CHAPTER XV
RALPH RAVENSPUR'S CONCEIT
"I should like to know why you wanted the ivory picture?"
It was Geoffrey who asked the question. He and Ralph Ravenspur were moving along the lanes that led up to the cliffs. They were deep lanes, with overhanging edges on either side – lanes where it was not easy for two conveyances to pass.
"I dare say you would," Ralph replied. "But not at present. In due course you must know everything. Geoffrey, you are fond of novel reading?"
"Yes, especially books of the Gaboriau type. And yet, in all my reading, I never knew a more thrilling mystery than that of the ivory portrait."
"You had a good look at it, then?"
"Of course I did. The likeness to Marion was amazing. It might have been her own photograph on the ivory. It was the same, yet not the same – Marion transformed to an avenging fury."
"An ancestress of hers, no doubt?"
"Of course. The idea of it being Marion herself is out of the question."
"That you may dismiss at once," Ralph said. "The age of the medallion proves that and Marion is an angel."
"She is. Uncle Ralph, I am fearfully puzzled. What can Marion's queer ancestors and all that kind of thing have to do with our family terror?"
Ralph declined to say, beyond the fact that there was a connection. A horseman was coming pounding down the lane and he stepped aside instinctively.
"Jessop," he murmured, "I can tell by the trot of his horse."
Jessop, one of the farmers on the estate, it was. Geoffrey regarded his companion admiringly. He seemed to be able to dispense with eyes altogether. A long course of training in woodcraft stood him in good stead now. The apple-cheeked farmer pulled up so as to pass the squires at a walking pace.
"Morning, Jessop," Geoffrey cried cheerfully. "Where are you going dressed in your best. And what are you doing with that feminine-looking box?"
The big man grinned sheepishly.
"Riding into town," he explained. "Fact is, missus and myself have got a lodger, a great lady, who's taken our drawing-room and two bedrooms. They do say it's going to be the fashion for the 'quality' to spend their holidays right in t'country. It's a rare help to us these hard times."
Ralph Ravenspur turned round suddenly upon his nephew.
"Is it a fact?" he demanded. "Is it as Jessop says?"
"I believe so," Geoffrey replied. "I know that for the last five years the influx of visitors along this lonely coast has been steadily growing. It seems to have become quite the thing for good-class people to take cottages and farmhouses miles away from everywhere, but I have not heard of any of our tenants having them before."
"I be the first here, sir," Jessop replied. "The lady came over and said she had been recommended to come to us. Not as I wanted her at first, but six guineas a week for two months ain't to be despised. But the lady has a power of parcels to be fetched and carried, surely. That's why I'm off to town."
Jessop touched his hat and rode on. For a time Ralph was silent.
"It's some time since I last visited an English watering-place," he said, "and Scarborough was the spot in question. We had a furnished house there one season, a good house, well furnished, and beautifully situated. We paid eight pounds a week for it, and it was considered to be a lot of money. Don't you think that Jessop's lodger must be a very extravagant kind of woman?"
Geoffrey laughed. Like most young men born to the purple, he had a light estimate of the value of money.
"Now you come to think of it, perhaps so," he said. "Over at Brigg, the farmers fancy they do well if they get ten shillings a room for the week."
Again Ralph was thoughtful. He and his companion came up out of the lane, and then it dawned upon Geoffrey that the other had turned, not towards the cliffs as arranged, but inland in the direction of Jessop's farm.
There was a long, deep lane to the west side of the stone farmhouse, into which Ralph turned. From a gap in the hedge a peep into the garden could be obtained. There was a trim lawn bordered by old-fashioned flowers, two bay windows led from the house to the garden. These bay windows led from the show rooms of the house, rooms never opened except on state occasions. The house might have been made fit for anybody with very little alteration.
Ralph sat down on the grass and slowly filled an aged black pipe.
"I'm going to smoke here while you see Mrs. Jessop. I have a fancy to find out all about this fashionable lady who buries herself in the country like this. Call it curiosity if you like, but do as I ask you. If you can see the lady so much the better."
