CHAPTER III
RICE-PAPERS
DORIS looked from the man whose hand she had accepted to the one she had refused. Their attitudes were eloquent of concealment and the few phrases which had reached her ears as she paused outside the curtain did nothing to relieve the sudden tension of her fears. She hesitated for a moment as Rizzio recovered himself with an effort.
“Do come in, Doris,” he said with a smile. “Hammersley and I were—er”
“Discussing the scrap of paper. I’m sure of it,” she said coolly. “Nothing is so fruitful of argument. I shouldn’t have intruded, but Cyril was to take me home and I’m ready to go.”
A look passed between the men.
“By Jove—of course,” said Cyril with a glance at his watch. “If you’ll excuse me, Rizzio”
“Betty is going to Scotland tomorrow early and I think she wants to go to bed.”
Rizzio laughed. “The war has made us virtuous. Eleven o’clock! We’re losing our beauty sleep.”
He followed them to the door, but pleading a desire for a night-cap, remained in the smoking-room.
“I promised that you should take me home,” said the girl to Hammersley as they passed along the hall. “But I’m sorry if I interrupted”
“Awf’ly glad,” he murmured. “Nothing important, you know. Club matter. Personal.”
Doris stopped just outside the drawing-room door and searched his face keenly, while she whispered:
“And the threats—of exposure. Oh, I heard that. I couldn’t help it—Cyril—”
He glanced down at her quickly.
“Hush, Doris.”
Something she saw in his expression changed her resolution to question him. The mystery which she had felt to hang about him since he had said he was a coward had deepened. Something told her that she had been treading on forbidden ground and that in obeying him she served his interests best, so she led the way into the drawing-room, where they made their adieux.
Byfield had already gone and Sandys and Lady Joyliffe were just getting into their wraps.
“You’ll meet me here at ten?” their hostess was asking of Constance Joyliffe.
“If I’m not demolished by a Zeppelin in the meanwhile,” laughed the widow.
“Or the Yellow Dove,” said Jacqueline Morley. “I’m sure he alights on the roofs of the Parliament Houses.”
“You’ll be safe in Scotland at any rate, Constance. We’re quite too unimportant up there to be visited by engines of destruction—” she laughed meaningly. “That is—always excepting Jack Sandys.”
Sandys looked self-conscious, but Lady Joyliffe merely beamed benignly.
“It will really be quite restful, I’m sure,” she said easily. “Is Cyril going to be at Ben-a-Chielt?”
Hammersley awoke from a fit of abstraction.
“Quite possible,” he murmured, “gettin’ to be a bit of a hermit lately. Like it though—rather.”
“Cyril hasn’t anyone to play with,” said Betty Heathcote, “so he has taken to building chicken-houses.”
“Fearfully absorbin’—chicken-houses. Workin’ ’em out on a plan of my own. You’ll see. Goin’ in for hens to lay two eggs a day.” And then to Kipshaven, “So the submarines can’t starve us out, you know,” he explained.
“I don’t think you need worry about that,” said the Earl dryly, moving toward the door.
Doris Mather went upstairs for her wraps and when she came down she found Hammersley in his topcoat awaiting her. As they went down the steps into the waiting limousine her companion offered her his arm. Was it only fancy that gave her the impression that his glance was searching the darkness of the Park beyond the lights of the waiting cars with a keenness which seemed uncalled for on so prosaic an occasion? He helped her in and gave the direction to the chauffeur.
“Ashwater Park, Stryker, by way of Hampstead—and hurry,” she heard him say, which was surprising since the nearer way lay through Harlenden and Harrow-on-Hill. The orders to hurry, too, save in the stress of need, were under the circumstances hardly flattering to her self-esteem. But she remembered the urgent look in his eyes in the hall when he had silenced her questions and sank back in the seat, her gaze fixed on the gloom of Hyde Park to their left, waiting for him to speak. He sat rigidly beside her, his hands clasped about his stick, his eyes peering straight before him at the back of Stryker’s head. She felt his restraint and a little bitterly remembered the cause of it, buoyed by a hope that since he had thought it fit to enact a lie, the whole tissue of doubts which assailed her might be based on misconception also. That he was no coward she knew. More than one instance of his physical courage came back to her, incidents of his life before fortune had thrown them together and she only too well remembered the time when he had jumped from her car and thrown himself in front of a runaway horse, saving the necks of the occupants of the vehicle. He had lied to her. But why—why?
She closed her eyes trying to shut out the darkness and seek the sanctuary of some inner light, but she failed to find it. It seemed as though the gloom which spread over London had fallen over her spirit.
