A WEAVING OF WEBS
Carsdale looked round him with the stealthy care of a man who fears
that even the most unlikely things may shelter an eavesdropper.
“Sophie?” he whispered.
Mrs. Walsingham shook her head.
“Fast asleep,” she said. “It’s all right--there’s no danger. What is
it, Jack! I know something’s happened. Not so much because you’re here,
but because of--your look. Tell me!”
Carsdale took off his hat and, putting it down, wiped his forehead. Now
that he was here, away from his own place, matters looked worse.
“It’s--bad,” he went on, in the same low tones. “You remember what
Sandy Kinahan told you?”
He was watching her keenly, and he saw her suddenly put her hands
behind her and grasp the edge of the table against which she had backed
when they entered the room, and he knew from the whitening of the
knuckles that she was gripping it hard. And then she whitened to the
lips.
“Take it easy, now,” said Carsdale. “You’ve got to know. What Sandy
Kinahan told you wasn’t--true.”
She tried to swallow once or twice, and then to speak; and Carsdale
went over to the sideboard, quickly mixed her a drink, and forced it on
her.
“You mean--he isn’t dead!” she whispered.
“He’s not dead,” answered Carsdale, with a cynical laugh. “It was all
a plant of Kinahan’s and somebody else’s, for some reason. No, Master
Sydney is very much alive!”
She stood staring at him with dilated eyes and parting lips.
“He’s--here?” she said.
“He’s here,” replied Carsdale.
“In--London?” she whispered.
Carsdale made a grimace.
“To tell you the truth, my girl,” he said, “he’s at my rooms, and
he’s either enjoying himself with my whiskey--though he’s too fond
of keeping his wits to touch much of that--or he’s safe between the
sheets. That’s where Syd Werrick is!”
She threw up her head with a gesture of despair and dropped into the
nearest seat.
“My God!” she muttered. “What’s to be done?”
“Heaven knows!” answered Carsdale. “I don’t.”
“Where on earth did you find him?” she asked.
“Find him! We met--met in the Strand. He hailed me, cool as a
cucumber,” said Carsdale. “And he’d just come from seeing--you.”
“Seeing--me!” she exclaimed.
“He happened to catch sight of you and the boy going into the Odalium,
and so he bought a pit ticket and feasted his eyes on you and the
necklace,” answered Carsdale grimly. “And, naturally, when you left the
theatre he watched you over the road to the _Cecil_. You know Master
Syd’s tricks.”
Mrs. Walsingham had taken a filmy handkerchief from her bosom and was
twisting and untwisting it in her jewelled fingers--it was suddenly
torn violently in two as if by mere will-power. And Carsdale laughed.
“It’s no good, Sylvie,” he said. “The thing is, to keep calm and cool.
Sydney’s a rock that you’re up against--I, too, perhaps. According to
the law of this blessed land, he’s your husband, and he’s done nothing
that you can rid yourself of him for. That’s flat. Now that he’s back,
the best thing is to make the best of a bad job, and see what we can
do. One thing’s certain--if your lord and master is to be kept quiet,
we shall have to take him into partnership.”
“Partnership!” she exclaimed.
Carsdale sat down and tapped her knee.
“You must see,” he said, quietly, “you must see that the serious affair
with the boy is off--off, as far away as Cape Horn! You can’t commit
bigamy. All that we can do now is to make as much as we can out of him.
And--unpleasant as it is--Sydney Werrick will have to come in at it.”
She sat staring at him in silence for a full minute; then, with a low,
harsh laugh she rose, and, going over to the sideboard, mixed herself
another drink.
“Play light,” said Carsdale, warningly.
“Give me a cigarette,” she said, coming back to her seat. “Thank you.
Now, then--what do you propose?”
Carsdale again looked cautiously and suspiciously around the room.
“You’re sure that girl is really asleep--and safe?” he whispered.
Mrs. Walsingham made an impatient gesture.
“Certain!” she answered. “Never mind her. Get to business.”
Carsdale fingered his moustache for a minute or two, staring fixedly at
an exact point of the ceiling.
“Well,” he said at last, “well, if we’ve got down to plain and brutal
fact, I think we both know what we intended about the young ’un when
that letter to Barclay Leverton fell into our hands. Things ran well
for us, Sylvie--especially when Sandy Kinahan brought that news which
wasn’t true. As they ran, you were going to get your share through
marriage--and an excellent way it would have been, and would have saved
an awful lot of trouble. But now that Sydney’s turned up, that’s all
off--it’s impossible, it’s quite----”
“Couldn’t Sydney be bought out and packed off for good?” she suggested.
Carsdale shook his head with unmistakable dissent.
“That’s still more impossible,” he replied. “You’d never know when he’d
come back. No--it’s off--off! And so--well, we must reap our harvest in
another way. Fortunately, we’ve so engineered things that it won’t be
very difficult to reap. And, if you want to know the truth, I shan’t be
sorry to make a new development. Things are not good.”
She looked at him quickly.
“You mean--you want to get out?” she asked.
“Something very like it,” he admitted. “The young ’un’s coming was a
godsend, and, if we only play our cards properly, we can start in fresh
fields and new pastures to big advantage. But don’t forget this--Syd
Werrick will have to be in at it.”
Mrs. Walsingham made no immediate reply. She sat smoking cigarette
after cigarette, tapping her slippered feet impatiently on the
hearthrug, her eyes sombre with thought.
“What’s gone wrong with you?” she suddenly demanded.
Carsdale shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s not that anything has gone absolutely wrong,” he said. “It’s
simply that nothing seems doing or coming along. And if you want to
know, it’s my belief that that young vixen, Frances Leverton, has her
knife into me, and is somehow, but I don’t know how, doing me harm. I
couldn’t put my finger on any precise spot--but I’ve an uneasy feeling
that she’s up to no good.”
“Could she do anything?” asked Mrs. Walsingham.
“Well,” replied Carsdale, stirring a little uneasily in his seat,
“there is one affair, if only she was cute enough to understand the
papers which she’d doubtless find in her father’s effects. It may be
that.”
“She’s cute enough for anything,” remarked Mrs. Walsingham. She
reflected a little, and then turned to him with an odd look. “I--I’ve
been made rather uneasy to-night,” she said.
“Where? At the theatre?” he asked. “The supper-party?”
“It may be all nothing, but I was uneasy,” she answered. “You know
I put on the--the real necklace. I saw no danger in that, now that
I’ve got both. Well, Burgoyne had a friend there--another Army man, a
Captain Blair, but retired, because he’s lost an arm.”
“Blair--ex-Army man--lost an arm?” said Carsdale, musingly. “Seems to
me I know something about that man. Describe him.”
“A tall, well-built, handsome man, with very remarkable eyes, who seems
as if he were looking clean through you and turning you inside out,”
answered Mrs. Walsingham. “He made me uneasy and uncomfortable.”
“I know him,” said Carsdale. “He’s a writing fellow. Well?”
“Well, when we went to supper at the _Cecil_,” continued Mrs.
Walsingham, “the talk somehow got on to the necklace, and, of course,
the boy was full of the Maria Louisa legend, or whatever it is. Then
this Captain Blair asked to be allowed to look at the necklace because
of its historic interest, and I had to take it off--we were in a
private room, you know--and let him examine it. And that was where I
got uneasy.”
“Why?” asked Carsdale. “It was probably only curiosity.”
Mrs. Walsingham shook her head.
“No!” she said. “I don’t think so. He examined that necklace in a way
that showed me he was an expert in diamonds. He was a little bit too
careful about it. Now--why?”
Carsdale manifested signs of impatience.
“Oh, I don’t see anything in that, Sylvie!” he said. “You’ve got
fidgety and suspicious because of all the recent circumstances. I don’t
suppose the man had any ulterior design--what ulterior design could he
have? Now I come to think of it, this Captain Blair, after he left the
Army, took to writing, and I remember--I was trying to recall it while
you talked--he did write a series of articles or something about the
precious stones, in one of those collectors’ journals. He was probably
examining the thing as a connoisseur--that’s all. By the by, where is
the necklace?”
