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Based on a vintage poster (ca. 1920)
The Saturday Evening Post, 17 December 1921
with "Winnie and the Poison Runner"
This is one of a series of stories about an impoverished but quick-witted and enterprising young country-girl who seeks fortune and happiness in London. Collections of the stories were published under the titles "Winnie and the Wolves" (1921) and "Winnie and the Dark Horses" (1925).
THEY—call them the Society for the Protection of Winnie's Heart—were holding a little committee meeting over coffee in a quiet corner of the big dining room at the Astoria. The society was few in numbers but well equipped in talent. "Little, but apt in the field," as good Mr. Kipling hath it. For it consisted of little Miss Winnie O'Wynn, president, and gentle Mr. George H. Jay, vice president.
The business before the committee was, in effect, the consideration of the following points:
Why were Winnie's eyes so wistful?
Why was Captain Fairbairn, D.S.O., M.C., so invariably hard up?
What did he do with his money?
Why did he not put into words the hungry look which haunted his eyes when watching Winnie?
From all of which may possibly be gleaned the distressing knowledge that the man whom little Miss Winnie loved and who, she was quite sure, loved her was not sufficiently vocal about it; that there was some mystery or discrepancy about his financial income and its outgo; and that, clearly, if the glorious blue eyes of Winnie were to be relieved of the wistful look which now rarely left them, something drastic would have to be done about it.
That this sweet wistfulness only added to the charm which had kept so many would-be willing slaves active in their minds Winnie was well aware; but wistfulness, like milk in hot weather, cannot kept too long. It is liable to turn. Of this great truth also she was well aware.
Some weeks had gone stealing by since Winnie, caressingly but firmly, had rushed Captain Fairbairn into Parliament, but he had remained quite poignantly dumb on the subject of taking his quick-witted little champion to his heart, to his church and so to his house.
They had met quite frequently, and Cecil had given unmistakable signs, by look and by deed, that she was his sun, moon and stars, but never by word of mouth. His adoration was so heartbreakingly mute that Winnie was beginning to believe he would forever fear to tread where so many other men had by no means hesitated to rush in. Hence the committee meeting.
Winnie accepted a cigarette from Mr. Jay with a sad little smile.
"I don't think I shall enjoy it very well," she said; "but you are so kind, Mr. Jay, that I will try." She tried bravely.
"Oh, but I am so disheartened. Perhaps you think that I am looking forward very eagerly to going to-morrow with Lady Fasterton to the little house party which Captain Fairbairn is giving at March Lodge, but I don't think I am. I seem to have lost all eagerness and brightness and vivacity; sometimes I seem almost tired of it all-tired, and so old and sad."
She smiled a wistful smile at Mr. Jay's incredulous gaze, shaking her graceful little head slightly.
"Why, my dear Miss Winnie, you have never looked more lovely, more ingenuous, more fresh and flowerlike in all your life!" he declared.
She touched his hand lightly with her finger tips.
"That is your kind, kind heart," she said. Then she frowned a tiny frown and with a very palpable effort became businesslike.
"If only one could tell how it is that Captain Fairbairn never has any money. He told my friend Gerald Peel that he was always at his wit's end to pay his way halfway, and yet he should have lots of money—don't you think so, please, dear Mr. Jay? Quite enough to justify him asking me the question that is always in his eyes?"
She flushed pinkly, although her attachment to Fairbairn was an old secret between her and her agent. Mr. Jay nodded over his cigar.
"You are right there certainly, Miss Winnie. Marriage—in moderation, ha-ha—I mean in a reasonably quiet way—oughtn't to be financially out of his reach."
Winnie brightened up.
"Oh, do you think so, please? That is what I think too. You see, he isn't a bit extravagant. Gerald Peel told me he wouldn't have gone even to the modest expense of this little house party for the partridge shooting at March Lodge if his filly Nanette had not just won the Gimcrack Stakes."
"Yes, yes, quite so, Miss Winnie. I got a hundred to eight about her," said Mr. Jay absently. "A hundred to eight. I took five hundred to forty twice—ha-ha!"
He beamed, glowing at the recollection.
"How splendid, Mr. Jay! I am so glad for you," said Winnie, who in her demure little way had also helped herself to two thousand to a hundred and sixty about Fairbairn's lion-hearted little two-year-old on the occasion of her short-head triumph at York a few days before.
"So there's no doubt that the captain must have fairly scalped the ring—skinned 'em alive you may say," said the gentle George H. with zest. "As you say, Miss Winnie, he ought occasionally to be fairly incrusted with coin, so to speak. But he isn't. Why? Because more goes out than a comes in—eh? That's arithmetic—accountancy, in fact; and it's true."
Winnie clasped her slender fingers and gazed across at Mr. Jay.
"You would know that, dear Mr. Jay, of course. You are Captain Fairbairn's man of business, and I don't think he would be so unwise as to conceal anything from you, please, do you?"
But the breezy Mr. Jay did not seem quite so sure about that.
"I don't handle all his business," he explained reluctantly. "In fact I only deal with his borrowing—Dr—department—that is to say, his London financial affairs."
He smiled upon the girl.
"His business affairs don't bring the amount of grist to my little mill that yours do, dear little lady, and consequently I don't bring the amount of anxious interest to them that I bring to yours."
He nodded warmly, his face ruddy and good-natured, for he had gazed upon the liqueur when it was green.
"In fact you are old George Jay's star client, and your interests come first, second and third. Compared with yours, my dear Miss Winnie, all others' interests are also-rans— ha-ha—and old George ever transacts other people's business with an eye like a searchlight to your interests."
"I know, I know, and I am so grateful for that," sighed Winnie.
"And the reason I suggested this little lunch was because I want to break to—to tell you of something which, by chance, I found out the other day. I'll admit I have been screwing up my courage to the point all the time we've been here. For I am a tender-hearted old agent—if you ever heard of such a thing—and, my dear, I'm afraid it's going to hurt you. Miss Winnie, I know where every cent of Captain Fairbairn's money goes to. I know who gets it, who spends it and where it is spent, and I don't like the task of telling you."
He refortified himself with Chartreuse. Winnie's exquisite face paled a little and her eyes shadowed almost to violet. A tiny quiver flickered over her red lips—gone in an instant.
"Tell me, please—haven't you always been my friend? You know that I am not quite without courage, don't you, Mr. Jay? Tell me."
He fidgeted.
"Going to hurt, my dear," he warned.
Slowly Winnie took another cigarette and lit it.
"I did that because if it hurts too much I can make a—smoke screen," she said with a little laugh, perhaps a shade tremulous.
"You know, a real friend, a kind friend, tells what one should know not only the nice things."
Mr. Jay sighed a little gustily.
"Very well, Miss Winnie. Well, Captain Fairbairn's spare money —half his income—goes to Paris."
"Ye-es?"
"To a lady!"
"Ye-es?"
"A Madame Déguise—Lucie Déguise!"
"Oh!"—very sudden and soft.
