Miss Ferriby's Clients

  Chapter 8

  Whatever he might have thought before about the household at The Lawns, this last incident was quite conclusive in his mind on more than one point.

  In the first place, he knew that what he had suspected during the course of the evening was true, and that the well-trained and quiet footman whom he had seen entering the house in Mayfair as a guest, was not really the servant of Miss Ferriby, but was her equal. Whether he was her partner, her lover, or her husband, it was impossible as yet to say, but that he had as much authority in the house as she had, appeared to be certain. Otherwise, how could he account for the fact that the man could take it upon himself to turn the lock of the library door?

  Not for one moment did Welton doubt that it was the footman who had done this. Miss Ferriby must, he took it for granted, be upstairs with her mysterious visitor. And she could scarcely have guessed that the secretary would think of trying to get upstairs by way of the library, and therefore taken the precaution of locking the inner door. She certainly would not, he thought, have gone the length of locking him into the room.

  Miss Ferriby always did her best to appear innocent of anything wrong or suspicious, and he felt sure that she would not herself have suggested a course of action so likely to rouse every possible doubt and fear, concerning what was going on upstairs and the character of the mysterious guest.

  Remembering what he had seen on the first evening at The Lawns, the arrival of a visitor in the garb of a man, and his departure in that of a woman, and remembering also that his doubts as to the identity of that visitor had never been set at rest, Welton was extremely anxious to see whether Miss Ferriby's hints concerning a guest of high rank, come to have his fortune told, had any justification in fact, or whether the visitor was really the same person he had seen then, or one come on a similar errand.

  Welton stood for a few minutes quite close to the outer door of the room, trying to make out whether there was anyone waiting for him to attempt to force a way out. But if that were so, the watcher was too quiet to be heard.

  So he found the electric switch in the wall and turned up the light, and throwing up the rolltop of his desk with sufficient noise to be heard by anyone who might be waiting outside, he sat down and wrote a couple of letters on his own account, not only to fill up the time, but also to throw off guard anyone who might be on the watch in the hall.

  This done, he shut the desk so softly that he was sure he could not have been heard by anyone outside; and peeping out from behind the drawn curtains, and seeing nothing moving in the garden, he very quietly drew back the catch of the window, and throwing up the sash without noise, dropped down into the flower border below.

  Then for a few moments he stood quite still, taking stock of the situation. On the opposite side of the little square patch of garden, shut in on his left hand by the main building of the house, and in front and behind him by the two wings, the lights of the kitchen and servants' quarters glimmered faintly through the thick yew hedge which stood in front of their windows.

  He wondered whether he could contrive to peep into those windows, and what he would see there -- not, certainly, the solitary figure of Box, the footman, enjoying the light and warmth all by himself. It was quite impossible that the whole service of the house could be carried on by one man, and that one the superior, stolid, handsome personage who led two lives.

  Even if the man had only led one, Welton knew that it was out of the question for one person, however active, to be cook, housemaid, parlour maid, kitchen maid, ladies' maid, butler and footman, in a house where everything was so well done as at The Lawns.

  How much less probable was it, now that he knew Box paid visits in the West End in quite another capacity? Who, then, were the mysterious servants who did, unseen, the work of the house? And why were they kept shut up as if in a nunnery?

  He stared at the glimmering lights, until the temptation to see into those secluded quarters of the house became too strong for him. He crossed the smooth stretch of grass that lay between the two wings, and reaching the hedge, tried to look through between the branches.

  But provision had been made for such attacks of curiosity, and he found that on the other side of the yew hedge there was a strong wire netting erected, and that beyond the netting there was a second hedge, thicker than the first.

  He could force apart the branches of the outer hedge, but that was of little avail. Certainly he was thus enabled to see better the lights in the windows of the rooms in front of him, but although he could hear the murmur of voices he could see no one. The white blinds were drawn down, and not even a shadow passed them on the other side to satisfy his curiosity as to whether the inhabitants of this secluded wing were men or women.

  So Welton, disappointed in this quarter, turned without leaving the hedge, and looked up at the windows of the other wing where the fortune-telling went on.

  There were lights in the big room and on the beautifully furnished landing. The lights were very bright indeed: not the mysterious half-lights which the fortune-teller usually affected. And the more he looked at the brilliant illumination, the more strongly impelled he was to find out what was going on within.

  At last the temptation grew irresistible, and cautiously he crossed the lawn again and went round the angle of the house, looking for some means by which he might reach the upper floor from outside.

  He had seen two or three signs of an unseen gardener's presence on the occasion of his last saunter in the grounds: a few tools, a garden roller, a rake. If he could only find a ladder, such as must sometimes be used to nail up the creepers, he might reach the upper windows without difficulty.

  But there was nothing of the kind left about in that discreetly-managed garden. And at last he was obliged to scramble up to the top of the veranda, which was on the river side of the house, by means of a slanting drainpipe and the strong bough of an old wisteria which grew against the end of the wing, and joined its branches with those of the Virginia creeper which grew along the river front of the drawing room wing.

