Running Water Part 34

"What do you infer, then?" she asked.

"That we are in very deep and troubled waters, my dear," he replied, but he would not be more explicit. He had no doubt in his mind that the murder of Walter Hine had been deliberately agreed upon by Garratt Skinner and the unknown man in London. But just as Sylvia had spared him during his months of absence, so now he was minded to spare Sylvia. Only, in order that he might spare her, in order that he might prevent shame and distress greater than she had known, he must needs go on with his questioning. He must discover, if by any means he could, the ident.i.ty of the unknown man who was so concerned in the destiny of Walter Hine.

"Of your father's friends, was there one who was rich? Who came to the house? Who were his companions?"

"Very few people came to the house. There was no one amongst them who fits in"; and upon that she started. "I wonder--" she said, thoughtfully, and she turned to her lover. "After my father had gone away, I found a telegram in a drawer in one of the rooms. There was no envelope, there was just the telegram. So I opened it. It was addressed to my father. I remember the words, for I did not know whether there was not something which needed attention. It ran like this: 'What are you waiting for?

Hurry up.'"

"Was it signed?" asked Chayne.

"Yes. 'Jarvice,'" replied Sylvia.

"Jarvice," Chayne repeated; and he spoke it yet again, as though in some vague way it was familiar to him. "What was the date of the telegram?"

"It had been sent a month before I found it. So I put it back into the drawer."

"'What are you waiting for? Hurry up. Jarvice,'" said Chayne, slowly, and then he remembered how and when he had come across the name of Jarvice before. His face grew very grave.

"We are in deep waters, my dear," he said.

There had been trouble in his regiment, some years before, in which the chief figures had been a subaltern and a money-lender. Jarvice was the name of the money-lender--an unusual name. Just such a man would be likely to be Garratt Skinner's confederate and backer. Chayne ran over the story in his mind again, by this new light. It certainly strengthened the argument that the Mr. Jarvice who sent the telegram was Mr. Jarvice, the money-lender. Thus did Chayne work it out in his thoughts:

"Jarvice, for some reason unknown, pays Walter Hine an allowance. Walter Hine gives it out that he receives it from his grandfather, whose heir he undoubtedly is, and being a vain person much exaggerates the amount.

He falls into Garratt Skinner's hands, who, with the help of Barstow and others, proceeds to pluck him. Walter Hine loses more than he has and applies to Jarvice for more. Jarvice elicits the facts, and instead of disclosing who Garratt Skinner is, and the obvious swindle of which Hine is the victim, takes Garratt Skinner into his confidence. What happened at the interview between Mr. Jarvice and Garratt Skinner in London the subsequent facts make plain. At Jarvice's instigation the plot to swindle Walter Hine becomes a cold-blooded plan to murder him. That plan has been twice frustrated, once by me in Dorsetshire, and a second time by Sylvia."

So far the story worked out naturally, logically. But there remained two questions. For what reason did Mr. Jarvice make Walter Hine an allowance?

And how would Walter Hine's death profit him? Chayne pondered over those two questions and then the truth flashed upon him. He remembered how the subaltern had been extracted from his difficulties. Money had been raised by a life insurance. Again Chayne ranged his facts in order.

"Walter Hine is the heir to great wealth. But he has no money now. Mr.

Jarvice makes him an allowance, the money to be repaid with a handsome interest on the grandfather's death. But in order to insure Jarvice from loss, if Walter Hine should die first, Walter Hine's life is insured for a large sum. Thus Mr. Jarvice makes his position tenable should his conduct be called in question. Having insured Walter Hine's life, he arranges with Garratt Skinner to murder him. The attempt failed the first time, the slower method is then adopted by Garratt Skinner, and as a result comes the impatient telegram: 'What are you waiting for? Hurry up!'"

The case was thus so far clear. But anxiety remained. Was the plan abandoned altogether, now that Sylvia had stood bravely up and warned her father that she would not keep silent? So certainly Sylvia thought. But then she did not know all that Chayne knew. It seemed that she had not understood the incident of the lighted window. Nor was Chayne surprised.

For she was unaware of what was in Chayne's eyes the keystone of the whole argument. She did not know that her father had worked as a convict in the Portland quarries.

"So they are abroad together, your father and Walter Hine," said Chayne, slowly.

"Yes!" replied Sylvia, with a smile. "Guess where they are now!" and she turned to him with a tender look upon her face which he did not understand.

"I can't guess."

"At Chamonix!"

She saw her lover flinch, his face grow white, his eyes stare in horror.

