CHAPTER XILOVE VS. HONOR
Herewas a new and extraordinary complication.
Why was Stanley Audley, alias Philip Graydon, in possession of forged notes from the notorious factory in South America? Why had he attempted to destroy one of them, while leaving the others in a drawer?
In the hope, though it was but faint, of getting further information about Audley, I telephoned to Marigold Day and asked her to dine with me at the Piccadilly Hotel.
She promptly accepted, and during the meal I brought the talk round to Audley, telling her of his remarkable disappearance from the room in Seton’s Hotel in Lancaster Gate.
“But are you really certain it was Mr. Audley?” she asked.
“Quite,” I replied. “Seton’s description of him bears no possible room for doubt. Besides, he had known Audley for a long time and there is no possibility that he can have made a mistake.”
“It is an extraordinary thing if he has been inLondon that he did not let me know,” she said, frowning and evidently puzzled.
“Yes, that is so, but we have to remember that for some unaccountable reason he seems to have decided to completely efface himself.”
“Harold Ruthen believes that he is hiding in Paris,” she said.
“But from whom should he be hiding, and why?” I questioned. “Do you think that he can possibly be hiding from the police?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she replied with a sigh, “but why do you suggest the police.”
“Well,” I answered, “I think you ought to know that a very strange thing happened at Lancaster Gate. When we searched the room we found in the grate a half-burned Bank of England fifty-pound note. In a drawer were three others. And all of them have been found to be forgeries.”
“Ah, then you know,” said the girl with a queer, hard look that I had never seen in her eyes before.
“That is all I know,” I said, “and I wondered whether you could tell me any more. Is it on account of these forged notes that he is hiding? It certainly looks very like it, and I have no doubt whatever that that will be the view of the police. What does Ruthen say?”
“He hasn’t told me anything, but I remember one queer incident. Once when we were out togetherhe paid for supper with a five-pound note and we were about to go out when the manager of the restaurant came back and declared it to be a forgery. Stanley apologized profusely, and gave the man another in its place, explaining that he had cashed a cheque at his club and they had given it to him with four others. Apparently the others he had were genuine. I did not think much of it at the time—such a thing, of course, might easily have happened—but after what you have told me I don’t know what to believe.”
It was difficult to believe that the young fellow who had married Thelma and for whom I had formed a genuine liking, could be the ally of a gang of bank-note forgers, yet the evidence was becoming overwhelming.
“But I thought you told me Audley was well off,” I said. “Well-to-do people don’t usually descend to dealing in forged notes.”
“He always appeared to be,” was Marigold’s reply, “but possibly that was how he made his money. As a matter of fact I really did not know very much about him. I met him through intimate friends and I suppose I more or less took him for granted. He was quite obviously a gentleman and one can’t enquire closely into the antecedents of every man one meets.”
I wondered whether the girl had in some waystumbled upon the truth. If this were the case, the shock of finding that the man she undoubtedly was beginning to love was involved in such infamous practices as the passing of forged notes would be quite sufficient to explain the strange change Mrs. Powell had noticed and commented on. It was quite clear, from what Mrs. Powell had said, that she had suffered some blow which had utterly upset her. On the other hand, the knowledge that Audley had married Thelma would have been an equally satisfactory explanation.
In answer to a question, Marigold told me she had seen Ruthen at Rector’s Club three nights before and had chatted with him. He had then told her that he was still in search of Stanley and that he had been looking for him in Paris. But, although she had questioned him, he would not tell her his motives.
We went to a revue together and later I saw her into a taxi on her way home. Though I questioned her as closely as I could, and she seemed quite willing to help, she could not, or would not, tell me any more.
I walked home to Russell Square utterly bewildered and spent a sleepless night racking my brain for a solution of the mystery. Here we were in April and so far as I could tell I was as far off as ever from finding the key to the enigma.
I decided next day to take my partner, Hensman, fully into my confidence. He was five years older than I, and a keen, practical business man for whose judgment I had considerable respect.
He heard me in silence. At first he was inclined to be amused but as I went on his thin, clean-shaven face assumed a very serious expression.
“Well,” I asked when I had finished, “what do you think of it all?”
“Intensely interesting, Rex—but extremely complicated,” was my partner’s reply, as he sat back in his chair. “On the face of it Audley is a crook hiding from the police. Evidently he has not attempted to get abroad, but is still somewhere in London. That’s my view.”
“But what causes his wife to tell me that he can never return to her?” I asked. “What is your opinion of that?”
“I cannot tell that. But I believe she must hear from him and that she knows his whereabouts from time to time. The telegram he received calling him back from Mürren was, no doubt, a message of warning.”
“I quite agree,” I said. “But why did he escape so rapidly from Lancaster Gate?”
“Probably he thought you were a detective.”
“But if he saw me enter the place he would have recognized me at once.”
“True. I never thought of that,” said Hensman. “No. He took fright at something, and thought he’d destroy all the bank-notes. His escape, I admit, was an ingenious one. He evidently slipped out while you had gone downstairs to call Seton, and leaving the key on the inside of the door, re-locked it.”
