from a woman’s lips.
the handsome, dark-haired girl had placed her hand upon my arm, and stood with her eyes anxiously fixed upon mine.
“do you really mean this?” she asked, in a hoarse, strained voice.
“i have told you quite frankly my intention,” was my answer. “i know that scoundrel—in fact i am myself a witness against him.”
“in what manner?” she asked na?vely.
“that man is one of a clever gang of thieves who for years have eluded the police,” i replied. “in england he lives in security in a cornish village under the name of gordon-wright, while here, on the continent, he frequents the best hotels, and with his friends makes enormous hauls of money and jewels.”
“a thief!” she exclaimed, with amazement that i thought well feigned. “and can you really actually prove this?”
“the coward robbed a friend of mine who, being ill, could not take care of himself,” i said. “i have only to say one single word to the nearest police office and they will arrest him wherever he may be. and now, to speak quite openly, i tell you that i mean to do this.”
“you will have him arrested?”
“yes, and by so doing i shall at least save ella. the thing is really very simple after all. i intend to defy him. ella is mine and he shall not snatch her from me.”
“then you know him—i mean you knew him before i introduced you?” she asked, after a brief pause.
“i know him rather too well,” i answered meaningly. “it is curious, miss miller,” i added, “that your father should be the intimate friend of a man of such bad reputation. he surely cannot be aware of his true character.”
she knit her brows again, for she saw that she was treading on dangerous ground. she was not an adventuress herself but a sweet and charming girl, yet i had no doubt but that she participated in her father’s many guilty secrets. perhaps it was her easy-going cosmopolitan air that suggested this, or perhaps it may have been owing to her earnest desire that ella should marry that man, and thus be prevented from betraying what she had learnt on that fateful night at studland.
“dear old dad always makes friends far too easily,” was her evasive reply, the response of a clever woman. “i’ve told him so lots of times. travelling so much as he does, half over europe, he is for ever making new acquaintances, and queer ones they are, too, sometimes, i can tell you. we’ve had visitors here, in this flat, of all grades, from broken-down english jockeys and music hall artists trying to borrow their fare third-class back to england, to lords, earls, stock exchange men and company promoters whose names are as household words in the halfpenny papers. yet i suppose it’s so with many men. they are big-hearted, make friends easily, and everybody takes advantage of their hospitality. it is so with my father. all his friends impose on him without exception.”
“well, it’s a pity that he’s intimate with the man i knew as lieutenant shacklock, for when he is in the hands of the police some curious revelations will be made—revelations that will reveal the existence of a most ingenious and daring continental gang. you see,” i added, with a smile, “i’m not making a mere idle statement—i know. these men once robbed a friend of mine, and it is only just to him that, having discovered shacklock, i should give information against him.”
“you mean you will win ella by freeing her of that man?” said my companion, apparently following me for the first time.
“exactly. if he holds any secret of hers, he is quite welcome to speak. neither i nor ella will fear anything, you may depend upon that. a man of his stamp always seeks some low-down revenge. it is only what may be expected. perhaps i may as well tell you that i recognised him when you introduced us, and that i have already been down to cornwall and seen the smug scoundrel at his home. he’s a church-warden, a parish councillor and all the rest of it, and the people believe he’s worth thousands. he poses as a philanthropist in a mild way, opens local bazaars, and makes speeches in support of the local habitation of the primrose league. all this is to me most amusing. the fellow little dreams that he sits upon the edge of a volcano that to-morrow may engulf him—as it certainly must.”
“but is this worth while—to denounce such a man? you’ll be compelled to support your allegations,” she said.
“oh! i can do that, never fear,” i laughed. “i shall bring his victim forward—the man he robbed so heartlessly. english juries have no compassion for the swell-mobsman or the elegant hotel-thief.”
i watched her face as i spoke, and saw the effect my words were having upon her. if i denounced him her own father would at once be implicated. hers were alarming apprehensions, no doubt.
i saw that i was gradually gaining the whip-hand over circumstance. she recognised now that her father was in deadly peril of exposure.
and yet did she know the truth, after all? if she actually knew that the young chilian carrera, the man she loved when they lived outside paris, had met with his death through her own father’s treachery, she surely would not hold him in such esteem.
yet was it likely that such skilled scoundrels as the mysterious miller, milner—or whatever he chose to call himself—and gordon-wright alias lieutenant harold shacklock would risk exposure by betraying their true occupation to a sweet high-minded girl such as lucie really was? had she been their decoy; had there, indeed, been any suspicion that she had assisted them in their clever conspiracies of fraud then it would have been different.
