"And have you seen her? Where is she now?"

"I was to meet her in the lounge of the Hotel Bristol in Paris last night. Punctually at nine o'clock, the time arranged, I arrived there. I waited until nearly ten, and then a messenger arrived with a note. It was from her. She said in it that she had been telegraphed for to return to England, that she was leaving by the night boat. She expressed deep regret, and said she hoped that I would come back to London as soon as possible--and so here I am."

Again, for some moments, n.o.body spoke. Dulcie was the first to break the silence.

"Father," she exclaimed impetuously, "are you really going to--are you still determined to marry that woman?"

Sir Roland stared at her.

"'That woman'?" he said in surprised indignation. "Whom do you mean by 'that woman'?"

"Connie Stapleton, father," she answered, looking him full in the eyes.

"Have you the least idea who and what she is?"

Sir Roland gazed at her aghast. Then, obviously controlling himself:

"I know that she has done me the honour of accepting my offer of marriage," he replied, with cold dignity. "More than that, I don't ask to know; her circ.u.mstances don't interest me; my fortune is ample for both."

Dulcie made a gesture of impatience.

"For goodness' sake, father," she exclaimed, "how can you talk like that? Connie Stapleton is--"

She turned to me abruptly.

"Oh, Mike," she said in a tone of great vexation, "tell him everything--I can't."

I cleared my throat to gain time to collect my thoughts. Sir Roland's rather dull stare was set upon my face inquiringly, though his expression betrayed astonishment and keen annoyance.

"It's just this, Sir Roland," I said at last, bracing myself to face an unpleasant task. "You, Dulcie, and I too, have been completely taken in by Mrs. Stapleton. We believed her to be as charming as she certainly is beautiful, we thought she was a lady, we--"

"'Thought'!" Sir Roland interrupted, cold with anger. "I still consider her to be--"

"Will you let me finish? I say we all thought that, I say we supposed that Mrs. Stapleton was just one of ourselves, a lady, an ordinary member of society. Then circ.u.mstances arose, events occurred which aroused my suspicions. At first I tried to dispel those suspicions, not only because I liked the woman personally, but because it seemed almost incredible that such a woman, mixing with the right people, received everywhere, could actually be what the circ.u.mstances and events I have hinted at pointed to her being. But at last proof came along that Mrs.

Stapleton was--as she is still--a common adventuress, or rather an uncommon adventuress, a prominent member of a gang of clever thieves, of a clique of criminals--"

"Criminals!" Sir Roland stormed, bursting suddenly into pa.s.sion. Often I had seen him annoyed, but never until now had I seen him actually in an ungovernable fury. "How dare you say the lady I am about to marry is--is--"

"I have proofs, Sir Roland," I cut in as calmly as I could. "You may doubt my word, you can hardly doubt the word of a famous Continental detective. He is on board. I will bring him here now."

As I quietly rose to leave the room, I saw Sir Roland staring, half stupidly, half in a pa.s.sion still, from Dulcie to me, then back again at Dulcie. Before he could speak, however, I had left the little room and gone in search of Victor Albeury. He was not in his cabin, nor was he in the smoking-room, where men still sat playing cards, nor was he in the big saloon. On the forward deck I found him at last, a solitary figure leaning against the stanchion rail, smoking his pipe, and gazing abstractedly out across the smooth sea, his eyes apparently focussed upon the black, far-distant horizon.

Gently I tapped him on the arm, as he seemed unaware of my approach.

"Well, Mr. Berrington," he said calmly, without looking round or moving, "what can I do for you?"

"Please come at once," I exclaimed. "Sir Roland and Miss Challoner are in the small saloon; we have been trying to explain to Sir Roland that the woman Stapleton is an adventuress. Probably you don't know that she is engaged to be married to Sir Roland. He won't believe a word we say.

We want you to come to him--to speak to him and open his eyes."

It was no easy matter, however, to get the old man to believe even Albeury's calm and convincing a.s.surance that Connie Stapleton belonged to a gang of infamous people, some of whom we knew beyond question to be cold-blooded a.s.sa.s.sins. It was due, indeed, largely to Albeury's remarkable personality that in the end he succeeded in altering the opinion Sir Roland had held concerning this woman of whom he was evidently even more deeply enamoured than we already knew him to be.

"But she has been such a close friend of yours, Dulcie," he said at last, in an altered tone. "If she is all that you now say she is, how came you to remain so intimate with her all this time?"

"She has tricked me, father, just as she has hoodwinked you," she answered, with self-a.s.surance that astonished me. "And then she seemed somehow to mesmerize me, to cast a sort of spell over me, so that I came almost to love her, and to do almost everything she suggested. By degrees she got me in her power, and then she began to make proposals that alarmed me--and yet I was drawn to her still. Once or twice Mike had warned me against her, but I had refused to believe his warnings. It was only two days ago that the crisis came. She didn't ask me to do what she wanted; she told me I _must_ do it--and then, all at once, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes. At last her true nature was revealed to me. It was an awful moment, father--awful!"

Far into the night the three of us remained talking. At last, when we rose to separate, Albeury turned to me.

"I sleep with you in your cabin to-night, Mr. Berrington," he said quietly. "And I have arranged that one of the stewardesses shall share Miss Challoner's cabin. n.o.body can tell what secret plans the members of this gang may have made, and it's not safe, believe me it isn't, for either of you to spend the night unprotected. Locks, sometimes even bolts, form no barrier against these people, some of whom are almost sure to be on board, though I haven't as yet identified any among the pa.s.sengers. You will remember that Lady Fitzgraham's cabin was ransacked last week, though she was in it, and the door locked on the inside. And poor Preston--we can't risk your sharing his fate."

These ominous warnings would a.s.suredly have filled me with alarm, had not Albeury's calmness and complete self-possession inspired me with a strange confidence. Somehow it seemed to me that so long as he was near no harm could befall either Dulcie or myself. Even Preston's presence had never inspired such confidence as this clever and far-seeing detective's presence had done ever since I had come to know him.

But nothing happened. When I woke next morning, after a night of sound rest, the boat was steaming slowly into port.

Together the four of us journeyed back to town, and for the first time for many weeks I had an opportunity of a lengthy talk with Dulcie.

Somehow her a.s.sociation with the woman Stapleton seemed to have broadened her views of life, though in all other respects she was absolutely unchanged. To me she seemed, if possible, more intensely attractive and lovable than during the period of our temporary estrangement--I realized now that we had during those past weeks been to all intents estranged. Perhaps, after all, the singular adventures she had experienced--some which she related to me were strange indeed--had served some good purpose I did not know of. What most astonished me was that, during those weeks which she had spent in close companionship with Stapleton, Gastrell, Lorrimer, and other members of the criminal organization, nothing had, until quite recently, been said that by any possibility could have led her to suppose that these friends of hers, as she had deemed them to be, were other than respectable members of society. Certainly, I reflected as she talked away now with the utmost candour and unconcern, these people must const.i.tute one of the cleverest gangs of criminals there had ever been; the bare fact that its members were able to mix with such impunity in exclusive social circles proved that.

Before the train left Newhaven I had bought a number of newspapers, but not until we were half-way to London did it occur to me to look at any of them. It was not long, then, before I came across an announcement which, though I had half expected to see it, startled me a little. The report of my supposed suicide was brief enough, and then came quite a long account of my uneventful career--uneventful until recently. Turning to Dulcie, who, seated beside me, was staring out at the flying scenery, I handed her one of the papers, indicating the paragraph.

"Good heavens, Mike!" she exclaimed when she had read it. "How awful!

Supposing I had read that without knowing it to be untrue!"

She held out the paper to Sir Roland.

"Father, just read that," she said.

He had heard me relate to Dulcie the story of my narrow escape in the forest near Martin d'Ablois, and I was pleased to see a smile at last come into his eyes, for since his cruel disillusionment he had looked terribly depressed.

"After all," I said as he put the paper down, "I am glad I returned to Paris, if only because my doing so has saved you from this shock."

"If I had read that, believing it to be true," he answered quietly, "the shock would probably have killed me."

"Killed you!" I exclaimed. "Oh, no, Sir Roland, a little thing like that would not have killed you; a family like yours takes a lot of killing--the records in history prove that."

He gazed at me with a strange seriousness for some moments. At last he spoke.

"Michael," he said, and there was an odd catch in his voice, "I wonder if you have the remotest conception of the strength of my attachment to you. I don't believe you have. And yet I could hardly be more attached to you than I am if you were my own son."

When, after parting from Sir Roland and Dulcie in London--they were to return to Holt direct--I arrived with Albeury at my flat in South Molton Street, I found a stack of letters awaiting me, also several telegrams.

Simon, my man, was expecting me--I had telegraphed from Newhaven--but almost directly he opened the door I noticed a change in his expression, and to some extent in his manner. Deferential, also curiously reserved, he had always been, but now there was a "something" in his eyes, a look which made me think he had something on his mind--something he wished to say to me but dared not say.

I had sent Albeury into my study to smoke a cigar and drink a gla.s.s of wine while I went up to my room to have a bath. Simon was still busy with my things when I came out of the bathroom, and, while I dressed, I took the opportunity of questioning him.

"What's amiss, Simon?" I asked lightly.

He looked up with a start.

"Amiss, sir?" he repeated, with obvious embarra.s.sment.

"I said 'amiss.' Out with it."