Haslemere snatched the words from his mouth. "But you telegraphed.
You came here----"
"We didn't telegraph, my lord," the detective respectfully contradicted
him.
Violet gave a cry, and put her hands up to her head, staring at the
trio so subtly altered. As before, I was a back-ground figure. I said
nothing, but I thought a good deal. The trick jokingly suggested by me
had actually been played.
At first neither Violet nor Haslemere would believe the dreadful thing.
It was too bad to be true. These, not the other three, were the
impostors! Violet staggered towards the bell to call the servants, but
Combes showed his police badge: and between the trio it was soon made
clear that the Marquis and Marchioness of Haslemere had let themselves
be utterly bamboozled. They had of their own free will handed over to
a pack of thieves nearly one hundred thousand pounds worth of famous
jewels: not even their own, but other people's jewels entrusted to them
for charity!
There was, however, not a moment to waste in repinings. The local
police were warned by telephone; the escaping car and chauffeur were
described, and the genuine detectives, with the jewel-expert, dashed
off in pursuit of their fraudulent understudies. Meantime, while the
others talked, I reflected; and an astonishing idea began to
crystallise in my brain. When Violet was left crying on Haslemere's
shoulder (sobbing that she was ruined, that she would kill herself
rather than face the blame of her friends) I made my voice heard.
"I know you and Haslemere always hated my detective talents--if any.
But they might come in useful now, if I could get an inspiration," I
remarked.
Violet caught me up.
"_Have_ you an inspiration?"
"Perhaps."
"For heaven's sake what is it?"
"If I have one, it's my own," I drily replied. "I don't see why I
should give it away. This is _your_ business--yours and Haslemere's.
Why should I be interested? Neither of you are interested in mine."
"You mean, your ideas are for sale?" Haslemere exclaimed, in virtuous
disgust, seizing my point.
"My _help_ is for sale--at a price."
"The price of our receiving your wife, I suppose!" he accused me
bitterly.
"Oh, it's higher than that! I may have guessed something. I may be
able to do something with that guess; but I'm hanged if I'll dedicate a
thought or act to your service unless you, Haslemere, personally ask
Maida's forgiveness for the cruel injustice you once did without
stopping to make sure whether you were right or wrong: unless you,
Violet, ask my wife--_ask_ her, mind you!--to let you present her to
the King and Queen at the first Court after the war."
"We'll do anything--anything!" wailed Violet. "I'll crawl on my knees
for a mile to your Maida, if only you can really get the jewels back
before people find out how we've been fooled."
"I don't want you to crawl," said I. "You can walk, or even motor to
Maida--or come out in a boat to the yacht where she's waiting for me
and my news. But if I can do any useful work, it will be to-night."
"Do you think you can--oh, do you _think_ you can?" Violet implored.
"That's just what I must do. I must think," I said. "Perhaps
meanwhile the police will make a lucky stroke If so, you'll owe me
nothing. If they don't----"
"They won't--I feel they won't!" my sister-in-law sobbed.
Suddenly I had become the sole person of importance in her world. She
pinned her one forlorn hope to me, like a flag nailed to a mast in a
storm. And I--saw a picture before my mind's eye of a dark figure in a
boat, putting on a thing that looked like a diver's helmet. Queer,
that--very queer!
* * * * *
So utterly absorbed was I in my new-born theory and in trying to work
it out, that for the first time since I met and loved her I ceased
consciously to think of Maida. Of course she was the incentive. If I
put myself into Haslemere's service, I was working for _her_: to earn
their gratitude, and lay their payment at her feet. Far away in the
dimmest background of my brain was the impression that I was a clever
fellow: that I was being marvellously intelligent: and at that moment I
was more of a fool than I had ever been in my life. I thought I saw
Rameses' hand moving in the shadows, using my brother and his wife as
pawns in his game of chess. Yet it didn't occur to my mind that he was
using me also: that he had pushed me far along the board, for his
convenience, while I believed myself acting in my own interests and
Maida's. I had flattered myself that my white queen was safe on the
square where I had placed her, guarded by knight, bishop and castle.
Yet while I went on with the game at a far end of the board, Rameses
said "Check!" Another move, and it would be checkmate.
I was gone longer than Maida had expected, but she was not anxious.
The yacht at anchor, lay in sight of the towers Which I had pointed out
the night before, rising above a dusky cloud of trees. From Maida's
deck-chair she could see them against the sky; and she could have seen
the landing-place where I had gone ashore, had it not been hidden
behind a miniature promontory. She tried to read, but it was hard to
concentrate her mind on any book, while her future was being decided.
