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The Lighted Way by E. Phillips Oppenheim

E >> E. Phillips Oppenheim >> The Lighted Way




"Fenella!"

"We were to be friends, we were to help one another. To-night I am
afraid and I think that I am a little remorseful. It was my doing
that you dined to-night with Andrea. I have wanted to bring you,
too, into the life that my brother lives, into the life where I also
make sometimes excursions. It is not a wicked life, but I do not
know that it is a wise one. I was foolish. It was wrong of me to
disturb you. After all, you are good and solid and British, you were
meant for the other ways. Forget everything. It is less than a week
since you came first to dine with us. Blot out those few days. Can
you?"

"Not while I live," Arnold replied. "You forget that it was during
those few days that I met you."

"But you are foolish," she declared, laying her hand upon his and
smiling into his face, so that the madness came back and burned in
his blood. "There is no need for you to be a gambler, there is no
need for you to stake everything upon these single coups. You
haven't felt the call. Don't listen for it."

"Fenella," he whispered hoarsely, "what was I doing when Samuel
Weatherley was shipwrecked on your island!"

She laughed.

"Oh, you foolish boy!" she cried. "What difference would it have
made?"

"You can't tell," he answered. "Has no one ever moved you, Fenella?
Have you never known what it is to care for any one?"

"Never," she replied. "I only hope that I never shall."

"Why not?"

"Because I am a gambler," she declared; "because to me it would mean
risking everything. And I have seen no man in the whole world strong
enough and big enough for that. You are my very dear friend, Arnold,
and you are feeling very sentimental, and your head is turned just a
little, but after all you are only a boy. The taste of life is not
yet between your teeth."

He leaned closer towards her. She put his arm gently away, shaking
her head all the time.

"Do not think that I am a prude," she said. "You can kiss me if you
like, and yet I would very much rather that you did not. I do not
know why. I like you well enough, and certainly it is not from any
sense of right or wrong. I am like Andrea in that way. I make my own
laws. To-night I do not wish you to kiss me."

She was looking up at him, her eyes filled with a curious light, her
lips slightly parted. She was so close that the perfume in which her
clothes had lain, faint though it was, almost maddened him.

"I don't think that you have a heart at all!" he exclaimed,
hoarsely.

"It is the old selfish cry, that," she answered. "Please do not be
foolish, Arnold. Do not be like those silly boys who only plague
one. With you and me, things are more serious."

The car came to a standstill before the portals of Pelham Lodge.
Arnold held her fingers for a moment or two after he had rung the
bell. Then he turned away. She called him back.

"Come in with me for a moment," she murmured. "To-night I am afraid.
Mr. Weatherley will be in bed. Come in and sit with me for a little
time until my courage returns."

He followed her into the house. There seemed to Arnold to be a
curious silence everywhere. She looked in at several rooms and
nodded.

"Mr. Weatherley has gone to bed," she announced. "Come into my
sitting-room. We will stay there for five minutes, at least."

She led the way across the hall towards the little room into which
she had taken Arnold on his first visit. She tried the door and came
to a sudden standstill, shook the handle, and looked up at Arnold in
amazement.

"It seems as though it were locked," she remarked. "It's my own
sitting-room. No one else is allowed to enter it. Groves!"

She turned round. The butler had hastened to her side.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked. "My sitting-room is locked
on the inside."

The man tried the handle incredulously. He, too, was dumbfounded.

"Where is your master?" Mrs. Weatherley asked.

"He retired an hour ago, madam," the man replied. "It is most
extraordinary, this."

She began to shiver. Groves leaned down and tried to peer through
the keyhole. He rose to his feet hastily.

"The lights are burning in the room, madam," he exclaimed, "and the
key is not in the door on the other side! It looks very much as
though burglars were at work there. If you will allow me, I will go
round to the window outside. There is no one else up."

"I will go with you," Arnold said.

"If you please, sir," the man replied.

They hurried out of the front door and around to the side of the
house. The lights were certainly burning in the room and the blind
was half drawn up. Arnold reached the window-sill with a spring and
peered in.

"I can see nothing," he said to Groves. "There doesn't seem to be
any one in the room."

"Can you get in, sir?" the man asked from below. "The sash seems to
be unfastened."

Arnold tried it and found it yielded to his touch. He pushed it up
and vaulted lightly into the room. Then he saw that a table was
overturned and a key was lying on the floor. He picked it up and
fitted it into the door. Fenella was waiting outside.

