Late though it was when Philip reached his rooms, he found on his writing
table a message addressed to him from the telephone call office in the
building. He tore it open:
"Kindly ring up Number 551 Avenue immediately you return, whatever the
time."
He glanced at the clock, hesitated, and finally approaching the
instrument called up Elizabeth's number. For a few moments he waited. The
silence in the streets outside seemed somehow to have become communicated
to the line, the space between them emptied of all the jarring sounds of
the day. It was across a deep gulf of silence that he heard at last her
voice.
"Yes? Is that you, Philip?"
"I am here," he answered. "I am sorry it is so late."
"Have you only just come in?"
"This moment."
"Has that girl kept you out till now?" she asked reprovingly.
"I couldn't help it," he replied. "It was her first night over here. I
took her to Churchill's for supper."
"Is everything--all right with her? She doesn't mean to make trouble?"
The unconscious irony of the question almost forced a smile to his lips.
"I don't think so," he answered. "She is thoroughly excited at the idea
of possessing the money. I believe she thought that Douglas would have
drawn it all. She is going straight to the bank, early in the morning, to
get hold of it."
"What about the man Dane?"
"He has gone to Chicago. He won't be back for several days."
There was a moment's pause.
"Have you anything to ask me?" she enquired.
"Nothing."
"I have had the most extraordinary letter from Sylvanus. You and he have
met."
"Yes," he admitted.
"Philip, we must make up our minds."
"You mean that you must make up your mind," he answered gently.
There was another silence. Then she spoke a little abruptly.
"I wonder whether you really love me, Philip.... No! don't, please--don't
try to answer such a foolish question. Go to bed and sleep well now.
You've had a trying day. Good night, dear!"
He had barely time to say good night before he heard the ring off. He set
down the receiver. Somehow, there was a sensation of relief in having
been, although indirectly, in touch with her. The idea of the letter from
Sylvanus Power affected him only hazily. The crowded events of the day
had somehow or other dulled his power of concentrated thought. He felt a
curious sense of passivity. He undressed without conscious effort, closed
his eyes, and slept until he was awakened by the movements of the valet
about the room.
Philip was still seated over his breakfast, reading the paper and
finishing his coffee, when the door was thrown suddenly open, and
Beatrice entered tumultuously. She laughed at his air of blank surprise.
"You booby!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't help coming in to wish you good
morning. I have just discovered that my hotel is quite close by here.
Lucky, isn't it, except that I am going to move. Good morning, Mr.
Serious Face!" she went on, leaning towards him, her hands behind her,
her lips held out invitingly.
He set down his paper, kissed her on the cheek, and looked inside the
coffeepot.
"Have you had your breakfast?"
"Hours ago. I was too excited to sleep when I got to bed, and yet I feel
so well. Philip, where's Wall Street? Won't you take me there?"
He shook his head.
"I am expecting a visitor, and I have piles of work to do."
She made a grimace.
"I know I shall be terrified when I march up to the counter of the bank
and say I've come for twenty thousand pounds!"
"You must transfer it to a current account," he explained, "in your own
name. Have you any papers with you--for identification, I mean?"
She nodded.
"I've thought of all that. I've a photograph and a passport and some
letters. It isn't that I'm really afraid, but I hate being alone, and you
look so nice, Philip dear. I always loved you in blue serge, and I adore
your eyeglass. You really have been clever in the small things you have
done to change your appearance. Perhaps you are right not to come,
though," she went on, looking in the mirror. "These clothes are the best
I could get at a minute's notice. Mr. Dane was really quite nice, but he
hadn't the least idea how long it takes a woman to prepare for a journey.
Never mind, you wait until I get back here this afternoon! I am going
round to all the shops, and I am going to bring the clothes I buy away
with me. Then I am going to lock myself in my room and change everything.
I am going to have some of those funny little patent shoes, and silk
stockings--and, oh, well, all sorts of things you wouldn't understand
about. And do try and cheer up before I get back, please, Philip. Twelve
months ago you would have thought all this Paradise. Oh, I can't stop a
moment longer!" she wound up, throwing away the cigarette she had taken
from the box and lit. "I'm off now. And, Philip, don't you dare to go out
of these rooms until I come back!"
She turned towards the door--she was half-way there, in fact--when they
were both aware of a ring at the bell. She stopped short and looked
around enquiringly.
"Who's that?" she whispered.
Philip glanced at the clock. It was too early for Elizabeth.
"No idea," he answered. "Come in."
The door opened and closed. Philip sat as though turned to stone.
Beatrice remained in the middle of the room, her fingers clasping the
back of a chair. Mr. Dane, hat in hand, had entered.
"Good morning, Miss Wenderley!" he said. "Good morning, Mr. Ware!"
Philip said nothing. He had a horrible feeling that this was some trap.
Beatrice at first could only stare at the unexpected visitor. His sudden
appearance had disconcerted her.
"I thought you were in Chicago, Mr. Dane!" she exclaimed at last.
