Then in a different and more cheery voice, she went on:
“You have to help me, Mr. Tab. Not in the matter we have been discussing—I don’t mean that.”
“I’ll help you in that,” said Tab.
“I think you will,” she answered quickly, “but for the moment, ungracious as it may sound, I do not need help. The other matter is more personal. Do you remember telling me about your friend?”
“Rex?” he asked in surprise.
She nodded.
“He went to Naples, didn’t he? I had a letter from him written on board.”
Tab smiled.
“Poor old Rex. What did he want, your photograph?”
“More than that,” she said quietly. “You won’t think I am horrible if I betray his confidence, but I must, if you are to help me. Mr. Lander has done me the honour of asking me to marry him.”
Tab looked at her open-mouthed.
“Rex?” he said incredulously.
She nodded.
“I won’t show you the letter, it would hardly be fair; but he has asked me to give my answer in the agony column of the Megaphone. He says that he has an agent in London who will send it by wireless, and I was wondering—” she hesitated.
“If I were the agent?” said Tab, “No, I know nothing whatever about this.”
She drew a sigh.
“I’m glad,” she said inconsequently. “I mean, I’m glad that you won’t be hurt even indirectly.”
“Do you intend putting in the advertisement?”
“I have already sent it to the paper,” she said. “Here is a copy.” She went to her writing-table and brought back a slip of paper and Tab read:
“Rex: What you ask is quite impossible. I shall never make any other reply.
“One does get that kind of letters,” she said, “and as a rule they are not worth while answering. Had I not known he was a friend of yours, I don’t think I should have taken the trouble—yes I would,” she nodded slowly. “Mr. Trasmere’s nephew has certain claims to refusal.”
“Poor old Rex,” said Tab softly. “I had a wireless from him this morning saying that he was enjoying the voyage.”
He took up his hat.
“As regards the other matter, Miss Ardfern,” he said, “you must tell me in your own time, if you wish to tell me at all. But you must understand that there is a very big chance that the police will trace you, in which case I may be of assistance. As matters stand, I am just a sympathetic observer.”
He held out his hand with a smile and she took it and held it in both of hers.
“For twelve years I have been living in a nightmare,” she said, “a nightmare which my own vanity created. I think I am awake now, and when the police trace me—and I am so certain they will trace me that I have left the stage—”
“Was that the reason?” he exclaimed in surprise.
“That is one of the two reasons,” she said. “When they trace me, I think I shall be glad. There is still something of the old Eve in me,” she smiled a little sadly, “to make exposure a painful possibility.”
One last question he asked as he stood at the door.
“What was in the box? The box that looked like a brick and was hidden in the fireplace?”
“Papers,” she replied. “I only know they were papers written in Chinese. I do not know what they were about yet.”
“Had they—could they possibly supply a clue to the murderer?”
She shook her head and he was satisfied.
He smiled at her and with no other word, went out. All doubts that he had had as to his feeling toward her were now set at rest. He loved this slim girl with the madonna-like face, whose moods changed as swiftly as April light. He did not think of Rex, or the heartache which her message would bring, until later.
There was no very satisfactory portrait of Wellington Brown in existence. On the ship which brought him from China, a fellow passenger had taken a snapshot of a group in which Mr. Brown’s face, slightly out of focus, loomed foggily. With this to work on, and with the assistance of Tab, something like a near-portrait was constructed and circulated by the police. Every newspaper carried the portrait, every amateur detective in the country was looking for the man with the beard, whose gloves had been found outside the death chamber of Jesse Trasmere.
Less fortunate was the lot of Mr. Walter Felling, alias Walters. He had been in prison, and his portraits, full face and profile, were available for immediate distribution. He watched the hunt from one of those densely crowded burrows where humanity swelters and festers on the hot days and nights. In the top room of a crowded tenement, he grew more and more gaunt as the days went by, for the fear of death was in his heart.
Despite the efficient portraiture it is doubtful whether he would have been recognized by the most lynx-eyed policeman, for his beard had reached a considerable length and suspense and terror had wasted his plump cheeks into hollows and cavities that had changed the very contours of his face. He knew the law; its fatal readiness to accept the most fragmentary evidence when a man was on trial for murder. His very movement had been an acknowledgment of guilt, would be accepted as such by a judge who would lay out the damning points, against him with a cold and remorseless thoroughness.
Sometimes at night, especially on rainy nights, he would creep out into the streets. Always they seemed to be full of police—he would return in a panic to spend another restless night, when every creak of the stairs, every muffled voice in the rooms below made him jump to the door.
Walters had doubled back to town, the only safe place of refuge. In the country he would have been a marked man and his liberty of short duration. Avoiding the districts which knew him well, and the friends whose loyalty would not stand the
