The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 28

Elizabeth was not in a mood to be gainsaid. She placed a coin in the man's hand. "I must see him," she said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "If you won't take me up, I'll walk. I am his wife," she went on, as he still stared at her, wondering. "I have a right to see him."

"Well, it's the police that settles that," he rejoined, gruffly, but still he took her up, reflecting that, after all, it was no business of his. He brought the elevator to a stand-still, with a shake of the head and an anxious look towards the fatal studio, but Elizabeth moved towards it as if she had no doubt whatever of entering. And at the same moment, Mr. D'Hauteville opened the door of his rooms on the same landing, and came face to face with her.

"Miss Van Vorst!" he exclaimed, staring at her; then, in a lower voice: "For Heaven's sake, don't come here. Halleck is dead. Haven't you heard?"

"Yes, I--I have heard." She looked pleadingly at him. "Mr.

D'Hauteville," she said, "take me in to see him. I--I must see him. It was such a shock. I am his wife, you know," she added. The disclosure, which she had once so dreaded, fell from her lips indifferently, as if it were a thing of small importance, compared with the gaining of her purpose.

"His wife!" D'Hauteville fell back and stared at her incredulously.

Then his mind quickly grasped the explanation of facts which had puzzled him. He looked at her and saw that she was suffering from terrible distress and excitement. "Do you really wish to see him?" he said. "It would be painful."

"Yes, I--I must see him." Elizabeth raised confidingly her troubled eyes, and D'Hauteville apparently could not resist their appeal.

Slowly and reluctantly he unlocked the studio door and allowed Elizabeth to enter. The hall was empty, but from behind the portiere at the end came the sound of voices. D'Hauteville cast an anxious glance towards them, but he opened quickly another door, and led the way into the bedroom, which was still and dark, and close with a strange, oppressive atmosphere. D'Hauteville, treading softly, drew up the shade. Then he fell back and turned his eyes away.

Elizabeth felt no fear, though her only recollection of death was connected with a horrible moment in her childhood, when they had led her in trembling to look at her father in his coffin. But now she felt indifferent to any trivial terrors. She stood by the bedside looking down at the dead man, and put out her hand and touched the curls which cl.u.s.tered about his forehead. He was not much changed; the greatest difference which death had made was in a certain look of dignity, which his face had never worn in life. It was impossible, standing there, to think of his faults, or of any harm that he had wrought in her life. She only remembered that he had been her first lover--nothing more.

A few moments pa.s.sed, and then D'Hauteville pulled down the shades and drew her gently from the room. The tears were falling fast behind her veil, and the hand that rested against his was icy cold.

"I had better see you home," he said anxiously, but she shook her head.

"No, no, thank you. You have been very kind, but I--I would rather not. Mr. D'Hauteville," she said, raising piteous eyes to his "who--who could have done it?"

"G.o.d only knows!" said D'Hauteville, with a sigh. "No one else, I believe, ever will."

He had rung the bell, and they stood waiting for the elevator, when she turned to him. "It was not I," she said, "don't ever think that it was I." And at that moment the elevator stopped and she was borne away, before there was time for further words. But D'Hauteville stood paralyzed.

"For Heaven's sake," he asked himself, "why did she say that? Who accused her?"

Elizabeth, as she went her way, was quite unconscious of the impression her words had produced. Her head felt confused, and after she left Carnegie there followed a blank interval, during which she wandered aimlessly, but found herself at last, as if led by some involuntary instinct, in the Park beside the lake, into which a few weeks before she had thrown her wedding ring. Now, as before, it was nearly covered with a thin coating of ice, yet there was a strip of water visible, and upon this her eyes fastened with a thrill of terrified fascination. She pictured it involuntarily, closing over her, dragging her down, blotting out all thoughts, all feelings.... A moment of agony, perhaps, and then? Rest, oblivion, an end of all struggle, no more to-morrows to be faced, no more regrets.... The thought of death, the one way out, the only remedy, swift and sure, appealed to her with a force almost irresistible.

If only the water were not so cold!--In an instant there swept over her, quite as inevitably, the natural, healthy reaction; the revulsion against the icy pond, and all the weird, uncanny, frightful, unpleasant a.s.sociations that it conjured up. Ah, she had not the courage!--not then, at least. She closed her eyes, shutting out the strange fascination of the water gleaming in the pale chill sunlight, and promising its sure and terrible relief--she closed her eyes and turned resolutely away. A horror seized upon her of herself and of loneliness, of the bleak desolation on every side. She hastened, breathing heavily, towards the entrance of the Park, her hurried foot-steps on the crisp, hard path sounding unnaturally loud in the wintry silence.

