XI

Clive did not need to wait for Juliet’s reply to his letter in order to obtain Captain Culvers’s address. On the day of his arrival in Paris there was delivered to him a letter from his father, which made him feel that he had done well to break his journey there.

“Since I said goodbye to you last week,” Mr. Redway wrote, “a strange circumstance has occurred. A lawyer⁠—Phillips by name⁠—with whom I have been casually brought into contact, told me, in the course of conversation, of a curious letter that he said he had received from a member of a family in which he knew that I and my son were interested.

“This letter, which he subsequently showed me, was dated from 15, Rue Vervien, Paris, and was signed Sefton Culvers. In roundabout fashion the writer asked for advice for a friend, who he said wished to borrow a few thousand pounds on a clause in his wife’s marriage settlement, which provided that, if she died childless, her whole fortune over one hundred thousand pounds⁠—would revert to him. There were no children, Captain Culvers went on to say, nor any likelihood of any, as the husband and wife had quarrelled and separated, and he had now every reason to suppose that reconciliation between them would be impossible.

“Captain Culvers further stated that his friend’s need for money was immediate and pressing. He was willing to pay a high percentage for even a small loan so long as it could be had at once, and without the trouble of legal formalities that might necessitate negotiation or correspondence with his wife’s family.

“Now it doesn’t require a wiseacre to come to the conclusion that the friend, for whom Captain Culvers made these enquiries, was the best of all his friends⁠—himself; and that the letter would never have been addressed to Phillips if Culvers had known that I was likely to have dealings with him.

“But the most important part of the whole letter, to my way of thinking, is the phrase, ‘the husband and wife have quarrelled, separated, and there is now every reason to suppose that reconciliation between them would be impossible.’

“Of course, the most charitable supposition would be that Captain Culvers made use of these expressions wholly and solely for the purpose of facilitating and expediting the loan of which he is so much in need, that there may not be a grain of truth in them, and that he may be as much in the dark as to his wife’s movements as we are.

“On the other hand, there is the possibility that in speaking thus, he was speaking of matters within his knowledge. Juliet has, you say, spoken of serious quarrels that took place during the engagement. Some such a quarrel may have occurred on the day before the wedding⁠—which, to save an open scandal, was allowed to go on⁠—it may even have been continued during the drive from the house to the graveyard, and Captain Culvers may thus have been in some sort prepared for his wife’s disappearance. Subsequently she may have written to him, and his words, ‘there is now every reason to suppose that reconciliation between them would be impossible,’ may point to the fact that he will not consent to certain conditions his wife wishes to impose upon him, or that she refuses consent to terms proposed by her husband.

“I confess that from the first my suspicions have pointed in this direction rather than towards Juliet, who I think has been somewhat unjustly suspected on the matter. If you remember, she hinted to you that it would be as well to keep an eye on Captain Culvers, who probably knew more than anyone imagined of her sister’s movements. His letter to Phillips, to my way of thinking, gives colour to the idea, and allows us to conjecture that, negotiations with his wife having come to nothing, he has tried to raise money on her property without her knowledge. If I were in Lord Culvers’s place I would let every other theory go and concentrate attention in this quarter. It would not in the least surprise me to learn that Ida, as well as her husband, is in Paris. My own belief is that she is safe and well wherever she may be, and is only deterred from communicating with her own people by the fear that they may compel her to make terms with her husband, and to live with him as his wife.”

To this letter was added a postscript, which ran thus:

“By the way, I am told on good authority, that the house where Captain Culvers has taken up his abode No. 15, Rue Vervien⁠—does not bear a very good reputation. It is kept by a Russian⁠—Ivanoff by name⁠—and is the resort of all sorts of shady people, British and foreign⁠—gamblers, sporting and betting-men, in fact of adventurers of every class.”

Before Clive had time to shape his thoughts to a clear judgement on this letter, Juliet’s telegram, despatched immediately after Lord Culvers’s departure, was brought to him, and then, hey presto! the father’s letter was read upside down, and a clear judgement on that or any other matter for the time became an impossibility to him.

Juliet’s telegram ran briefly thus:

“The brooch has been found in Paris. Father crosses tonight. Pray meet him at the station tomorrow morning.”

The news, coming on the heels of his father’s letter, for the moment startled and bewildered him. The telegram, read side by side with Mr. Radway’s conjectures, called forth speculations as to probabilities as wild as they were vague.

