Chapter Thirty Six. The Victim of Shame.

The tall red-moustached man stood in the dining-room with Gwen Griffin.

She had seen his approach from the window, and dashing downstairs, had admitted him. Taking him at once into the room she had closed the door, and in a few brief hasty words had admitted him to her confidence.

“What!” he cried, staring at her in amazement. “Jim Jannaway has dared to come here, to read the documents, and then to threaten you with this! Look here, Miss Griffin, the matter is much more serious for you than I had imagined. Those fellows, Felix and Jim, will stick at nothing, but they shall not ruin your reputation. Leave that to ‘Red Mullet’.”

“But, Mr Mullet,” she cried, “he threatens your arrest if I tell my father the truth. Besides, have I not promised secrecy to you?”

“My dear child,” he said, “go at once and tell your father the truth. Then leave the rest to me.”

“But what will he think of me?” she asked, her face blanched to the lips.

“Let your father—indeed, let the world—think what it will of you, Miss Griffin. You are an innocent victim of the avarice of these men, just as I am. I stood your friend that day when I released you from bondage—and I will stand your friend still!”

“They possess our secret.”

“That is a most unfortunate fact,” he admitted. “Still we must try and defy them. I will do my best. But if I fail,” he added in a low earnest voice, “it will not be for want of endeavour, I promise you. I tried to save you and your father once—and I will try again. We must win even if we make some sacrifice.”

“But do not imperil yourself,” she urged. “Do not, I beg of you, Mr Mullet.”

“I shall act with both firmness and discretion, and if we but unmask these blackguards who have tried again to entrap you, we shall have done a service to society at large. Unfortunately,” he added with a sigh, “my own hands are none too clean.”

“You will see my father. The Doctor is upstairs with him,” she urged.

“No—later!” he exclaimed hastily. “At the present moment not a second is to be lost. I must go to them, and see what we can do by firmness. Tell your father of Jim’s visit here, but do not say you have seen me, and say nothing regarding the past—remember, nothing. Promptness of action is now our only safeguard.”

And leaving the girl standing there bewildered, he passed out of the room, and next second she heard the front door closed behind her.

Of his power to avert the natural flow of events she had but little confidence. He was beneath the thumb of Sir Felix Challas, therefore, how could he hope to wrest back the secret which Jim Jannaway had learned?

In any case, the good-looking scoundrel to whom a woman’s honour was of no account, would carry out his threat, and Frank must, ere long, turn his back upon her, as he had done before.

Her heart beat fast, and she placed her hand upon her breast, as if to stay its anxious throbbing.

Mullet, though an adventurer himself, was right. It was her duty to tell her father the truth, and not allow him to continue further in that sense of false security.

Yet at what cost must her statement be made! At cost, alas! of her own honour.

Ere long she would not be able to look Frank in the face, for Jim Jannaway would lie so circumstantially that both her father and he would believe it to be the shameful truth. Mullet would not admit the past. “Say nothing regarding the past,” he had urged! He had some strong motive in this—a motive that must, of itself, prevent him revealing the truth, and clearing her of the blemish placed upon her good name.

Besides, would Frank ever accept the excuses made for her by a man of “Red Mullet’s” stamp? The actual truth was an ugly one. She had been absent from home, and on returning, had refused to give an account of where she had been. And now it was to be revealed that she had lived in “Red Mullet’s” chambers!

She burst into a flood of tears on recognising her own utter helplessness.

Circumstances were entirely against her. She could never hope to defend her own honour in the face of such dark facts.

Suddenly she dried her eyes with a great effort, and looked at herself in the big mirror at the back of the high, old-fashioned carved sideboard. She started to notice how pale she was, and how dark beneath the eyes.

Then slowly she went out of the room, and up the stairs, in obedience to her protector, “Red Mullet.”

Hardly knowing what she did, or what words escaped her, she re-entered the study where her father, her lover and the Doctor were in consultation, and standing before them, described the scene that had occurred in that room during the night-hours.

The three men, when they heard the astounding truth, started to their feet with one accord.

“You!—Gwen—my daughter!” gasped the old Professor in a voice of bitter reproach. “And you have allowed this—you allowed that man to gain our secret without alarming me! I am ashamed of your conduct—heartily ashamed!”

“I could not, father,” answered the girl, panting and pale-faced, “I—I was afraid—I feared him!”

She raised her eyes to Frank’s, and saw in them a look of blank disappointment. She now fully realised that if she had raised the alarm, the communication of the secret to Challas might perhaps have been prevented. She pointed to the broken bell-push, and explained how before her entry there, the resourceful scoundrel had disarranged it as a precaution.

Diamond paced the room in a frenzy of despair. The little man raised his clenched fists above his head and uttered curses upon his enemies, for he saw that through his fingers at the very moment of success, there had slipped a colossal fortune.

