WHITE MOTLEY (continued 3)

"But, surely, this is a dreadful night to be out; he should have returned by this time?"

The abbé nodded his head.

"Madame is quite right," he said; "he should have returned. It is very necessary for him to be here these days; he will lose a great deal of money if he behaves so foolishly; would that Madame told him as much!"

"I?" exclaimed Lily, turning her large eyes upon him. "But, surely, Mr. Benson would not listen to a woman?"

"He would listen to you," Jack rejoined with emphasis. "He thinks a good deal of your opinion—he told me so."

She smiled, but turned away her eyes nevertheless. "And what am I to say to your brother?"

"Tell him that he can do it yet, if he will only believe as much. Say that it's not the game for him to be here, there and everywhere when his future depends on what we're doing for him. If he wins the ten thousand pounds put up by the London daily paper, he's a made man for life. There's nothing Benny could not do with capital, nothing on earth, I do believe. Why, he's invented a dozen machines as clever as this, and all of them are just so many drawings, because he hasn't got the money to build them. And here's ten thousand going begging, so to speak, and he's dreaming all the time; acting like some moonsick shepherdess, and got just about as much sense in his head. If you'd tell him that, you'd be doing him a very great kindness, Mrs. Kennaird. There's no one else at Andana who could do it, I assure you."

Lily looked from one to the other: her face was very pale, her manner unusually earnest.

"And what does Monsieur l'Abbé say?"

The abbé ceased to work at the canvas upon his knee.

"I think that Madame is the only person who could help us," he said at length; and having said it he cast down his eyes and went on with his work. She was a clever woman, and she would understand that, he thought. Nor was he mistaken. Madame understood him perfectly.

"I see Mr. Benson so rarely," she said. "Now that I have left the hotel my opportunities will be fewer. But that is not to say that I will not do my best when I do see him, if you care to tell him so."

Jack was delighted.

"I'll send him down to your place in the morning," he exclaimed; "that is, with your permission, he shall come directly after breakfast. Perhaps you will be going skating or something. If so, he might meet you on the rink?"

She smiled at his eagerness.

"I shall be pleased to see your brother any time. Now I fear I must go. Is not that eight o'clock striking? My cook will never forgive me."

A miserable cuckoo-clock shrieked the hour with intolerable emphasis, and reminded them all of the flesh-pots. Jack, however, remembered his manners sufficiently to escort her down the hillside, and it was a quarter past eight when he left her at her own door. The snow still fell fast, and the wind howled dismally up the valley. It was going to be a dreadful night.

"You won't forget," he said as he turned at her gate and drew the collar of his heavy coat about his ears. She answered that she would expect Benny sometime during the morning, and immediately went in to ask her servant if anyone had come. When Louise retorted with a shrug of the shoulders and the inquiry, "Who would come upon such a night?" Madame had nothing to say.

The hours were making it very difficult for her to believe the best. The dawn found her still awake, and quite prepared for that hour of crisis which such a life as Luton's had made inevitable.

CHAPTER XII

FLIGHT

The Abbé Villari slept at Benny's chalet that night, fearful of the storm, and not a little concerned at the absence of its master. This anxiety he shared with Jack, who suggested a hundred reasons which might have taken Benny to Sierre, but none which could have kept him there—unless it were the storm, which in the case of such a man seemed altogether insufficient.

"He'll have gone down to see if the stuff has come," Jack declared with conviction; "they say at the stables that he engaged a sleigh shortly after ten o'clock. I know he's ordered a lot of things, and he was particularly anxious to have the new steel arms for the frame. If the snow's very bad down there, the fellow who drives the sleigh may have refused to come up, and then Benny would be on his own. That wouldn't matter much to him, though, for he's as tough as old leather, and would just as soon walk up as ride. I can't think why he hasn't done it, Abbé."

The abbé agreed, although he had a poor opinion of some of the coachmen at Andana.

"The fellows like to spend a night in the town," he said, with a suggestion of ascetic regret. "It is difficult for a stranger to think of Sierre in such a light, but, after all, these things are a question of opportunity. A showman with a bear is a great person in a village where they have never seen bears, and so a man with a fiddle is an orchestra for people who have no music. I should imagine that André has refused to come back, and that your brother will remain at the Terminus Hotel. If so, he will be very comfortable, for the wines are excellent, and nobody would quarrel with the cooking. I think we had better say that he has done so, and go on with our work. There is nothing so unprofitable as speculation when time alone can tell us the truth."

Jack admitted the good sense of it, but he did little work, and after they had supped he went some way down to the road toward the village of Andana in the hope that he might discover Benny and the sleigh. It was a vain quest, however, and he returned to tell the abbé that the wind had nearly blown him off his legs, and that if Benny had refused to return from Sierre, he was no fool for his choice. Thereafter they ceased to speak about it, but neither suggested bed; and although they slept a little after twelve o'clock, the dawn found them wide awake and alert for tidings of the wanderer.

Benny was at Sierre—their guess was perfectly correct. Where they were at fault was in the matter of motive, which they failed entirely to comprehend. Which mystery is the better understood by harking back to the bridle track below Vermala, at an hour when a certain foreigner spoke of a strange affair upon the hillside, and those two masters of idiomatic but obsolete French, Bob Otway and Dick Fenton, responded incoherently to his vain appeals.

Benny, it will be remembered, had heard the Frenchman's story, and immediately understood its meaning. His knowledge of Luton Delayne convinced him that such an act of folly was to be expected from a man famous in two counties for the violence of his temper. He perceived that some scandalous affair had set the police upon the baronet's track, that one of them had been set to watch him and had been detected in the act. There had been an exchange of angry words, of abuse upon the one hand and of insolence upon the other—and then the blow. Just as Luton Delayne had invited the contempt of his neighbours at Holmswell by descending to a vulgar arena in which a butcher figured not ingloriously, so here in Switzerland had his temper got the better of him and this blow been struck. What the consequences might be, Benny did not care to ask himself; but he realised that they might be momentous, and remembering that the man was Lily's husband, he went up to Vermala at once and began to search the hillside. Was it possible that the affair had been nothing but an idle fracas after all? Had the gendarme gone off to report the matter to his superiors, as one calling for a prosecution which would amuse the community? It might be that, he said, and disbelieving it utterly, he turned to the heights.

The snow was firm and hard upon the narrow track, and revealed little even to his keen eyes. He perceived that luges had gone up to the hotel, and he could almost say how many. The track itself disclosed but gentle slopes, and none which could be called a precipice even by an imaginative person. The woods harboured deep drifts of snow, and were scarred here and there by the trails of skis; but at one spot alone was there any possible scene for such a drama as the Frenchman had described. This lay immediately below the hotel; a plateau upon which two men could stand side by side, with a sheer wall of rock falling fifty or sixty feet away from it and an arbour of the pines, which the sun could hardly penetrate, at its foot.

Benny climbed to the plateau, and kneeling there he peered down to the depths. A great drift of snow had culminated about the trunks of three trees which appeared to grow straight out of the hillside. On the plateau itself there were footprints which clearly indicated that two people had faced each other, and that a scuffle had taken place. But, and this was the more remarkable thing, save for a curious wraith of snow some twenty feet down the abyss, there was no scar upon the unbroken sheet of white which stretched from the plateau to the trees; not a mark which would have invited the suspicions of the most watchful. Many men, satisfied with the scrutiny, would have gone on at once, convinced that the glen could tell them nothing; but Benny was not that kind of man, and when he had reflected upon it a little while, and had made sure that his acts would not be observed, an idea came to him, and he put it into practice immediately. It was nothing less than this: to descend the precipice by the help of the trees, and to discover for himself the secret of the snow wraith, if secret there were.

The feat was not a little difficult, perhaps really dangerous. But here was a man who had ploughed the "roaring forties" in an old Scotch brig, and had the foot of a goat upon a height. Swinging himself out upon a branch, to which he leaped, Benny climbed over to other branches; then he slid down the trunk of a pine as a sailor down a pole. He was five minutes in the hollow below the plateau, and a quarter of an hour making his way back through the heavy drifts to the path he had quitted. Then he went straight on to the hotel at Vermala—a silent man, with set face and eyes which saw nothing but the track before him.

To the porter who told him that the Englishman, Mr. Faikes, was engaged in his private room Benny merely replied: "Go back, and say he'll have to see me." Thereafter, he waited, standing immobile in the hall, and quite unconscious of the guests who studied him with critical eyes. Some of these knew him for the winner of the Grand Prix down at Andana, and wondered that such a man should interest himself in Alpine sports; but others made a jest upon his earnestness, and said, behind their papers, that he looked like the impersonification of tragedy.

