The Thousandth Woman

"So have I, the little I've seen of him. And I don't blame him for getting on my tracks, mind you; he's a bit of a detective, I was fair game, and he did warn me in a way. That's why I meant to have the week – " He stopped and looked away.

"I know. And nothing can undo that," she only said; but her voice swelled with thanksgiving. And Cazalet looked reassured; the hot suspicion died out of his eyes, but left them gloomily perplexed.

"Still, I can't understand it. I don't believe it, either! I'm in his hands. What have I done to be saved by Toye? He's probably scouring London for me – if he isn't watching this window at this minute!"

He went to the curtains as he spoke. Simultaneously Blanche sprang up, to entreat him to fly while he could. That had been her first object in coming to him as she had done, and yet, once with him, she had left it to the last! And now it was too late; he was at the window, chuckling significantly to himself; he had opened it, and he was leaning out.

"That you, Toye, down there? Come up and show yourself! I want to see you."

He turned in time to dart in front of the folding-doors as Blanche reached them, white and shuddering. The flush of impulsive bravado fled from his face at the sight of hers.

"You can't go in there. What's the matter?" he whispered. "Why should you be afraid of Hilton Toye?"

How could she tell him? Before she had found a word, the landing door opened, and Hilton Toye was in the room, looking at her.

"Keep your voice down," said Cazalet anxiously. "Even if it's all over with me but the shouting, we needn't start the shouting here!"

He chuckled savagely at his jest; and now Toye stood looking at him.

"I've heard all you've done," continued Cazalet. "I don't blame you a bit. If it had been the other way about, I might have given you less run for your money. I've heard what you've found out about my mysterious movements, and you're absolutely right as far as you go. You don't know why I took the train at Naples, and traveled across Europe without a hand-bag. It wasn't quite the put-up job you may think. But, if it makes you any happier, I may as well tell you that I was at Uplands that night, and I did get out through the foundations!"

The insane impetuosity of the man was his master now. He was a living fire of impulse that had burst into a blaze. His voice was raised in spite of his warning to the others, and the very first sound of Toye's was to remind him that he was forgetting his own advice. Toye had not looked a second time at Blanche; nor did he now; but he took in the silenced Cazalet from head to heel, by inches.

"I always guessed you might be crazy, and I now know it," said Hilton Toye. "Still, I judge you're not so crazy as to deny that while you were in that house you struck down Henry Craven, and left him for dead?"

Cazalet stood like a red-hot stone.

"Miss Blanche," said Toye, turning to her rather shyly, "I guess I can't do what I said just yet. I haven't breathed a word, not yet, and perhaps I never will, if you'll come away with me now – back to your home – and never see Henry Craven's murderer again!"

"And who may he be?" cried a voice that brought all three face-about.

The folding-doors had opened, and a fourth figure was standing between the two rooms.

XV

THE PERSON UNKNOWN

The intruder was a shaggy elderly man, of so cadaverous an aspect that his face alone cried for his death-bed; and his gaunt frame took up the cry, as it swayed upon the threshold in dressing-gown and bedroom slippers that Toye instantly recognized as belonging to Cazalet. The man had a shock of almost white hair, and a less gray beard clipped roughly to a point. An unwholesome pallor marked the fallen features; and the envenomed eyes burned low in their sockets, as they dealt with Blanche but fastened on Hilton Toye.

"What do you know about Henry Craven's murderer?" he demanded in a voice between a croak and a crow. "Have they run in some other poor devil, or were you talking about me? If so, I'll start a libel action, and call Cazalet and that lady as witnesses!"

"This is Scruton," explained Cazalet, "who was only liberated this evening after being detained a week on a charge that ought never to have been brought, as I've told you both all along." Scruton thanked him with a bitter laugh. "I've brought him here," concluded Cazalet, "because I don't think he's fit enough to be about alone."

"Nice of him, isn't it?" said Scruton bitterly. "I'm so fit that they wanted to keep me somewhere else longer than they'd any right; that may be why they lost no time in getting hold of me again. Nice, considerate, kindly country! Ten years isn't long enough to have you as a dishonored guest. 'Won't you come back for another week, and see if we can't arrange a nice little sudden death and burial for you?' But they couldn't you see, blast 'em!"

He subsided into the best chair in the room, which Blanche had wheeled up behind him; a moment later he looked round, thanked her curtly, and lay back with closed eyes until suddenly he opened them on Cazalet.

"And what was that you were saying – that about traveling across Europe and being at Uplands that night? I thought you came round by sea? And what night do you mean?"

"The night it all happened," said Cazalet steadily.

"You mean the night some person unknown knocked Craven on the head?"

"Yes."

The sick man threw himself forward in the chair. "You never told me this!" he cried suspiciously; both the voice and the man seemed stronger.

"There was no point in telling you."

"Did you see the person?"

"Yes."

"Then he isn't unknown to you?"

"I didn't see him well."

Scruton looked sharply at the two mute listeners. They were very intent, indeed. "Who are these people, Cazalet? No! I know one of 'em," he answered himself in the next breath. "It's Blanche Macnair, isn't it? I thought at first it must be a younger sister grown up like her. You'll forgive prison manners, Miss Macnair, if that's still your name. You look a woman to trust – if there is one – and you gave me your chair. Anyhow, you've been in for a penny and you can stay in for a pound, as far as I care! But who's your Amer'can friend, Cazalet?"

"Mr. Hilton Toye, who spotted that I'd been all the way to Uplands and back when I claimed to have been in Rome!"

There was a touch of Scruton's bitterness in Cazalet's voice; and by some subtle process it had a distinctly mollifying effect on the really embittered man.

"What on earth were you doing at Uplands?" he asked, in a kind of confidential bewilderment.

"I went down to see a man."

Toye himself could not have cut and measured more deliberate monosyllables.

"Craven?" suggested Scruton.

"No; a man I expected to find at Craven's."

"The writer of the letter you found at Cook's office in Naples the night you landed there, I guess!"

It really was Toye this time, and there was no guesswork in his tone. Obviously he was speaking by his little book, though he had not got it out again.

"How do you know I went to Cook's?"

"I know every step you took between the Kaiser Fritz and Charing Cross and Charing Cross and the Kaiser Fritz!"

Scruton listened to this interchange with keen attention, hanging on each man's lips with his sunken eyes; both took it calmly, but Scruton's surprise was not hidden by a sardonic grin.

"You've evidently had a stern chase with a Yankee clipper!" said he. "If he's right about the letter, Cazalet, I should say so; presumably it wasn't from Craven himself?"

"No."

"Yet it brought you across Europe to Craven's house?"