There was nothing striking about the Earl of Cranmere. A man past middle age, he had, I thought a rather weak face. A small, fair beard, neatly trimmed and pointed, concealed his chin: as I looked at him I wondered whether, were that beard removed, I should see any chin at all. The short upper lip was hidden by a fair moustache; he had also whiskers.

The fair hair, which was rather thin on the top, was carefully parted in the middle, and plastered down on both sides. His complexion was clear, the complexion of a man who lives a good deal in the open, and his eyes were pale blue, with almost golden lashes and eye-brows. He inclined to stoutness, and spoke with a slight lisp. This then was the man, or rather one of the men, I thought, as I noted these points about him while we exchanged remarks, concerning whom Jack Osborne had been so mysteriously questioned while he lay bound upon the bed in that dark room in Grafton Street. I knew Lord Cranmere to be a particular friend of Jack's, though in appearance no two men could have presented a greater contrast.

What mostly kept my thoughts busy, however, was the presence of Hugesson Gastrell.

Since his name had been mentioned by Harold Logan on his dying bed, I had carefully debated whether or not to tell Easterton, who had let him his house, what I now knew about him; also whether to tell Sir Roland Challoner that Osborne and I had actually met Gastrell. Unable to decide, I had put the case to Osborne, and eventually we had decided to say nothing, at any rate for the moment, to anybody at all.

"What would be the good?" Jack had argued. "You have the word of a dying man, and that's all; and what is there that you can prove against this man Gastrell--at present? Besides, if you say anything, you may find yourself forced to reveal that you know who the dead man was, that you know him to have been Lord Logan's son, and you told me that Sir Roland wants particularly to avoid doing that. No, keep silent and await developments, that's my advice, as you have asked for it. He'll probably end by hanging himself if you give him rope enough. I wouldn't tell even Dulcie, if I were you."

I was thinking of all this again, when my train of thought was suddenly cut by a voice at my elbow:

"Mr. Berrington, I want to introduce you to Mrs. Gastrell. Come with me, will you?"

I turned abruptly. Connie Stapleton was at my elbow, and she spoke in soft, purring tones.

"She's the woman you asked me if I knew, the other night at Mr.

Gastrell's reception," she went on in an undertone, as we walked towards the woman. "I was introduced to her a couple of nights later. She is a cousin of Mr. Gastrell's."

Almost before I had time to collect my thoughts, she had introduced me, adding, a moment later, with one of her charming smiles:

"And will you take Mrs. Gastrell in to dinner?"

I was debating whether or not to refer to our previous meeting, at Maresfield Gardens, when Mrs. Gastrell herself solved the difficulty.

"I wonder," she said, her great eyes very wide open, her gaze resting full on mine, "if you remember that we have met before. It was just before Christmas. You and Mr. Osborne called in the middle of the night to ask if Hugesson had lost his purse: we both thought it so kind of you."

I remembered a good deal more than that, but I did not tell her so. I remembered too that she had seemed to speak sarcastically, almost mockingly, that night when she had said she thought it kind of Jack to have come out "all that way" just to inquire if Gastrell had accidentally left his purse at the club. She appeared now, however, to mean what she said, and so I only answered:

"How, having met you once, Mrs. Gastrell, could I forget our meeting?

What rather astonishes me is that you should remember me by sight, seeing that we spoke for a few minutes only."

She smiled in acknowledgment of the compliment, and I found myself wondering how many men that terribly alluring smile of hers had enslaved from first to last.

"Would you believe it," she went on almost without a pause, "we were very nearly burnt in a dreadful fire that broke out in that house on Christmas Eve. We only just managed to escape with a few of our belongings; we had not, I am thankful to say, anything very valuable there, because the house had been sub-let to us, so that the furniture was not ours."

"You certainly were fortunate, in a sense," I answered, marvelling at her self-possession, and mentally asking myself if she spoke with conviction and whether I had, after all, formed a wrong opinion about her as well as about our hostess. Then I heard Gastrell's voice behind me, and that brought me to my senses. If such a man were a guest of Mrs.

