"I can tell you nothing," she said. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

It was the voice of one who would have spoken had she dared. With anybody else Steel would have been furiously angry. In the present case he could only admire the deep, almost pathetic, loyalty to somebody who stood behind.

"Are you sure you were in this house?" the girl asked, at length.

"Certain!" David exclaimed. "The walls, the pictures, the furniture--all the same. I could swear to the place anywhere. Miss Gates, if I cannot prove that I was here at the time I name, it is likely to go very hard with me."

"You mean that a certain inconvenience--"

"Inconvenience! Do you call a charge of murder, or manslaughter at best, inconvenient? Have you not seen the local papers? Don't you know that two nights ago, during my absence from home, a strange man was practically done to death in my conservatory? And during the time of the outrage, as sure as Heaven is above us, I was in this room."

"I am sorry, but I am sure that you were not."

"Ah, you are going to disappoint me? And yet you know something. You might have been the guiltiest of creatures yourself when I disclosed my ident.i.ty. No prisoner detected in some shameful crime ever looked more guilty than you."

The girl stood there, saying nothing. Had she rang the bell and ordered the footman to put him out of the house, Steel would have had no cause for complaint. But she did nothing of the kind. She stood there torn by conflicting emotions.

"I can give you no information," she said, presently. "But I am as positive one way as you are another that you have never been in this house before. I may surmise things, but as I hope to be judged fairly I can give you no information. I am only a poor, unhappy girl, who is doing what she deems to be the best for all parties concerned. And I can tell you nothing, nothing. Oh, won't you believe that I would do anything to serve you if I were only free?"

She held out her hand with an imploring gesture, the red lips were quivering, and her eyes were full of tears. David's warm heart went out to her; he forgot all his own troubles and dangers in his sympathy for the lovely creature in distress.

"Pray say no more about it," he cried. He caught the outstretched hand in his and carried it to his lips. "I don't wish to hurry you; in fact, haste is dangerous. And there is ample time. Nor am I going to press you.

Still, before long you may find some way to give me a clue without sacrificing a jot of your fine loyalty to--well, others. I would not distress you for the world, Miss Gates. Don't you think that this has been the most extraordinary interview?"

The tears trembled like diamonds on the girl's long lashes and a smile flashed over her face. The sudden transformation was wonderfully fascinating.

"What you might call an impossible interview," she laughed. "And all the more impossible because it was quite impossible that you could ever have been here before."

"When I was in this room two nights ago," David protested, "I saw---"

"Did you see me, for instance? If not, you couldn't have been here."

A small, misshapen figure, with the face of a Byron--Apollo on the bust of a Satyr--came in from behind the folding doors at the back of the dining-room carrying some letters in his hand. The stranger's dark, piercing eyes were fixed inquiringly upon Steel.

"Bell," the latter cried; "Hatherly Bell! you have been listening!"

The little man with the G.o.dlike head admitted the fact, coolly. He had been writing letters in the back room and escape had been impossible for him.

"Funny enough, I was going to look you up to-day," he said. "You did me a great service once, and I am longing to repay you. I came down here to give my friend Gates the benefit of my advice and a.s.sistance over a large philanthropic scheme he has just evolved. And, writing letters yonder on that subject, I heard your extraordinary conversation. Can I help you, Steel?"

"My dear fellow," David cried, "if you offered me every intellect in Europe I should not choose one of them so gladly as yours."

"Then let us shake hands on the bargain. And now I am going to stagger you; I heard you state positively that two nights ago you were in this very room."

"I am prepared to testify the fact on oath anywhere, my dear Bell."

"Very well; will you be good enough to state the hour?"

"Certainly. I was here from one o'clock--say between one and two."

"And I was here also. From eleven o'clock till two I was in this very room working out some calculations at this very table by the aid of my reading-lamp, no other light being in the room, or even in the house, as far as I know. It is one of my fads--as fools call them--to work in a large, dark room with one brilliant light only. Therefore you could not possibly have been in the house, to say nothing of this room, on the night in question."

David nodded feebly. There was no combating Bell's statement.

"I presume that this is No. 219?" he asked.

"Certainly it is," Miss Gates replied. "We are all agreed about _that_."

"Because I read the number over the fanlight," Steel went on. "And I came here by arrangement. And there was everything as I see it now. Bell, you must either cure me of this delusion, or you must prove logically to me that I have made a mistake. So far as I am concerned, I am like a child struggling with the alphabet."

"We'll start now," said Bell. "Come along."

Steel rose none too willingly. He would fain have lingered with Ruth. She held out her hand; there was a warm, glad smile on her face.

"May you be successful," she whispered. "Come and see me again, because I shall be very, very anxious to know. And I am not without guilt.... If you only knew!"

"And I may come again?" David said, eagerly.

A further smile and a warm pressure of the hand were the only reply.

Presently Steel was standing outside in the road with Bell. The latter was glancing at the house on either side of 219. The higher house was let; the one nearest the sea--218--was empty. A bill in the window gave the information that the property was in the hands of Messrs. Wallace and Brown, Station Quadrant, where keys could be obtained.

"We'll make a start straightaway," said Bell. "Come along."

"Where are you going to at that pace?" Steel asked.

"Going to interview Messrs. Wallace and Brown. At the present moment I am a gentleman who is in search of a house of residence, and I have a weakness for Brunswick Square in particular, especially for No. 218.

Unless I am greatly mistaken I am going to show you something that will startle even the most callous novelist."

CHAPTER VIII

HATHERLY BELL

The queer, misshapen figure striding along by Steel's side would have attracted attention anywhere; indeed, Hatherly Bell had been an attractive personality from his schooldays. A strange mixture of vanity and brilliant mental qualities, Bell had almost as many enemies as friends. He was morbidly miserable over the score of his personal appearance despite the extraordinary beauty of his face--to be pitied or even sympathised with almost maddened him. Yet there were many women who would gladly have shared the lot of Hatherly Bell.

For there was strength in the perfectly moulded face, as well as beauty.

It was the face of a man possessed of marvellous intellectual powers, and none the less attractive because, while the skin was as fair as a woman's and the eyes as clear as a child's, the wavy hair was absolutely white.

The face of a man who had suffered fiercely and long. A face hiding a great sorrow.

Time was when Bell had promised to stand in the front rank of operative physicians. In brain troubles and mental disorders he had distinguished himself. He had a marvellous faculty for psychological research; indeed, he had gone so far as to declare that insanity was merely a disease and capable of cure the same as any ordinary malady. "If Bell goes on as he has started," a great German specialist once declared, "he will inevitably prove to be the greatest benefactor to mankind since the beginning of the world." Bell was to be the man of his time.

And then suddenly he had faded out as a star drops from the zenith. There had been dark rumours of a terrible scandal, a prosecution burked by strong personal influence, mysterious paragraphs in the papers, and the disappearance of the name of Hatherly Bell from the rank of great medical jurists. n.o.body seemed to know anything about it, but Bell was ignored by all except a few old friends, and henceforth he devoted his attention to criminology and the evolution of crime. It was Bell's boast that he could take a dozen men at haphazard and give you their vices and virtures point-blank. He had a marvellous gift that way.

A few people stuck to him, Gilead Gates amongst the number. The millionaire philanthropist had need of someone to pick the sheep from the goats, and Bell made no mistakes. David Steel had been able to do the specialist some slight service a year or two before, and Bell had been pleased to magnify this into a great favour.