“And he died mysteriously?”
“The doctors certified that he died from natural causes – heart failure.”
“That is what the world believes, of course. His death was a nation’s loss, and the truth was hushed up. But you, Phil Poland, know it. Upon the floor was found something – a cigar – eh?”
“Nothing very extraordinary in that, surely? He died while smoking.”
“Yes,” said the bald-headed man, bending towards the other and lowering his voice into a harsh whisper. “He died while smoking a cigar – a cigar that had been poisoned! You know it well enough. What’s the use of trying to affect ignorance —with me!”
“Well?” asked Philip Poland after a brief pause, his brows knit darkly and his face drawn and pale.
“Well, I merely wish to recall that somewhat unpleasant fact, and to tell you that I know the truth,” said the other with slow deliberation, his eyes fixed upon the man seated opposite him.
“Why recall unpleasant facts?” asked Poland, with a faint attempt to smile. “I never do.”
“A brief memory is always an advantage,” remarked Arnold Du Cane, with a sinister grin.
“Ah! I quite follow you,” Poland said, with a hardness of the mouth. “But I tell you, Arnold, I refuse to lend any hand in this crooked bit of business you’ve just put before me. Let’s talk of something else.”
“Crooked business, indeed! Fancy you, Phil Poland, denouncing it as crooked!” he laughed. “And I’m a crook, I suppose,” and he thoughtfully caressed his small moustache, which bore traces of having been artificially darkened.
“I didn’t say so.”
“But you implied it. Bah! You’ll be teaching the Sunday School of this delightful English village of yours before long, I expect. No doubt the villagers believe the gentleman at the Elms to be a model of every virtue, especially when he wears a frock-coat and trots around with the plate in church on Sundays!” he sneered. “My hat! Fancy you, Phil, turning honest in your old age!”
“I admit that I’m trying to be honest, Arnold – for the girl’s sake.”
“And, by Jove! if the good people here, in Middleton, knew the truth, eh – the truth that you – ”
“Hush! Somebody may overhear!” cried the other, starting and glancing apprehensively at the closed door of his cosy study. “What’s the use of discussing the business further? I’ve told you, once and for all, Arnold, that I refuse to be a party to any such dastardly transaction.”
“Ho! ho!” laughed Du Cane. “Why, wasn’t the Burke affair an equally blackguardly bit of business – the more so, indeed, when one recollects that young Ronald Burke had fallen in love with Sonia.”
“Leave my girl’s name out of our conversation, Arnold, or, by Gad! you shall pay for it!” cried the tall, dark-haired, clean-shaven man, as he sprang from his chair and faced his visitor threateningly. “Taunt me as much as ever it pleases you. Allege what you like against me. I know I’m an infernal blackguard, posing here as a smug and respectable churchgoer. I admit any charge you like to lay at my door, but I’ll not have my girl’s name associated with my misdeeds. Understand that! She’s pure and honest, and she knows nothing of her father’s life.”
“Don’t you believe that, my dear fellow. She’s eighteen now, remember, and I fancy she had her eyes opened last February down at the Villa Vespa, when that unfortunate little trouble arose.”
Arnold Du Cane, the round-faced man who spoke, was rather short and stout, with ruddy cheeks, a small moustache and a prematurely bald head – a man whose countenance showed him to be a bon vivant, but whose quick, shifty eyes would have betrayed to a close observer a readiness of subterfuge which would have probably aroused suspicion. His exterior was that of a highly refined and polished man. His grey tweed suit bore evidence of having been cut by a smart tailor, and as he lolled back in his big saddle-bag chair he contemplated the fine diamond upon his white, well-manicured hand, and seemed entirely at his ease.
That August afternoon was stiflingly hot, and through the open French windows leading into the old-world garden, so typically English with its level lawns, neatly trimmed box-hedges and blazing flowerbeds, came the drowsy hum of the insects and the sweet scent of a wealth of roses everywhere.
The pretty house in which his host, Philip Poland, alias Louis Lessar, lived, stood back a little distance from the London road, two miles or so out of the quiet market-town of Andover, a small picturesque old place surrounded by high old elms wherein the rooks cawed incessantly, and commanding extensive views over Harewood Forest and the undulating meadow-lands around, while close by, at the foot of the hill, nestled a cluster of homely thatched cottages, with a square church-tower, the obscure village of Middleton.
In that rural retreat lived the Honourable Philip Poland beneath a cloak of highest respectability. The Elms was, indeed, delightful after the glare and glitter of that fevered life he so often led, and here, with his only child, Sonia, to whom he was so entirely devoted, he lived as a gentleman of leisure.
