William Le Queux (continued 4)

He stole a look at Guy Spencer chatting amiably with his cousin, the cousin whom rumour had persistently designed as the future Countess of Southleigh. He seemed the happy contented young married man; there was no hint of trouble or regret in his assured, placid demeanour. Evidently he was suffering from no self-reproach, no suspicion of the beautiful young woman he had made his wife. The calmness of his aspect gave the lie to any such disquieting suggestions.

And the current of Murchison’s thoughts ran swiftly along. They had been married some time now. If Stella Keane was the impostor Hugh suspected her to be, from that striking resemblance to Norah Burton the heroine of that tragic Blankfield episode, surely in the close intimacy of wedded life something would have escaped her that would have aroused her husband’s suspicions, have set him inquiring more closely into the past.

Granting that she was a clever actress, still the most accomplished performer in the world could not wear the mask all day. There must come one moment, if not several moments, when that mask would be inadvertently dropped.

No, he must be mistaken. The resemblance must be accidental. The brother in the one case, the cousin in the other, were equally accidental coincidences.

He had got to this frame of mind when the men joined the ladies after dinner. In the spacious drawing-room, the atmosphere seemed to have cleared, the tension to be relaxed, with the change of scene.

This was readily comprehensible. During dinner, Lord Southleigh, frowning and morose, in close juxtaposition with his guests, had in a very real sense dominated the scene, and communicated a sense of his hostility and displeasure to all round him, not least to the unhappy young woman who had inspired those wrathful feelings.

Upstairs he was less in evidence. He retreated to the far end of the room, flung himself in a deep armchair, and, in a way, removed himself from the proceedings. There was nobody to whom he felt himself constrained to be civil. Murchison he had known from a boy; he could afford to be uncivil, to play the rôle of churlish host. Miss Crichton was more or less a social hanger-on, grateful for invitations to good houses; she did not count. Guy had forfeited all claim to consideration. His wife ought to be made to feel her position every moment of her life.

Murchison gravitated to Miss Crichton. Well-born, she was very poor, and by no means proud. She accepted in a meek spirit the social crumbs that were thrown at her by her wealthy superiors. She was always obliging and amiable. She never grumbled at being asked to join a dinner-party at the eleventh hour, when some other guest had failed. She never resented being put in a small bedroom at a country house-party, while a rich girl with no ancestry was given a luxurious apartment.

On account of this excessive amiability, this indifference to studied and unstudied slights, she was immensely popular. All her friends declared her not only to be amiable, but “so sensible?”

Hugh had known her for years, and in a way he pitied her, much more really than she pitied herself, for she had long since grown accustomed to her lot. But what he did know was, that she was as shrewd as she was amiable, that under that gay and smiling exterior she concealed a very acute intelligence.

He wanted particularly to know her opinion of Mrs Spencer, if she were frank enough to give it, for she had especially developed the bump of caution. She heard a great deal, but what she heard she generally kept to herself. It would have been fatal to her somewhat insecure position if it could have been said of her, with regard to any particular scandal, “Of course, you will never give me away, but Laura Crichton was my informant.”

He replied in a general way, “I was very interested, to-night, in my old friend Guy Spencer’s wife. She is a little bit on the quiet side, but she is very beautiful, and there is certainly a wonderful charm about her. Of course, Lord Southleigh behaved abominably. I rather wonder she did not fling herself out of the room. One can understand his feelings, in a certain way. But why does he not take one attitude or the other? If he elects to receive her, for the sake of avoiding an open breach, he ought to put his hostility in his pocket.”

Miss Crichton smiled her worldly and diplomatic smile: “Dear Lord Southleigh is never very successful at hiding his real feelings.”

“Do you see much of her?” asked Hugh presently.

“Oh, very little. I have met her a few times here, at these little informal gatherings. Lord Southleigh won’t have her at their big parties, as I daresay you know. I have called on her a few times, and she has called back. That is all.”

“Well, you have seen enough to form some opinion of her. I should dearly like to know what that is.”

Miss Crichton looked at him quizzically. “Oh, the artfulness of you men! Do you think I don’t see that you are trying to draw me? Well, I have formed the same conclusion that you have—she is very beautiful, and, from a man’s point of view, has a subtle charm. Will that content you?”

Hugh regarded her with a smile as quizzical as her own. “No, I’m afraid it won’t. Now, look here, we are very old friends,” he said persuasively, “and I am pretty near as discreet as you are, I never repeat what is told me in confidence. I should like to put a plain question to you.”

“Put it: I don’t promise to answer it, you know.”

“Of course not. But I am very much interested in this strange marriage of Guy’s. And, please don’t think I am laying it on with a trowel, but I have very great faith in your judgment, I would trust it more than I would that of nine-tenths of the women I know.”

Of course she knew he was flattering her to obtain his purpose; but then—was the most sensible woman absolutely impervious to flattery?

“Ask me your question,” she answered briefly.

Hugh sank his voice to a whisper. “We hear a great deal about her reticence as to the past. Do you think, in a few words, that Stella Spencer is a good and straight woman in the general sense in which we understand the expression?”

For a moment Miss Crichton hesitated, then she looked him straight in the face. He had compelled her to a most unusual frankness.

“You will, of course, never breathe a word of this to anybody. Suppose I say I refuse to reply to your question. Will you take that refusal as the answer you really want?”

“I will—a thousand thanks. The subject is closed between us,” was Hugh’s grateful reply.

A diversion was caused by the approach of Guy Spencer.

“Hugh, old man, I am aching for a long crack with you. Come and dine quietly with us next week. I suggest Tuesday if that will suit you?”

“Perfectly; I am free on Tuesday, Guy.”

“Right, then. But to make sure, if Miss Crichton will excuse us, we will go over to Stella and see if I have forgotten something, if we are free that night. I can’t always carry these things in my head.”

They crossed over to the beautiful young woman, who was sustaining a somewhat listless conversation with her young hostess.

“Stella,” cried her husband, “I have asked Hugh to dine with us on Tuesday. My recollection is that we have nothing on for that night. But I thought you had better confirm it. You carry these things in your head so much better than I do.”

Young Mrs Spencer smiled at Hugh her sweet smile, and as she did so her likeness to Norah Burton was overwhelming, the Norah Burton who had smiled at him in just the same way six years ago, in the tea-shop at Blankfield.

“We are quite free, Major Murchison, and shall be delighted to see you.”

For a few moments he sat down beside her; and very shortly another coincidence happened.

Mrs Spencer made use of a certain word which is always pronounced in a certain way by educated people, and in another way by people who are only partially educated. Norah Burton had pronounced this particular word in the same way as Stella.

Hugh had commented upon the fact to Pomfret, and that easy-going young man had remarked to him that he failed to see it much mattered, that she was at liberty to pronounce the word as she thought fit.

When he got home, he passed a very restless night. When he had gone up into the drawing-room after dinner, he had been half prepared to dismiss the matter from his mind as a mere fantasy. And then had come his brief interview with Laura Crichton, in which she gave him plainly to understand that, in her opinion, Stella Spencer was not a good or a straight woman.

And then had come that corroborative little piece of evidence of the mispronunciation of a certain word, establishing another link in the chain of evidence that Stella Keane and Norah Burton were one and the same person.

And if it were so, what was his duty? If he could prove her to be Norah Burton, and her undesirable relative, George Burton, now freed from jail, could he permit such an adventuress to pass another day in the house of this honest gentleman whom she had so skilfully entrapped, as six years ago she had entrapped the guileless and trusting Jack Pomfret?

The morning dawned and found him still in the throes of anxious thought.

Chapter Sixteen.

As Murchison thought over matters in the cold, clear light of the morning, when the brain is at its freshest, he cursed the fate that ever seemed to mix him up in the private affairs of his friends. First had been that unhappy episode of poor Jack Pomfret, who had not strength of mind to survive the disgrace he had brought upon himself by his impetuous folly.

Now there was this affair of Guy Spencer’s, which he felt he must go through with and prove to the bottom. He must find out definitely whether the likeness to Norah Burton was accidental, or whether that scheming adventuress had, for the second time, ensnared a trusting and unsuspicious man.

On Tuesday night when he dined in Eaton Place with the Spencers, he would seize an opportunity of putting to her a few leading questions. They would be of such a nature, that if his suspicions were correct, they would shake her self-possession.

Certainly, she had betrayed no embarrassment at the sight of him, and that was a point in her favour. For, assuming that she was Norah Burton, the name of Murchison would be quite familiar to her, even if she had forgotten his appearance after the lapse of those six years.

In the meantime he would get as much information about Stella Keane as he could before the date of the dinner. There was a man at his club, Gregory Fairfax, a middle-aged gossip, who was to be found in the smoking-room every day at a certain hour.

Fairfax was a man of leisure and means, who had the reputation of knowing more people, and all about them, than anybody in town. He mixed in a dozen different sets: smart, fast, and Bohemian. He was equally at home in Belgravia, Mayfair, South Kensington, and several other quarters. He belonged to most of the best clubs, and many more that had no pretensions to social distinction. His knowledge of the various phases of London life was wide and extensive. He had also a marvellous memory. He never forgot a face or the minutest details of a scandal.

