My G.o.d, it was Anne herself! For a second only I saw her face distinctly, then she pulled the scarf over it with a quick gesture; the boat shot under the dark shadow of the arches and disappeared.
I stood dumbfounded for some minutes, staring at the river, and trying to convince myself that I was mad--that I had dreamt the whole incident.
When at last I turned to retrace my steps I saw something dark lying at the top of the steps, stooped, and picked it up.
It was a spray of scarlet geranium!
CHAPTER V
THE MYSTERY THICKENS
When I regained the bridge I crossed to the further parapet and looked down at the river. I could see nothing of the boat; doubtless it had pa.s.sed out of sight behind a string of barges that lay in the tideway.
As I watched, the moon was veiled again by the clouds that rolled up from the west, heralding a second storm; and in another minute or so a fresh deluge had commenced.
But I scarcely heeded it. I leaned against the parapet staring at the dark, mysterious river and the lights that fringed and spanned it like strings of blurred jewels, seen mistily through the driving rain.
I was bareheaded, for the fierce gust of wind that came as harbinger of the squall had swept off my hat and whirled it into the water, where doubtless it would be carried down-stream, on the swiftly ebbing tide, in the wake of that boat which was hastening--whither? I don"t think I knew at the time that my hat was gone. I have lived through some strange and terrible experiences; but I have seldom suffered more mental agony than I did during those few minutes that I stood in the rain on Westminster Bridge.
I was trembling from head to foot, my soul was sick, my mind distracted by the effort to find any plausible explanation of the scene I had just witnessed.
What was this mystery that encompa.s.sed the girl I loved; that had closed around her now? A mystery that I had never even suspected till a few hours ago, though I had seen Anne every day for this month past,--ever since I first met her.
But, after all, what did I know of her antecedents? Next to nothing; and that I had learned mainly from my cousin Mary.
Now I came to think of it, Anne had told me very little about herself. I knew that her father, Anthony Pendennis, came of an old family, and possessed a house and estate in the west of England, which he had let on a long lease. Anne had never seen her ancestral home, for her father lived a nomadic existence on the Continent; one which she had shared, since she left the school at Neuilly, where she and Mary first became friends.
I gathered that she and her father were devoted to each other; and that he had spared her unwillingly for this long-promised visit to her old school-fellow. Mary, I knew, would have welcomed Mr. Pendennis also; but by all accounts he was an eccentric person, who preferred to live anywhere rather than in England, the land of his birth. He and Anne were birds of pa.s.sage, who wintered in Italy or Spain or Egypt as the whim seized him; and spent the summer in Switzerland or Tyrol, or elsewhere.
In brief they wandered over Europe, north and south, according to the season; avoiding only the Russian Empire and the British Isles.
I had never worried my mind with conjectures as to the reason of this unconventional mode of living. It had seemed to me natural enough, as I, too, was a nomad; a stranger and sojourner in many lands, since I left the old homestead in Iowa twelve years ago, to seek my fortune in the great world. During these wonderful weeks I had been spellbound, as it were, by Anne"s beauty, her charm. When I was with her I could think only of her; and in the intervals,--well, I still thought of her, and was dejected or elated as she had been cruel or kind. To me her many caprices had seemed but the outcome of her youthful light-heartedness; of a certain nave coquetry, that rendered her all the more dear and desirable; "a rosebud set about with little wilful thorns;" a girl who would not be easily wooed and won, and, therefore, a girl well worth winning.
But now--now--I saw her from a different standpoint; saw her enshrouded in a dark mystery, the clue to which eluded me. Only one belief I clung to with pa.s.sionate conviction, as a drowning man clings to a straw. She loved me. I could not doubt that, remembering the expression of her wistful face as we parted under the portico so short a time ago, though it seemed like a lifetime. Had she planned her flight even then,--if flight it was,--and what else could it be?
My cogitations terminated abruptly for the moment as a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and a gruff voice said in my ear: "Come, none o"
that, now! What are you up to?"
I turned and faced a burly policeman, whom I knew well. He recognized me, also, and saluted.
"Beg pardon; didn"t know it was you, sir. Thought it was one of these here sooicides, or some one that had had--well, a drop too much."
He eyed me curiously. I dare say I looked, in my hatless and drenched condition, as if I might come under the latter category.
"It"s all right," I answered, forcing a laugh. "I wasn"t meditating a plunge in the river. My hat blew off, and when I looked after it I saw something that interested me, and stayed to watch."
It was a lame explanation and not precisely true. He glanced over the parapet in his turn. The rain was abating once more, and the light was growing as the clouds sped onwards. The moon was at full, and would only set at dawn.
"I don"t see anything," he remarked. "What was it, sir? Anything suspicious?"
His tone inferred that it must have been something very much out of the common to have kept me there in the rain. Having told him so much I was bound to tell him more.
"A rowboat, with two or three people in it; going down-stream. That"s unusual at this time of night--or morning--isn"t it?"
He grinned widely.
"Was that all? It wasn"t worth the wetting you"ve got, sir!"
"I don"t see where the joke comes in," I said.
