The House by the Lock Part 19

CHAPTER XXVI

A Tell-tale Ornament

"No, you don't!" I remarked, cheerfully, and with the force of superior muscles I pulled him towards me. "Come, sit down here by me," I said. "I want to talk to you." And somehow it came about that we subsided on the cushioned seat together.

He had recognised me, of course, as the man he had seen in the hotel--the man, Noel Stanton, against whom I did not doubt his cablegram had warned him. He was pale as death, and I could see that this meeting, added, like the piling of Ossa upon Pelion, on top of all that he had already gone through, had robbed him of the shattered remnant of his nerve.

Still, he was ready to "bluff" and brave if out while he could.

"Confound you!" he exclaimed. "What are you about? You must be mad to attack a stranger without the slightest provocation. Let me alone, sir, or I'll rouse the car."

"I wouldn't, you know, if I were you," I said coolly, for the more excited he grew the more did my own calmness come back to me. "You've been playing a dangerous game ever since you took your pa.s.sage in the American liner _St. Paul_ (or, rather, since Carson Wildred took it for you), but you've never, perhaps, steered so close to the wind as to-night, when you resorted to incendiarism as a finishing stroke."

The fellow stared at me in simulated nonchalance and defiance, but my hand was on his shoulder still, and I could feel the shudder that ran through his body.

"I say you must be mad," he reiterated.

"So you observed before; but I could very easily prove to you that I'm not, if you were not already sure of it. You can call for a.s.sistance if you like, but if you do the story I've got to tell will go flashing over the wires back to 'Frisco, and on to Denver, and you will find yourself in almost as hot a place as if you had stayed at the Santa Anna Hotel, where you wanted the world to think that poor Harvey Farnham had been roasted."

Once more the fit of shivering seized him. He glanced wildly about, as though to find some means of escape, but there was none.

"I am a bigger man and a stronger man than you," I remarked, in a significant and reflective manner. "Better hear the alternative I've got to offer. I know everything, you see--that is, everything that concerns _you_, and the curious game you've been playing.

"I've been just three days behind you everywhere since you left New York. I've got every link in the evidence now, and what with Bennett, of Denver, and the proprietor of the Santa Anna Hotel, and a few others, I can burst your wretched little soap bubble plot in four-and-twenty hours. There's just one way in which you can stay my hand."

"What's that?" He had spoken out impulsively, before he had stopped to think. The instant the words were uttered he saw all that they admitted, and bit his lip. But it was too late; he was completely trapped.

"I'll tell you," I said, keeping my hand on his shoulder, almost caressingly. "I'd listen attentively, if I were in your place. What you can do is to make a clean breast of your story from beginning to end.

I'm willing to pay you more for confessing than Wildred did for plotting. Then you must go back to England with me, and stand by while the thing is made public."

As I spoke he did not once take his eyes from me. It was remarkable even yet, now that he was out of his disguise, how strong his likeness was to Farnham. He might have been a younger brother.

When I had finished he sighed and drooped his head. His own hair, which was very closely cut, was of a beautiful reddish golden colour, much the shade of Karine Cunningham's, as the light fell on it from above. I thought of her with a great wave of pa.s.sionate love, and more of hope than I had dared to feel for many a long day.

Perhaps it was the recollection of her lovely face and the wonderful halo of her hair which caused me for an instant to relax my grasp. I only became conscious of having done so when the fellow twisted himself from under my hand, and springing lithely to his feet would have darted through the swing door had I not leaped after him like a tiger.

We fought together as the car swayed and bounded along its tracks. Once he dived under my arm and was almost out of my clutches, but I caught him by the collar with so fierce a grip that the linen of his shirt tore, and the garment ripped open to the waistcoat.

Something which he wore beneath snapped, as he still struggled to escape me, and a bright object flashed under my eyes as it fell, and dropped with a slight metallic noise to the floor.

Evidently it was to him an article of value. Impulsively he stooped, forgetful for a second of the object which had animated him, and thus the advantage became all mine again. I had him pinioned fast.

