If Sinners Entice Thee Part 3

"Why did he object to her, Harrison? Tell me confidentially what you know," urged the young man earnestly.

"I only know what he told me a few days ago," the solicitor replied.

"He said he had ascertained that you had taken many clandestine walks and rides with Liane Brooker, and he declared that such a woman was no fitting wife for you."

"Did he give any further reason?" the other demanded.

"None. He merely said that if you declined to abandon all thought of her you should not have a penny."

"And he has kept his word," observed George, gloomily.

"Unfortunately it appears so."

"He was unjust--cruelly unjust!" George protested. "I strove hard at the Bar, and had already obtained a few briefs when he recalled me here to be his companion. He would not allow me to follow my profession, yet he has now cast me adrift without resources."

"You certainly have my entire sympathy," the old lawyer declared, kindly. "But don't take the matter too much to heart. The woman may be already married. In this case you will receive fifty thousand."

George's face relaxed into a faint smile.

"I have no desire to hear of or see the woman at all," he answered.

"Act as you think fit, but remember that I shall never offer her marriage--never."

"She may be a pretty girl," suggested the elder man.

"And she may be some blear-eyed old hag," snapped the dead man's son.

"It is evident from the wording of the clause that my father has heard nothing of either mother or daughter for some years."

"That's all the more in your favour; because if she is thirty or so, the chances are that she is married. At all costs we must discover her."

"The whole thing is a confounded mystery," George observed. "Who these people are is an enigma."

"Entirely so," the solicitor acquiesced. "There is something exceedingly mysterious about the affair. The combined circ.u.mstances are bewildering in the extreme. First, the lady you admire bears a French name, next your father hates her because of some fact of which he is aware regarding her family, and thirdly, in order to prevent you marrying her, he endeavours by an ingenious and apparently carefully-planned device, to induce you to wed a woman whose existence is unknown to us all. He was not a man who acted without strong motives, therefore I cannot help suspecting that behind all this lies some deep mystery."

"Mystery! Of what character?"

"I have no idea. We must first find Mariette Lepage."

"My future wife," laughed George bitterly, rising wearily from his chair.

"Yes, the woman who is to receive twenty thousand pounds for marrying you," repeated the solicitor smiling.

"No, Harrison," declined the young man as he moved slowly across the room with head slightly bent. "I'll never marry her, however fascinating she may be. Liane is pure and good; I shall marry only her."

And opening the door impatiently he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his cap, strode along the hall, and out to where his man held the bay mare in readiness.

"Ah, well!" Harrison muttered aloud when he was alone. "We shall see, young man. We shall see. I thought myself as shrewd as most men, but if I'm not mistaken there's a mystery, strange and inexplicable, somewhere; a mystery which seems likely to lead to some amazing developments. It's hard upon poor George, very hard; but if my client was so foolish as to desire the family skeleton to be dragged from its chest his kith and kin must of necessity bear the consequences."

With a word to Morton, most exemplary of servants, George sprang into the saddle, and a moment later was galloping down the long straight avenue. The brilliant afterglow had now faded, dusk had fallen, and he feared that Liane, having kept the appointment, would have left disappointed and returned home. Therefore he spurred the mare onward, and was soon riding hard towards the unfrequented by-road known as Cross Lane.

With a heavy heart he told himself that he must say good-bye to love, good-bye to hope, good-bye to ambition, good-bye to all of life except the dull monotonous routine of empty days, and a restless empty heart.

"I can't tell her I'm a pauper," he murmured aloud, after galloping a long way in dogged silence. "She'll know, alas! soon enough. Then, when the truth is out, she'll perhaps discard me; while I suppose I shall go to the bad as so many fellows have done before me. Of what use am I without the means to marry? To love her now is only to befool her.

Henceforth I'm sailing under false colours. Yet I love her better than life; better than anything on earth. I'm indeed a beggar on horseback!"

And he laughed a hollow bitter laugh as he rode along beneath the oaks where the leafy unfrequented lane dipped suddenly to pa.s.s below the railway, the quiet lonely spot where, un.o.bserved, he so often met his well-beloved. So engrossed had he been in his own sad thoughts that the stumbling of the mare alone brought him back to a consciousness of things around. The light had paled suddenly out of the evening atmosphere; the gloom was complete. Eagerly he looked ahead, half expecting to catch a glimpse of her well-known neat figure, but in disappointment he saw her not. It was too late he knew. She had evidently waited in vain, and afterwards returned to the village when the dusk had deepened.

Still he rode forward, the mare's hoofs sounding loudly as they clattered beneath the archway, until suddenly, as he emerged on the other side, a sight met his gaze which caused him to pull up quickly with a loud cry of dismay.

In the centre of the road, hidden from view until that instant, by reason of the sudden bend, a girl was lying flat with arms outstretched, her face in the thick white dust, while beside her was her cycle, left where it had fallen.

Instantly he swung himself from the saddle, dashed towards her, and lifted her up. Her straw hat had fallen off, her fair hair was dishevelled, and her dark skirt covered with dust. But there was yet another thing which held him transfixed with horror. In the dim fast-fading light he noticed that her blouse bore at the neck a small stain of bright crimson.

