There was little sleep for David Harcourt that night. After his inrush into the kitchen, and his long amazement to find it empty, he again searched the flat throughout; no one but he was in it, and no one had gone out through the front door, for there stood his barricade of table, chair, and hat-stand, just as he had left it.

This seemed surely to show that he had to do with that which is beyond and above natural. Yet there were points against that view, too. There was, first of all, the spot of blood, for in the passage between the servant’s room and the kitchen he saw what seemed to be a spot of blood. The carpet was a brown pattern on a pink ground, and in one place the brown looked redder than elsewhere,—that was all. If it was blood, then the bullet shot by him, which he now found imbedded in the frame of the kitchen-door, may have passed through some part of a man; but he could not assert to himself that it was blood.

There were, however, the pictures. Unless he was dancing mad, the fact was certain that he had left only three of them with their backs undone, and now there were five—and he refused to believe that he was indeed moonstruck.

So, then, a man had been in the flat, since no ghost could materialize to the extent of picking tacks out of picture-frames. And, if there had been a man, that man was Van Hupfeldt, and no other. Van Hupfeldt’s motive would be clear enough. Miss L’Estrange had told Van Hupfeldt that the certificates had fallen out of the back of a picture. David himself had had the rashness, in his rage at the loss of the certificates, to say over the door of Van Hupfeldt’s landau that there “might be other things where the certificates came from.” Mrs. Grover had been seen that afternoon talking to Van Hupfeldt’s servant. She was evidently in process of being bribed and won over to the enemy. She may have told how David had had all the pictures taken down and was at work on them, and how he was to be out at an annual dinner that night. She may possibly have handed over to Van Hupfeldt the key of the flat, and Van Hupfeldt, in a crazy terror lest anything should be found by David in the pictures, may have come into the flat to search for himself.

All this seemed plausible enough. But, then, how had Van Hupfeldt got away? Had he a flying-machine? Was he a griffin? Were there holes in the wall?

But if, as a matter of fact, he or some other had been in the flat, and had some way got out other than by the front door, here was a new thought—that Gwendoline Mordaunt may not, after all, have committed suicide. Suicide had been assumed simply because of the locked and bolted front door. But how if there existed some other mysterious exit from the flat? In that case she might have been done to death—by Strauss, by Van Hupfeldt, if Van Hupfeldt was Strauss.

David, no doubt, was all too ready to think evil of this man. Nevertheless the question confronted him. Why, he asked himself, should Gwendoline have committed suicide? She was a married woman—the certificate, seen by Miss L’Estrange, proved that. True, Gwendoline had received some terrible letter four days before her death, as her servant had told David, and she had said to the girl: “I am not married. You think that I am; but I am not.” Still, a doubt arose now as to her suicide. Her sister Violet did not believe in the suicide. Nothing was certain.

However, this new theory of the tragedy put David upon writing to Violet the first thing in the morning. Vague as his doubt, it was a set-off against his shame of defeat in the matter of the certificates. It was something with which to face her. He resolved to tell her at once all that was in his mind, even his shocking suspicion that Van Hupfeldt was Strauss, and he wrote:

“Mr. David Harcourt has unfortunately not been able to secure the certificates of which he had the honor of speaking to Miss Mordaunt, but believes that her fiancÉ, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position to give her some information on the subject. However, Mr. Harcourt has other matters of pressing importance to communicate to Miss Mordaunt for her advantage, and, in case she lacks the leisure to be alone in the course of the day, he will be pleased to be at her sister’s grave this evening about five, if she will write him a line to that effect.”

He posted this before eight in the morning, went off to seek his old charwoman in Clerkenwell, breakfasted outside, came home, and set to work afresh upon the pictures.

And that proved a day of days for him. For, before noon, on opening the back of a mezzotint of the “Fighting Temeraire,” he found a book, large, flat, and ivory-white. Its silver clasp was locked. He could not see within, yet he understood that it was no printed book, but in manuscript, and that here was the diary of Gwendoline Mordaunt. He was still exulting over it, searching now with fresh zeal for more treasure, when he received a note: “Miss Mordaunt hopes to lay some flowers on her sister’s grave this evening about five.”

