Chapter Twenty Three. Her Ladyship.

Boyd, seeing my fierce determination, held back, a look of undisguised annoyance upon his face.

“I have a duty to perform. I beg of you not to obstruct me, Mr Urwin,” he said coldly. “It is quite as unpleasant to me as to you.”

“Unpleasant!” I echoed. “I tell you that you shall not arrest her,” and I stood firmly with my back to the door of my room.

“Come,” he said, in a tone of persuasion. “This action of yours cannot benefit her in the least. She has made every preparation for flight. Her trunk is in the cloakroom at Charing Cross Station, and she means within an hour to get away to the Continent. Let me pass.”

“I shall not,” I roared.

“In that case I shall be compelled to use force, however much I regret it.”

As he uttered these words the door was suddenly flung back, and I saw Eva’s tragic, almost funereal, figure in the opening. She was white to the lips, her countenance terribly wan and haggard.

“Enough!” she cried hoarsely. “Let the police enter. I am ready,” and she tottered back, clutching at the corner of my writing-table for support.

Her outward purity and innocence were a rare equipment for the committal of a crime. Who, indeed, would have suspected her of guile and intrigue? When Love is dead there is no God.

We were standing together in my sitting-room, Boyd being our only companion. A dozen times I had implored her to speak the truth, but without avail. She stood pale and trembling, yet still silent before us. Terror held her dumb.

“Those who turn King’s evidence obtain free pardon,” the detective gravely observed, speaking for the first time.

She laughed a little to herself.

“You might have striven for ever in vain to solve the mystery,” she answered at last, apparently bracing herself up for an effort. “Those who aimed that terrible blow, so swift and so fatal, were not the kind of persons to be ever caught napping. They never made a false move, and always took such elaborate precautions that to solve the enigma would be impossible to any one unacquainted with previous events.”

Her breast rose and fell quickly in her wild agitation. She was stirred by emotion to the depths of her being.

“I was weak and helpless,” she faltered. “God knows how I have suffered; how deep has been my repentance. Hear me to the end,” she urged, turning her fine eyes to mine. “Then, when I have told you my wretched if astounding story, Frank, judge me as you think fit—for I am yours.”

“Speak!” I said anxiously. “My justice shall be tempered with mercy.”

By that sentence she had acknowledged her love for me, but now I hesitated. She was accused of murder.

“Then I must begin at the very beginning, for it is a long and most complicated story, a story of a deep-laid intrigue and conspiracy, and of a duplicity extraordinary,” she said, her thin, nerveless hand trembling in mine as I held her with my arm about her waist. “In the days when I had reached my sixteenth year I lived with my mother abroad, in Italy for the most part, because it was cheap, and further because my father, who had been guilty of certain shady transactions, had been compelled to fly from England. He had treated my mother shamefully, therefore they were separated, and mother and I lived economically in these cheap pensions in Florence and Rome which seem to exist as asylums for the well-bred needy. A few days after I was sixteen, while we were at an obscure pension in Siena, my mother took typhoid and died, leaving me absolutely alone in the world, and practically penniless. Nearly a year before we had received a letter from my father’s solicitors in London stating that he had died in poverty in Buenos Aires, therefore I was utterly alone. The position of a friendless girl on the Continent is always serious,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “Acting upon the advice of some English people in the pension I went to Florence and saw there the Consul-General, who not only gave me money from the British Relief Fund, which is supported by English residents in that city, but also interested himself actively upon my behalf and obtained for me a post as governess in a wealthy Italian family living near Bologna. In their service I remained nearly three years, until, by the death of the head of the house, the family became scattered, when I took a fresh engagement with a lady who advertised for an English companion. She was a Madame Damant, a good-looking woman of forty-five, whose father, I understood, had been Italian, and whose mother English. She spoke English quite as well as I did, and had a fine apartment in Florence, where she received a good deal, for she was well-known there. With the winter over we travelled first to Paris, where we stayed several months, and then to Switzerland. Our life was pleasant, as Madame had plenty of money and we always lived at the best hotels.”

She paused and drew a long breath. There was a hardness about her mouth, and tears were in her eyes.

