Читать книгу His Prey Was Man - Arthur Gask - Страница 3

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THE lovely young Mrs. Hilary—she was well worthy of her beautiful Christian names, Jean Madeline—was not exactly an old man's darling, as her husband, Colonel Basil Hilary, was well on the right side of fifty. He was, however, five and twenty years older than she, and when, in her twenty-second year and within twelve months of their marriage, she presented him with a son and heir, he declared himself to be one of the happiest men alive. Certainly he ought to have been a contented one, for, apart from his beautiful young wife and baby, he was in perfect health, of ample means, and the proud possessor of many hundreds of acres of good and fertile land in the county of Norfolk.

One glorious morning in early spring, Jean had gone to look for primroses in one of the woods belonging to the estate, when suddenly a man came out from behind a tree and placed himself in front of her on the narrow path. He touched his cap and remarked briskly, "Good morning, Mistress. It's a nice day for a bit of a walk."

Of big frame and fine physique, the man was about forty years of age and, with his neatly trimmed beard, was good-looking in a rough sort of way. His eyes, however, were set too close together and his lips were over-full and sensual. He had large hairy hands, the backs of which were tatooed heavily after the fashion of a man who had once followed the sea. He wore a shabby leather jacket and breeches and leggings, and carried a double-barrelled gun upon his shoulder.

Astonished at his sudden appearance, Jean recognised him instantly as her husband's new game-keeper. He had arrived about three weeks previously, but, as it happened, although she had seen him several times at a distance, she had not as yet spoken to him. Now, she returned his good-morning with a slightly heightened colour, not altogether liking his manner, thinking it both bold and familiar.

"I've been on the look-out to catch you for some days," he went on jauntily, "but I've had no luck." He screwed his face up into a sly smile. "We've met before, haven't we?"

Jean's breath came a little quicker. "What do you mean?" she asked sharply. "I don't understand you. What do you want?"

"What I mean is," he replied, and she thought his smile a horrible one, "that we are old acquaintances, and what I want I'll come to later on." He nodded slowly and impressively. "I remember you, young lady, two years ago at Sutton Coldfield, two years ago this June."

The effect of his words was startling. Jean's face went white as death, her lips parted, and she stared at him with terrified eyes. Her knees trembled under her.

He laughed lightly at her discomfiture. "Yes, I was the gardener and handy-man at Sister Rowe's private hospital when you came there to have your baby. You've often seen me about in the garden when you were lying out on the verandah as you were getting better."

Jean was motionless as a graven image. It seemed she hardly breathed. Her lips were still parted and she was staring as if she saw a ghost.

The gamekeeper shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, I looked a bit different then, as I hadn't got this beard." His horrible smile returned. "But it's me, right enough. Then, Sister Rose's gardener and now"—he bowed ironically—"now your good hubby's gamekeeper."

She found her voice at last, and though she could not prevent it trembling, spoke sharply and as if in annoyance only. "You are quite mistaken," she said. "I've never been in Sutton Coldfield in my life. You are mixing me up with someone else." She made a movement with her arm for him to get off the path. "Let me pass, please."

But the man made no attempt to move. His face darkened and his voice rose harshly. "Now don't you be a fool, Missy," he snarled. "Make yourself safe when you've got the chance and no one need know anything about it. I'm not the one to talk if it pays me not to." He spoke scoffingly. "You were that young Mrs. James there, right enough, and it can easily be proved if anyone wants to. Everyone in the hospital was specially interested in you because we all thought there must be something fishy, as you never had a visitor or received a single letter the whole time you were there." He seemed very amused. "Not that Mrs. James, eh? Why you made sketches of all the nurses in the hospital and gave them to them to keep, and here"—he laughed derisively—"your hobby is sketching and painting. The servants say you're always making portraits of someone."

Jean was obviously now in great distress, but for all that her courage was not broken. "I shall speak to Colonel Hilary about you," she panted, "and you'll be sent away at once."

Still smiling, the gamekeeper shook his head knowingly. "I guess, my dear, you won't be telling the master anything about me. You won't dare to, for I'm thinking he knows nothing about that pretty Mrs. James whose husband was abroad when her baby died." He lowered his voice impressively. "Look here, I'm not quite a fool and I've made a few enquiries about the Colonel and you. He'd never met you until about eighteen months ago when he came home from India, and he'd been there ten years. Then you were Miss Castle, no Mrs. about you, and your father was a parson in Devonshire. But you weren't living in Devonshire. No, you were in London, learning painting"—he laughed—"and, it seems, other things as well."

