CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIITWO WOMENMr. Isidore David Baumgartner was in a state of high good humor. After wasting many hundreds of cartridges he had actually shot a driven grouse. True, the method of slaughter amounted almost to a crime. Traveling fast and low before the wind, the doomed bird flew straight toward the butts. Baumgartner closed his eyes, fired both barrels—the first intentionally, the second from sheer nervousness—and a cloud of feathers, out of which fell all that was left of legs, wings, and body, showed how a gallant moorcock had met his fate.“There’s a clean hit for you, Sandy,” cried the little man delightedly. “It’s all knack. I knew I could do it, once I got the hang of it.”“Man, but ye stoppit him,” replied Sandy, who doled out encouragement with a sour grin. The shattered carcass lay in full view on a tuft of heather. Two ounces of shot had riddled it at a distance of ten feet.“I suppose the second barrel was hardly necessary,” said Baumgartner, more critically.“It’s best to mak’ sure,” said the sardonic gillie,“but now ye’ve got yer ‘ee in, as the sayin’ is, mebbe ye’ll be droppin’ ithers, Mr. Baumgartner.”He held forth the spare gun as a hint. Grouse were plentiful at Lochmerig, and three other men in the line of shelters were busy. Baumgartner forthwith excelled himself. Just as a novice at Monte Carlo may achieve several winning coups in succession, so did fortune favor one whom nature had not designed as a sportsman. He shot with blind confidence, and brought down half a dozen birds while they came sailing over the crest of the hill before a strong breeze that brought them to close range. That he rendered them for the most part uneatable did not trouble him in the least. Sport was merely slaying to him; his only trophies previously were some tame pigeons secured for practice.So Baumgartner was well content. As he trudged down the brae to Lochmerig Lodge, discoursing learnedly to his companions anent the “stopping” qualities of his eighty–guinea pair of guns, his eyes roved over the beauties of loch and glen, and the day–dream that it would be well to pass the remainder of his days in this quiet haven cast its spell on his soul. Rich as he was, he owned no home except a garish mansion in New York. His career had been meteoric, full of lurid energy. Beginning with the lust of money, he had followed the beaten track of his order, and became obsessed with the lust of power. Yet his ambition needed spurring. Already the tremendous issues involved in the project which procured him the condescending patronage of an emperor were revealingtheir dangers. Here, in Scotland, surrounded by subservient friends and well–trained servants, he longed for rest. Lairdship was proving a subtle rival to West African adventure.Moreover, he was married, and Mrs. Baumgartner was endowed with a will of her own and a tongue to bear witness thereto. She was learning to appreciate the easy tolerance of English society, which proved itself far more accessible than the Four Hundred of New York. Men and women of recognized social rank and pleasant manners were quite willing to shoot over the Lochmerig moors, play bridge in the Lodge, cruise on theSans Souci, and generally live and amuse themselves at the millionaire’s expense. Mrs. Baumgartner was shrewd enough to see that the gain of a big slice of British territory in West Africa would offer poor compensation for the loss of the new career which was opening up an alluring vista to her dazzled gaze. For once, therefore, discord threatened in the household. In her daughter, too, she found a powerful ally. A month of close companionship with Evelyn Dane had completely changed the life–theories of a spoiled and affected girl of eighteen. Too young as yet to be jealous of Evelyn’s greater attractions, Beryl Baumgartner was alert enough to see that vulgar pertness was ludicrously inadequate as a means of winning male regard. Luckily, she became enthusiastically attached to Evelyn from the first hour. The wonderful faculty of hero–worship had survived the precocity of a too–indulgent rearing. It was stronger now thanmere counsel. Beryl began to copy her new friend, and at once she began to improve.It was, therefore, a very dark cloud that lowered over the Baumgartner sky when a family coach which brought visitors from the ten miles distant railway deposited at the hospitable door of Lochmerig Lodge, at one and the same moment, Mrs. Laing, Miguel Figuero, and Count von Rippenbach. As it happened, the three already knew each other slightly. They had met in Madeira during the previous winter. Figuero then acted as bear–leader to the count before he started on the hunting trip in the Tuburi hinterland which had come to the Under Secretary’s knowledge.It was a surprise to both men when they encountered Mrs. Laing at Perth Junction. They passed several interesting hours in her company, and von Rippenbach, who spoke English better than Figuero, was a skilled cross–examiner. Thus, he soon hit upon a plausible explanation of the lady’s appearance in Inverness–shire. She was one of Mrs. Baumgartner’s social links with England. On his part, as a “distinguished foreigner,” he would be acceptable in a higher circle than that occupied by his host, but, when it came to Figuero, Mrs. Laing was puzzled—indeed, somewhat amused.The man’s record was no secret. Tolerant Madeira did not ask how he had risen to seeming affluence. It helped him to spend his money, and was graciously blind to the darker pages of his history—nevertheless, those pages were an open book to local gossips.Figuero, a shrewd and level–headed scoundrel, was the most taken aback of the trio at this unlooked–for meeting. He was aware of the love passages between Warden and Rosamund Laing; he feared Warden; and here was the woman whom Warden had once loved crossing his path at an awkward hour.The situation might have provided harmless interest for a number of unimportant people at Lochmerig if Figuero had not recognized Evelyn Dane the instant he set eyes on her. Straightway the tiny rills of intrigue and suspicion flowing through the adventurer’s brain united into a torrent.Seizing the first opportunity that presented itself, he drew Baumgartner into an unoccupied room, and closed and locked the door. Before the surprised millionaire could utter a word of protest, the West African fire–brand began to question him in his own tongue, since Baumgartner, despite his Teutonic label and semblance, had a Portuguese mother.“Why did you fail to recognize the girl I described to you in Cowes?” he demanded fiercely. “Malediction! Are you mad, that you would risk our enterprise in this fashion?”“You must neither address me in that manner nor talk in riddles,” growled Baumgartner. “What girl? How am I to know one among the ten thousand girls of a regatta week?”“Riddles! It is you who are the conundrum, senhor. I tell you that this Englishman, Captain Warden, a Deputy Commissioner in Nigeria, is theman we have most to fear, yet you permit one who is probably his fiancée, and surely in league with him, to live in your house and spy on the actions of yourself and your friends. What will Count von Rippenbach think when I tell him? What will the Emperor say, after all the precautions we took that none should know——”“Silence!” roared Baumgartner, who could hold his own in matters that demanded clear thinking and careful guidance. “You are too ready with some names, Senhor Figuero, yet too sparing of others that may explain your folly. Of whom are you speaking?”“Of the young Englishwoman I have just met, of course. I am not good at catching these strange words, but I mean the good–looking one, the tall slim girl in white muslin, she with brown hair and Madonna eyes——”“Do you mean Miss Dane?”“Yes—that is she. I remember now.”“My daughter’s companion! Nonsense!”“It is true, I tell you. Am I likely to forget a face—and such a face! Did I not describe her dress? She must have left your yacht just before Warden met her. And they are lovers. How can I be mistaken? They went away from Cowes in the same train. I told you her destination. What was it? I have it written here,” and he hurriedly turned over the leaves of a note–book.Baumgartner was undoubtedly impressed. Figuero’s earnestness was not to be gainsaid, and he had an unpleasant belief, now he came to recall the incidentsof a busy day, that Evelyn Dane was dressed exactly as Warden’s unknown acquaintance was pictured.Meanwhile, the Portuguese found the memorandum he sought.“Here it is,” he snapped, all a–quiver with the doubts that threatened the destruction of his pet scheme of vengeance on the British power which had stopped the supply of slaves to the Sultan of Bogota. “Langton in Oxfordshire—that is the place. The railway official spelt it for me. A boatman told me he knew the girl, and gave me some outlandish name as being hers. Now I see he was fooling me. What was his motive? Was he also an emissary of Warden’s? Let me assure you, senhor, this thing begins to look ugly.”Baumgartner’s heavy jowl lost some of the ruddy hue of the moors. Count von Rippenbach had been ready enough to apply the screw when his quondam confederate showed a degree of hesitancy in falling in with the proposal he came from London to make, and this latest complication would strengthen von Rippenbach’s hands beyond resistance. Already the lairdship of Lochmerig was becoming visionary, and the far–off hills of interior Africa grew more substantial in their dim outlines.But the millionaire, though he might toady to a Scottish gillie for a crumb of recognition as a marksman, had not attained his present position by displaying weakness in face of a crisis.“I believe you are the victim of a delusion,” he said, with some show of dignity, “but, even if you are right, we gain nothing by yielding to panic. What if Miss Dane is, as you say, Warden’sbelle amie? Why should that be harmful? Does it not explain his visit to Cowes? Indeed, once we are convinced that they know each other, we can turn the circumstance to our own purpose. I am far from crediting an insignificant official of the Niger Company with the importance you seem to attach to him, but, granted he is a hostile influence to be feared, why not stalk him through an unsuspecting agent?”“You don’t rate him high enough,” muttered Figuero. “He can sway those stupid niggers like no other man in Nigeria. He talks Arabic, and Hausa, and krooboy palaver as well as I do. He broke the Oku ju–ju when it was worth a thousand lives to touch a stick or a feather. If Warden gets wind of our project before we are ready, we will fail, and you realize what that means to all of us.”A dinner gong came to Baumgartner’s aid. He wished to avoid any discussion on the last point raised by the Portuguese. It bristled with thorns. Von Rippenbach revealed some of its cactus–like properties earlier in the evening.“You and I and the Count will go into other matters fully to–morrow,” he said. “As for Miss Dane, I shall clear up that difficulty without delay. Act as though you had never seen her before, and keep your ears open during dinner.”So it came to pass that Evelyn, who was mightily astonished and perplexed by the arrival of the two men concerning whom Warden had told her so much, was still more bewildered when Mr. Baumgartner availed himself of a lull in the conversation at the dinner–table to say casually:“By the way, Miss Dane, is Langton, in Oxfordshire, near your people’s place?”“Yes,” she said, wondering what the question signified.“I suppose, then, you passed through it on your way home after quitting theSans Souciat Cowes?”“Oh, yes. Langton is our station.”“Ah! What a small world it is! A friend of mine, Mr. James G. Hertz, of Boston, is staying there now. I suppose you did not chance to meet him?”“No. Our village is three miles away, and that is a long distance in the country.”And, in truth, Mr. James G. Hertz, of Boston, who was buried in Boston, could tell of yet more impassable gulfs.Rosamund Laing was sitting next to Figuero. She noticed the eager attention with which he followed this trivial bit of talk, though his limited knowledge of English rendered most of the lively chatter at the table unintelligible.“Were you in Cowes during the regatta week, Senhor Figuero?” she asked.It was a reasonable deduction from his presence at Lochmerig, but she little guessed the devilish purposeengendered in that alert brain by her aimless inquiry. The Portuguese felt that he was at a disadvantage among the gay throng gathered under Baumgartner’s roof. His nimble wits were dulled by the barrier of language. It put him outside the pale. Things might be occurring which he ought to know, but which were hidden from him owing to this drawback. In the beautiful woman by his side he might find an excellent go–between if only he could command her interest. Was that old flame quite quenched in her heart, he mused? She had married a rich man, but had she forgotten—did any woman ever forget—her first love? He thought not. At any rate, here was an opening provided by the gods.“I lib for Cowes one–time, senora,” he murmured, “an’ I see somet’ing dere dat I tell you if you not vexed.”“Why should I be vexed?” she said, smiling at the odd expressions, though she was quite conversant with thelingua francaof the coast.“You ‘member dem Captain Warden?”“Of course I do.”“An’ you keep secret dem t’ing I tell you?”“Where Captain Warden’s affairs are concerned, I shall certainly not discuss him or them.”Figuero paid no heed to the intentional snub.“You understan’ better w’en I tole you dem secret. You promise not speak ‘im any one?”“Well—yes.”“He fit for marry dem Mees Dane.”“Don’t be idiotic.”Mrs. Laing could not help it. She was so startled that she raised her voice, and more than one of her neighbors wondered what the sallow–faced stranger had said that evoked the outburst. Figuero looked annoyed. He was not prepared for such vehement repudiation of his news. Fortunately, the Honorable Billy Thring was giving a realistic account of his failure to secure an heiress during a recent wife–hunting tour in America—he tried lots of ‘em, he explained, but they all said he must kill off at least one brother and two healthy nephews before they would risk marryin’ a prize dude like him—so Rosamund’s emphatic cry passed almost unheeded amidst the laughter evoked by Thring’s exploits.“You fit for chop,” muttered the Portuguese sarcastically. “You fit for fool palaver. You plenty–much silly woman.”“But what you say cannot be true,” she half whispered, and the man’s astute senses warned him that it was dread, not contempt, that drew the protest from her lips.“I fit for tell you Warden make wife palaver wid dem girl at Cowes. If you no b’lieve me, make sof’ mouf an’ ax Mees Dane.”Then the woman remembered Warden’s anxiety to return to the Isle of Wight. He had not written to her or to Lady Hilbury during the past month, and this fact, trivial as a pin–prick before, now became a rankling wound.“You keep dem secret?” went on Figuero, watching her closely.“Why did you tell me?” she retorted.“Coss I no want Warden marry dem girl. Savvy?”“Do you want to marry her yourself?” she asked, with a bitterness that showed how deeply she was hurt.He grinned, and wetted his thin lips with his tongue.“You t’ink I tired goin’ by lone?” he said.“What is your motive? Why do you choose me as a confidant?”Figuero suddenly became dense.“I tell you leetle bit news,” he said. “Dat is English custom. W’en we chop one–time palaver set. But you no say Figuero tole you dem t’ing.”Rosamund did not reply. She endeavored to eat, and entered into conversation with a man near her. The Honorable Billy was ending his story.“So I am still eligible,” he was saying. “I went to America full of hot air, and came back with cold feet. But I learned the language—eh, what?”That night, in the drawing–room, Mrs. Laing carried out the opening move in a campaign she had mapped out for herself. If Figuero’s story were true, she would smite and spare not. If it were untrue, Evelyn would be the first to deny it, and Rosamund trusted to her own intuition to discover how far such denial might be credited.A man who was talking to Evelyn was summoned to a bridge table, and Rosamund took his place unobtrusively.“Then you really were on board the Sans Souci at Cowes, Miss Dane?” she began, with a friendly smile.“Yes,” said Evelyn, at a loss to determine why her brief sojourn in the Solent should attract such widespread attention.“And you met Captain Warden there?”The attack was so direct and unexpected that the younger woman blushed and flinched from it. Still, she was not to be drawn into admissions like a frightened child.