Introductory material

THE RAT TRAP

CHAPTER ONE

In the marble hall of the gay Hôtel Continental, Ostend, that reckless center of bathing, gambling and dancing, stood two Englishmen, chatting together.

The younger of the pair, about twenty-two, and dressed in tennis flannels, was a young sprig of the Stock Exchange named Claude Peyton; the elder, a handsome, dark man, about ten years his senior, was Frank Aylmer.

Aylmer was of somewhat foreign appearance, owing to the fact of his mixed parentage, his father having been an Englishman, his mother a Spaniard. He had lived in Spain for the first twelve years of his life, and was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan.

After coming down from Oxford, he studied for the Bar, and, in due course, was called. But his father having died about that period, he came into possession of a comfortable fortune which rendered it unnecessary to work for a living. His beautiful Spanish mother had died before he and his father had come to England.

Passionately fond of travel, he made up his mind to lead a busy, cosmopolitan life at the various Continental resorts, as the seasons came and went. Though outwardly gay and irresponsible, at heart he was a quiet, rather studious man, with drowsy, half-closed eyes, and sleek black hair. Women were greatly attracted to him by his smartness, his handsome features, the perfect little dinners he frequently gave, and perhaps by his innate politeness, and his foreign manner of kissing a woman’s hand.

He was quite well off enough to make him an eligible parti, with the money he had inherited from his father, a member of an old North-Country family. But fortune sometimes delights to give with both hands to her favorites. And she had done so in his case. Two years before this story opens, a distant cousin of his father’s, Sir Charles Reeks, had died suddenly at Biarritz, apparently of heart disease.

Sir Charles was a rich man, a bachelor of somewhat eccentric character. He had not taken any very great notice of either father or son since they had been in England, and he had a heap of other relatives, some with very much stronger claims on him. To such, his will must have been a bitter disappointment; for, with the exception of a few trifling legacies, he left the whole of his considerable fortune to Frank Aylmer, the relative of whom he had seen so very little.

It was the eccentric benefaction of an eccentric man; but, as he was of perfectly sound mind when he made this disposition of his property, the disappointed ones had no hope of upsetting the will. In all probability he had derived great satisfaction in leaving his money to somebody who never had asked him a favor, and never had harbored the idea that he would receive anything from him.

As the two men stood chatting in the marble hall, a party of three passed them on their way out—a charming-looking young woman, apparently in the early twenties, and two men. Peyton bowed to them, and they returned his salutation.

Aylmer’s rather sleepy eyes displayed considerable animation as his gaze followed the young woman whose slender form was enveloped in a mauve bathing-wrap. He turned to his companion.

“What a lovely creature! You know her, then! Who is she?”

Peyton gave him the desired information. “A very slight acquaintance. They only arrived yesterday, and I danced with her last night. She’s as charming as she looks, and was a delightful partner. That tall, dark fellow is her husband, I should say a good fifteen years older than herself. I shouldn’t wonder if they were on their honeymoon—he seems rather attentive. I should say she wasn’t a day older than twenty-two, or three.”

“Who is the other man with them—the short, fair one?” asked Aylmer.

“A great friend of the husband’s so I learned last night. They came here together from England.”

“Of course you know her name?”

“She is a Mrs. Quentin. They live at Hampstead. I didn’t find out what the man is. He looks rather like the Foreign Office type, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” assented Aylmer. “Do you know anything of the husband’s friend?”

“Only that his name is Martyn. You see, old man, I had not too much time with her. But, by Jove, she is a ripping partner; she dances the tango to perfection. She’s as light as a fairy.”

“There is certainly something very uncommon about her, she carries herself so splendidly,” remarked the elder of the young men after a pause. “That mauve bathing-dress suits her down to the ground. I like women better in that sort of gear, don’t you? There are no trimmings when they bathe. If I were the husband of a beautiful woman like that I think I should be disposed to keep her more to myself. I shouldn’t care to have a fellow like this Martyn hanging about. He seems as attentive as her lawful owner.”

“Quite as attentive, if not more so,” laughed young Peyton. “He may be Quentin’s friend, but I think he is very much interested in the delightful young wife. When I was dancing with her last night, I could see his eyes were on her all the time. A bit jealous, perhaps; he can’t dance a little bit, she told me. As soon as I get an opportunity to-night I will introduce you. She’s mad on dancing, and as you are a very fine performer, you’ll just suit her. I can just keep my end up, but I’m not in it with you.”

There was nothing mean or paltry about this bright, open-hearted specimen of the best English youth. He was always ready to yield the palm to those superior to himself in any particular accomplishment, and he had a very humble idea of his own merits. Just a plain, breezy, straightforward Englishman, reflecting credit upon his public-school training. All his friends agreed that he was a thorough “sportsman” in every sense of the word.

“Quentin doesn’t seem a bad sort of chap,” he remarked presently. “A little bit grave and reserved, perhaps, but possessing excellent manners, and, I should say, decidedly well-informed. I don’t take much to the Martyn chap; a bit of a bounder, I fancy. But that may be just prejudice, because I resented his watching us so closely last night. He gave me the impression that he rather begrudged Mrs. Quentin enjoying herself. But, of course, I may be wrong, not by any means for the first time.” He ended with his boyish laugh.

That evening, young Peyton fulfilled his promise and introduced his friend to the charming Mrs. Quentin, and she and Aylmer danced together.

In appearance the young woman was a typical blond—blue eyes, fair hair, shingled in the latest fashion, a complexion of cream and roses. She wore a wonderful hyacinth dance-frock which suited her delicate beauty to perfection. Young Peyton had not exaggerated her proficiency. She danced like a fairy, or a professional. As Aylmer, no mean performer himself, guided her slender form through the crowded room, he thought she embodied the very poetry of motion.

They were much too good performers not to take their dancing seriously, more especially as they could not fail to perceive the admiration that their graceful partnership was exciting both amongst their fellow dancers and those who, like Mr. Quentin and his friend Martyn, contented themselves with looking on at the gay scene. During the dance they did not say much to each other. But, after it was over he found that this very beautiful young woman was a most bright and entertaining companion as well as an exquisite dancer. He paid her some compliments on her skill and expressed his pleasure at having found such a partner.

She smiled very sweetly at his sincere praise.

“But, I can return the compliment, Mr. Aylmer,” she said in her pretty, well-bred voice. “It would be affectation to pretend that I am not generally the best dancer amongst the women in most places where I find myself, for dancing is in my blood. But you are quite as good. Except amongst professionals, I have never met anybody your equal. I danced last night with your friend, that nice boy, Mr. Peyton. He is a most delightful young fellow, so fresh and ingenuous; but, of course, his notions of the art are of the most elementary kind, and he has no false pride about it. He admitted it frankly.”

Frank Aylmer smiled. It amused him to hear this young woman, a girl in spite of her wedding-ring, talking so condescendingly of a man of her own age, as if he were a child.

“There can’t be many months between you and Peyton, either way,” he said good-humoredly; “but you speak of him as some elderly woman might speak of a little boy. He is as modest a chap as ever breathed. But I am sure he thinks himself quite a man.”

Mrs. Quentin smiled in her turn. “I dare say you are right, and there is not much difference in our ages. But you will surely admit, Mr. Aylmer, that women are always much older than men. I have just turned twenty-two, but I always feel quite the equal of a man of thirty. The young men in the twenties always seem to me more or less, boys. I cannot take them seriously.”

Evidently Mrs. Quentin had no great penchant for quite young men, except as occasional cavaliers or dancing partners. The fact that she had married a man so much her senior, no doubt, was due to this particular characteristic. Aylmer was not sorry to hear her voice this sentiment. He often told himself that he was beginning to get on to the borderland: he was going on thirty-three. It was refreshing to find one very beautiful young woman who did not admit the supremacy of masculine youth.

At this point in their conversation they had come to the spot where Mr. Quentin was watching the dancers, in the company of his inseparable friend, Mr. Martyn. The tall, dark man greeted them with a smile.

“You have been the admired of all beholders,” he said, speaking in suave, refined tones. “Some of the couples have stopped in order that they might watch you; it seemed to give them more pleasure than dancing themselves. And all round us I have heard most enthusiastic remarks on your performance. I am sure it must have been a treat for my wife to come across such a partner as you, Mr. Aylmer. Perhaps I ought not to say it, but she seldom meets anybody who is in the same class with her.”

Mr. Quentin by no means gave the impression of being a gushing person, but it was evident he appreciated his beautiful young wife. Mr. Martyn stood by, and did not attempt to join in his friend’s compliments. His face wore an expression of indifference.

Aylmer stole a quick glance at the silent man, who did not mask his indifference under even a genial smile. He was not a bad-looking fellow. His stature, a good deal under middle height, militated somewhat against his appearance, but he was good-looking, with clean-shaven, clearcut features. In spite of these redeeming points, Aylmer did not take to him. His eyes were shifty, and he had a way of averting his gaze from the one seeking his, that produced a rather uncomfortable impression.

