Mention of the name of Logan placed me instantly on the alert. It was
surely the man whom I had seen with her in the wood in the early hours
of the morning following the tragedy--the same whom I had encountered
with Mademoiselle in Chelsea--the same, I believe, who had lived in such
suspicious seclusion at Hayes's Farm.
"Tell him I am engaged at present," exclaimed my love, facing the waiter
without betraying the least anxiety. She was, of course, not aware that
I knew the name of the man with whom I had seen her on that fateful
morning. Therefore she affected a carelessness that utterly amazed me.
Could it be that that bowl of flowers had been placed in the window as a
signal to him, and that he had disregarded it and come to her?
The slightly pursed lips betrayed her annoyance at his presence, but
beyond that she treated the man's announcement with calm indifference.
Was this broad-shouldered man her accomplice--or perhaps her lover, that
she should thus communicate with him in secret? How my mind struggled
to be free; how my restless reason combated with my love. I tried, but
could not contradict the glaring truth which impressed itself upon my
soul; and yet, though I was urged to a conviction, I could not act upon
the principles which subdued me.
I could learn stoicism and be the calm philosopher in every passion,
save only love; but he was my divinity, and like a defenceless babe
within the giant's grasp, all struggles to evade him were but vain.
Fool that I was! poor doting fool, how had I quaffed the sweet illusions
of hope only to feel the venom of despair more poignant to my soul.
"You have a caller," I said in a hard blank voice. "Perhaps I had
better leave you?"
"Oh," she answered, "there really is no necessity for you to go. He may
wait--he's quite an unimportant person."
"Named Logan--is he not?"
"Yes," she replied rather faintly, with a strange smile.
"A friend of yours?"
"No, not particularly," was her answer.
"Then if he is not, Lolita, why did I find you walking with him in the
wood on that morning--I mean after the finding of the body of Hugh
Wingfield?"
"You saw us?" she gasped, glaring at me aghast. "You followed us!"
"I saw you," I repeated. "And further, I met the man on the following
night in Chelsea in company with Marie Lejeune. He was flying from the
police."
"Yes, he has told me how, by your timely warning, he was saved."
"My warning also saved the Frenchwoman. She should, therefore, in
return do you the service of telling the truth, and thus clearing you."
"Ah! She'll never do that, as I've told you. It would be against her
own interests."
"But this man? Who is he?" I demanded, recollecting the confidential
conversation between them before they had parted on the edge of the
wood.
Both of us remembered how she had changed her wet, muddy dress at my
house, and how I had succeeded in stealing a dress from her wardrobe and
carrying it down to Sibberton. Yet no word of that curious incident had
ever passed between us. With mutual accord we had regarded the
circumstance as one that had never occurred, nevertheless, at the
cloak-room at St Pancras was a box filled with her boots, while locked
away in an attic of my house was the muddy dinner-gown she had exchanged
for her walking skirt on that memorable morning.
"You know his name?" she said, in response to my question.
"I do. But there are many circumstances connected with him which are
puzzling," I said. "Among them is the reason of his concealment in the
house of the farmer Hayes."
"Because he feared the police, I suppose. A watch was being kept on the
house in Britten Street, you say."
"For what reason? What was the offence of the pair?"
"They were suspected--suspected of a crime," she replied. "But," she
added, "their guilt or their innocence does not concern me. I alone am
to be the victim," she added bitterly, pushing her hair from her brow as
if its weight oppressed her.
"Then this man Logan is your enemy--eh?"
"He is not my friend."
"He is in league with the others to encompass your ruin? Tell me the
truth of this, at least."
"I have not yet exactly decided whether he is my enemy or my friend,"
was her answer. "Once he rendered me a very great service--how great I
can never sufficiently acknowledge."
"And now?" I asked, remembering that secret sign in the window.
"I am at a loss what to think," was her response. "Sometimes I believe
he is working in my interests, while at others I entertain a vague
suspicion that he is my enemy."
"As he is Marie Lejeune's," I added, looking her straight in the face.
"Her enemy--why, he's her best friend. Their interests are identical."
"I think not," was my calm reply. And in a few brief sentences I
related to her what had transpired at the lonely Northamptonshire farm,
how a murderous attack had been made upon "Miss Alice," as she was there
called, and how the whole of the mysterious party had afterwards made
good their escape from the neighbourhood.
"This is certainly surprising to me," she declared. "Whom do you
suppose attacked her?"
"Pink's idea is that it was Logan."
"But Pink surely knows nothing about my connexion with those people?"
she exclaimed apprehensively.
"Nothing. Up to the present there is no suspicion whatsoever that you
were acquainted with the dead man. Indeed his name is still unknown."
I recollected how the young fellow wore her portrait in his ring, and
fell to wondering again if he were actually her secret lover, and if he
had been the victim of another's jealousy.
She certainly escaped from the Hall that night and met some one in the
park--but whom was an utter mystery. Yet there still sounded in my ears
that scream I had heard--the scream that was certainly hers and which
came from the scene of the tragedy. If she were not the actual
assassin, then she had of a certainty borne witness of it--and had been
appalled by that terrible _denouement_.
