The Four Faces

At all the tables play was still in progress. At some complete silence prevailed. From others there arose at intervals a buzz of conversation. Behind some of the lucky players stood groups of interested watchers. About the sideboard were clustered men and women refreshing themselves, the majority smoking and laughing, though a few looked strangely solemn. Among the latter I suddenly noticed a face I had seen before. It was the demure, dark little woman who at Connie Stapleton's dinner party had all the evening seemed so subdued. She was dressed quietly now, just as she had been then, and she looked even more out of place in this crowd of men and women gamblers, all of whom were exceedingly well-dressed, than she had looked at that dinner party. "There is only one person I should be more surprised at seeing here," I said mentally, "and that is Dulcie."

The thought of her made me wonder what she would think if she could see me at this moment, when suddenly my heart seemed to stop beating.

Seated at the table nearest me but one, a table partly surrounded by a group of excited onlookers, was Connie Stapleton. And close beside her, engrossed in the game, Dulcie Challoner herself!

CHAPTER XV

THE MODERN VICE

So staggered was I that for the moment I almost forgot my disguise, and the rôle I was playing, and was on the point of hurrying over to Dulcie and asking her how she came to be there. That Mrs. Stapleton must have brought her, of course I guessed.

Fortunately I restrained myself just in time. Dulcie, I saw to my dismay, was not merely playing, but was deeply engrossed in the game. "Sandown Park" was the game in progress at that table, a game which to all intents is a series of horse-races, but whereas at a race-meeting only half a dozen or so races are run in an afternoon, the players at "Sandown Park" can back horses in half a dozen races in as many minutes. Judging by the interest she evidently took in the game, Dulcie must, I conjectured, have been playing for some time, for she appeared to be quite au fait. Never had she mentioned this game to me, and never had I known her to take interest in backing horses or in any form of reckless speculation. Consequently I had reason to suppose that this was the first time she had played, if not the first time she had seen or heard of the game.

Did I dare approach her? Would my feelings get the better of me and lead to my betraying who I was? Though I had not been identified by people who knew me, would Dulcie's perception be keener and lead to her seeing through my disguise? These and similar doubts and questions crowded my brain as I stood there watching her from a distance, but in the end indiscretion got the better of prudence, and I decided to join the men and women grouped about the table at which she and her friend sat.

For fully ten minutes I stood there, and during that time I saw her win seven times in succession. She seemed to play without judgment or calculation, in fact, with absolute recklessness, and after winning three "races" in succession she had increased her stake each time. In the fourth "race" she had backed a horse for ten pounds at four to one, and won. In the next race she had planked twenty sovereigns on an outsider, and raked in over a hundred pounds. The next two races had increased her pile by between three and four hundred pounds. I could see her panting with excitement. Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyes shone. Her whole soul seemed centred upon the game.

And then she began to lose.

At first slowly, then rapidly, her pile of gold and notes dwindled. Time after time she backed the wrong "animal." Now only a few five- and ten-pound notes and a little heap of sovereigns—twenty at most—remained. Her face had turned gradually pale. Connie Stapleton leant towards her and whispered in her ear. I saw Dulcie nod; then, taking up all the money in front of her, she handed it to the man who held the bank, and received a ticket in return.

The board with the graduated divisions and the names of the horses marked upon them spun round once more. Dulcie's brows were contracted, her face was drawn, her expression tense. Slowly the board now revolved, slower still. It stopped. I saw her give a little start, and distinctly heard the gasp which escaped her.

She had lost everything.

Connie Stapleton's hand closed over hers, as though to reassure her. Again the widow spoke into her ear. A moment later I saw a roll of notes pushed towards Dulcie. Eagerly she grabbed them.

This was terrible. I realized at once what was happening. The widow was lending her money. I wondered if the money she had already lost had been lent to her by her friend. Instantly it dawned upon me that it must have been, unless, indeed, Dulcie had, before I arrived, been extraordinarily lucky, for I knew that she had not money enough of her own to gamble with for such high stakes. She was playing again now—and losing. Once or twice she won, but after each winner came several losers. I was gradually getting fascinated. Again the widow lent her money, and again she lost it all.

At last they rose. Never, as long as I live, shall I forget the expression that was on my darling's face as, with the widow's arm linked within her own, she made her way towards the door.