“The City of Dreadful Night,” she murmured at last. “I can’t ever seem to get used to it.”
She heard his light laugh and the sound of it comforted her.
“Jolly murky, isn’t it? I miss that fireworks Johnny pourin’ whiskey over by Waterloo Bridge—and Big Ben. Doesn’t seem like London. All rot anyway.”
“You don’t think there’s danger,” she asked cautiously.
He hesitated a moment before replying. And then, “No,” he said, “not now.”
Silence fell over them again. It was as though a shape sat between, a phantom of her dead hopes and his, something so cold and tangible that she drew away in her own corner and looked out at the meaningless blur of the sleeping city. Her lips were tightly closed. She had given him his chance to speak, but he had not spoken and every foot of road that they traversed seemed to carry them further apart. The end of their journey—! Was it to be the end . . . of everything between them?
After a while that seemed interminable she heard his voice again.
“I suppose you think I’m an awful rotter.”
She turned her head and tried to read his face, but he kept it away from her, toward the opposite window. The feeling that she had voiced to Betty Heathcote of wanting to “mother” him came over her in a warm effusion.
“Nothing that you can say to me will make me think you one, Cyril,” she said gently.
“Thanks awf’ly,” he murmured. And after a pause, “I am though, you know.”
She leaned forward impulsively and laid a hand on his knee.
“No. You’re acting strangely, but I know that there’s a reason for it. As for your being a coward”—she laughed softly—“it’s impossible—quite impossible to make me believe that.”
He laid his fingers over hers for a moment.
“Nice of you to have confidence in a chap and all that, but appearances are against me—that’s the difficulty.”
“Why are they against you? Why should they be against you? Because you—” She stopped, for here she felt that she was approaching dangerous ground. Instead of parleying longer, she used her woman’s weapons frankly and leaning toward him put an arm around his neck and compelled him to turn his face to hers. “Oh, Cyril, won’t you tell me what this mystery is that is coming between us? Won’t you let me help you? I want to be in the sunlight with you again. It can’t go on this way, one of us in the dark and the other in the light. I have felt it for weeks. When I spoke to you tonight about going to France it was in the hope that you might give me some explanation that would satisfy me. My heart is wrapped up in the cause of England, but if the German blood in you is calling you away from your duties as an Englishman, tell me frankly and I will try to forgive you, but don’t let the shadow stay over us any longer, Cyril. I must know the truth. What is the mystery that hangs over you and makes”
“Mystery?” he put in quickly. “You’re a bit seedy, Doris. Thinkin’ too much about the war. Nothin’ mysterious about me.” He turned his head away from her again. “People don’t like my sittin’ tight—here in England,” he said more slowly, “when all the chaps I know are off to the front. I—I can’t help it. That’s all.”
“But it’s so unlike you,” she pleaded. “It’s the sporting thing, Cyril.”
“I want you to believe,” he put in slowly, “it isn’t the kind of sport I care for.”
“I won’t believe it. I can’t. I know you better than that.”
“That’s the trouble,” he insisted. “I’m afraid you don’t know me at all.”
“I don’t know you tonight,” she said sadly. “It almost seems as though you were trying to get rid of me.”
He clasped her tightly in his arms and kissed her gently.
“God forbid,” he muttered.
“Then tell me what it is that is worrying you,” she whispered. “Not a living soul shall ever know. What were the threats of exposure that passed between you and Rizzio. He can’t bear you any illwill because I chose you instead of him. I didn’t mean to listen but I couldn’t help it. What was the menace in his tone to you? What is the danger that hangs over you that puts you in his power? It’s my right to know. Tell me, Cyril. Tell me.”
She felt the pressure of the arm around her relax and the sudden rigidity of his whole body as he drew away.
“I think you must have been mistaken in what you say you heard,” he said evenly. “I told you that it was a personal matter—a club matter in which you couldn’t possibly be interested.”
They were speaking formally now, almost as strangers. She felt the indifference in his tone and couldn’t restrain the bitterness that rose in hers.
“One gentleman doesn’t threaten a club-mate with exposure in a club matter unless—unless he has done something discreditable—something dishonorable”
The Honorable Cyril bent his head.
“You have guessed,” he said. “He—he is jealous. He wants to humiliate me.”
She laughed miserably. “Then why did you threaten him?”
“I had to defend myself.”
“You! Dishonorable! I’ll have to have proofs of that. What are the papers you have that he wants? And what is there incriminating in Rizzio’s card-case? You see, I heard everything.”
“What else did you hear?” he asked quickly.
She drew away from him and sank back heavily in her corner.
“Nothing,” she muttered. “Isn’t that enough?”
