CHAPTER XXI
HEROLD caught his train. He had accomplished his mission; Stella had spoken. In a few words he had enlightened Stella's unhappy guardians.
“Be gentle with her,” he had recommended. “Don't try to force her confidence. Don't let Ransome feel her pulse too often or give her physic. Talk about the tropics, and try to stimulate her interest and make her think she would like to go on a sea-voyage. Or, if you can get hold of a lost baby, stick it in the garden where she can find it.”
He had talked bravely to the old people, who would have cut off each other's heads—and their own, for the matter of that—to bring back the Stellamaris of a year ago. They clung to him pathetically. If he had counselled them to shut Stella in a room and read the minor prophets aloud to her, they would have obeyed him with unquestioning meekness. With a smile on his lips, he had put heart into them. Lady Blount had kissed him, and Sir Oliver, watery-eyed, had wrung his hand.
In the empty carriage of the train he gave way, as your highly strung, sensitive man must do, if he would avoid disaster. He did not think. To think implies an active process. But thoughts came tumultuous, and without a struggle he let them assail him. He felt that if he attempted to put into logical order the intricacies of passionate emotion in which he and John and Stella and Unity were involved, if he attempted to gage the effect on all their lives of this new horror brought therein by the murderous devil-woman, if he allowed himself to think of Stella's challenge, “You say you love me like that?” he would go mad. Let the burning thoughts sear his brain as they listed; his sanity demanded passive surrender.
At Victoria Station he collected his wits so as to deal with the commonplace routine of life. He looked at the clock, rapidly calculating. He would have time to go home, bolt some food and drink, and go off to keep his appointment with the men of money. He drove to his house in Kensington in a taxicab, and, telling the driver to wait, let himself in with his latchkey. His man met him in the hall.
“A lady waiting to see you, sir.”
“I have no time to see ladies. Tell her I'm very sorry, and bring me a sandwich and a whisky and soda.”
He thought she was some persistent actress in search of an engagement. Such phenomena are not infrequent in the overcrowded theatrical world.
“It 's a Miss Blake, sir, Mr. Risca's ward. She telephoned this morning, and asked when you would be likely to be in—”
“Miss Blake?”
He stood amazed. What was Unity doing in his house? It was only yesterday that he had seen her. What had happened?
“Where is she?”
“In the library, sir.”
He ran up the stairs. As he entered the room, Unity rose from the straight-backed chair in which she had been sitting and rushed to meet him. She was an eager and anxious Unity, still wearing the tartan blouse, but not the gorgeous hat of yesterday. A purple tam-o'-shanter hastily secured by a glass-headed pin, had taken the place of that extravagant creation.
“Oh, Mr. Herold, do you know anything about guardian?”
The eagerness faded from her face as she saw the perplexity on his.
“What do you mean, dear?”
“He went out last night about seven o'clock, and has n't come back since.” She wrung her hands. “I thought you might be able to tell me something.”
He could only look at her in blank dismay, and question her as to John's latest known movements. There was very little to tell.
“He had an appointment in town after lunch, which was the last time I saw him. I heard him come in about a quarter to seven and go straight into his study—”
“He left me about half-past five—at the club,” said Herold. “He was all nerves and crazy-headedness. He almost quarrelled with me. He said he had n't slept for weeks.”
“He has n't,” said Unity. “That's what makes me so frightened.”
“Well, go on.”
“I heard him come in. I was in the kitchen helping Phoebe. A few minutes afterward I heard him walk down the passage—you know his quick, heavy tread—and go out again, slamming the street door. We waited dinner for ever so long, and he did n't come. And then it was bedtime. Aunt Gladys was n't anxious, because nothing that guardian did now would surprise her. She's like that, you know. And I did n't think very much about it at first, because he's always irregular. But when it came to two and three and four o'clock in the morning—I can never go to sleep till I hear him come in, you know,” she explained simply—“then I was terribly anxious—”
“Why did n't you ring me up during the night?” Herold asked.
“I thought of it; but I did n't like to disturb you. I did early this morning, but your servant said you had already gone down to Southcliff. Oh, I was so hoping,” she sighed, “that he had gone to Southcliff, too! There was a letter waiting for him—”
“Good Lord!” cried Herold, with a flash of memory, “so there was! From Lady Blount.”
“Do you know what was in it?” she asked quickly.
“Lady Blount told me. She said that Stellamaris was very ill, going to die,—an alarming letter,—and begged him to go down at once.”
“And he went out, but he did n't go down,” said Unity.
Their eyes met, and the same fear froze them. “Did you look—”
“No; how could I? The drawer was locked.”
“It must be broken open,” said Herold.
The man-servant came in to ask whether he should pay and dismiss the waiting driver of the taxi.
