By the Night Express: a psychological romance

Front matter

THE LUDGATE NOVELS. NADINE. By Mrs. Campbell Praed. MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? By Helen Mathers. BLACK MAIL. By R. Mounteney-Jephson. THE BRoIHER OF THE SHADOW. By Mrs. Campbell Praed. THE SECRET OF BARRAVOE. By Lady Violet Greville. 7 to 12 : A DETECTIVE STORY. By Anna Katharine Green. MR. BARNES OF NEW YORK. By Archibald C. Gunter. FREE JOE. By The Author of "Unclk Remus." HERR RICHTER'S STRANGE EXPERIMENT. By W. H. Stacpoole. MONSIEUR MOTTE. By Grace Kinc. MR. BAZALGETTE'S AGENT: A DETECTIVE STORY. By Leonard Merrick. WELL OUT OF IT. By John Habberton. A PSYCHOLOGICAL ROMANCE BY KEITH FLEMING "Is all we see or seem But a dream within a dream ? " E. A. POE. LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS Broadway, Ludgate Hill GLASGOW, MANCHESTER, AND NEW YORK 18S9 LO M don : PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, 70 TO 76, LONG ACRE.

W.C CONTENTS. PAGE BY THE NIGHT EXPRESS 7 DOLORES 63 LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH . . . .125 A PSYCHOLOGICAL ROMANCE. IN TWO PARTS. ' ' Is all we see or seem But a dream within a dream ? " — E. A. Poe. PA ET I. What a horrible murder it was ; and what strange possession it took of me, as I leaned back in that com fortable second-class carriage, en roide from Paddington to Milford. All the way from London to Gloucester it ran riot in my brain, and would not be exorcised. I could Uterally think of nothing else, not that I was a very sensitive or imaginative fellow in the ordinary way ; quite the reverse, I thought myself ; but the peculiar details of this crime seemed to exercise a sort of hideous fascination for me. And yet I had plenty of pleasant things to think of if only that newspaper, that lay open on my knee, would let me.

I had just got a whole month's holiday, and was speeding away to spend it with those I loved, and who loved me. I had been nearly three years in London, and was without kindred, friends, I might almost, say without acquaintance there. I suppose I was not what you would call a " popular fellow." I know I was somewhat reserved and silent. My fellow clerks at Messrs. Nelson and Oldcastle, Warehouse Street, City, liked me fairly < well, and I think respected me ; but they would not have broken their hearts if I had not turned up again ; in fact, one or two below me might have been rather glad than otherwise, expecting a step. In truth, in all that big city no one would have missed me if I had disappeared ; no one was sorry when I left, no one would be glad when I returned. I grew misanthropical as I lay back in luxurious idle ness, gazing out with absent eyes on the lovely summer landscape spread around me ; and I forgot to cheer myself with the remembrance of all the loving, welcoming faces awaiting me on the far wild coast of Clare.

Part I

" Murder or Suicide ? " This was the pregnant question that had been wildly agitating the pretty, picturesque village of Glenore during the past four weeks. But at last lingering doubt vanished ; conviction forced itself on all, without exception, save myself, that the awful mystery of that strange and terrible death that took place in our peaceful midst, convulsing our small community, and shaking it to its very centre a month before, could be explained only by the second dread term, that made those who used it shrink in memory from him, so beloved in life, compelling them half-unconsciously to substitute horror and reprobation for the infinite sorrow, pity, and rage that filled their hearts to overflowing when first the appalling, tragic story of sudden, violent, unexplained death, on that lovely summer evening was whispered with bated breath from each to each.

" Yes, it must have been suicide," they argued, for F DOLORES. the hundredth time, with ominous head-shakes and expressive shudders. There was no longer any excuse for assuming the possibility of its having been murder. Suspicion had rested on none from the first ; in fact, there were none to suspect. No stranger had been seen in the neighbourhood of the village for weeks before the event occurred. The dead man's servants, but three in number — an elderly housekeeper, well known and respected in Glenore and the surrounding district ; a rosy-cheeked village lass, her beutenant ; and the man who, for the last twenty years, had followed the fortunes of Colonel Oswald with the faithfulness and affection so often displayed by soldier servants — were devoted to him. Besides, the usual raison d'etre of murder — ordinary vulgar murder — ■ was conspicuous by its absence, as robbery there had been none ; even the valuables on the dead man's person remained undisturbed ; and any other more refined motive for secret, deliberate murder, such as revenge, &c, could not be entertained for a moment.

