The House of Mystery, etc

Front matter

THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY a Before they could reach him, with the little man — struggling, fighting, yelling — held tightly in his arms, Lazarus had sprung over the iron railing. — Page 300. The House of Mystery. (I-rontispiece.) THE HOUSE OF 7MTSTERT BY RICHARD MARSH Author of k The Beetle : A Afysteiy,' ' The Crime and the Criminal,' Etc., Etc. With Frontispiece by JOHN WILLIAMSON LONDON F. V. WHITE & CO. i4 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND V CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. SF.NT PACKING ! ' . . . . . I II. THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE, . . . l6 III. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MUSIC ROOM, . 3 1 IV. THE STRANGER IN THE SHADOW, . . 44 V. A VOICE IN THE DARKNESS, ... 58 VI. SOME INTERVIEWS AT CROSS PURPOSES, . . 73 VII. A STRANGE WOOING, .... 87 VIII. THE WAY TO THE DOOR, . . . . IOI IX. A REFUGE FROM THE WORLD, . . . II4 X. THE BETROTHAL, ....

I27 XI. A LOVER SCORNED, .... I4O XII. THE SINGULAR BEHAVIOUR OF MR LAZARUS, . 153 XIII. THE SIKH'S DAGGER, . . . . 167 XIV. STABBED TO THE HEART ! . . . l8l XV. PUT TO THE QUESTION, .... 195 XVI. A DECLARATION OF INNOCENCE, . . . CONTENTS VI CHAP. PAGE XVII. THE SIGNOR IS ASTONISHED, . . . 221 XVIII. MAUD SINGS TO MR LAZARUS, . . . 234 XIX. CONFESSION, ..... 250 XX. THE RELEASE OF SIGNOR BIANCHI, . . 264 XXI. THE CAT AND THE MOUSE, . . . 278 XXII. THE CAT IN A CORNER, . . . . 29I XXIII. A SWAN SONG, ..... 301 XXIV. A GREAT LADY, . . . . .

Chapter I Sent Packing

! Click, click, click, went the typewriters. AVithout, the day was miserable. The rain came down in torrents. The wind blew from the river right through that side street off the Strand. AVithin the office, on the top floor of the building, the girls' fingers went click, click, click, as they typed for their daily bread. There were five of them. Four worked ; one sat idle, a girl, with her masses of red-gold hair and a face so beautiful it seemed strangely out of place in that bare room ; so beautiful, indeed, that its beauty startled the beholder, despite her shabby dress. Big violet eyes looked from under heavily-fringed lashes. Pouting lips framed a rosebud of a mouth. The cheeks were white — with trouble — ay, with want of food, and yet the skin gleamed like satin. The brow was broad and lofty.

The nose, which was small and arched, with delicate pink nostrils, lent to the countenance an expression of pride and resolution. This was a girl who would not easily succumb ; who would fight the battle of life with the best of them, who would hold herself undaunted, if needs be, against overwhelming odds. And yet, at that moment, despair gnawed at her heart. A She was cold and worn and hungry. Everything was against her — the world, and, so it seemed to her, all the people in it. At that office piecework was the rule. Sevenpence per thousand words typed was the amount paid to operators who did the actual work ; one shilling and upwards was charged to clients. If you were skilled, and kept at it hard, and had luck, you might, in halcyon days, earn a pound a week — an entire sovereign ! That was when you were in favour.

Madeleine Orme was out of favour, for reasons. For one thing, she had committed that cardinal offence*— she was too good looking. Mrs Griffiths, the proprietress, with whom good looks had never been a failing, could not, to use her own words, 'abide those stuck-up, painted Judys!' And though Madeleine was neither stuck-up nor painted nor a Judy, Mrs Griffiths was always harder on her than on either of the others. AA'fiat in another was venial, in her was criminal. Ellen Rouse, for instance, might make error after error. 'AVell,' argued Mrs Griffiths, 'it was natural. The MS. was not quite as clear as copperplate. AVho could avoid an occasional mistake ? ' But let Madeleine Orme so much as misplace a comma, she was fined. Although she had reached the bottom line, the page was declared useless.

It had to be typed all over again. She was punished for the waste of time. So now, while the others worked, she sat idle, earning nothing, without a penny in her pocket, or the prospect of placing one there. The injustice of it all made her heart red-hot within her. A MS. had been given her to type. She had started on it bravely — even gaily. It ran to about 8000 words. It would mean, when done, that she had earned four shillings and fourpence. It was not particularly clearly written, and the corrections had been plentifully inter lined ; but, if she stuck at it closely, she might finish it in the course of the day, and then, if Mrs Griffiths were in an agreeable frame of mind, she might give her half, or even the whole, of the four and fourpence when the work was done. It seemed to her that with four shillings and fourpence one could do so much.

She had typed four pages when Kate Ellis, the girl who sat next to her, had finished the work she had to do. Mrs Griffiths came and gathered together the scattered pages, and presently moved to Madeleine. Taking up one of the finished sheets, she glanced at it. She tapped Madeleine smartly with her finger-tips upon the shoulder. ' What nonsense is this ? ' she demanded. ' This isn't sense.' She was pointing to a line on Madeleine's clear copy. The girl's response was gentle ; she deprecated the other's wrath. ' It is difficult to make out what the writer means. Just there, there are so many corrections that it is not easy to decide which is meant to stand. See, here is the MS.' AVith her outstretched finger she showed that at the point alluded to the MS. was such a tangle of inter lineations that it was almost impossible to make head or tail of it.

Without paying the slightest heed to the girl's timid explanation, she tore the four sheets of ' copy,' which represented a couple of hours' hard, persistent labour, first into halves and then into quarters. Snatching up the MS., she passed it to Kate Ellis. ' Miss Ellis, be so good as to type that MS., and be so good as to make sense of it, which Miss Orme appears unable to do. Miss Orme does not seem to be aware that if MSS. were as plain as print, it would not be necessary to send them here to be typed.' The action was so unexpected that for some seconds Madeleine sat in speechless surprise. Then she sprang to her feet with a cry. ' Mrs Griffiths, oh, Mrs Griffiths, do let me type it ! I will make sense of it — I will ! I have had nothing at all to do this week. It is the first thing you have given me.' Mrs Griffiths had reached the door of her own apart ment.

She turned with what was possibly intended to be an air of hauteur. 'And I am sorry I gave you that. Miss Ellis, be so good as to type that MS.' She disappeared from sight. "Z. Her disappearance was followed by a chorus from the girls. ' It's a shame ! ' cried Mary Wilson. ' It really is a shame ! Kate, you ought to have spoken up. You ought to have refused to take the thing when you knew that Miss Orme was half way through it.' ' Miss Orme was not half way through it,' rejoined Kate, calmly. ' And even if she was, it's no business of mine. It's each for yourself in this world. If I'd refused to take it, Mrs Griffiths would have had her knife in me. I can't afford to throw away my bread and butter.' Madeleine said nothing — she could say nothing. The incident, trivial enough in itself, was tragedy to her.

From her point of view, at that moment hardly anything more dreadful could have happened. As she had said, so far she had had no work to do that week. They were not very busy ; as regards such work as had come in she had been persistently passed over — it had been given someone else to do. She was absolutely penniless. To have had it so near her lips, and yet to have had it dashed away, that was the cup of Tantalus indeed. And the injustice of it ! She had not made an error, she was sure of it ! The error, if one there had been, had been the author's, not hers. At any rate, Mrs Griffiths had not stayed to see. AVhat was the use of continuing to live in a world in which — toil, strive, struggle as she might — there was nothing but hunger, hardship and despair? The girl sat with clenched fists and flashing eyes, with something throbbing in her breast as if her heart would burst.

Presently the office door was thrown open with a little rush. Someone came hastening in. A young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four; short, slightly built. He had an eager, intelligent face, and shrewd, pleasant eyes. He was neatly, yet poorly dressed. There was about him an air of alertness, which suggested that he was not of the kind to suffer the grass to grow beneath his feet. He carried a black felt hat in one hand and a small bundle of MS. in the other, with which he advanced buoyantly towards Madeleine Orme. A smile lit up his homely countenance. ' Nothing to do, Madeleine ? That's a stroke of luck ! I've brought you something which I want you to turn off for me at once. The editor of Fancies has told me that if I'll knock together a paper on " Queer Trades," he'll look at it while I wait, and, if it suits, pay cash upon the nail.

Here's the paper. It runs to about 3000 words. It's now about one ; do you think you could let me have it by five ? Then I could catch the editor before he leaves.' ' I'll try, Geoffrey ; but you know your MSS. are not the plainest.' She turned to him with a longing something on her face, which, because perhaps of his own eagerness, went unnoticed. He made a little grimace. ' No ! You're right there ! I'm afraid they're not. Providence seems to have denied me the power of writing a legible hand. I don't know how it is, but so it is. But what is my misfortune is the typewriter's boon ; if all MSS. were so plain that he who runs might read, where would this come in ? ' He laid his hand lightly on her machine. The blood came to her cheeks ; his words recalled Mrs Griffiths' gibe. She turned the sheets of his MS. over with her fingers, smiling faintly. ' That is so.