_Chapter x.x.x_

Several weeks later the Halleck poisoning case was still, so far as the general public was concerned, an impenetrable mystery. For a day or two various clues were investigated, with a great appearance of zeal; and then a lull fell upon the efforts of the police. Their final investigations, if they made any, were conducted behind closed doors.

But no result appeared from their labors; the coroner's inquest was postponed from week to week for lack of sufficient evidence. The public grew impatient, and clamored that some one should be arrested;--it did not seem greatly to matter whom. And then there began to be strange rumors of influence exerted to conceal the truth, of suspicion which pointed in such high quarters, that the police were afraid to continue their search.

These rumors were still comparatively new when Eleanor Van Antwerp took up one day a scandalous society journal--(one of those papers which no one reads, but whose remarks, in some mysterious way, every one hears about)--and came across a paragraph, which seemed to her at once insulting and inexplicable.

"They say"--it began with this conventional formula--"that certain highly dramatic developments are to be expected soon in the famous poisoning case. The evidence that the District Attorney has collected is now said to be complete and to inculpate rather seriously a well-known beauty. The lady is related, though on the father's side only, to one of our old Dutch houses, and was introduced to society, where she was before entirely unknown, by the representative of another old Knickerbocker family. Under such circ.u.mstances her success was certain. Not content with taking the town by storm, she made special capture of a certain prominent society man and eligible parti, to whom her engagement was announced. This gentleman has, however, according to latest reports, left the forlorn beauty and fled to parts unknown."

What did it mean? The hot, indignant color rushed to Mrs. Bobby's cheek, and then, retreating, left her deadly pale. She took the paper to her husband, and pointing out the offending paragraph, she stood beside him as he read it, her dark eyes fixed intently upon his face, and seeing there, to her dismay, more indignation than surprise.

"Well," she said, as he looked up at the end. "Tell me--what does it mean?"

"It--the editor of that infernal thing ought to be horsewhipped," he said, fiercely.

She put the remark aside as irrelevant. "Why, that should have been done long ago. But what does it mean?" she persisted, holding to the main point.

He put the paper down with a sigh. "It means what it says, Eleanor, I'm afraid," he said.

She stared at him, a shade paler, while the dread in her eyes grew more p.r.o.nounced. "Means what it says?" she repeated. "Then it isn't merely a wild concoction of the kind they're always inventing?"

"It's more than that, I'm afraid." Bobby rose and began to pace up and down. "They do say nasty things," he said, apparently addressing the walls, or anything rather than his wife.

Her eyes followed him with an intense anxiety, as her white lips barely framed the question: "At the clubs?"

He nodded. "Yes, there, and--at other places besides. At the District Attorney's, for instance"--

"You don't mean?"--she began incredulously.

"That they suspect her? Yes."

Mrs. Bobby sat down as if her strength suddenly had failed her. "But that's absurd--impossible!" she said, after a moment.

"Perhaps; but--it's the impossible that some times happens." Mrs.

Bobby was silent in incredulous horror; and he went on, after a pause: "You see, she's in a confoundedly unpleasant position. There are all kinds of queer stories going the round. They say now that she was secretly married to Halleck; that he had some kind of power over her, at least; and then having every motive to get rid of him, being engaged to Gerard"--

"Bobby," said his wife, in a horrified tone "how can you repeat such disgusting gossip?"

"I'm only telling you what they say," said Bobby, apologetically.

"I don't wish to know it." Bobby held his peace. "Why should she have any motive?" said his wife, after a moment's reflection "when her engagement was broken?"

"They say--but I thought you didn't wish to know."

"I don't, but I suppose, I must know. What do they--these disgusting people--say?"

"They think that Gerard found out something which made him break the engagement. As for the poison, that was sent before, you know"--

"Bobby," said his wife, with a little cry, "you don't mean to suggest that she--that Elizabeth Van Vorst"--She paused as if at a loss for words, and Bobby concluded the sentence.

"Sent the poison?" he said, quietly. "No, I don't suggest it--not for a second; I don't _believe_ it, even," he cried, with sudden emphasis, "but there are other people who--who do both."

"Then they must be fools." Bobby made no reply. "Where," she said, in a moment, "do they suppose she got it--the poison?"

"That they don't know--as yet; but they know--or they think they do--where she got the flask. There's a shop in Brooklyn where they sell others like it"--he stopped.

"Well," she said, "what of it? I daresay there are a good many shops where they sell them."

"The man who keeps this particular shop, said, I believe, that he sold one on the twenty-third of December to a young woman thickly veiled, rather tall and with wavy red hair."

"Her hair isn't red," said Mrs. Bobby, quickly.