The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Part 47

"Why, I thought you were ill," she answered, looking at him apprehensively.

"No, dear," he replied, quietly. "Not ill, but worried."

"I knew that dreadful man who came last night had told you something to worry you. Who is he?"

"Oh! a friend of mine," answered Frettlby, with hesitation.

"What--Roger Moreland?"

Her father started.

"How do you know it was Roger Moreland?"

"Oh! Brian recognised him as he went out."

Mark Frettlby hesitated for a few moments, and then busied himself with the papers on his desk, as he replied in a low voice--

"You are right--it was Roger Moreland--he is very hard up, and as he was a friend of poor Whyte's, he asked me to a.s.sist him, which I did."

He hated to hear himself telling such a deliberate falsehood, but there was no help for it--Madge must never know the truth so long as he could conceal it.

"Just like you," said Madge, kissing him lightly with filial pride.

"The best and kindest of men."

He s.h.i.+vered slightly as he felt her caress, and thought how she would recoil from him did she know all. "After all," says some cynical writer, "the illusions of youth are mostly due to the want of experience." Madge, ignorant in a great measure of the world, cherished her pleasant illusions, though many of them had been destroyed by the trials of the past year, and her father longed to keep her in this frame of mind.

"Now go down to dinner, my dear," he said, leading her to the door. "I will follow soon."

"Don't be long," replied his daughter, "or I shall come up again," and she ran down the stairs, her heart feeling strangely light.

Her father looked after her until she vanished, then heaving a regretful sigh returned to his study, and taking out the scattered papers fastened them together, and endorsed them.

"My Confession." He then placed them in an envelope, sealed it, and put it back in the desk. "If all that is in that packet were known," he said aloud, as he left the room, "what would the world say?"

That night he was singularly brilliant at the dinner table. Generally a very reticent and grave man, on this night he laughed and talked so gaily that the very servants noticed the change. The fact was he felt a sense of relief at having unburdened his mind, and felt as though by writing out that confession he had laid the spectre which had haunted him for so long. His daughter was delighted at the change in his spirits, but the old Scotch nurse, who had been in the house since Madge was a baby, shook her head--

"He's fey," she said gravely. "He's no lang for the warld."

Of course she was laughed at--people who believe in presentiments generally are--but, nevertheless, she held firmly to her opinion.

Mr. Frettlby went to bed early that night, the excitement of the last few days and the feverish gaiety in which he had lately indulged proving too strong for him. No sooner had he laid his head on his pillow than he dropped off to sleep at once, and forgot in placid slumber the troubles and worries of his waking hours.

It was only nine o'clock, so Madge stayed by herself in the great drawing-room, and read a new novel, which was then creating a sensation, called "Sweet Violet Eyes." It belied its reputation, however, for it was very soon thrown on the table with a look of disgust, and rising from her seat Madge walked up and down the room, and wished some good fairy would hint to Brian that he was wanted. If man is a gregarious animal, how much more, then, is a woman? This is not a conundrum, but a simple truth. "A female Robinson Crusoe," says a writer who prided himself upon being a keen observer of human nature--"a female Robinson Crusoe would have gone mad for want of something to talk to." This remark, though severe, nevertheless contains several grains of truth, for women, as a rule, talk more than men. They are more sociable, and a Miss Misanthrope, in spite of Justin McCarthy's, is unknown--at least in civilised communities. Miss Frettlby, being neither misanthropic nor dumb, began to long for some one to talk to, and, ringing the bell, ordered Sal to be sent in. The two girls had become great friends, and Madge, though by two years the younger, a.s.sumed the ROLE of mentor, and under her guidance Sal was rapidly improving. It was a strange irony of fate which brought together these two children of the same father, each with such different histories--the one reared in luxury and affluence, never having known want; the other dragged up in the gutter, all uns.e.xed and besmirched by the life she had led. "The whirligig of time brings in its revenges," and it was the last thing in the world Mark Frettlby would have thought of seeing: Rosanna Moore's child, whom he fancied dead, under the same roof as his daughter Madge.

On receiving Madge's message Sal came to the drawing room, and the two were soon chatting amicably together. The room was almost in darkness, only one lamp being lighted, Mr. Frettlby very sensibly detested gas, with its glaring light, and had nothing but lamps in his drawing-room.

At the end of the apartment, where Sal and Madge were seated, there was a small table. On it stood a large lamp, with an opaque globe, which, having a shade over it, threw a soft and subdued circle of light round the table, leaving the rest of the room in a kind of semi-darkness.

