BEHIND THE BRONZE DOOR

Thoroughly frightened, she turned away as the sound of the weird knocker shattered the ghostly stillness.

BEHIND
THE BRONZE DOOR

BY

WILLIAM LE QUEUX

AUTHOR OF “THE VOICE FROM THE VOID”

FRONTISPIECE BY
G. W. GAGE

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1923,
By THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

CONTENTS

BEHIND THE BRONZE DOOR

BEHIND THE BRONZE DOOR

CHAPTER I.

THE EPIDEMIC OF MYSTERY.

“Isn’t this terrible, Henry? Where is it going to end?”

“Isn’t what terrible?—and where is what going end?”

“Why! Haven’t you read to-night’s paper?”

“No.”

“Here it is; read that!” and handing her husband the Evening Herald Mrs. Hartsilver indicated with her finger a paragraph in the “stoppress” headed: “Another Society Tragedy,” and stated that a well-known baronet had been found shot in his bedroom in circumstances of great mystery.

Certainly the series of tragedies which had taken place during the past eight months in what is called “Society,” had been most puzzling.

First, Lord Hope-Cooper, the fifth peer, held in high esteem by all his friends and acquaintances, owner of Cowrie Park in Perthshire, Leveden Hall in Warwickshire, and one of the finest houses in Grosvenor Square, had drowned himself in the beautiful lake at Cowrie, apparently for no reason and without leaving even a note of farewell for Lady Hope-Cooper, with whom he was known to be on the best of terms—​they had been married eight years.

Then Viscount Molesley, a rich bachelor of three-and-twenty, an owner of thoroughbreds and well-known about town and in sporting circles, had been found shot in his bedroom one morning, an automatic pistol on the floor beside him, and in the grate the ashes of some burnt papers; apparently he had shot himself after receiving his morning letters.

Following close upon these tragedies had come the sudden death of the Honorable Vera Froissart, Lord Froissart’s younger daughter, in mysterious circumstances. She had been found dead in the drawing-room in her father’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate, and at the inquest the jury had returned a verdict of “death due apparently to shock.” Then the death of a rather notorious ex-Society woman, Madame Leonora Vandervelt, who had been divorced by three husbands—​she had thrown herself out of a fourth-floor window at a fashionable West End hotel. Then the death by poisoning of an extremely prosperous stockbroker of middle-age, owner of two financial journals. And after that four or five more tragedies of the same nature, the victim in nearly every case being a man or woman of high social standing and large income.

“Exactly the way Molesley made away with himself,” Henry Hartsilver observed dryly as he laid down the paper after reading the report of the discovery of Sir Stephen Lethbridge’s body in his bedroom at Abbey Hall in Cumberland.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You may think me hard and unsympathetic, my dear,” he went on, addressing his wife, “but these people who make away with themselves leave me cold. Such tragedies don’t excite my pity—​they arouse in me only a feeling of contempt.”

He paused, then continued:

“Now, look at me. You know how I began life, though I sometimes try to forget it, as I hope others do. My parents were poor, and I received only a moderate education; but I had grit and determination and I won through. And look at me to-day. All who know me look up to and respect me. I’m a self-made man and not ashamed to own it, though I don’t crow about it on the housetops as some of these plebeians do. Though I come of the people, I pride myself on being one of Nature’s gentlemen, and what can you want more than that—​eh? We can’t choose our parents, or I might have chosen parents like yours, my dear—​blue blood through and through. And that was one reason why I married you. I think I have told you this before. I made up my mind when I was still a lad that the woman I made my wife should be a lady in the true acceptation of that often misapplied word, and the first time I met you—​you remember that day, eh, my dear?—I recognized the type, and then and there I decided that you were the lady for me!”

He lay back in the big arm-chair, slipped his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and looked at his young wife with an expression of extreme self-satisfaction.

“But, Henry,” she said, wincing, “what has all that to do with this calamity? You forget that I knew poor Stephen Lethbridge. Abbey Hall is close to my old home, and Stephen and I were children together. I can’t help feeling upset.”

“I understand that quite well, but the feeling is one you ought to fight against, my dear Cora. A man who deliberately commits suicide, no matter what his social status may be, and no matter what the reason or reasons may be which prompt him to commit the rash act, is guilty of a grave wrong, not to himself alone, but to the whole of the community. Heaven knows I have had difficulties, almost unsurmountable difficulties, to contend with in my time, yet the bare thought of self-destruction never entered my imagination.”

Henry Hartsilver had been married three years. A common, self-centered person, endowed with exceptional shrewdness and with considerable commercial acumen, he had begun life as a jerry-builder in a small country town. Then war with Germany had been declared, and realizing at once what so many failed to realize, namely that such a war must last for years at least, Hartsilver had seized the opportunity he saw spread out before him of amassing money quickly and in large lump sums by securing by divers means building contracts for our Government.

Thus, long before the war ended, he found himself a rich man. Then, anxious to gratify his second ambition, he set to work to look about for a woman of good social standing to become his wife; the thought that any woman to whom he might propose might decline the honor of marrying him did not occur to him.

Consequently he was not surprised, nor did he appreciate the honor conferred upon him, when the only surviving daughter of a well-connected country gentleman accepted his offer of marriage. True, the war had reduced her already impoverished father almost to penury, and in addition both her brothers had been killed in action early in the war, so that when she accepted him she felt that she did not now much care what became of her. Her mother had been dead many years, and her father she literally worshipped. What she never admitted, even to herself, though in her heart she knew it to be the truth, was that by marrying Henry Hartsilver she would be able to provide her father with a comfortable income in his declining years. And since his sons’ death he had aged very rapidly.