The genial, kindly Frank Oswald, a good man and true, a staunch and steadfast friend, had not an en emyin the world; of this Glenore felt morally certain, and I, who knew him better, felt thoroughly convinced ; and Mills, his trusty servant and adherent, who knew all the circumstances of his master's life for a score of years, declared, with much energy, palliated by grief and humiliation (for a f ter all, when his brave, beloved master was dead, how far better it would be to be able to prove that it was the result of cold-blooded assassination, rather than shameful, cowardly self-murder !) that he knew there was not a creature living wished Colonel Oswald ill ; that everyone had loved him DOLORES. 67 elsewhere as at Glenore ; and that in all those years, whether in the service, or since he sold out, in times of peace or war, action or inaction, his master had never quarrelled with a human being.

And then again, if murdered by some person or persons unknown, there surely should be some trace, however faint and slight, of an intruder's presence in the dead man's home. That there had been no struggle whatever, was evident from the first ; and the supposition that any stranger (always an event of some importance at Glenore) could have walked into the Dingle House in the mellow golden glory of a lovely summer's evening, just at the time when the shadows are thickening, and a dreamy duskiness gather ing within doors, though outside the daylight still reigns supreme —and entered the study or library, sacred to the master's use, where that master was wont to repose at that hour, and stab him to the heart, as he lay presumably sleeping ; and then out again, without disturbing by a hair's breadth any article in that room, without a sign, a sound to betray that fell presence to the rest of the house hold, was simply untenable.

The dead man's adopted daughter sat in the drawing room on the opposite side of the hall, reading by the waning light ; and Mills, who generally at this time en joyed a pipe in the west shrubbery, on which the study windows looked, had been there that evening, and had noticed that the window near the sofa, on which Colonel Oswald lay, was open, and yet he had heard no sound. And he had scarcely returned to the house a quarter of an hour, when Miss Fairfax rang for tea, which he brought to the drawing-room ; and while he arranged the ~> DOLORES. table, she crossed the hall to summon her guardian, and opening the study door, her scream of terror and dismay apprised him and the rest of the household of the horror that had happened. That the assassin had deliberately passed out of the house again, into the saffron light of the dying day, through the grounds, out on to the high road, through the village — which he must perforce enter to gain the nearest town, nearly four miles off, as the Dingle House stood beyond Glenore nearer to the sea, with a precipitous cliff-wall rising steeply at its rear — and yet succeed in escaping observation, was a practical im possibility, especially at that hour of rest from labour and of general relaxation, when the village folk were gathered at their doors, enjoying the peace and beauty of the summer evening.

Besides, would it not argue, on the part of the imaginary assassin, a strange acquaintance with the ways of the Dingle House and its inmates ? No. The theory of murder, after fluctuating mightily for a whole month, now almost expiring, now flaring up into sudden transient life again, was at last finally abandoned by Glenore ; and I alone remained true to the memory of my dear dead friend, Frank Oswald, inasmuch as I still refused, in face of the most positive evidence, as my neighbours declared it to be, to dishonour him by doubt. And yet, was it positive ? There was one distinct and singular flaw in the suicide theory, which even those most absolutely convinced that it, and it alone, held the solution of the terrible problem of the Dingle House mystery, had to admit was unaccountable — inexpbcable.

