THE SIGNAL
BY now it was past the half-hour; the arrivals dwindled to a few late
stragglers, who were promptly turned away by the beadle; the crowd of
onlookers dispersed with smiles, shrugs, and a whistle or two: only a
group of reporters stood on the lowest step, talking to one another
and glancing at Sir Paget, as though they would like to tackle him but
were doubtful of their reception. One did quietly detach himself from
the group and walked up to where my uncle stood on the top step. I saw
Sir Paget raise his hat, bow slightly, and speak one sentence. The man
bowed in return, and rejoined his fellows with a rueful smile; then all
of them made off together down the street.
My uncle was a little below middle height, but very upright and spare,
so that he looked taller than he was. He had large features—a big,
high-peaked nose, wide, thin-lipped mouth, bushy eyebrows, and very
keen blue eyes. He bore himself with marked dignity—even with some
stiffness towards the world at large, although among intimates he was
the most urbane and accessible of men. His long experience in affairs
had given him imperturbable composure; even at this moment he did not
look the least put out. His manner and speech were modeled on the old
school of public men—formal and elaborate when the occasion demanded,
but easy, offhand, and familiar in private: to hear him was sometimes
like listening to behind-the-scenes utterances of, say, Lord Melbourne
or the great Duke which have come down to us in memoirs of their period.
When we went up to him, he nodded to me and gave his hand to Valdez.
He had not seen him for two years, but he only said, “Ah, you here,
Arsenio?” and went on, “Well, boys, here’s a damned kettle of fish! The
girl’s cut and run, by Gad, she has!”
Valdez muttered “Good Lord!” or “Good Heavens!” or something of that
kind. I found nothing to say, but the face I had seen at the taxi
window flashed before my eyes again.
“Went out at ten this morning—for a walk, she said, before dressing.
And she never came back. Half an hour ago a boy-messenger left a note
for her mother. ‘I can’t do it, Mother. So I’ve gone.’—That was all.
Aunt Bertha had been called in to assist at the dressing-up, and she
sent word to me. Mrs. Knyvett collapsed, of course.”
“And—and Waldo? Is he here?” asked Valdez. “I’d like to see him and—and
say what I could.”
“I got him away by the back door—to avoid those press fellows: he
consented to go back to the hotel and wait for me there.”
“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” said Valdez, who wore an air of
embarrassment quite natural under the circumstances. He was—or had
been—an intimate of the family; but this was an extremely intimate
family affair. “I called in Mount Street three days ago,” he went on,
“and she seemed quite—well, normal, you know; very bright and happy,
and all that.”
Sir Paget did not speak. Valdez looked at his watch. “Well, you’ll want
to be by yourselves, and I’ve got an appointment.”
“Good-by, my boy. You must come and see us presently. You’re looking
very well, Arsenio. Good-by. Don’t you go, Julius, I want you.”
Arsenio walked down the steps very quickly—indeed, he nearly ran—and
got into a taxi which was standing by the curb. He turned and waved his
hand towards us as he got in. My uncle was frowning and pursing up his
thin, supple lips. He took my arm and we came down the steps together.
“There’s the devil to pay with Waldo,” he said, pressing his hand on my
sleeve. “It was all I could do to make him promise to wait till we’d
talked it over.”
“What does he want to do?”
“He’s got one of his rages. You know ‘em? They don’t come often, but
when they do—well, it’s damned squally weather! And he looks on her as
as good as his wife, you see.” He glanced up at me—I am a good deal the
taller—with a very unwonted look of distress and apprehension. “He’s
not master of himself. It would never do for him to go after them in
the state he’s in now.”
“After—_them?_”
“That’s his view; I incline to it myself, too.”
“She was alone in the taxi.” I blurted it out, more to myself than to
him, and quite without thinking.
I told him of my encounter; it had seemed a delusion, but need not seem
so now.
“Driving past Marlborough House into the Mall? Looks like Victoria,
doesn’t it? Any luggage on the cab?”
“I didn’t notice, sir.”
“Then you’re an infernal fool, Julius,” said Sir Paget peevishly.
I was not annoyed, though I felt sure that my uncle himself would have
thought no more about luggage than I had, if he had seen the face as I
had seen it. But I felt shy about describing the flush on a girl’s face
and the sparkle in her eyes; that was more Valdez’s line of country
than mine. So I said nothing, and we fell into a dreary silence which
lasted till we got to the hotel.
I went upstairs behind Sir Paget in some trepidation. I had, for
years back, heard of Waldo’s “white rages”; I had seen only one, and
I had not liked it. Waldo was not, to my thinking, a Rillington: we
are a dark, spare race. He was a Fleming—stoutly built, florid and
rather ruddy in the face. But the passion seemed to suck up his blood;
it turned him white. It was rather curious and uncanny, while it
lasted. The poor fellow used to be very much ashamed of himself when
it was over; but while it was on—well, he did not seem to be ashamed
of anything he did or said. He was dangerous—to himself and others.
