Book: The House of Mystery

W >> William Henry Irwin >> The House of Mystery




Suddenly his heart gave a great leap. For the first time, something was
happening in the room before him. It came first as a slight, padded
thump, like bare feet striking the floor. He saw that the portieres to
left of his range of vision were undulating. They parted--and a pillar
of white stood for a moment before them. The thing resolved itself into
a human figure, swathed, draped in white, the face concealed by a white
veil which fell straight from the head. Now the white figure, with a
noiseless, gliding motion, was crossing the room toward the white desk.
It stopped, lifted a hand which crept toward the gaslight. With this
motion, the veil fell away from the face. The gaslight shone upon it;
he could see it in full profile.

It was Annette.

In the space of his long gasp, her hand touched the gas jet. It went
out; the room faded into absolute darkness.

And the vision which stood out from the black background made him sway
and clutch at the garments in the closet. For her robes radiated dull
light, like a coal seen behind ashes. It was as though she were about
to burst into flame. On her head gleamed a dull star; from it, the
radiance of her robe fell away toward her feet in lesser light, like
the tail-streamer of a comet. All emotion of despair, disillusion,
rage, were expressed for a moment within him by an emotion of
supernatural awe which sent the tremors running from his face to his
spine, and his spine to his feet. She stood a perfect phantom of the
night, like Annette called back from the dead.

The pillar of dull light was moving now. She had stooped; he heard a
faint creak, he imagined that he felt new air. Suddenly, too, a voice
which had been droning far away became audible. And now the pillar of
light was sinking, sinking through the floor. The feet were gone, the
torso; the star of light was level with the floor, was gone. He was
looking into darkness.

Mrs. Markham's controlled, vibrant voice rose clearly from below--he
caught every word:

"Come, Helen; be strong. He loves you. His love calls you!"

Silence for a quarter of a minute; then a swish as of garments agitated
by some swift motion; then Annette's well-remembered contralto voice of
a boy--Annette's voice, which had spoken such things to him--

"_Robert, dearest, I have come again. Robert, I keep for you out here
the little ring. Robert, we will be happy!_"

And the voice of a man, sobbing and breaking between the exclamatives:

"_My little Lallie--Dear Helen--how long I've waited--sweetheart--how
many years!_"

And the voice of Annette.

"_Only a few more years to wait, dearest--and now that you have faith,
I can come to you sometimes--but, oh, dearest, I foresee a danger--a
great danger!_"

Ten minutes later, Rosalie tiptoed from the library from which she had
observed the seance to the last detail of method, and made her way to
the closet wherein she had shut Dr. Blake. She opened the door with all
precaution, fumbled, found nothing, whispered. No one answered. At last
she stepped within, plugged the keyhole with her key, and lit a match.

The closet was empty.

Rosalie crept upstairs to her own room. When she lit the gas, she was
crying softly and--as of old habit under emotional stress--talking to
herself under her breath.

"I had to do it," she whispered. "He'd believe nothin' but his eyes!"

She sat down then, and surveyed her belongings. "The job's over. What
whelps it makes people--just to touch this business!"




XII

ANNETTE LIES


Blake rose from a night of protracted, dull suffering; of quick rages;
of hideous, unrelieved despairs. When the day came and the city roared
about him again, the habits of life reasserted themselves. He rose,
dressed, sent for coffee, gained the pathetic victory of swallowing it.
His face, seared by all the inner fires of that night, settled now to a
look of steel resolution. He rose from his coffee, opened his desk and
wrote this note:

MY DEAR MME. LE GRANGE:

I understand perfectly your motive in asking me to invade a private
house and peep through a keyhole. It was the only thing which would
have disillusioned me. Had you told me this, I would not have
believed you. Though it was harsh treatment, I thank you. I enclose
a check for a hundred dollars, payment two weeks in advance for
your services, which I shall need no longer. You did your job well.
You will understand, I think, that I do not reflect on you when I
ask you never to see me again. You would recall something which I
shall try for the rest of my life to forget.

WALTER H. BLAKE.

P.S. Do as you please about this--but I should prefer you to give
Mrs. Markham the customary notice.

As he sealed the letter and put on his hat that he might go to post it
with his own hands, he had the look of a man who has settled everything
and for life. But the clanging lid of the letter box had no sooner
closed than the look of resolution began to leave his face. For two
hours, he paced the streets of Manhattan. He found himself at length
apostrophizing a brick wall, "Who could believe it?" And again, to a
lamp-post, "I can't believe it!" And again, "She made her!" He wheeled
on this, turned into a drug store, shut himself into the telephone
booth, and called up the Markham house.

