At the far end of the drawing-room—not the end where the curtained windows led out on to the terrace lounge—there was a tall screen of carved teakwood from Benares. Behind it upon a little table stood a telephone. The Admastons—husband and wife—had always made a great point of using the telephone. Peggy herself, with her impulsive moods, found it most convenient, and insisted upon having one in any room that she habitually used.
Pauline, her face wrinkled in thought, strolled mechanically to this corner of the room and gazed down upon the glittering little machine of ebony and silver with a frown of dislike. She was thinking of Collingwood and his message, and a dull resentment glowed in her brain at these mechanical facilities of life.
There were no telephones in Pont-Aven when she was a girl in the ancient Breton town, and these things seemed to her part and parcel of the hot, feverish, and hurried life in which her beloved mistress was suffering so greatly.
The old bonne's face, kindly and sweet enough when it wore its ordinary expression, was now mocking and malevolent as she stared at the table. Suddenly she stiffened, raised her head, and listened intently.
She had heard the door of the drawing-room open and close quietly, and there came a rustle of silk skirts.
Lady Attwill had glided quietly into the room and stepped up to the big writing-table at which Peggy conducted most of her correspondence.
The maid stepped out from behind the screen, her eyes shining curiously. "Can I do anything for madame?" she asked. "Miladi a oublié quelque chose, n'est-ce pas?"
The tall, slim woman seemed strangely confused. Her face was a little flushed, her glance at Pauline distinctly uneasy.
She made an exclamation in French, paused to think, and then answered Pauline in English.
"I thought I left my bag down here," she said lamely.
Without troubling to disguise the suspicion and hostility in her voice, and with a slightly sneering note of triumph in it, as if she was pleased at Alice Attwill's confusion, Pauline made a little mocking bow.
"Madame had her bag in her hand when she went upstairs. But I will ring and ask." She went towards the nearest bell-push.
"No! no!" Lady Attwill answered; "please don't trouble. I must be mistaken."
Without a backward glance she almost hurried from the room.
Pauline's face was now extraordinarily watchful and alert. All the peasant cunning flashed out upon it. Any one who has seen the wives and daughters of the small Breton farmers selling a cow or a pony on market-day in some old-world town has seen this cautious, watchful look. One can see it even on the face and in the eyes of a pointer when birds are near: it is of the soil, primeval, part of the eternal hidden warfare of life.
"Yes, perhaps madameismistaken," the woman said to herself with an ugly grin.
She walked up to the writing-table and looked down upon it thoughtfully.
Suddenly something seemed to strike her and she stretched out her hand to open the great blotter of Nile-green leather, bordered with silver, when the telephone bell rang sharply out into the drawing-room.
She hurried to the telephone. "Who is it?" she said. "What? Yes, this is Admaston House—yes. She is in. Who is it? Yes, sir."
Still holding the receiver in her hand, the woman staggered back from the mouthpiece. She began to tremble violently. Her face became crimson with excitement.
"Oh, sir! she is...."
And now Pauline burst out crying. The tears ran down her cheeks, her old mouth trembled, she seemed upon the point of a breakdown.
"Oh, sir!" she cried again, "she has gone out upon the terrace, and is resting. Monsieur, I can hardly speak to you! Your wife is nearly mad, monsieur! Monsieur, she is innocent—on my soul!"
Her face became intensely eager. "Yes," she sobbed, "come. Yes, by the gate leading from the Park. You have the key. No. Yes, come; I will promise."
With hands that shook terribly, Pauline replaced the receiver on the bracket and came round from behind the Indian screen, walking towards the door. She had not got within three paces of it when it was flung open and the footman announced "Mr. Collingwood."
Roderick Collingwood entered, spruce,débonnaireas ever, but showing in his face traces of the ordeal he was passing through.
"Hullo, Pauline; where is madame?" he said.
"Madame is resting," the maid said, with distinct hostility.
"Out upon the terrace?" he answered, moving towards the windows.
Pauline made a swift movement and placed herself between him and the curtains.
"No; I think she is in her room, monsieur. Please wait here."
Collingwood looked at Pauline in some surprise. He seemed hurt. "What is the matter, Pauline?" he said.
"Nothing is the matter, sir. Would you like to see the news?"
She handed him the evening paper from the writing-table. "I will tell madame," she said, and hurried from the room—well knowing that there was another door from the hall by which the terrace could be reached.
Collingwood picked up the paper, opened it, and eagerly scanned the report of the day's proceedings. Then he flung it down with an oath just as a footman entered the room. "Lord Ellerdine wishes to speak to you, sir," said the footman.
"Is he here?" Collingwood replied.
"Yes, sir."
"Show him up at once."
In a moment or two more Lord Ellerdine, looking flurried and hot, entered the drawing-room.
His hat was in his hand, and he was wearing a light grey overcoat.
"My dear Dicky," Collingwood said, "what on earth brings you here?"
Collingwood had risen and strolled over to the big settee of blue linen. He sat down upon it calmly.