I followed them to the supper room. They stopped, and, standing at one of the tables, Mrs. Stapleton filled two glasses with champagne. She gave Dulcie one, and herself emptied the other. She filled her own again and once more emptied it. Dulcie only half emptied her glass, then set it down.

Out of the room they went. While they put on their wraps I went in search of my hat. A few minutes later Mrs. Stapleton and Dulcie were entering a car which I at once recognized as Connie Stapleton's. As the car started I saw a taxi approaching, and hailed it.

"Follow that car," I said to the driver. "Keep it in sight, and, when you see it stop, stop forty or fifty yards behind it."

Right up into Hampstead the grey car sped. It slackened speed near Southend Road, eventually pulling up at a house in Willow Road. Leaning forward, I rubbed the frosted glass in the front of my taxi, and peered out. I saw Mrs. Stapleton alight first; then she turned and helped Dulcie to get out. Both entered the house. The door closed quietly, and the car rolled away.

For some minutes I waited. Then I told my driver to pass slowly by the house and make a note of the number. The number was "460."

That, at any rate, was satisfactory. I had discovered what was, presumably, Mrs. Stapleton's London address. Only then did I begin to wonder what Osborne and Preston would think when they found that I had gone. So engrossed had I become in Dulcie's movements that for the time all thought of my two companions had passed out of my mind. I thought of returning to the house in Cumberland Place; then, deciding that it was too late, I told the driver to go direct to my flat in South Molton Street.

A letter was lying on the table in my sitting-room. I seemed to recognize the writing, and yet—

I tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter. To my surprise it was from Dick, who was now back at Eton. "My dear Mike," it ran. "I have something very important to say to you, and I want to say it at once. But I don't want to write it. Can you come here to see me to-morrow as soon as possible, or can you get leave for me to come to London to see you? I don't want to go home, because if I did father and Aunt Hannah and Dulcie would ask questions, and what I want to say to you is quite private. Will you telegraph to me as soon as you get this to say what I can do and where I can see you at once?

"Your affectionate brother-in-law-to-be,

"DICK."

I read the letter through again; then refolded it and put it in a drawer. The letter, I saw by the postmark, had arrived by the last post.

What could the boy want to see me about? What could he have to say to me that he wished to keep secret from his family? I could not imagine. Anyway, I would, I decided, gratify him—I was very fond of Dick. Then and there I wrote out a telegram to be sent off early in the morning, telling him that I would come down in the afternoon; I had decided to try to see something of Dulcie during the morning, also to telephone to Holt to inquire for her, though without betraying to Sir Roland or Aunt Hannah that I knew anything of her movements during the previous night.

But Sir Roland forestalled me. Shortly after eight o'clock I was awakened by the telephone at my bedside ringing loudly. Still half asleep, I grabbed the receiver and glued it to my ear.

"Had I seen anything of Dulcie? Did I know where she was and why she had not returned?"

The speaker was Sir Roland, and he spoke from Holt Manor.

"Why, isn't she at home?" I asked, controlling my voice.

"If she were here I shouldn't ask where she is," Sir Roland answered quite sharply. "Mrs. Stapleton called yesterday afternoon to ask if Dulcie might dine with her in town and go to the theatre. Of course I raised no objection"—Sir Roland in no way shared my suspicion concerning Mrs. Stapleton; on the contrary, she attracted him and he liked her, though Aunt Hannah did not—"and Dulcie dressed and went off at about five o'clock. They were to go to 'The Rook,' Mrs. Stapleton said, where she would dress, and then they would motor to London. Mrs. Stapleton assured me that she would bring Dulcie back here by about midnight or one o'clock, and Dulcie took with her the key of the back door, so that nobody need wait up for her—she told her maid to go to bed. Her maid has just come to tell me that when she went to awaken Dulcie, she found that she had not returned. I have telephoned to 'The Rook,' and they tell me there that Mrs. Stapleton has not been back to the hotel since yesterday soon after lunch. So I suppose that after leaving here she decided to motor straight to town, and dress there. I suppose she has some pied-à-terre in London, though she has never told me so."

"And you say that Dulcie has the door key with her," I said. "Do you think it was wise to give it to her?"

"Why in the world not? She has often taken it before. But tell me, have you seen anything of Dulcie?"

