RIZZIO TAKES CHARGE
Rizzio was to arrive that night. Meanwhile, with the papers hidden
about her and bright fires burning in all the living-rooms of the house
in which they could in a moment be destroyed, Doris thought herself
well placed upon the defensive. Cyril’s note had cheered her, and after
removing the dust of her journey she went down into the library, where
she joined the other members of the house party assembled. Black seemed
to be the prevailing color, for, in addition to the weeds of Lady
Constance, there was Wilfred Hammersley, Cyril’s uncle, who had lost
an only son at La Bassée, and the Heatherington girls, who had lost a
brother.
“Ugh!” Lady Betty was saying. “I came to Scotland to try and forget,
but the war follows me. Dick Byfield a traitor! Who next? Let’s not
even speak of it. Come, I’ve ordered the brake, Doris. We’re going out
for a spin. You and I and Angeline. Constance of course has a headache,
and Jack will be having another for sympathy.”
The air outside was life-giving, and when she returned later Doris felt
that her brain had been swept clear of its cobwebs of perplexity. She
found Wilson standing in her room gazing with a puzzled expression at
the tray of her unpacked box, the contents of which were in a state of
confusion.
“It’s strange, Miss Mather. Someone has been at your things while I
was down in the servants’ hall at luncheon.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Miss Mather, sure. Quite positive, in fact. Those waists were
lying flat when I left.”
“The window wasn’t open?” asked Doris with a glance around.
“Oh, no, Miss.” She looked about and lowered her voice. “It’s somebody
inside.”
“Curious,” said Doris thoughtfully. “Nothing has been taken? Is the
jewel box there?”
Together they examined the things and found that nothing was missing.
“Say nothing about this, Wilson,” said Doris thoughtfully. “Unless
something is taken, I shouldn’t care to disturb Lady Heathcote.”
“It can’t be----” Wilson paused, her voice hushed.
“The papers are safe, Wilson--as long as I am safe,” replied the girl,
and told the maid of her place of concealment.
Wilson looked dubious. “I wish you’d give them to me, Miss Mather.”
But the girl shook her head--she was thoroughly alive now to the perils
which hung about her, here within the very doors of Lady Heathcote’s
house, but she had determined that if she could not find it possible to
keep the papers until Cyril appeared she would destroy them. She was
not frightened, for however clumsy John Rizzio’s agents might be she
was in no danger from himself. Whatever the interests which made the
possession of the yellow packet so vital, she knew the man well enough
to be sure that if there came an issue between them, he would act with
her as he had always acted--the part of a gentleman.
Instead of apprehension at his approaching visit she now felt only
interest and a kind of suppressed exhilaration as at the prospect of a
flight in a new plane or the trying out of a green hunter--excitement
like that which preceded all her sportive ventures.
So that when she met John Rizzio in the drawing-room after dinner--he
had not been able to manage a more opportune train--she gave him a warm
hand-clasp of greeting and a smile which caused him some surprise and
not a little regret--surprise that she was carrying off a difficult
situation with consummate ease; regret that such self-possession and
artistry were not to be added to the ornaments of his house in Berkeley
Square. Perhaps still----
“How agreeable,” she was saying charmingly. “The great man actually
condescends to come to the land of Calvin, oatcake and sulphur, when
there are truffles and old Madeira still to be had in London.”
He laughed, his dark eyes appraising her slender blond beauty eagerly.
“I have no quarrel with Calvin. Oatcake--by all means. Sulphur--er--I
suppose the sulphur will come in time.”
“Not if you’re polite,” said the girl coolly, “and tell me what brought
you so unexpectedly to Scotland.”
They were standing near the fire apart from the others, Doris with one
slipper on the fender, which she was regarding approvingly, her head
upon one side. He admired her careless tone. She was quite wonderful.
“Perhaps you will not believe me,” he said suavely, “if I were to tell
you that I came to see you.”
“Me? I _am_ flattered. I thought that great collectors were always
deterred by fear of the spurious.”
She was carrying the war into his camp. He met the issue squarely.
“They are _only_ deterred by the spurious. Therefore I am here. The
inference is obvious.”
He had always showed the slightest trace of his foreign accent. It went
admirably with his shrug and mobile fingers.
“I am genuine in this,” she laughed, “that however much you know about
pictures, about _objets de vertu_--women must remain for you and for
all other men an unknown quantity.”
“Not when they are both,” he said gallantly.
“There are good and bad pictures--objects of virtue, excessively
ugly----”
“Objects of virtue are usually excessively ugly, especially if they are
women.”
“Thanks,” said Doris. “You’re most flattering. There’s something in the
air of Scotland that makes one tell the truth.”
He laughed. “If Scotland is as merciless as that, I shall be off in the
morning. I could imagine no worse purgatory than a place in which one
always tells the truth. Lying is one of the highest arts of a mature
civilization. I haven’t the slightest notion, nor have you, that either
of us means a thing he says. We were all born to deceive--some of us do
it in one way, some in another, but we all do it to the very best of
our bent. For instance, you said a while ago that it was agreeable for
you to see me. But I’m quite sure, you know, that it wasn’t.”
“It isn’t agreeable if you’re going to be horrid and cynical. Why
_shouldn’t_ I be glad to see you? You always stimulate my intelligence
even if you don’t flatter it.”
The others had moved on to the library and they had the room to
themselves.
“I don’t see how I could flatter it more than I have already done,” he
said in a low tone of voice.
She raised her chin a trifle and peered at him slantwise.
“Do you think that you flatter it now when you recall the mistakes of
my past?”
He searched her face keenly but her blue eyes met his gaze steadily.
She was smiling up at him guilelessly.
“A mistake--of course,” he said slowly. “You are young enough to afford
to make mistakes. But I am old enough to wish that it hadn’t been made
at my expense.”
“You still care?” she asked.
“I do.”
“If I hadn’t thought that you wanted me for your collection----”
“You are cruel----”
“No. I know. You wanted me for your portrait harem, and I should have
been frightfully jealous of the Coningsby Venus. I couldn’t compete
with that sort of thing, you know.”
He smiled at her admiringly and went on in a low tone.
“You know why I wanted you then, and why I want you now--because you’re
the cleverest woman in England, and the most courageous.”
“It took courage to refuse the hand of John Rizzio.”
“It takes more courage in John Rizzio to hear those words from the lips
that refused him.”
She laid her hand gently on his arm.
“I am sorry,” she said.
He bent his head and kissed her fingers.
“It is not the Coningsby Venus who is essential to my happiness,” he
whispered. “It’s the Doris Diana.”
She laughed.
“That’s the disillusionment of possession.”
“No. The only disillusionments of life are its failures--I got the
Venus by infinite patience. The Diana----” He paused and drew in his
breath.
“You think that you may get the Diana by patience also?” she asked
quietly.
He looked at her with a gaze that seemed to pierce all her subterfuges.
“I waited for the Coningsby Venus,” he said in measured tones, “until
the man who possessed her--was dead.”
She started, and the color left her cheeks.
“You mean--Cyril?” she stammered.
“I mean,” he replied urbanely, “precisely nothing--except that I will
never give you up.”
She recovered her poise with an effort, and when she replied she was
smiling gayly.
“I’m not at all sure that I want to be given up,” she said, with a
laugh that was meant to relax the tension. “You are, after all, one of
the best friends I have.”
“I hope that nothing may ever happen to make you think otherwise.”
Was this a threat? She glanced at him keenly as she quoted:
“‘Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and
affairs of love.’ May I trust you?”
“Try me.”
“No, I might put you to a test that would be difficult.”
“Try me.”
“Very well, I will. Go back to London in the morning.”
He looked at her and laughed.
“Why?”
“It will be easier for you to be patient there than here----”
“When Hammersley comes?”
“Oh,” she said quickly, “then he _is_ coming?”
“I don’t know why he shouldn’t,” he said slowly.
There was a pause.
“Shall you go?”
“To London? I’ll think about it.”
“There! You see? You refuse my first request.”
“I would like to know your purpose.”
“I think you know it already,” she put in quickly. “You want something
that I cannot give you--something that is not mine to give.”
She had come out into the open defiantly and he met her challenge with
a laugh.
“Because it is Hammersley’s?” he said. “You think so and Hammersley
thinks so, and possession is nine points of the law. But I will
contest.”
“Your visit is vain. Go back to London, my friend.”
“I find it pleasanter here.”
“Then you refuse?”
“I must.”
“Then it is war between us.”
“If you will have it so,” he said, with an inclination of the head.
Doris put her foot on the fender and leaned with her hands upon her
knee for a moment as though in deep thought. Then she turned toward
the door.
“Come,” she said coolly. “Let us join the others.”
There was a relief in the thought that at least they had come to an
understanding and that the matter of the possession of the papers had
at last become a private contest between them. She had brought the
interview to an end not because she was afraid to continue it but
because she wanted to think of a plan to disarm him. She felt that she
was moving in the dark but she trusted to her delicate woman’s sense of
touch to stumble upon some chance, some slip of his tongue, which might
lead her into the light.