"I wanted to ask you something," Lord Ellerdine said in a rather unsteady voice; "so I went round to your solicitors' office, and they told me that I should find you here."
"Well, what is it?" Collingwood asked imperturbably.
"I say, Colling—do you write with your left hand?"
The other made a movement of impatience. "My dear Dicky," he said irritably, "what the devil?..."
"But do you?" Ellerdine insisted.
"Of course I don't," Collingwood answered shortly.
"I thought as much," said Lord Ellerdine, with a sigh of relief.
"You did, did you?" Collingwood replied, with a slight smile. "What is the game, Dicky?"
"It's not a game, Colling; it's dead serious," said the ex-diplomatist.
"Why, Dicky, what's up?"
"You remember some time ago when some silly ass forged my name on a cheque?" Lord Ellerdine asked, still flurried and ill at ease.
"Well?"
"Well, I got to know a handwriting expert—an American—a devilish smart fellow. When we left the court just now, and Peggy was thinking pretty rotten things about you, I thought I would go and have a word with him."
Collingwood's languid manner entirely disappeared. He bent forward with a keen, searching look at his friend. "You found him?" he asked.
Ellerdine nodded.
"Well, what does he say?"
"I showed him the photos of the letters," Lord Ellerdine continued, "and then the originals, and he says that they are written by some one who writes easily and fluently with his left hand."
"Left hand! Great Scott! Is he sure?"
"As sure as an American expert can be of anything," the peer returned.
"That's sure enough," Collingwood replied, shrugging his shoulders and rising up from the sofa.
He began to walk up and down the room. "That clears me, at anyrate," he said. "But what the devil can it all mean, Ellerdine?"
Lord Ellerdine had been looking at his friend, pathetically waiting for a word of praise. Now he ventured upon a little fishing remark:
"Mighty good thing I thought of that American chap—don't you think so, Colling?"
Collingwood hardly seemed to hear him. His head was bent forward and he was deep in thought.
"Yes, Dicky, yes. Left hand, eh?"
"Yes," Lord Ellerdine answered, with a plaintive note in his voice. "I think, Colling, I've handled this business with some skill—what?"
"Left hand," the other repeated, in a brown study.
"With some skill, Colling—what? Skill—what?" Lord Ellerdine bleated.
Collingwood looked up at this note in the other's voice. He suddenly realised that the poor gentleman was pining for praise, and began to administer it in the heartiest possible fashion.
He smacked him on the shoulder and his voice became absolutely jovial. "Skill!" he said. "My dear Dicky, it's splendid! Really, you missed your vocation. Diplomacy! Never! You're a detective, Dicky! A sleuth-hound! A regular Sherlock Holmes, don't you know!"
Lord Ellerdine was the happiest man in the three kingdoms at that moment. His little mouth twitched with pleasure. His face beamed like the rising sun. "I say, Colling, do you think so—do you really think so, Colling?"
"Think so!" Collingwood answered, laughing. "I'm sure of it, old chap"; and then, with a sudden, swift transition of manner, "Dicky, look here—have you told Admaston?"
"Not yet," Lord Ellerdine replied. "George Admaston is hard hit, devilish hard hit. He doesn't believe Peggy's guilty—he'd chuck the case if it wasn't for Fyffe."
"Chuck the case!" Collingwood said eagerly.
"I honestly believe he would," Lord Ellerdine answered. "It's the letter which sticks with Fyffe, and I don't understand it—we come against the beastly thing all the time."
Collingwood nodded. "Yes," he said; "that letter's hell."
He suddenly raised his head. "Look here, Dicky," he said, "I think I hear Peggy coming; so off you go, please. Get your American expert to dine with us to-night at your place, at eight o'clock. Run along."
Ellerdine went to the door. "All right, old chap," he said; "that is what I'll do. Eight o'clock. I'm so glad it wasn't you, old chap—such a dirty business!"
He went out of the room, not noticing that he had left his hat and gloves upon the writing-table.
A moment afterwards Peggy entered, pulling aside the curtains of the terrace window. She started violently when she saw Collingwood. "You here!" she said, and there was an ugly note of apprehension and even of anger in her voice. "You——"
Collingwood went up to her. "Peggy!" he said.
"Wasn't that Dicky I heard?"
"Yes."
Collingwood had hardly said it, and the two were looking at each other strangely enough, when the door leading into the hall opened and Lord Ellerdine came back. "Forgot my hat, old chap," he said, going up to the table. Then he saw Peggy.
"Peggy!" he cried, going up to her and taking one of her hands in both of his. "Buck up, little woman! It'll be all right—we'll pull you through!"
Then he began to hesitate and stammer, while his cheeks flushed and he showed every possible sign of embarrassment.
"Yes," he continued, "we'll pull you through. Won't we, Colling?"
He hesitated, at a loss for words; and then his eye fell upon the table. "Ah!" he said. "My hat—yes—good-bye. Buck up, little woman! And, Colling, don't forget eight o'clock to-night."