"I can see nothing here," he announced, "but a table has been
upset."

She pointed to the sofa and gripped his arm.

"Look!" she cried. "What is that?"

Arnold felt a thrill of horror, and for a moment the room swam
before his eyes. Then he saw clearly again. From underneath the
upholstery of the sofa, a man's hand was visible stretching into the
room almost as far as his elbow. They both stared, Arnold stupefied
with horror. On the little finger of the hand was a ring with a
blood-red seal!




CHAPTER XVI

AN ADVENTURE


Arnold, for a moment or two, felt himself incapable of speech or
movement. Fenella was hanging, a dead weight, upon his arm. The eyes
of both of them were riveted upon the hand which stretched into the
room.

"There is some one under the couch!" Fenella faltered at last.

He took a step forward.

"Wait," he begged, "--or perhaps you had better go away. I will see
who it is."

He moved toward the couch. She strove to hold him back.

"Arnold," she cried, hoarsely, "this is no business of yours! You
had better leave me! Groves is here, and the servants. Slip away
now, while you have the chance."

He looked at her in amazement.

"Why, Fenella," he exclaimed, "how can you suggest such a thing!
Besides," he added, "Groves saw me climb in at the window. He was
with me outside."

She wrung her hands.

"I forgot!" she moaned. "Don't move the sofa while I am looking!"

There was a knock at the door. They both turned round. It was
Groves' voice speaking. He had returned to the house and was waiting
outside.

"Can I come in, madam?"

Fenella moved slowly towards the door and admitted him. Then Arnold,
setting his teeth, rolled back the couch. A man was lying there,
stretched at full length. His face was colorless except for a great
blue bruise near his temple. Arnold stared at him for a moment with
horrified eyes.

"My God!" he muttered.

There was a brief silence. Fenella looked across at Arnold.

"You know him!"

Arnold's first attempt at speech failed. When the words came they
sounded choked. There was a horrible dry feeling in his throat.

"It is the man who looked in at the window that night," he
whispered. "I saw him--only a few hours ago. It is the same man."

Fenella came slowly to his side. She leaned over his shoulder.

"Is he dead?" she asked.

Her tone was cold and unnatural. Her paroxysm of fear seemed to have
passed.

"I don't know," Arnold answered. "Let Groves telephone for a
doctor."

The man half turned away, yet hesitated. Fenella fell on her knees
and bent over the prostrate body.

"He is not dead," she declared. "Groves, tell me exactly who is in
the house?"

"There is no one here at all, madam," the man answered, "except the
servants, and they are all in the other wing. We have had no
callers whatever this evening."

"And Mr. Weatherley?"

"Mr. Weatherley arrived home about seven o'clock," Groves replied,
"dined early, and went to bed immediately afterwards. He complained
of a headache and looked very unwell."

Fenella rose slowly to her feet. She looked from Arnold to the
prostrate figure upon the carpet.

"Who has done this?" she asked, pointing downwards.

"It may have been an accident," Arnold suggested.

"An accident!" she repeated. "What was he doing in my sitting-room?
Besides, he could not have crept underneath the couch of his own
accord."

"Do you know who it is?" Arnold asked.

"Why should I know?" she demanded.

He hesitated.

"You remember the night of my first visit here--the face at the
window?"

She nodded. He pointed downward to the outstretched hand.

"That is the man," he declared. "He is wearing the same ring--the
red signet ring. I saw it upon his hand the night you and I were in
this room alone together, and he was watching the house. I saw it
again through the window of the swing-doors on the hand of the man
who killed Rosario. What does it mean, Fenella?"

"I do not know," she faltered.

"You must have some idea," he persisted, "as to who he is. You
seemed to expect his coming that night. You would not let me give
an alarm or send for the police. It was the same man who killed
Rosario."

She shook her head.

"I do not believe that," she declared.

"If it were not the same man," Arnold continued, "it was at least
some one who was wearing the same ring. Tell me the truth, Fenella!"

She turned her head. Groves had come once more within hearing.

"I know nothing," she replied, hardly. "Groves, go and knock at the
door of your master's room," she added. "Ask him to put on his
dressing-gown and come down at once. Mr. Chetwode, come with me into
the library while I telephone for the doctor."

Arnold hesitated for a moment.

"Don't you think that I had better stay by him?" he suggested.

She shook her head.

"I will not be left alone," she replied. "I told you on the way here
that I was afraid. All the evening I knew that something would
happen."

They made their way to the front of the house and into the library.
She turned up the electric lights and fetched a telephone book.
Arnold rang up the number she showed him.

"What about the police station?" he asked, turning towards her with
the receiver still in his hand. "Oughtn't I to send for some one?"

"Not yet," she replied. "We are not supposed to know. The man may
have come upon some business. Let us wait and see what the doctor
says."

He laid down the receiver. She had thrown herself into an
easy-chair and with a little impulsive gesture she held out one hand
towards him.

"Poor Arnold!" she murmured. "I am afraid that this is all very
bewildering to you, and your life was so peaceful until a week ago."

He held her fingers tightly. Notwithstanding the shadows under her
eyes, and the gleam of terror which still lingered there, she was
beautiful.

"I don't care about that," he answered, fervently. "I don't care
about anything except that I should like to understand a little more
clearly what it all means. I hate mysteries. I don't see why you
can't tell me. I am your friend. If it is necessary for me to say
nothing, I shall say nothing, but I hate the thoughts that come to
me sometimes. Tell me, why should that man have been haunting your
house the other evening? What did he want? And to-night--what made
him break into your room?"

She sighed.

"If it were only so simple as all that," she answered, "oh! I would
tell you so willingly. But it is not. There is so much which I do
not understand myself."

He leaned a little closer towards her. The silence of the room and
the house was unbroken.

"The man will die!" he said. "Who do you believe could have struck
him that blow in your room?"

"I do not know," she answered; "indeed I do not."

"You heard what Groves said," Arnold continued. "There is no one in
the house except the servants."

"That man was here," she answered. "Why not others? Listen."

There was the sound of shuffling footsteps in the hall. She held up
her finger cautiously.

"Be very careful before Mr. Weatherley," she begged. "It is an
ordinary burglary, this--no more."

The door was opened. Mr. Weatherley, in hasty and most unbecoming
deshabille, bustled in. His scanty gray hair was sticking out in
patches all over his head. He seemed, as yet, scarcely awake. With
one hand he clutched at the dressing-gown, the girdle of which was
trailing behind him.

"What is the meaning of this, Fenella?" he demanded. "Why am I
fetched from my room in this manner? You, Chetwode? What are you
doing here?"

"I have brought Mrs. Weatherley home, sir," Arnold answered. "We
noticed a light in her room and we made a discovery there. It looks
as though there has been an attempted burglary within the last hour
or so."

"Which room?" Mr. Weatherley asked. "Which room? Is anything
missing?"

"Nothing, fortunately," Arnold replied. "The man, by some means or
other, seems to have been hurt."

"Where is he?" Mr. Weatherley demanded.

"In my boudoir," Fenella replied. "We will all go. I have telephoned
for a doctor."

"A doctor? What for?" Mr. Weatherley inquired. "Who needs a doctor?"

"The burglar, if he is a burglar," she explained, gently. "Don't you
understand that all we found was a man, lying in the centre of the
room? He has had a fall of some sort."

"God bless my soul!" Mr. Weatherley said. "Well, come along, let's
have a look at him."

They trooped down the passage. Groves, waiting outside for them,
opened the door. Mr. Weatherley, who was first, looked all around
the apartment.

"Where is this man?" he demanded. "Where is he?"

[Illustration: "Where is this man?" he demanded. _Page 152_.]

Arnold, who followed, was stricken speechless. Fenella gave a little
cry. The couch had been wheeled back to its place. The body of the
man had disappeared!

"Where is the burglar?" Mr. Weatherley repeated, irritably. "Was
there ever any one here? Who in the name of mischief left that
window open?"

The window through which Arnold had entered the room was now wide
open. They hurried towards it. Outside, all was darkness. There was
no sound of footsteps, no sign of any person about. Mr. Weatherley
was distinctly annoyed.

"I should have thought you would have had more sense, Chetwode," he
said, testily. "You found a burglar here, and, instead of securing
him properly, you send up to me and go ringing up for doctors, and
in the meantime the man calmly slips off through the window."

Arnold made no reply. Mr. Weatherley's words seemed to come from a
long way off. He was looking at Fenella.

"The man was dead!" he muttered.

She, too, was white, but she shook her head.

"We thought so," she answered. "We were wrong."

Mr. Weatherley led the way to the front door.

"As the dead man seems to have cleared out," he said, "without
taking very much with him, I suggest that we go to bed. Groves had
better ring up the doctor and stop him, if he can; if not, he must
explain that he was sent for in error. Good night, Chetwode!" he
added, pointedly.

Arnold scarcely remembered his farewells. He passed out into the
street and stood for several moments upon the pavement. He looked
back at the house.

"The man was dead or dying!" he muttered to himself. "What does it
all mean?"

He walked slowly away. There was a policeman on the other side of
the road, taxicabs and carriages coming and going. He passed the
gate of Pelham Lodge and looked back toward the window of the
sitting-room. Within five minutes the man must have left that room
by the window. That he could have left it unaided, even if alive,
was impossible. Yet there was not anything in the avenue, or
thereabouts, to denote that anything unusual had occurred. He was on
the point of turning away when a sudden thought struck him. He
re-entered the gate softly and walked up the drive. Arrived at
within a few feet of the window, he paused and turned to the right.
A narrow path led him into a shrubbery. A few more yards and he
reached a wire fence. Stepping across it, he found himself in the
next garden. Here he paused for a moment and listened. The house
before which he stood was smaller than Pelham Lodge, and woefully
out of repair. The grass on the lawn was long and dank--even the
board containing the notice "To Let" had fallen flat, and lay among
it as in a jungle. The paths were choked with weeds, the windows
were black and curtainless. He made his way to the back of the house
and suddenly stopped short. This was a night of adventures, indeed!
On a level with the ground, the windows of one of the back rooms
were boarded up. Through the chinks he could distinctly see gleams
of light. Standing there, holding his breath, he could even hear
the murmur of voices. There were men there--several of them, to
judge by the sound. He drew nearer and nearer until he found a chink
through which he could see. Then, for the first time, he hesitated.
It was not his affair, this. There were mysteries connected with
Pelham Lodge and its occupants which were surely no concern of his.
Why interfere? Danger might come of it--danger and other troubles.
Fenella would have told him if she had wished him to know. She
herself must have some idea as to the reason of this attempt upon
her house. Why not slip away quietly and forget it? It was at least
the most prudent course. Then, as he hesitated, the memory of
Sabatini's words, so recently spoken, came into his mind. Almost he
could see him leaning back in his chair with the faint smile upon
his lips. "You have not the spirit for adventure!" Then Arnold
hesitated no longer. Choosing every footstep carefully, he crept to
the window until he could press his face close to the chink through
which the light gleamed out into the garden.




CHAPTER XVII

THE END OF AN EVENING


To see into the room at all, Arnold had been compelled to step down
from the grass on to a narrow, tiled path about half a yard wide,
which led to the back door. Standing on this and peering through the
chink in the boards, he gained at last a view of the interior of the
house. From the first, he had entered upon this search with a
certain presentiment. He looked into the room and shivered. It was
apparently the kitchen, and was unfurnished save for half a dozen
rickety chairs, and a deal table in the middle of the room. Upon
this was stretched the body of a motionless man. There were three
others in the room. One, who appeared to have some knowledge of
medicine, had taken off his coat and was listening with his ear
against the senseless man's heart. A brandy bottle stood upon the
table. They had evidently been doing what they could to restore him
to consciousness. Terrible though the sight was, Arnold found
something else in that little room to kindle his emotion. Two of the
men were unknown to him--dark-complexioned, ordinary middle-class
people; but the third he recognized with a start. It was Isaac who
stood there, a little aloof, waiting somberly for what his
companion's verdict might be.

Apparently, after a time, they gave up all hope of the still
motionless man. They talked together, glancing now and then towards
his body. The window was open at the top and Arnold could sometimes
hear a word. With great difficulty, he gathered that they were
proposing to remove him, and that they were taking the back way.
Presently he saw them lift the body down and wrap it in an overcoat.
Then Arnold stole away across the lawn toward a gate in the wall. It
was locked, but it was easy for him to climb over. He had barely
done so when he saw the three men come out of the back of the house,
carrying their wounded comrade. He waited till he was sure they were
coming, and then looked around for a hiding-place. He was now in a
sort of lane, ending in a _cul de sac_ at the back of Mr.
Weatherley's house. There were gardens on one side, parallel with
the one through which he had just passed, and opposite were stables,
motor sheds and tool houses. He slipped a little way down the lane
and concealed himself behind a load of wood. About forty yards away
was a street, for which he imagined that they would probably make.
He held his breath and waited.

In a few minutes he saw the door in the wall open. One of the men
slipped out and looked up and down. He apparently signaled that the
coast was clear, and soon the others followed him. They came down
the lane, walking very slowly--a weird and uncanny little
procession. Arnold caught a glimpse of them as they passed. The two
larger men were supporting their fallen companion between them, each
with an arm under his armpits, so that the fact that he was really
being carried was barely noticeable. Isaac came behind, his hands
thrust deep into his overcoat pocket, a cloth cap drawn over his
features. So they went on to the end of the lane. As soon as they
had reached it, Arnold followed them swiftly. When he gained the
street, they were about twenty yards to the right, looking around
them. It was a fairly populous neighborhood, with a row of villas on
the other side of the road, and a few shops lower down. They stood
there, having carefully chosen a place remote from the gas lamps,
until at last a taxicab came crawling by. They hailed it, and Isaac
engaged the driver's attention apparently with some complicated
direction, while the others lifted their burden into the taxicab.
One man got in with him. Isaac and the other, with ordinary
good-nights, strode away. The taxicab turned around and headed
westward. Arnold, with a long breath, watched them all disappear.
Then he, too, turned homewards.

It was almost midnight when Arnold was shown once more into the
presence of Sabatini. Sabatini, in a black velvet smoking jacket,
was lying upon a sofa in his library, with a recently published
edition _de luxe_ of Alfred de Musset's poems upon his knee. He
looked up with some surprise at Arnold's entrance.

"Why, it is my strenuous young friend again!" he declared. "Have you
brought me a message from Fenella?"

Arnold shook his head.

"She does not know that I have come."

"You have brought me some news on your own account, then?"

"I have brought you some news," Arnold admitted.

Sabatini looked at him critically.

"You look terrified," he remarked. "What have you been doing? Help
yourself to a drink. You'll find everything on the sideboard there."

Arnold laid down his hat and mixed himself a whiskey and soda. He
drank it off before he spoke.

"Count Sabatini," he said, turning round, "I suppose you are used to
all this excitement. A man's life or death is little to you. I have
never seen a dead man before to-night. It has upset me."

"Naturally, naturally," Sabatini said, tolerantly. "I remember the
first man I killed--it was in a fair fight, too, but it sickened me.
But what have you been doing, my young friend, to see dead men? Have
you, too, been joining the army of plunderers?"

Arnold shook his head.

"I took your sister home," he announced. "We found a light in her
sitting-room and the door locked. I got in through the window."

"This is most interesting," Sabatini declared, carefully marking the
place in his book and laying it aside. "What did you find there?"

"A dead man," Arnold answered, "a murdered man!"

"You are joking!" Sabatini protested.

"He had been struck on the forehead," Arnold continued, "and dragged
half under the couch. Only his arm was visible at first. We had to
move the couch to discover him."

"Do you know who he was?" Sabatini asked.

"No one had any idea," Arnold answered. "I think that I was the only
one who had ever seen him before. The night I dined at Mr.
Weatherley's for the first time and met you, I was with Mrs.
Weatherley in her room, and I saw that man steal up to the window as
though he were going to break in."

"This is most interesting," Sabatini declared. "Evidently a
dangerous customer. But you say that you found him dead. Who killed
him?"

"There was no one there who could say," Arnold declared. "There were
no servants in that part of the house, there had been no visitors,
and Mr. Weatherley had been in bed since half-past nine. We
telephoned for a doctor, and we fetched Mr. Weatherley out of bed.
Then a strange thing happened. We took Mr. Weatherley to the room,
which we had left for less than five minutes, and there was no one
there. The man had been carried away."

"Really," Sabatini protested, "your story gets more interesting
every moment. Don't tell me that this is the end!"

"It is not," Arnold replied. "It seemed then as though there were
nothing more to be done. Evidently he had either been only stunned
and had got up and left the room by the window, or he had
accomplices who had fetched him away. Mr. Weatherley was very much
annoyed with us and we had to make excuses to the doctor. Then I
left."

"Well?" Sabatini said. "You left. You didn't come straight here?"

Arnold shook his head.

"When I got into the road, I could see that there was a policeman on
duty on the other side of the way, and quite a number of people
moving backwards and forwards all the time. It seemed impossible
that they could have brought him out there if he had been fetched
away. Something made me remember what I had noticed on the evening I
had dined there--that there was a small empty house next door. I
walked back up the drive of Pelham Lodge, turned into the
shrubbery, and there I found that there was an easy way into the
next garden. I made my way to the back of the house. I saw lights in
the kitchen. There were three of his companions there, and the dead
man. They were trying to see if they could revive him. I looked
through a chink in the boarded window and I saw everything."

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