The Late Tenant

CHAPTER XI

SWORDS DRAWN

David, meantime, also by cab, was off to Porchester Gardens, a certain hurry and fluster now in his usually self-possessed bosom. He looked at his face in the cab-mirror, and adjusted his tie. A young man who acts in that way betrays a symptom of heart-disease. At 60A he sent up his card.

Violet knew from Dibbin the name of David Harcourt, but when she read it she seemed startled, and turned a little pale. “Show him up,” she said, in a flurry.

“You will excuse my calling,” explained David, without shaking hands, “though we have met before – you remember?”

She inclined her head a little, standing, as it were, shrunk from him, some way off.

“But my visit has to do with a small matter which admits of no delay.”

“My mother – ” she began.

“Is out, I know,” said he, “but as the affair is urgent, I am here. You know that I am the tenant of No. 7, Eddystone Mansions, and you know also, that, without seeking it, I have some knowledge of your history. I wish to ask whether, without troubling your mind with a lot of details, you care to authorize me to spend at once, in your interests, a sum of one hundred pounds.”

She scrutinized him with a certain furtiveness, weighing him.

“In my interests?” said she.

“Yours and your mother’s.”

“One hundred pounds?”

“Yes.”

“It seems a strange request.”

“It isn’t a request. If you haven’t confidence in me to the extent of one hundred pounds, I am not deeply concerned.”

“But you come like a storm, and speak like one.”

“On a purely business matter of your own – remember.”

“You were at the pains to come,” she said with a smile. “You cannot both care and not care.”

“I used the word ‘concern,’ you know.”

“Is it a gracious way to approach me?”

“Is it charming to be mistrusted?”

“Did I say that I mistrusted you?”

“With your eyes.”

“Well, I say now with my lips that I do not. Which will you believe?”

“No doubt they can both deceive.”

“Oh, now you are verging on rudeness.”

“There are worse things than rudeness, when one thinks of it.”

“I have no idea to what you refer.”

“That may be because I know more about you than you think.”

At this she started guiltily, visibly, and at that start again she appeared before the eye of David’s memory gliding through the moonlight at three in the morning, a ghost hastening back to the tomb. Yet, in her presence, the resentment which rankled in him softened to pity. A look of appeal came into her dark eyes, and a certain essence of honesty and purity in her being communicated itself to his instincts, putting it out of his power to think any ill of her for the moment.

He said hurriedly: “I fear I have begun badly. All this is neither here nor there.”

She sat down, slung a knee between her clasped fingers in her habitual manner, and said: “Please tell me, what do you mean?” Then she looked up at him again with a troubled light in her eyes.

He walked quickly nearer to her, saying: “Now, don’t let that get into your head as a serious statement. It was a mere manner of speaking, what I said, and of no importance. Moreover, there’s this question of one hundred pounds, and time is a vital consideration.”

“Nevertheless, you were definite enough, and must have had some meaning,” she went on. “Did I not hear you say that you know more about me than I think? Well, then, have the goodness to tell me what.”

“Now I have put my foot in it, I suppose,” said David, “and you will never rest till I find something to tell you. But not now, if you will bear with me. In a few days I shall, perhaps, call on your mother, or see you again at a place which you no doubt visit pretty often at about the same hour, and to which I, too, somehow am strangely drawn. The question now before us is whether I am to spend the one hundred pounds for you.”

“As to that, what can one say? You tell me nothing of your reason, my mother is out, and I am afraid that I have not at the moment one hundred pounds of my own. I am about to be married, and – ”

“Married?”

“I am myself rather surprised at it. Yet I fail to see why you should be immoderately surprised.”

“I? Surprised?” said he in a dazed way, still standing with one foot drawn back a step. “I was merely taken aback, because – ”

“Well?”

“Because – nothing. I was simply taken aback, that’s all. Or rather because I had not heard of it before.”

“It was only fully decided upon yesterday,” said she, bending down over her knee.

“Oh, only yesterday. And the happy event takes place when? for I am at least interested.”

“Soon. Within two or three weeks. I don’t quite know when.”

“And the happy man?”

“The same whom you saw come to take me from Kensal Green.”

“Mr. Van Hupfeldt?”

“Oh, you know his name. Yes; Mr. Van Hupfeldt.”

David chuckled grimly.

“Why do you laugh?” she asked.

“But whatever is your motive?” he cried sharply.

“You are strange to venture to inquire into my motive,” she said, with downcast eyes. Then her lip trembled, and she added in a low voice: “My motive is known only to the dead.”

“Ah, don’t cry!” he almost shouted at her, with a sudden brand of red anger across his brow. “There’s no need for tears! It shan’t ever happen, this thing!”

“What do you mean?” she asked, glancing tremulously at him.

“What I say. This marriage can’t happen. I’ll see to that. But stop – perhaps I am talking too soon. ‘Let not him boast that putteth his armor on as he that taketh it off.’ Good-day, Miss Mordaunt. I shall not trouble you any more about the one hundred pounds. I will spend it out of my own pocket pocket – ”

“Please stay!” she cried after him. “Everything that you say bewilders me! How am I to believe you honest when you say such things?”

“What things? Honest? You may believe me honest or not, just as you will. I told you before that I am not greatly concerned. If I bewilder you, you anger me.”

“I am sorry for that. But how so?”

“What, is it nothing for a man to hear it doubted whether he is honest or not? And, apart from that, admit that your sister is not very long dead, and that you have been easily drawn into this engagement – ”

“But what can all this matter to you?” she asked, with a wrinkled brow. “Why should my private conduct anger you at all? I have not, in fact, as you think, been so easily won into this engagement; yet, if I had, it is amazing that you should lecture me. If it was any one but you, I should be cross.”

“What, am I in special favor, then?”

“You have an honest face.”

“Then why is my poor honesty constantly doubted.”

“Because you say extraordinary things. It is not, for instance, usual for people to pay one hundred pounds for the benefit of a casual acquaintance as you just volunteered to do. Either you have some trick or motive in view, or you are very wonderfully disinterested.”

“Which do you think?”

“I may think one thing now, and the other after you are gone.”

“Well, it is useless arguing. I should be here all day, if I let myself. We were not made to agree, you see. Some people are like that. I shall just pay the one hundred pounds out of my own pocket – ”

“You are not to do that, please.”

“Then, will you?”

“I think not.”

“You have no idea what is in question!”

“Then, give me some idea.”

“And lose more time. However, you may as well hear. It is this: that the tenant in the flat before me, one Miss L’Estrange, found concealed in a picture a certificate of a marriage and one of a birth, and I wish to buy them for you from Miss L’Estrange’s servant, who has them.”

Violet sprang upright with an adoring face, murmuring: “Heaven be thanked!”

“I didn’t tell you before,” said David, “because I haven’t secured the papers yet. I have left the girl in my flat – ”

“But where – where do you say she found them?” she asked, with a keener interest than the question quite seemed to call for.

“It was in a picture-frame, between the picture and the boards at the back,” he answered. “The picture dropped, and the certificates fell out.”

“Heaven be praised!” she breathed again. “Was there nothing else that fell out?”

“Nothing else, apparently.”

“That was enough. Why should I want more? Oh, get them for me quickly, will you?” she cried, all animated and pink. “With these in my hand everything will be different. Even your prophecy against my marriage, which you seemed not to desire, will very likely come true.”

“So now I have your authority to spend the one hundred pounds?” he asked, with a smile.

“Of course! Ten times as much!”

“But blessed is she who has not seen, and yet has believed!”

“Forgive me! I do thank and trust you!” She put out her hand. He took it, and bent some time over it.

“Good-by, Miss Mordaunt.”

“Not for long – an hour – two?”

“I am glad to have pleased you. I shall always remember how the brunette type of angels look when they thank Providence.”

“It is not fair to flatter when one is highly happy and deeply thankful, for then one hears everything as music. Tell me of it some other time, when I shall have a sharper answer ready. But stay – one word. It is of these certificates that Mr. Van Hupfeldt, too, must somehow have got wind. Does the girl say that any one else knows of them?”