“I met several people on the island,” she said. “Cowes is a crowded place during regatta week.”“Oh, come now,” purred the smiling Rosamund, “one does not forget a man of Arthur Warden’s type so readily—and after a violent flirtation, too! You see, I know all about it. Little birds whisper these things. Arthur did not tell me when he came to see me in town. Of course, he wouldn’t, but there are always kind–hearted people willing enough to gossip if they think they are annoying one.”There was sufficient innuendo in this brief speech to justify Mrs. Laing’s worst estimate of scandal–mongers. Not one barbed shaft missed its mark. If words could wound, then Evelyn must have succumbed, but the injuries they inflict are not always visible, and she kept a stiff upper lip, though her heart raced in wild tumult.“The inference is that you are far more interested in Captain Warden’s visits to Cowes than I or any other person can pretend to be,” she said slowly.She meant the cold–drawn phrase to hurt, and in that she succeeded, though her own voice sounded in her ears as if it had come from afar.“Well, perhaps you ought to be told that he and I are engaged,” said Rosamund, stung to a sudden fury of lying. “Don’t imagine I bear malice. You are sweetly pretty, and Arthur is so susceptible! But he is also rather thoughtless. We were pledged to each other years ago, but were kept apart by—by a mother’s folly. Now I am free, and he came back to me, though I had to insist that at least a year should elapse between my husband’s death and the announcement of our engagement. All our friends know our sad story, and would forgive some measure of haste, but one has to consider the larger circle of the public.”Then, indeed, Evelyn’s blood seemed to chill in her veins. The room and its occupants swam before her eyes, and the pain of repression became almost unbearable, yet she was resolved to carry off the honors in this duel unless she fainted.“I gather that you are warning me against Captain Warden’s thoughtlessness, as you term it?” she said, compelling each word at the bayonet’s point, as it were.“Oh, I was not speaking seriously, but we can let it go at that.”“And you wish me to understand that you are his promised wife?”“There, at least, I am most emphatic,” and Rosamund laughed, a trifle shrilly, perhaps, for a woman so well equipped with the armor of self–conceit.“I suppose, then, that the late Mr. Laing has been dead a year, as I form one of that larger circle whose favorable opinion you court?”For an instant Rosamund’s black eyes flashed angrily. She had expected tears and faltering, not resistance.“I only meant to do you a good turn, yet on the raw,” she sneered.“Pray do not consider me at all. By your own showing, I have no grievance—nolocus standi, as the lawyers say—but, since you have gone out of your way to give a mere stranger this interesting information, I wish to be quite sure of the facts. For instance, let us suppose that I have the honor of Captain Warden’s acquaintance—am I at liberty to write and congratulate him?”“That would place me in a false position.”“Ah. Is there nothing to be said for me? You spoke of a ‘violent flirtation,’ I think. If I may guess at the meaning of a somewhat crude phrase, it seems to imply a possible exchange of lovers’ vows, and one of the parties might be misled—and suffer.”“We women are the sinners most frequently.”“I do not dispute your authority, Mrs. Laing. I only wish to ascertain exactly what I am free to say to Captain Warden?”“Tell him you met me, and that I am well posted in everything that occurred at Cowes. And, for goodness’ sake, let me see his reply. It will be too killing to read Arthur’s verbal wrigglings, because he is really clever, don’t you think?”Somehow, despite the steely tension of every nerve, Evelyn caught an undertone of anxiety in the jesting words. Her rival was playing a bold game. It might end in complete disaster, but, once committed to it, there was no drawing back.“The proceedings at Cowes were open to all the world,” Evelyn could not help saying. “Even you, with your long experience, might fail to detect in them any trace of the thoughtlessness you deplore.”“Then you have met him elsewhere?”Evelyn, conscious of a tactical blunder, colored even more deeply with annoyance, though again she felt that her tormentor was not so sure of her ground as she professed to be. Every woman is a born actress, and Evelyn precipitated a helpful crisis with histrionic skill.“The whole story is yours, not mine, Mrs. Laing,” she said quietly. “Perhaps, if you apply to your half–caste informant, he may fill in further details to please you.”At that moment the Honorable Billy Thring intervened. He was one of those privileged persons who can say anything to anybody without giving offense, and he broke into the conversation now with his usual frank inanity.“I find I’ve bin lookin’ for a faithful spouse in the wrong direction, Mrs. Laing,” he chortled. “Barkin’ up the wrong tree, a Chicago girl called it. What a thorough ass I was to spin that yarn at dinner with you in the room. Will you be good, an’ forget it?Don’t say I haven’t got an earthly before the flag falls.”“What in the world are you talking about?” cried Rosamund, turning on him with the sourest of society smiles.“It sounds like the beginning of a violent flirtation,” said Evelyn, yielding to the impulse that demanded some redress for the torture she had endured.“Right you are, Miss Dane,” said Billy. “By gad, that clears the course quicker than a line of policemen. You see, Mrs. Laing, I really must marry somebody with sufficient means for both of us. I have expensive tastes, and my noble dad gave me neither a profession nor an income. So what is a fellow to do?”“You flatter me,” said Rosamund tartly. “Unfortunately I have just been telling Miss Dane that I amhors de concours, as they put it in the Paris exhibitions.”“That is the French for ‘you never know your luck,’ Mr. Thring,” cried Evelyn, with a well–assumed laugh. “Mrs. Laing may change her mind, too, not for the first time.”Without giving her adversary a chance to retaliate, she darted away to join Beryl Baumgartner, and soon seized an opportunity to retreat to her own room. Once safely barricaded behind a locked door, she bowed before the storm. Flinging herself on her knees by the bedside, she wept as though her heart would break. It was her first taste of the bitter cup that is held out to many a girl in her position, and its gall was not diminished because she still believed that ArthurWarden loved her. How could she doubt him, when each passing week brought her a letter couched in the most endearing terms? Only that morning had she heard from him at Ostend, whither theNancyhad flown after making a round of the Norfolk Broads. He described his chances of speedy promotion once the threatened disturbance in West Africa had spent itself, and, oddly enough, reminded her of his intention to curtail his furlough so as to permit of a visit to Rabat in a coasting steamer before going to Madeira on his way to the Protectorate.Not a word did he say of the Baumgartners, or their queer acquaintances of the Isle of Wight. It was tacitly agreed between them that Evelyn should not play the rôle of spy on her employers, and, indeed, until that very day there was little to report save the utmost kindness at their hands.Why, then, it may be urged, did she weep so unrestrainedly? and only the virgin heart of a woman who loves can answer. She feared that Rosamund Laing was telling the truth when she spoke of a prior engagement. She knew that Warden had said nothing at Plymouth of meeting Rosamund in London, and she was hardly to be blamed for drawing the most sinister inference from his silence. Did he dread that earlier entanglement? He was poor, and she was poor; how could he resist the pleading of one so rich and beautiful as her rival?In short, poor Evelyn passed a grievous and needlessly tortured hour before she endeavored to composeherself for sleep, and she was denied the consolation of knowing that the woman who destroyed her happiness was pacing another room like a caged tigress, and striving to devise some means of extricating herself from the morass into which Figuero’s tidings and her own rashness had plunged her.CHAPTER VIIISHOWING HOW MANY ROADS LEAD THE SAME WAYNext day, her mind restored to its customary equipoise, Evelyn thought she would be acting wisely if she gave Warden some hint of recent developments. Too proud to ask for an explicit denial of Rosamund Laing’s claim, she saw the absurdity of letting affairs drift until the hoped–for meeting at Madeira. At first, she thought of resigning her post as Beryl’s companion, and returning to Oxfordshire, but she set the notion aside as unreasonable and unnecessary. Most certainly Warden should not be condemned unheard. Without pressing him for a definite statement with regard to Mrs. Laing, it was a simple matter to put the present situation before him in such guise that he could not choose but refer to it. So, after drafting a few sentences, and weighing them seriously, she incorporated the following in a letter of general import:“Yesterday we had three new arrivals whose names must appeal to you powerfully. First, a Mrs. Rosamund Laing came here from London, and she lost no time in telling me, among other things, that she was aware of our meeting at Cowes. Her informant, I am sure, was Miguel Figuero, and you will be evenmore astonished to learn that he and Count von Rippenbach turned up by the same train as Mrs. Laing. The latter, by the way, said that you called on her at Lady Hilbury’s when in London. Is that true? There are some hidden forces in motion at Lochmerig which I do not understand. Mr. Baumgartner tackled me openly at dinner with regard to my journey from Cowes to Oxfordshire. We know from Peter that Figuero saw us together that morning, and your Portuguese friend evidently recognized me at once. But Mr. Baumgartner’s pointed reference to Langton as my destination was rather puzzling. How does it strike you? I expect my news will prove rather in the nature of a thunderbolt, and that is usually a very striking article. I assure you I am somewhat shaken myself. Mrs. Laing’s personal attributes remind one of those galvanic batteries you see at fairs in the country—the more you try to endure her magnetic influence, the greater your collapse.”Before sealing the envelope, she re–read Warden’s latest letter. She even read it aloud, and the straightforward, honest, loving words assumed a new significance. Then she turned to her own effusion, and viewed it critically. To her surprise, she detected a jarring, somewhat cynical, note in those passages which she regarded as all–important. To her judgment, events in the near future would follow a well–defined course. Her lover would say whether or not he had met Mrs. Laing in London, and give the clearest reasons for his omission of her name from the subsequentrecital of his adventures. Evelyn would count the hours until that reply reached her hands. Perhaps Mrs. Laing’s curiosity anent Warden’s skill in “wriggling” would then be sated. She might even give an exhibition of the wriggler’s art in her own behalf.Evelyn refused to admit now that she had ever yielded to doubt or anxiety. The hysterical outburst of last night was natural, perhaps, under the circumstances, but quite nonsensical. Even Warden himself must be made to believe that Mrs. Laing was only indulging an exuberant sense of humor in claiming his fealty. Meaning, therefore, to tone down any apparent asperity in the paragraph referring to the three newcomers, she added a few lines beneath her signature.“The Men of Oku have not yet appeared. I am longing to see them. They are really the most picturesque villains in the piece. I am just going for a stroll by the side of the loch, and I shall not be a little bit alarmed if I find a decorated calabash sailing in with the tide.”There is nothing new in the fact that the most important item in a woman’s letter is often contained in a postscript, but never did the writer of a harmless and gossipy missive achieve such amazing results as Evelyn Dane brought to pass by the words she scribbled hurriedly after the magic letters “P.S.”For others than Evelyn Dane were taking thought that morning. Baumgartner, von Rippenbach, andFiguero—locked in the library, and seated round a small table drawn well away from the door—were settling the final details of a scheme that aimed at nothing less than a very grave alteration in the political map of the world, while Rosamund Laing was planning an enterprise which should have an equally marked effect in the minor sphere of her own affairs.Yet the fortunes of these five people gathered at Lochmerig, and of many millions in other parts of the earth, were absolutely controlled by one of those trivial conditions which appear to be so ludicrously out of proportion with ultimate achievement.Baumgartner, being a rich man, objected to delay where his interests were concerned. Refusing to await the tardy coming of a country postman, he kept a groom in the village to which the mails were brought by train, and it was this man’s duty to ride in each day with the post–bag for Lochmerig Lodge and return some hours later with the first out–going budget. The house letters were dropped into a box in the entrance hall, and a notice intimated that the time of clearance was at noon. To an unscrupulous woman, such an arrangement offered the means to do ill deeds that makes ill deeds done. Rosamund, ready to dare anything now to save herself from contumely, actually set out to find Evelyn and taunt her into an admission that she had written to Warden.“Miss Dane is not in the house, madam,” said the London footman on duty at the door. “She went out some time since—in that direction,” and he pointedtoward the glistening firth that brought the North Sea into the heart of Inverness.Mrs. Laing pouted prettily.“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I do hope she has not forgotten to write. I shall never find her in time.Didyou happen to notice if she posted a letter?”The footman sought inspiration by stroking his chin.“Yes, madam,” he announced, after a pause. “I’m almost certain Miss Dane went to the box. Yes, I’m sure of it.”Madam was very much obliged, and tipped him half–a–crown, informing him with a most charming smile that she did not on any account wish Miss Dane to believe that she was suspected of forgetfulness. It was then some few minutes after eleven, and this gracious lady was sympathetic enough to inquire if the footman did not become very tired of remaining on duty so many hours in one place.“Oh, it’s nothing compared with London, ma’am,” said he. “Here we have sunshine—if the weather is fine—an’ fresh air all the time. I only came on duty at nine o’clock, an’ I go off at 11.30 for the first servants’ dinner.”Mrs. Laing was talking to Billy Thring in the hall when the postman groom came to clear the letter–box. She darted forward with that irresistible smile of hers.“I’m so glad I happened to be standing here,” she exclaimed. “I have just remembered that I have stupidly left out of a letter the very thing I most wanted to say. It would never have occurred to me if I hadn’tseen you. The letter is addressed to Captain Warden. May I have it?”The man was Baumgartner’s servant. He had never before set eyes on Mrs. Laing, but he knew the Honorable Billy quite well, so he raised no objection to this smartly dressed lady’s eager search for her incomplete letter. Though her hands fumbled somewhat, she soon picked it out.“Here it is!” she cried delightedly, “this one—Captain Arthur Warden, Poste Restante, Ostend. Now, that will save me a heap of trouble. Itwasso nice of you to come in at the right moment. You have saved me a lot of trouble.”The groom grinned as he pocketed half–a–crown. Some ladies were easy pleased, to be sure. Even Billy Thring, experienced hunter of gilded brides, was bewildered by Mrs. Laing’s excited manner.“Seems to me I’ve made a killin’,” he mused when she gushed herself away. “I s’pose old Baumgartner can be relied on. He is all there as a rule when he talks dollars an’ cents, but he’s a perfect rotter every other way. By gad, I’ll kid him into wearin’ kilts before the end of the month.”The notion tickled him. He lit a cigarette and strolled out through the open door. A glorious sweep of moorland and forest spread beyond the loch, whose wavelets lapped the verges of the sloping lawn and gardens. A little to the left theSans Soucilay at her moorings. A steam launch was tied to a neat landing–stage. A string of horses and moor ponies returningfrom exercise crossed a level pasture at the head of the loch. The letter–carrying groom was clattering down the broad carriage drive toward the distant station, and a couple of gardeners were cutting and rolling the green carpet of grass in front of the house.