The Red Widow: or, The Death-Dealers of London. Le Queux William

passing actively in and about the neighbourhood, keenly on the alert for any new clients and any fresh "proposals."

      Probably Mr. Boyne was one of the best known of local personalities. He was a regular attendant at the parish church of St. George the Martyr, Hammersmith, where he acted as sidesman. Further, he was honorary secretary to quite a number of charitable organisations and committees in Hammersmith, and in consequence had become acquainted with most of the wealthiest residents.

      "Busy" Boyne – for that was what the people of Hammersmith called him – was a widower, and lived in that small unpretentious house, a very deaf old woman named Mrs. Felmore – the aunt of Marigold Ramsay – looking after him. For several years she had performed the domestic duties, and she did them well, notwithstanding her infirmity.

      Now this is what happened.

      On Thursday night, on his return after a strenuous day at about ten o'clock, Boyne had entered his small sitting-room and taken his bulky notebook and papers from his pocket. Then he had thrown off his coat and sat down to the cold meal which Mrs. Felmore had prepared for him prior to retiring. Though the house was so dingy, yet everything appertaining to its master's comfort was well ordered, as shown by the fact that the evening paper was lying neatly folded, ready for his hand.

      Beneath the hissing incandescent gas-jet Bernard Boyne looked very pale, his eyes deeply set, his brow furrowed and careworn. He seemed weary and out-of-sorts.

      "Fool!" he grunted aloud to himself. "I'm growing nervous! I suppose it is that big cheque that I had to-day – seven thousand, eight hundred – the biggest I've ever had. I wonder if I ought to tell Lilla?"

      The room was the typical home of a man earning an income on commission just sufficient to enable him to "rub along" in comfort. It was certainly not the room of a man who was receiving cheques for such sums as seven thousand, eight hundred pounds.

      At first glance Bernard Boyne, as he stood there in his shirt-sleeves, was an excellent type of the steady, reliable insurance agent, with no soul above "proposals" and "premiums." They constituted his sole aim in life, now that his "dear wife" was dead.

      Nobody suspected the man who so piously passed round the bag in St. George the Martyr on Sundays to be a man of mystery. Nobody, indeed, would ever have dreamed that the active man in question would be placing cheques to his account of such value as seven thousand odd pounds.

      "I wonder how long I shall remain here?" he whispered to himself. "I wonder what all these good people would say if they but knew – eh? If they knew! But, happily, they don't know!" He chuckled to himself.

      He was silent for a moment as he crossed to rearrange the dusty old Venetian blinds.

      Then he turned to a half-open cupboard beside the fireplace, and from it took a small wire cage from which he released a tame white rat, which instantly ran up his arm and settled upon his shoulder.

      "Poor little Nibby!" he exclaimed, tenderly stroking its sharp pink snout with his forefinger. "Have I neglected you? Poor little fellow! – a prisoner all day! But if I let you out when I'm away some nasty terrier might get you – eh? Come let me atone for my neglect."

      And he placed his pet upon the table, over which the rodent ran to investigate the remains of the meal.

      Boyne stood watching his pet nibbling at a scrap of sausage.

      "Ah!" he gasped in a whisper. "If they knew – but they will never know. They can't!"

      A few minutes later his actions were, to say the least, strange.

      He flung himself into the old armchair from which the flock stuffing protruded from the worn-out American cloth, and unbuttoning his dusty boots, took them off. Then, in his socks, he crept upstairs, and on the landing listened at the deaf old woman's door. Sounds of heavy snoring apparently satisfied him.

      Back again he returned to the parlour, and with a key opened the opposite cupboard beside the fireplace, from which he took a very long, loose coat which seemed to be made of white alpaca. This he shook out and submitted to close scrutiny. It was shaped like a monk's habit, with a leather strap around the waist – a curious garment, for it had a hood attached, with two slits in it for the eyes.

      After careful examination of the strange garment, he put it on over his head, drawing down the hood over his eyes, which gave him a hideous appearance – like the ghost of an ancient Inquisitor of Spain, or a member of the mediæval Misericordia Society of Italy, dressed in white instead of black.

      Thus attired, he fumbled beneath in his pocket, and then noiselessly ascended the two flights of stairs to an attic door upon which was the circular brass plate of a Yale lock. This he opened, and passing within, closed the door softly behind him.

      Bernard Boyne naturally believed himself alone in the house with old Mrs. Felmore sound asleep – but, truth to tell, he was not!

      As he ascended the stairs, Marigold's pale face peered around the corner. The shock of seeing such a hideous ghostly form moving silently upstairs proved almost too much for her. But clinging on to the banisters, she managed to repress the cry of alarm which rose to her lips, and she stood there rooted to the spot – full of wonder and bewilderment. She listened breathlessly, still standing in the dark passage which led to the kitchen stairs. Then she detected the sound of the key going into the lock of the upstairs room where she knew Mr. Boyne kept his private papers.

      But was it Mr. Boyne? Or was it an intruder who had adopted that garb in order to frighten any person he might encounter? Besides, why should Mr. Boyne assume such a strange disguise before entering the room where his business papers were stored?

      Now upon that summer night Marigold had called about nine o'clock to visit her aunt, who had in years past been as a mother to her, to have a snack of supper, as she often did. Afterwards she had helped her aunt to prepare Mr. Boyne's frugal meal. Then old Mrs. Felmore, feeling rather unwell, had gone to bed, leaving her niece in the kitchen to write an urgent letter to Gerald, which she wanted to post before midnight.

      As she finished the letter, she had heard someone enter, and not desiring that Mr. Boyne should know of her presence there at that hour, she had moved about quietly, and was just about to escape from the house when she had seen that strangely-garbed figure ascending the stairs.

      The girl's first impulse had been to waken her aunt and raise an alarm that an intruder had entered the place. But on seeing that the supper had been eaten, and that Mr. Boyne's hat and coat lay upon the sofa, she at once decided that the figure that had ascended the stairs to the locked room was actually that of the master of the house.

      "Why is he dressed like that?" she asked herself in a whisper, as she stood in the front parlour. "What can it mean?"

      She glanced around the room. The cupboard beside the fireplace, which stood open, and from which Boyne had taken his strange disguise, caught her eye. She had never before seen that cupboard open, for her aunt had always told her that Mr. Boyne kept some of his important insurance papers there. Therefore, with curiosity, the girl approached it, finding it practically empty, save for a woman's big racoon muff, and with it a photograph – that of a handsome, well-preserved woman of about forty, across the front of which had been scrawled in a thin, feminine hand the signature, "Lilla, January, 1919."

      Who was Lilla? She wondered.

      Mr. Boyne she knew as a pleasant, easy-going man, full of generosity so far as his limited means allowed. He was a widower, who frequently referred to his "poor dear wife," and would descant upon her good qualities and how affectionately they had lived together for ten years.

      The photograph, which she examined beneath the light, was quite a new one, and dated – hence it could not be that of the late Mrs. Boyne.

      "I'll come back and tell auntie to-morrow," she said to herself. "She ought to know – or one night she'll see him and get a shock like I've had. And her heart is not too strong. Yes – I must warn her – then no doubt she'll watch."

      With those words she dabbed her hair in front of the cheap mirror over the mantelshelf, and then treading on tiptoe, went to the front door and let herself out.

      This was the strange story