I didn't like telling an untruth, but, questioned in that point-blank way, I had to prevaricate; otherwise I should have been forced to say all I knew.

"She has not been to see me," I answered. "Perhaps Mrs. Stapleton's car broke down and they have been obliged to seek refuge at some wayside inn. I wouldn't be anxious, Sir Roland," I added, knowing how little it needed to make him anxious about Dulcie. "You will probably get a telegram from one of them presently."

We exchanged a few more remarks, and then Sir Roland exclaimed suddenly:

"Hold the line a moment. Hannah wants to speak to you."

Aunt Hannah, who, whatever faults she possessed, rarely lost her head, spoke sensibly and incisively. She didn't like this affair at all, she said, and intended to speak very seriously to Dulcie immediately upon her return. Also she was determined to put an end to this strong friendship between her niece and Mrs. Stapleton. On Dulcie's side, she said, it was nothing less than an absurd infatuation. She would not have minded her being infatuated about some women, but she had come thoroughly to mistrust Mrs. Stapleton.

I asked her to telephone or telegraph to me the moment Dulcie got home, and said that if I saw Dulcie in town or heard anything of her during the morning I would at once ring up Holt Manor. With that we rang off.

"Can I see Mrs. Stapleton?" I inquired, as the door of the house in Willow Road was opened by a maid with rather curious eyes; I had come there straight from my flat, no longer wearing my disguise, and it was nearly eleven o'clock. Just then I had an inspiration, and I added quickly, before she had time to answer, "or Mr. Hugesson Gastrell?"

An arrow shot at random, it proved a lucky shot, for the maid answered at once:

"Mrs. Stapleton isn't dressed yet, sir; but Mr. Gastrell can see you, I expect. What name shall I say?"

I was shown into a small morning room, and there I waited for, I suppose, five minutes. At last I heard footsteps approaching, and in a moment Gastrell entered.

"Dear me, this is a surprise," he exclaimed cordially, extending his hand. "I didn't know I had given you this address. Well, and what can I do for you?"

His tone, as he said this, was rather that of a patron addressing an inferior, but I pretended not to notice it, and, drawing upon my imagination, answered:

"I don't think you did give me this address; it was somebody else—I forget who—who mentioned it to me the other day in course of conversation. Really I have come to see Mrs. Stapleton and inquire for Miss Challoner."

"Miss Challoner? Do you mean Miss Dulcie Challoner, Sir Roland's daughter?"

"Yes."

An extremely puzzled look came into his eyes, though this he was probably not aware of.

"But what makes you think Miss Challoner is here?" he inquired quickly.

"She spent the night here with Mrs. Stapleton."

He looked still more puzzled.

"Did she really?" he answered in a tone of surprise which obviously was feigned.

"Yes. Didn't you know?"

"This is the first I have heard of it, but I dare say you are right. Mrs. Stapleton has rooms in this house—it's a little private establishment of mine—but beyond that I know little of her movements. I'll go and inquire if you'll wait a moment."

"Clever scoundrel!" I said aloud when he had left the room and shut the door. "Rooms here," "knows little of her movements," "first he has heard of it." But I am going to bowl you out in the end, my friend, I ended mentally as I seated myself and picked up one of the morning papers which lay upon the table. It was the Morning Post. I noticed that several little bits had been cut out of the front page—presumably advertisements.

I had scanned one or two pages and was reading a leading article when Gastrell returned.

"You are quite right," he said, offering me his cigarette case. "Miss Challoner is here. After supper last night at the Carlton with Mrs. Stapleton she didn't feel very well, so Mrs. Stapleton persuaded her to come back and sleep here instead of motoring back to Newbury. She told her maid to telegraph early this morning to Sir Roland Challoner, in case he should feel anxious at Miss Challoner's not returning last night, but the maid stupidly forgot to. She is sending a telegram now. Miss Challoner is quite all right this morning, and will be down presently, but I am afraid you won't be able to see Mrs. Stapleton, as she isn't up yet."

I thanked him for finding out, thinking, as I did so, that certainly he was one of the most plausible liars I had ever come across; and then for a few minutes we conversed on general topics.

"You don't remember who it was told you my address?" he presently asked carelessly, flicking his cigarette ash into the grate.

"I am sorry, I don't," I answered, pretending to think. "It was some days ago that somebody or other told me you lived here, or rather that you had an address here."

