"So you"ve no need to be jealous any more," said Jimmy Challoner, after a moment.
No need to be jealous! There was still the same need; death cannot take memory away with it. Christine felt as if the dead woman were more certainly between them now, keeping them apart, than ever before.
The silence fell again; then suddenly Christine moved to the door.
Jimmy caught her hand.
"Where are you going? Don"t be a little fool. It"s ever so late; you can"t leave the hotel to-night."
"I am not going to stay here with you." She did not look at him; did not even faintly guess how much he was longing for a kind word, a little sympathy. He had had the worst shock of his inconsequent life when, in reply to that urgent summons, he had raced round to Cynthia Farrow"s flat, and found that he was too late.
"She died ten minutes ago."
Only ten minutes! Jimmy had stared blankly at the face of the weeping maid, and then mechanically taken his watch from his pocket and looked at it. Only ten minutes! If he had not had to hang about for a taxi he would have been in time to have seen her.
Now he would never see her again; as yet he had had no time in which to a.n.a.lyse his feelings; he was numbed with the shock of it all; he listened like a man in a dream to the details they told him. It pa.s.sed him by unmoved that she had been in Mortlake"s car when the accident occurred; it had conveyed nothing to his mind when they told him that the only words she had spoken during her brief flash of consciousness had been to ask for him.
As he stood there in the familiar scented pink drawing-room, his thoughts had flown with odd incongruity to Christine.
She would be kind to him--she would be sorry for him; his whole heart and soul had been on fire to get back to her--to get away from the harrowing silence of the flat which had always been a.s.sociated in his mind with fun and laughter, and the happiest days of his life.
A fur coat of Cynthia"s lay across a chair-back; so many times he had helped her slip into it after her performance at the theatre was ended.
He knew so well the faint scent that always clung to it; he shuddered and averted his eyes. She would never wear it again; she was dead! He wondered what would become of it--what would become of all her clothes, and her jewelry and her trinkets.
Suddenly, in the middle of more details, he had turned and rushed blindly away. It was not so much grief as a sort of horror at himself that drove him; he felt as if someone had forced him to look on a past folly--a folly of which he was now ashamed.
He had thought of Christine with a sort of pa.s.sionate thankfulness and grat.i.tude; and now there was nothing but dislike and contempt for him in her brown eyes. Somehow she seemed like a different woman to the one whom he had so lightly wooed and won such a little while ago. She looked older--wiser; the childishness of her face seemed to have hardened; it was no longer the little girl Christine who faced him in the silent room.
He broke out again urgently:
"Don"t be absurd, Christine. I won"t have it, I tell you, I forbid you to leave the hotel. After all, you"re my wife--you must do as I wish."
She seemed not to hear him; she stood with her eyes fixed straight in front of her.
"Please let me go."
"Where are you going? You"re my wife--you"ll have to stay with me."
His hand was on the door handle now; he was looking down at her with haggard eyes in his white face.
"Let"s begin all over again, Christine. I"ve been a rotter, I know; but if you"ll have a little patience--it"s not too late--we can patch things up, and--and I"ll promise you----"
She cut him short.
"You are saying this because she is dead. If she were living you would not care what I did, or what became of me." Suddenly her voice changed wildly. "Oh, let me go--let me _go_!"
For a moment their glances met, and for the first time in his spoilt and pampered life Jimmy Challoner saw hatred looking at him through a woman"s eyes. It drove the hot blood to his head; he was unnerved with the shock he had suffered that evening. For a moment he saw the world red; he lifted his clenched fist.
"Go, then--and a d.a.m.ned good riddance!"
"Jimmy!" Her scream of terror stayed his hand, and kept him from striking her. He staggered back, aghast at the thing he had so nearly done.
"Christine--Christine----" he stammered; but she had gone. The shutting and locking of her bedroom door was his only answer.
CHAPTER XV
SANGSTER SPEAKS IN RIDDLES
Sangster heard of Cynthia Farrow"s death late that night.
He was walking up Fleet Street when he ran into a man he knew--a man whom Jimmy knew also; he stopped and caught him by his b.u.t.tonhole.
"I say, have you heard--awful thing, isn"t it?"
Sangster stared.
"Heard! Heard what?"
"About Cynthia Farrow. Had a frightful accident--in Mortlake"s car."
Sangster"s eyes woke to interest.
"Badly hurt?" he asked briefly.
"Dead!"
"My G.o.d!" There was a moment of tragic silence. "Dead!" said Sangster again. He could not believe it; his face was very pale. "Dead!" he said again. His thoughts flew to Jimmy Challoner. "Are you sure?" he asked urgently. "There"s no mistake--you"re quite sure?"
"Sure! Man alive, it"s in all the papers! They"ve all got hold of a different story, of course; some say she never recovered consciousness, and others----" He lowered his voice. "I happen to know that she did," he added confidentially. "She sent for Challoner, and he was with her when she died."
"Challoner--Jimmy Challoner!" Sangster repeated his friend"s name dully. The one shocked thought of his heart was "Christine."
"I always knew she really liked him," the other man went on complacently. "If he"d had Mortlake"s money----" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.
Sangster waited to hear no more; he went straight to Jimmy"s hotel. It was late then--nearly eleven. The hall porter said in reply to his inquiry that Mr. and Mrs. Challoner had both been in all the evening, he thought, and were still in; he looked at Sangster"s agitated face curiously.
"Was you wishing to see Mr. Challoner, sir?"
"No--oh, no. I only thought--you need not tell him that I called." He went away wretchedly; he wondered if Christine knew--and if so, what she must be thinking.
He never slept all night. He was on the "phone to Jimmy long before breakfast; he was infinitely relieved to hear Jimmy"s voice.
"Hallo--yes, I"m all right, thanks. Want to see me? Well----"
There was a pause here. Sangster waited in a fever of impatience.
After a moment: