They were both men of presence of mind, of courage and enterprise, and yet he left them standing there and departed, slamming the door behind him. On the steps of the club, however, he stopped short. His taxicab was still waiting at the kerb, but a very official-looking and alert man in plain clothes was standing by its side. Two policemen were crossing the street; another, who had been talking to the commissionaire, left him and approached. Charles’s hand flashed from his pocket, there were two sharp reports, and he collapsed upon the pavement. As he fell, he threw the pistol to Sir Richard, who had rushed out.
“I killed De Besset with that,” he confessed falteringly. “I regret—”
* * * * *
Once more the same decrepit taxicab rumbled along the stately avenue of Glenlitten Hall. Notwithstanding previous warnings, the driver again pulled up before the great main entrance, and in due course a woman descended—a woman who looked as though she had slept in her clothes in a bedchamber peopled with horrible dreams. Lily Drayton—“Lil” to her intimates—had forgotten all about cosmetics. Nothing remained of her showy looks but her eyes, still, notwithstanding their terrified light, large and beautiful.
“I must see Lady Glenlitten,” she begged of Parkins, who had opened the door.
He looked at her sympathetically, but there was a certain mild reproach in his tone.
“Her ladyship only motored down from London last night, and it is barely ten o’clock, madame.”
“Her ladyship saw me last time I came,” the woman reminded him. “She promised she would see me at any time. I’ve been up nearly all night and I’ve driven over from Winchester this morning. You must tell her ladyship, please.”
Parkins ushered her into a sitting room. He was a kindly person, and he felt somehow in touch with the full drama of life when he saw, for the second time, the pitiable condition of this woman whose husband, as the whole household knew full well, was lying in Winchester Jail under the shadow of a terrible death.
“You would like some coffee?” he asked.
“Nothing at all, thank you,” she said. “Just her ladyship, please—as soon as she can see me. I must speak to her. I can think of nothing else.”
“Her ladyship is down, I believe,” Parkins confided. “I will let her know that you are here.”
He departed, and the woman walked restlessly up and down the room. The agony of that last quarter of an hour’s interview with her panic-stricken husband was still tearing at her heart strings. Presently Félice came in.
“Mrs. Drayton!” she exclaimed. “I am so glad that you are here. Won’t you please sit down?”
The woman was almost beside herself. She stood in the middle of the room, shaking from head to foot—dumb horror burning in her eyes.
“My lady,” she cried, “I cannot sit down, I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I cannot drink. This morning I was allowed to see Max. They told him yesterday that the day of Assizes is fixed. He will be tried for murder—the sixth of next month. Sir Richard has no more news for him. They all think at the jail —I can tell by their manner and so can he—that he’s in for it. My lady, he’s crazy. He never did it. You know he didn’t do it, but you haven’t said a word—nothing has happened, and the days go on.”
“Please stop!” Félice begged. “Stop and I will tell you something.”
“But I can’t stop until I ask you this,” the woman continued, her voice rising almost to an hysterical shriek. “This I must know—this Max must know— every one must know. You do know that it wasn’t Max. It may have been some one dear to you, it may have been some one who should not have been in your room, you may have to suffer for telling the truth, but you wouldn’t let an innocent man hang? Oh, my lady there’s something in your face which tells me you wouldn’t do that. Give me a message for Max. He knows that only you can save him, and he’ll die if I don’t give him some hope.”
Félice leaned over and held the woman by the shoulders.
“Now please listen,” she insisted. “Your husband will be proved innocent. You hear that? Innocent! Don’t work yourself up like this. Sit down.”
The woman collapsed into a chair. She sat with her eyes fastened upon Félice, moistening her hard, withered lips with her tongue.
“A very terrible thing has happened,” Félice confided, “and yet perhaps it is for the best. It was the young Russian who claimed to be my brother who stole the necklace and killed the Comte de Besset. He has confessed and shot himself. Now listen, Mrs. Drayton. Bear up, if you please, and listen. There is no more question of your husband being concerned in the murder. That is finished. You can go and tell him so. Charles Protinoff, or De Suess, as he called himself then—a guest who had dined in the house— killed the Comte de Besset, because he interfered when he was trying to steal my necklace. He has confessed. Sir Richard Cotton has his signed confession. You are listening carefully? Your husband will never be charged.”
The woman seemed scarcely to have fainted, but to have passed into a state of numb inertia; to be absolutely incapable of speech or movement. Félice rang the bell and gave hurried orders. Parkins brought coffee, her maid some sal volatile. In time a thin streak of colour came back to the woman’s face. Her breathing grew more regular, her eyes less glazed. Her fingers ceased their convulsive twitching.
“I shall be all right in a moment,” she faltered. “I’m coming back. I sha’n’t faint. Say that over again, my lady—slowly.”
“Your husband will never be charged with the murder of the Comte de Besset,” Félice repeated, leaning over her. “The murderer was hidden in my room, and he has confessed. It will be in the papers to-night. Sir Richard Cotton, your husband’s lawyer, has a signed copy of his confession.”
“Oh, thank Gawd!” the woman groaned. “Thank Gawd! Oh, my lady!”
The tears and some strong coffee revived her, and she staggered to her feet.
“I must go,” she cried. “Perhaps they haven’t told Max. Anyway, they’ll let me see him. They’ll have to let me see him. Perhaps I’ll be the first to tell him.”
“Wait!” Félice enjoined. “I shall give you a letter to the governor of the jail and to Major Hartopp. Of course you must see him.”
Félice sat down at the desk and wrote rapidly. Then, with the letters clasped in her hand, they helped the dazed woman into the taxicab. Félice watched it rattle its way down the avenue until it became a lumbering speck in the distance.
Andrew found her there a few minutes later.
“Your father and I object to this long desertion,” he complained. “Dear old fellow, he’s coming out with me after the partridges, and he’s fussing whether he’ll take a twelve or a twenty bore. Whatever are you thinking about, sweetheart?”
She clung to him tightly.
“I was thinking,” she sighed, “that there are very many different sorts of good women in the world.”
THE END
THE
