"I'm half afraid to tell you, Lester; you'll laugh at me. But as I bent outside that ventilator yonder with my ear against it, I could have sworn that the person inside was engaged in shovelling earth-shovelling it into-a grave!"

A little shudder ran through me at the words; never was laughter farther from my thoughts.

"A grave!" I stammered. "But whose grave?"

"I don't know-Marcia Lawrence's, perhaps."

"Marcia Lawrence sailed on the Umbria."

"You don't know she did. You don't even believe she did."

"Whether she did or not, who would kill her, and why?"

"Ah, if you come to the why and wherefore, I can't answer you-not yet."

"Besides," I went on, "the writing on the message left at the West Street office was her writing."

"Perhaps it was only a good imitation-you can't be absolutely sure that you've ever seen a sample of her writing. There's nothing to prove that she wrote either the note or the message."

"But Curtiss identified them-he was sure the writing was hers."

"Curtiss wasn't in a condition to be sure of anything. But suppose it was hers. She may have wished to blind her mother and Curtiss completely-she may have wished them to think that she had really gone abroad-she must have foreseen that you would trace the telegram. She may have done all that before she came back here--"

"Came back here?" I repeated, suddenly finding a dozen arguments against my own theory of half an hour before. "Walk into the lion's jaws? Nonsense, G.o.dfrey! Place herself in the power of the people who, I suppose you think, killed her!"

"I don't think they killed her," G.o.dfrey said composedly. "My belief is that she killed herself to escape her husband-to get out of the tangle in which she'd involved herself."

"Her husband! You cling to the husband then, do you?"

"More than ever. He's an Italian-a tall, well-built, handsome fellow, with black eyes and a most becoming black moustache. He has a florid complexion and can speak English, though with a strong accent. He smokes cigarettes, which he rolls himself, and he has lost the tip of the little finger of his left hand. He's fond of music; perhaps himself a singer or musician, and it may have been as instructor that he first met Miss Lawrence--"

I had been staring at G.o.dfrey open-mouthed; I could restrain myself no longer.

"But how do you know all this?" I gasped. "Or is it merely a fairy tale?"

"It's not in the least a fairy tale, my dear Lester. I know it because this estimable gentleman was himself in Elizabeth yesterday. The letter which Miss Lawrence received appointed a rendezvous at the Kingdon cottage. It was here she fled to see him-to buy him off, as she had done once before."

CHAPTER XVI

The Secret of the Cellar

It was a moment before I fully understood the meaning of these extraordinary words. When I did understand them, I saw crumbling before me that elaborate structure which I had been at such pains to build-the structure founded upon the a.s.sumption of Miss Lawrence's innocence. She was only an adventuress, after all, then; or, more probably, only a weak woman, swayed by an ungovernable pa.s.sion, risking everything rather than give up the man she loved; deceiving him, lying to him, taking the one desperate chance that lay within her reach; pausing at nothing so she might gain her end.

Or perhaps she had really believed that old mistake of hers buried past resurrection. She may have thought him dead, this fascinating scoundrel who had turned her girlish head. She may have thought herself free. But even then her skirts were not wholly clean. She should have told her lover; she should never have permitted this shadow to lie between them-this skeleton, ready at any moment to burst from its closet. But better far that it should burst out when it did, than wait until the sin was consummated; an hour later, and the shackles had been forged past breaking! If revenge on Marcia Lawrence was the object of the plot, the conspirators had overleaped themselves. They should have waited until the words were uttered which bound her to her second lover-then, had they sprung their trap, how they might have racked her!

One other thing I understood-and marvelled that I had not understood before. I saw what Mrs. Lawrence had meant by saying that the marriage was not impossible-that the obstacle could be cleared away-that it should be for Burr Curtiss to decide. But even he, I felt, would hesitate to take for his wife a woman just emerging from the shadow of the divorce court, however little she had been to blame for the tragedy which drove her there-more especially since he must see that from the very first she had not dealt fairly with him. A fault confessed may be forgiven; a fault discovered is a different thing.

She had not been brave enough to confess; she had not trusted him; she had deceived him. She had been guilty, guilty! Those were the words which sang and sang in my brain and would not be stilled.

