Grit Lawless Part 4

"Oh! someone of the same name... That's rather a broad claim to kinship."

The change in her tone was unmistakable. Her manner became more guarded, more studiously careless, but the face exposed to the merciless raking of his gaze wore a faintly distressed flush.

"He claimed kinship with you," he insisted, smiling pleasantly at her, while he pulled at his iron-grey moustache with a large, well-shaped hand. "I can't help feeling he was justified even on the most slender grounds. He was related to you by marriage, so he said."

She looked at him inquiringly.

"By marriage only," he added, unconsciously quoting Lawless.

"Yes!"

Her composure had rea.s.serted itself. The man who watched her felt puzzled to understand what there had been in his tactless speech to cause her embarra.s.sment, what there was in his further speech to relieve the strain. Her disapproval of the man must be fairly deep-rooted when an indirect mention of him caused her distress. She turned the tables while he was thus wondering, and roused dark doubts and anxious suspicions in his own breast as to the honesty of purpose of the reckless adventurer in whom he had confided an important trust.

"You speak of Mr Lawless," she said quietly. "He called upon me to-day."

"Indeed?"

The Colonel's eyes snapped. He hunched his shoulders, and jerked his big head forward and peered hard at her. Intuition told her what he was thinking. He feared treachery. Distrust grew in him, distrust of the man for whose services he was paying,--the man who was connected by marriage with this woman who had tricked a drunken boy and robbed him; who was on visiting terms with her, though he had emphatically stated that the connection counted for nothing,--the man who was a friend and comrade of the scoundrel Van Bleit,--the man who was cashiered from the Army for a reason the Colonel had yet to find out. And he intended to find out. He had already started inquiries.

She looked back at him steadily, and her slightly raised eyebrows betokened a faint curiosity. She was fencing with him. They were fighting a duel with wit for their weapons; and if the first advantage had been on his side, the second and greater advantage was to her. The knowledge annoyed him.

"Mr Lawless is to be doubly congratulated," he said drily. "Many men would envy him his reputation, all men would envy him the privilege of calling himself your kinsman."

She smiled faintly.

"That is flattery, Colonel Grey," she answered. "But tell me why men should envy him his reputation. I was not aware that it justified envy."

"Is there nothing enviable in a reputation for valour?" he asked.

She turned deathly white, and her eyes glittered angrily in her tense face.

"If I do not misunderstand you," she replied, "that is the meanest speech man ever made."

He looked, as he felt, wholly nonplussed. There was to come a day when he better understood her then incomprehensible indignation, when he not only understood but sympathised with it; but at the time he was entirely baffled. He could only feel astonishment at her outbreak.

"I fear you do misunderstand me," he said. "There was nothing unworthy in the speech. I merely conceded to a brave man a brave man's due. I have heard many tales of his courage. Men call him Grit who remember him by no other name. If there is truth in hearsay, he has earned the nickname."

His manner was sufficiently earnest to convince her of his sincerity.

The swift anger died out of her eyes, leaving them softly pensive, and wistful, like the eyes of a woman who meets Hope on the road of Disillusion, and being unprepared for the meeting, is inclined to doubt that it is Hope that she encounters.

"Grit!" she repeated softly. And added: "I have not been out here long, and I have heard nothing of Mr Lawless for years... I have not heard the nickname before, but--I like it... Why do men call him Grit?"

"Because," he answered quietly, "they credit him with being without fear. They tell tales of his courage--or, rather, less of his courage than of his absolute fearlessness. He is a man to whom fear is unknown... That is the popular belief."

"And you do not share it?"

He was not altogether prepared for the question. She sprang it upon him suddenly, as if something in his manner challenged her to the inquiry.

"I have his word for it that he has known terror," he answered quietly, after a brief hesitation.

"That does not disprove his courage," she said quickly.

"No," he allowed. "Courage is fear overcome."

There was another and longer pause. He ended it with the reluctant admission:

"I am inclined to believe myself that Grit Lawless has earned his nickname."

"You give your meed of praise grudgingly," she said. But she smiled while she spoke, and the Colonel was dazzled, as many men had been dazzled before him, by the extraordinary seductiveness of her smile.

It was not until he was back in his bungalow going over the interview, and that part of their talk that had related to Lawless, that it occurred to him her manner had been rather that of a person jealous for a friend's reputation than of a woman who disapproved of, and disowned, a kinsman. And his old suspicion of her, and of the man whom he had trusted in a difficult and dangerous enterprise, returned with renewed force. It struck him as a highly suspicious circ.u.mstance that while Lawless was on visiting terms with the woman he should have given him to understand that the relationship between them was the reverse of friendly. He would have liked to question Lawless on the subject; but it had been agreed between them for the greater success of their plans that it was safer to hold no intercourse. If either wished to communicate with the other it was left to his discretion to select a trustworthy messenger. The occasion scarcely justified, in the Colonel's opinion, so extreme a measure. If he had enlisted the services of a traitor, it was but another false move of the many that had been made. Trickery could only be mated by trickery. He must keep his own counsel and watch the game...

He remembered, thinking quietly over the evening's entertainment, how Van Bleit had come forward while he was talking with Mrs Lawless, and ignoring him with pointed insolence, had offered her his arm and led her away on some pretext or another. She had glanced back over her shoulder and given him another of her wonderful dazzling smiles as she left him; and he had uttered the wish then, which now in the lonely silence of his own quarters he repeated:

"I would to G.o.d that woman were on our side!"

CHAPTER FOUR.

Lawless meanwhile had renewed his acquaintance with Van Bleit. On leaving Mrs Lawless' residence he had driven as he had come back to Cape Town, and, dismounting from the taxi outside his hotel, was in the act of paying the driver when Van Bleit pa.s.sed him with the stream of business men homeward bound while he stood upon the kerb feeling for the change. But that scar on Lawless' face was unmistakable, and Van Bleit, arrested by it, paused in his rapid march and glanced inquiringly at him. Then he came back and waited until Lawless had paid and dismissed his driver.

When the tall, spare man with the ugly scar faced round, it was to find the broad figure of Van Bleit blocking his pa.s.sage. He held out his hand as carelessly as though they had met the day before.

"G.o.d, man!" said Van Bleit sharply. "Where have you sprang from? It's a matter of nearly five years since we met, I believe, if one bothered to calculate; and it seems almost a lifetime. It takes me back into the past to see you. What are you doing here?"

"d.a.m.ned if I know," Lawless answered laconically.

Van Bleit laughed.

"Grit, you haven't altered," he said.

He scrutinised the thin, handsome face intently. Then he looked from the man to the hotel before which the latter had alighted.

"Stopping here?" he asked.

Lawless nodded, and Van Bleit's manner warmed.

"I've made lots of inquiries about you, but could never learn anything,"

he said. "I feared you had gone under, but," with a glance at the hotel front, "this scarcely looks like it."

"On the contrary," Lawless answered, "I'm on top at present. I've been under and afloat several times since last we met."

"You struck it rich at the mines, I suppose?"

Lawless laughed unexpectedly.

"Yes," he lied. "I struck it rich at the mines. Any man might who wasn't a fool."

Van Bleit looked cunningly intelligent.