I want you to drive with me in, say, half an hour to the banker's.

There I shall take you into a private room, and I shall tell them that you are my husband, Sir Jocelyn Kingstone; that you have not been very well, and cannot stand much worry, so that they're to get matters through as quickly as they can. If you like, you need not speak at all; you can leave all the talking to me, and, I may add, all the responsibility, too. Then, I imagine, they may ask you to sign a paper of some sort--I don't quite know what, but it won't be very much--then they'll hand you the money, and you'll sign for it, and then we'll come away. You see that the whole thing won't last more than five or, at the outside, ten minutes. We'll drive back here together, and in return for the service you've done me I'll do anything you like--mind, anything you like--for you. You'll find in me the best friend you ever had."

She knelt beside him on the floor, cajoling him, whispering things which he barely understood, but which were pleasant to hear. Somehow the feeling of physical well-being seemed to dull his senses still more. The dream became more dream-like; the woman's hands softly smoothed his hair; her lips were close to his; her eyes bewitched him; her words charmed his ears. She refilled the big sherry gla.s.s, and, even unwittingly, he sipped the insidious liqueur. In short, she played the fool with him, which, after all, was easy. At the best, after what he had lately gone through, he was little more than the husk of a man; but they had taken care that he should not be at his best. Her male accomplice had, as they put it, "readied" him. It was true that they had fed and washed and clothed him, but it was also true that they had dosed and drugged him. Being helpless in their hands, they had played tricks with him of which he had no notion and against which he had no defence.

After awhile the woman went out of the room. Without, suspiciously close to the door, was the man. They exchanged a few hurried sentences.

She asked: "Is the brougham outside?"

"It's been there ever since I brought him down."

"I'm going to put on my hat. Give me his; I'll put it on for him. He's in a state in which he's more in my line than in yours."

The man grinned. He rubbed his chin as if considering.

"How long shall you be?"

"I ought to be back inside an hour. I shall come straight back."

She began to ascend the stairs, the man watching her as she went.

"I'll take care that you come straight back. You may have a card up your sleeve which you mean to play; but I have another, which will perhaps surprise you."

These words were not spoken aloud; they were said to himself. He looked as if he meant them, and as if they had a significance--an ominous significance--which was a little secret of his own.

CHAPTER VII

Among Thieves

She sat very close to him as they went through the streets in the brougham. She had persuaded him to have still another taste of the liqueur before they started; the world seemed more dream-like than ever. When the vehicle drew up, she helped him out into the street. The air of the misty November morning seemed to add to the fog which was in his brain. Nothing could have been more gracious or graceful than her solicitude for his seeming incapacity to take proper care of himself; no wife could have taken more tender care of a delicate husband. He did not know what place this was at which they stopped, and she did not tell him. When presently he found himself seated in an arm-chair, he had only the vaguest idea of how he had got there, and no knowledge whatever of the room in which he was. There was a gentleman who occupied a seat behind a table who he had a dim feeling was observing him with considerable curiosity. Something was said to him which he did not catch, possibly because his hearing was unusually dull. The woman at his side repeated it.

"My dear Jocelyn, this gentleman is asking if you are my husband, if you are Sir Jocelyn Kingstone."

Sydney said something. He did not know what he said; he never did know; but it seemed to be regarded as an efficient answer. Shortly something else was said to him, which the woman again repeated. He had a misty notion that she was doing a good deal of talking; that notion became clearer in the days that were to come. She put her hand lightly on his arm.

"Come, Jocelyn." She led him nearer to the table, placing him on a chair which was drawn close up to it. "This is what you are to sign.

They have given me the money; here it is."

She held up what, although he did not realise it, was a bundle of bank-notes.

"Is it all right?"

He did not know why he asked the question, but he asked it. It was the first thing he had said consciously since he was in the room. He had had an odd feeling that she wished him to ask the question. She smiled.

"Quite all right. I will count it if you like, but I a.s.sure you it's right. Would you rather I counted it, or would you like to count it yourself?"

"No; it doesn't matter, so long as it's right."

He was conscious that a piece of paper was on the table in front of him, and that he had a pen between his fingers, though he was not sure how either of them had got there. She pointed to the paper with her finger.

"Sign here. Just put your name--Jocelyn Kingstone. My dear boy, how your hand does shake!"

He was aware that it shook, but he was not aware of the glance that the lady exchanged with the gentleman who was on the other side of the table, to whom, when he had made an end of writing, she handed the sheet of paper.

"What a scrawl! Jocelyn, your writing's getting worse and worse." Then, to the elderly gentleman: "I'm afraid my husband's signature is not a very easy one to read."

