Isobel was very silent on the way, but once I intercepted a sidelong glance and felt my heart leaping madly when she blushed.

Mrs. Wentworth made me very welcome as had ever been her way. She was an eccentric, but embarra.s.singly straightforward old lady; and if I had heeded her simple motherly counsel in the past all might have been different.

She bore Isobel off to her room, leaving me to my own devices, for she had never observed any ceremony towards me in all the years that I had known her, but had taught me to make myself at home beneath her hospitable roof. I knew, too, because she had never troubled to disguise the fact, that she regarded Isobel and me as made for one another. Isobel's engagement to poor Eric Coverly, Mrs. Wentworth had all along regarded as a ghastly farce, and I can never forget her reception of me on the occasion of my first visit after returning from Mesopotamia.

Half an hour or so elapsed, then, before Isobel returned; and, although she came into the room confidently enough, the old tension rea.s.serted itself immediately. I felt that commonplaces would choke me. And although to this day I cannot condone my behavior, for the good of my soul I must confess the truth.

I took her in my arms, held her fast and kissed her.

An overwhelming consciousness of guilt came to me even as her lips met mine, and, releasing her, I turned aside, groaning.

"Isobel!" I said hoa.r.s.ely--"Isobel, forgive me! I was a cad, a villain ... to _him_. But--it was inevitable. Try to forget that I was so weak. But, Isobel--"

I felt her hand trembling on my arm.

"We must _both_ try to forget, Jack," she whispered.

I grasped her hands and looked eagerly--indeed I think wildly--into her eyes.

"Because my life is over if I lose you," I said, "I suppose I was mad for a moment. Tell me that one day--when it is fit and proper that you should do so--you will give me a hearing, and I will perform any penance you choose. I acted like a blackguard."

"Stop!" she commanded softly.

She raised her eyes, and her grave, sweet glance cooled the fever which consumed me and brought a great and abiding peace to my heart.

"You were no more to blame than I!" she said. "And because--I understand, it is not hard to forgive. I don't try to excuse myself, but even if--_he_--had lived, I could never have gone on with it, after his ... suspicions. Oh, Jack! why did you leave me to make that awful mistake?"

"My dearest," I replied, "G.o.d knows I have suffered for it."

"Please," she said, and her voice faltered, "help me to be fair to ...

_him_. Never--never--speak to me again--like that ... until--"

But the sentence was never completed; for at this moment in bustled Aunt Alison--in appearance a white-haired, rosy-faced little matron, very brisk in her movements and very shrewd-eyed. A dear old lady, dearer than ever to me in that she had tried so hard to bring Isobel and my laggard self together. She had, as usual, more to say than could be said in the time at her disposal. As we proceeded to the dining-room:

"Now then, you boys and girls, I'm starving, if you're not. What a time I've had with cook, not knowing when you might be here. Cook's leaving to be married: I'm afraid she's neglected this sea-kale. Dear, dear! what love will do for people's minds, to be sure. Put your hair straight, Isobel, dear, or Mary will think Jack has been kissing you!

I saw her kiss the postman yesterday. Mary, I mean! You're eating like a pigeon, Jack! Gracious me! Where's the pepper? Mary! Ring the bell, Isobel. I must speak to that postman; he's made Mary forget to put any pepper in the cruet, and any one might have seen them. It isn't respectable!"

"Dear Aunt Alison!" I said, as the active old lady ran out (Mary not being promptly enough in attendance). "She loves to keep running in and out like a waiter! What a friend she has been to me, Isobel! You could not be in better company at such a time."

"She's a darling!" agreed Isobel, and when I met her glance across the table she blushed entrancingly.

Then, in a moment, tears were in her eyes; and knowing of whom she was thinking, I sat abashed--guilty and repentant. I had transgressed against the murdered man; and there and then I made a solemn, silent vow that no word of love again should pa.s.s my lips until the fit and proper time of mourning was over. Because I faithfully kept this vow, I dare to hope that my sin is forgiven me.

Luncheon at that homely house, with Isobel, was an unalloyed delight; and I regretted every pa.s.sing minute which brought me nearer to the time when I must depart. But when at last I said good-by it was a new world upon which I looked--a new life upon which I entered. I have said that to-day I venture to hope my poor human transgression is forgiven me. Yet it did not go unpunished. Little did I dream, in my strange new happiness, how soon I was to return to that house--how soon I was to know the deadliest terror of my life.

CHAPTER XXIV

A CONFERENCE--INTERRUPTED

"The case has narrowed down," said Gatton, "from my point of view, into the quest of one man--"

"Dr. Damar Greefe!"

"Precisely. You have asked me what I found at Friar's Park and the Bell House, and I can answer you very briefly. Nothing! The latter place, had quite obviously been fired in a systematic and deliberate way. I suspect that the contents of the rooms had been soaked with petrol. It burned to a sh.e.l.l and then collapsed. At the present moment it is merely a mound of smoking ashes.

