The Sign of the Stranger
Page 19
who was her husband.
"If I can assist you in any way in this, Lady Stanchester, I willwillingly do so," I replied, deeply in earnest.
She turned her handsome countenance to me, and I saw that her grey eyeswere dimmed by tears.
"I ought not, I suppose, to make you my confidant," she went on, "yet ifyou will really take pity upon me, a helpless woman, you can at leastprevent the one thing I dread from becoming known--you can help me toshow George that I love him fondly after all--that I will try to makehim as happy as is my duty. You have no belief in me, that I know fullwell. You believe that if it suited my purpose I would betray anyconfidence of yours to-morrow, and laugh in your face for being such afool as to trust me. That is my exact character, I admit; but if youwill preserve the secret of Richard Keene's return and promise to act asmy friend as well as Lolita's, I swear to you that I will keep faithwith you and endeavour when the day comes--as it certainly must erelong--to show George my heart is his, and his alone."
I could scarcely follow her true meaning, except that she was in deadlyfear that the Earl should learn of the stranger's presence at the_Stanchester Arms_.
I promised to remain secret and, if possible, to secure Warr's silence,yet in her words there was some hidden meaning that even then I couldnot fathom. She seemed to anticipate an event in the near future bywhich her love for her husband would be sorely tried. How strange itwas that she, gay and giddy woman that she was, had been seized by agenuine remorse on learning of the return of that dusty, down-at-heelstranger!
I looked at her and became convinced that the words she had spoken wereby no means idle ones. Her slim white hand, laid upon the edge of mytable, trembled, her pale lips were set, and in her grey eyes was astrange hard light as she said--
"Then I trust you, as you will trust me. In future, Mr Woodhouse, wewill be friends, and I assure you that you will find your friendship hasnot been misplaced."
"Remember," I pointed out, "that I do not unite with you against theEarl."
"No, of course not," she cried in a low intense voice. "But by yoursilence you can give me a chance to atone for all the past--you--you cansave me!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH.
When the Countess had gone, leaving behind her a sweet breath of"Ideale," that newest invention of the Parisian perfumer, I sat with myelbows idly upon the table, pondering over her strange words andbecoming more than ever puzzled.
Beauty may be only skin-deep, yet it makes a very deep impression. Thebrilliant woman who was my dear friend's wife had never captivated me.Nevertheless I had seen in her a genuine desire for reform and hadtherefore given her my promise. Still the mystery of it all seemed toincrease, instead of diminish.
The Earl of Stanchester had, of course, seen the dead man on the morningafter the discovery, but had not recognised him. At least it was quiteclear that he had no suspicion whatever of who the young man reallymight be.
From a drawer I took that piece of paper with those puzzling numeralsupon it which I had managed to obtain in secret. The cipher was,however, utterly unreadable. Staring at the paper I sat wondering whatwas written there. If only I could learn the meaning of those figures,then I knew that the truth would quickly become revealed.
Only that morning I had received a response from an expert in cipher--one of the officials at the Record Office in London--to whom I hadsubmitted a copy of that tantalising document.
"This," he wrote, "is what is known as the checker-board cipher, anumerical cipher invented by a Russian revolutionist some forty yearsago, and of all secret means of correspondence is the most complicatedand ingenious. It is absolutely undecipherable unless the keyword orwords agreed upon by the two correspondents be known, and it istherefore much used by Anarchists and Revolutionists. The meaning ofthe present cipher can never be solved until you gain knowledge of thekeyword used, for in writing it the numbers representing each letter ofthat word are added to the numbers representing each letter of themessage. Therefore, in deciphering, the proper subtraction must be madebefore any attempt can be successful in learning the message contained.I enclose you a copy of the checker-board used in writing the cipher,but without knowledge of the keyword this can be of no use whatever. Itwill, however, serve to show you what an extremely ingenious cipher itis, devised as it has been by a Russian of quick and subtle intellect,and used as means of secret communication in the constant plots againstthe Russian aristocracy. In the Russian prisons this square with itsfive numbers and twenty-five letters is used in a variety of ways, formost political prisoners have committed it to memory. If two personsare in separate cells, for instance, and one wishes to communicate withthe other, who in all probability is acquainted with the use of thesquare, he will ask, `Who are you?' by rapping on the wall, thus, 5raps, a pause, 2 raps, a pause (W); 2 raps, a pause, 3 raps, a pause(H); 3 raps, a pause, 4 raps, a pause (O); and so on until the wholequestion is rapped out. This is the way in which the cipher you havesubmitted to me is written, but in this case, as I have said, with thenumbers of the keyword added. Discover that, and the secret here willbe yours."
