“This will was made a few months ago,” said Eunice, troubled. “I do hope I haven’t betrayed any secret of hers.”
“Let me see this precious document,” said Digby, starting up.
His voice was brusque, almost to rudeness. She wondered what had brought about this sudden change. They walked back to the old woman’s shabby room and the girl produced a document from the drawer.
He read it through carefully.
“The old fool,” he muttered. “The cussed drivelling old fool! Have you read this?” he asked sharply.
“I read a little of it,” admitted the girl, shocked by the man’s brutal reference to his mother.
He examined the paper again and all the time he was muttering something under his breath.
“Where did you find this?” he asked harshly.
“I found it by accident,” explained Eunice. “There is a little drawer here”—she pointed to the seemingly solid side of the bureau in which gaped an oblong cavity.
“I see,” said Digby Groat slowly as he folded the paper. “Now, Miss Weldon, perhaps you will tell me how much of this document you have read”—he tapped the will on his palm.
She did not know exactly what to say. She was Mrs. Groat’s servant and she felt it was disloyal even to discuss her private affairs with Digby.
“I read beyond your legacy,” she admitted, “I did not read it carefully.”
“And you saw that my mother had left me £20,000?” said Digby Groat, “and the remainder to—somebody else.”
She nodded.
“Do you know who that somebody else was?”
“Yes,” she said. “To the Marquis of Estremeda.”
His face had changed from sallow to red, from red to a dirty grey, and his voice as he spoke shook with the rage he could not altogether suppress.
“Do you know how much money my mother will be worth?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Groat,” said the girl quietly, “and I don’t think you ought to tell me. It is none of my business.”
“She will be worth a million and a quarter,” he said between his teeth, “and she’s left me £20,000 and this damned house!”
He swung round and was making for the door, and the girl, who guessed his intentions, went after him and caught his arm.
“Mr. Groat,” she said seriously, “you must not go to your mother. You really must not!”
Her intervention sobered him and he walked slowly back to the fireplace, took a match from his pocket, lit it, and before the astonished eyes of the girl applied it to one corner of the document. He watched it until it was black ash and then put his foot upon the debris.
“So much for that!” he said, and turning caught the amazed look in the face of Eunice. “You think I’ve behaved disgracefully, I suppose,” he smiled, his old debonair self. “The truth is, I am saving my mother’s memory from the imputation of madness. There is no Marquis of Estremeda, as far as I know. It is one of the illusions which my mother has, that a Spanish nobleman once befriended her. That is the dark secret of our family, Miss Weldon,” he laughed, but she knew that he was lying.
XI
The door of Digby Groat’s study was ajar, and he caught a glimpse of Eunice as she came in and made her way up to her room. She had occupied a considerable amount of his thoughts that afternoon, and he had cursed himself that he had been betrayed into revealing the ugly side of his nature before one whom he wished to impress. But there was another matter troubling him. In his folly he had destroyed a legal document in the presence of a witness and had put himself into her power. Suppose his mother died, he thought, and the question of a will arose? Suppose Estremeda got hold of her, her testimony in the courts of law might destroy the value of his mother’s earlier will and bring him into the dock at the Old Bailey.
It was an axiom of his that great criminals are destroyed by small causes. The spendthrift who dissipates hundreds of thousands of pounds, finds himself made bankrupt by a paltry hundred pounds, and the clever organizer of the Thirteen who had covered his traces so perfectly that the shrewdest police in the world had not been able to associate him with their many crimes, might easily be brought to book through a piece of stupidity which was dictated by rage and offended vanity. He was now more than ever determined that Eunice Weldon should come within his influence, so that her power for mischief should be broken before she knew how crushingly it might be employed.
It was not an unpleasant task he set himself, for Eunice exercised a growing fascination over him. Her beauty and her singular intelligence were sufficient lures, but to a man of his temperament the knowledge that she added to these gifts a purity of mind and soul gave her an added value. That she was in the habit of meeting the man he hated, he knew. His faithful Jackson had trailed the girl twice, and on each occasion had returned with the same report. Eunice Weldon was meeting Steele in the park. And the possibility that Jim loved her was the greatest incentive of all to his vile plan.
He could strike at Jim through the girl, could befoul the soul that Jim Steele loved best in the world. That would be a noble revenge, he thought, as he sat, pen in hand, and heard her light footsteps pass up the stairs. But he must be patient and the game must be played cautiously. He must gain her confidence. That was essential, and the best way of securing this end, was to make no reference to these meetings, to give her the fullest opportunity for seeing Jim Steele and to avoid studiously any suggestion that he himself had an interest in her.
He had not sought an interview with his mother. She had been sleeping all the afternoon, the
