CHAPTER XX.

"WE MUST SPEAK BY THE CARD."

It was Thursday morning, the morning of the day following that of Mr. Melray's journey to London. Denia, Freddy, and Miss Sudlow breakfasted by themselves, Mr. Melray having requested that his tea and toast might be taken upstairs to his dressing-room. Denia had just left the table and was on her way back to her own room, when she was accosted by Charlotte. "If you please, ma'am," said the girl, "I have had a note this morning from my brother. I don't know whether you would care to read it, but in case you should I have left it on your dressing-table."

Be it noted that Charlotte was the only person, or so Denia believed, who had any knowledge or suspicion of the relations between Dyson and her mistress.

Denia nodded and passed on. Shutting the door of the room behind her, she went quickly up to the table and pounced on the note. She felt quite sure that Charlotte would not have left it for her to read had there not been something in it which nearly concerned her.

Here is what she read:

Dear Lotty,--This comes to inform you that on Tuesday evening, between nine and ten o'clock, I see Mr. R. D. and Miss G. a-walking out together. They passed close under a lamp by which, I was standing, so that I could not be mistaken about either one or the other. Still, to make quite sure, I thought I would follow them. I did so, and I see them part at Mrs. Malcolm's door. He kissed her, and then she rang the bell. Then he strolled back to his lodgings in Peelgate, I strolling after him; and that is all I know.

"Your loving brother,

"Edgar Wallis."

(It was at midnight on Tuesday that Dyson had kissed Denia in the garden.)

Ten minutes later Denia received a message to the effect that Mr. Melray would feel obliged if she would step downstairs to his office. "Something about money matters, I suppose," she said wearily to herself. She went at once, presaging nothing, fearing nothing. She was as one half dazed, who, having been struck down from behind, as yet can hardly realise what has happened to him. Although she was unaware of it, the note which had been to her as a message of doom was still clutched tightly between her fingers as she entered the room. Robert Melray was at once struck by the pallor of her face, and by a certain hard, cold glitter in her eyes such as he had never noticed in them before.

"Sit down, Dania; I have something of particular moment to say to you," he began, in no unkindly tones, indicating a chair at the table opposite his own. Then, opening the door of the outer office, he said: "Mr. Cray, will you be good enough to see that I am not disturbed by anybody till I ring." Then he turned the key of the door which opened into the side lane, after which he sat down facing Denia. It was evident to that clear-sighted young woman, even through her own perturbation, that he was extremely nervous and ill at ease.

With his elbows resting on the table and his fingers interlocked, he gazed at her for a few seconds with a sort of sad, wistful earnestness. Then clearing his voice he said: "I am a poor hand at a preface, or at leading up by degrees to anything I may have to say. In short, I cannot beat about the bush." For a moment he paused, and again he cleared his voice. "Denia, it has come to my knowledge that you and Richard Dyson were together in the garden at midnight on Tuesday. It was your hand that admitted him by way of the side-door."

He ceased, as though to afford her time to recover herself. The pallor of her face gave way to a great wave of colour which surged quickly up from her bosom to her cheeks and thence to the roots of her hair. For a few moments it remained thus, at high-water mark as it were, and then began to subside.

"His arm was round you," continued Robert, "he kissed you and you did not repulse him Only one inference can be drawn--that he and you are in love with each other."

Denia's bosom rose with the slow indrawing of her breath. It was one of those supreme moments when, brought to bay, one's whole future course in life may depend on the next few sentences that fall from one's lips.

"I believed that Richard Dyson loved me, but now I know that I was mistaken," said Denia in a low voice. "I loved him (or, perhaps, I only dreamt I did), but now--I hate him!"

"You hate him!" exclaimed Robert. "And yet, less than thirty-six hours ago, you allowed him unreproved to press his lips to yours."

"A great deal may happen in thirty-six hours. I loved him then. I hate him now."

"So be it. Whatever reasons may have influenced you in this sudden change of feeling are no concern of mine. What, however, does seem to concern me (and you yourself can best infer why), and what I must ask you to afford me some explanation of, is a certain threat which you made use of to Dyson on Tuesday night. You bade him beware in that his secret was your property, that you 'held his life in the hollow of your hand.' Now, will you be good enough to tell me to what those words referred?"

Denia's hesitation was of the briefest. For a moment or two she set her teeth hard, then with a little nod of her head she said: "Yes, Mr. Melray, I will tell you--will tell you everything. From this moment there shall be no more secrets between you and me. I used those words to Richard Dyson because to his hand was due the death of my husband and your brother!"

Robert Melray sank back in his chair with a gasp. "You have known this all along, and yet you have kept it hidden from everyone in your own breast!" he contrived to say after a time.

"I have known it all along, and yet I have kept it hidden from everyone," came like an echo from Denia's lips.

Robert knew not what to say. Never had he been so utterly at a loss for words. There was a space of silence while the two sat confronting each other. Denia was the first to break it.

"You stare at me, Mr. Melray, as if I were some monster of wickedness," she said with a bitter smile. "Perhaps, before you open your lips to reproach me or to give utterance to words such as, later on, you might see reason to regret, it may be as well that you should be enlightened about certain matters as to which at present you are wholly ignorant. If you will condescend to listen to me, I will promise to be as little tedious as possible, and that, on this occasion at least, you shall hear from me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!"

"Go on," said Robert in a voice that was hardly raised above a whisper.

But Denia did not at once respond to the invitation. It was neither shyness nor hesitation that held her back; the former, indeed, was a quality of which she knew nothing; she was merely considering in what terms it behoved her to couch her version of what could no longer be kept back.

