Chapter VIII: Part 8

Then solemn, slow, emphatic tones of admonition fell on the heavy air. They were not cruel words, for the Judge felt deeply sorry for the young man before him. He had heard, only last evening at a dinner-party, something of the quiet, kindly, useful life that Mrs. Gretorex and her son had both led since the death of the husband and father who had caused their financial ruin.

And then came the awful words--

“Roger Kingston Gretorex, the jury, after a careful and patient hearing, have found you guilty of the wilful murder of Jervis Lexton. The sentence of the Court upon you is that you be taken from here to a lawful prison, and from there to a place of execution; and that you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead; and that your body be buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall have been last confined after your conviction; and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

As Ivy Lexton, supported by a number of her friends and acquaintances, left the Old Bailey by a back way, she chanced in the passage to meet Mrs. Gretorex face to face. The eyes of the two women crossed--and a stab of horrible pain flashed across the worn, yet even now calm, face of Roger Gretorex’s mother.

Chapter Seventeen

“I took Mrs. Gretorex a nice cup of tea at seven o’clock, for I heard her moving about even before then. But the poor lady only just sipped it. She said her throat seemed swollen, so she couldn’t swallow. But she’s up now, and I do wish, miss, you’d go in and try and persuade her to have just a little bit of breakfast. Me and my husband--well--we both fairly broke down and cried last night, when we thought of how we’d feel if it was our boy that was going to be hanged by the neck till he was dead.”

“I hope she doesn’t let her mind dwell on that,” Enid’s pale face went a shade paler, as she looked into the kind, pitying eyes of Mrs. Gretorex’s landlady.

“How can she help hearing those awful words a-ringing in her ears? Why they rings in mine, ever since yesterday! I’m sorry I did stay till the end. A friend warned me, so she did. She says to me, ‘Maria, you’ll enjoy every bit of it up to the jury coming back. But if I was you I’d leave the Court before the Judge puts on his black cap.’ I wish I’d done that now!”

As Enid advanced into the sitting-room, and saw Mrs. Gretorex’s figure leaning back in the deep grandfather’s chair, she thought for one moment--and to her it was a blessed moment--that her dear old friend was dead, that she had died, literally, of a broken heart, so rigid was the lonely looking figure, so calm and white the face, so pale the lips.

But Roger Gretorex’s mother was not dead, and hearing Enid’s footsteps, she opened her eyes.

“I want you to have something to eat, Mrs. Gretorex. Mr. Oram told me yesterday that he thought you might be allowed to see Roger to-day. You must keep up your strength.”

“I will,” said the other quietly. “But it’s an odd thing, Enid, when that kind soul brought in my cup of tea this morning I found I couldn’t swallow. Perhaps I can now. At any rate I’ll try.”

Enid came up a little closer to the big chair.

“I wonder if you would think it strange if I went and had a talk with Mr. Finch?” she said a little nervously.

“With Mr. Finch?” Mrs. Gretorex looked surprised.

“From something he said the other day, I gathered that he has some theory which is not shared by Mr. Oram. I should like to know what it is. Somehow I feel that there must be something we could do----”

There was such a fervour of revolt, of anguish, in the steady voice, that the older woman for one moment forgot her own agony.

She felt deeply moved; even she had not realised how much Enid cared. The girl had kept an entire curb over her feeling during the terrible days that the two had sat next to one another in Court.

She got up from her chair, and came close up to Enid Dent.

“I feel as if there was nothing left, for me at any rate, to do but to endure.”

“I feel,” cried the girl, “as if there was a great deal left to do! Mr. Oram is an old man, Mrs. Gretorex, and though he’s been so awfully good to us, I’ve had the feeling----” then she stopped.

“I know,” replied Mrs. Gretorex in a low voice. “I realise, too, that he believes that Roger did that awful thing.”

“But Mr. Finch,” said Enid eagerly, “knows that Roger is innocent! Would you mind my going and seeing him? He’s always at the office long before Mr. Oram arrives there in the morning.”

“You can do exactly what you think best. I trust you entirely; so, I know, does Roger.”

Twenty minutes later Enid Dent was sitting in the rather drab-looking waiting-room, lined with steel-bound boxes, where she had spent, during the last few weeks, many dreary, anxious minutes. But this time she had not long to wait, for Mr. Oram’s head clerk soon appeared, a look of surprise on his face.

“I’m afraid you’ll think I’ve come very early,” she said nervously. “But the truth is, Mr. Finch, I wanted to have a short talk with you. And I was anxious to see you before Mr. Oram arrived here this morning.”

“You come up now, at once, to Mr. Oram’s room, Miss Dent. He won’t be here to-day, at all.”

A feeling of relief swept over Enid Dent. She had a regard for Mr. Oram, but she was also rather afraid of him. And she resented keenly a fact which had become at once apparent to her--that he was convinced, even if most unwillingly, of his client’s guilt.

Enid had a direct, honest nature, as have so many people who yet do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves. So it was that when the two were together in Mr. Oram’s room, she began without any preamble:

“From something you said the other day, Mr. Finch, I understood that you believe there’s some as yet quite unsuspected mystery behind this story of Jervis Lexton’s death. If I am right, will you tell me what it is you do think? Also whether anything can be done to bring the truth to light before--” And then once more she repeated that word “before,” which may mean so very much or so very little in life.