In spite of herself, she would find her eyes wandering from the page
and focussing on the little green promontory that screened the landing.
At any moment I might appear from behind those rocks and bushes.
Suddenly, just as she had contrived to lose herself in a poem of Rupert
Brooke's, the throb of a motor-boat caught her ear. She glanced
eagerly up, to see a small automobile craft rounding the promontory.
Apparently it had come from the private landing-place of Hasletowers,
but the girl could not be certain of this until she had made sure it
was headed for the yacht. Presently it had stopped alongside, and
Maida saw that it had on board a man and a boy. The man, in a yachting
cap and thick coat of the "pea-jacket" variety, absorbed himself deeply
in the engine. What he was doing Maida neither knew nor cared; but it
took his whole attention. He humped his back over his work and had not
even the human curiosity to look up. It was the boy who hailed the
_Lily Maid_, and announced that he had a message for Lady John Hasle
from her sister-in-law, Lady Haslemere. It was a verbal message, which
he had been ordered to deliver himself; and three minutes later he was
on deck carrying out his duty.
"If you please, m'lady, the Marquis and Marchioness of Haslemere send
their best compliments, and would you favour them by going in this boat
to meet her ladyship on board the yacht of a friend? You will be
joined a little later by the Marquis, and Lord John Hasle, who are at
the house, kept by important business."
"I don't understand," Maida hesitated. "My hus--Lord John went on
shore some time ago. I thought--was Lady Haslemere not at home after
all?"
"That's it, m'lady," briskly explained the lad. "She was away on board
this yacht I'm speaking of. Her ladyship hasn't been well--a bit of an
invalid, or she'd come to you. But Lord John Hasle thought you might
not mind----"
"Of course I don't mind," Maida answered him, believing that she began
to see light upon the complicated situation. "I'll be ready to start
in five minutes."
And she was. Her maid gave her a veiled hat and long cloak; and she
was helped on board the motorboat. Still the elder member of its crew
did not turn, but went on feverishly rubbing something with an oily
rag. The dainty white-clad passenger was made comfortable, the boy
tucking a rug over her knees. As he did this, he glanced up from under
his cap, as if involuntarily, straight into Maida's chiffon-covered
face. She had been too busy thinking of other things to notice the lad
with particularity: but with his face so close to hers for an instant,
it struck her for the first time that it was like another face
remembered with distaste. There rose before Maida a fleeting picture
of a young lay sister at the house of the Grey Sisterhood far away on
Long Island. The girl had been of the monkey type, lithe and thin,
brown and freckled, her age anything between seventeen and twenty-two;
and she had seemed to regard Miss Odell, the Head Sister's favourite,
with jealous dislike.
"The same type," thought Maida. "They might be brother and sister.
But the boy is better looking than the girl. Funny they should look
alike: she so American, he with his strong Cockney accent!"
A minute more, and the motor-boat had left the side of the _Lily Maid_
and was shooting away past the private landing-place of Hasletowers.
She took the direction whence the yacht had come the previous night,
before the dark shapes above the trees had been pointed out by me.
Still, there was no other yacht in sight: the waters were empty save
for a little black speck far away which might be, Maida thought, the
bell buoy of which we had talked. Indeed, as the boat glided on--at
visibly reduced speed now--she fancied that she caught the doleful
notes of the tolling bell.
"The yacht where Lady Haslemere expects us, must be a long way from
shore;" Maida said.
"Don't be impatient," the man's voice answered. "You will come to your
destination soon enough."
A thrill of horror ran through her veins with an electric shock. She
knew the voice. She had heard it last in a house in Egypt. The man
turned deliberately as he spoke, and looked at her. The face was the
face of her past dream, the still more dread reality of her present----
And so, after all, this was to be the end of her love story!
"You do not speak," Essain said.
"I have nothing to say," Maida heard herself answer; and she wondered
at the calmness of her own voice. It was low, but it scarcely
trembled. So sure she was that there was no hope, no help, she was not
even frightened. Simply, she gave herself up for lost: and the sick
stab of pain in her heart was for me. She was afraid--but only afraid
that I might reproach myself for leaving her alone.
"You've no doubt now as to what your destination is?" the voice went
on, quivering with exultation as Maida's did not quiver with dread.
"I have no doubt," she echoed.
"No appeal to my pity?"
"I made none before. It would have been worse than useless then--and
it would now."