“He talks of buyin’ this property,” communed the Honorable Billy, who was thirty–five and had never earned a penny in his life. “Can’t be ten years older than me, though he looks sixty, bein’ podgy. Now, why can’t I have a stroke of luck an’ rake in a stack? Then I might have a cut–in for the giddy widow.”Evelyn’s trim figure emerged from a tree–shrouded path. She walked with a lithe elegance that pleased Mr. Thring’s sporting eye.“Or marry a girl likethat,” he added. The wild improbability of ever achieving any part of this fascinating programme brought a petulant frown to his handsome, vacuous face.He strode up to one of the gardeners, a red–whiskered Caledonian, stern and wild.“Where the devil is everybody?” he yawned. “No shootin’, no yachtin’, not a soul in the billiard–room—where’s the bloomin’ crowd?”The dour Scot looked at him pityingly.“Aiblins some are i’ bed,” he said, “an’ there’s ithers wha ocht to be i’ bed.”“Bully for you, Rob Roy,” cried Thring, who never objected to being scored off. “Aiblins some people are cuttin’ grass wha ocht to be under it, because they don’t know they’re alive, eh what?”“Man, but ye’re shairp the day,” retorted the gardener. “Whiles I’m thinkin’ there’s a guid pig–jobber lost in you, Maister Thring.”“Pig–jobber, you cateran! Why pigs?”“Have ye no heerd tell that fowk a bit saft i’ the heid have a wonderfu’ way wi’ animals, an’ pigs are always a fine mairket.”“A bit heavy, McToddy. Trem yer whuskers an’ change yer trousies for a kelt, an’ mebbe ye’ll crack a joke wi’ less deeficulty.”The under–gardener chortled, for the Honorable Billy could imitate the Scots dialect with an unction that was decidedly mirth–provoking.“Ma name’s no McToddy,” began the other.“Well, then, McWhusky. I ken the noo from yer rid neb that there’s michty little watter in yer composition.”Snorting defiance, but not daring to pour forth the wrath that boiled up in him, the man pushed a mowing–machine savagely across the lawn.“Routed!” smiled Billy. “Bannockburn is avenged!”“What is amusing you, Mr. Thring?” asked Evelyn, who had walked over the grass unheard.“I have just discovered my lost vocation,” he said. “I am a buffoon, Miss Dane, an idle jester. The only difference between me and a music–hall comedian is that my humor is not remunerative.”“Why, when I left you last night you were on the verge of proposing to Mrs. Laing, a most serious undertaking.”“Jolly nice woman, Mrs. Laing. No nonsense about her. We’ve bin together the last half hour, an’ I’m under the starter’s orders, at any rate.”“Why not go in and win?” demanded Evelyn, taking a kindly interest in the Honorable one’s matrimonial prospects. If he and Mrs. Laing made a match of it, that would provide a very agreeable close to a disquieting incident.“I’m afraid it’ll only be to make the runnin’ for some other Johnny,” sighed he. “I was gettin’ along like a house a–fire, when all at once she remembered she hadn’t said what she wanted to say in a letter to a Captain somebody at Ostend, an’ off she waltzed to her room. She’s probably writin’ sweet nothings to him now. Same old story—Billy Thring left at the post. Gad, that’s funny! See it, eh, what?”Thring was so amused by his own wit that he did not notice the expression of pain and fear that drove the brightness from Evelyn’s face. But she herself was conscious of it, and looked away lest he should peer into her eyes, and wonder. So Mrs. Laing was writing to Arthur! She knew his address! How strange, how unutterably strange, that he had not once mentioned her name! The girl, as in a dream, affected to be watching a boy, the son of the village post–mistress, coming up the avenue. For the sake of hearing her own voice in such commonplace words as she might dare to utter, she drew her companion’s attention.“Here is our telegraph messenger,” she said.Thring glanced at his watch.“It’s for me,” he announced. “There’s a chap at Newmarket who is the champion loser–finder of the world, an’ I’m one of his victims. This is Leger day, an’ if you wait a moment I’ll put you onto a stiff ‘un, sure thing. Then you must turn bookmaker at lunch, and win gloves right and left—in pairs, in fact. I’ll stand your losses if my prophet has gone mad an’ sent a winner.”The boy made straight for him, and commenced to unfasten the pouch slung to his belt.“See? I told you,” laughed Billy, opening the message.Evelyn hardly understood him. She was grateful for the high spirits that prevented him from paying any heed to the tears trembling under her drooping eyelashes. Despite her brave resolve to disregard Rosamund Laing’s unbelievable story, a whole legion of doubts and terrors now trooped in on her. She asked herself how she could endure to live in the same house as her rival, for five long days, until Arthur’s answer came. Would he receive the two letters by the same post? Could there be any real foundation for her rival’s boast? The thought made her sick at heart. Fighting down her dread, she turned to Thring hoping to find a momentary oblivion in listening to his cheerful nonsense.She found oblivion, indeed, but not in the shape she anticipated. Shading his eyes with one hand and holding the telegram in the other, her companion wasgazing at it in a dazed way. His cheeks were bloodless, the hand gripping the scrap of flimsy paper shook as though he were seized with ague, his whole attitude was that of a man who had received an overwhelming shock.“Mr. Thring!” she cried, startled beyond measure, “what has happened?”“My God!” he wailed, with the tingling note of agony in his voice that comes most clearly from one whose lips are formed for laughter. “My God! And I was jesting about them only last night!”“Oh, what is it?” she cried again, catching his arm because he swayed like one about to faint.“Read!” he murmured. “Fairholme an’ the two boys! May Heaven forgive me! To think that I should have said it last night of all nights!”Evelyn took the telegram from his palsied fingers, and this is what she read:“With deepest regret I have to inform you that the Earl of Fairholme and his two sons were killed in the collision at Beckminster Junction last evening. Their private saloon was being shunted when the down express crashed into it. Letters found on his lordship’s body gave me your address. Every one here joins in profound sympathy. Please wire instructions. James Thwaite.”Scarce knowing what she said, and still clinging desperately to the stricken man at her side, Evelyn whispered:“Are they your relatives?”And the answer came brokenly.“Don’t you know? That’s Ferdy and my nephews! And two such boys! Straight an’ tall an’ handsome. Good Lord! was that the only way?”Then she realized the horror of it. The crushed society butterfly, who was like to fall to the ground but for her support, was now Earl of Fairholme. Calling Brown to her aid, they led him inside the house. The butler, impelled to disobey his master’s strict injunctions, knocked at the library door, and told Baumgartner what had happened.Von Rippenbach heard. He was a callous person, to whom the death of three Englishmen was of very slight consideration.“The very thing!” he murmured. “Now you have your excuse. You can empty the place in twenty–four hours.”Rosamund Laing, whose white brows wore unseemly furrows, was writing and thinking in her own room when a maid brought her the news. Before her on the table was Evelyn’s letter, and the sharp–eyed Scotch lassie saw that the lady nearly upset the inkstand in her haste to cover something with the blotting–pad. Rosamund was shocked, of course. Finding that Thring was leaving for the south almost immediately, she then and there wrote a sweetly sympathetic note, and had it taken to him.“By the way,” she said before the maid went out, “have you seen Mr. Figuero recently? I mean the dark–skinned man who came here yesterday.”Yes, he had just left the library with the master and another gentleman. Rosamund rose at once. If she were not greatly mistaken, Evelyn’s harmless–looking postscript had given her a clue to the mystery of Figuero’s presence in Baumgartner’s house. She knew her West Africa, and the bad repute of Oku was one of her clearest memories. Yet she turned back at the door, took Evelyn’s letter from her pocket, copied a portion of it, and locked the original in her jewel case.The luncheon–gong sounded as she descended the stairs, so perforce she postponed the interview she promised herself with the Portuguese. And, for the success of her deep–laid schemes, it was as well. Sometimes there comes to the aid of evil–doers a fiend who contrives opportunities where human forethought would fail. Rosamund, embarked on a well–nigh desperate enterprise, suddenly found the way smoothed by Baumgartner’s wholly unexpected announcement that business considerations compelled him to leave Lochmerig forthwith.“My wife and I would have tried to arrange matters satisfactorily for our guests,” he said, “but the gloom cast on our pleasant party by the unhappy tidings received this morning by one of our number renders it almost impossible for any of us to enjoy the remainder of a most memorable and delightful sojourn in Scotland.”He delivered himself of other platitudes, but Mrs. Baumgartner’s dejected air and Beryl’s sulky silence showed plainly enough that the millionaire’s fiat wasunalterable. Polite murmurs of agreement veiled the chagrin of people who had a fortnight or more thrown on their hands without any prior arrangements. The meal was a solemn function. Everybody was glad when it ended.Rosamund met Figuero in the hall.“I am going to the village,” she said. “Will you walk there with me?”He caught the veiled meaning of the glance, and agreed instantly. When they were clear of the house, she commenced the attack.“Why are you and Count von Rippenbach and three men of Oku in England?” she asked.She did not look at Figuero. There was no need. He waited a few seconds too long before he laughed.“You make joke,” he said.“Do I? It will be no joke for you when Captain Warden informs the Government, if he has not done that already.”“Why you say dem t’ing?” he growled, and she was fully aware of the menace in his voice.“You told me what you were pleased to consider a secret last night. Very well, I am willing to trade. Captain Warden knows what you are doing. He probably guesses every item of the business you and the Count were discussing so long and earnestly with Mr. Baumgartner in the library before lunch. Oh, please don’t interrupt”—for Figuero, driven beyond the bounds of self–control, was using words better left to the Portuguese tongue in which they were uttered—“Iam not concerned with your plots. They never come to anything, you know. If either Count von Rippenbach or Mr. Baumgartner had your history at their finger’s ends as I have, they would drop you like a hot cinder. Yet, I am ready to bargain. Help me, and I will keep my information to myself.”“What you want, den?”She glanced at him, and was surprised to see that his face was livid, almost green with rage and perplexity. It must be a grave matter—this jumble of hints in Evelyn’s letter.“Can you read English?” she asked, after a pause.“Yes, leetle piece—better as I can make palaver.”“Read that then.”She handed him the copy of that part of the fateful letter that alluded to himself and his affairs. He puzzled it out, word by word.“Where him lib for?” he demanded.“That was written by Miss Dane and intended for Captain Warden. I came by it, no matter how, and I mean to make use of it in some way.”With a rapid movement, he stuffed the sheet of note–paper into a pocket.“I keep dem letter,” he announced.“Certainly. It is only a copy. Savvy? I have the real one safely put away.”Figuero swallowed something. His thin lips were bloodless, and his tongue moistened them with the quick darting action of a snake. Rosamund, who was really somewhat afraid, trusted to the daylight and thefact that they were traversing an open road, with cottages scattered through the glen.“You cannot humbug me,” she went on, “but I want to assure you again that I am no enemy of yours. Now, listen. I mean to marry Captain Warden, but I have reason to believe that he is engaged, promised, to Miss Dane. I am trying to stop that, to break it off. Can you help?”“You ask hard t’ing—in dis place. In Africa, we get Oku man make ju–ju.”She shuddered. The cold malevolence in his words recalled stories she had heard of those who had died with unaccountable suddenness when “Oku man make ju–ju.”“I don’t mean that,” she cried vehemently. “Tell me what is taking place, and how it will affect Captain Warden. Then I can twist events to my own purpose. I can warn him, perhaps prove myself his friend. Above all—where are you going to–morrow? Mr. Baumgartner sails in theSans Souci, I hear. Does Miss Dane go with him, or is she to be sent away because she is aware of your plans?”Figuero did not answer during a whole minute.He saw light, dimly, but growing more distinct each instant. Warden was a deadly personality in the field against him, and his active interference was now assured beyond cavil. But, with two women as foils, both beautiful, and one exceedingly well equipped with money, there was still a chance of circumventing the only man he feared.“You steal dem letter?” he said unexpectedly.“At any rate, it has not gone to Captain Warden,” was the acid reply.“An’ you write ‘im. What you say?”“Oh, nothing that affects the case.”“You tole him me here?”“No. That can wait,” which statement, as shall be seen, was strictly untrue.“Well, den, dem yacht lib for—for somewheres to–morrow. Dem girl, Mees Dane, go wid me. You tole him dat t’ing as you say las’ night. I make wife palaver to dem girl.”“What good will that do?” she said. “In a week, ten days, he will hear from her again.”“No. I take dem letter. You gib me Captain Warden writin’, an’ I keep eye for dat. Savvy?”“But can you carry out what you promised?”“Two, t’ree months, yes. After dem yacht lib for Madeira, no. P’raps dem girl be wife den.”Rosamund’s dark eyes narrowed to two tiny slits. If Figuero could really keep Warden and Evelyn apart during so long a period, the utterly hopeless project on which she had embarked in a moment of jealous rage might become feasible. Of course, the suggestion that he would marry Evelyn was preposterous, but there was no reason why she should hurt his pride by telling him so. Her heart throbbed madly, while her active brain debated the pros and cons of the all–important question—should she post the letter already written? Yes. It was the outcome of her earliest thought. Shewould follow it up with another in different strain. The two would be vastly more convincing than one, and the dates would have a significance that no mere contriving could impart.By this time they were at the post–office, from which mails were dispatched by a later train than that caught by the groom. Rosamund dropped her letter in the box. She was quite pale with suppressed excitement. Her boats were burnt. She heard the fall of the envelope into the receptacle, and the appalling notion possessed her that the sound resembled the fall of earth on a coffin. She breathed heavily, and pressed a hand to her bosom. Figuero was watching her.“Now you done dem t’ing,” he said, “you dash me some money.”She started. Did he mean to levy blackmail for his services?“Why?” she asked, summoning all her strength of character to meet his gaze without flinching.“Me buy present for dem girl. If I make wife palaver dat cost many dollar.”“I am not buying your help. You trade with me one thing for the other. If you refuse, I write to the Government about the men of Oku.”The Portuguese laughed more naturally than she had yet heard him. If his arch–enemy, Arthur Warden, was well acquainted with the mission he and the chiefs had undertaken, this pretty and passionate woman counted for very little in the scale against him.“You dash me one hunner’ poun’,” he said cheerfully.“Jus’ dat, no mo’. If you say ‘no,’ dem girl no lib for yacht. Mr. Baumgartner say go one–time. Me tell ‘im take dem girl—savvy?”Mrs. Laing savvied. She gave him thirty pounds—all she could spare from her purse—and promised to send the balance to an address in London. He was fully satisfied. He was sure she would not fail him. When he needed further supplies she would pay willingly. In an intrigue based on such lines Miguel Figuero was an adept.

CHAPTER VIITWO WOMENMr. Isidore David Baumgartner was in a state of high good humor. After wasting many hundreds of cartridges he had actually shot a driven grouse. True, the method of slaughter amounted almost to a crime. Traveling fast and low before the wind, the doomed bird flew straight toward the butts. Baumgartner closed his eyes, fired both barrels—the first intentionally, the second from sheer nervousness—and a cloud of feathers, out of which fell all that was left of legs, wings, and body, showed how a gallant moorcock had met his fate.“There’s a clean hit for you, Sandy,” cried the little man delightedly. “It’s all knack. I knew I could do it, once I got the hang of it.”“Man, but ye stoppit him,” replied Sandy, who doled out encouragement with a sour grin. The shattered carcass lay in full view on a tuft of heather. Two ounces of shot had riddled it at a distance of ten feet.“I suppose the second barrel was hardly necessary,” said Baumgartner, more critically.“It’s best to mak’ sure,” said the sardonic gillie,“but now ye’ve got yer ‘ee in, as the sayin’ is, mebbe ye’ll be droppin’ ithers, Mr. Baumgartner.”He held forth the spare gun as a hint. Grouse were plentiful at Lochmerig, and three other men in the line of shelters were busy. Baumgartner forthwith excelled himself. Just as a novice at Monte Carlo may achieve several winning coups in succession, so did fortune favor one whom nature had not designed as a sportsman. He shot with blind confidence, and brought down half a dozen birds while they came sailing over the crest of the hill before a strong breeze that brought them to close range. That he rendered them for the most part uneatable did not trouble him in the least. Sport was merely slaying to him; his only trophies previously were some tame pigeons secured for practice.So Baumgartner was well content. As he trudged down the brae to Lochmerig Lodge, discoursing learnedly to his companions anent the “stopping” qualities of his eighty–guinea pair of guns, his eyes roved over the beauties of loch and glen, and the day–dream that it would be well to pass the remainder of his days in this quiet haven cast its spell on his soul. Rich as he was, he owned no home except a garish mansion in New York. His career had been meteoric, full of lurid energy. Beginning with the lust of money, he had followed the beaten track of his order, and became obsessed with the lust of power. Yet his ambition needed spurring. Already the tremendous issues involved in the project which procured him the condescending patronage of an emperor were revealingtheir dangers. Here, in Scotland, surrounded by subservient friends and well–trained servants, he longed for rest. Lairdship was proving a subtle rival to West African adventure.Moreover, he was married, and Mrs. Baumgartner was endowed with a will of her own and a tongue to bear witness thereto. She was learning to appreciate the easy tolerance of English society, which proved itself far more accessible than the Four Hundred of New York. Men and women of recognized social rank and pleasant manners were quite willing to shoot over the Lochmerig moors, play bridge in the Lodge, cruise on theSans Souci, and generally live and amuse themselves at the millionaire’s expense. Mrs. Baumgartner was shrewd enough to see that the gain of a big slice of British territory in West Africa would offer poor compensation for the loss of the new career which was opening up an alluring vista to her dazzled gaze. For once, therefore, discord threatened in the household. In her daughter, too, she found a powerful ally. A month of close companionship with Evelyn Dane had completely changed the life–theories of a spoiled and affected girl of eighteen. Too young as yet to be jealous of Evelyn’s greater attractions, Beryl Baumgartner was alert enough to see that vulgar pertness was ludicrously inadequate as a means of winning male regard. Luckily, she became enthusiastically attached to Evelyn from the first hour. The wonderful faculty of hero–worship had survived the precocity of a too–indulgent rearing. It was stronger now thanmere counsel. Beryl began to copy her new friend, and at once she began to improve.It was, therefore, a very dark cloud that lowered over the Baumgartner sky when a family coach which brought visitors from the ten miles distant railway deposited at the hospitable door of Lochmerig Lodge, at one and the same moment, Mrs. Laing, Miguel Figuero, and Count von Rippenbach. As it happened, the three already knew each other slightly. They had met in Madeira during the previous winter. Figuero then acted as bear–leader to the count before he started on the hunting trip in the Tuburi hinterland which had come to the Under Secretary’s knowledge.It was a surprise to both men when they encountered Mrs. Laing at Perth Junction. They passed several interesting hours in her company, and von Rippenbach, who spoke English better than Figuero, was a skilled cross–examiner. Thus, he soon hit upon a plausible explanation of the lady’s appearance in Inverness–shire. She was one of Mrs. Baumgartner’s social links with England. On his part, as a “distinguished foreigner,” he would be acceptable in a higher circle than that occupied by his host, but, when it came to Figuero, Mrs. Laing was puzzled—indeed, somewhat amused.The man’s record was no secret. Tolerant Madeira did not ask how he had risen to seeming affluence. It helped him to spend his money, and was graciously blind to the darker pages of his history—nevertheless, those pages were an open book to local gossips.Figuero, a shrewd and level–headed scoundrel, was the most taken aback of the trio at this unlooked–for meeting. He was aware of the love passages between Warden and Rosamund Laing; he feared Warden; and here was the woman whom Warden had once loved crossing his path at an awkward hour.The situation might have provided harmless interest for a number of unimportant people at Lochmerig if Figuero had not recognized Evelyn Dane the instant he set eyes on her. Straightway the tiny rills of intrigue and suspicion flowing through the adventurer’s brain united into a torrent.Seizing the first opportunity that presented itself, he drew Baumgartner into an unoccupied room, and closed and locked the door. Before the surprised millionaire could utter a word of protest, the West African fire–brand began to question him in his own tongue, since Baumgartner, despite his Teutonic label and semblance, had a Portuguese mother.“Why did you fail to recognize the girl I described to you in Cowes?” he demanded fiercely. “Malediction! Are you mad, that you would risk our enterprise in this fashion?”“You must neither address me in that manner nor talk in riddles,” growled Baumgartner. “What girl? How am I to know one among the ten thousand girls of a regatta week?”“Riddles! It is you who are the conundrum, senhor. I tell you that this Englishman, Captain Warden, a Deputy Commissioner in Nigeria, is theman we have most to fear, yet you permit one who is probably his fiancée, and surely in league with him, to live in your house and spy on the actions of yourself and your friends. What will Count von Rippenbach think when I tell him? What will the Emperor say, after all the precautions we took that none should know——”“Silence!” roared Baumgartner, who could hold his own in matters that demanded clear thinking and careful guidance. “You are too ready with some names, Senhor Figuero, yet too sparing of others that may explain your folly. Of whom are you speaking?”“Of the young Englishwoman I have just met, of course. I am not good at catching these strange words, but I mean the good–looking one, the tall slim girl in white muslin, she with brown hair and Madonna eyes——”“Do you mean Miss Dane?”“Yes—that is she. I remember now.”“My daughter’s companion! Nonsense!”“It is true, I tell you. Am I likely to forget a face—and such a face! Did I not describe her dress? She must have left your yacht just before Warden met her. And they are lovers. How can I be mistaken? They went away from Cowes in the same train. I told you her destination. What was it? I have it written here,” and he hurriedly turned over the leaves of a note–book.Baumgartner was undoubtedly impressed. Figuero’s earnestness was not to be gainsaid, and he had an unpleasant belief, now he came to recall the incidentsof a busy day, that Evelyn Dane was dressed exactly as Warden’s unknown acquaintance was pictured.Meanwhile, the Portuguese found the memorandum he sought.“Here it is,” he snapped, all a–quiver with the doubts that threatened the destruction of his pet scheme of vengeance on the British power which had stopped the supply of slaves to the Sultan of Bogota. “Langton in Oxfordshire—that is the place. The railway official spelt it for me. A boatman told me he knew the girl, and gave me some outlandish name as being hers. Now I see he was fooling me. What was his motive? Was he also an emissary of Warden’s? Let me assure you, senhor, this thing begins to look ugly.”Baumgartner’s heavy jowl lost some of the ruddy hue of the moors. Count von Rippenbach had been ready enough to apply the screw when his quondam confederate showed a degree of hesitancy in falling in with the proposal he came from London to make, and this latest complication would strengthen von Rippenbach’s hands beyond resistance. Already the lairdship of Lochmerig was becoming visionary, and the far–off hills of interior Africa grew more substantial in their dim outlines.But the millionaire, though he might toady to a Scottish gillie for a crumb of recognition as a marksman, had not attained his present position by displaying weakness in face of a crisis.“I believe you are the victim of a delusion,” he said, with some show of dignity, “but, even if you are right, we gain nothing by yielding to panic. What if Miss Dane is, as you say, Warden’sbelle amie? Why should that be harmful? Does it not explain his visit to Cowes? Indeed, once we are convinced that they know each other, we can turn the circumstance to our own purpose. I am far from crediting an insignificant official of the Niger Company with the importance you seem to attach to him, but, granted he is a hostile influence to be feared, why not stalk him through an unsuspecting agent?”“You don’t rate him high enough,” muttered Figuero. “He can sway those stupid niggers like no other man in Nigeria. He talks Arabic, and Hausa, and krooboy palaver as well as I do. He broke the Oku ju–ju when it was worth a thousand lives to touch a stick or a feather. If Warden gets wind of our project before we are ready, we will fail, and you realize what that means to all of us.”A dinner gong came to Baumgartner’s aid. He wished to avoid any discussion on the last point raised by the Portuguese. It bristled with thorns. Von Rippenbach revealed some of its cactus–like properties earlier in the evening.“You and I and the Count will go into other matters fully to–morrow,” he said. “As for Miss Dane, I shall clear up that difficulty without delay. Act as though you had never seen her before, and keep your ears open during dinner.”So it came to pass that Evelyn, who was mightily astonished and perplexed by the arrival of the two men concerning whom Warden had told her so much, was still more bewildered when Mr. Baumgartner availed himself of a lull in the conversation at the dinner–table to say casually:“By the way, Miss Dane, is Langton, in Oxfordshire, near your people’s place?”“Yes,” she said, wondering what the question signified.“I suppose, then, you passed through it on your way home after quitting theSans Souciat Cowes?”“Oh, yes. Langton is our station.”“Ah! What a small world it is! A friend of mine, Mr. James G. Hertz, of Boston, is staying there now. I suppose you did not chance to meet him?”“No. Our village is three miles away, and that is a long distance in the country.”And, in truth, Mr. James G. Hertz, of Boston, who was buried in Boston, could tell of yet more impassable gulfs.Rosamund Laing was sitting next to Figuero. She noticed the eager attention with which he followed this trivial bit of talk, though his limited knowledge of English rendered most of the lively chatter at the table unintelligible.“Were you in Cowes during the regatta week, Senhor Figuero?” she asked.It was a reasonable deduction from his presence at Lochmerig, but she little guessed the devilish purposeengendered in that alert brain by her aimless inquiry. The Portuguese felt that he was at a disadvantage among the gay throng gathered under Baumgartner’s roof. His nimble wits were dulled by the barrier of language. It put him outside the pale. Things might be occurring which he ought to know, but which were hidden from him owing to this drawback. In the beautiful woman by his side he might find an excellent go–between if only he could command her interest. Was that old flame quite quenched in her heart, he mused? She had married a rich man, but had she forgotten—did any woman ever forget—her first love? He thought not. At any rate, here was an opening provided by the gods.“I lib for Cowes one–time, senora,” he murmured, “an’ I see somet’ing dere dat I tell you if you not vexed.”“Why should I be vexed?” she said, smiling at the odd expressions, though she was quite conversant with thelingua francaof the coast.“You ‘member dem Captain Warden?”“Of course I do.”“An’ you keep secret dem t’ing I tell you?”“Where Captain Warden’s affairs are concerned, I shall certainly not discuss him or them.”Figuero paid no heed to the intentional snub.“You understan’ better w’en I tole you dem secret. You promise not speak ‘im any one?”“Well—yes.”“He fit for marry dem Mees Dane.”“Don’t be idiotic.”Mrs. Laing could not help it. She was so startled that she raised her voice, and more than one of her neighbors wondered what the sallow–faced stranger had said that evoked the outburst. Figuero looked annoyed. He was not prepared for such vehement repudiation of his news. Fortunately, the Honorable Billy Thring was giving a realistic account of his failure to secure an heiress during a recent wife–hunting tour in America—he tried lots of ‘em, he explained, but they all said he must kill off at least one brother and two healthy nephews before they would risk marryin’ a prize dude like him—so Rosamund’s emphatic cry passed almost unheeded amidst the laughter evoked by Thring’s exploits.“You fit for chop,” muttered the Portuguese sarcastically. “You fit for fool palaver. You plenty–much silly woman.”“But what you say cannot be true,” she half whispered, and the man’s astute senses warned him that it was dread, not contempt, that drew the protest from her lips.“I fit for tell you Warden make wife palaver wid dem girl at Cowes. If you no b’lieve me, make sof’ mouf an’ ax Mees Dane.”Then the woman remembered Warden’s anxiety to return to the Isle of Wight. He had not written to her or to Lady Hilbury during the past month, and this fact, trivial as a pin–prick before, now became a rankling wound.“You keep dem secret?” went on Figuero, watching her closely.“Why did you tell me?” she retorted.“Coss I no want Warden marry dem girl. Savvy?”“Do you want to marry her yourself?” she asked, with a bitterness that showed how deeply she was hurt.He grinned, and wetted his thin lips with his tongue.“You t’ink I tired goin’ by lone?” he said.“What is your motive? Why do you choose me as a confidant?”Figuero suddenly became dense.“I tell you leetle bit news,” he said. “Dat is English custom. W’en we chop one–time palaver set. But you no say Figuero tole you dem t’ing.”Rosamund did not reply. She endeavored to eat, and entered into conversation with a man near her. The Honorable Billy was ending his story.“So I am still eligible,” he was saying. “I went to America full of hot air, and came back with cold feet. But I learned the language—eh, what?”That night, in the drawing–room, Mrs. Laing carried out the opening move in a campaign she had mapped out for herself. If Figuero’s story were true, she would smite and spare not. If it were untrue, Evelyn would be the first to deny it, and Rosamund trusted to her own intuition to discover how far such denial might be credited.A man who was talking to Evelyn was summoned to a bridge table, and Rosamund took his place unobtrusively.“Then you really were on board the Sans Souci at Cowes, Miss Dane?” she began, with a friendly smile.“Yes,” said Evelyn, at a loss to determine why her brief sojourn in the Solent should attract such widespread attention.“And you met Captain Warden there?”The attack was so direct and unexpected that the younger woman blushed and flinched from it. Still, she was not to be drawn into admissions like a frightened child.“I met several people on the island,” she said. “Cowes is a crowded place during regatta week.”“Oh, come now,” purred the smiling Rosamund, “one does not forget a man of Arthur Warden’s type so readily—and after a violent flirtation, too! You see, I know all about it. Little birds whisper these things. Arthur did not tell me when he came to see me in town. Of course, he wouldn’t, but there are always kind–hearted people willing enough to gossip if they think they are annoying one.”There was sufficient innuendo in this brief speech to justify Mrs. Laing’s worst estimate of scandal–mongers. Not one barbed shaft missed its mark. If words could wound, then Evelyn must have succumbed, but the injuries they inflict are not always visible, and she kept a stiff upper lip, though her heart raced in wild tumult.“The inference is that you are far more interested in Captain Warden’s visits to Cowes than I or any other person can pretend to be,” she said slowly.She meant the cold–drawn phrase to hurt, and in that she succeeded, though her own voice sounded in her ears as if it had come from afar.“Well, perhaps you ought to be told that he and I are engaged,” said Rosamund, stung to a sudden fury of lying. “Don’t imagine I bear malice. You are sweetly pretty, and Arthur is so susceptible! But he is also rather thoughtless. We were pledged to each other years ago, but were kept apart by—by a mother’s folly. Now I am free, and he came back to me, though I had to insist that at least a year should elapse between my husband’s death and the announcement of our engagement. All our friends know our sad story, and would forgive some measure of haste, but one has to consider the larger circle of the public.”Then, indeed, Evelyn’s blood seemed to chill in her veins. The room and its occupants swam before her eyes, and the pain of repression became almost unbearable, yet she was resolved to carry off the honors in this duel unless she fainted.“I gather that you are warning me against Captain Warden’s thoughtlessness, as you term it?” she said, compelling each word at the bayonet’s point, as it were.“Oh, I was not speaking seriously, but we can let it go at that.”“And you wish me to understand that you are his promised wife?”“There, at least, I am most emphatic,” and Rosamund laughed, a trifle shrilly, perhaps, for a woman so well equipped with the armor of self–conceit.“I suppose, then, that the late Mr. Laing has been dead a year, as I form one of that larger circle whose favorable opinion you court?”For an instant Rosamund’s black eyes flashed angrily. She had expected tears and faltering, not resistance.“I only meant to do you a good turn, yet on the raw,” she sneered.“Pray do not consider me at all. By your own showing, I have no grievance—nolocus standi, as the lawyers say—but, since you have gone out of your way to give a mere stranger this interesting information, I wish to be quite sure of the facts. For instance, let us suppose that I have the honor of Captain Warden’s acquaintance—am I at liberty to write and congratulate him?”“That would place me in a false position.”“Ah. Is there nothing to be said for me? You spoke of a ‘violent flirtation,’ I think. If I may guess at the meaning of a somewhat crude phrase, it seems to imply a possible exchange of lovers’ vows, and one of the parties might be misled—and suffer.”“We women are the sinners most frequently.”“I do not dispute your authority, Mrs. Laing. I only wish to ascertain exactly what I am free to say to Captain Warden?”“Tell him you met me, and that I am well posted in everything that occurred at Cowes. And, for goodness’ sake, let me see his reply. It will be too killing to read Arthur’s verbal wrigglings, because he is really clever, don’t you think?”Somehow, despite the steely tension of every nerve, Evelyn caught an undertone of anxiety in the jesting words. Her rival was playing a bold game. It might end in complete disaster, but, once committed to it, there was no drawing back.“The proceedings at Cowes were open to all the world,” Evelyn could not help saying. “Even you, with your long experience, might fail to detect in them any trace of the thoughtlessness you deplore.”“Then you have met him elsewhere?”Evelyn, conscious of a tactical blunder, colored even more deeply with annoyance, though again she felt that her tormentor was not so sure of her ground as she professed to be. Every woman is a born actress, and Evelyn precipitated a helpful crisis with histrionic skill.“The whole story is yours, not mine, Mrs. Laing,” she said quietly. “Perhaps, if you apply to your half–caste informant, he may fill in further details to please you.”At that moment the Honorable Billy Thring intervened. He was one of those privileged persons who can say anything to anybody without giving offense, and he broke into the conversation now with his usual frank inanity.“I find I’ve bin lookin’ for a faithful spouse in the wrong direction, Mrs. Laing,” he chortled. “Barkin’ up the wrong tree, a Chicago girl called it. What a thorough ass I was to spin that yarn at dinner with you in the room. Will you be good, an’ forget it?Don’t say I haven’t got an earthly before the flag falls.”“What in the world are you talking about?” cried Rosamund, turning on him with the sourest of society smiles.“It sounds like the beginning of a violent flirtation,” said Evelyn, yielding to the impulse that demanded some redress for the torture she had endured.“Right you are, Miss Dane,” said Billy. “By gad, that clears the course quicker than a line of policemen. You see, Mrs. Laing, I really must marry somebody with sufficient means for both of us. I have expensive tastes, and my noble dad gave me neither a profession nor an income. So what is a fellow to do?”“You flatter me,” said Rosamund tartly. “Unfortunately I have just been telling Miss Dane that I amhors de concours, as they put it in the Paris exhibitions.”“That is the French for ‘you never know your luck,’ Mr. Thring,” cried Evelyn, with a well–assumed laugh. “Mrs. Laing may change her mind, too, not for the first time.”Without giving her adversary a chance to retaliate, she darted away to join Beryl Baumgartner, and soon seized an opportunity to retreat to her own room. Once safely barricaded behind a locked door, she bowed before the storm. Flinging herself on her knees by the bedside, she wept as though her heart would break. It was her first taste of the bitter cup that is held out to many a girl in her position, and its gall was not diminished because she still believed that ArthurWarden loved her. How could she doubt him, when each passing week brought her a letter couched in the most endearing terms? Only that morning had she heard from him at Ostend, whither theNancyhad flown after making a round of the Norfolk Broads. He described his chances of speedy promotion once the threatened disturbance in West Africa had spent itself, and, oddly enough, reminded her of his intention to curtail his furlough so as to permit of a visit to Rabat in a coasting steamer before going to Madeira on his way to the Protectorate.Not a word did he say of the Baumgartners, or their queer acquaintances of the Isle of Wight. It was tacitly agreed between them that Evelyn should not play the rôle of spy on her employers, and, indeed, until that very day there was little to report save the utmost kindness at their hands.Why, then, it may be urged, did she weep so unrestrainedly? and only the virgin heart of a woman who loves can answer. She feared that Rosamund Laing was telling the truth when she spoke of a prior engagement. She knew that Warden had said nothing at Plymouth of meeting Rosamund in London, and she was hardly to be blamed for drawing the most sinister inference from his silence. Did he dread that earlier entanglement? He was poor, and she was poor; how could he resist the pleading of one so rich and beautiful as her rival?In short, poor Evelyn passed a grievous and needlessly tortured hour before she endeavored to composeherself for sleep, and she was denied the consolation of knowing that the woman who destroyed her happiness was pacing another room like a caged tigress, and striving to devise some means of extricating herself from the morass into which Figuero’s tidings and her own rashness had plunged her.

