The Millionaire Mystery Page 18

The Captain entered the room with a somewhat cringing air. His nerve was gone, and with it a goodly portion of his courage. Miss Marlow, on the contrary, was quite mistress of herself and of the situation. She had heard from Joe Brill, amongst other things, that this man was not her father, and she now felt no fear of him. He was anxious and ill at ease, like a culprit before a judge.

  ‘Good evening, Captain Lestrange,’ said Sophy, sitting very erect in her chair. ‘You wish to see me, I believe. Why have you come?’

  ‘To make reparation, Miss Marlow.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said ironically, ‘then I am not your daughter?’

  ‘I expect you have heard as much from Joe Brill,’ replied Lestrange, looking at her gloomily. ‘No, you are not my daughter, but you are my cousin, Marie Lestrange, although you choose to keep your name of Sophia Marlow.’

  ‘I keep the name of the man who has been a father to me.’

  ‘In that case, you should call yourself Beauchamp,’ he retorted. ‘May I sit down? Thank you. Well, I suppose you are wondering why I have come to see you?’

  She glanced at the card.

  ‘To give me news of my father, I presume,’ she said. ‘Do you mean my real father?’

  ‘No, I mean the false one. Your real father died long ago. He was murdered by Beauchamp.’

  ‘He was not!’ cried Sophy vehemently, and started from her seat. ‘I have heard the story from Joe, and I know now why you came here. But nothing will induce me to believe that he killed my father. My mother fled to him from the cruelty of her husband, and you were at the bottom of all the trouble.’

  ‘Yes,’ he cried fiercely, ‘I was! I loved your mother dearly. She gave me up for Achille, and I swore I would be revenged. I sowed dissension between them. It was through me that Zelia fled with Beauchamp. Do you think I am sorry for what happened? I am not. I hated Achille; but he is dead. I hate Beauchamp, for your mother loved him—’

  ‘And he also is dead,’ interrupted Sophy; ‘you cannot harm him.’

  ‘Are you so sure he is dead?’ sneered Lestrange.

  ‘I saw his dead body!’ cried the girl, with emotion.

  ‘You saw him in a state of insensibility, brought about by Warrender’s devilish drugs!’ said the Captain sharply. ‘I don’t believe Beauchamp is dead. If he had been, why should his body have been carried off?’

  ‘You declared that Mr Thorold did that, and—’

  ‘I do not say so now. Thorold had nothing to do with it; but I am quite sure that Warrender had. In order to escape me, Beauchamp allowed himself to be drugged by Warrender, and that was why Warrender assisted at the removal of the supposed dead body. I feel certain that Beauchamp is alive.’

  ‘Alive! Oh! I hope so, I hope so! My dear father!’ cried Sophy. ‘Only prove that he is alive, Captain Lestrange, and I will forgive you all!’

  ‘You forget that I am his enemy,’ was the fierce reply. ‘Were I able to prove that he is alive, I should at once have him arrested for the murder of your father—my cousin.’

  ‘It is not true! it is not true!’

  ‘It is, and you know it. Beauchamp must have had some very good and strong reason for allowing himself to be buried alive so as to escape me. But for your sake and for my own I will leave Beauchamp, should he be indeed alive, to the punishment of his conscience.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that I want money. You are rich, and you can pay me. Give me a thousand pounds, and I will go away and never trouble you again.’

  ‘I refuse!’ She walked up and down the room in a state of great agitation. ‘If you were certain that Mr Beauchamp was alive—if you were certain he had committed that crime, you would not let him escape so easily.’

  ‘I would! I would! I am tired of the whole business.’

  ‘No, no,’ insisted the girl; ‘I don’t believe you. If I gave you money, I should only be supplying you with the means to cause further trouble. If my dear father—for I shall still call him so—is alive, I will leave the matter in his hands.’

  ‘And hang him.’

  ‘And save him,’ retorted the girl firmly. ‘You can go, Captain Lestrange. I shall not give you one penny!’

  Lestrange made a bound and caught her wrist.

  ‘Take care!’ he cried, shaking with rage; ‘I am desperate—I will stick at nothing. If you do not give the money I want, I shall go to the police!’

  ‘Go! go! I defy you!’

  ‘Little devil!’ muttered Lestrange, and he gave her arm a sharp twist.

  She screamed for help, and as though in answer to her summons, Alan appeared at the door. With an exclamation of rage he sprang forward, seized Lestrange, and flung him on the floor.

  ‘You hound!’ he cried, panting. ‘You dog!’

  ‘Alan! Alan! Thank Heaven you are here! Let me sit down, Alan; I—I feel faint.’

  While Alan was assisting the girl to a chair, Lestrange rose slowly from the ground. The sudden and opportune arrival of the young Squire disconcerted him greatly, and he began to think it was time to retire. If Sophy refused him money when alone, she would most certainly not yield to his demand now that her lover was beside her. So with deadly hatred in his heart, he stole towards the door, which was still open. On the threshold he recoiled with a shrill cry of fear. Before him stood Herbert Beauchamp, alias Richard Marlow.

  ‘You—you here, after all?’

  Beauchamp, shutting and locking the door after him, strode into the room.

  ‘Yes, I live to punish you, Jean Lestrange. Hold him, Alan, while I speak to Sophy.’

  The girl, with a pale face and staring eyes, was looking at the man who had come back from the grave. He approached and took her hands.

  ‘My poor child!’ he said in caressing tones, ‘do not look so alarmed! I am flesh and blood.’

  ‘You are alive, father?’ gasped Sophy, amazed and somewhat terrified.

  ‘Yes.’ He kissed her. ‘I feigned death to escape from this man. Come, Sophy, have you no welcome for me? It is true that I am not your father; but—after all—’

  ‘You are as dear to me as ever!’ she cried, putting her arms round his neck. ‘You are my true father—my real father! I shall never think of you as anything else. Oh, thank God—thank God!’ And she wept and kissed him by turns.

  ‘Amen!’ said Beauchamp in a solemn tone. ‘But we have much to do before things are put straight. There is the cause of all my trouble, and I must deal with him.’ He rose and crossed to where Lestrange, white and shaking, was in the grip of Thorold. ‘What have you to say for yourself, Lestrange?’

  The man made a violent effort to recover his self-control, and partially succeeded.

  ‘I have to say to you what I shall shortly say to the world: You are a murderer!’

  ‘That is a lie!’

  ‘It is no lie. You murdered that girl’s father!’

  ‘That is a lie!’ repeated Beauchamp sternly. ‘Do you think I am a Judas, to kiss that innocent girl if I knew myself to be her father’s murderer? I knocked your cousin Achille senseless, and well he deserved it; but it was not I who stabbed him to the heart. It was you, Jean Lestrange!’

  ‘I—I—’ gasped the wretch, his lips white, his limbs shaking under him. ‘You dare—to—to—accuse—me—of—’

  ‘I do not accuse you,’ said Beauchamp solemnly. ‘Out of the mouth of the dead you are condemned. Here is the confession of Warrender, and in it he tells the truth. You are the murderer of Achille!’

  Sophy uttered a cry of horror, and throwing herself back on the couch, hid her face from the guilty wretch. He strove to speak, but no words came, and he continued to look silently on the ground. But for the support of Thorold he would have fallen.

  ‘Warrender,’ continued Mr Beauchamp, ‘himself almost as great a villain as you, knew the truth these twenty years. But he kept silence in order to terrorize me, to extort money from me. It was he who proposed that I should escape you by feigning death, knowing, as he did, that I
was innocent. Well, he has been punished!’

  ‘I did not kill him, at all events!’ cried Lestrange savagely.

  ‘I know you did not; you were not in England at the time. But you killed Achille. Yes, you left the room where Zelia lay dead, you found Achille senseless on the veranda, and you stabbed him to the heart. Warrender saw you commit the crime. It is all set out here, and signed by Warrender, in the presence of two witnesses. Can you deny it?’

  Lestrange moistened his dry lips, looked at Sophy, at Beauchamp, then suddenly shook off Alan’s hold.

  ‘No, I don’t deny it,’ he said in a loud, harsh voice. ‘You have been one too many for me. I am so poor as to be almost starving, so I don’t care what becomes of me. Hang me if you like. I hate you, Beauchamp—I have always hated you, the more so when I found how much Zelia cared for you. And I loved her, though that was not the reason I killed her husband; for she was dead then, and could never be mine. But I killed him so that blame might rest on you. And I wanted the custody of the child, because I should have been able to handle the money. I found Achille senseless where you had knocked him down. I did not intend to do it; but I had a knife—and the devil put it into my head to stab him. Then you fled, and the murder was laid at your door.’