Hartsilver was now in his forty-sixth year, his wife just seven-and-twenty. They had no children, but that did not prevent Hartsilver’s everlasting complaint to his wife that he considered himself deeply aggrieved at the Government’s neglect in failing to confer a title upon him.

“Just think, my dear,” he had said to her more than once, “what you would feel like if I made you ‘my lady!’ Shouldn’t we be able to crow it over our friends, eh? And to think of the sums I gave to war charities! Well, we must live in hope!”

Fortunately his wife’s tact, possibly also the sense of humor which she possessed, prevented her from becoming annoyed with him when he spoke like that, and making the sarcastic rejoinder which she sometimes longed to utter. Though she could not accuse herself of having married him for his money, that being the last thing she cared about, she yet felt that she had in a way married him under false pretenses, for certainly she knew that, but for her anxiety to add to her father’s happiness and comfort, this common, self-satisfied, and self-righteous person was one of the last men she would have linked herself to for life.

Presently he spoke again.

“You know, my dear Cora,” he said, linking his fingers across his ample chest, “although of course, it distresses me that you should grieve for this man Lethbridge, yet I don’t quite appreciate your feeling what I can only suppose is a sort of affection for the fellow—​you, a married woman. Somehow it seems—​it seems not quite the right thing. A woman, when she marries, should have no thought for other men, at least of all thoughts of a—​er—​friendly nature. Now, consider for a moment, and tell me if your better nature does not tell you so itself.”

Cora Hartsilver winced, but her husband did not notice it. He did notice, however, when a moment later she smiled.

“You seem amused, my dear,” he said dryly. “May I ask what amuses you?”

“Oh nothing, Henry, nothing at all,” she answered quickly, then bit her lip. “It was only something I happened to think of just then.”

“Ah, then it was something. Then why say it was ‘nothing?’ You should always be truthful, Cora, always absolutely truthful, in even the smallest matters. And what did you ‘happen to think of just then?’”

“I can’t remember now. It’s gone. Anyway it was nothing of consequence. May I have that paper again, Henry?”

“Certainly,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then, as he handed it to her, he said:

“Tell me what you know about Sir Stephen Lethbridge. I know him only by name.”

“Well, I have not seen him for a year or two,” she replied carelessly. “Indeed, I think not since our marriage. He came to the wedding, if you remember.”

“I don’t remember. But go on.”

“He was in the Gunners. He went out to France in 1914, and was home on sick leave when we were married. He used to be rather fond of me, I believe.”

Henry’s mouth opened. He stared at his wife in astonishment.

“Really, Cora—​—” he began, but she went on without heeding him.

“I heard not so long ago that he had got into rather a bad set. Somebody told me that the things he had seen out in France seemed to have unsettled his brain—​I know that happened in other cases too. But he was a man who would never, I am quite sure, have done anything dishonorable. Oh, I wish I knew,” she exclaimed, carried away by a sudden emotion. “I do wish I knew what made him kill himself!”

“I wouldn’t worry about him, my dear Cora, if I were you,” her husband remarked coldly. “Probably he was mentally unsound, mad—​‘potty’ as the boys say, Those scenes in the trenches must have been extremely trying. And yet—​had I been younger and able to join the colors—​—”

He stopped and stared. Cora, lying back on the settee, was laughing hysterically.

CHAPTER II.

HUSBAND, WIFE—​AND ANOTHER.

Cora Hartsilver was preparing to go out next morning, when she was told that “Miss Yootha Hagerston would like to see her.”

“Oh, ask her to come up!” she exclaimed. “And Jackson—​—”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“If Mr. Hartsilver should come in while I am out, he had better be told that I shall not be in for lunch.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jackson, the maid, went downstairs with a look of mild amusement in her eyes. She had been in the Hartsilvers’ service two years, and was fond of expressing her opinion to the other servants on the subject of what she called her master and mistress’s “matrimonial mésalliance.”

“I give them another year,” she had observed to the cook only the night before, “and that will see the end of it. However a lady like her came to marry that—​that old woman of a husband of hers fair beats me.”

“Not so much of the ‘old woman,’” the cook had answered sharply—​she showed signs of age herself. “But I do agree with you, Mary, nevertheless. Ah, well, the old feller’s got the money-bags, and that goes a long way when it comes to marryin’, I always says. I never did hold with these love and cottage matches, nor I never shall. I’ve had some of it, I can tell you, and I have told you before now, but seein’ as my poor old man lies in Carlisle churchyard, nil nisi bonus. Isn’t that how they put it? And he had his good points for all he was poor as a rat, that I will admit.”

Yootha Hagerston was one of Cora’s oldest and dearest friends, the one friend, indeed, of whom she had for years made an intimate confidant. Yootha was not married, but that was not due to any lack of suitors, for the proposals she had had were numerous. She was a very pretty girl, about two years younger than Cora: tall, slim, extremely graceful, and with a face full of expression. She was one of those girls who attract through their personality rather than by the beauty of their features. The look in the large intelligent eyes betrayed her temperamental nature. She lived alone in an unpretentious flat near Knightsbridge, which she had taken two years before, after leaving her home near Penrith owing, as she put it, to the “impossible sort of life my people expected me to lead, boxed up in the country and with nothing on earth to do.” The truth was that her stepmother disliked her, and that her father was intemperate. Yootha was the youngest of three children; her two brothers were serving oversea.