To this gentleman, with whom he was on quite intimate terms, having known him from his first introduction to the London world, Hugh repaired, in the hope of getting to know all there was to know about this mysterious young woman who had so suddenly and clandestinely projected herself into the Southleigh family.

After a few casual remarks, he opened the ball. It was an easy task, for there was nothing pleased Fairfax more than to place his extensive social knowledge at the service of any friend or acquaintance who was in search of details.

“I say, Fairfax, I think you can help me in a little matter, because you have the reputation of knowing everything about everybody.”

Mr Fairfax smiled genially. He was very proud of his profound social knowledge, and nothing pleased him more than to have his well-earned reputation alluded to in flattering terms.

“Fire away, my young friend. I think I have picked up a bit in my twenty-five years of London life. Who is it you want to ask me about?”

“I dined last night with my old friends the Southleighs; and there, for the first time, I met Mrs Guy Spencer. I had heard of the marriage, of course, but no particulars of the young lady until I came to town a little while ago. All I have learned is that she was a Miss Stella Keane, and that she gives no very detailed account of her family history. I gather the general impression is that there is a mystery about her, which she refuses to allow anybody to penetrate. Do you know anything about her yourself?”

Fairfax assumed an air of great gravity and importance. He was now in his element, about to pour out his stores of knowledge to an interested and grateful listener.

“There may be one or two people who know as much as I know—always remembering that there is no first-hand knowledge, but the chances are a hundred to one you would not come across them. It happens that I was a good deal in that rather queer set which frequented Mrs L’Estrange’s flat.”

“She was supposed to be a well-bred woman, was she not?”

“Oh, certainly, so far as family went. But, judging in the light of subsequent events, there is no doubt she was a wrong ’un. The place, from the start, was simply a gambling-saloon. Sometimes, the play was very moderate. I am fond of a bit of a flutter myself, but I must own that I never lost very much, and for a long time I never had any suspicions of foul play.”

“Ah, but you had later on?” interrupted Hugh.

“I’ll come to that before we get on to Miss Stella Keane. Then one night something happened. Do you remember a little chap named Esmond, who used to go about everywhere?”

Yes, Hugh remembered Tommy Esmond, although his acquaintance with him had been of the slightest.

“He was a funny little man, very genial and popular with everybody. Like myself, he didn’t stick to any one particular set, but went into a dozen different ones. One night he would be dining at a swagger club with a peer, the next he would be hobnobbing at a pot-house sort of a place with a fifth-rate actor. Very eclectic was Tommy, and nobody ever knew where the deuce he came from. He had been so long about that people forgot to inquire, and looked upon him as a sort of institution, and took him for granted, as it were.

“Well, one night, one dreadful night, Tommy was discovered cheating by a couple of chaps who were too sharp for him. They were common sort of fellows, might have been crooks themselves for all I know, and kicked up a deuce of a row. They went so far as to insinuate that Mrs L’Estrange was not altogether innocent, and had a hand in the plunder. Result, Tommy had to make a bolt of it.”

“What was your own opinion about it? Was it an accident?”

“I might not have believed it, but a similar thing took place about a couple of months later. Another man was found cheating, and this time Mrs L’Estrange refused to face the music. She closed down, and disappeared from London. I have never met anybody who has seen or heard anything of her since. I expect she’s to be found on the Continent like her friend Tommy.”

“And Miss Keane was an inmate of this suspicious household?”

“Yes, ever since I went to the house, up to a few days after Tommy bolted. She left suddenly, and Mrs L’Estrange was very reticent as to where she had gone to. The next I heard was that she had been married quietly to Guy Spencer.”

“Did any suspicions attach to her?”

“No, it would not be fair to say that they did. She never played herself, but she had a great knack of hovering about the tables. And after the Esmond episode one or two men whispered that she had been hovering about them too much, and that Mrs L’Estrange thought she had better get rid of her. It might be so or not.”

“Did you ever come across a cousin of hers there, a man named Dutton?”

“Oh yes, a dozen or more times, for I went to the flat pretty frequently. A common, under-bred fellow, not in the least like her, for in addition to being remarkably good-looking, her manners and appearance were those of a lady.”

“Do you know what has become of him?”

“Yes, he’s an outside stockbroker, with a small office in the City. I ran against him only last week. I don’t know whether he recognised me or not, but I looked the other way. With one or two exceptions, the L’Estrange clientèle was not one that you cared to recognise when outside the flat.”

Fairfax had finished his narrative. Hugh thanked him warmly. Still, he had not learned anything really of importance. There was no evidence that Miss Keane had cheated, or helped others to cheat. The hovering round the card-table was not a particularly suspicious action if taken by itself. She might be signalling to her confederates, of course, but there was no evidence on which to convict her.

A sudden thought struck Murchison which prompted him to put a question to Fairfax.

“She might have been a decoy, to lure rich men to this gambling place, in order that they might be rooked by her accomplices.” The middle-aged man shook his head. “I don’t think so. She had no scope for that sort of game. Mrs L’Estrange hardly knew any body in her own world, for reasons which I daresay could be very satisfactorily explained, I should guess a not too clean or reputable past. She could not get the girl into houses where she would pick up rich men.”

“But you say some men came there who played heavily.”

“A few,” answered Fairfax. “But I always had a notion that Dutton picked those up, in the course of his shady business, a mug here, a mug there, who had a few thousands to throw away either on the Stock Exchange or in gambling. If the flat was run on the crook, and it is even betting it was, I should say the proprietors—or the syndicate, call it what you like—were contented with quite small profits. I daresay a couple of thousand a year would keep Mrs L’Estrange in luxury, and I suppose she must have had a bit of money of her own.”

“And, assuming that they were all in league, Tommy Esmond and others would want their bit,” suggested Hugh.

“Certainly,” assented Fairfax; “but always granting that the show was run on the crook, it wouldn’t be difficult to romp in thirty or forty pounds a night, with even the small players and the occasional mugs who were well-lined. Quite a decent amount to divide at the end of the week.”

“Well, I am awfully obliged for all you have told me, Fairfax.”

“But it doesn’t help you much, eh?” queried the elder man, who detected a certain note of disappointment in his companion’s tone.

“Well, candidly, it doesn’t, but of course, that is no fault of yours. We may dismiss the L’Estrange business, there is no evidence there. She might have signalled to her confederates or not. It might have been a perfectly innocent action. She didn’t play herself, she just hovered round the tables to kill the time.”

“Of course, either theory will fit,” remarked the shrewd man of the world, who had picked up so much knowledge of life in his forty-five strenuous years.

He paused for a few moments before he spoke again.

“Now look here, Murchison, I can read you like a book. I haven’t told you very much more than you know yourself, or could have pieced together. You are disappointed because I couldn’t tell you anything of her history prior to her appearance in the L’Estrange household. Well, there, I am at fault. And you have a particular reason for wanting to know. In other words, you have some suspicions of your own.”

Hugh felt he must be cautious. In connecting Mrs Spencer with Norah Burton he might be on the wrong track altogether, have been deceived by a striking, but purely accidental, resemblance. He could not be too frank with a man of Fairfax’s temperament. Rumour had it that he would always respect a confidence, but his general reputation was that of a chatterbox. He spoke guardedly.

“Yes, certain undefined ones, quite undefined, please understand that.” Then, speaking a little more frankly, “What I dearly want to know is, was she a straight woman before she charmed my friend Guy Spencer into marrying her.”

Fairfax smiled his slow, wise smile: “I am glad you have put your cards on the table. Of course I guessed from the beginning that it was what you were after. Well, I shan’t breathe a word of this to anybody; I can hold my tongue when I have a mind. You have a deep interest in the matter for the sake of the Southleigh family, eh?”

Hugh had to admit that it was so.

“Well, I am going to tell you something that, up to the present, I have not told to anybody else, and, to tell you the truth, I was not in the least interested in Guy Spencer’s marriage. If he chose to marry a girl without a past, that was his affair. But I see you are keen.”

“Yes, I am very keen.”

“Good! Well, I will give you a little information, from which you can draw your own inferences. They are as open to you as to me, and I shall just state the bare facts. As you know, Esmond had to bolt to the Continent. On a certain morning I came up from the country by an early train, landing at Charing Cross. I went to the bookstall to buy a few papers. I must tell you that I am one of those persons who have eyes at the back of their head, and see everything going on around them.”

Yes, Hugh knew that Fairfax had a wonderful gift of observation, in addition to his many other gifts.

“As I turned away, I saw Esmond slink into the station, glancing furtively from right to left, as fearful of being seen. Of course, I had not heard the news, and I was not present at the débâcle, but I guessed something was up from his furtive appearance. As he slunk along, a young woman heavily-veiled walked swiftly forward, and laid her hand upon his arm. They were only together for a few seconds, Esmond was evidently urging her to leave him for fear of recognition. When they parted, she kissed him affectionately. In spite of the heavy veiling, I recognised her.”

“Stella Keane, of course,” cried Hugh.

