The Second Latchkey Part 34

Still worse was the remembrance of Mrs. Ellsworth's latchkey, the keeping of which had been accidental at first. Afterward he had gaily regarded its possession as a gift from Providence. The way to Ruthven Smith's house was made clear by it; and better still, through it the dragon could be punished for years of cruelty to the captive princess. "Char" had been the man to whom fell the honour of bestowing the punishment, and leaving a missive from the princess's rescuer.

Knight writhed in spirit as he wondered whether the princess guessed the fate of the key.

He wondered also if she asked herself what part he had had in the disappearance of the Valley House heirlooms. She would loathe him more intensely, if possible, could she know how her presence with him on that public "show day" had helped to cloak with respectability his secret mission. How mean he had been in distracting her attention from the two Fragonards and from the cabinets containing the miniatures and the carved Chinese G.o.ds of jade while he "marked" the prizes for the eyes of his two a.s.sistants. How unsuspicious and happy the girl had been, trusting him utterly, while behind her back he manipulated the diamond--the useful diamond--he always carried for such purposes!

Even then he had the grace to be ashamed of himself for disloyalty, though not for dishonesty, as deftly the diamond cut the gla.s.s faces of the cabinets directly opposite the miniatures and the Buddha meant to enrich Paul Van Vreck's secret collection. He had been glad to hurry his wife away, and let the eager pair of "tourists" crowding on his heels finish the work he had begun.

It seemed to Knight, as his thoughts travelled heavily along the past, that no other woman but Annesley Grayle, this fragile white rose that had freely given its sweetness, could have turned him from the vow of vengeance for his parents' fate which as a boy he had sworn against the world. Day by day, week by week, month by month, the fragrance of the white rose had so changed him that looking back at himself, he saw a stranger.

Had it not been for certain engagements made with Paul Van Vreck and others--engagements which had to be kept because there is honour among thieves--that "den" of his in Portman Square would long ago have been shut to his "at home" day visitors. No more "business" would have been done on those or any premises; this party of Easter guests would not have been invited to Valley House; and the Malindore diamond, sleeping away its secret on Annesley's breast, would still be guarding his secret, too.

While the others were at church she had sent him the diamond by Parker--the blue diamond, and the rose sapphire; her engagement ring also; the pearls he had given her the day before their marriage, and all his other gifts (except the wedding ring), which had not been stolen on the night when the Annesley-Setons' silver went.

It had been a blow to open the box brought to his room by the maid without a word of explanation--no lighter because it was deserved. It was only less severe than had the wedding ring been with the rest.

And perhaps, Knight reflected, it would have been there had Annesley known of another trick played upon her: those cleverly "reconstructed"

pearls, gleaming ropes of them, and paste diamonds added to her collection only for the purpose of disappearing in the "burglary." A hateful trick, but he had believed it necessary at the time, while despising it.

Well, he was punished for everything at last--everything vile he had done and thought in his whole life; even those things the White Rose did not know!

He was young still, but he felt old--old in sin and old in hopelessness; for youth cannot exist in a heart deprived of hope. It seemed to Knight that his heart had been deprived of hope for years, yet suddenly he recalled the fact that a few moments before--up to the time when he had begun counting his sins one by one, like the devil's rosary--he had been thinking with something akin to hope of the future.

"What if, after all----" he began to ask himself.

But stumbling unseeingly from avenue to path, and path to lawn, he had wandered near the house.

By what seemed to him a strange coincidence he had come to a standstill almost on the spot where he had stood last night when Annesley, at her window, called him in.

She had loved him then! She had called him in to be forgiven. But her forgiveness, divine as it was, white and wide-winged as the flight of a dove--had not been wide enough to cover his guilt.

What a ghastly difference between last night and this! It was right that the face of the moon, so bright then, should be veiled with ragged black clouds. And yet, what if----

The man's eyes strained through the darkness of that dark hour before the dawn.

"If her window is uncurtained, I'll take it as a good omen," he said.

Noiselessly his feet trod the short, wet gra.s.s, going nearer to the shadowed loggia to make sure....

The curtains were drawn closely, and the window was shut.

CHAPTER XXII

DESTINY AND THE WALDOS

After the cablegram came, calling them to America, it took the Nelson Smiths an incredibly short time to wind up their affairs and to break the ties--many and intricate as the clinging tendrils of a vine--which attached them to England.

Of course, as their friends pointed out, it wasn't as if they had had a home of their own. Luckily for them--unluckily for the Annesley-Setons--they had taken the Portman Square house only month by month. And in Devonshire they had been but paying--dearly paying!--guests, as the world surmised.