It was Nelly Bridson. She was rigid in death. The pallor of her refined, delicate face was rendered the more ghastly by the blood that had oozed from the corners of her arched mouth. Her small gloved hands were tightly clenched, her features haggard, convulsed and drawn by a last paroxysm of excruciating agony.

In her soft white neck was an ugly bullet wound. She had been shot by an unknown hand.

CHAPTER THREE.

"WE MUST NOT MARRY!"

George Stratfield stood aghast and horrified. It was nearly dark, but there still remained sufficient light to reveal the terrible truth that Nelly Bridson, his gay, vivacious friend, had been foully murdered.

Tenderly he lifted her, and placed his hand upon her heart. But there was no movement. It had ceased its beating.

Her face, with its hard drawn features so unlike hers, was absolutely hideous in death. Her hair was whitened by the dust, while her blue eyes were wide open, staring fixedly into s.p.a.ce with a look of inexpressible horror.

For some moments, still kneeling beside her inanimate form, George hesitated. Suddenly his eager eyes caught sight of some round flat object lying in the dust within his reach. He stretched forth his hand and picked it up, finding to his surprise that it was an exquisitely-painted old miniature of a beautiful woman, set round with fine brilliants. He held it close to his eyes, examining it minutely until convinced of a fact most amazing. This miniature was the very valuable portrait by Cosway of Lady Anne Stratfield, a noted beauty of her time, which for many years had been missing from the collection at Stratfield Court. It corresponded exactly in every particular with the description his father had so often given him of the missing portrait, the disappearance of which had always been a mystery.

He remained speechless, dumbfounded at the discovery. At length a thought flashed across his mind, that by prompt action the a.s.sa.s.sin might perhaps be discovered. He could not bear the appalled agonised gaze of those glazed, stony eyes which seemed fixed despairingly upon him, therefore he closed them and prepared to move the body to the roadside. Suddenly he recollected that such action would be unwise.

The police should view the victim where she had fallen. Therefore in breathless haste he sprang again into the saddle, and tore down into Stratfield Mortimer, a distance of a mile and a half, as hard as the mare could gallop.

Quickly he summoned the village constable and the doctor. The former, before leaving for the scene scribbled a telegram to Reading requesting the a.s.sistance of detectives; then both returned with him to the spot.

When they reached it they found the body still undisturbed, and a cursory examination made by the doctor by aid of the constable's lantern quickly corroborated George's belief that the unfortunate girl had been shot through the throat.

Nearly an hour the three men waited impatiently for the arrival of the detectives, speaking in hushed tones, examining the recovered miniature and discussing the tragedy, until at last the lights of a trap were seen in the distance, and very soon two plain-clothes officers joined them, inspected the body and the tiny portrait, and made a close examination of the road in every direction. In the dust they found the mark of her tyre, and followed it back beneath the railway arch and up upon the road towards Burghfield. With the rays of their lanterns upon the dust they all followed the track, winding sometimes but distinct, for about three hundred yards, when suddenly, instead of proceeding along the lane, it turned into a gateway leading into a field.

This fact puzzled them; but soon, on examining the rank gra.s.s growing between the gate and the road, they found it had been recently trodden down. There were other marks too, in the thick dust close by, but, strangely enough, these were not footprints. It seemed as if some object about a foot wide had been dragged along from the gate into the lane. Long and earnestly the detectives searched over the spot while the others stood aside, but they found nothing to serve as a clue. It was, however, evident that the unfortunate girl had approached, on her return from Burghfield, and dismounting, had wheeled her cycle up to the gate and placed it there while she rested. Here she had undoubtedly been joined by someone--as the gra.s.s and weeds bore distinct traces of having been trodden upon by two different persons--and then, having remounted, she rode down beneath the railway bridge, and while ascending towards Stratfield Mortimer, had been foully shot.

The position in which both the body and the cycle were found pointed to the conclusion that she was riding her machine when fired at, but dismounting instantly she had staggered a few uneven steps, and then sank dying.

From the gateway the mark of the cycle could be traced with ease away towards Burghfield; indeed, a few yards from where the unknown person had apparently met her there were marks of her quick footsteps where she had dismounted. For fully a quarter of an hour the detectives searched both inside and outside the gate trying to distinguish accurately the footprints of the stranger whom she had met, and in this they were actively a.s.sisted by the village constable and George, all being careful not to tread upon the weeds and dust themselves. But to distinguish traces of footprints at night is exceedingly difficult; therefore they searched long and earnestly without any success, until at last something half-hidden in some long rank weeds caught George's eye.

"Why, what's this?" he cried, excitedly, as putting out his hand he drew forth a purely feminine object--an ordinary black hairpin.

The detectives, eager for anything which might lead to the discovery of the ident.i.ty of the a.s.sa.s.sin, took it, examining it closely beneath the light of one of their bull's-eyes. It was a pin of a common kind, and what at first seemed like a clue was quickly discarded, for on taking it back to where the body was lying and taking one of the pins that held the unfortunate girl's wealth of fair hair, it was at once seen in comparison to be of the same thickness and make, although of a slightly different length.

Half a dozen pins were taken one by one from her hair and compared, but strangely enough all were about half an inch shorter than the one discovered by George.

"Anything in this, do you think?" one of the detectives asked the other, evidently his superior.