Her face was a siren's face-beautiful, innocent, virgin-fresh; and her soul a siren's soul-merciless, selfish, hard. And I had fancied that the soul was like the face! I had not thought that a face like that could lie! Verily, of women I had much to learn!

"It was only by the merest accident I found it out," G.o.dfrey was saying. "It was the policeman who was on duty at the Lawrence place yesterday morning who gave me the first hint. I'd already sounded him, as well as everybody else about the place, as to whether any strangers had been noticed loitering about, and they were all quite positive that no stranger had pa.s.sed the gate or entered the grounds during the morning. After I left you, yesterday morning, I started back to the hotel to get my things together, and in the hotel office I happened to meet the policeman, whose name, it seems, is Clemley. He was off duty and seemed anxious to talk, so I took him in to the bar, and got him a drink, and pumped him a little on the off-chance of his knowing something he hadn't told me.

"'And you're still sure,' I asked him after a while, 'that no strangers went into the Lawrence house yesterday morning?'

"'Oh, yes, sir,' he answered. 'Perfectly sure. I was on duty there all the time, you know. There were a good many people around, but I knew them all. I've been a policeman here for twenty years, and there's mighty few people I don't know. The only stranger I noticed the whole morning was a fellow who stopped to ask me where Miss Kingdon lived.'

"You can guess, Lester, how my heart jumped when I heard that! Well, he described him about as I described him to you--"

"Even to his being a musician?" I asked.

"Well, no," G.o.dfrey laughed. "That was a long shot of my own. But he told me the fellow was humming a tune all the time he wasn't talking. He came along just about eleven o'clock, and asked where Miss Kingdon lived; asked also what was going on at the Lawrence place, and seemed much interested in what the policeman told him. He rolled a cigarette and lighted it as he talked-rolled it, Clemley says, with one twist of his fingers, so expertly that Clemley marvelled at it. Finally he went on to the gate out yonder, and entered the yard. That was all Clemley saw."

"Did he see him come out again?"

"No-he's certain he didn't come out while he was on duty, which was till three o'clock in the afternoon. Of course, he may have left by some other way. He could have gone out by the alley at the back of the lot, if he'd wished to avoid being seen."

"And you believe Marcia Lawrence met him here?"

"I'm sure of it. There can be only one explanation of that letter-it demanded a price for silence; threatened exposure-at the church itself, perhaps, unless the money was paid. Miss Lawrence flew here with what jewels and money she could lay her hands on at the moment, gave them to him, and he left; or perhaps she only promised to reward him if he'd keep the secret-it's doubtful if she had money enough at hand to buy him off, for his demands wouldn't be modest. At any rate, she got rid of him for the moment. But after he had gone, she reflected that she would always be at his mercy, that she could never be Burr Curtiss's legal wife. Suppose she should return to the house and carry through the farce of a marriage ceremony, she would only be preparing for herself an agony of suffering even more terrible than that which she was then enduring. The time would surely come when she would be unmasked before her lover. She could bear anything but that. She decided to end it-but to end it in such a way that her secret would be safe forever. So she lured him away upon another trail, then returned here and--" He finished with a significant gesture at his throat.

I thought it over; then I shook my head.

"It won't do, G.o.dfrey," I said. "It won't hold together. In the first place, how did this fellow know about the Kingdons? If he met Miss Lawrence here, they must be his accomplices."

"I believe they are."

"Granting that, I don't believe Miss Lawrence killed herself. I certainly don't believe any such fantastic theory as that Miss Kingdon is working away there in the cellar burying the body. Why should she incur such a risk as that?"

"I've asked myself the same question, depend upon it, Lester."

"And found an answer to it?"

"Not yet."

"Miss Lawrence is on board the Umbria," I repeated, trying to convince myself.

"Then what is Miss Kingdon doing in the cellar?"

"I don't know, but it's not what you think."

"Well," said G.o.dfrey, rising suddenly, "I'm not going to theorise about it any longer-I'm going to find out."

"To find out?" I echoed, rising too.

"Yes-I'm going to enter the house."

"But you'll be committing a felony."