Abergavenny Chronicle

?G r- [AH Rights Reserved, i || t=;HE F; ROOMI1i 1, I BY III I I JAMES McELDERRY, I I Author of The Veil of Circumstance," &c. II I I CHAPTER XXIII. THM XUBDIMBR. "Then," I questioned, "events have -marched -rapidly during my absence?" "No. 'The mills of God you knew —nothing more. I have had this. It was lying on the dressing-table in the Fatal Boom when I brought Dolores home—which leaves it still open as to whether this part of the game is Tocqueville's." He held up as he spoke another of the typewritten warnings of which we had now had so many that I should have laughed at them had not that which Dolores had re- ceived been fulfilled. "You notice," Hollow went on, "that I was allowed till yesterday evening in which to escape. I think that the end would have come last night had I not deliberately, by keeping, my lights on, postponed it. I pre- ferred that you should be here for the denouement." I flashed at him a look of gratitude which had now very little- of incredulity in it. Obviously he knew something which I did 1 wt. "Do you think that we owe this last warning to our rescue of Dolores? Because I should have thought our friend would have realised that it took more than that fool's game to alarm us." "Yes," said Hollow. "I think we owe it entirely to our rescue of Dolores. I rather think that whoever sent those messages 7had just come to the conclusion that we were., a couple of harmless fools, who could safely be allowed to go our own way without -caus- ing him much apprehension. Our rescue of izores upset something more than Wal- den's little conspiracy—or perhaps I should say rather more than that side of the con- Siracy with which we have become familiar through Dolores." "You mean," I suggested, "that some member of the household was not prepared for the rescue-for our success-and did not welcome it? Perhaps Detaille is not so in- anocent as I thought?" If On the contrary, I fancy we shall have to apologise to Detaille for our suspicion. You are right as to the other part. Come, it-is time that we began our last vigil in the Fatal Room." I had taken the precaution of dining in town, and Hollow told me, as we went up the stairs, that he had had occasion to slip up to London for a few hours during my (absence, and had done the same, while he had also brought back with him some provi- sions. "I do not mean to run any risk of drugs to-night," he said. "You will see that I have had wine and food sent up here; but I do not propose that we should touch ifchem." He stopped suddenly in the centre of the -room, into which we had by this time turned, and, looking" me full in the face, :said, almost under his breath: "It may surprise you to learn, Vincent, that I know now how Margaret Denmark died—almost every detail of the diabolical manner of her death." I paused in the middle of a hasty exami- nation of some electrical contrivance which my friend was affixing to one of the wires ,which supplied the room with light. .CCYOU !!fnpoliw e? _that? I gasped. "Yes," he said, in an undertone. "We <will now extinguish the other light, if you don't mind, and lie awake on our beds with Óur revolvers ready'. Within a few hours I ihope to have unmasked the murderer of Margaret Denmark. Directly I switch on that apparatus, which has a strong reflector attached to it, and will concentrate all the light on one spot, leaving all the rest of the room in darkness, I want you to cover him. Now, not a word till I give the al" T walked to the second light and extin- guished it, with my mind in a whirl of conflicting thoughts and emotions. The thing of which I had begun to despair was about to happen Hollow knew, at last! In some way unknown to me his genius had given him the clue for which we had sought in vain, and he waited now only for the confirmation of his theory or his knowledge. He knew even the name of the murderer, in all probability; but for this I must wait. I settled myself in the easiest position I could upon my bed, and peered forward into the darkness. A strained, Minister eilence seemed to brood over the house. I could hear the watch in my pocket ticking off the minutes and the seconds, and pre- sently the first hour chimed. I shifted my position and settled down again to wait. A little later I heard Hollow begin to breathe heavily, as though he were asleep, .00 I at once followed his example. The second hour came and went; and then the third. Then I heard something that seemed like the faint whistle of some night (bird calling its mate. It appeared to come from the direction of the dressing-room that led out of the room in which we waited (or- the end. The note changed. I was certain now. It became a low whistle from the throat of a human being. It ;was a kind of sensuous melody that lured. Almost, with a sort of hypnotic power, it drew me from my bed. I know that I could not have resisted it had I been out in the night