The Raven's Seal

by Andrei Baltakmens

  She said to herself: You are a fool, but you have sworn to do this. So forget honesty and stand by your words and your wits, girl. They are frauds and liars, and subtle with it, all about you. You are in their house. Hypocrites all. But there is one true man, locked up in the Bells, who never asked you for this, nor intended this danger, but needs this of you, and it will be done straight for him.

  With a shaking hand, she drew down the box and held it tight against her. She heard papers sliding and shifting inside. With lighter, quicker steps she hastened back to the door.

  She hurried down. The clocks told the quarter-hour as she descended. She made her way past the kitchen, where the smallest maid dozed on the warmth of the hearth. She passed the door into the mews and ran to where her brother waited.

  “Do you have it?” he said.

  The box was in the crook of her arm.

  “Let me take it,” said Toby.

  “No. Take the light. I will carry this.”

  She drew up her hood, and cast the corner of her cloak over her burden. The boy brightened the lamp. Together they hastened away, into the roaring, rain-swept dark.

  IT HAD GROWN late in Mr. Bensey’s little set of rooms above Campion’s, and the frost etched its tracery of branches, lines, and links with a patient, steady hand against the windows. The fire had gone down and the candles had gone down, in a curious cabal. Many papers from an open box were scattered across the table and formed a trail to the fireside. There, in the easy-chair, Mr. William Quillby slumped, quite asleep. Cassie Redruth drooped on one side of the table. She had before her a paper, and the line of concentration that formed on her brow when she read was pronounced, though she had, this last quarter-hour, read the same half-page in fits and starts a dozen times or more. Mr. Bensey, on the other side of the table, nearest the window and perhaps a little sharper for the draft there, still patiently scanned the correspondence and bills before him.

  At last the girl nodded and sighed, rested her head on her folded arms, and did not raise it again. Mr. Bensey placed one more letter in a pile at his side, added a mark to his memorandum book, and looked on the sleeping girl with a singular expression of tenderness and admiration. By nature a meek and cheerful man, disappointed in his condition but not given to haphazard brooding or discontent, Mr. Bensey was moved to contemplate how strange each human soul is. All our thoughts, fancies, habits, and memories are no more than these scraps of paper, marked with fragments of ourselves, and the whole of our history and nature is a great book, which we read in fragments and parts, a labyrinth of instances and recollections, never entire and never divisible: a veritable mystery, for which our only clue is imagination and compassion.

  Mr. Bensey looked over the papers he had browsed through and puzzled and pored over these three and a half days, reflecting that here he had glimpsed so much calculation, cruelty, and avarice in such plain matters, in so many common bills and invoices. One thing was plain in all these obsequious notes and painstaking accounts: the Withnail brothers were no more than agents and proxies for their unnamed partner. Mr. Bensey glanced at the sleeping girl, beautiful in her fatigue and uncertain repose, and again touched in his mind the thing he had found.

  “I have it,” said Mr. Bensey, in a voice that surprised even him in its firmness, breaking the rest of the torpid room.

  Quillby started and twisted in the chair by the fire. “Wharisit?”

  The girl stirred and looked at Mr. Bensey blearily, through a veil of rich hair. “What? What have you found?” Her voice was softened by sleep.

  “That is,” said Mr. Bensey, abashed, “I believe I have the key to the matter. At least, it is compelling. Very compelling.”

  Quillby rose unsteadily, and still yawning, shuffled to the table, while Mr. Bensey tried to clear a small space, which led Cassie, in her impatience, to toss heaps of papers onto the spare chair and the window box. They gathered around Mr. Bensey, and the papers he had garnered up were spread out one by one.

  “What are they?” asks Cassie.

  “Bills,” whispered Quillby. “Tradesmen’s accounts. Promissory notes. Memoranda. Loans. There is enough debt here to ruin any man.”

  “That is why I thought it notable,” said Mr. Bensey.

  “But in whose name?” asked Cassie.

  “The name is Kempe,” returned William, wonderingly.

  “Mr. Kempe, in debt!”

  “No, if you please,” interposed Mr. Bensey. “At least, it is not your Mr. Kempe. It is Mr. Bartholemew Kempe. It is the father: Mr. Kempe the Elder.”

  Quillby let out a long breath. “His father. On the verge of ruin. What a thing it must be for a cautious, ambitious son to have an improvident father.”

  “You see,” said Mr. Bensey, touching the markers almost reverently, “this is the hold they have on him; a considerable hold. This is how he is bound to their conspiracy.”

  Cassie sat again, but her back was straight, her expression grave, and her eyes dark. “Then if he is bound, he shall be broken. That is all.”

  And while Quillby wrote frantic notes into his little book, Mr. Bensey bent to trim the wick of the smothering candle and thought what a very terrible thing it would be to be in the path of that fierce girl’s resolve, while she sat quietly across from him and stared at the trace of frost on the window.

  MRS. WENRENDER entertained at home, and the acolytes of style gathered. The fashionable gentlemen about town, libertines and rakehells, were drawn together this evening and feigned indifference—and confounded the same with exercises in wit, and sneering—and furtively judged the effect of their calves and waistcoats in the mirrors that ran about the parlour. Mrs. Wenrender’s girls skittered about, fluttering and chattering gaily, a mass of ribbons and silks and rosy arms, powdered bosoms and bright, hectic eyes. If the pleasures of the evening seemed a little forced, if the room was at once too bright and too vivid, the conversation decorous, arch, and fatuous, so be it. For fashion is a life unto itself, and no mean blade of reality could intrude here to break its complacency under Mrs. Wenrender’s placid aegis.

  A door opened and Miss Redruth stepped through, and for a moment the strong, slender girl in her sober dress caught the eye—she moved like a handsome cat set among a flock of preening, chattering pigeons. She bent and spoke to Mrs. Wenrender, who nodded and tapped her fan against her palm. Mrs. Wenrender glanced across the room, and Cassie followed her gaze. Their attention coincided on Miss Cozzens.

  “Miss Cozzens is lively tonight,” remarked Mrs. Wenrender.

  Miss Cozzens had some six or seven admirers about her, and she spoke and gestured brightly, while her eyes shone, and she had never been more beautiful or imperious.

  “She has an air of triumph about her,” said Cassie, very low.

  “Then go to, girl,” urged Mrs. Wenrender, “and find out what my little general’s latest conquest is.”

  Calmly, as if measuring her thoughts with her steps, Cassie approached Miss Cozzens.

  Miss Cozzens smiled and raised her pointed chin, and her sapphire earrings captured the light and reflected the blue of her eyes and set off the long, white rise of her neck.

  “Why, what beautiful earrings!” exclaimed Cassie. “I don’t believe I have ever seen anything quite so fine.”

  “They are a gift from a devoted admirer of mine,” replied Miss Cozzens. “Now don’t pout, Mr. Pettinger. If you gave me gifts as pretty as these, I would wear them also—but you never do.”

  “Surely the gentleman is in love with you,” said Cassie.

  Miss Cozzens tilted her head. “In love? Why do you say that, dear girl?”

  “I mean,” returned Cassie demurely, “to make you such a costly gift. No one would give me a thing such as that.”

  “But my dear, have you not a lover?” asked Miss Cozzens.

  Cassie looked down. “No, miss.”

  “Demned shame. Dashed ’endsome girl,” Mr. Pettinger remarked and instantly regretted his presumption.

 
“Be quiet, Mr. Pettinger, if you please, and keep your opinions to yourself. Surely I recall that you were—that is, you are involved in some peculiar, romantic attachment.”

  “I visit a prisoner,” said Cassie. “I can’t say that we are attached. That’s but servant’s gossip.”

  One or two of the women fanned themselves and glanced away.

  “Well, the case is made,” said Miss Cozzens. “We must find you a lover. I mean a respectable sort, and then the dear idiot will be sure to give you jewels.”

  “I cannot think how you do it,” Cassie renewed her pursuit.

  “Do what, my dear?”

  “Speak slightingly of the gentleman.”

  “Why ever not, you goose?”

  “Why, when you rely so much on his favour and his generosity.”

  Miss Cozzens glanced across the room, and a faint, arch smile touched her lips. Cassie did not follow her gaze, though she guessed who lingered there.

