Upon this Van Hupfeldt’s brow flushed angrily, and he leaped to his feet, crying: “But that will never be! Clear your sister’s name? You still talk like a child—”

Now it was Violet’s turn to stand up in astonishment, as she saw her castle in the clouds diminishing. She stared in her turn, with open lips, crying: “Do you say this? that it will never be?”

“How can you set a man’s life on the chance of the realization of such a mere dream?” asked Van Hupfeldt, irritated, saying more than was wise.

“A dream?” murmured Violet, as if in a dream herself. “Then, who is it that has sent me this?”

Thereupon she drew from her pocket David Harcourt’s unsigned note. She held it out to Van Hupfeldt, and he, without touching, leaned over and read it; apparently slowly; more than once, so Violet thought. He stood there looking at the letter an unconscionable time, she holding it out for him to read, while the man’s face bled away inwardly, as it were to death, and some power seemed to rivet his eyes, some power stronger than his effort to withdraw them.

The thought passing through Van Hupfeldt’s soul was this: “Some one knows that she was a ‘duly wedded wife.’ But who? And how? To him it is somehow ‘a pretty certain thing’; and the proofs of it ‘may sooner or later be forthcoming’; and then he will give these proofs to Violet.”

“I see, then, that it was not you who sent it to me,” said Violet at last, and, as she said it, a certain gladness, a little thrill of relief, occurred somewhere within her.

Van Hupfeldt straightened himself. His lips were white, but they smiled dreadfully, though for some part of a second he hesitated before he said: “Now, who told you that?”

“I do not, of course, know the facts,” said Violet; “but I should like to.”

“You may as well know,” said Van Hupfeldt, turning away from her. “Yes, I sent it.”

Violet flushed. His manner did not carry conviction even to a mind not used to doubt the spoken word. It was horrid to think he was lying. Yet an odd sheepishness was visible in his face; his voice was not strong and brave.

“Well, I am still in a maze,” she murmured. “Since it was you who sent it, and since you say in it that my sister’s honor is now ‘a pretty certain thing,’ and that ‘the proofs will be forthcoming,’ why did you say a moment ago that it is ‘a mere dream’ to look forward to their forthcoming?”

Van Hupfeldt was looking out of the window. He did not answer at once; only after a minute he replied without looking round: “It was I who sent you the note. Yes, it was I; and what I say in it is true—somehow—true in some way; but I did not wish you to make the realization of those hopes a condition of your giving yourself to me. Hence I said that your stipulation was ‘a mere dream.’ Now, you understand; now, I think, all is clear to your mind.”

Violet sighed, and made no answer. All was not so very clear to her mind. One thing only was clear, that the nobility with which she and her mother had credited Van Hupfeldt in sending the note anonymously, so that he might not claim a reward from her, was not a deep nobility; for he had promptly volunteered the information that it was he who had sent it. She felt some disgust. A woman disillusioned about a man rushes to the opposite pole. Let him but be detected to be not the hero which she had thought him, and steep is his fall. Henceforth he is not only not a hero but less than nothing in her eyes. Violet paced aimlessly through the room, then went to the window farthest from that at which Van Hupfeldt stood, and the unspoken words on her lips were: “The miserable man.”

At last Van Hupfeldt almost rushed at her, with the cry: “The promise on that sheet of paper in your hand shall be fulfilled, and fulfilled by me, I vow, I swear it to you! But the fulfilment of it must not be made a condition of our union. The union must come first, and then the fulfilment; and the quicker the union the sooner the fulfilment.”

“No, I will not have it so.”

“You must!”

“You are to release my wrist, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!”

“You must!”

“But why hold me?”

“Listen—your sister was a wedded wife. I know it, I have reason to know it, and I am certain that, if you marry me, within six months after the marriage I shall be in a position to hand you the proofs of everything—to tell you truly the whole history from beginning to end—”

“But why six months after? Why not six months before?”

“I have reasons—there are reasons. What I shall have to tell will be a pain to you, I foresee, a pain; but perhaps not a pain which you will be unable to outlive. Nevertheless, from what I already know of your sister’s history, I see that it must be told you after, not before, our union. It is a terrible history, I—gather, a harrowing tale. You don’t even guess, you are far from being able to hear it now, even if I could tell you now. Violet! say ‘Yes’ to me!”

“What? Without understanding anything?”

“Yes, Violet, turn to me! Violet, say ‘Yes’ to me!”

“But what guaranty—”

“My pledged word, nothing else; that is enough. I say that within six months, not more, from the day of our marriage you shall have all that you desire to know, even the child shall have been found, for already I am on its track. But unless you consent, you will never know, the child will never be found; for I shall be dead, and the knowledge which I am in course of gathering shall die with me. If you will not give yourself, then, agree to that bargain you spoke of.”

“One gives, in a bargain, for something one receives.”

“It is the only condition on which we can come together. I could not bring you to-day the proofs that you long for, even if I had them. It must be six months after—not less than six months after—and for then I promise, calling Heaven to witness. Believe in me! Not all things that a man says are true; but this is true. Violet, for Gwen’s sake, within a week—the sooner it’s done, the sooner you hear—within not more than two weeks—”

Violet, sore beset, shielded her eyes with a listless hand. Van Hupfeldt was pleading like a man battling for his last earthly good. And yet, and yet, he left her cold.

