It was a long time before Moreno spoke. It was evident that, in her
present mood, Violet Hargrave was perfectly prepared to be made love to.
It was not the first time it had occurred to him that this woman of
mixed nationality like himself was more than usually attracted by him.
But although he was one of the vainest men living in certain respects,
notably in the high estimate in which he always held his own capacity
and mental qualities, still in other matters he was fairly modest.
Every man can get some woman to fall in love with him, or, at any rate,
to profess affection. Some day he would come across a woman whom he
could impress sufficiently to justify him in asking her to marry him.
For the time would come when, like other men, even of the most roving
disposition, he would want to say good-bye to adventure and settle down
quietly.
As regards his personal appearance, he was quite a just and
dispassionate critic. He could look in the glass and sum up the general
verdict that would be passed by the opposite sex. In appearance he was
rather short and squat. His features, somewhat irregular, were redeemed
from plainness by a pair of very brilliant dark eyes, and a perfect set
of strong white teeth.
Still, he had not the makings of a Don Juan in him; he was not the sort
of man whose path was likely to be strewn with conquests; not the type
of man, like Guy Rossett, for instance, on whom most women looked with a
kindly eye, even on their first acquaintance.
Under ordinary circumstances, Violet's attitude could hardly be
misinterpreted. The misty eyes raised appealingly to his, the soft
inflections in her voice said as plainly as words could speak that here
was a woman fully ready to respond at the first hint from him.
But he was very cautious; he felt he must proceed warily. He must never
forget that this woman had been, more or less, an adventuress from her
girlhood, the associate of desperate and callous men, who hesitated at
nothing in the attainment of their objects. Not so very long ago, she
had exulted in the prospect of obtaining a terrible revenge, through
others, on the man she had once professed to love.
Why had she turned, so suddenly, as it seemed, from this vengeance, had
almost said that she no longer desired revenge? In an ordinary woman,
the explanation would have been simple. Rossett now no longer aroused
her love or hate because she had found a new lover in Moreno himself.
Always severe to himself in these purely personal matters, he asked
himself the candid question if a woman so attractive as she undoubtedly
was could turn from a man of Rossett's physical advantages to himself?
Years ago, he had loved devotedly a simple little girl with no
pretensions to beauty or great charm, possessing only average
intelligence. He had loved her for her sweet nature, her good
qualities. And she had loved him in return.
But this was an entirely different matter. That poor little dead girl,
still a very tender memory, had never had any other lover but himself.
Violet Hargrave, with her powers of fascination, her blonde prettiness,
her quick mentality, must have had many men at her feet.
Did the foreign element in him attract the foreign element in her? It
might be so, but he could not be sure of that. In many things he was
more Spanish in thought and feeling than English, but she was more
English than Spanish in everything, of that he was convinced.
Had he been a few years younger, had he enjoyed less experience in life,
have thought less over social problems, anarchist doctrines might have
appealed to him very strongly. He was sure they would never appeal to
her, the English strain in her was too strong.
When he spoke, he put a very leading question.
"I have often wondered whether you are really greatly interested in the
Cause? Whether the methods we have to adopt are not somewhat repugnant
to you?"
He looked at her very steadfastly. He judged her to be an admirable
actress, but he noticed she did not meet his glance. Perhaps if she was
really attracted by him, as she seemed to be, it was not so easy to act.
She spoke a little nervously. "What on earth has made you think that?
Why should I be here if I were not sincere? I joined the organisation
of my own free will. Juan Jaques, who was my sponsor, explained
everything very clearly to me."
Moreno spoke lightly. "You have been comfortably off for many years,
and you are more English than foreign. Anarchist principles don't take
deep root in English soil."
"My father was a revolutionary at heart, although not an active one,"
she said hastily. "Of course, I don't suppose my mother thought about
such things."
Moreno was too polite to say he did not believe in that little fiction
about her father. This derelict parent might not have had a very great
love for the social institutions from which he did not derive much
benefit. But from a natural dissatisfaction with his own lot to
professed anarchy was a long step.
"It runs in the blood naturally, then, that I can understand. Still, it
puzzles me. Women don't think very seriously about these matters--or,
at any rate, only a very few of them. And women of means are hardly
likely to be keen on upsetting a world in which they are fairly
comfortable, in favour of a new dispensation, the results of which are
highly problematical."
She fenced with him a little longer. "Why are you so sure I was
comfortably off?" she queried.
"I think you must have forgotten what you told me. Your husband made
money through the good offices of Jaques, and that money became yours.
That flat in Mount Street was not run on a small income."
She became a little agitated under his rather ruthless cross-examination
and suggestions.
"The money that was left me was not enough to support me comfortably. I
had to turn to other means of support."
"You would not care to tell me what they were?" Of course he had heard
rumours about that Mount Street establishment, that the host and hostess
were suspiciously lucky at cards. The man, at any rate, had always
suffered from a shady reputation.
