Mysterious Mr. Sabin by E. Phillips Oppenheim (read novel full .TXT) 📖

he said; “still, I would like you to have it, and you shall if you will be quite frank with me.”

She hesitated.

“I should like,” she said, “to think it over till to-morrow morning; it will be better, for supposing I decide to accept, I shall know a good deal more of this than I know now.”

“Very well,” he said, “only I should strongly advise you to accept.”

“One hundred a year,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Perhaps you will have changed your mind by to-morrow.”

“There is no fear of it,” he assured her quietly.

“Write it down,” she said. “I think that I shall agree.”

“Don’t you trust me, Blanche?”

“It is a business transaction,” she said coolly; “you have made it one yourself.”

He tore a sheet from his pocket-book and scribbled a few lines upon it.

“Will that do?” he asked her.

She read it through and folded it carefully up.

“It will do very nicely,” she said with a quiet smile. “And now I must go back as quickly as I can.”

They walked to the hall door; Lord Wolfenden’s carriage had come back from the station and was waiting for him.

“How are you going?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I must hire something, I suppose,” she said. “What beautiful horses! Do you see, Hector remembers me quite well; I used to take bread to him in the stable when I was at Deringham Hall. Good old man!”

She patted the horse’s neck. Wolfenden did not like it, but he had no alternative.

“Won’t you allow me to give you a lift?” he said, with a marked absence of cordiality in his tone; “or if you would prefer it, I can easily order a carriage from the hotel.”

“Oh! I would much rather go with you, if you really don’t mind,” she said. “May I really?”

“I shall be very pleased,” he answered untruthfully. “I ought perhaps to tell you that the horses are very fresh and don’t go well together: they have a nasty habit of running away down hill.”

She smiled cheerfully, and lifting her skirts placed a dainty little foot upon the step.

“I detest quiet horses,” she said, “and I have been used to being run away with all my life. I rather like it.”

Wolfenden resigned himself to the inevitable. He took the reins, and they rattled off towards Deringham. About half-way there, they saw a little black figure away on the cliff path to the right.

“It is Mr. Blatherwick,” Wolfenden said, pointing with his whip. “Poor little chap! I wish you’d leave him alone, Blanche!”

“On one condition,” she said, smiling up at him, “I will!”

“It is granted already,” he declared.

“That you let me drive for just a mile!”

He handed her the reins at once, and changed seats. From the moment she took them, he could see that she was an accomplished whip. He leaned back and lit a cigarette.

“Blatherwick’s salvation,” he remarked, “has been easily purchased.”

She smiled rather curiously, but did not reply. A hired carriage was coming towards them, and her eyes were fixed upon it. In a moment they swept past, and Wolfenden was conscious of a most unpleasant sensation. It was Helène, whose dark eyes were glancing from the girl to him in cold surprise; and Mr. Sabin, who was leaning back by her side wrapped in a huge fur coat. Blanche looked down at him innocently.

“Fancy meeting them,” she remarked, touching Hector with the whip. “It does not matter, does it? You look dreadfully cross!”

Wolfenden muttered some indefinite reply and threw his cigarette savagely into the road. After all he was not so sure that Mr. Blatherwick’s salvation had been cheaply won!

CHAPTER XXVIII A MIDNIGHT VISITOR

“Wolf! Wolf!”

