Chapter Seventeen. Ethelwynn Speaks.

I looked into the closely-set, crafty eyes of the old Italian, and saw both determination and desperation.

Was he the man who killed Professor Greer?

“I require no guarantee of safety from you, Antonio,” I answered quickly. “I am now solely in search of my wife. Where is she?”

“Caro signore, I have no idea,” was the old fellow’s bland reply, as he exhibited his palms. “I have not the pleasure of the signora’s acquaintance.”

“But you know where Kirk is hiding, and she is with him, assisting him in discovering my whereabouts, I believe!” I cried.

“That the Signor Kirk crossed from Dover to Calais I am well aware, but of his movements afterwards I assure you I am in complete ignorance.”

What could I do further?

He professed to be equally mystified with myself regarding my wife’s disappearance, declaring his readiness and anxiety to assist me if it were possible.

Then, in the falling twilight, we slowly descended the road together, he giving me his address in the Via Tordinona, a side street close to the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo, which I noted on my shirt-cuff. At the Porto del Popolo we parted, and I returned to the hotel to dine with Gwen, whom I found awaiting me in feverish expectation. I told her briefly of my meeting with a man I knew, but explained nothing of his connection with the house in Sussex Place, nor of the secret tragedy that had been enacted.

Next day was the fifth of February, the day of Santa Agata. How well I recollect it, for at noon we bade farewell to the Eternal City, and as the train roared on across those wide, dreary marshes of the Maremma on our journey northward, I sat in the corner of the compartment and made up my mind to go direct and seek Ethelwynn, the girl whom I had seen dead, and who was yet alive.

I recalled all Antonio’s ominous statements; how that he had expressed a doubt whether the professor’s assassin would ever be brought to justice, and how he had threatened that, if I betrayed the truth to the police, I should never again meet Mabel alive. Did not those words of his conclusively prove complicity in the affair? Why did he command my silence at peril of my dear wife’s life. He had lied when he told me that he was ignorant of her whereabouts; but if he were the actual assassin, or even one of the accomplices, I saw that I could hope for no assistance from him. It was that conclusion which caused me to resolve to invoke the aid of the girl whom I had seen lying upon the floor, cold and lifeless.

From Rome to Broadstairs is a far cry, but two days later we alighted at Victoria, and on the morning of the third day I found myself at the door of a pretty newly-built red-roofed house standing in its own ground high upon the cliffs between the Grand Hotel at Broadstairs and Dumpton Gap.

A neat maid opened the door, and, on inquiring for Miss Greer, I was shown across a square, ample hall to a small cosy sitting-room overlooking the sea, facing direct upon the treacherous Goodwins.

The maid who took my card returned to say that her mistress would be with me in a few moments. And then I stood at the window, gazing along at the quaint old-world harbour of Broadstairs, with “Bleak House” standing high beyond, full of keen anxiety as to the result of the interview.

She came at last, a tall, slim figure, in a dark stuff skirt and cream silk blouse, relieved by a touch of colour at the throat, a sweet-faced, fair-haired, delicate girl, whose large blue eyes wore a look of wonder at the visit of a stranger. She whom I had seen a corpse was certainly alive, and living here in the flesh!

“I must apologise for this intrusion, Miss Greer,” I began, for want of something better to say, “but I may introduce myself as an acquaintance of Mr Langton—an acquaintance under somewhat romantic and curious circumstances.”

“Mr Langton has already told me how he met you—when he believed there were burglars in our house in Sussex Place,” she said, with a brightening smile.

“Yes,” I replied. “I—well, I was put there on guard, but Mr Langton’s suspicions fortunately proved to be unfounded.”

“Ah!” she said, with just the slightest suspicion of a sigh. “I’m glad of that—very glad!”

“The reason of my visit, Miss Greer, is,” I explained after a brief pause, “to ask you whether you are aware of the whereabouts of my friend, your father?” And I fixed my eyes straight upon hers.

“My father went to Scotland,” she replied, without wavering. “At present he’s in Germany. The last I heard of him was three days ago, when he was in Strassburg.”

“He wrote to you?” I gasped, staring at her in amazement that this ready lie should be upon her lips.

She noted my surprise, and said:

“Yes, why shouldn’t he?”

What reply could I give? Could I tell her that the Professor, her father, had been cruelly done to death, and his body cremated in his own experimental furnace? Had I not given my word of honour to that weird will-o’-the-wisp, Kershaw Kirk, that I would preserve silence? Besides, my only thought was for my own dear wife, whose face now rose ever before me.

“Well,” I stammered. “I—well—I believed that you were unaware of his whereabouts, Miss Greer. At least, I understood so from your father’s butler, Antonio.”

She smiled, regarding me quite calmly. She was either in ignorance of what had occurred, or else she was a most perfect actress.

Yet how could she feign ignorance? Had not Kirk told me that she had thrown herself upon her knees before her father’s body, vowing a fierce, bitter vengeance upon his assassin? Perhaps Kirk had lied, of course, yet I recollected that the discovery had been made while the dead man’s daughter was in the house, and that after the astounding incident she had removed with Morgan, her maid, to Lady Mellor’s, while the other servants—unaware of what had occurred—had either been sent away down to Broadstairs, or else discharged. In secret, this handsome girl before me—the girl with that perfect dimpled face and innocent blue eyes—had returned, and we had found her lying apparently dead in the dining-room.

