The Red Widow: or, The Death-Dealers of London

Boyne, unsuspicious of being watched, for so occupied was he that he had forgotten Marigold's presence in the house, returned to his sitting-room, divested himself of the hideous disguise which he always wore when visiting the locked room, and then reascended to bed.

The girl lay awake for hours until, wearied out, she fell asleep till her aunt brought her some tea.

"Don't let Mr. Boyne know that I've stayed here to-night, auntie," she said, getting up hurriedly. "I'll get away before he comes down. I don't want him to know I've been so ill."

The old woman read her lips and nodded, saying in a whisper:

"As soon as you're gone, dear, I'll make the bed."

"I don't want any breakfast. I'll get to the City early, and have it there."

And this she did.

When Boyne came down to breakfast he asked his housekeeper how her niece was, to which she replied that she had recovered at about ten o'clock on the previous night and gone home to Wimbledon.

Saturday was always an "off" day with Mr. Boyne. Working people did not pay their weekly insurance premiums till Monday. Saturday is the half-day with the working class as Wednesday is with the shop-keeping community. Now on that particular Saturday Bernard Boyne, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, sent Mrs. Felmore to King Street to buy him a tin of tomato soup. He wrote down the brand on an old envelope. And he wanted nothing else.

"If one grocer has not got it, another has, no doubt. If you can't get it in Hammersmith go down to Chiswick or Bedford Park," he said. "You'll find it somewhere."

And the old woman, whose shopping successes were always marvellous considering her stone deafness, went forth, little dreaming that such a brand as that he had written down was non-existent.

So all the morning until well into the afternoon Bernard Boyne had the house entirely to himself. As soon as she had gone, Boyne put on his white disguise and, rushing upstairs to the locked room, opened it.

"Now then!" he shouted roughly. "Are you ready? Have you dressed yet? No – you haven't. Now put it on – quick. Come out and get some air. It's stifling in this place!"

He waited at the door, whereupon a white figure, dressed exactly the same as himself, emerged, and slowly and painfully came down the stairs.

The two weird figures, linked arm in arm, descended to Boyne's parlour, whereupon in an authoritative tone he ordered the strange creature to be seated.

"Sit there!" he said. "And I'll open the window. You want a bit of air and exercise."

"Food! Food!" came the words, weak and squeaky behind the hideous mask.

"Very well. I'll go and get you some. But you can't eat it yet. Not till you're back again in your own room. Food!" he said roughly, with a sneer. "You're always wanting food and water. Fortunately the cistern is up there, or I'd have to carry up every drop for you. But your food I never forget, do I, eh?" he shouted, as though the strange figure was as deaf as old Mrs. Felmore.

The hooded figure, huddled in the arm-chair, only shrugged its shoulders.

From the voice it was impossible to tell the sex of the individual. The tone was weak, squeaky, and quite unnatural.

"Now, tell me, what have you done?" asked Boyne. "How is it progressing? I know you must be lonely sometimes, but it can't be helped. You are not fit to mix with us, you know. And you exist upon my charity. I am always good to you! Understand that!"

"I – I know," squeaked the figure, whose white cloak was soiled and stained, while those two long slits for the eyes under the pointed hood gave it a most weird and forbidding appearance.

"I hope you appreciate all I've done for you," Boyne went on. "If I had not risked all this, where would you have been – tried and executed in the hangman's noose. But I have done my best – though often you don't appreciate it."

"I – I do!" cried the voice from behind that strange disguise. "And I do all that you tell me," it whined.

"Very well," laughed Boyne. "We'll let it rest at that. The failure you lately had put me right in the cart. We mustn't have another. Remember that! Let it sink into your brain. You are clever, I know. But a single slip and both of us will go where we don't want to!"

"I know! I know! Yes – yes," replied the huddled figure. "But it was the weather – always the weather. And it is so hot under that roof."

"Weather be hanged!" replied Boyne. "This is winter – cold winter! – and yet you believe it to be summer."

As a matter of fact, it was hot summer weather, yet Boyne was trying to impress upon his companion that heat was cold, and vice versa.

The two weird figures in white cloaks, with only slits for the eyes, like Brothers of the Misericordia of Mediæval Italy, only in white, instead of black, sat opposite each other. Boyne was giving to his prisoner a breath of air, and a change in his living room.

A few minutes later the strange occupant of the locked room uttered the single word:

"Nibby?"

"Oh, yes, dear little Nibby is here," was Boyne's reply.

Rising, he fumbled beneath his cloak, and with his key unlocked the cupboard and opened the cage, from which the tame rat darted down and across the room. A second later he was sniffing the cloak of the figure from upstairs, running around the hem of the cloak with his little pink nose, while the wearer of the cloak put down a hand to be smelt, saying:

"Nibby, my dear little Nibby, that I have lost so long!"

In all London no scene in broad daylight could have been more weird than that at noon on a summer morning in Bridge Place, Hammersmith.

Boyne, the mystery man, held in such high esteem from Addison Road to Kew, sat there with the poor crouching figure as his victim. Behind those long narrow slits in the white fabric showed a pair of dark, deep-sunken eyes – eyes that were inhuman and unnatural.

The voice from behind the mask was metallic and squeaky. Whether the person was a man or a woman could not be conjectured. The high-pitched note was feminine.

"Am I not good to you to allow you this little relaxation?" asked Boyne. "You don't often get it, I admit, for the old deaf crone is always about, and I can seldom get rid of her."

"I – I felt – I felt very ill – last week. Days ago!" croaked the mysterious occupant of the locked room.

"I go up to you every day. You never complained. You are usually asleep when I come up."

"You come up at night. But all day I look out from the window over the roofs towards the river."

"River! What do you mean? There is no river here. It is a desert – a desert of bricks and mortar. You dream."

"Yes – yes. I dream! I – I'm always dreaming," was the response.

It was evident that Boyne held his half-imbecile prisoner completely in his power, and that all the orders of the insurance agent were obeyed.

Into the room strayed a ray of summer sunlight across the threadbare green carpet, lighting up the dingy old place.

The stranger from upstairs saw it, and squeaked:

"Look! It's summer – summer!"

"Summer!" cried the man who held him enthralled. "You're dreaming! It's winter. We get sun in winter sometimes. Surely you know that – dense as you are."

"I'm not dense," came the protest. "I do all you ask – fine jobs, too."

"You're dense about sunshine," Boyne repeated.