V

“Look at lucky Olive Larnoch. A month ago she didn’t know where to turn for sixpence!”

Ivy Lexton, and one of her young married women friends, Janet Horley, were lunching together at the Embassy Club.

Every place in the great room was occupied. At the next table an American diplomat was being lunched by one of the younger Ministers of the Crown; and close by a popular actor-manager was entertaining a pretty young duchess. Two sisters, who had just leapt into musical comedy fame, were laughing at the top of their voices, while being gaily chaffed by their host, an elderly peer who had entertained two generations of charming women by the daring quality of his wit.

Olive Larnoch? Ivy gazed eagerly across at a couple sitting at right angles from where she sat herself.

“Look at her string of pearls studded with huge diamonds! They’re all real!” went on Mrs. Horley excitedly. “As for the emerald Jock Larnoch gave her the day they became engaged, it’s worth five thousand pounds⁠—”

“I’m sure I’ve seen her before,” exclaimed Ivy.

“Of course you must have often seen her, in the old days, when she was Olive Ryde, a war widow without a bob⁠—”

“⁠—and a stocking-shop in North Bolton Street?”

“You’ve got it in one! And her stockings always laddered, too. Well, one evening, she met a Scotch man of business here at the Embassy, named Jock Larnoch. He’d never been in a nightclub before, so I suppose it went to his head! I happen to know the people who brought him here, and the funny thing is that they hadn’t an idea he was made of money. They just thought him comfortably off. Yet his first love-gift to Olive was a Baby Rolls⁠—she didn’t know what to do with it, poor dear!”

Ivy gazed with absorbed interest at the fortunate bride of the Scotch millionaire. How marvellous it must be to have everything one wants, including an adoring husband! She sighed a quick, bitter little secret sigh. The sight of this fortunate young woman had brought back to her poignant memories and a sudden realisation of what her life might be now, had she been, a few weeks ago, what Miles Rushworth called “free.”

“Is that nice-looking man her spouse?”

“Heavens, no! That’s Bob Crickle, who wrote the book of T’wee-t’we. Jock Larnoch spends every other week ‘at the works’; there never was such a lucky girl as Olive!”

Again, with a sensation almost of despair, Ivy thought of Rushworth, and of all that he might have meant in her life by now if he hadn’t been so⁠—so old-fashioned and queer in his ideas.

The Lextons had been settled down in London for nearly two months, and Jervis was going to Rushworth’s City office each morning. As for Ivy, she was once more a popular member of the happy-go-lucky, while for the most part financially solid, set with whom she had danced, played bridge, lunched, and supped through life, in the days when she and her husband were still living on what remained of Jervis’s fortune.

But woman does not live by amusement alone. Ivy loved being loved, so she had “made it up” with Roger Gretorex.

Rushworth was far away, and though he wrote to her by every mail, his letters, as she sometimes pettishly told herself, might have been read aloud at Charing Cross. So it was that, though she had really done with Gretorex, she still went, now and again, to Ferry Place, but far less often than in the days when she had been utterly down on her luck, and at odds with Fate.

And yet, though the Lextons’ troubles seemed over, black care was again beginning to dog Ivy’s light footsteps, for she was once more what she called, to herself, very hard up.

True, the couple were now living in what appeared to Ivy’s husband extreme comfort, and even luxury. Not only was their flat one of the best in the fine block called the Duke of Kent Mansion, charmingly furnished; but an excellent cook, and a good day-maid had been left there by Miles Rushworth’s cousins. So what might have been called the Lextons’ home-life ran as if on wheels.

From the moment, however, that Ivy had come back to London, secure in the knowledge that her husband was now earning a thousand pounds a year, paid monthly, she had again fallen into the way of buying, or, better still, of ordering on account, any pretty costly trifle, any becoming frock or hat, that took her fancy. She also, in a way that seemed modest to herself, had at once begun to entertain.

It was such fun to give lively little luncheon parties to her women friends⁠—lunch being followed as often as not by bridge! One, sometimes even two, bridge tables would be set out in the attractive drawing-room and, in due course, a bountiful tea would be served by the smiling day-maid, for those of Ivy’s guests who were not afraid of getting fat.