At our feet, I now had time to observe, lay a broken gold chain and a locket.

Twisting my hand firmly in his collar I bent over and picked up the ornaments. "Allow me," I said, smiling. And as I was about to put the locket in his hand I could not avoid seeing the portrait that it framed.

It was an open-faced, old-fashioned thing, set round with a rim of pearls. The crystal had been cracked across in the fall, but the delicately painted ivory miniature within was intact, and I gave a slight exclamation as I saw that it represented Karine Cunningham.

If I had been surprised to see her picture in the "studio" at the House by the Lock, I was doubly surprised to see it in a locket worn by a young desperado on the other side of the world. Impulsively I withdrew my hand which held the ornament, with the feeling that the man had no right to it--that I could not return it to him again.

"Give it back to me!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, forgetting his evident fear of me for the first time, and speaking with a certain manly fierceness that thawed the chill of my contempt for him. "If I've got a right to nothing else on earth, I've got a right to that. It's a portrait of my sister."

"_Your sister!_ You swear that?"

"Of course I swear it. I don't see why you shouldn't know it--though I haven't done much credit to the name of Cunningham."

I could not doubt him. Not that I had not every reason to believe that he would be willing to lie as fast as he could speak if it happened to suit his purpose, but the ring of sincerity in his voice was unmistakable.

I let go my hold upon him. Such was his astonishment at the manoeuvre that he made no attempt to take advantage of his freedom, but simply stood still and stared at me.

"Here is the locket," I said. "I came from England to California to serve Miss Cunningham's interests, and I will not lay my hand upon her brother."

"I don't know what you mean," he said, sullenly.

"I'll tell you," I returned, "if you'll sit down here and listen to me for a few minutes longer. After that, as far as I am concerned, you are free to do as you choose. You look surprised--but whatever may have been your faults and your offences, I would stake my life you love your sister."

"She is the only being on earth I do love," he replied, still half dazedly.

Then he sat down, his eyes furtively on me, and I seated myself beside him.

"She is sacrificing herself for someone," I remarked. "I think I begin dimly to understand now who that someone may be. I think, too, that circ.u.mstances have given me the right to be inquisitive, as I can still further explain to you later on. Is Miss Cunningham going to marry Carson Wildred to save you from any unpleasant consequences of the past, for instance?"

He started as though he had been struck.

"She is _not_ going to marry Carson Wildred!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, yes, she is, unless it can be prevented. I see I have even more to tell you than I thought. Is it long, may I ask, since you have seen your sister?"

"Last November," he said drooping his head, and bringing under my eyes again the hair that was like hers.

"Ah, that explains your ignorance. The man had not shown his hand at that time. Now I am going to trust to your affection for Miss Cunningham, to your presumable wish to save her from unhappiness, and talk to you as though we had been allies instead of enemies. Perhaps I may be a fool for my pains; but something seems to say to me----"

"Something says right. Go on!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, gruffly.

No doubt the very most dunder-headed of lawyers or detectives would have told me that I was mad, thus deliberately to give all my good trumps away to the treacherous, hired scoundrel whom I had been hunting down with the dogged ferocity of a bloodhound. On principle, of course, I _was_ all wrong, and I knew it; but still I went on.

I told him the strange story of the past few weeks from beginning to end. I commenced with the part which concerned Farnham and Carson Wildred alone. I did not pa.s.s over that which had to do with Karine, my hopeless and unrequited love for her, my pa.s.sionate anxiety to serve her at all costs; and I ended by declaring my certainty that Carson Wildred and Willis Collins were one and the same man.

"He is doubly a murderer," I said. "And yet, unless you and I together can keep him from it, he will be your sister's husband."

"I'll kill him first!" exclaimed my companion.

"I think the trick can be done without resorting to such extreme measures as that," I returned, "especially if you are willing to come over from his camp to mine."

He looked at me sharply for a moment without answering, then he said: