This House to Let Part 28

Murchison bowed respectfully; he felt he had got to recover a good deal of lost ground. So far the woman had the advantage, but he did not fail to notice the vulgarity of the last phrase, "snap my fingers."

"I am very sorry if I have offended you, Mrs Spencer, by my indiscreet remarks. If you are secure in Guy's love, as I am sure you are, you have a very happy possession."

She sank back on the sofa, and in a second recovered the composure which had been momentarily disturbed.

"Forgive me if I have spoken a little warmly," she said, "but I could not overlook what you said just now."

And then Hugh shot at her his last bolt. "I have not yet told you the name of the girl who drove my poor young friend Pomfret to his death."

"Tell it me, if you please, but I shall be no more likely to know it than the name of your friend, Mr Pomfret. As I told you, I am a member of the respectable middle-cla.s.s; I cannot boast that I am acquainted with the aristocracy, except through my husband."

"And yet your father, you told me just now, was an officer in the Twenty-fourth Lancers. Those officers were all recruited from the aristocracy, or at worst the upper middle-cla.s.s."

"Oh, you are trying to cross-examine me and trap me," she cried bitterly.

But Hugh was inexorable. "The name of that woman was Norah Burton; her accomplice, her brother as she called him, was George Burton; he had other aliases," he thundered.

He had shot his last bolt, but Stella was not shaken. She rose up, quivering a little. He noticed that, but it might be due to the agitation of wronged innocence.

"The name conveys nothing to me. Your att.i.tude during these few minutes has been very strange. You have insinuated that I am an adventuress on the same level with your Miss Norah something. Well, so far, poor dear Guy has not shot himself, and I will take good care he doesn't."

"You have much to gain by his living, if you love him--the t.i.tle and everything. I have no doubt he has made his will. You would gain a good deal by his death. I cannot say, at the moment, which alternative would suit you better."

"You are intolerable, you are insulting. If I tell my husband this when he comes down, he will kick you out of the house."

"But I don't think you will tell your husband," retorted Hugh coolly.

"And why not? My word will outweigh yours. I have only to tell him that you brand me as an adventuress, of the same cla.s.s as this Miss Nora Burton, and you will see what he will say."

"But you will not tell him," repeated Hugh. "Mrs Spencer, I did not think we should go so far as we have done. But I will put my cards on the table at once, and I do so from certain indications in your demeanour to-night. I will not say all I have in my mind; I am going to collect further evidence first. But I will say this: you are not what you seem." He had touched her now. Her calm had gone, her breast was heaving, her hands were moving more restlessly.

"Put your cards on the table and have done. I was Stella Keane when I married my husband. I defy you to disprove that."

"At present, no. You are the same Stella Keane who saw Tommie Esmond, a discovered card-sharper, off at the Charing Cross Station, and kissed him an affectionate farewell. If you were on such intimate terms with that man, you are no fit wife for my friend Guy Spencer."

He had touched her at last. "How did you find that out?" she gasped, and her face for a second went livid. She was surprised beyond the point of denial.

And at that moment the door opened and Guy Spencer entered. She recovered herself immediately; went up to her husband and laid a caressing hand on his shoulder.

"A perfect tie, dearest; it was worth the time. Your friend, Major Murchison, has been distressing me with a terrible story of some tragedy that happened when he was quartered at Blankfield."

Guy Spencer smiled cheerfully. "Dear old Hugh is good at stories. He must tell it me after dinner."

As she looked up into her husband's face, Hugh noticed the tender light in her eyes. Lady Nina had said that if she was not devotedly in love with Guy, she must be the most consummate actress off the stage. Loving wife or consummate actress, which was she?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

When Hugh reflected over that interview in the drawing-room before dinner, he came to the conclusion that he had not played his cards very well, that he had been a little too precipitate. Whether she was Norah Burton or not, she was a very clever young woman, and he had just put her on her guard by that rather indiscreet allusion to Tommy Esmond. If he had no further evidence to go on than that incident, she would give her husband a plausible explanation of it. And Hugh believed his old friend Guy was still deeply in love enough with his wife to believe anything she told him.

He could imagine her telling that convincing story to Guy, probably with her arms round his neck, and her pretty eyes looking up to his with the love-light in them. Esmond had been a kind friend to her, had done her many a good turn. Much as she deplored his baseness, she could not bear the thought of his slinking out of the country, a branded fugitive, without a forgiving hand stretched out to him.

Backwards and forwards he revolved the matter in his mind, till he came to the conclusion that the problem was one he could not solve himself.

And then he suddenly thought of his old acquaintance, Davidson of Scotland Yard, the tall man of military aspect who had arrested George Burton on that memorable night at Rosemount.

He went round to Scotland Yard, presented his card, and inquired for Mr Davidson. His old acquaintance was dead; a man named Bryant had taken his place. Would Major Murchison care to see him?

In a few seconds Hugh was ushered into Bryant's room. To his surprise and relief Bryant was the man who had accompanied Davidson to Blankfield. It was pretty certain he would recall to the minutest detail the circ.u.mstances of that visit.

"Good-day, Mr Bryant. You know my name by my card, of course, but I am not so sure you remember anything of the time and place where we last met."

But the detective was able to rea.s.sure him on this point.

"In our profession, sir, we remember everything and everybody, and we never forget a face. It is some years ago, it is true, but I recall the incidents of our meeting as if they had happened yesterday. Poor Davidson and I came down to collar that slim rascal George Burton, who, by the way, got off with a light sentence. Davidson saw you in the afternoon and gave you the option of staying away. You talked it over, and came to the conclusion that, for certain reasons, you would rather be in at the finish. Those reasons were connected with your young friend Mr Pomfret, who was infatuated with the young woman."

"You remember everything as well as I do, Mr Bryant. I must congratulate you on your marvellous memory, for I suppose this is only one out of hundreds of cases."

Mr Bryant smiled, well pleased at this tribute to his capacity.

"We cultivate our small gifts, sir, in this direction. Well, we took the slim George. The girl fainted. You dragged Mr Pomfret out of the house, and he shot himself in the small hours of the morning. It came out that he had married the young woman a day or two before, and could not face the exposure." Hugh paid a second tribute to the detective's marvellous memory. "And now, Mr Bryant, have you any knowledge of what has become of them? People like that are never quite submerged: some day or another, like the sc.u.m they are, they will be found floating on the top again."

Bryant shook his head. "No, sir, I cannot say I have. They have not come under our observation again. Probably they are abroad under a.s.sumed names, engaged in rascally business, of course, but doing it very much _sub rosa_."

"Mind you, at present I have very little to go on," said Hugh. "I may have been deceived by a chance resemblance. But I have a strong intuition I am on their track."

Bryant's att.i.tude became alert at once. "You say you have no evidence.

Well, tell me your suspicions, and I will tell you what weight I attach to them."

"First of all, before I do that, let me know if you would recognise Norah Burton and George Burton again, in spite of the pa.s.sage of years.

Norah had fair hair; the one I am on the track of has dark hair. The man I have not seen; this time he is a cousin, not a brother."

"Ah!" Mr Bryant drew a deep breath. "If they are the people you think, sir, and I once saw them, no disguises would take me in. Now tell me all you know."

Thus exhorted, Murchison launched into a copious narrative. He explained that on the night of the dinner with the Southleighs at Carlton House Terrace, he had met for the first time the wife of his old friend Guy Spencer, that he had detected in her an extraordinary likeness to Norah Burton. The marriage had been hastily contracted; next to nothing wap known about the young woman's antecedents, apart from the very vague details with which she furnished them.

In the background was a cousin, by all accounts a very common fellow, who had never visited the house since the marriage. Then there was the episode of Tommy Esmond being found cheating at cards at the L'Estrange flat, and Stella Keane's farewell meeting with him at Charing Cross Station.

Mr Bryant made copious notes. When the narrative was finished he made his comments.

"There are, of course, coincidences that may mean nothing or a great deal, Major Murchison. However, a.s.suming that the lady in question is not our old friend Norah Burton, she is evidently not a very estimable member of society. She was in a shady set at Mrs L'Estrange's, and Tommy Esmond must have been a pretty close pal."

"Well, I want you to take this case on for me, and find out what you can."

But Bryant shook his head. "Sorry, sir, but in my position I can't take on private business. It is not a public matter, you see, unless you can accuse them of anything." Hugh's face fell. "I forgot that. What am I to do? Can you recommend me to a private detective?"

"Half a dozen, sir, all keen fellows. But you can't stir very much without me, in the first instance. You want me to identify them. Well, I will go so far as that, in memory of the time when we were together in the original job. Mrs Spencer, you say, lives in Eaton Place. I will keep a watch on that house till I see her coming out or going in. If I agree that she was Norah Burton, we have got the first step. Now, what do you know about this cousin, Dutton?"

"Only that he is an outside stockbroker, with an office, or offices, in the City."

"Good." Mr Bryant opened a telephone book and rapidly turned over the pages. "Here he is, right enough--George Dutton--George, mark you-- share- and stockbroker, Bartholomew Court. Well, sir, to oblige you, I will run down to the City and get a peep at Mr George Dutton. If my recollection agrees with yours, I will put you on to one of my friends, and you can have the precious pair watched. If they are the persons you think they are, you may depend upon it they won't keep long apart; they will make opportunities of meeting each other. Anyway, they must be pretty thick together, or he would not put up with being excluded from the house."