Chapter Seventeen
In Peril
Without loss of a moment we entered the hansom and drove along Bishop’s Road and Westbourne Terrace, and thence across Sussex Gardens to Gloucester Square.
Beside me my companion sat pale, erect, and rigid, responding only in monosyllables to my questions, and refusing to tell me anything beyond what she had already said – that her cousin was dying. Her manner was strange, as though she were in deadly fear.
I had taken her hand to assist her into the cab, and found it was cold as ice. Her face was the face of a woman haunted by some imminent terror, a white countenance with eyes dark and deep sunken. How changed she was from the bright, pleasant woman who had consulted me under such curious circumstances, when I had first taken Bob’s place at Rowan Road. Could this change in her be in any way due, I thought, to the tragedy at Whitton? I recollected the singular fact that Mrs Chetwode had omitted the name and that of Beryl from the list furnished to the police. Again I glanced at her ashen face as we rounded the corner into Gloucester Square; it was that of a woman absolutely desperate. She was trembling with fear, yet at the same time striving to preserve an outward calm. My suspicion of her was increased.
The hall door having been thrown open by a servant, my companion led me through into a pretty boudoir on the left, where, lying fully dressed upon a divan of yellow silk, I saw my love. Her wonderful hair had become disengaged from its fastenings and fell dishevelled about her white face, and her corsage was open at the throat as though some one had felt her heart.
In an instant I was at her side, and, while her cousin held the shaded lamp, I examined her. Her great fathomless eyes were closed, her cheeks cold, her heart motionless. Every symptom was that of death.
“Is she still alive?” asked the terror-stricken woman at my elbow.
“I cannot decide,” I answered, rising and obtaining a small mirror to test whether respiration had ceased.
Hers was no ordinary faintness, that I at once saw. The limbs were stiff and rigid as in death, the hands icy cold, the lips drawn and hard-set, the whole body so paralysed that the resemblance to death was exact.
All the startling events of my fateful wedding day came back to me. From that white throat that lay there exposed I had taken the tiny gold charm, which now hung round my own neck, reminding me ever of her. That sweet face, with the halo of gold-brown hair, was the same that I had seen lying dead upon the pillow in that house of mystery in Queen’s-gate Gardens, the same that I had bent and kissed.
I took her hand again; there were rings upon it, but all were set with gems. The bond of matrimony that I had placed there was absent.
For a moment I stood gazing at her, utterly confounded. But I saw that to save her life no time must be lost, therefore, rousing myself, I obtained her ladyship’s assistance to unloose my loved one’s corset, and then made a further examination.
“This is a serious matter,” I said at last. “I shall be glad if you will send a servant in a cab to Bloomsbury with a message.”
“To Bloomsbury? Why?” she asked. “Cannot you treat her yourself?”
“Not without consultation,” I responded; and taking a card from my pocket, I wrote upon it an urgent message to accompany the bearer at once.
She gave me an envelope, and, enclosing the card, I wrote the superscription, “Doctor Carl Hoefer, 63, Museum Mansions, Bloomsbury.”
Her ladyship at once sent the servant on the message, and then without delay returned to my side.
“Well, Doctor,” she asked in a low, strained voice, “what is your opinion? Will she recover?”
“I cannot say,” I responded mechanically, my eyes still fixed upon my patient’s face, watching for any change that might occur there.
At my request her ladyship brought the brandy decanter from the dining-room, and I managed, after some difficulty, to force a few drops between her cousin’s lips.
“Now tell me,” I said firmly, turning to the agitated woman at my side, “how did this occur?”
“I don’t know.”
“But if her life is to be saved we must know the truth,” I said, my eyes fixed upon her. “In this manner to prevaricate is useless. Tell me how it is that I find her in this condition of fatal collapse.”
“I cannot tell you things of which I myself am ignorant,” she answered, with a well-feigned air of innocence.
“You wish to save your cousin’s life?” I inquired.