After an eternal minute, he was answered in Annette's own deep,
thrilling contralto:

"Hello!"

He paused, controlled his voice, and plunged in:

"Miss Markham, this is Dr. Blake. Please don't go away from the
telephone. You owe it to me to listen--"

"I shall listen--"

"Very well. You will remember that I have respected your wishes about
keeping away from you. I do not want to make you any trouble. But
something has happened in which you are concerned, and which makes it
imperative that I should speak to you face to face for five minutes--"

"Something important?" he heard her voice tremble. He remembered then
that cheated and humiliated lovers had been known to shoot women; he
had raised his voice; perhaps, what with her bad conscience, she was
thinking of that.

"Understand me," he added, speaking lower. "I shall be kind. I shall do
nothing violent nor disagreeable. I want five minutes, at your house,
in the Park--anywhere. Though I would prefer to see you alone, I would
consent to the presence of your aunt. But you must see me!"

"I must see you," she repeated--musingly he thought--"Aunt Paula is
away."

"Could you come at once to that Eighty-sixth Street entrance of the
Park?"

A pause, and--

"I will come," she said.

"Good-by--at once," he answered, and hung up the receiver, without
further word. Outside, he hurled himself into a taxicab. Spurred on by
an offer of an extra dollar for speed, the chauffeur raced north.

Annette was sitting on a bench by the Park gate. Not until he had paid
and dismissed the chauffeur did she look up. She wore a smile, which
faded as she caught his expression. With its fading came the old, worn
look; he had never, even at that first meeting on the train, seen it
more pronounced. A flood of perverse tenderness came over him; he found
himself obliged to steel his heart. And so, it was Annette who spoke
first:

"What is the matter--oh, what has happened?"

He stood towering over her.

"Miss Markham, I came to ask a simple question. Do not be afraid to
tell me the truth. What did you do last night?"

"What did I do last night?" she repeated. "Why do you ask?"

"Answer, please. Where were you last night--what did you do?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"It will be better, I assure you," he replied, "if you do not act with
me."

"You have never seemed harsh before--"

"Will you answer me?"

A blush ran over her exquisite whiteness.

"I have to remember," she said, "that perhaps I once gave you the right
to ask such things of me. Last night I went to bed just after dinner."

"Exactly when?"

"A little after eight. I have been tired lately. Aunt Paula saw that I
went to sleep."

"Is that all?" sharply.

"Why, yes. I slept heavily. The old sleep. The one which leaves me
tired."

"You did not get up?"

"I am beginning to question your right to--"

"But answer me--_Did you wake?_"

"No. I slept until seven this morning. Walter, Walter--" she had never
used his Christian name before, and at the moment it struck him only as
one of her Circe arts--"you are cruel! What do you mean by this? Why do
you trouble me so?"

Now that she had lied in his face, he felt the blood surging scarlet
behind his eyes. It came to him that, if he remained a moment longer,
he should lose all control. Without another word, without a backward
look, he turned and walked away.

"Walter!" she called after him, and again, "Walter! Don't go!"

But he was running top speed down the footpath.

When he stopped, from growing weariness of soul as much as from
physical exhaustion, he was on a cross street leading into Sixth
Avenue. The tinsel front of a saloon rose before him. He tore through
the swinging doors, ordered a drink of whiskey and then another. It
might have been so much water, for all it either fed or quenched the
fire within him. With some instinct to go back to his own private hole
of misery, he took a street car. But he found it impossible to sit
still. He got down after three blocks, found another saloon, took
another drink. This, too, evaporated in the feverish heat engendered by
his sleepless night. But it did afford an idea, a plan. He would get
drunk--for the first time in his life, get blind, staggering drunk.
When he recovered from that, time would have dimmed the misery a
little; he would be able to endure. Just now, he must get drunk or die.

Alone and in broad daylight, he tried it. From, the corner saloons of
the Upper West Side to the dives of the Bowery, he poured in whiskey
and yet more whiskey. Nothing happened; positively nothing. The fire
within burned as fiercely as ever, the misery beat as keenly against
his temples. He tried his voice; he was speaking clearly. Once he ran
down the open asphalt of a water-front street; all his muscular control
remained. The most that liquor did was to spread a slight fog over his
senses, so that he seemed to be seeing through a veil, hearing through
a partition.

