The Trey o' Hearts

Front matter

A Motion-Picture Melodrama

BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE Author of "The Lone Wolf," etc.

Illustrated with photographs from the picture-play production by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company

Chapter 1

THE TREY O' HEARTS

LAPPED deep in the leather-bound luxury of an ample lounge-chair, walled apart from the world by the portentous silences and venerable solitude of the library of London's most exclusive club, Mr. Alan Law sprawled (largely on the nape of his neck), and, squinting discontentedly down his nose, plotted in furtherance of his own selfish ends.

He was exhaustively bored.

He had every legitimate reason to be bored. He had squeezed the orange of amusement dry and had nothing else to do but be bored. And this was England, this was June, this was his twenty-seventh summer; a combination of circumstances so alluring that with almost any other right-minded man it would have proved resistless.

He was, outwardly, a very ordinary person; that is to say, normally sane and good looking, well mannered, well cared for, well dressed. In other respects his was a singular personality. Since childhood he had worked hard, for no good reason that he could see, at learning his duty (and pleasure) in that state of life into which it had pleased God, to call him—but he had yet to earn an honest penny. He was master of a dozen-odd arts and crafts which had thus far rewarded him with nothing but ennui. He possessed and maintained in prime condition the body of an athlete, which served him to no particular end. He knew more about most things, from cabbages to kings, than did ninety-nine out of every hundred denizens of his world, but he didn't know how to avoid boredom. The sum of his wisdom on this subject was to the effect that ennui was inescapable; being good was frightfully wearing on one; misbehaving was worse.

Normally, Mr. Law did behave himself; he was made of the stuff that riches cannot spoil. Left to himself, he would far rather stand at the wheel of a motor boat than beside that of a roulette layout; he preferred playing polo to playing the ponies; hitting the high spots along Montmartre was less amusing, in his esteem, than sailing comfortably over them at an altitude of several thousand feet; while it was never his notion of fun to gulp bromo seltzer as an antidote for last night, and then cocktails to counteract the antidote.

But there were times when it was strongly borne in upon him that he must either break out in some unique and spontaneous manner or blow up. At such times history was apt to be manufactured in bulk. And this—this day of an English June—was one of those times. Mr. Queux was uneasily aware of the unrest simmering within him; very much, no doubt, as Vesuvius is periodically conscious of its divine discontent.

His chair stood by an open window, below which lay an old English garden in full flower, the property of the club and its boast. Through the window a half-hearted breeze wafted gusts of air soporific and heavy with the breath of roses.

Mr. Law drank deep of it, and in spite of his spiritual unrest, sighed slightly and shut his eyes.

An unspoken word troubled the deeps of his consciousness, so that old memories stirred and struggled to its surface. The word was "Rose," and for the time seemed to be the name neither of a woman nor a flower, but oddly of both, as though the two things were one.

He wondered idly why this was so until his mental vision, bridging the gap of a year, conjured up the picture of a lithe, sweet silhouette in white, with red roses at her belt, posed on a terrace of the Riviera against the burning Mediterranean blue.

Mr. Law was dully conscious that he ought to be sorry about something. But he was really very drowsy indeed. And so he fell quietly asleep.

The clock was striking four when he awoke, and before closing his eyes he had noticed that its hands indicated ten minutes to four. So he could not have slept long, if quite long enough to dream of a girl in white, with red roses at her belt, waiting for him on a pierhead in New York harbour.

And he came to smiling a gentle smile that slowly as consciousness cleared gave place to an impatient frown due to the reminder that he was to all intents an outlaw from America, and then by a look of downright bewilderment, due in turn to realization of a minor miracle that had come to pass while he dreamed.

For some few seconds Alan rested as he was, incredulously regarding the rose which had materialized so mysteriously upon the little table at his elbow. He was sure it had not been there when he closed his eyes, and almost as sure that it was not real. What right, indeed, had a red rose to trespass upon the solidly respectable and imaginative precincts of a British club library? Beyond reasonable doubt it was nothing more or less than the figment of a supersentimentalized imagination worked upon by the magic fragrance of the rose garden.

Then of a sudden he sat bolt upright.