“Stella Keane. Fortunately, neither of them saw me, I expect they were both too agitated. Well, there is the fact; as I said just now, you can draw your own inferences, and perhaps answer the question whether she was a good woman before she married your friend.”

“It is answered,” said Hugh sternly. “A good woman would not trouble to go to the station to say good-bye to a derelict card-sharper, and kiss him affectionately, unless there had been some close and dishonourable relationship between them.”

Chapter Seventeen.

Murchison arrived at Eaton Place about twenty minutes before the dinner hour. His expectation was that he would find Mrs Spencer alone in the drawing-room, and in this hope he was not disappointed.

Stella, beautifully gowned, was seated in a luxurious easy-chair, reading. As he was announced, she rose and threw her novel down. She advanced to him with outstretched hand and that ever-charming smile.

“Oh, how sweet of you to come in good time, not rush in just a moment before dinner is served. We can have a comfortable chat before Guy comes. He takes an awful time to dress, you know. His ties bother him really; he discards about half a dozen before he gets the proper bow. Isn’t it silly?”

She was very girlish to-night, quite different from what she had been at the Southleigh party, staid, demure, a little resentful, and averse from conversation.

Murchison’s thoughts flew back to that day at Blankfield when he had met a certain girl by chance at the tea-shop. Norah Burton had been just as girlish then as Mrs Spencer was now, allowing for the six years’ interval.

She crossed over to a Chesterfield, and motioned him to a seat beside her. Hugh obeyed her invitation, but he felt sure that she had done this with a motive. She was about to exercise her subtle fascination on her husband’s friend.

“Now, please tell me all about yourself,” she said. “You are Guy’s friend, and I have a right to know. His friends are mine. I know what you have done in the War: you have suffered very terribly. But before that; please enlighten me.”

It was a challenge. Did she desire to know as much of his past as he desired to know of hers? He looked at her very steadily.

“You know, Mrs Spencer, it is a little difficult to go back to anything before those awful years of war. But I remember, as in a sort of dream, that, quite as a young man, I was gazetted to the Twenty-fifth Lancers.”

“A crack regiment, was it not?” queried Mrs Spencer. “My dear father was in the Twenty-fourth.”

She was keeping it up bravely, he thought. He remembered Fairfax’s story. The woman who had said good-bye to a fugitive card-sharper at Charing Cross Station, and kissed him affectionately, was hardly likely to be the daughter of an officer in the Twenty-fourth Lancers. He was not sure of very much, but of this one incident he was absolutely positive: Fairfax was a man who was always certain of his facts.

“I can’t remember much about the early years; I expect I went through the usual trials and troubles of a young subaltern, was subjected to a good deal of ragging. Well, somehow, promotion came: I was Captain at quite a youthful age. The one thing that sticks in my mind, in those pre-war days, is the fact that we were quartered at Blankfield.”

Mrs Spencer lifted calm, inquiring eyes. “At Blankfield! And where is that?”

“You don’t mean to say you haven’t heard of Blankfield?”

Mrs Spencer shook her dark head. “No; I dare say it shows great ignorance, but I was never good at geography. I was brought up so quietly; I have never travelled. I know next to nothing of my own country, and nothing of any other.”

She uttered these remarks with a disarming and appealing smile, as if asking pardon from a man of the world for having led such an uneventful and sequestered life—she, as he thought sardonically, the mysterious cousin of Mrs L’Estrange, the affectionate friend of the card-sharper Tommie Esmond.

“Blankfield is rather a well-known town in Yorkshire; it is also a garrison town. As I said, it was my lot to be quartered there.”

“Was it a nice place?” queried Mrs Spencer with an air of polite interest.

“In a way, yes; we had a good time. But my recollections of it are distinctly unpleasant. For I had the misfortune to assist at a tragedy—nay, more, to play a part in it—which has left an ineffaceable record upon my memory.” Stella Spencer leaned forward. There was no momentary change of expression upon the clear-cut, charming face; her eyes met his own with a calm, steady gaze. But he thought—and after all that might be fancy—he detected a restless movement of her hands.

“I shall like to hear about that tragedy, if it is not too painful for you to recall it,” she said softly. If she were really what he believed her to be, she was playing the rôle of sympathetic listener to perfection.

“I had a young chum of the name of Pomfret, a mere boy, impulsive, high-spirited, generous, unsuspicious, little versed in the ways of the world, absolutely unversed in the ways of women. I had promised his family to look after him. Looking back at this distance of years, I realise how badly I fulfilled my trust; how, in a sense, I was unwittingly the cause of the tragedy that befell him. I wonder if you ever came across my friend, Jack Pomfret.”

“Never; but, of course, I have met so few people. And you know the truth, as well as everybody else, I was not brought up in my husband’s world, in your world and that of the Southleighs. I could never claim to be more than respectable middle-class. I take it, your friend was a member of some old family.”

The voice was steady, but he thought he noticed an increased restlessness in the movements of the hands. And the admission that she was a member of the respectable middle-class struck him as conveying a false note intentionally. If what she alleged was true, that her father had been an officer in the Twenty-fourth Lancers, she was a grade higher than the respectable middle-class. Clever as she was, she had made a false step there.

“You want to hear the history of that tragedy, of the terrible circumstances which cut short the life of my poor young friend. Well, it is hardly necessary to say that a woman was the cause. Women, I suppose, have been at the bottom of most of the tragedies that have happened to men ever since the days of Eve.”

“I know that is the general opinion, but I have always been very doubtful as to whether it is a true one.”

She spoke lightly, but it seemed to him her tone was not quite so assured as it had been a moment ago. Anyway, she was evidently intensely interested in the forthcoming narrative.

“At Blankfield I happened to make the acquaintance of a very charming young woman, who was not received in the Society of the place, for the reason that nothing was known about her. The acquaintance was made in the most unconventional fashion. She asked me to call upon her and her brother. I told all this to Pomfret, who knew the girl by sight, and he asked me to take him along with me. He had met her very often in the High Street, and was immensely attracted by her appearance.”

“And were you attracted, too, by this formidable young lady, Major Murchison?” interrupted Stella.

“In a way. But, honestly, more curious than attracted. Well, to cut my story as short as I can, Pomfret soon arrived at an understanding with the young woman, to a great extent without my knowledge. They were married secretly; there were family reasons why he could not marry her openly.”

“But this—but this,”—was she speaking a little nervously, or was it only his fancy?—“was quite romantic and charming. No doubt they were deeply in love with each other. Surely there was no tragedy to follow such a delightful wooing?”

“But there was. This innocent-faced, charming girl was an adventuress of the first water. She was the accomplice of her criminal brother, if brother he was. A day or two after the wedding, Pomfret and I went to dine with this wretched pair. Before we sat down to dinner, two detectives entered the room and arrested the so-called brother on a charge of forgery.” Mrs Spencer shuddered. “How horrible, how appalling! And what happened to the girl? Was she arrested, too?”

“No; she fainted, and I dragged my friend away. At the time I did not know he had married her. When I got him back to the barracks, he told me his miserable story. That same night, or some time in the next morning, he shot himself. It was perhaps a cowardly way in which to avoid the consequences of his folly, but then he was always rash and impulsive.”

Mrs Spencer spoke, and there was a far-away look in her eyes. “Your poor friend! No wonder that memory haunts you. And yet, he was not very wise. This poor adventuress might have been easy to deal with; she might not have troubled him any further if he had made her some small allowance; would, so to speak, have slunk out of his life. And she might have been innocent herself, unable to break away from this wretched criminal of a brother.”

“You are very charitable, Mrs Spencer,” said Hugh coldly. “But I fear I cannot agree with you. If the girl had been naturally and innately honest, she would rather have swept a crossing than have lived upon the gains of that creature—brother, or lover, or whatever he was.”

Stella spoke with dignity. “You are, I see, very much moved, Major Murchison, and you can judge better than I. I cannot pretend to understand the mentality of adventuresses and their criminal associates,” she added with a light laugh, “but I should say that sweeping a crossing is a most uncongenial occupation, especially in the cold weather.”

“In other words, if you had been in her place, you would have preferred to live on the earnings of a rogue?” queried Hugh, perhaps a little too warmly. As soon as he spoke, he regretted his words. He had given her an advantage, of which she was not slow to avail herself.

She drew herself up proudly. “Major Murchison, are you not saying a little too much in presuming to place me on the level of the adventuress you have spoken of? I think it will be more consistent with my self-respect to leave your question unanswered.”

And then suddenly her proud mood vanished, and a softer one took its place. Her voice trembled as she spoke; there was a suspicious moisture in her eyes.

“I see that I was very wrong when I suffered Guy to persuade me to marry him. I have alienated him from his friends and family, and, alas! I have none of my own to bring him in exchange. His uncle loathes me; Lady Nina is polite and tolerates me. And you—you, his old friend, who have known him from boyhood—you dislike me also. But,”—and here her voice swelled into a proud note—“my husband loves and trusts me. While he does that, Major Murchison, I can snap my fingers at the rest of the world.”

Murchison bowed respectfully; he felt he had got to recover a good deal of lost ground. So far the woman had the advantage, but he did not fail to notice the vulgarity of the last phrase, “snap my fingers.”

