The Temptress. Le Queux William

he returned to the bureau, still holding the photograph in his hand, and after a few moments’ eager search drew forth a small packet of letters tied with pink tape and sealed with red wax.

      They had evidently been carefully preserved, for he discovered the packet concealed at the back of one of the small drawers in the interior.

      With hands trembling with feverish excitement he took them to the window. Hastily he broke the seals, drew off the tape, and found there were three letters.

      He felt a sudden throb at his heart, a touch of suspense that was painful, as he opened the first anxiously.

      “Her handwriting!” he ejaculated excitedly, at the same time taking from his pocket a letter he had received that morning from Valérie, and placing them side by side.

      The peculiarities of the fine angular calligraphy were exactly similar.

      He read the letter. It was disappointing.

      Merely a plain, curt note, commencing: “Dear Douglas,” making an appointment to meet at the Midland Hotel, St. Pancras, from which place it was dated and signed with the initial “V.”

      The discovery had wrought a great change in him. He was not the same man. A cloud overspread his countenance, and he remained buried in thought.

      When he roused himself to glance at the second letter, he seemed yet more melancholy.

      It certainly was an interesting and correspondingly mysterious communication.

      Dated from 14 Rue d’Amsterdam, Paris, it commenced without any prefix, endearing or formal, and bore unmistakable signs of having been hastily written. It read as follows:

      If you do not call before midday to-morrow I shall know that you refuse to entertain any conciliatory measure. Time does not admit of argument; I must act. At least, I must leave Paris to-morrow night, and even then all may be known. Fail to come, and I shall know you are my enemy. If I am unfortunate, rest assured I shall not suffer alone. Take my advice and seek me the moment you receive this, as it is imperative we should arrange matters before my departure. This course will be the best for you.

      V.

      “There was some secret between them!” Hugh said to himself in a strange half-whisper, as he finished the curious epistle. “I wonder what it was? It is clear she had a very strong motive in her desire to see him, and the letter, from its general tone, appears to relate to some transaction in which they were both implicated.”

      Suddenly the words of Jack Egerton, when he had pointed Valérie out at Eastbourne, recurred to him.

      “The less of her sort the better,” he mused, gazing out of the window abstractedly. “I never asked Jack what he meant by that mysterious allusion. Perhaps, however, he didn’t mean it seriously, and only said it in chaff.”

      He remained silent for some moments.

      “Why,” he suddenly exclaimed, “why should I believe malignant stories, when there is nothing to prove them? These letters are certainly strange, yet, after all, they may relate to some purely matter-of-fact affair.”

      Truth to tell, he felt half inclined to believe there had been a deeper meaning in the artist’s words than he imagined, and was stupefied in the agony of mental struggle. He stood rigid and confounded, gazing in turn at the letters and photograph, utterly unable to account for the curious and secret correspondence that had evidently taken place between his late brother and the woman who had promised to become his wife.

      At last he opened the remaining letter, and was astonished to find it merely a blank sheet of notepaper, inside which was carefully preserved a scrap of half-burned paper about two inches square. Apparently it was a portion of a letter which, after being torn across, had been thrown into the fire. By some means the edges had been burned, the remainder being severely scorched.

      It was written on one side of the paper, and the words, which were in French, and in a disguised hand, revealed a fact which added interest to the discovery. Necessarily few, they were very pointed, and translated they read:

      Our agreement… dies I will… meet in London… of that sum on June 13th… Montabello to his rooms on the Boulevard… defy detection by…

      He read and re-read these words, but could glean little from them. The small piece of blackened paper had presumably formed part of a note, but it was clear that the writer was illiterate, or intentionally ignorant, for in two instances the orthography was faulty.

      Try how he would, Hugh was unable to disguise the fact that it was a promise to pay a certain sum, and the mention of the word “dies” seemed as if it had connection with some dark deed. Perhaps it alluded to the secret referred to by Valérie in the former letter! With tantalising contrariety, any names that had been mentioned had been consumed, and nothing but the few words already given remained as indication of what the communication originally contained.

      Nevertheless, thought Hugh, it must have been regarded as of considerable importance by his brother, or it would not have been so carefully preserved and concealed. So crisp was it in its half-consumed condition, that he was compelled to handle it tenderly, otherwise it would have crumbled.

      Having satisfied himself that nothing further could be gathered from the almost obliterated words, he replaced it carefully inside the sheet of notepaper, and proceeded to make a thorough search of the bureau.

      In vain he took out the remaining letters and scanned them eagerly, hoping to find something which would throw a further light upon the extraordinary missives. None, however, contained any reference to Valérie, or to Paris. When he had finished, he summoned old Jacob, and ordered him to make a fire and burn all except about half a dozen, which appeared of a business character.

      Placing the photograph and the three letters in his pocket, he stood thoughtfully watching the old man as he piled the bills and the billets-doux upon the wide-open hearth and ignited them.

      The mysterious correspondence sorely puzzled him, and he was determined to find out its meaning. Undoubtedly, Douglas and Valérie were intimately acquainted, and from the tone in which she wrote, it appeared as if from some reason she was afraid of him, and, further, that she was leaving Paris by compulsion.

      His thoughts were embittered by a vague feeling of jealousy and hatred towards his brother, yet he felt himself on the verge of a discovery which might possibly lead to strange disclosures.

      Curiously enough, our sins find us out very rapidly. We cannot tamper with what is right and for the best in order to secure what is temporarily convenient without invoking Nemesis; and sometimes she comes with a rapid tread that is a little disconcerting.

      Though he experienced a strange apprehensive feeling, Hugh Trethowen little dreamed of the significance of the communications which, by a strange vagary of Fate, had been placed under his hand.

      Chapter Nine

      Denizens of Soho

      A dirty, frowsy room, with furniture old and rickety, a ceiling blackened, and a faded carpet full of holes.

      Its two occupants, dark, sallow-looking foreigners in shabby-genteel attire, sat conversing seriously in French, between frequent whiffs of caporal cigarettes of the most rank description.

      Bateman’s Buildings, Soho – where, on the second floor of one of the houses, this apartment was situated – is a thoroughfare but little known, even to dwellers in the immediate vicinity. The wandering Londoner, whose peregrinations take him into the foreign quarter, might pass a dozen times between Frith and Greek Streets without discovering its existence. Indeed, his search will not be rewarded until he pauses halfway down Bateman Street and turns up a narrow and exceedingly uninviting passage between a marine-store dealer’s and the shop of a small vendor of vegetables and coals. He will then find himself at Bateman’s Buildings, a short, paved court, lined on each side by grimy, squalid-looking houses, the court itself forming the playground of a hundred or so spirited juveniles of the unwashed class.

      It is altogether a very undesirable place of abode. The houses, in comparison with those of some neighbouring thoroughfares, certainly put forward a sorry pretence