C. N. Williamson & A. N. Williamson: 30+ Murder Mysteries & Adventure Novels (Illustrated). Charles Norris Williamson
of steel round her shuddering body. "When you heard the truth about the diamond, it was the same as if you'd heard everything, wasn't it? You guessed Ruthven Smith suspected—someone must have told him—Madalena perhaps. You guessed he had some trick to play, and in the quietest, cleverest way you checkmated him, without hint or help from any one. You saved me from ruin, and not only me, but others. And on top of all that, when I hoped for nothing more from you, you promised me forgiveness. That's what I understood. Was I mistaken?"
"I was mistaken," she answered, almost coldly; then broke down with one agonized sob. "I thought—oh, what good is it now to tell you what I thought?"
"You must tell me!"
"I thought you had bought the blue diamond, knowing it had been stolen, but wanting it so much you didn't care how you got it. I didn't dream that you were a——"
"That I was—what?"
"A thief—and a cheat!"
"My God! And now you know I'm both, you hate me, Anita? You must, or you wouldn't throw those words at me like stones."
"Let me go," she panted, pushing him from her again with trembling, ice-cold hands.
He obeyed instantly. The band of steel that had held her fell apart. She stumbled up from the low sofa, and trying to pass him as he knelt, she would have fallen if he had not sprung to his feet and caught her.
But recovering herself she turned away quickly and almost ran to a chair in front of the dressing table not far off. There she flung herself down and buried her face on her bare arms.
Knight followed, to stand staring in stunned silence at the bowed head and shaking shoulders. He could hear the ticking of a small, nervous-sounding clock on the mantelpiece. It was like the beating of a heart that must soon break. At last, when the ticking had gone on unbearably long, he spoke.
"Anita, you called me a cheat," he said. "I suppose you mean that I cheated you by playing the hero that night at the Savoy, and stealing your sympathy and help under false pretenses; that I've been steadily cheating you and your friends every day since. That's true, in a way—or it was at first. But lately it's not been the same sort of cheating. It began to be the real thing with me. I mean I felt it in me to be the real thing. As for the other name you gave me—thief—I'm not exactly that—not a thief who steals with his own hands, though I dare say I'm as bad.
"If I haven't stolen, I've shown others the most artistic way to steal. I've shown men and women how to make stealing a fine art, and I've been in with them in the game. Indeed, it was my game. Madalena de Santiago, and the two men you knew first as the 'watchers,' then as Torrance and Morello, now as Charrington and Char, have been no more than the pawns I used, or rather they've been my cat's paws. There's only one other man at the head of the show besides me, and that is one whose name I can't give away even to you.
"But he's a great man, a kind of financial Napoleon—a great artist, too. He doesn't call himself a thief. He's honoured by society in Europe and America; yet what I've done in comparison to what he's done is like a brook to the size of the ocean. He has a picture gallery and a private museum which are famous; but there's another gallery of pictures and another museum which nobody except himself has ever seen. His real life, his real joy, are in them. Most of the masterpieces and treasures of this world which have disappeared are safe in that hidden place, which I've helped to fill.
"That man has no regrets. He revels in what he calls his 'secret orchard.' He thinks I ought to be proud of what I've done for him; and so I was once. I came here and brought the other people over to England to work for him.
"Not that that fact will whitewash me in your eyes; not that I wasn't working for myself, too, and not that I'm trying to make more excuses by explaining this. But I'd like you to understand, at least for the sake of your own pride, that you haven't been cheated into loving and living with a common thief. Does that make it hurt less?"
"No," she said in a strange tone which made her voice sound like that of an old woman. "That doesn't make it hurt less. It makes no difference. I think nothing can ever make any difference. My life is—over."
"Don't, for God's sake, say that! Don't force me to feel a murderer!" he cried out, sharply.
"There's nothing else to say. I wish I could die to-night."
"If one of us is to die," he said, "let it be me. If you hadn't happened to see me and call me in when I was under the trees bidding good-bye to your window, by this time I might have found a way out of the difficulty without any scandal or trouble to you whatever. No one would have known that it wasn't an accident——"
"I should have known."
"But if you had, it would have been a relief——"
"No. Because I—I hadn't heard the truth. I didn't understand at all. I thought you had done one unscrupulous thing. I didn't dream your whole life was—what it is. I loved you as much as ever. It would have broken my heart if you——"
"But now that you don't love me, it wouldn't break your heart."
"I don't seem to have any heart," Annesley sighed. "It feels as if it had crumbled to dust. But it would break my life if you ended yours. If anything could be worse than what is, it would be that."
"Very well, you can rid yourself of me in another way," the man answered. "You can denounce me—give me up to 'justice.' If you hand over the Malindore diamond to Ruthven Smith and tell him how you got it——"
"You must know I wouldn't do that!"
"Why not?"
"Because I—couldn't."
"It needn't spoil your life. No one could blame you. I would tell the story of how I deceived you. You could free yourself—get a divorce——"
"Don't!" the girl cut him short. "I'm not thinking of myself. I'm thinking of you. I can't love you again, and I wouldn't if I could, now that I—know. You're a different man. The one I loved doesn't exist and never did; yet you've told me your secret, and I'm bound to keep it. I don't need to stop and reflect about that. But as for what's to become of me, and how we're to manage not to let people guess that everything's changed, I don't know! I must think. I must think all to-night, until to-morrow. Perhaps by that time I can decide. Now—I beg of you to go and leave me—this moment. I can't bear any more and live."
He stood looking at her, but she turned her head away with a petulant gesture of repulsion; and lest her eyes might feel the call of his she covered them with her hands. Her hopelessness, her loathing of him enclosed her like a wall of ice.
"So! The dream's over!" he said. "'This woman to this man'! What a farce—what a tragedy!"
When she looked up again he had gone and the door between their rooms was shut.
The moon no longer lit the high window. With Knight's going darkness fell.
Chapter XX.
The Plan
Annesley sat as Knight had left her for a long time—minutes, perhaps, or hours. But at last she was very tired and very cold, so tired that she threw herself weakly on the bed, in her dressing-gown, because she couldn't sit up. All through the rest of the dark hours she lay shivering, and did not even trouble to roll herself in the warm down coverlet spread lightly over the bed.
It seemed right, somehow, that she should be cold and miserable physically. She did not care or wish to be comfortable.
Over and over again she asked herself: "What shall I do? What is to become of me—of both of us?" She tried to pray, but her heart was too hard toward the man who had trampled on her life and love for his own cruel purposes. It seemed to her that God would not hear a prayer sent up in such a mood; yet she did not want to soften her heart toward the sinner.
Because