THE WIDOW'S ULTIMATUM
SYDNEY BARNES stepped quickly forward. If Wrayson had permitted it, he would have snatched the packet from the girl's fingers. Wrayson, however, saw his intent and intervened. He stepped forward and led her to his writing table.
"I want you to sit down here quietly and open the envelope," he said, switching on the electric lamp. "That is what he told you to do, isn't it? There may be a message for you inside."
She looked round a little fearfully. The presence of the Baroness evidently discomposed her.
"I thought," she said, "that we were going to be alone, that there would have been no one here but him and you."
"The lady is a friend of mine," Wrayson said, "and it is very likely that she may be interested in the contents of this envelope."
She untied the string with trembling fingers. Wrayson handed her a paper-knife and she cut open the top of the envelope. Then she looked up at him appealingly.
"I—I don't want to look inside," she half sobbed.
Wrayson took up the envelope and shook out its contents before her. There was a letter addressed simply to Agnes, and a small packet wrapped in brown oilcloth and secured with dark-green ribbon. Sydney Barnes' hand stole out, but Wrayson was too quick for him. He changed his position, so as to interpose his person between the packet and any one in the room.
"Read the letter," he told the girl. "It is addressed to you."
She handed it to him. Her eyes were blinded with tears.
"Read it for me, please," she said.
He tore open the envelope and read the few lines scrawled upon a half sheet of notepaper. He read them very softly into her ear, but the words were audible enough to all of them.
"My dear Agnes,—
I have just discovered that there are some people on my track who mean mischief. I have a secret they want to rob me of. I seem to be followed about everywhere I go. What they want is the little packet in this envelope. I'm leaving it with you because I daren't carry it about with me. I've had two narrow escapes already.
"Now you'll never read this letter unless anything happens to me. I've made up my mind to sell this packet for what I can get for it, and take you with me out of the country. It'll be a matter of ten thousand quid, and I only wish I had my fingers on it now and was well out of the country. But this is where the rub comes in. If anything happens to me before I can bring this off, I'm hanged if I know what to tell you to do with the packet. It's worth its weight in banknotes to more persons than one, but there's a beastly risk in having anything to do with it. I think you'd better burn it! There's money in it, but I don't see how you could handle it. Burn it, Agnes. It's too risky a business for you! I only hope that in a week or so I shall burn this letter myself, and you and I will be on our way to America.
"So long, Nessie,
"from your loving husband.
"P.S.—By the bye, my real name is Morris Barnes!"
There was an instant's pause as Wrayson finished reading. Then there came a long-drawn-out whisper from Sydney Barnes. He was close to the girl, and his eyes were riveted upon the little packet.
"Ten—thousand—pounds! Ah! Five thousand each! Give me the packet, sister-in-law!"
She stretched out her hand as though to obey. Wrayson checked her.
"Remember," he said, "what your husband told you. You were to burn that packet. He was right. Your husband was a blackmailer, Mrs. Barnes, and he paid the penalty of his infamous career with his life. I shall not allow either you or your brother-in-law to follow in his footsteps!"
She flashed an indignant glance upon him.
"Who are you calling names?" she demanded. "He was my husband and he was good to me!"
"I beg your pardon and his," Wrayson said. "I was wrong to use such a word. But I want you to understand that to attempt to make money by the contents of that packet is a crime! Your husband paid the penalty. He knew what he was doing when he commanded you to burn it."
She looked towards Sydney Barnes.
"What do you say?" she asked.
The words leaped from his mouth. He was half beside himself.
"I say let us open the packet and look it through ourselves before we decide. What the devil business is it of anybody else's. He was my brother and your husband. These people weren't even his friends. They've no right to poke their noses into our affairs. You tell them so; sister-in-law. Give me the packet. Come away with me somewhere where we can look it through quietly. I'm fair and straight. It shall be halves, I swear. I say, sister-in-law Agnes, you don't want to go back to the refreshment bar, do you?"
"No!" she moaned. "No! no!"
"Nor do I want to go back to the gutter," he declared fiercely. "But money isn't to be had for the picking up. Ten thousand pounds Morris expected to get for that packet. It's hard if we can't make half of that."
She looked up at Wrayson as though for advice.
"Mrs. Barnes," he said gravely, "I can tell you what is in that packet. You can see for yourself, then, whether it is anything by means of which you can make money. It consists of the letters of a very famous woman to the man whom she loved. They were stolen from him on the battlefield. I do not wish to pain you, but the thief was Morris Barnes. The friends of the lady who wrote them paid your brother two thousand pounds a year. Her enemies offered him—ten thousand pounds down. There is the secret of Morris Barnes' wealth."
Sydney Barnes leaned over the back of her chair. His hot whisper seemed to burn her cheek.
"Keep the packet, sister-in-law. Don't part!"
"Your brother-in-law," Wrayson remarked, "is evidently disposed to continue your husband's operations. Remember you are not at liberty to do as he asks. Your husband's words are plain. He orders you to burn the packet."
"How do I know that you are telling me the truth?" she asked abruptly.
"Undo the packet," he suggested. "A glance inside should show you."
For some reason or other she seemed dissatisfied. She pointed towards the Baroness.
"What is she doing here?" she asked.
"She is a friend of the woman who wrote those letters," Wrayson answered. "I want her to see them destroyed."
There was silence for several moments. The girl's fingers closed upon the packet. She turned round and faced them all. She faced them all, but she addressed more particularly Wrayson.
"You are wondering why I hesitate," she said slowly. "Augustus said destroy the packet, and I suppose I ought to do it."