“I don’t doubt your promise,” she said with a charming shyness; “but it is a great matter, you give me no guaranties, you may fail, and then all will have been in vain.”

“I won’t fail. I shall so manage that there will be no chance of failure. And to prove my faith, if you say ‘Yes,’ I think I can undertake that within only two months after the marriage the child shall be unearthed, and within six the proofs of his legitimacy shall be handed you. That’s fair—that seems fairer—come, now. Only the marriage must be prompt in that case, without a fortnight’s delay. I can’t offer better terms. What do you say to it?”

Violet, without answering, suddenly cast herself upon the sofa-head, burying her face in it. A bitter lamentation came from her, so thin and low that Van Hupfeldt could scarce hear it. He stood over her, looking at her, his heart in his mouth; and presently, bending to her, he whispered: “Tell me!”

“God knows!” came from her brokenly.

He put his lips on her hair, and she shivered. “It is ‘Yes,’ then,” said he; “but pity me still more, and say that it shall be at once.”

“No,” she sobbed, “I must have time to think. It is too much, after all—”

At that moment Mrs. Mordaunt entered. Violet, aroused by the opening door, stood up with a bent head, an averted face, and Van Hupfeldt said, with a sort of frenzied laugh, to Mrs. Mordaunt: “See how the days are lengthening out already.”

Mrs. Mordaunt looked at Violet with a query in her glance; and Violet’s great eyes dwelt on her mother without answering by any sign that question of lifted eyebrows. The girl was puzzled and overwrought. Was it so that men won women, that some man had won her sister? Surely this was a strange wooing!

CHAPTER VIII

His mental faculties being now on a tension, he thought to himself that there was no reason why he should not be prompt, and call upon Miss Gissing that evening. Though, after dinner, a mortal lethargy and reaction seized upon him with the whisper, “To-morrow is better than to-day,” he proved true to his high-strung self, and went by bus to Baker-St., where he took train for the station nearest the village of Chalfont.

It was a sharp walk from station to village. There was no cab; and when he arrived at the Peacock Inn, where Sarah Gissing was now a barmaid, he learned that she was away on leave at a neighboring village. He strolled about the silent street until Sarah came home at ten o’clock, a thin girl, with projecting top teeth, and a chronic stare of wonderment in her eyes.

“You are not to be alarmed,” David said to her. “I only came to ask you a few questions about your late mistress, Miss Gwendoline Barnes, in whom I have an interest. No one will be harmed, as far as I am aware, by your telling me all that you know, while you and I may profit by it.”

They spoke in the tiny inn drawing-room, and Sarah in her coat, with her hat on, sitting on the piano-stool, stared and answered shortly at first. Little by little she was induced to utter herself.

“He was a tall man,” she said, “rather thin, dark and pale—”

“Straight nose?” asked David.

“Yes, sir, straight nose; a handsome man.”

“Black mustache, nicely turned out?”

“Yes, sir; he had a mustache.”

“Well, but all that says nothing. Many people answer such a description. Was there no photograph of him in the flat? Did you never see a photograph?”

“Yes, there was a photograph on the mantelpiece of Miss Barnes’s bed-room. In a silver frame it was; but the day after her death the silver frame was still there, and the photograph was gone, for I noticed it myself.”

“Do you realize that you are telling me a mighty odd thing,” said David with sudden interest. “How soon after the door was forced did you go into the flat?”

“Wasn’t I there when the door was forced? Didn’t I go in at once?”

“And how soon afterward did you notice that the photograph was gone from the silver frame?”

“How soon? Soon afterward.”

“It was not one of the men who forced the door who removed the photograph from the frame?”

“I don’t think that, sir. I would have noticed it if that had been the case.”

“When you went in you found the body of your mistress lying dead; the front door had been bolted inside; so there was no way for any one to have come out of the flat. And when you left your mistress the previous night the photograph was in its frame, but gone when the door was forced the next day. Those are the facts, aren’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that seems to say that it was Miss Barnes herself who removed the photograph, doesn’t it? And it follows that the photograph is still in the flat?”

“P’raps she did it to screen him,” suggested Sarah, indulging in the vanity of thought. “I shouldn’t wonder if that was it. No doubt she tore up the photograph, or burnt it.”

“But you didn’t see any shreds or ashes of it anywhere?”

“Not of a photograph, although I did sweep out the place the same day, too. Still, that’s not to say she didn’t tear it up because there was no shreds of it, for there are ways and means.”

“Were there shreds of any kind about?”

“Yes; she must have torn up a good few letters overnight before doing what she did. There was no end of litter, for that matter.”

“But suppose she did not burn or tear up the photograph,” said David, “where would she have hidden it? Can you suggest a place? Did you ever know her to hide anything? For, if she hid one thing, she may have hidden others, mayn’t she?”

“I believe there’s one letter she must have hidden,” answered Sarah, “unless she destroyed it—a letter that came from Paris four days before she made away with herself. I saw the postmark and the handwriting, so I know. It was from him, for he was in Paris at the time, and it was that letter that was the death of her, I feel certain. It came about eleven o’clock, soon after breakfast. She was at the piano in her dressing-gown, singing, not ordinary singing, but a kind of moaning of different notes, practising her voice like—it used to give me the blues to hear her every morning, it was so doleful like, moan, moan, moan! So I says, ‘A letter for you, mum,’ and she first stared at it in my hand, then she jumped up sudden like, and kind of snatched it out of my hand. But she didn’t read it. She went with it to the front window, looking out, holding the letter behind her back with her two hands, trembling from head to foot. So, not having any excuse to stay, I went out, but didn’t quite close the door. I loitered for a little while; but, not hearing anything, I went about my work, till half an hour later something seemed to say to me: ‘Better have a look,’ and when I peeped into the drawing-room, there she was sitting on the floor with her face on the sofa, and the letter in her hand. I thought she had the neuralgia; she looked that much in pain, you never saw. I spoke to her, but she looked at me, sick like, and didn’t say nothing. I don’t believe she could have stood up, if she had tried, and it did go to my heart to see her struck down and helpless like that.”

David’s close interest in her story pleased the girl. Such a nice young man he was! Perhaps he might call again some evening.

“My missus wasn’t quite right the rest of her time, I don’t think,” she went on. “She wandered about the flat, restless as a strange kitten, singing bits of songs, and she had a sweet soprano voice, I’m sure, that pierced you through when she screamed out the high notes. She didn’t go to the theater any more, after the letter. The next day she comes to me in the kitchen, singing and chuckling to herself, and she says to me: ‘What are you doing here?’ says she. ‘How do you mean, mum?’ says I. ‘Listen, Sarah,’ says she, putting her face quite close to mine, ‘you shouldn’t be here, this is not a place for a decent girl like you. You are to understand that I am not married. I told you that I was; but it was a lie. I have a child; but I am not married,’ and she ran off, laughing again to herself, as wild as a bird.”

“No, not that!” interrupted David, for the outspoken revelation hurt him. “It was not so much that which I wished to hear. Let us talk of the letter and the man. You never saw the letter again? You can’t think what your mistress may have done with it?”

“No, I never saw it again,” said Sarah, “nor I can’t think where she may have put it, unless she tore it up. There’s only one queer thing which I can call to mind, and that is, that during the afternoon of the day before she died, I went out to buy some soda, and when I came back I found her standing on a chair, hanging up one of the pictures in the long corridor. I wondered at the time whether it had fallen down or what, though I didn’t say anything. But now I come to think of it—”

David thought to himself: “She was then hiding the marriage and birth certificates which Miss L’Estrange afterward saw when the picture fell. She was reluctant to destroy them, and yet wished to screen the man, having in her mind the purpose to take her own life. The man’s photograph and the fatal letter from him were not hidden in the picture, but somewhere else, perhaps. I must search every cranny.”

“Of course,” he said aloud, “you could easily identify her husband if he was shown to you again?”

“Oh, rather, sir,” Sarah answered, “I’ve seen him dozens of times. He used to come to the flat anyway twice a week, though sometimes he would be away for a goodish stretch, mostly in Paris.”

“They were an affectionate pair—fond of each other?”

“They were that, indeed,” said Sarah with a smile, as one who understood that sort of thing. “He, I’m sure, worshiped the ground she walked on, and she was just as bad. It came as a surprise to me that anything was wrong, though latterly she did use to have red eyes sometimes after he had been with her.”

“What name did she call him by?” asked David. “His name was Johann Strauss, wasn’t it?”

“He was a Mr. Strauss, sir, yes, but not the other name you say. At least, she always called him Harry.”

“Henry is sometimes the English for Johann, you see,” muttered David, with a random guess that Sarah was none the wiser. “Henry, too, was the name of the child, wasn’t it? How about the child? Don’t you know where it is?”

“I only know that she used to go every Tuesday and Thursday by the seventeen minutes past two train from Baker-St., and be back by six o’clock, so it couldn’t have been very far. ’Pon my word, sometimes she’d go half crazy over that child. There was a little box of clothes that she’s many a time made me waste half a day over, showing me the things, as if I’d never seen them afore, everything that was possible embroidered with violets, and she’d always be making—”

“Fond of violets, was she?” broke in David, ready enough to catch at the phrase.

“Oh, it was all violets with her,—violets in her hair, at her neck, at her waist, and all about the place. She had a sister called Violet, and I came to know the sister as well as I knew herself in a manner of speaking, she was always telling me about her. For often she had nobody to talk to, and then she’d make me sit down to hear about her mother and this Miss Vi and the child, and what she meant to do when her marriage could be made public, and that. She was a good, affectionate lady, was Miss Gwen, sir. You couldn’t help loving her, and it was a mortal hard thing what happened.”

It was just then that the mistress of the tavern looked in with an unsympathetic face; so David rose and slipped a gold coin into the hand of the staring Sarah. The talk had already lasted a long while, and the inn-door had to be opened to let him out.

He walked the two miles back to the station, and there learned that the last up-train for the night had just left. Even on the suburban lines there is a limit to late hours.

This carelessness on his own part caused him to growl. It was now a question either of knocking up some tavern, or of tramping to London—about twenty-one miles. However, twenty-one miles made no continent to him, and, after posting himself by questions as to the route, he set out.

