Mr. Van Torp kept away from the Primadonna, and she watched him curiously, a good deal surprised to see that most of the others liked him better than she had expected. She was rather agreeably disappointed, too, at the reception she herself met with Lord Creedmore spoke of her only as 'Miss Donne, the daughter of his oldest friend,' and every one treated her accordingly. No one even mentioned her profession, and possibly some of the guests did not quite realise that she was the famous Cordova. Lady Maud never suggested that she should sing, and Lord Creedmore detested music. The old piano in the long drawing-room was hardly ever opened. It had been placed there in Victorian days when 'a little music' was the rule, and since the happy abolition of that form of terror it had been left where it stood, and was tuned once a year, in case anybody should want a dance when there were young people in the house.
A girl might as well master the Assyrian language in order to compose hymns to Tiglath-Pileser as learn to play the piano nowadays, but bridge is played at children's parties; let us not speak ill of the Bridge that has carried us over.
Margaret was not out of her element; on the contrary, she at first had the sensation of finding herself amongst rather grave and not uncongenial English people, not so very different from those with whom she had spent her early girlhood at Oxford. It was not strange to her, but it was no longer familiar, and she missed the surroundings to which she had grown accustomed. Hitherto, when she had been asked to join such parties, there had been at least a few of those persons who are supposed to delight especially in the society of sopranos, actresses, and lionesses generally; but none of them were at Craythew. She was suddenly transported back into regions where nobody seemed to care a straw whether she could sing or not, where nobody flattered her, and no one suggested that it would be amusing and instructive to make a trip to Spain together, or that a charming little kiosk at Therapia was at her disposal whenever she chose to visit the Bosphorus.
There was only Logotheti to remind her of her everyday life, for Griggs did not do so at all; he belonged much more to the 'atmosphere,' and though she knew that he had loved in his youth a woman who had a beautiful voice, he understood nothing of music and never talked about it. As for Lady Maud, Margaret saw much less of her than she had expected; the hostess was manifestly preoccupied, and was, moreover, obliged to give more of her time to her guests than would have been necessary if they had been of the younger generation or if the season had been winter.
Margaret noticed in herself a new phase of change with regard to Logotheti, and she did not like it at all: he had become necessary to her, and yet she was secretly a little ashamed of him. In that temple of respectability where she found herself, in such 'a cloister of social pillars' as Logotheti called the party, he was a discordant figure. She was haunted by a painful doubt that if he had not been a very important financier some of those quiet middle-aged Englishmen might have thought him a 'bounder,' because of his ruby pin, his summer-lightning waistcoats, and his almond-shaped eyes. It was very unpleasant to be so strongly drawn to a man whom such people probably thought a trifle 'off.'
It irritated her to be obliged to admit that the London financier, who was a professed and professing Hebrew, was in appearance an English gentleman, whereas Konstantinos Logotheti, with a pedigree of Christian and not unpersecuted Fanariote ancestors, that went back to Byzantine times without the least suspicion of any Semitic marriage, might have been taken for a Jew in Lombard Street, and certainly would have been thought one in Berlin. A man whose eyes suggested dark almonds need not cover himself with jewellery and adorn himself in naming colours, Margaret thought; and she resented his way of dressing, much more than ever before. Lady Maud had called him exotic, and Margaret could not forget that. By 'exotic' she was sure that her friend meant something like vulgar, though Lady Maud said she liked him.
But the events that happened at Craythew on Sunday evening threw such insignificant details as these into the shade, and brought out the true character of the chief actors, amongst whom Margaret very unexpectedly found herself.
It was late in the afternoon after a really cloudless June day, and she had been for a long ramble in the park with Lord Creedmore, who had talked to her about her father and the old Oxford days, till all her present life seemed to be a mere dream; and she could not realise, as she went up to her room, that she was to go back to London on the morrow, to the theatre, to rehearsals, to Pompeo Stromboli, Schreiermeyer, and the public.
She met Logotheti in the gallery that ran round two sides of the hall, and they both stopped and leaned over the balustrade to talk a little.
'It has been very pleasant,' she said thoughtfully. 'I'm sorry it's over so soon.'
'Whenever you are inclined to lead this sort of life,' Logotheti answered with a laugh, 'you need only drop me a line. You shall have a beautiful old house and a big park and a perfect colonnade of respectabilities—and I'll promise not to be a bore.'
Margaret looked at him earnestly for some seconds, and then asked a very unexpected and frivolous question, because she simply could not help it.
'Where did you get that tie?'
The question was strongly emphasised, for it meant much more to her just then than he could possibly have guessed; perhaps it meant something which was affecting her whole life. He laughed carelessly.
'It's better to dress like Solomon in all his glory than to be taken for a Levantine gambler,' he answered. 'In the days when I was simple-minded, a foreigner in a fur coat and an eyeglass once stopped me in the Boulevard des Italiens and asked if I could give him the address of any house where a roulette-table was kept! After that I took to jewels and dress!'
Margaret wondered why she could not help liking him; and by sheer force of habit she thought that he would make a very good-looking stage Romeo.
