The grey lady stood there, with her hands pressed to her heart, her
great pathetic eyes dilated with a curious fear. It was a long time
before she spoke, though it was easy to see that she had penetrated
Berrington's disguise. But then, he had spoken in his natural voice,
which made all the difference. It seemed to him that the grey lady would
have fallen had he not put out his hand and supported her slender frame.
"Wait a bit," Berrington whispered. "Don't try to talk yet. You are
surprised to see me here, Mary. And yet it is natural enough--you must
know that I have been seeking you for years. Why have you carefully
avoided me all this time?"
A little colour crept into the cheeks of the grey lady. Field had drawn
into the background with a feeling that he was not wanted here. Yet he
was not pleased at the unexpected contretemps. The detective had mapped
out a line for himself, and he desired now to bring it to a successful
conclusion. And yet the interruption might not altogether be without its
good results. Field had, of course, already heard a great deal about the
grey lady, and he did not doubt that the pathetic figure standing there
in the doorway was the same person.
"You will not forget to be cautious," he whispered.
The grey lady started. She had not anticipated that anybody else was
there.
"Who is that?" she asked. "And how did you get here?"
"Well, we got into the house by the pantry window," Berrington
explained. He had himself well in hand again by this time. "I am afraid
that we must have some kind of an understanding, Mary. Would you mind,
Inspector?"
Field was understood to say that he had no objection so long as it did
not lead to anything rash. He began to wish that he had half a dozen or
so of his most trusted men with him. Meanwhile his hands were tied and
he could do no more than wait developments. He had naturally a keen
desire to know what was going on behind the closed door of the
dining-room, but on that score he would have to possess his soul in
patience for the time. He had the comfortable assurance that he could
bag his birds, one by one, later on.
"Don't go out of earshot and don't betray yourself, sir," he said.
Berrington gave the desired assurances and he and his companion passed
quietly across the hall to a morning room beyond. This was at the back
of the house, with a French window that gave on to the lawn. The grey
lady softly undid the catch.
"That will be an easy way out for you, if necessary," she said. "If
anybody comes in here you can slip out into the garden. And now, Philip,
how did you find me?"
Berrington made no reply for the moment. He was looking at the pale
features of his companion with something like a lovelight in his eyes.
Looked at closely it was a beautiful face, despite its sorrow and the
grey hair that crowned it. Berrington recollected the grey lady as a
merry laughing girl, who seemed not to have a single care in the world.
His mind was very far away from Audley Place at that moment.
"How long since we last met, Mary!" he said.
The woman sighed and her eyes filled with tears. Berrington had struck a
tender cord.
"Four months, four years, four centuries!" she said with a passionate
catch of her voice. "You are not angry with me, Phil? I can see you are
not angry with me."
"My dearest, no. When I look at you I can feel no anger in my heart
against you. My God, what you must have suffered! The same and yet so
different. All your colour has gone, the laughter from your eyes, the
tender lines of your mouth. And yet at the outside your years cannot be
more than thirty."
"Thirty-one," the other said mournfully. "And yet I seem to have lived
such a long, long life. You think that I treated you very badly, Phil?"
"My dear Mary, how could I come to any other conclusion? You were
engaged to me, we were going to be married, the very hour was fixed.
Then you disappeared utterly, leaving nothing more than a note to say
that I was to forget you and not seek you. I was to think of you as
being utterly unworthy to become a good man's wife."
"If you had done so a great deal of trouble and anxiety would have been
saved, Phil."
"Yes, but I declined to do anything of the kind," Berrington said
eagerly. "I knew that in some way you were sacrificing yourself for
others. And when I found that your brother had gone, I felt absolutely
certain of it."
"Did you discover anything about him?" the grey lady asked anxiously.
"Dear Mary, there was nothing fresh to discover. Your love for Carl made
you blind to his faults. Did we not all know what he was! Every man in
India who knew him could have told you. It is a painful thing to say,
but he was an utter blackguard. But for influence, he had been expelled
the Civil Service long before he chose to vanish. It used to madden me
to see the way in which he traded upon your affection for him. Oh, he
was a bad man."
The red blood flamed into the cheeks of the listener. Berrington could
see her hands clasped together.
"You are wrong," she said, "oh, I am sure you are wrong. Carl was a
little selfish, perhaps, but then he was so brilliantly clever, so much
sought after. And when he fell in love with--with the right woman, I was
entirely happy. He was passionately in love, Philip."
Berrington gave a dissenting gesture. There was a bitter smile on his
lips.
"Carl never cared for anyone but himself," he said. "It was a physical
impossibility."
"Indeed you do him wrong, Phil. He was very much in earnest with Sir
Charles Darryll's ward who came out with her brother and his wife to
Simla. All was going brilliantly when a rival came on the scene. You
were not in Simla at the time, and I daresay if you had been you would
never have heard anything about that unhappy business. Whether the rival
used his power unscrupulously or not I never knew, but there was a
quarrel one day, out riding. Even Carl refused to speak of it. But his
rival was never seen again, and from that day to this Carl has been a
physical wreck. He----"
"You don't mean to say," Berrington burst out, "you don't mean to say
your brother is the Carl Sartoris who is master of this house?"
