A Master of Deception

"My dear girl, it was only a way of speaking."

"Then don't you speak that way. 'If' it is your child! When you knew me I was innocent, and I'm innocent now except for you. Don't you dare to say if! You know it is your child!"

"My dear girl, of course I know it's my child. You won't let a fellow finish what he is going to say. I was only going to say that the child shall want for nothing; it shall have everything a child can have. So shall you; you'll be much better off than if you were my wife."

"If the child is born, and I am not your wife, I'll kill myself-and it. Or, rather, if I'm not going to be your wife, I'll kill myself before it's born, as sure as you are alive."

"Mabel, don't talk like that-don't! I can't bear it. If you only knew how it hurts!"

"Hurts! As if anything hurts you! Nothing could hurt you, nothing; you're not built that way. Do you suppose that I don't know what kind of man you are-that you're an all-round bad lot?"

"To say a thing like that, after pretending to care for me!"

"Pretending! There wasn't much pretence about my caring; I proved it. You wouldn't let me rest until I did. Not only did I care for you, but I do care for you; and I shall continue to care for you as long as I live. No other man can ever be to me what you have been."

"That's more like the Mabel I know."

"But don't imagine that I'm under any delusion about you; you'll know better by the time I've done. You're the kind of man who's not to be trusted with a girl. You make love to every woman you meet-what you call love! You're entangled with no end of women. I know! I don't know how many think you're going to marry them, but I shouldn't be surprised if Miss Patterson and Miss Austin both think you are. If I were to go and tell them, do you think they'd marry you? Not they; they're not that sort."

"But you won't tell them. You're not that sort either. I, perhaps, know you better than you know yourself."

"It's this way. Even you mayn't know who you're going to marry, but I do. You're going to marry me."

"I wish I were. I'll admit so much. But-we can't always do what we wish, my dear."

"You can, and do; that's what makes you dangerous-at first to others, in the end to yourself. Rodney, I don't want to say something which will change the whole face of the world for both of us, but I'll have to if you make me. Don't you make me! Say you'll marry me."

"My dear child-"

"Don't talk like that to me; don't you do it! You're duller than I thought, or long before this you'd have seen what I was driving at. Now, you listen to me; I'll tell you. To-day I was at the inquest."

"That fact, I assure you, in spite of my dullness, I have appreciated already. What I still fail to understand is what the attraction was."

"Attraction! You call it an attraction! You wait. I've always thought that an inquest was to find out the truth, not to hide it up. The idea of that one seemed to be to conceal, not to reveal. The coroner was an old idiot, as blind as a bat. He'd got a notion into his head, and as there wasn't room for more than one at a time-why, there it was! I went there knowing nothing, guessing nothing, suspecting nothing. The inquest hadn't hardly begun before I saw everything, knew everything, understood everything. But the coroner, the jury, and the witnesses-they knew less at the end than the beginning."

"Your words suggest that nature erred in making you a pretty girl, and therefore incompetent to be a coroner."

"According to the guard of the train, your uncle was found sitting up in a corner of the carriage, with a box in his hand, in which were some of the things with which he is supposed to have poisoned himself. The box was handed round for the coroner and jury to look at. Directly I saw it I knew it."

If Elmore changed countenance it was only very slightly, and the change went as quickly as it came; yet one felt that for an instant it had been there.

"Is that so? What sort of box was it? It must have been something rather out of the common run of boxes for you to have recognised it at what, I take it, was some little distance."

"I was close enough, close enough to take it in my hand if I had wanted; and it was all that I could do to keep my hand from off it. And it was very much what you call out of the common run of boxes. It was a silver box, Chinese, with Chinese engraving on it, about an inch and a half long, round, and a little thicker than a fountain pen."

"You seem to have observed it pretty closely."

"It was not the first time I'd seen it. The first time I saw it it was on your dressing-table."

Again, if Elmore's expression altered, it was only as if a flickering something had come and gone in his eyes.

"You may have seen a box like it on my dressing-table. You certainly never saw the one you saw this morning."

