Whither Thou Goest Part 40

"It runs in the blood naturally, then, that I can understand. Still, it puzzles me. Women don't think very seriously about these matters--or, at any rate, only a very few of them. And women of means are hardly likely to be keen on upsetting a world in which they are fairly comfortable, in favour of a new dispensation, the results of which are highly problematical."

She fenced with him a little longer. "Why are you so sure I was comfortably off?" she queried.

"I think you must have forgotten what you told me. Your husband made money through the good offices of Jaques, and that money became yours.

That flat in Mount Street was not run on a small income."

She became a little agitated under his rather ruthless cross-examination and suggestions.

"The money that was left me was not enough to support me comfortably. I had to turn to other means of support."

"You would not care to tell me what they were?" Of course he had heard rumours about that Mount Street establishment, that the host and hostess were suspiciously lucky at cards. The man, at any rate, had always suffered from a shady reputation.

She became more agitated. "Yes, it is quite simple. I have been well-paid for my services by Jaques."

"Then it was simply money that induced you to join the brotherhood?"

"Money, combined with my natural sympathy with their objects."

Moreno appeared to accept the explanation. Jaques seemed, then, to have paid her handsomely for her services. But evidently he had not paid her enough, or she would not have trafficked with Guy Rossett and sold him important secrets.

It was some little time before he spoke again, and then he played his trump card.

He left the personal question altogether, and spoke of the affairs of the brotherhood.

"There must be traitors amongst us," he said presently, "although I do not think they are to be found in Spain--so many things have leaked out."

"Yes." She spoke very quickly. "There was the failure of poor Valerie Delmonte. Do you think there was treachery there?"

"I rather doubt it," answered Moreno easily. "My theory has always been that she drew suspicion on herself by her inexperience, her amateurish methods, her suspicious movements when she got inside the Palace. If the job had been entrusted to me, with my steady nerves, I think I should have been successful. I boasted as much to Contraras, and I suppose that is the reason he has given me this job."

Violet was silent. Moreno went on smoothly.

"But with regard to that affair of Guy Rossett, the information he got which, for the moment, frustrated our plans--that was clearly the work of a traitor. That happened just before I came on the scene, but Lucue has told me all about it."

He was looking at her very steadfastly. She was trying to avoid his gaze, but those dark, brilliant eyes of his drew her lighter ones with a certain mesmeric power.

She was not acting well to-night, he thought. There crept into her troubled glance a shadow of fear. She tried to speak lightly, indifferently, but her voice broke and faltered, in spite of her efforts at self-control.

"It seems like it. Have you any idea of who the traitor was?"

Moreno rose and walked over to the little shabby sofa, typical furniture of the mean lodgings, where she sat. He flung at her the direct challenge.

"It is not a question of having an idea. _I know_." She laughed hysterically; she hardly knew what she was saying. "You think you know, perhaps. Probably you have been led to suspect the wrong person."

"Not when I have seen the actual memoranda, not when I have a photograph of that memoranda in my possession, to show, if necessary, to Contraras."

For a moment she seemed paralysed. All the colour left her cheeks. She could only clasp her hands together and moan piteously.

Moreno spoke quite gently. "Violet Hargrave, you haven't an ounce of fight left in you. Give in and own you sold those secrets to Guy Rossett. I expect he paid a handsome sum for them--and probably because you sold them, you lost your lover."

She burst into a fit of wild sobbing, and threw herself at his feet.

She had not the heroic spirit of Valerie Delmonte. She was only a very commonplace adventuress, with a well-defined streak of cowardice in her.

Like Madame Du Barri, she would have gone shrieking to her death.

"Are you going to denounce me?" she cried wildly.

Moreno was a kind-hearted man. To an extent he despised her, although he was half in love with her. But he could not but feel pitiful at the spectacle of her abject terror.

"That depends," he said quietly. "It is quite possible we may drive a bargain."

Rea.s.sured by those conciliatory words, the woman speedily recovered her self-control. She rose from her kneeling att.i.tude, brushed the tears from her eyes, adjusted her disordered hair. As long as she escaped with life, she would consent to any bargain.

What a mercy she had not been found out by Contraras, or some equally implacable and fanatical member of the brotherhood! In that case, her shrift would have been very short. This black-browed young man, born of a Spanish father and an English mother, had this much of the English strain in him, that he leaned to the side of mercy.

"How did you find out? How did you suspect?" were her first words when she had recovered herself.

"What first led me to suspect. I cannot quite explain--it was a sort of intuition. When I once suspected, the rest was easy."

"It was Guy Rossett who gave me away?" she cried, and an angry gleam came into her eyes.

Moreno looked at her a little contemptuously.

"And you have known this man well, and loved him! Are you not a shrewder judge of human nature than to harbour such a suspicion? Why, Rossett is just that dogged type of Englishman who would rather be put to death than betray a confidence."

Violet looked a little ashamed. "But if not from him, how did you obtain your information?"

"That is my affair. When I have quite a.s.sured myself that I can trust you, I may tell you. It suffices that I hold in my possession the photograph of that doc.u.ment. By the way, you lost your head when you gave yourself away like that, because your handwriting is known to several. Why did you not dictate your notes to Rossett and let him take them down? Then you might never have been found out."

"I know I was a fool," answered Mrs Hargrave bitterly. "I suppose all criminals make mistakes at times. I was terribly hard up at the time; I was in desperate want of money. I pitched a plausible tale to Guy, which I believe he swallowed at the time."

"Ah!" said Moreno. Then it was not on account of this transaction that Rossett had broken off his relations with the pretty widow. The cause was no doubt to be sought in Isobel Clandon.

"I pretended that a Spaniard whom I had known in my youth was ready to turn traitor for a handsome consideration. He had confided these notes to me, and I had taken them down from his dictation. Of course, I ought to have done as you said. I was so eager for the money that I did not stop to think."

"And you are quite sure that Rossett did not suspect you of being a member of the brotherhood?"

"Positive. He is not naturally a suspicious man, not like yourself, for instance. I pretended that this man, the imaginary man, was an old friend of my father's, that he hated the whole business and wanted to get out of it."

Moreno pondered a little. In spite of her physical attraction for him, she was a pretty bad character on her own admissions. She had owned her great obligations to Jaques, who, rascal that he was, had been her benefactor. And yet she was ready to sell Jaques and the Cause he held so dear at heart for ready money. Was it possible a woman with this unscrupulous and predatory temperament could ever become a reformed character? And, if so, was he a likely man to bring about the miracle?

Pa.s.sionate love might work wonders, but was she not a little past the age of pa.s.sionate love?

"Let us come to the point," he said abruptly. "I take it you no longer desire what we politely term the `removal' of Guy Rossett."

"Certainly not. I don't know that I ever really desired it."

Moreno raised his hand. "Don't forget that night at the flat in Mount Street."

"I know, I remember perfectly. I gave you a very bad impression of myself. I was angry, humiliated, bitterly jealous of a younger woman who had taken him from me."