The Red Symbol Part 3

I thought her paler than usual--though that might have been the effect of the electric lights overhead--and her face was wistful, but very fair and sweet and innocent. One could scarcely believe it the same face that, a few minutes before, had been animated by audacious mischief and coquetry. Truly her moods were many, and they changed with every fleeting moment.

"I've behaved abominably to you all the evening," she whispered tremulously. "And yet you've forgiven me."

"There's nothing to forgive. The queen can do no wrong," I answered.

(How Jim Cayley would have jeered at me if he could have heard!) "Anne, I love you. I think you must know that by this time, dear."

"Yes, I know, and--and I am glad--Maurice, though I don't deserve that you should love me. I've teased you so shamefully--I don't know what possessed me!"

If I could only have kissed those faltering lips! But I dare not. We were within range of too many curious eyes. Still, I held her hand in mine, and our eyes met. In that brief moment we saw each into the other's soul, and saw love there, the true love pa.s.sionate and pure, that, once born, lasts forever, through life and death and all eternity.

She was the first to speak, breaking a silence that could have lasted but a fraction of time, but there are seconds in which one experiences an infinitude of joy or sorrow.

"And you are going away--so soon! But we shall meet to-morrow?"

"Yes, we'll have one day, at least; there is so much to say--"

Then, in a flash, I remembered the old man and Ca.s.savetti,--the mystery that enshrouded them, and her.

"I may not be able to come early, darling," I continued hurriedly. "I have to see that old man in the morning. He says he knows you,--that you are in danger; I could not make out what he meant. And he spoke of Ca.s.savetti; he came to see him, really. That was why I dare not tell you the whole story just now--"

"Ca.s.savetti!" she echoed, and I saw her eyes dilate and darken. "Who is he--what is he? I never saw him before, but he came up and talked to Mr.

Cayley, and asked to be introduced to me; and--and I was so vexed with you, Maurice, that I began to flirt with him; and then--oh, I don't know--he is so strange--he perplexes--frightens me!"

"And yet you gave him a flower," I said reproachfully.

"I can't think why! I felt so queer, as if I couldn't help myself. I just had to give him one,--that one; and when I looked at him,--Maurice, what does a red geranium mean? Has it--"

"Mrs. Dennis Sutherland's carriage!" bawled a liveried official by the centre steps.

Mrs. Sutherland swept towards us.

"Come along, Anne," she cried, as we moved to meet her. "Perhaps we shall see you later, Mr. Wynn? You'll be welcome any time, up to one o'clock."

I put them into the carriage, and watched them drive away; then started, on foot, for Whitehall Gardens. The distance was so short that I could cover it more quickly walking than driving.

The night was sultry and overcast; and before I reached my destination big drops of rain were spattering down, and the mutter of thunder mingled with the ceaseless roll of the traffic.

I was taken straight to Lord Southbourne's sanctum, a handsomely furnished, but almost ostentatiously business-like apartment.

Southbourne himself, seated at a big American desk, was making hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper before him while he dictated rapidly to Harding, his private secretary, who manipulated a typewriter close by.

He looked up, nodded to me, indicated a chair, and a table on which were whiskey and soda and an open box of cigarettes, and invited me to help myself, all with one sweep of the hand, and without an instant's interruption of his discourse,--an impa.s.sioned denunciation of some British statesman who dared to differ from him--Southbourne--on some burning question of the day, Tariff Reform, I think; but I did not listen. I was thinking of Anne; and was only subconsciously aware of the hard monotonous voice until it ceased.

"That's all, Harding. Thanks. Good night," said Southbourne, abruptly.

He rose, yawned, stretched himself, sauntered towards me, subsided into an easy-chair, and lighted a cigarette.

Harding gathered up his typed slips, exchanged a friendly nod with me, and quietly took himself off.

I knew Southbourne's peculiarities fairly well, and therefore waited for him to speak.

We smoked in silence for a time, till he remarked abruptly: "Carson's dead."

"Dead!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, in genuine consternation. I had known and liked Carson; one of the cleverest and most promising of Southbourne's "young men."

He blew out a cloud of smoke, watched a ring form and float away as if it were the only interesting thing in the world. Then he fired another word off at me.

"Murdered!"

He blew another smoke ring, and there was a spell of silence. I do not even now know whether his callousness was real or feigned. I hope it was feigned, though he affected to regard all who served him, in whatever capacity, as mere pieces in the ambitious game he played, to be used or discarded with equal skill and ruthlessness, and if an unlucky p.a.w.n fell from the board,--why it was lost to the game, and there was an end of it.

Murdered! It seemed incredible. I thought of Carson as I last saw him, the day before I started for South Africa, when we dined together and made a night of it. If I had been available when the situation became acute in Russia a few weeks later, Southbourne would have sent me instead of him; I should perhaps have met with his fate. I knew, of course, that at this time a "special" in Russia ran quite as many risks as a war correspondent on active service; but it was one thing to encounter a stray bullet or a bayonet thrust in the course of one's day's work,--say during an _emeute_,--and quite another to be murdered in cold blood.

"That's terrible!" I said huskily, at last. "He was such a splendid chap, too, poor Carson. Have you any details?"

"Yes; he was found in his rooms, stabbed to the heart. He must have been dead twenty-four hours or more."

"And the police have tracked the murderer?"

"No, and I don't suppose they will. They've so many similar affairs of their own on hand, that an Englishman more or less doesn't count. The Emba.s.sy is moving in the matter, but it is very unlikely that anything will be discovered beyond what is known already,--that it was the work of an emissary of some secret society with which Carson had mixed himself up, in defiance of my instructions."

He paused and lighted another cigarette.

"How do you know he defied your instructions?" I burst out indignantly.

The tone of his allusion to Carson riled me. "Don't you always expect us to send a good story, no matter how, or at what personal risk, we get the material?"

"Just so," he a.s.serted calmly. "By the way, if you're in a funk, Wynn, you needn't go. I can get another man to take your place to-night."

"I'm not in a funk, and I mean to go, unless you want to send another man. If you do, send him and be d.a.m.ned to you both!" I retorted hotly.

"Look here, Lord Southbourne; Carson never failed in his duty,--I'd stake my life on that! And I'll not allow you, or any man, to sneer at him when he's dead and can't defend himself!"

Southbourne dropped his cigarette and stared at me, a dusky flush rising under his sallow skin. That is the only time I have ever seen any sign of emotion on his impa.s.sive face.

"I apologize, Mr. Wynn," he said stiffly. "I ought not to have insinuated that you were afraid to undertake this commission. Your past record has proved you the very reverse of a coward! And, I a.s.sure you, I had no intention of sneering at poor Carson or of decrying his work. But from information in my possession I know that he exceeded his instructions; that he ceased to be a mere observer of the vivid drama of Russian life, and became an actor in it, with the result, poor chap, that he has paid for his indiscretion with his life!"

"How do you know all this?" I demanded. "How do you know--"

"That he was not in search of 'copy,' but in pursuit of his private ends, when he deliberately placed himself in peril? Well, I do know it; and that is all I choose to say on this point. I warned him at the outset,--as I need not have warned you,--that he must exercise infinite tact and discretion in his relations with the police, and the bureaucracy which the police represent; and also with the people,--the democracy. That he must, in fact, maintain a strictly impartial and impersonal att.i.tude and view-point. Well, that's just what he failed to do. He became involved with some secret society; you know as well as I do--better, perhaps--that Russia is honeycombed with 'em. Probably in the first instance he was actuated by curiosity; but I have reason to believe that his connection with this society was a purely personal affair. There was a woman in it, of course. I can't tell you just how he came to fall foul of his new a.s.sociates, for I don't know. Perhaps they imagined he knew too much. Anyhow, he was found, as I have said, stabbed to the heart. There is no clue to the a.s.sa.s.sin, except that in Carson's clenched hand was found an artificial flower,--a red geranium, which--"

I started upright, clutching the arms of my chair. A red geranium! The bit of stuff dangling from Ca.s.savetti's pa.s.s-key; the hieroglyphic on the portrait, the flower Anne had given to Ca.s.savetti, and to which he seemed to attach so much significance. All red geraniums. What did they mean?

"The police declare it to be the symbol of a formidable secret organization which they have hitherto failed to crush; one that has ramifications throughout the world," Southbourne continued. "Why, man, what's wrong with you?" he added hastily.

I suppose I must have looked ghastly; but I managed to steady my voice, and answer curtly: "I'll tell you later. Go on, what about Carson?"

He rose and crossed to his desk before he answered, scrutinizing me with keen interest the while.

"That's all. Except that this was found in his breast-pocket; I got it by to-night's mail. It's in a horrid state; the blood soaked through, of course."