"The box was on your dressing-table. I picked it up and asked you what it was. You said you believed it was a Chinese sweetmeat box. I said that if it was it did not hold many sweets. You laughed and said it was very old, and that you believed it came from Pekin, and that some of the carvings on it were Chinese characters, but you didn't know what they meant. I opened it. Inside it were some of the white things which were in it when they handed it round this morning. I asked you if they were sweets. You said that those who wanted a long, long sleep would find them sweet enough; and you took the box from me as you said it. I thought there was something queer about you and the box, and when you put it down for a moment I picked it up again, and, with some scissors which were on the table, scratched some marks on the bottom-I myself hardly know why. But when I saw that box this morning it was all I could do to keep from asking the coroner if they were on the bottom. I could describe them perfectly; I should know them again. I can see them now."

"What a vivid imagination you have, and what powers of observation! Even granting that, by some odd coincidence, that box was my box, what's the inference you draw from it, when the simple explanation is that it was a present to my uncle from his affectionate nephew?"

"I daresay it was a present, but not in the sense you mean. You went to Brighton yesterday by the Pullman, but you didn't come back by it."

"Pray, who is your informant, and what's the relevancy to your previous remarks?"

"George Dale, who has the bed-sitting-room upstairs, and who cares for me in a different way to what you do, because he wants me to be his wife."

"Then why the-something don't you oblige him? Isn't he respectable?"

"Oh, he's respectable."

"Then could there be a sounder proposition? A man who loves you, who would be all that a husband ought to be! I tell you what, on the day you marry him an unknown benefactor will settle on you a thousand pounds-something like a fortune."

"You can talk to me like that, knowing what you know! After what you've done to me you want to pass me on to someone else. That finishes it! Now you listen. George Dale's a booking clerk at Victoria Station. He recognised you, though you didn't him."

"Quite possibly, if he was on the other side of the peep-hole, and seeing that I've only seen him two or three times in my life."

"He gave you your ticket for the Pullman. All the seats are numbered; he made a note of your number. Your ticket wasn't among those which were given up by the passengers who came back by the Pullman, but it was among those which were collected from the train which reached Victoria at 11.30. The guard saw you get into the train at Redhill Station. You got into a first-class compartment with a little man. You two were the only first-class passengers who got in at Redhill, so he took particular notice. You were in the London Bridge part of the train. At East Croydon someone else got into your compartment. You got out and went back to the Victoria part. The guard, shutting your carriage door, took particular notice of you again."

"Your friend the guard appears to be as quick to observe as he is to impart the fruits of his observation."

"He wasn't my friend, only Mr. Dale introduced me to him, and he was kind enough to answer a question or two. Mr. Dale also introduced me to the guard of the train in which your uncle was. I asked him if it stopped anywhere. He thought a bit, and then said that it did once, for about a minute, in Redhill tunnel, because the signal was against it. I haven't made inquiries yet, but I shouldn't be surprised if someone saw you get into your uncle's train at Brighton. As that train stopped in Redhill tunnel, it's not hard to understand how, or why, you got into another train a little later at Redhill Station."

"You surprise me, Mabel. I hadn't a ghost of an idea that you had such a genius for ferreting."

"It's easy enough. If that coroner hadn't had a notion in his head when he started, he might have got at the facts as easily as I have."

"And, from what you call the facts, what is the inference you draw? What dreadful charge against me have you been formulating in your mind?"

"Rodney, a wife can't give evidence against her husband in a charge of murder."

"I believe I have heard as much. And then?"

"I'm the only creature in the world who has any suspicion. If you marry me you're safe."

"You, pretending to love me, can marry the sort of man you believe I am?"

"It is because I do love you that I am willing to marry you, knowing you to be the kind of man you are.

"Your standard of morality is not a high one."

"It's what you've made it."

"Mabel, while you have got parts of your story right, the inferences you draw from it are all wrong; but I'm not going to attempt any denials."

"I shouldn't; lies won't help you-not with me."

"So you also think that I'm a liar?"

"I'm sure of it; you're a born liar. Sometimes I don't believe you know yourself if you are speaking the truth."

"One thing I've learnt this evening-that you're a born actress. I am speaking the absolute truth when I assure you that I never for one second dreamt that you had the opinion of me you seem to have."

"I never really began to understand you myself till last night. Just before you came in Mr. Dale had gone to bed. He told me, as he went upstairs, that your uncle had been found dead in the Brighton train, and that you had gone to Brighton in the Pullman; and he wondered, laughing, if it was you who had killed him. Then Miss Patterson came with her air of owning you, and you came and went out with her again as with one whom you were going to make your wife, and something happened inside my head and I began to understand. All night I scarcely slept for thinking, and in the morning, somehow, I knew; and all day I have been learning much more, until now I know you-for the man you are."

"My dear Mabel, one thing I do see plainly, that you're not very well, that your nerves are out of order, and play you tricks. Let's both turn in. I, for one, am tired, and I'm sure that a good night's rest will do you good; and to-morrow we'll continue our talk where it left off."

"Rodney, you'll give me at once a written promise of marriage, or I'll communicate with Inspector Harlow, and in the morning you'll be charged with murder."

"Do you wish me to suppose that you are speaking seriously?"

"We'll be married at a registrar's-it doesn't matter where, so long as we are married, and at a registrar's it's quickest. You can get a licence for £2 3s. 6d.; I'll get it, I've enough money for that, and then the day after you can be married. If I get the licence to-morrow we can be married on Thursday-and we will."

"We can be married on Thursday, can we, you and I? This sounds like comic opera, and, as the song says, 'When we are married, what shall we do?'"

"You can do as you please. I shall have my marriage lines, and that's all I care about."

"So you propose to haul me to the registrar, and chain me to you, and souse me in the gutter, and ruin my career, and render life not worth living, not because you've any special ambition for yourself, nor even because you crave for the sweets of my society, but in order that you may have somewhere locked up in a drawer what you call your marriage lines. This seems to me like using a steam hammer to crack a nut."

"I've got a sheet of paper; you sit down and write what I tell you."

She laid on the table a sheet of paper which she had taken out of her blouse. As he looked at it he laughed.

"Stamped-a sixpenny stamp, as I'm a sinner! Do you know, my dear, that this is a bill form which you've got here, good for any amount up to fifty pounds. Wherever did you get the thing? And what use do you suppose it is to you? What a practical-minded child it is! And I never guessed it till now! Tis a wonderful world that we live in!"

"You get a pen and write."

He took a fountain pen and a blotting pad from a table at the side, and spread out on the latter the crumpled bill stamp.

"Here we are. Now for the writing. 'Three months after date I promise to pay.' Is that the sort of thing I'm to write?"

"You write what I tell you."

"Tell on; I'm waiting."

"Write: 'I, Rodney Elmore, promise to marry on Thursday next Mabel Joyce, who is about to bear a child of which I am the father.' Have you got that? Why aren't you writing?"

"Before I start I want to see the finish; that is, I want to know all that I am to write."

"Except your signature and the date, that is all."

"Rather a considerable all, eh? What use do you suppose this will be to you when you've got it?"

"That's my business."

"What do you propose to do with it?"

"Nothing. If you marry me I'll give it you before we leave the registrar's."

"And if I don't?"

"You'll be in gaol."

"I see; that's it. If I don't write I'm in the cart, and if I do write and don't marry I'm also in the cart."

"I'm fighting for my life."

"And I lose mine either way."

"How do you make that out? Who's there to be afraid of except me?"

"If I do marry you I might as well be dead, and if I don't you'll do your best to bring my death about."

She was silent. They eyed each other, she standing at one side of the table, he sitting at the other. In the white-faced woman, with the rigid features and close-set lips, who looked at him with such unfaltering gaze, he scarcely recognised the pretty, dainty, blue-eyed girl whom it seemed only yesterday he had wooed and won. He was sufficiently a physiognomist and student of character to be aware that this woman meant every word she said. As this knowledge was borne more clearly in on him a curious something came into his own eyes-the something which had been there last night in the train. He spoke very softly.

"Mabel?"

Her voice fell as his had done.

"Well?"