While she was thinking of that and smiling in spite of his tie, the old clock in the hall below chimed the hour, and it was a quarter to seven; and at the same moment three men were getting out of a train that had stopped at the Craythew station, three miles from Lord Creedmore's gate.
The daylight dinner was over, and the large party was more or less scattered about the drawing-room and the adjoining picture-gallery in groups of three and four, mostly standing while they drank their coffee, and continued or finished the talk begun at table.
By force of habit Margaret had stopped beside the closed piano, and had seated herself on the old-fashioned stool to have her coffee. Lady Maud stood beside her, leaning against the corner of the instrument, her cup in her hand, and the two young women exchanged rather idle observations about the lovely day that was over, and the perfect weather. Both were preoccupied and they did not look at each other; Margaret's eyes watched Logotheti, who was half-way down the long room, before a portrait by Sir Peter Lely, of which he was apparently pointing out the beauties to the elderly wife of the scientific peer. Lady Maud was looking out at the light in the sunset sky above the trees beyond the flower-beds and the great lawn, for the piano stood near an open window. From time to time she turned her head quickly and glanced towards Van Torp, who was talking with her father at some distance; then she looked out of the window again.
It was a warm evening; in the dusk of the big rooms the hum of voices was low and pleasant, broken only now and then by Van Torp's more strident tone. Outside it was still light, and the starlings and blackbirds and thrushes were finishing their supper, picking up the unwary worms and the tardy little snails, and making a good deal of sweet noise about it.
Margaret set down her cup on the lid of the piano, and at the slight sound Lady Maud turned towards her, so that their eyes met. Each noticed the other's expression.
'What is it?' asked Lady Maud, with a little smile of friendly concern. 'Is anything wrong?'
'No—that is—' Margaret smiled too, as she hesitated—'I was going to ask you the same question,' she added quickly.
'It's nothing more than usual,' returned her friend. 'I think it has gone very well, don't you, these three days? He has made a good impression on everybody—don't you think so?'
'Oh yes!' Margaret answered readily. 'Excellent! Could not be better! I confess to being surprised, just a little—I mean,' she corrected herself hastily, 'after all the talk there has been, it might not have turned out so easy.'
'Don't you feel a little less prejudiced against him yourself?' askedLady Maud.
'Prejudiced!' Margaret repeated the word thoughtfully. 'Yes, I suppose I'm prejudiced against him. That's the only word. Perhaps it's hateful of me, but I cannot help it—and I wish you wouldn't make me own it to you, for it's humiliating! I'd like him, if I could, for your sake. But you must take the wish for the deed.'
'That's better than nothing!' Lady Maud seemed to be trying to laugh a little, but it was with an effort and there was no ripple in her voice. 'You have something on your mind, too,' she went on, to change the subject. 'Is anything troubling you?'
'Only the same old question. It's not worth mentioning!'
'To marry, or not to marry?'
'Yes. I suppose I shall take the leap some day, and probably in the dark, and then I shall be sorry for it. Most of you have!'
She looked up at Lady Maud with a rather uncertain, flickering smile, as if she wished her mind to be made up for her, and her hands lay weakly in her lap, the palms almost upwards.
'Oh, don't ask me!' cried her friend, answering the look rather than the words, and speaking with something approaching to vehemence.
'Do you wish you had waited for the other one till now?' askedMargaret softly, but she did not know that he had been killed in SouthAfrica; she had never seen the shabby little photograph.
'Yes—for ever!'
That was all Lady Maud said, and the two words were not uttered dramatically either, though gravely and without the least doubt.
The butler and two men appeared, to collect the coffee cups; the former had a small salver in his hand and came directly to Lady Maud. He brought a telegram for her.
'You don't mind, do you?' she asked Margaret mechanically, as she opened it.
'Of course,' answered the other in the same tone, and she looked through the open window while her friend read the message.
It was from the Embassy in London, and it informed her in the briefest terms that Count Leven had been killed in St. Petersburg on the previous day, in the street, by a bomb intended for a high official. Lady Maud made no sound, but folded the telegram into a small square and turned her back to the room for a moment in order to slip it unnoticed into the body of her black velvet gown. As she recovered her former attitude she was surprised to see that the butler was still standing two steps from her where he had stopped after he had taken the cups from the piano and set them on the small salver on which he had brought the message. He evidently wanted to say something to her alone.
Lady Maud moved away from the piano, and he followed her a little beyond the window, till she stopped and turned to hear what he had to say.
'There are three persons asking for Mr. Van Torp, my lady,' he said in a very low tone, and she noticed the disturbed look in his face. 'They've got a motor-car waiting in the avenue.'
'What sort of people are they?' she asked quietly; but she felt that she was pale.
'To tell the truth, my lady,' the butler spoke in a whisper, bending his head, 'I think they are from Scotland Yard.'
Lady Maud knew it already; she had almost guessed it when she had glanced at his face before he spoke at all.
'Show them into the old study,' she said, 'and ask them to wait a moment.'
