And at that moment the door opened and Guy Spencer entered. She recovered herself immediately; went up to her husband and laid a caressing hand on his shoulder.
“A perfect tie, dearest; it was worth the time. Your friend, Major Murchison, has been distressing me with a terrible story of some tragedy that happened when he was quartered at Blankfield.”
Guy Spencer smiled cheerfully. “Dear old Hugh is good at stories. He must tell it me after dinner.”
As she looked up into her husband’s face, Hugh noticed the tender light in her eyes. Lady Nina had said that if she was not devotedly in love with Guy, she must be the most consummate actress off the stage. Loving wife or consummate actress, which was she?
Chapter Eighteen
When Hugh reflected over that interview in the drawing-room before dinner, he came to the conclusion that he had not played his cards very well, that he had been a little too precipitate. Whether she was Norah Burton or not, she was a very clever young woman, and he had just put her on her guard by that rather indiscreet allusion to Tommy Esmond. If he had no further evidence to go on than that incident, she would give her husband a plausible explanation of it. And Hugh believed his old friend Guy was still deeply in love enough with his wife to believe anything she told him.
He could imagine her telling that convincing story to Guy, probably with her arms round his neck, and her pretty eyes looking up to his with the love-light in them. Esmond had been a kind friend to her, had done her many a good turn. Much as she deplored his baseness, she could not bear the thought of his slinking out of the country, a branded fugitive, without a forgiving hand stretched out to him.
Backwards and forwards he revolved the matter in his mind, till he came to the conclusion that the problem was one he could not solve himself. And then he suddenly thought of his old acquaintance, Davidson of Scotland Yard, the tall man of military aspect who had arrested George Burton on that memorable night at Rosemount.
He went round to Scotland Yard, presented his card, and inquired for Mr Davidson. His old acquaintance was dead; a man named Bryant had taken his place. Would Major Murchison care to see him?
In a few seconds Hugh was ushered into Bryant’s room. To his surprise and relief Bryant was the man who had accompanied Davidson to Blankfield. It was pretty certain he would recall to the minutest detail the circumstances of that visit.
“Good-day, Mr Bryant. You know my name by my card, of course, but I am not so sure you remember anything of the time and place where we last met.”
But the detective was able to reassure him on this point.
“In our profession, sir, we remember everything and everybody, and we never forget a face. It is some years ago, it is true, but I recall the incidents of our meeting as if they had happened yesterday. Poor Davidson and I came down to collar that slim rascal George Burton, who, by the way, got off with a light sentence. Davidson saw you in the afternoon and gave you the option of staying away. You talked it over, and came to the conclusion that, for certain reasons, you would rather be in at the finish. Those reasons were connected with your young friend Mr Pomfret, who was infatuated with the young woman.”
“You remember everything as well as I do, Mr Bryant. I must congratulate you on your marvellous memory, for I suppose this is only one out of hundreds of cases.”
Mr Bryant smiled, well pleased at this tribute to his capacity.
“We cultivate our small gifts, sir, in this direction. Well, we took the slim George. The girl fainted. You dragged Mr Pomfret out of the house, and he shot himself in the small hours of the morning. It came out that he had married the young woman a day or two before, and could not face the exposure.” Hugh paid a second tribute to the detective’s marvellous memory. “And now, Mr Bryant, have you any knowledge of what has become of them? People like that are never quite submerged: some day or another, like the scum they are, they will be found floating on the top again.”
Bryant shook his head. “No, sir, I cannot say I have. They have not come under our observation again. Probably they are abroad under assumed names, engaged in rascally business, of course, but doing it very much
sub rosa
.”
“Mind you, at present I have very little to go on,” said Hugh. “I may have been deceived by a chance resemblance. But I have a strong intuition I am on their track.”
Bryant’s attitude became alert at once. “You say you have no evidence. Well, tell me your suspicions, and I will tell you what weight I attach to them.”
“First of all, before I do that, let me know if you would recognise Norah Burton and George Burton again, in spite of the passage of years. Norah had fair hair; the one I am on the track of has dark hair. The man I have not seen; this time he is a cousin, not a brother.”
“Ah!” Mr Bryant drew a deep breath. “If they are the people you think, sir, and I once saw them, no disguises would take me in. Now tell me all you know.”
Thus exhorted, Murchison launched into a copious narrative. He explained that on the night of the dinner with the Southleighs at Carlton House Terrace, he had met for the first time the wife of his old friend Guy Spencer, that he had detected in her an extraordinary likeness to Norah Burton. The marriage had been hastily contracted; next to nothing wap known about the young woman’s antecedents, apart from the very vague details with which she furnished them.
