Chapter 8

JANE could only stare at her husband---numbed---speechless. Here, then, was the secret of the Clever One, and the Clever One was----

She wanted to scream as the horror of her discovery came upon her. She was married to a forger, the most notorious forger in the world, the man for whom the police of Europe and America were searching. It wasn't true, it couldn't be true. Yet here he was, examining with a critical eye one of the notes he had taken from the belt.

His back was towards her as she cringed away from the door. She gained the hall, and had one foot on the stairs when she remembered the man on the lawn. Under the stress of this new shock he seemed unimportant, and it was not until she reached the upper landing that the old fear returned, and, leaning over the banisters, she called Peter by name. At the third time his voice answered her.

"What is it, Jane?" he asked.

"There is a man . . . on the lawn."

She tried to keep her voice steady. He heard its quaver and misunderstood the cause. She waited, listening, heard him go back to the dining-room and the soft thud of a door closing, and then a sharp click. Almost immediately she heard him race into the hall and the jangle of chains being removed.

From the window of her room she caught a glimpse of him in the light thrown from the hall. There was no sign of the intruder, and after a while she saw Peter reappear from the gloom.

She was sitting now, terribly calm, not as she had been the night before. The discovery had stunned her, yet her mind was unnaturally active. She could remember certain little incidents, examine them with a strange, passionless detachment. This was the source of Peter's wealth, the explanation for the "legacy." He was the Clever One, and this house, which he pretended to rent, was his head-quarters.

As she drew the curtain and turned on the lights she heard his foot on the stairs, and when he appeared in the door she was not more than a few feet away from him.

"I could see nobody," he said breathlessly, and then, as he saw her face, she detected the look of dismay in his eyes.

She knew she was pale, never dreamt how colourless and drawn her face had become.

"My dear! You look terrible! If I find that man I'll murder him?"

"The man?" She had almost forgotten the shape on the lawn. "Oh, yes. You didn't find him?"

He made no answer; his chief concern for the moment was this shaken wife of his.

"We'll go to town to-morrow," he said, and when she shook her head: "Why?" he demanded in surprise.

"I don't know. I'll tell you to-morrow. I'm very tired."

She was more than tired. Mentally and physically she was exhausted. She lay for half an hour staring into the dark, trying to reorganise her outlook upon life and Peter. Once she heard him go out from the house, evidently conducting a new search for the unknown trespasser.

Jane went cold as a possible solution for that intrusion came to her. A detective! Was Peter under observation? In his anxiety to keep friendly with the police was he blind to the possibility that Bourke had guessed his secret and was watching him?

She fell into a deep sleep amidst these speculations and woke to find the sun pouring into her room and hear the vinegary-faced Anna asking if she had had a good night.

Jane sat up in bed and looked round, bewildered. Had it all been an ugly dream? It was almost impossible to believe that it could have been anything else, in the freshness and gaiety of the morning. . . .

"Did you go downstairs in the night, ma'am?" Anna was asking. "I found one of your slippers in the hall."

No dream---hideous reality. She remembered leaving the slipper behind her as she had fled up the stairs.

"Reminded me of Cinderella," Anna went on---the morning seemed to have brought a little of its loveliness into her own withered heart. "Funny me thinking that---I ain't seen the play for years."

As Jane sipped her tea an idea occurred to her.

"Anna---to whom does this house belong?"

Anna shook her head.

"I don't know now, ma'am. It used to be owned by an old gentleman who lived abroad. Maybe he's dead by now. The agent is a gentleman named Blonberg---he's got an office in the West End---Knowlby Street. I never seen him. Sometimes he comes down here and stays a month at a time."

Jane stared at the woman.

"And yet you've never seen him?"

"No, ma'am. When Mr. Blonberg comes down he brings his own servants, and a poor lot they are! The place is like a pigsty after they've gone. Nothing swept, nothing dusted, the garden in rack and ruins."

"But where do you go when he's here?"

Anna smiled toothlessly.

"Home to my brother in London. All the servants get a holiday on board wages---none of us live in the neighbourhood, except the gardener. He works in the garden three days a week, but he's not allowed to come to the house."

Jane turned the extraordinary circumstances over and over in her mind. Who was Mr. Blonberg? Somebody who was anxious to avoid recognition. . . .

She began to see clearly now. This was Peter's own house. . . . Blonberg was the name behind which he worked and schemed—the man who, according to Bourke the detective, had many confederates, but was not betrayed because they were ignorant of his identity.

