A Master Of Deception Part 22

"It'll be my own money."

"If you'll have so much money of your own why can't you marry me?"

"If I do marry you I'll have no money?"

"Are you going to get it with your wife? Which wife?"

"I can understand how you're feeling, so I'll try not to mind your being bitter, though it isn't like you one sc.r.a.p. I can only implore you to trust me, to leave it all to me; I'll arrange everything. If you're right in what you fear you'll find a place ready for you when the time comes, in which you'll be comfortable, in which you'll have everything you want, and when it's over, if you like you can come home again, and no one will be one whit the wiser, and you won't be an atom the worse. It's done every day."

"Is it? And the child--what about the child?"

"The child? If it is my child----"

"If? if? if? What do you mean by 'if'? You'd better be careful, Rodney, what you are saying. What do you mean by 'if'?"

"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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sengers 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-cla.s.s compartment with a little man. You two were the only first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers 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."