Chapter Eighteen. Wiles of the Wicked.

On the day that Arthur Porter, under the guise of a doctor from Philadelphia, had visited Edna Manners at quaint old Bayeux, Roddy Homfray had, since early morning, been in his wireless-room at Little Farncombe Rectory, making some experiments with the new receiving-set which he had constructed in a cigar-box.

The results had been highly satisfactory and very gratifying. He had been experimenting with a new organic and easily manufactured super-sensitive crystal which he had discovered to be a very delicate detector of wireless waves when an electrical circuit was passed through it, and by dint of long and patient tests of pressure electricity, had come to the conclusion that it was quite as effective as the usual three valves. This meant a very great improvement in the reception of wireless telephony.

As that afternoon he sat at tea with his father he explained the trend of his piezo-electric experiments. The discovery was entirely his own, for though others had experimented with inorganic crystals, quartz and gems, trying to solve the riddle why sugar and certain salts should cool from liquid into different patterns of crystals, nobody had ever dreamed of constructing such a detector or of using such a manufactured “crystal.”

The secret of the new crystals was his own, and, judging from the efficiency of the new portable receiving-set, would be of very considerable value. When, later on, deaf old Mrs Bentley had cleared the table, father and son sat smoking, and Roddy said:

“I’m going along to the Towers to dinner. Mr Sandys has asked me to have a hand at bridge afterwards.”

“Elma is away, isn’t she?”

“Yes. At Harrogate with her aunt. She returns on Tuesday,” the young man replied. “And to-morrow Barclay meets the Kaid Ahmed-el-Hafid at the Ritz to receive the concession. He had a telegram from the Kaid last Friday to say that the concession had been granted in my name, and that he was leaving Tangiers with it on the following day.”

“Well, my boy, it really looks as though Fortune is about to smile on you at last! But we must always remember that she is but a fickle jade at best.”

“Yes, father. I shall not feel safe until the concession is actually in my hands. Barclay has promised to introduce me to the Kaid, who will give me every assistance in my prospecting expedition. It is fortunate that we already hold the secret of the exact position of the ancient workings.”

“It is, my boy,” remarked the old rector thoughtfully. “Possibly you can induce Mr Sandys to finance the undertaking and float a company—eh?”

“That is my idea,” his son replied. “But I shall not approach him until I have been out to the Wad Sus and seen for myself. Then I can speak with authority, and conduct to the spot any expert engineer he may like to send out there.”

Afterwards Roddy glanced at the old grandfather clock with its brass face which stood in the corner, rose, and after dressing, shouted a merry “good-bye” to the rector, and left the house to dine with the great financier, with whose daughter he was so deeply in love.

Their secret they withheld from Mr Sandys. Theirs was a fierce, all-absorbing passion, a mutual affection that was intense. They loved each other fondly and, Mr Sandys being so often in London, they saw each other nearly every day. Indeed, for hours on end Elma would sit in the wireless-room and assist her lover in those delicate and patient experiments which he had been daily making. Roddy, in the weeks that had passed, had regained his normal condition, though sometimes, at odd moments, he still experienced curious lapses of memory.

Old Mr Homfray had not been very well of late. His heart was naturally weak, and the doctor had for several years warned him against any undue excitement or hurrying when walking uphill. Once while conducting morning service, he was seized by faintness and was prevented from preaching his sermon. The narrow, gossiping world of Little Farncombe declared that their rector needed a change, and Mr Homfray had promised his churchwardens that he would take one as soon as he could get someone to lock after the parish in his absence.

On the previous day he had received a letter from Gray’s solicitors informing him that the mortgaged property at Totnes had been sold, and enclosing the paltry sum of fourteen pounds twelve shillings as the balance due to him. This fad had irritated him and caused him the greatest indignation. Gordon Gray had defied him and had foreclosed the mortgage after all! He had, however, made no mention of it to Roddy. The matter was his secret—and his alone, for it so closely concerned that closed chapter of his earlier days.

