poor little girl!’ he muttered to himself. And then the door clicked.
Eileen Meredith stood there, a pink dressing-gown enveloping her graceful figure from shoulders to feet. There was questioning wonder in her grey eyes as she extended her hand, but no alarm. He almost wished there was. It would have made things easier.
‘You, Sir Ralph?’ she cried. ‘What has brought you here so early? Has Bob repented of his bargain and sent you to call it off at the last moment?’
The man fumbled for words. Now that he was face to face with her the phrase he had so laboriously worked out to lead up to the news had deserted him. He pushed a chair towards her.
‘Er—won’t you sit down?’ he said awkwardly.
He was striving for an opening. Both words and tone called the girl’s direct attention to the haggard face, the feverish eyes. Her fears were alight on the instant. She regarded him with parted lips and gripped his arm impulsively.
‘Something has happened!’ she cried apprehensively. ‘Why do you look like that? What is it?’ Her voice rose and she tried to shake the silent man. ‘Answer—why don’t you answer? Is he ill—dead?’
Sir Ralph choked over his reply.
‘He was killed last night—murdered.’
It was out at last. He had blundered clumsily, and he knew it. The colour drained from Eileen’s face and she stood rigid as a statue for a moment. Then slowly she swayed forward. He stretched out his arms to prevent her from falling. She waved him aside dumbly and tottered to a couch. His directness had been more merciful than he had thought. She was stunned, dazed by her calamity. Her very silence frightened the man. She sat bolt upright, her hand resting limply in her lap and her dull eyes staring into vacancy. A tiny clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly.
‘Dead!’ she whispered at last. There was no trace of unsteadiness in her voice and her eyes were dry. She spoke mechanically. ‘And it is our wedding-day! Dead! Bob is dead?’
Her hair had fallen about her shoulders, and, beautiful in her grief, she inspired the man with almost supernatural awe. He had moved to the mantelpiece and, resting an arm upon it and one foot upon the fender, remained looking down upon her. He was waiting until the first numbness of the shock had passed. The little clock on the mantelpiece had ticked out ten minutes ere she spoke again. But her voice was pitched in more natural tones, and her face had regained something of its colour.
‘How did it happen?’
Haltingly he gave such details as he knew. Her eyes were fixed on his face as he narrated his story. He hesitated as he referred to his telephone conversation with her. In her clear eyes he saw challenging scorn and stopped abruptly.
‘You say that Bob asked you to lie to me?’ she demanded.
‘Not to you in particular. To anyone who rang up. I couldn’t know whether he wished his instructions to apply to you.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ she interposed quickly, but with a tightening of the heart he recognised the bitterness of her tone. For all her soft daintiness, there was something of the tigress in Eileen Meredith.
The man she loved was dead. Well, she would have her vengeance—somehow, on someone. She was ready to suspect without thinking. And Sir Ralph Fairfield had laid himself open to suspicion.
‘He was killed before eleven,’ she went on remorselessly, ‘and you told me he was in the club with you at that time.’
‘You don’t believe me.’ He held out his arms to her imploringly, and then dropped them to his side. ‘I give you my word that everything I have told you is true. Why should I lie now?’
She wheeled on him passionately.
‘You ask me that?’ she said tensely. ‘You who thought he was in your way—that what you could not gain while he was living you might take when he was dead. Do you think your smooth-faced hypocrisy deceives me now? You pretended to accept your dismissal, pretended to be still my friend—and his.’
Her anger disconcerted the man more than her anguish had done. His breath caught sharply.
‘You don’t realise what you are saying,’ he said, speaking calmly with an effort. ‘Because I once loved you—love you still if you will—before ever Robert Grell came into your life, you hint an unthinkable thing.’
She crossed the room in a graceful swirl of draperies, and laid a finger on the bell. Her features were set. She was in no state to weigh the justice or injustice of the implied accusation she had made. And the man, for his part, felt his oppression brushed away by anger at her readiness to judge him.
‘We shall see whether the police believe it unthinkable,’ she said coldly.
A servant tapped discreetly and opened the door.
‘Show this person out,’ she said.
Sir Ralph bowed mechanically. There was nothing more to be said. He knew that in her present condition an appeal to her to suppress the story of the telephone message would be worse than useless. As he passed down the steps and into the street, a man sauntered idly a dozen yards behind him. And thirty yards behind that man was another whom the baronet might have recognised as Chief Detective-Inspector Green—had he seen him.
Within the house a girl, no longer upheld by the strength of passionate denunciation, had collapsed on a couch, a huddled heap of draperies, sobbing as though her heart would break.
IT was an hour after Fairfield had left her before Eileen Meredith’s sobs died away in the deserted room. There was none to hear or see, and she gave way to her grief uncontrolled. Gradually the first shock passed. Her calmness came back to her, but she was a different woman to the vivacious, sunny girl who had looked forward to her wedding-day. Her face was set stonily, and in the grey depths of her eyes there lurked in place of laughter an implacable determination.
She had loved Robert Grell with the fierce, passionate devotion of a strong nature. The sudden news of his death had brought out the primitive woman bent on vengeance. It was no impulse of suddenly shattered nerves that had made her turn on Fairfield. To coldly analyse the facts for and against him was beyond her. She only thought of the man who had a possible motive for slaying her lover and had had a possible opportunity.
Yet none would have guessed the burning emotion that thrilled in her veins as she submitted to the ministrations of her maid. She had not even troubled to tell her father, although the elderly peer was her only near relative. Not until he was seated at breakfast did she inform him in level, passionless tones of what had happened. Even then she said nothing of her suspicions of Ralph Fairfield. But for her pale face she might have been speaking of something in which she was but slightly interested.
The Duke of Burghley dropped his knife and fork at her first words. As she finished, he stood over her and passed a hand tenderly around her.
‘My poor, poor little girl,’ he said. ‘This is terrible. Fairfield ought to have seen me first. I must telephone for your aunt to come and stay here until we can get away.’
She shook her head a trifle impatiently.
‘I don’t want her, father. She cannot help me. I would rather be here alone with you. It would drive me mad to have sympathy showered on me. I want to see no one. I want to be left to myself.’
‘But—my dear, I know it is a shock, but you cannot be allowed to brood—’
She rose abruptly from the table and put him from her.
‘I shall not brood,’ she said. ‘I shall work. I am going to Scotland Yard to learn what they know.’
‘Yes, yes, if you wish it,’ he said soothingly. ‘We will go at once. I will order the car