“We fear something has happened to Lady Sibyl,”—she replied at once—“Her rooms are locked, and we cannot make her hear. Her maid got alarmed, and ran over to my house to ask me what was best to be done,—I came at once, and knocked and called, but could get no response. You know the windows are too high to reach from the ground,—there is no ladder on the premises long enough for the purpose,—and no one can climb up that side of the building. I begged some of the servants to break open the door by force,—but they would not,—they were all afraid; and I did not like to act on my own responsibility, so I telegraphed for you——”
I sprang away from her before she had finished speaking and hurried upstairs at once,—outside the door of the ante-room which led into my wife’s luxurious ‘suite’ of apartments, I paused breathless.
“Sibyl!” I cried.
There was not a sound. Mavis had followed me, and stood by my side, trembling a little. Two or three of the servants [p 392] had also crept up the stairs, and were clinging to the banisters, listening nervously.
“Sibyl!” I called again. Still absolute silence. I turned round upon the waiting and anxious domestics with an assumption of calmness.
“Lady Sibyl is probably not in her rooms at all;”—I said; “She may have gone out unobserved. This door of the ante-chamber has a spring-lock,—it can easily get fast shut by the merest accident. Bring a strong hammer,—or a crowbar,—anything that will break it open,—if you had had sense you would have obeyed Miss Clare, and done this a couple of hours ago.”
And I waited with enforced composure, while my instructions were carried out as rapidly as possible. Two of the men-servants appeared with the necessary tools, and very soon the house resounded with clamour,—blow after blow was dealt upon the solid oaken door for some time without success,—the spring lock would not yield,—neither would the strong hinges give way. Presently however, after ten minutes’ hard labour, one of the finely carved panels was smashed in,—then another,—and, springing over the débris I rushed through the ante-room into the boudoir,—then paused, listening, and calling again, “Sibyl!” No one followed me,—some indefinable instinct, some nameless dread, held the servants back, and Mavis Clare as well. I was alone, ... and in complete darkness. Groping about, with my heart beating furiously, I sought for the ivory button in the wall which would, at pressure, flood the rooms with electric light, but somehow I could not find it. My hand came in contact with various familiar things which I recognised by touch,—rare bits of china, bronzes, vases, pictures,—costly trifles that were heaped up as I knew, in this particular apartment with a lavish luxury and disregard of cost befitting a wanton eastern empress of old time,—cautiously feeling my way along, I started with terror to see, as I thought, a tall figure outline itself suddenly against the darkness,—white, spectral and luminous,—a figure that, as I stared at it aghast, raised a [p 393] pallid hand and pointed me forward with a menacing air of scorn! In my dazed horror at this apparition, or delusion, I stumbled over the heavy trailing folds of a velvet portiére, and knew by this that I had passed from the boudoir into the adjoining bedroom. Again I stopped,—calling “Sibyl!” but my voice had scarcely strength enough to raise itself above a whisper. Giddy and confused as I was, I remembered that the electric light in this room was fixed at the side of the toilet-table, and I stepped hurriedly in that direction, when all at once in the thick gloom I touched something clammy and cold like dead flesh, and brushed against a garment that exhaled faint perfume, and rustled at my touch with a silken sound. This alarmed me more thoroughly than the spectre I fancied I had just seen,—I drew back shudderingly against the wall,—and in so doing, my fingers involuntarily closed on the polished ivory stud which, like a fairy talisman in modern civilization, emits radiance at the owner’s will. I pressed it nervously,—the light blazed forth through the rose-tinted shells which shaded its dazzling clearness, and showed me where I stood, ... within an arm’s length of a strange, stiff white creature that sat staring at itself in the silver-framed mirror with wide-open, fixed and glassy eyes!
“Sibyl!” I gasped—“My wife ... ! ...” but the words died chokingly in my throat. Was it indeed my wife?—this frozen statue of a woman, watching her own impassive image thus intently? I looked upon her wonderingly,—doubtingly,—as if she were some stranger;—it took me time to recognize her features, and the bronze-gold darkness of her long hair which fell loosely about her in a lavish wealth of rippling waves, ... her left hand hung limply over the arm of the chair in which, like some carven ivory goddess, she sat enthroned,—and tremblingly, slowly, reluctantly, I advanced and took that hand. Cold as ice it lay in my palm much as though it were a waxen model of itself;—it glittered with jewels,—and I studied every ring upon it with a curious, dull pertinacity, like one who seeks a clue to identity. That large turquoise in a diamond setting was a marriage-gift from a [p 394] duchess,—that opal her father gave her,—the lustrous circle of sapphires and brilliants surmounting her wedding-ring was my gift,—that ruby I seemed to know,——well, well! what a mass of sparkling value wasted on such fragile clay! I peered into her face,—then at the reflection of that face in the mirror,—and again I grew perplexed,—was it, could it be Sibyl after all? Sibyl was beautiful,—this dead thing had a devilish smile on its blue, parted lips, and frenzied horror in its eyes! Suddenly something tense in my brain seemed to snap and give way,—dropping the chill fingers I held, I cried aloud—
“Mavis! Mavis Clare!”
In a moment she was with me,—in a glance she comprehended all. Falling on her knees by the dead woman she broke into a passion of weeping.