Chapter XXV: “buff Ogilvie!”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?” said Dolly crossly. “I nearly broke my back moving the things.”

Somehow Magdalen pulled herself together. Fool that she had been to have let Dolly take this place without seeing it; more fool still never to have found out that the bookcase hid a door.

“I can’t make hats, Doll,” she said slowly, untruthfully. “I tried this morning and I can’t. I’m sorry you bothered.”

“We can put them back. I only thought--we haven’t been getting on too well lately, Magda”--the little name came softly; there were real tears in Dolly’s eyes--“and it’s been my fault. I’ve been hateful. I--I wanted to do something that would please you.”

They were not sisters who kissed each other; Magdalen’s hand only fell softly on Dolly’s shoulder.

“I’ve been priggish and hateful myself,” she said soberly. “Don’t fuss about what you’ve been. I want to tell you something--about this room, I mean. I’ve seen it before, only till you moved the furniture I didn’t recognize it. I dreamed about it, looking just like this, and the Chinaman was in it, trying to kill you.”

Even Dolly gave a start.

“You had him on your mind,” she said practically.

“How could I? I dreamed about this place at Ardmore before I ever saw it or Ah Lee either. It’s--oh, it’s uncanny and horrible! Besides, I honestly think it’s a warning.”

“It’s horrid enough, but”--there was no superstition in Dolly--“we can’t really ever believe in dreams. You’re sure you didn’t dream it after you saw Ah Lee?” privately thinking that people who saw ghosts and supernatural things often forgot details that did not suit them.

“Certain,” nodding her lovely, strange head. “I saw Ah Lee and this room as plainly as I see you now, and he was trying to kill you and I couldn’t save you. I felt his hands on my throat as I fought with him. Oh, Doll, do let us leave it! I’ll never have a happy minute here.”

“We have to give three months’ notice and we’ve paid our rent in advance.” But there was indecision in Dolly’s voice.

When a man has once tried to murder you it is not pleasant to have people dream he has tried to do it again, even though you have no faith in such things.

“Give notice, then, and let’s go. We’ll only lose that much rent. Don’t laugh, but ever since that Chinese butler came to Ardmore, bang on top of my dream, I’ve been frightened. I’ve felt as though I had a sort of second sight.”

Dolly gave her a queer look.

“You might be Scotch,” she said slowly, “by the way you talk!”

It was not the word, but the look that made Magdalen stare at her.

“How could I be Scotch?” she cried. “Mother wasn’t, and you remember my father if I don’t. Mother always said there was nothing Scotch about him but his name.” She half closed her eyes, as if she saw again the face of the dead woman who had been Dolly’s mother and hers and was so like Dolly, so unlike herself. For a moment she wished she had seen her own father, who had left her mother a widow for the second time when she was a year old. She did not notice how sharply Dolly had turned away, nor that when she answered her it was with her face to the window.

“Neither there was,” said Dolly with an unsteady giggle. She was horribly afraid as she stared out of the blessed panes that let her keep her back turned without seeming to. “Oh, don’t let’s talk about mother; she’s dead. Of course, I didn’t mean you could really be Scotch; it was just rubbish, because you talked about second sight. If you really feel nervous here we won’t stay.” She could turn now and she did. “I’ll do anything you like,” she finished feverishly; “anything! What do you want to do?”

“Go to the country. I can get a little house at Marlow by the week for very little. Let me get something to eat and go there now. I can get the next train.”

There were reasons why this proposition suited Dolly and that absurd dream was not the strongest of them. London was far from desirable when you dared not go anywhere. For once she helped to get lunch ready. She even saw Magdalen down to the street door; but at the foot of the stairs she paused and drew back into the hallway by the swinging baize door.

“Don’t be long,” she said as if for once she did not want to be left alone. “Send me a wire from Marlow if you can get a place and I’ll make arrangements about going away from here at once.”

Magdalen nodded, got into a bus at the corner of the street, looked up at a clock as they rumbled along and saw she must miss the half-past-two train, or take a hansom.

As she got down from the bus to hail one she did not notice another cab pass her with the glass down and the side curtains drawn; nor as she ran to her just-caught train at Paddington did it occur to her to glance at the first-class carriages.

To get out of Hare’s Buildings was her first thought; to see Lovell and tell him why, the second. She was certain, somehow, that he could help her.

But four hours later she stood once more in Paddington Station and realized that she had nothing to tell him but that she, Dark Magdalen, was afraid. For all she had got by her journey was a stuffy coming and going in a third-class carriage and the knowledge that in all Marlow there was not a house to be got. They were not out of Hare’s Buildings yet; and all the way up in the train her unreasoning terror of the place had been growing on her.

“I wish I’d gone to the Marlow Inn and wired for Dolly,” she thought faintly. “Anything would be better than another night at home. I----”

She put her hand in her pocket for her purse and the purse was gone.

Her plan of going in search of Lovell was useless. From Paddington to Hare’s Buildings was a walk enough in the dusk without that trudge to Fleet Street that her pride recoiled from and only that senseless, gripping terror at her heart made possible. With a cab she could have done it; she dared not take the time to walk, with Dolly alone in that hateful house. She almost ran as she left the station. Suppose her dream had come true while she was out, without her part in it of fighting for Dolly!

Street after street, square after square, she hurried through; each hundred yards a mile; a relentless swallowing of the time--and something told her that she had not a minute to spare in this cold twilight. When she came to quiet streets she ran; at the corner of her own street she leaped forward with a little cry of joy.

There was no need to go to Fleet Street--never had been. There, standing under the sickly, flaring gaslight, not ten yards before her, was Lovell--Lovell, who had helped her twice and would help her again.

It was not a dream or a Chinaman who could frighten her with Lovell at her back; her lips parted to call him.

She paused, flinched, nearly fell, and melted like a darker shadow into the darkness of an open doorway.

A man had come across the street with a slow, languid step--a gentleman of finer mold than was often seen in that border of the slums. And his face, under his immaculate silk hat, was the face of Lord Stratharden. There before her in the flesh were those pale eyes, those crooked, restless eyebrows, that smile that was not smiling; and as Stratharden laid his hand on Lovell’s shoulder the man she had meant to trust neither moved nor started.

For one swimming moment all the blood in Magdalen Clyde’s body was in her heart. Lovell and Stratharden!

Dolly--oh! Dolly had been right! She was sick and cold with the shock of it as she leaned against the wall of her sheltering passage; she could not move to save her soul, though only ten yards away Lovell was talking to Stratharden.

A voice she knew, a voice that ten minutes ago she would have followed to Hades and back again, steadied her like an electric shock. They were moving, coming closer, stopping to talk not a yard from her black doorway. Magdalen was motionless against the dirt-stained wall.

Yet all that Lovell was saying was:

“Keith? No, I’ve not seen her.” Only there was a devilish coldness in his voice that she had never heard.

“Well,” Stratharden spoke silkily, “it isn’t of any importance, my dear boy. At least, I think not. Keith says it is and I’ve no doubt she thinks so; but the good creature had always a bee in her bonnet.”

There was no answer. Some one knocked his heel impatiently on the pavement and she knew it was Lovell.

“Did you come down here and keep me waiting half an hour to talk of Keith?” he coolly inquired.

“Not at all. I came down here because you wouldn’t see me at your photographer’s,” he answered airily. “Good God, Buff! you don’t tell me you live anywhere in this vile slum?”

“Buff!” In all her life she had heard of but one man thus nicknamed. Like a flash she heard Keith’s grim old voice in her ears: “Buff Ogilvie, Stratharden’s son? Oh, ay! he’s a good lad enough.” She hardly heard Lovell answering--and lying, though neither of his listeners knew it.

“I don’t live here. It seemed a retired locality, that’s all. You requested, if I remember, that it might be retired.”

Stratharden laughed.

“You’re very young,” he said; “younger than I was at your age! I came to tell you something. The whole thing will be settled inside of a month, but in the meantime I may as well tell you that at this present moment you are Stratharden. It is quite time, Buff, to--to throw over the trade of photographing.”

“What have you done?”

To the girl in the dark there was no knowing that the slow words would have been fierce but for the dread behind them. Father or no father, if there were truth in that dread----But the man’s mouth closed firmly. “I know how you’ve tried and failed,” he said after a long pause.

“I was mistaken,” Stratharden returned smoothly; if he were a trifle startled he did not show it. “My lady is as sane as you or I, and--damnably clever to a certain point. Her limitation is that she never was my lady at all. Did you ever hear of a Mr. Starr-Dalton?”

Lovell shook his head.

“Starr-Dalton!” the mouth of the girl in the doorway was set harder than the man’s outside it. She listened like a caged fury, for this tallied too well with her own long thoughts.

“Oh, well, you’ll hear now to the infinite good of your pocket. Mr. Starr-Dalton is the back-bone of a sham antique furniture business--too much sham and too little antique. Also, he has been cashing my lady’s checks for her, which led to his discovery just when he was required on various charges of fraud. He babbled a good deal and finally--well, he can put his finger on Lady Barnysdale’s live husband. Live!”

“Lady Barnysdale’s live husband!” As if she were a child learning a language, Magdalen found herself painfully translating. What he meant was that Dolly--Dolly had a husband alive! She never heard Lovell’s answer--would not have cared if she had. Oh, poor Dolly! who had been starving, had been brave enough to play a game a well-fed woman’s blood might have failed her in! And Starr-Dalton had betrayed her!

Outside Lovell said something that carried no meaning to the girl, who was only thinking of Dolly. Afterward it came back to her terribly enough.

“I’m playing my own game now,” he said coolly. “I dare say it may tally with yours, if I know you. But it’s not yours any more than I’m Buff Ogilvie, till I choose.”