And this was the extraordinary fact the non-discovery of the weapon that had gone home to its mark with such straight, awful, unerring aim — that had DOLORES. 69 transformed life into death by that small, clean, cruel puncture, which though scarcely the circumference of a quill, yet had proved a door quite wide enough to release the imprisoned soul. No trace of any instrument that could have caused death was found, after the most rigorous and exhaustive search. The doctors who viewed the wound declared it must have been produced by a weapon of somewhat strange and peculiar design, some exquisitely fine and slender dagger, remarkable and uncommon. But if the blow was self-inflicted, it was quite feasible, they averred, and also possible, that the hand that made that unshrinking thrust might have wrenched the steel from the quivering flesh ere it hung powerless in death ; but where was the weapon ?

It should necessarily be on the floor, or, at least, somewhere in the room, even if thrown from the dying hand. Yet the strictest search revealed nothing. The very sofa on which the body lay was taken to pieces in a last effort to find that one link which, thus wanting, left all hi a state of unsatisfactory incompleteness. But, as we have seen, even with this most mysterious disap pearance of the cause of the effect, all except myself were fain to accept the belief of self-murder. Confessing there was much mystery in the affair, but still that other explanation was not feasible ; and suggesting, as a possible way of accounting for the evanishment of the weapon of death, that, perhaps, when first the alarm was given on that fatal night, and scared confusion reigned within the Dingle House, when friends and villagers alike flocked to the scene of the tragedy, and stood within that room in mute horror and amaze, one of the latter may possibly have unthinkingly picked up the deadly DOLORES. thing, and unconsciously carried it away with him, and have foolishly shrunk since from yielding it up from an ignorant fear that its being found in his possession might in some way implicate him ; or, still more Ukely, that one of the village children had confiscated it as a novel, though dan gerous, plaything, had quietly made his own of it, saying nothing but keeping his own counsel with that strange secretiveness that seems so inherent in a child's nature.

This, was, perhaps a plausible mode of trying to ex plain away the difficult problem of the missing weapon, but it was not sufficient for me ; the whole affair was wrapped in impenetrable mystery, but until I received positive, unanswerable proof, that my friend had taken his own life, I should remain firm in the belief that he had been the victim of unimaginable diabolical treachery. It was contrary to all reason and common sense, that the man should have committed suicide. All motive for so desperate an act was lacking. Frank Oswald, still in the prime of life, joyous-natured, healthy, vigorous ; with no troubles domestic or monetary ; enjoy ing the half-sportsman, half-student life he led, in that sweet country home to the full ; happy in the society of his ward, Dolores Fairfax, and in that of that dear adopted daughter's betrothed, myself; with a tender, gentle heart, full of love and charity, and kindness for all ; a brave soldier ; a true and honourable gentleman ; a devout and humble-minded Christian ; surely it was not in the nature of things, that such a man would rush thus impiously into the presence of his Maker.

Some three years before that tragic Auo-ust night I Arthur Wilmore, having just left my thirtieth birthday DOLORES. 71 behind me, and by my father's recent death, became master of the " Manor" (a sad and dreary privilege, as I felt very desolate in my solitary greatness, in that stately grey old house, and a hundred times a day missed my dear old dad, who had been brother and friend, as well as father) met Frank Oswald, who had lately taken " The Dingle House," which had stood empty for years. The acquaintance, begun accidently, just at the time when my solitude was pressing most heavily, soon ripened into firm and lasting friendship ; our tastes were similar, we thought alike on most subjects ; were, to put it briefly, congenial. (What better word for friendship's basis ? What can so thoroughly insure a true, staunch, mutual liking, whether between man and man, or man and woman ? ) " The Dingle House " soon became almost as much my home as " The Manor," and Colonal Oswald and his ward (his " little Grief," as he sometimes playfully called her) my most intimate friends.

Dolores Fairfax was at that time but a slender slip of a maiden, little over sixteen. About a year previous, Frank Oswald, who was then in the East, had been implored, by a very old and much loved friend, who had married and settled years before in the West Indies, to come to him for God's sake with all speed ; it was " a dying man's request," the letter stated, and the urgency was great ; his old comrade longed, with an inexpressible sick longing, to place, with his own trembling hands, chill already with the dews of ap>proaching death, his only and beloved child, under the safe and tender guardianship of his dear and trusted friend, before that terrible and relentless foe had chilled ■CK DOLORES. 72 for ever the heart that beat with such warm and passionate love for his little daughter. Colonel Oswald obeyed that summons, and was just in time to hear a murmured blessing, to see a look of glad recognition in the glazing eyes ; and then to follow to his lonely grave in that distant land, all that remained of his old friend and comrade, Ronald Fairfax.