The smoke screen ascended slowly. Winnie was silent for some seconds.
Presently she put the cigarette down.
"I think I want to go now, please," she said plaintively. "You see, there is something in this that I don't understand very well, and I would like to think it over. You were kind, most kind, to tell me. I appreciate it very much, dear Mr. Jay. . . . I—I am wounded. You said it would hurt—and it has."
Mr. Jay raised a large white hand.
"I am sorry, dear Miss Winnie, very sorry. It is painful to me. I don't care to hurt a lady; it's not my style. I'm a kind man; it's my nature. Let me see if I can make a suggestion. Why shouldn't I run over to Paris and see who this Madame Déguise is, and why Captain Fairbairn sends her money? I think there's some mystery. I don't like it. I don't care about it at all. Good money going to Paris this way, with money so tight in the country—ha-ha! It jars on me. Gone, you see. France is a fine country; but any money that goes there is gone—stays there, in fact. I admire the French, but I don't want them to get my money away from me; at least, I mean Captain Fairbairn's away from him. Now I know Paris like I know London, and I advise—I strongly advise you to send me over there and get this thing properly inquired into. It's a good idea—one of my best. What do you say. Miss Winnie?"
"But wouldn't that seem like spying on Captain Fairbairn, please?" doubted Winnie.
"Nuh, nuh—oh, nuh, nuh, nuh!" said Mr. Jay eagerly. "I think it would be entirely in his interests—and, of course, yours."
Winnie considered. She fully intended that the gentle one should go by the next boat train: as, needless to say, he did.
II
BECAUSE Winnie was always a little subdued in manner—or, rather, gave off an impression to that effect—neither her dearest friend, Lady Fasterton, nor her brotherly friend, the Honorable Gerald Peel, nor her fatherly friend, Colonel Murreys, with all of whom she motored down to March Lodge next day, noticed any sign of the wound which Mr. Jay, with quite the best intentions, had inflicted upon her. She was as sweet as ever, as trimly clad, and as gentle. Perhaps her wonderful eyes were a trifle wider and more wistful, the delicate shadows under them a little darker, the perfect curve of her cheek a shade less full; but these minute changes gave to rather than took from her beauty.
It had been a long, long séance which she had held with Best-Beloved-in-the-Mirror overnight, but it had been productive. The long thoughts, stimulated by a profound and anxious study of a photograph of Cecil Fairbairn, had resulted in a certain serene belief in him. In the end Winnie had smiled very affectionately at the face of the member for Tiltonham, and said:
"I trust you, Cecil. Even if you do send half your income to a Parisian lady called Lucie, I trust you still;" and so, wistfully, to bed.
But somehow the discovery had nulled and deadened all her ambition to conceive and execute plans for the augmentation of Fairbairn's income. One must be a super-girl to remain an enthusiastic income increaser for a gentleman when one has discovered that a large 40 per cent of his income goes to Paris for Lucie.
Since Winnie had long ago learned that hasty decision is the father and mother of leisured and probably futile regret, she had not yet settled upon any particular tactics with which to combat this perfectly impossible situation. Beyond sending Mr. Jay to Paris to find out everything he could concerning Lucie, she had done nothing. Data was what she needed now.
"You must have something to go upon, dearest," she had told the little lady in the mirror of yesternight.
"Lucie may be anybody, you see—his old nurse, a poor relative, or even one of those dreadful blackmailers one reads about. Perhaps it may prove to be just a kind action—a secret charity—something to do with some promise Cecil made during the war. There are lots of reasons."
And that was perfectly true, though she could not hit upon any palatable reason which sounded thoroughly acceptable.
"But I will never believe that anyone with eyes like Cecil's is not nice, and because I believe in him it doesn't hurt a bit, and Mr. Jay need not have worried about my feelings at all," she had declared finally, winking two liquid diamonds out of her eyes as she put the mirror down and switched off the light.
Each of Winnie's traveling companions had harvested a very sweet little stack over Nanette, and all were in very high spirits.
"Fairbairn tells me that the birds are plentiful, free from disease and strong on the wing," said the Honorable Gerald, generally.
"That," observed Lady Fasterton dryly, "is very jolly for them."
"Oh, but they get their chance, you know—like a fox. A driven partridge in a wind takes some hitting, what?"
"Is Captain Fairbairn a good shot?" asked Winnie.
"He's a very fine shot," said Gerald. "Bar his brother, he is about the best shot at partridges I've ever seen."
"Brother? I did not know he had a brother," exclaimed May Fasterton, who had never really cared.
"Oh, yes—Weston Fairbairn. Great wanderer; been abroad years. Remarkable chap, I believe. At least he used to be."
It was news to Winnie also, but not of thrilling interest, and when the conversation moved on to Nanette, Winnie's Lullaby—now preparing for the Middle Park Plate—and one or two of Lady Fasterton's steeds, nobody missed Weston Fairbairn's name.
It was a pleasant little run down to March Lodge, and in spite of the unforgettable Lucie, Winnie enjoyed it. They arrived at mid-afternoon, in comfortable time for the girl to see that since her last visit to March Lodge, Cecil Fairbairn had evidently been at some pains to have the place considerably smartened up. Gardeners had been busily at work, and painters too, it seemed, had condescended to while away a few hours there with the brush and can and ladder.
March Lodge had always been a jewel to Winnie, and now, with its new air of prosperity, it thrilled her. It was one of those sunny early September days which had all the warmth of summer but none of its torrid heat, all the refreshing coolness of the autumn but none of its chill, and the spirit of the place was perfect, Each of the little party liked the others, and all had brought with them a fixed intention to enjoy the change, no difficult matter to such a one as Colonel Murreys, lean, brown, correct, reveling openly if quietly in the green, breezy downland, its cleanness and spaciousness, after the brassy Indian sunshine of brown and dusty Kragpore, to which he was soon returning: to Lady Fasterton, gayly indifferent—with a little care—to the deadly lure of the cocaine, which she had conquered, who knew that the downland air, sufficiently courted, held for her charming face a gift of misty pink which rain would not wash off: to the laconic Gerald Peel, who was tranquilly happy in the knowledge that in addition to the shooting, he would have the keen delight of studying the legs, teeth and general anatomies of quite a number of horses whose acquaintance he had not yet made. And Winnie had never been quite so happy in her life, even though the name "Lucie" flickered at intervals upon her consciousness like lightning upon a far horizon.
She had stolen away alone in the garden a little before tea: not far, just down to the stables to see Nanette and Henry, the boy with the sword cut, who attended to and—Winnie suspected—secretly bowed down to and worshiped Nanette. They talked a little—gravely. For Winnie, not long before, had saved Henry from the awkward results of a seriously illegal excess of zeal in the matter of endeavoring to assure for Nanette that triumph in the Ascot New Stakes which the fates had reserved for Lullaby. The sword cut, which in the retreat had struck him permanently off the muster roll of the Third Hussars, had left him a little shaken mentally; but not so shaken that he had failed to add Winnie to the list of those for whom he cheerfully would have taken risks at which a less shaken man might excusably have flinched. He said little, but what he said sounded musical to Winnie.
