The Silent House
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SILENT HOUSE
BY
FERGUS HUME
New York
C. H. DOSCHER
Copyright, 1907, by
C. H. DOSCHER
[Illustration: I have ample time at my command, and I shall only be
too happy to place it and myself at your service]
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I--The Tenant of the Silent House 1
II--Shadows on the Blind 10
III--An Unsatisfactory Explanation 20
IV--Mrs. Kebby's Discovery 29
V--The Talk of the Town 38
VI--Mrs. Vrain's Story 47
VII--The Assurance Money 56
VIII--Diana Vrain 65
IX--A Marriage That Was a Failure 74
X--The Parti-Coloured Ribbon 83
XI--Further Discoveries 93
XII--The Veil and Its Owner 101
XIII--Gossip 111
XIV--The House in Jersey Street 121
XV--Rhoda and the Cloak 131
XVI--Mrs. Vrain at Bay 141
XVII--A Denial 151
XVIII--Who Bought the Cloak? 160
XIX--The Defence of Count Ferruci 169
XX--A New Development 179
XXI--Two Months Pass 187
XXII--At Berwin Manor 196
XXIII--A Startling Theory 206
XXIV--Lucian Is Surprised 215
XXV--A Dark Plot 224
XXVI--The Other Man's Wife 233
XXVII--A Confession 241
XXVIII--The Name of the Assassin 252
XXIX--Link Sets a Trap 262
XXX--Who Fell into the Trap 272
XXXI--A Strange Confession 282
XXXII--The Confession (_continued_) 291
XXXIII--What Rhoda Had to Say 301
XXXIV--The End of It All 310
THE SILENT HOUSE
CHAPTER I
THE TENANT OF THE SILENT HOUSE
Lucian Denzil was a briefless barrister, who so far departed from the
traditions of his brethren of the long robe as not to dwell within the
purlieus of the Temple. For certain private reasons, not unconnected
with economy, he occupied rooms in Geneva Square, Pimlico; and, for the
purposes of his profession, repaired daily, from ten to four, to
Serjeant's Inn, where he shared an office with a friend equally
briefless and poor.
This state of things sounds hardly enviable, but Lucian, being young and
independent to the extent of L300 a year, was not dissatisfied with his
position. As his age was only twenty-five, there was ample time, he
thought, to succeed in his profession; and, pending that desirable
consummation, he cultivated the muses on a little oatmeal, after the
fashion of his kind. There have been lives less happily circumstanced.
Geneva Square was a kind of backwater of the great river of town life
which swept past its entrance with speed and clamour without disturbing
the peace within. One long, narrow street led from a roaring
thoroughfare into a silent quadrangle of tall grey houses, occupied by
lodging-house keepers, city clerks and two or three artists, who
represented the Bohemian element of the place. In the centre there was
an oasis of green lawn, surrounded by rusty iron railings the height of
a man, dotted with elms of considerable age, and streaked with narrow
paths of yellow gravel.
The surrounding houses represented an eminently respectable appearance,
with their immaculately clean steps, white-curtained windows, and neat
boxes of flowers. The windows glittered like diamonds, the door-knobs
and plates shone with a yellow lustre, and there were no sticks, or
straws, or waste paper lying about to mar the tidy look of the square.
With one exception, Geneva Square was a pattern of all that was
desirable in the way of cleanliness and order. One might hope to find
such a haven in some somnolent cathedral town, but scarcely in the
grimy, smoky, restless metropolis of London.
The exception to the notable spotlessness of the neighborhood was No.
13, a house in the centre of the side opposite to the entrance. Its
windows were dusty, and without blinds or curtains, there were no
flower-boxes on the ledges, the steps lacked whitewash, and the iron
railings looked rusty for want of paint. Stray straws and scraps of
paper found their way down the area, where the cracked pavement was damp
with green slime. Such beggars as occasionally wandered into the square,
to the scandal of its inhabitants, camped on the doorstep; and the very
door itself presented a battered, dissolute appearance.
Yet, for all its ill looks and disreputable suggestions, those who dwelt
in Geneva Square would not have seen it furbished up and occupied for
any money. They spoke about it in whispers, with ostentatious
tremblings, and daunted looks, for No. 13 was supposed to be haunted,
and had been empty for over twenty years. By reason of its legend, its
loneliness and grim appearance, it was known as the Silent House, and
formed quite a feature of the place. Murder had been done long ago in
one of its empty, dusty rooms, and it was since then that the victim
walked. Lights, said the ghost-seers, had been seen flitting from window
to window, groans were sometimes heard, and the apparition of a little
old woman in brocaded silk and high-heeled shoes appeared on occasions.
