"Mr. Deane will excuse me," he said hurriedly, yet with a marked attempt at stiffness. "I have to return the _Times_."

He left the room. Deane looked after him with some surprise.

"What is the matter with your uncle?" he asked the girl.

"He has just heard," she answered, "that a young lady from somewhere or other spent the night out at the tower last night."

Deane looked at her in amazement. "And what business is it of his?" he asked.

"I don't know," brusquely. "As a rule, gentlemen when they're living alone don't have young lady visitors,--not to stay the night, at any rate."

Deane laughed. "The young lady in question," he said, "came to see me on a very important matter. If you heard anything of the storm last night, you would understand that it was scarcely possible for any one to have found her way from the tower to the mainland after the flood-tide was in."

The girl nodded shortly. "It's not my business," she said. "I am glad you came. I wanted to ask you something. Who is this man Rowan who killed my uncle?"

Deane shook his head slowly. "No one knows very much about him," he said. "They were out in South Africa together. It was there, perhaps, that their quarrel, if they had one, started."

"It says in the _Times_ this morning that he has been reprieved. Why?"

she asked fiercely. "Why don't they hang him?"

"Because they came to the conclusion," he answered, "that there had been a fight, and that it was not a deliberate murder."

"They ought to have hanged him," she declared. "It was brutal--hideous!"

"You are going to London, are you not?" he asked quietly.

Her eyes flashed. "Yes!" she answered. "I am going. I am afraid it will be too late. All the papers declare that my uncle's possessions were of little value. He has been robbed. I am sure he has been robbed. His letter told me that he would have plenty of money. He would not write and tell me that if he had nothing."

"You will be able to find out," Deane answered, a little coldly.

"I shall find out," the girl declared. "I am going to a good lawyer. He wrote as though he had something in his possession which was worth money. It was for that, I am sure, that this man Rowan tried to kill him. I shall find out all about it when I get there."

"The man Rowan was arrested on the premises," Deane reminded her. "There was no time for him to have taken anything away, and the room was locked up by the police."

"I don't care," she answered. "Oh! Can't you understand what this means to me?" she cried, jumping up from the chair in which she had seated herself a moment or so before. "I am starved for life here, starved for the want of it," she cried. "I was never meant to live in a place like this--a life like this! It isn't fair. Other girls have clothes and jewels, and men to admire them, and go to theatres, and see the world.

Why shouldn't I? I will! I am going to London to find out what that man killed my uncle for, and I mean never to come back here again."

The girl was evidently in earnest. Her bosom was heaving, her dark eyes were full of fire. Deane noticed the firm lines of her mouth, the crisp determination of her speech, and he realized a new danger. This girl was not one to be bribed or put off. Every word she had said she had meant.

There was a distinct change in her whole appearance since the last time he had seen her. She was at once handsomer and less attractive. The wistfulness of her few sad speeches to him had pa.s.sed away. The vague discontent seemed suddenly to have become focussed in a pa.s.sionate anger against this untoward stroke of fate.

"Well," said Deane at length, rising as though about to leave, "I hope you may discover, after all, that your uncle was a man of property."

"Why won't you help me?" she asked suddenly. "You could if you would."

"Could I?" he answered. "I wonder."

"Of course you could," she declared, coming a little nearer to him. "I suppose I seem a very ordinary discontented sort of creature to you, but you haven't lived as many years as I have pushing against the walls of a prison. I think I am one of those persons who would improve a good deal with a little prosperity," she added, with a sudden smile which transformed her face, a smile which was almost brilliant. "Why won't you help me?"

"Do you mean that you would like me to go to London for you, and search through your uncle's effects?" Deane asked quietly. "If you gave me a letter, I suppose I could do that."

"Come with me, then," she begged. "I mean to do everything for myself, but there are many little things I am ignorant about. If you would come with me, I promise you," she added, looking into his eyes, "that you would not find me ungrateful."

"When are you going?" he asked.

"Monday morning," she answered.

Deane walked to the window, and looked out for a moment at the tangled wilderness of cottage flowers, which seemed to have been encouraged to grow there in wild profusion--a brilliant spot of color, as he remembered very well, from the sea line. In a day or so at most, this girl might, if she realized her position, or if she were properly advised, be in a position to bring ruin upon him. An alliance with her was obviously the very best thing that could happen for him. Yet he felt a certain distrust, a certain unexplained reluctance to accepting her overtures. If she discovered her power, she would drive a hard bargain--he knew that well enough. If she did not discover it--

He turned away and faced her suddenly. "Yes!" he said, "I'll help you if I can. We'll go to London together on Monday morning."

A curious look came into her face. She drew him out of the room. "Come,"

she said, "I won't ask you to stay to tea, because my aunt thinks that you are a most improper person. I'll walk with you back across the marshes. I want you to tell me what you really think, and I want to show you the one letter I received from my uncle...."

She read the letter to him as they walked side by side on the top of the d.y.k.e path, which was high enough now from the receding waste of waters.