air, and, unsuspecting, had Jieard it. I caught my breath, and forgot, momen- tarily, to simulate sleep. Then there came -& eharp click, and I remembered, and be- gan to take heavy, long-drawn breaths 4M?ainj Barely a second later I heard )?hort/ stertorous breathing somewhere be- ?em the door of the dressing-room and our own window, which was a little open. The whistling in the next room became slightly more distinct. Someone was in the room. The tension became unendurable. Would Hollow never end it? I longed to shriek aloud, and came to the verge of hysteria. Another moment and I should be obliged to ehriek out. I began to choke in mv throat. Then Hollow moved. At last I should know. A blinding flash leapt into the darkness and concentrated itself upon one object-a tall, heavily-built man, who stood Tiveted to thefloor, where it had discovered him. I died out with horror as I distinguished him. He put up a hand to shield his eyes, and as he did so I saw that his other ihand held a small tray. His jaw began to drop, and hung loose, quivering; and his -eye& filled with an awful, nameless, uncon. trollable fear of he knew not what. His face worked; and he tried to move, and -could not. I looked at him again, and began to shudder with a kind of sickness and nausea. It wtus impossible — unbelievable — this ghastly, fearful revelation! There was gome mistake—there must be! Hollow sprang forward. His voice rang out low and threatening in the silence. "Put up your hands. Max Denmark—put op "your hands!" And aa he spoke he fvreroed a revolver-muzzle right into the i man's very temple. "Put up your hands, I .1 say! If » sound escapes your lips I shall J 1 > surely shoot!" T I went towards them dazedly, and Hollow i made■ a motion with his hand. I pointed my te?olver at the man; but I could not Btifl k the tremor of my fingero, and my knees  a little. ? 4< K him covered, Vincent, and for $sh"ooKk eep s sake keep his mouth sealed. If he J t Heaven to cry out, ahoot him-øhoot him like )* :eoildg to cry out, shoot him—shoot him like ? I knew that he did not mean it, that he saia it only to ensure the man's silence, but I took his plaoe, and I rested my revolver agkinst the temple of the assassin, beea-ttws only eo could I steady it. Hollow went out, going by the anteroom door. All the time, the other xoenr^ the low whistling rose and fell sensuously. Then, suddenly, just as Hollow must have reached the toassage, it ceased abruptly, as it were, A in the middle of a bar. The seconds seemed to etgetch r. themselves into long hours. At r last Hollow came back.. She has gone," he said, quietlI' It 18 ?eU that it is so. She heard. &W she MW gone." 90? She hu gone-who'" "The Woman in Blu? Then he turned towards Denmark, who was a ghastly sight in the glare of light that fell full upon him. "Max Denmark-assassin !—assassin !—you remain here to-night, to meet the fate you prepared for us-to face the death you sent to your wife, to your daughter, to your guest. I have discovered your secret, and the way you came. Your retreat is cut off. If you move before we leave the room, I shoot!" At that I saw Denmark's eyes begin to move, for the first time, fearfully about the room. But, save for the spot on which he stood, it was in darkness, and he could see nothing. His lips moved, and an awful spasm of hatred and fury shook him; but he could speak no words. "God have upon you a mercy you never knew, Denmark!" And then Hollow drew me after him out of the room, white and silent, and trembling with an anger that was almost beyond his control; and somewhere in the corridor he removed a piece of the wains- coting and broke the electric wires that fed the room with light. I n-dticed also that as we came into the corridor he had shot a bolt on the door of the ante-room on the outside, that had not been there before, so that he must himself have fixed it some time during the day. I followed him in a kind of trance. I was amazed and thrilled into silence—a dumb bewilderment into which there crept every ttow and then a blind rage and lust to go -back-and to feel my hands about Denmark's throat. What could it all mean? Denmark, the sportsman, the gentleman, the man we had all admired, the man with whom half the world .that counted had dined and shot and travelled and raced—this man was a murderer, the foulest and most dastardly of all murderers—a hypocrite and a scoundrel of powers all but beyond belief! This was the man who had tricked and foiled us, and whom Hollow had unmasked! There was no room for doubt-the man himself had ad- mitted it with eyes and the terror of his whole physical being! Was he mad! Was this the explanation? Had he murdered his guest and his daughter and his wife-the wife he loved, and the wife who adored him-in a mad- ness in which he had no consciousness of his actions? But it was too absurd to be- lieve-too utterly grotesque and impossible! How had he done it? What diabolical