To Roddy his own strange experience following the tragic discovery in Welling Wood was still a mystery. Only a few days before he had, out of sheer curiosity, taken train to Welwyn and walked out to Willowden. But the house was closed and the garden neglected, and on inquiry in the neighbourhood he had learnt that the people from London had taken the place furnished, and that their lease being up they had left. Where they had gone nobody knew.

To Park Lane Mr Rex Rutherford—as Gordon Gray called himself—had accompanied his friend Porter, alias Harrison, on two occasions, and had endeavoured to make himself extremely affable to Elma, by whose extraordinary beauty he had become greatly attracted. The girl, however, instinctively disliked him. Why, she could not herself tell. He was elegantly-dressed, and his manners were those of a gentleman, yet he had an oleaginous air about him which annoyed her on both occasions. Once she had been compelled to dance with him, and he had been full of empty compliments. But on subsequent occasions when he requested “the pleasure” she managed to excuse herself.

Indeed, she went so far as to suggest to her father that he should not invite Mr Rutherford again. Mr Sandys was rather surprised, but said nothing, and obeyed his daughter’s wish.

Roddy had left the Rectory about an hour and the dusk was gathering into night, when a closed car with strong headlights, coming from the direction of London and driven by a middle-aged man, drew up outside the village, and from it there alighted a short, stout man wearing a green velour Homburg hat.

“I won’t be long,” he remarked to the driver, and at once set out on foot in the direction of the Rectory.

Old Norton Homfray was in his study looking up a text in his big well-worn “Cruden,” when he heard a ring, and knowing Mrs Bentley to be upstairs—and that if downstairs she would never hear it—he went to the door and threw it open, expecting his visitor to be one of his parishioners.

Instead, he came face to face with his enemy, Gordon Gray.

For a second he was too surprised for words.

“Well,” he asked with dignity, “why are you here?”

“Oh!—well, I happened to be near here, and I thought I’d just pay you a call. I want to see you. May I come in?”

“If you wish,” growled the old clergyman, admitting him and conducting him to the study where the lamp was lit.

Then when his visitor was in the room, he turned to him and said:

“So you have carried out your threat, Gray, and sold my houses in Totnes—eh? You’ve taken my little income from me, as that woman told me you intended.”

“I had to; I’m so hard-up. Since the war I’ve been very hard hit,” replied the man. “I’m sorry, of course.”

“Yes. I suppose you are very sorry!” sarcastically remarked the old man, pale with anger. “Once, Gray, I trusted you, and—”

“And I befriended you in consequence,” interrupted the other. “I lent you money.”

“You did—to your own advantage,” said the old rector bitterly. “But let all that pass. I want you to tell me—nay, I demand to know!—what occurred in the wood outside this house on the night when Freda came here in secret.”

“How do I know? I was not here.”

“You were here. I saw you in church.”

“I came to listen to the excellent maxims you put before these yokels—you, who have been in a criminal dock. A fine moral leader you are, Norton?” he laughed scornfully. “You ought to be hounded out of the parish as a hypocrite and a black-coated humbug. And if you don’t take care you will be!”

“And you! I—”

“Take care. I know too much for you, remember,” said Gray seriously.

“You ruin me, and now you would blackmail me—as you and that woman Crisp have blackmailed others. I know your game. It has been played too long.”

“You are making allegations that may prove as dangerous to yourself as to me, Homfray,” said the adventurer coldly, gazing straight into the other’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” cried the rector fiercely. “I know something—and I suspect a good deal more. Edna Manners died in Welling Wood on that fatal night, and my boy Roddy, because he discovered her, fell into your unscrupulous hands. Now, confess it—or, by Heaven! I’ll tell the truth concerning young Willard!”

“Really, Homfray,” the visitor remarked, quite unperturbed. “You’re a very nice, delightful parson—eh? Fancy you preaching in that pulpit, as I sat and listened to you on that Sunday night! You—of all men!”

“I demand to know the truth. Poor Edna was engaged to marry that boy whom you, with that accursed woman, fleeced with such audacity. And you had the further audacity to ask me to assist you in your vile plans.”

“Why not? You live askew, just as we do—only you are slick enough to put on a clerical collar, as to six-tenths of the world the ‘cloth’ can do no evil,” he laughed.

