The Riddle of the Purple Emperor

A sigh of relief came from Miss Cheyne's lips and she met the peculiar look of her servant with one equally significant.

"Send Aggie up to her," she commanded, "and don't forget to lock her in."

With this remark she turned on her high-heeled shoes, and minced painfully back to the dining room.

Whether it was the effects of her journey, or what was more likely the strong spirit in the lemonade, Lady Margaret slept as soundly as the proverbial top till close on mid-day, when she was awakened by the rough entry of the person designated as "Aggie."

She was a queer-looking maid, Lady Margaret thought to herself, with rough, unkept hair, and strangely roughened and stained fingers.

She did not like the way the woman looked at her as she banged on the table a cup of weak tea and some thick slices of bread and butter.

"Here you are, Miss – yer ladyship, I mean," she said in harsh cockney tones which made Lady Margaret wince unconsciously, accustomed as she was to the soft, pure French of the good nuns at Notre Dame. "An' the quicker you gets up and attends to yerself, the better I shall like it," the woman continued, muttering more to herself than to the girl. "It's a bit more than I bargained for."

"That will do very well. I shall not require anything more, and please tell my aunt I shall be with her directly."

"I don't doubt you will," responded the blunt Aggie in a rather surprising manner, then without another word she swung on her heel, and stalked out of the room, banging the door behind her.

"What an awful creature," said Lady Margaret as she jumped lightly out of her bed. "I shall get Auntie to discharge her very soon. Oh, I am so thankful to be home," and she ran lightly to the window and looked out. With all the resilience of youth, she seemed a different being this morning from the worn-out, fragile child who had been driven home last night by Lieutenant Deland.

A few minutes later she ran lightly down the staircase and into the dining room where she found the Honourable Miss Cheyne deeply absorbed in the morning newspapers.

She greeted her niece a little gruffly, but knowing her eccentric ways, Lady Margaret took but scant notice. It was not long, however, before she realized that her future life was not to be entirely a bed of roses.

"I am going over to see Miss Lorne to-day, Auntie," she said presently, "and to thank her for getting me out of my difficulties."

"Got us into them, you mean," snapped Miss Cheyne angrily. "She's a designing adventuress trying to scrape acquaintance with you, so that she can say she is a friend of Lady Margaret Cheyne! Oh, I know the breed, she and her blessed accomplice, Beland, or Deland, or whatever his name is, they were probably on the watch for you, and managed to carry you off before I arrived on the scene. I forbid you even to mention their names again, much less speak to them."

"Oh, Auntie!" pleaded poor Lady Margaret, her bright young face clouding at this unexpected ban on a friendship to which she had looked forward with such pleasure. "I am sure you are mistaken, and Miss Lorne said that she was coming to see you to-day and explain – "

"Well, if she has the impertinence to come here," snapped Miss Cheyne angrily, "she will not be admitted. Don't you dare to argue with me, child, or back to school you'll go. I'm not going to have you drive about with strange men just as you like, so don't you think it – "

"I told you last night how it happened," responded Lady Margaret in a little gust of impatience. "I slept in the car all the time till I got here. I don't know what I should have done had it not been for Miss Lorne, anyway, and especially on board ship."

Miss Cheyne's thin lips set in a straight, grim line. "Well, the best thing you can do is to forget her, or else send her some money, probably she'll value that more," she retorted with heat, shaking a finger in the girl's face. "Don't forget you have something more important to think of than designing minxes and pert Lieutenants, if he is really a genuine officer, which I doubt. Anyhow, I shall take you up to town next week out of their reach, for one thing, and for another to celebrate your coming of age. Then you will have all the Cheyne jewels, don't forget that – "

Lady Margaret was young enough and human enough to forget temporarily her grief for Miss Lorne's rejected friendship in the idea of seeing, to say nothing of wearing, the famous treasures of her family.

"Oh, Auntie!" she cried. "I had forgotten them, are you really going to let me see them?"

"You shall do more than that, my dear," replied her aunt almost amiably, "you shall wear them. I mean to have you presented at Court, and you will certainly have to wear some jewellery then. I don't suppose you know anything about the pieces themselves. I myself have forgotten – "

"Oh, yes, I do," said Lady Margaret, "don't you remember the list father gave me in his last letter, in case there was any trouble? I don't remember all of them, but I know there were three strings of pearls, a big diamond necklace and tiara, ever so many rings, and of course the Purple Emperor!"