“A man named Strauss knows of them.”

At that name her eyelids fell as if her modesty had been hurt. “Does not Mr. Van Hupfeldt know of them?” she asked, with face averted.

“I cannot tell you – yet,” he answered, turning a little from her lest she caught the grim smile on his lips. “Why do you think that he may know?”

“Because some days ago he wrote me a note – it is this. It can refer only to these certificates, I suppose.”

She handed to David his own note – “It is now a pretty certain thing that your sister was a duly wedded wife” – and David, looking at it, asked with something of a flush: “Did Mr. Van Hupfeldt say that it was he who sent you this? I see that it has no signature.”

“Yes, it was he,” said Violet.

“Ah!” murmured David, and said no more.

“If it was these certificates which he had in his mind when he wrote that note,” said she, “then he, too, as well as you, must have a chance of securing them from the girl. So you had better be careful that he is not beforehand with you.”

David looked squarely at her. “So long as you obtain them, what does it matter from whom they come?”

“Of course,” she replied, with her eyes on the ground, “I shall owe much gratitude to the person who hands them to me.”

He took a step forward, whispering: “Must I be the winner?”

He received no answer from her; only, a wave of blood, a blush that flooded her being from her toes to the roots of her hair all of a sudden, suffused Violet, while he stood awaiting her reply. He put out his hand with a fine self-control. “Well, I must try,” he cried lightly. She just touched his fingers with hers, and the next moment he was striding from her.

His cab was waiting outside. Calling, “Quick as you can!” to the driver, he sprang in, and they started briskly away. He was well content inwardly. Something bird-like seemed new-fledged and fluttering a little somewhere inside. He had tasted the sweet poison of honey-dew.

As for doubt, he had none at the moment. Jenny he had left safe with Mrs. Grover; he was sure that she had the certificates with her. But when he reached the middle of Oxford-St., he saw that which made him start – Van Hupfeldt in a landau driving eastward, and, sitting beside the coachman, the valet Neil. What spurred David’s interest was the pace at which the landau’s horses were racing through the traffic, and also the face of the man in the carriage, so gaunt and wild, leaning forward with his two hands clenched on his knees, as if to press the carriage faster forward by the strain of his soul.

At once a host of speculations crowded upon David’s mind. Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that Neil may have shadowed him and the girl to the flat, that Van Hupfeldt might have the daring to be on the way to the flat to win Jenny from him. He felt that he could hardly prevail against Van Hupfeldt with Jenny – Van Hupfeldt being rich – and the two high-steppers in the landau were fast leaving the cab-horse behind. An eagerness to be quickly at his flat rose in David, so without stopping his cab he stood out near the splash-board and cried to his amazed driver: “I say! You come inside, and let me drive.”

“Mustn’t do that, sir. It is more than my place is worth,” began the cabman.

“Two pounds for you, and I pay all fines – quick now!” said David.

The driver hesitated, but pulled up. He climbed down, went into the cab, and David was on the perch, reins in hand. Though some persons were astonished, luckily no policeman saw them. The horse, as if conscious of something from Wyoming behind him, began to run. David bolted northward out of the traffic, and careered through the emptier streets, while the old cab-horse wondered what London was coming to when such things could be, and praised the days of his youth. When David drew up at Eddystone Mansions, there was no sign of the landau. He ran up the stairs three at a time. He would not await the tardy elevator. In moments of stress we return to nature and cast off the artificial. Opening his door with his key, he made straight into the drawing-room where he had left Jenny. Then his heart sank miserably, for she was not there.

“Mrs. Grover!” he called, and when Mrs. Grover hurried from the kitchen, her hands leprous with pastry-dough, David looked at her so thunderously that she drew back.

“Where’s the girl, Mrs. Grover?” he growled.

“She’s gone, sir.”

“I see that. You let her go, Mrs. Grover?”

“Why, sir, a man came here, saying he had a message from you for the girl, and I let him in. They had a talk together, then she said she must be going. I couldn’t stop her.”

David groaned.

The man who had called was Neil, who, on hurrying to tell his master where Jenny was, had been sent back with instructions to try and induce her to leave the flat and come to Hanover Square. Neil had accomplished this to the extent of getting Jenny to leave Eddystone Mansions; but she would not go to Strauss, for David’s threat of the police if she disposed of the papers to any one else than their lawful owner was in her mind, and she now feared to sell the papers to Strauss, as she knew that she would certainly do if she once went to his rooms. Yet she was sorely tempted to sell to the lavish rich man rather than to the bargainer, and so, making a compromise between her fears and her temptation, she had told Neil that she would wait in a certain café, and there discuss the matter with Strauss, if Strauss would come to her. She was waiting there, and Strauss was going to her, led by Neil, when David had seen him in the landau.

At any rate, the girl was gone. David felt as if he had lost all things. He had promised the certificates; and Violet had said: “I shall owe much gratitude to the person who hands them to me.”

Now Van Hupfeldt had, or would have, them. While he had been dallying and bandying words in Porchester Gardens, Van Hupfeldt had been acting, and he groaned to himself in a pain of self-reproach: “Too much Violet, David!”

He strode to and fro in the dining-room with a quick step, pacing with the lightness of a caged bear, his fists clenched, keen to act, yet not knowing what to do. The girl was gone, the certificates gone with her.

One thing, however, he had gained by the adventure, namely, the almost certainty that Van Hupfeldt was Strauss – for he had seen the valet, Neil, who at Piccadilly Circus had declared that he was Strauss’s servant, sitting on the box-seat of the landau in which was the man whom David had heard Violet at the grave call “Mr. Van Hupfeldt.” This seemed a sort of proof that Van Hupfeldt and Strauss were one. The same man who had been so bound up with the one sister, and had somehow brought her to her death, was now about to marry the other! The thought of such a thing struck lightning from David’s eyes.

“Never that!” he vowed in his frenzy. “However it goes, not that!”

And then he was angry afresh with her, thinking: “He can’t be much good, this man – she must be easily won.”

He could not guess that Van Hupfeldt had promised to clear her sister’s name six months after the marriage, and that this was her motive, and not love, for being won. He did not realize that the certificates now lost by him would have freed Violet from Van Hupfeldt. He believed that she was entering lightly into marriage with a man of great wealth. Again, in this unreasoning mood, he saw her in her nocturnal wanderings.

But bitterness and regrets could not bring back the certificates, in the gaining of which her honor was almost at stake. If he had known where Van Hupfeldt lived, he would have gone straight there. Nevertheless, Van Hupfeldt was not at home, was hurrying away from home, in fact. Here, then, was another point. Jenny had clearly not gone to Van Hupfeldt’s on leaving the flat, or why should Van Hupfeldt be racing eastward? It seemed that Jenny and Van Hupfeldt were to meet somewhere else, perhaps somewhere not far from the mansions. If David had only kept the landau in sight, he might have tracked Van Hupfeldt to that meeting! He felt now that, if he could come upon them, then, by the mere force and whirlwind of his will, he should have his way. On a sudden he went out again into the streets.

He ran southward at a venture. If there was a conference going on in any house near by, and if the landau was waiting outside, he should recognize it by the horses and by Neil on the box. But, as it turned out, even this recognition was not necessary, for, running down Bloomsbury-St., toward a carriage of which he caught sight standing before a French chocolate-shop at the Oxford-St. corner, he saw a man and a girl come out of the shop. The man lifted his hat and nodded toward the girl with his foot on the carriage-step, and then was driven off westward. Half a minute afterward David had overtaken the girl.

“You wretched creature!” he said, in the fierce heat of his anger and haste: “Hand me those certificates, and be quick about it!”

“I haven’t the faintest idea which certificates you mean,” said Jenny, as bold now as brass, for she had no doubt been strengthened by the interview in the shop, and assured of Van Hupfeldt’s protection.

This was enough for David. He understood from her words that the papers were now in Van Hupfeldt’s hands; whereat a flood of rage surged within him, and, without any definite purpose, he rushed after the carriage. It had not gone far, because of a block of traffic near Tottenham Court Road, and his hot face was soon thrust over the carriage-door. Van Hupfeldt shrank back into the farthest corner with a look of blank dismay.

