Title: The Forger (1927)
Author: Edgar Wallace
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Title: The Forger (1927)
Author: Edgar Wallace




TO DENNIS NEILSON TERRY



CHAPTER I


THE BIG consulting-room at 903, Harley Street differed as much from its
kind as Mr. Cheyne Wells differed from the average consultant.

It was something between a drawing-room and the kind of a library which a
lover of good books gathers together piecemeal as opportunity presents.
There was comfort in the worn, but not too worn, furniture, in the deep,
leather-covered settee drawn up before the red fire. Two walls were
filled with shelves wedged with oddly bound, oddly sized volumes; there
were books on the table, a newspaper dropped by a careless hand on the
floor, but nothing of the apparatus of medicine--not so much as a
microscope or test tube.

In one corner of the room, near the window where yellow sunlight was
pouring in, was a polished door; beyond that a white-tiled bathroom
without a bath but with many glass shelves and glass-topped table. You
could have your fill of queer mechanisms there, and your nostrils
offended by pungent antiseptics. There were cupboards, carefully locked,
with rows and rows of bottles, and steel and glass cabinets full of
little culture dishes. But though Peter Clifton had been a constant
visitor for years, he had never seen that door opened.

He was sitting now on an arm of one of the big chairs, his fine head
screwed round so that he could see the street, though he had no interest
in the big car which stood at the kerb, or the upper floors of the houses
on the opposite side of the road which filled his vision. But he was a
sensitive man, with a horror of emotional display, and just then he did
not wish any man--even Cheyne Wells--to see his face.

Presently he jerked back his head and met the dark eyes of the man who
straddled before the fireplace, a cigarette drooping from his lips.

Mr. Wells was rather thin, and this gave the illusion of height which his
inches did not justify. The dark, saturnine face with its neat black
moustache was almost sinister in repose: when he smiled, the whole
character of his face changed, and he was smiling now.

Peter heaved a deep sigh and stretched his six feet of bone and muscle.

"It was a good day for me when I mistook you for a dentist!" he said.

There was a nervous tension in his laugh which Mr. Donald Cheyne Wells did
not fail to note.

"My good chap"--he shook his head--"it was a double-sided benefit, for
you have been the most foolishly generous patient I have ever had. And I
bless the telephone authorities that they made 903, Harley Street the
habitation of a gentleman who left the week before I moved in."

Again the other laughed.

"You even cured the old molar!" he said.

The smile left the surgeon's face.

"I have cured nothing else--except your misgivings. The real assurance on
which your faith must rest is Sir William Clewers's. I would not have
dared to be so definite as he; even now I tell you that although the big
danger is wiped out you are liable to the attacks I spoke about. I did
not think it was worth while discussing that possibility with Sir
William, but you may have another consultation if you wish?"

Peter shook his head emphatically.

"In future I am making long detours to avoid Harley Street," he said, and
added hastily: "That's pretty ungracious-"

But the surgeon waved his agreement.

"You'd be a fool if you didn't," he said, and then, turning the subject
abruptly: "What time is this interesting ceremony?"

He saw a frown gather for an instant on the broad forehead of his
patient. It was a surprising expression to observe on the face of a very
rich and a very good-looking young man who was to marry the most
beautiful girl Cheyne Wells had seen in his life, yet the consultant was
not wholly surprised.

"Er--twelve-thirty. You'll be there, of course? The reception is at the
Ritz and we go on to Longford Manor. I thought Jane would have preferred
the Continent--but she seems rather keen on Longford."

There was no sound for a little while except the soft tick of the Swiss
clock on the mantelpiece. Then: "Why the frown?" asked Wells, watching
his patient's face intently.

Peter threw out his arms in a gesture of uncertainty. "The Lord
knows--really. Only...it has been such a queer courtship...with this
thing hanging over my head. And sometimes Jane is rather--how shall I put
it?--'cold' isn't exactly the word--neither is 'indifferent.’
‘Impregnable’--that's the word. One can't get into her mind. She becomes a
stranger, and that terrifies me. The whole thing started on the wrong
note--we haven't kept step. I'll go on mixing my metaphors till I can get
a little lucid." The smile was twitching the corner of Cheyne Wells's
lips.

"I introduced you--here beginneth the first wrong note!" he said. "And--"

"Don't be a silly ass--that was the rightest thing you ever did. Donald,
I adore Jane! There is nothing in the world I wouldn't do for her. She
terrifies me because I feel that way and because I know she doesn't. And
there is no reason why she should--that's my bit of comfort. I sort of
burst into that quiet home and made myself an infernal nuisance--I almost
bullied her into an engagement that wasn't an engagement--"

His teeth came together, and again that strained, worried look.

"Donald, I bought her," he said quietly, and this time the consultant
laughed aloud.

"You're too imaginative, my friend--how could you buy her? Stuff!"

But Peter shook his head.

"Of course, I didn't say, 'I want your daughter--I'll give a hundred
thousand pounds for her'; I'd have been chucked out if I had. But when,
like a blundering left-handed oaf, I cornered Leith in his study and
blurted out that I would settle that sum if I married...and I'd only seen
Jane twice! I have an idea that broke down opposition...I'm not sure...I
feel rather rotten about it. Do you know that I've never kissed Jane?"

"I should start today," said the other dryly. "A girl who is going to be
married the day after tomorrow expects some sort of demonstration."

Peter ran his fingers through his untidy brown hair.

"It's wrong, isn't it?" he asked. "It is my fault, of course...once I got
panic-stricken--I wondered if she had heard something about me. You know
what I mean. Or whether there was some arrangement which I upset--Hale,
for example."

"Why should she--"

There was a soft tap on the door of the consulting-room.

"That is my wife," said Wells. "Do you mind her coming in, or do you want
to talk?"

"I've talked enough," said Peter ruefully.

He went towards the slim, youthful woman who came in. Marjorie Wells was
thirty-five and looked ten years younger, though darker than her husband.

"They told me you were here," she said with a quick flash of teeth. "Hail
to the bridegroom! And, by the way, I saw the bride this morning, looking
conventionally radiant--with the wrong man!"

If she saw the quick sidelong glance her husband shot in her direction,
she gave no evidence. There was a thread of malice--in the most innocent
of Marjorie's comments; this was a veritable rope.

He it was who took up the challenge.

"The wrong man--not Basil Hale by any chance?"

He saw Peter's grey, questioning eyes turned in Marjorie's direction. He
winced rather easily, did this young man who had once been deputy sheriff
of Gwelo and had hanged L'chwe, the rebel chief, out of hand.

"It was Basil, of course--poor old Basil! I'm sure he feels rotten--"

"Why should he?"

When Cheyne Wells used a voice that had the hard tinkle of metal in it,
his wife became meek and penitent.

"I am a mischievous gossip, aren't I? I'm so sorry, Peter."

He was taking up his hat and was smiling as at some secret joke.

"Yes--you are," he said grimly. "You give me more heart jumps than any
woman I know. Come and dine tomorrow night, Wells."

The surgeon nodded. "It will have to be a bachelor dinner," he said
significantly. "I can't have you made miserable the night before your
wedding."

He walked with Peter to the door and stood on the top step until the
Rolls had disappeared into Wigmore Street. Then he came back to the
consulting-room.

"What's the matter with Peter really?--he looks healthy enough."

She asked the question off-handedly, as though the repetition of Peter's
visits had only just dawned on her.

"I have told you half a dozen times, Marjorie, that I do not discuss my
patients--even in my sleep. And, Marjorie," as, with a petulant twist of
one shoulder, she turned towards the door, "don't be--er--difficult about
Peter--do you understand...Well, what is it?"

A maid was at the open door. A small sealed envelope lay on the silver
plate she carried. It was unaddressed, but he broke the flap and took out
a card. This he studied.

"All right, show Mr. Rouper in, please. You can clear." This to his wife.
"I'll talk to you later about Peter--and other things."

She was out of the room before he had finished.

The man who was ushered in was tall and broad-shouldered; what hair he
had was grey, but he carried himself like a soldier. Cheyne Wells shut
the door and pointed the visitor to a chair.

"Sit down, Inspector."

Chief Inspector Moses Rouper put his Derby hat carefully on the table,
peeled his brown leather gloves and felt anxiously in the inside pocket
of his greatcoat. When he had brought to light a fat leather wallet he
seated himself.

"Sorry to bother you, Doctor," he began. "I know that you're a busy man,
but I had to see you."

Mr. Wells waited, expectant but wondering.

"Here we are." The inspector fished out a folded white paper and spread
it on the table. "A fifty-pound note. We shouldn't have been able to
trace it only your name is stamped on the back." He fixed pince-nez and
read: "'D. Cheyne Wells, MRCS, 903, Harley Street.’”

He passed the note to the consultant, who turned it over and saw the
faded purple stamp mark.

"Yes," he said, "that is my stamp--I use it for a variety of purposes,
though I can't remember stamping this note."

"Do you remember passing the note--or where it came from?"

Cheyne Wells was thinking.

"Yes--fifties are an unusual denomination--I had that from a patient, Mr
Peter Clifton. I passed it at Kempton Park races--I like to bet
occasionally, and I hate bookmakers' accounts,"

The detective smiled genially. "And you lost it?"

Mr. Wells shook his head with a laugh. "As a matter of fact, I won--a
couple of hundred." Rouper was writing rapidly on the back of an
envelope. "Mr. Peter Clifton. I think I know the gentleman," he said.
"He's got a flat in Carlton House Terrace."

"But what is the mystery?" asked Wells, and added good humouredly:
"You're not suggesting that he stole it?"

The inspector finished his writing before he spoke. "No, sir. But that
note is a forgery. It's the Clever One's worst job! The paper gave him
away."

There was no need to seek information about the Clever One. For five
years his unauthorized intrusions into the currency field had agitated a
world of bankers. So long had he been active that nobody quite remembered
who had named him so. (In point of fact it had been a police constable in
the course of his evidence against one of the Clever One's agents.)

"He's never tackled English notes before," said Rouper. "He started on
the Bank of Africa, then he switched off to the Swiss Federal, then he
had a cut at the US hundred-dollar bills, then he came back to the Bank
of France. We thought he was taking up the United States again--we traced
one bill in Paris, and it was a bit of a startler to find he'd gone all
unpatriotic!" He laughed wheezily and coughed.

"You haven't lost your money," he assured the worried surgeon. "The Bank
has met the note, and now I want to meet the man who forged it!"

Wells opened a small wall safe and took out a book. "I'll make absolutely
sure," he said, and turned the leaves quickly. After a while he stopped.
"Here it is--Mr. Peter Clifton, £52 10s.--cash. He never paid me by
cheque."

"Number?"

Mr. Wells shook his head. "No, I didn't take the number. I never do. It
would be rather like hard work. Most of the people who consult me pay in
cash."

The detective ran his eye down the page. "That would be about the date,"
he nodded, and, drawing a small brown book from his pocket, thumbed the
leaves. "Yes, Kempton was the same day. Thank you. Doctor." Him also
Cheyne Wells saw to the door. When he came back there was a thoughtful
frown on his face--and it was not the forgery which concerned him. If
there was one thing more certain than another, it was that he had not
stamped his name on the back of that note. Who had? And what was the
object?



CHAPTER 2


"HAVE YOU seen Peter today?"

John Leith looked up from his evening newspaper as the question followed
on chance thought.

"No, Daddy."

Mr. Leith resumed his study of the day's news. He was a hearty man, with a
long beard that had once been golden and now was completely grey.

The walls of the lofty room in which they sat would have proclaimed his
calling even had not the long windows said “studio.” Every inch of wall
space was covered with his landscapes, his studies, his copies of the
great masters. It was his wont to confess plaintively that comfortable
circumstances had ruined him as an artist. After a while he put down his
paper and came to this favourite topic of his.

"Without the spur of poverty a man is just a loafer after his fancies. It
is when a man has to paint what the public wants that he growls himself
to greatness. All the masters did their best work to order--Murillo,
Leonardo, Bellini, Michaelangelo--chapel-hacks every one of 'em! Greuze
painting like the devil to keep his extravagant virago of a wife supplied
with money; Morland and his public-house signs; Gainsborough with his
duchesses--when an artist can afford to choose his own subjects he's
finished!"

But she was not interested in artists. Her legs doubled under her, she
reclined over the bulbous end of a settee, her face in her hands, her
grave eyes fixed on the one being in the world she loved without
reservations.

"We are awfully well off, aren't we, Daddy?"

He pursed his bearded lips.

"Tolerably, my dear--"

"Then, why must I marry Peter? I know that he is hideously rich--and I
really think I am fond of him, though there is a look on his face
sometimes that scares me...and I do think I could be much fonder of him,
if--well, if there wasn't such a violent hurry."

He reached over lazily and caught her hand. "My dear--I wish it. I want
to see you settled."

She looked at him, startled. "You're not ill. Daddy--?"

His loud laugh was a reassuring answer. "No, I'm not ill," he said good
naturedly. "I'm keeping nothing from you. Only I want to see you married.
He's a good fellow, and, as you say, enormously rich."

"Where did he make his money?" She had asked this question before. "He
never speaks about his relations--he couldn't inherit an enormous fortune
unless everybody knew about it. Basil says--"

"Basil says a lot that Basil shouldn't say." Mr. Leith's voice was quiet,
but she gathered that at the moment Basil was unpopular. "You haven't
heard from Peter, eh?"