Alfred Finch felt and looked uncomfortable. To make a remark in a casual way is very different from being pinned down, and asked what it is exactly that you meant by saying what you did. But the girl was looking at him with such anxious, appealing eyes, and, after all, if he was a fool, he was being a fool in good company, that of the great Sir Joseph Molloy himself.

Mr. Oram’s head clerk and the famous counsel had become friends over the Lexton case, and what Mr. Finch was about to expound to Enid Dent as his own theory was really Sir Joseph Molloy’s theory. Not, as he intended carefully to explain, as to what had certainly happened, but as to what might conceivably have happened, to provide an explanation of what seemed inexplicable--how, that is, Jervis Lexton had come by his death.

“You may be aware,” he began a little nervously, “that there is a section of the public, including whom I may call our most noted amateur criminologists, who are convinced that we needn’t go further than Mrs. Lexton herself. Their view is that, apart from Mr. Roger, no one else, except the lady who is now his widow, can have had the slightest motive for getting rid of poor Lexton. Now I don’t share that view at all!”

“Neither do I,” said Enid quickly. “We all know that Mrs. Lexton had every reason for wanting her husband to remain alive.”

“But what I do believe,” and a queer expression came over Alfred Finch’s shrewd face, “is that Mrs. Lexton knows a good deal more than she admitted yesterday in the witness-box. I can’t help suspecting that there is some man, a stranger to the case, but well known to her, who had some vital interest in compassing Jervis Lexton’s death. Far stranger things happen in real life than any novelist would dare to put in a story, Miss Dent. Men, aye, and women too, are more unscrupulous than any ordinary person would imagine. Even Mr. Oram would agree to that. If we can find among Mrs. Lexton’s admirers--and she has a goodish few--some wealthy man who is in love with her, _and who has easy access to any form of arsenic_, we might have something like new evidence to offer when the case comes up on appeal.”

“But if that is true,” said Enid quickly, “then the nurse must have known that Mr. Lexton had some other visitor within a few hours of his death--and the parlourmaid who gave evidence as to admitting Dr. Gretorex the afternoon before Mr. Lexton died must have known it too.”

Alfred Finch looked straight into the girl’s now flushed, anxious face.

“What is it,” he asked impressively, “that rules the whole world to-day?”

And, as he saw she looked bewildered, he snapped out the one word, “Money! What Mrs. Lexton and her lot call ‘the ready.’”

What did he mean? In what way could money have played a part in this sinister business?

His next words enlightened her.

“Money can do anything nowadays, for everybody wants money, and spends money as they never did before. Believe me, Miss Dent, no one, in these days, is incorruptible.”

“What a terrible thing to say--even to think!” exclaimed Enid.

“It may be terrible, but it’s the truth, Miss Dent! And it’s particularly true when one considers the people who were mixed up in this affair. All women, and poor themselves, mark you. I don’t mean to imply for a moment that they meant to connive at murder. My view is that their mouths, maybe, were shut with gold before they had any idea what it was that they were going to be asked to stay ‘mum’ about. But then? Well, then, they wisely, in their own interest, continued to keep their mouths shut!”

“I see,” said Enid slowly.

“I was very much struck by the demeanour of that Nurse Bradfield in the witness-box,” he went on eagerly. “Sir Joseph reduced her to a drivelling state of terror. Now, why was that? You remember, maybe, how he pressed her as to who else came to the flat besides Mr. Roger; and how at last she had to admit that several ladies and gentlemen came there, and that often she really didn’t know who they were! Now, isn’t that a singular thing? We have the master of the house lying ill--not ill enough to have a night nurse, but still, ill enough to have a nurse all day. And yet a lot of people come and go--to lunch, to play bridge, and to take Mrs. Lexton out in the evening! Now that, to me, sounds very odd, not to say suspicious.”

“I quite agree that it does seem strange and heartless,” said Enid in a troubled tone. “But I liked Nurse Bradfield. I thought her a truthful woman, though it was plain she was awfully frightened of Sir Joseph.”

“I never can understand why an honest witness should feel frightened when in the witness-box,” exclaimed Mr. Finch in a tone of contempt.

“Oh, I can understand it so well!” cried the girl. “I know I should be terrified, especially if Sir Joseph were cross-examining me as he cross-examined that poor woman.”

“Well, be that as it may, Miss Dent, my point is that it came out very clearly that a certain number of men, all friends and admirers of that pretty little lady, came in and out of the flat during the poor chap’s illness.”

“And you actually think that Mrs. Lexton----” and while she was seeking for the right word he broke in with:

“If my theory is correct, I am inclined to think that Mrs. Lexton must have a shrewd suspicion as to who the man was who did that terrible thing--and I shan’t be at all surprised if she makes what is commonly called a good marriage before the year is out!”

“But what an awful thing--to allow an innocent man----”

Again he cut across her words: “She’s a thoroughly selfish woman, and only thinks of herself. But capable of murder?” he shook his head. “Oh no, Miss Dent! The folk who are inclined to think that of her know but little about human nature. I don’t claim to know more of the set Mrs. Lexton lives in than one can gather from the newspapers, and perhaps I ought to say from proceedings in the Bankruptcy Court. But, though they’ll do almost anything for money, those sort of people stop short at murder, believe me.”

“Still, you do think it possible that Mrs. Lexton may be shielding a murderer?”

Mr. Finch hesitated. “That’s it exactly. I think she may be shielding a murderer. How did she strike you in the witness-box?”

“I thought her very clever,” said Enid Dent slowly. “Her one object was to produce a good impression, and she succeeded.”

Instinctively Mr. Finch lowered his voice.

