“Rubbish!” he answered. “I could not have stayed in Paris and waited for news. Tell me exactly what has happened. Even now I do not understand. Is this man Hill dead?”

She shook her head.

“He was alive at four o’clock this afternoon,” she answered, “but the doctors give little hope of his recovery.”

“What is there to be feared?” he asked her quietly.

She hesitated.

“You are my friend,” she said, “if any one is. I think that I will tell you. The man Hill has persecuted me for months – ever since I have been in England. He claimed me for his wife, and showed to every one a marriage certificate. He shot at me at the ‘Unusual,’ and the magistrates bound him over to keep the peace. I found him once in my rooms, and I believe that he had a key to my front door. Last night Mr. Brendon and I returned from the ‘Unusual,’ and found him lying in my room shot through the lungs. In the grate were some charred fragments of a marriage certificate. We fetched the doctor and the police. From the first I could see that neither believed my story. I am suspected of having shot the man.”

“But that is ridiculous!” he exclaimed.

She laughed a little bitterly.

“I am under police surveillance,” she said. “So is Mr. Brendon.”

“But there is not a shadow of evidence against you,” he objected. “The man alone could supply any, and if he recovers sufficiently to say anything, what he would say would exonerate you.”

“Yes.”

There was a moment’s silence. Anna’s face was half turned from him, but her expression, and the tone of her monosyllable puzzled him. He stepped quickly towards her. Her eyes seemed to be looking backwards. She distinctly shivered as he forced her to look at him. He was bewildered.

“Anna!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “Look at me. What is it? Good God!”

An unhappy little smile parted her lips. She clenched her hands together and leaned forward in her chair, gazing steadily into the fire.

“I think,” she said, “that I will tell you everything. I must tell somebody – and you would understand.”

“I am your friend,” he said slowly, “whatever you may have to tell me. You can trust me, Anna. You know that. I will be as silent as the grave.”

“Not long ago,” she said, “you left me in anger, partly because of this exchange of identities between Annabel and myself. You said that it would bring trouble. It has.”

“Yes.”

“Annabel’s real reason for wishing to leave Paris, the real reason she married Sir John Ferringhall, was because of a very foolish thing which she did. It was – in connection with this man Hill. He personated over there a millionaire named Meysey Hill, and it seems that he induced Annabel to go through some sort of marriage with him at the Embassy.”

“Where?” Courtlaw asked quickly.

“In Paris.”

Courtlaw seemed about to say something. He changed his mind however, and simply motioned to her to proceed.

“Then there was a motor accident only an hour or so after this ceremony, and Hill was reported to be killed. Annabel believed it, came to England and married Sir John. Now you can understand why I have been obliged to – ”

“Yes, yes, I understand that,” Courtlaw interrupted. “But about last night.”

“Annabel knew where I lived,” Anna continued slowly. “She has been to my flat before. I saw her come out from the flat buildings two minutes before we entered it last night. I picked up her handkerchief on the floor.”

“You mean – you think – ”

“Hush! I think that he was concealed in my room, and Annabel and he met there. What passed between them I cannot think – I dare not. The pistol was his own, it is true, but it was one which was taken from him when he forced his way in upon me before. Now you can understand why every minute is a torture to me. It is not for myself I fear. But if he speaks – I fear what he may tell.”

“You have been to her?” he asked.

“I dare not,” she answered.

“I will go,” he said. “She must be warned. She had better escape if she can.”

Anna shook her head.

“She will take her risk,” she answered. “I am sure of it. If he recovers he may not accuse her. If he dies she is safe.”

He paced the room for a minute or two restlessly.

“There are some people,” he said at last, “who seem fated to carry on their shoulders the burdens of other people. You, Anna, are one of them. I know in Paris you pinched and scraped that your sister might have the dresses and entertainments she desired. You fell in at once with her quixotic and damnable scheme of foisting her reputation and her follies upon your shoulders whilst she marries a rich man and commences all over again a life of selfish pleasure. You on the other hand have to come to London, a worker, with the responsibility of life upon your own shoulders – and in addition all the burden of her follies.”

