The tall red-moustached man stood in the dining-room with Gwen Griffin.
She had seen his approach from the window, and dashing downstairs, had
admitted him. Taking him at once into the room she had closed the door,
and in a few brief hasty words had admitted him to her confidence.
“What!” he cried, staring at her in amazement. “Jim Jannaway has dared
to come here, to read the documents, and then to threaten you with this!
Look here, Miss Griffin, the matter is much more serious for you than I
had imagined. Those fellows, Felix and Jim, will stick at nothing, but
they shall not ruin your reputation. Leave that to ‘Red Mullet’.”
“But, Mr Mullet,” she cried, “he threatens your arrest if I tell my
father the truth. Besides, have I not promised secrecy to you?”
“My dear child,” he said, “go at once and tell your father the truth.
Then leave the rest to me.”
“But what will he think of me?” she asked, her face blanched to the
lips.
“Let your father--indeed, let the world--think what it will of you, Miss
Griffin. You are an innocent victim of the avarice of these men, just
as I am. I stood your friend that day when I released you from
bondage--and I will stand your friend still!”
“They possess our secret.”
“That is a most unfortunate fact,” he admitted. “Still we must try and
defy them. I will do my best. But if I fail,” he added in a low
earnest voice, “it will not be for want of endeavour, I promise you. I
tried to save you and your father once--and I will try again. We must
win even if we make some sacrifice.”
“But do not imperil yourself,” she urged. “Do not, I beg of you, Mr
Mullet.”
“I shall act with both firmness and discretion, and if we but unmask
these blackguards who have tried again to entrap you, we shall have done
a service to society at large. Unfortunately,” he added with a sigh,
“my own hands are none too clean.”
“You will see my father. The Doctor is upstairs with him,” she urged.
“No--later!” he exclaimed hastily. “At the present moment not a second
is to be lost. I must go to them, and see what we can do by firmness.
Tell your father of Jim’s visit here, but do not say you have seen me,
and say nothing regarding the past--remember, nothing. Promptness of
action is now our only safeguard.”
And leaving the girl standing there bewildered, he passed out of the
room, and next second she heard the front door closed behind her.
Of his power to avert the natural flow of events she had but little
confidence. He was beneath the thumb of Sir Felix Challas, therefore,
how could he hope to wrest back the secret which Jim Jannaway had
learned?
In any case, the good-looking scoundrel to whom a woman’s honour was of
no account, would carry out his threat, and Frank must, ere long, turn
his back upon her, as he had done before.
Her heart beat fast, and she placed her hand upon her breast, as if to
stay its anxious throbbing.
Mullet, though an adventurer himself, was right. It was her duty to
tell her father the truth, and not allow him to continue further in that
sense of false security.
Yet at what cost must her statement be made! At cost, alas! of her own
honour.
Ere long she would not be able to look Frank in the face, for Jim
Jannaway would lie so circumstantially that both her father and he would
believe it to be the shameful truth. Mullet would not admit the past.
“Say nothing regarding the past,” he had urged! He had some strong
motive in this--a motive that must, of itself, prevent him revealing the
truth, and clearing her of the blemish placed upon her good name.
Besides, would Frank ever accept the excuses made for her by a man of
“Red Mullet’s” stamp? The actual truth was an ugly one. She had been
absent from home, and on returning, had refused to give an account of
where she had been. And now it was to be revealed that she had lived in
“Red Mullet’s” chambers!
She burst into a flood of tears on recognising her own utter
helplessness.
Circumstances were entirely against her. She could never hope to defend
her own honour in the face of such dark facts.
Suddenly she dried her eyes with a great effort, and looked at herself
in the big mirror at the back of the high, old-fashioned carved
sideboard. She started to notice how pale she was, and how dark beneath
the eyes.
Then slowly she went out of the room, and up the stairs, in obedience to
her protector, “Red Mullet.”
Hardly knowing what she did, or what words escaped her, she re-entered
the study where her father, her lover and the Doctor were in
consultation, and standing before them, described the scene that had
occurred in that room during the night-hours.
The three men, when they heard the astounding truth, started to their
feet with one accord.
“You!--Gwen--my daughter!” gasped the old Professor in a voice of bitter
reproach. “And you have allowed this--you allowed that man to gain our
secret without alarming me! I am ashamed of your conduct--heartily
ashamed!”
“I could not, father,” answered the girl, panting and pale-faced, “I--I
was afraid--I feared him!”
She raised her eyes to Frank’s, and saw in them a look of blank
disappointment. She now fully realised that if she had raised the
alarm, the communication of the secret to Challas might perhaps have
been prevented. She pointed to the broken bell-push, and explained how
before her entry there, the resourceful scoundrel had disarranged it as
a precaution.
Diamond paced the room in a frenzy of despair. The little man raised
his clenched fists above his head and uttered curses upon his enemies,
for he saw that through his fingers at the very moment of success, there
had slipped a colossal fortune.
“Frank!” exclaimed the girl, in a low piteous voice, standing before him
with bent head, “forgive me. I--I was helpless last night. I am
helpless now!”
“Forgive!” echoed her father in furious anger. “How can he ever forgive
you--how can I forgive you? You might have been in fear of him at that
moment, but upon your own showing, you knew him, is not that so?”
“Yes, father,” she faltered. “I--I did know him.”
“Then you have had dealings with our enemies before!” Frank cried, all
his dark suspicions now suddenly aroused by her fears and apprehensions.
“I told them nothing, though they tried to force me to.”
“You knew this man, Jim Jannaway, while I was in Copenhagen,” said
Frank, his eyes fixed upon her very seriously. “Come, tell the truth,
Gwen.”
She nodded in the affirmative, and unable to utter another word, burst
again into tears.
And the three men standing there saw that her tears were tears of shame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two hours later, Frank Farquhar, dark-faced and determined, stood in one
of the smaller rooms in Sir Felix Challas’s house in Berkeley Square,
while before him, seated easily on the edge of the table, was Jim
Jannaway.
“Well, Mr Farquhar,” he said, “what you’ve just stated is to a certain
extent correct. I have no reason whatever to hide the truth, now that
you have come to me and demanded it. The investigation of Holmboe’s
story has simply been a matter of business in which the keenest wits
win. We have won.”
“By trickery--and by a burglary, for which Professor Griffin intends to
have you arrested.”
Jannaway laughed impudently in his face.
“My dear sir, pray don’t be foolish,” he answered, “why it was Miss
Griffin herself who let me in, and who showed me her father’s decipher
of the message in Ezekiel. And if you don’t believe me,” he added,
“here’s the telegram which she sent me.”
Frank took the telegram he handed him, and read the following words:
“Shall place candle at my window at two to-morrow morning. Come. Have
something very important to communicate. Love, Gwen.”
Love! The word danced before Frank’s eyes.
“Why should she be acting in your interests, Mr Jannaway, and not in
her father’s? That seems to me a very curious point,” he said, for want
of something else to say.
“There was a reason--a very strong reason,” replied the fellow, with a
mysterious grin, pretending, of course, to be unaware that Farquhar was
the girl’s lover; “the little girl is a particular friend of mine.”
“What do you mean?” gasped Frank, his face paler.
“Well--what I say. Need I be more explicit? It is not usual for a man
to imperil a girl’s reputation, is it?”
“Come,” said Frank; “tell me the truth. Is your acquaintance an
intimate one?”
The fellow nodded and laughed. He plainly saw the result of his cruel
aspersions upon the girl’s character.
“I don’t believe it,” declared Frank.
“Oh! perhaps you are her friend also!” exclaimed Jannaway with a smile.
“If so, you’d better ask her if she did not remain with me during a
recent absence from home. I wanted her to go back, but she seemed
afraid, and preferred life in a bachelor’s chambers.”
“You lie!” cried Frank, crimson with anger.
“No, not so quick, Mr Farquhar,” exclaimed the scoundrel coolly. “Just
inquire of her, that’s all. Ask her if she did not meet me in secret
late one night, and whether she didn’t remain with me in my chambers off
Oxford Street. She will certainly not have forgotten the incident,” he
added with meaning sarcasm.
“I don’t believe you!” declared Frank, “but even if she had, you’re a
cursed blackguard for giving her away!”
“You asked me for the truth, and you’ve got it!” was Jim Jannaway’s
response. “Anything more you wish to know? If so, I am entirely at
your service.”
It was one of Jannaway’s characteristics that the more angry he became,
the more cool was his exterior.
“I want to know nothing from one who is a liar, a thief, and a slanderer
of women,” Frank responded, in a hard, bitter voice.
“I understand that the object of your visit was to inquire the reason
why I called so early this morning at Pembridge Gardens. I have simply
replied that I called at the Professor’s in response to this
invitation,” and he indicated the telegram which he still held in his
hand, and which, if the truth were told, he had taken the precaution to
send to himself, as additional evidence against the innocent girl whom
he had all along intended should be his victim.
“And you repeat your allegation that Miss Gwen has been your guest at
your chambers for several days--eh? Remember, if untrue, such a
statement is actionable.”
“I repeat it. And I ask you to satisfy yourself as to its truth by
asking her. But,” he added, “I may as well tell you that the little
girl is annoyed with me just now for betraying her father’s secret to my
friends. Yet, after all, as I’ve already said, it was only a matter of
business, and with business women ought never to meddle. They always
burn their fingers.”
“And your friends--that is Sir Felix Challas and his associates--intend,
of course, to profit by this secret which you’ve stolen--eh?” asked
Frank, his face darkening.
“That’s their affair--not mine.”
“I hear that you bribed the parlour-maid at Pembridge Gardens--the
crafty scoundrel that you are!”
“That’s it!” Jim laughed, “and I squeezed the cook, and kissed the
kitchenmaid! Anything else? No, I really haven’t any more time to
waste, Mr Farquhar. All I need add is, that if you doubt my statement,
please ask Miss Griffin herself.”