"The bell?"
"Yes. I rang for a servant. I had to send the wire myself, so I had to get a cab." His voice rose to irritability. "I pressed the bell several times; but the thing had gone wrong--"twouldn"t work. At last I gave it up and went into the corridor to call some one."
"Well?" In the intense suspense of the moment the word escaped Loder.
"Oh, I went out of the room; but there at the door, before I could call anybody, I knocked up against that idiot Greening. He was looking for me--for you, rather--about some beastly Wark affair. I tried to explain that I wasn"t in a state for business; I tried to shake him off, but he was worse than Blessington. At last, to be rid of the fellow, I went with him to the study--"
"But the telegram?" Loder began; then again he checked himself.
"Yes--yes--I understand," he added, quietly.
"I"m getting to the telegram! I wish you wouldn"t jar me with sudden questions. I wasn"t in the study more than a minute--more than five or six minutes--" His voice became confused; the strain of the connected recital was telling upon him. With nervous haste he made a rush for the end of his story. "I wasn"t more than seven or eight minutes in the study; then, as I came down-stairs, c.r.a.pham met me in the hall. He told me that Lillian Astrupp had called and wished to see me. And that he had shown her into the morning-room--"
"The morning-room?" Loder suddenly stepped back from the table. "The morning-room? With your telegram lying on the bureau?"
His sudden speech and movement startled Chilcote. The blood rushed to his face, then died out, leaving it ashen. "Don"t do that, Loder!" he cried. "I--I can"t bear it!"
With an immense effort Loder controlled himself. "Sorry!" he said. "Go on!"
"I"m going on! I tell you I"m going on. I got a horrid shock when Chapham told me. Your story came clattering through my mind. I knew Lillian had come to see you--I knew there was going to be a scene--"
"But the telegram? The telegram?"
Chilcote paid no heed to the interruption. He was following his own train of ideas. "I knew she had come to see you--I knew there was going to be a scene. When I got to the morning-room my hand was shaking so that I could scarcely turn the handle; then, as the door opened, I could have cried out with relief. Eve was there as well!"
"Eve?"
"Yes. I don"t think I was ever so glad to see her in my life." He laughed almost hysterically. "I was quite civil to her, and she was--quite sweet to me--" Again he laughed.
Loder"s lips tightened.
"You see, it saved the situation. Even if Lillian wanted to be nasty, she couldn"t, while Eve was there. We talked for about ten minutes. We were quite an amiable trio. Then Lillian told me why she"d called.
She wanted me to make a fourth in a theatre party at the "Arcadian"
to-night, and I--I was so pleased and so relieved that I said yes!" He paused and laughed again unsteadily.
In his tense anxiety, Loder ground his heel into the floor. "Go on!" he said, fiercely. "Go on!"
"Don"t!" Chilcote exclaimed. "I"m going on--I"m going on." He pa.s.sed his handkerchief across his lips. "We talked for ten minutes or so, and then Lillian left. I went with her to the hall door, but Chapham was there too--so I was still safe. She laughed and chatted and seemed in high spirits as we crossed the hall, and she was still smiling as she waved to me from her motor. But then, Loder--then, as I stood in the hall, it all came to me suddenly. I remembered that Lillian must have been alone in the morning-room before Eve found her! I remembered the telegram! I ran back to the room, meaning to question Eve as to how long Lillian had been alone, but she had left the room. I ran to the bureau--but the telegram wasn"t there!"
"Gone?"
"Yes, gone. That"s why I"ve come straight here."
For a moment they confronted each other. Then, moved by a sudden impulse, Loder pushed Chilcote aside and crossed the room. An instant later the opening and shutting of doors, the hasty pulling out of drawers and moving of boxes, came from the bedroom.
Chilcote, shaken and nervous, stood for a minute where his companion had left him; at last, impelled by curiosity, he too crossed the narrow pa.s.sage and entered the second room.