  “My dear girl,” said Miss Cozzens, softly, “do you not see that men are boundless fools for us?”

  “Is he here?” Cassie whispered to Miss Cozzens.

  “He is here. He won’t dare speak to me in company, but he can see how lovely these little jewels look. It will drive him mad, and I shall work it to my advantage.”

  They moved a little aside.

  “I don’t understand,” said Cassie, “surely that gentleman could overthrow you, or dismiss you, and you would be undone.”

  “On the contrary: he would be undone without me.”

  “How so?”

  “Because the poor fool thinks he loves me, because he is quite lonely, I am persuaded, and I listen to his fretting and complaining without rebuking him, unlike his shrew-wife. And because, as a consequence, I know his secrets.”

  “He cannot be such a weak man as to be so under your power.”

  “I assure you, he is. You are a good-natured girl, but if you are to take a lover, you must understand these things.”

  “But what if his wife found out about those earrings?” said Cassie, adding a little breathlessness. “He would take them back, would he not?”

  “He could never do that,” scoffed Miss Cozzens.

  “But why?”

  “He has good reason not to.”

  “I expect he would not like to make you angry.”

  “La! As if that is all he had to care about.”

  “Now you are being subtle and making fun of us both,” said Cassie.

  “Look here, you little goose. He gives me these, and he urges me to remember a certain occasion, a few years ago, when we dined together and spoke of such-and-such a thing together. He thinks that this is such a clever ruse, and if any fellow (such as a lawyer or a constable) should ask me to recall that occasion, this is what he means me to say. But I know better, and he knows that if I told anyone this thing, he would be discovered.”

  “But what is the occasion he wants to conceal?” asked Cassie.

  “Some ghastly, idiotic scandal about a duel and a murder.”

  “And would you not do everything he asks?” said Cassie.

  “As long as it is in my interest,” returned Miss Cozzens serenely. “And there is my power.”

  Mr. Kempe made ready to leave. He bowed stiffly before Mrs. Wenrender, who extended him her hand. Taking it, he turned to Miss Cozzens, and for a moment his troubled eyes rested wholly on her. Miss Cozzens tossed her exquisite head, and tiny splinters of blue flames flickered in the jewels hanging so delicately and prettily from her ears.

  Kempe inclined fractionally to her. His mouth moved, as though he wanted air, but then it closed, set and hard and immeasurably tired.

  “So goes the world,” said Miss Cozzens. “Mistresses must love their master no better than themselves, and that is their vanity. But men love their mistresses better than themselves, and that is their tragedy.”

  Mrs. Wenrender beckoned, and Cassie returned to her side. Yet, though her manner was pensive, her thoughts exulted: You vain, prattling creature, you have shown all his devices quite plainly, and he is revealed. We know what binds him to silence, and he shall not evade us!

  CHAPTER XIX.

  Brought Down.

  MR. QUILLBY CALLED on Mr. Kempe, but Kempe was not at home. That gentleman had not been at home for several days, but Quillby, pressing the urgency of his visit with the exasperated butler, forced his way into the hall. The butler proposed that Mrs. Kempe might consent to come down.

  Quillby waited in the hall. It was muted and dully tasteful, and betrayed nothing of character or interest.

  Mrs. Kempe came down the stairs. Quillby squinted up into the gloom. She was not a pretty woman. She had a small mouth, perpetually drawn together as if in dislike, a pressed-up nose, and black eyes, too close for the span of her brow. She stopped on the last step, and her white hand rested on the banister.

  “Mr. Quillby, my husband is not here. Perhaps if you would consent to call another time.”

  “I have called several times already.”

  “Mr. Kempe, I say, is out. He will be sorry that he has missed you again.”

  “Mrs. Kempe, let us not continue to deceive each other.”

  She raised her head proudly. “Very well. Why then do you persist in harrowing and harassing my husband?”

  “Your husband knows much and is capable of materially affecting a case that deeply concerns me.”

  “You mean the case of your friend, Grainger, the murderer.”

  “He is no more a murderer than you or I.”

  “Twelve of his fellow men beg to differ.”

  “They were not appraised of the facts as I am—as your husband is.”

  “You are sure?” Her dark eyes searched him.

  “The evidence I possess makes me certain,” returned William.

  “You cause him so much pain!” said Mrs. Kempe suddenly, and her simplicity gave William pause.

  “That is not my intention.”

  “My husband has never been confident in himself. He has always allowed himself to be overmastered by stronger wills. But he has never confided in me. Perhaps there is another—but I refuse to speak of that!”

  William, unconsciously, stepped closer. “Madam, you are distracted.”

  She recovered herself and drew breath. “My husband does not love me. I am reconciled to this. But I will protect him and the honour of our family.”

  “Let him vindicate his honour. Let him speak truthfully with me.”

  “Please. He is not here.”

  “Then permit me to leave a note,” said William.

  “If you will.”

  William scrawled a few lines in his pocket memorandum-book. When he finished, he hesitated with the paper in hand.

  Mrs. Kempe interpreted his reluctance. “Do you imagine, sir, that I would intercept a private communication intended only for my husband?”

  “No. Assuredly, I do not.”

  She leaned down and he placed the note in her hands. “Please see that Mr. Kempe receives this.”

  “I will. Please do not trouble yourself, Mr. Quillby.”

  He could not know what this little service would cost her, nor reckon up her passionate unhappiness, her suspicions, the thoughts and disappointments that consumed her. William bowed. The butler opened the door. Mrs. Kempe followed him to the threshold. He turned as he prepared to leave, but all speech seemed useless. They would not meet again.

  CASSIE REDRUTH woke at the sound of hooves in the yard and the shouts of the driver and the stable-boy as the horses and carriage were brought out. Mrs. Wenrender had retired for the night, so Cassie rose from her narrow bed, pulled on a wrap, and went to look down from the window. It was a wild night, with a brisk wind turning and blowing everywhere, scattering and breaking the new leaves. The horses were being hitched and the carriage-lamps lit. Then the kitchen-maid knocked and called that the mistress wanted her maid.

  Cassie found Mrs. Wenrender in the parlour. Miss Cozzens was there. Mrs. Wen
render was holding her hands and speaking urgently, but when Cassie entered, Miss Cozzens burst out:

  “Miss Redruth, praise God you are here! You are so direct and sensible. You will know what to do.”

  “Why—what is the matter?”

  Miss Cozzens bit her lip and did not reply. Mrs. Wenrender was grim. Without her finery, her wigs, her powder, she was but an aging woman, grey and resolute. “Cassie, go dress at once and fetch my shawl. We set out directly.”

  Cassie hastened to obey, while the carriage was brought round. It was not far to Miss Cozzens’s lodging, but the horses were driven at haste through the dark streets to a slender house on Tidenell Street. The three women rode together in silence: Miss Cozzens anxious and biting on her thumb, Mrs. Wenrender impassive, Cassie alert and suspenseful. When they stopped and alighted, Miss Cozzens turned and clung to Mrs. Wenrender.

  “I can’t bear to go in there again!”

  “Hush,” said that lady sternly. “You must bear up and show us.”

  No servant opened the door. They went up the darkened steps, Cassie following, into the pretty little house with its bright carven gables. The hallway was dark; a single candle, almost burnt away, rested on the corner of a slender side-table as if negligently set down.

  But what a hideous thing to show in the air beside it. What a ghastly shadow to cast, bloated and massive, on the wall above the staircase.

  Miss Cozzens was weeping. Mrs. Wenrender suppressed a startled cry.

  Mr. Kempe was hanging from the neck by a rope strung from the topmost banister: utterly motionless, betrayed into no false movement by a flicker of the fading candle-flame, a dreadful counterweight, suspended against all strife and passion as Death draws down against Life. His face was pale and distorted, his eyes bulged, his tongue pressed between his teeth. His arms and legs fell straight and rigid as lead.

  Miss Cozzens reached for Mrs. Wenrender, who was staring up at the horror. Absently, she pushed Miss Cozzens aside, and that lady turned into Cassie’s arms, moaning, “The wretch. The wretch has ruined me.”

  “The poor, poor man,” whispered Cassie. “I had not thought he was so very sad.” But what a storm of apprehension and surmise was whirling in her breast, horror and pity and fear all beating against each other.