The handsome, dark-haired girl had placed her hand upon my arm, and
stood with her eyes anxiously fixed upon mine.
"Do you really mean this?" she asked, in a hoarse, strained voice.
"I have told you quite frankly my intention," was my answer. "I know
that scoundrel--in fact I am myself a witness against Him."
"In what manner?" she asked naively.
"That man is one of a clever gang of thieves who for years have eluded
the police," I replied. "In England he lives in security in a Cornish
village under the name of Gordon-Wright, while here, on the Continent,
he frequents the best hotels, and with his friends makes enormous hauls
of money and jewels."
"A thief!" she exclaimed, with amazement that I thought well feigned.
"And can you really actually prove this?"
"The coward robbed a friend of mine who, being ill, could not take care
of himself," I said. "I have only to say one single word to the nearest
police office and they will arrest him wherever he may be. And now, to
speak quite openly, I tell you that I mean to do this."
"You will have him arrested?"
"Yes, and by so doing I shall at least save Ella. The thing is really
very simple after all. I intend to defy him. Ella is mine and he shall
not snatch her from me."
"Then you know him--I mean you knew him before I introduced you?" she
asked, after a brief pause.
"I know him rather too well," I answered meaningly. "It is curious,
Miss Miller," I added, "that your father should be the intimate friend
of a man of such bad reputation. He surely cannot be aware of his true
character."
She knit her brows again, for she saw that she was treading on dangerous
ground. She was not an adventuress herself but a sweet and charming
girl, yet I had no doubt but that she participated in her father's many
guilty secrets. Perhaps it was her easy-going cosmopolitan air that
suggested this, or perhaps it may have been owing to her earnest desire
that Ella should marry that man, and thus be prevented from betraying
what she had learnt on that fateful night at Studland.
"Dear old dad always makes friends far too easily," was her evasive
reply, the response of a clever woman. "I've told him so lots of times.
Travelling so much as he does, half over Europe, he is for ever making
new acquaintances, and queer ones they are, too, sometimes, I can tell
you. We've had visitors here, in this flat, of all grades, from
broken-down English jockeys and music hall artists trying to borrow
their fare third-class back to England, to lords, earls, Stock Exchange
men and company promoters whose names are as household words in the
halfpenny papers. Yet I suppose it's so with many men. They are
big-hearted, make friends easily, and everybody takes advantage of their
hospitality. It is so with my father. All his friends impose on him
without exception."
"Well, it's a pity that he's intimate with the man I knew as Lieutenant
Shacklock, for when he is in the hands of the police some curious
revelations will be made--revelations that will reveal the existence of
a most ingenious and daring Continental gang. You see," I added, with a
smile, "I'm not making a mere idle statement--I know. These men once
robbed a friend of mine, and it is only just to him that, having
discovered Shacklock, I should give information against him."
"You mean you will win Ella by freeing her of that man?" said my
companion, apparently following me for the first time.
"Exactly. If he holds any secret of hers, he is quite welcome to speak.
Neither I nor Ella will fear anything, you may depend upon that. A man
of his stamp always seeks some low-down revenge. It is only what may be
expected. Perhaps I may as well tell you that I recognised him when you
introduced us, and that I have already been down to Cornwall and seen
the smug scoundrel at his home. He's a church-warden, a parish
councillor and all the rest of it, and the people believe he's worth
thousands. He poses as a philanthropist in a mild way, opens local
bazaars, and makes speeches in support of the local habitation of the
Primrose League. All this is to me most amusing. The fellow little
dreams that he sits upon the edge of a volcano that to-morrow may engulf
him--as it certainly must."
"But is this worth while--to denounce such a man? You'll be compelled
to support your allegations," she said.
"Oh! I can do that, never fear," I laughed. "I shall bring his victim
forward--the man he robbed so heartlessly. English juries have no
compassion for the swell-mobsman or the elegant hotel-thief."
I watched her face as I spoke, and saw the effect my words were having
upon her. If I denounced him her own father would at once be
implicated. Hers were alarming apprehensions, no doubt.
I saw that I was gradually gaining the whip-hand over circumstance. She
recognised now that her father was in deadly peril of exposure.
And yet did she know the truth, after all? If she actually knew that
the young Chilian Carrera, the man she loved when they lived outside
Paris, had met with his death through her own father's treachery, she
surely would not hold him in such esteem.
Yet was it likely that such skilled scoundrels as the mysterious Miller,
Milner--or whatever he chose to call himself--and Gordon-Wright alias
Lieutenant Harold Shacklock would risk exposure by betraying their true
occupation to a sweet high-minded girl such as Lucie really was? Had
she been their decoy; had there, indeed, been any suspicion that she had
assisted them in their clever conspiracies of fraud then it would have
been different.
