The Black Cabinet (8 page)

The unknown language changed slowly into words of terrible plainness. Blackmail!—the word seemed to start up in letters of fire in the midst of her cold, watching thoughts. Blackmail!—the word burned white hot. Blackmail! Everything became most terrifyingly clear and distinct. The marketing of these wretched, pitiful, shameful letters had been Mr. Dane's business. And the source of his wealth. There were people who did such things. It was horrible—like the pay of Judgment; only this was the Judgment of Evil instead of the Judgment of Good. For an Instant Chloe had a vision of a Judgment Day in which the hidden evil and darkness of the world came out into a great light and was burnt up, melting and shrivelling into nothingness. That was the Judgment of Good. But this—this was the Judgment Day of Evil; all this sin and shame, these tears and terrors, dragged out and gloated over until the darkness was tenfold dark and the terror tenfold terrible.

The letters that she had opened lay by themselves where she had piled them against the left-hand wall of the safe. They were just ink and paper with a few dark blots where the anguished hand had betrayed its owner—just blots, and ink, and paper.

Chloe put out her hand and picked up a long envelope that threatened to fall from the main pile, which she had not touched. Her curiosity was faintly awakened by the fact that this did not seem to be a letter, and she had the impulse to move, to do something, anything, that would break the pictures that were forming in her mind. She was like a man sinking into some terrible dream, who feels that at any cost he must stir, shake off his drowsiness, and awake.

The envelope was one of the usual stout manila envelopes of the size to take foolscap. It was endorsed in very large, clear letters, “Stran's receipts. On
no
account destroy.” Chloe remembered with dazzling distinctness words which had meant nothing to her when Mr. Dane had spoken them: “Don't trust Stran a yard. I've got the whip hand of him because I've made him give me receipts for every penny. If he's troublesome, you may find them useful.”

A good many of the letters she had opened had been marked “From Stran.” Stran, then, was Mr. Dane's jackal, or one of his jackals—one of the creatures who collected,
stole
this merchandise which he had described as his “stock-in-trade.”

Chloe turned the envelope, and was about to open it, when a faintness came on her. The walls of the safe, the walls of the cabinet, seemed to be pressing in on her. There was no air to breathe. She dropped the envelope and turned, blindly groping for the half-closed doors and pushing them outwards. The air of the drawing-room, cold, still and faintly musty, was grateful to her. She crouched there drawing long breaths.

And then she heard the sound.

Chapter XIV

The sound roused Chloe more effectively than any amount of fresh air would have don It set her heart beating, and shocked her into ne for action.

Some one was coming downstairs.

Even as she formulated the thought, the sound changed. The footsteps had left the carpeted stairs and fell now upon the parquet floor of the hall. With instant quickness Chloe reached behind her and put out her lamp. Then she caught at the doors of the cabinet and drew them closed. It seemed all to happen in a moment, the sound and her instinctive movements. As the doors of the cabinet closed, the drawing-room door was opened and through the last chink, Chloe saw a candle flame flickering upon Leonard Wroughton's flush and frowning face.

Next moment, with a click, the light in the great chandeliers lit the drawing-room from end to end, making the brilliance which Chloe had longed for. It came to her now as a burning wire between the doors of the cabinet. She pulled them closer, and the burning wire was gone.

The key—what had she done with the key of the cabinet?—where had she put the key? If she had left it sticking in the keyhole, Leonard Wroughton would see it there. No mere accident or coincidence had brought him to this room at such an hour. If he was here at all, he was here to visit the cabinet; and the key—where had she put the key?

There was a little wooden catch on a pin that fastened the right-hand door. She felt for it, snibbed it, and groped along the floor of the cabinet with her other hand. Her faintness was all gone. She remembered now that she had taken the key out of the lock and laid it against the wall of the cabinet away on her left. She could hear Mr. Wroughton moving in the room outside. Her fingers clutched the key.

