“You lost your head, as most women do,” he grumbled. “There was no harm in my being in your sitting room—I—your brother.”
“Then why didn’t you tell every one, or allow me to tell them that you were my brother?” she retorted swiftly. “Then you could have done just as you liked. It was simply because you have made me pledge my word to this secrecy that we are always in such trouble. It is intolerable, the situation which you force upon me.”
“It is not for my sake, it is for the sake of the others,” was his almost passionate insistence. “Our family has many enemies, Félice, and some of them are in London at the present moment. That any of us escaped alive was a miracle. I do not think,” he went on, with an unpleasant smile, “that there is a family in Russia more hated than ours.”
She sighed.
“I begin to wonder sometimes,” she confessed, “whether we have not deserved it. But that is not what I wish to talk of at this moment. I have promised to say nothing about any of you and so far I have kept my word. It has been very difficult and I warn you that a time may come when I shall break that promise.”
“If you do—” he cried.
“Whenever it pleases you,” she interrupted, “we will speak of that matter. At present there is something different. There is something which I must tell you, because it is on my mind night and day.”
He helped himself to a cigarette with trembling fingers. Apparently he forgot to light it.
“When that shot was fired,” she went on, dropping her voice until it sunk to a whisper, vibrant with terrible emotion, “one of the burglar’s hands was upon the window sill, and the other was gripping my ring. Therefore, I know that the burglar did not fire that shot. They are going to try to hang him for it, Charles. What am I to do?”
“What you have to do is plain enough,” he muttered savagely. “You are beside yourself with fear even now. I do not know what you are talking about. Forget it. You fainted. Why not?”
“But I did not faint until afterwards, Charles,” she persisted, “and I saw the burglar’s two hands when the shot was fired, and there was no gun in them. Now, who shot Raoul de Besset, Charles?”
“The burglar,” was the furious retort. “No one in their senses will ever doubt it.”
“The burglar whose two hands I saw at the time when the shot was fired,” she repeated—“the burglar who even the police admit they have never known to carry a gun? Where were you, Charles, when the shot was fired?”
He helped himself to more brandy with a trembling and lavish hand.
“Downstairs, dancing,” he insisted. “You do not suppose I would let any one find me in your room? I couldn’t say that we were brother and sister. I had to get you out of it. I went through your bathroom and bedroom and out on to the corridor, met not a soul on the stairs, came in through the winter garden, and I was dancing before any one even knew that I had been away for those few minutes. I danced with your sister-in-law—Lady Susan. They’ll all tell you the same story.”
“I have no doubt they will,” she admitted, “and yet it is not the truth. When the people rushed up, they had to come through my bathroom because I had locked the door of my bedroom and of Andrew’s room, so that no one should know that you were in my sitting room whilst we were talking. How could you get out through that door, Charles, and lock it again on the inside?”
“I unlocked it and went out that way,” he declared stubbornly. “You must have locked it again when you came in to bed.”
“That I did not do.”
He sat quite still for a moment. His manner was changed. He was becoming wickedly and dangerously quiet.
“Listen, little sister,” he said, “you think more of that burglar than of me? You would like me to say that I shot De Besset.”
“I should like you to tell me who else could have done it,” she answered.
He scoffed at her.
“How do I know how many lovers you had locked up in your room?” he demanded. “The women of our family have never been over-squeamish, and that fellow Haslam, as well as De Besset, were both crazy about you. If it wasn’t your pet burglar who killed De Besset, find the murderer for yourself. You can do it.”
“I am terribly afraid that I have found him,” she replied. “I believe that it was you, Charles.”
He leaned forward and the long fingers of his hand were tense and quivering. She felt his arm around her waist. His strange-coloured eyes terrified her. His face drew nearer to hers. She could scarcely make up her mind whether it was murder that was coming or some other terrible thing.
“Little sister,” he whispered, “have you forgotten?”
The words seemed suddenly frozen upon his lips. Félice herself was absolutely incapable of movement. They both looked up. Andrew Glenlitten, smiling, well-groomed, with a great bunch of violets in his hand, had crossed the threshold. He closed the door carefully behind him. There was about his manner not the slightest shade of anger or embarrassment.
“Hope I’m not interrupting a specially interesting tête-à-tete,” he said good- humouredly. “Fact is, I’ve brought Susan and a few of them in for a cocktail, and they’re all clamouring for you, Félice. How are you, De Suess? Hope you’ll come down and join us if the lesson’s over. Smell these, my dear,” he added, presenting the violets. “All home-grown. Last of the season, or first. I forget what they told me. Come along then. These fellows have got their tongues out for cocktails. I think you’ll like our Martinis, De Suess.”
He led the way with his arm affectionately around his wife’s waist. Her heart was beating madly. She would have given anything in the world to have thrown her arms around his neck. She knew so well, as the young man who was following, half glum, half unnerved, also knew, that her husband was covering up as best he could that moment of drama into which he had stepped.
CHAPTER XVI
An interesting and cheerful little company were gathered together in the library of Glenlitten House, being served with cocktails from an enormous shaker. There was Lady Susan, up for the day to see her dressmaker, Haslam—a little gaunter than ever he seemed in his town clothes—fresh from an official call at the Colonial Office, Andrew Glenlitten himself, his brother, Philip Monteith, just back from a brief period of service at Gibraltar, and Sir Richard Cotton. At the sight of the latter, Charles perceptibly hesitated. It was too late for retreat, however. The little party were sitting around in an easy, lounging circle, but the lawyer changed his place at the first opportunity and crossed the room to where Charles and his host were exchanging rather strained amenities.
“Met you once before, I think, on a memorable occasion down at Glenlitten,” Sir Richard remarked, addressing Charles. “Not a night we any of us care to remember very much, I am afraid.”
“It was an unfortunate evening indeed,” Charles assented. “For me it was quite an unexpected visit. I was to have dined with Major Fraser at his Mess, and he and his friend discovered that they were due to dine and dance at Glenlitten. They asked me to accompany them. It would have been a very charming evening but for its unfortunate close.”
“You must try and forget that,” Andrew said courteously, “and pay us a visit later on.”
“Any news of the necklace?” Lady Susan enquired.
Sir Richard shook his head.
“Not up to the present,” he admitted. “One ring is all we have managed to squeeze out of