A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 40

"Writing letters, Alice?" Collingwood said easily, though there was a chill in his voice which sounded like the note of doom in the miserable woman's ears.

"I have finished writing," she said, stammering--"just finished."

Collingwood came up to her without removing his eyes from hers. He came slowly up, with a steady, persistent stare, magnetic, horrible.

"Just got up from writing, eh? That's lucky!" he said. "I want to have a talk with you, Alice--by the way, let me post your letters."

"Please don't trouble," she faltered.

"No trouble, I a.s.sure you," he answered, his voice becoming more cold, dangerous, and menacing than ever. "I a.s.sure you it is no trouble, Alice. There can't even be a great weight of letters for me to take to the post--because, you see, Peggy and I were here until about two minutes ago."

There was a revolving chair of green leather in front of the writing-table. Lady Attwill sank into it. She felt as if the whole room, with all its contents, was spinning round her with horrible rapidity. She sank into the chair, unable to stand longer; but, even as she did so, one last despairing gleam of hope prompted her to make an effort to show that she was still unconcerned and sitting down in a natural way.

"I hardly expected to see you here," she said in a rather high, staccato voice, the words coming from her one by one as if each separate word was produced with great difficulty.

"Indeed?" Collingwood asked. "And why not?"

The fact that she was sitting down, that she had the arms of the chair to hold, that she was _somewhere_, seemed to give Alice Attwill more courage.

In a voice which was still tremulous, but in which an ugly note of temper was beginning to displace the abject indications of fear, she answered him.

She pushed her head a little forward, and her eyes shone with malice.

"I should have thought that the revelations of this afternoon would have----"

Collingwood recognised the change of att.i.tude in a moment.

"Closed these doors to those who planned the trip to Paris--yes?"

"I was not thinking of the trip to Paris," she said.

Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Because we were partners in that, of course," he replied.

"Partners!" she cried shrilly. "I knew nothing about it. It was you who gave the orders to the porter and booked the rooms--I don't come in anywhere!"

Collingwood folded his arms and stood with his feet somewhat apart, looking down upon her with a face which, in its contempt and strength, once more drove her into an extremity of fear.

When he spoke again his voice had lost its bitterness and contempt, but it had become harsh and imperative. It was the voice of a bullying counsel in the courts--the voice in which a low man speaks to a servant.

"That is your game, is it?" he said. "You never knew of the trip to Paris?"

The woman was spurred up to answer. She met his voice with one precisely in the same key; it was a voice a succession of unfortunate lady's-maids knew very well.

"Absolutely nothing," she said; "where as you--your guilt, my friend, is clear, transparently clear."

She nodded two or three times to emphasise her a.s.sertion, and by this time her composure had returned to her and she was ready for anything.

Collingwood, who had been watching her with the most intense scrutiny, had followed with perfect clearness the changes in her voice and att.i.tude. He now knew where he was. The bluff was over, he was about to play his hand.

More particularly than anything else his mind, intensely alert and active at this supreme moment, noticed that Alice Attwill had wheeled round upon her chair and seemed in a most marked way to be interposing herself between him and the writing-table.

It was as though some precious possession lay there of which she feared she would be robbed.

Feeling certain now of the woman's guilt, he said: "Perhaps you are also going to suggest that I wrote that dastardly letter?"

Lady Attwill sneered. "One of us obviously must have written it," she said, "and your motive--well, it is pretty clear, isn't it?"

"And yours," he said--"and isn't yours clear also?"

"Do you think so?" she asked, with a toss of her head.

He bent forward, gazing at her with an almost deadly look of hate.

"Look here," he said: "don't you hope to marry Admaston if Peggy loses this case?"

She was frightened--obviously very frightened; but she did her best to throw it off.

"My dear Colling," she said in a light and airy manner, "you are so imbued with the remarkable excellence of Sir Robert Fyffe's methods that you are imitating him. But you are doing it so badly, Colling--so extremely badly!"

His face did not change in the slightest. It remained as set and firm as before, absolutely uninfluenced by what she was saying.

"Isn't it true that you hope to marry George Admaston?" he repeated in exactly the same tone.

She lifted her pretty left hand in the air and snapped her fingers in a gesture full of mingled insolence and provocation.

"Why should I satisfy your curiosity?" she said.

Again the man, intent upon one great purpose, absolutely not to be deterred from it or to be influenced in any way by what she was saying, repeated his query.

"How can you explain that letter?" he said, in the insistent tone of a judge. "Who else could have written it except you or me?"

Her eyelids fluttered. She looked up at him quickly. "I don't attempt to explain it," she said; "but I certainly agree with you that one of us must have written it--any fool can see that; but which of us?"

She paused for a moment, and then looked him straightly in the face, defiant and at bay at last.

"But which of us?" she repeated. "That's the point upon which we shall differ, Colling."

"I see," he said. "You mean that you will endeavour to father this cowardly trick upon me?"

Alice Attwill smiled bitterly. "The public will judge," she said. "Ever since that night have I not been in constant attendance here, her devoted and trusted friend?--while you--I thought you had been forbidden the house."

"That's a lie," Collingwood said sharply.

"It is quite unnecessary to become abusive," she went on, her voice gaining confidence for a moment and her manner becoming infinitely more a.s.sured. "You are in a very tight corner, and the sooner you recognise the fact the better it will be for you."

"You think you can threaten me?" Collingwood asked quietly.

"I know my cards," she replied, "and what I can do with them. You needn't try to bluff me, Colling, for I know your cards too. Even if I did write that letter--how can you ever prove it? You can a.s.sert it, but who will believe you--you who stand convicted of decoying your friend's wife to Paris to attempt her seduction?..."