She followed him into the dining-room.
"This is Mr. Reynolds,--Mr. Reynolds, my cousin Mrs. Blake!" He waited uncomfortably, impatiently, while they shook hands, and then: "I"m afraid you"re going to have a shock----" he exclaimed, and, suddenly softening, looked at her with a good deal of concern in his face.
"There"s very little doubt, Rose, that Anna Bauer is guilty."
"I"m sure she"s not," said Rose stoutly. She looked across at the stranger. "You must forgive me for speaking like this," she said, "but you see old Anna was my nurse, and I really do know her very well."
As she glanced from the one grave face to the other, her own shadowed.
"Is it very very serious?" she asked, with a catch in her clear voice.
"Yes, I"m afraid it is."
"Oh, James, do try and get leave for me to see her to-night--even for only a moment."
She turned to the other man; somehow she felt that she had a better chance there. "I have been in great trouble lately," she said, in a low tone, "and but for Anna Bauer I don"t know how I should have got through it. That is why I feel I _must_ go to her now in her trouble."
"We"ll see what can be done," said Mr. Reynolds kindly. "It may be easier to arrange for you to see her to-night than it would be to-morrow, after she has been charged."
When they reached the Market Place they saw that there were a good many idlers still standing about near the steps leading up to the now closed door of the Council House.
"You had better wait down here while I go and see about it," said James Hayley quickly. He did not like the thought of Rose standing among the sort of people who were lingering, like noisome flies round a honey-pot, under the great portico.
And when he had left them standing together in the great s.p.a.ce under the stars, Rose turned to the stranger with whom she somehow felt in closer sympathy than with her own cousin.
"What makes you think our old servant was a----" she broke off. She could not bear to use the word "spy."
"I"ll tell you," he said slowly, "what has convinced me. But keep this for the present to yourself, Mrs. Blake, for I have said nothing of it to Mr. Hayley. Quite at the beginning of the War, it was arranged that all telegrams addressed to the Continent should be sent to the head telegraph office in London for examination. Now within the first ten days one hundred and four messages, sent, I should add, to a hundred and four different addresses, were worded as follows----" He waited a moment. "Are you following what I say, Mrs. Blake?"
"Yes," she said quickly. "I think I understand. You are telling me about some telegrams--a great many telegrams----"
But she was asking herself how this complicated story could be connected with Anna Bauer.
"Well, I repeat that a hundred and four telegrams were worded almost exactly alike: "Father can come back on about 14th. Boutet is expecting him.""
Rose looked up at him. "Yes?" she said hesitatingly. She was completely at a loss.
"Well, your old German servant, Mrs. Blake, sent one of these telegrams on Monday, August 10th. She explained that a stranger she met in the street had asked her to send it off. She was, it seems, kept under observation for a little while, after her connection with this telegram had been discovered, but in all the circ.u.mstances, the fact she was in your mother"s service, and so on, she was given the benefit of the doubt."
"But--but I don"t understand even now?" said Rose slowly.
"I"ll explain. All these messages were from German agents in this country, who wished to tell their employers about the secret despatch of our Expeditionary Force. "Boutet" meant Boulogne. Of course we have no clue at all as to how your old servant got the information."
Rose suddenly remembered the day when Major Guthrie had come to say good-bye. A confused feeling of horror, of pity, and of vicarious shame swept over her. For the first time in her young life she was glad of the darkness which hid her face from her companion.
The thought of seeing Anna now filled her with repugnance and shrinking pain. "I--I understand what you mean," she said slowly.
"You must remember that she is a German. She probably regards herself in the light of a heroine!"
The minutes dragged by, and it seemed to Mr. Reynolds that they had been waiting there at least half an hour, when at last he saw with relief the tall slim figure emerge through the great door of the Council House.
Very deliberately James Hayley walked down the stone steps, and came towards them. When he reached the place where the other two were standing, waiting for him, he looked round as if to make sure that there was no one within earshot.
"Rose," he said huskily--and he also was consciously glad of the darkness, for he had just gone through what had been, to one of his highly civilised and fastidious temperament, a most trying ordeal--"Rose, I"m sorry to bring you bad news. Anna Bauer is dead. The poor old woman has hanged herself. As a matter of fact, it was I--I and the inspector of police--who found her. We managed to get a doctor in through one of the side entrances--but it was of no use."
Rose said no word. She stood quite still, overwhelmed, bewildered with the horror, and, to her, the pain, of the thing she had just heard.
And then, suddenly, there fell, shaft-like, athwart the still, dark air, the sound of m.u.f.fled thuds, falling quickly in rhythmical sequence, on the brick-paved s.p.a.ce which melted away into the darkness to their left.
"What"s that?" exclaimed Mr. Reynolds. His nerves also were shaken by the news which he had just heard; but even as he spoke he saw that the sound which seemed so strange, so--so sinister, was caused by a tall figure only now coming out of the shadows away across the Market Place.
What puzzled Mr. Reynolds was the man"s very peculiar gait. He seemed, if one can use such a contradiction in terms, to be at once crawling and swinging along.
"It"s my husband!"
Rose Blake raised her head. A wavering gleam of light fell on her pale, tear-stained face, and showed it suddenly as if illumined, glowing from within: "He"s never been so far by himself before--I must go to him!"
She began walking swiftly--almost running--to meet that strangely slow yet leaping figure, which was becoming more and more clearly defined among the deeply shaded gas lamps which stood at wide intervals in the great s.p.a.ce round them.
Then, all at once, they heard the eager, homing cry, "Rose?" and the answering cry, "Jervis?" and the two figures seemed to become merged till they formed one, together.
THE END