Stapleton's it seemed quite on the cards that men and women of equally bad character might also be included among her friends. I had several reasons for suspecting Mrs. Gastrell of duplicity, and I determined to remain on my guard.

The dinner, I confess, was excellent. I was glad to see that Dulcie sat between Jack Osborne and Lord Easterton, and was thus out of harm's way.

We dined at a round table, and almost facing me were two unintelligent-looking women--I had heard their names, but the names conveyed nothing to me. These women, both past middle age, somehow had the appearance of being extremely rich. They sat on either side of Hugesson Gastrell, whose conversation appeared to be amusing them immensely. One other woman made up the party of twelve--a dark, demure, very quiet little person, with large, dreamy eyes, a singularly pale complexion, and very red lips. She was dressed almost simply, which the other two women certainly were not, and altogether she struck me as looking somewhat out of place in that _galere_.

Champagne flowed freely, and gradually we all became exceedingly vivacious. Once, when I glanced across at Dulcie, after conversing animatedly for ten minutes or so with the beautiful woman at my side, I thought I noticed a troubled look in her eyes, but instantly it disappeared, and she smiled quite happily. Then, turning to her neighbour, Jack Osborne, she said something to him in an undertone which made him laugh, and he too looked across at me. It had struck me all the evening that Jack was in exceptionally high spirits, and more than once I had wondered if he had some special reason for being so.

It was an extraordinary dinner party. The more I looked about me, the more astonishing it seemed. A stranger entering the room would have noticed nothing unusual; he would have seen a number of apparently quite ordinary men and women dining, and enjoying themselves, people rather more sociable, perhaps, than the guests at dinner parties often are. And yet I had reason to believe that among these ostensibly respectable people three at least there were whose lives were veiled in a mystery of some sort--I hoped it might be nothing worse. The opinion I had formed of our hostess is already known. In addition there was that strange young man, Hugesson Gastrell, who, knowing everyone in London, was, in a sense, known by no one. For what did anybody know about him? Questioned, people invariably answered that he came from Australia or Tasmania and had inherited a large fortune from an uncle. That was all. They knew naught of his parents or his antecedents; his private life was a closed book.

My glance rested on my neighbour's white, well-manicured hands. Several times already, during dinner, I had observed how graceful they were, and had noticed the long, slender fingers, the well-shaped, polished nails--fingers on which precious stones shone and sparkled as the rays cast down from beneath the shades of the subdued electric lamps touched them at frequent intervals. Suddenly a thought flashed in upon me, and involuntarily I caught my breath. The voice of a dying man was calling to me, was crying a name in my ears as it had done that day I had sat with Sir Roland Challoner by Harold Logan's bed and watched the fearful eyes gazing into vacancy.

"Jasmine ... it is all I ask, all I want, my darling woman ... wouldn't otherwise have killed her ... it was her fault ... oh, no, discovery is impossible ... black, charred beyond all hope of recognition ... did right to kill her, dear, I ..."

The sound of the voice--I seemed to hear it distinctly in spite of the conversation and laughter all around--and the picture which rose simultaneously into the vision of my imagination, made me recoil. My gaze was set again upon those pale, graceful hands with their blue veins, their scintillating gems. As in a dream I heard Jasmine Gastrell in conversation with Cranmere, seated upon her other side; heard, too, his silly talk, his empty laughter. Her hands seemed now completely to hold my gaze. I could not look away. And, as I watched them, the feeling of revulsion rose.

Conjectures, suspicions, hideous thoughts filled my brain as my eyes remained riveted. Now the fingers looked like snakes--strange, flesh-tinted reptiles with eyes emerald green and ruby red, cruel, sinuous. Now great knots of muscle stood out upon her bare arms. Her hands were clutching something--what it was I could not see. The fingers grew twisted and distorted ... they had crimson stains upon them ... the very nails were shot with blood and I thought I saw--

My train of thought was cut by my neighbour on my right. What she said I hardly knew, and did not care. Still, I was glad that she had spoken.

The interruption had diverted my attention, and brought my thoughts from dreamland back into actual life.