"We are alone together in the house, you and I."

"We are; as you were alone with your uncle in the railway carriage."

"Why shouldn't I serve you as you persist in hinting that I served him? What reason is there?"

"None."

"Then-why shouldn't I?"

"You can."

"I can-what?"

"Kill me."

"Knowing me, as you pretended to know me, you're not afraid?"

"I shall never be afraid of you."

"You seem to flatter me all at once."

"I don't care what you do to me. I'd rather you killed me than not marry me-much."

"You wouldn't be so easy to explain. You'd want a lot of explaining if they found you dead."

When he stopped she was still looking at him with eyes which never flinched. He went on:

"You wouldn't be difficult to manage."

"I shouldn't resist. If you broke my head to pieces with the poker I wouldn't make a sound."

"The poker? Not such a fool! He would be sanguine who hoped to explain a poker."

He had been sitting back in his chair; now, leaning forward, he rested his arms on the table.

"Suppose I had another of those things which were in the silver box. If I gave it to you would you take it?"

"No."

Her face had become all at once so pale that her very lips seemed white.

"I should have to go through the form of making you."

"You would have to do to me what you did to your uncle."

"And if I did, what then? – what then?"

If he expected an answer it did not come. She stood confronting him, so immobile that she scarcely seemed to breathe. The smile was on his face which had seemed the night before to give it such unpleasant significance, as if unholy thoughts were chasing each other through his mind.

"I'll be frank with you."

If he expected her to speak he was again disappointed.

"If I could explain you-I'd do it, but I don't see how I could. How can I? Suggest an explanation."

"You won't kill me; you dare not. You only killed your uncle because you thought you wouldn't be found out."

"You think that was the only reason? You don't think that I had a choice of evils, and that I merely chose what seemed to be the lesser?"

"I wonder why you killed him?"

"In your case you wouldn't wonder?"

"Was it because of Miss Patterson?"

"As how?"

"Because you've treated her as you've treated me, and her father found out. If I thought-if I thought- Take that paper and write on it what I told you-now! now! now!"

"And if I don't?"

"If you don't kill me-and you won't, you're afraid-I'll have you hanged!"

"So with you also it is a choice of evils."

"Write what I told you-write it-"

She had raised her voice nearly to a scream. All at once she was still, leaving her sentence unfinished. There were sounds without of a key being put in a lock, of a door being opened, of steps in the passage. She spoke in a whisper, hurriedly, eagerly, and the fashion of her countenance was changed:

"That's Mr. Dale come back from the station. If you don't write what I told you now, I'll call him in-I will!"

He also spoke in a whisper, and in some subtle fashion his countenance was also changed:

"Mabel, don't-don't be hard on me."

"Then write, write what I told you; write it now. If I do call him in it'll be too late. Write!"

He drew the bill stamp towards him and picked up the fountain pen. His air was more than a trifle sullen.

"What am I to write?"

"You know perfectly well. Write: 'I, Rodney Elmore, promise to marry on Thursday next Mabel Joyce, who is about to bear a child of which I am the father.' Write that. Now sign it, put your name at the bottom, and the date. I'll blot it."

Drawing the pad to her she blotted what Elmore had written; then, after a glance at what was on it, began to return it to her blouse, while the young gentleman sat and watched.

"I'm going to put this into an envelope with a note I'm going to write, and give it to Mr. Dale, and tell him to keep it for me till I ask for it; and if I don't ask for it he'll know why."

"So, in writing that, I have not only put myself in your power, but also in Mr. Dale's."

"I tell you that if you do marry me on Thursday I'll give it you again before we leave the registrar's; but if for any cause you don't, even if you put me out of the way, Mr. Dale will see that you are made to smart."

A voice was heard calling to her without:

"Miss Joyce."

She replied to it.

"All right, Mr. Dale. You'll find your supper all ready for you in the parlour; I'm coming now."

She went, the bill form inside her blouse. Mr. Elmore was left to his own reflections. He remained just as she had left him, leaning forward, his arms upon the table, looking with unblinking eyes straight in front of him, as if he hoped to find in space an answer to a problem which was difficult to solve.

