Chapter Twenty Five. Two Men and a Woman.

The face of Charlie Rolfe went pale as death.

He was in doubt, and uncertain as to how much, or how little, was known by this man who loved his sister.

“I saw you there, Rolfe, with my own eyes,” repeated Max, looking straight into his face.

He tried to speak. What could he say? For an instant his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

“I—I don’t quite understand you,” he faltered. “What do you mean?”

“Simply that I saw you at the Doctor’s house on the night of their disappearance.”

“My dear fellow,” he laughed, in a moment, perfectly cool, “you must have been mistaken. You actually say you saw me?”

“Most certainly I did,” declared Max, his eyes still upon his friend.

“Then all I can say is that you saw somebody who resembled me. Tell me exactly what you did see.”

Max was for a moment silent. He never expected that Rolfe would flatly deny his presence there. This very fact had increased his suspicions a hundredfold.

“Well, the only person I saw, Charlie, was you yourself—leaving the house. That’s all.”

“Somebody who closely resembled me, I expect.”

“Then you deny having been at the house that evening?” asked Max in great surprise.

“Why, of course I do. You’re absolutely mistaken, old chap,” was Charlie’s response. “Of course, I can quite see how this must have puzzled you. But what now arises in my mind is whether someone has not endeavoured to personate me. It seems very much as though they have. You say that I left the house. When?”

“After the removal. You were in the empty house, which you left secretly.”

“And you were there also, then?” he asked.

“Of course. I called, ignorant that they had left.” Charlie Rolfe did not speak for several moments.

“Well,” he exclaimed at last, “it seems that somebody has been impersonating me. I certainly was not there.”

“Why should they impersonate you?”

“Who knows? Is there not mystery in the whole affair?”

“But if somebody went there dressed to resemble you, there must have been a motive in their visit,” Max said.

“Well, old fellow, as you know, I have kept away from the house of late—at Maud’s request. She feared that her father did not approve of my too frequent visits.”

“And so you met her at dusk in the quiet streets about Nevern Square and the adjacent thoroughfares?”

“Certainly. I told you so. I made no secret of it to you. Why should I?”

“Then why make a secret about your visit to the house on that particular evening?”

“I don’t make any secret of it,” he protested. “As I’ve already told you, I was not there.”

“But you didn’t leave Charing Cross, as you made people believe you had done. You didn’t even go to the station,” returned Max.

“Certainly I did not.”

“You had no intention, when you saw Marion at Cunnington’s, of leaving at all. Come, admit that.”

“You are quite right. I did not intend to leave London.”

“But Statham had given you orders to go.”

“I do not always obey his orders when it is to his own interest that I should disregard them,” he replied enigmatically.

“Then you had a reason for not going to Servia?”

“I had—a very strong one.”

“Connected with Maud Petrovitch?”

“In no way whatever. It was a purely personal motive.”

“And you thought fit to disregard Statham’s injunctions in order to attend to your own private business!”

“It was his business, as well as mine,” declared Charlie, who, after a pause, asked: “Now tell me, Max, why are you cross-examining me like a criminal lawyer? What do you suspect me of?”

“Well—shall I be frank?”

“Certainly. We are old enough friends for that.”

“Then I’m sorry to say, Charlie, that I suspect you of telling a lie.”

“Lies are permissible in certain cases—for instance, where a woman’s honour is at stake,” he replied, fixing his eyes steadily upon those of his friend.

“Then you admit that what you have just told me is not the truth?”

“I admit nothing. I only repeat that I was not in Cromwell Road on the evening in question.”

“But my eyes don’t deceive me, man! I saw your face, remember.”

“If it was actually my face, it was not in Cromwell Road. That’s quite certain?” laughed old Statham’s secretary. “But it was your face.”

“It was, I repeat, somebody who resembled me,” he declared. “But you haven’t told me what the person was doing in the empty house.”

“That’s just what I don’t know,” Barclay replied. “I only know this: When I entered that night I saw nothing of a safe let into the wall. But on going there the next day the safe stood revealed, the door was open, and it was empty.”

“And so you charge me with being a thief!” cried Rolfe, his cheek flushing.

“Not at all. You asked me for the truth, and I’ve told you.”

“Well, it’s evident that you suspect me of sneaking into the house, breaking open the Doctor’s safe, and taking the contents,” he said plainly, annoyed.

“The Doctor may have returned himself in secret,” Max replied. “But such could hardly be the case, for the door had been blown open by explosives.”

“That would have created a noise,” Charlie remarked quickly. “Shows that whoever did it was a blunderer.”