When she entered Cora’s bedroom, Cora came forward and kissed her fondly.

“You dear thing,” she exclaimed. “I am so glad you have come. I have not seen you for a week. Where in the world have you been?”

“Oh, my people have been in town. You know what that means.”

“Indeed I don’t! Your people? You mean your father and mother?”

“Stepmother, if you please,” Yootha corrected. “For goodness’ sake don’t insult my mother’s memory. Yes, they both came up unexpectedly, and for what do you think?”

“I give it up.”

“To try to persuade me to go home!” and Yootha laughed merrily. “Can you see me back in the old homestead with its memories of my happy childhood’s days, and by contrast the atmosphere which prevails there now? No, thank you! And why do you think they wanted me back again, Cora?”

“Oh, stop asking conundrums.”

“Because some busybody has been telling my father that the way I live in my bachelor flat is not comme il faut, if you please, and so he thinks—​or says he thinks—​that I may end by bringing the family name into disrepute. Just think of that! Now, if you ask me, I will tell you what I believe the true reason is. On my twenty-fifth birthday I come into some money from a defunct aunt, my father’s only sister—​quite a nice little sum safely invested—​and I am pretty sure my stepmother hopes to induce me to make over a portion of the nest egg to her, or to my father. You have no idea how amiable she was, and my father too. Couldn’t make enough of me or do too much for me. The money comes to me in five months’ time.”

“But didn’t they know before that you would inherit it?”

“Apparently not. I knew nothing about it myself until a few weeks ago, and I purposely didn’t tell you then because the lawyer who wrote to me—​he is a friend of mine—​asked me to say nothing about it just yet. He told me about it more or less in confidence—​said he thought I might like to know.”

“So you are not going back to Cumberland?”

“My darling Cora, what a question!”

“Oh, I am glad!” Mrs. Hartsilver exclaimed. “I don’t know how I should live if you went away. You are the only friend I have; you are, really. Tell me, did your father or mother—​I beg your pardon ‘stepmother’—say anything about Stephen Lethbridge? You have read about the tragedy, of course.”

“Indeed I have, and I at once thought of you. Yes, they were full of it last night. My father said he saw Stephen less than ten days ago, and was struck by the change that had come over him.”

“How—​‘change’?”

“He said he looked years older than when he saw him a month ago, and he mentioned the fact to my stepmother at the time. Then he said that strange-looking people had been staying at Abbey Hall lately.”

“Men or women?”

“Men. There were rumors, too, my father said, that Stephen had become financially embarrassed.”

“Really? But he was so well off, or supposed to be.”

“I know. That adds to the mystery. I suppose there was a woman, or women, in the case. I see in to-day’s paper that an inquest will be held.”

Cora did not answer. She was staring out of the window towards Regent’s Park—​the house was in Park Crescent—​with troubled eyes, as though her thoughts were miles away.

“Don’t fret, Cora,” her friend said at last. “I know you were fond of him, and that he was fond of you, but—​—”

“Oh, don’t, don’t speak like that,” Mrs. Hartsilver exclaimed hastily, pressing her fingers to her eyes. “It is all too terrible, I can’t bear to think of it; and yet I can’t help thinking about it and wondering—​wondering—​—”

Yootha Hagerston encircled her friend with her arm, and kissed her warmly.

“I know—​I know,” she said in a tone of deep sympathy. “No, we won’t talk about it. Did Henry refer to it at all?”

“Henry!”

The tone betrayed utter contempt, almost hatred.

“Oh, yes, Henry referred to it all right. At least I drew his attention to the report in last night’s paper, and—​oh, you should have heard him! I felt I wanted to scream. I longed to strike him. He has no heart, Yootha, no sympathy for anything or any one. I wonder sometimes why I go on living with him. He said he felt only contempt for any man who took his life, no matter in what circumstances!”

Like many another, Henry Hartsilver had succeeded in supplying himself with petrol during the war, and as his limousine sped slowly down Bond Street a little later that morning with his wife and Yootha Hagerston in it, officers home on leave who noticed it wondered if people at home actually realized what was happening on the Western front.

“More profiteers’ belongings!” a captain in the Devons, limping painfully out of Clifford Street, observed grimly. “I sometimes wish the Boches could land a few thousand troops here to give our folk a taste of the real thing. Who’s that they are talking to? I seem to know his face.”

For the car, after slowing down, had stopped owing to the traffic congestion, and a tall, good looking, well-groomed man who could not have been more than seven-and-twenty, had raised his hat to its occupants and now stood on the curb, talking to them.

“Know him!” the officer’s companion answered; he was a gray-haired man who looked as if he had been a sportsman. “Probably you do know him—​I wonder who doesn’t. It’s Archie La Planta, one of the most popular men in town, some say because he’s so handsome, but I expect it’s largely because he is such a good matrimonial catch.”

“Why isn’t he serving?”

“Oh, ask me another, Charlie. Why are half the youths one meets not serving? They’ve managed to wangle it somehow. Haven’t you ever met him?”

“Not to the best of my recollection. You see, I’ve been in France three years. But I am sure I have seen him somewhere.”

“Here he comes. I’ll introduce you. He knows everybody worth knowing, and is quite an interesting lad.”