“Frank!” exclaimed the girl, in a low piteous voice, standing before him with bent head, “forgive me. I—I was helpless last night. I am helpless now!”

“Forgive!” echoed her father in furious anger. “How can he ever forgive you—how can I forgive you? You might have been in fear of him at that moment, but upon your own showing, you knew him, is not that so?”

“Yes, father,” she faltered. “I—I did know him.”

“Then you have had dealings with our enemies before!” Frank cried, all his dark suspicions now suddenly aroused by her fears and apprehensions.

“I told them nothing, though they tried to force me to.”

“You knew this man, Jim Jannaway, while I was in Copenhagen,” said Frank, his eyes fixed upon her very seriously. “Come, tell the truth, Gwen.”

She nodded in the affirmative, and unable to utter another word, burst again into tears.

And the three men standing there saw that her tears were tears of shame.

Two hours later, Frank Farquhar, dark-faced and determined, stood in one of the smaller rooms in Sir Felix Challas’s house in Berkeley Square, while before him, seated easily on the edge of the table, was Jim Jannaway.

“Well, Mr Farquhar,” he said, “what you’ve just stated is to a certain extent correct. I have no reason whatever to hide the truth, now that you have come to me and demanded it. The investigation of Holmboe’s story has simply been a matter of business in which the keenest wits win. We have won.”

“By trickery—and by a burglary, for which Professor Griffin intends to have you arrested.”

Jannaway laughed impudently in his face.

“My dear sir, pray don’t be foolish,” he answered, “why it was Miss Griffin herself who let me in, and who showed me her father’s decipher of the message in Ezekiel. And if you don’t believe me,” he added, “here’s the telegram which the sent me.”

Frank took the telegram he handed him, and read the following words: “Shall place candle at my window at two to-morrow morning. Come. Have something very important to communicate. Love, Gwen.”

Love! The word danced before Frank’s eyes.

“Why should she be acting in your interests, Mr Jannaway, and not in her father’s? That seems to me a very curious point,” he said, for want of something else to say.

“There was a reason—a very strong reason,” replied the fellow, with a mysterious grin, pretending, of course, to be unaware that Farquhar was the girl’s lover; “the little girl is a particular friend of mine.”

“What do you mean?” gasped Frank, his face paler.

“Well—what I say. Need I be more explicit? It is not usual for a man to imperil a girl’s reputation, is it?”

“Come,” said Frank; “tell me the truth. Is your acquaintance an intimate one?”

The fellow nodded and laughed. He plainly saw the result of his cruel aspersions upon the girl’s character.

“I don’t believe it,” declared Frank.

“Oh! perhaps you are her friend also!” exclaimed Jannaway with a smile. “If so, you’d better ask her if she did not remain with me during a recent absence from home. I wanted her to go back, but she seemed afraid, and preferred life in a bachelor’s chambers.”

“You lie!” cried Frank, crimson with anger.

“No, not so quick, Mr Farquhar,” exclaimed the scoundrel coolly. “Just inquire of her, that’s all. Ask her if she did not meet me in secret late one night, and whether she didn’t remain with me in my chambers off Oxford Street. She will certainly not have forgotten the incident,” he added with meaning sarcasm.

“I don’t believe you!” declared Frank, “but even if she had, you’re a cursed blackguard for giving her away!”

“You asked me for the truth, and you’ve got it!” was Jim Jannaway’s response. “Anything more you wish to know? If so, I am entirely at your service.”

It was one of Jannaway’s characteristics that the more angry he became, the more cool was his exterior.

“I want to know nothing from one who is a liar, a thief, and a slanderer of women,” Frank responded, in a hard, bitter voice.

“I understand that the object of your visit was to inquire the reason why I called so early this morning at Pembridge Gardens. I have simply replied that I called at the Professor’s in response to this invitation,” and he indicated the telegram which he still held in his hand, and which, if the truth were told, he had taken the precaution to send to himself, as additional evidence against the innocent girl whom he had all along intended should be his victim.

“And you repeat your allegation that Miss Gwen has been your guest at your chambers for several days—eh? Remember, if untrue, such a statement is actionable.”

“I repeat it. And I ask you to satisfy yourself as to its truth by asking her. But,” he added, “I may as well tell you that the little girl is annoyed with me just now for betraying her father’s secret to my friends. Yet, after all, as I’ve already said, it was only a matter of business, and with business women ought never to meddle. They always burn their fingers.”

“And your friends—that is Sir Felix Challas and his associates—intend, of course, to profit by this secret which you’ve stolen—eh?” asked Frank, his face darkening.

“That’s their affair—not mine.”

“I hear that you bribed the parlour-maid at Pembridge Gardens—the crafty scoundrel that you are!”

“That’s it!” Jim laughed, “and I squeezed the cook, and kissed the kitchenmaid! Anything else? No, I really haven’t any more time to waste, Mr Farquhar. All I need add is, that if you doubt my statement, please ask Miss Griffin herself.”