Geoffrey agreed cheerfully. A moment or two later and he was gossiping with the buxom farmer's wife in the kitchen, a glass of amber, home-brewed ale before him. He was a favorite with the tenantry, and none the less beloved because of the cloud that was hanging over him.
"It does one's eyes good to see you again, Mr. Geoffrey," Mrs. Jessop cried. "And you so cheerful and bright, and all, dear, dear! I'm main sorry I can't ask you in the parlor, but we've got a lodger."
"So Jessop told me. Not that I don't feel far more comfortable here. And what may your distinguished visitor be like, Mrs. Jessop?"
"Dark and handsome. And dressed over so. Might be a princess, who had just slipped off her throne. And clever. She had books and books, some in languages that look like Chinese puzzles."
"Some great society dame, no doubt."
"I shouldn't be surprised, Mr. Geoffrey. But not English, I should fancy, though she speaks the language as well as you or I. And simple, too. Just tea and toast for breakfast with a little meat and rice for luncheon and dinner with stewed fruit. And she never drinks anything but water. What she spends a week in food wouldn't keep one of our laborers. And she had pounds' worth of hot-house flowers sent from York every day."
Mrs. Jessop paused. There was a rustling of something rich, and a lady entered the kitchen. Geoffrey rose instantly from the table upon which he had been seated.
He saw a tall woman who might have been anything between thirty and fifty years of age, a woman of great beauty. It was the hard, commanding style of beauty that men call regal. She might have been a queen, but for the faint suggestion of the adventuress about her. To Geoffrey's bow she made the slightest possible haughty recognition.
"I'm going out, Mrs. Jessop," she said. "I shall be back to luncheon. If a telegram should happen to come for me, I shall be along the cliffs between here and Beauhaven."
She flashed out of the kitchen all rustling and gleaming, and leaving the faint suggestion of some intoxicating perfume behind her. And yet, notwithstanding her proud indifference, it seemed to Geoffrey that she had regarded him with more than passing interest just for the moment.
"She is very beautiful," he said. "She is a total stranger to me, and yet she reminds me of somebody else, somebody whose name I can't recall, but who is totally different. It is a strange sort of feeling that I cannot explain."
"She's interested for all her haughtiness," said Mrs. Jessop. "I'm sure if she has asked me one question about your family, she has asked a thousand."
Geoffrey strolled away round the house. There was a short cut to the place where Ralph was seated, and this short cut lay along the lawn. Geoffrey's feet made no noise. As he passed the window of the sitting-room he looked in.
The place was full of flowers, white flowers everywhere. There were azaleas and geraniums and carnations, with delicate foliage of tender green, thousands of blooms, arranged wherever a specimen glass or a bowl could go.
Standing with his back to the window, a man was arranging them. And the man was a Hindoo, or other Eastern, one of the men Geoffrey had seen going through that queer incantation on the cliffs. Strange, more than strange, that Mrs. Jessop had said nothing of him.
Geoffrey prudently slipped away before he had been seen. He found his uncle doggedly smoking under the hedge. He looked like patience personified.
"Well," he said, "have you anything wonderful to relate?"
"Pretty well," Geoffrey replied. "To begin with, I have actually seen the lady."
"Ah! But go on. Tell me everything, everything mind, to the minutest detail."
Geoffrey proceeded to explain. Whether he was interesting his listener or not he could not tell, for Ralph had assumed his most wooden expression; indeed, a casual spectator would have said that he was not paying the slightest attention. Then he began to ask questions, in a languid way, but Geoffrey could see that they were all to the point.
"I should not be surprised," he said, "if the man you saw in the house was one of the men you saw on the cliffs. Mrs. Jessop said nothing about him, because she knew nothing. So he was arranging the lady's flowers. What flowers?"
"Azaleas and carnations and geraniums. Nothing else."
"Well, there may be worse taste, if there can be bad taste with flowers. Any color?"
"Yes, they were all white. I was a little surprised at that, considering that the lady was so dark and Eastern-looking."
"Of course you ascertained her name?"
"Indeed, I did nothing of the kind. I forgot all about it. But I had a good look at her, and the description I gave you is quite correct. Uncle, I don't want to seem unduly curious, but I fancy you expected to find this lady here."
Ralph rose to his feet slowly, and knocked out the ashes of his pipe. He turned his face toward the castle.
"I am not altogether surprised," he said.
Not another word was said for some time. Ralph appeared to be deeply cogitating, so deeply that Geoffrey asked of what he was thinking.
"I was thinking," Ralph said slowly, yet drily, and with the same dense manner, "that a pair of dark, gold-rimmed glasses would improve my personal appearance."
CHAPTER XVI
THE WHITE FLOWERS
Surely enough, when Ralph Ravenspur came into the great hall, where tea was being served, he was wearing a pair of dark glasses, with gold rims. Slight as the alteration was in itself, it changed him almost beyond recognition. He had been doing something to his face also, for the disfiguring scar had practically disappeared. As he came feeling his way to a chair, the slight thread of conversation snapped altogether.
"Don't mind me," he said quietly. "You will get used to the change, and you cannot deny it is a change for the better. One of the causes leading to this vanity was a remark I overheard on the part of one of the servants. She expressed the opinion that I should look better in glasses. That opinion I shared. I have no doubt the maid was correct."
All this was uttered in the dry, soft, caustic manner Ralph constantly affected. Nobody answered, mostly because it was assumed that no reply was expected. With a cup of tea in his hand Ralph began to speak of other things.
Leading from the hall was a big conservatory. Here Marion was busy among her flowers. She was singing gently as she snipped a bud here and there, and Vera was helping her. Curled up in a leisure chair, Geoffrey was absorbed in a book. The smoke from his cigarette circled round his head.
Ralph placed his cup down again and felt his way into the conservatory. He stood in the doorway listening to the controversy going on beyond.
"I don't fancy I shall like it," said Vera. "It will be too cold, too funereal."
"My dear child," Marion cried, "then we will abandon the idea. Only don't forget that it was your own suggestion. You said it would look chaste."
"Did I really! Then I had forgotten about it. And we are not going to abandon the idea. It shall not be said that I change my mind like a weathercock. The flowers on the dinner table to-night are all going to be white."
Marion paused in the act of cutting a lily.
"I don't fancy I would," she urged. "After all, second thoughts are best. White flowers on a table do suggest a funeral, that is if they are all white. And in an unfortunate house like this anything melancholy is to be discouraged. I think I will throw these blooms away – "
"You will do nothing of the kind," Vera cried. "White it shall be, and you and I shall arrange them in the best possible style. Why, you have enough already. Come along and we'll 'fix' up the table at once. Uncle Ralph, how you startled me."
"Did I?" Ralph said coolly. "I fancy it is my mission in life to startle people. What have you two been quarreling about?"
"We were not quarreling," Vera replied. "Marion insists that white flowers on a dinner-table are cold and chilly, not to say funereal. I say they are chaste and elegant. And, to prove that I am right, the table to-night will be decorated with white flowers."
"Not with my consent," Marion laughed. "I have set my face dead against the whole business. But spoilt Vera always gets her own way."
Vera smiled as she passed on with an armful of the nodding white flowers. Ralph passed slowly into the conservatory and closed the stained-glass door behind him.
Then he crossed the tiled floor rapidly as if his eyes were all that could be desired, and slipped up a glass panel at the far end of the conservatory. From this point there was a sheer fall down the cliffs on to a hard sandy beach below.
"Just the same," Ralph muttered. "Nothing altered. And just as easy."
He crossed the tiles again and passed into the great stone flagged hall in his slow way. Then he proceeded to light his pipe and strolled into the grounds. Past the terrace he went until he came to the cliffs where he was out of sight of the house.
Then with the confidence of the mountain goat he made his way to the beach, the hard strip of beach that lay under the shadow of the castle. Here he fumbled for some time among the damp slippery rocks, feeling for something with infinite care and patience.
His perseverance was rewarded at last. His hands lay on a mass of flowers, damp and sodden and yet comparatively fresh. He lifted one to his nostrils and sniffed it.