She spoke hoarsely. "But what are you telling me all this for?" she asked. "What do you want?"

He dropped his mocking tone at once. "Ah, that's the way to look at it, just as a little matter of business between you and me, and nothing said to anybody." He smiled with an appearance of great geniality. "I'm not a mischief-maker. Not I, I'm a good sport and don't see any harm in a girl having had a bit of fun before she's married, if she doesn't tell anyone about it afterwards." He eyed her leeringly. "Gee, you're pretty enough to make any man want to fall for you."

She winced under his glance and, keeping herself from tears with an effort, stamped her foot angrily. "But what do you want?" she demanded again. "Tell me straight out."

"Five pounds down and a couple of pounds every now and then," replied the gamekeeper promptly. "Push them under the boards of the swan's house by the lake. Push them down in the corner, and the fiver there this afternoon. It'll come in handy for I want to get some things in North Walsham to-night."

Her eyes were hard as flint. "Very well, then," she said curtly, "I'll think it over," and, with him at last moving off the path, she made to get away as quickly as she could.

"Good-bye, Missy," he called out grinningly, and then, as if stung to anger by her taking not the slightest notice, he added truculently, "Yes, my lady, and you come here for a walk about this time once or twice a week, so that I can tell you if I want anything more. Now don't you stop away or I shall have to hang round the Hall to get a word with you. See?"

She made no sign, however, that she had heard him and he watched her frowningly until a turn in the path took her out of sight.

"Damn her," he swore. "She's got a temper and if I push her too much she may do anything. Yes, I must be careful." He moistened his lips with his tongue and smiled. "Yes, she's pretty enough for anybody, and I wouldn't mind myself, if I——" but his voice trailed away to silence with more moistening of his lips.

As long as she knew he would be able to see her, Jean walked with determined stride and with her head held high, and there was nothing in her poise to betray the dreadful anguish which was possessing her. The moment, however, she knew the trees would be hiding her from him, after one quick glance behind to make sure she had not been followed, she sank down on to the ground and, covering her face with her hands, burst into a flood of passionate tears.

God, what a terrible position she was in! Her secret, which she has so confidently believed had been buried for ever, was known to a common and unscrupulous man, and she was completely in his power! He could wreck her life if he told it, and if he kept silent it would only be at the price of continual, and probably never-ending, blackmail. Either alternative meant the end of all happiness for her. Oh! what had she done to deserve such punishment?

Her mind travelled back like lightning along the years. She thought of her happy girlhood in the old Rectory in Devonshire, her studying Art in London and her going to France for a brief holiday, her meeting there with Paul, the handsome mysterious Paul, and their whirlwind courtship and hasty marriage after only a few days. Then had come the suddenly interrupted honeymoon, and the dreadful disclosures about her husband which had been avalanched upon her. His awful death had followed and, after that, so soon the chilling fear had begun to loom up through her grief that she was going to become a mother.

At first the appalling horror of this realisation had almost made her take her own life, but she had fought against it and in the end pulled herself resolutely together to face the future bravely, whatever happened. After all, she had told herself, Paul had loved her and, whatever he had been, she had loved him in return. So the child would be the token of their mutual passion.

And how cleverly she had managed to keep everything from her relatives and friends! Happily, she had not written of her engagement or marriage to any of them and they had not even been aware of Paul's existence. So, keeping her secret from them all, after his death she had gone up to Sutton Coldfield and lived in lodgings as a married woman whose husband was abroad.

Later, only the matron of the private hospital where she had gone to have her baby and to the doctor who had attended her had she told who she really was, and they both had been kindness itself to her, even to standing as godparents when the child had been christened. Then, the very day when she was to have left the hospital, the child had died suddenly of convulsions, and her grief had been in no wise lessened by the knowledge that now her secret marriage to Paul and its consequences might never become known.

Returning to London and picking up the threads of her work again, less than a year later Colonel Hilary, a childless widower, had come into her life and started to pay great attention to her.

At first she had taken little interest in him and certainly not encouraged him in any way but, warm and affectionate by nature, she had gradually begun to realise it was unnatural for a girl of her age to be condemning herself henceforth to live a loveless life. Besides, and she did not hypocritically hide from herself the fact, a marriage to him would be a splendid thing for her both socially and from a monetary point of view too. He came of an aristocratic family, and was very well-to-do, with an historic old home in Norfolk.

In the end she had let him pay his court to her and, becoming genuinely fond of him, the marriage had duly taken place. Then with the arrival of their child, her happiness had seemed almost complete, her only sorrow being that she had come to her husband in deceit, and in deceit she had continued on in her married life.