The good-natured old cook had not been used to so much work, and she had very soon declared, not unreasonably, that she must have extra help in the kitchen.

Lexton, who was rather pathetically anxious “to make good,” always went down to the City each morning by the Underground. But he came back by omnibus, and he invariably dropped in at his club on his way home, and, as he was an openhearted fellow, he often asked one of his new business acquaintances to drop in too. That, also, meant entertaining, but on a far more modest scale than that in which Ivy indulged.

Though Mrs. Jervis Lexton had learnt long ago the fine art of living on credit, there are a great many things which even in London a prosperous young couple with a good address cannot obtain, as it were, for nothing. Each week many pounds slipped through pretty, popular Ivy’s fingers, and she honestly could not have told you how or why. So it was inevitable that she should again begin to feel short of money⁠—short, even, of petty cash.

Often she told herself that it was maddening to feel that if Rushworth were in England she could almost certainly have had all the money she needed, and that without too great a sacrifice of her pride, or, what was far more important, his good opinion of her. Just before leaving for South Africa he had given her a hundred pounds as “a birthday gift.” How good he was, how generous! Her heart thrilled with real gratitude when she thought of Miles Rushworth.

Late in the same day that his wife had lunched at the Embassy Club, Lexton, who was going out to what he called a stag party that evening, came back from the City to find an unpleasantly threatening letter, this time from a tailor to whom he had owed for years a huge bill, and who had evidently just heard of his newfound prosperity.

For once Ivy’s husband looked ruffled and cross, and she, also for once, felt very angry indeed. Jervis had begun, so she told herself with rage, to put on airs, just because he had a job⁠—a job that she was too clever and tactful ever to remind him was entirely owing to her friendship with his employer.

At last he left the flat and, with a feeling of relief, she went off, too, by omnibus, to the tiny house where Roger Gretorex lived and practised his profession. It was in what might have been called a slum, though each of the mid-Victorian, two-storied, cottage-like dwellings were now inhabited by decent working people and their families.

Ivy had not been to No. 6 Ferry Place for nearly a fortnight, and her lover had written her a long, reproachful letter, imploring her to come and see him there, if for only a few moments. It made him feel so wretched, so he wrote, never to see her now, except in the company of people and in surroundings which filled him with contemptuous dislike, or, in a sense worse still, only in the presence of her husband.

When everything was going well with Ivy Lexton, she felt bored, often even irritated, with Roger Gretorex and his great love for her. But the moment she was under the weather and worried, as she was again beginning to be, then she found it a comfort to be with a man who not only worshipped her, but who never wanted her to make any effort to amuse or flatter him, as did all the other men with whom she was now once more thrown in contact.

So it was that this late afternoon, immediately after Jervis had left the flat, she telephoned and told the enraptured Gretorex that as she happened to have this evening free, she would come and have dinner with him at Ferry Place.

And yet, as she sat in the almost empty omnibus on her way to Westminster, her heart and her imagination were full of Miles Rushworth, and not once did she even throw a fleeting thought to the man she was going to see. Gretorex had become to Ivy Lexton what she had once heard a friend of hers funnily describe as a kind of “Stepney” to her husband. Sometimes she felt that she really preferred Jervis to Roger. Jervis was so kindly, easygoing, unexacting.

Still tonight she felt cross with Jervis, because of the scrap they had had over the tailor’s bill, so the thought of secret revenge was sweet.

But the image securely throned in her inmost heart was that of Miles Rushworth.

The knowledge that Rushworth, a man possessed of great, to her imagination limitless, wealth, was loving her, longing for her, and yet, owing to his oversensitive, absurdly scrupulous, conscience, hopelessly out of her reach, awoke in Ivy Lexton a feeling of fierce, passionate exasperation.

At last she stepped lightly out of the omnibus, the conductor, and an old gentleman who had been her only fellow-passenger, eagerly assisting her. She smiled at them both. Even the most trifling tribute to her beauty always gave her a touch of genuine pleasure. She was looking very pretty tonight in a charming frock, and in her hand she held the curious little bolster bag which Rushworth had bought for her at Dieppe.

