Suddenly I had become the sole person of importance in her world. She pinned her one forlorn hope to me, like a flag nailed to a mast in a storm. And I--saw a picture before my mind"s eye of a dark figure in a boat, putting on a thing that looked like a diver"s helmet. Queer, that--very queer!
So utterly absorbed was I in my new-born theory and in trying to work it out, that for the first time since I met and loved her I ceased consciously to think of Maida. Of course she was the incentive. If I put myself into Haslemere"s service, I was working for _her_: to earn their grat.i.tude, and lay their payment at her feet. Far away in the dimmest background of my brain was the impression that I was a clever fellow: that I was being marvellously intelligent: and at that moment I was more of a fool than I had ever been in my life. I thought I saw Rameses" hand moving in the shadows, using my brother and his wife as p.a.w.ns in his game of chess. Yet it didn"t occur to my mind that he was using me also: that he had pushed me far along the board, for his convenience, while I believed myself acting in my own interests and Maida"s. I had flattered myself that my white queen was safe on the square where I had placed her, guarded by knight, bishop and castle.
Yet while I went on with the game at a far end of the board, Rameses said "Check!" Another move, and it would be checkmate.
I was gone longer than Maida had expected, but she was not anxious.
The yacht at anchor, lay in sight of the towers Which I had pointed out the night before, rising above a dusky cloud of trees. From Maida"s deck-chair she could see them against the sky; and she could have seen the landing-place where I had gone ash.o.r.e, had it not been hidden behind a miniature promontory. She tried to read, but it was hard to concentrate her mind on any book, while her future was being decided.
In spite of herself, she would find her eyes wandering from the page and focussing on the little green promontory that screened the landing.
At any moment I might appear from behind those rocks and bushes.
Suddenly, just as she had contrived to lose herself in a poem of Rupert Brooke"s, the throb of a motor-boat caught her ear. She glanced eagerly up, to see a small automobile craft rounding the promontory.
Apparently it had come from the private landing-place of Hasletowers, but the girl could not be certain of this until she had made sure it was headed for the yacht. Presently it had stopped alongside, and Maida saw that it had on board a man and a boy. The man, in a yachting cap and thick coat of the "pea-jacket" variety, absorbed himself deeply in the engine. What he was doing Maida neither knew nor cared; but it took his whole attention. He humped his back over his work and had not even the human curiosity to look up. It was the boy who hailed the _Lily Maid_, and announced that he had a message for Lady John Hasle from her sister-in-law, Lady Haslemere. It was a verbal message, which he had been ordered to deliver himself; and three minutes later he was on deck carrying out his duty.
"If you please, m"lady, the Marquis and Marchioness of Haslemere send their best compliments, and would you favour them by going in this boat to meet her ladyship on board the yacht of a friend? You will be joined a little later by the Marquis, and Lord John Hasle, who are at the house, kept by important business."
"I don"t understand," Maida hesitated. "My hus--Lord John went on sh.o.r.e some time ago. I thought--was Lady Haslemere not at home after all?"
"That"s it, m"lady," briskly explained the lad. "She was away on board this yacht I"m speaking of. Her ladyship hasn"t been well--a bit of an invalid, or she"d come to you. But Lord John Hasle thought you might not mind----"
"Of course I don"t mind," Maida answered him, believing that she began to see light upon the complicated situation. "I"ll be ready to start in five minutes."
And she was. Her maid gave her a veiled hat and long cloak; and she was helped on board the motorboat. Still the elder member of its crew did not turn, but went on feverishly rubbing something with an oily rag. The dainty white-clad pa.s.senger was made comfortable, the boy tucking a rug over her knees. As he did this, he glanced up from under his cap, as if involuntarily, straight into Maida"s chiffon-covered face. She had been too busy thinking of other things to notice the lad with particularity: but with his face so close to hers for an instant, it struck her for the first time that it was like another face remembered with distaste. There rose before Maida a fleeting picture of a young lay sister at the house of the Grey Sisterhood far away on Long Island. The girl had been of the monkey type, lithe and thin, brown and freckled, her age anything between seventeen and twenty-two; and she had seemed to regard Miss Odell, the Head Sister"s favourite, with jealous dislike.
"The same type," thought Maida. "They might be brother and sister.
But the boy is better looking than the girl. Funny they should look alike: she so American, he with his strong c.o.c.kney accent!"
A minute more, and the motor-boat had left the side of the _Lily Maid_ and was shooting away past the private landing-place of Hasletowers.
She took the direction whence the yacht had come the previous night, before the dark shapes above the trees had been pointed out by me.
Still, there was no other yacht in sight: the waters were empty save for a little black speck far away which might be, Maida thought, the bell buoy of which we had talked. Indeed, as the boat glided on--at visibly reduced speed now--she fancied that she caught the doleful notes of the tolling bell.
"The yacht where Lady Haslemere expects us, must be a long way from sh.o.r.e;" Maida said.
"Don"t be impatient," the man"s voice answered. "You will come to your destination soon enough."
