Ainslee's Magazine/The Brightener/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
“There was no body in the coffin,” Roger said.
“Empty?” I gasped.
“Not empty. No. There was something there. Will you come to my cabin and see what it was? Don't look terrified. There's nothing to frighten you. And, princess, the rest of the plan you gave me has been carried out. Thanks to your woman's wit, I believe that my future and Shelagh's is clear. And, before Heaven, my conscience is clear, too.”
“Oh, Roger, it's thanks to your own courage more than to me. Is—is all safe?”
“The coffin isn't empty now. It is fastened up just as it was. The broken rope is round it again. It's covered with the tarpaulin as before. No one outside the secret would guess it had been disturbed. I owe more than my life—l owe my very soul to you. For I haven't much fear of what may come at St. Heliers to-morrow or after.”
“Nor I. Oh, I am thankful for Shelagh's sake even more than yours, if possible. Her heart would have broken. Now she need never know.”
“She must know and choose. I shall tell her everything I did. Only I need not bring you into it.”
“If you tell her about yourself, you must tell her about me,” I said. “I'd like to be with you when you speak to her—if you think you must speak.”
“I'm sure I must. If all goes well to-morrow, she can marry me without fear of scandal, if she's willing to marry me after what I've done to-night.”
“She will be. And she shall hear from me that this woman who killed herself and our spy of the Abbey were one. As for to-morrow—all must go well! But the thing you found in the coffin? You'll have to dispose of it somehow.”
“It's for you to decide about that, I think.”
“For me? What can it have to do with me?”
“You'll see, in my cabin. If you'll trust me and come.”
I went with him, my heart pounding as I entered the room. It seemed as if some visible trace of tragedy must remain, But there was nothing. All was in order. The brandy bottle had disappeared into the sea, no doubt. The tumbler so cleverly taken from this cabin was clean and in its place. There were no bits of broken glass from the vial to. be seen. And the odor of bitter almonds, with which the place had reeked, was no longer very strong. The salt breeze blowing through two wide-open portholes would kill it before dawn.
“But where is the thing?” I asked.
“In the study,” Roger answered. He motioned me to pass through the curtained archway, as I had passed before, and there I had to cover my lips with my hand to press back a cry. The desk, the big chair I had sat in, and a sofa were covered with objects as familiar to me as my own face in a looking-glass. There were Queen Anne's silver tea service and Napoleon's green-and-gold coffee cups; there were Li Hung Chang's box of red lacquer and the wondrous Buhhda; there were the snuff boxes, the miniatures, the buckles and brooches, the fat watch of George the Fourth; half unrolled lay Charles the First's portrait and sketch and the Gobelin panel which had been the Empress Josephine's. In fact, all the treasures that had been stolen from Courtenaye Abbey! Here they were in Roger Fane's cabin on board the Naiad; and they had come out of a coffin found floating in the sea.
When I could think at all, I tried to think the puzzle out, and I tried to do it alone, for Roger was in no state to bend his mind to trifles. But, in his almost-pathetic gratitude, he wished to help me; and when we had locked up the things in three drawers of his desk, we sat together discussing theories, Something must be thought out, something settled, before day!
It was Roger who unfolded the whole affair before my eyes, unfolded it so clearly that I could not doubt he was right. My trust—every one's trust, in fact—in the Barlows had been misplaced. They were the guilty ones! If they had not organized the plot, they had helped to carry it through, as no one else could have carried it through.
I told Roger of the two Australian nephews about whom, if he had heard, he had forgotten. I explained that they were twin sons of a brother of old Barlow's, who had taken them out there years ago when they were children. Vaguely I recalled that, when I was very young, Barlow had worried over news from Australia; his nephews had been in trouble of some sort. I fancied they had got in with a bad set. But that was ancient history! The twins had evidently “made good.” They had fought in the war and had done well. They must have saved money, or they could not have bought the old house on the Dorset coast, which had belonged to the Barlows for generations. It was at this point, however, that Roger stopped me. Had the boys saved money, or had they got it in a way less meritorious? Had they need, for pressing reasons of their own, to possess that place on the coast?
The very question called up a picture—no, a series of pictures—before my eyes. I saw, or Roger made me see, almost against my will, how the scheme might have been worked, must have been worked, and how at last it had most strangely failed. For an hour we talked, and made our plan almost as intricately as the thieves or their backers had made theirs. Then, as dawn paled the sky, framed by the open portholes, I slipped off to my own cabin. I did not go to bed—I could not where she had lain—and I didn't sleep. But I curled up on the long window seat, with cushions under my head, and thought. I thought of a thousand things: of Roger's plan and mine; of how I should return the heirlooms, yet keep the secret; of what Sir Jim would say when he learned of their reappearance; and, above all, I thought of what our discovery in the coffin would mean for Roger Fane.
