Devil's Dice
Page 7
low tone. "Don't mention it to anybody, but herladyship is simply furious because Dora and I love each other. She hadset her mind on her daughter marrying a peer."
"Then you haven't yet obtained her ladyship's consent--eh?"
"No. We love each other, and Dora says she intends to marry me,therefore we have agreed to defy the maternal anger."
"Quite right, old chap," I said. "Under the circumstances you arejustified. Besides, knowing the unhappiness in the Fyneshade menage,Dora is not likely to marry anybody she does not love."
"True," he said. Then tossing his cigarette into the grate he rose, anddeclaring he had a business appointment, he struggled into his overcoatand, grasping my hand in adieu, said:
"You seem confoundedly glum to-day. Shake yourself up, old fellow. Weshall soon be hearing of your marriage!"
"My marriage!" I gasped, starting. His jovial words cut me to thequick. They had an ominous meaning. "My marriage!"
"Yes," he said. "We shall soon be hearing all about it."
"Never, I hope--never."
"Bah! I was of the same mind until a month ago. Some day you, likemyself, will discover one woman who is not a coquette. Ta-ta for thepresent," and he strode airily out, whistling a gay air, and leaving mealone with my bitter sorrow.
Once or twice during our conversation I had been sorely tempted todisclose the whole of the dismal circumstances and seek his advice, butI had hesitated. He was perhaps too full of his newly-found joy totrouble himself over my grief, and, after all, he might consider me afool for allowing myself to become fascinated by a mere chance-metacquaintance about whom I knew absolutely nothing, and whose principalefforts were directed towards enveloping herself in an impenetrable veilof mystery. No; I resolved to preserve my own secret and act upon theplans I had already formulated. With bitterness I sat and brooded overBurns' lines:
Pleasures are like poppies spread. You seize the flower, its bloom is shed. Or like the snowflake on the river, A moment white--then gone forever.
At noon I roused myself and started forth on the first stage of a searchafter truth, a search which I swore within myself I would not relinquishuntil I had learnt Sybil's true history; nay, I had resolved to make theelucidation of the mystery of her tragic end the one object in my life.
It occurred to me that from the police I might at least ascertain hername and the nature of the information upon which the warrant had beenissued; therefore I walked to New Scotland Yard and sought audience ofthe Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. For half an hour Iaired my heels in a bare, cheerless waiting-room at the end of a longstone corridor on the first floor, until at last a secretary enteredwith my card, and an intimation from the Chief that he regretted he had"no information to give on the subject."
Argument with the secretary proved unavailing, therefore I left, feelingthat I could hope for no assistance from the police.
Next it occurred to me to search the record of special marriage licencesat Doctors' Commons, and, taking a cab there, I was not long inobtaining what appeared to be the first clue, for at the Faculty OfficeI was shown the affidavit that had been made in application for aspecial licence, which read as follows:
"Canterbury Diocese, December 8, 1891.
"Appeared personally, Sybil Henniker, spinster, of Hereford Road,Bayswater, and prayed a special licence for the solemnisation ofmatrimony between her and Stuart Ridgeway, bachelor, of 49, ShaftesburyAvenue, London, and made oath that she believed that there is noimpediment of kindred or alliance, or any other lawful cause, nor anysuit commenced in any Ecclesiastical Court, to bar or hinder theproceedings of the said matrimony according to the tenor of suchlicence.
"Sworn before me,--
"John Hatchard (Registrar)."
The special licence had, it appeared, been granted on the following day,but the clerk said the applicant had been seen by his colleague, nowabsent.
Feeling that at least I should know the whereabouts of the strangecompany who held in their charge the lifeless form of the woman I loved,I drove rapidly to Bayswater, but when the cab turned from WestbourneGrove into Hereford Road, and I saw that the house for which I wassearching, the number of which appeared in the licence, was a smalltobacconist and newsvendor's, my heart again sank within me.
I alighted and made inquiry of the shopkeeper, but she knew of no younglady named Sybil, nor of any person named Henniker. Once again, then, Iwas foiled; the address given in the affidavit was false.
For hours I drove aimlessly about the streets and squares lying betweenPraed Street and Oxford Street, vaguely looking for a house I had neverdistinctly seen, until at last it grew dark; then, cold and wearied, Ireturned to my chambers.
As day succeeded day I continued my search, but could not grasp a singlecertainty. At Somerset House I could discover no facts regarding eitherthe marriage or the death, and advertisements I inserted in variousnewspapers, inquiring for the cabman who drove me home on the fatalmorning, elicited no reply.
Jack Bethune dropped in to see me daily and pestered me with inquiriesregarding the cause of my gloominess. Little, however, did he imaginethat I had been engaged through a whole fortnight in searching patientlyand methodically the registers of the great metropolitan cemeteries. ToKensal Green, Highgate, Abney Park, Nunhead, Dulwich, Brompton, Norwood,Crystal Palace, Lee, and elsewhere I went, always searching for thenames of Sybil Henniker or Sybil Ridgeway. This investigation provedlong and, alas! futile. I could obtain no clue whatever, all trace ofher had been so carefully hidden as to defy my vigilance.
At last, however, a month after that fatal night and just when theprospect of misery which my future offered seemed too terrible forendurance, I suddenly made a discovery. It was in the London office ofthe Woking Cemetery Company that I found in the register an entry of aninterment on the second day following the midnight ceremony, of "SybilRidgeway, wife of Stuart Ridgeway, of Shaftesbury Avenue." The addresswhence the body was removed was not given, but, taking the next trainfrom Waterloo to Woking, I was not long in finding, by aid of thecemetery-keeper's plan, away in a far corner of the ground a newly-madegrave.
Overcome with emotion, I stood before it in the fast-falling wintrytwilight, and saw lying upon the mound of brown earth a magnificentwreath of white immortelles. Attached to it was a limp visiting-card.Eagerly I took it up and inspected it.
Upon it, traced in ink that had become blurred and half-effaced by therain, there appeared some words. As I read them they seemed to glow inletters of fire; they held me spell-bound.
I lost courage to pursue my cold, calm, reasonable deductions; a kind ofhallucination came upon me--a mental picture of her tragic end--and Ifelt my reason reel.
A vertigo of terror seized me, as though the breath of destiny sweptover my brow.
The card secured to the great wreath was my own--the one I had givenSybil on the first evening we had met in the Casino Garden--but thewords written upon it amazed me. I stood breathless, dumbfounded,holding it between my trembling fingers, utterly unable to realise thetruth.
A portion of the writing upon it was in a well-formed man's hand, theremainder in a heavy calligraphy totally different. The rains hadrendered the writing faint and brown, yet in the fast-falling gloom Iwas enabled to decipher that one side bore the inscription--
"From your heart-broken husband--Stuart."
Then, turning it over, I read in a distinctly feminine hand the strangeexhortation--
"Seek, and you may find."
What did it mean? Was it an actual message to me from the grave? Didit not appear like a declaration from my dead love herself that somemysterious crime had been committed, and that she left its elucidationin my hands? I became lost in bewilderment.
The inscription, purporting to be written by myself, was not in myhandwriting, and I was puzzled to divine its meaning. That it had beenpenned at a date prior to the mysterious woman's words appeared certain,as the lines were almost obliterated. Yet on reflection I saw
that thisfact might be accounted for if that side of the card had been uppermost,and thus more exposed. But the mysterious words, "Seek, and you mayfind," were written in a different ink, upon which the action of theweather had had but little effect. The exhortation stood out plainlybefore my wondering eyes. By whose hand had it been traced? True, itwas not addressed personally to me, yet so ominous were the words that Icould not rid myself of the conviction that they were meant as an appealto me.
Why the wreath had been so carefully placed upon the grave, as if itwere a tribute from myself, was an inscrutable mystery; and the fivefirmly-written words on the reverse of the card contained a mysticmeaning that I could not follow.
For a long time I remained there until night closed in and the wintrymists gathered; then, detaching the card and placing it in mypocket-book, I wended my way between the white, ghostly tombs