ARRESTED.
Rupert awoke with a start. Some one had been knocking loudly at his
door. He turned slowly round, then sat upright. The little maid had
drawn back the curtains and pulled up the blind with a noisy jerk.
"It's past nine o'clock, sir. You slept that sound I began to grow
scared--though I wouldn't have woke you but for Mrs. Jones--she's got
one of her nasty moods on this morning; she says she can't have
breakfast kept about the whole morning. Shall I turn the bath water on
for you, sir?"
"Yes, I shan't be five minutes," Rupert replied. "She can start cooking
the breakfast at once."
Directly the door closed he jumped out of bed, and slipping on his
dressing-gown commenced to shave. Every now and then as he lathered his
face he stopped and stared at his reflection in the mirror. The action
was unconscious, yet, whenever he caught himself doing it he was filled
with a vague sense of uneasiness. On his way to the bathroom he glanced
at the breakfast-table to see if there were any letters for him. He
half expected one from Sir Reginald. But there was only a postcard.
As he saw and recognised the writing he picked it up eagerly. It was
from Ruby. The postmark was Paris, dated the previous morning. He
turned it over, but for a few seconds the writing was blurred by the
mist which rose before his eyes. He experienced a sudden, blessed sense
of relief. The horror which had haunted him all night went away. He
read the address at the top of the card--"Hotel de Tournon." He knew
it, a little place in the Latin Quarter patronised by artists and
students.
Had she been guilty she would never have written to him nor let him know
where she was hiding.
The postcard meant that she was not hiding, that she had not run away.
He knew that she was safe.
For the moment nothing else mattered. Not even the danger which
threatened him, the possibility of his arrest, the shame it would cast
on his father and sister.
The maid came into the room carrying the breakfast-tray, so he took the
card to the bathroom, and, locking the door, read it there:
"I arrived here about a week ago. Thought I'd let you know where I was
in case you returned to town; but I'm moving on to-morrow, so if you get
this write by return. Tell me how you are and if everything is going on
satisfactorily. I'm anxious to know. On hearing, I'll send you my next
address."
She did not sign her name or her initials.
Slowly, the feeling of relief Rupert had experienced faded away. He
read the card again as soon as he was seated at the breakfast-table.
Her anxiety to know that all was well with him and progressing
satisfactorily, caused fear to return. He told himself angrily that he
was a fool, he knew his suspicions were groundless. Of course, she
would not have written at all, not even on a postcard, if she had been
in any way connected with the altered cheque.
She would really have run away and hidden where no one could find her.
And yet.... When men stole or robbed or murdered or committed any
crime, they nearly always did so in the belief that their crime would
remain undetected and they would escape. In this case she would be the
last person anyone would suspect. No one connected with the affair knew
of their friendship or of the relations which existed between them.
Neither the Crichtons nor his father had ever heard of her.
There was a knock on the sitting-room door, and Rupert started and
hastily hid the postcard in his pocket. It was only the landlady to ask
if he had everything he required and to take any orders he might have to
give her for luncheon or dinner.
"I shall be out all day," he replied, trying to speak in his normal
voice.
"Will you be staying another night or two, or will you be returning to
Devonshire at once, sir?" she asked.
"I expect I shall go back to-morrow."
Even as he spoke he had a curious feeling that he would not return home
next day. Some dreadful sub-conscious instinct warned him that he would
not return home for a long time.
Directly the landlady had gone he looked at the postcard again, then
with unsteady hands tore it up and put it into the fire. Under normal
conditions, lover-like, he would have kept it.
In every little thing he did now he seemed to have some ulterior motive.
He found himself criticising every action and every thought.
He sipped his tea--it was half cold. He had been seated at the table
for ten minutes without realising the flight of time. The bacon lay
untouched on his plate. He nibbled a piece of bread, then lay back in
his chair staring across the room--at nothing.
The clock on the mantelshelf chimed the hour--half-past ten. It was
time he started to call on Sir Reginald Crichton. But he did not move.
During the night, during the long hours of darkness, he had made up his
mind that the woman he loved was guilty of the crime of which obviously
he was already suspected. And he had made up his mind what course of
action he would pursue.
But by the cold, clear light of day he began to reason again, once more
to argue with himself.
In imagination he saw two figures standing by his side; one on the
right, the other on the left. Duty and Love.
His duty was to tell the whole truth. To clear himself from any
possible shadow of guilt. That was his duty, because his life was not
his own any more than his name. Both, in a sense, belonged to his
father and sister.
And his sister was loved by the son of the man he was suspected of
robbing. But Love, on his left hand, told him that at all costs he must
shield and save the woman who loved him. If she had done this terrible
thing, she had done it on the inspiration of the moment; love and fear
had made her do it. She had found him seated in this very room
determined to take his life. She had entered at the critical moment.