Luton Delayne had a sitting-room looking over toward the Weisshorn, and here Benny discovered him a few moments later. A whisky-and-soda stood at his side, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes lay in a tawdry Swiss ash-tray. Evidently he had but recently returned from the open, for he still wore heavy boots and puttees, and these were wet with the snow. His manner was characteristically aggressive, and his question, "Well, what the devil do you want with me?" quite in the expected tone.

Benny shut the door of the room carefully behind him, and then crossed it on tip-toe, an unnecessary proceeding, but one in keeping with his own desire for secrecy. His hands were thrust deep in his trousers pockets, and he had quite forgotten to take off the old Alpine hat without which his best friends at Andana would not have recognised him. Delayne could not but see that this man had a right to come to him as he did, and his face blanched suddenly.

"You know why I have come here, Sir Luton—none but a d——d fool would ask that question. I've come to save your neck!"

Delayne puffed hard at his cigarette, and then laid the end of it down with the others.

"Oh," he exclaimed in the grand manner; "so you know about the row, then?"

Benny went to the window and looked out. The plateau lay a hundred yards from the hotel, but was hidden by a belt of trees. He wondered if others had already made their way there—searching for what he had found. The minutes were precious if he would save this madman for a woman's sake.

"Yes," he said, swinging round on his heel, "I know about the row. Half the place is talking about it. I suppose you'll be joining in yourself just now—when the police come along. That should be before morning with any luck—it won't be much later anyway."

The baronet rose and walked across to the window. Benny could see that his hands were twitching, while his eyes almost danced in his head.

"The man followed me," he said inconsequently. "It was the most damnably impertinent thing I ever saw in all my life. When I asked him what he wanted, he wouldn't say a word. I warned him to keep off, and he was on my heels again in five minutes. Would you stand that yourself? You're a man, and can judge between us? Would you stand it?"

Benny shrugged his shoulders.

"What we have to stand depends on our footing. The man who grubs in dirty soil mustn't complain that his hands are black. You came to blows, I suppose, and he went over. Is that what you would say?"

"I struck him on the face, and he tried to draw a revolver on me—we were on the plateau, and he went over. If he's hurt, I'll pay compensation. What more do you want?"

Benny looked at him curiously. Was he lying outright, or merely reciting a defence he had rehearsed in the interval? It was difficult to say. The truth must be told without delay, for the truth alone could move him.

"You say the man went over. Did you see him after he fell?"

"See him! What do you mean?"

"I ask if you saw him after he fell—he might have been injured, you know?"

Delayne returned to the table, and took a deep draught from the tumbler there.

"You know something," he said, averting his eyes. "Well, I'm not a child; tell me."

Benny crossed over, and looked him full in the face.

"It's a pity you didn't stop," he said quietly—"the man's dead—!"

Delayne began to tremble, a little at first and then as one stricken by an ague. Reaction had come in an instant—the man's hands were as cold as ice, he could not keep still.

"How do you know he's dead?"

"I have seen him, touched him! He's stone dead at the foot of the clump of pines: that's what I came here to tell you."

Delayne said: "My God!" and sank into the chair. He began to blubber like a child; his whole body twitched in a nervous collapse to be expected of such a temperament. The truth had stricken him; it prevailed above any thought of his own safety, which was left to the man who had come to him with so little ceremony.

"You have twenty hours at the best, six at the worst," Benny said, ignoring the outbreak and knowing that it would pass. "If the little Frenchman who saw him fall doesn't blab, the police may not be here until the morning. You'll have to answer for this sooner or later, but you'll answer it better across the frontier. Are you going to start at once, or wait for them to come for you? Take another drop of that whisky, and then tell me. I can give you that long."

The man obeyed him like a child. He was already trying to excuse himself, to make a case which might be put to a jury subsequently.

"It's no more than mischance, look at it how you like. He provoked me—I had no intention to kill him. If he'd have gone away, it would have been all right. What business had he to follow me, I ask you, what business had he? Is this a free country? Then why did he spy on me? Let the police answer that: what right had he to spy on me?"

Benny became contemptuous now.

"They'll answer it sharp enough when they are here. You'll learn pretty quick whether it's a free country or not. If I were you, I would choose another, and let my lawyers do the talking from there. You could catch the afternoon train through the tunnel, if you were quick about it. You'd be in Italy to-morrow, and in my house opposite Magadino the day after. There's nobody there but an old Italian woman, and she couldn't pronounce your name if she knew it. I have the shanty until the winter—the hydroplanes I was running in the fall are still there, and some other stuff. Say you come on my business, and no one will question you. That's what I would do if I were you, and I wouldn't be long in doing it either."

He stood waiting for an answer, his arms still thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his hat awry. The expression of low cunning which crept upon the baronet's face did not deter him in any way. He cared not a straw for any imputations of motive, whatever they might be. A determination to save Lily Delayne from the shame of this madness drove him as a spur. Had it been otherwise he would not have crossed the street at this man's beck.

Delayne understood the situation perfectly, and was upon the point of confessing as much. He knew how sure was his wife's influence over men, and for an instant a savage impulse of jealousy impelled him to turn on the man who would have befriended him for his wife's sake and to say all that was in his mind. From this an instinct of prudence saved him at the last moment. He remembered the words: "The man is dead," and began to shudder. Yes, flight was his only chance—but flight must imply guilt!

"Oh," he exclaimed, after a moment's hesitation, "that's all very well, but if I go, what will they say? And my valet, Paul—what of him? Is he ready to hold his tongue, do you think?"

"I think nothing. Send him to Paris by the Simplon to-night. Tell him you're following later. You're not going to say that you've been mad enough to take him into your confidence?"

"Nothing of the kind; but he's a Swiss. They may question him about me?"

"In Paris—"

Delayne shrugged his shoulders.

"If I go, I admit that the police had the right to molest me."

"If you stay, by God, they'll guillotine you. Don't you understand that—don't you see that this man was in the service of the State? Lord, a child would know better. And you're losing the minutes. I say, the minutes; and every one may be the most precious you'll ever live."

Delayne still hesitated, pacing the room, and muttering all the jargon of defence he had recited a hundred times since the instant of his passion. Despite his dilemma, certain instincts of his pride remained. How should he tell this bull-dog of an engineer that he was at his wits' end to pay his hotel bill? He would never have told him had not Benny guessed it from the first.

"You want money, perhaps?" he said, speaking in a new tone, which a sense of delicacy forced upon him. "Well, I'll see you through this, and you can pay me when you like. I'll give you a hundred at Brigue, and you can run the shanty with that until I come. Ten pounds should see your man to Paris—let him go to a back-street hotel until you come. You know the place well enough for that, and can direct him. I'm going down to order the sleigh. It'll be at the cross-roads above the Palace in half an hour. If you're not there when I bring it, a telegram will go to Sierre. As sure as I stand here, I'll dispatch that if you keep me waiting five minutes. Now go, and do what I tell you—you've played the fool long enough."

He strode from the room and the hotel. Half an hour afterwards, Luton Delayne and the valet, Paul, met him at the cross-roads above Andana, and stepped aboard the sleigh he had hired from Karl Meyer, the jobmaster at the Park. Benny's excuse, that he wished to go down alone to bring up "stuff" from Sierre, satisfied the phlegmatic German, who had a good customer in this active Englishman. He promised to telephone for a second horse to be at the Terminus Hotel in the valley that night, and gave no further thought to the matter.

Benny, in the meantime, discovered powers of prevision which were quite remarkable. His immediate object was to get this madman across the Pass, and to harbour him in his own shanty on Lake Maggiore without the loss of an hour. He foresaw that the departure of a certain Mr. Faikes from the hotel at Vermala, and the journey of that worthy's valet to Paris, would be in his favour. Luton Delayne must take his own name at Domo d'Ossola, where his presence would be of no concern to the Swiss authorities, and would never be associated with such a crime. The better to attain this object, he set down the valet, Paul, at the station in Sierre, and then, under the pretence that he himself and Sir Luton were to pass a few days at the Terminus Hotel, he returned at once to the great high road through the valley of the Simplon, and set out boldly for Visp.

Here, and here only, luck went with him. He had been but three hours upon the road when the storm overtook him—another hour brought him to a hamlet, where the lights of a railway station shone warmly through the blinding haze of snow. He inquired of the station-master, and learned that a train would leave for Milan within the hour. Nothing could be more opportune; he believed that he had succeeded in his task beyond all hope, and that the story of the tragedy at Vermala would never be known to the world.

"Go straight through to Domo d'Ossola without a word to anybody," he said to Delayne. "I will telegraph instructions to the old woman at the shanty to-morrow, and you can make your way there as soon as you please. If there is any danger, I will warn you of it. That's my part of the business: yours is to hold your tongue, whatever the consequences."

Sir Luton hardly answered him. A certain contempt for himself because he had let this masterful personage persuade him to an ignominious flight now took possession of him, and entirely banished any thought of gratitude. The money which was thrust upon him he received with the air of a master borrowing from a servant. Distance had dwarfed his understanding of danger, and he had forgotten already his own platitudes of defence. Was he not an Englishman, and what right had that d——d fool to spy upon him? For two pins he would have returned to Sierre and told the authorities as much.

