Chapter IX: Part 9

“Much oftener than that!” exclaimed the old woman, rousing herself. “At one time, Mrs. Lexton was here constant. She’d come in just for ten minutes. ’Nother time, maybe, for a couple of hours. She’d ’phone first, to see if the doctor’ud be in. Mostly I couldn’t help knowing about it, though the doctor always made an excuse to get me out of the place before she come.”

“And on that last occasion, what exactly was it that happened? Are you sure this jar of arsenic was on the table, in front of Mrs. Lexton?”

In his eagerness he came and flung himself across a chair, close to the old woman.

“I’m sure ’twas there, though I don’t know how it come there, excepting that the doctor had maybe some medicine to make up. I come in to clear up, and as I puts my key in the surgery door--that’s our back-way in, sir--she didn’t hear me. When she did, she was awfully put about. I begged her pardon, and I went away. And when I come round to the front of the house, I saw the doctor letting a man out. That was why Mrs. Lexton was alone, then, in the surgery. She was waiting for the doctor, maybe to get her a cab. He often did that.”

“I suppose you can give me nothing that would afford any corroboration as to what you have just told me? I mean that would make anyone know that you are now telling the truth? _I_ believe you, Mrs. Huntley, but you know that, in a matter of this sort, belief doesn’t go very far. People want proof.”

“I knows that. But I can’t say no more than I have said.”

“Is there nothing? Think, Mrs. Huntley!” exclaimed Enid Dent. “Did you never tell anyone outside that you’d found Mrs. Lexton in the surgery under such curious circumstances?”

“I give the doctor my word I’d never tell on either of them. He said I could do a great thing for him in doing that, and I’ve kep’ my word till to-day.”

And then Alfred Finch had something like an inspiration.

“Of course, I know the police made a thorough search of this house,” he observed. “But I ask myself, Mrs. Huntley, if they overlooked anything--_anything in the way of a letter or letters?_” And he looked very hard at the old woman.

Mrs. Huntley blinked at him, and for the first time she looked uneasy and ashamed.

“I’ve got summat,” she said in a low reluctant voice. “Summat I’ve no business to have. It’s two love-letters Mrs. Lexton wrote to the doctor. As was his way, poor young gentleman, he tore them up in little pieces, and----”

“You pieced them together,” observed Mr. Finch pleasantly.

Enid Dent gave a gasp, as he went on:

“If you can produce those letters, I think I can promise you, Mrs. Huntley, that Dr. Gretorex will not hang the day after to-morrow. They, together with a sworn statement made by you before a Commissioner of Oaths, will provide what is called ‘new evidence.’ I want you to go with me now into the surgery, to tell me exactly where Mrs. Lexton was standing when you surprised her. You are sure that she was alone?” he added quickly.

“She was quite alone,” said Mrs. Huntley positively. “I come in softly like, and there she was! I can show you exactly where she was standing.”

She got up and led the way down the passage, and through the two doors which shut off the surgery from the house.

“Is everything here just as it was?” asked Mr. Finch quickly.

“No, sir. They took away everything as was in that cupboard, but they left the books.”

He glanced up at the row of shabby volumes in the hanging bookcase, but made no comment.

“Is that the same table where stood the jar labelled arsenic?”

Mrs. Huntley put her work-worn hand on a certain spot on the deal table.

“The jar was here; the light was full on it, and I saw it plain as plain.”

And then she acted, or, rather, enacted, the scene with some spirit, making Enid Dent stand exactly where Ivy Lexton had stood.

“I noticed particular how she was dressed,” she went on eagerly. “She always dressed very dainty-like, lovely clothes they was! And she had the most peculiar looking bag I ever did see. ’Twas exactly like mother-of-pearl. Lovely it was! I noticed it when she turned round. Says she, ‘Why, Mrs. Huntley, how you did startle me,’ or something like that, sir.”

Alfred Finch was writing down every word that came out of her mouth. He was one of those men who never lose a chance, and he had invented a kind of shorthand for himself. Everything the woman had said since he had come into the room had been put on record by him.

“And now,” he said quietly, “I’ll trouble you to show me those two letters.”

Finch noticed that Mrs. Huntley gave just an imperceptible glance towards the girl who stood a little aside, gazing into vacancy, as if her thoughts were far away, as indeed they were--with Roger Gretorex in his prison cell.

“Yes, sir, I’ll go and get the letters, but I do hope Dr. Gretorex won’t ever know I did such a thing as that, sir? I was very attached to the doctor, and that made me feel curious, I suppose. I oughtn’t to have acted so, sir; I knew I was doing wrong.”

“All I can say now is, thank God you did do wrong, Mrs. Huntley! But don’t you worry--we won’t let him ever know you did what you did. After all, anyone who found those pieces might have put them together, eh? Why people don’t burn compromising documents always beats me! I’ve got a cab at the end of the street, and I want you to come along this very minute to a Commissioner of Oaths. I’ve got all you’ve told me in black and white. You’ll only have just to repeat word for word what I’ve got down here before the gentleman, and then swear it’s true.”

“But do you think I ought to leave the house, sir?”

“We can leave Miss Dent here, while I go on to your place to get those letters.”

When, within a quarter of an hour, the three were standing outside the queer little office of a Commissioner of Oaths, with whom Alfred Finch happened to be acquainted, Mr. Finch said something which surprised Enid Dent. “I think you’d better not come in here with us,” he muttered. “You see, it’s better, in such a case, to have the witness alone. Prevents her being nervous.”