Red and shy as a schoolgirl, Lord Ellerdine somehow got himself out of the room.
"Poor, dear old Dicky!" Peggy said with a sigh, more to herself than to her companion; and then, turning, "Colling, why have you come?"
Collingwood held out both his hands. "Peggy—dear little Peggy!" he said. "My heart bleeds for you!"
Peggy stepped back. "Don't let's talk about that," she said swiftly.
"But, Peggy——"
"It is rather late," the girl returned in the same cold voice; "the time for sympathy is long past. Why did you ask to see me?"
There was a deep note of passion in Collingwood's voice as he answered. "I could not let you think what I could see you were thinking," he said.
Peggy did not appear moved in any way. "You promised," she said, "neither to come nor to ask to see me."
"I could not stay away any longer," he answered; and if ever a man had tears in his voice, Collingwood had then.
"Have you come to tell me that the man Stevens is telling a lie, and that our trip to Paris was only accident?"
"No," the man replied. "Peggy dear, can you ever——"
"Colling! Colling! why did you do it?" she wailed.
His body went back suddenly as if he had received an actual blow in the chest.
"Oh, Peggy—for God's sake!..."
"You have thought neither of God nor me," she answered bitterly.
"Of you," he cried—"always of you, Peggy!"
She shook her head. "No," she said. "Thought of me would have made you think of all I have had to suffer. Did you think ofmewhen you planned to go to Paris? When did you ever think of me—my being—my life—my soul? What excuse can you offer?"
His arms fell to his side, his face was pale and passionate. "Only my love," he answered—"my fierce, burning love. The mad desire to have you for my own. I have thought of nothing else since I met you."
She bent forward and threw out her arm. The little ivory-white hand was palm upwards, and it shook in dreadful accusation.
"Thought of me?" she cried. "Was it thought of me that drove me under the lash of that man's scourge to-day? Was it thought of me that placed me like a criminal in that court to-day? How could you have thought of me and not foreseen the shame, the misery, and the torture to which I have been subjected? Where was your love for me when you were conscious of the mass of evidence these creatures were piling up against me? Did your love of me foresee newsboys rushing about the streets with placards blazing out like letters of fire, 'Mrs. Admaston on the Rack'? Rack, Colling!"
He shook his head with a terrible gesture of sadness.
"No. I did not foresee it," he said, "because you made me believe that you were in earnest—that you loved me. If you had loved me you wouldn't have cared."
"I liked you, Colling, I liked you," she said; and now all the fire had gone from her voice.
"Liked me! Was it mere liking that made you take all those risks? You knew my intention. I told you again and again I wanted him to divorce you."
"I never realised——" the girl said hopelessly.
His voice as he answered her was very soft and tender.
"No, dear; you played with me. I am not blaming you, but don't be too harsh in judging me. I know the torture you are suffering now, Peggy, and I would give my right hand to save you from it. But don't you ever think of the torture you have given me? All the pain, the longing of months and months—is it all to be forgotten? Oh, I know it is no excuse to the others; but you, dear, will know in your heart that I did it because I loved you, thinking to make you happy."
"I think I understand, Colling," Peggy said; "but the letter——"
Collingwood appeared dazed. "The letter!" he murmured.
"Oh, Colling," she answered, "I'll forgive you anything you have done because you loved me; but the letter—you will own up, Colling?"
"Own up?"
"Yes, dear," Peggy said; "my life depends on it. You are a man. You can begin again. Don't see me go under. There is no hope for a woman. Don't stand there and watch me struggle while there is a chance to save me. I'll forgive everything—yes, everything—but the letter."
Collingwood seemed genuinely surprised. His face, which at first appeared perplexed, now showed nothing but astonishment as he realised what she meant. "Peggy—little Peggy," he said, "surely you don't judge me as harshly as that, do you? No, dear; I have done much that I am sorry for—that I shall never be able to forgive myself for as long as I live, but not that. The letter is the work of some one else. I never wrote it."
"Oh, Colling," she replied, "I am so glad—so very glad! But the letter—the letter is everything after all. It means everything to me. Then, if you didn't write it—there is only one other person who could possibly have done so."
"Exactly," Collingwood answered. "Lady Attwill and I were the only two people who knew anything about the Paris trip, who could know anything about it. But the question is, how on earth are we going to prove that she wrote that letter? I do not see any possible way in which it can be done, and I am sure you don't."
"If we prove it," Peggy answered, "do you think it will satisfy George, Colling?"
"Satisfy?" Collingwood replied, seating himself on the edge of the writing-table. "I should think so—he is satisfied already. But still, you know, Peggy, the letter sticks. Why, even Lady Attwill knew that there was nothing between us. It was only the appearance of guilt which she schemed for, and that letter gives it."
"And if we can't prove it, and the worst happens, she hopes to marry George," Peggy said despairingly.
