The Bradmoor Murder (7 page)

And yet how snugly the whole thing ran in the grooves of this fantastic theory!

It held, it enveloped the girl, beyond me. And how lovely, how desirable a thing she was! And the bargain with the god, struck in that mood of half humor, on the arc of sand, under the moon, before the sea, returned to me.

If there was any virtue in the legend cut in the wedge characters of the ancient Sumerian priests on the bench of rose-colored stone below that sinister image, let it now appear. If it was the moving factor in this affair, let it go on. If it had, as its threat ran, encouraged Brad-moor's right hand to destroy him, let it carry out the remainder of that legend. And the words of it returned striding through my memory:

“
His right hand shall be his enemy; and the son of another shall sit in his seat. I will encourage his right hand to destroy him. And I will bring the unborn through the Gate of Life. And they shall lean upon me. And I will enrich them, and guide their feet and strengthen their hearts. And they shall laugh in his gardens, and sit down in his pleasant palaces
.”

The thing was like the pronouncement of a fate. And Bradmoor's death awfully confirmed it.

But was that one fact merely a sinister coincidence—or would the thing go on? If it required faith, here was the faith of Joan, and here was the bargain I had struck.

But the beauty, the charm, the fascination of the girl overwhelmed me. She became in that moment above all things, in any world, desirable, and I said aloud what I had already determined in my heart:

“If the God of the Mountain is so great a god, then let him carry out the remainder of his prophecy, for I shall never give you up.”

For a moment there was utter silence. The girl looked about her vaguely, like one in a
dream, like one expecting a visitation; and the beauty and the charm of her seemed to extend itself, to fill the empty places of the room.

Then suddenly something on the stones by the hearth came within the sweep of my eye. It looked like a red bead.

I went over and picked up the heavy double express from the hearth. The hard rubber butt plate, striking against the stone corner of the fireplace, had been broken to pieces, and a stream of rubies poured out.

The explanation was clear.

Slaggerman, when he had robbed Bradmoor in the desert, had unscrewed the butt plate, hollowed out the stock, and concealed the treasure in it.

As in a sort of dream I gathered up the handful of great gleaming rubies, and put them on the table.

Then I turned toward the girl, standing with her arms hanging, her lips parted, her eyes wide with wonder.

She came with a little cry into my arms.

“You shall sit in his seat,” she said. “The God of the Mountain has carried out his prophecy.”

I drew her in against my heart.

“But not all of it,” I said. “I hold him to the letter of that contract. ‘I will bring the unborn through the Gate of Life.'”

But her face crimson with blushes was bedded into my shoulder, and her hand creeping up, covered my mouth.

My amazement at the painting above the mantel in the smoking room did not escape Sir Rufus.

It was the notorious Lady Gault in the most beautiful frame that one could buy in Bond Street. I was astonished to see her picture in this house, or in any house.

She was an unspeakable person.

Sir Rufus had sent me word to ride over and sit with him. The fifth Duke of Dorset was expected on this night. The great old English house, above the ancient oak trees, and the dark, swift river, was lighted and silent, with that tense vague expectancy which inanimate things seem sometimes able to take on. Sir Rufus was the greatest surgeon in England. He was alone in the smoking room but for me, with a bottle of port on the table at his elbow.

He watched me looking at the picture.

“There is another that goes with it,” he said.
There was a sort of glee in his voice. “One I always bring out when I am here.” He pointed to a little frame beyond the bottle of port. It was the Rajah of Gujrat, photographed by “The Bystander” at one of the Ranelagh polo games.

Sir Rufus laughed.

“You will understand this,” he said. “There will be a reason for this picture here. It was the Indian Rajah of Gujrat who came to the rescue of the young duke's wrecked fortune.”

I knew what Sir Rufus was driving at.

It was the inexplicable purchase at the moment of crying need of that great barren tract of deer forest in Argyleshire for a fabulous sum—a sum beyond all reason, beyond all sense. The deer forest was a practically valueless property. It was hardly an asset of the wrecked estate, and to the amazement of the whole of England this Indian Rajah had come forward with an offer of one hundred thousand pounds sterling for it!

It was not worth five thousand pounds sterling!

It was not, in fact, worth anything. An immense
barren mountain with a vast rain-soaked moor, extending into the Firth of Lorn.

What value could the Rajah of Gujrat see in it?

Scotland was the last land in the world that a native Indian prince would wish to live in. England was cold and wet enough; what the Rajah of Gujrat should have been seeking was a dry land, baking in the sun.

Here was a mystery that no man in England could unravel.

The Rajah had never set foot on the estate after its purchase. He had never gone to see what he had bought. It had very nearly escheated to the Crown from neglect. Why, then, had he paid one hundred thousand pounds sterling for it? I took a cigarette out of a lacquered Japanese box on the table and lighted it.

“I can understand why the Rajah of Gujrat might be set up here,” I said. “He was the Fairy Friend, by whose mysterious aid all these things have resulted.”

Sir Rufus poured out a bottle of port and drank it slowly.

“Why, no,” he said, “it was the woman over the mantel who was the Fairy Friend.”

The words brought me up sharply before the woman.

She was there in the exquisite oval frame, as she had so often been notoriously before us in life. The big, determined bony face; the sharp, hawk eyes, that had an aspect of a bird of prey. She was the worst woman in England. I don't mean immoralities. I mean she was the most dangerous woman in England. She wasn't a factor in love affairs. She had a profession. She was the greatest blackmailer in the world!

She was of a good family, a distinguished family; determined in any direction it chose to set out on. She had chosen to set out in the direction of the devil, and—well, she outdistanced all competitors. It was an insult to know the woman; it was an unspeakable outrage to have her picture up.

I saw the smile deepening on Sir Rufus's face.

He twisted the cigarette a moment in his fingers, and his voice went into a soft, facetious note.

“It is I,” he said, “who am the instigator of this abomination. I put the picture up there.
They”—he made a slight gesture toward the far-away portions of the great English house—“the Two Innocents”—he meant the young duke and his American wife—“don't know who she is. He doesn't even remember her. It's hardly a wonder; she was in a fury of the fiends the only time he ever saw her. He thinks she is a friend of mine, and keeps the picture in a cupboard until I come down, and then he sets it up.”

He laughed again.

“She was never a friend of mine, but she was a friend to him with the friendship mentioned in the Scriptures!

“She died in one of my rest houses in London, when she might have lived forever in a yacht on the Mediterranean.”

“I know. Heaven, what a world it is!”

He got up with a sudden energy, and threw the glass down on the floor. It broke into a dozen pieces.

“She was the Fairy Friend,” he said; “but for her none of it would have happened; they wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be here, nor the thing that will happen to-night.”

I thought Sir Rufus was drunk. And there
must have been some evidence of the thing in my face, for he crossed to the writing table, picked up two pencils, sharpened at the points and, taking one in either hand, extended his arms and brought the points of the two pencils together before him. The two points touched, and were held without the slightest tremor. The man had the steadiest hands of any human creature in the world. A bottle of port could not unhinge a nerve in him.

He took his toll of the cellar while he waited for the new duke.

The only part he elected to play in the matter was to wait. His theory about such things was to leave the local man alone, if the local man had sense enough to leave nature alone. In the most important instance like this one, or the most unimportant, he never varied the plan.

“I am here for the emergency,” he said, “if there is one, and until it arises I shall sit by the fire.”

It was to have some one wait with him by the fire that brought me in.

All the time I was looking at the picture. How could anyone, even Sir Rufus, have the
effrontery to put this woman's picture in the young duke's house?

He selected a cigarette, and went back to his chair.

“You got your conception of the natures of people out of the copy books, Sir Henry Marquis,” he said. “You think only the good do good. Heaven's enervating; that's the fact about it, Marquis. For a big thing, for a tremendous thing, for some sacrifice that takes your breath away, give me a creature out of hell!”

He made a vague gesture.

