Devil's Dice

“Oh, what a good angel you are,” she cried joyously. “I’ve been wondering how I could get him down there for the hunting now that Ma declines to ask him.”

“Well, I have asked him because I knew you wanted to have him near you. So do not let your spirits flag nor trouble yourself regarding his journey. He will be back soon, and you can have some jolly spins across country together.”

“I don’t know how to thank you sufficiently,” she said, rising slowly and stretching forth her small hand. “You are an awfully good friend both to Jack and to myself. But I must go, for I have to call at the dressmaker’s with Ma at twelve, and I’ve only just time to get back.”

“Good-bye, Dora,” I said earnestly. “If we do not meet again in town I shall call on you at Blatherwycke. Then we can arrange plans.”

We shook hands and she left, leaving behind her a delightful breath of some subtle perfume that stirred my senses. Her beauty always brought back to me sad memories of Sybil, the adorable woman who came into my life, the one ray of happiness, brief and fleeting, as sunshine on an April day. Like Dora, she had been bright, radiant, and happy, but the grave, alas! had claimed her, and she had left me alone, gloomy and forgotten.

I took her portrait – the one I had bought in Regent Street – from its hiding-place, and as I gazed upon the pictured face, my throat contracted and a mist rose before my eyes – the tearful mist caused by life’s bitterness.

Chapter Thirteen

Between the Dances

I delayed my departure for nearly a fortnight in an endeavour to learn something of Bethune but could glean no tidings, so at last went down to the home of my childhood. My grandfather had purchased it in the early part of the century because the county was a hunting one and the neighbours a good set. I had spent the greater part of my youth there, and my parents still resided there at frequent intervals. Situated midway between Oundle and Deenethorpe, near Benefield village, Wadenhoe Manor was a great rambling old place, a typical English home, half hidden by ivy, with quaint gables and Elizabethan chimneys. As in the fading sunlight I drove up to it I thought I had never seen the old place looking so peaceful. Perhaps it was because my own mind was so perturbed by recent events that the solitude seemed complete. From the old mullioned windows the yellow sunset flashed back like molten gold and the birds in the chestnuts were chattering loudly before roosting. On the hill-slope farther down lay the quiet hamlet, a poem in itself. By the grey tower of its church stood two tall poplars, like guardian angels, the golden green of their young foliage all a-shimmer in the sunlight Beneath them was the sombre shade of one old yew, while a line of dark cypress trees, marshalled like a procession of mourners, stood along the grey old wall, and here and there showed the brown thatch of cottage roofs.

At home I found quite a party of visitors and the warmest welcome awaited me. My parents, who had not enjoyed good health, had remained there nearly all the winter, my father only coming to town now and then on pressing business, so I had not seen my mother for several months. The visitors, mostly friends from London, were a gay and pleasant company and dinner was bright and enjoyable, while there was plenty of brilliant chatter in the drawing-room afterwards.

Every one was full of expectancy of the meet on the morrow at Glapthorn, and the ball that was to be given by Lady Stretton at Blatherwycke in the evening, therefore all retired early, and were about again betimes.

The meet was a great success, and at night I accompanied our party to the dance, not because I felt in any mood for dancing, but because I wanted to get a chat with Dora and hear if she had received news of her lover.

Blatherwycke Hall was situated at a beautiful spot. I knew the place almost from the time I could toddle. It was a very ancient house. Its massive walls and dark oak timbers, its open hearths and spacious chimneys, its heavy doors with their antique locks and bars and hinges went back to the Armada days when the Stretton who held it was, in the words of a ballad of the time, “A hard-riding devil.” As old as the Hall, too, were the barns that clustered around it, the thatch of whose pointed gables was weathered to every shade of brown and grey, green with moss and golden with clinging lichens. Beyond was the green woodland, musical with streams, its stately pine trees springing straight and tall, its noble oaks just breaking into leaf, its larch and elm and hawthorn in all the pride of their young beauty.

From without it looked warm and cheerful with its brightly-lit windows, and within all was warm, comfortable, and brilliant. The party was a large one, for all the best people in the county came to Lady Stretton’s dances, and as I entered the great oak-panelled ballroom with its stands of armour and its quaint old chiming clock, I looked eagerly around and saw Dora in a ravishing toilette with skirt and sleeves of soft white satin, a bodice of rose-pink velvet, with the front lightly traced with jet, talking to several men, while at that moment I heard my name uttered by a well-known voice and turned to greet Mabel who, standing with her husband, the Earl, was attired in a marvellous gown of palest heliotrope.

As soon as dancing commenced, however, I managed to speak with Dora, and found she had saved me several dances. Many of the guests were my friends, and we spent altogether a most delightful night. Lady Stretton always entertained in first-rate style, and this was no exception. Outside, in the old-world garden, Chinese lanterns were hung in the arched walks, and in the smaller paths similarly arched crossing the central one at intervals those who desired air could find cool alleys, where the starlight filtered through the trees.