"Oh, yes, I had not forgotten that," said Miss Cheyne drily. "It is something one is not likely to forget."

"But I don't think there's any need to have that out, Auntie; do you?" asked Lady Margaret with a little tremor of fear in her voice. "It's not particularly beautiful. In fact, I don't suppose it looks much different from an amethyst, and father used to say it was best at the bottom of the sea."

"That's because he knew no better and spoke like a fool," snapped Miss Cheyne, her voice quivering with excitement, and as the girl looked up at her, she saw a face that was changed out of all recognition, distorted as it was with avarice and envy. "I want them all, I tell you – all! They ought to have been mine and I want to see them before I die. Do you hear me?"

"Oh, of course, Aunt Marion," said Lady Margaret, astonished at the unexpected outburst. "You can have them and wear them, too. I shan't want them, that is, until – " she broke off, her face crimsoning.

"Until what, pray?" demanded Miss Cheyne, sharply, switching round and looking at her.

"Until – well, until I get married. I meant to have told you before long, but I am going to be married some day to Sir Edgar Brenton – " She paused as if waiting for another outburst, but to her intense amazement Miss Cheyne only laughed.

"Marry, well, so you shall, my dear, if you want to, and your jewels will be a good wedding present." She gave a little chuckle which mystified the girl still further.

"Meanwhile," went on Miss Cheyne, as if to change the subject to other things, "you had better get upstairs and unpack your boxes. Don't expect Aggie to help you, she has enough to do downstairs."

"Oh, I don't want Aggie's help," responded Lady Margaret quickly with a wry little smile. "She wasn't exactly charming, and I must say I don't quite like the look of her. Can't you get rid of her, Aunt? I'm sure she is not honest, and that man, too. If we are going to have the Cheyne jewels here – "

"We are," snapped Miss Cheyne, "and don't you trouble your head about what doesn't concern you, my dear. You leave John and Aggie alone. I'll settle them."

Lady Margaret said no more but ascended to her room, thinking in her innermost heart of many things. She could only dimly remember her aunt when she had been allowed to spend her holidays at Cheyne Court, but she knew she was eccentric, and because she herself had been jilted in her youth hated all men.

Still she did not mean to be made a prisoner of. She was determined to visit not only Miss Lorne, to whom she had been undeniably attracted, but also, and this she considered far more important, Lady Brenton, the mother of the man she had pledged herself to marry in those stolen interviews under the walls of Notre Dame.

Thanks to Miss Cheyne's many requests, Lady Margaret had little time to pay visits or write letters that day, and when night did fall, she was glad to crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of youth and healthy fatigue.

She slept soundly for hours, but all at once she was rudely awakened. From the depths below that supposedly sleeping household came a queer bumping noise, and it seemed to the terrified girl, as she sat up in bed, that the very house was being torn to pieces.

Conquering her natural fears she rose, and donning a dressing gown, unconsciously tried the handle of her door.

To her amazement it was locked on the outside, locked! She was a prisoner in her own house!

Burglars were Lady Margaret's first thought, and she pulled vigorously at the door. At first it resisted, but to her delight the old lock, rotten with age, gave way under her vigorous onslaught. A second later she was descending the staircase, bent on rousing Miss Cheyne or obtaining assistance.

She had reached the bottom of the first flight, amid complete silence, and for a moment she thought she had heard the sounds only in her dream.

But at the head of the stairs she stood hesitating when from all around her came a sound as of a soul in agony, a horrible moaning cry that chilled her very heart. Startled and terrified she gave a shriek, and losing her balance, came hurtling down the shallow staircase. Her slim ankle was twisted under her, and she lay there for some time, a little, moaning, writhing heap.

When Lady Margaret awoke to consciousness, it was to find herself once more in her own room, with Aggie, the pert serving maid, bending anxiously over her.

"What was it?" she cried out, clutching feverishly at the grimy, toil-worn hand of the girl. "Oh, what was it? Didn't you hear it?" She struggled to get up, but sank back with a moan at the pain in her ankle.

"Hear what? Lawks o'mussy, but you gave us all a turn, Miss – yer ladyship," said the woman roughly.

