The Second Latchkey Part 24

There were certain times on certain days when Nelson Smith was "at home"

for certain people. These days were not those when Annesley and Constance were "at home."

In fact, they had been chosen purposely in order not to clash.

The American millionaire had, from his first appearance in London, interested himself in more than one charitable society. Representatives of these a.s.sociations called upon him during appointed hours, and were shown straight to his "den." Indeed, they were the only persons welcomed there, but the Countess de Santiago had some reason to expect that an exception might be made in her favour.

Luckily, the day when she heard the news from Lady Annesley-Seton was one of the two days in the week when Nelson Smith was certain not to be out of the house in the afternoon. Luckily also she knew that his wife was equally certain to be absent. "Anita" was going to play bridge at a house where Madalena was invited.

She got her maid to telephone an excuse--"the Countess had a bad headache." Had she said heartache it would have been nearer the truth.

But one does not tell the truth in these matters.

Not for years--not since the strenuous times when Don had saved her from serious trouble and put her on the road to success had Madalena de Santiago been so unhappy. Whichever way she looked she saw darkness ahead, yet she hoped something from her talk with Don--just what, she did not specify to herself in words, but "_something_."

"I wish to see Mr. Nelson Smith on important business," she said, looking the butler straight in the eyes. It was he who opened the door of the Portman Square house on the "charity days." He gave her back look for look, losing the air of respectable servitude and suddenly becoming a human being.

"Mr. Smith is not alone," he answered, contriving to give some special meaning to the ordinary words which made them almost cryptic. "But I think he will be free before long, if you care to wait, madame, and I will mention that you are here."

"You must say it is important," she impressed upon him as she was ushered into a little reception room.

A few minutes later Charrington took her to the door of the "den," where Knight received her with casual cheerfulness.

"This is an unexpected pleasure!" he said.

"Don't let us bother with conventionalities, Don!" she exclaimed, her emotion showing itself in petulance. "I had to come and have an understanding with you."

"An understanding?" Knight was very calm, so calm that she--who knew him in many phases--was stung with the conviction that he needed to ask no questions. He was temporizing; and her anger--pa.s.sionate, unavailing anger, beating itself like waves on the rock of his strong nature--broke out in tears.

"You know what I mean!" She choked on the words. "You're tired of me!

There's nothing more I can do for you, and so--and so--oh, Don, say I'm wrong! Say it's a mistake. Say it's not you but _she_ who doesn't want me. She's jealous. Only say that. It's all I want. Just to know it is not you who are so cruel--after the past!"

Knight remained unmoved. He looked straight at her, frowning. "What past?" he inquired, blankly.

"You ask me that--_you_?"

"We have never been anything to one another," Knight said. "Not even friends. You know that as well as I do. We've been valuable to each other after a fas.h.i.+on, I to you, you to me, and we can be the same in future if you don't choose to play the fool."

She was cowed, and hated herself for being cowed--hated Knight, too.

"What do you call playing the fool?" she asked.

"Behaving as you're behaving now; and as you've been behaving these last few weeks. I'm not blind, you know. You have been trying your power over me. I suppose that's what you'd call the trick. Well, my dear Madalena, it won't work. I hoped you might realize that without making a scene; but you wouldn't. You've brought this on yourself, and there's nothing for it now but a straight talk.

"My wife is not jealous. It's not in her to be jealous. If she doesn't like you, Madalena, it's instinctive mistrust. I don't think she's even seen the claws sticking out of the velvet. But _I_ have. I've seen exactly what you are up to. You talk about our 'past'. You want to force my hand. You expect me, because I've been a decent pal, and paid what I thought was due, to pay higher, a fancy price. I won't. My wife had no hand in keeping you out of the Easter house party. It was I who said you weren't to be asked. You had to be taught that you couldn't dictate terms. You wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, so the lesson had to be more severe than I meant. Now we understand each other."

"I doubt it!" cried Madalena.

"You mean I don't understand _you_? I think I do, my friend. And I'm not afraid. If I'm not a white angel, certainly _you're_ not. We're tarred with the same brush. Forget this afternoon, if you like, and I'll forget it. We can go back to where we were before. But only on the promise that you'll be sensible. No cat-scratchings. No mysteries."

It was all that the Countess de Santiago could do to bite back the threat which alone could have given her relief. Yet she did bite it back. Her triumph would be incomplete in ruining the man if he could not know that he owed his punishment to her. But she must be satisfied with the second best thing. She dared not put him on his guard, and she dared not let him guess that she meant to strike.

