A Master Of Deception Part 23

"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 a.s.sure 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.