In defiance of the injunction that glared at him from every reading table in the room—letters of gold on a black ground, neatly framed:

Mr. Law announced with the emphasis of absolute conviction:

"Well, I'm damned!"

He touched the rose. It was real beyond all question; a warm red rose, fresh plucked. When impulsively he took it by the stem, he discovered a most indisputable thorn—which did service for the traditional pinch.

Thus persuaded that he was not still dreaming, Mr. Law jumped up from his chair and glared suspiciously round the room. A practical joke in that solemn atmosphere was a thing unthinkable; still, there was the rose.

But the room was empty aside from himself and the rose.

Impulsively he struck a call-bell—and repented, haunted by the fear of making himself ridiculous. It was inconceivable that he should demand of the waiter then approaching, "Who, while I slept, made me a present of this rose?"

The waiter entered to find the member leaning nonchalantly against the table, drawing on his gloves.

"You rang, sir?"

"I did. Ah—waiter, I've been asleep, you know."

"Thank you, sir."

"Only a minute or two, of course."

"Quite so, sir."

"I wish to know if anybody entered this room while I was asleep."

"I couldn't say, sir—unless it might 'ave been Mr. Marrophat. 'E's the only other gentleman on this floor of the club-'ouse at present, sir."

"Marrophat? But I don't know him!"

"Thank you, sir."

"Still ... where is he?"

"In the writing-room, sir."

"Thanks."

"Thank you, sir."

"Marrophat? No fear!" Mr. Law assured himself as the waiter left the room.

On the other hand, roses are not introduced into London's most exclusive clubs without some human sponsor.

On his way out Law glanced through the door of the writing-room, and was confirmed in his incredulity. Mr. Marrophat, stodgily rounded over a desk in the corner, was the incarnate genius of superfatted British dignity. Impossible to credit him with anything resembling a sense of humour—or any such spirit of romantic mischief as might prompt one to distribute roses to one's fellow club members.

Perplexed, Alan fled the club, pausing by force of habit only long enough to consult the letter-rack and annex an envelope he found there addressed to him.

It was a white envelope of good quality. The address was typewritten, the stamp English, with a London postmark, half illegible.

Mr. Law tore the envelope open in an absent-minded fashion, and started as if stung. The inclosure was a simple playing card—a Trey of Hearts!

In the writing-room Mr. Marrophat continued to compose. The mental exertion caused him to breathe rather heavily. His colourless thick lips were compressed as if to restrain his tongue from aping the antics of his pen. His starting eyes followed the ink scratches on the telegraph blank with a look of mildly anguished surprise.

In point of fact, he wasn't writing; he was laboriously printing the following words:

"Senex, New York—Rose uttered 3:58 p. m. Trey followed. A. much disturbed. M. P. T."

When he had finished, Mr. Marrophat waved the blank to and fro until the ink was dry. This was not for want of a blotter, but because blotters have been known to reveal secrets when read in a mirror.

Nor was it because the club lacked servants that Mr. Marrophat presently got up, folded his cable message, waddled forth, and proceeded to commit it to the nearest office with his own trustworthy fat hands.

As for Alan Law, he wandered down Pall Mall in a state of daze; he went toward Trafalgar Square. He didn't know where he was going, or even that he was on his way, and he didn't care. For all that, no one who chanced to observe him would have dreamed that he was preoccupied with questioning his own mental integrity; but the hypothetical observer would have shared his misgiving had he suspected that Mr. Law was wearing a rose inside his top hat, to say nothing of a three spot of hearts in the breast pocket of his admirable morning coat.

He could, of course, read quite well the message of the rose. He would not soon forget that year-old parting with his Rose of the Riviera:

"You say you love me but may not marry me—and we must never see each other again. Then promise this, that if ever you change your mind, you'll send for me."

And her promise: "I will send you a rose."

But a year had lapsed with never a sign from her, so that he had grown accustomed to the unflattering belief that she had forgotten him.

And now the sign had come—but in a fashion so strange that he hesitated to accept it. It wouldn't do to jump at conclusions and make one's self ridiculous. Very probably it hadn't come from her at all, but was just an everyday coincidence.

But there was that Trey of Hearts! Now what the deuce did the Trey of Hearts mean?