The elderly gentleman surveyed the performance through a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez smilingly.

"It isn't very legible, is it? Your signature is not very legible, Sir Jocelyn; it would take an expert to decipher it. Would you mind, Lady Kingstone, witnessing the fact that it is your husband's signature?"

"Do I mind? Of course I don't." She laughed as if she appreciated the joke of the suggestion. "There--'Witness, Helena Kingstone,'--I think you will be able to read that."

"That certainly is legible enough. You write a good bold hand, Lady Kingstone, the sort of hand I like a woman to write."

When the pair had left the room the elderly gentleman said to a younger one who was seated at a table to one side:

"That's a sad case, a very sad case indeed. That is quite a charming woman, and not bad-looking; while he--he's the sort of person who, in a better ordered state of society, would be consigned to a lethal chamber at the earliest possible moment. Upon my word, I often wonder what makes a woman marry such a man. Fancy, at this time of day, drunk."

The younger man seemed to consider before he spoke.

"It struck me that he was something else as well as drunk. He didn't carry himself like an ordinary drunken man. He seemed to be under the influence of some drug. She says that he's been ill; he looks it. I wonder if they've been drugging him to bring him up to concert pitch."

The elder man shook his head. He seemed to be weighing the other's words.

"It's a sad case, a very sad case, whichever way you look at it. Poor woman! She may have had her own motives when she promised to love, honour, and obey him, but it's a long row she has set herself to plough."

When the pair in question were back in the brougham, and the horse's head was turned the other way, they had not gone very far before a distinct change took place in the lady's manner. She was no longer solicitous; she no longer sat close to her companion's side; indeed, she seemed disposed to give him as wide a berth as possible, to ignore him as completely as the exigencies of the situation permitted, and she never spoke a word. She was, possibly, too engrossed with the singularity of her proceedings to pay any attention to him. On her lap was a pile of bank-notes which she was dividing into separate parcels; these parcels she was bestowing in distinctly surprising portions of her attire. She slipped one parcel in the top of one stocking, a second into the top of the other; she took off her shoes, and placed a wad of notes in each; she turned up the sleeves of her coat--into the lining about the wrists, in which an aperture seemed to have been purposely cut, she inserted quite a number. Loosening her bodice, she slipped several into the band at the top of her skirt. With the residue she performed quite a surprising feat of legerdemain. She produced a small bag which was made of what looked like oil-skin, into which she crammed the notes; raising it to the back of her neck, she gave her shoulders a sort of hunch, it slipped down the back of her dress; one could see from the movements she made that she was trying to get it to settle in its proper place. Then, for the first time, she turned towards Beaton.

Some of her performances had been hardly of the kind which the average woman would care to essay in front of an entire stranger. She had been as indifferent to her companion's presence as if he had been a mechanical figure; and, indeed, when she looked at him, one perceived that he might just as well have been. He seemed to be as devoid of intelligence, as incapable of taking active interest in what was going on about him; it was probable that he had been quite oblivious of what she had been doing. But this time the spectacle he presented, instead of amusing her, seemed to fill her with quite different feelings. She addressed him all at once as if he had been a dog, her voice hard, cold, strident, even a trifle vulgar:

"Hullo--over there!" He remained still, clearly not realising that he was being spoken to. She went on in the same tone: "Now then, wake up!

Haven't you been ill quite long enough? Try another sort of game. Do you hear me speak to you?" Apparently he did not. "Don't you, or won't you? Are you drunk? Now then, this won't do. I'm very much obliged to you, but I've had quite enough of it."

Leaning towards him, taking him by the shoulder, she began to shake him with considerable vigour, considering he was a man, and a big one, and she was a woman. The effect was, in its way--a grim way, ludicrous. His hat first tilted forward over his nose, then dropped on to the floor; his head fell forward over his chest. It seemed as if, if she kept on shaking him, he would come to pieces. Perceiving this, she stopped, eyeing him more closely, but still with no show of amus.e.m.e.nt, rather with contempt and annoyance.

"What's the matter with you? Are you ill, or is it the liqueurs and--the other things? Anyhow, I've had enough of it; I'm not going to have you ill in here. The time has come when we must part. Do you hear?

Wake up!"

He did seem to wake up, in a kind of a fashion. He raised his head with an effort, looking at her with lack-l.u.s.tre eyes.

"What is it?"

"What is it? It's the key of the street, the same key you had before."

A thought seemed all at once to occur to her. Stooping, she took off her right shoe, from it the wad of notes; selecting one, she replaced the others and the shoe.

"When I first made your acquaintance you had nothing, and rather less.