“I didn’t know I was talking,” the policeman muttered. “It all comes of being too many hours on duty. What have you got those note-books out for? Not been taking down anything about me, have you?”
“Show us out of the Park and you’ll hear no more about it,” Hamar said.
“And we’ll give you half a sovereign into the bargain,” Kelson chimed in.
“Follow me then,” the policeman said. “I’ll take you to one of the side entrances.”
“Matt!” Hamar exclaimed as they passed the tree behind which Lilian Rosenberg was hiding, “I smell scent—and what is more I recognize it. It is Violette de mer—the scent that—Rosenberg uses! You were with her this evening!”
“I swear I wasn’t!” Kelson replied. “I bought some scent in Regent Street this afternoon.”
“Humph,” Hamar grunted. “I have my doubts.”
They walked on in silence till they came to a small iron gate, where the policemen left them, whilst he went to the lodge for the keys; and all the while Kelson was in terror, lest Hamar should catch sight of Lilian Rosenberg, who had kept close behind them, and was now standing, but a few yards away, trying to conceal her identity and escape notice.
But the policeman on his return with the keys called out to her, and Kelson, fearing that she might be either taken in charge for loitering there, in apparently suspicious circumstances, or made to remain in the Park all night—neither of which contingencies he could possibly permit—at once came forward, and explained that she was a friend of his.
The policeman was satisfied. The sight of another half-sovereign had rendered him more than polite, and, without saying a word, he let them all out together.
The moment they were in the street, Hamar turned on Kelson, white with passion.
“So,” he said, “I was right after all—liar! fool! You would risk all our lives for a few hours’ flirtation with this silly girl.”
“If it’s only flirtation, Leon, what does it matter?” Curtis interposed. “For goodness’ sake shut up wrangling and let’s get home. I’m starving.”
“I shall have something to say to you to-morrow morning,” Hamar remarked, in an undertone, to Lilian Rosenberg.
“And I to you,” was the furious reply. “I shall not forget the disrespectful way in which you have just spoken of me, in alluding to the scent.”
She signalled to a taxi, and giving Kelson a friendly good-night, jumped into it and was speedily whirled away.
On the whole, the evening had been a disappointment. She had wanted to see the Unknown—the awful thing that had inspired Kelson and his colleagues with such unmitigated horror—and instead she had seen only an obsessed policeman—a cataleptic “copper”—who, had he not spoken in a strangely uncanny voice, would certainly have seemed to her absolutely ordinary.
With regard to Hamar’s displeasure, she was not in the slightest degree disturbed. He would never dare say anything to her. And after all that had occurred he would never venture to “sack her.” All the same she hated him. There was just sufficient in her conduct to make the name he had called her by applicable—therefore her bitterest wrath and indignation were aroused against him. He had behaved unpardonably. She could kill him for it.
“I’ll just show him,” she said to herself, “what that uncivil tongue of his can do. He shall see that it can do him infinitely more harm than all Kelson’s love-making. For one thing I’ll spoil his chances with Gladys Martin; and—I wonder if I could make use of what I know about him, as a means of getting friendly again with Shiel. At all events I’ll try.”
With this object in view she went round to Shiel’s lodgings, and was informed by the landlady that Shiel was ill.
“Nothing serious I hope?” she asked.
“It has been,” the landlady replied, “but he is better now. It all came through his not taking proper care of himself.”
“May I see him, do you think?” Lilian Rosenberg inquired.
“I don’t know,” the landlady grumbled. “He’s in a very touchy mood—no one can do nothing right for him. But maybe there won’t be any harm in your trying,” she added, her eyes wandering to the half-crown in Lilian Rosenberg’s fingers.
She opened the door somewhat wider, and Lilian Rosenberg entered. Shiel was immensely surprised to see her. Illness and solitude had very considerably subdued him, and though at first he showed some resentment, he speedily softened under her sympathetic solicitation for his health. She put his room straight and dusted the furniture, got tea for him, and when she had completely won him over by these kindly actions, and made him beg her pardon for ever having spoken harshly to her, she broached the subject all the while uppermost in her mind—the subject of Hamar and Gladys.
