The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  “Had your agent any reason to identify this woman with Mrs. Levison?”

  “None; except the fact that Mrs. Levison was missing, and his natural habit of suspecting the very worst. The paragraph was nearly a month old when it reached me. I set off at once for the place named; saw the village authorities, and visited the Englishwoman’s grave. They showed me the dress she had worn; a black silk, very simply made. Her face had been too much disfigured by the fall, and the passage of time that had occurred before the finding of the body, for my informants to give me any minute description of her appearance. They could only tell me that her hair was dark auburn, the colour of Laura’s, thick and long; and that her figure was that of a young woman.

  “After exhausting every possible inquiry, I pushed on to the next village, and there received confirmation of my worst fears. A gentleman and his wife—the man of foreign appearance, but talking English, the woman young and beautiful—had stopped for a night at the chief inn of the place, and had left the next morning without a guide. The gentleman, who talked German perfectly, told the landlady that his travelling carriage and servants were to meet him at the nearest stage on the home journey. He knew every inch of the country, and wished to walk across the mountain, in order to show his wife a prospect which had struck him particularly on his last expedition a few years before. The landlady remembered that, just before setting out, he asked his wife some question about her watch, took it from her to regulate it, and then, after some peevish exclamation about her carelessness in leaving it unwound, put it into his waistcoat pocket. The lady was very pale and quiet, and seemed unhappy. The description which the landlady gave me was only too like the woman I was looking for.”

  “And you believe there had been foul play?”

  “As certainly as I believe in my own existence. This man Levison had grown tired of a wife whose affection had never been his; nay, more, I have reason to know that his unresting jealousy had intensified into a kind of hatred of her some time before the end. From the village in the Tyrol, which they left together on the bright October morning, I tracked their footsteps stage by stage back to the point at which I had lost them on the Italian frontier. In the course of my wanderings I met a young Austrian officer who had seen them at Milan, and had ventured to pay the lady some harmless attentions. He told me that he had never seen anything so appalling as Levison’s jealousy; not an open fury, but a concentrated silent rage, which gave an almost devilish expression to the man’s parchment face. He watched his wife like a lynx, and did not allow her a moment’s freedom from his presence. Every one who met them pitied the beautiful girlish wife, whose misery was so evident; every one loathed her tyrant. I found that the story of the servants and the travelling carriage was a lie. The Levisons had been attended by no servants at any of the hotels where I heard of them, and had travelled always in public or in hired vehicles. The ultimate result of my inquiries left me little doubt that the dead woman was Laura Levison; and from that hour to this I have been employed, more or less, in the endeavour to find the man who murdered her.”

  “And you have not been able to discover his whereabouts?” asked Frank Lorrimore.

  “Not yet. I am looking for him.”

  “A useless quest, Horace. What would be the result of your finding him? you have no proof to offer of his guilt. You would not take the law into your own hands?”

  “By the heaven above me, I would!” answered the other fiercely. “I would shoot that man down with as little compunction as I would kill a mad dog.”

  “I hope you may never meet him,” said Frank solemnly.

  Horace Wynward gave a short impatient sigh, and paced the room for some time in silence. His share in the breakfast had been a mere pretence. He had emptied his coffee-cup, but had eaten nothing.

  “I am going back to London this afternoon, Frank.”

  “On the hunt for this man?”

  “Yes. My agent sent me a description of a man calling himself Lewis, a bill-discounter, who has lately set up an office in the City, and whom I believe to be Michael Levison.”

  * * *

  —

  The office occupied by Mr. Lewis, the bill-discounter, was a dismal place enough, consisting of a second floor in a narrow alley called St. Guinevere’s Lane. Horace Wynward presented himself at this office about a week after his arrival in London, in the character of a gentleman in difficulties.

  He found Mr. Lewis exactly the kind of man he expected to see; a man of about fifty, with small crafty black eyes shining out of a sallow visage that was as dull and lifeless as a parchment mask, thin lips, and a heavy jaw and bony chin that betokened no small amount of power for evil.

  Mr. Wynward presented himself under his own name; on hearing which the bill-discounter looked up at him suddenly with an exclamation of surprise.

  “You know my name?” said Horace.

  “Yes; I have heard your name before. I thought you were a rich man.”

  “I have a good estate, but I have been rather imprudent, and am short of ready money. Where and when did you hear my name, Mr. Lewis?”

  “I don’t remember that. The name sounds familiar to me, that is all.”

  “But you have heard of me as a rich man, you say?”

  “I had an impression to that effect. But the circumstances under which I heard the name have quite escaped my memory.”

  Horace pushed the question no further. He played his cards very carefully, leading the usurer to believe that he had secured a profitable prey. The preliminaries of a loan were discussed, but nothing fully settled. Before leaving the money-lender’s office, Horace Wynward invited Mr. Lewis to dine with him at his lodgings, in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly, on the following evening. After a few minutes’ reflection Lewis accepted the invitation.

