The Avenger Part 51

She waited until he had finished, but she seemed to take very little, if any, notice of his intervention.

"It isn't," she continued, "that I'm afraid to go back to the bar. I'll have to go to work some where, I suppose, but it isn't that. I want to know," she leaned a little forward,--"I want to know who it is that has robbed me of my husband. I don't care what he was to other people! He was very good to me, and I loved him. I should like to see the person who killed him hanged!"

Wrayson, for a moment, was discomposed.

"But that," he said, "has nothing to do with obeying your husband's directions about that packet."

She looked at him with tired eyes and changeless expression.

"Hasn't it?" she asked. "I am not so sure. You have explained about these letters. It is quite certain that my husband was killed by either the friends or the enemies of the woman who wrote these letters. I think that if I take this packet to the police it will help them to find the murderer!"

Her new att.i.tude was a perplexing one. Wrayson glanced at the Baroness as though for counsel. She stepped forward and laid her hand upon the girl's shoulder.

"There is one thing which you must not forget, Mrs. Barnes," she said quietly. "Your husband knew that he was running a great risk in keeping these letters and making a living out of them. His letter to you shows that he was perfectly aware of it. Of course, it is a very terrible, a very inexcusable thing that he should have been killed. But he knew perfectly well that he was in danger. Can't you sympathize a little with the poor woman whose life he made so miserable? Let her have her letters back. You will not find her ungrateful!"

The girl turned slowly round and faced the Baroness. They might indeed have represented the opposite poles in femininity. From the tips of her perfectly manicured fingers to the crown of her admirably coiffured hair, the Baroness stood for all that was elegant and refined in the innermost circles of her s.e.x. Agnes would have looked more in place behind the refreshment bar from which Morris Barnes had brought her. Her dress of cheap shiny silk was ill fitting and hopeless, her hat with its faded flowers and crushed shape an atrocity, boots and gloves, and brooch of artificial gems--all were shocking. Little was left of her pale-faced prettiness. The tragedy which had stolen into her life had changed all that. Yet she faced the Baroness without flinching. She seemed sustained by the suppressed emotion of the moment.

"He was my man," she said fiercely, "and no one had any right to take him away from me. He was my husband, and he was brutally murdered. You tell me that I must give up the letters for the sake of the woman who wrote them! What do I care about her! Is she as unhappy as I am, I wonder? I will not give up the letters," she added, clasping them in her hand, "except--on one condition."

"If it is a reasonable one," the Baroness said, smiling, "there will be no difficulty."

Agnes faced her a little defiantly.

"It depends upon what you call reasonable," she said. "Find out for me who it was that killed my husband, you or any one of you, and you shall have the letters."

Sydney Barnes smiled, and left off nervously tugging at his moustache. If this was not exactly according to his own ideas, it was, at any rate, a step in the right direction. Wrayson was evidently perplexed. The Baroness adopted a persuasive att.i.tude.

"My dear girl," she said, "we don't any of us know who killed your husband. After all, what does it matter? It is terribly sad, of course, but he can't be brought back to life again. You have yourself to think of, and how you are to live in the future. Give me that packet, I will destroy it before your eyes, and I promise you that you shall have no more anxiety about your future."

The girl rose to her feet. The packet was already transferred to the bosom of her dress.

"I have told you my terms," she said. "Some of you know all about it, I dare say! Tell me the truth and you shall have the packet, any one of you."

Wrayson leaned forward.

"The truth is simple," he said earnestly. "We do not know. I can answer for myself. I think that I can answer for the others."

"Then the packet shall help me to find out," she declared.

The Baroness shook her head.

"It will not do, my dear girl," she said quietly. "The packet is not yours."

The girl faced her defiantly.

"Who says that it is not mine?" she demanded.

"I do," the Baroness replied.

"And I!" Wrayson echoed.

"And I say that it is hers--hers and mine," Sydney Barnes declared. "She shall do what she likes with it. She shall not be made to give it up."

"Mrs. Barnes," the Baroness declared briskly, "you must try to be reasonable. We will buy the packet from you."

Sydney Barnes nodded his head approvingly.

"That," he said, "is what I call talking common sense."

"We will give you a thousand pounds for it," the Baroness continued.

"It's not enough, not near enough," Barnes called out hastily. "Don't you listen to them, Agnes."

"I shall not," she answered. "Ten thousand pounds would not buy it. I have said my last word. I am going now. In three days' time I shall return. I will give up the letters then in exchange for the name of my husband's murderer. If I do not get that, I shall go to the police!"

She rose and walked out of the room. They all followed her. The Baroness whispered in Wrayson's ear, but he shook his head.

"It is impossible," he said firmly. "We cannot take them from her by force."

The Baroness shrugged her shoulders. She caught the girl up upon the stairs and they descended together. Wrayson and Sydney Barnes followed, the latter biting his nails nervously and maintaining a gloomy silence.

At the entrance, Wrayson whistled for a cab and handed Agnes in. Sydney Barnes attempted to follow her.

"I will see my sister-in-law home," he declared; but Wrayson's hand fell upon his arm.

"No!" he said. "Mrs. Barnes can take care of herself. She is not to be interfered with."

She nodded back at him from the cab.

"I don't want him," she said. "I don't want any one. In three days' time I will return."

"And until then you will not part with the letters?" Wrayson said.

"Until then," she answered, "I promise."

The cab drove off. Sydney Barnes turned upon Wrayson, white and venomous.

"Where do I come in here?" he demanded fiercely.

"I sincerely trust," Wrayson answered suavely, "that you are not coming in at all. But you, too, can return in three days."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

INEFFECTUAL WOOING