La Planta was about to cross the street, when he caught sight of his friend on the pavement, hesitated an instant, then waited for his friend and the wounded officer to come up.

“’Morning, Archie,” the man exclaimed who had told Captain Preston who La Planta was. “Preston, let me introduce Mr. La Planta.”

The two men bowed formally to each other.

“Archie, who are those two ladies to whom you were talking, if you don’t mind my asking?” his friend said a moment later.

La Planta told him.

“You must have heard of Henry Hartsilver,” he added. “You won’t find a list of contributors to any public war charity in which his name doesn’t appear—​mind, I emphasize the public. Mrs. Hartsilver is his wife, a charming woman.”

“Oh, that bounder,” the first speaker observed. “Yes, I know all about him; one of our profiteers!”

“Exactly, and a quite impossible person in addition. Which way are you going?”

The three progressed slowly, owing to Preston’s limp, along the pavement, in the direction of Piccadilly. Preston hardly spoke. He was almost morose. The reason was that La Planta’s personality repelled him. Why it repelled him he could not explain. It was one of those natural repulsions which all of us have experienced regarding certain persons, and that we are at a loss to account for.

“Where are you both lunching?” La Planta asked as they approached Piccadilly.

“Nowhere in particular,” Preston’s companion, whose name was Blenkiron, replied.

“Well, why not lunch with me at the Ritz, and I’ll introduce you to Mrs. Hartsilver and her friend. They have promised to meet me there at one o’clock. It is about the only place where one can get anything decent to eat. You will find both ladies charming.”

It was then noon, and La Planta, saying that he had an appointment at his club, left them after arranging that they should all meet at the Ritz at one.

“I am not attracted by the fellow,” Captain Preston remarked some moments later. “I would sooner have lunched with you alone, George. Who and what is he?”

Blenkiron shrugged his shoulders.

“What he is, we know—​a man of leisure and of fortune. Who he is, whence he comes...?”

He made an expressive gesture.

“And, after all, what does it matter? Who knows who half the people are whom one meets everywhere to-day? They can afford to do you well, they do do you well, and that is all that most people care about. Though ‘La Planta’ is not precisely a British name, the man looks, and evidently is an Englishman. He has a great friend, indeed, two great friends, who are almost always with him. Profane people have nicknamed the three ‘The Trinity.’ One is a man called Aloysius Stapleton, the other is a young widow—​Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, a perfectly lovely creature; heaven knows what her dressmaking bills must come to.”

“Or who pays them?”

“Charlie, that is unkind of you, what the women call ‘catty.’ Why should we conclude that she doesn’t pay her own bills?”

“And why should we conclude that she does? Well, I shall be interested to meet Mrs. Hartsilver at lunch presently. I don’t think I have ever before met the wife of a profiteer.”

In spite of the Food Comptroller’s regulations, the luncheon supplied at the Ritz lacked little. It was the second day of our great offensive, August 9th, 1918, but a stranger looking about him in the famous dining-room, where everybody seemed to be in the best of spirits and spending money lavishly, might have found it difficult to believe that men were being shot down, mangled, tortured, and blown to pieces in their thousands less than two hundred miles away. Captain Preston thought of it, and of the striking contrast, for that morning he had, while at the War Office, listened on the telephone to the great bombardment in progress. And that perhaps was the reason he looked glum, and why he was, as Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson afterwards remarked to La Planta as they drove away together, “a regular wet blanket right through the whole of lunch.”

Aloysius Stapleton, though not distinguished-looking, was one of those men who, directly they begin to talk, rivet the attention of their hearers. Forty-two years of age, he did not look a day over thirty-five, and in addition to being an excellent conversationalist, his knowledge of men and women was exceptional. He had traveled several times round the world, or rather, as he put it, zig-zagged over it more than once. He appeared to possess friends, or at least acquaintances, in every capital in Europe, also in many American cities and in far-off China and Japan. The only country he had not visited, he observed that day at lunch, was New Guinea, but he meant to go there some day to complete his education.

“Were you ever in Shanghai?” Preston inquired carelessly, looking him straight in the eyes across the table. As this was only the second time Preston had spoken since they had sat down to lunch, everybody looked towards him.

“Yes,” Stapleton answered, meeting his gaze. “I was there twice, some years before the war.”

“I stayed there several months in 1911,” Preston said, “and I believe I met you there. Your face seemed familiar to me when I was introduced to you just now—​—” he was about to add that he had just remembered it was in Shanghai he had seen La Planta before, but he checked himself.

“Were you there in the autumn, and did you stay at the Astor Hotel?” Stapleton asked.

“I did, and in the autumn.”

“Then no doubt we did meet, though I can’t at the moment recollect the occasion.”

For a couple of seconds the two men looked hard at each other. It was rather a curious look, as though each were trying to read the other’s character. The conversation was changed by Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s saying suddenly:

“What is everybody going to do after lunch, I wonder?”

And then, as nobody seemed to have any fixed plans, she went on:

“Why don’t you all come to a little party I am giving? Just a few intimate friends. We shall play bridge, and several well-known artists will come in later and have promised to sing. It would be nice of you if you would all come.”

There was a strange expression, partly cynical and partly of contempt, in Captain Preston’s gray eyes as Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson stopped speaking. The sound of the terrific slaughter which he had listened to an hour or two before, and which must be in progress still, he reflected, rang again in his ears. And here in London, in the London which, but for the heroism of our troops and their allies, and the unflagging watchfulness of the nations’ navies, might already have been running in blood, these people, especially Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson and her friends Stapleton and La Planta, seemed to have no thought except for amusement and for themselves.

