She had known none of the absolute horrors of life which were
possible in that underworld which was not likely to touch her own
existence in any form.
"Why," had argued Mademoiselle Valle, "should one fill a white
young mind with ugly images which would deface with dark marks and
smears, and could only produce unhappiness and, perhaps, morbid
broodings? One does not feel it is wise to give a girl an education
in crime. One would not permit her to read the Newgate Calendar
for choice. She will be protected by those who love her and what
she must discover she will discover. That is Life."
Which was why her first discovery that neither door could be
opened, did not at once fill her with horror. Her first arguments
were merely those of a girl who, though her brain was not inactive
pulp, had still a protected girl's outlook. She had been overwhelmed
by a sense of the awkwardness of her position and by the dread
that she would be obliged to disturb and, almost inevitably,
embarrass and annoy Lady Etynge. Of course, there had been some
bungling on the part of the impudent footman--perhaps actually at
the moment when he had given his sidelong leer at herself instead
of properly attending to what he was trying to do. That the bedroom
was locked might be the result of a dozen ordinary reasons.
The first hint of an abnormality of conditions came after she had
rung the bells and had waited in vain for response to her summons.
There were servants whose business it was to answer bells at once.
If ALL the bells were out of order, why were they out of order when
Helene was to return in a few days and her apartment was supposed
to be complete? Even to the kittens--even to the kittens!
"It seems as if I had been locked in," she had whispered to the
silence of the room. "Why did they lock the doors?"
Then she said, and her heart began to thump and race in her side:
"It has been done on purpose. They don't intend to let me out--for
some HORRIBLE reason!"
Perhaps even her own growing panic was not so appalling as a sudden
rushing memory of Lady Etynge, which, at this moment, overthrew
her. Lady Etynge! Lady Etynge! She saw her gentle face and almost
affectionately watching eyes. She heard her voice as she spoke of
Helene; she felt the light pat which was a caress.
"No! No!" she gasped it, because her breath had almost left her.
"No! No! She couldn't! No one could! There is NOTHING as wicked--as
that!"
Bat, even as she cried out, the overthrow was utter, and she threw
herself forward on the arm of the couch and sobbed--sobbed with
the passion she had only known on the day long ago when she had
crawled into the shrubs and groveled in the earth. It was the same
kind of passion--the shaken and heart-riven woe of a creature who
has trusted and hoped joyously and has been forever betrayed. The
face and eyes had been so kind. The voice so friendly! Oh, how
could even the wickedest girl in the world have doubted their
sincerity. Unfortunately--or fortunately--she knew nothing whatever
of the mental processes of the wicked girls of the world, which
was why she lay broken to pieces, sobbing--sobbing, not at the
moment because she was a trapped thing, but because Lady Etynge
had a face in whose gentleness her heart had trusted and rejoiced.
When she sat upright again, her own face, as she lifted it, would
have struck a perceptive onlooker as being, as it were, the face
of another girl. It was tear-stained and wild, but this was not the
cause of its change. The soft, bird eyes were different--suddenly,
amazingly older than they had been when she had believed in Helene.
She had no experience which could reveal to her in a moment the
monstrousness of her danger, but all she had ever read, or vaguely
gathered, of law breakers and marauders of society, collected
itself into an advancing tidal wave of horror.
She rose and went to the window and tried to open it, but it was
not intended to open. The decorative panes were of small size
and of thick glass. Her first startled impression that the white
framework seemed to be a painted metal was apparently founded on
fact. A strong person might have bent it with a hammer, but he
could not have broken it. She examined the windows in the other
rooms and they were of the same structure.
"They are made like that," she said to herself stonily, "to prevent
people from getting OUT."
She stood at the front one and looked down into the broad, stately
"Place." It was a long way to look down, and, even if the window
could be opened, one's voice would not be heard. The street
lamps were lighted and a few people were to be seen walking past
unhurriedly.
"In the big house almost opposite they are going to give a party.
There is a red carpet rolled out. Carriages are beginning to drive
up. And here on the top floor, there is a girl locked up--And they
don't know!"