“I have had the confidence of the world, like a priest, for half a century. I have seen the insides of all of them, and I give it up. I can't tell the good ones.”

He extended his hand in a sort of caressing gesture toward the picture.

“That's the worst woman in the world.… And this is what she did:

“Mahadol of Gujrat—that lightly colored gentleman in the frame to the left of my hand—had come over to England. His brother, the Rajah of Gujrat, had disappeared; joined a rising of the Sikhs in the north of India, the Mahadol said. Anyway, he had cleared out
boots and baggage at a time the Germans were supposed to be stirring up the Sikhs. They found the English uniform that he had left behind him, to show that he had gone out of our service, at any rate.

“And there was a German resident out there, a Doctor Leouenheim, a sort of scientific professor of sorts, as he gave himself out to be; a Berlin agent, the Mahadol said, in the desertion plot with the Rajah. He disappeared a day or two later.”

Again he indicated the picture with his hand.

“And Lady Gault was out there, too, it seems. She was anywhere that the business of her profession could be advanced. She broke the Sirdar of Egypt, as you remember, and there were things in India that she needed to know.”

He paused a moment and regarded the picture.

“Mahadol came posthaste to England. He wished to be confirmed in the succession. But the Foreign Office is a little slow; sometimes a little skeptical; sometimes, strangely, a little careful.

“Mahadol went down to Somerset to play
polo and to wait, while the Foreign Office considered him. He was sitting tight at a little hotel in Somerset, when one evening Lady Gault walked in on him.

“It was a heavenly night, like a fairy day.

“She told me all about it—every detail.

“There was a polo dance in the drawing-rooms below. Mahadol had the apartments looking out toward the sea. He was in evening dress; he had just come up.

“For some time he had been watching a yacht anchored in the bay outside, but now he had gone back to an immense chair that the manager had put in for him. The curtains were drawn across the windows. There was a sort of alcove; one could go behind them, and look down at the gardens and the sea, and be in the dark oneself. The curtains shut out the lights of the sitting room from the window recess.

“He had come back from behind these curtains and sat down. He was very much concerned; nervous, we would say. He did not understand the English people, and didn't know what the Foreign Office was going to do with him. That's what moved him about, like the
evil spirits moved the swine. Anyway, it was at this moment that Lady Gault walked in.

“ ‘Mahadol,' she said, ‘I shall have to tap you on the shoulder, and ask you to give me a bit of the loot!'

“He didn't understand what she meant, but he knew who she was, and he knew how she was regarded. Unfortunately there was a thing he didn't know: he didn't know how she was feared.

“ ‘What do you want?' he said.

“The woman was amused. ‘Now, that's a direct question, Mahadol,' she said, ‘and I shall answer it directly. I want one hundred thousand pounds sterling.'

“The big creature in the chair laughed.

“The woman's face took on a mocked, pained expression.”

Sir Rufus paused.

“She told me every detail, as I said a while ago, and she acted it out.

“ ‘Now don't laugh, Mahadol,' she said. ‘I have got to have one hundred thousand pounds sterling. I can't cut it a shilling. I must pay for the yacht I have borrowed, out there'—she indicated the sea with her hand—‘and I
must live on the Mediterranean for the rest of the time I am here. I wouldn't last three months in an English climate. It will take a lot of money. You will be the richest Rajah in India.… I shall have to ask you to divide with me.'

“Mahadol thought she was crazy, but he found out differently in a moment.

“ ‘I can't be annoyed with you,' he said, and he put out his hand toward the bell cord. She came close to his chair then, and looked down at him.

“ ‘Mahadol,' she said, ‘if you put your hand on that bell cord you will never be the Rajah of Gujrat!'

“That brought him up. She saw the hesitation in his face, and quickly took advantage of it.

“ ‘We are a queer people,' she said. ‘We object to direct methods. The natural way, of course, when a man is in one's way, is to kill him.… Succession by assassination is the oldest method of succession in the world. But it is not favored just now in England. I doubt if one who came into his succession by the direct and effective instrumentality of murder
would be confirmed in his titles by our English Office.'