Grit Lawless Part 18

"What makes you so confident we should find him at home?" Van Bleit asked quickly.

"Because, until I set out to look for you, I was seated on his stoep with him, smoking."

"--And discussing me?"

"And discussing the letter and its conditions as they concerned you-- yes."

"He keeps late hours if he is out of bed when we get there," Van Bleit remarked. "It's after midnight."

Simmonds, who had been instructed to fetch Van Bleit to the bungalow that night if possible, with difficulty repressed a smile.

"I imagine he does keep late hours," he said. "The only occasions I have surprised him in bed have been in the daytime. But if he were abed I don't doubt he would see you. Nevertheless, if you prefer some other time, I am sure it will be equally convenient to him."

"And if I refuse to go at all?"

"Then, I expect he will drop down on you. You see his instructions are imperative. He has no voice in the matter."

Van Bleit swung round suddenly and stared in the other's face.

"It's a game of bluff you're playing," he said. "I don't trust you.

I'll go with you to-night--yes. I'll hear the proposal this precious letter contains. But, remember, I'm armed, and I shan't hesitate to use my weapon if I see the slightest occasion."

"You may rea.s.sure yourself. Great as you know our interest in you to be," Simmonds replied imperturbably, "I don't suppose either of us covets the distinction of hanging for you."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Karl Van Bleit was neither popular nor especially respected among his fellows, nevertheless a sensation that had in it something of consternation supervened when the news burst like a bomb over Cape Town that he had been arrested on a charge of murder. His connection with the Smythes added considerably to the interest, and lent a social importance to the affair. Speculation was rife concerning the crime, the details of which were tardy in forthcoming; only the barest facts were known, and these were sufficiently unusual to strain public curiosity to the utmost. A sense of mystery enveloped the affair: the lonely bungalow; the hour; the unexplained connection between the three men, who had met by arrangement seemingly, for what reason had not transpired; the shooting affray, in which one man, Simmonds, had been killed; and finally the arrest of Van Bleit, who had on leaving the bungalow walked into town and given himself up to the authorities.

The whole business was, in the opinion of Theodore Smythe, worthy the shady character of his wife's undesirable connection. Out of a feeling of delicacy he kept the verbal expression of his views from her. He did his utmost to console her; for she was not only inexpressibly shocked, but acutely alive to the danger of Van Bleit's position. He even promised to secure for his defence the best services that money could procure. But he entertained no great belief that Karl would get out of the present mess. He had been extraordinarily lucky hitherto through a career of suspected crime; nothing beyond suspicion had clung to him; but it seemed as though this time at least the law had got its iron grip on him and would not be likely to let go. Putting his wife's feelings out of the question, Smythe had a distinct dislike to the idea of a connection of his own suffering the penalty of the law.

"It's such a beastly low-down, undignified position," he complained.

Mrs Lawless read the news while she lingered over her breakfast. The midnight tragedy had already been seized upon to fill a column of the daily paper. Her face turned paler as she read, and the hand that held the newspaper was not quite steady. When she had read to the last line she laid the paper down beside her plate and sat staring out at the sunshine with wide startled eyes... Murder! ... There was something terrible in the mere sight of the word in print--something horribly revolting. Could it be possible that this man with whom she had talked so often, who had touched her with his hands, was guilty of this foul crime? She shivered at the mere remembrance that only the night before he had held her hand and touched it with his lips. He had parted from her and had gone straightway and done this thing... What violent deeds men who engage in desperate ventures will commit!

She rose from the table, and leaving her unfinished breakfast, went out into the garden. The news had shocked her. She looked like a woman who is frightened and at the same time infinitely relieved. As she paced up and down beneath the trees that cast their pleasant shade upon the path, one thought kept beating upon her brain with an insistence that drove out every other thought and lulled a long-endured pain at her heart like some blessed anodyne. She smiled as she looked up into the green tracery above her head.

"If she by her evil influence over him has saved him from danger," her thought ran, "then I am grateful to her for coming into his life."

And so she put behind her her jealousy of the woman who for the present dominated Lawless' life.

Later in the morning Mrs Lawless ordered the car and drove into Cape Town to call on her friend.

She found Mrs Smythe reclining on a cane lounge on the stoep, a book beside her, which she was not reading, and the morning paper open at the page with the gruesome headline lying in her lap. She looked round as Zoe Lawless mounted the steps, and seeing who it was, got up and went to meet her.

"Oh! how good of you to come," she said. "I have been thinking of you... Zoe, isn't it awful? ... I can't believe it. I can scarcely realise it yet."

Tears rose in her eyes, already spoiled with futile weeping for a man so little worthy of her grief. She dabbed at them ineffectually with a wet handkerchief, and added with unconscious absurdity:

"Karl couldn't have done it... He wouldn't hurt a fly."

Mrs Lawless put her hands upon her shoulders, and bending from her superior height, kissed the tremulous mouth.

"Poor Kate!" she said, and led her gently back to her seat.

"I feel," said Mrs Smythe plaintively, "as though he were dead already... as though he, and not the other man, had met with a violent end. Oh! surely he will be able to explain... They were two to one...

What could they have wanted with him? And why were they armed? Men who are peaceable citizens don't carry firearms. Karl must have distrusted them to take a revolver with him... And yet, Colonel Grey--"

She broke off suddenly, and added in a voice of puzzled questioning:

"Zoe, you never liked Colonel Grey!"

Mrs Lawless leant back in a chair, her chin tilted slightly upward, gazing into the remote blueness of the sky. The flicker of a smile shone in the dark eyes, but the gravity of her features remained otherwise unchanged.

"That isn't quite a correct statement," she said. "As I told you before, it is Colonel Grey who doesn't like me."

Mrs Smythe regarded her doubtfully.

"I thought you were joking when you said that," she replied. "If you really believe it, I think you are mistaken. He has often spoken of you, and it seemed to me that he greatly admires you. It is a strange thing to say in face of what has happened, but I always felt he was a man to be trusted."

"You can't be certain," replied Zoe, "that your first impression of him is wrong. Quarrels between men--even violent quarrels--don't necessarily make them rogues. I feel the same about him. I think he is an eminently trustworthy person."

"But," objected Mrs Smythe, "there is this affair with Karl... Karl always disliked him--he was rude to him once in this house. He made me angry, I remember, poor fellow!"

She sighed and again dabbed at her eyes with her ruined pocket-handkerchief.

"We've been more like brother and sister than cousins," she explained apologetically. "He has confided his troubles to me since he was a boy, and now in this great trouble I can't even help."

She did not think it necessary to explain that in those early days, when he was an impecunious young man and she a good-looking girl with a larger dowry than most girls, he had expended much time and eloquence in endeavouring to persuade her to accept his name in exchange for her fortune. She had believed then in the honesty of his professions of love, though she had felt too sisterly towards him to yield to his wishes; and it had been her one desire ever since her own happy marriage to see him happily married also. In Mrs Lawless she believed she had found a worthy mate for him.

"Zoe," she exclaimed suddenly, turning appealingly towards her friend, "you won't let this shocking affair prejudice you against the poor boy!

He may be able to justify himself. I can't believe that there isn't some explanation. It seems a horrible gigantic mistake... You won't be prejudiced, will you?" she pleaded.

"I am not prejudiced, Kate," the other answered.

There was in the steady voice, in the expression of the composed face, so little encouragement to be read that Mrs Smythe for the first time entertained serious doubts of Karl's success. She had imagined that his suit was prospering satisfactorily; now, like a further darkening of the already dark cloud that depressed her spirit, it was borne in upon her consciousness that Zoe Lawless did not love him. She could not love him and remain so entirely unmoved in face of the awful fate that overshadowed him.

"Of course," she went on, still more dejectedly, for her heart was sorely troubled, "no woman cares to have her name mixed up in a scandal like this. It would be only a great love that could live through such an ordeal. I suppose I'm foolish, Zoe, but I had hoped--"

She paused, unable to complete the sentence, and surveyed the dark glowing beauty of her silent companion with added distress in her eyes.

"Oh, Zoe!" she burst out impulsively. "He thinks the world of you...

There's a new quality comes into his voice whenever he speaks of you.

You are the sunshine of the land to him--it's his own phrase. If he thought he stood no chance of winning you, I don't believe he would attempt to defend himself against this awful charge--I truly don't."

A wave of colour swept over Zoe Lawless' face, but beyond the swift blush she showed no sign of embarra.s.sment.

"My dear," she said, "you are mistaken--utterly mistaken."