“I am very sorry if I have offended you, Mrs Spencer, by my indiscreet remarks. If you are secure in Guy’s love, as I am sure you are, you have a very happy possession.”

She sank back on the sofa, and in a second recovered the composure which had been momentarily disturbed.

“Forgive me if I have spoken a little warmly,” she said, “but I could not overlook what you said just now.”

And then Hugh shot at her his last bolt. “I have not yet told you the name of the girl who drove my poor young friend Pomfret to his death.”

“Tell it me, if you please, but I shall be no more likely to know it than the name of your friend, Mr Pomfret. As I told you, I am a member of the respectable middle-class; I cannot boast that I am acquainted with the aristocracy, except through my husband.”

“And yet your father, you told me just now, was an officer in the Twenty-fourth Lancers. Those officers were all recruited from the aristocracy, or at worst the upper middle-class.”

“Oh, you are trying to cross-examine me and trap me,” she cried bitterly.

But Hugh was inexorable. “The name of that woman was Norah Burton; her accomplice, her brother as she called him, was George Burton; he had other aliases,” he thundered.

He had shot his last bolt, but Stella was not shaken. She rose up, quivering a little. He noticed that, but it might be due to the agitation of wronged innocence.

“The name conveys nothing to me. Your attitude during these few minutes has been very strange. You have insinuated that I am an adventuress on the same level with your Miss Norah something. Well, so far, poor dear Guy has not shot himself, and I will take good care he doesn’t.”

“You have much to gain by his living, if you love him—the title and everything. I have no doubt he has made his will. You would gain a good deal by his death. I cannot say, at the moment, which alternative would suit you better.”

“You are intolerable, you are insulting. If I tell my husband this when he comes down, he will kick you out of the house.”

“But I don’t think you will tell your husband,” retorted Hugh coolly.

“And why not? My word will outweigh yours. I have only to tell him that you brand me as an adventuress, of the same class as this Miss Nora Burton, and you will see what he will say.”

“But you will not tell him,” repeated Hugh. “Mrs Spencer, I did not think we should go so far as we have done. But I will put my cards on the table at once, and I do so from certain indications in your demeanour to-night. I will not say all I have in my mind; I am going to collect further evidence first. But I will say this: you are not what you seem.” He had touched her now. Her calm had gone, her breast was heaving, her hands were moving more restlessly.

“Put your cards on the table and have done. I was Stella Keane when I married my husband. I defy you to disprove that.”

“At present, no. You are the same Stella Keane who saw Tommie Esmond, a discovered card-sharper, off at the Charing Cross Station, and kissed him an affectionate farewell. If you were on such intimate terms with that man, you are no fit wife for my friend Guy Spencer.”

He had touched her at last. “How did you find that out?” she gasped, and her face for a second went livid. She was surprised beyond the point of denial.

And at that moment the door opened and Guy Spencer entered. She recovered herself immediately; went up to her husband and laid a caressing hand on his shoulder.

“A perfect tie, dearest; it was worth the time. Your friend, Major Murchison, has been distressing me with a terrible story of some tragedy that happened when he was quartered at Blankfield.”

Guy Spencer smiled cheerfully. “Dear old Hugh is good at stories. He must tell it me after dinner.”

As she looked up into her husband’s face, Hugh noticed the tender light in her eyes. Lady Nina had said that if she was not devotedly in love with Guy, she must be the most consummate actress off the stage. Loving wife or consummate actress, which was she?

Chapter Eighteen.

When Hugh reflected over that interview in the drawing-room before dinner, he came to the conclusion that he had not played his cards very well, that he had been a little too precipitate. Whether she was Norah Burton or not, she was a very clever young woman, and he had just put her on her guard by that rather indiscreet allusion to Tommy Esmond. If he had no further evidence to go on than that incident, she would give her husband a plausible explanation of it. And Hugh believed his old friend Guy was still deeply in love enough with his wife to believe anything she told him.

He could imagine her telling that convincing story to Guy, probably with her arms round his neck, and her pretty eyes looking up to his with the love-light in them. Esmond had been a kind friend to her, had done her many a good turn. Much as she deplored his baseness, she could not bear the thought of his slinking out of the country, a branded fugitive, without a forgiving hand stretched out to him.

Backwards and forwards he revolved the matter in his mind, till he came to the conclusion that the problem was one he could not solve himself. And then he suddenly thought of his old acquaintance, Davidson of Scotland Yard, the tall man of military aspect who had arrested George Burton on that memorable night at Rosemount.

He went round to Scotland Yard, presented his card, and inquired for Mr Davidson. His old acquaintance was dead; a man named Bryant had taken his place. Would Major Murchison care to see him?

In a few seconds Hugh was ushered into Bryant’s room. To his surprise and relief Bryant was the man who had accompanied Davidson to Blankfield. It was pretty certain he would recall to the minutest detail the circumstances of that visit.

“Good-day, Mr Bryant. You know my name by my card, of course, but I am not so sure you remember anything of the time and place where we last met.”

But the detective was able to reassure him on this point.

“In our profession, sir, we remember everything and everybody, and we never forget a face. It is some years ago, it is true, but I recall the incidents of our meeting as if they had happened yesterday. Poor Davidson and I came down to collar that slim rascal George Burton, who, by the way, got off with a light sentence. Davidson saw you in the afternoon and gave you the option of staying away. You talked it over, and came to the conclusion that, for certain reasons, you would rather be in at the finish. Those reasons were connected with your young friend Mr Pomfret, who was infatuated with the young woman.”

“You remember everything as well as I do, Mr Bryant. I must congratulate you on your marvellous memory, for I suppose this is only one out of hundreds of cases.”

Mr Bryant smiled, well pleased at this tribute to his capacity.

“We cultivate our small gifts, sir, in this direction. Well, we took the slim George. The girl fainted. You dragged Mr Pomfret out of the house, and he shot himself in the small hours of the morning. It came out that he had married the young woman a day or two before, and could not face the exposure.” Hugh paid a second tribute to the detective’s marvellous memory. “And now, Mr Bryant, have you any knowledge of what has become of them? People like that are never quite submerged: some day or another, like the scum they are, they will be found floating on the top again.”

Bryant shook his head. “No, sir, I cannot say I have. They have not come under our observation again. Probably they are abroad under assumed names, engaged in rascally business, of course, but doing it very much sub rosa.”

“Mind you, at present I have very little to go on,” said Hugh. “I may have been deceived by a chance resemblance. But I have a strong intuition I am on their track.”

Bryant’s attitude became alert at once. “You say you have no evidence. Well, tell me your suspicions, and I will tell you what weight I attach to them.”

“First of all, before I do that, let me know if you would recognise Norah Burton and George Burton again, in spite of the passage of years. Norah had fair hair; the one I am on the track of has dark hair. The man I have not seen; this time he is a cousin, not a brother.”

“Ah!” Mr Bryant drew a deep breath. “If they are the people you think, sir, and I once saw them, no disguises would take me in. Now tell me all you know.”

Thus exhorted, Murchison launched into a copious narrative. He explained that on the night of the dinner with the Southleighs at Carlton House Terrace, he had met for the first time the wife of his old friend Guy Spencer, that he had detected in her an extraordinary likeness to Norah Burton. The marriage had been hastily contracted; next to nothing wap known about the young woman’s antecedents, apart from the very vague details with which she furnished them.

In the background was a cousin, by all accounts a very common fellow, who had never visited the house since the marriage. Then there was the episode of Tommy Esmond being found cheating at cards at the L’Estrange flat, and Stella Keane’s farewell meeting with him at Charing Cross Station.

Mr Bryant made copious notes. When the narrative was finished he made his comments.

“There are, of course, coincidences that may mean nothing or a great deal, Major Murchison. However, assuming that the lady in question is not our old friend Norah Burton, she is evidently not a very estimable member of society. She was in a shady set at Mrs L’Estrange’s, and Tommy Esmond must have been a pretty close pal.”

“Well, I want you to take this case on for me, and find out what you can.”

But Bryant shook his head. “Sorry, sir, but in my position I can’t take on private business. It is not a public matter, you see, unless you can accuse them of anything.” Hugh’s face fell. “I forgot that. What am I to do? Can you recommend me to a private detective?”

“Half a dozen, sir, all keen fellows. But you can’t stir very much without me, in the first instance. You want me to identify them. Well, I will go so far as that, in memory of the time when we were together in the original job. Mrs Spencer, you say, lives in Eaton Place. I will keep a watch on that house till I see her coming out or going in. If I agree that she was Norah Burton, we have got the first step. Now, what do you know about this cousin, Dutton?”

“Only that he is an outside stockbroker, with an office, or offices, in the City.”

“Good.” Mr Bryant opened a telephone book and rapidly turned over the pages. “Here he is, right enough—George Dutton—George, mark you—share- and stockbroker, Bartholomew Court. Well, sir, to oblige you, I will run down to the City and get a peep at Mr George Dutton. If my recollection agrees with yours, I will put you on to one of my friends, and you can have the precious pair watched. If they are the persons you think they are, you may depend upon it they won’t keep long apart; they will make opportunities of meeting each other. Anyway, they must be pretty thick together, or he would not put up with being excluded from the house.”

