“Nothing is wrong. Only... only I am a little tired—”
She moved away from him again. She tried to master herself and smile, but the result of that effort was so piteous that she abandoned it. He stood a moment, watching her with eyes which were full of sorrow and bewilderment and pain.
“Sacha, dear,” he said gently, “will you tell me why Barrington Bryan is here tonight?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“He called to see me. After all, he is our nearest neighbor at Redden.”
The pain in Dick’s eyes deepened. He caught his breath in sharp repudiation.
“Surely,” he exclaimed, “you know enough about him — about his character — to realize that—”
He stopped suddenly.
There was a sharp knocking at the door of the room.
Chapter III
The Hour Was at Hand
Sacha ran to open the door. She seemed to have become endowed, suddenly, with a new strength. Barrington Bryan was standing behind it. He was wearing his overcoat, and held his hat in his hand.
“Forgive me,” he said crisply, “but I have an appointment which I must keep.”
He was frowning, and he glanced angrily in the direction of Dick Lovelace. It was obvious that his appointment interested him much less than the fact of Sacha’s presence in this room with her lover.
“Dr. Andrews of Redden,” the girl exclaimed, in breathless tones, “has sent for me to go to The Black Tower to-night! My uncle’s reason has given way.”
There was a note of pleading in her voice, which caused Dick to set his teeth. Barrington’s frown grew more pronounced. He advanced a little way into the room.
“What good can your going do?” he demanded.
“Dick says that my consent may be necessary if... if he is certified.”
Sacha’s voice shook. In her eyes, which were turned to Dick, there was a desperate appeal that he would maintain his self-restraint.
“Oh, very well.” Barrington appeared to hesitate a moment. Then he turned toward Dick with a new recklessness gleaming in his dark eyes.
“Mrs. Malone has just consented to marry me,” he announced. “In the circumstances, I am naturally reluctant that she should go away—”
He got no farther than that. Dick’s face had become so ghastly in its sudden pallor that, instinctively, he shrank back toward the door. Sacha came quickly between the two men. She laid her hand on Barrington’s arm.
“I will let you know what happens.”
He did not seem to hear her. He turned on his heel and strode out of the room. They heard him open the front door and descend the steps. The little gate clanged.
“Is it true, Sacha — what he said?”
“Yes, Dick.”
She faced him with a new, strange wildness in her eyes. He saw that she was trembling, but he saw also that the color had flowed back, in full tide, to her cheeks. He misread that sign, taking it for relief that her secret had been told. She caught her breath in a gasp.
“I’ll go and get ready,” she declared.
Upstairs, in her drawing-room, she wrote a letter. She put it in an envelope and sealed it. She addressed it to “The Coroner, Redden, Leicestershire.” She put it in her desk.
Ten minutes later, she and Dick reached Harley Street. The servant who opened the door of No. 22 announced that Dr. Hailey was at home.
Her first sight of the doctor caused Sacha a sense of wonder. He looked so big and so kind, like one of the good giants of her fairy books. His expression, she thought, was as gentle as a woman’s, and as full of understanding. Dick handed him the letter he had brought from Dr. Andrews, and they stood in silence — a silence which had not been broken since they left Green Street — while he read it.
When he had finished reading the letter, Dr. Hailey raised his eyeglass to his eye.
“I think,” he said, “that, in the circumstances, I had better go down to Leicestershire at once. I suppose you are returning to Redden to-night?”
Dick assented. “I am taking Mrs. Malone down with me now. I ought to explain, perhaps, that I am Lord Templewood’s agent”
“And Mrs. Malone is his niece?”
“Yes.” A look of bewilderment came into the young man’s eyes. “You know Lord Templewood then?”
A faint smile appeared on Dr. Hailey’s large and genial face.
“Oh, no; but it is obvious, is it not? Lord Templewood, Dr. Andrews says, is a bachelor. On such occasions one summons only very near relations.” He added: “I shall follow you as soon as my car is ready.”
Sacha scarcely spoke a word during the long drive in the rain, and Dick did not try to make her speak. His misery and his indignation against her were too deep to be spent in the small change of talk.
A flickering lamp in the village street of Redden gave her a momentary sight of his face, and she saw that it was hard and stem as it had been in the dining room in Green Street. She caught her breath in a gasp of pain. It was terrible to do what she must do, alone, under the lash of his scorn.
Next moment, the car came to the lodge gates of The Black Tower. They were shut. Dick blew his horn, and after a short interval a figure appeared from the cottage.
“It’s all right, Robson. Mr. Lovelace—”
The big iron gates, which looked as though they had been designed for a prison, fell slowly back. The coupe moved forward. When it came abreast of the lodge-keeper, Dick announced that a second car might be expected any moment.
“Shall I need to shut the gates, sir, in the meantime?”
“Yes. That is his lordship’s special order, you know.”
The coupé drove on into the mysterious darkness of the long avenue.
Sacha told herself that her hour was at hand.
Chapter IV
The Horseman of Death
Dr. Andrews of Redden met Dr. Hailey at The Black Tower, and then left to attend to an urgent case. Sacha accompanied Dr. Hailey to her uncle’s room to which Dick had already ascended. She started at the sight of the wan face which confronted her. Lord Templewood, who lay fully dressed on a couch, looked like a man who has only just succeeded in escaping from a critical illness.
And yet his voice, when he greeted the doctor, was strong and clear. The brainstorm from which he had suffered earlier in the day had by no means exhausted him. She saw that his gaze was as resolute as ever.
She stood near the window of the room while the doctor spoke to his patient. She could hear what was being said, but her mind wandered incessantly, as it had been wandering all these last hours, and she scarcely comprehended the drift of the conversation.
If only she could tell Dick the truth! If only his safety, his very life did not depend on her silence! She raised her eyes to his face in a swift, furtive glance, and saw the deep sorrow and disillusionment which were imprinted on it. That expression stabbed her with new pain.
Then her gaze traveled to the face of the Italian woman, Ninon Darelli, the “medium,” who was her uncle’s companion. Those strange, inscrutable features expressed no human emotion. If she but held the secret of that indifference!
The room was very warm, and yet there seemed to be a chill in its stuffy atmosphere. She wondered if that were due to the gas fire or merely to her own overstrained nerves. It was strangely silent, too, in spite of the voices of the doctor and his patient. What were they talking about? She listened and heard the drip of water in the moat below the window. What a terrible night!
“I assure you, doctor, that spiritualism saved my reason.”