"Ah. miss, it would be fine to see you and your two-year-old settled down here at March Lodge with the Captain and Nanette and me!"
"Oh, Henry!" Winnie laughed, wide eyed, and went back to the others.
Cecil Fairbairn, coming to seek her, met her under a rose pergola. Winnie caught her breath as she realised how much happier and more confident he looked now than on the day when she first visited March Lodge. They were not in sight of the others, gossiping on the lawn, and he was holding out both hands to her, smiling.
"We saw that you had disappeared, and I guessed where you were and came to find you," he said "I am very glad. I wanted a chance to welcome you alone—away from the others."
His grip was so close upon her fingers that it hurt. But she did not mind, for it seemed that the little quick pain at her fingers was taken from her heart. She did not withdraw her hands.
"Do you like so much for me to be here?" she said, almost whispering.
"Like this—like this, yes. To be my guest—my loveliest, most honored little guest."
"Thank you—oh, thank you so—"
"When you came here that first time to arrange about lending me the money for the second mortgage on March Lodge I was ashamed. I had come almost to the very end of a run of bad luck, and I was almost in the mire; down and out—down and out. Ill too. Did I seem strange—uncouth? I have always wanted to explain that to you, my dear little friend. I'm not whining—only just trying to make you see from what an abyss you lifted me. Ill, disheartened, down and out. Then you came. You were different from what I had expected. Why, one man had told me to beware of you! And you were kind to me—kindest in all the world; and now"—his hands had tightened, but Winnie was aware of no pain now—"now you have saved me, and I am out of the abyss, Winnie."
He dropped her hands and broke off abruptly, staring past her.
"Weston!" he said.
Winnie turned. A tall man was coming towards them with outstretched hand.
"Well, Cecil!" he said in an odd, flat voice.
Winnie's wits placed him at once. Weston! This must be that brother of Cecil of whom Gerald Peel had spoken in the car —returned from his travels. And it was their first meeting for years. She knew her moment was past, so with a little smite she slipped by the newcomer and went to the others on the lawn —happy, in spite of the disappointment, for what she had long seen in Fairbairn's eyes his hands had just repeated and, but for this sudden appearance of Weston Fairbairn, his votes would have confirmed.
"There are anthems in Winnie's eyes!" said Lady Fasterton as she went up to them.
"There are wild roses in Winnie's cheeks!" said the colonel his eyes twinkling.
Winnie blushed exquisitely. It was the first time May Fasterton had ever seen her really confused.
"And there is a large green caterpillar in Gerald's tea," said the Honorable Gerald, loyally diverting attention from his little pal. "It deliberately dived from the cedar."
By the time he was rescued from the deliberate caterpillar and allayed with cake Cecil Fairbairn and the newcomer were crossing the lawn towards them. The Honorable Gerald stared a little.
"Why, that's Weston Fairbairn!" he said, rising. "I haven't seen him for ten years—boys together, what?"
He want across—without any symptom of real pleasure, Winnie noted—and greeted the returned traveler, whom in a moment the captain was introducing to them all.
"Weston has just arrived from Australia," he explained.
"I had a sudden hunger to see the old country again after ten years out there. I couldn't resist It, and there was a boat sailing—one of those sudden impulses. It's good to be here."
He looked round at them all with a smile. His eyes lingered a little on Winnie. She returned his smile, but it was with an effort, and she was relieved when he looked away. She did not like him; and, leaning back in her chair, she studied him as he talked.
"He isn't a bit like Cecil," she told herself. "And how hard he looks! I suppose it is only because he is so sunburned that his eyes look greenish yellow instead of gray. Gerald said that he has had a hard, adventurous life, and I think that is true. It has left its mark upon him. Yet daddy had an adventurous life, and so has Colonel Murreys, but it did not seem to brand them so much. I think Cecil's brother looks cruel and harsh and—not very scrupulous."
She half closed bar eyes, noting the square, heavy, clean-shaven chin, the wide, thin-lipped mouth, the heavily seamed, weather-bitten face of Weston Fairbairn; and, strangely, her dislike of this big, powerful man increased.
Somebody had asked him about Australian bush life, and in his flat, hard, rather jarring, compelling voice he was telling stories of his experiences. Responding automatically to the swift instincts which warned her against this man, Winnie studied him minutely. In the rough blue serge suit, the low collar and loosely knotted black tie he wore he looked like the hard mate of a small sailing ship, ashore for a time. His boots puzzled her a little. They were very yellow and extraordinarily pointed. She wondered for a moment where she had seen such boots before she realized that they were of a type largely worn on the Continent. As he reached for the siphon—he had declared for whisky in preference to tea—the girl noticed that his powerful forearm was tattooed, though she could not distinguish the pattern of the work.
He laughed a good deal as he talked, but Winnie thought his merriment was insincere; and his odd, fierce eyes were cold and quick and—and—yes, watchful. That was the word to which her instincts had been leading her. He was a man on the watch, on guard. She noted now that so surely as anyone of the little company made a movement the eyes of Weston Fairbairn flickered to that movement instantly. Or if a bird fluttered the yellowing leaves of the garden across the lawn; if the gardener's heavy step crunched the gravel beyond the espaliers; if one of the horses down at the stable pawed or stamped; if the trim little maid waiting on them appeared for any reason from the house—the quick ears of this man caught the sound and his cold eyes sought the explanation. There was nothing furtive in this watchfulness. It was the menacing air of one of the big Carnivora in a suspicious mood.
Yielding to the instinct of indulgence which most people feel towards one who has homed from a far place after many years, they encouraged him to talk, and he was nothing loath. He had known strange experiences, places and people in Australia. He had been on many ranges—shearing, boundary riding, storekeeping, horse breaking, rabbit trapping; he had tramped the bush as a sundowner, and pried in desert crannies for opal, ruby and gold; he had been a professional boxer; he had tried gum digging; and he had once owned a share in a pearling lugger up Thursday Island way. He knew the towns and the back blocks, he said, and added that he had learned to track with those aboriginal bloodhounds, the black trackers. He could talk with them in their own vernacular, he claimed: and, thanks to the training of a black grateful for some trivial service, he had learned that most difficult of the outré arts—how to throw the boomerang. New Zealand and Tasmania he knew, and regarded as practically played out. New Guinea he had visited, and considered a place of great possibilities.
"But that is enough—more than enough of me," he said presently. "It's just the record of an ordinary rolling stone, still conspicuous by a total absence of moss."
They laughed a little—except Cecil Fairbairn.
"And after all that," came the flat, harsh voice, "it is good to come home for a little and find that one's brother is an M.P. and owner of a Gimcrack Stakes' winner."
Only Winnie saw the tiny groove between Cecil's eyebrows, or noticed that some of the worry which she thought banished had crept back to his face, and she was glad presently to leave the four men to themselves while she and Lady Fasterton went indoors.
