Wyllard's Weird

"You are always spending your wealth for the good of others, Julian," his wife answered tenderly. "Providence ought to bless the riches you earned in your laborious youth. I cannot imagine you caring for money for its own sake."

"I never did so care for it, Dora. Money in my mind meant power. I began life as a poor man's son, and tasted all the bitterness of narrow means. In my boyhood I told myself that I would be rich before I grew old, and to that end I worked as few men work. I was able to surround my mother with luxury during the closing years of her life. I was able to give my sister a dowry that helped the man of her choice to make his way in the world years before he could have done so without that aid. She did not live very long to enjoy her happiness, poor girl; but her last days were brightened by prosperity. No, Dora, I was not a money-grubber, but I made speculation a science, and I turned the age in which I lived to good account. It is not often given to a speculator to live in such a golden age as the days of Morny and Jecker."

"I am sure you would do nothing that was not strictly honourable," said Dora, with her bright trusting look.

"O, I belonged to the honourable section of the Bourse," replied Wyllard, with a somewhat cynical smile. "I had my office and my agents in London, and was a power on the Stock Exchange; and when I had acquired a reputation as a financier on both sides of the Channel, I founded the firm of Wyllard & Morrison, with one of the richest merchants in London for my partner. A man in my position could soil his fingers with no doubtful enterprise. Well, Dora, it is agreed you will go to Paris with me?"

"With pleasure."

She was happier than she had felt since that cloud of anger had passed across her domestic horizon. Julian's manner was franker, fonder, more like his old self – the man who had won her away from that other noble-minded man to whom she had promised herself – the man for whose sake she had been willing to break her promise.

"Can you be ready to start to-morrow morning? The sale takes place three days hence, and I want to have a good look at the pictures before they come to the hammer."

"Yes, I will be ready whenever you like."

"Then we'll leave by the morning train, and go straight on to Paris by the night mail. You will be able to see Heathcote, and hear how his investigation progresses. Where is he staying, by the way?"

"At the Hôtel de Bade."

"I'll drop him a line, and ask him to call on us at the Windsor. It is an old-fashioned family hotel, where I think you will be more comfortable than at one of those huge palaces, where you may be surfeited with splendid upholstery, but rarely get your bell answered under a quarter of an hour. You will take Priscilla, I suppose?"

Priscilla was Mrs. Wyllard's maid, Cornish to the marrow, and a severe Primitive Methodist.

"Priscilla in Paris? No, I think not. She was so wretched in Italy. The very smell of the incense offended her."

"She will not be overpowered by incense in Paris nowadays. She is more likely to be offended by a new Age of Reason. However, if you think you can do without her – "

"I'm sure I can. We shall not be visiting, I suppose?"

"Hardly, I think. It is the dullest of dull seasons in Paris just now, and I had never a large visiting acquaintance in that city. I was too busy a man to go into society."

"You must have been a stoic to resist the temptations of Parisian society – the writers, the painters, singers, actors – all that is foremost and brightest in the intellectual world."

"There are circles and circles in Paris, as well as in London. I have been in Parisian assemblies that were eminently dull," said Wyllard.

They started from Penmorval after breakfast next morning, and were seated in the Dover mail at eight o'clock in the evening, after dining at the Grand Hotel. Dora was in excellent spirits. Change of scene had a brightening effect upon her mind, and she was very happy in the idea of Hilda and Bothwell's happiness. She had handed her cousin a cheque for seven hundred pounds, with which he was to open an account at the local bank. And then he had only to wait for Hilda to approve his choice, before he set to work with bricklayers and carpenters at improving a cottage into an Elizabethan Grange. That was his idea.

"We will have an Elizabethan Grange furnished with real Chippendale," he said. "Incongruous, but charming."

"Then be sure that very few of your windows are made to open," said Dora, laughing at his ardour, "if you want to be truly Elizabethan."

"Every casement shall open to its uttermost width – every corner of the house shall be steeped in light and air," protested Bothwell.

And now Dora Wyllard was reclining in her corner of the railway compartment, speeding towards Dover through the gray autumn night, by Kentish hayfields and stubble, and across the gentle undulations of a Kentish landscape, so different from the bold hills and deep gorges of her native Cornwall.

