Chapter VIII: Was It by Chance Only?

It is not easy to determine what part accident plays in the affairs of daily life. I have not been able to decide where, so far as I was concerned, it began, and where it ended, in what was known to the public as the Fulham Mystery. Who can say, for instance, that it was not by design--the design of a force beyond our ken--that I entered that tea-shop in the Brompton Road? It was full of people, as at that hour of the day, I take it, it generally is. Was it by chance that two persons were seated at the table next to mine? Was there not an intention even in that? Anyhow, there they were--a dark-haired girl and a red-headed youth.

The girl was, after a fashion, good-looking; it was not a fashion I care for. Her nose was too thin; her eyes, though undoubtedly fine ones, were, to my mind, too big--I have seldom seen larger ones. They were what I call roving eyes. One felt that they were taking in half a dozen things at once. I had not the slightest doubt that she noticed me, but she took it for granted that since she and her companion spoke in whispers, so that their words were only audible to themselves, my watching them was of no consequence at all.

What first attracted my attention towards their table was not only the singularity of their appearance--and the fiery-headed youth, with his thin face, high cheek-bones, small eyes, deep-set in a web of freckles, presented an even more remarkable appearance than the girl; what really in the original instance caught my eye was the pantomime the girl was going through. She had a handkerchief in her hand, with which she was going through some quite singular evolutions. Her lips, which were very red, were rather prominent; the sort of lips which, from my point of view, when she was speaking, were as easy to read as large print. I was not the only person who was watching her evolutions with the handkerchief--I fancy she rather liked attracting attention--but I was the only person who, because of the key I had to the words which formed on her lips, had any notion what she was after.

I saw her say to the red-headed youth, in a whisper which was so faint that I am sure it only just reached his ears:

“There are all sorts of ways of signalling; you can signal with anything; soldiers have found out that. You can signal with a blind; almost any information can be conveyed to a passer-by by the way in which you draw it up. Now, take your case; it’s impossible to meet you again. I’m only meeting you now by a tremendous risk.”

The youth said something. He had his hand up to his face, so that I could not see what it was, but I guessed it was something tender. His whole attitude was that of an adoring lover. The girl went on.

“Of course I care for you. You know I care for you. Should I ask you to do this for me if I didn’t?”

Again the youth said something which again I lost; and again the girl went on, with a sigh which I would have bet anything was a pretence.

“My dear Dan, if you only knew how, when you talk like that, you make me quiver. But we mustn’t speak of such things now--there isn’t time; there really isn’t time enough for me to try to make you understand, so pay particular attention. You want to know when the coast is clear, don’t you?”

What he answered I could not say. She continued:

“If you want to do this thing for me--and if you care for me as you say you do, you must want to--it must be done at the first opportunity which offers. And as I may not be able to get at you in any other way----”

He took his hand away from his mouth, so that I could see what he said.

“Couldn’t you write?” he asked.

“My dear Dan!” She looked shocked. “Think of the danger. Do you want me to place myself in your hands as I have done in his? Of course I know I can trust you--you needn’t fly out; but I shall never be easy in my mind again. No, no, no, writing is out of the question. We must try some other way, so pay attention to me. You know the window of my room?”

“I’ve looked at it often enough.”

He still had his hand away from his mouth. I thought, as I saw him speak, what an odd mouth it was, and how his curiously saturnine face was lighted up by his smile.

“Then look at it more carefully than ever each time you pass. If the blind is drawn right down or right up it will mean nothing; if it is half-drawn, a little crooked, at an angle like this”--she demonstrated with her handkerchief--“it will mean--Meet me here, at this tea-shop, this afternoon at four. I have taken it for granted that you will pass at the usual hour, so that you will have plenty of time.”

“Of course I shall pass at the usual hour. I hope that tell-tale blind of yours will be at that angle to-morrow. I’ve got it well fixed in my mind’s eye.”

“If--now pay particular attention--if it’s drawn up more than half-way, and is crooked on the other side, like this, that will mean that the coast will be clear, and the angle at which the blind is set will tell you the day and the hour. Now, just you notice very carefully.”

She was going to manipulate her handkerchief, and I was watching with some curiosity to see how she was going to do it, when, considerably to my surprise, she changed the subject altogether. With the corners of the handkerchief still between her fingers, and with exactly the same expression on her face, she said:

“There’s the girl at the table next to you staring at us in a way which I don’t quite like. Of course she can’t hear, and she wouldn’t understand if she did, but I think I’ll just wait and see how long she’s going to stay. In the meantime I think I’ll have another cake. Don’t look round; she’ll know I’ve noticed her.”

Of course I understood that the reference was to me, and I was not exactly pleased. Apart from the question of good manners, I do not wish to let anyone be aware that they have been observed by me. Clearly I had been staring at them more intently than I supposed. So I called the waitress, paid for my tea, and went. I had no wish to intrude upon their confidence, nor to give them ground for comment on my breeding.

Two days afterwards I went to lunch with some friends near The Boltons. When I left them I walked to the Fulham Road, meaning to catch a motor-bus. On my way I passed down a street of rather shabby-looking houses, in which there was only one other pedestrian besides myself--a man who was approaching, on the same side, from the other end. As he came nearer I recognized, with some amusement, that it was the red-headed youth of the tea-shop in the Brompton Road. I doubt if he noticed me at all; his glance was fixed on the houses on the other side of the way. When he was twenty or thirty feet away from me, stopping short, he stared harder than ever. There was something in his attitude and in the way he stared which suggested considerable agitation. I looked to see what could have caused it.

