Chapter X: Part 10

“More fool he to go to the flat on that last day,” said Mr. Oram crustily.

It was that fact which, as soon as he had learnt it, had seemed to fix the guilt definitely on Gretorex.

“He was dotty about her! When a chap’s in that peculiar condition, sir, it’s as if he can’t keep away,” murmured Mr. Finch.

And then, it might have seemed irrelevantly, he observed: “Mr. Rushworth will be back in London in a day or two. Earlier, if he travels overland from Marseilles.”

But even Alfred Finch felt a thrill of surprise when that same afternoon he was told that Mr. Rushworth was closeted with Mr. Oram. Indeed, he made a quick mental calculation. Either this must mean that their important client had come to Mr. Oram’s office straight from Victoria Station, or that he had flown from Paris.

Mr. Finch would have given a good deal to have been present at the interview which was taking place within a few yards of where he was working on a tiresome right-of-way case.

Mr. Oram’s head clerk had never much liked Miles Rushworth, and he could not help smiling to himself, as he considered the very awkward position in which that gentleman would find himself, if he was called as a witness for the Crown, as he most certainly would be if Mrs. Lexton were ever put on trial for the murder of her husband.

Alfred Finch knew that something of a most incriminating nature had been found in Ivy’s bedroom, when the flat in Duke of Kent Mansion had been searched yesterday. He thought it probable that this consisted of a series of letters between Mrs. Lexton and Miles Rushworth. Even a man of huge wealth does not give something for nothing to an attractive woman.

Lawyers are apt to overlook the exception which proves the rule in life.

Had Mr. Finch been able to look through a blank wall, he would have seen Mr. Oram sitting at his writing-table, and looking across it straight at Miles Rushworth. And could he have heard what was being said, he would have realised that his employer was speaking in a tone that was, for him, oddly hesitant and uneasy.

“I’m sorry to say, Rushworth, that I’ve no doubt at all but that there’s been a terrible miscarriage of justice. I take it that you knew comparatively little of Mrs. Jervis Lexton, even though her husband was in your employment?”

Miles Rushworth made a conscious effort to appear calm and unconcerned. But he failed in that endeavour, and was aware that he failed.

“I knew them both fairly well,” he answered at last.

Mr. Oram began playing with a paper knife. He was wondering how much the man who sat there, with overcast face, and anxious, frowning eyes, was concerned with this horrid business.

“What’s going to be the next move, Oram? I take it that you’ve been informed?”

“Well, yes, I have been informed, though quite unofficially. The--ahem! authorities are very naturally perturbed. An innocent man was very nearly hanged. It was, in fact, a matter of hours----”

Should he tell this old friend and client the truth? All his life long John Oram had cultivated caution, and technically he was now bound to silence. But he made up his mind that he owed the truth to Rushworth. Even now the solicitor had no suspicion of how really close had been the relations between the woman he now believed to have been a cold-blooded murderess, and this man whom she had so completely deceived. He was aware of how carelessly generous Rushworth could be and often was.

Still, a glance at his client’s face, now filled with a painful expression of suspense and acute anxiety, showed that this matter was of great moment to him.

“Mrs. Lexton,” he said in a low voice, “is going to be arrested, I understand, this evening, or to-morrow morning. The Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard are completing what they consider a very strong chain of evidence against her. I have here copies of three letters which have come into their possession. You had better glance over them, Rushworth.”

He got up and, leaning across his table, handed a number of typewritten sheets to his client.

How strange looked those burning words of love and longing, transcribed on a bad old typewriting machine! But the man now reading them could visualise Ivy’s pretty flowing handwriting, and, as he read on, he turned hot and cold.

Then he started on Gretorex’s letter; the letter acquiescing in Ivy’s decision that there should be a break between them.

“That was written,” observed the solicitor, “after Lexton’s mysterious illness was well started. I think you will agree that it is the letter of a man who was certainly unaware of what was going on?”

He waited a moment, then he added: “They’ve unluckily traced all your cables to the lady, Rushworth, as well as yours to me. I fear that you are certain to be called as leading witness for the Crown, if Mrs. Lexton is sent for trial, as seems now inevitable.”

“That would be monstrous! What is my connection with this case?” exclaimed Rushworth. “Surely I had the right to give all the help in my power to the wife of one of my own people?”

