If Lexy had not caught the unhappy woman, she would have fallen; but those sturdy young arms held her, and, with Mrs. Royce’s help, they got her on the bed. White as a ghost, incredibly frail in her black dress, she lay there, scarcely seeming to breathe.
“It ain’t Mrs. Quelton!” repeated Mrs. Royce, in a whisper.
“I know!” said Lexy softly. “Will you get me water and a towel, please?”
Mrs. Royce went out of the room, and Lexy knelt down beside the bed. She did know now—the woman whom they had all called Muriel Quelton was really Caroline Enderby.
Lexy did not blame herself for not having known before. Looking at that face now, in its terrible stillness, she could trace the familiar features easily enough, but how changed! How worn and lined, how old! The brows, the lashes, the soft, disordered hair, were black now instead of brown; but that merely physical alteration was of no significance, compared with that other awful change. It was Caroline Enderby, the gentle and pitifully inexperienced girl of nineteen, but it was Mrs. Quelton, too, that tragic and somber figure.
Mrs. Royce came back with a basin of water, clean towels, and a precious bottle of eau de Cologne.
“Poor lamb!” she whispered. “Ain’t she pretty?”
Lexy wet a towel and passed it over that unconscious face again and again. Mrs. Royce watched, spellbound; for the dark and haggard stranger was passing away before her very eyes, and some one else was coming into life—some one quite young and—
The closed lids fluttered, and then opened.
“Lexy!” murmured the metamorphosed one.
“I’m here, Caroline!” said Lexy, with a stifled sob. “Everything’s all right, dear! Don’t worry—just rest!”
“I can’t, Lexy! I can’t!” she answered, and from her eyes, now closed again, tears came running slowly down her cheeks.
“Yes, you can!” said Lexy. “We’ll—”
“Supposing I get her some nice hot soup?” whispered Mrs. Royce, and, at a nod from Lexy, she was off again.
Caroline reached out and caught Lexy’s hand.
“Oh, Lexy, Lexy!” she said. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“No!” her friend replied cheerfully. “Never! But don’t bother now. You can tell me later, when you feel better.”
“I’ll never, never feel better till I’ve told you! Oh, Lexy, I knew yesterday, and I didn’t tell you! Oh, Lexy, Lexy, I don’t understand! I want to tell you! I want you to help me!”
A flush had come into her cheeks. She was growing painfully excited. She tried to sit up, but Lexy firmly prevented that.
“Lie down, darling!” she said. “We’ll get a doctor.”
“No! No! I’m not ill—not ill, Lexy, only tired. Oh, you don’t know! You won’t let him come here, Lexy?”
“I promise you he’ll never trouble you again,” replied Lexy quietly.
She saw Captain Grey standing in the doorway, behind the head of the bed. She glanced at him, and then at Caroline again. Let him stay! Whatever had happened, he ought to know.
“I don’t understand,” said Caroline, clinging fast to Lexy’s hand. “I want to tell you—all of it. You know, Lexy, I did a horrible, wretched thing. I said I’d marry a man. I promised to meet him here in Wyngate, because it was near to dear Miss Craigie’s. I didn’t tell you, but it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you, Lexy—truly it wasn’t! It was only because I knew mother would be so angry with you. I told him I’d take the train that got here at eleven o’clock that night; but after I’d left the house, I got frightened. I’d never gone out alone before. I couldn’t bear it. If I hadn’t promised him, I’d have gone home again. I wanted to go home. I was sorry I’d promised.”
“Don’t try to go on now, dear!”
“I must! So I took a taxi. I thought I’d get here as soon as the train, but when it was eleven o’clock we were still miles away. I thought perhaps Charles wouldn’t wait, and there’d be nobody in Wyngate, and I didn’t dare go home again; so I kept begging the driver to go faster. Oh, Lexy, it was all my fault! He did go—terribly fast. It was wonderful to be alone, and rushing along like that; and then I think he ran into a telegraph pole, turning a corner. There was a crash, and I didn’t know anything more for—I don’t know how long it’s been.”