"How do you like the rolling stone, Winnie?" asked May, idly looking over the brushes and dressing-table toys which her maid had laid out.
Winnie, curled up in a big chair near the window of her friend's bedroom, looked very grave.
"I think if I liked him I should be very much afraid of him. So it's lucky that I don't like him very well."
May Fasterton nodded.
"I see, child. You mean that queer air of latent violence about him. It's funny how often a man comes back from the wilder parts of the globe like that. He is not very like Cecil, is he?"
"Oh, no, dear! No one would dream that they were brothers!" cried Winnie softly.
She went across to her friend, slipped an arm round her waist, and they looked at each other in the big mirror of the dressing table. They were oddly alike. Winnie might have been a younger sister.
"May, dearest, do you agree with me? I think he is a dangerous man—a cruel man," she said gravely.
Lady Fasterton smiled at the lovely face and its wide, anxious blue eyes.
"Well, little sister, what if he is? Need it trouble us?" she asked airily.
No man ever troubled May Fasterton, Winnie thought. "No, of course not," she replied at last—"if he does not trouble Cecil."
"Cecil is well able to look after himself, with worse enemies than his brother."
"Then why should he look worried?" asked Winnie.
"But did he?" May seemed surprised. Then she laughed and kissed the girl.
"Those big blue eyes magnify the things they see on the bright and beautiful face of their owner's idol, my child!" she explained.
But Winnie was not so sure, and as she slipped away to her own room she recognized frankly a premonition of coming trouble. There were clouds gathering upon her mental horizon. First there had been Lucie—Lucie Déguise; then the disappointment among the roses, the startlingly swift antipathy to Weston Fairbairn, the tiny signs of worry returning to Cecil's face and, lastly, this premonition, this sudden warning instinct.
Winnie ever trusted her intuition, and because the subtle, so-far-unspoken-of link between her and Cecil Fairbairn was the most priceless thing she had, she called in all her wits to aid her in her fight against this nameless, formless, intangible menace which she sensed from afar.
"Oh, Winnie, Winnie," she whispered to herself, "you are fighting this time for something more than you wanted from the wolves, in the days before you loved anyone!" She gazed for a while out of the window, thinking. "There is nothing to do," she told herself, "except to remember what daddy used to say: 'When in doubt, lie doggo. Drop your chin on your little paws and keep your blue eyes wide, wide open. Don't forget that, child—when in doubt lie doggo, and say nothing.'" Winnie smiled a little and nodded.
"Very well," she said, "I will be doggo with my chin on my paws and my eyes wide open."
III
TWO mornings later Winnie found awaiting her a thick letter with a French stamp on the envelope, addressed in the handwriting of Mr. George H. Jay. Although apparently she was first down and therefore alone for a little in the room, she decided that study of the batch of news which the able George H. had evidently collected might be reserved until she could read it without possibility of interruption. So she slipped it into her pocket, reserving it till later.
It was a fortunate decision, for when, breakfast over, she went off to a favorite and secluded corner of the garden to read the letter, she had hardly settled down before she discovered that there appeared to be others at March Lodge that morning who desired a little brief privacy—Cecil Fairbairn and his brother.
Sitting in a deep arched recess cut in an old yew hedge, Winnie heard them approach. Weston Fairbairn was talking, and even as they came near—on the other aide of the hedge—the girl's quick wits caught the increasing note of emphasis and urgency in his voice. It was that which, even as she rose, served to draw her back to settle herself again in silence on the seat in the recess.
They stopped exactly opposite the girl, so close that no more than a foot's thickness of dense growth separated her from them. She could have heard them if they had whispered.
For a second she was undecided, for this was eavesdropping on Cecil. That gave her a pang, but Weston Fairbairn allayed it at once.
"It's the chance of a lifetime, Cecil, and I've come a long way to get you in it," said the harsh, flat voice she disliked so much. "I tell you, boy, they can't police the Atlantic Coast. It will take them years, cost them millions. Realize the huge length of coast line, and remember that anywhere outside a three-mile limit is sanctuary. It's one of those chances that crop up once in fifty years. Put me up five thousand and leave it to me. I tell you, Cecil, I shall bring back fifty thousand pounds cold cash after paying the charter and the gang. They're paying five pounds and more a bottle for it almost anywhere; and, boy, I can load up from a clever devil in France with stuff that will cost me about two shillings a bottle. Ghastly stuff, sure, but good enough for a man who only sells once in the same market. Next trip will be five hundred miles north—or south. I've gone into it all that part of it. I've only come to you for the capital, which you will get back, and 25 per cent of the profits. What about it?"
There was a short silence, Winnie waited. Then Cecil spoke. His voice seemed oddly quiet and delicate after that of his brother.
"Let me be quite sure that I understand your proposal, Weston," he began.
"It's simple enough."
"Yes? I take it that if I let you have five thousand you and your friends purpose investing it in purchasing illicit spirits in France, chartering a ship and smuggling the stuff into America."
"You've crystallized it, Cecil."
"You are going to pay two shillings a bottle for it——"
"Well, I've got an option on a shipload at that, but I might do better," said Weston Fairbairn. "It's weird stuff, but it's chock-full of alcohol."
Again the silence. Cecil Fairbairn's voice was curiously low when presently he spoke.
"It's a very—modern stunt. It sounds a bit queer to hear it proposed at this old place—in this old garden.
"I don't see that—if you mean because it's an illegal proposition. A good many Fairbairns have lived here who haven't minded a keg of smuggled French brandy," countered the adventurer.
"But this stuff you talk about—why, man, what sort of filthy acid can it be at that figure? Poison! It's bound to be sheer poison! Still, leave that out. I tell you frankly I haven't the money to spare, and—forgive me, old chap—if I had it I wouldn't do it. It doesn't—well, appeal."
"You won't do it?"
"No. I wouldn't do it if you were proposing to run the finest whisky ever blended, much less the Continental filth that shows such a profit."
"You're a prohibitionist?"
"That doesn't arise, Weston. I happen to be a member of Parliament, and I don't happen to be the kind of member who will finance an outrage against another country's laws. I don't imagine that you'd be remotely interested in knowing my personal views for or against prohibition. But that's not my point."
"No, that's understood"—the flat voice was cold and malevolent—"it's a straight answer I want."
"All right. I'm sorry, old chap. The answer is no."
"It must be yes!"
"I beg your pardon?" There was a chill surprise in Cecil Fairbairn's voice.
Winnie paled a little. These were brothers who spoke, but there was no longer a hint of their relationship in their tones.
"I've been everywhere for the money—to every likely man I know. I've failed everywhere. You are my last chance. You've staked me to a good many things. This is the last I shall ever ask of you. You must put up this money."
"No!"
