“Now, if I was at a dance, with a really thrilling partner like—oh, well, like that Mr. Fossetter. Yes, he was rather thrilling; there’s something romantic about dark eyes, and he’s a dream to dance with. Yes, if I was dancing with him, or with anyone else I liked,”—Chloe’s chin lifted a little—“why a quarter of an hour would be gone before it had begun. Zip! Oh, how I wish I was going to a dance to-night in my darling silver dress instead of having to creep and crawl in a black house as if I was a burglar or a ghost, with that beastly, beastly safe waiting for me to open it! And if there are only stocks and shares in it, I suppose I shall be thankful. But oh, what a colossal fool I shall feel!”
The thought pricked deep. Chloe struck a match with such a vicious jerk that the head flew flaming on to the floor and sizzled there. She dropped a book on it and tried again. The match flared, and the little white circle of her watch showed her the two black hands together at twelve. With a sigh of relief she lit a candle and flung the bed-clothes back.
The coast should be clear enough now. It was two hours since she had said good-night to Emily, and at least an hour since she had heard any stir in the house. She made her preparations in a little glow of excitement. To have come at last to a point of action was like being suddenly freed from a heavy weight. She put on a dark blue dressing gown and blue felt slippers, picked up and tested her bicycle lamp, blew out the candle, and opened her bedroom door, stood there upon the threshold.
The passage was quite dark. All the house was dark, quite dark and still. Chloe stood listening until it seemed to her that the silence was rising about her softly, insistently, beating in upon her thoughts as waves beat. And now it was no long silence, but fear—that chill, unreasoning fear which saps the power to act. Chloe knew that if she stood there much longer, the fear and the silence would overmaster her and turn her tamely back into her room again.
With a sudden movement she crossed the threshold and took a couple of steps forward. Then, suddenly, she turned back again, took the key from the inside of her door, closed the door, locked it from the outside, and slipped the key into her dressing gown pocket. She drew a little sigh of relief as she turned away. She had not thought of locking the door when she had planned what she would do and suppose Emily had come to her room while she was away. There were a thousand chances against it; but the instinct that had turned Chloe back was afraid of the one dim chance that lay beyond the thousand.
She set her left hand on the wall and felt her way past the right-angle turn into the broad corridor, and so to the head of the stairs. She took the first step hesitatingly and moved along it until her groping fingers touched the balustrade. That would be easier than feeling her way down by the wall. It was quite easy really; the steps broad, shallow, and softly carpeted, and the hall itself not dark with the absolute blackness of the closed in passages behind her. She came down into the hall, turned to the left, and opened the drawing-room door.
All her movements up to now had been slow and steady, but a sudden breathless sense of hurry came on her as the door opened. She slipped into the dark room and shut the door, and felt her heart beat and her hand tremble. She would have liked to switch on all the lights in the big cut-glass chandeliers, set all the rainbow colours dancing in the lustres, and flood the room with brilliance. Quite suddenly she hated the darkness so much that she could hardly bear it. She took her bicycle lamp out of her pocket and turned it on. The little lane that it cut through the black room seemed only to make the surrounding gloom more intolerable. Chloe gave herself a little shake, “You’re making a most abject fool of yourself. Do you hear? Stop dithering at once, and attend to business!”
The first thing to be done was to lock the door, that one chance in a thousand clamoured insistently. She felt for the key. No, of course it would be outside; a careful housemaid would have locked the door before she went to bed. But the door had not been locked: it had opened to Chloe’s hurried touch without delay. She opened it now, found the keyhole empty, and closed it again, frowning deeply. She had passed that door dozens of times a day on every day since she had come to Danesborough. She had never passed it without being conscious of it, without some shrinking or defiant thought of what lay beyond it. As she looked back upon those many times of her passing, there was always a key in the picture; she couldn’t see the door at all without a key. Then who had taken it away? A little anger rose up in Chloe; but if she had not been angry, she would have been afraid. Why should the key have disappeared?