“They will call you in order to prove that Mrs. Lexton had a strong motive for wishing to get her husband out of the way,” returned Mr. Oram in a doleful tone. “I hope you refrained from writing to her? If you did, I trust she had the sense to destroy your letters.”

“It is this man Gretorex, if, as you seem to think, he is entirely innocent, who should be called, not I,” said Rushworth in a hard voice.

“Roger Gretorex will certainly refuse to give evidence against her. They’ll try to make him. But they’ll fail. He worshipped Ivy Lexton, and I fear he still loves her.”

Then the old man sighed. “It’s an awful story, Rushworth,” he observed, “however you look at it.”

The other threw the typewritten sheets of paper back on the table. He rose, and rather blindly he felt for, and found, his hat and stick.

“I must be going now,” he said shortly. “If I’m wanted, you know where to find me, Oram.”

He felt humiliated to the depths of his being. His passion for Ivy Lexton had turned to bitter hatred. Yet he knew that their fates were linked together, and that through what had been his mad infatuation for this woman, a name which was known and honoured all over the world, was not only going to become a laughingstock, but also to be smirched and befouled for ever.

As he went down the fine staircase of the old house, he exclaimed wordlessly, “By God, that shall not be!”

He waited a moment in the hall, and in that moment he thought of a way out.

It was a way made possible by the fact that an unpleasant experience at the beginning of August, 1914, had taught him the value of gold. Since the Saturday which had preceded the outbreak of war, he had always kept a thousand pounds in gold, and a thousand pounds in Bank of England ten-pound notes, in the private safe of his London office.

He walked quickly to the corner of a quiet street where he had left his car, and threw the chauffeur the address.

Then he looked at his watch. If what old Oram had said was true with regard to the probable arrest of Ivy Lexton, there was just time to accomplish that which he had planned to do in what had seemed but one flashing second.

“Stop at the nearest telephone box,” he called out. And the chauffeur drew up at a tube station.

Rushworth was in the telephone box for a long time, for he had to a certain extent to speak in parables. But the young man whom he had called up, and had had the good fortune to find at home, at last understood exactly what was wanted of him. He was an airman to whom Rushworth had once been magnificently generous.

“Right-ho!” came the young voice down the line. “I’ll be quite ready. I understand you want me to take my wife, too, and that you’ll motor her down here from town. Her passport’s always O.K. You can trust me. Afraid? Not much!”

Rushworth’s face looked strained and white as he came out of the telephone box.

He was well aware that he was inciting that lad to do, from pure gratitude, a very wrong thing. Well? If it “didn’t come off,” he, Rushworth, would take all the blame, of course. But he felt pretty sure that the plan he had made would succeed, for it had the two essential qualities which spell success. His plan was bold and his plan was simple.

True, he wondered uncomfortably if the police had traced that last wire of his from Paris. He was glad indeed that Ivy had had the wit to telegraph her country address. And then, as he evoked her lovely face, her beckoning eyes, his own darkened, and filled with wrath and pain.

He did not go himself into his London office. Instead he sent in his chauffeur, with the key of his private safe, and armed with minute instructions as to what he was to take out of it.

Then, when the man had brought him the heavy little canvas bag, and the envelope containing a hundred ten-pound notes, he threw him the address of some lodgings in a quiet street off Piccadilly, where he knew Lady Dale and her daughter were staying just now. His sister had made him promise that he would see Bella the moment he reached London, and he was fulfilling that promise.

When he was told that her ladyship was out, but that Miss Dale was in, and alone, he suddenly felt as if his luck was holding, after all!

Ivy had insisted on coming back to London before luncheon.

Not only was her mind now full of vague, unsubstantial fears, but she was aware that Miles Rushworth would call at her flat some time this evening. That, indeed, was a fact to which she clung and constantly returned with a feeling of reassurance and hope. Even so she had not allowed Lady Flora to telephone the fact that she was returning unexpectedly to the flat. She felt, somehow, that she wanted no one to know about her movements just now. She was beginning to feel that most terrifying of sensations--that of being hunted.

Even when settled comfortably, and alone, in a first-class carriage of the train taking her to town, she found she could not rest, and she actually got up and began moving about.