"My plans were altered at the last moment," he told her. "No, I won't sit
down, thanks," he added, waving away the chair towards which Philip had
pointed. "As a matter of fact, I haven't been out of New York. I decided
to wait and hear your news, Miss Wenderley."
"Well, you're going to be disappointed, then," she said bluntly. "I
haven't any."
Mr. Dane was politely incredulous. He was also a little stern.
"You mean," he protested, "that you cannot identify this gentleman--that
you don't recognise him as Mr. Douglas Romilly?"
"I cannot identify him," she repeated. "He is not Mr. Douglas Romilly."
"I have brought you all this way, then, to confront you with a stranger?"
"Absolutely," she insisted. "It wasn't my fault. I didn't want to come."
Mr. Dane's expression suddenly changed. His hard knuckles were pressed
upon the table, he leaned forward towards her. Even his tone was altered.
His blandness had all vanished, his grey eyes were as hard as steel.
"A stranger!" he exclaimed derisively. "Yet you come here to his rooms
early in the evening, you stay here, you go to the theatre with him the
same night, you go on to supper at Churchill's and stay there till three
o'clock in the morning, you are here with him again at nine o'clock--at
breakfast time. A stranger, Miss Wenderley? Think again! A story like
this might do for Scotland Yard. It won't do for us out here."
She knew at once that she had fallen into a trap, but she was not wholly
dismayed. The position was one which they had half anticipated. She told
herself that he was bluffing, that it was simply the outburst of a
disappointed man. On the whole, she behaved extraordinarily well.
"You brought me out here," she said, "to confront me with this man--to
identify him, if I could, as Mr. Douglas Romilly. Well, he isn't Mr.
Douglas Romilly, and that's all there is about it. As to my going out
with him last evening, I can't see that that's any concern of any one. He
was kind to me, cheered me up when he saw that I was disappointed; I told
him my whole story and that I didn't know a soul in New York, and we
became friends. That's all there is about it."
"That so?" the detective observed, with quiet sarcasm. "You seem to have
a knack of making friends pretty easily, Miss Wenderley."
"It is not your business if I have," she snapped.
"Well, we'll pass that, then," he conceded. "I haven't quite finished
with you yet, though. There are just one or two more points I am going to
put before you--and this gentleman who is not Mr. Douglas Romilly," he
added, with a little bow to Philip. "The first is this. There is one fact
which we can all three take for granted, because I know it--I can prove
it a hundred times over--and you both know it; and that is that the Mr.
Merton Ware of to-day travelled from Liverpool on the _Elletania_ as Mr.
Douglas Romilly, occupied a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as Mr.
Douglas Romilly, and absconded from there, leaving his luggage and his
identity behind him, to blossom out in an attic of the Monmouth tenement
house as Mr. Merton Ware, a young writer of plays. Now I don't think,"
Mr. Dane went on, leaning a little further over the table, "that the Mr.
Douglas Romilly who has disappeared was ever capable of writing a play. I
don't think he was a man of talent at all. I don't think he could have
written, for instance, 'The House of Shams.' Let us, however, leave the
subject of Douglas Romilly for a moment. Let us go a little further
back--to Detton Magna, let us say. Curiously enough, there was another
young man who disappeared from that little Derbyshire village about the
same time, who has never been heard of since. His name, too, was Romilly.
I gathered, during the course of my recent enquiries, that he was a poor
relation, a cousin of Mr. Douglas Romilly."
"He was drowned in the canal," Beatrice faltered. "His body has been
found."
"A body has been found," Mr. Dane corrected, "but it was in an
unrecognisable state. It has been presumed to be the body of Philip
Romilly, the poor relation, a starving young art teacher in London
with literary aspirations--but I hold that that presumption is a mistake.
I believe," the detective went on, his eyes fastened upon Philip, his
voice a little raised, "that it was the body of Douglas Romilly, the shoe
manufacturer, which was fished out from the canal, and that you, sir, are
Mr. Philip Romilly, late art-school teacher of Kensington, who murdered
Douglas Romilly on the banks of the canal, stole his money and
pocketbook, assumed his identity in Liverpool and on the _Elletania_, and
became what you are now--Mr. Merton Ware."
Philip threw away the cigarette which he had been smoking, and, leaning
over the box, carefully selected another. He tapped it against the table
and lit it.
"Mr. Dane," he said coolly, "I shall always be grateful to you for your
visit this morning, for you have given me what is the most difficult
thing in the whole world to stumble up against--an excellent idea for a
new play. Apart from that, you seem, for so intelligent a man, to have
wasted a good deal of your time and to have come, what we should call in
English, a cropper. I will take you into my confidence so far as to admit
that I am not particularly anxious to disclose my private history, but if
ever the necessity should arise I shall do so without hesitation. Until
that time comes, you must forgive me if I choose to preserve a certain
reticence as to my antecedents."
