Читать книгу The Cluny Problem - A. Fielding - Страница 5

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NEXT morning, Vivian, Mrs. Brownlow, and Mrs. Brownlow's faithful slave, Tibbitts, went out with Mr. Murgatroyd to an old fortress close beside the villa, from whose ancient battlements they had a good view.

It was a glorious day. Vivian shook off all fancies and riddles, and enjoyed it to the full. The meadows were one blaze of buttercups, the hawthorns white with blossom.

Behind them lay the wooded slopes of Fouettin and Saint Mayeul. A lane of lime trees, centuries old, still in full flower, led to the little town on their right. The smell of its blossoms, surely one of the sweetest smells in the world, rose all about them. Girls with big baskets on their arms were cutting off the thick clusters for the famous tilleul tisane. To one side the Grosne, crystal clear, glittered past meadows where maize was tossing its great golden plumes. There was a hint of ripening grapes in the air from the vineyards all around.

There is magic in Cluny by night or by day. A spell woven by man, and the mind of man. A spell from out the great days when:

En tout pays où le vent vente

L'Abbé de Cluny a rente.

The days when this little town was an asylum for kings, when its abbey led the world of Christian thought, and led it well; when Cardinals of Guise, and Richelieu, and Mazarin, and princes of the blood royal were content to be its "abbot of abbots;" when four Popes came from its grand old walls; when its library, and its learning, and its high standards; were only equaled by its power and its wealth.

Vivian leaned over the coping and studied the scene. For a while the historian let them idle, then he set to work. He had promised them a glimpse of the Cluny that he knew. A very different place from the sleepy ville that they saw.

Of the great Basilica, that monumental work of the eleventh century, the noblest church in Christendom of its time, he could only speak of as of a lost treasure, save for two towers of the narthex still left standing.

But he built it up again for them. In its green setting, with its triple roofs, its soaring steeples, its innumerable buttresses.

Then he showed them where the abbey ran, a world in itself, with its gardens, and its immense cloisters, its buildings, towers and ramparts.

Vivian was not greatly interested in architecture, but she liked hearing any man talk on what he knew well. Also, she had sent home a delicious little vignette of "The Professor at the Dinner-table," and she wanted another. Even if he had read them, Mr. Murgatroyd would only have been flattered, for she drew him with a very friendly pen.

Mrs. Brownlow seemed interested. But there was so little else doing at Cluny that Vivian suspected her of gracefully making the best of a dull day. Tibbitts shifted heavily from one big foot to the other and breathed hard. When he could, he leaned over the battlements and betted with Vivian on the various depths. He had a quite unexpectedly accurate eye, she found.

"And now"—Mr. Murgatroyd beamed at them like a father promising his youngsters a treat—"now we will go and have another look at the beautiful double-arched entrance gate of the old abbey. We won't go on to the museum. I don't doubt you, too, know that by heart."

"Bet your life!" Tibbitts agreed, adding in an aside, "I don't think!"

They walked to the school of arts and crafts, now housed in the old abbey, or part of it. Mrs. Brownlow said that she knew the gate well with its charming view. Why, Vivian asked herself, was she always so interested in Mrs. Brownlow? It was not only because of that odd incident of her picture in Anthony Cross's hands. It was something in the woman herself. Some charm that emanated from her, as perfume from a damask rose. Whether she were a vamp or no, Vivian could well imagine her to be a spell-binder.

Murgatroyd leading, they passed into the building. It was then that Vivian missed Tibbitts.

She believed that they would find him at some café outside, in front of an aperitif, but, to her surprise, looking over her shoulder, she saw him standing still on the handsome broad staircase, the original staircase, and bending down to examine the wrought iron banister.

"Gosh! I never saw finer work!" he muttered. "Old iron this," he went on touching it as Vivian had never thought that his thick fingers could touch anything. "Very old. Yuss," he bent down and studied it intently. Then he straightened up and grinned sheepishly at her before shooting a swift, rather nervous glance at Mrs. Brownlow's slender back.

"Don't often find things in museums and old places that interest me," he murmured apologetically; "first time I ever remember to've cared a damn for any of the rot they show you."

They walked on, Tibbitts sinking again into the dull young man with the efforts at heavy pleasantry that they knew at the villa.

It was when they were in the cloisters that he seemed to come to life again. He suddenly left them, turned at right angles and was lost to view. His action had something so definite, so purposeful in it, that the others followed.

"I told you the boy was only joking when he said that he had never been here before," Mrs. Brownlow murmured.

They found Tibbitts on his knees by a funny little excrescence in the wall.

"Here is the spot!" he called exultantly. "They've built this doorway half over it, but here was the 'earth where that iron was puddled, bet your life, and drawn and hammered, and worked up, that we saw just now on that staircase."

Murgatroyd gave an exclamation.

"You think you've located the blasting furnace of Brother Placidus?" His voice shook with excitement. "We've been hunting for that for years. I was certain that it was under some part of this later addition."

