The Golden Web Part 9

"Do forgive me," he begged. "I met a man outside who kept me gossiping about trifles. Tell me, do you think that we can persuade your mother to come out to supper?"

"We've nowhere else to go," Lady Olive answered. "Do see if you can talk her into it. It would be very pleasant."

"I'll try," he promised.

CHAPTER XI

AN APPEAL

A morning paper, apparently in lack of a new sensation, suddenly took up the cause of Basil Rowan. An evening paper, conducted under the same auspices, promptly followed suit. This was a case, they both declared, of obvious manslaughter. The evidence clearly pointed to a quarrel between the two men. A prominent criminal lawyer allowed his name to be a.s.sociated with what rapidly grew to be an agitation. Pet.i.tions began to appear. The Home Secretary was bombarded with doc.u.ments. Everywhere people were saying that the man should never have been put on his trial for murder. The jury had been confused by their instructions. It was a case of manslaughter, pure and simple.

Three days after her first visit, Winifred Rowan sat once more in Deane's office. There were lines underneath her eyes. She seemed to have become thinner and more fragile. Deane himself, save that he was a trifle paler, was unchanged,--carefully dressed as usual, and with unruffled demeanor. He sat in his accustomed place, and guided the destinies of those great affairs which lay under his control. For the moment he had relaxed. He was doing his best to console the girl who had come to him in a sudden whirl of terror.

"My dear Miss Rowan," he said, "I have certain intelligence from my friends. I have gone to great lengths in this matter, and I can a.s.sure you that there is not the slightest doubt about a reprieve being forthcoming."

She glanced at the calendar. "But think," she said, "already for three days he has lain there, sentenced to death. Think of what he must be suffering. Oh, it is horrible! It isn't only death," she cried. "Think of the manner of it,--the hideous disgrace, the cruel, cold ugliness of it! Oh, if it should come--"

He held out his hand. She was on the verge of hysteria. "It shall not come," he declared firmly. "I have promised you that."

"If they are going to reprieve him," she continued, "why do they let him suffer these agonies? Why do they not tell him so at once? I saw him this morning. He says nothing. He is as brave as a man can be, but his eyes are awful, and when he tries to speak his voice dies away. Oh! Mr.

Deane, do something! Oh! do something!"

She laid her hands suddenly upon his shoulders. He took them gently in his.

"My dear Miss Rowan, I am doing everything that man can do. Believe me that I am. I only wish that your brother had done as he threatened, and walked into the river, before he came to me."

She went away at last. Deane lay back in his chair, feeling absolutely unfit for work. Twice he laid his hand upon the telephone, and twice he withdrew it. Then he turned to his secretary, who had just entered the room.

"Get Mr. Hardaway upon the telephone," he directed. "I want to speak to him."

In a few moments the bell of the instrument by his side tinkled. He put the receiver to his ear.

"Is that Hardaway?" he asked.

"Yes!" was the answer.

"This is Stirling Deane. You remember the subject of our conversation the other night at the theatre? I am referring now to the matter of doc.u.ments of which you spoke."

"I remember," Hardaway answered.

"In whose possession are those doc.u.ments at the present moment?" Deane asked.

"In whose possession," Hardaway repeated. "Do you mean--"

"I mean have they been sent to Scotland Yard, or are they still in that locked-up room at the Universal Hotel?"

There was a moment's pause. Then Hardaway answered. "To the best of my belief," he said, "they are still in the room at the hotel. They may be removed to Scotland Yard at any time, though."

"No one has yet claimed Sinclair's effects, then?" asked Deane.

"No one," was the answer.

Deane was on the point of ringing off, but Hardaway suddenly put a question to him. "Shall you be in your office for ten minutes, Mr.

Deane?"

"For longer than that," Deane answered.

"I am coming around," the lawyer said. "I hope you can spare me a moment."

Deane set down the telephone with a frown. Perhaps his question had been a clumsy one, or was Hardaway already suspicious? He welcomed the lawyer, when he arrived, a little coldly.

"Five minutes, please," he said. "I have a large mail to go through, and an early dinner-party to-night."

The lawyer nodded. "I don't want to detain you, Deane," he said. "Send your secretary away for a moment, there's a good fellow. What I have to say can be said in half-a-dozen words if we are alone."

Deane pointed to the door. "One moment, if you please, Ellison," he said. "Get everything ready for me that you can."

The two men were alone. Hardaway, who had not taken a seat, deliberately drew off his glove, and tapped the table with his fingertips.

"Deane," he said, "have you any idea of paying a visit to the Universal Hotel?"

Deane met him on his own ground, coolly, and with perfect self-possession. "I have not made up my mind," he said. "It might be worth it."

"It wouldn't," the lawyer said. "There's nothing haphazard about the way these things are conducted. There's a detective watching Number 27, day and night."

"It occurred to me," Deane remarked, "that as there is no mystery about this affair, Scotland Yard would not have thought that necessary."

"It is as I have told you," said Hardaway. "At any time after to-morrow, the man's clothing and doc.u.ments, and everything belonging to him, will be removed, unless they are claimed. Until they are claimed they are watched. It wouldn't do, Deane, for a man in your position to be seen in this place, especially when one of those papers bears the name of your mine, and Sinclair has just been murdered by a man for whose defence you have paid."

"That's plain speaking," Deane remarked.

"It's what I came to say," Hardaway answered. "Don't do it, Deane. We are not in Africa, you know. Your methods were splendid there. They might spell ruin here. Good-night!"

"The reprieve?" Deane asked.

"A certainty," Hardaway answered, looking back from the door. "It may be a week before it is issued, but it is a certainty all the same."

Deane sat in his chair, looking through the dusty window out into the court,--a dull vista enough, and uninspiring. Of the lawyer's words he took little enough notice. The reprieve would come, of that he was certain, but nevertheless he was beginning to feel the severity of the strain. He was a man who would have been kind-hearted but for the continual pressure of business obligations. He was a great schemer, a man of imagination, and a brilliant financier. There had been little room in his life for the gentler side of his nature to develop. Yet it had been a genuine horror which he had felt, which he had carried about with him since the day he had visited the court and looked into Rowan's white face, and heard those awful words of condemnation amid a silence intense, unnatural, hideous. It was a memory from which he could not easily rid himself, a memory which had penetrated even that splendid armor of indifference in which the man of toil and thought gradually encases himself. The girl's white face, too, and her plaintive eyes, had touched his heart. He felt that this period of suspense was growing almost unendurable!

His secretary entered the room quietly. "Did you wish me to make any arrangements, sir," he asked, "for the journey to Scotland?"

Deane looked at him for a moment as a man without understanding. Then he suddenly remembered that to-morrow was the day on which he was to leave London to join the Nunneley's house-party.

"I am not sure, Ellison," he said doubtfully. "I will let you know in a few minutes."