There was, however, no suspicion except that she had spoken of her
father's "secret," which she feared that Ella had learned when she
overheard her father's conversation with his friend. That was a curious
and unaccountable feature. She knew that her father held some secret
that was shared by Gordon-Wright, that gallant ladies'-man who had
wormed himself into the confidence of so many English and American women
travelling on Continental railways, women whose jewels and valuables had
subsequently disappeared.
She, however, held her father in the highest regard and esteem, and that
fact in itself was sufficient to convince me that she was after all in
ignorance of his true profession.
She might have entertained suspicions of the lieutenant, suspicions that
were verified by the denunciation I had just made, but as I looked into
her pale dark face I could not bring myself to believe that she knew her
father's true source of income. There was some secret of her fathers, a
secret that she knew must be kept at any cost. It was that which she
feared Ella might betray, and for that reason she deemed it best that my
love should be allowed to become the false lieutenant's wife.
Thus I argued within myself as I stood there beside her with the
blood-red light of the dying day streaming in from across the sea.
I recollected Sammy's warning; I recollected, too, the strange
circumstances of Nardini's death in Shepherd's Bush, and of what had
been told me by this woman now at my side. She was doomed, she said--
and, true enough, there was black despair written in that dark face, now
so pale and agitated.
She was as much a mystery as she had been on that first day when we had
met--even though through her instrumentality the mystery of my
well-beloved's self-effacement had actually been cleared up.
That she detested the lieutenant had been palpable from the first
mention I had made of him. Therefore I argued that she suspected him of
playing her father false, even though she might be unaware of their real
relationship. Indeed it was not natural for a father of Miller's stamp
to allow his daughter to know of his shameful calling. She had told me
that she remained at home with old Marietta--the grey-haired Tuscan
woman who had admitted me--while her father travelled hither and thither
across Europe. Those unscrupulous "birds of prey," known to the police
as international thieves, migrate in flocks, travelling swiftly from one
frontier to another and ever eluding the vigilance of the agents in
search of them. The international thief is a veritable artist in crime,
the cleverest and most audacious scoundrel of the whole criminal
fraternity.
"I quite understand your feelings and all that you must suffer, Mr
Leaf," she said at last in a mechanical voice. "I know how deeply you
love Ella, and, after all that has passed, it is not in the least
surprising that you will not stand by and see her married to such a man
as Gordon-Wright. Yet is it really prudent to act without carefully
considering every point? That she is about to become that man's wife
shows that she is in his power--that he possesses some mysterious hold
over her. And suppose you denounced him to the police, would he not, on
his part, revenge himself upon her?"
"Probably. But I will risk that."
"Personally I think that Ella will be the greater sufferer from such an
injudicious action."
Curious. Her words bore out exactly what Ella herself had said. Yet
she surely could know nothing of the secret between them. Until half an
hour ago, when I had told her, she was not even aware that Gordon-Wright
was acquainted with the woman who had been betrothed to me.
"But I do not intend that she shall fall the victim of this adventurer,"
I said quickly, for I recognised in her words a fear that her father's
secret might be exposed.
"If he really possesses a hold over her sufficient to compel her to
marry him, any attempt to rescue her may only cause her complete ruin,"
she said. "Have you any idea of the nature of this extraordinary
influence he seems to have over her?"
"None. I am in entire ignorance."
"When we met that night at Studland I certainly was deceived," she went
on. "I believed that she was beside herself with delight at finding you
again, and still unmarried--I never dreamed that she was engaged to
another--and to Gordon-Wright of all men."
"Why do you say `of all men'?"
"Because--well, because he's the last man a girl of her stamp should
marry."
"Then you know more about him than you care to admit, Miss Miller?"
"We need not discuss him," was her brief answer. "It is Ella we have to
think of, not of him."
"Yes," I said, "we have to think of her--to extricate her from the
horrible fate that threatens her--marriage to a scoundrel." Then
turning again to my pretty companion I said, in a voice intended to be
more confidential: "Now, Miss Miller, your position and mine are, after
all, very curious. Though we have been acquainted so short a time, yet
the fact of your having been Ella's most intimate friend has cemented
our own friendship to an extraordinary degree. We have exchanged
confidences as old friends, and I have told you the secrets of my heart.
Yet you, on your part, have not been exactly open with me. You are
still concealing from me certain facts which, if you would but reveal,
would, I know, assist me in releasing Ella from her bondage. Why do you
not speak plainly? I have travelled here, across Europe, to beg of you
to tell me the truth," I added, looking straight into her pale serious
face.
"How can I tell you the truth when I am ignorant of it myself?" she
protested.
"What I have told you this evening concerning Ella's engagement to that
blackguard has surprised you, and it has also shown you that the
mysterious secret of your father's of which you have spoken may be
imperilled, eh?"
She nodded. Then, after some hesitation, she said:--"Not only that, but
something further. That Gordon-Wright should aspire to Ella's hand is
utterly mystifying."
"Why?"
