Presently Jennifer began to speak. Bit by bit she poured out the whole amazing story, her mysterious illness, her removal to the nursing home, her interview with her father, first on the lawn and then in the reception room.
When she had finished, there were tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Robin, you do believe me?” she said breathlessly. “Tell me—you do believe me? You don’t think I’ve had hallucinations? You don’t think I—I’m out of my senses?”
Robin took her in his arms, and she nestled close to him, her face hidden in his neck.
The story she had told was fantastic, but in Robin’s experience truth was often fantastic, and he knew, too, the signs of a disordered mind. None of these was apparent, he thanked God, in the girl he loved.
“Yes,” he said gently. “Yes, my dear, I believe you. We’re up against something so diabolical and ingenious that I should not have blamed you if you had doubted your own senses. You have been deceived, and, as I believe, deliberately deceived, in order to give your father and those who love you the horrible suspicion that your mind was not to be trusted.”
The girl sighed, and her arms tightened about him. The relief at discovering that someone really believed in her at last was almost too much for her. She began to cry, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
Robin kissed them away.
“Don’t, sweetheart,” he said gently. “You’re with me now, and I shall never let you go again. I love you, Jennifer, and I’m going to take care of you.”
He had spoken oblivious of any presence but her own in the room and now glanced up to see Madame Julie looking at him, a strange, almost pleading expression in her dark eyes.
“Robin,” she said slowly, coming towards him, “when I came to look for Jennifer tonight I had no idea that she was not alone among her enemies. When I saw you smash the emergency light in the operating theatre I thought you were a madman. I was trying to get into the house to attempt to rescue the girl myself when you came out with her in your arms. I have brought you to a place of safety.”
Robin looked puzzled. He did not understand the note of appeal in her voice. She seemed to be asking him something, imploring him to take pity, to have a little mercy. He was bewildered.
“Madame,” he said, “I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you. Had it not been for you the escape would have been an impossibility. You and your friend saved us. I shall be in your debt till I die. You have saved my life once before, but this time you have done more.”
A half-smile passed over the woman’s face.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Although I am fond of Jennifer, she is almost a stranger to me. My motive for taking the tremendous risk I did in order to save her was not purely disinterested.
“Listen,” she went on rapidly, laying a hand on the girl’s arm. “You are young, both of you, but you know what love is. Already you have experienced some of the sweetness and the agony of it. You know its strength, its depth. Let me tell you a story.
“Once there were two young people who loved quite as passionately, quite as desperately as you two. They lived very happily. They had their flat in town, their cottage in the country—terribly like this one—and then one day, when they had been married some years and their love had grown so strong that they were almost welded together as one human person, tragedy overcame them.
“The husband was accused of a crime he did not commit. His enemies piled up evidence against him. The woman appealed, even in the court, in public, but all to no purpose.
“The man, her man, whom she loved even more than life itself, was condemned to a long term of imprisonment.”
Madame Julie was speaking passionately now. There was fire in her eyes, and a new colour in her cheeks. Her words poured forth in a stream of unquenchable eloquence.
“The woman worked and schemed to save him. Gradually she discovered the hint of a clue to the mystery which surrounded his accusation. She stumbled upon a plot diabolical and fantastic, a plot in which her beloved husband was an instrument sacrificed for the sake of much larger game.
“In her relentless efforts to probe this mystery and clear her husband’s name she became many things. Finally she acted as a spy in the house of her employer, who was none other than her husband’s accuser.
“At last it seemed that she was stumbling upon the truth. Another woman was about to be sacrificed by the same men who had destroyed her own life. She determined to save her.
“She was just setting out on this mission alone when the unbelievable occurred. Her husband, the man for whom she would give her life gladly, escaped from prison.
“He was hunted up and down the country. Every hand was turned against him. Yet, instead of flying with him to one of the ports, with his consent—or rather, with his insistence—she turned aside and they went together to the rescue of the girl.”
The woman paused and looked at Robin.
“Now do you understand?” she said.
Robin looked at her wonderingly. His eyes were very grave.
“I think I understand,” he said. “You need not be afraid of me, Madame.”
The woman sighed, and the colour flooded her face. From the doorway, where he had been standing during the latter part of her outburst, the man who had driven them to safety over the treacherous marsh stepped forward.
Robin saw the close-cropped hair, prematurely whitened, the strong, kindly, emaciated face, the eyes burning with a sense of long-suffered injustice, and his heart went out instinctively to the man who came forward cautiously into the room.
Madame Julie turned to him. Her eyes were dancing like a girl’s. In spite of her anxiety there was happiness and a new youth in her face.
“Robin and Jennifer,” she said, “this is my husband.”
The man bowed stiffly, and as he spoke his mouth was twisted into a faint ironical smile.
“Wendon Sacret,” he said. “Wanted by the police, escaped convict from Porchester. Shall we close the door?”
The old woman darted forward, but before she could reach the door the man had closed it quietly behind him.
Robin glanced meaningly at the woman, and Madame Julie interpreted his unspoken question.