TWO WOMEN

Mr. Isidore David Baumgartner was in a state of high good humor. After wasting many hundreds of cartridges he had actually shot a driven grouse. True, the method of slaughter amounted almost to a crime. Traveling fast and low before the wind, the doomed bird flew straight toward the butts. Baumgartner closed his eyes, fired both barrels—the first intentionally, the second from sheer nervousness—and a cloud of feathers, out of which fell all that was left of legs, wings, and body, showed how a gallant moorcock had met his fate.

“There’s a clean hit for you, Sandy,” cried the little man delightedly. “It’s all knack. I knew I could do it, once I got the hang of it.”

“Man, but ye stoppit him,” replied Sandy, who doled out encouragement with a sour grin. The shattered carcass lay in full view on a tuft of heather. Two ounces of shot had riddled it at a distance of ten feet.

“I suppose the second barrel was hardly necessary,” said Baumgartner, more critically.

“It’s best to mak’ sure,” said the sardonic gillie,“but now ye’ve got yer ‘ee in, as the sayin’ is, mebbe ye’ll be droppin’ ithers, Mr. Baumgartner.”

He held forth the spare gun as a hint. Grouse were plentiful at Lochmerig, and three other men in the line of shelters were busy. Baumgartner forthwith excelled himself. Just as a novice at Monte Carlo may achieve several winning coups in succession, so did fortune favor one whom nature had not designed as a sportsman. He shot with blind confidence, and brought down half a dozen birds while they came sailing over the crest of the hill before a strong breeze that brought them to close range. That he rendered them for the most part uneatable did not trouble him in the least. Sport was merely slaying to him; his only trophies previously were some tame pigeons secured for practice.

So Baumgartner was well content. As he trudged down the brae to Lochmerig Lodge, discoursing learnedly to his companions anent the “stopping” qualities of his eighty–guinea pair of guns, his eyes roved over the beauties of loch and glen, and the day–dream that it would be well to pass the remainder of his days in this quiet haven cast its spell on his soul. Rich as he was, he owned no home except a garish mansion in New York. His career had been meteoric, full of lurid energy. Beginning with the lust of money, he had followed the beaten track of his order, and became obsessed with the lust of power. Yet his ambition needed spurring. Already the tremendous issues involved in the project which procured him the condescending patronage of an emperor were revealingtheir dangers. Here, in Scotland, surrounded by subservient friends and well–trained servants, he longed for rest. Lairdship was proving a subtle rival to West African adventure.

Moreover, he was married, and Mrs. Baumgartner was endowed with a will of her own and a tongue to bear witness thereto. She was learning to appreciate the easy tolerance of English society, which proved itself far more accessible than the Four Hundred of New York. Men and women of recognized social rank and pleasant manners were quite willing to shoot over the Lochmerig moors, play bridge in the Lodge, cruise on theSans Souci, and generally live and amuse themselves at the millionaire’s expense. Mrs. Baumgartner was shrewd enough to see that the gain of a big slice of British territory in West Africa would offer poor compensation for the loss of the new career which was opening up an alluring vista to her dazzled gaze. For once, therefore, discord threatened in the household. In her daughter, too, she found a powerful ally. A month of close companionship with Evelyn Dane had completely changed the life–theories of a spoiled and affected girl of eighteen. Too young as yet to be jealous of Evelyn’s greater attractions, Beryl Baumgartner was alert enough to see that vulgar pertness was ludicrously inadequate as a means of winning male regard. Luckily, she became enthusiastically attached to Evelyn from the first hour. The wonderful faculty of hero–worship had survived the precocity of a too–indulgent rearing. It was stronger now thanmere counsel. Beryl began to copy her new friend, and at once she began to improve.

It was, therefore, a very dark cloud that lowered over the Baumgartner sky when a family coach which brought visitors from the ten miles distant railway deposited at the hospitable door of Lochmerig Lodge, at one and the same moment, Mrs. Laing, Miguel Figuero, and Count von Rippenbach. As it happened, the three already knew each other slightly. They had met in Madeira during the previous winter. Figuero then acted as bear–leader to the count before he started on the hunting trip in the Tuburi hinterland which had come to the Under Secretary’s knowledge.

It was a surprise to both men when they encountered Mrs. Laing at Perth Junction. They passed several interesting hours in her company, and von Rippenbach, who spoke English better than Figuero, was a skilled cross–examiner. Thus, he soon hit upon a plausible explanation of the lady’s appearance in Inverness–shire. She was one of Mrs. Baumgartner’s social links with England. On his part, as a “distinguished foreigner,” he would be acceptable in a higher circle than that occupied by his host, but, when it came to Figuero, Mrs. Laing was puzzled—indeed, somewhat amused.

The man’s record was no secret. Tolerant Madeira did not ask how he had risen to seeming affluence. It helped him to spend his money, and was graciously blind to the darker pages of his history—nevertheless, those pages were an open book to local gossips.

Figuero, a shrewd and level–headed scoundrel, was the most taken aback of the trio at this unlooked–for meeting. He was aware of the love passages between Warden and Rosamund Laing; he feared Warden; and here was the woman whom Warden had once loved crossing his path at an awkward hour.

The situation might have provided harmless interest for a number of unimportant people at Lochmerig if Figuero had not recognized Evelyn Dane the instant he set eyes on her. Straightway the tiny rills of intrigue and suspicion flowing through the adventurer’s brain united into a torrent.

Seizing the first opportunity that presented itself, he drew Baumgartner into an unoccupied room, and closed and locked the door. Before the surprised millionaire could utter a word of protest, the West African fire–brand began to question him in his own tongue, since Baumgartner, despite his Teutonic label and semblance, had a Portuguese mother.

“Why did you fail to recognize the girl I described to you in Cowes?” he demanded fiercely. “Malediction! Are you mad, that you would risk our enterprise in this fashion?”

“You must neither address me in that manner nor talk in riddles,” growled Baumgartner. “What girl? How am I to know one among the ten thousand girls of a regatta week?”

“Riddles! It is you who are the conundrum, senhor. I tell you that this Englishman, Captain Warden, a Deputy Commissioner in Nigeria, is theman we have most to fear, yet you permit one who is probably his fiancée, and surely in league with him, to live in your house and spy on the actions of yourself and your friends. What will Count von Rippenbach think when I tell him? What will the Emperor say, after all the precautions we took that none should know——”

“Silence!” roared Baumgartner, who could hold his own in matters that demanded clear thinking and careful guidance. “You are too ready with some names, Senhor Figuero, yet too sparing of others that may explain your folly. Of whom are you speaking?”

“Of the young Englishwoman I have just met, of course. I am not good at catching these strange words, but I mean the good–looking one, the tall slim girl in white muslin, she with brown hair and Madonna eyes——”

“Do you mean Miss Dane?”

“Yes—that is she. I remember now.”

“My daughter’s companion! Nonsense!”

“It is true, I tell you. Am I likely to forget a face—and such a face! Did I not describe her dress? She must have left your yacht just before Warden met her. And they are lovers. How can I be mistaken? They went away from Cowes in the same train. I told you her destination. What was it? I have it written here,” and he hurriedly turned over the leaves of a note–book.

Baumgartner was undoubtedly impressed. Figuero’s earnestness was not to be gainsaid, and he had an unpleasant belief, now he came to recall the incidentsof a busy day, that Evelyn Dane was dressed exactly as Warden’s unknown acquaintance was pictured.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese found the memorandum he sought.

“Here it is,” he snapped, all a–quiver with the doubts that threatened the destruction of his pet scheme of vengeance on the British power which had stopped the supply of slaves to the Sultan of Bogota. “Langton in Oxfordshire—that is the place. The railway official spelt it for me. A boatman told me he knew the girl, and gave me some outlandish name as being hers. Now I see he was fooling me. What was his motive? Was he also an emissary of Warden’s? Let me assure you, senhor, this thing begins to look ugly.”

Baumgartner’s heavy jowl lost some of the ruddy hue of the moors. Count von Rippenbach had been ready enough to apply the screw when his quondam confederate showed a degree of hesitancy in falling in with the proposal he came from London to make, and this latest complication would strengthen von Rippenbach’s hands beyond resistance. Already the lairdship of Lochmerig was becoming visionary, and the far–off hills of interior Africa grew more substantial in their dim outlines.

But the millionaire, though he might toady to a Scottish gillie for a crumb of recognition as a marksman, had not attained his present position by displaying weakness in face of a crisis.

“I believe you are the victim of a delusion,” he said, with some show of dignity, “but, even if you are right, we gain nothing by yielding to panic. What if Miss Dane is, as you say, Warden’sbelle amie? Why should that be harmful? Does it not explain his visit to Cowes? Indeed, once we are convinced that they know each other, we can turn the circumstance to our own purpose. I am far from crediting an insignificant official of the Niger Company with the importance you seem to attach to him, but, granted he is a hostile influence to be feared, why not stalk him through an unsuspecting agent?”

“You don’t rate him high enough,” muttered Figuero. “He can sway those stupid niggers like no other man in Nigeria. He talks Arabic, and Hausa, and krooboy palaver as well as I do. He broke the Oku ju–ju when it was worth a thousand lives to touch a stick or a feather. If Warden gets wind of our project before we are ready, we will fail, and you realize what that means to all of us.”

A dinner gong came to Baumgartner’s aid. He wished to avoid any discussion on the last point raised by the Portuguese. It bristled with thorns. Von Rippenbach revealed some of its cactus–like properties earlier in the evening.

“You and I and the Count will go into other matters fully to–morrow,” he said. “As for Miss Dane, I shall clear up that difficulty without delay. Act as though you had never seen her before, and keep your ears open during dinner.”

So it came to pass that Evelyn, who was mightily astonished and perplexed by the arrival of the two men concerning whom Warden had told her so much, was still more bewildered when Mr. Baumgartner availed himself of a lull in the conversation at the dinner–table to say casually:

“By the way, Miss Dane, is Langton, in Oxfordshire, near your people’s place?”

“Yes,” she said, wondering what the question signified.

“I suppose, then, you passed through it on your way home after quitting theSans Souciat Cowes?”

“Oh, yes. Langton is our station.”

“Ah! What a small world it is! A friend of mine, Mr. James G. Hertz, of Boston, is staying there now. I suppose you did not chance to meet him?”

“No. Our village is three miles away, and that is a long distance in the country.”

And, in truth, Mr. James G. Hertz, of Boston, who was buried in Boston, could tell of yet more impassable gulfs.

Rosamund Laing was sitting next to Figuero. She noticed the eager attention with which he followed this trivial bit of talk, though his limited knowledge of English rendered most of the lively chatter at the table unintelligible.

“Were you in Cowes during the regatta week, Senhor Figuero?” she asked.

It was a reasonable deduction from his presence at Lochmerig, but she little guessed the devilish purposeengendered in that alert brain by her aimless inquiry. The Portuguese felt that he was at a disadvantage among the gay throng gathered under Baumgartner’s roof. His nimble wits were dulled by the barrier of language. It put him outside the pale. Things might be occurring which he ought to know, but which were hidden from him owing to this drawback. In the beautiful woman by his side he might find an excellent go–between if only he could command her interest. Was that old flame quite quenched in her heart, he mused? She had married a rich man, but had she forgotten—did any woman ever forget—her first love? He thought not. At any rate, here was an opening provided by the gods.

“I lib for Cowes one–time, senora,” he murmured, “an’ I see somet’ing dere dat I tell you if you not vexed.”

“Why should I be vexed?” she said, smiling at the odd expressions, though she was quite conversant with thelingua francaof the coast.

“You ‘member dem Captain Warden?”

“Of course I do.”

“An’ you keep secret dem t’ing I tell you?”

“Where Captain Warden’s affairs are concerned, I shall certainly not discuss him or them.”

Figuero paid no heed to the intentional snub.

“You understan’ better w’en I tole you dem secret. You promise not speak ‘im any one?”

“Well—yes.”

“He fit for marry dem Mees Dane.”

“Don’t be idiotic.”

Mrs. Laing could not help it. She was so startled that she raised her voice, and more than one of her neighbors wondered what the sallow–faced stranger had said that evoked the outburst. Figuero looked annoyed. He was not prepared for such vehement repudiation of his news. Fortunately, the Honorable Billy Thring was giving a realistic account of his failure to secure an heiress during a recent wife–hunting tour in America—he tried lots of ‘em, he explained, but they all said he must kill off at least one brother and two healthy nephews before they would risk marryin’ a prize dude like him—so Rosamund’s emphatic cry passed almost unheeded amidst the laughter evoked by Thring’s exploits.

“You fit for chop,” muttered the Portuguese sarcastically. “You fit for fool palaver. You plenty–much silly woman.”

“But what you say cannot be true,” she half whispered, and the man’s astute senses warned him that it was dread, not contempt, that drew the protest from her lips.

“I fit for tell you Warden make wife palaver wid dem girl at Cowes. If you no b’lieve me, make sof’ mouf an’ ax Mees Dane.”

Then the woman remembered Warden’s anxiety to return to the Isle of Wight. He had not written to her or to Lady Hilbury during the past month, and this fact, trivial as a pin–prick before, now became a rankling wound.

“You keep dem secret?” went on Figuero, watching her closely.

“Why did you tell me?” she retorted.

“Coss I no want Warden marry dem girl. Savvy?”

“Do you want to marry her yourself?” she asked, with a bitterness that showed how deeply she was hurt.

He grinned, and wetted his thin lips with his tongue.

“You t’ink I tired goin’ by lone?” he said.

“What is your motive? Why do you choose me as a confidant?”

Figuero suddenly became dense.

“I tell you leetle bit news,” he said. “Dat is English custom. W’en we chop one–time palaver set. But you no say Figuero tole you dem t’ing.”

Rosamund did not reply. She endeavored to eat, and entered into conversation with a man near her. The Honorable Billy was ending his story.

“So I am still eligible,” he was saying. “I went to America full of hot air, and came back with cold feet. But I learned the language—eh, what?”

That night, in the drawing–room, Mrs. Laing carried out the opening move in a campaign she had mapped out for herself. If Figuero’s story were true, she would smite and spare not. If it were untrue, Evelyn would be the first to deny it, and Rosamund trusted to her own intuition to discover how far such denial might be credited.

A man who was talking to Evelyn was summoned to a bridge table, and Rosamund took his place unobtrusively.

“Then you really were on board the Sans Souci at Cowes, Miss Dane?” she began, with a friendly smile.

“Yes,” said Evelyn, at a loss to determine why her brief sojourn in the Solent should attract such widespread attention.

“And you met Captain Warden there?”

The attack was so direct and unexpected that the younger woman blushed and flinched from it. Still, she was not to be drawn into admissions like a frightened child.

“I met several people on the island,” she said. “Cowes is a crowded place during regatta week.”

“Oh, come now,” purred the smiling Rosamund, “one does not forget a man of Arthur Warden’s type so readily—and after a violent flirtation, too! You see, I know all about it. Little birds whisper these things. Arthur did not tell me when he came to see me in town. Of course, he wouldn’t, but there are always kind–hearted people willing enough to gossip if they think they are annoying one.”

There was sufficient innuendo in this brief speech to justify Mrs. Laing’s worst estimate of scandal–mongers. Not one barbed shaft missed its mark. If words could wound, then Evelyn must have succumbed, but the injuries they inflict are not always visible, and she kept a stiff upper lip, though her heart raced in wild tumult.

“The inference is that you are far more interested in Captain Warden’s visits to Cowes than I or any other person can pretend to be,” she said slowly.

She meant the cold–drawn phrase to hurt, and in that she succeeded, though her own voice sounded in her ears as if it had come from afar.

“Well, perhaps you ought to be told that he and I are engaged,” said Rosamund, stung to a sudden fury of lying. “Don’t imagine I bear malice. You are sweetly pretty, and Arthur is so susceptible! But he is also rather thoughtless. We were pledged to each other years ago, but were kept apart by—by a mother’s folly. Now I am free, and he came back to me, though I had to insist that at least a year should elapse between my husband’s death and the announcement of our engagement. All our friends know our sad story, and would forgive some measure of haste, but one has to consider the larger circle of the public.”

Then, indeed, Evelyn’s blood seemed to chill in her veins. The room and its occupants swam before her eyes, and the pain of repression became almost unbearable, yet she was resolved to carry off the honors in this duel unless she fainted.

“I gather that you are warning me against Captain Warden’s thoughtlessness, as you term it?” she said, compelling each word at the bayonet’s point, as it were.

“Oh, I was not speaking seriously, but we can let it go at that.”

“And you wish me to understand that you are his promised wife?”

“There, at least, I am most emphatic,” and Rosamund laughed, a trifle shrilly, perhaps, for a woman so well equipped with the armor of self–conceit.