Young Peyton had thought that he was a bit of a bounder. Was the boy right? In spite of his youth and want of experience, he had an uncanny knack of getting at the bottom of people on a very cursory acquaintance. With his natural modesty, he used to allude to it as his one and only “gift.”

There was a slight pause after this. Aylmer, who in some ways was quite as modest as his young friend, felt a little embarrassed by Quentin’s suave compliments. Mrs. Quentin, who did not appear to suffer from embarrassment, broke the silence.

“Mr. Aylmer dances divinely—about that there can be no question,” she said emphatically. “I do hope, for purely selfish reasons, he is going to stay here as long as we do. I shall never find another partner like him.”

And then Mr. Martyn broke his rather marked silence. “You live only for pleasure, Eileen. I wonder if it will be always so?” He had the grace to accompany these peculiar words with a smile, but it was certainly not a genial one. Anybody could perceive that they were meant in a depreciatory sense, as a reproach.

A deep flush rose to Mrs. Quentin’s beautiful face, and she seemed on the point of making an angry retort. But before she could frame it, her husband’s smooth tones broke in.

“My dear Martyn, you must remember that Eileen is very young, little more than a girl. It is natural she should love gaiety and pleasure, at her age. It will be a long time yet before she need adopt more serious views of life. Personally, I should be content that she never adopted them. Rather let her teach us to be young, than we constrain her to be old.”

Aylmer took rather a fancy to the man for saying what he did. However intimate Martyn might be with the husband, it was a gross presuming on their friendship to address such remarks to the wife. Quentin had administered a justifiable, but very dignified, reproof.

At that moment, Claude Peyton danced past them with a very charming young girl with shingled hair. They were smiling and chatting merrily to each other like a couple of children; they evidently did not take their dancing too seriously. Mrs. Quentin turned away from the undiplomatic and rebuffed Martyn, and watched them with rather a tender look on her fair young face.

“Now, are not those two perfectly matched?” she said to Aylmer, when the couple had swum beyond her gaze. “She is a dear little thing, quite a child—I doubt if she has seen seventeen; but she is as wise as he with his twenty-two years, just a little bit more sentimental, perhaps. Men don’t become really sentimental till they have turned thirty.” She added, with a rather mischievous smile: “And she dances as badly as he does. Neither can complain on that score.”

Aylmer thought over one of her remarks. They had drawn a little away from Quentin and his friend, and he said to her in a low voice:

“Is it your real opinion that a man does not develop proper sentiment till he has turned thirty?”

She nodded her pretty shingled head, and spoke in as low a voice as his own.

“I am sure of it.”

His next question was delivered in a whisper.

“What age is Mr. Martyn?”

She had a sense of humor, and grasping the drift of the query, she whispered back:

“Come a little farther away, he can hear through a brick wall. According to reliable evidence, he is thirty-five, and therefore ought to be overflowing with romance. As a matter of fact, he hasn’t an ounce of sentiment in his nature. He is hard, sour, and joyless.”

“I thought he was decidedly rude to you,” Aylmer ventured to remark.

She shrugged her shoulders, and her usually charming mouth took on a disdainful expression as she answered in the same low tone:

“When we happen to be alone, he is often much ruder than that. I don’t know whether he likes me or not. He worships my husband like a dog, and he may think I have come between them. And yet, in his own way, he appears quite fond of me. He would do anything I asked him. But he would like me to lead the life he thinks proper for a young married woman. He looks upon me as light and frivolous.”

“I thought Mr. Quentin dealt very well with him.”

“Oh yes, Richard knows how to set him down when he goes too far. He is a kind old thing. I don’t suppose I am all that he would like me to be, but he will always take up the cudgels on my behalf.”

When he thought over the happenings of that evening, Frank Aylmer found much food for reflection. Eileen Quentin was a dangerously fascinating girl; he could not quite think of her as a woman in spite of her married state. She had told him in an indirect way that she was not attracted by very young men. Was she really in love with this rather serious husband of hers, whom he guessed to be nearer twenty than fifteen years older than his young wife? Or, had it been only a marriage of convenience, and was she pretending in order to save her face?

And where did the unsmiling Martyn come in, in this apparently inseparable trio? What were his real sentiments towards his friend’s wife? He had been guilty of rudeness to her in Aylmer’s presence; and, according to her account, he was often rude to her. If Quentin was in love with his wife, why did he not get rid of this churl.

But then did Martyn really dislike her? Peyton was by no means clever or profound, but he was sharp in some things. He observed a good deal that escaped Aylmer, in spite of the latter’s experience and deeper knowledge of the world. He said that Martyn showed her as much, if not more, attention than her own husband. Clearly, then, he had seen something that Aylmer had missed. Was the man’s rudeness and fault finding a sort of revenge for his baffled hopes, for his chagrin in knowing that she belonged to another?

It was a puzzle! Aylmer was terribly fascinated with this beautiful young married woman; he was half in love with her after the briefest of acquaintances. Was it wise to stay and lose his heart irretrievably to her? He was an upright and honorable young man. Would it spell disaster, to both, if he remained? He was singularly free from vanity. But he could not help seeing that Eileen—he already called her that to himself—had taken a great interest in him. She seemed to hold Martyn in contempt; Peyton she regarded as a callow youth; but he was sure her feeling for him was altogether different.

If he stayed, would he not be playing with fire?

CHAPTER TWO

When Aylmer came down to breakfast, the next morning, later than his usual custom, he found that his friend Peyton already had breakfasted and had gone out, leaving word with the waiter that he would be back in about an hour.

The table where the trio had sat at dinner, the previous night, was occupied only by Quentin, who beckoned to Aylmer to join him.

“Eileen danced too much last night; she is not very strong and has to pay the penalty by having her breakfast in bed,” Quentin explained, “My friend Martyn is always an early bird; comes down before us and gets out for the morning air as soon as he can. I see you are alone; Mr. Peyton left when I came in, a few minutes ago. We might as well join forces, if it is agreeable to you.”

Aylmer, who had taken rather a liking to the man for his dignified defense of Eileen, against Martyn’s sneering attack, the previous evening, declared he would be delighted, and took his seat at Quentin’s table. He said something suitable about Mrs. Quentin’s fatigue, and expressed the hope that she was not seriously indisposed.

The grave-faced man, whose hair was thinning rapidly at the top, smiled reassuringly. “Oh, dear no, nothing of that sort—just a little bit overdoing it the last two nights. One could not call her exactly robust, but as a rule she has excellent health. The only thing wrong with her is her heart. That is a trifle weak and pays her out if she over-exerts herself. She will just have to take things quietly for a day or two, and she’ll be all right again.”

Quentin was a very slow eater, and Aylmer out of courtesy accommodated his pace to his. In consequence, they sat a long time at the breakfast table, and during this period the elder man never allowed the conversation to flag. When he recalled that conversation, Aylmer came to the conclusion his new acquaintance had a strong streak of curiosity in his composition. For during the time he had adroitly succeeded in inducing the young man to tell him a good deal about himself and young Peyton, and, in return for these disclosures, had revealed some portion of his own history, and a little of Martyn’s.

He had begun with a very direct question. “Very nice chap, that young friend of yours. Looks to me as if he had got the public-school stamp about him.”

Aylmer explained that his surmise was correct. Peyton had been at Rugby, and from there had gone straight into his father’s office. A year ago he had been given a junior partnership, and was now quite proud of the fact that he was a full-fledged stockbroker.

Mr. Quentin pursued his inquiries. “I know his firm very well by repute, although I have not had the pleasure of knowing any of the partners personally. A fine business, I understand, and an old-established one. I should say you hailed from a public school, too.”

Aylmer, who was a little amused at the man’s determination to ferret out everything, modestly stated his credentials—Harrow and Magdalen, Oxford.

Mr. Quentin nodded his head approvingly on receipt of this information. “I was right, then. I have rather a knack of classifying my fellow-creatures. And have you got a snug business, like your friend? Or, are you a gentleman at large?”

“Very much at large,” laughed Aylmer. “Circumstances have made it unnecessary for me to work, and I am afraid at heart I am an idle fellow. I love this roaming about from one place to another, following just the whim of the moment.”

The elder man’s tones were thoughtful when he spoke again.

“Yes, such a life has many advantages; but, on the whole, I have come to the conclusion that work is the best thing for a man—a busy life full of duties to be done, of ambitions to be achieved. I know, I feel it to be so in my own case.”

Aylmer began to evince a little curiosity on his side. His interest in the wife had led him to take an interest in the husband.

“Like you, Mr. Aylmer, I am lord of myself—that heritage of woe, as some poet has put it. My father died before I was of age. I was the only child, and I came into a quite comfortable income. Like you, I was of an idle, unambitious temperament, and I thought I could manage to lounge through life very comfortably. Well, I have had a good many years of it—I am close upon forty-five, though some people are kind enough to say I don’t look it—and I have begun to think I should have been happier on the whole if I had gone into some business or profession. It is too late now, of course; my habits are too set. But, there are moments when I find time hangs very heavily on my hands.”

