Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim
you are not like Everard to me any more,” she told him, “because something has gone from you, and something has come to you. You are not the same man. What is it? Had you troubles in Africa? Did you learn what life was like out there?”
He sat looking at her for a moment, leaning back in his chair, which he had pushed a few feet into the shadows. Her hair was glossy and splendid, and against it her skin seemed whiter and more delicate than ever. Her eyes were lustrous but plaintive, and with something of the child’s fear of harm in them. She looked very young and very fragile to have been swayed through the years by an evil passion.
“I learnt many things there, Rosamund,” he told her quietly. “I learnt a little of the difference between right doing and wrongdoing. I learnt, too, that all the passions of life burn themselves out, save one alone.”
She twisted the girdle of her dressing-gown in her fingers for a moment. His last speech seemed to have been outside the orbit of her comprehension or interest.
“You need not be afraid of me any more, Everard,” she said, a little pathetically.
“I have no fear of you,” he answered.
“Then why don’t you bring your chair forward and come and sit a little nearer to me?” she asked, raising her eyes. “Do you hear the wind, how it shrieks at us? Oh, I am afraid!”
He moved forward to her side, and took her hand gently in his. Her fingers responded at once to his pressure. When he spoke, he scarcely recognised his own voice. It seemed to him thick and choked.
“The wind shall not hurt you, or anything else,” he promised. “I have come back to take care of you.”
She sighed, smiled like a tired child, and her eyes closed as her head fell farther back amongst the cushions.
“Stay just like that, please,” she begged. “Something quite new is coming to me. I am resting. It is the sweetest rest I ever felt. Don’t move, Everard. Let my fingers stay in yours—so.”
The candles burned down in their sockets, the wind rose to greater furies, and died away only as the dawn broke through the storm clouds. A pale light stole into the room. Still the woman slept, and still her fingers seemed to keep their clutch upon his hand. Her breathing was all the time soft and regular. Her silky black eyelashes lay motionless upon her pale cheeks. Her mouth—a very perfectly shaped mouth—rested in quiet lines. Somehow he realised that about this slumber there was a new thing. With hot eyes and aching limbs he sat through the night. Dream after dream rose up and passed away before that little background of tapestried wall. When she opened her eyes and looked at him, the same smile parted her lips as the smile which had come there when she had passed away to sleep.
“I am so rested,” she murmured. “I feel so well. I have had dreams, beautiful dreams.”
The fire had burned out, and the room was chilly.
“You must go back to your own room now,” he said.
Very slowly her fingers relaxed. She held out her arms.
“Carry me,” she begged. “I am only half awake. I want to sleep again.”
He lifted her up. Her fingers closed around his neck, her head fell back with a little sigh of content. He tried the folding doors, and, finding some difficulty in opening them carried her out into the corridor, into her own room, and laid her upon the untouched bed.
“You are quite comfortable?” he asked.
“Quite,” she murmured drowsily. “Kiss me, Everard.”
Her hands drew his face down. His lips rested upon her forehead. Then he drew the bedclothes over her and fled.
CHAPTER XIII
There was a cloud on Seaman’s good-humoured face as, muffled up in their overcoats, he and his host walked up and down the terrace the next morning, after the departure of Mr. Mangan. He disclosed his mind a little abruptly.
“In a few minutes,” he said, “I shall come to the great purpose of my visit. I have great and wonderful news for you. But it will keep.”
“The time for action has arrived?” Dominey asked curiously. “I hope you will remember that as yet I am scarcely established here.”
“It is with regard to your establishment here,” Seaman explained drily, “that I desire to say a word. We have seen much of one another since we met in Cape Town. The passion and purpose of my life you have been able to judge. Of those interludes which are necessary to a human being, unless his system is to fall to pieces as dry dust, you have also seen something. I trust you will not misunderstand me when I say that apart from the necessities of my work, I am a man of sentiment.”
“I am prepared to admit it,” Dominey murmured a little idly.
“You have undertaken a great enterprise. It was, without a doubt, a miraculous piece of fortune which brought the Englishman, Dominey, to your camp just at the moment when you received your orders from headquarters. Your self- conceived plan has met with every encouragement from us. You will be placed in a unique position to achieve your final purpose. Now mark my words and do not misunderstand me. The very keynote of our progress is ruthlessness. To take even a single step forward towards the achievement of that purpose is worth the sacrifice of all the scruples and delicacies conceivable. But when a certain course of action is without profit to our purpose, I see ugliness in it. It distresses me.”
“What the devil do you mean?” Dominey demanded.
“I sleep with one ear open,” Seaman replied.
“Well?”
“I saw you leave your room early this morning,” Seaman continued, “carrying Lady Dominey in your arms.”
There were little streaks of pallor underneath the tan in Dominey’s face. His eyes were like glittering metal. It was only when he had breathed once or twice quickly that he could command his voice.
“What concern is this of yours?” he demanded.
Seaman gripped his companion’s arm.
“Look here,” he said, “we are too closely allied for bluff. I am here to help you fill the shoes of another man, so far as regards his estates, his position, and character, which, by the by, you are rehabilitating. I will go further. I will admit that it is not my concern to interfere in any ordinary amour you might undertake, but—I shall tell you this, my friend, to your face—that to deceive a lady of weak intellect, however beautiful, to make use of your position as her supposed husband, is not, save in the vital interests of his country, the action of a Prussian nobleman.”
Dominey’s passion seemed to have burned itself out without expression. He showed not the slightest resentment at his companion’s words.
“Have no fear, Seaman,” he enjoined him. “The situation is delicate, but I can deal with it as a man of honour.”
“You relieve me,” Seaman confessed. “You must admit that the spectacle of last night was calculated to inspire me with uneasiness.”
“I respect you for your plain words,” Dominey declared. “The fact is, that Lady Dominey was frightened of the storm last night and found her way into my room. You may be sure that I treated her with all the respect and sympathy which our positions demanded.”
“Lady Dominey,” Seaman remarked meditatively, “seems to be curiously falsifying certain predictions.”
“In what way?”
“The common impression in the neighbourhood here is that she is a maniac chiefly upon one subject—her detestation of you. She has been known to take an oath that you should die if you slept in this house again. You naturally, being a