Of this resolution he quickly repented, and, being bundled into the train for Milan, condescended to offer his hand to the man who had saved him. It chanced, however, that Benny had turned his back at this particular moment, and thus missed the proffered grasp which was to be the laurel upon his altruism. Five minutes later he set out through the blinding storm for Sierre, where he arrived at the Terminus Hotel in time for dinner. All thoughts of going up to Andana that night had now been abandoned. He decided to sleep at the hotel, and to return as soon as daylight would let him.

Perhaps such a change from his normal way of life was not unwelcome. There is bustle of a kind at Sierre, where stranded tourists are wont to gather and excited English folk to indulge in the platitudes of travel. This pleasant little town, too, is honoured by the great Simplon express, which calls after nine o'clock, and is to be stopped by the station-master's whistle when there are passengers to take up. Benny dined at his leisure, and having lighted a cigar, he strolled over to the station and waited for the express to come in. The snow fell heavily, and the wind moaned in the heights; but there was good shelter here at the heart of the valley and a sense of sanctuary very welcome. Benny knew that he had done as good a day's work as he would ever do; and, perhaps, he began to think that after all he was not such an unlucky mortal—for, surely, the greatest of good luck is the possibility to help others.

Half an hour passed in optimistic reflections, and then the express from Milan came in. There were three English passengers, and the station-master ran out on the rails and blew a shrill whistle when the great flaming headlights of the engine appeared round the bend. Then the English folk were hauled up into a wagon-lit and the train went on, scattering flaming sparks into the haze of snow. When all was silent in the station, Benny returned toward the hotel, and had taken some twenty steps across the courtyard when he came almost face to face with Paul, the valet, who walked arm-in-arm with a diminutive gendarme, to whom he was talking earnestly. Benny watched him as though he had seen a ghost. Should not the fellow have been on his way to Paris three hours or more ago!

He did not know what to do: whether to speak to the man or merely to watch him. Delayne had spoken little of this servant, nor did Benny know whether he were to be trusted or feared. On the face of it, the latter opinion should have been preferred; for what had a valet to do with the police, and how came it that this particular valet postponed his visit to Paris to confab with one of them? Benny detected danger and drew back into the shadows.

"They may take him at the frontier after all," he said.

CHAPTER XIII

AFTER THE STORM

Bob Otway was down very early upon the morning after the great storm, and he was not a little surprised to find Dick Fenton waiting upon the plateau before the hotel, whence he surveyed the newly-fallen snow with greedy eyes. In truth, Dick was telling himself that he would take Marjory up to the wood again, and compel her to confess that she loved him; an unnecessary repetition of an ancient story, but pleasant enough when white arms go with it.

Bob Otway was less sentimental. He confessed that he felt a little down, and he added the information that the concierge was a "nut." There had been great "events" last night after Dick went to bed to dream of Marjory; much damage had been done. All this would be charged for when the weekly bills were sent on, and as Bob asked ruefully: "What do you think a 'cello's worth, Dick; is it worth thirty shillings?" By which he implied the destruction of such an instrument and his own share therein.

"It was Rivers who began it," he explained, as they strolled about arm in arm, waiting for the bell to announce morning coffee: "He tried to hang up the big clock in the hall with a drawing pin, and when the concierge spotted him, Billy Godeyer was doing the same for the picture of the Battle of Sedan. Then Rivers found that the band had left their instruments behind in the drawing-room, and we had a concert. Never saw such rot; I played the 'cello and all the hair came out of the bow before I'd sawed out half a tune. They say we smashed five notes in the piano, but I don't believe it. Old Gordon Snagg doesn't like noise, so we played on his account; he'd pay the damage if he were a gentleman."

Dick agreed to that, but didn't much care to talk about music. The night had brought pleasant dreams of Marjory. He really was rather sorry that they had chosen the "little widow" for their ambassador.

"We were in too much of a hurry," he said, arguing in a philosophical if amatory vein. "Why not let it run until we get back to England? It's beastly to think about money in such a place as this, and I'm sure Marjory would hate me for doing it. I'll speak to my uncle when I get back, and he might do something for me. Perhaps he'll send me out to Canada; there's lots of cash to be made there, and why shouldn't we make some of it? Let's have some fun, Bob. You're such a gloomy beggar; you always look at things in the worst light."

Bob retorted that it depended upon the age of the lady; a vague and half-truthful remembrance of the havoc which the sun had played with the otherwise peach-like skin of a nameless nymph. The morning found him in a dubious-mood about Nellie, but less alarmed about the enormity of the offence. She really was a "jolly little girl," and it had been quite impossible not to propose to her in the circumstances. With good luck, her views upon the final step of matrimony might be as distant as his own. And who could say that something would not turn up?

"Mrs. Rider will make the devil of a row about it, and we shall have to clear out," he said musingly. "I know she brought the girls here to get 'em off, but she won't think very much of the particular planks for this particular plunge. I'm sorry, too, that we spoke to the 'little widow.' It's rather jolly to be thought rich, though it wouldn't be honest to the girls to leave them under that impression. I shall tell Nellie just what I've got when we're up in the wood this morning. Two hundred a year sounds all right when someone else is paying your hotel bill. It's when you come to running a pug dog and a motor-car that you find where the slice pinches."

"But one would begin in a small way, Bob."

Bob shook his head.

"That's what the modern girl tells you; she follows it up with the hint that she'd like a flat overlooking the park, and really couldn't live in Bayswater. It's a day of big ideas and little balances. I believe my old guv'nor was right when he said that money was the greatest curse that ever came into the world. There'd be a lot of happiness if it wasn't for money, Dick. Think of it, if fashion wasn't so rotten, we might camp out the first year, live in a tent for two, and sleep by the roadside. I'm told it's healthy, and I know Mecredy did it. There'd be no rent to pay, and we might sell our portraits as an advertisement for a tonic. As it is, we've just got to own up that we're paupers; and if the girls take pity on us—well, we'll feel smaller than ever."

Dick was not so sure of it. Ancient fables concerning the angelic qualities of the sex still buoyed him up with youthful hopes.

"Oh," he said loftily, "that's all rot, Bob. Money's something, of course, but lots of girls don't think much about it. Look at old Gordon Snagg. He's supposed to be worth half a million; they say he paid ten thousand for his knighthood; do you think Marjory would have had him if he'd have proposed to her? Give sentiment half a chance. Surely, it is possible to believe that the girl you're going to marry has some other ideas but those of your bank balance?"

Bob would not give in.

"Wait until old Mrs. Rider gets going," he exclaimed sententiously. "We shall hear some home truths then, old chap, and just when we were beginning to enjoy ourselves. By Jove, isn't it a day! Look at the sun on the old Rothhorn; isn't it splendid, Dick? and it rises upon our hour of woe. Well, I suppose the ancient martyrs went through this kind of thing; but I'm hanged if I wouldn't sooner go to the dentist any day. What shall we say to the old girl? How shall we tell her that the truth—?"

"I shall tell her for Marjory's sake. Why, I believe she's up at the window there, and Nellie as well. Don't you see them, Bob?"

The girls were giggling behind the sun-blind of a third-floor window, but they disappeared almost instantly when their object of attracting attention had been achieved. It still wanted ten minutes to the first breakfast-bell, and a few active folk had now appeared to enjoy the sunshine, or to drag luges up the ice-run and have a "canter" down before the coffee. The latter idea appealed to the boys; and getting their luges from the hall, they went up to the starting-point. This was the moment, however, when a little procession appeared upon the mountain track above them; and being attracted by the novelty of the spectacle, they stood to see it pass.

"They're soldiers, aren't they, Bob?"

"Looks very much like it. What can they be doing up here?"

"Would it be about the story? Surely, they can't have found the man?"

"I wouldn't wonder; why, here's our little Frenchman, who wanted to tell us all about it yesterday. He'll know what's up; let's ask him."

"But he doesn't understand your French!"

Bob was not to be daunted. Walking across the snow to the edge of the wood, he took off his hat to the Frenchman, and asked him the question: "What are they doing up there, monsieur?"

The reply overwhelmed the young man by its velocity. He caught the word un mort, or thought that he did; but so great was the stranger's desire to tell him that a flood of terrible English followed upon the outbreak. The soldiers had been searching the snow for the body of a comrade, so much Bob made of it; and not only had they been searching, but the quest had been successful. They were now carrying the dead man down to Andana, whence the body would be conveyed in a sleigh to Martigny. With which intimation, and some incoherent reflections upon the whole tragedy, the Frenchman turned upon his heel and left them. His own curiosity would take him some distance in the wake of the procession. Like all his race, the psychology of crime fascinated him beyond any other study.