In the background was a cousin, by all accounts a very common fellow, who had never visited the house since the marriage. Then there was the episode of Tommy Esmond being found cheating at cards at the L’Estrange flat, and Stella Keane’s farewell meeting with him at Charing Cross Station.
Mr Bryant made copious notes. When the narrative was finished he made his comments.
“There are, of course, coincidences that may mean nothing or a great deal, Major Murchison. However, assuming that the lady in question is not our old friend Norah Burton, she is evidently not a very estimable member of society. She was in a shady set at Mrs L’Estrange’s, and Tommy Esmond must have been a pretty close pal.”
“Well, I want you to take this case on for me, and find out what you can.”
But Bryant shook his head. “Sorry, sir, but in my position I can’t take on private business. It is not a public matter, you see, unless you can accuse them of anything.” Hugh’s face fell. “I forgot that. What am I to do? Can you recommend me to a private detective?”
“Half a dozen, sir, all keen fellows. But you can’t stir very much without me, in the first instance. You want me to identify them. Well, I will go so far as that, in memory of the time when we were together in the original job. Mrs Spencer, you say, lives in Eaton Place. I will keep a watch on that house till I see her coming out or going in. If I agree that she was Norah Burton, we have got the first step. Now, what do you know about this cousin, Dutton?”
“Only that he is an outside stockbroker, with an office, or offices, in the City.”
“Good.” Mr Bryant opened a telephone book and rapidly turned over the pages. “Here he is, right enough – George Dutton – George, mark you – share- and stockbroker, Bartholomew Court. Well, sir, to oblige you, I will run down to the City and get a peep at Mr George Dutton. If my recollection agrees with yours, I will put you on to one of my friends, and you can have the precious pair watched. If they are the persons you think they are, you may depend upon it they won’t keep long apart; they will make opportunities of meeting each other. Anyway, they must be pretty thick together, or he would not put up with being excluded from the house.”
Hugh left with a great sense of relief. He felt that the matter was in very capable hands. If Bryant told him that he was following a will-o’-the-wisp, then the whole matter could drop. The fact of Mrs Spencer’s relations with Tommy Esmond were hardly important enough to justify him in disturbing his friend’s domestic felicity.
At the end of three days the detective rang him up. The message was brief: “Come and see me.”
Bryant received him in his room. “Well, Major Murchison, your suspicions are quite correct. I have been very close to the interesting pair. Mrs Spencer has camouflaged herself very well, but beyond doubt she is Norah Burton. Our gaol-bird, George Burton, has been less particular. He has not disguised himself at all; the few years have made little or no impression on him. He has hid himself in the City, trusting that nobody he ever knew would come across him.”
“Then I was right, after all, Mr Bryant. And now what would you advise me to do? This woman is the worst type of adventuress card-sharper all through – at least a confederate, in Paris with Burton, in London with Tommy Esmond. To be fair, we cannot say how much or how little she knew of his forgery business.”
“Your idea is to turn her out of her husband’s house, with or without scandal?” queried the detective.
“Without scandal, if possible. I would prefer that. I suppose you would back me up by saying that you have recognised her and this scoundrel who was yesterday her brother and is to-day her cousin?”
“If you push me to it, I will, Major Murchison, for the sake of our old acquaintance. But, for reasons which I stated last time we met, I don’t want to mix myself up in a purely private affair. The woman caught hold of a fool in your friend Pomfret; she has caught hold of another equally silly fool in your friend Mr Spencer. Please forgive my blunt language, but it is so, is it not?”
“You are quite right, Bryant,” groaned poor Hugh. “I seem fated to be mixed up in these matters. At the present moment I have a little stunt on, in which I don’t require any help. A younger brother of mine has got mixed up with a young harpy in the chorus of a third-rate theatre. The young fool has written compromising letters to her. I am trying to buy these letters. I need hardly tell you she is asking a high price. I can’t see her at my own place, for fear of my brother popping in. I have taken rooms in a suburb where I see her to carry on the bargaining.”
Mr Bryant raised his hands. “Well, sir, when a woman once begins to twist a man round her little finger there is no knowing to what length he will go.”
“Profoundly true, Mr Bryant. Well, what do you advise me to do?”
“For the moment, nothing. Get a little more evidence. When I watched this couple, I took my old friend Parkinson with me. He knows them now. Get him to watch them. He will tell you where they meet, and how often. Here is his card. He will wait on you at your convenience.”
