CHAPTER V.
That night was one of the worst in my life.
I was so fond of Robert Lorillard, and I'd grown to love Joyce Arnold so well that the breaking of their love idyl hurt as if it had been my own.
Never shall I forget the hour when we three talked together at my flat after that séance at the Savoy, or the look on those two faces as Robert and Joyce agreed to part! Even I had acquiesced, at first, in that decision, but only while I was still half stunned by the shock of the great surprise, and thrilled by the seeming miracle. At sight of the two I loved quietly giving each other up, making sacrifice of their hearts on a cold altar, I had a revulsion of feeling.
I jumped up, and broke out desperately.
“I don't believe it's true! Something tells me it isn't! Don't spoil your lives without making sure.”
“How can we be surer than we are?” Robert asked. “You recognized June's voice.”
“I thought then that I did,” I amended. “I was excited. Now, I don't trust my own impression.”
“But the perfume of La France roses? Even if the woman could have found out other things, how should she know about a small detail like June's favorite flower? How could she have the perfume already in her room when we came, as if she were sure of our coming there, which of course she couldn't have been,” Robert argued.
“I don't see how she could have been,” I had to admit. “I don't see through any of it. But they're so deadly clever, these people, the fraudulent ones, I mean. They couldn't impress the public as they do, if they weren't up to every trick. All I say is—wait. Don't decide irrevocably yet. The way the voice talked didn't seem to me a bit like June. Only the tones were like hers, and they might have been imitated by anybody who'd known her, or who'd been coached by some one.”
“Dear princess, you're so anxious for our happiness that I fear you're thinking of impossible things. Who could have an object in parting Joyce and me? I can think of no one. Still less could this stranger from America have a motive, even if she lied, and really knew who I was before she spoke to us at the Savoy.”
“I know, it does sound just as impossible as you say!” I agreed forlornly. “But things that sound impossible may be possible. And we must find out. In justice to Joyce and yourself, even in justice to June's spirit—which I can't think would be so selfish!—we must find out!”
“What would you suggest?” Joyce asked rather timidly. But there was a faint color in her cheeks, like a spark in the ashes of hope.
“Detectives!” I said. “Or rather a detective. I know a good man. He served me very well once, when some of our family treasures disappeared from Courtenaye Abbey, and it rather looked as if I'd stolen them myself! He can learn without any shadow of doubt when Miss Reardon did land, and when she came to London. Besides, he's sure to have colleagues on the other side who can give him all sorts of details about the woman, how she's thought of at home, whether she's ever been caught as a cheat, and so on. Will you both consent to that? Because if you will, I'll telephone to my man this moment.”
They did consent. At least, Robert did, for Joyce left the decision entirely to him. She was so afraid, poor girl, of seeming determined to hold him at any price that she would hardly speak. As for Robert, though he felt that I was justified in getting to the bottom of things, I saw that he believed in the truth of the message he'd received. If it were not the spirit of June who had come to command his allegiance, he still had a right to his warm earthly happiness with Joyce Arnold. But if it were indeed her spirit who claimed all he had to give for the rest of life, it was a fair debt and he would pay in full.
I received the detective, my old friend Smith, in another room. The necessary discussion would have been torture for Robert and intolerable for Joyce. When he left, I had at least this encouragement to give the two: it would be simple to learn what I wished to learn about Miss Reardon, on both sides of the Atlantic.
That was better than nothing. But it didn't make the dark watches of the night less dark. I had an ugly presentiment that Smith, smart as he was, would get hold of little help for us, if any. Yet at the same time, I felt that there was something to get hold of somewhere!
If I hadn't implored them to wait, Joyce and Robert would have decided to publish the news that their marriage—which somehow every one knew about!—would not take place. This concession they did make to me; but they agreed together that they mustn't meet. My cheerful flat felt like a large grave fitted with all modern conveniences, when it had been deprived of Robert. And Joyce trying to be normal and not to shed gloom over me, her employer, was too agonizing!
Robert didn't even write to Joyce. I suppose he couldn't trust himself. But he wrote to me, and gave the history of his second interview with Miss Reardon. June had come again, and had reminded him of incidents about which—he said—no outsider could possibly know. He ended his letter:
- I can't help believing now that there are more things in heaven and earth than I'd dreamed of in my philosophy. There's no getting around the fact that what I should have thought a miracle has happened. The spirit of June has claimed me from the other side. And even if I were brutal enough, disloyal enough, to disown the claim, to pretend to Joyce and myself that I didn't believe, neither Joyce nor I could have a moment's happiness, married. She knows that as well as I do. As my wife, her life would be spoiled. June would always stand between us, separating us one from the other. I think I should be driven mad. Joyce's heart would be broken.
- I've promised to talk with June through a medium every day. Miss Reardon has to leave London in a fortnight, but June's voice asked me to go to Opal Fawcett. You remember my telling you that Opal suggested this long ago, saying that June wanted to get in touch with me? I wouldn't hear of it then, because at that time I had no reason to believe in the genuineness of visits from one world to another. Now it's different. I shall go to Opal.
