The dangerous game
would never know the truth!” the girl sobbed in her bitter anguish,
and in her penitence she prayed earnestly for forgiveness and
assistance.
At the same time Seton was standing in his room grief-stricken and
heart-broken. Even now, when he knew everything, she was keeping up a
hollow pretense of loving him. Why? he asked himself. Was it because
of his popularity that she still sought to remain affianced to him,
yet at the same time meeting her lover in secret? Her protests of love
had sickened him.
“She is false--damnably false!” he cried in his sorrow--a pathetic
figure, bowed and broken. He stood by his bed and leaned upon it,
looking around him bewildered. “And I trusted her! I thought that at
last I had found happiness; that I had found my soul’s affinity, the
perfect woman!”
He choked down his sobs, and, going to the glass, tied his cravat and
reluctantly descended the staircase to the pretty drawing-room, with
its bowls of pink tulips, where Mrs. Temperley was sitting before the
fire.
“Edris tells me she is going to London to-morrow, Mr. Darville,” said
the General’s wife, a tall, well-preserved woman, who had been a great
hostess in India before the retirement of her husband. “You will
remain here with us, won’t you?”
“I fear that I must also go to London to-morrow,” replied the
novelist. “I have an appointment in town to-morrow night. Besides, I
can go up with Edris.”
“No, don’t. Remain with us. Do!” urged Edris’s mother.
But Seton made excuse that he was compelled to leave, and that moment
Edris, in a plain black dinner-frock, entered the room.
When, later on, at about eleven o’clock, they were left alone together
in the morning-room, Edris exclaimed, suddenly gripping his arm and
looking into his face:
“I know, Seti, that you can have no further confidence in me, but I
repeat what I have already said--that I love you, my wonderful lover,
and you alone. Karl is coming to London, and to-morrow night I am
meeting him at Victoria.”
“Yes,” he said brokenly, “I know. You have as him to come to London.”
Edris flushed up. “I do not deny it. I have done it in order to test
my love for you!” she said very seriously, her little hands trembling
upon his shoulders as she tried to bring her face up to his.
“How curious!” he remarked coldly. “You are engaged to me, and yet you
are compelled to test your love for me, eh? I really cannot understand
you,” he added, with a hard expression on his face.
“I know how base and cruel you must think me, Seti,” she cried in her
distress. “I--I can’t ask--I dare not ask you to forgive me. But if I
could only explain, you would, I know, think better of me--perhaps,
indeed, have pity for me.”
“Pity one who has acted as you have acted?” he said with withering
scorn. “You thought me in ignorance of it all--that I was a dotard,
and that I was one to be gulled and tricked. Instead, I am a man
strong in intelligence and health, with faculties more acute, perhaps,
than those of your straw-stuffed lover. No!” cried Darville in his
anger. “Go and meet him. You are longing for the hour, as you wrote to
him in your last letter four days ago.”
Edris did not answer. She knew that it was true that he had more fear
and jealousy of Karl Weiss than of any other man living.
The color mounted to her face and burnt there, but she did not draw
her hands away. His very words conjured up hatred and things she did
not want to think about, and which she resolutely put away at their
first appearance, now that Karl was on his way to London.
“I love you, Seti,” she said after a time, tired and heartsick as she
was. “I know that you have thrown me over because of my despicable
behavior. But I tell you that I will never marry anyone but you, if
that’s any consolation to you.”
He winced.
“Thank you,” he said very coldly.
She hesitated. Then, at last, summoning courage, she said with tears
in her eyes:
“Seti--my darling--can you ever believe, after all that has passed,
after my foolish infatuation, my abominable deceit and lies, that I
still love no other man but yourself?”
“No, Edris,” was his harsh reply, for his heart was now turned to
stone. “I regret I cannot. You are very young, and, the difference in
our ages being so great, perhaps it is, after all, best as it is. At
least, your lover says so!” he added bitterly.
Edris wondered fully what had torn the scales from his eyes so
roughly.
“Don’t you think I love you, Seti?” she cried in desperation. “You
shouldn’t talk like this.”
He put out his hand as though to touch hers, but stopped in time.
“Will you never forgive me?” She caught hold of him. “Seti, kiss me!”
But the man turned his head away. He had become sickened by her
treachery, her falsehoods, and her pretense of love.
Then her pent-up emotions found vent, and she opened the floodgates of
her soul and poured out the truth to him in short, quick
sentences--how the flirtation, begun by the kiss beneath the
mistletoe, had ended in a mutual attraction, and how Karl had forced a
profession of love from her lips, and a promise to marry him, just
before they had parted at Interlaken.
Edris, with tears streaming from her great, gray eyes, told him the
truth. On her knees she implored forgiveness, covering his hands with
passionate kisses.
Alas! it all left him quite cold. She saw that he had become a changed
man.
Next morning he accepted Mrs. Temperley’s pressing invitation to
remain until Edris returned from meeting Karl. He did not wish to
intrude upon their meeting, and, besides, the trap was set for his
enemy by the lucrative appointment awaiting him. It was Wednesday. She
said that she would return to Stagsden on Saturday.