“Certainly. She must not die,” she cried anxiously.
“Then answer my questions plainly, and leave the rest entirely in my hands,” I replied. “From your manner I know that you have some secret which you are striving to conceal. Knowledge of this secret will, no doubt, place me in a position to combat this extraordinary attack. If because you maintain silence she dies, then an inquest will be held, and the truth must come out – and a scandalous truth it will be.”
“Scandalous!” she exclaimed with some hauteur. “I don’t understand.”
“An attempt has been made upon her life,” I said as calmly as I could. “Those who are responsible for this must, if she dies, be discovered.”
“An attempt upon her life? How do you know?” she gasped.
I smiled, but made no direct answer to her question.
“I am aware of it by the same means that I know that Feo Ashwicke and Beryl Wynd are one and the same person.”
She started quickly.
“Who told you that?” she asked, with a strange flash in her eyes.
I smiled again, answering, “I think it would be best if you confided in me in this matter, instead of leaving me to obtain the truth for myself. Remember, you have called me here to save your cousin, and yet, by her side, while her young life is slowly ebbing, we are engaged in a battle of words. Now tell me,” I urged, “how did this occur?”
She shook her head.
“Shall I begin?” I suggested. “Shall I say that you came up with Miss Beryl from Atworth yesterday, quite unexpectedly, in order to keep an appointment? That you – ”
“How did you know?” she gasped again. “How did you know our movements?”
“I merely ask whether this is not the truth,” I responded calmly. I had noticed that the furniture in the room was undusted, and therefore knew that they had returned to town unexpectedly. “Shall we advance a step further? I think, if I am not mistaken, that there was a strong reason for your return to town, and also for keeping your presence in London a secret. That is the reason that you communicated with your friend.”
“With whom?”
“With Mrs Chetwode.”
The light died from her face. She swayed slightly, and I saw that she gripped the edge of the little glass-topped table to steady herself.
Then her features relaxed into a sickly smile, and she managed to stammer —
“You are awfully clever, Doctor, to be aware of all these things. Is it clairvoyance – thought-reading, or what?”
“Those who have secrets should be careful not to betray them,” I responded ambiguously.
“Then if I have betrayed myself, perhaps you will tell me something more of equal interest.”
“No,” I answered. “I have no desire to make any experiments. In this matter your cousin’s life is at stake. It will be, at least, humane of you if you place me in possession of all the facts you know regarding the dastardly attempt upon her.”
“I tell you that I know nothing.”
“Nothing beyond what?” I said very gravely.
Again she was silent. I watched the inanimate body of the woman I loved, but saw no change. In what manner that state of coma had been produced I knew not, and I was in deadly fear that the last breath would leave the body before the arrival of Hoefer, the great German doctor whose lectures at Guy’s had first aroused within me a desire to become a medico-legist. There was, I knew, but one man in all the world who could diagnose those symptoms, and it was Hoefer. I only prayed that he might not be out of town.
“Well,” I went on, “it seems that you hesitate to tell me the truth, because you fear that I might divulge your secret. Is that so?”
“I believed that I might trust you to attend my cousin, and preserve silence regarding her illness and her presence in London,” was the haughty reply. “But it seems that you are endeavouring to ascertain facts which are purely family affairs.”
“The doctor is always the confidant of the family,” I answered.
“But the other – the doctor who is coming?”
“He is an old friend and will promise to keep your secret,” I said. “Come, tell me.”
She stood hesitating, erect, statuesque, her eyes fixed immovably upon me.
“I know you are in trouble,” I added in a tone of sympathy. “I am ready to assist you, if you are open and straight forward with me. I have already given you my pledge of secrecy. Now tell me what has occurred.”
She wavered in her resolution to tell me nothing. My sympathetic tones decided her, and she said in a low, hoarse voice —
“It is a mystery.”
“In what way?”