She walked across to the alcove beside the fire, and turned on the shaded reading lamp which stood on a table in front of the cabinet. The shade was faintly rose-coloured, and the light came through it just tinged with a sickly pink.
Chloe put out her bicycle lamp, set it down on the table, and turned to the cabinet. It looked very large, very tall, and very black. The golden river flickered in the pinkish light. The little golden men stood rigidly amongst the golden reeds. Chloe put the key in the lock, turned it, and opened the folding doors. Now that the moment had come, anger and fear, dread and suspicion, were all gone. She was intensely, vividly herself, quick of thought and hand, working to a methodical plan.
She touched the springs as Mr. Dane had touched them, and by stretching her arms to the widest possible extent she was able to draw out the middle section of the cabinet as he had drawn it out. It was quite light—Uncle Walter’s butterflies were insubstantial enough—; but the width made it awkward to handle, and she was glad to set it down. The gaping space which it left behind shaded away into blackness. Chloe looked at it, and then looked down at the section which she had withdrawn. If anyone came—nonsense, there was no one to come. But if anyone did come, why, there would be this awkward thing to advertise Mr. Dane’s secret.
Chloe picked the section up. Clear of the cabinet it was easier to manage. She crossed with it to the nearest window, and set it down behind the pale, heavy curtains. Then she stepped back, arranged the folds a little, and came again to the cabinet. Her feet made no sound at all on the thick carpet; it was like walking on moss—queer, light-coloured moss with a straggly pattern on it. Chloe shook off the thought as she would have shaken off a wandering puff of thistle-down. Then with a steady hand she picked up her bicycle lamp and turned off the pink electric light. The new-come dark was very black indeed. She turned on her lamp, and pushed it far back into the cabinet. Then she set her knee on the edge of the opening and crawled forward into it, turning half-way to reach the outer doors and partly close them. She was now half sitting, half kneeling in a space about four feet six inches wide and something under three feet high. The depth might have been three feet or a little less.
Holding the lamp in her left hand, she felt for and found the little spring on either side which released the folding doors in the back wall of the cabinet. With the last click the doors sprang an inch apart. Chloe opened them widely, and saw before her the door of the secret safe. The door was painted red, bright red like sealing-wax. The lamp made a circle of light upon it, so brilliant that it looked like fire. Chloe saw this brilliant circle, and with her mind’s eye she saw two other things as well—Mr. Dane’s odd smile as he showed her how to manipulate just such another lock as this: “Only of course the combination is a different one—you understand that”; and the note which she had burned in kind Dr. Golding’s presence, the note with her name in it—just her name, her own name—“Chloe. The word is Chloe.”
She shifted the circle of light until it fell upon the lock, then propped the lamp a-tilt against her knee, and used both hands to set the combination. With a click the door of the safe swung in toward her. She had to shift her position and press up against the left-hand wall of the cabinet to give it room. Then slowly, reluctantly, without excitement, she lifted the lamp and turned the light upon the open safe.
Papers. There were only papers. Packets, and packets, and packets of papers.
“I said it would be only stocks and
shares, and fusty old mortgages and things,” said Chloe. And then something came, as it were, behind her formulated thought and struck it dumb. Quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, she was afraid. Kneeling there with the lamp in her hand, looking at those piled up shelves, she was horribly, unaccountably afraid.
Those harmless-looking bundles of paper frightened her more than anything had ever frightened her in her life before. They were no stocks and shares, or parchments, or business papers: they were letters—packet on packet of letters, two together, three together, half-a-dozen, all neatly tied up with red tape. Chloe felt as if she had been turned to ice. Everything seemed to stop in that cold atmosphere of dread. Thought stopped, feeling stopped. There remained a mechanical impulse that made her set the lamp at a convenient angle and reach for the nearest packet. It slipped as she touched it, and she picked it up with the pink knot uppermost. It was loosely tied and came undone easily enough.
There were three letters in the packet, two of them without envelopes. Chloe picked up the first of these and opened it. Her hand did not shake, but it was cold and stiff. She read:
“My own darling, darling boy,” and was touched with an odd emotion. Had anyone really ever written to Mr. Dane like that? She turned the sheet over and saw that it was signed “Judy.”