The youths, in their turn, were not a little awed by this gruesome spectacle, nor could they remain insensible to its romance. Down below, upon the plateau, were the first of the merrymakers, the outposts of a vigorous life, the careless creatures of laughter and the sunshine. Here upon the height, beneath a tracery of silver, upon a path still in shadow, were the emblems of death and eternal sleep. Stern figures, whose footfalls fell soft upon the untrodden snow, moved with military rhythm about the body of their comrade. None spoke, none paused, the faces of all were hard set and expressionless. To-morrow the whole of Switzerland would be talking of this crime; to-day it was but a muttered whisper, which hardly echoed in the woods which harboured it.

But of this the lads knew nothing, and when the procession disappeared from their view they went racing down to the Palace; where they arrived at the precise moment of Miss Marjory and Miss Nellie Rider's appearance, in virginal white.

The "girls" were dreadfully important people this morning. And how little they thought of the married women!

CHAPTER XIV

THE GENDARME PHILIP

Lily was usually an early riser, but the night of storm had wearied her, and it was nearly ten o'clock when she rang for her maid to bring her coffee.

This was the hour of the day she preferred to any other in a general way. Then she had letters from her English friends, and journals, often long delayed upon their voyage, but none the less welcome. To open the windows wide and breathe the air blowing straight into the room from the glaciers of the Weisshorn, to sup tea at her leisure and hear of this person and of that who groped their muggy way in London's chill atmosphere, were pleasures of the day she would not readily forgo. Just as the ascetic believes that the joy of the blessed is to rejoice upon the sufferings of the damned, so did Lily realise her own opportunities the better when contemplating the despair of the pilgrims she had quitted. London was "awful," one woman said; "you could hardly see how badly dressed the other women were."

The morning of the flight brought Louise to the room in a querulous mood. She had quite expected that there would be gendarmes in the kitchen, and was disappointed when none came. True, a postman had told her strange things and had hinted at this and that in a way which irritated her dull understanding; but of news she had none, save that which Madame's letters implied—and, to be sure, it was a pity she could not read them. Failing the opportunity, she banged them down on the bed as an act of protest, and with the intimation that the sun would close the skating rink at twelve, bounced out of the room with no more grace than she had bounced in.

There were three letters for Lily, all addressed to Mrs. Kennaird; but of the three, the handwriting of one alone arrested her immediate attention. This was from her father, Sir Frederick Kennaird; a long and rambling epistle, expressing all the petulance, the anger and the selfishness of a rich man called upon to surrender a portion of his riches.

Reciting the family story from the moment when she had married Luton Delayne, his first charge concerned her choice of such a man, when it ignored altogether the paternal satisfaction which the marriage had awakened at the moment of its inception. These particular Delaynes, Sir Frederick wrote, had been bad eggs since old General Delayne of Huddlesmere played the knave in the American War, and was shot by a Yankee whose house he had outraged. Nothing was to be hoped from such a family; nor was anything more to be hoped from the writer, should a further request on Luton's behalf be made.

As to Bothand and Co. and the alleged fraud, Sir Frederick had little sympathy for the West-End jewellers, the majority of whom he declared to be rascals who battened on the folly and the vanity of unfledged boys and vulgar parvenues. Luton's hint that his wife's name had been used was received with the derision which, perhaps, it deserved. It was a device, he said, to extort money under a species of blackmail permitted by the law. Should such an allegation be made seriously, it would be met in a way which would surprise these people. Luton's debt was another thing, and not to be taken lightly. The amount of it he considered incredible; this firm must be nothing less than money-lenders in disguise, and should be treated accordingly. Sir Frederick promised to set his solicitors, Welis and Welis, to work to see what could be done. At the same time, he concluded his reference to an unpleasant affair by the assurance that his son-in-law would yet make a beggar of him, and that Lily owed it to him to see that at his age some consideration was shown for a man who had done so much for them both.

She did not fall to observe that her father said nothing upon the more vital matter of her own unhappiness; nor did he invite her to Benham Priory, whither he had taken his young American wife, Edna. Lily did not need this oversight to assure her that the Priory had ceased to be her home, and that of all the houses she knew, there would the coldest welcome be offered her. These letters from Sir Frederick were so stereotyped in their expressions that they provoked no longer those bitter memories once associated with them, He had ceased to remember any obligations toward his children save those which their importunities thrust upon him; to write to him, who should have been her best friend, had become a humiliation.

She crushed the letter in her hand, and pulling on her dressing gown, she went to the window and looked out. The superb morning had sent a merry throng to the skating rink, where Dr. Orange and Bess Bethune were delighting an envious crowd by a sedate performance in the "English" school; while upon the opposite side of the rink, Keith Rivers pirouetted and pranced in the "International" fashion, to the satisfaction of the inexpert, who thought the English manner dull. A few beginners were in remote corners, and were as ungoverned ships upon a crowded waterway; but they fell in solemn silence, for it is heresy here to laugh at that ignorance which, even when firmly seated, is so far from bliss.

Cheek by jowl with the skating rink lay the little lake whereon the curlers performed. From this a babel of sounds arose; an awful jargon from which the Esperanto school would have fled in terrified despair. Generals of divisions here roared at soulless "stanes," as though their salvation depended upon a besom. Cries of "bring her along," "up cows," "well sweepit," or "man, you're a curler," rent the air as the battle cries of warriors. In the intervals of storm there fell the calm of comedy. "Will ye crack an egg on this, Sandy, dear?" a Scotchman was heard to remark; but when Sandy did not "crack an egg" upon it, his compatriot roared: "Ah! ye red-headed little deevil, wait till I get doun the rink and catch haud o' ye"—a threat which occasioned no surprise, and hardly moved a member of the solemn-faced company to the ghost of a sad smile.

Merry or solemn, it certainly was a scene to remember and to dwell upon. All these healthy people might have been groping in the London fogs but for those wonder-workers who rediscovered Switzerland some twenty years ago. Some of them had been so groping perhaps but yesterday; and here they were, basking in a sunshine hardly known to an English July, reborn to energies they had forgotten, playing the fool in the finest spirit of the Horatian precept. Lily said it was wonderful; and then it occurred to her that she had no part or lot in it. The events of the night were remembered in an instant of wonder that she could have forgotten them even during this idle hour.

In one way the placid ebb and flow of the tides of recreation reassured her. She feared no longer an aftermath of the fracas at Vermala—or, verily, there would be some bruit of it at this early hour of the day. It was impossible for her to believe that a tragedy of moment would be attended in this remote place by no overt manifestation; and of that there was not a sign. To-day, as yesterday, and all the days, the pilgrims set out for the heights on skis; the skaters waltzed and pirouetted to the strains of the tenth-rate orchestra generously provided by the proprietaire; the curlers heaved the "stanes" and complained of the sweltering sunshine. None of these suggested a knowledge of drama, remote or intimate. One man alone, the little gendarme, Philip, could have spoken, and he had already passed on toward the Park Hotel. These were hours of respite for this gracious lady, and her gratitude was not feigned.

As to Luton, she had grown accustomed to his habit of procrastination and his incurable levity of life. Any excuse, however trivial, would have kept him from her last night; and she had to admit that he might have been physically unable to come, for this also was one of the shameful secrets. In the latter case, he would visit her this morning; and her imagination already depicted him, sitting in the chair by the window, and pulling ceaselessly at his long red moustache, while he asked her news and complained that it was not what he had expected.

Here, of course, she was at fault, and the only visitor who presented himself at the chalet was Mr. Benjamin Benson, who, in the language of seamen, had "cleaned himself" and donned a suit of clothes which astonished both his brother and the abbé. To their many questions, Benny replied that the storm kept him at Sierre, and that the "stuff" had not come; and when this was said, he heard their tale about the "little widow," and her desire to see him, and marched off to the chalet without another word. He found her dressed rather prettily in a heavy jacket of white wool and a violet hat which showed the many perfections of her pale face, and did not hide the beauty of her eyes. Benny thought her so beautiful that he was almost afraid to look her in the face when he spoke to her; but he knew that he had a part to play, and must play it bravely if he would succeed.

She met him at the gate of the chalet, but did not suggest that they should return there. It seemed wicked, as both admitted, to be indoors upon such a morning; and she fully believed that she could deliver his brother's message as eloquently upon the hillside as in her own drawing-room. Concerning his own absence she had little curiosity, for she was unaware that he knew of the affair at Vermala, and would never have associated it with his visit to Sierre. At the same time, she thought that he might have some news of Luton, and was anxious to hear it.

"So you were caught in the storm, Mr. Benson?"

He said that it was so, and then he asked a question in his turn.

"You'd never guess who went with me to Sierre, Lady Delayne."

"Why should I guess it?"

He looked round about him and turned deliberately toward the deserted path which led to the Park Hotel.