there was, however, no suspicion except that she had spoken of her father’s “secret,” which she feared that ella had learned when she overheard her father’s conversation with his friend. that was a curious and unaccountable feature. she knew that her father held some secret that was shared by gordon-wright, that gallant ladies’-man who had wormed himself into the confidence of so many english and american women travelling on continental railways, women whose jewels and valuables had subsequently disappeared.
she, however, held her father in the highest regard and esteem, and that fact in itself was sufficient to convince me that she was after all in ignorance of his true profession.
she might have entertained suspicions of the lieutenant, suspicions that were verified by the denunciation i had just made, but as i looked into her pale dark face i could not bring myself to believe that she knew her father’s true source of income. there was some secret of her fathers, a secret that she knew must be kept at any cost. it was that which she feared ella might betray, and for that reason she deemed it best that my love should be allowed to become the false lieutenant’s wife.
thus i argued within myself as i stood there beside her with the blood-red light of the dying day streaming in from across the sea.
i recollected sammy’s warning; i recollected, too, the strange circumstances of nardini’s death in shepherd’s bush, and of what had been told me by this woman now at my side. she was doomed, she said—and, true enough, there was black despair written in that dark face, now so pale and agitated.
she was as much a mystery as she had been on that first day when we had met—even though through her instrumentality the mystery of my well-beloved’s self-effacement had actually been cleared up.
that she detested the lieutenant had been palpable from the first mention i had made of him. therefore i argued that she suspected him of playing her father false, even though she might be unaware of their real relationship. indeed it was not natural for a father of miller’s stamp to allow his daughter to know of his shameful calling. she had told me that she remained at home with old marietta—the grey-haired tuscan woman who had admitted me—while her father travelled hither and thither across europe. those unscrupulous “birds of prey,” known to the police as international thieves, migrate in flocks, travelling swiftly from one frontier to another and ever eluding the vigilance of the agents in search of them. the international thief is a veritable artist in crime, the cleverest and most audacious scoundrel of the whole criminal fraternity.
“i quite understand your feelings and all that you must suffer, mr leaf,” she said at last in a mechanical voice. “i know how deeply you love ella, and, after all that has passed, it is not in the least surprising that you will not stand by and see her married to such a man as gordon-wright. yet is it really prudent to act without carefully considering every point? that she is about to become that man’s wife shows that she is in his power—that he possesses some mysterious hold over her. and suppose you denounced him to the police, would he not, on his part, revenge himself upon her?”
“probably. but i will risk that.”
“personally i think that ella will be the greater sufferer from such an injudicious action.”
curious. her words bore out exactly what ella herself had said. yet she surely could know nothing of the secret between them. until half an hour ago, when i had told her, she was not even aware that gordon-wright was acquainted with the woman who had been betrothed to me.
“but i do not intend that she shall fall the victim of this adventurer,” i said quickly, for i recognised in her words a fear that her father’s secret might be exposed.
“if he really possesses a hold over her sufficient to compel her to marry him, any attempt to rescue her may only cause her complete ruin,” she said. “have you any idea of the nature of this extraordinary influence he seems to have over her?”
“none. i am in entire ignorance.”
“when we met that night at studland i certainly was deceived,” she went on. “i believed that she was beside herself with delight at finding you again, and still unmarried—i never dreamed that she was engaged to another—and to gordon-wright of all men.”
“why do you say ‘of all men’?”
“because—well, because he’s the last man a girl of her stamp should marry.”
“then you know more about him than you care to admit, miss miller?”
“we need not discuss him,” was her brief answer. “it is ella we have to think of, not of him.”
“yes,” i said, “we have to think of her—to extricate her from the horrible fate that threatens her—marriage to a scoundrel.” then turning again to my pretty companion i said, in a voice intended to be more confidential: “now, miss miller, your position and mine are, after all, very curious. though we have been acquainted so short a time, yet the fact of your having been ella’s most intimate friend has cemented our own friendship to an extraordinary degree. we have exchanged confidences as old friends, and i have told you the secrets of my heart. yet you, on your part, have not been exactly open with me. you are still concealing from me certain facts which, if you would but reveal, would, i know, assist me in releasing ella from her bondage. why do you not speak plainly? i have travelled here, across europe, to beg of you to tell me the truth,” i added, looking straight into her pale serious face.
“how can i tell you the truth when i am ignorant of it myself?” she protested.
“what i have told you this evening concerning ella’s engagement to that blackguard has surprised you, and it has also shown you that the mysterious secret of your father’s of which you have spoken may be imperilled, eh?”
she nodded. then, after some hesitation, she said:—“not only that, but something further. that gordon-wright should aspire to ella’s hand is utterly mystifying.”
“why?”
