The Red Widow: or, The Death-Dealers of London

"By Jove! She's a handsome woman, too! But she's not Joan Eastlake. That's my belief. Nevertheless, now I'm here, I may as well make quite certain."

And he took out a final cigarette from his case and smoked it reflectively before he turned in.

Next day he was about early at the loch-side, and though he contrived to arouse no suspicion in the minds of either those connected with the hotel or any of his fellow-visitors, he kept casual observation upon the pair. Now and then he would accidentally be so close in their vicinity as to be able to overhear scraps of their conversation. Yet so cleverly did he do this, and so utterly uninterested did he appear to be, that even Ena, who was ever suspicious of eavesdroppers and persons watching, failed to realise the intense interest which she had evoked in the little round-faced man.

The following day Ena accompanied her friend on a trip across to Loch Katrine, but the stranger idled about the hotel and wrote letters. After lunch, however, at the hour when the small establishment was quietest, the curiosity of anyone watching him would certainly have been aroused. His actions were truly a little peculiar.

At about three o'clock that afternoon, having ascertained that none of the servants were about, he slipped silently to Mrs. Pollen's bedroom, the door of which was unlocked, and, entering quickly, closed the door after him. Then, walking straight to a big dressing-case which lay upon a chair near the window, he took out a bunch of keys and tried one after the other in an effort to open it.

He failed, none of the keys would fit.

"If I force it she'll suspect," he murmured. "No, I must give it up for the present – curse it!"

Then he made a tour of the room, opened the wardrobe, and examined the contents of several drawers, but though some expensive jewellery was there, he cast it aside in contempt.

Mr. Greig did not want jewels. It was evident that he was in search of something else far more interesting. But that lock upon the dressing-case was an unusually good one, and had defied all his many keys.

There was but one course to pursue, and that was to retreat to his own room, which he did in great disappointment and chagrin.

That evening he watched the two women on their return. His movements were those of a practised watcher. He was unobtrusive, disinterested in everything save the picturesque surroundings, and behaved as though he had no interest whatever in any person in the hotel.

That evening, while in the garden after dinner, he found himself sitting on a seat beside Mrs. Morrison, and ventured to address a remark to her regarding the glorious sunset.

What more natural than in a few moments Ena and her friend were chatting affably with the new-comer.

"This is my first visit to Scotland," Ena declared, though it was a falsehood, "and I'm delighted with it. My views – those of a Londoner – have entirely altered concerning Scotland and the Scottish people. I don't agree now with the ridicule cast upon them."

"I'm very glad of that," declared Mr. Greig. "In the south you don't really understand us, I think. And perhaps we here don't quite understand you. National prejudices are very hard to break down."

"They are. But you see the majority of the English never come north. They view the Scottish people by the ridicule cast upon them by performers on our music-halls. It is unfortunate, but it is a fact."

"Never mind," laughed the pleasant-faced man from Glasgow. "Our national pride is never hurt by those amblers on the stage who wax fat upon the profits of their mimicry. We only laugh at it up here, I assure you," he declared to Mrs. Pollen.

The conversation drifted naturally to the fact that Mrs. Morrison told him her name, which was Scottish, and the identity of her late husband, so well known in Glasgow.

"Oh! I knew your husband quite well, Mrs. Morrison," declared John Greig, for no shrewder or more well-informed person was there between the Lowlands and Cromarty. "I knew him twenty years ago. Do you recollect Mr. Buchanan, who had an office in St. Vincent Street, Glasgow, and with whom he went into partnership? Mr. Buchanan died about four years ago. I went to visit him once at that beautiful house of his on Loch Rannoch."

"Then you knew Mr. Buchanan!" cried Mrs. Morrison. "He was a dear fellow. My husband was devoted to him. Together they built up the works."

"I know. Everyone in commercial circles in Glasgow knows how closely they worked together, and, Mrs. Morrison, I may tell you that not a worker on the Clyde has any but good words for your husband and his partner. The conditions of work in your husband's place at Govan were always ideal. We hear much of labour trouble in these post-bellum days, but if all works were like your husband's there would be little to grumble at."

"It is awfully good of you to pay such a tribute to my husband's regard for his employees," said Mrs. Morrison, much gratified. "He and I often discussed their welfare, and I always agreed with him that labour should be duly paid and there should be no sweating. We have Socialist propaganda on the Clyde to-day, but is it at all astonishing in view of the high prices, of Government muddle and waste, and the advancement into society by the King's favour in the shape of 'honours' of bare-faced swindlers and those who escape under the more euphonious name of profiteers?"

"Ah! I'm glad that you have realised the deadly peril of Britain, Mrs. Morrison," Greig said. "As a business man in Glasgow – I am an exporter to the East – I know much of what is transpiring among the Socialists, and I know the deadly peril of Britain to-day."

The fact that Greig had known not only her husband but his partner, Buchanan, appealed to Mrs. Morrison, with the result that he had frequent chats with her, and incidentally with her friend, Ena Pollen, whose belongings he had so carefully scrutinised in her absence.

The man from Glasgow, with his round, merry, well-shaven face, a countenance of prosperity, was a typical man of business, and he appealed to old Morrison's widow as a very nice man.

With her estimate Ena, any suspicion utterly disarmed, entirely agreed.

Pleasant, humorous, and careless in his relaxation from money-making in grim and grimy Glasgow, John Greig was an excellent fellow on holiday. His estimate of women – for he was a bachelor – coincided entirely with that of Ena Pollen.

To be frank, he had, in the course of conversation, gauged her views regarding her own sex, and he at once sought to cultivate her acquaintance upon her line of thought.

"Of course," she said next morning, as he found himself gossiping with her after breakfast, "woman ought not to work at all. No man really likes a woman who works for him. Work isn't woman's natural element, though trouble is. Work is an odious word to women."

"Really, Mrs. Pollen, your philosophy is quite upon that of my own thinking," laughed Greig. "Once a man I know declared to me that to girls business life would be a dull existence if it were not for its sly opening for an illicit romance."

"One woman writer has said, and with much truth, that petticoats, like time, were made for slaves, and that there is more virtue in a single pair of trousers than there is in a multitude of skirts," laughed Ena.

"True. Was it not the same lady author who told us that the wrong part of wrong-doing is being found out?"

"Ah! yes. And the same feminine philosopher went farther," Ena said. "She declared that the woman who thinks it wicked to buy silk petticoats and luxurious 'undies' – 'because no one sees them' – is a fool; but the hedonist who frankly revels in the feel and frou-frou of silk and crêpe de chineand mysterious lace things is as wise as Eve, who wore leaves rather than nothing, and made a tantalising mystery of herself out of the poor resources at her command."

The man from Glasgow laughed immoderately. "Really," he remarked, "you have no great admiration of your own sex, Mrs. Pollen."

"No, I have not," declared the Red Widow frankly, as they both halted and leaned over a gate which gave entrance to a great green meadow beyond which was the edge of the loch, the water of which lay like a mirror in the morning sunlight.

Up there, far removed from the life and bustle of the outer world, with all its political bickerings and its labour troubles, life was very enjoyable, and the two women who had become so friendly had quickly discovered in John Greig a man whose ideas corresponded exactly with their own – a man who had formed distinct views upon life, and who was not afraid to admit them.

At last came the afternoon of their departure for Edinburgh. They bade Mr. Greig farewell on the Pier just before the steamer started for Balloch.

Then, going on board, they waved him a farewell as the paddles began to revolve, sending out long ripples over the glassy surface of the loch.

He raised his hat with a merry laugh, but as he did so, he remarked beneath his breath:

"After all – I'm not sure, even now!"

CHAPTER X

MORE MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES

"Let's pull up here; it's so delightfully shady."

Marigold Ramsay, who spoke, lay back among the crimson cushions of the punt, with her eyes fixed upon the sky.

She loved the river. That Sunday afternoon was perfect, and she was enjoying the day on the river after a week's hard work in the bank.

Gerald, who was an expert with the punt-pole, was taking her up that pretty reach of the Thames which winds between Shepperton and Walton, with the long rows of poplars fringing the river bank.

They had lunched at the little riverside inn at Halliford, and were now making their way slowly up-stream. Gerald, in flannels, with coat off and sleeves upturned, placing his pole and withdrawing it without any apparent effort.

Since that adventurous night at Bridge Place they had become even closer friends. No day passed but they met. The previous two Sundays Durrant had spent with her, the first at Dorking, where they had wandered over Leith Hill and along the Surrey lanes, and the next Sunday at Brighton. This, the third Sunday, they had decided to spend together on the Thames.

As they were passing beneath a long row of trees which overhung the water, the girl, who was in white, raised herself from her couch of cushions and suggested that they should tie up the punt there.

"Certainly," he replied, and a few moments later he had secured the punt to a tree root, and, sitting down to rest, he lit his pipe.