A thrill of horror ran through her veins with an electric shock. She knew the voice. She had heard it last in a house in Egypt. The man turned deliberately as he spoke, and looked at her. The face was the face of her past dream, the still more dread reality of her present----
And so, after all, this was to be the end of her love story!
"You do not speak," Essain said.
"I have nothing to say," Maida heard herself answer; and she wondered at the calmness of her own voice. It was low, but it scarcely trembled. So sure she was that there was no hope, no help, she was not even frightened. Simply, she gave herself up for lost: and the sick stab of pain in her heart was for me. She was afraid--but only afraid that I might reproach myself for leaving her alone.
"You"ve no doubt now as to what your destination is?" the voice went on, quivering with exultation as Maida"s did not quiver with dread.
"I have no doubt," she echoed.
"No appeal to my pity?"
"I made none before. It would have been worse than useless then--and it would now."
"You are right!" the man said. "It would be useless. I have lived for this. My one regret is that my sister sacrificed her life in vain.
But she and I will meet--soon it may be--and I shall tell her that we did not fail."
"If you tell her the truth, you will have to say you couldn"t make me die a coward," Maida answered, "and so your triumph isn"t worth much."
"It is the end of the vendetta, and our promise to our father will have been kept," said Essain. "That is enough. I do not expect a woman of your ancestry to be a coward."
"She doesn"t know yet what you"re going to do with her," cut in his companion. The c.o.c.kney accent was gone. Maida started slightly in surprise, and stared at the brown, monkey face with its ears which stuck out on the close-cropped head. The voice was only too easy to recognise now.
"Be silent, you cat!" Essain commanded savagely. "Your business is to obey. Leave the rest to me."
He turned again to Maida. "You see," he said, "my sister and I never lacked for servants. I have many on this side of the water--as everywhere when I want them. But this one is rather over-zealous because she happened not to be among the admirers of Miss Odell at the Sisterhood House. She wants you to realise that she is enough in my confidence to know what is due to happen next. I intend to tell you--not to please her, but to please myself. I have earned the satisfaction! First, however, I have a few other explanations to make.
I think they may interest you, Lady John Hasle! .... My organisations are as powerful in Europe as in the States. Through some of my best men your new family is going to be disgraced. There will be a first-cla.s.s scandal, and they will have to pay, to the tune of one hundred thousand pounds, to crush it. They"re far from rich. I"m not sure they can do the trick--unless your clever husband stumps up with the fortune he"ll inherit from you, on your death. I shall be interested, as an outsider, to see the developments. Meanwhile I"ve put into my pocket, and my friends" pockets, the exact sum which must come out of theirs--or rather I shall in a few moments from now do so, as you yourself will see."
By this time they had come close to the bell buoy; and Maida remembered how, with me, she had leaned on the deck-rail idly watching the silhouettes of a man and a boy in a motor-boat.
"It was you we saw last night!" she exclaimed. "You put on a diver"s helmet. You had a thing like an empty cage in your hand. You went down under the water----"
"Ah, you saw that from the yacht, did you?" broke in Essain. "I was afraid, when I caught sight of the pa.s.sing yacht, that it might have been so! But it doesn"t matter. Lord John fancies himself a detective--but it"s luck, more than skill, which has favoured him so far: and his luck won"t bring him to the bell buoy until I want him to come--which I shall do, later. The cage you saw isn"t empty to-day, if any of Lord John"s luck is on my friends" side, and I"m sure it is. I placed the receptacle ready last night. Now, I think it will be filled with jewelled fish, which I have come to catch. In their place I shall give it a feed of stones, heavy enough to hold it down. And deep under the still water you shall be its guardian, till I"m out of England and can let Lord John have a hint where to look for his lost wife."
Maida remembered what I had told her last night: how, when I was a boy I had loved the old bell buoy and "imagined a thousand stories about it." Surely I could never have invented one so strange as this--this end of our love story for which the bell tolled!
"When he finds me gone, he will never think of the bell buoy," Maida told herself.
But I had thought of it even without knowing that she was gone. I had put myself into Rameses" skin, and let my mind follow the workings of his since the sending of the anonymous letter to Lady Annesley, just up to the moment when those two dark silhouettes had pa.s.sed near the moonlit bell buoy. I had cursed myself for not seeing how it might have suited Rameses" book to have Maida isolated on board the _Lily Maid_--certain to be offered to her if she left Annesley"s house to be married in a hurry. I had called myself every kind of madman and fool for leaving her alone at the mercy of the enemy, and--having done all this I went straight to Southampton in my brother"s highest-powered car, to hire a motorboat of my own.
That is how I got to the bell buoy just as Essain and his companion had emptied the iron cage of its treasures and were filling it with stones while Maida lay bound hand and foot in the bottom of the boat.
Rameses had ready a tiny bottle of Prussic acid which he crushed between his teeth at sight of me and the two policemen from Southampton. But the disguised girl lived, and through her we found the false Combes, Blackburn and Drivenny, members all of the old New York gang who had played me so many tricks. n.o.body outside has ever yet heard the story of the imposture and the theft; nor will they know till they see this story in print. By then the jewel auction will have been forgotten by the world. Only we shall not forget. But we are too happy, Maida and I, to remember with bitterness.