DANGEROUS SECRETS
Once within the borders of her father’s estate and hidden in a clump of
bushes near the hedge, all idea of flight left Doris’s head. She was
home and the familiar scene gave her confidence. From the middle of her
clump of bushes grew a spruce tree, and into it she quickly climbed
until she reached a point where she could see the figures in the road
beside the quivering machines. She had not been followed. The five
men were gathered around Cyril, who was protesting violently at the
outrage. They had not missed her yet. Stryker was on his knees beside
the stricken wheel.
“Come, now,” she heard the leader saying, “you’re not to be hurt if
you’ll give ’em up.”
“Why, old chap, you’re mad,” Cyril was saying coolly. “I was thinkin’
you wanted my watch. You chase me twenty miles in the dead of night and
then ask me for cigarette papers. You’re chaffin’--what?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” said the tall man gruffly. “Off with his
coat, Jim.... Now search him.”
Cyril made no resistance. Doris could see his face quite plainly. He
was smiling.
“Rum go, this,” he said with a puzzled air. “I only smoke made
cigarettes, you know.”
But they searched him thoroughly, even taking off his shoes.
“I say, stop it,” she heard him laugh. “You’re ticklin’.”
“Shut up, d--n you,” said the tall man, with a scowl.
“Right-o!” said Cyril, cheerfully. “But you’re wastin’ time.”
They found that out in a while and the leader of the men straightened.
Suddenly he gave a sound of triumph.
“The girl!” he cried and, rushing to the limousine, threw open the door.
“Gone!” he shouted excitedly. “She can’t be far. Find her.”
He rushed around the rear wheels of the limousine and for the first
time spied the gate in the hedge.
“Tricked, by God! In after her, some of you.”
“It won’t do a bit of good,” remarked Cyril. He was sitting in the dirt
of the middle of the road near the front wheels of the machines. “She
doesn’t smoke, o’ chap. Bad taste, I call it, gettin’ a lady mixed up
in a hunt for cigarettes. Besides she’s almost home by this. The house
isn’t far. She lives there, you know.”
In her tree Doris trembled. She was well screened by the branches and
she heard the crackle of footsteps in the dry leaves as the searchers
beat the bushes below her, but they passed on, following the path
toward the house. As the sounds diminished in the distance she saw
Cyril still seated on the ground leaning against the front wheels
of the touring-car while he argued and cajoled the men nearest him.
Helping himself by a wheel as he arose he faced the tall man who had
come up waving his revolver and uttering wild threats.
“It won’t help matters calling me a lot of names,” said Cyril, brushing
the dust from his clothes. “You want something I haven’t got--that’s
flat. I hope you’re satisfied.”
“Not yet. They’ll bring the girl in a minute. She can’t have gone far.”
Cyril glanced around him carelessly and brushed his clothes again.
He had discovered that Stryker had put on the spare wheel and was
parleying with one of their captors.
“Oh, very well. Have your way. What more can I do for you? If you don’t
mind I’d like to be going on.”
“You’ll wait for the girl--here.”
Doris watched Stryker skulking along in the shadow of the limousine.
She saw him reach his seat, heard a grinding of the clutches and a
confused scuffle out of which, his blond hair disheveled, his shoulders
coatless, Cyril emerged and leaped for the running-board of the moving
machine.
“You forgot to search the limousine,” she heard him shout.
The tall man scrambled to his knees and fired at the retreating machine
while the others jumped for the touring-car.
It had no sooner begun to move than there was a sound of escaping air
and an oath from the chauffeur.
“A puncture,” someone said. And Doris heard a volley of curses which
spoke eloquently of the sharpness of Cyril’s pocket-knife.
Doris in her hiding-place breathed a sigh of relief. Cyril had gotten
safely off, and his last words had created a diversion in the camp of
the enemy. They were working furiously at the tire, but she knew that
the chance of coming up with Cyril again that night was gone. Now
that the affair had resulted so favorably to Cyril she began to regret
her imprudence in remaining to see the adventure to its end. Cyril had
played for time, and if she had followed his instructions she could
have gotten far enough away to have eluded her pursuers. By this time,
in all probability, she would have been safe beneath the parental roof.