Really, that night at Cragsfoot, I had thought that he was going to
knock Valdez’s head off, though the ostensible cause of quarrel was
nothing more serious—or perhaps I should say nothing less abstract—than
the Legitimist principle, of which Valdez, true to his paternal
tradition, elected to pose as the champion and brought on himself a
bitter personal attack, in which such words as hypocrites, parasites,
flunkeys, toadeaters, etc., etc., figured vividly. And all this before
the ladies, and in the presence of his father, whose absolute authority
over him he was at all normal moments eager to acknowledge.
“I’m going to tell him that you think you saw her this morning,” said
Sir Paget, pausing outside the door of the room. “He has a right to
know; and it’s not enough really to give him any clew that might
be—well, too easy!” My uncle gave me a very wry smile as he spoke.
Waldo was older now; perhaps he had greater self-control, perhaps the
magnitude of his disaster forbade any fretful exhibition of fury. It
was a white rage—indeed, he was pale as a ghost—but he was quiet;
the lightning struck inwards. He received his father’s assurance that
everything had been managed as smoothly as possible—with the minimum
of publicity—without any show of interest; he was beyond caring about
publicity or ridicule, I think. On the other hand, it may be that these
things held too high a place in Sir Paget’s mind; he almost suggested
that, if the thing could be successfully hushed up, it would be much
the same as if it had never happened: perhaps the diplomatic instinct
sets that way. Waldo’s concern stood rooted in the thing itself. This
is not to say that his pride was not hit, as well as his love; but it
was the blow that hurt him, not the noise that the blow might make.
Probably Sir Paget saw this for himself before many minutes had passed;
for he turned to me, saying, “You’d better tell him your story, for
what it’s worth, Julius.”
Waldo listened to me with a new look of alertness, but the story seemed
to come to less than he had expected. His interest flickered out again,
and he listened with an impatient frown to Sir Paget’s conjectures as
to the fugitive’s destination. But he put two or three questions to me.
“Did she recognize you? See you, I mean—bow, or nod, or anything?”
“Nothing at all; I don’t think she saw me. She passed me in a second,
of course.”
“It must have been Lucinda, of course. You couldn’t have been mistaken?”
“I thought I was at the time, because it seemed impossible. Of course,
now—as things stand—there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been
Lucinda, and no doubt it was.”
“How was she looking?”
I had to attempt that description, after all! “Very animated;
very—well, eager, you know. She was flushed; she looked—well, excited.”
“You’re dead sure that she was alone?”
“Oh, yes, I’m positive as to that.”
“Well, it doesn’t help us much,” observed Sir Paget. “Even if anything
could help us! For the present I think I shouldn’t mention it to any
one else—except, of course, Mrs. Knyvett and Aunt Bertha. No more talk
of any kind than we can help!”
“Besides you two, I’ve only mentioned it to Valdez; and, when I did
that, I didn’t believe that the girl was Lucinda.”
“Monkey Valdez! Did he come to the—to the church?” Waldo asked quickly.
“I didn’t know he was in London, or even in England.”
“He’s been in town about a fortnight, I gathered. He’d seen the
Knyvetts, he said, and I suppose they asked him to the wedding.”
“You met him there—and told him about this—this seeing Lucinda?”
“I didn’t meet him at the church. He lunched with me before and we
walked there together.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, only some half-joking remark that you couldn’t take any other girl
for Lucinda. He didn’t seem to attach any importance to it.”
Waldo’s eyes were now set steadily on my face. “Did you tell him at
lunch, or as you walked to the church, or at the church?”
“As a matter of fact, before lunch. I mentioned the matter—that was
half in joke too—as soon as I met him in the street.”
Sir Paget was about to speak, but Waldo silenced him imperiously. “Half
a minute, Father. I want to know about this. Where did you meet—and
when?”
“As soon as the taxi—the one with the girl in it—had gone by. I had to
wait for it to go by. I crossed over to St. James’s Street and stopped
to light a cigarette. Just as I was getting out a match, he spoke to
me.”
“Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know; I didn’t see him till he spoke to me.”
“He might have been standing at the corner there—or near it?”
“Yes, for all I know—or just have reached there, or just crossed from
the other corner of St. James’s Street. I really don’t know. Why does
it matter, Waldo?”
“You’re dense, man, you’re dense!”
“Gently, Waldo, old boy!” Sir Paget interposed softly. He was standing
with his back to the fireplace, smoking cigarette after cigarette, but
quite quietly, not in a fluster. It was plain that he had begun to
follow the scent which Waldo was pursuing so keenly.
“I beg your pardon, Julius. But look here. If he was at either corner
of the street, or on the refuge in the middle—there is one, I think—he
may well have been there a moment before—standing there, waiting
perhaps. The taxi that passed you would have passed him. He would have
seen the girl just as you saw her.”
“By Jove, that’s true! But he’d have told me if he had.”
“He didn’t say he hadn’t?”
I searched my memory. “No, he didn’t say that. But if—well, if, as you
seem to suggest, he was there in order to see her, and did see her——”
“It was funny enough your happening to see her. It would be a lot
funnier coincidence if he just happened to be there, and just happened
to see her too! And just as funny if he was there and didn’t see her,
eh?”