"Let's go this way," he said evasively. "There are too many human gramophones at Andana to my way of thinking, and some of them must have known Ananias. Well, about Sierre? Sir Luton was my fellow passenger—"

"My husband—then he—!"

She stood quite still, and her face had become waxen in its pallor. Benny did not look at her, and recited his story to the woods upon his right hand.

"Yes, Sir Luton. There was a bit of a row up at Vermala yesterday, and his temper got the better of him. They tell me he struck one of the gendarmes from Martigny; you can't do that sort of thing with impunity hereabouts. If there's a fuss, he's better across the frontier, and so I told him. That's what took him down to the town with me—I thought the climate of the lakes would suit him better for a day or two—and there he is as safe and sound as a bird in a nest. If you hear any stories, don't you believe a word of them. It's my advice to you to return to England to your father's house as soon as you can do it conveniently. These foreigners make a rare hullaballoo if you lay a finger on them. They'll ask you ten thousand questions if you'll let them. Don't give them the opportunity, Lady Delayne—say your father wants you back, and you are going. That's my advice, and it's good common sense. I'll drive you down to Sierre this afternoon, if you like. You could catch the Simplon to-night, and be in London to-morrow; I hope you'll let me, for if they find out that Mr. Faikes is really Sir Luton Delayne, then there'll be no end to the trouble. Now, will your ladyship think of it?"

He spoke with unwonted earnestness, as though her case were his own, and she really must be led to see the importance of it. If any other had told her such a story, Lily would have disbelieved every word of it; but here was a very apostle of candour, and who would doubt him?

"Do you mean to say that I am to return to England because my husband has had a foolish quarrel with the authorities? Do you mean that, Mr. Benson?"

He nodded his head almost savagely.

"Foreigners are all right when you keep the right side of them. Sir Luton's temper got the better of him, and there would have been the devil to pay if he had not cleared off. I don't want you to be troubled about it, and so I say: Go back to England at once. I shall be stopping on here, and I can put matters right if anything is said. Don't you think I am wise, Lady Delayne; now, really, don't you think so?"

"I think you are kind, very kind, to interest yourself in those who are comparative strangers to you. And if it was but a fracas as you say—"

He laughed it off, clenching his hands and pursing his lips to the boldest lie he had ever told in all his life:

"Just a vulgar row and nothing more. We should laugh at it in England, but they've other notions here. I don't want you to be bothered about it, and so I'm all for the journey to Sierre and the Simplon to-night. Give me leave, and I'll telephone for tickets right away. You'd be wise to do that, Lady Delayne—I'm sure you'd be wise—"

"But, my dear Mr. Benson, I have friends coming from Caux this afternoon. I could not go away in such a hurry; it would be too ridiculous in the circumstances."

Benny did not know what to say. His anxiety for her had become almost pitiful. Perhaps he would have betrayed himself altogether, but for the sudden appearance of the gendarme, Philip, who emerged from the wood upon their left hand, and sauntered down toward them with his eyes searching the ground and his hands crossed behind his back. This was a ghost to stem the flood of eloquence suddenly. Benny turned pale when he saw Philip, and his agitation was not to be hidden from his companion.

"Who is that?" she asked him with awakened curiosity. He shook his head.

"One of the gendarmes from Martigny. I saw him at the station last night."

"Then why do you see him with displeasure this morning?"

"He may be here on our affair. I've told you what I think. They'll be questioning you about it if you stay."

"But, surely, I shall be able to answer them! Is a woman responsible for her husband's follies—even in Switzerland? I do not think so, Mr. Benson; you are not quite honest with me—there is something yet to come?"

He shook his head.

"I have told you what I think, Lady Delayne. It's for you to decide. I can quite understand that you may not be able to go away this afternoon, but to-morrow, or the next day, perhaps? Will you think it over, and let me know? I shall be round this way after dinner to-night, and I'll look in, with your-permission. Now I must run away, for I see the abbé throwing his arms about up yonder, and that's to say the lunch is on the table. Isn't it wonderful that a man cannot go three or four hours without food and remain in his right senses? It's true, though, so, you see, I'll just run away. But you'll think of what I've said, won't you?—and you'll know that I'm your friend, come what may!"

He held put his hand to her with an awkward gesture, and felt her soft fingers lying for an instant in his own. The look which she gave him was a reward beyond his expectations; he returned to the chalet with the step of a boy, and was hoping and believing a hundred good things when he met the gendarme, Philip, almost at his own door.

"Ah, my lad, I am glad to see you again," he said. "Were you not at Sierre last night with the valet of my friend, Mr. Faikes?"

Philip looked up quickly.

"Of your friend, Sir—?"

Benny did not appear to notice it.

"The Englishman staying at Vermala," he persisted; and then he asked: "Do you know him also?"

Philip answered as quickly.

"Yes, I know this Englishman, sir; he killed my brother, Eugène. Am I to understand that he is a friend of yours?"

Benny grabbed the man by the arm, and began to walk him to and fro upon the narrow path. He was acting now with all the art he could command. Yes, he had seen the Englishman several times; was he the man who struck the officer, Eugène Gaillarde, on the hillside? Who would have thought it? But then, to be sure, no one knew the fellow very well: a sour-tempered bully, who had come from Cannes, and gone, they said, to Paris. Had Monsieur Philip heard that the Englishman had gone to Paris? Well, it was so, and he, Benny, had seen him at the station—indeed, he had driven him some way on the road. It would be useful to remember that. Perhaps Monsieur Philip would be glad of the information?

The young man heard the strange tale to the end, but he expressed neither surprise nor gratitude. He had come to Andana to learn what he could, and when his work was done he would know the Englishman's story and where to seek him. "And then, monsieur," he added with almost savage conviction, "I shall arrest him with my own hands."

Benny did not argue with him; he saw that this idea obsessed him, and that words were vain. His own acting, clever as it was, appeared to have made no impression whatsoever upon the gendarme, and when the man left him, it was to go on with the same quiet step and unchanging resolution, up toward the height where his brother had perished. Benny, however, stood for a little while at the door of the chalet looking down toward Lily's house. Did she believe the story he had told her with such poor wit?

He knew not what to think. It was hardly a week ago she had come to Andana; but the days had changed his own life beyond all knowledge, and had left him with but one ambition in the world. He would lift the burden from her shoulders if he could—the burden of shame which threatened to overwhelm her utterly.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CORTÈGE

The siesta at Andana is an event of the day and differs from other siestas chiefly in the fact that no one goes to sleep.

Visiting the plateau before the Palace Hotel upon an afternoon of February a stranger will discover the arts, the professions and the industries of Great Britain in some disorder and not a little comfort. Accrediting the best chairs to generals and colonels, whom a gracious King employs no longer upon active service, mere lawyers and persons who write will be found in accommodating attitudes which a diversity of luges, camp-stools and even rugs make possible; while commerce, stiff-backed and upright, flirts amiably in amatory markets and appears to think little of Protection.

Everyone has done something during the morning, and this make-believe of a siesta is the due reward. Here upon the brink of the valley topographers yawn and discover mountains; matrons remember their complexions; mere youth its volatility.

All bask in a wonderful sunshine and are tolerant of evil. There is no protest upon the projectile aimed erringly and discovering unsought targets. The prettiest girls do not always show the prettiest ankles, nor the middle-aged ladies the least desirable qualities. There is flippancy of talk and act, a craving for ease not always gratified, and a worship of the glories of Switzerland as honest as any article in the social creed. If a subject be chosen and pursued, it is haltingly and at intervals. Men yawn upon other men's bons-mots—they have quick ears chiefly for the whispers.

They were discussing Lily Delayne upon the afternoon of this particular day, and not without that charity which remembered her as a baronet's wife. Led by Bess Bethune—whose father had known Sir Frederick Kennaird—and kept in order by Dr. Orange, who was a man of the world with good perceptions, it was unanimously resolved by the meeting that her ladyship had been foolish to go to the chalet and would be more foolish if she remained there. Had she not been a baronet's wife, the assembly might have arrived with justice at another conclusion; but the daughter of Burnham Priory was a desirable acquisition, and as Lady Coral-Smith remarked: "Not in any way responsible for the vices of an irresponsible man." So the meeting carried the resolution nem. con., and having carried it, settled down to remember all the "good things" about Sir Luton which ready tongues and readier newspapers had recorded these ten years.

Dr. Orange said very little, except to admit that Lady Delayne was a very charming person, and to express his surprise that she had not divorced the baronet long ago. This remark escaped him at a moment when Bess Bethune had deserted the study of social jurisprudence for that of the velocity of snow when obstructed by the bald head of a choleric sleeper. When the young lady returned from her occupation, Lady Coral-Smith took up the running with the observation that the measure of a woman's endurance is often the measure of her intellect, and that bad men should certainly marry fools. This remark, directed to the dull understanding of Major Boodle, pleased that worthy mightily, and he echoed it with a succession of "Eh, what's," which trilled like the warblings of an asthmatic bird.

