A LONDON MYSTERY. (Founded on Fact.)

Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 108, 30 May 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

A LONDON MYSTERY. (Founded on Fact.)

[By Joseph Hattoit, Atjthoe or "Cltoe, 1 etc.] at the zoo. I was strolling in the Zoological Gardens in a lazy mood Friday afternoon to listen to a lecture on "Snakes." " Congratulate me, old chap ["exclaimed an impulsive voice at the gates, and I turned to find Eeggy Gardner at my elbow. " Can't stay now — just off to the lawyer's," he said, as he hailed a passing hansom. " What is it all about, Eeggy ?" " I am going to be married. She's tho loveliest woman in the world! Come and lunch with me at the club to-morrow, and then go home to my mother's — you'll see her there." As his hansom drove off I looked af tor my bright, cheery, lucky friend, just entering life with a newlyinhorited fortune. Eeggy Gardner was a typical young Englishman, broad - shouldered, sturdy, fairhairod, gray-oyed, and beaming with health. Snakos, as I suppose you know, decline to accept food which they have not killed themselves. The serpent mind seems to obtain unmixed latisfaction from the terrors of his victims. Neither the anaconda nor the common boa kills its ducks and rabbits, doves and guineapigs at once. They aro like wicked lawyers who keep their clients about them, pretending that they never mean to swallow them, estates and all. Now and then, long before the fatal blow is struck, the victims discover their danger, and then it is dreadful to watch their terror develop and grow into madness. The melancholy cries of a couple of fowls could be heard in the serpent-house at the Zoo. Tho crowd of lookers-on were breath- • loss watching tho fluttering of a dove which one of the serpents had just seized, and the death agonies of a rabbit which the rattlesnake, liokod up by the koeper, had kindly )itton. Pitiful tragedioswere being enacted in every cage. On the score of science people go on Fridays to boo the reptiles fed. Professor Huxley does not lecture in the snake-house ; he would probably say some bitter things to the morbid audiences which collect there. I was about to seek the intellectual refuge of the lecture-room, when tho face of a woman arrested my attention. It was a cold, cruel, beautiful countenance, classic in its severity, with blue eyes, and lips that had no red in them. Tho nose came down in a straight line from the low forehoad, and was chisollod at the nostrils. The mouth was rather a contradiction to the other part of the face. It was sensual, yet without a touch of the generosity that sometimes modifies the sensual so much that we only call it sensuous. Madamo's eyes were not looking at me. They were fixed, on tho anacpnda, which had just uncurled itself and was sliding towards a couple of fowls that were retreating before it. Suddenly, from an expression of intonse expectation, the cold, cruel fnco was lighted up with anger. Tho next moment a fan was dashed against the glass to urge the birds into the jaws of the serpent. Madame was tired of waiting for the end. A thrill of indignation ran through me. " This is no place for ladies," I said aloud to tho keeper, that she might hoar mo : but she continued an unrostrained and active ally of the sorpont intent upon forcing the tragic destiny of tho imprisoned birds. Thpn all of a sudden there was a hurried movomout of the snako, a flutter of feathers, and an expiring cry. Tho anaconda 'had begun to feed. Madanio gave a little sigh of satisfaotion, and, casting a frigid glance at mo, movod away. Then I found eho was not alone. Her cavalier waa a foroignor, who looked like a faded personage matriculating for Tussaud. My thoughts, however, were not of him, but of her, and as I strolled home, wondering at the combination of angel and demon whioh is sometimes found in female beauty, I called this lady " Adrastia," as the resemblance to an Italian picture of tho goddess flashed upon me. A head full of strange beauty, the hair a cluster of writing Berpenta, a face of lovely forbiddingnosß, with the agony of the serpent's teeth in it, and yot about the mouth the calm, cruel, doath-like expression of a Nemesis. • The two faces were like and unlike ; and the living ono took the place of tho other in my mind, eclipsing the picture, yet recalling shadowy reminicencos of it. Adrastia never lookod so glad whon the victims she slow deserved tho death it was her duty to provide as did this lady in tho London snakehouse when the anaconda swooped down upon its living food. Clytomnestra might havo worn a similar expression when she murdered Agamemnon ; and yet I callod tho woman of the Zoo Adrastia, and I gave her, in my imagination, a fitting head-dr6ss of snakes and serpents. IN MAYIXrR. Pall Mall swarmed with cabs and carriages. It was the height of the Loudon season. We had lunched cosily at the club. I forgot Adrastia undor the influence of the Reform's dry champagne and Eeggy's gush about Mrs. Trentham For the lady who had won the young fellow's heart was a widow. I reminded Eoggy that a certain character in fiction had uttered a warning concorning widows which had passed into a proverb. He simply said, with the blood rushing into hia face, " Dickons is a vulgar snob," and then, as quickly, "I beg Dickens pardon, old boy, and yours ;" and we drove off to Mayfair. Eeggy was hard hit. I did not attempt to chaff, him about his passion, so out of keeping with the present tone of socioty, which never goes into raptures ovor anything. "We met her at Hombnrg, and afterward at Como," said Eeggy's l» v aristocratic yet amiable and pleasant v mother. " She was travelling with her uncle, Count de Sourier." " It is rather a short engagement," I replied, "but we live in a rapid age"' " I hope he will be happy, rejoined his mother, but I though! there waa something of doubt in the way she gave expression to hei hopes. „!.•« Our conversation, necessarily bnel was interrupted by the arrival oi Eeggy's betrothed— Mrs. Trentham There was a movement of curiosity among the people. Mrs. Gardnei roso from the tea-table to receive th< latest caller with especial honour