She did not guess the truth, which was that, in the few minutes he had been away with the old woman, she had spoken more freely than she had cared to do before the girl whom she regarded as Gretorex’s “young lady.” And some of the things she had then told him Alfred Finch determined should be embodied in her statutory declaration. Mr. Finch was keenly alive to the value of prejudice. He was aware that the Home Secretary was a man of rigid, some would have said too rigid, moral principle.

So it was with considerable satisfaction that he had exclaimed, after reading through the two letters, “My word! Mrs. Lexton’s what _I_ call a hot cup of tea. Eh? Mrs. Huntley?”

Solemnly she had nodded her head. She had always known that such was the fact, though she wouldn’t perhaps have put it in just those words, for she was a refined, delicate-natured old woman.

Chapter Twenty

The morning after these events had taken place, the Home Secretary, Sir Edward Law, was moving about his fine room in Whitehall. He felt restless and thoroughly ill at ease, and that, although he was a statesman noted for his calm and cool temperament.

Within a few moments from now he expected his door to open and three persons to be shown in. First there would be a solicitor named John Oram, whose name he vaguely knew as that of a man of the highest standing in his profession, and who, the year before, had been President of the Law Society. Mr. Oram was the legal adviser of Roger Gretorex, a man convicted of murder, whose execution had been fixed to take place the following morning at nine o’clock. Then Sir Joseph Molloy, the most famous advocate of the day, known by the cynically minded as “the murderer’s friend,” who had defended Roger Gretorex at the Old Bailey would accompany Mr. Oram, though his presence could not be regarded as being quite in order. However, Sir Joseph was a very old friend of the Home Secretary, and he had pleaded urgently to be allowed to come this morning. The Judge, Mr. Justice Mayhew, who had tried Roger Gretorex, was the third visitor expected, his presence at the forthcoming conference being, very properly, regarded as essential.

An odd thing had happened only the previous day in connection with this Gretorex case. Sir Edward Law had received an envelope, marked “Private,” and containing a letter signed “Roger Gretorex.” With it, a plain piece of paper bore the following words: “The enclosed was written to Mrs. Lexton only last November, after the beginning of Jervis Lexton’s illness. It reads like the letter of an innocent man.”

That touching, in its way noble, love-letter had much impressed him, and had added a note of real mystery to a story with all the details of which he was by now painfully familiar.

At last Sir Edward stopped in front of his writing-table. There, in a place by themselves, stood five white cards. Each was marked with a name and a date; and they formed a perpetual reminder that four men and one woman were now lying under sentence of death. For the date on each of those death-cards was the day on which the person named was to suffer the last penalty of the law.

The Home Secretary’s eyes became fixed on the card bearing the name of Roger Gretorex, the young man of gentle birth who had been sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for the murder of one Jervis Lexton. And, as he gazed at the rather unusual name, the Minister, in whose hands the fate of these men and one woman still reposed, asked himself, with a tightening of the heart, whether Sir Joseph Molloy might not be right after all in his belief that there had been a grave miscarriage of justice.

Sir Edward Law was a man with a high sense of duty. At first he had naturally accepted the verdict at the trial as conclusive of Gretorex’s guilt, and he had daily expected to hear the news that there had been a full confession, especially after he learnt that the condemned man had refused to enter an appeal. But he had been unwillingly impressed by Sir Joseph Molloy’s strong conviction of his client’s innocence, and now he understood that certain extraordinary new evidence was to be laid before him this morning, at what was indeed the eleventh hour.

That was why, as late as the day before, the Home Secretary had conscientiously read once more all the documents, and they were many, connected with what had been called “The Lexton Mystery.” He had felt it to be his plain duty thus to prepare himself for the critical examination which it would be his business to apply to this new evidence.

And yet? And yet, he could not imagine what new evidence could possibly be adduced of a nature strong enough to upset the apparently conclusive case built up against Roger Gretorex at the trial.

The door opened, and Sir Edward’s principal private secretary came in.

“Sir Joseph Molloy to see you, sir, by appointment. And there is another man with him.”

Thus announced, Sir Joseph Molloy, who was followed by Alfred Finch, entered the room and, after greeting his old friend, the Home Secretary, came at once to business.

“Mr. Oram is unfortunately ill, so I have ventured to bring in his stead his head clerk, Mr. Finch, who has had all the threads of the Gretorex case in his hands. Indeed, it is to Mr. Finch that I believe we owe the proof of a fearful miscarriage of justice. I hope he will be able to convince you, Sir Edward, of the innocence of his most unfortunate client, Roger Gretorex. ‘Murder, though it hath no tongue, will speak!’” added Sir Joseph in a dramatic tone.

The Home Secretary slightly raised his eyebrows. Sir Joseph was going just a little bit too fast, as he sometimes did, especially when he had any kind of audience. But the famous advocate realised that he was not going quite the right way to work, for quickly he changed his tone:

“I think, Sir Edward, that after you have seen the statutory declaration made by a certain person who was closely connected with Gretorex’s London life, as well as other new evidence which Mr. Finch is about to lay before you, you will agree that there is a strong case for, at any rate, the postponement of Roger Gretorex’s execution.”

And then the door of the room opened again, and the Judge who had tried the Lexton case came in.

Mr. Justice Mayhew appeared outwardly his usual calm and dignified self. But within he was full of interest, and even a certain excitement. Unlike the Home Secretary, he thought nothing of Sir Joseph Molloy’s belief in his client’s innocence; what had profoundly impressed him had been the condemned man’s refusal to appeal.

