The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
Changeling
AT DAWN Judith rose and bathed and dressed herself in negligee. In the adjoining room she could hear small, stealthy noises—the sounds made by her sister moving about and preparing against the unguessable moment when her rescue would be attempted, according to the information conveyed in that midnight message.
For, by chance, Judith had been in the recess of her darkened window when Alan edged out along the girder, on the building opposite. Judith recognized him at the moment when he was inditing his message, while grim death stalked him from behind.
She had seen him throw the watch and she had witnessed with wildly beating heart that duel in the air, unable to surmise its outcome only from the fact that the victor spared the life of the vanquished.
The infatuate chivalry of that man! …
A dozen emotions tore at her heart. She was estranged from her father. She was at odds with his creature, Marrophat, because she had repulsed his overtures at love-making. And the old contempt in which she had ever held her sister Rose had been transmuted into violent hatred.
And it had been her destiny to learn to love the man who loved her sister and was loved by her in turn.
That she could no longer suffer this state of affairs to endure was the one clear fact on the horizon of her tempestuous soul. The clock was striking six as she left her room; across the street workingmen were about to begin the labours of the day. Brushing past the guard outside the door to Rose's room, Judith turned the key that remained in the lock on the outside, removed it, entered, and locked the door behind her.
Without any surprise she found her sister already dressed to the point of donning her outer garments. Rendered half-frantic by this unexpected interruption, threatening as it did the perilous scheme that Alan had proposed, Rose greeted her sister with a countenance at once aghast and wrathful.
"What do you want?" she demanded. "I insist that you leave this room at once!"
"I may leave this room, and I may not, dear little sister. But one of us will never leave it alive."
"Judith!"
"One moment!" Crossing to a side table, Judith took up a glass from a tray that held a silver water-pitcher, and returned with it to the table that occupied the middle of the floor. At the same time she opened a hand till then fast clenched and discovered a small blue bottle with a red label shrieking the warning "POISON!"
"Strychnine," she explained composedly, "in solution," and emptied the bottle into the glass.
A measure of courage returned to Rose. "Do you expect to be able to make me drink that?" she demanded.
"Not I—but Destiny, if it will! See here!" From a pocket of her dressing-gown Judith produced a sealed deck of playing cards. "Let these declare the will of Destiny toward us. I will break the seal, shuffle the cards, and deal," she explained, suiting action to the word. "The one who gets the Trey of Hearts will drain that glass. Is it a bargain?"
"Never! Oh, now I know that you are altogether mad!"
Whipping a small revolver from another pocket of her dressing-gown, Judith placed it on the table, ready to her hand.
"You will shoot me if I do not consent?"
"Not you, but him. If you refuse, little sister, I will shoot Alan Law dead when he comes to keep his appointment with you."
"Ah!" Rose cried in mingled fright and amazement, "how did you find out"
"Never mind. Is it a bargain?"
With a shudder Rose bowed her head.
"Deal—and may God judge between us!"
One by one Judith stripped the cards from the top of the deck, dealing first to Rose, then to herself. Twelve had been dealt when she held her hand an instant.
"I have a premonition about thirteen," she said, with a cruel smile for Rose.
But the card that fell to Rose was a Queen of Hearts.
"Another superstition gone smash!" Judith commented, and dealt herself the Trey of Hearts.
Judith's hand moved steadily toward the glass.
"Judith! you cannot mean to drink it?"
With a strangled cry. Rose covered her face with her hands to shut out the sight, stood momentarily swaying, and dropped to the floor in a complete faint.
Judith carried the glass to her lips, but before she could tilt it, her glance darted through the window and saw that which caused her to stay her hand.
On the topmost tier of girders of the building opposite Alan Law stood amid a little knot of amused and animated labourers, one foot in the great steel hook of the hoisting tackle. As Judith stared, he waved a hand to some person invisible.
Immediately the arm began to lift, the tackle to move slowly through the blocks. Very gently he was swung up and outward. ….
With a cry Judith flung the poison from her, leaped across the room, snatched up the street garments Rose had dropped, and struggled madly into them.
Before the shadow of Alan, clinging to the hook and chain, fell athwart the window, she was dressed, and clambered out upon the sill.
The hook hung steady within six inches of the window-ledge. Alan extended his arm.
"Nothing to fear, except lest I hold you too tight, dear one!"
Without a word Judith set her foot beside his in the hook, surrendered to his embrace, and closed her eyes. Immediately they were swung away from the window, over toward the opposite sidewalk, and gently lowered to the street.
"Safe and sound—and not a soul over there the wiser as yet," he declared with a derisive nod toward the home of Trine. "Come along! Here's a limousine waiting. In twenty minutes we'll be at the ferry, in forty over in Jersey, within an hour married, within four hours safe at sea!"
She made the need for haste cover her consternation. And when they were safely ensconced in the town-car and swiftly tearing downtown—the time was not yet. She could not declare herself. Nor could she refuse his endearments, who had gone so long athirst for them. So that presently she was returning them passionately—and the infamy of it all was dim and blurred in her understanding.