"You will forgive me if I ask what you did come for, Joan. I would rather you had come as a friend, but I fear there is no chance of that."

She laughed mockingly.

"I have searched for you many days," she said, "and many nights. I have ransacked a city which was strange to me; I have walked many hundreds of miles over its pavements until I have grown sick with disappointments.

And now that I have found you Douglas Guest, you are right when you say that I do not come as your friend."

"You had a motive, I presume?"

"Yes, I had a motive. I wanted to look into your face and tell you that the net of my vengeance is drawn close about you, and the cords are gathered in my hands. To-day you are flushed with triumph, to-morrow you will be pale with fear."

"Joan," he said, looking across the table into her face, distorted with pa.s.sion, "you believe that I killed your father?"

"Believe? I know it!"

"Nevertheless I did not raise my hand against him. I took money because it was my own. I left him sound and well."

"There are others," she exclaimed scornfully, "who may believe that, but not many, I should think."

"Joan," he said earnestly, "you will be a happier woman all your life if you will listen to me now. Your father was killed that night and robbed, but not by me. I took twenty pounds, which was not a t.i.the of what belonged to me--not a penny more. It was after I had left--"

"Two in one night?" she interrupted. "It doesn't sound ingenious, Douglas Guest, though you are welcome, of course, to your own story."

"Ingenious or not, it is true," he answered. "You are very bitter against me, and some hard thoughts from you I have certainly deserved.

But of what you think I am not guilty, and unless you want to do a thing of which you will repent until your dying day, you must put that thought away from you."

"Do you think that I am a child?" she asked scornfully. "Do you think that I am to be put off with such rubbish as that? I made all my arrangements long ago for when I found you. In less than an hour you will be in prison."

"Joan, you are very hard," he said.

"I loved my father, and I hate you," she returned, pa.s.sionately.

He nodded.

"I misjudged you," he said reflectively. "I never gave you credit for such tenacity of purpose. I did not think that love or hate would ever burn their way into your life."

"Then you were a fool," she answered shortly. "You have never understood me. Perhaps when you have the rope about your neck you will read a woman's nature more truthfully."

"You are very vindictive, Joan."

"I want justice," she replied sharply, "and I hate you!"

"Listen," he said. "I am not going to make any attempt to escape. I will answer this charge of yours when the time comes. Meanwhile there is something which I want to show you. It will not take long and it may alter your purpose."

"Nothing could ever alter my purpose," she remarked emphatically.

"You cannot tell," he answered. "Now, I declare to you most solemnly that if you have me arrested before you do what I ask, you will never cease to repent it all your life."

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

He took down his hat from a peg behind the door.

"It is something I have to show you. We must go to my rooms. They are only just the other side of the Strand."

In absolute silence they walked along together. Joan had but one fear--the fear which had made her grant his request--and that she put resolutely behind her. "G.o.d was just," she muttered to herself again and again, and He would not see her cheated of her vengeance. From behind her thick veil she looked at Douglas. He was pale and serious, but there was no look of fear in his face. Then he had always been brave. She remembered that from the old days. He would walk to the scaffold like that. She shuddered, yet without any thought of relenting. On the way he met acquaintances and greeted them. Crossing the Strand he held out his hand to steer her clear of a pa.s.sing vehicle, but she shrank away with a little gesture of indignation. When at last they reached the street where his rooms were, and stopped in front of the tall, grimy building she addressed him for the first time.

"What place is this? What are you bringing me here for?"

"This is where I live," he answered. "There is something in my rooms which I must show you."

She stood still, moody and inclined to be suspicious.

"Why should I trust you? We are enemies, you and I. There may be evil inside this house for me."

He threw open the door.

"You are quite safe," he said curtly, "and you know it. It is for your good, not mine, that I have brought you here."

She entered and followed him upstairs. A vague sense of coming trouble was upon her. She started when Douglas ushered her into a dimly-lighted room, with a bed in one corner. A hospital nurse rose to meet them, and looked reproachfully at Douglas. A man was leaning back amongst the pillows, wild-eyed, and with flaring colour in his cheeks. When he saw Joan he called out to her.

"You've come, then," he cried. "You know, Joan, I never meant to do it; upon my soul, I didn't."

The nurse bent over him, but he thrust her aside.

"My sister!" he shouted. "My sister! I must talk with her. Listen, Joan. I struck only one blow. It was an accident. I shall swear that it was an accident. I had the money safe--I was ready to go. He was mad to interfere with me, for I was desperate. It was only one blow--I wanted to free myself, and down he went like a log. A hard man, too, and a powerful, but he went down like a log. I didn't want his life. I wanted money, for I was in rags and she wouldn't look at me. 'Come to me properly clothed,' she said. I, who had ruined myself for her.

Joan, hist! Come here."

They were under the spell of his terrible excitement. The nurse fell back, Joan took her place at his pillow. He gripped her arm with claw-like fingers, but though he drew her down till his lips nearly touched her ear, his hoa.r.s.e whispering was distinctly heard throughout the room.

"Two of us--father and son. Will you avenge us, eh? Listen, then. I will tell you her name. She played with my life and wrecked it, she took my time, my love, nay life, she gave me nothing. It was she who poisoned my blood with the l.u.s.t for gold; it was she who sent me over the hills to Feldwick. Ay, it was she who nerved me to steal and to kill. Joan, will you not avenge me and him, for I must die, and it is she who has killed me--Emily de Reuss. Oh, may the G.o.ds, whoever they be--the G.o.ds of the heathen, and the G.o.d of the Christian, your G.o.d, Joan, and the G.o.d of Justice curse her! If I had lived I should have killed her. If my fingers--were upon her throat--I could die happy."

He fell back upon the pillows. Douglas led Joan from the room. She turned and faced him.

"Who is this woman?" she asked.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

A SCENE AT THE CLUB

He made her sit down, for she was white and faint. For the moment he left her question unanswered.

"You have learnt the truth, Joan, from his own lips," he said. "I have a confession signed last week by him before the fever set in. You can read it if you like."

"There is no need," she answered. "I have heard enough. Who is this Emily de Reuss?"

"She is a very clever woman," he said, "with whom your brother became most unreasonably infatuated. She took an interest in him, as she has done in many young literary men. He fell in love with her without any encouragement, and gave way to his foolishness in a most unwarrantable manner. He neglected his work to follow her about, lost his position and his friends--eventually, as you see, his reason. I cannot tell you any more than that. She was perhaps unwise in her kindness, perhaps a little vain, inasmuch as she liked to pose as the literary inspirer of young talent, and to surround herself with worshippers. That is the extent of her fault. I do not believe that for a moment she deliberately encouraged him, or was in any way personally responsible for the wreck of his life."