Now in heraldry the word Trine signifies a group of three. And the Trey of Hearts is a group of three. And the surname of that Rose of his heart's desire was Trine.

Was the card then simply her way of fixing beyond question the identity of the sender of the rose?

Alan ambled aimlessly into Cockspur Street, and of a sudden found himself at a dead halt, transfixed by a poster in one of the show windows.

The poster advertised the newest steamship in the trans-Atlantic service, and the artist had seen fit to delineate his subject at the moment of drawing away from a pierhead in the foreground, on which pierhead a young woman was shown waving a farewell handkerchief—a lithe, sweet silhouette in white with red roses at her belt posed against a sea of burning blue.

Mr. Law drew an incredulous, lemon-gloved hand across his bewildered forehead.

"Three times in the same place in thirty minutes!" he muttered blankly, "There's something uncanny about this … If life itself were not a riddle without a reading—I'd begin to believe in the supernatural! As it is2"

When he entered his rooms that evening to dress for dinner it was to find an American Beauty rose ornamenting his dressing-table, pinned to a Trey of Hearts.

Interrogated, his valet deposed ignorance of the matter.

When Alan returned from dinner and the theatre, it was to find a solitary rose reposing with blushing effrontery upon his pillow. The inevitable Trey of Hearts, it appeared, had crawled in between the covers.

That made three of each.

Mr. Law sat down and thought. Then he summoned his valet—and discharged him.

"The Lord," he said, "may love a liar. But I'm human. Here's a month's wages. Clear out of this in three minutes. ..."

When morning came, London had lost Alan Law. No man—nor any woman—had received warning of his disappearance. He was simply vanished from English ken.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II The Sign of the Three

OUT of doors, high noon, spring, the clamorous life of New York swift running through its brilliant streets.

Within doors, neither sound nor sunbeam disturbed a perennial quiet that was yet not peace.

The room was like a well of night, the haunt of shadows and sinister silences. Heavy hangings darkened its windows and masked its doors, a carpet of velvet muffled its floor, bookcases lined its walls. From the topmost shelves pale sculptured masks peered down, incarnadined by the dim glow from a solitary light that burned in that darkness like a smouldering ember.

The electric bulb of ruby glass was focussed upon a leather-bound desk-blotter on a black desk whose farther edges blended with the shadows.

Little was visible beyond the radius of that light and the figure of an old man that brooded over it, motionless in a great leather-bound chair.

His hair was as white as his heart was black; his nose was aquiline, finely chiselled, his cheek-bones high and sharp. His mouth resembled a steel trap; while his forehead shelved back sharply from ragged black brows that shadowed eyes like live coals.

He was clothed in a black dressing-gown, and from the thighs down was covered by a woollen rug. He stared unblinking at the crimson blotter: a man seven eighths dead, completely paralyzed but for his head and his left arm.

A figure of savage patience he sat waiting—for years on end, for so long that those who knew him had well-nigh forgotten that Seneca Trine once had been as vital a creature as ever lived.

Presently a faint clicking disturbed the stillness. Seneca Trine had put forth his left hand and touched a button embedded in the desk. Something else clicked—this time a latch. There was the faint sound of a closing door, the hangings rustled, and a smallish man in black stole into the light, paused beside the desk, and waited for leave to speak.

The voice of Trine rang like a bell in the silence, a weirdly deep and sonorous voice to issue from that wasted frame.

"Well?"

"A telegram, sir—from England."

"Give it me!"

The old man seized the sheet of yellow paper, scanned it hungrily, and crushed it with a gesture of uncontrollable emotion. His voice rang with exultation when next he spoke:

"Send my daughter Judith here!"

The servant disappeared, and two minutes later a young woman in street dress was admitted to the chamber of the shadows. She went directly to her father, bent over and touched her lips to his forehead.

He did not speak, but her quick ears caught the rustle of the paper crushed anew in his grasp, and she experienced an intuition of something momentous impending.

"You sent for me, father?"

He replied brusquely: "Sit down."

She found a chair and settled herself in it.

"Now turn the light upon your face."

The red glow lighted up a face of exquisite beauty, an eager, passionate face mirroring the spirit of quenchless youth, and her father nodded slightly as if with satisfaction.

