Oh, how lovely she was at that moment, my dear, my perfect dear!
"But, _caro_, _of course_ I cannot run away with you and be married. _I must_ stay with father, cannot you see that?"
Well, of course I did, there were no two words about it. "Very well," I answered, "Little Lady of my heart, I"ll stick by the old chap too. I"ve crept up here in a sort of underhand way, but not for underhand reasons.
After all, I"ve just as much right to love you as anybody else in this world."
I took her by her sweet hands and I laughed in her face.
"I"m not the Duke of Perth," I said, "but, but, Juanita--?"
There came a little knocking at the door.
Juanita swirled round, flung up her arm--I saw her sweet face glowing for an instant--and then she seemed to whirl away like an autumn leaf.
The only thing I could possibly do was to light a cigarette.
Juanita, having met me, having delivered her ultimatum, having turned me into a jelly, flitted away quite oblivious of the fact that I was a burglar, an intruder into what was probably the most guarded and secret place in Europe at that moment.
My heart sang high music, and that was well. But at the same time I recognized that I was in the deuce of a mess and had planned out no course of action at all.
I prayed, almost audibly, for Pu-Yi.
But n.o.body came. There I was in the s.e.xagonal room, with the gold dragons with their jeweled eyes leering at me.
A dull anger welled up within me. On every side, mentally as well as physically, I seemed baffled, hemmed in. I determined, at any risk to myself, to get out into the library. I took two steps towards the door through which Juanita had gone, when I heard a sharp snap just behind me.
I whipped round, clutching the only weapon I had--which was a bra.s.s knuckle-duster in the side pocket of my coat, and then I stood absolutely still.
One of the dragon panels had rolled up like a theater curtain, and standing in what appeared to be the end of a pa.s.sage, was the great brute Mulligan, with a Winchester rifle at his shoulder, covering me.
As a man does in the presence of imminent danger, I swerved out of the line of the deadly barrel.
As I did so--click! A second panel disappeared, and I was confronted by Gideon Morse, his hands in the pockets of his dinner jacket, his mouth faintly smiling, his eyes inscrutable.
Imagine it! let the picture appear to you of the fool, Thomas Kirby, trapped like a rat!
Once, twice I swallowed in my throat, and I swear it wasn"t from fear but only from an enormous, immeasurable disgust.
I turned to Morse.
"You"ve been listening," I said, "you and your servant here."
"I have been listening, Sir Thomas Kirby, that"s true. I have every right to. When a man breaks into my house without my knowledge and makes clandestine love to my daughter, he"s not the person to accuse one of eavesdropping. As for my servant there, you do me an injustice, which I find harder to forgive than anything, when you suggest that I allowed him to overhear what pa.s.sed in this room just now. He was not at his post until Juanita had been gone from here some seconds. Mulligan, you can go now. Sir Thomas, please come with me into the library."
There was something so magnetic about this strange and compelling personality that I followed him without a word.
"Then you knew," I asked in a husky voice, "you knew all the time?"
He smiled.
"Yes," he said, "I arranged a little comedy. The faithful Mulligan was not drugged at all, and I did everything to facilitate your entrance."
"Then that treacherous cur, Pu-Yi, was playing with me the whole time!
And yet I could have sworn that he was genuine. When I meet him--"
"You will shake hands with him if you are a wise man. Pu-Yi was absolutely genuine, but he, in common with my daughter, knew nothing of the truth until you told it him. He had believed me a madman. Then he understood not only the peril in which I was, and am, but also that of my daughter. Do you think, Kirby, that I should have built these towers, let imagination transcend itself, made myself the cynosure of Europe, unless I was sure of what I was doing? Now, alas, you"ve told Juanita, and brought terror into her life as well as mine."
"Sir," I said, "her relief is greater than any fear. I"ll answer for that."
I faced him fair and square.
"G.o.d knows," I said, "I"m not worth a single glance of her sweet eyes, but somehow or other she loves me, though she wouldn"t fly with me when I suggested it."
"She has some decent feeling left," he answered, with a dry chuckle.
"Well, I overheard everything that pa.s.sed in that little room and I must say I rather appreciate the way in which you behaved. You are a rapid thinker, Sir Thomas. What suggests itself to you as the next move in our relations?"
"Quite obvious, sir. You give your consent to my engagement with your daughter. You please her, you bind me to your interests by hoops of steel--though as a matter of fact I"m bound already--and you add a not invaluable auxiliary to your staff."
"Very well," he said, perfectly calmly, and held out his hand. "Now come and have some supper and tell me all you know."
Then that astonishing man thrust his arm through mine and led me down the great library.
"What a marvelous intellect that fellow Pu-Yi has," he said confidentially. "He saw the situation in all its bearings, from all sides at once, and made an instant decision. I"ll tell you now, Kirby, that he actually predicted every detail of what has just come to pa.s.s.
He told me that he owed you his life and was perfectly ready to die for you, as of course for me and my daughter, but that it had occurred to him that his living for all three of us might be by far the wisest att.i.tude to adopt under the circ.u.mstances. I quite agree with him."
Then again came the little dry, strange chuckle.
"But no more peddling poppy-juice to my Chinese, my boy. It plays the devil with their nerves in the end!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Morse and I sat at supper in a room which differed in no way from the ordinary study of a country gentleman. Except for the very slightest suggestion rather than sensation of vibration, which my host explained was the drag of the City on the three great towers which perpetually oscillated out of the perpendicular, and so insured the safety of the vast elastic structure, there was nothing to indicate that we were two thousand two hundred feet up in the air.
Our meal was of the simplest, and during it I told Morse, without reservation, all that I had heard from Arthur Winstanley.
"He has the outline very correctly. I"ll fill it in later. How long has Lord Arthur been in London?"
"About five days, I believe."
"Time for many preparations to be made if they"re going to strike quickly," he said, more to himself than to me, drumming his fingers on the tablecloth.
Then he looked up.
"And these two men who were seen to-day in the bar of your public house?"