XXVII

He leapt to his feet.

“What?” he gasped.

“I killed Jesse Trasmere,” she repeated, “not directly, with my own hands, but I am responsible for his death, almost as assuredly as if I had shot him.” She caught his hand and held it. “How white you are! I was a brute to put it that way. In our profession we love these dramatic⁠—no I don’t mean that, Tab.”

“Will you tell me what you do mean?”

She signalled him to sit on the footrest of the chair.

“I’ll tell you something, but I don’t think I’ll tell you any more about the murder,” she said, “and this is the something which you ought to know, and which I intended you should know. I had not the slightest intention of saying what I did. The spirit of tragedy seems to haunt me,” she said, staring straight ahead, “I was cradled in that atmosphere of violence and wickedness. I once told you, Tab, that I had been in service as a tweeny maid and I think you were startled. I went there from a public orphan’s home, an institution where little children are taught to be born old. Tab⁠—my mother was murdered, my father was hanged for her murder!”

There was no pain in her eyes, just a little hardness. He took both her hands in his and held them.

“I don’t remember anything about it,” she went on, “my earliest recollections was the long dormitory where about forty little girls used to sleep, a very fat matron, and two iron-faced nurses, and the why and wherefore of my being at Parkingtons Institute only came to me late in life. One of the little girls had heard the matron tell the nurse, and I had to piece together the fact that I was an orphan by the act of my father and that after his trial and execution I had been sent to this home to be brought up and educated for the profession which all good little girls follow, and which had, as its supreme reward, an appointment as undercook. I was not so fortunate. I am afraid my cooking was rather vile, for when I came out of the Institute, it was to take a place as under-housemaid and general help in the kitchen of a great society leader, who spent thousands of pounds upon charity, but weighed the very bread that her servants ate. I had only been in this place for three months when Mr. Trasmere made his appearance. It was on a cold windy afternoon, I remember it as distinctly as though it were yesterday, when one of the parlourmaids came and said I was to go up into the drawing-room. I found Mr. Trasmere alone and I was rather frightened at the sight of him, for he did not speak, but sat with a little scowl on his face, taking me in from head to foot.

“I was between twelve and thirteen then, a sensitive child, to whom life, as it came to me, was a veritable hell. He asked me what my age was, and whether I was happy and I told him the truth. Apparently he had seen the authorities at the Institute, for I was allowed to go away with him, and he took me to a poor apartment house and placed me under the care of a woman who either owned or rented the house, and sublet the rooms furnished to the queerest lot of people I have ever seen congregated under one roof. Knowing him now much better, I am inclined to think that Mr. Trasmere owned the house himself and that the woman was his nominee. I did not see him again for nearly two months. I had a room to myself and he sent me school books to read and study and it was whilst I was here that I first met Yeh Ling, who, as I have told you, was a poor waiter at a Chinese restaurant.

“At the end of the two months, Mr. Trasmere came for me, and his coming was heralded by the arrival of a huge box of clothes, the like of which I had never seen, let alone worn. He left a message that I was to be dressed and ready to go with him, and that afternoon he called and took me down into the country, to a preparatory school which, after the Institute, was a heaven upon earth. On the way down, he told me he had heard about me from some friends of his, and he wanted to give me an education which would fit me to take the position which he had for me, and I was so overcome by his kindness that I cried all the way to our destination.

“The three years that I spent at St. Helen’s seem, even now, like a beautiful dream. I was happy, I made many friends, and my whole outlook on life changed. The year I left, Mr. Trasmere came down to our Commemoration and saw me acting in a play which the school dramatic society had produced, and from what he saw, was evolved this extraordinary arrangement. Knowing what I do, I know he was not wholly disinterested. It was his practice to take up projects and finance likely people. Once he told me that he had intended settling in this country and living the life of a gentleman⁠—to use his own words⁠—but that he was so unutterably bored, that to give himself an interest, he took up the most extraordinary of schemes.

“Do you know at one time he financed twelve tearooms and collected his share of the takings every day? Do you know that he was behind three doctors and took his profits from each? He was Yeh Ling’s backer, and in time he came to be mine. I was with him six months, acting as his secretary in a tiny office he hired for the purpose, and to which he never came until five o’clock in the afternoon.

“Then it was, that he suggested that I should go on to the stage and sent me away with a touring company. Of course, he was financially interested in it and it was my duty to send him a daily return showing the amount of money we took every night. On Saturdays I paid the salaries and expenses and remitted the remainder to him. When the tour was finished I came back to town to find that he had already made arrangements in his furtive, secretive way, to start a season with me as the principal attraction. My salary! You would laugh if I told you. It was hardly enough to keep body and soul together, only, as an excuse for his parsimony, he agreed that he would pay me one half of the profits over a certain amount.

“To my astonishment, as well as to his, I became not only a respectable success, but a great financial success. The profits on my seasons were enormous, they exceeded to an incredible extent the amount he had fixed. And, of course, he paid. Jesse Trasmere’s word was more than his bond. It was his oath.