The bitterness of the thought was terrible. It seemed as she sat there that such treachery and black-heartedness were almost incredible. Could the woman who had been her constant friend, who had stayed with her for months at a time, on whom she had lavished innumerable favours, be so base and despicable of soul as this?
Collingwood saw what was passing in her mind, and nodded.
"That is her game without a doubt, Peggy," he said earnestly.
"Then why has she stood by me all these months? Why? Why? That is what I want to know," Peggy said.
Collingwood smiled bitterly. "Why, don't you see?" he said. "Because her devotion to you will touch George, who still loves you."
Peggy's face changed in a moment. "Oh, Colling!" she said, and her voice was inexpressibly pathetic—"oh, Colling, do you think George does love me still?"
"I know he does, and that you love him. My dear, if I could have won you I should not have stayed away all these months; but I owed you that—and I tried to play the game."
"Colling," she answered, in a burst of warmth and kindliness, "I never liked you so much as I do now, Colling. I think it is because I feel I can lean upon you and trust you——"
"Poor little Butterfly!" he answered; and there were tears in the eyes of this hardened man of fashion, tears which sprang to his eyes in spite of himself and showed the deep tenderness beneath.
"But, Colling," Peggy went on anxiously, "have we any chance at all of proving it against her? She has been awfully clever about it all, hasn't she?"
Collingwood shook his head rather hopelessly. "I doubt if we have any chance at all," he said. "But there is just one thing—I have just remembered it. I have a sort of clue, and that is one which Dicky has just given me when he was here a few minutes ago."
"Oh! Dicky!" Peggy said, with a wan little smile.
"Well," Collingwood resumed, "of course no one would call Dicky intellectual and that, but I really think there is something in what he said this time. I'll tell you. He has consulted an American handwriting expert about the letters, and he says that they are the work of some one who can write with the left hand. I know that I can't write with my left hand. But what about Alice?"
"I don't know," Peggy answered slowly; "I have never heard of her doing so."
"Or using it more than the ordinary?" Collingwood continued.
"Yes—stay," Peggy replied eagerly. "She is ever so good with it at billiards."
Collingwood laughed.
"Oh, don't laugh, Colling!" she continued—"please don't laugh at me—but I remember she did tell me—yes—that she broke her right arm sleighing when she was a girl, and that she is almost ambidextrous. It has only just come back to me. She told me many years ago."
Collingwood jumped up from the table alert and excited.
"That is something—by Jove! it is," he cried. "Tell me, where is she?"
"She has only gone upstairs for a moment," Peggy said. "I am expecting her down every moment."
"By the way, Peggy," Collingwood asked, "where does she write her letters and things when she is here with you?"
"She always writes there," Peggy answered, pointing to the table, "where you have been sitting."
"Look here," Collingwood said decisively, "when she comes, leave her alone with me. I'll do what I can. I'll tackle her. You had better not be here at all."
"But, Colling, can't I help?" Peggy asked. "I think I might be of use, though of course it will be dreadfully unpleasant. But, for my own sake, I must stick at nothing now."
"No, Peggy," he replied firmly. "I feel I can manage this much better myself. Look here—you go out upon the terrace again. I will just come with you and settle you in your chair—how tired you look!—and then amauvais quart d'heurefor Alice, if she ever had one in her life."
"But it may not be true after all," Peggy said, as they walked together towards the long windows.
He shook his head at that. "It must be true," he said; "no one else could have done it; and what you have just told me, and what Dicky said, make it conclusive to my mind."
They passed behind the curtains together, and there was the sound of a chair being moved over the tessellated floor.
Lady Attwill was upstairs in her bedroom.
It was very large, and luxuriously furnished, with Chippendale chairs and Adams ceiling, while the walls were covered with a paper of white upon which, here and there, tiny apple blossoms of pink and grass-green were indicated.
Despite its size, the room felt close, and Alice Attwill had thrown open all the windows to the summer afternoon.
The cooler air, scented with flowers, poured into the place, but she seemed to notice nothing of it.
She walked up and down the room with her feline grace—for this was natural to her, and no careful pose or cultivated mannerism. Her lovely head was bent a little forward as she walked, and the hands which were clasped behind her slim waist folded and unfolded themselves nervously.
The face itself was very white, the eyes glistened, the lips twitched nervously, and there was about her an atmosphere of terror.
She made it herself, this beautiful woman walking up and down a beautiful room; but fear there was in that quiet place, and it did not come in there from the open windows, but radiated out from a guilty mind and a wildly pulsating heart. Every now and again, as she walked up and down, Alice Attwill moistened her lips with her tongue and glanced at the travelling-clock covered with red leather which stood upon the mantlepiece.
At last she stopped with one thoughtful glance at the clock.
"It'll be all right now," she said to herself. "I am sure they must be beginning to suspect me. Fool that I was! Why, every novel and almost every play has this question of the blotting-book in it. It is such a simple device, and yet in real life how often itdoeshappen! Here am I confronted with the worst crisis in my whole life, simply because I forgot the blotting-book."
