Part 22 (1/2)
”I sleep with one ear open,” Seaman replied.
”Well?”
”I saw you leave your room early this morning,” Seaman continued, ”carrying Lady Dominey in your arms.”
There were little streaks of pallor underneath the tan in Dominey's face. His eyes were like glittering metal. It was only when he had breathed once or twice quickly that he could command his voice.
”What concern is this of yours?” he demanded.
Seaman gripped his companion's arm.
”Look here,” he said, ”we are too closely allied for bluff. I am here to help you fill the shoes of another man, so far as regards his estates, his position, and character, which, by the by, you are rehabilitating. I will go further. I will admit that it is not my concern to interfere in any ordinary amour you might undertake, but--I shall tell you this, my friend, to your face--that to deceive a lady of weak intellect, however beautiful, to make use of your position as her supposed husband, is not, save in the vital interests of his country, the action of a Prussian n.o.bleman.”
Dominey's pa.s.sion seemed to have burned itself out without expression.
He showed not the slightest resentment at his companion's words.
”Have no fear, Seaman,” he enjoined him. ”The situation is delicate, but I can deal with it as a man of honour.”
”You relieve me,” Seaman confessed. ”You must admit that the spectacle of last night was calculated to inspire me with uneasiness.”
”I respect you for your plain words,” Dominey declared. ”The fact is, that Lady Dominey was frightened of the storm last night and found her way into my room. You may be sure that I treated her with all the respect and sympathy which our positions demanded.”
”Lady Dominey,” Seaman remarked meditatively, ”seems to be curiously falsifying certain predictions.”
”In what way?”
”The common impression in the neighbourhood here is that she is a maniac chiefly upon one subject--her detestation of you. She has been known to take an oath that you should die if you slept in this house again. You naturally, being a brave man, ignored all this, yet in the morning after your first night here there was blood upon your night clothes.”
Dominey's eyebrows were slowly raised.
”You are well served here,” he observed, with involuntary sarcasm.
”That, for your own sake as well as ours, is necessary,” was the terse reply. ”To continue, people of unsound mind are remarkably tenacious of their ideas. There was certainly nothing of the murderess in her demeanour towards you last night. Cannot you see that a too friendly att.i.tude on her part might become fatal to our schemes?”
”In what way?”
”If ever your ident.i.ty is doubted,” Seaman explained, ”the probability of which is, I must confess, becoming less every day, the fact that Lady Dominey seems to have so soon forgotten all her enmity towards you would be strong presumptive evidence that you are not the man you claim to be.”
”Ingenious,” Dominey a.s.sented, ”and very possible. All this time, however, we speak on what you yourself admit to be a side issue.”
”You are right,” Seaman confessed. ”Very well, then, listen. A great moment has arrived for you, my friend.”
”Explain if you please.”
”I shall do so. You have seen proof, during the last few days, that you have an organisation behind you to whom money is dross. It is the same in diplomacy as in war. Germany will pay the price for what she intends to achieve. Ninety thousand pounds was yesterday pa.s.sed to the credit of your account for the extinction of certain mortgages. In a few months'
or a few years' time, some distant Dominey will benefit to that extent.
We cannot recover the money. It is just an item in our day by day expenses.”