The butler went away with his two coffee cups, and scarcely any one had noticed that Lady Maud had exchanged a few words with him by the window. She turned back to the piano, where Margaret was still sitting on the stool with her hands in her lap, looking at Logotheti in the distance and wondering whether she meant to marry him or not.
'No bad news, I hope?' asked the singer, looking up as her friend came to her side.
'Not very good,' Lady Maud answered, leaning her elbow on the piano. 'Should you mind singing something to keep the party together while I talk to some tiresome men who are in the old study? On these June evenings people have a way of wandering out into the garden after dinner. I should like to keep every one in the house for a quarter of an hour, and if you will only sing for them they won't stir. Will you?'
Margaret looked at her curiously.
'I think I understand,' Margaret said. 'The people in the study are asking for Mr. Van Torp.'
Lady Maud nodded, not surprised that Logotheti should have told thePrimadonna something about what he had been doing.
'Then you believe he is innocent,' she said confidently. 'Even though you don't like him, you'll help me, won't you?'
'I'll do anything you ask me. But I should think—'
'No,' Lady Maud interrupted. 'He must not be arrested at all. I know that he would rather face the detectives than run away, even for a few hours, till the truth is known. But I won't let him. It would be published all over the world to-morrow morning that he had been arrested for murder in my father's house, and it would never be forgotten against him, though he might be proved innocent ten times over. That's what I want to prevent. Will you help me?'
As she spoke the last words she raised the front lid of the piano, and Margaret turned on her seat towards the instrument to open the keyboard, nodding her assent.
'Just play a little, till I am out of the room, and then sing,' saidLady Maud.
The great artist's fingers felt the keys as her friend turned away. Anything theatrical was natural to her now, and she began to play very softly, watching the moving figure in black velvet as she would have watched a fellow singer on the stage while waiting to go on.
Lady Maud did not speak to Van Torp first, but to Griggs, and then to Logotheti, and the two men slipped away together and disappeared. Then she came back to Van Torp, smiling pleasantly. He was still talking with Lord Creedmore, but the latter, at a word from his daughter, went off to the elderly peeress whom Logotheti had abruptly left alone before the portrait.
Margaret did not hear what Lady Maud said to the American, but it was evidently not yet a warning, for her smile did not falter, and he looked pleased as he came back with her, and they passed near the piano to go out through the open window upon the broad flagged terrace that separated the house from the flower-beds.
The Primadonna played a little louder now, so that every one heard the chords, even in the picture-gallery, and a good many men were rather bored at the prospect of music.
Then the Señorita da Cordova raised her head and looked over the grand piano, and her lips parted, and boredom vanished very suddenly; for even those who did not take much pleasure in the music were amazed by the mere sound of her voice and by its incredible flexibility.
She meant to astonish her hearers and keep them quiet, and she knew what to sing to gain her end, and how to sing it. Those who have not forgotten the story of her beginnings will remember that she was a thorough musician as well as a great singer, and was one of those very few primadonnas who are able to accompany themselves from memory without a false note through any great piece they know, fromLuciatoParsifal.
She began with the waltz song in the first act ofRomeo and Juliet. It was the piece that had revealed her talent to Madame Bonanni, who had accidentally overheard her singing to herself, and it suited her purpose admirably. Such fireworks could not fail to astound, even if they did not please, and half the full volume of her voice was more than enough for the long drawing-room, into which the whole party gathered almost as soon as she began to sing. Such trifles as having just dined, or having just waked up in the morning, have little influence on the few great natural voices of the world, which begin with twice the power and beauty that the 'built-up' ones acquire in years of study. Ordinary people go to a concert, to the opera, to a circus, to university sports, and hear and see things that interest or charm, or sometimes surprise them; but they are very much amazed if they ever happen to find out in private life what a really great professional of any sort can do at a pinch, if put to it by any strong motive. If it had been necessary, Margaret could have sung to the party in the drawing-room at Craythew for an hour at a stretch with no more rest than her accompaniments afforded.
Her hearers were the more delighted because it was so spontaneous, and there was not the least affectation about it. During these days no one had even suggested that she should make music, or be anything except the 'daughter of Lord Creedmore's old friend.' But now, apparently, she had sat down to the piano to give them all a concert, for the sheer pleasure of singing, and they were not only pleased with her, but with themselves; for the public, and especially audiences, are more easily flattered by a great artist who chooses to treat his hearers as worthy of his best, than the artist himself is by the applause he hears for the thousandth time.
So the Señorita da Cordova held the party at Craythew spellbound while other things were happening very near them which would have interested them much more than her trills, and her 'mordentini,' and her soaring runs, and the high staccato notes that rang down from the ceiling as if some astounding and invisible instrument were up there, supported by an unseen force.
Meanwhile Paul Griggs and Logotheti had stopped a moment in the first of the rooms that contained the library, on their way to the old study beyond.
It was almost dark amongst the huge oak bookcases, and both men stopped at the same moment by a common instinct, to agree quickly upon some plan of action. They had led adventurous lives, and were not likely to stick at trifles, if they believed themselves to be in the right; but if they had left the drawing-room with the distinct expectation of anything like a fight, they would certainly not have stopped to waste their time in talking.
