The Stretton Street Affair Part 23

As I spoke I heard a sweet contralto voice in the adjoining room break out into a song from one of the popular revues. It was Gabrielle's voice, I knew.

"All the information I possess, sir, is at your disposal," the woman a.s.sured me. "I only wish Mrs. Tennison was here to answer your questions."

"But you know as much as she does," I said. "Now tell me--what is your theory? What happened to your young mistress during the time she disappeared?"

Mrs. Alford lifted her hands in dismay.

"What can we think? She went away quite bright and happy. When she was found wandering on the road between London and Portsmouth her memory was a blank. She was haggard, worn, and much aged--aged in those few days of her absence. She could remember nothing, and all she could repeat were those strange words 'Red, green and gold.'"

"I wonder why those colours were so impressed upon her memory?" I remarked.

"Ah! That is what puzzles the doctors so. Each evening, just as it grows dark, she sits down and is silent for half an hour, with eyes downcast as though thinking deeply. Then she will suddenly start up and cry, 'Ah! I see--I see--yes--that terrible red, green and gold!

Oh! it's horrible--bewildering--fascinating--red, green and gold!'

The three colours seem to obsess her always at nightfall. That is what Doctor Moroni told me."

I paused for a few moments.

"You've never heard her speak of Mr. De Gex? You're quite sure?"

"Quite," was Mrs. Alford's reply. "My young mistress was studying singing at the Royal Academy of Music. Hark! You hear her now! Has she not a beautiful voice? Ah, sir--it is all a great tragedy! It has broken her mother's heart. Only to think that to-day the poor girl is without memory, and her brain is entirely unbalanced. 'Red, green and gold' is all that seems to matter to her. And whenever she recollects it and the words escape her drawn lips she seems petrified by horror."

What the woman told me was, I realized, the actual truth. And yet when I recollected that I had seen the dark-eyed victim lying dead in that s.p.a.cious room in the house of Mr. De Gex in Stretton Street, I became utterly bewildered. I had seen her dead there. I had held a mirror to her half-open lips and it had not become clouded. Yet in my ears there now sounded the sweet tuneful strains of that bird-song from "Joy Bells."

Truly, the unfortunate girl possessed a glorious voice, which would make a fortune upon the concert platform or the stage.

I did my level best to obtain more information concerning the Italian doctor and the man De Gex, but the woman could tell me absolutely nothing. She was concealing nothing from me--that I knew.

It was only when I mentioned the French banker, Monsieur Suzor, that she started and became visibly perturbed.

"I have no knowledge of the gentleman," she declared. Yet had I not seen them together in Kensington Gardens?

"I don't know whether he is known to you as Suzor," I said. Then I described him as accurately as I could.

But the woman shook her head. For the first time she now lied to me.

With my own eyes I had seen the man approach her and the girl, and after they had greeted each other, she had risen and left the girl alone with him.

Curiously enough when the pair were alone together they seemed to understand each other. I recollected it all most vividly.

To say the least it was strange why, being so frank upon other details, she so strenuously denied all knowledge of the affable Frenchman who had been my fellow-traveller from York almost immediately preceding my strange adventures in the heart of London.

My conversation with her had been, to say the least, highly illuminating, and I had learnt several facts of which I had been in ignorance. But this fixed a.s.sertion that she knew nothing of the elusive Frenchman aroused my suspicions.

What was she hiding from me?

I felt that she was concealing some very essential point--one that might well prove the clue to the whole puzzling enigma.

And while we spoke the girl's clear contralto rang out, while she herself played the accompaniment.

At length I saw that I could obtain no further information from the servant, therefore I begged to be introduced to her young mistress, a.s.suring her of my keen interest in the most puzzling problem.

Apparently relieved that I pressed her no further regarding the handsome but insidious Frenchman, the woman at once ushered me into the adjoining room--a small but well-furnished one--where at the grand piano sat the girl whose eyes were fixed, though not sightless as I had believed when in Florence.

She turned them suddenly upon my companion, and stopped playing.

"Ah! dear Alford!" she exclaimed, "I wondered if you were at home."

Then she paused. She apparently had no knowledge of my presence, for she had not turned to me, though I stood straight in her line of gaze.

"I thought you had gone out to see Monsieur--to tell him my message."

She again paused, and drew her breath.

I stood gazing upon her beautiful face, dark, tragic and full of mystery. She sat at the piano, her white fingers inert upon the keys.

She wore a simple navy blue frock, cut low in the neck with a touch of cream upon it, and edged with scarlet piping--a dress which at that moment was the mode.

Yet her pale, blank countenance was indeed pathetic, a face upon which tragedy was written. I stood for a moment gazing upon her, perplexed, bewildered and breathless in mystery.

I spoke. She rose from her seat, and turned to me.

Her reply, low and tense, staggered me!

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

"RED, GREEN AND GOLD!"

"I know you!" she cried, staring at me as though transformed by terror. "They told me you would come! You are my enemy--you are here to kill me!"

"To kill you, Miss Tennison!" I gasped. "No, I am certainly not your enemy. I am your friend!"

She looked very hard at me, and I noticed that her lips twitched slightly.

"You--you are Mr. Garfield--Hugh Garfield?" she asked, her hands quivering nervously.

"Yes. That is my name," I replied. "How do you know it?"

"They--they told me. They told me in Florence. The doctor pointed you out. He told me that you were my worst enemy--that you intend to kill me!"

"Doctor Moroni told you that?" I inquired kindly.

"Yes. One day you were in the Via Tornabuoni and he made me take note of you. It was then that he told me you were a man of evil intentions, and warned me to be wary of you."

I paused. Here was yet another sinister action on the part of Moroni!

Besides, I was unaware that he had realized I had watched him!

"Ah! yes, I see," I replied, in an attempt to humour her, for she was very sweet and full of grace and beauty. "The doctor tried to set you against me. And yet, strangely enough, I am your friend. Why should he seek to do this?"

"How can I tell?" replied the girl in a strange blank voice. "But he evidently hates you. He told me that you were also his enemy, as well as mine. He said that it was his intention to take steps to prevent you from seeking mischief against both of us."