CHAPTER XXV
With the letter to Beatrice safe in her pocket, Mary made her way to the Royal Palace Hotel. She had her own idea as to what she was going to do, and that certainly was not to invite Beatrice to go to Wandsworth. For the girl had a difficult and dangerous task before her. Rightly or wrongly, it seemed to her that her place was by the side of the brother who had treated her so badly. Many a good woman before had sacrificed herself to a scoundrel, and many a good woman will do so again. Mary had always clung to the idea that Sartoris might be brought back to the fold again. She knew pretty well how far he had fallen, but she did not quite understand the deep depravity of the man's nature. After all, he was an object to be pitied; after all, he had been the victim of a woman's cruelty, or so Mary thought. But Mary did not know everything; had she done so she would have been forced to leave her brother to his own devices.
She came at length to the Royal Palace Hotel, and asked for Beatrice. The latter was in her room, she was told, and Mary went up. But Beatrice was not there, her place for the time being occupied by Adeline, the maid.
"My mistress is out," the maid explained; "but if you will leave any message I can deliver it. She will not be very long, in any case."
Mary hesitated. She had many things to do and no time to waste. It was not altogether imperative that she should see Beatrice just at the moment. She turned the matter over in her mind before she replied to Adeline's suggestion.
"I rather wanted to see your mistress," she said. "Perhaps I may make it convenient to return in about half an hour or so. Meanwhile, will you please give her this letter. Will you be very careful to say that Mrs. Richford is to do nothing till she has seen me? I mean that she is not to take any steps in the matter of the letter till I come back. Will you be especially careful about that?"
Adeline promised, in a vague kind of way. She did not express the usual curiosity of her class; her mind seemed to be elsewhere. She showed Mary out with an alacrity that would have aroused her suspicions had she had less to occupy her mind. But Adeline had affairs of her own to think of. There was a very striking-looking valet on the same floor who had shown himself not insensible to the girl's attractions. Adeline laid the note on the table and promptly forgot all about it.
In the full assurance that no harm was possible for the present, Mary went her way. It was getting late in the evening now, and the hotel was full of people; a strange excitement seemed to be in the air; outside, the newsboys were particularly busy, and there seemed to be a more than usually heavy run on their wares.
Surely they were shouting a familiar name, Mary thought. She came out of her brown study and listened. It was something to do with Stephen Richford. Surely there could not be two men of the same name. No; it must be the same.
"Startling disclosures in the City. Collapse of a great firm. Richford & Co. go down. Warrant out for the arrest of the senior partner. Flight of Stephen Richford."
Mary listened in amazement. Her brother knew a great deal about this man; he had always been spoken of as a wealthy individual. And here was Beatrice Darryll's husband a criminal and a fugitive from justice. Nobody appeared to be talking about anything else; the name was on the streets. Mary could hear it everywhere. A bent man, with a clerical hat and glasses and an Inverness cape, hurried by the girl as she came out of the hotel. Even this elderly gentleman seemed interested.
He pushed his way into the hotel and feebly ascended the stairs as if he had business there. In so large a place every respectably dressed man could pass in and out without incurring suspicion. No hall porter would stop any visitor and ask his business, so that the elderly clergyman passed unchallenged. As he came to the door of Beatrice's room he hesitated for a moment, and then passed in and closed the door behind him.
"Nobody here!" he muttered. "Maid gone off on her own business, I suppose. Well, I can sit down here and wait till Beatrice comes back. What's this? A letter addressed by some unknown correspondent to Mrs. Richford. By Jove! Sartoris's address on the flap. Now, what does this little game mean? And who wrote the letter? My dear Sartoris, if I only had you here for the next five minutes!"
The man's face suddenly convulsed with rage, his fists were clenched passionately. He paced up and down the room with the letter in his hand.
"This may tell me something," he said; "this may be a clue. I'll open it."
As frequently happens with thick envelopes, the gum was defective, and the back of a penknife served to open the cover without in any way betraying the fact that the cover had been tampered with. A puzzled frown crossed the face of the thief.
"Berrington!" he muttered; "Berrington! Oh, I know. That beast, eh? Now considering that he is more or less of a prisoner in the house of my dear friend Sartoris, why does he write like this to Beatrice? Damn Sartoris; there is no getting to the bottom of him, with his wily brain. On the whole Beatrice shall be allowed to go. It's a horrible position for a girl like her; but at the present moment I have no choice – perhaps I'll join the party later on. Hang those newsboys, too – why can't they stop their silly clatter?"
The intruder replaced the letter, and a moment later Beatrice came in. She started at the sight of the stranger, who made some apology for the intrusion. The man looked old and respectable and harmless, so that the girl smiled at him. But she did not smile when the shovel hat was removed, together with the wig and the glasses.