“Good heavens,” he muttered, as presently they all rose from the table. “I wish the Boches could get here just to show them all what war and its atrocities are like! Well, perhaps they may get here yet.”

The only member of the party who had really interested him had been Cora Hartsilver, and that was due perhaps to the fact that La Planta had told him that she had lost her brothers in the war. Yootha Hagerston, too, he had rather liked; the “atmosphere” surrounding both these women was quite different he at once realized, from the “atmosphere” of Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson and the men who, so Blenkiron had told him, were her particular friends.

And yet, before he had been long in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s beautifully appointed house in Cavendish Square, its luxury and the sense of ease and comfort the whole of her entourage exhaled began to have its effect upon him. He was not a card-player, but music at all times appealed to him intensely, and as he lay back among the cushions in a great soft arm-chair which Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson had specially prepared for him, and listened with rapt attention to Tchaikowsky’s wonderful “None but the Weary Heart,” sung with violin obligato, those thoughts of the horrors he had witnessed “out there,” which so perpetually haunted him, faded completely from his mind, and even the dull, throbbing pain in his injured leg became for the time forgotten.

At last the music ceased, and he became conscious of conversation in subdued tones at his elbow. The speakers were late arrivals, and as he caught the name “Hartsilver” his attention became focused on what was being said.

“A terrible affair—​and his wife over there, talking, knows nothing about it as yet.”

“When did it happen?”

“About midday. It must have been premeditated, because when he was found dead in his bath he had opened an artery with a razor.”

CHAPTER III.

THE HIDDEN SCANDAL.

During the nine months which had passed since Henry Hartsilver had been found dead in his bath, many things had happened. The war was over, and people were already beginning to forget the discomfort, for some the misery, of those five long years. In London the wheels of life, their spoke having been removed, were slowly beginning to revolve once more.

The thousands who had “done their bit,” and become impoverished in consequence, were many of them cursing the impetuosity which had led them to forget their own interests in their anxiety to help to avenge the outrages in Belgium and France, and to save their own country from possible disaster. On the other hand many thousands of men and women who before the war had been struggling small traders, now contemplated with a feeling of smug satisfaction their swollen bank balances, and, while thanking heaven there had been a war, began to adopt a style of living which, though it ill became them, gratified their vanity enormously.

“I ’aven’t reelly decided if me boy shall go to Eton or to ’Arrow,” was the observation Captain Preston had overheard while inspecting cars at the motor exhibition one afternoon in late April, and the remark had made him metaphorically grind his teeth. For he detested the war profiteers as a race almost as deeply as he hated “conscientious” objectors. Indeed, since the war had ended he had regretted more than ever that the Huns had failed to land here.

The London season was now beginning, and the traffic congestion in the streets was admitted by all to be greater than at any period before the war. Enormous cars blocked the main thoroughfares, sometimes for hours at a time, yet everywhere was talk of poverty among people of education and of culture, who a few years previously had been in good circumstances. And among the many rich people in the West End few now entertained more lavishly than Aloysius Stapleton and the man who seemed to be his shadow—​young Archie La Planta.

“Then you have decided that it shall be at the Albert Hall,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said as she thoughtfully blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, “and you want me to act as hostess? Well, I won’t.”

“You won’t? But why not?”

“It wouldn’t do, Louie,” she answered with decision, addressing Aloysius Stapleton, who, seated near her on a settee in the drawing-room in her house in Cavendish Square, had been discussing arrangements for a great bal masqué.

“I really can’t see why; can you, Archie?” and he looked across at La Planta.

“You wouldn’t,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said dryly, before La Planta could reply. “I think men are the dullest things, I do really. Though our many ‘friends’ profess always to be so fond of us, and so pleased to see us, any number of the women hate me, if the truth were known.”

“They are simply jealous.”

“It’s the same thing. I know the things they have said about me, and that they say still. Or if they don’t say them they imply them, which is worse. No, I refuse to be your hostess; also I consider you ought to get somebody of more importance, some woman of established social standing, of high rank, if you want the ball to be a big success. There are plenty of people who do like me, of course, but at least they know nothing about me, who I am or where I come from, and though that may not count with the majority of men and women in our large circle of acquaintance, it counts a good deal with some—​they become inquisitive after a time and start making inquiries in all sorts of directions. Mrs. Hartsilver and her friend Yootha Hagerston are making inquiries of that sort now. Do you know that they have gone so far as to instruct a personal inquiry agency to find out all about me?”

“I did hear something of the sort,” Stapleton said. “But why worry? There is nothing it can say against you.”

“You mean the agency?”

“Yes.”

“But it can invent things, and readily will if it thinks it worth while.”

“Lies can’t be proved to be truth,” La Planta said, who for some moments had not spoken.

“Indeed!” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson exclaimed with a little laugh. “Perhaps when you grow older you will change your opinion,” she added. “You are more ingenuous than I thought you were, Archie!”

There were several visitors present, and soon conversation drifted to other topics. After a little while, however, somebody inquired, turning to Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson:

“You were speaking some minutes ago of Mrs. Hartsilver. Was anything ever discovered about her husband—​I mean, why he put an end to himself?”