"Be careful, Cecil. Remember that I've suffered. You here, in civilization, cantering on thoroughbreds about Salisbury Plain. You don't know, you'll never understand, what I've been through! Never again! I tell you I have dragged myself up out of the pit for this chance, to get here with this proposition. If I were to tell you half—no, never mind that. The fact is you've soured on me. I've worn you down; bled you white, I suppose you'll say. Well, I've been unlucky. It's not the booze-running scheme you're turning down. It's me—you're turning me down. Well, I can understand that. But you've got to stand for me once more. Do it, and I'll give you your money back and a wedding present—oh, yes, I saw! It's that blue-eyed little lady—isn't it?—that will wipe out all. I'm not trying to persuade you: I'm no diplomat. Cecil, I'm telling you. You have got to make it yes."
"I have made it no."
"Is it the money alone?"
"No, it's the enterprise. I haven't the money to spare, and I happen to take a certain old-fashioned pride in being a conscientious member of Parliament."
"You need to move about the world a bit. That conscientious stuff is old. Because you dislike the idea——"
"Despise—not dislike."
"Oh, very well. That's your last word?"
"Absolutely!"
"Right! Now we will come to business. Will a week's notice to you to clear out of March Lodge suit you?"
The flat voice was quiet, slow and undisguisedly malignant, like a snake crawling.
"Will you explain what you mean by that?" asked Cecil quietly.
"You don't honestly require it, but if you must have it I'll tell you. You'll agree that the place, March Lodge, was left to me—the elder. It's ten years ago now since, bored stiff at the prospect of vegetating here all my life, I offered you the place in return for a fixed yearly payment of twelve hundred for a term of years."
"Yes. You have had it plus a good deal more. I've not totaled it."
"My good man, what are you talking about? I have not had two-thirds——"
"What you personally have not had has been paid where and how you have asked it to be paid," said Cecil. "It isn't necessary to argue, is it? I'll take you through my books, show you the receipted and canceled checks whenever you wish. But if you care to remember that I've staked you to dozens of enterprises in all parts of the world in the last ten years, that you've never made a request for money that I haven't fulfilled—"
"Oh, well, it was my own money, wasn't it? But I'll take a look at those books. Meantime the old arrangement is canceled. I cancel it now. You probably won't claim that there are any legal documents barring that it was a verbal arrangement settled between ourselves. I purpose to take back the estate and give you a mortgage upon it for the amount of the difference between what I have had and what was strictly due to me."
There was a little pause.
"You would really do that?" asked Cecil Fairbairn.
"Certainly—failing the stake for this American enterprise."
"You realize that the whole estate this house and a few hundred acres of almost worthless downland was never worth the money; that I have kept myself poor for ten years struggling to pay you the sum simply because I promised that and because it is my home and birthplace—yours, too, I admit and in effect I have paid you a fancy price for the place spread over ten years. Because I was dealing with a brother I was foolish enough to allow it to remain a personal matter instead of making it a legally safeguarded bargain. You now purpose turning me out, taking possession yourself and recompensing me with a mortgage deed of perhaps one thousand pounds upon a place intrinsically worth possibly five thousand? You seriously intend to do that, because for unassailable reasons I refuse to advance you the cost of what you call a booze-running expedition to America?"
"You have put it in a nutshell," dragged the voice of the adventurer. "You can't have the conscience of a straight M.P. without paying for it, you know. And you won't starve. They pay you four hundred a year for your conscience, don't they?"
There was another long pause. Winnie feared they had moved away. But suddenly Cecil Fairbairn spoke abruptly.
"I've been trying to think of some reason, some sort of excuse for you to justify this—hold-up. But there isn't one; or if there is, it doesn't come to me. Weston, the plain fact is that you are a damned scoundrel, a dishonest blackguard and a mean liar!"
It left the other completely undisturbed.
"I'll look through those books to-night," he said.
"The sooner the better," answered Cecil Fairbairn curtly, and so they moved away.
For a little Winnie sat absolutely still, like a child stunned into silence among the ruins of some well-beloved toy, suddenly broken. Because hitherto she had been uniformly successful in achieving the things she set out to achieve she had never anticipated that there would be any serious difficulty ultimately in fulfilling her desire to settle as Cecil Fairbairn's wife at March Lodge. She had fought hard for it—and so, too, had he. Now the plan was wrecked, kicked into ruins by the foot of this wandering scoundrel and ne'er-do-well, Weston Fairbairn.
Her unopened letter still in her band, she gazed across the garden, thinking rapidly. Cecil was no match for his brother; he had no weapons. He was a gentleman and a man of principle; this adventurer was a pirate, without even the inadequate justification of cleverness.
"Only a stupid person would approach a man like Cecil with a proposal like that," she told herself wisely. "I think Cecil is the very last man in all the world to be attracted by an invitation to become a partner in that—that poison ship. He has lived all his life on these clean, sweet downlands with his horses; he has gone into Parliament with the intention of keeping a clean record. Oh, he is clean at heart"—her eyes shone—"cleaner than mine, and I—I—her voice dropped "worship him! To come to him with such a proposal—it is like a slow, deadly snake crawling out from some dark, evil place. We must do something quickly."
She stared tensely before her, thinking hard. But her thoughts led her nowhere. It was so simple. Cecil Fairbairn had trusted his brother, and his brother had not played straight. Because Cecil had neglected certain legal forms connected with the transfer of the estate he was without legal protection.
"Daddy used to say that all business arrangements needed to be put in black and white, particularly and especially arrangements between relatives—the closer the relative the greater the need," said Winnie rather sorrowfully. "Now we shall never have March Lodge, and Cecil will be poor too poor to marry, he will think."
Her face shadowed. Then she remembered the letter from Mr. Jay and opened it. Before she had read five lines her attitude had subtly changed. The slender little figure in the recess of the yew hedge no longer seemed to droop as though tired and discouraged. A new quality invested it; an air of alertness, eagerness, oddly blended with relief.
She was smiling and her eyes were bright as jewels when, a quarter of an hour later, she looked up to see Lady Fasterton coming down the garden in search of her.
IV
WINNIE was glad that neither Lady Fasterton nor she had planned to go out with the guns that day; and, fond of the lightsome May though she was, it was without any pangs of regret that she listened to a declaration from her friend to the effect that she purposed making an excessively restful day of it in the garden and house. They had traveled some distance on the previous day, and to May's mind a good long lounge was clearly indicated.
It was perhaps ten o'clock before Winnie found an opportunity to speak alone with Captain Fairbairn. She found him rummaging at his big corner table in the long, low, paneled room she loved, in search of half a dozen cartridges specially loaded with duck shot with which to load for the evening stroll home in case of a flight passing overhead to the river some miles west. Winnie's heart sank at sight of the trouble on his good-looking face.
"I hope you will have a good day's sport," she said.
He brightened up a little as he turned to her. "Thank you. Miss O'Wynn," he answered. "You are going to ride, aren't you? I have told Henry to have Tess ready for you whenever you want her."
Winnie glowed. Tess was his own pet mare, a perfect three-quarter Arab riding-hack.
"Yes, I know. You are so kind. I will take such great care of her."
She went nearer to him.
"May I ask you a question, please—a little one, just to satisfy my curiosity?" she murmured.
"Why, of course! Anything you like."
"It is only just an idle question about a matter we were discussing. Is your brother, Mr. Weston Fairbairn, married?"
He winced a little, and his face darkened. But almost immediately he was smiling again.
"Married-oh, yes! His wife lives in France. She was a French girl." Winnie hesitated.
"Was—was her name Odille Déguise, please?"
Fairbairn shook his head. "Déguise, yes; but not Odille—Lucie. Her full Christian names were Lucie Gabrielle Justine. Did you think she was, perhaps, a friend?"
"I just wondered, that was all," said Winnie rather tremulously.
He noted the slight quiver in her voice, the sudden, telltale darkening of her blue eyes and the quick flush that veiled her cheeks with rose. "You are excited about something?" he challenged her, half smiling.
"Yes, indeed I am, dear Captain Fairbairn. But not so excited as you will be soon. You are worried now. I can see it even if the others do not. But, please, will you not worry any more? You know, you have nothing to worry about. I am quite sure. I would not be so foolish as to say such a thing if I were not sure. I shall go out to ride Teas with so much more happiness if you say that you are determined to have a happy day's shooting."
She was resting her lovely slender hand on his tweed coat sleeve, looking up at him with eyes that were as earnest as they were beautiful.
"You see, it chanced that I overheard part—perhaps most—of your conversation with your brother in the garden a little while ago. You came close to where I was resting on the other side of the yew hedge. But it was only accidental eavesdropping for a few seconds—after a sentence or two I listened deliberately."
She spoke, wide eyed, with a charming air partly of confession, partly of defiance. But there was no reproach in his expression; nothing but a dawning eagerness.
"And do you think I was right?" he asked. "I have wondered a little. Do you think I made too great a sacrifice for sake of my principles—to throw away March Lodge and all—and all?"
Her eyes deepened again.
"Oh, no, no, no! You were right, so right! It was splendid! Men differ so strangely. There are so many who would have very quickly joined your brother in his enterprise and have found lots of excuses. But I was so glad that you refused, for no matter how many clever excuses a man made, he could not in his heart be proud of himself or of money made in that way."
He nodded, drinking her in with brightening eyes.
"He means to make me pay for it. I shall be—almost beggared. But at least it was the decent thing to do, wasn't it? I expect some of the keen, cute people would consider me a fool. They would say, 'Fairbairn doesn't mind winning money from bookmakers, got heaven knows how and from heaven knows whom; but he wilts at a neat little proposition like running a cargo of spirit into America at 1000 per cent or so profit.'"
"As though they were the same," cried Winnie. "One is a sporting matter, but the other is illegal and unclean. Oh, please don't let what people might think, or other men might do, alter your decision! It—I think it isn't so much the harm that cargo of poisonous stuff might do that is so important to you—and perhaps me too—as the fact that you despise the proposal and refuse at all costs to contaminate yourself with it. And perhaps it may not be so costly as you think; something may happen to put things right yet, you see."
He stared, puzzled at a certain ring of confidence in her voice, but before he could speak the others came in, looking for him. So he went to his shooting while Winnie, on Tess, set out for her canter. Not far from the house she pulled up under a clump of trees in a fold of the downland and there carefully reread the letter from Mr. Jay. Then, nodding like one who has decided on a definite course of action, she rode on into the village, from whence she sent a short telegram.
"There, Tess darling, that is done, and I do hope that it will all work out properly, don't you?" she said to the mare. "And now we will have a really good gallop, I think."
Tess was perfectly agreeable. She had taken quite a liking to this featherweight, silken-handed little lady who rode so perfectly.
Late that afternoon, just as Winnie and Lady Fasterton were on the point of strolling out to meet the guns, a boy crawled up to the house with a telegram for Winnie. It was quite brief, but judging by Winnie's smile it was brief with that species of brevity which we are told is the soul of wit.
"Something perfectly splendid?" asked Lady Fasterton, watching Winnie.
"Yes. Dear Mr. Jay is coming down to-night."
"How very delightful!" said May dryly.
She was not a very enthusiastic admirer of the gentle George H., who had once worked overtime to divorce her from her wealthy husband, a maneuver defeated by Winnie, and at Winnie's request forgiven—with reservations—by May.
"How excessively jolly!" she repeated more dryly. "Is the gentleman making a long stay, child?"
"Oh, no, May darling! He is going back quite quickly, I expect."
"That will be so nice of him," observed May. "Shall we come out of our blue-eyed reverie and start, Winnie?"
The girl was staring across the downs, lost in thought. She awoke under the gentle irony of her friend.
"Oh, yes, please! Was I dreaming? I am so sorry, dearest."
She turned, with dancing eyes, to slip an affectionate hand through her friend's arm.
"Forgive me, dearest May. I have had a great deal of worry this morning. But it is all right now, I think." A thought occurred to her.
"May, dear, have you any influential friends in Paris—political ones, with real power?"
"Shoals, darling."
"Do you know anyone who has any control over the French police, May, please?"
The flippant lady reflected.
"I know the Minister of Justice, though whether justice has anything to do with the police I don't pretend to know. Theoretically, I expect it has. But, if necessary, we can find out. Come along. If it isn't a secret tell me all about it as we go, child."
Dinner that evening was rather a quiet affair. Weston Fairbairn, who had shot badly, was inclined to be sulky and thirsty, and nobody was sufficiently fond of him to make the slightest effort to coax him. The colonel was tired and seemed quite satisfied to listen to the airy conversation of Lady Fasterton. Winnie, momentarily expecting the arrival of Mr. George H. Jay, was unusually quiet, and because the Honorable Gerald was puzzled and a little perturbed by an instinct that all was not well he, too, was not talkative. Everyone seemed a little relieved when finally the meal ended.
Gentle Mr. Jay arrived just as Winnie and Lady Fasterton left the dining room. At her first glimpse of him Winnie saw that he was in high spirits, at his breeziest. His bow to May Fasterton and herself was the production of a very confident man. And when, a few seconds later, alone with Winnie in the morning room, he settled down to business, his air was that of a conqueror.
"They have got to hand it to us, my dear Miss Winnie," he declared. "We are just naturally the sort of people who are bound to have things our own way—ha-ha. As you've seen already from my letter, I've found out all you require to know about the fair Lucie Déguise."
He dropped his voice.
"No rival there, my dear Miss Winnie. The lady's passée—tres passée, in the language of the country. She is a singer—café-chantant quality. Not what we would call a lady—strictly speaking. A great friend of hers and I got talking—very quickly. But you know most of that."
"Oh, but, please, Mr. Jay, tell me again! You are so lucid. One understands—seems to see so vividly—when you are telling a thing. Do you mind, please?"
The girl interrupted herself suddenly. "Oh, but have you dined, dear Mr. Jay? I was so glad to see you that I forgot."
But Mr. Jay only smiled a comfortable smile.