Thereafter silence fell and endured until the major thought that he remembered a good story concerning the Delaynes, and was about to tell it, when what should happen but that her ladyship appeared suddenly among the company, and brought the men to their feet as though a bombshell had fallen amongst them.

Social credulity is a curious thing, and is apt to become incredulity on next to no provocation at all. The man or woman, whom all discuss, remains just the man, or the woman, when introduced to the company. All the stories concerning him or her seem to be forgotten in a moment; nothing is remembered but the personality of the intruder, and should that be satisfying, the recording finger ceases to write. So, at Andana, this little company would now have been prepared to swear in any court that none but the most flattering observations concerning her ladyship had fallen from its lips, and that it was ready to welcome this charming lady with the cordiality her position (and her father's money) demanded.

To this happy state of things Lily's own charm contributed not a little. She was, for some of these good middle-class folk, as an ambassador from another kingdom, and one which they might not hope to enter. Her unaffected manner, her gentleness, conquered the men, and did not provoke the women. Had she been of their own sphere, they would have envied her beauty and complained of it. But being of a race apart, even the mayor's relict could grant her some natural "advantages." As for homely Mrs. Rider, particularly honoured by her ladyship's attentions, she, good soul, was in the seventh heaven. This would make a fine story in Bayswater when she got back. "My friend, Lady Delayne, travelling incognito"—how well it sounded. Her lips were already prepared for that delicacy.

Lily drew a chair close to the prospective mother of "the boys," and began to talk to her in low tones. Sir Gordon, after a vain attempt to join in, had the wit to perceive that he was making no impression, and turned his attention to "the little savage," as he called Mistress Bess. When he was gone, Lily approached the dangerous topic of Messrs. Robert Otway and Richard Fenton. She thought that they were pleasant young men and would start in life with some pecuniary advantages.

Had Mrs. Rider known them long—were they very old friends? To which that good lady replied with warmth that this was her third season at Andana, and that the boys had been there on each occasion. Then, with an aside of some moment, she hastened to confess that it was embarrassing to be the mother of two grown-up daughters at her age: "For I am but nine-and-thirty, Mrs. Kennaird, and my poor husband has been dead these five years."

Lily expressed her sympathy in a kindly way and led the good soul insensibly to other confessions. Each of the girls had three hundred a year in her own right, and, naturally, their mother would like to see them happily married. She, herself, was not too old to resign "all the pleasures of life," as she put it naïvely; but what could she do with these great grown-up girls and their perpetual activities? Men naturally thought a woman as old as her children believed her to be; and young people nowadays have such strange notions about years.

As to the young men, she liked them well enough. They were noisy, to be sure; but, then, might not others say the same with justice of Nell and Marjory?

"I'm ashamed of their boisterousness sometimes," the good lady admitted. "I'm sure I was never like that when I was a girl, and what happiness they can find in it, I don't know. Believe me, Mrs. Kennaird, they never are at rest. When it's not skating and sliding, it's golf and hockey. If you ask them to read a book, they think you want to do them an injury. I gave Marjory the 'Pilgrim's Progress' on her last birthday, and all she said was that 'Christian won on the last green.' There's levity for you—there's improper behaviour. Oh, I shall be sorry to lose them, but sorrier still for the man who marries them—indeed I shall. You couldn't understand it yourself, for you have no daughters of your own, they tell me; but I've a mother's heart, and they wound it every day that I live. Oh, yes, I shall be sorry for the man who marries them."

Lily smiled, but did not comment upon the grammar of the observation, or its suggestions. The situation was now quite plain to her. Here was a good woman who would enter the holy bonds for the second time, one who found a serious obstacle in the presence of these hoydens who proclaimed their mother's age urbi et orbi. Little it mattered to her whether the worldly prospects of likely suitors were good or ill. Lily perceived that the boys were already married, so far as Mrs. Rider was concerned, and she determined to push the suggestion no further. So she led the conversation to more general topics, and finally turned to Dr. Orange, who had been waiting for an opportunity to speak to her.

Lily confessed to the doctor that she had come out with the intention of doing a little shopping in the village of Andana, and he, with ready gallantry, offered to accompany her thither. His art in mundane affairs was considerable, and no one who overheard their talk would have guessed that he knew this lady's story to the last line. Not until the narrow path carried them to the heart of the wood by the Sanatorium did he begin to speak of intimate affairs at all, and then in so general a way that it was impossible not to be frank with him.

"By the way," he said—joining her after the passage of a bob sleigh steered by that dashing pilot, Keith Rivers, who rarely broke his collar-bone more than twice in any season—"by the way, do you know a person of the name of Paul Lecroix—I think he is a gentleman's servant, and has been staying at Andana, recently—do you know anything of him?"

Lily guessed the object of the question and would not fence with it.

"Yes," she said in a low voice, "he was my husband's valet; what of him, Dr. Orange?"

The doctor continued as though it were an ordinary affair.

"He has been recently in the employment of a Mr. Faikes, also staying at Vermala. The fellow has a long tongue, and is not to be encouraged. I fear he has said many things in the hotel here which you would not wish him to have said. They make no difference to any of us, of course, it goes without saying; but should you be perplexed by them, I hope you will give the credit where it is due."

"You mean, that people know my real name—the name under which I choose not to travel?"

The doctor was surprised by her candour.

"Yes," he said slowly, "that is what I wanted to say. Your incognito is an incognito no longer—if it concerns you that it should not be. Most possibly it does not. I have often taken a nom de voyage myself and found it useful. I can understand that it might be helpful to a lady, especially to the daughter of one so influential as Sir Frederick Kennaird. If you wish it to be respected at Andana, you have but to say the word. Perhaps, however, you will think that it has served its purpose in Egypt and the Balkans. I was almost expecting you to tell me so when I first mentioned it."

This was subtly put, and it pleased her. He expected her to say that it mattered no longer whether anyone called her Lady Delayne or Mrs. Kennaird, and she met him as readily. It was a matter of indifference to her. In any case, she did not expect to be many days in Andana, and would be returning almost immediately to London. Perhaps the doctor would come and see her in town?

"I am on the north side of the Park, and that is quite reprehensible," she said with a smile. "My address is Upper Gloucester Place, but I will give you a card. Doctors find themselves in strange places, and cultivate an uncritical attitude, I suppose. But I shall be very glad to see you, if you care to come, and perhaps some of my Italian curiosities will interest you."

He admitted an interest: it would have been the same had she said that the golden gods of Burma were her hobby; and when he had informed her that he was now living at Hastings, which proposed shortly to indulge in the luxury of a pageant, they came to the little village of Andana and to its bazaar.

The latter was situated picturesquely enough at the summit of the narrow winding street, and was itself a gabled chalet which would have served for a picture book. An ancient dame, whose English ran to half a dozen inaccurate phrases, here vended grotesque knick-knacks at prices still more grotesque. There were post cards embracing every possible view of Andana at every possible season; fabulous distortions of the Matterhorn; panoramas showing the whole of the Rhone Valley, and portraits of peasants, who seemed to have dressed themselves especially for the stage of the Gaiety Theatre. Elsewhere, the stock was hardly more attractive. Cheap jewellery from Birmingham; cheap glass from Italy; German ingenuity vended for "two francs-fifty," lay cheek by jowl with skis to be sold for twice their market value, and luges upon which a child could sit with difficulty. The carved wooden trifles alone represented the genius of Switzerland, and were to be valued. Lily bought some half a dozen of them as an excuse—her real object had been the quest of writing-paper—and then remembering that it was growing dark, she paid her bill hastily, and set out to return to her chalet.

The night falls swiftly and often with bitter cold in the Rhone Valley. It had been twilight when they entered the shop; it was quite dark when they emerged. The village street, usually the resort of gossips, now welcomed men of more serious aspect, who were clustered round three sleighs about to go down to Sierre. Lily delighted in these sleighs, as a rule, in the music of their bells, and the primitive caparison of their long-suffering horses; and when she came thus face to face with an unexpected cortège, she stopped, despite the cold, to remark upon it. Hardly had the words been spoken when she regretted them. This was no common spectacle. She perceived in a moment that it was the harbinger of death.

"Oh," she had exclaimed, "how very picturesque," and then with the truth of it arresting her, she turned upon the doctor inquiring eyes.

"What are they doing, Doctor Orange? Why are they here?"

He answered as frankly that he did not know.

"Have you heard of any death in Andana? Has there been any illness?"

He shook his head.