"Oh, indeed. It's odd how people talk. By the way, how did you come to know that Mrs. Stapleton and Miss Challoner were here?"

His question was interrupted by Dulcie's entering, wrapped in a great fur coat. There were dark marks under her eyes that I had never seen there before, but she seemed in quite good spirits as she came across the room and greeted me.

"How in the world did you find out I was here!" she exclaimed. "It is most astonishing. Did you know that Connie had rooms here? I didn't, until last night. It was so good of her to put me up. I can't think what it was upset me so last night, but I am quite all right this morning. Connie has just telegraphed to father to explain my absence—you know how little it takes to worry him. I've got my evening dress on under this coat that Connie's lent me. She wanted to lend me one of her day dresses, but not one of them comes near fitting me."

I gasped. I couldn't answer. It was bad enough to find people like Gastrell and Jasmine Gastrell and Connie Stapleton perjuring themselves in the calmest way imaginable; but that Dulcie, whom I had until now implicitly believed to be everything that was good should thus look me in the eyes and lie to me—with as much self-assurance as though she had been accustomed to practising deception all her life.

A kind of haze seemed to rise before my eyes. My brain throbbed. All the blood seemed suddenly to be going out of my heart. Mechanically putting out an arm, I supported myself against the mantelpiece.

"Mike! Mike! What is the matter? Are you ill? do you feel faint?"

Her voice sounded a long, long way off. I heard her words as one hears words in a dream. My mouth had turned suddenly dry. I tried to speak, but could not.

"Here, Berrington, drink this and you'll feel better."

These were the next words I remember hearing. I was lying back on the settee, and Gastrell was holding a tumbler to my lips. It contained brandy slightly diluted. I drank a lot of it, and it revived me to some extent.

Still uncertain if I were sleeping or awake, I passed out through the hall, slightly supported by Dulcie, and clambered after her into the taxi which awaited us outside.

"Go to Paddington," I heard her say to the driver, as she pulled the door to. No servant had come out of the house, and Gastrell had disappeared while we were still inside the hall.

CHAPTER XVI

SECRETS OF DUSKY FOWL

To this day that drive to Paddington recalls to mind a nightmare. The entire confidence I had placed in Dulcie was shattered. Had anybody told me it was possible she could deceive me as she had done I should, I know, have insulted him—so infuriated should I have felt at the bare thought. And yet she clearly had deceived me, deceived me most horribly, inasmuch as she had done it in such cold blood and obviously with premeditation. Her eyes, which had always looked at me, as I thought, so truthfully, had gazed into mine that morning with the utmost coolness and self-possession while she deliberately lied to me. Dulcie a liar! The words kept stamping themselves into my brain until my head throbbed and seemed on the point of bursting. As the car sped along through the busy streets I saw nothing, heard nothing. The remarks she made to me seemed to reach my brain against my will. I answered them mechanically, in, for the most part, monosyllables.

What did it all mean? How could she continue to address me as though nothing in the least unusual had occurred? Did she notice nothing in my manner that appeared to be unusual? True, she addressed to me no term of endearment, which was singular; but so engrossed was I in my introspection and in my own misery that I scarcely noticed this. Indeed, had she spoken to me fondly, her doing so just then would but have increased the feeling of bitterness which obsessed me.

Several times during that drive I had been on the point of telling her all I knew, all I had seen and heard: the suspicions I entertained regarding her friend Connie—her abominable friend as she now seemed to me to be; the grave suspicions I entertained also regarding Gastrell, with whom she seemed to be on good terms, to say the least—these, indeed, were more than suspicions. But at the crucial moment my courage had failed me. How could I say all this, or even hint at it, in the face of all I now knew concerning Dulcie herself, Dulcie who had been so much to me, who was so much to me still though I tried hard to persuade myself that everything between us must now be considered at an end?

I saw her off at Paddington. Mechanically I kissed her; why I did I cannot say, for I felt no desire to. It was, I suppose, that instinctively I realized that if I failed to greet her then in the way she would expect me to she would suspect that I knew something. She had asked me during our drive through the streets of London who had told me where to find her; but what I answered I cannot recollect. I made, I believe, some random reply which apparently satisfied her.

For two hours I lay upon my bed in my flat in South Molton Street, tossing restlessly, my mind distraught, my brain on fire. Never before had I been in love, and perhaps for that reason I felt this cruel blow—my disillusionment—the more severely. Once or twice my man, Simon, knocked, then tried the door and found it locked, then called out to ask if anything were amiss with me. I scarcely heard him, and did not answer. I wanted to be left alone, left in complete solitude to suffer my deep misery unseen and unheard.

I suppose I must have slept at last—in bed at three and up at eight, my night had been a short one—for when presently I opened my eyes I saw that the time was half-past two. Then the thought flashed in upon me that in my telegram I had promised to go to Eton to see Dick by the train leaving Paddington at three. I had barely time to catch it. A thorough wash restored me to some extent to my normal senses, and at Paddington I bought a sandwich which served that day instead of lunch.

Once or twice before I had been down to Eton to see Dick, though on those occasions I had been accompanied by Sir Roland. I had little difficulty now in obtaining leave to take him out to tea. He wanted to speak to me "quite privately," he said as we walked arm in arm up the main street, so I decided to take him to the "White Hart," and there I ordered tea in a private room.

"Now, Mike," he said in a confidential tone, when at last we were alone, "this is what I want to draw your attention to," and, as he spoke, he produced a rather dirty envelope from his trousers pocket, opened it and carefully shook out on to the table several newspaper cuttings, each three or four lines in length.

"What on earth are those about, old boy?" I asked, surprised. "Newspaper advertisements, aren't they?"

"Yes, out of the Morning Post, all on the front page. If you will wait a minute I will put them all in order—the date of each is written on the back—and then you will see if things strike you in the way they have struck me."

These were the cuttings:

"R.P, bjptnbblx. wamii. xvzzjv. okk.

zxxp.—DUSKY FOWL."

"Rlxt. ex. lnvrb. 4. zcokk. zbpl. qc.

Ptfrd. Avnsp. Hvfbl. Ucaqkoggwx.—DUSKY FOWL."

"Plt. ecii. pv. oa. t1vp. uysaa. djt. xru.

przvf. 4.—DUSKY FOWL."

"Nvnntltmms. Pvvvdnzzpn. ycyswsa.

Bpix. uyyuqecgsqa. X. W. ljfh. sc.

jvtzfhdvb.—DUSKY FOWL."

"I can't make head or tail of them," I said when I had looked carefully at each, and endeavoured to unravel its secret, for obviously it must possess some secret meaning. "What do you make of them, Dick—anything?"

"Yes. Look, and I will show you," he answered, going to the writing-table and bringing over pen, ink and paper. "I have always been fond of discovering, or trying to discover, the meanings of these queer cypher messages you see sometimes in some newspapers, and I have become rather good at it—I have a book that explains the way cyphers are usually constructed. I have found out a good many at one time and another, but this one took me rather a long time to disentangle. I can tell you, Mike, that when I found it concerned you I felt frightfully excited."

"Concerned me!" I exclaimed. "Oh, nonsense. What is it all about?"

"Follow me carefully, and I'll show you. I guessed from the first that it must be one of those cyphers that start their alphabet with some letter other than A, but this one has turned out to be what my book calls a 'complex alphabet' cypher. I tried and tried, all sorts of ways—I began the alphabet by calling 'b' 'a'; then by calling 'c' 'a'; then by calling 'd' 'a,' and so on all the way through, but that was no good. Then I tried the alphabet backwards, calling 'z' 'a'; then 'y' 'a'; right back to 'a,' but that wasn't it either. Then I tried one or two other ways, and at last I started skipping the letters first backwards, and then forwards. Doing it forwards, when I got to 'l' I found I had got something. I called 'l' 'a'; 'n' 'b'; 'p' 'c'; and so on, and made out bjptnbblx, the first word in the first cypher, to be the word 'improving,' and the two letters before it in capitals 'R.P.' to be really 'D.C.' The next cypher word, wamii, stumped me, as the code didn't make it sense; then it occurred to me to start the alphabet with 'm' instead of 'l,' skipping every alternate letter as before, and I made out wamii to mean 'shall.' The next cypher word, xvzzjv, I couldn't get sense out of by starting the alphabet with either 'l' or 'm,' so I tried the next letter, 'n,' skipping alternate letters once more, and that gave me the word 'settle.' I knew then that I had got the key, and I soon had the whole sentence. It ran as follows: