The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Even now he found time to realize with poignant pain, and yet with a certain relief, that such a man as had once been he now lying stretched out at his feet could certainly, had he cared to do so, have stayed, or at least deviated, the course of the weapon, and later on this knowledge brought Wantley comfort.

But he had no leisure now to give to such reasoning and, slipping the bolt in the door, he again stooped over the dead man.

What he was about to do was intolerably repugnant to him, and as, after a moment's pause, he thrust his hand into the old-fashioned pockets, turned back the coat, sought eagerly for what it was so essential he should find, he felt the sweat break out all over his body. But, to his dismay, there seemed to be no keys, either loose in the various pockets, or attached to the heavy gold chain, which terminated with a bunch of old seals and a repeater watch.

Wantley was turning away, half relieved to be spared the task he had set himself, when something strange and enigmatical struck him in the ashen, lined face, the wide-open, sightless eyes, from which he had till now averted his glance.

During the performance of what had been to him a hateful task, and after having so turned the head as to conceal the wound above the right ear, he had been at some pains to leave the body exactly as it had fallen. But in the course of his search he had been compelled to shift the position of the dead man's arms, and he now saw that Downing's right hand, lying across his breast, seemed to be pointing—to what was it pointing? Again the seeker stooped—nay, this time he knelt down; and at once he found what he had sought for so fruitlessly, for under the palm of the dead hand, in an inner waistcoat pocket, which had before escaped him, lay a small key.

For the first time Wantley bared his head, and a curious impulse came over him. 'You will forgive me,' he said, not loudly, but in a whisper, 'you will pardon, for her sake, for your poor Penelope's sake, what I have been compelled to do?'

And then heavy-hearted, full of fear and foreboding, he made his way back, up the rough track, so through the pine-wood, to the villa, mercifully spared on the way the ordeal of meeting, and having perchance to speak with, another human being.

Quickly he passed by the window where Lady Wantley was still sitting, up the shallow staircase leading from the hall to the upper stories of Monk's Eype, and so on to the room, close to his own, where, with pleasant anticipation of an agreeable friendship with his cousin's famous guest, he had ushered Downing the first night of his stay, just a month ago.

It was, as he now reminded himself, a month to a day, for that first meeting had been on the seventh of August, the eve of his, Wantley's own birthday, and this now was the seventh of September.

Wantley singled out at once a large red despatch-box as probably containing what he sought. The key he held in his hand clicked in the lock, and he saw, almost filling up the top compartment, a plain, old-fashioned leather jewel-case which contained more than he expected to find of moment to himself. There, smiling up at him, lay the baby face of Penelope, a miniature which he recognized as one that had been painted to be a surprise gift from Lady Wantley to her husband on their child's second birthday, and which had always stood on Lord Wantley's table. 'She should not have given him that!' was the young man's involuntary thought.