"And so he was!" declared the girl in English. "Mr Homfray can bear me out! He can prove it!" she said determinedly.

Their visitor was silent for a moment. Then he asked:

"What is this strange story?"

"You know it as well as I do, Mr Porter," she replied bitterly. But the stranger only smiled again as though in pity.

"My name is not Porter," he a.s.sured her. "I am a doctor, and my name is George Crowe, a friend of your guardian, Mr Ford. He called upon me in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, and as I was travelling to Paris he asked me to come here and see you."

"What?" shrieked the girl. "Dare you stand there and deny that you are Arthur Porter, the friend of that woman, Freda Crisp!"

"I certainly do deny it! And further, I have not the pleasure of knowing your friend."

Betty Grayson drew a long breath as her blue eyes narrowed and her brow knit in anger.

"I know that because of my lapses of memory and my muddled brain I am not believed," she said. "But I tell you that poor Mr Willard was killed--murdered, and that the ident.i.ty of the culprits is known to me as well as to old Mr Homfray, the rector of Little Farncombe."

"Ah! That is most interesting," remarked the doctor, humouring her as he would a child. "And who, pray, was this Mr Willard?"

"Mr Willard was engaged to be married to me!" she said in a hard voice.

"He lived in a house in Hyde Park Square, in London, a house which his father had left him, and he also had a pretty seaside house near Cromer.

But he was blackmailed by that adventuress, your friend, Mrs Crisp, and when at last he decided to unmask and prosecute the woman and her friends he was one morning found dead in very mysterious circ.u.mstances.

At first it was believed that he had committed suicide, but on investigation it was found that such was not the case. He had been killed by some secret and subtle means which puzzled and baffled the police. The murder is still an unsolved mystery."

"And you know the ident.i.ty of the person whom you allege killed your lover--eh?" asked the doctor with interest.

"Yes, I do. And so does Mr Homfray."

"Then why have neither of you given information to the police?" asked the visitor seriously.

"Because of certain reasons--reasons known to old Mr Homfray."

"This Mr Homfray is your friend, I take it?"

"He is a clergyman, and he is my friend," was her reply. Then suddenly she added: "But why should I tell you this when you yourself are a friend of the woman Crisp, and of Gordon Gray?"

"My dear young lady," he exclaimed, laughing, "you are really making a very great error. To my knowledge I have never seen you before I pa.s.sed this house last evening, and as for this Mrs Crisp, I have never even heard of her! Yet what you tell me concerning Hugh Willard is certainly of great interest."

"Hugh Willard!" she cried. "You betray yourself, Mr Porter! How do you know his Christian name? Tell me that!"

"Because you have just mentioned it," replied the man, not in the least perturbed.

"I certainly have not!" she declared, while Madame Nicole, not understanding English, stood aside trying to gather the drift of the conversation.

The man's a.s.sertion that his name was Crowe, and that he was a doctor when she had recognised him as an intimate friend of the woman who had blackmailed her lover, aroused the girl's anger and indignation. Why was he there in Bayeux?

"I tell you that you are Arthur Porter, the friend of Gordon Gray and his unscrupulous circle of friends!" cried the girl, who, turning to the stout Frenchwoman, went on in French: "This man is an impostor! He calls himself a doctor, yet I recognise him as a man named Porter, the friend of the woman who victimised the man I loved! Do not believe him?"

"Madame!" exclaimed the visitor with a benign smile, as he bowed slightly. "I think we can dismiss all these dramatic allegations made by poor mademoiselle--can we not? Your own observations have," he said, speaking in French, "shown you the abnormal state of the young lady's mind. She is, I understand, p.r.o.ne to imagining tragic events, and making statements that are quite unfounded. For that reason Mr Ford asked me to call and see her, because--to be frank--I am a specialist on mental diseases."

"Ah! Doctor! I fear that mademoiselle's mind is much unbalanced by her poor father's death," said the woman. "Monsieur Ford explained it all to me, and urged me to take no notice of her wild statements. When is Mr Ford returning to France?"

"In about three months, I believe. Then he will no doubt relieve you of your charge--which, I fear, must be a heavy one."