There was a reading-lamp hanging on Mrs. Wyllard's side of the carriage, and she had the October Quarterlies and a heap of papers to beguile the journey. Among the papers, was the Times supplement, which she opened for the first time to look at the births, marriages, and deaths. Mr. Wyllard had read the other part of the paper before they reached Paddington, but he had not looked at the supplement.

While Dora was looking down the births, marriages, and deaths in a casual way, her eye was suddenly caught by an advertisement at the top of the second column.

"The person who was to have met Léonie Lemarque at Charing Cross Station on the morning of July 5th last is earnestly requested to communicate immediately with Messrs. Distin & Son, Solicitors, Furnival's Inn."

"How strange!" exclaimed Dora; and then she read the advertisement to her husband, who was sitting in an opposite corner, with closed eyes, as if half-asleep.

He started at the sound of her voice.

"I beg your pardon, Julian. I did not see that you were asleep."

"I was only dozing. Léonie Lemarque! that was the name of the girl who was killed, was it not? Then no doubt the advertisement is put in by Heathcote. The reference to Distin indicates as much."

"He must have made some further discovery about that unfortunate girl," said Dora thoughtfully. "He must have found out the date of her arrival in London, and that she came to meet some particular person. Do you think it was that person who killed her, Julian?"

"My dear Dora, how can I think about a business of which I know absolutely nothing? For anything we know, the girl's death may have been purely accidental, and this person who was to have met her at the station may be a figment of Heathcote's fancy, and this advertisement only a feeler thrown out in the hope of obtaining information from some unknown source. Why any of you should trouble yourselves to solve this mystery is more than I can understand."

"Why, Julian, did not you yourself send for Mr. Distin? did you not say that as a magistrate it was your duty – "

"To do all I could to further the ends of justice. Most assuredly, Dora. But having engaged the assistance of the cleverest criminal lawyer in England, and he having failed to fathom the mystery, I had no more to do. I had done my duty, and I was content to let the matter rest."

"So would I have been, if people had not suspected Bothwell. I could have no peace while there was such a cloud upon my cousin's reputation."

"That shows how narrow a view even the cleverest and most large-minded of women can take of this big world. Surely it can matter to no man living what a handful of people in a little country town may choose to think about him."

"Bothwell has to spend his life among those people."

"Well, you have had your own way in the matter, my dear Dora; and if you will only allow me to forget all about it, I am content that you and Heathcote should grope for ever in the labyrinth of that girl's antecedents. A lady's-maid or a nursery-governess, I suppose, who came to England to seek her fortune."

Dora was silent. Once again she felt that there was a want of sympathy upon her husband's part in this matter. He ought to have remembered that Bothwell was to her as a brother.

They were in Paris early next morning. Mr. Wyllard had telegraphed to the proprietor of the Windsor, and had secured charming rooms on the first floor, with a balcony overlooking the gardens of the Tuileries. The outer shell of the palace still stood there, a memorial of the brilliant historic past, and cabs and carriages and omnibuses and wagons were driving across the once sacred grounds, on the new road that had been lately cut from the Rue de Rivoli to the quay. It was a splendid Paris upon which Dora and her husband looked out in the clear freshness of the autumnal morning, but it was curiously changed from that Imperial Paris which Julian Wyllard had known twenty years before. It seemed to him this morning, looking across those ruined palace-walls, the daylight streaming through those vacant windows, as if he and the world had grown old and dim and feeble since those days.

Twenty years ago, and Morny was alive, and Jecker was a power on the Parisian Bourse, and Julian Wyllard was laying the foundation-stones of his fortune. He had started the Crédit Mauresque – that powerful association which had dealt with the wealth of Eastern princes and Jewish traders, had almost launched a company for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, had ridden gaily over the perilous ocean of public enterprise for some time, and had made great fortunes for the four or five gifted individuals whose second sight revealed to them the right hour at which to withdraw their capital from the scheme.

Yes, it had been a glorious Paris in those days, a city in which a young Englishman with a mathematical brain could court the goddess Fortune more profitably than in his native capital. Julian Wyllard had earned his bread upon the London Stock Exchange for some years before he changed the scene of his labours to Paris; but it was upon the Paris Bourse that he began to make his fortune.

Dora was tired after her journey, for she had been too full of thought to sleep in the train, and even now her brain was too active for the possibility of rest. So, after dressing and breakfasting, she accompanied her husband to the great Parisian auction rooms to look at the Rochejaquelin collection.

The inspection of the pictures lasted over two hours. Julian Wyllard was an ardent connoisseur, and his wife sympathised with him in his love of art. Together they criticised the gems of the collection, and stood in silent admiration before the famous Raffaelle.

"It will fetch thousands," said Wyllard.

"Why not buy it, if you really wish to possess it?" said Dora. "Why should we hoard our money? There is no one to come after us. Penmorval may be a show place when you and I are gone, and your picture-gallery will give pleasure to hundreds of tourists."

"Ah, there is the rub," sighed her husband, conscious of the latent melancholy in his wife's speech. "'No son of mine succeeding.' When you and I are gone there will be no one to care for Penmorval – no one to cherish your garden, and say, 'My mother planted these roses, or planned these walks' – no one to treasure the pictures I have collected, for any reason except their intrinsic value."

"Will you take me to see the house in which you lived and worked?" asked Dora, as they were leaving the auction-room.

"My dear Dora, I can show you the outside of that historic spot," answered her husband lightly; "but I doubt if I can introduce you to the rooms in which I worked. The present occupant may not be inclined to sympathise with your hero-worship.".

"O, but I should so like to see those rooms, and I am sure if the occupier is a gentleman, he will not refuse such a natural request. Here comes Mr. Heathcote," she exclaimed, as they turned into the Boulevard.

"I was coming to the Hôtel Drouot in quest of you," said Heathcote, as they shook hands. "I called at your hotel, and was told you had gone to the auction-room. How well you are looking, Mrs. Wyllard – as if Paris agreed with you!"

"Your letter took a weight off my mind," she said. "And now I hope you will be kind to Bothwell and Hilda, and not insist upon too long an engagement."

"It seems to me that Bothwell and Hilda have taken their lives into their own hands, and don't want anybody's kindness," he answered. "I have had a tremendous letter from Hilda, telling me her lover's plans. They are the most independent young people I ever heard of. And pray what brings you to Paris? Are you going on anywhere?"

"No, we have only come to look at the Rochejaquelin pictures," answered Wyllard. "I have two or three business calls to make in the neighbourhood of the Bourse. Wyllard & Morrison have still some dealings in Paris."

"And I am going to look at my husband's old apartments," said Dora. "I have never stayed in Paris since our marriage. My only knowledge of the city dates from the time when I spent a month at Passy with my dear mother. What a happy time it was, and how much we contrived to see! It was in sixty-nine, and people were beginning to talk about war with Germany. How little did any of us think of the ruin that was coming, when we saw the Emperor and Empress driving in the Bois!"

"Come back to the hotel and lunch with us, Heathcote," asked Wyllard.

"A thousand thanks; but I am too Parisian to eat at this hour. I breakfasted at eleven o'clock."

"And we breakfasted less than three hours ago," said Dora. "I am sure we neither of us want luncheon. Let us go and look at your old home, Julian."

"It is not to be called a home, Dora," answered her husband, with a touch of impatience. "A business man's life has only one aspect – hard work. However, if you want to see the offices in which a money-grubber toiled, you shall be gratified. The street is not very far off. Will you walk there with us?" he added, turning to Heathcote.

"Gladly. I am a free man to-day."

"Indeed! Then your criminal investigation, your amateur-detective work is at a standstill for the moment, I conclude?" said Wyllard, with an ill-concealed sneer.

"For the moment, yes," answered the other quietly.

"And you have made some startling discoveries, no doubt, since you crossed the Channel?"

"Yes, my discoveries have been startling; but as they relate to the remote past, rather than to the period of that poor girl's death, they are of no particular value at present."

"The remote past? What do you mean by that?" asked Wyllard.

"Ten years ago."

"May we ask the nature of these discoveries?"

"I'd rather tell you nothing at present. My knowledge is altogether fragmentary. Directly I have reduced it to a definite form – directly I have a clear and consecutive story to tell – you and Mrs. Wyllard shall hear that story. In the mean time I had rather not talk about the case."

"You have all the professional reticence. And I see that you and Distin are working together," said Wyllard.

"How do you mean?"

"We saw your advertisement in yesterday's Times".

"How did you know that I had inserted that advertisement?"

"The girl's name was conclusive – Léonie Lemarque: that was the name of the girl who was killed."

"Yes. But I did not think it was known to any one except Distin and myself."