Her paper had a scent of violets, and David, in putting it to his nostrils, allowed his lips, too, to steal a kiss;—for happy men do sometimes kiss scented paper. And he was happy, thinking how, when he presented the diary to her, he would see her glad and thankful.

At the very hour, however, when he was thus rejoicing, Van Hupfeldt was going up the stairs at 60A, Porchester Gardens. He was limping and leaning on his valet, and his dark skin was now so much paler than usual that on his entrance into the drawing-room Mrs. Mordaunt cried out:

“Why, what is the matter?”

“Do not distress yourself at all,” said Van Hupfeldt, limping on his stick toward her. “Only a slight accident—a fall off a stumbling horse in the park this morning—my knee—it is better now—”

“Oh, I am so sorry! But you should not have come; you are evidently still in pain. So distressing! Sit here; let me—”

“No, really,” said he, “it is nearly all right now, dear Mrs. Mordaunt. I have so much to say, and so little time to say it in. Where is Violet?”

“She is in her bed-room; will soon be down. Let me place this cushion—”

“She is well, I hope?”

“Yes; a little strange and restless to-day, perhaps.”

“What is it now?”

“Oh, some little fall of the spiritual barometer, I suppose. She has not mentioned anything specific to me.”

“You received my telegram of this morning?”

“Saying that you would come at half-past one? Yes.”

“Well, I am lucky to have found you alone, for in what I have now to suggest to you, I do not wish my influence to appear—let it seem to be done entirely on your own impulse—but I have to beseech you, Mrs. Mordaunt, to return to Rigsworth this very day.”

“To-day? Rigsworth? But there are still a host of things to be seen to before the wedding—”

“I know, I know. Even at the cost of putting off the wedding for a week, if you will do all that is to be done from Rigsworth instead of in London, you will profoundly oblige me. I had hoped that you would this do for me without requiring my reason, but I see that I must give it, and without any beating about the bush. Only give me first your assurance that you will breathe not one word to Violet of what I am forced to tell you.”

“Good gracious! What has happened?”

“Promise me this.”

“Well, I shall be discreet.”

“Then, I have to tell you that Violet has made an undesirable acquaintance in London, one whom it is of supreme importance, if our married life is to be a success, that she should see not once again. It is a man—No, don’t be unduly alarmed—I don’t for a moment suspect that their intimacy has proceeded far, but it has proceeded too far, and must go no farther. I may tell you that it is my belief that letters, or notes, have passed between them, and, to my knowledge, they have met at least once by appointment in Kensal Green cemetery, for I have actually surprised them there. Now, pray, don’t be distressed. Don’t, now, or I shall regret having told you. Certainly, it is a serious matter, but don’t think it more serious than it is—”

“Violet?” breathed Mrs. Mordaunt, with a long face.

“The facts are as I have stated them,” proceeded Van Hupfeldt, “and when the knowledge of them came to me, I was at some pains to make inquiries into the personality of the man in question. He turns out to be a man named Harcourt.”

“Oh, you mean Mr. Harcourt, the occupier of the flat in Eddystone Mansions? Why, he was here yesterday. Violet herself told me—”

“Here? Yesterday?” Van Hupfeldt turned suddenly greenish. “But why so? What did the man say?”

“Violet did not seem to wish to be explicit,” answered Mrs. Mordaunt; “but I understood from her that he is interested in Gwendoline’s fate.”

“He? By what right does he dare? He is interested in Violet! That is whom the man is interested in, Mrs. Mordaunt, I tell you! And do you know what this man is? I have been at the pains to discover—a scribbler of books, a man of notoriously bad character who has had to fly from America—”

“How awful! But Mr. Dibbin, the agent, had references—”

“References are quite useless. It is as I say, and I am not guessing when I assert to you that Violet has a penchant for this man—a most dangerous penchant, which can lead to nothing but disaster, if it be not now scotched in the bud. I demand it as my right, and I beseech it as a friend, that she never see him again.”

“Yet it is all most strange. I think you exaggerate. Violet’s fancies are not errant.”

