It was a fine winter day, though bitterly cold, so the homecoming traveller found himself a comfortable spot in a sheltered place, on the upper deck of the steamer, where was just room for three.
Two deck-chairs were already occupied, one by a big man with whose powerful, humorous face Rushworth felt he was vaguely familiar, the other by a delicate, fragile-looking, little grey-haired lady. The third chair was unoccupied, and so he sat down in it.
Perhaps because he was in a sentimental mood today, he felt queerly moved when he saw that, under their rug, the big man was holding the hand of the grey-haired little lady. They were talking together eagerly, happily; obviously, so Rushworth told himself, an old-fashioned husband and wife, never so happy as when they were together.
His heart swung back to Ivy Lexton, and to the bliss of their coming meeting.
Poor, precious darling! What a terrible ordeal she had been through! He would regret all his life, all their joint life, that he had been far from her during the weeks that had followed the strange death of Jervis Lexton.
And then—for a moment he thought his ears had misled him—he heard that very name of “Lexton” uttered aloud by the man sitting one from him.
“That Lexton affair? Come now. If you really read your loving husband’s letters—I sometimes suspect that you don’t, you naughty little thing—well, there’d be nothing left to tell you! It’s hunting I should be today, instead of coming to meet an ungrateful woman.”
“I want to know what’s happening now, Joe. Also, most of all, what led to the extraordinary reprieve on the very day this man was to have been hanged?”
A reprieve? Miles Rushworth felt a sudden rush of anger and surprise. He was, of course, aware that Roger Gretorex, the man whose name and personality he loathed, and for whom he felt he would ever feel an intense, retrospective horror, was to have been hanged this very morning. That fact had been stated in both the daily papers which are published in English in Paris.
If it was true that there had been a reprieve that morning, how had this stranger already become aware of the fact?
“You know I told you, Eileen, long ago, that the poor chap had refused to appeal?”
“Yes, I remember that,” she murmured.
“Well, there seemed nothing left to be done! I was in despair, and it was only the day before yesterday that by—well, I suppose old-fashioned folk like you would call it an intervention of Providence, some astounding new evidence was produced. And what’s more, I’ve been proved right!”
And there was a tone of triumph in the, now low, organ-like voice.
“D’you mean that what you half suspected was true all along, Joe?”
She had turned her head round, and was gazing up into her husband’s face.
Rushworth saw the big man bend his head as jovially he exclaimed, “Bedad! I think we’ve got her cold!”
A tremor ran through the lady. “What a horrible expression,” she murmured.
“Still, so far there’s something lacking, me dear, and it’s causing me a bit of anxiety.”
“What’s that, Joe?”
“Motive!” the man exclaimed, in a voice that had become suddenly grave. And then he went on: “I don’t mind telling you that everything fair and—well, a bit near the wind, also, was done to try and find out if our lovely, clinging Ivy had another man in tow. She is a”—the speaker sought for something in place of the Biblical word trembling on his lips, but he gave it up, and said instead:
“We heard that there was one chap who went about with her a good deal last autumn, and who was far more often at Duke of Kent Mansion than Gretorex ever was. But though we ran him to earth and gave him—at least I hope so—a pretty bad quarter of an hour, it was clear that he would never have married her, not if she had been a hundred times free! Also, though he’s a gay bachelor, and manages to give his lady friends a scrumptious time, he’s not a rich man, and our practical little Ivy wants money, money, money all the time.”
“Then what’s going to be done now? You don’t want your man, if he’s really innocent, to languish in prison half his life,” observed the little lady shrewdly.
“I do not,” he answered, in his rich, Irish voice. “What’s more, I want to shift that noose. Once we get her in the dock I’ll see there’s no recommendation to mercy; trust me for that! The woman’s a double-dyed murderess. She poisoned her husband, and she as good as hanged her lover.”
“You haven’t got her in the dock yet, and maybe you never will,” said his wife calmly.
“Hold on! Hold on! Did you ever see me miss a kill I’d set my heart on? There’s another woman whose neck I’d like to wring—that of an old charwoman, who, if she’d told the truth when Gretorex was first arrested, might have made all the difference, for there would still have been time, then, to find out something.”
“Has that poor, pretty woman had a chance of saying anything for herself?” asked his wife slowly.
“That artful little Jezebel is staying with a woman friend in the country at present, and the police are determined that everything is to be OK this time. It’s for hell she’s making—” and he laughed a jolly laugh. “Ivy’s held all the cards in her hand up to now, but she’s going to lose the rubber.”
“I do wonder, Joe, what her motive can have been—her husband had just got a good job, hadn’t he?”
For a few moments the speaker remained silent, then he said in a singular voice:
“If Gretorex had hanged this morning, I’d have betted a hundred to one that within a year we should have seen, in all the papers, a paragraph announcing that the beautiful Mrs. Lexton, whose husband had died in such tragic circumstances, was about to be married very quietly to
