Read Ebook: Mr. Carteret and Others by Gray David

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Ebook has 618 lines and 19191 words, and 13 pages

"The proof?" he echoed. "What proof?"

His blank surprise shook her confidence for an instant. "You know well enough," she said. "You forgot to put back the violet."

"The violet?" he repeated. "In Heaven's name what are you talking about?"

She studied his face. Again her conviction was shaken, and she trembled in spite of herself. But she saw no other way. "I can't believe you," she said sadly.

He made no answer, but a change came over his face. His patience had gone. His anger was kindling. It began to frighten her. She summoned her will and made an effort to hold her ground. "Will you swear," she said--"will you swear you didn't open the locket?"

Still he made no reply.

"Nor shut it?" she went on. She was pleading now.

"Sally," he said in a strange voice, "I neither opened nor closed nor saw a locket. What has a locket to do with this?"

She looked at him blankly in terror, for suddenly she knew that he was speaking the truth. "Then what has happened?" she murmured.

"You must tell that," he said.

"I only know this," she began: "I wore a locket the day of the accident. There was a pressed flower in it." The color began to rise in her cheeks again. "When I came to, the flower was gone, so I knew the locket had been opened."

For a moment he was speechless. "And you treat me as you have," he cried, "on the suspicion of my opening this locket!"

She made no answer.

He laughed harshly. "You think of me as a man who would open your locket!"

Still she made no answer.

His voice dropped to a whisper. "O Sally! Sally!" he exclaimed.

"There are things on my side!" she said protestingly at last. "You can't understand because you don't know what was in the locket."

"I could guess," he said.

She went on, ignoring his remark: "And you have no explanation as to how it was opened and closed again. What am I to think?"

"Sally," he said more gently, "isn't it possible that the locket was shaken open when you fell and that the people who put you to bed closed it?"

"My maid put me to bed," said the girl; "she says the locket when she saw it was closed."

"Then perhaps the flower was lost before, and you had forgotten," he suggested.

She shook her head. "No," she answered, "the maid found the flower when she undressed me. She gave it to me when I came to. That is how my attention was called to it."

"Then strange as it seems," he said calmly, "the thing must have jarred open, the flower dropped out, and the locket shut again of itself. There is no other way."

"Perhaps," she said.

"Perhaps!" he repeated. "What other way could there have been?"

"There couldn't have been any other way," she assented, "if you say you didn't see it when you loosened my habit."

He looked at her in amazement. "Loosened your habit?" he asked.

"Yes," she said; "you loosened my habit when I was hurt."

"No," he answered.

"Do you mean to say," she demanded, "that you didn't loosen and cut things?"

"Most certainly not," he replied.

"But, Carty," she exclaimed, "some one did! Who was it?"

Just then Lady Martingale rode up to inquire how Miss Rivers was recovering, and Mr. Carteret mounted and rode away. The hounds were starting off to draw Brinkwater gorse, but he rode in the opposite direction toward Crumpelow Hill. There he found the farmer who had brought them home. Through him he found the boy who had summoned the farmer, and from the boy, as he had hoped, he discovered a clew. And then he fell to wondering why he was so bent upon clearing the matter up. At most it could only put him where he was before the day of the accident. It could not make that drive home real or make what she had said that afternoon her utterance. She would acquit him of prying into her affairs, but beyond that there was nothing to hope. Everything that he had recently learned strengthened his conviction that she was going to marry Wynford. It was a certainty. Nevertheless, from Crumpelow Hill he rode toward the Abbey.

It was nearly four o'clock when Miss Rivers came in. He rose and bowed with a playful, exaggerated ceremony. "I have come," he began, in a studiedly light key, "because I have solved the mystery."

"I am glad you have come," she said.

"It is simple," he went on. "Another man picked you up, and put you where I found you. Your breathing must have been bad, and he loosened your clothes. Probably the locket had flown open and he shut it. Then he went after a trap. Why he did not come back, I don't know."

"But I do," said Miss Rivers.

He looked at her warily, suspecting a trap for the man's name. He preferred not to mention that.

"I know," she went on, "because he has told me. He did come back part way--till he saw that you were with me."

Mr. Carteret looked at her in surprise.

"More than that," she went on, "the locket had jarred open and he saw what was in it and closed it. Perhaps that was why he went away. Anyway, after thinking about it, he decided that it was best to tell me. If he had only done so before!"

"I see," said Mr. Carteret. He did not see at all, but it was a matter about which he felt that he could not ask questions.

"You know," she said, after a pause, "that the man was Captain Wynford."

"Yes," he answered shortly. His tone changed. "Wynford is a good man--a good man," he said awkwardly. "I can congratulate you both honestly." He paused. "Well, I must go," he went on. "I'm glad things are right again all round. Good-by." He crossed to the door, and she stood watching him. She had grown very pale.

"Carty," she said suddenly, in a dry voice, "I'm not acting well."

He looked back perplexed, but in a moment he understood. She evidently felt that she ought to tell him outright that she was going to marry Wynford.

"In treating you as I did," she finished, "in judging you--"

"You were hasty," he said, "but I can understand."

She shook her head. "You can't understand if you think that there was only a flower in the locket."

"Perhaps I have guessed already that there was a picture," he said--"a picture that was not for my eyes."

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