“You did? Well, what about it? Indignant, angry or merely amused?”
There was a wistfulness in his tone which Mary had not heard before and which held a new appeal for her. She held her breath. He was still waiting for her answer, standing in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed not upon her but upon the carpet at his feet.
She moved slowly into a sitting position, holding the coverlet so that it hid the bruise upon her chin and the discoloured mark upon her lower lip. She could see him distinctly, although the light was not strong. She saw the droop of his shoulders and the angle of his bent head.
She remembered the advertisement, remembered every word of it with a clarity which astounded her. She was afraid of herself. Her heart was beating wildly, and there was something which was not hope of rescue, not relief at finding a friend, but rather a complete recklessness, which bewildered her. It would have been so easy to hold out her hand to him.
Suddenly, when the desire to do so was quite overwhelming, he swung round and she saw some of the old amusement dancing in his eyes.
“I’m not doing this very well, am I?” he said. “I could do it so much better if it wasn’t genuine. D’you know that? I’m afraid I’m a hopeless person, Mary. Good God, what a time to come barging in like this, covered with rain! It’s enough to frighten you out of your wits.”
He moved over to the bed again and sat down on the end of it, where she was just out of reach of his hand.
“You’ve been frightened rather a lot, haven’t you? How did they get you back, my mother and Edmund?”
The question was obviously genuine. Mary’s heart bounded as she realized it. He did not know what had happened. He was not associated with his mother and half brother—or at least not now.
She told him in jerky little sentences, her voice muffled by the coverlet.
“I was on a railway carriage—someone came to tell me that the woman I was travelling with had been run down by a cab—I went out with him—there was a car waiting—they pushed me in and—and—and it drove off.”
“I see.” His eyes were holding her own. They were darker than she had imagined, and there was something in their depths which she had not seen there before, something which made her heart contract painfully. “Did you scream?”
Her eyes widened, and there was terror in them.
“Yes.”
“I see.” The man leant forward and, jerking down the coverlet, looked steadily at the discolouration on the white moulding of her chin. “And Edmund did that?”
“Yes.”
She half expected him to be angry. She expected the colour to go out of his face, expected his eyes to narrow, but she was not prepared for the sound which escaped his lips. It was very soft and like nothing she had ever heard before. The next moment he was on his knees by her side, one arm thrust beneath her head, while with the other hand he held her face gently and peered down into her eyes.
“I love you, Mary,” he said. “What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to you? This is the thing that ought never to have happened. This is the thing that makes us both utterly helpless. I love you, my dear, I love you so.”
Mary’s hands moved slowly until her fingers touched the hard, shorn curls at the back of his neck, and she pulled his head down gently towards her.
The great room was very silent. To its two occupants the world seemed to have paused. Then, from the other side of the apartment, there came a strange sound. It was a little ghostly, fluttering sigh.
A moment later the velvet curtain over the door rustled on its slender brass rings, and Eva de Liane, a filmy bundle of Shetland lace, moved quietly into the room.
“You did that very nicely, Richard,” she said. “But I ought to have told you, my dear, we’ve rather changed our plans. You ought to have seen me first. When you went away this was the line of campaign on which we had decided, but since then Mary had become quite reconciled to her position, and there is now no longer any need for this type of play-acting.”
Her voice was clear, pleasant and inclined to be amused. There was not the vestige of irritation in its bell-like tone. She sat down on the end of the bed and smiled at them both.
Richard had risen slowly to his feet, and now he stared at the old woman, his face white, his lips quivering. Once again Mary was aware of that strange gift of silent communication which these two possessed. She had seen it before on that dreadful occasion which now seemed so long ago, when he had convinced the old woman that Mary had told the truth and was not indeed Marie-Elizabeth Mason. Then they had been allies, but now she was aware of a silent quarrel going on between them.
Had she kept her head and permitted herself to watch that eerie contest things might have been different, but she was a very human little girl and the old woman was far too clever for her.
The quiet, matter-of-fact words sank into her mind and poisoned it just as they were intended. She had been on the point of admitting the love which she had been fighting against so desperately for so long. All her doubts of Richard, all the haunting questions which had clamoured to be answered whenever she thought of him and which had been shelved by her during that brief moment of passion, now came crowding back.
Mrs de Liane laughed. “I’m afraid I haven’t been very tactful,” she said. “I’ve made you look rather silly, haven’t I? You poor boy, I’ve spoilt your beautiful scene. …”
She turned to the girl.
“He was always so good at acting, even as a little boy. I thought it wasn’t very fair on you, my dear: that’s why I interrupted. After all, there have been so many complications in this little business, and I didn’t want to make any where none existed.”
She paused and looked from one to the other of the two young people. A quiet, rather mischievous smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.
“Of course,” she said, picking her words with quiet deliberation not at all unmixed with humour, “as long as you both understand each other perfectly, as long as Mary realizes that Richard and I have discussed this—shall we say line of conduct—it’s all perfectly all right. I mean, my dears, you are married and—”
Richard caught the woman by the shoulders.
“Stop!” he said. “Stop!”