“I have known Mary nearly all my life,” she said. “When she left my service to marry, I never lost sight of her, and when her husband died she took over this cottage of ours and has lived here ever since. I am not afraid of Mary, Mr. Grey.”
Robin nodded understandingly, and the old woman, who had been regarding the convict with real affection in her faded eyes, smiled faintly. Robin understood. Wendon Sacret was among friends.
He turned again to Jennifer. She was still in her night-clothes and wrapped only in a light woollen blanket.
Once again Madame Julie interpreted his thought.
“Mary will take Jennifer upstairs,” she said. “There are some clothes of mine which although a little large for her will at least keep her warm until she can get others. We must hurry,” she went on. “We have no time to lose.”
The woman nodded and, putting a supporting arm round the girl’s shoulders, led her out of the room.
When they had gone, the three faced one another, the anxious wife, the escaped convict, and the detective who owed them both so much.
Robin had time to examine the man’s careworn features. He had at one time been very handsome, he decided, and even now, in spite of the lines which want and hardship had carved upon his features, his face was by no means ignoble.
“Madame Julie,” Robin said, “what are the chances of Dr. Crupiner and his friends finding us here?”
She hesitated and glanced at her husband.
“None,” he said grimly. “But,” he added abruptly, “from my own point of view he is the least person I have to fear.”
Robin looked up sharply. “You mean the police?”
“Yes. At the moment every man’s hand is against me. That is to be understood. Did it occur to you, Mr. Grey, that the second p
air of headlights which we saw hovering near our pursuers probably belonged to a police van which I know is scouring the neighbourhood for me?”
Robin eyed him gravely. “That had occurred to me,” he said. “However, you are safe for the moment. The police will get no information from Dr. Crupiner, even if he suspects that it was you who drove our car.”
The man bowed his head without replying, but Robin fancied he was on the alert, listening always for the sound of wheels in the lane, and the realization that this man was hunted, an outcast in constant danger of losing his liberty if not his life, came to him with overwhelming force.
The atmosphere in the room was tense. Robin glanced at the man.
“Why did you do it?” he demanded simply. “Why did you run the extraordinary risk you did in order to save a girl who, after all, must have meant very little to either of you? I don’t think I shall ever be able to tell you how timely your assistance was, and I shall certainly never be able to express my gratitude sufficiently. But I don’t understand why—I don’t see what it was that made you take such a dangerous chance.”
Wendon Sacret glanced at his wife as though asking her permission before he spoke. She signalled to him to continue, however, and when he looked again at the boy, Robin was astounded to see the passionate light in his eyes, the burning sincerity in his expression.
“I came,” he said slowly and distinctly, “because Miss Fern’s destiny and my own are linked. The same force which threatens her was responsible for my own wrongful imprisonment and disgrace.”
He was speaking rapidly now and with such conviction that Robin found it impossible not to believe him. He leant across the table and listened intently to the other man’s story.
“Our persecutors,” Sacret went on, “Dr. Crupiner in Miss Fern’s case and Sir Ferdinand Shawle in my own, are in turn controlled by a personality of fiendish cruelty and power. Have you ever heard of the Dealer, Mr. Grey? Ah, I see you haven’t. I myself know very little of the story, but at least I can tell you something.”
He went on talking rapidly, and now Robin heard the truth concerning the mysterious box deposited by Morton Blount with a firm of solicitors, to be opened only when Jennifer should die or marry.
As the extraordinary tale was unfolded to him by the hunted man in the little cottage, much of the amazing happenings of the past few weeks were explained to the young man, and he listened aghast as bit by bit the mysterious shapes in the jigsaw fell into place.
“I cannot tell you where the box is,” the man went on. “Nor can I tell you exactly what it contains. Nor do I know if the whole of this story is true. But I assure you I have learnt my facts in a hard school. My information has come to me through much suffering.
“All I can tell you further,” he added, “is that as matters now stand, should Miss Fern marry or die, information would come to light which would imperil the liberty, if not the lives, of at least half a dozen wealthy and influential men, one of whom, horribly enough, is her father.”
Robin drew back. His face was pale, and there were beads of sweat upon his forehead. Bit by bit he saw himself dragged out of his official capacity and forced to work upon the side of those who were, temporarily at least, on the wrong side of the police.
Suddenly an idea came into his mind, and the thought of it sent a thrill of apprehension down his spine. He stared at the ex-convict. The man did not look a desperate criminal, but after all there was no telling to what lengths a man might not go when driven to it by the piling up of circumstances which had overpowered Sacret.
The convict suddenly smiled.
“No,” he said. “No, Mr. Grey, I did not seek out your fiancée with the intention of killing her, although I admit that that would be one way of forcing the issue. I meant to get hold of the girl to explain to her the truth of the situation and to persuade her to marry. After all, my wife assured me that Jennifer was in love, and I felt sure that after my story a run-away match would not have been hard to arrange.
