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Continuing, Mr. Parker seemed to address his remarks particularly to Rodney:

"You never would have thought that it could be so easy to kill a man, and have it brought in as suicide, would you? When I read the report of the inquest in the papers, I was amazed to find how easy it really was. Then it occurred to me that as, of course, he had been murdered-I knew that-why shouldn't I communicate with the police, after all? No harm would come to me; lunatics are protected by the law. It would be different if he had been murdered by-you; you would quite certainly be hung. I shall go to Broadmoor. I have rather a fancy for Broadmoor. I am told that they are all of them lunatics there; I should like to see. At any rate, they have all of them done something; no lunatic I've met ever did anything worth doing. They must be interesting people. But certain credentials are necessary for Broadmoor, and now I think I've earned them. If the part I've played in this little affair of Graham Patterson doesn't qualify me for Broadmoor, then I should very much like to know what would. Eh, young man, eh?"

CHAPTER XXIV
LOVERS PARTING

Inspector Harlow having gone, with Mr. Parker as close companion, the lovers being again alone together, it was pretty plain that they were conscious that, since entering the house, the situation had materially changed. Rodney, try how he might, could not erase from his mind, so quickly as he wished, the impression that he had been assisting at some hideous nightmare. He had supposed, at the sight of the little man, that his accuser had come into the room. His nerves were strained in the expectation that every moment the charge would be made. Even as the instants passed, and he began to see the drift of the tale which the man was telling, inventing it as he went on, he had a feeling that he was only playing with him as a cat does with a mouse, and that, just when it seemed least likely, he would right-about-face and, perhaps with that diabolical snigger of his, place the onus of the guilt on him. Now that the fellow had actually gone, a self-accused prisoner in the inspector's charge, the feeling that he was still taking part in some fantastic drama seemed stronger than ever.

Gladys, on her side, when at last she broke the curious silence, which prevailed longer than either of them supposed after they had been left together, quickly showed that she was obsessed by a mood in which he did not know her, in which, as it were, she had slipped out of his reach.

"Rodney, do you think that what that man said is true?"

"He seemed to give chapter and verse for most of it."

"But if it's true-dad didn't take his own life!"

"If it's true."

"But don't you see what a difference that makes?"

"Of course it makes a difference; but in what sense do you mean?"

"In every sense-every sense! Do you think-that while he's being buried-I should be here-if I had known that he was murdered? He was my father."

"In any case he was that."

"Not in any case, not in any case! I may have got him all wrong! I may have misjudged! I may-I don't know what I mayn't have done. There's the letter!"

"What letter?"

"To Mr. Wilkes. You said, when he wrote it, he was mad, and that taking his own life proved it. I thought so. But, if he didn't take his own life, what then?" Rodney made an effort to regain his self-possession, and partially succeeded.

"My dear Gladys, the whole business is a bad one, whichever way you look at it. We are to be married on Monday."

"Monday? Married-to you?"

The knowledge of women on which he was apt to pride himself ought to have warned him that this was not the same girl as the one with whom he had come back from lunch in the cab. But at the moment he was not yet quite himself; his perception was at fault. He made a mistake.

"My dear Gladys, you are perfectly well aware that the arrangement, as it stands at present, is that we are to be married on Monday. I was merely about to suggest that, as it would seem that this whole unfortunate affair is likely to prove too much, we should be married to-morrow instead, and then we shall be able to get out of this unpleasant atmosphere at the earliest possible moment."

"Stop! stop!"

She shouted at rather than spoke to him.

"Perhaps I shall not be married to you at all."

He stared at her in genuine amazement.

"Gladys! What are you talking about? What do you mean?"

"I don't know what I mean; I almost hope I never may know."

"My dear child; that wretched man."

"Have you ever seen him before?"

"Seen whom?"

"You know quite well. That-wretched man."

"So far as I'm aware, never in my life. What makes you ask such a question?"

"Are you sure? Do you swear it?"

"How can a man swear to a thing like that? But I do swear that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I have never seen him before."

"Then how came it that he knew you so well?"

"Knew me so well? Gladys! What are you dreaming about? Why, he never even addressed me by name."

"No, I noticed that; but he addressed you all the same. Most of what he said was especially addressed to you, as if he knew that you would understand."

"What are you driving at?"

"What's more, he saw that I was afraid of you."

"Afraid? You? Why, you could hardly have snuggled closer."

"That was because I was afraid to let you know how afraid of you I was."

"Gladys! Has that creature turned your brain?"

"I-I don't know. Oh, if I could only say a few words to dad-if I only could!"

"What would they be?"

"I would-ask him-how-he died."

"You have two stories offered for your choice. Are you content with neither?"

"Rodney, if my father were standing here now, and his spirit may be, would you tell me, in his presence, that you don't know why he disliked you?"