"It would be a soldier's funeral. There have been rumours in the hotel about an accident up at Vermala. I will speak to them, if you like—"

He crossed over to one of the officers and exchanged a few words with him. Other gendarmes emerged from the little café, carrying lanterns. A captain, whose sword jangled upon the flags, uttered an order in a commanding tone, and sent some of his men to the horses' heads. He also exchanged a brusque word with the doctor, and saluted Madame when he passed her. The bells swung musically as the procession set out and disappeared slowly round the bend upon its way to the valley.

Dr. Orange meanwhile had returned to Lily's side, and ignorant that his news had any meaning for her, he hastened to tell her what had been told to him.

"They say that a gendarme from Martigny has been killed up on the Zaat. I heard something about it this morning, but did not pay much attention. The officer was not very communicative. We shall have to wait until we get to the Palace before we hear the whole story. Perhaps it will not be very exciting after all. These accidents are not so common as English people believe. Five or six bodies of men who have been lost on the heights are discovered under the snow every spring, when the great thaw comes. The Alpine chasseurs, too, have a good deal of trouble with some of the rogues who haunt the passes. Shall we walk on? I am sure you must be feeling the cold."

Lily had not stirred from the spot; but now, with a determination which surprised her, she set out for her house, and did not betray even by a word the tumultuous thoughts which afflicted her.

As for the doctor, he dismissed the affair almost immediately, and continued to gossip of lighter things. There would be a dance at the Palace that night; would she care to come down? Or perhaps she would like him to make up a rubber at bridge? Old Gordon Snagg played well, but parsimoniously, and Lady Coral-Smith was the terror in petticoats. Failing that, there would be some passable music in the drawing-room—he confessed that he himself played, but did not tell her what a very fine pianist he really was—nor did he notice her indifference and the effort it cost her to answer him at all. When they parted it was at the door of her own chalet, where he stood a moment to light a cigarette in the shelter of the porch. And there for the first time a suggestion of the truth flashed upon him from the darkness, and spoke both of the living and of the dead in one instant, of utter bewilderment.

Lily had entered her house and gone straight to the sitting-room upon the right-hand side of the door. There she switched on the electric light, and the blinds being drawn up, the doctor saw the whole room quite plainly, and the figure of the woman as she laid aside her cloak and threw back her head to unpin her hat. Attracted by the grace of her attitudes, and perplexed by the extraordinary pallor of her face, he continued to stand until she turned about suddenly, and pressing both her hands to her forehead, sank suddenly into a chair, and burst into a passionate flood of weeping. Then he understood, and fearing to be detected, set off instantly toward the hotel.

"By God!" he said as he went, "Luton Delayne is the man!"

CHAPTER XVI

TWO OPINIONS

Benny arrived at the chalet at a quarter to nine, and was shown immediately into the sitting-room. There he found Lily seated before her writing-table; but she had written no letters, and the note-paper was covered by meaningless hieroglyphics which her pen inscribed ceaselessly.

Men are rarely observant when it is a question of knowing whether a woman is well or ill, and this good-natured engineer was no exception to a common rule. Had anyone called his attention to the extraordinary pallor of Lily's face, he would have admitted its significance; but, as it was, his desire to resume their conversation of the morning blinded him to the truth. He had come to know if she were ready to return to England; he found her determined upon another purpose altogether.

"I thought you'd have done dinner by this time, Lady Delayne," he explained, "and so I ventured to come in. It's a fine night outside, and good for walking. I half expected you to be down with the Palace people. They're dancing to-night, and they tried to run me in. But I'm too old to prance round with yearlings, and so I told them. I'd sooner drive an airship across the Mediterranean than steer some of the heavy-weights down yonder—yes, a hundred times. But I thought it might be different in your case."

She did not smile; her manner arrested his words, and was an omen of her answer. Benny watched her rising from her chair as he would have watched an accusing figure about to approach him. She had discovered the truth—he was sure of it.

"Mr. Benson," she said slowly, "why did you not deal more generously with me this morning?"

He did not shrink from it. The question appealed to his manhood, and resolution made him strong. He was glad, moreover, that the hour of suspense had passed; he would keep nothing from her now.

"I wanted to shield you," he rejoined very naturally. "It was a man's part to do that. I wanted to keep trouble from you. Now I see my own foolishness. It couldn't be done, Lady Delayne. The whole place is talking of the affair; you were bound to hear of it. But I did my best, because I wanted to be your friend."

She knew that it was true, and his frankness disarmed her. The irony of life had left her with but one friend in the world, and he a man she had seen for the first time a week ago. It needed some resolution to keep her courage in the face of that.

"It was not friendship to deceive me," she said, against her convictions; "so much might have happened. I am grateful to you, none the less. Will you now tell me all you know?"

She sat upon a sofa near to him, a lamp behind her, and her face in shadow. He perceived that she breathed heavily; but there was no other overt testimony either of fear or grief.

"I'll tell you willingly, every word," he rejoined. "There's no doubt that Bothand and Co. got out a warrant in England against Sir Luton, and that the Swiss police, acting on instructions from Scotland Yard, traced him here. They sent an officer, Eugène Gaillarde, from Martigny, to ascertain if their man was at Vermala; he watched your husband for a couple of days. I think he may have followed him over from Grindelwald, but I do not know for sure. If they had established his identity, word would have been sent to London; most likely they would have arrested him, and applied for extradition. Anyway, it seems clear that Sir Luton knew he was being followed, and that he resented the fact just in the way such a man would resent it. As bad luck would have it, he seems to have met Gaillarde face to face on the plateau below the hotel. There were words passed between them, and then blows. What precisely befell we shall never know, but I make no doubt that Gaillarde lost his footing and was thrown over. He must have fallen about thirty-five feet and struck the clump of trees at the foot. I saw him there myself, lying stone dead, and that's how I came to warn your husband. If Sir Luton hadn't gone away, it would have been a murder charge. We may avoid that if they don't trace him, and time will put the affair in another light. It would be manslaughter at the worst—though I can't keep it from you that, whichever it is, it's bad enough in a country like this. What you and I have to do is to keep the thing black dark while we can. I've sent Sir Luton where no police will find him, and if he's wise he will stay there until the worst has blown over. Then he ought to go to the East for a couple of years. We can tell a tale in the English papers if the truth ever does come out, and he won't want sympathisers. We hate bureaucrats in our country, and there's many who will understand just what happened in his case. It would be otherwise if they had taken him and brought the trial on immediately. I had to stop that at any cost—that's why I sent him into Italy. The same reason lay behind my idea that you should go to England. You are a danger to him here, Lady Delayne, so it seems to me. You are a danger every hour you remain, and if you would save him, you won't lose an hour in going away. I'm glad that I can tell you so freely, for I couldn't this morning, much as I wanted to—"

He paused, a little afraid of his own eloquence. What impression he had made he did not know; but one thing was plain, and that was the woman's courage. There was no hysterical outburst now, no expression of a vain regret—nothing but a quiet determination which astonished him.

"I could never forget my obligation to you," she began; "that must be lifelong. You say that I should return to England to save my husband; but surely it would be the wiser thing to remain. If they do not know all the facts, why should they seek Sir Luton Delayne? May we not hope that this question of identity will protect him to the end? Indeed, I am beginning to believe that my first duty is to him, to go to him, Mr. Benson, and to forget! If he were really guilty of a monstrous crime, it would be another thing. But can we believe that he is?—unless passion itself be such a crime. I cannot say that; his sins have been greatly punished, and am I to judge him at such an hour? Not so, surely. I will go to Italy whatever the cost. I feel it is my duty."

He was amazed to hear her. His primitive knowledge of woman had prepared him for an issue so very different. She would have been humbled utterly by the disclosure, he thought, overwhelmed and incapable of any clear purpose. And here she was prepared for an act of madness which, whatever its sublimity, must bring down the house of his hopes with a crash. Let her go to Italy and the end might be at hand. Which is to say, that he doubted his own hypothesis, and put little faith in identity as an ally. Had not Sir Luton been followed from Grindelwald? Why, there would be twenty ready to bear witness.

"My dear lady," he said, hardly knowing how to put it to her, "your wish does you great credit, but do not forget that if you are followed from here to Locarno, it will not take the authorities very long to guess what is going on. Perhaps I was wrong to advise a journey at all. The Swiss police are no fools. They will remember that this English lady came to spend some weeks at Andana; she took a chalet; she appeared to have settled down. Then she goes without warning. Suppose, upon the top of that, they remember that a certain Sir Luton Delayne left Grindelwald in a hurry—don't you think they are capable of getting at the truth? Why, he might be arrested in the next four-and-twenty hours; and if he were, God help him. No, it would be madness to go—madness to think of it. He's safe where he is, and there will be just two people in all Europe who share this secret. Let us leave well alone—we have done our best and can do no more."

She saw the reason of it, but her distress was very great. All that she had suffered at her husband's hands went for nothing in the hour of cataclysm. In a way the defects of his character made a new appeal to her: his life might have been so very different; his intellect might have led him so far. And here he was, a veritable outcast, despised by all, a fugitive to be named with contempt, even by the vulgar.