"Where else could it be?" Tibbitts asked contemptuously; "seeing the way the valley faces, it would 'ave to be 'ere, wouldn't it?"

His voice was the voice of a laboring man.

"Then you think this blackened wall—" Murgatroyd's tone was quite humble.

"I don't think! I know! You can see for yourself that part of the old sandstone 'earth is still 'ere. It would be lined with charcoal dust, you know. The pile of ore would go there. The 'earth would be filled up this-a-way with charcoal, and blanketed down with a muck of wet dust and small ore. Then you'd start the blast going, and keep adding more blanketing until you got a good heat, then you'd let the blast rip, and bit by bit the whole'ld turn to bloom."

"What's 'bloom'?" Mr. Murgatroyd was always interested in anything even distantly connected with his work. "What's 'bloom,' Mr. Tibbitts?"

Mrs. Brownlow watched the scene with a faint line between her rather thick, very long and low brows.

"Why, your puddled iron o' course. The stuff wot ye draws out and hammers and rolls. The stuff wot some bloke worked into those banisters we saw in the house back there, and that r'iling to the balcony just over our heads." He pointed up with one of his big red hands. "And I'll tell you one thing, the bloke wot designed them knew iron, knew wot it will do, and wot it won't. Beaten it with his bare fists in his time he must 'ave."

"Well done!" Murgatroyd was enchanted. "Well done! They are indeed both by the same master hand. Both by Brother Placidus. But that you should have detected as much at a mere glance—you are indeed a master craftsman, not merely the dilettante which in your modesty you claimed! Metal work was a genuine hobby with you evidently."

"Metal work, yuss." Tibbitts seemed to give a little start, and again he shot a rather timid glance at Mrs. Brownlow, who only turned and began to admire the flowers.

On the way out, Murgatroyd motioned them to follow him to a little room. He pointed to a painting in a corner representing a monk with a rugged, but intellectual head.

"That's Brother Placidus. Looks like a pilgrim with that staff in his hand, doesn't he? Well, he was one. We all are."

"Staff? That's a rabble, that is!" Tibbitts was staring intently into the dull, dim picture.

"And what, pray, is a rabble?" asked Mrs. Brownlow. Her voice was bored and indifferent.

"Why, what you rabbles with, silly!" was the unexpected reply. There followed a second of appalled silence. Then Mrs. Brownlow gave a forced laugh. There was nothing forced about Vivian's. She had to laugh or burst. The absolute stupefaction on Mrs. Brownlow's features was too marked and too sudden for her self-control. Even Mr. Murgatroyd was betrayed into one reluctant cackle.

"Really, Mr. Tibbitts," Mrs. Brownlow spoke with an effort at gaiety, "you are rather overwhelming as a tutor!"

Tibbitts turned scarlet.

"Sorry, Mrs. Brownlow, I spoke too quick," he mumbled; "I was thinking of that bloke there."

"You haven't told us yet what you rabble, and why you rabble," Vivian reminded him, with another burst of hilarity.

"A rabble is the long bar wot you rouses the boiling with," he said suddenly, and walked off whistling between his teeth. And with that, as far as Tibbitts was concerned, the interest of the morning seemed to be over. But on their saunter back to the villa, a saunter in which Mrs. Brownlow very quietly, but very firmly chose Mr. Murgatroyd as her companion, Tibbitts said suddenly to Vivian:—

"Brother Placidus, eh? That's the same as Placid I suppose?" Vivian said she supposed so too.

"Placidus"—Tibbitts swung his ornate cane to and fro—"'e worked like 'is name. Placid. Nothing hurried about his work. No need to." Again there was a silence, and then he said half to himself:—

"Must be wonderful to do work like that back there. Work you 'ave a right to be proud of. Work you'd never need to brag about. It speaks for itself, it does. I used to think when I was a nipper that I'd do something like that bloke's wrought iron work some day. You couldn't do nothink finer if you was to try all your life! Yuss, I used to think in those days that once you was grown-up—why, you could do as you liked. Work to please yourself—"

He stopped again. Something in his brown eyes reminded Vivian of a homeless mongrel staring in through a window.

"I believe," she said encouragingly, "that wealth is just as much of a handicap as is poverty."

Tibbitts nodded, but he said nothing more. Mr. Murgatroyd stopped them a second later to point out a Merovingian wooden house. Suddenly Mrs. Brownlow gave a startled little exclamation.

"Ah!" beamed Murgatroyd; "you've noticed that added arch? It is indeed a dissonance. That must have been done when—"

But Mrs. Brownlow had turned and was hurrying down into the rue de la Poste without one glance at the anachronism which Murgatroyd fondly thought had surprised and shocked an informed eye.

