discover an `awkward accident' next door, and that she must not be seen and recognised as Mrs. Luff. She told me that, in order to avoid any unpleasant inquiries, Hartmann had entered the place before the police, and had carried away every sc.r.a.p of anything that could lead to their ident.i.ty, and as I knew from Mr. Kerr's previous conversation that all his letters were addressed to Drummond's Bank, it seemed improbable that the bodies would be identified. `It's a very serious matter for us,'

Madame said to me earnestly. `Therefore say nothing, either to Mrs.

Blain or Mary.' By that, and other subsequent circ.u.mstances, I knew that both were in ignorance. They had no hand whatever in the ghastly affair, for after the quarrel they never again met Madame.

"Weeks went by," she continued, after a pause. "I still remained on friendly terms with Mrs. Blain and her daughter, knowing them to be innocent. Madame never went out, but once or twice Hartmann visited her. Whenever he did so, high words usually arose, regarding money, it seemed, and once Blain, who by his family was supposed to be still in Paris, came late at night, ill-dressed and dirty. It was then that I first learnt the motive for the ingenious conspiracy. Blain seemed in abject fear that the police had somehow established the ident.i.ty of the dead man. If so, he said, all had been futile. Hartmann, it appeared, had a daughter whom I had never seen, and it was through her that the activity of the police had been ascertained." Then, turning her eyes again to me with an undisguised love-look, Eva exclaimed, "The tortures of conscience which I suffered through those summer days when you declared your love are known to G.o.d alone. My position was a terrible one, for I saw that by preserving this secret I had been an accessory to a most foul and cowardly crime, and I held back from your embrace, knowing that one day ere long I should be arrested and brought to punishment. I lived on, my heart gripped by that awful sin in which I had been unwittingly implicated. Then one day you called at The Hollies and I gave you some wine from a fresh bottle which I opened myself. It was wine which Madame had specially ordered from the stores on my account because the doctor had prescribed port for me. That wine was poisoned, and you narrowly escaped death. The fatal draught was intended for me! Hartmann and Madame Damant had, indeed, brought poisoning to a fine art."

"Was poison never in your possession?" inquired Boyd gravely.

"Yes," she responded without a second's hesitation. "After the affair at Phillimore Place I discovered Hartmann's address, and from a paper in Madame's jewel-cabinet I copied some strange name--Latin, I think--which I knew related to one of the secret poisons. Then, in order to satisfy myself as to Hartmann's position, I went to him to obtain some. My idea was that the information I could thus obtain would be of use if I were arrested. I found that under the name of Morris Lowry he had for years kept a herbalist's shop near the _Elephant and Castle_. Fortunately, by reason of my veil, he did not recognise me, and after some haggling gave me some greyish powder in a small wooden box securely sealed. I discovered afterwards that his daughter was in love with your friend Mr.

Cleugh, therefore it must have been through the latter that the old man became aware of the movements of the police."