“I quite see,” said Hugh, as he took the proffered card. “If I can prove that they are meeting on the sly it will strengthen my hands, eh?”
“That is the idea. Of course, at the moment, I don’t know which you are going to tackle first, the husband or the wife.”
“I can’t say myself, my mind is in such a whirl. But I feel I must avenge poor Jack Pomfret’s death.”
Mr Bryant rose. “You will excuse me, Major Murchison, but I have a very busy day. Make use of Parkinson; he is as keen as mustard. And if it comes to this, that you want me for purposes of identification, I am at your disposal, in Eaton Place or elsewhere.”
Murchison left, but not before he had pressed a substantial cheque into Bryant’s somewhat reluctant hand.
The next day he interviewed Parkinson, a lean, ascetic-looking man of the true sleuth-hound breed. He took his instructions.
“Give me a fortnight, if you please, sir; a week is hardly long enough. I’ll warrant, from what our friend Bryant has hinted to me, I will have something to report.”
And he had. At the end of the fortnight he appeared. He produced a small pocket-book.
“I’m glad you didn’t stipulate for only a week, sir; it was rather a blank one – only one meeting. I expect the lady couldn’t get away comfortably. But the week after I was rewarded. Three meetings in that second week.”
“Ah! Where do they meet?”
“At quite humble little restaurants and queer places in the City. I fancy the bucket-shop business is not very flourishing just now. For on the last two occasions when I followed them in, and sat at a table where I could observe them, I saw Mrs Spencer slip an envelope into his hand.”
“Good Heavens!” cried Murchison in a tone of disgust. “She is keeping this criminal with her husband’s money.”
Mr Parkinson shrugged his shoulders. “A common enough case, sir, if you had seen as much of life as I have.”
Hugh shuddered. The woman was depraved to the core. She could leave her house in Eaton Place, where she had been installed by her devoted and trustful husband, and journey down to some obscure eating-house in the City to meet this criminal who lived upon her bounty.
Well, the chain of evidence was complete. Bryant would swear to the identification, and Parkinson would swear that Mrs Guy Spencer, once Norah Burton, had met George Burton clandestinely four times in a fortnight, and had supplied him with money.
Chapter Nineteen
It was in his blackest and most grim mood that Hugh Murchison walked to Eaton Place, for the purpose of paying an afternoon call upon Mrs Spencer. He had not been near her since the night of the dinner, had only left cards. And, very fortunately, he had not come across Guy in the interval.
On that particular night he had reproached himself with indiscretion. He had availed himself of Fairfax’s information to tax her with meeting Tommie Esmond at Charing Cross Station on the morning of his flight to the Continent.
And at the moment that he had made that dramatic announcement, the drawing-room door had opened to admit the unsuspecting husband. Hugh had left shortly after dinner, on the plea of another engagement. Had Mrs Spencer tried to take the wind out of his sails by volunteering some plausible explanation about her meeting with Esmond? She was a clever young woman; she might try to forestall him. On the other hand, she might sit tight till he forced her hand. Anyway, he was going to force it to-day, armed with the new evidence that had been furnished to him.
Mrs Spencer was not looking well. Her eyes had lost their brightness, her once charming smile was forced and mechanical.
She rose as he was announced, and advanced to him with outstretched hands, with an exaggerated air of cordiality.
“I thought you had forgotten us.” She seated herself on the Chesterfield and motioned him to sit beside her. “Major Murchison, I fear I was a little rude to you the other night, you remember, just before Guy came in.” She clasped her hands nervously together. “I do trust we are going to be friends.”
Hugh looked at her grimly. He had no compassion for this shameless adventuress who had driven the poor foolish Pomfret to his grave, who had ensnared Guy Spencer, a man of stronger fibre, but equally powerless in the hands of an unscrupulous woman.
“Mrs Spencer – to call you by one of the many names by which you are known – we were not friends the last time I was at this house. To-day we are bitter enemies.”
“What do you mean?” she faltered. “You are speaking in riddles. Why should you, the old friend of my husband, be the bitter enemy of his innocent wife?”
“His innocent wife!” repeated Hugh sternly. “Dare you look me in the face and say that my name, even if you fail to recognise me after these years, does not recall to you certain tragic episodes at Blankfield?”
“I know nothing of Blankfield.” The voice was low but very unsteady. “You put that question to me the other night in a roundabout sort of way. My answer is the same – I know nothing of Blankfield.”
There was a long pause. Hugh continued to look at her with his steady and disconcerting gaze. Suddenly she rose, and paced restlessly up and down the long drawing-room.
