The Angel of Terror by Edgar Wallace (first color ebook reader .TXT) 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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She went up to her room, said her prayers and went to bed and was asleep immediately.
Lydia had forgotten about Jean's story until she saw her writing industriously at a small table which had been placed on the lawn. It was February, but the wind and the sun were warm and Lydia thought she had never seen a more beautiful picture than the girl presented[Pg 212] sitting there in a garden spangled with gay flowers, heavy with the scent of February roses, a dainty figure of a girl, almost ethereal in her loveliness.
"Am I interrupting you?"
"Not a bit," said Jean, putting down her pen and rubbing her wrist. "Isn't it annoying. I've got to quite an exciting part, and my wrist is giving me hell."
She used the word so naturally that Lydia forgot to be shocked.
"Can I do anything for you?"
Jean shook her head.
"I don't exactly see what you can do," she said, "unless you could—but, no, I would not ask you to do that!"
"What is it?" asked Lydia.
Jean puckered her brows in thought.
"I suppose you could do it," she said, "but I'd hate to ask you. You see, dear, I've got a chapter to finish and it really ought to go off to London to-day. I am very keen on getting an opinion from a literary friend of mine—but, no, I won't ask you."
"What is it?" smiled Lydia. "I'm sure you're not going to ask the impossible."
"The thought occurred to me that perhaps you might write as I dictated. It would only be two or three pages," said the girl apologetically. "I'm so full of the story at this moment that it would be a shame if I allowed the divine[Pg 213] fire of inspiration—that's the term, isn't it—to go out."
"Of course I'll do it," said Lydia. "I can't write shorthand, but that doesn't matter, does it?"
"No, longhand will be quick enough for me. My thoughts aren't so fast," said the girl.
"What is it all about?"
"It is about a girl," said Jean, "who has stolen a lot of money——"
"How thrilling!" smiled Lydia.
"And she's got away to America. She is living a very full and joyous life, but the thought of her sin is haunting her and she decides to disappear and let people think she has drowned herself. She is really going into a convent. I've got to the point where she is saying farewell to her friend. Do you feel capable of being harrowed?"
"I never felt fitter for the job in my life," said Lydia, and sitting down in the chair the girl had vacated, she took up the pencil which the other had left.
Jean strolled up and down the lawn in an agony of mental composition and presently she came back and began slowly to dictate.
Word by word Lydia wrote down the thrilling story of the girl's remorse, and presently came to the moment when the heroine was inditing a letter to her friend.
"Take a fresh page," said Jean, as Lydia[Pg 214] paused half-way down one sheet. "I shall want to write something in there myself when my hand gets better. Now begin:
"My dear Friend."
Lydia wrote down the words and slowly the girl dictated.
"I do not know how I can write you this letter. I intended to tell you when I saw you the other day how miserable I was. Your suspicion hurt me less than your ignorance of the one vital event in my life which has now made living a burden. My money has brought no joy to me. I have met a man I love, but with whom I know a union is impossible. We are determined to die together—farewell—"
"You said she was going away," interrupted Lydia.
"I know," Jean nodded. "Only she wants to give the impression——"
"I see, I see," said Lydia. "Go on."
"Forgive me for the act I am committing, which you may think is the act of a coward, and try to think as well of me as you possibly can. Your friend——"
"I don't know whether to make her sign her name or put her initials," said Jean, pursing her lips.[Pg 215]
"What is her name?"
"Laura Martin. Just put the initials L.M."
"They're mine also," smiled Lydia. "What else?"
"I don't think I'll do any more," said Jean. "I'm not a good dictator, am I? Though you're a wonderful amanuensis."
She collected the papers tidily, put them in a little portfolio and tucked them under her arm.
"Let us gamble the afternoon away," said Jean. "I want distraction."
"But your story? Haven't you to send it off?"
"I'm going to wrestle with it in secret, even if it breaks my wrist," said Jean brightly.
She took the portfolio up to her room, locked the door and sorted over the pages. The page which held the farewell letter she put carefully aside. The remainder, including all that part of the story she had written on the previous night, she made into a bundle, and when Lydia had gone off with Marcus Stepney to swim, she carried the paper to a remote corner of the grounds and burnt it sheet by sheet. Again she examined the "letter," folded it and locked it in a drawer.
Lydia, returning from her swim, was met by Jean half-way up the hill.
"By the way, my dear, I wish you would give me Jack Glover's London address," she said as they went into the house. "Write it[Pg 216] here. Here is a pencil." She pulled out an envelope from a stationery rack and Lydia, in all innocence, wrote as she requested.
The envelope Jean carried upstairs, put into it the letter signed "L. M.," and sealed it down. Lydia Meredith was nearer to death at that moment than she had been on the afternoon when Mordon the chauffeur brought his big Fiat on to the pavement of Berkeley Street.[Pg 217]
Chapter XXIXIt was in the evening of the next day that Lydia received a wire from Jack Glover. It was addressed from London and announced his arrival.
"Doesn't it make you feel nice, Lydia," said Jean, when she saw the telegram, "to have a man in London looking after your interests—a sort of guardian angel—and another guardian angel prowling round your demesne at Cap Martin?"
"You mean Jaggs? Have you seen him?"
"No, I have not seen him," said the girl softly. "I should rather like to see him. Do you know where he is staying at Monte Carlo?"
Lydia shook her head.
"I hope I shall see him before I go," said Jean. "He must be a very interesting old gentleman."
It was Mr. Briggerland who first caught a glimpse of Lydia's watchman. Mr. Briggerland had spent the greater part of the day sleeping. He was unusually wakeful at one o'clock in the morning, and sat on the veranda in a fur-lined overcoat, his gun lay across his[Pg 218] knees. He had seen many mysterious shapes flitting across the lawn, only to discover on investigation that they were no more than the shadows which the moving tree-tops cast.
At two o'clock he saw a shape emerge from the tree belt and move stealthily in the shadow of the bushes toward the house. He did not fire because there was a chance that it might have been one of the detectives who had promised to keep an eye upon the Villa Casa in view of the murderous threats which Jean had received.
Noiselessly he rose and stepped in his rubber shoes to the darker end of the stoep. It was old Jaggs. There was no mistaking him. A bent man who limped cautiously across the lawn and was making for the back of the house. Mr. Briggerland cocked his gun and took aim....
Both girls heard the shot, and Lydia, springing out of bed, ran on to the balcony.
"It's all right, Mrs. Meredith," said Briggerland's voice. "It was a burglar, I think."
"You haven't hurt him?" she cried, remembering old Jaggs's nocturnal habits.
"If I have, he's got away," said Briggerland. "He must have seen me and dropped."
Jean flew downstairs in her dressing-gown and joined her father on the lawn.
"Did you get him?" she asked in a low voice.[Pg 219]
"I could have sworn I shot him," said her father in the same tone, "but the old devil must have dropped."
He heard the quick catch of her breath and turned apprehensively.
"Now, don't make a fuss about it, Jean, I couldn't help it."
"You couldn't help it!" she almost snarled. "You had him under your gun and you let him go. Do you think he'll ever come again, you fool?"
"Now look here, I'm not going to——" began Mr. Briggerland, but she snatched the gun from his hand, looked swiftly at the lock and ran across the lawn toward the trees.
Somebody was hiding. She sensed that and all her nerves were alert. Presently she saw a crouching figure and lifted the gun, but before she could fire it was wrested from her hand.
She opened her lips to cry out for help, but a hand closed over her mouth, and swung her round so that her back was toward her assailant, and then in a flash his arm came round her neck, the flex of the elbow against her throat.
"Say one of them prayers of yours," said a voice in her ear, and the arm tightened.
She struggled furiously, but the man held her as though she were a child.
"You're going to die," whispered the voice. "How do you like the sensation?"
The arm tightened on her neck. She was[Pg 220] suffocating, dying she thought, and her heart was filled with a wild, mad longing for life and a terror undreamt of. She could faintly hear her father's voice calling her and then consciousness departed.
When Jean came to herself she was in Lydia Meredith's arms. She opened her eyes and saw the pathetic face of her father looming from the background. Her hand went up to her throat.
"Hallo, people—how did I get here?" she asked as she struggled into a sitting position.
"I came in search of you and found you lying on the ground," quavered Mr. Briggerland.
"Did you see the man?" she asked.
"No. What happened to you, darling?"
"Nothing," she said with that composure which she could command. "I must have fainted. It was rather ridiculous of me, wasn't it?" she smiled.
She got unsteadily to her feet and again she felt her throat. Lydia noticed the action.
"Did he hurt you?" she asked anxiously. "It couldn't have been Jaggs."
"Oh no," smiled Jean, "it couldn't have been Jaggs. I think I'll go to bed."
She did not expect to sleep. For the first time in her extraordinary life fear had come to her, and she had shivered on the very edge of the abyss. She felt the shudder she could not[Pg 221] repress and shook herself impatiently. Then she extinguished the light and went to the window and looked out. Somewhere there in the darkness she knew her enemy was hidden, and again that sense of apprehension swept over her.
"I'm losing my nerve," she murmured.
It was extraordinary to Lydia Meredith that the girl showed no sign of her night's adventure when she came in to breakfast on the following morning. She looked bright. Her eyes were clear and her delicate irony as pointed as though she had slept the clock round.
Lydia did not swim that day, and Mr. Stepney had his journey out to Cap Martin in vain. Nor was she inclined to go back with him to Monte Carlo to the Casino in the afternoon, and Mr. Stepney began to realise that he was wasting valuable time.
Jean found her scribbling in the garden and Lydia made no secret of the task she was undertaking.
"Making your will? What a grisly idea?" she said as she put down the cup of tea she had carried out to the girl.
"Isn't it," said Lydia with a grimace. "It is the most worrying business, too, Jean. There is nobody I want to leave money to except you and Mr. Glover."
"For heaven's sake don't leave me any or Jack will think I am conspiring to bring about[Pg 222] your untimely end," said Jean. "Why make a will at all?"
There was no need for her to ask that, but she was curious to discover what reply the girl would make, and to her surprise Lydia fenced with the question.
"It is done in all the best circles," she said good-humouredly. "And, Jean, I'm not interested in a single public institution! I don't know by title the name of any home for dogs, and I shouldn't be at all anxious to leave my money
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