Who? Part 27

The doctor glared at Cyril for a moment but seemed at a loss for a crus.h.i.+ng reply.

"You must acknowledge that appearances are against you," he said at last, making a valiant effort to control his temper. "If you are a man of honour, you ought to appreciate that my position is a very difficult one and to be as ready to forgive me, if I have erred through excessive zeal, as I shall be to apologise to you. Now let me ask you one more question. Why were you so anxious that I should not see the jewels?"

"Oh, had you not seen them? I thought, of course, that you had. I apologise for not having satisfied your curiosity."

There was a short pause during which the doctor looked long and searchingly at Cyril.

"I can't help it. I feel that there is something fishy about this business. You can't convince me to the contrary."

"I was not aware that I was trying to do so."

The doctor almost danced with rage.

"Lord Wilmersley--for I suppose you are Lord Wilmersley?"

"Unless I am his valet, Peter Thompkins."

"I know nothing about you," cried the doctor, "and you have succeeded to your t.i.tle under very peculiar circ.u.mstances, my lord."

"So you suspect me not only of flogging my wife but of murdering my cousin!" laughed Cyril. "My dear doctor, don't you realise that if there were the slightest grounds for your suspicions, the police would have put me under surveillance long ago. Why, I can easily prove that I was in Paris at the time of the murder."

"Oh, you are clever! I don't doubt that you have an impeccable alibi.

But if I informed the police that you were pa.s.sing off as your wife a girl several years younger than Lady Wilmersley, a girl, moreover, who, you acknowledged, joined you at Newhaven the very morning after the murder--if I told them that this young lady had in her possession a remarkable number of jewels, which she carried in a cheap, black bag--what do you think they would say to that, my lord?"

Cyril felt cold chills creeping down his back and the palms of his hands grew moist. Not a flicker of an eyelash, however, betrayed his inward tumult. "They would no doubt pay as high a tribute to your imagination as I do," he answered.

Then, abandoning his careless pose, he sat up in his chair.

"You have been insulting me for the last half-hour, and I have borne it very patiently, partly because your absurd suspicions amused me, and partly because I realised that, although you are a fool, you are an honest fool."

"Sir!" The doctor turned purple in the face.

"You can hardly resent being called a fool by a man you have been accusing of murder and wife-beating. But I don't want you to go to the police with this c.o.c.k-and-bull story----"

"Ah! I thought not," sneered the doctor.

"Because," continued Cyril, ignoring the interruption, "I want to protect my wife from unpleasant notoriety, and also, although you don't deserve it, to keep you from becoming a public laughing stock. So far you have done all the talking; now you are to listen to me. Sit down.

You make me nervous strutting about like that. Sit down, I tell you.

There, that's better. Now let us see what all this rigmarole really amounts to. You began by asking for my wife's address, and when I did not immediately gratify what I considered your impertinent curiosity, you launch forth into vague threats of exposure. As far as I can make out from your disjointed harangue, your excuse for prying into my affairs is that by doing so you are protecting a helpless woman from further ill-treatment. Very well. Granting that you really suppose me to be a brute, your behaviour might be perfectly justified if--if you believed that your patient is my wife. But you tell me that you do not.

You think that she is either my mistress or my accomplice, or both. Now, if she is a criminal and an immoral woman, you must admit that she has shown extraordinary cleverness, inasmuch as she succeeded not only in eluding the police but in deceiving you. For the impression she made on you was a very favourable one, was it not? She seemed to you unusually innocent as well as absolutely frank, didn't she?"

"Yes," acknowledged the doctor.

"Now, if she was able to dupe so trained an observer as yourself, she must be a remarkable woman, and cannot be the helpless creature you picture her, and consequently would be in no danger of being forced to submit to abuse from any one."

"True," murmured the doctor.

"But I think I can prove to you that you were not mistaken in your first estimate of her character. This illness of hers--was it real or could it have been feigned?"

"It was real. There is no doubt about that."

"You saw her when she was only semi-conscious, when she was physically incapable of acting a part--did she during that time, either by word or look, betray moral perversity?"

"She did not." The doctor's anger had abated and he was listening to Cyril intently.

"How, then, can you doubt her? And if she is what she seems, she is certainly neither my mistress nor a thief; and if she is not the one nor the other, she must be my wife, and if you go to the police with your absurd suspicions, you will only succeed in making yourself ridiculous."

There was a pause during which the two men eyed each other keenly.

"You make a great point of the fact that my wife had in her possession a number of valuable ornaments," continued Cyril. "But why should she not?

My wife insisted on having all her jewelry with her at Charleroi, and when she escaped from there, they were among the few things she took with her. The excitement of meeting her so unexpectedly and her sudden illness made me forget all about them, otherwise I would have taken them out of the bag, which, as you may have noticed, was not even locked. But the very fact that I did forget all about them and allowed them to pa.s.s through the hands of nurses and servants, that alone ought to convince you that I did not come by them dishonestly. You had them for days in your possession; yet you accuse me of having prevented you from examining them. That is really ridiculous! Your whole case against me is built on the wildest conjectures, from which you proceed to draw perfectly untenable inferences. My wife looks young for her age, I grant you; but even you would not venture to swear positively that she is not twenty-eight. You fancied that I neglected her; consequently I am a brute. She is sane now; so you believe that she has never been otherwise. You imagined that I did not wish you to examine the contents of my wife's bag, therefore the Wilmersley jewels must have been in it."

"What you say sounds plausible enough," acknowledged the doctor, "and it seems impossible to a.s.sociate you with anything cruel, mean, or even underhand, and yet--and yet--I have an unaccountable feeling that you are not telling me the truth. When I try to a.n.a.lyse my impressions, I find that I distrust not you but your story. You have, however, convinced me that I have no logical basis for my suspicions. That being the case, I shall do nothing for the present. But, if at the end of a fortnight I do not hear that Lady Wilmersley has arrived in England, and has taken her place in the world, then I shall believe that my instinct has not been at fault, and shall do my best to find out what has become of her, even at the risk of creating a scandal or of being laughed at for my pains. But I don't care, I shall feel that I have done my duty.

In the meantime I shall write to Dr. Monet. Now I have given you a fair warning, which you can act on as you see fit."

What an unerring scent the man had for falsehood, thought Cyril with unwilling admiration. It was really wonderful the way he disregarded probabilities and turned a deaf ear to reason. He was a big man, Cyril grudgingly admitted.

"I suppose you will not believe me if I tell you that I have no personal animosity toward you, Lord Wilmersley?"

"I know that. And some day we'll laugh over this episode together,"

replied Cyril, with a heartiness which surprised himself.

"Now that is nice of you," cried the doctor. "My temper is rather hasty, I am sorry to say, and though I don't remember all I said just now, I am sure, I was unnecessarily disagreeable."

"Well, I called you a fool," grinned Cyril.

"So you did, so you did, and may I live to acknowledge that I richly deserve the appellation."

And so their interview terminated with unexpected friendliness.

CHAPTER XIII

CAMPBELL REMONSTRATES

In his note to Guy, Cyril had asked the latter to join him at his club as soon as he had left Priscilla at the hotel, and so when the time pa.s.sed and his friend neither came nor telephoned, Cyril's anxiety knew no bounds.

What could have happened? thought Cyril. Had Priscilla been arrested? In that case, however, Guy would surely have communicated with him at once, for the police could have had no excuse for detaining the latter.

Several acquaintances he had not seen for years greeted him cordially, but he met their advances so half-heartedly that they soon left him to himself, firmly convinced that the t.i.tle had turned his head. Only one, an old friend of his father's, refused to be shaken off and sat prosing away quite oblivious of his listener's preoccupation till the words "your wife" arrested Cyril's wandering attention.

"Yes," the Colonel was saying, "too bad that you should have this added worry just now. Taken ill on the train, too--most awkward."

Cyril was so startled that he could only repeat idiotically: "My wife?"