Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

Eileen was waiting for Aylmer at the little countryfied station the next morning. Her telegram had been dispatched late on the previous evening. There was no late train to this out-of-the-way place or he would have started off there and then. As it was, he took an early one on the next day and arrived at a few minutes past noon. From the London station he had dispatched a wire informing her of the time at which she might expect him.

His heart ached as he looked at her and saw the inexpressible sadness on her face, the pathetic droop of the slender figure. Heedless of the few passengers who had alighted at the same time as himself, he took her arm, and led her out of the station in silence.

When they were in the road leading to the little town, she spoke, turning her sombre eyes upon him. “You know why I sent for you?”

“I can guess,” was the answer. Then he added briefly: “You have heard. When did you hear?”

“Three days ago. I had received no communication from--from him since I left Nice. But that did not worry me; he was always an indifferent correspondent. We had been separated before, and I never got more than an occasional letter, always of the briefest.”

“And who was it who informed you?”

“An envelope was addressed to me in an unfamiliar handwriting. I had a presage of evil tidings when I opened it; you know almost my last words to you were that I had a presentiment something disastrous was about to happen. Inside was a hastily scrawled note in pencil, I at once recognized Martyn’s handwriting. There was no address, no date, no signature. I can tell you the exact words, for they are graven on my memory. ‘You will get this through the medium of one I can trust, I dare not let you know where I am. The police came to the hotel, I had left the day before for the purpose of arresting Richard. Before they could effect their object, he shot himself. He had always told me that if such a thing came about, he would never suffer himself to be taken alive. Aylmer was there at the time. I believe Richard has made some provision for you, of which you will hear later.’”

News, no doubt, traveled quickly in the underworld, was Aylmer’s reflection. A further thought was that the criminals, whose hands were against everybody, were very staunch to each other. Here was Martyn, in deadly peril himself--by now he might have been taken--doing a good service to a woman in whom his late confederate was interested.

Aylmer pressed her arm gently. “It must have been a ghastly blow to you, poor child. I suppose you are going to take me to Rosebank. You must have much to tell me, much that it will cause you inexpressible pain to relate. Let us postpone any further talk on this horrible subject till we get there. I have been to Rosebank before, you know.”

Eileen looked at him with a wan smile. “Yes, I found that out. Mrs. Robinson told me somebody had called who said he had known us abroad, and described you to me. Whitefield had a letter from here; I guessed at once you had got the address from him.”

In the hall they met the pleasant landlady, who bestowed a cheerful smile on Aylmer. “Glad to see you, sir. I hope you will cheer Mrs. Quentin up; she has been in very poor spirits since she has been here.”

They sat down in the tiny sitting room, and Eileen was the first to speak. “I sent for you for two reasons, perhaps three. First, I wanted to talk this awful thing over; then, now that my lips are unsealed, I wished to tell you the reasons which decided me not to become your wife. There is a third. You will remember in the last part of his brief letter, Martyn stated that provision had been made for me, and that I should hear about it later. Well, yesterday morning, about this time, I had a visitor, a strange man who had come from London to see me.”

“Let us talk about the strange man first. What was the object of his visit? What was he like?”

“There was something about him which repelled me, which gave me the impression of a sinister personality, although he appeared to be a person of some education, expressed himself well, and, in a way, was sympathetic and polite. He told me that he was an old and very confidential friend of Richard’s although, in all probability, I had never heard of him. Some time ago, Richard had entrusted him with a certain sum of money which was to be handed over to me if anything happened to him. He had heard from reliable sources that Richard had committed suicide; he was careful not to enter into any details, and that, under the circumstances, he wished to discharge his trust. He had brought down the money with him, five thousand pounds, and would be pleased to hand it over to me. He added it would be a transaction entirely between our two selves, that he would require no receipt.”

Another and a stronger instance of the fidelity of the criminal classes to one another, thought Aylmer. He felt certain that the sum mentioned, five thousand pounds, was part of the ten thousand which Quentin had extracted from the American, and which he, no doubt, had dispatched to his faithful confederate a few hours after he had received it. In all probability this sum represented Quentin’s own share, the other portion had to be divided amongst others. If that supposition were correct, no part of the money would be found amongst the dead man’s effects, and if Whitefield had made any efforts to regain it, they would have been doomed to failure.

“And what was your answer, Eileen?” asked the young man when he had thought over the situation for a few seconds.