“How could he?”
“If the end of the key protruded, as it does in many cases, it would be quite easy to turn with a pair of pincers,” Hensman replied. “If he is a crook he most probably carries a pair, for by that means locked doors are frequently opened by thieves.”
This explanation, simple though it was, appeared perfectly adequate and I was chagrined that neither Seton nor myself had hit upon it. Later, when I again examined the door, I had no doubt at all about it. The end of the key projected beyond the surface of the door and as the lock was well-oiled and went very easily, it was easy, I found, to turn the key from the outside with a pair of pliers.
It was clear that Audley had been alarmed by something, whether it was my knock at his door that had disturbed him, we could not tell. Whatever it was, he had evidently slipped out when he heard me walk away from the door, locked the door behind him and hidden in one of the other rooms. Then hismovements, masked by the noise made in breaking open the door, he had calmly walked out and disappeared.
“My advice, Rex, is to have nothing further to do with the affair,” my partner argued. “Leave it all severely alone. There is no sort of reason why you should allow yourself to be dragged into any police-court business. Suppose Audley is arrested, as no doubt he will be eventually, then you’ll be called for the prosecution. And you don’t want that.”
I demurred. It was the same advice that old Feng had given me. And yet, try how I could, I could not bring myself to desert Thelma in her distress.
Three days later I received a note from her from the Hotel Reubens, in Buckingham Palace Road, saying that her mother and she were staying there for a few days and asking whether I could see her.
I called that evening, and was invited to stay to dinner. She was very charming, but I saw she was pale and anxious. She seemed overwrought and nervous, her slim fingers ever fidgeting with her wedding ring.
After dinner we were taking coffee in the lounge when Thelma, seeing a girl she knew, rose and left us to speak to her.
“Well, Mrs. Shaylor,” I asked quickly, “has Thelma had any further news of her husband?”
“Not a word,” was the reply. “But several times a man, a stranger to me, has been to see her, and they have gone out together. His name, I believe, is Ruthen or Ruthven.”
“Harold Ruthen! He was at Mürren.”
“So I believe. But he seems to pester her to death,” replied her mother. “Each time he comes she seems very upset, and I know she cries bitterly after he has gone. He seems to hold some extraordinary hold over her, but she will not say anything about it.”
“She does not like him?”
“I don’t know. She always receives him gladly. But she may not feel what she pretends.”
“Curious if that fellow really has some hold over her,” I said, recollecting that strange conversation in the night at Mürren. “My opinion is that Thelma is in fear of him, and in order to cloak her fear from you she pretends to welcome him, whereas his presence is really hateful to her.”
“You think so?” asked the widow, stirring her coffee and looking straight into my face. “All she has told me is that the man is a friend of her husband’s.”
“I believe that is true,” was my reply.
“And he is in search of Stanley, just as you are, Mr. Yelverton,” she added.
I drew a long breath, but made no reply, for at that instant Thelma rejoined us, exclaiming:
“Only fancy, mother, I haven’t seen Sybil Deighton since I left school. And now she’s married. That’s her husband she’s with. Rather a nice boy, isn’t he?”
And she threw herself into the lounge-chair next to me.
Not until an hour later when Mrs. Shaylor had bidden us good-night and we had retired into one of the cosy corners that I ventured to speak of Stanley.
“No, Mr. Yelverton,” she said shaking her beautiful head sadly, and raising her big gray eyes to mine. “I have heard nothing—not a word. If Stanley is still alive he would surely send me a reassuring word. I—I begin to think that he must be dead!”
Stanley Audley dead! If that were so I should be free to love her and to win her if I could. The very thought caused my heart to leap. I even found myself cherishing the wish that it might be true. Yet a moment later I began to despise myself for entertaining such an unworthy thought. It was not “playing the game” according to the right traditions of the school in which I had been brought up. Andso far, at any rate, I had tried to conform to the code of personal honor that, with many men, is a far more powerful rule of conduct than most forms of religious belief.
Though I led the conversation several times in the direction of Harold Ruthen, Thelma said nothing of his visits to Bexhill. I was irritated because she would not be frank with me. At length I thought it would be best to speak plainly and told her of my adventure in Lancaster Gate, of course without mentioning the discovery of the forged bank-notes.
“But, surely it could not have been Stanley!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Why should he want to avoid you, of all men? He could not imagine you as anything else but a friend!”
“Equally so, why does he not let you know his whereabouts?” I asked in turn.
She shook her head in dismay.
Then suddenly, with an expression of despair in her eyes, she put out her thin white hand with the wedding ring upon it, and pointing to it, said in a low voice—
“Think what—what a mockery this is to me!”
What could I reply? Here was a girl not yet twenty, married only a few days and then deserted. Her distress was very real and very pitiful. It had been on the tip of my tongue to tax her with her concealment from me of Ruthen’s visits, but in viewof what she was suffering I could not bring myself to pain her further. Either she loved her husband, in spite of his apparently callous desertion of her, or, for some inexplicable reason she was playing a part with a skill that many an actress would envy.