The finding of the brooch in Paris no doubt confirmed Mr. Redway’s surmise that Ida had been in Paris, and in communication with her husband; but to Clive’s way of thinking did not give the slightest support to his conjecture that, “wherever she might be she was safe and well.” On the contrary, to his mind it seemed to point to a directly opposite conclusion, that is to say, if the brooch had been found, as he surmised, in a stranger’s hands.

And his brain, once set going in this direction and stimulated by his hatred of his successful rival, soon refused to be trammelled by the probable, but ran riot among the wildest possibilities.

His father had stated the case far too leniently for such a scoundrel as Culvers, who, no doubt, throughout had been acting on a settled plan. Ida’s fortune⁠—over one hundred thousand pounds⁠—had from the very first been always before this man’s mind, and he had set his wits to work to get it entirely into his own hands. He was beset by creditors. He knew that a girl of Ida’s high spirit could never, under any circumstances, be likely to enact the part of a patient Griselda and hand her property unreservedly to his keeping, and so he had done his best to render the clause in her marriage settlement, which provided that, if she died childless, her fortune should pass to him, “un fait accompli.” Ida had most likely been inveigled from her mother’s grave into some place where she would be surrounded by Captain Culvers’s creatures. The letter to her father had without doubt been written under compulsion, in order to throw her friends off the scent, and she had been kept to all intents and purposes a prisoner until means had been found to end her life without detection to the criminals. There were plenty of people who could be found to do such things, and plenty of places where they could be done both in London and Paris. Why, No. 15, Rue Vervien, might even have been selected for the purpose.

Of course, at present he knew nothing as to the where and how the diamond brooch had been found; but he had not the slightest doubt that when fuller information came to him it would confirm his terrible suspicions. Great heavens! And they had been all sitting still with folded hands while such a piece of iniquity was being perpetrated!

And when Clive had got so far in his thinking, his brain seemed to reel, and he felt as if all power of reasoning had left him.

Inaction seemed impossible. An hour of black temptation came to him.

The wild beast instinct to tear, to kill the thing he hated, grew strong in him. Now why should he not that very minute take a pistol in his hand, go straight to 15, Rue Vervien, and put a bullet through the brain of the man who, according to all acknowledged principles of right and wrong, was fit for the hangman’s hands?

His mood of fury did not soon spend itself. While it lasted, his revenge, or, as he phrased it, “the act of retributive justice,” seemed to him sweeter than anything else life could offer him; sweeter far than would be the discovery of Ida and her possible reconciliation to her husband.

If only the bitter suspense could be ended, and he could know that she was peacefully laid to rest in her grave, he felt that he could kneel down and thank Heaven for her deliverance from the keeping of such a man as Captain Culvers⁠—a gamester, an unprincipled roué, no doubt; a man, in fact, who had naught to recommend him but a handsome face and certain showy personal accomplishments.

Side by side with this image of Captain Culvers came a vision of Ida; not the marble-faced, self-repressed bride of three weeks back, but a girl who had quick blood coursing in her veins; eyes that lighted up with every passing thought; lips that knew how to speak those thoughts in a voice that vibrated to every changeful mood. Out of the shadowy past stepped this Ida, in the white fluttering robes in which he had first seen her at the country house of a friend. How well he remembered the day! It seemed but yesterday, although nearly a year had since slipped away. It was the close of a hot August day, the golden glamour of a setting sun was falling on greensward and terrace, a thousand birds were carolling their hymns to the dying day. A tall queenly figure, she had stood before him, with eyes looking straight into his own, lips parted and half-smiling, and pure pale brow that seemed to demand a crown of lilies as its right.

The wave of memory quenched the fury of his thoughts. Sefton Culvers even was forgotten in the bitter recollection of a cup of happiness held close to his lips and then forever denied to them.

He bowed his head upon his hands; hot, passionate tears forced themselves from his eyes.

“Oh, my darling, my darling!” he cried, brokenly, “why did I let you go! Why, why did I suffer myself to be fooled out of my happiness?”

And hand-in-hand with the bitter recollection of the easy manner in which he had allowed himself to be blinded to the real state of Ida’s feelings towards him, came the thought that perhaps, after all, the bullet intended for Captain Culvers’s brain might more fitly find its home in his own.