“When I recovered my astonishment at the honesty of this man, who found himself in possession of a large sum of money which I have no doubt he could easily have retained himself without anybody being the wiser, I began to think. In face of his self-inflicted death I could not bring myself to believe that any money belonging to Richard could be acquired honestly, and that I should be tainted myself if I touched it. He begged me to reconsider my decision. How was I going to live if I refused? I told him that I had inherited a very tiny income from my mother, and that I could supplement it by some sort of work.”

“Bravo, Eileen, and what did he say to that?”

“He seemed frankly incapable of understanding my attitude. To get rid of him, I said that if he would leave me his name and address, I would communicate with him in the event of my altering my mind.”

“And what did he say to that?”

There was a faint smile on Eileen’s face as she answered the question. “He was much too wary to be caught by such a simple proposition; I suppose men of his calling are very chary of trusting outsiders. If I changed my mind, I was to put an advertisement, the wording of which he made me write down, a week hence in _The Times_. After he had read it, he would take measures that the money should reach me safely. He was careful not to say that he would himself pay another visit to Sherehaven.”

“You were quite right in refusing the money,” said Aylmer. “Let him look in _The Times_, he must never find that advertisement there. And now tell me your reasons for refusing to be my wife, although I am quite sure I know what they were.”

And Eileen told him, the tears falling from time to time as she did so. “You know that Martyn saw us that day in Soho. Later on, he told Richard, who taxed me with meeting you clandestinely. I admitted it, and told him that we were in love with each other and wanted to marry, at the same time I reminded him of his promise when we entered into our strange compact. He was very grave, he admitted his promise, but added that before I could become the wife of any decent man, there was something of the utmost importance he had to impart to me. But before doing so, he must exact from me a solemn pledge to preserve secrecy; that pledge I gave him.”

“And he revealed to you that he was not the man of means and leisure you had thought him, but simply an adventurer and a crook.”

A deep flush of shame mounted to the unhappy girl’s cheek as she bowed her head. “That is what it amounted to, really. He camouflaged it as well as he could, made it out that he was an adventurer of the financial type, that he borrowed money from anybody weak enough to lend it to him without the slightest intention of repayment. He went on to say that, although he exercised the utmost precautions in these transactions, there might come a day when he would overstep the border-line and be pilloried to the world. You can understand what a terrible shock this was to me, as I had never had the least suspicion that anything of the kind was hanging over his head.”

“You were all along under the impression that he was a man of considerable means, of assured income?”

There was absolute truth in the girl’s voice and gaze as she made answer. “Certainly. After he made this revelation, I recalled one or two things I had noticed, but which made little impression on me at the time. He never ventured any details of his actual resources, never dropped a hint as to the nature of his investments and securities, but I explained this by the fact of his being a singularly reticent man. I did know that he had borrowed money from Sir Charles Reeks, for I overheard him say so to Martyn one day after we had returned from Biarritz. But he was very lavish in his expenditure, and at times he openly admitted that he was short of funds and must retrench for a short while. I concluded he had borrowed just to tide him over an uncomfortable period. That was why I warned you, because I did not wish you to risk your money, although at the time I did not believe him to be dishonest as well as extravagant. And now tell me, for I had a certain feeling when he and I did have that fateful talk that he was not revealing the whole truth, for what offense did the police arrest him? Please give me all the details; I would rather know them.”

Yes, he would let her know that; the one thing he was resolved to keep from her was that the man had stained his hands with murder. He told of how he and Whitefield had been sitting at breakfast when they heard a commotion in the hall, of the ringing out of the pistol shot, how they had rushed out to find Quentin lying dead on the floor surrounded by the police who had come to arrest him, of Monsieur Paillot’s revelations that he was one of the heads of an international gang of crooks who specialized in robberies from hotels, that Martyn was one of his confederates.

She listened with downcast eyes, and now and again he could see her half-averted face convulsed with a spasm of pain, but on the whole, she bore the ordeal with commendable composure.

When he had finished, she lifted her tear-stained eyes to his. “You see, dearest, how wise it was for me to write you that letter. When he had finished telling me what was only a half-truth, he uttered some very weighty words; I have never seen him in a graver mood than he was then. ‘You see, Eileen, how impossible it would be for you to link your fate with that of an honest young fellow like Aylmer. Anything that smirched me would smirch you, and through you him. I know you have far too much nobility of nature to run the risk.’”

Aylmer mused a little after she had told him this. “A strange, complex sort of creature,” he said presently. “One would not have credited him with any consideration for the feelings of others. I should have thought he would have been glad to get you off his hands, into safe harbor, as it were, without thinking about any after-consequences.”