"Judith—tell me—what day is this?"

"My birthday. I am twenty-one."

"And your sister's birthday? Rose, too, is twenty-one."

A slight frown clouded Judith's face; but she replied quietly: "Yes."

"You could have forgotten that," the old man pursued almost mockingly. "Do you dislike your twin-sister so intensely?"

The girl's voice trembled. "You know," she said, "I hate and despise her."

"Why?"

"We have nothing in common—beyond parentage and this abominable resemblance. Our natures differ as light from darkness."

"And which would you say was—light?"

"Hardly my own: I'm no hypocrite. Rose is everything that they tell me my mother was, while I"—the girl smiled strangely—"I think—I am more your daughter than my mother's."

A nod of the white head confirmed the suggestion. "It is true. I have watched you closely, Judith. Before I was brought to this"—the wasted hand made a significant gesture—"I was a man of strong passions. … Your mother never loved, but rather feared, me. And Rose is the mirror of her mother's nature: gentle, unselfish, sympathetic. But you, Judith, you are like a second self to me."

An accent of satisfaction was in his voice. The girl waited, tensely expectant.

"Then, if I were to ask a service of you that might injuriously affect the happiness of your sister2"

The girl laughed briefly: "Only ask it!"

"And how far would you go to do my will2"

"Where would you stop in the service of one you loved?"

Seneca Trine permitted himself an odd mirthless

TRINE SUSPECTED HIS WIFE. OF WHAT, HE COULD NOT TELL.

ON THIS DAY, LAW, SR., WENT DOWN TO FINANCIAL DEFEAT

chuckle, "I know," he said, "I know." And after a brief pause: "Rose is in love," he announced obliquely.

The girl half-started from her chair, but with visible effort controlled herself.

"Oh, I know—I know!" the father continued. "I am a prisoner of this living tomb; but all things I should know—somehow—in time—I come to know."

"It's true—that Englishman last year—what's his name?—Law, Alan Law."

"In the main," the father corrected, "you are right. Only he's not English. His father was Wellington Law, the banker."

She knew better than to interrupt, but her seeming patience was belied by the whitening knuckles of a hand that lay within the little pool of blood-red light.

Presently the deep voice rolled on: "Law and I were once friends; then—we loved one woman, your mother. I won her—all but her heart: too late she realized it was Law she loved. He never forgave me, nor I him. Though he married another woman, still he held from me the love of my wife. I could not sleep for hating him—and he was no better off. Each sought the other's ruin; it came to be an open duel between us in Wall Street. One of us had to fail—and I held the stronger hand. The night before the day that was to have seen my triumph I walked in Central Park, as was my habit, to tire my body so that my brain might sleep. I was struck by a motor-car, picked up insensible—and lived only to be what I am. Law triumphed in the Street while I lay helpless; only a remnant of my fortune remained to me. Then his chauffeur, discharged, came to me and sold me the truth; it was Law's car with Law at the wheel that had struck me down—a deliberate attempt at assassination. I sent Law word that I meant to have a life for a life. For what was I better than dead? I promised him that, should he escape, I would have the life of his son. He knew I meant it, and sent his wife and son abroad. Then he died suddenly—I believe from fear of me."

Trine smiled. "I had made his life a reign of terror. Ever so often I would send him—mysteriously always—a Trey of Hearts: it was my death-sign for him. Every time he received a Trey of Hearts, within twenty-four hours an attempt of some sort would be made upon his life. The strain broke down his nerve. …

"Then I turned my attention to the son, but the Law millions mocked my efforts; their alliance with the Rothschilds placed mother and son under the protection of every secret police in Europe, but they dared not come home. At length I realized that I must wait game. I needed three things: more money; to bring Alan Law back to America; and an incorruptible agent. I ceased to persecute mother and son, and by careful speculations repaired my fortunes. In Rose I had the lure to draw the boy back to America; in you, the one person I could trust.

"I sent Rose abroad under an assumed surname and arranged that she should meet Law. They fell in love at sight. Then I wrote her that the man she had chosen was the son of him who had murdered all of me but my brain. It fell out as I foresaw: she broke off with Law without telling him the truth. You can imagine the scene—passionate renunciation—pledges of constancy—the arrangement of a secret code whereby, when she needed him, she would send him a single rose—the birth of a great romance!"