It seemed to the girl as though her companion’s figure relaxed a little. And he turned toward her gently.
“Don’t bother about me. I’m not worth bothering about. The worst of it is that I can’t make any explanation—at least any that will satisfy you. All I ask is that you have patience with me if you can, trust me if you can, and try to forget—try to forget what you have heard. If you should mention my conversation with Rizzio it might lead to grave consequences for him—for me.”
The girl listened as though in a nightmare, the suspicions that had been slowly gathering in her brain throughout the evening now focusing upon him from every incident with a persistence that was not to be denied. The shape sat between them again, more tangible, more cold and cruel than before. All his excuses, all his explanations gave it substance and reality. The phantom of their dead hopes it had been before—now it was something more sinister—something that put all thoughts of the Cyril she knew from her mind—the shade of Judas fawning for his pieces of silver—a pale Judas in a monocle. . . . She closed her eyes again and tried to think. Cyril! It was unbelievable. . . . And a moment ago he had kissed her. She felt again the touch of his lips on her forehead. . . . It seemed as though she too were being betrayed.
“You ask something very difficult of me,” she stammered chokingly.
“I can only ask,” he said, “and only hope that you’ll take my word for its importance.”
She shivered in her corner. The sound of his voice was so impersonal, so different from the easy bantering tone to which she was accustomed, that it seemed that what he had said was true—that she did not know him.
Another surprise awaited her, for he leaned forward, peering into the mirror beside the wind shield in front of Stryker and turned and looked quickly out of the rear window of the car. Then she heard his voice in quick peremptory notes through the speaking-tube.
“There’s a car behind us. Lose it.”
The driver touched his cap and she felt the machine leap forward. The thin stream of light far in front of them played on the gray road and danced on the dim façades of unlighted houses which emerged from the obscurity, slid by and were lost again as the car twisted and turned, rocking from side to side, moving ever more rapidly toward the open country to the north. The dark corners of cross streets menaced for a moment and were gone. A reflector gleamed from one, but they went by it without slowing, the signal shrieking. A flash full upon them, a sound of voices cursing in the darkness and the danger was passed! At the end of a long piece of straight road Cyril turned again and reached for the speaking-tube. But his voice was quite cool.
“They’re coming on. Faster, Stryker.”
And faster they went. They had reached the region of semi-detached villas and the going was good. The road was a narrow ribbon of light reeling in upon its spool with frightful rapidity. The machine was a fine one and its usual well-ordered purr had grown into a roar which seemed to threaten immediate disruption.
Doris sat rigidly, clutching at the door sill and seat trying to adjust her braced muscles to the task of keeping upright. But a jolt of the car tore her grasp loose and threw her into Cyril’s arms and there he held her steadily. She was too disturbed to resist, and lay quietly, conscious of the strength of the long arms that enfolded her and aware in spite of herself of a sense of exhilaration and triumph. Triumph with Cyril! What triumph—over whom? It didn’t seem to matter just then whom he was trying to escape. She seemed very safe in his arms and very contented though the car rocked ominously, while its headlight whirled drunkenly in a wild orbit of tossed shadows. The sportswoman in her responded to the call of speed, the chance of accident, the danger of capture—for she felt sure now that there was a danger to Cyril. Over her shoulder she saw the lights of the pursuing machine, glowing unblinkingly as though endowed with a persistence which couldn’t know failure. Under the light of an incandescent she saw that its lines were those of a touring-car and realized the handicap of the heavy car with its limousine body. But Stryker was doing his best, running with a wide throttle picking his road with a skill which would have done credit to Cyril himself. The heath was already behind them. At Hendon, having gained a little, Stryker put out his lights and turned into a by-road hoping to slip away in the darkness, but as luck would have it the moon was bright and in a moment they saw the long spoke of light swing in behind them.
“Good driver, that Johnny,” she heard her companion say in a note of admiration to Stryker. “Have to run for it again.”
The road was not so good here and they lost time without the searchlights, so Stryker turned them on again. This evasion of the straight issue of speed had been a confession of weakness and the other car seemed to realize it, for it came on at increased speed which shortened the distance so that the figures of the occupants of the other were plainly discernible, five men in all, huddled low.
A good piece of road widened the distance. The limousine, now thoroughly warmed, was doing the best that she was capable of and the tires Cyril told her were all new. Her question seemed to give him an idea, for he reached for the flower vase and, thrusting out a hand, jerked it back into the road.
“A torn tire might help a little,” he said.
But the fellow behind swerved and came faster.