"As I thought," he said, "as I expected. How cunning it all is, how beautifully worked out! And nothing, however small, is left to chance. Well, I came home in the nick of time, and I have found an ally I can depend upon. Only it was just as well not to let Geoffrey know that I knew of Jessop's lodger before to-day. I wonder if my lady guesses how carefully she is being watched."
Half an hour later Ralph was in the castle again, wandering about in his restless way and appearing to be interested in nothing, as usual. Presently the great bell began to clang in the turret, and the family partly gathered in the dining room before dinner. Vera was the last to arrive.
"How lovely you look," Geoffrey whispered.
Vera laughed and colored. She had a white dress without ornament and without flowers, save a deep red rose in her hair.
"That red rose is the crowning touch," said Geoffrey.
"I thought it was to be all white to-night," Ralph said. He had caught the whispered words, as he seemed to catch everything. "Was that not so, Vera?"
"Not for me, sir," Vera replied. "I am in white."
"I wish you could see her," Geoffrey said tenderly, "she looks lovely. Her eyes are so blue, her skin is like the sunny side of a peach."
"And your tongue is like that of a goose," Vera laughed. "Never mind, Uncle Ralph. Never mind. If you can't have the inestimable advantage of gazing on my perfect beauty, you shall have the privilege of sitting by me at dinner."
Geoffrey pleaded with comic despair, but Vera was obdurate. As the bell clanged again, she laid a hand light as thistledown on Ralph's arm. She was brighter and more gay than usual this evening and Marion played up to her, as she always did.
The elders were silent. Perhaps the white flowers on the table checked them. They were so suggestive of the wreaths on a coffin.
When once the cloth was drawn in the good old-fashioned way, and the decanters and lamps and glasses stood mirrored in the shining dark mahogany, the resemblance was more marked than ever. The long strip of white damask, whereon lamps and flowers and decanters rested, might have been a winding sheet. Rupert Ravenspur protested moodily.
"It's dreadful in a house like this," he said. "Who did it?"
"I am the culprit, dearest," Vera admitted prettily. "Marion did all in her power to prevent me, but I would have my own foolish way. If you will forgive me I will promise that it shall not occur again."
Rupert Ravenspur smiled. It was only when he was looking at Vera that the tender relaxation came over his stern old face. Then his eyes fixed on the flowers and they seemed to draw him forward.
"You are forgiven," he said. "Marion was right, as she always is. What should we do without your cheerfulness and good advice? Upon my word I feel as if those flowers were drawing all the reason out of me."
Nobody replied. It was a strange and curious thing that everybody seemed to be regarding the waxen blossoms in the same dull, sleepy, fascinating way. All eyes were turned upon them as eyes are turned upon some thrilling, repulsive performance. The silence was growing oppressive and painful.
Geoffrey gave a little gasp and laid his hand upon his chest.
"What is it?" he said. "There is a pain here like a knife. I am burning."
Nobody took the faintest notice. Only Ralph seemed to be alive, and yet there was no kind of expression on his face. Heads were drawing nearer and nearer to the vases where the graceful flowers were grouped – those innocent looking blooms which were the emblems of all that was fair and fine and beautiful.
What did it mean, what strange mystery was here? Nobody could speak, nobody wanted to speak; all were sinking, lulled and soothed into a poppyland sleep, even Geoffrey who seemed to be fighting for something he knew not what.
Then Ralph reached out his hand to the foot of the table. His long, lean fingers were tangled in the strip of damask down the mahogany table on which lamps and decanters and glasses and dishes of fruit were placed.
With a vigorous pull he brought the whole thing crashing on the polished floor, where two pools of paraffin made a blaze of the wreck that Ralph had caused. Then he slid over the floor and opened one of the windows, letting in the pure air fresh from the North Sea.
CHAPTER XVII
WHENCE DID THEY COME?
In the darkness nobody spoke for a moment. Not one of them could have said anything for a king's ransom. Apart from the feeling of suffocation, the gradual poppy sleep of death that filled the room as a great wave suddenly engulfs some rocky cave, the dramatic horror of the darkness held them fast.