“well—you recollect what i told you regarding—regarding that man who died in the house where you were living in london,” she said, in a low, faltering voice.
“you mean the ex-minister of justice, nardini?”
she nodded an affirmative.
“i remember perfectly all that you told me. he refused to speak the truth concerning you.”
“he laughed in my face when i asked him to make a confession that would save me,” she said hoarsely, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous fire. “he was a coward; he sacrificed me, a woman, because he feared to speak the truth. ah!” she cried, clenching her hands, “you see me here wearing a mask of calm and tranquillity, but within my heart is a volcano of bitterness, of scorn for that wretched embezzler who carried his secret to the grave.”
“i can quite understand it, and fully sympathise with you,” i said, in a kindly tone, recollecting all that had passed between us after she had discovered the mysterious italian dead in that upstairs room at shepherd’s bush. “but i hope you are not still disturbed over what may, after all, be merely an ungrounded fear?”
“ungrounded!” she cried. “ah! would to heaven it were ungrounded. no. the knowledge that the blow must fall upon me sooner or later—to-day, to-morrow, in six months’ time, or in six years—holds me ever breathless in terror. each morning when i wake i know not whether i shall again return to my bed, or whether my next sleep will be within the grave.”
“no, no,” i protested, “don’t speak like this. it isn’t natural.” but i saw how desperate she had now become.
“i intend to cheat them out of their revenge,” she said, in a low whisper, the red glow of the sundown falling full upon her haggard face. “they shall never triumph over me in life. with my corpse they may do as they think proper.”
“they? who are they?”
“shall i tell you?” she cried, her starting eyes fixing themselves upon mine. “that man gordon-wright is one of them.”
“he is your enemy?” i gasped.
“one of my bitterest. he believes i am in ignorance, but fortunately i discovered his intention. i told nardini, and yet he refused to speak. he knew the peril in which i existed, and yet, coward that he was, he only laughed in my face. he fled from rome. i followed him to england only to discover that, alas! he was dead—that he had preserved his silence.”
“it was a blackguardly thing,” i declared. “and this fellow, gordon-wright, or whatever he calls himself, though your father’s friend, is at the same time your worst enemy?”
“that is unfortunately so, even though it may appear strange. to me he is always most charming, indeed no man could be more gallant and polite, but i know what is lurking behind all that pleasant exterior.”
“and yet you are opposed to me going to the police and exposing him?” i said in surprise.
“i am opposed to anything that must, of necessity, reflect upon both ella and myself,” was her answer. “remember the lieutenant knows that you and i are acquainted. i introduced him to you. if you denounced him as a thief he would at once conclude that you and i had conspired to effect his ruin and imprisonment.”
“well—and if he did?”
“if he did, my own ruin would only be hastened,” she said. “ah! mr leaf, you have no idea of the strange circumstances which conspired to place me in the critical position in which i to-day find myself. though young in years and with an outward appearance of brightness, i have lived a veritable lifetime of woe and despair,” she went on, in a voice broken by emotion.
“in those happy days at enghien i loved—in those sweetest days of all my life i believed that happiness was to be mine always. alas! it was so short-lived that now, when i recall it, it only seems like some pleasant dream. my poor manuel died and i was left alone with a heritage of woe that gradually became a greater burden as time went on, and i was drawn into the net that was so cleverly spread for me—because i was young, because i was, i suppose, good-looking, because i was inexperienced in the wickedness of the world. ah! when i think of it all, when i think how one word from giovanni nardini would have liberated me and showed the world that i was what i was, an honest woman, i am seized by a frenzy of hatred against him, as against that man gordon-wright—the man who knows the truth and intends to profit by it, even though i sacrifice my own life rather than face their lying denunciation without power to defend myself. ah! you cannot understand. you can never understand!” and her eyes glowed with a thirst for revenge upon the dead man who had so unscrupulously thrust her back into that peril so deadly that she was hourly prepared to take her own life without compunction and without regret.
“but all this astounds me,” i said, in deep sympathy. “i am your friend, miss miller,” i went on, taking her slim hand in mine and holding it as i looked her straight in the face. “this man, gordon-wright, is, we find, our mutual enemy. cannot you explain to me the whole circumstances? our interests are mutual. let us unite against this man who holds you, as well as my loved one, in his banal power! tell me the truth. you have been compromised. how?”
she paused, her hand trembled in mine, and great tears coursed slowly down her white cheeks. she was reflecting whether she dare reveal to me the ghastly truth.
her thin lips trembled, but at first no word escaped them. laughter and the sound of gaiety came up from the promenade below.
i stood there in silence in the soft fading light await her confession—confession surely of one of the strangest truths that has ever been told by the lips of any woman.
