Whenshe got home that night she found Gordon had arrived before her. He was thoughtful, unusually subdued; most remarkable of all, was to be seen, for he invariably went to bed as soon as he reached home after a dinner or theatre, and never by any chance was he in a conversational mood at such hours.
“Good time?” he asked.
“Very. I met the cream of the Colonial Office. It was thin but genuine cream. Were you very late, and was she very annoyed?”
Such a query, ordinarily, would be ignored.
“Five minutes or so; the lady was naturally——”
“Peeved?” she suggested. “And it was a lady, after all? Gordon, let me see her?”
He smiled.
“She wouldn’t interest you, Diana. She is rather an intellectual.”
Diana was not offended.
“The only thing I approve about the Bolsheviks is that they killed off theintelligentsiafirst,” she said without heat. “I suppose they got tired ofseeing their plays and hearing about their spiritual insides. What do you talk about—Bimetallism or Free Will?”
He humoured her, being in a somewhat sympathetic mood. The strain of holding friendship to lecture-hall level was beginning to tell.
“Books and people,” he said lightly. “And you?”
She threw her cloak over the back of a chair, pulled a stool to the fire and sat down, warming her knees. Gordon, the soul of delicacy, strolled out of the line of vision.
“We talked about tradesmen and the superiority of Australian beef and the difficulty of finding servants and Mrs. Carter-Corrillo’s fearful indiscretion—she went to France with the third secretary of the Montenegrin Embassy. She was only there three days, but, as Lady Pennefort said, there are twenty-four hours in every day. Some women are fools—and most men. This young man’s career is ruined, even though he swears that their mutual interest in the gravel deposits of Abbeville was the explanation of the visit. They are both keen on geology.”
“And why shouldn’t that be the true explanation?” demanded Gordon stoutly, his heart warming to the geological third secretary. “Why should not men and women have mutual scientific interests?”
“We’ll hear what the judge says,” she answered complacently. “Mr. Carter-Corrillo is suing for a divorce.”
“On what grounds—incompatibility of interest in strata?” sneered Gordon.
“Don’t be silly. Conventions are the by-laws of society. It is presumed that, if you break a by-law, you are capable of breaking the law.”
He stared, amazed at her cool inconsistency.
“Here are you, living, unchaperoned, in the house of a bachelor——”
“Cousins are different,” she said promptly. “Nobody suggests that the third secretary is Mrs. Carter-Corrillo’s cousin. That would make a difference. Besides, everybody knows how much you dislike me.”
“I don’t dislike you,” after a moment’s thought; “but if you think I do, why do you stay?”
“I have a mission,” she said, with a finality of tone that brought the subject out of discussion.
Gordon broke the news of his impending departure after breakfast the next morning.
“I am thinking of running up to Scotland to have a shot at the birds,” he said. He felt rather like a liar.
“What have they been doing?” she asked, her grey-blue eyes wide.
“Nothing. One shoots them at this season of the year. You have game laws in Australia, I suppose?”
“I don’t know. I have shot wallaby and dingo and rabbits and things, but never birds. To Scotland? That’s an awful long way. Gordon, I shall be worried about you. There was a railway accident in the newspapers this morning. You’ll send me a wire?”
“From every station,” he said sarcastically, and was ashamed of himself when she thanked him so warmly.
“I’m glad—that is my eccentricity, a horrid fear that people I like are in railway accidents. Of course, I could always wire to the stationmaster to enquire about you, or to your hotel.”
Slowly it dawned upon Gordon Selsbury that in an unguarded and fatally foolish moment he had enormously complicated a situation already far from simple. To escape, to offer excuses, even to laugh off her anxiety, simulated or real,was impossible. A solution came to him and was instantly rejected. It came again because it was, in all the circumstances, the only solution. But it was one that could only be applied at the cost of his self-respect. Almost he cursed Heloise or whoever was the fool who had suggested this mad excursion.
Trenter was laying out his master’s clothes for dinner when Gordon strolled into his dressing-room.
“Um ... don’t go, Trenter. When did you have your holiday?”
“First week in April, sir.”
Gordon considered.
“Do you know Scotland?”
“Yes, sir; I’ve been with several house parties for the September shooting.”
