Chapter XXI: A Weaving of Webs

Carsdale looked round him with the stealthy care of a man who fears that even the most unlikely things may shelter an eavesdropper.

“Sophie?” he whispered.

Mrs. Walsingham shook her head.

“Fast asleep,” she said. “It’s all right--there’s no danger. What is it, Jack! I know something’s happened. Not so much because you’re here, but because of--your look. Tell me!”

Carsdale took off his hat and, putting it down, wiped his forehead. Now that he was here, away from his own place, matters looked worse.

“It’s--bad,” he went on, in the same low tones. “You remember what Sandy Kinahan told you?”

He was watching her keenly, and he saw her suddenly put her hands behind her and grasp the edge of the table against which she had backed when they entered the room, and he knew from the whitening of the knuckles that she was gripping it hard. And then she whitened to the lips.

“Take it easy, now,” said Carsdale. “You’ve got to know. What Sandy Kinahan told you wasn’t--true.”

She tried to swallow once or twice, and then to speak; and Carsdale went over to the sideboard, quickly mixed her a drink, and forced it on her.

“You mean--he isn’t dead!” she whispered.

“He’s not dead,” answered Carsdale, with a cynical laugh. “It was all a plant of Kinahan’s and somebody else’s, for some reason. No, Master Sydney is very much alive!”

She stood staring at him with dilated eyes and parting lips.

“He’s--here?” she said.

“He’s here,” replied Carsdale.

“In--London?” she whispered.

Carsdale made a grimace.

“To tell you the truth, my girl,” he said, “he’s at my rooms, and he’s either enjoying himself with my whiskey--though he’s too fond of keeping his wits to touch much of that--or he’s safe between the sheets. That’s where Syd Werrick is!”

She threw up her head with a gesture of despair and dropped into the nearest seat.

“My God!” she muttered. “What’s to be done?”

“Heaven knows!” answered Carsdale. “I don’t.”

“Where on earth did you find him?” she asked.

“Find him! We met--met in the Strand. He hailed me, cool as a cucumber,” said Carsdale. “And he’d just come from seeing--you.”

“Seeing--me!” she exclaimed.

“He happened to catch sight of you and the boy going into the Odalium, and so he bought a pit ticket and feasted his eyes on you and the necklace,” answered Carsdale grimly. “And, naturally, when you left the theatre he watched you over the road to the _Cecil_. You know Master Syd’s tricks.”

Mrs. Walsingham had taken a filmy handkerchief from her bosom and was twisting and untwisting it in her jewelled fingers--it was suddenly torn violently in two as if by mere will-power. And Carsdale laughed.

“It’s no good, Sylvie,” he said. “The thing is, to keep calm and cool. Sydney’s a rock that you’re up against--I, too, perhaps. According to the law of this blessed land, he’s your husband, and he’s done nothing that you can rid yourself of him for. That’s flat. Now that he’s back, the best thing is to make the best of a bad job, and see what we can do. One thing’s certain--if your lord and master is to be kept quiet, we shall have to take him into partnership.”

“Partnership!” she exclaimed.

Carsdale sat down and tapped her knee.

“You must see,” he said, quietly, “you must see that the serious affair with the boy is off--off, as far away as Cape Horn! You can’t commit bigamy. All that we can do now is to make as much as we can out of him. And--unpleasant as it is--Sydney Werrick will have to come in at it.”

She sat staring at him in silence for a full minute; then, with a low, harsh laugh she rose, and, going over to the sideboard, mixed herself another drink.

“Play light,” said Carsdale, warningly.

“Give me a cigarette,” she said, coming back to her seat. “Thank you. Now, then--what do you propose?”

Carsdale again looked cautiously and suspiciously around the room.

“You’re sure that girl is really asleep--and safe?” he whispered.

Mrs. Walsingham made an impatient gesture.

“Certain!” she answered. “Never mind her. Get to business.”

Carsdale fingered his moustache for a minute or two, staring fixedly at an exact point of the ceiling.

“Well,” he said at last, “well, if we’ve got down to plain and brutal fact, I think we both know what we intended about the young ’un when that letter to Barclay Leverton fell into our hands. Things ran well for us, Sylvie--especially when Sandy Kinahan brought that news which wasn’t true. As they ran, you were going to get your share through marriage--and an excellent way it would have been, and would have saved an awful lot of trouble. But now that Sydney’s turned up, that’s all off--it’s impossible, it’s quite----”

“Couldn’t Sydney be bought out and packed off for good?” she suggested.

Carsdale shook his head with unmistakable dissent.

“That’s still more impossible,” he replied. “You’d never know when he’d come back. No--it’s off--off! And so--well, we must reap our harvest in another way. Fortunately, we’ve so engineered things that it won’t be very difficult to reap. And, if you want to know the truth, I shan’t be sorry to make a new development. Things are not good.”

She looked at him quickly.

“You mean--you want to get out?” she asked.

“Something very like it,” he admitted. “The young ’un’s coming was a godsend, and, if we only play our cards properly, we can start in fresh fields and new pastures to big advantage. But don’t forget this--Syd Werrick will have to be in at it.”

Mrs. Walsingham made no immediate reply. She sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, tapping her slippered feet impatiently on the hearthrug, her eyes sombre with thought.

“What’s gone wrong with you?” she suddenly demanded.

Carsdale shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s not that anything has gone absolutely wrong,” he said. “It’s simply that nothing seems doing or coming along. And if you want to know, it’s my belief that that young vixen, Frances Leverton, has her knife into me, and is somehow, but I don’t know how, doing me harm. I couldn’t put my finger on any precise spot--but I’ve an uneasy feeling that she’s up to no good.”

“Could she do anything?” asked Mrs. Walsingham.

“Well,” replied Carsdale, stirring a little uneasily in his seat, “there is one affair, if only she was cute enough to understand the papers which she’d doubtless find in her father’s effects. It may be that.”

“She’s cute enough for anything,” remarked Mrs. Walsingham. She reflected a little, and then turned to him with an odd look. “I--I’ve been made rather uneasy to-night,” she said.

“Where? At the theatre?” he asked. “The supper-party?”

“It may be all nothing, but I was uneasy,” she answered. “You know I put on the--the real necklace. I saw no danger in that, now that I’ve got both. Well, Burgoyne had a friend there--another Army man, a Captain Blair, but retired, because he’s lost an arm.”

“Blair--ex-Army man--lost an arm?” said Carsdale, musingly. “Seems to me I know something about that man. Describe him.”

“A tall, well-built, handsome man, with very remarkable eyes, who seems as if he were looking clean through you and turning you inside out,” answered Mrs. Walsingham. “He made me uneasy and uncomfortable.”

“I know him,” said Carsdale. “He’s a writing fellow. Well?”

“Well, when we went to supper at the _Cecil_,” continued Mrs. Walsingham, “the talk somehow got on to the necklace, and, of course, the boy was full of the Maria Louisa legend, or whatever it is. Then this Captain Blair asked to be allowed to look at the necklace because of its historic interest, and I had to take it off--we were in a private room, you know--and let him examine it. And that was where I got uneasy.”

“Why?” asked Carsdale. “It was probably only curiosity.”

Mrs. Walsingham shook her head.

“No!” she said. “I don’t think so. He examined that necklace in a way that showed me he was an expert in diamonds. He was a little bit too careful about it. Now--why?”

Carsdale manifested signs of impatience.

“Oh, I don’t see anything in that, Sylvie!” he said. “You’ve got fidgety and suspicious because of all the recent circumstances. I don’t suppose the man had any ulterior design--what ulterior design could he have? Now I come to think of it, this Captain Blair, after he left the Army, took to writing, and I remember--I was trying to recall it while you talked--he did write a series of articles or something about the precious stones, in one of those collectors’ journals. He was probably examining the thing as a connoisseur--that’s all. By the by, where is the necklace?”

“Here, of course--locked up in my safe,” she answered. “I shall bring it to the office to-morrow.”

“Better take it to your bank,” said Carsdale. “At any rate, don’t leave it here. However much you may trust that maid of yours, I shouldn’t trust her to the extent of diamonds worth twelve thousand. Now then--as to what we are going to do. There are two persons to think of first--Sydney and this boy Shrewsbury.”

“Well?” she said with a sigh. “What of them?”

“Let’s get a clear notion,” said Carsdale. “Now, first as to Syd Werrick. There will be no trouble with him, Sylvie, so long as he’s kept in clover. I’ll take care that he gives you no trouble. He can put up with me, down there in Jermyn Street. He shall have as much money as he likes--in reason--and he shall enjoy himself. He’ll be made to understand that he’s to behave himself in every way. I expect there’ll have to be a talk between the three of us----”

“I don’t want to see him--I won’t see him!” broke in Mrs. Walsingham. “At any rate, not yet.”

“Certainly not yet,” said Carsdale, soothingly. “Leave it to me--I can manage him. It’s very fortunate that there’s nothing against the young gentleman on this side, so he’ll be able to go around town and amuse himself, and do what he likes with his liberty----”

“Yes, and then he’ll some day get too much to drink, and then he’ll turn ugly, and then--oh, then, I know!” she said.

“He doesn’t look as if he’d been at that game lately, anyway,” said Carsdale, thoughtfully. “He looks as hard and fit as a man of his age should be, and his eyes are as clear as a child’s, and----”

Mrs. Walsingham suddenly laid a hand on her companion’s arm.

“Jack!” she said in a tense whisper. “Don’t you ever forget this: Syd will never forgive you and me because we cleared out and left him to face the music in New York. He may play that he’s forgotten and forgiven, but he hasn’t and he won’t. Oh, don’t I know him! You’re too easy-going; too optimistic.”

“Oh, I think he’ll be all right if he’s decently treated now,” said Carsdale, hopefully. “I say--leave him to me. Now, as to the other.”

Mrs. Walsingham shook her head; it was evident that she had small belief in Carsdale’s anticipations.

“Well--go on,” she said.

“As to the young ’un,” continued Carsdale, in a lower voice, and again looking about him as if he mistrusted the very walls, “you’ll see how beautifully my policy will work out. He’s a complete belief in me, and he’ll trust me to the last extent. The thing to do is to gradually get his securities into my absolute control, and then----”

“Then you’ll do what you like with them!” she said, with an ironic laugh. “And what am I to do in the meantime?”

“Keep the game going,” answered Carsdale. “Keep the game going. I’ll be answerable for your husband while it’s being played.”

“I wish my husband had gone to the bottom of the Atlantic!” she said, clenching her hand. “I wish what Sandy Kinahan said had been true!”

Carsdale laughed, rose, and picked up his hat.

“So do I!” he said. “Heartily--heartily! But--it isn’t true. The young gentleman is here. That, my dear Sylvie, is a fact. Fact, remember!”

Then he left her, and finding a belated taxi-cab near the mansions, chartered it and drove home to Jermyn Street, thinking hard all the way. And his chief thought was that, if he hadn’t a sentimental feeling for Sylvie he would quickly feather his own nest and clear clean out.

Carsdale’s sitting-room was tenantless. He picked up the whiskey decanter, and gave it a quick look. He had eyed it before he left, and he knew that Werrick had drunk no more after his departure. And he shook his head solemnly and meaningly.

“That argues mischief!” he said to himself. “He means to keep a cool head. And when Sydney Werrick’s head is cool, the devil himself wouldn’t be a match for him!”