Mr. Dane, in the moment's breathless silence which followed, acknowledged
to himself the perpetration of a rare mistake. He had selected Philip to
bear the brunt of his attack, believing him to be possessed of the weaker
nerve. Beatrice, who at the end of his last speech had sunk into a chair,
white and terrified, an easy victim, had rallied now, inspired by
Philip's composure.
"You deny, then, that you are Mr. Philip Romilly?" the detective asked.
"I never heard of the fellow in my life," Philip replied pleasantly, "but
don't go, Mr. Dane. You can't imagine how interesting this is to me. You
have sent me a most charming acquaintance," he added, bowing to Beatrice,
"and you have provided me with what I can assure you is almost
pathetically scarce in these days--a new and very dramatic idea. Take a
seat, won't you, and chat with us a little longer? Tell us how you came
to think of all this? I have always held that the workings of a
criminologist's brain must be one of the most interesting studies in
life."
Mr. Dane smiled enigmatically.
"Ah!" he protested, "you mustn't ask me to disclose all my secrets."
"You wouldn't care to tell us a little about your future intentions?"
Philip enquired.
Mr. Dane shook his head.
"It is very kind of you, Mr. Merton Ware," he confessed, "to let me down
so gently. We all make mistakes, of course. As to my future intentions,
well, I am not quite sure about them. You see, this isn't really my job
at all. It isn't up to me to hunt out English criminals, so long as they
behave themselves in this city. If an extradition order or anything of
that sort came my way, it would, of course, be different."
"Why not lay this interesting theory of yours before the authorities at
Scotland Yard?" Philip suggested. "I am sure they would listen with
immense interest to any report from you."
"That's some idea, certainly," the detective admitted, taking up his hat
from the table. "For the present I'll wish you both good morning--or
shall I say an revoir?"
"We may look for the pleasure of another visit from you, then?" Philip
enquired politely.
The detective faced them from the doorway.
"Sir," he said to Philip, "I admire your nerve, and I admire the nerve of
your old sweetheart, Miss Wenderley. I am afraid I cannot promise you,
however, that this will be my last visit."
The door closed behind him. They heard the shrill summons of the bell,
the arrival of the lift, the clanging of the iron gate, and its
subsequent descent. Then Beatrice turned her head. Philip was still
smoking serenely, standing with his back to the mantelpiece, his hands in
his pockets. She rose and threw her arms around him.
"Philip!" she cried. "Why, you are wonderful! You are marvellous! You
make me ashamed. It was only for a moment that I lost my nerve, and you
saved us. Oh, what idiots we were! Of course he meant to watch--that's
why he told me he was going to Chicago. The beast!"
"He seems to have got hold of the idea all right, doesn't he?" Philip
muttered.
"Pooh!" she exclaimed encouragingly. "I know a little about the law--so
do you. He hasn't any proof--he never can have any proof. No one will
ever be able to swear that the body which they picked out of the canal
was the body of Douglas Romilly. There wasn't a soul who saw you do it. I
am the only person in the world who could supply the motive, and I--I
shall never be any use to them. Don't you see, Philip?... I shall be your
wife! A wife can't give evidence against her husband! You'll be safe,
dear--quite safe."
He withdrew a little from her embrace.
"Beatrice," he reminded her, "there is another tragedy beyond the one
with which Dane threatens us. I do not wish to marry you."
She suddenly blazed up.
"Because--?"
"Not because of any reason in the world," he interrupted, "except that I
love Elizabeth Dalstan."
"Does she want to marry you?"
He was suddenly an altered person. Some of his confidence seemed to
desert him. He shook his head doubtfully.
"I am not sure. Sometimes I think that she would. Sometimes I fancy that
it is only a great kindness of heart, an immense sympathy, a kind of
protective sympathy, which has made her so good to me."
She looked at herself steadily for a moment in the mirror. Then she
pulled down her veil.
"Philip," she said, "we find out the truth when we are up against things
like this. I used to think I could live alone. I can't. Whatever you may
think of me, I was fond of Douglas. It wasn't only for the sake of the
money and the comfort. He was kind, and in his way he understood. And
then, you know, misery didn't agree with you. You were often, even in
those few hours we spent together, very hard and cold. Anyway," she
added, with a little tightening of the lips, "I am going to get my money
now. No one can stop that. You stay here and think it over. It would be
better to marry me, Philip, and be safe, than to have the fear of that
man Dane always before you. And wait--wait till you see me when I come
back!" she went on, her spirits rapidly rising as she moved towards the
door. "You'll change your mind then, Philip. You were always so
impressionable, weren't you? A little touch of colour, the perfume of
flowers, a single soft word spoken at the right moment--anything that
took your fancy made such a difference. Well--just wait till I come
back!"
She closed the door. Philip heard her descend in the lift. He moved to
the window and watched for her on the pavement. She appeared there in a
moment or two and waited whilst the boy whistled for a taxicab, her face
expectantly upraised, one hand resting lightly on her bosom, just over
the spot where her pocketbook lay.