The Guests Of Hercules Part 57

"We were so hoping you'd come," Eve went on, "and I wanted to send for you, but Mary refused. She said that even if you came she would not see you, because she had broken off the engagement, and never wished to meet you again."

"That was all a mistake," Vanno said. "I must see her."

"I quite understand how you feel," Lady Dauntrey agreed, soothingly, "but don't you think, as she's resting for the first time in more than thirty hours, you'd better let the poor child have her sleep out first?

I don't know if you are aware that my husband is a doctor; but he is, and practised in South Africa, very successfully. He's with Mary now, and has helped me watch over her. The dear girl begged us to come here.

She said there had been trouble between her and your brother and sister-in-law, so she couldn't stay at their villa. Afterward she told us about the broken engagement, and that explained the dreadful state of nervousness she was in from the moment she came to us at Monte Carlo, till she collapsed here, and became delirious. We have done our very best--and I'm so thankful to have been with her, though it was most inconvenient for our plans. We were just ready to start for England when she appealed to us not to let her come to this dreary, haunted sort of place by herself. I don't know what would have become of the poor darling if she'd been alone with this dreadful woman--almost a savage from the mountains, whom Captain Hannaford engaged as caretaker."

Eve talked rapidly and gravely, in a whisper. As she spoke of Apollonia, she turned a look upon her; and the woman "made horns" with two pointing fingers. Vanno knew well what this meant.

If Lady Dauntrey's story had begun to impress him, that glance thrown at Apollonia brought back in a flash all his enmity and suspicion. It was a murderous look. He knew that she hated the woman for having brought him to the door of Mary's room.

He was silent for an instant when Eve ceased to speak. Then he said, "I won't disturb Mary. I will go in quietly and look at her while she sleeps."

"You may wake her."

"If she did not wake when I called, she won't wake at the sound of a footstep."

"But my husband--we ought to consult him----"

Before she could finish, Vanno pushed open the door, by virtue of his strength, which was far greater than that of Lord Dauntrey, who kept guard on the other side. Noiselessly the young man entered the room; and as Dauntrey realized that opposition would not avail, he gave way.

It was a large room, spa.r.s.ely furnished, and so full of light that for a second or two Vanno was confused, after the dimness of the corridor outside. The huge window had no curtains, and the afternoon sunlight poured through it upon the bed which stood near by, facing the door.

Mary's face lying low on the pillow was colourless as wax. The sun lit up her hair, and turned it to living gold.

Vanno saw only the bed, and Mary lying there asleep. He did not once look at Dauntrey, who stole out on tiptoe. Eve, waiting for her husband, put a finger to her lips. As Apollonia peered anxiously into the room, not daring to cross the threshold, Lord and Lady Dauntrey went softly away together, as if they were afraid that a creaking board under their feet might wake the sleeper.

It seemed to Peter that she must have been waiting in Schuyler's automobile for an hour, when at last she saw a man and a woman walking quickly down the avenue, toward the gate. She had never seen Lord and Lady Dauntrey, but she knew that Rose Winter and Vanno believed them to be Mary's companions. In the hand of the woman was a small, rather flat bag of dark blue Russian leather, which might be a jewel-case or a miniature dressing-bag such as women carry when motoring.

The pair had come into sight rounding a turn of the drive; and they saw the girl looking up from the window of the waiting car at the moment when her eyes fell upon them. For an instant they slackened their pace, but the woman spoke to the man, and they came on steadily, walking as briskly as before. The man unfastened the gate with a big key, which he left in the lock, and the two stepped out into the road. They glanced casually at Peter, her chauffeur, and the motor, as if they would pa.s.s by, but on an impulse Peter leaned from the window and spoke. "Lord and Lady Dauntrey?"

"Yes," the woman replied, stiffly. "I'm afraid I don't remember----"

"Oh, we've never met, but I knew you were both here, and I'm Mary Maxwell, Mary Grant's best friend. I'll go in and find her and Prince Vanno, now the gate's unlocked. I thought perhaps Mary was sending me out her jewel-case, as I see you have it in your hand."

This was a shot in the dark. All that Peter knew of the jewel-case was Rose Winter's description of it, when she told of Mary's arrival in her absence, to take it away; but Lady Dauntrey's face said that the shot had not gone wide of the mark.

"It is Miss Grant's jewel-case, certainly," she replied. "She put it in my charge. Prince Giovanni Della Robbia has insulted me and my husband, and we are going at once; but I'm too fond of poor Mary to leave her property at the mercy of the only servant in the house--a horrible woman, who would murder one for a franc. She knows about the jewels, and as the Prince won't look after them and Mary isn't able to, I meant to take them back to Mrs. Winter."