Near this sat Madge and Sal, talking gaily, and away on the left-hand side they could see the door open, and a warm flood of light pouring in from the hall.

They had been talking together for some time, when Sal's quick ear caught a footfall on the soft carpet, and, turning rapidly, she saw a tall figure advancing down the room. Madge saw it too, and started up in surprise on recognising her father. He was clothed in his dressing-gown, and carried some papers in his hand.

"Why, papa," said Madge, in surprise. "I--"

"Hus.h.!.+" whispered Sal, grasping her arms. "He's asleep."

And so he was. In accordance with the dictates of the excited brain, the weary body had risen from the bed and wandered about the house. The two girls, drawing back into the shadow, watched him with bated breath as he came slowly down the room. In a few moments he was within the circle of light, and, moving noiselessly along, he laid the papers he carried on the table. They were in a large blue envelope much worn, with writing in red ink on it. Sal recognised it at once as the one she had seen in the possession of the dead woman, and with an instinctive feeling that there was something wrong, she tried to draw Madge back, as she watched her father's action with an intensity of feeling which held her spell-bound. Frettlby opened the envelope, and took therefrom a yellow, frayed piece of paper, which he spread out on the table. Madge bent forward to see it, but Sal, with a sudden terror drew her back.

"For G.o.d's sake no," she cried.

But it was too late; Madge had caught sight of the names on the paper--"Marriage--Rosanna Moore--Mark Frettlby"--and the whole awful truth flashed upon her. These were the papers Rosanna Moore had handed to Whyte. Whyte had been murdered by the man to whom the papers were of value--

"Oh! My father!"

She staggered blindly forward, and then, with one piercing shriek, fell to the ground. In doing so, she struck against her father, who was still standing beside the table. Awakened suddenly, with that wild cry in his ears, he opened his eyes wide, put out feeble hands, as if to keep something back, and with a strangled cry fell dead on the floor beside his daughter. Sal, horror-struck, did not lose her presence of mind, but, s.n.a.t.c.hing the papers off the table, she thrust them into her pocket, and then called aloud for the servants. But they, already attracted by Madge's wild cry, came hurrying in, to find Mark Frettlby, the millionaire, lying dead, and his daughter in a faint beside her father's corpse.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

HUSH-MONEY.

As soon as Brian received the telegram which announced the death of Mark Frettlby, he put on his hat, stepped into Calton's trap, and drove along to the St. Kilda station in Flinders Street with that gentleman.

There Calton dismissed his trap, sending a note to his clerk with the groom, and went down to St. Kilda with Fitzgerald. On arrival they found the whole house perfectly quiet and orderly, owing to the excellent management of Sal Rawlins. She had taken the command in everything, and although the servants, knowing her antecedents, were disposed to resent her doing so, yet such were her administrative powers and strong will, that they obeyed her implicitly. Mark Frettlby's body had been taken up to his bedroom, Madge had been put to bed, and Dr. Chinston and Brian sent for. When they arrived they could not help expressing their admiration at the capital way in which Sal Rawlins had managed things.

"She's a clever girl that," whispered Calton to Fitzgerald. "Curious thing she should have taken up her proper position in her father's house. Fate is a deal cleverer than we mortals think her."

Brian was about to reply when Dr. Chinston entered the room. His face was very grave, and Fitzgerald looked at him in alarm.

"Madge--Miss Frettlby," he faltered.

"Is very ill," replied the doctor; "has an attack of brain fever. I can't answer for the consequences yet."

Brian sat down on the sofa, and stared at the doctor in a dazed sort of way. Madge dangerously ill--perhaps dying. What if she were to die, and he to lose the true-hearted woman who stood so n.o.bly by him in his trouble?

"Cheer up," said Chinston, patting him on the shoulder; "while there's life there's hope, and whatever human aid can do to save her will be done."

Brian grasped the doctor's hand in silence, his heart being too full to speak.

"How did Frettlby die?" asked Calton.

"Heart disease," said Chinston. "His heart was very much affected, as I discovered a week or so ago. It appears he was walking in his sleep, and entering the drawing-room, he alarmed Miss Frettlby, who screamed, and must have touched him. He awoke suddenly, and the natural consequences followed--he dropped down dead."

"What alarmed Miss Frettlby?" asked Brian, in a low voice, covering his face with his hand.

"The sight of her father walking in his sleep, I suppose," said Chinston, b.u.t.toning his glove; "and the shock of his death which took place indirectly through her, accounts for the brain fever."

"Madge Frettlby is not the woman to scream and waken a somnambulist,"

said Calton, decidedly, "knowing as she did the danger. There must be some other reason."