The Nine of Hearts

"My God! my God!"

"I will not deceive you. Such happiness cannot come to pass if you are guilty."

"I am not guilty!" he cried, starting to his feet. "God knows I am not guilty!"

"Swear it," I exclaimed, sternly.

"By all my hopes of happiness," he exclaimed, falling upon his knees-"by my dear Mabel's life, by my dear mother's life-I swear that I am innocent!"

He was grovelling on the floor, and 1 assisted him to rise.

"And being not guilty," I said, solemnly, "you were content to remain in hiding while another man was accused of the crime which neither he nor you committed! And being not guilty, you would have waited until he was done to death before you emerged once more into the light of day! I believe you when you say you did not know of your sister's peril, but you knew of the peril in which Edward Layton stood. Don't deny it. Remember, the time of evasion has passed."

"Yes," he murmured, "I knew it."

"Why did you not come forward," I said, indignantly, rushing as if by an inspiration of reasoning to the truth, "to affirm that you and Ida White were in Prevost's Restaurant, in the very room in which Edward Layton and your sister entered, on the night of the 25th of March? Why did you not come forward to affirm that it was you who-by a devilish prompting-took Edward Layton's ulster, unknown to him, from the peg upon which it was hanging, and went out with your paramour to the carriage in which he and your sister had arrived? Answer me. Why did you not do this, to prevent a noble and innocent man from being condemned for a murder which he did not commit?"

"It was no murder!" cried Eustace. "It was no murder! She died by her own hand!"

"She died by her own hand!" I echoed, bewildered by this sudden turn in the complexion of the case.

"Yes," said Eustace, "by her own hand. Upon the table by her bedside there was written evidence of it."

"Which you removed!" I cried.

"No, not I, not. I! Of which she took possession!"

"Speak plainly. Whom do you mean by she-Ida White?"

"Yes."

I paused. Truth to tell, I was overwhelmed by these disclosures.

"Bear this steadfastly in mind," I said, presently, in a calm, judicial tone. "You are in the presence of a man who has sworn to rescue the innocent. You are in the presence of a man who has sworn to bring the guilty to justice. Upon me depends your fate. I can save or destroy you. If by a hair's-breadth of duplicity and evasion you attempt to deceive me, your destruction is certain. This is the turning-point of your life. Upon your truthfulness rests your fate. Open your heart to me, not as to your enemy, but as to your friend, and relate to me, without equivocation, the true story of your life, from the time you commenced to plunge into dissipation and disgrace."

Awed and conscience-stricken, he told me the story. In the course of his narration I was compelled frequently to prompt and encourage him, but that, in the result, it was truthfully told I have not a shadow of doubt.

His career at college ended, he came to London. There he made the acquaintance of Edward Layton's father, a man who, although well on in years, was as weak-minded as he was himself. They entered into a kind of partnership, in which, no doubt, the elder man, now in his grave, was the leader and prompter. From Eustace's description of Edward Layton's father I recognized a man weak-minded as Eustace himself was, and whose inherent honor and honesty were warped by his fatal passion for gambling. Old Mr. Layton, for a long time, kept his infatuation from the knowledge of his son, and it was not until he was actually involved in crime and disgrace that Edward became aware of it. Long before this Edward had, through his engagement with Mabel Rutland, been employed in the helpless task of endeavoring to save her beloved brother, but when the knowledge of his own father's disgrace was forced upon him, he knew that all hope of Mabel's father consenting to his marriage was irretrievably gone. It was not only that the young and the old man had lost money in betting-it was that they had actually been guilty of forging bills, which Mr. Beach, the father of the woman whom Edward Layton afterwards married, held in his possession. It was this that first took Edward Layton to Mr. Beach's house. Mabel had implored him to save her darling brother, against whom Mr. Beach had threatened to take criminal proceedings. I do not at this moment know whether Edward Layton had revealed to Mabel the disgrace which hung also above his father but that is immaterial. Agnes Beach, Mr. Beach's only child, saw and fell in love with Edward Layton, and her father, disreputable as he was, being devoted to his daughter, was guided by her in all that subsequently transpired. The bills he held he determinedly refused to part with, unless Edward Layton married his child.

In the terrible position in which he was placed, knowing that Mabel Rutland was lost to him forever-knowing how deeply and devotedly she loved her brother Eustace-knowing the disgrace which hung over his own name, he saw no other way to prevent utter ruin than to enter into this fatal engagement, and to marry a woman whom he did not love. But, with a full consciousness of the disreputable connection he was about to form, he laid no pressing injunction upon his father to recognize the unhappy union; and, indeed, old Mr. Layton, aware that he was in Mr. Beach's power, was by no means desirous to meet him. Love lost, honor lost, the sword hanging over his head, Edward Layton submitted to the sacrifice. There was no duplicity on his part. Agnes Beach knew full well that he did not love her. He received, as he believed, the whole of the forged bills which Mr. Beach held, and it was not until some time after his marriage that he discovered that three of these fatal acceptances had been withheld from him. At the time he made this discovery he was leading a most unhappy life with his wife, and on more than one occasion she taunted him with the power she held over him.

It was shortly after the marriage that weak-minded Eustace made the acquaintance of Ida White. She was an attractive woman, well versed in the wiles of her sex, and she played upon him and entangled him to such an extent that there was no escape for him. It is unnecessary here to enter into the details of this connection. It is sufficient to say that Ida White held Eustace Rutland completely in her power, with a firm conviction that if she could induce him to marry her, she could, after the marriage, obtain the forgiveness of Eustace's father-which would insure her a life of ease and luxury. But there was still a certain firmness in the young man.

"Marry me," she said.

"I will marry you," Eustace replied, "when I get back the forged acceptances."

Where were they? In Mrs. Layton's possession.

Close as was the intimacy which existed between the unhappy lady and her maid, Mrs. Layton retained so jealous a possession of these incriminating documents that Ida White was not able to lay her hands upon them. In the company of Eustace Rutland she was supping in Prevost's Restaurant on the night of the 25th of March. She had slipped away from Mrs. Layton's house, as she had often done before, to meet her young and foolish lover. She saw her master and Mabel enter the room, and observed Layton taking off his ulster. Then the idea suddenly entered her head that Eustace and she should personate her master and the young lady-with a full knowledge how deeply those two were compromised by their being together and arrive home before them, by which time, doubtless, Mrs. Layton would be asleep. She knew that under her pillow Mrs. Layton kept the documents which Eustace frantically desired to obtain, and the possession of which would make her, Ida White, his wife. If Mrs. Layton awoke and resisted while the forged bills were being abstracted, Eustace would be at hand to use force, if necessary; and it was principally from the wish to compromise her lover so deeply that he would not dare to break his promise to marry her that she determined to put her idea into execution. She knew that ordinarily Edward Layton kept the latch-key of the street door in the pocket of his ulster. She disclosed the scheme to Eustace, and threatened him with exposure if he did not do as she desired. It was she who took the ulster from the wall of the restaurant, and it was she who, secretly and expeditiously, assisted Eustace to put it on; then they stole out together and entered the carriage. Before acquainting Eustace with her design she had ascertained that Edward Layton's carriage was waiting for him and for Mabel. She trusted to her own resources to keep her master out of his house after she and Eustace had entered it.

Here a word is necessary as to the true meaning of Edward Layton's proceedings during the day and night of the 25th of March. Abandoned as were the hopes in which he and Mabel had once fondly indulged, she still relied upon his efforts to save her brother from harm. Eustace had lost heavily upon certain races. He had made a despairing appeal to her, and she called upon Layton to assist the erring lad. It was in the endeavor to discover Eustace that Edward Layton had driven from place to place to obtain from him the information necessary to rescue him from his peril. Mabel had, by letter, engaged to meet Edward Layton in Bloomsbury Square at ten o'clock on the night of that day, in order that he might relieve her anxiety with respect to her brother. How they met, and what transpired after they met, have been already sufficiently detailed.

Ida White's manœuvres were successful up to a certain point. She and Eustace entered the carriage, were driven home, and, unsuspected, obtained entrance into the house. The correspondence between Eustace and Mabel had been for some time conducted through the medium of the system of the Nine of Hearts, and it was either by an oversight or by accident that Eustace, during the drive from Prevost's Restaurant to Edward Layton's house, took from his own pocket one of these cards and let it drop into the pocket of the ulster. But when they were safely in Layton's house, and crept stealthily and noiselessly into Mrs. Layton's bedroom, they made the horrible discovery that Mrs. Layton, in a moment of frenzy, had emptied the bottle of poisonous narcotics, and had by her own will destroyed herself. The proof was at her bedside: When she had swallowed the fatal pills, the horror of the deed overwhelmed her. She summoned up sufficient strength to rise in her bed, to take paper and the pen from the inkstand, and before the death-agony commenced in her sleep, to write upon that paper the confession which fixed upon her the crime of suicide.

Having reached this point of the strange story, I demanded to know from Eustace Rutland what had become of that confession.

"Ida took possession of it," he said, "and I have not seen it from that moment to this."

"Why did you not come forward and make this public?" I cried.

"Because," was his reply, "Ida told me that, if what we had done became known, nothing could save us from the hangman."

"Did she obtain possession of the forged acceptances?"

"Yes."

"How was it that the tumbler from which the fatal draught was taken was on the mantle-shelf?"

"Ida placed it there."

It was enough. The entire facts of this mysterious case were clear to me. I required nothing more to prove Edward Layton's innocence than the possession of the document written almost in her death-throes by his unhappy wife.

I unlocked the door and called up Fowler. Briefly and swiftly I told him what was necessary, and said it was not at all improbable that this document was in Ida White's lodgings at Brixton; and I had scarcely uttered the words before a rat-tat-tat came at the street door.

"It is she!" cried Eustace.

"Who?" I asked, in great excitement.

"Ida," he replied.

"It serves our turn exactly, sir," muttered Fowler to me, and then addressing Eustace, he said, "Is that your bedroom?" pointing to a communicating door.

"We will go in there. Let the lady come up."

We disappeared, leaving the communicating door partially open, and the next minute I heard Ida White's voice.

"Cursed luck!" she cried. "I've lost eighty-five pounds to-day. I tell you what it is, Eustace-if we can't wheedle your old governor into forgiving us after we are married, we shall have to turn book-makers ourselves. You shall take the bets, and I will do the clerking. It will be a novelty, and we shall make pots of money."

Eustace did not reply.

"Why don't you speak?" she continued. "Are you struck dumb?"

Then came Eustace's voice, like the cry of a despairing soul:

"You are a devil! Why have you driven me to this? I hate you, hate you, hate you! You fiend, you have killed my sister!"

Fowler did not wait for me to act. He seized me by the arm, and pulled me after him into the room.