So many times she had been on the point of telling him everything, feeling sure he would forgive her. The realisation, however, of what a terrible shock it would have been to him had kept her silent. He was so proud of the reputation of his family and how for generation upon generation the breath of scandal had never been associated with the Hilary name.

All these thoughts surged through her as she sat crying in the wood, and her misery was the more bitter in the knowledge that, confessing everything to him now, he would know she was only doing it because she had been found out and was being threatened by one of his servants.

Her thoughts ran on. And, all apart from the shame of any confession, the aftermath of her telling him would be so terrible. Of course the gamekeeper would be dismissed instantly, for her husband was not the kind of man to make any terms with a blackmailer. Then the wretch would spread the dreadful scandal all round the countryside that she had once been an unmarried mother. It would be a wicked lie, but nothing would stop his talking and the gossip would spread from servant to servant, until at last it reached the ears of her friends. She shuddered to think how wounded her husband's great pride would be when he knew the tale was going round that his wife had had a child before she married him.

Then the thought came to her that perhaps things might not turn out to be as bad as she was anticipating. Perhaps, she need not have to say anything, after all. The gamekeeper might prove quite reasonable and be content with a few pounds every now and then! Contrary to what he had ordered her—she shuddered here again at the thought of being 'ordered' by one of her husband's servants—she would take care never to meet him. She would keep right away from the woods and never give him the chance of speaking to her alone. All the time, however, she would never let more than a week or so pass without putting a pound note or two under the boards of the swans' house. In acting in that way she would be making it quite clear to him that, while she was willing to give him a little money now and then, she was not afraid of him and did not intend to be bullied in any way.

She sighed heavily. Well, that was all she could do for the moment. At any fate she must not make the man her enemy and then, of course, he would realise it would pay him best to leave her alone.

So she returned to the house determined to make the best of things, and that afternoon, having hidden a five-pound note in the place arranged, tried to delude herself into the belief that as long as she was willing to pay small sums of money to her blackmailer she had the whip-hand over him.

That evening at dinner it came to her with a dreadful pang that she had never really been grateful enough for the peace and happiness which had been hers up to a few short hours ago. Her surroundings had been all of the fulfilment of life's promise in its most generous form.

Surely she had had everything which a woman could wish for, a husband who worshipped her, the loveliest baby in all the world, and a most beautiful home! Now—and with the greatest difficulty she kept the misery from her face—all her happiness depended upon the will of a coarse, rough man. He would ruin her whole life, just by the uttering of a few words. Henceforth she would be living as a haunted woman.

The next day, however, everything seemed to go on just as usual, and she tried to put out of her mind that she had ever met the gamekeeper in the wood. Thank Heaven his cottage was a mile and more away from the Hall, and there were parts of the estate where she could take her daily walks and be certain of not meeting him!

A week passed and she saw nothing of the man. She put two more pound notes in the swans' house, slipping out at night so that she would be certain not to meet him. Then, on the tenth day she saw him passing the dining-room windows on his way towards the servants' part of the house. He stared in hard as he went by, then, two days later she saw him again. She was out in the grounds with her husband this time but, when he came up to speak to the Colonel, she walked on, leaving the two to have their conversation together. She did not so much as glance at the gamekeeper. She learnt afterwards that his excuse for being there was that he had run out of cartridges, and had come up for some more.

Her husband overtook her in a few minutes and, with a quickly beating heart, she noticed he was frowning. "I like that new man, Vance," he said, "and yet, at the same time, I don't. He seems capable and to know his work, but he's inclined to be familiar, and I thought he stared rather impudently at you."

Jean pretended to yawn as if she were not in the least bit interested. "I didn't notice it," she said. "I suppose it's only his manner."

The next night she took two more notes to the hiding place and, as she flashed her little electric torch to put them under the board, her eyes fell upon a large piece of paper upon which was scrawled in rough handwriting, "I want to speak to you, to-morrow at eleven."

She caught her breath in her dismay and her heart beat like a sledge-hammer. So, he wasn't going to leave her alone! He was going to worry her! He would make her desperate! She clenched her teeth together. But she wouldn't go. She would defy him, and she ran quickly back to the house in case by any chance he should, even then, be on the look-out for her.

Firm in her resolve, she did not go near the wood the next day, wondering and very frightened, however, what the gamekeeper would do. Two days went by, and upon the third she saw her husband off in his car to attend the usual weekly Justices' Meeting at North Walsham. Then, not ten minutes later, she realised the gamekeeper must have been watching, for the butler came to find her and announced that Vance was outside and would like to speak to her.

She choked back her consternation. "The game-keeper!" she exclaimed. "What does he want to speak to me for?"

"About a young squirrel he's caught, mum," replied the butler. "I thinks he wants to know if you'd like to have it as a pet."

For the moment she was minded to send out a message, but then, thinking it was best the man should see she was not afraid of him, she thought better of it. She would face him and face him down.

"Very well," she said, "tell him to wait. Say I'll be out in a minute."

But it was much longer than a minute before she appeared upon the gravelled drive where the game-keeper was waiting; indeed it was nearly ten, and then she regarded him coldly and without the slightest trace of fear. He touched his cap with a grin, the expression upon his face being anything but a respectful one.

"Why didn't you come as I told you to?" he asked in a hoarse, intense whisper.

She ignored his question. "What do you want now?" she asked.

"Two pounds is not enough," he snarled. "I want ten."

"Then you won't get them," she snapped. "I'll leave you three next week, but not a penny more before Monday."

"Then you know what'll happen," he retorted angrily. "I shall tell the master."

"You fool!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "You'll lose every penny and your place as well if you drive me into a corner. If you worry me any more I shall tell the Colonel everything," and without another word she turned on her heel and went back into the house.

Then followed a dreadful time for Jean Hilary. The gamekeeper was continually demanding extra money and, notwithstanding all her attempts at remaining firm, she began to yield the more and more to him. There was no help for it as, if she did not give him the amounts he asked, he took to hanging round the house upon one excuse and another, and she was terrified her husband would fall out with him.

There was added danger in his not being always perfectly sober, and she knew that if the Colonel happened to meet him when in that condition he would dismiss him at once, for the one thing he would not tolerate in his employees was drunkenness.

Her terrible anxiety began to affect her health, and her husband became really anxious about her, his care and solicitude, however, only making her worry worse.

Then one late afternoon things came to a climax. Returning alone in her car along the main road from North Walsham where she had been doing some shopping, the gamekeeper suddenly darted out from behind some trees and, planting himself right in front of her, forced her to stop barely a hundred yards away from the lodge gates.

"No, it's no good you trying to avoid me," he cried angrily, "for I'll get at you in one way or another, whatever I have to do. Now, look here, I'm going to talk to you and I'll tell you straight what I want. Give me £500 and I'll clear off and you won't see me again. I want to join in with a man who's training some horses. No nonsense, I want that £500 and I mean to have it."

She was about to lash out at him in fury for stopping her in the open road, but realised in time that he had been drinking and was in a condition when he might do anything. So she said sharply, "I'll think it over. I can't decide all at once. It's a big sum you're asking."

"A big sum," he exclaimed. "Why, it'd be nothing to the boss and you just cook up some lie to get it from him." He spoke jeeringly. "Women can always tell lies and——"

"But we can't talk here," she interrupted, fearful that his loud voice might be heard at the lodge and the keeper there come out to see what was happening. "I'll meet you one day by the lake."

"No, not by the lake," he ordered loudly, "you come to my cottage to-morrow and then no one will see us talking." He looked at her slyly. "I won't bite you. You needn't be afraid. Come round at five o'clock."

"All right," she panted, "but let me go now," and, reluctantly, he moved away from the car and allowed her to pass.

"God!" she murmured brokenly as she drove into the grounds. "I'll have to tell Basil now." Then she remembered they were going to some friends that evening and added with a choke, "No, I won't tell him to-night. He shall be happy for a few more hours. I'll tell him to-morrow." She could hardly keep back her tears. "It'll be the end of all our happiness then, and our lives will never be the same again."

That evening she dressed herself most carefully to look her very best, and there was no trace of her inward misery as she presented herself to her husband for inspection just before their car was brought round. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were flushed and she carried herself, not with the poise of a condemned woman, but with that of a queen moving among her subjects.

"How lovely you are, darling," said the Colonel as he kissed her fondly. "I've never seen you more beautiful than you are to-night." He sighed happily. "I am a fortunate man."

It was a dinner party they were going to, to be followed by a small informal dance. Arriving at their friend's house, the hostess drew Jean to one side.

"I'm going to introduce you to such an interesting man, to-night, dear," she said. "Mr. Gilbert Larose. You know he used to be one of the star detectives of Scotland Yard until he married that rich widow, Lady Ardane, and gave up all his work. I've arranged that he shall take you into dinner and you will be amazed what a charming man an ex-detective can be." She laughed slyly. "I expect he'll be your slave after about ten minutes, as he is very susceptible where pretty girls are concerned."

Jean laughed back. "I've heard of him," she said. "My husband was talking about him the other day. He said he was a very unusual sort of detective and often a worry to the Chiefs of Police he served under, as he wanted to do things in his own way."

Her friend nodded. "Yes, that's Larose all over. He has a perfect passion for justice and they do say"—she lowered her voice darkly—"that if criminals couldn't be punished lawfully, he used to take vengeance upon them in other ways." She nodded again. "At any rate I'm sure you'll like him."

And certainly Jean did like the kind-looking man with the smiling eyes who took her into dinner. With all his gentleness, however, he gave her the impression of being of strong character and, mindful of her own misery, she sighed at the thought of what a tower of strength he would be to a friend in any time of trouble.

He, on his side, seemed to be greatly taken with her, and when they adjourned to the ball-room he had put himself down for two dances. But when he came to claim her for them, she suddenly felt a wave of faintness coming over her, and asked him to take her outside.

So they seated themselves on a broad bench in the shadow of a thick privet hedge on the other side of the lawn in front of the house. The star-lit night was calm and warm, and the air was heavy with the scent of early summer. The peace and beauty of everything, in contrast to the dreadful misery and turmoil in her heart, affected Jean strongly and, before she knew what she was doing, her eyes welled over with tears and she gave a big sob.

Larose was all sympathy at once. "Would you like to go inside and lie down?" he asked, "or shall I get you some brandy?"

"No, no, I shall be all right in a minute," she protested. Her voice shook. "It's only that I'm very worried about something to-night."

"What is it?" asked Larose gently. "If you tell me, I may be able to help you." He laughed lightly. "You see I've helped quite a lot of people in my time. I was a policeman once."

"I know that," she whispered, "but—but my trouble is a private one."

"Then make it public to me," laughed Larose. "I'm quite a wise old bird in my way, and I keep every secret I'm told."

For a few moments she hesitated and then she panted. "Oh, Mr. Larose, I'm in such trouble. I'm being blackmailed by a man in my husband's employ. I've been paying him money for weeks and weeks, but now he wants more than I can get and if I don't give it to him he says he's going to tell my husband a secret about me."

Larose spoke in ordinary, most matter-of-fact tones as if what she had just told him were nothing at all out of the way. "Ah," he exclaimed, "I thought during dinner to-night that you were worried about something. You were trying to forget it, but every now and then it came back to you and you looked very unhappy. Blackmail is it?" He nodded reassuringly. "Well, that'll be easily dealt with now you've confided in a third party. It's when two people only, the blackmailer and the blackmailed, are aware what's going on that it is so dreadful. Tell me all about it. You trust me and I'll put it right for you." He laughed lightly again. "I'm very good at handling blackmailers."

Again for a few moments she hesitated and then, with a rush, out came all the pent-up emotions of the lonely and miserable weeks.

"Oh, Mr. Larose," she wailed, "the dreadful thing is that when I married Colonel Hilary last year I did not tell him I was a widow and had had a baby. It was wicked of me to keep it from him and now I am being punished for it."

Larose opened his eyes very wide. "But why did you hide it?" he asked. "Why didn't you tell him?"

Jean swallowed hard. "Because——" she began. She stopped for a few moments and then burst out chokingly, "—because the man I married before had been hanged!" Her voice was almost inaudible. "He was Paul Wensworthy, the bank robber!"

"Good God!" exclaimed Larose, and he was so horrified at the revelation that he felt half choking himself.

Who had not heard of Wensworthy, the wretch who murdered as well as robbed? The life-story of that good-looking but execrated malefactor was written deep in the annals of crime. For a long time, up to two years before, the police had been baffled by an unknown miscreant who had made a speciality of attacking small branch offices of country banks. Operating in places as wide apart as Cumberland and Devonshire, he had struck terror into the hearts of bank officers whose work lay in lonely districts. Never hesitating to fire murderously if he met with the slightest opposition, seven times in succession, at the cost of two lives, he had got away with his plunder. No one had ever seen his face or had any idea what he was like for, working single-handed, he had always slipped on a mask as he had entered the banks.

Then upon his eighth attempt his good fortune had deserted him, for, having mortally wounded the bank officer in charge, the alarm had been given, he had been laid hold of and his mask torn off. Only after a desperate struggle, had he managed to escape by the very skin of his teeth.

His face, however, had been seen by a number of people and a few weeks later, being recognised when in a town in quite another part of the country, he had been seized before he could put up any resistance, and handed over to the police.

The case against him had been quite clear and his trial, his condemnation and the carrying out of the sentence had constituted almost a record for speed, as in eight weeks exactly from the day the authorities had laid hands upon him, he was hanged.

"And we had only been married a week when he was arrested," went on Jean tearfully, "the very day we had come back from our honeymoon in Paris. I never saw him again, for he wouldn't see me. He sent a message, through his lawyer, imploring me not to come near him, so that it might never come out I had been married to him."

"You were actually married?" asked Larose sharply.

"Oh, yes, in an English church in Paris," replied Jean. She sighed deeply. "I had known him only such a little time."

"And who has found out all this and is now blackmailing you?" asked Larose.

"Our gamekeeper," said Jean, "but he's got it all wrong. He only knows that two years ago, as a Mrs. Best, I was in a private hospital in Sutton Coldfield to have my baby. He thinks I was an unmarried girl," and then she told him the whole story of the gamekeeper's persecution up to his stopping her in the road that afternoon and ordering her to come to his cottage the next day at five o'clock. "Oh, how I'm being punished!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have told my husband everything before I said I would be his wife. It was very wicked of me not to do so."

"I wouldn't say it was wicked," said Larose, "but it was foolish and wrong. If you had been an unmarried girl and had had a baby it would have been your own secret to tell or keep, but as you had been legally married it was quite a different thing. Once you had brought the law into your affairs, the law took charge of you and it now means that you have been married to Colonel Hilary under a false name. That doesn't affect the validity of the marriage in any way, but if it becomes known you will probably be prosecuted, and public disgrace will fall upon your husband."

"I've thought of that," said Jean tremblingly, "and I'm sure the shame of it will kill him." She caught her breath. "And he's so happy now."

"Of course he is," agreed Larose. He nodded kindly. "I take you to be not only a charming woman, but a very good one as well." He spoke briskly. "Well, now we must think what we can do to silence this blackmailer."

"I shall tell my husband," said Jean with a sob. "I shall have to. I won't do it to-night, but I will the first thing to-morrow morning when he wakes up. Then——"

"No, no, don't do anything precipitate," broke in Larose. "You've kept it from him for so long that a few days more won't make any difference. Wait and see what I can do, first. Now you tell me about this blackmailer. Describe to me exactly what he's like."

Jean steadied her voice. "He's about forty and of the big, blustering type, with a mocking face. His eyes are small and cunning and close together. He's——"

"Ah, his eyes are close together!" exclaimed Larose gleefully. "Now that's very hopeful, for it nearly always means the party has not too much courage. Go on. Tell me more about him and where that cottage of his is. I'll take that five o'clock appointment instead of you."

A few minutes later they went back into the house, with Jean now a very different woman. There was no need for her to pretend to be bright and happy. She was so thankful for the promised help of Larose, being now quite sure he would not only frighten the gamekeeper away at once, but would also make him hold his tongue when he had gone.

Shortly before five the following evening, the gamekeeper was standing outside his cottage, waiting for his master's wife to appear. He was quite confident she would come as he had given her such a fright the previous day by approaching her so openly, where anyone might have passed by and been a spectator of their meeting. He had his eyes fixed upon the path leading from the Hall when, suddenly he heard someone whistling a merry tune and, turning his eyes sharply round in the opposite direction, saw a man coming towards him. The man was swinging a stick and keeping time to the tune he was whistling.

"What the hell's he doing here?" exclaimed the gamekeeper, very annoyed at the new-comer's inopportune appearance. He scowled. "I'll warn him he's trespassing and that'll send him off, quick."

As the man approached closer, however, the gamekeeper somehow received the impression that he was by no means the type to be frightened easily. He carried himself jauntily and there was a bold and reckless air about him, as if he did not care much what happened.

"Hullo! You Vance, Colonel Hilary's gamekeeper?" he called out in slightly nasal tones, giving the gamekeeper a hard stare.

Vance nodded surlily. "What do you want?" he frowned. He affected an air of authority. "This is private property."

"So much the better," nodded back the man. "Then we are less likely to be interrupted." He inclined his head towards the opened cottage door. "Let's go inside. I've come to talk to you."

"What about?" asked the gamekeeper, beginning to feel a little bit uneasy, he didn't quite know why.

"Your master's wife," snapped the other. "I've come to do some business for her, with you."

The gamekeeper's jaw dropped and his face went an unpleasant colour. His breath came with an effort. Hell, then she'd told someone! She had set the police on him! This fellow was a plainclothes man! But no, he didn't look like a 'tec. He was much too well-dressed for that and was wearing suede gloves. Besides, he'd mentioned 'business', and that meant some sort of bargain. The gamekeeper breathed more freely. Already he heard the rustle of crisp bank-notes.