So he went to the station with her. They uttered few words, both being
full of their own thoughts. Edris was going to meet his enemy in order
to see whether she preferred him to Seton Darville! When she entered
the compartment, her companion suddenly whispered to her:
“Do not forget that I await you!”
She turned quickly to him as she stood upon the footboard, and
replied:
“No, Seti, I shall not forget.”
And the train went off, leaving him alone. He saw her smiling face at
the window. She was expectant and happy. Then he turned, and, with
tears standing in his eyes, walked back to the car.
She had gone to meet his false friend, the traitor who had
extinguished the sun of his life.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TRAP
At ten o’clock on Thursday morning Karl Weiss presented himself at a
certain room in the War Office, as he had been requested by letter,
and there found a grave, gray-haired official awaiting him. As a
matter of fact it was Webster.
When Karl was seated the elder man, leaning back in his writing-chair,
said:
“I understand, Mr. Weiss, from our records here that you have already
been employed by us in certain confidential matters, and that you wish
to reënter our service?”
“That is so,” replied the young man, who looked every inch a German
officer.
“You are able to pass yourself off as a German, eh?”
“I have done it many times, in Berlin and other towns in Germany.”
“Then you could go to Russia with safety, I suppose?”
“With perfect safety. I have a Russian friend in Moscow. He was in
Berlin with me.”
“And you would be prepared to carry out a little confidential mission
for us in Russia?” asked the official seated at the table. “I am
instructed from a certain quarter to offer you a gratuity of one
thousand pounds a year and all traveling and hotel expenses, providing
that you place yourself entirely at the service of the department
engaging you.”
Karl’s heart leapt with joy. From unemployment with only Canada in
prospect, he was to drop into an easy and congenial post--a
confidential mission to Russia!
He accepted with eagerness.
“Very well,” said the gray-haired official. “We need not go over your
references. We have them all here. To-day is Thursday. Will you call
here at eleven o’clock on Monday morning, when an amount will be paid
to you in advance for expenses, and exact instructions given you as to
what information we desire?”
Karl Weiss went out into Whitehall treading on air, and took a taxi to
Edris’s club off Oxford Street, where she awaited him. Meanwhile, the
man who had interviewed the candidate for employment in the Secret
Service, crossed to the office in Trafalgar Square, and rang up
Darville at Stagsden.
When Seton took up the receiver he heard the familiar buzzing, and
knew that his office wished to speak.
“Amerton there?” asked a voice he recognized. The voice used
Darville’s code name.
“Yes. What report?” he asked quickly.
“All settled. He comes again for pay and instructions on Monday at
eleven.”
“Thanks. What report concerning the pair?”
“They dined at the Villa Villa after she met him, and afterwards sat
in the lounge of his hotel. He saw her to the Carlton, and left her at
twelve.”
“Good. Report again to-night at eight,” said Darville in those quick,
business-like tones he used when dealing with confidential matters.
And then he rang off.
When Karl met Edris in the lounge of her club he at once told her the
good news.
“You see your Government trusts me, or they would not give me such a
mission,” he said. “They know what I did for them in Berlin, and they
appreciate it. Now that I am in employment you need not hesitate to
tell old Darville of our engagement.”
“He already knows,” she said. “He has known everything all along, and
that accounts for his strangely suspicious behavior towards me.”
“Known it!” gasped the man. “How? You never betrayed our secret?” he
asked fiercely.
“No. But he has known, nevertheless, and has kept his knowledge of our
treachery to himself.”
Karl’s face clouded, and a hard, evil expression showed at the corners
of his mouth.
“He had better not interfere with my love for you, or he will repent
it,” he said threateningly, and he placed his hand upon his
hip-pocket, where he had his automatic pistol, in order to frighten
her.
To his surprise he saw that she was unmoved by his threats. She had
become quite used to them.
The pair were in ignorance that it was known to Darville that the
Swiss carried a revolver without a permit, and that he had given
orders for his arrest on arrival at Dover as an armed alien, and that
he should be sent back to Switzerland. He had taken that precaution in
order to prevent him coming to London at all, and it was only on the
day prior to his arrival that he had telegraphed and rescinded his
order.
The man who was at enmity with Seton Darville had indeed but little
chance when he chose to use the hidden and subtle power within his
hands.
After luncheon they spent the day walking and sitting in Hyde Park and
in Kensington Gardens, Karl being full of vituperation against Seton.
“I will show him now who will succeed,” he cried angrily, as they were
resting upon a seat in the Broad Walk. “I have a position with the
Government, and I will speak my mind. I will write to him, and defy
him to come between us!”
“You forget that I belonged to Seton before I met you,” she
remonstrated mildly.
“I do not care,” he swung round angrily. “You can never love an old
man like that! I have come into your life. I am young and strong, and
you love me. That you can’t deny, darling. You have told me so.”
For an hour he sat discussing the best way to give Seton Darville his
_congé_.
“You will never find a man who worships you as I do, Edris,” he said.
“You must get rid of him, and take me down to Stagsden before I go to
Russia. I demand to meet the General and your mother.”
There was silence for a few minutes, and then the girl said:
“I have never before had the experience of being loved by two men at