Valentine - Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927

“May I ask why that woman was in your bedroom to-night?” he queried, in his gentle tones.

“She came herself, after I had gone to bed.”

“To explain that she was not the impostor I had proved her?”

“ She did explain that, yes.”

“Hm!” Dr. Hailey thought a moment. “I suppose your poor uncle tried to summon her, and discovered that her room was empty. He would naturally conclude that you had ordered her off the premises.”

Sacha sighed deeply.

“ His brain has given way utterly, I am afraid,” she said.

“And yet there was method in his madness.” Dr. Hailey’s large face expressed the perplexity he felt. “As I told you last night, this spiritualism business is the foundation of his life. If he really did believe that he was about to be certified as a lunatic, and so separated from his Ninon, suicide would seem the only avenue of escape left to him. His failure to kill himself, clearly, unhinged his nerves. That is what usually happens.”

The promise which Ninon Darelli had made to Sacha was fulfilled. Her sleep, after her uncle had been carried back to his bedroom, was deep and dreamless.

But when she awoke, it was as if she had not slept at all. Instantly, the fear which had driven her to the very gates of death clutched once again at her heart. She rose and walked to the window of the room. Her head ached and her mouth seemed to be dry and burning. All that calm, wonderful confidence of the night before, which had saved her from her uncle’s maniacal fury, had deserted her utterly.

And the danger threatening the man she loved was not abated by a single jot.

She held her hands to her brow, trying to clear her thoughts. Ninon Darelli had told her that she alone could save Dick. But how? How? Fresh doubts of the medium crowded in now on her mind. It was so easy to make statements of that kind; indeed, they were the stock-in-trade of every vulgar fortune teller in the land.

On the other hand, Ninon had come to her bedroom at the moment of crisis. And Ninon had certainly been aware that Dick was in great danger. The injection, too, which she had administered, had wrought all, and more than all, that she promised of it.

If only, now, she could obtain another injection!

She rang the bell, and told the maid who answered it to prepare her bath. The maid informed her that Mlle. Darelli had already left The Black Tower to return to London.

So there was no chance of getting another injection! And she did not know Ninon’s address in London. A sense of despair came to Sacha, of weakness and great exhaustion, such as she had never before experienced in her life. She sank down in the armchair, and covered her face with her hands.

Would it not be better to tell everything that she knew about that awful night when her husband was snatched suddenly from his wild business of living? Would not the truth save Dick, even though appearances might be against him? But no — what she told would not be believed.

That had been the whole strength of Barrington’s blackmail of her.

She glanced up with haunted eyes. She must marry Barrington then, as she had promised, seeing that the other way, which she tried to follow, was closed against her. She began to sob and was not able to control her weeping.

Unless, indeed, there was anything in what Ninon Darelli had told her.

That hope gleamed suddenly with new brightness. In spite of what Dr. Hailey had said, there could be no harm in asking the help of this woman. After all, she could not fail to help. At the very worse, things could not be blacker than they were already. And Ninon did certainly possess strange powers. It might be that what she had said about Beatrice was no more than the simple truth as she had experienced it.

Sacha started in recalling the name of her uncle’s fiancée. Was it the presence of Ninon in her room which had brought to her mind the idea of pretending to be Beatrice when her uncle was threatening her?

That might explain the curious sensation she had felt of having acted the same part often and often before; for Ninon had said that all his outbursts were similar to this one. Suppose that the spirit of the dead Beatrice had entered for a moment into her body and spoken with her voice! Just as, perhaps, the hooves of the Horseman of Death had been heard by means of Ninon’s body.

Sacha rose with a new excitement burning in her eyes, and then, with an exclamation of delight, lifted from the mantelpiece a tiny visiting card which had been left there since she went to sleep. It bore the name and address:

Ninon Darelli’s flat was on the first floor. Sacha was shown into a waiting room which was furnished so austerely as to suggest an apartment in a convent.

She glanced about her in surprise, with which a sense of relief was mingled. Not thus, in her experience, did charlatans and impostors furnish their houses. The plain gray walls and bare, polished floor, the chairs upholstered in black leather, the steel fender, shining dully in the diminished light, bore silent witness to the sincerity of this girl. Sacha found that witness unexpectedly convincing.

Nor was this impression removed by the appearance of Ninon herself, or by the furnishings of her private room. The austere note of the waiting room characterized this apartment also. Ninon was dressed in a frock of pale green material, which enhanced her girlishness rather than the psychic qualities of her beauty. She looked almost gay.

“So,” she said, in her musical voice, “you have come to me after all. I am glad.”

She waved her visitor to a deep sofa, which extended across a corner of the room, and sat down near her on a narrow divan.

“Tell me,” she invited, “what I can do to help you.”

Sacha was conscious already of the wonderful sense of relief which this girl had bestowed on her the night before. She lay back on the soft cushions and closed her eyes.

“I have come,” she said, “ to thank you. That first. Last night I slept so soundly that all my troubles seemed to have been blotted out.”

“Ah, my medicine did not fail then.”

“Your medicine is the most wonderful, the most blessed in the whole world.”

Ninon sighed. “I will give you some more of it presently,” she promised; “but first I wish to ask you something, and to tell you something. And I will begin by telling. It is about your uncle, Lord Templewood. Last night was not the first occasion on which he has tried to take his own life—”

She spoke quickly. She glanced at Sacha, as if to note the effect of her words. Sacha’s expression was unmoved.

“It is always the same. First he sleeps; then he walks in his sleep. And then there is that terrible business of trying to kill—”

Ninon broke off and shuddered.

“Last night,” she whispered, “I was so tired that I thought I would not be able to call his Beatrice to him. I was dreadfully frightened then, because if Beatrice does not come, he grows violent.”

“So it was you who called Beatrice!” Sacha exclaimed. “ I felt sure of it.”

“Of course. When she — his Beatrice — spoke to him, it was your lips which spoke, but the accents of the voice were not your accents. Do you know what that means?”

Ninon’s tones had grown suddenly peremptory. Sacha shook her head.

“No.”

“It means that you also have the soul of a medium, a little of that soul, at any rate.”

She rose as she spoke, and crossed to a table in the far corner of the room. She took a black box, like a large jewel-case, from the table, and brought it to Sacha. She set it down on the arm of the sofa, close to where the girl was sitting. She opened it. A ball of crystal was revealed, set on a pedestal of black velvet.