“Yes,” said Herold, after a moment's reflection. “And, Ripley, you might telephone to Mr. Bowers of Temple Chambers and say that I'm detained; that I don't know whether I 'll be able to come at all.”
It was impossible to transact business beneath this lowering cloud of tragedy. The men of money could wait till John was found, dead or alive. Suddenly he remembered that a taxicab was the one thing necessary. He recalled Ripley.
“Let the cab wait.” He turned to Unity as soon as the man had closed the door.
“It must be broken open, and at once. I 'll come with you and do it. I 'll take the responsibility.”
“Yes,” said Unity. “Let us know the worst.”
“I 'll go and fetch a couple of bunches of keys. We may find one to fit.”
He went out and soon afterward returned, the keys jingling in his pocket. Ripley was at the hall telephone as they passed.
“I 'm going up to Mr. Risca's,” said Herold.
In a few moments they were speeding across London. Unity sat very tense, her red hands clenched together till the knuckles showed white.
“The house first, and then Scotland Yard,” he said.
“We must know first,” she assented.
He glanced at her admiringly.
“You 're one of the bravest girls I 've ever met.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It is n't a time for playing the fool and going into hysterics,” she said bluntly.
Many girls of her mongrel origin would have broken down under the strain, shed wild tears, uttered incoherences of terror. Not so Unity. “She is the kind that walks through fire,” thought Herold.
They spoke little. He grew sick with anxiety. Lady Blount's letter had been the determining cause of John's flight from home. Of this there could be no question. It had not been a sane man who raved at him yesterday. He was primed for any act of madness. The letter was the spark. Stella ill, fading away to a ghost and as silent as one, victim to an obscure and wasting disease that baffled them all; Stella dying before their eyes—the unhappy picture of the beloved was poignant in its artlessness. It would have stirred to grief any friend of Stellamaris. What emotions, then, had it not aroused in the breast of the man who loved her desperately, and whose very love had brought her to this pitch of suffering, to this imminence of dissolution? And the appeal for help, for the immediate presence of the rock and tower of strength of the household, with what ironic force had that battered at the disordered brain? There were only three courses for a man situated like Risca, and gifted or afflicted with Risca's headstrong and gloomy temperament, to pursue: to surrender to the appeal, which he had not done; to find his friend and bid him stand by while he cursed the day he was born and the God who made him and the devil-ruled welter of infamy which called itself a world, which likewise he had not done; or, in a paroxysm of despair and remorse, to fling himself beyond reach of human touch and seek a refuge for himself in the darkness. The conclusion that he had taken this last course forced itself with diabolical logic on Herold's mind. The very key to the door of darkness had lain ready to his hand, hidden in the study drawer. Before the eyes of the imaginative man, strung tight almost to breaking-point by the morning's emotions, flashed vivid pictures of tragic happenings—so vivid that they could not but be true: the reading of the letter; John standing by the study table; the letter dropping from his hands, which, in familiar gesture, went to the crisp, grizzly hair; the bloodshot eyes,—he had noted them yesterday,—the heavy jaw momentarily hanging loose, then snapping tight with a grating of the teeth; the unlocking of the drawer; the snatching up of the evil, glittering thing; the exit along the passage, with “his quick, heavy tread.”
Did he remember to lock the drawer again? The vision was elusive. The question became insistent.
“Did you try the drawer?” he asked suddenly.
“No,” said Unity.
It was unlocked. He felt sure that it was unlocked. He recalled the moving picture, bade it stay while he concentrated his soul on the drawer. And one instant it was shut, and another it did not seem flush with the framing-table and a crack, a sixteenth of an inch, was visible.
He strove to carry on the vision beyond the house-door; but in vain. He saw John Risca going out grim into the soft and clouded summer evening, and then the figure disappeared into lucent but impenetrable space.
Unity gripped his hand. Her common little face was like marble.
“Supposing he's dead!”
“I won't suppose such a thing,” said Herold.
“You must. Why not face things?”
“All right. Let us face them.”
“Supposing he's dead. Do you think he 's wicked?”
“Certainly not. Do you?”
“You know I don't,” said Unity.
“Of course I know,” said Herold.
“I could die for her myself, and I'm not a man,” said Unity.
“Is n't it best, however, to live for those one loves, even at the cost of suffering?”
“Not if you can do them good by dying.”
“Supposing he 's dead,” asked Herold,—clean direct souls can ask each other such questions,—“what will you do?”
Her grip grew fierce as she turned up to him her snub-nosed little cockney face. “There 'll be no need for me to kill myself. I 'll die all right. Don't make any mistake about that.”
“But supposing he is alive, and supposing the barrier were removed—I mean, supposing the woman—you know whom—were no longer there, and he married—what would you do?”
“What would you?”