The Under-Secretary

At that instant the door was flung open suddenly, and there advanced into the room the woman he believed to be far away in Italy – the woman who held his future in her hands, Muriel Mortimer.

“Marriage with me,” she said, answering his question.

“You!” he cried, thoroughly taken aback at her sudden appearance. “What do you mean? Kindly explain all this.”

“It requires no explanation, Mr Chisholm,” she replied, her pale face hard-set and determined. “You are in the gravest peril, and I have come to you prepared to rescue you from the punishment which must otherwise fall upon you. To-night you have been with the woman who loves you – the witch-like woman who has half London at her feet. I know it all. You love her, and intend to marry her. But you will marry me – me!” and she struck her breast with her hand to emphasise her words. “Or,” she added, – “or to-night you will be arrested as a common criminal.”

He looked her straight in the face without flinching. She was dressed plainly, even shabbily, in rusty black, as though, when out of doors, to avoid attention. Her countenance, pallid and drawn, showed how desperate she was. He, for his part, perceived that he had been tricked by her, and the thought lashed him to fury.

“Listen!” he cried indignantly; “I have been enticed here to this place as part of a plot formed to obtain ten thousand pounds by blackmail, or else to drive me into becoming your husband, you well knowing that I should be prepared to pay any sum to be rid of the danger that threatens me. You promise me freedom if I consent to one or the other. The affection you pretended to feel for me was a sham of the worst kind. You and your precious myrmidons want money – only money. But from me you won’t obtain a single halfpenny. Understand that, all three of you!”

“You intend to marry her!” she said between her teeth. “But you shall never do that. She shall know the truth.”

“Tell her. To me, it is quite immaterial, I assure you,” he declared in defiance.

He saw that this woman, whom he had once believed so innocent, even childish in her simplicity, was an associate of an unscrupulous gang that, no doubt, existed by blackmailing those who desired to escape from England. He had heard vague rumours of the existence of this strange association, for it had long ago been a puzzle to the London police why so many foreigners were able to evade them and fly successfully from the country, while Englishmen, who knew well the various outlets, usually failed.

“You made a solemn compact with me that night at Wroxeter,” she said. “And you have broken it. On my part I have done all that was possible. Cator would have known the truth long ago had it not been for my presence in Italy, and for the counteracting efforts of his own lieutenant, Francesco Marucci. To my foresight all this is due, yet now you decline to save yourself!”

“I refuse to be blackmailed.”

“You hope to escape and marry her,” laughed the fair-haired woman defiantly.

“I hope for nothing. My life is, to me, just as precious as it was that bitter night at Wroxeter.”

“And you absolutely refuse to accept the alternative?”

“I will accept nothing either from you, or from your associates,” he replied.

“Then we are to be enemies?”

“If you so desire.”

“You prefer the revelations that I intend to make?”

“I do, most certainly,” he answered with a forced laugh.

“Shall I tell you one thing?”

“Do, by all means.”

“Well, you shall never marry her. To-morrow she will hate the very mention of your name,” she cried wildly.

“My memory, you mean.”

“Why?”

“Because to-morrow I shall be dead, and your chance of plucking the pigeon will have disappeared,” he answered bitterly.

She looked at him with a maddened and fiery glance, as though his defiance had aroused the spirit of murder within her. She saw that his determination to carry out his previous intention of suicide checkmated her. All her ingenious wiles had been conceived and operated in vain.

While he still lived, there was a hope of securing the prize which an hour ago had seemed to be so well within her grasp.

“So you refuse!” she cried in a frenzy of anger. “You intend to escape by self-destruction, miserable coward that you are!”

“I am no coward!” he replied with fierce indignation. “If I were a coward I would accept the offer of your associates and pay willingly to be placed beyond the possibility of arrest. But I prefer to face the inevitable, and shall do so without flinching.” Then, turning to the others, he added: “I wish all three of you more success in your next attempt to squeeze money from an unfortunate criminal – that is all.”

He turned to leave, but Tonio, the hot-headed young bully, instantly sprang forward and drew from his belt a glittering knife, one of those long, narrow-bladed weapons which the Italian of the South usually carries out of sight on his person, although his paternal government forbids him so to do. Quick as thought Dudley divined the Italian wished to prevent him from leaving the house, and, seeing the knife held down threateningly before him, he raised his fist and with a rapid, well-directed drive from the shoulder struck the fellow beneath the jaw with such force that he was lifted up and fell backwards upon the table, overturning the cheap paraffin lamp standing there.

In an instant the place burst into flames. During the confusion that followed, while the woman rushed from the room screaming “Fire!” Dudley dashed out of the house, expecting, of course, to find his cab waiting for him.

But it was not there. While he had been arguing, the old hag had evidently paid the fare and dismissed the conveyance, a fact which was in itself sufficient evidence that they had not intended him to leave the house.

For a moment he hesitated. Then, recognising how narrowly he had escaped being struck down by an assassin, he turned and hurried away across the rough brickfield to which the unfinished road gave entrance.

Shouts of alarm, and loud cries of “Fire!” sounded behind him, but without turning to look he continued on his way, stumbling along in the darkness, utterly dumbfounded at his strange adventure and the remarkable revelation of the true character of the pretty young woman known in West End drawing-rooms as Muriel Mortimer.

For most of the remainder of the night Dudley Chisholm, unnerved by the strange affair and haunted by the constant dread that he was already under police surveillance, wandered through the deserted streets of Penge and Lower Sydenham. He feared to inquire the way from any of the constables he met, lest he should be recognised. As he was entirely unacquainted with the district, he knew his position was hopeless till there should be light enough to show him the Crystal Palace. Once arrived there, he could easily make his way back to London, for in days gone by he had often driven down in his tandem from Westminster, once or twice with Claudia at his side.

The night was dark, starless, and intensely cold. But he heeded not fatigue, for his mind was full of the gravest reflections. That the woman Mortimer, the mysterious ward of the Meldrums, had laid a very clever plot, into which he had fallen, was plainly apparent. But he had refused her demands, and she was now, of course, his most bitter enemy. That she would seek vengeance he had no doubt, for she had already shown herself to be a woman not to be thwarted.

And what was worse than all – she knew his secret.

Through the ill-lit suburban roads he wandered on and on, reflecting bitterly that with this woman as his enemy there only remained for him suicide, if he wished to avoid arrest and a criminal’s trial. He came at last to a railway line running on a low embankment, through market gardens, and it occurred to him to climb up there and wait in patience for the approach of a train. All this time Dudley Chisholm was not in the least distraught; and yet of all his wishes none was so powerful as the wish to end his life.

But Claudia’s beautiful face arose before him. Her dear eyes, with that familiar expression of tenderness, a little sad, but sweet with a love-look not to be mistaken, seemed to gaze upon him just as they had done during that blissful hour before midnight, when he had held her in his arms and breathed into her ear the declaration of his love.

Ah, how passionately he loved her!

No, he could not take farewell of life without once again beholding her! He descended the embankment and walked along what seemed interminable miles of streets, until he met at last a bricklayer on his way to work, carrying his tin tea-bottle in his hand. This man proved communicative, and informed him that he was at Rushey Green, on the main road which led through Lewisham and Deptford, where it entered one of the arteries of London, the Old Kent Road.

He glanced at his watch and found that it was close upon five o’clock. Roused by this discovery, he pushed forward at a quicker pace, at length finding a belated cab in front of a coffee-stall, at which its driver was refreshing himself. Then, thoroughly worn out, he got into the conveyance and was driven back to his chambers.

Old Parsons had a message for him when he reached home.

“A man called to see you during the night, master Dudley. He wished to see you very particularly, but would leave no card.”

“What kind of man?” inquired his master suspiciously.

“I think he was a gentleman. At least he spoke like one. I had never seen him before. He wanted to know whether he would find you down at the House, and I said that it was most probable you were there.”

“He wasn’t a foreigner?”

“Oh no,” the old man answered. “Some papers have also been brought by a messenger. They are on your table.”

Dudley passed through into his study, put down his hat, and broke open the usual sealed packet of Parliamentary papers which reached him each night, and which contained among others, the draft of the questions to be addressed to him on the following day in his capacity of Foreign Under-Secretary in the House.

Without seating himself he took out the question paper and looked at it.