“I believe nothing. If anything had been discovered I should probably have heard, as I know many people who were friends of his. A verdict of ‘suicide while temporarily insane’ was returned at the inquest, if you remember.”

“Yes,” the woman who had inquired said thoughtfully. “Yet he was one of the last men one would have looked upon as insane. I should have called him absolutely ‘all there.’”

“You never know,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson replied, pouring out a cup of tea. “People one considers sane seem nowadays to go mad in the most astonishing way. Look at the terrible list of suicides during the last year of the war, beginning with Lord Hope-Cooper and Viscount Molesley. Of course Madame Leonora Vandervelt’s tragedy was not so surprising—​she had had such a remarkable career—​but poor Vera Froissart’s suicide gave us all a terrible shock.”

“You knew her intimately, didn’t you?”

“My dear, she was one of my closest friends. And the jury pretended that she had died of ‘shock!’ Girls of that age don’t die of shock. My belief is that she had some private love affair and—​but there, I must not say more.”

“You don’t mean that?”

“Indeed I do. And my suspicion is not based on supposition only. Soon after her death I heard definite rumors, which emanated from trustworthy sources.”

“How dreadful! I hope they didn’t reach her father.”

“I hope so too. He looked dreadfully altered when I met him the other day, but Vera’s sad end no doubt accounts for that.”

A minute or two later the visitor with whom Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson had been conversing rose to go. Other visitors followed her example, among them La Planta.

“I am dining to-night with Mrs. Hartsilver,” he said carelessly as they shook hands.

“Oh!”

A look of sudden interest had come into Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s eyes.

“You will tell me if she says anything about me?” she added hurriedly under her breath.

“Of course I will. Shall I see you to-morrow?”

“Do. I shall be shopping in Bond Street in the morning. Why not meet me at Asprey’s at twelve?”

“I will. By the way, Captain Preston inquired for you this morning, when I met him in Regent Street.”

“Captain Preston?” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson repeated with a puzzled look. “Who is he? I seem to remember the name.”

“Don’t you recollect my introducing him to you about nine months ago? We all had lunch together at the Ritz—​Louie was there, and Mrs. Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston, and afterwards we went on to your house to play bridge and listen to music, and so on.”

“Of course, now I remember perfectly. A deadly dull person, wasn’t he?”

“He had been badly wounded and was only just out of hospital. You will find him less dull now, I think.”

“Possibly, but I am not very anxious to renew the acquaintanceship. He is one of the people one prefers to drop.”

“He wouldn’t like to hear that,” La Planta answered with a laugh. “It struck me he was greatly attracted by you that day, but tried not to show it.”

“Then don’t tell him,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said lightly. “Good-by then—​and twelve to-morrow at Asprey’s.”

As Archie La Planta stepped into his car strange thoughts came to him. They were thoughts which would have astonished most of his friends, though not Stapleton or the friend whose house he had just left.

At his chambers in the Albany he rang for his servant.

“James, bring me some telegram forms,” he said as the man entered. “And where is my ‘Who’s Who’?”

For some minutes he studied a page in “Who’s Who” carefully. Then, when James reëntered with the forms, he said:

“And now I want ‘Debrett.’ Why don’t you leave my books of reference where I always put them?” he added sharply.

“Mr. Stapleton looked in this morning, sir,” the man answered, “and wanted your ‘Who’s Who’ and ‘Debrett’ in a hurry, to refer to; said he hadn’t time to go home, sir. So I let him have them and he left them on the piano.”

For some moments La Planta sat at his escritoire writing out two telegrams.

“Send these off at once, James,” he said to his servant, who stood waiting at his elbow. “Both are very important.”

Then, going over to the full-length mirror, he carefully lit a cigar in front of it, set it going, and stretched himself out in a long fauteuil with his back to the French window.

He was soon deep in thought.

Suddenly his reverie was interrupted by the sound of the door-bell ringing.

“Hullo, Preston!” he exclaimed, as a moment later the footman announced the captain, who came limping into the room. “This is a pleasant surprise. Come and sit over here,” and he rolled an armchair towards him.

“Thanks,” his visitor answered. “I hope I am not intruding?”

He let himself slowly down into the big chair, then laid his stick beside it on the carpet.

“I wanted to see you rather particularly, La Planta,” he said, when they had exchanged one or two commonplace remarks. “So I looked up your address in the ‘Red Book’ and came along. I tried to get you on the telephone, but the operator declared she could get no reply.”

“She always does,” the young man answered dryly. “I have been seated beside the telephone at least half an hour and the bell has not even tinkled.”

“So much the better, perhaps, as I have found you in. Now, what I want to see you about is Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson.”

“Yes? I was at her house less than an hour ago.”

“Do you mind if I ask if you know much about her—​who she is, where she comes from, and all that sort of thing? Please don’t think me inquisitive. You may think it cool of me to ask you this, but I have a reason for wanting to know.”

“Naturally, or you wouldn’t ask,” La Planta replied quickly.

“I believe she is a friend of yours.”

“I believe she is. Do you mind telling me, Preston, the reason you need the information?”

“Not in the least. A friend of mine, Lord Froissart, whose daughter died suddenly over a year ago, tells me that his daughter was rather intimate with Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, but knew nothing about her—​that is to say, who her parents were and so on. His daughter’s death has rather preyed upon his mind, and he seems to suffer under what I take to be a delusion that Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson could throw some light on the cause of death if she chose. Consequently he has been worrying a good deal about the lady, and, when I dined with him last night, he asked me as a particular favor—​I am an old friend of his—​if I would try to interview you on the subject, and ask you to tell me Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s past history, if you know it. I said I would, though it is not a task I greatly relish as I am sure you will understand.”

