Chapter XIV

The last person in the world that Danty Morell wished to see was Inspector Bird. If there was any compensation for that meeting in Green Park, it was that Mr. Bird was accompanied by a very pretty girl, whose face was curiously familiar to the connoisseur of beauty.

Danton was strolling aimlessly along the margin of the pond watching the ducks, his mind intent upon a scheme which he had formulated that morning. When he saw that the Sparrow had a companion, he hoped that the detective would have sufficient sense of decency to pass him; but apparently Mr. Bird was deficient in this quality. He stood, a stout, stolid figure, his eyes twinkling through his puffed eyelids, a smirk of satisfaction on his face, as though he were meeting a long-lost friend.

“’Morning, Morell--I’d like you to meet this gentleman, Miss Bolford.”

His tone was so friendly that Danty was momentarily taken off his guard. He smiled ingratiatingly.

“I think I’ve met you before,” he began.

“And you’ll meet her again,” boomed the Sparrow. “This young lady’s a reporter--ever been to the Old Bailey, Miss Bolford?”

She laughed.

“Twice. I don’t want to go again.”

“You _can_ go there too often,” admitted the Sparrow. “Once is too often with some people, eh, Morell?”

Before the wrathful man could reply:

“Any news of Mr. Maddison?”

“He’s in Paris,” said Danty shortly.

“Thought he was.” The Sparrow nodded. “When I see that servant of yours getting off the boat train I said to myself, ‘I’ll bet Maddison’s in Paris. I’ll bet he’s sendin’ lovin’ wires to his wife all the time that servant of yours is there.’ Do you know Mr. Stiles?” His head drooped on one side so ludicrously like a sparrow’s that Mary Bolford had to make an effort to keep her face straight. “Manager of Maddison’s Bank?”

“I’ve heard of him; I’ve met him, I think,” said the other curtly.

“Good fellow, but not talkative,” said Bird. “The more you talk to him the less he says. He’s just like ten oysters singing the Hallelujah Chorus--maybe eleven. What he doesn’t know about the whereabouts of Mr. Maddison he doesn’t say.”

“So far as I know,” said Danty in a loud voice, “Maddison is in Paris, having a very good time.”

“Not before the child,” murmured the Sparrow, closing his eyes in anguish. “I suppose he said so in his wire? I’m betting ten million pounds it wasn’t a letter.”

“You’d better ask Mrs. Maddison,” said Danty, and would have walked on had not the detective’s hand detained him.

“There’s one thing I’d like to know--have you met the Gunner?”

He saw the man start.

“The Gunner?” he stammered. “Do you mean Haynes--the fellow who was charged the other day? He’s in prison, I understand.”

“You don’t read your newspapers.” The Sparrow shook his head sorrowfully. “Here’s Fleet Street spendin’ millions of pounds a year, thousands of honest, industrious reporters workin’ like hell to get as much of the truth as makes good readin’, and you don’t read ’em! Gunner’s conviction was quashed--he’s floating around London somewhere.”

Danty had regained control over his features now and his face was like a mask.

“I’m really not interested in the criminal classes,” he said.

“I’ll bet you’re not!” said Mr. Bird admiringly. “I’ll give you a tip, Morell--avoid the wide, open spaces where men are men in the daytime and frequently dead at night. I never found the Gunner’s well-known gun, but maybe he knows just where to lay his hand on it. So-long!”

He watched Danton walking furiously along the path, and turned with a broad grin to his companion.

“That man’s nearer to being a crook than I am to being a detective,” he said.

“He’s the man who asked me to call at his house after dinner and have coffee with him,” smiled Mary.

“I’ll bet he is! Why, of course!” said Bird. “I’d forgotten that little episode outside the bank.” He scratched his chin. “Who was with him then?” he asked with sudden interest.

“A young man; I’d never seen him before, but you said he was a speculator or a gambler or something.”

The Sparrow’s lips pursed in a whistle.

“They were in that bank together,” he said softly, “at about three in the afternoon, when a check was cashed for umpteen thousand pounds! Everything is very curious and mysterious.”

But when she endeavoured to satisfy her own curiosity and solve the mystery, he was as uncommunicative as Mr. Stiles.

Danty strode on furiously, his smooth complacency disturbed. He had counted on the fact that the Gunner would be in prison for at least three months. And in three months much could be done. His big coup could be projected and brought to fruition, and he could be well out of the country, with enough money to last him for years, before Gunner Haynes started forth on his quest.