“I watched her very carefully, and listened even more carefully, while she was in the witness-box, and I made up my mind that she believes Dr. Gretorex to be an innocent man. Did I say believe? I think she knows he is innocent.”

“I think another thing,” said Enid, and she, too, allowed her voice to drop.

“What’s that, Miss Dent?” Mr. Finch bent forward.

“I feel quite sure”--and suddenly her pale face became red--“that Roger suspects who did it. I think that’s why he wouldn’t give evidence.”

“God bless my soul,” exclaimed Mr. Finch, “I never thought of that! You may be right, after all. But if it’s true, well, then he’s----”

“Very quixotic?”

“No, Miss Dent. Saving your presence, I was going to say he’s a damn fool.”

Chapter Eighteen

That same morning, the morning after the conclusion of Gretorex’s trial, Ivy awoke late. For a moment she remembered nothing, for she had gone through a very terrible strain the previous day, a greater strain than she herself had been aware of, at the time.

And then, all at once she remembered--remembered everything, and a sense of something akin to ecstasy flooded her heart. She flung her white arms above her head and stretched herself out luxuriously. Then--for it was very cold--she snuggled down into bed again.

How marvellous to know that her ordeal was over. All over--all over! That from now on she need never see any of the people who had been connected with this awful episode in her life. Perhaps, though, she would make an exception as to Paxton-Smith, for he had been so awfully kind to her, and he admired her so much! His description of how brave and plucky she had been in the witness-box would surely delight Miles Rushworth. Yes, Paxton-Smith should remain her friend.

Meanwhile she would follow his advice. She would go away, that is, to the country for a few days, to the delightful cottage near Brighton belonging to Lady Flora Desmond. She could not go to-day, unluckily, for Lady Flora had lent the cottage to some tiresome people. But they would be leaving soon, and then she would go down there and have a thorough rest.

Ivy felt she wanted what some of her friends called “a rest cure,” after all she had gone through.

All at once there came a knock on the bedroom door--a knock, and a quick whispered conversation outside. Something, too, very like a giggle.

She called out sharply “Come in,” and the day maid came in with a broad grin on her young face.

“Cook thought maybe that you’d like to see the paper she takes in, ma’am. There’s such a beautiful picture of you in it!”

And on the pink silk eiderdown the maid put down two picture papers, the one that Ivy always glanced at every day, and another paper.

Why, yes--there was the picture, and a very good one, too. Ivy had been snapped by a Press photographer just as she had stood on the doorstep of Duke of Kent Mansion, a moment before she got into Paxton-Smith’s car. She gazed with pleasure at all the details of her becoming costume. What a good thing that she had bought that charming little model hat just before poor Jervis’s death. She had soon discovered that what is called “mourning headgear” is apt to be singularly unbecoming.

“It does look nice, ma’am, don’t it? Cook says as how you looked bewitching while you was giving evidence,” ventured the girl.

“I wasn’t thinking of how I was looking,” said Ivy.

And indeed this was the truth. As she had stood up there, the target of all eyes, she had only thought of her coming cross-examination by Sir Joseph Molloy.

And then the girl made a mistake, and she knew that she had done so as soon as she had said the words.

“It does seem sad about that poor Dr. Gretorex, don’t it?” she exclaimed.

For at once Ivy burst into tears--angry, frightened tears. It was too bad, too bad, when she herself had succeeded this morning in entirely banishing Roger from her mind, that he should be thus stupidly, cruelly, thrust into it again.

“Oh, ma’am, I’m so sorry! Please forgive me!” And the tactless young woman almost ran out of the room.

Nurse Bradfield came in to see what was the matter. She looked wan and worn. Unlike Ivy, she had not slept the previous night; unlike Ivy, the face of Roger Gretorex, especially his expression as he had uttered, in answer to the awful question, the quiet words, “Only that I am innocent,” rang in her ears.

She had felt then, and she still felt now, a most painful sensation of doubt.

Was it possible, was it conceivable, that Gretorex was innocent after all, and that her patient had secretly done himself to death?

Every nurse comes across strange and most unexpected happenings in the course of her work. And Nurse Bradfield, though in a sense she had had an uneventful career, had yet been more than once very much startled and surprised by the astonishing things people will sometimes do.

She sat down, now, on the bed, and put her arms round the slender figure, still shaken by angry, frightened sobs.

“I know how you’re feeling, Mrs. Lexton,” she whispered. “I, too, can’t get Dr. Gretorex out of my mind. But there’s still a chance, you know, that something may be found out, even now. I mean between now and his appeal. Mrs. Berwick told me last night that she knows some great friends of Sir Joseph Molloy, and that he honestly does believe Dr. Gretorex to be innocent. She says that Sir Joseph is going to leave no stone unturned to try to prove his innocence. He’s in a terrible state about it all, and he was very distressed at Dr. Gretorex refusing to give evidence on his own behalf.”

“But you think he did it, don’t you, nurse?”

Ivy lifted her tear-stained eyes and gazed at the older woman.

“I did think so,” muttered Nurse Bradfield. “And even now I can’t see any other explanation. You and I know quite well that Mr. Lexton was not the sort of man to do away with himself.”

“Of course he wasn’t!” exclaimed Ivy, with a touch of indignation.

The nurse sighed. “Such extraordinary things do happen in life,” she observed.

“What is it Sir Joseph Molloy thinks he can find out? Did Mrs. Berwick tell you that?” asked Ivy.

She put the question in a careless tone, but she really wanted to know; indeed she was very, very anxious to discover what it was that Sir Joseph Molloy meant to do.

“What he says he means to find out,” said the nurse, “is whether there wasn’t some other person in the world who had a motive for getting rid of Mr. Lexton, besides Dr. Gretorex. He’s got a sort of an idea that there must have been someone else--someone who’s not been thought of yet--someone whose name didn’t appear in the case.”

And then was heard a hesitating knock on the door, and the maid came in again, looking very much subdued.

On the silver salver lay what had become Ivy’s daily cable from South Africa.

She saw a curious look flash over Nurse Bradfield’s face. As a matter of fact, those daily cables were a source of much interest and speculation to the household, now composed, apart from Ivy, of three women. It was the more mysterious as Mrs. Lexton never left those thick telegrams lying about. The daily cable always disappeared within a comparatively short time of her receipt of the buff-coloured envelope.

Ivy did not open the envelope. She put it on a little table by the side of her bed, and went on talking and listening.

“Everyone in Court admired the way you gave your evidence, Mrs. Lexton. Mr. Paxton-Smith told me you were the best witness he had ever had. Indeed, he said that you were just perfection! Not too shy, and not too bold. So clear, too! Every word you said could be heard, even where I was sitting.”

And then the speaker added, with considerable heat, “Some of the people there seemed to me like hyenas! Blood--blood--blood--that’s what they wanted, the horrid ghouls! Why, there was a man just behind me who said he hoped that Sir Joseph would make mincemeat of you----”

“I know that some of them wanted that,” murmured Ivy.

“The story goes,” went on Nurse Bradfield, “that Dr. Gretorex begged Sir Joseph to leave you alone.”

“I wonder if he did?”

That had not occurred to Ivy. But now, of course, she knew this to be almost certainly the reason Sir Joseph had been so--so unlike what everyone had expected him to be.

And then there did come over her a little glimmer of gratitude. Yes, Roger certainly loved her. No one would ever care for her as he cared. She remembered, now, his having once said that he would go through any torture in order to save her a moment’s pain. Well? Poor Roger hadn’t really gone through torture exactly--that sort of thing has been given up long ago, luckily. Still, it was very touching that, even in his own time of danger, he had thought of her and of her reputation.

After Nurse Bradfield had left the room, and after Ivy’s light breakfast had been brought in and arranged on the bed-table, she broke open Rushworth’s cable.

My sister died yesterday. Sailing for home the day after to-morrow. Will keep you advised by wireless of exact date of my return. I have been thinking of you night and day.

Rushworth coming back now, almost at once? Small wonder that a feeling of ecstasy flooded Ivy Lexton’s whole being. She had gone through a terrible ordeal, but that which was already in sight would make up for everything.

She jumped out of bed and locked her door. Then she went over to the fireplace, and watched the flimsy sheets curl up and become thin and black in the flames. After the first, she had always burnt each of Rushworth’s cables as soon as she had read it through. Somehow it seemed to her safer to do so.

Unlocking the door, she rang for the maid to put on her bath, for she wanted to go out and telegraph to Miles Rushworth.

It was half-past ten when Ivy came back to the flat.

“There’s a young lady to see you in the drawing-room, ma’am,” said the maid.

Ivy walked into the room smiling, for she expected to see waiting for her one of the many women belonging to her old, idle, easy life. Why shouldn’t they go out together shopping, and then come back to lunch?

But the smile froze on her face, for it was a stranger who rose and confronted her. Certainly a stranger, and yet somehow she had a disturbing feeling that she had seen her visitor before, and in disagreeable circumstances.

Then all at once, with a feeling of sharp annoyance, she realised that this was the girl who had been sitting with Mrs. Gretorex during the concluding hours of Roger’s trial yesterday. And when she, Ivy, and Roger’s mother had met face to face in a corridor of the Old Bailey, the stranger had been there too.

“I hope you’ll forgive my coming in this way without having first asked if you would see me,” said Enid Dent. “But the matter is very urgent, Mrs. Lexton, and the time is short, very short, between now and Roger Gretorex’s appeal, otherwise I feel sure Mrs. Gretorex would have come herself. Unfortunately, she is ill to-day.”

As Ivy still said nothing, only looked at her with an expression of fear, and yes, of dislike, on her lovely face, Enid exclaimed desperately, “I am sure you would do anything to help Roger Gretorex, Mrs. Lexton?”

And then Ivy did what all through her life she had often done, when in doubt. She burst into tears.

“Of course, I’d do anything,” she sobbed, “anything I could do! But what can I do? I’ve gone through such an awful time. No one knows what I’ve gone through, or how miserable I’ve been. No one thinks of me!” she ended hysterically. “I feel as if I hadn’t a friend in the world----”

Enid went up close to her, and touched her on the arm.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a troubled tone. “I know how terrible it must have been for you yesterday.”

She felt ashamed of what she had been led to believe by Mr. Finch an hour ago. It seemed incredible to her that the poor little creature before her, now trembling with emotion, could have acted the cruel part Alfred Finch and Sir Joseph believed she was acting, shielding the real murderer of her husband, and condemning an innocent man to a frightful death.

Ivy saw that she had made a good impression, and she became gradually calm.

Her one object was to get rid of this tiresome girl quietly. It had been stupid, very stupid, of the maid to allow a stranger to come in and wait, without knowing anything of her business. After all, this girl didn’t look in the least like one of her, Ivy’s, smart friends. Enid looked, to her critic’s practised eyes, a country bumpkin dressed in a plain and by no means expensive, if well-cut, coat and skirt.

“I suppose,” she said politely, “that you’re poor Mrs. Gretorex’s companion?”

“Yes,” answered Enid, “I am her companion. I’ve known her all my life; and I’m very, very sorry for her.” And then her voice, too, broke.

“What is it that Mrs. Gretorex thinks I can do?” asked Ivy in a timorous voice.

As the girl, who was struggling with her tears, answered nothing to this: “Of course I’d do anything if I thought it could be of any good,” she concluded.

And then, suddenly, she had an inspiration.

“People seem to forget all about poor Jervis,” she said in a hurt tone. “After all, he was my husband, and I was very fond of him, Miss----?”

“Dent,” said the other quietly. “My name is Enid Dent.”

And then she moved a little farther away from the still fur-clad little figure, for those words, uttered in so pathetic a tone, had suddenly brought Roger before Enid Dent. Roger, God help him, had loved, perhaps still loved, this woman.

“Well, Miss Dent, no one ever thinks now about poor Jervis, do they?”

That had been a remark made to Ivy by Paxton-Smith a few days ago, and she had been struck by the truth of it.

Enid felt a tremor of discomfort flash across her burdened heart. It was quite true that though his mysterious death had formed the subject of a great and searching inquiry, none of them, now, gave any thought to Jervis Lexton, the unfortunate young man who had certainly been poisoned by someone masquerading as a friend.

“I do know how you must feel about that,” she said in a low voice. “But it’s only natural for Mrs. Gretorex, and the friends of Roger Gretorex, to be thinking of him rather than of your husband, Mrs. Lexton. You see, we who have known Roger all his life, are absolutely convinced that he is innocent.”

And then Ivy, whose nerves were on edge, suddenly made, in her own immediate interest, a mistake.

“Everyone _I_ see,” she said quickly, defensively, “feels quite sure that Roger Gretorex did do it. You must know that, Miss Dent, though of course I wouldn’t say so to his mother.”

“Does that mean that you”--Enid Dent took a step forward, and the other instinctively stepped back as she met the accusing look in the girl’s eyes--“yourself are convinced of his guilt, Mrs. Lexton?”

“I don’t think you have a right to ask me such a question!” She uttered the rebuke lightly, pettishly.

Why, oh! why, didn’t this tiresome, disagreeable girl go away? She had no business here. Besides, she was only a paid companion. Ivy had a great contempt for any woman earning her own living in a quiet, humdrum way.

A tide of anger was rising up in her heart, making her what she seldom was, really angry.

“It’s a hideous misfortune for me that I ever met Roger Gretorex!” she exclaimed. “And yet you heard what I said in the witness-box? I did try, indeed I did, to help Dr. Gretorex. What is more----”

Enid had moved away again. She was standing still now, a look of despair on her face.

“--Mr. Paxton-Smith told me I oughtn’t to say a word, and I promised him that I wouldn’t say a word to anyone ever, unless he was there too!”

Anger is very catching, as most of us know, and wrath had also risen up in Enid Dent’s heart. How agonising it was to know that it was this cruel, foolish, selfish, silly woman who had stolen the man she, Enid, loved, and who, she believed in her heart, had loved her, before some malign fate had thrown him in Mrs. Lexton’s way.

So it was that, when she saw Ivy begin sidling towards the door, with a quick movement she flung herself across the room and stood with her back against it, barring the way.

“Mrs. Lexton?”

She uttered the other’s name calmly, though she was now shaking all over.

“Yes, Miss Dent? I’m sure no good can come of our going on talking----”

“Not only do I believe, but certain people, whose opinion you no doubt would value far more than mine, believe too, that you know Roger Gretorex to be innocent!” cried Enid. “They are convinced that you are well aware who it was who craftily, cruelly, secretly poisoned your husband. I warn you here and now, that if that is true, the truth is going to be discovered!”

She stopped, ashamed of, and frightened at, her own emotion. She felt now, as if it were someone else who had uttered that passionate warning.

Ivy Lexton suddenly gave a stifled cry. Tottering forward she sank down on a chair, and, moaning, covered her face with her hands.

All at once, she could not have said why, perhaps it was a glimpse she caught of Ivy Lexton’s convulsed face, there flashed into the girl’s mind a certain dread suspicion; and much that had seemed inexplicable suddenly became clear.

Ivy slipped off the chair on to the floor, and lay there quite still.

Enid Dent opened the door.

“I am afraid,” she said quietly to the maid who had been in the hall obviously listening to what was going on inside the drawing-room, “that Mrs. Lexton has fainted.”

As the scared-looking young woman went to call Nurse Bradfield, who was then packing, for she was about to go on to a new case, Enid left the flat and, without waiting for the lift, she ran down the stairs.

Hailing a taxicab she threw the driver her address in Ebury Street. She felt extraordinarily excited, carried out of herself. Consciously she longed for the man who was driving her to go faster--faster! At last he drew up; she paid him off, put the latchkey in the lock, and then, shaking with excitement, she walked straight into the room where Mrs. Gretorex was still lying back in the big arm-chair.

“I think I know now,” she said in a stifled voice, “who poisoned Jervis Lexton, and you and I, Mrs. Gretorex, must try and think of a way in which we can get proof, proof--proof!”

Mrs. Gretorex looked up at the girl.

“Who is it you now suspect?” she asked slowly, “of having poisoned Jervis Lexton?”