The key-hole showed like a little shining star in the darkness. As she put the key in softly, softly, she tried with all her might to remember whether it had grated as it turned, whether it had made any sound at all. Very steadily and slowly she began to turn the key, and as she began to turn it, she felt the door touched from outside—a hand on the handle, moving it, shaking it.

Chloe turned the key right home. It made a little click which was lost in the rattle of the wrenched handle. She held her breath, and gripped the key till it cut her palm.

The lock held. The doors held. Unless he was prepared to force them open, and meet discovery in the morning, Chloe was safe. The missing section behind the curtain scarcely troubled her. He wouldn't look behind the curtain because there would be nothing for him to look for. There was nothing to suggest to Leonard Wroughton any need for further search or suspicion.

Chloe crouched there, perfectly still in the dead darkness, and felt the air grow heavy, heavy, heavy. How long would he stay? And how long could she hold out? He had moved away from the cabinet and gone to the far end of the room. What was he doing there? What was he waiting for? Suppose, after all, that he were to go to the window. The fear that she had dismissed became suddenly clamorous. Why, any one of half a dozen things might take him to the window. He was moving again, coming back to the cabinet. This time he did not try the handle; but Chloe could hear his heavy breathing not more than a foot away.

A horror of Leonard Wroughton, a horror of being caught like a creature in a trap, came over her. She couldn't bear it; she felt as if she couldn't bear anything more at all. Then, just as she came to the very edge of endurance, she heard him swear softly to himself and turn away.

A moment later the door opened and shut again; the heavy step receded; she heard him mount the stairs. Each smallest sound seemed loud, and thrummed in her ears. She was really near to fainting as she pushed open the door of the cabinet and crept out into the dark, deserted room.

A minute passed—two, three, five. Chloe sitting in a heap on the floor, raised her head and began to think coherently again. The house was dead still. Leonard Wroughton, having made his tour of inspection, would not return; she felt sure of that. Thank goodness she had locked her door. If he tried the handle, or sent Emily to try it, they would only think that she was inside, asleep.

As these thoughts went through her mind, there emerged more and more clearly the conviction of a plan, of a mind moving according to plan, anticipating her own movements and bent on countering them. It was according to this plan that Leonard Wroughton had given out that he would be away for at least one night. He had not intended to be away; she felt sure of that. When he went off that morning with his suit-case and his talk of dining in town he had meant to return silently and unnoticed, as he had returned. Why?

Chloe answered the question easily enough. Those letters, Mr. Dane's stock-in-trade, were as valuable now as in the days when Mr. Dane carried on his business and made the fortune which had bought Danesborough. There was another fortune in the safe for anyone who knew the ropes and had neither heart nor conscience.

Chloe went on thinking quite quickly and calmly. Wroughton had tried to trap her. He had made sure that she knew how to open the safe, and that she would use her knowledge on the first opportunity. He meant to have the letters. Chloe stiffened. Nobody should have them; she would see to it that nobody should have them. Danesborough was hers; and the cabinet was hers; and the safe was hers; and the letters were hers. A sort of shudder came over her. The money was hers—this horrible money, wrung from terror and shame and crime. It was hers!

She got on to her feet and leaned against the cabinet with a sense of having lost her way and blundered into some horrible place full of slime and fetid odours that rose from it and choked her. The money—Danesborough—they were hers. They were most foully tainted; and they were hers.

A dreadful pang of resentment shook Chloe. Anger against the dead shook her to the depth. He had brought this dishonour upon Danesborough; and he had brought it on her. Danesborough, where her people had lived for uncounted generations—he had dared to put this disgrace upon it. She felt as if she would never be clean again.

She set her teeth, and wondered how soon she could be gone. She was living on this money, using it. She must get away at once, back to Maxton, out of it all. Yes, that was it, she must get away. People couldn't make you take money that you didn't want and wouldn't have. She would write at once to Mr. Hudson and tell him that she refused Mr. Dane's legacy.

“I won't take it, and they can't make me. Oh, how did he dare to think that I would?”

