The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

All his suavity dropped away from him, his face was distorted and puckered with anger and grew a shade darker. "Married, you lying little beast! He couldn't have been married! It was only a few minutes after eight, and the parson didn't come till nine. I'll break your neck if you try to scare me! I've told you about that before...."

      He raved on, and she listened unmoved.

      "He was married at eight o'clock by a man they brought down from Oxford, and who stayed the night in the house," she repeated with great calmness. "There's no sense in lashing yourself into a rage. I've seen the bride, and spoken to the clergyman."

      From the bullying, raging madman, he became a whimpering, pitiable thing. His chin trembled, the big hands he laid on the tablecloth shook with a fever.

      "What are we going to do?" he wailed. "My God, Jean, what are we going to do?"

      She rose and went to the sideboard, poured out a stiff dose of brandy from a decanter and brought it across to him without a word. She was used to these tantrums, and to their inevitable ending. She was neither hurt, surprised, nor disgusted. This pale, ethereal being was the dominant partner of the combination. Nerves she did not possess, fears she did not know. She had acquired the precise sense of a great surgeon in whom pity was a detached emotion, and one which never intruded itself into the operating chamber. She was no more phenomenal than they, save that she did not feel bound by the conventions and laws which govern them as members of an ordered society. It requires no greater nerve to slay than to cure. She had had that matter out with herself, and had settled it to her own satisfaction.

      "You will have to put off your trip to Monte Carlo," she said, as he drank the brandy greedily.

      "We've lost everything now," he stuttered, "everything."

      "This girl has no relations," said the daughter steadily. "Her heirs-at-law are ourselves."

      He put down the glass, and looked at her, and became almost immediately his old self.

      "My dear," he said admiringly, "you are really wonderful. Of course, it was childish of me. Now what do you suggest?"

      "Unlock that door," she said in a low voice, "I want to call the maid."

      As he walked to the door, she pressed the footbell, and soon after the faded woman who attended her came into the room.

      "Hart," she said, "I want you to find my emerald ring, the small one, the little pearl necklet, and the diamond scarf pin. Pack them carefully in a box with cotton wool."

      "Yes, madam," said the woman, and went out.

      "Now what are you going to do, Jean?" asked her father.

      "I am returning them to Mrs. Meredith," said the girl coolly. "They were presents given to me by her husband, and I feel after this tragic ending of my dream that I can no longer bear the sight of them."

      "He didn't give you those things, he gave you the chain. Besides, you are throwing away good money?"

      "I know he never gave them to me, and I am not throwing away good money," she said patiently. "Mrs. Meredith will return them, and she will give me an opportunity of throwing a little light upon James Meredith, an opportunity which I very much desire."

      Later she went up to her pretty little sitting-room on the first floor, and wrote a letter.

      "_Dear Mrs. Meredith.--I am sending you the few trinkets which James gave to me in happier days. They are all that I have of his, and you, as a woman, will realise that whilst the possession of them brings me many unhappy memories, yet they have been a certain comfort to me. I wish I could dispose of memory as easily as I send these to you (for I feel they are really your property) but more do I wish that I could recall and obliterate the occasion which has made Mr. Glover so bitter an enemy of mine._

      "_Thinking over the past, I see that I was at fault, but I know that you will sympathise with me when the truth is revealed to you. A young girl, unused to the ways of men, perhaps I attached too much importance to Mr. Glover's attentions, and resented them too crudely. In those days I thought it was unpardonable that a man who professed to be poor James's best friend, should make love to his fiance, though I suppose that such things happen, and are endured by the modern girl. A man does not readily forgive a woman for making him feel a fool--it is the one unpardonable offence that a girl can commit. Therefore, I do not resent his enmity as much as you might think. Believe me, I feel for you very much in these trying days. Let me say again that I hope your future will be bright._"

      She blotted the letter, put it in an envelope, and addressed it, and taking down a book from one of the well-stocked shelves, drew her chair to the fire, and began reading.

      Mr. Briggerland came in an hour after, looked over her shoulder at the title, and made a sound of disapproval.

      "I can't understand your liking for that kind of book," he said.

      The book was one of the two volumes of "Chronicles of Crime," and she looked up with a smile.

      "Can't you? It's very easily explained. It is the most encouraging work in my collection. Sit down for a minute."

      "A record of vulgar criminals," he growled. "Their infernal last dying speeches, their processions to Tyburn--phaugh!"

      She smiled again, and looked down at the book. The wide margins were covered with pencilled notes in her writing.

      "They're a splendid mental exercise," she said. "In every case I have written down how the criminal might have escaped arrest, but they were all so vulgar, and so stupid. Really the police of the time deserve no credit for catching them. It is the same with modern criminals...."

      She went to the shelf, and took down two large scrap-books, carried them across to the fire, and opened one on her knees.

      "Vulgar and stupid, every one of them," she repeated, as she turned the leaves rapidly.

      "The clever ones get caught at times," said Briggerland gloomily.

      "Never," she said, and closed the book with a snap. "In England, in France, in America, and in almost every civilised country, there are murderers walking about to-day, respected by their fellow citizens. Murderers, of whose crimes the police are ignorant. Look at these." She opened the book again. "Here is the case of Rell, who poisons a troublesome creditor with weed-killer. Everybody in the town knew he bought the weed-killer; everybody knew that he was in debt to this man. What chance had he of escaping? Here's Jewelville--he kills his wife, buries her in the cellar, and then calls attention to himself by running away. Here's Morden, who kills his sister-in-law for the sake of her insurance money, and who also buys the poison in broad daylight, and is found with a bottle in his pocket. Such people deserve hanging."

      "I wish to heaven you wouldn't talk about hanging," said Briggerland tremulously, "you're inhuman, Jean, by God--"

      "I'm an angel," she smiled, "and I have press cuttings to prove it! The _Daily Recorder_ had half a column on my appearance in the box at Jim's trial."

      He looked over toward the writing-table, saw the letter, and picked it up.

      "So you've written to the lady. Are you sending her the jewels?"

      She nodded.

      He looked at her quickly.

      "You haven't been up to any funny business with them, have you?" he asked suspiciously, and she smiled.

      "My dear parent," drawled Jean Briggerland, "after my lecture on the stupidity of the average criminal, do you imagine I should do anything so _gauche_?"

      Chapter VIII

      "And now, Mrs. Meredith," said Jack Glover, "what are you going to do?"

      He had spent the greater part of the morning