“I must admit,” he added with sudden candour, “that I might not have told her that her father’s name would be implicated in the revelations which would follow the opening of the box.”
“I see.” Robin spoke quietly. “And do you still intend to press forward this suggestion?”
“No.”
The vehemence of the man’s reply startled him. Sacret was pale, and there was an underlying note of disgust, if not of fear, in his tone.
“It was not until tonight,” he said, “that I realized just how desperate my enemies were. After Miss Fern’s story I see clearly, as you must yourself, that these men will stop at nothing. Had Morton Blount’s instructions provided for the box to be destroyed on Miss Fern’s death, I cannot think that she would have been alive at this hour. Having failed in their project, which seems to have been to keep her in a state of helpless lunacy to an advanced age, I feel sure that they would have taken the only other course left to them, and that is to have killed her and disposed of the body so secretly that death could not be presumed for at least a considerable number of years.
“Forgive me for speaking so bluntly,” he went on, catching sight of the boy’s face, “but this is a time for plain speaking. The danger is by no means over.”
Robin remained silent. He was no fool, and he knew that the man spoke the truth. Now that he had time to think, the story of the box did not seem so strange as it had done at the first hearing.
After all, he himself had proof of the interest of those powers against them in the solicitors with whom Morton Blount had been in communication before his death, and he shuddered when he thought how glibly he might have handed over the precious information to Caithby Fisher.
“No,” Wendon Sacret went on, “the mere act of marriage is not now sufficient. We must find another way. I know the solicitors with whom Morton Blount is most likely to have left these all-important proofs. If that box were destroyed, even if it meant that our enemies would go free, at least they would have no further cause to persecute us.”
He saw Robin’s expression and laughed.
“You are a policeman,” he said, “and you have your duty to consider. The question of ethics arises in your case, but not in mine.”
Madame Julie laid a hand upon his arm.
“Be careful,” she urged. “Oh, my dear, be careful.”
He smiled down at her tenderly.
“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” he said. “I have lost so much already that at least I can afford to take this risk. Once the box is in my possession the tables will be turned. With such a weapon in my hand it would be possible to mete out to those who have tortured us a punishment which no law could give them. There are times when the law is inadequate.”
Robin did not speak, and at this moment the inner door opened and Mary and Jennifer returned.
The girl was clad in a long brown woollen dress, but even its voluminous folds could not hide her beauty.
Sacret glanced at her admiringly.
“Now I understand how you come to be in this affair, Mr. Grey,” he said. “May I congratulate you?”
Jennifer went over to Robin’s side, and old Mary busied herself by laying a meal on the narrow table at the other side of the room.
In the moment when Robin put his arm round Jennifer’s shoulders and felt her lean against him, some of the strain of the past forty-eight hours seemed to have slipped away from them. The warmth and homeliness of their surroundings brought an air of something that was almost gaiety into the little party.
Madame Julie watched her husband with the hungry admiration of one who once again sees a happiness which she has long since thought dead to her for ever.
Outside, everything seemed very still and peaceful, and it was not until they had settled down to the meal that the incident occurred which swept aside their sense of false security and brought them back with a jerk to the grim realities which surrounded them.
Madame Julie was laughing with unaffected happiness,
and the colour had once again returned to Jennifer’s cheeks when footsteps sounded in the lane, followed by a vigorous knocking on the cottage door.
Instantly everyone rose. The colour drained out of Madame Julie’s face, and the old hunted lines reappeared round her husband’s eyes.
Old Mary motioned them all to be seated, and with the remarkable calm which old women sometimes show in times of emergency she went over to the door and threw it open.
From where they sat behind the table, Robin and Madame Julie could just see the unwelcome visitors picked out in the light streaming from the cottage doorway. Madame Julie caught her breath, and her dark eyes were wide and frightened.
Yet the newcomers were no more than a labourer and a village constable, good-humoured, red-faced people no less friendly and kindly than others of their type.
“There’s a car on the woodland path, Mrs. Bourne.” It was the constable who spoke.
“There aren’t any lights on it. I know that’s hardly a thoroughfare, but it’s a public way and it seems to me it ought not to be there.”
He was peering past the woman into the room with the bright-eyed curiosity of his calling, and the old woman turned and looked over her shoulder at the occupants of the room. If she was afraid, she did not show it. Her expression was calm, her voice matter-of-fact.
“It’s the policeman, ma’am, about the car,” she said.
“Oh. Is the owner in there? Then I’ll step in for a bit if you don’t mind, Mrs. Bourne. It’s powerful cold out here.”
Realizing that it would be dangerous to attempt to get rid of him too ostentatiously, the old woman stepped aside, and the man walked into the room. The labourer did not follow but shouted that he would wait outside.
The constable proved to be a rubicund soul with the naïveté of a child and a complete inability to make up his mind to leave the comfortable fire and light of Mrs. Bourne’s room for the cold lanes without.
The tension in the room grew. Madame Julie was plainly terrified, and even the imperturbability of the old woman became hard and unreal as time went on.
The Man of Dangerous Secrets Page 18