“Edna Manners knew too much for you. I recognised her from Roddy’s description. And then Roddy himself was drugged—or something.”

“It is a matter which neither of us need discuss, Homfray,” said the other. “There is six of me and half a dozen of you. Your son is all right again, deep in his wireless experiments and, I hear, in love with a very charming girl. What more do you want?”

“I want justice and fair play!” said the old rector in desperation. “You, whom I believed to be my real friend, have played a deep and crooked game. Place your cards on the table for once, Gray, and tell me why. I have never been your enemy—only your friend!”

The stocky, beady-eyed adventurer paused for a few seconds. The question nonplussed him. Suddenly he blurted forth:

“You didn’t play a straight game over young Willard. We might have shared equally thirty thousand pounds, but you wouldn’t. I confess, Homfray, your refusal annoyed me.”

“Oh! Then that is the secret!” he said. “I recollect it all. I told you that if you attempted to make that coup and divest the poor boy of everything so that he could not marry Edna, I would go to the police. You pretended to withhold your hand in fear of my threat. But Freda and your unscrupulous friend ‘Guinness’ managed to get the money from him and afterwards close his mouth so that the poor lad could tell no tales.”

“It’s a lie! A damnable lie!” cried Gray, fiercely indignant.

“I have only spoken the truth, and you know it,” declared the old rector calmly. “As a minister of the Gospel, I am not in the habit of lying or being, uncharitable towards my fellow-men.”

“Oh! stop that silly rot! You are on a par with us. Don’t pose as a saint?”

“I am not a saint by any means, Gray. But I try to live honestly and in the fear of God.”

“And the fear of man also, I hope!” the other laughed. “Look here, is it to be war to the end between us? Or will you consider a little proposition I have in mind? Remember that I can very easily go to your bishop and have you kicked out of this little snuggery of yours. And what would your dear son think of all your past adventures—eh?”

“Do it. Go to the bishop!” cried the poor old rector in desperation. “I tell you that I will never lift a finger to aid an assassin.”

“Whom do you call an assassin?” asked Gray, putting forward his dark face threateningly to the rector.

“You—Gordon Gray!” replied the elder man fearlessly. “I know the truth concerning that poor boy Willard’s death, and now that you have ruined me I have determined to risk my position here and reveal the truth!”

Gray, never at a loss for words, stood silent. Homfray’s pale determined countenance told him that he meant what he had said. He realised, for the first time, that in attacking Roddy he had taken a false step. The boy’s father suspected the truth. Nay, he knew it.

But there was the concession—and Elma! He was determined, at all hazards, to possess himself of both as the crowning point of his marvellously adventurous career.

“I defy you to utter a single word!” cried Gray, with clenched fists. “If you do, it will be the worse for you! Remember that!”

“I repeat what I told your accomplice, Freda Crisp. I will rid society of you both as social pests—vampires who prey upon the unwary and inexperienced,” shouted the old clergyman in a frenzy of anger. “You have attacked me and mine, and now I will, in turn, retaliate. Get out of my house this instant!”

Gordon Gray glanced keenly at the old rector with his shrewd dark eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“Homfray, you are a fool?” he declared. “Why can’t we arrange matters? I came here to put a little proposition to you—that I should join your son in that mining concession he is obtaining from the Moorish Government.”

“Join my son!” shrieked the old man. “I would rather that Roddy grasped hands with Satan himself than with you! I—I—”

And his face became crimson as he gasped for breath, and suddenly clutched wildly at his throat.

“I—I—”

But he uttered no further intelligible word. Next second a seizure, due to the violent excitement, held him rigid, and a few seconds later he sank into the arm-chair and expired in the presence of his enemy, thus carrying with him to the grave the secret of Hugh Willard’s tragic end.

Gordon Gray stood there in silence and watching with interest, amused rather than otherwise, realising that Nature herself had, by a strange freak, effected still another coup in his own interests.

The one enemy he feared had been swept from his path! Of Roddy he took no heed.

The road to fortune and to Elma was now rendered clear for him.