Collected Plays and Stories

The Door at Abelard - II

Another week had passed by, but Armand's nerves were not reconciled to the door of ill omen that looked nightly at him with the secret of Bertha Abelard's death behind it. Yet nothing farther had happened of an unusual nature. Richard Abelard was often absent and distracted, a thing formerly unknown in him, and his speech was occasionally irritable, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in his action. He walked, smoked, shot, rode, hunted, played billiards and read the light literature that pleased him, without any deviation from his familiar habits. Armand noticed that on some days he was entirely his old self, and then he invariably spoke with great satisfaction of the profound sleep he had enjoyed all night. Sieurcaye finally dismissed the presentiment from his mind. He had accepted the somnambulist theory; it was sleeplessness that was telling on Richard's nerves. The whole mystery received a rational explanation on that simple hypothesis.

Two nights after he arrived at this cheerful conclusion, he woke at night for the first time after the experience of the open door. Every night he had thought of watching for the somnambulist, but, though he had been accustomed all his life to light slumbers, a sleep as profound as that of which Richard Lancaster boasted, glued his head to the pillow. On this particular night his wife was not with him, for, to satisfy a caprice of Isabel's, she was sleeping with her sister in their old nursery. Armand turned on his pillow, noticed with the surprise of a half-sleeping man the absence of his wife, then glanced about the room and observed that the door of his chamber was slightly open. A meaningless detail at first, the circumstance began to awaken a sort of indolent wonder—had Aloÿse come into the room to visit his sleep and gone back to the nursery? Or was it Richard the somnambulist driven by the monomania of the locked room? And then, as if galvanised by a shock of electricity, he sat up in bed, suddenly, violently, and stared at the door with unbelieving eyes. It had come back to him that, before turning into bed, on the spur of some unaccountable impulse, he had locked his

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room and lain down wondering at his own purposeless action. And there now was the door he had thus secured, open, with the key in the lock, challenging him for an explanation. Had he got up himself in his sleep and opened it? Had he too grown a somnambulist? He remembered the profound slumber, so unusual to him, so similar to Lancaster's, that had surprised him for the last few nights. Then an idea occurred to his rapidly working mind; he got out of bed, went to the inner door and turned the handle. It opened! He looked into the room with the iron bed. There was no one there, only the bed and the armchair. Then he closed the door, walked over to his own door, locked it, put the key under his pillow and got into bed again. His heart was beating a little faster than usual as he lay gazing at the door of Bertha Abelard's death chamber. And then a very simple explanation flashed on him. Baulked by the locked door, Richard had climbed up by the ivy from outside and effected his entry from Bertha's chamber. But Isabel was not with Richard tonight—how could he have got possession of the key? Well, conceivably, Isabel might have left her keys by oversight in her own chamber, or the somnambulist might have entered the nursery and detached what he needed from his wife's chatelaine. But what settled waking idea, what persistent fancy of sleep drove Richard Lancaster to the ominous chamber, forced him to devise entrance against every obstacle and by such forbidden means? Armand shuddered as he remembered the story of Bertha Abelard's death and his own theory of the means by which her assassin had gained entrance.

As he expected, he soon fell asleep. Rising the next morning, his first action was to walk over to the inner door and try it. It was locked! Well, that was natural. Somnambulists were often alert and keen-minded even beyond their waking selves and Richard, foiled again by the locked door, had climbed up once more by the ivy to efface all proof of his nocturnal visit.

Armand contrived that morning to be alone with Isabel in order to ask her where she kept the key of Bertha Abelard's chamber. She turned to him with laughing eyes.

"You are not haunted, Armand? No? It's always with me and the ghost, if she's there, must get through solid wood to

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invade your room. I keep my chatelaine at night under my pillow."

"You had it there last night?"

"Armand! I am positive our ancestress has visited you. Yes, last night too." And then suddenly, "Why, no, it was not. I put it last night in the box where I kept my doll and my toys. Don't look surprised, Armand. I'm a great baby still in many things and I wanted to have everything last night just as it was when we were children. I was a very careful and jealous little housewife, and before I slept I used always to lock up my chatelaine with my doll and playthings and treasure the tiny key of my box in a locket under my nightgown. I did all that last night. If you have been haunted, I'm not responsible."

"Did you tell anybody what you were going to do?"

"I did not think of it till we went to bed. Only Aloÿse knew."

"Does anybody else know of this habit of your childhood?"

"Only Roberts and papa. They don't remember, probably. I had forgotten it myself till last night. What is puzzling you, Armand?"

"Oh, it is only an idea I had," he replied, and rapidly escaped from farther question to the sitting-room set apart for himself and Aloÿse.