Hot tears rushed to her eyes. She made a sudden movement, and struck her hand against the open door of the cabinet. What was she going to do about the cabinet? What was she going to do about the letters in the safe? The answer came as quick and hot as her tears:

“I must destroy them. I can't go away until I have destroyed them.”

She turned, felt for her lamp, and put on the light. The beam slanted across those many, many packets of letters, written for the most part on the thick, expensive paper which does not lend itself readily to destruction. Chloe knew something about the time it takes to burn papers. Letters take longer than anything; they will not burn in their envelopes; they must be taken out and unfolded. The destruction of the letters in this safe would take many hours.

She climbed into the cabinet again, and took out the letters she had read and a few still unopened packets. Then she shut the safe. The rest would have to wait. She must have time to think. Just now she only wanted to fling herself down on her bed and cry her heart out in the kind dark that would not see how ashamed she was.

She piled the letters on the floor, and slowly, haltingly, she crossed the room and fetched the section which had to be fitted again into the cabinet to mask the safe. When the doors were locked upon it, she filled the lap of her dressing-gown with the letters and slipped her lamp into her pocket. At the door she switched on the light in the chandeliers for a moment, and looked down the room to make sure that she had left no trace. Everything was as cold, prim, and orderly as its wont. Her fingers jerked the switch; the brilliance died; a little red glow, and then blackness. She went slowly, very slowly, through the hall and up the stairs, feeling her way and making no sound.

When she came to her own door and unlocked it, the faint grating of the key seemed to her like an alarm that must rouse the house. She stood listening for a full minute before she dared lock the door on the inside.

The sounds of her own making died and were lost in the general stillness. The locked door, the feeling of being in her own room again, gave her confidence. She no longer wanted to throw herself down on the bed and cry her heart out; she wanted to deal with the letters and destroy them.

She made her way to the bed, tipped all the letters out of the skirt of her dressing-gown, and switched on the light in the small shaded reading-lamp which stood on the table near the head of the bed. The letters lay in a heap on the bright blue eiderdown. Chloe turned from them and looked towards the fireplace. There had been a fire there when she came to bed, but it had burnt itself out. She picked up a box of matches, and then put it down again. If anyone were to pass her door and see the light. She decided that there was no need for them to see it, and before she did anything else she pushed a piece of tissue paper into the keyhole and laid a coat across the bottom of the door. Then she carried the letters over to the hearth and, crouching there, realized that she was cold—she who was never cold. The embers in the grate were black, but a very faint warmth still came from them. Well, the letters would burn all the more easily for that.

She took the first letter out of its envelope, unfolded it, and held a lighted match to its lower edge. The flame caught in a thin blue line, and then ran upwards with a rush. She threw the envelope with its cynical endorsement into the flames and watched the whole die to a black film that could no longer yield its secret to anyone.

She lit the second letter; and so burned them one by one. It took a long time. Sometimes an edge curled over and showed a word or two before the flame and the blackness took them for ever. Once a name stood out, writhing in the fire; Chloe as glad when it was gone.

When all was done, and the grate full of the thin black ash that slowly turned to grey, she got up stiffly and stood looking down at her handiwork. The ash would fly about all over the room. She pushed it down with the shovel and put one or two lumps of coal upon it. Then she washed her hands, took the paper out of the keyhole, unlocked the door, and picked up her coat.

She wondered if she would sleep. She thought that she would like to sleep, to let a curtain fall upon all that she had done and felt that night. She did not feel ready to think of it, or to decide what she must do next. She wanted to let that curtain fall, and to sink behind it into a dreamless rest.

She slept until the maid drew up the blinds in the morning and let in the cold November light.

Chapter XV

Emily Wroughton seemed more than usually flustered and breathless at breakfast. At the moment of saying good-morning to Chloe she managed to upset the milk, and sat uttering little deprecatory exclamations and dabbing at the spilt milk with her table-napkin.

“I should leave it alone if I were you,” said Chloe.