It was such an awful sensation--that of feeling that human hounds might be hot on her scent.…

She had bought her favourite picture paper at the station, and then she had had a shock, for a large photograph of Roger had confronted her on the front page.

Underneath the picture ran a long paragraph, stating that Dr. Gretorex, who was to have been hanged this morning for the murder of Jervis Lexton, had had his execution postponed on the very eve of its being carried out. Such a thing had not taken place in England for close on eighty years. But important new evidence had been placed before the Home Secretary at the eleventh hour.…

“New Evidence”--Ivy turned those two ominous words over and over again, in her troubled, anxious mind. They now forced her to do what she had believed she would never, never have to do--live over again, in imagination, a certain fortnight of her life, the first fortnight of last November.…

She found herself imagining, suspecting, wild, crazy things. For instance, the existence of minute peepholes in the ceilings of certain rooms in the flat? Even that seemed more likely than that Roger Gretorex should have “given her away” with regard to the fact that she had been once left alone by him with a jar of arsenic on the table of his surgery.

Besides, even if he had done such a cruel, despicable thing, what he had it in his power to reveal _proved_ nothing, and could prove nothing. She knew herself to have been not only very clever, but also very very careful.

And yet, as the train sped nearer and nearer to London, she became more and more afraid.

The old cook was quite pleased to see “the missus,” and volubly she described the visit of Inspector Orpington and of his sergeant.

“No, they didn’t find nothing. How could they--when there was nothing there?”

This Ivy believed to be nothing but the truth, and yet the fact that the two men from Scotland Yard had come to search the flat, filled her with a terrible foreboding.

And then, suddenly, she remembered Mrs. Huntley! With a sensation of sick fear she recalled how Gretorex’s servant had surprised her on what she now perceived to have been the most dangerous day of her life.

Vile, wicked, cruel old woman! However, she, Ivy, had already replaced the cap on the jar labelled “Arsenic” when Mrs. Huntley had crept into the surgery so slyly and softly behind her. But the jar had been there, on the table before her, and no doubt the old fox had noticed it.

Yes! It was probably some sort of gossip traced to Gretorex’s day-servant which had been the cause both of the reprieve, and of the presence yesterday of the Scotland Yard inspector here, in the flat. But, thank God, there was nothing--nothing--_nothing_ that could be found, and for the best of reasons, that there was nothing to find.

Even so, all this was very frightening, as well as very annoying, if only because it meant new trouble and worry, just at a time when she, Ivy, would be wanting to pick up the old, and create the new, links, between herself and Rushworth.

She went into her bedroom feeling a little reassured. It is always better to know the worst, and Ivy Lexton thought she did know the worst now. And it was not so bad as she had feared.

Already she was mentally preparing the tale she would tell. And it ran somewhat like this: She had gone just for a moment to see Gretorex on the evening Mrs. Huntley had seen her in the surgery, with a message from Jervis, who was waiting for her hard by Ferry Place in a taxi. They two were on their way to a dance, and Jervis had suggested that Gretorex should come with them. But the fact had made so little impression on her mind that she had forgotten all about it, when asked if she had ever been to Ferry Place alone. If Mrs. Huntley mentioned the supper, she would simply deny that she had been the lady entertained by Gretorex. Mrs. Huntley had not actually seen her with her host. She had only seen her for that moment or two in the surgery.

But, even so, Ivy’s nerves were so far upset that she made an involuntary and violent movement of recoil, when she heard a sudden loud knock on the front door of the flat.

There followed a moment of delay, and then she heard the cook waddling down the passage. She told herself that it was probably Inspector Orpington, and she mentally prepared her story, the explanation, that is, of that unfortunate encounter with Mrs. Huntley.

And then her heart leapt with joy in her bosom, for, “Is Mrs. Lexton at home?” was uttered in Miles Rushworth’s voice.

“I don’t know that Mrs. Lexton can see you, sir.”

“I think she’ll see me. Will you kindly say Mr. Rushworth has called to see her?”

Ivy heard him go into the drawing-room, and, after a few moments spent before her dressing-table in making up her face, she followed him.