She was very cool now, until a little aching of heart revealed a most peculiar and devastating knowledge. She was fond of Peter! Why this discovery of his guilt should emphasise his attractive qualities she could not analyse. Of a sudden she was conscious of his great loneliness, his danger, was tenderly aware of his gentleness with her.

What could she do? Write to her father and tell him everything? She shook her head at the thought. No, it must remain her secret---hers and Peter's---and she must find some way to avert the inevitable disaster which awaited him.

The police were already suspicious and the net was being drawn. Rouper knew him for what he was; Bourke must know, too, and be utilising his friendship to blind Peter to the peril in which he stood.

Jane was the type that thrived on the threat of misfortune. All her dormant qualities were stirred to life. She was almost cheerful as she stood under the cold shower and felt the icy fingers of the water tattoo upon her slim body.

Peter was in the grounds, striding up and down the lawn, and at the sight of his face she hardly restrained an exclamation of alarm. He was pale, hollow-eyed, listless.

"No---I didn't sleep very well," he said. "The truth is---the country doesn't agree with me. But I am afraid you will have to put up with Longford Manor for another night---those confounded people can't put us up until to-morrow."

There was a querulous note in his tone---she had never seen him so nervous and irritable.

"I should like to spend a full week here---can't we?" she asked.

To leave this place with its ghastly secret for other prying eyes would be an unpardonable folly.

He seemed relieved at her suggestion, and then his face clouded.

"I suppose it isn't possible for you to go to town and leave me here for a day or two?" And then, quickly: "That's an extraordinary suggestion, I know, and of course it is impossible. Only---I've one or two things I want to clear up. And I thought of asking Cheyne Wells to come down for a night; I wish to see him about---things."

She puzzled over the suggestion that Donald Wells should be asked down. Did Peter wish to see him as friend or doctor? The strain he was undergoing must be a frightful one, calling for every stimulation that science could devise.

"Certainly, ask him. But, Peter, I couldn't possibly go to town by myself---people would think all sorts of queer things."

He ought to know, she thought, that what "people" might think or say would not influence her in the slightest degree. Apparently he accepted her conventional objection without question. She was almost annoyed.

Slipping her arm through his, she paced by his side.

"Peter---I'm being a selfish pig and you're being a perfect angel. If you don't hate me you ought to---if I were you I'd loathe the sight of me! But I really do want to help you---where and how I can. I mean---in various ways."

He laughed softly.

"You don't know how you're helping me at this very minute!" he said, and added, before he could check his speech: "I hope you never will know."

Here was a challenge which yesterday she would have taken up instantly. To his relief she did not ask the question which he thought was inevitable. He gave her little chance, for he went on:

"If you think you're being unreasonable, it will comfort you to know that I'm not worrying---really. My natural vanity was rather hurt for a bit. Men are rather godlike---they think the world and all that is in it was created for their satisfaction. I don't think you hate me or that we're going to drift apart, or that we've discovered that we've both made a terrible mistake and that the future is a tragic blank. The only unreality about our marriage was an entire absence of courtship---an old-fashioned word but the only one."

She nodded. That really was the case. Peter and she had enjoyed the most formal of engagements. Except for the kiss he had given her in the vestry on the day of their marriage, there had been nothing.

"Anyway we avoided that illusion," he went on surprisingly. "And it is the greatest of all the illusions. A man meets a girl, is on his best behaviour---meets her again, calls on her people and takes her to dances and things. She learns to like him---allows him certain little privileges---they drift into an engagement. He seldom shows her the ugly side of him---always on his best behaviour, always acting perfection. Naturally she is an idealist and, seeing her ideal, loves the man he shows her. And then they marry and he slackens off. She sees him at breakfast, when he doesn't have to act, and after dinner, when he's as nature made him, and she knows she's been cheated. I'd rather you were never cheated."

Jane listened, fascinated. For the moment she forgot that she was talking to the Clever One, the forger for whom the police of Europe were searching; forgot the cloud that shadowed both their lives, in the exposition of a philosophy which held for her a hope---a certainty of happiness.

"We'll just hang on and trust in truth," he smiled down on her oddly. "I think we shall have great need of one another. Please God you will have no great shocks in the near future, but if you do---I want to feel that there is firm ground beyond any mud through which we may have to wade."

Thus, in the glory of morning sunlight and amidst the fragrance of flowers, he offered his first warning of the catastrophe that was to shake her to the very foundations of life.