“Well, say that I exaggerate. But you will at least sympathize, Mrs. Mordaunt, with my sense of the acute danger of your further stay in London at present—”

“I think you make a mountain of a molehill, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” said Mrs. Mordaunt with some dryness, “and I am sorry now that I have promised not to speak with Violet on the subject. Of course, I recognize your right to have your say and your way, but as for leaving London to-day at a moment’s notice, really that can’t be done.”

“Not to oblige me? not to please me?” said he, grasping the old lady’s hand with a nervous intensity of gesture that almost startled her.

“We might go to-morrow,” she admitted.

“But if they correspond or meet to-night?”

“Well, you are a lover, of course; but you shouldn’t start at shadows. Here is Violet herself.”

“Leave us a little, will you?” whispered Van Hupfeldt, rising to meet the girl in his impulsive foreigner’s way, but, forgetting his wounded leg, he had to stop short with a face of pain.

“Are you ill?” asked Violet, and a certain aloofness of manner did not escape him.

“A small accident—” he told over again the history of his fall from a horse which had never borne him. Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet stood at a table, turning over the leaves of a book, while Van Hupfeldt searched her face under his anxious eyes, and there was a silence between them, until Violet, taking from her pocket David’s first unsigned note to her, held it out, saying: “It was you who sent me this?”

“I have told you so,” answered Van Hupfeldt, gray to the lips. “Why do you ask again?”

“Because I am puzzled,” she answered. “I have this morning received a note in this same handwriting, unless I am very much mistaken, a note from a certain Mr.—”

“Yes. Harcourt—Christian name David.”

“Quite so. David Harcourt—I can say it,” she answered quietly. “But how, then, comes it that your note and his are in the same handwriting?”

Van Hupfeldt’s lips opened and shut, his eyes shifted, and yet he chuckled with the uneasy mirth of a ghoul: “The solution of that puzzle doesn’t seem difficult to me.”

“You mean that you got Mr. Harcourt to write your note for you?” asked Violet.

“You are shrewdness itself,” answered Van Hupfeldt.

“I did not know that you even knew him.”

“Ah, I know him well.”

“Well, then, have you brought the certificates?” she asked keenly.

“Which certificates?”

“Which? You ask that? Surely, surely, you know that a certificate of marriage and one of birth were found in the flat by a Miss L’Estrange?”

“No, I didn’t know. How could I know?”

“But am I in a dream? I have made sure that it was upon some knowledge of them that you relied when you wrote in the unsigned note, ‘It is now a pretty certain thing that your sister was a duly wedded wife.’” And she looked at David’s letter again.

“No, I had other grounds. I needn’t tell you what, since they are not yet certain—other grounds. I have not heard yet of any certificates—”

“Well, God help me, then!” she murmured, half-crying. “What, then, does Mr. Harcourt mean? He says in the note of this morning: ‘Mr. Harcourt has not been able to secure the certificates, but believes that Miss Mordaunt’s fiancÉ, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position to give her some information on the subject.’ What does that mean when you never even heard of the certificates?”

Van Hupfeldt, looking squarely now at her, said: “It means nothing at all. You may take it from me that no certificates have been found.”

Violet flushed angrily. “Some one is untrue!” she cried out.

“I fear that that is so,” murmured Van Hupfeldt, dropping his eyes from her crimsoned face.

There was silence then for a while.

“With what object did this Harcourt come to you yesterday, Violet?” asked Van Hupfeldt.

“He wished to obtain my mother’s authorization for him to spend one hundred pounds in buying the certificates from Miss L’Estrange’s servant.”

“Ah, that was what he said was his object. But his real object was slightly different, I’m afraid. I know this man, you see. He is poor, and not honest.”

“Not honest?”

“No, not honest.”

“You say such a thing?”

“But what is it to you? Why do you care? Why are you pale? Yes, I say it again, not honest! the miserable ruffian.”

“If he heard you, I think he might resent it with some vigor,” she said quietly.

“Why do you speak so strangely? What is it? Do you doubt what I tell you?” asked Van Hupfeldt.

“I neither doubt nor believe. What is it to me? I only feel ashamed to live in the same world with such people. If it was not to obtain my authorization to spend the one hundred pounds for the certificates, why did he come?”

