The Evil Shepherd Part 42

"Go on, please," she begged.

"Well, I was talking to Andrew. I told him that in future I should accept no case unless I not only believed in but was convinced of the innocence of my client. I added that I was at war with crime. I think, perhaps, I was so deeply in earnest that I may have sounded a little flamboyant. At any rate, your father, who had overheard me, moved up to our table. I think he deduced from what I was saying that I was going to turn into a sort of amateur crime-investigator, a person who I gathered later was particularly obnoxious to him. At any rate, he held out a challenge. 'If you are a man who hates crime,' he said, or something like it, 'I am one who loves it.' He then went on to prophesy that a crime would be committed close to where we were, within an hour or so, and he challenged me to discover the a.s.sa.s.sin. That night Victor Bidlake was murdered just outside Soto's."

"I remember! Do you mean to tell me, then," Margaret went on, with a little shiver, "that father told you this was going to happen?"

"He certainly did," Francis replied. "How his knowledge came I am not sure--yet. But he certainly knew."

"Have you anything else against him?" she asked.

"There was the disappearance of Andrew Wilmore's younger brother, Reginald Wilmore. I have no right to connect your father with that, but Shopland, the Scotland Yard detective, who has charge of the case, seems to believe that the young man was brought into this neighbourhood, and some other indirect evidence which came into my hands does seem to point towards your father being concerned in the matter. I appealed to him at once but he only laughed at me. That matter, too, remains a mystery."

Margaret was thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned towards the house.

They heard the soft ringing of the gong.

"Will you believe me when I tell you this?" she begged, as they pa.s.sed arm in arm down the pergola. "I am terrified of my father, though in many ways he is almost princely in his generosity and in the broad view he takes of things. Then his kindness to all dumb animals, and the way they love him, is the most amazing thing I ever knew. If we were alone here to-night, every animal in the house would be around his chair. He has even the cats locked up if we have visitors, so that no one shall see it. But I am quite honest when I tell you this--I do not believe that my father has the ordinary outlook upon crime. I believe that there is a good deal more of the Old Testament about him than the New."

"And this change which we were speaking about?" he asked, lowering his voice as they reached the lawn.

"I believe that somehow or other the end is coming," she said. "Francis, forgive me if I tell you this--or rather let me be forgiven--but I know of one crime my father has committed, and it makes me fear that there may be others. And I have the feeling, somehow, that the end is close at hand and that he feels it, just as we might feel a thunder-storm in the air."

"I am going to prove the immemorial selfishness of my s.e.x," he whispered, as they drew near the little table. "Promise me one thing and I don't care if your father is Beelzebub himself. Promise me that, whatever happens, it shall not make any difference to us?"

She smiled at him very wonderfully, a smile which had to take the place of words, for there were servants now within hearing, and Sir Timothy himself was standing in the doorway.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy strolled after dinner to the bottom of the lawn and watched the punt which Francis was propelling turn from the stream into the river.

"Perfectly idyllic," Lady Cynthia sighed.

"We have another punt," her companion suggested.

She shook her head.

"I am one of those unselfish people," she declared, "whose idea of repose is not only to rest oneself but to see others rest. I think these two chairs, plenty of cigarettes, and you in your most gracious and discoursive mood, will fill my soul with content."

"Your decision relieves my mind," her companion declared, as he arranged the cushions behind her back. "I rather fancy myself with a pair of sculls, but a punt-pole never appealed to me. We will sit here and enjoy the peace. To-morrow night you will find it all disturbed--music and raucous voices and the stampede of my poor, frightened horses in the park. This is really a very gracious silence."

"Are those two really going to marry?" Lady Cynthia asked, moving her head lazily in the direction of the disappearing punt.

"I imagine so."

"And you? What are you going to do then?"

"I am planning a long cruise. I telegraphed to Southampton to-day. I am having my yacht provisioned and prepared. I think I shall go over to South America."

She was silent for a moment.

"Alone?" she asked presently.

"I am always alone," he answered.

"That is rather a matter of your own choice, is it not?"

"Perhaps so. I have always found it hard to make friends. Enemies seem to be more in my line."

"I have not found it difficult to become your friend," she reminded him.

"You are one of my few successes," he replied.

She leaned back with half-closed eyes. There was nothing new about their environment--the cl.u.s.ters of roses, the perfume of the lilies in the rock garden, the even sweeter fragrance of the trim border of mignonette. Away in the distance, the night was made momentarily ugly by the sound of a gramophone on a pa.s.sing launch, yet this discordant note seemed only to bring the perfection of present things closer. Back across the velvety lawn, through the feathery strips of foliage, the lights of The Sanctuary, shaded and subdued, were dimly visible. The dining-table under the cedar-tree had already been cleared. Hedges, newly arrived from town to play the major domo, was putting the finishing touches to a little array of cool drinks. And beyond, dimly seen but always there, the wall. She turned to him suddenly.

"You build a wall around your life," she said, "like the wall which encircles your mystery house. Last night I thought that I could see a little way over the top. To-night you are different."

"If I am different," he answered quietly, "it is because, for the first time for many years, I have found myself wondering whether the life I had planned for myself, the things which I had planned should make life for me, are the best. I have had doubts--perhaps I might say regrets."

"I should like to go to South America," Lady Cynthia declared softly.

He finished the cigarette which he was smoking and deliberately threw away the stump. Then he turned and looked at her. His face seemed harder than ever, clean-cut, the face of a man able to defy Fate, but she saw something in his eyes which she had never seen before.

"Dear child," he said, "if I could roll back the years, if from all my deeds of sin, as the world knows sin, I could cancel one, there is nothing in the world would make me happier than to ask you to come with me as my cherished companion to just whatever part of the world you cared for. But I have been playing pitch and toss with fortune all my life, since the great trouble came which changed me so much. Even at this moment, the coin is in the air which may decide my fate."

"You mean?" she ventured.

"I mean," he continued, "that after the event of which we spoke last night, nothing in life has been more than an incident, and I have striven to find distraction by means which none of you--not even you, Lady Cynthia, with all your breadth of outlook and all your craving after new things--would justify."

"Nothing that you may have done troubles me in the least," she a.s.sured him. "I do wish that you could put it all out of your mind and let me help you to make a fresh start."

"I may put the thing itself out of my mind," he answered sadly, "but the consequences remain."

"There is a consequence which threatens?" she asked.

He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, he had recovered all his courage.

"There is the coin in the air of which I spoke," he replied. "Let us forget it for a moment. Of the minor things I will make you my judge.

Ledsam and Margaret are coming to my party to-morrow night. You, too, shall be my guest. Such secrets as lie on the other side of that wall shall be yours. After that, if I survive your judgment of them, and if the coin which I have thrown into the air comes, down to the tune I call--after that--I will remind you of something which happened last night--of something which, if I live for many years, I shall never forget."

She leaned towards him. Her eyes were heavy with longing. Her arms, sweet and white in the dusky twilight, stole hesitatingly out.

"Last night was so long ago. Won't you take a later memory?"

Once again she lay in his arms, still and content.

As they crossed the lawn, an hour or so later, they were confronted by Hedges--who hastened, in fact, to meet them.