And she wondered. For her the little town, overtopped by its tumbled glittering fields of snow and tall rock spires was a place apart. She cherished it in her memories, keeping clear and distinct the windings of its streets, where they narrowed, where they broadened into open s.p.a.ces; yet all the while her thoughts transformed it, and made of its mere stones and bricks a tiny city magical with light and grace. For while she stayed in it her happiness had dawned and she saw it always roseate with that dawn. It seemed to her that plots and thoughts of harm could there hardly outlive one starlit night, one sunlit day. Had she mapped out her father's itinerary, thither and nowhere else would she have sent him.

"You are afraid?" she asked. "Hilary, why?"

Chayne did not answer her question. He was minded to spare her, even as she had spared him. He talked of other things until the restaurant grew empty and the waiters began to turn out the lights as a hint to these two determined loiterers. Then in the darkness, for now there was but one light left, and that at a little distance from their table, Chayne leaned forward and turning to Sylvia, as they sat side by side:

"You have been happy to-night?"

"Very," she answered, and there was a thrill of joyousness in her clear, low voice, as though her heart sang within her. Her eyes rested on his with pride. "No man could quite understand," she said.

"Well then, why should we wait longer, Sylvia?" he said. "We have waited long enough, my dear. We have after all no one but ourselves to please. I should like our marriage to take place as soon as possible."

Sylvia answered him without affectation.

"I, too," she whispered.

"To-morrow then! I'll get a special license to-morrow morning, and make the arrangements. We can go away together at once."

Sylvia smiled, and the smile deepened into a laugh.

"Where shall we go, Hilary?" she cried. "To some perfect place."

"To Chamonix," he answered. "That was where we first met. There could be no better place. We can just go and tell your father what we have done and then go up into the hills."

It was well done. He spoke without wakening Sylvia's suspicions. She had never understood the episode of the lighted window; she did not know that her father was Gabriel Strood, of whose exploits in the Alps she had read; she believed that all danger to Walter Hine was past. Chayne on the other hand knew that hardly at any time could Hine have stood in greater peril. To Chamonix he must go; and to Chamonix he must take Sylvia too. For by the time when he could reach Chamonix, he might already be too late. There might be publicity, inquiries, and for Garratt Skinner ruin, and worse than ruin. Would Sylvia let her lover share the dishonor of her name? He knew very surely she would not.

Therefore he would have the marriage.

"By the way," he said, as he draped her cloak about her shoulders. "You have that telegram from Jarvice?"

"Yes."

"That's good," he said. "It might be useful."

CHAPTER XXII

REVAILLOUD REVISITED

Never that familiar journey across France seemed to Chayne so slow. Would he be in time? Would he arrive too late? The throb of the wheels beat out the questions in a perpetual rhythm and gave him no answer. The words of Jarvice's telegram were ever present in his mind, and grew more sinister, the more he thought upon them. "What are you waiting for? Hurry up!"

Once, when the train stopped over long as it seemed to him he muttered the words aloud and then glanced in alarm at his wife, lest perchance she had overheard them. But she had not. She was remembering her former journey along this very road. Then it had been night; now it was day.

Then she had been used to seek respite from her life in the shelter of her dreams. Now the dreams were of no use, since what was real made them by comparison so pale and thin. The blood ran strong and joyous in her veins to-day; and looking at her, Chayne sent up his prayers that they might not arrive in Chamonix too late. To him as to her Walter Hine was a mere puppet, a thing without importance--so long as he lived. But he must live. Dead, he threatened ruin and dishonor, and since from the beginning Sylvia and he had shared--for so she would have it--had shared in the effort to save this life, it would be well for them, he thought that they should not fail.

The long hot day drew to an end, and at last from the platform at the end of the electric train they saw the snow-fields lift toward the soaring peaks, and the peaks purple with the after glow stand solitary and beautiful against the evening sky.

"At last!" said Sylvia, with a catch in her breath, and the clasp of her hand tightened upon her husband's arm. But Chayne was remembering certain words once spoken to him in a garden of Dorsetshire, by a man who lay idly in a hammock and stared up between the leaves. "On the most sunny day, the mountains hold in their recesses mystery and death."

"You know where your father is staying?" Chayne asked.

"He wrote from the Hotel de l'Arve," Sylvia replied.

"We will stay at Couttet's and walk over to see him this evening," said Chayne, and after dinner they strolled across the little town. But at the Hotel de l'Arve they found neither Garratt Skinner nor his friend, Walter Hine.