“Good. The fact is, Trenter, I’m going away on a—a peculiar mission. It is a secret even from my most intimate friends. There are reasons, very excellent reasons with which I need not trouble you, and which you certainly would not understand, why I should go secretly to one place whilst I am supposed to be at another.”
Trenter aimed wildly, but scored on the target at the first shot.
“A lady, sir?” he ventured respectfully, meaning no harm—offering, in fact, a tribute to the known chivalry of the Selsburys.
“No!”
There was reason enough for the large and angry blush that darkened Gordon’s face.
“No, of course not. Business. Nothing at all to do with a lady.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Trenter, and was.
“We won’t discuss my mission. What I want to say is this. Miss Ford, who is rather of a nervous disposition, has asked me to send her wires at intervals of the journey....”
“And you want me to go to Scotland and send them,” said Trenter brilliantly. Gordon had never respected his servant’s intelligence so much as he did at that moment.
“Exactly. It will save me a lot of worry. And,” he added mysteriously, “if the wires fall into other hands, they will help deceive a Certain Person!”
Trenter nodded wisely. He couldn’t guess who the Certain Person was: even Gordon did not know. But lying grew easier with practice—he had grown reckless.
“Not a word of this in the servants’ hall,” warned Gordon.
The servitor smiled. Gordon had not seen him smile before. It was a strange sight.
“No, sir; I shall tell them that my aunt in Bristol is ill (which she is) and that you’ve given me leave. How long do you want me to be away, sir?”
“A week,” said Gordon.
Mr. Trenter went down to the servants’ hall importantly.
“The old man’s given me a week’s holiday to see my aunt. I’m leaving to-morrow.”
Eleanor was constitutionally suspicious.
“Bit sudden, isn’t it? He’s going away to-morrow too. You men are devils! Us women never know what you’re up to.”
Trenter smiled cryptically. It added to his self-confidence to be suspected of devilish deeds.
“Noos verrong,” he said, and added the information: “French.”
“Is Miss Diana going?” asked the cook.
“With me or him?” demanded Trenter insolently. “She’s not going withhim! And do I blame him? No! She’s no lady, that’s my firm opinion.”
“Then keep it to yourself!” said Eleanor, shrill of voice. “I don’t want you to say anything about Miss Diana!”
“You women stick together.” Trenter could not but admire the trait.
“And you men stick at nothing.” Eleanor’s sincerity gave sanction to inconsequence. “She’s too good for him. I suppose you’re both off on some gallivanting business? So far as I am concerned you’re welcome! You’ve been an experience, and every girl ought to have experience—up to a point. Your wife can have you.”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you forty million times that I’m not married!” hissed Trenter. “I had to be married because he wanted a married man for a butler, and if I’d said I was single I should have lost the job. That temper of yours, my girl, is going to be your ruin.”
“Well, don’t talk disp—whatever the word is—about Miss Diana,” she sulked.
“I don’t trouble my head about her, because I don’t think there’s anybody in the world like you, Eleanor,” he urged.
She admitted later that there was much to be said for his point of view.
Inthe early days, when Trenter had known him, Mr. Superbus was a court bailiff, a man who seized the property of unsuccessful litigants, who served writs, attached furniture, and committed all those barbarous acts peculiar to his office. But progression, the inexorable law of getting on, the natural craving for success, brought Mr. Superbus from the atmosphere of a dull county court to a small office in the Insurance Trust Building, and the distinction of having his name painted upon the glass panel of the door. He was officially styled “First Enquiry Clerk.” The “detective” which was printed on the corner of his visiting card was wholly unofficial, and his request to his superiors that a nickel badge should be designed that he might wear on his waistcoat and display at fitting moments when it was necessary to disclose his identity, was refused as being “impracticable and undesirable.”
The cinematograph is at once educative and inspirational. Mr. Superbus spent most of hisspare evenings in watching the pictures. Those he liked best dealt with the careers of young, beautiful but penurious girls, who were pursued by rich and remorseless villains, and were rescued in the nick of time from a fate which is popularly supposed to be worse than death, by a handsome young hero, with the assistance of a stern-faced officer of the law, who smoked cigars, wore a derby hat, and from time to time turned back his coat to display the badge of his calling. A film which had no detective, and dealt merely with the love of a millionaire’s beautiful young wife for his secretary, was unpalatable to him, even though it featured his favourite artists and showed, in the course of its telling, tremendous railway accidents, landslides, riots and the enervating effects of cocaine.
