That Affair at Elizabeth by Burton Egbert Stevenson (book club suggestions TXT) 📕

disturb my sister again to-night; it would really not be safe. And I hope you'll let me know when you succeed in clearing up those little points you were speaking of—I'm immensely interested in them."

She laughed again, and I heard her footsteps die away down the hall.

Feeling absurdly foolish, I switched off the light, and left the house. Plainly, Lucy Kingdon had ceased to fear me. She believed that she had won the fight, that her position was impregnable. Either she thought that Marcia Lawrence had escaped, that we had not traced her to the Umbria, or she knew that the telegram was a blind, and that we had been misled by it. Which was right, I wondered. And she must have come off well, too, in that interview with Mrs. Lawrence, which I would have given so much to have overheard—must have convinced her of her innocence, else she would not still be employed as a maid in the Lawrence house, and retained so near her mistress. How had she done it? How had she succeeded in blinding her mistress so completely?

Then a sudden thought stabbed through me. Was it possible, I asked myself, that Mrs. Lawrence had been a party to the deception—that she had knowingly assisted in the farce of the telegram, for my benefit? But, as I reviewed her behaviour at our morning interview, I could not believe it. She was no such consummate actress as that would imply. If I was a dupe, then she was a dupe also.

Busy with this problem, I made my way through the grove along the path back to the Kingdon cottage, and stood for a moment looking over the hedge before opening the gate. There was a light in the room which I took to be the dining-room, but even as I gazed at it, the light moved, a shadow crossed the blind; the light reappeared in the kitchen, faded and disappeared—then, a moment later, my heart leaped suffocatingly as I perceived a glimmer of light at the ventilator in the foundation! What was this woman doing in the cellar? What was the task that was going forward there?

I entered the grounds and started forward along the hedge, when suddenly a hand reached up from the shadow and held me fast. For an instant I struggled fiercely to free myself—but only for an instant.

"Come, Lester, sit down," said a voice carefully repressed, but which I nevertheless recognised as Godfrey's. "I was looking for you," he added, as I dropped to the grass beside him.

"Oh, is it you, Godfrey?" I asked, much relieved. "I rather thought you might be out this way, when I found you weren't at the hotel. What are the developments?"

"Wait a minute. I wonder where that light has gone?"

"It's in the cellar," I said, and pointed out to him the faint glimmer which marked the ventilator. "It was there last night. I sat here for over an hour and watched it," and I told him briefly of my adventures of the night before.

He listened without comment until I had finished.

"It's a pity you didn't tell me that this morning," he said.

"I didn't see that it was connected with the case in any way. Is it?"

"I don't know," he answered slowly. "Perhaps it is. Did Miss Kingdon mention it when she saw you this morning?"

"Yes—she said she'd been in the cellar, putting away some fruit."

"Absurd! There's no fruit this early in the year. Besides, even if it were true, she wouldn't have to repeat the process again to-night. What else haven't you told me?"

I laughed and recounted my adventures from the moment Mrs. Lawrence gave me her daughter's telegram until that other moment when Lucy Kingdon left me alone in the darkened library.

He listened without interruption, his eyes on the glimmer of light at the ventilator.

"Yes," he said, "I saw Lucy Kingdon leave the house a few minutes ago. Her sister's alone there now. What do you suppose she's doing in the cellar?"

"I can't imagine."

"You could see nothing?"

"Not a thing except her shadow moving back and forth."

"Moving back and forth?"

"Yes; it seemed to me that she was alternately rising and stooping, as though she were going through some sort of exercise."

"She'd hardly go into the cellar at midnight to exercise."

"No, of course not. But that's the only explanation I could think of, unless she's bowing up and down before an idol."

Godfrey laughed grimly.

"That would be a unique solution," he said. "Fancy our headlines: 'Devil Worship at Elizabeth! Fantastic Midnight Orgies in a Cellar!' Wouldn't that stir the public? But I'm afraid it's a little too fantastic. Could you hear anything?"

"Only the faintest of faint sounds. I couldn't make anything of them."

"Well, there wouldn't be any sounds at all if she were merely bobbing up and down before an idol. Was she alone last night?"

"Yes. Her sister spent the night with Mrs. Lawrence. Godfrey," I added, "you haven't told me yet why you sent that telegram. Has Miss Lawrence returned?"

"Not that I know of. Furthermore, I don't think she will return very soon."

"Then you think she really sailed?"

"I think—I don't know what to think, Lester. Give me a moment more. Isn't there a window to the cellar?"

"Yes, but it's closely curtained."

"Well, I'm going to take a look, myself," he said. "Wait here for me, and be as patient as you can."

I saw him go cautiously forward toward the ventilator, and stoop down before it. He remained there motionless for some moments, then disappeared around a corner of the house. I sat there waiting for him, thinking not without some chagrin, that, as usual, he had pumped me dry, and given nothing in return. It was really unfair of Godfrey to expect every one to play into his hands. And yet, I reflected, if he hadn't wanted to be friendly, he would scarcely have taken the trouble to send me that message.

I looked up to see his tall figure coming toward me through the darkness. He dropped beside me, and sat for a moment silent—only, as I caught a glimpse of his face, I was startled to see how white it was.