"Of course, the local fire-brigade was hopelessly ill-equipped, but even with the most up-to-date appliances I doubt if the conflagration could have been extinguished. The men watching the house were thrown quite off their guard when flames began to leap out of the windows: hence, the escape of Damar Greefe."

"You are sure he _did_ escape?"

Gatton stared at me grimly.

"To whom do you suppose you are indebted for the telephone trick?" he asked. "Besides--Blythe, the fool, actually heard the car at the moment that it came out on to the highroad! Oh, they bungled the thing villainously. My Marathon feat saved your life, Mr. Addison, but it looks like losing me the case! We have the Hawkins couple. But, although a graceless pair, they were more dupes than knaves. I am convinced, personally, that neither of them suspected that Lady Burnham Coverly was dead. Damar Greefe had represented to them that she had lost her reason."

"Good heavens! what a scheme!"

"What a scheme, indeed. Hawkins seems to have considered that his duty--which was merely to keep intruders out of the park--was dictated by necessity. He thought that if Lady Coverly's real condition became known she would be removed to a madhouse! He also thought that a _nurse_ was in attendance."

"A nurse!"

"Yes. He a.s.sured me that he had heard and seen her! Mrs. Hawkins also was certain on the point. Neither of them were ever allowed in the house, by the way. But Damar Greefe paid them well--and they were satisfied. The ident.i.ty of the 'nurse' is evident, I think?"

"Perfectly evident. But how was poor Lady Coverly disposed of--and why this elaborate secrecy?"

"Well," replied Gatton slowly--"out of the mult.i.tude of notes which I have compiled upon the case, I have worked out a sort of summary, and it amounts to this: The whole series of outrages turns upon something in the financial arrangements of the late Sir Burnham of benefit to the Eurasian doctor. It may be that Damar Greefe had some secret locked up in the Bell House which he could not very well remove, and that the greatest peril he feared was the taking over of the Park property by an heir. I a.s.sume he had complete authority over the late Lady Burnham; and his object in concealing her death (for our investigations at Friar's Park have definitely established the fact that no one had resided there for twelve months at least) was clearly this: he hoped to carry on the pretense of attending upon the invalid until--"

"Until there was no heir to the property remaining alive!" I interrupted excitedly. "Exactly, Gatton! That is my own theory, too!

"We have now received," continued the Inspector, "some particulars concerning the circ.u.mstances of Roger Coverly's death in Basle. Whilst there was no direct evidence of foul play (and at that time at any rate no reason to suspect it) I am convinced that the local physician who attended him at the hotel and the specialist who was sent for post-haste from Zurich were by no means agreed as to the cause of death.

"The symptoms were apparently not unlike those which would be caused by a snake-bite, for instance; but naturally one does not look for poisonous snakes in Switzerland. There was some sort of inflammation of the skin apparently"--he consulted a page of his note-book--"which might have been eczema or something similar, of course, but which according to medical evidence had no apparent connection with the cause of his death. This was given in the certificate simply as syncope--although there did not appear to be any hereditary cardiac trouble or anything of the kind to account for a young fellow of that age dying suddenly of heart failure. And there had been nothing in his life during his sojourn at Basle which would help to clear up the mystery.

"However, no doubt seems to have arisen at the time, as you can well understand; nevertheless, I, personally, count the death of Roger Coverly as the first of the outrages to be laid to the credit of Dr.

Damar Greefe!"

"The object of the whole thing is still completely dark to me," I declared.

"In a sense it is dark to _me_," replied Gatton; "but considering that the boy died at a time when the health of his father, Sir Burnham, was already giving cause for anxiety, I maintain that he was removed because his inheritance of Friar's Park was feared--by some one. The invitation from Dr. Damar Greefe to Sir Marcus is a very significant piece of evidence, of course; and when we consider that it reached Sir Marcus within a very short time of his return from Russia, the conclusion is obvious.

"He inherited the t.i.tle on the death of Sir Burnham, whilst he was on service in Archangel. Being in Russia, I conclude that he was not accessible from the Eurasian doctor's point of view. Directly he _became_ accessible, this invitation arrived; and it is perfectly clear that the fate intended for him was that which so nearly befell yourself! Remember, I have seen the gun mounted on the tower of Friar's Park and I a.s.sure you it was not placed there yesterday. In short, I have no doubt that it was put there in antic.i.p.ation of Sir Marcus's visit and only employed in your case as a sort of afterthought.

"The Red House plot was the next move on the part of the Eurasian, and it succeeded almost faultlessly. The accident at the docks prevented the scheme being carried out in all its details, but it did not entirely dislocate the murderer's arrangements, for it left us with no better clew to his ident.i.ty than the statuette of the cat."

"The presence of that statuette calls for some explanation, Gatton," I said.

Gatton very carefully lighted his pipe.