The full light streamed in through the open window; the keen spring air blew freshly across the house-tops; and on the window-sill a band of grimy, joyous sparrows twittered and preened themselves. In the middle of the room stood Loder. His coat was off, and round him on chairs and floor lay an array of waistcoats, gloves, and ties.
For a s.p.a.ce Chilcote stood in the doorway staring at him; then his lips parted and he took a step forward. "Loder--" he said, anxiously. "Loder, what are you going to do?"
Loder turned. His shoulders were stiff, his face alight with energy.
"I"m going back," he said, "to unravel the tangle you have made."
XXVIII
Loder"s plan of action was arrived at before he reached Trafalgar Square. The facts of the case were simple. Chilcote had left an incriminating telegram on the bureau in the morning-room at Grosvenor Square; by an unlucky chance Lillian Astrupp had been shown up into that room, where she had remained alone until the moment that Eve, either by request or by accident, had found her there. The facts resolved themselves into one question. What use had Lillian made of those solitary moments? Without deviation, Loder"s mind turned towards one answer. Lillian was not the woman to lose an opportunity, whether the s.p.a.ce at her command were long or short. True, Eve too had been alone in the room, while Chilcote had accompanied Lillian to the door; but of this he made small account. Eve had been there, but Lillian had been there first. Judging by precedent, by personal character, by all human probability, it was not to be supposed that anything would have been left for the second comer.
So convinced was he that, reaching Trafalgar Square, he stopped and hailed a hansom.
"Cadogan Gardens!" he called. "No. 33."
The moments seemed very few before the cab drew up beside the curb and he caught his second glimpse of the enamelled door with its silver fittings. The white and silver gleamed in the sunshine; banks of cream colored hyacinths cl.u.s.tered on the window-sills, filling the clear air with a warm and fragrant scent. With that strange sensation of having lived through the scene before, Loder left the cab and walked up the steps. Instantly he pressed the bell the door was opened by Lillian"s discreet, deferential man-servant.
"Is Lady Astrupp at home?" he asked.
The man looked thoughtful. "Her ladyship lunched at home, sir--" he began, cautiously.
But Loder interrupted him. "Ask her to see me," he said, laconically.
The servant expressed no surprise. His only comment was to throw the door wide.
"If you"ll wait in the white room, sir," he said, "I"ll inform her ladyship." Chilcote was evidently a frequent and a favored visitor.
In this manner Loder for the second time entered the house so unfamiliar--and yet so familiar in all that it suggested. Entering the drawing-room, he had leisure to look about him. It was a beautiful room, large and lofty; luxury was evident on every hand, but it was not the luxury that palls or offends. Each object was graceful, and possessed its own intrinsic value. The atmosphere was too effeminate to appeal to him, but he acknowledged the taste and artistic delicacy it conveyed.
Almost at the moment of acknowledgment the door opened to admit Lillian.
She wore the same gown of pale-colored cloth, warmed and softened by rich furs, that she had worn on the day she and Chilcote had driven in the park.
She was drawing on her gloves as she came into the room; and pausing near the door, she looked across at Loder and, laughed in her slow, amused way.
"I thought it would be you," she said, enigmatically.
Loder came forward. "You expected me?" he said, guardedly. A sudden conviction filled him that it was not the evidence of her eyes, but something at once subtler and more definite, that prompted her recognition of him.
She smiled. "Why should I expect you? On the contrary, I"m waiting to know why you"re here?"
He was silent for an instant; then he answered in her own light tone.
"As far as that goes," he said, "let"s make it my duty call-having dined with you. I"m an old-fashioned person."
For a full second she surveyed him amusedly; then at last she spoke. "My dear Jack"--she laid particular stress on the name--"I never imagined you punctilious. I should have thought bohemian would have been more the word."
Loder felt disconcerted and annoyed. Either, like himself, she was fishing for information, or she was deliberately playing with him. In his perplexity he glanced across the room towards the fireplace.
Lillian saw the look. "Won"t you sit down?" she said, indicating the couch. "I promise not to make you smoke. I sha"n"t even ask you to take off your gloves!"