“That’s very sensible of you. But you need have no fears about hydrophobia, at any rate. It was simply a bluff and nothing more.”
Cressida thanked them again, and, in order to escape from her gratitude, Sir Clinton said good night, promising to return next morning to tell her anything that she might wish to know.
Wendover had been horrified by the story; and he began to wish that after all they had left Aird to his fate in the tunnel.
“Brutes like that aren’t fit to live,” he declared bitterly, when the door had closed behind them.
“Some of them won’t live much longer, squire, if I can manage it,” Sir Clinton assured him, in a tone that left no doubt in the matter.
In the hall below, they encountered Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux, and at the sight of Sir Clinton her face showed something more than the mere pleasure of meeting an acquaintance. She came forward and intercepted them.
“I am most fortunate,” she explained, with a smile which betrayed her real gratification at their meeting. “I depart tomorrow morning by the first train, and I was fearing that I might not encounter you to make you my adieux. That would have been most impolite to friends so cordial as you have been. And, besides, I am so very happy that I would wish to be very amiable to all the world. All the embarrassments that I feared have been swept away, and everything has arranged itself happily.”
Sir Clinton’s face lost the hard expression which it had borne a few moments before.
“I hope that it is my good fortune to be the first to congratulate you on your approaching marriage, madame. You have all my wishes for great happiness.”
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux’s manners did not allow her to throw up her hands in astonishment, but her face betrayed her surprise.
“But it is marvellous!” she exclaimed. “One would need to be a sorcerer to know so much! It is quite true, what you say. Now that Staveley is dead, I can espouse such a good friend of mine, one who will be kind to me and whom I have been adoring for so long. I can hardly believe it, I am so happy.”
Sir Clinton smiled.
“And you would like everyone else to be happy too? Then you will perhaps begin at once. Go upstairs, madame, and ask to see Mrs. Fleetwood. Say that I sent you. And when you see her, tell her that you married Staveley in 1915. You do not need to say any more.”
Rather puzzled, but quite anxious to do as he told her, Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux bade them both farewell, and they saw her ascending the stair. Sir Clinton gazed after her.
“Easy enough to guess that riddle. One gets a reputation on the cheap sometimes. Her association with Staveley; then her complete separation for years; then this sudden need to meet him again in order to sidetrack some ‘embarrassments’: obviously she had married him, and needed a divorce if she was to marry again. I wish most problems were as simple.”
“And, of course, if she married Staveley in 1915, as she seems to have done, he committed bigamy in marrying Mrs. Fleetwood?”
“Which means that Mrs. Fleetwood is Mrs. Fleetwood, and that she’s legally married now. She won’t be sorry to hear it. That’s why I sent Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux up there now. Firsthand evidence is better than documents; and, of course, the documents will be forthcoming if they’re required in future. Evidently those three scoundrels didn’t know this latest twist in the affair, or they wouldn’t have tried the trick they did last night. They’d have done worse, probably, when they got hold of her. If she’d been dead and out of the way, there would have been no one except old Miss Fordingbridge to contest that impostor’s claim—and she was so besotted with him that she’d never have dreamed of doing so.”
He paused for a moment or two, as though considering the case; but when he spoke again it was on a different point.
“You sometimes jeer at me for playing the mystery-man and refusing to tell you what I infer from the facts that turn up. It’s sometimes irritating, I admit; and now and again I suppose it makes me look as if I were playing the superior fellow. But it’s really nothing of the sort. In affairs of this kind, one never can tell what the next turn of the wheel may be; and one might quite well blurt out something which would give the cue to the very people you want to keep in the dark.”
“You do irritate me often enough, Clinton,” Wendover admitted. “I can’t see why you shouldn’t put your cards on the table. A fact’s a fact, after all.”
“I’ll give you just one example,” said Sir Clinton seriously. “Suppose I had blurted out the fact which I’d inferred about Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux’s marriage. It was implicit in the story she told us; but luckily no one spotted the key except myself. Now, just think what would have happened tonight if that had been common property. These scoundrels would have known that Mrs. Fleetwood was legally married to young Fleetwood, since the ceremony with Staveley was illegal. Therefore, instead of trying the business of the forced marriage, they’d simply have pitched her over the cliff at the Blowhole. She’d have been dead by this time; for their only interest in keeping her alive was to force this marriage with the claimant and sidetrack difficulties in that way. Suppose I’d blurted out my inference, and sent that girl to her death by my carelessness, how should I be feeling at this moment? None too comfortable, so far as I can see.”
Wendover had to admit that the secrecy policy had justified itself.
“It would have been a dreadful business,” he