The air was unusually salt. Great ma.s.ses of seaweed had been brought in and left by the ebbing tide. The wind had freshened since the morning.

She walked on in supreme disregard of her disordered hair and skirts.

"You see," she said, "he writes distinctly as one who has, or expects to have, money. Listen! 'I did no particular good out there,'" she read, "'but I have brought something home with me which will mean a fortune of some sort or another. I expect you have had quite enough of your country life, and you won't object to coming and sharing it with me. I am rather a rough sort, and I have a few vices that your respected uncle Sarsby knows all about, but I fancy you will get a better time with me than with that solemn old prig. I'd like to do what I can for you, though we haven't seen much of one another, but your mother was the best sister a man ever had, and for her sake I look upon you as the only relative I've got worth counting.'"

She looked up at him eagerly. "Now tell me," she asked, "would he have written that if he hadn't something--jewels, or estate, or something of that sort, which he knew was going to bring him in money?"

"It doesn't sound so," Deane admitted.

She thrust the letter back into her pocket. "You will help me," she said, her face glowing, her eyes full of antic.i.p.ation. "We will go through his papers carefully. We will find out, somehow or other, what he meant. Oh! It is good to think that I have only a few more days to eat and to sleep in this ghastly wilderness."

"You may be disappointed," he reminded her.

"Never!" she answered. "My uncle was no fool. What he had I shall discover."

"You may be disappointed," he continued, "in the things which wealth itself brings you. You may find life not so very much more wonderful a thing in the city than here in the wilderness."

"Don't you believe it!" she exclaimed, with a scornful laugh. "I am not that sort. I am not an artist who can sit about here for days and potter about with a paintbox, and look at a sunset or a streak of wild lavender, or the shimmering of the yellow sands, as though it were something so marvelous that life itself stood still while they realized it. I like beautiful places and beautiful things, but I hate the impersonality of it all. I want to feel the touch of lace and furs and fine linen, to eat soft food, to listen to music, to ride when I want to, to sleep when I want to, to have friends who admire me, men friends worth speaking to, different from these yokels round here. I suppose I have got it in my blood," she added, with a little laugh. "The milk-and-water ways of life don't attract me. I want the big things."

"Do you know what the big things are?" he asked.

"When I have found my way where I mean to find it, I shall know," she answered. "Here, one might live till one's hair was gray and one's looks had pa.s.sed, live--if you call it living--and never once see over the wall. When I have come so that I can see over the wall, then I will tell you, if you are still curious, what the big things of life are for me!"

CHAPTER XVIII

AN EXPENSIVE KEY

It was three o'clock in the morning when Deane softly opened the door of his bedroom in the Hotel Universal, and looked up and down the side corridor. There was no one in sight, no sound of any one pa.s.sing in the main corridor, a few yards away. For several moments he stood and listened intently. Then he moved a few yards to the left, and stopped opposite another door. He scrutinized the number,--27. It was the number he sought. He felt in his pocket for the keys which he had collected from various sources. One by one he tried them in the lock. In vain! Not one fitted. He tried the handle of the door softly. There was no doubt about it. The door was securely fastened. He recognized at once the failure of his first attempt, and returned to his room. His bed was as yet undisturbed. He had not even changed the tweed travelling suit in which he had journeyed up from Rakney. It was a fool's errand, after all, he thought, on which he had come. Yet somehow or other, after his conversation with Ruby Sinclair, after he had realized how thorough her search would indeed be, how convinced she was that somewhere amongst the effects of the dead man lay the secret of wealth, he had realized more completely than ever before the danger in which he stood. Granted, even, that no suspicion of complicity with Rowan attached to him, his financial ruin would be none the less complete if that paper should ever come into the hands of people who understood its worth. Never had the situation seemed so clear, so dangerous, as that night after he had walked home with the girl and turned his face again toward the sea.

Something in the very desolation of the marshes seemed to help thought, perhaps by the absence of any distracting object. There was a sense of breadth about the place. As he walked, with only the murmur of the sea in his ears, he saw things clearly. He saw himself in the prime of life, suddenly flung from the place to which he had climbed, flung down to join all those poor millions of strugglers whose first foot has yet to be planted upon the first rung of the great ladder. He was too old to begin at the beginning. There was no place for him down amongst those on whom failure had already placed her mark. He could not have borne it. To be stripped of his riches, his name, the position of which he was without a doubt proud, to suffer the breaking of his engagement, the downfall of all his ambitions,--the very thought of it was intolerable.

And in the deep silence of that night, as he listened to the gurgling of the sea below, and the faint movement of the wind across the level land, he realized, with a sudden pain at his heart, the danger in which he stood. In three days the girl would be there. Scotland Yard would send one of its myrmidons with her. She would have free access to all the dead man's belongings. She would take with her a lawyer. Every sc.r.a.p of paper the man had possessed, every trifling object, would have its value. The Little Anna Gold-Mine was world famous. There would be no chance of their overlooking a single doc.u.ment bearing such a name.