“Yes, you can have them, Mr. Strauss – ” began David, hotly.

“What is it?” muttered Van Hupfeldt, crouching, with his hand on the opposite door-handle. “That is not my name.”

“Whatever your name, or however many names you may own, you can have those papers now; but there may be other things where they came from, and if they’re there, I’m the man in possession, mark you, and I’ll be finding them – ”

“Papers! What papers? Find what?” asked Van Hupfeldt, with a scared face that belied his words.

“You cur!” cried David, his heart burning hot within him; “make amends for your crimes while you may. If you don’t, I tell you, I shall have no mercy. Soon I shall have my hands on you – ”

“Drive on!” screamed Van Hupfeldt to his coachman, and, the block of traffic having now cleared, the horses trotted on, and left David red-faced with fury, in imminent danger of being run over by the press of vehicles behind.

CHAPTER XII

THE NIGHT-WATCHES

David returned home angry with himself in all ways, not least for his loss of self-control in pursuing Van Hupfeldt with no object but to vent himself in mere threats. His suggestion to Van Hupfeldt that other documents besides the certificates might be hidden among the picture-frames in the flat was in the tone of a child’s boasting. One should find first, he told himself, and boast afterward. However, one of Mrs. Grover’s excellent little lunches put him straight, and, though work was a thousand miles from his mood that day, he compelled himself to do it, and the pen began to run.

But first he had said to Mrs. Grover: “I want you to get the steps, and take down every picture in the flat, except the three big ones, which I will see to myself.”

Then, with his flower-pot of violets on each hand, he was soon in the thick of the cow-boy and prairie-flower history which he had on hand. His stories were already known on this side by the whiff of reality they brought from the States, and were in some demand. Already the postman handed him printers’ proofs, and he had proved to himself that he possessed some of the wisdom of the serpent in choosing a reputable abode, because the men whom he entertained went away saying: “Harcourt has private means. He has taken to literature as a hobby,” an idea which made him popular. If certain editors, on the strength of it, wished to pay him half-rates, they were soon undeceived. David was much too hard a nut to crack in that easy way.

Meantime, neither by sight nor sound had he been reminded of the eery experience of his first night in No. 7. True, there were noises during the still hours, such as had twice thrilled Miss L’Estrange and Jenny. But they seemed quite natural to him. The dryness of the interior of the block of flats had loosened flooring-boards and dislocated cross-beams, until the mere movement of an article of furniture overhead, or the passing of a next-floor tenant from one room to another, would set going creaks enough to give rise to half a dozen ghost-panics.

That night he had to be at the Holborn Restaurant for an annual dinner of internationals, so he struck work soon after four, seeing that by then Mrs. Grover’s task of taking down and dusting was ended, and the pictures now lay in a pile by the dining-room sideboard. David procured himself a quantity of brown paper, with gum and pincers, sat on the floor by the pile, and, with an effort to breathe no faster than usual, set himself to work. It was not so slight a task as it looked, some of the pictures being elaborately fastened with brown paper, tacks, and bars; and, since they were not his own, he had to leave them not less trim than he found them. He was resolved to trust not even a workman in this search. However, being handy, a Jack of all trades, he had got some half dozen unfastened and again fastened before six o’clock.

His gum failing, he called upon Mrs. Grover, received no answer, called again, went searching, but could not find her in the flat. Wondering at this, he stepped outside the front door to invoke the services of the lift-man, when a little way down the stairs he caught a sound of voices in low talk. His ready ear seemed to detect the particular accent of his housekeeper, and he went downward, spying out who it might be. He wore slippers, and for this reason, perhaps, approached near the speakers before he was seen. They were Mrs. Grover and a young man. The latter, the moment he was aware of David’s presence, was gone like a thief, so David did not see his face – it was dark there at that hour – but he had an impression that it was Neil, Van Hupfeldt’s valet, and his legs of themselves started into chase; but he checked himself.