A few moments later the three men--for Alfred Finch was standing a little aside, he had done his part and he knew the documents which he had brought with him almost by heart--were gazing with intense curiosity at Mrs. Huntley’s statutory declaration. Each, in turn, read the pasted-up fragments of Ivy Lexton’s two passionate love-letters. They belonged to an early period of her friendship with Roger Gretorex, and each letter proposed a meeting at Ferry Place. On each occasion she had chosen an evening, or rather a night, when her husband was to be with an old friend who had a fishing place some way from London.

And then the Home Secretary took out of a drawer, and handed to the Judge, Gretorex’s own piteous letter to Ivy Lexton, the letter which had remained so long hidden in Mrs. Berwick’s desk.

It took quite a little while for Sir Edward Law and Mr. Justice Mayhew to make themselves fully acquainted with what had been laid before them. And then they looked at one another in silence for a moment. As for Sir Joseph, he wisely said nothing, though he was longing intensely to express something of the triumph and exultation which filled his heart.

“I read a full report of the case over again yesterday,” said the Home Secretary. “There seemed to me, then, no doubt as to the guilt of Roger Gretorex. But this Mrs. Huntley’s report of what she swears she saw the very day before, it is now ascertained, Jervis Lexton had his first attack of illness, does, I admit, entirely alter the complexion of everything. But I should not have attached very great importance to a statement which rests on the word of one person, who, if she tells the truth now, certainly lied before, had we not also these three letters. They prove that Mrs. Lexton has committed gross perjury.”

As the two men he was addressing remained silent, he went on: “I suppose the police made a thorough search of the flat in which Jervis Lexton met his death?”

And then all at once Alfred Finch took a hand.

“No, Sir Edward, the flat was not searched,” he answered deferentially.

“Are you sure of that?”

“Quite sure. It is not usual to institute a search unless there is cause for suspicion against a person actually living in the house or flat where the murder has been committed. Now, the first C.I.D. man, who was in charge of the preliminary inquiries, undoubtedly formed the definite opinion that Roger Gretorex had poisoned Jervis Lexton. From his point of view there was no need to go further, the more so as his view was confirmed by a conversation he had with Gretorex just after he had taken a statement from Mrs. Lexton. The inspector, a day or two later on, interviewed Mrs. Huntley. You have that first statement of hers, gentlemen, in that bundle of papers I have laid down over there, marked ‘I.’ Mrs. Huntley then perjured herself, apparently because she had made a solemn promise to Dr. Gretorex to reveal nothing as to his association with Mrs. Lexton. She was, of course, quite unaware, at the time, of the fearful injury she was doing her employer.”

The Home Secretary opened the bundle marked “I.” He read through first the notes which Inspector Orpington had made during his first interview with Ivy Lexton--that interview during which she had gone out of her way to volunteer the fact that Roger Gretorex entertained for her a hopeless, unrequited passion.

Sir Edward next read most carefully again Mrs. Lexton’s two letters to Gretorex, as well as the letter which had reached him anonymously only yesterday.

“This Mrs. Lexton appears to be, in any case, a most hypocritical and abandoned woman,” he observed tartly.

Sir Joseph Molloy laughed a merry, hearty, boyish laugh, and Mr. Justice Mayhew looked round at him with an expression of shocked disgust on his stern face.

But “divil a bit,” as he said to himself, did Sir Joseph care for that.

“Do you agree,” said Sir Edward Law, looking at the Judge, “that these various documents provide sufficient reason for further inquiries?”

Mr. Justice Mayhew waited for what seemed a very long time, both to Sir Joseph and to Alfred Finch. Then reluctantly he answered:

“Yes, I think we have certainly cause here for the execution to be postponed, and for further inquiries to be made.”

“Now that we are on what I may term the right track,” exclaimed Sir Joseph, “I trust that my unhappy friend Roger Gretorex will not be allowed to languish in the cell of a condemned felon a moment longer than is absolutely necessary?”

The great advocate felt that he had now done all he could, and he was well aware that he had only been admitted to this conference by favour. And so, after a word of thanks to his old friend, and a sly look of triumph at the Judge, he went away, taking Alfred Finch with him, and leaving the Home Secretary and Mr. Justice Mayhew alone together.

Inspector Orpington looked not only serious but also very grim, as, early that afternoon, and accompanied by the same colleague as had been with him here before, he rang the bell of Mrs. Lexton’s flat.

He felt extremely incensed for, turn the facts round in his mind as he might, there was no doubt that the childishly simple-looking, lovely little woman had completely taken him in. She had certainly, as he put it to himself, bamboozled him to the top of her bent.

Yet, even now, he found it almost impossible to believe that Ivy Lexton had poisoned her husband. Even so, he had been very much startled and impressed, not so much by Mrs. Huntley’s new statement, for he knew her to be a liar. No, what had astounded him had been Ivy’s letters to Roger Gretorex. Though these two letters had been written at a time when the writer was passionately in love with her correspondent, they revealed quite a different type of woman from what everyone connected with the case had taken her to be.

Inspector Orpington had also been unwillingly impressed by the letter written by Gretorex to Ivy in evident answer to one in which she had begged him to leave off coming to see her. The date, that of November the 6th, inscribed on Gretorex’s letter, proved that she had written the note to which it had been the answer after she had started her cruel work of poisoning her husband, if indeed she had poisoned her husband. The inspector realised that the letter was what might have been called a bull point in the writer’s favour. It breathed sincerity in every line.

It seemed a long time, to the two men standing there, before the door of the flat was opened by the cook. She looked surprised when she saw the inspector standing there, and then she smiled amiably.

“Want to see Mrs. Lexton?” she inquired. And, as he nodded, “Then want will be your master! She’s away in the country, and not coming back yet awhile.”

Orpington had already walked through into the hall.

“All alone in the flat?” he asked casually.

“I am this minute. There don’t seem any reason for keeping a young girl here all day just to do nothing,” said the woman tolerantly. “She works pretty hard when Mrs. Lexton is at home, that I will say.”

“Where is Mrs. Lexton staying?”

“I’ve got it down on a bit of paper. It’s near Brighton. A place belonging to the Lady Flora something or other. I’ll go and get it.”

“Wait a sec. We’ve come on what isn’t a very pleasant job, cook. We’ve got to search this place of yours.”

“Search this place?” Cook looked taken aback. “Whatever for?”

As no answer was vouchsafed to that question, “I’ll just go and tidy my room then,” she exclaimed. “I’ve been taking things easy since Mrs. Lexton went away. Where will you begin? How about the dining-room just here?”

“All right. We’ll begin with the dining-room, and work down towards the kitchen.”

He added in a perfunctory tone, “No need to tell you to hide nothing, eh, cook?”

“There’s nothing to hide!” she exclaimed with some heat. “Everything’s always left open. Mrs. Lexton isn’t a lady to lock up her jewellery, like some do. She trusts us, and we are worthy of the trust, same as everyone is who is trusted.”

“If that’s so ’twill make our job easy. Then there’s no lock-up at all?” and he looked at her rather hard.

“I keeps my box locked up, but you’re welcome to the key!”

“Don’t you be afraid. We’ll let your box alone. I meant, is there no lock-up this end of the flat?”

She waited a moment. “There’s half the big hanging cupboard in Mrs. Lexton’s bedroom always kept locked, just because there’s nothing in it. She keeps all her fine clothes--my, and she has got a lot, fit to stock a shop with!--in a little room that no one uses, next door to the bathroom.”

“Have you got the key of that part of the hanging cupboard?”

“I’ve never even seen it. But I expect it’s about somewhere. Maybe in the dressing-table drawer.”

It takes a long time to search a room thoroughly, and by the time the two men had done with the dining-room and the drawing-room, they felt tired.

“Perhaps we’d better do Mrs. Lexton’s room next? Not that I expect to find anything there. The room in which that poor chap died was searched, and thoroughly too, though not till after the post-mortem.”

Cook brought the bit of paper on which Ivy had written down her country address. Then she went off again into her kitchen.

The two men walked, in a rather gingerly way, into Ivy Lexton’s charming bedroom.

There the searchers had an easy task, for everything was unlocked, as the cook had said it would be.

But suddenly Orpington exclaimed, “Why, this must be the room where, according to that good old soul, there’s a lock-up? I’d forgotten that! It’s the half of this big cupboard. Seen any keys about?”

The other shook his head.

Orpington, stepping back, looked dubiously at the big handsome inlaid piece of furniture. It was a fine bit of early Victorian cabinet work, and had belonged to the mother of the Miss Rushworth whose room this was. Though it was not in modern taste, Inspector Orpington thought it a beautiful object.

“I wonder if we’ve any call to force this lock?” he muttered to himself. “I wouldn’t like to hurt that cupboard in any way. It’s a good piece----”

“I bet you I can open it all right without doing it a bit of harm,” said the other man confidently.

He went up to the cupboard. Then he did something to the lock with a bit of wire he happened to have in his pocket, and--the big door swung open.

Orpington came forward quickly. He peered into the mahogany-lined cavity. It was empty, save for a shabby-looking red-leather despatch-box, on which, so faded as to be practically indecipherable, were embossed three gilt letters.

“That’s a rummy looking thing! One wouldn’t expect Mrs. Lexton would have such an object as this about,” and he lifted the despatch-box out of the cupboard.

It was surprisingly light.

“I wonder if she kept Gretorex’s love-letters in there,” said the other with a laugh. “If so, we may find something useful, eh?”

Orpington shook the box. Though it was so light he could feel that there was something in it which rolled about.

“You won’t find it as easy to open this box as you did that cupboard,” he observed, “but it has to be done.”

“The only way we could open this,” said the sergeant, decidedly, “would be with a kitchen knife, unless they’ve got a chisel.”

“You go and get what you can from the old woman.”

A minute or two later the man came back. “She’s in her room tidying up,” he said with a grin, “so I just took this without saying ‘by your leave.’” And he held up a short stout kitchen knife.

“You just lock that door,” said Orpington quickly.

And then, the two men, by exerting a great deal of strength, managed to prize open the hinges of the old despatch-box which had belonged to Ivy’s father. The lock stayed fast.

The inspector felt a pang of disappointment, for there only lay on the rubbed green velvet lining a lady’s fancy handbag.

And then Orpington suddenly remembered Mrs. Huntley’s sworn statement. In that statement was actually a description of the bag Ivy had had with her when the old woman had found her alone in the surgery with the jar of arsenic on the table before her. A bolster bag that “looked like mother-of-pearl.” This was the same one without doubt.