"Sometimes, yes. But mademoiselle has never been so talkative and vehement as she is to-day."

"Because I, perhaps, bear some slight resemblance to some man she once knew--the man named Porter, I suppose."

"You are Arthur Porter!" declared the girl in French. "When I first saw you hazily last night I thought that you resembled him, but now I see you closer and plainly I _know_ that you are! I would recognise you by your eyes among a thousand men!"

But the visitor only shrugged his shoulders again and declared to madame that mademoiselle's hallucinations were, alas! pitiable.

Then he questioned the woman about her charge, and when he left he handed her a five-hundred-franc note which he said Mr Ford had sent to her.

But a few moments later when on his way down the narrow, old-world street with its overhanging houses, he muttered ominously to himself in English:

"I must get back to Gordon as soon as possible. That girl is more dangerous than we ever contemplated. As we believed, she knows too much--far too much! And if Sandys finds her then all will be lost. It was a false step of Gordon's to leave her over here. She is recovering.

The situation is distinctly dangerous. Therefore we must act--without delay!"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

WILES OF THE WICKED.

On the day that Arthur Porter, under the guise of a doctor from Philadelphia, had visited Edna Manners at quaint old Bayeux, Roddy Homfray had, since early morning, been in his wireless-room at Little Farncombe Rectory, making some experiments with the new receiving-set which he had constructed in a cigar-box.

The results had been highly satisfactory and very gratifying. He had been experimenting with a new organic and easily manufactured super-sensitive crystal which he had discovered to be a very delicate detector of wireless waves when an electrical circuit was pa.s.sed through it, and by dint of long and patient tests of pressure electricity, had come to the conclusion that it was quite as effective as the usual three valves. This meant a very great improvement in the reception of wireless telephony.

As that afternoon he sat at tea with his father he explained the trend of his piezo-electric experiments. The discovery was entirely his own, for though others had experimented with inorganic crystals, quartz and gems, trying to solve the riddle why sugar and certain salts should cool from liquid into different patterns of crystals, n.o.body had ever dreamed of constructing such a detector or of using such a manufactured "crystal."

The secret of the new crystals was his own, and, judging from the efficiency of the new portable receiving-set, would be of very considerable value. When, later on, deaf old Mrs Bentley had cleared the table, father and son sat smoking, and Roddy said:

"I'm going along to the Towers to dinner. Mr Sandys has asked me to have a hand at bridge afterwards."

"Elma is away, isn't she?"

"Yes. At Harrogate with her aunt. She returns on Tuesday," the young man replied. "And to-morrow Barclay meets the Kaid Ahmed-el-Hafid at the Ritz to receive the concession. He had a telegram from the Kaid last Friday to say that the concession had been granted in my name, and that he was leaving Tangiers with it on the following day."

"Well, my boy, it really looks as though Fortune is about to smile on you at last! But we must always remember that she is but a fickle jade at best."

"Yes, father. I shall not feel safe until the concession is actually in my hands. Barclay has promised to introduce me to the Kaid, who will give me every a.s.sistance in my prospecting expedition. It is fortunate that we already hold the secret of the exact position of the ancient workings."

"It is, my boy," remarked the old rector thoughtfully. "Possibly you can induce Mr Sandys to finance the undertaking and float a company-- eh?"

"That is my idea," his son replied. "But I shall not approach him until I have been out to the Wad Sus and seen for myself. Then I can speak with authority, and conduct to the spot any expert engineer he may like to send out there."

Afterwards Roddy glanced at the old grandfather clock with its bra.s.s face which stood in the corner, rose, and after dressing, shouted a merry "good-bye" to the rector, and left the house to dine with the great financier, with whose daughter he was so deeply in love.

Their secret they withheld from Mr Sandys. Theirs was a fierce, all-absorbing pa.s.sion, a mutual affection that was intense. They loved each other fondly and, Mr Sandys being so often in London, they saw each other nearly every day. Indeed, for hours on end Elma would sit in the wireless-room and a.s.sist her lover in those delicate and patient experiments which he had been daily making. Roddy, in the weeks that had pa.s.sed, had regained his normal condition, though sometimes, at odd moments, he still experienced curious lapses of memory.