“There were no certificates!” cried Van Hupfeldt, vehemently. “The certificates were an invention. What he really wanted was, not your authorization, but the one hundred itself. He hoped that when he asked for your authorization, you, in your eagerness to have the certificates, would produce the one hundred pounds, which to a man in his position is quite a large sum, whereupon he would have decamped, and you would have heard no more either of him or of your one hundred pounds. But, as you did not hand him the money, he now very naturally writes to say that he can’t get the certificates. I know the fellow very well. I have long known him. He comes from America, where he has played such ingenious pranks once too often.”

Violet sighed with misery, like one who hears the unfavorable verdict of a doctor. “Oh, don’t!” she murmured.

“I am sorry to offend your ears,” said Van Hupfeldt, looking with interest at his nails, for they had nearly dug into the palms of his hands a few minutes earlier, “but it was necessary to tell you this. This is not the sort of man who ought ever to have entered your presence. How, by the way, did you come to know him?”

“I met him by chance at my sister’s grave. He told me that he is the tenant of the flat. He seemed good. I don’t know what to do!” She let herself fall into a chair, leaned her head on her hand, and stared miserably into vacancy, while Van Hupfeldt, limping nearer, said over her:

“You ought to promise me, Violet, never again to allow yourself to hold any sort of communication with this person. You will hardly, indeed, be able to see him again, for Mrs. Mordaunt has just been telling me of her sudden resolve to go down to Rigsworth to-morrow morning.”

“To-morrow?”

“So she says; and perhaps on the whole it is best, don’t you think?”

Violet shrugged hopeless shoulders. “I don’t care one bit either way,” she said.

“So, then, that is agreed between us. You won’t ever write to him again.”

“I don’t undertake anything of that kind,” she retorted. “I must have time to think. Are you quite sure that all this infamy is the God’s truth? It is as if you said that mountain streams ran ink. The man told me that there were certificates. They fell out of a picture-frame, he said. He looked true, he seemed good and honest; he is a young man with dark-blue eyes—”

“He is a beast!”

“I don’t know that yet, I have no certain proof. I was to see him this evening.”

“To see him? Ah, but never again, never again! And would you now, after hearing—”

“I am not sure. I must have time to think, I must have proof. I have no proof. It is hard on me, after all.”

“What is hard on you?” demanded Van Hupfeldt; and, had not the girl been so distraught, she would have seen that he had the semblance more of a murderer than of a lover. “What proofs do you want beyond my word? The man said that there were certificates, did he not? Well, let him produce them. The fact that he can’t is a proof that there were none.”

“Not quite. No—there is a doubt. He should have the benefit of the doubt. A man should not be condemned before he is tried, after all. If Miss L’Estrange was to say that there were no certificates, that would be proof. You must know her address—give it to me, and let me go straight to her—”

“Certainly, I have her address,” said Van Hupfeldt, his eyes winking a little with crafty thought, “but not, of course, in my head. You shall have it in a day or two. You can then write and question her from Rigsworth, and she will tell you that no certificate ever fell out of any picture.” He thought to himself: “for I shall see that she tells you what I wish, if she has any love of money.”

“But couldn’t you give me the address to-day?” asked Violet. “That would settle everything at once.”

“To-day I’m afraid it is out of the question,” answered Van Hupfeldt. “I have it put away in some drawer of some bureau. It may take a day or two; but find it I will, and, meantime, is it much to expect that my angel will believe in her one best and eternal friend? Assure me now that you will not see this undesirable person this evening.”

“I do not mean to at this moment, but I do not decide. I said that I would. He pretends he has something to say to me—”

“He has nothing! He is merely impudent. Where were you to see him? At the grave, I think? At the grave?”

Violet blushed and made no answer. Mrs. Mordaunt came in. “So, mother,” said Violet to her, “we go home to-morrow?”

“I have thought that it might be well, dear,” answered her mother, “in which case we shall have enough to do between now and then.”

“But why the sudden decision?”

“We are not at all moments our own masters and mistresses, dear. This at present seems the indicated course, and we must follow it.”

“May I have the pleasure to come with you, if only for a day or two?” asked Van Hupfeldt.

“Of course, we are always glad of your company, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” answered Mrs. Mordaunt; “but it is such a trying journey, and it may affect your injury.”

“Not trying to me where Violet is,” said Van Hupfeldt.