The old man laughed sardonically. "Well … the rose has been sent; Law is already homeward bound; my agents are watching his every step. The rest is in your hands."

The girl bent forward, her eyes aflame in a pallid face.

"What is it you want of me?" she asked in a vibrant voice.

"Bring Alan Law to me. Dead or alive, bring him to me. But alive, if you can compass it: I wish to see him die."

The hand of youth grasped the icy hand of death-in-life.

"I will bring him," Judith swore. "Dead or alive, you shall have him here."

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III The Trail of Treachery

BUT young Mr. Law was sole agent of his own evanishment. The reason for his life in exile was well known to him, if largely a matter of indifference since his friendships had taken root in English soil. The message of the Rose he understood perfectly; but the hidden meaning of the Trey of Hearts so perplexed him that before leaving London he dispatched a cablegram to Digby, his confidential agent in New York:

"What do you know about the Trey of Hearts? Answer immediately."

Digby's answer forestalled Alan's arrival in Liverpool:

"Trey of Hearts was Trine's death-sign for your father. For God's sake keep away from America."

But Alan had more than once visited America incognito and unknown to Seneca Trine, and had confidence in his ability successfully to repeat the adventure—via a route of his own selection.

Eight days out of London, a second-class passenger newly landed from one of the C.-P. steamships, he walked the streets of Quebec, and dropped out of sight between dark and dawn, to turn up in the Canadian hamlet of Baie St. Paul, apparently a tenderfoot American woods-traveller chaperoned by a taciturn Indian guide.

Crossing the St. Lawrence by night, the two struck off into the hinterland of the Notre Dame range, followed the Riviere Quelle to its headwaters, and then crossed the Maine border.

On the second noon thereafter, trail-worn and weary, the two paused on a ridge-pole of the wilderness up back of the Allagash country, and made their midday meal in a silence which, if normal in the Indian, was one of deep misgiving on Alan's part.

Continually his gaze questioned the northern skies that lowered portentously, foul with the smoke of a county-wide conflagration that threatened unless soon checked to lay waste all northern Maine bone-dry with drought.

And the fires were making southward far faster than man might hope to travel through that grim and stubborn land. Even as he stared, Alan saw fresh columns of dun-coloured smoke spring up as the flames, spurred by a freshening wind, made league-consuming strides.

Anxiously he consulted the Indian. But his questions gained Alan little comfort from Jacob, who said that rain alone could stop the flames. After recommending forced marches to bring them by to-morrow's noon to the spot he called Spirit Lake, where canoes might be found to aid their flight, the Indian withdrew into sullen reserve.

They travelled far and fast before sundown, then again paused for food and rest. As Jacob set about preparing the meal, Alan stumbled off to whip the little trail-side stream for trout.

Perhaps a hundred yards upstream, the back-lash of a careless cast hooked the State of Maine. Too tired even to remember the appropriate words, Alan scrambled ashore, forced through the undergrowth that masked the trail, found his fly, set the State of Maine free, and swinging on his heel brought up standing, transfixed by the discovery of a rectangle of white pasteboard fixed to the trunk of a sapling: a Trey of Hearts, of which each pip had been neatly punctured by a .22 calibre bullet.

Nor had it been long there: when Alan scrutinized it he found the card innocent of weather-stains, the pin unrusted that held it, the wounds in the sapling raw and damp.

He carried it back to camp, meaning to consult the guide, but on second thought reconsidered. It was not likely that the Indian had overlooked the inevitable traces of human neighbours that must have been apparent to his woods-sharpened wits. So Alan waited for him to speak, and meantime determined to watch him narrowly, though no other suspicious circumstance had marked their association. It might turn out to be simply chance which had thrown that sinister card in his path.

The first half of the night was devoted to relentless progress southward. There could be no more question as to the need for urgent haste: overhead the north wind muttered; thin veils of smoke drifted through the forest, and ever the curtained heavens glared with reflected fires.