Everyone protested that they would be dreadfully missed, and begged to know their plans, and whether Mr. Nelson Smith's business on the other side (something to do with mines, wasn't it?) would not be finished, so that they might come back in time for Henley and Cowes?

But the American millionaire's answers were vague. He couldn't tell. He could only hope. And his manner, unflatteringly, was indifferent. It was Mrs. Nelson Smith who seemed depressed; "a changed girl," Constance said, "from the moment that cable message arrived at Valley House."

Connie thought, and mentioned her thought to others: very likely the truth was that Nelson Smith had lost money. In contradiction to this theory he was known to have given generously to charities just before starting; not those queer, new-fangled societies he had tried to bolster up while he was in London, but hospitals and orphan asylums, and organizations of that sort which opened their mouths wide.

Still, n.o.body could say for a certainty how much he gave, and it was argued that Lady Annesley-Seton was sure to know more than most people about Nelson Smith's private affairs. The story of possible money losses ran about and grew rapidly, healing regrets for his absence. Soon the pair dropped out of their late friends' conversation as a subject of living interest.

It was much the same with the Countess de Santiago. Whether her plans were affected by those of the Nelson Smiths, n.o.body knew; and she said that they were not. But about the time that their departure for America was decided upon, Madalena had a sharp illness. It was, she wrote Constance (who made inquiries, fearing something contagious), an unusual form of neuralgia, from which she had suffered before. The only doctor who had ever been able to relieve her pain lived in San Francisco, and in San Francisco she must seek him.

She had at first an idea of sailing on the same ship with the Nelson Smiths; but for a reason which she did not explain, she changed her mind the day after making it up, and engaged a cabin on a boat which started a week earlier.

She was missed, also, for a while. But then it was remembered that the crystal visions had been mysteriously more favourable for those who included the Countess in their nicest parties than for those who asked her to their second best. Little malicious digs which she had given were recalled, and those who had thought her wonderful when in their midst began to doubt her powers.

"Rather theatrical, don't you think?" said the d.u.c.h.ess of Peebles. "It's more satisfactory to go to a woman you can pay with money and not invitations."

So Madalena was not mourned for long; and the Annesley-Setons were fortunate enough to replace their lost American millionaire with one from Australia. He was old, and his wife was fat; but you can't have everything.

The Nelson Smiths took pa.s.sage not on one of the great floating palaces patronized by millionaires, but on an obscure, cheap little ship, which bore out the gossip about the man's losses. As a matter of fact, however, they chose that way of going by Annesley's desire. It would have been Knight's way to vanish in a blaze of glory, as the setting sun plunges behind the horizon after a gorgeous day.

"I want to go on a ship," she said, "which none of the people we know have ever heard of. I couldn't bear to come across anyone I ever met before."

But, as it turned out, she was forced to bear what she had thought unbearable. At the top of the gangway as she went on board, a slightly shrill voice called out, "Why, how _do_ you do! Who would ever have thought of meeting you two expensive creatures on board _this_ tub?"

With a sinking heart Annesley recognized a Mrs. Waldo, an American woman (there was a husband in attendance) whom she and Knight had met during their honeymoon at the Knowle Hotel. The pair had been so friendly and kind that the Nelson Smiths had asked them to Portman Square more than once during the three gay months which followed.

But it was cruel, thought Annesley, that fate should bring them together again now, just when she and the man she had married were at the parting of the ways.

Little had the girl dreamed when she first conceived a mild fancy for the pretty, smiling woman and her silent, humorous husband, that the pair were destined to decide her future--decide it in a way precisely opposite to that in which she had decided it herself. But so it was to be.

Mr. and Mrs. Waldo were returning to New York in its waning season because the decorating of a house they had bought was just completed.

They begged Annesley and Knight to be their first visitors, and the invitation was given so unexpectedly that Annesley, taken unawares, found herself at a loss.

"But I--I mean my husband--is going straight to Texas," she stammered.

"All the more reason, if he has to run off so far on business, and leaves you in New York, that you should stay with us, instead of in a hotel,"

argued Mrs. Waldo.

Annesley blushed, and for the first time since Easter eve looked for help to Knight. But he was silent, and she blundered on, not daring to pause lest the firm-willed little lady should seal her to a promise in spite of herself.

"You're very kind, and it would be delightful," she hurried along, "but I didn't mean that I was to stop in New York. I----"

"Oh, you are going together!" Mrs. Waldo caught her up. "I didn't understand. Well, I'm sorry for our sakes. But couldn't you spare us two or three days before you start?"