"All right," he nodded curtly, "come inside," and the stranger, proceeding into the living room of the cottage, seated himself in the one chair which was there. He pointed to an upturned packing case by the window. "You sit there," he ordered. "We can talk better sitting down."

Frowning heavily, the gamekeeper did as he was requested. Then he asked sharply, "But you tell me who you are and where you come from."

The stranger shook his head. "Never mind who I am," he replied, "but if you like you can think of me as Joe. Flash Joe they used to call me in Chicago where I've come from, but I've left there a couple of years, and over here I've got a respectable name." He smiled a grim smile. "You wonder what my trade is? Well, I'll tell you." He almost shouted out his next words as if he didn't mind who heard him. "I'm a gun-man, Brother, a professional killer, and Mrs. Hilary is paying me to fix you up if you give her any more trouble. Understand?"

Then before the gaping and astonished gamekeeper could realise what was happening, he saw himself covered with a wicked-looking little automatic which the man had whipped out of one of his pockets. The latter chuckled unpleasantly. "Yes, and I'll kill you without turning a hair if I find you're not going to listen to reason. Understand, I say? It's nothing to me to hole a man if I'm certain I won't be found out, and I'm quite certain of that now. Notice my gloves? That means I've come all prepared. No fingermarks to be found anywhere! 'Colonel Hilary's gamekeeper found shot in lonely cottage, miles away from anywhere'." His eyes bored like gimlets into those of Vance. "Are you taking in what I'm telling you?"

The gamekeeper leaned heavily against the wall and his voice was husky. "You'd not dare to murder me," he said with an effort at a confidence he did not feel. "Strangers are few round here, and you'd be remembered afterwards. Anyone might hear the shot, too."

His visitor scoffed. "You think so? Then you listen to this," and in a few seconds he had produced a silencer and affixed it on to his pistol. His eyes roved round the room. "Ah, watch the handle of that saucepan," and, following instantly upon his words came a slight spitting sound and the saucepan crashed on to the floor with its handle shattered into pieces. "And there goes that box of matches on the shelf there! Oh, that's nothing! I could pip you in your eye, every time at twenty paces. I'm pretty handy with my gun, I am, and the guy at the other end's not got a dog's chance, whoever he is."

His lips curved to a sneer. "Now, you big, blackmailing bully, you heard what little noise my gun makes, and you're a fool if you think you'll be safe from it anywhere. No, I'll follow you wherever you go, in a disguise you won't see through, and the first second I get you alone, I'll plug you in your stomach or your liver." His eyes glared. "Those are nasty painful deaths for they can't stop the bleeding inside you." He gritted his teeth together. "Yes, if Colonel Hilary gets any anonymous letter about his wife I shall know it has come from you, and, with your tatooed hands and big lumpy body, you'll be pretty easy to pick out wherever you try to hide."

The gamekeeper's face was livid under its tan and his forehead was all pricked out in little beads of sweat. With all his bold appearance, he had a thick streak of cowardice in him and he had no doubt the man before him was what he was making himself out to be—an assassin to be hired.

His visitor nodded viciously. "I'm not particular what I do. I've been brought up in a rough school. You just look here," and in a trice he had bared a muscular arm up to the elbow. "See those scars, one, two, three; two bullets from guns and a dig with a knife! And I've got three scars on my body, one in my side where my heart was missed by the eighth of an inch, another where I got a bullet through my lung and the last from a stab in my side." He nodded again. "So I've sometimes had to take a dose of trouble myself."

He dropped his voice and spoke very quietly now. "You've been a fool, Vance, a darned silly fool. You might have gone on touching that pretty lady for a few pounds at a time for years and years to come if you hadn't made her desperate by asking too much all of a sudden and made her think of me. I'd sat once as a model for her and some other young ladies who painted, and she knew what I'd been and where to find me." He spoke in crisp and businesslike tones. "Now, Vance, have you got any money in the house?"

The gamekeeper did not seem to take in what he said. "What money do you mean?" he asked with his face all puckered in a frown.

"Money to go away with," was the sharp reply, "for you've got to clear out to-night or to-morrow. You've got to go straightaway and you're to take yourself right out of this part of the country. You haven't any? Well, here's a fiver for you, and you're to go off without saying a word to anyone. Understand?" The speaker went on very sternly. "If it ever gets to Mrs. Hilary's ears that you've spoken a word to anyone, to anyone, mind, about Sutton Coldfield, then she's making it worth my while to plug you off." His jaws snapped together. "And I'll do it with pleasure."

