The Avenger - E. Phillips Oppenheim (best classic romance novels .txt) 📗

a moment, if you can, in patience. It is a deeply interesting case. If you remember, it was about nine o'clock when we left Luigi's; Bentham must have gone almost straight to his office, for he was found there dead a very few minutes after ten."

"Who killed him, and why?" Wrayson asked breathlessly.

"That, I suppose, we shall know later," the Colonel answered. "The police will be on their mettle this time, but it isn't a particularly easy case. He was found lying on his face, stabbed through the heart. That is all anybody knows."

The thoughts went rushing through Wrayson's brain. He remembered the man as he had seemed only a few hours ago, cold, stonily indifferent to young Barnes' passionate questions, inflexibly silent, a man who might easily kindle hatreds, to all appearance without a soft spot or any human feeling. He remembered the close of their interview, and Sydney Barnes' rash threat. The suggested idea clothed itself almost unconsciously with words.

"I have just seen young Barnes," he said. "He has been at the Empire all the evening."

The Colonel lit another cigar.

"It takes a man of nerve and deliberation," he remarked, "to commit a murder. From what I have heard of him, I should not imagine your young friend to be possessed of either. The lady whom he was entertaining, or rather failing to entertain, at dinner—"

"I have seen her since," Wrayson interrupted shortly. "She went straight to the Alhambra."

The Colonel nodded.

"I would have insured her against even suspicion," he remarked. "She was a large, placid woman, of the flabby order of nerves. She will probably faint when she hears what has happened. She might box a man's ears, but her arm would never drive a dagger home into his heart, especially with such beautiful, almost mathematical accuracy. We must look elsewhere, I fancy, for the person who has paid Bentham's debt to society. Heneage, here, has an interesting theory."

Wrayson looked across and found that his eyes met Heneage's. He was sitting a little in the background, with a newspaper in his hand, which he was, however, only affecting to read. He was taking note of every word of the conversation. He was obviously annoyed at the Colonel's reference to him, but he did his best to conceal it.

"Scarcely a theory," he remarked, laying down his paper for a moment. "I can hardly call it that. I only remarked that I happened to know a little about Bentham, and that his clients, if he had any, were mostly foreigners, and their business of a shady nature. As a matter of fact, he was struck off the rolls here some years ago. I forget the case now, but I know that it was a pretty bad one."

"So you see," the Colonel resumed, "he was probably in touch with a loose lot, though what benefit his death could have been to any one it is, of course, a little hard to imagine. Makes one think, somehow, of this Morris Barnes affair, doesn't it? I wonder if there is any connection between the two."

Heneage laid down his paper now, and abandoned his attitude of indifferent listener. He was obviously listening for what Wrayson had to say.

"Connection of some sort between the two men there certainly was," Wrayson admitted. "We know that."

"Exactly," Heneage remarked. "I speak without knowing very much about the matter, but I am thoroughly convinced of one thing. If you can find the murderer of Morris Barnes, you will solve, at the same time, the mystery of Bentham's death. It is the same affair; part and parcel of the same tangle."

The Colonel was silent for a few moments. He seemed to be reflecting on Heneage's words.

"I believe you are right," he said at last. "I should be curious to know, though, how you arrived at this decision."

Heneage looked past him at Wrayson.

"You should ask Wrayson," he said.

But Wrayson had risen, and was sauntering towards the door.

"I'm off," he remarked, looking backwards and nodding his farewells. "If I stay here any longer, I shall have nightmare. Time you fellows were in bed, too. How's the Malleni fund, Colonel?"

The Colonel's face relaxed. A smile of genuine pleasure lit up his features.

"Going strong," he declared triumphantly. "We shall ship him off for Italy next week with a very tidy little cheque in his pocket. Dear old Dobson gave us ten pounds, and the concert fund is turning out well."

Wrayson lit a cigarette and looked back from the open door.

"You're more at home with philanthropy than horrors, Colonel," he remarked. "Good night, everybody!"

CHAPTER XXI

THE FLIGHT OF LOUISE

The Baroness was looking her best, and knew it. She had slept well the night before, and her eyes were soft and clear. Her maid had been unusually successful with her hair, and her hat, which had arrived only that morning from Paris, was quite the smartest in the room. She was at her favourite restaurant, and her solitary companion was a good-looking man, added to which the caviar was delightfully fresh, and the toast crisp and thin. Consequently the Baroness was in a particularly good temper.

"I really do wish, my dear friend," she said, smiling across at him, "that I could do what you ask. But it is not so simple, not so simple as you think. You say, 'Give me the address of your friend,' You ask me nicely, and I like you well enough to be glad to do it. But Louise she say to me, 'Give no one my address! Let no one know where I am gone.'"

"I'm sure she didn't mean that to apply to me," Wrayson pleaded.

"Ah! but she even mentioned your name," the Baroness declared. "I say to her, 'Not even Mr. Wrayson?' and she answered, 'No! No! No!'"