"But the horrible noise!" shuddered the girl.

"That? Why, it was one of the dogs. There's a dog ill down in the cellar and that's what you heard," retorted Aggie. "A nice twist you've given this ankle of yours. It's a good job; Auntie – the mistress – I mean, knows something about sprains."

"Does she?" asked the girl wearily, her mind still bent on the horrible sound. Appallingly human it was; no dog could have screamed like that, she felt sure. It was the hurt cry of a human being in pain.

"Yes, you bet, and here she is." Aggie relinquished her place, apparently only too gladly, to Miss Cheyne, who appeared with lotions and bandages, and literally took possession of the patient. Her long, slender fingers manipulated the swollen ankle with the experience and precision of a trained hand.

"Now, my lady, you'll just have to be still and patient," she said grimly. To Lady Margaret it seemed as if this eccentric relative were by no means ill-pleased at the catastrophe which had overtaken her niece.

"I thought it was burglars, Aunt Marion," said the girl, as Miss Cheyne's eye fell on the splintered lock, "and that reminds me, I was locked in – Did you know that? You won't dare to keep that woman now – "

"You go off to sleep, and I'll inquire into it," was all Miss Cheyne would say, and with that the girl was obliged to rest content. But when she fell into an uneasy sleep, it was with the profound intention to ask Edgar Brenton's advice at the earliest opportunity.

A sprained ankle is not a dangerous occurrence, but it is sufficiently painful and depressing to be worthy of more anxiety than was expended over Lady Margaret.

Rendered practically a prisoner she had only to rely on such books and magazines as Miss Cheyne brought up to her and the days passed very slowly indeed.

She wrote letters to Sir Edgar and to Miss Lorne, bribing Aggie with such coins as she possessed to post them, unknown to her aunt.

No answer came to them, though Aggie swore that they had been sent to the post, and later the girl was not surprised to find them in the possession of Miss Cheyne, opened and mutilated.

At intervals she heard the dull, distant moans, but had schooled herself to believe Aggie's statement.

On the first day that she could walk about her room she was almost hysterical with delight.

For once, too, Miss Cheyne relaxed her firm manner.

"I suppose you know what to-morrow is, my dear," she said, looking almost furtively at her niece.

Lady Margaret thought a moment, then gave a little cry of delight.

"Why, it's my birthday, of course, and I'm eighteen."

"Yes, and what is just as important," said Miss Cheyne, "you are the owner of the Cheyne jewels. We're going up to town in the morning to bring them back."

"Bring them all here?" cried Lady Margaret, startled at the odd look in the black, flashing old eyes. "Do you think it safe enough? Thieves might break in. Why not leave them, at least some of them, where they are, Aunt Marion. It is safer, surely!"

"Because I want them. I want to see them," Miss Cheyne snapped ferociously. "I'm curious, you know, more curious than you are. And I mean to have them here."

"Just as you like, Aunt. I want to see them, too, only I was thinking of the danger."

"There is no danger. I am having special safes made for them downstairs," said Miss Cheyne. "If you have them here you can wear them whenever you like without having to go up to those thieving lawyers every time you happen to want them."

Lady Margaret agreed, but deep down in her own mind she felt that she would prefer to leave the Cheyne jewels in the safe custody of Messrs. Shallcott, Woodward & Company in London. On the other hand, she had gained an unspoken victory in regard to her future marriage.

Indeed it seemed to her as if Miss Cheyne had but one obsession: to see the Cheyne Court jewels. Her inexplicable antipathy even against Ailsa Lorne seemed to have died a natural death. When Lady Margaret, albeit a trifle timidly, ventured to hint at a visit to her newly found friend, Miss Cheyne said pleasantly enough:

"Yes, if you like my dear, after we come back from London, then there is no reason at all why you should not see your friends."

To say that this lifted a load off the girl's mind, is to express the matter in the mildest terms imaginable. Her failure to hear either from Lady Brenton or her lover, as well as from Ailsa Lorne herself, had filled Lady Margaret's mind with strange forebodings. She almost felt that she would be willing to lose every stone among the heirlooms if her aunt could be made so much pleasanter to live with.

And downstairs, Miss Cheyne said aloud with a queer little chuckle, when the girl had left the room:

"See your friends? So you shall, my dear. After we come back!"

CHAPTER VII

IN THE TIGER'S CLUTCHES

Despite the mysterious fact that the Honourable Miss Cheyne's photo had been found in the dirty little shop in Crown Court, Drury Lane, Cleek could find no visible connection between it and the fact of the murder. Its presence was also speedily accounted for, owing to the information garrulously volunteered by Mrs. Malone. It appeared that "Madame" had been in the service of the Honourable Miss Cheyne. "Hupper 'ousemaid, she were," said that lady, "and when she left to get married, the mistress gave her half-a-crown and her photo to remind her wot a fool she was to do it. 'Er very own words, sir, not but what she wasn't 'appy enough – Still, it's a man wot's killed 'er, so the old girl wasn't far out."

"How do you know that?" asked Cleek, to whom she was talking at the time.

Mrs. Malone bit her lip.

"Stands to reason it was so, sir. I'll not be speaking the black word against anybody, but sure an' I belave I know the man what did it – "

"What's that? What do you mean?"

"Well, sir," said the woman, "I wasn't 'ere myself all day, but it might have been the man who used to come in 'ere and pump 'er all about 'er old 'ome and 'er first place – which was 'er last, too. It were Cheyne Court itself down on the river somewhere, I don't exactly know where, but poor 'Madame' was bred and born there, and loved the place like 'ome. This man was always a coming in, after he spotted that dratted photograph there. Talk, talk, talk 'e would. What was the place like and how far away was it? And ever so many more such-like questions. But Madame always shut up and once when 'e offered to buy the picture itself, she nearly broke his neck with a broom handle."

Cleek sat very still, his eyes half closed. To all appearances he was half asleep. But his thoughts were racing at topmost speed. So he was right. There was some connection between this murder and the Cheyne Court mystery; but what? What was it that this stranger wanted to learn, and why had he been so persistent in his inquiries? He could find no answer to his mental queries, and eventually he was obliged to own himself beaten. But that in nowise prevented his taking the impression of the finger-prints on the dagger with which the grim deed had been perpetrated. The case was left in the hands of the jury with the result that the verdict was one he had prophesied, "wilful murder against someone or persons unknown." Notwithstanding its practical passing into oblivion, Cleek felt that the case was connected in some way with the Cheyne Court mystery, and as he left the grimy regions of Drury Lane behind him his thoughts went back to Lady Margaret.

Meanwhile, the object of his solicitude was apparently far from needing it. "Lady Margaret Cheyne, the Honourable Miss Cheyne and maid," the latter, the furtive-faced "Aggie," had registered their arrival in a quiet little hotel in Craven Street, W. Once in London Miss Cheyne had shown an amazing knowledge of its thoroughfares and shopping centres, despatching the girl, in the company of Aggie, on delightful expeditions that sent the child, for she was little more, almost delirious with delight. After being pent up in the austere walls of that convent abroad it was small wonder that to have all the bewildering splendour of feminine fashions at her command turned her head a little.

Only one little thing gave her cause for dissatisfaction, and that was the presence of the ever-watchful Aggie.

"If only you would come, too, Auntie," she cried, on the third morning of their stay, previous to setting forth on another whirl of purchasing. "Aggie hasn't an atom of taste, you know. She would cheerfully let me buy a green hat to go with a mauve skirt, and I don't think even an orange blouse would upset her equanimity."

"Well, why should it?" demanded Miss Cheyne. "I like a bit of colour myself."

This coming from her aunt, whose clothes were always of the darkest and dowdiest combinations of gray or black that could be imagined, left Lady Margaret almost breathless.

"Don't be too long to-day," said Miss Cheyne, apparently totally unconscious of the effect her words had produced. "Don't forget that we have an appointment with the solicitors this afternoon, and I shall want all my energies to see you are not done out of those jewels."

Lady Margaret laughed gaily.

"No, I don't suppose they will like giving them up after all these years."

With a little nod she passed out and was soon on her way westward. In Trafalgar Square she stopped to stare skyward at the Nelson monument. So absorbed was she that she did not see the start of glad surprise which a stalwart young man gave as he came rushing to her side.

It was not, indeed, until the sound of her own name spoken in glad, joyous tones fell on her ears that she came back once more to her surroundings.