“He hasn’t the slightest intention of marrying her,” she said. “All he wants is to make her his mistress, so as to be able to throw her over the moment he gets tired of her, and then marry some one of title. He is tremendously taken with her of course—her physical beauty, which he had the impudence to tell me surpassed that of any other woman he had seen, appeals strongly to his grossly sensual nature. If she won’t give in to him now, she will be obliged to do so in six months’ time.”
“I don’t understand you,” Shiel said feebly; “why in six months’ time?”
Lilian Rosenberg then told him what she knew about the compact.
“So you see,” she added, “that if the final stage is reached no woman will be safe—the trio will have any girl they fancy entirely at their mercy.”
“How inconceivably awful!” Shiel exclaimed. “Surely there is some way of stopping them.”
“There is only one way,” Lilian said slowly, “the union between the three must be broken—they must quarrel, and dissolve partnership.”
“You may be sure they will take good care not to do that.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Lilian Rosenberg replied. “Matthew Kelson is very fond of me. With a little persuasion he would do anything I asked.”
“Then do you think you could bring about a rupture between him and Hamar!” Shiel asked eagerly.
“I might!”
“And you will—you will save Gladys Martin after all!”
Lilian did not reply at once.
“Do you think she is the sort of girl who would marry poverty,” she said, evasively, “poverty like this!” and she glanced round the room.
“I won’t ask her to!” Shiel exclaimed. “Whilst I have been lying in bed, ill, I have thought of many things—and have come to the conclusion I have no right ever to think of marrying. It is difficult for me to earn enough to keep one person in comfort—and I’ve lost all hope of ever earning enough to keep two.”
“Well, if you don’t ask her,” Lilian Rosenberg said, “there’s one thing, she will never ask you. And I think you are remarkably well out of it. If you do ever marry, marry a girl that has grit—a girl that would be a real ‘pal’ to you—a girl that would help you to win fame!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
WHOM WILL HE MARRY?
Had Lilian Rosenberg been able to see the effect of her conversation upon Shiel after she had left him, she would have been disappointed. He had, prior to this interview with Lilian Rosenberg, as he told her, made up his mind to abandon all idea of marrying Gladys Martin; and there is a possibility that had her name not been mentioned, had she not been recalled so vividly to his mind, he would have adhered to that resolution—at all events so long as he refrained from seeing her. But such is human nature—or at least man’s nature—that directly Lilian Rosenberg had left him, Shiel’s love for Gladys burst out with such wild, invigorated force that it swept reason and everything else before it. Gladys! He could think of nothing else! Every detail in her appearance, every word she had spoken, came back to him with exaggerated intensity. Her beauty was su
blime. There was no one like her, no one that could inspire him with such a sense of ideality, no one that could lead him on to such dizzy heights of greatness. It was all nonsense to say, as Lilian Rosenberg had said, there were just as many good fish in the sea as had ever come out of it—there was only one Gladys. Hamar should never marry her—he would marry her himself. She must be told at once of Hamar’s infamous designs. A mad desire to see her came over him, and disregardful of the doctor’s orders that he should remain in bed several more days, he got up, and dressing as fast as his weak condition would allow him, took a taxi and drove to Waterloo.
On reaching the Cottage, at Kew, he found Gladys at home, and to his great joy, alone.
There is nothing that appeals to a woman more than a sick man, and Shiel, in coming to Gladys in his present condition, had unwittingly played a trump card. Had he appeared well and strong she would probably have received him none too cordially—for she was very tired of men just then; but the moment her eyes alighted on his thin cheeks and she saw the dark rings under his eyes, pity conquered. This man at least was not to blame—he was not of the same pattern as other men, he was not like so many men whose adulations had grown fulsome to her, and—he was totally unlike Hamar.