"You mentioned the name in your letter to me," said Dora.

"Did I really? Then it was unconsciously. I meant to have told nothing till I could tell the whole story."

CHAPTER IV.

THE HOME OF THE PAST

Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard and Heathcote walked on together to a quiet street near the Madeleine, a street of offices and wholesale traders.

The house in which Mr. Wyllard had occupied the ground floor was one of the best in the street, a large stone-fronted house, with a high doorway and carved columns – not so richly decorated as those palatial dwellings of Haussmannised Paris, built during the Second Empire, but a handsome and somewhat florid style of house notwithstanding. It stood at the corner of a narrow court, leading no one cared where. Doubtless to some obscure slum in which the working classes had one of their nooks – those hidden colonies which lurk here and there behind the palaces of great cities.

The ground floor was no longer the home of finance and grave transactions. The house in which Julian Wyllard had schemed and laboured was now occupied by wholesale dealers in foreign goods of all kinds, from china to toys, from travelling-bags to Japanese tea-trays, chinoiseries, unbreakable glass, German lamps, English electro-plate. The house had become one huge bazaar, which a stranger might enter without much ceremony; albeit there is a strict etiquette in such establishments, and no retail purchases were permissible. Only the trade was allowed to buy anything in that dazzling chaos of small wares.

While all the upper floors had been made into warehouses, the lower floor had been in somewise respected. The rooms in which Julian Wyllard had worked were used as offices by Messrs. Blümenlein Brothers, while one of the brothers had made his nest in Julian's old rooms at the back of the offices.

"Upon my word, Dora," said Wyllard, pausing on the threshold of his old abode, "I feel that we are going into this house on a fool's errand. I don't know what excuse to make."

"Why make any excuse at all?" replied his wife. "Leave the whole business to me, Julian. I want to see your old home, and I am determined I will see it. I am not at all afraid of Messrs. Blümenlein."

"In that case I will leave you and Heathcote to manage the matter between you," said Wyllard, with a sudden touch of impatience, of anger even, his wife thought. "I have a business call to make near here. Heathcote will take you back to your hotel."

He turned on his heel, and was gone before Dora could make any objection. Again she had seen that dark look in his face which had so startled and shocked her in the yew-tree arbour. Was it indeed jealousy of her old lover which so changed him? Her pride revolted at the idea of such want of faith in one to whom she had given so much.

She allowed no sign of disquietude to escape her, but went quietly into the office of Messrs. Blümenlein, followed by Heathcote.

"Pardon me for intruding upon you, gentlemen," she said in French to the two clerks who were seated at a desk in this outer room. "These offices were some years ago occupied by my husband, and I should esteem it a favour if you would allow me to see the rooms on this floor."

A middle-aged man, who was standing near a window looking through some papers, turned at the sound of her voice, and came over to her.

"With pleasure, Madame," he said. "Have I he honour of speaking to Mrs. Wyllard?"

"Yes, Monsieur, I am Mrs. Wyllard. You were my husband's immediate successor in these rooms, I conclude?"

"Yes, Madame, there was no other occupation. My brother and I bought this house in 'seventy-one, almost immediately after the war; but Mr. Wyllard was the occupant of this floor for some years after we were in possession."

"Exactly two years," said a second Mr. Blümenlein, appearing from an inner room. "Is it possible that Madame has not before seen these rooms, in which her distinguished husband transacted so much important business?"

"No, Monsieur, this is my first visit to Paris since my marriage. I am much interested in seeing these rooms."

"It will be an honour and a pleasure to us to show them," said the elder of the two brothers. "Gustav there, my younger brother, enjoys the possession of the private apartments almost exactly as Mr. Wyllard left them. He bought the furniture and fittings, pictures, bronzes, everything except the books, en bloc, when Mr. Wyllard gave up his Parisian establishment. Hardly anything has been altered. These offices can have little interest for you, Madame. They are the facsimile of a thousand other Parisian offices. But the private apartments have a certain individuality. Gustav, show Madame the rooms which were once her husband's home."

There was a touch of German sentimentality about Mr. Blümenlein, in spite of his Parisian training. He was full of sympathy for the affectionate wife. He had lofty ideas about the sanctity of home.

The younger brother, Gustav, opened a padded door, and admitted the two visitors into his bachelor nest.

