CHAPTER 3

“First, I will read you the opening sentences of the letter,” said Leonard. And this is what he read:

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“To you, my very dear friend, whose friendship has been one of the most pleasurable things in my life, to the memories of which I look back with a feeling of great tenderness as I pen these lines, the last I shall ever write upon earth, I reveal the secret of the tragedy which will shortly take place. In Nice the affair will, naturally, be a nine days’ wonder. Nice, this fair and lovely city of aristocratic crookdom, where vice and virtue rub shoulders at every hour of the twenty-four, and where the cleverest criminals of the world congregate in the pursuit of their nefarious calling! Nice, where I first met the only woman who ever stirred my pulses, who made me realize the meaning of ardent, overmastering love! When you read these words, perhaps you will smile at the idea of the cautious diplomatist, the rather cynical young man of the world, confessing to being violently in love. But it is the truth. I had passed unscathed up to a few years ago, indifferent to the charms of the many beautiful women I had met in my own country and elsewhere, until I made the acquaintance of Elise Makris. Then suddenly I realized, poor fool as I was, that I had found my ideal. To me she stood for the perfection of womanhood.

“To-night I am going to kill her, because she has betrayed my faith in her, because I have proved she is base and unworthy. And when I have accomplished this justifiable vengeance, there is nothing left for me but to end my own life. By the time you receive this letter the nine days’ wonder will have died out, and the memory of Hugh Craig will only linger in the hearts of one or two faithful friends like yourself. The details I am about to relate will not interest the world, but you are at perfect liberty to communicate them to anybody you think it may concern.”

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“As you are such an old and confidential friend of the Clandon family, Mr. Shelford,” said the young man when he had finished reading this preliminary portion of the letter, “I feel quite justified in reading to you what my poor, unfortunate friend has disclosed to me.”

From the astounding narrative to which Mr. Shelford listened, he learned the following remarkable facts: Mrs. Makris, the mother of Elise, a very beautiful young woman, had posed, ever since Craig knew her, as the widow of a Greek merchant who had left her comfortably off. Her late husband’s fortune was settled upon her for life, she told him, and her daughter would inherit it at her death.

It was on Craig’s last visit to Nice, and then only towards the end of it, that his suspicions concerning the truth of her story were aroused. Elise had addressed to him by mistake a letter intended for somebody else, a letter of a most suspicious character, betraying her acquaintance with a very questionable set of people. When he asked her for an explanation, her replies were evasive and unsatisfactory, so much so that he at once came to the conclusion that both the girl and her mother were quite different from what they seemed.

He did not at once break off with her, wishing to test the truth of his suspicions. For this purpose he secured the services of a private inquiry agent, without doubt the shabby furtive-looking man to whom Leonard had seen him talking in that quiet side street.

This man soon discovered the horrible fact that both the woman and her daughter were connected with a well-known gang of international crooks. Elise, with her beauty and charm, was one of their most useful decoys, and under another name had served a term of imprisonment a short time before Craig had made her acquaintance. The woman Makris had never been married, so he alleged; the girl was her illegitimate daughter, the father having been a member of the same gang. To the young man, whose affections she had captured, Elise had represented herself as a model of simplicity and purity. As they did not see each other very frequently, it was the more easy for her to maintain the double rôle of sweetheart to him and the clever decoy of these unscrupulous scoundrels. But for her own carelessness in putting the wrong letter into the envelope directed to him, Craig had made up his mind to marry her privately and tell his family afterwards.

“A most astounding story,” was the remark of the shrewd and experienced lawyer when the narrative was finished. “Poor fellow, one cannot but pity him in spite of the fact that he took the law into his own hands. The discovery of her baseness must have overthrown his reason. How deceptive are appearances. One would have judged him the last man in the world to be swayed by violent passions. Clearly the mind must have given way under the shock.”

“There are some rather obscure hints that he had been subjected to blackmail, and that through this man he employed, he was able to trace it to her agency. That of course would have a maddening effect upon any man in a similar position.”

Mr. Sheldon knitted his brows. “I wish he had been a little more explicit on that point. We do not know whether this girl is alive or dead. When Hugh’s brother left Nice, she was hovering between life and death in the hospital to which they had taken her. If she has recovered, I should very much like to find the young woman, although it doesn’t appear that it would serve any very useful purpose if I did.”

Lydon also expressed his wish that, if she had escaped her lover’s vengeance, Elise Makris, the decoy of blackmailers, should be found. Mr. Shelford promised to instruct his agent in Nice to make inquiries at once.

The tragedy had cast a deep shadow over Lydon. Even the prospect of meeting again with Gloria Stormont could not restore him to his old cheerfulness, nor blot out the memory of those sinister happenings at the peaceful-looking Villa des Cyclamens.

Gloria looked very charming and radiant when she arrived at Waterloo Station, where Leonard was awaiting her.

“It was a little indiscreet of us to arrange meeting here,” she said with a blush as they shook hands. “Somebody who knew me might have travelled in the same train; that would have been awkward. It was silly of me to overlook that.”

“And equally silly on my part,” replied the young man. “Well, on a future occasion, we must avoid a similar mistake. Well, now about lunch. I was going to suggest the Berkeley or the Savoy. But perhaps we had better get off the beaten track?”

Miss Stormont agreed. Several people she knew frequented both these popular places. They finally went to a excellent restaurant in the Strand.

They had a very enjoyable time together. There was not a trace of coquetry about her, but she seemed to envisage the situation with perfect frankness. If Lydon had not been attracted by her, he would not have asked her to lunch. If she had not been equally attracted by him, she would not have accepted his invitation. They might therefore take for granted the fact of their mutual attraction, and not pretend an embarrassment they did not feel.