  By this means he was enabled to reach the top of the veranda, and once there, he found it easy to crawl along until he was under the nearest window.

  Here, however, he came to a standstill. For one thing, he felt the metal roof of the veranda yielding under him as if the support were not firm, and fearful of coming down with a crash to the ground below he crouched closely against the wall, holding on by the ledge of the window, and carefully feeling whether the nailed-up branches of wisteria, which had lost almost all their red and brown leaves, were capable of offering any support.

  While he clung under the window, he heard sounds in more than one direction. There were footsteps on the stone floor of the veranda beneath him, and an occasional sound of a voice in the room where the fortune-telling went on.

  The footsteps were light and stealthy, and he wondered whether they were those of Box, the footman, on the prowl, and whether he had found out by this time that the prisoner in the library had escaped.

  Although a stream of light came on the lawn from each of the two drawing room windows beneath him, Welton could not see any shadow crossing these streams of light, by which he could have found out the identity of the person below. Nor were the footsteps heavy enough for him to say for certain whether they were those of a man or of a woman.

  As for the voices in the room close to him, the sounds were almost as mysterious as the footsteps. He could not distinguish whether the murmur denoted the voice of a woman or of a man. The murmur was not continuous, but rather suggested someone uttering short sentences from time to time by way of direction or short comment.

  Welton clung to the ledge until his fingers grew stiff. By that time the footsteps below had died away, and he summoned courage at last to raise himself a little and to try to discover some chink or crack by which he could look into the room.

  But the blinds were drawn down securely, and to judge by the little light which came through on this side, in co
ntrast to the bright light on the inner side of the house, the curtains must not only be thick, but closely drawn.

  To these facts he attributed his failure to catch even the distant sound of the voice or voices within.

  And it occurred to him that if the curtains and blinds formed such a strong barrier to the passage of sound, he might use that fact to his own advantage. So he took out a penknife which he carried in his pocket, and raising himself very cautiously to his full height, pushed back the catch of the window, not without difficulty, but almost without noise, and then began softly to push up the sash.

  He had scarcely got it open an inch, when he began to be able to make out something more of what was going on inside the room.

  A voice which he recognized as that of Miss Ferriby said, "A little to the right, please."

  There was no answer.

  "And now for your hair. You'd better have it bleached, I think."

  This was enough for Welton, who knew now that she was not telling fortunes, but helping another visitor to an efficient disguise. It became a matter of importance to see who was the person operated on, and to judge, if possible, his or her position in life.

  He pushed up the sash little by little, still hearing from time to time the same sort of directions and remarks, always in Miss Ferriby's voice, until he was able to touch the blind and draw aside the curtain a little.

  This, however, was an act that needed the greatest caution in performance, as it was difficult to tell when the faces of the two people, whom he presumed to be inside the room, would be turned away from the window.

  With his hand close to the curtain, he waited patiently for what seemed a long time. There was this difficulty, that if, as he supposed, Miss Ferriby were engaged in making up the face and figure of her client or visitor, when she had her back to the window the visitor would face it.

  Welton, however, was growing too impatient to wait any longer. It was more by chance than judgment that he seized upon the right moment and drew aside the inner curtain about an inch, just as the two occupants of the room were facing each other and neither facing the window.

  As he looked, Welton could almost have cried aloud. For more certainly than he had identified the visitor of the previous occasion with the man whose picture he had seen in the paper, and whom he believed to be the murderer, Henry Ward, did he now recognize in the man whose face Miss Ferriby was making up with the dexterity of a finished artist, a man whom the police wanted for a robbery of diamonds from a duchess's dressing table; a man whose identification was rendered easy by the fact that he had a large growth on the side of his neck under the left ear.

  As he now stood, the growth was distinctly visible to Welton outside the window, and it was this that made him sure that the man in front of him, the man whom Miss Ferriby was so benevolently occupied in disguising, was none other than the Fergus Johnston, alias about a dozen other names, of whom the police were now in active search.

  So much struck was Welton by this hideous discovery, that he did not attempt to retreat from his dangerous post, but holding the curtain aside just far enough to watch what went on, he stood rooted to the spot, staring at Miss Ferriby, as with one swift, sure, clever touch after another she gradually altered the appearance of the man before her, until from a repulsive-looking man of about thirty years of age, with close-cropped black hair and clean-shaven, thick-lipped face, she had transformed him into an elderly man of respectable and even benevolent appearance: grey hair, grey eyebrowed, his ugly mouth hidden by a short greyish beard, and the growth on his neck concealed by an old-fashioned stock, while his sinister eyes seemed gentle and mild from behind a pair of spectacles which looked as if they had gold rims.

  Welton remained in his perilous position more than half an hour, long enough indeed to see the greater part of the artistic work in which Miss Ferriby was evidently an expert.

  Keen as was his interest in and abhorrence of the criminal in front of him, whom the public now knew to be one of the most despicable of irreclaimable criminals, Welton's interest in the creature grew pale and tame compared to what he felt in the woman who was transforming him, and helping him to escape the punishment he so thoroughly deserved.