Eight o’clock boomed from Big Ben, and Roger Gretorex, his arm round Ivy’s shoulder, led her into the tiny dining-room, where had been prepared in haste an attractive little meal. She had been what the man who loved her with so devoted and absorbing a passion, called “kind,” and he felt happy and at peace.

After they had finished dinner they sat on at table for a while, and, as she looked across at him, Ivy told herself that her lover was indeed a splendid-looking man⁠—a man many a woman would envy her.

“Sometimes,” he said in a low voice, “I dream such a wonderful dream, my dearest. I dreamt it last night⁠—”

She looked at him roguishly. “Tell me your dream!”

“I dreamt that you were free, and that we were married, you and I⁠—”

She made no answer to that remark, only shook her head, a little pettishly. For one thing, she always felt a trifle cross, as well as bored, when Gretorex talked in what she called to herself a sloppy, sentimental way. Could he seriously suppose that, if she had the good fortune to be what he called “free,” she would marry a poverty-stricken doctor who was forced to live and work in a slum? He evidently did suppose that; and the fact that he did so made her feel uncomfortable.

“I don’t set out to be particularly good, Roger, but I do think it awfully wrong to talk like that!”

He said slowly, “I agree, it is.”

“It makes me feel I oughtn’t to come and see you like this, in your own house. Jervis would be very much put out if he knew I ever came here.”

Gretorex, wincing inwardly, made no answer to that observation. Sometimes this woman, who was all his life, would say something that made him experience a violent feeling of recoil.

She had got up as she spoke, and with a sensation of relief she put on her hat. It was still early, and she had suddenly remembered an amusing bachelor girl named Judy Swinston, who lived not far from here, in Queen Anne’s Mansions. Judy had said that she was always at home after dinner on Thursdays, so why shouldn’t she, Ivy, go along there now? She could telephone from a call office to find out if it was really true that the Bohemian crowd who formed Judy Swinston’s circle didn’t bother to dress.

In some ways Ivy Lexton was very conventional. She would have disliked making part of any gathering which could be called a party, in her present day-frock and walking shoes, charming as were both the frock and the shoes. It was a perfect St. Martin’s summer evening, more like June than the first of November.

“You’re not going yet?” asked Gretorex, in a tone almost of anguish.

“Jervis said he’d try and be back by half-past ten, so I knew I’d have to be home early.”

“I see. All right. You won’t mind my walking with you a little way?”

And then she turned and faced him, angry at his obtuseness. How utterly selfish men were!

“I should mind⁠—mind very much indeed! Whenever we’ve left the place together, I’ve always felt uncomfortable. Taxis go all sorts of ways nowadays⁠—just to make their fares bigger, I suppose. The other day a taxi brought Jervis and me down close here, past the end of this street, though it was quite out of our way. I should hate it, if he met us walking together at this time of night. He would think it so queer.”

Again he said sorely, “I see. All right.”

Suddenly there came the sound of raucous cries echoing down Ferry Place.

“… Verdict in the Branksome Case.⁠ ⁠… All the winners!”

“I thought they weren’t allowed to cry papers now?” said Ivy, as the shouts drew nearer and nearer.

“They cry them down here. As for the Branksome Case, to my mind the verdict is a foregone conclusion. The man will hang, and they’ll let the woman off⁠—though she ought to hang too!”

“A lot of people were talking about the Branksome mystery where I was lunching today,” exclaimed Ivy. “I knew nothing about it, so I felt rather a fool. The truth is, I’m not a bit interested in murders, Roger. I think it’s morbid to want to know about such things.”

“Do you, darling? Then I’m afraid I’m morbid. This Branksome Case is of peculiar interest to every medical man, owing to the simple fact that there is a great deal of secret poisoning going on nowadays.”

“What a horrid idea!” And Ivy Lexton did indeed think it very horrid.

“Horrid, no doubt. But I’m afraid unquestionably true. In fact I heard the question put only the other day, as to what a doctor ought to do if he suspects anything of the sort is going on?”

She looked at him with a certain curiosity. “What would you do, Roger?”

“I’ve never been able to make up my mind. Of course, this Branksome story was complicated by the fact that two were in it⁠—a husband and a wife. They’d got everything they could out of the woman’s lover, so they made up their minds to do away with him. They were awfully clever, and it’s a marvel they were ever found out.”

“How did they do it?” she asked, eager at last.

“With arsenic⁠—fly papers.”

“Fly papers?”

He laughed. “Wonderful what people will do sometimes, isn’t it? Steeping fly papers in water has long been a common way of ridding oneself of a tiresome husband. There’s arsenic in almost everything we use⁠—at least, that’s what’s said.”

“Arsenic?” Ivy pronounced the word very carefully. It was a new word in her limited vocabulary.

He smiled across at her. Every moment of her presence was precious to him, so he talked on, eager too. “There’s plenty of the stuff in my surgery, at any rate. It’s a splendid tonic, as well as a poison.”

“What a funny thing!” and she smiled at him, apparently rather amused at the notion.

Looking back, for even Ivy Lexton looked back now and again to certain crucial moments of her life, she realised it must have been at that very moment that a certain as yet vague and formless plan slipped into her mind.

“As a matter of fact,” Gretorex smiled back at her, “I’ve got to make up and send off this very evening a mixture which will contain arsenic⁠—”

“I must be off now,” Ivy said, a thought regretfully.

They walked down the short passage, and through the two doors which separated the house from the surgery. Once there he turned up the light. Anything⁠—anything to keep her a few moments longer in his company!

He went quickly across from the door to the left corner of the bare, low-ceilinged room, now his surgery, which had once been an outhouse. There he unlocked the cupboard where he kept his dangerous drugs, and lifted down a jar on which was printed on a red label the word “Arsenic.” Placing it on a deal table above which was a hanging bookcase, he exclaimed, “If you would like to see, darling, what⁠—”

And then there came a thunderous knock at the front door of the tiny house.

“Wait one moment! Don’t go yet, dearest,” he said hastily. “I won’t be a minute!”

He rushed away, though even in his haste he did not forget to shut both the doors which separated the surgery from the rest of the house.

Ivy Lexton gave a quick look round the sordid-looking stone-flagged walled space, through which her eager little feet had so often carried her last winter, at a time when she had been in love, really in love, with Roger Gretorex.

She noted that there was no blind to the little square window. But, even in the unlikely event of anyone looking in through that window, no one standing outside could see, while she stood by the table, what she was doing, or was about to do.

Standing very still, she listened. From the consulting-room at the other end of the passage there came the sound of voices, raised in argument.

Hesitatingly she took up the jar Gretorex had placed on the table. Then she looked at it with avid curiosity. How strange and exciting to know that Death was in that jar⁠—prisoned, but ready to escape and become the servant of any quick-witted, determined human being.

When, at last, she put the jar down again, she noticed what she had not seen till now, that a glass spoon lay on the table.

Once more she looked round the bare surgery. Once more she listened intently, only to hear again Gretorex’s voice, far away, raised in argument.

All at once and in feverish haste she began unscrewing the top of the jar. Once this was achieved, she pressed the jewelled top of her bolster bag, and as it sprang open, she took her powder puff out of its pochette. Then, taking the glass spoon off the table, with its help she began shaking into the little white leather-lined pocket a quantity of the powder which she knew to be a deadly poison.

After snapping-to the bag, she replaced its cap on the jar labelled “Arsenic” and screwed it tight. Then she stepped back from the table a little way, and stood quite still, thinking of what she had just done.

Why had she done that⁠—to herself she called it “funny” thing? Deep in her heart she knew quite well the answer to her own wordless question. But she did not admit her purpose, even to herself.

All at once she heard sounds just behind her⁠—the sounds made by slippered, shuffling feet.

Filled with a sudden shock of sick terror, she turned slowly round to see Roger Gretorex’s old charwoman, Mrs. Huntley, standing uncertainly in the middle of the room.

The woman had evidently let herself in from the back alley with a latchkey. But how long had she been here? And how much had she seen?

“Why, Mrs. Huntley,” said Ivy in a shaken voice. “You did startle me!”

“Did I, ma’am? I beg your pardon, I’m sure. I just come in to see if the doctor wanted anything,” the old woman spoke in a pleasant, refined voice.

“He’ll be here in a minute⁠—”

“I won’t disturb him now, ma’am. I’ll come in later.”