The thing was staggering. Somnambulism did not make one omniscient, and it was impossible that Richard Abelard should have known this arrangement of Isabel's far-off childhood, extracted the key from his sleeping wife's locket, the chatelaine from the box and restored them undiscovered, when his need was finished. The theory involved such a chain of impossibilities and improbabilities that it must be rejected. And then, as always, a solution suggested itself. Richard Abelard must have taken, long ago, the impress of the key and got a duplicate of it made for his own secret use. But if so, what unavowable design, what stealthy manoeuvres must such a subterfuge be intended to serve? What legitimate need could Richard Abelard have of this secret and ominous exit or entry? Was it not Armand's duty to warn Stephen Abelard of proceedings that must conceal in them something abnormal, perilous or even criminal? But there

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was the danger that Isabel might come to hear of it and receive a shock. Armand decided to wait till after her delivery.

A knock at the door roused him from his thoughts and in response to his invitation Richard Abelard himself entered. He walked up to the fireplace, flung himself into a chair opposite Armand and jerked out abruptly:

"Dṛ Armand, you are a dab at medical diagnosis. Can't you tell me what's the matter with me?"

"Name your symptoms."

"You've seen some of them yourself. I've observed you noticing me. But that's nothing. It's the mind."

"What of the mind?"

"Oh, how should I know? Dreams, imaginations, sensations, impulses. Yes, impulses." He grew pale as he repeated the word.

"Can't you be more precise?"

"I can't; the thing's vague." He paused a moment; and then his features altered, a look of deep agony passed over them. "Somebody is hunting me," he cried, "somebody's hunting me."

A great dread and sickness of heart seized upon Armand Sieurcaye as he looked at his brother-in-law.

"Steady!" he cried, "it's a nervous disorder, of course, nothing more. But you are hiding something from me. That won't do."

"Nerves! Don't tell me I'm going mad! Or if I am, prevent it, for Isabel's sake."

"Of course, I'll prevent it. But you have got to be frank with me. I must know everything."

A visible hesitation held Richard for a few seconds, then he said, "I've told all I can think of, all that's definite." Then, suddenly, striking the arm of his chair with his closed hand, "It's this beastly house," he cried; "there's something in it! There's something in it that ought not to be there."

"If you think so, you must leave it till your nerves are restored. Look here, why not take John's yacht and go for a cruise, oh, to America, if you like,—or to Japan. Japan will give you a longer spell of the sea."

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"I'll do it," cried Richard Lancaster, "as soon as Isabel's safe through this, I'll go. Thank you, Armand." And with a look of great relief on his face, he rose and left the room.

Armand had not much time to ponder over this singular interview, though certain phrases Richard had used, kept ringing in his brain; for that night the pangs of childbirth came upon Isabel and she was safely delivered of a male child. An heir was born to the dying house of Abelard. The strong health of Isabel Abelard easily shook from it the effects of the strain. There was no danger for her and the child seemed likely to inherit the robust physique of his parents. As for Richard, he was joyous, at ease and seemed to have put from him his idea of a flight from Abelard.

But on the third night after the delivery Armand Sieurcaye had troubled dreams and wandered through strange afflictions; the rustling of a dress haunted him; a pang of terror, a movement of agony seemed to come from someone's heart into his own, and there was a laughter in the air he did not love. And in the grey of the autumn morning, Stephen Abelard with a strange look in his eyes stood by his side.

"Get up, Armand; dress and come. Do not disturb Aloÿse."

In three minutes Armand was outside on the landing where Stephen Abelard was pacing to and fro under the whip of the sorrow that had leaped upon him.

"Isabel is dead," he said briefly.

With a dull brain that refused to think Armand followed the father to the death chamber of his child. The wall lamp was flaring high above the bed. A night-lamp that no one had thought to put out, burned on the toilette-table. In a chair far from the bed Richard Lancaster with his face hidden in his hands sat rocking himself, his body shaken by sobs. When Armand entered, he uncovered his face, cast at him a tragic look from eyes full of tears, and went swaying from the room.

Armand stood at the bedside and looked at the dead girl. As he looked, a pang of fear troubled his heart, for his practised perceptions, familiar with many kinds of death, gave him an appalling intimation. Isabel had not died easily! Then something

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peculiar in the pose of the head and neck struck his awakened brain. He bent down suddenly, then rose as suddenly, his olive face sallow with some strong emotion, strode to the toilette-table, seized the night-lamp and returning held it to Isabel's neck.

"What is it?" asked Stephen Abelard. One could see that he was holding himself tight to meet a possible shock. Armand carefully put back the lamp where it had stood and returned to the bedside before he answered. In the shock of his discovery he had forgotten his surroundings, forgotten to whom he was about to speak.