Enid hesitated for a moment, then she said in a low voice, “His wife.”

“I have felt almost sure, from the first, that Ivy Lexton poisoned her husband,” said Mrs. Gretorex quietly.

Then she rose and, coming quite close up to the girl, she added: “What is more, I am convinced that Roger knows the truth now. That is the real reason why he begged Sir Joseph Molloy to be very careful as to what questions he put to Mrs. Lexton in his cross-examination.”

Mrs. Gretorex took Enid’s hand.

“You and I believe this terrible thing of Ivy Lexton. But it can do Roger no good to say what we believe. It would, even, probably, do him harm.”

“Does Mr. Oram know that you think her guilty?”

“Yes,” said Roger’s mother, and she sighed. “I told him just before the trial opened. He begged me most earnestly to put any idea of the kind out of my mind, as he felt convinced I was wrong. He pointed out to me that there was not what he called an iota of evidence connecting Mrs. Lexton with the crime. In fact, I saw that I dropped very very much in his estimation as a sensible woman when I told him of my more than suspicion, of my absolute conviction, that Mrs. Lexton had had some all-powerful motive for wishing her husband dead.”

“Surely we can discover what that was?”

Mrs. Gretorex shook her head. “She certainly did not wish to marry Roger--of that I feel quite sure. I hoped against hope that something might come out while Sir Joseph Molloy cross-examined her. But, of course, nothing did come out, and it is my conviction, Enid, that nothing ever will.”

That same day the fact that Roger Gretorex had made up his mind not to appeal appeared in the late editions of the evening papers. “It will only prolong the agony for my mother,” he had said to Mr. Oram. “And as for me, I am sufficiently a coward to long for it to be all over.”

And so they all--those who loved Roger, and she who feared him, together with the myriads of men and women who regarded him as a callous murderer, and who hoped that he would finally confess his crime--waited for the end.

Chapter Nineteen

And now there were but two days--to be accurate, but two nights--to the date fixed for Roger Gretorex’s execution. All those to whom the matter was of grave moment had given up hope, and, to the great relief of each member of what may be described as the outside circle of those concerned in the still mysterious story, there was something stoic in the resignation and self-control of both the mother and the son.

But Enid Dent showed many signs of the strain and agony she was enduring, and Sir Joseph Molloy felt quite unlike his powerful, jovial self. Even against his better judgment he still felt convinced that an awful miscarriage of justice was going to be enacted. His conviction actually affected the nerves of Sir Edward Law, the Home Secretary, who happened, unfortunately for himself, to be one of Sir Joseph’s oldest friends.

Sir Edward hoped most fervently that Gretorex would make a last-moment confession. Not that the Home Secretary really doubted the fact of the young man’s guilt. But he felt the kind of anxiety which must possess any sensitive, conscientious human being who has the onerous gift of life in his hand, if he knows that the mind of a friend he trusts as deeply as he did trust Sir Joseph’s powerful mind, is convinced of a condemned man’s innocence.

The execution had been fixed for a Thursday. Deliberately Sir Joseph arranged to cross to Calais on the Wednesday in order to meet his wife, who was coming back the next day from the south of France.

Though Lady Molloy was an invalid, a tiny, fragile little body, and no longer young, her husband adored her, and when he was parted from “the woman who owned him,” as he sometimes oddly expressed it, he seemed at times only half himself. His Eileen, so he told himself now, would know how to heal the ache at his heart.

For one thing, Lady Molloy was deeply religious in a happy childlike way. Heaven seemed to her a beautiful place, just hard by, and so she would naturally view Roger Gretorex’s terrible mode of exit from life as the certain gateway to a happier existence than he could have hoped for on this earth.

“The day after to-morrow--the day after to-morrow.”

Those four words seemed to beat themselves on Enid Dent’s brain. Sometimes would come a variant--“What can be done, surely something can be done, before the day after to-morrow?”

Early on the Tuesday morning she wandered out of doors and walked for miles in the cold, still empty streets. At last she went into Westminster Abbey for a while, and then into the vast Catholic Cathedral. But she found she could not pray. She felt as if abandoned by God, as well as by man.

Reluctantly, she at last turned her feet towards Ebury Street. She shrank from seeing Mrs. Gretorex. To Enid there was something horribly unnatural in the calmness and appearance of strength shown by Roger’s mother. It was, as the girl knew, by Roger’s plainly expressed desire that they were going home to-morrow down to Sussex. By his wish, also, they would be in the parish church, which was actually an enclave in the grounds attached to what was still his house, when nine o’clock struck out his hour of doom on Thursday.

As Enid came in to their sitting-room Mrs. Gretorex held out an open letter.

“This has just reached me--sent on from Mr. Oram’s office this morning. It’s from the old woman who used to look after Roger.” And as the other took it from her, “Rather a touching letter, but I don’t feel I can bring myself to go to Ferry Place, my dear. I went there once, and spent such a happy, happy day with Roger. This Mrs. Huntley waited on us. Perhaps you will go instead of me? See what she says.”

Enid took the letter, and this is what she read:

6 Ferry Place.
_Tuesday._

Dear Madam,

I don’t know what to do about the doctor’s things, and I should be glad if you could spare time to come here. Also there is something on my mind that I’d like to tell you, Mrs. Gretorex. But I gave my word, I even swore my oath to the doctor not to. So perhaps I oughtn’t to.

I’ve tried to keep everything tidy, but the police pulled everything about so.

Yours respectfully,
Bertha Huntley.