  ‘And had you not done me harm enough, wretched man, without hunting me down?’ said Beauchamp sternly.

  ‘I wanted money,’ he cried recklessly. ‘I saw your portrait in the paper, and I arranged with Barkham, who was as hard-up as I, that we should come to England and get some of your money. He played the traitor, and wrote you that letter—why, I don’t know, as he stood to make as much as I did. But for that letter I should have found you alive, and I should have forced you to pay me. As it turned out, you escaped me.’

  ‘And will you escape me, do you think?’ asked Beauchamp with emphasis.

  ‘I don’t know—I don’t care. Call in the police and have me arrested if you like. I have played a bold game, and lost—do your worst!’

  He folded his arms, and stared defiantly at the man whose life he had ruined.

  Beauchamp looked irresolutely at him, then he turned to Sophy, who, pale and quiet, was clinging to her lover’s arm.

  ‘The daughter of the man whose life you took shall be your judge,’ said the millionaire. ‘Sophy, is he to go free, or shall the law take its course?’

  ‘Let him go—let him go,’ murmured the girl. ‘His death shall not be upon my soul. Let him go and repent.’

  ‘I agree with Sophy,’ said Alan Thorold. ‘Let him go.’

  ‘And repent,’ finished Mr Beauchamp. ‘Go, Jean Lestrange, and seek from an offended God the mercy you denied to me.’

  Lestrange pulled himself together, and put on his hat with a would-be jaunty air. He tried to speak, but the words would not come, and he slunk out of the room like a beaten hound.

  And that was the last they ever saw of Jean Lestrange.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE OTHER PART OF THE TRUTH

  SHORTLY afterwards Mr Beauchamp returned to his lodgings as the Quiet Gentleman. Having been informed by Alan, on his way to the Moat House, that Lestrange was there with Sophy, he had taken off his false wig and beard to confound him; but now, in spite of the girl’s protestations, he put them on again.

  ‘No, child, no,’ he said; ‘I am as dead as Richard Marlow, and I shall not come to life again. What purpose would it serve? It would only cause a scandal, and the papers would be full of the story. I have no wish to be a nine days’ wonder.’

  ‘But, father, what will you do? Where will you live?’

  ‘Oh,’ said he, with a smile, ‘I dare say you will carry out the terms of the will and let me have that two thousand a year. I shall take my departure from Mrs Marry’s as the Quiet Gentleman, and appear in London as Herbert Beauchamp. You can join me there, and we can go on our travels.’

  ‘But what about me?’ cried poor Sophy, who had found her adopted father only to lose him again.

  ‘You shall marry Alan.’

  ‘But I want you to be at the wedding, father.’

  ‘I shall be at the wedding, child, and I shall give you away.’

  Alan looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Then you will be recognized, and the whole story will come out.’

  ‘So it would if you were married here,’ answered Beauchamp composedly. ‘But the wedding must take place in London. Can’t you see, Alan, that Sophy must be married to you under her true name—Marie Lestrange?’

  ‘Oh, must I?’ cried the girl in dismay.

  ‘I think so; otherwise I doubt if the marriage would hold good.’

  ‘You are right,’ said Alan, after a pause. ‘We must do as you say. But I am sorry. I wanted to be married here, and I wanted Phelps to marry us.’

  ‘There is no reason against that. Bring him to London and tell him the whole story.’

  ‘But I will never be called Marie!’

  ‘No, no; you will always be Sophy to us,’ said her lover, kissing her. ‘And we will go abroad with Mr Beauchamp for our honeymoon.’

  ‘With my father!’ cried Sophy, embracing the old man; ‘my dear and only father!’

  He sighed as he kissed her good-bye. He was devoted to his adopted daughter, and felt deeply parting with her even to so good a fellow as Alan Thorold. But he comforted himself with the thought that they could be much together abroad. And so, taking this cheerful view of the situation which had been created by the villainy of Lestrange, the ex-millionaire, as he may now be called, withdrew to his lodgings. It was there that Alan took leave of him, promising to call the next morning. A thankful heart was Herbert Beauchamp’s that night. The sorrow of his life was over, the dark clouds had lifted, and now, under his own name, and with a good income, he could spend the rest of his days in peace. Lestrange had slunk back into the night whence he had emerged, leaving one part of the mystery cleared up by his confession. It still remained to discover who had been the murderer of the unlucky Warrender. And that came to light the very next day.