Ethelwynn’s present attitude of pretended ignorance of her father’s fate struck me as both amazing and culpable.

“You say that the Professor was in Strassburg?” I said. “Is he still there?”

“As far as I know,” she replied, twisting her rings nervously around her thin white finger.

“Could I telegraph to him?” I ventured to suggest.

“Certainly, if you have business with him,” she responded. “I’ll go and get the address.” And she swiftly left the room, leaving on the air a sweet breath of violets, a bunch of which she wore in her belt.

A few minutes later she returned with a letter in her hand.

“His address is Kronenburger Strasse, number fifteen,” she exclaimed. “Do you know Strassburg? It’s just at the corner, by the bridge over the canal.”

“I have never been in Strassburg,” was my reply. “But I have important business with the Professor, so, with your permission, I will telegraph to him from here.”

“Most certainly,” she said. “He tells me that his affairs are likely to keep him abroad for a considerable time. But—” and she paused. At last she added: “I have never heard him speak of you as a friend, Mr—Mr Holford.”

“Perhaps not,” I said quickly. “The fact is, I’m a confidential friend of his, as well as of Mr Kershaw Kirk.”

“A friend of Mr Kirk!” she cried, staring at me with a startled expression, half of fear and half of surprise.

“Yes,” I said. “I believe Mr Kirk is an intimate friend both of your father and yourself. Is not that so?”

“Certainly. He’s our very best friend. Both Dad and I trust him implicitly,” replied the girl. “Indeed, during my father’s absence he is left in charge of my affairs.”

For a moment I remained silent.

“He is your friend—eh?”

“Certainly. Why do you ask?”

“Well, because I feared that he was not your friend,” I answered. “Do you happen to know his whereabouts?”

“He’s abroad somewhere, but where I don’t know.”

“Ah!” I laughed lightly, in pretence of careless irresponsibility. “He has always struck me as a strange figure, ever mysterious and ever evasive. Who and what is he?”

“You probably know as much of him, Mr Holford, as I do,” was the girl’s answer. “I only know him to be an intimate friend of my father, and the ideal of an English gentleman. Of his profession, or of his past, I know nothing. My father, who knows him intimately, is always silent upon that point.”

I noted that she spoke in the present tense, as though to preserve the fiction that her father was still alive. Ah! this girl with the innocent eyes and the wonderful hair, the beloved of young Leonard Langton, was an admirable actress, without a doubt. Without the tremble of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle of the mouth, she had actually declared to me that Professor Greer was still alive!

“To me, Kirk is a mystery,” I declared, my gaze fixed straight into her eyes as I stood near the window where the wintry sunlight from across the sea fell full upon her; “at times I doubt him.”

“And so does Mr Langton,” she responded. “But I think that the fears of both of you are quite groundless. Mr Kirk is a little eccentric, that’s all.”

“When did you first know him?” I inquired.

“Oh, when I came back from Lausanne, where I had been at school, I found him to be my father’s most trusted friend. They used to spend many evenings together in the study, smoking and discussing abstruse points of foreign politics in which I, a woman, have no interest.”

“And has he always showed friendship towards you, Miss Greer?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, and to Leonard also, though of late I fear there has been some little unpleasantness between them.”

At this I pricked my ears. I recollected that young Langton had, to me, pretended ignorance of the very existence of Kershaw Kirk! What was the meaning of his attitude towards the man whom I had so foolishly allowed to escape, and who had repaid my friendship by inducing my wife to travel upon a fool’s errand, and, as I feared, fall into a fatal trap laid open for her?

Antonio had covertly threatened me, and I knew instinctively that my well-beloved Mabel was now in direst peril. Ah! that wild fevered life I was now leading was one continuous whirl of dread, of suspicion, and of dark despair.

“You have actual knowledge that Mr Langton has quarrelled with Kirk?” I asked at last.

“Yes, and I much regret it, for Mr Kirk has been our very good friend throughout. It was he who urged my father to allow Mr Langton to pay court to me,” she added. “It was he who made the suggestion that we might be allowed to marry. Such being the case, how can I think ill of the eccentric old fellow?”

“Of course not,” I said, “but is your trust really well founded, do you think? Are you quite certain that he is your friend, or only your pretended ally?”

“I am quite certain,” she declared, “I have had proof abundant of it.”

“Your father did not, I believe, tell you of his projected visit to Germany before leaving?”

“No,” was her reply. “He went up to Edinburgh, but after having left me was suddenly compelled to alter his plans. He crossed to the Hook of Holland, travelling from York to Harwich without returning to London.”

“This he has told you?”

“Yes, in a letter he wrote from Cologne. I wanted to join him, but he would not allow me, and ordered me to come down here. He is very busy concerning one of his recent discoveries.”

“Ah!” I sighed. “He would not allow you to go to him, eh?”

“No; he made excuse that the weather was better just now in Broadstairs than in Southern Germany, and said that his future movements were very uncertain, and that he could not be hampered by a woman.”

In that reply I recognised an evasiveness which was natural. The Professor himself was dead, and this mysterious person posing as him was, of course, disinclined to meet Ethelwynn face to face.

Yet that even surely did not affect the girl’s amazing attitude? She herself had seen her father dead, yet was now actually assisting the impostor to keep up the fiction that he was still alive!