"Are you going into that all over again? To what end?"

"What does that man know of you? What does he know?"

"How can I tell what a half-witted man knows of me, or thinks he knows? Certainly he knows nothing to my discredit."

"Rodney-don't."

"Don't what?"

"You know! You do know! I can see in your eyes you know! Please go!"

"Sweetheart!"

"Don't-speak to me-like that-now. Go!"

"You surely are not in earnest. You cannot wish me to leave you before this extraordinary misunderstanding which has so inexplicably sprung up is cleared away. Tell me what is in your mind-frankly, all! I quite understand how this wretched man, Parker, may have turned your thoughts into unexpected currents and filled you with miserable doubts. I assure you he has upset me more than I care to tell you."

"I know that he upset you! I felt you were upset when I was so close to you. I can see it now."

If for the moment he was disconcerted-and the lady's manner was disconcerting-he slurred it over with creditable skill.

"Come, Gladys; let's try to get back to where we were-to perfect understanding. Tell me your doubts, no matter how insoluble they may seem to you. I promise you I'll solve them."

"I'm sure you will; I feel you could solve anything, but I am afraid of your solution."

Before he had an inkling of her intention she had passed rapidly across the floor and from the room.

"Gladys!" he exclaimed.

But it was too late; she had gone. He stood staring at the door through which she had vanished, irresolute. Should he follow her, possibly to her bedroom, and entreat her for a hearing? For once in his life he had been taken wholly unawares; he had not suspected that this Gladys was in the Gladys he had known. Often a man lives to a ripe old age, ignorant how many women are contained in the one woman he knows best. Then, as if unwittingly, his fingers strayed to the pocket in which were the proceeds of the cheque he had cashed while Gladys, without in the cab, had supposed him to have gone into the bank for his letter-case. Apparently the touch decided him; often a little thing brought him to an instant decision. Without making any further effort to gain the lady's ear, he buttoned his coat across his chest, took his hat and stick from off the table, and quietly left the house.

CHAPTER XXV
STELLA'S BETROTHAL FEAST

That evening Rodney Elmore was at a dinner given at a famous restaurant in honour of his engagement to Stella Austin, quite a different sort of meal from that at which he had assisted at the Misses Claughton's house in Kensington. If in his manner there was an unusual touch of nervousness, it was not unbecoming; the bride that was to be was not entirely herself. He met her as, with her father and mother, she entered the hall. She said to him, as he fell in by her side:

"I did hope, Rodney, that you would have come to fetch me."

"My dear, it's only by the skin of my teeth that I've got here myself! Do you think that I wouldn't have come if I could?"

She said nothing in reply, but as she passed towards the ladies' cloak-room there was a look on her face which almost suggested tears. Her mother's manner, as she greeted him, was not too genial:

"So you are here? Well, I suppose that's something!"

Mr. Austin, as he deposited his hat and coat with the attendant, seemed very much in the same key.

"We should have been here some minutes ago, only Stella would have it you were coming to fetch her; we should have been waiting for you still if she had had her way. How was it you didn't come? She's quite disappointed; rather a pity that the evening should have begun with a misunderstanding of that sort."

Rodney drew the gentleman aside.

"I take it, Mr. Austin, that you haven't heard the news?"

"To what news do you refer?"

"It is now stated that my uncle did not commit suicide, but was murdered."

"But I thought the coroner's jury had returned a verdict of suicide."

"That is so; but this afternoon a man named Parker gave himself up to the police, on his own confession, as having murdered my uncle. You will understand that I-I have had rather a trying day."

"On his confession? Is the man a lunatic?"

"That's just it; he is, yet it seems only too likely that-he did what he says he did."

"But how came he to make his confession in your presence? Do you know the man?"

"Not I; he's an entire stranger to me; but I'll tell you all about it later. I don't want you to say anything to the ladies or anyone; I only mention it to you because I want you to understand how it is that I am not in such-such good fettle as I might be for an occasion of this kind; and also because I want you, if needs be, to help me with Stella."

"My dear boy, of course I will. It is only natural that, at a time like this, a girl should think that there's nothing of much consequence except her own affairs; but I'll stand by you, never fear. I rather wish that the whole thing had been postponed, but Stella wouldn't hear of it. There's Tom not at all himself; he wanted Mary Carmichael to come, and Stella wanted her to come, in fact, we all wanted her to come, but she hasn't. I've been told nothing, but I can see there's some trouble there. Altogether the evening doesn't look as if it were going to be quite such a merry one as I had hoped it would have been; however, we must make the best of it. Cheer up, lad; put your troubles behind you for this night only."

That was a prescription which at any rate the prescriber's son did not seem at all disposed to follow, as Rodney quickly learnt when Tom appeared a little tardily. Tom's naturally good-humoured face wore an expression of unwonted gloom, and there was that in his air and general bearing which accorded ill with a time of feasting and making merry.

