Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

“Yes, well?”

  “Well, the grandfather answered me very shortly that he did not know his grandson, that he did not wish to know him, and that they had nothing to do with one another in any way. It was a churlish letter. He seemed to think that I wanted to marry Mr. Hine,” and she laughed as she spoke, “and that I was trying to find out what we should have to live upon. I suppose that it was natural he should think so. And I am so glad that I wrote. For he told me that although Mr. Hine must eventually have a fortune, it would not be until he himself died and that he was a very healthy man. So you see, there could be no advantage to any one—” and she did not finish the sentence.

  But Chayne could finish it for himself. There could be no advantage to any one if Walter Hine died. But then why the cocaine? Why the incident of the lighted window?

  “Yes,” he said, in perplexity, “I can corroborate that. It happened that my friend John Lattery, who was killed in Switzerland, was also connected with Joseph Hine. He also would have inherited; and I knew from him that the old man did not recognize his heirs. But — but Walter Hine had money — some money, at all events. And he earned none. From whom did he get it?”

  Sylvia shook her head.

  “I do not know.”

  “Had he no other relations, no friends?”

  “None who would have made him an allowance.”

  Chayne pondered over that question. For in the answer to it he was convinced he would find the explanation of the mystery. If money was given to Walter Hine, who had apparently no rich relations but his grandfather, and certainly no rich friends, it would have been given with some object. To discover the giver and his object — that was the problem.

  “Think! Did he never speak of any one?”

  Sylvia searched her memories.

  “No,” she said. “He never spoke of his private affairs. He always led us to understand that he drew an allowance from his grandfather.”

  “But your father found that that was untrue when you were in Dorsetshire, ten months ago. For the card-playing and the bets ceased.”

  “Yes,” Sylvia agreed thoughtfully. Then her face brightened. “I remember a morning when Mr. Hine was in trouble. Wait a moment! He had a letter. We were at breakfast and the letter came from Captain Barstow. There was some phrase in the letter which Mr. Hine repeated. ‘As between gentlemen’ — that was it! I remember thinking at the time what in the world Captain Barstow could know about gentlemen; and wondering why the phrase should trouble Mr. Hine. And that morning Mr. Hine went to London.”

  “Oh, did he?” cried Chayne. “‘As between gentlemen.’ Had Hine been losing money lately to Captain Barstow?”

  “Yes, on the day when you first came.”

  “The starlings,” exclaimed Chayne in some excitement. “That’s it — Walter Hine owes money to Captain Barstow which he can’t pay. Barstow writes for it — a debt of honor between gentlemen — one can imagine the letter. Hine goes up to London. Well, what then?”

  Sylvia started.

  “My father went to London two days afterward.”

  “Are you sure?”

  It seemed to Chayne that they were getting hot in their search.

  “Quite sure. For I remember that after his return his manner changed. What I thought to be the new plot was begun. The cards disappeared, the bets ceased, Mr. Parminter was brought down with the cocaine. I remember it all clearly. For I always associated the change with my father’s journey to London. You came one evening — do you remember? You found me alone and afraid. My father and Walter Hine were walking arm-in-arm in the garden. That was afterward.”

  “Yes, you were afraid because there was no sincerity in that friendship. Now let me get this right!”

  He remained silent for a little while, placing the events in their due order and interpreting them, one by the other.

  “This is what I make of it,” he said at length. “The man in London who supplies Walter Hine with money finds that Walter Hine is spending too much. He therefore puts himself into communication with Garratt Skinner, of whom he has doubtless heard from Walter Hine. Garratt Skinner travels to London, has an interview, and a concerted plan of action is agreed upon, which Garratt Skinner proceeds to put in action.”

  He spoke so gravely that Sylvia turned anxiously toward him.

  “What do you infer, then?” she asked.