She became more agitated. "Yes, it is quite simple. I have been
well-paid for my services by Jaques."
"Then it was simply money that induced you to join the brotherhood?"
"Money, combined with my natural sympathy with their objects."
Moreno appeared to accept the explanation. Jaques seemed, then, to have
paid her handsomely for her services. But evidently he had not paid her
enough, or she would not have trafficked with Guy Rossett and sold him
important secrets.
It was some little time before he spoke again, and then he played his
trump card.
He left the personal question altogether, and spoke of the affairs of
the brotherhood.
"There must be traitors amongst us," he said presently, "although I do
not think they are to be found in Spain--so many things have leaked
out."
"Yes." She spoke very quickly. "There was the failure of poor Valerie
Delmonte. Do you think there was treachery there?"
"I rather doubt it," answered Moreno easily. "My theory has always been
that she drew suspicion on herself by her inexperience, her amateurish
methods, her suspicious movements when she got inside the Palace. If
the job had been entrusted to me, with my steady nerves, I think I
should have been successful. I boasted as much to Contraras, and I
suppose that is the reason he has given me this job."
Violet was silent. Moreno went on smoothly.
"But with regard to that affair of Guy Rossett, the information he got
which, for the moment, frustrated our plans--that was clearly the work
of a traitor. That happened just before I came on the scene, but Lucue
has told me all about it."
He was looking at her very steadfastly. She was trying to avoid his
gaze, but those dark, brilliant eyes of his drew her lighter ones with a
certain mesmeric power.
She was not acting well to-night, he thought. There crept into her
troubled glance a shadow of fear. She tried to speak lightly,
indifferently, but her voice broke and faltered, in spite of her efforts
at self-control.
"It seems like it. Have you any idea of who the traitor was?"
Moreno rose and walked over to the little shabby sofa, typical furniture
of the mean lodgings, where she sat. He flung at her the direct
challenge.
"It is not a question of having an idea. _I know_." She laughed
hysterically; she hardly knew what she was saying. "You think you know,
perhaps. Probably you have been led to suspect the wrong person."
"Not when I have seen the actual memoranda, not when I have a photograph
of that memoranda in my possession, to show, if necessary, to
Contraras."
For a moment she seemed paralysed. All the colour left her cheeks. She
could only clasp her hands together and moan piteously.
Moreno spoke quite gently. "Violet Hargrave, you haven't an ounce of
fight left in you. Give in and own you sold those secrets to Guy
Rossett. I expect he paid a handsome sum for them--and probably because
you sold them, you lost your lover."
She burst into a fit of wild sobbing, and threw herself at his feet.
She had not the heroic spirit of Valerie Delmonte. She was only a very
commonplace adventuress, with a well-defined streak of cowardice in her.
Like Madame Du Barri, she would have gone shrieking to her death.
"Are you going to denounce me?" she cried wildly.
Moreno was a kind-hearted man. To an extent he despised her, although
he was half in love with her. But he could not but feel pitiful at the
spectacle of her abject terror.
"That depends," he said quietly. "It is quite possible we may drive a
bargain."
Reassured by those conciliatory words, the woman speedily recovered her
self-control. She rose from her kneeling attitude, brushed the tears
from her eyes, adjusted her disordered hair. As long as she escaped
with life, she would consent to any bargain.
What a mercy she had not been found out by Contraras, or some equally
implacable and fanatical member of the brotherhood! In that case, her
shrift would have been very short. This black-browed young man, born of
a Spanish father and an English mother, had this much of the English
strain in him, that he leaned to the side of mercy.
"How did you find out? How did you suspect?" were her first words when
she had recovered herself.
"What first led me to suspect. I cannot quite explain--it was a sort of
intuition. When I once suspected, the rest was easy."
"It was Guy Rossett who gave me away?" she cried, and an angry gleam
came into her eyes.
Moreno looked at her a little contemptuously.
"And you have known this man well, and loved him! Are you not a
shrewder judge of human nature than to harbour such a suspicion? Why,
Rossett is just that dogged type of Englishman who would rather be put
to death than betray a confidence."
Violet looked a little ashamed. "But if not from him, how did you
obtain your information?"
"That is my affair. When I have quite assured myself that I can trust
you, I may tell you. It suffices that I hold in my possession the
photograph of that document. By the way, you lost your head when you
gave yourself away like that, because your handwriting is known to
several. Why did you not dictate your notes to Rossett and let him take
them down? Then you might never have been found out."
"I know I was a fool," answered Mrs Hargrave bitterly. "I suppose all
criminals make mistakes at times. I was terribly hard up at the time; I
was in desperate want of money. I pitched a plausible tale to Guy,
which I believe he swallowed at the time."
"Ah!" said Moreno. Then it was not on account of this transaction that
Rossett had broken off his relations with the pretty widow. The cause
was no doubt to be sought in Isobel Clandon.