On the approach of night, the effect struck him all at once. It came in
a wave of drowsiness, a delicious sense that his trouble, still there,
weighed lightly upon him--did not matter. He was sitting in Madison
Square when he realized this effect. He could sleep now. Thank God for
that! He turned toward the club, walking on the rosy airs of reaction.

As he approached the club door, he was aware that a woman had
disengaged herself from the crowd across the street, was hurrying
toward him. At that moment, a hall-boy dived from the entrance, and
grabbed his arm urgently but respectfully.

"That woman's been asking for you since four--when we chased her away
she laid for you--if you want to get inside--"

"Young man," said the voice of Rosalie Le Grange across his shoulder,
"young man, Dr. Blake wants to see me as much as I want to see him an'
more. Now you jest leave go of him, and you Dr. Blake, come right along
with me, or I'll make a scene and scandal right here in front of the
club."

The hall-boy, with the exaggerated desire to avoid scandal which marks
the perfect club servant, fell away. As for Dr. Blake, this seemed the
line of least resistance. Life and death, misery and happiness--all
looked equally dim and rosy.

Mme. Le Grange said nothing until they were three doors away. Under the
marquee of a restaurant, she stopped, whirled Blake, whom she still
held by an arm, within the entrance.

"You've been drinkin'," she said. "Now don't talk back. The question in
my mind is whether you're clear enough in your head to understand what
I've got to say, because it's something you want to hear straight and
quick. See that table over in the corner? Let's see you walk to it and
take off your hat and pull out a chair for me an' tell the waiter we
won't eat till the rest of our party comes. If you can do that, you can
listen to me."

Blake, feeling that someone else was going through these motions,
obeyed.

"Legs are straight," commented Rosalie Le Grange as she settled herself
and picked at her glove buttons. "How's your head? Are you takin' in
what I tell you?"

"Yes. I hear you. Why won't you leave me alone?"

"Tongue's pretty straight, too. Can't have much in you, though you do
look like the last whisper of a misspent life. Well, men can't cry just
when they want to, though a woman knows they cry oftener than any _man_
ever sees. You have to take it out in booze."

Blake heard his own voice, far away, saying:

"What did you come for?"

"You'll know soon enough. If I didn't have the patience of an angel I'd
never have waited. Gee, those gentlemen's clubs is exclusive! Now I
want you to remember you're drunk and keep quiet and not hurry me. I've
got things to tell you. Miss Markham came in from a walk this
morning--"

Dr. Blake saw his own hand lift in a gesture of repulsion, heard his
own voice say:

"I don't want to hear about her."

"Will you kindly remember," said Rosalie Le Grange, "that you're
supposed to be drunk? She came in from a walk this morning about half
past ten, in a worse state than I ever saw her. I didn't much care, way
I felt about her then--you know--now let me go my own way. Mrs. Markham
was shut in her room all the morning. I was busy packing--I was getting
ready to send in my notice but didn't, thank our stars--an' I didn't
run onto her but once or twice. She was movin' about the house, and her
face was like death.

"Just before lunch, I came down to the library, lookin' for a sewin'
basket. Mrs. Markham was at the table, writin' a note. In meanders
Annette Markham an' begins to pull out the books in the library,
listless. She'd open one, flip the pages, put it back and open another.
She kept that up quite some time. I wasn't noticing special until she
took out three or four together, reached into the space they left and
pulled out a sizable gray book that had fallen down behind the
stock--or been put there!

"Mrs. Markham had just looked up, and I saw her git stiff. She spoke
quick--'Annette!'--jest like that--sharp, you know. Annette looked at
her. Mrs. Markham reached over and took the book away. The girl, never
looked down at it again, I can swear to that--she was starin' straight
at her aunt. Mrs. Markham dropped the book on the table, but she put
her elbows on it, and said: 'I'd been hunting everywhere for that--I'm
glad you found it.' Annette never said a word, never tried to get the
book back; she jest went on rummaging.

"Well, one thing was clear. Mrs. Markham didn't want her to git as much
as a sight of that book. Why? It was about the funniest little thing
I'd seen in that house. Better believe I found business in the front
parlor where I could keep my eyes on 'em. After a minute or two,
Annette walked out, listless as ever. Soon as her back was turned, Mrs.
Markham went to the desk an' locked the book in the top drawer.

"It was an hour before the coast was clear for me to git into the
parlor and open that lock with a skeleton key an' a hairpin. An' when I
seen the title of that book--well it got as clear--"

Blake saw, through the veil above his sight, that Rosalie's face had
broken out dimples and sparkles as a yacht breaks out flags. It
irritated him remotely.

"What has that to do with the case?" he asked; and then, weakly, "I
don't want to hear about it."

"If I was to tell you," persisted Rosalie rolling the sweets of
revelation under her tongue, "that jest the name of the book in the
secretary showed your girl was all right and you and I was fools, what
would you say?"

The veil lifted from Blake. It was he himself who had risen from his
chair, was leaning over the table, was asking:

"What do you mean? Tell me--what do you mean?"

Rosalie herself rose, leaned over to meet him, and whispered four words
in his ear.

"See!" she added aloud. "See!"

Blake fell back into his chair with a thump.

"I, a doctor and a man of science and I never thought once of that!
What a damned fool I was!"

"_We_ was," amended Rosalie Le Grange.




XIII

ANNETTE TELLS THE TRUTH


It seemed to Blake, waiting in Rosalie's sitting-room for a quarter of
nine, that this silent house of mystery vibrated suppressed excitement.
He sat with his hands clenched, his body leaning forward, in the
attitude of one waiting the signal to strike. Rosalie, sitting opposite
him, sent over a smile of reassurance now and then, but neither spoke.

There was no need of words. They had talked out the smallest detail of
Rosalie's plot, even to mapping the location of the furniture. Inch by
inch, objection after objection, she had conquered his cautions and
scruples; had persuaded him that the dramatic method was the best
method. When Blake entered the house, nothing was left to chance except
the question whether Norcross would miss his engagement to "sit" with
Mrs. Markham. Rosalie settled that. From the front windows, she had
observed the green limousine automobile waiting by the curbing outside;
through her open registers she had caught the murmur of conversation.

So even Rosalie, whose tongue ran by custom in greased grooves, found
nothing to say until the little mantel clock tapped three times to
announce a quarter to the hour. It brought Blake to his feet with such
a jerk that Rosalie shook both her hands at him by way of caution. At
the door she stopped a second, put her lips to his ear.

"I don't have to tell you to be brave, boy," she said. "But keep your
head and don't git independent. You do what I say!"

She touched his side pocket, which bulged. "An' not too brash with
that!" she added. "Revolvers is good for bluffs but bad for real
business!"

Blake nodded. And for the second time they crept down the silent,
padded halls to those apartments above Mrs. Markham's alcove library.
They approached, then, not the closet door, but the door leading to
that boudoir which he had seen once before through Rosalie's hole in
the wall paper. Rosalie applied a key, turned it with infinite caution,
opened the door, motioned him in. The room appeared as before. The
light burned low over the white desk; the portieres hung close. Rosalie
pointed to the rounded, further end of the room--the space where he had
seen the ghostly thing which was Annette disappear through the floor.
That floor space was bare; a rug, rolled up, rested against the further
wainscot. Blake took it in, and smiled at Rosalie as though to say,
"everything is ready I see!" Then for a minute they stood immobile,
listening. A murmur of conversation came up from below, and in the room
behind the portieres someone was breathing, lightly, regularly. Rosalie
touched his arm and beckoned. Moving without sound, they lifted the
portieres, stepped within.

No light inside that room, except the low radiance from a prone figure
by the outer wall. It seemed at first that this ghost of Annette lay
suspended between heaven and earth. Blake's mind put down the awe which
was stealing over his senses. His eyes sharpened until he could make
out a few details.

At the right, dimly suggested, was a disordered bed. Annette lay on a
couch. The robes swathed her from head to foot, but the veil over her
face was parted as though to give her air. Her eyes were closed; her
arms, with something strained and stretched in their attitude, lay
along her sides.

And now Rosalie had her lips at his ear.

"Quick!" she said.

Blake crept to Annette's side and spoke in a low tone.

"Annette, this is I--Walter, your lover. You belong to me. I revoke no
other commands, but you are to listen to me also and do as I tell you.
Answer me first. You have been commanded to rise when you hear music?"

As by the miracle of one speaking in normal tones out of sleep, Annette
answered:

"Yes."

"Speak low. You have been commanded to enter the other room then, turn
out the light, lift a trap, let down a rope ladder, descend it, and say
certain things?"

"Yes." The tone was less than a whisper.