“But how could he carry it off as he did?”
“My dear chap, the Monkey would carry off a load of bricks that hit him
on the head! There’s nothing in that.”
“What’s your theory, Waldo?” Sir Paget asked quietly.
Waldo sat silent for a full minute. He seemed by now to be over the
first fit of his rage; there was color in his cheeks again. But his
eyes were bright, intent, and hard. He seemed to be piecing together
the theory for which his father asked him—piecing it together so as to
give it to us in a complete form. Waldo was not quick-witted, but he
had a good brain. If he got hold of a problem, he would worry it to a
solution.
“I’ve written to her every day,” he began slowly. “And she’s answered,
quite affectionately—she’s never offensive; she’s given me no hint that
she meant to go back on me like this. The day before yesterday I wired
to her to know if I might come up; she wired: ‘For pity’s sake don’t. I
am too busy. Wait till the day.’”
“Nothing much in that,” said his father. “She’d put it that
way—playfully.”
“Nothing much if it stood alone,” Waldo agreed. “But suppose she was
struggling between two influences—mine and his.” For a moment his
voice faltered. “He’s always been against me—always—ever since that
time at Cragsfoot.” I heard a swallow in his throat, and he went on
again steadily. “Never mind that. Look at it as a case, a problem,
impersonally. A girl is due to marry a man; another is besieging her.
She can’t make up her mind—can’t make it up even on the very day
before the wedding; or, if you like, won’t admit to herself that she
has really resolved to break her promise, to be false to the man to
whom she is already——” Again there was a falter in his voice—“already
really a wife, so far as anything short of—short of the actual thing
itself—can make her——”
He came to a sudden stop; he was unable to finish; he had invited us to
a dispassionate consideration of the case as a case, as a problem; in
the end he was not equal to laying it before us dispassionately. “Oh,
you see, Father!” he groaned.
“Yes,” said Sir Paget. “I see the thing—on your hypothesis. She
couldn’t make up her mind—or wouldn’t admit that she had. So she told
the other man——”
“Valdez?”
“Yes, Julius. Arsenio Valdez. She told Arsenio to be at a certain spot
at a certain time—a time when, if she were going to keep her promise,
she would be getting ready for her wedding. ‘Be at the corner of St.
James’s Street at one o’clock.’ That would be it, wouldn’t it? If I
drive by in a taxi, alone, it means yes to you, no to him. If I don’t,
it means the opposite.’ That’s what you mean, Waldo?”
Waldo nodded assent; but I could not readily accept the idea.
“You mean, when I saw her she’d just seen him, and when I saw him, he’d
just seen her?”
“Wouldn’t that account for the animation and excitement you noticed in
her face—for the flush that struck you? She had just given the signal;
she’d just”—he smiled grimly—“crossed her Rubicon, Julius.”
“But why wasn’t he with her? Why didn’t he go with her? Why did he come
to the wedding? Why did he go through that farce?”
Sir Paget shrugged his shoulders. “Some idea of throwing us off the
scent and getting a clear start, probably.”
“Yes, it might have been that,” I admitted. “And it does account
for—for the way she looked. But the idea never crossed my mind. There
wasn’t a single thing in his manner to raise any suspicion of the sort.
If you’re right, it was a wonderful bit of acting.”
Waldo turned to me—he had been looking intently at his father while Sir
Paget expounded the case—with a sharp movement. “Did Monkey ask for me
when he came to the church?”
“Yes, I think he did. Yes, he did. He said he’d like to see you and—and
say something, you know.”
“I thought so! That would have been his moment! He wanted to see how
I took it, damn him! Coming to the church was his idea. He may have
persuaded her that it was a good ruse, a clever trick. But really he
wanted to see me—in the dirt. Monkey Valdez all over!”
I believe that I positively shivered at the bitterness of his anger
and hatred. They had been chums, pals, bosom friends. And I loved—I
had loved—them both. Sir Paget, too, had made almost a son of Arsenio
Valdez.
“And for that—he shall pay,” said Waldo, rising to his feet. “Doesn’t
he deserve to pay for that, Father?”
“What do you propose to do, Waldo?”
“Catch him and—give him his deserts.”
“He’ll have left the country before you can catch him.”
“I can follow him. And I shall. I can find him, never fear!”
“You must think of her,” I ventured to suggest.
“Afterwards. As much as you like—afterwards.”
“But by the time you find them, they’ll have—I mean, they’ll be——”
“Hold your tongue, for God’s sake, Julius!”
I turned to Sir Paget. “If he insists on going, let me go with him,
sir,” I said.
“Yes, that would be—wise,” he assented, but, as I thought, rather
absently.
Waldo gave a laugh. “All right, Julius. If you fancy the job, come
along and pick up the pieces! There’ll be one of us to bury, at all
events.” I suppose that I made some instinctive gesture of protest, for
he added: “She was mine—mine.”
Sir Paget looked from him to me, and back again from me to him.
“You must neither of you leave the country,” he said.