So, he was more than twenty years older than his young wife. Peyton, that masterful observer, had guessed fifteen. But it was a pardonable error, for even with the telltale thinness of the hair he did not look forty-five.

“The worst of it is, I have no hobbies,” remarked Mr. Quentin, presently. “I have read a good deal, but I find I don’t take the interest in books I used to do. Theaters bore me; this hotel life is the same day after day, week after week. I have seen everything worth seeing in the shape of scenery. I suppose it is inevitable that one should become a bit blasé when life is a perpetual holiday. By the way, have you any hobbies?”

“Like you, I read a good deal, and I haven’t yet got to that stage when the theater bores me. Yes, I have, I think, one especial hobby, rather a peculiar one. I am a keen student of criminology.”

Mr. Quentin lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise. “Yes, it seems to me quite a peculiar one; it would make no appeal to me. Personally, I think all crime is sordid, and I would prefer to shut it out of my thoughts. I suppose it appeals to you on the scientific side?”

Conversation languished for a little while. During the pause Aylmer indulged in a few reflections. From what he had said, Quentin did not seem to be a happy man in spite of his fortunate circumstances. Surely, the possession of such a beautiful wife ought to have brought him serene contentment. He wished that he could induce the man to talk about Eileen, to give him some details of their wooing, of how they had become acquainted. But, good taste forbade him to steer the conversation into such delicate channels.

However, he had no hesitation in imitating his companion’s frankness in the direction of the man whom Peyton had thought was a bit of a bounder.

So, he put a direct question. “And what about your friend Mr. Martyn—has he any occupation?”

Quentin laughed pleasantly. “Poor old Martyn, he has had a wonderfully checkered career. He ran away from home when he was sixteen—a stepmother made his life unbearable—and, according to his own account, he has been nearly everything under the sun: bartender, cattle-puncher, ranch-hand, and all sorts of things. I can’t help thinking he draws the long bow a bit when he discourses about the past; but, there is no doubt he has had a tremendously varied experience. He made good in the gold-fields, got together a nice little pile, invested it with judgment and a fair slice of good luck, and from that hour forswore adventure and settled down to a quiet, uneventful life.”

“Certainly a very romantic history,” was Aylmer’s remark.

Mr. Quentin went on with further details of his friend.

“He comes of a quite respectable family. His father, who died a few years ago, a merchant of some sort, left a very tidy sum of money behind him. But, his stepmother, who evidently hated him intensely, took care that he should have none of it. His name was never mentioned in the old man’s will. No wonder that he’s hard and cynical, at times. An experience like his doesn’t tend to soften a man or develop his finer feelings.”

“Have you known him long?” asked Aylmer.

“The best part of five or six years,” was the answer. “I met him in a casual sort of way, and somehow took a fancy to him. He is a trifle rough and unpolished, and although not uneducated—he is a brainy fellow and has taught himself a lot—not educated in the strict sense of the term. Only material things interest him; he cares nothing for art, literature or music. But he is essentially a man, and has lived in every sense of the term. He has made of his life a very different thing from my dolce far niente existence.”

Mr. Quentin ended the little history with what seemed like a note of regret. If he was sincere in what he said, he appeared to brood very much over what he considered his idle and purposeless existence. Aylmer found himself wondering if, later on, he would experience the same sense of disappointment at not having put what talents he possessed to more strenuous use; if he would grow as weary as this man seemed to be of a butterfly life.

After breakfast was over they went into the smoking-lounge and chatted away there on general topics till young Peyton made his appearance, very fresh and rosy from an invigorating swim. On his appearance Quentin rose and threw away his half-finished cigarette, saying that the young men would like to go out together and that it was time he went to see how his wife was getting on.

As Aylmer and his friend sauntered along, the conversation naturally turned to the Quentins. Peyton rather sniffed when he was told that Quentin had revealed himself in the light of a disillusioned and disappointed character.

“He’s a very agreeable chap,” he said, “but I have a strong notion that he’s a bit of a poseur, and doesn’t mean half he says; just likes to strike an attitude for the benefit of his audience. A man who has got plenty of money has no right to get morbid and think he ought to be leading a different sort of life. I’m not so fond of work and the Stock Exchange that I wouldn’t change with you or him if I had half a chance.”

Aylmer smiled indulgently at the younger man, who never had any hesitation in avowing his real sentiments, and honestly confessed that he was not greatly in love with work for work’s sake. He looked upon it as a means to an end, he was always careful to explain. He would slog away hard while he was young, so that he could make a nice little pile for his middle age, when he would give up business and enjoy himself, to make up for his strenuous days of self-denying youth.

Aylmer mentioned to him the fact of Mrs. Quentin’s indisposition. The young man, who was so observant in small things, looked at his friend rather intensely.

“I expect it’s quite slight,” he said. “But it strikes me that you seem a bit worried about it. You won’t mind my saying, old chap, that I think it would be wise for you to take yourself in hand in that quarter. She’s a very fascinating young woman, and I can see with half an eye she has bowled you over.”

“Rubbish,” replied Aylmer a little testily, although he could not prevent himself from flushing at those direct remarks. Peyton always went so straight to the point.

When they returned to the hotel, they found Mrs. Quentin sitting alone in the lounge. She looked a trifle pale, but was in quite good spirits, and answered their inquiries after her health in her usual bright manner.

“Oh, there’s really nothing the matter with me. I have just overdone it a tiny bit these last two evenings, and my tiresome heart has an unpleasant way of reminding me when I do silly things. I am going to be very quiet for the rest of the day; I wouldn’t even go out with my husband and Mr. Martyn. And to-night I shall not have a single dance. So it’s no use your asking me, Mr. Aylmer, for I shall be adamant.”

Aylmer protested that he would not think of doing anything which might retard her recovery, and took a seat beside her. He had not quite made up his mind as to whether he was going to stay or beat a precipitate retreat. But, so long as he was here he could not deny himself the happiness of basking in the sunshine of her presence. Peyton, seeing how matters stood, left them after a few minutes. He was not the sort of fellow to spoil sport anyway. He had given his friend a warning. If Aylmer did not choose to take it, that was his own affair.

“An awfully nice boy that,” remarked Mrs. Quentin when Peyton was out of earshot. “You seem very great friends. Have you known him long? Or, is it just a casual acquaintance?”

The young man enlightened her as to the relations between them. Yes, they were very good pals in spite of the ten years’ difference in their ages. He had known Claude since he and his father came to England, Aylmer senior and Peyton’s father being distantly connected by marriage. Claude frequently had spent a part of his holidays with the Aylmers when a boy, and the friendship between them had continued until the present time.

“In spite of his youth Claude has got a fair share of brains, and he takes a very common sense view of life. I don’t suppose he is particularly fond of work; but, his father is very satisfied with the way he is shaping, he tells me, and is sure he will turn into a first-class man of business when he has had a bit more experience,” said Aylmer in conclusion.

A little while later he told Mrs. Quentin how he had enjoyed a long talk with her husband that morning, and of his apparent regret that he led such an idle life.

She indulged in a faint smile. “Oh, that is rather a pose of his. My husband could never have been a worker in the real sense of the term,” she said. “Not for such as he laborious days and the strenuous life of a business man. If fate had destined him to such a career, he would have abhorred drudgery and wanted to get rich quickly, with the result that he would have plunged into all sorts of doubtful and risky schemes.

“He hasn’t the dogged temperament necessary for commercial success. And, between you and me, he would much rather live on what he has than make five times as much by steady application and industry. But I know he cheats himself into the belief that he was born to be one of the workers of the world, and he tries to impress everybody with the fact.” She added, with what seemed a touch of bitterness: “If he were sincere in what he says, it would have been easy enough for him to take on a more strenuous life at any time within the last twenty years. A man who has got any capital can soon find an opening. That he has not done so is sufficient proof that he is contented as he is.”

“And I suppose you are equally contented?” He put the question carelessly, but he was very curious to know what were her real sentiments on the subject.

She shrugged her shapely shoulders slightly. “Oh yes, I think I am quite happy as I am. When I was a girl, I fancy I had different ideals, that inclined to a husband who was ambitious in the best sense of the term, who would carve out a career for himself. But those were idle dreams, and fate willed it otherwise.”

“And was the hero of those youthful dreams always a man older than yourself?” asked Aylmer.

“Always,” she answered, “though perhaps not quite old enough to be my father as Mr. Quentin really is, although he does not look his full age.”

He would have liked to question her further, but she saved him the trouble by volunteering a rather frank explanation of her marriage.