She said it aloud, and her voice sounded as though it were not her
own. It was a dreadful voice, and, as she heard it, panic seized
her.
Nobody knew--nobody! Her mother never either knew or cared where
she was, but Dowie and Mademoiselle always knew. They would be
terrified. Fraulein Hirsch had, perhaps, been told that her pupil
had taken a cab and gone home and she would return to her lodgings
thinking she was safe.
Then--only at this moment, and with a suddenness which produced a
sense of shock--she recalled that it was Fraulein Hirsch who had
presented her to Lady Etynge. Fraulein Hirsch herself! It was she
who had said she had been in her employ and had taught Helene--Helene!
It was she who had related anecdotes about the Convent at Tours
and the nuns who were so wise and kind! Robin's hand went up to
her forehead with a panic-stricken gesture. Fraulein Hirsch had
made an excuse for leaving her with Lady Etynge--to be brought
up to the top of the house quite alone--and locked in. Fraulein
Hirsch had KNOWN! And there came back to her the memory of the
furtive eyes whose sly, adoring sidelooks at Count Von Hillern
had always--though she had tried not to feel it--been, somehow,
glances she had disliked--yes, DISLIKED!
It was here--by the thread of Fraulein Hirsch--that Count Von
Hillern was drawn into her mind. Once there, it was as if he stood
near her--quite close--looking down under his heavy, drooping lids
with stealthy, plunging eyes. It had always been when Fraulein
Hirsch had walked with her that they had met him--almost as if by
arrangement.
There were only two people in the world who might--because she
herself had so hated them--dislike and choose in some way to punish
her. One was Count Von Hillern. The other was Lord Coombe. Lord
Coombe, she knew, was bad, vicious, did the things people only
hinted at without speaking of them plainly. A sense of instinctive
revolt in the strength of her antipathy to Von Hillern made her
feel that he must be of the same order.
"If either of them came into this room now and locked the door
behind him, I could not get out."
She heard herself say it aloud in the strange girl's dreadful
voice, as she had heard herself speak of the party in the big
house opposite. She put her soft, slim hand up to her soft, slim
throat.
"I could not get out," she repeated.
She ran to the door and began to beat on its panels. By this time,
she knew it would be no use and yet she beat with her hands until
they were bruised and then she snatched up a book and beat with
that. She thought she must have been beating half an hour when
she realized that someone was standing outside in the corridor,
and the someone said, in a voice she recognized as belonging to
the leering footman,
"May as well keep still, Miss. You can't hammer it down and no
one's going to bother taking any notice," and then his footsteps
retired down the stairs. She involuntarily clenched her hurt hands
and the shuddering began again though she stood in the middle of
the room with a rigid body and her head thrown fiercely back.
"If there are people in the world as hideous--and monstrous as
THIS--let them kill me if they want to. I would rather be killed
than live! They would HAVE to kill me!" and she said it in a frenzy
of defiance of all mad and base things on earth.
Her peril seemed to force her thought to delve into unknown dark
places in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten--newspaper
stories of crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which
people disappeared and were long afterwards found buried under
floors or in cellars. It was said that the Berford Place houses,
winch were old ones, had enormous cellars under them.
"Perhaps other girls have disappeared and now are buried in the
cellars," she thought.
And the dreadful young voice added aloud.
"Because they would HAVE to kill me."
One of the Persian kittens curled up in the basket wakened because
he heard it and stretched a sleepy paw and mewed at her.
Coombe House was one of the old ones, wearing somewhat the aspect
of a stately barrack with a fine entrance. Its court was enclosed
at the front by a stone wall, outside which passing London roared
in low tumult. The court was surrounded by a belt of shrubs strong
enough to defy the rain of soot which fell quietly upon them day
and night.
The streets were already lighted for the evening when Mademoiselle
Valle presented herself at the massive front door and asked for
Lord Coombe. The expression of her face, and a certain intensity
of manner, caused the serious-looking head servant, who wore no
livery, to come forward instead of leaving her to the footmen.
"His lordship engaged with--a business person--and must not be
disturbed," he said. "He is also going out."