Miss Young, as they walked on up the road that climbed to the villa, saw her hasten on towards a tall figure that was sauntering along with a leisurely,

All that I see,

Belongs to me!

air as she called it. It was Anthony Cross. Vivian saw him stop at a word from Mrs. Brownlow and take off his hat. Mrs. Brownlow drew him to one side, and together he and she, after a few minutes animated conversation, walked back towards the center of the town.

Mr. Murgatroyd, since this was a matter unconnected with sticks and stones or past ages, had noticed nothing. He burbled on. Tibbitts melted away into a café. Vivian Young threw the historian a word now and then, but she was thinking hard.

Anthony and the problem from his past! Apparently he had just arrived. He was carrying a small bag. She had noticed that at Macon there was no word or sign of his valet. She would do nothing to deliberately put herself in his path, she had decided. That should be left to Fate. Besides, always at the back of her mind was the knowledge that Anthony really was engaged in a most important search, one which, though he had denied its presence here at Cluny, was not unconnected with danger.

She wondered whether he would learn that she was staying at the Villa Porte Bonheur. She wondered, whether, and if so, when and how they two would meet.

At dinner that night, Mrs. Brownlow spoke of Cross.

"I met an old friend of ours unexpectedly this morning, Tom," she murmured. "It's Anthony Cross. Fancy meeting him again and of all places here! I asked him to drop in for a chat after dinner."

"Anthony Cross?" Tom Brownlow repeated rather vacantly. "Oh, yes, of course! Coming in this evening, is he? Good!"

Surely this was overdoing it, Vivian thought. Surely a couple who had spent the whole afternoon together would have talked over a friend's arrival. Why then this public announcement and this apparent difficulty on the husband's part to "place" the friend?

"What brings Cross to Cluny?" Brownlow went on.

"The abbey remains. I suggested his asking you for a room, Monsieur Pichegru. Perhaps he will. If he stays on at all for any length of time. Apparently he has only made up his mind definitely to one night, and took a room at the hotel near the station. If you hadn't happened to be taking us on that historical tour of the town, Mr. Murgatroyd, he might have come and gone without either of us knowing of it. He was so surprised to see me walking towards him." This last to her husband, who nodded carelessly.

"Are you talking of the Sir Anthony Cross?" Smith asked with interest "One of the directors of the South African Diamond Combine?"

The Brownlows said that that was the man.

"He's on his way back to London on some matter connected with the syndicate, so he told me," the wife added.

Vivian saw Smith flash a quick, inquiring glance at his friend, Mr. Lascelles, who returned it blandly. Catching Vivian's gaze on them, both men dropped their eyes with a haste that looked positively guilty, and began to crumble their bread.

"Perhaps we can persuade him to let me put him up, though but for one night," suggested Monsieur Pichegru, and again a message of the eyes passed between Smith and his friend. "Any friend of yours, Brownlow, can always count on a room here. And a rest in this quiet spot might do such a busy man as Sir Anthony good."

"I am sorry to seem discourteous," Mr. Murgatroyd said in his clear voice; "but if Sir Anthony Cross were to become an inmate of Villa Porte Bonheur, I should be constrained to go to one of the hotels. Under ordinary circumstances that would be no matter, but half-way through my book it would entail, I confess, a certain amount of adjusting of impediments..."

"You know Anthony Cross?" Brownlow asked curiously.

"I have never met him," explained the professor; "but some years ago my brother was very anxious to establish a leper colony not far from one of the mines owned by his company. He had just been appointed a director, I remember, and it was owing to his active and passive resistance that all efforts fell through. I feel that the abandoning of a project of bringing help to a class of human beings who certainly needed it sorely was due entirely and solely to him. And feeling that, I very strongly object to meeting him. His standpoint was—"

Mr. Murgatroyd pulled himself up, but his eyes flashed. He looked very different from the placid scholar of the morning.

He shook his head at himself. "The French are right; to be angry and to make bad blood is one and the same thing. Sir Anthony must have brought down on himself enough ill will without my adding to it."

"It does not seem to have harmed him, so far," Mrs. Brownlow put in, with, for once, a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

"So far," Murgatroyd repeated. "Remember the words of the wise Solon: 'Account a prosperous man happy only when he ends his life as he began it.' Sir Anthony is still a comparatively young man, as age goes nowadays."

It seemed to Vivian that the rest of the dinner was unusually quiet.

Smith, his friend and Mr. Murgatroyd all seemed lost in thought. Only the Brownlows, Monsieur Pichegru and she kept up a desultory chat, with clumsy contributions from Tibbitts.

After dinner, Vivian took a walk by herself through the gardens. For the present she had decided to act exactly as though Anthony Cross were not in the town. She finally strolled back to the summer-house to which she had taken Mackay. It was the hour at which they had agreed to meet.

As she shut the door, some one rose in the dusk inside. It was the detective.

"Sure, it's verra kind of ye, Miss Young," he said, with evident pleasure. "Naething to report, I tak' it? I hope to find some clue when I tak' a luik at the hoose tomorrow nicht. The nicht o' the dance. For I shall come to it. I've met a mon who's a director of a great diamond combine for which I did a bit o' warrk a couple of years back. He's doon to tak' a luik at the ruins, and is putting up at the same hotel as I am.

"I've had a crack wi' him. I tellt him what brings me here—in strict confidence, o' course, and I spoke aboot the ball tomorrow. Balls are a bit oot o' ma line. But he thinks, like you, that I must na miss seeing the inside o' a' the rooms when the parties are engaged below. It seems he kens the leddy who lost her jewels—yon Mrs. Brownlow—and through her he'll meet Monsieur Pichegru, and will ask him for twa invitations for Saturday nicht. Ane for himself, though he doesna expect to be here to use it, and ane for a friend. That's me! Certes, I shall use mine."

"You mean Sir Anthony Cross? Mrs. Brownlow spoke at dinner of having met him in the town. If you've worked for Sir Anthony, perhaps he can put you in the way of some really good job." Vivian was thinking of the diamond thefts.

"A doot that," Mackay said with his self-deprecatory smile. "I'm no the class o' detective that Sir Anthony Cross wad employ. What I did for his combine was nobbut looking up some clerk's Edinburgh guarantor. And that class o' warrk is a' I'm guid for, I fear me. Ye see, detecting differs. I've always worked on business questions. Tracing checks, asking aboot characters, and the like. But private warrk—like Mr. Davidson's—it pays the best, o' coorse, but it's the sort I'm no cut oot for, and that's a fact. However, I shall just use ma een tomorrow nicht, and if I find naething after all, I'll awa' to Paris, and try to work at the bogle frae that end. For when a's said and dune, 'tis by the light o' reason alane problems are solved."

"Father solved his with his gun—alone," Vivian said dryly, and Mackay laughed. A laugh that suddenly spoke of youth and a sense of humor, however repressed.

"What are you coming to the dance as?" she asked next. "We ought to be able to recognize each other."

"I thocht o' a ghaist," he said tentatively. "I canna spend ony money on it. And for a ghaist a' I'd need wad be but a sheet and a pillow case—over and abune ma other claes," he added hastily. It was Vivian's turn to laugh. Suddenly an impish idea struck her. She would have dearly like to suggest that Mackay should go as "The Ghost of a Young Man Drowned in Shanghai," but she bit back the speech. After all, though the tale linking his death with Mr. Brownlow might be false enough, the young man had probably really died. And besides that, Vivian was no spreader of idle gossip.

"White's rather a poor color for snooping," she said instead.

"True." He thought a moment. "Forbye giving some servant lass the fright of her life. Hoo aboot a collector then? That micht do. Just ma Sunday blacks—ma frock-coats gey shiny at the seams, and I'll rip it a bit here and a bit there—and ma top-hat has seen better days—and wi' ma small black bag in ma hand, I'd do fine, and widna be seen a mile off. Aye. It'll be as a collector I'll come. A debt-collector, ye ken. And you, Miss Young?"

"I'm 'Lady-into-Fox.' Chiefly a woman, but turning back into the fox that I once was. With a fox's head on my hair. But about what brings you to Cluny—I came here simply bursting with something that happened this afternoon, and yet which seems too monstrous."

She stopped as though she really meant the adjective.

He looked hard at her. His bright, alert, gray eyes were trying to read what she had to tell him before she spoke. His resolute, freckled, rather plain face was alight with interest. Was he to hear something that would help him?

"If only you were hunting for Mrs. Brownlow's jewels instead of, or as well as, Mr. Davidson's money, it might help you tremendously," she said slowly; "though, as I say, I can't believe—no, I can't!" She stopped again.

"I cann't warrk but for Davidson the noo, but I'm as keen on knowing what happened to Mrs. Brownlow's jewels as she can be," he said eagerly. "The twa thefts were the warrk o' the ane thief. There's na doot aboot that. It's not entirely the money I'm working for, Miss Young," he added, as she still did not speak, "though I canna deny that a bit o' siller wad be useful. But it's the thocht o' mebbe beating a criminal at his ain game. I'd like fine to do that!"

She nodded. "Well, this afternoon, while I was practicing 'some serves, I happened to look towards the house just as a gust of wind blew back the curtains in one of the first floor rooms. You'd call it ground floor. And there stood Mr. Tibbitts by the window with a string of black pearls in his hands. He nearly dropped them, and looked ready to drop himself when the curtain billowed around him and he saw me on the grass.

"He sounded me when he came out as to whether I had noticed some beads he'd bought in the village as a present for his sister at home. Now, of course, that's quite possibly all the scene meant. But—it's funny! It sure is! He looked appalled when that curtain blew out like a sail and left the window free. Yet I can't think that Mr. Tibbitts is a thief! He is supposed to be a rich young man! But it was a string of black pearls that Mrs. Brownlow lost along with some sapphires, and those in Tibbitts's hand were just the length of hers—long enough to go around the neck—a choker string. And I never saw a lovelier sheen. They looked like black grapes. And Tibbitts was on the car the night they were stolen from Mrs. Brownlow—altogether—" she shook her head with its bright waves of light-brown hair—hair that matched her eyes in color.

