The dangerous game
into his eyes--tears of joy that all his suspicions were ungrounded.
His first impulse was to demand the reason she had lied to him so
consistently, moreover, why she had spent those hours in the arms of
Karl Weiss. But he refrained. The man was his enemy. He had taken from
him all that life possessed, and his one thought was of his subtle and
deadly revenge.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A DANCE AT CLARIDGE’S
It was dusk when the car swept into the drive at Stagsden, and as
Edris got out, Lord Simba, her Great Dane, bounded forth to meet her,
while a few moments afterwards Darville, still in his traveling coat,
stood before the welcome fire in the artistic morning-room, being
greeted by his friend General Temperley and his wife.
“It’s awfully good of you, Mr. Darville, to have given Edris such a
jolly time! She wrote saying how much she was enjoying herself at
Wengen,” Mrs. Temperley said.
“Glad you’re safely back, Darville,” exclaimed the General cheerily,
rising from his chair. “It’s been pretty dull here without Edris, for
she’s always lively. You had a good time, eh?”
“Delightful,” replied the novelist, while at that moment Edris, who
had been greeting her magnificent dog, entered, and embraced both her
father and mother.
That night, after dinner, both the General and his wife retired early,
and, after Edris had taken Lord Simba out in the grounds, she sat with
Seton beside the fire.
“Somehow, darling,” she exclaimed suddenly, “I feel that you are not
the same to me as you were. Why?”
He remained silent. What could he say? It was upon the tip of his
tongue to speak frankly and tell her that he knew of her perfidy and
deceit, and to cast her out of his life as worthless. But his better
nature asserted itself, and he crushed down the volcano of anger
arising within him.
“I am just the same to you, darling,” he replied quite calmly. “I love
you. I can say no more.”
“You have been annoyed about Karl--I know it,” she exclaimed. “But do
believe me when I tell you that there is no reason whatever to be
jealous. He is going to Canada, and I shall never see him again. I
bade farewell to him in Interlaken. He leaves from Cherbourg on
Saturday week.”
Darville, a heavy expression upon his face, bent towards her, and,
taking her hand, asked: “Then you have really parted from him?”
“I have.”
“You asked me to obtain a job for him in England. Suppose that I do
so?”
“Oh, it would be awfully good of you to do so, Seti. Do try and fix
him up somehow, won’t you, dearest? I feel so sorry for him.”
“I will try and do so, darling--if it is your wish. But why do you
want to get him here to England?”
“I have no other interest in him except that I like him as a friend,”
she assured him, looking straight into his eyes. “I know you think I
love him, but I assure you I don’t. I love you and you only, Seti. I
shall never love any man except your wonderful self. To me your life,
your achievements, your popularity--all are wonderful. You are my
wonderful lover!” And she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him
again and again.
Her attitude towards him was such as to cause him to wonder once again
whether he had not suffered the canker-worm of jealousy without real
cause. What Bennett had reported might, after all, have been slightly
exaggerated. His age was different from hers, and, after all, had he
not told her that he wished her to have an enjoyable time in Wengen?
As they smoked their cigarettes together he sat gazing upon her smart
figure in her evening gown of cyclamen velvet, and, entranced by the
sweetness of her smiles, he began to dub himself a fool for
entertaining false suspicions concerning the girl who, after all, was
devoted to him, and was wholly his.
When they parted for the night he felt that her kisses were just as
they had been at Hove before Christmas--full of hot passion and deep
devotion. And he, in turn, held her in a long, clinging embrace, his
lips pressed to hers.
On the following morning, when the neat maid brought his early tea,
several letters lay upon the tray. One, in a long envelope of peculiar
pattern, he recognized as being from Bennett.
He tore it open, and found within a note enclosing four photographs,
being those of four pages of a closely-written letter in a small
handwriting. He sprang from his bed and carried them to the light.
He recognized the handwriting of Karl Weiss. The letter was full of
poetry and undying affection, but from it he learnt one staggering
fact--that Edris, though pretending to be his, had _engaged herself to
Karl!_
His friend had betrayed him! They were engaged! _Engaged!_
He uttered a cry of agonized despair, and, covering his face with his
hands, sank into an arm-chair and gave vent to a torrent of tears.
The woman he loved dearer than his life was no longer his!
He rose from his chair and stood motionless. The blow had turned his
heart to stone.
When they met at breakfast Darville said nothing. The knowledge he had
gained of the girl’s astounding deceit held him silent and
broken-hearted. The light of his life had become extinguished. She no
longer belonged to him.
She kissed him when they were alone, and, although locked away in her
room was the letter she had received from Karl, a copy of which was in
Darville’s hands, she still made great pretense of affection.
She drove him that morning into Leicester in her fine blue car, but as
he sat at her side, he spoke only a few words, for the poor fellow’s
cup of bitterness was full to overflowing. Edris and Karl, in their
ignorance, thought themselves amazingly clever, yet next morning’s
post brought another envelope from Bennett, containing photographs of
an amazing love-letter in Edris’s bold handwriting, which not only
revealed the fact that Karl was coming to London purposely to see her,
but which also contained most unkind references to himself, describing
how she was keeping from him the truth regarding her engagement. The
letter breathed love in every line, and towards the man who had
fascinated her she used every term of endearment she could conjure up.