“Oh, no! Such a mess—and the servants—and you know Leonard likes things just so. I can't think how I came to do it.” She sniffed, dropped her table-napkin, and began to rub the tip of her nose with a wispy handkerchief. She made it very pink, and some of the colour spread suddenly and unbecomingly to her cheeks as she said, “I told you I could never depend on him. Just fancy, after all, he came back late last night. But, there, I never know; I can't depend on him a bit.” Chloe's tongue ran away with her under the sharp spur of indignation.

“I should hate to have a husband that I couldn't depend on,” she said.

Emily Wroughton laughed nervously.

“Oh, Miss Dane, how that sounds! But you know what I mean. He—he didn't disturb you last night, did he?—coming in, I mean. Did you hear him?”

“I heard some one,” said Chloe shortly.

Mr. Wroughton had not hurried down to breakfast. He came out of his room at about the same time that Emily spilled the milk. Instead of going downstairs he strolled along the corridor, turned to the left, and passed the door of Chloe's room. The door stood open, and a hard-featured, middle-aged housemaid was coming out with a dust-pan in her hand.

Mr. Wroughton stopped, and looked curiously at the dust-pan. It was full of a thin grey-black ash, so light that, as the woman moved, a particle or two floated off into the air.

“Hullo!” said Wroughton in a jocular tone. “Miss Dane been trying to burn the house down, Jessie?”

“It's a wonder if she hasn't,” said Jessie crossly, “seeing there's nothing like paper for setting a chimney on fire. Why, the grate's just fair stuffed with it. What in the world a young lady like her wants to sit up half the night writing letters land burning 'em, when she's got the whole blessed day to do it in, beats me.”

The woman's tone and manner were familiar; but Wroughton did not appear to resent them.

“Writing letters, eh? What makes you think that?”

“I suppose I can use my eyes,” said Jessie. “Half a wastepaper-basket full of tore up bits besides this mess in the grate.”

“Well, well,” said Wroughton. “Cheer up, Jessie.”

He passed on, and Jessie flounced off in the opposite direction. As soon as she had passed the corner and was out of sight, Wroughton turned and came back astonishingly lightly and quickly for so large a man. He entered Chloe's room, spread his handkerchief on the floor and tipped the contents of the wastepaper-basket on to it.

Jessie had made the most of her grievance. The basket held a few torn sheets and no more. Leonard Wroughton gathered them up in his handkerchief, and went back to his own room whistling. Arrived there, he locked the door and spread the pieces of paper on the writing-table. He was glad to see that they were not torn very small. Most of them were blank, with no writing at all on either side. It did not take him long to determine that Chloe had begun and torn up three letters, and that they were all to Mr. Hudson. When the sheets were pieced together, one of them read:

“Dear Mr. Hudson,

“I can't” and there broke off. The rest of the sheet was empty.

The next was in four pieces. It read:

“Dear Mr. Hudson,

“I want to see you at once. Can you come down here, or shall I come to town? I”

There was a blot after the “I,” but no more writing.

The third sheet ran:

“Dear Mr. Hudson,

“I have found out something that makes it quite impossible”

Chloe had stopped there and torn the sheet into half a dozen pieces.

Leonard Wroughton sat and looked at the three sheets for about five minutes. Then he tore them into much smaller bits, and pushed them down to the bottom of his own wastepaper-basket, which was tolerably full of circulars and bills, most of the latter being unopened.