Before the open window of his parlour, Mr. Superbus sat in a state of profound meditation. Though the day was chilly, he was in his shirt-sleeves, for he was one of those hot-blooded men in whom the variations of climate peculiar to his native land produced no effect. It was an open secret that he was one of those hardy souls who swam in the Serpentine every Christmas Day, preferably breaking the ice to get in, and hisportrait appeared with monotonous regularity every twenty-sixth of December in all the better-class illustrated newspapers.
His good lady came bustling in with a shiver. She restricted her own bathing operations to the decent privacy of a four by seven bathroom.
“You’ll catch your death of cold there, Julius,” she said. “Fancy sitting there from morning till night doing nothing!”
“I’m not doing nothing,” said Julius quietly. “I’m thinking.”
“Well, that’s what I call doing nothing,” said Mrs. Superbus, bustling round and laying the cloth.
She had an extraordinary appreciation of her husband’s qualities, admired him secretly, but felt that the smooth harmonies of matrimony might well be disturbed if she committed the error of showing her feelings.
“It’s beyond me how you puzzle these things out,” she said.
“It’s brains,” explained Julius.
“You get such ideas,” she said in despair. “I wonder you don’t go on the stage.”
It was her conviction that the stage was the ultimate goal of all genius; its greatest reward; its most natural line of development.
“This Double Dan is certainly a bit of a puzzle, though I’ve worked out bigger problems in my time, mother.”
She nodded in agreement.
“The way you mended the cistern last week beats me,” she said. “After that I’ll believe anything. Who is this Double Dan?”
“He’s a swindler,” said Mr. Superbus, “a parasite of society, a human vampire—but I’ll get him!”
“I’m surprised the police don’t go after him,” she said.
He was naturally irritated, and his laughter lacked sincerity.
“The police! No, mother, the man who’s going to get Double Dan has got to be clever, he’s got to be cunning, he’s got to be artful.”
“I don’t know anybody artfuller than you, Julius,” said his wife graciously, and Mr. Superbus accepted the compliment as his right.
He might speak disparagingly of the police, as he did; as all private detectives, authors of mystery stories and such-like are in the habit of doing. But his knowledge that Double Dan was in London, the hint that had been whispered up from the underworld that Mr. Gordon Selsbury was to be the new victim; these and a hundred other little pointers of incalculable value came to him fourth-hand from Scotland Yard. After his midday dinner he put on his coat and strolled to Cheynel Gardens. Gordon was out, and he was received by Diana.
“Why, of course, you’re Mr.——”
“Superbus,” said Julius.
“The Roman!”
Mr. Superbus confessed to that distinction. He might have added “ultimus Romanorum,” only he was unacquainted with the phrase. Instead he remarked, a little pathetically:
“There ain’t many of us left.”
“I bet there ain’t,” said Diana. “Sit down and have some tea. You want to see Mr. Selsbury, but he won’t be back for an hour.”
“I did and I didn’t,” said Julius the obscure. “What I want to do is to keep a certain eye on a certain fellow.”
He did not particularise the eye, but Diana guessed that it might be that which was nearest to her: it looked the less glassy of the two. Inthe matter of the certain fellow she sought information.
“Double Dan—I remember. Who is he, Mr. Superbus?”
“Well, ma’am——”
“Miss.”
“You don’t look it,” he said gallantly, if vaguely. “This Double Dan is a desperado, and is believed to emanate from the West.”
“Do you mean West London?”
“I mean America,” said Julius, “where most of the desperadoes come from. And go to,” he added, with a recollection of certain past defaulters, whose disappearance had been hampering to him as a bailiff of the court.
She listened attentively while Mr. Superbus described the misdoings of the impersonator.
“There’s nothing this fellow can’t do, miss,” said Superbus impressively. “He can make himself fat, he can make himself thin; he can impersonate a tall man or a short man, an old man or a young man. By all accounts he was an actor onthealls.”