By midnight Alan had passed the limit of his endurance. Though Jacob declared that Spirit Lake was now only six hours distant, as far as concerned Alan he might have said six hundred. They camped in perfunctory fashion. His blanket once unrolled, Alan dropped upon it like one drugged.

The sun was high when he awakened and sat up, wondering what had come over the Indian to let him sleep so late. This was soon made clear. Jacob had absconded, leaving Alan barely food enough for a cold breakfast.

Overnight the fire had made tremendous gains. The nearness of his peril dwarfed the treachery of the Indian. Alan delayed long enough to swallow a few mouthfuls of raw food, gulped water from a spring, and set out at a dog-trot on the trail to Spirit Lake.

For hours he blundered on, holding to the trail mainly by instinct—the roaring of the flames ever more loud and ominous, the cloud of smoke ever more dense, the heat moment by moment more intense.

Finally he staggered into a little clearing, tripped over some obstacle, and plunged headlong, so bewildered that he could not have said whether he was tripped or thrown. As he fell a heavy body landed on his back and crushed him savagely to earth.

In less than a minute he was overcome, his wrists hitched together, his ankles bound. When his vision cleared he discovered Jacob squatting on his heels and regarding him with a face as immobile as the bronze it resembled.

Beyond, a woman in a man's hunting costume stood eying the captive as narrowly as the Indian, but with a countenance that seemed exultantly aglow over his downfall.

But for that look he could have believed the face that which had brought him overseas: feature for feature, she counterfeited the woman he loved; only those eyes, aflame with their look of inhuman ruthlessness, denied that the two were one.

He sought to speak. The breath rustled in his throat like wind whispering among dead leaves.

THEY HAD CRUSHED THEIR MAN … THEIR FILTHY WORK WAS DONE

THE FACE IN THE LOCKET BROUGHT MEMORIES OF WONDERFUL DAYS NOW PAST.

Thrusting the Indian aside, the woman knelt by Alan's head.

"So!" she said sweetly. "So, Mr. Alan Law!"

He made no effort to reply; the thought in his mind was that in those eyes was less of madness than of inhumanity; that this was less a creature bereft of reason than one brought into the world without a soul.

"No," she said, smiling cruelly, "I am not your Rose. But I am her sister Judith, born in the same hour, daughter of2 Can you guess whose daughter?"

He shook his head.

"You thought it a girl’s romantic nonsense that made Rose refuse you because of a secret barrier between you! But see this!” She held a card before his eyes. "You know it? The Trey of Hearts—the symbol of Trine—Trine, your father's enemy, and yours, and—Rose's father and mine!"

A gust of wind like a furnace blast swept the glade. The woman sprang up, glanced over-shoulder into the forest, and signed to the Indian.

"In ten minutes," she said, "these woods will be your funeral pyre."

Jacob picked Alan up and strode into the forest. Ten feet from the clearing he dropped the helpless man upon a bed of dry logs and branches.

Then, with a single movement, he disappeared.

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV Flower o' the Flame

OOVERHEAD through the foliage, a sky was visible whose ebon darkness called to mind a thundercloud. Beneath it veils and whorls of smoke fled athwart the wreck. The heat was nearly intolerable; the voice of the fire was loud—snappings and cracklings and sharp detonations making an embroidery of sound upon a texture of sustained roaring like that of surf.

A heavy crashing made Alan turn his head, and he saw a terrified bear break cover and plunge on into the farther thickets.

Two minutes had passed of the ten when a sharp crackling brought him suddenly to a sitting position, to find that the Indian had touched a match to the pyre before departing. At Alan's feet the twigs were blazing merrily.

It would have been easy to snatch his limbs away, but another thought was in his mind: he did not move more than to strain his feet apart as far as their bonds permitted. He was conscious of scorching heat even through his cowhide hunting boots; but a minute sufficed: within its span a tongue of flame licked up, wrapped itself round the hempen cord, and ate it through. Immediately Alan kicked his feet free and crawled from the pyre.

As for his hands—Alan's hunting-knife was still in its sheath belted to the small of his back. Tearing at the belt with his hampered fingers, he contrived to shift it round within comparatively easy reach. Withdrawing and conveying the blade to his mouth, he gripped it between his teeth and severed the cords round his wrists.