Dolores' mother — a West Indian by birth, of Spanish descent — had been dead some years, and the child was literally alone in the world. She had a few friends in Cuba, chiefly amongst the Spanish West Indians, but she apparently felt little regret in bidding them farewell, as she seemed anxiously eager to leave Cuba. The fifteen-year-old West Indian was but a frail and delicate sapling, when first she saw her father's native land, Colonel Oswald told me ; but the year in England had improved and benefitted her greatly, and though when I first saw her, I regarded her still as scarcely more than a child, I thought her very lovely, with something of a strange, singular, silent beauty, but still fascinating in an uncommon puzzling way. Not that in cataloguing her points of attraction there seemed anything especially peculiar or odd ; but it was the indefinable expression of the face, a vague strange abstraction in the manner, that struck one as unfamiliar and novel, and interested one in spite of oneself.

Yet, it was rather a singular countenance, with that cloud of rippling yellow hair, framing that coldly clear pale face ; no waxen pallor, but a snowy -white purity of complexion, especially remarkable when one remembered her almost tropical birthplace, and her origin on the mother's side • no colouring whatever in the cheeks, and scarcely any in DOLORES. 73 the lips, and yet it did not strike one as the colourless ness of delicacy, but rather as if some rare mental attri bute thus declared itself through the medium of the skin, as well as in those strange great eyes ; eyes, beautiful in themselves in form, and in colour deepest, richest brown with jetty fringes ; eyes that had centred in themselves all the colouring of the face ; but it was not their beauty you noticed, as compared with their unusual, almost startling expression.

At times they glowed with a strange luminous light, as if some mystic fire burned in their liquid depths, lit by the yearning soul that was almost visible in that spiritual face. But this was only seldom ; ordinarily they wore a look — what was it ? introspective, dreamy, abstracted ; or was it rather a singular mysterious expression of looking at something beyond, outside the present person, place or time ? It gave you an odd, slightly shivery impression, and yet attracted strangely. You grew unconsciously to look upon the girl as a psychological problem you vainly and ardently longed to solve ; and yet she was simplicity itself in her ways and manners, save for a vague, nameless, silent sense of waiting and watching ; an instinctive feeling that there was some latent expectation — of what you could not tell — under that calm, grave, gentle exterior.

Here, at least, one saw at a glance that mind predominated over matter; that the soul out weighed the body and left the casket almost trans parent enough to see that mysterious Presence at work within. Yet, in intellectual development, she seemed in no way distinguished from the generality of girls, but probably DOLORES. it was the imaginative, ideabstic faculties that were so abnormally accentuated. As time passed on and she grew into womanhood, my wondering admiration and vivid interest changed by degrees into a warmer feeling. I grew to love this sweetly-grave serious maiden with the mystic eyes ; not with the intensity and passion I had hoped and expected to feel when the magical sweetness of that wondrous, inexplicable action of the human heart that men call " love," should visit me ; perhaps this arose from the peculiar nature of the woman I loved ; she was so cold, and pure, and passionless, that all mere human earthly desires seemed to shrink and pale in her presence.

My love for her was calm but steadfast, and was tempered, or rather mingled with a feeling that I could not analyze or account for. A strange, odd sense of unreality would sometimes suddenly smite me when I was alone with Dolores ; a feeling as if a third person were present unseen, or rather, as if I myself were only present spiritually, and that third imaginary presence was really the other per son in the dual walk or talk. I would rouse up suddenly with the absurd feeling that I had been straining and listening — for what ? that third invisible person's voice I suppose, and used mentally to abuse myself in vigorous language as " a nervous, imaginative, contemptible idiot." But shortly after my father's death I had rather a bad illness, a low nervous fever, and I had never been quite so strong since.

