Geoff bowed his head in silent a.s.sent.

"That I--I--did this thing?"

Still he could not answer, could not put into brutal words the conviction that had been forced upon him.

"That I met you and took you into Gleer Cottage last night?" she went on. "Took you in there and showed you that man's--body? I?"

"Not exactly showed it to me--that, as we both know, is an exaggeration.

You showed me into the room where it was hanging, however. Or, at least, you waved me to the door and told me to go in there and wait a minute or two and you'd rejoin me and show me something that would 'light the way back to the land of happiness!' But you never did rejoin me. I waited in that dark room for fully ten minutes but you never came back. Afterward, when I struck a match to light a cigarette and saw that dead man spiked to the wall-- G.o.d! I think I went mad for the moment. I know I ran out of the house, although I do not know when nor how; for when I came to my senses I was racing up and down the right-of-way across the fields; and if it had not been for you I should have run on until I dropped. But all of a sudden I remembered you, remembered that in rushing out of the house I had left you there; and you might come back to that room and find me gone, and think that I had deserted you. I ran back to the place as fast as I could. I remembered that when first you met me and took me into it you had led me in through the gates and up the drive to the door; but when I got back there a horror of the place seized me. I couldn't have gone in that way again had my life depended upon it. There was a break in the boundary wall. I got back into the grounds that way, cutting my wrist--look, see, here's the mark--on the fragments of broken gla.s.s which still adhered to the coping. I ran through the gardens and round to the back of the house. I burst open the rear door and raced along the pa.s.sage to the room where De Louvisan's body hung. You were not there. I struck another match to see, noticing this time that there was the half of a candle standing upon the mantelpiece, where it had been secured in its own wax. I took that thing and lit it and ran through all the house, hunting for you. There was not a trace of you anywhere--and at last, in a panic, I rushed from the house and flew for my very life. But there was no getting away so easily as all that.

Lights were shining, men were coming, the hue and cry had begun. I could not go forward; I dared not go back. I remembered the old hollow tree where we used to play in our kiddy days, you and I. I ran to that and got inside of it--and I was there through all that followed. I was found in time, and it might have ended badly for me but for my father's friend, Mr. Narkom, and a French detective--a m.u.f.f of a fellow named De Lesparre. It didn't, however. I got off scot free, thanking G.o.d that no suspicion pointed your way, and telling myself that you had not left so much as one hair from the ermine cloak you wore that might be caught up as a clue to bring the thing home to you!"

"The ermine cloak I wore! You say I wore an ermine cloak?"

"Yes. An ermine cloak and the same pretty white frock you had worn at the Close earlier in the evening. It was the white of the ermine that first attracted my attention in the darkness when I looked up and saw you near the gates of Gleer Cottage."

"That is not the truth!" she flung back, with a sudden awakening from the sort of stupor which, up till now, had mastered her. "I never wore an ermine cloak in my life! I never was nearer to Gleer Cottage last night than I am at this minute; and if you say that I met you, that I spoke to you, that I even saw you, or that you saw me after Ailsa Lorne led me out of the drawing-room at Clavering Close when you threatened the Count de Louvisan's life, you are saying what is absolutely untrue."

"Kathie!"

"I repeat it, utterly and absolutely untrue."

"Good G.o.d! Do you accuse me of lying?"

"There must be some horrible mistake. Some one impersonated me for some awful purpose. You never saw me again after I left your father's house last night, and you know it. But, in any case, since you confess that you were there, what took you to Gleer Cottage last night at all?"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A QUESTION OF VERACITY

Geoffrey Clavering's reply to Lady Katharine's staggering question was given so promptly that one might have been tempted to believe he had expected it and prepared himself for the question beforehand.

"I had no idea of going there at first," he said. "I couldn't remain among the guests after you had left the Close and Narkom's men had bundled that De Louvisan out of the house; my head seemed full of fire, and I simply couldn't. I got away as soon as I decently could, and went upstairs to my own room. I couldn't stop there, either; the stillness and the loneliness half maddened me and set me to thinking and thinking until I thought my head would burst. So, in sheer desperation, I caught up a cap, sneaked down the back stairs, and let myself out. n.o.body saw me go, and, thank G.o.d, n.o.body saw me return, either. I walked about the Common for heaven knows how long before I turned round at the sound of some one coming toward me through the mist, and the next thing I knew I 'b.u.mped' smack into that person, and found it to be my stepmother."

"Lady Clavering?" said the girl in a tone of the utmost surprise--and Cleek could have blessed her for the words, since they voiced an inquiry upon a subject which he much desired to have explained. "You mean to say that Lady Clavering was out there on the Common, away from her guests?

What could have impelled her to take such a step--and at such a time?"

"She had come in search of me, she said. She felt anxious, distressed, afraid, so she said, that I would do something desperate, and went to my room to talk with me. When she found it empty she jumped to the conclusion that I had gone out for the purpose of following De Louvisan and meeting him somewhere for the mere satisfaction of thrashing him.