Clenching her teeth she quietly left the room, descended the wide Georgian stairs into the hall, and opened the door of the drawing-room.
She peered cautiously into the room, now lit up by clusters of electric lights.
Satisfied that no one was there, she closed the door very quietly, and with silent, cat-like steps walked up to the writing-table.
Again, as her hand fell upon the blotting-book, she looked round in an agony of apprehension. Then, opening it hurriedly, she searched among the leaves with a puzzled brow.
Some of the leaves were heavily blotted and no writing upon them was wholly distinguishable, while others only bore a few well-defined imprints.
Her slender, trembling fingers turned over the leaves in an agony of anxiety, but—either she was too agitated or too inexperienced—she was unable to find what she sought.
Suddenly a thought came to her.
The mirror!—yes, that was the thing. By the aid of the mirror she would be able to identify the sheet she wanted at once. She hurried up to the fireplace.
Above it was an oval mirror framed in wood which had been painted white, and, shaking exceedingly, hardly knowing what she did, she held up the heavy blotter with the paper facing the mirror, and slowly turned over the thick white sheets.
While she was doing this, with a perfectly livid face, she heard the faint sound of an advancing footstep.
It was at the very moment when she thought she had discovered what she wanted, and with twitching fingers was about to tear it out from the book.
The sound of the step came from behind the curtains which hung over the windows leading to the terrace.
Lady Attwill almost bounded back to the writing-table and put down the blotter upon it.
She had hardly done so, and was actually closing the book, when the curtains parted with a soft swish and Collingwood came into the room.
He came in jauntily and easily enough, but there was something in his face which made Alice Attwill give a little startled gasp of alarm and despair.
"Writing letters, Alice?" Collingwood said easily, though there was a chill in his voice which sounded like the note of doom in the miserable woman's ears.
"I have finished writing," she said, stammering—"just finished."
Collingwood came up to her without removing his eyes from hers. He came slowly up, with a steady, persistent stare, magnetic, horrible.
"Just got up from writing, eh? That's lucky!" he said. "I want to have a talk with you, Alice—by the way, let me post your letters."
"Please don't trouble," she faltered.
"No trouble, I assure you," he answered, his voice becoming more cold, dangerous, and menacing than ever. "I assure you it is no trouble, Alice. There can't even be a great weight of letters for me to take to the post—because, you see, Peggy and I were here until about two minutes ago."
There was a revolving chair of green leather in front of the writing-table. Lady Attwill sank into it. She felt as if the whole room, with all its contents, was spinning round her with horrible rapidity. She sank into the chair, unable to stand longer; but, even as she did so, one last despairing gleam of hope prompted her to make an effort to show that she was still unconcerned and sitting down in a natural way.
"I hardly expected to see you here," she said in a rather high, staccato voice, the words coming from her one by one as if each separate word was produced with great difficulty.
"Indeed?" Collingwood asked. "And why not?"
The fact that she was sitting down, that she had the arms of the chair to hold, that she wassomewhere, seemed to give Alice Attwill more courage.
In a voice which was still tremulous, but in which an ugly note of temper was beginning to displace the abject indications of fear, she answered him.
She pushed her head a little forward, and her eyes shone with malice.
"I should have thought that the revelations of this afternoon would have——"
Collingwood recognised the change of attitude in a moment.
"Closed these doors to those who planned the trip to Paris—yes?"
"I was not thinking of the trip to Paris," she said.
Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Because we were partners in that, of course," he replied.
"Partners!" she cried shrilly. "I knew nothing about it. It was you who gave the orders to the porter and booked the rooms—I don't come in anywhere!"
Collingwood folded his arms and stood with his feet somewhat apart, looking down upon her with a face which, in its contempt and strength, once more drove her into an extremity of fear.
When he spoke again his voice had lost its bitterness and contempt, but it had become harsh and imperative. It was the voice of a bullying counsel in the courts—the voice in which a low man speaks to a servant.
"That is your game, is it?" he said. "You never knew of the trip to Paris?"
The woman was spurred up to answer. She met his voice with one precisely in the same key; it was a voice a succession of unfortunate lady's-maids knew very well.
"Absolutely nothing," she said; "where as you—your guilt, my friend, is clear, transparently clear."
She nodded two or three times to emphasise her assertion, and by this time her composure had returned to her and she was ready for anything.
Collingwood, who had been watching her with the most intense scrutiny, had followed with perfect clearness the changes in her voice and attitude. He now knew where he was. The bluff was over, he was about to play his hand.
More particularly than anything else his mind, intensely alert and active at this supreme moment, noticed that Alice Attwill had wheeled round upon her chair and seemed in a most marked way to be interposing herself between him and the writing-table.
It was as though some precious possession lay there of which she feared she would be robbed.
Feeling certain now of the woman's guilt, he said: "Perhaps you are also going to suggest that I wrote that dastardly letter?"
Lady Attwill sneered. "One of us obviously must have written it," she said, "and your motive—well, it is pretty clear, isn't it?"