“Soup!” whispered Mrs. Royce, but Caroline was too intent upon her confession to stop.
Lexy took the broth and set it on the table.
“I don’t know how long it was,” Caroline went on. “It must have been days, or perhaps weeks. Sometimes I seemed to knew, in a sort of dream. Oh, it was horrible! Oh, Lexy, I can’t explain! I didn’t really know anything, only that sometimes my mind seemed to be struggling—”
“Take some of this soup,” said Lexy. “You’ve got to, Caroline, or I won’t listen.”
Obediently Caroline allowed herself to be fed. She took fully half of that excellent soup, and it did her good.
“Yesterday,” she said, “I did know. I couldn’t sleep all night. I felt so ill, I thought I was going to die; and all the time it was coming back to me. I couldn’t think why I was there in that place. I was frightened—worse than frightened. The nurse kept calling me ‘Mrs. Quelton,’ and I told her I wasn’t Mrs. Quelton—I was Caroline Enderby. She must have told him. He came, he kept looking at me, and saying, ‘You are Muriel Quelton, I tell you!’ Then he sent the nurse away, and he said: ‘If you insist that you are Caroline Enderby, you’re mad, and I’ll send you to an asylum.’ I was—oh, Lexy, I’m not brave!—I was afraid of him. When you came that morning, I didn’t dare to tell you. I hoped you’d find the handkerchief, and know; and then—”
Suddenly she turned and buried her face in the pillow.
“Then I didn’t want you to know!” she sobbed. “Captain Grey—he sat there with me. Lexy! Lexy! I didn’t know there was any one like him in the world! I wanted to stay, then. I thought, if you found out, I’d have to go away—to go home again, or to marry Charles. I’d promised to marry him, Lexy, but I can’t! Not now!”
“Hush, darling!” said Lexy hastily.
This was something Captain Grey had no right to hear, but he did hear it. He was still standing outside the door, motionless.
“He was so kind!” Caroline went on. “And his face—”
“Never mind that!” Lexy interrupted sternly. “Tell me how you got away.”
“When he came back, he found George there—I had to call him George.”
“Yes, I see. Never mind!”
“George went away, and then—he told me. He said his wife had died a few months ago, and that in her will she’d left some jewel—a ruby—”
“An emerald,” corrected Lexy.
“Yes—it was an emerald. She’d left it to her brother, and he—Dr. Quelton—had taken it long ago, and sold it, to get money for his horrible drugs. She never knew that, and he didn’t tell her lawyer that she’d died. I don’t know how he managed, or what he did, but nobody knew. Then there came a letter from her brother, to say that he was coming; and the doctor said—I’ll never forget it:
“‘Consequently, Muriel Quelton had to be here, and she was; and she’ll remain here until her purpose is served!’
“He told me what had happened. He said that as soon as he knew Captain Grey was coming, he began to look for some one to take his poor wife’s place. The captain hadn’t seen his sister since she was a baby, you know, and all he knew was that she was tall and dark. Dr. Quelton said he had arranged for some one to come from a hospital; and then he found me. He drove by just a little while after the accident, and he found the poor driver dead and me unconscious. He found a letter to mother in my purse, and he mailed it afterward. Then he heard another car coming along the road, and he started the engine and sent the taxi—with the dead driver in his seat—crashing down the hill, to run into the other car. He wanted the driver’s death to look like an accident. He didn’t care if the other man were killed. He’s—he’s not human, Lexy! He told me he had never in his life cared for any one except his wife. He told me what a beautiful, wonderful woman she was—and yet he had stolen her emerald when she was dying. Love! He couldn’t love any one!”
But Lexy remembered her last glimpse of Dr. Quelton, lying dead across the coffin of the woman he had robbed. Who would ever know, who was to judge now, what might have been in his warped and utterly solitary heart?
“He told me,” Caroline went on, “that he had never felt any great interest in me. A mediocre mind, he said I had. He told me he had never so much as touched my finger tips. He sat there, talking so calmly! He said he had kept me under the influence of some drug that made my mind suggestible—I think that’s the word. He meant that whoever took that drug would believe anything, accept anything. He had told me I was Muriel Quelton, and I believed I was. Then he told me to dye my hair, and to make up my face with things he gave me. He told me I was ill and tired and growing old, and I felt so. Lexy, he said that even without that, without making the least change in my appearance, no one would have known me, because my mind was changed. He said there was no disguise in the world like that. Was it true, Lexy? Was I old, and—and horrible to every one?”
“No,” Lexy briefly replied.
“Then he went on. He said he had no more of the drug left, and that he’d have to dispose of me. ‘You know you’re very ill,’ he said. ‘The nurse and that young fool of a doctor agree with me. I think you’re likely to grow worse—very much worse—to-night. You’re very likely to die.’ Oh, Lexy! What could I do but agree? I was shut up—so weak and ill— I knew he could so easily give me something to kill me! He said that if I would make a will and sign it as he told me, he would let me go and be—be myself again. I couldn’t help it! And his wife was dead. It couldn’t do her any harm if I signed her name. He wrote it, and I traced it on another sheet of paper. I had to, Lexy! I knew it was wrong, but what else could I possibly do?”
“Never mind, Caroline!” said Lexy. “It didn’t do any harm, dear. And then did he let you go?”
An odd smile came over Caroline’s face.
“Not exactly,” she said. “After I’d signed the will, leaving him the emerald, he sent away the nurse. Then he came out on the balcony, sat down, and began to talk to me. He was so pleasant and kindly! He made plans for my getting away unnoticed, and brought me some sandwiches and a cup of tea. He said I would have to eat a little, or I wouldn’t have strength enough to go. It was getting dark then, and he couldn’t see my face. I pretended to believe him, but I knew all the time. He kept urging me to hurry up, and to eat the sandwiches and drink the tea. I knew! I had made the will, and now, of course, I had to die. I tried to think of a way out; and at last, when he saw that I didn’t eat or drink, he spoke out plainly. He said that he had sent the servants away for the afternoon, and that we were alone in the house. He got up; he stood there and looked down at me.
“‘That tea is an easy way out—quite painless and easy,’ he said; ‘but if you won’t take it, there’s another way—not so easy!’
“He had some sort of hypodermic needle; but just then some one began pounding on the door downstairs, and he had to go. He locked the door after him, and he knew I was too weak to move. I tried. I got off the couch, but I fell on the floor beside it; and then Charles came—”
“Charles?”
“He climbed up over the balcony. It was too dark to see him, but I heard his voice, whispering, ‘Where are you?’ He found me, lifted me up, and helped me over to the railing. Then we heard Dr. Quelton coming back. There was another man, down in the garden, with a taxi. Charles called out to him, and he stood below there. I heard Dr. Quelton unlock the door, and I was so frightened that I felt strong enough to do anything to get away. Charles helped me over, and the other man caught me. Then I heard Charles shout, ‘Quick! Get her away!’ The other man pushed me into the taxi and started off across the lawn. I fainted, and I didn’t know anything more until I opened my eyes here.”
“But where is he?” cried Lexy. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you don’t seem to care, either!” said Lexy hotly. “He saved your life, and now—”
She thought of that bloody hand print, and the grass beaten down. The young man who had no caution, no regard for the proprieties, had done the direct and simple thing which appealed to his audacious mind. Perhaps he had been killed in doing it. He would know how to face death in the same straightforward way.
Lexy would be as straightforward as he. She would find him, and she wouldn’t try to think how much she cared about finding him.
She rose.
“I’ll get Mrs. Royce to stay with you, Caroline,” she said.
“But where are you going, Lexy?”
“I’m going to find Charles.”
In the doorway she encountered Captain Grey.
“Do you think she could stand seeing me?” he asked anxiously. “I mean do you—”
But Lexy didn’t even answer.