Mary felt as though she was going to faint. She saw the strange scene enacted at the end of her bed as though it had no reality. Richard and the old woman seemed to have no substance. It was as though they were both phantoms, shadows on a screen, or marionettes in a puppet show. She saw the old woman put up her hands and flick her son’s grasp from her shoulders as though it had barely existed, and she saw her rise and stand looking at him for a moment.
Richard turned to the girl.
“I suppose it’s no good asking you to believe?” he began passionately.
“No … no!” Horror and a sense of physical disgust which she could not understand had swept over the girl. She covered her face with her hands. “Please go—please!”
“Mary …” The man’s voice was shaking, and the girl, looking up, saw him standing pale and haggard, his eyes dark with wretchedness, his hands outstretched; and behind him the old woman, quiet, self-possessed and very much amused.
The memory of her own inclination to hide herself in his arms, burying her face in his neck, and to forget the misery of the past days, coupled with the discovery that she had been deceived, was too much for the girl.
“Go away,” she said, the tears streaming down her face. “Go away. I can’t tell you how I loathe and despise you. I never want to see you again. I—I’d like to see you dead.”
She was unconscious of the intensity of hatred infused into the last words.
The man drew back. “I believe you mean that, God help me,” he said slowly.
Mary met his eyes. “I do.”
He turned on his heel and without another word strode out of the room. The curtain over the door billowed, and the rings rattled, and then there was silence.
Mrs de Liane walked ov
er to the girl.
“You may be angry with me now, my dear, but you’ll be grateful later on,” she said gently. “Richard’s a dear boy but not very scrupulous. Good night.”
Mary could not answer her. Her heart felt like a dead weight in her breast, and there was a pain in her throat much worse than tears.
“Good night,” said Mrs de Liane again, and, moving quietly across the room, she too went out.
After the curtain had fallen in place Mary heard the soft click of the key in the lock.
CHAPTER XX
Interests Involved
“I TOLD YOU everything I could remember when I first came back from that damned uncomfortable boarding-house three days ago. You’ve got all the facts, Eva: what are you worrying for now?”
Ted de Liane paused before the large desk in the library at Baron’s Tye and looked down at his wife, who sat before it, a sheaf of papers under her hand. The old man was querulous and truculent.
“I told you this business would bring trouble,” he said. “I never liked it. You’re getting old, my girl, that’s what it is. You’ve got megalomania or something.”
A frown appeared on Mrs de Liane’s white forehead.
“You may go back to your own room now, Ted,” she said. “You fidget me.”
“Fidget you!” said Ted de Liane with some violence. “I want to know what you’re doing. When I first came back and gave you the information you were pleased enough with me. Now, because I can’t remember anything else, I fidget you. And what’s the matter with that girl? What’s she cowering in her room like some little dark-eyed ghost for? And Richard too? He goes out of the house the first thing in the morning with a gun and doesn’t come back until the last thing at night. They never see each other, never speak to each other. What are you playing at?”
The telephone bell prevented Mrs de Liane from having to reply. She picked up the instrument and had a brief conversation with someone who was presumably a broker in London. Her husband listened to her decisive orders, his eyebrows raised.
“You’re using that girl’s fortune to fight Cosmos,” he said. “What’s the idea? D’you know anything, or have you gone mad?”
Mrs de Liane smiled complacently. “I’m not using very much of her fortune, not yet,” she said. “Latcher is very cautious. However, he’s parted with enough to make our friends excited.”
“Excited!” echoed Ted de Liane. “Be careful you don’t get too excited yourself.” He looked at the woman shrewdly as he spoke. There were two bright spots of colour in her cheeks, and her eyes were dancing. Eva de Liane had been a gambler all her life, and now she was enjoying some of the strange thrill which only gamblers in big money know.
The man stood looking at her curiously. “You’re happy now because you’re winning,” he said, sneering at her, “but wait till you lose.”
An amused little laugh escaped the woman. “I’m going to win, Ted,” she said. “I’m going to win, and nothing in the world is going to stand in my way.”
Ted de Liane went out of the room. For some little time Mrs de Liane continued to work at the big desk. The afternoon sun shone waterily through the tall windows and glinted upon her soft white hair and upon the diamonds on her finger.
An outsider might have thought her some gentle old lady absorbed during the evening of her life by some charitable organization and might have marvelled at the diligence with which she totted up rows of figures and made little notes in a small black book.
Once again the telephone bell rang, and this time the excitement was even more apparent in her bright blue eyes and the smile on her soft lips even more jubilant
She was resting for a moment, her hands folded on the fine Italian blotter and a faraway expression on her calm, still lovely face, when the door burst open and a man hardly recognizable as the Edmund Beron of a week before rushed into the room.
He was pale. The blood had drained out of his heavy face, leaving it grey and unhealthy and covered by a network of little red veins. He looked dishevelled, and when he spoke his voice was high and uncontrolled.
Mrs de Liane glanced up at him, and the panic-stricken words he had been about to utter were frozen on his lips.
“Well, what is it, Edmund?” The old woman’s voice, clear and sharp as a lash, provided just the corrective the man needed to hold him together. He straightened himself and came slowly towards her.