Hugh left with a great sense of relief. He felt that the matter was in very capable hands. If Bryant told him that he was following a will-o’-the-wisp, then the whole matter could drop. The fact of Mrs Spencer’s relations with Tommy Esmond were hardly important enough to justify him in disturbing his friend’s domestic felicity.

At the end of three days the detective rang him up. The message was brief: “Come and see me.”

Bryant received him in his room. “Well, Major Murchison, your suspicions are quite correct. I have been very close to the interesting pair. Mrs Spencer has camouflaged herself very well, but beyond doubt she is Norah Burton. Our gaol-bird, George Burton, has been less particular. He has not disguised himself at all; the few years have made little or no impression on him. He has hid himself in the City, trusting that nobody he ever knew would come across him.”

“Then I was right, after all, Mr Bryant. And now what would you advise me to do? This woman is the worst type of adventuress card-sharper all through—at least a confederate, in Paris with Burton, in London with Tommy Esmond. To be fair, we cannot say how much or how little she knew of his forgery business.”

“Your idea is to turn her out of her husband’s house, with or without scandal?” queried the detective.

“Without scandal, if possible. I would prefer that. I suppose you would back me up by saying that you have recognised her and this scoundrel who was yesterday her brother and is to-day her cousin?”

“If you push me to it, I will, Major Murchison, for the sake of our old acquaintance. But, for reasons which I stated last time we met, I don’t want to mix myself up in a purely private affair. The woman caught hold of a fool in your friend Pomfret; she has caught hold of another equally silly fool in your friend Mr Spencer. Please forgive my blunt language, but it is so, is it not?”

“You are quite right, Bryant,” groaned poor Hugh. “I seem fated to be mixed up in these matters. At the present moment I have a little stunt on, in which I don’t require any help. A younger brother of mine has got mixed up with a young harpy in the chorus of a third-rate theatre. The young fool has written compromising letters to her. I am trying to buy these letters. I need hardly tell you she is asking a high price. I can’t see her at my own place, for fear of my brother popping in. I have taken rooms in a suburb where I see her to carry on the bargaining.”

Mr Bryant raised his hands. “Well, sir, when a woman once begins to twist a man round her little finger there is no knowing to what length he will go.”

“Profoundly true, Mr Bryant. Well, what do you advise me to do?”

“For the moment, nothing. Get a little more evidence. When I watched this couple, I took my old friend Parkinson with me. He knows them now. Get him to watch them. He will tell you where they meet, and how often. Here is his card. He will wait on you at your convenience.”

“I quite see,” said Hugh, as he took the proffered card. “If I can prove that they are meeting on the sly it will strengthen my hands, eh?”

“That is the idea. Of course, at the moment, I don’t know which you are going to tackle first, the husband or the wife.”

“I can’t say myself, my mind is in such a whirl. But I feel I must avenge poor Jack Pomfret’s death.”

Mr Bryant rose. “You will excuse me, Major Murchison, but I have a very busy day. Make use of Parkinson; he is as keen as mustard. And if it comes to this, that you want me for purposes of identification, I am at your disposal, in Eaton Place or elsewhere.”

Murchison left, but not before he had pressed a substantial cheque into Bryant’s somewhat reluctant hand.

The next day he interviewed Parkinson, a lean, ascetic-looking man of the true sleuth-hound breed. He took his instructions.

“Give me a fortnight, if you please, sir; a week is hardly long enough. I’ll warrant, from what our friend Bryant has hinted to me, I will have something to report.”

And he had. At the end of the fortnight he appeared. He produced a small pocket-book.

“I’m glad you didn’t stipulate for only a week, sir; it was rather a blank one—only one meeting. I expect the lady couldn’t get away comfortably. But the week after I was rewarded. Three meetings in that second week.”

“Ah! Where do they meet?”

“At quite humble little restaurants and queer places in the City. I fancy the bucket-shop business is not very flourishing just now. For on the last two occasions when I followed them in, and sat at a table where I could observe them, I saw Mrs Spencer slip an envelope into his hand.”

“Good Heavens!” cried Murchison in a tone of disgust. “She is keeping this criminal with her husband’s money.”

Mr Parkinson shrugged his shoulders. “A common enough case, sir, if you had seen as much of life as I have.”

Hugh shuddered. The woman was depraved to the core. She could leave her house in Eaton Place, where she had been installed by her devoted and trustful husband, and journey down to some obscure eating-house in the City to meet this criminal who lived upon her bounty.

Well, the chain of evidence was complete. Bryant would swear to the identification, and Parkinson would swear that Mrs Guy Spencer, once Norah Burton, had met George Burton clandestinely four times in a fortnight, and had supplied him with money.

Chapter Nineteen.

It was in his blackest and most grim mood that Hugh Murchison walked to Eaton Place, for the purpose of paying an afternoon call upon Mrs Spencer. He had not been near her since the night of the dinner, had only left cards. And, very fortunately, he had not come across Guy in the interval.

On that particular night he had reproached himself with indiscretion. He had availed himself of Fairfax’s information to tax her with meeting Tommie Esmond at Charing Cross Station on the morning of his flight to the Continent.

And at the moment that he had made that dramatic announcement, the drawing-room door had opened to admit the unsuspecting husband. Hugh had left shortly after dinner, on the plea of another engagement. Had Mrs Spencer tried to take the wind out of his sails by volunteering some plausible explanation about her meeting with Esmond? She was a clever young woman; she might try to forestall him. On the other hand, she might sit tight till he forced her hand. Anyway, he was going to force it to-day, armed with the new evidence that had been furnished to him.

Mrs Spencer was not looking well. Her eyes had lost their brightness, her once charming smile was forced and mechanical.

She rose as he was announced, and advanced to him with outstretched hands, with an exaggerated air of cordiality.

“I thought you had forgotten us.” She seated herself on the Chesterfield and motioned him to sit beside her. “Major Murchison, I fear I was a little rude to you the other night, you remember, just before Guy came in.” She clasped her hands nervously together. “I do trust we are going to be friends.”

Hugh looked at her grimly. He had no compassion for this shameless adventuress who had driven the poor foolish Pomfret to his grave, who had ensnared Guy Spencer, a man of stronger fibre, but equally powerless in the hands of an unscrupulous woman.

“Mrs Spencer—to call you by one of the many names by which you are known—we were not friends the last time I was at this house. To-day we are bitter enemies.”

“What do you mean?” she faltered. “You are speaking in riddles. Why should you, the old friend of my husband, be the bitter enemy of his innocent wife?”

“His innocent wife!” repeated Hugh sternly. “Dare you look me in the face and say that my name, even if you fail to recognise me after these years, does not recall to you certain tragic episodes at Blankfield?”

“I know nothing of Blankfield.” The voice was low but very unsteady. “You put that question to me the other night in a roundabout sort of way. My answer is the same—I know nothing of Blankfield.”

There was a long pause. Hugh continued to look at her with his steady and disconcerting gaze. Suddenly she rose, and paced restlessly up and down the long drawing-room.

“Major Murchison, put your cards on the table. You have come into this house, an old friend of my husband’s; I have done my best to make you welcome. But you have some spite against me. Of what do you accuse me?”

“I will put my cards on the table,” answered Hugh in his inflexible voice. “On the night I met you at Carlton House Terrace I had my suspicions; no two women could be so exactly alike. Since that night I have been picking up information here and there. I have now got a complete chain of evidence.”

“Evidence of what?” she gasped, still pursuing her restless walk up and down the room. “Of my having met Tommie Esmond at Charing Cross Station? Would you like to hear the true history of that?”

“I shall be pleased to hear any explanation you like to offer, with the reservation that I must please myself as to whether I accept it or not.”

“You are very hard, Major Murchison. As you are not prepared to believe me, perhaps it would be better if I did not embark on this history. But Tommie Esmond is really my uncle, my mother’s brother. When I was in low water he was very kind to me. I could not turn my back on him in his distress.” She spoke with sudden passion. “Of course, you, with your pharisaical way of looking at things, would say I should have forgotten all his previous kindness.”

“The Tommie Esmond affair is, comparatively, a trivial one, Mrs Spencer. I am coming in a moment to graver issues. You still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to you. Oh, think well before you answer! Remember, I have told you I have overwhelming evidence. And, believe me, the task I have set out upon is far from a welcome one.”

“I still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to me.” She spoke with a certain air of assurance, but he could see that she was quivering all over.

“Carry your memory back to that night at Blankfield when your so-called brother, George Burton, was arrested on a charge of forgery. You had been his decoy and accomplice in a gambling-saloon in Paris. You had inveigled my poor friend, Jack Pomfret, into a clandestine marriage a few days before. Jack, unable to survive his folly and disgrace, blew his brains out. If not in the eyes of the law, you were, morally, a murderess.”

“You are mad, raving mad!” she cried, but her voice seemed strangled as she made the bold denial.