Along one of these I wandered with Dora after we had been waltzing, and finding a seat, we sat down to rest heedless of the chill air.

“Well,” I exclaimed at length, “have you heard from him?”

“Yes,” she answered rather gloomily. “Only three lines. I have brought it in my pocket so that you may see,” and producing a crumpled envelope, she handed it to me.

Striking a vesta I opened the note and read the few words it contained, written hurriedly in pencil; the message ran: “I cannot return yet, but tell no one you have heard from me. I still love you, darling, better than my life. Jack.” Then I looked at the postmark, and found it had been posted at Bardonnechia, an obscure village on the Italian frontier.

“He reassures you,” I said, after a moment’s silence. “We must wait.”

“Wait,” she echoed, sadly. “We can do nothing else. It is strange that he desires his absence to be concealed,” she continued. “Curiously enough only this morning a well-dressed man called just as I was going to the meet and saw me privately. He gave his name as Captain Allen, of Jack’s regiment, and said he had come from London to ask me his address, as he wished to send him a telegram on some important business. I told him I did not know. Then he asked if I had heard from him, and I told him – ”

“You told him what?” I gasped, starting up.

“I told him that the letter I received yesterday was posted at Bardonnechia.”

I sank back upon the seat, nerveless, paralysed.

“Did he not tell you that if you loved him you must remain silent?” I demanded, fiercely. “Don’t you know what you’ve done?”

“No,” she gasped, alarmed. “What – what have I done? Tell me. What will happen?”

But I knew I had nearly betrayed myself, and quickly recovering my self-possession, said:

“You have – well, if he is on a secret mission, as I expect he is, it may be that you may have placed those who desire to thwart its success in a position to do so.”

“Ah! Heaven! I never thought of that,” she cried in despair. “Now, I remember, the man spoke with a rather foreign accent.”

“Yes,” I said, severely. “By disobeying his injunctions you may have placed him in the hands of his enemies!” She sat silent, her hands clasped before her, and sighing heavily, she shuddered.

Then rising slowly she left me. I did not follow, for I saw she walked unevenly with bent head, in order to hide her emotion.

Chapter Fourteen

The Deeper Indiscretion

During a quarter of an hour I sat alone smoking a cigarette in thoughtful silence under the trellis, when suddenly I heard the sound of passionate voices on the other side of the ivy. Two persons had evidently seated themselves in close proximity to myself, and I was, so to speak, in the middle of a scene before I realised that I was listening.

“You shall not do this thing,” cried a woman’s voice. “By God! you shan’t – you shall listen to reason. He has been murdered, foully done to death, and – ”

“Well, what of that? Can’t you whisper, you fool?” and I heard an imprecation from between a man’s set teeth.

Stealthily, in order not to attract attention, I turned and parting the foliage saw directly behind me the gleam of a light dress in the darkness. At first I could not distinguish its wearer, but almost at that moment her companion struck a match to light his cigar, and its fickle flame illuminated both their faces.

The woman in the light dress was the Countess of Fyneshade, and the man, wearing a heavy fur travelling-coat, and with several days’ growth of beard on his dark, frowning face, was the mysterious individual who had met me on the night I had been married to Sybil.

“So you have come from Marseilles, for what purpose?” exclaimed Mabel angrily. “Merely to run risk of compromising me, and to tell me absolutely nothing. You must think me an idiot?”

“Have I not already told you the result of my inquiries into the movements of Bethune?”

“I have surreptitiously read each letter that Dora has received from him, and I was well aware of your devilish cunning, for I have already had experience of it myself.”

“So you entertain a suspicion that Gilbert Sternroyd has been murdered – eh?” he said, with a low laugh, not deigning to remark upon the uncomplimentary terms in which she had spoken. “Surely a young man may – er – disappear for a week or so, without any great harm coming to him?”

“Mine is not a mere suspicion,” she declared quickly. “I am absolutely certain he has met with foul play.”

“Why?”

“Because three days before his disappearance he told me in confidence that an enemy, whom he would not name, had threatened him.”

“But if he had really been murdered, surely his body would have been found by this time?” he observed. “You have, I am well aware, communicated your suspicions to the police, and they have made every inquiry, but without avail. In passing through London this morning I called at Scotland Yard on your behalf and was informed that they had succeeded in tracing the missing man to the Army and Navy Club on the night of his disappearance. He left there at midnight to walk home, but since that moment nothing has been heard of him.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing except the curious fact that on the following morning a check for five thousand five hundred pounds in favour of some mysterious individual, named Charles Collinson, was handed in at the Temple Bar branch of the London and Westminster Bank, endorsed in an illiterate hand by the bearer, and duly cashed. After that all traces are lost. He has disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him.”

“I care nothing for police theories,” Mabel said firmly. “I feel convinced that he has been brutally murdered.”

“But who were his enemies?”