The Hunt Ball Mystery Part 25

In the bright moonlight he could see her expression of rather haughty surprise. "I think you are unmannerly, Mr. Gifford," she retorted defiantly. "May I ask why you are not going to leave me here?"

"Because," he answered with quiet decision, "Mr. Henshaw is waiting just there in Turner's Lane."

"Is he?" The same defiant note; but there was anxiety behind the cold pretence.

"Yes. And pardon me, I have an idea he is waiting there for you."

His firm tone and manner baffled equivocation. "What is it to you if he is?" she returned with a brave attempt to suggest cold displeasure. But her lip trembled and her voice was scarcely steady.

"It is something to me," he replied insistently, "because it means a great deal to you. This man is persecuting you. He is--"

"Mr. Gifford!" she exclaimed. "You take--"

He held up his hand. "Please let me finish, Miss Morriston. I can convince you that I am not taking too much upon myself. I am no fool and am not interfering without warrant. This man Henshaw has succeeded in persuading you that you are in his power. That is very far from being the case, and I can prove it."

"I don't understand you, Mr. Gifford."

The tone of cold annoyance was gone now. Relief and a vague hope seemed to be struggling with an almost overwhelming anxiety.

"You will understand directly," he replied. "I have more than a suspicion that this man is seeking to connect you with his brother's death and is making use of a certain half-knowledge he possesses to get a hold over you. Is that not so?"

For a while she was silent, her breath coming quickly, as she hesitated how to meet the direct question. Gifford hated, yet somehow rejoiced, to see this proud, cold-mannered girl brought to this pa.s.s, and the reason he rejoiced lay in the knowledge that he could help her out of it.

At length she spoke. "Mr. Gifford, I trust you as a man of honour. Your conjecture is right, but unhappily there is no help for it."

"There is help," he declared rea.s.suringly. "Can this man prove that you are in any way guilty of his brother's death?"

The girl gave a shiver. "He can by implication," she admitted in a low voice.

"Can he prove it?"

"Not actually, perhaps. But far enough to disgrace me and mine for ever,"

she said with a sob.

"And with that idea he terrorizes you?" The question was put with quiet sternness.

"Yes, yes; but I cannot help it! I cannot bear it. Oh, let me go." She seemed now in an agony of fear.

Gifford laid his hand on her as she sought to move away towards the gate and the waiting enemy.

"Miss Morriston," he said with decision, "you must not go; you must have no more communication with this man Henshaw. He can prove nothing against you, while I can prove everything in your favour."

Her look of fear and impatience changed at the last words to one of startled incredulity.

"You, Mr. Gifford? What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I say," he returned decisively, "I can prove, if need be, that you had no hand in that cowardly ruffian's death."

"You? How?" the girl gasped, staring at him with dilated eyes.

"I will convince you," he answered quietly. "When I told you the other day that I had found your brooch on the lawn I said, for an obvious reason, what was not true. I found it in the room where Clement Henshaw died."

"You did," the girl gasped almost in terror. "When?"

"A few minutes after his death," Gifford replied calmly. "I happened to be present in the room when he came by his fatal wound."

CHAPTER XX

AN INVOLUNTARY EAVESDROPPER

As she heard the words Edith Morriston stood for a moment as though transfixed, and then staggered back grasping at a tombstone for support.

Gifford took a quick step forward, but before he could be of help she had recovered from the shock, and motioning him back, was looking at him with incredulous eyes.

"You were there?" she repeated, with more suspicion now than unbelief.

"In that room at the top of the tower; yes; by accident," he answered in a tone calculated to rea.s.sure her.

"Then you know--you saw what happened?"

He bowed his head in a.s.sent. "Enough to be sure that Mr. Clement Henshaw was a great scoundrel, and that his fate was not altogether unmerited.

Now," he added in a tone of decision, "you will have nothing more to do with this Gervase Henshaw, or he with you."

It was good to see the eager relief in Edith Morriston's eyes.

"And you never told me this before," she said.

"I could not very well," he replied. "And I should not have told you now had I not been forced to protect you from this man. It is a dangerous position for me to stand in, and I should in ordinary circ.u.mstances have let the affair remain a mystery."

"I understand your position," she responded, with a look of grat.i.tude.

"But you can trust me."

"Indeed I can," he a.s.sured her with infinite content.

"I don't realize it now," the girl said, with signs that she was fighting against the effect of the reaction. "Can you trust me enough to tell me how it all happened?"

"I would trust you with my life," he responded fervently. "Though it hardly comes to that. Of course I will tell you the whole story of my adventure. But we had better not stay here. Mr. Henshaw must be getting impatient by this time and may come to look for you. Before he has the chance of meeting you it will be well for you to hear the real facts of the case. Shall we come into the park, or would your brother--"

"d.i.c.k is at church," she said, a little shamefacedly, it seemed. "I gave him the slip."

"What a terrible risk you have just run," Gifford observed as they went through the churchyard to the private gate into the park. "If I had not happened to come along just then and see Henshaw waiting--"

"Oh, don't talk of that now," she entreated. "I knew it meant horrible misery for the rest of my life, but anything seemed better than the terrible scandal which threatened us."

"With which Henshaw threatened you, the scoundrel," Gifford corrected.