XXI. GRIZEL! GRIZEL!
I indulged in some very serious thoughts after Mr. Grey’s departure. A fact was borne in upon me to which I had hitherto closed my prejudiced eyes, but which I could no longer ignore, whatever confusion it brought or however it caused me to change my mind on a subject which had formed one of the strongest bases to the argument by which I had sought to save Mr. Durand. Miss Grey cherished no such distrust of her father as I, in my ignorance of their relations, had imputed to her in the early hours of my ministrations. This you have already seen in my account of their parting. Whatever his dread, fear or remorse, there was no evidence that she felt toward him anything but love and confidence: but love and confidence from her to him were in direct contradiction to the doubts I had believed her to have expressed in the half-written note handed to Mrs. Fairbrother in the alcove. Had I been wrong, then, in attributing this scrawl to her? It began to look so. Though forbidden to allow her to speak on the one tabooed subject, I had wit enough to know that nothing would keep her from it, if the fate of Mrs. Fairbrother occupied any real place in her thoughts.
Yet when the opportunity was given me one morning of settling this fact beyond all doubt, I own that my main feeling was one of dread. I feared to see this article in my creed destroyed, lest I should lose confidence in the whole. Yet conscience bade me face the matter boldly, for had I not boasted to myself that my one desire was the truth?
I allude to the disposition which Miss Grey showed on the morning of the third day to do a little surreptitious writing. You remember that a specimen of her handwriting had been asked for by the inspector, and once had been earnestly desired by myself. Now I seemed likely to have it, if I did not open my eyes too widely to the meaning of her seemingly chance requests. A little pencil dangled at the end of my watch-chain. Would I let her see it, let her hold it in her hand for a minute? it was so like one she used to have. Of course I took it off, of course I let her retain it a little while in her hand. But the pencil was not enough. A few minutes later she asked for a book to look at—I sometimes let her look at pictures. But the book bothered her—she would look at it later; would I give her something to mark the place—that postal over there. I gave her the postal. She put it in the book and I, who understood her thoroughly, wondered what excuse she would now find for sending me into the other room. She found one very soon, and with a heavily-beating heart I left her with that pencil and postal. A soft laugh from her lips drew me back. She was holding up the postal.
“See! I have written a line to him! Oh, you good, good nurse, to let me! You needn’t look so alarmed. It hasn’t hurt me one bit.”
I knew that it had not; knew that such an exertion was likely to be more beneficial than hurtful to her, or I should have found some excuse for deterring her. I endeavored to make my face more natural. As she seemed to want me to take the postal in my hand I drew near and took it.
“The address looks very shaky,” she laughed. “I think you will have to put it in an envelope.”
I looked at it,—I could not help it,—her eye was on me, and I could not even prepare my mind for the shock of seeing it like or totally unlike the writing of the warning. It was totally unlike; so distinctly unlike that it was no longer possible to attribute those lines to her which, according to Mr. Durand’s story, had caused Mrs. Fairbrother to take off her diamond.
“Why, why!” she cried. “You actually look pale. Are you afraid the doctor will scold us? It hasn’t hurt me nearly so much as lying here and knowing what he would give for one word from me.”
“You are right, and I am foolish,” I answered with all the spirit left in me. “I should be glad—I am glad that you have written these words. I will copy the address on an envelope and send it out in the first mail.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, giving me back my pencil with a sly smile. “Now I can sleep. I must have roses in my cheeks when papa comes home.”
And she bade fair to have ruddier roses than myself, for conscience was working havoc in my breast. The theory I had built up with such care, the theory I had persisted in urging upon the inspector in spite of his rebuke, was slowly crumbling to pieces in my mind with the falling of one of its main pillars. With the warning unaccounted for in the manner I have stated, there was a weakness in my argument which nothing could make good. How could I tell the inspector, if ever I should be so happy or so miserable as to meet his eye again? Humiliated to the dust, I could see no worth now in any of the arguments I had advanced. I flew from one extreme to the other, and was imputing perfect probity to Mr. Grey and an honorable if mysterious reason for all his acts, when the door opened and he came in. Instantly my last doubt vanished. I had not expected him to return so soon.
He was glad to be back; that I could see, but there was no other gladness in him. I had looked for some change in his manner and appearance,—that is, if he returned at all,—but the one I saw was not a cheerful one, even after he had approached his daughter’s bedside and found her greatly improved. She noticed this and scrutinized him strangely. He dropped his eyes and turned to leave the room, but was stopped by her loving cry; he came back and leaned over her.
“What is it, father? You are fatigued, worried—”
“No, no, quite well,” he hastily assured her. “But you! are you as well as you seem?”
“Indeed, yes. I am gaining every day. See! see! I shall soon be able to sit up. Yesterday I read a few words.”
He started, with a side glance at me which took in a table near by on which a little book was lying.
“Oh, a book?”
“Yes, and—and Arthur’s letters.”
The father flushed, lifted himself, patted her arm tenderly and hastened into another room.
Miss Grey’s eyes followed him longingly, and I heard her give utterance to a soft sigh. A few hours before, this would have conveyed to my suspicious mind deep and mysterious meanings; but I was seeing everything now in a different light, and I found myself no longer inclined either to exaggerate or to misinterpret these little marks of filial solicitude. Trying to rejoice over the present condition of my mind, I was searching in the hidden depths of my nature for the patience of which I stood in such need, when every thought and feeling were again thrown into confusion by the receipt of another communication from the inspector, in which he stated that something had occurred to bring the authorities round to my way of thinking and that the test with the stiletto was to be made at once.
Could the irony of fate go further! I dropped the letter half read, querying if it were my duty to let the inspector know of the flaw I had discovered in my own theory, before I proceeded with the attempt I had suggested when I believed in its complete soundness. I had not settled the question when I took the letter up again. Re-reading its opening sentence, I was caught by the word “something.” It was a very indefinite one, yet was capable of covering a large field. It must cover a large field, or it could not have produced such a change in the minds of these men, conservative from principle and in this instance from discretion. I would be satisfied with that word something and quit further thinking. I was weary of it. The inspector was now taking the initiative, and I was satisfied to be his simple instrument and no more. Arrived at this conclusion, however, I read the rest of the letter. The test was to go on, but under different conditions. It was no longer to be made at my own discretion and in the up-stairs room; it was to be made at luncheon hour and in Mr. Grey’s private dining-room, where, if by any chance Mr. Grey found himself outraged by the placing of this notorious weapon beside his plate, the blame could be laid on the waiter, who, mistaking his directions, had placed it on Mr. Grey’s table when it was meant for Inspector Dalzell’s, who was lunching in the adjoining room. It was I, however, who was to do the placing. With what precautions and under what circumstances will presently appear.
Fortunately, the hour set was very near. Otherwise I do not know how I could have endured the continued strain of gazing on my patient’s sweet face, looking up at me from her pillow, with a shadow over its beauty which had not been there before her father’s return.
And that father! I could hear him pacing the library floor with a restlessness that struck me as being strangely akin to my own inward anguish of impatience and doubt. What was he dreading? What was it I had seen darkening his face and disturbing his manner, when from time to time he pushed open the communicating door and cast an anxious glance our way, only to withdraw again without uttering a word. Did he realize that a crisis was approaching, that danger menaced him, and from me? No, not the latter, for his glance never strayed to me, but rested solely on his daughter. I was, therefore, not connected with the disturbance in his thoughts. As far as that was concerned I could proceed fearlessly; I had not him to dread, only the event. That I did dread, as any one must who saw Miss Grey’s face during these painful moments and heard that restless tramp in the room beyond.
At last the hour struck,—the hour at which Mr. Grey always descended to lunch. He was punctuality itself, and under ordinary circumstances I could depend upon his leaving the room within five minutes of the stroke of one. But would he be as prompt to-day? Was he in the mood for luncheon? Would he go down stairs at all? Yes, for the tramp, tramp stopped; I heard him approaching his daughter’s door for a last look in and managed to escape just in time to procure what I wanted and reach the room below before he came.
My opportunity was short, but I had time to see two things: first, that the location of his seat had been changed so that his back was to the door leading into the adjoining room; secondly, that this door was ajar. The usual waiter was in the room and showed no surprise at my appearance, I having been careful to have it understood that hereafter Miss Grey’s appetite was to be encouraged by having her soup served from her father’s table by her father’s own hands, and that I should be there to receive it.
“Mr. Grey is coming,” said I, approaching the waiter and handing him the stiletto loosely wrapped in tissue paper. “Will you be kind enough to place this at his plate, just as it is? A man gave it to me for Mr. Grey; said we were to place it there.”
The waiter, suspecting nothing, did as he was bidden, and I had hardly time to catch up the tray laden with dishes, which I saw awaiting me on a side-table, when Mr. Grey came in and was ushered to his seat.
The soup was not there, but I advanced with my tray and stood waiting; not too near, lest the violent beating of my heart should betray me. As I did so the waiter disappeared and the door behind us opened. Though Mr. Grey’s eye had fallen on the package, and I saw him start, I darted one glance at the room thus disclosed, and saw that it held two tables. At one, the inspector and some one I did not know sat eating; at the other a man alone, whose back was to us all, and who seemingly was entirely disconnected with the interests of this tragic moment. All this I saw in an instant,—the next my eyes were fixed on Mr. Grey’s face.
He had reached out his hand to the package and his features showed an emotion I hardly understood.
“What’s this?” he murmured, feeling it with wonder, I should almost say anger. Suddenly he pulled off the wrapper, and my heart stood still in expectancy. If he quailed—and how could he help doing so if guilty—what a doubt would be removed from my own breast, what an impediment from police action! But he did not quail; he simply uttered an exclamation of intense anger, and laid the weapon back on the table without even taking the precaution of covering it up. I think he muttered an oath, but there was no fear in it, not a particle.
My disappointment was so great, my humiliation so unbounded, that, forgetting myself in my dismay, I staggered back and let the tray with all its contents slip from my hands. The crash that followed stopped Mr. Grey in the act of rising. But it did something more. It awoke a cry from the adjoining room which I shall never forget. While we both started and turned to see from whom this grievous sound had sprung, a man came stumbling toward us with his hands before his eyes and this name wild on his lips:
“Grizel! Grizel!”
Mrs. Fairbrother’s name! and the man—
XXII. GUILT
Was he Wellgood? Sears? Who? A lover of the woman certainly; that was borne in on us by the passion of his cry:
“Grizel! Grizel!”
But how here? and why such fury in Mr. Grey’s face and such amazement in that of the inspector?
This question was not to be answered offhand. Mr. Grey, advancing, laid a finger on the man’s shoulder. “Come,” said he, “we will have our conversation in another room.”
The man, who, in dress and appearance looked oddly out of place in those gorgeous rooms, shook off the stupor into which he had fallen and started to follow the Englishman. A waiter crossed their track with the soup for our table. Mr. Grey motioned him aside.
“Take that back,” said he. “I have some business to transact with this gentleman before I eat. I’ll ring when I want you.”
Then they entered where I was. As the door closed I caught sight of the inspector’s face turned earnestly toward me. In his eyes I read my duty, and girded up my heart, as it were, to meet—what? In that moment it was impossible to tell.
The next enlightened me. With a total ignoring of my presence, due probably to his great excitement, Mr. Grey turned on his companion the moment he had closed the door and, seizing him by the collar, cried:
“Fairbrother, you villain, why have you called on your wife like this? Are you murderer as well as thief?”
Fairbrother! this man? Then who was he who was being nursed back to life on the mountains beyond Santa Fe? Sears? Anything seemed possible in that moment.
Meanwhile, dropping his hand from the other’s throat as suddenly as he had seized it, Mr. Grey caught up the stiletto from the table where he had flung it, crying: “Do you recognize this?”
Ah, then I saw guilt!
In a silence worse than any cry, this so-called husband of the murdered woman, the man on whom no suspicion had fallen, the man whom all had thought a thousand miles away at the time of the deed, stared at the weapon thrust under his eyes, while over his face passed all those expressions of fear, abhorrence and detected guilt which, fool that I was, I had expected to see reflected in response to the same test in Mr. Grey’s equable countenance.
The surprise and wonder of it held me chained to the spot. I was in a state of stupefaction, so that I scarcely noted the broken fragments at my feet. But the intruder noticed them. Wrenching his gaze from the stiletto which Mr. Grey continued to hold out, he pointed to the broken cup and saucer, muttering:
“That is what startled me into this betrayal—the noise of breaking china. I can not bear it since—”
He stopped, bit his lip and looked around him with an air of sudden bravado.
“Since you dropped the cups at your wife’s feet in Mr. Ramsdell’s alcove,” finished Mr. Grey with admirable self-possession.
“I see that explanations from myself are not in order,” was the grim retort, launched with the bitterest sarcasm. Then as the full weight of his position crushed in on him, his face assumed an aspect startling to my unaccustomed eyes, and, thrusting his hand into his pocket he drew forth a small box which he placed in Mr. Grey’s hands.
“The Great Mogul,” he declared simply.
It was the first time I had heard this diamond so named.
Without a word that gentleman opened the box, took one look at the contents, assumed a satisfied air, and carefully deposited the recovered gem in his own pocket. As his eyes returned to the man before him, all the passion of the latter burst forth.
“It was not for that I killed her!” cried he. “It was because she defied me and flaunted her disobedience in my very face. I would do it again, yet—”
Here his voice broke and it was in a different tone and with a total change of manner he added: “You stand appalled at my depravity. You have not lived my life.” Then quickly and with a touch of sullenness: “You suspected me because of the stiletto. It was a mistake, using that stiletto. Otherwise, the plan was good. I doubt if you know now how I found my way into the alcove, possibly under your very eyes; certainly, under the eyes of many who knew me.”
“I do not. It is enough that you entered it; that you confess your guilt.”
Here Mr. Grey stretched his hand toward the electric button.
“No, it is not enough.” The tone was fierce, authoritative. “Do not ring the bell, not yet. I have a fancy to tell you how I managed that little affair.”
Glancing about, he caught up from a near-by table a small brass tray. Emptying it of its contents, he turned on us with drawn-down features and an obsequious air so opposed to his natural manner that it was as if another man stood before us.
“Pardon my black tie,” he muttered, holding out the tray toward Mr. Grey.
Wellgood!
The room turned with me. It was he, then, the great financier, the multimillionaire, the husband of the magnificent Grizel, who had entered Mr. Ramsdell’s house as a waiter!
Mr. Grey did not show surprise, but he made a gesture, when instantly the tray was thrown aside and the man resumed his ordinary aspect.
“I see you understand me,” he cried. “I who have played host at many a ball, passed myself off that night as one of the waiters. I came and went and no one noticed me. It is such a natural sight to see a waiter passing ices that my going in and out of the alcove did not attract the least attention. I never look at waiters when I attend balls. I never look higher than their trays. No one looked at me higher than my tray. I held the stiletto under the tray and when I struck her she threw up her hands and they hit the tray and the cups fell. I have never been able to bear the sound of breaking china since. I loved her—”
A gasp and he recovered himself.
“That is neither here nor there,” he muttered. “You summoned me under threat to present myself at your door to-day. I have done so. I meant to restore you your diamond, simply. It has become worthless to me. But fate exacted more. Surprise forced my secret from me. That young lady with her damnable awkwardness has put my head in a noose. But do not think to hold it there. I did not risk this interview without precautions, I assure you, and when I leave this hotel it will be as a free man.”
With one of his rapid changes, wonderful and inexplicable to me at the moment, he turned toward me with a bow, saying courteously enough:
“We will excuse the young lady.”
Next moment the barrel of a pistol gleamed in his hand.
The moment was critical. Mr. Grey stood directly in the line of fire, and the audacious man who thus held him at his mercy was scarcely a foot from the door leading into the hall. Marking the desperation of his look and the steadiness of his finger on the trigger, I expected to see Mr. Grey recoil and the man escape. But Mr. Grey held his own, though he made no move, and did not venture to speak. Nerved by his courage, I summoned up all my own. This man must not escape, nor must Mr. Grey suffer. The pistol directed against him must be diverted to myself. Such amends were due one whose good name I had so deeply if secretly insulted. I had but to scream, to call out for the inspector, but a remembrance of the necessity we were now under of preserving our secret, of keeping from Mr. Grey the fact that he had been under surveillance, was even at that moment surrounded by the police, deterred me, and I threw myself toward the bell instead, crying out that I would raise the house if he moved, and laid my finger on the button.
The pistol swerved my way. The face above it smiled. I watched that smile. Before it broadened to its full extent, I pressed the button.
Fairbrother stared, dropped his pistol, and burst forth with these two words:
“Brave girl!”
The tone I can never convey.
Then he made for the door.
As he laid his hand on the knob, he called back:
“I have been in worse straits than this!”
But he never had; when he opened the door, he found himself face to face with the inspector.