Eeggy looked at me triumphantly as ho said " Come and bo introduced." I advanced as one in a dream. I was under a spell. I pulled myself together as well as I could. "This is my oldest and best friend, Marie," said Eeggy; he hopes, though your newest, to be also your best friend." She looked me straight in the face, and held ont her hand. It seemed to me as if her manner was a chal-. lenge> — as if she said, "We are deadly enemies, but you must pay homage to me !" What Bhe really did say was. " I hope so, Eeggy." Mrs. Trentham was Adrastia! The knot of golden hair which fell in a cluster from her bonnet and fell upon her cheek was, to my mind, a tanglement of snakes, The eloquence of the serpent was on her tongue, and she held my friend in her fascinations as completely as the serpent holds the bird, that eventually drops from the tree into the expectant jaws. Eeggy Gardner was to marry the woman of the snakehouso. DOWN IN BERKSHIB.E. j Two years had passed. The honeymoon had long since been forgotten, or remembered only to be thought of as too • many waned moons recalled with wonder. Yet they were happy as the world goes. They had their little iffs, and Reggy had more than once been jealous, but not of the Count Tourier, her "uncle," of course. The idea of such an absurdity had never entered the honest soul of Eeggy Gardner. Mrs. Trentham I had brought him no money. Her first husband had squandered it in gaming and speculation. Eeggy had plenty, and ho felt proud to settle a handsome sum on his wife, and to allow her for pin-money the income of a duchess. The will which he made in her favour was worthy of his most generous impulses. "If we do have a little misunderstanding now and then," he said to me, while we took a noonday rest in the stubbles at his princely place down in Berkshire, " that's the common lot, and it gives zest to the fun of making up." He wouldn't for the world have acknowledged that he was unhappy ; and she had a peculiar power over him which could charm him into any mood which Bhe desired. If her occasional bursts of ill-temper or indiscretion of manner towards other men were thunder-clouds in his domestio life, her smiles were summer, her acted affection was sunshine. She knew that I saw through it all. I visited them rarely, and only at all for Eeggy'a sake. They lived in a curious way, constantly travelling, coming to town only for a month in the season, and going to Berkshire for the Ist of September. Eeggy's mother kept her own state in town. Two mothers-in-law, she would say, could not be expected to get on well together, and Eeggy' ¦ wife preferred to have her own mother with her; and so between the dear old lady of Mayfair and her son there had grown up an estrangement which Mrs. Gardner, junior, promoted with insidious persistence. Count Tourier had latterly been a rare visitor at Eeggy's owing to misunderstandings with the head of the house ; but he often wrote to his " dear niece," and made a special journey now and then to see her. "No, I don't know where the Count lives or how," said Eeggy one evening at the end of our week's shooting when wo .were smoking after dinnor, "Ho is, as you say, rather a mystery. Marie's mothor is Italian, you know, on her father's aide, and the Count belongs to that branch of her family. At Milan he is an authority, I believe, in chemical scienco." " You don't like him, I fear." "Like him? I hate him." Mrs. Gardner entered the room on the word. 11 My dear, I thought you had gone to bed," said Reggy. She had been listening to our conversation. "I have come to smoke a cigarette with you if you don't mind," was the answer. Her suspicions had been confirmed (for our conversation had been a long one) that her ntrange influence over her husband was in danger of weakening; that his confidence in her was on the wane ; that her hideous secret, whatever it was, might be oozing out. "By all means— delighted," said Eeggy; and she sat down by his side, a superb-looking woman, if you did not examine her face critically for indications of feminine gentleness. During my acquaintance with her neither she nor I had ever alluded to the incident at' the Zoo, though she knew it was constantly in my mind. She had great penetrating powers, and she was, like a woman, constantly on the watch. Eeggy only saw her great blue eyes, her faultless classical features, wealth of hair, and tall, graceful figure, lithe and sinuous as a serpent's. From the first he had been enamoured of her beauty, and he was not in the habit of looking behind the mask of what are called perfect features, nor did he understand that a face, to be truly beautiful, must in some measure reflect a pure soul. One part of that conversation which she overheard (not that Eeggy ever suspected her of listening) referred to his will, about which I had made an enquiry, since he had only lately told me I was one of his trustees. It is possible sjio bad misinterpreted something he had said about altering it. I think of these and other things now, which under other circumstances I might have forgotton. IN MOURNING. I had left Berkshire for London, t and my servant was packing my traps for Norway, Eeggy and his wife having, as I understood, started for the Mediterranean, when I received a telegram from Eeggy's mother: "Please come at once; I fear my poor boy is dying." It was from Berkshire; so she was there. I had only been in London three days. I hurried down by the next train. Mrs. Gardner had been sent for only that morning. She thought I was there. The Count had come, and a local physician was in at- ; tendance. A London doctor of great i eminence had arrived with us. We ¦ were both too late. Eeggy Gardner was dead. He had been taken ill the day I came away, and had : gradually grown worse. The end had been intensely painful. His • wife was with' him to the last. • She had attended him night and i day. lie had died in her arms. Now she was inconsolable, they