Hence the Silent House bore an uncanny reputation.
How much truth there was in these stories it is impossible to say; but
sure enough, in spite of a low rental, no tenant would take No. 13 and
face its ghostly terrors. House and apparition and legend had become
quite a tradition, when the whole fantasy was ended in the summer of '95
by the unexpected occupation of the mansion. Mr. Mark Berwin, a
gentleman of mature age, who came from nobody knew where, rented No. 13,
and established himself therein to lead a strange and lonely life.
At first, the gossips, strong in ghostly tradition, declared that the
new tenant would not remain a week in the house; but as the week
extended into six months, and Mr. Berwin showed no signs of leaving,
they left off speaking of the ghost and took to discussing the man
himself. In a short space of time quite a collection of stories were
told about the newcomer and his strange ways.
Lucian heard many of these tales from his landlady. How Mr. Berwin lived
all alone in the Silent House without servant or companion; how he spoke
to none, and admitted no one into the mansion; how he appeared to have
plenty of money, and was frequently seen coming home more or less
intoxicated; and how Mrs. Kebby, the deaf charwoman who cleaned out Mr.
Berwin's rooms, declined to sleep in the house because she considered
that there was something wrong about her employer.
To such gossip Denzil paid little attention, until his skein of life
became unexpectedly entangled with that of the strange gentleman. The
manner of their meeting was unforeseen and peculiar.
One foggy November night, Lucian, returning from the theatre, shortly
after eleven o'clock, dismissed his hansom at the entrance to the square
and walked thereinto through the thick mist, trusting to find his way
home by reason of two years' familiarity with the precincts. As it was
impossible to see even the glare of the near gas lamp in the murky air,
Lucian felt his way cautiously along the railings. The square was filled
with fog, dense to the eye and cold to the feel, so that Lucian shivered
with the chill, in spite of the fur coat over his evening clothes.
As he edged gingerly along, and thought longingly of the fire and supper
awaiting him in his comfortable rooms, he was startled by hearing a
deep, rich voice boom out almost at his feet. To make the phenomenon
still more remarkable, the voice shaped itself into certain well-known
words of Shakespeare:
"Oh!" boomed this _vox et praeterea nihil_ in rather husky tones, "Oh!
that a man should put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains!"
And then through the mist and darkness came the unmistakable sound of
sobs.
"God bless me!" cried Lucian, leaping back, with shaken nerves. "Who is
this? Who are you?"
"A lost soul!" wailed the deep voice, "which God will not bless!" And
then came the sobbing again.
It made Denzil's blood run cold to hear this unseen creature weeping in
the gloom. Moving cautiously in the direction of the sound, he stumbled
against a man with his folded arms resting on the railings, and his face
bent down on his arms. He made no attempt to turn when Lucian touched
him, but with downcast head continued to weep and moan in a very frenzy
of self-pity.
"Here!" said the young barrister, shaking the stranger by the shoulder,
"what is the matter with you?"
"Drink!" stuttered the man, suddenly turning with a dramatic gesture. "I
am an object lesson to teetotalers; a warning to topers; a modern helot
made shameful to disgust youth with vice."
"You had better go home, sir," said Lucian sharply.
"I can't find home. It is somewhere hereabout, but where, I don't know."
"You are in Geneva Square," said Denzil, trying to sharpen the dulled
wits of the man.
"I wish I was in No. 13 of it," sighed the stranger. "Where the deuce is
No. 13? Not in this Cloudcuckooland, anyhow."
"Oh!" cried Lucian, taking the man's arm. "Come with me. I'll lead you
home, Mr. Berwin."
Scarcely had the name passed his lips than the stranger drew back
suddenly, with a hasty exclamation. Some suspicion seemed to engender a
mixture of terror and defiance which placed him on his guard against
undue intimacy, even when some undefined fear was knocking at his heart.
"Who are you?" he demanded in a steadier tone. "How do you know my
name?"
"My name is Denzil, Mr. Berwin, and I live in one of the houses of this
square. As you mention No. 13, I know you can be none other than Mr.
Mark Berwin, the tenant of the Silent House."
"The dweller in the haunted house," sneered Berwin, evidently relieved,
"who stays there with ghosts, and worse than ghosts."
"Worse than ghosts?"
"The phantoms of my own sins, young man. I have sowed folly, and now I
am reaping the crop. I am----" Here his further speech was interrupted
by a fit of coughing, which shook his lean figure severely. At its
conclusion he was so exhausted that he was forced to support himself
against the railings. "A portion of the crop," he murmured.
Lucian was sorry for the man, who seemed scarcely capable of looking
after himself, and he thought it unwise to leave him in such a plight.
At the same time, he was impatient of lingering in the heart of the
clammy fog at such a late hour; so, as his companion seemed indisposed
to move, he caught him again by the arm without ceremony. The abrupt
action seemed to waken again the fears of Berwin.
"Where would you take me?" he asked, resisting the gentle force used by
Lucian.
"To your own house. You will be ill if you stay here."
"You are not one of them?" asked the man suddenly.
"One of whom?"
"One of those who wish to harm me?"
Denzil began to think he had to do with a madman, and to gain his ends
he spoke to him in a soothing manner, as he would to a child: "I wish to
do you good, Mr. Berwin," said he gently. "Come to your home."
"Home! home! Ah, God, I have no home!"
Nevertheless, he gathered himself together, and with his arm in that of
his guide, stumbled along in the thick, chill mist. Lucian knew the
position of No. 13 well, as it almost faced the lodgings occupied by
himself, and by skirting the railings with due caution, he managed to
half lead, half drag his companion to the house. When they stood before
the door, and Berwin had assured himself that he was actually home by
the use of his latch-key, Denzil wished him a curt good-night. "And I
should advise you to go to bed at once," he concluded, turning to
descend the steps.
"Don't go! Don't go!" cried Berwin, seizing the young man by the arm. "I
am afraid to go in by myself--all is so dark and cold! Wait until I get
a light!"
As the creature's nerves seemed to be unhinged by over-indulgence in
alcohol, and he stood gasping and shivering on the threshold like some
beaten animal, Lucian took compassion on him.
"I'll see you indoors," said he, and striking a match, stepped into the
darkness after the man. The hall of No. 13 seemed to be almost as cold
as the world without, and the trifling glimmer of the lucifer served
rather to reveal than dispel the surrounding darkness. The light, as it
were, hollowed a gulf out of the tremendous gloom and made the house
tenfold more ghostly than before. The footsteps of Denzil and Berwin
sounding on the bare boards--for the hall was uncarpeted--waked hollow
echoes, and when they paused the silence which ensued seemed almost
menacing. The grim reputation of the mansion, its gloom and silence,
appealed powerfully to the latent superstition of Lucian. How much more
nearly, then, would it touch the shaken and excited nerves of the tragic
drunkard who dwelt continually amid its terrors!
Berwin opened a door on the right-hand side of the hall and turned up
the light of a handsome oil-lamp which had been screwed down pending his
arrival. This lamp was placed on a small square table covered with a
white cloth and a dainty cold supper. The young barrister noted that the
napery, cutlery, and crystal were all of the finest; that the viands
were choice; that champagne and claret were the beverages. Evidently
Berwin was a luxurious gentleman and indulgent to his appetites.
Lucian tried to gain a long look at him in the mellow light, but Berwin
kept his face turned away, and seemed as anxious now for his visitor to
go as he had been for him to enter. Denzil, quick in comprehension, took
the hint at once.
"I'll go now, as you have the light burning," said he. "Good-night."
"Good-night," replied Berwin shortly, and added to his discourtesy by
letting Lucian find his way out alone.
And so ended the barrister's first meeting with the strange tenant of
the Silent House.
CHAPTER II
SHADOWS ON THE BLIND
The landlady of Denzil was a rather uncommon specimen of the class. She
inclined to plumpness, was lively in the extreme, wore very fashionable
garments of the brightest colours, and--although somewhat elderly--still
cherished a hope that some young man would elevate her to the rank of a
matron.
At present, Miss Julia Greeb was an unwedded damsel of forty summers,
who, with the aid of art, was making desperate but ineffectual efforts
to detain the youth which was slipping from her. She pinched her waist,
dyed her hair, powdered her face, and affected juvenile dress of the
white frock and blue sash kind. In the distance she looked a girlish
twenty; close at hand various artifices aided her to pass for thirty;
and it was only in the solitude of her own room that her real age was
apparent. Never did woman wage a more resolute fight with Time than did
Miss Greeb.