"How good of you! I'll save you the trouble," Peter said.

Lady Dauntrey looked at her with narrow eyes, Dauntrey standing apart listlessly. "I don't know you," Eve objected.

"You can ask Mr. James Schuyler's chauffeur about me," Peter suggested.

"Or if you won't accept his word, wait a little while, and I'll take you both to Monte Carlo and Mrs. Winter's house, where I'm staying."

"I really think you had better trust this lady," Dauntrey said. He looked at his wife with his sad, tired eyes. Eve shrugged her shoulders, and handed Peter the bag. "Well, the responsibility is off my hands, anyhow!" she cried. "That's one comfort. And it's much more convenient for us not to go to Monte Carlo, on other people's business. Mary Grant's jewels are nothing to us."

"Of course not," Peter agreed, pleasantly. "I hope Mary's well?"

"Then you'll be disappointed," Eve replied, her eyes very bright. "She's far from well. My husband, an experienced doctor, has been treated unbearably by the Prince. You can bear witness that he leaves his patient only because he was insulted. I advise you, if you're fond of Mary Grant, to get in some one else, or it may be too late. It's impossible to know what she may have done, but my private opinion is that her love troubles were too much for her, and she took something----"

"Eve!" Dauntrey stopped his wife. "Be careful what you say."

"Well, it's no longer our affair, since the Prince has taken matters into his own hands, and practically turned out Mary's best friends. Good afternoon, Miss Maxwell."

They walked off quickly, without looking back, the two tall figures marching shoulder to shoulder in the direction of Latte, the nearest railway station.

"You oughtn't to have said what you did," Dauntrey reproached Eve.

"I'm sorry," she replied. "That girl nearly drove me mad. To think she's got the jewels! Nothing to pay us for it all, except the money from the cheque."

"Serves us right," Dauntrey said grimly. "I'd thank G.o.d we're out of it at any price, if G.o.d was likely to be looking after us. Better thank the devil."

"Don't talk like that," Eve implored him. "There's nothing against us, nothing. I'm sorry I blurted out that about her taking some stuff, but it can't do us any harm. You said yourself, n.o.body could find out what----"

"They couldn't prove, but they might suspect. G.o.d! What hideous days! I never thought the stuff would act on her like that, or I wouldn't have let you persuade me----"

"I know you wouldn't," Eve cut him short. "It was my fault. You thought there was only a slight risk----"

"Yes, but it acted differently from the beginning. I didn't suppose it would send her to sleep. G.o.d knows I did everything I knew to wake her up----"

"Well, we're out of it all now," Eve soothed him. "Remember, they can't prove anything. Even if they send after us, and make us come back, they'll have their trouble for their pains. We've been clever."

"You have!"

"Everything's for and nothing against us. Perhaps it's as well the fellow came, after all. He's given us our excuse to go in a hurry. And we've got money--in gold, no notes, thank goodness. Only--I shall dream of those jewels at night."

"Best to be rid of them, as things have turned out. If she'd given them to us, as you hoped, it would have been all right, but----"

"No use crying over spilt milk," Eve sighed. "Let's walk faster. There ought to be a train for Genoa in twenty minutes, if your time-table is right. That reminds me, I never posted her letter to the convent, but it doesn't matter now."

Mary lay on her back between the pillows, her hair loose around her face, a thick plait of it tossed out over the faded green silk quilt.

One arm supported her head, the other was hidden by the bed covering.

The bright light that streamed through the window was an illumination.

Suddenly it was as if an iron hand seized Vanno's heart and slowly pressed the blood out of it. The thought had flashed into his head that she was more than ever before like a gentle and lovely Juliet, but Juliet in the tomb, her white beauty lit by many candles.

If she were dead--if those people had killed her----

Never had Vanno seen any one sleep so soundly. There was no flicker of the eyelids, no quivering of the nostrils, no rising and falling of the breast. He laid his hand over her heart, and could not feel it beating, yet he was not sure that it did not beat very faintly. There were bounding pulses in his hand as he touched her. He could not tell whether it was his own blood that throbbed, or whether hers spoke to his, through living veins.

Very gently he lifted her head, and laying it down again, higher on the pillow whence it seemed to have slipped, he moved the arm that had supported it. Then kneeling beside the bed, he kissed her hand again and again. It was very cold, cold as a lily, he thought, yet not so cold as a lily killed by the frost.

If some one had come to him at that moment and said, "Mary is dead," he would have believed that it was the truth, for she looked as if her eyes had seen the light beyond this world. She was not smiling, yet there was a radiance on her face which did not seem to be given by the sunset.

Rather did the light appear to come from within. Yet, because no one said aloud the words that went echoing through his heart, Vanno would not believe that Mary was dead.