The Woman with One Hand (and) Mr. Ely's Engagement Part 7

"Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor's compliments, sir, and would you mind stepping upstairs?"

I had a lighted match in my hand, and was in the very act of applying it to the bowl of my pipe when the latest importation in waiters brought me the message.

"Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor?" I let the match go out. "And pray who may Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor be?"

"The lady who arrived to-day, sir, and who has taken a private sitting-room--No. 8."

"Indeed! And what does Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor want with me?"

"I don't know, sir; she asked me to give you her compliments, and would you be so kind as to step upstairs."

I stepped upstairs, wondering. I was received by a tall and somewhat ponderous woman, who was dressed in a dark-blue silk costume, almost as if she were going to a ball. She half rose from the couch as I came in, inclining her head in my direction with what struck me as a slightly patronising smile. She spoke in a loud, hearty tone of voice, which was marked by what struck me as being a Yorks.h.i.+re tw.a.n.g.

"It is so good of you to come to see me, Mr. Southam. I was really more than half afraid to ask you. As it is, I beg ten thousand pardons, but I do so want you to write me a letter."

"To write you a letter? I am afraid I am a little slow of comprehension."

"I have lost my hand." She stretched out her right arm. Both arms were bare to the shoulder. I could not but notice how beautifully they were moulded, their ma.s.sive contours, their snowy whiteness. She wore gloves which reached nearly to her elbows. So far as I could judge there appeared to be a hand inside of both. She seemed to read my thoughts, still continuing to hold her right arm out in front of her.

"You think my hand is gloved? I always wear it so. But the glove conceals a dummy. Come and feel it." I bowed. I was content to take her at her word; I had no wish to put her to the actual test. "I have never been able to gain complete control over my left hand--to use it as if it were my right. I suppose it is because I am not clever enough. I can scribble with it, but only scribble. When I desire to have a letter properly written I am dependent upon outsiders' help.

Will you write one for me now?"

It was an odd request for a new-comer at an hotel to address to a perfect stranger, but I complied. The letter she dictated, and which I wrote at her dictation, seemed to me the merest triviality--a scribble would have served the purpose just as well. She chattered all the time that I was writing, and, when I had finished, she went on chattering still. All at once she broke into a theme to which I ought to have become accustomed, but had not.

"Do you know, Mr. Southam, that I have been reading about this dreadful murder case? How the papers have all been full of it! And I don't mind telling you, as a matter of fact, that in a sort of a way it was that which has brought me to this hotel."

If that were so, I retorted, then her tastes were individual; she perceived attractions where the average man saw none. She laughed.

"I don't know that it was exactly that, but the truth is, Mr. Southam, I was interested in you." The way in which she emphasised the p.r.o.noun a little startled me. "I made up my mind that I would ferret you out directly I got to the hotel, and that then, if I liked the look of you, would make you an offer. You see how frank I am."

She certainly was frank to a fault, in one sense. And yet I wondered.

As I replied to her my tone was grim.

"It is very good of you. And now that, as I take it for granted that you do like the look of me--as you can scarcely fail to do--may I inquire what is the nature of the offer you propose to make?"

She laughed again. Possibly my perceptions were unusually keen, but, all the time, it occurred to me that there was about her a something--an atmosphere, if you will--which was not exactly suggestive of laughter. Unless I was mistaken, her faculties were as much on the alert as mine were. She was engaged in summing me up when she feigned to be least observant.

"You must understand, Mr. Southam, that I know all about you which the papers had to tell, and that was not a little! So we are not exactly strangers. At least, that is, you are not wholly a stranger to me.

Besides which, I myself once knew a person whose name was Southam."

I started. The woman's eyes were fixed on me, although she pretended to be trifling with her dress.

"You knew a person whose name was Southam. Indeed! Who was it, a man or a woman?"

She ignored my question.

"Have you any relatives of your own name?

"Not that I am aware of, though there seems to be more than one Southam about in the world. What Southam was it you knew?"

Her tone was ostentatiously indifferent. "Oh, it doesn't matter. It was a long time ago, and, as you say, I suppose there are heaps of Southams about in the world. I only wanted to explain to you that you were not so absolutely unknown to me as the fact that this is our first actual meeting might lead you to imagine. Will you allow me to ask if you are still seeking employment? I thought, from what I read in the papers, that it was just possible you might be."

"You have supposed correctly. I am."

"Would you like to fill the post of secretary?"

"Of secretary?" I paused for a moment to consider--not the suggestion of such a post, but the source from whence the suggestion came. "To whom?"

"To me."

"It is very kind of you, but do you clearly understand, madam, that you are speaking to a person whose character is under a cloud?"

"Because you were suspected of having murdered that man?"

Her question was brutal in its candour.