The gamekeeper's face was the picture of black fury, and he neither spoke a word nor even glanced in the direction of the five-pound note lying on the table. His eyes were all for the man who threatened him.

The latter rose to his feet and spat on to the floor. "That's what I think of you, Vance," he said with the utmost scorn. "I've killed men in my time and killed for money, but I've never tortured a defenceless woman and so I'm a hell of a sight a better man than you. Damn you." He spat on the floor again and then was just going out of the door when he remarked casually, "Oh, by the bye, it wasn't Mrs. Hilary who had that baby up at Sutton Coldfield. It was her sister and she is shielding her. They are as alike as two peas." He spat for the third time. "Damn you, once again."

The door banged behind him and he was gone.

Larose, for of course it was he, walked quickly away in the direction from which he had come, for the first hundred yards or so, however, keeping a backward glance over his shoulder to make sure he was not being followed. He had noted the double-barrelled gun in the cottage and was thinking it best not to neglect a reasonable precaution.

"But no," he told himself when at length the cottage was well behind him, "I knew I was right in thinking that he wasn't that kind of man. When it came to a showdown he had no pluck at all." He chuckled. "Oh, yes, I frightened him! He's ignorant enough to believe gun-men can be picked up for the asking and I don't think he'll bother the little lady any more. He's a big, blustering coward and the threat to his own dirty skin will have frightened him more than the threat of any appeal to the police."

He picked up his car where he had hidden it in a by-lane about a mile away, and drove off in a roundabout way to Rondle Hall. Jean had told him that her husband would not be home until seven o'clock and that she would be keeping a look-out for him, Larose, in the grounds.

He found her waiting for him, and when he told her the gamekeeper was leaving the district and that she would never be seeing him again, her relief and thankfulness were so apparent that he felt recompensed at once for the trouble he had taken.

"At any rate," he said, "his going out of the district will prevent his spreading the scandal by word of mouth among the people here and I don't think he'll send your husband any anonymous letter. For one thing, for a little while he'll probably be too frightened that I shall come after him and, for another, I don't think he's the type to make any trouble where he's going to get nothing out of it."

"But I shall tell my husband now," said Jean.

Larose shook his head. "No, take my advice and don't, at any rate for the present." He frowned. "It's rather puzzling to know exactly what is wisest to do, but as our great object is to save Colonel Hilary any distress, I think we are justified in waiting a little while." He nodded. "If he has, eventually, to be told, I'll take the blame for preventing your speaking sooner."

Now Larose had been right in thinking he had frightened the man badly, but he was quite wrong in imagining the latter would now be reconciled to leaving his victim alone. On the contrary, his fury that she had escaped him was soon spurring the gamekeeper on to some hard thinking as to what way he could spite her. He had not altogether given up the idea, either, that he could not yet make money out of the secret he possessed, for if he were not going to use the information himself then he might, perhaps, be able to sell it to someone to whom it could be valuable.

His thoughts turned at once to a London solicitor in Theobald's Road who had once defended his brother when the latter had been charged with receiving a stolen motor car. His brother had been guilty, right enough, but, thanks to the promptings of this unscrupulous man of law, he had lied so plausibly that he had obtained an acquittal.

Vance remembered a lot of things he had heard afterwards about this solicitor. It was said he would do anything for money and that when, in the course of his defending them, he had come into the possession of the secrets of any well-to-do breakers of the law, he would make use of his knowledge to extort money, as a matter of sheer blackmail.

"The very man," nodded Vance. "I'll go and see to-morrow. I'll make out I've come because I am being threatened by that gunman and I'll pretend to ask his advice. Then I'll see if I can't touch him for a bit." He nodded again. "Yes, he might make thousands out of it."

The following morning, soon after three o'clock, he left his cottage and, locking the door behind him, proceeded to make his way through the Hilary woods in the direction opposite to that of North Walsham. He was minded to pick up the early morning train at a station some seven miles away, where he was not known. He had brushed his boots and tidied himself up a bit, but he was carrying his gun upon his shoulder. As he moved away from the cottage he gave a furtive glance round, but there was nothing suspicious to be seen and he was quite easy in his mind that no one was in hiding there to watch him.

As long as he was on the Hilary land he kept his gun with him, but just before stepping out of the woods on to the high road he secreted it under some bushes, intending to pick it up again when he was returning home that evening. Then, after another quick look round to make sure he was not being observed, he set off at a smart pace upon his journey.