Yes, that was far more important to him than to me! For the fact that the coffin had been the property of thieves meant that no claim would ever be made to it. The mystery of its present occupant would therefore remain a mystery till the end of time, and Roger was safe!
The next day we reached St. Heliers, after a quick voyage through blue, untroubled waters; and there we came in for all the red tape that Roger had foreseen, if not more. But how inoffensive, even pleasing, is red tape to a man saved from handcuffs and a prison cell!
The body of an unknown woman in a coffin picked up at sea gave the chance for a dramatic story flashed from Jersey to London; and the evident fact that death had been caused by poison added an extra thrill. Every soul on board the Naiad was questioned, down to the chef's assistant; but exactly the same tale was told. The coffin had first been sighted at a good distance, and mistaken for a dead shark or a small, overturned boat. The whole party were agreed that it must be brought on board, though no one had wanted it for a traveling companion, and the sailors, especially, had objected. Now, by the way, they were reveling in reflected glory. They would not have missed the experience for the world! I quaked inwardly, fearing that some one might mention the veiled female journalist who had arrived before the start with an order to view the Naiad. But so completely was her departure from the yacht taken for granted that none who had seen her recalled the incident.
There was no suspicion of Roger Fane, nor of any one else on board, for there was no reason to suppose that any of us had been acquainted with the dead.
The description wired to London was of “a woman unknown, probable age between forty and fifty; hair dyed auburn; features distorted by effect of poison; hands well shaped, badly kept; figure, medium; black serge dress; underclothing plain and much torn, without initials or laundry marks; no shoes.”
It was unlikely that landlords or chance acquaintances should identify the woman newly arrived from France with the woman picked up in a coffin at sea. And the gray-veiled motor toque, the gray cloak worn by the “journalist,” and even the battered boots, with high, broken heels, were safely hidden with the heirlooms from the Abbey.
All through the week of the trip, the three drawers in Roger's desk remained locked, the little Yale key hanging on Roger's key ring. And all that week there was no excuse to make for going home before the appointed time—our plan had to lie in abeyance. I was impatient. Roger was not. With Shelagh by his side, and very often in his arms, the incentive for haste was all mine. But I was happy in their happiness, wondering only whether Roger would not be tempting Providence if he told the truth to Shelagh.
Nothing, however, would move the man from his resolution. The one point he would yield was to postpone the confession, if “confession” is a fair word, until the last day, in order not to disturb Shelagh's pleasure in the trip. She was to hear the story the night before we landed; and I begged once more that I might be present to help plead his cause. But Roger wanted no help, no pleading. He would state the case plainly, for and against himself. Then Shelagh must decide whether she could still love him, whether she could consent to be his wife.
“At least, I shall have these wonderful days with her to remember,” he said to me. “Nothing can rob me of them. And they are a thousand times the best of my life so far.”
I believed that, equally, nothing could rob him of Shelagh! But I wasn't quite sure. And the difference between just “believing” and being “quite sure” is the difference between mental peace and mental storm. I had gone through so much with Roger, and for him, that by this time I loved the man as I might love a brother, a very dear and somewhat trying brother. As for Shelagh, I would have given one of my favorite fingers or toes to buy her happiness. Consequently, the hour of revelation was a bad hour for me.
I knew that, till it was over, I should be incapable of brightening. Lest I should-be called upon in any such capacity, therefore, I went to bed, after dinner, with an official headache.
“Now he must be telling her,” I groaned to my pillow.
“Now he must have told!”
“Now she must be making up her mind!”
“Now it must be made up. She'll be giving her answer. And if it's 'No,' he won't by a word or look plead his own cause. Hang the fool! And bless him!”
Then followed a blank interval, when I couldn't at all guess what might be happening. I no longer speculated on the chances. My brain became a blank. And my pillow was a furnace.
I was striving in vain to read a book whose pages I scarcely saw, and whose name I've forgotten, when a tap came at the door. Shelagh Leigh burst in before I could answer.
“Oh, Elizabeth!” she gasped, and fell into my arms.
I held the girl tight for an instant, her beating heart against mine. Then I inquired, “What does 'Oh, Elizabeth!' mean precisely?”
“It means, of course, that I'm going to marry poor, darling Roger as soon as I possibly can, to comfort him all the rest of his life. And that you'll be my 'matron of honor,' American fashion,” she explained. 'Roger is a hero, and you are a heroine.”
“No; a brightener,” I corrected. But Shelagh didn't understand. And it didn't matter that she did not.