The worst of it was that Cyril thought her safe. The packet in her
glove burned in her hand. Beneath her, somewhere between her refuge
and the house were two men, and how to pass them with her precious
possession became now the sole object of her thoughts. Cyril had told
her that the packet must under no circumstances fall into the hands
of their pursuers and the desperateness of his efforts to elude them
gave her a renewed sense of her importance as an instrument for good
or ill in Cyril’s cause--whatever it might be. Now that Cyril had gone
she felt singularly helpless and small in the face of such odds. For
a moment she thought of hiding the packet in the crotch of one of the
branches where she might come and reclaim it at her leisure and go down
and run the chance of being taken without it. But the unpleasantness
which might result from such an encounter deterred her, and so she sat,
her chilly ankles depending, awaiting she knew not what. She had almost
reconciled herself to the thought of spending several hours in this
uncomfortable position when the tall man in the road blew a blast on
a sporting whistle and soon the passing of footsteps through the gate
advised her that the men inside the grounds had returned.
This was her opportunity, and without waiting to listen she dropped
quietly down on the side of the tree away from the gate and, stealing
furtively along in the shadow of the hedge, made her way as quickly as
possible in the direction of the house. Out of breath with exercise and
excitement, when she reached a patch of trees at the edge of the lawn,
she stopped and looked behind her. Then she blessed her luck in coming
down when she did, for she saw the thin ray of a pocket light gleaming
like a will-o’-the-wisp in her place of concealment and knew that the
search for her was still on.
Fear lent her caution. She skirted the edge of the wide lawn in the
shadow of the trees, running like a deer across the moonlit spaces,
always keeping the masses of evergreens between her and the wicket gate
until she reached the flower garden, where she paused a moment to get
her breath. A patch of moonlight lay between her and the entrance and
the hedge was impenetrable. There was no other way. She bent low and
hurried forward, trusting to the good fortune that had so far aided
her. Halfway across the open she heard a shout and knew that she had
been seen.
There was nothing for it but to run straight for the house. So
catching her skirts up above her knees and scorning the garden path
which would have taken her a longer way, she made straight for the
terrace, the main door of which she knew had been left open for her
return. Across the wide lawn in the bright moonlight she ran, her heart
throbbing madly, the precious yellow packet clutched tightly against
her palm. Out of the tail of her eye she saw dark forms emerge from
the bushes and run diagonally for the terrace steps in the hope of
intercepting her. But she was fast, and she blessed her tennis for
the wind and muscle to stand the strain. She was much nearer her goal
than her pursuers, but they came rapidly, their bulk looming larger
every moment. She saw the lights and knew that servants were at hand.
Her father, too, was in the library, for she saw the glow of his
reading-lamp. She had only to shout for help now and someone would hear
her. She tried to, but not a sound came from her parching throat. With
a last effort she raced up the terrace steps, pushed open the heavy
door and shut and bolted it quickly behind her. Then sank into the
nearest piece of furniture in a state of physical collapse.
Doris Mather did not faint, an act which might readily have been
forgiven her under the circumstances. Her nerves were shaken by the
violence of her exercise and the narrowness of her escape, and it was
some moments before she could reply to the anxious questions that were
put to her. Then she answered evasively, peering through the windows at
the moonlit lawn and seeing no sign of her pursuers. In a few moments
she drank a glass of water and took the arm of Wilson, her maid, up the
stairway to her rooms, after giving orders to the servants that her
father was not to be told anything except that she had come in very
tired and had gone directly to bed.
For the present at least Cyril’s packet was safe. In her dressing-room
Wilson took off her cloak and helped her into bedroom slippers, not,
however, without a comment on the bedraggled state of her dinner
dress and the shocking condition of her slippers. But Doris explained
with some care that Mr. Hammersley’s machine had had a blow-out near
the wicket gate, that she had become frightened and had run all the
way across the lawn. All of which was true. It didn’t explain Mr.
Hammersley’s deficiencies as an escort, but Wilson was too well
trained to presume further. A little sherry and a biscuit and Doris
revived rapidly. While the maid drew her bath she locked Cyril’s
cigarette papers in the drawer of the desk in her bedroom, and when
she was bathed and ready for the night she dismissed Wilson to her
dressing-room to wait within call until she had gone to bed.
Alone with her thoughts, her first act was to turn out her lights and
kneel in the window where she could peer out through the hangings. It
was inconceivable that her pursuers would dare to make any attempt
upon the house, but even now she wondered whether it would not have
been wiser if she had taken her father into her confidence and had
the gardeners out to keep an eye open for suspicious characters. But
the motives that had kept her silent downstairs in the hall were even
stronger with her now. She could not have borne to discuss with her
father, who had an extraordinary talent for getting at the root of
difficulties, the subject of Cyril’s questionable packet of cigarette
papers. She was quite sure, from the adventure which had befallen
them tonight, and the mystery with which Cyril had chosen to invest
the article committed to her care, that Cyril himself would not have
approved of any course which would have brought the packet or his own
actions into the light of publicity.