La Planta did not answer for some moments.

“Yes, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson was a great friend of Vera Froissart,” he said at last, “and I don’t suppose any of Vera’s friends was more upset at her sudden death than Mrs. Robertson was. The astonishing delusion you speak of—​Froissart’s apparent belief that Mrs. Robertson has some knowledge or suspicion of what brought about the tragedy—​is, of course, the result of an unhinged mind. As for my telling you Mrs. Robertson’s private history, though I quite see how you are placed, I consider that to go into a family affair of that sort would, under existing conditions, be a breach of confidence on my part. Also, what bearing could such knowledge have on Mrs. Robertson’s knowing why Vera Froissart ended her life, as she undoubtedly did? Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson is a friend whose acquaintance I made some years ago under rather romantic circumstances, and to you I don’t mind saying that she has made me her rather close confidant. This I can tell you, however—​she is a woman who has from first to last met with many misfortunes, and been persistently misunderstood.”

For a minute both men were silent.

“And is that all you are prepared to tell me about her?” Preston said suddenly, in rather a hard voice.

“That is all.”

“In that case, La Planta,” Preston bent down to get his stick, “perhaps I had better go.”

“Perhaps you had.”

The wounded man looked up quickly, as though something in the young man’s tone had stung him, and their eyes met. It was little more than a glance which passed between them, yet the swift transference of thought from each to the other warned Preston to be on his guard against this polite, suave youth who was popularly said to be the most sought after bachelor in London; and in the same way La Planta knew on the instant that before him stood a man who might, under certain conditions, prove a formidable adversary.

“Good afternoon,” Captain Preston said, as he put on his hat in the hall.

“Good evening,” La Planta replied with frigid courtesy.

Then James, who had returned from the telegraph office, opened the door and the captain limped slowly up the Albany towards Vigo Street.

By the time Preston reached Regent Street, Archie La Planta had succeeded in getting through on the telephone to Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, and was telling her what had just occurred. When he stopped speaking, he heard her give a gay little laugh.

“Didn’t I say this afternoon,” she exclaimed, “that he was one of the people whose acquaintance I preferred to drop?”

CHAPTER IV.

THE BRONZE FACE.

Though Archie La Planta had met Cora Hartsilver frequently since the Armistice, he did not know her intimately, and had therefore been rather surprised at her asking him to dine. He concluded that she must be giving a dinner party, so when on the evening Preston had called to see him, he arrived at the big house in Park Crescent, he was astonished to find that Yootha Hagerston was to be the only other guest. Then and there his quick brain began to act and, while carrying on light conversation with the two ladies, he kept asking himself what reason Mrs. Hartsilver could have had for inviting him.

She had an excellent cook who had been with her since her marriage, and the little dinner was irreproachable. La Planta, an epicure to his fingertips, had realized this at once, and towards the end of the meal he began to feel at peace with the world at large.

“It is awfully good of you to have invited me to a nice, friendly little dinner like this,” he remarked presently, looking his hostess straight in the eyes across the table. “I don’t like big dinner parties, you know, and was half afraid you might have a lot of people to-night.”

“I never give big dinner parties if I can help it,” Cora answered, “though one has to sometimes. Like you, I prefer an informal little gathering, just one or two friends with whom one can exchange ideas. So many people are colorless, don’t you find? And dull people bore me to death. Let me pass you the port.”

It was ’48 port which had belonged to her late husband. La Planta poured himself out another glass, and presently his gaze became fixed upon the widow. It had never struck him before, he thought, what a pretty woman she was.

“When are we going to see your charming friend again?” Yootha presently said carelessly. “I do think her so attractive.”

“Which charming friend is that?”

“Why, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, of course. Who else could it be?”

At once La Planta was on the alert. The words flashed back into his partly bemused brain: “Mrs. Hartsilver and her friend Yootha Hagerston are making inquiries about me now. Do you know that they have gone so far as to instruct a personal inquiry agency to find out all about me?”

Could that be the reason he had been invited to dine? Were they going to try to find out from him something about Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, though perhaps with greater tact than Preston had displayed?

He pulled himself together, and answered:

“I am sure Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson would like to meet you at any time.” Then he added as an afterthought: “Though she has many acquaintances, she has comparatively few friends.”

“Do you think she would dine with me one night if I invited her?” Mrs. Hartsilver asked quickly. “We have met only casually.”

“I am sure she would. She is not one of those people who stand always on ceremony. Like most people who have traveled, she takes a broad view of life.”

“Oh, has she traveled a lot?” Yootha asked. “How interesting. Tell me—​where has she been?”

“Rather you should say, ‘Where has she not been?’ She has been almost everywhere, I believe.”

“I do think she is lovely, don’t you?” Yootha persisted. “If I were a man I should be head over heels in love with her.”

“Some men are,” La Planta answered in an odd tone. “But she doesn’t care about men, I think. I mean in a general way.”

“Did you say she had been in China?” Yootha suddenly asked abruptly.

“I didn’t—​but she has been. She was in Shanghai a good while.”

“She is a widow, I am told,” Cora presently hazarded.

“Yes.”

“Did you know her husband?”

“No. He died several years ago.”

“But you have known her a good while?”

“Only a year or two.”