"Stephen!" Beatrice gasped. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Well, I can conclude that my disguise is a pretty good one," Richford grinned, "seeing that you did not recognize me at all. And as to what this means, I should say that your own common sense would tell you. Did you hear anything?"
"I heard the boys with the papers," Beatrice said; "but I did not connect … do you mean to say that you are, you are – "
Beatrice could not say the word. But there was no reason for her to ask the question.
"Why be so delicate about it in the presence of a mere husband?" Richford sneered. "Do you suppose I came here in disguise just to give you a pleasant surprise? The bubble has been pricked, and all the rest of it. I went for too much, and I failed, as many a better man has failed before me. I have Carl Sartoris to thank for this; I should have pulled through but for him. This is his revenge because I would not do as he desired. Whatever you do, beware of that man! Don't go near him under any circumstances."
"I am not likely to go near him," Beatrice said coldly; "but tell me, why did you come here? It is not possible that I can help you in any way!"
"Oh, yes it is," Richford said, with a certain good humour that caused Beatrice to turn suspicious at once. "You can do a great deal for me if you only will. I am going to leave you a desolate and disconsolate widow. A grass widow, if you like; but you will have your freedom. I am going to leave my country for my country's good; I shall never come back again. But the crash has come at a time when I least expected it, which is a habit that crashes have. I had barely time to procure this disguise before the wolves were after me. They are hot on my track now, and I have no time to spare. What I come for is money."
"Money! Surely you made a sorry mistake then!"
"Oh, no; I'm not asking for cash, seeing that you have practically none of your own. As you refuse to consider yourself my wife, in future you must also decline to take anything from me. Therefore those diamonds are not your property. If you will hand them over to me, we will shake hands and part for ever."
Beatrice drew a long deep breath of something like relief. It was good to know that this man was going to rid her of his hateful presence for ever, but this was too big a price to pay for her freedom.
"Let us quite understand one another," she said. "Your business is ruined; there is nothing left. What about your creditors, the people who trusted you?"
"Burn and blister my creditors," Richford burst out furiously. "What do they matter? Of course the fools who trusted me with their money will cry out. But they only trusted it with me, because they thought that I was slaving and scheming to pay them big dividends. It will not be the welfare of my creditors that keeps me awake at night."
"Always cold and callous and indifferent to the feelings of others," Beatrice said. "Not even one single thought for the poor people that you have ruined. What are those diamonds worth?"
"Well, I gave £40,000 for them. I dare say I can get, say £30,000 for them. But we are wasting time in idle discourse like this."
"Indeed, we are," Beatrice said coldly. "So you think that in the face of what you have just told me, I am going to hand those stones over to you! Nothing of the kind. I shall keep them in trust for your creditors. When the right time comes I shall hand them over to the proper authorities. Nothing will turn me from my decision."
A snarling oath burst from Richford's lips. He stretched out his hand as if he would have fain taken Beatrice by the throat and strangled her.
"Don't fool with me," he said hoarsely; "don't play with me, or I may forget myself. Give me those diamonds if you have any respect for your skin."
But Beatrice made not the slightest attempt to move. Her face had grown very pale, still she was quite resolute.
"If you think to frighten me by threats, you are merely wasting your time," she said coldly. "The stones are in safe keeping, and there they remain till I can give them to your trustees."
"But I am powerless," Richford said. "How am I to get away? In a few hours all my resources will be exhausted, and I shall fall into the hands of the police. And a nice thing that would be. Your husband a felon, with a long term of imprisonment before him!"
"I see no dissimilarity," Beatrice said, "between the deed and the punishment that fits it. After all I have gone through, a little thing like that would make no difference to me."
"Then you are not going to part with those diamonds?"
Beatrice shook her head. Richford stood before her with one of his hands on her arm and his other about her white slender throat. There was a murderous look on his face, but the eyes that Beatrice turned upon him did not for a moment droop. Then Richford pushed the girl away brutally from him and walked as far as the door.
"You don't want for pluck," he growled. "I believe that if you had flinched just now I should have killed you. And I was going to save you from a danger. I shall do nothing of the kind. Go your own way, and I will go mine."
Richford glanced at the letter on the table, then he passed out, banging the door behind him. In the foyer of the hotel he sat down as if waiting for somebody. In reality he was trying to collect his scattered thoughts. But it was hard work in that chattering, laughing mob, with his own name on the lips of a hundred people there.
CHAPTER XXVI
The venerable-looking old cleric sat there for the better part of an hour in the patient attitude of one who waits for a friend, but though he puzzled his cunning brain he could see no way out of the difficulty. He had no money, and the police were after him. He recognised only too well that he had to thank Sartoris for this – he had measured his cunning against that of the little cripple, and he had failed. He had played for the greater part of the stake that was at the bottom of the mystery, and he had paid the penalty. Bitterly he regretted his folly now.
