The Pauper of Park Lane Part 43

The girl hesitated.

"She certainly spoke to me," she admitted at last. "I was her most intimate friend, and it was only natural perhaps that she told me what was most uppermost in her mind."

"And what was that?"

"I regret," she replied, "that I cannot repeat it; Mr Statham."

"What! You refuse to say anything?"

"Under compulsion--yes," was her firm answer. "I did not know," she added, "that you had invited me here to ply me with questions in this manner."

"Or you would not have come, eh?" he laughed. "Well, my dear young lady, you apparently don't quite realise how very important it is to me to discover Doctor Petrovitch. I have asked you here in order to beg a favour of you. I may be rough and matter-of-fact, but I trust you will pardon my apparent rudeness."

"There is nothing to forgive, Mr Statham," was her quiet, dignified response. "My reply, quite brief and at the same time unalterable, is that I have nothing to say."

"You mean you refuse to tell me?"

She nodded.

He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his old grey trousers, and stared down at the carpet. Marion Rolfe was more difficult to question than he had antic.i.p.ated. She possessed the same firm, resolute nature of her father and her brother. That Maud Petrovitch had made a statement to her which possessed a most important bearing upon the serious interests involved, he was absolutely certain. Ever since the day following the strange disappearance, certain secret agents of his had been at work, but they had discovered next to nothing. Marion Rolfe alone was in possession of the actual facts. He knew that full well, and was therefore determined that she should be compelled to speak and explain.

"I wish, Miss Rolfe, that I could impress upon you the extreme importance of this matter to myself personally," he said, a.s.suming an air quite conciliatory in the hope that he might induce her to reveal the truth. "I have begged of you to a.s.sist me in a very difficult task--one which, if I fail in accomplishing, will mean an enormous financial revenue. Your brother is in my service, while you yourself are also indirectly in my service," he added; "and if, as result of your information, I am able to discover the Doctor, I need not tell you that I shall mark your services in an appreciable manner."

"You have already been very generous to us both, Mr Statham, but I think you cannot know much of me if you believe that for sake of reward I will betray the Doctor," was her dignified answer.

"It is not a question of betrayal," he hastened to rea.s.sure her. "It is to his own interest as well as to mine that we should meet. If we do not, it will mean ruin to him."

"And if he is dead?" suggested Marion.

"My own belief is that he is not dead," was the millionaire's reply. "I know more of him and of his past than you imagine. There is every reason why he should live."

"And Maud--what of her?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and replied:

"As regards her--you know best. She told you the truth."

"Yes--and which I will not repeat."

"Oh! but, my dear young lady, you must! Why waste time like this?

Every day, nay every hour, causes the affair to a.s.sume increased gravity. I would have gone to the police long ago, only such a course would have brought the Doctor into a criminal dock. I have his interests, as well as my own at heart."

"I have given my promise of secrecy, Mr Statham, and I will not betray it," she repeated, again rising from her chair, anxious to leave the house.

"You still refuse!" he cried starting to his feet also, and standing before her. "You still refuse--even to save yourself!"

"To save myself!" she exclaimed. "I do not follow you, Mr Statham."

A sinister grin spread over his grey face.

"You are perfectly free to leave this place, Miss Rolfe," he said in a hard, meaning voice, "but first reflect what they will say at Cunnington's regarding your visit here to-night!"

"You--you will tell them!" she gasped, drawing back from him, pale as death as she realised, for the first time, how she had imperilled her good name, and how completely she was in his power. "I--I believed, Mr Statham, that you were an honourable man!"

"Where a man's life is concerned it is not a question of honour," was his reply. "You refuse to a.s.sist me--and I refuse to a.s.sist you. That is all!"

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

"HIS NAME!"

"Not a question of honour, Mr Statham!" she cried. "Is it not a question of my own honour!" and she stood before him, erect and defiant.

"My dear young lady," he laughed, "pray calm yourself. Let us discuss the matter quietly."

"There is nothing to discuss," she exclaimed resentfully, looking straight into the old man's grey face. "You have threatened to divulge the secret of my visit to you to-night if--if I refuse to betray my friend! Is such an action honourable? Does such a threat against a defenceless woman do you credit?" she asked.

"You misunderstand me," he hastened to a.s.sure her, realising the mistake he had made.

"I understand that you ask me a question," she said. "You wish me to repeat what was told to me in confidence--the secret imparted to me by the girl who was my beat friend!"

"Yes; I wish to know what Maud Petrovitch told you," he answered, standing with his thin hands behind his back.

"Then I regret that I am unable to satisfy your curiosity," was her firm response. "I now realise your motive in inviting me here at this hour to see you in secret. You meant me to compromise myself--to remain away from Cunnington's and be punished for my absence--the punishment of dismissal," she went on, her fine eyes flashing in anger at his dastardly tactics. "You know quite well, Mr Statham, that the world is only too ready to think ill of a woman! You antic.i.p.ate that I will betray my friend, in order to save myself from calumny and dismissal from the service of the firm. But in that you are mistaken. No word shall pa.s.s my lips, and I wish you good-night," she added with serve hauteur, moving towards the door.

"No, Miss Rolfe!" he cried, quickly intercepting her. "Surely it is unnecessary to create this scene. I hate scenes. Life is really not worth them. You have denounced what you are pleased to call my ungentlemanly tactics. Well, I can only say in my defence that Samuel Statham, although he is not all that he might be, has never acted the blackguard towards a woman, and more especially, towards the daughter of his dear friend."

"You have told me that you will refuse to a.s.sist me further!" she said.

"In other words, you decline to preserve the secret of my visit here, although you made a promise that my absence to-night from Cunnington's should not be noted!"

"I have given you a promise, Miss Rolfe, and I shall keep it," was his quiet and serious response.

She looked at him with distrust.

"You have asked me a question, Mr Statham--one to which I am not permitted to reply," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because--well, because I have made a vow to regard what was told me as strictly in confidence."

Sam Statham pursed his lips. Few were the secrets he could not learn when he set his mind upon learning them. In every capital in Europe he had his agents, who, at orders from him, set about to discover what he wished to know, whether it be a carefully-guarded diplomatic secret, or whether it concerned the love affair of some royal prince to whom he was making a loan. He knew as much of the internal affairs of various countries as their finance ministers did themselves, and with the private affairs of some of his clients he was as well acquainted as were their own valets.

To the possession of sound but secret information much of the old man's success was due. The mysterious men and women who so often came and went to that house all poured into his ear facts they had gathered-- facts which he afterwards duly noted in the locked green-covered book which he kept in the security of his safe.

Surely the contents of that book would, if published, have created a huge sensation; for there were noted there many ugly incidents in the lives of the men who were most prominent in Europe, together, be it said, with facts concerning them that were highly creditable, and sometimes counterbalanced the black pages in their history.

And this man of many secrets stood there thwarted by a mere chit of a girl!

He regarded her coldly with expressionless eyes. His gaze caused her to shudder. She withdrew from him with instinctive dislike. About this man of millions, whose touch turned everything to gold, there seemed to her something superhuman, something indescribably fearsome. His very gaze seemed to fascinate her, and yet at the same time she regarded him with distrust and horror. She was a fool, she told herself, ever to have listened to his appeal. She ought to have had sense enough to know that by bringing her there at that hour he had some sinister motive.