"You are right!" the man said. "It would be useless. I have lived for
this. My one regret is that my sister sacrificed her life in vain.
But she and I will meet--soon it may be--and I shall tell her that we
did not fail."
"If you tell her the truth, you will have to say you couldn't make me
die a coward," Maida answered, "and so your triumph isn't worth much."
"It is the end of the vendetta, and our promise to our father will have
been kept," said Essain. "That is enough. I do not expect a woman of
your ancestry to be a coward."
"She doesn't know yet what you're going to do with her," cut in his
companion. The Cockney accent was gone. Maida started slightly in
surprise, and stared at the brown, monkey face with its ears which
stuck out on the close-cropped head. The voice was only too easy to
recognise now.
"Be silent, you cat!" Essain commanded savagely. "Your business is to
obey. Leave the rest to me."
He turned again to Maida. "You see," he said, "my sister and I never
lacked for servants. I have many on this side of the water--as
everywhere when I want them. But this one is rather over-zealous
because she happened not to be among the admirers of Miss Odell at the
Sisterhood House. She wants you to realise that she is enough in my
confidence to know what is due to happen next. I intend to tell
you--not to please her, but to please myself. I have earned the
satisfaction! First, however, I have a few other explanations to make.
I think they may interest you, Lady John Hasle! .... My organisations
are as powerful in Europe as in the States. Through some of my best
men your new family is going to be disgraced. There will be a
first-class scandal, and they will have to pay, to the tune of one
hundred thousand pounds, to crush it. They're far from rich. I'm not
sure they can do the trick--unless your clever husband stumps up with
the fortune he'll inherit from you, on your death. I shall be
interested, as an outsider, to see the developments. Meanwhile I've
put into my pocket, and my friends' pockets, the exact sum which must
come out of theirs--or rather I shall in a few moments from now do so,
as you yourself will see."
By this time they had come close to the bell buoy; and Maida remembered
how, with me, she had leaned on the deck-rail idly watching the
silhouettes of a man and a boy in a motor-boat.
"It was you we saw last night!" she exclaimed. "You put on a diver's
helmet. You had a thing like an empty cage in your hand. You went
down under the water----"
"Ah, you saw that from the yacht, did you?" broke in Essain. "I was
afraid, when I caught sight of the passing yacht, that it might have
been so! But it doesn't matter. Lord John fancies himself a
detective--but it's luck, more than skill, which has favoured him so
far: and his luck won't bring him to the bell buoy until I want him to
come--which I shall do, later. The cage you saw isn't empty to-day, if
any of Lord John's luck is on my friends' side, and I'm sure it is. I
placed the receptacle ready last night. Now, I think it will be filled
with jewelled fish, which I have come to catch. In their place I shall
give it a feed of stones, heavy enough to hold it down. And deep under
the still water you shall be its guardian, till I'm out of England and
can let Lord John have a hint where to look for his lost wife."
Maida remembered what I had told her last night: how, when I was a boy
I had loved the old bell buoy and "imagined a thousand stories about
it." Surely I could never have invented one so strange as this--this
end of our love story for which the bell tolled!
"When he finds me gone, he will never think of the bell buoy," Maida
told herself.
But I had thought of it even without knowing that she was gone. I had
put myself into Rameses' skin, and let my mind follow the workings of
his since the sending of the anonymous letter to Lady Annesley, just up
to the moment when those two dark silhouettes had passed near the
moonlit bell buoy. I had cursed myself for not seeing how it might
have suited Rameses' book to have Maida isolated on board the _Lily
Maid_--certain to be offered to her if she left Annesley's house to be
married in a hurry. I had called myself every kind of madman and fool
for leaving her alone at the mercy of the enemy, and--having done all
this I went straight to Southampton in my brother's highest-powered
car, to hire a motorboat of my own.
That is how I got to the bell buoy just as Essain and his companion had
emptied the iron cage of its treasures and were filling it with stones
while Maida lay bound hand and foot in the bottom of the boat.
Rameses had ready a tiny bottle of Prussic acid which he crushed
between his teeth at sight of me and the two policemen from
Southampton. But the disguised girl lived, and through her we found
the false Combes, Blackburn and Drivenny, members all of the old New
York gang who had played me so many tricks. Nobody outside has ever
yet heard the story of the imposture and the theft; nor will they know
till they see this story in print. By then the jewel auction will have
been forgotten by the world. Only we shall not forget. But we are too
happy, Maida and I, to remember with bitterness.
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND