THE BLOOD-STAINED PORTRAIT
In the vestibule I hung around waiting till Anne and Mrs. Dennis
Sutherland should reappear from the cloak-room.
It was close on the time when I was due at Whitehall Gardens, but I must
have a parting word with Anne, even at the risk of being late for the
appointment with my chief.
Jim and Mary passed through, and paused to say good night.
"It's all right, Maurice?" Mary whispered. "And you're coming to us
to-morrow, anyhow?"
"Yes; to say good-bye, if I have to start on Monday."
"Just about time you were on the war-path again, my boy," said Jim,
bluffly. "Idleness is demoralizing, 'specially in London."
Now this was scarcely fair, considering that it was little more than a
month since I returned from South Africa, where I had been to observe
and report on the conditions of labor in the mines; nor had I been by
any means idle during those weeks of comparative leisure. But I knew,
of course, that this was an oblique reference to my affair with
Anne; though why Jim should disapprove of it so strongly passed my
comprehension. If Anne chose to keep me on tenter-hooks, well that was
my affair, not his! Still, I wasn't going to quarrel with Jim over his
opinion, as I should have quarrelled with any other man.
Anne joined me directly, and we had two precious minutes together under
the portico. Mrs. Sutherland's carriage had not yet come into the
courtyard, and she herself was chatting with folks she knew.
There were plenty of people about, coming and going, but Anne and I
paced along out of the crowd, and paused in the shadow of one of the
pillars.
She looked ethereal, ghostlike, in her long white cloak, with a filmy
hood thing drawn loosely over her shining hair.
I thought her paler than usual--though that might have been the effect
of the electric lights overhead--and her face was wistful, but very fair
and sweet and innocent. One could scarcely believe it the same face
that, a few minutes before, had been animated by audacious mischief and
coquetry. Truly her moods were many, and they changed with every
fleeting moment.
"I've behaved abominably to you all the evening," she whispered
tremulously. "And yet you've forgiven me."
"There's nothing to forgive. The queen can do no wrong," I answered.
(How Jim Cayley would have jeered at me if he could have heard!) "Anne,
I love you. I think you must know that by this time, dear."
"Yes, I know, and--and I am glad--Maurice, though I don't deserve that
you should love me. I've teased you so shamefully--I don't know what
possessed me!"
If I could only have kissed those faltering lips! But I dare not. We
were within range of too many curious eyes. Still, I held her hand in
mine, and our eyes met. In that brief moment we saw each into the
other's soul, and saw love there, the true love passionate and pure,
that, once born, lasts forever, through life and death and all eternity.
She was the first to speak, breaking a silence that could have lasted
but a fraction of time, but there are seconds in which one experiences
an infinitude of joy or sorrow.
"And you are going away--so soon! But we shall meet to-morrow?"
"Yes, we'll have one day, at least; there is so much to say--"
Then, in a flash, I remembered the old man and Cassavetti,--the mystery
that enshrouded them, and her.
"I may not be able to come early, darling," I continued hurriedly. "I
have to see that old man in the morning. He says he knows you,--that you
are in danger; I could not make out what he meant. And he spoke of
Cassavetti; he came to see him, really. That was why I dare not tell you
the whole story just now--"
"Cassavetti!" she echoed, and I saw her eyes dilate and darken. "Who is
he--what is he? I never saw him before, but he came up and talked to Mr.
Cayley, and asked to be introduced to me; and--and I was so vexed with
you, Maurice, that I began to flirt with him; and then--oh, I don't
know--he is so strange--he perplexes--frightens me!"
"And yet you gave him a flower," I said reproachfully.
"I can't think why! I felt so queer, as if I couldn't help myself. I
just had to give him one,--that one; and when I looked at
him,--Maurice, what does a red geranium mean? Has it--"
"Mrs. Dennis Sutherland's carriage!" bawled a liveried official by the
centre steps.
Mrs. Sutherland swept towards us.
"Come along, Anne," she cried, as we moved to meet her. "Perhaps we
shall see you later, Mr. Wynn? You'll be welcome any time, up to one
o'clock."
I put them into the carriage, and watched them drive away; then started,
on foot, for Whitehall Gardens. The distance was so short that I could
cover it more quickly walking than driving.
The night was sultry and overcast; and before I reached my destination
big drops of rain were spattering down, and the mutter of thunder
mingled with the ceaseless roll of the traffic.
I was taken straight to Lord Southbourne's sanctum, a handsomely
furnished, but almost ostentatiously business-like apartment.
Southbourne himself, seated at a big American desk, was making
hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper before him while he dictated rapidly
to Harding, his private secretary, who manipulated a typewriter close
by.
He looked up, nodded to me, indicated a chair, and a table on which were
whiskey and soda and an open box of cigarettes, and invited me to help
myself, all with one sweep of the hand, and without an instant's
interruption of his discourse,--an impassioned denunciation of some
British statesman who dared to differ from him--Southbourne--on some
burning question of the day, Tariff Reform, I think; but I did not
listen. I was thinking of Anne; and was only subconsciously aware of
the hard monotonous voice until it ceased.
"That's all, Harding. Thanks. Good night," said Southbourne, abruptly.
He rose, yawned, stretched himself, sauntered towards me, subsided into
an easy-chair, and lighted a cigarette.
Harding gathered up his typed slips, exchanged a friendly nod with me,
and quietly took himself off.
I knew Southbourne's peculiarities fairly well, and therefore waited for
him to speak.
We smoked in silence for a time, till he remarked abruptly: "Carson's
dead."
"Dead!" I ejaculated, in genuine consternation. I had known and liked
Carson; one of the cleverest and most promising of Southbourne's "young
men."
He blew out a cloud of smoke, watched a ring form and float away as if
it were the only interesting thing in the world. Then he fired another
word off at me.
"Murdered!"
He blew another smoke ring, and there was a spell of silence. I do not
even now know whether his callousness was real or feigned. I hope it was
feigned, though he affected to regard all who served him, in whatever
capacity, as mere pieces in the ambitious game he played, to be used or
discarded with equal skill and ruthlessness, and if an unlucky pawn fell
from the board,--why it was lost to the game, and there was an end of
it.
Murdered! It seemed incredible. I thought of Carson as I last saw him,
the day before I started for South Africa, when we dined together and
made a night of it. If I had been available when the situation became
acute in Russia a few weeks later, Southbourne would have sent me
instead of him; I should perhaps have met with his fate. I knew, of
course, that at this time a "special" in Russia ran quite as many risks
as a war correspondent on active service; but it was one thing to
encounter a stray bullet or a bayonet thrust in the course of one's
day's work,--say during an _emeute_,--and quite another to be murdered
in cold blood.
"That's terrible!" I said huskily, at last. "He was such a splendid
chap, too, poor Carson. Have you any details?"
"Yes; he was found in his rooms, stabbed to the heart. He must have been
dead twenty-four hours or more."
"And the police have tracked the murderer?"
"No, and I don't suppose they will. They've so many similar affairs of
their own on hand, that an Englishman more or less doesn't count. The
Embassy is moving in the matter, but it is very unlikely that anything
will be discovered beyond what is known already,--that it was the work
of an emissary of some secret society with which Carson had mixed
himself up, in defiance of my instructions."
He paused and lighted another cigarette.
"How do you know he defied your instructions?" I burst out indignantly.
The tone of his allusion to Carson riled me. "Don't you always expect us
to send a good story, no matter how, or at what personal risk, we get
the material?"
"Just so," he asserted calmly. "By the way, if you're in a funk, Wynn,
you needn't go. I can get another man to take your place to-night."
"I'm not in a funk, and I mean to go, unless you want to send another
man. If you do, send him and be damned to you both!" I retorted hotly.
"Look here, Lord Southbourne; Carson never failed in his duty,--I'd
stake my life on that! And I'll not allow you, or any man, to sneer at
him when he's dead and can't defend himself!"
Southbourne dropped his cigarette and stared at me, a dusky flush rising
under his sallow skin. That is the only time I have ever seen any sign
of emotion on his impassive face.
"I apologize, Mr. Wynn," he said stiffly. "I ought not to have
insinuated that you were afraid to undertake this commission. Your past
record has proved you the very reverse of a coward! And, I assure you, I
had no intention of sneering at poor Carson or of decrying his work. But
from information in my possession I know that he exceeded his
instructions; that he ceased to be a mere observer of the vivid drama of
Russian life, and became an actor in it, with the result, poor chap,
that he has paid for his indiscretion with his life!"
"How do you know all this?" I demanded. "How do you know--"
"That he was not in search of 'copy,' but in pursuit of his private
ends, when he deliberately placed himself in peril? Well, I do know it;
and that is all I choose to say on this point. I warned him at the
outset,--as I need not have warned you,--that he must exercise infinite
tact and discretion in his relations with the police, and the
bureaucracy which the police represent; and also with the people,--the
democracy. That he must, in fact, maintain a strictly impartial and
impersonal attitude and view-point. Well, that's just what he failed to
do. He became involved with some secret society; you know as well as I
do--better, perhaps--that Russia is honeycombed with 'em. Probably in
the first instance he was actuated by curiosity; but I have reason to
believe that his connection with this society was a purely personal
affair. There was a woman in it, of course. I can't tell you just how he
came to fall foul of his new associates, for I don't know. Perhaps they
imagined he knew too much. Anyhow, he was found, as I have said, stabbed
to the heart. There is no clue to the assassin, except that in Carson's
clenched hand was found an artificial flower,--a red geranium, which--"
I started upright, clutching the arms of my chair. A red geranium! The
bit of stuff dangling from Cassavetti's pass-key; the hieroglyphic on
the portrait, the flower Anne had given to Cassavetti, and to which he
seemed to attach so much significance. All red geraniums. What did they
mean?
"The police declare it to be the symbol of a formidable secret
organization which they have hitherto failed to crush; one that has
ramifications throughout the world," Southbourne continued. "Why, man,
what's wrong with you?" he added hastily.
I suppose I must have looked ghastly; but I managed to steady my voice,
and answer curtly: "I'll tell you later. Go on, what about Carson?"
He rose and crossed to his desk before he answered, scrutinizing me with
keen interest the while.
"That's all. Except that this was found in his breast-pocket; I got it
by to-night's mail. It's in a horrid state; the blood soaked through, of
course."
He picked up a small oblong card, holding it gingerly in his
finger-tips, and handed it to me.
I think I knew what it was, even before I looked at it. A photograph of
Anne Pendennis, identical--save that it was unframed--with that which
was in the possession of the miserable old Russian, even to the
initials, the inscription, and the red symbol beneath it!