"I know that you have done your best," she said, after some moments of silence, "but what have I done? Can I justify the story of my own life since I left him—can a woman ever justify herself for leaving a man in the hour of his misfortunes? While the world went well with him, I suffered in silence. Is it possible for me to forget that he is alone, without friends or help? The world would say that his own acts justify me. Should a woman be guided by the world, or by her own conscience? No, indeed, I cannot agree with you; and yet your advice is wise. If they know, there is the end of it. I can do nothing; I must wait and hope. My gratitude to you remains—it will never be told truly, Mr. Benson; it could not be."

He shrank from this expression as strong men ever shrink from a verbal recognition of their friendship. It may be that he perceived how much she really suffered, and what it cost her to hide the truth. The danger hovered about them both, and put a spell of its constraint upon their intercourse. In a spirited endeavour to make light of it, he told her that men would not judge Sir Luton hardly; and then he dwelt upon the security of his retreat in a villa upon the shore of Lake Maggiore. Though near to Locarno, its situation was one of some isolation, and it would serve their purpose beyond contention. The old woman who kept it had little English, and no curiosities. Generally speaking, he thought it as safe a haven as they were likely to find anywhere on the Continent, and, as he said, Sir Luton himself would use his eyes, and if there were danger, he would not fail to meet it. In brief, if things fell out as they had been planned, the secret need never pass the doors of the chalet.

She agreed with this, though it was plain that her thoughts centred rather upon her own conception of duty than upon the peril of the situation. Insensibly she turned to the man where a man's work was to be done, and Benny encouraged her with a pride that burned. Yes, he would be the agent in the matter, if she would but leave it to him. He had no fear of the issue; let him enjoy her confidence and the rest was easy.

"We must keep his identity out of it," he repeated; "all depends upon that. There is a little gendarme here—the brother of the man who was killed, and he is to be watched. Trust me to do so. I have had my eye on him from the start, and I shall not sleep much until he is on his way to Martigny again. If you see him, beware of the man: a little pale-faced fellow, with a serious air and a mincing manner—not the sort of man you suspect, but one who could be very dangerous. I would say nothing to him—not that he is likely to think of you; but you might meet him accidentally. When he's done with, the rest will be easy. We shall keep Sir Luton at the shanty for a month; then send him down to Monte Carlo. If they don't suspect him, the trouble will be over pretty quickly. I hope to God it will be!"

His optimism was splendid, and fearing a new note, he ended the interview upon it. She might rely upon him to bring her all the news, and meanwhile courage was necessary. When he left her, it was just a quarter-past ten, and he could hear the music at the Palace floating up the mountain-side in a dreamy rhythm which seemed in odd contrast with the secrecy and the fears of that interview. How bravely she had suffered it, and what big promises he had made! If they were not justified, what of it? He had done his best, and she had thanked him. He could almost feel the pressure of her fingers in his great hand now.

He was alone upon the mountain-side and all the glory of the night about him. A flux of stars marked the Palace Hotel, every window of which paid tribute of warm light to the sheen of the spotless snow. Higher up there twinkled the minor constellations of Vermala; while away to the west arc-lamps marked the path to the Park and the slopes whereon the beginners kept carnival. These were the human aspects of the scene, but the majesty and solitude of the mountains remained impregnable, even in the half-lights; and looking out upon them, the man recalled his ambitions, the task he had set himself, and the hope which had deluded him. Would he find inspiration anew because of this thing which had come into his life?

He turned with a sigh, and went on to his own house. A light burned in the workshop, and he discovered Jack and the abbé still at work there, but they put down their tools immediately and watched him with eager eyes. Had the woman spoken? Had she remembered her promise? They were all agog, and their desire to know would not be restrained.

"Well, Benny, and what did she say, my boy?"

"Oh, we had a little talk about everything. What did you expect her to say, Jack?"

"Then she didn't mention the prize?"

He opened his eyes wide.

"Why should she mention it?"

"Well, you see, she promised to. She wants you to win it. We sent you down there on purpose. Do you mean to say she forgot all about it? How like a woman! And you thought she was interested; eh, Benny? you could have sworn she was."

The abbé nodded his head sagely; then he sighed and resumed his work. Benny continued to look at them with wonder. A conspiracy. And she was interested and had forgotten. Well, after all, that was very natural in the circumstances—but if she had remembered!

He did not answer Jack directly; but declaring that he was very tired, went off to bed. When he was gone, the abbé confessed to Jack that "it was finished," and he also laid down his tools.

"We waste our time," he said. "Your brother has lost interest. It is a pity, for he might have been one of the greatest men of our time."

Jack thought so too. He would have given a good deal to have heard that this high and mighty lady was about to quit Andana.

CHAPTER XVII

HERALDS OF GREAT TIDINGS

Bob Otway and Dick Fenton were coming down the Vermala slopes together, when they espied the "little widow" on the path below the hotel. Her appearance reminded them that more than a week had passed since they had seen her at the chalet, and that it had been a time of events never to be forgotten. To be candid, the boys had changed very much during these wonder-working days. They had even come, as Bob admitted ruefully, to speak of such mysteries as drainage and water supply. The realities were gripping them and romance already cried out.

"Why, it's Lady Delayne, Bob—don't you see her? We really ought to pull up and tell her what has happened."

Bob agreed, and, as a testimony to his approval, did a wonderful telemarque which came near to dashing out his brains against a tree. It was just twelve o'clock of a glorious day, and both the boys hungering for lunch.

But they could not pass by Lily Delayne, even at the bidding of a mountain appetite, and so they shot down wildly to the path and confronted her, as two loping bears emerging suddenly upon their prey.

Lily was dressed in black, and wore a wide motor hat and a heavy veil. For an instant she smiled kindly upon the boys, then relapsed to that pensive air which seemed inseparable from her natural mood.

"Why," she said, "here are the truants. Let me see, ten days, yes, just ten days since the embassy, is it not, Mr. Otway? And black silence all this time; now, really, is not that ingratitude?"

Bob admitted that it was; Dick hung his head and looked sheepish.

"You see," said the former, "we found it was all right, and so we didn't want to trouble you. It's a beastly thing to have to speak about money, and I wouldn't have any girl believe that it's her money I want. When I heard from Mrs. Rider that Nellie had three hundred a year, I knew we could just rub along, and what more does any fellow want? Of course, we can't keep a motor on that, and I shall have to play golf once a week, instead of twice. But it's something to be able to pay your way these hard times, and the fellow who can't give up something for the sake of a pretty girl isn't much good."

Dick was more explicit.

"I'm rather sorry Marjory has the money," he said with conviction. "I don't believe marriages are made in heaven, or that sort of nonsense; but I do believe that young people should be content to start in a small way, and that if a man is to get on, his own brains should push him. It can't be helped, of course, and Mrs. Rider is so pleased about it that I believe she'd double their allowance for a nod. She's flirting like one o'clock with old Gordon Snagg, and it wouldn't astound me if she married him."

"And struck another!" interposed Bob, whose alternations of melancholy and gladness were a delight to hear. Lily was so much amused by them that she encouraged him to talk; and saying that she, also, was returning to lunch, they all set off down the mountain together.

"We're going to live out at Hampstead to begin with," Bob explained, cheerily. "I suppose it must be flats, for it won't run to a house. Dick thinks we might share a big one, but I know the girls would quarrel, and when sisters do quarrel, then you hear things. I shall go into a motor-car business, and open a garage somewhere. Dick is going to write books when he can afford the paper—and I'm sorry for Thackeray and those fellows. Perhaps you'll come and see us when we're settled down, though I say it's the settling up that's the trouble. Hampstead's not a bad place, and they don't charge anything for the empty ginger-beer bottles on the Heath. I wonder if you really would come, Lady Delayne?"

Lily said it would be a pleasure to do so, though her secret doubt as to the establishment of this particular ménage remained unspoken. Concerning Dick, however, she had no afterthought. He had grown sentimental in an hour, and saw nothing but a vision of Marjory in his brightest heaven.

"I've always wanted to write a book," he said, "but a man needs a spur. It's impossible for a fellow to do anything when he's a bachelor and men are coming in every five minutes to look over his shoulder. I could have finished a play last year, if it hadn't been for the Scratch Medal at Neasden, but I was so keen to win it that I never got further than the prologue. Now, however, I mean to take my coat off."

"And to fly—like Benny, the wonderful Benny," Bob added. He was surprised to learn that her ladyship had heard nothing of this. Did she not know that a regular mob was expected at the Palace to-morrow to see that amazing hero, Mr. Benjamin Benson, try for the great prize offered by the Daily Recorder of London? Well, it was so. They were even making up beds on the billiard table, and what sort of a game was a man expected to play on a mattress?