"Edgar," she said breathlessly, clapping her hands like a little child. "Isn't this just wonderful; meeting you like this? Why, where did you spring from, and why haven't you been near me?"

Without waiting for his reply she led him round till they found a seat on the stone steps.

"I jolly well haven't had a chance of seeing you, my darling," said the young man as he devoured the radiant young face with his eyes. "I've fairly haunted the grounds of Cheyne Court but didn't dare to face your old dragon after the drubbing she gave me last week. I suppose she's all right?" he asked, a little irrelevantly.

Lady Margaret looked at him in surprise.

"Why, of course she is all right. She has been good to me, though she seems queerer than ever. But, Edgar, what do you think, she says my jewels will be a good wedding present for us! What do you say to that?"

"What!" cried the young man. "Do you mean you tackled her – you brave darling. I wonder she didn't snap your pretty head off."

"I did expect an outcry, when I said I was going to marry you," she said, shaking her fair head, "but she said I might, and should have the Cheyne Court jewels, too."

"Considering they're your own property, my darling, that's just like her cheek," retorted Sir Edgar. "But I'm hanged if I can understand it, for when I saw her last, as I told you, she abused me like a pickpocket."

Lady Margaret laughed aloud in childish glee.

"Well, we'll just take the goods the gods send," said she. "She can keep the old jewels if she likes, if only she gives her consent to our marriage."

Her voice dropped tenderly upon the words, and the wild-rose colour bloomed for a moment in her cheeks until Sir Edgar, impetuous young man that he was, gave a hasty look round at the practically empty square and snatched the kiss he had been longing for ever since he had caught sight of her.

"And now," he said, when Lady Margaret, blushing deeper than ever, had reproved him for his audacity, "what are you going to do next?"

"Go back to the hotel, Maxell's, in Craven Street, and get ready for those horrid old lawyers," she responded, laughing, as she surveyed Aggie's broad figure some distance away. "Auntie won't rest till she gets those precious jewels home."

"Jove, Meg darling, but you don't mean to tell me you're going to be mad enough to take the Cheyne jewels back to that old rookery of a place?" exclaimed Sir Edgar.

"It does seem a bit of a risk," she admitted, "but Auntie is keen on it and I don't care so long as she lets me see you. I really must go now, Edgar. I shall have to go right back instead of shopping."

"I'm coming with you," Sir Edgar said, jumping to his feet. "I won't let you out of my sight if I can help it."

"But you must. I don't want Auntie to be upset again; now be a dear, sensible Edgar! See, here is Aggie, she's a new servant of Auntie's and I can see she is getting cross. I will get back, and when we return home this evening you must meet me on the terrace. I will talk Auntie into playing the fairy godmother."

There was no gainsaying the wisdom of this line of reasoning, and unwillingly enough the ardent young lover watched the figure of the girl he loved run lightly across the great square and vanish, with a parting wave, in the whirl of the Strand.

Meanwhile, Lady Margaret, back at the hotel, lost no time in acquainting her aunt of this chance encounter with her lover, but strangely enough, save for a gruff remark about the waste of time, Miss Cheyne was apparently content to waive her dislike of the Brenton family. The girl was too elated at this unexpected abeyance to grumble at her aunt's non-attention, or the haste with which lunch was partaken of in order to keep the dreaded legal appointment.

Once in the lawyer's grimy office, Miss Cheyne was curiously subdued, and her mien was that of one decidedly ill at ease.

It was Mr. Shallcott, the senior partner, a short-sighted old-fashioned gentleman who shook hands with the ladies and congratulated Lady Margaret on her "accession to her throne," as he jokingly put it.

His face, however, when she expressed her intentions of removing all the precious heirlooms down to Cheyne Court, was a study in dire dismay.

"But it's utter madness, my child!" he said gently. "Why, every jewel thief in Europe will be after them, don't you agree with me, Miss Cheyne?" he peered over at the old lady as she sat immersed in shadow.

"To a certain extent I do," was the amazing response, and coming from one who had been so intensely insistent on their removal it caused Lady Margaret's blue eyes to widen to their fullest extent.

As in a dream she heard her aunt continue blandly:

"But I think the child's whim may be safely granted, Mr. Shallcott, for I have had special safes made to hold them and they can be returned into your safe custody directly Lady Margaret is presented."