Nearly a year before Frank Oswald's mysterious death Dolores and I became engaged ; she was but a little past eighteen then, and it was agreed that we should not marry DOLORES. 75 till she was twenty-one. It was no dowerless bride that would be coming to me ; for, though her inheritance from her father was but trifling, Frank Oswald would give her a fortune on her marriage, and at his death she would be — as he told me — his sole heiress, for near relations he had none ; and, in any case, he loved the girl so fondly that she was in all things to him as a daughter. He was utterly pleased and happy in her betrothal to me ; delighted to think, if anything should happen to him, that he would leave her in such good hands ; she was a fragile sensitive plant, and required to be sheltered from the storms of life ; and though in strong, vigorous health himself, and still under fifty, yet all was so fearfully uncertain in this world, that he felt thoroughly glad to know that her future would be so guarded and safe.

Dolores herself, too, for the first few months after our engagement, seemed brighter, gayer, happier than I had ever known her. Always undemonstrative, self-contained, reserved to a degree, she yet seemed to live less within herself (if I may use the phrase) than before ; she almost appeared for a time like one who had been relieved from some mental burden which oppressed, and which, when flung off for a space, causes a rebound that cannot bo quite concealed. For those first few montns sne sang and chatted and laughed, and was altogether more like other girls. Her eyes were sweeter, softer, tenderer, with less of the visionary, mystical look that was so puzzling, and that was a wee shade startling, when she seemed to look at some one or some thing, through or beyond you, and you were tempted involuntarily to turn your head to see whom she regarded, though you knew there was no one there.

There was DOLORES. also less of that strange, odd stillness and impression of waiting, listening, watching, in her manner. It was a very pleasant change and flattering ; for it was as if her love for myself made her a new creature ; but, unfortu nately, it did not last, and of late the peculiarities of her nature had been more pronounced than ever, not that her affection for myself seemed at all diminished ; nay, rather, she appeared to cling to me more, though her lips grew more silent, and her eyes more absorbed and distant looking day by day. I sometimes thought she must have unpleasant Cuban reminiscences ; that possibly she had experienced some great terror or distress when she was quite a child, and that it had .left this strange impress on the sensitive, nervous, highly-organized nature ; but though I frequently tried to induce her to speak of her childhood and earliest youth, of Cuba and its associations, she always seemed to shrink from doing so, ever turning the conversation, after answering my questions as briefly as possible.

And now, I shuddered to think of the effect, the lasting effect, this awful event that had convulsed all Glenore would have upon her. Dolores loved her adopted father devotedly ; though undemonstrative, whether in the display of grief or joy, love or hate, yet this sweet, undeclared affection was very perceptible both to me, and to him who evoked it, to whom it had been, as he often averred, the crowning and greatest blessing of his life. Yes, what a terrible impression it would make upon the girl ; what injurious result might it not have upon her, constituted as she was ? On the only two occasions she consented to see me, since that fearful night, I was DOLORES. 77 alarmed, awed almost, at the extraordinary unnatural calm and rigidity of her manner : her eyes wore a fixed, stony look, as if they had looked upon a great horror, and were frozen at the sight ; her lips had a white look of strain and tension, very painful to witness, she would scarcely speak, and, when she did, not above a whisper.

Hers was a grief that found no relief in blessed tears that so often save the overtaxed brain, and I dreaded to think of the future. She positively and absolutely re fused to leave the house, though she had many invita tions from kind friends in the neighbourhood to make her home with them, at least for a time. 1 ardently longed she should do so (to the " Manor," unhappily, she could not come, until she came as mistress, as I was quite alone save for my servants) ; but she was inflexible, saying, she much preferred staying with Mrs. Joyce (the house keeper) and Mills, who knew and loved him wh > was gone, to going amongst strangers. This evening, just six weeks after that awful tragedy that robbed Dolores of her second father and me of my dear and trusted friend, who had gone out from our midst so silently, inexplicably ; just when the long and eagerly-debated question of " Murder or suicide ?

