As I stood beside her bed, our hands clasped in meaning silence, I saw that she smiled gladly at my arrival.
Then, presently, when she had motioned me to a chair and I had congratulated her upon her rapid progress towards recovery, I related in as quiet a voice as I could all that I had learned that day in London.
"Mr Arnold was my father!" she cried, looking at me amazed and stupefied. "I never knew that--I--I can"t believe it--and yet how kind he has always been to me--what beautiful presents he used to buy for me when I was a child--and how tenderly he used to kiss me when we met. Ah yes!" she cried, "I ought to have known; I ought to have guessed. Poor dear father--and he died without betraying to me the secret of my birth."
"He was a lonely man, Asta," I said in a low voice, calling her by her Christian name for the first time. "He loved your mother and revered her memory. And he kept from you the secret that he had been cruelly misjudged as a shark and a swindler. He entrusted you to the man I know as Shaw, believing him to be upright and a friend. But, alas! how greatly his confidence has been abused."
Her eyes were filled with tears.
"You alone, Mr Kemball, have stood my friend," she said scarcely above a whisper, as she turned her bright gaze upon me. "When I saw that terrible spider in my room I sent word to you, after chasing it out into the corridor. A vague suspicion that it had been placed there purposely crept over me. But Shaw must have allowed it to pa.s.s into my room again, after I had dropped off to sleep."
"I was your father"s friend," I replied, "and I hope--"
"Poor dear father! Why did he not tell me? He wrote to me to come to the hotel, urging me to say nothing to Mr Shaw. Perhaps he had something to tell me--ah! who knows?" she exclaimed reflectively. "But I arrived there, alas! too late--too late!"
"He probably intended to reveal to you the truth," I remarked, looking into her pale, wan countenance. "But had he done so perhaps--perhaps you and I would not have been such close friends as we are to-day."
"Perhaps not," she sighed. "I remember how, when we motored to Aix, Shaw was very careful of a little box. Ah yes! I owe more to you than I can ever repay."
"No," I said softly. "But--but let me make a confession to you, Asta,"
and I took the tiny hand that lay outside the down-quilt. "When I first knew you I grew jealous of poor Guy for--ah, forgive me--because-- because, Asta, I loved you!"
Her pale face reddened, and her eyes were downcast. She tried to withdraw her hand from mine.
"But I knew what a good honest fellow he was, and I determined to become his friend. Alas! his friendship for me, because he intended to consult me and tell me what he had discovered, cost him his life."
"Ah no!" she cried, "do not recall that. It is all too terrible--too terrible!"
"I know what a blow it was for you," I went on madly. "I suffered all your poignant grief because I loved you--"
"No, no?"
"Let me finish--let me tell you, Asta, now, once and for all, what I feel and what is in my heart. I knew that, with memories of poor Guy still upon you, that you could care nothing for me--perhaps barely like me. I know that at first you almost felt you hated me, yet I have kept my secret to myself, and I have loved you, Asta--loved you better than mere words of mine can tell."
And I bent and drew her gently to me.
She made no response. Only she looked at me swiftly, and a long sigh escaped her lips.
"In all my life I have never loved any woman but you--so long as I live I never shall," I declared, in a fervent voice. "If you are not my wife, Asta, then no other woman will ever be. I could not speak before--I dared not. I could not think that you even liked me, and I should have to take time to teach you the sweet lesson I longed to teach you. But to-night, my beloved, I have thrown hesitation to the winds.
Now that you are to live, I have told you--I ask you, my love, to be my wife!"
"And I--I thought--"
"Yes," I said, tightening my hold upon her hand and placing my arm softly about her neck.
"I--I never thought that you loved me," she said suddenly. But the look in her splendid eyes, the tone of her voice, the rare sweet smile which parted her lips in sheer gladness, unconsciously shown at my confession, told me more than a whole volume of words could have told me.
And slowly my lips met hers in a long kiss--a long, long kiss of ecstatic love--a kiss that changed my whole life from that moment.
"I love you, dearest. I love you with all my soul," I said, looking down at the pale, thin little face that rested upon my shoulder as she lay.
"You love me?" Her words were scarcely a breath, but I heard them clearly enough in the silence of the room.
"I love you," I repeated, with fervour and simplicity. "I love you, Asta, as I have never loved, and as I shall never love again. But you-- it is of you that I have had the doubt; it is your love that I have feared I might not yet have won. Have you nothing to say to me? You rest here in my arms. You have let me kiss your lips--"
Through the room there sounded a half laugh, half sob that silenced me.
Two soft arms wound themselves about my throat and lay softly there; two sweet tear-dimmed eyes looked straight into mine with something in their depths that held me silent for sheer joy; and two warm lips lifted to mine gave me back, shyly, one out of my many caresses.
"Yes, Lionel, I do love you," she said at last, so low that I had to bring my ear close to her lips to catch the words. "And--and if you really mean that you want me for your wife--"
"Really mean it!" I echoed. "My dear love, cannot you understand that I live for you alone--only you--that for you to be my wife is the greatest, almost the only wish of my life?"
"Then it shall be as you wish," she said softly. What pa.s.sionate words escaped me I do not remember. All I know is that our lips met again and again many, many times, and we sat in each other"s embraces childishly blissful in our new-born happiness.
For a long time, indeed, no further word was spoken between us. Our minds were too full for mere uttered phrases.
Thus we sat until recalled to a sudden consciousness of the situation by the nurse"s light tap upon the door.
Then, before I left that room, and heedless of the presence of the nurse, I bent and kissed fondly upon the lips my wife who was to be.
Ah! can I adequately describe my feelings that evening, my heart-bursting to tell to some intimate friend the secret of our love?
No, I will leave you who have loved to imagine the boundless joy I felt at the knowledge that Asta loved me after all, and that we were betrothed.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.
PLOT AND COUNTER-PLOT.
In London next day I met Mr Fryer by appointment at half-past eleven at the Holborn Restaurant, being near Chancery Lane, and together we went to the Safe Deposit Company"s vaults, where we obtained the ancient cylinder from the strong box in which I had placed it, and then entered a taxi and drove to the City.
Across Holborn, in Red Lion Street, we found a locksmith, and took him with us to Fryer"s office in London Wall. He brought with him some tools, but when he seated himself and examined the mysterious cylinder he shook his head, remarking--"This"ll be a pretty tough job. It"s been very well welded together. I"ll have to file it off!"
"Is it ancient welding?" I asked.
"Oh no, sir. It"s a very ancient bit o" bronze, but the top"s been off of late, and when, welded on it"s been painted over green to imitate the patina of the old bronze. Whoever did it was one of those fakers of antiques, I should say."
"Well," said the solicitor, "make a start on it, and get it open."
The mechanic seated himself at the table and, taking up a long sharp file, began to cut into the hard metal, while we stood aside watching him intently.
What could it be that was so securely concealed therein--the Thing that had been withheld even from Mr Fryer, the dead man"s confidant in everything?
For a quarter of an hour the man worked hard, but made little or no impression upon the ancient metal. So the solicitor took me into an adjoining room, where after a brief chat he said--
"Since our conversation last night I"ve been carefully weighing matters.
The motive of the cruel and ingenious a.s.sa.s.sination of your friend Nicholson is perfectly plain. Harford knew that there was a will in existence, for now I recollect Mr Edgec.u.mbe, after getting me to make it, told me that he had revealed its provisions to his friend. They are that his daughter should inherit the whole of his very substantial fortune, but in the event of her death while unmarried it was to go to Harford himself, in recognition of his friendship and of his kindness to Miss Asta. Now if Nicholson had married her, the money would have pa.s.sed beyond his control. Therefore, aided, no doubt, by Earnshaw and his wife, they killed him by a method which fully bears out my estimate of the craft and cunning of my client"s late partner. Edgec.u.mbe, not long before his death, had somehow become aware of the existence of the huge spider, kept as a pet, and having suspicions as to what use it might be put to, warned you of it with his last effort. Nicholson, against whom it is more than probable an unsuccessful attempt was made one night while sleeping at the Hall, also discovered Harford"s secret.
He intended to reveal it to you, but was attacked, and succ.u.mbed before he could call upon you. Harford next feared lest you might propose marriage to his ward, hence the fact that he carried his pet to the Continent with him, and you saw the terrible `Hand" and narrowly escaped its fatal grip on that night in the old French inn. Yes, Mr Kemball,"
Fryer added, "depend upon it that Harford played his last card when he allowed the terrible spider to pa.s.s into Miss Asta"s bedroom. He intended that she should die, and that Arnold Edgec.u.mbe"s fortune should be his--a plot which would, alas! have been successfully accomplished, had your suspicions not been providentially aroused."