said, and would not see anyone. The doctors called the fatal malady which had carried him off "inflammation of the heart." They did not dream what grim satire there was in the verdict. At my request the London physician examined the remains of the medicine which had been administered to Reggy, and make other inquiries, hut everything, he told me confidentially, tended to confirm the correctness of the certificate of death which the other medical attendant had signed. He diagnosed the case for me, malang the story of -^ e £gy' 8 death appear perfectly regular and natural; and a week afterwards they carried the boy who had accosted me that Friday outside the Zoo to the family vault in the little Berkshire church. A codicil had been made to the will the second day of the poor lad's illness excluding my trusteeship, and appointing the widow sole executrix. "And now good-bye!" said Adraßtia, when all was over and we were alone, face to face. "We never liked each other ; there is now no further cause to dissemble our hatred." " Mrs. Gardner," I answered, "I thank you for this frankness. Let me follow your example. I charge you with the murder of the boy we have just buried." She stepped a pace backward, but her face neither changed in colour nor expesaion. " The day may come when I shall reiterate that declaration before an earthly judge." She swept across the floor in a long train of rustling crape. She was dressed in deep mourning. She looked defiantly at me and laid her hand upon the bell-pull, and rang a quick, firm peal. It was answered by a sleek Italian servitor. She pointed towards me as she addressed him — "This gentleman is leaving us; order the carriage round for the railway station at once." The door being closed again she said — "Your malice outruns your discretion, aud your enmity overrides your manners. I despise and defy you !" All the same she killed that unhappy boy, and watched over his last agonies with the same cruel satisfaction that chilled my blood in the serpent-house. I am sure of it. Have I proved it? No; not yet. M present Eeggy Gardner's death is one of the mysteries of London.