"Mike! Mike! What is the matter? Are you ill? do you feel faint?"

Her voice sounded a long, long way off. I heard her words as one hears words in a dream. My mouth had turned suddenly dry. I tried to speak, but could not.

"Here, Berrington, drink this and you'll feel better."

These were the next words I remember hearing. I was lying back on the settee, and Gastrell was holding a tumbler to my lips. It contained brandy slightly diluted. I drank a lot of it, and it revived me to some extent.

Still uncertain if I were sleeping or awake, I pa.s.sed out through the hall, slightly supported by Dulcie, and clambered after her into the taxi which awaited us outside.

"Go to Paddington," I heard her say to the driver, as she pulled the door to. No servant had come out of the house, and Gastrell had disappeared while we were still inside the hall.

CHAPTER XVI

SECRETS OF DUSKY FOWL

To this day that drive to Paddington recalls to mind a nightmare. The entire confidence I had placed in Dulcie was shattered. Had anybody told me it was possible she could deceive me as she had done I should, I know, have insulted him--so infuriated should I have felt at the bare thought. And yet she clearly had deceived me, deceived me most horribly, inasmuch as she had done it in such cold blood and obviously with premeditation. Her eyes, which had always looked at me, as I thought, so truthfully, had gazed into mine that morning with the utmost coolness and self-possession while she deliberately lied to me. Dulcie a liar!

The words kept stamping themselves into my brain until my head throbbed and seemed on the point of bursting. As the car sped along through the busy streets I saw nothing, heard nothing. The remarks she made to me seemed to reach my brain against my will. I answered them mechanically, in, for the most part, monosyllables.

What did it all mean? How could she continue to address me as though nothing in the least unusual had occurred? Did she notice nothing in my manner that appeared to be unusual? True, she addressed to me no term of endearment, which was singular; but so engrossed was I in my introspection and in my own misery that I scarcely noticed this.

Indeed, had she spoken to me fondly, her doing so just then would but have increased the feeling of bitterness which obsessed me.

Several times during that drive I had been on the point of telling her all I knew, all I had seen and heard: the suspicions I entertained regarding her friend Connie--her abominable friend as she now seemed to me to be; the grave suspicions I entertained also regarding Gastrell, with whom she seemed to be on good terms, to say the least--these, indeed, were more than suspicions. But at the crucial moment my courage had failed me. How could I say all this, or even hint at it, in the face of all I now knew concerning Dulcie herself, Dulcie who had been so much to me, who was so much to me still though I tried hard to persuade myself that everything between us must now be considered at an end?

I saw her off at Paddington. Mechanically I kissed her; why I did I cannot say, for I felt no desire to. It was, I suppose, that instinctively I realized that if I failed to greet her then in the way she would expect me to she would suspect that I knew something. She had asked me during our drive through the streets of London who had told me where to find her; but what I answered I cannot recollect. I made, I believe, some random reply which apparently satisfied her.

For two hours I lay upon my bed in my flat in South Molton Street, tossing restlessly, my mind distraught, my brain on fire. Never before had I been in love, and perhaps for that reason I felt this cruel blow--my disillusionment--the more severely. Once or twice my man, Simon, knocked, then tried the door and found it locked, then called out to ask if anything were amiss with me. I scarcely heard him, and did not answer. I wanted to be left alone, left in complete solitude to suffer my deep misery unseen and unheard.

I suppose I must have slept at last--in bed at three and up at eight, my night had been a short one--for when presently I opened my eyes I saw that the time was half-past two. Then the thought flashed in upon me that in my telegram I had promised to go to Eton to see d.i.c.k by the train leaving Paddington at three. I had barely time to catch it. A thorough wash restored me to some extent to my normal senses, and at Paddington I bought a sandwich which served that day instead of lunch.

Once or twice before I had been down to Eton to see d.i.c.k, though on those occasions I had been accompanied by Sir Roland. I had little difficulty now in obtaining leave to take him out to tea. He wanted to speak to me "quite privately," he said as we walked arm in arm up the main street, so I decided to take him to the "White Hart," and there I ordered tea in a private room.

"Now, Mike," he said in a confidential tone, when at last we were alone, "this is what I want to draw your attention to," and, as he spoke, he produced a rather dirty envelope from his trousers pocket, opened it and carefully shook out on to the table several newspaper cuttings, each three or four lines in length.

"What on earth are those about, old boy?" I asked, surprised. "Newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts, aren't they?"

"Yes, out of the _Morning Post_, all on the front page. If you will wait a minute I will put them all in order--the date of each is written on the back--and then _you_ will see if things strike _you_ in the way they have struck me."

These were the cuttings:

"R.P, bjptnbblx. wamii. xvzzjv. okk.

zxxp.--DUSKY FOWL."

"Rlxt. ex. lnvrb. 4. zc.o.kk. zbpl. qc.

Ptfrd. Avnsp. Hvfbl. Ucaqkoggwx.--DUSKY FOWL."

"Plt. ecii. pv. oa. t1vp. uysaa. djt. xru.

przvf. 4.--DUSKY FOWL."

"Nvnntltmms. Pvvvdnzzpn. ycyswsa.

Bpix. uyyuqecgsqa. X. W. ljfh. sc.

jvtzfhdvb.--DUSKY FOWL."

"I can't make head or tail of them," I said when I had looked carefully at each, and endeavoured to unravel its secret, for obviously it must possess some secret meaning. "What do you make of them, d.i.c.k--anything?"

"Yes. Look, and I will show you," he answered, going to the writing-table and bringing over pen, ink and paper. "I have always been fond of discovering, or trying to discover, the meanings of these queer cypher messages you see sometimes in some newspapers, and I have become rather good at it--I have a book that explains the way cyphers are usually constructed. I have found out a good many at one time and another, but this one took me rather a long time to disentangle. I can tell you, Mike, that when I found it concerned you I felt frightfully excited."

"Concerned me!" I exclaimed. "Oh, nonsense. What is it all about?"

"Follow me carefully, and I'll show you. I guessed from the first that it must be one of those cyphers that start their alphabet with some letter other than A, but this one has turned out to be what my book calls a 'complex alphabet' cypher. I tried and tried, all sorts of ways--I began the alphabet by calling 'b' 'a'; then by calling 'c' 'a'; then by calling 'd' 'a,' and so on all the way through, but that was no good. Then I tried the alphabet backwards, calling 'z' 'a'; then 'y'

'a'; right back to 'a,' but that wasn't it either. Then I tried one or two other ways, and at last I started skipping the letters first backwards, and then forwards. Doing it forwards, when I got to 'l' I found I had got something. I called 'l' 'a'; 'n' 'b'; 'p' 'c'; and so on, and made out _bjptnbblx_, the first word in the first cypher, to be the word 'improving,' and the two letters before it in capitals 'R.P.'

to be really 'D.C.' The next cypher word, _wamii_, stumped me, as the code didn't make it sense; then it occurred to me to start the alphabet with 'm' instead of 'l,' skipping every alternate letter as before, and I made out _wamii_ to mean 'shall.' The next cypher word, _xvzzjv_, I couldn't get sense out of by starting the alphabet with either 'l' or 'm,' so I tried the next letter, 'n,' skipping alternate letters once more, and that gave me the word 'settle.' I knew then that I had got the key, and I soon had the whole sentence. It ran as follows:

"_D.C. improving shall settle all soon.--Dusky Fowl._"

"Still, I wasn't much the wiser, and it never for a moment occurred to me that D.C. stood for Dulcie Challoner--"

"Good heavens, d.i.c.k!" I cried, "you don't mean to tell me that Dulcie--"

"Do be patient, brother-in-law, and let me go through the whole thing before you interrupt with your e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns," d.i.c.k said calmly. "Well, four days went by, and then in the _Morning Post_ of February 7th the second advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared:

"Rlxt. ex. sroehnel. 28. Zc.o.kk. zbpl. qc.

Ptfrd. Avnsp. Hvfbl. Ucaqkoggwx.--DUSKY FOWL."

"The code was the same as the first, and I deciphered it quite easily.

Here it is," and he read from a bit of paper he held in his hand:

"_Date is February 28. Shall stay at Mount Royal Hotel, Bedlington.--Dusky Fowl_."

There was nothing more after that until February 12th, when the third advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared, same code,--here it is deciphered:

"_Car will be at Clun Cross two day February 28.--Dusky Fowl_."

"That 'Dusky Fowl' bothered me a lot. I couldn't think what it meant.

Several times I had gone through the names of all the 'dusky birds'

I could think of--blackbird, rook, crow, raven, and so on, but nothing struck me, nothing seemed to make sense. Then the next day--yesterday--an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the same code appeared which startled me a lot because your name and Mr. Osborne's were in it, and it didn't take me long then to get at the meaning of 'Dusky Fowl.' Here is the advertis.e.m.e.nt from yesterday's _Morning Post_, and directly I had read it I wrote that letter asking you to come to see me at once, or to let me come to you."

He read out:

"_Osborne and Berrington suspect. Take precautions. D.C. with me Hampstead.--Dusky Fowl_"

"'Dusky Fowl' evidently stands for 'rook,' and 'rook' for 'Rook Hotel,'

and 'Rook Hotel' for 'Mrs. Stapleton.' And that being the case, who else can 'D.C.' stand for but 'Dulcie Challoner'? It's as plain as a pike-staff."

"By Jove, d.i.c.k," I said after a few moments' pause, "I believe you are right!"