"Oh, perfectly!" Laurie sighed. "Of course you"re a crowned head," he mused aloud. "I had forgotten. Would you like my head on a charger, or anything like that?"
She studied him thoughtfully.
"Almost from the first," she said, "and except for an occasional minute or two, you have refused to be serious. That interests me. Why is it?
Aren"t you willing to realize that there are real troubles in the world, terrible troubles, that the bravest go down under?"
"Of course." He was serious now. He had begun to realize that fully.
"It"s my unfortunate manner, I suppose," he defended himself. "I"ve never taken anything seriously for very long. It"s hard to form the habit, all of a sudden."
"You will have to take me seriously."
He made a large gesture of acceptance.
"All right," he promised. "That brings us back to where we were. Tell me the truth. If there"s anything in it that really menaces you, you"ll find me serious enough."
Before answering, she rose and opened the studio door, on which, he observed with approval, a strong new lock and an inside bolt had already been placed. He saw her peer up and down the hall. Then she closed and bolted the door, and returned to her chair. The precaution brought before him a mental vision of Herbert Ransome Shaw prowling about the dim corridors. He spoke incredulously.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "There is someone outside that door!" she whispered]
"Are you really afraid of that chap?"
"I have good reason to be," she said quietly. She sat down in her chair again, rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, in the pose already so familiar to him, and added quietly, "He is the source of all my present trouble."
She stopped and turned her head to listen.
"Do you hear anything moving in the hall?" she asked, almost in a whisper.
"No. Shall I look?"
She shook her head. "Don"t unbolt the door."
"You"re nervous. I"m sure there"s nothing there. Please go on," he urged. "Our little friend Bertie--"
Seeing her expression, he stopped short. "Forgive me," he said, humbly.
"But the plain truth is, it"s awfully hard for me to take that fellow seriously. Oh, I know he"s venomous," he conceded, "but I can"t help feeling that he hasn"t as much power over you as you think he has."
He realized that she was listening, but not to him.
"There _is_ some one outside that door!" she whispered.
Laurie leaped to the door as noiselessly as a cat, unbolted it, and flung it open. The hall was empty. He had an instantaneous impression that something as silent as a moving shadow had vanished around the staircase at the far end, but when he reached the spot he saw nothing save the descending iron spirals of successive stairways. He returned to his companion, smiling rea.s.suringly.
"It"s our nerves," he said. "In a few minutes more I shall be worrying about Bertie, myself."
"Bolt the door again," she directed.
He obeyed. She went on as if there had been no interruption to their talk.
"It isn"t what he is," she admitted. "He himself is nothing, as you say.
It"s what is back of him that--that frightens me! Why don"t you smoke?"
she interrupted herself to ask.
Laurie automatically selected and lit another cigarette.
"I know what"s going to be back of Bertie pretty soon," he darkly predicted. "Whoever he is, and whatever he is doing, he has a big jolt coming to him, and it"s coming fast."
He laid down the cigarette and turned to her with his most charming expression, a wonderfully sweet smile, half shy, wholly boyish. Before this look, any one who loved Laurence Devon was helpless.
"Come," he said gently, "tell me the whole story. You know it"s not curiosity that makes me ask. But how can I help you when I"m working in the dark?"
As she hesitated, his brilliant eyes, so softened now, continued to hold hers.
"And I want to help you," he added. "I want that privilege more than I want anything else in the world."
For a long moment she sat still, as if considering his words, her eyes on her hands, folded in her lap. The strange, deep flush he had noticed once before again stained her face. At last she straightened up with a quick movement, throwing back her shoulders as if to take on again some burden they had almost cast off.
"I am sorry to seem so mysterious," she said, "and so unresponsive. I will tell you this much, and it is more than I ought to say. In the situation we are in I am in his power, horribly so. He can crush me at any time he chooses."
"Then why doesn"t he?"
The gentleness of her caller"s voice softened the brusqueness of his words.
"Because--" She stopped again. For the first time she had become embarra.s.sed and self-conscious. She made her climax in a rush: "Lately he insists that he has fallen in love with me!"
Laurie uttered an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. It was not a pretty one, but it nicely fitted the emergency.
"He has hoped that to save myself, and others, I will marry him, the contemptible, crawling snake!"
The listener was impressed by her comparison. Certainly there was something ophidian about Shaw. He himself had noticed it.
"Then, for the time being, you"re really safe?" he suggested.
"No. His patience is exhausted. He is beginning to realize that I"d rather die."
"The police can stop all this nonsense." But Laurie spoke without his customary authority.
"Don"t imagine that. The police know nothing about this matter, and they never will." A sudden thought struck her and she rose almost with a spring. He rose, too, staring at her in bewilderment. She caught his shoulders and held them tightly, in a grip wholly free from self-consciousness.
"If you warn the police," she said swiftly; "if you draw them into this, you will ruin everything. You will do me a harm that could never be undone. Give me your word that you won"t. Please, _please_!"
She was almost shaking him now. Under the clasp of her hands on his shoulders Laurie paled a little, but his black eyes held hers steadily.
"Of course I promise," he said, slowly, "as you make such a point of it."
She removed her hands and stepped back.
"Please go now."
"So soon? Why, I"ve only just come!"