But this was the worst and most frivolous side of her character, for she
was really a good-hearted, cheery little woman, with a brisk manner, and
a flow of talk unequalled in Geneva Square. She had been born in the
house she occupied, after the death of her father, and had grown up to
assist her mother in ministering to the exactions of a continuous
procession of lodgers. These came and went, married and died; but not
one of the desirable young men had borne Miss Greeb to the altar, so
that when her mother died the fair Julia almost despaired of attaining
to the dignity of wifehood. Nevertheless, she continued to keep
boarders, and to make attempts to captivate the hearts of such bachelors
as she judged weak in character.
Hitherto all her efforts had been more or less of a mercantile
character, with an eye to money; but when Lucian Denzil appeared on the
scene, the poor little woman really fell in love with his handsome face.
But, in strange contrast to her other efforts, Miss Greeb never for a
moment deemed that Lucian would marry her. He was her god, her ideal of
manhood, and to him she offered worship, and burnt incense after the
manner of her kind.
Denzil occupied a bedroom and sitting-room, both pleasant, airy
apartments, looking out on to the square. Miss Greeb attended to his
needs herself, and brought up his breakfast with her own fair hands,
happy for the day if her admired lodger conversed with her for a few
moments before reading the morning paper. Then Miss Greeb would retire
to her own sitting-room and indulge in day dreams which she well knew
would never be realised. The romances she wove herself were even more
marvellous than those she read in her favourite penny novelettes; but,
unlike the printed tales, her romance never culminated in marriage. Poor
brainless, silly, pitiful Miss Greeb; she would have made a good wife
and a fond mother, but by some irony of fate she was destined to be
neither; and the comedy of her husband-hunting youth was now changing
into the lonely tragedy of disappointed spinsterhood. She was one of the
world's unknown martyrs, and her fate merits tears rather than laughter.
On the morning after his meeting with Berwin, the young barrister sat at
breakfast, with Miss Greeb in anxious attendance. Having poured out his
tea, and handed him his paper, and ascertained that his breakfast was to
his liking, Miss Greeb lingered about the room, putting this straight
and that crooked, in the hope that Lucian would converse with her. In
this she was gratified, as Denzil wished to learn details about the
strange man he had assisted on the previous night, and he knew that no
one could afford him more precise information than his brisk landlady,
to whom was known all the gossip of the neighbourhood. His first word
made Miss Greeb flutter back to the table like a dove to its nest.
"Do you know anything about No. 13?" asked Lucian, stirring his tea.
"Do I know anything about No. 13?" repeated Miss Greeb in shrill
amazement. "Of course I do, Mr. Denzil. There ain't a thing I don't
know about that house. Ghosts and vampires and crawling spectres live in
it--that they do."
"Do you call Mr. Berwin a ghost?"
"No; nor nothing half so respectable. He is a mystery, sir, that's what
Mr. Berwin is, and I don't care if he hears me commit myself so far."
"In what way is he a mystery?" demanded Denzil, approaching the matter
with more particularity.
"Why," said Miss Greeb, evidently puzzled how to answer this leading
question, "no one can find out anything about him. He's full of secrets
and underhand goings on. It ain't respectable not to be fair and above
board--that it ain't."
"I see no reason why a quiet-living old gentleman should tell his
private affairs to the whole square," remarked Lucian drily.
"Those who have nothing bad to conceal needn't be afraid of speaking
out," retorted Miss Greeb tartly. "And the way in which Mr. Berwin lives
is enough to make one think him a coiner, or a thief, or even a
murderer--that it is!"
"But what grounds have you to believe him any one of the three?"
This question also puzzled the landlady, as she had no reasonable
grounds for her wild statements. Nevertheless, she made a determined
attempt to substantiate them by hearsay evidence. "Mr. Berwin," said she
in significant tones, "lives all alone in that haunted house."
"Why not? Every man has the right to be a misanthrope if he chooses."
"He has no right to behave so, in a respectable square," replied Miss
Greeb, shaking her head. "There's only two rooms of that large house
furnished, and all the rest is given up to dust and ghosts. Mr. Berwin
won't have a servant to live under his roof, and Mrs. Kebby, who does
his charing, says he drinks awful. Then he has his meals sent in from
the Nelson Hotel round the corner, and eats them all alone. He don't
receive no letters, he don't read no newspapers, and stays in all day,
only coming out at night, like an owl. If he ain't a criminal, Mr.
Denzil, why does he carry on so?"
"He may dislike his fellow-men, and desire to live a secluded life."
Miss Greeb still shook her head. "He may dislike his fellow-men," she
said with emphasis, "but that don't keep him from seeing them--ah! that
it don't."
"Is there anything wrong in that?" said Lucian, contemptuous of these
cobweb objections.