  He made his appearance at the appointed hour, dressed in a suit of shabby black, in which his sallow complexion looked more than usually parchment like and ghastly. The door was opened by Horace Wynward in person, and the money-lender was surprised to find himself in an almost empty house. In the hall and on the staircase there were no signs of occupation whatever; but, in the dining-room, to which Horace immediately ushered his guest, there was a table ready laid for dinner, a couple of chairs, and a dumb-waiter loaded with the appliances of the meal. The dishes and sauce tureens were on a hot plate in the fender. The room was dimly lighted by four wax candles in a tarnished candelabrum.

  Mr. Lewis, the money-lender, looked round him with a shudder; there was something sinister in the aspect of the room.

  “It’s rather a dreary-looking place, I’m afraid,” said Horace Wynward. “I’ve only just taken the house, you see, and have had in a few sticks of hired furniture to keep me going till I make arrangements with an upholsterer. But you’ll excuse all shortcomings, I’m sure—bachelor fare, you know.”

  “I thought you said you were in lodgings, Mr. Wynward.”

  “Did I?” asked the other absently; “a mere slip of the tongue. I took this house on lease a week ago, and am going to furnish it as soon as I am in funds.”

  “And are you positively alone here?” inquired Mr. Lewis, rather suspiciously.

  “Well, very nearly so. There is a charwoman somewhere in the depths below, as deaf as a post, and almost as useless. But you needn’t be frightened about your dinner; I ordered it in from a confectioner in Picadilly. We must wait upon ourselves, you know, in a free and easy way, for that dirty old woman would take away our appetites.”

  He lifted the cover of the soup tureen as he spoke. The visitor seated himself at the table with rather a nervous air, and glanced more than once in the direction of the shutters, which were closely fastened with heavy bars. He began to think there was something alarmingly eccentric in the conduct and manner of his host, and was inclined to repent having accepted the invitation, profitable as his new client promised to be.

&nb
sp; The dinner was excellent, the wines of the finest quality, and, after drinking somewhat freely, Mr. Lewis began to be better reconciled to his position. He was a little disconcerted, however, on perceiving that his host scarcely touched either the viands or the wine, and that those deep-set gray eyes were lifted every now and then to his face with a strangely observant look. When dinner was over, Mr. Wynward heaped the dishes on the dumb-waiter, wheeled it into the next room with his own hands, and came back to his seat at the table opposite the bill-discounter, who sat meditatively sipping his claret.

  Horace filled his glass, but remained for some time silent, without once lifting it to his lips. His companion watched him nervously, every moment more impressed with the belief that there was something wrong in his new client’s mind, and bent on making a speedy escape. He finished his claret, looked at his watch, and rose hastily.

  “I think I must wish you good night, Mr. Wynward. I am a man of early habits, and have some distance to go. My lodgings are at Brompton, nearly an hour’s ride from here.”

  “Stay,” said Horace, “we have not begun business yet. It’s only nine o’clock. I want an hour’s quiet talk with you, Mr. Levison.”

  The bill-discounter’s face changed. It was almost impossible for that pallid mask of parchment to grow paler, but a sudden ghastliness came over the man’s evil countenance.

  “My name is Lewis,” he said, with an artificial grin.

  “Lewis, or Levison. Men of your trade have as many names as they please. When you were travelling in Switzerland two years ago your name was Levison.”

  “You are under some absurd mistake, sir. The name of Levison is strange to me.”

  “Is the name of Daventry strange to you too? You recognised my name yesterday. When you first heard it I was a happy man, Michael Levison. The blight upon me is your work. Oh, I know you well enough, and am provided with ample means for your identification. I have followed you step by step upon your travels—tracked you to the inn from which you set out one October morning, nearly a year ago, with a companion who was never seen alive by mortal eyes after that date. You are a good German scholar, Mr. Levison. Read that.”

  Horace Wynward took out of his pocket-book the paragraph cut from the German paper, and laid it before his visitor. The bill-discounter pushed it away, after a hasty glance at its contents.

  “What has this to do with me?” he asked.

  “A great deal, Mr. Levison. The hapless woman described in that paragraph was once your wife—Laura Daventry, the girl I loved, and who returned my love; the girl whom you basely stole from me, by trading on her natural affection for a weak, unworthy father, and whose life you made wretched, until it was foully ended by your own cruel hand. If I had stood behind you upon that lonely mountain pathway in the Tyrol, and had seen you hurl your victim to destruction, I could not be more convinced than I am that your hand did the deed; but such crimes as these are difficult—in this case perhaps impossible—to prove, and I fear you will escape the gallows. There are other circumstances in your life, however, more easily brought to light; and by the aid of a clever detective I have made myself master of some curious secrets in your past existence. I know the name you bore some fifteen years ago, before you settled in Trinidad as a merchant. You were at that time called Michael Lucas, and you fled from this country with a large sum of money, embezzled from your employers, Messrs. Hardwell and Oliphant, sugar brokers in Nicholas Lane. You have been ‘wanted’ a long time, Mr. Levison; but you would most likely have gone scot-free to the end had I not set my agent to hunt you and your antecedents.”

