The Mystery Queen

The Mystery Queen
Fergus Hume

Fergus Hume

The Mystery Queen

CHAPTER I

A STRANGE VISITOR

"A penny for your thoughts, dad," cried Lillian, suppressing a school-girl desire to throw one of the nuts on her plate at her father and rouse him from his brown study.

Sir Charles Moon looked up with a start, and drew his bushy gray eye-brows together. "Some people would give more than that to know them, my dear."

"What sort of people?" asked the young man who sat beside Lillian, industriously cracking nuts for her consumption.

"Dangerous people," replied Sir Charles grimly, "very dangerous, Dan."

Mrs. Bolstreath, fat, fair, and fifty, Lillian's paid companion and chaperon, leaned back complacently. She had enjoyed an excellent dinner: she was beautifully dressed: and shortly she would witness the newest musical comedy; three very good reasons for her amiable expression. "All people are dangerous to millionaires," she remarked, pointing the compliment at her employer, "since all people enjoy life with wealth, and wish to get the millionaire's money honestly or dishonestly."

"The people you mention have failed to get mine, Mrs. Bolstreath," was the millionaire's dry response.

"Of course I speak generally and not of any particular person, Sir Charles."

"I am aware of it," he answered, nodding and showed a tendency to relapse into his meditation, but that his daughter raised her price for confession.

"A sixpence for your thoughts, dad, a shilling-ten shillings-then one pound, you insatiable person."

"My kingdom for an explicit statement," murmured Dan, laying aside the crackers. "Lillian, my child, you must not eat any more nuts or you will be having indigestion."

"I believe dad has indigestion already."

"Some people will have it very badly before I am done with them," said Sir Charles, not echoing his daughter's laughter; then, to prevent further questions being asked, he addressed himself to the young man. "How are things going with you, Halliday?"

When Sir Charles asked questions thus stiffly, Dan knew that he was not too well pleased, and guessed the reason, which had to do with Lillian, and with Lillian's friendly attitude towards a swain not overburdened with money-to wit, his very own self-who replied diplomatically. "Things are going up with me, sir, if you mean aeroplanes."

"Frivolous! Frivolous!" muttered the big man seriously, "as a well-educated young man who wants money, you should aim at higher things."

"He aims at the sun," said Lillian gaily, "how much higher do you expect him to aim, dad?"

"Aiming at the sun is he?" said Moon heavily, "h'm! he'll be like that classical chap who flew too high and came to smash."

"Do you mean Icarus or Phaeton, Sir Charles?" asked Mrs. Bolstreath, who, having been a governess, prided herself upon exceptional knowledge.

"I don't know which of the two, perhaps one, perhaps both. But he flew in an aeroplane like Dan here, and came to grief."

"Oh!" Lillian turned distinctly pale. "I hope, Dan, you won't come to grief."

Before the guest could reply, Sir Charles reassured his daughter. "Naught was never in danger," he said, still grim and unsmiling, "don't trouble, Lillian, my dear. Dan won't come to grief in that way, although he may in another."

Lillian opened her blue eyes and stared while young Halliday grew crimson and fiddled with the nut-shells. "I don't know what you mean, dad?" said the girl after a puzzled pause.

"I think Dan does," rejoined her father, rising and pushing back his chair slowly. He looked at his watch, "Seven-thirty; you have plenty of time to see your play, which does not begin until nine," he added, walking towards the door. "Mrs. Bolstreath, I should like to speak with you."

"But, dad-"

"My dear Lillian, I have no time to wait. There is an important appointment at nine o'clock here, and afterwards I must go to the House. Go and enjoy yourself, but don't" – here his stern gray eyes rested on Dan's bent head in a significant way-"don't be foolish. Mrs. Bolstreath," he beckoned, and left the room.

"Oh!" sighed the chaperon-governess-companion, for she was all three, a kind of modern Cerebus, guarding the millionaire's child. "I thought it would come to this!" and she also looked significantly at Halliday before she vanished to join her employer.

Lillian stared at the closed door through which both her father and Mrs. Bolstreath had passed, and then looked at Dan, sitting somewhat disconsolately at the disordered dinner-table. She was a delicately pretty girl of a fair, fragile type, not yet twenty years of age, and resembled a shepherdess of Dresden china in her dainty perfection. With her pale golden hair, and rose-leaf complexion, arrayed in a simple white silk frock with snowy pearls round her slender neck, she looked like a wraith of faint mist. At least Dan fancifully thought so, as he stole a glance at her frail beauty, or perhaps she was more like a silver-point drawing, exquisitely fine. But whatever image love might find to express her loveliness, Dan knew in his hot passion that she was the one girl in the world for him. Lillian Halliday was a much better name for her than Lillian Moon.