"And yours," he said—"and isn't yours clear also?"
"Do you think so?" she asked, with a toss of her head.
He bent forward, gazing at her with an almost deadly look of hate.
"Look here," he said: "don't you hope to marry Admaston if Peggy loses this case?"
She was frightened—obviously very frightened; but she did her best to throw it off.
"My dear Colling," she said in a light and airy manner, "you are so imbued with the remarkable excellence of Sir Robert Fyffe's methods that you are imitating him. But you are doing it so badly, Colling—so extremely badly!"
His face did not change in the slightest. It remained as set and firm as before, absolutely uninfluenced by what she was saying.
"Isn't it true that you hope to marry George Admaston?" he repeated in exactly the same tone.
She lifted her pretty left hand in the air and snapped her fingers in a gesture full of mingled insolence and provocation.
"Why should I satisfy your curiosity?" she said.
Again the man, intent upon one great purpose, absolutely not to be deterred from it or to be influenced in any way by what she was saying, repeated his query.
"How can you explain that letter?" he said, in the insistent tone of a judge. "Who else could have written it except you or me?"
Her eyelids fluttered. She looked up at him quickly. "I don't attempt to explain it," she said; "but I certainly agree with you that one of us must have written it—any fool can see that; but which of us?"
She paused for a moment, and then looked him straightly in the face, defiant and at bay at last.
"But which of us?" she repeated. "That's the point upon which we shall differ, Colling."
"I see," he said. "You mean that you will endeavour to father this cowardly trick upon me?"
Alice Attwill smiled bitterly. "The public will judge," she said. "Ever since that night have I not been in constant attendance here, her devoted and trusted friend?—while you—I thought you had been forbidden the house."
"That's a lie," Collingwood said sharply.
"It is quite unnecessary to become abusive," she went on, her voice gaining confidence for a moment and her manner becoming infinitely more assured. "You are in a very tight corner, and the sooner you recognise the fact the better it will be for you."
"You think you can threaten me?" Collingwood asked quietly.
"I know my cards," she replied, "and what I can do with them. You needn't try to bluff me, Colling, for I know your cards too. Even if I did write that letter—how can you ever prove it? You can assert it, but who will believe you—you who stand convicted of decoying your friend's wife to Paris to attempt her seduction?..."
He winced at that. Even in his present mood of penitence and help, it was a palpable hit.
"With your assistance," he said, and that was all.
She pressed her momentary triumph. "So you will assert," she said.... "But I shall deny it—and there is nothing but your word. It will be suggested to you—by Peggy's counsel, if not by Admaston's—that you wrote the letter which has caused all the bother. You will try to put it on to me——"
He interrupted her quickly. "You will never dare to deny it," he said in a voice of conviction.
"My dear, simple friend," she answered, "why not? I loved George Admaston, as you have said. Do you think I shall sacrifice myself and save you? You can make your mind easy on that score. No, my dear Colling, there is only one way out. To-morrow your counsel will have to say that in the face of the evidence to-day he can contest the case no further. Then you will not go into the witness-box."
"Not go into the witness-box?" he asked.
"Admaston will get his divorce," she went on in a final voice, but one in which a note of conciliation had crept. "You will marry Peggy—I shall marry Admaston—and no one will know about the letters. But if you dare to fight, you will leave the court dishonoured. Peggy will never look at you. You take my advice, Colling, and marry the girl you love, and don't try to interfere with my plans, just when victory is assured."
The note of conciliation in her voice stung every fibre of decency, every sense of honour in him. He raised his eyebrows in extreme contempt and surprise. "You must have a pretty poor opinion of me," he said.
"The highest, my dear Colling," she replied; "but the situation is just a little too big for you."
"We shall see," he answered. "You have been very frank with me. I gather that you don't deny your authorship of that infamous letter."
Her face, and indeed her whole manner, had by now become almost indifferent. "I am not called upon to deny anything that cannot be proved," she said. "You have heard this afternoon that the experts have entirely failed to identify the writing. How did you manage to deceive them, Colling? Still, I suppose it is not very difficult to trick a handwriting expert."
"Don't be too disrespectful to experts yet, my lady. I have a notion that a report I have just received from an American expert may give you food for thought. After all, if you hadn't been afraid of these experts you wouldn't have written that second letter three days ago."
She glared at him. "Well, what does your Yankee say?" she asked.
"He has proved conclusively that I could not have written the letter."
At that she jumped up from her seat, still keeping herself between the writing-table and him. "What do you mean?" she said.
Collingwood dealt his trump card. "I mean," he said, "that since you have finished writing your own letters, you will have no objection to my writing there for a moment."
His voice was so pregnant with meaning, so fraught with decision, that Alice Attwill slunk away from the table, trembling, as Collingwood seated himself in the writing-chair.
"Writing what?" she asked almost in a whisper.
"A confession——" he said.
"A confession?"
"—Which you will sign. I intend before I leave this room to have from you a signed confession that you wrote that letter."