"By God, you shan't!" Sydney Barnes broke in fiercely. "Morry didn't know that I should be here to look after things."
She waited until he had finished, but she seemed to take very little, if any, notice of his intervention.
"It isn't," she continued, "that I'm afraid to go back to the bar. I'll have to go to work some where, I suppose, but it isn't that. I want to know," she leaned a little forward,—"I want to know who it is that has robbed me of my husband. I don't care what he was to other people! He was very good to me, and I loved him. I should like to see the person who killed him hanged!"
Wrayson, for a moment, was discomposed.
"But that," he said, "has nothing to do with obeying your husband's directions about that packet."
She looked at him with tired eyes and changeless expression.
"Hasn't it?" she asked. "I am not so sure. You have explained about these letters. It is quite certain that my husband was killed by either the friends or the enemies of the woman who wrote these letters. I think that if I take this packet to the police it will help them to find the murderer!"
Her new attitude was a perplexing one. Wrayson glanced at the Baroness as though for counsel. She stepped forward and laid her hand upon the girl's shoulder.
"There is one thing which you must not forget, Mrs. Barnes," she said quietly. "Your husband knew that he was running a great risk in keeping these letters and making a living out of them. His letter to you shows that he was perfectly aware of it. Of course, it is a very terrible, a very inexcusable thing that he should have been killed. But he knew perfectly well that he was in danger. Can't you sympathize a little with the poor woman whose life he made so miserable? Let her have her letters back. You will not find her ungrateful!"
The girl turned slowly round and faced the Baroness. They might indeed have represented the opposite poles in femininity. From the tips of her perfectly manicured fingers to the crown of her admirably coiffured hair, the Baroness stood for all that was elegant and refined in the innermost circles of her sex. Agnes would have looked more in place behind the refreshment bar from which Morris Barnes had brought her. Her dress of cheap shiny silk was ill fitting and hopeless, her hat with its faded flowers and crushed shape an atrocity, boots and gloves, and brooch of artificial gems—all were shocking. Little was left of her pale-faced prettiness. The tragedy which had stolen into her life had changed all that. Yet she faced the Baroness without flinching. She seemed sustained by the suppressed emotion of the moment.
"He was my man," she said fiercely, "and no one had any right to take him away from me. He was my husband, and he was brutally murdered. You tell me that I must give up the letters for the sake of the woman who wrote them! What do I care about her! Is she as unhappy as I am, I wonder? I will not give up the letters," she added, clasping them in her hand, "except—on one condition."
"If it is a reasonable one," the Baroness said, smiling, "there will be no difficulty."
Agnes faced her a little defiantly.
"It depends upon what you call reasonable," she said. "Find out for me who it was that killed my husband, you or any one of you, and you shall have the letters."
Sydney Barnes smiled, and left off nervously tugging at his moustache. If this was not exactly according to his own ideas, it was, at any rate, a step in the right direction. Wrayson was evidently perplexed. The Baroness adopted a persuasive attitude.
"My dear girl," she said, "we don't any of us know who killed your husband. After all, what does it matter? It is terribly sad, of course, but he can't be brought back to life again. You have yourself to think of, and how you are to live in the future. Give me that packet, I will destroy it before your eyes, and I promise you that you shall have no more anxiety about your future."
The girl rose to her feet. The packet was already transferred to the bosom of her dress.
"I have told you my terms," she said. "Some of you know all about it, I dare say! Tell me the truth and you shall have the packet, any one of you."
Wrayson leaned forward.
"The truth is simple," he said earnestly. "We do not know. I can answer for myself. I think that I can answer for the others."
"Then the packet shall help me to find out," she declared.
The Baroness shook her head.
"It will not do, my dear girl," she said quietly. "The packet is not yours."
The girl faced her defiantly.
"Who says that it is not mine?" she demanded.
"I do," the Baroness replied.
"And I!" Wrayson echoed.
"And I say that it is hers—hers and mine," Sydney Barnes declared. "She shall do what she likes with it. She shall not be made to give it up."
"Mrs. Barnes," the Baroness declared briskly, "you must try to be reasonable. We will buy the packet from you."
Sydney Barnes nodded his head approvingly.
"That," he said, "is what I call talking common sense."
"We will give you a thousand pounds for it," the Baroness continued.
"It's not enough, not near enough," Barnes called out hastily. "Don't you listen to them, Agnes."
"I shall not," she answered. "Ten thousand pounds would not buy it. I have said my last word. I am going now. In three days' time I shall return. I will give up the letters then in exchange for the name of my husband's murderer. If I do not get that, I shall go to the police!"
She rose and walked out of the room. They all followed her. The Baroness whispered in Wrayson's ear, but he shook his head.
"It is impossible," he said firmly. "We cannot take them from her by force."
The Baroness shrugged her shoulders. She caught the girl up upon the stairs and they descended together. Wrayson and Sydney Barnes followed, the latter biting his nails nervously and maintaining a gloomy silence. At the entrance, Wrayson whistled for a cab and handed Agnes in. Sydney Barnes attempted to follow her.
"I will see my sister-in-law home," he declared; but Wrayson's hand fell upon his arm.
"No!" he said. "Mrs. Barnes can take care of herself. She is not to be interfered with."
She nodded back at him from the cab.
"I don't want him," she said. "I don't want any one. In three days' time I will return."
"And until then you will not part with the letters?" Wrayson said.
"Until then," she answered, "I promise."
The cab drove off. Sydney Barnes turned upon Wrayson, white and venomous.
"Where do I come in here?" he demanded fiercely.
"I sincerely trust," Wrayson answered suavely, "that you are not coming in at all. But you, too, can return in three days."