CHAPTER XVI

THOMAS AUSTIN, SENIOR

Miss Joyce came into Mr. Elmore's bedroom the next morning before he was out of it. As a matter of fact, he was arranging his tie before the looking-glass with that nice care which is becoming to a young gentleman of looks.

"There's a gentleman come to see you-a Mr. Austin. I should say from the look of him that he's the father of the Miss Austin who was here last evening."

"The thing is possible."

"I don't know what he's come about."

"It's conceivable that you soon will know if you keep your ear close enough to my sitting-room door. Mr. Austin has rather a hearty way of speaking."

"Don't you talk to me like that! You know I've never played the spy on you yet, and you know I never will. But don't you make any mistake about last night. Mr. Dale's got that paper you wrote and my letter in a sealed envelope, and if you don't turn up on Thursday you'll be sorry."

"Thank you so much for the information. Now, let me clearly understand. If, as you put it, I do turn up on Thursday, what is going to happen-after the ceremony?"

"All I want is my marriage lines. I'm coming straight back home; you can do as you like."

"If I like can I go through a similar ceremony with Miss Jones or Miss Brown?"

"If I thought you were going to be up to any game of that sort I'd-I'd-"

"Yes-you'd what?"

"I'd go and talk to your Mr. Austin to begin with. Don't you get any ideas of that kind in your head; don't you try it on."

"I've no intention of, as you again put it, 'trying it on,' not I. I only wondered. Then, at least, you won't insist on the position being made instantly public?"

"I don't care if it's made public or not. All I want is my marriage lines-when the time comes."

"And you quite understand that, whatever the relations may be, from the legal point of view, in which we stand to each other, you'll get no money out of me, for the sufficient reason that I shall have none to give you."

"I don't want your money. I don't want anything from you except that one thing; and-and-mind you do turn up!"

"I've been thinking things over in the silent watches of the night, and I've quite decided that I will turn up."

"Mind you do!"

"I will, I will; be assured I will. Now I believe I'm ready. I was thinking of troubling you to tell Mr. Austin that I'll be with him in a second, but I'll save you that trouble."

"Mind-"

Standing by the door she was beginning a sentence. He cut her short.

"All right, my dear; I'll mind. Would you mind getting out of the way?"

She moved aside to let him pass. He went down the stairs to his sitting-room below, quickly, lightly, humming a tune as he went, as if he had not a care in the world; and with a face which was all sunshine he entered his visitor's presence.

"My dear Rodney, this is an unconventional hour at which to pay a call, but I didn't think that in my case you'd mind about conventions, and I thought that, as I didn't get a chance of speaking to you last night, I'd have a few words with you before you started for the City. I suspect that I needn't tell you that I was glad to hear the news from Stella."

The speaker was a short, sturdily-built, fresh-coloured man, probably somewhere in the fifties, whose neatly trimmed beard was a shade whiter than his hair. A pair of bright eyes looked out from behind gold-rimmed spectacles; about his whole appearance there was a suggestion of health, vigour, and clean living. He took both the young man's hands in his, looking up at him as at one whom he both esteemed and liked.

"You're on the tall side. Stella always did like six-footers. I shouldn't wonder if that's the main reason why she's contracted a fondness for you."

Rodney laughed.

"It's very good of you, sir, to look me up in this unceremonious way. You must join me at breakfast."

"On this occasion I've been an earlier bird than you-I've breakfasted-but I will join you in a cup of coffee."

Rodney rang the bell. Miss Joyce entered with the breakfast on a tray. As she was placing the various articles on the table the two men scarcely spoke. The young man was examining the outsides of three or four letters which the morning post had brought; the elder, who had taken up his position before the fireplace, was for the most part observing Miss Joyce. When she had gone he said:

"That's not a bad-looking young woman. Who is she?"

"She's the landlady's daughter."

"Don't they keep a servant?"

"I fancy they do at intervals, someone who does the rougher work; but I'm out all day, and I never see her. So far as I'm concerned, either the mother or the daughter does the waiting."

"Are you the only lodger?"