“I wonder what she wants to tell you?”

“I can form a shrewd guess,” said Mrs. Gretorex in a low voice.

The girl looked at her with eager eyes. “It may be something tremendously important,” she exclaimed.

The older woman shook her head.

“It might have had a certain importance before the trial, but it would have no importance now. I have no doubt that what Mrs. Huntley wants to tell me is----”

Then she hesitated, for Mrs. Gretorex was an old-fashioned gentlewoman, who considered that certain things which unfortunately do happen in life should not be dwelt on, much less mentioned, by “nice” women.

“What do you mean, Mrs. Gretorex? Do tell me!”

The girl was looking at her with perplexed, unhappy eyes. Perhaps, after all, it would be better to tell her the truth? It might cause her to forget Roger more quickly than she could otherwise do.

“I have very little doubt, Enid, that Mrs. Lexton, at one time, often went to Ferry Place. Naturally Roger bound the old woman to silence. He may have even made her swear that she would never reveal a fact so damaging to Ivy Lexton’s reputation. I don’t know if a knowledge of what I feel sure was the truth would have made any difference, one way or the other, at the trial. In any case, it won’t make any difference now.”

“May I go off to Ferry Place now?” asked Enid eagerly.

“Do, if you like. But be careful what you say, child.” She gazed into the girl’s flushed face. “I think we ought to do what we know Roger would wish us to do--and not to do.”

And then, with a slight break in her even voice, she quoted the fine line--“For silence is most noble to the end.”

As Enid Dent walked with what, to one passing her, would have appeared to be the happy, eager steps of youth towards Ferry Place, she more than once felt strongly inclined to turn back.

The thought of going to the house where Roger Gretorex had lived and worked during the months when he and she had become so entirely estranged was bitter to her. Also, she now had to endure the incessant talking and the kindly meant, but to her almost intolerable, sympathy of the landlady of Mrs. Gretorex’s lodgings. The thought that she would now endure more sympathy, and more garrulous talk, on the part of Mrs. Huntley was well nigh unendurable. Why not go back and write a nice letter to the old woman, explaining that Mrs. Gretorex was ill, but wished Mrs. Huntley to know how deep was her gratitude for everything she had done for her dear son?

And then, just as she was going to turn around, Enid felt ashamed of her strained nerves. If this old woman had been fond of Roger, then she must be very unhappy now.

She had to ask the way twice to Ferry Place, and each time she asked the question she saw a peculiar look come over the stranger’s face, showing, plainly enough, that he had recalled the fact that this was where Roger Gretorex had lived, the man who had committed murder for the sake of the woman he loved. The name of the obscure thoroughfare had been constantly mentioned, bandied to and fro, during Gretorex’s trial.

Enid soon found the double row of shabby little houses. It was strange to remember that Roger had lived for over a year in this sordid-looking place.

She walked slowly down the middle of the roadway till she reached No. 6. It looked just a little cleaner and “better class” than the houses on each side of it.

She knocked, and the door was opened almost at once, revealing a grey-haired, sad-faced old woman, who, before the visitor could speak, said sharply, “You’ve made a mistake. No one lives here now.”

“I’ve come from Mrs. Gretorex,” said Enid in a low voice.

And then the door, which had been nearly closed in her face, was opened widely.

“Come in, miss. Come in, do!” and the old woman opened a door to the left, and showed the visitor into what had been Roger Gretorex’s consulting-room. It was bare and poor-looking, but the girl, with a stab of pain, saw at once a small piece of furniture which had always stood in what was still called “the day nursery” at Anchorford Hall.

“Mrs. Gretorex is ill, or she would have come herself. But she has given me a message for you, Mrs. Huntley. She wishes me to tell you how grateful--how grateful----”

And then all at once Enid Dent broke down, and burst into a storm of tears.

She had not so “let herself go,” at any rate not in the day-time, since the end of Roger Gretorex’s trial. But somehow now, with this stranger, she didn’t care. It was such a comfort to have a good cry, and something seemed to tell her that this sad, anxious-looking old woman would understand, and sympathise with, her grief.

Mrs. Huntley pushed the sobbing girl gently down into the worn leather arm-chair in which Gretorex would sometimes put a delicate-looking woman patient--the sort of patient who did not care to go into the surgery.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Huntley in a troubled voice, “that you was the doctor’s young lady, miss?”

It somehow comforted Enid to hear those simple words, uttered in so quiet, if pitying a tone.

“I think I was,” she sobbed. “Indeed, I am sure I was--though that was a long time ago, Mrs. Huntley.”

“I know,” came the low-toned answer. And the old woman did know, perhaps better than anyone else in the world, why Roger Gretorex had left off thinking of the girl who now sat, the picture of despair, before her.

Enid suddenly got up. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.

“And now,” she said, “let me deliver the rest of my message, Mrs. Huntley. Mrs. Gretorex knows how good you were to her son, and she wants me to tell you that a little later on she would like you to come down to Anchorford, for she does want to see you.”

“Later on?” echoed the old woman in a strange voice. “But that would be too late, miss. I has to see Mrs. Gretorex to-day for it to be of any good. Can’t you take me to her? Not that I likes to leave the house alone. I never do leave it--not since I got the message from Mr. Oram that I was to regard myself as caretaker, that is.”

“I am afraid you can’t see Mrs. Gretorex to-day,” said Enid firmly. “But I’ll give her any message, and--and you can trust me, Mrs. Huntley, you really can!”

