A Master Of Deception Part 34

"But if he tells?"

"Tells what?"

"He said to me last night that if anyone knows that--that someone has killed a person, and doesn't at once inform the police, that's being an accessory after the fact."

"Well? He was merely acquainting you with what I take is a legal truism."

"Then he said that, whatever I might choose to do, he did not mean to be an accessory, either before the fact or after. Then he looked at me in such a way--I knew what he meant--and he went right off to bed without saying another word."

"What had you been talking about?"

"About--your uncle."

"Had he introduced the subject or had you?"

"He had; he would keep talking about it. Rodney, he knows, and--he's going to tell."

"Then, in that case, it looks as if you will gain little by becoming my wife, and that I shall gain nothing."

"Rodney, I want you to get out of your head what I said the other night. I don't want to force you to marry me, and I never did."

"Then you've rather an unfortunate way of expressing yourself, don't you think so, my dear Mabel?"

"I--I didn't know how else to do what I wanted to do. It's quite true that if I'm not going to be your wife I'll kill myself; but that doesn't matter--I'd just as soon die as live. But I do want to save you, and the only way I can do it is for you to marry me."

"That may keep you from playing the tell-tale, but how is it going to affect Mr. Dale?"

"He won't tell if I'm your wife."

"Won't he? Why? I should have thought, if your story's correct, that he'd have told all the more, that disappointment would have inflamed him to madness."

Rodney, as he said this, struck a match to light his pipe, and laughed. Nothing could have seemed less like laughter than the girl's white face and haunted eyes.

"He'd tell to keep me from being your wife, but if I were your wife he'd never tell. I know him; he'd suffer anything rather than do anything which would give me pain or bring me to shame; if I were your wife he'd never tell. You're a gentleman, Rodney, and I'm not a lady, and I don't suppose I ever shall be; I'm just a girl who has let you do what you like with her, and you're cleverer than I am--much, much cleverer; but, in this, do be advised by me--do, dear, do! There is something here, something which makes me sure that the only way out of it, for you, is for you to make me your wife. I know you don't want to do it, that you never meant to do it, and I can quite understand why; but you'd better have me for your wife than--than that; don't you see, dear, that you had? I shan't be able to tell, and George Dale won't, and no one else knows, and instead of trying to find out more he'll keep others from finding out anything; he'll be on your side instead of against you, for my sake. Rodney, I implore you--for your own sake, dear, your own sake!--to do as you promised, and marry me."

She pleaded to be allowed to save his life as if she were pleading for her own life. He turned to shake the ash from his pipe into the fender, and so remained, for some moments, with his back to her; while her eyes looked as if they were crying out to him. When he turned to her again he was pressing the tobacco down into his pipe before restoring it to his lips, smiling as he looked at her.

"My dear Mabel, I'm not certain that I follow your reasoning, but do make your mind easy; I've promised to marry you to-morrow, and I will--on the stroke of noon--to the tick, for my sake as well as for yours. And, though the fates don't seem over propitious at the moment, I dare say we shall be quite as happy as the average married folk--at least, I'll marry you."

"You mean it?"

"I do--unreservedly; please understand that once more, and once for all. You shall have something like a wedding day."

"I wish--I wish it were to-day; I'm afraid--of what may happen--before to-morrow."

"Of whatever you may be afraid, I'm afraid that it couldn't be to-day.

It's my uncle's funeral to-day."

"Rodney! You--you're not going!"

"I am; as chief mourner."

"Rodney, you--you can't do a thing like that! You--you mustn't!"

As she spoke an elderly woman came into the room, of a somewhat portly presence--the lady's mother. Seemingly she was in a mood to be garrulous.

"What mustn't he do? Excuse me, Mr. Elmore, for coming in like this, but really, Mabel, I don't know what you are thinking about. I'm sure Mr. Elmore wants to go to his business, and here's all the work at a standstill----"

"All right, mother; Mr. Elmore doesn't want to hear you grumbling at me, I know."

Without waiting for her mother to continue her observations, Miss Joyce bustled out of the room with the breakfast tray in her hands.

Left alone with him, the landlady addressed her lodger.

"What's the matter with the girl I can't think; I never saw anything like the change that's come over her the last few days; she looks more fit for a hospital than anything else--and her temper! She never says anything to me; I suppose you don't know what's wrong?"

"Mrs. Joyce, I'm not your daughter's confidant; she certainly says nothing to me in the sense you mean. Why do you take it for granted that anything's wrong?"

"Because I've got two eyes in my head, that's why. She's not the same girl she was; that something's wrong I'm certain sure; but she snaps my nose off directly I open my mouth. I know she thinks a lot of you.

I wondered if she'd said anything to you."

"Absolutely nothing."

"Then I can't understand the girl, and that's flat!"

With that somewhat cryptic utterance Mrs. Joyce went out of the room as impetuously as she had entered. Rodney stood looking at the door for a moment or two, as if in doubt whether she would return. He tore the sheet of paper on which were the two typewritten lines into tiny sc.r.a.ps and dropped them into the fireplace. Re-reading Miss Carmichael's epistle, he obeyed her injunctions, a little tardily, perhaps, and sent the fragments after the others, repeating to himself as he did so a line from an old song:

"Of all the girls that are so sweet!"

Then he took an oblong piece of paper out of a letter-case and studied it.

"'Steams.h.i.+p _Cedric_.--John Griffiths, pa.s.senger to New York, cabin forty-five, berth A.' I wonder if it will be occupied, or if the money's wasted. That's for to-morrow, or is it to be Buenos Ayres on Friday, or New York on Sat.u.r.day?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Who knows if it is to be either?"

He had left the house and was descending the steps when a telegraph boy approached, with a yellow envelope in his hand.

"Who's it for?" he asked.

"Rodney Elmore, sir."

"I am Rodney Elmore. Wait and see if there's an answer."

The telegram which the envelope contained was a lengthy one; it covered the whole of the pink slip of paper. He read it through once, then again. As he read it the second time he whistled, very softly, as if unconsciously, the opening bars of "Sally in Our Alley."

"There is an answer. Give me a form."