AArell, Geoffrey, you don't give me much time; but I'll do the best for you I can.' ' Of course ! I know you will ! I wouldn't bustle you, only, you see, this is something extra particular. To be quite frank with you, the cash will come in uncom monly useful — especially if I can lay my hands on it tonight. By the way, I've got a grand idea, one of the best that's been seen in journalism this many a day. It will knock them, you take my word. I'm going to spring it on the editor of Fancies if he accepts that paper, which he will do, or I'm a Dutchman. And then, I think, we'll show them/ It was pleasant to hear him talk — and so Madeleine felt ; although she had heard words of the same sort from the same lips before. But there was in the speaker's voice such a note of confidence — of assured conviction — that it seemed, from sheer sympathy, to cheer the girl's despairing heart.

Geoffrey Clifford was of the try-and-try-again sort. Failure was nothing to him. If at first he did not succeed, why, he asked, who has a right to expect to ? He would succeed at last, of that he was assured. He would keep on, and on, and or, until at last the goal was reached. It was good for the girl to come in contact with such a nature. ' I won't keep you,' he cried, ' or I shall be defeating my own purpose. You understand, I must have it at five.' He turned to go. Just then the inner door opened — Mrs Griffiths appeared. ' Mr Clifford ! Is that you ? ' He faced her with a laugh. ' It looks as if it were.' Her manner was as acid as his was genial. ' I presume you have come to pay that small account of yours ? ' He pulled a wry face. ' I will pay it you this evening, or the first thing in the morning.' ' Indeed !

It has been standing some time. I would rather you paid it now.' ' I have Drought a MS. which I have asked Madeleine to type for me by five. It's for Fancies — I'm going to take it right away. I shall be paid cash down, and then you shall have your money.' She looked him up and down ; her tone was biting. ' Do I understand you to say that you have brought a MS. for Miss Orme to type, without paying what you already owe ? ' ' You shall have it to-night, or the first thing in the morning. It's only five shillings.' ' Precisely. The fact of the amount being so small is one reason why we should like you to let us have it now.' ' I'm afraid I can't let you have it at this moment ; but, as I say, you shall have it, at latest, in the morning.' ' Very good. AA'here is that MS. ? ' She took it from Madeleine's unwilling fingers. ' When, Mr Clifford, you have settled the small account which is outstanding, we shall be pleased to do more work for you.

Our terms are cash.' She held out to him the MS. He looked at her askance. ' But — I can't settle with you until that MS. is ac cepted, and paid for. I assure you, Mrs Griffiths, if you will have it typed for me so that I can catch the editor of Fancies before he goes, you shall have your money safe enough.' 'AVe do not want your promises, Mr Clifford, we want your cash. Our terms, I repeat, are cash. Here is your MS., if it is of any value to you. Good-day.' Madeleine interposed eagerly. ' I will type it for him, Mrs Griffiths, if you will let me, and charge you nothing for it. If he promises to pay you, I'm sure he will.' ' You forget yourself, Miss Orme. This office is mine, not yours. Don't show your face here again, Mr Clifford, except to pay your bill. AA'e must decline to do any more work for you under any circumstances.' AVith a comical grimace, and a ghost of a smile to wards Madeleine, he slipped the MS. into his pocket and went.

So soon as his back was turned, Mrs Griffiths opened the vials of her wrath on the offending girl. 'Your behaviour, Miss Orme, is disgraceful. You appear to have no proper sense of your position. AAho are you to speak to me as if you were the employer and I the employed? You are the most ill-conducted and useless person I have ever had in my office. And how dare you allow such a penniless and impudent fellow, like that Clifford, to address you, publicly, by your Christian name ? — and a most theatrical one it is ! ' ' He is my foster-brother.' ' Your foster-brother ? Indeed ! We all know what foster-brothers are. They're like cousins. I once had a servant who, whenever I caught a more than usually doubtful-looking fellow with her in the kitchen, declared that it was her foster-brother.' The girls giggled.

Madeleine went fiery red. ' Since, however, you claim Mr Clifford as a species of relation, I feel sure you will feel in duty bound to pay his debts. Of course you will not object to my stopping the amount he owes me from the next piece of work you do.' Mrs Griffiths retired to her own apartment, leaving Madeleine quivering in every nerve. The girls' glances did not add to her sense of comfort. They eyed her as if she were a peep-show. Ellen Rouse did not confine herself to glances. ' I don't see, Miss Orme,' she said spitefully, ' how you can object to pay what Mr Clifford owes, since you offered to type his MS. for nothing.' Kate Ellis struck in with a remark which was, if anything, more spiteful still. ' That was rather a nasty one about Madeleine being a theatrical sort of Christian name.

Is it your real name, Miss Orme ? ' Madeleine looked at the speaker with eyes which were eloquent, but her tongue was still. . While she sat there, with panting breast and crimsoned cheeks, and heart that burned, and they looked and laughed at her, and mocked — all three together — once more the office door was opened, and another man came in. At the sight of him there instantly was silence. He was a young fellow, probably only just out of his teens, but there was about him a something which seemed intended to convey the suggestion that he was older than he seemed. And, in some respects, undoubtedly he was ! His hair was very fair, and very short, and there was not much of it. It was parted exactly in the middle, so that there seemed precisely the same number of hairs on either side ; which hairs adhered so very closely to his scalp that one could not but suspect that they must have been plastered down with soap.

His eyes, which were bloodshot, looked out of long, narrow slits. His nose was large ; there was a twist about the bridge which hinted that at some period of his career it had been broken. His mouth was wide ; when he opened it there was a liberal display of enormous teeth, which were not precisely white. His attire was, from his own point of view, in the height of fashion. He wore a gardenia in the buttonhole of a short jacket, which was of some peculiarly irritating shade of slaty blue ; a flowered waistcoat ; and copious trousers of a beautiful pearl grey. The bottoms of these latter garments were turned up so as to exhibit to the best advantage a pair of light brown shoes. His collar was of the turned-down-all-round variety ; the ends of a parti-coloured silk necktie, which was arranged in a beautiful bow, straggling, in artistic disorder, over the bosom of his soft blue shirt.

He wore a brown billycock very much on the side of his head ; a half-consumed cigar was sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He carried a pair of yellow dogskin gloves in his large and red right hand ; and a crooked bamboo cane dangled over his arm. This was Augustus Dauncey Griffiths — his mother's only darling, and, in that mother's opinion, the smartest young man in town. There were one or two other persons who thought him tolerably smart— with reason ; but they used the word in a different sense to his parent. He entered the office without thinking it necessary to remove his hat — or his cigar. And, so soon as he was in, he struck an attitude. He passed the whole of his time in striking attitudes — but that is by the way. ' Oh, you darlings ! You dears ! You pets ! AVhere's the dragon ? ' Ellen Rouse took upon herself to answer.

He was her cousin ; she would have gone through fire and water for him — and worse. As a natural consequence, he treated her as if she were the dirt beneath his feet; it being the custom with men of his sort to so use the women who love them. ' Aunt is in her room.' ' Is she ? Then let her stop there, Nelly, dear ! Oh, you sweets ! You pretty things ! You little ducks ! And aren't you working ! Of course, when I come in ! Before I showed my nose inside that door there wasn't a finger moving — only tongues. Think I don't know you ? Oh, you loves ! ' He looked at Madeleine. ' Hullo, Venetian Red ! you're doing nothing ! You lazy girl, I'm ashamed of you ! Why are you doing nothing to earn your bread and butter ? Is it because it's a principle of yours that the less you do the more you get? It is so, anyhow, especially if you are a pretty girl.' He went close to her — she perceptibly shrinking from him as he did so. ' Do you know how the Venetian women used to get their hair your colour ?

They used to sit on the roofs of the houses in the hottest suns of summer, with their hair spread out on sheets of brass all round them ; at least, so the story goes. By Jove ! you have got hair ! Do you know, my dear, that locks like yours are as good as a fortune ? It's truth, so help me ! I know a girl whose thatch isn't a patch on yours, who gets five quid a week from the Cerulean for just coming on to the stage with it hanging all over her shoulders, and the other girls tug at it, just to show the folks in front it's real ; fact, upon my sivvy ! And as for face — and figure ! — why, there isn't a professional beauty anywhere who can hold a torch to you — upon my word, there isn't ! The dragon don't know what a prize she's got, or she'd try you at some better lay than tapping those corn-raising keys.

Look here, Madeleine, it isn't often I give myself away, but I'll give you this gardenia for a kiss — fair, sweet, frank and free, mind ! — and it cost eighteenpence, upon my honour ! And you girls can turn your heads aside.' Mr Augustus Dauncey Griffiths — one loves to give such a gentleman his name in full ! — had come close enough to Madeleine to enable him to put his hand upon her shoulder. She shook it from her as if it had been the touch of some noxious insect — turning to him with cheeks which were white enough now, and eyes which flamed. Though hot enough within, her tone was icy. ' Have the goodness not to touch me, Mr Griffiths. And though I esteem your offer at its full value, I fear that it is one which I must — respectfully — decline.' The gentleman was not in the least nonplussed.