"Which window was it?" Mackay asked at once.

"A long window in a room they call the cedar room. It's a sort of extra room. Hardly ever used."

"Not the room where the safe is?" Mackay asked. She shook her head.

"That's in Monsieur Pichegru's study. I know, because he wanted to lock away any jewelery or money of mine I might have with me. But about Mr. Tibbitts—" she looked inquiringly at Mackay, who only stood thoughtful and silent.

"Sakes alive, why don't you say something?" she said laughing.

"I'm thinking," he replied gravely.

"But I want to know what you think about what I've just told you—about Tibbitts—"

"It takes time to think," Mackay said judicially; "to think wi' any degree of usefulness, that is. But I'll admit that it's queer," he conceded with one of those boyish smiles that lit up his lean face.

"So are many little things about the house," she said in answer to that. "Tonight at dinner, for instance, when Sir Anthony's name came up. Mr. Smith and a friend of his, a Mr. Lascelles—the two you were watching when we met"—Vivian's eyes twinkled like brown diamonds at the recollection—"he's leaving tomorrow morning, by the way—looked so oddly at each other. A long, meaning look, especially when Monsieur Pichegru said he would put Sir Anthony up."

"Is he going to?" Mackay wanted to know.

"Mrs. Brownlow thought Sir Anthony wouldn't be staying long enough to make it worth his while changing over from the hotel. Besides dear old Mr. Murgatroyd got quite mad at the mere notion. I thought Mr. Smith, and Mr. Lascelles, too, both looked very disappointed. Certainly they were very silent for the rest of the meal. Say, Mr. Mackay, it all sounds so silly, gossiping like this. But I like talking to you. Partly because I sure am glad to have some one to speak to who reminds me of home. You look like the kind of men I'm used to. Though, heaven knows, they'd beat you when it comes to grabbing on to things! But also you never know what bit of idle chatter might not help a detective."

"Not this detective! Not me!" Mackay said gloomily. "I'm plum oot o' ma depth. But I'll dae ma best!" he finished sturdily.

She laughed. "My grandmother used to say:

"Do your best

And leave the rest,

Angels can't do better.

"But the trouble is it isna angels I'm up against," was his only comment on grandmamma's philosophy. "I've been trying to think things oot. But even if I had ma suspicions, hoo can I prove them?"

There was a short silence, then she told him of the morning at the abbey.

"Mr. Tibbitts was too funny. He grew just like a workman. Dropping his aitches and speaking like what we call a Bowery tough. And the way he turned on Mrs. Brownlow, when she was fed up with his talk about a rabble and asked him what it was. Asked him in the tone that says you don't care a cuss what it is—you know the tone." Vivian laughed again. "It sure was funny!"

"Do you think she likes Tibbitts?" Mackay wondered.

"She treats him very nicely. In a sort of elder-sister way that's quite charming. But, then, she is charming in everything she does."

"And her husband—Mr. Brownlow?"

"He speaks to him always in a very civil tone. More I can't say. Mrs. Brownlow told me that they met Tibbitts at Monte Carlo simply flinging his money away right and left. He was a mill hand. She thinks—she doesn't know—and his father emigrated and made a fortune suddenly and then died. She explained to me that they wanted Tibbitts to stay a while at the villa with them and learn to pick up a few things-"

"Such as Mr. Davidson's thousand pounds, and her jewelery?" asked Mackay grimly, and they both rocked in unseemly mirth.

"How mean we are to talk like this! Say, she fascinates me, Mr. Mackay. She's a wonderful woman."

"She's a face that doesna attract me," he said rather shortly.

"But she's so graceful!"

"Aye. She has a nice walk," he agreed. "I've heerd that Isadora Duncan walked that gait."

"I should like to know her better," Vivian went on, half to herself. "I'm sure she'd be interesting to know. Yet I can't think why I'm not sure."

She rose to go. But she had one question to put.

"Mr. Mackay why did you ask me where Monsieur Pichegru's safe is?"

"I've known of a missing paper once being a' the time in the man's own safe," he said darkly. "That's why, Miss Young."

Vivian thought this over on the way back to the house. And the more she thought it over, the less she understood exactly what the private detective meant. Did he know himself? But her thoughts now were really on Anthony Cross. Had he arrived? Would he and she meet? Tonight?

She heard her name called, and found Mr. Smith behind her on the path.

"I thought I heard voices in the summer-house. Have you left poor Tibbitts locked in?" he asked languidly.