The Greek spoke first.
'Perhaps you had better let me do the talking,' he said.
'By all means,' answered Griggs. 'I am not good at that. I'll keep quiet, unless we have to handle them.'
'All right, and if you have any trouble I'll join in and help you. Just set your back against the door if they try to get out while I am speaking.'
'Yes.'
That was all, and they went on in the gathering gloom, through the three rooms of the library, to the door of the old study, from which a short winding staircase led up to the two small rooms which Griggs was occupying.
Three quiet men in dark clothes were standing together in the twilight, in the bay window at the other side of the room, and they moved and turned their heads quickly as the door opened. Logotheti went up to them, while Griggs remained near the door, looking on.
'What can I do for you?' inquired the Greek, with much urbanity.
'We wished to speak with Mr. Van Torp, who is stopping here,' answered the one of the three men who stood farthest forward.
'Oh yes, yes!' said Logotheti at once, as if assenting. 'Certainly! Lady Maud Leven, Lord Creedmore's daughter—Lady Creedmore is away, you know—has asked us to inquire just what you want of Mr. Van Torp.'
'It's a personal matter,' replied the spokesman. 'I will explain it to him, if you will kindly ask him to come here a moment.'
Logotheti smiled pleasantly.
'Quite so,' he said. 'You are, no doubt, reporters, and wish to interview him. As a personal friend of his, and between you and me, I don't think he'll see you. You had better write and ask for an appointment. Don't you think so, Griggs?'
The author's large, grave features relaxed in a smile of amusement as he nodded his approval of the plan.
'We do not represent the press,' answered the man.
'Ah! Indeed? How very odd! But of course—' Logotheti pretended to understand suddenly—'how stupid of me! No doubt you are from the bank. Am I not right?'
'No. You are mistaken. We are not from Threadneedle Street.'
'Well, then, unless you will enlighten me, I really cannot imagine who you are or where you come from!'
'We wish to speak in private with Mr. Van Torp.'
'In private, too?' Logotheti shook his head, and turned to Griggs.'Really, this looks rather suspicious; don't you think so?'
Griggs said nothing, but the smile became a broad grin.
The spokesman, on his side, turned to his two companions and whispered, evidently consulting them as to the course he should pursue.
'Especially after the warning Lord Creedmore has received,' said Logotheti to Griggs in a very audible tone, as if explaining his last speech.
The man turned to him again and spoke in a gravely determined tone—
'I must really insist upon seeing Mr. Van Torp immediately,' he said.
'Yes, yes, I quite understand you,' answered Logotheti, looking at him with a rather pitying smile, and then turning to Griggs again, as if for advice.
The elder man was much amused by the ease with which the Greek had so far put off the unwelcome visitors and gained time; but he saw that the scene must soon come to a crisis, and prepared for action, keeping his eye on the three, in case they should make a dash at the door that communicated with the rest of the house.
During the two or three seconds that followed, Logotheti reviewed the situation. It would be an easy matter to trick the three men into the short winding staircase that led up to the rooms Griggs occupied, and if the upper and lower doors were locked and barricaded, the prisoners could not forcibly get out. But it was certain that the leader of the party had a warrant about him, and this must be taken from him before locking him up, and without any acknowledgment of its validity; for even the lawless Greek was aware that it was not good to interfere with officers of the law in the execution of their duty. If there had been more time he might have devised some better means of attaining his end than occurred to him just then.
'They must be the lunatics,' he said to Griggs, with the utmost calm.
The spokesman started and stared, and his jaw dropped. For a moment he could not speak.
'You know Lord Creedmore was warned this morning that a number had escaped from the county asylum,' continued Logotheti, still speaking to Griggs, and pretending to lower his voice.
'Lunatics?' roared the man when he got his breath, exasperated out of his civil manner. 'Lunatics, sir? We are from Scotland Yard, sir, I'd have you know!'
'Yes, yes,' answered the Greek, 'we quite understand. Humour them, my dear chap,' he added in an undertone that was meant to be heard. 'Yes,' he continued in a cajoling tone, 'I guessed at once that you were from police headquarters. If you'll kindly show me your warrant—'
He stopped politely, and nudged Griggs with his elbow, so that the detectives should be sure to see the movement. The chief saw the awkwardness of his own position, measured the bony veteran and the athletic foreigner with his eye, and judged that if the two were convinced that they were dealing with madmen they would make a pretty good fight.
'Excuse me,' the officer said, speaking calmly, 'but you are under a gross misapprehension about us. This paper will remove it at once, I trust, and you will not hinder us in the performance of an unpleasant duty.'
He produced an official envelope, handed it to Logotheti, and waited for the result.
It was unexpected when it came. Logotheti took the paper, and as it was now almost dark he looked about for the key of the electric light. Griggs was now close to him by the door through which they had entered, and behind which the knob was placed.
'If I can get them upstairs, lock and barricade the lower door,' whispered the Greek as he turned up the light.
He took the paper under a bracket light on the other side of the room, beside the door of the winding stair, and began to read.
His face was a study, and Griggs watched it, wondering what was coming. As Logotheti read and reread the few short sentences, he was apparently seized by a fit of mirth which he struggled in vain to repress, and which soon broke out into uncontrollable laughter.
'The cleverest trick you ever saw!' he managed to get out between his paroxysms.
It was so well done that the detective was seriously embarrassed; but after a moment's hesitation he judged that he ought to get his warrant back at all hazards, and he moved towards Logotheti with a menacing expression.
But the Greek, pretending to be afraid that the supposed lunatic was going to attack him, uttered an admirable yell of fear, opened the door close at his hand, rushed through, slammed it behind him, and fled up the dark stairs.
The detective lost no time, and followed in hot pursuit, his two companions tearing up after him into the darkness. Then Griggs quietly turned the key in the lock, for he was sure that Logotheti had reached the top in time to fasten the upper door, and must be already barricading it. Griggs proceeded to do the same, quietly and systematically, and the great strength he had not yet lost served him well, for the furniture in the room was heavy. In a couple of minutes it would have needed sledge-hammers and crowbars to break out by the lower entrance, even if the lock had not been a solid one.
Griggs then turned out the lights, and went quietly back through the library to the other part of the house to find Lady Maud.
Logotheti, having meanwhile made the upper door perfectly secure, descended by the open staircase to the hall, and sent the first footman he met to call the butler, with whom he said he wished to speak. The butler came at once.
'Lady Maud asked me to see those three men,' said Logotheti in a low tone. 'Mr. Griggs and I are convinced that they are lunatics escaped from the asylum, and we have locked them up securely in the staircase beyond the study.'
'Yes, sir,' said the butler, as if Logotheti had been explaining how he wished his shoe-leather to be treated.
'I think you had better telephone for the doctor, and explain everything to him over the wire without speaking to Lord Creedmore just yet.'
'Yes, sir.'
'How long will it take the doctor to get here?'
'Perhaps an hour, sir, if he's at home. Couldn't say precisely, sir.'
'Very good. There is no hurry; and of course her ladyship will be particularly anxious that none of her friends should guess what has happened; you see there would be a general panic if it were known that there are escaped lunatics in the house.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Perhaps you had better take a couple of men you can trust, and pile up some more furniture against the doors, above and below. One cannot be too much on the safe side in such cases.'
'Yes, sir. I'll do it at once, sir.'
Logotheti strolled back towards the gallery in a very unconcerned way. As for the warrant, he had burnt it in the empty fireplace in Griggs' room after making all secure, and had dusted down the black ashes so carefully that they had quite disappeared under the grate. After all, as the doctor would arrive in the firm expectation of finding three escaped madmen under lock and key, the Scotland Yard men might have some difficulty in proving themselves sane until they could communicate with their headquarters, and by that time Mr. Van Torp could be far on his way if he chose.
When Logotheti reached the door of the drawing-room, Margaret was finishing Rosina's Cavatina from theBarbiere di Sivigliain a perfect storm of fireworks, having transposed the whole piece two notes higher to suit her own voice, for it was originally written for a mezzo-soprano.
Lady Maud and Van Torp had gone out upon the terrace unnoticed a moment before Margaret had begun to sing. The evening was still and cloudless, and presently the purple twilight would pale under the summer moon, and the garden and the lawns would be once more as bright as day. The friends walked quickly, for Lady Maud set the pace and led Van Torp toward the trees, where the stables stood, quite hidden from the house. As soon as she reached the shade she stood still and spoke in a low voice.
'You have waited too long,' she said. 'Three men have come to arrest you, and their motor is over there in the avenue.'
'Where are they?' inquired the American, evidently not at all disturbed. 'I'll see them at once, please.'
'And give yourself up?'
'I don't care.'
'Here?'
'Why not? Do you suppose I am going to run away? A man who gets out in a hurry doesn't usually look innocent, does he?'
Lady Maud asserted herself.
'You must think of me and of my father,' she said in a tone of authority Van Torp had never heard from her. 'I know you're as innocent as I am, but after all that has been said and written about you, and about you and me together, it's quite impossible that you should let yourself be arrested in our house, in the midst of a party that has been asked here expressly to be convinced that my father approves of you. Do you see that?'
'Well—' Mr. Van Torp hesitated, with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets.
Across the lawn, from the open window, Margaret's voice rang out like a score of nightingales in unison.
'There's no time to discuss it,' Lady Maud said. 'I asked her to sing, so as to keep the people together. Before she has finished, you must be out of reach.'
Mr. Van Torp smiled. 'You're remarkably positive about it,' he said.
'You must get to town before the Scotland Yard people, and I don't know how much start they will give you. It depends on how long Mr. Griggs and Logotheti can keep them in the old study. It will be neck and neck, I fancy. I'll go with you to the stables. You must ride to your own place as hard as you can, and go up to London in your car to-night. The roads are pretty clear on Sundays, and there's moonlight, so you will have no trouble. It will be easy to say here that you have been called away suddenly. Come, you must go!'
Lady Maud moved towards the stables, and Van Torp was obliged to follow her. Far away Margaret was singing the last bars of the waltz song.
'I must say,' observed Mr. Van Torp thoughtfully, as they walked on, 'for a lady who's generally what I call quite feminine, you make a man sit up pretty quick.'
'It's not exactly the time to choose for loafing,' answered Lady Maud. 'By the bye,' she added, 'you may as well know. Poor Leven is dead. I had a telegram a few minutes ago. He was killed yesterday by a bomb meant for somebody else.'
Van Torp stood still, and Lady Maud stopped with evident reluctance.
'And there are people who don't believe in Providence,' he said slowly. 'Well, I congratulate you anyway.'
'Hush, the poor man is dead. We needn't talk about him. Come, there's no time to lose!' She moved impatiently.
'So you're a widow!' Van Torp seemed to be making the remark to himself without expecting any answer, but it at once suggested a question. 'And now what do you propose to do?' he inquired. 'But I expect you'll be a nun, or something. I'd like you to arrange so that I can see you sometimes, will you?'
'I'm not going to disappear yet,' Lady Maud answered gravely.
They reached the stables, which occupied three sides of a square yard. At that hour the two grooms and the stable-boy were at their supper, and the coachman had gone home to his cottage. A big brown retriever on a chain was sitting bolt upright beside his kennel, and began to thump the flagstones with his tail as soon as he recognised Lady Maud. From within a fox-terrier barked two or three times. Lady Maud opened a door, and he sprang out at her yapping, but was quiet as soon as he knew her.
'You'd better take the Lancashire Lass,' she said to Van Torp. 'You're heavier than my father, but it's not far to ride, and she's a clever creature.'
She had turned up the electric light while speaking, for it was dark inside the stable; she got a bridle, went into the box herself, and slipped it over the mare's pretty head. Van Torp saw that it was useless to offer help.
'Don't bother about a saddle,' he said; 'it's a waste of time.'
He touched the mare's face and lips with his hand, and she understood him, and let him lead her out. He vaulted upon her back, and Lady Maud walked beside him till they were outside the yard.
'If you had a high hat it would look like the circus,' she said, glancing at his evening dress. 'Now get away! I'll be in town on Tuesday; let me know what happens. Good-bye! Be sure to let me know.'
'Yes. Don't worry. I'm only going because you insist, anyhow.Good-bye. God bless you!'
He waved his hand, the mare sprang forward, and in a few seconds he was out of sight amongst the trees. Lady Maud listened to the regular sound of the galloping hoofs on the turf, and at the same time from very far off she heard Margaret's high trills and quick staccato notes. At that moment the moon was rising through the late twilight, and a nightingale high overhead, no doubt judging her little self to be quite as great a musician as the famous Cordova, suddenly began a very wonderful piece of her own, just half a tone higher than Margaret's, which might have distressed a sensitive musician, but did not jar in the least on Lady Maud's ear.
Now that she had sent Van Torp on his way, she would gladly have walked alone in the park for half an hour to collect her thoughts; but people who live in the world are rarely allowed any pleasant leisure when they need it, and many of the most dramatic things in real life happen when we are in such a hurry that we do not half understand them. So the moment that should have been the happiest of all goes dashing by when we are hastening to catch a train; so the instant of triumph after years of labour or weeks of struggling is upon us when we are perhaps positively obliged to write three important notes in twenty minutes; and sometimes, too, and mercifully, the pain of parting is numbed just as the knife strikes the nerve, by the howling confusion of a railway station that forces us to take care of ourselves and our belongings; and when the first instant of joy, or victory, or acute suffering is gone in a flash, memory never quite brings back all the happiness nor all the pain.
Lady Maud could not have stayed away many minutes longer. She went back at once, entered by the garden window just as Margaret was finishing Rosina's song, and remained standing behind her till she had sung the last note. English people rarely applaud conventional drawing-room music, but this had been something more, and the Craythew guests clapped their hands loudly, and even the elderly wife of the scientific peer emitted distinctly audible sounds of satisfaction. Lady Maud bent her handsome head and kissed the singer affectionately, whispering words of heartfelt thanks.
Through the mistaken efforts of Isidore Bamberger, justice had got herself into difficulties, and it was as well for her reputation, which is not good nowadays, that the public never heard what happened on that night at Craythew, how the three best men who had been available at headquarters were discomfited in their well-meant attempt to arrest an innocent man, and how they spent two miserable hours together locked up in a dark winding staircase. For it chanced, as it will chance to the end of time, that the doctor was out when the butler telephoned to him; it happened, too, that he was far from home, engaged in ushering a young gentleman of prosperous parentage into this world, an action of which the kindness might be questioned, considering that the poor little soul presumably came straight from paradise, with an indifferent chance of ever getting there again. So the doctor could not come.