In the drawing-room by common consent all talk of war had been
abolished. She sat in at a hand of auction, but playing badly, she
was gladly relinquished by her partner at the end of the rubber. John
Rizzio, who disliked the game, had gone off for a quiet smoke, but when
she got up from the card table he was there waiting for her.
“Cyril shall know of this,” laughed Betty, as they went toward the
door. “They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder--of the other
fellow.”
Doris led the way to the gun-room, a place used by Algie Heathcote for
his sporting implements and trophies of the chase. It was comfortably
furnished in leather and oak and a cheerful fire was burning in the
grate. Doris sank into the davenport and motioned to her companion to
the place at her side. She was thoroughly alive to her danger, but the
sportswoman in her made her keen to put it to the test.
“We are quite alone here,” she said coolly. “The others are not even
within call. Now what do you want of me?”
Her audacity rather startled him, but he folded his arms and leaned
back smiling.
“The papers of Riz-la-Croix, of course,” he said amiably.
“And how do you know they’re in my possession?”
He shrugged.
“Because they couldn’t possibly be anywhere else.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have exhausted every other resource.”
“You’re frank at least--including the burglary at Ashwater Park and the
messing in my box upstairs?”
“And since you must know the full truth,” he continued politely, “the
careful search of your room in your absence this evening--including the
removal of the rugs and bedding. Oh, don’t be disturbed, I beg of you,”
as she made a movement of alarm, “they have all been replaced with a
nice care for detail.”
“And if I told Lady Heathcote of this----”
“I am quite sure that the best interests of all,” he said politely,
“are conserved--by silence.”
She meditated a moment, her gaze on the coals.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “you’re clever--more than ordinarily clever. I
can’t understand how I could ever have refused you. But don’t you think
your methods have been a little--er--unchivalrous?”
“The importance of my objects admitted of no delay. I hope you have not
been inconvenienced----”
“Not in the least,” calmly. “My recollection of your many civilities
merely made me think that your agents were overzealous.”
“I am sorry,” he said genuinely. “It could not be helped. You and I are
merely pawns in a game greater than anything the world has ever known.”
“I didn’t want you to apologize. I merely thought in order to avoid
comment that you might have come to me yourself.”
“I thought I might save you the unpleasantness of a controversy which
can only have one end.”
“You mean--that you will win.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“You will give me the papers--here, tonight.”
“And if I told you that I had destroyed them?”
“That would be manifestly untrue, since at the present moment in the
position of your body their outline is quite clearly defined on the
inside of your right knee.”
Doris put both slippers upon the ground, her feet together, her face
flushing warmly.
“I hope you will forgive my frankness,” she heard him say gently, “but
the method of your challenge--is--unusual.”
She clasped her hands around her knees and frowned into the fire.
“You mistake, I think, my friend. It is not a challenge. It is merely a
method of defense--the safest, I am sure, against John Rizzio.”
He bowed low with deep ceremony.
“Of course, I am helpless.” And then, “I can only rely on your good
sense and”--here his voice sunk a note lower--“and on your loyalty to
the cause of England.”
This was the opening that she had been waiting for. She thrust quickly.
“And if the cause is England’s why didn’t Scotland Yard come to
Ashwater Park?”
“Dunsinane to Burnam Wood!” he shrugged. “They would have made asinine
mistakes as they always do--the chief of which would have been that of
denouncing Miss Doris Mather as an agent of England’s enemies.”
The girl tapped her toe reflectively upon the rug.
“I won’t attempt subterfuge. Of course, I know the contents of that
packet.”
“You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t.”
“And how it was passed from Captain Byfield to Cyril Hammersley.” This
was a random shot but it hit the mark. Rizzio’s eyes dilated slightly,
but she saw them.
“Byfield! Impossible.”
“Not at all. Cyril told me,” she lied.
“He told you----?” he paused aghast, for now she was laughing at him.
“No--but you have.”
His brow tangled and he folded his arms again.
“Of course, you know the importance to Cyril and Captain Byfield of
keeping such a matter secret.”
He had not heard! He did not know! She remembered that the subject of
the dreadful news from London had not been reopened and Jack Sandys’
sources of information were probably semiofficial.
She controlled her voice with an effort.
“I would hardly be the one to mention names under the circumstances--since
my own fortunes seem to be involved in the matter, but as for Captain
Byfield, I’m afraid that further secrecy will hardly help him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Merely that he was arrested late yesterday afternoon as he was leaving
the War Office.”
She had not counted on the effect she created. She knew that her last
thrust had put him more carefully on guard, but he could not hide the
sudden intake of breath and the quick searching glance his dark eyes
shot at her.
“What is your source of information?”
“Jack Sandys. He came here directly from Downing Street.”
She saw Rizzio’s lips meet under his mustache in a thin line.
“So. It has come sooner--than I expected.”
He got up and paced the floor, his fingers twitching behind his back.
She said nothing, waiting for him to rejoin her. When he did, it was
with a serious expression.
“I suppose you know what this means to--to Hammersley,” he said in a
low voice.
Doris sat without moving, but her brain was busy weighing Rizzio.
“No,” she replied calmly, “I don’t. Won’t you tell me?”
He leaned forward toward her along the back of their seat, his look and
voice concentrated upon her.
“Is it possible,” he continued, “that you haven’t realized by this time
exactly what Cyril Hammersley is?”
“No,” she said staunchly. “I will believe nothing of him unless he
tells it to me himself.”
He waited a moment, watching her, and fancied that he saw her lips
tremble slightly. Her loyalty to Hammersley inflamed him. He followed
up his advantage quickly.
“There are reasons why I should dislike to give you pain, greater
reasons why I should be generous with a successful rival, and I have
done what I can to take this matter out of your hands. There is still
time. Will you give me that packet?”
She shook her head.
“Then I must speak,” he went on. “My duty demands it, whatever happens
to him--whatever happens to you. Don’t make me go to extremes with you.
I cannot bear to do it. Hammersley is a German spy. Those papers were
to be forwarded to Germany. You are saving them for him, that he may
betray England.”
“That is not true,” she said chokingly. “I do not believe it.”
“You must. Isn’t there proof enough in what you have read?”
“There is some mistake.”
“No. There can’t be. Your sentiments are blinding you.”
“One moment, please.” Doris had risen and faced him across the hearth,
a new fire of resolution in her eyes. To Rizzio, the lover of beauty,
she was a mockery of lost happiness. She was Diana, not the huntress
but the hunted.
“You have told me what Cyril Hammersley is. Now if you please I would
like to know what _you_ are!”
He paused a moment and then with a step toward her said gently:
“I think my interests should be fairly obvious. I am acting for the
English Government.”
“I have only your word for it. Have you any papers that would prove
it--in your card-case, for instance?”
He started back, his fingers instinctively reaching upward. Then he
shrugged and laughed.
“You are surely the most amazing person. Unfortunately I have no
documents. I am only doing my duty as a private citizen--a loyal
resident of the Empire.”
“But not a Briton. Neither am I. We meet on equal terms.”
“Then you refuse me--definitely, finally.”
“Yes, I must.”
“I beg that you will consider carefully the alternatives. If you give
me the papers--silence on my part--safety for Hammersley. If you refuse
to give them up----” he paused.
“Then what will you do?” she defied him.
“It would be the most terrible moment of my life--but I will denounce
him--here tonight--tomorrow in London. Those papers must not reach
Germany--even if I have to denounce you, too.”
“And if I promise that the papers will not reach Germany?”
He hesitated a moment.
“There is too much at stake. I can’t take the risk. No woman can be
trusted----”
“Not even the woman John Rizzio would have made his wife?”
He moved his shoulders expressively. Her youth and cleverness were
bewildering him.
“No, that will not do,” he said in desperation. “You must give me the
papers.”
“I will not. You shall have to take them from me.”
He leaned toward her along the mantel aware of her dominant loveliness.
“You would not drive me to that!”
“Yes. It _is_ a challenge. I offer it. I will fight you, and I am
strong. I have a voice and I will raise an outcry. They will come and
I will tell them. Then you can denounce me? Will you dare?”
He came toward her while she fled around the davenport, eluding him
with ease. She was swifter of foot than he. He stopped a moment near
the gun-rack to plead. She kept the huge oak lounge between them and
listened by the fire. Something she saw in his eyes decided her, for as
he came forward to leap over the davenport she threw something yellow
toward him.
He gave a gasp of relief, picked the object up and made a cry of dismay.
“The cover! I must have the papers,” he cried, coming forward again.
By this time the girl was standing upright, a poker in one hand, the
thin cigarette papers cramped in the fingers of the other, over the
open fire.
Rizzio paused in the very act of leaping.
“Not that,” he whispered hoarsely, “for God’s sake--not that.”
[Illustration: “‘Not that,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘for God’s sake--not
that.’”]
“Stay where you are, then,” said the girl in a low resolute tone.
Rizzio straightened. Doris still bent over the fire.
“Give it to me,” he said again.
“No. England’s secrets shall be safe.”
“Don’t you understand?” he whispered wildly. “I’ve got to prove that
they are.”
“I can prove that as well as you----”
“But you won’t. Hammersley is----”
He paused and both of them straightened, listening. Outside in the hall
there was a commotion and a familiar voice as the Honorable Cyril, his
face and fur coat spattered with mud, came into the room.