"Precisely. Because I was suspected, and, for all I know, still am."

"The people who suspected you were fools. I will back my capacity as a judge of character, even at sight, against their suspicions. You are not of the stuff of which murderers are made."

Her tone was short and sharp--I had almost written sarcastic--as if she thought it a shame to a man not to be made of the stuff of which murderers are. She went on, speaking quickly, even brusquely.

"I will trust you, if you, on your part, will trust me. As I have told you, and as I will prove to you, if--as I almost believe--you doubt me, I have lost my hand. See!" Hastily, before I could stop her, she began to unb.u.t.ton her right glove. She only unloosed a b.u.t.ton or two, when the whole thing, glove, hand and all, came clean away, and she held out towards me her handless arm. I stared, at a loss for words, not a little shocked--the disfigurement was so dreadful, and seemed to have been so recent. Her voice grew bitter. "I lost that hand under circ.u.mstances which impressed its loss upon my memory. As it were, I seem to be losing it anew, every hour of every day. It has left me impotent. Will you relieve my impotence? Will you become my secretary?

There will not be much for you to do, but there will be something; the salary which I shall pay you will not be a large one, but it will, perhaps, suffice till something better offers; I will give you a hundred pounds a year, and, as they say in the advertis.e.m.e.nts, all found. Do not give me your answer at once. It may be that I shall stay in the hotel some time, and, at any rate, while I am here, possibly you will not refuse to act as my amanuensis. You can see with your own eyes how much I am in want of one."

Again she drew my attention to her mangled arm. As she suggested, I neither accepted nor declined her offer there and then; it was one which needed consideration from more points than one. For instance, while she did know something of me--if what she had read in the newspaper reports could be called knowledge--I knew literally nothing of her; for all I could tell, she might be an adventuress lately freed from the purlieus of a gaol. I did consent to do any secretarial work she might require during her stay in the hotel. By the time she left it I might be able to see my way more clearly than I did just then.

I saw a good deal of Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor during the few days which followed, and the more I saw of her the less I could make her out.

There was a good deal of work for me to do, such as it was. I wondered if she had brought it with her in order to furnish her with an excuse to give me occupation. There were papers for me to copy--papers which seemed to be of the very slightest importance. While I was supposed to be engaged in copying them, she interrupted me without remorse, and talked and talked and talked. During those conversations she learned a great deal of my history, while I ascertained nothing at all of hers.

I found that she was a woman of quick and imperious temper: to fence with one of her interminable questions annoyed her; to have declined point-blank to answer one would have involved an immediate breach. If I took service with her, it would be with my eyes open; I should have to be prepared for squalls. Though she gave me employment as if she were bestowing charity, she would expect and require perfect obedience from me in return.

I do not think that, as a rule, I am quick in taking dislike at a person, but there did, in spite of myself, grow up in my mind a sense of antipathy towards Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor. I felt as if she were watching me; pumping me, turning me inside out, as if I were some old glove; playing with me with that cruel sort of enjoyment with which a cat plays with a mouse, and I did not find the feeling an agreeable one.

To add to my comfort, I had an uneasy consciousness that the new waiter had an attentive eye upon my movements in a non-waiterial sense. It was an eye for which I did not thank him; I almost suspected that he was playing the part of a sleepless spy. I half believed that, not infrequently, he was an unseen auditor of my interviews with Mrs.

Lascelles-Trevor--I should like to have caught him in the act! One night I could not sleep, I found that I had left my pipe downstairs. I started off to get it; I had scarcely got outside the bedroom door when I all but stumbled over the new waiter. Before I had discovered who it was, I had pinned him to the floor. He was profuse in his apologies, but I do not think that he could altogether have liked the way in which I handled him.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECOND ENCOUNTER

I began, as the days went by, to be more and more a prey to unhealthy, and apparently unreasonable doubts and fears--fears which, in truth, were so intangible that they were without form and void, but which were very real for all that. I began to feel as if a net were being drawn tighter and tighter round me, and as if every step I took was beset by hidden dangers. Such a mental condition was as I have said, an unhealthy one. I realised that well enough, and I had been wandering one evening to and fro on the Embankment, striving to free myself, if only for a time, from the imaginary mists and shadows which seemed to compa.s.s me about, when as I was turning into the street in which stood Mrs. Barnes's hotel, I saw a man crouching in the darkness of the wall. What was the man's purpose I had no doubt: he was seeking for concealment. He had seen me before I saw him, and was endeavouring to escape my scrutiny.

I took him to be the new waiter. I supposed that I had caught him in the act of spying on me at last. I turned swiftly on him, and before he could retreat I had him by the shoulders.

"Before I let you go, my friend, you will be so good as to tell me, now and here, what is the cause of the extreme interest which you evidently take in my proceedings."