"Sakes alive! isn't this awful?" she wailed, making a clutch at Miss Vrain's arm. "You've done it, this time, Diana. Ferruci's dead, and your father alive, and I'm not a widow, and my father away I don't know where! I was told that the police were after me, so I'm clearing out."

"Clearing out, Mrs. Vrain?" repeated Diana, stiffly.

"I should think so!" sobbed Lydia. "I don't want to stay and be put in gaol, though what I've done to be put in gaol for, I don't know."

"What?" cried Lucian indignantly. "You don't know--when this abominable conspiracy is----"

"I know nothing of the conspiracy," interrupted Lydia.

"Did you not get Ferruci to put your husband into an asylum?"

"I? I did nothing of the sort. I thought my husband was dead and buried until Ferruci told me the truth, and then I held my tongue until I could think of what to do. After Ercole died, his servant came round and told me all--he overheard the conversation you had with the Count, Mr.

Denzil. I was never so astonished in my life as to hear about Mrs. Clear and her husband--and Mark alive--and--and--oh, Lord! isn't it dreadful?

Give me a gla.s.s of wine, Diana, or I'll go right off in a dead faint!"

In silence Miss Vrain poured out a gla.s.s of port and handed it to her stepmother, who sipped it in a most tearful mood. Lucian looked at the wretched little woman without saying a word, and wondered if, indeed, she was as innocent as she made herself out to be. He thought that, after all, she might be ignorant of Ferruci's plots, although she had certainly benefited by them; but she was such a glib liar that he did not know how much to believe of her story. However, she had hitherto only given a general idea of her connection with the matter, so when she had finished her wine, and was somewhat calmer, Lucian begged her to be more explicit.

"Did you know--did you guess, or even suspect--that your husband was alive?"

"Mr. Denzil," said Lydia, with unusual solemnity, "as I'm a married woman, and not the widow I thought I was, I did not know that Mark was alive! I'm bad, I daresay, but I am not bad enough to shut a man up in a lunatic asylum and pretend he is dead, just to get money, much as I like it. What I did about identifying the corpse was done in good faith."

"You really thought it was my father's body?" questioned Diana doubtfully.

"I swear I did," responded Mrs. Vrain, emphatically. "Mark walked out of the house because he thought I was carrying on with Ferruci, which I wasn't. It was that Tyler cat who made the trouble between us, and Mark was so weak and silly--half crazy, I think, with his morphia and over-study--that he cleared right out, and I never knew where he had gone to. When I saw that notice about the murdered man in Geneva Square, who called himself Berwin, and was marked on the cheek, I thought he might be my husband. When the coffin was opened, I really believed I saw poor Mark's dead body. The face was just like his, and scarred in the same way."

"What about the missing finger, Mrs. Vrain? If I remember, you even gave a cause for its loss."

"Well, it was this way," replied Lydia, somewhat discomposed. "I knew that Mark hadn't lost a finger when he left, but Ferruci said that if I denied it the police might refuse to believe that the body was that of my husband. So, as I was sure it was Mark's corpse, I just said he had lost a finger out West. I didn't think there was any harm in saying so, as for all I knew he might have got it chopped off after leaving me. But the face of the dead man was--as I thought--Mark's, and he called himself Berwin, which, you know, Diana, is the name of the Manor, and the scar was on the cheek. I know now it was all contrived by Ercole; but then I was quite ignorant."

"When did you find out the truth?"

"After that cloak business. Ferruci came to me, and I told him what that girl at Baxter's had said, and insisted that he should tell me the truth. Well, he did, in order to force me to marry him, and then I told him to go and make it right with the girl, so that when Mr. Denzil went again she'd deny that Ercole had bought the cloak."

"She denied it, sure enough," said Lucian grimly. "Ferruci, before he died, told me he had bribed her to speak falsely. What more did the Count reveal to you, Mrs. Vrain?--the conspiracy?"

"Yes. He said he'd found Mark hiding at Salisbury, half mad with morphia, and had taken him up to Mrs. Clear's, where it seems he went mad altogether, so they locked him up as her husband in a lunatic asylum. Ferruci also told me that he had seen Michael Clear on the stage, and that as he was so like Mark, and was likely to die of drink and consumption, he got him to play the part of Mark in Geneva Square, under the name of Berwin. Mrs. Clear visited her husband there by climbing over a back fence, and getting down a cellar, somehow."