"Yes--I've heard from him. He telephoned. Some police officer has been to
his house about a fifty-pound note that was forged, and it had Donald
Wells's name stamped on it, and Peter was quite agitated--you know how his
voice goes, all funny and high?"

"A forged fifty-pound note--there's some reference here to the fellow they
call the Clever One." Mr. Leith had returned to his journal. He both read
aloud and pursued his private thoughts. "Rascal! They'll catch him...um,
about Peter. Clever chap, Peter. He's cursed with money, too--he might be
as great as Zohn. Really, Peter's etchings are marvellous. Do you
remember those beauties he did for you--"

"And which you lost," she accused, and he grumbled, in his middle-aged
way, about his failing memory..

"Where the deuce I left them I can't think--I was going somewhere and I
put them in my pocket--left them in the train, I'll swear."

She let him go on, her interest being completely self-centred.

"And, talking of things one loses," she nodded, "Daddy, don't you realize
that I shall be married in forty-eight hours! And I don't want to be a
bit--isn't it awful?"

The bearded man put down his newspaper and, leaning over, nicked open a
cigar box and took the first cigar that came. He bit off the end and lit
it almost simultaneously. "There are nine and seventy cardinal illusions
of youth." He pulled strongly at the cigar. "Maybe there are two or three
more. But an important one is that all brides-to-be are deliriously happy
and impatient for the last forty-eight hours to pass. That all brides are
confident of the future, that no brides, or only a miserable few, have
any serious misgivings about the future."

He was looking at her over his glasses.

"They do, my dear--the nice ones. The young people who love each other
with equal desperation are the exceptions."

"In fact the position is horribly normal?" She nodded agreement to this
possibility. "Well, it--it isn't pleasant. I have a feeling that I ought
to say something--tabulate my emotions and inhibitions and have them
witnessed before a commissioner of oaths. In other words, I want to be
fair to Peter, and I'm not being."

She looked round as the door handle turned, and slid down to a more
graceful pose. Mr. Leith raised his head to stare at the visitor.

"I want to see you, Basil," he said.

"Sounds like a row--what have I done?"

There were times when Jane decided that she loathed Basil: usually, such
is the contrariness of women, these were the occasions when Basil Hale
made a very special effort to please her. He had a round, fresh face; his
hair was reddish and he smiled all the time. There was a period in their
acquaintance when his assurance was a source of irritation to Jane Leith,
an irritation in which was a spice of uneasiness. Instinctively she knew
that there were no boundaries to his audacity, that he was cast in the
mould of the brigand who takes what he wants, asks no man's permission
and fears no man's resentment. He was as unlike her mental picture of a
Lothario as any man could be. Handsome he was not; he was inclined to
chubbiness; but his vitality was immeasurable. He drew something from
every man and woman who fell under its spell, and left them at the end
inert and exhausted.

He stood now by the door, a delighted grin on his glowing face, in no
wise abashed by the ominous note in her father's voice or the disapproval
in her eye. From his burnished head to the tip of his shiny shoes he was
resplendent. There was a glittering diamond point in the onyx buttons of
his white waistcoat, two larger scintillations from his shirt; even the
gardenia in the buttonhole of his dress coat had an ultra-exotic quality.

"What's the trouble and why the chilliness? I'm going to the Arts' Dance.
What about it, Jane?"

"Jane is not going to any dance, artistic or otherwise. I want a few
words with you, Basil."

Leith got up from his chair and nodded to his study, which opened from
the studio.

"O Lord! You're not going to rag me, are you?" Basil had a gurgling
little giggle of a laugh. "Stop him, Jane! I'll stand anything if you'll
come and dance. Dash up and climb into something simple an' expensive.
Jane, you look divine tonight--you do, by Heaven! It's a desecration
marrying that dull monument of virtue--"

"Hale!"

When Mr. Leith called him by his surname, Basil seldom argued. As the
study door closed on them, Jane heard the purr of the front door bell and
crossed quickly to the large window. A big Rolls stood in Avenue Road
before the door. Was it dismay she felt, apprehension? For some reason
which was not to be analysed she was irritated. She could not allow
herself to believe this--nor could she wholly hide from realization the
devastating discovery. The man to whom she would be married in
forty-eight hours bored her already!

She tried hard to simulate pleasure at seeing him, gave a warmth to her
greeting that surprised and pleased him. She hated herself for the
deception. He wore his shabbiest suit and was unusually nervous and
tongue-tied. She had not sufficient self-conceit to realize that he had a
palpable excuse.

When Cheyne Wells had said that she was the most beautiful woman in
London, he had been daring rather than extravagant. She had all that
regular features and a faultless skin could lend to natural charm of
expression and grace of figure. But there was something that had neither
form nor shape, an elusive glory which dwelt somewhere behind the grey
eyes--a visible fragrance like a tropic dawn, like daffodils growing on a
field sloping to the sea.

"I didn't expect you."

It sounded terribly trite.

"No"--he was a little hoarse. "I didn't expect to come. But I've been
thinking out--things. You know the sort of thing--"

With Peter, tautology was the forerunner of incoherence.

"What things?"

"You, mostly. I'm afraid I've been rather a--what shall I say--you know--"

She knew, but would not help him. She found an ugly satisfaction in her
cruelty.

"Well--you and everything. Whether it is the game to marry you when you
aren't frantically keen I mean--well, you're not, are you?"

For one wild moment she was urged to tell him the truth, tempering the
blow with protestations of her friendship.

"You haven't come to break it off, have you, Peter?"

What a liar she was! She was aghast at the duplicity of the concern in
her voice.

"Er--no. I thought I'd like you to say--you know?"

"You'd like me to break it off?"

Then the danger of this drift came to her. In consternation she realized
that the return of her father would precipitate this cloudy mixture of
hint and half-dissolved intention into a definite separation.

"Don't be silly. Of course I wouldn't dream of doing anything so--" She
paused here for a word, rejected “absurd” as ill-fitting. Happily he
filled the gap. If a large, relieved sigh can fill a gap.

"Sorry--I'm rather worried tonight. A fellow from Scotland Yard has been
to see me. I told you that. I have a sneaking admiration for Scotland
Yard--I was in the Rhodesian Police when I was a kid."

"Did you find a gold mine in Rhodesia?"

She smiled the question, but there was purpose in it.

His confusion dumbfounded her.

"No. I--er--inherited it from--from my father."

She could have sworn that the hand that went up to his face was shaking;
he seemed to realize that his agitation needed explaining.

"How abruptly you asked that question! You made me feel as if I had
stolen the money!"

Her steady eyes were fixed on his.

"I didn't even ask you about money--I was joking! I don't even know
whether one does find gold mines in Rhodesia."

She was lying at the rate of one every few seconds, she noted, through
the awkward silence which followed.

He was the type of man (she decided) that would make most girls envious
of her fortune. She would give him full points for his looks--ordinarily
that kind of face fascinated her. The straight nose and firm chin and the
big, rather deep-set eyes. A good figure too--an athlete of a man. If he
would only talk! If he had the aplomb of Basil or the worldliness of
Donald Wells!

There he sat, the most obviously ill-at-ease visitor that had ever come
to the studios, literally twiddling his fingers and trying, in his
disjointed way, to make conversation about the weather and etching.

John Leith led the way out of his study, and a somewhat chastened Basil
followed. Not so chastened that he could not wink at Jane as he caught
her eye. Nor completely squashed either.

"I say, honestly, Jane--what about this last spinster fling? Here's the
Arts' Ball calling, and it won't take you a minute to dress. Old Peter
won't mind. I'll bet he wants to talk business."

She looked expectantly at Peter. His brows had met: for the first time
since their acquaintance began. That decided her.

"I think I'll go, Daddy," she said.

Mr. Leith shrugged his shoulders. When Jane came down, a beautiful,
ethereal thing in green, Peter had gone.

Somehow she did not enjoy the evening.



CHAPTER 3


WHEN PETER stepped out of his car before St. George's he faced fifty
cameras. A dozen urgent voices begged him to stand still--there was a
fierce chattering of falling shutters.

"Thank you, Mr. Clifton," said a newspaper photographer.

"Thank you," said Peter mechanically. What on earth brought all these
people here? Every pew filled; throughout the church the sickly perfume
of flowers. Strangers, most of them--idle folk lured by curiosity to see
two millions of money marry beauty. Idle, open-mouthed women staring at
him and nudging one another--he saw his valet in one pew and his butler
and wife in another. Forby smiled respectfully, in his face a look of sad
uncertainty. Possibly he would not “suit”the new madame. It was rather
dreadful to have so many lives dependent on one. Blossoms were massed
along the chancel rail, and flowers on the altar, and lighted candles.
His gloved hands twiddled with the rim of his hat.

"Have you got the ring?"

"Eh?"

He felt in his waistcoat pocket. Yes, it was there. Jane had begun by
expressing her indifference to gold or platinum, and had finished by
distinctly favouring platinum.

Marjorie Wells smiled at him from a favoured front pew. She looked
unusually haggard, and there was no geniality in her smile. Perhaps she
was continuing, mutely, her protest against Donald acting as best man.
She had become a stickler for custom. It was unlucky to have a married
best man; it was absurd. Surely Peter had a friend. His lawyer? Peter's
lawyer was also a benedict--lawyers marry young.

Marjorie Cheyne Wells had been crying! He made the discovery when she
turned full face to him, and it came as a shock. Marjorie was no
sentimentalist.

"For Heaven's sake, how long do we wait?" he asked fretfully.

Donald Wells looked at his watch.

"You've been here just under fifty seconds. Nervous?"

"A bit, yes. I wish I had seen Jane yesterday--I was rather stuffy about
her going out to dance with Hale--I wanted to apologize."

Wells's thin lips were pressed tighter. Jane should have been spanked, he
thought. She had set the town talking--supping tete a tete with Basil Hale
two nights before her marriage.

A stir and a craning of necks. The choir was waddling down to meet the
bride. “Waddle”--that was the word for it, decided Peter. Like a double
rank of white ducks...

She was here! The organ trembled, and one clear note led the sweet voices
of boys. Now they were coming back with greater dignity. And here was
Jane on her father's arm and mysteriously strange girls in white behind
her. He hardly knew one of them--certainly did not recognize Jane, though
he stared and stared till Wells caught his sleeve and placed him...

Kneeling was an aching business, though in Jane it seemed no effort.
Would her hand be cold when he took it--no, it was blood-warm and soft: to
touch it was to receive a caress.

She never looked at him once; her voice was clear when she answered the
priest's demands--but she never looked at Peter--did not take his arm as
they walked to the vestry. He was so dazed that he had to think before he
signed the register--a full half minute he kept them waiting, the pen
poised...

More snappings of cameras and a swaying mass of women surging up to the
car door. A policeman stood on the step till they were clear of the
crowd.

"Ghastly, wasn't it?" she said.

"Yes...rather...I don't realize."

They were alone, but no more alone than when he had driven her back from
Lord's or a theatre. And there was no splendour in this very loneliness.

"I'll be awfully good to you," he blurted out.

It was just the banality he would utter. Jane drew into the corner of the
car, for the first time in her life self-conscious.

Thank Heaven she had managed at the eleventh hour to change the venue of
the reception from the hotel to the house in Avenue Road! It had involved
the dispatch of hundreds of telegrams, and fewer people would come--which
was an advantage.

In her own room she sat down to take stock. Mainly she was concerned
about herself, but now and again a thought of Peter crossed her mind and
her maid saw her face shadow.

"You ought to go down soon, madame."

Madame! She was Mrs. Peter Clifton. There was no time to reflect on the
phenomenon.

"Porter, who did the flowers for the house, said Mr. Clifton paid him with
a bad five-pound note, miss--ma'am. I told Porter it would be all right--"

"Bad five-pound note? A forgery?" Jane's first sensation was one of
amusement.

"Yes, miss. He took it to the post office and they said: 'Where did you
get it?' and all that--and Porter says he can't afford to lose all that
money."

A bad five-pound note! How odd! And yesterday there was trouble about a
fifty-pound note. Jane was not amused any longer.

She opened a drawer of her writing table, took out her bag and opened it.

"Here is another five pounds--tell Porter not to be silly--of course he
will lose nothing. Mr. Clifton must have had these forgeries passed on
him."

She went downstairs, so intent upon the forged note that she had to be
shepherded to the studio. This was not a moment to discuss the matter
with Peter. She found it very difficult to talk to him at all...

Free of everything at last, thank God--of white charmeuse and veil and the
faint smelling bouquet, free of the slavery of greeting unimportant
people with a smile that must approximate to happiness.

Basil Hale was almost the last to approach, and she saw an imp in his
dancing eyes.

"I've got orders not to annoy or depress you," he said, and whilst he
spoke he was shaking hands with Peter, at whom he did not look. "Happy
life to you, Jane, and all that sort of thing, and come back soon and
make matches for all your friends--ow!"

His hand was still resting in Peter's--Peter had given it a sudden and
excruciating grip.

"Congratulate me!" he said coolly.

It was the first glimpse she had of another Peter.

"By Gad--you've got a grip on you!" complained Basil.

That was the one distinct memory she carried away from the babel and the
white rosettes and silver confetti.

As the car went swiftly and noiselessly across Hampstead Heath she
brushed the last silver anchor from her skirt and looked round at her
husband. His arm was in the rest loop, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on the
road ahead. She tried to ask him if he was happy, but she could not bring
her tongue to this supreme hypocrisy. And then she remembered the
five-pound note. She thought he hadn't heard her, and told him again.

"Porter? Yes, I gave him a fiver. Bad, was it? How careless!"