"He will see me," replied Mademoiselle Valle. "If you give him
this card he will see me."
She was a plainly dressed woman, but she had a manner which removed
her entirely from the class of those who merely came to importune.
There was absolute certainty in the eyes she fixed with steadiness
on the man's face. He took her card, though he hesitated.
"If he does not see me," she added, "he will be very much displeased."
"Will you come in, ma'am, and take a seat for a moment?" he
ventured. "I will inquire."
The great hall was one of London's most celebrated. A magnificent
staircase swept up from it to landings whose walls were hung
with tapestries the world knew. In a gilded chair, like a throne,
Mademoiselle Valle sat and waited.
But she did not wait long. The serious-looking man without livery
returned almost immediately. He led Mademoiselle into a room
like a sort of study or apartment given up to business matters.
Mademoiselle Valle had never seen Lord Coombe's ceremonial evening
effect more flawless. Tall, thin and finely straight, he waited
in the centre of the room. He was evidently on the point of going
out, and the light-textured satin-lined overcoat he had already
thrown on revealed, through a suggestion of being winged, that he
wore in his lapel a delicately fresh, cream-coloured carnation.
A respectable, middle-class looking man with a steady,
blunt-featured face, had been talking to him and stepped quietly
aside as Mademoiselle entered. There seemed to be no question of
his leaving the room.
Coombe met his visitor half way:
"Something has alarmed you very much?" he said.
"Robin went out with Fraulein Hirsch this afternoon," she said
quickly. "They went to Kensington Gardens. They have not come
back--and it is nine o'clock. They are always at home by six."
"Will you sit down," he said. The man with the steady face was
listening intently, and she realized he was doing so and that,
somehow, it was well that he should.
"I do not think there is time for any one to sit down," she said,
speaking more quickly than before. "It is not only that she has
not come back. Fraulein Hirsch has presented her to one of her old
employers-a Lady Etynge. Robin was delighted with her. She has a
daughter who is in France--,"
"Marguerite staying with her aunt in Paris," suddenly put in the
voice of the blunt-featured man from his side of the room.
"Helene at a Covent in Tours," corrected Mademoiselle, turning a
paling countenance towards him and then upon Coombe. "Lady Etynge
spoke of wanting to engage some nice girl as a companion to her
daughter, who is coming home. Robin thought she might have the
good fortune to please her. She was to go to Lady Etynge's house
to tea sine afternoon and be shown the rooms prepared for Helene.
She thought the mother charming."
"Did she mention the address?" Coombe asked at once.
"The house was in Berford Place-a large house at a corner. She
chanced to see Lady Etynge go into it one day or we should not
have known. She did not notice the number. Fraulein Hirsch thought
it was 97A. I have the Blue Book, Lord Coombe--through the
Peerage--through the Directory! There is no Lady Etynge and there
is no 97A in Berford Place! That is why I came here."
The man who had stood aside, stepped forward again. It was as if
he answered some sign, though Lord Coombe at the moment crossed
the hearth and rang the bell.
"Scotland Yard knows that, ma'am," said the man. "We've had our
eyes on that house for two weeks, and this kind of thing is what
we want."
"The double brougham," was Coombe's order to the servant who
answered his ring. Then he came back to Mademoiselle.
"Mr. Barkstow is a detective," he said. "Among the other things
he has done for me, he has, for some time, kept a casual eye on
Robin. She is too lovely a child and too friendless to be quite
safe. There are blackguards who know when a girl has not the
usual family protection. He came here to tell me that she had been
seen sitting in Kensington Gardens with a woman Scotland Yard has
reason to suspect."
"A black 'un!" said Barkstow savagely. "If she's the one we think
she is-a black, poisonous, sly one with a face that no girl could
suspect."
Coombe's still countenance was so deadly in the slow lividness,
which Mademoiselle saw began to manifest itself, that she caught
his sleeve with a shaking hand.
"She's nothing but a baby!" she said. "She doesn't know what a baby
she is. I can see her eyes frantic with terror! She'd go mad."
"Good God!" he said, in a voice so low it scarcely audible.
