The Sign of the Stranger
Page 31
defenceless babewithin the giant's grasp, all struggles to evade him were but vain.
Fool that I was! poor doting fool, how had I quaffed the sweet illusionsof hope only to feel the venom of despair more poignant to my soul.
"You have a caller," I said in a hard blank voice. "Perhaps I hadbetter leave you?"
"Oh," she answered, "there really is no necessity for you to go. He maywait--he's quite an unimportant person."
"Named Logan--is he not?"
"Yes," she replied rather faintly, with a strange smile.
"A friend of yours?"
"No, not particularly," was her answer.
"Then if he is not, Lolita, why did I find you walking with him in thewood on that morning--I mean after the finding of the body of HughWingfield?"
"You saw us?" she gasped, glaring at me aghast. "You followed us!"
"I saw you," I repeated. "And further, I met the man on the followingnight in Chelsea in company with Marie Lejeune. He was flying from thepolice."
"Yes, he has told me how, by your timely warning, he was saved."
"My warning also saved the Frenchwoman. She should, therefore, inreturn do you the service of telling the truth, and thus clearing you."
"Ah! She'll never do that, as I've told you. It would be against herown interests."
"But this man? Who is he?" I demanded, recollecting the confidentialconversation between them before they had parted on the edge of thewood.
Both of us remembered how she had changed her wet, muddy dress at myhouse, and how I had succeeded in stealing a dress from her wardrobe andcarrying it down to Sibberton. Yet no word of that curious incident hadever passed between us. With mutual accord we had regarded thecircumstance as one that had never occurred, nevertheless, at thecloak-room at St Pancras was a box filled with her boots, while lockedaway in an attic of my house was the muddy dinner-gown she had exchangedfor her walking skirt on that memorable morning.
"You know his name?" she said, in response to my question.
"I do. But there are many circumstances connected with him which arepuzzling," I said. "Among them is the reason of his concealment in thehouse of the farmer Hayes."
"Because he feared the police, I suppose. A watch was being kept on thehouse in Britten Street, you say."
"For what reason? What was the offence of the pair?"
"They were suspected--suspected of a crime," she replied. "But," sheadded, "their guilt or their innocence does not concern me. I alone amto be the victim," she added bitterly, pushing her hair from her brow asif its weight oppressed her.
"Then this man Logan is your enemy--eh?"
"He is not my friend."
"He is in league with the others to encompass your ruin? Tell me thetruth of this, at least."
"I have not yet exactly decided whether he is my enemy or my friend,"was her answer. "Once he rendered me a very great service--how great Ican never sufficiently acknowledge."
"And now?" I asked, remembering that secret sign in the window.
"I am at a loss what to think," was her response. "Sometimes I believehe is working in my interests, while at others I entertain a vaguesuspicion that he is my enemy."
"As he is Marie Lejeune's," I added, looking her straight in the face.
"Her enemy--why, he's her best friend. Their interests are identical."
"I think not," was my calm reply. And in a few brief sentences Irelated to her what had transpired at the lonely Northamptonshire farm,how a murderous attack had been made upon "Miss Alice," as she was therecalled, and how the whole of the mysterious party had afterwards madegood their escape from the neighbourhood.
"This is certainly surprising to me," she declared. "Whom do yousuppose attacked her?"
"Pink's idea is that it was Logan."
"But Pink surely knows nothing about my connexion with those people?"she exclaimed apprehensively.
"Nothing. Up to the present there is no suspicion whatsoever that youwere acquainted with the dead man. Indeed his name is still unknown."
I recollected how the young fellow wore her portrait in his ring, andfell to wondering again if he were actually her secret lover, and if hehad been the victim of another's jealousy.
She certainly escaped from the Hall that night and met some one in thepark--but whom was an utter mystery. Yet there still sounded in my earsthat scream I had heard--the scream that was certainly hers and whichcame from the scene of the tragedy. If she were not the actualassassin, then she had of a certainty borne witness of it--and had beenappalled by that terrible _denouement_.
But when a man loves a woman as I loved Lolita, he cannot openly chargeher with being a murderess. And yet how I longed and longed forstrength to drive the demon suspicion from me; that fiend that sathovering over my soul, affrighting every gleam that might afford mecomfort.
"Then you have been loyal to me, Willoughby. You have kept yourpromise!" she exclaimed with a sad sweetness. "Would that you couldrescue me from the cruel fate that must now be mine!"
I strove to speak, but utterance was denied me. She seemed so convincedof the hopelessness of the future that her very conviction seemed tocarry upon it evidence of her guilt.
Could poor Hugh Wingfield, the man who had carried that secret cipher inhis pocket and who had worn her portrait on his finger, have actuallybeen struck down by that very hand that I had kissed?
Ah! no! Perish such a thought. She was my love--and my love was, Iknew full well, the innocent victim of as foul and base a conspiracy ashad ever been conceived by the ingenious mind of man.
I doubted her, but only on account of the character of the persons withwhom she was in secret association. When I enumerated them in my mind Isaw what a strange mysterious group they were--the young Frenchwoman,the man Logan, the two sallow-faced foreigners who had been diligentreaders of socialistic newspapers, and, last of all, the rough-manneredhunter of big game, Smeeton, _alias_ Keene--the man over whom the youngCountess of Stanchester appeared to possess some secret power.
Was Marigold the evil genius of the situation? Her past had been sofull of adventure, and the rumours about her--mostly untrue be it said--had been so many that I confess I felt inclined to prejudge and condemnher.
A vain, pretty married woman, fond of admiration and moving in theultra-smart set, can seldom escape the evil tongue of gossip. Yetalthough I made every allowance for her social surroundings and the factof her being one of "the giddy Gordons," there were certain facts of myown knowledge with which I could not well reconcile her position as myfriend's wife. For that reason, as well as because of her opendeclaration of antagonism to Keene, I held her in suspicion. She hadcleverly deceived me as to her real motive, and that was sufficient tocause me to regard her as an enemy.
"Why not admit this man Logan and let us consult together?" I suggestedat last. "We might arrive at some way out of this deadly peril ofyours."
"We might," she admitted. "But he would never meet and discuss thematter with you. Remember he is wanted by the police, and has noguarantee that you might not betray him. He told me of your meeting inChelsea, how you raised the alarm, and how narrowly he escaped beingcaptured. Therefore he views you with no great affection. No," sheadded, "for the present you must not meet. It would be unwise. He mustnot even know that you axe in Edinburgh."
"Why not?"
"Because--well, because if he knows you are here with me he willhesitate to act in the manner I am trying to induce him to act. Fear ofyou will prevent him."
"What are you inducing him to do?" I asked.
"I am trying to prevail upon him to assist me in performing a certainservice--one by which I hope to gain my release from these torturingfears that hold me. It is my last resource. If my project fails, deathalone remains to me."
She spoke with a deep breathless earnestness which told me plainly thather words were no idle ones. True she had spoken of self-destructionmany times, but it was with the firm conviction of a woman hounde
d toher own destruction.
The world, curiously enough, regards a wealthy woman of title as thoughshe were a different being to themselves, believing her to possessattributes denied to the commoner, and a mind devoid of any of the caresof the weary workaday existence. Yet if the truth be told, the womanwho is dressed by Laferrier, Raudnitz or Callot often has a far uglierskeleton in her cupboard than she who is compelled to go bargain-huntingin Oxford Street at sales for her next season's gown. The smartvictoria, the matched pair, the liveried servants and the emblazonedpanels form the necessary background of the woman who is _chic_, but,alas! how often she hates the very sight of all