"It is a murder," he said, slowly and mechanically.

"Armand!"

"It is a murder," he continued, unheeding the cry of the father, "I cannot be mistaken. And effected by unusual means. There is a spot in the body which has only to be found by the fingers and receive a peculiar pressure and a man dies suddenly, surely, with so light a trace only the eyes of the initiate can discover it—not even a trace, only an indication, but a sure indication. The Japanese wrestlers know the device, but do not impart it except to those who are too self-disciplined to abuse it. That is what has been done here."

Stephen Abelard seized Armand's shoulder with a tense, violent grip. "Armand," he cried, "who besides yourself knows of this means of murder?"

"John Lancaster knows it."

Stephen's hand fell limply from his son-in-law's shoulder. After a time he said in a voice that was again calm, "Armand, my child died of heart-failure as so many of the Abelards have done."

"It is best so," replied Armand Sieurcaye.

"Now go, Armand," continued Stephen quietly, "go and leave me alone with my child."

Armand did not return to his chamber, but went into his sitting-room, lighted a candle and sat, looking at the chair in which Richard Abelard had consulted him only three days ago. John Lancaster, Richard's brother, who alone near Orringham knew of the Japanese secret! What share had John Lancaster,

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friend of Armand Sieurcaye, in the murder of Isabel Abelard? Was it for his entry that Richard had provided, by the duplicate key, by his strange and perilous manoeuvres with the ivy and the balcony room? But why not open the front door for him or leave unshuttered one of the lower windows, a much easier and less dangerous passage? Then he remembered that the great dog, Brilliant, lay at the bottom of the stairs and would not allow any but an inmate to pass unchallenged. John Lancaster was his friend, his benefactor, but Armand knew the man, a reckless flamboyant profligate capable of the most glorious and self-immolating actions and capable equally of the most cruel and cynical crimes. He remembered, too, how he himself had taught John that peculiar trick of the Japanese art of slaying. In a certain sense he himself was responsible for Isabel's death. How wise were the Easterns in their rigid reticence when they taught only to prepared and disciplined natures the secrets that might be misused to harm mankind! And then his mind travelled to Isabel and her sorrowful end slain in the supreme moment of a woman's joy by the husband she loved. What grim and inexorable Power ruling the world, Fate, Chance, Providence, had singled out for this doom a girl whose whole life had been an innocent shedding of sunshine on all who came near? Providence! He smiled. There were still fools who believed in an overruling Providence, a wise and compassionate God! And then the insoluble problem returned to baffle his mind, what possible motive moved Richard to compass this heartless crime or John to assist him?

All that day of sorrow Richard was absent from the house, and Armand had no chance of probing him. It was late at night, about eleven, that he entered. Armand met him on his way to his room, candle in hand.

"I should like a word with you, Richard," he said.

Richard turned on him, laughing with a terrible gaiety. "No use, Doctor Armand. You could not save me, you see. The thing was too strong. Mark my words, the thing will be too strong even for you." And he strode to his room leaving Armand amazed on the staircase.

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Aloÿse had elected to sleep that night with her dead sister's child and Armand once more found himself alone in Bertha Abelard's chamber with no companion except the locked door, accomplice perhaps in the tragedy that had darkened the house. Again his slumbers were troubled and he dreamed always of the locked door open and someone traversing the room on a mission of evil, a work of horror. He woke with a start, his heart in him dull and heavy as lead and full of the conviction, which it called knowledge, that the tragedy was not finished but more crimes mysterious and unnatural were about to pollute the old walls of Abelard. Then his thoughts flew to Aloÿse. He dressed himself hastily and went to the room where she was sleeping. Aloÿse was asleep and the child's nurse slept on a bed some five feet away, but Armand cast only a fleeting glance at the two women, for between the beds was the cradle of Isabel's child and over it was a figure stooping, and as it lifted its face towards the opened door, he saw a face that was and yet was not the face of Richard Lancaster. Richard immediately moved over to the door. As he neared, Armand drew away from it with the first pang of absolute terror in his heart he had ever experienced since his childhood. Richard Lancaster noted the emotion and it seemed to amuse him, for he laughed. And again there was something in the laugh that was not in the laugh of Richard Lancaster or of any human mirth to which Armand Sieurcaye had ever listened. As soon as Richard had left the room, Armand almost ran to the door, locked it and sat down at his wife's bedside shaking with an excitement he could not control. He soon recovered hold of his nerves, but he did not leave the room and its unconscious inmates. He sat there motionless till at four o'clock in the morning a light knock at the door startled him. When he opened it, Stephen Abelard entered. He took Armand's presence as a matter of course and went calmly to the side of the child and began looking down on the heir of his house, the little baby who was all that was left to him of Isabel. When he turned from the cradle, Armand spoke.