“Not mad, Mrs Spencer, but very sane, as I will show you in a few seconds. As I told you, I recognised you that night at the Southleigh dinner-party, in spite of the pains you had taken to camouflage yourself. But I waited for corroborative evidence. The detective who arrested your so-called brother, George Burton, has seen you and is prepared to swear to your identity as Norah Burton.”

Then suddenly she gave way, fell on her knees before him, and stretched out appealing hands.

“Oh, you are very clever; I see you have found it all out. But you will be merciful, you will not drive an unhappy woman to despair, just when she has got into safe harbour. Will you be kind enough to listen to my miserable history?”

“I will listen to anything you have got to say.”

“My childhood and girlhood were most wretched and unhappy. At a time when most girls are tasting the sweets and joys of life, I had to live by my wits. I fell under the influence of a good-natured, but very wicked man.”

“In other words, George Burton?” queried Hugh.

“In other words, George Burton,” she repeated in the low, strangled voice that did not move Hugh very much. “I was starving when he met me and took me up. He was genuinely sorry for me. Mind you, I knew nothing of his nefarious schemes. He hid those very carefully away from me.”

“But you were his decoy, if not his confederate, in the gambling-saloon in Paris?”

“His decoy, perhaps, unconsciously, but never his confederate.”

“And when did Tommie Esmond appear on the scene?” queried Hugh.

“Oh, much later. George got into low water and had not enough for himself. I then hunted up my uncle, who received me with open arms.”

Hugh was developing the instincts of a cross-examiner. “And Tommie Esmond, I suppose, introduced you to the card-sharping crew at the Elsinore flat, and you were launched as the cousin of Mrs L’Estrange, who presided over this delectable establishment?”

“I was a distant cousin of Mrs L’Estrange on my dear mother’s side,” was the answer.

She was lying terribly, he felt assured. But he had a card or two up his sleeve yet. Still, it was wise to see how far she would go.

“And when did you part with the so-called brother, George Burton?”

“Oh, very shortly after he came out of prison. I had one interview with him; I could not do less after his kindness to me. And in the meantime I had hunted up poor old Tommie Esmond.”

“And what did you do after that night at Blankfield? I think you cleared out the next day. I heard you had paid everything up.”

“Thank Heaven, yes. There was just a little money left. My life after that was a nightmare. Amongst other humiliations, I was a waitress in a tea-shop.” A smile of vanity broke over the charming face. “The wages were very small, but I got a lot of tips.” Perhaps in this particular instance she was not lying, if it was true that she had been in a tea-shop at all.

There was a little pause, and then Murchison spoke in his stern, inflexible voice:

“And how long is it since you saw George Burton?”

She had answered the question before, but he was hoping to entrap her into some unguarded admission. He could see that she was considerably thrown off her balance, clever and ready as she was, by the extent of his knowledge.

“I told you just now, soon after he came out of prison.”

And then Hugh rose in his wrath. And then she, seeing in his face that he had another and a stronger card to play, got up from her kneeling position and watched him with an agonised countenance.

“I am sorry to use such harsh words to a woman, even such a woman as you are, Mrs Spencer. But when you say that you are lying miserably, and you know it as well as I do.” Her face went livid. She assumed a tone of indignation, but her voice died away in a sob. “How dare you say that?”

“I am not the sort of man to make a statement unless I can prove it up to the hilt. Your so-called cousin, George Dutton, keeps a bucket-shop in the City; from certain evidence in my possession, I should say it was not a very paying business.”

Stella did not attempt to reply to this last shot, but she recognised that he had gone about the business very thoroughly.

“George Dutton, the bucket-shop keeper, is George Burton, the forger, come to life again, still, I take it, on the same criminal tack, perhaps in a lesser degree. Do you admit,” he cried vehemently, “that George Burton and George Dutton are one and the same?”

“Yes, since you seem to have proof, I admit it,” was the somewhat sullen answer.

“That is as well; it clears the ground, up to a certain point. You say you parted from Burton soon after his release from prison, and have not seen him since. When was that—how long ago? You met him frequently as George Dutton at Elsinore Gardens.”

The courage of despair seemed to come to her, and she ceased to tremble. “I will answer no more questions. Tell me what you allege and I will admit or deny. Of course, you have employed a detective; you have had me watched.”

“Of course. I should not presume to cope single-handed with a clever woman like yourself. You have met George Dutton, alias George Burton, four times within the last fortnight at obscure restaurants in the City, and there is a strong presumption that you were handing to him envelopes containing money.” She seemed now to recognise that the game was up. Her self-possession returned to her. She sat down, and motioned to him to seat himself.

“You are much too clever for me, Major Murchison. You have handled the matter very well, so well that you have turned your vague suspicions into absolute certainty. Well, what action are you going to take? As a matter of course, you intend to turn me out of my husband’s house?”

“If not at the moment, very speedily. You will admit, I think, with your clever brain, that you should not remain under the roof of such an honourable English, gentleman as he is a day longer than necessary.”

“I will admit it, from your point of view, if you like. Oh, believe me, I can see your side,” replied this remarkable young woman. “But you will forgive me, Major Murchison, if I say that, from my point of view, I would have preferred that you had never been born. Guy is very happy; he believes in me and trusts me. It will be a great blow to him as to me.”

“I know. I wish it were in my power to spare him this misery. But, in common honesty, I cannot.”

“And have you thought of what is to become of me when I am turned out of my husband’s house?” she inquired in a composed voice. Her adroit mind had evidently adapted itself to the altered circumstances, and was now busied in turning them, as far as possible, to her own advantage.

“You have George Dutton to fall back upon, also Tommie Esmond,” was Murchison’s retort.

She snapped her fingers in a fashion that was almost vulgar, and she was so free from vulgar actions.

“George is thankful that I can, from time to time, fling him a ten-pound note; his luck has deserted him. Tommie Esmond, I believe, saved a bit out of the wreck, but he has not more than enough to keep body and soul together.”

“Guy is not a man to behave ungenerously, however deeply he has been wronged,” said Hugh, after he had reflected a few moments. He added more hesitatingly, “And if Guy should take an obdurate attitude, it is possible I might come to your assistance. I have hunted you down, but I do not want to drive you into the gutter.”

“But a man must support his wife, even if her past has not been quite so respectable as it might have been,” she cried defiantly.

Hugh directed upon her a searching look. “Mrs Spencer, it is in my mind that you may not be Guy’s wife after all. If I probed a little deeper, I might get at your real relations with this George Dutton, or rather Burton.”

“Oh, this time you are really pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp, I assure you. George has never been anything to me but brother or cousin, as the occasion demanded.”

She paused a second, and there was a terrified look in her eyes as she added, “But even if your suspicions were correct, which they are not, you would not go back from your own promise. If Guy proved obdurate, you would not drive me to the gutter. You promised me that.”

“I shall keep my promise, Mrs Spencer, and I will give it you in writing, if you wish.”

“It would be as well. And you will want something from me in writing also, I expect,” she concluded shrewdly.

“Certainly I shall,” said Hugh steadily. “I shall draw up a full confession for you to sign, to prevent you from ever troubling your husband again—if, as I suggested just now, he is your husband.”

Mrs Spencer rose. It seemed that there was a sense of relief in the fact that the interview was ending so amicably.

“I would have preferred to remain as I am, but, on the whole, the life doesn’t suit me, luxurious as it is. I am very fond of Guy really, he has been so good to me, but I have alienated him from his friends. And I have to sit here hour after hour by myself, with only my thoughts for company.”

“Let us say one week from now I will have that confession ready to sign.”

“And you will bring it here?” suggested Stella.

“I think not. It will take some time to read through, and we might be interrupted,” was Hugh’s answer.

“At your hotel, then, I suppose?” was the young woman’s next suggestion.

“The same objection applies.”

He scribbled down an address on a piece of paper. “Meet me there this day week at the hour I have appointed. Nobody will interrupt us, I will take care of that.”

And Mrs Spencer lay awake half the night, working out a problem that had suggested itself to her in a flash.

The next day she lunched with George Dutton in the City. The detective might be watching her, but did it matter? Whatever happened at the end of the week, she had burned her boats.

Chapter Twenty.

Two months had elapsed since the meeting between Major Murchison and Stella Spencer, recorded in the last chapter.

A handsome, well-set-up man of about thirty was travelling up from Manchester to London. The reason of his journey was his desire to visit his sister, Caroline Masters, who occupied a small flat in the neighbourhood of King’s Cross.

Up to a short time ago this handsome, well-set-up man had been leading a very quiet life in the busy city of Manchester. He was an electrician by trade, and a very clever one. He was civil, well-spoken, intelligent beyond his station, but he had not foregathered much with his fellow-workers, had kept himself very much to himself. And yet, strange to say, this self-isolation had not provoked suspicion or resentment on the part of his daily associates.

Reginald Davis, for such was his name, had been unjustly suspected of murder, and the police had been hot on his track. Then had come the suicide in Number 10 Cathcart Square, and his sister, Caroline Masters, had identified the dead body as that of her brother.

Caroline Masters had always been a plucky, resourceful girl, and devoted to him. The dead man, no doubt, bore some resemblance to himself, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to swear to a false identification, and remove from him the sleepless vigilance of the police. This much she had conveyed to him in a guarded letter.