Presently, his humming brain began to clear. He saw one or two people there whom he knew; he saw Beatrice come down to the office and go out presently, with a little flat case under her arm. Richford's eyes gleamed, and a glow of inspiration thrilled him.
"As sure as fate she has the diamonds," he told himself. "She is afraid that I should hit upon some scheme for getting them, and she is going to dispose of them in some hiding-place. I'll follow her. Courage, my boy – the game is not up yet."
As a matter of fact, Richford had summed up the situation correctly. In some vague way Beatrice was a little alarmed. She had heard of such things as injunctions and the like. Suppose the law stepped in to protect the rogue, as the law does sometimes. And Beatrice had something else to do, for she had read Berrington's letter, and she had made up her mind to go to Wandsworth without delay. But first of all she would walk as far as the old family jewellers in Bond Street and deposit the stones there. She had every faith in the head of the firm, whom the family had dealt with for so many years.
No sooner had Beatrice stepped out of the hotel than Mary Sartoris came back. She proceeded quietly up the stairs to find Adeline alone in the room of her mistress. The girl blushed as Mary put the question that rose naturally to her lips.
"I'm very sorry, miss," the girl stammered; "but I forgot all about your message and the letter. I left the letter on the table, and my mistress has just gone out."
"Did she get the letter before she went?" Mary asked quickly.
"Well, yes, I suppose so, miss," was the reply, "seeing that the letter is no longer on the table. I suppose that my mistress has got it. She must have done so, for the envelope is in the grate."
Sure enough, the envelope with the forged handwriting of Berrington upon it lay in the grate. Mary was too mortified to speak for the moment, besides there was no occasion to tell the maid anything.
"I'm sorry you were so careless," she said. "Did your mistress go out alone?"
"I believe so," the contrite Adeline said. "She had a visitor, an old clergyman who – "
But Mary was not listening, she was only thinking of Beatrice's danger. At the same time she had a clear recollection of the old clergyman, for he had pushed past her into the hotel at the moment when she was leaving the building for the first time.
She went out into the street which was dark by this time. She would take a cab to Wandsworth at once and get there before Beatrice came. But there was no cab in sight, so that Mary had to walk some little way. At the corner of the road she stopped and hesitated for a moment. Close by stood the well-dressed couple who had imposed themselves upon Beatrice under the guise of Countess de la Moray and General Gastang.
Whatever were they doing here, just now, Mary wondered? Just for the moment it flashed across her mind that they were prying upon her movements. But another idea occurred to her, as the two were accosted by the old clergyman that Mary had seen before, and who had been a visitor to Beatrice Richford such a little time previously.
She saw the man raise his hat politely at some question from the clergyman, then she saw his face change to a startled expression, and instantly Mary understood.
"I know who it is," she said half aloud. "It is Stephen Richford in disguise. He has been to see his wife. I should like to know what they are talking about."
The trio were talking very earnestly indeed now. Just for the moment it had looked as if the man called Reggie and the woman called Cora had decided to give Richford the cold shoulder. But he had said a few words, and the scene was suddenly changed. The three walked off together and turned into a small restaurant a little way down the street.
Moved by a feeling which she would have had some trouble to explain, Mary followed. In some vague way she felt that Beatrice was in danger. The restaurant was by no means a fashionable one, and few people were there. Mary noticed, too, that the inside was divided into compartments in the old-fashioned way. She stepped into the box next the one where the three conspirators were seated and ordered a cup of tea. It was a satisfaction to the girl to know that she could hear all that was being said in the other box. She heard the popping of a champagne cork, speedily followed by another. She had only to sit there and listen. She had forgotten all about Beatrice by this time.
"Wine like that puts life into a man," she heard Richford say.
"And gives him a tongue too," the man called Reggie laughed. "Deadly expensive stuff unless you can see some reasonable return for your outlay in the near future. Come, Richford, we are both eager to know how you propose to put money into our pockets."
"And yet I can put a lot," Richford said. "Oh, you need not be afraid of that crooked little devil at Wandsworth, for he shall not know anything about it. What do you say to £10,000 apiece and nobody any the wiser? Doesn't that make your mouth water?"
"It would if you could show me the way," Reggie said. "But in the most delicate way possible, my dear Richford, let me put it to you – that you are under a cloud at present. And why do you offer to divide the plunder in this very irrational way?"