And when she had tried to show him his folly and sin, he had told her,
calmly and quietly, that nothing could alter his determination. He had
told her he was not only thinking of himself, but of his father and
Marjorie.
And that was why she had done this thing ... To save him and those he
loved. She had not considered herself at all. It was not just because
she loved him and wanted to keep him. He remembered everything she had
said to him and he had said to her in this little room a week ago.
He put his hands up to his face. They were wet and clammy now.
Love and Duty.
He heard the front door bell ring. He started to his feet, his nerve
had gone. Again the clock chimed the hour--eleven. Sir Reginald
Crichton would be waiting for him.
He turned towards the bedroom, then stopped. There was a hurried knock
on the door and the landlady entered. He noticed that her face looked
white, her large, coarse hands were clasped together.
"There are two--two gentlemen to see you, sir. I didn't know what to
say. I told them to wait while I saw if you was at home or not."
Rupert pulled himself together. He looked at Mrs. Jones and smiled. "I
haven't finished my breakfast yet. Tell them to come up."
As he spoke the men entered the room. Rupert looked at them, and he
knew who they were and why they had come.
There was a moment's silence. He glanced at Mrs. Jones and smiled
again.
"You can go."
Very slowly she stepped back.
"I hope nothing's wrong," she stammered. "I'm sure the young gentleman's
done nothing--nothing to be ashamed of----"
"That's all right, Mrs. Jones.... Shut the door, please."
He sat down again and sipped some tea. Then he told the men to be
seated. One stepped forward. From the breast-pocket of his tunic he
took out a slip of paper and unfolded it.
"You are Rupert Allen Dale?"
"Yes. You have a warrant----" He checked himself.
The man said something else which he did not hear. There was a buzzing
in his ears. The imaginary figures on either side of his chair had
grown to an enormous size. They seemed to be hemming him in. He felt
stifled.
Now the man was reading. Reading the warrant for Rupert Allen Dale's
arrest. He caught words here and there.
"That's all right," he said when the officer had finished. "But it's a
mistake. I'm not guilty."
Again the man repeated automatically the official warning. Rupert
glanced round the room. His eyes stopped at the vase of faded flowers,
the red roses which Ruby had left for him.... Her thoughts, which she
said would always be with him, surrounding him--in the little room where
they had first known one another; known and loved one another.
Again a mist rose before his eyes. He set his teeth, telling himself
that he must play the man.
For he had made up his mind what he was going to do, and there was
nothing for it now but to do it. To do what he felt was right. Or,
right or wrong, to do what heart and head prompted.
"Do you mind if I finish my breakfast?" he said steadily.
The officer glanced at his watch. "I can give you five minutes."
Rupert made a pretence of eating. He managed to swallow a little food.
He felt he wanted to remain in this room just a few minutes more. Just
a common lodging-house room, that was all, but it seemed now as if the
greater part of his life had been passed here.
Here he had worked; here he had really lived, learnt just a little of
the meaning of life. Here love had come to him for the first time. It
was just as much or even more his home than Blackthorn Farm had been.
He swept it with his eyes. But he did not see the common cloth nor the
lodging-house breakfast service, the framed text on the wall "Home,
Sweet Home," the cheap etching of one of Landseer's pictures, or the
coloured print from the Christmas number of the _Illustrated London
News_. He did not see the hideous wallpaper with its green and gold
pattern which had long irritated him, nor the well-worn Early-Victorian
furniture. He only saw the Ghost of the Things that Had Been. The
photograph of Ruby on the bureau, the vase of dead roses, and through
the windows one of the turrets of Westminster Abbey.
The officer cleared his throat. "I'm afraid----"
Rupert rose instantly. "Will you call a cab?"
Then, to his own surprise, as much as to the surprise of the two men
waiting, he laughed. For, suddenly, the vision of an old four-wheeled
cab, a policeman on the box next the driver, and inside a man sitting
very close to a plain-clothes officer, rose before his eyes. He had
seen this four-wheeled cab and its occupants on Westminster Bridge the
day he and Ruby went to the races.
And they had both laughed then at some foolish joke he had made.
And so he laughed again now. "Get a taxi-cab, if you can," he said.
He put on his hat and coat, drew on a pair of gloves. Then, not out of
bravado, but prompted by a sentimental whim, perhaps, he drew one of the
roses from the vase and placed it in his button-hole.
"I'm ready," he said. "I don't suppose you'll want to--to handcuff me?"
The officer put his hand on his arm. "I don't think it will be
necessary, sir."
They walked downstairs together side by side.