Immediately facing him was a house which was like its fellows, but rather less shabby perhaps, as if it had been more recently painted. My eyes, passing over its front, rested on one of the windows of the upper floor--on the other side of which was a very crooked blind. That blind quite startled me, especially when I coupled it with the young man’s evident emotion. I thought of the girl with the handkerchief, how she had explained how one could signal with a blind. Did she live in the house at which he was staring, or who did live there? Was some one signalling to him with that crooked blind?

I was convinced not only that he understood what the signal was, but that its meaning occasioned him something like actual distress. He stood staring, as if unwilling to credit his eyes. Then, as if conscious of my approach, he broke again into movement, and, quickening his pace, went past me at a speed which was very nearly a run. He never glanced at me; I doubt if he realized whether I was a man or a woman.

Here was a pretty problem on which I had stumbled--ought I to write by chance? Who lived in that house? Who was responsible for the position of that blind? What was the meaning it was intended to convey? I will not say that I puzzled over these things; that would be to speak too strongly; but, as I have a trick of doing, I kept them, as it were, in some pigeon-hole in my mind. The next day the papers were full of what came to be known as the Fulham Mystery.

George Ryder had been murdered in a house in Helena Grove, Fulham, not very far from the road in which I had met that red-headed youth. At first it looked like a commonplace murder--if a murder ever is commonplace. It was afterwards that features began to appear which caused it to occupy so prominent a place in the public interest. George Ryder was a young man of thirty-seven. Not long before he had been knocked down, at night, presumably by some sort of motor vehicle. He was picked up near Barnes Common insensible; he had concussion of the brain. When, several days afterwards, consciousness returned, he could only say that he had been crossing to the other side of the street at a point where four roads met, and that a car, coming round one of the corners, had knocked him down. It was afterwards shown that he had been spending the evening with some bachelor friends, and that he was not perhaps so sober as he might have been, so that the fault was not altogether with the car; but that was no reason that it should have gone on and left behind it no sign by which it could be identified.

He had nearly recovered from the effects of this accident when he was murdered--at five o’clock on an April afternoon. He was alone in the house--by what really seemed to be a most curious chance. It was the servant’s afternoon out; his nurse, who had charge of his case, had gone out to take tea with a friend; his wife and four-year-old child were left at home. Just before five a telegram was brought to his wife, informing her that her mother, who lived at Hampstead, had had another attack, and was dying; if she wished to see her alive she must go at once. Only a week before her mother, who suffered from a weak heart, had had an attack from which she had only by a miracle recovered. Mrs. Ryder showed the telegram to her husband. Both the maid and the nurse were to be back at six. He declared that he wished to rest, that he would be all right till they returned, and that she was to go without delay to see her mother. She left the house between a quarter and twenty past five, taking, at her husband’s request, her little girl with her. The nurse, whose name was Verrion, returned before her appointed time. As was her custom, she entered the house with a latch-key at about a quarter to six. She was going into her bedroom, when, struck by the silence of the house, she opened the door of Mr. Ryder’s room, to see how her patient was. He was lying on the floor, dead--some one had struck him a heavy blow on the temple with an electro-plated candlestick which lay beside him.

The whole tragedy had taken place inside twenty minutes--the twenty minutes which intervened between Mrs. Ryder’s going out and Nurse Verrion’s coming in. Nurse Verrion brought in a doctor who lived on the other side of the street, who gave his opinion that Mr. Ryder had been dead about a quarter of an hour--so that the murder must have been committed probably not more than ten minutes after his wife went out.

Just before seven a taxi-cab drew up in front of the house, and Mrs. Ryder came rushing out of it; that telegram which had reached her just before five had been a hoax. She had found her mother, if anything, in better health than usual. Amazed, wondering what the thing meant, oppressed by a consciousness that her husband might still be alone in the house, she had rushed back home, to find her husband dead.

This, succinctly, was the Fulham Mystery, as it was presented to the public. Not a trace of the murderer was discovered. There was nothing to show that anyone, except Mr. Ryder, had been in the house during those fatal twenty minutes. Suicide was out of the question, as well as accident. It was shown conclusively that neither by accident nor design could he have dealt himself that fatal blow. There were those who suspected both the wife and the nurse. It was, however, made perfectly clear that husband and wife were on excellent terms; there was, besides, the almost unconscious testimony of the intelligent four-year-old child, who told how her father had gone to the door to see them off, and kissed her before she started; so that he must have been alive when his wife went out. Nurse Verrion, on her part, established two facts--she was accompanied by a friend to the house, who only left her as she opened the door, and that within three minutes she was at the doctor’s on the other side of the way. George Ryder had certainly not been killed within those three minutes.

For reasons which I can hardly define, I took more interest in the Fulham Mystery than I generally do in matters of the kind. Of course it was the merest coincidence, but it did strike me as odd that I should have met the red-haired youth that same afternoon, and have been puzzled by the agitation he showed as he stared at the signalling blind. I suppose I met him, so far as I could judge, at about half-past three, some two hours before the murder took place within a quarter of a mile of where I saw him. I recalled what the girl had said at the tea-shop--that her object was to let him know, as I took it, by means of a signal conveyed by the blind in her room, when the “coast was clear.” Two hours afterwards the coast had been cleared in Helena Grove in a truly singular manner. However, I told myself, the thing was the merest coincidence; the puzzle of the signalling blind remained, and, more or less vaguely, I continued to wonder.