"Oh, that's all right, Miss Winnie. I coincided with dinnertime at the White Hart Hotel at Salisbury. But the dust was very troublesome during the motor drive out here—very troublesome. The country needs rain. It's very dry on these chalk roads. Dry work traveling on them. I should like a glass of soda water slightly tinctured, my dear Miss Winnie, so to speak—ha-ha!"
Winnie rang the bell, smiling.
"If Mr. Weston Fairbairn has left anything for you," she cautioned him playfully, for that gentleman had exhibited a sullen and untiring thirst throughout dinner.
Nevertheless he had left something for Mr. Jay, who, duly irrigated, presently settled down to his story. He told it well and at some length, but Winnie did not weary. Lovely in her little evening frock, and fair as a flower against the dark background of the paneled wall behind her, she faced the gentle George H. Jay across the table, listening with shining eyes.
Occasionally the clear-cut tittering of the piano came to them from the drawing-room, where the vivacious May was amusing Colonel Murreys and Gerald Peel; but it was not for the sake of May's music that Winnie had kindly opened the door. Nor— though he thought it was—had it been on account of Mr. Jay, who had mentioned that it was a warm evening.
The study, to which Winnie knew Cecil Fairbairn and his brother had retreated, having excused themselves on the ground of extremely urgent business, adjoined the morning room, and it was to the low murmur of voices from the study that Winnie strove to listen while she appeared to give Mr. Jay her undivided attention. As he proceeded with the slightly complacent account of his doings as private sleuth the breezy-mannered Mr. Jay never dreamed that the girl was giving him no more than a bare half of her attention, but he learned it just at the finish.
"And so, my dear Miss Winnie, I reckoned that I had found out all you were likely to be interested in, and promptly left the lady and wrote you. Being, as you know, a quick man, I followed up the letter myself, and when I got your wire was ready to jump off under the gate at once—ha-ha! Yes, indeed. You may definitely take it that anything Captain Fairbairn may have sent mademoiselle—or madame it should be, though she doesn't call herself so—Madame Déguise—has been in the nature of an act of charity to her husband, this Gérard Déguise. Why Captain Fairbairn should tear his bank balance to pieces for the sake of Gérard Déguise I can't tell, Miss Winnie, can you?"
He leaned forward, caught by a look in her shining eyes.
"Ah, yes, indeed I can, Mr. Jay," she breathed.
But she did not, just then, for as she spoke the door of the study suddenly flung open and Weston Fairbairn lurched out, speaking loudly and angrily.
"You don't get such figures as that across on me!" he was shouting furiously. "You lolling about here, a country gentleman, a member of Parliament, owner of racehorses, tell me—me—that outside your miserable four hundred a year parliamentary pay you have to live on what you win and make out of the farm land! Tell me, a man like me, that since I left England you have paid me or my wife for me nearly fifteen thousand pounds! You lie, you—you politician! We'll see what an accountant has to say to your cooked figures!"
Winnie, beckoning Mr. Jay with a swift gesture, moved quickly across the hall. Weston Fairbairn, his back to her, was standing on the threshold of the study, glaring at his brother. Disappointment, drink and a vicious temper had driven from him any veneer of decent manners he may have had. Winnie, glancing past him, saw Cecil Fairbairn standing at his book-littered writing table, looking steadily at the other. He was pale, but his temper was in perfect control, and his expression was one of weary disgust.
"Every figure of my affairs for the last ten years is to be found in these books," he said in a chill, sharp, different voice that oddly sent his D.S.O. and M.C. into Winnie's mind. "I have just tried to lead you through these accounts myself. Your intelligence—or doubtful sobriety—does not seem equal to the strain to-night. Very well, bring any accountant, any aid you wish. The books are at your disposal."
Then he saw Winnie behind his brother, and he faltered. His face changed, and something like despair came to his eyes. The old expression—she knew it. It had been in his eyes when she saved him at Ascot. So he might have looked at something that he wanted desperately but which ever evaded and eluded him. Winnie understood. He saw himself poor again worse than poor. He was to be stripped of March Lodge, the home that he had paid for outrageously, that by every moral law, though not by technical law, was his—to be, as he had dreamed it, Winnie's and his.
A white and slender hand fell, light as a floating feather, on the sleeve of Weston Fairbairn.
"Please!" said a soft voice, very clear, very sweet and distinct for all its softness.
He turned abruptly—dark, raging, towering over the girl. It was characteristic of the man that his pale eyes shot instantly to the burly figure of George H. Jay looming behind Winnie.
In the curious play of light and shade the Gentle George H., standing in the dim hall between the open doors of the two brightly lighted rooms, looked less benevolent, less paternal and benign than usual. He looked harder, grimmer, even a trifle tough. His jaw seemed oddly prominent.
"Who are you?" demanded Weston Fairbairn, a wrung shrillness in his voice, almost a tremor.
Winnie spoke quickly to Mr. Jay, smiling. She asked him to return to the morning room until a little private matter was settled, when she would notify him and be grateful if he would come to them in the study. But she spoke in French.
So swiftly were her wits working that it had not occurred to her to speak to Mr. Jay at all—even in English—until she caught that queer tremor in Weston Fairbairn's voice.
Monsieur Georges bowed and retreated to the morning room. But Weston Fairbairn glared down into Winnie's face.
"Who's that man, hey? What's he want here?"
He whispered—a harsh and hissing sound—and there was that in his whisper which was akin to panic. Winnie passed into the study.
"If you will come in, please, I will explain," she said, smiling at Cecil.
Obediently Weston Fairbairn came in, closing the door carefully behind him with his left hand. His right was jammed into the pocket of his dinner jacket. His heavy face was curiously pale—yellowish.
"One moment, please, Miss O'Wynn," said Cecil Fairbairn quietly as Winnie began to speak, and faced his brother. "I can forgive a good deal, but understand clearly I will forgive no accident with that implement in your hand. You're bringing that trick into this house at your own risk. Miss O'Wynn is standing in the line of a bullet. Take that weapon out of your pocket! Man, where do you think you are? What water-front pothouse do you think this is?"
He rapped it out with a chill distinctness and a note of authority that was as novel to Winnie as to his brother, and slowly the latter took a little ugly automatic from his pocket and laid it on the table.
"All right, but no tricks!" he said. "Now"—he turned his pale glare on Winnie—"who is he—that Frenchman?"
"I will explain presently—if you wish me to," said Winnie demurely. "But, please, I have something important to say first."
She turned a little so that she partly faced both.
"You are furious with your brother, are you not, because he will not finance your enterprise for smuggling some terrible Continental distillation into America? Please don't be angry with me, Mr. Fairbairn, and please answer me quite frankly, for I think have discovered a solution—a way out of the difficulty."
She smiled up at him with those blue, innocent eyes. Never had they been more perilously blue, never more deadly innocent than now, and never had Winnie been more dangerous, for she was fighting for Cecil Fairbairn as well as for herself, for happiness instead of money.
"Well, yes, if you like to put it so," agreed Weston Fairbairn uneasily.
