"Why! that clock must have stopped!"
Chancing to look at it by-and-by, I saw that it stood at the same time--twenty minutes to ten. I took out my watch. It said just ten minutes past ten.
"What does it signify?" said Coralie. "You can stay here till twenty minutes to twelve if you like--and be whirled home in a cab by midnight then."
That was true. If----
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Coralie.
She was looking at the door with surprised eyes. There stood Verena, her bonnet on; evidently just come in.
Verena tripped forward, bent down, and kissed her sister. "Have you been desperately angry, Coral?" she lightly asked, giving me her hand to shake. "I know papa has."
"_I_ have not been angry," was Coralie"s equable answer: "but you have acted childishly, Verena. And now, where have you been?"
"Only in Woburn Place, at Mrs. Ball"s," said Verena, throwing off her bonnet, and bringing her lovely flushed face close to the light as she sat down. "When I left here that evening--and really, Johnny, I was sorry not to stay and go in to dinner with _you_," she broke off, with a smile--"I went straight to our old lodgings, to good old Mother Ball.
"They are frightful tyrants at home," I said to her, "I"m not sure but they"ll serve me as Bluebeard did his wives; and I want to stay with you for a day or two." There"s where I have been all the time, Coral; and I wondered you and papa did not come to look for me."
"It is where I fancied you might be," returned Coral. "But I only thought of it on Sat.u.r.day night. Does that mean check, Johnny?"
"Check and mate, mademoiselle."
"Oh, how wicked you are!"
"Mrs. Ball has been more careful of me than she"d be of gold," went on Vera, her blue eyes dancing. "The eldest daughter, Louise, is at home now: she teaches music in a school: and, if you"ll believe me, Coral, the old mother would never let me stir out without Louise. When Edward Pym came up in the evening to take me for a walk, Louise must go with us. "I feel responsible to your papa and sister, my dear," the old woman would say to me. Oh, she was a veritable dragon."
"Was Louise with you when you went on board the _Rose of Delhi_ yesterday afternoon?" cried Coralie, while I began to put away the chessmen.
Verena opened her eyes. "How _did_ you hear of that? No, we tricked Louise for once. Edward had fifty things to say to me, and he wanted me alone. After dinner he proposed that we should go to afternoon service.
I made haste, and went out with him, calling to Louise that she"d catch us up before we reached the church, and we ran off in just the contrary direction. "I should like to show you my ship," Edward said; and we went down in an omnibus. Mrs. Ball shook her head when we got back, and said I must never do it again. As if I should have the chance, now Edward"s gone!"
Coralie glanced at her. "He _is_ gone, I suppose?"
"Yes," sighed Vera. "The ship left the docks this morning. He took leave of me last night."
Coralie looked doubtful. She glanced again at her sister under her eyelids.
"Then--if Edward Pym is no longer here to take walks with you, Vera, how is it you came home so late to-night?"
"Because I have been to a concert," cried Vera, her tone as gay as a lark"s. "Louise and I started to walk here this afternoon. I wanted you to see her; she is really very nice. Coming through Fitzroy Square, she called upon some friends of hers who live there, the Barretts--he is a professor of music. Mrs. Barrett was going to a concert to-night and she said if we would stay she"d take us. So we had tea with her and went to it, and they sent me home in a cab."
"You seem to be taking your pleasure!" remarked Coralie.
"I had such an adventure downstairs," cried Verena, dropping her voice after a pause of thought. "Nearly fell into the arms of papa."
"What--now?"
"Now; two minutes ago. While hesitating whether to softly tinkle the kitchen-bell and smuggle myself in and up to my room, or to storm the house with a bold summons, Ozias drew open the front-door. He looked so glad to see me, poor stupid old fellow. I was talking to him in the pa.s.sage when I heard papa"s cough. "Oh, hide yourself, Missee Vera,"
cried Ozias, "the master, he so angry;" and away I rushed into papa"s little library, seeing the door of it open----"
"He has come out of it, then!" interjected Coralie.
"I thought papa would go upstairs," said Vera. "Instead of that, he came on into the room. I crept behind the old red window-curtains, and----"
"And what?" asked Coralie, for Verena made a sudden pause.
"Groaned out with fright, and nearly betrayed myself," continued Verena.
"Papa stared at the curtains as if he thought they were alive, and then and there backed out of the room. Perhaps he feared a ghost was there.