Whether, again, the second chapter of this strange story owed its inception to mere chance, he would be a bold person who ventured positively to affirm. I was spending the week-end on the cliff at Boscombe. George Ryder had been dead two years; the Fulham Mystery, still unsolved, had practically slipped from the public mind. I arrived on the Friday, and had to leave on the Monday afternoon. On Monday morning, since rather a cold wind was blowing, I enjoyed the open air in the pretty, sheltered public gardens, from which the cliff on either side keeps off the wind. I occupied a chair under a tree. On the other side of the path, perhaps a dozen yards from where I sat, a lady was the sole occupant of a seat. We were both of us reading. An exclamation caused me to glance up from the page of my book. A lady, holding a child by each hand, had come along the path; at sight of her the occupant of the seat had sprung up; the two women were staring at each other as if each saw in the other a ghost.

The woman with the two children seemed to be the more amazed; it was she who had uttered the exclamation. I judged her to be perhaps thirty years of age, but she looked so worn and worried that she might have been younger than she seemed. Her clothing was worn and shabby--I noticed that she wore old black cotton gloves; it was not easy, from her appearance, to judge to what station of life she belonged.

The person who had risen from the seat was the first to speak; though I could not hear her, I could see distinctly what she said. Her expression was one of sheer bewilderment, as if she were still in doubt of the other’s identity.

“Annie!--It is you!--Have you tumbled from the sky? Where have you been hiding? What are you doing here? And who are these?--these two young people? Where is your own small daughter? Surely this is not she.”

The woman addressed as Annie seemed to be so overcome by the other’s unexpected appearance as to be almost incapable of speech. She seemed to be positively frightened, giving nervous glances on this side and that, as if afraid of she alone knew what. When she spoke, although I heard nothing, I could see from the twitching of her lips that her voice was tremulous. Agitation made her stammer.

“Laura, I--I never expected to see you; I--I can’t stop now, but I--I want to speak to you very much; I would like to speak to you. I--I’ve got to take these two children to a friend’s, just--just over there; but I’ll be back in--in ten minutes, if you’ll wait for me--here.--Laura, say you’ll wait for me.”

She seemed to me to be gasping for breath, as if the strength of feeling which she put into the appeal that the other would stay for her was almost more than she could bear. Her friend’s bewilderment seemed to be growing. The expression in her eyes showed clearly that she could not make the speaker out.

“Stay for you?” She smiled, as if to reassure her. “Of course I’ll stay for you, ten minutes, or as long as you like. Only--don’t forget I’m waiting.”

The woman, with her two charges, hurried off. I hardly knew whether to go or stay. Where I was I was partially screened from the occupants of the seat by a big rhododendron; I could probably see them better than they could see me. I was perfectly comfortable where I was; I really saw no reason why I should move, so I stayed where I was.

I imagine that it was nearer twenty than ten minutes before the other returned; when she came she was nearly running. When she sat down beside her friend her breath was coming in little gusts.

“They--they kept me longer--than I thought they would. I--I couldn’t get away. I--I’m not my own mistress, and--and when people want me to stay--I have to.”

I could see that the other’s puzzlement was momentarily growing.

“But, my dear Annie, what do you mean by you’re not your own mistress?”

“I’m--I’m a nursery governess. Didn’t you know I was a nursery governess?”

“A nursery governess?” The speaker’s surprise was so marked that she gave a little bound on her seat. “You!--Annie!--A nursery governess! But I thought that George Ryder----”

The other put her hand upon her arm, glancing about her as if in sudden terror.

“Hush!--I’m not Mrs. Ryder now--at least I don’t call myself that. I--I call myself Mrs. Brown.”

“You call yourself Mrs. Brown!--Annie--I understand you less and less. Are you ashamed of your husband’s name?”

“Indeed no. But when I told people that I was Mrs. Ryder they began to ask me questions; and when they found out that I was Mrs. George Ryder, and--and that it was my husband who was--murdered, they didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

“But why ever not? It wasn’t you who murdered him.”

“I don’t know that, exactly, they thought it was.”

“Exactly? But, my dear girl, I never heard anything so monstrous. Do you mean to say that anybody ever dared to let such an idea enter their heads?”

“Laura, I don’t mean to say anything at all, but I have to live. And when people found out who I was, they wouldn’t give me a chance, so--I call myself Mrs. Brown. If they found out, in my present situation, that I--I wasn’t Mrs. Brown, they’d turn me off at a moment’s notice.”

“But what do you mean by you’ve got to live? Didn’t your husband leave you plenty of money?”

“Not a penny, or, at least, only a few pounds. And shortly after, my mother died, and she left nothing. So there was I, with my child to keep, with nothing to live on.--Laura, you don’t know what I’ve been through.”

“But I thought that your husband not only had money of his own, but that he had excellent expectations.”

“He did; but nobody seems to have understood, and that has made it seem so much harder. His aunt, Mrs. Dawson, told him herself that she had left him all her money; and so she had, but her will was rather oddly worded. She left all her money to her nephew George Ryder, but if he died before she did, then all her property was to go to her other nephew, Athelstan Ward. The will was an old one; it had been made before George and I were married, or, I think, in case of George’s dying first, she might have left something to me, to say nothing of his child. We were great friends, she and I. She was always very fond of me, and I am sure she would have altered her will to that effect if she had ever dreamt that matters would turn out as they did. She was ill when George was--killed. Some one, stupidly enough, went blundering into her bedroom, crying out that George had been murdered. The shock had such an effect on her that it brought on a paralytic seizure, from which she never recovered. In less than a month afterwards she was dead. By her will, as I have explained, she left nothing to George, who was dead, and nothing to me, or to Daisy either. Everything went to Mr. Ward.”

“What a very unfortunate state of affairs for you. Did Mr. Ward do nothing? He must have seen the iniquity of such an arrangement.”

