The Golden Web Part 26

"Why?" he asked bluntly.

"Because," she told him, "my name is Ruby Sinclair, and I am here on very much the same errand as you, only with this difference," she added,--"I know where my uncle is. I know what has become of him. There are other things for which I seek."

He came over from the window, and stood on the hearthrug by her side.

Some part of her excitement had become communicated to him. "I say," he exclaimed, "this is a rum go, and no mistake! If it's the same man, we may be able to help one another. It's Richard Sinclair I am looking for, called over there Bully Sinclair. He was a man about fifty years old, been in South Africa for the last twenty years, a mine prospector and general adventurer. He'd had his fingers in a good many pies, had Richard."

"What was he over in England for?" she asked.

The young man hesitated. "I don't know that there's any harm in telling you," he said, "only remember its information for information. I'm giving you the whole show away."

"I'll tell you all you want to know," she interrupted. "Go on."

"Well," the young man said, "he came over to lay claim to a gold-mine that he considered he'd been done out of."

"A gold-mine!" the girl repeated breathlessly. "Was it a rich one--very rich, I mean?"

"I should say so," the young man answered. "It was a complicated bit of business--the mine's in other hands, you see--but Sinclair reckoned that he'd got a claim to it, anyway, and he expected either to be squared for a big amount, or to get a syndicate to take the thing up. He came to me dead on his uppers. My name's Hefferom. He and I had been pretty thick at odd times, and though we'd been in a good many deals together, we'd kept friends in a way. He came to me, as I say, in Cape Town, and he told me what the game was. He wanted a matter of two or three hundred pounds to get over to this side, and to start things properly. Well, I thought it out, and though it was about all I was worth in the world, I let him have it. Over he comes. I got a letter from him to say he'd landed, and never another line. I cabled--no answer. Over I came myself, for he'd scarcely left Cape Town before a little affair that I was mixed up in went plumb wrong, and I lost every penny I'd got left. So over here I come, and I've been here a fortnight, and I tell you Sinclair seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. The worst of it is,"

he continued, "I'm stoney-broke. I've got to leave this place to-day because I can't pay my bill, and I've no idea where to raise a sovereign."

The girl's sense of humor triumphed for a second over her excitement.

"There are your diamonds," she reminded him. "I heard you talking about them at dinner the other night. One of them you said was worth a hundred pounds."

"A bluff," he answered readily. "They are false, every one of them. I talked like that to get old mother Towsley to let my account go on a bit, but she wasn't having any. Now, I say, I've told you my story. Tell me why you are so keen on knowing about it."

"Yes," she said, "I will tell you. My name is Ruby Sinclair, and I am the niece of the man whom you have come to England to find."

He made use of an oath for which he forgot even to apologize. "You know where he is!" he exclaimed. "Come, remember it was a fair bargain.

Information for information!"

"He is dead!"

The young man staggered back. His first emotion of shocked surprise lasted only a few seconds. Anger and disappointment took its place.

"Dead?" he exclaimed. "And my money--what about that? What he left belongs to me, anyway. It's got to be made up. I can show you his note for it."

"You had better wait," she answered coldly, "Until I have told you everything. I suppose you don't read the papers?"

"Never," he answered. "What good are they to me?"

"They might have been of some use on the present occasion," she answered. "They might at any rate have saved you from wasting a good deal of time. My uncle was murdered in the Hotel Universal by a man named Rowan."

The young man swore again,--fluently, volubly,--swore until he had come to the end of a varied and extensive vocabulary. When he had finished, there was an excited flush in his cheeks and a bright light in his eyes.

"By Rowan--Basil Rowan?" he exclaimed. "He was one of us out there when we were prospecting up the Newey Valley. Look here," he continued, "you and I have got to have this out. Murdered, was he? Well, I'm the man that may be able to throw some light upon that. What's happened to Rowan? Had he anything to say?"

"I will tell you all that I know," the girl answered. "My uncle wrote me directly he arrived in England. He told me that he had been fortunate in Africa, that he had come to take possession of a large fortune, and that he would be sending for me in a very short time to live with him, and that, as he had no other relative, I should be rich all my days. I replied, of course, asking whether I could not come at once. He wrote me again to tell me to wait for a day or two, until his affairs were settled. Then I heard no more. I waited. I wrote again. I waited, and wrote again. There was no reply. I found afterwards that my letters had never even been called for at the address where he told me to write.

Then one day a stranger who was staying at Rakney told my uncle there to look at the papers. We found the story of his murder. He had been dead some time."

"Rowan was tried, I suppose?" the man asked. "Did he say what his motive was? Has he been hanged?"

"He insisted upon it that it was a quarrel," the girl said. "I do not believe him. He was found guilty and reprieved. I saw in the papers last night that he had been released. I believe that he has only a few days to live."

"And you?" the young man asked.

"I came up," the girl said slowly, "to take possession of my uncle's effects."

"Have you got them?" he asked breathlessly.

"Yes!" the girl answered.

"There were papers?" he demanded.

"Some," she answered, "but none of any importance."

He looked at her suspiciously. She shrugged her shoulders. "Look here,"

she said, "I am telling you the truth. Look at me, look at my gloves--mended half-a-dozen times. Look at my clothes, just hanging on my back and no more. If there had been a single thing amongst my uncle's papers on which I could have raised even a five-pound note, do you think that I should be sitting here like this, wondering which might be the quickest way out of the world?"

The young man moistened his lips. He was obviously in a state of excitement. "Listen," he said, "among these papers was there a sort of deed on yellow parchment paper, roughly written, with a government stamp in the left-hand corner, a paper which spoke of a gold-mine called the Little Anna Gold-Mine?"

She shook her head decidedly. "There was nothing of the sort."

Then the young man swore again, and this time he seemed to surpa.s.s himself. "Your uncle was robbed!" he exclaimed,--"robbed of that paper!

I tell you," he added, "he was murdered for it, and for no other reason!"

"How do you know?" the girl cried.

"Why, it's as simple as A B C," he explained. "He had the paper in his possession when he came to England. The mine has been claimed by a great syndicate who are working it now. He came to see them, to make terms.

The next thing we hear is that he is murdered and the paper is gone.

They thought that no one else knew of it. Young lady," he exclaimed, "you may thank your stars, as I do, that you and me have come together.

We'll have justice, and we'll have that fortune yet!"

CHAPTER VI

AN OPPORTUNE ARRIVAL

With his feet to the sea, and his head pillowed by many cus.h.i.+ons, Rowan lay in a long invalid chair at the edge of the little strip of s.h.i.+ngle which separated the tower of Rakney from the sea. Every limb was at rest, every nerve seemed lulled into quiescence. The sun and wind had left their traces upon his hollow cheeks. It seemed, indeed, as though Death had lifted her hand from his forehead. It was only when one looked closer that one realized his terrible weakness, realized how slender, indeed, the thread was by which he held on to life. There was scarcely a breath of wind stirring. The sun was high in the heavens, and the whole country seemed lulled into a state of almost unnatural repose. The distant trees were motionless, as though, indeed, they were simply painted things against that background of deep blue sky. The smoke from the little cl.u.s.ter of cottages crept upwards, straight as a ruled line.

The cattle in the fields seemed all asleep, exhausted by the unexpected heat. The sea was like a lake, unruffled, almost unrippled.

The man dozed, and Winifred sat by his side, with her eyes fixed steadily and yet absently upon the distant horizon. A week, at most, the doctor had given him, and after that--what? She looked backwards to the window,--the window through which she had entered on that wild night earlier in the year. She looked away again uneasily. She was afraid of such moments as these. It was to escape from them that she had protested so vehemently against their accepting Deane's offer of his cottage.

At low tide, a rough, pebbly road led from the village to the cottage, as well as the d.y.k.e footpath higher up. Along this came two people, a man and a woman, mere specks at first in the distance, but rapidly becoming more and more evident. They walked fast, and they looked always anxiously toward the tower, which stood out at the end of the road against the background of the sky,--a curious, almost uncanny, sort of building.

"If they see us coming," said Ruby Sinclair, "they will certainly try to prevent our seeing him. Our only chance is to come upon them unexpectedly. They can watch the d.y.k.e path from the front, but few people ever come by this road. It winds about so, and it is generally thick with sea mud."

The man nodded. He too was keeping his gaze fixed in a strained manner upon their goal. "Now that we are so near," he said, "so near to him, we will make him speak. We will not be driven away. He cannot escape from us there."

There was a curious air of determination about these two, a certain grimness which seemed common to both of them, as they hurried along the rough, stone-strewn road. They had reached the last hundred yards now, and their course was perfectly straight. They walked single file along the little stretch of marshland which served as a footpath.