“He was exceedingly complex, and though I suppose you may rather resent praise from such a source, he took an excessively strong fancy to you, and spoke in the highest terms of you, though, for a time, he was bitter against you just after you refused to lend him the money. I don’t think he said much about you to Martyn, but to me he has said more than once that you were a perfect type of an honorable, straightforward young Englishman.”

At this moment the maid came in to lay the cloth for lunch, and a few minutes later the meal was served. Intimate conversation was arrested until they were alone again and safe from interruption.

“Do you know anything of a man named Ramon?” he asked her presently.

She answered him without the slightest hesitation. “A rather refined-looking man, always dressed in the shabbiest of clothes. I saw him only once or twice, but he always paid a visit to The Laurels when we were in London. The explanation given to me was that he was a destitute relation whom Richard helped from time to time. He used to enter the house by the kitchen entrance, and Richard used to see him in his study, he was never brought into the other rooms. Why do you ask?”

He told her of his first visit to Hampstead, and how, long after the household had gone to bed, he had seen Quentin and Dicks escorting the shabbily-dressed man to the gate, and how his suspicions of Quentin had arisen from that moment. He found that she had heard nothing of the tragic end of Ramon and Dicks. There could be little doubt that Quentin was a many-sided criminal and belonged to more than one organization; he did not confine his energies to one branch of crime.

There were still a few questions he wished to put to her. “Will you carry your mind back, dear, to our first intimate conversation at Ostend, when I promised to be your friend?”

“Yes, I remember every word of it,” she said in a low voice. “That was when I first knew I was in love with you.”

“You had some sort of presentiment of coming misfortune then. What grounds had you for that premonition?”

“I can hardly give any satisfactory explanation. But all the time we were together, I always felt I was living in an unreal world, that one day I should wake up to something totally different. Our strange nomadic life--we were so seldom in London that I often wondered why he kept on that house at Hampstead.”

“He had some business in London, you may be sure, business in which Dicks and Ramon were closely associated with him, something quite apart from his continental activities,” interjected Aylmer.

She was quick enough to see the point at once. “Of course, that must have been the reason. Then the absence of any proper friends, the isolation in which we lived when we were in London, weighed upon my spirits. As I told you, there were a few men who came to the house; they paid very short visits, and were generally closeted with Richard in his study, I rarely saw anything of them. Then there was the occasional shortage of money which puzzled me. Altogether I was conscious of a peculiar mystery. And that borrowing from Sir Charles troubled me. I was afraid that was not the only time he had borrowed; I suspected he had made up his mind to ask you and Whitefield to Hampstead for the same purpose, and it showed me the uncertain state of his finances, that a crash might come at any moment.”

“Not many more questions, dear, and I think I shall have done. Why were you so agitated that morning when I surprised you and Martyn together?”

“I had been very upset by something he had told me, that Richard was very short of money, that he knew you were a rich young man and that in all probability you would be useful to him. He asked me--oh, I am ashamed to tell you--he asked me to cultivate you as much as possible so as to make you more easy to approach. I answered him indignantly, told him that I refused to play the part of decoy, and we had a sort of battle royal which left me in tears.”

“Did Martyn really not know of these peculiar relations with Quentin?”

“I always used to believe he did not. Richard always swore that nobody but our two selves were in possession of the secret. But I latterly had a suspicion--mind you, it was nothing more--that Martyn _did_ know.”

“And now for my last question. That sudden flight from Hampstead. The object of that, I take it, was to remove you from my influence?”

Eileen thought a moment. “It was a contributory cause, no doubt, but his financial condition was the strongest motive. I could tell he had been very hard-up since we left Ostend, and your refusal to let him have money put him, I believe, into dire straits. The sale of the furniture gave him a fair sum in ready cash. We went off to Paris, and for a little time lived in the usual luxurious way. But he soon found that retrenchment was necessary, so he brought me to Sherehaven, where he was able to exist economically, for him. Then I suppose he got funds again, and we went off to Nice to meet Whitefield. He had designs, of course, upon him?”

“Yes,” replied Aylmer, who did not wish to dwell upon this topic at any great length. “He did get money out of Whitefield. That five thousand you refused was part of the plunder.”

The girl covered her face with her hands. “Oh, how terrible!” Then a sudden thought struck her: “Would it not be a good thing if I put the advertisement in as that man suggested, got the money, and sent it to Whitefield?”

“It’s a splendid idea,” said Aylmer. “Do this, my dear; it will show him you had no complicity in Quentin’s schemes. Ten thousand pounds was the sum got out of him; the other five has gone into quarters where you cannot recover it.”

It may be mentioned here that in due course this was done. Eileen received the money in a somewhat roundabout way and sent it to the millionaire with a very humble note in which she explained her inability to make good the whole of his loss. And by return she received from the millionaire a graceful and appreciative reply.

There was a long silence before Aylmer approached what to him was the most important object of his visit. He leaned forward and took both her hands in his. “And have you thought of what you are going to do as regards your future?”

She answered him very bravely, although she could not keep back the tears. “I have my little income; one can say this to his credit, he never tried to touch that, and I can work. I am afraid I am not educated enough to be a governess, but I could go into a shop. I might get a place as a mannequin; I have always been told I have a good figure.”

And then this staunch lover burst out into impetuous speech. “You are going to do nothing of the sort. You are going to marry me with as little delay as possible.”

A rosy flush dyed the pale cheeks. “Oh, my dear, is there another man in the world like you, so brave, so true? But it can never be, even _he_ saw that. And if it was impossible then, it is equally so now. I am innocent enough, Heaven knows; I have never been guilty of a dishonest action in my life. But you cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. I will not defile you.”

“I am the best judge of that, Eileen,” replied the young man firmly. “I can see as clearly as you do all the objections you would like to urge. They weigh nothing with me.”

“But your relatives, your friends, Peyton and others,” she cried piteously. “It is true there has been no report in the English papers of that awful thing; I have scanned dozens of them, and found nothing. But there were people at the hotel when it happened. We made no friends, it is true; but we made passing acquaintances when we went abroad who would remember me as Mrs. Quentin.”

His grasp upon her hands tightened. “My darling, have I not told you I know all this, and that it does not in the least alter my purpose? Listen to me! I spent the first twelve years, the most impressionable portion of my early life, in Spain. I have no deep roots in England, no ties, no friendships that it would give me pain to sever. Put Peyton into the scale, a hundred Peytons, and you will outweigh them all. The world is wide; there are yet places where you, the innocent victim of a desperate criminal, have never been. We will go to these places, my darling, and I shall think the world well lost for love.”

For a long time they argued, his insistence growing stronger, her resistance feebler, till, at length, the more resolute will prevailed, and at last, for the first time, their lips met in a long, fervent kiss, a kiss of betrothal.

“I have got it all cut and dried,” he said presently when they had recovered from their emotion. “You will stay here for another week, or a little longer, in order to get through that little matter of Whitefield’s. Then you will come up to London; I will find you some pleasant apartments, and we will be married as soon as possible.”

She was crying unrestrainedly now, but with happiness, not sorrow. “But some day you will repent,” she whispered through her tears.

“Never,” was the fervent answer.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. clearcut/clear-cut, smoking-room/smoking room, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Formatting: abandon the use of drop-caps.

Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings.

Add ToC.

Change five instances of _Alymer_ to _Aylmer_.

[Chapter Two]

Change “she had one accomplishment; she was a _spendid_ dancer” to _splendid_.

[Chapter Three]

“He felt it would have have been a serious reflection” delete one _have_.

“He’s neither one thing nor the other neither a ladies’ man nor a man’s man.” add a comma after _other_.

[Chapter Five]

“very _plaintly_ had hinted that she was not indifferent to him” to _plainly_.

[Chapter Six]

“when he had suggested the _Berkley_ or the Savoy” to _Berkeley_.

[Chapter Seven]

“One shuts _onself_ up like a recluse, excludes commonplace persons” to _oneself_.

[Chapter Nine]

“with the one exception of the ungenial _Martin_” to _Martyn_.

[Chapter Ten]

(“No he had not taken her into his confidence.) add a comma after _No_.

[Chapter Twelve]

(through the swinging doors “Our quick-change artist is going) add a comma after _doors_.

[Chapter Fourteen]

“the clue was _to_ slight to be of any use” to _too_.

[Chapter Eighteen]

“A third party would remove the _awkardness_ inseparable from the” to _awkwardness_.

(“Hush! I hear his _footstep_ coming down the staircase.) to _footsteps_.

[Chapter Twenty]

“my friends would say of me that I’m a pretty ‘_cute_ one’" to _’cute_.

“The finger-prints on the tumbler _co-incided_ in every detail” to _coincided_.

[Chapter Twenty-One]

(“When I do, you will not have to complain of my lack candor.”) add _of_ after _lack_.

“I had hoped to escape them _altogther_, but I had mistimed” to _altogether_.

[End of text]