have no intention of touching a single farthing of it.”
“Until you are forced to.”
“Forced to!” I exclaimed. “I don’t understand your meaning.”
“You will understand one day,” he answered with a grin – “one day when it may, perhaps, be too late. It would be best for us to act in unison, I assure you.”
“For you, possibly; not for me.”
“No – for you,” he said, fixing his crafty, evil-looking eyes upon me. “You have taken one step towards the goal, and you cannot now draw back. You have already accepted your price – twenty thousand pounds.”
“Enough!” I cried indignantly. “If I were to give information to the police regarding this conversation, you would find yourself arrested within an hour.”
“As I have already told you, my dear sir, I am not at all afraid of such a contretemps; I am no blunderer, I assure you.”
“Neither am I,” I answered quickly, resolving to remain there no longer discussing such a subject. From the first moment of our meeting I had entertained a suspicion of him. Several facts were evident. He had some strong motive, first in marrying his daughter Beryl, secondly in encompassing her death before sundown, and thirdly in implicating me so deeply that I should be unable to extricate myself from the net which he set to entrap me.
A fourth fact, apparently small in itself, had caused me considerable reflection: the hand that I had held and on the finger of which I had placed the bond of matrimony, was in no sense chilly or clammy. It was not the wasted hand of a moribund invalid, but rather that of a healthy person. While I had held it I felt and counted the pulsations. The latter had told me that my mysterious bride was without fever, and was apparently in a normal state of health. It was curious that she should have walked and acted involuntarily, if only half-conscious of her surroundings.
The Tempter was endeavouring to deceive me in this particular. But it was in vain.
“Cannot we come to terms?” he asked in a low, earnest voice. “There is surely no object to be gained in our being enemies; rather let us act together in our mutual interests. Recollect that by your marriage you have become my son-in-law and heir.”
“Your heir!” I echoed. I had not thought of that before. His house betokened that he was wealthy. “You are very generous,” I added, not without some sarcasm. “But I do not feel inclined to accept any such responsibility from one whose name even I do not know.”
“Of course,” he said easily. “I was stupid not to introduce myself. In the excitement it quite slipped my memory. Pray forgive me. My name is Wynd – Wyndham Wynd.”
“Well, Mr Wynd,” I said with some forced politeness, “I think we may as well conclude this interview. I wish to make the acquaintance of my wife.”
“Quite natural,” he answered, smiling good-humouredly. “Quite natural that you should wish to see her; only I beg you, doctor, to prepare for disappointment.”
“Your warning is unnecessary,” I responded as carelessly as I could.
My curiosity had been aroused by the healthfulness of that small, well-formed hand, and I intended to investigate for myself. That house was, I felt certain, a house of mystery.
I had turned towards the door, but in an instant he had reached it and stood facing me with his back to it resolutely, saying —
“You will go to her on one condition – the condition I have already explained.”
“That I take her life seriously, and give a certificate of death from natural causes,” I said. “No, Mr Wynd, I am no murderer.”
“Not if we add to the sum an extra five thousand?”
“I will not harm her for an extra fifty thousand. Let me pass!” I cried with fierce resolution.
“When you have promised to accede to my request.”
“I will never promise that.”
“Then you will not enter her room again.”
Almost as the words left his lips there was a low tap at the door, and it opened, disclosing Davies, who announced —
“The Major, sir.”
“Show him in.”
The visitor, who entered jauntily with his silk hat still set at a slight angle on his head, was the well-groomed man who had led my bride up the aisle of the church. I judged him to be about forty-five, dark-complexioned, good-looking, but foppish in appearance, carrying his monocle with ease acquired by long practice.
“Well, Wynd,” he said, greeting his friend, cheerily, “all serene?”
“Entirely,” answered the other. And then, turning to me, introduced the new-comer as “Major Tattersett.”
“This, Major, is Dr Colkirk, my new son-in-law,” he explained. “Permit me to present him.”
“Congratulate you, my dear sir,” he responded laughing good-humouredly, while the Tempter remarked —
“The Major is, of course, fully aware of the circumstances of your marriage. He is our nearest friend.”
“Marriage rather unconventional, eh?” the other remarked to me. “Poor Beryl! It is a thousand pities that she has been struck down like that. Six months ago down at Wyndhurst she was the very soul of the house-parties – and here to-day she is dying.”
“Extremely sad,” I remarked. “As a medical man I see too vividly the uncertainty of human life.”
“How is she now?” inquired the Major of her father. “The same, alas!” answered the Tempter with well-assumed sorrow. “She will, we fear, not live till midnight.”
“Poor girl! Poor girl!” the new-comer ejaculated with a sigh, while the Tempter, excusing himself for an instant left the room.
I would have risen and followed, but the Major, addressing me confidentially, said —
“This is a strange whim of my old friend’s, marrying his daughter in this manner. There seems no motive for it, as far as I can gather.”
“No, none,” I responded. “Mr Wynd has struck me as being somewhat eccentric.”
“He’s a very good fellow – an excellent fellow. Entirely loyal to his friends. You are fortunate, my dear fellow, in having him as a father-in-law. He’s amazingly well off, and generosity itself.”
I recollected his dastardly suggestion that my wife should not live longer than sundown, and smiled within myself. This friend of his evidently did not know his real character.
Besides, being an observant man by nature, I noticed as I sat there one thing which filled me with curiosity. The tops of the Major’s fingers and thumb of his right hand were thick and slightly deformed, while the skin was hardened and the nails worn down to the quick.
While the left hand was of normal appearance, the other had undoubtedly performed hard manual labour. A major holding her Majesty’s commission does not usually bear such evident traces of toil. The hand was out of keeping with the fine diamond ring that flashed upon it.
“The incident of to-day,” I said, “has been to me most unusual. It hardly seems possible that I am a bridegroom, for, truth to tell, I fancied myself the most confirmed of bachelors. Early marriage always hampers the professional man.”
“But I don’t suppose you will have any cause for regret on that score,” he observed. “You will have been a bridegroom and a widower in a single day.”
I was silent. His words betrayed him. He knew of the plot conceived by his friend to bribe me to kill the woman to whom I had been so strangely wedded!
But successfully concealing my surprise at his incautious words, I answered —
“Yes, mine will certainly have been a unique experience.”
He courteously