“Onthealls?” She wrinkled her brow, thinking for the moment that Mr. Superbus had dug up one of those natty colloquialisms that enlivened the Senate in those days when Cicero could always be depended upon to pass a few bright, snappy remarks about the Tribune Clodius.
“An actor onthealls,” repeated Mr. Superbus, astounded that he was unintelligible.
“Oh, I see!” a great light dawning upon her mind. “On the halls? You mean the vaudeville stage?”
“So they say,” said Mr. Superbus. “Anyway, he’s been too clever for the regular police. It’s now up to them who have made a study of crime, so to speak, to bring him to justice.”
He looked cautiously round the apartment and lowered his voice.
“By all accounts, Mr. Selsbury’s the next.”
Diana sat bolt upright in her chair.
“You means he’s to be the next person robbed?”
Mr. Superbus nodded gravely.
“From information received,” he said.
“But does he know?”
“I’ve dropped an ’int, miss,” said Julius. “But on the whole it’s better that he didn’t know. A man gets jiggered, so to speak, if he knows a crook is after him, and that hampers the officersof the law.” He shook his head. “Many a good case have I lost that way.”
“What do you mean exactly by impersonation?” asked Diana, troubled. “Do you mean to say that, when Mr. Selsbury is out, somebody who looks very much like him is liable to walk into this house and help himself to anything that he can find?”
“Cheques mostly, or money,” affirmed Julius. “He works big, this fellow. Nothing small about him, you understand. You could leave your silver around, and he wouldn’t touch so much as an egg-spoon. He’s one of the big gang—I’ve had my eye on him for years.”
“This is very alarming,” said Diana after a long silence.
“It is alarming,” agreed Julius, “but at the same time, if you’ve got the right kind of man around to protect you, a fellow who’s a bit sharp, it’s not alarming. But he’s got to be clever, and he’s got to have experience of what I might term the criminal classes, I should say.”
“You mean yourself?” Diana smiled faintly, not in the mood to be amused.
“I mean me,” said Julius. “If I was you,miss, I’d drop a hint to Mr. Selsbury. Maybe he takes more notice of what his daughter says.”
At parting he took her hand in his own large, purple paw, called her “Miss Selsbury” and asked to be remembered to her father. When Gordon came home, she told him of the visit.
“Superbus, eh?” said Gordon good-naturedly. “He called for a tip. But why, in the name of heaven, he should start in to alarm you, I don’t know. I must speak to the Association about it.”
“He didn’t alarm me at all,” said Diana, “except when he asked to be remembered to my father, and said that you were more likely to be influenced by your young and gentle daughter——”
“Does he think I’m your father?” demanded Gordon indignantly. “That fellow’s got a nerve! As for Double Dan, I shouldn’t think very much about him if I were you, Diana. He certainly caught old Mendlesohn, but then, old Mendlesohn is a philandering old fool. He allowed himself to be trapped by the woman who works with the scoundrel and acts as his decoy duck.”
The mail boat was in, Gordon noted, glancingat his newspaper the next morning. He had arranged to remain at home that day, and his accountant called at the house with a carefully engrossed receipt form and the office cheque-book. Gordon filled a blank for eleven thousand and a few odd pounds.
“I want fifty thousand dollars in gold bills; you’ll buy them at the Bank of England. Bring them back here in a taxicab, Miller. You have told the office that wires are to be telephoned to me? Good. I expect a message from Mr. Tilmet.”
The message did not come until long after the bills had been deposited in The Study safe.
It was from Paris, to the effect that Mr. Tilmet had landed at Cherbourg and would be in London on the Sunday; he added that he would leave for Holland that same night. Gordon, in his genteel way, consigned the American to the devil.
He saw Heloise that afternoon. She was a being exalted at the prospect of the trip, and his last desperate appeal to her that it should be cancelled was unmade. They were to meet at a quarter to eleven on the platform at Victoria, and were to travel as strangers until they reached Ostend. The passage looked likely to be a goodone; the weather bureau reported a smooth sea and light easterly winds.
