She gave an exclamation of disgust.

"It was the Crown Princess who eventually came to my rescue," she continued. "Long-suffering wife as she is, the stories that came to her ears from Metz were such that she went to the Emperor and declared that she would insist upon a divorce. There was a great scandal. The Prince's headquarters were moved and at length I got my release.

"I had no money. This was a detail which the Prince overlooked.

But I wanted to resume my stage work, so, with great difficulty, through the influence of the Prince, I obtained a pa.s.sport to Holland and from there got across to England.

"I had hoped to turn my back once and for all on my connection with the Prince. But your German Secret Service had been warned about me. The Imperial Authorities were obviously afraid that I might tell tales out of school. Scarcely had I arrived in London when a man who called himself Bryan Mowbury, but who looked and spoke like a German, came to see me and said he had been instructed to 'look after me.' What that meant, I was soon to discover. In a very few days I found that I was under the supervision of your Secret Service here. In fact, Mowbury gave me to understand that any indiscretion on my part as to my stay at Metz would result in my immediate denunciation to the English police as a spy.

"My friend, I had no alternative. I am not German; I am not English; I am a Pole. I have good friends in Germany, I have good friends in England, and their quarrels are not mine. I held my peace about the past and submitted to the incessant watch which Mowbury and his friends kept on my movements.

"And then one day I had a letter. It was from Count Plettenbach, the Crown Prince's aide-de-camp, as I knew by the hand-writing, for it was signed with an a.s.sumed name. In this letter the Count, 'on behalf of a mutual friend,' as he put it, requested me to hand back to a certain Mr. Mortimer, his accredited representative, 'Erich's present.' There were cogent reasons, it was added, for this unusual request.

"I sent no reply to that letter, although an address in Switzerland was given to which an answer might be despatched. I was resolved, come what may, not to part with the Star of Poland.

When Mortimer came, five days later, I told him the jewel was not mine to hand over, that it was part of the regalia of Poland and that I would never give it up.

"Mortimer replied that the German and Austrian Governments had decided to restore the independence of Poland, that probably an Austrian Archduke would be made king and that it was essential that the Star of Poland should be restored in order to include it in the regalia for the Coronation. But I knew what this Austro-German kingdom of Poland was to be, a serf state with not a shadow of that liberty for which every Pole is longing. Since I have been in England, I have kept in touch with the Polish political organizations in this country. Ra.s.s, as he calls himself, the landlord of this inn, is one of the most prominent of the Polish leaders in England.

"Mortimer reasoned with me in vain and finally went away empty-handed. But he did not abandon hope. Four successive attempts were made to get the jewel away from me. Twice my apartments at the Nineveh Hotel were rifled; once my dressing-room at the theatre was entered and searched whilst I was on the stage. But I wore the jewel day and night in a little bag suspended by a chain from my neck and they never got it from me.

"Two days before I came down to your house--it was the day before the murder--I was hustled by a group of men as I came out of the theatre. Fortunately the stage-door keeper came up unexpectedly and the men made off. But the encounter frightened me, and I resolved to break my contract with the Palaceum and bury myself down here in the country.

"But somehow Mortimer learnt of my intention. The next night--it was the night of the murder--he came to the theatre and warned me against trying to elude his vigilance by flight. I have never forgotten his words.

"'I can afford to wait,' he said, 'for I shall get what I want: I always do. But you have chosen to set yourself against me and you will bitterly repent it!"

As though the recollection proved too much for her, Nur-el-Din broke off her narrative and covered her face with her hands.

"And do you think that Mortimer did this murder?" asked Desmond gently.

Wearily the girl raised her head.

"Either he or one of his accomplices, of whom this girl is one!"

she answered.

"But why not have put the jewel in a bank or one of the safe deposits? Surely it was risky to have entrusted it to a girl of whom you knew nothing?"

"My friend,", said the dancer, "I was desperate. Mortimer sees and knows all. This unexpected meeting with the daughter of my old friend seemed at the moment like a heaven-sent chance to place the jewel, unknown to him, in safe hands. I felt that as long as I carried it on me, my life was in constant danger. It was only to-day, when I heard of the murder, that it dawned on me how indiscreet I had been. I might have guessed, since Miss Mackwayte knew Mortimer--"

"Miss Mackwayte knows Mortimer?" echoed Desmond in stupefaction.

"But certainly," replied Nur-el-Din. "Was it not I myself--" She broke off suddenly with terror in her eyes.

"Ah, no!" she whispered. "It is enough. Already I have said too much..."

Desmond was about to speak when the door opened and a foreign-looking maid, whom Desmond remembered to have seen in the dancer's dressing-room, came in. She went swiftly to her mistress and whispered something in her ear.

The dancer sprang to her feet.

"A little moment... you will excuse me..." she cried to Desmond and ran from the room. The maid followed her, leaving Desmond alone.

Presently, the sound of Nur-el-Din's voice raised high in anger struck on his ears. He stole softly to the door and opened it.

Before him lay the staircase deserted. He tiptoed down the stairs to the first landing and listened. The murmur of voices reached him indistinctly from the room below. Then he heard Nur-el-Din crying out again in anger.

He craned his ear over the well of the staircase, turning his face to the window which stood on the landing. The window gave on a small yard with a gate over which a lamp was suspended and beyond it the fen now swathed in fog. The dancer's maid stood beneath the lamp in earnest conversation with a man in rough shooting clothes who held a gun under his arm. As Desmond looked the man turned his head so that the rays of the lamp fell full upon his face. To his unspeakable consternation and amazement, Desmond recognized Strangwise.

CHAPTER XVII. MR. BELLWARD ARRANGES A BRIDGE EVENING

Oblivious of the voices in the room below, Desmond stood with his face pressed against the gla.s.s of the window. Was Strangwise staying at "The d.y.k.e Inn"? Nothing was more probable; for the latter had told him that he was going to spend his leave shooting in Ess.e.x, and Morstead Fen must abound in snipe and duck.

But he and Strangwise must not meet. Desmond was chary of submitting his disguise to the other's keen, shrewd eyes.

Strangwise knew Nur-el-Din: indeed, the dancer might have come to the inn to be with him. If he recognized Desmond and imparted his suspicions to the dancer, the game world be up; on the other hand, Desmond could not take him aside and disclose his ident.i.ty; for that would be breaking faith with the Chief. There was nothing for it, he decided, but flight.

Yet how could he get away un.o.bserved? There was no exit from the staircase by the door into the tap-room where Nur-el-Din was, and to go through the tap-room was to risk coming face to face with Strangwise.

So Desmond remained where he was by the window and watched.

Presently, the woman turned and began to cross the yard, Strangwise, carrying his gun, following her. Desmond waited until he heard a door open somewhere below and then he acted.

Beside the window ran an old lead water-pipe which drained the roof above his head. On a level with the sill of the landing below, this pipe took a sharp turn to the left and ran diagonally down to a tall covered-in water-b.u.t.t that stood on the flat roof of an outhouse in the little yard.

Desmond raised the window very gently and tested the pipe with his hand. It seemed rather insecure and shook under his pressure.

With his eye he measured the distance from the sill to the pipe; it was about four feet. Desmond reckoned that, if the pipe would hold, by getting out of the window and hanging on to the sill, he might, by a pendulum-like motion, gain sufficient impulse to swing his legs across the diagonally-running pipe, then transfer his hands and so slide down to the outhouse roof.

He wasted no time in debating the chances of the pipe collapsing under his weight. All his life it had been his practice to take a risk, for such is the Irish temperament--if the object to be attained in any way justified it; and he was determined to avoid at all costs the chance of a meeting with Strangwise. The latter had probably read the name of Okewood in that morning's casualty list, but Desmond felt more than ever that he distrusted the man, and his continued presence in the neighborhood of Nur-el-Din gravely preoccupied him.

He stood a moment by the open window and listened. The murmur of voices went on in the taproom, but from another part of the house he heard a deep laugh and knew it to be Strangwise's. Trusting to Providence that the roof of the outhouse would be out of sight of the yard door, Desmond swung his right leg over the window-sill and followed it with the other, turning his back on the yard. The next moment he was dangling over the side of the house.

Then from the yard below he heard Strangwise call:

"Rufus! Rufus!"

A heavy footstep sounded on the flags. Desmond remained perfectly still. The strain on his arms was tremendous. If Strangwise should go as far as the gate, so as to get clear of the yard, he must infallibly see that figure clinging to the window-sill.

"Where the devil is that doggy" said Strangwise. Then he whistled, and called again:

"Rufus! Rufus!"

Desmond made a supreme effort to support the strain on his muscles. The veins stood out at his temples and he felt the blood singing in his ears. Another minute and he knew he must drop. He no longer had the power to swing himself up to the window ledge again.

A bark rang out in the courtyard, followed by the patter of feet.

Desmond heard Strangwise speak to the dog and reenter the house.

Then silence fell again. With a tremendous effort Desmond swung his legs athwart the pipe, gripped it with his right hand, then his left, and very gently commenced to let himself down. The pipe quivered beneath his weight, but it held fast and in a minute he was standing on the roof of the outhouse, cautiously peering through the dank fog that hung about the yard.

Screening himself from view behind the tall waterb.u.t.t, he reconnoitred the back of the inn. The upper part of the house was shrouded in darkness, but a broad beam of light from a half-open door and a tall window on the ground floor cleft the pall of fog.

The window showed a snug little bar with Strangwise standing by the counter, a gla.s.s in his hand. As Desmond watched him, he heard a m.u.f.fled scream from somewhere within the house.

Strangwise heard it too, for Desmond saw him put his gla.s.s down on the bar and raise his head sharply. There followed a dull crash from the interior of the inn and the next moment the yellow-faced man, whom Desmond judged to be Ra.s.s, stepped into the circle of light inside the window. He said something to Strangwise with thumb jerked behind him, whereupon the latter clapped him, as though in approval, on the shoulder, and both hurried out together.