After a whisky and soda, brought by the grave, antiquated butler, Garrett drove the car round to the garage some little distance from the house, where he found three fine cars belonging to his host.
Then, as he went to his room to change for dinner, he pa.s.sed his Highness on the stairs.
"The game"s quite easy," whispered the latter as he halted for a second.
"It remains for you to make the running with Elfrida. Only be careful.
Old Blair-Stewart is pretty sly--as you"ll see."
At dinner in the long old-fashioned panelled room, hung with the portraits of what were supposed to be the ancestors of the Blair-Stewarts of Glenblair, Garrett first met the rather stout, coa.r.s.e-featured shipbuilder who had a.s.sumed the head of that historic house, and had bought the estate at three times its market value. From the first moment of their meeting Garrett saw that he was a blatant parvenu of the worst type, for he began to talk of "my hothouses," "my motors," and "my yacht" almost in the first five minutes of their conversation.
The party numbered about fifteen at dinner, and he had the good fortune to be placed next the dainty little girl in turquoise towards whom the part allotted to him was to act as lover.
She was, he saw, of very different type to her father. She had been at school in Versailles, and afterwards had studied music in Dresden she told him, and she could, he found, speak three languages quite well.
She had apparently put off her school-girl shyness when she put up her hair, and indeed she struck him as being an amusing little friend to any man. Motoring was her chief hobby. She could drive one of her father"s cars, a "sixteen-twenty" herself, and often did so. Therefore they were soon upon a topic in which they were mutually enthusiastic.
A yellow-haired, thin-faced young man of elegant appearance, for he had a velvet collar to his dress-coat and amethyst b.u.t.tons to his vest, was looking daggers at them. From that Garrett concluded that Archie Gould was the lover of the winning Elfrida, and that he did not approve of their mutual merriment. The Parson, who said grace, was a perfect example of decorum, and was making himself delightful to his hostess, while his Highness was joking with a pretty little married woman who, without doubt, was full of admiration of his handsome face.
What would the good people of Glenblair have thought had they been aware of the ident.i.ty of the trio they were entertaining at their table? As Garrett reflected, he smiled within himself. His fellow guests were mostly wealthy people, and as he looked around the table he saw several pieces of jewellery, necklets, pendants and the like for which the old Jew in the Kerk Straat at Amsterdam would have given them very fair prices.
If jewellery was not the object of their visit, then what was?
Two days pa.s.sed, and Garrett took Elfrida and the Prince for several runs on the "sixty," much to the girl"s delight. He watched closely the actions of his two companions, but could detect nothing suspicious.
Blair-Stewart"s wife was a quaint old crow with a faint suspicion of a moustache, who fancied herself hugely as wife of the wealthy laird of Glenblair. She was busy visiting the poor of the grey straggling Highland village, and his Highness, flattering her vanity, was a.s.sisting her. Next to the Prince, the Parson was the most prominent person in the house-party, and managed to impress on every occasion his own importance upon the company.
With the dainty Elfrida, Garrett got on famously, much to the chagrin and disgust of her yellow-headed young admirer, Gould, who had recently inherited his father"s estate up in Inverness-shire, and who it was currently reported, was at that moment engaged in the interesting occupation of "going through" it.
Elfrida, though extremely pretty, with a soft natural beauty all her own, was an essentially out-door girl. It being a hard frost, they had been out together on the "sixty" in the morning, and later she had been teaching him curling on the curling-pond in the park, and initiated him into the mysteries of "elbow in" and "elbow out." Indeed, every afternoon the whole party curled, a big bonfire being lit on the side of the pond, and tea being taken in the open. He had never practised the sport of casting those big round stones along the ice before, but he found it most invigorating and amusing, especially when he had as instructress such a charming and delightful little companion.
Just as the crimson light of sundown was tinting the snow with its blood-red glow one afternoon, she suddenly declared her intentions to return to the house, whereupon he offered to escort her. As soon, however, as they were away from the rest of the party she left the path by which they were approaching the avenue, saying that there was a shorter cut to the castle. It was then that they found themselves wandering over the snow in the centre of a leafless forest, where the deep crimson afterglow gleamed westward among the black trunks of the trees, while the dead silence of winter was upon everything.
