The Brightener Part 31

"How can we see anything if the room's pitch-black?" I persisted.

"Explain to your friends, Captain Lorillard, what takes place," bade Miss Reardon.

"When--June comes--she brings a faint radiance with her--seems to evolve it out of herself," Robert said in a low voice.

As he spoke he switched off the light, and profound silence fell upon us.

Some moments pa.s.sed, and nothing happened.

Joyce and I sat with locked cold hands. I was on the right of the medium, and from my chair quite close to hers could easily have reached out and touched her, if I'd wished. On her left, at about the same distance, sat Robert. Jim was the only one who stood. He had refused a chair, and propped his long length against the wall between two doors: the door opening into the hall outside the suite, and that leading to Miss Reardon's bedroom and bath.

We could faintly hear each other breathe. Then, after five or six minutes, perhaps, I heard odd, gasping sounds as if someone struggled for breath. These gasps were punctuated with moans, and I should have been frightened if the direction and nearness of the queer noise hadn't told me at once that it came from the medium. I'd never before been to a materializing seance, yet I felt instinctively that this was the convulsive sort of thing to expect.

Suddenly a dim light--oh, hardly a light!--a pale greenish glimmer, as if there were a glowworm in the room--became faintly visible. It seemed to swim in a delicate gauzy mist. Its height above the floor (this was the thought flas.h.i.+ng into my mind) was about that of a tall woman's heart. A perfume of La France roses filled the room.

At first our eyes, accustomed to darkness, could distinguish nothing except this glowworm light and the surrounding haze of lacy gray. Then, gradually, we became conscious of a figure--a slender shape in floating draperies. More and more distinct it grew, as slowly it moved toward us--toward Robert Lorillard; and my throat contracted as I made out the semblance of June Dana.

The form was clad in the gray dress which Miss Reardon had so surprisingly described when we met her first--the dress June had worn the day of her engagement--the dress of the portrait at River Orchard Cottage. The gray hat with the long curling plume shaded the face, and so obscured it that I should hardly have recognized it as June's had it not been for the thick wheel of bright, red-brown hair on each side bunching out under the hat exactly as June had worn her hair that year.

A long, thin scarf filmed like a cloud round the slowly moving figure, looped over the arms, which waved gracefully as if the spirit-form swam in air rather than walked. There was an illusive glitter of rings--just such rings as June had worn: one emerald, one diamond. A dark streak across the ice-white throat showed her famous black pearls; and--strangest thing of all--the green light which glimmered through filmy folds of scarf was born apparently in a glittering emerald brooch.

At first the vision (which might have come through the wall of the room, for all we could tell) floated toward Robert. None save spirit-eyes could have made him out distinctly in the darkness that was lit only by the small green gleam. But I fancied that he always sat in the same seat for these seances; he had taken his chair in a way so matter of course.

Therefore the spirit would know where to find him!

Within a few feet of distance, however, the form paused, and swayed as if undecided. "She has seen that there are others in the room besides Robert and the medium," I thought. "Will she be angry? Will she vanish?"

Hardly had I time to finish the thought, however, when the electricity was switched on with a click. The light flooding the room dazzled me for a second, but in the bright blur I saw that Jim Courtenaye had seized the gray figure. All ghostliness was gone from it. A woman was struggling with him in dreadful silence--a tall, slim woman with June Dana's red-bronze hair, June Dana's gray dress and hat and scarf.

She writhed like a snake in Jim's merciless grasp, but she kept her head bent not to show her face, till suddenly in some way her hat was knocked off. With it--caught by a hatpin, perhaps--went the gorgeous, bunched hair.

"A wig!" I heard myself cry. And at the same instant Joyce gasped out "_Opal!_"

Yes, it was Opal, disguised as June, in the gray dress and hat and scarf, with black pearls and emeralds all copied from the portrait--and the haunting fragrance of roses that had been June's.

The likeness was enough to deceive June's nearest and dearest in that dimmest of dim lights which was like the ghost of a light, veiled with all those chiffon scarves. But with the room bright as day, all resemblance, except in clothes and wig and height, vanished at a glance.

The woman caught in her cruel fraud was a pitiable sight, yet I had no pity for her then. Staring at the whitened face, framed in dishevelled, mouse-brown hair, the long upper lip painted red in a high Cupid's bow to resemble June's lovely mouth, I was sick with disgust. As at last she yielded in despair to Jim's fierce clutch, and dropped sobbing on the sofa, I felt I could have struck her. But she had no thought for me nor for any of us--not even for Jim, who had ruined the game, nor for Miss Reardon, who must have sold her to him at a price; for no one at all except Robert Lorillard.