"Perhaps not, Mr. Denzil; but where do those he sees come from?"
"How do you mean, Miss Greeb?"
"They don't go in by the front door, that's certain," continued the
little woman darkly. "There's only one entrance to this square, sir,
and Blinders, the policeman, is frequently on duty there. Two or three
nights he's met Mr. Berwin coming in after dark and exchanged friendly
greetings with him, and each time Mr. Berwin has been alone!"
"Well! well! What of that?" said Denzil impatiently.
"This much, Mr. Denzil, that Blinders has gone round the square, after
seeing Mr. Berwin, and has seen shadows--two or three of them--on the
sitting-room blind. Now, sir," cried Miss Greeb, clinching her argument,
"if Mr. Berwin came into the square alone, how did his visitors get in?"
"Perhaps by the back," conjectured Lucian.
Again Miss Greeb shook her head. "I know the back of No. 13 as well as I
know my own face," she declared. "There's a yard and a fence, but no
entrance. To get in there you have to go in by the front door or down
the aiery steps; and you can't do neither without coming past Blinders
at the square's entrance, and that," finished Miss Greeb triumphantly,
"these visitors don't do."
"They may have come into the square during the day, when Blinders was
not on duty."
"No, sir," said Miss Greeb, ready for this objection. "I thought of that
myself, and as my duty to the square I have inquired--that I have. On
two occasions I've asked the day policeman, and he says no one passed."
"Then," said Lucian, rather puzzled, "Mr. Berwin cannot live alone in
the house."
"Begging your pardon, I'm sure," cried the pertinacious woman, "but he
does. Mrs. Kebby has been all over the house, and there isn't another
soul in it. No, Mr. Denzil, take it what way you will, there's
something that ain't right about Mr. Berwin--if that's his real name,
which I don't believe it is."
"Why, Miss Greeb?"
"Just because I don't," replied the landlady, with feminine logic. "And
if you think of having anything to do with this mystery, Mr. Denzil, I
beg of you not to, else you may come to something as is too terrible to
consider--that you may."
"Such as--"
"Oh, I don't know," cried Miss Greeb, tossing her head and gliding
towards the door. "It ain't for me to say what I think. I am the last
person in the world to meddle with what don't concern me--that I am."
And thus ending the conversation, Miss Greeb vanished, with significant
look and pursed-up lips.
The reason of this last speech and rapid retreat lay in the fact that
Miss Greeb could bring no tangible charge against her opposite
neighbour; and therefore hinted at his complicity in all kinds of
horrors, which she was quite unable to define save in terms more or less
vague.
Lucian dismissed such hints of criminality from his mind as the outcome
of Miss Greeb's very lively imagination; yet, even though he reduced her
communications to bare facts, he could not but acknowledge that there
was something queer about Mr. Berwin and his mode of life. The man's
self-pity and self-condemnation; his hints that certain people wished
to do him harm; the curious episode of the shadows on the blind--these
things engaged the curiosity of Denzil in no ordinary degree; and he
could not but admit to himself that it would greatly ease his mind to
arrive at some reasonable explanation of Berwin's eccentricities.
Nevertheless, he held that he had no right to pry into the secrets of
the stranger, and honourably strove to dismiss the tenant of No. 13 and
his tantalising environments from his mind. But such dismissal of
unworthy curiosity was more difficult to effect than he expected.
For the next week Lucian resolutely banished the subject from his
thoughts, and declined to discuss the matter further with Miss Greeb.
That little woman, all on fire with curiosity, made various inquiries of
her gossips regarding the doings of Mr. Berwin, and in default of
reporting the same to her lodger, occupied herself in discussing them
with her neighbours. The consequence of this incessant gossip was that
the eyes of the whole square fixed themselves on No. 13 in expectation
of some catastrophe, although no one knew exactly what was going to
happen.
This undefinable feeling of impending disaster communicating itself to
Lucian, stimulated his curiosity to such a pitch that, with some feeling
of shame for his weakness, he walked round the square on two several
evenings in the hope of meeting Berwin. But on both occasions he was
unsuccessful.
On the third evening he was more fortunate, for having worked at his
law books until late at night, he went out for a brisk walk before
retiring to rest. The night was cold, and there had been a slight fall
of snow, so Lucian wrapped himself up well, lighted his pipe, and
proceeded to take the air by tramping twice or thrice round the square.
Overhead the sky was clear and frosty, with chill glittering stars and a
wintry moon. A thin covering of snow lay on the pavement, and there was
a white rime on the bare branches of the central trees.