On the instant he produced his own and gave it to her. She glanced at it, then handed it back.
"It is not his," she said quietly. Her gaze rested steadily upon Osborne's face for some moments, then she said:
"How exceedingly kind of you to come all this way, and in the middle of the night, just to find out if a purse picked up at your club happens to belong to the guest of a friend of yours."
In her low, soft voice there was a touch of irony, almost of mockery. Looking at her now, I felt puzzled. Was she what she appeared to be, or was this amazing beauty of hers a cloak, a weapon if you will, perhaps the most dangerous weapon of a clever, scheming woman? Easterton had told us that Gastrell was a bachelor. Gastrell had declared that he had never before met either Jack Osborne or myself. Yet here at the address that Gastrell had given to the taxi-driver was the very woman the man calling himself Gastrell, with whom Osborne had returned from Africa, had passed off as his wife.
"My husband isn't in at present," she said calmly, a moment later, "but I expect him back at any minute. Won't you come in and wait for him?"
Before either of us could answer she had walked across the hall, unlocked and opened a door, and switched on the light in the room.
Mechanically we followed her. As we entered, a strange, heavy perfume of some subtle Eastern scent struck my nostrilsI had noticed it in the hall, but in this room it was pungent, oppressive, even overpowering. The apartment, I noticed, was luxuriously furnished. What chiefly attracted my attention, however, were the pictures on the walls. Beautifully executed, the subjects were, to say the least, peculiar. The fire in the grate still burned brightly. Upon a table were two syphons in silver stands, also decanters containing spirits, and several tumblers. Some of the tumblers had been used. As I sank, some moments later, into an easy chair, I felt that its leather-covered arms were warm, as if someone had just vacated it.
And yet the door of this room had been locked. Also, when we had arrived, no light had been visible in any of the windows of the house, and the front door had been chained and bolted.
"Make yourselves quite at home," our beautiful hostess said, and, as she spoke, she placed a box of cigars, newly opened, upon the table at my elbow. "I am sorry," she added, "that I must leave you now."
There was a curious expression in her eyes as she smiled down at us, an expression that later I came to know too well. Then, turning, she swept gracefully out of the room, closing the door behind her.
I looked across at Osborne. For some moments neither of us spoke. The mysterious house was still as death.
"Well, Jack," I said lightly, though somehow I felt uneasy, "what do you make of it, old man?"
"It is just as I thought," he answered, taking a cigar out of the box and beginning to trim it.
"How do you mean'just as you thought'?" I asked, puzzled.
"Gastrell is an impostor, andand that isn't his wife."
He did not speak again for some moments, being busily occupied in lighting his long cigar. Presently he leaned back, then blew a great cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.
Suddenly we heard a click, like the wooden lid of a box suddenly shut.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed suddenly, "what's that?"
"What's what?"
"Why! Look!" he gasped.
His gaze was set upon something in the shadow of a small table in a corner of the roomsomething on the floor. In silence, now, we both stood staring at it, for Osborne had risen suddenly. Slowly it moved. It was gradually gliding along the floor, with a sound like paper being pushed along a carpet. Whence it came, where it began and where it ended, we could not see, for the shadow it was in was very deep. Nor was its colour in the least discernible.
All we could make out was that some long, sinuous, apparently endless Thing was passing along the room, close to the wall farthest from us, coming from under the sofa and disappearing beneath the table.
All at once Osborne sprang towards me with an exclamation of alarm, and I felt his grip tighten upon my arm.
"Good God!" he cried.
An instant later a broad, flat head slowly reared itself from beneath the red table-cover which hung down almost to the floor, rose higher and higher until the black, beady, merciless eyes were set upon mine, and in that brief instant of supreme suspense my attention became riveted on the strange, slate-grey mark between and just behind the reptile's cruel eyes. Then, as its head suddenly shot back, Osborne dashed towards the door.
Once, twice, three times he pulled frantically at the handle with all his force.
"Good God! Berrington," he cried, his face blanched to the lips, "we're locked in!"
Almost as he spoke, the serpent with head extended swept forward towards us, along the floor.
I held my breath. Escape from its venomous fangs was impossible.
We had been trapped!
CHAPTER III
A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
With a shriek of alarm I leapt to the further side of the table which stood in the middle of the room, and at that moment hurried footsteps became audible.
Our wild shouts for help had evidently been heard, for someone was hurrying down the bare oak stairs into the hall.