Enclosed was a half sheet of note-paper on which was drawn the followingdevice:--
- 1 2 3 4 5 1 A B C D E 2 F G H I K 3 L M N O P 4 Q R S T U 5 V W X Y Z
Ah! If only I could read what was written there! I placed the keybeside the message, but saw that all the numbers were higher than thoseof the checker board, showing that the unknown keyword had been added,thus rendering the cipher secure from any save the person aware of thepre-arranged word. If, however, the expert failed to decipher what waswritten there, how could I hope to decipher it? I therefore replacedthe papers in the drawer regretfully, locked it, and went upstairs tothe long, old-fashioned room set apart for me when I dined and slept atthe Hall.
My thoughts were full of Lolita and of the curious effect the news ofRichard Keene's return had produced upon the Countess. For a long timeI sat gazing out across the park, flooded as it was by the bright whitelight of the harvest moon.
My window was open, and the only sound that reached me there was thedistant barking of the hounds in the kennels and the bell of the oldNorman church of Sibberton striking two o'clock.
Over there, beyond the long dark line of the avenue, was the spot wherethe tragedy had been enacted, the spot where, in the clay, was left theimprints of Lolita's shoes. Time after time I tried to get rid of thosegrave suspicions that ever rose within me, but could not succeed. Theevidence against my love, both confirmed by her own words and by thecircumstances of the affair, was so strong that they seemed to convey anoverwhelming conviction.
Yet somehow the Countess herself seemed to have united with Lolita inorder to preserve the secret. Their interests, it seemed, werestrangely identical. And it was this latter fact that rendered theenigma even more puzzling than ever.
Next day the guests shot over at Banhaw, the Countess accompanying them,but "cubbing" having just opened, the Earl was out with the hounds atfive o'clock at the Lady Wood.
A letter I received by the morning post from Lolita at Strathpeffer toldof a gay season at the Spa, for quite a merry lot of well-known peoplealways assemble there in early autumn and many pleasant entertainmentsare given. One passage in the letter, however, caused me considerableapprehension. "If Marigold should question you regarding there-appearance of a certain person at the inn in Sibberton, tell her_nothing_. She must not know."
What could she mean? Unfortunately her warning had come too late! Ihad told the Countess exactly what was contrary to my love's interests.Could any situation be more perilous or annoying?
When I recollected her ladyship's words of the previous night I saw withchagrin how clever and cunning she was, and with what marvellous tactshe had succeeded in eliciting the truth from me.
Pink came in during the afternoon, and flinging himself into thearmchair opposite me, took a pinch of snuff with his usual nonchalantair.
"Thought you'd
be out cubbing this morning," he commenced. "Too earlyfor you--eh? We killed a brace in Green Side Wood. Frank Gordon wasthere, of course. He's as keen a sportsman as he ever was, and rides asstraight as half the young ones. Wonderful man! They say he used, backin the fifties, to ride seventy miles to the meet, hunt all day, andride home again. That's what I call a sportsman!"
"Yes," I said. "There are few left nowadays like old Frank Gordon. Hewas one of the hunting crowd at the Haycock at Wansford in the old dayswhen men rode hard, drank hard, and played hard. He did the first, butalways declares that his present good health is due to abstinence fromthe other two."
The old gentleman we were speaking of was the _doyen_ among hunting-menin the Midlands. He had hunted with the Belvoir half a century ago, andwas as fine a specimen of an Englishman as existed in these degeneratedays when