“Mine has been a rather strange life. My father died a couple of years after my birth, leaving very little money behind him. It had been a love-match, against the wishes of my mother’s family, and they disowned her in consequence. Poor and friendless, as she was, she was too proud to beg for assistance from them, she preferred to fight for herself and her helpless child. She had made the acquaintance of Mr. Quentin during her short married life, and there is no doubt he had formed a strong attachment for her. When she was left a widow, she turned to him as practically the only friend she had in the world. He was ready to make her his wife, but she had no love to give him, it was all buried in her husband’s grave. He turned out a true and faithful friend, in spite of the fact that she would not reward his devotion in the way he wished. She had always been very fond of the stage, and she had one accomplishment; she was a splendid dancer.”

“When you spoke of dancing being in your blood, you were thinking of her. You inherited her gift.”

Mrs. Quentin nodded her graceful head. “Yes, it was her wish that I should follow in her footsteps. But, alas! I had no confidence in myself, nothing would have induced me to face the footlights; if I had found myself before an audience I should have been paralyzed. My dear mother, fortunately for us, had not my nervous temperament. Mr. Quentin worked very hard on her behalf, and at length he succeeded in getting her into musical comedy. She was nothing of an actress; but she could dance exquisitely, and she earned enough by that one gift to keep the wolf from the door. Then, when I was fifteen, she died. She had managed to save a little, but it was very little, for she never earned a big salary. The interest on what she left brought in about fifty pounds a year; so, for the second time I was thrown practically upon the world.”

Aylmer looked his sympathy. In spite of her brightness and vivacity, it appeared that this charming girl had had her full share of trouble.

“On her death-bed my poor dear mother confided me to Mr. Quentin as a sacred trust. And very nobly he acquitted himself of the obligation he had accepted out of his deep love for her. After I had finished the education he generously provided for me, he put me to board in the house of some friends of his, paying for my maintenance, and doing everything he could to make my life easy for me. And so—and so,” she ended with a little catch in her voice, “it came about that the peculiar relationship between us drifted into marriage. I felt towards him the greatest gratitude, and not a little affection; he was the only friend I had in the world, and he was very fond of me. That is the history of my life so far, and during the three years of my married life he always has shown me the greatest kindness and consideration.”

So they had “drifted into marriage,” to use her own expression, as the easiest way out of a rather difficult situation. Aylmer did not suppose that Quentin loved the daughter as he had loved the mother, and she had only admitted affection, not love. He suspected it was a very placid relationship on both sides; that the feelings of the man were more those of a parent than a husband, and hers more of a daughter than a wife. She seemed so full of life, so born for enjoyment, that he found himself rather pitying her. Even if she did prefer men older than herself, there could have been no romance in this union with one old enough to be her father. Ten years would surely have been sufficient disparity.

Aylmer stayed on for another couple of days, and on neither of the evenings did Mrs. Quentin join the dancers. He understood her abstention the first night, she had given him fair warning that she was not going to run any risk of a relapse. But, on the second evening she seemed fully recovered, and he experienced a keen sense of disappointment, when, in response to his suggestion, she announced that she would be content with looking on. By then he had almost definitely made up his mind to leave Ostend. But, he had hoped to take away with him the memory of a last dance with her.

He wondered for a moment if her health was the real cause of her refusal, or whether she was obeying a secret instruction of her husband; if Quentin had displayed a fit of jealousy of a man a good deal younger than himself, and had compelled her to abstain from dancing altogether so that she should not dance with him.

Small things are often great factors in clinching a determination. After that refusal on what he was sure were insufficient grounds, he told himself that he was now eager to leave, to remove himself from the sphere of her fascinations. He would stay one more day and night at the most, taking Peyton with him, or leaving him at the hotel, according to the young man’s choice.

And then, on the next morning, an incident occurred that made him change his mind. In the lounge, after breakfast, he saw Mrs. Quentin and Martyn engaged closely in conversation. There was nobody else in the apartment, and the man looked up quickly as Aylmer came in. There was an angry gleam in his eyes, as if he resented the fact of their being disturbed.

At least that was the impression made on Aylmer by that sudden hostile glance. Taking the hint, he left them and went up to his own room. In that moment, brief as it was, he had noticed that the young woman seemed very agitated, and on Martyn’s face was a cold, hard expression. It looked very much, he thought, as if they were indulging in a quarrel.

At the end of a quarter of an hour he came down again, into the lounge, on his way out of the hotel. Martyn had left, and Mrs. Quentin, apparently oblivious of observation, was sitting alone with her handkerchief pressed to her face. He could see, by the movement of her shoulders, that she was crying.

His natural impulse was to steal away; she would hardly care that he should be a spectator of her sudden distress. But, as he tried to carry out his intention, she suddenly dropped her handkerchief and, recognizing him, greeted him with a wan smile. It was a most awkward situation. He could not think of anything fitting to say, and yet it was impossible to ignore her agitated condition.

His words came nervously, in a stammer.

“Mrs. Quentin, I am so distressed to see you like this. Can I do anything, be of any help?”

Her self-control seemed suddenly to return to her, the recollection of where she was, in a public apartment open to all comers. She rose, evidently with the intention of going to her own room, in order to remove the telltale traces of her emotion. But before she left, she threw him a grateful glance out of the tearful eyes and she spoke these remarkable words:

“It is very sweet of you, and I should judge you are the kind of man who is always chivalrous to a woman. But you cannot help me.” As she moved away, she added in a tone that seemed one almost of despair: “Nobody can help me.”

CHAPTER THREE

After she had left, Aylmer remained in the lounge for a few moments thinking deeply over what just had occurred. He recalled the despairing tone in which she had uttered those few words: “Nobody can help me.” Was it possible there was some mystery about this beautiful young woman, who had hitherto seemed so bright and gay, and who had declared to him but a little time previously that she was quite contented with her life?

She did not strike him in the least as one possessing a neurotic or hysterical temperament. Obviously, there had been some serious quarrel between her and this man Martyn, who had the power to move her to almost convulsive emotion. If it had been her husband who was the actor in this brief and dramatic scene, he would not have wondered so much. Very few married people go through life without occasional and bitter quarrels. In spite of his placid demeanor, Quentin might be a man of deep feelings, perhaps of violent passions which he did his best to keep in check, but which suddenly blazed forth in his uncontrollable moments. A middle-aged husband united to a young and singularly fascinating wife can hardly escape occasional spasms of fierce jealousy.

But this could not be the case with Martyn. Even if he was secretly in love with her, he would hardly dare to exercise any authority over her, to reproach her for something in her conduct of which he disapproved, and, to the extent of reducing her to tears. It was a perplexing mystery, and the more Aylmer thought over it, the less could he imagine a clue to it. What could be the reason for Martyn’s mysterious influence over her?

This incident had the effect of making him alter his resolution to separate himself speedily from the too fascinating Eileen. He felt an irresistible impulse to watch this trio closely, in the hope that he might discover something that would help him to elucidate the mystery.

He already had dropped a hint to Peyton that he would be leaving shortly, and, although that clear-sighted young man had not said much, Aylmer could see from his manner that such a step would have his approval. Peyton went so far as to say that he was not particularly keen on staying on at the Continental and would be quite contented to go with his friend to any other place where they could have an equally good time. With the new turn of events, Aylmer had to confess that he suddenly had altered all his plans.

Peyton lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise. He did not say very much, but, as usual, he spoke to the point.

“I thought your decision was a wise one, and I am sorry you have altered your mind,” he said quietly. “Something must have happened to account for it. But I suppose I can’t expect you to tell me what it is.”

For a few seconds Aylmer hesitated. It occurred to him that something was suggesting itself to Peyton’s rather active mind. He, in all probability, was thinking that his friend had so far forgotten himself as to make love to Mrs. Quentin and had not been repulsed. He must clear himself and her of that dishonoring suspicion, and the only way to do so was to tell the actual truth. He narrated to Peyton, under the strictest seal of secrecy, what had happened in the lounge that morning. Peyton, he knew to be the soul of honor, a man who never would betray a confidence.

It was a little time before the young man spoke. He evidently was turning the matter over in his mind. It was characteristic of him that in serious matters he was always very deliberate in expressing his opinion.

“There is certainly something mysterious in it,” he said at last. “I mean in the fact that he has the power to produce such emotion in her. As you say truly, if it had been her husband one would not have given a second thought to it—just a little matrimonial wrangle, such as occurs now and then between the most placid couples. Now, I have kept my eye upon them a good deal during these few days, and I have come to certain definite conclusions, rightly or wrongly.”

Aylmer pricked up his ears. He knew that this easy-going, vivacious young man had remarkable powers of observation and nothing in the demeanor of anybody he was watching escaped him, and that he also had a marvellous faculty of lucid deduction from those same observations.

“Please go on,” said Aylmer tersely. “I am very curious to know what conclusions you have arrived at.”

