There was just one ray of consolation for Clifford King in the
misfortune which had befallen Nell. She seemed to him, in spite of the
trembling of her limbs and the pallor of her face, to be more relieved
than depressed by the arrival of the police.
It was with perfect self-possession that she turned to the sergeant and
said:
“May I speak to Mr. King alone before I go?”
“Certainly, Miss. Perhaps you would like to walk as far as Beach with
Mr. King, and we will have a cab waiting there to take you on to
Stroan.”
This course was agreed upon, and Nell and Clifford left the house
together. They walked in perfect silence until they had passed through
the unlovely back streets of the town, and had reached the contiguous
village of St. Mary’s, with its gray old church on the high ground.
They stopped for a moment in the shadow of the tall tower. Clifford
looked at the girl by his side, and was amazed to see that the gloom
which had hung over her on his arrival had melted away.
“Why, Nell,” said he, with a puzzled smile on his own face, “I told
you that you would soon be your own self again, but I didn’t guess how
quickly the transformation would take place.”
Her face clouded a little, but the sigh she gave was one of more relief
than pain.
“Can you imagine what it would be like,” she asked, gravely, as they
turned and continued their walk down the crooked village street, “to
live for months in perplexity and dread of you didn’t quite know what?
And then to find yourself groping your way to a dreadful, shameful
secret, which was bound to bring misery and disgrace upon yourself and
everybody you cared about? Supposing that you were presently forced to
confess everything--forced to do it, mind--wouldn’t it be a relief to
you, even if you brought upon yourself a dreadful punishment?”
Clifford was silent. He was alarmed by her words, indicating as they
did that she was involved in the horrible story; yet he did not wish to
acquiesce in the idea of her guilt, or even in the notion of her having
been a passive agent in the tragedy.
Nell insisted, however, on getting an answer from him.
“I think, darling,” he then said, very tenderly, “that you have been
troubling yourself a great deal more than you need have done. And that
you will find plenty of other people as ready as I am to say that Nell
Claris would never merit a dreadful punishment, even if she tried.”
These words were not said merely to satisfy her. He began to feel, as
she did, that the thrashing out of the whole matter, horrible as the
process must be, was better for her in every way than the suspense from
which she had been so long suffering. Whatever her share in the affair
might have been, it had certainly been a passive and an unwilling, if
not an altogether unconscious one. His answer seemed to content the
girl, for she walked on by his side without any further remark, while a
more placid expression began to appear in her wan face.
It was almost in silence that they went on walking briskly in the
direction of the bay, which they reached by the short way over the
fields. A cab was waiting, as the police-sergeant had promised, on the
road outside the village. As soon as Nell saw it she stopped short and
said:
“I was forgetting what I wanted to say to you. I want you to go
to Shingle End. And I want you to tell them there--to tell the
Colonel--that the police have come for me.”
“To tell the Colonel?” echoed Clifford, stupidly, struck with a
remembrance of the vague suspicions he had had on his recent visit to
that gentleman’s house.
“Yes.”
He wanted to ask her more questions. But she saw his intention,
and walked briskly on. A few paces farther she was met by the
police-sergeant, who saluted her respectfully, and held open the door
of the cab. Nell turned and gave her hand in silence to Clifford. But
as he pressed it for a brief moment in his, she again looked up in his
face with the flicker of a smile on her lips and in her eyes.
“Surely,” thought he to himself, “it is hope, and not despair, which I
see in her eyes!”
The cab door was shut, and Clifford, who had a long walk before him,
walked briskly past it, in the direction of the Stroan road. But before
he had gone many steps he heard the voice of the police-sergeant behind
him.
“I beg your pardon, sir--”
Clifford stopped and the sergeant overtook him.
“Might I ask, sir, whether it’s to Colonel Bostal’s you’re going?”
“Well, yes.”
“Might I suggest, sir, that you shouldn’t say anything about Miss
Claris to the old gentleman and his daughter for the present? The poor
lady and gentleman have been in a fearful state of nervousness lately;
and if this news was to come on them quite sudden, it might bring on a
stroke, perhaps, or something of that sort.”
Clifford hesitated. He had promised Nell to take her message, but, on
the other hand, he quite agreed with the sergeant. He temporized.
“Well, I shall be as careful as I can, and I shan’t be in any great
hurry.”
“That’ll do, sir,” said the sergeant, as, with a shrewd look, he
saluted and went back to the cab.
Clifford walked on, therefore, at no very rapid pace. Indeed, as the
cab passed him, with the sergeant on the box beside the driver, he saw
Nell’s face at the window, with a little surprise and reproach in her
eyes at the slow progress he was making in carrying out her behest.
She, poor girl, sat upright and listened to the sound of the horse’s
hoofs and to the wheels upon the road like a person incapable of steady
thought. She had known that this blow was coming. She had passed hour
after hour of many a weary night in trying to devise means of escape
from it. But every plan had ended in failure even before she could put
it in practice; for day after day she had found that she was watched
by the police, and it had become clear to her that wherever she went
she would be shadowed, and that at the time they chose she would find
herself in the grip of the police.
It was to the house of one of the local justices of the peace that
she was being taken. The cab soon took a turning to the right, and
presently arrived at the lodge-gates of Horne Park.
Horne Court was a large building, brand-new and many-gabled, built
of brilliant red brick. It had so many little turrets and towers and
steeples springing out from the main edifice in all directions, that it
looked like a puzzle, and set the onlooker wondering whether one could
get from one portion of the building to the other without the aid of a
plan.
It was in the study--an oddly shaped apartment, with an imposing
gallery filled with books--that Nell was brought before the local
magistrate.
Sir Neville Bax was a bland and imperious gentleman, with a loud voice
and a dominant manner, who, having married the ugliest woman in the
county, sought to palliate this misdeed by posing as a great admirer of
the rest of the sex. He stared at Nell with an approving eye.
“Well, Miss Claris, and so I hear you have a statement to make to me?”
he began in a benevolent tone which made Nell wince.
Nell did not immediately answer.
“Well, don’t be afraid. Only speak out and speak the truth. It’s the
best way--in fact, it’s the only way--when, as I understand, the police
know so much already.”
Nell shivered.
“I understand,” continued he, “that you have some important information
to give concerning the robbery at your uncle’s inn, the Blue Lion?”
“It’s only a very little thing that I know,” pleaded Nell.
“Ah, but little things sometimes lead to great results,” retorted Sir
Neville, buoyantly. “You know that there was sleeping on the premises
at the Blue Lion, on the occasion of the first robbery committed there,
a person whose presence there was known to you only?”
“Yes,” faltered Nell, and burst into tears.