Wolfenden, to whom sleep before the early morning hours was a thing absolutely impossible, was lounging in his easy chair meditating on the events of the day over a final cigarette. He had come to his room at midnight in rather a dejected frame of mind; the day’s happenings had scarcely gone in his favour. Helène had looked upon him coldly—almost with suspicion. In the morning he would be able to explain everything, but in the meantime Blanche was upon the spot, and he had an uneasy feeling that the girl was his enemy. He had begun to doubt whether that drive, so natural a thing, as it really happened, was not carefully planned on her part, with a full knowledge of the fact that they would meet Mr. Sabin and his niece. It was all the more irritating because during the last few days he had been gradually growing into the belief that so far as his suit with Helène was concerned, the girl herself was not altogether indifferent to him. She had refused him definitely enough, so far as mere words went, but there were lights in her soft, dark eyes, and something indefinable, but apparent in her manner, which had forbidden him to abandon all hope. Yet it was hard to believe that she was in any way subject to the will of her guardian, Mr. Sabin. In small things she took no pains to study him; she was evidently not in the least under his dominion. On the contrary, there was in his manner towards her a certain deference, as though it were she whose will was the ruling one between them. As a matter of fact, her appearance and whole bearing seemed to indicate one accustomed to command. Her family or connections she had never spoken of to him, yet he had not the slightest doubt but that she was of gentle birth. Even if it should turn out that this was not the case, Wolfenden was democratic enough to think that it made no difference. She was good enough to be his wife. Her appearance and manners were almost typically aristocratic—whatever there might be in her present surroundings or in her past which savoured of mystery, he would at least have staked his soul upon her honesty. He realised very fully, as he sat there smoking in the early hours of the morning, that this was no passing fancy of his; she was his first love—for good or for evil she would be his last. Failure, he said to himself, was a word which he would not admit in his vocabulary. She was moving towards him already, some day she should be his! Through the mists of blue tobacco smoke which hovered around him he seemed, with a very slight and very pleasant effort of his imagination, to see some faint visions of her in that more softening mood, the vaguest recollection of which set his heart beating fast and sent the blood moving through his veins to music. How delicately handsome she was, how exquisite the lines of her girlish, yet graceful and queenly figure. With her clear, creamy skin, soft as alabaster below the red gold of her hair, the somewhat haughty poise of her small, shapely head, she brought him vivid recollections of that old aristocracy of France, as one reads of them now only in the pages of romance or history. She had the grand air—even the great Queen could not have walked to the scaffold with a more magnificent contempt of the rabble, whose victim she was. Some more personal thought came to him; he half closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair steeped in pleasant thoughts; and then it all came to a swift, abrupt end, these reveries and pleasant castle-building. He was back in the present, suddenly recalled in a most extraordinary manner, to realisation of the hour and place. Surely he could not have been mistaken! That was a low knocking at his locked door outside; there was no doubt about it. There it was again! He heard his own name, softly but unmistakably spoken in a trembling voice. He glanced at his watch, it was between two and three o’clock; then he walked quickly to the door and opened it without hesitation. It was his father who stood there fully dressed, with pale face and angrily burning eyes. In his hand he carried a revolver. Wolfenden noticed that the fingers which clasped it were shaking, as though with cold.

“Father,” Wolfenden exclaimed, “what on earth is the matter?”

He dropped his voice in obedience to that sudden gesture for silence. The Admiral answered him in a hoarse whisper.

“A great deal is the matter! I am being deceived and betrayed in my own house! Listen!”

They stood together on the dimly lit landing; holding his breath and listening intently, Wolfenden was at once aware of faint, distant sounds. They came from the ground floor almost immediately below them. His father laid his hand heavily upon Wolfenden’s shoulder.

“Some one is in the library,” he said. “I heard the door open distinctly. When I tried to get out I found that the door of my room was locked; there is treachery here!”

“How did you get out?” Wolfenden asked.

“Through the bath-room and down the back stairs; that door was locked too, but I found a key that fitted it. Come with me. Be careful! Make no noise!”

They were on their way downstairs now. As they turned the angle of the broad oak stairway, Wolfenden caught a glimpse of his father’s face, and shuddered; it was very white, and his eyes were bloodshot and wild, his forefinger was already upon the trigger of his revolver.

“Let me have that,” Wolfenden whispered, touching it; “my hand is steadier than yours.”

But the Admiral shook his head; he made no answer in words, but the butt end of the revolver became almost welded into the palm of his hand. Wolfenden began to feel that they were on the threshold of a tragedy. They had reached the ground floor now; straight in front of them was the library door. The sound of muffled movements within the room was distinctly audible. The Admiral’s breath came fast.

“Tread lightly, Wolf,” he muttered. “Don’t let them hear us! Let us catch them red-handed!”

But the last dozen yards of the way was over white flags tesselated, and polished like marble. Wolfenden’s shoes creaked; the Admiral’s tip-toe walk was no light one. There was a sudden cessation of all sounds; they had been heard! The Admiral, with a low cry of rage, leaped forwards. Wolfenden followed close behind.

Even as they crossed the threshold the room was plunged into sudden darkness; they had but a momentary and partial glimpse of the interior. Wolfenden saw a dark, slim figure bending forward with his finger still pressed to the ball of the lamp. The table was strewn with papers, something—somebody—was fluttering behind the screen yonder. There was barely a second of light; then with a sharp click the lamp went out, and the figure of the man was lost in obscurity. Almost simultaneously there came a flash of level fire and the loud report of the Admiral’s revolver. There was no groan, so Wolfenden concluded that the man, whoever he might be, had not been hit. The sound of the report was followed by a few seconds’ breathless silence. There was no movement of any sort in the room; only a faint breeze stealing in through the wide-open windows caused a gentle rustling of the papers with which the table was strewn, and the curtains swayed gently backwards and forwards. The Admiral, with his senses all on the alert, stood motionless, the revolver tense in his hand, his fiercely eager eyes straining to pierce the darkness. By his side, Wolfenden, equally agitated now, though from a different reason, stood holding his breath, his head thrust forward, his eyes striving to penetrate the veil of gloom which lay like a thick barrier between him and the screen. His fear had suddenly taken to itself a very real and terrible form. There had been a moment, before the extinction of the lamp had plunged the room