The Heart of a Woman Part 16

"She ought to have broken off her engagement long ago."

"Isn't it awful?--Poor thing."

Louisa, left alone with her father, could allow her nerves to ease their fearful tension. She had no need to hide from him the painful quiver of her lips, or the anxious frown across her brow.

"Do you know," she asked, "anything about this awful business, father?"

"There's a lot of gossip," he replied: his voice was not only gruff but hoa.r.s.e, which showed that he was strangely moved.

"But," she insisted, "some truth in the gossip?"

"They say Philip de Mountford has been murdered."

"Who says so?"

"Some people have come on from the theatres, and men from the clubs.

The streets are full of it--and evening papers have brought out midnight editions which are selling like hot cakes."

"And do they say that Luke has killed Philip de Mountford?"

"No"--with some hesitation--"they don't say that."

"But they hint at it."

"Newspaper t.i.ttle-tattle."

"How much is actual fact?"

"I understand," he explained, "that at nine o'clock or thereabouts two men in evening dress hailed a pa.s.sing taxicab just outside the Lyric Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and told the chauffeur to drive to Hyde Park corner, just by the railings of the Green Park. The driver drew up there and one of the two men got out. As he reclosed the door of the cab he leaned toward the interior and said cheerfully, "S'long old man. See you to-morrow." Then he told the chauffeur to drive on to 1 Cromwell Road opposite the museum, and turning on his heel disappeared in the fog. When the chauffeur drew up for the second time no one alighted from the cab. So he got down from his box and opened the door."

"The other man," murmured Louisa vaguely, "was in the cab--dead!"

"That's about it."

"With his throat pierced from ear to ear by a sharp instrument which might have been a skewer."

"You have heard it all then?"

"No, no!" she said hurriedly.

The room was swaying round her: the furniture started hopping and dancing. Louisa, who had never fainted in her life, felt as if the floor was giving way under her feet. Memory was unloading one of her storehouses, looking over the contents of a hidden cell, wherein she had put away a strange winter scene in Brussels, a taxicab, the ill-lighted boulevard, the chauffeur getting down from his box and finding a man crouched in the farther corner of the cab--dead--with his throat pierced from ear to ear by an instrument which might have been a skewer. And memory was raking out that cell, clearing it in every corner, trying to find the recollection of a certain morning in Battersea Park a year ago, when Louisa recounted her impressions of that weird scene and told the tale of this crime which she had almost witnessed. Memory found a distinct impression that she had told the tale at full length and with all the details which she knew. She remembered talking it all over, and, that when she did so, the ground in Battersea Park was crisp with the frost under her feet, and an inquisitive robin perched himself on the railings and then flew away accompanying her and another all the way along as far as the gates.

Two pictures, vivid and distinct: that evening in Brussels, and the morning in Battersea Park, her first meeting with Luke after his letter to her--the letter which had come to her in the Palace Hotel and which had made her the happiest woman in all the world.

Memory--satisfied--had at last emptied the storehouse of that one cell and left Louisa Harris standing here, staring at her father, her ears buzzing with the idle and irresponsible chatter of society jackdaws, her mind seeing all that had happened outside 1 Cromwell Road: the cab stopping, the chauffeur terrified, the crowd collecting, the police taking notes. Her mind saw it as if her bodily eyes had been there, and all that her father told her seemed but the recapitulation of what she knew already.

"Where," she said after awhile, "is the dead man now?"

"I don't know," he replied. "I should imagine they would keep the body at the police station until the morning. I don't suppose they'd be such mugs as to disturb Lord Radclyffe at this time of night; the shock might kill the old man."

"I suppose they are quite sure that it is Philip de Mountford who was killed?"

"Why, yes; he had his pocket-book, his cards, his letters on him, and money too--robbery was not the object of the crime."

"It was Philip de Mountford then?"

"Good G.o.d, yes! Of whom were you thinking?"

"I was thinking of Luke," she replied simply.

The old man said nothing more. Had he spoken at all then it would have been to tell her that he, too, was thinking of Luke and that there was perhaps not a single person in the magnificent house at that moment who was not--in some way or another--thinking of Luke.

The hostess came in, elegant and worldly, with ba.n.a.l words to request the pleasure of hearing Miss Harris sing.

"It is so kind of you," she said, "to offer. I have never heard you, you know, and people say you have such a splendid voice. But perhaps you would rather not sing to-night?"

She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight Scandinavian intonation, which seemed to soften the ba.n.a.lity of her words. Being foreign, she thought less of concealing her sympathy, and was much less fearful of venturing on delicate ground.

She held out a small, exquisitely gloved hand and laid it almost affectionately on the younger woman's arm.

"I am sure you would rather not sing to-night," she said kindly.

"Indeed, Countess, why should you think that?" retorted Louisa lightly. "I shall be delighted to sing. I wonder which of these new songs you would like best. There is an exquisite one by Guy d'Hardelot. Shall I sing that?"

And Her Excellency, who so charmingly represented Denmark in English society, followed her guest into the reception room: she admired the elegant carriage of the English girl, the slender figure, the soft abundant hair.

And Her Excellency sighed and murmured to herself:

"They are stiff, these Englis.h.!.+ and oh! they have no feeling, no sentiment!"

And a few moments later when Louisa Harris's really fine voice, firm and clear, echoed in the wide reception room, Her Excellency reiterated her impressions:

"These English have no heart! She sings and her lover is suspected of murder! Bah! they have no heart!"

CHAPTER XIV

THE TALE HAD TO BE TOLD

And whilst the morning papers were unfolded by millions of English men and women, and the details of the mysterious crime discussed over eggs and bacon and b.u.t.tered toast, Philip de Mountford, the newly found heir presumptive to the Earldom of Radclyffe, was lying in the gloomy mortuary chamber of a London police court, whither he had been conveyed in the same cab whose four narrow walls jealously guarded the secret of the tragedy which had been enacted within their precincts.

Lord Radclyffe had been aroused at ten o'clock the previous night by representatives of the police, who came to break the news to him. It was not late, and the old man was not yet in bed. He had opened the front door of his house himself, his servants--he explained curtly--were spending their evening more agreeably elsewhere.

The house--even to the police officers--appeared lonely and gloomy in the extreme, and the figure of the old man, who should have been surrounded by every luxury that rank and wealth can give, looked singularly pathetic as he stood in his own door-way, evidently unprotected and uncared for, and suspiciously demanding what his late visitors' business might be.

Very reluctantly on hearing the latter's status he consented to admit them. He did not at first appear to suspect that anything wrong might have happened, or that anything untoward could occasion this nocturnal visit: in fact, he seemed unconscious of the lateness of the hour.