He took the odd little bag out of the despatch-box and pressed the jewelled knob--to find nothing in it but a cable from South Africa. The signature, “Rushworth,” meant nothing to him, though of course he knew of the famous Rushworth Line.

Then he opened the little white leather-lined, inner pocket of the bag. It, too, was empty. A faint scent, that of a popular face powder, rose from it.

And then, suddenly, he noticed, with a queer quickening of his pulse, that a few grains of what looked like kitchen salt clung to the white leather sides.

Moistening his finger, he put it against the leather, and a few grains stuck on to his wet finger. Face powder? No, not face powder. He touched his finger with his tongue, and then the colour rushed up all over his face.

“I’d like Sir Bernard to have a squint at that!” he exclaimed, holding up the open bag.

“D’you mean you’ve found something?” the other cried excitedly.

“Hush!”

Carefully Orpington put the rather absurd-looking mother-of-pearl bolster into a big black bag which he had brought with him. Then he put the empty despatch-box back into the cupboard.

“Let’s get out of this,” he murmured, “before the old woman sees us. Can you manage to shut the cupboard as cleverly as you opened it?”

“I think I can,” said the other. And sure enough he did shut it, though it took him longer to lock up the half of the great early-Victorian cupboard than it had done to unlock it.

Orpington took a card out of his notebook. He wrote on it: “We’ve seen everything we wanted. Shan’t be troubling you any more,” and left it in a prominent place on the hall table.

Then he shut the front door rather loudly behind him, and, together, the two men went down the stairs by the side of the lift.

When they were safely out of the Duke of Kent Mansion, the inspector stayed his steps.

“I’ve got her!” he said exultingly. “Little Ivy will live to be sorry she bamboozled ‘yours truly,’ my boy!”

Chapter Twenty-one

With a sudden cry of fear Ivy Lexton sat up in the Jacobean four-post bed, where she had spent a broken night.

She was still plunged in sleep, but anyone standing, say, by the large half-moon window of the delightful old-world country bedroom would have thought her awake, for her violet-blue eyes were wide open and dilated, as if with terror.

How lovely she looked; how childlike was the pure, delicate contour of her face, and the droop of her little red mouth. Her dimpled shoulders rose from what she called a “nightie” of flesh-coloured crêpe de Chine. The sleeveless bodice was edged with a deep band of real lace, and, to the eyes of the old-fashioned maid who waited on her in this, her friend’s, Lady Flora Desmond’s, country cottage, it looked more like a ball-dress than a nightgown.

There were tens of thousands of human beings who, had they been privileged to see Ivy as she was now, this morning, would have felt their hearts contract with intense pity for the woman they regarded as having been the innocent victim of an extraordinary set of ironic circumstances. There were also tens of thousands of other human beings who, though they had had strong doubts as to the part she had played in the singular story, would have told themselves that their suspicions had been cruelly unjust, could they have looked into that flower-like face, and heard the words now escaping from her half-opened mouth.

Those words were uttered in an appealing, broken tone, “Don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt him!” And then: “Oh, Roger, I am so sorry for you!”

Ivy’s soul was not here in this delightful country bedroom. It had travelled a long long way, to a prison situated on the outskirts of London.

She seemed to be gazing through the door of a small, bare room, which she knew to be now occupied by one on whom judgment of death was to be executed that morning.

There stood by the pallet bed the tall, sinewy figure of a man who had loved her with a passionate and absorbing love, and whom she, in her own fashion, had also loved. By his wish, at his trial, not a word concerning what she had called their “friendship,” had been uttered in extenuation of anything he, Roger Gretorex, had done, or left undone.

There he stood, the man whose arms had so often cradled her, on whom she had made the limitless demands that a woman only makes on the man she loves. Never once, in great or in little things, had he failed her.

This morning he looked strange indeed, for though dressed, he was collarless, and clad in an old tweed suit--a suit which Ivy remembered well, and which she had once told him caressingly she liked to see him wear.

He held himself upright, with his head thrown back in what had been a characteristic attitude.

In Ivy’s vision two men were pinioning Roger’s arms, and it was to them that, living through this terrible nightmare, she had just addressed her piteous plea. And then with slow steps the chaplain, together with the governor of the prison, walked in.…

It was all happening exactly as Ivy had once seen something happen, in what had then appeared to her just a thrilling scene in a play, in London about a year ago.

And now Roger left the cell and began walking, with steady steps, his head still thrown back, down a narrow way.…

And then the woman in the bed gave a stifled shriek, for suddenly she saw the gallows through an open door at the end of the passage.

She covered her face with her hands, yet something seemed to force her to peep through her fingers and--for a fleeting moment--Roger Gretorex turned and looked at her.…

So had the condemned man turned and looked at the woman in the play.

But Roger’s face was so charged with mute, terrible reproach that, with an anguished cry of protest, Ivy awoke--awoke to the blessed reality that she was sixty miles from the place where that awful drama was to be enacted this morning.

Her shaking hand felt for her diamond-circled watch on the Chippendale table standing by her bed. Having found it, she held it up close before her eyes.

It was only eight o’clock. She sighed heavily, for that meant that there was another hour of misery and suspense to be lived through. Nay, maybe even as much as an hour and a half--for the morbid-minded woman pal of hers who intended to stand near the prison gate till the death notice was put up, and had promised faithfully to telephone to her from a house near by, had thought it unlikely she could get a trunk call through before half-past nine.