He almost dragged her out of the room, though, as they passed
through the hall, the servants only saw that he had given the
lady his arm-and two of the younger footmen exchanged glances with
each other which referred solely to the inimitableness of the cut
of his evening overcoat.
When they entered the carriage, Barkstow entered with them and
Mademoiselle Valle leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and
her face clutched in her hands. She was trying to shut out from
her mental vision a memory of Robin's eyes.
"If--if Fraulein Hirsch is--not true," she broke out once. "Count
von Hillern is concerned. It has come upon me like a flash. Why
did I not see before?"
The party at the big house, where the red carpet was rolled across
the pavement, was at full height when they drove into the Place.
Their brougham did not stop at the corner but at the end of the
line of waiting carriages.
Coombe got out and looked up and down the thoroughfare.
"It must be done quietly. There must be no scandal," he said. "The
policeman on the beat is an enormous fellow. You will attend to
him, Barkstow," and Barkstow nodded and strolled away.
Coombe walked up the Place and down on the opposite side until he
was within a few yards of the corner house. When he reached this
point, he suddenly quickened his footsteps because he saw that
someone else was approaching it with an air of intention. It was
a man, not quite as tall as himself but of heavier build and with
square held shoulders. As the man set his foot upon the step,
Coombe touched him on the arm and said something in German.
The man started angrily and then suddenly stood quite still and
erect.
"It will be better for us to walk up the Place together," Lord
Coombe said, with perfect politeness.
If he could have been dashed down upon the pavement and his head
hammered in with the handle of a sword, or if he could have been
run through furiously again and again, either or both of these
things would have been done. But neither was possible. It also was
not possible to curse aloud in a fashionable London street. Such
curses as one uttered must be held in one's foaming mouth between
one's teeth. Count von Hillern knew this better than most men
would have known it. Here was one of those English swine with whom
Germany would deal in her own way later.
They walked back together as if they were acquaintances taking a
casual stroll.
"There is nothing which would so infuriate your--Master-as
a disgraceful scandal," Lord Coombe's highbred voice suggested
undisturbedly. "The high honour of a German officer-the knightly
bearing of a wearer of the uniform of the All Highest-that sort
of thing you know. All that sort of thing!"
Von Hillern ground out some low spoken and quite awful German words.
If he had not been trapped-if he had been in some quiet by-street!
"The man walking ahead of us is a detective from Scotland Yard.
The particularly heavy and rather martial tread behind us is that
of a policeman much more muscular than either of us. There is a
ball going on in the large house with the red carpet spread across
the pavement. I know the people who are giving it. There are a
good many coachmen and footmen about. Most of them would probably
recognize me."
It became necessary for Count von Hillern actually to wipe away
certain flecks of foam from his lips, as he ground forth again
more varied and awful sentiments in his native tongue.
"You are going back to Berlin," said Coombe, coldly. "If we English
were not such fools, you would not be here. You are, of course,
not going into that house."
Von Hillern burst into a derisive laugh.
"You are going yourself," he said. "You are a worn-out old ROUE,
but you are mad about her yourself in your senile way."
"You should respect my age and decrepitude," answered Coombe. "A
certain pity for my gray hairs would become your youth. Shall we
turn here or will you return to your hotel by some other way?"
He felt as if the man might a burst a blood vessel if he were
obliged to further restrain himself.
Von Hillern wheeled at the corner and confronted him.
"There will come a day--" he almost choked.
"Der Toy? Naturally," the chill of Coombe's voice was a sound to
drive this particular man at this particular, damnably-thwarted
moment, raving mad. And not to be able to go mad! Not to be able!
"Swine of a doddering Englishman! Who would envy you--trembling
on your lean shanks--whatsoever you can buy for yourself. I spit
on you-spit!"
"Don't," said Coombe. "You are sputtering to such an extent that
you really ARE, you know."
Von Hillern whirled round the corner.
Coombe, left alone, stood still a moment.
"I was in time," he said to himself, feeling somewhat nauseated.
"By extraordinary luck, I was in time. In earlier days one would
have said something about 'Provadence'." And he at once walked
back.