"So I have heard. At least I know you are leaving town to-morrow. Your destination is at present a secret, so far as the press is concerned. You will be glad to get away, darling!"
"Glad!" the girl echoed. "Oh, Davy, life at Charlton Crescent just now is nothing but hell! Picture it. Every one looking at every one else, wondering who is guilty—who may be the next one to be killed. And detectives all around us spying, trying to find out the smallest thing to tell them who the murderer is." She bit her lip. "I don't know what to do—I'm frightened! Frightened. And—and, Davy"—her voice dropped to the faintest whisper—"suppose they suspect us?" A great pity dawned in the man's eyes. Ordinarily David Branksome's face was hard, his expression unsympathetic. Only one woman ever saw the softening in his eyes, heard the tenderness in his tone.
"They couldn't suspect, my darling—you—we are safe enough. And very soon we shall be away from it all, alone together, just you and I."
A new light dawned in the girl's eyes. She bent a little nearer.
"Ah! yes! think of that time, Davy, dream of it. And yet"—her face clouding over as suddenly as it had brightened—"something seems to tell me that it will never come, that he—that man will find out. Oh, Davy, Davy, in spite of all we have done, all our precautions, suppose he—he finds it out. What will they do to me if he does?" She broke off with a gasp of horror.
The man leaned over and laid one hand on hers. "They won't find out," he said tenderly. "They can't, I have been much too careful, and—and if the very worst came, I should speak out, I should not let you suffer."
The girl gazed at him with terrified eyes. "But—but don't you know that that would be worse than anything for me—that I would a thousand times sooner bear the penalty myself. Oh, Davy, Davy, will you never understand?"
"I know that you have always been far too good for me," the man said, his hard voice breaking. "Ah, darling, if you had never met me how different your life might have been."
"No life would have been life to me without you!" the girl said unsteadily. "I don't mind anything, Davy, if they don't separate us."
"They shall not!" the man assured her. But somehow his confident tone did not ring true. "Be brave just a little while longer," he went on, "it can hardly be a week or two now, and then think of the reward. I keep it before my eyes always."
"So do I!" the girl whispered. "But—but I don't know how long it will be, Davy. I can't get Mr. Fyvert to tell me even when he thinks things will be settled up. He keeps saying that the manner of Lady Anne's death complicates matters. I believe the police tell him to. Davy, you will come to see me at North Coton?"
"I—don't know!" the man hesitated. "We shall have to find some means of communication, of course. But there is always the possibility that our being seen together may delay matters, or even bring about—discovery!"
"I don't see why it should!" the girl said obstinately. "It is bad enough being alone among strangers, knowing what I know. But to be there, to look at one another, to catch some one looking at you sideways. Oh, Davy, Davy, never can you imagine the horror. Often I think I shall go mad, shall tell them—"
"Oh, no!" The man's eyes narrowed; he drew his thin lips together. "You must be my own brave girl to the end. Think what it means, darling. The success, the reward of all our efforts. No more struggling. No more separation. And it will not be for so long as you fear. Did you tell Mr. Fyvert that you wished to go back to Australia?"
"Yes, yes, I did, but it was of no use," the girl said wearily. "I do not think he would mind me realizing my share and going back. But at the present time the police would not allow anyone to leave the country—anyone, that is to say, who may be wanted as a witness at the inquest, or any subsequent proceedings."
He drew his brows together. "That cannot go on for ever. The English law would not give them the power to keep you indefinitely, I am certain. And the moment they have paid the money over—"
"But—but if we do get away," the girl whispered. "If—if they find out anything afterwards nowadays they could follow us to Australia. There is the wireless and aeroplanes and all sorts of things, we shouldn't be safe anywhere."
The man dropped his voice to a caressing murmur. "Only we shouldn't go to Australia! What a little goose you are, darling; I know the sweetest spot on earth and all my arrangements are made. When our—I shall say our—honeymoon is over, I wonder how you will like to be a farmer's wife?"
The girl's face lighted up momentarily. "I think, perhaps, I might like it very much—if you were the farmer," she confessed.
"It won't be as dull as it sounds," the man went on. "We shall have our gay times and life can be very jolly in those southern republics."
"Gaiety—gaiety! I only want safety—and you!" the passion in her voice quickening. "But, Davy," coming nearer and speaking so that he could only catch the words with difficulty—"will you tell me if you—whether you—"
"Hush!" The man's voice broke sharply across her hesitating speech. "Don't ask—I don't want to know anything. Remember that walls have ears—"
The girl stood up shivering, drawing her furs more closely round her.
"Then—then I must go now. I have been longer than I ought. Suppose Dorothy has finished with her dressmaker and gone home?"
"Does she know?"
The girl shook her head. "No! But I think perhaps she guesses a little. She was busy looking at patterns and I just slipped away and left her a message saying I had a bad toothache and had gone to get something for it. Still I think she will wait. She is not a bad sort—Dorothy. And some day I hope things will be straight for her."
"Of course they will," the man assented. But his eyelids flickered curiously, his narrow lips curled in an unpleasant fashion as he spoke. He pushed his chair back. "And I suppose I must not even see you home, Margaret?"
"No! No! somebody might recognize us and guess!"
She looked very attractive standing there, her heavy furs drawn closely round her shoulders, her throat gleaming white between, the deep red gold of her hair just peeping out from beneath her cloche hat, her eyes looking all the bigger and clearer for the dark half circles beneath them, for the touch of lassitude and fatigue that gave her face the look of pathos that enhanced the beauty that was at times hard and unsympathetic. Her breathing had quickened; despite her furs one could see her breast rising and falling, even the plentiful use of her lipstick could not altogether spoil the perfect curves of her mouth—the shape of her pretty lips.
The eyes of the man watching seemed to drink in every detail of her loveliness. "Darling!" he said hoarsely at last. "Don't forget, child. Don't let John Daventry—"
The girl drew up her small golden head. "John Daventry is nothing to me," she said icily. "If, after all, you do not trust me, Davy!"
"I trust you with everything," the man said with sudden fire, "even with life itself."
Several people were coming in. A little group gathered in the middle of the room and obstructed the view of the watcher on the side opposite. When once more she could see clearly the girl had gone, the man was sitting alone at the table. He beckoned to the waitress and put the bill into her hand with what was evidently an unusually liberal tip, to judge by her expression.
The watcher got up and paid her modest account.
"I shall always be thankful that my mother made me learn the lip language when was a child," she said to herself as she went out.
Chapter XIII
"And now," said Inspector Furnival, "there is a little hard work before us, Mr. Cardyn, if we want to elucidate the mystery of Charlton Crescent."
Bruce Cardyn did not attempt to answer this thrust.