Throwing his overcoat over his left arm, he put his elbows to his ribs, lifted his face skyward, and went away at a long, slow, swinging trot. One mile winded him. He stopped and walked for five minutes, then away he went again at a steady jog-trot; and now, with this second wind, he could have run in one heat to Bow Bells without any feeling but one of joy and power. He had seen Indians run all day long with pauses. He had learned the art from them, and London had scarce had time as yet to enervate him. Up hill and down dale he went steadily away, like a machine. It was dark at first, dismal in some places, the sky black, crowded with stars, like diamond-seed far sown; but suddenly, while he was trotting through the main street of Uxbridge, all this was changed, the whole look and mood of things underwent transformation, as the full moon floated like a balloon of light into the sky. It was then about one-thirty in the morning. Thenceforth his way was almost as clearly lit as by day.

Through dead villages he passed, through dead Ealing to Shepherd’s Bush; there were cats, and there were policemen, and one running man, little else. Here or there a constable was half-drawn into giving chase, but wisely forbore—he never would have caught David Harcourt. But at Shepherd’s Bush David came to the foot of a long hill, which he shirked, and drew up. From that point he walked to Notting Hill, past Kensington Gardens, toward Oxford Circus. It was near three A.M.

Walking on the south side of Oxford-St. eastward, he stopped to look at some books behind a grille. The moonshine was so luminous, the sky so clear, that he could see well enough to read their titles. This was the only quiet hour of London. There was not a sound, save the echo of a policeman’s tread some way off down Regent-St. Not even a night cab rattled in the distance. And then, on the other side of the street, his quick ears caught the passing of swift-gliding feet—a woman’s.

When David glanced round, already she was gone well past him, making westward, most silently, with a steady haste. She gave him the impression of having been overtaken by, of being shy at, the moonlight. His heart leaped in a spasm of recognition, almost of fear. And he followed, he could not help it; as water flows downward, as the needle follows the magnet, he followed, with the stealthy pace of the stalker, as silently as if he was tracking a deer, and as keenly.

His breathing, meantime, was as if suspended, his heart seemed to stand still. That form and motion, his instincts would have recognized them in midnight glimmer of dull lamps, and now they were before him in light. Still he could not believe his wits. He doubted whether he was not moonstruck, chasing a phantom made of the clair-obscure stuff of those dead hours of the night when dreams are rife in the world, and ghosts leer through the haunted chambers of the brain. That she should be walking the streets of London at three in the morning, alone, hastening secretly homeward like some poor outcast foreconscious of the light of dawn!—this savored somewhat of limbo and lunacy. For what good reason could she be thus abroad? A swarm of doubts, half-doubts, queer bodings, jostled in David’s heart. She might, indeed, have come out to summon a doctor, to obtain a drug in an emergency. But something in her air and pace, something clandestine, desperate, illicit, seemed to belie this hope. She turned north when she had gone so far west as Orchard-St., little thinking, apparently, that she was being shadowed, and thence sped on west and north alternately through smaller streets, a region in which the desolation of the sleeping city seemed even more confirmed. And David followed, with this thought in his mind, that, though he had not seen her face, he had a certain means of determining her identity—for, if the flying figure before him went to 60A, Porchester Gardens, the address which he had of Violet Mordaunt, then this must be Violet.

Not that in the later part of his chase he had the slightest doubt. The long black cloak, like those that nurses wear, inflated behind her, the kind of toque above it, the carriage of her head, the slope of her shoulders, all these were hers: and she sped direct, notwithstanding turns and twists, to Porchester Gardens. David, from behind the corner of a street, could see her go up the house-steps, bend over something in her hand, open the door, and slip on what must have been rubber overshoes. This secrecy revolted him, and again he almost doubted that it was she. But when she had gone in, he hastened from his street-corner to the door to read the house-number, and it was 60A.

She was gone now. It was too late to challenge and upbraid her. He already regretted that he had not dared. He was bitter at it. Something said within him: “Both sisters!” Some envenomed fang of anger, spite, and jealousy plagued him, a feeling that he was wholly out of it, and had no part nor lot in her life and acts; and then, also, like oil on the waters, came pity. He must home to his haunted flat, where the scent of the violets which he had bought greeted him on his entrance. It was near four o’clock. After looking gloomily for some time at the head in chalks, he read three letters which he had found in the letter-box. One of them was from Miss L’Estrange, and in it she said:

“I have asked my girl, Jenny, about the marriage and birth certificates which fell out of the picture, and there’s something funny about her.” (A woman never means humor when she uses that word funny.) “She wants to make out that she knows nothing about what became of them, but I believe she does. Perhaps she has found out Strauss and sold them to him, or perhaps she only means to do so, and you may get them from her if you be quick and bid high. Anyway, I have done my best for you, and now it is in your own hands. You can come here whenever you like.”

But David was now suddenly not so devoted to the affairs of Violet and Gwendoline Mordaunt as he had been. What he had seen within the past hour made him bitter. He went foraging in the kitchen for something to eat, then threw himself into bed in a vexed mood, as some gray of morning mingled with the night.

CHAPTER IX

But who? And how? Van Hupfeldt locked himself away from his valet—he lived in chambers near Hanover Square—and for hours sat without a movement, staring the stare of the hopeless and the lost. The fact that he had as good as won from Violet the pledging of herself to him—that fact which at another time would have filled him with elation, was now almost forgotten in the darkness of his calamity, as a star is swallowed up by clouds. The thing was known! That known which had been between the chamber of his heart and God alone! A bird of the air had whispered it, another soul shared in its horror. The faintest hiss of a wish to commit murder came from between his teeth. He had meant well, and ill had come; but because he had meant not badly and had struggled hard with fate, let no man dare to meddle! He could be flint against the steel of a man.