More and more I was tortured by my growing love for her. Hitherto I had kept it within bounds, and, so far as I knew, I had never—intentionally, at any rate—given a hint of it to Thelma herself. But as I look back, I can see now that such a restraint could not be maintained. A crash was bound to come. It came, very swiftly and very suddenly a few days later.
Thelma and her mother had promised to come and have tea with me in my rooms at Russell Square. At the last moment Mrs. Shaylor was called to Watford to see her sister who had been taken ill, and Thelma came alone. She was in comparatively good spirits and after my old housekeeper had served us with tea, we spent a couple of delightful hours. Thelma, an accomplished musician, sang to me, accompanying herself on my piano, and as I sat watching and listening to her I realized more fully than ever how handsome and lovable she was and my anger against Stanley Audley became almost unbearable.
“Poor mother!” she exclaimed presently as she re-seated herself by the fire, after singing a gaysong from one of the latest revues, “She’s awfully worried. That’s why we are up in town. The securities which my father left are depreciating in value, and one of the companies in which he invested most of his money has now gone into liquidation. She came up to see my uncle, who is her trustee. Yes, Mr. Yelverton, the war spelt ruin to us, as it did to so many others, and yet the Stock Exchange speculators made fortunes out of it—out of lives of men.”
It was sad news she had told me, but I had not been blind to the fact that Mrs. Shaylor was, like so many other gentlewomen of today, keeping up a brave appearance, with but small funds at her disposal.
I longed to mention Harold Ruthen, but did not dare to do so lest I should betray what her mother had told me in confidence. But I was angry that the fellow dared to seek her at Bexhill and cause her worry. It, however, proved one fact, that he, at any rate, was not aware of Stanley’s whereabouts, and, for the moment, could not do him the harm that I believe he fully intended.
How one’s most momentous actions depend at times upon the merest trivialities! I little guessed that a trifle was to rouse in me a gust of emotion destined to sweep away the last vestige of the iron self-control I had honestly tried to set upon myself.
Thelma was the wife of another man: that fact I had tried to keep always before my mind. I was to learn now that there are, in each one of us, forces too strong to be enchained by any man-made codes of conduct.
Thelma had seated herself in a low chair and was gazing sadly into the fire. Either her gaiety had been a pretense or the thought of her unhappy position had again overcome her.
“It’s very hard lines on you, Thelma,” I said softly.
She made no reply, but her eyes filled suddenly with tears. She put out her hand as if in acknowledgment of my sympathy and I took it in mine.
Its touch seemed to pour liquid fire through every pore of my being. I forgot all my good resolutions, all my pride of tradition and, in a second, I was kneeling beside her, pouring out a flood of impassioned words. What I said I have not the faintest idea. I was beside myself in a passion of love that broke all bounds and defied restraint.
Thelma rose quickly from her chair, crossed the room to the window and, burying her face in her hands, burst into a torrent of tears.
That brought me to my senses. I saw, too late, how unutterably foolish I had been. How utterly inexcusable was my conduct. Yet I had no regrets;rather I was thrilled with a savage joy that she should know the truth at last.
“Stanley had no right to leave you as he has done, without cause, or explanation after a few days only of marriage!” I cried. “It is harsh and cruel. It is not the act of a man of honor.”
But she held up her hand as though to stay my further words.
“I—I’m sorry I came here, Mr. Yelverton,” she said, suddenly, quite earnest and calm. “I thank you for all your efforts on my behalf but I think we must not meet in the future.”
“Then you still love the scoundrel who has deserted you!” I cried, unable to restrain myself.
“I will have no word said against him,” she replied gently. “Perhaps, after all, we have misjudged him. It is time I went back to the Hotel. Mother is taking me to see some friends tonight, and—and we return to Bexhill tomorrow.”
That last sentence was equivalent to telling me not to call again upon her.
“Why, I thought you were here for some days,” I exclaimed in dismay.
“I think mother has decided to return tomorrow,” was her significant reply.
I saw her home to Buckingham Palace Road and there bade her farewell, cursing myself for myfrantic outburst. I had acted like a fool. Yet the regret I knew I ought to feel would not come.
Next morning among my letters on the breakfast table was one addressed in typewriting, which I instantly recognized. It was from Hammersmith, having been sent by express messenger instead of being posted as the other had been.
I recognized the uneven typing—and tore it open. The words I read were:
“Will you never take warning! You yesterday entertained Stanley Audley’s wife at your rooms. As you have disregarded the caution already given you, the consequences will be upon your own head. If you value your life, you will relinquish the search for a man who is already dead. To continue is at your own peril. This is the last warning——”
“Will you never take warning! You yesterday entertained Stanley Audley’s wife at your rooms. As you have disregarded the caution already given you, the consequences will be upon your own head. If you value your life, you will relinquish the search for a man who is already dead. To continue is at your own peril. This is the last warning——”
I had a new and insistent problem to face. Who was my mysterious correspondent and why was he sufficiently interested to threaten me with death in case I refused to abandon my search for Stanley Audley?