"Well--you recollect what I told you regarding--regarding that man who
died in the house where you were living in London," she said, in a low,
faltering voice.
"You mean the ex-Minister of Justice, Nardini?"
She nodded an affirmative.
"I remember perfectly all that you told me. He refused to speak the
truth concerning you."
"He laughed in my face when I asked him to make a confession that would
save me," she said hoarsely, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous
fire. "He was a coward; he sacrificed me, a woman, because he feared to
speak the truth. Ah!" she cried, clenching her hands, "you see me here
wearing a mask of calm and tranquillity, but within my heart is a
volcano of bitterness, of scorn for that wretched embezzler who carried
his secret to the grave."
"I can quite understand it, and fully sympathise with you," I said, in a
kindly tone, recollecting all that had passed between us after she had
discovered the mysterious Italian dead in that upstairs room at
Shepherd's Bush. "But I hope you are not still disturbed over what may,
after all, be merely an ungrounded fear?"
"Ungrounded!" she cried. "Ah! would to Heaven it were ungrounded. No.
The knowledge that the blow must fall upon me sooner or later--to-day,
to-morrow, in six months' time, or in six years--holds me ever
breathless in terror. Each morning when I wake I know not whether I
shall again return to my bed, or whether my next sleep will be within
the grave."
"No, no," I protested, "don't speak like this. It isn't natural." But
I saw how desperate she had now become.
"I intend to cheat them out of their revenge," she said, in a low
whisper, the red glow of the sundown falling full upon her haggard face.
"They shall never triumph over me in life. With my corpse they may do
as they think proper."
"They? Who are they?"
"Shall I tell you?" she cried, her starting eyes fixing themselves upon
mine. "That man Gordon-Wright is one of them."
"He is your enemy?" I gasped.
"One of my bitterest. He believes I am in ignorance, but fortunately I
discovered his intention. I told Nardini, and yet he refused to speak.
He knew the peril in which I existed, and yet, coward that he was, he
only laughed in my face. He fled from Rome. I followed him to England
only to discover that, alas! he was dead--that he had preserved his
silence."
"It was a blackguardly thing," I declared. "And this fellow,
Gordon-Wright, or whatever he calls himself, though your father's
friend, is at the same time your worst enemy?"
"That is unfortunately so, even though it may appear strange. To me he
is always most charming, indeed no man could be more gallant and polite,
but I know what is lurking behind all that pleasant exterior."
"And yet you are opposed to me going to the police and exposing him?" I
said in surprise.
"I am opposed to anything that must, of necessity, reflect upon both
Ella and myself," was her answer. "Remember the lieutenant knows that
you and I are acquainted. I introduced him to you. If you denounced
him as a thief he would at once conclude that you and I had conspired to
effect his ruin and imprisonment."
"Well--and if he did?"
"If he did, my own ruin would only be hastened," she said. "Ah! Mr
Leaf, you have no idea of the strange circumstances which conspired to
place me in the critical position in which I to-day find myself. Though
young in years and with an outward appearance of brightness, I have
lived a veritable lifetime of woe and despair," she went on, in a voice
broken by emotion.
"In those happy days at Enghien I loved--in those sweetest days of all
my life I believed that happiness was to be mine always. Alas! it was
so short-lived that now, when I recall it, it only seems like some
pleasant dream. My poor Manuel died and I was left alone with a
heritage of woe that gradually became a greater burden as time went on,
and I was drawn into the net that was so cleverly spread for me--because
I was young, because I was, I suppose, good-looking, because I was
inexperienced in the wickedness of the world. Ah! when I think of it
all, when I think how one word from Giovanni Nardini would have
liberated me and showed the world that I was what I was, an honest
woman, I am seized by a frenzy of hatred against him, as against that
man Gordon-Wright--the man who knows the truth and intends to profit by
it, even though I sacrifice my own life rather than face their lying
denunciation without power to defend myself. Ah! you cannot understand.
You can never understand!" and her eyes glowed with a thirst for
revenge upon the dead man who had so unscrupulously thrust her back into
that peril so deadly that she was hourly prepared to take her own life
without compunction and without regret.
"But all this astounds me," I said, in deep sympathy. "I am your
friend, Miss Miller," I went on, taking her slim hand in mine and
holding it as I looked her straight in the face. "This man,
Gordon-Wright, is, we find, our mutual enemy. Cannot you explain to me
the whole circumstances? Our interests are mutual. Let us unite
against this man who holds you, as well as my loved one, in his banal
power! Tell me the truth. You have been compromised. How?"
She paused, her hand trembled in mine, and great tears coursed slowly
down her white cheeks. She was reflecting whether she dare reveal to me
the ghastly truth.
Her thin lips trembled, but at first no word escaped them. Laughter and
the sound of gaiety came up from the promenade below.
I stood there in silence in the soft fading light await her confession--
confession surely of one of the strangest truths that has ever been told
by the lips of any woman.