As he reached the Mall he stopped suddenly with a blank sense of dismay. Why had the Sparrow warned him? There was nothing to connect him with the arrest of the Gunner, unless--the police had betrayed him! So the Gunner knew. It was strange that Haynes had made no attempt to see him during all the weeks he had been at liberty. Danton Morell took comfort from that thought, and went on to keep his appointment.

Margaret was out when he arrived; he had to wait for an hour in her drawing room before she returned. That in itself was a bad sign. He had made the appointment and did not dream that she would fail to keep it. He hinted as much when she came in, and recognized his mistake.

In these days Margaret was never in the same mood for ten minutes together. She who had been so tractable and so easily influenced, who was ready to accept the most deadly charges against the man she had loved, without any attempt at independent investigation, was now peculiarly difficult to convince at all. He was constantly meeting new barriers, new reservations; he had to combat, as it were, another nature which he had not even suspected. She was in her most austere mood this morning.

“You must have mistaken the time,” he suggested. “I said eleven o’clock----”

“I know you said eleven o’clock, but I was detained.”

He swallowed something.

“Been shopping?”

She shook her head. She seemed to be more intent upon the book whose leaves she was turning than upon Danton and his appointment. He saw it was a Continental Bradshaw.

“I thought you were bored with Madeira? You’re not going away again?”

She did not answer. She had found the place she wanted and her finger went down a column of figures.

“I’m not going away,” she said; “I am sending a man into Spain--Mr. Stiles thinks that if Luke went anywhere it would be to Ronda, though of course he wouldn’t have had time to reach there yet.”

He stared at her in amazement.

“Stiles? Have you seen him?”

She nodded.

“Yes.”

“But I thought he was rather rude to you the last time you spoke to him?”

A faint smile curled the finely moulded lips.

“He was inclined to be rude to me to-day--but I persevered,” she said quietly.

“But, my dear Margaret! You surely aren’t going to do anything as undignified as to run after Luke? After his wire and his barefaced admission of consolations----”

“Luke has not been in Paris,” she said evenly. “Mr. Stiles had a note from him this morning, saying that he had been in London but would probably go off to Spain for a little time. He asked Mr. Stiles to send his Spanish check book to the Carlton in Madrid. Luke has an account at the Spanish National Bank which apparently he has only just remembered.”

There was a long silence. Danty was too wise to insist upon the authenticity of the Paris telegram.

“You’re sending a man to Ronda?”

She nodded.

“But what can he do?”

“He can tell me when Luke arrives--then I shall go out to him.”

The man stared at her open mouthed.

“You’ll go out to him?” he repeated incredulously. “Do you really mean that you’ve forgotten… Rex, and Rex’s letter?”

She was standing by her little writing table, looking down at the pad, very lovely, very thoughtfully--a slim, gracious figure of a girl.

“When Rex--” she hesitated--“shot himself he could not have been in his right mind. He must have been mistaken. It wasn’t possible that Luke could have done this thing. I’ve been thinking it over day and night.”

Danty could adapt himself to circumstances, but when those circumstances were centred in a woman’s caprice he found his task an almost superhuman one.

“You disbelieve your brother, then?”

She raised her eyes slowly to his.

“I even disbelieve myself,” she said.

“And me?” he challenged.

She hesitated.

“I think you were very zealous for me,” she said, “and I probably let you into my way of thinking; and Rex was very fond of you.”

He smiled bitterly.

“Is that all?”

“What did you expect?”

There was genuine surprise in her voice. Danton Morell knew that it was not the moment to put his fortune to the test. He threw out his hands and smiled.

“I’m sorry--one is human with human ambitions, human thoughts, human hopes.”

Before she could check this, he went on:

“I suppose I was prejudiced against Maddison. I always thought he was a weakling. I have still suspicions that he is. If one of us has prejudiced the other, it is I who have prejudiced you.”

Instinct told him that he was saying the right thing, and that now for the first time he was attuned to her mood. But he had his own business to settle.

“I was talking to you the other day about this Argentine Power Scheme I was organizing--you remember I showed you the report and the figures. You said you would like to take a few thousand shares.”

She nodded.

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” she began, but he interrupted her.

“Well, I’ve had a cable this morning. I have been trying to persuade one of the biggest supporters of the scheme to stand out--I was virtually pledged to give him a big holding--and he has agreed. I can now let you invest a hundred thousand pounds----”

“I’m sorry”--her tone was so definite that he turned cold--“but I can’t even take the few thousand. I have handed to the custody of Mr. Stiles and Luke’s lawyer every penny I had from him--that is why I went to see Mr. Stiles.”