The letter had been posted in secret at the little village post office
at Thurnby, but it had not escaped the eyes which in London were
awaiting it.
Those references to himself cut him to the quick. He had never
imagined that any woman living could be so cruel and base to the man
who was devoted to her. To and fro he paced his bedroom, beside
himself with grief. Her lover was coming to London to meet her in
secret, and they were actually engaged to each other! He felt himself
bewildered, for his brain had been dulled by that most terrible and
unexpected blow. He read and re-read that cruel letter, which was on
its way to Switzerland, until the breakfast gong sounded, when he
descended to grasp the hand that had penned those hard, bitter words.
How he got through that day he hardly knew.
He walked into the village in pretence of buying postage stamps, and
in his absence, Edris flew to her room and wrote the usual daily
letter to her lover, a copy of which duly found its way to Seton.
On the following day, when he was about to leave for London, she
placed her arms around his neck and kissed him a fond adieu, saying:
“You’ll come back in a day or two, Seti, won’t you? I cannot live
without you, my darling. It will be so horribly dull and lonely while
you are away.”
“Yes,” he said in a strange voice, “I’ll come back very soon, Carina.
I’ll endeavor to see my friend concerning Karl.”
“Do, darling. He’ll be so thankful to you.”
Darville recollected her letter, a copy of which reposed in his
pocket, and, nauseated by her abominable deception, entered the car,
raised his hat, and with a forced smile, drove down the drive.
He held his breath as he turned back to wave her farewell.
Then aloud he exclaimed in a bitter, broken voice, tears welling in
his eyes, “And so ends my romance!”
He went down to Hove, and shut himself up in his flat with his
unbearable grief. At evening he would take his pet Pom for a walk
beside the sea, over those same paths where he had walked so
blissfully at Edris’s side at the birth of their love. For hours he
would sit in his rooms, brooding and alone, speaking to himself aloud
between his sobs.
Strong man that he was, he now was inert, broken, and deserted.
He tried to apply himself to his literary work, so as to forget, but
all in vain. The beautiful face of Edris, with its great, gray eyes
and dark, shingled hair, smiled upon him in his fancy, and sometimes
he would set the big arm-chair before the fire and conjure up a
recollection of her seated there, laughing gayly and smoking, just as
she had so often done when he had first revealed his great passion for
her.
As day succeeded day, however, there came to him copies of Karl’s
letters to Edris, and those of her replies. The mean character of the
man who had stolen her heart from him was revealed by his jeering and
insulting references to himself, while his views Edris never
challenged. In one letter she declared that she was tired of him.
That expression caused him the greatest grief, and added much to his
burden of sorrow. She was tired of him, so to that younger man she had
secretly engaged herself on the night of her departure from
Switzerland. Though playing a double game, she still made a hollow
pretense of loving him, for she wrote him constantly letters which
were perfectly charming.
They were, however, strange missives when compared with her letters to
her lover in Switzerland.
One day he received a letter saying that she was coming to London on
business for her father, and asked whether he would meet her at the
Carlton, where she would be staying. He had loaned his rooms for a few
weeks to a friend recently married, therefore he replied by wire that
he, too, would also stay at the Carlton. He had made up his mind that
he would, while wreaking a terrible vengeance upon Karl Weiss, see her
for the last time and speak his mind openly.
Already in the post was a letter to Interlaken, written from a certain
Government department in Whitehall, saying that if he happened to be
coming to London the department would be pleased if he would call.
That department was the Secret Service, which, if he called, would
offer to engage him at a big remuneration if he would pose as a
German, which he could easily do, and go to Moscow to investigate the
new Communist plot against Great Britain. Darville had arranged that
Webster was to pose in his place as director of the department.
Webster and Bennett had been down to Hove, and Darville had arranged
everything. Once Karl Weiss accepted the alluring bait, as he, no
doubt, would--for he loved Secret Service work, as shown by his
success while with the Commission in Germany after the war--then the
rest would be easy. He would travel as a German from Berlin to Moscow,
and it would be easy enough to give anonymous warning to the Soviet
authorities that a British secret agent was in their midst. The hatred
of Seton Darville was now relentless, for, once Karl Weiss crossed the
Russian frontier, then he would never return.
In dealing with an enemy Seton Darville was hard and utterly
unscrupulous, yet such was his strange dual nature that he had the
heart of a child, sympathetic and noble to a degree.
Three days later he met Edris at the Carlton. She had a lady friend
staying with her, and his room was quite close to theirs. When alone
Edris kissed him affectionately before they dressed for dinner. She
having been invited by her friend to go to the theater, Darville was
left alone, when, suddenly, he recollected that he had an invitation
to the Countess of Culford’s dance at Claridge’s, at which many of his