"Ah! here"s something to put a little colour in your cheeks. You want bucking up, you know! Here"s how!"
She took an appreciative sip, then set down her gla.s.s, turning on him a slightly troubled face.
"Roger ... I suppose if this man is caught, it will mean a trial. I shall be wanted as a witness, sha"n"t I? The chief witness, even!"
"Yes, my dear, you will," he replied reluctantly. "I hate the thought of it as much as you do. I wish there were some way to spare you."
"I expect he"ll try to prove I"m insane," she said slowly. "Or else that I had some low motive in trying to fasten suspicion on to him.
Perhaps he"ll even suggest to his lawyer that I was out to blackmail him!"
"Esther, you"re frightfully astute to think of such a thing. It"s quite on the cards he will do that. He"ll use every weapon in his power, unless ..."
"Unless what?"
"Well, there"s a pretty black lot of evidence against him. Therese"s death in itself, the way in which she died, was a damaging admission.
It seems to me possible that he"ll give up the fight entirely. It"s hard to predict anything. One doesn"t know what cards he has up his sleeve."
Her clouded gaze strayed past him out of the window at the glimmering points of light.
"There is something still so terrifying to me about his machine-like efficiency," she said, "that I can believe him capable of anything.
His whole plan was so perfectly thought out, down to the smallest detail. It only broke down through the purely accidental. Once through my losing the needle--though that wasn"t so bad as his losing his temper!--and once because he let Holliday give me the injection instead of doing it himself. And yet when I think of what he may say at the trial..."
He leaned forward suddenly and took her two hands in his.
"Esther, listen to me! Will you promise to marry me, at once, before this beastly trial comes on?"
Once again the wave of colour swept over her face. She gave a little nervous laugh.
"But you haven"t asked me at all, yet!"
"I"m asking you now. Besides, you knew I meant to. I"ve been making inquiries this afternoon. There are a lot of formalities that have to be gone through with: we have to see an English solicitor, sign a lot of papers, be _affiched_ two Sundays--a sort of banns, you know--and then we have to be married at the _mairie_. Altogether the business takes just over a couple of weeks, so the sooner one decides the sooner one can set about it, you see?"
She could think of no reply. Her home, her sisters, came into her mind; she stammered, then laughed again with a lump in her throat.
Those tears again! She mustn"t be so stupid...
There was a sharp rap at the door, more businesslike than the last.
"Who in h.e.l.l is that?" Roger burst out in irritable annoyance.
It proved to be the valet, obsequious and apologetic, yet full of importance.
"There is a _sergent-de-ville_ to speak with Monsieur," he informed them mysteriously, but with a Frenchman"s full appreciation of the ruptured tete-a-tete.
"I"ll have to go, I suppose," Roger informed her. "But I"ll get it disposed of as quickly as possible."
Ten minutes went slowly by. She had tried not to let Roger see how much she dreaded the prospect of the witness-box. In her present state of nerves she felt she might be guilty of a hundred contradictions and indiscretions, if faced with the basilisk eyes and over-powering personality of the man she feared. At the very thought of him she began to tremble all over as though with ague. It was perfectly absurd, of course, but there it was. Still now, if she chose, she could face the trying experience as a married woman, as Roger Clifford"s wife. That security somehow promised her a new strength.
Roger"s wife! And in a fortnight"s time! A different sort of tremor seized her, a _frisson_ of exquisite joy....
The door opened. Roger came towards her, took her hands again in his, and looked at her closely. She grew apprehensive of what he had to tell her.
"What is it? What has happened?"
"Don"t be frightened. They have caught Sartorius. They captured him aboard a fruit-boat in the harbour, about an hour ago. The boat was under sailing orders, bound for a port in Morocco; they think the captain was a friend of Sartorius"s. Anyway, they surrounded the doctor in his cabin. He didn"t put up any fight--simply looked at them, blew his nose, and followed them up without a word."
She stared at him blankly, wondering what more he had to say.
"Yes--go on. What then?"
"They handcuffed him, of course, and let him sit between two of them in the car. He was quite composed, had nothing to say. It was dark inside the car; they couldn"t see him very well. One of the officers thought he leaned against him pretty heavily. When they got to the station he didn"t get up, didn"t move at all."
"What do you mean?"
"He did us a good turn, Esther. He was quite dead--poisoned, beyond doubt."
"Poisoned! I wonder how he did it?"
"It is amazing, isn"t it? It was the stolid calmness of the fellow that put them off, I suppose. They think he must have taken something he had ready when he blew his nose."
She looked at him, her pupils dilated, trying to adjust her ideas to this new development. She felt strangely bewildered.
"It seems so--so stupid! I can"t take it in. A clever man like that ... first to run away, then to throw up the sponge..."
"I know, that"s the way it strikes me, too; he seemed at the last so lacking in resource. Still, he was probably like one of those big, heavy cars that are wonderful on the straight, but can"t turn quickly in a sharp corner. Take one of those two-ton Hispano-Switzers----"
"Or the Juggernaut," she suggested slowly.
"By Jove, yes, the Juggernaut ... he was like that."
He looked at her with an awful realisation of how near her slender body had come to being ruthlessly crushed by the human machine--simply because it happened to put itself in the path. That he, too, had all unconsciously been in the path and had barely escaped destruction was now of minor importance.
For several seconds Esther stood with her hands against her heart, making an effort to grasp, to envisage, the whole of her strange adventure. Since she had set foot in Cannes two months before she had watched an old man done slowly to death, had saved a life that meant everything to her, and had been directly responsible for the events leading up to two deaths. What a part she had played! She could scarcely take it in....
She came out of her reverie to find herself in Roger"s strong arms, his lips warm upon hers. Thought deserted her for a breathless moment.
"Do you know what I"m thinking?" he whispered in what might be termed the first conscious interval. "There may not be any pressing necessity for an immediate wedding, and yet..."
"Yes?" she murmured, her face against his, her heart beating fast.
"Well, a fortnight is a pretty long engagement--at least for me. What do you say?"
Her answer, somewhat m.u.f.fled, came after a longish pause.
"Since you force me to admit it," she whispered against his neck, "it"s quite long enough for me--too!"
THE END