The three men were let out in due time, however, and as no trace of a warrant could be discovered at that hour, Logotheti and Griggs being already sound asleep, and as Lord Creedmore, in his dressing-gown and slippers, gave them a written statement to the effect that Mr. Van Torp was no longer at Craythew, they had no choice but to return to town, rather the worse for wear. What they said to each other by the way may safely be left to the inexhaustible imagination of a gentle and sympathising reader.
Their suppressed rage, their deep mortification, and their profound disgust were swept away in their overwhelming amazement, however, when they found that Mr. Rufus Van Torp, whom they had sought in Derbyshire, was in Scotland Yard before them, closeted with their Chief and explaining what an odd mistake the justice of two nations had committed in suspecting him to have been at the Metropolitan Opera-House in New York at the time of the explosion, since he had spent that very evening in Washington, in the private study of the Secretary of the Treasury, who wanted his confidential opinion on a question connected with Trusts before he went abroad. Mr. Van Torp stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and blandly insisted that the cables should be kept red-hot—at international expense—till the member of the Cabinet in Washington should answer corroborating the statement. Four o'clock in the morning in London was only eleven o'clock of the previous evening, Mr. Van Torp explained, and it was extremely unlikely that the Secretary of the Treasury should be in bed so early. If he was, he was certainly not asleep; and with the facilities at the disposal of governments there was no reason why the answer should not come back in forty minutes.
It was impossible to resist such simple logic. The lines were cleared for urgent official business between London and Washington, and in less than an hour the answer came back, to the effect that Mr. Rufus Van Torp's statement was correct in every detail; and without any interval another official message arrived, revoking the request for his extradition, which 'had been made under a most unfortunate misapprehension, due to the fact that Mr. Van Torp's visit to the Secretary of the Treasury had been regarded as confidential by the latter.'
Scotland Yard expressed its regret, and Mr. Van Torp smiled and begged to be allowed, before leaving, to 'shake hands' with the three men who had been put to so much inconvenience on his account. This democratic proposal was promptly authorised, to the no small satisfaction and profit of the three haggard officials. So Mr. Van Torp went away, and in a few minutes he was sound asleep in the corner of his big motor-car on his way back to Derbyshire.
Lady Maud found Margaret and Logotheti walking slowly together under the trees about eleven o'clock on the following morning. Some of the people were already gone, and most of the others were to leave in the course of the day. Lady Maud had just said good-bye to a party of ten who were going off together, and she had not had a chance to speak to Margaret, who had come down late, after her manner. Most great singers are portentous sleepers. As for Logotheti, he always had coffee in his room wherever he was, he never appeared at breakfast, and he got rid of his important correspondence for the day before coming down.
'I've had a letter from Threlfall,' he said as Lady Maud came up. 'I was just telling Miss Donne about it. Feist died in Dr. Bream's Home yesterday afternoon.'
'Rather unfortunate at this juncture, isn't it?' observed Margaret.
But Lady Maud looked shocked and glanced at Logotheti as if asking a question.
'No,' said the Greek, answering her thought. 'I did not kill him, poor devil! He did it himself, out of fright, I think. So that side of the affair ends. He had some sealed glass capsules of hydrocyanide of potassium in little brass tubes, sewn up in the lining of a waistcoat, and he took one, and must have died instantly. I believe the stuff turns into prussic acid, or something of that sort, when you swallow it—Griggs will know.'
'How dreadful!' exclaimed Lady Maud. 'I'm sure you drove him to it!'
'I'll bear the responsibility of having rid the world of him, if I did. But my share consisted in having given him opium and then stopped it suddenly, till he surrendered and told the truth—or a large part of it—what I have told you already. He would not own that he killed Miss Bamberger himself with the rusty little knife that had a few red silk threads sticking to the handle. He must have put it back into his case of instruments as it was, and he never had the courage to look at it again. He had studied medicine, I believe. But he confessed everything else, how he had been madly in love with the poor girl when he was her father's secretary, and how she treated him like a servant and made her father turn him out, and how he hated Van Torp furiously for being engaged to marry her. He hated the Nickel Trust, too, because he had thought the shares were going down and had risked the little he had as margin on a drop, and had lost it all by the unexpected rise. He drank harder after that, till he was getting silly from it, when the girl's death gave him his chance against Van Torp, and he manufactured the evidence in the diary he kept, and went to Bamberger with it and made the poor man believe whatever he invented. He told me all that, with a lot of details, but I could not make him admit that he had killed the girl himself, so I gave him his opium and he went to sleep. That's my story. Or rather, it's his, as I got it from him last Thursday. I supposed there was plenty of time, but Mr. Bamberger seems to have been in a hurry after we had got Feist into the Home.'
'Had you told Mr. Van Torp all this?' asked Lady Maud anxiously.
'No,' Logotheti answered. 'I was keeping the information ready in case it should be needed.'
A familiar voice spoke behind them.
'Well, it's all right as it is. Much obliged, all the same.'
All three turned suddenly and saw that Mr. Van Torp had crept up while they were talking, and the expression of his tremendous mouth showed that he had meant to surprise them, and was pleased with his success in doing so.
'Really!' exclaimed Lady Maud.