The tears began rolling down Ivy Lexton’s cheeks; yet it was not for Roger Gretorex, and his awful fate, that she was weeping. It was for pity of herself, for all she had gone through, and for what remained for her to go through, till she knew for certain that Roger Gretorex had died, as he had lived, silent.

She was well aware, deep down in her heart, that not only his counsel, Sir Joseph Molloy, who believed him innocent, but also that Roger’s mother, would hope up to the last moment of his sentient life that he would clear himself by shifting the burden of guilt on the one who was guilty.

Ivy had written the condemned man a letter three days ago, and she had made so many rough copies of that short letter that she knew it, now, by heart.

She repeated that touching letter over to herself, rocking her slight body this way and that in the large bed.

_Sunday night._

Dear Roger,

I am ill, so I cannot come to you. Otherwise I would do so. You know that I believe you innocent, and I want now to tell you how _grateful_ I am for all your kindness to me, and for the love, however _wrong_ it may have been, that you lavished on me.

Ivy.

She hoped that letter had given poor Roger pleasure and, above all, that he had read between the lines and seen how really, truly sorry she was--how dreadfully grieved that everything had fallen out as it had fallen out. Indeed, she had twice underlined the word “grateful.”

And then she suddenly felt that she could not go on remembering any more. It was too horrible--too horrible! So she took a bottle off the little table, where her watch was lying, and measured out a small dose into a medicine glass. Lady Flora would wake her, she knew, when that secretly longed-for message came through.

Soon she was once more plunged into uneasy slumber. But alas! again there came that hideous, hideous nightmare.

Once more she seemed transported to the condemned cell. But this time, in addition to the warders, the governor of the prison, and the chaplain, there was the horrid, cruel, fat-faced man, Sir Joseph Molloy, who had cross-examined her. True, he had dealt with her gently, kindly, but only because he had been adjured to do so, and, as well she remembered, with now and again a tigerish glare in his blue Irish eyes.

She listened with a feeling of indignation and pitiful dread to his voice uttering the words: “I adjure you, Gretorex, to tell the truth, now, for the sake of your poor mother who has always believed you innocent!”

There was a pause. Ivy clasped her hands together in supplication. But the collarless prisoner had turned his sunken eyes away from her pleading face. Was he going to obey Sir Joseph Molloy? Yes! For she heard Roger’s deep voice answer: “It is as you have always thought it was, Sir Joseph. I die innocent. Ivy Lexton poisoned her husband.”

Outside that quiet bedroom Lady Flora, already on her way down to breakfast, heard a fearful cry--“No! No! _No!_--that isn’t true!”

She opened the bedroom door and saw that Ivy was asleep. “Poor child,” she murmured. “No wonder she talks in her sleep. Thank God! that unhappy man is to be hanged this morning.”

And, being the manner of woman she was, she offered up a silent prayer for the murderer, that he might make his peace with God.

There came a sharp knock on the bedroom door, and Ivy woke with a stifled cry. She jumped straight out of bed and stood, her hands clasped together, waiting.

There came another knock, and then, “Come in!” she cried shrilly, and Lady Flora’s old parlourmaid entered the room.

Ivy had never liked the woman, and the woman had never liked her. She did not understand, and she never quite knew how to treat, those of her own sex whom she regarded as inferior to herself; yet some of the kindest letters written to her in the last few weeks had been from domestic servants, warmly sympathising with the heroine of their favourite Sunday paper.

“Mrs. Doghill is on the telephone, ma’am. Her ladyship is holding the line till you come.”

Ivy snatched up her periwinkle-blue satin dressing-gown and wrapped it about her. Then she thrust her little white feet into slippers that matched the dressing-gown, and ran downstairs, telling herself, not for the first time, how stupid it was to have the telephone in so public a place as the hall.

Lady Flora was standing, the telephone receiver to her ear. But when she saw Ivy she silently handed her the receiver and, turning into the dining-room, shut the door.

“Is that you, Millicent? Yes--yes! I can hear quite well----”

She waited in an agony of mingled hope and fear till, with startling distinctness, came the measured words that were being uttered sixty miles away.

“There’s been a reprieve. The story goes that important new evidence was laid before the Home Secretary yesterday.”

Ivy remained silent. She felt stunned. New evidence?

At last she managed to get out, in a low, strangled voice, “I--I don’t quite understand.”

But instantly she heard a cross voice interject, “You’ve had six minutes--can’t allow you to have any more now.”

“Indeed I haven’t! I’ve only just come to the telephone,” she said pleadingly.

“I can’t help that. The call was put through six minutes ago----” And ruthlessly she was cut off.

Ivy turned towards the room where she knew her hostess was waiting, full of sympathy. She opened the door, and then she cried, “He’s been--he’s been----” and before she could say the word “reprieved” she had fallen fainting at the other woman’s feet.

Lady Flora would not have believed an angel, had an angel come and told her, that her dear little friend Ivy Lexton had fainted, not from relief, but from sheer, agonising fear.

Ivy spent the rest of the morning in bed, a prey to frightful anxiety and terror.

New evidence? What could that mean? Had Roger really failed her at last?

At twelve o’clock the parlourmaid came in with a telegram.

Hope to be with you to-morrow evening.

Miles Rushworth.

The telegram had been sent from Paris the day before, and delayed in transmission.

“There is no answer,” said Mrs. Lexton in her soft voice. And then she lay back, feeling much less unhappy.

Whatever the mysterious reprieve might portend, Rushworth would very soon, in fact to-morrow, be here to help and to protect her.