" had at last been answered by all Glenore to their own entire satisfaction — I alone remaining Didymus-like amongst them, awaiting proof incontrovertible — I determined to go up to the Dingle House again and try to have an interview with Dolores, who had so persistently declined to see me, save on the two occasions mentioned, alleging as excuse for what must seem to me (her betrothed husband) somewhat strange (who had a better right to comfort her in her sorrow?) that she was too ill and too DOLORES. suffering to talk ; and besides, that seeing me only brought her grief and the horror of its nature more vividly before her. But to-night I was determined, if possible, to frustrate her growing morbid desire for utter solitude, that would have such an unwholesome effect upon a girl of her visionary, reflective temperament, by stealing on her unawares, and then by dint of much tender persuasion getting her to promise to marry me when six months from her guardian's death should have expired.

We had nothing to wait for now, and the sooner this un healthful state of existence ceased for Dolores the better. The girl was quite alone and needed a protector, and who so safe as a husband ? And when once my wife, I would take her abroad, and amidst change of scene and surroundings the shock and horror of the bereavement she had sustained would, I trusted, gradually subside, leaving but the calm natural sorrow behind ; whereas, if the mind were allowed to prey on itself in this strange seclusion, it might do her serious harm. Those necessary intervening months I hoped to be able to induce her to spend with cousins of mine, living at the other end of England, where, I trusted, she might begin to forget. These were my hopes and fears as I wended my way to the Dingle House, on this evening of September the 28th, 188 — , just six weeks after Frank Oswald's mysterious death.

Part II

It had been a dull, cheerless, sad-coloured day, and it was a grey, bleak, dismal evening. When I say evening, it was but. little past six o'clock, but it seemed as if the shades of night were already gathering, so gloomy and leaden was the sky. There was a decided chill in the air too, unusual at that season, and unwelcome, and the wind was soughing drearily amongst the hills that clustered in gracious, greenest semicircle round our little village ; now, it was but a faint distant whisper, a hushed sighing lament, swelling anon into a sobbing moan, a weary, saddening wail, that seemed as if unseen spirits plained and sorrowed round one. It was an evening to make one creep and shiver slightly, not so much with cold of body as with an eerie sense of desolation and foreboding, as if r.n actual embodied grief or horror were somewhere abroad, and one shrank from stumbling upon it unawares.

The Dingle House was wrapped in deepest quiet. I saw no one as I crossed the lawn and took my way round the side of the house to that west shrubbery, which the servants already shunned, but which Mrs. Joyce had told me Dolores had grown strangely fond of haunting. DOLORES. 80 She would pace up and down there for hours together, she said, glancing askance every now and then at that window that had stood open on that fatal night. It was a peculiar fancy, but, perhaps the imaginative girl felt nearer in spirit to the adopted father she so fondly loved, when thus looking ou the windows of the room that was so especially his own, but which she had not been able to bring herself as yet to enter. I hoped to find her here and thus compel her to a meeting. But I was disappointed. All was lonely ; solitude reigned supreme, and the wind moaned and sobbed piteously round the gables of the old house, while mingled with it might be heard a sadder, more depress ing sound still, the distant, far-away moaning of the ever restless sea, as it beat in sullen swelling cadence on the shore, scarcely half-a-mile off.

It was dreary in the ex treme, and I felt a sudden inexpressible longing for human companionship. I walked almost mechanically to that farthest window and looked in ; all was exactly the same as on that night, six weeks ago, when, in the con fidence and security and peace of home the master lay outstretched upon that sofa resting, mayhap sleeping, and fell, treacherous death stole upon him, borne by the assassin's cruel, hideous hand. He must have been asleep, I argued, else he would have seen that dastardly approach. And yet when the body was discovered the eyes were wide open, with a look of astonished horror and wild dismay in their fixed gaze, very awful to contemplate, and seemed to prove then beyond a doubt that murder had been perpetrated, though public opinion had veered round since, and asserted that that look on the dead face was the instinc- DOLORES. 81 tive, unconscious awe of the unknown into which the wretched man was about impiously to plunge.