DESPERATION
The curtain had fallen upon the first act of this little drama in
Deane's life. Hefferom was committed for trial. Deane had walked into
the court a few minutes late, as though the whole affair was one which
interested him only indirectly. He had gone into the witness box without
hesitation, and his story had been so perfectly rational and
straightforward that people began to wonder whether, indeed, any defence
was possible. Cross-examination only amused him. Hefferom, who went into
court expecting to be released, was committed at once to the Old Bailey,
and to everyone's surprise, his own included, was refused bail.
Deane left the court a few minutes after the case was closed, and paused
for a moment to light a cigarette on the steps. On the edge of the
pavement there was a woman who watched with steady and scrutinizing
interest every person who left the entrance of the Law Courts. When
Deane came out she advanced towards him. "Is Hefferom free?" she asked.
Deane looked at her, and recognized at once Ruby Sinclair.
"No!" he answered. "He is committed for trial."
"You--"
She leaned forward as though about to strike him. Deane neither shrank
back nor showed any sign of interest in her words.
"What is Hefferom to you?" he asked quickly.
"He is no blackmailer, at any rate!" she answered fiercely.
"The Court has ventured to think otherwise," Deane declared.
She was almost at his side now. Suddenly his eyes caught the sight of
something glittering, something half drawn from the pocket of her dress.
Her wrist was caught in a clasp of iron.
"Young lady," he said sternly, "are you mad?"
"If I am, it is your fault," she answered.
"Nonsense!" he declared. "You see that policeman there? He is watching
us now. Let go the revolver and be off. I don't want to give you into
custody--my life is worth something for others as well as myself--and I
shall certainly do it unless you obey me."
She gave a little sob, and her fingers relaxed their hold upon the
revolver, which Deane transferred into his own pocket. She glided away
into the crowd. Deane stepped into his brougham, giving the man the
address of the hotel where Winifred Rowan was staying. He leaned back in
the seat, looking at the little weapon in his hands. Somehow, the fact
of his escape, instead of bringing any exultation with it, seemed to
depress him strangely. Deane had never called himself or believed
himself to be a religious man, yet there was certainly one principle
which had always been part of his creed,--to live and let live. He was
not a greedy capitalist. He could look upon money without any desire to
absorb it. Yet lately he seemed to have been forced into tortuous paths.
From the moment when he had attempted to make use of Rowan as a tool,
everything had gone against him. Rowan himself lay dead in that windy
churchyard, and the words which had been spoken over Rowan's grave were
still fresh in his memory. He had lost Lady Olive, of whom, in a way, he
had been fond. And at her own bidding he was engaged to this strange,
impenetrable girl, a situation which he could not wholly realize, and
yet which he felt to be surrounded with danger and humiliation. Then
there was this other,--Ruby Sinclair,--who had come to London expecting
to find a fortune, and had found nothing but her uncle's dead body. She,
too, looked upon him as a hungry schemer, the indirect cause of her
uncle's death, a robber, if not a murderer! He looked at the little
revolver, opened it carelessly, and laughed as he stared into the empty
breech. It was unloaded, a brand-new toy which had never been
discharged. He threw it into the opposite seat with a little gesture of
contempt. All its tragedy seemed to have passed away. She had bought it
to frighten him with. There had, after all, been no serious purpose in
her mind. She too, perhaps, had hoped to play the part of extortioner.
What was his offence, he asked himself, as his brougham glided along the
Embankment. Simply this: there had been a claim presented for his mine,
which was, without doubt, a fraud, which few people would ever have
believed in, and which, in a court of law, would have stood but little
chance of success. What a fool he had been not to defy Sinclair, to go
to his directors and tell them the truth, to resist stoutly any claim
the man might bring! Since his first compromise with Rowan, everything
had gone wrong. It was unworthy for a man in his position to have
allowed Rowan even to play the ambassador, apart from anything else. He
saw very clearly in those few minutes where the mistake of his life had
been. What he could not see was whither he was tending.
Winifred was waiting for him in the hall of the small hotel in Dover
Street. For three days, at her own request, he had not seen her.
Nothing, however, had prepared him for the transformation which he now
saw. She was faultlessly dressed in a gown of the latest design, and a
picture hat which even he recognized as being something quite apart from
the usual efforts of even the Bond Street shopkeepers. In every detail
she seemed to express the wholly self-satisfied, half-insolent
perfection of the woman who knows that she may and does command the best
of everything. And with this change in her dress seemed to have come a
similar change in her deportment. Her aloofness was still evident
enough, but she carried herself with confidence, and with a sort of
languid, graceful ease.
"You are nearly ten minutes late," she said quietly. "Where are you
taking me to lunch?"
"Wherever you like," he answered. "What about Prince's?"
She took a gold purse and a tiny black spaniel from the neatly dressed
maid who stood by her side, and lifting her skirts in her other hand,
passed through the door which he was holding open. The lace of her
petticoat, the slenderness of her arched instep, the delicate narrowness
of her patent shoes, were revelations to him. He gave an order to his
chauffeur, and sat down by her side.
"You appear," he said, "to possess a gift for assimilation!"
"My sex is like that," she said. "I have had a good many years to wait,
to store up knowledge in. Besides," she continued, a little mockingly,
"you yourself are supposed to be something exceptional in the way of
grooming, aren't you? There is no need for other people to find our
engagement surprising."
Looking at her critically, "I think," he said, "that there is no fear of
that."
"You flatter me," she murmured.
"Not at all," he answered. "People might wonder, perhaps, how it is
possible to fall in love with anyone whose expression so much resembles
that of those statues in there," pointing to a gallery which they were
passing. "You have no other fault. There is none, at least, to be found
in your appearance. You certainly do look, however, a little inclined to
be faultily faultless."
She laughed,--a laugh, however, which brought no color into her cheeks
or light into her eyes. "I am a statue," she said, "into which life has
not yet been breathed. You see you have been a little remiss up till
now. You have never attempted to make love to me!"
"Do you mean to say--" he asked, leaning towards her,--
She gently pushed back his hand, saying: "Please don't be ridiculous. Of
course, you must know that overtures of that sort, under the
circumstances, are impossible."
"For always?" he asked.
"Certainly!"
"Perhaps you will draw up a little code of conditions," he remarked. "I
feel a little in the dark sometimes as to what is expected of me."
"You will easily pick it up as we go along," she replied. "Is this
Prince's? I wonder if I shall succeed in behaving as though I had
lunched here every day of my life!"