“Here, of course--locked up in my safe,” she answered. “I shall bring
it to the office to-morrow.”
“Better take it to your bank,” said Carsdale. “At any rate, don’t leave
it here. However much you may trust that maid of yours, I shouldn’t
trust her to the extent of diamonds worth twelve thousand. Now
then--as to what we are going to do. There are two persons to think of
first--Sydney and this boy Shrewsbury.”
“Well?” she said with a sigh. “What of them?”
“Let’s get a clear notion,” said Carsdale. “Now, first as to Syd
Werrick. There will be no trouble with him, Sylvie, so long as he’s
kept in clover. I’ll take care that he gives you no trouble. He can
put up with me, down there in Jermyn Street. He shall have as much
money as he likes--in reason--and he shall enjoy himself. He’ll be
made to understand that he’s to behave himself in every way. I expect
there’ll have to be a talk between the three of us----”
“I don’t want to see him--I won’t see him!” broke in Mrs. Walsingham.
“At any rate, not yet.”
“Certainly not yet,” said Carsdale, soothingly. “Leave it to me--I can
manage him. It’s very fortunate that there’s nothing against the young
gentleman on this side, so he’ll be able to go around town and amuse
himself, and do what he likes with his liberty----”
“Yes, and then he’ll some day get too much to drink, and then he’ll
turn ugly, and then--oh, then, I know!” she said.
“He doesn’t look as if he’d been at that game lately, anyway,” said
Carsdale, thoughtfully. “He looks as hard and fit as a man of his age
should be, and his eyes are as clear as a child’s, and----”
Mrs. Walsingham suddenly laid a hand on her companion’s arm.
“Jack!” she said in a tense whisper. “Don’t you ever forget this: Syd
will never forgive you and me because we cleared out and left him
to face the music in New York. He may play that he’s forgotten and
forgiven, but he hasn’t and he won’t. Oh, don’t I know him! You’re too
easy-going; too optimistic.”
“Oh, I think he’ll be all right if he’s decently treated now,” said
Carsdale, hopefully. “I say--leave him to me. Now, as to the other.”
Mrs. Walsingham shook her head; it was evident that she had small
belief in Carsdale’s anticipations.
“Well--go on,” she said.
“As to the young ’un,” continued Carsdale, in a lower voice, and again
looking about him as if he mistrusted the very walls, “you’ll see how
beautifully my policy will work out. He’s a complete belief in me, and
he’ll trust me to the last extent. The thing to do is to gradually get
his securities into my absolute control, and then----”
“Then you’ll do what you like with them!” she said, with an ironic
laugh. “And what am I to do in the meantime?”
“Keep the game going,” answered Carsdale. “Keep the game going. I’ll be
answerable for your husband while it’s being played.”
“I wish my husband had gone to the bottom of the Atlantic!” she said,
clenching her hand. “I wish what Sandy Kinahan said had been true!”
Carsdale laughed, rose, and picked up his hat.
“So do I!” he said. “Heartily--heartily! But--it isn’t true. The young
gentleman is here. That, my dear Sylvie, is a fact. Fact, remember!”
Then he left her, and finding a belated taxi-cab near the mansions,
chartered it and drove home to Jermyn Street, thinking hard all the
way. And his chief thought was that, if he hadn’t a sentimental feeling
for Sylvie he would quickly feather his own nest and clear clean out.
Carsdale’s sitting-room was tenantless. He picked up the whiskey
decanter, and gave it a quick look. He had eyed it before he left, and
he knew that Werrick had drunk no more after his departure. And he
shook his head solemnly and meaningly.
“That argues mischief!” he said to himself. “He means to keep a cool
head. And when Sydney Werrick’s head is cool, the devil himself
wouldn’t be a match for him!”