yours in heart. Yet inher secret engagement to Gordon-Wright there is a mystery which makes mesuspicious."
"Suspicious of what?"
She sighed, and moving forward rested her hands upon the balcony, gazingagain towards the fiery sunset.
"Well--to put it plainly--that she is deceiving both of us."
"Deceiving us! In what way?"
"Ah! that is what we have not yet discovered," replied the girl. "Thinkof her ingenuity in coming to our house in order to see that man insecret, of how cleverly she made us believe that they were strangers--ofher listening to my father's words when he spoke with Gordon-Wright!All this proves to me that she is working with some mysterious end."
"She has been endeavouring to effect her emancipation from thatscoundrel," I protested hotly. "She has been trying to break away fromhim, but in vain. Her motive, Miss Miller, is not an evil one asregards either your father or yourself, you may rest assured. She onlydesires freedom--freedom to live and to love, the freedom that you, ifyou will, can assist her to obtain."
"I--" she cried. "How can I?"
"You know who this fellow Gordon-Wright really is. If you will, you cansave her."
"I can't. That's just where the difficulty lies."
"Then if you will not, I will!" I cried, angry at her sudden withdrawalafter all the sympathy I had shown her, and goaded by thoughts of mylove's martyrdom. "Fortunately I happen to know that Gordon-Wrightalias Lieutenant Shacklock is wanted by the police of half a dozendifferent countries, as well as certain of his associates, and a wordfrom me will effect his arrest." She started, and her face went ashenpale. She saw that I knew the truth, and in an instant held me indread.
"You--" she gasped. "You would do this--_you_?"
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
FROM A WOMAN'S LIPS.
The handsome, dark-haired girl had placed her hand upon my arm, andstood with her eyes anxiously fixed upon mine.
"Do you really mean this?" she asked, in a hoarse, strained voice.
"I have told you quite frankly my intention," was my answer. "I knowthat scoundrel--in fact I am myself a witness against Him."
"In what manner?" she asked naively.
"That man is one of a clever gang of thieves who for years have eludedthe police," I replied. "In England he lives in security in a Cornishvillage under the name of Gordon-Wright, while here, on the Continent,he frequents the best hotels, and with his friends makes enormous haulsof money and jewels."
"A thief!" she exclaimed, with amazement that I thought well feigned."And can you really actually prove this?"
"The coward robbed a friend of mine who, being ill, could not take careof himself," I said. "I have only to say one single word to the nearestpolice office and they will arrest him wherever he may be. And now, tospeak quite openly, I tell you that I mean to do this."
"You will have him arrested?"
"Yes, and by so doing I shall at least save Ella. The thing is reallyvery simple after all. I intend to defy him. Ella is mine and he shallnot snatch her from me."
"Then you know him--I mean you knew him before I introduced you?" sheasked, after a brief pause.
"I know him rather too well," I answered meaningly. "It is curious,Miss Miller," I added, "that your father should be the intimate friendof a man of such bad reputation. He surely cannot be aware of his truecharacter."
She knit her brows again, for she saw that she was treading on dangerousground. She was not an adventuress herself but a sweet and charminggirl, yet I had no doubt but that she participated in her father's manyguilty secrets. Perhaps it was her easy-going cosmopolitan air thatsuggested this, or perhaps it may have been owing to her earnest desirethat Ella should marry that man, and thus be prevented from betrayingwhat she had learnt on that fateful night at Studland.
"Dear old dad always makes friends far too easily," was her evasivereply, the response of a clever woman. "I've told him so lots of times.Travelling so much as he does, half over Europe, he is for ever makingnew acquaintances, and queer ones they are, too, sometimes, I can tellyou. We've had visitors here, in this flat, of all grades, frombroken-down English jockeys and music hall artists trying to borrowtheir fare third-class back to England, to lords, earls, Stock Exchangemen and company promoters whose names are as household words in thehalfpenny papers. Yet I suppose it's so with many men. They arebig-hearted, make friends easily, and everybody takes advantage of theirhospitality. It is so with my father. All his friends impose on himwithout exception."
"Well, it's a pity that he's intimate with the man I knew as LieutenantShacklock, for when he is in the hands of the police some curiousrevelations will be made--revelations that will reveal the existence ofa most ingenious and daring Continental gang. You see," I added, with asmile, "I'm not making a mere idle statement--I know. These men oncerobbed a friend of mine, and it is only just to him that, havingdiscovered Shacklock, I should give information against him."
"You mean you will win Ella by freeing her of that man?" said mycompanion, apparently following me for the first time.
"Exactly. If he holds any secret of hers, he is quite welcome to speak.Neither I nor Ella will fear anything, you may depend upon that. A manof his stamp always seeks some low-down revenge. It is only what may beexpected. Perhaps I may as well tell you that I recognised him when youintroduced us, and that I have already been down to Cornwall and seenthe smug scoundrel at his home. He's a church-warden, a parishcouncillor and all the rest of it, and the people believe he's worththousands. He poses as a philanthropist in a mild way, opens localbazaars, and makes speeches in support of the local habitation of thePrimrose League. All this is to me most amusing. The fellow littledreams that he sits upon the edge of a volcano that to-morrow may engulfhim--as it certainly must."
"But is this worth while--to denounce such a man? You'll be compelledto support your allegations," she said.
"Oh! I can do that, never fear," I laughed. "I shall bring his victimforward--the man he robbed so heartlessly. English juries have nocompassion for the swell-mobsman or the elegant hotel-thief."
I watched her face as I spoke, and saw the effect my words were havingupon her. If I denounced him her own father would at once beimplicated. Hers were alarming apprehensions, no doubt.
I saw that I was gradually gaining the whip-hand over circumstance. Sherecognised now that her father was in deadly peril of exposure.
And yet did she know the truth, after all? If she actually knew thatthe young Chilian Carrera, the man she loved when they lived outsideParis, had met with his death through her own father's treachery, shesurely would not hold him in such esteem.
Yet was it likely that such skilled scoundrels as the mysterious Miller,Milner--or whatever he chose to call himself--and Gordon-Wright aliasLieutenant Harold Shacklock would risk exposure by betraying their trueoccupation to a sweet high-minded girl such as Lucie really was? Hadshe been their decoy; had there, indeed, been any suspicion that she hadassisted them in their clever conspiracies of fraud then it would havebeen different.
There was, however, no suspicion except that she had spoken of herfather's "secret," which she feared that Ella had learned when sheoverheard her father's conversation with his friend. That was a curiousand unaccountable feature. She knew that her father held some secretthat was shared by Gordon-Wright, that gallant ladies'-man who hadwormed himself into the confidence of so many English and American womentravelling on Continental railways, women whose jewels and valuables hadsubsequently disappeared.
She, however, held her father in the highest regard and esteem, and thatfact in itself was sufficient to convince me that she was after all inignorance of his true profession.
She might have entertained suspicions of the lieutenant, suspicions thatwere verified by the denunciation I had just made, but as I looked intoher pale dark face I could not bring myself to believe that she knew herfather's true source of income. There was some secret of her fathers, asecret that she
knew must be kept at any cost. It was that which shefeared Ella might betray, and for that reason she deemed it best that mylove should be allowed to become the false lieutenant's wife.
Thus I argued within myself as I stood there beside her with theblood-red light of the dying day streaming in from across the sea.
I recollected Sammy's warning; I recollected, too, the strangecircumstances of Nardini's death in Shepherd's Bush, and of what hadbeen told me by this woman now at my side. She was doomed, she said--and, true enough, there was black despair written in that dark face, nowso pale and agitated.
She was as much a mystery as she had been