Dan himself was tall and slim, dark and virile, with a clear-cut, clean-shaven face suggestive of strength and activity. His bronzed complexion showed an open-air life, while the eagle look in his dark eyes was that new vast-distance expression rapidly being acquired by those who devote themselves to aviation. No one could deny Dan's good looks or clean life, or daring nature, and he was all that a girl could desire in the way of a fairy prince. But fathers do not approve of fairy princes unless they come laden with jewels and gold. To bring such to Lillian was rather like taking coals to Newcastle since her father was so wealthy; but much desires more, and Sir Charles wanted a rich son-in-law. Dan could not supply this particular adjective, and therefore-as he would have put it in the newest slang of the newest profession-was out of the fly. Not that he intended to be, in spite of Sir Charles, since love can laugh at stern fathers as easily as at bolts and bars. And all this time Lillian stared at the door, and then at Dan, and then at her plate, putting two and two together. But in spite of her feminine intuition, she could not make four, and turned to her lover-for that Dan was, and a declared lover too-for an explanation. "What does dad mean?" Dan raised his handsome head and laughed as grimly as Sir Charles had done earlier. "He means that I shan't be asked to dinner any more."

"Why? You have done nothing."

"No; but I intend to do something."

"What's that?" Dan glanced at the closed door and seeing that there was no immediate chance of butler or footmen entering took her in his arms. "Marry you," he whispered between two kisses. "There's no intention about that," pouted the girl; "we have settled that ever so long ago."

"So your father suspects, and for that reason he is warning Mrs. Bolstreath."

"Warning the dragon," said Miss Moon, who used the term quite in an affectionate way, "why, the dragon is on our side."

"I daresay your father guesses as much. For that reason I'll stake my life that he is telling her at this moment she must never let us be together alone after this evening. After all, my dear, I don't see why you should look at me in such a puzzled way. You know well enough that Sir Charles wants you to marry Curberry."

"Marry Lord Curberry," cried Lillian, her pale skin coloring to a deep rose hue; "why I told dad I wouldn't do that." "Did you tell dad that you loved me?"

"No. There's no need to," said the girl promptly. Dan coughed drily. "I quite agree with you," he said rising, "there's no need to, since every time I look at you, I give myself away. But you surely understand, darling, that as I haven't a title and I haven't money, I can't have you. Hothouse grapes are for the rich and not for a poor devil like me."

"You might find a prettier simile," laughed Lillian, not at all discomposed, although she now thoroughly understood the meaning of her father's abrupt departure with Mrs. Bolstreath. Then she rose and took Dan by the lapels of his coat, upon which he promptly linked her to himself by placing both arms round her waist. "Dearest," she said earnestly, "I shall marry you and you only. We have been brought up more or less together, and we have always loved one another. Dad was your guardian: you have three hundred a year of your own, and if we marry dad can give us plenty, and-"

"I know all that," interrupted Halliday, placing her arms round his neck, "and it is just because Sir Charles knows also, that he will never consent to our marriage. I knew what was in the wind weeks ago, darling heart, and every day I have been expecting what has occurred to-night. For that reason, I have come here as often as possible and have arranged for you and the dragon to go to the theatre to-night. But, believe me, Lillian, it will be for the last time. To-morrow I shall receive a note saying that I am to stay away from Lord Curberry's bride."

"I'm not his bride and I never shall be," stamped Lillian, and the tears came into her pretty eyes, whereupon Dan, as a loyal lover, wiped them away with his pocket-handkerchief tenderly, "and-and-" she faltered. "And-and-" he mocked, knowing her requirements, which led him to console her with a long and lingering kiss. "Oh!" he sighed and Lillian, nestling in his arms, echoed the sigh. The moment of perfect understanding and perfect love held them until the sudden opening of the door placed Dan on one side of the table and Lillian on the other. "It won't do, my dears," said the new-comer, who was none other than Mrs. Bolstreath, flaming with wrath, but not, as the lovers found later, at them. "I know quite well that Dan hasn't wasted his time in this league-divided wooing."

"We thought that one of the servants-" began the young man, when Mrs. Bolstreath interrupted. "Well, and am I not one of the servants? Sir Charles has reminded me of the fact three times with the information that I am not worth my salt, much less the good table he keeps."

"Oh! Bolly dear," and Lillian ran to the stout chaperon to embrace her with many kisses, "was dad nasty?"

"He wasn't agreeable," assented Mrs. Bolstreath, fanning herself with her handkerchief, for the interview had heated her. "You can't expect him to be, my sweet, when his daughter loves a pauper." "Thank you," murmured Dan bowing, "but don't you think it is time we went to the theatre, Bolly dear."

"You must not be so familiar, young man," said the chaperon, broadly smiling at the dark handsome face. "Sir Charles wants Lillian to marry-"

"Then I shan't!" Lillian stamped again, "I hate Lord Curberry." "And you love Dan!"

"Don't be so familiar, young woman," said Halliday, in a joking way, "unless you are on our side, that is."

"If I were not on your side," rejoined Mrs. Bolstreath, majestically, "I should be the very dragon Lillian calls me. After all, Dan, you are poor."