Thus encouraged, Peyton proceeded in his drawling, high-pitched voice. “In the first place, Quentin is by no means passionately in love with his beautiful young wife; but, he is very fond of her with a sort of paternal affection, and she is not any more in love with him. On the other hand, this rather objectionable Martyn worships the ground she treads on, in true lover-like style. He hates to see her in the company of another man, I should say in yours especially.”

“And what do you guess are her feelings towards him?” asked Aylmer eagerly.

“If my diagnosis is correct, I should say she hates him as much as he loves her. But more important still, she fears him as much as she hates him. She seems restless and distraite when his eyes are upon her, as if she were apprehending some violent after-scene.”

Aylmer ruminated over his young friend’s remarks. He knew he had an uncanny knack of reading the thoughts of others.

“If he is really in love with her, he has a strange way of showing his affection,” he remarked. “He bullies her into tears when they are alone, and even in her husband’s presence he says rude and insulting things.”

Peyton shrugged his shoulders. “That is the nature of the creature, a sort of cave man who would caress a woman one minute and thrash her the next.”

He spoke again in a lighter tone. “Well, now I see what has made you change your mind. You want to stay here to try to fathom the mystery. I still think you would be wiser to go. But, you are master of your own actions. I will help you all I can.”

That night things went on in normal fashion. Mrs. Quentin, who had quite recovered from her emotion of the morning, announced that she was completely herself again, and accepted Aylmer for her partner. The young man fancied he saw a slight scowl on Martyn’s brow as he led her out. But, the husband bestowed one of his pleasant smiles upon them both, while exhorting his young wife not to overtax herself.

Eileen seemed in wonderfully good spirits, as if she had never had a care in the world. Peyton danced repeatedly with the pretty girl on whom she previously had passed her comments.

“I am sure it is quite a serious case,” she said with mock gravity. “They are gradually tangoing into love with each other. Poor dears, I do wish they could perform with a bit more grace.”

“Nothing really serious, I am quite sure,” was Aylmer’s reply. “Just the holiday spirit, that is all. Claude has got a wonderfully old head on his young shoulders. He’ll want to look about a bit before he settles down.”

The next day Quentin gave the young man some news which he seemed to consider of great importance, to judge by the manner in which he conveyed it.

“I learned from the reception clerk just now that a person of considerable importance is expected to-day,” he told Aylmer. “Cyrus J. Whitefield, one of America’s biggest millionaires. I expect you have heard of him, a veritable captain of industry.”

Aylmer certainly had heard of the gentleman in question, although for the life of him he could not have said how he had amassed his millions. It was evident that Quentin took a great interest in the advent of the millionaire, probably because he was such a worshiper of commercial success.

“Do you know him?” Aylmer asked politely.

“I came across him in an hotel in Nice before I was married,” was the answer. “We forgathered just a little after the usual cosmopolitan fashion. I shall remind him of that occasion. But it is very likely he may not remember me. In his position he must know dozens of people, and he would regard me, no doubt, as a very insignificant individual, one to be forgotten immediately.”

Mr. Cyrus J. Whitefield arrived in due course, but did not present himself to the general public till just before dinner, when he came into the lounge.

Aylmer and Peyton were standing near the Quentins who were accompanied by the inevitable Martyn, but they were not in their actual company. They were quite close enough, however, to take in all the details of the little comedy that followed.

The millionaire, a tall, clean-shaven, typical American, cast a searching glance from his deep-set, keen blue eyes round the apartment, doubtless with the object of discovering if he recognized any friend or acquaintance. Apparently, he did not; for, his gaze traveled from left to right, paused a moment on the beautiful Mrs. Quentin, and went past her husband without any gleam of recognition.

It was obvious that Quentin had not lingered in the great man’s memory. But he was not the person to be abashed by a trifle like that. He went up to the American with outstretched hand.

“I am afraid you have forgotten me, Mr. Whitefield. I had the pleasure of meeting you some four years ago at the Hôtel Negresco, at Nice.”

Mr. Whitefield murmured a rather brusque apology, saying that he had a bad memory for faces. Mr. Quentin was determined not to let his quarry go.

“Will you allow me to present you to my wife and our great friend Mr. Martyn?”

Introductions being effected, the millionaire slipped into a vacant chair beside that of the charming young woman, and at once proceeded to pay her compliments. He had rather the deferential air of the ladies’ man in the society of the opposite sex, and although he was sixty years of age, did not in the least consider that he had lost the art of pleasing where a good-looking woman was concerned.

“But surely, Mrs. Quentin, you were not at the hotel when I was there? Whoever else I might have forgotten, I should most certainly have remembered you.”

Eileen gave him one of her pretty smiles. “You have nothing to reproach yourself with, Mr. Whitefield, so far as I am concerned. When my husband met you at the Negresco, I was not then married to him.”

The millionaire looked relieved. He felt it would have been a serious reflection on his good taste if he could have forgotten such a beautiful young woman.

Peyton, who, with his friend, had been an interested spectator of the little scene, nudged Aylmer. “I’ve been introduced to the Johnnie in London,” he whispered. “He is an old acquaintance of my father, in fact he is a client of ours. But I shan’t thrust myself upon him like Quentin. A bit bad form, I think, what? Besides, I don’t fancy Quentin wants us to be drawn into the circle; he intends to keep the millionaire as much to himself as he can. Fancy how pushing some of these quiet men are when they see the opportunity.”

But, if such were Quentin’s intentions they were destined to be frustrated by Whitefield himself. His keen glance happened to rest for a moment on young Peyton and remembrance suddenly stirred within him. He turned abruptly with the question:

“I am sure I’ve met that young man before, his face is quite familiar to me, but for the moment I can’t put a name to it. Do you know him?”

“Yes, we have made his acquaintance in the hotel. His name is Peyton; he is a junior partner of his father’s firm of stockholders, I believe a firm of considerable importance.”

“Of course, of course, I know the old boy well, I have known him for years in business.” He beckoned to the rather reluctant Peyton to come forward, and shook him heartily by the hand.

“Very pleased to see you, my young friend. Your father introduced you to me on my last visit to London. You remember me, don’t you? Why didn’t you make yourself known to me when I came in?”

Peyton, feeling himself rather abashed by the millionaire’s loud tones and confident gestures, muttered something about not wishing to intrude. Then his sense of humor came to his aid, and he said with a somewhat mischievous smile:

“Besides, Mr. Quentin took possession of you so quickly that I could hardly find an opportunity.”

Whitefield burst into a loud laugh; he was a bit boisterous, this tall, keen-eyed man at whose touch everything appeared to turn to gold. But he evidently appreciated the situation and saw the joke. Apparently, so did Mrs. Quentin by the peculiar smile which curled her pretty mouth.

“Well, it’s all right now, and I don’t think any the worse of a young fellow for being a bit modest. Is that a friend you were talking to? If so, bring him along. As some of us have met before, we may as well make a little party of it the short while I am here. We’ll get the waiter to give us a special table so that we can be together at meals.”

Aylmer was brought along and presented. Quentin seemed to grow rather quiet after the irruption of the two young men, a circumstance which confirmed Peyton in his belief that he had wanted to keep the millionaire to himself. But, before they went to dinner, he roused himself sufficiently to put a question to Whitefield.

“You don’t intend to make a long stay here, then?”

The American shook his head. “Three or four days at the outside, just want to see after a little bit of business, and then I’m off. For the matter of that, I don’t stay very long anywhere.”

At dinner he sat next to Mrs. Quentin, and certainly exerted himself to amuse and entertain his companion, a task in which he succeeded, to judge by the brightness of her demeanor and her frequent peals of silvery laughter. Aylmer watched her closely. Was she a flirt, he wondered, greedy for admiration wherever it came from? And yet, he flattered himself there was a subtle difference between her demeanor to Whitefield and her bearing towards himself. She was gay and vivacious enough, but she seemed more intimate with him than with the gallant and talkative American.

As was usual with him, Peyton had formed some impressions at dinner and before, which he communicated to his friend later in the evening.

“The great Cyrus doesn’t seem to bother much about anybody but Mrs. Quentin,” he remarked. “The husband was trying to get hold of him as hard as he could, but the old boy kept shaking him off. Perhaps my innocent little remark had opened his eyes a bit; when he came to think it over, he mightn’t have quite liked being rushed at like that. Still, I suppose he’s used to it by now, he’s quite a public character. For myself, I haven’t much use for millionaires, except as a beacon-light to ambitious youth to go and do likewise. Did you notice Mrs. Quentin’s smile when I made that little joke about her lord and master? No? It was a very subtle one. I think she was a bit annoyed at his obvious officiousness.

“Another little thing I noticed,” went on this very keen observer after a slight pause. “There was a distinct look of disappointment on Quentin’s face when Whitefield said he was only going to make a short stay. What was the reason of that, I wonder? He can’t want anything out of the old boy, a dilettante sort of chap like that. Not that he would be likely to get it if he did. Whitefield’s reputation is too well known. It is said that mustard isn’t in it with Cyrus J. Anyway, he’s awfully gone on the wife. I expect that’s why he’s putting up with the rest of us. I wonder how that hangdog Martyn likes the state of affairs? What an infernal wet blanket the fellow is! He’s neither one thing nor the other, neither a ladies’ man nor a man’s man. What Quentin can see in him beats me.”