"Oh, no," she spoke as casually as he. "I was talking to an acquaintance of mine who didn't know where Monsieur Pichegru's boundary runs. A man who's putting up at the Hotel de Bourgogne. By the way, he's an acquaintance of this Sir Anthony Cross's too."

"Why don't you bring him up to the house," Smith suggested in what sounded a sociable tone; "do you know if he's any good at squash racquets?"

"Let's ask him," she suggested.

They found the house, as she knew they would, empty. It had a window that looked on to the opposite side of the path, and she had talked to Smith as they walked towards it. Unless he wished to be found then, Mackay would be out over the sill and through the bushes, like a young salmon over a rapid; of that she was quite sure.

Smith murmured some vague word of regret about the squash racquets and strolled back, while Vivian took a turn through the orchard, enjoying the beauty around her.

Coming back to the villa once more, she saw ahead of her, in a corner of the thickly-wooded drive that made a little bay here, two people standing talking. One was Anthony Cross. He was speaking very earnestly to an over-dressed, over-painted woman. Or rather the woman was talking earnestly to Anthony Cross. She was a remarkably handsome woman too. Vivian thought that she must have been a singularly lovely girl. Standing still in the shadow of some trees she looked at them. By Anthony's expression she saw that he was trying to escape. But the woman would not let him go. There was something absolutely desperate in the very bend of her neck as she seemed to be pouring out a string of entreaties. Twice he tried to leave her, but she only stepped after him and continued to talk. Finally Anthony's face flushed at something said, and with a little twitch of his shoulders very familiar to Vivian—it had reminded her the first time she saw it of a Roman senator adjusting his toga—he almost pulled his arm from her hand and turned away. An exclamation from the woman stopped him. Even to Vivian's far-off ears it had had a tragic sound. He looked ashamed of himself, she thought, and turning, he stood patiently for another moment or two. But by the set of his jaw, when he replied, Vivian could guess that he was not giving way. Indeed it looked to her as though he were delivering some sort of an ultimatum, or even warning the woman not to continue her argument, her pleading, her—whatever it was. And when he had done speaking, he turned away in a manner that brooked no further stopping. Resolutely he walked towards the house, out of sight.

The woman stood where he had left her, in the middle now of the path. She stared after him. Her face was towards Vivian. It was pale, and there was a sort of desperate hatred in it, a sort of unable to believe that all was lost expression on it that kept Vivian rooted to the spot. She shivered. What could make a woman look like that at a man? Tragic and almost frightening in their wild fixity, there was a passion of hatred in her magnificent eyes that had to be seen to be believed.

"I wouldn't like any one to look after me like that!" thought Vivian. She wondered what it meant. She was far too experienced, knew too much of the world, to think the worst, as a nicely brought up young woman of the mid-Victorian period would have done. But still—it was an odd look...It did not admit of many interpretations...Vivian went on. The woman, hearing the steps on the gravel, turned, gave her one glance and then walked away swiftly towards the gate. Vivian was half-minded to catch her up and chance some excuse. After all, she was Anthony Cross's fiancée. Or was she? No, to be honest, she didn't care a rap how many old flames, or new ones either, Anthony had. She was quite sure that she never had cared, and never would care. And on that thought, she slowed up, turned and walked away. At the first possible moment she intended to take her freedom back.

That wild night on the ship, something big about the man had imposed itself on her and blinded her to many smaller facts—their different upbringing—their different walks in life. A girl, of course, can marry a man of quite another world, but she must want to become a member of that world. Vivian didn't. She was a born fighter. She loved a struggle. And there would be no fighting, no struggling, as Lady Cross. Anthony was not a self-made man. He had shown her some photographs of his family place that had much impressed her. It must be a dream of a house, of a park. But even at that moment of semi-awe, Vivian had known in her heart of hearts that it was no home for her. You couldn't add anything to Quarry Court. You could only keep it up. And keeping up what others had had the fun of making did not appeal to Miss Young.

Arrived at the villa, she went to her room. By the reflection on some ilex bushes below her window, she could see that the lights were on in the cedar room—the room where she had seen Tibbitts standing with the beads—or could it possibly be the pearls—in his hand.

Leaning out, she could even catch a voice, Anthony's voice, speaking quietly as ever. In fact, speaking a good deal more quietly than usual, she thought. Then came a laugh. Mrs. Brownlow's throaty gurgle. And another! Her husband's this time. Anthony did not seem to join in, and he had a very hearty guffaw when he was amused. Next she heard his low tones making what seemed quite a long speech. Evidently the Brownlows had carried their friend off from the drawing-room to this quieter spot. There was only one other room in the wing. A sudden wonder struck her as to whether the Brownlows already knew of Anthony Cross's engagement to her. It would hardly be possible for him to be talking so long without telling old friends of the most important step that can befall man or woman. If so, would he learn of her arrival here? Here in the villa? Would he think it a coincidence if he did? He might. But she knew the quickness of his perception, of his reasoning. He was not a man whom you could easily hoodwink. He had an uncanny—at least she thought it uncanny—way of putting just the one question that you did not want him to put, the one and only query whose answer would inevitably give him the kernel of the matter. She decided that if Anthony heard of her arrival, it would be no use pretending that it was not linked with the sight of that photograph, with her overhearing his question about a man called Brownlow.

