Mr. Marx's Secret

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

“Well, of course, when Cecil began talking about this man Hart’s disappearance,” I continued, “and I heard a good deal about it at Little Drayton, I began to think about this lunatic whom no one knew anything about. I put down the exact dates, and I found that Hart must have left Little Drayton about a week before the first attack on Mr. Marx by the unknown madman. Of course, this by itself was scarcely worth thinking about, but the strangest part of it is to come. More out of curiosity than anything, I asked to see a photograph of Mr. Hart. His daughter took us into the sitting-room to look at one and to her amazement found it gone. All search was unavailing. Someone had taken it away. Well, I found out where it had been taken and went to order a copy. It was no use. The negative had been sold to the same person who alone could have entered Miss Hart’s sitting-room and abstracted the photograph. That person was Leonard de Cartienne, and he has been in communication with Mr. Marx, the man whom the lunatic tried to murder. Can you make anything of that, sir?”

Apparently Mr. Ravenor had made something of it. He was leaning a little forward in his chair and at the sight of his face a great fear came upon me.

A ghastly change had crept into it. His eyes were burning with a dry, fierce fire, and the pallor extended even to his lips.

He sat forward, with his long, wasted fingers, stretched out convulsively before his face, like a man who sees a hideous vision pass before his sight and yet remains spellbound, powerless to speak, or move, or break away from the loathsome spectacle.

Sickly beads of perspiration stood out upon his clammy forehead and his dry lips were moving, although no sound came from them.

I gazed at him in a speechless horror, and as I looked the room and all its contents seemed to swim around me. What could Mr. Ravenor have found so awful in the story which I had told and how could it concern him?

Suddenly he rose from his seat and stood over me. I was more than ever alarmed at his strange expression.

“There is a third connection,” he said hoarsely. “Do you remember that a man called to see me, whom I declined to admit, on the night of your first visit here? When I changed my mind he had disappeared.”

I gave a little cry and felt my blood run cold.

“Mr. Marx had something to do with that,” I faltered out. “I met him under the trees in the avenue and he was horribly frightened to see me. I had heard a cry. I was listening.”