"And he refuses. Don't you see, please, that being an honorable man he is bound to refuse? And because he refuses, you are going to claim the property which you, being the elder son, inherited but agreed to give him in return for a number of payments which he has made."
"He has not made the right payments!" lied Weston Fairbairn.
"No! He has paid too much—a great deal too much, I know. But he is at your mercy because, trusting you, he was careless and did not have your agreement made legal with stamped documents."
"Thats the wrong way to put it, but it will do. He hasn't a legal leg to stand on."
Winnie's eyes widened.
"But do you really mean to do this cruel thing?" she cried.
"I do!"
"In spite of all the money he has paid to you through your wife, Madame Déguise, so that you could begin a new enterprise after each of your failures?"
"I shall return that."
"But, please, the whole estate is not worth half the amount he paid you."
"That is his trouble," said Weston Fairbairn sourly.
Cecil would have spoken now, but Winnie signed him to silence. Her voice was very low as she asked her last question:
"You won't be satisfied with what you have already had and go away—back to your wife—leaving your brother alone?"
"Without that money, I will not. Understand that!"
Winnie sighed.
"Very well, you must be sent away," she said gently.
He laughed, really amused.
"Yes? And who will start me, my dear?"
"I—I suppose I must," cooed Winnie. "But"—she smiled—"I think that when you have started you will continue of your own accord, please."
"Oh—why?" His voice was contemptuous, but his hard eyes were uneasy.
"For this reason"—Winnie's voice was never sweeter —"because you are not an unfortunate man who has tried and failed in many countries, Mr. Fairbairn, but because you are a convicted prisoner escaped from a French penal settlement."
The man drew in his breath like one who dips suddenly into icy water. For fully a second he stared at her with his jaw hanging.
"You you will have to prove that," he said at last.
"If it is necessary. The gentleman who is waiting in the next room has all the proofs. Shall I send for him now?"
She noted the pale eyes drop to the pistol on the table, and covered it swiftly with her hand.
"One moment, please! It is your own violence which has always been your worst enemy," she said, moved her hand from the pistol and, taking a thin package from her dress, placed it by the weapon.
"It can be proved, Mr. Fairbairn—if you force me to prove it. But you will not be so unwise. On the table is a hundred pounds in English bank notes. That's because you have the good fortune to be Captain Fairbairn's brother. You may have them, and the way out of the difficulty is there!"
She pointed at the open French window.
"You know every inch of this country—the gentleman in the morning room does not," she said.
His hand hung over the money. His face was wry and bitter with hate. He glared.
"You're bluffing!"
"No, it's just a choice of doors. Will you go by that one, or shall I open this and call to the gentleman in the morning room?"
He hesitated, then decided swiftly. He picked up the money and stepped to the French window, where he turned, glaring. He opened his lips for a last insult, thought better of it, and disappeared in the moonlight. Winnie turned to the amazed Cecil.
"This is bewildering," he said. "Was that—about the French penal settlement, I mean—was that true?"
"Yes, quite true," she told him.
"But how did you know? I never dreamed—never suspected it. I always understood that he was just unlucky in his ventures abroad, always just failing to get well started. That was why I was willing to send money to his wife for her own support, and to him—again and again. That was mainly what has kept me poor. His wife was going to join him when he was successful."
Winnie's eyes were bright. "You have been kind, but, you see, they imposed upon you. For years they have spent the money on pleasure—on anything—he in Australia, she in Paris."
"Why was he sent to the French penal settlement?"
"It—it was for forgery, in Paris, years ago. He almost killed a detective."
"But how did you know ail this, Miss Winnie?" She flushed.
Her eyes were downcast, and for a moment she stood before him like a child about to be scolded—except, of course, for the tiny smile on her lips.
"I—you see, I heard that you sent a very great deal of money to a Mme. Lucie Déguise in Paris, and—I am ashamed to say—I made inquiries. I was so sorry to think that you should not have enough money to support your position, and perhaps I was curious a little about the Frenchwoman. So I sent Mr. Jay to Paris to inquire. He returned yesterday. He found out that Lucie Déguise was the wife of an évadé—an escaped French convict. He found out everything about him, except just one thing: He never learned that the husband, Gérard Déguise, was Weston Fairbairn. Do you see, please? Mr. Jay only knew Gérard Déguise was a convict, as he told me. You knew Lucie Déguise's husband was Weston Fairbairn, and you told me so. But you did not know he was a convict; Mr. Jay did not—does not—know he was your brother. So, you see, only two people in England know the whole truth—just you and I—and I think we should be foolish if we did not regard it as a secret and keep the knowledge quite to ourselves. There is no need, please, for people to know."
She looked at him with clasped hands, puzzled at the odd expression on his face a blend of tremendous relief and, oddly, of bitter regret.
"Oh, what is it, please?" she said. "Are you not happy—relieved? It is terrible to think that one's brother has descended so low—yes; but you have done your best, your very best, for him, and he was not grateful. He came to prey upon you. Once he was a gentleman, though Gerald Peel told me he was always wild; but it is no fault of yours that he has ruined himself. He is hard and bad, a man without honor. You must forget him. He will never trouble you again—you know his secret. He only retreated—drew off from you—because he heard me speak in French to Mr. Jay and believed him to be a French detective. So it is all finished—happily. Nobody knows—except me—and you can be quite happy again."
"Thanks to you once more," he said in a low voice. "My debt to you grows and grows. I am so grateful to you—worship you—"
He threw out his hands, his eyes troubled, and suddenly Winnie divined his trouble.
She had saved him again, restored his financial position, assured the safety of his home; but he was too ashamed at the revelation of what his brother had become to ask her—yet—the question she was aching to hear and to answer.
Her glorious eyes dimmed suddenly at the fresh disappointment with which the realization stabbed her. For once she was utterly at a loss for words, which perhaps was just as well, for she was in a mood which made it almost possible to propose to him herself.
But however that may have been, there was no opportunity. Somebody knocked at the door.
"One moment," said Cecil. He caught Winnie's hand and bent over it, pressing it hard to his lips. Thrilling, she looked at the shapely head, the wavy hair with adoration in her eyes.
"I don't care," she was saying to herself over and over again. "He shall propose to me some day. I know he wants to. It is so silly to punish himself because of his brother, but I shall persevere and persevere——"
The door opened and Cecil Fairbairn dropped her hand. It was only the gentle George H. Jay come to see if all was well.
"I hope I am not butting in at all—ha-ha," he said. "But I was getting a little worried at the sudden silence in here, and being a cautious sort of chap—old George Cautious Jay, ha-ha, eh?—thought I would come across..."
They reassured him.
"All's well—eh, Miss Winnie? That's good; that's very good. I——"
"Won't you good people ever finish business?" chimed a musical voice from the hall outside.
It was May Fasterton coining in search of them.
Winnie flashed a glance at her M.P. that bewildered him and hurried out to reassure her too. She was always a grand little reassurer.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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