The Blue Diamond

by Annie Haynes

  “What does she mean? Whom has she seen?”

  Dorothy’s face was very pale; great tears were standing in her eyes.

  “She thinks that the—the burglar—the one who tried to shoot Arthur—is Gregory, Arthur’s orchid man, you know, and—”

  “So he is, so he is!” wailed Minnie. “There is no mistake, Miss Dorothy. Oh, what a fool I have been! What a fool—and worse! It will be the death of me, Miss Mavis! I couldn’t live and face it.”

  “Minnie, what is the use of talking like that?” Mavis said wearily. “You will have to put up with it if it is so; but I can’t think—”

  She paused and revolved matters in her mind; of the man bending over Hilda she had caught only the most cursory glimpse; still, she had a vague feeling that in some sense his appearance had not been unfamiliar.

  After a moment’s bewilderment Mr. Gore stepped forward.

  “The girl is right enough!” he said excitedly. “I had the queerest feeling all the while that I had seen the fellow somewhere before, though I couldn’t locate him; but Arthur would have me go to look at the orchids yesterday, and this was the man who took us round.”

  “Oh, it was Jim Gregory, safe enough, sir!” Minnie said, looking up with dry, tearless eyes and twitching lips. “Why was I ever born?” with another burst of sobbing.

  “Come, come, my good girl,” he said, “you won’t do a bit of good by distressing yourself like that! You are not the only person who has been made a fool of over this business—you can console yourself by thinking that you are in just the same boat with a good many more!”

  “Ah, if that was all, sir!” Minnie gasped. “But—”

  “Yes, sir,” Mrs. Parkyns said severely—the events of the night had left her usually comely face unwontedly pale—“Minnie, finding as she had a key as fitted the door, has been meeting her young man in the conservatory when the family was at dinner.”

  “What! Do you mean to say that she let him in to-night?”

  “Oh, no, sir, no! She had nothing to do with that,” the housekeeper interposed. “It was before that.”

  “Is Mr. Gore here? Could I speak to him a moment?” The interruption came from Superintendent Stokes, who had suddenly appeared at the end of the passage.

  Mr. Gore bustled forward.

  “Certainly! What can I do for you?” he said.

  “Well, Sir Arthur is upset by all this, and it is no use asking him anything. There ought to be a magistrate here. I have taken the liberty of sending a dog-cart over for Squire Lewis.”

  “Quite right, superintendent, quite right! To take that poor thing’s depositions, I conclude?” Mr. Gore said, lowering his voice.

  The superintendent shook his head.

  “No, it is too late for that, sir. She passed away a few minutes ago.”

  “What dead? Well, well, poor thing!” the other said, looking very much shocked. “It seems terribly sudden. Well, it isn’t for us who have never known her temptations to judge her. If she sinned she has suffered for it, poor girl.”

  “Just so, sir,” the superintendent acquiesced respectfully. “If you could leave the ladies for a moment, sir, I could explain.”

  Mr. Gore moved aside with him, and Mavis went on.

  “I must go to my mother,” she said. “Try to control yourself, Minnie. We shall all be wiser another time.”

  “Yes, Miss Mavis!” But Minnie’s face was not any less woebegone—the shadow of a terrible fear still lay in her eyes.

  Dorothy followed her cousin and slid her hand into hers.

  “Mavis, did you hear the police officer say that Hilda was—dead?”

  Mavis shuddered.

  “Yes, I heard! But, Dorothy, I think I must be dazed. I don’t seem to care about anything—to be surprised at anything.”

  Dorothy’s soft brown eyes were full of tears.

  “It is all so dreadful! I cannot help thinking of her. Only a few hours ago she was as well as any of us, and now—and it is so terrible for him—poor Arthur!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “HE IS asking for you, Arthur, and he has but a short time to live. They have taken him into Jenkins’ room.”

  “Why?” Sir Arthur was sitting in his study, his head laid on his clasped arms on the writing-table. The face he raised as Garth Davenant entered was haggard and lined, there were dark circles round his eyes, and his mouth twitched convulsively.