  Alan did not wait until Beauchamp had departed for London to acquaint his revered tutor with all that had taken place. On the afternoon of the next day he proceeded to the Rectory, and told the whole story to the amazed and delighted Phelps. Nothing would serve but that he must go at once to Mrs Marry’s and see with his own eyes the man who had been buried alive. But Alan restrained the Rector’s impetuosity by pointing out that Mrs Marry supposed Brown, the Quiet Gentleman, to be dumb. If by any chance she should hear him speak all secrecy would be at an end.

  ‘Ay, ay,’ assented Mr Phelps, ‘true enough, Alan, true enough. Mrs Marry is a terrible gossip, and we must keep the matter quiet. I don’t want my churchyard to be made the subject of another scandal. But I must see Marlow—I mean Beauchamp. God bless me! I shall never get his name right—may I be forgiven for swearing! Bring him here, Alan—bring him at once. I must see my old friend after all he has suffered.’

  This Alan agreed to do, and an hour later appeared with Beauchamp and Sophy. Phelps received his old friend as one returned from the dead, and insisted upon having several points cleared up which he felt to be obscure.

  ‘How about getting away, Marlow?’ he asked. ‘You had no clothes. How did you manage?’

  ‘But I had clothes,’ replied Beauchamp. ‘We prepared all our plans very carefully. Joe took a suit of clothes to the hut, and brought money with him. Then I walked to the nearest town and caught the train for London. There, at a quiet hotel, a box in the name of Beauchamp was waiting for me. I slept there, and went on to Brighton, and took rooms in Lansdowne Place. I was comfortable, you may be sure. Joe came down to see me, and told me all the trouble which had ensued upon the death of Warrender.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Alan reflectively; ‘we don’t know who murdered him, and we never shall know. It could not have been Lestrange, and if it were the Quiet Gentleman, he has escaped us.’

  ‘I wonder who that Quiet Gentleman was,’ said Sophy.

&
nbsp; ‘We all wonder that, my dear,’ put in the Rector; ‘but I fear we shall never know.’

  ‘Well, what does it matter?’ said Beauchamp, with more asperity than he usually showed. ‘Whoever murdered Warrender gave him no more than he deserved. The man was a blackmailer, although the money he got out of me was obtained under the guise of friendship. He could have saved me years of agony had he only spoken the truth—ay, and honesty would have paid him better than dishonesty.’

  ‘No doubt. But the man is dead; let us not speak evil of the dead,’ said Phelps. ‘But there is one question I wish to ask you, Marlow—Beauchamp, I mean. How was it that the page-boy swore Joe Brill was never out of the room on that night?’

  ‘Joe drugged the lad’s supper-ale, and slipped out when he was fast asleep. He did the same the next night when he had to take Warrender’s body to the vault. That was my idea, for I was terrified lest I should be traced by the murder, and I wanted to get rid of the evidence of the crime. That tramp, confound him! spoilt it all.’

  They were interrupted by the entrance of a servant, with the card of Inspector Blair. He was admitted at once, leaving a companion whom he had brought with him in the hall.

  ‘You must excuse my intrusion, sir,’ he said, addressing Mr Phelps; ‘but I have already been to the Moat House and to the Abbey Farm in search of Mr Thorold.’

  ‘Here I am,’ said Alan. ‘What is the matter, Blair? You have some news?’

  ‘I have, sir. I have been to London, and I have brought back with me a gentleman whom Mr Beauchamp may know;’ and he summoned the gentleman in the hall.

  ‘Barkham!’ exclaimed Mr Beauchamp; ‘you here!’

  Mr Barkham was a dapper dark man, not unlike Lestrange, with an expression which a schoolboy would have called ‘sneaky’. He did not recognize Mr Beauchamp until that gentleman stripped off beard and wig. Then he hastened to acknowledge him.

  ‘Mr Beauchamp,’ he said, in a servile voice, ‘I hope, as I warned you of Lestrange’s plot, you will hold me blameless.’

  ‘Why? What have you been doing?’

  ‘I will tell you,’ interposed Blair. ‘This gentleman, as you see, bears a slight resemblance to Captain Jean Lestrange. He and the Captain were hard up in Jamaica, and seeing your portrait, Mr Beauchamp, in the papers, they thought they might have a chance of extorting money from you. In case Lestrange got into trouble here, he wished to have an alibi, so he left for England under another name, and Mr Barkham here came to Southampton in the Negress as Captain Lestrange.’