  Michael Levison rose from his seat hastily, trembling in every limb. Horace rose at the same moment, and the two men stood face to face—one the very image of craven fear, the other cool and self-possessed.

  “This is a tissue of lies!” gasped Levison, wiping his lips nervously with a handkerchief that fluttered in his tremulous fingers. “Have you brought me here to insult me with this madman’s talk?”

  “I have brought you here to your doom. There was a time when I thought that if you and I ever stood face to face, I should shoot you down like a dog; but I have changed my mind. Such carrion dogs as you are not worth the stain of blood upon an honest man’s hand. It is useless to tell you how I loved the girl you murdered. Your savage nature would not comprehend any but the basest and most selfish passion. Don’t stir another step—I have a loaded revolver within reach, and shall make an end of you if you attempt to quit this room. The police are on the watch for you outside, and you will leave this place for a gaol. Hark! what is that?”

  It was the sound of a footstep on the stairs outside, a woman’s light footstep, and the rustling of a silk dress. The dining room door was ajar, and the sounds were distinctly audible in the empty house. Michael Levison made for the door, availing himself of this momentary diversion, with some vague hope of escape; but, within, a few paces of the threshold, he recoiled suddenly, with a hoarse gasping cry.

  The door was pushed wide open by a light hand, and a figure stood upon the threshold—a girlish figure dressed in black silk, a pale sad face framed by dark auburn hair.

  “The dead returned to life!” cried Levison. “Hide her, hide her! I can’t face her! Let me go!”

  He made for the other door leading into the inner room, but found it locked, and then sank cowering down into a chair, covering his eyes with his skinny hands. The girl came softly into the room and stood by Horace Wynward.

  “You have forgotten me, Mr. Levison,” she said; “and you take me for my sister’s ghost. I was always like her, and they say I have grown more so within the last two years. We had a letter from you a month ago, posted from Trinidad, telling us that my sister Laura was well and happy there with you; yet you mistake me for the shadow of the dead!”

  The frightened wretch did not look up. He had not yet recovered from the shock produced by his sister-in-law’s sudden appearance. The handkerchief which he held to his lips was stained with blood. Horace Wynward went quietly to the outer door and opened it, returning presently with two men, who came softly into the room and approached Levison. He made no attempt to resist them as they slipped a pair of handcuffs on his bony wrists and led him away. There was a cab standing outside, ready to convey him to prison.

  Emily Daventry sank into a chair as he was taken from the room.

  “Oh, Mr. Wynward,” she said, “I think there can be little doubt of my sister’s wretched fate. The experiment which you proposed has succeeded only too well.”

  Horace had been down to Devonshire to question the two girls about their sister. He had been struck by Emily’s likeness to his lost love, and had persuaded her aunt to bring her up to London, in order to identify Levison by her means, and to test the effect which her appearance might produce upon the nerves of the suspected assassin.

  The police were furnished with a complicated mass of evidence against Levison in his character of clerk, merchant, and bill-discounter; but the business was of a nature that entailed much delay, and after several adjourned examinations the prisoner fell desperately ill of heart disease, from which he had suffered for years, but which grew much worse during his imprisonment. Finding his death certain, he sent for Horace Wynward, and to him confessed his crime, boasting of his wife’s death with a fiendish delight in the deed, which he called an act of vengeance against his rival.

  “I knew you well enough when you came home, Horace Wynward,” he said, “and I thought it would be my happy lot to compass your ruin. You trapped me, but to the last you have the worst of it. The girl you loved is dead. She dared to tell me that she loved you; defied my anger; told me that she had sold herself to me to save her father from disgrace, and confessed that she hated me, and had always hated me. From that hour she was doomed. Her white face was a constant reproach to me. I was goaded to madness by her tears. She used to mutter your name in her sleep. I wonder I did not cut he
r throat as she lay there with the name upon her lips. But I must have swung for that. So I was patient, and waited till I could have her alone with me in the mountains. It was only a push, and she was gone. I came home alone, free from the worry and fever of her presence—except in my dreams. She has haunted those ever since, with her pale face—yes, by heaven, I have hardly known what it is to sleep, from that hour to this, without seeing her white face and hearing the one long shriek that went up to the sky as she fell.”

  He died within a few days of this interview, and before his trial could take place. Time, that heals almost all griefs, brought peace by-and-by to Horace Wynward. He furnished the house in Mayfair, and for some time led a misanthropical life there; but on paying a second visit to Devonshire, where the two Daventry girls lived their simple industrious life in their aunt’s school, he discovered that Emily’s likeness to her sister made her very dear to him, and in the following year he brought a mistress to Crofton in the person of that young lady. Together they paid a mournful visit to that lonely spot in the Tyrol where Laura Levison had perished, and stayed there while a white marble cross was erected above her grave.