His eyes, long bereft of sleep, closed of themselves at last, and he threw himself upon his bed. But the pang which pierces the sleep of the condemned criminal soon woke him. He opened his eyes with a clearer mind, and set to thinking. The unsigned note to Violet was in a man’s hand. Some nights before in the cemetery he had found a man near the grave with her, and the man had seemed to be talking with her, a young, sunburned man. Who he was he had no idea; he had no reason to think this was the man who had sent the note. There was left only Miss L’Estrange. She might have sent it, getting a man to write for her—suspicion of itself fixed upon her. Always he had harbored this fear, that some paper, something to serve as a clue, had been left in the flat, which would lie hidden for a time, and then come forth into the noonday to undo him utterly. Gwendoline, he knew, had wished to screen him; but the chances were against him. He had never dared to go into the flat alone, to take the flat in his own name, and search it inside out. The place was haunted by a light step, and a sigh was in the air which no other ear could hear, but which his ear would hear without fail. Within those walls his eyes one night had seen a sight!

He had not dared to take the place; but he had put Miss L’Estrange into it, and she had failed him; so, suspecting at last that she did not search according to the bargain, he had threatened to stop supplies, in order merely to spur her to search, for his heart had always foreboded that there was something to find.

Gwen, he knew, had kept a diary. Where was that? His photographs, where were they? His last letter to her? The certificates? Had they all been duly destroyed by her? Had she forgotten nothing? But when he had attempted to spur L’Estrange, the woman had flown into a fury, and he had allowed himself to lose his temper. How bitter now was his remorse at this folly! He ought to have kept some one in perpetuity in the flat, till all fear of anything lying hidden in it was past. He suspected now that L’Estrange might have found some document, and had kept it from him through his not being well in her favor during the last weeks of her residence. He groaned aloud at this childishness of his. It was his business to have kept in touch with her, to have made her rich. But it was not too late.

So, on the following evening, he presented himself at the stage-door of the theater where Miss Ermyn L’Estrange was then displaying her charms, in his hand an écrin containing a rivière of diamonds. He said not one word about his motive for coming to her after so long, but put out an every-day hand, as if no dispute had been between them.

“Well, this is a surprise!” said she. “What’s the game now?”

“No game,” said he, assuming the necessary jauntiness. “Should old acquaintance be forgot?” They drove together to the Café Royal.

“It was just as I tell you,” she explained in the cab, driving later to Chelsea. “I never saw one morsel of any paper until that last day, when the two certificates dropped out of the picture, and them I wouldn’t give you because of the tiff. I’m awfully sorry now that I didn’t,” she glanced down at the rivière on her palm; “but there, it’s done, and can’t be undone—nature of the beast, I s’pose.”

“And you really think Jenny has them? Are you sure, now? Are you sure?” asked Van Hupfeldt, earnestly.

“That’s my honest belief,” she answered. “I think I remember tossing them to Jenny, and as Jenny knew that I had gone into the flat specially to search for papers for you, she must have said to herself: ‘These papers may be just what have been wanted, and they’ll be worth their weight in gold to me, if I can find Mr. Strauss.’ No doubt she’s been looking for you ever since, or waiting for you to turn up. When I said to her yesterday: ‘What about those two papers that dropped out of the picture at Eddystone Mansions?’ she turned funny, and couldn’t catch her breath. ‘Which two papers, miss?’ she says. ‘Oh, you go on,’ I said to her; ‘you know very well. Those that dropped out of the picture that fell down.’—‘Yes,’ said she, ‘now I remember. I wonder what could have become of them? Didn’t you throw them into the fireplace, Miss L’Estrange?’—‘No, I didn’t, Jenny,’ I said to her, ‘and a woman should lie to a man, not to another woman; for it takes a liar to catch a liar.’—‘But what lie am I telling, Miss L’Estrange?’ says she. ‘I am not sure,’ I said, ‘but I know that you ought to tie your nose with string whenever you’re telling a lie, for your nostrils keep opening and shutting, same as they’re doing now.’—‘I didn’t know that, I’m sure,’ says she. ‘That’s queer, too, if my nostrils are opening and shutting.’—‘It’s only the truth,’ I said to her; ‘your mouth is accustomed to uttering falsehood, and it doesn’t mind, but when your nostrils smell the lie coming out, they get excited, my girl.’—‘Fancy!’ says she. ‘That’s funny!’—‘So where’s the use keeping it up, Jenny?’ I said to her. ‘You do make me wild, for I know that you’re lying, and you know that I know, and yet you keep it up, as if I was a man, and didn’t know you. If you’ve got the papers, say so; you are perfectly welcome to them, for I don’t want to take them from you,’ I said. ‘Well, you seem to know more than I do myself, miss,’ she says. ‘Oh, you get out!’ I said to her, and I pushed her by the shoulders out of the room. That’s all that passed between us.”

“For what reason did you ask her about these papers yesterday in particular?” demanded Van Hupfeldt, thickly, a pain gripping at his heart.

“I’ll tell you. The new tenant of the flat came to me—”

“Ah! the flat is let again?”

“What, didn’t you know? He’s only just moved in—a young man named David Harcourt.”

“And he came to you? What about?”

“Asking about papers—”

“Papers? What interest can he have in them? And you told him about the certificates?”

“Yes.”

“Gott in Himmel!”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“You told him about the certificates? Then it was he who wrote the note!”

“Which note? Don’t take on like that—in a cab!”

“You told him! Then it was he—it was he! How does he look, this young man? What kind of young man?” Van Hupfeldt wanted to choke the woman as she sat there beside him.

“Come, cheer up, pull yourself together; it will be all the same a hundred years hence. I’m sure I didn’t know that I was injuring you by telling him, and even if I had known, I should still have told him—there’s nothing like being frank, is there? You and I weren’t pals—”

“But what is he like, this young man?”

“Not a bad sort, something like a Jameson raider, a merry, upstanding fellow—”

“It was he who was at the grave with her!” whispered Van Hupfeldt to himself, while his eyes seemed to see a ghost. “And you told him all, all! It was he, no other. What name did you give him as that of the husband on the marriage-lines? Did he ask that, too? Did you tell him?” With a kind of crazy secrecy he asked it at her ear, panting for the answer.

“I didn’t remember the husband’s name,” she answered. “I told him it wasn’t Strauss, but van or von Something. And don’t lean against me in that way. People will think you are full.”

“Van? You told him that? And what did he say then?”

“He asked if it wasn’t van Something, I forget what, Van Hup—something. I have an awful bad memory for names, and, look here, don’t come worrying me with your troubles, for I’ve got my own to look after.”

Van Hupfeldt’s finger-nails were pressed into the flesh of his palms. This new occupier of the flat, then, even knew his name, even suspected the identity of Strauss with Van Hupfeldt. How could he know it, except from Violet? To the pains of panic in Van Hupfeldt was added a stab of jealousy. That Violet knew this young man he no longer doubted, nor doubted that the meeting at the grave was by appointment. Perhaps Violet, eager to find suspected papers of her sister’s, had even put this man into the flat, just as he, Van Hupfeldt, had once put Miss L’Estrange there. At all events, here was a man in the flat having some interest or other in Violet and in Gwendoline’s papers, with the name Van Hupfeldt on his lips, and a suspicion that Van Hupfeldt was Strauss, the evil genius of Gwendoline!

“But there must be no meddling in my life!” Van Hupfeldt whispered to himself, with an evil eye that meant no good to David.

When the cab drew up before Miss L’Estrange’s dwelling, she said: “You can’t come up, you know; it is much too late. And there isn’t any need. I will let Jenny go to you as early as you like in the morning if you give me your address, or you can come yourself to-morrow—”

“Ah, don’t be hard on me,” he pleaded. “I mustn’t lose a night. Send her down to me, if I can’t go up.”

“Go on, the poor girl’s asleep,” she answered. “Where’s the use in carrying on like a loony? Can’t you take it coolly?”

In the end he had to go without seeing Jenny, having left his card on the understanding that she should be with him not later than ten in the morning, and that Miss L’Estrange should keep his address an inviolable secret.

The moment he was gone from her, Ermyn L’Estrange darted up the stairs, as if to catch something, and, on entering her flat, tripped into her bed-room, turned on the light, threw off her cloak, and put on the necklace before her mirror. It was a fine affair, and no mistake, all lights and colors playing bo-peep in the stones. She made a curtsy to her image, inspected herself on every side, stepping this way and that, daintily, like a peacock, keenly enjoying the gift, till the novelty of possessing it was gone stale. But at no time did she feel any gratitude to the giver, or think of him at all in connection with it—just the fact of having it occupied her mind, it didn’t matter whence.

And the mere knowledge that it was so valuable proved it to be a bribe, pointed to a weakness in the giver. Some gifts to women, especially splendid ones, produce not only no gratitude, but a certain hardness of heart, contempt, and touch of enmity. Perhaps there is a feeling of “I ought to be grateful,” but being too happy to be grateful, they are bored with a sense of fault, and for this they punish the giver with the opposite of gratitude.

At all events, by the time Miss L’Estrange had taken off the string of gems, a memory had grown up within her of David Harcourt, and with it came a mild feeling of partizanship and liking for David as against Strauss. It was a wayward machine, that she-heart under the bodice of Miss Ermyn L’Estrange—wayward without motive, subtle without thought, treacherous for treachery’s sake. As a matter of fact, before waking Jenny, it came into her head to “give a friendly tip” to David on the ground that he was “not a bad sort,” and she actually went out of her way to send him a post-card, telling him that she had expected him to call on Jenny that day, and that, if he meant business, he must see her not later than half-past nine the next morning, or he would be too late.

What a web, this, which was being spun round the young adventurer from Wyoming!

CHAPTER X

Then again the face which he had seen at the grave rose before him with silent pleadings, a face touching to a man’s heart, with dry rose-leaf lips which she had a way of wetting quickly, and in her cheeks a die-away touch of the peach, purplish like white violets. And how did he know, the jealous youth, by what hundred reasons her nightly wandering might be accounted for? Why did he nourish that sort of resentment against a girl who was a perfect stranger? Perhaps there was really some jealousy in it! At which thought he laughed aloud, and suddenly darted into action, snatched a hat, and went flying. But then it was already past nine.

When he reached Miss L’Estrange’s flat, for some time no one answered his ring, and then the door opened but a little way to let out a voice which said: “What is it? I am not dressed. She’s gone. I told you you’d be too late.”

“Is she gone?” said David, blankly, eager enough now to see her.

“Look here, why should I be bothered with the lot of you at this ungodly hour of the morning?” cried the fickle L’Estrange. “I can’t help your troubles! Can’t you see when anybody is in bed?”

“But why did you let her go before I came?” asked David.

“You are cool! Am I your mother?”

“I wish you were for this once.”

“Nice mother and son we little two would make, wouldn’t we?”

“That’s not the point. I’m afraid you are getting cold. You ought to have contrived to keep the girl till I came, though it is my own fault. But can’t anything be done now? Where is she gone to?”

“To Strauss, of course.”

“With the certificates?”

“I suppose so. I know nothing about it, and care less. I did try to keep her back a bit for your sake, but she was pretty keen to be gone to him when once she had his address, the underhanded little wretch!”

“But stop—how long is it since she has gone?”

“Not three minutes. It’s just possible that you might catch her up, if you look alive.”

“How can that be? I shouldn’t know her. I have never seen her. We may have passed each other in the street.”

“Listen. She is a small, slim girl with nearly white hair and little Chinese eyes. She has on a blue serge skirt with my old astrakhan bolero and a sailor hat. Now you can’t miss her.”

“But which way? Where does Strauss live?”

“I promised not to tell, and I’m always as good as my word,” cried the reliable Miss Ermyn L’Estrange, “but between you and me, it’s not a thousand miles from Piccadilly Circus; and that is where Jenny will get down off her bus; so if you take a cab—”

“Excellent. Good-by! See you again!” said David.

David was gone, in a heat of action. He took no cab, however, but took to his heels, so that he might be able to spy at the occupants within and on the top of each bus on the line of route, by running a little faster than the vehicles. At this hour London was already out of doors, going shopping, going to office and works. It was a bright morning, like the beginning of spring. People turned their heads to look at the man who ran faster than the horses, and pried into the buses. Victoria, Whitehall, Charing Cross, he passed—still he could see no one quite like Jenny. He began to lose hope, finding, moreover, that running in London was not like running in Wyoming, or even like his run from Bucks. Here the air seemed to lack body and wine. It did not repay the lungs’ effort, nor give back all that was expended, so that in going up the steep of Lower Regent-St. he began to breathe short. Nevertheless, to reward him, there, not far from the Circus, he saw sitting patient in a bus-corner the sailor hat, the bolero, the Chinese eyes, and reddish white hair of Jenny.

The moment she stepped out, two men sprang forward to address her—David and Van Hupfeldt’s valet. Van Hupfeldt lived near the lower portion of Hanover Square, the way to which being rather shut in and odd to one who does not know it, his restlessness had become unbearable when Jenny was a little late, so he had described her to his valet, a whipper-snapper named Neil—for Van Hupfeldt had several times seen Jenny with Miss L’Estrange—and had sent Neil to Piccadilly Circus, where he knew that Jenny would alight, in order to conduct her to his rooms. However, as Neil moved quickly forward, David was before him, and the valet thought to himself: “Hello, this seems to be a case of two’s company and three’s none.”

David was saying to Jenny: “You are Miss L’Estrange’s servant?”

“I am,” answered Jenny.

“She sent me after you. I must speak with you urgently. Come with me.”

Now, in Jenny’s head were visions of nothing less than wealth—wealth which she was eager to handle that hour. She said, therefore, to David: “I don’t know who you are. I can’t go anywhere—”

They stood together on the pavement, with Neil, all unknown to David, behind them listening.

“There’s no saying ‘No,’” insisted David. “You’re going to see Mr. Strauss, aren’t you? Well, I am here instead of Mr. Strauss in this matter.”

But this ambiguous remark failed of its effect, for Neil, whose master had told him that in this affair he was not Van Hupfeldt but Strauss, intervened with the pert words: “Begging your pardon, but I am Strauss.”

However, this short way of explaining that he was there on behalf of Strauss was promptly misunderstood by Jenny, who looked with disdain at the valet, saying: “You are not Mr. Strauss!”

“Of course he isn’t,” said David, quickly. “How dare you, sir, address this lady? Come right away, will you? Come, now. Let’s jump into this cab.”

“Who are you? I don’t even know you!” cried the perplexed Jenny.

“I didn’t say I was Mr. Strauss himself,” began Neil.

“Yes, you did say so,” said Jenny, “and it isn’t the truth, for I know Mr. Strauss very well, and neither of you isn’t going to get over me, so you know!”

“Don’t you see,” suggested David, his wits all at work, “that one of us must be true, and as you are aware that he is false—”

“What is all this about?” demanded Jenny. “I have no business with either of you. Just tell me the way to Hanover Square, please, and let me go about my business.”