"You know, old chap, I oughtn't to be here, I really didn't. I shall queer the whole show. Unless I drink too much, and put my spirits up that way, I shall give everyone the hump; and when I start on that lay I'm apt to get my spirits up a bit too much, so I don't know that that will have a good effect either."

Rodney laughed as he put his hand on the speaker's shoulder.

"Why, Tom, what's wrong?"

"I don't know what's wrong, but something's wrong. I do know that. When the governor told me about this kick-up to-night, I wrote to Mary and told her all about it, and asked her to come up, and so on, and said I'd run down to Brighton this morning to bring her up, and told her the train I'd come by, and asked her to meet me at the station. She didn't meet me at the station-that was shock number one; and then when I got to the house, if you please, the servant didn't want to let me in-she wanted to make me believe that Mary was out. I wasn't taking that; I would go in, and I saw her old aunt-she's an old dear, she is. After a while, and she'd told no end of them, she owned up that Mary was in all the time she'd been telling them. She was up in her bedroom, and had given word that if I called she wouldn't see me. You might have bowled me over with an old cork."

"The lady wasn't well."

"Her health was all right; the old girl owned as much. She said Mary was perfectly well, but beyond that she wouldn't say anything; and she made out that she couldn't; and she wouldn't send a message up, or a note, or anything. She said that she knew her niece well enough to be sure that that would be no use. But when she saw that I was set, she said that if I chose I might go up and try my luck. So, if you please, up I went, and rapped at her bedroom door."

"Summoned her to surrender, quite in the good old style; and she did?"

"Not much she didn't. I spoke to her through the bedroom door, I called out to her, I as nearly as possible howled; I daresay I rapped as many as twenty times-I know I made my knuckles sore But she took not the slightest notice, not a sound came from the other side; she might have been stone deaf or dead. In fact, I wanted to tell her that I felt sure that something dreadful had happened, and that if she wouldn't speak I should have to break down the door to see what was wrong. But the old girl wouldn't have it. She said that she had had enough of that folly, and when I talked about camping out on the door-mat she marched me off downstairs, feeling all mops and brooms, and all over the place. Then it came out that when I was at the front door she had told the old girl that she wouldn't see me, and nothing would make her see me, and had rushed up to her bedroom and locked herself in. So I came back from Brighton all alone, and the wonder is I didn't start to drink and keep on at it; only I had a sort of feeling that if I began by being squiffy when I got here things wouldn't be so very much brighter; besides, there's always time to start that sort of thing if you are set on it."

"My dear old chap, you've done something to upset the lady's apple-cart; you'll have a letter telling you all about it in the morning."

"I hope so, but I doubt it; I might have known I was feeling too much bucked up. You know she never said exactly yes; she sort of let me take it for granted, and perhaps I took it a little too much for granted; I feel that perhaps that's how it is. But if she's off with me, I'm done-clean. She could make a man of me, even the kind of article the governor thinks a man; but no one else could. If she won't have me, I shall emigrate, that's what I shall do; I shall go to one of those cheery spots where you get knocked out by blackwater fever, or sleeping sickness, or something nice of that sort, three months after you've landed."

Notice being given that dinner was ready, Rodney led Stella into the private room in which it was to be served cheerfully enough, bestowing on her admiring glances and whispering what he meant to be sweet things into her pretty ear as they went.

"My hat! that's a duck of a frock you're arrayed in; you do look scrumptious."

"I'm glad you think so."

The maid's manner was a trifle prim; she plainly wished him to understand that she was still a little out with him. He smiled at her.

"I don't know what you're laughing at."

"Would you rather I cried?"

"I'm afraid poor Tom feels like crying. Isn't it strange Mary not coming, and sending no message, or anything-nothing to explain? Have you heard how she treated Tom?"

They had reached the dinner-table, and were settling themselves in their places.

"Stella, be so good as to understand, once for all, that there's only one subject to-night, and that's you. All other subjects are tabooed. Are you quite comfortable? Don't put your chair too far off; so that, if you feel like it, you can put your baby foot out towards mine and with your wee slipper crush my favourite corn."

"Rodney, I'm glad you are going to talk to me at last, though I don't suppose you have thought of me once all day."

"Shall I tell you what I've been looking for ever since I came?"

"I expect for somewhere to smoke."

"I've been looking for-say, a curtained nook, where I can have you alone for about five minutes, and have a few of those kisses of which I have been dreaming this livelong day."

"If you had come and fetched me you might have had one kiss-in the cab."

"I'll have one kiss when I take you back-one!"

"Oh, you are going to take me back?"

"I am; and I'm going to eat you on the way; then you'll understand what you escaped by my not fetching you."

"You're not to talk like that; people will hear you."