“Athelstan Ward had never expected to inherit anything. He and his aunt did not get on at all; he had offended her in all sorts of ways. At the last upset they had she had told him that she would leave him nothing. He knew that everything was left to George, who was her favourite nephew. When she died he was a clerk in the city, at a salary of something over a hundred a year. The news that he was the heir almost turned his head; at least I hope that was the explanation of his conduct to me. He told me to my face--gratuitously--that I would never get a farthing out of him. He said that George would have stuck to the lot, and he meant to do the same. I had--I had to keep Daisy and myself as best I could.”

“But what has become of the man? What a dreadful creature he must be!”

“He’s married, that’s all I know about him. He married Miss Lisle.”

“What, Lily Lisle? The girl with the dreadful eyes, who acted as Mrs. Dawson’s companion? I never could stand her; I never could make out why Mrs. Dawson kept her in the house. I could have told her some tales about her.”

“Mrs. Dawson liked her well enough, I believe; though, in the end, in a sense, she was the actual cause of the old lady’s death, because it was she who rushed into her bedroom screaming out that George Ryder was murdered. However she could have done such a thing, considering that the doctor had warned her to allow nothing to disturb or agitate the old lady, was beyond me altogether. It turned out that she and Mr. Ward had been engaged, under the rose, for ages. After the will was read they were married--within a week or two. Everyone believed that the old lady was well off, but no one guessed how well off until things were gone into. She had not been living on a quarter of her income, and had been investing the other three-quarters as it came in. I’m told that she left over two hundred thousand pounds. Think what even a little of it would have meant to Daisy and me. I’m getting twenty-five pounds a year, and out of that I have to clothe myself and keep my child. They give me lodging, and my food, such as it is, but if I could only manage to earn a little more money.”

“How long are you free now? I’m staying at the Burlington Hotel. Can’t you come and lunch with me?”

“I’m free for this afternoon. My mistress, Mrs. Levison, is out. The children have gone to lunch with a friend. If--if I’m not too shabby, I should like to come and lunch with you very much. It would be a treat.”

The two got up from their seat and walked away. I remained where I was, thinking. It did seem extraordinary that I should have been there when such things were being talked about--things which brought back such odd memories. The girl with the “dreadful eyes,” could she, by any chance, have had any connection with the young woman whose singular eyes had attracted my attention in the tea-shop in the Brompton Road? And Mr. Athelstan Ward--was he red-headed? I wondered.

Suppose that those two chance encounters, in the tea-shop in the Boscombe public gardens, had put into my hands the key to the unsolved mystery, would that not be something very like a miracle? If I had had anything tangible to go upon, I would have spoken to those two women then and there. But what a figure I should have cut if my fashion of putting two and two together had proved all wrong. I might never have seen Mrs. Dawson’s companion in my life--if they had mentioned where Mrs. Dawson had lived I might have got nearer to certainty--and Mr. Athelstan Ward might be a bald-headed gentleman of portly presence. I should have been regarded as a meddler. I have suffered in that direction more than once in my time; I had no wish to suffer again. I endeavoured to dismiss the whole subject from my mind, and went up to Waterloo by the afternoon train.

That the third and last chapter of my connection with the Fulham Mystery seemed to have been brought about by fortuitous circumstances I am ready to agree; but that it was by accident only I am not so sure. So strange a sequel to such singular beginnings, to my mind suggests design.

Nearly another two years elapsed, and I was at Eastbourne, staying with some friends at a big hotel on the front. My friends had gone up to town for a day or two, and I was left in sole possession of their apartments. One morning I was walking rapidly along the Parade. The sky was blue, but the east wind, of which Eastbourne is perhaps rather too fond, did not breathe warmth. One had to move quickly if one wished to keep warm. As I was about to move over to what I hoped was the warmer side of the road, I was accosted by a woman selling flowers. I had already passed two or three, at whom, I am afraid, I had not even glanced; but something about this one’s method of address and manner caused me to look at her. Where, I asked myself, had I seen her before? Her face seemed familiar. I had gone past her perhaps half a dozen steps when it came back to me. The Boscombe public gardens, the two women on the seat--surely this was Mrs. George Ryder. And yet it was impossible. She would not be selling flowers in a public road.

I must have been mistaken, a chance resemblance had taken me in. I thought I would go back and, while buying some of her flowers, have a good look at her. Anyhow, I could always do with a few flowers.

It was Mrs. Ryder--or the resemblance was supernatural. Of course she had altered: she had grown so thin; her cheeks were hollow; her eyes cavernous, even hungry; her skin seemed to be all furrows; yet that she was the woman whom I had seen sitting on the seat, telling her friend the tragic story of the will which had passed her by, I was certain. What to say to her, what to do--these were points on which I could not make up my mind. I bought nearly all her flowers; her gratitude was piteous. Then I gave an order for more, and directed her to bring them to my hotel the next morning at a certain hour. I left her there, standing in the bitter east wind, which I hoped she did not feel to be quite so bitter as before, while I walked away, wondering by what possible means she could have reached so dreadful a position. She was a lady; such a short time ago a happy wife, with such prospects of happiness in front of her--and now selling pennyworths of flowers in the gutter. It was an object lesson on the mutability of human affairs.

I kept thinking of her, even when I got back to the hotel. She was with me all that day; when I was dressing for dinner, as I was going down to the great meal of the day. What sort of dinner was she having--there was much hunger in her eyes, she looked so hungry altogether--and where?

In the absence of my friends I was the solitary occupant of their table. I was down early, and watched the people coming in. I had just finished my fish course when four or five persons came down the room, at the sight of one of whom I almost jumped.

It was the girl of the tea-shop, she of the dreadful eyes. I was sure it was she, though she was altered out of all conscience. To begin with, she was beautifully dressed--rather too well dressed, in fact, for such a place. Her hair was dressed in a way which was really an exaggeration of the latest fashion; she held herself as if she were a person of importance. She had filled out, grown plumper; in many respects she had altered altogether. Yet it was she--surely no other woman in the world could have such eyes as she had. They seemed to have grown larger; they roved as much as ever. They passed all round the room, resting, I should say, on every one in it, as she moved with her party towards their own table.

I observed the other members of her party as they took their seats. Remembering the quickness with which she had noticed my observation when we met for the first time, I did it as furtively as possible. One thing I saw at once--the red-headed youth was not there. This was by way of being a surprise; somehow I had taken it for granted that he would have been. There were three other men and two other women. One of the other men was her husband. I was sure of it from the obvious way in which he was acting as host. She was hostess, the others were guests.

The man, who I was convinced was her husband, was the antipodes of that red-headed youth. He was rather under-sized; his scanty brown hair was parted in the centre and plastered down at the sides. He wore glasses; his clothes did not seem to fit, his shirt front bulged; altogether he appeared to me about as insignificant an individual as one might expect to see. I could not believe that that woman had married him for love. I was as sure as if she had told me so that he was not the sort of man she admired, and that when she decided to become his wife it was for very solid and sufficient reasons.

The head waiter was coming down the room. That was not the first time I had stayed at that hotel; he and I were old acquaintances.

“Can you tell me who those people are who have just come in?”

His manner as he answered was most discreet. He smoothed an imaginary crease out of the tablecloth.

“It’s a dinner party. The lady and gentleman who are giving it are Mr. and Mrs. Athelstan Ward; they arrived this morning--old customers; this is their fifth or sixth visit.--Have you everything you want?”

I assured him that I had. He departed, and my appetite went with him; the feelings which came rushing over me left me no desire to eat.

So, actually, this was Mr. and Mrs. Athelstan Ward, and my wild surmise had been right. The crooked blind in the top window of the house in the street leading off the Fulham Road--the girl whom I had seen demonstrating with her handkerchief how one may signal with a blind had done it; it had been crooked because she had carefully arranged it at the precise and proper angle. In that house Mrs. Dawson had lived, the aunt of the man who had been murdered two hours after I saw that crooked blind. At that time, if what Mrs. George Ryder had told her friend in the public gardens at Boscombe was true, this girl was engaged to the other nephew, who, in a certain eventuality, of which he seemed to have been ignorant, was to benefit by his aunt’s will; that eventuality, by which the girl was to benefit as much as Mr. Ward occurred within two hours of that crooked blind having been seen by that red-headed youth--with whom she had arranged that particular signal. For what purpose?

A cold something stole up my spine as I groped about for an answer. She knew the delicate state of Mrs. Dawson’s health, she was her companion; the physicians had laid on her a special charge; yet the moment the news of the tragedy reached her, well knowing that she ought to do nothing of the kind, she rushed into the presence of the aged invalid, who was really and truly at her mercy, and struck her down by yelling out the news at her.

Things began to look very ugly. Was it by accident, or design, that I was stumbling on these things? What I still had to understand was the relation between the red-headed youth and the girl. That, when I saw them together in the tea-shop, he was her lover I was convinced. Not impossibly, he was so beside himself with love of her, that he was ready to be guilty of any folly, or perhaps worse than folly, for her dear sake; unless I erred, he was that sort of youth. Could she have used him as a tool and then thrown him over? Unless I erred again, she was that sort of girl; it was an action of which she was quite capable. Apparently she had attained the object of her ambition; she was prosperous, as happy, perhaps, as it was in her nature to be. What had become of the red-headed youth? The widow of the murdered man was selling flowers in the gutter.

A page came down the room with a telegram on a waiter. He handed it to Mrs. Athelstan Ward. With a murmured apology to her guests, she tore it open. I do not think I ever saw such a change take place on a woman’s face in public as took place on hers as she read that telegram. She appeared to be incapable of concealing the effect it had upon her. What was the dominant expression on her countenance I could not say; fear and rage were two. She seemed unconscious that the boy was waiting, that her guests were looking at her--until her husband’s voice recalled her to herself. He was facing me. As he pronounced his words with a punctilious correctness which I should say was characteristic of the man, I saw clearly what he said.

“My dear Lily, from whom is your telegram? It appears to be of absorbing interest. Permit me to see it.”

He held out his hand across the table. Then she came back to herself, after a fashion. She looked, or rather she glared, at him. When she saw his outstretched hand, and caught his meaning, she crushed the telegram up into a ball, thrust it into the bosom of her dress, and turned to the page, who instantly departed. She was sitting sideways to me, so that it was not easy for me to read the reply which she made to her husband; but I am quite sure that it was not an expression of her willingness to let him see that telegram.

I resolved to keep my eye on Mrs. Athelstan Ward. By way of a beginning, I thought it might be just as well to see if she would recognize me. To reach the private sitting-room which my friends had at the other end of the building it was necessary for me to pass her table, which I presently did, with something like ostentation. As I approached she looked at me, and I at her. I could see that she recognized me, and was aware that I did the same to her. Her face changed again, and a look came into her eyes which haunted me long after I had quitted the room. The hungry look in the eyes of the murdered man’s widow, and now that dreadful look in hers--they were with me that night even in my dreams.