He was looking so strange, Coralie."
"All your fault, child. Since the night you went away he has looked more like a maniac than a rational man, and acted like one. I have just said so to Johnny Ludlow."
"Poor papa! I will be good and tractable as an angel now, and make it up to him. And--why, Coralie, here are visitors."
We gazed in surprise. It is not usual to receive calls at bedtime. Ozias stood at the door showing in Captain Tanerton. Behind him was Alfred Saxby.
The captain"s manner was curious. No sooner did he set eyes on us than he started back, as if he thought we might bite him.
"Not here. Not the ladies. I told you it was Sir Dace I wanted," he said in quick sentences to Ozias. "Sir Dace alone."
Ozias went back down the stairs, and they after him, and were shown into the library. It was a little room nearly opposite the front-entrance, and underneath the room called the boudoir. You went down a few stairs to it.
Verena turned white. A prevision of evil seized her.
"Something must be the matter," she shivered, laying her hand upon my arm. "Did you notice Captain Tanerton"s face? I never saw him look like that. And what does he do here? Where is the ship? And oh, Johnny"--and her voice rose to a shriek--"where"s Edward Pym?"
Alas! we soon knew what the matter was--and where Edward Pym was.
Dead. Murdered. That"s what young Saxby called it. Sir Dace, looking frightfully scared, started with them down to Ship Street. I went also; I could not keep away. George was to sit up for me at home if I were late.
"For," as Miss Deveen had said to me in the morning, laughingly, "there"s no telling, Johnny, at what unearthly hour you may get back from Gravesend."
IV.
It was a dreadful thing to have happened. Edward Pym found dead; and no one could tell for a certainty who had been the author of the calamity.
He had died of a blow dealt to him, the doctors said: it had struck him behind the left ear. Could it be possible that he had fallen of himself, and struck his head against something in falling, was a question put to the doctors--and it was Captain Tanerton who put it. It perhaps might be possible, the medical men answered, but not at all probable. Mr. Pym could not have inflicted the blow upon himself, and there was no piece of furniture in the room, so far as they saw, that could have caused the injury, even though he had fallen upon it.
The good luck of the _Rose of Delhi_ seemed not to be in the ascendant.
Her commander could not sail with her now. Neither could her newly-appointed third mate, Alfred Saxby. So far as might be ascertained at present, Captain Tanerton was the last man who had seen Pym alive; Alfred Saxby had found him dead; therefore their evidence would be required at the official investigation.
Ships, however, cannot be lightly detained in port when their time for sailing comes: and on the day following the events already told of, the _Rose of Delhi_ finally left the docks, all taut and sound, the only one of her old officers, sailing in her, being Mark Ferrar. The brokers were put out frightfully at the detention of Tanerton. A third mate was soon found to replace Saxby: a master not so easily. They put in an elderly man, just come home in command of one of their ships. Put him in for the nonce, hoping Captain Tanerton would be at liberty to join her at Dartmouth, or some other place down channel.
On this same day, Tuesday, the investigation into the events of that fatal Monday, as regarded Edward Pym, was begun. Not the coroner"s inquest: that was called for the morrow: but an informal inquiry inst.i.tuted by the brokers and Sir Dace Fontaine. In a back-room of the office in Eastcheap, the people met; and--I am glad to say--I was one of them, or I could not have told you what pa.s.sed. Sir Dace sat in the corner, his elbow resting on the desk and his hand partly covering his face. He did not pretend to feel the death as an affectionate uncle would have felt it; still Pym was his nephew, and there could be no mistake that the affair was troubling him.
Mrs. Richenough, clean as a new pin, in her Sunday gown and close bonnet, a puzzled look upon her wrinkled face, told what she knew--and was longer over it than she need have been. Mr. Pym, who lodged in her parlour floor, had left her for good, as she supposed, on the Monday morning, his ship, the _Rose of Delhi_, being about to go out of dock.
Mr. Saxby, who had lodged in the rooms above Mr. Pym, got appointed to the same ship, and he also left. In the afternoon she heard that the ship had got off all right: a workman at the docks told her so. Later, who should come to the door but Mr. Pym--which naturally gave her great surprise. He told her the ship had sprung a leak and had put back; but they should be off again with the next day"s tide, and he should have to be abroad precious early in the morning to get the cargo stowed away again----