“Careless” was not exactly the word she expected. She discovered that she
badly wanted him to talk--she was living for the present: the future was
not to be contemplated sanely.

"Longford Manor was your idea, Jane," he said in surprise.

"Was it?" Jane could be very provocative.

"I thought Paris or--"

"Don't say 'Como,’” she breathed. She felt that if he said “Como” she
would scream.

He went red.

"I don't know Como," he said, a little stiffly. "But whatever I should
have said it would not have been Longford Manor. I thought you didn't
like the place when you saw it."

"Is it your own house?" She evaded the challenge.

"No--I've hired it three months at a time when I got sick of town. The
owner lives permanently abroad and one can always get it. The grounds are
nice and its loneliness rather appealed to me."

"It shall appeal to me too," she said stoutly, and went on: "Don't mind
if I'm rather nervy today--getting married is a nervy business. Did you
see Marjorie? That woman is in love with you, Peter." He was too
astonished to protest. "I know. She looked at me with a basilisk eye.
Isn't that funny?"

"I'll swear you're mistaken," he said, almost violently.

"Perhaps I am--about you. But she loathes me."

"But why?"

Jane shook her head. They had traversed the mean streets of Tottenham and
were on the Epping road. He returned to the question of honeymoon--she
would rather have talked about Marjorie Cheyne Wells.

"We could go abroad after," he suggested. "New York--Long Island or
somewhere. It is glorious on the Sound. I know quite a lot of people in
the States. I went over there last year with Bourke--he's the big fellow
at Scotland Yard."

He had been many times in America--pleasure trips to kill ennui really.
She found herself wondering why Peter sought out detectives and made them
his friends.

There was little more said on that wearisome journey. With a fluttering
at her heart she saw from the crest of the hill above Newport the
chimneys of Longford Manor in the distance. Before she could quite
collect her thoughts and order them, the car had passed the lodge gates
and was slowing before the door of the house.

The two menservants were waiting in the open doorway, deaf old men who
had been in the owner's service for years. An ancient maid brought a cup
of tea to Jane in her panelled sitting-room-boudoir would have been too
pretty a name for this severe apartment.

Peter's room as well as her own opened from this chamber. He appeared at
the door as she was sipping the hot liquid.

"You've not seen the garden and the rockery?" he asked her. She was
childishly glad to get into the open air and the slanting sunlight, but
when he took her arm she was so unresponsive that after a while he let it
fall awkwardly.

Time did not pass. Every minute had to be lived through--she was wearing
with the strain of it when she went up to dress for dinner with the help
of the old maid. For one thought of Peter's she was grateful: Anna was
under the impression that the honeymoon was in its decline.

"Mr. Clifton said he'd bring you here before you went to London, ma'am.
This is a rare place for honeymoons. We often let for a month, but you're
the first lady that's ever finished her honeymoon at Longford."

For which she thanked Peter rather prettily when they were at dinner.

"Anna doesn't read the newspapers or she'd know I was a liar," he said,
and seemed in a hurry to change the subject.

They spent that interminable evening in the big library that formed one
wing of the manor house. Once or twice he tried to say something, but the
stream of thought ran into a sandy delta of incoherent words. More than
once she had an inclination to fly from the house and find some sort of
conveyance that would take her home. When he tried to talk of
housekeeping or the future, she sat tense, holding herself in.

"...You'll sign what cheques you wish--a sort of joint account, Jane.
Money is rather a horrid subject for a honeymoon, isn't it?"

"You've been awfully generous."

He was momentarily deceived into a deeper blundering.

"The settlement was nothing--the hundred thousand, I mean. Money is a
ruthless sort of weapon--I wonder sometimes whether I haven't used it a
little cruelly."

"It gives you what you want."

A little devil was in her: how could he guess that she was seeking a
respite from her panic by the most obvious method?

"It gave me to you--I mean, it made possible--"

It needed that gaucherie of his and the arm that slipped a little
awkwardly about her shoulders.

She was on her feet, looking down at him with smouldering eyes.

"It bought me--that is what you mean!"

"I meant nothing of the kind--"

"Yes, you did--money was the short cut--we comfortably placed people are
inclined to be dazzled with sums that seemed fabulous. It was easier
than--courting--that's a stupid old word, but it's expressive. You don't
think I love you, do you?"

A white face above her shook from side to side. "No. I hoped. But I don't
think so."

"Or that you have anything more in me than money can buy? A bargain's a
bargain--I'll keep to mine. I'll be your wife. I am your wife. I'm not
going to be a fool at this hour. But I don't love you. I hate being
heroic, but you can't buy that. You can kiss me if you like, but I shall
hate it--I'm sorry. I ought to have told you last night--when was it I saw
you? If you are satisfied with that--here I am!"

He was looking down at her blankly, and his face had lost all expression.

"I see," he said at last. "Well--I don't want what I paid for. I want what
you can give."

She shook her head. "That is nothing," she said.

He nodded at this. "Well, we've got--er--a month to fill in somehow," he
said.

At that second came on the outer door a knock that reverberated
thunderously through the bare stone hall. A shuffle of feet on the flags
and the rattle of chains. Peter waited, his eyes on the door. Presently
it opened.

It was Chief Inspector Rouper. "Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Clifton."

He was terse to a point of brusqueness as he laid a small attaché-case on
the library table and snapped it open. Jane was watching in
amazement--almost forgotten was the unnerving five minutes through which
she had just passed, though she was shaking from head to foot.

Rouper pulled out a bundle of banknotes and laid them on the table.

"They were found in a suitcase that you left at Victoria parcels office
yesterday morning," he said quietly. "I should like some explanation, Mr.
Clifton."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," said the detective, "that every one of those notes is a
forgery."



CHAPTER 4


PETER CLIFTON looked from the detective to the neatly packed bundle of
notes.

"I have never left a suitcase at Victoria," he said steadily.

"I am telling you--" began the inspector, raising his voice.

"Don't be aggressive, please." The authority in his voice made Jane open
her eyes. "I have told you that I have never left a suitcase at
Victoria."

"It had your label on," insisted Rouper, but in a milder tone.

Peter's lips parted in a ghost of a smile.

"One does not label bags containing forged notes and leave them in a
public place--I would like to have your chief constable's views on that.
And Superintendent Harvey's and a few other gentlemen's. The inference I
am to draw is that I knew those notes were forged and that I was
distributing them. The Bank of England will give you one million eight
hundred thousand reasons why I should not do anything so stupid. Have you
the suitcase?"

Rouper turned to one of the two men who stood outside the door and gave
an order, and presently he brought in a brand-new cowhide case. To the
handle dangled a printed label:

“Mr. Peter Clifton, 175, Carlton House Terrace”

"I have never seen it before," said Peter after one glance. "Would it be
suggesting that you betray official secrets if I asked you how you knew
the bag was at Victoria?"

"That is neither here nor there." Rouper, never an even-tempered man, was
ruffled. "I've come down to inquire into the circumstances. And another
thing--"

"I gave a man a forged fiver this morning, and a forged fifty was traced
to me yesterday and--"

Peter put his hand in his pocket and took out a leather notecase. He
opened this on the table and slowly extracted one by one its contents.

"That is a good twenty and so is that--this one"--he lifted the note to the
light--"is forged. The watermark is bad--you'd better take charge of it.
This note"--he fingered the fourth carefully--"is genuine, and this--but
this is a forgery; I can feel without looking."

One by one he sorted the notes.

"Did you get these from your bank?"

"Some of them--I'm rather careless about money and keep my notes in a
steel-lined drawer of my desk. When I want money I take the first that
comes to hand. When I receive money in return for a cheque, I replenish
the store."

"From the bank?" asked the detective quickly.

Peter shook his head. "I seldom go to the bank. No, from tradespeople--my
tailor, for example, cashed a cheque last week for a hundred. Whoever's
nearest."

Jane listened, puzzled, fascinated. Suppose--if he were guilty here was a
complete and baffling explanation.

Baffled, Rouper certainly was. He fell back on the bundle of notes. "You
couldn't have got these from a shop," he said triumphantly.

There was contempt in Peter's voice.

"I have told you--they are not mine. The case isn't mine. The only thing
that looks like mine is the label. An enemy hath done this."

"Have you any enemies?"

Peter smiled.

"Only you, Rouper."

The detective's face went dark with anger.

"I'm no enemy--I am surprised that a gentleman like you should say so. I'm
doing my duty."

Then, to the amazement of the listening girl, Peter shook his head. "You
have been watching me for a month--keeping me under observation, I think,
is the expression."

Anger overcame the inspector's discretion. "Have I? Then perhaps you'll
put a little more information at my disposal. Who is the lady who has
been visiting you in your flat night after night--going in by the side
door and leaving I don't know when?"

"What a horrible invention!"

Jane could hardly believe that it was she who was talking so furiously.
"Even if it were true, you have no right--"

"It is true." Peter was coolness itself. "Perfectly true. I have been
visited in my flat by a lady who has generally stayed no longer than an
hour and has left by the way she came. Her age is, I believe, sixty-five.
Her name and address I am not prepared to give--"

"A friend of yours?"

Again Peter smiled.

"Not even a friend. She is in truth one who hates me--her occupation is,
or was, a cook, and I will add she is, or was, a very bad cook. And that,
I think, is all I can tell you."

Rouper rubbed his chin irritably.

"This will have to be reported to our people," he said.

"It will be reported by me." Peter nodded to the telephone on the table.

The inspector hesitated. "Can I use that?" He half reached for the
instrument.

"No," curtly, "you cannot. There is no law which gives you the right to
use my telephone."

Rouper's surprise was almost comic.

"All right, sir. I am sorry I annoyed you. As a matter of fact, I haven't
reported this matter to the Yard--"

"Nor to the Essex police," smiled Peter. "In fact, Rouper, of all the
people in this room you are in the worst mess! You've come without a
warrant--you're on territory where you have no right except at the request
of the Chief Constable of Essex, you've brought two men with
you--unauthorized, I imagine--and you've got to ask me very kindly not to
mention this matter to headquarters."

Rouper looked at him suspiciously. "You're not a police officer of any
kind, are you?"

Peter shook his head. "Merely an intelligent observer," he said.

Then for the first time he appeared to be aware of his wife's presence.
"Jane, if you will excuse us for a moment, I would like to talk to the
inspector."

She went into the dark drawing-room and turned on the light. A big barn
of a place that smelt mustily and of earth, so that, even though the
night was warm, she shivered and switched on the electric stove that
stood in the open bricklined fireplace. The sound of voices came to her
in a low hum.

Almost, in the new interest, the supreme drama had receded into the
background. In that quarter of an hour when she had stood by the side of
her husband and heard the stupefying accusation, she had experienced
almost every human emotion. Fear amounting to terror, relief,
near-happiness as the half charge was turned away from him; contempt--when
had she felt contempt? It was with something of dismay to recall that it
was Peter's quiet contempt that she had shared. He had changed--the
nervous and tongue-tied Peter she knew had vanished and left no trace. It
was another man who faced these merciless servants of the law, fenced
with them, by inference threatened them.

Was he bluffing? Her heart sank at the thought. Suppose these two
millions of his were mythical...Yet the hundred thousand he had settled
on her was real enough. John Leith had, as it were, bitten every single
pound.

She heard the front door close, and Peter came in. She expected that he
would be smiling, but he was very serious. "The bloodhounds have gone,"
he said.

"Who is this Rouper?"

"A genuine detective. They are rather a fine lot of fellows at the
Yard--poorly paid but beyond suspicion. I suppose they make a little by
side-lines--so do we all. Now and again they get a fellow who is
gambolling with the hares when he should be snug at home in his kennel.
That's Rouper--he's all side-line."

"He is an elderly man--"

"Due to retire this year. I know Scotland Yard rather well. I have had to
consult them once or twice--no, I'm not a disguised detective masquerading
as a millionaire! I'm just--well, it pays me to keep in touch with the
Yard."

"But this man is watching you."

He chuckled at this. "I made him spiteful and then it came out. Yes, he
has been watching me."

He looked at his watch.

"You had better toddle off to bed. You had better lock your door in case
somebody leaves a few forged fivers under your pillow."

She smiled for the first time that day--genuinely.

"Longford Manor has no other surprises to offer." Jane was almost
flippant. "A family ghost, now?"

"I do not allow my family ghost to travel with me," was all he said. And
then he nodded towards the door.

In this way was Jane Clifton peremptorily dismissed on her wedding night.

She was amused as she went up the broad stairs--a little piqued, too. She
had pictured many possibilities--it was not within the scope of her
unpleasant daydreams that she should be dismissed, or that she should so
meekly obey the imperious gesture.

As she reached the landing she had a fright. It was lit by one dim globe,
and that was enclosed in an antique iron lantern that swung from the
ceiling. One foot was on the top stair when she saw a figure moving in
the shadow. Jane suppressed a scream only by sheer force of will.

"Oh, it is you, Anna!"

The aged servant came into the light.

"Yes, ma'am--I bin waiting for you."

She followed the girl into the bedroom with its big four-poster and
tapestry-covered walls. But it was bright enough when the light was
switched on.

The old lady was ready to accept credit for the efficiency of the
electric service.

"We're the only house in the neighbourhood to be lit that way," she said
proudly. "Everything's done by it--cookin', cleanin', everything."

"Does Mr. Clifton come here very often?" asked Jane as she stepped out of
her dress.

She was surprised at the rebuff which followed.

"We ain't supposed to talk about anybody's business," said Anna primly.
"That's why we keep our jobs."

"But are you Mr. Clifton's servants?"

"We belong to the 'ouse," was the cryptic reply, "an' we're let with the
'ouse."

"But the house isn't Mr. Clifton's, I know that," said the undaunted Jane.

Anna had her reply. She belonged to the house and was hired with the
house. To which she added. Jinks & Jinks done everything. Jane gathered
they were the house agents.

The bed was unexpectedly comfortable--the appointments were made for
comfort--you could extinguish all or half the lights from the bedhead. She
turned them out and snuggled down luxuriously. She was half asleep when
she remembered she had not locked the door.

She had no intention of doing anything so theatrical. She was asleep
almost before the thought ran out of her mind...

Anna looked very old in the searching light of morning.

"Good morning, ma'am."

Ma'am--of course. How funny!

Waiting till the old woman had gone out of the room, Jane slipped into
her dressing-jacket and slippers and went over to the open window. She
looked down upon a shaven lawn separated from the park by a decrepit iron
fence. Beyond was the rolling green of parkland that stretched to a belt
of sunlit elms.

She did not see Peter, but, as she was turning away, he came into view,
and to her surprise a strange man walked by his side.

Peter apparently was in good spirits: the sound of his laughter came to
her. "...poor old Rouper...caught him out..."

She was not sure whether she was glad or sorry to find him so cheerful.
Perhaps he did not care very much--or was he waiting to wear down her
mental resistance, or hoping that blessed propinquity would bring about a
change in her attitude?

She drank the tea that Anna had brought, turned on the water in her bath
and began to unpack her one big trunk. When she joined the two men on the
lawn, Peter's flippant mood had passed: he was grave, almost glum, and
for the first time since that scene in the library was his old
embarrassed self.

"Jane, this is Mr. Bourke--you've heard me speak of him."

So this was the redoubtable Superintendent Bourke. He was a stoutish man
with a large, jovial face and many chins.

"Sorry to intrude myself into the Garden of Eden, Mrs. Clifton."

Mr. Bourke was less like a great detective than any man she had ever
imagined. It was only when she looked into his eyes, steadfast,
searching, sceptical, that she found the attributes of a thief-catcher.

"I hope old man Rouper didn't worry you last night, Mrs. Clifton? Good
chap, Rouper, but he rather jumps at conclusions, huh?"

He ended almost every question with a deep-throated growl of inquiry.

He turned abruptly to Peter.

"Perhaps it was the gardener, Mr. Clifton?"

Clifton shook his head.

"The gardener would hardly walk on flower-beds, and to my knowledge he
has no car."

She was listening, puzzled.

"What is it?" she asked, and again Peter showed signs of embarrassment.
He went red and shifted uneasily.

"The fact is...some fellow was in the grounds last night...we don't know
who it was, but one of the servants saw him." He pointed to a garden bed
under the window. "He left footmarks on the mould. It is nothing to worry
about. Bourke didn't come down because of that: we were merely discussing
it."

Seeing that he did not wish to pursue the subject, Jane left the men
alone. She expected Bourke to stay to lunch, but, to her surprise, he
disappeared, and she found herself alone at the long table with Peter.

He was no more inclined now to discuss the midnight visitor than he had
been.

"A tramp possibly," he said. "These fellows know that the house is empty
half the year. I suppose he was looking for an unfastened window."

He spoke enthusiastically of Bourke, his genius and his qualities as an
investigator. She listened without interrupting to a eulogy that lasted
through the greater part of the meal.

"How did you come to know these people at Scotland Yard, Peter?" she
asked, as they strolled out on to the sunlit lawn.

The question produced a curious effect upon him: from the self-possessed,
cool man of the world, he became an incoherent, stammering schoolboy.

"Well...they have been rather decent to me...taken an interest in me and
all that sort of thing and helped me tremendously, especially Bourke. You
have no idea what good fellows they are. And of course it is always as
well to be on the right side--"

"On the right side of Scotland Yard? Why?" she asked quickly.

He did not answer at once, evidently revolving in his mind many
alternative answers.

"Well, it is," he said at last, very unconvincingly, and changed the
subject.

They spent the afternoon on a miniature golf course. As the day wore on,
they both experienced something of the tension and the peculiar
antagonism of the night before. Was it antagonism? Was it not in her
heart a fear and in his a sense of resentment, she wondered.

He grew shorter and more sparing of speech. Eventually she relapsed into
silence, and in silence they dined, under the myopic eye of the old and
asthmatic manservant who acted as butler, footman and man-of-all-work.

After dinner she wandered into the drawing-room. The night was a little
chilly: a small wood fire smouldered on the open hearth. He followed, and
waited (she imagined) with suppressed impatience until the coffee had
come. It was almost like a ritual, this coffee-drinking together. The
girl in the grey evening frock, and the man sitting stiffly on the edge
of a big armchair, were indulging in a ceremony from which neither
obtained the least pleasure.

Presently he made an excuse.

"I shall be in the library if you want me," he said, in such a tone as
suggested to her that he had not the slightest expectation of being
wanted at all.

At ten o'clock she looked in. He was sitting at the table with a blank
sheet of notepaper before him, nibbling the end of a. pen. Peter jumped
up in some confusion, which suggested she had surprised him in a
reprehensible act.

"I am going to bed now," she said, and was gone before his mumbled reply
reached her.

Sleep did not come easily, and hardly had her head touched the pillow
before she remembered the visitor of the night before. She got out of bed
and, going to the window, looked out. The moon had not yet risen. The
calm of the day was at an end: a fitful wind was blowing; from somewhere
in the south came a low growl of thunder.

She pulled the curtains over the open window, went back to bed and tried
to sleep. It was an hour before she fell into a restless slumber.

It was unusual in her to dream, but now dreams followed in bewildering
succession. Of Peter, of her father, of that stout detective. They were
without beginning or end--just fitful, uneasy glimpses of horrors--Peter
drowning in the sea and the detective grinning fiendishly at him from the
high bridge of a liner...

She turned in her sleep, shivering. Peter had told her to lock the door,
but she had no fear.

Suddenly she was awake. Somebody's arm was about her thinly clad
shoulders.

There were lips to her cheek, hot, hungry lips that roved blindly. With a
scream she struggled up, fighting back the man who held her.



CHAPTER 5


HER HAND thrust wildly at a bristling chin--she remembered an old
jiu-jitsu trick and pressed it upward, and as she did so she felt the arm
encircling her shoulder relax under the shock. In an instant she wriggled
from his grasp and was out of bed, too breathless to scream, too
terrified to think.

Blindly she ran to the door by the window. It swung open and she was in
the dour sitting-room. She could see nothing. The drawn curtains excluded
even the faint lights of the night.

Behind her she could hear the scraping of feet on the polished floor of
her bedroom, and in a frenzy of fear she ran forward and, stumbling over
a chair, fell. Falling, her hands touched the handle of a door, and this
in her desperation she turned.

"Who is there?"

A sudden blinding glow of light. Peter was half out of bed. As she picked
herself up from where she sprawled on the floor she stared at him,
amazed, dumbfounded. The visitor of the night had not been this newly
wakened sleeper. She had felt the roughness of a tweed coat and a soft
collar.

"Jane! What is wrong?"

She could only point backward through the dark opening of the door and
gasp an incoherent story. Before she was half way through her narrative,
Peter had run past her. Jane staggered to the bed and sat down. She was
trembling from head to foot. For the first time in her life she had
known, fear. And she was cold--terribly cold.

She looked round helplessly for something to cover her, did not see his
black dressing-gown hanging behind the door.

Peter came back to find her sitting on his bed, an eiderdown about her
trembling shoulders.

"Your window is wide open and there is a ladder against the wall outside.
Now just tell me what happened."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and listened as she told her
disjointed story. He was not furious, as she expected him to be. There
was a certain gravity in his tone which first surprised and then piqued
her. All his interest seemed to be centred, not in the identity, but in
the clothing of the visitor.

"You're sure he was dressed?"

"Of course he was dressed," she said, a little impatiently. "I tell you,
I felt the coat, and there was a safety pin in his collar which came
loose and scratched my finger--look!"

He was silent for a while, but she knew that he was not thinking of her
scratched finger, at which he had hardly glanced.

"He didn't speak--you're sure of that? And he wore boots? I must have been
sleeping heavily: I did not hear you scream."

"I didn't scream. I had no breath to scream. I thought it was--you!"

He had raised his head, listening. She heard the whine and purr of a
distant motor car.

"That is he," he said.

It may have been imagination on her part, but she could have sworn she
detected relief in his tone.

"Why didn't you follow him?"

She tried to simulate reproach, but did not succeed. She was only too
glad that he had not left her alone.

"I wasn't sure." And then, in some confusion: "You see, I didn't exactly
know what had happened--it might have been nightmare. And even if I had
followed, it is very unlikely that I could have come up with him."

He was walking about the room, gathering up his clothes.

"I suppose you want me to go?"

He shook his head again.

"No, I'll dress. It's nearly four o'clock and I've slept quite long
enough. You had better stay here and keep the light on till I come back."

Apparently he dressed in the sitting-room, for in an incredibly short
space of time he returned to take the electric torch that lay on the
bedside table.

"I'm going down the ladder to do a little investigation," he said. "In
the meantime you can either go to sleep--I don't think you will,
somehow--or dress yourself--or, alternatively, stay where you are!"

He said this with one of those quick, rare smiles of his, and she had the
impression that he was feeling very cheerful about something. She heard
his feet on the rungs of the ladder, and, slipping out of the bed, she
made her way to the sitting-room.

The electric fire offered a coal-like comfort, but it did not induce her
to stay. Passing into her bedroom, she shut the door and looked out of
the open window. Peter was standing on the gravel path below. She saw the
circle of his lamp roving the garden beds, and she must have made some
sound, for he addressed her.

"There are new footmarks here," he said conversationally.

It was extraordinary, she thought, as she closed the window and drew the
curtains before turning on the light, how calmly he accepted her
terrifying experience. It was almost as though he had expected something
of the sort to happen.

She had not finished dressing when she heard him come back up the ladder,
cross the sitting-room and pass into the corridor. Going into the
sitting-room, she found he had turned on the lights. She had hardly
settled herself in a chair before the all too warm radiator when he came
in with two cups of tea and a plate of biscuits, which he set on the
table. He might have been a thought-reader, to have gauged her wonder and
resentment.

"I suppose you think I take this rather calmly," he said. "As a matter of
fact, I'm only just beginning to realize what has happened. If I'd been
quite awake I'd have gone after that fellow and broken his neck!"

The venom in his voice was certainly genuine, she decided. She too was
feeling the reaction, and though the hand that reached out to take the
tea did not tremble, she had not wholly recovered from the shock. Dawn
was paling in the eastern skies; the elms in the drive were a hard, black
line against the steel of morning.

"We had better change rooms," he suggested. "I can keep my window closed.
There are three panes which open and admit all the air that I want. But I
don't imagine this bird will repeat his attempt--you found no jewellerymissing?"

She shook her head. That had been one of the discoveries she had made
when she went to dress; though the thought that she might have been
robbed had been the last thing to occur to her.

"No; I very foolishly left my rings and bracelets on the dressing-table,
but they have not been touched. If it were a burglar--"

She knew that it was no burglar, and in this certitude could not even
discuss such a possibility.

Making conversation was something of a trial. She discovered with a sense
of dismay that they had so few friends and interests in common. She found
herself talking about her wedding as though it were a ceremony in which
she had little more than a detached interest. She had not seen Marjorie
Cheyne Wells, either in the church or at the reception.

"Do you like her?" she asked, almost knowing what he would reply, for he
was one of those maddening people who had no strong likes or dislikes. It
was almost in the nature of a pleasant surprise to hear that Marjorie was
not a favourite of his.

"I don't quite know what to make of her," he said. "She can be so
extraordinarily sour--spiteful is a better word."

"Has she been spiteful to you?" she asked quickly, and he laughed.

"No. I'm too insignificant to arouse her animosity."

Here was an opportunity to ask a question which had been on the tip of
her tongue since the visit of the detective. This queer intimacy which
the adventure of the night had brought about created an atmosphere in
which the most embarrassing problems might be discussed. Nevertheless she
thought he was a little distant, and her uneasiness was intensified when,
for a moment after she had questioned him, he remained silent.

"Yes, it is perfectly true that this lady frequently visits me; but she
is, as I told Rouper, a cook--at least, she was many years ago."

He chuckled nervously. "She has a grievance," was all that he would tell
her, except that her name was Untersohn, of Swedish origin.

The sun came up into a blue, cloudless sky, and garden and lawn called
urgently. By seven o'clock, despite the stimulation of tea, Jane found
her head nodding. She went to her room, intending to lie down for an
hour--it was the sound of the luncheon gong which woke her.

Many things had happened while she had slept. Looking out of the window,
she saw Peter walking down the drive with a man whose figure suggested
Superintendent Bourke.

Peter was waiting lunch for her. "I told them not to sound that infernal
gong," he said. "You were sleeping so heavily that I didn't want you
wakened."

"Was that Mr. Bourke I saw?"

He explained that Bourke had come down at his request, and that he had no
doubt whatever about the man who had come to her room in the night being
the same individual who had been wandering about the grounds the night
before. He did not explain how he knew this, but went on:

"By the way, I hope you won't mind: I've asked Donald Wells if he can
come down--I would have gone up to him, but I don't like leaving you here
alone."

She looked up from her plate quickly.

"Why? Aren't you well?" she asked.

