CHAPTER XVI
WHEREIN SEVERAL LARGE DIFFICULTIES ARE SMOOTHED AWAY
He had sat upright, his hands over his chair-arms, his mind and muscle tense; but at that unbelievable sight, he fell back in his chair relaxed, staring and dazed like one who sees a G.o.ddess in a vision.
"Good evening," said this G.o.ddess, looking decidedly embarra.s.sed and remarkably pretty. "I--I am so glad that we"ve found you."
"You were looking for _me_?" he said incredulous, utterly mystified; and the instinct of long training, working on with no guidance from him, impelled him to rise with a stiff and somewhat belated bow.
"Yes. And there are two men with me who are anxious to help...."
Her fragrant presence seemed to fill and transform the dingy office; and he was at once aware that her manner had lost that cool remoteness which at their last meeting had set him so far away.
He pulled himself sharply together, entirely missing the implication in her speech, and struck abruptly to the one point that mattered.
"Some one has convinced you since last night that I am not that man."
"Yes," she answered, looking away from him with faintly heightened color. "I--I must ask you to forgive me for--last night."
He bowed stiffly from behind the table.
"But who--if I may know--persuaded you, where I appeared so--"
"My mother," she said, simply. "She caught a glimpse of you on the street yesterday. I did not know of it till to-day--never dreamed that she knew you. I"m glad," she added hurriedly, resolutely contrite, "of the chance to--to say this--"
"It is extraordinarily kind," said Varney. He looked at her steadily, as far from understanding the mystery of her coming as ever.
"But I came," she went on at once, as though reading the question in his eyes, "for quite another reason. We happened to stop just now at poor Jim Hackley"s."
The name riveted his attention. A quality in her voice had already told him that something troubled her.
"At Hackley"s?"
She stood just behind Peter"s deserted chair and rested her ungloved right hand upon it. He noticed, as though it were a matter which was going to be vital to him later on, that she wore no rings, and that there was a tiny white spot on the nail of her thumb.
"Some men are waiting on this dark street somewhere, Mr. Varney," she began hurriedly, "waiting, I"m afraid, for you to come out--four or five--I don"t know how many. You know--what that means. But oh, it isn"t their fault!--they don"t know any better, you see!--"
The sudden anxiety in her voice cleared his wits and braced him like a tonic: and so he came front to front with the fact that it was to help him--to help _him_--that Uncle Elbert"s daughter had come to the _Gazette_ office that night.
"I appreciate that perfectly, of course. But--the rest is not so clear.
I don"t quite understand--how did you happen to learn of this?"
"I? Oh, my learning about it was the purest chance. It was told me two minutes ago by a visitor here, a Mr. Higginson, whom I met last night.
He is outside in the car now, and--"
"Mr. Higginson!" echoed Varney, astounded.
"You know him, perhaps?"
"I? Oh, no--no. But I interrupted you. Do go on and tell me--"
She began to speak rapidly and earnestly:
"This afternoon I went motoring, I and a friend of mine--Mr. John Richards. We took a wrong turn coming back, and of course were horribly late. But at the edge of the square we stopped a minute to inquire about Mrs. Hackley, who was taken quite ill yesterday afternoon. Just as I was getting back into the car, up ran this Mr. Higginson, very much fl.u.s.tered and excited. You see, he had just found out about all this--this plot--even to knowing where you were; he had seen poor Jim Hackley, it seems, not at all himself, and overheard him talking. Of course, we saw that you must be warned at once, so we took him in the car, and all three of us ran back here."
She paused a moment, and he prompted her with a close-clipped: "Yes?"
"I wanted him to--come in and tell you about it," she said hesitatingly--"but he wouldn"t do it. He is a most agreeable old man, but, I imagine--of a very nervous temperament. So," she added with a hurried little laugh, "as I was the only one who--knew you, I said that I would come in and tell you myself."
"It was most kind--most kind of you all."
He turned away sharply to hide his sudden rush of indignation and resentment. Turbulently he longed to get his hands upon the sly Higginson, who had had the effrontery to dispatch a woman to protect him, and this woman of all others that lived in Hunston.... Protect him? Hardly. That an attack had been planned against his person was, indeed, likely enough, but not that any hireling of Ryan"s should rush forward hysterically to pluck him from his peril. What move in that mysterious game, what strange plot within a plot was here?...
"Did Mr. Higginson happen to explain why he took such a generous, and I fear very troublesome, interest in my welfare?"
Genuinely anxious for light, he tried to iron all suggestion of a sneer out of his voice, but evidently he did not quite succeed.
"Oh, I don"t think you ought to speak that way! Surely he has done only what anybody would do for any stranger who was in danger and didn"t know it."
"And you?"
She looked at him rather shyly out of her somewhat spectacular eyes.
"That explains me, too--if you wish."
"Maginnis and I," said Varney immediately, "are not going out for some time yet. Oh, a long, long time! These poor fellows you speak of will tire of waiting long before that. And when we do go--"
"You must not go together."
"I don"t think I understand you."
"Don"t you see," she said, speaking very earnestly, "that that is exactly what they are hoping for? This ambuscade didn"t just happen--it is manufactured--it is politics. Men like these haven"t the initiative, or whatever you call it, to get up a thing of this sort. Some one has done it for them. Don"t you know why? _They want to get rid of Mr.
Maginnis_. But they can"t hurt him _alone_--without having it brought right home to them--to the politicians. With you--it is--different--"
"Yes, yes--I see. But forgive my asking--did Mr. Higginson explain the situation to you in just this way?"
"Mr. Higginson?" she said, plainly surprised at his harking back to that. "It was not necessary. I understood the situation very well, from what Mr. Hare has told me. Mr. Higginson simply gave us the facts about these men hiding out there--there was no time for anything more."
He was staring at her with unconscious steadiness, and now his face took on a slow faint smile, which she was very far from understanding. Blurry as it all still was, light was beginning to break through upon him. Of course, that was all that Mr. Higginson had told her. Of course. The last thing desired by that clever rogue, who used petticoats for stalking-horses and was not above hiding behind them for the safety of his own skin, was for the engineered "attack" to go off prematurely, landing only Varney and failing to "get" Maginnis. Warnings that the two should _not_ go out together from Higginson? Hardly.
"I understand perfectly. Maginnis is quite safe without me, but not at all safe with me. You may count upon me absolutely. I"ll give him the slip and leave here alone."
"You mustn"t do anything of the kind," said Mary sharply.