“As you have already said, we left Atworth in order to keep an appointment here. I was entertaining a house-party, but made an excuse that one of my aunts in Cheltenham was dangerously ill. I left, and, unknown to my husband or any other person, travelled with Beryl to London.”
I noted that she inadvertently used my love’s proper name instead of Feo, the name by which she had introduced us.
“The appointment was with Mrs Chetwode?” I suggested.
“Yes,” she answered. “I had arranged to meet her to-day at two o’clock.”
“I have read in the newspapers, reports of the terrible tragedy at Whitton. It was her husband who was murdered, was it not?”
“Yes,” she answered in a tone rather unusual. Then she pursed her lips and held her breath for a single instant. “She has been staying with her sister in Taunton since the awful affair occurred, and came to town purposely to meet me.”
“I think, if I mistake not, both you and your cousin were at Whitton at the time of the tragedy,” I observed with affected carelessness.
“Oh no; fortunately we were not,” she answered quickly. “We left the day previously.”
That certainly was not the truth – at least, Beryl had been there at four o’clock in the afternoon. But I made no remark. It would not be policy to tell this woman of my visit to Whitton and of all I had overheard and seen.
“Well, and to-day? Did your friend Mrs Chetwode call?”
Again she hesitated, and that aroused within me a further suspicion.
“Yes,” she replied. “She remained an hour, then left.”
“Alone?”
“No; we went with her?”
“Where?”
“To visit a friend in Cadogan Place.”
“And how long did you remain?”
“About half an hour.”
“Cannot you tell me the name of this friend?”
“No,” she answered; “it is of no account.”
“Did you or your cousin eat or drink anything to-day, except here in your own house?”
“Nothing. The person whom we visited offered us port wine, but neither of us accepted.”
“No tea?”
“None,” she answered. “We afterwards returned home, arriving about five o’clock, took tea here, and dined at half-past six. An hour later, just as we had finished dinner, the servant handed Beryl a card; and she rose, excusing herself on the plea that her dressmaker had called, and, saying that she would return in a moment, left me alone to finish my dessert. I waited for her return for fully twenty minutes, then went across to the morning-room. The light had been switched off, and, when I turned it on, I saw to my horror that she was lying full length on the floor, apparently dead. We carried her here, and then I at once went in search of you.”
“And is that all you know?” I inquired rather incredulously.
“Everything,” she assured me. “I found Beryl lying helpless and insensible, just as she is now.”
“And that was an hour and a half ago?” I remarked.
“Yes.”
“But who was this caller? Surely you are able to ascertain that? The servant asked the person in.”
“It was a woman, and she asked for my cousin.”
“Then you don’t actually know that it was the dressmaker?”
“The servant can give no accurate description, except that she was middle-aged, dressed in deep mourning, and wore a veil. She said she was the dressmaker.”
“Then the woman escaped from the house without being seen?”
“Yes,” her ladyship replied. “No one heard a sound after poor Beryl entered the room. What occurred there no one knows.”
“We only know what occurred by the effects,” I said. “A desperate attempt was made upon her life. This is no mere fainting-fit.”
“But who could this mysterious woman have been?” her ladyship exclaimed. “It is absolutely astounding!” A thought flashed across my mind at that moment. Could the visitor in black actually have been that dreaded person of whom even Tattersett had spoken with bated breath – La Gioia?
Chapter Eighteen
The Mystery of the Morning-Room
My eyes wandered from the face of the trembling woman before me to the blanched countenance of my love. In an instant I detected a change there. While I had been speaking the muscles had relaxed until that face I adored had become blank and quite expressionless. No deep medical knowledge was necessary to detect the awful truth. It was the exact counterpart of the photograph which had been in the Colonel’s possession.
With a cry of despair I sank upon my knees, touching her cheeks and chafing her hands. I held the mirror against her mouth. But the jaw had dropped, and when I looked eagerly for signs of respiration, there were none. Beryl, my mysterious, unknown wife, was dead.