"Eh--well? Oh, yes, I'm well! Of course, Donald loathed the idea of
intruding on our honeymoon."

There was the ghost of a laugh in his eyes when he said this.

"Is he bringing Marjorie?"

Peter shook his head. "No," he said shortly.

"But why is he coming, if you're not ill?" she insisted.

It was an opportunity for heroics and oblique reproach. Yet somehow she
did not expect this, nor was she disappointed.

The afternoon came and brought the second shock of the day.

Peter was reading in the library, and she, having made a futile attempt
to interest herself in the rose garden and make conversation with an
ancient and taciturn gardener, had returned to the house with a blank
feeling of despair as she contemplated the hours that had to be filled
before bedtime.

Peter looked up as she came in and hastily concealed the book he was
reading--an odd circumstance which excited her curiosity.

"How long do we have to stay at Longford?" she asked desperately. "Peter,
this is an awful place, and will you be very angry if I tell you that I
am terribly bored?"

His smile was sympathetic. "I've been thinking the same thing," he
confessed, "and without consulting you I have engaged a suite at the
Ritz-Carlton. At least we shall have the theatres."

She was almost happy at the prospect of release from her dismal
environment.

"Father mustn't know--he wouldn't understand," she said. "When do we
leave?"

He told her that he had not been able to secure the suite he wanted until
the day after the morrow.

"What were you reading when I came in?"

Very guiltily he produced the book. It was a French work on etching. She
had forgotten that he had a hobby, and told him so.

"I owe it a lot," he said. "I shouldn't have met you if my vanity hadn't
run in the direction of a private show."

She had even forgotten that it was in a dingy gallery off Bond Street
that her father had introduced them.

"Poor Daddy! He was terribly upset about losing your plates. I am sorry."

Here Peter was sufficiently human to echo her sorrow. For in a moment of
expansiveness he had loaned what to him was an invaluable set of his
etchings to his prospective father-in-law. Peter's work was
extraordinarily fine. The lost plates, each no larger than a postcard,
represented his supreme efforts.

"It's a terrible pity--I'll never do such good work again," he said, for
the moment a picture of gloom. Then he laughed almost gaily. "And they
say we English have no artistic leaning! I offered a thousand pounds for
the return of the plates, but the finder preferred the masterpieces!"

She sat in a low chair on the other side of the fire, her chin in her
palm, looking at him, her mind strangely busy.

"I suppose this man--what do they call him?--the Clever One--must be an
etcher too? Daddy says that only a brilliant artist could do the work--he
has seen some specimens."

"I suppose so."

His tone was completely indifferent. Evidently he was not greatly
interested in the artistic abilities of the unknown forger. The very
mention of the Clever One seemed to dry up his good humour and inhibit
further conversation.

After a while she rose and went out into the hall.

She was standing at the door, looking across the park, when she became
aware of the car. It was not an ordinary limousine. Her first impression
was that by some error part of a circus procession had strayed into the
grounds. The body was large and old-fashioned. It was painted a bright
crimson lake, and this was “picked out” with gold. The handles and the
other metal appointments were of dull gold--the chauffeur and the footman
were in uniform which completely matched the car and its upholstery, for
their caps were gold-laced.

Watching this tremendous machine open-mouthed, Jane observed that the
servants' caps were further ornamented with imposing cockades.

The footman got down and opened the door. He seemed rather
self-conscious. From the interior stepped a large woman. She was of
commanding height; stout of build, coarse-skinned. But Jane could see,
beyond the inflamed face and swollen flesh, the beauty that once had
lived in that repellent visage. The thick coating of white powder
accentuated the furrows and wrinkles beneath. Her lips were a bright
scarlet, the eyelashes heavily darkened--a smear of the colouring matter
had somehow reached her cheek and had given a touch of the grotesque to a
face which in itself was a little terrifying.

Her swollen hands were gloveless, and every finger was tightly ringed
from knuckle to knuckle. There were diamonds in her ears, and suspended
from her neck a huge and glittering plaque that rested on her bosom.

She was expensively and youthfully dressed, but the colours must have
been of her own choosing. No tyrannical designer would have sanctioned
that champagne hue or those girlish lines.

She stood under the portico, staring sombrely at the girl.

"You're his wife? I'm Madame Untersohn."

Madame Untersohn--the cook! This, then, was the mysterious woman who had
visited Peter almost daily. Her voice was hard and common; she made no
attempt to carry any further than in her appearance and state the
illusion of gentility.

"I am Mrs. Clifton, yes."

The large woman was breathing heavily; obviously under the effect of some
pent emotion--Jane suspected a rumbling fury and was more interested than
alarmed.

"You're gettin' what ain't his to give." The visitor almost barked the
accusation. "What he's robbin' the rightful heir out of--"

For a moment Jane was staggered. She could overlook the theatrical
gesture, the hackneyed cliché of cheap melodrama. "Rightful heir? Who is
'the rightful heir'?" Madame Untersohn struck yet another attitude.
"Peter Clifton's brother--my son!" she said.



CHAPTER 6


PETER'S BROTHER? Peter was an only child: it was the one piece of
information that he had given to her about himself.

"I think you are mistaken--"

"Allow me!"

It was Peter's voice. He had come out of the library noiselessly behind
her.

"Allow you, eh?" The painted lips curled in an ugly sneer. "You'll do all
the talkin'! But you can't talk your poor brother out of his rights!"

There was a subtle difference in the harsh voice that addressed Peter
Clifton. The coarse assurance had been replaced by a note of pleading,
there was an uneasiness in it which was reflected in the woman's gesture,
for the jewelled hands were rubbing nervously one over the other and
the blackened lashes were blinking nervously.

"I come down to see you an' have it out!" The voice had grown shrill.
"I'm not afraid of you. If you come any of your father's tricks I'll
shoot you like a dog, by God I will!" She had snapped open the big bag
she carried, groped into its depths and now one trembling hand held a
nickel-plated revolver. "...shoot you as soon as look at you. I want
justice, and you ain't goin' to frighten me!"

Peter was surveying her, his face expressionless, his grave eyes fixed on
the woman's.

"Come in, Mrs. Untersohn," he said, and, turning, walked to the library
and threw open the door.

Jane could only gape, dumbfounded at the scene. It was like the segment
of a fantastic dream that had neither beginning nor end. She watched the
woman waddle past, her suspicious eyes on Peter, the shining pistol still
wagging tremulously in her hand.

Madame Untersohn backed into the room and Peter followed her. The door
closed upon them. Jane walked out on to the lawn, her head in a whirl.

What did all this mean--what explanation could there possibly be for the
intrusion of this overdressed old woman with her threats and her revolver
and her cryptic references to Peter's brother?

As she walked slowly and aimlessly towards the drive she heard the hum of
wheels and, looking up, saw a car appear from the direction of the lodge
gates. Her heart leapt as she recognized the blue body of it, and she ran
across the lawn, waving her hand.

"I'm terribly sorry--barging into Arcady and all that sort of thing."
Donald Cheyne Wells's white teeth showed in a smile as he took her hand.

"And I'm terribly glad you came," she said fervently. "Welcome to
Wonderland!"

He smiled again. "A pleasant wonderland, I hope?" he suggested. It was a
curious fact (she remembered even as she revealed the happenings of the
night) that she had never before been on terms of confidence either with
Donald or his wife, and yet, almost before she realized what she was
saying, she had told him of the midnight visitor.

The effect upon him was remarkable. He stood stock still, staring at her.

"For God's sake!" he breathed; and then quickly: "You didn't know him?"

There was something almost comic in his agitation. And then she saw his
eyes open even wider. The “coach” of Madame Untersohn had drawn up beyond
the house, and as they walked it had come into view.

"Untersohn--is she here?"

His face had gone peaked and grey. She could only gaze at him in
consternation.

"Do you know her? Who is she?"

But before her question was finished he was walking quickly towards the
house.

Before he could reach the portico, Madame Untersohn had appeared. Under
the powder her face was a choleric red. Imperiously she beckoned to the
watchful footman and her ponderous car moved towards her.

Cheyne Wells stopped at the sight of her and did not speak or move until
the machine moved on with its resplendent burden.

"How long has she been here?" He was brusque almost to a point of
rudeness.

"Only a few minutes," said Jane wonderingly. "Who is she?"

 She heard his long sigh, the sigh of a man from whom a weight of trouble
 had been shifted; his tone became more amiable.

"She's a woman who's been worrying Peter rather a lot, I fancy," he said.
And then quickly: "Did you see her? Did she say anything to you?"

Jane laughed.

"You're becoming mysteriouser and mysteriouser, Donald," she said. "Yes,
I did have a brief interview with the lady, in the course of which she
told me that her son was the rightful heir, that he was Peter's brother--"

Again his face had gone tense; his dark eyes had narrowed till they were
the merest slits.

"She told you that, did she? She's mad! Obviously she's mad. Nobody would
travel about in a band wagon as she does unless they were crazy. You
didn't take the slightest notice of anything she said, did you?"

Jane shook her head.

"I haven't had time to think about it," she said, and was going on, but
he interrupted her.

"Peter never had a brother. This woman is a lunatic, obsessed with the
idea that her son is the heir to Peter's fortune."

"She doesn't seem particularly poor herself," said Jane, remembering the
flashing diamonds.

Wells nodded.

"She ought to be a rich woman. That makes her behaviour all the more
extraordinary." He seemed most anxious to convince her on the point--too
anxious, she thought, in her shrewd way.

"Peter should have had her arrested years ago; he's too
kind-hearted--hallo, Peter, old boy!"

Peter Clifton had strolled out from the house, his hands thrust deep into
his flannel pockets, a half smile on his lips. Without a word to the
girl, Donald Wells darted to him, caught him by the arm and led him,
reluctantly, Jane thought, back into the house.

"Mysteriouser and mysteriouser," said Jane, and went up to her ugly
little sitting-room. No bride ever felt more unbride-like than she, or
less necessary to the happiness, the comfort or the entertainment of
anybody.

She could not believe her ears a quarter of an hour later when she heard
Donald's car moving off. He had gone without saying goodbye, without
exchanging another word. At first she was amused, then a little angry,
and it required something more than Peter's message of farewell at third
hand to restore her equanimity.

"He had to rush back to town."

"Why did he rush down?" she asked, almost tartly.

"I asked him to see me--what do you think of the lady?"

He followed her into the library and pushed an easy chair for her, but
she stood by the side of the library table, her fingers drumming
ominously.

"Have you any more surprises for me?" She asked, and something in her
tone amused him, for he laughed.

"I'm terribly sorry." Peter was apologetic, but he was in no sense
abashed--not even apprehensive. "She was surprising, wasn't she?"

He was waiting for a further question, and she did not disappoint him.

"What did she mean when she talked about your brother?"

He smiled faintly.

"That is one of my many family skeletons," he said; "to me, the smallest.
I suppose I've got an unmoral mind, but that particular indiscretion of
my father does not trouble me as it should."

She was silent at this.

"Oh--is it that?" she asked awkwardly.

"It is that. I'm sorry. Mrs. Untersohn, who, so far as I know, is Miss
Untersohn, has very hazy ideas of primogeniture and imagines that her son
is entitled to a--er--share in the estate."

His questioning eyes were upon her. Was she convinced? they seemed to
ask.


"It is very--ugly, isn't it?"

It was a lame, almost hypocritical response on her part; she really was
not shocked; did not even realize the unpleasantness of the revelation.
Her chief emotion was one of relief.

"Yes--very. Do you mind? I have asked Bourke to come to dinner."

She was a little staggered at this.

"The police officer? Peter, why are you so keen on having detectives
around you?"

This genuinely amused him.

"I thought I had explained," he laughed. "In fact, I can't improve on the
explanation I have given. Bourke is a very good friend of mine. He has
done a great deal for me. Do you really mind if he comes? I can put him
off."

She had no objections at all. A third at dinner would relieve the
tension.

"Is he staying the night?"

Peter shook his head.

"He goes back to London soon after dinner."

There was no link between their talk and the realization of their
extraordinary relationship. It came upon her suddenly--the grotesque
unreality of their positions. Peter had accepted her with amazing
readiness; his compliance was almost inhuman. She sat at the window of
her bedroom, looking out over a world that had grown bleak and a little
ugly, wondering whether presently she would wake up and find her marriage
was a dream; in some respects--here was the curious perversity of
it--rather a pleasant dream.

When she saw Peter crossing the lawn slowly she had to tell herself:
"That is your husband--you bear his name; you are his wife till death do
you part."

Even the horrible inevitability did not shock her; even as she did not
believe the unbelievable phenomenon of her marriage, so she accepted her
own fate as something in which she was not personally interested.

"Which is silly," she told herself; yet there was no conviction in her
scorn.

The afternoon post brought a letter from Basil Hale, and the sight of his
handwriting gave her a little pang. Peter brought the letter to her in
her room, together with a wrappered newspaper.

"I didn't see the postman come," she said in surprise.

"He was here an hour ago--I forgot to give you the letter," he answered.

She slit the envelope--what had Basil to say? He had, he said, returned
from Bournemouth that morning; the London postmark indicated the earliest
postal collection.

'I am wondering when it will be reasonably decent to call upon you young
love birds...Your father was so dismal the night you left that I took a
late train to Bournemouth. I don't exactly know why...'

The rest was so much chronicling of unimportant personal experiences.

For some reason the letter irritated her. It may have been the suggestion
that there was a privacy into which he or anybody else could not intrude.