- Tell Joyce that I'll write her to-night. It won't be a letter such as I should wish to write. But she will understand.
Yes, she would understand! One could always trust Joyce to understand, even if she were on the rack!
It was the next day—the third day after that unforgetable one at the Savoy—when my tame detective brought his budget. He would have come even sooner, he said, if there hadn't been a delay in the cable service.
Miss Reardon, Smith learned, never been exposed as an impostor, She was respected personally, and had attained a certain amount of fame both in Boston, where she lived, and New York. Several times she had been invited to visit England, but had never been able to accept until now. She had arrived by the ship and at the time stated. When we met her at the Savoy, she could not have been more than two hours in London. Therefore her story seemed to be true in every detail, and what was more, she had not been met at ship or train.
I simply hated poor dear Smith! He ought to have nosed out something against the woman! What are detectives for?
“You've been an angel to fight for my happiness,” Joyce said. “I adore you for it. And so does Robert, I know, though he mustn't put such feelings into words, or even have feelings, if he can help it. There's nothing more to fight about now. The best thing I can pray for is that Robert may forget our dream, and that he may be happy in this other dream of June.”
“And you?” I asked. “What prayer do you say for yourself? Do you pray to forget?”
“Oh, no!” she answered. “I don't want to forget. I wouldn't forget, if I could. You see, it wasn't a dream to me. It was—it always will be—the best thing in my life, the glory of my life. In my heart I shall live it all over and over again until I die. I don't mind suffering. I've seen so much pain in the war and the courage that went with it. I shall have my roses—not La France!—deep red roses they'll be, red as blood, and sharp with thorns, but sweet as heaven. There!” and her voice changed. “Now you know, princess! We'll never speak of this again, because we don't need to, do we?”
“No-o,” I agreed. “You're a dear girl, Joyce, worth two of—never mind! And I'll try to make you as happy as I can.”
She thanked me for that, she was always thanking me for something! Soon, however, she broke the news that she must go away. She loved me and her work, yet she couldn't stop in London—she just couldn't! Not as things were. If Robert had been turning his back on England, she might have stayed. But his promise to communicate with June daily through Opal bound him to London. Joyce thought that she might try India. She had friends there in the army and in the civil service. She might do useful work as a nurse among the native women and their babies, where mortality was big.
“I must be busy, busy every minute of the day!” she cried, hiding her anguish with that smile of hers which I had grown to love.
What Robert had said to her in his promised letter, the only one he wrote, she didn't tell. I knew no more than that it had been written and received. Probably it wasn't an ideal letter for a girl to wear over her heart. Robert would have felt it unfair to write that kind of letter. All the same I'm sure that Joyce did wear it there!
As for me, I was absolutely sick about everything! I felt as if my two dearest friends had been put in prison on a false charge, and as though—if I hadn't cotton wool for a brain—I ought to be able to get them out.
“There's a clew to the labyrinth, if I could see it,” I told myself so often that I was tired of the thought. And the most irritating part was that now and then I seemed to catch a half glimpse of the clew dangling back and forth like a thread of spider's web close to my eyes. But invariably it was gone before I'd really caught sight of it. And all the good that concentrating did was to bump my intelligence against the pale image of Opal Fawcett.
I didn't understand how Opal, even with the best, or worst, will in the world, could have stage-managed this drama, though I should have liked to think she had done it.
Miss Reardon frankly admitted having heard of Opal—who hadn't heard of her during the last few years?—but, as the American woman had never before been to England, and Opal had never crossed to America, the Boston medium hardly needed to say that she'd never met Miss Fawcett. As for correspondence, if there were a secret between the pair, of course they'd both deny it. And so, though I longed to fling out a challenge to Opal, I saw that it would be stupid to put the two women, if guilty, on their guard. Besides, how could they, through any correspondence, have contrived the things that had happened?
Suddenly, through the darkness of my doubts shot a lightning flash: the thought of my “forty-fourth cousin four times removed,” Jim Courtenaye.
Our acquaintance had started with dislike on my side, and—well, I don't know exactly what on his, though at one time the detective, Smith, had hinted at a theory. But he had come to my rescue three times. Once, he'd saved the situation for me financially by taking Courtenaye Abbey off my hands at a huge rent. Next he had saved my life, and vindicated my honor when some people suspected me of stealing Courtenaye heirlooms. On the third occasion, he'd stood by me when for really splendid reasons I had become a kidnaper.
Superficially judging, red-haired, black-eyed Sir James Courtenaye, wild man of the West, but lately transplanted, appeared the last person to assist in working out a psychic problem. All the same a great longing to prop myself against him—figuratively!—overwhelmed me; and for fear the impulse might pass, I wired at once:
- Please come if you can. Wish to consult you. Elizabeth Di Miramare.
Jim was, as usual, living between the Devonshire village of Courtenaye Combe and my ancestral home, Courtenaye Abbey, which he'd turned temporarily into a sort of museum. There were hours between us, even by telegraph; and the best I expected was an answer in the afternoon to my morning's message. But at six o'clock his name was announced, and he walked into the drawing-room of my flat, as large as life, or a size or two larger.
