Part 16 (1/2)

Clarice drew a finger down the frame of gla.s.s in front of her.

'Mr. Drake thought so too,' she said quietly.

'Drake!' exclaimed Mallinson, utterly bewildered. 'Drake! The man wouldn't be such a--'

'He was though.'

'Do you mean that he confessed to it?'

'Confess?' she said, turning towards him. 'That is hardly the word. He told me of his own accord the moment he knew I had been engaged to--to--'

She broke off at the name, and continued, 'and he spared himself in the telling far less than you have spared him.'

She spoke with a gentle dignity which Mallinson had never known in her before, and he felt that it raised a more solid barrier between them than even her refusal had done.

Fielding, meanwhile, waited with an uneasy conscience which no casuistry would lighten. He threw himself in Mallinson's way time after time in order to ascertain whether the latter had spoken. Mallinson let no word of the matter slip from him, and for the rest seemed utterly despondent.

Fielding threw out a feeler at last.

'Of course,' he said, 'you would never repeat what I told you about Gorley. I forgot to mention that.'

Mallinson flushed. 'Of course not,' he said awkwardly.

Fielding turned on him quickly. 'Then what made you tell Miss Le Mesurier?'

Mallinson was too taken aback to deny the accusation. 'Oh, Miss Le Mesurier,' he replied, 'knew already.'

'She knew? Who told her?'

'Drake.'

Fielding drew in his breath and whistled. His first feeling was one of distinct relief, that after all he had not been the means by which Clarice had come to her knowledge; his second was one of indignation against Drake. He realised how a frank admission from Drake would outweigh in the girl's susceptible nature the fact admitted. 'What on earth induced him to reveal it?'

'I suppose he is a little more cunning than one took him for. No doubt he saw the thing would get known sooner or later, and thought the disclosure had better come from himself.'

Fielding had been leaning to the same opinion, but the moment he heard it stated, and stated by Mallinson, he felt a certain conviction that it was wrong. 'I don't believe that,' he said sharply.

He was none the less, however, indignant with Drake. To intermeddle at all in other people's concerns was averse to his whole theory of existence. But to intermeddle, and not very creditably, and out of the most disinterested motives of benevolence and expediency, and then to fail! All this was nothing short of degrading. He dined that night at his club, to which Drake had been elected, and lay in wait for him.

Drake, however, did not appear, and at ten o'clock Fielding went round to his rooms.

Drake was living in chambers on the Embankment, a little to the west of Hungerford Bridge. As he was shown into the room, Fielding could not help noticing the plainness of its furniture and adornment. The chairs were covered with a cheap red cretonne; there was an armchair or two with the high seat and long elbows, which seemed to have gone astray from a Peckham drawing-room; an ormolu clock under a gla.s.s shade ornamented the overmantel, and in the way of literature there was one book in the room--Prescott's _Conquest of Peru_--and a copy of the _Times_.

Drake was seated at the table engaged in the study of a map of Matanga.

'Come in!' he said cordially. Fielding drew up a chair to the fire. 'Have a drink? The cigars are on the mantelshelf.'

Drake fetched a syphon and a decanter of whisky and mixed two gla.s.ses. He handed one to Fielding, and brought his map to the fire.

'Ah!' said Fielding. 'There's likely to be a rising in Matanga, I see.'

'Very possibly.'