The Yellow Dove. Gibbs George
is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love.’ May I trust you?”
“Try me.”
“No, I might put you to a test that would be difficult.”
“Try me.”
“Very well, I will. Go back to London in the morning.”
He looked at her and laughed.
“Why?”
“It will be easier for you to be patient there than here–”
“When Hammersley comes?”
“Oh,” she said quickly, “then he is coming?”
“I don’t know why he shouldn’t,” he said slowly.
There was a pause.
“Shall you go?”
“To London? I’ll think about it.”
“There! You see? You refuse my first request.”
“I would like to know your purpose.”
“I think you know it already,” she put in quickly. “You want something that I cannot give you—something that is not mine to give.”
She had come out into the open defiantly and he met her challenge with a laugh.
“Because it is Hammersley’s?” he said. “You think so and Hammersley thinks so, and possession is nine points of the law. But I will contest.”
“Your visit is vain. Go back to London, my friend.”
“I find it pleasanter here.”
“Then you refuse?”
“I must.”
“Then it is war between us.”
“If you will have it so,” he said, with an inclination of the head. Doris put her foot on the fender and leaned with her hands upon her knee for a moment as though in deep thought. Then she turned toward the door.
“Come,” she said coolly. “Let us join the others.”
There was a relief in the thought that at least they had come to an understanding and that the matter of the possession of the papers had at last become a private contest between them. She had brought the interview to an end not because she was afraid to continue it but because she wanted to think of a plan to disarm him. She felt that she was moving in the dark but she trusted to her delicate woman’s sense of touch to stumble upon some chance, some slip of his tongue, which might lead her into the light.
In the drawing-room by common consent all talk of war had been abolished. She sat in at a hand of auction, but playing badly, she was gladly relinquished by her partner at the end of the rubber. John Rizzio, who disliked the game, had gone off for a quiet smoke, but when she got up from the card table he was there waiting for her.
“Cyril shall know of this,” laughed Betty, as they went toward the door. “They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder—of the other fellow.”
Doris led the way to the gun-room, a place used by Algie Heathcote for his sporting implements and trophies of the chase. It was comfortably furnished in leather and oak and a cheerful fire was burning in the grate. Doris sank into the davenport and motioned to her companion to the place at her side. She was thoroughly alive to her danger, but the sportswoman in her made her keen to put it to the test.
“We are quite alone here,” she said coolly. “The others are not even within call. Now what do you want of me?”
Her audacity rather startled him, but he folded his arms and leaned back smiling.
“The papers of Riz-la-Croix, of course,” he said amiably.
“And how do you know they’re in my possession?”
He shrugged.
“Because they couldn’t possibly be anywhere else.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have exhausted every other resource.”
“You’re frank at least—including the burglary at Ashwater Park and the messing in my box upstairs?”
“And since you must know the full truth,” he continued politely, “the careful search of your room in your absence this evening—including the removal of the rugs and bedding. Oh, don’t be disturbed, I beg of you,” as she made a movement of alarm, “they have all been replaced with a nice care for detail.”
“And if I told Lady Heathcote of this–”
“I am quite sure that the best interests of all,” he said politely, “are conserved—by silence.”
She meditated a moment, her gaze on the coals.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “you’re clever—more than ordinarily clever. I can’t understand how I could ever have refused you. But don’t you think your methods have been a little—er—unchivalrous?”
“The importance of my objects admitted of no delay. I hope you have not been inconvenienced–”
“Not in the least,” calmly. “My recollection of your many civilities merely made me think that your agents were overzealous.”
“I am sorry,” he said genuinely. “It could not be helped. You and I are merely pawns in a game greater than anything the world has ever known.”
“I didn’t want you to apologize. I merely thought in order to avoid comment that you might have come to me yourself.”
“I thought I might save you the unpleasantness of a controversy which can only have one end.”
“You mean—that you will win.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“You will give me the papers—here, tonight.”
“And if I told you that I had destroyed them?”
“That would be manifestly untrue, since at the present moment in the position of your body their outline is quite clearly defined on the inside of your right knee.”
Doris put both slippers upon the ground, her feet together, her face flushing warmly.
“I hope you will forgive my frankness,” she heard him say gently, “but the method of your challenge—is—unusual.”
She clasped her hands around her knees and frowned into the fire.
“You mistake, I think, my friend. It is not a challenge. It is merely a method of defense—the safest, I am sure, against John Rizzio.”
He bowed low with deep ceremony.
“Of course, I am helpless.” And then, “I can only rely on your good sense and”—here his voice sunk a note lower—“and on your loyalty to the cause of England.”
This was the opening that she had been waiting for. She thrust quickly.
“And if the cause is England’s why didn’t Scotland Yard come to Ashwater Park?”
“Dunsinane to Burnam Wood!” he shrugged. “They would have made asinine mistakes as they always do—the chief of which would have been that of denouncing Miss Doris Mather as an agent of England’s enemies.”
The girl tapped her toe reflectively upon the rug.
“I won’t attempt subterfuge. Of course, I know the contents of that packet.”
“You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t.”
“And how it was passed from Captain Byfield to Cyril Hammersley.” This was a random shot but it hit the mark. Rizzio’s eyes dilated slightly, but she saw them.
“Byfield! Impossible.”
“Not at all. Cyril told me,” she lied.
“He told you–?”