So she had dodged him and opened the safe. The fragments which he had just disposed of meant that or nothing. Whilst he was congratulating himself on his precautions, she had slipped through them and done him down. She had certainly opened the safe. As certainly, she had taken out and destroyed letters whose value it was impossible to estimate. The question was, how many of them had she managed to destroy? He thought not so very many. He had had a look at the grate when he emptied the wastepaper-basket in Chloe's room. It was clear; the contents of Jessie's dust-pan represented the whole of the debris. The safe, with its piled up shelves, rose reassuringly before him. Chloe could have made very little impression, really, on Mr. Dane's stock-in-trade. There was still a fortune left for anyone who could lay hands on it. One thing was certain, he must see the letter to Hudson, the letter which Chloe must have written; he was convinced that she must have completed a letter to Hudson. And he couldn't be sure of Hudson. Hudson was too damned cautious; he wouldn't put anything on paper. And he fussed like a hen if you used the telephone—as if the operator at the exchange hadn't something better to do than to sit eaves-dropping all day. Even if you went to see him, he'd hedge, be non-committal, and behave as if Scotland Yard had its ear to the keyhole. He must see Chloe's letter for himself before it went to Hudson at all.

He glanced at the hall table on his way to the dining-room. Emily had put a letter there for the post, but it had no companion.

In the dining-room he found Emily and Chloe just finishing breakfast. Chloe felt his eyes rest searchingly upon her face, and knew that, in spite of much cold water, she was pale and heavy-eyed enough. She bit her lip, and looked back at Wroughton with a spark of anger in her eyes.

For a moment there was that tension under which self-control is strained to very near breaking-point. Chloe's look was an open, angry challenge; but Wroughton avoided it. With his usual “Good morning,” he passed to the side table and stood there helping himself.

Chloe pushed back her chair and got up. She was furious at her own self-betrayal, but for the life of her she could not keep her dislike of Wroughton out of her voice. She stood with her hand on the rail of the chair and spoke to his back.

“I should like the Napier in half an hour.” Wroughton finished cutting a slice of ham before he turned round.

“The Napier?” he said. “I'm afraid—didn't you know?—didn't Emily tell you?”

“I don't know anything. What is it?” said Chloe.

“Well you know the Daimler has been away to be painted—Mr. Dane made the arrangement and I let it stand. The Napier was to go as soon as the Daimler came back; but there seems to have been some misunderstanding, and they fetched her yesterday whilst I was away.”

Chloe's colour rose brightly.

“I should have been asked——” she began, and then stopped.

There was a little pause. Emily Wroughton said, “Oh, dear!” just under her breath, but her husband said nothing at all. He had seated himself, and was spreading a roll with butter.

“I'll have the A.C. then.”

Wroughton looked up with a smile which Chloe thought insolent.

“Sorry, but the A.C. is out of action too. I had a slight mishap with her last night.”

“A slight mishap! What did you do?”

“I'm not quite sure. Bell is going to overhaul her this morning.”

Chloe turned away sharply. Her temper strained at the leash; she was afraid of letting it slip, afraid of what she might say if she did let it slip. She was mistress of Danesborough, but she could not order Wroughton out of the house. If she were of age—if she were only of age! If she let her temper go, this impossible situation would become more impossible still. She could not order Wroughton out of Danesborough, and she was only determined not to go herself until she had destroyed the rest of the letters.

She turned away and spoke to Emily:

“I shall walk down into the village, I think.” For once Emily earned her husband's gratitude. “Oh, my dear! In this rain? You mustn't think of it!”

“I want to post a letter,” said Chloe. “And I want some air.”

“But Leonard or any of the servants would post your letter.”

“I'm sure they would,” said Chloe at the door. She flashed a look at Wroughton, and saw with pleasure that her tone had stung him. “I'm sure Mr. Wroughton would love to post my letter; but—I think I'll post it myself.”

Leonard Wroughton finished his breakfast rather hastily. He was in the study when Chloe came downstairs. As soon as the front door had shut behind her he went to the telephone, waiting in frowning impatience for the click of the receiver at the other end. A voice said “Hullo,” and his features relaxed a little.

“That you, Jennings?” he said eagerly.

Chloe tramped along in the wet. The rain was coming straight down; there was no wind. The sky was one even grey. All the trees dripped, and the grass squelched under foot. She took a short cut across it to the gate, and came out upon a very muddy road. It was a relief to be out of Danesborough even for half an hour. She tramped on, and found herself presently wondering at the heat of her own temper a little while back.