“You forget,” she said, looking up at him with a faint smile, “that under the cloak of her name I am earning more money a week than I could ever have earned in a year by my own labours.”

“It is an accident,” he answered. “Besides, it is not so. You sing better than Annabel ever did, you have even a better style. ‘Alcide’ or no ‘Alcide,’ there is not a music hall manager in London or Paris who would not give you an engagement on your own merits.”

“Perhaps not,” she answered. “And yet in a very few weeks I shall have done with it all. Do you think that I shall ever make an actress, my friend?”

“I doubt it,” he answered bluntly. “You have not feeling enough.”

She smiled at him.

“It is like old times,” she said, “to hear these home truths. All the same, I don’t admit it.”

He shook his head.

“To be an actress,” he said, “you require a special and peculiar temperament. I do not believe that there has ever lived a really great actress whose moral character from the ordinary point of view would bear inspection.”

“Then I,” she said, “have too much character.”

“Too much character, and too little sentiment,” he answered. “Too much sensibility and too cold a heart. Too easily roused emotions and too little passion. How could you draw the curtain aside which hides the great and holy places of life – you, who have never loved?”

“You have become French to the core,” she murmured. “You would believe that life is kindled by the passions alone.”

There was silence between them. Then a servant girl brought in a telegram. Anna tore it open and passed it to Courtlaw. It was from Brendon.

“Hill gradually recovering consciousness. Doctor says depositions to-night. Recovery impossible. – Brendon.”

He looked at her gravely.

“I think,” he said, “that some one ought to warn her.”

“It is Number 8, Cavendish Square,” she answered simply.

Courtlaw found himself ushered without questions into Annabel’s long low drawing-room, fragrant with flowers and somewhat to his surprise, crowded with guests. From the further end of the apartment came the low music of a violin. Servants were passing backwards and forwards with tea and chocolate. For a moment he did not recognize Annabel. Then she came a few steps to meet him.

“Mr. Courtlaw, is it not,” she remarked, with lifted eyebrows. “Really it is very kind of you to have found me out.”

He was bereft of words for a moment, and in that moment she escaped, having passed him on deftly to one of the later arrivals.

“Lady Mackinnor,” she said, “I am sure that you must have heard of Mr. David Courtlaw. Permit me to make him known to you – Mr. Courtlaw – Lady Mackinnor.”

With a murmured word of excuse she glided away, and Courtlaw, who had come with a mission which seemed to him to be one of life or death, was left to listen to the latest art jargon from Chelsea. He bore it as long as he could, watching all the time with fascinated eyes Annabel moving gracefully about amongst her guests, always gay, with a smile and a whisper for nearly everybody. Grudgingly he admired her. To him she had always appeared as a mere pleasure-loving parasite – something quite insignificant. He had pictured her, if indeed she had ever had the courage to do this thing, as sitting alone, convulsed with guilty fear, starting at her own shadow, a slave to constant terror. And instead he found her playing the great lady, and playing it well. She knew, or guessed his mission too, for more than once their eyes met, and she laughed mockingly at him. At last he could bear it no longer. He left his companion in the midst of a glowing eulogy of Bastien Leparge, and boldly intercepted his hostess as she moved from one group to join another.

“Can you spare me a moment?” he asked. “I have a message from your sister.”

“Are you in a hurry,” she asked carelessly. “A lot of these people will be going presently.”

“My message is urgent,” he said firmly. “If you cannot listen to me now it must remain undelivered.”

She shrugged her shoulders and led him towards a small recess. “So you come from Anna, do you?” she remarked. “Well, what is it?”

“Montague Hill is recovering consciousness,” he said. “He will probably make a statement to-night.”

“That sounds very interesting,” she answered coolly. “Perhaps I should better be able to understand its significance if you would explain to me who Mr. Montague Hill is.”

“Your husband,” he answered bluntly.

She did not wince. She laughed a little contemptuously.

