Part 19 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXVI

A Tell-tale Ornament

”No, you don't!” I remarked, cheerfully, and with the force of superior muscles I pulled him towards me. ”Come, sit down here by me,” I said. ”I want to talk to you.” And somehow it came about that we subsided on the cus.h.i.+oned seat together.

He had recognised me, of course, as the man he had seen in the hotel--the man, Noel Stanton, against whom I did not doubt his cablegram had warned him. He was pale as death, and I could see that this meeting, added, like the piling of Ossa upon Pelion, on top of all that he had already gone through, had robbed him of the shattered remnant of his nerve.

Still, he was ready to ”bluff” and brave if out while he could.

”Confound you!” he exclaimed. ”What are you about? You must be mad to attack a stranger without the slightest provocation. Let me alone, sir, or I'll rouse the car.”

”I wouldn't, you know, if I were you,” I said coolly, for the more excited he grew the more did my own calmness come back to me. ”You've been playing a dangerous game ever since you took your pa.s.sage in the American liner _St. Paul_ (or, rather, since Carson Wildred took it for you), but you've never, perhaps, steered so close to the wind as to-night, when you resorted to incendiarism as a finis.h.i.+ng stroke.”

The fellow stared at me in simulated nonchalance and defiance, but my hand was on his shoulder still, and I could feel the shudder that ran through his body.

”I say you must be mad,” he reiterated.

”So you observed before; but I could very easily prove to you that I'm not, if you were not already sure of it. You can call for a.s.sistance if you like, but if you do the story I've got to tell will go flas.h.i.+ng over the wires back to 'Frisco, and on to Denver, and you will find yourself in almost as hot a place as if you had stayed at the Santa Anna Hotel, where you wanted the world to think that poor Harvey Farnham had been roasted.”

Once more the fit of s.h.i.+vering seized him. He glanced wildly about, as though to find some means of escape, but there was none.

”I am a bigger man and a stronger man than you,” I remarked, in a significant and reflective manner. ”Better hear the alternative I've got to offer. I know everything, you see--that is, everything that concerns _you_, and the curious game you've been playing.

”I've been just three days behind you everywhere since you left New York. I've got every link in the evidence now, and what with Bennett, of Denver, and the proprietor of the Santa Anna Hotel, and a few others, I can burst your wretched little soap bubble plot in four-and-twenty hours. There's just one way in which you can stay my hand.”

”What's that?” He had spoken out impulsively, before he had stopped to think. The instant the words were uttered he saw all that they admitted, and bit his lip. But it was too late; he was completely trapped.

”I'll tell you,” I said, keeping my hand on his shoulder, almost caressingly. ”I'd listen attentively, if I were in your place. What you can do is to make a clean breast of your story from beginning to end.

I'm willing to pay you more for confessing than Wildred did for plotting. Then you must go back to England with me, and stand by while the thing is made public.”

As I spoke he did not once take his eyes from me. It was remarkable even yet, now that he was out of his disguise, how strong his likeness was to Farnham. He might have been a younger brother.

When I had finished he sighed and drooped his head. His own hair, which was very closely cut, was of a beautiful reddish golden colour, much the shade of Karine Cunningham's, as the light fell on it from above. I thought of her with a great wave of pa.s.sionate love, and more of hope than I had dared to feel for many a long day.

Perhaps it was the recollection of her lovely face and the wonderful halo of her hair which caused me for an instant to relax my grasp. I only became conscious of having done so when the fellow twisted himself from under my hand, and springing lithely to his feet would have darted through the swing door had I not leaped after him like a tiger.

We fought together as the car swayed and bounded along its tracks. Once he dived under my arm and was almost out of my clutches, but I caught him by the collar with so fierce a grip that the linen of his s.h.i.+rt tore, and the garment ripped open to the waistcoat.

Something which he wore beneath snapped, as he still struggled to escape me, and a bright object flashed under my eyes as it fell, and dropped with a slight metallic noise to the floor.

Evidently it was to him an article of value. Impulsively he stooped, forgetful for a second of the object which had animated him, and thus the advantage became all mine again. I had him pinioned fast.

At our feet, I now had time to observe, lay a broken gold chain and a locket.

Twisting my hand firmly in his collar I bent over and picked up the ornaments. ”Allow me,” I said, smiling. And as I was about to put the locket in his hand I could not avoid seeing the portrait that it framed.

It was an open-faced, old-fas.h.i.+oned thing, set round with a rim of pearls. The crystal had been cracked across in the fall, but the delicately painted ivory miniature within was intact, and I gave a slight exclamation as I saw that it represented Karine Cunningham.