Reginald Davis, the man falsely accused of murder, was dead in the eyes of the law: in a sense, he had nothing further to fear. But at the same time, caution must be observed. The few friends he had were in London; at any time he might run across one or more of them. So, taking another name, he had hidden himself in Manchester, and corresponded secretly with the one of the two sisters he could trust, Caroline Masters.

And then, suddenly, the burden had been lifted from his soul. There was a small paragraph in the evening newspapers, afterwards reproduced in the morning ones, which told him that he need not skulk through the world any longer.

A man lying under sentence of death for a brutal murder and without hope of reprieve, had confessed to the crime of which Davis had been falsely accused. In the paragraph, which was, of course, essentially the same in all the papers, were a few words of sympathy for the unfortunate Reginald Davis who had stolen into Number 10 Cathcart Square and committed suicide, under a sense of abject terror. The police had carefully investigated the statements of the condemned man, with the result that they found the late Reginald Davis absolutely innocent.

The late Reginald Davis, very alive and well, knocked at the door of his sister’s flat. She had been apprised of his coming, and greeted him affectionately. She sat him down before a well-cooked supper. He was hungry and ate heartily. She did not disturb him with much conversation till he had finished.

“Well, Reggie, that was a bit of luck indeed.” She was, of course, alluding to the confession of the real murderer. “Now you are as free as air. You were always a bit of a bad egg, old boy, but never a criminal to that extent.”

“No, hang it all, I am not particular in a general way, but murder was not in my line,” he answered briefly. “It was hard lines to get scot-free of the other things, and then to be suspected of that at the end.”

He looked at her admiringly. “By Jove! Carrie, you were always the cleverest of the lot of us. That was a brain-wave of yours, walking in and identifying me as the suicide.” Mrs Masters smiled appreciatively. “Yes, it came to me in a flash. I read the account in the papers. It struck me I might do something useful. I went up to the court with the tale of a missing brother. I saw the body; the poor creature might have been your twin. Of course, I swore it was you, and gave you a new lease of life.” She added severely, “I hope you have taken advantage of what I did, and become a reformed character.” Davis spoke very gravely. “Yes, Carrie, I swear to you I have. That shock was the making of me. I have lain very low, worked hard, and put by money.”

He pulled out an envelope from his breastpocket, and thrust it into her hand; it was full of one-pound notes.

“Fifty of the best, old girl, for a little nest-egg. I have not forgotten my best pal, you see.”

The tears came into Mrs Masters’ eyes. He had been a bad egg, but he had a good heart at bottom.

“That is very sweet of you, Reggie; it will come in very useful. And now to go back for a moment to Cathcart Square. Who was the poor devil who killed himself there? He was as like you as two peas are like each other.”

“I think we have got to find that out,” said Reginald Davis gravely. “Nor, reading the account in the papers, am I quite sure that it was a suicide.”

“But that was the verdict,” interrupted the sister.

“I know, but there are peculiar things about the case. Letters addressed to Reginald Davis were found on him; there was a letter signed Reginald Davis, addressed to the Coroner, announcing his intention to commit suicide. Those letters had been placed there by the person who murdered him, and that person who murdered him was somebody who knew me, unless it was the accidental taking of a common name.”

“But the razor was clutched in his hand, Reggie!”

“Quite easy,” replied Davis, who, if not a murderer himself, could easily project himself, apparently, into the mind of one. “We will assume, for the moment, it was a man. He cut the poor devil’s throat, and then thrust the razor into his stiffening hand, to convey the idea of suicide.”

“It might be,” agreed Mrs Masters.

“Well, Carrie, one thing I have fixed on, and it is one of the things for which I have come up. I go to Scotland Yard to-morrow, tell them straight I am Reginald Davis, without a stain upon my character, explain to them that you were misled by a close resemblance. We will have that body exhumed. I am firmly convinced it was a murder.”

“Let sleeping dogs lie, Reggie,” advised Mrs Masters, who had a horror of the law and its subtle ways. “Never mind who was the poor devil who was found there, whether he was murdered or committed suicide. It is no affair of yours.”

“It is an affair of mine in this way,” replied Davis in a dogged tone. “The person who murdered the poor devil, as you call him, knew something about me, and took a liberty with my name.”

“It served you a good turn, Reggie, anyway.”

“I know; I admit that. But the murderer did not know he was doing me, thanks to you, a good turn when he killed the other fellow.” Mrs Masters thought deeply for a few moments. “Reggie, you have been a very bad egg, I am sure. I shall never guess a quarter of what you have been guilty of.”

He laid his hand affectionately on her arm. “Well for you, old girl, you can’t. That is all past and done with. By the way, that letter found on the poor chap, announcing his intention to commit suicide, did they ask you to identify my handwriting? Of course, the others addressed to him didn’t matter much. Anybody could have written them. But my letter was a forgery. Did they ask you to identify that particular letter?”

“They did, Reggie, and my brain was in such a whirl that I could hardly read it. I said that I believed it was in your handwriting. It was certainly very like, although, as you can imagine, I looked at it through a sort of mist. Anyway, it was as like your handwriting as the dead man was like you.” Davis ruminated for a few moments. “That letter was forged by somebody who knew me and could imitate my hand to a nicety. I am thinking of all the wrong ’uns I knew in the old days. I think I can fix him.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Masters breathlessly. She was capable of great daring in the cause and the service of those she loved, but she was not habituated to the ways of hardened criminals.

“A man I was a bit associated with in the old days; luckily he didn’t drag me in far enough. He was an expert forger. We used to call him ‘George the Penman.’”

Mrs Masters shuddered. “Oh, you poor weak soul, you were so near it as that?”

“Very near, Carrie. The shock of the false accusation of murder pulled me up straight. I saw where I was drifting, and made up my mind that the straight path was the surest.” At the moment that Mr Davis gave utterance to this honourable sentiment there was a ring at the bell.

Mrs Masters rose at once. “It is Iris. I dropped her a note to say you were coming. She will be so pleased to see you.”

There floated into the small sitting-room a very dainty and ethereal figure, Miss Iris Deane, a charming member of the chorus at the Frivolity Theatre.

She flung her arms round the neck of her handsome brother. “Oh Reggie, dear, what a treat to see you! And all this dreadful thing is lifted from you.”

Iris was not his favourite sister. She was clever in a worldly way, and had made good. But she had not the sterling loyalty of Caroline.

Davis gently checked her enthusiasm. “And how have you been getting on, Iris? Always floating on the top as usual?”

Miss Iris showed her dimples. “Always floating on the top, as you say, dear old boy. A silly, soft chap fell in love with me; wrote most impassioned love-letters. Well, he was too soppy for me to care much about him, and when his rich brother came along, offering me a price for his love-letters, I can tell you I just jumped at the chance.”

“Did you get a good price?” queried her brother.

“I stuck out for ten thousand,” explained the capable Iris; “but this chap was a good bargainer, and I let them go at seven. It was better on the whole. If I had married Roddie, I should have been so fed-up in a month that I should have run away from him, and then Heaven knows where I might have ended.”

Davis looked at his sister approvingly. There was enough of the old Adam left in him to entertain a slight envy of his sister’s chances. Seven thousand pounds, a little fortune in itself, was a good bit of work, a handsome reward for the display of her dimples.

“Roddie who, dear? You might tell us his other name,” queried Mrs Masters, who perhaps was also smitten with a sense of envy.

“That’s telling,” answered the sprightly Iris, who was not given to be too frank about her own affairs. “But if either of you two dear things want a little ready, apply to me. Of course, you will remember I have got to take care of myself, to make provision for my old age.”

Davis and Carrie exchanged glances. They knew the volatile Iris of old. As a child she had always been mean and grasping. Not much of the seven thousand would come their way, if they were on the verge of starvation.

Carrie spoke in cold accents. “You are really too generous, Iris. But we shall not have to trespass upon your generosity. I have enough for my humble wants. And Reggie has been able to put by, so much so that he has been kind enough to make me a very handsome money present to-night.”

“Dear old Reggie,” said the sweetly smiling Iris. “I am so glad you have made good.”

And then Davis spoke: “Thanks, in great part, to Carrie, who told that splendid lie about the suicide, or murder, at 10 Cathcart Square. You remember that, of course?”

“Suicide, wasn’t it?” said Iris, but her cheek had grown a little pale.

“I don’t think so. There was a forged letter purporting to be written by me. I am going to Scotland Yard to-morrow, stating frankly who I am, and urging them to exhume the body. We will find out who the man, buried under the name of Reginald Davis, really was.”

And then the agitation of his younger sister became extreme. She clutched convulsively at his arm.

“Reggie, you will not do this. What does it matter to you who the man was? Go under some other name, and let sleeping dogs lie.” Unconsciously she had used the same expression as Mrs Masters, but from different motives.

“I have been under a different name for a longer time than I care to remember,” answered Davis doggedly. “I have a fancy to resume my own, and make a clean breast of it to the police. They have nothing else to charge me with.”

Iris fell on her knees, and the tears rained down her cheeks.

“For my sake, Reggie, if not for your own.”

“And why for your sake? Tell us what you mean,” demanded her brother sternly.

And Iris spoke as clearly as she could speak amidst her strangled sobs.

“If you try and unearth that mystery at Cathcart Square, I might be dragged in, and it might be very awkward for me.”

Chapter Twenty One.

Davis directed a keen glance at his elder sister over the bowed head of Iris. The younger woman was by no means of an emotional nature. Light, frivolous and volatile, she had danced through life, and, on the whole, had had a good time. One could not picture her in a tragic mood.

And yet, she was the personification of deep emotion now. She could hardly speak for those convulsive sobs, and in her frightened eyes there was a deep and haunting terror. At what point, and through what circumstances, had tragedy touched this little selfish, self-centred butterfly, gifted with a certain amount of cunning and sharpness, but utterly brainless.

“What do you know of Number 10 Cathcart Square, except what you gleaned from the newspapers?” demanded her brother sternly. “How can you be implicated in the murder of the unknown man whom Carrie mistook for me?”

“But Carrie did not mistake him for you,” wailed Iris. “She told me afterwards that the idea suggested itself in a flash, and when she read the newspaper she was not sure whether it was you who had crept in there, according to the evidence, and made away with yourself, through fear of the police.”

“Leave Carrie out of it for the moment,” said Davis. “Whatever she did was well thought out. Of course, we both know her object was to identify me, if possible, and put Scotland Yard off the scent. What we want to know is, how did you come to be acquainted with the house? What do you mean by saying that, if further investigations are made, you might be dragged in?”

“I was there on four occasions: on the last a few days before the murder, or suicide, whatever it was.”

Davis gasped, and Carrie lifted her hands in horror. What did this confession mean? It was impossible that this slim, weak girl had herself been the murderess, could have killed a big, powerful man of the same build as the supposed Davis, with those slim, weak hands.

She saw the horror in their faces, and hastened to reassure them. “Oh no, not that, I swear to you. I am no more a murderess than you were a murderer, Reggie. But if the whole thing is raked up, and the man whom I believe it to be, accurately identified this time, things might look very black for me.”

Davis lifted her from her kneeling position, and placed her in an easy-chair. “Calm yourself, and tell us the whole story of why and how you came to be in Cathcart Square at all.”

Iris waited a few moments till the convulsive sobbing ceased. She spoke with little occasional gasps, but it was very evident it was a relief to unbosom herself.

“It is a very long story,” she began tremulously.

“If the telling of it lasts till midnight, we must have it,” said her brother in an inflexible voice.

And compelled by his resolute manner, the girl, whom they had always regarded as a frivolous butterfly, embarked upon her strange and thrilling narrative.

“It all arose out of the sale of those letters I spoke to you about. Carrie just now asked me the name of the man who wrote them. Well, I didn’t get further than Roddie, which doesn’t carry you very far. If it had not been for your threat of going to Scotland Yard, I should have stopped at that. A still tongue makes a wise head, you know.”

They could quite believe that. In spite of her ceaseless chatter, Iris had always been very reticent about her own affairs. She had seen next to nothing of her brother for a few years, not very much of Carrie Masters. And, on these occasions, she had always avoided, in a marked manner, any allusion to her private affairs.

“I told you of a soppy young chap who started to make love to me last year. I didn’t care a snap for him, but he was very persistent, and at last wrote me most urgent letters imploring me to be his wife. His full name was Roderick Murchison, a member of the great brewing family; his father has been dead for some time, he died during the War, and Roddie came in for tons of money, although he was not the eldest son. I don’t know if you have ever heard of him?”

No, neither Davis nor Carrie had known of the existence of such a young man. They had a hazy idea that there was a big brewing firm of that name, that was all.

“Well, as I say, I didn’t care a snap for him, although he was awfully good and generous, overwhelmed me with, all kinds of lovely presents: rings, bracelets, fur coats, etc. In our life, you know, one accepts these things from the mugs who are gone on us without attaching very much importance to the fact.” It was evident that Miss Iris had struck out her own line of life, and made a very good thing out of it.

“Well, then, Roddie began to grow desperate, and declared he couldn’t live without me. It was all so genuine that at last I began to think seriously of it. There were tons of money, and although I didn’t cotton much to the sort of life I should have to lead as his wife, still there were worse things than being Mrs Roderick Murchison, with the future well assured, and a handsome settlement.”

Davis and his elder sister exchanged wondering glances. So this butterfly little girl, whom they had always regarded as rather shallow and feather-brained, had had this wonderful chance of marrying a gentleman and a rich man.

“It was difficult to bring myself up to the scratch, in spite of the advantages, for he was so soft and soppy that he irritated me in a thousand-and-one ways, and I knew in a very short time I should grow to hate and despise him. Then one night, after a very excellent champagne supper at the ‘Excelsior,’ he got me in a yielding mood, and I promised to marry him.”

Brother and sister could only marvel at the girl’s extraordinary good fortune, reluctant as she seemed to avail herself of it.

“He told me that before he went to bed that night he wrote to his family acquainting them with the news, anticipating fully their objections, but expressing his strong determination to brook no interference or remonstrance. You see he was his own master, nobody could take his money away from him, and he didn’t care whether his relatives were offended or not.”

“And how did the family take it?” queried Davis.

“I am coming to that,” replied Iris. She was growing much calmer now. It was a relief to unburden her secret to an audience whom she could trust. For she was sure that neither her brother nor sister would ever allow her to put herself into real danger.

“I am coming to that,” she repeated. “A few days after he had written those letters, one to his widowed mother, one to his elder brother, who had inherited the bulk of the big fortune, the elder brother called upon me in my flat. He was a very handsome, well-set-up man, although he had been through a good deal in the War. He was very like you, Reggie.”

“Ah,” ejaculated Mr Davis. He looked at Carrie, keenly watching her sister, with a glance that suggested they would soon be coming to the real pith of this rambling confession.

“He begged the favour of a short conversation. He was perfectly open and above-board. He told me straight he was Roddie’s elder brother, and that his name was Hugh Murchison. He pointed out to me very kindly that his brother was an impetuous young ass—a judgment which I privately endorsed—that Roddie had been infatuated, in his short day, with quite a number of other girls, although, perhaps, not to the same extent as with me.” Iris, getting back rapidly into her light mind, let her volatile and easily impressed nature peep out in her next words.

“Oh, Hugh Murchison was a darling, so quiet, so sensible, and so strong. If he had been fool enough to ask me to marry him, I would not have given him up for seven thousand pounds.”

“But you were prepared to chuck Roddie for that?” suggested her brother quietly.

“I think I let him go a bit too cheap,” answered the fair Iris in a reflective voice. “Many girls have got more than I asked for compromising a breach of promise. But to tell the absolute truth, Hugh Murchison hypnotised me a bit. He was so quiet and yet so strong that I felt he could twist me round his little finger.”

“We want to get to Cathcart Square,” interjected Davis a little impatiently. “We don’t seem to be near it yet.”

“I must tell my story my own way, it is no use driving me,” replied Iris, pouting a little. “Well, as I tell you, he called that day at my flat—that was the beginning of negotiations. Where were we to meet to discuss details? I couldn’t have him at my flat, because Roddie was always popping in and out. He couldn’t have me at his hotel, because nobody knew whom we might come across, and Roddie was always coming there. He said he would think out a plan and telephone or wire me.”

“Ah,” said Carrie, with a sigh of relief: she was a very practical person. “Now, I suppose we are coming to it.”

Iris, heedless of the interruption, went on with her story.

“Next day he ’phoned me up, and after ascertaining that I was quite alone, told me to meet him at 10 Cathcart Square to resume our conversation.”

“Why, in the name of all that is wonderful—” began Reginald Davis, but his sister motioned him to silence.

“Don’t interrupt, please, you will know everything in a few minutes. I went to Number 10 Cathcart Square at the time appointed. He opened the door himself. It was a big house in an old-fashioned square, ages old, I should say, and in the front court was an agent’s board, intimating that this particular house was to let, furnished.”

“I know Cathcart Square well, it’s in an old-world quarter of Kensington,” interrupted Davis. He added grimly, “I know it well, although I did not have the misfortune to commit suicide there.”

“He told me a very funny story. The afternoon of the day before, he had been up to Kensington to visit an old nurse of the family who lived near by. He had strolled round to Cathcart Square to fill up an idle half-hour. He had been struck by the appearance of the house, and loitered before it, when suddenly the door opened, and a somewhat bibulous-looking caretaker came out.”

Davis indulged in a sigh of relief. “We are really coming to it now, then?”

“Yes, you are coming to it. He told me a sudden idea had occurred to him. Here would be a quiet little spot for our meetings, a place where Roddie would never dream of following us. He accosted the caretaker, evidently a drunken and corrupt creature. He explained that he wanted to rent a couple of rooms where he could receive a certain visitor he was expecting in the course of the next week or fortnight. It was no use going to the house agents for that, they would turn down such a proposition. The caretaker, with a couple of five-pound notes in his hand, took an intelligent view of the situation. He gave Hugh a key, and intimated that, if he had sufficient notice, he would make himself scarce on the occasions when the visitor was expected.”