It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries

by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler

The rattle of the dice still continued.

“Take my place at the table,” said Marlowe, approaching the landlord, and then he added to the players, “I will return immediately.”

He had no reason to believe that he would make a prompt return, but as most of the money which had been wagered lay in his own pockets, he felt it incumbent upon him to avoid any remonstrance by making this statement. If he had noticed the changing color of the Count’s face, and the determined expression that gathered upon it at this moment, it might have caused him to have paused at some point along the line of his proposed venture to ascertain the reason of this apparent solicitude; but it had escaped his observation.

A moment after his departure from the tap-room he was hurriedly ascending the stairway in the Golden Hind. His haste, although like that of one pursued, was occasioned wholly by the force of attraction. He had no cause to believe his time limited, nor that any one might be enough interested in, or disturbed by, his presence there to attempt to thwart him.

It was true that Tabbard had spoken of some one, who that day had caused the lady to cut short her message for him; but such person may have been merely a friend whom she did not desire to know of her converse with the serving-man.

In his haste he had not stopped to make any inquiry of Dodsman concerning the lady’s friend or friends at the tavern. If he had considered for a moment, he would have remembered that both Manuel Crossford and his daughter had been well known to the landlord, and the occasion of her presence here could have been easily ascertained. He had thought of making such inquiry prior to his entrance, but the three men, and later the game of hazard, had diverted his mind. Besides these diversions, the many cups of ale which he had drained were not conducive to quick wit or sober thought. However, his failure to learn more of his surroundings occurred to him as he climbed the stairs, but no lover at the last step to the tryst ever yet turned back for an answer which in any case could not have swerved him from his course.

“I suppose I shall run into the arms of her morose and irascible sire, before I catch a glimpse of her face,” he thought.

He reached the second story, passed along the hall a short distance and then halted. The door that stood before him was emblazoned with a shield lying flat against two spears. They were carved on the center panel, which occupied nearly the whole space between the posts. There was no other portal displaying elaborate decoration. The walls and ceiling of the passage were timbered with chestnut, without finish and in striking contrast to the door. This was undoubtedly the entrance to the room into which, as told by Tabbard, the woman had so hurriedly disappeared. It stood ajar, as though speaking an invitation to enter without knocking. Without hesitation he pushed it open.

The room revealed was at one end of the tavern and its two latticed windows overlooked a side street. The walls were unrelieved except for a red arras hanging against the center of one, a black chimney-mouth breaking the dead surface of another, and the two windows setting deep in the wall furthest from the door. The few pieces of furniture were of antique manufacture, and a carpet—an unusual article for houses at that period, except city inns and private mansions—lay upon the floor. A table stood near the chimney, and on it was a candelabrum. All of its lights were burning.

If the fact of the existence of these general outlines of the room and its intimate belongings, were conveyed to the brain of the intruder, he was unconscious of the same, for their projection upon his retina was destroyed by the sight of one sole object. At the creak of the hinges, a woman, seated on a chair beside the table, raised her eyes. It was this living figure that rushed into his vision with a violence productive of slight symptoms of syncope.