"I couldn't see a thing," he said, at last, "except a shadow moving up and down, as you said. And I heard the sounds. The woman is working at something in the cellar—something that requires time—something which must be done secretly. I couldn't make anything out of the shadows, and not much out of the sounds—at least, I fear it's only my imagination which gave them the significance they had for me."

"What significance did they have?" I asked.

"I'm half afraid to tell you, Lester; you'll laugh at me. But as I bent outside that ventilator yonder with my ear against it, I could have sworn that the person inside was engaged in shovelling earth—shovelling it into—a grave!"

A little shudder ran through me at the words; never was laughter farther from my thoughts.

"A grave!" I stammered. "But whose grave?"

"I don't know—Marcia Lawrence's, perhaps."

"Marcia Lawrence sailed on the Umbria."

"You don't know she did. You don't even believe she did."

"Whether she did or not, who would kill her, and why?"

"Ah, if you come to the why and wherefore, I can't answer you—not yet."

"Besides," I went on, "the writing on the message left at the West Street office was her writing."

"Perhaps it was only a good imitation—you can't be absolutely sure that you've ever seen a sample of her writing. There's nothing to prove that she wrote either the note or the message."

"But Curtiss identified them—he was sure the writing was hers."

"Curtiss wasn't in a condition to be sure of anything. But suppose it was hers. She may have wished to blind her mother and Curtiss completely—she may have wished them to think that she had really gone abroad—she must have foreseen that you would trace the telegram. She may have done all that before she came back here——"

"Came back here?" I repeated, suddenly finding a dozen arguments against my own theory of half an hour before. "Walk into the lion's jaws? Nonsense, Godfrey! Place herself in the power of the people who, I suppose you think, killed her!"

"I don't think they killed her," Godfrey said composedly. "My belief is that she killed herself to escape her husband—to get out of the tangle in which she'd involved herself."

"Her husband! You cling to the husband then, do you?"

"More than ever. He's an Italian—a tall, well-built, handsome fellow, with black eyes and a most becoming black moustache. He has a florid complexion and can speak English, though with a strong accent. He smokes cigarettes, which he rolls himself, and he has lost the tip of the little finger of his left hand. He's fond of music; perhaps himself a singer or musician, and it may have been as instructor that he first met Miss Lawrence——"

I had been staring at Godfrey open-mouthed; I could restrain myself no longer.

"But how do you know all this?" I gasped. "Or is it merely a fairy tale?"

"It's not in the least a fairy tale, my dear Lester. I know it because this estimable gentleman was himself in Elizabeth yesterday. The letter which Miss Lawrence received appointed a rendezvous at the Kingdon cottage. It was here she fled to see him—to buy him off, as she had done once before."

CHAPTER XVI The Secret of the Cellar

It was a moment before I fully understood the meaning of these extraordinary words. When I did understand them, I saw crumbling before me that elaborate structure which I had been at such pains to build—the structure founded upon the assumption of Miss Lawrence's innocence. She was only an adventuress, after all, then; or, more probably, only a weak woman, swayed by an ungovernable passion, risking everything rather than give up the man she loved; deceiving him, lying to him, taking the one desperate chance that lay within her reach; pausing at nothing so she might gain her end.

Or perhaps she had really believed that old mistake of hers buried past resurrection. She may have thought him dead, this fascinating scoundrel who had turned her girlish head. She may have thought herself free. But even then her skirts were not wholly clean. She should have told her lover; she should never have permitted this shadow to lie between them—this skeleton, ready at any moment to burst from its closet. But better far that it should burst out when it did, than wait until the sin was consummated; an hour later, and the shackles had been forged past breaking! If revenge on Marcia Lawrence was the object of the plot, the conspirators had overleaped themselves. They should have waited until the words were uttered which bound her to her second lover—then, had they sprung their trap, how they might have racked her!

One other thing I understood—and marvelled that I had not understood before. I saw what Mrs. Lawrence had meant by saying that the marriage was not impossible—that the obstacle could be cleared away—that it should be for Burr Curtiss to decide. But even he, I felt, would hesitate to take for his wife a woman just emerging from the shadow of the divorce court, however little she had been to blame for the tragedy which drove her there—more especially since he must see that from the very first she had not dealt fairly with him. A fault confessed may be forgiven; a fault discovered is a different thing.

She had not been brave enough to confess; she had not trusted him; she had deceived him. She had been guilty, guilty! Those were the words which sang and sang in my brain and would not be stilled.

Her face was a siren's face—beautiful, innocent, virgin-fresh; and her soul a siren's soul—merciless, selfish, hard. And I had fancied that the soul was like the face! I had not thought that a face like that could lie! Verily, of women I had much to learn!

"It was only by the merest accident I found it out," Godfrey was saying. "It was the policeman who was on duty at the Lawrence place yesterday morning who gave me the first hint. I'd already sounded him, as well as everybody else about the place, as to whether any strangers had been noticed loitering about, and they were all quite positive that no stranger had passed the gate or entered the grounds during the morning. After I left you, yesterday morning, I started back to the hotel to get my things together, and in the hotel office I happened to meet the policeman, whose name, it seems, is Clemley. He was off duty and seemed anxious to talk, so I took him in to the bar, and got him a drink, and pumped him a little on the off-chance of his knowing something he hadn't told me.

"'And you're still sure,'