Part 13 (1/2)
Vincent Cawdor.”
Peter Ruff took her upstairs. There was a little mound of ashes in the grate.
She nodded.
”I imagined that,” she said. ”But why did you send me out to watch yourself?”
”My dear Violet,” Peter Ruff answered, ”there is no man in the world to-day who is my equal in the art of disguising himself. At the same time, I wanted to know whether I could deceive you. I wanted to be quite sure that my study of Mr. Vincent Cawdor was a safe one. I took those rooms in his name and in his own person. I do not think that it occurred even to our friend John Dory to connect us in his mind.”
”Very well,” she went on. ”Now tell me, please, what took you up to Westmoreland?”
”I followed Rounceby and Marnstam,” he answered, ”I knew them when I was abroad, studying crime--I could tell you a good deal about both those men if it were worth while--and I knew, when they hired a big motor car and engaged a crook to drive it, that they were worth following. I saw the trial of the flying machine, and when they started off with young Franklin, I followed on a motor bicycle. I fished him out of the tarn where they left him for dead, brought him on to London, and made my own terms with him.”
”What about the body which was found in the Longthorp Tarn?” she asked.
”I had that telegram sent myself,” Peter Ruff answered.
She looked at him severely.
”You went out of your way to make a fool of John Dory!” she said, frowning at him.
”That I admit,” he answered.
”It seems to me,” she continued, ”that that, after all, has been the chief object of the whole affair. I do not see that we--that is the firm--profit in the least.”
Peter Ruff chuckled.
”We've got a fourth share in the Franklin Flying Machine,” he answered, ”and I'm hanged if I'd sell it for a hundred thousand pounds.”
”You've taken advantage of that young man's grat.i.tude,” she declared.
Peter Ruff shook his head.
”I earned the money,” he answered.
CHAPTER IV. THE INDISCRETION OF LETTY SHAW
Amidst a storm of whispered criticisms, the general opinion was that Letty Shaw was a silly little fool who ought to have known better. When she had entered the restaurant a few minutes before midnight, followed by Austen Abbott, every one looked to see a third person following them.
No third person, however, appeared. Gustav himself conducted them to a small table laid for two, covered with pink roses, and handed his fair client the menu of a specially ordered supper. There was no gainsaying the fact that Letty and her escort proposed supping alone!
The Cafe at the Milan was, without doubt, the fas.h.i.+onable rendezvous of the moment for those ladies connected with the stage who, after their performance, had not the time or the inclination to make the conventional toilet demanded by the larger restaurants. Letty Shaw, being one of the princ.i.p.al ornaments of the musical comedy stage, was well known to every one in the room. There was scarcely a person there who within the last fortnight had not found an opportunity of congratulating her upon her engagement to Captain the Honourable Brian Sotherst. Sotherst was rich, and one of the most popular young men about town. Letty Shaw, although she had had one or two harmless flirtations, was well known as a self-respecting and hard-working young actress who loved her work, and against whom no one had ever had a word to say.
Consequently, the shock was all the greater when, within a fortnight of her engagement, she was thus to be seen openly supping alone with the most notorious woman hunter about town--a man of bad reputation, a man, too, towards whom Sotherst was known to have a special aversion. Nothing but a break with Sotherst or a fit of temporary insanity seemed to explain, even inadequately, the situation.
Her best friend--the friend who knew her and believed in her--rose to her feet and came sailing down the room. She nodded gaily to Abbott, whom she hated, and whom she had not recognized for years, and laid her hand upon Letty's arm.
”Where's Brian?” she asked.
Letty shrugged her shoulders--it was not altogether a natural gesture.