In very sympathetic tones she inquired how he was, and on learning that he had been sufficiently ill to be kept in bed, asked why he had not told her.
“Aunty and I would have called to see you,” she said, “and brought you jelly and other nice things. Who waited on you, had you no nurse?”
Fearful lest he should give her the impression he was speaking for effect, or trying to trade on her feelings (Shiel was one of those people who are painfully exact), he told her as simply as he could just how he had been placed.
“But why come here,” Gladys demanded, “when you were told to stay in bed till the end of the week. It is frightfully risky.”
Shiel then explained to her the purport of his visit.
“Then it was to warn me, to put me on my guard against Hamar, that you disobeyed the doctor’s orders,” she said.
Shiel nodded. “You are not displeased, are you?” he asked nervously.
“I am displeased with you for thinking so little of yourself,” Gladys said, “and more than obliged to you for thinking so much of me. You know I only consented to marry Mr. Hamar to save my father—and you say he no longer has the power to work spells?”
“I believe that to be a fact,” Shiel replied.
“Then he lied to me!” Gladys observed. “He threatened that unless I saw him as often as he wished, and went with him wherever he wanted, and a good many more things, he would inflict my father with every conceivable disease. You are quite sure your information is correct?”
“Absolutely!”
“Then, thank God!” Gladys said with a great sigh of relief. “I shall know how to act now.”
“You will break off your engagement?” Shiel inquired eagerly.
“No! I can’t do that!” Gladys said sadly. “I’ve promised to marry Mr. Hamar, and, therefore, marry him I must.”
“Promises made under such conditions are mere extortions, they don’t count.”
“I fear they do,” Gladys replied. “I’ve never yet broken my word.”
“Then there’s no hope for me,” Shiel gasped. “I must go—it maddens me to see you the affianced bride of that devil.”
He rose to go, but had hardly gained his feet, when his strength utterly failed and he collapsed. Gladys helped him into a chair, and then flew for some brandy. In the hall, she met her aunt, who had just returned from an afternoon call. In a few words she explained what had happened.
“Poor young man,” Miss Templeton said. “I thought he looked very ill the last time I saw him. And he came here solely to benefit you! Well, you have a good deal to answer for, and your face is not only your own misfortune, but other people’s too. But it will never do for your father to see Mr. Davenport. He went off in a very bad temper this morning, and if he comes back and finds him here, there’ll be a scene.”
Miss Templeton and Gladys consulted together for some minutes, and then decided to send for a taxi and have Shiel conveyed back to his rooms, Miss Templeton accompanying him.
Miss Templeton knew that Shiel was poor, but like most people who have lived in comfortable surroundings all their lives, she had no idea of what poverty was like—the poverty of a seven-and-sixpenny a week room in a back street; and when she saw it she nearly swooned.
“Why this is a slum!” she ejaculated as the taxi stopped next door to a fried fish shop in a narrow street swarming with children sucking bread and jam, and rolling each other over in the gutters.
“I don’t wonder the man is ill here!” she said to herself, as the door of the house they stopped at opened and she snuffed the atmosphere. “The place reeks—and—oh! gracious! is this the landlady?”
Yet the woman was ordinary enough—the type of landlady one sees in all back streets—greasy face, straggling hair, dirty blouse, black hands, bitten fingernails, short skirts, prodigious feet, a grubby child clinging on to her dress and every indication of the speedy arrival of another.
“I suppose you’re ’is mother hain’t you, mum?” she said, gaping at Miss Templeton’s rather fashionable clothes in open-mouthed wonder. “I told ’im ’ee ought not to go out, but ’ee never ’eeds what I says.”
