FullReads

“Heaven forbid that you ever should, Lady Audley,” Robert said, gravely.

She looked at him for a moment with a smile, which had something defiant in its brightness.

“Heaven forbid it, indeed,” she murmured. “I don’t think I ever shall.”

The second bell rung, and the train moved as she spoke. The last Robert Audley saw of her was that bright defiant smile.

“Whatever object brought her to London has been successfully accomplished,” he thought. “Has she baffled me by some piece of womanly jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth, but am I to be tormented all my life by vague doubts, and wretched suspicions, which may grow upon me till I become a monomaniac? Why did she come to London?”

He was still mentally asking himself this question as he ascended the stairs in Figtree Court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his railway rugs over his shoulder.

He found his chambers in their accustomed order. The geraniums had been carefully tended, and the canaries had retired for the night under cover of a square of green baize, testifying to the care of honest Mrs. Maloney. Robert cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room; then setting down the dogs upon the hearth-rug, he walked straight into the little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room.

It was in this room that he kept disused portmanteaus, battered japanned cases, and other lumber; and it was in this room that George Talboys had left his luggage. Robert lifted a portmanteau from the top of a large trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand, carefully examined the lock.

To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which George had left it, when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. Robert brushed his coat sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which the initials G. T. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but Mrs. Maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives, for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty.

Mr. Audley dispatched a boy to fetch his Irish attendant, and paced up and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival.

She came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the return of “the master,” humbly awaited his orders.

“I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day—any lady?”

“Lady? No, indeed, yer honor; there’s been no lady for the kay; barrin’ it’s the blacksmith.”

“The blacksmith!”

“Yes; the blacksmith your honor ordered to come to-day.”

“I order a blacksmith!” exclaimed Robert. “I left a bottle of French brandy in the cupboard,” he thought, “and Mrs. M. has been evidently enjoying herself.”

“Sure, and the blacksmith your honor tould to see to the locks,” replied Mrs. Maloney. “It’s him that lives down in one of the little streets by the bridge,” she added, giving a very lucid description of the man’s whereabouts.

Robert lifted his eyebrows in mute despair.

“If you’ll sit down and compose yourself, Mrs. M.,” he said—he abbreviated her name thus on principle, for the avoidance of unnecessary labor—”perhaps we shall be able by and by to understand each other. You say a blacksmith has been here?”

“Sure and I did, sir.”

“To-day?”

“Quite correct, sir.”

Step by step Mr. Audley elicited the following information. A locksmith had called upon Mrs. Maloney that afternoon at three o’clock, and had asked for the key of Mr. Audley’s chambers, in order that he might look to the locks of the doors, which he stated were all out of repair. He declared that he was acting upon Mr. Audley’s own orders, conveyed to him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his Christmas. Mrs. Maloney, believing in the truth of this statement, had admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about half an hour.