The Brightener

"'Now will you promise?' she repeated. I couldn't – for I should not have kept my word. She looked at me a second. I saw in her eyes that she was going to do the thing, and I jumped at her – but I was too late. She nearly drained the phial. And she'd hardly flung it away before she was dead – with an awful, twisted face – and that cry. If I hadn't caught her, she'd have fallen with a crash. This is the end of things for me."

"Oh, no – don't say that!" I begged.

"What else is there to say? There she lies, dead in my cabin. There's prussic acid on the floor – and the phial broken. The room reeks of bitter almonds. No one but you will believe I didn't kill her – perhaps not even Shelagh. Just because the woman made my past life horrible – and I had a chance of happiness – the temptation would be irresistible."

"Let me think. Do let me think!" I persisted. "Surely there's a way out of the trap."

"I don't see one," said Roger. "Throwing a body overboard is the obvious thing. But it would be worse than – "

"Wait!" I cut him short. "I've thought of another thing —not obvious. But it's hard to do – and hateful. The only help I could lend you is – a hint. The rest would depend on yourself. If you were strong enough – brave enough – it might give you Shelagh."

"I'm strong enough for anything with the remotest hope of Shelagh, and – I trust – brave enough, too. Tell me your plan."

I had to draw a long breath before I could answer. I needed air! "You're right." I said. "To give the body to the sea would make things worse. You couldn't be sure it would not be found, and the woman traced by the police. If they discovered who she was – that she'd been your wife – you would be suspected even if nothing were proved through those who saw a veiled woman come on board."

"That's what I meant. Yet you must see that even with your testimony, my innocence can't be proved if the story of this night has to be told."

"I do see. You might not be proved guilty, but you'd be under a cloud. Shelagh would still want to marry you. But she's very young, and easy to break as a butterfly. The Pollens – "

"I wouldn't accept such a sacrifice even if they'd let her make it. Yet you speak of hope! – "

"I do – a desperate hope. Can you open that coffin you brought on board to-day, take out – whatever is in it – and – and – "

"My God!"

"I warned you the plan was terrible. I hardly thought you would – "

"I would – for Shelagh. But you don't understand. That coffin will be opened by the police at St. Heliers to-morrow, and – "

"I do understand. It's you who do not. Everyone on board knows that the coffin was floating in the sea – that we came on it by accident. You could have had nothing to do with its being where it was. If you had, you wouldn't have taken it on board! The body found in that coffin to-morrow won't be associated with you. She– must have altered horribly since old days. And she has changed her name many times. The initials on her linen won't be L.L. There'll be a nine-days' wonder over the mystery. But you won't be concerned in it. As for what's in the coffin now, that can safely be given to the sea. Whatever it may be, and whenever or wherever it's found, it won't be connected with the name of Roger Fane. If there's the name of the maker on the coffin, it must come off. Oh, don't think I do not realize the full horror of the thing. I do! But between two evils one must choose the less, if it hurts no one. It seems to me it is so with this. Why should Shelagh's life and yours be spoiled by a cruel woman – a criminal – whose last act was to try to ruin the man she'd injured, sinned against for years? As for —the other– the unknown one – if the spirit can see, surely it would be glad to help in such a cause? What you would have to do, you'd do reverently. There must be tarpaulin on board, or canvas coverings that wouldn't be looked for, or missed. There must be a screw-driver – and things like that. The great danger is, if the coffin's in plain sight anywhere, and a man on watch – "

"There's no danger of that kind. The coffin is in the bathroom adjoining my cabin."

"Then – doesn't it seem that Fate bade you put it there?"

For a moment Roger covered his face with his hands. I saw him shudder. But he flung back his head and looked me in the eyes. "I'll go on obeying Fate's orders," he said.

Without another word between us, he left me. The door shut, and I sat staring at it, as if I could see beyond.

I had spoken only the truth. There was no sin against living or dead in what I had urged Roger to do. Yet the bare thought of it was so grim that I felt like an up-to-date Lady Macbeth.

I had forgotten to beg that he would come back and tell of his success or – failure. But I was sure he would come, sooner or later, whatever happened, and I sat quite still – waiting. I kept my eyes on the door, to see the handle turn, or gazed at my little travelling clock to watch the dragging moments. I longed for news. Yet I was glad when time went on without a sign. The quick coming back of Roger would have meant that he had failed – that all hope was ended.

Twenty minutes; thirty; forty; fifty, passed, seeming endless. But when with the sixtieth minute came the faint tap I awaited, down sank my heart. Roger could not have finished his double task in an hour!

I dashed to the door, and the light from my cabin showed the man's face, ashy pale. Yet I did not read despair on it.

Without a word I dragged him into the room once more; and only when the door was closed did I dare to whisper "Well?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT SURPRISE

"There was no body in the coffin," Roger said.

"Empty?" I gasped.

"Not empty. No. There was something there. Will you come to my cabin and see what it was? Don't look frightened. There's nothing to alarm you. And – Princess, the rest of the plan you gave me has been —carried out. Thanks to your woman's wit, I believe that my future and Shelagh's is clear. And, before Heaven, my conscience is clear, too."

"Oh, Roger, it's thanks to your own courage more than to me. Is – is all safe?"

"The coffin – isn't empty now. It is fastened up, just as it was. The broken rope is round it again. It's covered with the tarpaulin as before. No one outside the secret would guess it had been disturbed. There's no maker's mark to trace it by. I owe more than my life – I owe my very soul– to you. For I haven't much fear of what may come at St. Heliers to-morrow or after."

"Nor I. Oh, I am thankful, for Shelagh's sake even more than yours, if possible. Her heart would have broken. Now she need never know."

"She must know – and choose. I shall tell her – everything I did. Only I need not bring you into it."

"If you tell her about yourself, you must tell her about me," I said. "I'd like to be with you when you speak to her – if you think you must speak."

"I'm sure I must. If all goes well to-morrow, she can marry me without fear of scandal – if she's willing to marry me, after what I've done to-night."

"She will be. And she shall hear from me that this woman who killed herself and our spy of the Abbey were one. As for to-morrow – all must go well! But – the thing you found – in the coffin. You'll have to dispose of it somehow."

"It's for you to decide about that – I think."

"For me? What can it have to do with me?"

"You'll see – in my cabin. If you'll trust me and come."

I went with him, my heart pounding as I entered the room. It seemed as if some visible trace of tragedy must remain. But there was nothing. All was in order. The brandy bottle had disappeared – into the sea, no doubt. The tumbler so cleverly taken from this cabin was clean, and in its place. There were no bits of broken glass from the phial to be seen. And the odour of bitter almonds with which the place had reeked was no longer very strong. The salt breeze blowing through two wide-open portholes would kill it before dawn.

"But where is the thing?" I asked.

"In the study," Roger answered. He motioned me to pass through the curtained archway, as I had passed before; and there I had to cover my lips with my hand to press back a cry. The desk, the big chair I had sat in, and a sofa were covered with objects familiar to me as my own face in a looking-glass. There was Queen Anne's silver tea-service and Napoleon's green-and-gold coffee cups. There were Li Hung Chang's box of red lacquer and the wondrous Buddha; there were the snuff-boxes, the miniatures, the buckles and brooches; the fat watch of George the Fourth; half unrolled lay Charles the First's portrait and sketch, and the Gobelin panel which had been the Empress Josephine's. In fact, all the treasures stolen from Courtenaye Abbey! Here they were in Roger Fane's cabin on board the Naiad, and they had come out of a coffin found floating in the sea!

When I could think at all, I tried to think the puzzle out, and I tried to do it alone, for Roger was in no state to bend his mind to trifles. But, in his almost pathetic gratitude, he wished to help me; and when we had locked up the things in three drawers of his desk, we sat together discussing theories. Something must be planned, something settled, before day!

It was Roger who unfolded the whole affair before my eyes, unfolded it so clearly that I could not doubt he was right. My trust – everyone's trust – in the Barlows had been misplaced. They were the guilty ones! If they had not organized the plot, they had helped to carry it through as nobody else could have carried it through.

I told Roger of the two demobilized nephews about whom – if he had heard – he had forgotten. I explained that they were twin sons of a brother of old Barlow's, who had taken them to Australia years ago when they were children. Vaguely I recalled that, when I was very young, Barlow had worried over news from Australia: his nephews had been in trouble of some sort. I fancied they had got in with a bad set. But that was ancient history! The twins had evidently "made good." They had fought in the war, and had done well. They must have saved money, or they could not have bought the old house on the Dorset coast which had belonged to the Barlows for generations. It was at this point, however, that Roger stopped me. Had the boys "saved" money, or – had they got it in a way less meritorious? Had they needed, for pressing reasons of their own, to possess that place on the coast? The very question called up a picture – no, a series of pictures – before my eyes. I saw, or Roger made me see, almost against my will, how the scheme might have been worked —must have been worked! – from beginning to end; and how at last it had most strangely failed. Again, the Fate that had sailed on the Storm! For an hour we talked, and made our plan almost as intricately as the thieves or their backers had made theirs. Then, as dawn paled the sky framed by the open portholes, I slipped off to my own cabin. I did not go to bed (I could not, where she had lain!) and I didn't sleep. But I curled up on the long window seat, with cushions under my head, and thought. I thought of a thousand things: of Roger's plan and mine, of how I could return the heirlooms yet keep the secret; of what Sir Jim would say when he learned of their reappearance; and, above all, I thought of what our discovery in the coffin would mean for Roger Fane.

Yes, that was far more important to him even than to me! For the fact that the coffin had been the property of thieves meant that no claim would ever be made to it. The mystery of its present occupant would therefore remain a mystery till the end of time, and – Roger was safe!

The next day we reached St. Heliers, after a quick voyage through blue, untroubled waters; and there we came in for all the red tape that Roger had foreseen, if not more. But how inoffensive, even pleasing, is red tape to a man saved from handcuffs and a prison cell!

The body of an unknown woman in a coffin picked up at sea gave the chance for a dramatic "story" to flash over the wires from Jersey to London; and the evident fact that death had been caused by poison added an extra thrill. Every soul on board the Naiad was questioned, down to the chef's assistant; but the same tale was told by all. The coffin had first been sighted at a good distance, and mistaken for a dead shark or a small, overturned boat. The whole party were agreed that it must be brought on board, though no one had wanted it for a travelling companion, and the sailors especially had objected. (Now, by the way, they were revelling in reflected glory. They would not have missed this experience for the world!) I quaked inwardly, fearing that someone might mention the veiled female journalist who had arrived before the start, with an order to view the Naiad. But so completely was her departure from the yacht taken for granted, that none who had seen her recalled the incident.

There was no suspicion of Roger Fane, nor of any one else on board, for there was no reason to suppose that any of us had been acquainted with the dead.

The description wired to London was of "a woman unknown; probable age between forty and fifty; hair dyed auburn; features distorted by effect of poison; hands well shaped, badly kept; figure medium; black serge dress; underclothing plain and much torn, without initials or laundry-marks; no shoes."

It was unlikely that landlords or chance acquaintances should identify the woman newly arrived from France with the woman picked up in a coffin at sea. And the gray-veiled motor toque, the gray cloak worn by the "journalist," and even the battered boots, with high, broken heels, were safely hidden with the heirlooms from the Abbey.

All through the week of our trip the three drawers in Roger's desk remained locked, the little Yale key hanging on Roger's key ring. And all that week (there was no excuse to make for home before the appointed time) our Plan had to lie in abeyance. I was impatient. Roger was not. With Shelagh by his side – and very often in his arms – the incentive for haste was all mine. But I was happy in their happiness, wondering only whether Roger would not be tempting Providence if he told the truth to Shelagh.

Nothing, however, would move the man from his resolution. The one point he would yield was to postpone the confession (if "confession" is a fair word) until the last day, in order not to disturb Shelagh's pleasure in the trip. She was to hear the story the night before we landed; and I begged once more that I might be present to help plead his cause. But Roger wanted no help. And he wanted Shelagh to decide for herself. He would state the case plainly, for and against. Hearing him, the girl would know what was for her own happiness.

"At worst I shall have these wonderful days with her to remember," he said to me. "Nothing can rob me of them. And they are a thousand times the best of my life so far."

I believed that, equally, nothing could rob him of Shelagh! But – I wasn't quite sure. And the difference between just "believing" and being "quite sure" is the difference between mental peace and mental storm. I had gone through so much with Roger, and for him, that by this time I loved the man as I might love a brother – a dear and somewhat trying brother. As for Shelagh, I would have given one of my favourite fingers or toes to buy her happiness. Consequently, the hour of revelation was a bad hour for me.

I knew that, till it was over, I should be incapable of Brightening. Lest I should be called upon in any such capacity, therefore, I went to bed after dinner with an official headache.

"Now he must be telling her," I groaned to my pillow.

"Now he must have told!"

"Now she must be making up her mind!"

"Now it must be made up. She'll be giving her answer. And if it's 'no,' he won't by a word or look plead his own cause. Hang the fool! And bless him!"

Then followed a blank interval when I couldn't at all guess what might be happening. I no longer speculated on the chances. My brain became a blank. And my pillow was a furnace.

I was striving in vain to read a book whose pages I scarcely saw, and whose name I've forgotten, when a tap came at the door. Shelagh Leigh burst in before I could answer.

"Oh, Elizabeth!" she gasped, and fell into my arms.

I held the girl tight for an instant, her beating heart against mine. Then I inquired: "What does 'Oh, Elizabeth!' mean precisely?"

"It means, of course, that I'm going to marry poor, darling Roger as soon as I possibly can, to comfort him all the rest of his life. And that you'll be my 'Matron of Honour,' American fashion," she explained. "Roger is a hero, and you are a heroine."

"No, a Brightener," I corrected. But Shelagh didn't understand. And it didn't matter that she did not.

CHAPTER IX

THE GAME OF BLUFF

When the trip finished where it had begun, instead of travelling up to London with most of my friends, I stopped behind in Plymouth. If any one fancied I was going to Courtenaye Abbey to wail at the shrine of lost treasures, why, I had never said (in words) that such was my intention. In fact, it was not.

What I did, as soon as backs were turned, was to make straight for Dudworth Cove, on the rocky Dorset Coast. I went by motor car with Roger Fane as chauffeur; and by aid of a road map and a few questions we drove to the old farmhouse which the Barlow boys had lately bought.

Of course it was possible that Mrs. Barlow and the two Australian nephews had departed in haste, after their loss. They might or might not have read in the papers about the coffin containing the body of a woman picked up at sea by a yacht. Probably they had read of it, since the word "coffin" at the head of a column would be apt to catch their guilty eyes. But even so, they would hardly expect that this coffin, containing a corpse, and a certain other coffin, with very different contents, were one and the same. In any case, they need not greatly fear suspicion falling upon them, and Roger and I thought they would remain at the farm engaged in eager, secret search. As for Barlow, for whom the coffin had doubtless been made, he, too, might be there; or he might have left the Abbey at night, about the time of his "death," to wait in some agreed-upon hiding place.

The house was visible from the road; rather a nice old house, built of stone, with a lichened roof and friendly windows. It had a lived-in air, and a thin wreath of smoke floated above the kitchen chimney. There were two gates, and both were padlocked, so the car had to stop in the road. I refused Roger's companionship, however. The fact that he was close by and knew where I was seemed sufficient safeguard. I climbed over the fence with no more ado than in pre-flapper days, and walked across the weedy grass to the house. No one answered a knock at the front door, so I went to the back, and caught "Barley" feeding a group of chickens.

The treacherous old thing was in deep mourning, with a widow's cap, and her dress of black bombazine (or some equally awful stuff) was pinned up under a big apron. At sight of me she jumped, and almost dropped a pan of meal; but even the most innocent person is entitled to jump! She recovered herself quickly, and called up the ghost of a welcoming smile – such a smile as may decently decorate the face of a newly made widow.

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