"Hang this confounded lockit catches!" we heard a voice exclaim as the handle turned. Then an instant later the door was flung open, and Gastrell stood before us.
"I am dreadfully sorry, you fellows," he said apologetically, "that you should have been alarmed in this way, because I can assure you that my tame cobra, 'Maharaja,' is quite harmlesslook at him now," and we saw that the horrid reptile had swung round the instant its master had entered, and was sliding towards his feet. "He's a pet of mineI brought him home with me, and he follows me like a dogno, you needn't be in the least nervous," he added quickly, seeing that I instinctively edged away as the reptile passed. "I'm awfully sorry to have kept you waiting. I must apologize, too, for that confounded doorI myself got locked in here the other day. My wife told you I was out, but I was not. I came in by the side door, and she didn't know I was back, because I went straight upstairs. If you'll wait a moment I'll take our friend 'Maharaja' out."
He left the room, and the snake slid rapidly along the floor after him, almost, as he had said, like a dog following his steps.
"A nice cheerful pet to keep," I remarked, annoyed at my experience; but at that moment the mysterious Gastrell bustled in alone.
"So sorry," he said, and, after thanking us for coming out so far to ascertain if he had lost his purse, he pulled up a chair, seated himself between us, lit a big cigar, and helped us to whiskey from a silver tantalus.
"You had better add the soda yourselves," he said. "And now there is something I want to say to you both. You must have been surprised at my declaring so emphatically this evening that I had not met either of you beforeeh?"
"I can answer for myself," Osborne exclaimed quickly. "Are you going to admit, after all, that you were on the Masonic?"
"Of course! Who else could it have been? Any more," he added, addressing me, than it could have been someone other than me whom you met in Geneva?"
"Then why did you deny it?" Osborne said rather irritably, looking hard at him with an expression of disapproval and mistrust, while my eyes wandered to that little gold medallion upon his chain.
"Because I had to,that is, it was expedient that I should," was his reply. "I have a reason for not wanting it to be generally known that I am married,least of all did I want Easterton, whose house I have just leased, to know me to be a married man; indeed, I told him some weeks ago that I was a bachelorI had to, for reasons which I can't reveal at present."
He stopped speaking, and we watched him narrowly.
"Still," I remarked, "I don't see how you could have been on board ship in the middle of the ocean, and at the same time in London."
"I didn't say I was. I wasn't. I was in London a fortnight ago, and spent some hours with Lord Easterton. On the same day I sailed for Madeira, where I joined my wife on the homeward-bound Masonic. Think, Mr. Osborne," he ended, his curious gaze set on my companion's face, "think when we first met on board. It was not before the ship reached Madeira, surely."
Jack Osborne reflected.
"By Jove, no!" he suddenly exclaimed. "How odd I should all along have thought you had embarked at Capetown with the rest of us. But Mrs. Gastrell came from the Cape, surely?"
"She did, and the name 'Mr. Gastrell' was also in the passenger list, because a cousin of mine should have been on board. At the eleventh hour he was prevented from sailing, and it was upon receipt of a cable from him that I decided to catch the next boat to the Canaries and there meet my wife."
I admit that, as he paused, I felt rather "small"; and I believe Osborne felt the same. We had driven from the club right out here to Swiss Cottage, and on the way we had conjured up in our imaginations all sorts of mysterious happenings, even possible intrigues; and now the whole affair proved to have been "quite ordinary," with a few commonplace incidents to relieve its monotonynotably the incident of the giant cobra.
True, there was the mystery of the locked door. But then, had it really been locked? I had not myself tried to open it, and now as I thought about it, it seemed to me quite possible that Jack Osborne might, in the excitement of the moment, have failed to turn the handle sufficiently, and so have believed that the door was locked when it was not. Again we had Gastrell's assurance that he had found himself locked in one day. As for his declaration to Easterton that he was not the Gastrell whom Osborne had met on the Masonic, it was clear now that he had some secret reason for wishing to pass in London as a bachelor, and as Osborne had told Easterton that the Gastrell on the Masonic had told him that he had met me in Geneva, naturally Gastrell had been drivenin order to conceal his identityto maintain that he had never before met me either.
Our host insisted upon our taking another of his very excellent cigars before we left,it was close upon one o'clock when we rose to go. He rang up a taxi for us, helped us on with our coats, accompanied us to the door, and shook hands with each of us most cordially.
"What do you make of it, Michael?" Osborne asked, when we had remained silent in the swift-travelling taxi for five minutes or more, and were approaching Marlboro' Road Station."
