Chapter 2
Welton Keynes was so much interested by this second adventure in the neighbourhood that, changing his intention, he decided not to leave it until he had learnt all he could about the mysterious Miss Ferriby, whose eccentricities had excited so strongly the gossiping old lady with the pretty daughter.
He therefore went back to The Lawns, but mistaking his way it was some time before he arrived once more before the green door in the wall. Here, he pulled the iron handle.
Whether it rang or not he could not tell, as there followed no perceptible sound. In a few moments, however, he was conscious that an eye was looking at him through a small grating in the upper part of the door, which he had not previously noticed.
As noiselessly as it had been opened, the little trap was closed and the door opened.
"Is Miss Ferriby at home?" asked Welton of the tall footman in plain black livery who opened the door that showed a paved path up to the rustic porch of the house.
"I'll see, sir. Will you come this way?"
The man led the way along the path, which was bordered by a tangle of late autumn flowers, through a pretty and beautifully kept garden. In the gloaming Welton could see the smooth lawns which gave the house its present name, the massed clusters of flowers in the borders, and the peeps of tree and shrub, pond and mossy bank beyond.
A little suburban paradise, bright with colour and pleasant to ear, sight and smell, Welton was struck with the ridiculous contrast the place presented, with its peaceful beauties, to the sinister rumours which the old lady with the daughter had spread about it.
The house itself was very unpretending, but was evidently much larger than would have been thought from the glimpse he had obtained of its roof and upper story from over the wall.
A long wing, red brick and mellow with years like the rest, was built out at one side of it; and tiny little gabled windows perked up their heads from the red tiled roof amid clusters of dying clematis and brown Virginia creeper, the long empty strings of which hung down in a scanty fringe over the lower windows.
The servant led the way through the little rustic porch and the wide doorway into a hall which presented a striking contrast to the unpretending outside of the house.
It was luxuriously furnished with thick pile carpets and handsome leopard skin and tiger skin rugs, with marble statuettes on handsome pedestals, and masses of flowers and long feathery ferns in great brass-bound tubs and strange shaped majolica vessels.
The staircase was wide, shallow and gracefully curved; and on the wide landing he could see handsome velvet lounges, and a placid-faced Hindu god sitting serenely on a massive teak table, surrounded by palms and bowls of hothouse roses.
Welton Keynes was shown into a little sitting room which was evidently used as a waiting room for visitors. He supposed that the applicants for Miss Ferriby's charity would probably be the persons for whom it was intended.
The room was at the front of the house, was not more than ten or twelve feet square, and was plainly furnished with mahogany, and amply provided with writing materials.
"Your name, sir?"
Welton said, "I have come in answer to an advertisement for a secretary. But I dare say I'm too late."
The footman took the card, and Welton Keynes was left alone.
He looked out of the window into the little garden. The man had turned on the electric light, but he had not drawn the curtains, and Welton could look out into the grey gloom in the pretty garden, and inhale the fragrance of a sweetbriar bush through the open window. The evening was wonderfully warm for the time of year, and as he seated himself in a rush and cane armchair with cheerful cushions, and rested his arm upon the window ledge, he thought that this was the prettiest, the most charming residence near London which he had ever entered.
There was something quite exceptional about the air of peace and harmony which reigned both inside and out, and which made the high outer walls of the garden, with their picturesque covering of fruit and flower, remind him of the walls of a convent, shutting out the cares and wickedness of the world.
He could not see very much of the flowers and the lawns in the grey evening, so he presently turned to the table which stood near one of the walls of the room, and picked up one of the newspapers which lay there, apparently placed for the use of the casual visitor.
It was one of the daily papers, and the first page on which he cast his eye was the illustrated one, with pictures of the people most in vogue, bad sketches with very little likeness to the originals. At the bottom was a portrait of a man who had startled the world by the murder of a woman under exceptionally brutal circumstances. The name he went by was "Henry Ward," and a reward was being offered for any information which would lead to his apprehension. The description of the man was given underneath his portrait, and he was described as about thirty years of age, five feet six inches in height, with black hair and eyes and beard, spare of figure, and with a slight stoop.
Casually Welton read these details and looked at the portrait of the man, thinking how very unlike a murderer he looked, and wondering whether his guilt could really be proved.
Then he put down the paper, and began to wonder how soon he would be interviewed, or told that his services would not be required by Miss Ferriby.
He went back to the window, and looked out again. He heard the sound of a car stopping outside the garden wall, and wondered whether this portended the arrival of another would-be secretary. Without his hearing any bell, he saw the tall footman who had led him in, go down the path and admit a man, whom he showed up to the house, just as he had done with Welton Keynes.
And it flashed through Welton's mind how common a type was that of the murderer, Henry Ward, when this man, the very first he had seen after looking at the picture, was almost as like him as if the portrait had been his own.
There was the slight figure, the slight stoop, the dark hair and beard. The man was rather shabbily dressed, and looked like a superior sort of mechanic. Welton wondered whether he would be shown into the room where he himself was.
But he did not come. And again there was a long silence. He grew impatient. It seemed to him that this quiet, peaceful house was like a mansion of the dead. For quite a quarter of an hour from the time when the man with the beard was shown in, Welton heard no sound whatever, except the whistling of a tradesman's boy walking along the road outside.
He began to remember the gruesome suggestions and rumours which he had heard that afternoon from the old lady with the pretty daughter, and to wish he had never come into the mysterious house about which the neighbours gossiped. He looked at his watch. He had been half an hour in the room, and he began to think that he had been forgotten by the servant who let him in.
Without his hearing a footstep outside, the door suddenly opened, just as he had begun to think he would not wait any longer, but would make his exit without any ceremony, and the man who had let him in said, "Miss Ferriby will see you, sir. This way."
Welton followed the man through the beautiful hall to a door on the other side, which he opened into a long, low-ceilinged and very attractive room, hung with pale pink damask, and furnished with Louis Quinze chairs and sofa in white and gold, upholstered in delicate tapestry. Everything was dainty and suggestive of Dresden china shepherdesses and the days of the spinet and powdered hair. The carpet had a pale ground upon which loosely woven garlands of pale pink flowers were tied with pale blue ribbons. A harp stood in one corner, a grand piano in a painted case stood in another. A faint perfume of potpourri was perceptible, growing stronger as he passed two enormous porcelain jars which stood on little ebony pedestals, one on either side of a doorway hung with a pale satin portière.
Between these curtains the servant led the way, and standing back, announced, "Mr. Welton Keynes." He allowed the visitor to pass him into the inner room, which stood at right angles with that through which they had just passed.
This inner room was a complete contrast to the other
. The ceiling was much higher; the walls, instead of being hung with pale tapestries, were draped with heavy stuffs, of which the predominating colours were rich, dark green, and red, and gold. The woodwork of the room was stained dark brown, and over the doorways were carved ornaments in dark oak. A lofty, old-fashioned fireplace faced the door by which Welton had entered, and on each side of it stood a tall carved Spanish chair, heavy with rich embroideries, and gorgeous in rich tones of dark brown, and red, and burnished gold.
Everything in the apartment was rich and handsome, from the lion skin that lay stretched upon the hearth, in front of the little fire that smouldered in the grate, to the old Italian furniture and the painted ceiling.
Perched high in one of the big Spanish armchairs, the richly coloured back of which stretched high above her head, sat the old woman whom Welton had rescued from the rascals in the lane.
Without her hat, her head with its mass of tousled grey hair looked even more masculine, more imposing in its massiveness and squareness, than it had looked on his first meeting with her. Over it, and around her shoulders, she wore a long shawl of fine black lace, fastened on each side of her head by an enormous tortoiseshell pin, studded with gold and hung with gold chains.
She was now dressed in a loose robe of dark red silk, embroidered with what looked like tarnished gold. With these accessories, it was impossible to detect her deformity. If he had now seen her for the first time, Welton Keynes would have been moved almost to admiration by the fire in the big grey eyes, by the square jaw with its look of will and strength, by the large features, the long white hands, the air of quiet dignity and repose about the old woman's whole person.
The shortness of her stature was partly concealed by the fact that she had her feet on a high square footstool, over which the edge of her dress fell.
Welton was not in the least surprised at the discovery of the identity of Miss Ferriby with the woman he had rescued; he had had an intuition that this would prove to be the case.
In a mild and gentle voice she said, "Ah! And so we meet again after all, Mr. Keynes. And so you wish to be my secretary?"
"I'm afraid I'm too late, Miss Ferriby. I'm told you've been besieged."
"So I have, so I have. But I'm a difficult person to please. I've seen between thirty and forty young men today, and I've put them all off till tomorrow."
"And tomorrow you're going to make up your mind?"
"I've made up my mind tonight."
The gracious manner in which she uttered the words made it impossible to doubt her meaning, and Welton bowed in some confusion.
"That is, of course, if you care to come."
"I shall be delighted, if you think I am qualified," he stammered.
"I am sure you are. What I chiefly need is someone with tact to deal with a large and troublesome correspondence, brought about by my dabbling in what is called philanthropy. A good name! What can a poor, deformed old woman like me do in the world but be charitable? It's a form of vanity, and the only one open to me to indulge. Well, you shall open my letters, sift them, and answer them. You have a home in London?"
"I'm in lodgings with a younger brother."
"Good. You can keep them. It will be pleasanter for you, I dare say, to have the relief and change of a little journey morning and evening. And the salary will suit you?"
"It is more, much more than I feel myself qualified to earn."
She smiled, showing her splendid teeth, and making him wonder once more whether they could possibly be her own.
"We shall see. I may want you later to come with me to the Riviera. Nothing to prevent that, I hope?"
"I should like it. And if you want references..."
"I do not," she interrupted quickly. "After all, this is not our first meeting, you know. Tomorrow then, at ten?"
She held out her hand in gracious dismissal, as a queen might have done, and at the same time touched the wall on her left hand.
A minute later the tall footman appeared, holding up the silken portière, and Welton was ushered out by the way he had come. In another minute he was in the road outside, and the green door was shut behind him.
Contused, bewildered, disturbed as he was by the strange things he had seen that evening, Welton walked a few steps slowly down the lane, and then stopped.
He was suddenly seized with the fancy that he should like to know what had become of the man with the black beard, whom he had seen ushered into the house half an hour before.
Although on first seeing the man he had had no other suspicious thought concerning him than that he resembled the murderer, Henry Ward, the strangeness of the circumstances surrounding his visit to the neighbourhood now filled Welton's mind with suspicion, and he resolved to hang about on the chance of seeing the man come out.
It would not do, however, to be seen hanging about in the lane, and he therefore walked to the end and, passing the cottage where the lady and the pretty girl lived, and finding the corner house on the opposite side of the lane where it joined the road to be tenantless, he slipped inside and got over the rail into the back garden, and easily concealed himself among the straggling bushes that grew there in all the luxuriance of complete neglect.
From time to time he leaned over the railing and looked along the lane towards the green door of The Lawns, and at last, on one of these occasions, he saw someone come out.
But his curiosity was disappointed: it was a woman.
She came on foot up the lane in the gloom of the evening, and Welton, retreating behind his screen of evergreens, watched her. And as she came past he was struck by two or three circumstances. In the first place, she was tall and walked strangely. In the second place, she stooped slightly; in the third place, she carried her dress awkwardly.
And a shiver passed through Welton as he became convinced, when the figure passed close to him on the other side of the railing, of two things. The first, that the figure was not a woman at all, but a man. The second was that the man was the very man he had seen entering The Lawns three-quarters of an hour before.
Miss Ferriby's Clients Page 2