“I suppose, then, that the late Mr. Laing has been dead a year, as I form one of that larger circle whose favorable opinion you court?”

For an instant Rosamund’s black eyes flashed angrily. She had expected tears and faltering, not resistance.

“I only meant to do you a good turn, yet on the raw,” she sneered.

“Pray do not consider me at all. By your own showing, I have no grievance—nolocus standi, as the lawyers say—but, since you have gone out of your way to give a mere stranger this interesting information, I wish to be quite sure of the facts. For instance, let us suppose that I have the honor of Captain Warden’s acquaintance—am I at liberty to write and congratulate him?”

“That would place me in a false position.”

“Ah. Is there nothing to be said for me? You spoke of a ‘violent flirtation,’ I think. If I may guess at the meaning of a somewhat crude phrase, it seems to imply a possible exchange of lovers’ vows, and one of the parties might be misled—and suffer.”

“We women are the sinners most frequently.”

“I do not dispute your authority, Mrs. Laing. I only wish to ascertain exactly what I am free to say to Captain Warden?”

“Tell him you met me, and that I am well posted in everything that occurred at Cowes. And, for goodness’ sake, let me see his reply. It will be too killing to read Arthur’s verbal wrigglings, because he is really clever, don’t you think?”

Somehow, despite the steely tension of every nerve, Evelyn caught an undertone of anxiety in the jesting words. Her rival was playing a bold game. It might end in complete disaster, but, once committed to it, there was no drawing back.

“The proceedings at Cowes were open to all the world,” Evelyn could not help saying. “Even you, with your long experience, might fail to detect in them any trace of the thoughtlessness you deplore.”

“Then you have met him elsewhere?”

Evelyn, conscious of a tactical blunder, colored even more deeply with annoyance, though again she felt that her tormentor was not so sure of her ground as she professed to be. Every woman is a born actress, and Evelyn precipitated a helpful crisis with histrionic skill.

“The whole story is yours, not mine, Mrs. Laing,” she said quietly. “Perhaps, if you apply to your half–caste informant, he may fill in further details to please you.”

At that moment the Honorable Billy Thring intervened. He was one of those privileged persons who can say anything to anybody without giving offense, and he broke into the conversation now with his usual frank inanity.

“I find I’ve bin lookin’ for a faithful spouse in the wrong direction, Mrs. Laing,” he chortled. “Barkin’ up the wrong tree, a Chicago girl called it. What a thorough ass I was to spin that yarn at dinner with you in the room. Will you be good, an’ forget it?Don’t say I haven’t got an earthly before the flag falls.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” cried Rosamund, turning on him with the sourest of society smiles.

“It sounds like the beginning of a violent flirtation,” said Evelyn, yielding to the impulse that demanded some redress for the torture she had endured.

“Right you are, Miss Dane,” said Billy. “By gad, that clears the course quicker than a line of policemen. You see, Mrs. Laing, I really must marry somebody with sufficient means for both of us. I have expensive tastes, and my noble dad gave me neither a profession nor an income. So what is a fellow to do?”

“You flatter me,” said Rosamund tartly. “Unfortunately I have just been telling Miss Dane that I amhors de concours, as they put it in the Paris exhibitions.”

“That is the French for ‘you never know your luck,’ Mr. Thring,” cried Evelyn, with a well–assumed laugh. “Mrs. Laing may change her mind, too, not for the first time.”

Without giving her adversary a chance to retaliate, she darted away to join Beryl Baumgartner, and soon seized an opportunity to retreat to her own room. Once safely barricaded behind a locked door, she bowed before the storm. Flinging herself on her knees by the bedside, she wept as though her heart would break. It was her first taste of the bitter cup that is held out to many a girl in her position, and its gall was not diminished because she still believed that ArthurWarden loved her. How could she doubt him, when each passing week brought her a letter couched in the most endearing terms? Only that morning had she heard from him at Ostend, whither theNancyhad flown after making a round of the Norfolk Broads. He described his chances of speedy promotion once the threatened disturbance in West Africa had spent itself, and, oddly enough, reminded her of his intention to curtail his furlough so as to permit of a visit to Rabat in a coasting steamer before going to Madeira on his way to the Protectorate.

Not a word did he say of the Baumgartners, or their queer acquaintances of the Isle of Wight. It was tacitly agreed between them that Evelyn should not play the rôle of spy on her employers, and, indeed, until that very day there was little to report save the utmost kindness at their hands.

Why, then, it may be urged, did she weep so unrestrainedly? and only the virgin heart of a woman who loves can answer. She feared that Rosamund Laing was telling the truth when she spoke of a prior engagement. She knew that Warden had said nothing at Plymouth of meeting Rosamund in London, and she was hardly to be blamed for drawing the most sinister inference from his silence. Did he dread that earlier entanglement? He was poor, and she was poor; how could he resist the pleading of one so rich and beautiful as her rival?

In short, poor Evelyn passed a grievous and needlessly tortured hour before she endeavored to composeherself for sleep, and she was denied the consolation of knowing that the woman who destroyed her happiness was pacing another room like a caged tigress, and striving to devise some means of extricating herself from the morass into which Figuero’s tidings and her own rashness had plunged her.

CHAPTER VIIISHOWING HOW MANY ROADS LEAD THE SAME WAYNext day, her mind restored to its customary equipoise, Evelyn thought she would be acting wisely if she gave Warden some hint of recent developments. Too proud to ask for an explicit denial of Rosamund Laing’s claim, she saw the absurdity of letting affairs drift until the hoped–for meeting at Madeira. At first, she thought of resigning her post as Beryl’s companion, and returning to Oxfordshire, but she set the notion aside as unreasonable and unnecessary. Most certainly Warden should not be condemned unheard. Without pressing him for a definite statement with regard to Mrs. Laing, it was a simple matter to put the present situation before him in such guise that he could not choose but refer to it. So, after drafting a few sentences, and weighing them seriously, she incorporated the following in a letter of general import:“Yesterday we had three new arrivals whose names must appeal to you powerfully. First, a Mrs. Rosamund Laing came here from London, and she lost no time in telling me, among other things, that she was aware of our meeting at Cowes. Her informant, I am sure, was Miguel Figuero, and you will be evenmore astonished to learn that he and Count von Rippenbach turned up by the same train as Mrs. Laing. The latter, by the way, said that you called on her at Lady Hilbury’s when in London. Is that true? There are some hidden forces in motion at Lochmerig which I do not understand. Mr. Baumgartner tackled me openly at dinner with regard to my journey from Cowes to Oxfordshire. We know from Peter that Figuero saw us together that morning, and your Portuguese friend evidently recognized me at once. But Mr. Baumgartner’s pointed reference to Langton as my destination was rather puzzling. How does it strike you? I expect my news will prove rather in the nature of a thunderbolt, and that is usually a very striking article. I assure you I am somewhat shaken myself. Mrs. Laing’s personal attributes remind one of those galvanic batteries you see at fairs in the country—the more you try to endure her magnetic influence, the greater your collapse.”Before sealing the envelope, she re–read Warden’s latest letter. She even read it aloud, and the straightforward, honest, loving words assumed a new significance. Then she turned to her own effusion, and viewed it critically. To her surprise, she detected a jarring, somewhat cynical, note in those passages which she regarded as all–important. To her judgment, events in the near future would follow a well–defined course. Her lover would say whether or not he had met Mrs. Laing in London, and give the clearest reasons for his omission of her name from the subsequentrecital of his adventures. Evelyn would count the hours until that reply reached her hands. Perhaps Mrs. Laing’s curiosity anent Warden’s skill in “wriggling” would then be sated. She might even give an exhibition of the wriggler’s art in her own behalf.Evelyn refused to admit now that she had ever yielded to doubt or anxiety. The hysterical outburst of last night was natural, perhaps, under the circumstances, but quite nonsensical. Even Warden himself must be made to believe that Mrs. Laing was only indulging an exuberant sense of humor in claiming his fealty. Meaning, therefore, to tone down any apparent asperity in the paragraph referring to the three newcomers, she added a few lines beneath her signature.“The Men of Oku have not yet appeared. I am longing to see them. They are really the most picturesque villains in the piece. I am just going for a stroll by the side of the loch, and I shall not be a little bit alarmed if I find a decorated calabash sailing in with the tide.”There is nothing new in the fact that the most important item in a woman’s letter is often contained in a postscript, but never did the writer of a harmless and gossipy missive achieve such amazing results as Evelyn Dane brought to pass by the words she scribbled hurriedly after the magic letters “P.S.”For others than Evelyn Dane were taking thought that morning. Baumgartner, von Rippenbach, andFiguero—locked in the library, and seated round a small table drawn well away from the door—were settling the final details of a scheme that aimed at nothing less than a very grave alteration in the political map of the world, while Rosamund Laing was planning an enterprise which should have an equally marked effect in the minor sphere of her own affairs.Yet the fortunes of these five people gathered at Lochmerig, and of many millions in other parts of the earth, were absolutely controlled by one of those trivial conditions which appear to be so ludicrously out of proportion with ultimate achievement.Baumgartner, being a rich man, objected to delay where his interests were concerned. Refusing to await the tardy coming of a country postman, he kept a groom in the village to which the mails were brought by train, and it was this man’s duty to ride in each day with the post–bag for Lochmerig Lodge and return some hours later with the first out–going budget. The house letters were dropped into a box in the entrance hall, and a notice intimated that the time of clearance was at noon. To an unscrupulous woman, such an arrangement offered the means to do ill deeds that makes ill deeds done. Rosamund, ready to dare anything now to save herself from contumely, actually set out to find Evelyn and taunt her into an admission that she had written to Warden.“Miss Dane is not in the house, madam,” said the London footman on duty at the door. “She went out some time since—in that direction,” and he pointedtoward the glistening firth that brought the North Sea into the heart of Inverness.Mrs. Laing pouted prettily.“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I do hope she has not forgotten to write. I shall never find her in time.Didyou happen to notice if she posted a letter?”The footman sought inspiration by stroking his chin.“Yes, madam,” he announced, after a pause. “I’m almost certain Miss Dane went to the box. Yes, I’m sure of it.”Madam was very much obliged, and tipped him half–a–crown, informing him with a most charming smile that she did not on any account wish Miss Dane to believe that she was suspected of forgetfulness. It was then some few minutes after eleven, and this gracious lady was sympathetic enough to inquire if the footman did not become very tired of remaining on duty so many hours in one place.“Oh, it’s nothing compared with London, ma’am,” said he. “Here we have sunshine—if the weather is fine—an’ fresh air all the time. I only came on duty at nine o’clock, an’ I go off at 11.30 for the first servants’ dinner.”Mrs. Laing was talking to Billy Thring in the hall when the postman groom came to clear the letter–box. She darted forward with that irresistible smile of hers.“I’m so glad I happened to be standing here,” she exclaimed. “I have just remembered that I have stupidly left out of a letter the very thing I most wanted to say. It would never have occurred to me if I hadn’tseen you. The letter is addressed to Captain Warden. May I have it?”The man was Baumgartner’s servant. He had never before set eyes on Mrs. Laing, but he knew the Honorable Billy quite well, so he raised no objection to this smartly dressed lady’s eager search for her incomplete letter. Though her hands fumbled somewhat, she soon picked it out.“Here it is!” she cried delightedly, “this one—Captain Arthur Warden, Poste Restante, Ostend. Now, that will save me a heap of trouble. Itwasso nice of you to come in at the right moment. You have saved me a lot of trouble.”The groom grinned as he pocketed half–a–crown. Some ladies were easy pleased, to be sure. Even Billy Thring, experienced hunter of gilded brides, was bewildered by Mrs. Laing’s excited manner.“Seems to me I’ve made a killin’,” he mused when she gushed herself away. “I s’pose old Baumgartner can be relied on. He is all there as a rule when he talks dollars an’ cents, but he’s a perfect rotter every other way. By gad, I’ll kid him into wearin’ kilts before the end of the month.”The notion tickled him. He lit a cigarette and strolled out through the open door. A glorious sweep of moorland and forest spread beyond the loch, whose wavelets lapped the verges of the sloping lawn and gardens. A little to the left theSans Soucilay at her moorings. A steam launch was tied to a neat landing–stage. A string of horses and moor ponies returningfrom exercise crossed a level pasture at the head of the loch. The letter–carrying groom was clattering down the broad carriage drive toward the distant station, and a couple of gardeners were cutting and rolling the green carpet of grass in front of the house.“He talks of buyin’ this property,” communed the Honorable Billy, who was thirty–five and had never earned a penny in his life. “Can’t be ten years older than me, though he looks sixty, bein’ podgy. Now, why can’t I have a stroke of luck an’ rake in a stack? Then I might have a cut–in for the giddy widow.”Evelyn’s trim figure emerged from a tree–shrouded path. She walked with a lithe elegance that pleased Mr. Thring’s sporting eye.“Or marry a girl likethat,” he added. The wild improbability of ever achieving any part of this fascinating programme brought a petulant frown to his handsome, vacuous face.He strode up to one of the gardeners, a red–whiskered Caledonian, stern and wild.“Where the devil is everybody?” he yawned. “No shootin’, no yachtin’, not a soul in the billiard–room—where’s the bloomin’ crowd?”The dour Scot looked at him pityingly.“Aiblins some are i’ bed,” he said, “an’ there’s ithers wha ocht to be i’ bed.”“Bully for you, Rob Roy,” cried Thring, who never objected to being scored off. “Aiblins some people are cuttin’ grass wha ocht to be under it, because they don’t know they’re alive, eh what?”“Man, but ye’re shairp the day,” retorted the gardener. “Whiles I’m thinkin’ there’s a guid pig–jobber lost in you, Maister Thring.”“Pig–jobber, you cateran! Why pigs?”“Have ye no heerd tell that fowk a bit saft i’ the heid have a wonderfu’ way wi’ animals, an’ pigs are always a fine mairket.”“A bit heavy, McToddy. Trem yer whuskers an’ change yer trousies for a kelt, an’ mebbe ye’ll crack a joke wi’ less deeficulty.”The under–gardener chortled, for the Honorable Billy could imitate the Scots dialect with an unction that was decidedly mirth–provoking.“Ma name’s no McToddy,” began the other.“Well, then, McWhusky. I ken the noo from yer rid neb that there’s michty little watter in yer composition.”Snorting defiance, but not daring to pour forth the wrath that boiled up in him, the man pushed a mowing–machine savagely across the lawn.“Routed!” smiled Billy. “Bannockburn is avenged!”“What is amusing you, Mr. Thring?” asked Evelyn, who had walked over the grass unheard.“I have just discovered my lost vocation,” he said. “I am a buffoon, Miss Dane, an idle jester. The only difference between me and a music–hall comedian is that my humor is not remunerative.”“Why, when I left you last night you were on the verge of proposing to Mrs. Laing, a most serious undertaking.”“Jolly nice woman, Mrs. Laing. No nonsense about her. We’ve bin together the last half hour, an’ I’m under the starter’s orders, at any rate.”“Why not go in and win?” demanded Evelyn, taking a kindly interest in the Honorable one’s matrimonial prospects. If he and Mrs. Laing made a match of it, that would provide a very agreeable close to a disquieting incident.“I’m afraid it’ll only be to make the runnin’ for some other Johnny,” sighed he. “I was gettin’ along like a house a–fire, when all at once she remembered she hadn’t said what she wanted to say in a letter to a Captain somebody at Ostend, an’ off she waltzed to her room. She’s probably writin’ sweet nothings to him now. Same old story—Billy Thring left at the post. Gad, that’s funny! See it, eh, what?”Thring was so amused by his own wit that he did not notice the expression of pain and fear that drove the brightness from Evelyn’s face. But she herself was conscious of it, and looked away lest he should peer into her eyes, and wonder. So Mrs. Laing was writing to Arthur! She knew his address! How strange, how unutterably strange, that he had not once mentioned her name! The girl, as in a dream, affected to be watching a boy, the son of the village post–mistress, coming up the avenue. For the sake of hearing her own voice in such commonplace words as she might dare to utter, she drew her companion’s attention.“Here is our telegraph messenger,” she said.Thring glanced at his watch.“It’s for me,” he announced. “There’s a chap at Newmarket who is the champion loser–finder of the world, an’ I’m one of his victims. This is Leger day, an’ if you wait a moment I’ll put you onto a stiff ‘un, sure thing. Then you must turn bookmaker at lunch, and win gloves right and left—in pairs, in fact. I’ll stand your losses if my prophet has gone mad an’ sent a winner.”The boy made straight for him, and commenced to unfasten the pouch slung to his belt.“See? I told you,” laughed Billy, opening the message.Evelyn hardly understood him. She was grateful for the high spirits that prevented him from paying any heed to the tears trembling under her drooping eyelashes. Despite her brave resolve to disregard Rosamund Laing’s unbelievable story, a whole legion of doubts and terrors now trooped in on her. She asked herself how she could endure to live in the same house as her rival, for five long days, until Arthur’s answer came. Would he receive the two letters by the same post? Could there be any real foundation for her rival’s boast? The thought made her sick at heart. Fighting down her dread, she turned to Thring hoping to find a momentary oblivion in listening to his cheerful nonsense.She found oblivion, indeed, but not in the shape she anticipated. Shading his eyes with one hand and holding the telegram in the other, her companion wasgazing at it in a dazed way. His cheeks were bloodless, the hand gripping the scrap of flimsy paper shook as though he were seized with ague, his whole attitude was that of a man who had received an overwhelming shock.“Mr. Thring!” she cried, startled beyond measure, “what has happened?”“My God!” he wailed, with the tingling note of agony in his voice that comes most clearly from one whose lips are formed for laughter. “My God! And I was jesting about them only last night!”“Oh, what is it?” she cried again, catching his arm because he swayed like one about to faint.“Read!” he murmured. “Fairholme an’ the two boys! May Heaven forgive me! To think that I should have said it last night of all nights!”Evelyn took the telegram from his palsied fingers, and this is what she read:“With deepest regret I have to inform you that the Earl of Fairholme and his two sons were killed in the collision at Beckminster Junction last evening. Their private saloon was being shunted when the down express crashed into it. Letters found on his lordship’s body gave me your address. Every one here joins in profound sympathy. Please wire instructions. James Thwaite.”Scarce knowing what she said, and still clinging desperately to the stricken man at her side, Evelyn whispered:“Are they your relatives?”And the answer came brokenly.“Don’t you know? That’s Ferdy and my nephews! And two such boys! Straight an’ tall an’ handsome. Good Lord! was that the only way?”Then she realized the horror of it. The crushed society butterfly, who was like to fall to the ground but for her support, was now Earl of Fairholme. Calling Brown to her aid, they led him inside the house. The butler, impelled to disobey his master’s strict injunctions, knocked at the library door, and told Baumgartner what had happened.Von Rippenbach heard. He was a callous person, to whom the death of three Englishmen was of very slight consideration.“The very thing!” he murmured. “Now you have your excuse. You can empty the place in twenty–four hours.”Rosamund Laing, whose white brows wore unseemly furrows, was writing and thinking in her own room when a maid brought her the news. Before her on the table was Evelyn’s letter, and the sharp–eyed Scotch lassie saw that the lady nearly upset the inkstand in her haste to cover something with the blotting–pad. Rosamund was shocked, of course. Finding that Thring was leaving for the south almost immediately, she then and there wrote a sweetly sympathetic note, and had it taken to him.“By the way,” she said before the maid went out, “have you seen Mr. Figuero recently? I mean the dark–skinned man who came here yesterday.”Yes, he had just left the library with the master and another gentleman. Rosamund rose at once. If she were not greatly mistaken, Evelyn’s harmless–looking postscript had given her a clue to the mystery of Figuero’s presence in Baumgartner’s house. She knew her West Africa, and the bad repute of Oku was one of her clearest memories. Yet she turned back at the door, took Evelyn’s letter from her pocket, copied a portion of it, and locked the original in her jewel case.The luncheon–gong sounded as she descended the stairs, so perforce she postponed the interview she promised herself with the Portuguese. And, for the success of her deep–laid schemes, it was as well. Sometimes there comes to the aid of evil–doers a fiend who contrives opportunities where human forethought would fail. Rosamund, embarked on a well–nigh desperate enterprise, suddenly found the way smoothed by Baumgartner’s wholly unexpected announcement that business considerations compelled him to leave Lochmerig forthwith.“My wife and I would have tried to arrange matters satisfactorily for our guests,” he said, “but the gloom cast on our pleasant party by the unhappy tidings received this morning by one of our number renders it almost impossible for any of us to enjoy the remainder of a most memorable and delightful sojourn in Scotland.”He delivered himself of other platitudes, but Mrs. Baumgartner’s dejected air and Beryl’s sulky silence showed plainly enough that the millionaire’s fiat wasunalterable. Polite murmurs of agreement veiled the chagrin of people who had a fortnight or more thrown on their hands without any prior arrangements. The meal was a solemn function. Everybody was glad when it ended.Rosamund met Figuero in the hall.“I am going to the village,” she said. “Will you walk there with me?”He caught the veiled meaning of the glance, and agreed instantly. When they were clear of the house, she commenced the attack.“Why are you and Count von Rippenbach and three men of Oku in England?” she asked.She did not look at Figuero. There was no need. He waited a few seconds too long before he laughed.“You make joke,” he said.“Do I? It will be no joke for you when Captain Warden informs the Government, if he has not done that already.”“Why you say dem t’ing?” he growled, and she was fully aware of the menace in his voice.“You told me what you were pleased to consider a secret last night. Very well, I am willing to trade. Captain Warden knows what you are doing. He probably guesses every item of the business you and the Count were discussing so long and earnestly with Mr. Baumgartner in the library before lunch. Oh, please don’t interrupt”—for Figuero, driven beyond the bounds of self–control, was using words better left to the Portuguese tongue in which they were uttered—“Iam not concerned with your plots. They never come to anything, you know. If either Count von Rippenbach or Mr. Baumgartner had your history at their finger’s ends as I have, they would drop you like a hot cinder. Yet, I am ready to bargain. Help me, and I will keep my information to myself.”“What you want, den?”She glanced at him, and was surprised to see that his face was livid, almost green with rage and perplexity. It must be a grave matter—this jumble of hints in Evelyn’s letter.“Can you read English?” she asked, after a pause.“Yes, leetle piece—better as I can make palaver.”“Read that then.”She handed him the copy of that part of the fateful letter that alluded to himself and his affairs. He puzzled it out, word by word.“Where him lib for?” he demanded.“That was written by Miss Dane and intended for Captain Warden. I came by it, no matter how, and I mean to make use of it in some way.”With a rapid movement, he stuffed the sheet of note–paper into a pocket.“I keep dem letter,” he announced.“Certainly. It is only a copy. Savvy? I have the real one safely put away.”Figuero swallowed something. His thin lips were bloodless, and his tongue moistened them with the quick darting action of a snake. Rosamund, who was really somewhat afraid, trusted to the daylight and thefact that they were traversing an open road, with cottages scattered through the glen.“You cannot humbug me,” she went on, “but I want to assure you again that I am no enemy of yours. Now, listen. I mean to marry Captain Warden, but I have reason to believe that he is engaged, promised, to Miss Dane. I am trying to stop that, to break it off. Can you help?”“You ask hard t’ing—in dis place. In Africa, we get Oku man make ju–ju.”She shuddered. The cold malevolence in his words recalled stories she had heard of those who had died with unaccountable suddenness when “Oku man make ju–ju.”“I don’t mean that,” she cried vehemently. “Tell me what is taking place, and how it will affect Captain Warden. Then I can twist events to my own purpose. I can warn him, perhaps prove myself his friend. Above all—where are you going to–morrow? Mr. Baumgartner sails in theSans Souci, I hear. Does Miss Dane go with him, or is she to be sent away because she is aware of your plans?”Figuero did not answer during a whole minute.He saw light, dimly, but growing more distinct each instant. Warden was a deadly personality in the field against him, and his active interference was now assured beyond cavil. But, with two women as foils, both beautiful, and one exceedingly well equipped with money, there was still a chance of circumventing the only man he feared.“You steal dem letter?” he said unexpectedly.“At any rate, it has not gone to Captain Warden,” was the acid reply.“An’ you write ‘im. What you say?”“Oh, nothing that affects the case.”“You tole him me here?”“No. That can wait,” which statement, as shall be seen, was strictly untrue.“Well, den, dem yacht lib for—for somewheres to–morrow. Dem girl, Mees Dane, go wid me. You tole him dat t’ing as you say las’ night. I make wife palaver to dem girl.”“What good will that do?” she said. “In a week, ten days, he will hear from her again.”“No. I take dem letter. You gib me Captain Warden writin’, an’ I keep eye for dat. Savvy?”“But can you carry out what you promised?”“Two, t’ree months, yes. After dem yacht lib for Madeira, no. P’raps dem girl be wife den.”Rosamund’s dark eyes narrowed to two tiny slits. If Figuero could really keep Warden and Evelyn apart during so long a period, the utterly hopeless project on which she had embarked in a moment of jealous rage might become feasible. Of course, the suggestion that he would marry Evelyn was preposterous, but there was no reason why she should hurt his pride by telling him so. Her heart throbbed madly, while her active brain debated the pros and cons of the all–important question—should she post the letter already written? Yes. It was the outcome of her earliest thought. Shewould follow it up with another in different strain. The two would be vastly more convincing than one, and the dates would have a significance that no mere contriving could impart.By this time they were at the post–office, from which mails were dispatched by a later train than that caught by the groom. Rosamund dropped her letter in the box. She was quite pale with suppressed excitement. Her boats were burnt. She heard the fall of the envelope into the receptacle, and the appalling notion possessed her that the sound resembled the fall of earth on a coffin. She breathed heavily, and pressed a hand to her bosom. Figuero was watching her.“Now you done dem t’ing,” he said, “you dash me some money.”She started. Did he mean to levy blackmail for his services?“Why?” she asked, summoning all her strength of character to meet his gaze without flinching.“Me buy present for dem girl. If I make wife palaver dat cost many dollar.”“I am not buying your help. You trade with me one thing for the other. If you refuse, I write to the Government about the men of Oku.”The Portuguese laughed more naturally than she had yet heard him. If his arch–enemy, Arthur Warden, was well acquainted with the mission he and the chiefs had undertaken, this pretty and passionate woman counted for very little in the scale against him.“You dash me one hunner’ poun’,” he said cheerfully.“Jus’ dat, no mo’. If you say ‘no,’ dem girl no lib for yacht. Mr. Baumgartner say go one–time. Me tell ‘im take dem girl—savvy?”Mrs. Laing savvied. She gave him thirty pounds—all she could spare from her purse—and promised to send the balance to an address in London. He was fully satisfied. He was sure she would not fail him. When he needed further supplies she would pay willingly. In an intrigue based on such lines Miguel Figuero was an adept.