“Is she entirely English? I sometimes think—​—”

“Yes?”

“I was only going to say she sometimes gives me the impression that she has a foreign strain.”

“If Australians are ‘foreigners,’” La Planta said lightly, “then she has a ‘foreign’ strain, because her parents were Australians—​they were sheep farmers in Queensland.”

“You don’t say so. That no doubt accounts for the queer expressions she sometimes uses. They were rich people, no doubt.”

“Well off, I fancy, but not enormously rich.”

“Then her fortune, I take it, came to her from her husband?”

La Planta had been answering more or less mechanically, for the wine he had drunk had dulled, to some extent, his ordinarily keen intelligence. Now, all at once, he seemed to become alive again.

“You seem greatly interested in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s private life, Mrs. Hartsilver, and you too, Miss Hagerston,” he said suddenly. “Oddly enough a man you know, in fact it was I who introduced him to you, called to see me only an hour ago for the express purpose of cross-questioning me with regard to the same lady. Merely a coincidence no doubt, but a singular coincidence.”

His tone, as he said this, resembled the tone he had adopted whilst addressing Preston, though it was not quite so marked. Mrs. Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston winced nevertheless, and presently they changed the subject.

He joined them in the drawing-room about ten minutes later, and half an hour or so afterwards took his departure rather abruptly. Though he had drunk more than was good for him, he knew he had not said anything that he would wish to recall. He walked leisurely down Portland Place in search of a taxi, then decided to walk home.

In Regent Street, as he passed into the halo of light shed down by a street lamp, he came face to face with Stapleton.

“Why Archie,” the latter exclaimed, “I was just thinking of you. Aren’t you dining with Mrs. Hartsilver?”

“I was,” La Planta answered, “but she and Yootha Hagerston rather bored me, so I came away early.”

“Wasn’t it a dinner party?”

“No, only those two.”

“Only the two! Then why were you invited?”

“I don’t know, but I think I can guess. Come along home with me. There are one or two things I want to talk to you about.”

At first Stapleton hesitated, alleging that he had an appointment, but finally he decided to do as his friend suggested.

Two telegrams lay awaiting La Planta in his sitting-room, and after reading them he handed them to Stapleton.

As Stapleton read the second, he raised his eyebrows.

“Curious, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I think not. I expected as much.”

“Won’t it upset your calculations?”

“Not necessarily.”

A tantalus and syphons stood on the table. Without saying more, Stapleton mixed himself a brandy and soda. Then he took a cigar from La Planta’s box.

“One or two things have happened lately,” he said at last, “which rather puzzle me. And the last is why those women should have asked you to dine alone with them.”

“No puzzle about that,” Archie answered, then went on to explain how Mrs. Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston had obviously tried to pick his brain regarding Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson and her past life.

“Strange,” Stapleton said thoughtfully. “That fits in with something that was said to me within the last hour. You know that little Jew who lends money to his friends—​Levi Schomberg?”

“By name.”

“I know him only slightly, but we walked along Jermyn Street together just now—​he was bound for the Turkish baths—​and he warned me to be on my guard against ‘Hartsilver’s widow’—said she was a ‘designing woman,’ as I might presently find out, and added that she was trying, for a reason which he stated, to get a case up against—​well, you can guess whom.”

“What sort of case?”

“A scandalous case. So, putting two and two together, I can only suppose that Cora Hartsilver is either jealous of our friend, or that for some reason she bears her a grudge.”

For a little while they continued talking.

And, while they talked, interesting events were in progress not far away.

“The house with the bronze face,” as it was called by people living in the neighborhood, was situated in a quiet street just off Russell Square. It had acquired that curious appellation owing to its front door being made conspicuous by a huge old Florentine bronze knocker representing a woman’s laughing face. The face was really that of a bacchante, and a very wicked-looking bacchante at that, and many were the stories told about the house in consequence. Some said the woman’s face possessed a lurid significance, and that within those portals.... Another rumor often credited was that the face could cast a spell over those who sought to probe its history, and that on more than one occasion persons who had entered the house had never come out again.

Those were, of course, foolish legends, yet the fact remained that an atmosphere of mystery surrounded the house with the bronze face. Obviously at some period it had been a private residence. Now it was ostensibly the headquarters of a private inquiry agency which had sprung into existence shortly before the war, and was known to be patronized by many fashionable and rich people.

It was nearly midnight, and in a comfortably furnished office in the middle of the building, so that no light showed in the street outside, a venerable-looking old gentleman and a handsome young woman, the latter with a semitic cast of countenance, sat side by side examining some documents.

A shaded electric reading-lamp on the table gave the only light in the room, and the documents lay in the ray which it shed immediately in front of them.

Neither spoke. Both were working rapidly. First the old man would take a document off the pile, read through it carefully, then pass it to his companion, who, after quickly scanning its contents, would make a marginal note or two, and then docket it. Thus they continued in silence for over half an hour, when the pile of papers came to an end.

The man leant back in his chair, stretched himself, and yawned.

“We have had about enough of this, eh, Camille?” he said, turning with a curious expression to his companion.

“Not half!” she answered with a foreign accent, which made the slang sound quaint. “Après minuit,” she added, glancing at her wrist-watch. “I call it crewel.”

“Never mind; it can’t last,” he said. “Or at least it won’t if I have much to do with it. Give me one of your chipre cigarettes.”

She took a cigarette herself and lit it, then handed him her case.