The next morning I got up early; I could not sleep, and I hate lying between the sheets with my eyes wide open. My window looked out across the garden. As I peeped to see what sort of weather it was, I saw Mrs. Athelstan Ward come through the great front door of the hotel. She was dressed for walking. Crossing the garden to the street, turning to the right, she moved quickly in the direction of Beachy Head. I had one of those intuitions to which I am subject. I felt sure that the purpose which had taken her out at that extremely matutinal hour was of interest to me. It was not only chance which had taken me to the window at just that moment. I dashed into the bath, rushed into my clothes--I do not believe anything feminine can dress quicker than I can--and was out in the street in I am afraid to say how few minutes. Mrs. Ward was out of sight, but I knew the direction in which she was going, and off I tore.

Presently I saw her. She was walking almost as quickly as I was, and was nearly at the point where one begins to ascend the grassy slopes towards Beachy Head. That some special attraction was drawing her to Beachy Head at seven o’clock in the morning I felt convinced. She went round to the right--evidently she knew the shortest way. When I reached the grass I went straight on; I did not wish to keep too closely in her footsteps, lest she should look round and see that she was followed. The ascent at the part at which I took it was pretty steep. I was a little short of breath when I gained the ridge, and was sufficiently on the level to enable me to see what was ahead. There was Mrs. Ward some distance in front, striding rapidly along what I knew to be the better path. She was nearly out of sight when I gained the point from which one can see the top of the Head. A minute or two later some one came out of the little hotel which lies in the hollow on one side, and crossed to her. So this was it--she had an appointment with something masculine; it was a man who had joined her, on the top of Beachy Head, at an hour when they were likely to have it all to themselves.

I had with me a pair of those folding opera-glasses which lie down flat, so that they occupy scarcely any space at all. I focussed them on to the pair in front. I was anxious to see who the man might be. Something within me gave quite a little jump--I never have been able to get quite the better of that sort of thing--as I recognized the red-headed youth of the tea-shop and the signalling blind. Their backs were towards me, so of course I could not see what they were saying, but one had only to observe the man’s gestures to be able to form a very shrewd guess that the subject under discussion was of paramount interest to him. He was talking both with heat and volubility. The woman, on the other hand, was stiff and rigid--suggesting no desire to hear him, and disapprobation of whatever he might be saying.

They passed the signal station, passed the lighthouse, moved on towards Birling Gap, he still talking nineteen to the dozen, she listening with what I would have been willing to bet was contempt. Presently they stopped on a little knoll which was just on the other side of the lighthouse. Down I dropped in a little grassy dell which was just large enough to contain me as I lay full-length, face downwards, and raised myself just sufficiently on my elbows to permit me to have a view of the knoll in front.

I was particularly anxious that they should not see me. That the Fulham Mystery was going to be solved at last some instinct told me, and by that pair ahead. I did not intend to run any risk of losing what I had so long sought. They might, if they looked closely, have seen the top of my hat, but they would have been no wiser if they had. With the aid of that pair of folding glasses I watched their faces.

They were good glasses, the definition was excellent, the morning was clear; they were at a distance, as the crow flies, of perhaps under a hundred yards. When they turned my way I could see even the slightest movement of their lips as well as if they had been within a dozen feet.

It was some seconds, however, before they did turn my way. She had placed herself upon a sort of natural seat, formed by a ridge of earth, with her face at not quite the proper angle to allow of my seeing her mouth; he stood close up to her, saying something which--as he said it--needed a great deal of gesticulation. Suddenly, however, she stood up, fronting him, and also me, and I saw her say, as distinctly as if she had been speaking within reach of my hand:

“It’s no use your ranting. What I’ve said I’ve said, and as I’ve no more to add, there’s an end of it.”

He was silent for an instant. I was sure that he was silent from the way in which he stood motionless. Then he also turned slightly, occupying such a position that, while he looked across the sea, his mouth was as visible as if he had looked at me. I followed his answer through the glasses. He did not gesticulate that time; he spoke rather with what struck me as being an air of profound conviction.

“Lily, if ever there was a heartless devil in the shape of a woman, you are she.”

She replied, with a little flick of the cane she was carrying:

“You’ve told me so before. The remark is not in the least novel. Have you brought me here to make it again?”

“You have lied, and lied, and lied to me.” His gesticulations recommenced. “You have fooled me practically my whole lifelong. I have stolen for you--you know how often you have induced me to steal for you----”

“You didn’t need much inducement.” Her air was contemptuous.

“I did not; you are right. There was nothing I would not have done for you at a word from you; at last, at a word from you, I committed murder.”

“Put it that way if you like. From my point of view you made a mess of the whole thing; I never wanted you to actually kill the man.”

“No, you wanted me to play him some infernally clever trick which would result in his killing himself--as you afterwards killed that old woman. That was as much a murder as mine was. But I was not born with the instinct of killing, as you were, so I blundered, and had to do the poor wretch out of his life with an actual blow. And then you denied me my reward.”

“I never promised you anything.”

“Not in so many words; you were much too clever. But you know what you wished me to understand that you had promised me, and how, afterwards, you robbed me of the price which you had made me believe I was to receive.”

“Listen to me.” Her attitude became all at once that of a person who was giving utterance to a final decision. “You have been to me a continual nuisance--not practically all your life, but actually all your life. There was a time when I tried to put up with you, though it wasn’t easy. You’ve always been a penniless beggar, so that if you wanted to make me a present you had to steal it; now you throw it in my face. Afterwards--you know when--I explained that if a certain person were to die before a certain time it might be an advantage both to you and to me.”

“Especially to you.”