"Nothing," I answered bluntly. "I don't know what to make of it."
"Suspect anything?"
"Yesand no."
"That's just how I feel, and yet"
"Well?"
"I mistrust him. I don't know why, but I do. I mistrust them both. There's something queer happening in that house. I am certain there is."
"You can't be certain, as you don't know."
"My suspicions are so strong that they amount to convictions."
"So I think, too. And those dirty tumblers on the tray, and the hot arm-chair I sat down inJack, I believe there were a lot of people in that house, hidden away somewhere, all the time we were there. I believe Gastrell admitted his identity only because he was obliged to. Our calling like that, so unexpectedly, and being admitted by his wifeif she is his wifedisconcerted him and took him unawares. I can't think why she admitted usespecially I can't think why she kept us so long in the dark in the hall before she switched on the light. By Jove! What a stunning woman!"
"She isbut crafty. I thought that when I met her on board ship. And those eyes of hers. Phew! They seem to read right into one's soul, and discover one's secret thoughts." He stopped for an instant, then added, meditatively, "I wonder what makes Gastrell keep that horrible cobra as a pet."
I yawned, and we relapsed into silence. Then gradually my thoughts drifteddrifted away from London, far from crowds and hustle, the rumble of motor 'buses and the hootings and squawkings of ears, to a peaceful, rural solitude.
I was in Berkshire. Down in the picturesque valley into which I gazed from the summit of a wooded slope stood a Manor house, ivy-grown, old, very beautiful Facing it an enormous plateau, hewn out of the Down, had been converted to various usesthere were gardens, shrubberies, tennis lawns. Lower came terrace after terrace of smoothly mown grass, each with its little path and borders of shrubs, interspersed with the finest Wellingtonias in the county, tapering gracefully to heaven, copper-beeches and grand oaks.
The house itself was very long and low, its frontage white, mellowed with age, and broken up by old-fashioned, latticed windows which gleamed blue and grey in the translucent, frosted air. The roof of the Manor boasted a mass of beautiful red-brown gables, many half hidden from sight by the wealth of ivy; last summer also by a veritable tangle of Virginia creeper and crimson rambler, now sleeping their winter sleep.
My thoughts wandered on. They travelled with extraordinary rapidity, as thought does, picture after picture rising into the vision of my imagination like the scenes in a kaleidoscopic cinema.
Now I was seated in the old Manor. I could see the room distinctly. It was a small boudoir or ante-room opening into the large drawing-rooma cosy, homely place, its low, latticed windows, divided into four, opening outwards on to garden and terraces, its broad, inviting window-seat comfortably cushioned. Nearly all the furniture was quite old, dark oak, elaborately carvedwriting-table, high-backed chairs, an old French "armoury" in the corner; but near the hearth there were two or three deep, modern armchairs of peculiarly restful character, covered with exquisite flowered chintzes.
This vision deepened. I started. The door of the quiet room had suddenly opened, and, humming a gay little French air, a young girl had enteredfresh, exquisite, like a breath of early Springtime itself in the midst of Winter. With her deep eyes, so soft and brown, her skin of a healthy olive pallor, the cheeks just flushed with crimson, and her nimbus of light brown hair through which the golden threads strayed so charmingly, she made a perfect picture standing there in her long gown of sapphire-blue velvet.
The soft contours of her young face were outlined against a tall screen embroidered gorgeously with silken peacocks, before which she stopped to lay down upon a small table the sheaf of red and brown and golden chrysanthemums which she carried in her arms.
My pulses throbbed as they always did in her presence, or when, indeed, she so much as crossed my daydreams, as at this moment. For this girl was Dulcie Challonerthe woman who was fast becoming the one woman in the world to me, and thus had I seen her enter that very room when last I had spent a week-end at Holt Manor, four miles from the little village of Holt Staceyand that happened to have been only three weeks from the present moment.
The taxi stopped abruptly, shattering my dreams. We had reached the club. Some letters were awaiting me. My spirits rose as I recognized the handwriting on one of them.
Dulcie wrote to say that her father hoped, if I were not "already booked," I would spend Christmas with them.
I was "already booked." I had accepted an invitation a month before to dine on Christmas Day with an hysterical aunt from whom I had expectations. Well, the expectations must take their chance. Then and there I sat down and wrote a long letter to Dulcie saying what joy the contents of her letter had given me, and a brief line to my aunt explaining that "unavoidable circumstances had arisen" which necessitated my cancelling my promise to come to her, much as I regretted doing so.