SHOWING HOW MANY ROADS LEAD THE SAME WAY

Next day, her mind restored to its customary equipoise, Evelyn thought she would be acting wisely if she gave Warden some hint of recent developments. Too proud to ask for an explicit denial of Rosamund Laing’s claim, she saw the absurdity of letting affairs drift until the hoped–for meeting at Madeira. At first, she thought of resigning her post as Beryl’s companion, and returning to Oxfordshire, but she set the notion aside as unreasonable and unnecessary. Most certainly Warden should not be condemned unheard. Without pressing him for a definite statement with regard to Mrs. Laing, it was a simple matter to put the present situation before him in such guise that he could not choose but refer to it. So, after drafting a few sentences, and weighing them seriously, she incorporated the following in a letter of general import:

“Yesterday we had three new arrivals whose names must appeal to you powerfully. First, a Mrs. Rosamund Laing came here from London, and she lost no time in telling me, among other things, that she was aware of our meeting at Cowes. Her informant, I am sure, was Miguel Figuero, and you will be evenmore astonished to learn that he and Count von Rippenbach turned up by the same train as Mrs. Laing. The latter, by the way, said that you called on her at Lady Hilbury’s when in London. Is that true? There are some hidden forces in motion at Lochmerig which I do not understand. Mr. Baumgartner tackled me openly at dinner with regard to my journey from Cowes to Oxfordshire. We know from Peter that Figuero saw us together that morning, and your Portuguese friend evidently recognized me at once. But Mr. Baumgartner’s pointed reference to Langton as my destination was rather puzzling. How does it strike you? I expect my news will prove rather in the nature of a thunderbolt, and that is usually a very striking article. I assure you I am somewhat shaken myself. Mrs. Laing’s personal attributes remind one of those galvanic batteries you see at fairs in the country—the more you try to endure her magnetic influence, the greater your collapse.”

Before sealing the envelope, she re–read Warden’s latest letter. She even read it aloud, and the straightforward, honest, loving words assumed a new significance. Then she turned to her own effusion, and viewed it critically. To her surprise, she detected a jarring, somewhat cynical, note in those passages which she regarded as all–important. To her judgment, events in the near future would follow a well–defined course. Her lover would say whether or not he had met Mrs. Laing in London, and give the clearest reasons for his omission of her name from the subsequentrecital of his adventures. Evelyn would count the hours until that reply reached her hands. Perhaps Mrs. Laing’s curiosity anent Warden’s skill in “wriggling” would then be sated. She might even give an exhibition of the wriggler’s art in her own behalf.

Evelyn refused to admit now that she had ever yielded to doubt or anxiety. The hysterical outburst of last night was natural, perhaps, under the circumstances, but quite nonsensical. Even Warden himself must be made to believe that Mrs. Laing was only indulging an exuberant sense of humor in claiming his fealty. Meaning, therefore, to tone down any apparent asperity in the paragraph referring to the three newcomers, she added a few lines beneath her signature.

“The Men of Oku have not yet appeared. I am longing to see them. They are really the most picturesque villains in the piece. I am just going for a stroll by the side of the loch, and I shall not be a little bit alarmed if I find a decorated calabash sailing in with the tide.”

There is nothing new in the fact that the most important item in a woman’s letter is often contained in a postscript, but never did the writer of a harmless and gossipy missive achieve such amazing results as Evelyn Dane brought to pass by the words she scribbled hurriedly after the magic letters “P.S.”

For others than Evelyn Dane were taking thought that morning. Baumgartner, von Rippenbach, andFiguero—locked in the library, and seated round a small table drawn well away from the door—were settling the final details of a scheme that aimed at nothing less than a very grave alteration in the political map of the world, while Rosamund Laing was planning an enterprise which should have an equally marked effect in the minor sphere of her own affairs.

Yet the fortunes of these five people gathered at Lochmerig, and of many millions in other parts of the earth, were absolutely controlled by one of those trivial conditions which appear to be so ludicrously out of proportion with ultimate achievement.

Baumgartner, being a rich man, objected to delay where his interests were concerned. Refusing to await the tardy coming of a country postman, he kept a groom in the village to which the mails were brought by train, and it was this man’s duty to ride in each day with the post–bag for Lochmerig Lodge and return some hours later with the first out–going budget. The house letters were dropped into a box in the entrance hall, and a notice intimated that the time of clearance was at noon. To an unscrupulous woman, such an arrangement offered the means to do ill deeds that makes ill deeds done. Rosamund, ready to dare anything now to save herself from contumely, actually set out to find Evelyn and taunt her into an admission that she had written to Warden.

“Miss Dane is not in the house, madam,” said the London footman on duty at the door. “She went out some time since—in that direction,” and he pointedtoward the glistening firth that brought the North Sea into the heart of Inverness.

Mrs. Laing pouted prettily.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I do hope she has not forgotten to write. I shall never find her in time.Didyou happen to notice if she posted a letter?”

The footman sought inspiration by stroking his chin.

“Yes, madam,” he announced, after a pause. “I’m almost certain Miss Dane went to the box. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

Madam was very much obliged, and tipped him half–a–crown, informing him with a most charming smile that she did not on any account wish Miss Dane to believe that she was suspected of forgetfulness. It was then some few minutes after eleven, and this gracious lady was sympathetic enough to inquire if the footman did not become very tired of remaining on duty so many hours in one place.

“Oh, it’s nothing compared with London, ma’am,” said he. “Here we have sunshine—if the weather is fine—an’ fresh air all the time. I only came on duty at nine o’clock, an’ I go off at 11.30 for the first servants’ dinner.”

Mrs. Laing was talking to Billy Thring in the hall when the postman groom came to clear the letter–box. She darted forward with that irresistible smile of hers.

“I’m so glad I happened to be standing here,” she exclaimed. “I have just remembered that I have stupidly left out of a letter the very thing I most wanted to say. It would never have occurred to me if I hadn’tseen you. The letter is addressed to Captain Warden. May I have it?”

