Dutton walked up and down, his face working, his hands and his body trembling. He was up against the gravest problem of his adventurous career. The shadow of the prison had always hovered over him, but now there was a more ghastly menace, the shadow of the gallows. From the prison, he could return. There was no return from the other.
He paused in his restless pacing, and came to a halt before the stricken woman. He had recovered himself to a certain extent. He had gambled and lost, he was prepared to accept the fate of the unsuccessful gambler.
"You are brave, old girl?" he asked briefly.
She looked up at him with a wan smile.
"Yes, I think I am brave. I can guess what you are about to suggest, with the detectives watching us outside." She burst into a little sob.
"Oh, you always thought you were so clever, and yet, if I had had the management of affairs, things might have been so different."
He spoke humbly. "I think you are right, Norah. I was always full of arrogance and self-conceit. You were weaker in character than I was, but you had always more brains. And I was a blind fool not to admit it.
Many a time you gave me your advice, and I rejected it."
"And what do you suggest now?" she asked, in a voice that had sunk to a whisper.
He looked at her steadily. He had screwed up his courage to the sticking point. Could he count upon an equal fort.i.tude in her?
"It is the finish, old girl. You say the detectives are waiting outside. Bryant has got a good case, and the diary will hang us. There is no getting over that."
"You propose--" she said falteringly.
He spoke quite steadily. The end had come, he had made up his mind, so far as regards himself.
"We neither of us want to hang for the murder of Hugh Murchison?"
She shuddered, and hid her face with her hands. "Oh, that awful evening! It has been like a nightmare ever since."
"I know," said Dutton soothingly. "It was one of my fatal mistakes.
But it is no use crying over spilt milk. To-night we are face to face with facts. We have gambled, and we have lost, and we have got to pay the penalty."
The wretched woman rose up, and wrung her hands. "And to think I might have been the Countess of Southleigh."
"I know; don"t think I am not reckoning up all that," replied Dutton.
"But we have got to deal with facts to-night, with the detectives waiting outside. The game is up, you know that as well as I do. We have only a few hours before us, perhaps a few minutes, in which to make the choice."
"I know," she answered. "You mean our only alternative is to cheat the law."
He looked at her steadily. "That is the only way. If we suffer ourselves to be taken, we have not got a dog"s chance."
Weak woman as she was, she gathered something of his iron resolution.
Yes, they must die and die together, to cheat the law. Such was to be the end of the brilliant adventuress who had inveigled two men into marriage, Jack Pomfret and Guy Spencer, with her subtle and elusive charm.
"And what do you suggest, George? You have thought of these things more than I have."
"I have always thought of them," said Dutton gloomily. "Well, there are various ways I can suggest to you. I can shoot you first, and myself afterwards."
She shuddered. "Some other way than that."
"I can give you some tabloids."
"Is there any pain?" she queried.
"Hardly any."
She shuddered again. "Hardly any. That does not sound very convincing."
He proposed a third alternative. "You can come up to my room, and lie on the bed. I will paper up all the doors and cracks and turn up the gas. You will simply go to sleep and never wake."
"That is the best," she said.
"If we had plenty of time. But they may take us in a few minutes.
Bryant has seen your husband, he will not wait long after that interview."
"The tabloids, then," she said firmly.
Yes, it had come to this, she must cheat the law. Twice, she had had her chance, once as the wife of Jack Pomfret, again as the wife of Guy Spencer. And twice had the cup of triumph been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her lips.
She must die, like a rat in a hole, in this obscure little cottage at Strand-on-the-Green, in the company of the man who had always been her evil genius.
Dutton went across to a small cupboard built in the wall of the shabby parlour, and brought out a little bottle filled with capsules. He extracted one and handed it to the shrinking woman.
"Take yours first, dear, I will take mine after." There was a look of infinite compa.s.sion in the scoundrel"s face as he offered it to her.
Bravely she took it, and swallowed it with a great gulp, sitting in the shabby easy-chair. The effect was almost instantaneous, and when Dutton had made sure that she was beyond human aid, he took a similar tabloid himself, with the same result.
An hour later there was a thundering knock at the door of the cottage.
One of the detectives had gone to a telephone office and informed Bryant that the woman had come to Strand-on-the-Green, and was with Dutton.
The order came back from Bryant, who had only stayed a few minutes at Eaton Place, that the pair were to be arrested at once.
Of course there was no response. After waiting for a few moments, the men broke in the frail door. But they were too late.
Norah Burton, and the man who had been so long a.s.sociated with her-- brother, cousin, lover, whatever he might be--had gone to their judgment.
It was a nine-days" wonder, and while his friends and acquaintances were still discussing it at clubs and over tea-tables, Guy Spencer slipped quietly abroad. When he returned to England, at the end of twelve months, these tragic happenings had become little more than a memory to his world.
He stayed a week with the Southleighs at their ancestral home in Suss.e.x, and at the end of that week their friends read an important announcement in _The Morning Post_:--
"A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Mr Guy Spencer and his cousin, Lady Nina, only daughter and child of the Earl of Southleigh."
The End.