He would wonder perhaps, when the blow fell, and say to himself, "Can Madalena have done this?" She must so act that his answer would be, "No.

It's an accident of fate." Knight was not the sort of man who for a mere wandering suspicion, without an atom of proof, would pull a woman down.

And there would be no proof.

"You are not kind," was the only response she ventured. "And you are not just. I did not want to 'scratch.' I would not injure you for the world, even if I could. Yet it does hurt to think our friends.h.i.+p in the past has meant nothing to you, when it has meant so much to me. It hurts. But I must bear it. I shall not trouble you about my feelings again."

If she had hoped that her meekness might make him relent she was disappointed. He merely said, "Very good. We'll go back to where we were."

That same evening Madalena wrote to Ruthven Smith. She took pains to disguise her handwriting, and not satisfied with that precaution, went out in a taxi and posted the letter in Hampstead.

It was a short letter, and it had no signature; but it made an impression on Ruthven Smith.

CHAPTER XVI

WHY RUTHVEN SMITH WENT

Never in his life had Ruthven Smith been blessed or cursed by an anonymous letter. He did not know what to make of it, or how to treat it.

Instead of exciting him, as it might had he been a man of mercurial temperament, it irritated him intensely.

That was the way when things out of the ordinary happened to Ruthven Smith: he resented them. He was not--and recognized the fact that he was not--the type of man to whom things ought to happen. It was only one strange streak of the artistic in his nature which made him a marvellous judge of jewels, and attracted adventures to come near him.

He was const.i.tutionally timid. He was conventional, and prim in his thoughts of life and all he desired it to give. He was a creature of a past generation; and whenever in time he had chanced to exist he would always have lagged a generation behind. But there was that one colourful streak which somehow, as if by a mistake in creation, had shot a narrow rainbow vein through his drab soul, like a glittering opal in gray-brown rock.

He loved jewels. He had known all about them by instinct even before he knew by painstaking research. He could judge jewels and recognize them under any disguise of cutting. He could do this better than almost any one in the world, and he could do nothing else well; therefore it was preordained that he should find his present position with some such firm as the Van Vrecks; and, being in it, adventures were bound to come.

Many attempts to rob him had doubtless been made. One had lately succeeded. His nerves were in a wretched state. He was "jumpy" by day as well as night; and sometimes, when at his worst, he even felt for five minutes at a time that he had better hand in his resignation to the firm who had employed him for nearly twenty years, and retire into private life, like a harried mouse into its hole.

But that was only when he was at his very worst. Deep down within him he was aware that, while the breath of life and his inscrutable genius were together in him, he could not, would not, resign.

It was part of Ruthven Smith, an intimate part of him, not to be able to decide for a long time what to do when he was confronted with one of those emergencies unsuited to his temperament. He was afraid of doing the wrong thing, yet was too reserved to consult any one. He generally counted on blundering through somehow; and so it was in the matter of the anonymous letter.

He had heard, and dimly believed, that it was morally wrong, and, still worse, quite bad form, to take notice of anonymous letters. But this one must be different, it seemed to him, from any other which anybody had ever received. Duty to his employers and duty to the one thing he really loved was above any other duty; and for fear of losing forever an immense, an unhoped-for advantage, which might possibly be gained, he dared not ignore the letter.

At all events, he had told himself, no matter what he might decide later, it was just as well that he had accepted the invitation to Valley House.

Perhaps someone--he could not think who--was playing a stupid practical joke, with the object of getting him there. But he would risk that and go, and let his conduct shape itself according to developments.

For instance, if his eyes were able to detect the small detail mysteriously mentioned in the letter, he would feel bound to act as it suggested; yes, bound to act--but how unpleasant it would be!

And the worst of the whole unpalatable affair was that if he _did_ act in that suggested way, and if he accomplished what he might, with dreadful deftness, be supposed to accomplish, it would be the moment when perhaps he might be fooled.

_If_ the letter were written by a practical joker, he would be made to look ridiculous in the eyes of all who were in the secret. And that thought brought him back to the question which over and over he asked in his mind. Who could have written the anonymous letter?

It must be someone acquainted with him, or with his profession; someone who knew the Nelson Smiths and the Annesley-Setons well enough to be aware that there was to be an Easter party at Valley House. The writer hinted in vague terms that he was a private detective aware of certain things, yet so placed that he could have no handling of the affair, except from a distance, and through another person. He pretended a disinterested desire to serve Ruthven Smith, and signed himself, "A Well Wisher"; but the nervous recipient of the advice felt that his correspondent was quite likely to be of the cla.s.s opposed to detectives.