Opening the door through which she had entered, she slipped through it into the gathering darkness. Then she shut the door noiselessly behind her.

Ivy moved again close to the deal table. She felt violently disturbed, even terrified. Yet the old woman had looked absolutely placid, though a little taken aback at finding a lady where she had expected to see nobody, excepting maybe her employer, and him only if he were engaged in making up medicines.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, Ivy Lexton glanced up at the row of books in the shabby little bookcase above the table by which she was standing, and she saw that among them was one entitled, “Poisons.”

She was just about to take it down when she heard quick footsteps in the short passage, and Gretorex opened the surgery door.

“I won’t be more than a few moments now! You will stay, my dearest, won’t you, till I’ve done with this chap?”

“Of course I will. Don’t hurry,” she answered, in a soft, kindly tone.

She took down the book and hurriedly she turned to the index.

Yes! Here was the word she sought. There were a number of references⁠—half a dozen at least⁠—and she turned up, “Effects of Arsenic; page 154.”

A famous case of secret poisoning was quoted, with every detail set out, and she read it with intense, absorbed interest. It told her what she had so much wanted to know, and feared to ask Roger Gretorex, how a secret poisoner went to work, and also how long the process took before⁠—before⁠—even to herself she did not end the question.⁠ ⁠…

As she put the volume back on the bookshelf her mind travelled into the future⁠—the now possible, now probable, future.

Standing there, in Gretorex’s barely furnished surgery, she saw herself the cherished wife of Miles Rushworth, and not only rich beyond the dreams of even her desire, but also secure from every conceivable earthly ill.

Had Ivy Lexton belonged to another generation, she would doubtless have called what had just happened to herself “providential.” As it was, she just thought it a piece of astounding, almost incredible, good luck.

She next took down from the shelf a thin little book dealing with infantile paralysis. But she had only just time to open it, and to glance, with a feeling of shrinking distaste, at one of the illustrations, when Gretorex burst into the surgery. “The poor chap’s gone at last! What are you reading, darling?”

“A book about children, dear.”

There came a pathetic look into her eyes, and Gretorex gently took the thin volume from her hand. Then he kissed that lovely, soft little hand.

She had told him, very early in their acquaintance, that her husband hated the idea of children, as if they had a child it would surely interfere with the kind of idle, gay life that he, Jervis, loved. For the hundredth time Gretorex cursed Lexton for a heartless brute.

She allowed him to take her in his arms. For a few moments they clung together, and she kissed him with real passion, responding as she had not responded for what seemed to Gretorex an eternity of frustrate longing.

Ivy had been frightened, very much frightened, just now. It was surprisingly comfortable and reassuring to feel his strong arms round her, to know that he loved her⁠—loved her.

“Did you buy an evening paper?” she asked at last, disengaging herself from his close embrace.

“No, but the chap who came to see me had one in his hand, and I believe he left it behind. Would you like me to give it you to read in the omnibus?”

“It would hurt my eyes to do that. I was only wondering what had happened about that Branksome Case?”

“I can tell you that without looking at the paper, darling. In fact I did tell you⁠—but you’ve forgotten, my pet.”

“What was it that you told me?”

“That they’ll hang the man, and let the woman off!”

He spoke quite confidently. “There’s not a doubt but that she really planned the whole thing out. But he, poor wretch, bought the fly papers. Most of the secret poisoning that goes on is done by women.”

“How dreadful!”

“A great many dreadful things go on in this strange world, my darling love.”

“You mean things that are not found out?”

He nodded, almost gaily. He was glad, so glad, to find a subject that interested her, and that might make her stay a few moments longer.

So, “I’m afraid that only one secret poisoner is found out for six that go scot free,” he went on. “Even now it’s difficult to tell the difference between the effect produced by, say, arsenic, and a very ordinary ailment. A postmortem only takes place if there’s already reason to suspect foul play.”

“Postmortem?”

The word meant nothing to Ivy Lexton.

“In the vast majority of cases the danger is negligible,” he continued. “The secret poisoner, especially if a woman, is never even suspected, and if she is⁠—”

“If she is?” echoed Ivy uncertainly.

“The doctor, nine times out of ten, gives her the benefit of the doubt!”