  “That we are in very deep and troubled waters, my dear,” he replied, but he would not be more explicit. He had no doubt in his mind that the murder of Walter Hine had been deliberately agreed upon by Garratt Skinner and the unknown man in London. But just as Sylvia had spared him during his months of absence, so now he was minded to spare Sylvia. Only, in order that he might spare her, in order that he might prevent shame and distress greater than she had known, he must needs go on with his questioning. He must discover, if by any means he could, the identity of the unknown man who was so concerned in the destiny of Walter Hine.

  “Of your father’s friends, was there one who was rich? Who came to the house? Who were his companions?”

  “Very few people came to the house. There was no one amongst them who fits in”; and upon that she started. “I wonder—” she said, thoughtfully, and she turned to her lover. “After my father had gone away, I found a telegram in a drawer in one of the rooms. There was no envelope, there was just the telegram. So I opened it. It was addressed to my father. I remember the words, for I did not know whether there was not something which needed attention. It ran like this: ‘What are you waiting for? Hurry up.’”

  “Was it signed?” asked Chayne.

  “Yes. ‘Jarvice,’” replied Sylvia.

  “Jarvice,” Chayne repeated; and he spoke it yet again, as though in some vague way it was familiar to him. “What was the date of the telegram?”

  “It had been sent a month before I found it. So I put it back into the drawer.”

  “‘What are you waiting for? Hurry up. Jarvice,’” said Chayne, slowly, and then he remembered how and when he had come across the name of Jarvice before. His face grew very grave.

  “We are in deep waters, my dear,” he said.

  There had been trouble in his regiment, some years before, in which the chief figures had been a subaltern and a money-lender. Jarvice was the name of the money-lender — an unusual name. Just such a man would be likely to be Garratt Skinner’s confederate and backer. Chayne ran over the story in his mind again, by this new light. It certainly strengthened the argument that the Mr. Jarvice who sent the telegram was Mr. Jarvice, the money-lender. Thus did Chayne work it out in his thoughts:

  “Jarvice, for some reason unknown, pays Walter Hine an allowance. Walter Hine gives it out that he receives it from his grandfather, whose heir he undoubtedly is, and being a vain person much exaggerates the amount. He falls into Garratt Skinner’s hands, who, with the help of Barstow and others, proceeds to pluck him. Walter Hine loses more than he has and applies to Jarvice for more. Jarvice elicits the facts, and instead of disclosing who Garratt Skinner is, and the obvious swindle of which Hine is the victim, takes Garratt Skinner into his confidence. What happened at the interview between Mr. Jarvice and Garratt Skinner in London the subsequent facts make plain. At Jarvice’s instigation the plot to swindle Walter Hine becomes a cold-blooded plan to murder him. That plan has been twice frustrated, once by me in Dorsetshire, and a second time by Sylvia.”

  So far the story worked out naturally, logically. But there remained two questions. For what reason did Mr. Jarvice make Walter Hine an allowance? And how would Walter Hine’s death profit him? Chayne pondered over those two questions and then the truth flashed upon him. He remembered how the subaltern had been extracted from his difficulties. Money had been raised by a life insurance. Again Chayne ranged his facts in order.

  “Walter Hine is the heir to great wealth. But he has no money now. Mr. Jarvice makes him an allowance, the money to be repaid with a handsome interest on the grandfather’s death. But in order to insure Jarvice from los
s, if Walter Hine should die first, Walter Hine’s life is insured for a large sum. Thus Mr. Jarvice makes his position tenable should his conduct be called in question. Having insured Walter Hine’s life, he arranges with Garratt Skinner to murder him. The attempt failed the first time, the slower method is then adopted by Garratt Skinner, and as a result comes the impatient telegram: ‘What are you waiting for? Hurry up!’”

  The case was thus so far clear. But anxiety remained. Was the plan abandoned altogether, now that Sylvia had stood bravely up and warned her father that she would not keep silent? So certainly Sylvia thought. But then she did not know all that Chayne knew. It seemed that she had not understood the incident of the lighted window. Nor was Chayne surprised. For she was unaware of what was in Chayne’s eyes the keystone of the whole argument. She did not know that her father had worked as a convict in the Portland quarries.

  “So they are abroad together, your father and Walter Hine,” said Chayne, slowly.