"Let 'em. Fancy if you'd arrived here with that lovely frock all crumpled-two in a cab! People would have wondered what you had been doing."

"Rodney, if you will talk like that I shall crush your favourite corn."

"Crush it!"

"Please pass me the salt."

Whether, while he passed her the salt, she did crush it, there was nothing to show.

The feast passed off better than, at one time, it had promised to do. There were about twenty people present. Mr. Austin had whipped up, at a moment's notice, various relations, and also certain persons who were intimately connected with the firm of which he was head; he desired to introduce to them not only his future son-in-law, but also the probable partner in his business. Most of these people were very willing to be entertained, simple souls, easily pleased, and the dinner was a good one. Even Tom, who found himself next to a girl with mischievous eyes and a saucy tongue, was inclined to shed some of his melancholy before the menu was half-way through.

"I never did meet a girl who says such things as you do," he told her, with a frankness which was perhaps meant for laudation. "You are quite too altogether."

"You see," she said, with her eyes fixed demurely on her plate, "it doesn't matter what one does say to some people, does it?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Of course some people don't count, do they?"

"By that I suppose you mean that I'm a-"

She did not wait for him to finish.

"Oh, not at all."

She looked at him with innocence in her glance, which was too perfect to be real.

"How many times have you been ploughed?"

"Who's been telling you tales about me?"

"I was only thinking that it doesn't matter if one hasn't brains so long as one has looks, and you have got those, haven't you?"

Tom's face, as the minx said this, in a voice which was just loud enough to reach his ears, would have made a good photographic study. Beyond a doubt he was in a fair way to lose some of his sadness, at least for the time.

When the cloth had been removed the giver of the feast, getting on to his feet, made the usual half jovial, half sentimental references to the occasion which had brought them together; and, in wishing the young couple well, made special allusion to the fact that he was not only welcoming a son, but also a colleague. The toast he ended by proposing could not have been better received. Then, while the young maiden sat blushing, the young man stood up, and, in a brief yet deft little speech, told how happy they all had made him, how the hopes which he had cherished for years had at last been realised, how dear those hopes had been to him, how unworthy he was of all the good gifts which had descended on him. But of this they might be sure, that if he had health and strength-and at present he was very well and pretty strong, thanking them very much-he would do his very best in the years to come to prove that he could at least appreciate those things which Providence had bestowed on him. The young man sat down on quite a pathetic note, and the girl by his side pressed his hand and looked as if this were indeed one of those moments of which she had dreamed.

Then there were other speeches and all sorts of kind things were said, which, at such times, one takes it for granted should be said. The young man was made much of, and the maiden, if possible, even more. And when the feast was really ended, and all the good wishes had been wished again and again, and there came the time of parting, even Mr. Austin was obliged to confess to himself that everything could scarcely have gone off better. His wife was radiant, some of the shadows had gone from Tom's face; apparently the young lady with the mischievous eyes had in some subtle way, the secret of which she only possessed, acted the part of the sun in dispelling the clouds; Stella could not by any possibility have looked happier or Rodney prouder. Tom, it is believed, saw the young lady with the mischievous eyes home in one cab, and it is certain that Rodney was with Stella in another. What took place during that journey in the cab between the restaurant and Kensington it is not perhaps easy to determine precisely, but beyond a doubt Rodney had that one kiss which had been spoken of, and probably others; for when the house in Kensington was reached, and the young lady ran up the steps to the front door, she was in a state of the most delightful agitation. And in the house there was the final parting, which occupied a considerable time, for they had to say to each other the things which they had already said more than once, and which Rodney at least could say so well and to which the girl so loved to listen.

"I think that, after all, to-night has made up for to-day. Do you know, Rodney," and she looked up into his face with something shining in her pretty eyes, "that to-day I have had the most curious fancies? I was actually frightened; I don't know at what, but I do know that somehow it was because of you. Wasn't it silly?"

"I am not sure that it's ever silly for you to be frightened because of me; I'm in the most delicious terror all day, and sometimes all night, because of you; but you are a goose."

Then he held her perhaps a little closer, and whispered:

"It has been something of a night, hasn't it? For the first time in my life I feel as if I were a person of some importance. You couldn't have your betrothal feast again to-morrow, could you?"

She smiled.

"I doubt it; but we might have a silver betrothal feast as well as a silver wedding. Hasn't that sort of thing ever been done?"

He laughed at the conceit, and when the parting really did come she was looking forward as through a dim mist, towards that silver time at which he had hinted; and when she went upstairs she prayed that after five-and-twenty years of married life she might be as happy as she was then. And all night she slept sweetly, dreaming the happiest dreams of all that took place during the passage of the years, through which she walked with the husband whom she loved so dearly, ever heart in heart and hand in hand. That night was to her a halcyon time.