"Sir, you must do something about Richard."

Stephen looked at him. "Come to my room, Armand," he

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said, "We will talk there." Before following Stephen, Armand woke the nurse and bade her watch over the child. "Lock the door," he added, "and keep it locked till I return." As he went through the corridors, he passed Richard's room. The door was open, but the room absolutely dark; still his practised eyes perceived in the doorway a figure standing which drew back when he looked at it, obviously not the figure of Richard, for it was shorter, slenderer. When he was entering Stephen's room, it occurred to him that he had unconsciously carried away in his mind the impression that it was the figure of a woman. After the first disagreeable feeling had passed, he shook the absurdity from him; it must have been the dressing-gown that gave him the idea of a woman's robe. After a brief talk with Stephen, the two were pulling in silence at the cigars they had lighted, when, perhaps half an hour after his leaving the nursery, someone knocked at the door and the nurse appeared and beckoned to Armand Sieurcaye. There was a look of terrible anxiety on her face that brought Armand striding to the door.

"Will you come, sir?" she said, "I don't know what's the matter with the child."

"Did you lock the door?" asked Armand, as they went.

The nurse looked troubled. "I thought I did, though I could not understand why you wanted it; but it seems I can't have turned the key well. For when I dozed off for two minutes, I woke to find the door open." Then she paused and added with great hesitation. "And I almost felt, sir, as if I had noticed a woman in the room standing by the cradle, but I was too sleepy to understand. It wasn't Mṛṣ Sieurcaye, for I had to wake her up afterwards."

A woman! And the locked door that opened! Armand groaned; he could understand nothing, but he knew what he would find even before he bent with the already awakened and anxious Aloÿse over the dead child who had thus so swiftly followed his mother to the grave. And it was by the same way.

That morning Stephen Abelard spoke to his elder son-in-law. "Richard," he said, "you will start for your sea-voyage today. Take John's yacht at Bristol. You need not wait for the

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funeral nor mind what people will say. If I were you, I'ld have a doctor on board."

Richard Lancaster was very calm and deliberate as he replied, "I had settled that, sir, before you spoke. I'm going on a long journey and I'm going direct, not by Bristol nor in the yacht. As you suggest, I'll not wait for the funeral and I'm past caring what people will say."

"Don't forget the doctor," insisted Stephen.

"The doctor can't come," said Richard, "And he wouldn't like the voyage. I'm not mad, sir,—worse luck!"

The two sons-in-law of Stephen Abelard left the house-steps together, Armand for a stroll in the grounds to steady his heated brain and his shaken nerves, Richard in the direction of the stables.

When Armand was returning to the house, a pale-faced groom ran up to him and pointed in the direction of the great avenue of stately trees before Abelard.

"Mṛ Richard's lying there," he faltered, "—shot!"

Armand stood stock-still for a moment, then ran to the spot indicated. Of this last tragedy he had had no presentiment. What was it? What was this maddening and bloody tangle? This death dance of an incomprehensible fate which had struck down mother, father and child in less than thirty hours? No gleam of motive, no shred of coherence illuminated the nightmare. His reason stood helpless at last in the maze. It was the locked door, he thought, that opened and revealed nothing. But his reason insisted. Richard Abelard was mad, and in his madness he had used the device John must have incautiously taught him to slay wife and child; and this last act of self-slaughter was the natural refuge of a disturbed brain made aware by Armand's looks and by Stephen's words of discovery.

Richard Abelard lay dead on the grass by the avenue, shot through the heart and the revolver lay fallen two feet from his outstretched and nerveless hand. Armand, bending to assure himself that life was extinct, caught sight of a small piece of paper lying close to the knee of the dead man. When he rose, he turned to the groom. "Mṛ Richard's dead," he said, "go and tell

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Mṛ Abelard and bring men here to carry him in."

The man reluctantly departed and Armand caught up the paper and put it swiftly into his pocket. It was not till an hour later that he had time to take it out in his parlour and look at it. As he had suspected, it was a brief note in Richard's handwriting, and thus it ran, brief, pointed, tragic, menacing.

"Armand, you knew! But it was not I. God is my Witness, I am not guilty of murder. I can say no more; but in mercy to Aloÿse, look to yourself!"

For a long time Armand Sieurcaye held in his hand the dead man's mysterious warning. Then he flung it into the fire and watched its whiteness blacken, shrivel and turn into ashes.

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