  As Welton's gaze wandered from the man to the woman, he marvelled in the first place at the courage she showed in allowing herself to be left alone with such a brute.

  There she was, locked in with one of the most notorious criminals known to the English police, and obviously there was not a thought of danger, a fear, a tremor about her, as she gave herself up heart and soul to the work in which she evidently took the keenest delight and pride.

  There was the enthusiasm of a successful artist in her face and voice as she stood back from time to time, and with her head a little to one side contemplated her handiwork with an artist's pride.

  She even hummed fragments of the songs which she had been singing to her harp as she worked away at the transformation of the wretch under her hands from a repulsive-looking individual with the brand of Cain upon him, to a decent and civilized creature whom no one would suspect of the smallest attempt at wrongdoing.

  And all the while there lay beside her on the little table which held her paints, her powders, and her scraps of false hair, a little heap of magnificent rings, the value of which must be, as Welton knew, some thousands of pounds.

  True it was that she had taken off some of her jewellery, that he did not see either the diamonds she had worn in her hair and dress, her bracelets or her necklace. These, together with the rich dress she had worn at dinner, she had apparently put away as likely to tempt the cupidity of her guest, or perhaps in the way when she was going to work.

  Whether she had forgotten the rings until the last moment, or whether she had taken them off under her visitor's eyes from sheer bravado and faith in her own powers, Welton could not tell. Certain it is that neither she nor the thief whom she was transforming took any notice of the sparkling stones, and that both appeared to be absorbed, the one in working, the other in admiring what was being done to him.

  At last the moment arrived when Miss Ferriby, who was now dressed in a long garment like the blouse of a French workman, could step back some yards from her subject, and say with a sigh of triumph, "There, that will do, I think."

  And she stood back for the man to survey himself in a long cheval glass which she pulled forward out of a corner of the room. Welton now perceived that hanging over the chairs and on the ottomans and chests which formed part of the furniture of the room, was a large and varied collection of old clothes, some cloth, some fustian, and some velveteen, and he guessed that this extensive wardrobe was used for purposes of disguise, in order that each new visitor might find in a selection so vast the garb most likely to suit his particular needs, and to disguise him the most effectually.

  The man before him was now dressed like a Sunday school teacher and deacon in a Dissenting chapel, in a frock-coat, an old-fashioned silk hat and woollen gloves.

  Not by the furthest stretch of imagination could it be supposed the man had anything in common with thieves, or jewel robbers, or swindlers. As such, Miss Ferriby's triumph was supreme.

  Welton, shuddering, felt that he almost admired the woman who could put talents, so many and peculiar, so daringly to such evil purposes. It seemed to argue a mind above the common even to evolve such a plan of existence out of her head.

  Scarcely had he glanced from the man to her in this half-admiring, half-revolted manner, when the ungrateful thief made an attempt to escape by means of the door opposite to the window. But it was locked.

  "You've forgotten my fee," said Miss Ferriby coolly.

  The man turned sullenly. "You're a fine 'un to talk of fees," he began sulkily.

  His tone, so it seemed to Welton, was almost threatening. But he did not alarm Miss Ferriby, who was carefully collecting the garments which had not been used and packing them away into the chests round the walls.

  "Ten pounds," she said.

&n
bsp; "How do you know I've got ten pounds, you harpy?" said the man sullenly.

  Without turning or pausing in her work Miss Ferriby said, "You wouldn't have been allowed up here if you hadn't shown you could pay your footing."

  The man affected to laugh. "Oh! That's what you keep that hulking chap downstairs for, eh? To find out whether one can pay for your kind help, eh?"

  "That's it exactly," replied the woman quietly, as she folded up a military coat and put it neatly into one of the drawers of a beautiful Louis Quinze chest, which Welton had seen before but had little suspected to be put to such use as this.

  The man hesitated, put one hand reluctantly into his pocket, and looked stealthily at the rings on the table beside him. Rather as if she divined his thoughts than because she saw the look, Miss Ferriby suddenly turned and walked towards the table, took up the rings and thrust them into a pocket which she wore under her blouse.

  "Now then," she said quietly, but with a firmness there was no mistaking, "the money, please. And then you can go as quickly as you like. You'd better lose no time. The description of you is pretty well known, and so's your character. If I were you, I wouldn't waste more time about London than can be helped."

  Something in her determined yet quiet tone affected the man, as it affected everybody who came near her, and he sullenly took out of his pocket a greasy purse, from which he counted out the sum required.

  "Thank you," said Miss Ferriby, as she glanced at the door.

  He looked at her, and then at the door, as if expecting her to call someone to unlock it. She made an impatient movement with her foot.

  "You can go," she said at last.

  As if doubting her words, the man made a hesitating step forward, and turning the handle of the door, which had previously refused to open, he found that it flew wide at his touch. With a sort of alarmed glance at Miss Ferriby, as if he believed her to be in league with the powers of evil, the man darted out of the room, and Welton heard him stumbling down the stairs.