  “Yes!” replied Sylvia, with a smile. “Guess where they are now!” and she turned to him with a tender look upon her face which he did not understand.

  “I can’t guess.”

  “At Chamonix!”

  She saw her lover flinch, his face grow white, his eyes stare in horror. And she wondered. For her the little town, overtopped by its tumbled glittering fields of snow and tall rock spires was a place apart. She cherished it in her memories, keeping clear and distinct the windings of its streets, where they narrowed, where they broadened into open spaces; yet all the while her thoughts transformed it, and made of its mere stones and bricks a tiny city magical with light and grace. For while she stayed in it her happiness had dawned and she saw it always roseate with that dawn. It seemed to her that plots and thoughts of harm could there hardly outlive one starlit night, one sunlit day. Had she mapped out her father’s itinerary, thither and nowhere else would she have sent him.

  “You are afraid?” she asked. “Hilary, why?”

  Chayne did not answer her question. He was minded to spare her, even as she had spared him. He talked of other things until the restaurant grew empty and the waiters began to turn out the lights as a hint to these two determined loiterers. Then in the darkness, for now there was but one light left, and that at a little distance from their table, Chayne leaned forward and turning to Sylvia, as they sat side by side:

  “You have been happy to-night?”

  “Very,” she answered, and there was a thrill of joyousness in her clear, low voice, as though her heart sang within her. Her eyes rested on his with pride. “No man could quite understand,” she said.

  “Well then, why should we wait longer, Sylvia?” he said. “We have waited long enough, my dear. We have after all no one but ourselves to please. I should like our marriage to take place as soon as possible.”

  Sylvia answered him without affectation.

  “I, too,” she whispered.

  “To-morrow then! I’ll get a special license to-morrow morning, and make the arrangements. We can go away together at once.”

  Sylvia smiled, and the smile deepened into a laugh.

  “Where shall we go, Hilary?” she cried. “To some perfect place.”

  “To Chamonix,” he answered. “That was where we first met. There could be no better place. We can just go and tell your father what we have done and then go up into the hills.”

  It was well done. He spoke without wakening Sylvia’s suspicions. She had never understood the episode of the lighted window; she did not know that her father was Gabriel Strood, of whose exploits in the Alps she had read; she believed that all danger to Walter Hine was past. Chayne on the other hand knew that hardly at any time could Hine have stood in greater peril. To Chamonix he must go; and to Chamonix he must take Sylvia too. For by the time when he could reach Chamonix, he might already be too late. There might be publicity, inquiries, and for Garratt Skinner ruin, and worse than ruin. Would Sylvia let her lover share the dishonor of her name? He knew very surely she would not. Therefore he would have the marriage.

  “By the way,” he said, as he draped her cloak about her shoulders. “You have that telegram from Jarvice?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “It might be useful.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  REVAILLOUD REVISITED

  NEVER THAT FAMILIAR journey across France seemed to Chayne so slow. Would he be in time? Would he arrive too late? The throb of the wheels beat out the questions in a perpetual rhythm and gave him no answer. The words of Jarvice’s telegram were ever present in his mind, and grew more sinister, the more he thought upon them. “What are you waiting for? Hurry up!” Once, when the train stopped over long as it seemed to him he muttered the words aloud and then glanced in alarm at his wife, lest perchance she had overheard them. But she had not. She was remembering her former journey along this very road. Then it had been night; now it was day. Then she had been used to seek respite from her life in the shelter of her dreams. Now the dreams were of no use, since what was real made them by comparison so pale and thin. The blood ran strong and joyous in her veins to-day; and looking at her, Chayne sent up his prayers that they might not arrive in Chamonix too late. To him as to her Walter Hine was a mere puppet, a thing without importance — so long as he lived. But he must live. Dead, he threatened ruin and dishonor, and since from the beginning Sylvia and he had shared — for so she would have it — had shared in the effort to save this life, it would be well for them, he thought that they should not fail.

