The Crimson Blind Part 15

She stood there cold and still, but he could see that she was profoundly agitated.

"I never thought to see the day when I should trust you again," she said; "I never expected to trust any man again."

"You will trust me, darling," Bell said, pa.s.sionately. "If you still care for me as I care for you. _Do_ you?"

The question came keen as steel. Enid s.h.i.+vered and hesitated. Bell laid a light hand on her arm.

"Speak," he said. "I am going to clear myself, I am going to take back my good name. But if you no longer care for me the rest matters nothing. Speak."

"I am not one of those who change, G.o.d pity me," Enid murmured.

Bell drew a long, deep breath. He wanted no a.s.surance beyond that.

"Then lead the way," he said. "I have come at the right time; I have been looking for you everywhere, and I find you in the hour of your deepest sorrow. When I knew your aunt last she was a cheerful, happy woman. From what I hear now she is suffering, you are all suffering, under some blighting grief."

"Oh, if you only knew what that sorrow was, Hatherly."

"Hatherly! How good the old name sounds from your lips. n.o.body has ever called me that since--since we parted. And to think that I should have been searching for you all these years, when Miss Ruth Gates could have given me the clue at any time. And why have you been playing such strange tricks upon my friend David Steel? Why have you---What is that?"

Somebody was moving somewhere in the grounds, and a voice shouted for help. Enid started forward.

"It is Williams coming from the stables," she said. "I have so arranged it that the dogs are holding up my dear cousin, Reginald Henson, who is calling upon Williams to release him. If Reginald gets back to the house now we are ruined. Follow me as well as you can."

Enid disappeared down a narrow, tangled path, leaving Bell to limp along painfully in her track. A little way off Henson was yelling l.u.s.tily for a.s.sistance. Williams, who had evidently taken in the situation, was coming up leisurely, chuckling at the discomfiture of the enemy. The hounds were whining and baying. From the house came the notes of a love song pa.s.sionately declaimed. A couple of the great dogs came snarling up to Bell and laid their grimy muzzles on his thighs. A cold sensation crept up and down his spine as he came to a standstill.

"The brutes!" he muttered. "Margaret Henson must be mad indeed to have these creatures about the place. Ah! would you? Very well, I'll play the game fairly, and not move. If I call out I shall spoil the game. If I remain quiet I shall have a pleasant night of it. Let us hope for the best and that Enid will understand the situation."

Meanwhile Enid had come up with Williams. She laid her hand imperiously upon his lips.

"Not a word," she whispered. "Mr. Henson is held up by the dogs. He must remain where he is till I give you the signal to release him. I know you answered his call, but you are to go no farther."

Williams a.s.sented willingly enough. Everything that tended to the discomfort of Reginald Henson filled him with a peculiar and deep-seated pleasure.

"Very well, miss," he said, demurely. "And don't you hurry, miss. This is a kind of job that calls for plenty of patience. And I'm really shocking deaf tonight."

Williams retreated leisurely in the direction of the stables, but his malady was not so distressing that he failed to hear a groan and a snarling curse from Henson. Enid fled back along the track, where she found Bell standing patiently with a dog's muzzle close to either knee.

His face was white and s.h.i.+ning, otherwise he showed no signs of fear.

Enid laid a hand on the head of either dog, and they rolled like great cats at her feet in the bushes.

"Now come swiftly," she whispered. "There is no time to be lost."

They were in the house at last, crossing the dusty floor, with the motes dancing in the lamp-light, deadening their footsteps and m.u.f.fling the intense silence. Above the stillness rose the song from the drawing-room; from without came the restless murmur of the dogs. Enid entered the drawing-room, and Bell limped in behind her. The music immediately ceased. As Enid glanced at her aunt she saw that the far-away look had died from her eyes, that the sparkle and brightness of reason were there.

She had come out of the mist and the shadows for a time at any rate.

"Dr. Hatherly Bell to see you, aunt," Enid said, in a low tone.

Margaret Henson shot up from the piano like a statue. There was no welcome on her face, no surprise there, nothing but deep, unutterable contempt and loathing.

"I have been asleep," she said. She pa.s.sed her hand dreamily over her face. "I have been in a dream for seven long years. Enid brought me back to the music again to-night, and it touched my heart, and now I am awake again. Do you recollect the 'Slumber Song,' Hatherly Bell? The last time I sang it you were present. It was a happy night; the very last happy night in the world to me."

"I recollect it perfectly well, Lady Littimer," Bell said.

"Lady Littimer! How strange it is to hear that name again. Seven years since then. Here I am called Margaret Henson, and n.o.body knows. And now _you_ have found out. Do you come here to blackmail and rob me like the rest?"

"I come here entirely on your behalf and my own, my lady."

"That is what they all say--and then they rob me. You stole the Rembrandt."

The last words came like a shot from a catapult. Enid's face grew colder.

Bell drew a long tube of discoloured paper carefully tied round a stick from his pocket.

"I am going to disprove that once and for all," he said. "The Rembrandt is at present in Lord Littimer's collection. There is an account of it in to-day's _Telegraph_. It is perfectly familiar to both of you. And, that being the case, what do you think of this?"

He unrolled the paper before Enid's astonished eyes. Margaret Henson glanced at it listlessly; she was fast sinking into the old, strange oblivion again. But Enid was all rapt attention.

"I would have sworn to that as Lord Littimer's own," she gasped.

"It is his own," Bell replied. "Stolen from him and a copy placed by some arch-enemy in my portmanteau, it was certain to be found on the frontier.

Don't you see that there were two Rembrandts? When the one from my portmanteau was restored to Littimer his own was kept by the thief.

Subsequently it would be exposed as a new find, with some story as to its discovery, only, unfortunately for the scoundrel, it came into my possession."

"And where did you find it?" Enid asked. "I found it," Bell said, slowly, "in a house called 218, Brunswick Square, Brighton."

A strange cry came from Enid's lips. She stood swaying before her lover, white as the paper upon which her eyes were eagerly fixed. Margaret Henson was pacing up and down the room, her lips muttering, and raising a cloud of pallid dust behind her.

"I--I am sorry," Enid said, falteringly. "And all these years I have deemed you guilty. But then the proof was so plain; I could not deny the evidence of my own senses. And Von Gulden came to me saying how deeply distressed he was, and that he would have prevented the catastrophe if he could. Well?"

A servant stood waiting in the doorway with wondering eyes at the sight of a stranger.

"I'm sorry, miss," she said, "but Miss Christiana is worse; indeed, she quite frightens me. I've taken the liberty of telephoning to Dr. Walker."

The words seemed to bring consciousness to Margaret Henson.

"Christiana worse," she said. "Another of them going; it will be a happy release from a house of sorrow like this. I will come up, Martin."

She swept out of the room after the servant. Enid appeared hardly to have heard. Bell looked at her inquiringly and with some little displeasure.

"I fancy I have heard you speak of your sister Christiana," he said.

"Is she ill?"

"She is at the point of death, I understand; you think that I am callous.

Oh, if you only knew! But the light will come to us all in time, G.o.d willing. Look at this place, look at the blight of it, and wonder how we endure it. Hatherly, I have made a discovery."

"We seem to be living in an atmosphere of discoveries. What is it?"

"I will answer your question by asking another. You have been made the victim of a vile conspiracy. For seven years your career has been blighted. And I have lost seven years of my life, too. Have you any idea who your enemy is?"

"Not the faintest, but, believe me, I shall find out in time. And then---"