"I pretended that a Spaniard whom I had known in my youth was ready to
turn traitor for a handsome consideration. He had confided these notes
to me, and I had taken them down from his dictation. Of course, I ought
to have done as you said. I was so eager for the money that I did not
stop to think."
"And you are quite sure that Rossett did not suspect you of being a
member of the brotherhood?"
"Positive. He is not naturally a suspicious man, not like yourself, for
instance. I pretended that this man, the imaginary man, was an old
friend of my father's, that he hated the whole business and wanted to
get out of it."
Moreno pondered a little. In spite of her physical attraction for him,
she was a pretty bad character on her own admissions. She had owned her
great obligations to Jaques, who, rascal that he was, had been her
benefactor. And yet she was ready to sell Jaques and the Cause he held
so dear at heart for ready money. Was it possible a woman with this
unscrupulous and predatory temperament could ever become a reformed
character? And, if so, was he a likely man to bring about the miracle?
Passionate love might work wonders, but was she not a little past the
age of passionate love?
"Let us come to the point," he said abruptly. "I take it you no longer
desire what we politely term the `removal' of Guy Rossett."
"Certainly not. I don't know that I ever really desired it."
Moreno raised his hand. "Don't forget that night at the flat in Mount
Street."
"I know, I remember perfectly. I gave you a very bad impression of
myself. I was angry, humiliated, bitterly jealous of a younger woman
who had taken him from me."
Moreno thought he understood. "And the Spanish side came uppermost
then. You could have run a dagger into the pair of them at the moment,
and perhaps after you had done it, sat down and wept because you had
killed the man. I don't suppose you would have shed a tear over the
woman--she would have deserved her fate."
Violet was recovering herself fast. The colour had come back into her
cheeks. She looked at him admiringly.
"You seem to know something of my delightful sex," she said, with a
faint smile. Then, after a pause, she added, "And you want to drive a
bargain with me, don't you, in return for not denouncing me?"
Moreno assented. "You are quite right. You say you now don't desire
the removal of Rossett. To be quite frank, no more do I."
She looked at him sharply out of her tear-dimmed eyes, red and swollen
with the violent weeping of a few seconds ago.
"But why do you wish to spare Guy Rossett? You say you are a true son
of the Revolution."
"I am," replied Moreno composedly. "I am with certain reservations."
He felt he could not trust her too implicitly yet. "When they attack
the Heads, the great ones of the earth, I am in the heartiest sympathy
with them--that is the way to obtain our ends. But I draw the line at
making martyrs of the small fry, the mere instruments, the humble tools
of the despotic system. I think it brings justly deserved odium on us.
To remove an inoffensive person like Rossett is worse than a crime, it
is a blunder. If the great Revolution is coming, how can a feeble
person like him stop its impetuous course?"
Violet Hargrave listened attentively. When was he going to suggest the
terms of the bargain?
"Will you help me to save young Rossett? It is the price of my silence.
You can do nothing against me. Whatever innuendos or suggestions you
might make, if such occur to you, would not weigh a moment against the
damning evidence in my possession. They would only regard it as the
frantic action of a guilty woman, trying to save herself from their
vengeance."
He thought it wise to rub this in. He did not believe she was very
clever, but she was cunning. He wanted to divert her from any idea of
attempting to readjust the situation to her own advantage.
"You show me very plainly you don't trust me, by that somewhat
unnecessary warning," she said a little bitterly. She was hardened
enough, heaven knows, but the distrust of the man she had grown to care
for hurt her more than she liked to admit.
"I am not quite a fool," she added. "You have the whip-hand of me, I
admit frankly. If I thought to match myself against you, and bluff it
out, I recognise I have not a dog's chance. Yes, I am willing to help
you to save Guy Rossett. But I would like you to tell me why you want
so particularly to save him."
But Moreno was not going to satisfy her curiosity. He gave her one of
his reasons.
"Because I hate and loathe unnecessary bloodshed," was his answer.
There was a long pause, during which Violet's mind worked rapidly.
"Are you very sure in your own mind how you are going to save him?" she
asked presently. "I mean, so that we can go scot free."
Self would always be the predominating note, he thought. Well, perhaps
that was natural.
He tapped his forehead significantly.
"I have pretty well worked it out here; there are just a few details to
be filled in. With regard to our own personal safety, I feel pretty
confident I shall be unsuspected. As for you, I will guarantee it. I
will see you every day, as my plans develop."
Violet rose to say good night. There was genuine admiration in her
glance, as she held out her hand.
"I believe you are a very wonderful man," she said, in a tone of
conviction.
Moreno smiled, well pleased with the delicate flattery. He always had a
kindly feeling towards anybody who praised his mental qualities.
He saw her to the door. As they parted, she lifted up her face.
"You would not care to kiss a woman of my type--bad, selfish and
unscrupulous as you know me to be?" she said boldly.
For a second he hesitated. Then he kissed her lightly on her pale
cheek. He could not bring himself yet to touch her lips.
"Anyway, you are going to do a good thing now," he said, as she passed
out.