As she read the telegram over for the third time, Ivy told herself how noble, how generous, how devoted the sender had proved himself. Also, what a wonderful life lay before her as his cherished, sheltered wife! Rushworth was all-powerful. New evidence? There could be no “new evidence” for the simple reason that nothing, nothing, _nothing_ had ever happened--that could possibly be found out.

Chapter Twenty-two

As he walked up the gangway of the cross-Channel boat at Calais, Miles Rushworth’s heart was full of two women. The one was his dead sister, the other Ivy Lexton, the woman to whom he was hastening, and whom he expected to see to-day. Every fibre of Rushworth’s being longed consciously, hungrily, thirstily, for Ivy.

It was a source of real grief to him that these two could never now meet and love each other. He had been painfully aware that his sister hoped he would marry her own dearest friend, Bella Dale, and he had not dared to speak to her of Ivy.

During his long, dreary journey home he had often asked himself if all she had gone through had changed her from the deliciously pretty, kind-hearted, rather irresponsible little creature he remembered her as being, into a more serious woman. Not that he wanted Ivy different. To him she was already absolutely perfect. But her letters had grown shorter, as his had grown longer, and vaguely they had disappointed him.

Roger Gretorex? How often had Rushworth tried to visualise the young man who had committed so dastardly a crime in order to set free the woman he had loved hopelessly, and without return, from the degradation of being tied to such a waster as had been Jervis Lexton.

Though even the South African papers had been full of the wretched fellow’s photographs, proving that he had a singularly handsome face, Rushworth had no clear vision of him. Also, Ivy had never once mentioned him in any of her letters.

Suddenly that fact, Ivy’s absolute silence concerning Gretorex, struck him as being strange. He also realised, what he had not realised till now, that poor lovely Ivy could not but be, all her life long, even after she changed her name, a marked woman. She would be always pointed at, and that wherever she went in English-speaking lands, as the heroine of a great _cause célèbre_.

Yet stop! In the circumstances, would it not only be right, but reasonable, that she should marry him, Miles Rushworth, almost at once? He would beg her, entreat her, to consent to an immediate marriage. And then he would take her away in his yacht to the South, to some quiet place where they two could be hidden in a trance of love, while people forgot the sordid story of the murder of which she had been the innocent cause.

It was a fine winter day, though bitterly cold, so the home-coming traveller found himself a comfortable spot in a sheltered place, on the upper deck of the steamer, where was just room for three.

Two deck-chairs were already occupied, one by a big man with whose powerful, humorous face Rushworth felt he was vaguely familiar, the other by a delicate, fragile-looking, little grey-haired lady. The third chair was unoccupied, and so he sat down in it.

Perhaps because he was in a sentimental mood to-day, he felt queerly moved when he saw that, under their rug, the big man was holding the hand of the grey-haired little lady. They were talking together eagerly, happily; obviously, so Rushworth told himself, an old-fashioned husband and wife, never so happy as when they were together.

His heart swung back to Ivy Lexton, and to the bliss of their coming meeting.

Poor, precious darling! What a terrible ordeal she had been through! He would regret all his life, all their joint life, that he had been far from her during the weeks that had followed the strange death of Jervis Lexton.

And then--for a moment he thought his ears had misled him--he heard that very name of “Lexton” uttered aloud by the man sitting one from him.

“That Lexton affair? Come now. If you really read your loving husband’s letters--I sometimes suspect that you don’t, you naughty little thing--well, there’d be nothing left to tell you! It’s hunting I should be to-day, instead of coming to meet an ungrateful woman.”

“I want to know what’s happening now, Joe. Also, most of all, what led to the extraordinary reprieve on the very day this man was to have been hanged?”

A reprieve? Miles Rushworth felt a sudden rush of anger and surprise. He was, of course, aware that Roger Gretorex, the man whose name and personality he loathed, and for whom he felt he would ever feel an intense, retrospective horror, was to have been hanged this very morning. That fact had been stated in both the daily papers which are published in English in Paris.

If it was true that there had been a reprieve that morning, how had this stranger already become aware of the fact?

“You know I told you, Eileen, long ago, that the poor chap had refused to appeal?”

“Yes, I remember that,” she murmured.

“Well, there seemed nothing left to be done! I was in despair, and it was only the day before yesterday that by--well, I suppose old-fashioned folk like you would call it an intervention of Providence, some astounding new evidence was produced. And what’s more, I’ve been proved right!”

And there was a tone of triumph in the, now low, organ-like voice.

“D’you mean that what you half suspected was true all along, Joe?”

She had turned her head round, and was gazing up into her husband’s face.

Rushworth saw the big man bend his head as jovially he exclaimed, “Bedad! I think we’ve got her cold!”

A tremor ran through the lady. “What a horrible expression,” she murmured.

“Still, so far there’s something lacking, me dear, and it’s causing me a bit of anxiety.”

“What’s that, Joe?”

“Motive!” the man exclaimed, in a voice that had become suddenly grave. And then he went on: “I don’t mind telling you that everything fair and--well, a bit near the wind, also, was done to try and find out if our lovely, clinging Ivy had another man in tow. She is a”--the speaker sought for something in place of the Biblical word trembling on his lips, but he gave it up, and said instead:

“We heard that there was one chap who went about with her a good deal last autumn, and who was far more often at Duke of Kent Mansion than Gretorex ever was. But though we ran him to earth and gave him--at least I hope so--a pretty bad quarter of an hour, it was clear that he would never have married her, not if she had been a hundred times free! Also, though he’s a gay bachelor, and manages to give his lady friends a scrumptious time, he’s not a rich man, and our practical little Ivy wants money, money, money all the time.”

“Then what’s going to be done now? You don’t want your man, if he’s really innocent, to languish in prison half his life,” observed the little lady shrewdly.

“I do not,” he answered, in his rich, Irish voice. “What’s more, I want to shift that noose. Once we get her in the dock I’ll see there’s no recommendation to mercy; trust me for that! The woman’s a double-dyed murderess. She poisoned her husband, and she as good as hanged her lover.”

“You haven’t got her in the dock yet, and maybe you never will,” said his wife calmly.

“Hold on! Hold on! Did you ever see me miss a kill I’d set my heart on? There’s another woman whose neck I’d like to wring--that of an old charwoman, who, if she’d told the truth when Gretorex was first arrested, might have made all the difference, for there would still have been time, then, to find out something.”

“Has that poor, pretty woman had a chance of saying anything for herself?” asked his wife slowly.

“That artful little Jezebel is staying with a woman friend in the country at present, and the police are determined that everything is to be O.K. this time. It’s for hell she’s making----” and he laughed a jolly laugh. “Ivy’s held all the cards in her hand up to now, but she’s going to lose the rubber.”

“I do wonder, Joe, what her motive can have been--her husband had just got a good job, hadn’t he?”

For a few moments the speaker remained silent, then he said in a singular voice:

“If Gretorex had hanged this morning, I’d have betted a hundred to one that within a year we should have seen, in all the papers, a paragraph announcing that the beautiful Mrs. Lexton, whose husband had died in such tragic circumstances, was about to be married very quietly to Mr. Dash, a gentleman of great wealth and considerable position!”

Rushworth moved slightly in his seat. He felt as if, within the last few minutes, the whole world, his world, had stopped going round, and that when it began again it would be in quite a different world that he would find himself.

“Then you think it will come out, now, that Mrs. Lexton was in love with some man----?”

“I don’t think anything of the kind! My view is that among the innumerable young fools who have made love to her in the past year or two, she marked down some rich man as a possible husband, _were she only free_. One thing we learned only the other day. This was that two or three years ago she did her best to persuade that rotter Jervis Lexton to consent to an arranged divorce. He refused, unluckily for himself, for, though he was a poor mutt, he adored his wife. She’s the sort of woman over whom men go fantee----”

“It’s unlucky that you can’t put a name to the happy man, Joe! Eh, my dear?”

“Unlucky? I should think it is unlucky! Still, someone’s been supplying pretty Ivy with plenty of money during the last few weeks.”

“It’s strange she wasn’t suspected.”

“Of course she was! But not by the right people. My word, Eileen, she is a clever little woman! You should have seen her in the witness-box! Why, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But she overplayed her part. I think a good many people found it difficult to believe that she’s been what she made herself out to be--a kind of plaster saint.”

“Is there any evidence to show that she was not that?” asked Lady Molloy quietly.

“There you go! Hate to believe anything of a certain sort about a woman! You’re a regular suffragette. A cold-blooded poisoner, yes--but naughty? Oh dear no, not that, _if_ you please.”

Half to himself, he added, “She wrote Gretorex two letters the poor chap’s servant got out of his paper-basket and pieced together. The minute I’d read ’em I knew there’d be a reprieve!”

“Why?”

“Because Eddie Law is a highly moral man. He loathes the sins he’s not inclined to.” Sir Joseph added candidly, “Most of us do, me dear.”

As Rushworth walked down the gangway at Dover two or three of his fellow-passengers nudged one another and smiled. They thought he was “a sheet in the wind,” for he did not seem to know quite what he was doing, or where he was going.

The moment Mr. Oram received the wire informing him that the execution of Roger Gretorex had been postponed, he hurried back to London, full of surprise and curiosity.

What an amazing--he almost felt it to be, even now, an unbelievable--story, was that told him with deferential clearness and dryness by Alfred Finch.

“God bless my soul!” he repeated at intervals.

And then at last, with some magnanimity, he observed, “Then you were right, Finch, and I wrong, all along. Though I thought her a vain little fribble, murder is the last thing I’d have suspected that young woman capable of.”

“I didn’t suspect her either, sir. I was looking for a man--the successor to Dr. Gretorex in the lady’s affections. The police believe they’re on the track of what may be styled Mrs. Lexton’s motive. It’s a man, right enough! Orpington wouldn’t tell me his name. He simply said he was very rich, and seemingly infatuated with her.”

He gave the old solicitor a rather odd look. But that gentleman did not take up the challenge, though all Rushworth’s cables, both to Ivy and to the lawyer himself, had been traced. And Mr. Oram had just become aware of the fact.

“Well--well--well----”

“I suggest, sir, that you appeal to Sir Edward Law to consider the release of Dr. Gretorex on licence. The letter which he wrote to Mrs. Lexton--you have a copy of it here--which someone, I suspect one of the maids at the flat, sent anonymously to the Home Secretary, though one can’t exactly call it evidence, makes it clear to any impartial mind that our man was absolutely innocent of the whole business. As soon as she got busy, Mrs. Lexton wanted him out of the way. That’s as plain as a pikestaff. After all, he is a doctor, and he might have spoilt her game. Also he must have known, if he stopped to think a bit, that she had had access to the poison.”