Miles Rushworth was standing in the centre of the room, and when the door opened, and Ivy came through it, she looked so innocent and so appealing, as she advanced towards him in her plain black dress, that suddenly he felt as if all that had happened to-day had been only an evil dream. Almost he held out his arms.

And then he took a step backwards, for alas! he knew all that had happened to-day was no dream, but stark reality.

In silence she held out her hand, and perforce he took it in his, for a moment.

“I felt so sad, even in the midst of my own troubles, when I heard about your sister,” she murmured.

“Don’t speak of her!” he exclaimed violently. And involuntarily she shrank back.

She had put down that terrible, stern, sorrow-laden expression on his face to grief for his sister. But all at once she saw that he was gazing at her with an alien look--the look of a stern judge--on his sunburnt face.

What had he heard? What did he know? As she met that awful, accusing shaft of contempt, and yes, of loathing, a sensation of icy despair began slowly to envelop her.

“Do you remember Bella Dale?” he asked suddenly.

She answered in a faltering voice, “The girl on the yacht? Of course I do.”

“She was my sister’s dearest friend,” his voice sank. More strongly he said, “I went to see her this morning, and--and now we are engaged.”

And then he could not but admire her, for Ivy threw back her head, and in a hard, clear tone she exclaimed:

“I wish you joy, Mr. Rushworth! Also I do want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, for all you have done for me.”

She knew now why he looked “like that.” He was ashamed, and well he might be.

Quickly she told herself that he wasn’t married yet. The fact that he was so moved showed the power she had over him. It had been foolish of her to suppose, as she had done for a moment, that he had heard something to her disadvantage--why, there hadn’t been time!

But what was this he was saying?

“I’m the bearer of bad news, Mrs. Lexton.”

His voice had become almost inaudible. She moved, timorously, a little nearer to him.

“Bad news?” she echoed uncertainly, and once more terror filled her burdened, fluttering heart.

“You are to be arrested to-morrow morning on the charge of having caused the death of your husband by poison. The police claim to possess ample evidence to ensure a conviction; so you are in frightful danger.”

Arrested? In one fleeting moment she saw herself a prisoner in the dock where Roger Gretorex had stood. She visualised the Judge, the jury, the lawyers in the well of the Court, even the pitiless crowd of sightseers. The lifting of the black cap on to the Judge’s wig--his awful words of admonition--the condemned cell… the gallows.…

She who now had always fainted so easily, why did she not faint now? Because she was tasting the bitterness of death.

Yet she made no sign, though she was staring at Rushworth with dilated eyes. But for those large, terror-filled eyes, he would have thought that she had not understood the purport of his awful revelation of what now awaited her. And something like a spasm of pity shook him to the depths of his being.

“I think, nay, I’m sure, I can save you,” he exclaimed confidently.

Then he went on, speaking in low, quick tones: “I’ve arranged with a friend of mine who has got an aëroplane--you remember Jack Quirk, on the yacht?--to take you by air now, at once, to-day, to Spain. You will travel as his wife, on her passport. I’ve brought you a thousand pounds in gold, and another thousand in notes. From Spain you ought to be able to get a passage to South America without too much trouble. Quirk will arrange it all for you, and he will give you an address, where, if in need of help, you can write to me, once you are safe, far, far away.”

His voice broke. He was remembering a moment--an immortal moment--in their joint lives, when Ivy had certainly loved him, in her fashion.

He saw her lips, which were quivering under the dab of lipstick rouge, try to form the words, “Thank you.”

“I’m afraid there’s no time to be lost. We’d better not be seen leaving the flat together. I’ll say good-bye to you in the hall, and you’d better follow in about five minutes. My car is in Palace Row. _Don’t bring anything with you._ The front door may be watched, but I think not, as you are believed to be in the country.”

Epilogue

For the first few moments, spent alone by her in her bedroom, Ivy could only feel relief--sheer, sobbing relief.

Then there came over her a sensation of utter, numb despair.

She had lost everything that makes life worth the living to such as she…

But there was no time left her, now, to remember the past, or dread the future. She must hurry--hurry.

So it was that, in less than five minutes after Rushworth had left her, she was standing outside the flat, clad in a small pull-on black hat and a big fur coat.