The packet of cigarette papers! With a last scrutiny of the landscape
she pulled the shades and hangings so that no ray of light could reach
the outside of the house, then groped her way across the room. A thin
line of light beneath the door of her dressing-room showed that Wilson
was still there. So she took the precaution of locking that door as
well as the others leading to the upstairs hall, then went to her desk
and turned on her lamp. She unlocked the drawer of the desk and taking
the small object gingerly in her fingers, scrutinized it carefully.
It was yellow in color, quite new, bound with a small rubber band, a
very prosaic, a very harmless looking object to have caused so much
excitement and trouble to all who had been concerned about it. She
turned it over and stretched its rubber band, snapping it thoughtfully
two or three times. Now for the first time since Cyril had given it to
her did she permit herself to think of the hidden meanings the thing
might possess. In the machine, during the chase Cyril had won her
unreservedly to his side. As against the mysterious men of John Rizzio
Cyril’s cause had been the only one to be considered. She had been
carried off her feet and there hadn’t been time to think of anything
but the real necessity of acceding to Cyril’s wishes in getting the
small object to a place of safety. Then it had only been a packet of
cigarette papers--a mere package of Riz-la-Croix which everybody, for
some reason or other, seemed to want. Now, weighed lightly in her
hand, the seclusion of her room gave it a different character. She
recalled Cyril’s bantering tone at having been chased twenty miles
for a cigarette. But his attitude deceived Doris no more than it had
his pursuers. There was material here for something more deadly than
cigarettes. She took the yellow packet in both hands and pressed it
to her temples as though by this act she could pass its secrets into
her own brain. In spite of herself she was frightfully curious and
frightfully afraid.
She got up and paced the floor rapidly. No--it couldn’t go on. She must
know the truth. As the key of the one unopened room fascinated Blue
Beard’s wife, as the box fascinated Pandora, so this unopened yellow
packet plagued and fascinated Doris Mather. She hesitated another long
moment and then slipped off the rubber band and opened it, trembling so
that the first leaf of paper came out in her fingers and fell to the
floor. She picked the paper up and examined it minutely, holding it up
to the light. There was nothing unusual about it, no mark, no sign of
any kind that might indicate a secret mission. Leaf by leaf, slowly at
first and then more rapidly she went through the leaves, examining each
page back and front, without success. It was not until she was almost
half through it that she came upon the writing--four pages written
lengthways in ink with a line too fine almost for legibility.
She put the packet down for a moment, her heart throbbing with
excitement and incredulity, too apprehensive to read, in mortal dread
of a revelation which was to change the whole course of her life and
Cyril’s. There was still time to close the book and go to bed. Why did
she sit there holding the thing open, stupidly gazing at nothing? If
Cyril----
Yes, if Cyril was the unspeakable thing of her doubts, it was time that
she knew it and no compunctions of honor should hold her with such a
man. Besides she had promised him nothing. Hesitating no longer, she
held the leaves under the light of her lamp and slowly deciphered the
thin script.
At first she could make little of it, as it seemed to consist of
numerals which she couldn’t understand, but here and there she made
out the names of towns, the names of regiments familiar to her and a
series of dates, beginning in March and ending in May. As the meaning
of the writing grew clearer to her, she read on, her eyes distended
with horror. Even a child could have seen that this was a list of
the British forces under arms, the proposed dates for the completion
of their equipment, training and departure for France. When she had
finished reading the written pages, her inert fingers slowly turned the
blank papers over to the end. There was nothing more. God knows it was
enough! Cyril--the Honorable Cyril--a spy of the Germans!
She sank low in her armchair, her senses numb from the horror of the
revelation. Her thoughts became confused like those of a sick person
awaking from a nightmare to a half consciousness, peopled with strange
beautiful images doing the dark things of dreams. Cyril--_her_ Cyril--a
spy!
What would happen now. And which way did duty lie? Toward England or
toward Cyril? She sat crouched on the floor in an agony of misery at
the thought of Cyril’s baseness, the package of paper clenched in her
hand, trying to think clearly for England, for Cyril, for herself, but
the longer she battled the deeper became her desperation and despair.
The world seemed to be slipping away from her, the orderly arrangement
of her thoughts was twisted and distorted so that wrong had become
right and right wrong. She had lost her standard of judgment. She did
not know which way to turn, so she bent her head forward into her hands
and silently prayed. There seemed to be nothing else to do. For a long
while she remained prostrate by the window, her brain tortured, her
body stiff with weariness, until she could think no more. Then slowly
and painfully she rose and, still clutching the yellow packet, groped
her way to bed, into which she fell exhausted in mind and body.