When she'd given up hope of escape, and lay panting, exhausted, flung feebly across the sofa, she looked up at Robert.

"I loved you," she wept. "That's why I did it; I couldn't let you go to another woman. I thought I saw a way to keep you always near me--almost as if you were mine. You can't _hate_ a woman who loves you like that!"

Robert did not answer. I think he was half dazed. He stood staring at her, frozen still like the statue of a man. I was frightened for him. He had endured too much. Joyce couldn't go to him yet, though he would be hers--all hers, for ever--bye and bye--but _I_ could go, as a friend.

I laid my hand on his arm, and spoke his name softly.

"Robert, I always felt there was fraud," I said. "Now, thank Heaven, we know the truth before it's too late for you to be happy, as June herself would want you to be happy, if she knew. She wasn't cruel--the _real_ June. She wasn't like this false one at heart. Go, now, I beg, and take Joyce home to my flat--she's almost fainting. You must look after her. I will stay here. Jim Courtenaye'll watch over me--and later we'll bring you explanations of everything."

So I got them both away. And when they were gone the whole story was dragged from Opal. Jim forced her to confess; and with Robert out of sight--lost for ever to the wretched woman--the task wasn't difficult.

You see, Miss Reardon _had_ sold her beforehand. Jim doesn't care what price he pays when he wants a thing!

First of all, he'd taken a house that was to let furnished, near Opal's.

She didn't know him from Adam, but he had her description. He followed her several times, and saw her go to the Savoy; even saw her go to Miss Reardon's rooms. Then, to Miss Reardon he presented himself, _en surprise_, and pretended to know five times as much as he did know; in fact, as much as he suspected. By this trick he broke down her guard; and before she had time to build it up again, flung a bribe of two thousand pounds--ten thousand dollars--at her head. She couldn't resist, and eventually told him everything.

Opal and she had corresponded for several years, it seemed, as fellow mediums, sending each other clients from one country to another. When Opal learned that the Boston medium was coming to England, she asked if Miss Reardon would do her a great favour. In return for it, the American woman's cabin on s.h.i.+pboard and all expenses at one of London's best hotels would be paid.

This sounded alluring. Miss Reardon asked questions by letter, and by letter those questions were answered. A plan was formed--a plan that was a _plot_. Opal kept phonographic records of many voices among those of her favourite clients--did this with their knowledge and consent, making presents to them of their own records to give to friends. It was just an "interesting fad" of hers! Such a record of June's voice she had posted to Boston. Miss Reardon, who was a clever mimic (a fine professional a.s.set!) learned to imitate the voice. She had a description from Opal of the celebrated gray costume with the jewels June wore, and knew well how to "work" her knowledge of June's favourite perfume.

As to that first meeting at the Savoy, Opal was aware that Joyce and I met Robert there on most afternoons. A suite was taken for Miss Reardon in the hotel, and the lady was directed to await developments in the _foyer_ at a certain hour--an old stage photograph of Robert Lorillard in her hand-bag. The rest had been almost simple, thanks to Opal's knowledge of June's life and doings; to her deadly cleverness, and the device of a tiny electric light glimmering through a square of emerald green gla.s.s on the "spirit's" breast, under scarves slowly unfolded. If it had not been for Jim, Robert would have become her bond-slave, and Joyce would have fled from England.

"Well, are you satisfied?" Jim asked, spinning me home at last in his own car.

"More than satisfied," I said. "Joyce and Robert will marry after all, and be the happiest couple on earth. They'll forget this horror."

"Which is what you'd like to do if I'd let you, I suppose," said Jim.

"Forget! You mean----?"

"Yes. The promise I dragged out of you, and everything."

"I never forget my promises," I primly answered.

"But if I let you off it? Elizabeth, that's what I'm going to do! I love you too much, my girl, to blackmail you permanently--to get you for my wife in payment of a bargain. I may be pretty bad, but I'm hanged if I'm as bad as that."

I burst out laughing.

"_Idiot!_" I gurgled. "Haven't you the wits to see I _want_ to marry you? I'm in love with you, you fool. Besides, I'm tired of being matron of honour, and you being best man every time people I 'brighten' marry!"

"It sha'n't happen again!" said Jim.

And then he almost took my breath away. _What_ a strong man he is!

BOOK IV

THE MYSTERY OF MRS. BRANDRETH

CHAPTER I

THE MAN IN THE CUs.h.i.+ONED CHAIR