“Good gracious!” I gasped. “You've come?”
“You're not surprised, are you?” he retorted.
“Why, yes,” I said. “I didn't suppose”
“Then you're not as brainy as I thought you were,” said he. “Also you didn't look at time-tables. What awful catastrophe has happened to you, Elizabeth, to make you want to see me?”
I couldn't help laughing, although I didn't feel in the least like laughter; and besides he had no right to call me Elizabeth.
“Nothing has happened to me,” I explained. “It's to somebody else”
“Oh, somebody you've been trying to 'brighten,' I suppose?”
“Yes, and failed,” I confessed.
He scowled.
“A man?”
“A man and his girl.” Whereupon I emptied the whole story into the bowl of Jim's intelligence.
“Do you see light?” I asked at last.
“No,” he returned stolidly. “I don't.”
Oh, how disappointed I was! I'd hardly known how much I'd counted on Jim till I got that answer!
“But I might find some,” he added, when he'd watched the effect of his words on me.
“How?” I implored.
“There's only one way, if any, to get the kind of light you want,” said Jim. “It might be a difficult way, and it might be long.”
“Yet you think light could be got?” I clasped my hands, and deliberately tried to look irresistible. “The kind of light I want?”
“Who can tell? The one thing certain is, that trying would take all my time away from everything else, maybe for weeks, maybe for months.”
His tone made my face feel the way faces look in those awful concave mirrors: about three feet in length and three inches in width.
“Then you won't undertake the task?” I quavered.
“I don't say that,” grudged Jim.
“You wouldn't say it, if you could meet Joyce Arnold,” I coaxed. “She's such a darling girl. Poor child, she's out now, pulling strings for a job in India.”
“Meeting her wouldn't make any difference to me,” said Jim. “It's for you I'd try to bring off this stunt, if I tried at all.”
“Oh, then do it for me!” I broke out,
“That's what I was working up to,” he replied. “I wouldn't say 'yes' and I wouldn't say 'no' till I knew what you'd do for me in return, if I succeeded.”
“Why, I'd thank you a thousand times!” I cried. “I'd—I'd never forget you as long as I live.”
“There's not much in that for me. I hate being thanked for things. And what good would it do me to be remembered by you at a distance, perhaps married to some beast or other?”
“But if I marry I shan't marry a beast,” I sweetly assured my forty-fourth cousin four times removed.
“I should think any man you married a beast, if he wasn't me,” said Jim.
“Good heavens!” I breathed. “Surely you don't want to marry me!”
“Surely I do,” he retorted. “And what's more, you know it.”
“I don't!”
“You do. You've known it ever since that affair of the yacht. If you hadn't you wouldn't have asked me to hide the Scarlett kid. I knew then, that you knew. And you'd be a fool if you hadn't known, which you're not.”
I said no more, because I was found out! I had known. Only, I hadn't let myself think about it much—until lately perhaps. But now and then I had thought. I'd thought quite a good deal!
When he had me silenced. Jim went on.
“Just like a woman! You're willing to let me sacrifice all my engagements and inclinations to start off on a wild-goose chase for you, while you give nothing in return”
“But I would!” I cut in.
“What would you give?”
“What do you want?”
“Yourself, of course.”
“Oh!”
“If you'll marry me in case I find out that some one's been playing a devil's trick on Lorillard,” said Jim, “I'll do—my damnedest! How's that?”
I shrugged my shoulders, and looked debonair, which was easy, as my nose is that shape. Yet my heart pounded.
“You seem to think the sacrifice of your engagements and inclinations worth a big price!” I suggested.
“I know it's a big price,” he granted. “But every man has his price. That happens to be mine. You may not have to pay, however, even in the event of my success. Because, in the course of my operations I may do something that'll land me in quod. In that case, you're free. I wouldn't mate you with a jailbird.”
I stared, and gasped:
“What do you mean?”
“Don't you know me intimately enough to be sure that once I'm on the warpath I stop at nothing?” he challenged.
“I don't think you'd be easy to stop,” I said. “That's why I've called on you for help. But really, I can't understand what there is in the thing to send you to prison.”
“You don't need to understand,” snorted Jim. “I shan't get there if I can keep out, because that would be the way to lose my prize. But I suppose from your point of view the great thing is for your two dearest friends to be happy ever after.”
“Not at a terrible cost to you!” I just stopped myself from saying. Instead, I hedged.
“You frighten me!” I cried. “And you make me curious—fearfully curious. What can you be meaning to do?”
“That's my business!” said Jim.
“You've got a plan already?”
“Yes, I've got a plan already, if”
“If what?”
“If you agree to the bargain. Do you?”
I nodded.
He seized my hand and squeezed it hard.
“Then I'm off,” he said. “You won't hear from me until I have news, good or bad. And meanwhile I have no address.”
With that he was gone.
I felt as if he had left me alone in the dark!