It was now a test of metal. Their pursuer lagged a little on the levels but caught them on the grades and, barring an accident, it was doubtful whether they would reach the gates of Ashwater Park safely. She heard a reflection of this in Cyril’s voice as he shouted through the open front window.
“How far by the road, Stryker?”
“Five miles, I’d say, sir.”
“Give her all she can take.”
Stryker nodded and from a hill crest they seemed to soar into space. The car shivered and groaned like a stricken thing, but kept on down the hill without the touch of a brake. They crossed a bridge, rattled from side to side. Cyril steadied the girl in his arms and held her tight.
“Are you frightened?” he asked her.
“No. But what is it all about?”
Her companion glanced back to where the long beams of light were searching their dust. When he turned toward her his face was grave. He held her closely for a moment, peering into her eyes.
“Will you help me, Doris?” she heard him say.
“But how? What can I do, Cyril?”
He hesitated again, glancing over his shoulder.
“Bally nuisance to have to drive you like this. Wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t most important”
“Yes”
“They want something I’ve got”
“Papers?”
“You’ll laugh when I tell you. Most amusin’—cigarette papers!”
“Cigarette”
“That’s all. I give you my word. Here they are.” And reaching down into his trousers pocket he produced a little yellow packet. “Cigarette papers, that’s all. These chaps must be perishin’ for a smoke. What?” he laughed.
“But I don’t understand.”
“It isn’t necessary that you should. Take my word for it, won’t you? It’s what they want. And I’m jolly determined they’re not goin’ to get it.”
“You want me to help you? How?”
He looked back again and the lights behind them found a reflection in his eyes. If, earlier in the evening she had hoped to see him fully awake, she had her wish now. He was quite cool and ready to take an amused view of things, but in his coolness she felt a new power, an inventiveness, a readiness to resort to extremes to baffle his pursuers. Her apprehension had grown with the moments. Who were these men in the touring-car? Special agents of Scotland Yard? She had never been so doubtful nor so proud of him. Weighed in the balance of emotion the woman in her decided it. She caught at his hand impulsively.
“Yes, I’ll help—if I can—whatever comes.”
He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them gently.
“Thank God,” he muttered. “I knew you would.” He looked over his shoulder and then peered out in search of familiar land-marks. They had passed Canons Hill and swung into the main road to Watford. If they reached there safely they would get to Ashwater Park which was but a short distance beyond.
She heard him speaking again and felt something thrust into the palm of her hand.
“Take this,” he said. “It’s what they want. They mustn’t get it.”
“But who are they?”
“I don’t know. Except that they’ve been sent by Rizzio.”
“Rizzio!”
“Yes. He’s not with them. This sort of game requires chaps of a different type.”
“You mean that they”
“Oh, don’t be alarmed. They won’t hurt me and of course they won’t hurt you. I’m going to get you out of the way—with this. My success depends on you. We’ll drive past the Park entrance close to wicket gate in the hedge near the house. Just as we stop, jump out, run through and hide among the shrubbery. Your cloak is dark. They won’t see you. When they’re gone, make your way to the house. It’s a chance, but I’ve got to take it.”
“And you?” she faltered.
“I’ll get away. Don’t worry. But the packet. Whatever happens don’t let them get the packet.”
“No,” she said in a daze, “I won’t.”
“Keep it for me, until I come. But don’t examine it. It’s quite unimportant to anybody but me” he laughed, “that is, anybody but Rizzio.”
She stared straight in front of her trying to think, but thought seemed impossible. The speed had got into her blood and she was mastered by a spirit stronger than her own. He held her in his arms again and she gloried in the thought that she could help him. Whatever his cause, her heart and soul were in it.
They roared into Watford and, turning sharp to the left, took the road to Croxley Green. The machine hadn’t missed a spark but the touring-car was creeping up—was so close that its lights were blinding them. Hammersley leaned forward and gave a hurried order to Stryker. They passed the Park gates at full speed—the wicket gate was a quarter of a mile beyond. Would they make it? The touring-car was roaring up alongside but Stryker jockeyed it into the gutter. Voices were shouting and Doris got the gleam of something in the hand of a tall figure standing up in the other car. There followed shots—four of them—and an ominous sound came from somewhere underneath as the limousine limped forward.
“It’s our right rear tire,” said Stryker.
“Have we a spare wheel,” she heard Cyril say.
“Yes, sir.”
“When we stop put it on as quick as you can. A hundred yards. Easy—so and we’re there, Stryker. Now. Over to the left and give ’em the road. Quick! Now stop!”
The other machine came alongside at their right and the men jumped down just as Cyril threw open the left-hand door and Doris leaped out and went through the gate in the hedge.