"I know that," said Lucian. "It was Mrs. Clear's shadow I saw on the blind. She was fighting with her husband, and when I rang the bell they were both so alarmed that they left the house by the back way and got into Jersey Street. Then Mrs. Clear went home, and the man himself came round into the Square by the front way. That was how I met him. I wondered how people were in the house during his absence. Mrs. Clear told me all."

"Did she say why her husband made you examine the house?" asked Diana.

"No. But I expect he made me do so that I should not have my suspicions about that back entrance. But, Mrs. Vrain, when Ferruci confessed that your husband was alive, why did you not tell it to the world?"

"Well, I'd got the a.s.surance money, you see," said Lydia, with shrewd candour, "and I thought the company would make a fuss and take it back--as I suppose they will now. Ferruci wanted me to marry him, but I wasn't so bad as that. I did not want to commit bigamy. But I really held my tongue because Ferruci told me who killed Clear."

"He knew, then?" cried Lucian, "and denied it to me! Who killed the man?"

"Wrent did--the man who lived in Jersey Street."

"And who is at the bottom of the whole plot!" said Lucian furiously.

"Do you know where he is to be found?"

"Yes," said Lydia boldly, "I do; but I'm not going to tell where he is!"

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want him punished."

"But I do," said Diana angrily. "He is a wretch who ought to suffer!"

"Very well," said Lydia, loudly and spitefully, "then make him suffer, for this Wrent is your own father! It was Mark who killed Michael Clear!"

CHAPTER XXIX

LINK SETS A TRAP

In the course of their acquaintance, Diana had put up with a great deal from the little American adventuress, owing to her position of stepmother, but when she heard her accusing the man she had ruined of murder, the patience of Miss Vrain gave way. She rose quickly, and walking over to where Lydia was shrinking in her chair, towered in righteous indignation above the shameless little woman.

"You lie, Mrs. Vrain!" she said in a low, distinct voice, with a flushed face and indignation in her eyes. "You know you lie!"

"I--I only repeat what Ferruci told me," whimpered Lydia, rather alarmed by the att.i.tude of her stepdaughter. "I'm sure I hope Mark didn't kill the man, but Ercole said that he was in Jersey Street for that purpose."

"It is not true! My father was in the asylum at Hampstead!"

"Indeed he wasn't--not at the time Clear was killed!" protested Lydia.

"He was not put into the asylum until at least two weeks after Christmas. Is that not so, Mr. Denzil?"

"It is so," a.s.sented Lucian gravely, "but even admitting so much, it is impossible to believe that Mr. Vrain was in Jersey Street. For many months before Christmas he was in charge of Mrs. Clear, at Bayswater."

"So Ercole said," replied Lydia, "but he used to get away from Mrs.

Clear at times, and had to be brought back."

"He wandered when he got the chance," said Lucian, with hesitation. "I admit as much."

"Well, then, when he was not at Bayswater he used to live in Jersey Street as Wrent. Ferruci found him out there, and tried to get him to go back, and he took Mrs. Clear several times to the same place in order to persuade him to return to Bayswater. That was why Mrs. Clear visited Jersey Street. Oh, Mark played his part there as Mr. Wrent, I guess; there ain't no two questions about that," finished Lydia triumphantly.

"He is the a.s.sa.s.sin, you bet!"

"I don't believe it!" cried Diana furiously. "Why, my father is too weak in the head to have the will, let alone the courage, to masquerade like that. He is like a child in leading-strings."

"That's his cunning, Diana. He's 'cute enough to pretend madness, so that he won't be hanged!"

"It is impossible that Vrain can be Wrent," said Lucian decidedly. "I agree with Miss Vrain; he is too weak and irresponsible to carry out such a deed. Besides, I don't see how you prove him guilty of the murder; you do not even know that he could enter the Silent House by the secret way."

"I don't know anything about it, except what Count Ferruci told me,"

said Lydia obstinately. "And he said that Vrain, as Wrent, killed Clear.