But when a man loves a woman as I loved Lolita, he cannot openly charge
her with being a murderess. And yet how I longed and longed for
strength to drive the demon suspicion from me; that fiend that sat
hovering over my soul, affrighting every gleam that might afford me
comfort.
"Then you have been loyal to me, Willoughby. You have kept your
promise!" she exclaimed with a sad sweetness. "Would that you could
rescue me from the cruel fate that must now be mine!"
I strove to speak, but utterance was denied me. She seemed so convinced
of the hopelessness of the future that her very conviction seemed to
carry upon it evidence of her guilt.
Could poor Hugh Wingfield, the man who had carried that secret cipher in
his pocket and who had worn her portrait on his finger, have actually
been struck down by that very hand that I had kissed?
Ah! no! Perish such a thought. She was my love--and my love was, I
knew full well, the innocent victim of as foul and base a conspiracy as
had ever been conceived by the ingenious mind of man.
I doubted her, but only on account of the character of the persons with
whom she was in secret association. When I enumerated them in my mind I
saw what a strange mysterious group they were--the young Frenchwoman,
the man Logan, the two sallow-faced foreigners who had been diligent
readers of socialistic newspapers, and, last of all, the rough-mannered
hunter of big game, Smeeton, _alias_ Keene--the man over whom the young
Countess of Stanchester appeared to possess some secret power.
Was Marigold the evil genius of the situation? Her past had been so
full of adventure, and the rumours about her--mostly untrue be it said--
had been so many that I confess I felt inclined to prejudge and condemn
her.
A vain, pretty married woman, fond of admiration and moving in the
ultra-smart set, can seldom escape the evil tongue of gossip. Yet
although I made every allowance for her social surroundings and the fact
of her being one of "the giddy Gordons," there were certain facts of my
own knowledge with which I could not well reconcile her position as my
friend's wife. For that reason, as well as because of her open
declaration of antagonism to Keene, I held her in suspicion. She had
cleverly deceived me as to her real motive, and that was sufficient to
cause me to regard her as an enemy.
"Why not admit this man Logan and let us consult together?" I suggested
at last. "We might arrive at some way out of this deadly peril of
yours."
"We might," she admitted. "But he would never meet and discuss the
matter with you. Remember he is wanted by the police, and has no
guarantee that you might not betray him. He told me of your meeting in
Chelsea, how you raised the alarm, and how narrowly he escaped being
captured. Therefore he views you with no great affection. No," she
added, "for the present you must not meet. It would be unwise. He must
not even know that you axe in Edinburgh."
"Why not?"
"Because--well, because if he knows you are here with me he will
hesitate to act in the manner I am trying to induce him to act. Fear of
you will prevent him."
"What are you inducing him to do?" I asked.
"I am trying to prevail upon him to assist me in performing a certain
service--one by which I hope to gain my release from these torturing
fears that hold me. It is my last resource. If my project fails, death
alone remains to me."
She spoke with a deep breathless earnestness which told me plainly that
her words were no idle ones. True she had spoken of self-destruction
many times, but it was with the firm conviction of a woman hounded to
her own destruction.
The world, curiously enough, regards a wealthy woman of title as though
she were a different being to themselves, believing her to possess
attributes denied to the commoner, and a mind devoid of any of the cares
of the weary workaday existence. Yet if the truth be told, the woman
who is dressed by Laferrier, Raudnitz or Callot often has a far uglier
skeleton in her cupboard than she who is compelled to go bargain-hunting
in Oxford Street at sales for her next season's gown. The smart
victoria, the matched pair, the liveried servants and the emblazoned
panels form the necessary background of the woman who is _chic_, but,
alas! how often she hates the very sight of all that hollow show of
wealth and superiority, and how she longs for the quiet of obscurity.
How very true it is that wealth does not bring happiness; that there is
no pleasure in this world without the gall of pain, that love finds
sanctuary in the heart of the princess just as it does in that of the
factory-girl. There is no peace on this side of eternity, therefore we
must forever court the illusions which evade us.
What could I say? If it were to her interest to see this man alone--
this man of whom the police were in such active search--then to serve
her I ought not to object. I felt indignant that my well-beloved should
be polluted by the presence of such an adventurer, and yet I recollected
how they had walked together in the wood, and what was more--that the
man must be aware of her secret, whatever it was! He had walked and
spoken to her; he had seen her, her white dress of the previous night
wet, mud-stained and bedraggled--he must know, or at least guess, the
truth!
Did she hold him in fear on that account? Was she beneath the thrall of
this adventurer?
For a long time we stood talking, until as though in fear that the man
whose call had been so unwelcome and disturbing should grow tired of
waiting in the hall below, she urged me gently to take leave of her.
"Go, Willoughby--for my sake--do!" she implored of me with those soft
pleading blue eyes that were so resistless. "Let me see him alone. Let
me do this--if--if you wish to save me," she urged.
And I saw by her pale anxious face that she was desperate.
Therefore I kissed her once again with fondness, and assuring her of my
trust and love, left her, promising to return next morning.
Yes, I foolishly left her to the threats and insults of that man who
knew her secret.
Ah! Had I only known the truth!