in- genuity had he exercised? And this man was the father of Dolores! What would it mean to Hollow, this un- > masking? She would never marry him now —she, the daughter of a murderer, and of such a murderer! We turned into the passage, and Hollow stopped before the door of the dressing- room, and went in. I followed him to the window, and we stood looking out in silence into the night. We heard Denmark moving here and there, and groaning every now and then. Once he tried the door between the Fatal Room and that in which we were, having first shot back the bolts. But it was locked, and he had no key. Hollow quivered, and his breath came in choking gasps. I had never seen him so completely mastered by himself. After a while the sounds ceased in the next room. Still Hollow did not move, and I asked no question. A little light flickered upon the horizon, like a searchlight coming up from the edge of the world. Dawn was breaking. Quite suddenly Hollow swung round on his heel and strode towards the door of the Fatal Room, and threw it open, and cried out: "Max Denmark, assassin (though you are, I am going to let you go, because—because it is not you alone who would have to meet the punishment of your crime. Yes, I am going to leave you to God and the eternal retribution that goes on, and from which there is no escape. I am going to follow you—you hear?—to the gates of the park, with my revolver at your back. If you try to play any trick I shall shoot you like a dog. At the gates of the park I shall let you go; but if you ever come back I shall give you up, even though it should blight my life and hers! Yes, I shall give you up. You understand ?" There was no answer—neither sound nor movement. "I am waiting—I am going to give you this chance, although you deserve nothing but the most awful death. Come out." We waited in vain. Then we went into the room—I myself wondering and amazed at my friend's decision, trying in vain to reooncile his words now with those he had used when he left Denmark alone in the room. He switched on his electric torch, and a low cry broke from his lips. Denmark lay on his face, quite motion- less. We turned him over. His eyes bulged glassily, shot through with terror, such as I have never seen in any man's before or since. I dropped to my knees and felt his heart. Then I looked up at Hollow, and said: "He is dead, the assassin! He is dead, Hollow." "It is the way out-it is God's mercy and goodness. He has spoken: it is Hie way out. Let us carry the fellow back to hib room. No one need ever know now-" I looked up, and shot a question at him with my eyes. "No," he said. "It is only heart-failure —it could be nothing else. The shock, and tho fear. No one need ever know now." We carried him out, along the passage to the east wing and the room he had occu- pied; and there we left him just as he might have fallen, full length on the floor. No one need ever know. CHAPTER XXIV. I THE DEATH-SPIDER. I "The whole thing, once I was in pos- session of the threads from which I wove the web," said Hollow, a few minutes later, when we were back in the Fatal Room, was really very simple. Indeed, no one but a fool would have failed. "I built up; my case upon some words I overheard. It was on the night Dolores met Walden. After following him some distance—before, I think, he suspected that he was being followed-I was surprised to see a figure emerge from a clump of firs near the outskirts of the park, which I re- cognised as Denmark's. There had evi- dently been an appointment. I dared not try to get very close to them, as I was un- certain of the lie of the ground; but I overheard sufficient to tell me that Den- mark had laid the foundation of his for- tune-a matter of many thousands—by an act of fraud of which Walden knew, and that Walden had been for some period blackmailing him. Denmr? protested volubly that he was unable to meet Walden's demands, and Wal- den at once gave him two alternatives. Either he forced Dolores to consent to an immediate marriage, or at\ least offered no resistance to any act of force which Walden chose to employ to gain his end, or else the exposure should take place. Denmark blustered for some time and then began to whine; but I did not hear the conclusion of the interview." I think you might have told me of this before, Hollow," I said reproachfully. It is possible that, had I known this- I did not attach very much importance to it at the time, myself, Vincent, and it was for this reason that I did not mention it," he explained. Of course, I saw that I it presen ted Dersaark in a now light—as a man who wao, at least, something of a hypocrite. No man who had the love for i his daughter that Denmark professed to have would have tolerated that black- guard's threats and proposals ifot an -in- stant. Still, it did not occur to me that it could be possible for Denmark to have been scoundrel enough to deceive his wife and all the world for so many years." No, the man must have been one of the most consummate natural actors ithat the world has ever knoWn. Certainly he has de- ceived completely not only some of the cleverest men I know, but men of the greatest acumen in reading character. I shall never understand how he manager to do it." It was after your magnificent sim- plicity, my dear Vincent. permitted the ab. duction to take place," Hollow went on, that I knew Denmark for a scoundrel. When he came to us on the terrace I saw that he had known all along that the girl was to be seized by Walden's men, and that he was acting a part. When I brought her back I saw that he was frightened— genuinely frightened—of the effect of our frustration of Walden's plans It was this which made me sit down and do a little thinking that I should have done before. "The result was that I began to realise for the first time that Denmark had a motive in getting rid of his wife and daughters. I found out that he actually was in financial difficulties. His wife had a very consider- able fortune, which was willed to her daugh- ters. If he could possess himself of this, he could withstand Walden's demands for a while at least. Perhaps he killed Weider first merely as an experiment. We shall never know, but he was capable of doing that. He next killed Carlotta, because no suspicion of inheritance could arise if she died before her mother. I have absolutely no doubt that he would have made Dolores the third victim, had it not been for Wal- den's determination to win the girl and her fortune. Now, having discovered a motive, and accounted at last for Denmark's strange be- haviour when I questioned him about the Woman in Blue, and at one or two other junctures, I was puzzled as to the means he could possibly have used. All the known facts of the incidents accompanying Mar- garet Denmark's death seemed to miggeet that he had not actually murdered her in person. I remembered my discovery of the Brazilian relative of the American Poison Vine. It grows only in Brazil, and Den- mark had spent a great deal of his life in that country. If he were the scoundrel that I now began to believe him, he was quite capable of planting the creeper before he aotually took possession of the house. He might have planned these murders many years ago, foreseeing that one day Margaret Denmark's money might be a necessity to him in view of Walden's probably increasing demands. nWhat. I asked myself, could be the con- nection between this creeper and the mur- ders? You may know that there is no reli- able work dealing with the rare plant-life of Brazil, and I knew that this thing was rare. I remembered suddenly that in the fire in which Geoffrey de Goncourt's monumental work on this subject was burnt, detached fragments escaped. Goncourt, of course, de- voted nearly thirty years to the collection of the materials of that book, and I knew that the creeper must have figured in it. Had the Fates been kind, and had the pages de- voted to it been among those which escaped the flames? I went to the British Museum, where the MS is kept—Goncourt died imme- diately after its loss, as you will remember. "I found, Vincent, that the page, or rather pages—for there were several—had been burnt and blackened, but that the writing was still decipherable. I learnt all I wanted to know. I learnt that, although not actually of a poisonous nature itself, it is the haunt of a spider almost the size of a toad, which burrows into its roots and feeds upon it. This insect, which is naturally much dreaded in Brazil, is armed with a long fang, the tip of which contains a deadly poison. It will not attack or bite a human being unless angered, but then, if it can obtain a hold unnoticed, it will make its way to the head and bury itself in the hair, whence it drives its fangs directly into the brain." Hollow broke off for a moment as I reeled back, with a cry of horror. "The man had the terrible cleverness of the Fiend himself. He was cleverer than I was. I had now obtained nearly sufficient evidence to hang him; but I had not dis- covered how he effected .the murders. How did he manage to introduce the spiders into the room, and to arouse them to anger afterwards, at a time when he himself was out of the danger-zone? I made a shot in the dark. I suspected the Woman in Blue of some complicity. Last night showed that my guess was right—that I hit upon the truth by accident. She knew of some way to charm them. Denmark's tray was his method of carrying them to the bed. No doubt he then escaped from the room, and the Woman in Blue, by an alteration in her tune, enraged them to the point at which they would kill. Anything more diabolical it is difficult to imagine." I interrupted him with a question. "Do you imagine, Hollow, that, whoever she was, she could have had the least idea of the purpose for which she was em- ployed? I asked. "It is charitable to suppose that she did not," he replied. "But I really despair of ever understanding the part she played in the affairs of Denmark and at the same time of Walden, or whence she came or who she was. I think, if the truth ever came out, it would resolve itself into some unsavoury passage in Denmark's life that is better left alone. I, at least, shall never attempt to learn who she was, or how she came to be here." "But still, you have told me nothing of the mystery of the Fatal Room; I mean, how the murderer—Denmark—entered the room and left it without passing through either the doors or window, I said. "Or how the Woman in Blue managed to elude us when we all but had her at our mercy," added Hollow. "Ah, it is here that Denmark showed himself for what he wae- perhaps the cleverest criminal of recent years. Before he took this house he dis- covered that, between this room and the dressing-room yonder, there was a hidden means of communication. Now I myself have stared at this, perhaps, fifty times during the last few days without seeing it. "This is how I came to discover it. Of course, I knew that it must exist, since the man we thought to be Walden, but whom I have now no doubt was Denmark, disguised, escaped from this room al most under our eyes. The disappearance of the Woman in Blue told me that the hidden passage touched both this and the dressing-room. You did not notice it, but, before we left the room in the morning I went through into the dressing-room and bolted the door giving on to the passage. That was the only one we could not lock. If the secret passage was only a means of communication between these two rooms, the Woman in Blue would reveal the fact. She would be bound to escape by that door, and to leave it un- bolted. On the night when she came down the stairs and I rushed past you in such a hurry, it was to see whether the door had been unbolted or not. I found that it had." "Still," I said, "I fail to see how this helps us to the actual secret passage, Hollow." "That remark, Vincent, only shows how amazingly blind we have both been all the time. There is only one place where the secret passage could be. Now look at those ancient dog-irons in the fireplace! Have they ever been used? We may be pardoned for putting down the excessive bulging of the fireplaces and.) the chimneys into both rooms—despite the fact that at a few feet up they narrow away to nothing—to their ancient design and the architect's desire for quaintness. But we really cannot be for- given for not noticing that the fireplace has never been used—that there is not a speck of soot between the base and the very top of the chimney." "It was this that gave me the clue—this thing that seems to have revealed itself to Denmark at once. Get into the fireplace and stand on top of those corrsea. If you look closely there is a spring which I have put temporarily out of action. Those tiles and brickwork are nothing but a clever imitation upon iron. Press the spring and a door opens. Between the two rooms there is a sort of cupboard big enough to hide a man for days; in fact, it would ide two ordinary-sized people. We know how it hid e Woman in Blue. I can show you t'he working of the thing from the dressing- room." We went through and as Hollow explained it, I marvelled how the thing could have escaped our eyes before. It was only, I suppose, the obvious absurdity of the narrow chimney each room boasted afford- ing an avenue of escape for amy criminal that prevented our seeing it at once—that and the naturalness of fireplaces 80 ancient running forward into the rooms ae these did. I remetnber that a train of speculation 36 to who had been the Brst fugitive to seek the shelter of this amazing hiding-place had begun in my mind, when I was brought back to the present by Hollow. "Of course, coming to Margaret Den- mark's murder in particular, it is clear that the report of a revolver which has been de- scriped was .merely the banging of one of those cupboard doors, which are naturally heavy. You will ask how Denmark gained his room before the alarm was raised. I think that it must have happened while San- tiago was in the act of trying the fasten- ) ings of the passage window. Whether he calculated the thing to a nicety, or whether he simply had the most amazing luck, one can only conjecture. When the door banged I have no doubt that he hid! the Woman in Blue in the cupboard. The dressing-room door, which Santiago declared to be locked, was at that time carefully bolted. Denmark slipped the bolts silently, gained his own dressing-room, the door of which is almost opposite this one, and so got to his bed- room, from which he emerged almost simul- taneously with Manning. The slightest sound, an accidental turn of Santiago's head, and the Spaniard would have had him. But he had what one calls the devil's own peculiar luck." "Yes. Of the two, I do not know which is the more amazing, the criminal