  The long hot day drew to an end, and at last from the platform at the end of the electric train they saw the snow-fields lift toward the soaring peaks, and the peaks purple with the after glow stand solitary and beautiful against the evening sky.

  “At last!” said Sylvia, with a catch in her breath, and the clasp of her hand tightened upon her husband’s arm. But Chayne was remembering certain words once spoken to him in a garden of Dorsetshire, by a man who lay idly in a hammock and stared up between the leaves. “On the most sunny day, the mountains hold in their recesses mystery and death.”

  “You know where your father is staying?” Chayne asked.

  “He wrote from the Hôtel de l’Arve,” Sylvia replied.

  “We will stay at Couttet’s and walk over to see him this evening,” said Chayne, and after dinner they strolled across the little town. But at the Hôtel de l’Arve they found neither Garratt Skinner nor his friend, Walter Hine.

  “Only the day before yesterday,” said the proprietor, “they started for the mountains. Always they make expeditions.”

  Chayne drew no satisfaction from that statement. Garratt Skinner and his friend would make many expeditions from which both men would return in safety. Garratt Skinner was no blunderer. And when at the last he returned alone with some flawless story of an accident in which his friend had lost his life, no one would believe but that here was another mishap, and another name to be added to the Alpine death-roll.

  “To what mountain have they gone?” Chayne asked.

  “To no mountain to-day. They cross the Col du Géant, monsieur, to Courmayeur. But after that I do not know.”

  “Oh, into Italy,” said Chayne, in relief. So far there was no danger. The Col du Géant, that great pass between France and Italy across the range of Mont Blanc, was almost a highway. There would be too many parties abroad amongst its ice séracs on these days of summer for any deed which needed solitude and secrecy.

  “When do you expect them back?”

  “In five days, monsieur; not before.” And at this reply Chayne’s fears were all renewed. For clearly the expedition was not to end with the passage of the Col du Géant. There was to be a sequel, perhaps some hazardous ascent, some expedition at all events which Garratt Skinner had not thought fit to name.

  “They took guides, I suppose,” he said.

  “One guide, monsieur, and a porter. Monsieur need not fear. For Monsieur Skinner is of an excellence prodigious.”

  �
��My father!” exclaimed Sylvia, in surprise. “I never knew.”

  “What guide?” asked Chayne.

  “Pierre Delouvain”; and so once again Chayne’s fears were allayed. He turned to Sylvia.

  “A good name, sweetheart. I never climbed with him, but I know him by report. A prudent man, as prudent as he is skilful. He would run no risks.”

  The name gave him indeed greater comfort than even his words expressed. Delouvain’s mere presence would prevent the commission of any crime. His great strength would not be needed to hinder it. For he would be there, to bear witness afterward. Chayne was freed from the dread which during the last two days had oppressed him. Perhaps after all Sylvia was right and the plot was definitely abandoned. Chayne knew very well that Garratt Skinner’s passion for the Alps was a deep and real one. Perhaps it was that alone which had brought him back to Chamonix. Perhaps one day in the train, traveling northward from Italy, he had looked from the window and seen the slopes of Monte Rosa white in the sun — white with the look of white velvet — and all the last twenty years had fallen from him like a cloak, and he had been drawn back as with chains to the high playground of his youth. Chayne could very well understand that possibility, and eased of his fears he walked away with Sylvia back to the open square in the middle of the town. Darkness had come, and both stopped with one accord and looked upward to the massive barrier of hills. The rock peaks stood sharply up against the clear, dark sky, the snow-slopes glimmered faintly like a pale mist, and incredibly far, incredibly high, underneath a bright and dancing star, shone a dim and rounded whiteness, the snow-cap of Mont Blanc.

  “A year ago,” said Sylvia, drawing a breath and bethinking her of the black shadows which during those twelve months had lain across her path.

  “Yes, a year ago we were here,” said Chayne. The little square was thronged, the hotels and houses were bright with lights, and from here and from there music floated out upon the air, the light and lilting melodies of the day. “Sylvia, you see the café down the street there by the bridge?”