“Violet should be a happy girl to have so much devotion lavished upon her, I am sure,” said Mrs. Mordaunt, with a fond smile at her daughter. “I do hope that she is duly grateful to you, and to the Giver of all our good.”

Violet said nothing. In her gloomy eyes, if one had looked, dwelt a rather hunted look. She presently left Van Hupfeldt and her mother, and in her own room lay on a couch thinking out her problem. “To go to the grave, or not to go?”

She had promised: but how if David Harcourt was truly the thing which he was said to be? Her maiden mind shrank and shuddered. It was possibly false, but, then, it was possibly true—all men seemed to be liars. She had better wait and first hear the truth from Miss L’Estrange. If Miss L’Estrange proved him false, she, Violet, would give herself one luxury, the writing to him of one note—such a note! stinging, crushing, killing! After which she would forget once and forever that such a being had ever lived, and seemed nice, and been detestable. Meantime, it would be too unmaidenly rash to see him. It could not be done; however much he drew her with his strong magnetism, she should not, and would not. Why could he not have been good, and grand, and high, and everything that is noble and wonderful, as a man should be? In that case, ah, then! As it was, how could she? It was his own fault, and she hated him. Still, she had promised, and one should keep one’s word unless the keeping becomes impossible. Moreover, since she was to leave London on the morrow, she should dearly like to see the grave once more. The new wreath must be already on its way from the florist’s. She would like to go, dearly, dearly, if only it were not for the lack of dignity and reserve.

Thinking such thoughts, she lay so long that Van Hupfeldt went away without seeing her again; but he had no intention of leaving it to chance whether she saw David that evening or not. Certain that the rendezvous was at the grave, his cautious mind proceeded to take due precautions, and by three o’clock the eyes of his spy, a young woman rather overdressed, were upon the grave in the Kensal Green cemetery, while Van Hupfeldt himself was sitting patient in the smoking-room of a near hotel, ready to be called the moment a sign of Violet should be seen.

Violet, however, did not go to the grave. About four o’clock one of the servants of 60A, Porchester Gardens, arrived at the cemetery in a cab, went to the grave, put the new wreath on it, and on the wreath put an envelope directed to “David Harcourt, Esq,” and went away. The moment she was gone, Van Hupfeldt’s spy had the envelope, and with it hurried to him in the hotel. Breaking it open without hesitation, he read the words: “Miss Mordaunt regrets that she is unable to visit her sister’s grave to-day, as she hoped, and from to-morrow morning she will be in the country; but if Mr. Harcourt really has anything of importance to communicate to her, he may write, and she will reply. Her address is Dale Manor, Rigsworth, near Kenilworth, Warwickshire.”

“What do you think of this handwriting?” Van Hupfeldt asked of his she-attendant, showing her the note. “Do you think you could imitate it?”

“It is big and bold enough; it doesn’t look difficult to imitate,” was the critical estimate.

“Just have a try, and let me see your skill. Write—”

He dictated to her the words: “Miss Mordaunt has duly received from her fiancÉ, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, the certificates of which Mr. Harcourt spoke to her, so that all necessity for any communication between Mr. Harcourt and Miss Mordaunt is now at an end. Miss Mordaunt leaves London to-day.”

The scribe, after several rewritings, at last shaped the note into something really like Violet’s writing. It was then directed to “David Harcourt.” The young woman took it to the grave, and it was placed on the wreath of violets where the purloined note had lain.

Twenty minutes later, David, full of anticipation and hope, the diary in his hand, drew near to Kensal Green. For some time he did not go quite to the grave, but stood at the bend of the path, whence he should be able to see her feet coming, and the blooming beneath them of the March daisies in the turf. But she did not come. The minutes went draggingly by. Strolling presently nearer the grave, he noticed the fresh wreath, and the letter laid on it.

He stood a long while by the Iona cross over the violets, while the dusk deepened to a gloom like that of his mind. How empty seemed London now! And all life, how scantless and stale now, without the purple and perfume of her! For she was gone, and “all necessity for any communication between her and him was now at an end.” He went away from the cemetery whistling a tune, with a jaunty step, in order to persuade himself that his heart was not hollow, nor his mind black with care.