He ended his careless sentence with a laugh. It was of her, of her dear nearness, of her kind, soft, loving manner, that he was thinking, and not at all of what he was saying.

“Would you let her off, Roger?”

He grew suddenly grave. “Well, no, I don’t think I would. You see it wouldn’t be right. For one thing, she might try the same game over again.”

She looked at him coldly. Few men were as set on doing right as was apparently this man.

Then she smiled, a curiously subtle, sweet little smile. She knew, if no one else did, the weak place in his defences. It was pleasant to know that no other woman would ever have that knowledge. Ivy believed, rightly or wrongly, that a man does not love twice as this man, Gretorex, loved her.

“Well, I must go now,” she said at last. And then, for she saw the sudden darkening of his face, “You may as well come with me as far as the corner of Great Smith Street, Roger. It’s quite dark now.”

Once more she allowed him to kiss her. Once more there came from her the response which had now for so long been lacking, and of which the lack made him feel so desolate.

As they walked along the now shrouded, deserted little back streets of old Westminster, Ivy Lexton was very gentle in her manner to the man who loved her with so wholehearted and selfless a devotion.

She had quite decided that soon they must part, never to meet again. And yet, though Gretorex would never know it, it was to him, albeit indirectly, that she would owe her splendid freedom, and all that freedom was to bring to her. It was that knowledge, maybe, that made her manner so gentle and so kind.

When at last Jervis Lexton came in, he found his wife playing patience in the pretty sitting-room where she spent so little of her time.

He felt a little surprised, for unless she happened to be out, as was the case six nights out of seven, Ivy always went to bed early.

“Thank God, I’m safe home again!” he exclaimed. “It was the most awful show. The grub wasn’t bad, but the champagne was like syrup. I’ve ‘some thirst,’ I can tell you!”

“Wait a minute, and”⁠—she smiled a gay little smile⁠—“I’ll mix you a highball, old boy. Would you like a Bizzy Izzy, just as a treat?”

“The answer, ma’am, is ‘yes’!”

She went off into the dining-room, and took from the fine old mahogany brassbound wine-cooler a bottle of rye whisky and a bottle of sherry. Then, carefully, she poured a small wineglass of each into a tall glass.

With the glass in her hand she hurried down the passage, and so into the bright, clean, empty kitchen. There she soon found some ice, and, after having chipped off a number of small pieces, she waited a moment and listened intently, for she did not want to be surprised in what she was about to do.

But the old cook was lying sound asleep in the bedroom which lay beyond the kitchen. Ivy could even hear her long, drawn-out snores.

Opening a cupboard door very, very quietly, she found a syphon, and filled up the glass almost to the top with soda-water. Then, quickly, she mixed in with a clean wooden spoon a good pinch of the powder she had secreted in the pochette of her bag.

“A perfect Bizzy Izzy!” Ivy called out gaily as she swiftly went down the corridor, holding in her steady hand the tall glass, now full almost to the brim.

Through the hall and back into the sitting-room she hurried, and then she watched, with an odd sensation of excitement, her husband toss off the delicious iced drink.

“This soda fizz has got a bitter tang to it,” he exclaimed, “but it’s none the worse for that!”

Ivy stayed awake for a long time that night. She had suddenly begun to feel afraid, she hardly knew of what. But at last she dropped off to sleep.

At nine o’clock the next morning she awoke. What was it that had happened last night? Then she remembered.

Leaping out of bed she rushed across the dressing-table, on which there lay the mother-of-pearl bolster bag she had had out with her last night. Opening it she took out her handkerchief, her powder puff, and her purse. Then she put the bag, now quite empty save for the white powder the tiny white leather-lined inner recess contained, into an old despatch-box which had belonged to her father.

It was the only “lock up” Ivy Lexton possessed; at no time of her life had she been so foolish as to keep dangerous love-letters more than a very short time. She put the despatch-box in what was the empty half of a huge Victorian inlaid wardrobe. Then she got into bed again, and rang the bell.

A moment later the day-maid opened the bedroom door.

“Mr. Lexton was ill in the night, ma’am. He thinks he ate something last evening that didn’t agree with him. He asked me to tell you that he’s not going to the office this morning.”