“Exactly. That’s just my opinion. What I want to establish is the motive for the secret visit, and who made it.”

“Well, I can assure you that I’m in entire ignorance of the existence of any safe in the Doctor’s house.”

“And so was I. It was concealed by the furniture until my second visit, on the following morning.”

“Curious,” Rolfe said. “Very curious indeed. The whole thing is most remarkable—especially how both father and daughter got away without leaving the least trace of their flight.”

“Then you don’t anticipate foul play?” Max asked quickly.

“Why should one?”

“The Doctor had a good many political enemies.”

“We all have enemies. Who has not? But they don’t come and murder one and take away one’s household goods.”

“Then I am to take it that it was not you I saw at Cromwell Road, Charlie?” asked his friend in deep earnestness, at the same time filled with suspicion. He felt that his eyes could not deceive him.

“In all seriousness,” was the other’s reply. “I was not there. This personation of myself shows that there was some very clever and deeply-laid scheme.”

“But you’ve just declared that a falsehood was permissible where a woman’s honour was concerned?”

“Well, and will not every man with a sense of honour towards a woman hold the same opinion? You yourself, Max, for instance, are not the man to give a woman away?”

“I know! I know—only—”

“Only what? Surely you do not disagree with me!”

“In a sense I don’t, but I’m anxious to clear up this matter as far as you yourself are concerned.”

Rolfe saw that he had shaken his friend’s fixed belief that he had seen him in Cromwell Road. Max was now debating in his mind whether he had not suspected Charlie unjustly. It is so easy to suspect, and so difficult to satisfy one’s self of the actual truth. The mind is, alas! too apt to receive ill-formed impressions contrary to fact.

“It is already cleared up,” Rolfe answered without hesitation. “I was not there. You were entirely mistaken. Besides, my dear chap, why should I go there when I had been particularly asked by Maud not to visit the house?”

“When did she ask you?”

“Only the night before. That very fact is, in itself, curious. She urged me that whatever might occur, I was not to go to the house.”

“Then she anticipated something—eh?”

“It seems as though she did.”

“And she told Marion something on the night when she and her father disappeared.”

“I know.”

“You know what she told her?”

“No. Marion refuses to tell me, I wish I could induce her to speak. Marion knows the truth—that’s my firm belief.”

“And mine also.”

“The two girls have some secret in common,” Rolfe said. “Can’t you get Marion to tell you?”

“She refuses. I’ve asked her half a dozen times already.”

“I wonder why! There must be some reason.”

“Of course there is. She is loyal to her friend. But tell me honestly, Charlie. Do you know the Doctor’s whereabouts?”

“I tell you honestly that I haven’t the slightest idea. The affair is just as great a mystery to me as to you.”

“But why have you kept away from me till to-day?” Barclay asked. “It isn’t like you.”

“Well,” answered Rolfe, with a slight hesitation, “to tell you the truth, because I thought your manner had rather changed towards me of late.”

“Why, my dear fellow, I’m sure it never has.”

“But you suspected me of being in that house on the night of the disappearance!”

“Of course, because I saw you.”

“Because you thought you saw me,” Charlie said, correcting him. “You surely would not misjudge me for that.”

“No. But your theory regarding falsehoods has, I must admit, caused some suspicion in my mind.”

“Of what?”

“Well, of prevaricating in order to shield a woman—Maud it may be.”

“I am not shielding her!” he declared. “There is nothing to shield. I love her very dearly indeed, and she loves me devotedly in return. Cannot you imagine, Max, my perturbed state of mind now that she has disappeared without a word?”

“Has she sent you no secret message of her safety?” Max asked, seriously.

“Not a word.”

“And you do not know, then, if she has not met with foul play?”

“I don’t. That’s just it! Sometimes—” And he rose from his chair and paced the room in agony of mind. “Sometimes—I—I feel as if I shall go mad. I love her—just as you love Marion! Sometimes I feel assured of her safety—that she and her father have been compelled to disappear for political or other reasons—and then at others a horrible idea haunts me that my love may be dead—the victim of some vile, treacherous plot to take from me all that has made my life worth living!”

“Stop!” cried Max, starting to his feet and facing him. “You love her—eh?”

“Better—ah! better than my own life!” he cried in deep earnestness, his troubled face being an index of his mind.

“Then—then upon her honour—the honour of the woman you love—swear to me that you have spoken the truth!”

He looked into his friend’s eyes for a moment. Then he answered:

“I swear, Max! I swear by my love for Maud that I have spoken the truth!”

And Barclay stood silent—so puzzled as to be unable to utter a word.