'Goodness gracious!' cried the Primadonna.
'By the Dog of Egypt!' laughed Logotheti.
'Don't know the breed,' answered Van Torp, not understanding, but cheerfully playful. 'Was it a trick dog?'
'I thought you were in London,' Margaret said.
'I was. Between one and four this morning, I should say. It's all right.' He nodded to Lady Maud as he spoke the last words, but he did not seem inclined to say more.
'Is it a secret?' she asked.
'I never have secrets,' answered the millionaire. 'Secrets are everything that must be found out and put in the paper right away, ain't they? But I had no trouble at all, only the bother of waiting till the office got an answer from the other side. I happened to remember where I'd spent the evening of the explosion, that's all, and they cabled sharp and found my statement correct.'
'Why did you never tell me?' asked Lady Maud reproachfully. 'You knew how anxious I was!'
'Well,' replied Mr. Van Torp, dwelling long on the syllable, 'I did tell you it was all right anyhow, whatever they did, and I thought maybe you'd accept the statement. The man I spent that evening with is a public man, and he mightn't exactly think our interview was anybody else's business, might he?'
'And you say you never keep a secret!'
The delicious ripple was in Lady Maud's sweet voice as she spoke. Perhaps it came a little in spite of herself, and she would certainly have controlled her tone if she had thought of Leven just then. But she was a very natural creature, after all, and she could not and would not pretend to be sorry that he was dead, though the manner of his end had seemed horrible to her when she had been able to think over the news, after Van Torp had got safely away. So far there had only been three big things in her life: her love for a man who was dead, her tremendous determination to do some real good for his memory's sake, and her deep gratitude to Van Torp, who had made that good possible, and who, strangely enough, seemed to her the only living person who really understood her and liked her for her own sake, without the least idea of making love. And she saw in him what few suspected, except little Ida and Miss More—the real humanity and faithful kindness that dwelt in the terribly hard and coarse-grained fighting financier. Lady Maud had her faults, no doubt, but she was too big, morally, to be disturbed by what seemed to Margaret Donne an intolerable vulgarity of manner and speech.
As for Margaret, she now felt that painful little remorse that hurts us when we realise that we have suspected an innocent person of something dreadful, even though we may have contributed to the ultimate triumph of the truth. Van Torp unconsciously deposited a coal of fire on her head.
'I'd just like to say how much I appreciate your kindness in singing last night, Madame da Cordova,' he said. 'From what you knew and told me on the steamer, you might have had a reasonable doubt, and I couldn't very well explain it away before. I wish you'd some day tell me what I can do for you. I'm grateful, honestly.'
Margaret saw that he was much in earnest, and as she felt that she had done him great injustice, she held out her hand with a frank smile.
'I'm glad I was able to be of use,' she said. 'Come and see me in town.'
'Really? You won't throw me out if I do?'
Margaret laughed.
'No, I won't throw you out!'
'Then I'll come some day. Thank you.'
Van Torp had long given up all hope that she would ever marry him, but it was something to be on good terms with her again, and for the sake of that alone he would have risked a good deal.
The four paired off, and Lady Maud walked in front with Van Torp, while Margaret and Logotheti followed more slowly; so the couples did not long keep near one another, and in less than five minutes they lost each other altogether among the trees.
Margaret had noticed something very unusual in the Greek's appearance when they had met half an hour earlier, and she had been amazed when she realised that he wore no jewellery, no ruby, no emeralds, no diamonds, no elaborate chain, and that his tie was neither green, yellow, sky-blue, nor scarlet, but of a soft dove grey which she liked very much. The change was so surprising that she had been on the point of asking him whether anything dreadful had happened; but just then Lady Maud had come up with them.
They walked a little way now, and when the others were out of sight Margaret sat down on one of the many boulders that strewed the park. Her companion stood before her, and while he lit a cigarette she surveyed him deliberately from head to foot. Her fresh lips twitched as they did when she was near laughing, and she looked up and met his eyes.
'What in the world has happened to you since yesterday?' she asked in a tone of lazy amusement. 'You look almost like a human being!'
'Do I?' he asked, between two small puffs of smoke, and he laughed a little.
'Yes. Are you in mourning for your lost illusions?'
'No. I'm trying "to create and foster agreeable illusions" in you.That's the object of all art, you know.'
'Oh! It's for me, then? Really?'
'Yes. Everything is. I thought I had explained that the other night!' His tone was perfectly unconcerned, and he smiled carelessly as he spoke.
'I wonder what would happen if I took you at your word,' saidMargaret, more thoughtfully than she had spoken yet.
'I don't know. You might not regret it. You might even be happy!'
There was a little silence, and Margaret looked down.
'I'm not exactly miserable as it is,' she said at last. 'Are you?'
'Oh no!' answered Logotheti. 'I should bore you if I were!'
'Awfully!' She laughed rather abruptly. 'Should you want me to leave the stage?' she asked after a moment.
'You forget that I like the Cordova just as much as I like MargaretDonne.'
'Are you quite sure?'
'Absolutely!'
'Let's try it!'