“Major Murchison, put your cards on the table. You have come into this house, an old friend of my husband’s; I have done my best to make you welcome. But you have some spite against me. Of what do you accuse me?”
“I will put my cards on the table,” answered Hugh in his inflexible voice. “On the night I met you at Carlton House Terrace I had my suspicions; no two women could be so exactly alike. Since that night I have been picking up information here and there. I have now got a complete chain of evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” she gasped, still pursuing her restless walk up and down the room. “Of my having met Tommie Esmond at Charing Cross Station? Would you like to hear the true history of that?”
“I shall be pleased to hear any explanation you like to offer, with the reservation that I must please myself as to whether I accept it or not.”
“You are very hard, Major Murchison. As you are not prepared to believe me, perhaps it would be better if I did not embark on this history. But Tommie Esmond is really my uncle, my mother’s brother. When I was in low water he was very kind to me. I could not turn my back on him in his distress.” She spoke with sudden passion. “Of course, you, with your pharisaical way of looking at things, would say I should have forgotten all his previous kindness.”
“The Tommie Esmond affair is, comparatively, a trivial one, Mrs Spencer. I am coming in a moment to graver issues. You still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to you. Oh, think well before you answer! Remember, I have told you I have overwhelming evidence. And, believe me, the task I have set out upon is far from a welcome one.”
“I still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to me.” She spoke with a certain air of assurance, but he could see that she was quivering all over.
“Carry your memory back to that night at Blankfield when your so-called brother, George Burton, was arrested on a charge of forgery. You had been his decoy and accomplice in a gambling-saloon in Paris. You had inveigled my poor friend, Jack Pomfret, into a clandestine marriage a few days before. Jack, unable to survive his folly and disgrace, blew his brains out. If not in the eyes of the law, you were, morally, a murderess.”
“You are mad, raving mad!” she cried, but her voice seemed strangled as she made the bold denial.
“Not mad, Mrs Spencer, but very sane, as I will show you in a few seconds. As I told you, I recognised you that night at the Southleigh dinner-party, in spite of the pains you had taken to camouflage yourself. But I waited for corroborative evidence. The detective who arrested your so-called brother, George Burton, has seen you and is prepared to swear to your identity as Norah Burton.”
Then suddenly she gave way, fell on her knees before him, and stretched out appealing hands.
“Oh, you are very clever; I see you have found it all out. But you will be merciful, you will not drive an unhappy woman to despair, just when she has got into safe harbour. Will you be kind enough to listen to my miserable history?”
“I will listen to anything you have got to say.”
“My childhood and girlhood were most wretched and unhappy. At a time when most girls are tasting the sweets and joys of life, I had to live by my wits. I fell under the influence of a good-natured, but very wicked man.”
“In other words, George Burton?” queried Hugh.
“In other words, George Burton,” she repeated in the low, strangled voice that did not move Hugh very much. “I was starving when he met me and took me up. He was genuinely sorry for me. Mind you, I knew nothing of his nefarious schemes. He hid those very carefully away from me.”
“But you were his decoy, if not his confederate, in the gambling-saloon in Paris?”
“His decoy, perhaps, unconsciously, but never his confederate.”
“And when did Tommie Esmond appear on the scene?” queried Hugh.
“Oh, much later. George got into low water and had not enough for himself. I then hunted up my uncle, who received me with open arms.”
Hugh was developing the instincts of a cross-examiner. “And Tommie Esmond, I suppose, introduced you to the card-sharping crew at the Elsinore flat, and you were launched as the cousin of Mrs L’Estrange, who presided over this delectable establishment?”
“I was a distant cousin of Mrs L’Estrange on my dear mother’s side,” was the answer.
She was lying terribly, he felt assured. But he had a card or two up his sleeve yet. Still, it was wise to see how far she would go.
“And when did you part with the so-called brother, George Burton?”
“Oh, very shortly after he came out of prison. I had one interview with him; I could not do less after his kindness to me. And in the meantime I had hunted up poor old Tommie Esmond.”
“And what did you do after that night at Blankfield? I think you cleared out the next day. I heard you had paid everything up.”
“Thank Heaven, yes. There was just a little money left. My life after that was a nightmare. Amongst other humiliations, I was a waitress in a tea-shop.” A smile of vanity broke over the charming face. “The wages were very small, but I got a lot of tips.” Perhaps in this particular instance she was not lying, if it was true that she had been in a tea-shop at all.
There was a little pause, and then Murchison spoke in his stern, inflexible voice:
“And how long is it since you saw George Burton?”