Trenter had packed his big carry-all, and had included one of the new suits—that grey check with a little red in it—which had arrived belatedly from the tailor. The case had been secretly transported to a hotel in the neighbourhood of Victoria, where Gordon had to change. Nothing remained to be done but to prepare the telegrams which Trenter was to send. He could do this with a light heart, for it had occurred to him that if, taking advantage of his absence, the criminal impersonator should call (he regarded this as the least likely of any happening) the wires would confound and expose him. He felt almost as if he were doing a worthy deed.
The first he marked in the corner “Euston,” and inscribed “Just leaving, Gordon.” He wrote a number of “Good journey, all wells” for York, Edinburgh and Inverness.
Surprisingly, Diana came to him that day for some money.
“I arranged the transfer of my money to the London branch of the Bank of Australasia, but there has been some sort of hitch. I called to-day and the transfer has not arrived. Save mefrom penury, Gordon—I’m a ruined woman.”
She displayed dramatically the empty inside of a notecase. Gordon felt a queer satisfaction in signing a cheque for her, recovered a little of the kind-fatherly feeling appropriate to their relationship.
“And to think that, if you had really turned me out, I should have starved!” taking the slip from his hand. “Gordon, behind a rugged and unprepossessing exterior, you hide a heart of gold.”
“I sometimes wish you were a little more serious,” he said in good humour.
“I’m always wishing that you weren’t,” she said.
Gordon was temporarily deprived of the full use of The Study in the afternoon. There could be no more remarkable proof of Diana’s dynamic qualities than the arrival of post office linesmen to move the telephone from the hall to Gordon’s room—and that within forty-eight hours of her notifying the Postmaster General of her desires. Gordon demurred at first. The telephone was an invasion of his privacy. Diana was flippant and he was in no spirit for a fight.
Bobbie was at dinner that night, and, whenthey were alone, asked her a question that he had asked himself many times.
“Why do you stick this kind of existence, Diana? You’ve heaps of money and could be having a really good time instead of rushing round after Gordon.”
She looked up under her curling lashes.
“Does Gordon want me here? Has he ever wanted me? No, sir! When I came I left my baggage in the hall: I intended taking his advice about hotels and things. I never had the slightest intention of stopping—till I saw him and heard him, and read the panic he was in at the idea of my remaining in the house, and heard him become paternal and my-dear-little-girly. So I stayed. The day Gordon wants me to stay—I go!”
The atmosphere of the house was electric: Bobbie felt it, Diana was conscious of an uneasiness that was not to be accounted for by the errors of banking officials. Even in the servants’ hall hysteria made a mild manifestation. Eleanor had a premonition which she called by another name.
“I’m sure something’s going to happen.” When she was nervous her voice grew high-pitched.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Trenter’s voice lacked confidence.
“I wish you wasn’t—weren’t going away,” she sobbed. “I’ve got the creeps. That window man will do something. The moment I saw him I said ‘that man’s a villain,’ didn’t I, cook?”
“You did. You said ‘I’m sure there’s something wrong about that man,’”agreed cook.
As for Gordon Selsbury, he went to bed at ten. At one o’clock he was pacing his room. At three he went down to The Study and started the percolator working. Whilst the coffee was in process of making, he opened the safe and took out the fifty thousand dollars, counted them and put them back. The safe looked very fragile, he thought. Once this wretched trip was over he would attend to the matter. The house was not difficult to burgle. The big, stained-glass window—an enterprising craftsman with a penknife could get in....
In a corner of the room flush with the window was a small door, hidden behind a curtain. This led to the courtyard and was never used. As toits design, and what purpose it was intended to serve, only the builder and original owner of the house might testify. His name was Gugglewaite, he had been three times divorced, and was at the moment in heaven—or his well-edited epitaph lied.
Gordon went upstairs for his pass-key, opened the door and stepped out into the “garden.” It was very dark and still, and the wet wind smelt sweet and fresh. Across the yard was a door that gave to a small side passage. The wall was high, but no obstacle to an active burglar. He shivered and went in again to his coffee and a returning serenity induced by the fire he had kindled and the comfort of his surroundings.
He would have gladly given a thousand—ten thousand—to cancel his fool adventure; to remain here with ... well, with Diana. He told himself this with a certain defiance as though one half of a dual personality were challenging the other. Diana was really a dear. He wished he had been a little more loyal to her and had talked less about Dempsi ... a boy and girl affair and perfectly understandable. On Dempsi, his identity, his appearance, he mused till thelight began to show in a ghostly fashion behind the painted window.
There was no thrill in the secrecy, the plotting, the wile within wile. Gordon smelt the meanness of it, and sometimes he quavered. It made matters a thousand times worse that Diana was so sweet about everything.
It had occurred to him that he would have to depend upon her to deal with Mr. Tilmet when he called. Nobody else could possibly cope with that elusive gentleman.
“Surely,” she said without hesitation. “Have you the receipt ready and the final contract? It isn’t worth paper unless it has been drawn up by an American notary. Auntie bought an oil well in Texas and she had to find an American attorney before the contract could be made.”
“And she was swindled, of course?” said Gordon. “All these oil properties are swindles.”
“She made seventy thousand dollars out of the deal,” said Diana. “Auntie had an irresistible attraction for bargain money. The bills are in the safe?”
“With the contract and the receipt. Really, Diana, you’re almost a business woman!”
“Your patronage is offensive, but I feel sure that you mean well,” said Diana without heat. “Let me see that money.”
He opened the safe and she counted it, bill by bill, before she snapped the door close and spun the handle.
“Good,” she said. “I will have a spring clean whilst you are away. I have sent for a man to clean the windows of The Study. They are in a shocking state. And, Gordon, with Trenter and you away, I shall need extra help. I will have a man and his wife here. There is an attic room where they can sleep: is that in order?”
Diana was brisk, business-like, imposingly capable. Gordon realised that she was unconsciously ramming home her indispensability.
Eleanor, coming in to put the room in order, found him in his dressing-gown, asleep before the black ashes of the fire, and her squeal of fear woke him.
“Oh, sir, you gave me such a fright!”
He rose stiffly, blinking at her.
“Did I ...? I’m sorry, Eleanor. Will you send Trenter to me in my room?”
A bad start to a very bad day’s business. Heached from head to foot, until his bath gave him some bodily ease.
“Eleanor says you were asleep before the study fire. When did you come down, Gordon?” Diana asked at breakfast.
“About three o’clock, I think. I remembered work that had to be done.”
She was concerned.
“Why don’t you go by the night train—you could sleep?” she suggested, and he forced a smile.
“I shall sleep all right,” he said with spurious gaiety.
The talk went off in another direction, and then Bobbie came in for final instructions. Gordon was unaccountably irritated by this act of devotion to duty, and his “Good-morning” was like the crack of a whip.
“After you have gone,” said Diana, “I shall ask Trenter to show me such of your clothes as need go to the cleaners.”
“Trenter is going before me,” he said hastily. “He’s catching a train to Bristol. His aunt is seriously ill.”
“What on earth’s the matter with you?” gasped Bobbie.
Gordon turned, ready to be offensive, but itwas not he at whom Bobbie was staring. Diana’s face was ghastly; her eyes were wide with a terror she could not conceal; her skin the colour of chalk. Gordon jumped up and ran to her.
“Whatever’s the matter?” he asked, in genuine alarm.
“Nothing,” she said with a gasp. “Perhaps I’m feeling the parting. I always go like this when my cousins go away!”
“Have you had bad news?”
Her letters were open on the table. She shook her head.
“No; the butcher’s arithmetic is a little embrangled. Ever heard that word before, Gordon? I guess you haven’t! I found it inTom Brown’s School Days. Bobbie, don’t stare, it’s very rude....”
Under her covering hand was the letter she had been reading.
Mr. Dempsi was very much alive: was in London at that moment. The opening lines of his letter were significant.
“My bride! I have come to claim you!”
“My bride! I have come to claim you!”
“My bride! I have come to claim you!”
Dempsi always wrote like that.
Tenminutes later, Bobbie walked into his brother’s room without knocking, and interrupted what seemed to be a very confidential interview. Trenter pocketed a sheaf of telegrams in haste, but not so quickly that Bobbie did not see them. He made no comment until Mr. Trenter, in his best suit and looking unusually spruce, had made a hurried departure.
“Trenter’s going down to see his sick aunt,” explained his master.
“He looks like that,” said Bobbie. “The chrysanthemum in his buttonhole will cheer her immensely. Is the faithful Trenter in the swindle too?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘swindle,’”said Gordon loudly. “I wish I hadn’t told you anything about it!”
“You wouldn’t, only you wanted somebody to stand by you in case anything went wrong. That is, anything but you.”
Gordon glared at him.
“I shall not go wrong, believe me!”
“I don’t,” said Bobbie. And then, hastily: “At least, I do, but nobody else would.”
“You can’t understand these—it’s a hateful word, but there is no better—affinities,” said Gordon, “these understandings and yearnings for something which—which—well, somebody else can’t give you. Some magic that draws a man’s confidence and kills all sense of time and obligation.”
Bobbie nodded wisely.
“I know—a woman.”
Gordon stood erect.
“Bobbie,” he said awfully, “I tell you this is not an affair—at any rate, it is different from other kinds of affairs.”
“So are all other kinds of affairs,” said Bobbie. “That’s why the judges have been working overtime. I dare say Iamcynical: I can afford to be, I’m a bachelor. The lady has a husband?”
“Heloise is married,” said Gordon gravely.
“Heloise? I must remember that name. And Trenter, I presume, is going into the country to post the necessary telegrams to give verisimilitude to an otherwise unconvincing narrative. I hatequoting Gilbert at you, but the situation is a little Gilbertian. What is she like?”
Gordon was not inclined to particularise.
“Of course, if you’re going to make trouble——”
“Don’t be an ass,” said Bobbie. “I’m not going to give you away because, for some extraordinary reason, I believe you.”
A knock at the door: it was Eleanor.
“Will you see Mr. Superbus?” she said.
“No,” snapped Gordon. “Get me a cab.”
“Who’s Mr. Superbus?”
“He’s the detective I told you about; the man that is watching for Double Dan.”
Bobbie whistled: it was an exasperating trick of his.
“Double Dan? By Jove! I didn’t think of him. Gordon, you’re taking a risk. Is there any money in the house?”
“I told you.”
“You keep telling me you’ve told me things. I think your mind is wandering.”
“There’s fifty thousand dollars in the safe. Diana’s looking after it. The combination word is ‘Telma’—I told her, and I might as well tellyou. It is for Tilmet, who’s calling on Sunday, but Diana will look after that.”
“Double Dan,” repeated Bobbie softly. “And you’re the very bird he could impersonate to the life! Sometimes I do it myself unconsciously. A little pomp, a little strut, a little preciousness of speech——”
Gordon waved him out of the room. He had reached the limit of his patience.
Diana was out when he came down, and he was not sorry. Also, the telephone receiver was on the table; he replaced it in the hook.
“Where is Miss Ford?” he asked.
“Miss Ford had to go out. She asked me to say good-bye to you, sir,” said Eleanor. “Will you see Mr. Superbus?”
“No, I will not see Mr. Superbus. Tell him—well, tell him anything you like. I’ve got a train to catch.”
He was gone in such a hurry that Bobbie had not time to get the information he had come to procure—Gordon had not told him the address to which he was to wire. There was time to go after him, but his immediate objective was unknown. It was obviously too early for the train, and Bobbie had such a sense of delicacy that hewould not take the risk of a chance meeting with the fascinating Mrs. van Oynne. He sat down, waiting for Diana’s return, and puzzling over the change which a letter had wrought in her. That it was a letter, he knew. Sharper of eye than his brother, he had noticed the closely written page beneath her hand. Diana had her secrets too.
As for Gordon, he was a fool, an utter, hopeless, dithering maniac! Bobbie got up and walked across to the safe, hesitated a moment, then manipulated the dial and pulled the door open.
Except for a receipt form and a four page contract, the safe was empty. Of money there was none!
Itwas half an hour before Diana came back, and she still showed the effects of the shock she had received at breakfast time.
“Hullo, Bobbie!” She glanced at his face. “What is the matter?”
“Diana”—he spoke slowly—“you’re in some kind of trouble.”
“Some kind!” She flung her hat recklessly on the table. “Every kind, my dear child!”
