Chapter TWENTY-THREE: The Six Circles

The woman Illona, by this time, had made herself thoroughly at home in my rooms, for she had passed into my bedroom, where she had powdered her face and settled her hat. And now, on her return, she took one of my cigarettes, lit it, and again cast herself into the arm-chair, saying:

“What cozy quarters you have here, Lionel! I expect when on your long journeys in those stuffy sleeping-cars you often wish you were in your own rooms, eh?”

“Sometimes,” I said, with a laugh. “The conductors on the cars make night traveling as comfortable as they can for me. Most of them know me, and bring me a cup of coffee at the early morning stopping-place. Frequently I am unable to sleep, especially on that ill-laid line between Calais and Bâle, or between Paris and Irun, so I spend the night reading a book, while long journeys from Calais to Constantinople I usually spend in bed, except to get up for meals.”

“It must be terribly monotonous for you, poor dear,” she said in a tone of affection.

“Oh, but it has its brighter side,” I declared. “A couple of days at Evian just now, for instance, will not be amiss, except that I have so much to attend to here at home.”

I was about to replace Lady Rathgormly’s pearls in the hollowed volume of Voltaire when I saw within a folded paper, which I drew forth with interest. The paper was thick, and of good texture, and as I opened it I saw six circles drawn one within the other, as three double noughts--a circle of musical notes, outside of which were letters in bold Roman capitals, each against a drawn section, and each corresponding with a particular musical note.

In order that the reader may follow my discovery I give here a reproduction of the piece of cartridge paper which I found in the old volume in which the pearls had been concealed.

[image caption: THE DIAGRAM WITH THE PEARLS.]

As will be noticed, the partitions were drawn at different angles, and apparently the curious design had been made by a woman’s hand.

“The key!” she cried, the second I opened it. “I could not read the message Lisely sent you to Kensington Gardens because I foolishly left my key in Lausanne. Let us read it if you have not already done so.”

“I surely have not,” I alleged, astonished at the find. “Is this the key to that imitation music?”

“Oh, how foolish you are, Lionel! Of course it is.” And she snatched the piece of paper from my hands.

From her handbag she drew forth the piece of music which the girl Lisely had sent me, by the hands of the manicurist, to Kensington Gardens. She calculated for a few seconds. Then, with the pencil from her bag, she quickly deciphered the secret message, placing a letter beneath each musical note.

As she wrote, I read the message as follows:

“_Illona will betray you to the police. She is coming to London with that object. Beware of her! Trust in me._--Lisely.”

“The infernal liar!” cried the woman in fierce resentment, her hands clenched in fury. “What does she mean? Why has she sent you this, except in order to deceive you, and draw you into still further entanglements?”

“What entanglements?” I demanded. “Surely there has been enough mystery already. Through no fault of mine, save my fear of scandal, I have been compelled to take part in the nefarious operations of an accursed gang.”

“To your own profit, Lionel dear,” she remarked, with a quiet smile. “And, besides, His Excellency declares that you’re the most expert dipper for stones he has ever known--you’ve got such a marvelously light touch.”

“I certainly didn’t know I have that,” I declared, staring at her.

The discovery of the musical code used by the wide-spread gang astounded me. It was certainly a marvel of ingenuity, and could be varied in numberless ways. The “time” shown on the message was one of the easiest. But any message might be marked with figures of addition, or subtraction, which would render the message utterly unintelligible, even though it might be suspected by others, into whose hands it might fall.

The use of secret inks, combinations of figures and letters, or other means of confidential correspondence, surely faded into insignificance as compared with this latest creation of a criminal’s brain.

That distinct warning given me by Lisely made her furious.

“She intends to betray me. That I know!” she declared. “She thinks that, on account of a slip which Tuggy Wilson made in Paris, I have been the means of drawing the attention of the police to her lover, Owen. But,” she added, in a voice full of hatred, “Dufour is not ignorant of what she has done, and he will see that she gets her just deserts.” A silence fell between us.

“Look here, Illona,” I said at last, “you have sworn to be my friend, as well as my wife. Will you assist me? I beg of you to do so.”

“Assist you? Have I not all along tried to warn you?” she asked. “What do you require of me?”

“I want you to help me out of the strange predicament in which I now find myself--a tool of that man known as His Excellency.”

“How can I release you?” she asked in dismay. “You have for two years or more accepted payment, and His Excellency is always inexorable. You are one of us, my dear, and one of us you will remain,” said the woman, regarding me with those strange, deep-set eyes. “Only His Excellency himself can free you from your bond.”

“Whatever promise I made was made while I was unconscious of the truth,” I affirmed vehemently. “That drug given to me by Lisely Hatten destroyed my self-will, and rendered me inert, helpless, ignorant of my true existence.”

The woman smiled grimly.

“Yes, I know,” she replied. “You are not the only one. For over two years I myself remained in a state of mental lethargy, and only six months ago I recovered to a true sense of my position. Like yourself, I have acted involuntarily as the tool of others who held me irrevocably in their power. But Lisely was at least your friend on that night when you were discovered eavesdropping. She saved your eyesight at risk of punishment upon herself.”

“Then she is really my friend, notwithstanding what you say,” I remarked.

“She was then--not now.”

“Why?” I asked, remembering our romantic meeting in the deserted church in Rome, and how in my ignorance I had admired her, and carried that wonderful piece of aquamarine to Roddy Owen.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows?” she asked. “Women sometimes contract strange hatreds.”

“How can I rid myself of these pearls?” I begged of her.

“Why do you wish to do that? You are not suspected. Besides, His Excellency may demand them at any moment.”

“Is it not possible to return them to Lady Rathgormly?” I suggested.

“You could do so. But it would be extremely risky to incur His Excellency’s displeasure. Don’t you think so? To him alone they represent eight or nine thousand pounds profit.”

“And he used me as his cat’s paw. My hands stole them--for him, eh?”

“His Excellency never does a job himself. Like all leaders of men, he pays others to do his dangerous work,” she laughed. “Both of us are his agents.”

“His slaves, you mean!” I cried angrily, flinging the pearls heedlessly back into the hollow book.

Then she rose quietly, and, taking the little calf-bound volume, replaced it among the many others upon the shelf, saying:

“Let it remain there for the present--until wanted.”

“And if any secret enemy of mine denounces me, the pearls will be found in my possession!” I cried. “No, I shall return them to their owner.”

“Not before seeing His Excellency,” she urged. “Call upon him in Lausanne, and explain your position. He may relent; who can tell? In any case, he will have sufficient confidence in you, if you give your word of honor to remain silent.”

“He would not accept my word on that night in Camberwell,” I said.

“Because you were a stranger, and you were denounced as a police-spy, which he naturally believed you to be.”

“But I can’t allow the pearls to remain here in my possession! My man might discover them. Perhaps he already has!”

“He’s not likely to read Voltaire,” she laughed. “But if you prefer it, why don’t you deposit the string in your bank?”

“An excellent idea!” I cried enthusiastically. “I’ll take them to-day. But, Illona, I want you to help me in another matter,” I said, leaning against the table, and lighting the fourth cigarette she had just taken from my box.

“Get me a drink before we go on, will you dear?” she asked caressingly.

Immediately I rang for Bruce, who at once mixed us a couple of cocktails.

“Really,” she remarked, sipping hers, “your man is truly an artist. One gets such awful concoctions everywhere except at restaurants.”

“Yes,” I laughed, when the man had left, “Bruce knows his business, I think.”

“Well, what is the other matter?” she asked, lazily watching her cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling.

After a moment, I asked with suppressed eagerness:

“Have you ever heard of a girl called Joan Gell, the daughter of old Mr. Gell, the King’s Counsel?” I paused, looking straight into her rouged and powdered face.

“The girl whom you promised to marry before you married me?” she sneered. “Of course. She found out that you were a crook and refused to become your wife.”

“What!” I gasped, dumbfounded. “She found out that I was a thief?”

“Of course she did. You surely remember the quarrel between you?”

“I remember no quarrel,” I declared. “But how did she find me out?”

“Why, you related the incident to me with your own lips. You were sitting together side by side in her father’s drawing-room when she felt something in the pocket of your dinner-jacket, and, playfully putting her hand in, brought out a very fine diamond and emerald bracelet, which you had that evening pinched from the Countess of Edendon. You had been dining at Berkeley Square, and, making an excuse, had left the table, slipped upstairs, and taken it from her dressing-table.”

“Impossible!” I cried breathlessly.

“Ask her! You yourself told me how, on discovery of it, she became mystified, and how three days later she saw in the papers a sketch of the stolen bracelet, with an offer of three hundred pounds reward for its return.”

“Then she knows I’m a thief,” I cried despairingly, for surely the strain of it all was sending me mad.

“Of course she does,” answered the woman, with a triumphant jeer. I realized the reason, for apparently I had married her while still remaining engaged to Joan.

Was she lying to me? Did Joan--my Joan--actually know that I was a crook? Had she accidentally found stolen jewelry in my possession? Could it be possible?

The woman’s mocking laugh ringing in my ears bewildered me. In any case, Joan had been engaged to me until the moment she vanished, and certainly she had never mentioned the matter since I had awakened from my long period of involuntariness, that spell of fatality, with actions over which I had had no control. If I had really been a thief, as Illona alleged, then at least I had acted automatically and blindly, led by a master-hand--the hand of the man Felix Zuroff, who now called himself Nicholas Sarasti.

Since that night at Camberwell I had been the shuttlecock of circumstance, a creature of blind impulses, unwilling and unconscious. If Joan had actually discovered the shameful truth, it certainly had made no difference in her affection. What excuse had I given her? I wondered. How had I explained the presence of the stolen bracelet in my pocket?

“You mentioned Hilda Bennett a short time ago,” I remarked suddenly. “She’s in prison now, and her conviction was secured by Joan’s father.”

“Yes, and some of them swore at the time that the fat old lawyer, who is paid such big fees by the Treasury for prosecuting people, should suffer. Hilda’s stretch was far too long. They say the Recorder overdid it. You see, the police brought up the nasty fact that Hilda was with Monkey Dick when he was shot in Bloomsbury. Dicky had a pretty murky record, but I wonder who shot him? I’ve always suspected Roddy Owen,” said the woman, her sunken eyes set on mine.

Possibly I flinched; but apparently she did not notice it.

“It was revenge, I suppose,” I ventured to remark.

“But did not you admit that it was suspected that you shot him? Hilda told me so.”

I pretended to treat the matter as a joke, and hastened to assure her that, as an accusation had been leveled against me that I was in the employ of the police, I had endeavored to clear myself by declaring I was suspected, and thus gain time.

“I know,” she said. “Hilda did not recognize you as Dicky’s assailant. She acted foolishly. When he was shot she ought to have bunked, and they’d never have known that she was one of us.”

“Well, Illona,” I said, “I suppose you know that Joan has been missing for weeks, and that her parents are frantic?”

“I heard something about it the other day,” she replied in a rather cold tone.

“Do you think that her disappearance is due to the threat made against her father?”

“Possibly,” she responded, in a manner which made me suspect that she knew more about it than she pretended.

“Look here, Illona,” I cried, “do be honest with me! Do you know whether Joan is still alive?”

“I should think she most probably is,” was her brief reply, as her thin lips closed almost with a snap.

“You know something!” I exclaimed, advancing towards her determinedly. “Tell me at once what it is!”

She merely laughed sarcastically, and answered:

“Don’t upset yourself, my dear Lionel. Joan’s father did us a bad turn. I suppose it is only tit for tat, eh?”

“Then she is actually in the hands of the--the gang----”

“Of which you are one, remember!” she interrupted sharply.

“But won’t you tell me what you know, Illona?” I begged of her, grasping her hand and looking imploringly into her face.

She, however, remained obdurate. Her manner instantly changed, as she said in a hard, sarcastic tone:

“I am your wife, Lionel. Is it at all likely that I should assist you to find the girl with whom you are so desperately in love?”

I appealed to her in the name of humanity to give me a clue, however slight, to the girl’s whereabouts. But she flatly and blankly refused.

Her attitude was so irritating that I could have struck her. I felt that I could place my hands around her neck and wring from her the truth, so goaded had I become in those weeks of uncertainty and mystery.

Her manner and her words told me that she was well aware of Joan’s fate, but because of her jealousy she refused to utter a word, save to say:

“I never betray my friends!”

For a further half hour we argued, and high words arose between us. I fear I was very impolite towards her. But presently, when I saw that she did not intend to reveal anything more, my agitation grew less, and I resolved on a policy of silence and watchfulness.

“Well,” she exclaimed at last, dabbing her face with her powder-puff, and gathering up her gloves and bag ready for departure, “I see you do not intend to invite me out to lunch, eh?”

“Because you are the reverse of friendly, even though you may be my wife!” was my cutting retort.

“And when are we to be together again?” she asked, with a faint smile on her made-up countenance.

“Not until you have told me the truth concerning your knowledge of Joan,” was my firm reply.

“Then I assure you, my dear husband, that will never be!” she answered, as she walked out, leaving me standing upon the hearthrug.