The Slave of Silence. Fred M. White
should say there is very little doubt about it," Mark replied. "The handwritings are identical. It seems that Mrs. Beacon Light stayed here last night and dined in the red salon. She had breakfast here very early, and then she paid her bill and departed. The clerk cannot say where she went, for her small amount of baggage was placed in a hansom and the driver was told to go in the first instance to Peter Robinson's. That is everything that I could ascertain."
There was no more to be said for the present, and very little to be done. A tall, stiff man, with an air of Scotland Yard indelibly impressed upon him, came presently, and asked to be allowed to see Sir Charles's suite of rooms. He had been waited upon at his office, he explained, by the deceased baronet's medical man, who had suggested the necessity for an inquest, which had been fixed upon for ten o'clock the following day. Under the circumstances the suite of rooms would be locked up and the seal of authority placed on them. The inspector was sincerely sorry to cause all this trouble and worry to Miss Darryll, but she would quite see that he was doing no more than his duty.
"But why all this fuss?" Stephen Richford demanded. He had come up at the same moment. Troubled and dazed as Beatrice was, she could not help noticing that Richford had been drinking. The thing was so unusual that it stood out all the more glaringly. "There's no occasion for an inquest. Dr. Oswin has told me more than once lately that Sir Charles was giving his heart a great deal too much to do. This thing has got to be prevented, I tell you."
"Very sorry, sir," the inspector said politely; "but it is already out of private hands. Both Dr. Oswin and Dr. Andrews have suggested an inquest; they have notified us, and, if they wished to change their minds now, I doubt if my chief would permit them."
Richford seemed to be on the point of some passionate outburst, but he checked himself. He laid his hand more or less familiarly on Beatrice's arm, and she could feel his fingers trembling.
"Very well," he said sulkily. "If you have made up your minds as to this course, I have no more to say. But there is nothing to gain by standing here all day. Beatrice, I have something to say to you."
"I am quite ready," Beatrice said. "I have also something to say to you. We will go on as far as my sitting-room. Please don't leave the hotel, Colonel Berrington; I may want you again."
The hard corners of Richford's mouth trembled, but he said nothing. He did not utter a word until the door of the sitting-room had closed upon Beatrice and himself. He motioned the girl to a chair, but she ignored the suggestion.
"It is a very awkward situation," Richford began. "As my wife——"
"I am glad you have come so quickly to the point," Beatrice said eagerly. "Am I your wife? I doubt it. I do not think I am your wife, because the ceremony was not quite completed and we did not sign the register. You know what my feelings have been all along; I have never made the slightest attempt to disguise them. If I had known that my father was dead—that he had died on the way to church, I should never have become Mrs. Stephen Richford. To save my father's good name I had consented to this sacrifice. My father is dead beyond the reach of trouble. If I had only known. If I had only known!"
The words came with a fierce whisper. They stung the listener as no outburst of contempt or scorn could. They told him clearly how the speaker loathed and despised him.
"Nobody did know," he sneered. "Nobody could possibly have known."
"That is not true," Beatrice cried. She had come a little closer to Richford; her cheeks were blazing with anger, her eyes flamed passionately. "It is a cowardly lie. There was one man who saw my father after his death, and I am going to prove the fact in a way that cannot possibly be disputed. One man was in my father's room after his death. That man saw my father lying there, and he crept away without giving the slightest alarm. You may sneer, you may say that such a thing is impossible, that the man I allude to would have nothing to gain by such a course; but as I said before, I am going to prove it. Look at this telegram I hold in my hand. It was sent before ten o'clock to-day to the person to whom it is addressed. It evidently relates to some Stock Exchange business. The address is quite clear; the time the telegram was delivered is quite clear, too; and by the side of my father's body I found the telegram, which could only have been dropped there by the party to whom it was addressed. So that party knew that my father was dead, and that party made no alarm. Why?"
"Why," Richford stammered. "Why, because—well, you see it is quite possible to explain——"
"It is not," Beatrice cried. "The telegram is addressed to you. It was you who called on my father; you who found him dead. And in your agitation you dropped that message. Then you grasped the fact that if the marriage was postponed it would never take place, that I was in a position to defy you. You locked my father's door; you said nothing; you made up your mind to let the ceremony go on. That accounts for your agitation, for the fact that you have been drinking. Cowardly scoundrel, what have you to say to this!"
"What are you going to do?" Richford asked sullenly.
"Unless you release me here and now," Beatrice cried, "I swear by Heaven that I am going to tell the truth!"
CHAPTER VII
Richford stood there shaking and quivering with passion, and yet not free from the vague terror that Beatrice had noticed all along. Beatrice could not repress a shudder as she looked at that evil, scowling face. To be with that man always, to share his home and his company, seemed to her a most impossible thing. She had lost her father; the future was black and hopeless before her, but she felt a strength and courage now, that she had been a stranger to for a long time. There was hope, too, which is a fine thing when allied with youth and vitality.
She need not live with this man; she had every excuse for not doing so. Beatrice cared very little, for the moment, whether she was married or not. It might possibly be that in the eyes of the law she was this man's wife; the law might compel her to share his home. But now Beatrice had a weapon in her hand and she knew how to use it.
"Give me that telegram," Richford said hoarsely. "Hand it over to me at once."
He advanced in a manner that was distinctly threatening. Certainly he would not have stopped at violence if violence would serve his end. But Beatrice was not afraid.
"I shall do nothing of the kind," she said. "You may as well strike me as look at me like that. If you use violence you may obtain possession of the telegram. But I warn you that I shall not yield without a struggle that will arouse the whole hotel. I am not coming with you, and we part here and now. Oh, I am not in the least afraid."
Just at that moment it looked as if the scene of violence would take place. With an oath Richford grasped the girl by the wrist and drew her to him. A blow full in the face would have laid her senseless at his feet, then he could have helped himself to that priceless telegram. But Richford had been in the world long enough to knew how to control his temper when it suited him to do so. He forced something in the semblance of a smile to his lips.
"Don't let us discuss this question like two silly children," he said. "You have fairly caught me out. I did go to your father this morning—there was an urgent reason why I should see him. We need not go into that now, for it was purely on matters of business. If you ask me how I got into that room when the door was locked, I will tell you. Before I thought of marrying you and setting up a house of my own, I had that suite of rooms."
"Is all this material to our discussion?" Beatrice asked coldly.
"Yes, I think so. At any rate I never gave up the suite of rooms, and the keys are still in my possession. That is how I got in to see your father without anybody being the wiser. I was going to show him the very telegram which