"Well, sir, you newspaper gents are always on the lookout for mysteries," he a.s.serted, half apologetically. "There"s nothing out of the way in a boat going up or down-stream at any hour of the day or night; or if there was the river police would be on its track in a jiffy. They patrol the river same as we walk our beat. It might have been one of their boats you saw, or some bargees as had been making a night of it ash.o.r.e. If I was you, I"d turn in as soon as possible.
"Tain"t good for any one to stand about in wet clothes."
We walked the length of the bridge together, and he continued to hold forth loquaciously. We parted, on the best of terms, at the end of his beat; and following his advice, I walked rapidly homewards. I was chilled to the bone, and unutterably miserable, but if I stayed out all night that would not alter the situation.
The street door swung back under my touch, as I was in the act of inserting my latch-key in the lock. Some one had left it open, in defiance of the regulations, well known to every tenant of the block. I slammed it with somewhat unnecessary vigor, and the sound went booming and echoing up the well of the stone staircase, making a horrible din, fit to wake the seven sleepers of Ephesus.
It did waken the housekeeper"s big watch-dog, chained up in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and he bayed furiously. I leaned over the bal.u.s.trade and called out. He knew my voice, and quieted down at once, but not before his master had come out in his pyjamas, yawning and blinking. Poor old Jenkins, his rest was pretty frequently disturbed, for if any one of the bachelor tenants of the upper flats--the lower ones were let out as offices--forgot his street-door key, or returned in the small hours in a condition that precluded him from manipulating it, Jenkins would be rung up to let him in; and, being one of the best of good sorts, would certainly guide him up the staircase and put him comfortably to bed.
"I"m right down sorry, Jenkins," I called. "I found the street door open, and slammed it without thinking."
"Open! Well there, who could have left it open, going out or in?" he exclaimed, seeming more perturbed than the occasion warranted. "Must have been quite a short time back, for it isn"t an hour since Caesar began barking like he did just now; and he never barks for nothing. I went right up the stairs and there was no one there and not a sound.
The door was shut fast enough then, for I tried it. It couldn"t have been Mr. Gray or Mr. Sellars, for they"re away week ending, and Mr.
Ca.s.savetti came in before twelve. I met him on the stairs as I was turning the lights down."
"Perhaps he went out again to post," I suggested. "Good night, Jenkins."
"Good night, sir. You got caught in the storm, then?" He had just seen how wet I was, and eyed me curiously, as the policeman had done.
"Yes, couldn"t see a cab and had to come through it. Lost my hat, too; it blew off," I answered over my shoulder, as I ran up the stairs.
Lightly clad though he was, Jenkins seemed inclined to stay gossiping there till further orders.
When I got into my flat and switched on the lights, I found I still held, crumpled up in my hand, the bit of geranium I had picked up on the river steps. But for that evidence I might have persuaded myself that I had imagined the whole thing. I dropped the crushed petals into the waste-paper basket, and, as I hastily changed from my wet clothes into pyjamas, I mentally rehea.r.s.ed the scene over and over again. Could I have been misled by a chance resemblance? Impossible. Anne was not merely a beautiful girl, but a strikingly distinctive personality. I had recognized her figure, her gait, as I would have recognized them among a thousand; that fleeting glimpse of her face had merely confirmed the recognition. As for her presence in Westminster at a time when she should have been at Mrs. Dennis Sutherland"s house in Kensington, or at home with the Cayleys in Chelsea, that could be easily accounted for on the presumption that she had not stayed long at Mrs. Sutherland"s. Had the Cayleys already discovered her flight? Probably not. Was Ca.s.savetti cognizant of it,--concerned with it in any way; and was the incident of the open door that had so perplexed Jenkins another link in the mysterious chain? At any rate, Ca.s.savetti was not the man dressed as a sailor; though he might have been the man in the boat.
The more I brooded over it the more bewildered--distracted--my brain became. I tried to dismiss the problem from my mind, "to give it up," in fact; and, since sleep was out of the question, to occupy myself with preparations for the packing that must be done to-morrow--no, to-day, for the dawn had come--if I were to start for Russia on Monday morning.
But it was no use. I could not concentrate my mind on anything; also, though I"m an abstemious man as a rule, I guess I put away a considerable amount of whiskey. Anyhow, I"ve no recollection of going to bed; but I woke with a splitting headache, and a thirst I wouldn"t take five dollars for, and the first things I saw were a whiskey bottle and soda syphon--both empty--on the dressing-table.
As I lay blinking at those silent witnesses--the bottle had been nearly full overnight--and trying to remember what had happened, there came a knock at my bedroom door, and Mrs. Jenkins came in with my breakfast tray.
She was an austere dame, and the glance she cast at that empty whiskey bottle was more significant and accusatory than any words could have been; though all she said was: "I knocked before, sir, with your shaving water, but you didn"t hear. It"s cold now, but I"ll put some fresh outside directly."
I mumbled meek thanks, and, when she retreated, poured out some tea. I guessed there were eggs and bacon, the alpha and omega of British ideas of breakfast, under the dish cover; but I did not lift it. My soul--and my stomach--revolted at the very thought of such fare.
I had scarcely sipped my tea when I heard the telephone bell ring in the adjoining room. I scrambled up and was at the door when Mrs. Jenkins announced severely: "The telephone, Mr. Wynn," and retreated to the landing.