Basil was being normally impertinent. She was forced to consider her
mental attitude towards Basil Hale. They had been friends years before
she had met Peter. A typical happy-go-lucky young man of the town, coarse
in the grain, inclined to be loose of tongue, but thoroughly amusing.
Brilliant sometimes; an excellent companion who could shock, but never
bored.

Idly she turned over the little sheet and saw that at the bottom he had
written a postscript--an odd trick of his:

'I am terribly worried about you--honestly. Have I done right? Have any of
us? This passion for money for which we are prepared to sacrifice
everything--'

There the postscript ended--without so much as a full stop. Jane searched
the envelope for some continuation of the message--there was none. But as
she opened it out she made a discovery. The flap of the envelope curled
back under the strain of her search, and the gum was still wet.

Somebody had opened the letter and read it, and that somebody could be no
other person than her husband.



CHAPTER 7


SHE FOUND Peter in the library, dozing over a book, and without preamble
made her accusation.

"I am probably being very unjust in suspecting you of a meanness which
only one of the servants--"

"You need not blame the servants," he said quietly. "Yes, I opened the
letter."

A wave of anger swept over her and for a moment left her dumb.

"You opened my letter? Why? Is that one of the privileges that marriage
gives you?"

"I haven't noticed any particular privilege attaching to matrimony," he
said, with a half smile which maddened her. (She told herself she loathed
Peter in his more confident mood.)

"Will you please explain"--she tried to keep her voice calm--"why you took
this extraordinary step? It was not an accident--you would have told me."

"It was not an accident," he said coolly. "Only I object to Basil Hale’s
corresponding with you. I intended telling you this later--I never dreamt
he would have the nerve to write to you; when you were on
your--honeymoon."

She was angry, but she was bewildered too. She had always thought that he
and Basil were good friends. And, as if he read her mind, he went on
quickly: "I am not jealous in the vulgar sense of the word. Hale and I
are as the poles apart. I mistrust him, and he doesn't like me."

"Why do you mistrust him?"

He shrugged.

"One takes unreasonable dislikes, and he is one of them. I know I have
committed an unpardonable fault, but, Jane, I had only your happiness in
mind."

The last part of his speech was uttered a little haltingly. She was not
convinced. Unless she was prepared to quarrel, the sane course was to let
the matter rest where it stood; saner, perhaps, to find an excuse for him
in order that the possibilities of a growing friendship might not be
disturbed. This last course she took.

"It isn't really important," she said, almost carelessly. "I was a little
annoyed. One gives letters a very special value."

"Naturally. I'm terribly sorry."

This incident drove them a little farther apart; by the time Bourke
arrived their relations were almost frigid, and she could bless the happy
thought that had brought a third party to that unpromising meal.

Mr. Bourke, that stout man, was in his heartiest mood, so that she thawed
under his genial influence and found herself taking an interest in
criminals. Apparently there was only one in the world, and that one
exceptionally clever.

"I'm a poor man, but I'd give a thousand pounds to put my hand on him,"
boomed Mr. Bourke.

He had a trick of emphasizing his words with imaginary thumps on the
table. Every time he raised his huge fist Jane winced, but never once did
the expected thud come.

"Here's a man outside of all the criminal categories. He has
confederates, yet none have betrayed him. Why? Because they don't know
him!"

"In what respect does he differ from other forgers?" she asked.

There was no need for her to simulate an interest is the Clever One; the
unknown forger had taken hold of her imagination.

Bourke put his hand in his pocket, took out a thick leather notecase and
opened it. From one of its many compartments he extracted an American
bill for one hundred dollars.

"Look at that," he said. "You're not an expert, but if you were you'd say
the same. It is impossible to distinguish this from a genuine bill. There
are plenty of cheap forgeries in circulation. There is a place in Hamburg
where you can buy five-pound notes at eighteenpence a time. But a fellow
who buys the Clever One's work has got to pay--and he's paying for
safety."

Peter, who seemed scarcely interested, broke in with a question.

"What would that hundred-dollar bill cost straight from the hands of the
maker?" He leaned forward as he asked the question, his eyes on the
detective's face.

"Twenty dollars," replied Bourke promptly; "or rather, that would be the
cost from the agent, who would probably make five dollars on the
transaction. That is where the Clever One differs from all the others--he
charges for peace of mind. You could go through the United States of
America with a pocket full of these, and the chance of your being caught
is one in ten thousand. Unless you happen to be in Washington or in some
town where there was a chance of the Federal authorities taking a casual
peek at the money in circulation. There was a banker in Ohio who, in the
course of a year, passed three thousand of these hundred-dollar bills
into circulation--innocently, of course."

The modus operandi of the Clever One he found difficult to explain.
Agents had been arrested in Paris, Berlin and Chicago, and they could
give no other information except that at an agreed hour and rendezvous,
usually at night, and in some open place where there was no chance of
espionage, the forged bills or banknotes were handed to them and they
gave in exchange the price to the last penny. With the forgeries was a
typewritten slip telling them where they could write for the next batch.
The address was never the same: it was, the police discovered in one
case, an “accommodation” provided by a small newsagent. Invariably a
chance-found boy was sent to collect the letters, which probably passed
through two or three hands before they eventually reached the forger.

"He never makes the mistake of flooding the market. Sometimes he will
supply nothing for nine months at a time. But what he turns out is the
best. The only thing we're certain about is that his agents are very few
in number. There never has been a case where deliveries have been made
simultaneously in Paris and Berlin."

"Yet his profits must be enormous," said the girl wonderingly.

Bourke nodded.

"Sixty thousand a year. That's a lot of money. The only time he ever put
out forged bills wholesale was during the slump of the franc--he was
probably one of the contributing causes. He put thirty million francs in
mille notes on the French market."

Peter had been playing with his knife through this conversation, his eyes
fixed upon the table. Jane had the impression that he was a little bored,
and wondered why a man who was so interested in police work should find
so little that was thrilling in this narrative.

She gathered from his restlessness that he was anxious to see Bourke
alone. He left the conversation to Bourke and herself and sat throughout
the meal staring at the one picture the room held--a big oil painting in a
dull gold frame affixed to the panelling. It was a picture of a man of
the Regency period, high-stocked, heavy-faced, with a harsh, big mouth
and eyes into which the painter had conveyed more than a hint of cold
malignity. The picture seemed to fascinate him, for again and again his
eyes wandered back to the painted canvas.

At the earliest possible moment she rose and left them, and Peter visibly
brightened at the first sign of her coming departure. She was not by
nature curious, and was irritated to find herself speculating upon what
was the subject of the talk that held these two men in such earnest
conference. Really it was no business of hers.

She wandered from the drawing-room to her sitting-room upstairs; poked
the smouldering wood fire to a feeble liveliness, and, in sheer boredom,
searched the little bookshelf for something to read. There was a number
of three-decker novels, a volume on archaeology (published in 1863), a
dogeared school manual, and, to her surprise, a very modern volume in
German. She could not read German, but the illustrations left her in no
doubt as to the subject of the book. It was a manual on the art of
etching.

Peter's? She remembered the plates that her father had lost; remembered,
too, some of the better examples of Peter's work. A fenland scene, full
of light and soft shadows. John Leith had told her that this little work
of Peter's compared favourably with Zohn at his best.

The book had been read carefully, for there were certain unintelligible
phrases underlined. So Peter spoke or read German--she was discovering
some new accomplishment every day. Here she was shocked to find that
there was a sneer in her thought--there was no reason to sneer at Peter.
There was, in truth, much that she could admire and respect.

It was ten o'clock when Peter called her down to say goodnight to Mr.
Bourke. She stood by her husband's side and watched the red tail light of
the car disappear down the drive before they walked back to the library,
a little awkward in their companionship. "Well, did you have a very
satisfactory talk?" she asked.

She wasn't really interested, but she was trying desperately hard to
return her friendship to the notch whence it had slipped that afternoon.

He was gauche; stammered a little, and there was an uncomfortable silence
before she said "Goodnight" somewhat hastily, and went up to her room.

Tonight she locked the door, drew the curtains over the window and
fastened the latch of the casement so that it could not be opened; then
she undressed. She was not a bit tired--only bored, bored beyond words.
For an hour she lay, turning from side to side, in a vain attempt to
sleep, until at last she fell into a state that was neither one thing nor
the other, a sort of dazed and stupid wakefulness...

What brought her to full consciousness, her heart thumping, she did not
know. It was a sound--the crunch of feet on gravel. Perhaps in her sleep
subconsciously she had been listening. Danger had come before, and might
come again, from without.

She was out of bed in a second and, pulling on her dressing-gown, she
walked stealthily to the window and looked out. For a time she saw
nothing, and then...

It was not imagination: against the darkness of the grass she saw
something darker moving--the figure of a man.

She had to put her hand before her mouth to suppress the exclamation of
terror. There it was again! With trembling hands she opened the door
leading to the sitting-room, crossed it swiftly and opened Peter's door.
The bed was empty, had not been slept in, she saw by the light of the
little lamp burning on the bedside table.

The hands of the clock beneath the lamp pointed to two. She went through
the room and down the stairs. The library door was open and the interior
dark, but she saw a crack of light under the dining-room door and went
in. This room, too, was empty, but even as she turned the handle she was
conscious of a faint rhythmic-like whirr like the sound of machinery.

Where was the picture of the malignant man?

It had disappeared from the wall, and in its place was an oblong
aperture. The picture and the lower portion of the panelling formed a
door, now standing wide open.

Jane crept forward and, looking round the edge, saw a sight which she
would never forget.

A long, narrow room, dusty, unfurnished save for a stout bench in the
centre and a smaller bench against the wall littered with the
paraphernalia of the etcher's craft. But it was not these on which her
eye rested. On the central bench was a small machine that whirred and
clicked softly as its cylinders turned, A printing machine...

Then her heart nearly stopped beating, as she saw the oblong slips which
were being fed along a small canvas band. They were banknotes, and the
man who was standing, watching the automatic delivery, was her husband!



CHAPTER 8


JANE COULD only stare at her husband--numbed--speechless. Here, then, was
the secret of the Clever One, and the Clever One was--

She wanted to scream as the horror of her discovery came upon her. She
was married to a forger, the most notorious forger in the world, the man
for whom the police of Europe and America were searching. It wasn't true,
it couldn't be true. Yet here he was, examining with a critical eye one
of the notes he had taken from the belt.

His back was towards her as she cringed away from the door. She gained
the hall, and had one foot on the stairs when she remembered the man on
the lawn. Under the stress of this new shock he seemed unimportant, and
it was not until she reached the upper landing that the old fear
returned, and, leaning over the banisters, she called Peter by name. At
the third time his voice answered her.

"What is it, Jane?" he asked.

"There is a man...on the lawn."

She tried to keep her voice steady. He heard its quaver and misunderstood
the cause. She waited, listening, heard him go back to the dining-room
and the soft thud of a door closing, and then a sharp click. Almost
immediately she heard him race into the hall and the jangle of chains
being removed.

From the window of her room she caught a glimpse of him in the light
thrown from the hall. There was no sign of the intruder, and after a
while she saw Peter reappear from the gloom.

She was sitting now, terribly calm, not as she had been the night before.
The discovery had stunned her, yet her mind was unnaturally active. She
could remember certain little incidents, examine them with a strange,
passionless detachment. This was the source of Peter's wealth, the
explanation for the “legacy.” He was the Clever One, and this house,
which he pretended to rent, was his headquarters.

As she drew the curtain and turned on the lights she heard his foot on
the stairs, and when he appeared in the doorway she was not more than a
few feet away from him.

"I could see nobody," he said breathlessly, and then, as he saw her face,
she detected the look of dismay in his eyes.

She knew she was pale, never dreamt how colourless and drawn her face had
become.

"My dear! You look terrible! If I find that man I'll murder him!"

"The man?" She had almost forgotten the shape on the lawn. "Oh, yes. You
didn't find him?"

He made no answer, his chief concern for the moment was this shaken wife
of his.

"We'll go to town tomorrow," he said, and when she shook her head: "Why?"
he demanded in surprise.

"I don't know. I'll tell you tomorrow. I'm very tired."

She was more than tired. Mentally and physically she was exhausted. She
lay for half an hour staring into the dark, trying to reorganize her
outlook upon life and Peter. Once she heard him go out from the house,
evidently conducting a new search for the unknown trespasser.

Jane went cold as a possible solution for that intrusion came to her. A
detective! Was Peter under observation? In his anxiety to keep friendly
with the police was he blind to the possibility that Bourke had guessed
his secret and was watching him?

She fell into a deep sleep amidst these speculations and woke to find the
sun pouring into her room and hear the vinegary-faced Anna asking if she
had had a good night.

Jane sat up in bed and looked round, bewildered. Had it all been an ugly
dream? It was almost impossible to believe that it could have been
anything else, in the freshness and gaiety of the morning...

"Did you go downstairs in the night, ma'am?" Anna was asking. "I found
one of your slippers in the hall."

No dream--hideous reality. She remembered leaving the slipper behind her
as she had fled up the stairs.

"Reminded me of Cinderella," Anna went on--the morning seemed to have
brought a little of its loveliness into her own withered heart. "Funny me
thinking that--I ain't seen the play for years."

As Jane sipped her tea an idea occurred to her. "Anna--to whom does this
house belong?"

Anna shook her head. "I don't know now, ma'am. It used to be owned by an
old gentleman who lived abroad. Maybe he's dead by now. The agent is a
gentleman named Blonberg--he's got an office in the West End--Knowlby
Street. I never seen him. Sometimes he comes down here and stays a month
at a time."

Jane stared at the woman.

"And yet you've never seen him?"

"No, ma'am. When Mr. Blonberg comes down he brings his own servants, and a
poor lot they are! The place is like a pigsty after they've gone. Nothing
swept, nothing dusted, the garden in rack and ruins."

"But where do you go when he's here?"

Anna smiled toothlessly.  "Home to my brother in London. All the servants
get a holiday on board wages--none of us live in the neighbourhood, except
the gardener. He works in the garden three days a week, but he's not
allowed to come to the house."

Jane turned the extraordinary circumstances over and over in her mind.
Who was Mr. Blonberg? Somebody who was anxious to avoid recognition...

She began to see clearly now. This was Peter's own house...Blonberg was
the name behind which he worked and schemed--the man who, according to
Bourke the detective, had many confederates, but was not betrayed because
they were ignorant of his identity.

She was very cool now, until a little aching of heart revealed a most
peculiar and devastating knowledge. She was fond of Peter! Why this
discovery of his guilt should emphasize his attractive qualities she
could not analyse. Of a sudden she was conscious of his great loneliness,
his danger, was tenderly aware of his gentleness with her.

What could she do? Write to her father and tell him everything? She shook
her head at the thought. No, it must remain her secret--hers and
Peter's--and she must find some way to avert the inevitable disaster which
awaited him.

The police were already suspicious and the net was being drawn. Rouper
knew him for what he was, Bourke must know, too, and be utilizing his
friendship to blind Peter to the peril in which he stood.

Jane was the type that thrived on the threat of misfortune. All her
dormant qualities were stirred to life. She was almost cheerful as she
stood under the cold shower and felt the icy fingers of the water tattoo
upon her slim body.

Peter was in the grounds, striding up and down the lawn, and at the sight
of his face she hardly restrained an exclamation of alarm. He was pale,
hollow-eyed, listless.

"No--I didn't sleep very well," he said. "The truth is--the country doesn't
agree with me. But I am afraid you will have to put up with Longford
Manor for another night--those confounded people can't put us up until
tomorrow."

There was a querulous note in his tone--she had never seen him so nervous
and irritable.

"I should like to spend a full week here--can't we?" she asked.

To leave this place with its ghastly secret for other prying eyes would
be an unpardonable folly.

He seemed relieved at her suggestion, and then his face clouded.

"I suppose it isn't possible for you to go to town and leave me here for
a day or two?" And then, quickly: "That's an extraordinary suggestion, I
know, and of course it is impossible. Only--I've one or two things I want
to clear up. And I thought of asking Cheyne Wells to come down for a
night, I wish to see him about--things."

She puzzled over the suggestion that Donald Wells should be asked down.
Did Peter wish to see him as friend or doctor? The strain he was
undergoing must be a frightful one, calling for every stimulation that
science could devise.

"Certainly, ask him. But, Peter, I couldn't possibly go to town by
myself--people would think all sorts of queer things."

He ought to know, she thought, that what “people” might think or say
would not influence her in the slightest degree. Apparently he accepted
her conventional objection without question. She was almost annoyed.

Slipping her arm through his, she paced by his side.

"Peter--I'm being a selfish pig and you're being a perfect angel. If you
don't hate me you ought to--if I were you I'd loathe the sight of me! But
I really do want to help you--where and how I can. I mean--in various
ways."

He laughed softly.

"You don't know how you're helping me at this very minute!" he said, and
added, before he could check his speech: "I hope you never will know."

Here was a challenge which yesterday she would have taken up instantly.
To his relief she did not ask the question which he thought was
inevitable.--He gave her little chance, for he went on:

"If you think you're being unreasonable, it will comfort you to know that
I'm not worrying--really. My natural vanity was rather hurt for a bit. Men
are rather godlike--they think the world and all that is in it was created
for their satisfaction. I don't think you hate me or that we're going to
drift apart, or that we've discovered that we've both made a terrible
mistake and that the future is a tragic blank. The only unreality about
our marriage was an entire absence of courtship--an old-fashioned word but
the only one."

She nodded. That really was the case. Peter and she had enjoyed the most
formal of engagements. Except for the kiss he had given her in the vestry
on the day of their marriage, there had been nothing.

"Anyway we avoided that illusion," he went on surprisingly. "And it is
the greatest of all the illusions. A man meets a girl, is on his best
behaviour--meets her again, calls on her people and takes her to dances
and things. She learns to like him--allows him certain little
privileges--they drift into an engagement. He seldom shows her the ugly
side of him--always on his best behaviour, always acting perfection.
Naturally she is an idealist and, seeing her ideal, loves the man he
shows her. And then they marry and he slackens off. She sees him at
breakfast, when he doesn't have to act, and after dinner, when he's as
nature made him, and she knows she's been cheated. I'd rather you were
never cheated."

Jane listened, fascinated. For the moment she forgot that she was talking
to the Clever One, the forger for whom the police of Europe were
searching; forgot the cloud that shadowed both their lives, in the
exposition of a philosophy which held for her a hope--a certainty of
happiness.

"We'll just hang on and trust in truth," he smiled down on her oddly. "I
think we shall have great need of one another. Please God you will have
no great shocks in the near future, but if you do--I want to feel that
there is firm ground beyond any mud through which we may have to wade."

Thus, in the glory of morning sunlight and amidst the fragrance of
flowers, he offered his first warning of the catastrophe that was to
shake her to the very foundations of life.



CHAPTER 9


"WHAT DO you mean--mud?"

She had to force herself to ask the question, and her voice was husky.
Perhaps he would tell her the truth and ask her help. She knew he loved
her; was more sure of him at that moment than ever she had been. The
realization brought her to the edge of tears. Eagerly, yet dreading, she
waited, holding her breath.

"Mud--well, ugliness. I can't explain."

He was vague, unwilling, she guessed, to go any farther along the path of
self-revelation. The breakfast gong put a prosaic period to his mood.

At breakfast he relapsed into silence. Once she saw him staring fixedly
at the picture on the panelled wall, and, in spite of her self-control,
shuddered. Fortunately he did not notice.

She tried to make conversation. Very daringly she referred to the
eccentric Mrs. Untersohn--a subject that had by tacit agreement been
taboo--and only then did she arouse him to interest.

"A queer woman--she lives at Hampstead--no, that isn't why she is queer.
Lots of nice, normal people live at Hampstead. She ought to be well off,
but I suspect her son is a drain. I've helped her many times--I suppose
I've given her ten thousand pounds in the past four years."

He was very diffident and apologetic about his plan to have Cheyne Wells
down for the night.

"As a matter of fact, it was his suggestion; he thought I was looking run
down--are you sure you don't mind?"

If he had asked her on the previous night she would have been
wholehearted in her endorsement of the plan. But now--? She did not want
outsiders. With Peter alone she might get nearer to his confidence.

"When is he coming?"

"Tonight--if you'd rather he didn't I could put him off?"

But she shook her head.

That morning, after Peter had gone to the village to send some telegrams
(he said), she made a discovery. It came about in a most commonplace way.
Anna had unpacked her trunk and deposited its contents in various drawers
of the ancient wardrobe. Jane could not find her handkerchiefs and rang
for the ancient maid.

"Now where did I put 'em, ma'am?"

Anna added a new homeliness to her face by a deep frown.

"I remember--I put all the handkerchiefs together in Mr. Clifton's
dressing-table drawer. I'll get 'em."

"Don't trouble--I can find them myself."

Jane was in no great hurry. It was half an hour later that she went into
Peter's room. The one drawer in his dressing-table was locked, but the
key was on the table top. She turned the lock, opened the drawer, and the
first thing she saw was a neat pile of small copper plates. She lifted
the top plate out and instantly recognized it as one of the collection
which Peter said her father had lost. There was no doubt about it. So
they hadn't been lost after all! Peter, in his absent-minded way, had
them here all the time and had forgotten. When had they been mislaid? She
concentrated in an effort of memory. On April 1st! She remembered that
her father had made a jest about the date, denying that he had ever had
the plates and claiming that Peter was making an April fool of him.

The servant came up soon after and Jane asked carelessly: "When was Mr.
Blonberg here last?"

Anna thought.

"At the beginning of April, ma'am."

So that was it! Jane recalled the fact that at the beginning of April
Peter had a mysterious call to Paris.

"He didn't always sleep here--Mr. Blonberg. He comes down for the day in
his car and goes back the same night as often as not. He always drives
himself in a little closed car."

Jane sighed.

"How interesting!" she said.

With an effort she drove her mind to a more mundane subject.

"Dr. Wells is staying the night--I suppose there is a spare bedroom?"

"Three, ma'am. Is he coming by himself?"

It was a startling possibility that Donald Wells should bring his wife,
the one woman in the world whom Jane actively disliked.

"I suppose so--yes, I'm sure."

The possibility of being called upon to entertain Marjorie Cheyne Wells
was more than she dared contemplate.

Donald came after lunch--and came alone.

"There is nothing to be alarmed about," he told her when, at the first
opportunity, she sought him out and asked point-blank if there was any
special reason for his visit. "Peter is run down--I don't exactly know
why. He was as fit as a fiddle when he left London--I hope that woman
Untersohn hasn't rattled him. Marjorie? Oh, she's fine," he answered
shortly.

He gave her the impression that he was not anxious to discuss his wife.
Jane had guessed that the relationships between Donald and his wife were
not of the best, and Basil Hale had suggested that Mrs. Cheyne Wells was a
difficult woman to live with. But then, Basil's gossip was frankly
malicious.

For some reason Jane began to resent the presence of the doctor before he
had been in the house an hour. He represented a barrier to the smooth
progression of her new understanding with Peter--an understanding which
must remain one-sided until the opportunity came for her to tell him all
that she knew and feared. Towards the close of the day, however, she had
an experience which shattered much of her confidence that the
understanding could be anything more than one-sided.

She was alone with him for a few minutes before tea, and remembered the
incident of the morning. Perhaps he himself was unaware that the lost
plates had been found.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Peter--do you know that your plates are in the
drawer--the plates you thought Daddy had lost--"

So far she got, and stopped. His face had gone the colour of chalk.

"How do you know--why did you go to my drawer?"

His voice was sharp, almost angry, and momentarily she was staggered by
his tone.

"I went for some handkerchiefs--but, Peter, why are you cross? I thought
you valued those etchings..."

He was making a supreme effort to recover his equilibrium.

"Yes--sorry I'm so jumpy. In the drawer, are they? What a careless fool I
am! And I suppose I left the key on the table? I really need a nurse!"

The colour was back in his face, but he was obviously distressed by her
discovery. She knew, when he suggested that he did not know the plates
were there, he was lying, and lying clumsily.

"Very awkward--I mean, after accusing your father of losing them. Jane,
I'd be greatly obliged if you would keep this matter to yourself. I mean,
I shouldn't like your father to know that I'd made such an ass of
myself."

"But he'd understand--"

"I'd rather you didn't tell him--honestly. I'm rather keen on his not
knowing."

It seemed such a stupid little thing to make such a fuss about, but she
promised smilingly: the smile was wholly forced.

His anger she might understand; his undisguised fear was inexplicable.
Jane was baffled. Just when she thought she was beginning to know him,
something happened that threw her back to the place whence she had
started. She found a sort of an explanation in the presence of Donald
Wells. Peter was a bundle of jangled nerves--for the moment abnormal. How
far she had contributed to that state was a matter for uneasy
consideration.

She wrote to John Leith that afternoon--a colourless letter about
trivialities. She made no mention of the lost plates. Her letter to Basil
Hale was equally uninformative. She wondered as she wrote what would be
Basil's caustic verdict if he knew that his letter to her had been
opened. That was another strange happening at variance with all her
preconceptions of Peter.

Dinner was for eight o'clock, and at seven Peter and Donald Wells were
still together in the library. She dressed and came down. They were still
engaged, and she wandered out into the garden. The world was very quiet
and, except for the chattering of the birds, there was no sound. The
peacefulness of the evening had a curiously sedative effect upon her--she
was getting nervous, too. How nervous, she was to discover as she passed
through the opening in the yew hedge that led to the garden. Somebody
called her name in a whisper and she jumped.

"Oh! Who is that?"

She looked round with a wildly beating heart, saw nobody, and was
preparing to flee when the voice spoke again, this time more loudly.

"Jane!"

It was Basil Hale, sitting on a low garden seat, scarcely visible under
the drooping branches of a willow tree.

"Basil! What on earth are you doing here?"

He came cautiously from cover, a broad grin on his red face.

"Scared you!" he chuckled. "Where is hubby--with Donald?"

There was something in his tone that she did not like--perhaps she had
forgotten the old domineering air of proprietorship he had habitually
assumed. It jarred on her now a little.

"Yes--they are in the library. Are you staying to dinner?"

He shook his head.

"No--I've got my flivver down the road--I was on my way back to town and
thought I'd slip in for a glimpse of the bonny bride."

Her eyes were smiling--it had always been difficult to be annoyed with
Basil, though she found it less of an effort than usual.

"Been down to hear the preliminary court proceedings against Worth, a
crazy labourer who murdered his wife with a hatchet," he said pleasantly.

Basil had been called to the Bar. He never practised, but he took an
academic interest in horrors. Jane took none whatever, but it had so
happened that in her ennui of the afternoon she had read the newspaper
very thoroughly, and amongst other items had noticed that the police
court proceedings against the mad Worth had been postponed. She was on
the point of offering ironical condolences that he had had his journey
for nothing, when he continued:

"I've been in court all day--"

"But the case was postponed."

He seemed to regard this as a great joke.

"Fancy your knowing that! Jane, you're becoming quite a murder expert.
Yes, it was postponed and my introduction is spoilt! Dam' nuisance--and I
rehearsed it so carefully! Do you remember the case of Alexander
Welerson?"

She was looking at him, her mouth an “O” of amazement.

"What are you talking about, Basil? Have you been--"

"Drinking? No. Welerson was a very rich man who killed two perfectly
innocent servants in cold blood. He's the text of my argument. He was
crazy mad, of course. There was a bad history of insanity in the family.
His father died in an asylum and Welerson eventually died in Dartmoor.
There hasn't been a member of the family that wasn't queer in some way or
other."

"What is all this to do with me?" she demanded, and he smiled up at her
slyly.

"Wells is here, isn't he? He's been looking after Peter for years. Why is
Wells here now? Because Peter feels another attack is coming on, after
Donald had given him a clean bill of health for his marriage."

She stood petrified with horror at the innuendo.

"Peter--what do you mean?"

He saw that she understood, and nodded.

"Peter's crazy. I like you too much to allow you to stay in ignorance of
your danger. He's the son of Alexander Welerson--a mad homicide--and it's
about time you knew what your fool father has allowed you to marry!"

Jane Clifton looked at the red-faced man, dazed, uncomprehending. The
horror of his revelation momentarily paralysed her.

"It's not true." She found her voice. "It was a terrible thing to
say--terrible!"

He was grave enough now.

"I'm not blaming your father--Wells said he was cured and they're all
gambling on that. But they're gambling with your life, Jane--"

He heard a quick step on the gravel and turned with a grimace of fear
that she did not fail to notice.

"What are you doing here?"

It was Peter's voice, hard and authoritative, Basil blinked at him.

"Eh? I happened to be passing and I thought I'd call in to see Jane. I
hope you don't mind?"

Peter glanced from one to the other. Jane's face was drawn and haggard;
her trembling body told him less than he wished to know, more than he
could see without pain.

"What have you been telling her?" he demanded in a low voice.

Basil made a pitiable attempt to appear indifferent.

"All the gossip of town, old boy--" he began, but Peter turned abruptly
away to the girl.

"What is wrong, Jane--what has he told you?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing," she muttered, and tried to brush past him.

"What has he told you?" His strong hands held her by the shoulder. He was
looking down into her face. She did not answer, and again he turned to
Basil.

"I've two scores against you. Hale," he said slowly, "and I'm going to
allow one of them to wait."

"I'm afraid I can't follow you." Basil was smiling, but the uneasiness in
his voice was clear even to Jane.

"You broke into my house the second night I was here, and into my wife's
room. For that I intended killing you. And if the thing you have told
Jane is what I believe it to be, keep out of my way, Hale!"

"Don't threaten me," grated the other, fury overcoming fear.

"I have warned you," said Peter.

What followed was so unexpected, so quick to happen, that Jane thereafter
had only a confused memory. She saw Basil Hale crouch, heard the thud of
the blow as Peter's fist caught him squarely on the jaw, and in another
second he was a sobbing, howling, bestial thing, writhing in a clump of
dwarf roses. Lifting her bodily, Peter swung her through the yew opening.

"I think you'd better go to the house," he said, and turned to meet the
fury that came leaping towards him with whirlwind arms.



CHAPTER 10


MADAME UNTERSOHN lived in a dark little Georgian house in Hampstead: a
squat, two-floored building that was hardly visible behind high walls or
through a confusion of trees which must have been planted in some remote
period almost trunk to trunk. It had been built in the days when America
was still a British colony and the neighbourhood a veritable woodland,
and was a house of uneven floors and low ceilings; the lower rooms had
the everlasting musty earth smell which seems inevitable in such old
houses. They are living yet decaying things, rooted in stale soil.

A dark house that at nights was full of creaks and rustlings; one almost
heard the shuffling of ghostly feet along its crooked corridors.

If Mrs. Untersohn could have lived happily anywhere it was at Heathlands
with its half acre of unkempt garden. The place was to her taste. A long
drawing-room cluttered up with quaint modern furniture, showy Japanese
cabinets and tawdry little souvenirs of her limited travels, was her
ideal of what such a room should be. Two domestic servants and a
chauffeur (she hired a footman for state occasions from a local garage)
comprised her staff.

Mrs. Untersohn was in her drawing-room sitting at an inadequate
writing-table and endeavouring, with the aid of pencil stub and a
memorandum book, to make both ends meet. There were inevitable
miscalculations, both in addition and subtraction, but the broad effect
of her accountancy was depressing. She rubbed her nose with her knuckles,
shook her head and betrayed by other signs the extent of her dismay.

She enjoyed a fixed income on which she could have lived comfortably, but
Madame Untersohn had many demands upon her purse--heavy and insistent
demands which could not be denied.

She looked at the jewelled watch on her wrist, rose with a groan of
discomfort and went upstairs to her bedroom. When she came down she was
dressed in an unpretentious ulster and a very plain hat--a change which
considerably improved her appearance, though she would have been annoyed
if anybody had told her this.

She went out, not announcing her departure, and, walking to the Edgware
Road, boarded a bus. It was nine o'clock when she came to Marylebone Lane
and Knowlby Street. Higgson House was a narrow-faced office block that
had been built on the frontage of a dwelling house by a speculative
builder. It stood, an eyesore to the neighbourhood, in a street of good
class houses and ran back to the untidy mews behind. Higgson House had
ruined its builder and brought to bankruptcy two of its eventual
purchasers. Its present owner had apparently found tenants for the tiny
suites and narrow rooms, for on the door posts were divers brass plates
and painted names. In faded yellow letters she read “Blonberg,
Financier.”

The front door was closed and she pressed a bell. Almost instantly there
was a click and the door yielded to her pressure. Closing it behind
her, she passed along the meagre passage and began to climb the stairs.
Three flights she negotiated and then came to a small landing from which
two doors opened. She turned the handle of that facing her and entered a
small back room lighted by one dusty lamp.

"Come in," called a voice.

It came from an inner room. There was no illumination, but
sufficient light came from the outer office to show a small table
apparently set against the wall. Mrs. Untersohn knew, as she sat down
breathlessly, that the “wall” was a screen of fine wire gauze and that
sitting behind that gauze was the man she sought.

"I had your note." The voice from the darkness had a hollow sound--a
little metallic and unnatural. "You ask for a lot of money."

"I'm worth a lot of money," she answered in her deep voice. "Millions! If
I had my rights..."

"I am not interested in your rights," said the voice, "but I am very much
interested in something else. You come at a very good time. Mrs.
Untersohn, if your son values his life he must not repeat his visit to
Longford Manor!"

"Eh!"

The unseen could imagine her jaw dropping with astonishment. Then she was
not in it, he decided.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Blonberg," she gasped. "My
son? He didn't go to Longford at all. I went there myself--and it was like
talking to a bit of stone tryin' to make Clifton do the right thing by
me. Him rollin' in money an' me tryin' to make a penny do the work of a
pound--"

"Your son was at Longford Manor last night," said the voice sternly. "He
broke into the room of Mrs. Clifton. Warn him. He should be down on his
knees in gratitude that he has the chance I give him. How much do you
want?"

The last question was put abruptly.

"A thousand, Mr. Blonberg--and as to my son."

"You can't have a thousand. Five hundred will be posted to you. Have you
the promissory note?"

She fumbled in her bag, produced a slip of paper and pushed it through a
slit, in shape and size like the slit of a letterbox, cut in the gauze.
Instantly she heard the crinkle of notes and saw a thin pad of money
lying on the table before her.

"Unfasten the spring catch of the front door as you go out and close it
after you," said the voice of Mr. Blonberg, "and as usual wait in the
outer office until you hear my bell ring."

Mrs. Untersohn got up from the table.

"I only want to tell you that my boy wouldn't do anything wrong," she
said. "He's naturally high spirited being a gentleman born, but--"

"Better be a gentleman born than a gentleman dead," said the ominous
voice. "Wait in the office."

She went outside. Presently she heard the snap of a lock and a faint
moaning sound that died away into silence. A few seconds later, a noisy
bell tinkled. Mrs. Untersohn went out, shutting the door, which fastened
behind her. Obediently she released the catch of the front door and
slammed it.

This time she did not go back by bus: it was raining, and, chartering a
providential taxicab which she found in Marylebone Lane, she was driven
home.

And throughout the journey her troubled mind was so occupied by the
thought of the danger attending the one person she loved, that she did
not realize she was still grasping the bundle of notes Blonberg had
pushed into her hands.

Her son. There had been a threat in Blonberg's voice. What did he know
about her boy? She was frightened by Blonberg--terribly frightened of the
glare of those unseen eyes. She had a strange, grotesque picture of him
in her mind, this ogre in the wire cage who knew everything--who told her,
on her first visit to him, all the secrets that she thought were locked
tight in her own breast.

But he wouldn't hurt the boy--for whom she had sacrificed
everything--almost everything.

With that piece of self-assurance she went to bed.

The next morning her maid brought her a cup of coffee and the newspaper.
The coffee she sipped leisurely, and enjoyed a sensation of complacent
comfort. The heavy demands that had been made upon her during the last
week could now be satisfied. He was a dear boy, she told herself, and
worth it.

The maid pulled up the blinds and handed her a pair of horn-rimmed
spectacles as she idly turned the pages of the newspaper. As idly she
read the headlines:--

MYSTERIOUS MURDER IN HERTFORDSHIRE

MR. BASIL HALE FOUND BATTERED TO DEATH IN THE GROUNDS OF HISTORIC MANOR

The maid heard the scream, turned in startled surprise to see the old
woman leap from her bed, gibbering and mouthing and still holding the
paper in her hand.

"My son, my son!" she  shrieked. "Murdered--my son!"



CHAPTER 11


JANE CLIFTON realized that she could be two persons. At the moment she
was one--but it was the wrong one. She could sit at dinner with her
husband and Wells and talk lightly and almost amusingly about people they
knew, could ask calmly whether Marjorie was well and take, or
surprisingly simulate, an interest in the petty interests of a woman whom
she passively disliked. She found herself talking about the wedding and
was shocked.

It was amazing that she could talk and act rationally. She was angered by
her own indifference, her own abnormal serenity. She tried to stimulate a
sense of horror which would not develop naturally. She was married to a
madman--tied to him for life--the son of a homicide, a forger planning and
carrying out his crime with all the proper cunning of a madman.

Jane found herself examining him feature by feature. There was nothing of
madness in his eyes--she dimly remembered a hideous picture her father had
once painted of a lunatic's face. It used to be kept in one of his locked
sketchbooks, but she had seen it one day and had been physically
nauseated. The loose mouth, the irregular features, the peculiar
unevenness of the face. John Leith had painted the picture in
water-colours for his own edification and had been brutally faithful to
his subject.

Peter bore no resemblance to this nightmare portrait. The hands that were
folded on the table were singularly beautiful, big, but as shapely as a
woman's. His mouth was firm, the gaze fixed upon Cheyne Wells steadfast.

If she could only experience some emotion--fear, contempt, indignation at
the wrong he had done in marrying at all--if she were anything but what
she was, an impersonal observer of his weaknesses, she might bring her
own fate into perspective.

Donald Wells seemed unconscious of the strained atmosphere. No reference
had been made to that encounter in the garden. Though she had seen Peter
for a moment before dinner, she did not ask what had become of Basil, and
he had volunteered no explanation. There was a bruise on his cheek and
one of his fingers was bandaged. He told Wells in the course of the meal
that a dog had bitten him, and pooh-poohed the suggestion that he should
have the wound, slight as it was, examined.

It was obvious to Jane that even Donald Wells knew nothing of the fight
or of Basil's presence, for once in the course of dinner he mentioned
casually that he had met Basil in Bond Street and that he was going
abroad for three months. But the doctor was not kept in ignorance very
long. Jane had hardly left the room before the doctor put the question
that he had wanted to ask through the meal.

"What is the matter, Peter?"

Peter shook his head.

"Nothing," he said curtly.

"Don't be a fool. Something has upset you."

Peter hesitated for a while, and then briefly, haltingly, he told of the
occurrence in the garden. At the mention of Basil's name the doctor half
rose from his chair.

"Basil?" he said incredulously. "What was he doing there? What was he
talking about?"

Peter shrugged.

"Can't you guess?" he asked bitterly. "The swine knows who I am--and what
I am!"

Wells stared at him incredulously. "You mean he has told
Jane--impossible!"

"Didn't you see her at dinner? Wasn't it as clear as daylight that she
knows?"

Donald Wells pinched his under lip.

"I can't believe it's possible--good God! How would he know?"

Peter shook his head, shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"How can I tell? That sort of prying sneak worms his way into every ugly
secret. For a moment I had a thought that you--"

"I? Don't be absurd!" scoffed Wells. "It would be a terribly
unprofessional thing to do, and unpardonable even if Hale was my best
friend, which he isn't."

Peter sat for a long time staring ahead of him, his face was tense and
troubled; and then he asked suddenly: "Do you think there's any danger?
That man has scared me: I'm as frightened as a child in the dark."

Donald Wells reached out his hand and took the other's wrist and felt the
pulse for a while with the other. To his consternation, Peter saw a frown
gather on the doctor's face.

"You're rather upset, aren't you?" asked Wells, biting his lip
thoughtfully. "I didn't realize you had taken this so badly--what a swine!
I'm going to see Jane and ask her if she minds