The man was Baumgartner’s servant. He had never before set eyes on Mrs. Laing, but he knew the Honorable Billy quite well, so he raised no objection to this smartly dressed lady’s eager search for her incomplete letter. Though her hands fumbled somewhat, she soon picked it out.

“Here it is!” she cried delightedly, “this one—Captain Arthur Warden, Poste Restante, Ostend. Now, that will save me a heap of trouble. Itwasso nice of you to come in at the right moment. You have saved me a lot of trouble.”

The groom grinned as he pocketed half–a–crown. Some ladies were easy pleased, to be sure. Even Billy Thring, experienced hunter of gilded brides, was bewildered by Mrs. Laing’s excited manner.

“Seems to me I’ve made a killin’,” he mused when she gushed herself away. “I s’pose old Baumgartner can be relied on. He is all there as a rule when he talks dollars an’ cents, but he’s a perfect rotter every other way. By gad, I’ll kid him into wearin’ kilts before the end of the month.”

The notion tickled him. He lit a cigarette and strolled out through the open door. A glorious sweep of moorland and forest spread beyond the loch, whose wavelets lapped the verges of the sloping lawn and gardens. A little to the left theSans Soucilay at her moorings. A steam launch was tied to a neat landing–stage. A string of horses and moor ponies returningfrom exercise crossed a level pasture at the head of the loch. The letter–carrying groom was clattering down the broad carriage drive toward the distant station, and a couple of gardeners were cutting and rolling the green carpet of grass in front of the house.

“He talks of buyin’ this property,” communed the Honorable Billy, who was thirty–five and had never earned a penny in his life. “Can’t be ten years older than me, though he looks sixty, bein’ podgy. Now, why can’t I have a stroke of luck an’ rake in a stack? Then I might have a cut–in for the giddy widow.”

Evelyn’s trim figure emerged from a tree–shrouded path. She walked with a lithe elegance that pleased Mr. Thring’s sporting eye.

“Or marry a girl likethat,” he added. The wild improbability of ever achieving any part of this fascinating programme brought a petulant frown to his handsome, vacuous face.

He strode up to one of the gardeners, a red–whiskered Caledonian, stern and wild.

“Where the devil is everybody?” he yawned. “No shootin’, no yachtin’, not a soul in the billiard–room—where’s the bloomin’ crowd?”

The dour Scot looked at him pityingly.

“Aiblins some are i’ bed,” he said, “an’ there’s ithers wha ocht to be i’ bed.”

“Bully for you, Rob Roy,” cried Thring, who never objected to being scored off. “Aiblins some people are cuttin’ grass wha ocht to be under it, because they don’t know they’re alive, eh what?”

“Man, but ye’re shairp the day,” retorted the gardener. “Whiles I’m thinkin’ there’s a guid pig–jobber lost in you, Maister Thring.”

“Pig–jobber, you cateran! Why pigs?”

“Have ye no heerd tell that fowk a bit saft i’ the heid have a wonderfu’ way wi’ animals, an’ pigs are always a fine mairket.”

“A bit heavy, McToddy. Trem yer whuskers an’ change yer trousies for a kelt, an’ mebbe ye’ll crack a joke wi’ less deeficulty.”

The under–gardener chortled, for the Honorable Billy could imitate the Scots dialect with an unction that was decidedly mirth–provoking.

“Ma name’s no McToddy,” began the other.

“Well, then, McWhusky. I ken the noo from yer rid neb that there’s michty little watter in yer composition.”

Snorting defiance, but not daring to pour forth the wrath that boiled up in him, the man pushed a mowing–machine savagely across the lawn.

“Routed!” smiled Billy. “Bannockburn is avenged!”

“What is amusing you, Mr. Thring?” asked Evelyn, who had walked over the grass unheard.

“I have just discovered my lost vocation,” he said. “I am a buffoon, Miss Dane, an idle jester. The only difference between me and a music–hall comedian is that my humor is not remunerative.”

“Why, when I left you last night you were on the verge of proposing to Mrs. Laing, a most serious undertaking.”

“Jolly nice woman, Mrs. Laing. No nonsense about her. We’ve bin together the last half hour, an’ I’m under the starter’s orders, at any rate.”

“Why not go in and win?” demanded Evelyn, taking a kindly interest in the Honorable one’s matrimonial prospects. If he and Mrs. Laing made a match of it, that would provide a very agreeable close to a disquieting incident.

“I’m afraid it’ll only be to make the runnin’ for some other Johnny,” sighed he. “I was gettin’ along like a house a–fire, when all at once she remembered she hadn’t said what she wanted to say in a letter to a Captain somebody at Ostend, an’ off she waltzed to her room. She’s probably writin’ sweet nothings to him now. Same old story—Billy Thring left at the post. Gad, that’s funny! See it, eh, what?”

Thring was so amused by his own wit that he did not notice the expression of pain and fear that drove the brightness from Evelyn’s face. But she herself was conscious of it, and looked away lest he should peer into her eyes, and wonder. So Mrs. Laing was writing to Arthur! She knew his address! How strange, how unutterably strange, that he had not once mentioned her name! The girl, as in a dream, affected to be watching a boy, the son of the village post–mistress, coming up the avenue. For the sake of hearing her own voice in such commonplace words as she might dare to utter, she drew her companion’s attention.

“Here is our telegraph messenger,” she said.

Thring glanced at his watch.

“It’s for me,” he announced. “There’s a chap at Newmarket who is the champion loser–finder of the world, an’ I’m one of his victims. This is Leger day, an’ if you wait a moment I’ll put you onto a stiff ‘un, sure thing. Then you must turn bookmaker at lunch, and win gloves right and left—in pairs, in fact. I’ll stand your losses if my prophet has gone mad an’ sent a winner.”

The boy made straight for him, and commenced to unfasten the pouch slung to his belt.

“See? I told you,” laughed Billy, opening the message.

Evelyn hardly understood him. She was grateful for the high spirits that prevented him from paying any heed to the tears trembling under her drooping eyelashes. Despite her brave resolve to disregard Rosamund Laing’s unbelievable story, a whole legion of doubts and terrors now trooped in on her. She asked herself how she could endure to live in the same house as her rival, for five long days, until Arthur’s answer came. Would he receive the two letters by the same post? Could there be any real foundation for her rival’s boast? The thought made her sick at heart. Fighting down her dread, she turned to Thring hoping to find a momentary oblivion in listening to his cheerful nonsense.

She found oblivion, indeed, but not in the shape she anticipated. Shading his eyes with one hand and holding the telegram in the other, her companion wasgazing at it in a dazed way. His cheeks were bloodless, the hand gripping the scrap of flimsy paper shook as though he were seized with ague, his whole attitude was that of a man who had received an overwhelming shock.

“Mr. Thring!” she cried, startled beyond measure, “what has happened?”

“My God!” he wailed, with the tingling note of agony in his voice that comes most clearly from one whose lips are formed for laughter. “My God! And I was jesting about them only last night!”

“Oh, what is it?” she cried again, catching his arm because he swayed like one about to faint.

“Read!” he murmured. “Fairholme an’ the two boys! May Heaven forgive me! To think that I should have said it last night of all nights!”

Evelyn took the telegram from his palsied fingers, and this is what she read:

“With deepest regret I have to inform you that the Earl of Fairholme and his two sons were killed in the collision at Beckminster Junction last evening. Their private saloon was being shunted when the down express crashed into it. Letters found on his lordship’s body gave me your address. Every one here joins in profound sympathy. Please wire instructions. James Thwaite.”

Scarce knowing what she said, and still clinging desperately to the stricken man at her side, Evelyn whispered:

“Are they your relatives?”

And the answer came brokenly.

“Don’t you know? That’s Ferdy and my nephews! And two such boys! Straight an’ tall an’ handsome. Good Lord! was that the only way?”

Then she realized the horror of it. The crushed society butterfly, who was like to fall to the ground but for her support, was now Earl of Fairholme. Calling Brown to her aid, they led him inside the house. The butler, impelled to disobey his master’s strict injunctions, knocked at the library door, and told Baumgartner what had happened.

Von Rippenbach heard. He was a callous person, to whom the death of three Englishmen was of very slight consideration.

“The very thing!” he murmured. “Now you have your excuse. You can empty the place in twenty–four hours.”

Rosamund Laing, whose white brows wore unseemly furrows, was writing and thinking in her own room when a maid brought her the news. Before her on the table was Evelyn’s letter, and the sharp–eyed Scotch lassie saw that the lady nearly upset the inkstand in her haste to cover something with the blotting–pad. Rosamund was shocked, of course. Finding that Thring was leaving for the south almost immediately, she then and there wrote a sweetly sympathetic note, and had it taken to him.

“By the way,” she said before the maid went out, “have you seen Mr. Figuero recently? I mean the dark–skinned man who came here yesterday.”

Yes, he had just left the library with the master and another gentleman. Rosamund rose at once. If she were not greatly mistaken, Evelyn’s harmless–looking postscript had given her a clue to the mystery of Figuero’s presence in Baumgartner’s house. She knew her West Africa, and the bad repute of Oku was one of her clearest memories. Yet she turned back at the door, took Evelyn’s letter from her pocket, copied a portion of it, and locked the original in her jewel case.

The luncheon–gong sounded as she descended the stairs, so perforce she postponed the interview she promised herself with the Portuguese. And, for the success of her deep–laid schemes, it was as well. Sometimes there comes to the aid of evil–doers a fiend who contrives opportunities where human forethought would fail. Rosamund, embarked on a well–nigh desperate enterprise, suddenly found the way smoothed by Baumgartner’s wholly unexpected announcement that business considerations compelled him to leave Lochmerig forthwith.

“My wife and I would have tried to arrange matters satisfactorily for our guests,” he said, “but the gloom cast on our pleasant party by the unhappy tidings received this morning by one of our number renders it almost impossible for any of us to enjoy the remainder of a most memorable and delightful sojourn in Scotland.”

He delivered himself of other platitudes, but Mrs. Baumgartner’s dejected air and Beryl’s sulky silence showed plainly enough that the millionaire’s fiat wasunalterable. Polite murmurs of agreement veiled the chagrin of people who had a fortnight or more thrown on their hands without any prior arrangements. The meal was a solemn function. Everybody was glad when it ended.

Rosamund met Figuero in the hall.

“I am going to the village,” she said. “Will you walk there with me?”

He caught the veiled meaning of the glance, and agreed instantly. When they were clear of the house, she commenced the attack.

“Why are you and Count von Rippenbach and three men of Oku in England?” she asked.

She did not look at Figuero. There was no need. He waited a few seconds too long before he laughed.

“You make joke,” he said.

“Do I? It will be no joke for you when Captain Warden informs the Government, if he has not done that already.”

“Why you say dem t’ing?” he growled, and she was fully aware of the menace in his voice.

“You told me what you were pleased to consider a secret last night. Very well, I am willing to trade. Captain Warden knows what you are doing. He probably guesses every item of the business you and the Count were discussing so long and earnestly with Mr. Baumgartner in the library before lunch. Oh, please don’t interrupt”—for Figuero, driven beyond the bounds of self–control, was using words better left to the Portuguese tongue in which they were uttered—“Iam not concerned with your plots. They never come to anything, you know. If either Count von Rippenbach or Mr. Baumgartner had your history at their finger’s ends as I have, they would drop you like a hot cinder. Yet, I am ready to bargain. Help me, and I will keep my information to myself.”

“What you want, den?”

She glanced at him, and was surprised to see that his face was livid, almost green with rage and perplexity. It must be a grave matter—this jumble of hints in Evelyn’s letter.

“Can you read English?” she asked, after a pause.

“Yes, leetle piece—better as I can make palaver.”

“Read that then.”

She handed him the copy of that part of the fateful letter that alluded to himself and his affairs. He puzzled it out, word by word.

“Where him lib for?” he demanded.

“That was written by Miss Dane and intended for Captain Warden. I came by it, no matter how, and I mean to make use of it in some way.”

With a rapid movement, he stuffed the sheet of note–paper into a pocket.

“I keep dem letter,” he announced.

“Certainly. It is only a copy. Savvy? I have the real one safely put away.”

Figuero swallowed something. His thin lips were bloodless, and his tongue moistened them with the quick darting action of a snake. Rosamund, who was really somewhat afraid, trusted to the daylight and thefact that they were traversing an open road, with cottages scattered through the glen.

“You cannot humbug me,” she went on, “but I want to assure you again that I am no enemy of yours. Now, listen. I mean to marry Captain Warden, but I have reason to believe that he is engaged, promised, to Miss Dane. I am trying to stop that, to break it off. Can you help?”

“You ask hard t’ing—in dis place. In Africa, we get Oku man make ju–ju.”

She shuddered. The cold malevolence in his words recalled stories she had heard of those who had died with unaccountable suddenness when “Oku man make ju–ju.”

“I don’t mean that,” she cried vehemently. “Tell me what is taking place, and how it will affect Captain Warden. Then I can twist events to my own purpose. I can warn him, perhaps prove myself his friend. Above all—where are you going to–morrow? Mr. Baumgartner sails in theSans Souci, I hear. Does Miss Dane go with him, or is she to be sent away because she is aware of your plans?”

Figuero did not answer during a whole minute.

He saw light, dimly, but growing more distinct each instant. Warden was a deadly personality in the field against him, and his active interference was now assured beyond cavil. But, with two women as foils, both beautiful, and one exceedingly well equipped with money, there was still a chance of circumventing the only man he feared.

“You steal dem letter?” he said unexpectedly.

“At any rate, it has not gone to Captain Warden,” was the acid reply.

“An’ you write ‘im. What you say?”

“Oh, nothing that affects the case.”

“You tole him me here?”

“No. That can wait,” which statement, as shall be seen, was strictly untrue.

“Well, den, dem yacht lib for—for somewheres to–morrow. Dem girl, Mees Dane, go wid me. You tole him dat t’ing as you say las’ night. I make wife palaver to dem girl.”

“What good will that do?” she said. “In a week, ten days, he will hear from her again.”

“No. I take dem letter. You gib me Captain Warden writin’, an’ I keep eye for dat. Savvy?”

“But can you carry out what you promised?”

“Two, t’ree months, yes. After dem yacht lib for Madeira, no. P’raps dem girl be wife den.”

Rosamund’s dark eyes narrowed to two tiny slits. If Figuero could really keep Warden and Evelyn apart during so long a period, the utterly hopeless project on which she had embarked in a moment of jealous rage might become feasible. Of course, the suggestion that he would marry Evelyn was preposterous, but there was no reason why she should hurt his pride by telling him so. Her heart throbbed madly, while her active brain debated the pros and cons of the all–important question—should she post the letter already written? Yes. It was the outcome of her earliest thought. Shewould follow it up with another in different strain. The two would be vastly more convincing than one, and the dates would have a significance that no mere contriving could impart.

By this time they were at the post–office, from which mails were dispatched by a later train than that caught by the groom. Rosamund dropped her letter in the box. She was quite pale with suppressed excitement. Her boats were burnt. She heard the fall of the envelope into the receptacle, and the appalling notion possessed her that the sound resembled the fall of earth on a coffin. She breathed heavily, and pressed a hand to her bosom. Figuero was watching her.

“Now you done dem t’ing,” he said, “you dash me some money.”

She started. Did he mean to levy blackmail for his services?

“Why?” she asked, summoning all her strength of character to meet his gaze without flinching.

“Me buy present for dem girl. If I make wife palaver dat cost many dollar.”

“I am not buying your help. You trade with me one thing for the other. If you refuse, I write to the Government about the men of Oku.”

The Portuguese laughed more naturally than she had yet heard him. If his arch–enemy, Arthur Warden, was well acquainted with the mission he and the chiefs had undertaken, this pretty and passionate woman counted for very little in the scale against him.

“You dash me one hunner’ poun’,” he said cheerfully.“Jus’ dat, no mo’. If you say ‘no,’ dem girl no lib for yacht. Mr. Baumgartner say go one–time. Me tell ‘im take dem girl—savvy?”

Mrs. Laing savvied. She gave him thirty pounds—all she could spare from her purse—and promised to send the balance to an address in London. He was fully satisfied. He was sure she would not fail him. When he needed further supplies she would pay willingly. In an intrigue based on such lines Miguel Figuero was an adept.

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