On the contrary, he threw up his hands in an attitude of what was meant for admiration. ' By Jove ! Just look at her ! My dear, you're a duchess — by nature ! I give you my word you are ! Put a hundred pounds' worth of clothes on you, and ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds, drop you down among the duchesses at the Queen's Drawing-Room, and you'd cop the biscuit from the entire shoot ; I know what I'm talking about, and I tell you straight you would. Now, don't be a fool, my dear — don't you know which side your bread is buttered ? If you won't sell that kiss, give it us for nothing. That's the time of day, my swtet.' Suddenly he had his arms about her neck, and, if it had not been for Madeleine's agility, he would have pressed his hideous lips to hers. But slipping from his grasp, rising from her chair, turning, she confronted him with eyes in which there were lightning fires. ' How dare you !

Be careful ! Before you have cause to regret it ! ' Mr Augustus Dauncey Griffiths showed not the faintest sign of discomposure. He smiled, as if he sup posed she was jesting. 'Take it fighting, will you? — like some of the girls do when they're caught at kiss-in-the-ring ? All right, I don't mind ! It won't be the first kiss I've bought at the price of a little scuffle.' She was standing with her back to her typewriter. He threw himself on to her. In endeavouring to avoid him she was borne backwards on to the machine. There was a sound of something snapping, and at that same moment Mrs Griffiths appeared at the door of her room. 'Augustus,' she exclaimed, 'what is the meaning of this?' To all outward appearance her hopeful son was still completely at his ease. His volubility never for a moment forsook him. ' By Jove, mother, I don't know — I do not !

I don't want to tell tales, goodness knows ! But I came in here and I — I found this young lady arguing or quarrelling or — something, with Miss Ellis. Really, Miss Ellis, per haps you had better explain to my mother.' He winked at Kate Ellis, who frigidly replied, — ' I don't wish to say anything, thank you, Mr Griffiths. Miss Orme is a person I don't understand, and don't pretend to ! ' ' There you are, mother, you see how it is ! Then she started with Nelly — didn't she, Nelly?' Ellen Rouse looked at Madeleine as if she would have liked to kill her where she stood. Her words were in sympathy with her looks. ' Miss Orme is always quarrelling with someone— always. It's my opinion she's not fit to sit in the same room with respectable girls, and so I'll say straight out in the presence of aunt' ' That's how it is, mother, you see.

And now I rather fancy the young lady has broken her machine.' ' Broken her machine ! ' Mrs Griffiths rushed forward, roused at last. She brushed Madeleine on one side, as if she were nothing at all. ' So she has ! Two, three keys destroyed, utterly ! The machine is ruined ! ' She turned on the girl in a towering rage. ' You — you baggage ! You worthless creature ! who is to pay me for the damage you have done?' Madeleine, her brain in a whirl, tried her best to meet the woman's passion. ' I did not do it, it was your son ! ' The young gentleman in question strode up to her with an amount of assurance which was, in its way, unique. ' I did it ? You lie ! If you were a man, I would knock you down there as you stand. It is only because you are a woman that you dare to utter such an atrocious falsehood.

Mother, I fear this is a dangerous person. Miss Ellis, did I break that machine ? ' ' You never touched it.' ' Of course you didn't ! ' cried Ellen Rouse. ' You never had anything to do with it ! But that's just like her, to try to lay the blame on someone else. She's wicked through and through.' ' I've half a mind,' declared Mrs Griffiths, ' to send for a policeman and to give you into custody for destroying my property.' Her son laid his hand upon her arm ; he played the part of peacemaker. ' Don't do that, mother. There'll only be a scandal, and you'll get nothing out of her. You'd better get rid of her as quietly as you can — at once.' ' I suppose you're right. I'll be bound the creature has nothing but the rags upon her back to call her own. Miss Orme, put your things on, and take yourself out side my office, and never set your foot in it again.

You may think yourself lucky to get off so easily.' iVIadeline looked round her bewildered, as if she felt these things must be happening to her in a dream. ' But, Mrs Griffiths, you are mistaken. You are being guilty of a great injustice. I have done nothing — nothing ; it is your son.' Mr Augustus Dauncey Griffiths threw his hands and eyes up towards the ceiling in an attitude of astounded virtue. His mother's passion flamed anew. She went to where the girl's scanty garments were hanging on a peg, and, snatching them off it, she flung them at her. 'You barefaced, smooth-tongued, insolent, lying hussy ! Put on those rags of yours and take yourself away. If you're not gone in half a minute, I'll put you out with my own hands ! ' From her looks the lady meant what she said. Her son, always with an air of virtue, endeavoured to appease her. ' Hush, mother !