He made a little impatient gesture with his hand.
"Please don"t talk nonsense," he said. "And now about the towers on Richmond Hill. I have told you that I cannot explain fully until September. I will tell you, though, that your clever little journalist--what, by the way, did you say his name was?"
"Rolston."
"Of course--has ferreted out much that I wished to conceal, but he isn"t entirely upon the right track. I _am_, Kirby, at the bottom of the whole thing, and I have spent goodness knows how much to keep that quiet."
He lit another cigarette, leant back in his chair and laughed like a boy.
"I"ve bribed, and bribed, and bribed, I"ve managed to put pressure, actually to put pressure upon the British Government. I"ve employed an untold number of agents, in short I"ve exercised the whole of my intellect, and the pressure of almost unlimited capital to keep my name out of it. And now, you tell me, some little journalist has found out one thing at least that I was determined to conceal until September next! The plans of men and mice gang oft agley, Kirby! This little man of yours must be a sort of genius. I hope there are no more people like him prowling about Richmond Hill."
I was quite certain that there was not another Bill Rolston anywhere, and I amused Morse immensely by detailing the circ.u.mstances of the little, red-haired man"s arrival in Fleet Street. I never realized till now how human and genial the great man could be, for he even expanded sufficiently to offer to toss me a thousand pounds to nothing for the services of Julia Dewsbury!
I saw my way with Juanita becoming smoother and smoother every moment.
It was growing late, nearly one o"clock, when Morse insisted on having some bisque soup brought in.
"I think we both want something really sustaining," he said. "Do you begin and I"ll just run up and see my sister-in-law, Senora Balmaceda, and find out if Juanita is all right."
He left the room, and, happy that all had gone so well, I sipped the incomparable white essence, and gave myself up to dreams of the future.
I was to see her often. In September, at Sir Walter Stileman"s, Morse was to take me into his fullest confidence. That could only mean one thing. Within a little less than three months he would give his consent to my marriage with his daughter. Another opportunity like this of to-night, and Juanita and I would be betrothed. It would be delightful to keep our secret until the shooting began. I would follow her through the events of the season, watch her mood, hear her extolled on every side, knowing all the time she was mine. A vision came to me of Cowes week, the gardens of the R. Y. Squadron, Juanita on board of my own yacht "Moonlight."
I think I must have fallen asleep when I started into consciousness to find myself staring into the great broken mirror over the mantelpiece and to find that Mr. Morse had returned and was smiling down upon me.
"She"s all right, thank heavens," he said, "and has been asleep for a long time. And now, as you seem sleepy too, I"ll bid you good-night, with a thousand thanks for your consideration."
It was nearly two o"clock I noticed when I stepped out into the cool air of Piccadilly and walked the few yards to my flat. I must have been asleep for quite a long time, and dear old Morse had forborne to waken me.
I peculiarly remember my sense of well-being and happiness during that short walk. I was in a glow of satisfaction. Everything had turned out even better than I had expected. What did the scoop for the paper matter after all? Nothing, in comparison with the more or less intimate relations in which I now stood with Gideon Morse. I was to see Juanita constantly. She was almost mine already, and fortune had been marvelously on my side. Of course there would be obstacles, there was no doubt of that. I was no real match for her. But the obstacles in the future were as nothing to those that had been already surmounted. I began to smile with conceit at the diplomatic way in which I had dealt with the great financier; not for a single moment, as I put my key into the latch, did I dream that I had been played with the utmost skill, tied myself irrevocably to silence, and that horrible trouble and grim peril even now walked unseen by my side.
When I got into the smoking-room I found things just as usual. I had hardly lit a last cigarette when the door opened and Preston entered.
"Good heavens!" I said, "I never told you to wait up for me, Preston.
There was not the slightest need. You ought to have been in bed hours ago."
"So I was, Sir Thomas," he said looking at me in a surprised sort of way, and I noticed for the first time that he was wearing a gray flannel dressing-gown and slippers.
"What do you mean?"
"Until the telephone message came, Sir Thomas."
"What telephone message?"
"Why, yours, Sir Thomas."
"I never telephoned. When do you mean?"
"Not very long ago, Sir Thomas," he said, "I didn"t take particular notice of the time, somewhere between one o"clock and now."
I was on the alert at once, though I could not have particularly said why.
"Are you quite sure that it was I who "phoned?"
"But, yes," he answered, "it was your voice, Sir Thomas. You said you were speaking from the office."
"From the _Evening Special_? I"ve not been there since late afternoon.
And when have I ever been there so late? There"s never more than one person there all night long until six in the morning. It"s not a morning paper as you know."
Preston seemed more than ever bewildered as I flung this at him.
"All I can say is, Sir Thomas," he said, "that I heard your voice distinctly and you said you were at the office."
"What did I say exactly?"
"About the young gentleman, Sir Thomas, the young gentleman who has come to stay for a time. Your instructions were that he should be wakened and told to come to Fleet Street without the least delay. You also said a taxicab would be waiting for him, by the time he was dressed, to drive him down."
"And he went?"
"Certainly, Sir Thomas, he was in his clothes quicker than I ever see a gentleman dress before, had a gla.s.s of milk and a biscuit, and the cab was just coming as I went down with him and opened the front door."
I rushed out of the room, down the corridor and into that which had been placed at Rolston"s disposal. It was as Preston said, the lad was gone.
The bed was tumbled as he had left it, but a portmanteau full of clothes, some hair brushes and a tooth brush on the wash-stand remained.
Clearly Rolston believed he was obeying orders.
Preston had followed me out of the smoking-room and stood at the door, a picture of uneasy wonder. Let me say at once that Preston had been with me for six years, and was under-butler at my father"s house for I don"t know how many more. He is the most faithful and devoted creature on earth and, what is more, as sharp as a needle. He, at any rate, had no hand in this business.
"There"s something extraordinarily queer about this," I said. "I a.s.sure you that I have never been near the telephone during the whole night. I dined with Lord Arthur in Soho and the rest of the evening I have been spending at the Ritz Hotel with Mr. Gideon Morse. You"ve been tricked, Preston."
"I"m extremely sorry, Sir Thomas," he was beginning when I cut him short.
"It"s not in the least your fault, but are you certain the voice was mine?"
He frowned with the effort at recollection.
"Well, Sir Thomas," he said, "if you hadn"t told me what you have, I believe I could almost have sworn to it. Of course, voices are altered on the telephone, to some extent, but it"s extraordinary how they do, in the main, keep their individual character."
He spoke the truth. I, who was using the telephone all day, entirely agreed with him.
"Well, Preston, it was a skillful imitation and not my voice at all."
"If you will excuse me, Sir Thomas," he replied, "your voice is a very distinctive one. It"s not very easily mistaken by any one who has heard your voice once or twice."
"That only makes the thing the more mysterious."
"The more easy, I should say, Sir Thomas. It must be far less difficult to imitate an outstanding voice with marked peculiarities than an ordinary one."
He was right there, it hadn"t occurred to me before.