Wyllard's Weird

Edward Heathcote sighed within himself as he took his place beside his hostess in the subdued light of the old panelled room, a warm light from lamps that hung low on the table, under rose-coloured shades, umbrella-shaped, spreading a luminous glow over silver and glass and flowers, and leaving the faces of the guests in rosy shadow. He sighed as he thought how sweet life would have been for him had this woman remained true to her first love. For she had loved him once. Eight years ago they two had clasped hands, touched lips, as affianced lovers. He could never forget what she had been to him, or what she might have been. He sat at her husband's table in all loyalty of soul, in staunch friendship. He would have cut his heart out rather than debased himself or Dora by one guilty thought. Yet he could but remember these things had been.

The two ladies left almost immediately after dinner, and Bothwell sauntered out into the garden directly afterwards. Not to rejoin them, as he would have done a few months ago, but to smoke the cigar of solitude in a path beside a crumbling, old red wall, and a long, narrow border of hollyhocks, tall, gigantic, yellow, crimson, white, and pink. There were fruit-trees on the other side of the wall, which was supported with tremendous buttresses at intervals of twenty feet or so, and about wall and buttresses climbed clematis and passion-flower, jasmine, yellow and white, and the great crimson trumpets of the bignonia.

The banker and the lawyer sat silently for a few minutes, Julian Wyllard occupied in the choice of a cigar from a case which he had first offered to his guest; and then Edward Heathcote asked him what he thought of the inquest.

"I thought it altogether unsatisfactory," answered Wyllard. "You did your best to thrash out a few facts; but those fools of railway people had nothing to tell worth hearing. Everybody knows that the poor creature fell off the train – or was thrown off. What we want to find out is whether there was foul play in the business."

"It is my belief that there was," said Heathcote, looking at him fixedly in the dim roseate light, almost as unsatisfactory for such a scrutiny as the changeful glow of the fire.

"And mine," answered Wyllard; "and so strong is my conviction upon this point that I stopped at the post-office on my way home, and telegraphed to my old friend Joe Distin, asking him to come down and help us to solve the mystery."

"Do you mean the criminal lawyer?"

"Whom else should I mean? He and I were schoolfellows. I have asked him to stop at Penmorval while he carries on his investigation."

CHAPTER III.

JOSEPH DISTIN

Mrs. Wyllard was surprised and even horrified when, on the morning after the inquest, her husband told her that he had invited Distin, the criminal lawyer, to stay at Penmorval while he investigated the mystery of the nameless girl's death. The presence of such a man beneath her roof seemed to her like an outrage upon that happy home.

"My dear Dora, what a delightful embodiment of provincial simplicity you show yourself in this business!" said her husband laughingly. "I believe you confound the lawyer who practises in the criminal courts with the police-agent you have read about in French novels. A man of low birth and education, with nothing but his native wit to recommend him; a man whose chief talent is for disguises, and who passes his life in a false beard and eyebrows, in the company of thieves and murderers, whom it is his business to make friends with and then betray. Joe Distin is a solicitor of long standing, whose chief practice happens to be in the Old Bailey. He is a most accomplished person, and the friend of princes."

"He is your friend, Julian, so I ought not for a moment to have doubted that he is a gentleman," answered Dora sweetly, with her hand resting on her husband's shoulder. Such a lovely hand, with long tapering fingers, and dimples where other people have knuckles, like a hand in an early Italian picture. "Still, I wish with all my heart that he were going to stay at the hotel. I don't want you to be involved in this terrible business. Why should you concern yourself about it, Julian? Nothing you can do can be of use to the poor dead girl. What is it all to you? What have you to do with it?"

"My duty," answered Wyllard firmly. "As a magistrate I am bound to see that a terrible crime – if crime it be – shall not go unpunished in my district. I have no particular aptitude in unravelling mysteries. I therefore send for my old schoolfellow, who has won his reputation among the sinuous ways of crime."

"Ah, I remember. You and Mr. Distin were together at Marlborough," said Dora musingly. "That is enough to make him an interesting person in my mind."

"Yes, we were companions and rivals in the same form," answered Julian. "There were some who thought us two the sharpest lads in the school. In all our studies we were neck and neck: but in other points the difference between us was a wide one. Distin was the son of a rich London solicitor – an only son, who could draw upon an indulgent father for means to gratify every whim, who had his clothes made by a fashionable tailor, and could afford to hire a hunter whenever he got the chance of riding one. I was one of many children – the fourth son of a Warwickshire parson; so I had to reckon my cash by sixpences, and to wear my clothes till they were threadbare. Yes, there was an impassable gulf between Distin and me in those days."

"And now you must be a great deal richer than he, and you can receive him in this lovely old place."

"There will be some pride in that. Yes, Dora, Fortune was at home to me when I knocked at her door. I have been what is called a lucky man."

"And you are a happy one, I hope," murmured his wife, leaning her head upon his shoulder, as he stood before the open window, looking dreamily out at summer woods.

"Ineffably happy, sweetone, in having won you," he answered tenderly, kissing the fair broad brow.

"You must have been wonderfully clever," said Dora enthusiastically, "beginning without any capital, and within twenty years making a great fortune and a great name in the world of finance."

"I was fortunate in my enterprises when I was a young man, and I lived at a time when fortunes were made – and lost – rapidly. I may have had a longer head than some of my compeers; at any rate, I was cooler-headed than the majority of them, and I kept out of rotten schemes."

"Or got out of them before they collapsed," Mr. Wyllard might have said, had he displayed an exhaustive candour.

But in talking of business matters to a woman a man always leaves a margin.

So after a good deal more discursive talk between husband and wife it was agreed that Mr. Distin's visit was not to be regarded as an affliction. A telegram arrived while Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard were talking, announcing the lawyer's arrival by the same train which had carried the nameless waif to her grave in the valley, the train which was due at Bodmin Road at a quarter before eight. The dog-cart was to meet the guest, and dinner was to be deferred till nine o'clock for his accommodation.

"You can send a line to Heathcote and ask him to dine with us to-night," said Wyllard. "I know he is interested in this business, and would like to meet Distin."

"And Hilda – you won't mind having Hilda?"

"Not in the least. Hilda is an ornament to any gentleman's dining-table. But how fond you have become of Hilda lately!"

"I was always fond of her. Do you know there is something that puzzles me very much?"

"Indeed!"

"A few months ago I thought Bothwell was in love with Hilda. He seemed devoted to her, and was always asking me to have her over here. I was rejoicing at the idea of the poor fellow getting such a sweet girl for his wife, for I thought Hilda rather liked him, when all at once he cooled, and appeared actually to go out of his way in order to avoid her. Strange, was it not?"

"The fickleness of an idle mind, no doubt," answered Wyllard carelessly.

He had not his wife's keen interest in the joys and sorrows of other people. He was said to be a kind-hearted man. He was good to the poor in a large way, and never shut his purse against the appeal of misfortune. But he could not be worried about the details of other people's lives. He did not care a straw whether Bothwell was or was not in love with Hilda. To his wife, on the contrary, the question was vital, involving the happiness of two people whom she loved.

"If your cousin does not put his shoulder to the wheel before long he will fall into a very bad way," said Wyllard decisively.

"He would be very glad to do it, if he only knew what wheel to shoulder," said Bothwell's voice outside, as he sauntered to the window, wafting aside the smoke of his cigarette.

It seemed to Dora as if her cousin spent his home life in smoking cigarettes and sauntering in the gardens, where, on his energetic days, he helped her in her war of extermination against the greenfly.

"There is always a wheel to be moved by the man who is not afraid of work," said Wyllard.

"So I am told, but I have found no such wheel, as a civilian. Seriously, Julian, I know that I am an idler and a reprobate, that I am taking advantage of your kindness and letting life slip by me just because I have the run of my teeth in this fine old place, and because you and Dora are worlds too good to me. I have been taking my own character between my teeth and giving it a good shaking within the last few days, and I mean to turn over a new leaf. I shall go abroad – to the South Seas."

"What are you to do for a living in the South Seas?"

"Something. Sub-edit a colonial paper, keep a grocery store, turn parson and convert the nigger. I shall fall upon my feet, you may be sure. I shall find something to do before I have been out there long. Or if Otaheite won't give me a roof and a crust, I can cross to the mainland and drive sheep. Something I must do for my bread. Into the new world I must go. The atmosphere of the old world is stifling me. I feel as if I was living in an orchid house."

"No, Bothwell, you are not going to the other end of the world," said Dora affectionately. "You ought not to say such things, Julian, making him feel as if he were an intruder, as if he were not welcome here; my first cousin, the only companion of my youth that remains to me now my dear mother is gone. Surely we who are rich need not grudge our kinsman a home."

"My dearest, you ought to know that I spoke for Bothwell's sake, and from no other motive than my care for his interest," answered Julian gravely. "A young man without a profession is a young man on the high-road to perdition."

"I believe you with all my soul," cried Bothwell, with feverish energy, "and I shall sail for Otaheite in the first ship that will carry me. Not because I do not love you, Dora, but because I want to be worthier of your love."

He lighted a fresh cigarette, and sauntered away from the window, to breathe latakia over the John Hoppers and Victor Verdiers on the wall.

Dora's eyes filled with tears. She was angrier with her husband than she had ever been since her marriage.

"It is very unkind of you to drive Bothwell out of your house," she said indignantly. "You make me regret that I have not a house of my own. You forget how fond we have always been of each other – that he is as dear to me as a brother."

"It is because I remember that fact that I am anxious to stimulate Bothwell to action of some kind," answered her husband. "Do you think it is good for any young man to lead the kind of life your cousin leads here?"

"If he were to marry he would become more industrious, I have no doubt," said Dora. "You might pension off old Mr. Gretton, and make Bothwell your land-steward."

"Which in Bothwell's case would mean a genteel dependence, under the disguise of a responsible position. Bothwell would be seen on every racecourse in the west country – would play billiards at the George, shoot my game, and let somebody else do my work."

"Do you mean that my cousin is a dishonourable man asked Dora indignantly.