Then the thought came to me, What was the object of this dinner party?

Why had Connie Stapleton invited these people down to Newbury? Why, if she wished to give a dinner party, had she not given it in town? From the conversation during dinner I had gathered that the guests, one and all, lived in London. It seemed strange therefore to the verge of eccentricity to ask them to come fifty miles to dine. True, the _cuisine_ at "The Rook" was above reproach, the hotel itself excellently appointed, but none the less--

"Don't you agree, Mr. Berrington?" Mrs. Gastrell exclaimed, laughing as she turned from Cranmere to me.

"I didn't catch the question," I said with a start, again brought suddenly to earth.

"Lord Cranmere is of opinion that the man you found in hiding at Holt must, from the descriptions which have been given of him, at some time or other have been a gentleman. I say, 'No; that no gentleman could sink so low as to become a common criminal of that kind.' One can understand a gentleman, by which I mean a man of education and careful upbringing, being driven, through force of circ.u.mstances, to rob a bank, or even to forge a signature to a cheque; but for such a man to sink to the level of a common housebreaker is unthinkable--don't you agree with me?"

Her eyes shone strangely as they rested upon mine. Not until now had the wonderful intelligence in their purple-green depths struck me so forcibly. From the orange-tinted lamps before her on the table the light which shone up in her face seemed to increase their brilliance, accentuate their expression and their power. It imparted, too, to her extraordinary complexion a peculiar, livid tint, while the ma.s.ses of her burnished, red-brown hair, coiled about her head in great ropes and dressed low in her neck, was shot with a chestnut shade which greatly enhanced its beauty.

I paused before answering. For fully ten minutes she had not addressed me, so deeply engaged had she been in conversation with Lord Cranmere.

Why should she all at once interrupt her talk and put this question to me? None but Sir Roland Challoner and I were aware of the dead man's ident.i.ty; even we had no actual proof that he had been Lord Logan's son, though our discovery of the locket, considered in relation to certain facts known to Sir Roland, left no room for doubt. That locket Sir Roland had appropriated in order that the dead man's ident.i.ty might not be traced and the family name tarnished. Jasmine Gastrell must of course be aware of his ident.i.ty? Did she suspect that I knew his name, and could this be an attempt to entrap me into revealing that I knew it?

"That is a question difficult to answer," I said guardedly. "I believe there are instances on record of men of education, of men even of good birth, sinking to the lowest depth of degradation when once they had begun to tread the downward path. It would be interesting to know who that man really was. He wouldn't tell his name, wouldn't even hint at it."

"So that of course you don't know it."

"Naturally."

Again that keen, searching expression in the large, luminous eyes. They seemed to look right through me. They seemed to read my thoughts and wrest my secrets from me.

"And you found nothing upon him that might have given you a clue, I suppose; nothing in his pockets, no marks upon the body, there was nothing he was wearing that might have put you on the track?"

"Absolutely nothing," I answered, thinking of the locket as I looked straight into her eyes. Never before had I realized how cleverly I could lie.

It was close on midnight when we all a.s.sembled in the hall preparatory to leaving--those of us who were leaving. Hugesson Gastrell had left long before, in fact immediately after dinner, as he had, he said, an important appointment in London. Somebody nudged me lightly as he brushed past, and glancing round I caught Osborne's eye. He made no sign whatever, yet there was something in his look which made me think he wanted me, and a minute later I sauntered after him into the room where the hats and coats had been.

But for us, the room was now deserted. Glancing quickly to right and left, Jack walked over to a corner where a tall screen stood. There was n.o.body behind it.

He beckoned to me, and I approached.

"We are among a set of scoundrels," he said rapidly, under his breath.

"I am glad to see that you too didn't recognize him."

"Recognize whom?" I asked in astonishment, also speaking in a whisper.

"Preston, the ex-detective. I introduced him to you the last time we met in town."

"I remember the man perfectly, but surely he isn't here."

Jack's lips stretched into a grin.

"'Lord Cranmere,'" he said. "That's Preston!"