I pressed her hand, I called her by name, and, aided by her cousin Nora, frantically tried the various modes of artificial respiration. But all in vain. Her frail life had flickered out even while we had been fencing with each other. All was useless. She had, as the Major had predicted during that memorable interview at Whitton, been struck down swiftly and secretly in some manner that was impossible to determine.
“She’s dead!” I cried, still holding her thin, cold hand, and turning to the woman who had brought me to her side. “Dead – dead!”
“Impossible!” she gasped. “No, don’t tell me that. Do your best to save her, Doctor. You must save her – you must!”
“But she is beyond human aid!” I declared. “Respiration has ceased. She has been murdered!”
“By that woman in black!” she shrieked. “But how?”
“That I do not know,” I responded very gravely. “There is no wound; nothing whatever to account for death.”
“Oh!” she cried in desperation, “I ought to have told you everything at once, but I feared you would not believe it if I told you. A strange thing has occurred in this house, something very uncanny. It is as though the place is overshadowed by some evil influence.”
“I don’t understand you,” I answered quickly interested; but ere the words had left my mouth there was a tap at the door, and the servant, ushered in my old friend and lecturer, Carl Hoefer.
“Ah, my dear Doctor!” I cried eagerly, rushing forward to welcome him – “You will excuse me calling you so unexpectedly, and at this hour, but something very unusual has transpired – a matter in which I require your assistance.”
“Ach!” he answered, shaking my hand, “I was surprised to get your kart, my frient. But, you see, I haf come to you at once.”
He was a stout, ill-dressed man, broad-shouldered, short-legged, big-headed, heavy-jowled, about fifty-five, with scraggy yellowish hair upon his furrowed face, a pair of big eyes which blinked through large gold-rimmed spectacles, and a limp shirt-front secured by a couple of common pearl studs. Typically German in figure and manner, he spoke with a strong accent, his English grammar being often very faulty, but he was nevertheless a burly, good-natured man, possessing a keen sense of humour.
I introduced him briefly to the baronet’s wife, and then, indicating the inanimate body of my love, gave him a short, technical account of her symptoms. He bent over her, examined her face, and grunted dubiously.
“It looks as though the young lady were dead,” he said with his strong accent, his great sleepy-looking eyes blinking at us through his spectacles.
“I see no sign of life,” I responded. “What is your opinion?”
He went down on his knees, grunting over the effort, and while I held the lamp for him, examined her throat and neck carefully, as though looking for some mark or other.
“And how did it all happen?” he inquired presently, after a long, thoughtful silence.
I exchanged glances with her ladyship, and then related him the story just as she had told it to me.
“Her ladyship wishes that it should be kept a profound secret,” I added.
“Secret!” he snorted. “How are you going to hoodwink the coroner?”
“Then you think poor Beryl is really dead?” her cousin gasped.
“She is dead,” the old fellow answered gruffly.
“But can you do nothing?” I urged in desperation.
“If she’s dead, that’s impossible,” he declared.
“No,” I said. “I refuse to believe that she is actually beyond your aid. To us she may appear dead, but her state may be only a cataleptic one.”
He shook his great shaggy head dubiously, but made no response. This man, one of the greatest chemists of the age, who had been recognised as private docent of pathological anatomy and bacteriology at the University of Naples, and was renowned throughout the world for his excursions into the queer byways of medicine, was a man of few words.
His grunts were full of expression, and his fleshy face with the dull eyes was absolutely sphinx-like. The story he had heard regarding Beryl’s sudden seizure did not convince him. His expressive grunt told me so. He had ripped up the tight sleeves of her dress, and was examining the inside of the arms at the elbows, but what he saw did not satisfy him.
I told him of the mirror-test, of the artificial respiration which I had tried, and he listened to me in silence. With his finger he opened the left eye and looked long and earnestly into the pupil. Then after a long suspense he suddenly spoke.
“Ach! we have been meestake; she is not dead.”
