"I was an infernal fool not to have come down in a car! I hate these beastly muddy country roads. But Molly has the telephone--so I can ring up for a car to fetch me--which is a consolation, after all."
And with his keen eyes set before him, he pressed forward up the steep incline to where, for ten miles, ran the straight broad highway over the high ridge known as the Hog"s Back. The road is very popular with motorists, for so high is it that on either side there stretches a wide panorama of country, the view on the north being towards the Thames Valley and London, while on the south Hindhead with the South Downs in the blue distance show beyond.
Having reached the high road the stranger paused to take breath, and incidentally to admire the magnificent view. Indeed, an expression of admiration fell involuntarily from his lips. Then he went along for another half-mile in the teeth of the cutting wind with the twilight rapidly coming on, until he came to the clump of dark firs and presently walked up a gravelled drive to a large, but somewhat inartistic, Georgian house of red brick with long square windows. In parts the ivy was trying to hide its terribly ugly architecture for around the deep porch it grew thickly and spread around one corner of the building.
A ring at the door brought a young manservant whom the caller addressed as Arthur, and, wishing him good afternoon, asked if Mrs. Bond were at home.
"Yes, sir," was the reply.
"Oh! good," said the caller. "Just tell her I"m here." And he proceeded to remove his coat and to hang it up in the great flagged hall with the air of one used to the house.
The Manor was a s.p.a.cious, well-furnished place, full of good pictures and much old oak furniture.
The servant pa.s.sed along the corridor, and entering the drawing-room, announced:
"Mr. Benton is here, ma"am."
"Oh! Mr. Benton! Show him in," cried his mistress enthusiastically.
"Show him in at once!"
Next moment the caller entered the fine, old-fashioned room, where a well-preserved, fair-haired woman of about forty was taking her tea alone and petting her Pekinese.
"Well, Charles? So you"ve discovered me here, eh?" she exclaimed, jumping up and taking his hand.
"Yes, Molly. And you seem to have very comfortable quarters," laughed Benton as he threw himself unceremoniously into a chintz-covered armchair.
"They are, I a.s.sure you."
"And I suppose you"re quite a great lady in these parts--eh?--now that you live at Shapley Manor. Where"s Louise?"
"She went up to town this morning. She won"t be back till after dinner.
She"s with her old school-fellow--that girl Bertha Trench."
"Good. Then we can have a chat. I"ve several things to consult you about and ask your opinion."
"Have some tea first," urged his good-looking hostess, pouring him some into a Crown Derby cup.
"Well," he commenced. "I think you"ve done quite well to take this place, as you"ve done, for three years. You are now safely out of the way. The Paris Surete are making very diligent inquiries, but the Surrey Constabulary will never identify you with the lady of the Rue Racine. So you are quite safe here."
"Are you sure of that, Charles?" she asked, fixing her big grey eyes upon him.
"Certain. It was the wisest course to get back here to England, although you had to take a very round-about journey."
"Yes. I got to Switzerland, then to Italy, and from Genoa took an Anchor Line steamer across to New York. After that I came over to Liverpool, and in the meantime I had become Mrs. Bond. Louise, of course, thought we were travelling for pleasure. I had to explain my change of name by telling her that I did not wish my divorced husband to know that I was back in England."
"And the girl believed it, of course," he laughed.
"Of course. She believes anything I tell her," said the clever, unscrupulous woman for whom the Paris police were in active search, whose real name was Molly Maxwell, and whose amazing career was well known to the French police.
Only recently a sum of a quarter of a million francs had fallen into her hands, and with it she now rented Shapley Manor and had set up as a country lady. Benton gazed around the fine old room with its Adams ceiling and its Georgian furniture, and reflected how different were Molly"s present surroundings from that stuffy little flat _au troisieme_ in the Rue Racine.
"Yes," he said. "You had a very narrow escape, Molly. I dared not come near you, but I knew that you"d look after the girl."
"Of course. I always look after her as though she were my own child."
Benton"s lip curled as he sipped his China tea, and said:
"Because so much depends upon her--eh? I"m glad you view the situation from a fair and proper stand-point. We"re now out for a big thing, therefore we must not allow any little hitch to prevent us from bringing it off successfully."
"I quite agree, Charles. Our great a.s.set is Louise. But she must be innocent of it all. She must know absolutely nothing."
"True. If she had an inkling that we were forcing her to marry Hugh she would fiercely resent it. She"s a girl of spirit, after all."
"My dear Charles, I know that," laughed the woman. "Ever since she came home from school I"ve noticed how independent she is. She certainly has a will of her own. But she likes Hugh, and we must encourage it.
Recollect that a fortune is at stake."
"I have not overlooked that," the man said. "But of late I"ve come to fear that we are treading upon thin ice. I don"t like the look of affairs at the present moment. Young Henfrey is head over ears in love with that girl Dorise Rans...o...b.. and--"
"Bah! It"s only a flirtation, my dear Charles," laughed the woman.
"When just a little pressure is put upon the boy, and a sly hint to Lady Rans...o...b.. then the affair will soon be off, and he"ll fall into Louise"s arms. She"s really very fond of him."
"She may be, but he takes no notice of her. She told me so the other day. He"s gone to the Riviera--followed Dorise, I suppose," Benton said.
"Yvonne wrote me a few days ago to say that he was there with a friend of his named Walter Brock. Who"s he?"
"Oh! a naval lieutenant-commander who served in the war and was invalided out after the Battle of Jutland. He got the D.S.O. over the Falklands affair, and has now some post at the Admiralty. He was in command of a torpedo boat which sank a German cruiser, and was afterwards blown up."
"They are both out at Monte Carlo, Yvonne says. And Henfrey is with Dorise daily," remarked the woman.
"Yvonne is always apprehensive lest young Henfrey should learn the secret of the old fellow"s end," said Benton. "But I don"t see how the truth of the--well, rather ugly affair can ever come out, except by an indiscretion by one or other of us."
"And that is scarcely likely, Charles, is it?" his hostess laughed as she pushed across to him a big silver box of cigarettes and then reclined lazily among her cushions.
"No. It would certainly be a very sensational affair if the newspapers got hold of the facts, my dear Molly. But don"t let us antic.i.p.ate such a thing. Fortunately Louise, in her girlish innocence, knows nothing. Old Henfrey left his money to his son upon certain conditions, one of which is that Hugh shall marry Louise. And that marriage must, at all hazards, take place. After that, we care for nothing."
The handsome woman who was rolling a cigarette between her well-manicured fingers hesitated. Her countenance a.s.sumed a strange look as she reflected. She was far too clever to express any off-hand opinion. She had outwitted the police of Paris, Brussels, and Rome in turn. Her whole career had been a criminal one, punctuated by periods of pretended high respectability--while the funds to support it had lasted.
And upon her hands had been placed Louise Lambert, the child Charles Benton had adopted ten years before.
"We shall have to exercise a good deal of discretion and caution in regard to Louise," she declared. "The affair is not at all so plain sailing as I at first believed."
"No. It is a serious contretemps that you had to leave Paris, Molly,"
agreed her well-dressed visitor. "The young American was a fool, of course, but I think--"
"Paris was flooded by rich young men from the United States who came over to fight the Boche and to spend their money like water when on leave in Paris. Frank was only one of them."
Benton was silent. The affair was a distinctly unsavoury one. Frank van Geen, the son of the Dutch-American millionaire cocoa manufacturer of Chicago, had, by reason of his a.s.sociation with Molly, found himself the poorer by nearly a quarter of a million francs, and his body had been found in the Seine between the Pont d"Auteuil and the Ile St. Germain.
At the inquiry some ugly disclosures were made, but already the lady of the Rue Racine and her supposed niece had left Paris; and though the affair was one of suicide, the police raised a hue and cry, and the frontiers had been watched, but the pair had disappeared.