At the same time there was something of a shock, a healthy shock in the plunge from light to gloom. A fitful purple gleam still flickered where the blazing paraffin had licked the hard oak polished floor; the breath of the sea breeze was bracing. It was Marion who first came to herself as one comes out of a horrid nightmare.
"Oh, oh," she shuddered. "Who opened the window?"
Nobody responded for a moment. Ralph had crept to Geoffrey's side. It was marvelous how he found his way in the intense darkness.
"Say you did it," he whispered. "You must say you did it. Speak."
"I suppose I did," Geoffrey murmured. "I seem to recollect something of the kind."
"You have saved our lives," said Marion. "Will somebody ring the bell?"
Servants came without much dismay or surprise. They were used to amazing things at Ravenspur. It would have caused no more than a painful sensation to come in some night after dinner and find the whole family murdered.
"Bring more lamps," Ralph Ravenspur said quietly.
Lamps were brought. The disordered litter on the floor was swept up, the broken globes, the dainty china, the glass and silver. The white flowers were no longer there. This was a puzzle to everybody but Ralph, who had gathered them at the first distraction, and thrown them out of the window.
There was silence for a minute or two after the servants had withdrawn. Then Rupert Ravenspur dashed his fist on the table in a passion of despair.
"Great Heaven!" he said. "How long, how long? How much more of this is it possible to bear and still retain the powers of reason? What was it?"
"Could it have been the flowers?" Vera suggested. "It was my fault."
"No, no," Marion cried. "Why your fault? Those white blossoms were innocent enough; we packed them ourselves, we arranged them together."
"Still, I believe it was the flowers," Geoffrey observed. "Why should they have fascinated us in that strange way? It was horrible!"
Horrible indeed, and not the less so because the horrible was not conspicuous by its absence. That innocent flowers, pure white blossoms, could lend themselves to a dark mystery like this was almost maddening.
And yet it must have been so, for no sooner had the flowers been removed and the air of heaven had entered the room than the grip and bitterness of death were past.
"I am sure we were near the end," Marion cried. "Geoff, was it you who snatched the cloth from the table?"
Geoffrey was about to deny the suggestion when his eyes fell upon Ralph's face. It was eager, almost pleading in its aspect. Like a flash the changing expression was gone.
"It must have been mechanical," Geoffrey murmured. "One does those things and calls them impulses. Inspiration would be a better expression, I fancy."
They crowded round him and gave him their thanks, all save Ralph, who sat drumming his fingers on the table as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Nothing seemed to draw him out of his environment.
Still, it was another man who came creeping to Geoffrey's room when the lights were extinguished and the castle was wrapped in slumber. There was an inner room lying out over the sea, which Geoffrey used indifferently for a smoking room and study.
"I can smoke my pipe here without a chance of our being overheard," he said. "Well, was the adventure this evening creepy enough for you?"
Geoffrey shuddered slightly. Flagrant, rioting dangers would have had no terrors for him. It was the unseen that played on the nerves of imagination.
"Horrible," he said, "but why this mystery?"
"As far as I am concerned, you mean? My dear Geoffrey, it is imperative that I should be regarded by everybody as a poor blind worm who is incapable for good or evil. I want people to pity me, to make way for me, to treat me as if I were of no account, a needless cumberer of the ground. I want to see that you prevent these tragedies by sheer chance. I will strike when the time comes!"
The hoarse voice had sunk to a whisper, the sightless eyes rolled, the thin fingers crooked as if dragging down an unseen foe to destruction. As suddenly Ralph changed his mood and laughed noiselessly.
"Let us not prophesy," he said. "What did you think of the episode?"
"I don't know what to think about it."
"Then you have no theory to offer?"
"No, uncle. I am in the dark. That is where the keen edge of the terror comes in. I should say it was the flowers. As the atmosphere of the room grew warmer, as the heat from the lamps drew out the fragrance of the blooms, the perfume seemed to become overpowering. The perfume riveted attention, arrested the senses, and gradually sense and feeling appeared to go altogether."
