The Brightener. Williamson Charles Norris
out of the room and with a shriek bring everyone on board to my cabin. But I stood motionless, concentrating my gaze on those trembling eyelids. Something inside me seemed to say: "Don't be a coward, Elizabeth Courtenaye!" It was exactly like Grandmother's voice. I had a conviction that she wanted me to see this thing through as a Courtenaye should, shirking no responsibility, and solving the mystery of past and present without bleating for help.
The fringed lids parted, shut, quivered again, and flashed wide open. A pair of pale eyes stared into mine – wicked eyes, cruel eyes, green as a cat's. Like a cat, too, the creature gathered herself together as if for a spring. Her muscles rippled and jerked. She sat up, and in chilled surprise I thought I saw recognition in her stare.
CHAPTER VI
THE WOMAN OF THE PAST
"Oh, you've come at last!" she rasped, in a harsh, throaty voice roughened by drink. "I know you. I – "
"And I know you!" I cut her short, to show that I was not cowed.
Sitting up in bed, hugging her knees, she started at my words so that the springs shook. Whatever it was she had meant to say, she forgot it for the moment, and challenged me: "That's a lie!" she snapped. "You don't know me yet – but you soon will."
"I've known you since you came into my room at Courtenaye Abbey the night you tried to burn down the house," I said. "You were spying for the Germans in the war. Heaven knows all the harm you may have done. I can't imagine for whom you're spying now. Anyhow, you can't frighten me again. The war's over, but I'll have you arrested for what you did when it was on."
The woman scowled and laughed, more Medusa-like than ever. I really felt as if she might turn me to stone. But she shouldn't guess her power.
"Pooh!" she said, showing tobacco-stained teeth. "You won't want to arrest me when you hear who I am, Lady Shelagh Leigh!"
"Lady Shelagh Leigh!" It was on my lips to cry, "I'm not Shelagh Leigh!" But I stopped in time. The less I let her find out about me, and the more I could find out about her before rousing the yacht, the better. I spoke not a word, but waited for her to go on – which she did in a few seconds.
"That makes you sit up, doesn't it?" she sneered. "That hits you where you live! Why did you think I chose your cabin? I didn't select it by chance. I confess I was taken back at your remembering. I thought I hadn't given you time for much study of my features that other night. But it doesn't matter. You can't do anything to me. I'll soon prove that! But I had a good look at you, there in your friend's old Devonshire rat-trap. I knew who you both were. It was easy to find out! And the other day, when I heard that Lady Shelagh Leigh was likely to marry Roger Fane, I said to myself, 'Gosh! One of the girls I saw at the darned old Abbey!'"
"Oh, you said that to yourself!" I echoed. And, though my knees failed, I kept to my feet. To stand towering above the squatting figure on the bed seemed to give me moral as well as physical advantage. "How did you know, pray, which girl I was?"
"I knew, 'pray,'" she mocked, "because you've got the best room on this yacht. Roger'd be sure to give that to his best girl. Which is how I'm sure you're not Elizabeth Courtenaye."
"How clever you are!" I said.
"Yes – I'm clever – when I'm not a fool. Don't think, anyhow, that you can beat me in a battle of brains. I've come on board this boat to succeed, and I will succeed in one of two ways, I don't care a hang which. But nothing on God's earth can hold me back from one or the other – least of all, can you. Why, you can ask any question you please, and I'll answer. I'll tell the truth, too – for the more I say, and the more you're shocked, the more helpless you are – do you see?"
"No, I don't see," I drew her on.
"Don't you guess yet who I am?"
"I've guessed what you were– a German spy."
"That's ancient history. One must live – and one must have money – plenty of money. I must! And I've had it. But it's gone from me – like most good things. Now I must have more – a lot more. Or else I must die. I don't care which. But others will care. I'll make them."
Looking at her, I doubted if she had the power; though she must have had it in lost days of gorgeous youth. Yet again I remained silent. I saw that she was leading up to something in particular, and I let her go on.
"You're not much of a guesser," she said, "so I'll introduce myself. Lady-who-thinks-she's-going-to-marry Roger Fane, let me make known to you the lady who has married him – Mrs. Fane, née Linda Lehmann. I've changed my name since, more than once. At present I'm Katherine Nelson. But Linda Lehmann is the name that matters to Roger. You're nothing in looks, by the by, to what I was at your age. Nothing!"
If my knees had been weak before, they now felt as if struck with a mallet! She might be lying, but something within me was horribly sure that she spoke the truth. I'd never heard full details of Roger Fane's "tragedy," but Mrs. Carstairs had dropped a few hints which, without asking questions, I'd patched together. I had gleaned that he'd married (when almost a boy) an actress much older than himself; and that, till her sudden and violent death after many years – nine or ten at least – his life had been a martyrdom. How the woman contrived to be alive I couldn't see. But such things happened – to people one didn't know! The worst of it was that I did know Roger Fane, and liked him. Besides, I loved Shelagh, whose happiness was bound up with Roger's. It seemed as if I couldn't bear to have those two torn apart by this cruel creature – this drunkard – this spy! Yet – what could I do?
At the moment I could think of nothing useful, because, if she was Roger's wife, her boast was justified: for his sake and Shelagh's she mustn't be handed over to the police, to answer for any political crime I might prove against her – or even for trying to burn down the Abbey. Oh, this business was beyond what I bargained for when I engaged to "brighten" the trip on board the Naiad! Still, all the spirit in me rallied to work for Roger Fane – even to work out his salvation if that could be. And I was glad I'd let the woman believe I was Shelagh Leigh.
"Roger's wife died five years ago, just before the war began," I said. "She was killed in a railway accident – an awful one, where she and a company of actors she was travelling with were burned to death."
The creature laughed. "Have you never been to a movie show, and seen how easy it is to die in a railway accident? – to stay dead to those you're tired of, and to be alive in some other part of this old world, where you think there's more fun going on? It's been done on the screen a hundred times – and off it, too. I was sick to death of Roger. I'd never have married a stick like him – always preaching! – if I hadn't been down and out. When I met him, it was in a beastly one-horse town where I was stranded. The show had chucked me – gone off and left me without a cent. I was sick – too big a dose of dope, if you want to know. But Roger didn't know – you can bet. Not then! I took jolly good care to toe the mark, till he'd married me all right. He was a sucker! I suppose he was twenty-two and over, but Peter Pan wasn't in it with him in some ways. He kept me off the stage – and tried to keep me off everything else worth doing for five years. Then I left him, for my health and looks had come back, and I got a fair part in a play on tour. There I met a countryman of mine – oh! don't be encouraged to hope! I never gave Roger any cause to divorce me; and if I had, I'd have done it so he couldn't prove a thing!"
"When you say the man was your countryman, I suppose you mean a German," I said.
"Well, yes," she replied, with the flaunting frankness she affected in these revelations. "German-American he was. I'm German by birth, and grew up in America. I've been back often and long since then. But this man had a scheme. He wanted me to go into it with him. I didn't see my way at first though there was big money, so he left the show before the accident. When I found myself alive and kicking among the dead that day, however, I saw my chance. I left a ring and a few things to identify me with a woman who was killed, and I lit out. It was in the dead of night, so luck was on my side for once. I wrote my friend, and it wasn't long before I was at work with him for the German Government. The Abbey affair was after he'd got out of England and into Germany through Switzerland. He was a sailor, and had