Miss Templeton, though not particularly flattered at being taken for Shiel’s mother—since, like most ladies of mature age, she wished to be regarded as much younger—nevertheless, thought it better not to disillusion the woman. The poor, she told herself, often have very decided views on propriety. With the woman’s aid she got Shiel upstairs, and, as he was too feeble to undress himself, despite his protestations, helped to disrobe him. She had thought, when she first saw the slum, of returning to Kew at once, but she did no such thing. She stayed with Shiel; persuaded the landlady to make him some gruel (which proved to be a sorry mess, but had at least the advantage of being hot), and bribed one of the children to fetch the doctor. Shiel nearly died. Had it not been for the careful nursing and good food provided by Miss Templeton, who visited him every day, he would never have turned the corner.
“The poor boy is terribly fond of you,” Miss Templeton said to Gladys. “In his delirium he talked of nothing but saving you from Leon Hamar—from that devil Leon Hamar—and if one can place any reliance at all, on the ravings of a sick man, a devil, Leon Hamar undoubtedly is. What a pity it is Shiel hasn’t money.”
These remarks were naturally not without effect on Gladys, and she could not help growing more and more interested in the man, whose love for her had proved so deep-rooted and ideal, that he had practically sacrificed his life, in an attempt to serve her. Finally, she found herself awaiting her aunt’s daily report of his illness with an anxiety that was almost acute.
In the meanwhile, John Martin came home one evening in a rare state of excitement.
“What do you think!” he exclaimed, throwing a bundle of letters on the table, “one of Dick’s speculations has turned out trumps, after all. He had invested several thousands of pounds—in Shiel’s name—in enamel-ivorine, the new stuff for stopping teeth, which looks exactly like part of the teeth. I remember I thought it an absurd venture at the time, but for once in a way I was wrong—”
“Ahem!” interrupted Gladys.
“There has been a sudden boom in the patent, every dentist is using it, and, as a consequence, the shares have risen enormously. I’ve heard from Dick’s lawyer to-day that Shiel is now worth fifty thousand pounds!”
“Good heavens!” Miss Templeton ejaculated, “and Gladys has bound herself to Hamar! I suppose,” she said afterwards, when John Martin and she were alone together, “that you would not have any objection to Shiel now, if Gladys were free to marry him.”
“Certainly not!” John Martin said, “certainly not, I always liked Shiel. A fine manly young fellow, very different to the type one usually meets nowadays. I only wish Gladys were free!”
“You would raise no obstacle to her becoming engaged to Shiel?”
“None whatsoever! But what’s the good of talking about an impossibility. Gladys is stubbornness itself—when once she has made up her mind to do a thing, nothing in God’s world will make her not do it.”
“Wait,” Miss Templeton said, “wait and see. I think I can see a possible way out of it.”
She had learned much from Shiel in his “wanderings.” He had constantly alluded to Hamar, Curtis, Kelson—and Lilian Rosenberg; to the great compact, and to the one possible way of breaking that compact—namely through the instigation of a quarrel between the trio. From several of the statements he had made, Miss Templeton deduced that Kelson was greatly under the influence of Lilian Rosenberg—and it was from these statements that she finally received an inspiration.
Miss Templeton saw deeper than Shiel—it had always been her custom to read between the lines. “Now,” she argued, “if Kelson were so easily influenced by Lilian Rosenberg, who was young and attractive, it was almost a sine quâ non that he was in love with her,” and as marriage was one of the eventualities strictly forbidden to the trio in the compact—“they must neither quarrel nor marry,” Shiel had exclaimed—here was their chance. Kelson must marry Lilian Rosenberg, and by so doing, break the compact and overwhelm the trio in some sudden and dire catastrophe. But the marriage must take place within six months’ time. How could that be arranged? Could Lilian Rosenberg be bribed or persuaded into it? for of course Miss Templeton being a woman—albeit an old maid—had at once divined that Lilian Rosenberg was in love with Shiel—that she did not care a straw for Kelson, and that to marry the latter she would need some very strong inducement. And the only inducement she could think of was Lilian’s genuine love for Shiel.
The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack Page 108