She had answered the question before, but he was hoping to entrap her into some unguarded admission. He could see that she was considerably thrown off her balance, clever and ready as she was, by the extent of his knowledge.
“I told you just now, soon after he came out of prison.”
And then Hugh rose in his wrath. And then she, seeing in his face that he had another and a stronger card to play, got up from her kneeling position and watched him with an agonised countenance.
“I am sorry to use such harsh words to a woman, even such a woman as you are, Mrs Spencer. But when you say that you are lying miserably, and you know it as well as I do.” Her face went livid. She assumed a tone of indignation, but her voice died away in a sob. “How dare you say that?”
“I am not the sort of man to make a statement unless I can prove it up to the hilt. Your so-called cousin, George Dutton, keeps a bucket-shop in the City; from certain evidence in my possession, I should say it was not a very paying business.”
Stella did not attempt to reply to this last shot, but she recognised that he had gone about the business very thoroughly.
“George Dutton, the bucket-shop keeper, is George Burton, the forger, come to life again, still, I take it, on the same criminal tack, perhaps in a lesser degree. Do you admit,” he cried vehemently, “that George Burton and George Dutton are one and the same?”
“Yes, since you seem to have proof, I admit it,” was the somewhat sullen answer.
“That is as well; it clears the ground, up to a certain point. You say you parted from Burton soon after his release from prison, and have not seen him since. When was that – how long ago? You met him frequently as George Dutton at Elsinore Gardens.”
The courage of despair seemed to come to her, and she ceased to tremble. “I will answer no more questions. Tell me what you allege and I will admit or deny. Of course, you have employed a detective; you have had me watched.”
“Of course. I should not presume to cope single-handed with a clever woman like yourself. You have met George Dutton, alias George Burton, four times within the last fortnight at obscure restaurants in the City, and there is a strong presumption that you were handing to him envelopes containing money.” She seemed now to recognise that the game was up. Her self-possession returned to her. She sat down, and motioned to him to seat himself.
“You are much too clever for me, Major Murchison. You have handled the matter very well, so well that you have turned your vague suspicions into absolute certainty. Well, what action are you going to take? As a matter of course, you intend to turn me out of my husband’s house?”
“If not at the moment, very speedily. You will admit, I think, with your clever brain, that you should not remain under the roof of such an honourable English, gentleman as he is a day longer than necessary.”
“I will admit it, from your point of view, if you like. Oh, believe me, I can see your side,” replied this remarkable young woman. “But you will forgive me, Major Murchison, if I say that, from my point of view, I would have preferred that you had never been born. Guy is very happy; he believes in me and trusts me. It will be a great blow to him as to me.”
“I know. I wish it were in my power to spare him this misery. But, in common honesty, I cannot.”
“And have you thought of what is to become of me when I am turned out of my husband’s house?” she inquired in a composed voice. Her adroit mind had evidently adapted itself to the altered circumstances, and was now busied in turning them, as far as possible, to her own advantage.
“You have George Dutton to fall back upon, also Tommie Esmond,” was Murchison’s retort.
She snapped her fingers in a fashion that was almost vulgar, and she was so free from vulgar actions.
“George is thankful that I can, from time to time, fling him a ten-pound note; his luck has deserted him. Tommie Esmond, I believe, saved a bit out of the wreck, but he has not more than enough to keep body and soul together.”
“Guy is not a man to behave ungenerously, however deeply he has been wronged,” said Hugh, after he had reflected a few moments. He added more hesitatingly, “And if Guy should take an obdurate attitude, it is possible I might come to your assistance. I have hunted you down, but I do not want to drive you into the gutter.”
“But a man must support his wife, even if her past has not been quite so respectable as it might have been,” she cried defiantly.
Hugh directed upon her a searching look. “Mrs Spencer, it is in my mind that you may not be Guy’s wife after all. If I probed a little deeper, I might get at your real relations with this George Dutton, or rather Burton.”
“Oh, this time you are really pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp, I assure you. George has never been anything to me but brother or cousin, as the occasion demanded.”
She paused a second, and there was a terrified look in her eyes as she added, “But even if your suspicions were correct, which they are not, you would not go back from your own promise. If Guy proved obdurate, you would not drive me to the gutter. You promised me that.”
“I shall keep my promise, Mrs Spencer, and I will give it you in writing, if you wish.”
“It would be as well. And you will want something from me in writing also, I expect,” she concluded shrewdly.
“Certainly I shall,” said Hugh steadily. “I shall draw up a full confession for you to sign, to prevent you from ever troubling your husband again – if, as I suggested just now, he is your husba