"It was my husband who, soon after our marriage introduced Richard Dyson to me," at length she began, her blue eyes fixed calmly on Robert Melray's face. Before long he began to spend three or four evenings a week in the drawing-room, and by the time I had been half a year married it was evident to me that (not to mince my words) he had either fallen in love with me or was wishful of making me believe that he had done so. He was young and handsome and had a certain fascinating way with him; he played and sang charmingly, or so it seemed to me. I liked and respected my husband--no one could help doing that--and I strove to do my duty by him as a true wife should do; but I did not love him. Love is a very different sentiment from that which I experienced for James Melray. Is it, then, greatly to be wondered at if, at times, my heart could not help fluttering a little under the ardent glances of Richard Dyson? But, for all that, when, one day, he ventured to whisper certain words in my ear such as he had no right to whisper in the ear of any married woman, I was not slow in giving him to understand what an egregious piece of folly he had been guilty of. So strongly, indeed, did I resent the liberty he had taken that he never ventured to err in the same way again. And so matters went on as before. I continued to do my duty by my husband and guarded my feelings to the best of my ability; but, having promised that this shall be a full and frank confession, let me at once admit that deep down in my heart a germ of love lay perdu, and that it was only my strong sense of wifely obligation and the remembrance of all I owed my husband, which kept it there, frozen and half torpid, like a bulb buried deep under the snow.

"Such was the state of affairs on Friday, the 18th of September. Richard had gone for his annual holiday about ten days before. Sometimes I felt sad and lonely without him, missing his bright, vivacious talk and those half-veiled glances the meaning of which could be read by me alone; at other times I wished most devoutly that I might never set eyes on him again.

"At eight o'clock that evening I saw my husband off on his way to Mr. Arbour's for his usual rubber of whist. After that I sat down with the intention of writing a long letter to my friend, Mrs. Simpson. I was alone in the little sitting-room at the back of the drawing-room. The servants were all below stairs. Your mother had gone to her own room at the further end of the long corridor, and Miss Armishaw with her. I had got about half-way through my letter when a slight noise caused me to turn my head, and there in the open doorway I beheld Richard Dyson! Next instant he came forward and fell on his knees at my feet. His dress was disordered, his face was as white as that of corpse, while his eyes were charged with horror and fear, the like of which I have never seen in those of anyone else. 'Save me! Save me!' were the first words he gave utterance to.

"I have no wish to weary you, and will relate, as succinctly as possible, the story told me by Richard on that memorable night.

"Lack of funds had brought him back from his holidays two or three days before he was due at business. He had been compelled to leave his luggage in pawn at the seaside hotel where he had been staying. Not wishing it to be known, for private reasons of his own, that he had come back before his time, he had alighted from the train at a station a couple of miles away, and was making his way through some of the back streets to his lodgings, when he came face to face with Mr. Melray. The recognition was mutual. It would seem that Richard had been guilty of something at which my husband had just cause to be offended, but of what nature the something in question was even now I have no knowledge. In any case, Mr. Melray insisted on Richard there and then accompanying him back to his office. Once there, they appear to have got to high words, one thing leading to another, till at length Mr. Melray threatened Richard with some kind of public exposure. There was a struggle for the possession of some papers, and in the result my husband unhappily came by his death. On his knees Richard swore to me by everything he held sacred that it was purely an accident. Well, I believed him. Some people might say that, instead of putting credence in what he told me, I ought there and then to have denounced him as a murderer; but to me it seemed too terrible a thing to credit that he could wilfully have been guilty of such a crime. But, be that as it may, when he appealed to me to save him I felt it impossible to reject his appeal. From Friday night till an early hour on Monday he lay hidden in the lumber-room on the top floor, which is rarely entered from one year's end to another, I supplying him with food meanwhile. On Monday morning he made his appearance at his lodgings, and, later on, at the office, no one suspecting otherwise than that he had just got back from his holidays."

Robert Melray had not interrupted her by a word. He sat for a space after she had done with drawn brows and introverted eyes which saw nothing of what was before them. At length he roused himself with a deep sigh. "That your narrative throws a wholly unexpected light on a mystery which has long perplexed both me and others cannot be denied, he said, and I am obliged to you for the frankness which has at length prompted the telling of it. Still, I altogether fail to reconcile what you have just told me with the details of certain circumstances as set down in your written statement of a fortnight ago."

A short derisive laugh broke from Denia. "My good sir," she said, "seeing that I have just told you the true history of the events of the 18th of September as far as they concern me individually, but one inference can be drawn by you with regard to my so-called statement, namely, that from beginning to end it was a simple tissue of romance."

Mr. Melray stared at her in wide-eyed amazement. "But surely," he gasped, "you don't mean to say that all which was there stated with reference to Evan Wildash and yourself was----"

"A sheer piece of rigmarole--that and nothing more. I found it impossible to resist the temptation Miss Sudlow was good enough to put in my way. Besides, I had a suspicion, which may or may not have been baseless, that she had been brought to Loudwater House purposely to watch me and spy upon my actions, so that when she gave me a certain story to read, which undoubtedly seemed to embody in rather a startling way a number of details in connection with my husband's death, I decided to accept it as a true narrative, and it was on that assumption that I wrote out my statement. I need hardly add that my object in acting thus was to divert suspicion from the real quarter, and, if it were possible thereby to do so, to bring to an end, once and for ever, the inquiry into the causes of my husband's death."

"It is most extraordinary!" ejaculated Robert Melray. "But do you mean to imply that Evan Wildash never came back from Africa?"

"Never, to my knowledge. He was reported to have died there, and, for anything known by me to the contrary the report was true."

"Then, as regards the man who was killed in the railway accident?"

"I know no more about him than about the man in the moon."

Robert Melray sat back in his chair like a man bereft of speech.