or his detector. Then I suppose Manning's para- lysis was caused by one of the spiders- that their sting did produce that brain- paralysis which baffled the doctors in all cases? "Yes, I should like to go and tell old Hailey, if it were not so obviously impos- sible. Our escapes on the creeper were sheer God-given luck. Of course, after I found out, I was careful to cover our win- dow-sill with a mixture of molasses and eucalyptus, which is about the only thing that the brutes dare not cross." "Then," I said, "you really only intended to frighten Denmark when you left him in the room? "I thought it the most terrible punish- ment I could invent. It proved so. I am glad that he died as he did. The mills of God again! I believe that TocqucviUe dis- covered part, at any rate, of Denmark's secret, and that he also, levied blackmail. That is how I explain Denmark's awful hatred of him. No doubt the Frenchman imposed upon Margaret Denmark; but did any man impose upon a woman as that poor wonian was imposed upon by Denmark? God was merciful in that He took her before she discovered his character. Do you think that any man ever lived the double life as Denmark lived it?" No. And while there are Hollows, I do not think that any man will ever live it as Denmark lived it again." CHAPTER XXV. I A CROWN OF ROSES. I For three days we dared not stir from the house. Denmark's sudden death aroused, as we knew it would, the momentarily slumbering sleuth hounds which Fleet Street calls reporters. Night and day they thronged the place, waylay- ing first one and then another of us. Head- lines flared in all the newspapers, recalling the tragedies of the Fatal Room. We stormed and raged and threatened violence in vain. But at last they were gone, and the worst of the confusion was over, and I knew that Hollow and Dolores had settled it that their wedding should not be delayed by any mere question of sentiment. In his urgent anxiety to shield her, and to make sure that no knowledge of the real truth should ever come to her ears, I believe that Hollow would have carried her away out of the country had he dared. Four days after Max Denmark's death, I came down to breakfast dressed for a journey, and, picking up a dozen or so of the magazines that had come in by the post and carrying them with me, left the house after the merest pretence of a meal. I had fumed and fretted under my bondage, but there had been no shirking it, and it had not been possible to go back to Ninon before. Now there was no longer anything that could possibly call for the sacrifice of another day. I went out to the car Dolores had sent round, and flung myself back among the cushions, in no mind to do my own driving and 'to arrive at my friend's house in a veil of dust and soil. I picked up one magazine after another, scanning them idly, reading a paragraph here and there. Perhaps I was less than a mile from Jessop's house when the blood flamed suddenly, hotly into my cheeks. In one of the magazines, devoted for the most part to "society gossip," I had found half a dozen paragraphs relating to affairs in Helsia. Four of them were devoted to Ninon, and they were packed from end to end with the scanda4 and suggestion upon which such papers batten, with perpetual and intolerable hints of lovers and I know not what besides. I leapt to my feet, cursing horribly. This, then, was what Ninon had meant! This, then, yas what she had expected This was what she had probably had to endure for years! It was this-this scandal that she thought would come between us! And I had not been able to go to her; and now she would think-- She would think that I should never come back-that I had failed her. What if she should have gone away? We stopped, and I got out. I did not enter my friend's house, because I did not think she would be there. I went straight to the garden and then towards the river. I found her there, gazing into the silver waters. Her eyes were red as if with weep- ing; but I saw that in her hair there were white roses, drooping and withered and dead. They were twined there, crown-shape, just as I had laid them. So she had waited —and Hope had died with the roses, per- haps? But still, she had left them there, that I might see them if I came. Just as I was beside her she saw me, and cried out-a little fearful, joyful cry that was half a question or a doubt. I caught her in my arms and pressed her to me. "Ninon! Ninon!" I cried, "lift up your eyes to mine—lift up your lips! Do you hear Life calling-do you hear Love calling? Lift up your lips!" Ther? she looked at me a moment, and half turned as if to flee. But it seemed that she changed her mind, for she turned back again, and said: :?;o Hugh, Hugh! You have come back! You have come back-although you have heard it all, and you understand f Why don't you believe it,? Oh, Hugh, Hugh!" And ahe lifted first her eyes, and I kissed her lids. And then her lips. [THE END.]