"Since the day of your arrival here, sir," Ruxton cried. "I wired her a message, and it remained unanswered."

"Tell me of it." The puzzled expression remained, but there was more confidence in the Prince's manner. He was grasping his folded letter in his hand. He had remembered its contents, and the promise it had demanded.

Ruxton briefly told him of the search he had embarked on. He told of the services of Scotland Yard he had employed. And he told of the negative result of all his efforts. Then he broke out in the pa.s.sionate pain of the strong soul within him. He told this father the simple story of his love. It was simple, and big, and strong. And the Prince, in the simplicity of his own soul, understood and approved.

"I know. I have understood it, guessed it--what you will. I know, and it gives me happiness." He sighed nevertheless. It seemed to Ruxton as though his sigh were a denial. The grey head was inclined. His eyes were bent upon the letter in his hand. He seemed to be considering deeply. Suddenly he raised a pair of troubled eyes to Ruxton's.

"But she is at home. She is at Redwithy. Our enemies have not laid hands upon her. She is not without her fears, but she is well, and unmolested in her home. I had this letter from her only this morning.

It came through your father. It must have been written last night. So she was at Redwithy last night. See, here is the heading. It is her writing. I would know it in a thousand. There is a mistake. It must be a mistake."

Ruxton had no answer for him. That which he saw and heard now was incredible. He half reached out to take the letter, but he drew back.

He was burning to read and examine that letter, but the Prince gave no sign of yielding it up; and he knew, in spite of all his anxiety, he had no right to claim such a privilege.

Perhaps Von Hertzwohl understood something of that which was pa.s.sing in the younger man's mind. Perhaps the appeal to his sympathy was more than he could resist. He opened the letter. Then he folded it afresh so that the heading and the signature were alone visible. He held it out.

"Look. You know her writing. There it is--and her signature."

Ruxton leant forward eagerly. He examined the writing closely.

Amazement grew in his eyes.

"Yes," he said, as he sat back in his chair. "It is hers--undoubtedly."

And he realized by the manner in which the father had displayed these things to him that it was his way of a.s.suring him that he was not to be permitted to know the contents of the letter.

In consequence, a silence fell between them. And each knew it was a silence of restraint. Ruxton was endeavoring to discover a possible reason for the Prince's att.i.tude, and he felt that his reticence must be attributable to Vita's wish. If it were her wish there must be some vital reason. What reason could there be unless----? Was she avoiding him purposely? Was her absence from Redwithy her own doing? Was it that now, her work completed, she wished to----? A sweat broke out upon his broad forehead, and he stirred uneasily.

Then, in the midst of his trouble, the other spoke, and his words helped to corroborate all his worst apprehension. The old man's words were gently spoken. They were full of a deep and sincere regret. But they were equally full of an irrevocable decision.

"Mr. Farlow," he said, in his quaintly formal manner, "I must leave here. I must leave England. There is danger--great danger in my remaining. Oh, not for me," he went on, in response to a question in the other's eyes. "I do not care that for danger to my life." He flicked his fingers in the air. "Danger? It is the breath of life. No, it is not that. I am thinking of my friends. I am thinking of the project which is so dear to my heart--to my daughter's heart, as well as mine. My presence here can only add jeopardy to others. I can serve no purpose. I have your promise that the work will go on to its finish.

It is all I can ask. And in that my services are not needed. I shall leave for some part of America. That is all."

Ruxton's thoughtful eyes were searching. He was exercising great restraint.

"Will you be safer in any other part of the world?"

The other hesitated. The awkwardness of his excuses troubled him. He finally shrugged.

"It is not for myself. This place is alive with spies searching for me.

I know it. I--far more than the shipyards--am the magnet that draws them here. It is not good for the work. It is not good for you--or your father. Who knows----?"

"How do you know they have traced you here?"

The Prince's thin cheeks flushed.

"I know it," he said, and the manner of his a.s.sertion warned Ruxton that it was useless to proceed further in the matter.

He knew beyond a doubt that some influence was at work, the secret of which he was not to be admitted to. He knew beyond question that that secret had been communicated to her father in Vita's letter. He knew that it was something vital and pressing which she desired kept from him. What was it? For him there was only one explanation. For some incomprehensible reason she meant to abandon him. But was it incomprehensible? Was it? She was a woman--a beautiful, beautiful woman. There were other men, doubtless hundreds of men, who might possess greater attractions for her than he could ever hope to possess.

And yet--no, he could not, would not believe it.

CHAPTER XXIV

RUXTON ARRIVES AT A GREAT DECISION

Ruxton spent another long day and night travelling. He reached London and Smith Square in a fog, which by no means helped to lighten his mood. He visited Scotland Yard, where he spent an hour in close consultation, and when he departed thence for Buckinghamshire he was accompanied by a prominent officer. He spent several hours at Wednesford and Redwithy, and finally returned again to town.

His movements were made with a complete disregard for himself. Weary?

Depressed and worn out, he admitted to himself he had no time for weariness. He was obsessed by one thought now, one thought which dominated all others. He had lost Vita. She seemed to be pa.s.sing completely and finally out of his life.