“I wonder if I can? I wonder if I dare?”

“Have you anything to say that we don’t already know?” she asked.

“Yes, I have, miss. But in telling it I may be doing wrong.”

“D’you mean something about Dr. Gretorex? Something that might, even now, make a difference?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell. I fear me it may be too late.”

“Let me judge of that,” said Enid Dent.

She had become quiet, collected, though she was filled with a feeling of suspense and, she dared not call it “hope.”

“Shall I tell you?” said Mrs. Huntley as if asking herself the question. And then, all at once, she answered it, “Yes, surely I will!”

Alfred Finch was reading a copy of an old complicated will. But though he was trying to concentrate on the business in hand, he found his mind straying persistently to the prison cell where Roger Gretorex sat waiting for the morning of the day after to-morrow. For one thing, he had heard by a side wind that the warder who had Gretorex in his special charge believed him innocent, and this made a great impression on him. That warder had had charge of over thirty men condemned to death, and this was the first time he had ever believed one of them to have been innocent of the crime for which he was to suffer death.

The telephone bell at his elbow rang.

“Miss Dent is on the line, Mr. Finch. Can you speak to her? She says it’s very urgent.”

“Put her through at once.”

And then he heard an eager, quivering voice, “Is that Mr. Finch? Can you come at once, Mr. Finch, to 6 Ferry Place? I believe I’ve got some new evidence.”

“New evidence?”

Mr. Finch, though he was alone, shook his head. Had he not himself done everything that was in the power of mortal man to procure new evidence in the last three weeks, and had he not entirely failed?

“I don’t wish to say more over the telephone, but can you come now, at once, to take a statement from Dr. Gretorex’s day maid, Mrs. Huntley?”

Mrs. Huntley? Why, that was the old caretaker woman! He remembered distinctly reading over the record of her short, colourless, unimportant interview with Inspector Orpington.

Mrs. Huntley could have nothing new to say of the slightest value. Stop, though--she probably knew certain facts which might have been regarded as greatly to Mrs. Lexton’s discredit, had they come out at the trial. Facts which would certainly have added pungency to Sir Joseph Molloy’s speech for the defence. But Mrs. Huntley could have nothing to reveal that could make any real difference, now, to the fate of Roger Gretorex.

However, if only because he had come to like and respect Mrs. Gretorex’s young friend, Mr. Finch made up his mind he would do what Enid Dent desired.

“I’ll be with you within twenty minutes,” he called out.

“Be as quick as you can. I’m so frightened, Mr. Finch.”

“Frightened?” he repeated, surprised.

“Yes.” The voice dropped. “Supposing Mrs. Huntley were to die, suddenly, before you’ve heard what she’s got to say? I dare not tell you what it is over the telephone. But it is very important----”

Now Mr. Finch thought so little of what he was going to do, and, presumably, hear, that he simply left word for Mr. Oram that he had had to go out. And when he reached Westminster, he did not dismiss his taxicab; he left it at the end of Ferry Place.

Enid Dent stood waiting for him at the open door of the little house, and he noted at once the strained, excited look on her face.

Had she been a young man, and not a young woman, Alfred Finch would have exclaimed, “Come, come! What’s all this pother about?” But as it was, he looked at her very kindly, and made up his mind that he would “let her down” as gently as might be.

“I hope she’ll tell you all she told me,” murmured Enid as he shut the door. “Mrs. Lexton told a lie when she said she had never been here but once, and then with a woman friend. Mrs. Huntley swore to Roger Gretorex that she would say nothing about that, and she feels that she is breaking her oath. But I doubt if she realises herself the fearful importance of something else she told me, something Roger may suspect, but which only she actually saw.”

And then she opened the door of the consulting-room.

Mrs. Huntley was sitting all in a heap in a chair, staring before her. She looked up when the two came in, but she did not get up.

“Here is Mr. Finch. I want you to tell him exactly what you told me.”

“You tell him, miss,” muttered the old woman. “I’ve told you everything and--and I feels very upset.”

“Mrs. Huntley is ready to swear,” said Enid quietly, “that she once found Mrs. Lexton alone in the surgery here, with a jar labelled arsenic standing on the table before her.”

Alfred Finch, startled, looked hard at the old woman. Was she telling the truth, or had she invented this ingenious story?

“When did that happen?” he asked quietly. “Is there any way in which you can fix the date of that occurrence, Mrs. Huntley?”

She looked up at him. “Yes,” she said dully. “’Twas the last time Mrs. Lexton ever had supper here. The doctor got a messenger boy, and sent him up to a grand shop in Piccadilly for some cold fish--sole, I thinks it was--done up in a newfangled fashion. Also there was a game pie, likewise an ice.”

“But how does that fix the date in your mind?” asked Alfred Finch rather impatiently.

“I can’t fix it. But you could, sir, from the messenger boys’ office. I heard one of them boys once tell the doctor that they kep’ all their receipts. ’Twas early last summer when that happened.”

He felt suddenly convinced that she at least believed she was telling the truth.

“The last time Mrs. Lexton had supper here?” It was that statement which in a sense impressed him. And had he been another kind of man he would undoubtedly have explained, “But you yourself signed a statement declaring that Mrs. Lexton had never been here, at 6 Ferry Place, excepting on one occasion to tea?”

But, instead of saying that, he observed encouragingly, “Now listen to me, Mrs. Huntley. You say, I notice, ‘the last time.’ Would Mrs. Lexton have been here to supper as many, say, as three or four times?”