  Garth laid his hand on his arm.

  “He must have taken the poison before she died, Arthur. It—it has taken rapid effect since, and Dr. Grieve says his hours are numbered.”

  Arthur looked at him with dull, lack-lustre eyes.

  “He was Gregory, you know, Garth—the best man I ever had for orchids,” he said in a monotonous tone.

  “Yes, yes, I know. We have all been blind, old chap. I must confess I thought—”

  “And he was Hilda’s husband,” Arthur went on as if he did not hear. “As I have been sitting here, Garth, that one phrase, ‘Hilda’s husband’ has been beating into my brain with ceaseless, senseless iteration.” His face worked painfully.

  The compassion in Garth’s eyes grew and deepened, but his voice was studiedly cold when he spoke.

  “Hilda’s husband,” he repeated steadily. “But there is much else to be told, Arthur, much that she wished you to know. Won’t you come and hear it?”

  For a moment Arthur hesitated, but the stronger will of the other man conquered, and he rose.

  Garth put his arm through his and led him, walking with the halting, uncertain step of extreme old age, to a room where another act of the tragedy was being played out.

  On the threshold Arthur hesitated; the narrow pallet bed had been drawn out to the middle of the room to suit the doctor’s convenience, and at a little table behind the bed Mr. Lewis, looking watchful and alert with his papers before him, sat waiting to write. Dr. Grieve was there, and Mr. Mainwaring, Mr. Pauncefort, the Davenants’ solicitor, and his own. Superintendent Stokes placed a chair for Sir Arthur. The young man’s gaze, after wandering round the room restlessly, had come back to the bed. He started incredulously as he saw the drawn ashen face, in which the only living things seemed to be the bright, black eyes that darted round incessantly, as he heard the heavy, laboured breathing.

  The sick man was trying to raise himself in bed; his finger was pointing at his late employer.

  “I am glad you have come, because I must tell you —must make you understand that it wasn’t her fault. The blame of it was all mine; she did not want to come, but I made her. I had thought it all out—it seemed too good a chance to be missed—and she would do anything for me.”

  Sir Arthur shivered a little, but he did not speak. The thought struck him that Gregory’s tone was strangely altered—that his accent was now undeniably that of a gentleman, a man of education.

  “It is pretty well over with me now,” the voice that was at once so familiar and so strange went on. “Well, it was the only way, and I’m not sorry now that I took it, for I shall see her again soon. It is, as she said, that no one else shall be punished for what I did that I must speak. But perhaps if I tell you how it was with Hilda from the beginning you will understand better. Her father had been a man of good birth who broke his wife’s heart—she died when their only child was born. He was turned out of the Army, and finally sentenced to a long period of imprisonment for fraud. Hilda never knew the meaning of the word home. In her childhood she was neglected and half-starved, beaten and sworn at when her father had bad luck, and left to do what she could when things went well with him.

  “Later on as she grew up he realized that her beauty was a valuable asset, and then no expense was spared on the girl. The best masters were given her for accomplishments, she had carte blanche with her dress. When I first saw her twelve years ago she was eighteen, and a veritable angel of loveliness, with her fair face and wealth of golden hair. Her father was using her as a decoy for his gambling tables. I was then, as I have be
en for years, a gambler, a black-leg, a thief, one shunned by every honest man. I had believed my heart to be as hard as a millstone, but I suppose there was a weak spot left, and I fell desperately in love with Hilda St. Leger, as she was called then. Doctor, you must make my strength last out for what I have to say, please.”

  He drank eagerly from the glass Dr. Grieve held to his lips, and then sank back with a sigh of relief.

  “That is better. That wasn’t strange, perhaps, but the queerest thing was that she fell in love with me. Her father did not make any objection; already he and I had been partners in many a doubtful deed and I fancy he saw that the girl would still be useful to him. For a little while after we were married I tried to keep straight for her sake, but the world is slow to believe in repentance or amendment, and I went back to my old courses. My father-in-law and I entered into a partnership, and for a time all went well.

  “Then, in an evil hour, we thought of the great Blue Diamond of the Hargreaves; in his younger days my father-in-law had known the Hargreaves—it must have been a likeness to him that Lady Laura saw in Hilda—and from that moment our whole thoughts were given up to planning how we could best make it our own, and at last my father-in-law evolved a scheme that we ultimately adopted. Before we put the plan into execution, however, my father-in-law was run over by a motor-omnibus and fatally injured. There were others in the scheme then, and we had to go on. It was while going to see her father in the hospital that Hilda was met by Nurse Marston, and thus recognized by her when she came here.”

  “I don’t see that all this is to any purpose,” said Sir Arthur. “It is extremely painful to me to have to listen to it, and I should prefer her name kept out of it as much as possible.”

  “Don’t I tell you this is her wish, not mine?” the dying man retorted. “It was her wish that you should hear how Nurse Marston died; or rather she made me promise to make it clear that the man whose name has been widely connected with the mystery, Mr. Garth Davenant, had nothing to do with it. There didn’t seem to me to be any satisfactory way of doing it but this, so I took it.”

  Again he paused; the Doctor held something to his lips. He drew himself up.

  “That is putting new life into me, doctor. Well, our plans prospered beyond our expectations. Hilda had been established here more readily than I could have conceived possible. I had been fortunate enough to obtain the situation in the orchid-houses. A couple of my associates had been installed as my assistants. It only remained for Hilda to make herself sufficiently attractive to Sir Arthur to obtain from him the secret of the lock, and the game was ours.

  “Just as we had reached this conclusion everything was knocked on the head by the sudden appearance of Nurse Marston on the scene. When I learned from Minnie Spencer, in the housekeeper’s room that night, that Nurse Marston had recognized Hilda and asked for an interview with Lady Laura I knew that there was only one slender chance between us and ruin—and that was to get hold of the nurse before she saw Lady Laura. In order to gain my purpose I had been making love to Minnie Spencer for some time, and two or three times I had persuaded her to unlock the conservatory door and come and have a little chat with me while the family were at dinner.

  “That night I delayed her longer than usual, so that she had no time to fasten it after me, and I was thus able to get in later on. I stood in the conservatory waiting, and as Nurse Marston came into the small library by one door I opened the other. She started back, but I was prepared for her. I threw a chloroformed cloth over her head and seized her in my arms. Mind you, I did not intend any real harm to her—I simply meant to have her taken care of until the diamonds were ours and we were safely out of the country, and then she might have come back and said what she liked. If she had listened to me when I told her so she might have been alive now, but she struggled and fought like a wild cat. Once she got her head out of the cloth and screamed. You have heard cries spoken of. I rammed the cloth closer and closer to prevent her being heard, and carried her on through the shrubbery. At first, when I noticed how quietly she was lying in my arms, I thought it was only the chloroform taking effect, but when I was a safe distance from the house, and had met my confederate, we stopped to look. I found to my horror that it was all over with her—she was dead!”

  “Ah, I thought that was how it was!” Superintendent Stokes remarked as he drew a long breath.

  “We tried to restore her, but it was no use, and I had to realize that I had killed her without intending it, and was a murderer in fact if not in intention. Bad as I was, I had hitherto drawn the line at breaking the Sixth Commandment, and for a time I was utterly aghast. Then the question of concealing the body presented itself to me, and I recollected the Lover’s Oak. Accident had revealed it to me some time before the fact that it was hollow, and I had several times thought that it might be a suitable place in which to conceal some of our booty—for, needless to say, we did not intend to content ourselves with merely the Blue Diamond; we should have levied toll on the plate as well. It now struck me that the body would be safer there than anywhere else. I hadn’t reckoned for the vengeance of Heaven, you see!

  “I think that is all. If in the servants’ hall or elsewhere I have appeared to foster the suspicion against Mr. Garth Davenant it has been merely as a cover to our own designs for the time being, and with no desire to injure him eventually.”

  Superintendent Stokes looked at his notebook.

  “The tobacco-pouch?” he said.

  The dark eyes opened once more and looked even faintly amused.

  “I must have dropped it. Minnie worked it for me, after the pattern of that given by her mistress to Mr. Garth Davenant. She must have gone into the room and recognized it, and, fearing it might get me into trouble, annexed it. In the same way, remembering the conservatory door had been left open, when she came to look for Nurse Marston she bolted it, and thus fostered the idea that she might still be in the house. But I fancy Minnie has had her suspicions of me lately.”

  “Hilda did not know!”

  It was Sir Arthur’s voice, husky and strained; it was more an assertion than a question, but Gregory chose to answer it.

  “She had no idea at the time or till long afterwards. But naturally she could not help connecting me with the disappearance when she heard of it. Since the body was discovered she could not help knowing, and I fear—I fear it has made her very miserable—my poor Hilda!”

  “Mrs. Leparge?” the superintendent interpolated tentatively.

  “Well, you cannot expect me to inculpate my friends. It was difficult for me to see Hilda, and notes were dangerous. Mrs. Leparge brought a message.”

  “I see; I surmised that,” the superintendent assented slowly. “Well, I think that is all clear—all the mystery is plain enough now.”

  The unnaturally bright eyes gazed round.

  “Then my task is over.”

  “This paper must be signed and witnessed,” Mr. Lewis interpolated hurriedly. “I will read it over to you.”

  It was a somewhat lengthy document and Mr. Lewis was a slow reader, so that this process took time.

  When the document was brought to the dying man he scrawled his signature and then pushed the paper away from him almost convulsively, and fell back.

  Like one in a dream Sir Arthur suffered Garth to lead him away. His uncle joined Mr. Pauncefort and Mr. Lewis as they stood in the passage outside. Thither Superintendent Stokes followed them after giving a few directions to his two subordinates, whom he left in the room. Mr. Gore turned to him at once.

  “I was not prepared for this, superintendent—I was not indeed. I knew Mr. Garth Davenant had nothing to do with the murder, as some of these wiseacres have suggested, but I did think the poor thing had gone outside of her own free will to meet some one, and been the victim of foul play. I never dreamt that such a thing as this could happen in a respectable house. That little hussy who admitted the fellow—I hope she will get some punishment,” vindictively.

  “
I think she has had her punishment,” the superintendent said a little indulgently as he remembered pretty Minnie’s changed appearance. “Though she would have spared us some trouble if she would have spoken out from the first. But I think the girl was terrified, and she had no idea how bad things were really. It was some words I overheard between her and Mr. Jim Gregory that put me on the right track though.”

  “What! You suspected!” ejaculated Mr. Gore.

  “I was pretty nearly certain,” said the superintendent slowly, “but I hadn’t much proof, and it was no use speaking out too soon, and letting our birds escape.”

  “I understood that you suspected Mr. Garth Davenant; I am sure my nephew informed me so.”

  “I was inclined to do so at first,” the superintendent acknowledged frankly, “and I was a fool for my pains, as I soon found out. I made it my business to inquire into Mr. Garth Davenant’s movements and—well, in short, I came to the conclusion that whoever was guilty I must look elsewhere for the murderer.”

  “But what on earth—” Mr. Gore was unable apparently to get over his astonishment.

  “Well, some little time ago I began to suspect the young lady was not quite truthful.”

  “I should think so indeed. One would have thought anybody but an idiot would have seen that,” wrathfully interpolated Mr. Gore.

  “You don’t suppose that if I hadn’t had a pretty good suspicion how the land lay here,” the superintendent went on, unheeding the interruption, “that Mr. Garth Davenant would have remained at liberty so long. No, no! In an ordinary case, with the evidence against him apparently so strong, he would have been arrested before now and brought up before the magistrates. There has been blame thrown upon me because he hasn’t. But I knew he had nothing to do with it, and I had got my eye on the right men. Mr. Jim Gregory and his associates would have found themselves in a trap when they walked outside.”

  “You don’t mean that you were watching?”

  Mr. Gore’s opinion of the superintendent’s intelligence went up by leaps and bounds.

  Superintendent Stokes smiled a little.