CHAPTER TWELVE
THE THUNDERBOLT
It was not a man's foot that made that soft noise; his trained earrecognized that fact at once. A woman, eh? What woman would be cominghere at this time when all the ladies of the household would be in theirrooms dressing for dinner?
He crept in the darkness out of the cell in which he had been digging,through the one next and through the next again, until he came to thepassage leading to the staircase, and then, dropping on his hands andknees, went soundlessly up the stone steps.
Above him as he crept upward--as slow as any tortoise and with far lessnoise--sounded the woman's faint footfalls pacing the paved floor withthat persistent restlessness which tells of extreme agitation. He hadbut just begun to ask himself what that agitation might portend, whensomething occurred which caused him to twitch up his head with a jerkand crouch there, a thing all eyes and ears.
The woman's footsteps had ceased abruptly, brought to a sudden halt bythe ring of others--the nervous, heavy-heeled, fast-falling steps of anexcited man coming across the drawbridge and into the ruin at a pacewhich was almost a run; and that man had no more than come into rangeof the woman's vision when the thin, eager voice of Lady KatharineFordham sounded and made the situation clear.
It was a tryst--the lovers' meeting upon which Cleek had built such highhopes and upon which he had blundered by the merest fluke.
"Geoff!" sounded that enlightening voice, with a nervous catch in itwhich told of a hard-hammering heart. "Thank heaven you have come. Ailsathinks I am in my room dressing for dinner. Now tell me what it is allabout, there's a dear, for my head has been in a whirl ever since I readwhat you wrote. Why did you want me to come here and meet you withoutanybody knowing? Whatever can it be that you 'have to say to me that noone on this earth must hear'? Do tell me. I'm frightened half to death!"
"Are you?" His footsteps clicked sharply as he moved rapidly across thefloor toward her. "You have not gone so far as I, then, for I believe Ihave been frightened _past_ death, and that after this nothing on earthor in heaven or hell can appall me! Come here, into my arms, and let mehold you while I speak. How I love you! My God, how I love you!"
"Geoff!"
"Put your arms round me. Kiss me! I want you to know that I love you sowell I'll fight all the dogs of justice and all the devils of hell butwhat I'll stand by you and save you from them. They can't kill my lovefor you. Nothing on God's earth can do that. I'll come between them andyou no matter what happens, no matter what it costs me--life with allthe rest. That's what I've come to tell you! But, oh, my God, Kathie,why didn't you let _me_ kill him?"
"Kill him, Geoff? Good heavens, what are you talking about? Kill whom?"
"De Louvisan!"
"De Louvisan? Let you kill De Louvisan-- I? Oh, my God!Geoff--you--think--_I_--killed--killed--him?"
Geoff groaned and buried his face in his hands. "There was no one in thehouse but you," he said hoarsely. "It was you who took me into theplace; it was you who showed me his dead body spiked up there againstthe wall--you and you alone. My God! Kathie, what is the use of denyingwhat we both know?"
Cleek sucked in his breath, drew every muscle of his body taut as wire,and then crouching back in the darkness listened intently.
Lady Katharine remained perfectly silent for a moment, as though she hadbeen stricken dumb by the directness of the charge: as though thehalf-despairing, half-impatient protest of that final "What is the useof denying what we both know?" had impressed her with a realization ofthe utter futility of longer endeavouring to act a part.
It was either that that held her silent, Cleek told himself, or she wasutterly amazed, utterly overcome by an accusation which had nofoundation in fact and had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt. If thelatter should prove to be the case, why, then, Geoff Clavering would belying, and she would be wholly and entirely innocent of the crime withwhich he had charged her.
Then she spoke suddenly:
"You mean this thing? You really and truly _mean_ it?"
Geoff bowed his head in silent assent.
"That I--I--did this thing?"
Still he could not answer, could not put into brutal words theconviction that had been forced upon him.
"That I met you and took you into Gleer Cottage last night?" she wenton. "Took you in there and showed you that man's--body? I?"
"Not exactly showed it to me--that, as we both know, is an exaggeration.You showed me into the room where it was hanging, however. Or, at least,you waved me to the door and told me to go in there and wait a minute ortwo and you'd rejoin me and show me something that would 'light the wayback to the land of happiness!' But you never did rejoin me. I waited inthat dark room for fully ten minutes but you never came back. Afterward,when I struck a match to light a cigarette and saw that dead man spikedto the wall-- God! I think I went mad for the moment. I know I ran outof the house, although I do not know when nor how; for when I came to mysenses I was racing up and down the right-of-way across the fields; andif it had not been for you I should have run on until I dropped. But allof a sudden I remembered you, remembered that in rushing out of thehouse I had left you there; and you might come back to that room andfind me gone, and think that I had deserted you. I ran back to the placeas fast as I could. I remembered that when first you met me and took meinto it you had led me in through the gates and up the drive to thedoor; but when I got back there a horror of the place seized me. Icouldn't have gone in that way again had my life depended upon it. Therewas a break in the boundary wall. I got back into the grounds that way,cutting my wrist--look, see, here's the mark--on the fragments of brokenglass which still adhered to the coping. I ran through the gardens andround to the back of the house. I burst open the rear door and racedalong the passage to the room where De Louvisan's body hung. You werenot there. I struck another match to see, noticing this time that therewas the half of a candle standing upon the mantelpiece, where it hadbeen secured in its own wax. I took that thing and lit it and ranthrough all the house, hunting for you. There was not a trace of youanywhere--and at last, in a panic, I rushed from the house and flew formy very life. But there was no getting away so easily as all that.Lights were shining, men were coming, the hue and cry had begun. I couldnot go forward; I dared not go back. I remembered the old hollow treewhere we used to play in our kiddy days, you and I. I ran to that andgot inside of it--and I was there through all that followed. I was foundin time, and it might have ended badly for me but for my father'sfriend, Mr. Narkom, and a French detective--a muff of a fellow named DeLesparre. It didn't, however. I got off scot free, thanking God that nosuspicion pointed your way, and telling myself that you had not left somuch as one hair from the ermine cloak you wore that might be caught upas a clue to bring the thing home to you!"
"The ermine cloak I wore! You say I wore an ermine cloak?"
"Yes. An ermine cloak and the same pretty white frock you had worn atthe Close earlier in the evening. It was the white of the ermine thatfirst attracted my attention in the darkness when I looked up and sawyou near the gates of Gleer Cottage."
"That is not the truth!" she flung back, with a sudden awakening fromthe sort of stupor which, up till now, had mastered her. "I never worean ermine cloak in my life! I never was nearer to Gleer Cottage lastnight than I am at this minute; and if you say that I met you, that Ispoke to you, that I even saw you, or that you saw me after Ailsa Lorneled me out of the drawing-room at Clavering Close when you threatenedthe Count de Louvisan's life, you are saying what is absolutely untrue."
"Kathie!"
"I repeat it, utterly and absolutely untrue."
"Good God! Do you accuse me of lying?"
"There must be some horrible mistake. Some one impersonated me for someawful purpose. You never saw me again after I left your father's houselast night, and you know it. But, in any case, since you confess thatyou were there, what took you to Gleer Cottage last night at all?"