Before noon a message came from Mrs. Tanqueray: "Address, "The Manor, Wilbury, Wilts." Have sent your message there."
Admirable Mrs. Tanqueray!
"We"ve sent _our_ wire to the wrong address," said Brodrick.
"It"s the right one, I fancy, if Miss Ranger has it."
"Mrs. Tanqueray"s got the wrong one, then?"
They looked at each other. Gertrude"s face was smooth and still, but her eyes searched him, asking what his thoughts were.
They sent a wire to Wilbury.
Three days pa.s.sed. No answer to their wires and no ma.n.u.script.
"He"s left Okehampton, I suppose," said Brodrick.
"Or has he left Wilbury?"
"We"ll send another wire there, to make sure."
She wrote out the form obediently. Then she spoke again.
"Of course he"s at Okehampton." Her voice had an accent of joyous certainty.
"Why "of course"?"
"Because he went to Wilbury first. Mrs. Tanqueray said she sent our message there--the one we sent three days ago. So he"s left Wilbury and he"s staying in Okehampton."
"It looks like it."
"And yet--you"d have thought he"d have let his wife know if he was staying."
"He probably isn"t."
"He must be. The ma.n.u.script went there."
"Let"s hope so, then we may get it to-morrow."
It was as if he desired to impress upon her that the ma.n.u.script was the important thing.
It came as he had antic.i.p.ated the next day. Miss Ranger sent it up by special messenger.
"Good!" said Brodrick.
He undid the parcel hurriedly. The inner cover was addressed to Miss Ranger in Tanqueray"s handwriting. It bore the post-mark, Chagford.
"He"s been at Chagford all the time!" said Gertrude.
(She had picked up the wrapper which Brodrick had thrown upon the floor.)
Silence.
"T-t-t. It would have saved a day," she said, "if he"d sent this direct to you instead of to Miss Ranger. Why couldn"t he when he knew we were so rushed?"
"Why, indeed?" he thought.
"There must have been more corrections," he said.
"She can"t have typed them in the time," said Gertrude. She was examining the inner cover. "Besides, she has sent it on unopened."
"Excellent Miss Ranger!"
He said it with a certain levity. But even as he said it his brain accepted the inference she forced on it. If Tanqueray had not sent his ma.n.u.script to Camden Town for corrections, he had sent it there for another reason. The parcel was registered. There was no letter inside it.
Brodrick"s hand trembled as he turned over the pages of the ma.n.u.script.
Gertrude"s eyes were fixed upon its trembling.
A few savage ink-scratches in Tanqueray"s handwriting told where Miss Ranger had blundered; otherwise the ma.n.u.script was clean. Tanqueray had at last satisfied his pa.s.sion for perfection.
All this Brodrick"s brain took in while his eyes, feverish and intent, searched the blank s.p.a.ces of the ma.n.u.script. He knew what he was looking for. It would be there, on the wide margin left for her, that he would find the evidence that his wife and Tanqueray were together. He knew the signs of her. Not a ma.n.u.script of Tanqueray"s, not one of his last great books, but bore them, the queer, delicate, nervous pencil-markings that Tanqueray, with all his furious erasures, left untouched. Sometimes (Brodrick had noticed) he would enclose them in a sort of holy circle of red ink, to show that they were not for incorporation in the text. But it was not in him to destroy a word that she had written.
But he could find no trace of her. He merely made out some humble queryings of Miss Ranger, automatically erased.
The ma.n.u.script was in three Parts. As he laid down each, Gertrude put forth a quiet hand and drew it to herself. He was too much preoccupied to notice how minutely and with what intent and pa.s.sionate anxiety she examined it.
He was arranging the ma.n.u.script in order. Gertrude was absorbed in Part Three. He had reached out for it when he remembered that the original draft of Part Two had contained a pa.s.sage as to which he had endeavoured to exercise an ancient editorial right. He looked to see whether Tanqueray had removed it.
He had not. The pa.s.sage stood, naked and immense, tremendous as some monument of primeval nature, alone in literature, simple, superb, immortal; irremovable by any prayer. Brodrick looked at it now with a clearer vision. He acknowledged its grandeur and bowed his head to the power that was Tanqueray. Had he not been first to recognize it? It was as if his suspicion of the man urged him to a larger justice towards the writer.
He turned to Gertrude. "There are no alterations to be made, thank heaven----"
"How about this?"
She slid the ma.n.u.script under his arm; her finger pointed to the margin.
He saw nothing.
"What?" He spoke with some irritation.
"This."
She turned up the lamp so that the light fell full upon the page. He bent closer. On the margin, so blurred as to be almost indecipherable, he saw his wife"s sign, a square of delicate script. To a careless reader it might have seemed to have been written with a light pencil and to have been meant to stand. Examined closely it revealed the firm strokes of a heavy lead obliterated with india-rubber. Gertrude"s finger slid away and left him free to turn the pages. There were several of these marks in the same handwriting, each one deliberately erased. The ma.n.u.script had been in his wife"s hand within the last three days; for three days certainly Tanqueray had been in Chagford, and for three weeks for all Brodrick knew.
There was no reason why he should not be there, no reason why they should not be together. Then why these pitiable attempts at concealment, at the covering of the tracks?
And yet, after all, they had not covered them. They had only betrayed the fact that they had tried. Had they? And which of them? Tanqueray in the matter of obliteration would at any rate have been aware of the utter inadequacy of india-rubber. To dash at a thing like india-rubber was more the sudden, futile inspiration of a woman made frantic by her terror of detection.
It was clear that Jane had not wanted him to know that Tanqueray was at Chagford. She had not told him. Why had she not told him? She knew of the plight they were in at the office, of the hue and cry after the unappearing ma.n.u.script.