The Moving Finger Part 26

"I should be sorry," Saton said coldly, "to deprive you of your deserts."

"You have learned many things since those days," Rochester declared.

"You have acquired the knack of glib speech. You have become a past master in the arts which go to the ensnaring of over-imaginative women. You have mixed with quack spiritualists and self-styled professors of what they term occultism. Go and practise your arts where you will, but remember what I have told you. Remember the person's name which I have mentioned. Remember it, obey what I have said, and you may fool the whole world. Forget it, and I am your enemy. Understand that."

"And you," Saton answered with darkening face, "understand this from me, Rochester. I do not for a moment admit your right to speak to me in this fas.h.i.+on. I admit no obligation to you. We are simply man and man in the world together, and the words which you have spoken have no weight with me whatever."

"You defy me?" Rochester asked calmly.

"If you call that defiance, I do," Saton answered.

Rochester came a step further into the room.

"Listen, my young friend," he said. "You belong to the modern condition of things, to the world which has become just a little over-civilized. You may call me a boor, if you like, but I want you to understand this. If I fail to unmask you by any other means, I shall revert to the primeval way of deciding such differences as lie between you and me, the differences which make for hate. I can wield a horse-whip with the strongest man living, and I am in deadly earnest."

"The lady whose name you have mentioned," Saton said softly--"is she also your ward? You are related to her, perhaps?"

"She is the woman I love," Rochester answered. "Our ways through life may lie apart, or fate may bring them together. That is not your business or your concern. When I tell you that she is the woman I love, I mean you to understand that she is the woman whom I will protect against all manner of evil, now and always. Remember that if you disregard my warning, in the spirit or in the letter, so surely as we two live you will repent it."

Saton crossed the room with noiseless footsteps. He leaned toward the wall and touched an electric bell.

"Very well," he said. "You have come to deliver an ultimatum, and I have received it. I understand perfectly what you will accept as an act of war. There is nothing more to be said, I think?"

"Nothing," Rochester answered, turning to follow the servant whom Saton's summons had brought to the door.

CHAPTER XIX

TROUBLE BREWING

Saton turned out of Bond Street, and climbed the stairs of a little tea-shop with the depressed feeling of a man who is expiating an offence which he bitterly repents. Violet was waiting for him at one of the tables shut off from the main room by a sort of j.a.panese matting hanging from the ceiling. He resigned his stick and hat with a sigh to one of the trim waitresses, and sat down opposite her.

"My dear Violet," he said, "this is an unexpected pleasure. I thought that Wednesday was quite one of your busiest days."

"It is generally," she answered. "To tell you the truth," she added, leaning across the table, "I was jolly glad to get away. I have a kind of fear, Bertrand, that we are going to be a little too busy."

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

She nodded her head mysteriously.

"There have been one or two people in, in the last few days, asking questions which I don't understand," she told him. "One of them, I am pretty sure, was a detective. He didn't get much change out of me,"

she added, in a self-satisfied tone, "but there's someone got their knife into us. You remember the trouble down in the Marylebone Road, when you----"

"Don't!" he interrupted. "I hate to think of that time."

"Well, I tell you I believe there is something of the sort brewing again," the woman said. "I'll tell you more about it later on."

The waitress brought their tea, which Violet carefully prepared.

"Two pieces of sugar," she said, "and no cream. You see I haven't forgotten, although it is not often we have tea together now, Bertrand. You are becoming too fas.h.i.+onable, I suppose," she added with a little frown.

"You know it isn't that," he answered hastily. "It's my work, nothing but my work. Go on with what you were telling me, Violet."

"You needn't look so scared," she said, glancing round to be sure that they were not overheard. "The only thing is that Madame must be told at once, and we shall all have to be careful for a little time. I shut up shop for the day as soon as I tumbled to the thing."

"I wonder if this is Rochester's doings," he muttered.

"The husband of the lady?" Violet enquired.

Saton nodded.

"He is my enemy," he said. "Nothing would make him happier than to have the power to strike a blow like this, and to identify us with the place in any way."

"I don't see how they could do that," she said meditatively. "I should be the poor sufferer, I suppose, and you may be sure I shouldn't be like that other girl, who gave you away. You are not afraid of that, are you, Bertrand? Things are different between us. We are engaged to be married. You do not forget that, Bertrand?"

"Of course I do not," he answered.

"Well," she said, "we won't talk about the past. You are safe so far as I am concerned--for the present, at any rate. But Madame must know, and your friends in Charing Cross Road."

"We will close the office to-morrow for a little time," Saton declared. "It's no use running risks like this."

"The old lady must have made a tidy pile out of it," Violet declared, flouris.h.i.+ng an over-scented handkerchief. "If she takes my advice, she will go quiet for a little time. I can feel trouble when it's about, and I have felt it the last few days."

"It is very good of you, Violet, to have sent for me at once," he said. "I know you won't mind if I hurry away. It is very important that I see Madame."

"Of course," she agreed. "But when will you take me out to dinner?

To-night or to-morrow night?"

"To-morrow night," he promised, eager to escape. "If anything happens that I can't, I'll let you know."

She laid her hand upon his arm as they descended the stairs.

"Bertrand," she said, "if I were you, I'd make it to-morrow night...."

He called a taximeter cab, and drove rapidly to Berkeley Square. In the room where she usually sat he found Rachael, looking through a pile of foreign newspapers.

"Well?" she said, peering into his face. "You have bad news. I can see that. What is it?"

"Helga has just sent for me," he answered. "She says that she has had one or two mysterious visitors to-day and yesterday. One of them she feels sure was a detective."

"Huntley has just telephoned up," Rachael said calmly. "Something of the same sort of thing happened at the office in the Charing Cross Road. Huntley acted like a man of sense. He closed it up at once, destroyed all papers, and sent Dorrington over to Paris by the morning train."

Saton sat down, and buried his face in his hands.

"Rachael," he said, "this must stop. I cannot bear the anxiety of it.

It is terrible to feel to-day that one is stretching out toward the great things, and to-morrow that one is finding the money to live by fooling people, by charlatanism, by roguery. Think if we were ever connected with these places, if even a suspicion of it got about! Think how narrow our escape was before! Remember that I have even stood in the prisoner's dock, and escaped only through your cleverness, and an accident. It might happen again, Rachael!"