Joan's Enemies/Chapter 20

ECAUSE of his desperate haste Stormont had made an error in his first measurements. Consequently he had been compelled to dispose of several square yards of cement, whereas one would have sufficed, before he laid bare the flagstone. When Joan and the two men entered, they found him greatly exhausted, covered with dust, his hands bleeding. Yet he nodded pleasantly to Grant, saying:

“So we meet at Elm House after all!”

Grant briefly introduced him to Fairthorn. They bowed politely, and then Stormont directed attention to his handiwork.

“Well,” he said, “shall we go ahead? I've cleared the dirt from around the stone, and here is a trusty lever!”

As Grant and Fairthorn went forward to assist, Joan moved into the background and leaned against a bench. When the stone was raised and Stormont's voice exclaimed “At last!” she did not move, but her hand went to her heart.

“Why,” said Fairthorn, flashing an electric torch downward, “it's a steel room! Come and see, Miss March!”

“Thanks; I will wait,” she cried faintly.

“Yes; better wait,” Stormont agreed. “Keep back, gentlemen. There may be some gas.” He struck a match, set fire to a piece of paper and tossed the burning mass into the pit. It floated down, flaming cheerfully.

“Certainly not carbonic. In fact, I think Rufus has given an unnecessary warning. I'm going down,” added Stormont, now trembling slightly with eagerness. “I'll let you know at once what I find.”

A silence ensued, broken only by occasional sounds from below—footfalls and clangs as though Stormont were testing the walls. But those sounds came to an end.

After a little while Grant called: “I say, are you all right there?”

There was no response.

“I'd better go down,” said Grant in concern, and he was on his knees when Fairthorn cried: “Wait—I think I hear him. Yes! And he's coming up!”

As Stormont's face rose from the pit, the two friends involuntarily recoiled. Despite the dust, its pallor was startlingly apparent.

“Didn't think it of Rufus, but he has fooled us—fooled us, fooled us! What? Platinum? Not a pennyweight! Nice steel room down there, riveted like a ship, but nothing in it. Didn't think it of Rufus, but he has fooled us!” He staggered. “Fooled us!”

Grant sprang to his aid, but Stormont recovered himself and made unsteadily for the door. There he turned and drew himself up.

“Good night, gentlemen,” he said, and gazed wistfully at Joan. “Good-by, Miss March,” he said, and went out.

“Don't you wish to see the place for yourself, Grant?” asked Joan a moment later. “Mr. Stormont may have missed something.”

He shook his head, but moved over to the hole.

The moment he disappeared, Joan fled from the laboratory.

RANT found himself in a space ten feet by eight, by about twelve in height. Floor, walls and roof were lined with large steel plates closely riveted. He could discover neither crack nor crevice, though he conducted a most careful examination with his torch. And the chamber, as Stormont had stated, was absolutely void.

A sound behind him—the grate and clash of metal—caused him to wheel about. With a shuddering noise a steel plate swung outward; and next instant Joan, holding a lantern, stood in the opening..

“Come,” she said, “and don't speak a word.”

Amazed, he followed her through a short, narrow tunnel, over a litter of bricks, into a cellar which he recognized. Without pause the girl hurried from the cellar into the passage and turned to the left. A few paces more, and she halted before an ancient door. With a big key she opened it, and motioned him to enter.

It was a cellar like the first, but the floor was littered with small black sacks of stout drill, tied together in couples, and all bulging.

“Your platinum,” she said. “Four hundred bags, each containing a hundred ounces.” She leaned against the wall and set the lantern on a narrow ledge at her side.

“Joan! But how?”

“Oh, I felt that something might happen. I could endure no more risks. After you went this afternoon, I took the law into my own hands.”

“You broke down the wall! But the danger—the gas!”

“I kept back till I thought the place had aired. Also”—with a small, weary laugh—“I wore gloves.”

“But forty thousand ounces!”

“The bags are handy for carrying, and I had several hours. Please don't ask any more questions just now. But I must tell you this much. I burned your strip in Mr. Stormont's presence.”

“Then I have no claim to the platinum, nor has anyone!” cried the young man excitedly. “Oh, splendid! So it belongs to you. Honestly, I'm glad.”

“Don't be silly, Douglas. I burned it because those two men had altered the figures to their own advantage. Aunt Griselda knew, though she could not prove it. She will tell you about it herself.”

“So that's why you let Stormont go on to the bitter end!”

“He deserved it—but I feel a brute.” She drew herself erect. “Take this key, please, and let us go upstairs. Mr. Fairthorn—”

Grant's self-restraint gave way. He caught her hand and kissed it, while the key rang on the stone floor.

“Oh, Joan, Joan, if only I could hope all you have done meant something more than a duty to my uncle and your own honor!”

“You mustn't do that!” she cried. Smartly she drew away her hand, and with her elbow touched the lantern on its precarious refuge.

A crash—and darkness!

“Oh, dear!” she said helplessly.

“I have a torch in my pocket,” said Grant, and in almost the same breath: “Joan, you know I love you dearly. Will you marry me?”

The rest of that conversation is really not our affair at all, though you will be glad to know it was wholly satisfactory to Douglas Grant.

N an afternoon about a year later Joan and her aunt were seated in the drawing-room of Elm House, which had been in the latter's charge while the former and her husband were away “seeing the world.” The pair had reached home on the previous day. They intended to settle down,—for a time, at any rate,—and Miss Gosling, being a sensible creature, had already taken a small flat for her own use. She had been forced to accept a few sacks of the platinum.

“Yes,” she was saying, “Sylvia Lismore's letter gave the impression that things were going pleasantly enough. I can imagine Harold Lismore, with money in his pocket and nothing to gamble it on, as quite a passable country gentleman. Sylvia says his liver—I hope she means his temper—is greatly improved.”

“And Lottie?”

“Lottie, I gather, is, for the moment, sweet on a curate—heaven help him! She is thinking of becoming a nurse. Finds the country dull. But as she has also thought of becoming an artist, an author, a famous actress and so on, the nursing profession must not reckon too surely on being adorned.”

“Poor Lottie!”

“Poor fiddlesticks!” In a kindlier tone the spinster said: “I wonder if you would go to see Mrs. Lismore, Joan, or allow her to come to see you.”

“No.”

“Well, well, that decides it. And yet you were going to give her all you had, if Douglas had not insisted on handing over a share of the platinum, for which act he had no real reason but my word. I did hate being honest then!'”

Joan still shrank at the mention of Mrs. Lismore; perhaps the memory would always rankle. In silence she turned to the window, while the other continued:

“And never a trace of the Stormont person since he attended that inquest and got complimented on his evidence, and afterward went to his office and dismissed the boy with a gold-piece extra! Do you think he can be alive? Think of it! All his creditors paid, even the horrid revenue people, and two hundred thousand or so in the bank waiting for him! Well, it serves him right if he's in want somewhere!”

Joan sighed—then smiled. Douglas was coming up the garden.