When they parted, and he pressed for another meeting, she consented quite readily, adding, “I hope, however, we shall not have to keep up this sub-rosa business very long. Uncle was speaking last night of you and saying how much he liked you. You can guess how difficult it was to keep myself from blushing. I suggested that as he liked you so much, why did he not ask you to pay a visit? He did not exactly adopt the suggestion at once, but I’m sure the idea is germinating in his mind and will presently blossom forth.”

Lydon looked the delight he felt. “So you think I may receive a formal invitation to go down to Effington. That would be very pleasant. In the meantime our engagement for next week holds good.”

“Most certainly,” was the girl’s unaffected answer. He put her in a taxi and directed the driver to take her to Waterloo Station. It was not safe for him to go with her, much as he would have liked to do so. At this hour of the day some of the early birds might be returning home, and at this stage of the proceedings it was not politic for Miss Stormont to be seen by any of her neighbours in the company of a good-looking young man.

The next week when he met her, almost the first words she said were, “Have you heard from Uncle Howard?”

He answered that he had not, and she proceeded to explain: “Well, the idea has blossomed. Two days ago at breakfast, he announced solemnly to auntie and myself that he was going to write to you at the address in Ryder Street you gave him, and ask you down for a week-end. To-day is Wednesday; you ought to have had the letter by now. But perhaps he didn’t intend to ask you for this week-end but the next. Uncle is very impetuous in some things but slow-moving in others. And if it is for the following week, naturally he wouldn’t be in a hurry.”

It was, however, this week-end that the genial Stormont had fixed in his mind. When Lydon went home that night the precious letter was awaiting him, having arrived by a midday post. If Mr. Lydon had no previous engagement, would he spend next Saturday to Monday, or, if possible, Tuesday, at Effington? If so, Stormont would meet him at Waterloo by a certain train and they would go down together.

Of course, he sent an immediate reply. So, at last, he was made free of Effington; he would see his beloved Gloria in her own home, and be able to feast his eyes upon her for several hours. If Howard Stormont was as unconventional as his appearance and manners proclaimed, there would be an end of the sub-rosa meetings. In these advanced days, when the chaperone is nearly as extinct as the dodo, he would be able to ask her openly to lunch with him when she came up to London to do her shopping. It was a great step gained.

On the Friday before his visit, he had a summons from Shelford, the solicitor, who had heard from his agent in Nice.

Elise Makris was alive, wonderful to relate. For some days the doctors had entertained little or no hope. Then suddenly the tide had turned, and she had made a remarkable rally. Three days before Shelford’s letter of instructions reached Nice, she had been discharged from the hospital, still somewhat weak, but in no danger of a relapse. She had returned to the Villa des Cyclamens, which on the next day was evacuated. Madame Makris had paid up all she owed, and she and her daughter had gone away, nobody knew whither.

The agent had made some inquiries of the police, and had also found out the man employed by Craig in his researches into the past of the girl whom he had so passionately loved and found so unworthy. He gathered that she and her mother were members of a big organization belonging to the exclusive circles of what might be called aristocratic crookdom. Many of the subordinates were known to the guardians of the law under different aliases, Madame Makris, a very old offender, and her daughter being amongst them. But the chiefs of the gang, the daring spirits who engineered the great coups, remained in seclusion, men not only of great ability, but possibly of considerable wealth. They never came out into the open, and nobody could lay hands on them.

So Elise Makris, after that lucky escape from her enraged lover’s bullet, had disappeared where, in all human probability, no friend of Hugh would ever be able to find her. She and her mother had no doubt gone to another country, and would conceal their identity under other names. That of Makris had been made too public by recent events.

The only description Lydon had of her was a somewhat indefinite one, taken from the Phare du Littoral, the Nice daily newspaper. There were, however, two clues still remaining, if ever he should chance to be thrown into contact with her. She would carry to her grave the mark of her dead lover’s bullet; no surgery could obliterate that. And she would wear that remarkable carved sapphire pendant which her mother declared she always carried about with her as a mascot. By those signs he would recognize Elise Makris under whatever alias she chose to masquerade.

“That seems to close the chapter,” remarked Mr. Shelford, when he had imparted all that he had learned from his agent. “A terrible blow to the Clandon family. I saw his brother yesterday; he tells me the old people are prostrated with grief. That a man of the promise of Hugh Craig, with a brilliant future stretching in front of him, should have sought to imbrue his hands in the blood of such a shameless creature! It passes comprehension.”

On the Saturday morning Lydon met Stormont at Waterloo Station, and they travelled down to Guildford together by an early train. At Guildford they were met by a splendid Rolls-Royce car driven by one of the smartest of chauffeurs. Profiteer or not, as the case might be, Howard Stormont knew how to do things properly.

They went through a few miles of the beautiful Surrey country, till they came to some big open lodge gates. Passing through these, they drove up a broad avenue, shadowed by some splendid trees which would look magnificent later on in their summer raiment, and drew up before the low picturesque house.

The coming of the car had been heard evidently, for the hall door stood wide open to receive the owner and his guest. Behind the decorous form of the stately white-haired butler, Duncan, appeared the gaily-apparelled Mrs. Barnard, and the slim exquisite figure of the smiling Gloria.

Stormont sprang out of the car and grasped Leonard’s hand in a hearty grip. “Welcome, my dear boy, to Effington,” he said in his loud, ringing voice.