“We’ve got to get out,” he said.
She frowned. Edmund had been showing signs of strain of late, and he was not the panic-stricken, hysterical type that she had come to recognize in her husband. Edmund’s fears were usually well grounded.
“What is it?” she demanded. “What’s happened?”
There was no fear in her voice, simply command.
The man glanced about him nervously, as though he dreaded that even in that great room he might be overheard.
“There’s been a man in the village,” he said. “He’s enquiring about us. He interviewed the parson, and one of those clodhoppers who carried Richard downstairs for the wedding had a talk with him too. He’s finding out about us. We must get away. The game’s up.”
To his astonishment the old lady leaned back in her chair and laughed. It was a spontaneous ripple of pure amusement, and he gaped at her.
“Mother,” he said sharply, “are you mad?”
The sudden alarm in his eyes seemed to amuse her still more, and she leant forward across the desk and patted his hand.
“No, my dear, no,” she said. “It’s nothing to get alarmed about. This man wasn’t a policeman, was he?”
“Why no.” There was a puzzled expression on the man’s face. “I don’t think he was, as far as I could find out. ‘A lawyerlike sort of chap’ was the only description I could get from the village, but if that means Latcher we shall soon have the police. I tell you, Mother, I think we ought to go. After all, we’ve laid our hands on a great deal of money and——”
“Edmund!” Mrs de Liane’s tone was gently reproving. “I don’t think it is Latcher. I don’t think your friend is anything to do with Latcher. I think the people who are so interested in us are quite a different firm altogether. Dear me, this is very amusing!”
“I am glad you find it so,” said Beron, his fears somewhat allayed but his temper nettled. “Personally I think it’s terrifying. We’re in considerable danger.”
“Edmund, you’re getting old.” Mrs de Liane seemed quite concerned at the discovery. “Everything’s going splendidly. My dear boy, you can trust me. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I think so.” Beron turned away. “I only hope you’re not being foolhardy,” he said over his shoulder. His eyes had wandered to the scene outside the tall window, and an exclamation left his lips.
“Look!” he said huskily. “Look!”
As Mrs de Liane left her seat and came to his side he pointed towards the black saloon car which was making its way slowly down the drive. It was a magnificent vehicle, sleek and purring like a well-fed cat, glistening discreetly with metalwork, its paint winking in the sunlight.
Mrs de Liane caught her breath.
“Visitors …” she said. “At any rate, my dear boy, it’s not the police. I never heard of a policeman yet who arrived in a Rolls-Royce. Dear me, I rather thought this would happen.”
She walked over to the mirror in the door of one of the bookcases and surveyed herself with satisfaction.
“You will wait here, Edmund,” she said. “I shall see my visitor in the drawing room. I look so well in the drawing room, I always think.”
Beron was still staring at her in astonishment when a maid came in to announce a visitor. Before the girl had opened her mouth, however, Mrs de Liane had spoken.
“I will see Lord Tollesbury in the drawing room. Oh, you’ve put him there, have you? Very well, I’ll come at once.”
The girl went out, but before his mother could follow Edmund Beron had caught the old woman gently by the wrist and swung her round.
“Lord Tollesbury?” he said. “What on earth are you doing? What are you after?”
Mrs de Liane smiled up at him for a moment and then, lifting a small hand, pinched his cheek.
“Money, my son,” she said softly, “and still more money.”
Lord Tollesbury, his tall, elegantly clad figure looking strangely in keeping with the quiet magnificence of the Baron’s Tye drawing room, was standing on the hearthrug, his hands clasped behind his back, when the door opened and Eva de Liane came in.
They were old enemies, but until this moment they had never met, and now the man felt a sense of astonishment creep over him as his eyes rested upon the graceful silk-clad figure with the soft white hair and the priceless lace at her throat and wrists.
The words he had prepared as an opening died upon his lips. Lord Tollesbury belonged to a race of men who do not easily blackguard a lady in her own drawing room. He returned her bow but not her smile.
“Mrs de Liane,” he said, “my name is Tollesbury. We haven’t met.”
Mrs de Liane shot him one of her charming smiles.
“No, but we’ve corresponded, haven’t we?” she said, and laughed.
The woman and her attitude were both so very different from anything he had expected that Lord Tollesbury was taken completely off his guard. His cadaverous face grew blank, and for a moment his piercing dark eyes wavered.
In that moment Mrs de Liane took command of the situation.
“Do sit down,” she said, settling herself gracefully in one of the high-backed easy chairs. “It’s very kind of you to call upon an old woman as soon as you come into the district. Or is this a business visit?”
Lord Tollesbury, who had not taken the offered chair, regarded her calmly from his position by the fire.
“You’re unexpectedly courageous, if I may say so,” he observed.
“Courageous?” Mrs de Liane looked delightfully puzzled. “I don’t think so. I live a very quiet life, you know. It’s easy to be courageous if one has nothing to fear.”
Lord Tollesbury rearranged his programme. Clearly he had expected a different sort of interview, but since it was to be a delicate affair he made it apparent that he did not object.
The Shadow In The House Page 18