She did not read the letter, but picked up the second loose sheet. It was very much blotted and quite short. It began abruptly:
“You mustn’t come again. I believe he knows. If he doesn’t know, he suspects. You mustn’t come.
“Your broken-hearted
“Judy.”
Chloe took up the third letter. It was in an envelope addressed to Mr. Dane. She took out the enclosure, and found that it was in the same handwriting as the other two letters; but it began, “Dear Sir.” Chloe held it nearer to the light, the writing was so hurried, so agitated. It ran: “I can’t pay what you ask—I can’t indeed. I’ll do what I can. Haven’t you any pity at all? What good will it do you to ruin me? I’ll do what I can if you give me time.”
It was signed “J. St. Maurice.”
That was the last letter in the packet, but there was an endorsement on a loose half sheet of paper. The endorsement was in Mr. Dane’s handwriting: “Two letters from Lady Alexander St. Maurice Mr. Ralph Baverstock, and one which she very foolishly wrote to me. Nothing has yet been paid. She has expectations from her godmother, Lady Hilldrington. From Stran.”
Chloe tied the letters up and put them on one side. She was capable of this, but not of any mental activity. Her mind did not move; her thoughts did not move. The contents of the letters remained with her as something which she saw quite clearly, but which meant nothing. It was as if she had opened a book beautifully print in some unknown language; there was no meaning; to her frozen consciousness the letters had no meaning.
She took a second bundle of letters, and found the endorsement uppermost: “Three letters to Sir Gregory Slade Moffat from his eldest son November, 1920. From Stran. N.B. Sir Gregory received his baronetcy January, 1921.”
A faint, dull wonder stirred in Chloe’s mind. She opened the first letter, glanced at it, and let it fall. It seemed to be an answer to some inquiry about a cheque. She unfolded the second letter and found it in the same vein—bravado tinged with uneasiness. The third letter was different “I’ve been a damned fool. But for God’s sake pull me out of the mess. You stand to lose as much as I do if there’s a scandal. There are ways of shutting people’s mouths.”
There was more in the same strain. All three litters were signed “Jack.” Chloe put them down and stared at the unopened packets which lay some in the track of the beam of light from her lamp, some in the greyness beyond the beam, some scarcely seen, but guessed at in the far, dark corners of the safe. They were all letters; letters that should never have been written. She remembered Mr. Dane’s face when he said, “Don’t love anyone. Don’t trust anyone. And don’t put anything on paper that you don’t want the whole world to know.”
Kneeling there and remembering, she opened three more packets. Each one held its secret, its shameful secret. Chloe did not read the letters through. It was terrible to her to read them at all. Each packet was neatly and succinctly endorsed in Mr. Dane’s writing, and two of the endorsements bore the words “From Stran.”
The unknown language changed slowly into words of terrible plainness. Blackmail!—the word seemed to start up in letters of fire in the midst of her cold, watching thoughts. Blackmail!—the word burned white hot. Blackmail! Everything became most terrifyingly clear and distinct. The marketing of these wretched, pitiful, shameful letters had been Mr. Dane’s business. And the source of his wealth. There were people who did such things. It was horrible—like the pay of Judgment; only this was the Judgment of Evil instead of the Judgment of Good. For an Instant Chloe had a vision of a Judgment Day in which the hidden evil and darkness of the world came out into a great light and was burnt up, melting and shrivelling into nothingness. That was the Judgment of Good. But this—this was the Judgment Day of Evil; all this sin and shame, these tears and terrors, dragged out and gloated over until the darkness was tenfold dark and the terror tenfold terrible.
The letters that she had opened lay by themselves where she had piled them against the left-hand wall of the safe. They were just ink and paper with a few dark blots where the anguished hand had betrayed its owner—just blots, and ink, and paper.