On his return to Smith Square he spent the long evening alone. He would see n.o.body. He would transact no business, and the faithful Heathcote was distressed, he even protested. But for once the usual amenability of his friend and employer was lost amidst a jarring irritability, and the secretary was forced to leave him to his ungracious solitude.

During that long evening alone Ruxton endured a series of mental tortures such as only the imaginative can ever be called upon to endure. Every conceivable aspect of the situation arose before his mind's eye, clad in the drab of hopelessness, until it seemed there could be no possible place for one single gleam of promise. Many of these pictures were based upon the insidious doubts which never fail to attack those in the throes of a consuming pa.s.sion such as his.

At one moment he saw, in the disaster which had befallen him, the duplicity of a woman whose love has no depth, whose love is the mere superficial attraction of the moment, and which, under given conditions, can be flung aside as a thing of no consequence, no value.

Following upon each such accusation came denial--simple, swift, emphatic denial, as he remembered the treasured moments in the little flat in Kensington; as he remembered the woman of the Yorkshire cliffs; the woman whose shining eyes had revealed the mother soul within her as she appealed for the great world of humanity with pa.s.sionate denial of self. Doubts of her could not remain behind such memories. It was like doubting the rise of the morrow's sun.

Then, too, the simplicity of his own loyalty, apart from all reason, denied for him. It was the simple psychology of the devoted Slav in him battling and defeating the more acrimonious and fault-finding nature of his insular forebears.

There was reason enough for his doubts. He knew that. The steady balance of reason was markedly his, and once, after a feverish struggle, he allowed himself to give it play, and sought to review the case as might a prosecuting counsel.

The salient points of the situation were so marked that they could not be missed. Vita had gone to Redwithy in a fever of antic.i.p.ation, with a.s.surances of devotion to him upon her beautiful lips, to await a message from him of her father's safety. That message is duly dispatched. It reaches its destination. It is opened by some one and carefully re-sealed. Vita sends no acknowledgment. Later it is discovered that Vita has left Redwithy, almost on the moment of her arrival at her home, since when she has not returned. Apparently her going is voluntary.

On the face of it, it would appear that she has not received the message. But subsequently she proves, by writing to her father, that she is aware of his safe arrival, which is the news contained in his message. Furthermore, she addresses her letter from Redwithy, as though she desires him to communicate with her at that place. All these facts are so definite that the reasonable conclusion is that Vita has wilfully endeavored to hide herself from him--Ruxton.

That, he told himself, was the cold logic of it.

Then, even as he arrived at the conclusion, a hot pa.s.sion of denial leapt. It was wrong, wrong. He could stake his soul on it it was wrong.

Logic? Argument? Reason? They were all fallible; fallible as--as h.e.l.l.

Anyway, they were in this case, he moodily a.s.sured himself. Vita was above all such petty trickery. So contemptible a conclusion was an insult to a pure, brave, beautiful soul. It belonged to the gutter in which, he told himself, he was floundering.

There must be another reply to every question which the evidence opened up. What was the other view of it? He leapt back at once to his first inspiration. Treachery--treachery of the enemy. His first prompting had been that Vita had fallen into their hands. How, then, could this be made to fit in with the letter Prince von Hertzwohl had received from his daughter? At the first consideration it seemed that such fitment became impossible.

But he attacked it; he attacked it with all the vigor and imagination of a keen, resolute brain, backed by the pa.s.sionate yearning of his soul. But dark mists of confusion obscured the light he sought--mists of confusion and seeming impossibility through which he must grope and flounder his way.

For a long time there seemed no promise. A dozen times hope fell headlong and died the death. But with each rebuff he started afresh at the given point that--Vita was in enemy hands, whose will she was forced to obey.

After long hours of defeat his efforts wearied. His power of concentration lessened. He found himself repeating over and over again his formula without advancing one single step. Bodily fatigue was helping to oppress his mental faculties. He was growing sleepy. Again and again he strove to rouse himself. But the net results of his effort was a continuation of the idiotic repet.i.tion of his formula.

He was not really aware of these things. Mental and bodily weariness had completely supervened. Another few minutes and---- But something galvanized him into complete wakefulness. His weariness fell from him, and he started up in his chair alert--vigorously alert. By some extraordinary subconscious effort he had become aware that his formula had changed. He was no longer repeating it in full--only the latter portion of it: "Whose will she is forced to obey." And as he thought of them now the words rang with a new and powerful significance.

It was the spark of light he had so long sought, and it had leapt out at him from amidst the deep mists of confusion.

So it was that when eleven o'clock came, and the hall gong clanged below, Ruxton went himself to admit his visitor from Scotland Yard. His whole aspect had completely changed from the dispirited creature who had curtly refused to consider matters which Heathcote had placed before him some hours previously.

Inspector Purdic was a smiling, dark man of athletic build and decided manner. He was by no means of senior rank in his profession. But his reputation was unique amongst his colleagues. It was said of him that his record could be divided into two parts, as everybody else's could, but with this difference: his failures came during his early days of inexperience, and could be marked off with a sharp line of division.

Beneath that line was nothing but a list of successes.