"Oh! then it's you, Larry! Why did you knock? I was so frightened.
Turn up the light, dear. Come in!"
Feeling by the door for a switch in the pitch blackness he was conscious of arms round his neck, a warm thinly clad body pressed to his own; then withdrawn as quickly, with a gasp, and the most awful terror-stricken whisper:
"Oh! Who is it?"
With a glacial shiver down his own spine, Keith answered "A friend of Laurence. Don't be frightened!"There was such silence that he could hear a clock ticking, and the sound of his own hand passing over the surface of the wall, trying to find the switch. He found it, and in the light which leaped up he saw, stiffened against a dark curtain evidently screening off a bedroom, a girl standing, holding a long black coat together at her throat, so that her face with its pale brown hair, short and square-cut and curling up underneath, had an uncanny look of being detached from any body. Her face was so alabaster pale that the staring, startled eyes, dark blue or brown, and the faint rose of the parted lips, were like colour stainings on a white mask; and it had a strange delicacy, truth, and pathos, such as only suffering brings.
Though not susceptible to aesthetic emotion, Keith was curiously affected. He said gently:
"You needn't be afraid. I haven't come to do you harm--quite the contrary. May I sit down and talk?" And, holding up the keys, he added: "Laurence wouldn't have given me these, would he, if he hadn't trusted me?"Still she did not move, and he had the impression that he was looking at a spirit--a spirit startled out of its flesh. Nor at the moment did it seem in the least strange that he should conceive such an odd thought. He stared round the room--clean and tawdry, with its tarnished gilt mirror, marble-topped side-table, and plush-covered sofa. Twenty years and more since he had been in such a place. And he said:
"Won't you sit down? I'm sorry to have startled you."But still she did not move, whispering:
"Who are you, please?"
And, moved suddenly beyond the realm of caution by the terror in that whisper, he answered:
"Larry's brother."
She uttered a little sigh of relief which went to Keith's heart, and, still holding the dark coat together at her throat, came forward and sat down on the sofa. He could see that her feet, thrust into slippers, were bare; with her short hair, and those candid startled eyes, she looked like a tall child. He drew up a chair and said:
"You must forgive me coming at such an hour; he's told me, you see."He expected her to flinch and gasp; but she only clasped her hands together on her knees, and said:
"Yes?"
Then horror and discomfort rose up in him, afresh.
"An awful business!"
Her whisper echoed him:
"Yes, oh! yes! Awful--it is awful!"
And suddenly realising that the man must have fallen dead just where he was sitting, Keith became stock silent, staring at the floor.
"Yes," she whispered; "Just there. I see him now always falling!"How she said that! With what a strange gentle despair! In this girl of evil life, who had brought on them this tragedy, what was it which moved him to a sort of unwilling compassion?
"You look very young," he said.
"I am twenty."
"And you are fond of--my brother?"
"I would die for him."
Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes, true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first.
It was a very pretty face--either her life had not eaten into it yet, or the suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks; or perhaps this devotion of hers to Larry. He felt strangely at sea, sitting there with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the world, professionally used to every side of human nature. But he said, stammering a little:
"I--I have come to see how far you can save him. Listen, and just answer the questions I put to you."She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured:
"Oh! I will answer anything."
"This man, then--your--your husband--was he a bad man?""A dreadful man."
"Before he came here last night, how long since you saw him?""Eighteen months."
"Where did you live when you saw him last?"
"In Pimlico."
"Does anybody about here know you as Mrs. Walenn?""No. When I came here, after my little girl died, I came to live a bad life. Nobody knows me at all. I am quite alone.""If they discover who he was, they will look for his wife?""I do not know. He did not let people think I was married to him. Iwas very young; he treated many, I think, like me.""Do you think he was known to the police?"
She shook her head. "He was very clever."
"What is your name now?"
"Wanda Livinska."
"Were you known by that name before you were married?""Wanda is my Christian name. Livinska--I just call myself.""I see; since you came here."
"Yes."
"Did my brother ever see this man before last night?""Never."
"You had told him about his treatment of you?""Yes. And that man first went for him."
"I saw the mark. Do you think anyone saw my brother come to you?""I do not know. He says not."
"Can you tell if anyone saw him carrying the--the thing away?""No one in this street--I was looking."
"Nor coming back?"
"No one."
"Nor going out in the morning?"
"I do not think it."
"Have you a servant?"
"Only a woman who comes at nine in the morning for an hour.""Does she know Larry?"
"No."
"Friends, acquaintances?"
"No; I am very quiet. And since I knew your brother, I see no one.
Nobody comes here but him for a long time now.""How long?"
"Five months."
"Have you been out to-day?"
"No."
"What have you been doing?"
"Crying."
It was said with a certain dreadful simplicity, and pressing her hands together, she went on:
"He is in danger, because of me. I am so afraid for him."Holding up his hand to check that emotion, he said:
"Look at me!"
She fixed those dark eyes on him, and in her bare throat, from which the coat had fallen back, he could see her resolutely swallowing down her agitation.
"If the worst comes to the worst, and this man is traced to you, can you trust yourself not to give my brother away?"Her eyes shone. She got up and went to the fireplace: