I take her life seriously, and give a certificate of death from natural causes,” I said. “No, Mr Wynd, I am no murderer.”
“Not if we add to the sum an extra five thousand?”
“I will not harm her for an extra fifty thousand. Let me pass!” I cried with fierce resolution.
“When you have promised to accede to my request.”
“I will never promise that.”
“Then you will not enter her room again.”
Almost as the words left his lips there was a low tap at the door, and it opened, disclosing Davies, who announced —
“The Major, sir.”
“Show him in.”
The visitor, who entered jauntily with his silk hat still set at a slight angle on his head, was the well-groomed man who had led my bride up the aisle of the church. I judged him to be about forty-five, dark-complexioned, good-looking, but foppish in appearance, carrying his monocle with ease acquired by long practice.
“Well, Wynd,” he said, greeting his friend, cheerily, “all serene?”
“Entirely,” answered the other. And then, turning to me, introduced the new-comer as “Major Tattersett.”
“This, Major, is Dr Colkirk, my new son-in-law,” he explained. “Permit me to present him.”
“Congratulate you, my dear sir,” he responded laughing good-humouredly, while the Tempter remarked —
“The Major is, of course, fully aware of the circumstances of your marriage. He is our nearest friend.”
“Marriage rather unconventional, eh?” the other remarked to me. “Poor Beryl! It is a thousand pities that she has been struck down like that. Six months ago down at Wyndhurst she was the very soul of the house-parties – and here to-day she is dying.”
“Extremely sad,” I remarked. “As a medical man I see too vividly the uncertainty of human life.”
“How is she now?” inquired the Major of her father. “The same, alas!” answered the Tempter with well-assumed sorrow. “She will, we fear, not live till midnight.”
“Poor girl! Poor girl!” the new-comer ejaculated with a sigh, while the Tempter, excusing himself for an instant left the room.
I would have risen and followed, but the Major, addressing me confidentially, said —
“This is a strange whim of my old friend’s, marrying his daughter in this manner. There seems no motive for it, as far as I can gather.”
“No, none,” I responded. “Mr Wynd has struck me as being somewhat eccentric.”
“He’s a very good fellow – an excellent fellow. Entirely loyal to his friends. You are fortunate, my dear fellow, in having him as a father-in-law. He’s amazingly well off, and generosity itself.”
I recollected his dastardly suggestion that my wife should not live longer than sundown, and smiled within myself. This friend of his evidently did not know his real character.
Besides, being an observant man by nature, I noticed as I sat there one thing which filled me with curiosity. The tops of the Major’s fingers and thumb of his right hand were thick and slightly deformed, while the skin was hardened and the nails worn down to the quick.
While the left hand was of normal appearance, the other had undoubtedly performed hard manual labour. A major holding her Majesty’s commission does not usually bear such evident traces of toil. The hand was out of keeping with the fine diamond ring that flashed upon it.
“The incident of to-day,” I said, “has been to me most unusual. It hardly seems possible that I am a bridegroom, for, truth to tell, I fancied myself the most confirmed of bachelors. Early marriage always hampers the professional man.”
“But I don’t suppose you will have any cause for regret on that score,” he observed. “You will have been a bridegroom and a widower in a single day.”
I was silent. His words betrayed him. He knew of the plot conceived by his friend to bribe me to kill the woman to whom I had been so strangely wedded!
But successfully concealing my surprise at his incautious words, I answered —
“Yes, mine will certainly have been a unique experience.”
He courteously offered me a cigarette, and lighting one himself, held the match to me. Then we sat chatting, he telling me what a charming girl Beryl had been until stricken down by disease.
“What was her ailment?” I inquired.
“I am not aware of the name by which you doctors know it. It is, I believe, a complication of ailments. Half a dozen specialists have seen her, and all are agreed that her life cannot be saved. Wynd has spared no expense in the matter, for he is perfectly devoted to her.”
His words, hardly coincided with the truth, I reflected. So far from being devoted to her, he was anxious, for some mysterious reason, that she should not live after midnight.
“To lose her will, I suppose, be a great blow to him?” I observed, with feigned sympathy.
“Most certainly. She has been his constant friend and companion ever since his wife died, six years ago. I’m awfully sorry for both poor Beryl and Wynd.”
I was about to reply, but his words froze upon my lips, for at that instant there rang through the house a shrill scream – the agonised scream of a woman.
“Listen!” I cried. “What’s that?”
But my companion’s jaw had dropped, and he sat immovable, listening intently.
Again the scream rang out, but seemed stifled and weaker.
The Tempter was with his daughter whom he had determined should die. The thought decided me, and turning, without further word, I dashed from the room, and with quickly-beating heart ran up the wide thickly-carpeted staircase.
Chapter Four
The Note of Interrogation
On reaching the corridor I was confronted by the thin, spare figure of the Tempter standing resolutely before a closed door – that of Beryl’s chamber.
His black eyes seemed to flash upon me defiantly, and his face had reassumed that expression which was sufficient index to the unscrupulousness of his character.
“Let me pass!” I cried roughly, in my headlong haste. “I desire to see my wife.”
“You shall not enter?” he answered, in a voice tremulous with an excitement which he strove in vain to control.
“She is in distress. I heard her scream. It is my duty, both as a doctor and as her husband, to be at her side.”
“Duty?” he sneered. “My dear sir, what is duty to a man who will sell himself for a handful of banknotes?”
“I yielded to your accursed