"You are proposing to make a long stay," she said, slowly and venomously.
Collingwood did not answer her at all. He took a sheet of paper and wrote a few sentences upon it in a firm, bold handwriting.
When he had finished he held it up to her. "Will you read it through?" he said.
With the utmost carelessness she bent forward over the writing-table. Her manner was that of one who was reading some casual note.
"I have done so," she said at length.
Collingwood fell into her mood. "Now," he said, "if I had your signature to that,par exemple, there would be an end of AdmastonversusAdmaston and Collingwood, wouldn't there?"
Alice Attwill smiled. "That is obvious enough," she said.
Collingwood took the paper and opened the blotting-book, while Lady Attwill walked towards the fireplace.
She walked away with the same assumed air of indifference, but, when she heard the heavy leather-and-silver cover fall upon the table, she looked round and watched the man intently.
She saw him blot the confession upon a blank sheet at the beginning of the book, and then with the utmost care and deliberation turn over each separate leaf, scrutinising it like a man who looks at something through a microscope.
Suddenly one page seemed to strike his attention. He smoothed it out, pulled the blotter closer towards him, and took from his pocket photographs of the famous letters in the case.
He put one of the photographs upon a leaf of the blotter and compared them carefully. Then he took a small glass from his pocket and examined the photograph and the page of the blotter with that.
When he had, apparently, satisfied himself, he looked round with a white, stern face to where the defiant but trembling woman was standing by the fireplace.
There was a silence for a moment. It was broken by Lady Attwill saying, "Can I do anything for you?"
"Yes," Collingwood replied; "you can bring me that looking-glass from that small table there."
She looked at him without saying a word.
"You don't seem very eager," he said. "But there is an excellent mirror over the fireplace."
At that, as if hypnotised, she went up to the little table by the piano and took up a small Italian mirror framed in ivory and silver.
She gave it to him. "Well," she asked, "have you solved the mystery?"
"Wait!" he replied. He took the mirror in one hand, propping up the blotter with its back towards him, and looking intently into the glass.
After a moment or two he looked up. "You should be more careful where you blot your letters," he said simply. "You will notice that the impression upon the blotting-paper is not complete—though they obviously tally."
Speechless with terror, she made a sudden snatch at the sheet in the blotter which she had already begun to tear out when his entrance disturbed her.
He caught her by the wrist. "No," he said, very quietly and sternly. "I thought you would do that. I saw you trying to do it when I came in just now. Now, look here—look at the photograph and at the representation of your writing in the mirror. Have you any doubt that the impression upon the blotting-paper is the impression made by the blotting of that letter?"
"And if it is," she said, in one last faint effort, "what does that prove? Why should not you have written it and blotted it?"
"Because, my dear Alice," he replied, "I have not been in this house until this afternoon for six months. Listen! To-day the judge dropped a remark about the importance of finding the paper on which this letter was blotted. You alone knew where it was. Very well, in the sequence of events, Pauline found you here—the first moment the room was empty—with a cock-and-bull story about your bag. A few minutes later I, having heard this from Pauline, find you in the act of destroying this damning evidence—see, it's half torn out already. Come, the game's up."
Aristocrat as she was, something low, vulgar, and malignantly mocking came out upon Lady Attwill's face as Collingwood said this.
"Is it?" she said. "Do you think I am afraid of you and your game of bluff? You have forgotten the important link in your chain. How do you explain the discrepancy in the writing? That writing is not mine."
"Isn't it?" he asked quietly.
"No!" she almost shouted. "A pretty conspiracy!—to damn me and save Peggy Admaston. Why shouldn't Pauline have written it?"
Up to this he had listened to her with some patience. Now his face blazed at her for a moment. He sat down in the writing-chair, pulling it up to the table as he did so. "I'll show you," he said. "Sit down there."
She looked at him defiantly.
"Sit down there," he said again, and she did so. "Now take the pen and write what I dictate," he went on.
He began to dictate, "'Please destroy the other letter....'"
He leant over the table, tapping gently upon it with his knuckles.
"No! the other hand, please," he said.
The woman almost fell over the table.
"With my left hand?" she gasped. "What on earth do you mean? I can't write with my left hand."
"My expert thinks you can," he said sternly. "Come—write; or would you prefer to write to-morrow in court?"
She jumped up, and hysteria mastered her.
"I won't write!" she cried, in a voice which was hardly human. "Neither here nor in court! You can't make me ... the judge can't make me!"
Collingwood punctuated her shrill remarks with gentle taps of his firm hand upon the table. "You shall write to-morrow with all London looking on; they'll know I could not have done it—this book shows that. They'll hear how you tried to tear out the page."
"They won't believe you!" she gasped.
"They'll believe the evidence of Pauline," he went on calmly. "They'll hear from Peggy how you broke your arm and learnt to use your left hand. Every newspaper in England will be full of it.Thisis not the first time you've written with your left hand; there'll be other specimens somewhere—some other witness will be forthcoming. You have been very clever, but the cleverest of people like you bungle in the end. You've got to do it, Alice!"
Once more she sank down in the chair.
Her face was ghastly. "No!" was all that she could say.
"Believe me," he went on more calmly and more kindly—"believe me, you had better write now! Society may never know—Admaston may be generous. Come! Write! And do it quickly."
Absolutely broken and submissive, Lady Attwill took up the pen in her left hand and began to write to Collingwood's dictation.
"'Please destroy the other letter....'" he began.
She wrote the first word, and then looked up at him with a face which was a white wedge of hate.
"Quickly, please," he said, tapping his foot upon the carpet. "Now, or to-morrow with all London."
The wretched woman bent down once more to her shameful task.
"'... and this,'" he went on, "'and save an old servant who honours the family....'"
Again she looked up at him.
"Quickly!" he said imperatively, rapping his knuckles upon the table. "Quickly!—or——"
Cowed and subdued, she wrote again. "'... from the anger of Mrs. Admaston,'" came the cool, dictating voice.
She finished, and as she did so her head fell upon her arms and she burst into a fit of hysterical sobs—shaking, convulsed, in a terrible downfall of remorse and shame.
Suddenly—as Collingwood held the precious paper in his hand and looked with a certain compassion at his old friend and companion of so many years, whom he had tortured so dreadfully—a high, joyous voice burst into the room.
It was Peggy calling.
The curtains which led to the terrace were pulled aside and she ran into the drawing-room.
Her face was radiant.
"Colling! Colling!" she cried. "George is here!" She hurried up to Collingwood, looking for a moment rather strangely at Alice Attwill.
George Admaston, big, burly, and with all the weariness of the past weeks sponged and smoothed from his face, followed her into the drawing-room.
"Hullo, Colling," he said rather shyly, but with real geniality in his voice.
Collingwood ignored the outstretched hand. "Wait first, please," he said. "Lady Attwill has written you another copy of the letter she wrote three days ago." He handed the confession to Admaston.
There was a dead silence in the room as Admaston scrutinised the confession.
Then he went up to Lady Attwill, crouching over the table as she was, and put his hand not unkindly on her shoulder. "Good God!" he said. "Alice—why did you?"
A lovely tear-stained face looked up into the room.
A broken and unhappy voice sobbed out into the silence, "Let me go; let me go, I say!"
Admaston gently removed his hand. There was a swish of skirts, one deep sob, and then the door closed behind Alice Attwill.
Peggy went up to her husband and clung lovingly to his arm.
She looked at Collingwood. "Colling," she said, "how on earth did you find out?"
Collingwood pointed to the blotter. "Look there," he said.
Peggy and Admaston, still clinging together, went up to the writing-table and stared as if fascinated at the fatal and decisive page.
"Poor Alice!" Collingwood said. "I suppose it is because I have been a bit of a blackguard myself that I can't help feeling sorry for her. Perhaps, Admaston, you will find it in your heart, when the great case is withdrawn to-morrow, to let her down as lightly as possible."
He hesitated for a moment, and then he said in a quiet voice, "I think in her heart she really loved you, don't you know."
Admaston nodded.
"Yes, yes; I see," he said. "I will do what I can."
Collingwood, realising that he had been emotional, pulled himself together with immense aplomb. "It must be a comforting and flattering reflection that, but for the fit of nerves which caused Alice to write that second letter three days ago, there is probably not a judge nor jury in the world which would have refused to make you miserable for life, Admaston."
"You are right, Colling," he said; "but at the moment when no judge nor jury would have doubted her guilt—then, for the first time, I knew in my heart she was innocent."
Collingwood had listened to this, but had also been moving slowly towards the door of the drawing-room.
"But you, Colling——" Peggy said.
Collingwood's hand was upon the door. "Never mind about me," he said. "Peggy, I did a rotten thing because I cared for you, but I've tried to play the game since for the same reason; and if George can really forgive me for just the same reason——"
He stopped, looking with a wan, pathetic, but very tender face at the two who stood there clinging to each other.
Peggy looked up into her husband's face. "George!" she said quietly.
"—I think I'll go on playing it," Collingwood ended.
Admaston did not look at Collingwood, but he looked down at his wife. Then he lifted his head and smiled with a sort of grave kindness at the man by the door.
"I think I can forgive you anything to-day, Colling," he said.
Collingwood half turned the handle. "Good-bye, then, little Butterfly," he said, and there was a dreadful pain in his voice.
Peggy looked up into her husband's face.
What she saw there satisfied her.
She left him and walked shyly towards Collingwood and held out her hand.
He took it, bowed over it as if to kiss it, refrained, and then opened the door.
"Your wings are not really broken—not really," he said in a voice which was absolutely broken.
There was a sound of the soft closing of a door—a little click as it fell into place.
Peggy ran back to her husband and put her hands upon his shoulders.
"My husband!" she said.
He caught her in his arms—in his strong arms.