Chloe put out her hand and picked up a long envelope that threatened to fall from the main pile, which she had not touched. Her curiosity was faintly awakened by the fact that this did not seem to be a letter, and she had the impulse to move, to do something, anything, that would break the pictures that were forming in her mind. She was like a man sinking into some terrible dream, who feels that at any cost he must stir, shake off his drowsiness, and awake.
The envelope was one of the usual stout manila envelopes of the size to take foolscap. It was endorsed in very large, clear letters, “Stran’s receipts. On no account destroy.” Chloe remembered with dazzling distinctness words which had meant nothing to her when Mr. Dane had spoken them: “Don’t trust Stran a yard. I’ve got the whip hand of him because I’ve made him give me receipts for every penny. If he’s troublesome, you may find them useful.”
A good many of the letters she had opened had been marked “From Stran.” Stran, then, was Mr. Dane’s jackal, or one of his jackals—one of the creatures who collected, stole this merchandise which he had described as his “stock-in-trade.”
Chloe turned the envelope, and was about to open it, when a faintness came on her. The walls of the safe, the walls of the cabinet, seemed to be pressing in on her. There was no air to breathe. She dropped the envelope and turned, blindly groping for the half-closed doors and pushing them outwards. The air of the drawing-room, cold, still and faintly musty, was grateful to her. She crouched there drawing long breaths.
And then she heard the sound.
Chapter XIV
The sound roused Chloe more effectively than any amount of fresh air would have don It set her heart beating, and shocked her into ne for action.
Some one was coming downstairs.
Even as she formulated the thought, the sound changed. The footsteps had left the carpeted stairs and fell now upon the parquet floor of the hall. With instant quickness Chloe reached behind her and put out her lamp. Then she caught at the doors of the cabinet and drew them closed. It seemed all to happen in a moment, the sound and her instinctive movements. As the doors of the cabinet closed, the drawing-room door was opened and through the last chink, Chloe saw a candle flame flickering upon Leonard Wroughton’s flush and frowning face.
Next moment, with a click, the light in the great chandeliers lit the drawing-room from end to end, making the brilliance which Chloe had longed for. It came to her now as a burning wire between the doors of the cabinet. She pulled them closer, and the burning wire was gone.
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The key—what had she done with the key of the cabinet?—where had she put the key? If she had left it sticking in the keyhole, Leonard Wroughton would see it there. No mere accident or coincidence had brought him to this room at such an hour. If he was here at all, he was here to visit the cabinet; and the key—where had she put the key?
There was a little wooden catch on a pin that fastened the right-hand door. She felt for it, snibbed it, and groped along the floor of the cabinet with her other hand. Her faintness was all gone. She remembered now that she had taken the key out of the lock and laid it against the wall of the cabinet away on her left. She could hear Mr. Wroughton moving in the room outside. Her fingers clutched the key.
The key-hole showed like a little shining star in the darkness. As she put the key in softly, softly, she tried with all her might to remember whether it had grated as it turned, whether it had made any sound at all. Very steadily and slowly she began to turn the key, and as she began to turn it, she felt the door touched from outside—a hand on the handle, moving it, shaking it.
Chloe turned the key right home. It made a little click which was lost in the rattle of the wrenched handle. She held her breath, and gripped the key till it cut her palm.
The lock held. The doors held. Unless he was prepared to force them open, and meet discovery in the morning, Chloe was safe. The missing section behind the curtain scarcely troubled her. He wouldn’t look behind the curtain because there would be nothing for him to look for. There was nothing to suggest to Leonard Wroughton any need for further search or suspicion.
Chloe crouched there, perfectly still in the dead darkness, and felt the air grow heavy, heavy, heavy. How long would he stay? And how long could she hold out? He had moved away from the cabinet and gone to the far end of the room. What was he doing there? What was he waiting for? Suppose, after all, that he were to go to the window. The fear that she had dismissed became suddenly clamorous. Why, any one of half a dozen things might take him to the window. He was moving again, coming back to the cabinet. This time he did not try the handle; but Chloe could hear his heavy breathing not more than a foot away.
The Black Cabinet Page 8