And on that came the thought to go downstairs now, it was only a little past nine, and leave it to him to meet her as a stranger, or present her as his fiancée. Which would he do? What a delightful, awkward position for him. Vivian was a bit of a minx. The idea appealed to her immensely. She was down the stairs within the minute. She was almost at the door of the cedar room when came the reflection—was it fair to Anthony, supposing the very unlikely case that he did not know of her presence in the house at all; would it be fair to him to spring a meeting on him in circumstances of which he had had no idea when he had asked her to meet him as a stranger? That halted her. Then came the thought that, apart from fairness or not to Anthony, she was sure that he could be very stubborn. In which case the jest might be a rather awkward one in the end. Suppose he let himself be introduced to her as to a stranger, and suppose her vague feeling of thin ice, of undertows, was all wrong, and these people at the villa were all that they seemed, how could she ever explain away the facts when they learned them? And since the Brownlows were "all right" and friends of Anthony's, they were sure to learn of them, unless—

Could she save his pride if not his heart? Could she perhaps prevent him telling others of that engagement which she firmly intended to break. She decided to step into a room near the one from where the voices came—it was fitted up rather in an hotel fashion with several little writing-tables—and wait there for his departure, which could not now be long delayed. She would slip out through one of the long windows when he should pass the door and meet him outside the villa gate. She would be frank with him, she would tell him that she had acted on impulse when she had accepted him. That his personal magnetism had swept her judgment off its usually firm set. As to more sordid motives, Vivian refused to acknowledge them, even to herself. They were not really part of her. In that she was right. She was no parasite.

Vivian settled herself in an arm-chair. She did not switch up the light which was back by the door.

It was some minutes before a sound roused her from her thoughts. It was the faint fall of footsteps outside, or rather beside, the room. They died away. Then they came again. Again they died away. Some one was lightly, all but noiselessly, walking up and down a carpeted side-passage which ran between the room where she sat waiting and the room where Sir Anthony sat talking, presumably alone with the Brownlows.

Vivian waited until the steps passed once more, then she noiselessly opened her door and looked out. To her surprise the passage, too, showed no light. Whoever was there was in the darkness. And must have switched off the row of lights that had been shining like pink pearls a minute ago.

She hesitated. For after all, she, too, was waiting in the dark. That other person out there might be equally justified in hoping for a word with Anthony Cross. And for an equally good reason prefer, too, not to be seen waiting.

On that, however, came a sudden realization that Anthony Cross claimed to be in Cluny on a mission both secret and important. A mission connected with a theft that ran into many figures. He had laughed at the idea of danger, but the danger might be here just the same.

She knew now that she was not in the least in love with him, but she would always be his friend. Was that figure, doing so soft a sentry-go outside the cedar room, a friend?

She was just on the point of slipping out and switching up the lights, when the door of the cedar room itself opened and shut swiftly, as some one—a man—stepped out. She heard a "Sorry! I had no idea there was any one here!" in Brownlow's voice. He had evidently collided with some unseen person.

She heard an answering, "I can't find the switches. I want the room where Monsieur Pichegru told me that I should find plenty of writing paper."

It was Mr. Lascelles! Quiet Mr. Lascelles, then, who had been taking that promenade up and down the dark passage. Vivian was surprised. The next instant she jumped to her feet. For Brownlow, still speaking very pleasantly, said:

"Oh, that's the other side of us. This way—"

They were coming in here, and she, Vivian, would be found sitting in the dark and apparently waiting—for whom? For what? It was an impossibly ridiculous situation since she could give no explanation. There was no time to switch up the light, as the men had already turned the corner and would see the streak under the door and hear the click.

Intensely vexed at the whole affair, she stepped behind the long curtains over the windows. The glass doors themselves had patent fasteners, which were too noisy to dare to open—for the moment—or she would have slipped out now, at once, into the garden. She was delighted when she heard Lascelles say rather nervously:

"Oh, thanks! Thanks so much. I only—eh—wanted some paper to take to my room with me. This will do nicely. Thanks."

"Sure there's nothing else?" Brownlow asked. And was it Vivian's fancy or was there something mocking in the question so solicitously put. "Nothing, thanks," was the reply, and a minute later she heard the two men pass on together down the passage to the main hall.

She waited where she was. One of them might come back, and the villa's carpets were frightfully thick. A moment later she heard some one actually in the room. Some one who now closed the door. Vivian had noticed that her curtains by no means covered the whole of the window recess. She had not dared to touch them for fear of a fold continuing to quiver. Now peeping out, she saw that it was Mr. Brownlow who was back again in the room. But a Brownlow quite incredibly changed. Hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, his heard thrust forward, he stood staring at a table beside him with unseeing eyes. And as he stared, his face grew more and more malignant.