Garrett was laughing with her, as was his habit, for their flirtation from the first had been a desperate one. At eighteen, a girl views nothing seriously, except her hobbies. As they walked together she presented a very neat-ankled and dainty appearance in her short blue serge skirt, little fur bolero, blue French _beret_, and thick white gloves. In the brief time he had been her father"s guest, he had not failed to notice how his presence always served to heighten the colour of her cheeks, or how frequently she met him as if by accident in all sorts of odd and out-of-the-way corners. He was not sufficiently conceited to imagine that she cared for him any more than she did for young Gould, though he never once saw him with her. He would scowl at them across the table; that was all.
Of a sudden, as they went on through the leafless wood she halted, and looking into his face with her beautiful eyes, exclaimed with a girl"s frankness:
"I wonder, Mr Hebberdine, if I might trust you?--I mean if you would help me?"
"Trust me!" he echoed very surprised, as their acquaintanceship had been of such short duration. "If you repose any confidence in me, Miss Blair-Stewart, I a.s.sure you I shall respect its _secrecy_."
Her eyes met his, and he was startled to see in them a look of desperation such as he had not seen in any woman"s gaze before. In that moment the mask seemed to have fallen from her, and she stood there before him craving his pity and sympathy--his sympathy above that of all other men!
Was not his position a curious one? The very girl whom he had come to trick and to deceive was asking him to accept her confidences.
"You are very kind indeed to say that," she exclaimed, her face brightening. "I hardly know whether I dare ask you to stand my friend, for we"ve only known each other two or three days."
"Sufficiently long, Miss Elfrida, to win me as your faithful champion,"
the young man declared, whereupon her cheeks were again suffused by a slight flush.
"Well, the fact is," she said with charming bluntness, "though I have lots of girl friends, I have no man friend."
"There is Archie Gould," he remarked, "I thought he was your friend!"
"He"s merely a silly boy," she laughed. "I said a man friend--like yourself."
"Why are you so anxious to have one?"
She hesitated. Her eyes were fixed upon the spotless snow at their feet, and he saw that she held her breath in hesitation.
"Men friends are sometimes dangerous, you know," he laughed.
"Not if the man is a true gentleman," was her rather disconcerting answer. Then, raising her eyes again, and gazing straight into his face she asked, "Will you really be my friend?"
"As I"ve already said, I"d only be too delighted. What do you want me to do?"
"I--I want you to help me, and--and to preserve my secret."
"What secret?" he inquired, surprised that a girl of her age should possess a secret.
He saw the sudden change in her countenance. Her lips were trembling, the corners of her mouth hardened, and, without warning, she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.
"Oh! come, come, Elfrida!" he exclaimed quickly, placing his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. "No, don"t give way like this! I am your friend, and will help you in what ever way you desire, if you will tell me all about it. You are in distress. Why? Confide in me now that I have promised to stand your friend."
"And--and you promise," she sobbed. "You promise to be my friend-- whatever happens."
"I promise," he said, perhaps foolishly. "Whatever happens you may rely upon my friendship."
Then, next instant, his instructions from his Highness flashed across his mind. He was there for some secret reason to play a treacherous part--that of the faithless lover.
She stood immovable, dabbing her eyes with a little wisp of lace. He was waiting for her to reveal the reason of her unhappiness. But she suddenly walked on mechanically, in her eyes a strange look of terror, nay of despair.
He strode beside her, much puzzled at her demeanour. She wished to tell him something of which she was ashamed. Only the desperation of her position prompted her to make the admission, and seek his advice.
They had gone, perhaps, three hundred yards still in the wood. The crimson light had faded, and the December dusk was quickly darkening, as it does in Scotland, when again she halted and faced him, saying in a faltering tone:
"Mr Hebberdine, I--I do hope you will not think any the worse of me--I mean, I hope you won"t think me fast, when I tell you that I--well, somehow, I don"t know how it is--but I feel that Fate has brought you here purposely to be my friend--_and to save me_!"
"To save you!" he echoed. "What do you mean? Be more explicit."
"I know my words must sound very strange to you. But it is the truth!
Ah!" she cried, "you cannot know all that I am suffering--or of the deadly peril in which I find myself. It is because of that, I ask the a.s.sistance of you--an honest man."
Honest! Save the mark! He foresaw himself falling into some horrible complication, but the romance of the situation, together with the extreme beauty of his newly found little friend held the young man fascinated.
"I cannot be of a.s.sistance, Miss Elfrida, until I know the truth."
"If we are to be friends you must call me Elfrida," she said in her girlish way, "but in private only."
"You are right. Other people might suspect, and misconstrue what is a platonic friendship," he said, and he took her hand in order to seal their compact.
For a long time he held it, his gaze fixed upon her pale, agitated countenance. Why was she in peril? Of what?