“Yes--especially to me; that is obvious.” The air of scorn with which she said it! “I took the greatest pains in explaining to you how, if certain things were done, other things would necessarily follow. You offered to do them. If you had done them as I had explained no crime would have been committed.”

“No legal crime, you mean; it would still have been murder.”

“Murder for which you can’t be punished doesn’t count. Do you suppose that if I had known you were going to do what you did I would have allowed you to do it?”

“I’m not so sure; I have my doubts. You were very keen, you know.”

“Yes, but not keen like that; I’m not such a fool.--Well, anyhow you did do it--the wrong way. And I had to bear the brunt.”

“You had to!--You beautiful creature!--You miserable thing!”

The marked variety of emphasis with which he delivered himself of these two remarks was most perceptible through the glasses.

“It is easy enough for you to speak in that cock-a-doodle sort of tone, but the fact remains that it is as I said. To begin with, haven’t I kept you ever since?”

“Kept me!--My God!--Kept me! When I think of how and why you’ve kept me, how often I wish that he had killed me instead of I him.”

“He didn’t. If you really wished it, you made a mess even of that.--Now you have the assurance to send me that telegram.--It came to me last night, in the middle of a dinner party, ordering me to come and meet you here. And now that I’ve come, what is it you want me to do? You want me to desert my husband, to throw away everything for which I’ve worked and struggled, and--think of it!--to come and live with you. Let me tell you this--I wouldn’t live with you if there wasn’t another man in the world; I wouldn’t willingly stay in the same house in which you were, or even in the same town. I’ve grown to hate you--if you only knew how I hate you as I see you standing there, and how willingly I’d see you tumble dead at my feet.” She drew a great breath--the glasses made it perfectly plain. “I believe I should go back to Eastbourne almost a happy woman again if I knew that you were dead.”

“You mean that?”

“I never meant anything half so much.”

“Then--you shall go back a happy woman.”

They were standing within a few feet of the edge. The turf sloped downward. He ran down this little slope; when he had run as far as he could, he gave a sort of jump and sprang into space more than five hundred feet above the rocks below. The woman was left alone on the knoll. I was so taken aback by the horror of the thing that my joints seemed to have got locked; my limbs seemed rigid.

There stood the woman, alone, and there I lay watching her through the glasses. For several seconds we remained motionless, as if incapable of movement. Then, with what seemed to me to be a violent effort, I scrambled on to my feet and went rushing towards the woman across the intervening grass. When she turned and saw me coming, she staggered--she obviously staggered, and I thought she would have fallen. But, recovering herself just as she seemed to have lost her balance, she stood awaiting me. When I got to her I took her by the arm; I was beside myself with a strange sort of passion--when I look back I understand how people feel when they kill each other. At that moment I certainly felt like killing her.

“You’ve murdered him,” I gasped. “I’ve a mind to send you after him.”

“Send me.” Her face was white; her great eyes glared at me; but she never flinched. “I am perfectly willing that you should send me after him. He’s better off than I am.”

The consciousness which came to me, even in that terrible moment, that this might be so, gave my thoughts a new direction. Still gripping her by the arm I turned and shouted: “Help! Help!” Two men came running out of the coastguard station; they were followed by a third, and then a fourth. When she saw them coming she asked me, as coolly as if it were the most casual question:

“What are you going to tell them?--Lies?--He jumped over of his own accord.”

I said nothing to her, but when they came within hail I called to them:

“A man has just jumped over the cliff; he was with this lady.”

“I did not know he was going to jump,” she declared. “I believe he’s mad.”

The coastguards took her address and mine, then began to search for what was left of the man. People came out of the hotel; women and children came out of the coastguards’ station; on that lonely cliff, even at that hour of the morning, a small crowd began to assemble. I took the woman back with me to Eastbourne, holding her by the arm all the way.

“You needn’t hold me,” she said, when we were half-way down. “With you holding me like this it is not easy to walk on this rough ground. I shan’t run away. Besides, why should I run away? There’s no reason why I should run.”

But she knew better. I kept my hold. My friends had a private sitting-room at the hotel, on the ground-floor, to which admission was gained by a separate entrance. I led her to that sitting-room.

“Where are you taking me?” she remonstrated. “You’ve no right to keep hold of me like this; you are hurting my arm. I’m not your prisoner.”

I paid no heed. When I had got her into the sitting-room I rang the bell.

“Send up to Mr. Stephens, in number one hundred and twenty, and tell him that I shall be glad to see him here as soon as he can make it convenient to come.”

“Who’s Mr. Stephens?” asked the woman, as soon as the waiter had gone. “And what are you going to say to my husband? And who are you, anyhow?--Who are you?--Let go of my arm.”

She spoke savagely, trying to shake herself loose. But she was weaker than I, and she could not do it.

“I am Judith Lee,” I told her. “I am going to tell your husband everything I know about you.”

“And what do you know? I only saw you once before in my life.”

“Only once.--You will presently hear what I know about you, if you have not already guessed.”

I think she had; I saw it on her face. Almost immediately her husband came hurriedly into the room. He seemed disturbed.

“I am told that Miss Lee wants to see me. Are you Miss Lee? What are you doing here with my wife?”

I told him--she kept still. I told him everything; she never even attempted to interrupt. As I pieced my story together I think she began to have a feeling that I was something almost supernatural--that she was afraid of me. I fancy that she recognized in me the pointing finger which, though it sometimes seems to move so slowly, touches the criminal on the spot at last, showing that from the very first, when all seemed most secure, there was already starting in pursuit the avenging hand of justice.