The lift came up, and then, just as she was going to step into it, she remembered suddenly the bolster bag Rushworth had bought for her at Dieppe. On the morning of Jervis’s death she had shaken out of the inner _pochette_ the two or three pinches of--of “stuff” which remained in it, into the fire, and then, hardly knowing what she was doing, she had put it back in the red despatch-box. It would be all right, there, till she went out of her widow’s mourning.

She couldn’t leave _that_ behind. Why it was worth a lot of money! Besides, she would give up wearing black as soon as she reached the place of safety Rushworth had promised her.

“Wait a minute,” she said to the porter. “I’ve forgotten something. I won’t be a second!”

She put her key in the lock, and rushed back to her bedroom.

Meanwhile there began an insistent ringing for the lift from the bottom of the shaft, in the hall of the Mansion.

The porter knew pretty Mrs. Lexton’s ways. He felt sure that when she had said: “I won’t be a second!” she meant probably five minutes, maybe even longer than that, especially if she had forgotten something.

The bell was ringing continuously now, and with a shock the man remembered that the agent for Duke of Kent Mansion was coming to see a leak in the roof this very afternoon.

Quickly he pulled the cable, and the lift slid down.

Meanwhile Ivy had run back into her bedroom, turning up the electric light as she walked through the door. Quickly she took the three keys she always carried about with her in her embroidered black vanité case, and, unlocking the half of the great cupboard, she seized the despatch-box.

The lid fell back the wrong side, queerly. Someone failing to force the lock had prized open the hinges, and the bag with its beautiful emerald and pearl clasp was gone--gone!

She threw a wild look round her. What could she take with her? Then she remembered what Rushworth had said. No, she mustn’t take anything. Nothing, apart from that little bolster bag, was of any real value.… She turned out the light, and, running blindly through the dark hall, opened the front door of the flat. She hadn’t been more than two or three minutes, after all.

She was trembling now; she felt strung-up and terrified, hardly conscious of what she was doing.

She opened wide the lift gates. They were already ajar, and then--her little feet stepped through into the void.

The man below heard a terrible scream, followed by an awful thud, thud, on the iron top of the lift.

And, at once, with a fearful sensation of dismay, he knew what he had done. He had omitted to shut the gates for the first time since he had been on this job.

For one thing, apart altogether from that little matter of the agent’s visit, he, too, was excited--he, too, had been wondering what was going to happen. Everyone in Duke of Kent Mansion had been thrilled by the news of the reprieve. And, in his excitement at seeing the heroine of the Lexton Mystery, and in his certainty that he would be up again in less than a minute, he had left the lift gates ajar.

In one rushing moment, while on his way to the house-telephone to ring up the engineer, he visualised with dreadful clearness the Coroner’s court, the censure passed on him by the jury, his dismissal from this good situation, and the consequent angry despair of his wife.

Poor, pretty, pleasant-spoken “Ivy,” as he, in the company of thousands of other men of all ages, conditions, and kinds, had fallen into the way of secretly calling her--she had brought bad luck on everybody who came in touch with her. Well! Now she wouldn’t be able to harm anybody, man or woman, any more.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g., dovelike/dove-like, night club/night-club, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add ToC.

Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings, and some missing periods.

[Chapter Two]

Change “little woman now _sittinng_ so close to him” to _sitting_.

“She had further _confesed_ that now they were really” to _confessed_.

“a keen appreciation of all that makes _civilsed_ life decorous” to _civilised_.

[Chapter Eight]

(And yet the fact that she was now a widow would certainly _made_ Roger “tiresome.”) to _make_.

“come over her a most unexpected sensation of _lonelines_” to _loneliness_.

[Chapter Ten]

“you were dismayed by the _charge_ in his appearance” to _change_.

[Chapter Thirteen]

(He had _know_ “Mr. Roger” from childhood.) to _known_.

(“I have no legal adviser.” and she looked at him surprised) change the period to a comma.

[Chapter Seventeen]

“those sort of people stop short at murder. believe me” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter Eighteen]

(“There’s a young lady to see you in the drawing-room. ma’am,”) change the period to a comma.

[Chapter Nineteen]

“_Mrs._ Finch said something which surprised Enid Dent” to _Mr._

[Chapter Twenty]

“that these various documents provide _sufficent_ reason for” to _sufficient_.

[End of text]