"Have you been given anything special to say to-night--has anything
been impressed upon you?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"After the rest, I am to say: 'Robert, they tell me that the great
danger is near. They give me a message which I do not understand--"Declare
that dividend tomorrow." You do not know the awful things which will
come if you do not.'"

Blake could hear Rosalie catch her breath at this. It came to him,
also, that he had intervened at the very climax of Mrs. Markham's
operation on Robert H. Norcross. But he went on firmly:

"Obey that. Do as you were told. But do something else. So that you
will remember, I am going to whisper it in your ear."

Blake leaned over for a minute, and whispered. Presently he raised
himself a little, so that he bent over her face, and said in a low
speaking voice:

"Do all that. I command you. I am Walter, and you must obey me. And
remember especially--when you have done it all, then wake--wake and do
not be alarmed. Do you hear?"

"Yes."

"Will you obey?"

"Yes."

"You will not be frightened?"

"No."

Rosalie touched his arm. Blake, with one last look back, stepped
outside and dropped the portieres. Rosalie drew him into the hall,
softly locked the door, beckoned him to follow to the head of the
stairs. And hard upon this movement, the piano downstairs began:

_Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta._

"Make no noise--and hurry!" whispered Rosalie. Down the stairs they
went, and stationed themselves by the hall door of the drawing-room.
There, it was pitch dark. Without risk of being seen, they could look
along the dim reaches of Mrs. Markham's parlors. From a point above
their heads, a little, shaded cabinet-lamp gave a fan of low light
which shone full on the dark curtains of the alcove library. They could
make out, by his white hair and collar, the back of a man, and a
shadowy figure at the piano. "Wild roamed an Indian maid" was falling
away to its dying chord. Silence settled again; the back of the old man
swayed. Mrs. Markham spoke from the piano stool:

"I feel your influence, Helen. You are stronger every time, dear,
because his love grows stronger. Come, dear--come."

A pillar of light glowed against the cabinet curtains. Norcross rose;
Blake could catch a suggestion of his face and collar against the dark
draperies. There came the same exchange of love words, of pats, of
caressing speeches, which he had heard from the closet; even now,
better understood as this thing was, the sound of them drew his finger
nails up into his palms.

Rosalie's touch brought him back to his sense of observation. Here,
now, came the climax; here the moment upon which everything depended.
The low, sweet contralto voice was saying:

"They tell me that the great danger is near. They give me a message
which I do not quite understand. They say, 'Declare that dividend
to-morrow!' You cannot know what awful things will follow if you do
not."

Rosalie's clutch tightened on Blake's arm. For the voice had ceased
altogether. A silent moment; then they saw the pillar of light become a
crumpled blotch on the floor, heard a sudden shuffle of feet, heard
Annette's voice, loud, clear, distinct, crying:

"This is a lie! I am not Helen Whitton! I am Annette Markham. I am not
a spirit! I am alive! You are being fooled--fooled!"

There followed a jangle of piano keys, as though something had dropped
upon the keyboard.

In that instant, Rosalie Le Grange jerked the string of the cabinet
light, throwing the shutter wide open. The details of that group by the
curtain blazed into Blake's sight as he jumped forward--Annette, all in
black, her white gauze robes a crumpled heap at her feet, swaying in
the center of the floor; Norcross a huddle against the wall; Mrs.
Markham, stiff as though frozen to stone, leaning against the piano.
More light blazed on them; Blake knew that Rosalie, according to
program, had lit the gas. He reached the curtains an instant before
Mrs. Markham, roused to sudden, cat-like action, threw herself toward
Annette. Blake came between; out of his pocket he whipped the revolver.

"I'm talking to you all!" he said. "You, old fool over there, and you,
you devil! I'll kill the first that moves!"

Now Rosalie had slipped up beside Mrs. Markham, laid a hand on her
shoulder.

"Don't make any fuss, my dear. I'm a medium myself an' I've been
exposed four times. Take it from me, _your_ play is to be a lady--and
a sport."

Suddenly, Mrs. Markham lifted herself from the piano keys and spoke:

"Annette, my dear, control yourself. Come to me, dear--my poor, insane
niece. Mr. Norcross, I will explain these intruders later. Come to me,
dear!" She had stepped toward Blake, who stood with his left arm about
Annette. Blake felt Annette shrink away from him, felt her sway toward
her aunt. He raised the revolver.

"Stay where you are!" he commanded. "Annette, listen to me. I control
you now--I! Until I say otherwise, keep your face on my shoulder. Do
not look up. Keep your mind on what I am saying."

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