I told about that interview on which I had tumbled in the tea-shop; about the experiment with the handkerchief illustrating the signals which might be made with a blind--how her eyes seemed to distend as she heard me! I spoke of the chance meeting with the red-headed youth, who was staring at the crooked blind, and then of the murder which was done two hours afterwards. I passed the next two years and came to the interview which I had witnessed in the Boscombe gardens. When I narrated what the dead man’s wife had said to her friend, Mr. as well as Mrs. Athelstan Ward stood there like images of guilt stricken by their own consciences. Then came the story of what had happened that morning. When I repeated, word for word, the conversation which had taken place between the guilty pair, the woman sank on to the floor, and the man seemed dazed. Then came the horror of the suicide which she had prompted.

“I am aware,” I said, “that it would be difficult, Mr. Ward, to bring home against your wife the full measure of her guilt to the satisfaction of a criminal court. I admit the dexterity with which she has eluded responsibility. On one condition I am willing to let her go with you, to wherever you may choose to take her, and to hold my tongue. She has done all these things to gain possession of the fortune left by the late Mrs. Dawson. Render an account of the money she left; resign all claim to it; transfer it in its entirety to the woman to whom it rightfully belongs, and I will leave Mrs. Ward to her conscience. I do not, at this moment, suggest on your part complicity with your wife, though I cannot but feel that at some period you have probably had some sort of guilty knowledge. But if you ask why you should make this sacrifice to cover her, I will remark that I believe, if the whole truth were to be made public, that it would be held that you, at any rate, have no claim to the money which you pretend to have inherited. That is a point for you to consider. I may add that I communicated last night with the authorities at Scotland Yard, and that a detective is coming to Eastbourne by the first train which leaves London. If this matter is settled as I have suggested before he appears--so far well; if not, the matter will pass out of my hands into his. I have sent a message to a friend, who is staying in the hotel, Mr. Arthur Stephens, a solicitor of high standing. He will probably be here in a minute or two, ready to draw up a formal assignment to Mrs. George Ryder of what ought to have been hers at the beginning. I must ask you to give your answer, Mr. Ward, at once. How is it to be?”

I could see that his lips were dry; with the tip of his tongue he moistened them. His voice was husky.

“I--I’m willing to do what you wish, Miss Lee. I am willing to do everything, and anything, if only you will say nothing to anyone else of what you have just now been saying to us.”

Then I knew that my surmise had been correct, and that he had at least some sort of guilty knowledge of his wife’s nefarious conduct. Arthur Stephens entered.

“I’m very sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Stephens, but I am in pressing need of your services. This is Mr. Athelstan Ward. He is in possession of certain property, to which he has no title; at any rate, no moral title. Conscious of that fact, he wishes to assign it to the rightful owner. I want you to draw up a short form which shall give legal and valid expression to that wish of his. Afterwards, I may have to request you to go with him into matters of account. That you will be able to do later in the day. At present, all I ask you to do is to draw up a brief form which shall have the effect I have mentioned.--Here are pen, ink, and paper.”

Within a very few minutes that form was drawn up. As Mr. Ward was in the act of affixing his signature the door opened, and some one else I knew came in.

“This,” I explained, “is Inspector Ellis of Scotland Yard.--Inspector, this is Mr. Athelstan Ward. He is about to sign a document; perhaps you wouldn’t mind acting as one of the witnesses to his signature.”

The paper was signed and witnessed. Then I made certain other explanations. I kept within the letter of my bond, and I gave Mr. and Mrs. Athelstan Ward to understand that if they did not keep strictly within the letter of theirs, their trouble was only just beginning. After breakfast the Inspector and Mr. Stephens went up to London with that undesirable husband and his still less desirable wife. In the evening they returned to Eastbourne. They rendered their report: Mr. and Mrs. Ward had been called to a strict account; in the course of the day they had been stripped of every farthing of their ill-gotten gains. Berths had been booked for them on a steamer which was leaving the very next day for a South American port. They were informed that a certain amount of money would be credited to their account when they landed; with that they would have to begin the world afresh. Whether they succeeded, or failed, they would return to England at their peril. I do not think that either of them is ever likely to set foot on English soil again.

Soon after the quartette quitted the hotel on their way to London I kept an appointment which I had made the day before. A woman, who was selling flowers, was shown into the sitting-room. I met her on the threshold.

“Come in,” I said. “I am very glad to see you.”

She seemed alarmed, as if the way in which I tried to be friendly and treat her as an equal was terrible--since decent treatment from any quarter was a thing she was unused to.

“Please don’t look so frightened; there’s nothing to alarm you. I have asked you here because I want the flowers I see you have brought, and also because I wish to tell you something which I fancy you will think very wonderful, and also, I hope, very pleasant. I believe you are Mrs. George Ryder.”

At once she turned to flee, but I had her by the hand.

“Please--please don’t call me by that name--please don’t.”

“Why not, since it is your name? Is it not your name?”

“How do you know it’s my name? Who told you it was my name? Is it written on my forehead?”

Her looks were so wild that she looked almost like a person who was out of her senses. When I began to tell her, in her turn, my story, the change that took place in her! Many times have I been thankful for the gift which God gave me--never, I think, more thankful than I was then. She has often told me since that she felt, more and more, as the tale unfolded, that she was in the presence of a miracle--a miracle of blessing. I doubt if she has ever quite rid herself of the notion until this hour.

When I explained that she was to have the money which was meant for her husband, after all, and laid before her Mr. Athelstan Ward’s assignment, she broke into dry-eyed sobbing.

“Do you know”--the words broke from her between her sobs--“my child is dying for want of sufficient and proper nourishment--she is dying of starvation, and now--thank God!--thank God!”