“You and Anna,” she said, “seem to have stumbled upon a mare’s nest. If that is my sister’s message, pray return to her and say that the doings and sayings of Mr. Montague Hill do not interest me in the least.”

“Don’t be foolish,” he said sharply. “You were seen to leave the flat, and your handkerchief was found there. Very likely by this time the whole truth is known.”

She smiled at him, an understanding smile, but her words defied him.

“What a beautiful mare’s nest!” she exclaimed. “I can see you and Anna groaning and nodding your grave heads together. Bah! She does not know me very well, and you – not at all. Do have some tea, won’t you? If you must, go then.”

Courtlaw was dismissed. As he passed out he saw in the hall a quietly dressed man with keen grey eyes, talking to one of the footmen. He shivered and looked behind as he stepped into his hansom. Had it come already?

Chapter XXVII
JOHN FERRINGHAM, GENTLEMAN

“Confess, my dear husband,” Annabel said lightly, “that you are bewildered.”

Sir John smiled.

“My dear Anna,” he answered. “To tell you the truth, it has seemed just lately as though we were becoming in some measure estranged. You certainly have not shown much desire for my society, have you?”

“You have been wrapped up in your politics,” she murmured.

He shook his head.

“There have been other times,” he said a little sadly.

Her little white hand stole across the table. There was a look in her eyes which puzzled him.

“I have been very selfish,” she declared. “But you must forgive me, John.”

“I would forgive you a great deal more,” he answered readily, “for the sake of an evening like this. You have actually given up a dinner-party to dine alone with me.”

“And made you give up a political meeting,” she reminded him.

“Quite an unimportant one,” he assured her. “I would have given up anything to see you your old self again – as you are this evening.”

“I am afraid I have not been very nice,” she said sadly. “Never mind. You must think of this evening, John, sometimes – as a sort of atonement.”

“I hope,” he answered, looking at her in some surprise, “that we shall have many more such to think about.”

They were lingering over their dessert. The servants had left the room. Annabel half filled her glass with wine, and taking a little folded packet from her plate, shook the contents into it.

“I am developing ailments,” she said, meeting his questioning eyes. “It is nothing of any importance. John, I have something to say to you.”

“If you want to ask a favour,” he remarked smiling, “you have made it almost impossible for me to refuse you anything.”

“I am going to ask more than a favour,” she said slowly. “I am going to ask for your forgiveness.”

He was a little uneasy.

“I do not know what you mean,” he said, “but if you are referring to any little coolness since our marriage let us never speak of it again. I am something of an old fogey, Anna, I’m afraid, but if you treat me like this you will teach me to forget it.”

Annabel looked intently into her glass.

“John,” she said, “I am afraid that I am going to make you unhappy. I am very, very sorry, but you must listen to me.”

He relapsed into a stony silence. A few feet away, across the low vases of pink and white roses, sat Annabel, more beautiful to-night perhaps than ever before in her life. She wore a wonderful dress of turquoise blue, made by a great dressmaker for a function which she knew very well now that she would never attend. Her hair once more was arranged with its old simplicity. There was a new softness in her eyes, a hesitation, a timidity about her manner which was almost pathetic.

“You remember our first meeting?”

“Yes,” he answered hoarsely. “I remember it very well indeed. You have the look in your eyes to-night which you had that day, the look of a frightened child.”

She looked into her glass.

“I was frightened then,” she declared. “I am frightened now. But it is all very different. There was hope for me then. Now there is none. No, none at all.”

“You talk strangely, Anna,” he said. “Go on!”

“People talked to you in Paris about us,” she continued, “about Anna the virtuous and Annabel the rake. You were accused of having been seen with the latter. You denied it, remembering that I had called myself Anna. You went even to our rooms and saw my sister. Anna lied to you, I lied to you. I was Annabel the rake, ‘Alcide’ of the music halls. My name is Annabel, not Anna. Do you understand?”

“I do not,” he answered. “How could I, when your sister sings now at the ‘Unusual’ every night and the name ‘Alcide’ flaunts from every placard in London?”

“The likeness between us,” she said, “before I began to disfigure myself with rouge and ill-dressed hair, was remarkable. Anna failed in her painting, our money was gone, and she was forced to earn her own living. She came to London, and tried several things without any success.”

“But why – ”

Sir John stopped short. With a moment of inward shame he remembered his deportment towards Anna. It was scarcely likely that she would have accepted his aid. Some one had once, in his hearing, called him a prig. He remembered it suddenly. He thought of his severe attitude towards the girl who was rightly and with contempt refusing his measured help. He looked across at Annabel, and he groaned. This was his humiliation as well as hers.

“Anna of course would not accept any money from us,” she continued. “She tried everything, and last of all she tried the stage. She went to a dramatic agent, and he turned out to be the one who had heard me sing in Paris. He refused to believe that Anna was not ‘Alcide.’ He thought she wished to conceal her identity because of the connexion with you, and he offered her an engagement at once. She was never announced as ‘Alcide,’ but directly she walked on she simply became ‘Alcide’ to every one. She had a better voice than I, and the rest I suppose is only a trick. The real ‘Alcide’,” she wound up with a faint smile across the table at him, “is here.”

He sat like a man turned to stone. Some part of the stiff vigour of the man seemed to have subsided. He seemed to have shrunken in his seat. His eyes were fixed upon her face, but he opened his lips twice before he spoke.

“When you married me – ”

Her little hand flashed out across the table.

“John,” she said, “I can spare you that question. I had been about as foolish and selfish as a girl could be. I had done the most compromising things, and behaved in the most ridiculous way. But from the rest – you saved me.”

Sir John breathed a long deep sigh. He sat up in his chair again, the colour came back to his cheeks.

“John, don’t!” she cried. “You think that this is all. You are going to be generous and forgive. It isn’t all. There is worse to come. There is a tragedy to come.”

“Out with it, then,” he cried, almost roughly. “Don’t you know, child, that this is torture for me? What in God’s name more can you have to tell me?”

Her face had become almost like a marble image. She spoke with a certain odd deliberation carefully chosen words which fell like drops of ice upon the man who sat listening.

“Before I met you I was deluded into receiving upon friendly terms a man named Hill, who passed himself off as Meysey Hill the railway man, but who was in reality an Englishman in poor circumstances. He was going to settle I forget how many millions upon me, and I think that I was dazzled. I went with him to what I supposed to be the British Embassy, and went through a ceremony which I understood to be the usual form of the marriage one used there. Afterwards we started for a motor ride to a place outside Paris for déjeuner, and I suppose the man’s nerve failed him. I questioned him too closely about his possessions, and remarked upon the fact that he was a most inexpert driver, although Meysey Hill had a great reputation as a motorist. Anyhow he confessed that he was a fraud. I struck him across the face, jumped out and went back by train to Paris. He lost control of the machine, was upset and nearly killed.”

“Did you say,” Sir John asked, “that the man’s name was Hill?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“The man who was found dead in your sister’s room was named Hill?”

“It is the man,” she answered. “I killed him.”

Sir John clutched at the table with both hands. A slow horror was dawning in his fixed eyes. This was not the sort of confession which he had been expecting. Annabel had spoken calmly enough and steadily, but his brain refused at first to accept the full meaning of her words. It seemed to him that a sort of mist had risen up between them. Everything was blurred. Only her face was clear, frail and delicate, almost flower-like, with the sad haunting eyes ever watching his. Annabel a murderess! It was not possible.

“Child!” he cried. “You do not know what you say. This is part of a dream – some evil fancy. Think! You could not have done it.”

She shook her head deliberately, hopelessly.

“I think that I know very well what I am saying,” she answered. “I went to Anna’s rooms because I felt that I must see her. He was there concealed, waiting her return. He recognized me at once, and he behaved like a madman. He swore that I was his wife, that chance had given me to him at last. John, he was between me and the door. A strong coarse man, and there were things in his eyes which made my blood run cold with terror. He came over to me. I was helpless. Beside me on Anna’s table was a pistol. I was not even sure whether it was loaded. I snatched it up, pointed it blindly at him, and fired.”

“Ah!” Sir John exclaimed.

“He fell over at my feet,” she continued. “I saw him stagger and sink down, and the pistol was smoking still in my hand. I bent over him. Anna had told me that he carried always with him this bogus marriage certificate. I undid his coat, and I took it from his pocket. I burned it.”

“But the marriage itself?” Sir John asked. “I do not understand.”

“There was no marriage,” she answered. “I was very foolish to have been deceived even for a moment. There was no marriage, and I hated, oh, how I hated the man.”

“Did any one see you leave the flat?” he asked.

“I do not know. But David Courtlaw has been here. To-night they say he will be conscious. He will say who it was. So there is no escape. And listen, John.”

“Well?”

“I went from Anna’s flat to Nigel Ennison’s rooms. I told him the truth. I asked him to take me away, and hide me. He refused. He sent me home.”

Sir John’s head bent lower and lower. There was nothing left now of the self-assured, prosperous man of affairs. His shoulders were bent, his face was furrowed with wrinkles. He looked no longer at his wife. His eyes were fixed upon the tablecloth.

There was a gentle rustling of skirts. Softly she rose to her feet. He felt her warm breath upon his cheek, the perfume of her hair as she leaned over him. He did not look up, so he did not know that in her other hand she held a glass of wine.

“Dear husband,” she murmured. “I am so very, very sorry. I have brought disgrace upon you, and I haven’t been the right sort of wife at all. But it is all over now, and presently there will be some one else. I should like to have had you forgive me.”

He did not move. He seemed to be thinking hard. She paused for a moment. Then she raised the glass nearer to her lips.

“Good-bye, John,” she said simply.

Something in her tone made him look up. In a second the glass lay shattered upon the carpet. There was a stain of wine upon her dress.

“God in Heaven, Annabel!” he cried. “What were you doing?”

Her voice was a little hysterical. Her unnatural calm was giving way.

“It was poison – why not?” she answered. “Who is there to care and – John.”

His arms were around her. He kissed her once on the lips with a passion of which, during all their days of married life, he had given no sign.

“You poor little girl!” he cried. “Forgive you, indeed. There isn’t a husband breathing, Annabel, who wouldn’t have blessed that pistol in your hands, and prayed God that the bullet might go straight. It is no crime, none at all. It is one of God’s laws that a woman may defend her honour, even with the shedding of blood. While you talked I was only making our plans. It was necessary to think, and think quickly.”

She was altogether hysterical now.

“But I – I went to Nigel Ennison for help. I asked him – to take me away.”

She saw him flinch, but he gave no sign of it in his tone.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I have been to blame. It must be my fault that you have not learnt that your husband is the man to come to – at such a time as this. Oh, I think I understand, Annabel. You were afraid of me, afraid that I should have been shocked, afraid of the scandal. Bah. Little woman, you have been brave enough before. Pull yourself together now. Drink this!”

He poured out a glass of wine with a firm hand, and held it to her lips. She drank it obediently.

“Good,” he said, as he watched the colour come back to her cheeks. “Now listen. You go to your room and ring for your maid. I received a telegram, as you know, during dinner. It contains news of the serious illness of a near relation at Paris. Your maid has twenty minutes to pack your dressing case for one night, and you have the same time to change into a travelling dress. In twenty minutes we meet in the hall, remember. I will tell you our plans on the way to the station.”

“But you,” she exclaimed, “you are not coming. There is the election – ”

He laughed derisively.

“Election be hanged!” he exclaimed. “Don’t be childish, Annabel. We are off for a second honeymoon. Just one thing more. We may be stopped. Don’t look so frightened. You called yourself a murderess. You are nothing of the sort. What you did is called manslaughter, and at the worst there is only a very slight penalty, nothing to be frightened about in the least. Remember that.”

She kissed him passionately, and ran lightly upstairs. In the hall below she could hear his firm voice giving quick commands to the servants.