Enid started guiltily. She had quite forgotten her _role_ for the time.

Indeed, there was something unmistakably like relief on her face as she heard the porter's bell ring from the lodge to the house. Williams shuffled away, muttering that he would be more useful in the house than out of it just now, but a glance from Enid subdued him. Presently there came the sound of wheels on the gravel outside.

"They have come for the--the coffin," Enid murmured. "Frank, it would be best for you to go. Go upstairs, if you like; you know the way. Only, don't stay here."

The young man went off dreamily. A heavy grief dulled and blinded his senses; he walked along like one who wanders in his sleep. Christiana's room door was open and a lamp was there. There were dainty knick-knacks on the dressing-table, a vase or two of faded flowers--everything that denotes the presence of refined and gracious womanhood.

Frank Littimer stood there looking round him for some little time. On a table by the bedside stood a photograph of a girl in a silver frame.

Littimer pounced upon it hungrily. It was a good picture--the best of Christiana's that he had ever seen. He slipped out into the corridor and gently closed the door behind him. Then he pa.s.sed along with his whole gaze fixed on the portrait. The girl seemed to be smiling out of the frame at him. He had loved Christiana since she was a child; he felt that he had never loved her so much as at this moment. Well, he had something to remember her by--he had not come here in vain.

It seemed impossible yet to realise that Christiana was dead, that he would never look into her sunny, tender face again. No, he would wake up presently and find it had all been a dream. And how different to the last time he was here. He had been smuggled into the house, and he had occupied the room with the oak door. He--

The room with the oak door opened and a big man with a white bandage round his throat stood there with tottering limbs and an ugly smile on his loose mouth. Littimer started back.

"Reginald," he exclaimed, "I didn't expect to see you here, or--"

"Or you would never have dared to come?" Henson said, hoa.r.s.ely. "I heard your voice and I was bound to give you a welcome, even at considerable personal inconvenience. Help me back to bed again. And now, you insolent young dog, how dare you show your face here?"

"I came to see Chris," Littimer said, doggedly. "And I came too late.

Even if I had known that I was going to meet you, I should have been here all the same. Oh, I know what you are going to say; I know what you think. And some day I shall break out and defy you to do your worst."

Henson smiled as one might do at the outbreak of an angry child. His eyes flashed and his tongue spoke words that Littimer fairly cowed before. And yet he did not show it. He was like a boy who has found a stone for the man who stands over him with the whip. With quick intuition Henson saw this, and in a measure his manner changed.

"You will say next that you are not afraid of me," he suggested.

"Well," Littimer replied, slowly; "I am not so much afraid of you as I was."

"Ah! so you imagine that you have discovered something?"

Littimer apparently struggled between a prudent desire for silence and a disposition to speak. The sneer on the face of his enemy fairly maddened him.

"Yes," he said, with a note of elation in his voice, "I have made a discovery, but I am not going to tell you how or where my discovery is.

But I've found Van Sneck."

A shade of whiter pallor came over Henson's face. Then his eyes took on a murderous, purple-black gleam. All the same, his voice was quite steady as he replied.

"I'm afraid that is not likely to benefit you much," he said. "Would you mind handing me that oblong black book from the dressing-table? I want you to do something for me. What's that?"

There was just the faintest suggestion of a sound outside. It was Enid listening with all her ears. She had not been long in discovering what had happened. Once the ghastly farcical incubus was off her shoulders she had followed Littimer upstairs. As she pa.s.sed Henson's room the drone of voices struck on her ears. She stood there and listened. She would have given much for this not to have happened, but everything happened for the worst in that accursed house.

But Henson's last words were enough for her. She gathered her skirts together and flew down the stairs. In the hall Williams stood, with a grin on his face, pensively sc.r.a.ping his chin with a dry forefinger.

"Now what's the matter, miss?" he cried.

"Don't ask questions," Enid cried. "Go and get me the champagne nippers.

The champagne nippers at once. If you can't find them, then bring me a pair of pliers. Then come to me on the leads outside the bathroom. It's a matter of life and death."

CHAPTER XXI

A FIND

David did not appear in the least surprised; indeed, he was long since past that emotion. Before the bottom of the mystery was reached a great many more strange things were pretty sure to happen.

"So you bought that cigar-case yourself?" he said.

"Indeed, I did," Ruth answered, eagerly. "Of course I have long known you by name and I have read pretty well all your tales. I--I liked your work so much."

David was flattered. The shy, sweet admiration in Ruth's eyes touched him.

"And I was very glad to meet you," Ruth went on. "You see, we all liked your stories. And we knew one or two people who had met you, and gradually you became quite like a friend of ours--Enid and Chris and myself, you understand. Then a week or two ago I came down to Brighton with my uncle to settle all about taking the house here. And I happened to be in Lockhart's buying something when you came in and asked to see the cigar-case. I recognised you from your photographs, and I was interested. Of course, I thought no more of it at the time, until Enid came up to London and told me all about the synopsis, and how strangely the heroine's case in your proposed story was like hers. Enid wondered how you were going to get the girl out of her difficulty, and I jokingly suggested that she had better ask you. She accepted the idea quite seriously, saying that if you had a real, plausible way out of the trouble you might help her. And gradually our scheme was evolved. You were not to know, because of the possible danger to yourself."

"At the hands of Reginald Henson, of course?"

"Yes. Our scheme took a long time, but we got it worked out at last. We decided on the telephone because we thought that we could not be traced that way, never imagining for a moment that you could get the number of your caller over the trunk line. Enid came up to town, and worked the telephone, Chris was in No. 218, and I brought the money."

"You placed that cigar-case on my doorstep?"

"Yes, I was wound up for anything. It was I whom you saw riding the bicycle through Old Steine; it was I who dropped the card of instructions. It seems a shameful thing to say and to do now, but I--well, I enjoyed it at the time. And I did it for the sake of my friends. Do I look like that sort of a girl, Mr. Steel?"

David glanced into the beautiful shy eyes with just the suggestion of laughter in them.

"You look all that is loyal and good and true," he exclaimed. "And I don't think I ever admired you quite so much as I do at this moment."

Ruth laughed and looked down. There was something in David's glance that thrilled her and gave her a sense of happiness she would have found it hard to describe.

"I am so glad you do not despise me," she whispered.

"Despise you!" David cried. "Why? If you only knew how I, well, how I loved you! Don't be angry. I mean every word that I say; my feelings for you are as pure as your own heart. If you could care for me as you do for those others I should have a friend indeed."

"You have made me care for you very much indeed, Mr. Steel," Ruth whispered.

"Call me David..... How nice my plain name sounds from your lips. Ruth and David. But I must hold myself in hand for the present. Still, I am glad you like me."

"Well, you have been so good and kind. We have done you a great deal of injury and you never blamed us. And you are just the man I have always pictured as the man I could love ... David!"

"Well, it was only one little kiss, and I'm sure n.o.body saw us, dear. And later on, when you are my wife--"

"Don't you think we had better keep to business for the present?" Ruth said, demurely.

"Perhaps. There is one little point that you must clear up before we go any farther. How did you manage to furnish those two big dining-rooms exactly alike?"

"Why, the furniture is there. At the top of the house, in a large attic, all the furniture is stored."

"But the agent told me it had been removed."

"He was wrong. You can't expect the agent to recollect everything about a house. The place belonged to the lady whom we may call Mrs. Margaret Henson at one time. When her home scheme fell through she sold one house as it was. In the other she stored the furniture. Enid knew of all this, of course. We managed to get a latch--key to fit 218, and Enid and a man did the rest. Her idea was to keep you in the dark as much as possible.