That evening the fair Eileen danced a good deal, dividing her favors pretty equally between Aylmer and the American, who was a very good performer and as light on his feet as a young man.

“He’s not in it, of course, with you,” she told Aylmer later. “But he’s wonderful for his age. He seems a very wonderful sort of person altogether. From what Richard tells me you would think a man who is so wrapped up in money-making would despise the frivolous side of life.”

But it seemed that, in his less strenuous moments, the American was very much attracted toward the frivolous side of life. He loved the fleshpots, he liked philandering with pretty women, he cut a good figure in the ballroom, he appeared to be one of those who make money largely with the idea of giving themselves a good time.

Peyton’s surmise that the beautiful Mrs. Quentin was the magnet was justified later on in the evening. When she intimated that this must be her last dance, Whitefield protested, declaring, with the egotism peculiar to the man, that he was ready to go on for another hour. The night was yet young, he declared, darting at her a look of intense admiration. However, finding her firm in her refusal, he very soon left the little circle, making as his excuse the fact that he had a great deal of work to get through before he went to bed. In vain did Quentin, in his most conciliatory manner, urge him to join them in the lounge for a drink and a smoke. He was a great lover of the pleasures of the table, and he was always in a most benignant frame of mind after dinner. Night, he declared emphatically, was by no means the ideal time for work.

The keen-faced millionaire fixed his hawk-like gaze on him, and there was just a shade of contempt in his voice as he spoke. He had drunk a great deal more than the other man, but he had a cast-iron head and the digestion of an ostrich, and he might have been drinking water for all that his speech and appearance suggested to the contrary.

“That’s a fine theory for idlers,” he said. “But we men of business work hard and play hard. When we’ve played a bit too hard, we have to work double tides at any hour of the night or day. As Mrs. Quentin is so obdurate, I shall stop playing and get back to work.”

He made no secret of his admiration, perhaps the possession of his millions made him speak the blunt truth without regard for the feelings of less distinguished people, to which class he, no doubt, relegated Quentin.

But that placid gentleman did not appear at all to resent the fact that his wife seemed the only one who counted in the millionaire’s estimation. When he had departed, he gave utterance to some very eulogistic remarks on him.

“A splendid fellow,” he said with very evident sincerity. “It is a privilege to sit in the company of a man like that. For inherited wealth I don’t care a snap of my fingers. But for a man who has worked his way up till he has become a power in the land, I have an unstinted admiration. I have never enjoyed an evening more in my life. It was a delight to hear him talk to us.”

Peyton gave his friend a sly glance at this last remark. Aylmer knew what was passing in his mind. During the whole of that evening, the great magnate, Cyrus J. Whitefield, had directed practically the whole of his conversation to Mrs. Quentin. To the others he had addressed the briefest of observations.

They adjourned to the lounge, and half an hour later they were conscious of a certain stir and bustle in the hotel. In a few moments the rumor ran round that a singularly daring robbery had been committed while the guests were sitting at dinner.

CHAPTER FOUR

Presently the manager came into the lounge, which by now was quite full. Agitation and distress were written on his mobile countenance. Detaining gestures were made to arrest his progress, but taking no heed, he went on until he came to a halt before Mrs. Quentin.

He spoke excellent English. “Alas, madame, I am the bearer of terrible news. Thieves have got into the hotel during the dinner hour, and have reaped a rich harvest. Mrs. Scadden, the Scotch lady, is the chief victim; you know what a splendid store of jewelry was hers. She is away on a visit to friends; she does not yet know of her loss. She will be back some time to-morrow morning; I think I will wait till then to apprise her of this terrible happening. We have done everything. The police are in the hotel now. The chambermaid, going on her rounds discovered that two rooms had been entered and ransacked of their valuable contents. The thieves entered by the windows.”

Mrs. Scadden was a wealthy Scotch widow who must have invested a large portion of her capital in precious stones. Every evening at dinner she was a blaze of scintillating light, dazzling her fellow guests with the opulent display.

The manager’s voice took on a tone of deeper commiseration as he unfolded the story further. Mrs. Scadden was an ostentatious and arrogant woman, not popular with the other people at the hotel, nor with the staff; she set too great a valuation on herself.

Mrs. Quentin was liked by everybody from the manager to the diminutive page-boys. That charming smile, that genial manner, secured her friends everywhere.

“I am desolated to tell you, madam, that you are also a victim; I do trust not to the same extent. Your room was found in disorder, everything turned over and ransacked. Your husband’s room has not been disturbed.”

Quentin uttered a deep imprecation; Martyn growled one equally deep. Husband and wife rose together, moved by a common impulse to go upstairs and ascertain the extent of the loss. The others remained where they were. As a rule, Martyn did not address himself more than he could help to either Peyton and Aylmer, but this sudden catastrophe had the effect of compelling him to talk, even to people for whom he had no liking.

“Of all the fools, I think women are the greatest,” he remarked in unamiable tones. “If they will bring their gewgaws away with them to make each other envious, why don’t they carry just as much as they can plaster themselves with, and leave the rest at their bankers’? If they didn’t do that, they might have the sense to leave what they are not using in the custody of the proprietor. As for that silly Scotchwoman decking herself out as if she were an Empress at a state function, I have no patience with her. And if Mrs. Quentin hasn’t sense enough to take care of her property, Quentin ought to look after it for her.”

Presently husband and wife returned. Mrs. Quentin looked pale and worried; but Quentin did not appear to be greatly disturbed, perhaps he was too great a philosopher to worry unduly about the loss of a few trinkets.

She turned with a tragic gesture to the two young men. Since that conversation in the empty lounge, there had appeared to be a sort of armed neutrality between her and Martyn; they had spoken to each other very little, and then in the most formal manner.

“Everything has been taken except what I am wearing to-night. Fortunately, that is the most valuable of my small stock. Still, it is very annoying.”

Quentin patted her shoulder kindly. “Don’t worry, my dear. If you are very good, I will save up and in time replace it.”

“I hope you will take better care of the new than you have taken of the old,” growled Martyn in a low voice.

“Don’t rub it in too much, my dear fellow,” said Quentin in his usual placid tones. “Eileen recognizes, as fully as you do, now, that it was injudicious to keep it in her room. But what’s the use of crying over spilt milk?”

Having administered this rebuke to the disgruntled Martyn, he addressed the company generally.

“Seems to have been quite a clever piece of work. I have had a long talk with the head police official, who is upstairs, and he appears to be completely baffled. There has been very close examination, they have taken any amount of notes. But nothing much comes out of it. There are no clues, he admits, not even the presence of finger marks. The scoundrels must have worn thin gloves, he thinks. It looks very much as if Eileen and Mrs. Scadden must bear their loss with as much of philosophy as they can summon to their aid.”

Again he patted his wife’s shoulder, with the same kindly gesture. “Cheer up, little woman. It is a misfortune, but you might have suffered from a worse one. You might have walked out of this hotel and slipped on a piece of orange peel, and been a cripple for life. You might have been run over by a passing taxi. Let us take it calmly and have a final drink, while this excellent body of police is gradually coming to the conclusion that it has been outwitted. In a few hours from now, Mrs. Scadden’s very opulent jewels and your comparatively insignificant ones will be stripped of their settings and made unrecognizable.”

“You’re a rich man,” growled Martyn from his corner. “But it is a damnable thing to have happened. I am not sure it would not be wiser to shift to another hotel; they have got a mark on this, it seems.”

Mr. Quentin, who appeared to be in the best of humors, smiled pleasantly at his friend. “My dear Martyn, you always look on the gloomy side of things. As they have made such a good haul to-night, the chances are that they will give us a wide berth for quite a long time. Anyway, as Mrs. Scadden and Eileen have now no jewelry except what they carry on their persons, they will hardly enter in upon us as we are sitting at dinner and hold us up to ransom. Ah, here’s the waiter. Let us drink confusion to the scoundrels.”

He ordered drinks in a spirit of the most cheerful philosophy. As he raised his glass to his lips, he looked at Aylmer with a quizzical smile.

“Now, Mr. Aylmer, you told me a little time ago that you were deeply interested in criminology. Why don’t you go upstairs and have a chat with the head of the police? You might give them a wrinkle, you know. Eileen would be awfully grateful to you if we could get back the ‘loot’ or catch the chaps who have made off with it.”

Mr. Quentin was rather mellow to-night, and he meant it all in chaff. The young man recognized his mood, but, for all that he spoke quite seriously.

“I don’t know that I have specialized in the methods of these rats d’hôtel. But I think there is one thing pretty certain. To engineer this coup as they have done, they must have been supplied with some information from inside. Somebody in the Continental is in league with them.”

Quentin spoke seriously in his turn. “Of course, that is an obvious conclusion. Amongst the servants, or possibly the guests, I do not doubt there is an accomplice. Poor Mrs. Scadden, who bedizened herself in season and out of season, presented herself as a very open target. I could not say that of my wife, who wore the few jewels she possessed in good taste and on the proper occasions. It must have been known they kept their gewgaws in their rooms, and they chose the quietest time of the evening to make their raid. Somehow, you know, I pity these crooks. If they only put their brains to legitimate uses, what a success they might make of their lives. I’m sorry our friend Whitefield left us so soon, he won’t hear of it till to-morrow morning, and then the affair will have lost its dramatic quality.”

Later, when they separated, Peyton had a little chat with his friend. “Quite mellow to-night, our good Quentin,” he said. “He’s a bit of a sportsman, isn’t he? Quite nice to his wife about replacing the trinkets. I thought old Martyn looked very savage over it all. And so you are convinced there is somebody inside here who is an accomplice in this job, eh?”

“I am pretty sure it could not have been carried out otherwise,” was Aylmer’s convincing answer.

Mr. Cyrus J. Whitefield learned the news next morning, and was very greatly disgusted when he knew that Mrs. Quentin was a victim. He did not express any commiseration for Mrs. Scadden, who, he learned, was fat and remarkably plain. His sympathies were for youth and beauty. With his usual bluntness, he went straight to the point, and inquired of Mrs. Quentin: “What did they sting you for, if it isn’t a rude question?”

He had addressed his wife, but Quentin answered quickly: “Oh, really nothing to write home about; I should say four hundred would cover it. My wife is very wise in this respect; she doesn’t leave her best jewelry in her box; she puts it on.”

Four hundred pounds was, of course, nothing to a man who thought in millions. He opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, then closed it again, apparently from the restraining influence of second thoughts. Peyton read him like a book. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say that he would write her a check for the amount and accompany her to buy the trinkets that were to replace the stolen ones. But he was not quite sure of his ground, and such an offer might mortally offend both husband and wife.

And here it may be mentioned that this very daring jewel robbery was relegated to the long list of similar mysteries. The thieves, expert at their business, had left not a single clue, and after trying their hardest, the police had to confess themselves baffled. Poor Mrs. Scadden, whose loss was very serious, was vituperative and inconsolable. Eileen adopted the philosophy of her husband. There were worse misfortunes than this.

“It’s less to look after,” she said gaily the next evening to Aylmer as they were dancing together. “What little I have got left, I can take care of without any trouble. I shan’t really be sorry if Richard doesn’t replace it; it would be a constant anxiety.”

She always spoke of her husband as Richard, and when he thought over it, Aylmer found himself coming to the conclusion that Quentin was a man whom nobody would have thought of calling by the familiar abbreviation of Dick. He was genial in a way, after dinner particularly so; but, there was a certain something about him that did not invite familiarity. You felt you could go to a certain point with him—but no farther. Nevertheless, he possessed a considerable personality.

Aylmer ran an appraising eye over her, as she gave utterance to these remarks. She did not bedizen herself like the Scotch widow, but what she wore represented a goodly sum. Her diamonds and pearls, though few, were of the first quality. The rats d’hôtel certainly had come off second best, so far as she was concerned. She carried at least a thousand pounds on her very charming person.

At the end of four days the millionaire departed, expressing his deep regret at having to leave such delightful society. He expressed those regrets in his usual loud voice to Mrs. Quentin, whose hand he appeared to be pressing very tenderly as he made his adieux. He might have intended to address the whole of the party through her, but his manner, as he bade the others good-by separately, did not indicate any particularly warm feeling.

Young Peyton, who seemed to pass his life in minute observations of his fellow creatures, had several remarks to make to his friend about the departed Whitefield.

“Laid it on pretty thick when he said good-by to Mrs. Quentin, didn’t he?” he observed. “He tolerates me because I am my father’s son; I should say he rather dislikes you than otherwise, for obvious reasons. He thinks the fair Eileen looks upon you with favor. That bounder, Martyn, I am certain, he cordially detests. Well, I am with him there. With regard to Quentin himself, I don’t quite know what his feelings are. I fancy he regards him as a nonentity.”

“He certainly did not take much notice of anybody except the lady,” said Aylmer. “I think you are right about myself. I can’t exactly say he was uncivil, but he appeared to ignore me as much as he possibly could.”

“Very rum chap Quentin, I can’t make him out,” resumed Peyton, pursuing his meditations. “I thought our friend J. Cyrus flirted with her in the most open way—a good bit beyond the limits of good taste, in my opinion. To do her justice, she didn’t respond; she gave me the impression she was trying to keep him off, and put him in his place, a difficult task with such a self-sufficient, overbearing chap. It must have been obvious enough to Quentin, as it was to everybody else, but he never seemed to resent it in the least. I used to see Martyn scowling at him as if he could murder him. But the husband looked on with his usual air of placid indifference.”

“Evidently not a jealous husband; perhaps he has got beyond the age of jealousy,” commented Aylmer.

“Well, you know, or probably you don’t know, the latest development. I only knew of it myself about half an hour before Whitefield left. I happened to be in the lounge while the two men were talking together. Whitefield remarked that he was pretty certain to pay a visit to London in a couple of months’ time. Quentin was on at him at once. Would he come over and dine with them at their Hampstead house? If it was too far out, they could put him up if he would stay a day or two. Whitefield seemed to think a bit, then said he couldn’t promise to stay with them, but he would certainly see something of them while he was in London. He would be busy, as he always was, but he would make time to get to Hampstead. Quentin appeared delighted and asked him if he could rely upon that as a promise. Whitefield’s answer was that he could. So evidently Quentin is going to hang on to him, and desires his better acquaintance. Of course, if he does go, it will be with the intention of renewing his flirtation with the lady. I’m sure he wouldn’t walk across the street to shake hands with Quentin if he were without his wife.”

That this agreeable, placid man was not by any means a jealous husband was proved next morning, when Aylmer came upon the couple in the lounge.

Quentin addressed the young man with his usual pleasant, rather grave smile. “I have got a lot of letters to write this morning, and Eileen, as is natural, wants to go out into the sunshine and fresh air. Martyn, as is usually his custom, has gone off on his own. What do you say to being her escort, that is if you are not engaged to your friend, young Peyton?”

Aylmer assented to the suggestion with alacrity. Having stayed on from the desire of discovering the cause of that uncontrollable agitation of the other morning, he naturally was ready to embrace any opportunity of being alone with Eileen, as it was impossible to venture the most distant allusion to the subject in the presence of a third party. How often had those words occurred to him: “Nobody can help me.” What mystery was hidden behind that despairing utterance?

They talked on trivial subjects to begin with. But presently he felt himself compelled to put a direct question in the hope of inviting confidence.

“How are you and Mr. Martyn getting on now? It has struck me that quite lately—dating back, in fact, from a certain morning when I came upon you in the lounge—your relations have been strained. Once you were an inseparable trio, but now he seems to absent himself, except at meals.”

She flushed a little, and then answered him in a tone of lightness that he felt sure was assumed.

“We certainly, at the moment, are not the best of friends. I think, on the whole, I am rather glad. Whatever his feelings may be for me, I have never had much liking for him. I suppose he thought his great friendship with Richard gave him a certain authority over me, which I very much resented. On that morning to which you have alluded, I had to put him in his place. But I am naturally a peace-loving person, and the task upset me very greatly.”

“I cannot tell you how much your distress, it seemed more like despair, affected me,” said Aylmer in a tone the obvious sincerity of which evidently made a deep impression on her. “You said I could not help you. But is that really true? Believe me when I tell you there is no service you could ask of me which I would not render if it were within my power.”

She looked at him long and searchingly, while the rapid rise and fall of her bosom testified to the emotion that simple speech had aroused in her. And in her eyes was that telltale light which comes only when a woman is interested in a man. For a moment the young man was sorry that he had gone so far, that he had not controlled himself better. Why had he not moderated the warmth of his manner, the tenderness in his voice? Why had he let her read his heart so plainly? He felt himself a cur for making thinly-veiled love to a married woman.

“Would you be my friend, if ever I needed one?” she asked presently in a voice that seemed almost caressing.

At that question, the tide of prudence which had suddenly surged within him rolled back again. He answered fervently that he would.

She spoke again after a brief pause. “I am not sure, but some day I may need a friend. I cannot read the future. But sometimes I fancy it may be dark and uncertain. I should like to think I had somebody to rely upon, if such a time ever came. I know you have a tender and chivalrous nature, most especially where women are concerned. I cannot say very much now. But if I told you a very great secret would you swear by all you hold sacred to respect my confidence?”

“Dictate to me any form of oath you please and I will take it,” was the reply.

Again that tender light in her eyes as her earnest gaze fixed itself upon him.

“I will exact no oath. Give me your word of honor, that will be enough for me. My instinct tells me I can trust you.”

He bowed his head. “As you choose,” he said simply. “What you tell me shall never be divulged to any human being.”

The words dropped slowly from her lips, as a deep flush stained the beautiful face. “Something within me, I know not what, impels me to tell you this secret. You know me, as everybody else does here, as Mrs. Quentin. But Richard Quentin is not my husband; we are not man and wife.”

CHAPTER FIVE

She noted his sudden recoil, the almost horrified expression in his face, as she made this astounding confession.

Her voice had in it a vibrating note of reproach when she spoke again. “Surely, you do not think that of me? If I were what you seem to suppose, I could not look you in the face. Listen while I tell you a strange, an astonishing story, but a true one.”

Ashamed of himself for having so swiftly harbored evil thoughts, he composed himself to listen.

“I told you after I left boarding-school he found me a home with some friends of his, a married couple who, I fancy, were under considerable obligations to him. I was not at all happy there, and I suppose I could not help showing it when he came to see me. I did not take to either the husband or the wife, and they did not take to me. I saw from the first they did not want me, and I expect it was the fear of offending Mr. Quentin that made them hesitate to give a point-blank refusal to his suggestion. Perhaps also the want of money, for, I soon found out they were poor and making a brave show on very little. Anyway, we never hit it off together from the day I entered their house to the day I left it.”

And, at this point, Aylmer said the thing he might have been expected to say, and he said it with obvious sincerity.

“I am pretty certain the fault must have been on their side. It seems to me that any normal person could get on with you. You seem so even-tempered, so adaptable.”

She thanked him with a smile. “One is never a fair judge of oneself; still, I do not think I am difficult. If they had given me a little encouragement instead of keeping me always at arm’s length, I fancy I could have made myself fairly at home. Richard, I could see, began to have his suspicions of the state of affairs, and one day rather sternly bade me tell him the truth—was I happy or not?

“I hated to trouble him more than I could help, after his extraordinary kindness to me. But, that day I was in unusually low spirits and could not pretend. My answer was a flood of tears which it was impossible for me to restrain. He was very, very fond of me—chiefly, I think, for my mother’s sake—and he was deeply touched by my outburst of grief. He soothed me as a kind father might soothe a child, and assured me that my unhappiness should not continue. He would think it well over, and find some means of ending it. I must wait patiently for a few days while he was making up his mind as to what should be done. At the end of three days he paid me another visit, and made me a most remarkable proposition.”

“I should have guessed that he would have asked you to marry him,” interposed Aylmer. “In the case of a guardian and a young, attractive ward, that is often the solution of an awkward position.”

“Yes, I was prepared for that myself. And I was so wretched at the time that, frankly speaking, if he had asked me to marry him, I should have consented, although my feeling for him was of a strictly filial nature. But, apparently, no such idea recommended itself to him. He discussed the project of having me to live with him as his ward, or better still, his adopted daughter. He did not favor this scheme, foresaw that it would give rise to all sorts of gossip and uncharitable comment.

“He alluded to the subject of marriage in a very delicate sort of way, saying that even if I were willing to overlook the disparity in our ages and make what must be, under the circumstances, an experiment of the most hazardous kind, he felt it would be his duty to protect me from any such rash impulse. For himself, there never had been but one woman in the world he wanted to marry, and she would not have him. That, of course, was my dear mother. As her heart had been buried in her husband’s grave, so his was buried in hers. He could never give to any other the love he had given to her.”

She paused for a second, and Aylmer could find nothing to say. Surely, from what he could guess was coming, there had never been a more extraordinary situation. The girl would have taken him for a husband; but, although he loved her in his own way, the man would not take her for a wife.

“There was, he concluded, only one feasible solution for the difficulty, one from which, when he first suggested it, I frankly recoiled. It was that we should present ourselves to the world as husband and wife. Nobody would know that our real relations were those of guardian and ward. In this way he would have a right to protect me, and the tongue of scandal would be effectually silenced.”

At that moment it seemed that her companion was on the point of interrupting. She apparently divined the nature of the comment to which he was about to give utterance, and she went on swiftly, as if in answer to it.

“Of course, if we had been ordinary people with plenty of friends and acquaintances, it would have been almost impossible to carry out such a project unless we actually had gone through the ceremony of marriage. But, in our case, the difficulty was removed by the fact that both of us led a life of singular isolation. I had no friends at all, my dear mother having carefully secluded me from the companionship of any of the people she knew in her adopted profession. I was estranged, through no fault of my own, from all my relations. I took no interest in them; they were entirely oblivious of even my existence.”

“I understand your position perfectly,” the young man said. “But was Mr. Quentin in an equally isolated state? Had he, like you, nobody to consider?”

“Strange as it may sound to you, he appeared to be equally alone in the world,” was the answer. “Ever since I have known him, he has been a singularly reticent man. Never to me, never to my mother, according to what she told me, has he divulged any details of his family, of his past history. All we knew was that he was a man of means who spent the greater part of his life in travel.”

“But your home is in England, is it not?” asked Aylmer, voicing his surprise. “Traveling abroad so much, he would pick up acquaintances about whom he would know as much, or rather as little, as they would know about him. But, surely, in his own country, he must have some intimates, like his friend Martyn, for instance.”

She shook her head emphatically. But, in spite of that action, it seemed to him there was just a shade of hesitation in her manner as she spoke. “He has just a very few old cronies who occasionally come to see him at Hampstead during the very short periods that we are in residence there. In a general way, he is averse to cultivating society, and he hates entertaining in his own house. He prefers this cosmopolitan life, and is content to consort for a brief space with birds of passage like himself.”

“And would you wish a different sort of existence? Or, are you as contented as he is?” asked Aylmer.

“I am not quite sure,” she said after a brief pause. “The constant flitting about has its bright side. One is hardly ever dull; there is always some sort of excitement in a continual change of scenes and people. But then I am very young yet. Later on, perhaps, I may feel the desire to settle down, to have a real home, a place you can look upon as a haven of peace.”

They walked on for a long time in silence. The young man was thinking swiftly, deeply, over the singular tale she had unfolded to him. Presently he spoke.

“And when you made this strange arrangement, did it ever occur to you that there might come a day when you might meet somebody you really cared for, when these extraordinary relations might become exceedingly irksome?”

A vivid blush overspread her face at this question.

“As I told you, at first I recoiled at the proposition. But he is a singularly persuasive man. He employed all his eloquence to overcome my reluctance, to prove to me it was the best way out of a most difficult situation. I don’t think, at the time, I probed very deeply into the future; I was too anxious to embrace any lot that promised me even moderate happiness. But, to do him justice, he was not unmindful of the contingency to which you have alluded.”

Aylmer heaved a sigh of relief. He had thought very hardly of Quentin for having taken advantage of the girl’s inexperience and unhappiness to lure her into a false and anomalous position, one which, in time, she might find to be insupportable. He hoped she had been left some chance of escape from such a bondage.

“Yes, he was very fair and considerate. He told me in the most delicate way that if the experiment did not result in my happiness, if in the course of time I came across one whom I really loved and who really loved me, he would put no obstacles in the way. On the contrary, he would do everything he could to smooth away the difficulties that would arise.”

A very singular man this Quentin, that was quite obvious, thought Aylmer. Still, it puzzled him why such a roundabout way should have been chosen. Granted that her living with him as his ward, or adopted daughter, might have given rise to scandalous comment, there were other methods by which he might have secured his object of providing for her. He was, apparently, a very well-off man; he could have made her an allowance sufficient to support herself, apart from him. This masquerading as man and wife seemed one of the very wildest of projects that could emanate from the brain of one who appeared to be perfectly sane and also a man of the world. The situation would be very difficult to explain convincingly to the most ardent lover, if such should come upon the scene later on. They might have no real friends who took any interest in their proceedings, but, in the course of their short nomadic life together they must have come across heaps of people to whom she was known as Mrs. Quentin, the supposed wife of a man old enough to be her father.

His thoughts were in such a whirl over this remarkable revelation that he found it difficult to collect them. The one thing that insistently presented itself to his mind was the fact that she was really a free woman, and that he was at liberty to woo her, if he chose.

“And you have told me all this,” he said at length, “because you have an instinct that some day you may want a friend. I do not wish to force your confidence in any way, but I should like to know if that instinct has some foundation in fact; in a word, that you are, even now, apprehending trouble of some kind.”

There was a long pause before she replied to him, and there seemed in her manner the same hesitation that he had noticed a little time before.

“I do not know if there is any foundation in fact. It is, I think, simply an instinct but one that I cannot reason myself out of.” She spoke a little incoherently. “I have told you because I trust you, and because you offered to be my friend.”

He spoke very seriously. “My dear Mrs. Quentin, again I repeat that I shall prove myself worthy of your trust.” He added with a boldness that surprised himself: “I shall always be a friend. But if you care to look a little closer you will find more than a friend.”