“That’s just why I’m here, to show you the way,” said Neil. “I dunno why this gentleman takes it upon himself—”

“Best hold your tongue, young man,” growled David. “You must be stupid to think this young girl would go off with you, a man she never saw before, especially after detecting you in a direct untruth—”

“As for that, she don’t know you any more than me, seemingly,” retorted Neil. “Mr. Strauss sent me—”

“How is she to know that? Miss L’Estrange sent me. Didn’t I know your name, Jenny, and your mistress’s name?”

“Well, that’s right enough,” agreed Jenny on reflection.

“Then trust to me.”

“But what is it you want, sir?”

“It is about the papers,” whispered David, confidentially. “It is all to your good to come with me first and hear what I have to say. Miss L’Estrange—”

“Well, all right; but you must be quick,” said Jenny, rushing to a decision.

David hailed a cab, and he and Jenny turned their backs upon the defeated valet, got in, and drove off. However, Neil, who had witnessed Van Hupfeldt’s fever of eagerness to see this girl, followed in another cab. David drove to the Tube Station near Oxford Circus—she would accompany him no farther—and, while he talked with Jenny in a corner there, Neil, lurking among the crowd of shop-gazers across the street, kept watch.

“I propose to you,” David said to Jenny, “to give the certificates to me, and in doing so, I understand that you are a poor girl—”

“That’s just it,” answered Jenny, “and I must know first how much I am to get for them—if it’s true that I have any certificates.”

“Right enough,” said David, “but the main motive which I hold out to you is not what you will receive in hard cash, but that you will do an immense amount of good, if you give the papers to me. They don’t belong to this Mr. Strauss, but they do belong to the mother and sister of a poor wronged lady, a lady whose character they will clear.”

“Ah, no doubt,” agreed Jenny, with the knowing leer of a born Cockney; “still, a girl has got to look after herself, you see, and not mind other people’s troubles.”

“What!” cried David, “would you rather do the wrong thing and earn twenty pounds, or do the right thing and earn five pounds? You can’t be in earnest saying that.”

“It isn’t a question of five pounds, nor yet of twenty,” snapped Jenny, offended at the mere mention of such paltry sums, “it’s a question of hundreds and of thousands.” Her mouth went big for the “thousands.” “Don’t think that I’m going to part with the papers under high figures, if so be I have any papers.”

“Under what?” asked David—“under hundreds, or under thousands?”

“Under thousands.”

“Now hold on a bit. Are you aware that I could have the papers taken from you this minute, papers that don’t belong to you, which you propose to sell to some one other than the rightful owners?”

At this Jenny changed color. There was a policeman within a few yards, and she saw her great and golden dream dissolving.

“It remains to be seen if I have got any papers. That’s the very question, you see!” she said.

“You might be searched, you know, just to clear the point. Yet you needn’t be afraid of that, for I’m disposed to meet you, and you aren’t going to refuse any reasonable offer, with no trouble from the police to follow. So I offer you now—fifty golden sovereigns for the papers, cash down.”

“You leave me alone,” muttered Jenny, sheepishly, turning her shoulder to him.

“Well, I thought we were going to be friends; but I see that I must act harshly,” David said, making a threatening movement to leave her.

“You can have them for one hundred pounds,” the girl murmured in a frail voice with downcast eyes; to which David, not to drive a hard bargain with her, at once answered: “Well, you shall have your one hundred pounds.”

The next moment, however, he was asking himself: “Who’s to pay? Can I afford these royal extravagances in other people’s affairs? Steady! Not too much Violet!”

He walked a little way from the girl, considering it. He could not afford it. There was no earthly reason why he should. But he might go to Violet, to Mrs. Mordaunt, and obtain the one hundred pounds, or their authorization to spend that sum on their behalf. In that case, however, how make sure of Jenny in the meantime? It would hardly do to leave her there in the station, so near to Strauss. She would be drawn to him as by a magnet, and he thought that if he took her with him to the Mordaunts, she would recover her self-assurance and demand from the women more, perhaps, than they could afford. In the end, he decided to take her to his flat, and leave her there in Mrs. Grover’s charge till he returned from the Mordaunts.

“That’s a bargain, then,” he said to her; “one hundred it is. I take it that you actually have the certificates on you?”

“I may have,” smirked the elusive Jenny.

“That’s all right. ‘Have’ and ‘may have’ are the same things in your case. So now I shall go right away to procure the one hundred pounds, and meantime you’ll come with me to your old flat in Eddystone Mansions—that’s where I live now—No, don’t be scared, there’s some one there besides myself, and the ghost doesn’t walk in the daytime.”

They hailed another cab, and again Neil, leaving his lurking-place, drove after them. He saw David and Jenny go into the mansions, then stood uncertain whether to hurry home and tell the position of affairs to Van Hupfeldt, who, he knew, must by this time be raving, or whether to wait and see if Jenny and David came out again.

He was loitering a little way up the house-stairs, thinking it out, when he heard the lift coming down, and presently he saw David rush out—alone. Jenny, then, was still in the building. Neil ran to the lift-man.

“Gentleman who just come down,” he said, “does he live here?”

“He do, in No. 7,” was the answer.

“Girl’s left in his flat, then,” thought Neil, scratching his head, “and the bloke wot owns the flat don’t know I’ve been spying. I’d better hurry back and let the master know how things are looking.”

Whereat the valet, who was clearer in action than in speech, ran out and took cab to Hanover Square, to tell Van Hupfeldt where Jenny was.