The first room which they entered was the library, lined from floor to ceiling with book-shelves, and lighted by a large skylight. It was a room that had been built out into a yard. It was furnished with carved oak, in the Henri Deux style, rich, antique, solid. The clock upon the chimney-piece was a gem of mediæval metal-work. The covers of chairs and sofas were of old tapestry, sombre, genuine, artistic.

Adjoining this was the salon and dining-room in one, plainly furnished in the modern style. The walls were decorated with etchings of the most famous pictures of the Second Empire. It was a small room; an almost severe simplicity was its chief characteristic. Nothing here assuredly of the sybarite or the voluptuary, thought Edward Heathcote, as he contemplated the home of his rival's solitary manhood.

Bedroom and bathroom completed the suite of apartments, and even to these Mrs. Wyllard and her companion were admitted.

The bedroom was spacious, lofty, handsomely furnished in a solid and sombre style. But it was not a cheerful room. It was situated at the back of the house, and its windows, deeply recessed and heavily curtained, derived their light from a narrow court. The lower part of each window was of ground-glass; the upper sashes were violet-tinted, and gave an artificial colour to the daylight. The curtains were of dark-brown damask; the ponderous armchairs and sofa were upholstered in dark-brown velvet.

By the fireplace there was the secrétaire at which Julian Wyllard had worked, the large shaded lamp which had lighted his evening toil. Mr. Blümenlein showed these things with pride. Nothing had been altered.

"I am a man of somewhat studious habits, like Mr. Wyllard," he said, "and I often work late into the night. This room is a delightful room, for none of the noises of Paris penetrate here. The court is very little used after dark – a passing footstep, perhaps, once in half an hour. It is an almost monastic repose."

The bed was in an alcove in a corner, entirely shrouded by brown damask curtains like those which draped the windows.

"There is a door leading into the court, I see," said Heathcote, whose keen eyes had scrutinised every feature of the room.

"What, you have perceived that!" exclaimed Mr. Blümenlein, with marked surprise. "I thought it was quite hidden by the curtains."

"No, the top of the upper hinge is just visible above the curtain-rod."

"Strange! No one ever before noticed that door."

"It is not a secret door, I suppose?" said Heathcote.

"Certainly not. But it has never been used in my time, and I doubt if Mr. Wyllard made much use of it," said Mr. Blümenlein, drawing back the curtain. "The bed stood in his time just where it stands now, with the head against the door."

"The bedstead is light enough to be moved easily if the door were wanted," suggested Heathcote.

It was a small brass bedstead of English make. The voluminous curtains made a kind of tent, independent of the bedstead.

"No doubt it could," replied Blümenlein, "but I fancy it could have been no more wanted in Mr. Wyllard's time than it has been in mine. It may have been made by some former inhabitant of these rooms, who wanted free egress and ingress at any hour of the night, without exciting the curiosity of the porter."

"You conclude, then, that the door was an after-thought," said Heathcote, "and not in the original plan of the house."

"Decidedly. You will see how ruthlessly it has been cut through dado and mouldings. An after-thought evidently."

Mr. Blümenlein pulled aside the bedstead and showed Mr. Heathcote the door. It was a low narrow door, of plain oak, without panelling or ornamentation of any kind. The fastening was a latch-lock, a Bramah, with a small key, and a strong bolt secured the door on the inner side.

"A convenient door, no doubt," said Heathcote, "for a person of secret habits."

Dora looked lingeringly round the room. Its gloom oppressed her. The opaque windows, the tinted light from the upper sashes, the sombre colouring, the heavy furniture – all contributed to that gloomy effect. The only spot of brightness in the room was the writing-table, with its brass fittings, its handsome brass lamp, and large green shade. There her husband sat night after night, when the rest of Paris was gyrating in the whirlpool of fashionable pleasure, light as autumn leaves dancing in the wind. There he had sat brooding, calculating, plotting, striving onward, in the race for wealth. It was for money he had toiled, and to make a great fortune – not for science, or art, or fame – not to be useful or great – only to be rich. It seemed a sordid life to look back upon – a wasted life even – and Dora thought regretfully of those long evenings spent in this gloomy room. The idea of that monastic life had no charm for her. She would rather have heard that her husband had been the light of an intellectual circle – the favourite of fashion even. The picture of these studious nights spent in brooding over the figures in a share-list, the pages of a bank-book, chilled her soul.