“Not dead?” I cried joyfully. “Thank God for that! Do your best to restore her to us. Doctor – for my sake! How can I assist you?”
“By remaining quiet,” he growled reprovingly.
And again he recommenced the examination of the inside of the elbows after having ordered other lights to be brought. Then, without saying where he was going, he left us, promising to return in a few minutes. He was a queer old fellow, very eccentric, and with a method that was as curious as the particular branch of the profession in which he was a specialist.
Not more than ten minutes passed before he returned grunting, puffing, and carrying a small packet in his hand. He had evidently been to the nearest chemist’s.
“Some water!” he commanded – “warm water.”
This was at once brought, and, arranging several little packets on the glass-topped table, he seated himself leisurely, and commenced to open and examine the contents of each very slowly.
“You have a hypodermic syringe?” he inquired. I took it from my pocket-case and handed it to him. He grunted and made a disparaging remark about the make – German needles were so much better, he declared. Then, having cleaned the syringe, he mixed a solution with the utmost care, and then administered a subcutaneous injection in Beryl’s arm.
He took a chair and sat beside the cold, inanimate form, eagerly watching the effects of the drug he had administered.
Her ladyship stood near, her dark eyes, framed by the white agitated countenance, fixed immovably upon us.
Hoefer glanced at his cheap metal watch, and, grunting, crossed to the table and mixed a second injection, grumbling all the time at the inferior quality of my hypodermic syringe. So rough, unpolished in manner, and unsparing in criticism was he, that her ladyship drew back from him in fear.
The second injection proved of as little avail as the first, and from the great man’s grave expression I began to fear the worst. No sign of life asserted itself. To all appearance my adored had passed away.
Suddenly he rose, and, turning to her ladyship, said in broken English —
“Now, madam, you will tell me, please, how this occurred.”
“I do not know. Doctor Colkirk has told you all I know about it.”
“But, just as Doctor Hoefer entered, you were telling me about something mysterious that had happened here. What was that?”
She pursed her lips for a moment, and glanced quickly at the old German.
“It is a most serious thing. I cannot make it out. There is some mystery in the morning-room.”
“Ach!” exclaimed Hoefer, with a grunt – “a mystery! The symptoms of the lady are in themselves mysterious. Please explain the mystery of the room.”
“Well,” she answered, “when I entered, after the departure of the visitor, and discovered my cousin lying on the floor unconscious, I was quite well; but when I left I experienced a most curious sensation, just as though all my limbs were benumbed. I, too, almost lost consciousness while in the cab in search of Doctor Colkirk. But the most curious part of the affair is that my maid and the housemaid, who rushed in when I raised the alarm, experienced the very same sensation. It was as though we were struck by an icy hand – the Hand of Death.”
“There is something very uncanny about that,” I observed, puzzled.
“To me it seems as though poor Beryl were struck down in the same way as myself.”
“But you say that you felt nothing on entering – only on leaving?” inquired Hoefer, his eyes seeming to grow larger behind his great glasses.
“Only on leaving,” she assured him.
“Strange!” he ejaculated. “Let us see the room. We may, perhaps, obtain a clue to this mysterious ailment from which your cousin is suffering.”
“But she is not dead?” I asked in doubt.
“No,” he responded. “The last injection must be given time to take effect. We can only hope for the best.”
“But the electric battery?” I suggested. “Could we not try that?”
“Useless, my dear friend,” he responded; “it would kill her. Let us see the room of mystery.”
The baronet’s wife conducted us along the hall to the further end, where she opened the door, herself drawing back.
“What!” I inquired. “You fear to enter?”
“Yes,” she faltered. “I will remain here.”
“Very well. We will go in,” I laughed, for the idea seemed so absurd that both Hoefer and myself put it down to her excited imagination.
What ill effect could the mere entry into a room have upon the human system, providing there were no foul gases? Therefore we both went forward, sniffing suspiciously, and walking to the window, opened it widely.
The half-dozen lights in the electrolier illuminated the place brightly, revealing a fine, handsome room furnished with taste and comfort. On looking round we certainly saw nothing to account for the extraordinary phenomena as described by the trembling woman who stood upon the mat outside.
While we made a careful examination of the place in which my love had met her strange visitor, the door, creaking horribly, swung slowly to, as doors often will when badly hung. Hoefer examined the floor carefully, seeking to discover whether the unknown woman in black had dropped anything that might give a clue to her identity, while I searched the chairs for the same purpose. We, however, found nothing.
What, I wondered, was the nature of the interview that had taken place there a couple of hours before? Who was the woman who had called and represented herself as Beryl’s dressmaker? Could it have been the woman whose vengeance was so feared, the woman whose very name had been uttered by that miscreant with bated breath – La Gioia?
With her ladyship standing in the hall watching us we searched high and low. Neither of us felt any curious sensation, and I began to think that the story was merely concocted in order to add mystery to Beryl’s unique seizure. Yet, from that woman’s face, it was nevertheless evident that she stood there in fear lest any evil should befall us.
“Do you experience any queer feeling?” she inquired of us at last.
“None whatever,” I responded.
“It is only on leaving,” she replied.
“Very well,” I answered with a laugh, scouting the idea, and then boldly passing out into the hall.
“Good Heavens?” I gasped a few moments later, almost as soon as I had reached her side. “Hoefer! come here quickly. There’s something devilish, uncanny in this. I’ve never felt like this before.”
The old German dashed out of the room and was in an instant beside me.
“How do you feel?” he inquired.
I heard his voice, but it sounded like that of some one speaking in the far distance. The shock was just as though an icy hand had struck me as I had emerged from the hall. I was cold from head to foot, shivering violently, while my lower limbs became so benumbed that I could not feel my feet.
I must have reeled, for Hoefer in alarm caught me in his arms and steadied me…
“Tell me – what are your symptoms?”
“I’m cold,” I answered, my voice trembling and my teeth chattering violently.
He seized my wrist, and his great fingers closed upon it.
“Ach!” he cried in genuine alarm, “your pulse is failing. And your eyes!” he added, looking into them. “You are cold – your legs are rigid – you have the same symptoms, exactly the same, as the young lady?”
“And you?” I gasped. “Do you feel nothing?”
“Nothing yet,” he responded – “nothing.”
“But what is it?” I cried in desperation. “The feeling is truly as though the Angel of Death had passed and struck me down. Cannot you give me something, Hoefer? Give me something – before I lose all consciousness!”
The woman near me stood rooted to the spot in absolute terror, while the old German placed me upon an oaken settle in the hall, and ran along to the boudoir, returning with the syringe filled with the same injection which he had administered to my love. This he gave me in the arm, then stood by breathlessly anxious as to the result.
The feelings I experienced during the ten minutes that followed are indescribable. I can only compare them to the excruciating agony of being slowly frozen to death.
Through it all I saw Hoefer’s great fleshy face with the big spectacles peering into mine. I tried to speak, but could not. I tried to raise my hand to make signs, but my muscles had suddenly become paralysed. Truly the mystery of that room was an uncanny one.
It ran through my mind that, the house being lit by electric light, the wires were perhaps not properly isolated, and any person leaving the place received a paralysing shock. This theory was, however, completely negatived by my symptoms, which were not in any way similar to those consequent on electric shock.
Hoefer looked anxiously at his watch, then, after a lapse of a few minutes, gave me a second injection, which rendered me a trifle easier. I could detect, by his manner and his grunts, that he was utterly confounded. He, who had sneered at the weird story, like myself was now convinced that some strange, unaccountable mystery was connected with that room.
To enter, apparently produced no ill effect; but to leave brought swiftly and surely upon the fated intruder the icy touch of death. I had laughed the thing to scorn, yet within a few seconds had myself fallen a victim. Some deep, inscrutable mystery was there, but what it was neither of us could tell.