He did not smile.
“Gordon told me that he had left fifty thousand dollars in the safe to pay an American who’s calling on Sunday. He gave me the combination.”
She stood before him, her hands behind her.
“Well?”
“The money is not there.”
A little pause.
“And do you know why?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been worried to death. He didn’t take it?”
She shook her head.
“No, I took it,” she said. “Bobbie, Dempsi is alive!”
“Alive? Dempsi? Impossible!”
She nodded many times.
“He is alive! I’ve had a letter from him this morning—thirteen pages—you could have used any one of them as a mustard leaf. I’m scared!”
“But I thought he was lost in the bush?” said Bobbie.
She smiled painfully and dropped into the chair in which Gordon had spent the night.
“He was found in the bush,” she said. “He had fever or something and was discovered by the Jackies. They took him to their village. Bobbie, Dempsi is half Irish and half Italian. Which half is most mad? Because that’s the half that wrote.”
Bobbie considered for a long time.
“He knows you’re not married?”
She shook her head.
“What?”
“No,” said Diana calmly. “We talked on the telephone just after you left the room, and his first words were: ‘Are you single? We’ll be married to-morrow. If you’re married, you’ll be awidow to-night!’ I knew at once that it was Dempsi.”
“What did you say?” he asked, awe-stricken.
“I told him I was married,” she said, with such coolness that he was inarticulate. “I couldn’t very well explain why I was here if I wasn’t married, could I? Then he got so violent that I told him I was a widow. Bobbie, isn’t lying easy?”
Bobbie could say nothing.
“Then he sprang another one on me, and I told him that I was living with my Uncle Isaac—I used to have an Uncle Isaac,” she said in self-defence. “He was a sort of an adopted uncle. He died of delirium tremens. All our family have done something out of the common. I couldn’t say I was living alone in this big house, and anyhow, Gordon is away. It’s wonderful luck, his going.”
Bobbie paced the floor in a state of supreme agitation.
“What about the money?” he asked.
“I owed it to him. Before he ran away into the bush we had a terrible scene. He wanted me to elope with him, and when I wouldn’t, he said he would commit suicide. He was like a madman; he cried over me, he kissed my feet, and then wentoff to lose himself in the bush. He didn’t even do that properly.”
“And the money?”
“He gave it to me, or the cat or somebody. Anyway, I had it. Dempsi hadn’t a relation in the world, and I just banked the money with my own.” She bit her lip. “I intended putting up such a beautiful monument to him,” she added thoughtfully.
Bobbie drew a sigh of relief.
“Well, my dear girl, as you’ve obviously sent him the money, the worst is over. You can replace it: the banks do not close till twelve.”
“How am I to replace it?” she asked scornfully. “I’ve no money in my own bank, except a few pounds that I opened the account with when I came to London. I took the fifty thousand dollars and put eight thousand pounds to my own account. Here’s the rest.” She drew out a wad of bills and handed them to him.
Bobbie looked at her aghast.
“But this Tilmet, this American—you’ve got to find the money for him?”
“I thought you’d get it for me,” she said, her big eyes fixed pleadingly on him.
He looked at his watch.
“It’ll want some doing. You can’t raise eight thousand in real money in two hours. Is this money of Gordon’s in your bank?”
She nodded.
“I’m sending Dempsi a cheque by special messenger. He’s living in a little hotel in the Edgware Road.”
“He mentioned the money then?”
“He made a casual reference,” she said, “which my conscience probably magnified into a demand. Phew!” She fanned herself with her hand.
Bobbie locked away the remaining ten thousand dollars.
“I’ll see what I can do. May I telephone?”
She nodded.
“You may do anything you please except ask me to marry Dempsi,” she said wearily.
His first call was to his bank, and the conversation was not encouraging. Bobbie had just paid from his account heavy bills, and he was slightly overdrawn. To the suggestion that the overdraft should be increased, the manager turned an unsympathetic ear. And then, at the end of the third call, when Bobbie was in a condition of frenzy, Eleanor came in with a telegram, and the girl opened it quickly.
“Saved!” she whooped.
“What is it?” said Bobbie, snatching the form from her hand.
It was dated Paris and was from the American’s secretary.