The forehead, never lofty, seemed to flatten as she watched. The little eyes to move closer together. His jaw thrust forward till the yellow lower teeth jutted out a good eighth of an inch beyond the upper ones. It gave him a horrible resemblance to a wolf. Vivian had seen many seamy sides of life in her newspaper work, but she had never looked into a more criminal face than this man's was—now—seen like this, off his guard.

The story her friend Edith Montdore had told her in the train came back to her. For the first time she thought that the gossip linking the husband with the lover's disappearance might well be true. She could easily imagine this man in front of her, this hitherto unseen, unguessed-at man, jumping on another in the dark, holding his head down under water until the heaving and the struggles should cease...She kept very, very still. Vivian was frightened.

For a full minute she had the benefit of Brownlow's horrid and ferocious look, then, with a sudden gesture as though he had made up his mind, he opened the door again, stood a second, apparently listening, switched off the light, and passed noiselessly out of sight.

She was after him in a flash. That was no face to let roam a house where a man on a dangerous mission might be sitting all unsuspecting.

She flattened herself against the wall, even though he switched out each light as he came to it, so that the corridor leading to the cedar room was quite dark, as dark as the one which Mr. Lascelles had been patrolling. Had he gone back to his post? she wondered. Apparently this idea struck Brownlow, too, for at the corner he turned and gave the side-passage a long scrutiny. From the sound of his steps, she thought that he even tried a door at the farther end which led into the garden. Then he came back, and again he switched off each light. All was in darkness now, except that some leaded panes at the other end shed a sort of blurred luminosity all along the corridor.

By it Vivian saw Brownlow tiptoe to the door of the cedar room, and bending down, press his ear to the keyhole.

In the stillness she heard Anthony's voice talking, apparently pleasantly, and a moment later came another peal of laugher from Mrs. Brownlow. Vivian had never heard her laugh much before. Then came a sentence or two in her voice, but said with great animation.

Evidently it was not sober business that was going on behind that door. The man outside it stayed as he was for several minutes, then he straightened up, and, as Vivian backed into the room where she had been, he passed her walking swiftly on into the main part of the house. She followed cautiously until she saw him enter the billiard-room with some word that she did not catch, in a pleasant, ordinary voice.

She moved away, took up a book, and sat down in a corner of the lounge close to the room where she now heard the click of balls.

She had plenty to think of. First of all, she considered Mr. Lascelles's silent pacing of that dark passage. Mr. Lascelles—was he here by some arrangement with Anthony? Was he the man whom Anthony expected to meet? That might be possible. And that long, quiet interchange of glances between himself and Smith at dinner, when Anthony's name had first come up, could her idea explain that too? It must, if it were the right one. She saw the look again. Not stealthy exactly, yet not open. But then came the thought that Anthony's mission, or quest, was he here by some arrangement with Anthony? Was he the cause of it? Of course, that might include Mr. Lascelles. But it obviously did not include Smith. For Mr. Smith had not been acting, she felt sure, when he had inquired whether Mrs. Brownlow's chance-met friend were the Anthony Cross. But Mr. Lascelles might have had something he wanted to ask of Anthony—some favor. That might explain his acts tonight, and that look between the two friends...

Her thoughts passed on to Brownlow. The man was madly jealous. Of that she felt certain. Most dangerously jealous, too. That sent her mind racing back to the photograph of Mrs. Brownlow, to the "problem" in Anthony Cross's past, to the vamp of Mrs. Montdore. The last term she thought, but the fears of a wife with a slightly uncertain husband. But the photograph, Anthony, and that awful look on the husband's face...

She made up her mind to see Anthony as early as possible tomorrow morning and warn him of what she had seen. It was too late tonight for the talk that she had hoped to have with him outside. And in the villa, he would be accompanied to the door for certain by some member of the household.

She told herself that she ought to leave Porte Bonheur if there was any idea of resurrecting Anthony's past. But she found herself very reluctant to cut herself off from any chance of knowing what happened after she left. The clicking of balls beside her stopped.

"By Jove," came in Brownlow's voice; "my wife and Anthony Cross seem to have a lot to say to each other." How jocosely he said it, and now, as he stepped out of the room, how pleasantly he smiled at her as he passed her chair.

After a moment Smith came out too, and, also after a moment, went on down the same way.

Vivian closed her book and decided that it was her turn to get some note-paper from the writing-room.

Neither man was to be seen. But she heard Brownlow's voice. Evidently he had joined his wife. She looked at her watch. The talk in the cedar room was certainly a long one. Yet, as a rule, Anthony was a man of few words. She went to her room. It was not till nearly one o'clock that the light ceased to shine on the bushes in front of the cedar room, and only then did Vivian, fearing she did not know what, leave her window, and go to bed.