“It was in Zurich that I had my first misgivings, for there one day in late autumn we were joined by a strange old gentleman, Hartmann by name, whom I understood was Madame’s brother, a curious old fellow, whose main object in life appeared to be the carrying out of certain scientific experiments. He remained with us in the same hotel for nearly a fortnight, during which time Madame, who was extremely well-educated, held frequent consultations with him upon scientific matters, until one day I was overjoyed when she announced that we were all three to go straight to London.”

“Then the Lady Glaslyn at The Hollies was not your mother?” I gasped, profoundly amazed at this revelation.

“I am about to explain,” she went on in a hard voice. “On the night before our departure from Zurich I chanced to pass the door of Madame’s bedroom after everybody had retired to rest, and seeing a light issuing from the keyhole was prompted by natural curiosity to peep within. What I saw was certainly strange. In one hand she was holding an unopened bottle of Benedictine liqueur upside down, while with the other she took a hypodermic syringe filled with some liquid, and with the long thin needle pierced the cork, then slowly, and with infinite care, she injected the liquid from the tiny glass syringe. Afterwards she withdrew the hollow needle, glanced at the parchment capsule beneath the light, and having satisfied herself that the puncture made was quite unnoticeable, she shook the bottle so as to thoroughly mix the injected liquid with the liqueur. Then I saw her wrap the bottle carefully in a number of towels and place it in her trunk. Next day, when packing, I glanced at the bottle with some curiosity, examining the parchment covering the cork, but so tiny had been the puncture that I failed to discover the hole. The parchment had, I think, been touched with gum, which had caused the tiny hole to close.”

“That liqueur was evidently poisoned,” Boyd remarked, his brows knit in thought.

“Yes,” she answered. “I have every reason to believe so, although the true state of affairs did not dawn upon me until long afterwards. When alone in our compartment in the wagon-lit between Basle and Calais, Madame, however, made a very extraordinary proposal to me. She confessed that her husband had been made the scapegoat of some financial fraud in England and was in hiding somewhere near Paris, therefore, in going back, she feared that if she went under her right name—Damant—that the police would begin to make active inquiries regarding monsieur. She wished, she said, to avoid this and set up a house in some pleasant suburb of London, so as to have a pied-à-terre in the country she so dearly loved. Now my mother was dead, and no friends in England knew her, so many years had she lived on the Continent, why should she not pass as Lady Glaslyn and I as her daughter? At first this proposal utterly staggered me, but when she pointed out how much more I would be respected as her daughter instead of her companion, and told me of the manner in which she intended to live—a manner befitting her assumed station—I at length gave my consent, for which she made me a present there and then of a very acceptable bank-note.”

“Then that woman only posed as your mother!” I exclaimed. “She was not the real Lady Glaslyn?”

“Certainly not,” answered my beloved frankly. “At first I was very indisposed to be a party to any such transaction, but she had shown me so many kindnesses, and had always been so generous, that I, a friendless girl, felt compelled to accede. Ah! if I had but known what lay behind all that outward show of good feeling and sympathy I would have cast her accursed money from me as I could cast the gold of Satan. I would rather have made matches for a starvation wage, or slaved at a shop-counter, than have remained one day longer beneath her roof. But she was full of cool ingenuity and marvellous cunning, and on my acceptance of this proposal instantly set to work to bind me further to secrecy. This was not difficult, alas! for I was entirely unsuspicious of treachery, and least of all of my generous friend and benefactor. After some search and many interviews with house-agents we found The Hollies, which she purchased, together with the furniture just as it stood, and ere long neighbours began to call upon us, and we soon entered local society. Many times in those dull winter days I pondered long and deeply upon what I had seen in Zurich, wondering for what reason she had so carefully prepared the bottle which had passed the customs at Charing Cross undiscovered, and still remained locked in the travelling-trunk, surrounded by the wrappings she had placed upon it.”

“Was any of the liqueur given to any one?” asked Boyd grimly.

Ere she could respond the door was thrown open, and Dick entered with Lily Lowry. He had, it transpired, gone that day and besought her forgiveness.

In a single glance he realised what had occurred, and without a word he closed the door, and both stood in silence to listen to her statement.

How strange a thing is this life of ours! We are in hell one hour, and in heaven the next.