“I'm becoming a perfectly hateful person—bad-tempered, and suspicious, and altogether horrid.”

Her suspicions of Wroughton—was there any foundation for them really? He might have had half a dozen good reasons for last night's unexpected return. And if, by any chance, he had heard a sound in the house, it was no less than his duty to come down and make sure that all was in order.

“The fact is that I simply loathe him, and that makes me suspect everything he does. It shows what a beast I'm turning into. I never used to loathe people and suspect them. It's this horrible place and those horrible letters—they're like poison. Why—why—why on earth couldn't I have been born in September or October instead of February?”

Chloe fell into a pleasant dream of herself of age, fully mistress of the situation, dismissing Leonard Wroughton with dignified hauteur, and then making a glorious bonfire with the contents of Mr. Dane's safe.

“I'd do it too, if I could only stick it out till February. But I
simply cant
.”

She fell to thinking of how she could get hold of the other letters. After all, Wroughton must leave the house sometimes; and if the worst came to the worst, she must simply get rid of Emily by telling her that she wanted to be alone. Open defiance was about as likely from Emily Wroughton as from an earwig. Chloe laughed all to herself, she didn't know why she had thought of an earwig, but, once thought of, there was certainly a likeness. “The—the sort of pointedness, and always being a fuss,” she explained to herself.

She passed an outlying cottage or two, skirted the vicarage garden, and turned into Two Man Lane.

It was just at the bottom of the lane, where it came out at the end of the village street, that she heard herself hailed, and turned to see Dr. Golding's locum emerge from a cottage garden on her right. Chloe did not very much like Dr. Jennings.

In the capacity of Wroughton's friend he had been to Danesborough several times, and each time she had liked him a little less. Dark, good-looking, clever, and more than a little underbred, he did not improve upon acquaintance.

“Hul—lo, Miss Dane! What luck! I was just thinking it never does anything but rain in this damn climate, and—er, there you were—a regular sun-burst, so to speak!”

Chloe said “How do you do?” in rather frigid tones. To her annoyance, Dr. Jennings continued to walk beside her, turning when she turned, and producing half a dozen letters, which made it quite evident that his objective was the same as her own.

“I forget—did you know Golding at all? Worthy old chap of course, but frightfully behind the times.”

“I met him,” said Chloe. “I liked him awfully.”

“Worthy,” said Dr. Jennings in a patronizing tone. “Of course, a practice like this is absolute stagnation. Except for one thing, I shall be glad enough to get back to town.”

If he intended Chloe to ask what the one thing was, he was disappointed. She said nothing. As they came in sight of the post office she took out of her pocket the letter which she had written to Mr. Hudson, and prepared to cross the road.

A car had stopped in front of the little post office, which was also a general shop, and two of its occupants had got out and were deep in conversation with a couple who had just emerged from the shop. Chloe looked at these people, wondering who they were. It came over her with a sudden pang of loneliness that she didn't know them, that she didn't know anyone, and that it was strange—surely it was strange—that no one had been to call. Those women looked nice. One of them as quite young.

Just for the moment that these thoughts passed through her mind, Chloe stood still on the edge of the path. She was about to move, when, with a quick “Allow me,” Dr. Jennings took the letter out of her hand, and, putting it with his own, walked briskly across the road to the post office. The car hid him from view for the briefest possible space. Chloe saw him emerge from behind it, greet its occupants, and push the whole batch of letters into the slot in the post office wall.

He was back again in a moment, and was instantly made aware of her sharp annoyance.

“Why did you do that?” Her tone was biting. To her surprise, he looked at her gravely.

“I'm awfully sorry—it must have seemed rude. I'll explain if you'll let me walk a little way with you. Really, Miss Dane, I had a reason.”

“A reason?” (What an extraordinary thing to say! What did he mean?) “What reason?”

“I'll tell you—I'm really sorry if I seemed rude, ere, just let's get round the corner into the lane, and I'll tell you why I did it.”