The woman hesitated, stammered, her face had grown very pale.
"You seem to know more than I imagined," she said. "Perhaps I shall
understand better when I know what brings you here. But Carl Sartoris is
my brother."
"So he has gone back to his mother's maiden name! Does an honest man
want to do anything of that kind? But for the expression of your face,
which is sweet and fair as ever, I should say that you were in this
business. But I have only to glance at you to feel assured on that
point. You say that your brother is more sinned against than sinning.
Can you look me in the face and say that he has no past behind him, that
he is not making a mystery now?"
The girl's face grew pale and she cast down her eyes. Berrington kept
down his rising passion.
"You cannot answer me," he went on. "You find it impossible to do so.
You are running great risks for a worthless creature who is as crooked
in mind as he is in body."
"Oh, don't," Mary Sartoris said. "Don't say such terrible things,
please; they hurt me."
"My dear girl, I am sorry, but it is best to state these things plainly.
You may not know everything, but you can guess a great deal. Otherwise,
why did you try and see Sir Charles Darryll the night before his death,
why did you write him the note that was found in his bedroom? And
again, why did you stay in the hotel that night and try to warn the
servants on night duty? You see, Mary, it is quite useless to try to
keep the secret from me."
Mary Sartoris looked at the speaker with dilated eyes. For a moment she
could not speak. And yet there were no signs of guilty terror on her
face.
"I did not imagine that you knew so much," she said.
"I know more, but I would far rather know a great deal more," Berrington
admitted. "Mind you, matters are out of my hands and the police are hot
on the track. Why do you not confess everything and save yourself, Mary?
For instance, you stand a chance of being placed in the dock on a charge
of being concerned in the disappearance of Sir Charles Darryll's body."
"I am as innocent of that as the grave, Phil. I only did my best to try
to prevent----"
"Oh, I know, I know," Berrington said impatiently. "But the fact remains
that the body of Sir Charles Darryll was stolen for some vile purpose,
and that the culprits are in grave danger. Your brother is at the bottom
of this affair; he it was who drove up to the _Royal Palace Hotel_ in
that black hansom that took the body away. And yet you say that that
man----"
"Is more sinned against than sinning," Mary Sartoris cried. "I say it
still. Of course you regard me as blind and foolish, but then you do not
know everything."
"It is not a matter of what I know," Berrington protested. "Of course I
should believe every word that you tell me. But the police will take
another view of the matter altogether. Do you know what is going on
behind that closed door yonder?"
The girl shuddered and hid her face in her hands. She seemed afraid to
say anything. Berrington asked the question twice before he could get
any reply.
"Indeed I don't," she said. "I am not altogether in my brother's
confidence. I ventured to say something to him to-day and he was
dreadfully angry. He locked me in my bedroom, but I managed to get the
door of the dressing-room open and escaped that way. I was going to
interfere when I saw you. There seem to be other people there."
"Oh, there are," Berrington said bitterly. "There are two adventurers,
called Reggie and Cora, who very recently passed at the _Royal Palace
Hotel_ for General Gastang and Countess de la Moray. There is the
scoundrel Stephen Richford who tricked Beatrice Darryll into marrying
him, and then there is also a ruffian called Dr. James Bentwood. What
was that?"
"It seemed to me like a cry of pain," Mary Sartoris said in a frozen
whisper.
It was very like a cry of pain indeed, a fluttering, feeble cry ending
in a moaning protest. Acting on the impulse of the moment, and
forgetting Inspector Field altogether, Berrington crossed the hall and
laid his hand on the knob of the door. Mary Sartoris darted after him,
her face white with fear, and terror and anxiety in her accent.
"Don't do it," she said, "pray restrain yourself. There are mysteries
here, strange, horrible mysteries that come from the East, of which you
know nothing, despite the years you have passed in India. Oh, the danger
that lies there!"
In spite of his courage, Berrington hesitated. He might have recovered
his self-possession and returned to the drawing-room, only the strange
feeble cry of pain was raised again. It was more than flesh and blood
could stand, and in a sudden passion Berrington opened the door. He
would have entered resolutely, but Mary pulled him back.
"The mischief has been done," she said hurriedly. "If anyone has to
suffer let it be me. I have brought you to this pass and I must get you
out as best I can. Carl, what is this?"
The girl thrust herself past Berrington who stood in the shade of the
doorway. There was a sudden snarling, with a cry from the girl, as a
blow tingled on her cheek. Somebody laughed as if approving this
cowardly business.
With a cry of rage Berrington darted into the room. Instantly a pair of
strong hands were laid on him and he was borne backwards. Just for a
moment he lashed out freely and successfully and then the weight of
numbers was too much for him. The dining-room door was closed again.