"Simply because I am under a cloud," Richford growled. "I'm powerless and desperate. I don't even know where to turn for a night's lodging. Now look here, the matter may take a day or two, and in the meantime I've got to put up somewhere. And as a warrant of my good faith, I'm not going to ask you for any money. All I require is food and a bed and shelter, and that you may very well give me at Edward Street. Sartoris never goes there."
"Make it worth while and the thing's done," Reggie said. "Give it a name."
"Well, suppose we call it diamonds?" Richford suggested. "Have you forgotten those magnificent diamonds that I gave my wife, bless her, for a wedding present?"
A little gasp came from the listeners. It was evident to Richford that he had struck the right chord, for he proceeded with more confidence.
"I gave my dear wife stones worth nearly, if not quite, £40,000," he said. "I didn't hand over that little lot altogether out of disinterested affection. A man who takes risks, as I do, is pretty sure to come up against a financial crisis sooner or later, only it has been sooner in this case. Though my wife chose to ignore me, I left the stones in her possession because, being my wife, no creditor could lay hands upon those gems. I went to her to-day and asked for them. Of course I did not anticipate any difficulty whatever; I expected that she would cock that imperially haughty nose of hers in the air and hand them over to me as if I were dirt beneath her feet. To my astonishment she utterly refused to do anything of the kind."
"Unkind," the woman Cora laughed; "and yet so like a modern wife. Had she pawned them?"
"Not she! I was fool enough to say something that was not quite complimentary of my creditors, and she refused to part with the stones anyhow. Said that they would go to pay my debts. I threatened violence and all kinds of things, but it was no good. I said that unless I had money in forty-eight hours I should be in jail, but it was all to no effect. Did you ever hear anything so maddening in all your life?"
"You have my deepest sympathy," Reggie said; "but you did not bring us here to listen to a story that has no point to it like yours. You have got some scheme in your head for getting hold of the stones. But you can't do it alone."
"If I could should I be such a cursed fool as to bring you two in?" Richford growled. "But I – but I can't appear. All I can do is to show you the way and trust to your honour to give me a third of the plunder when it is turned into cash."
"Hadn't you better get to the point?" Reggie suggested with undisguised eagerness.
"I'm coming to that. After my interview with my wife I sat in the hall trying to pull myself together. Presently I saw her ladyship come down and go to the office. Those diamonds had been deposited in the hotel safe for obvious reasons. My wife came out of the office presently with the case in her hand. Then I recognized what had happened. She was afraid of some move of mine, and she was going to deposit the stones elsewhere. It did not take me long to make up my mind where she was going. She was about to take the plunder to Hilton in Bond Street."
"How long ago?" the woman called Cora asked eagerly. "This is important."
"Well, not more than an hour, anyway," Richford replied. "Why do you ask?"
"Because Hilton closes at five," the woman said. "I know that, because the firm has done several little jobs for me lately. You may be pretty sure that your wife did not deposit those stones at Hilton's to-day; therefore she still has them in her pocket. That being so, what we have to do now is to discover where she has gone. If you like I'll go round to the Royal Palace Hotel at once and see if she has returned. I'll ask the clerk in the office, and if he says she has returned, you may safely bet that those stones are back in the hotel safe again. If she has not returned, they are still on her person."
"It's just as well to make sure," Reggie said reflectively.
The woman flitted away and came back soon with a smile on her face.
"So far, so good," she said. "The lady has not returned to the hotel. Now, Mr. Richford, if you can only put us on the track of the timid little hare, then – "
"Done with the greatest possible ease," Richford replied. "She's gone to Wandsworth. I can't make the thing out at all, and in any case it does not in the least matter. When I was waiting for my wife just now I saw a letter to her from Berrington, – Colonel Berrington. As you know, he is a prisoner in Audley Place, and why he should have written that letter, or how Sartoris persuaded the warrior to write it, I don't know any more than Adam. But that's where she has gone. If you can intercept her before she gets there, or waylay her when she leaves, why there you are. I don't suppose my wife will tell Sartoris that she has all that stuff in her pocket."
"Do you think that she took a cab?" Reggie asked.
"I should say not. Cabs cost money, and Beatrice has not much of that. Wandsworth is not a place you can get to in ten minutes, especially after the business trains have ceased running for the evening; so that if you took a cab – "
Reggie jumped to his feet excitedly.
"No use wasting time here," he said. "Come along, Cora. I'll just scribble a few lines on one of my cards, so that you can be safe at Edward Street. There you are. And if I don't get those stones before bedtime, why I'm a bigger fool than the police take me for."
Thrilling with excitement, Mary followed the others into the street. She saw the two get into a cab, and she proceeded to take one herself. The cabman looked at her dubiously as he asked where he was to go to.
"No. 100, Audley Place, Wandsworth Common," Mary said. "If you get there ten minutes before the cab in front, I'll give you an extra half-sovereign."