WATCHING
It was not difficult for Jessie to guess the identity of the man who
addressed her. Only a man who loved and felt sure that he was loved in
return would have spoken to a girl like that. This was Charles Maxwell
beyond a doubt. Nice-looking enough, Jessie thought, with a pleasing,
amiable face--perhaps a trifle too amiable, but there was no mistaking
the power in the lines of the mouth.
"What are you doing here like this?" he asked. "Heavens! has all the
world gone mad to-night?"
The bitterness of despair rang in the speaker's voice. Jessie noticed
that Maxwell was dressed not in the least like men in his position
usually dress at that time of the night. He wore a grey flannel suit and
a panama hat pulled down over his eyes.
"I came on urgent business," Jessie said. "I presume that you are Mr.
Maxwell?"
"Why should I deny it?" the other asked. "I am Charles Maxwell, and the
most miserable dog in London. But I am forgetting. Why do you ask me
such a foolish question, Vera?"
"Because I want to be quite sure of my ground," Jessie said. "And
because I am not Miss Vera Galloway at all. If you look at me very
closely you will see that for yourself."
Maxwell stared at Jessie in a dull, wooden kind of way, as if the whole
thing were past his comprehension.
"Yes," he said, "there is a difference, but it is so subtle that even I
should not have noticed it unless you had called my attention to it. But
I know who you are now. You are Miss Harcourt, daughter of Colonel
Harcourt, late of the --th. I have often told Vera of the wonderful
likeness between you. If you should ever meet her in private life----"
"I have met her, I am personating her at the present moment," Jessie
whispered.
"Amazing!" Maxwell exclaimed. "But I understood that you were--that you
had been--in short----"
"Engaged in a Bond Street shop," Jessie finished the sentence. "So I was
till to-day, when I was discharged through no fault of my own. Miss
Galloway sent for me to take her place. Secretly I have played her part
all this evening. And she went away dressed in my simple black
clothes----"
"But why?" Maxwell demanded jealously. "Why all this absurd mystery?"
"Surely you can guess? Why do you look so suspicious? I am not
altogether in Miss Galloway's confidence, but I understand that she
wanted to save somebody whom she loved--somebody that was in trouble. It
requires no great intelligence to guess that you were the person in
question. It was all connected with those papers missing from the
Foreign Office."
"I know no more about it than the dead," Maxwell said vehemently. "The
papers in question--and others--were as much in Lancing's custody as
mine. It was he who was to blame, though I admit that I locked the
papers away to-night after Lord Merehaven had done with them. When I saw
the _Mercury_ I was horror-stricken. I guessed exactly what had
happened."
"How could you guess what had happened?" Jessie asked.
"Because I have had my suspicions for some time," Maxwell said. "I
dismissed those suspicions as unworthy of me and insulting to Captain
Lancing. I know that he was greatly infatuated with Countess Saens, whom
a Mr. Lechmere, a late Queen's Messenger, had warned me against as no
better than a Russian spy. Lancing was mad over her. There is not the
slightest doubt that she induced Lancing to let her have those papers to
copy. Then she refused to return them, and Lancing committed suicide.
That is what I make of it."
"The sensational report in the _Mercury_ went farther than that," Jessie
said. "It is assumed that you are a party to the conspiracy, and that
you fled to Paris. Is that true, or going to be true?"
"As heaven is my witness, no," Maxwell said in a hoarse whisper. "When I
had made up my mind what had happened, I determined to get possession of
those papers. I vanished, saying that I was called suddenly to Paris.
For the last four hours I have been dogging Countess Saens. I followed
her here, and I am not going to lose sight of her until she is safely at
home. And when she is once safely at home, I am going to do a desperate
and daring thing. What is she doing here?"
Jessie made no reply for the moment. She had pulled her wrap over her
face again so that she should not be recognized. She was watching the
movements of Countess Saens breathlessly. The woman had passed up the
steps into the big hall beyond the swinging glass doors. She seemed to
be arguing with a porter, who shook his head in an emphatic way.
Evidently the countess was angry; so much could be seen from her
gestures and the shake of her shoulders.
"She is trying to see a patient at irregular hours," Jessie said, "and
the porter is adamant. I pray from the bottom of my heart that she may
fail."
"Is this another piece in the puzzle?" Maxwell asked hopelessly.
"It is the key-piece of the problem," said Jessie. "Ah, the porter is
not to be moved. He has sent off an under porter, possibly to call one
of the house surgeons. See, the countess sits down."
Surely enough the countess had flung herself angrily into a seat. Nobody
seemed to care much about her, for she waited ten minutes without any
sign of anybody in authority. Meanwhile Jessie was making Maxwell _au
fait_ with the situation.
"You threatened some dangerous and desperate enterprise a little later
on," she said. "I suppose that is a supreme effort to try and get those
papers?"
"You have guessed it," Maxwell said grimly. "If I could do that, the
whole situation would be saved. We could do anything; we could point to
Lancing's suicide as the result of reckless gambling. Mind you, that
would be more or less true. If Lancing had not been desperately
situated, he would never have yielded to the countess's fascinations and
sold those precious documents."
"Yes, yes," Jessie interrupted. "But unless I am greatly mistaken, you
have been forestalled. Somebody else has already removed the documents
from Countess Saens's custody."
"You don't really mean that! What was it--a case of diamond cut
diamond?"
"Yes, but not quite in the way you imagine. Those papers were stolen in
turn from Countess Saens to-night, taken from a drawer in her bedroom by
Miss Galloway."
Maxwell pressed his hands to his head. The situation was too much for
him. He groaned for an explanation.
"I can only surmise," Jessie said. "But presently you will have to admit
that I have very strong grounds for my surmises. In some way Miss
Galloway obtained a clue to what was about to happen. That is why I was
called in to take her place, so that she could have an hour or two
without being suspected. An hour or so ago Countess Saens's maid came to
Merehaven House with the information that there had been a burglary in
the countess's bedroom, but that nothing besides some papers seemed to
be missing. That those papers were important could be guessed by the
ghastly yet furious expression on the lady's face. The maid was pressed
for a description of the thief--who, by the by, was a woman. And then
and there the maid pitched upon _me_. She declared point blank that it
was I who committed the burglary. What do you think of that?"
"You are a clever young lady," Maxwell said hoarsely. "Pray go on."
"The maid stuck to her guns, though everybody laughed at her. She said
the thief was dressed in plain black, and as I was in evening dress, and
had been seen all the evening, those who heard were amused. But _I_
understood. In my plain black dress Miss Galloway had gone to the
countess's house and stolen those papers. The thing was as clear as
daylight to anybody behind the scenes. Under the circumstances, your
prospective burglary would be so much loss of time."
"I quite understand that," Maxwell muttered. "It is exceedingly clever
of you to read between the lines so clearly. Vera has done this for my
sake. But how did she know--how could she possibly tell what was going
to happen, and when those papers were to be found? Of course, _I_
guessed where the trouble lay directly I saw the _Mercury_ paragraph,
but Vera! And she never takes the slightest interest in politics. What
are you looking at?"
Once more Jessie was staring intently past the swinging doors of the
hospital into the big hall beyond. The countess had now risen from her
chair and was facing a little man with a bald head and gold-rimmed
spectacles, who appeared to be explaining something to her. Jessie could
see him bow and shake his head. Her breath came very fast.
"Why are you so interested in the countess's present action?" Maxwell
asked.
"Because she has come here to try and see a patient," Jessie whispered
intently. "From the bottom of my heart, I pray that she may fail. If she
succeeds we are ruined, you are ruined. For the patient is no other than
Vera Galloway."