"And you promised?" he asked.

"Why, yes! What else could I do?" she replied. "I say to her, 'You are a very foolish girl, Louise. After you have gone you will be sorry. Mr. Wrayson will be angry with you, and I shall make myself very, very agreeable to him, and who knows but he will forget all about you?' But Louise she only shake her head. She knows her own countrymen too well. They are so terribly insularly constant."

"Is that such a very bad quality, Baroness?"

"Ah! I find it so," she admitted. "I do not like the man who can think of only one thing, only one woman at a time. He is so dull, he has no imagination. If he has only one sweetheart, how can he know anything about us? for in a hundred different women there are no two alike."

"That is all very well," Wrayson answered, smiling; "but, you see, if a man cares very much for one particular woman, he hasn't the least curiosity about the rest of her sex."

She sighed gently, and her eyes flashed her regrets. Very blue eyes they were to-day, almost as blue as the turquoises about her throat.

"They say," she murmured, "that some Englishmen are like that. It is so much a pity—when they are nice!"

"I suppose," he suggested, "that yours is the Continental point of view."

She was silent until the waiter, who was filling her glass with white wine, had departed. Then she leaned over towards him. Her forehead was a little wrinkled, her eyebrows raised. She had the half-plaintive air of a child who is complaining of being unjustly whipped.

"Yes! I think it is," she answered. "The lover, as I know him, is one who could not be unkind to a woman. In his heart he is faithful, perhaps, to one, but for her sake the whole world of beautiful women are objects of interest to him. He will flirt with them when they will. He is always their admirer. In the background there may always be what you call the preference, but that is his secret."

Wrayson smiled across the table.

"This is a very dangerous doctrine, Baroness!" he declared.

"Dangerous?" she murmured.

"For us! Remember that we are a susceptible race."

She flung out her hands and shook her head. Susceptible! She denied it vehemently.

"It is on the contrary," she declared. "You do not lose your heads or your hearts very easily, you Englishmen."

"You do not know us," he protested.

"I know you," she answered. "For myself, I admit it. When I am with a man who is nice, I try that I may make him, just a little, no more, but just a little in love with me. It makes things more amusing. It is better for him, and we are not bored. But with you, mon ami, I know very well that I waste my time. And so, I ask you instead this question. Tell me why you have invited me to take luncheon with you."

She flashed her question across at him carelessly enough, but he felt that she expected an answer, and that she was not to be deceived.

"I wanted Miss Fitzmaurice's address," he said.

"Naturally. But what else?"

He sighed.

"I want to know more than you will tell me, I am afraid," he said. "I want to know why you and Miss Fitzmaurice are living together in London and leading such an unusual life, and how in Heaven's name you became concerned in the affairs of Morris Barnes."

"Ah!" she said. "You want to know that? So!"

"I do," he admitted.

"And yet," she remarked, "even for that it was not worth while to make love to me! You ask so much, my friend, and you give so little."

"If you—" he began, a little awkwardly.

Her light laugh stopped him.

"Ah, no! my friend, you must not be foolish," she said. "I will tell you what I can for nothing, and that, I am afraid, is very little more than nothing. But as for offering me a bribe, you must not think of that. It would not be comme-il-faut; not at all gentil."

"Tell me what you can, then," he begged.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It is so little," she declared; "only this. We are not adventuresses, Louise and I. We are living together because we were schoolfellows, and because we are both anxious to succeed in a certain undertaking to which, for different reasons, we have pledged ourselves. To succeed we needed some papers which had come into the hands of Mr. Morris Barnes. That is why I am civil to that little—what you call bounder, his brother."

"It sounds reasonable enough, this," Wrayson said; "but what about the murder of Morris Barnes, on the very night, you know, when Louise was there?"

"It is all a very simple matter," the Baroness answered, quietly, "but yet it is a matter where the death of a few such men would count for nothing. A few ages ago it would not have been a matter of a dozen Morris Barnes, no, nor a thousand! Diplomacy is just as cruel, and just as ruthless, as the battlefield, only it works, down there—underground!"

"It is a political matter, then?" Wrayson asked swiftly.

The Baroness smiled. She took a cigarette from her little gold case and lit it.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, "you must not try to, what you say, pump me! You can call it what you will. Only to Louise, as to me, it is very much a personal affair. Shall we talk now, for a little, of other things?"

Wrayson sighed.

"I may not know, then," he begged, "where Louise has gone, or why?"

"It would not be her wish," the Baroness answered, "that I should tell you."

"Very well," Wrayson said, "I will ask you no more questions. Only this. I have told you of this man Bentham."

The Baroness inclined her head. He had told her nothing that was news to her.

"Was he on your side, or opposed to you?"

"You are puzzling me," the Baroness confessed.

"Already," Wrayson explained, "I know as much of the affair as this. Morris Barnes was in possession of something, I do not know whether it was documents, or what possible material shape it had, but it brought him in a considerable income, and both you and some others were endeavouring to obtain possession of it. So