“His code was the code of the Chinese business man. When you know what that means, Tab, you will realise how very punctilious he was in such matters. He made exactly the same arrangements with Yeh Ling. There was the curious bond which bound us together, Yeh Ling and I⁠—our shares were enormously in excess of his estimate. But he paid loyally. Between him and me there was never an agreement of any kind. In the case of Yeh Ling there was an agreement, as you know. But the most bizarre aspect of my success was that I was compelled to continue as his secretary. Every night when the theatre was closed, I motored to his house, dealt with his correspondence and answered his letters. Sometimes I was so weary after a heavy evening, that I could scarcely drag myself up the steps of Mayfield. But Jesse was inexorable. He never let up on any bargain he made, any more than he evaded the terms of any agreement which proved adverse to him.

“When I began to get talked about, he insisted upon my making a ‘show’ as he called it and brought a lot of jewels which he told me should be mine at his death. Whether he bought them⁠—they did not look new to me⁠—or whether he acquired them in one of those deals of his which nobody knew anything about, I am unable to say with certainty. They were beautiful⁠—but they were not mine until his death. Every night I dined with him at Yeh Ling’s, and he handed to me the jewel-case which he had taken from his bag, and every night I carried those jewels back to the house and gave them into his care.”

“Did the old man ever tell you how he came to seek you out?”

She nodded and a faint smile came and went.

“Jesse Trasmere was very frank. That was one of his charms. He told me he knew my deplorable history and he wanted somebody about whom he knew a few discreditable facts! He said that in almost those identical words: ‘You’ll have to go along as I want you,’ he said, ‘and the higher you get, and the more successful you become, the less you will want the news published that your father was a murderer.’ And yet, curiously enough, he never objected to my taking my own name, for Ardfern is my name, for professional purposes. I don’t suppose anybody at that dingy Institute associates me with the skinny little girl who used to scrub and peel and toil at uninteresting lessons from morning until night.”

“What was your father?” asked Tab with an effort, for he expected that any reference to her parents must still wound her.

To his surprise she answered readily.

“He was an actor,” she said, “and I think he was a clever actor until he took to drink. It was in drink that he murdered my mother. That much I learnt at the home⁠—I have not troubled to enquire since. What are you thinking about, Tab?”

His forehead was knit.

“I am trying to recall the execution of any person named Ardfern in the last twenty years, I know them all by name,” he said slowly. “Have you a telephone?”

She nodded.

In three minutes Tab was talking to the news editor of the Megaphone.

“Jacques,” he said, “I want some information. Do you remember any person named Ardfern being executed for murder in the last⁠—” he looked round at the girl⁠—“seventeen or eighteen years?”

“No,” was the instant reply. “There was a man named Ardfern against whom a coroner’s verdict of manslaughter was returned but he skipped the country.”

“What was his first name?” asked Tab eagerly.

“I am not sure that it was Francis or Robert. No, it was Willard⁠—Willard Ardfern. I remember there were two ’ards’ in it,” said the information bureau.

“In what town was this crime committed?”

Jacques answered without hesitation, giving the name of a small country town that Tab knew well.

He hung up the receiver and turned to the girl.

“What was your father’s name?” he asked.

“Willard,” she replied without hesitation.

“Phew!” whistled Tab, and wiped his streaming forehead. “Your father was not hanged.”

He saw her go red and white.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Perfectly sure. Old Jacques never makes a mistake. Besides which, he had the name pat when I asked him. Willard Ardfern. He was indicted for manslaughter. I fear that your unhappy mother died of his violence but Willard Ardfern himself left the country and was never arrested or tried.”

His arm went round her in support, she had gone suddenly white and ill-looking.

“Thank God,” she whispered. “That seemed⁠—worse⁠—than killing my poor mother. Oh Tab, it has been such a nightmare to me! Such a dreadful, dreadful weight. You can’t know how I felt about it.”

“Was it that?⁠—” he hesitated, “something I had said that made you feel bad when we talked of Mr. Trasmere’s will?”

She looked at him steadily but did not give an answer.

“I used to hate this nightly borrowing of jewels,” she went back to her relations with Jesse Trasmere. “I had enough money to buy my own, though I have no particular leaning toward jewelry, but old Trasmere would not hear of it. Any movement towards my independence he checked ruthlessly,” she stopped suddenly and her mouth made a little “O” of surprise. “I wonder if he heard⁠—in China?” she asked. “Yes, that is it! He must have met my father. That is how he came to know about me! I am sure Yeh Ling knows, because Mr. Trasmere had a habit of making elaborate notes⁠—I wonder,” she said speaking to herself. Impulsively she threw out her hands and caught his. “Tab, the night you came into my dressing-room I felt instinctively that you were a factor in my life. I could never have dreamt how big a part you were going to be.”

For once in his life Tab could not think of an appropriate rejoinder.