"Perfectly right, Geoffrey. Still, there is nothing very wonderful about it. Lucretia Borgia used the same means to despatch her victims. A poisoned bouquet was a favorite weapon of hers, you remember."
"But the poison there was conveyed through the palms of the hands. Why do we never hear of that sort of poison nowadays?"
Ralph smiled as he refilled his pipe.
"I've got some of it myself," he said, "or at least Tchigorsky has. It is poor, inartistic stuff, compared to some of the poisons known to Tchigorsky and myself. There are Eastern poisons unknown to science; toxicology little dreams of the drugs that Tchigorsky and your poor uncle wot of.
"You are right. Those flowers were impregnated with the deadly drug that comes out with warmth. It comes as quickly as a breath of wind and does its work and vanishes almost immediately, leaving no trace behind. Another minute and the whole family of Ravenspur had been no more. There would have been a fearful sensation: doctors would have discoursed learnedly – and vaguely – and there would have been an end to the matter. Not a soul in England would have had the remotest idea of the source of the tragedy. Look here."
From under his coat Ralph produced a single white carnation.
"That was on the table to-night," he said. "Take it in your hands. Smell it. Do you recognize anything beyond the legitimate perfume?"
Geoffrey held the perfect bloom to his nostrils. He could detect nothing further.
"It seems to me to be as innocent as beautiful," he said.
"So it is, so it is – at present. Give it me back again. See, I have here a little white, dull powder. In it is the one-thousandth part of a grain of the deadly drug. I dust the powder on the carnation, thus. The natural moisture in the leaves absorbs it and the flower presents a normal aspect. Smell it."
"I smell nothing at all," said Geoffrey.
"Not yet. Hold it to the lamp for ten seconds."
Geoffrey did so. At the end of the brief space he placed it to his nostrils as Ralph suggested. Immediately a drowsy feeling came over him, a desire for sleep, a desire to be at rest in body and mind, in heart and pulses. Indeed, it seemed to him as if his heart had stopped already.
Through a yellow scented mist he seemed to see his uncle and hear the latter's voice commanding him to drop the carnation. He could not have done it to save himself from destruction. Then the flower was plucked away.
"How long have I been asleep?" he asked, suddenly opening his eyes.
"You have been across the Styx and back in exactly fifty seconds," Ralph said gravely. "Now you see the effect of that stuff. Wonderfully artistic, isn't it?"
Geoffrey gazed at the flower with sickening horror. Ralph seemed to divine this, for he picked it up, sniffed it coolly and placed it in his button-hole.
"The evil effect has gone, believe me," he said. "The dose was very small, and I did not mix it with water, which makes a difference."
"Still, I don't follow," Geoffrey said. "We know those flowers were cut and arranged by Vera and Marion. It would have been impossible for any one to have entered the dining-room and replaced them with other white flowers. And for anybody to have had the time to impregnate them one by one – oh, it is impossible!"
"Not at all, Geoffrey. A mystery is like a conjuring trick – seemingly insoluble, but you know how it is done, and then it becomes bald and commonplace. Suppose the stuff is mixed with water and the mixture placed in a small spray worked by an india-rubber ball. Then one goes into the dining hall for half a minute, gives two or three rapid motions of the hand, and the thing is accomplished."
"Yes, that sounds easy. You speak as if you knew who did it."
"Yes," Ralph said, with one of his spasmodic smiles, "I do."
"You know the author of this dastardly thing. Tell me."
"Not yet. I dare not tell you, because you are young and might betray yourself. I could not confide my secret to any one, even the best detective in England. It is only known to Tchigorsky and myself. You shall help me in drawing the net around the miscreants, but you must not ask me that."
"And to-night's doings are to remain a secret?"
"Of course. Nobody is to know anything. They may conjecture as much as they like. Good heavens, if any one in the house were to know what I have told you to-night, all my work would be undone. You are my instrument, by which I ward off danger without attracting attention to myself. You are the unsuspecting boy, who by sheer good luck foils the enemy. Keep it up, keep it up; for so long as you appear young and unsophisticated, there is less of the deadly danger."