She begged and implored me to come back to the Close; to do nothing rash; to think of my father; to remember her; to be careful to do nothing that would get your name mixed up in a vulgar brawl. And she wouldn't leave me until I promised her on my word of honour that I would make no effort to find De Louvisan. When I did that, she was satisfied and went back to the Close."

In the darkness of the stone staircase Cleek puckered up his brows and thoughtfully pinched his chin.

Oho! so that was the explanation of her ladyship's presence on the Common last night, was it? Mere solicitude for the welfare of a beloved stepson, eh? Hum-m-m! Rather disappointing, to say the least of it, to find that she had no more connection with the case than just that. After all, she was merely "a red herring drawn across the trail," eh? He shouldn't have thought so, but, of course, if young Clavering spoke the truth, that eliminated _her_ from the affair altogether. Odd that she should have bribed the Common keeper not to say a word about having met her! In the circ.u.mstances, why should she have done so?

Ah, yes--just so! She wouldn't like to have the affair talked about; she wouldn't like to have young Geoff put on his guard, so that he might purposely avoid meeting her, and she would be most anxious to get him back into the house as quietly and as expeditiously as possible. No, decidedly, you never can be certain. Women are queer fish at the best of times, and mothers have odd methods of reasoning when beloved sons are concerned. But stepmothers? Hum-m-m! Yes, yes! To be sure, there are always exceptions. Still, he hadn't thought--he decidedly had not thought----

Young Clavering was speaking again. Cleek let the "thought" trail off and lose itself, and p.r.i.c.ked up his ears to listen.

"I suppose it was her speaking of you that first put the idea into my head," Geoff went on, "and impelled me to walk over to the place where we had been so happy before your father returned from Argentina and spoiled everything for us. That's why I went. That's how I came to meet you there."

"You did not meet me there!" she flung back indignantly. "Really this is past a jest."

"A jest? You think I'm likely to jest over it--a thing that threatens the life of the girl I love? In the name of heaven, Kathie, put an end to this nonsense. You know I did meet you there! You know how surprised I was when I got to the place to see you stealing out of the gates. Why, the very moment you saw me you spoke my name, and that I had no more than just time to say to you, 'For G.o.d's sake, Kathie, how did you come here?' when you plucked me by the sleeve and said, 'Come in, come in; I'll show you something that will light the way back to the land of happiness, dear!' And after all that to face me down like this--to pretend that you were not there. It is simply ridiculous."

"I am glad you can give it so mild a name," said the girl coldly. "To me it seems the cruellest and the wickedest falsehood a man could possibly utter. Dear G.o.d! what has come over you, Geoff? Are you mad, or are you something worse, to come here and make this abominable lying charge against me--against _me_? And when you know in your heart that there is not one word of truth in it!"

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, don't treat me as if I were a fool, Katharine. Who is there to impersonate you, and for what reason? I know what I know, I know what I've seen, what I've heard, what I've been through! Then what in heaven's name is the use of keeping up this idle pretence with me?"

"It is not a pretence--it is the truth, the simple and the absolute truth!" she replied with heat. "If they were the last words I had to say in this world, I would repeat on the very threshold of the one to come: _I was not at Gleer Cottage last night._ I came straight from Clavering Close to Wuthering Grange, and I never left my room for one instant from that time until I came down to breakfast this morning.

Ailsa Lorne was with me when I returned; she will tell you that I am speaking the truth."

Yes, decidedly Ailsa Lorne would tell him; that Cleek acknowledged to himself. Had she not done so already? But again she might also have told him that she thought she heard Lady Katharine's bedroom door open in the night and some one steal out of it. Besides, there was another thing--the golden capsule of the scent bracelet--to be reckoned with.

Hum-m-m! Was there, then, a possibility that Geoff Clavering was speaking the truth, and that it was Lady Katharine herself who was lying? Of course, in that case---- Stop a bit--they were going at it again, and he could not afford to lose a single word.

"I don't care a hang what Ailsa Lorne or anybody else will say; I know what I know," young Clavering flung in doggedly. "You can't tell me that I didn't see a thing when I did see it--at least, you can't and expect to make me believe it. Give me credit for a little common sense."

"How can I when your own words so utterly refute it, when you convict yourself out of your own mouth, when even the dead man himself is a witness to the utter folly of this charge?"

"De Louvisan?"

"Yes. He speaks for me!"

"What nonsense!"

"He speaks for me," she repeated, not noticing the interruption, "and if you will not believe a living witness, then you must believe a dead one.

Uncle Raynor and Harry said this morning that the Count de Louvisan's body had been found, not lying on the ground, but lifted up and spiked to the wall; and you who claim to have seen me in that house last night claim also to have searched the place and found no one but me present.

Will you tell me, then, how I could possibly have lifted the body of a man weighing ten or eleven stone at the least computation, much less have lifted it high enough to spike it to a wall?"

"One for the girl!" commented Cleek silently.

"You might have had help; there might have been somebody there who left before I arrived," replied Geoff.

"And another one for the man!" Cleek was obliged to admit. "Which of this interesting pair is doing the lying? They can't both be speaking the truth. At least, they can't unless---- By Jupiter! Hum-m-m! Quite so! Quite so! 'Write me down an a.s.s, gentlemen,' and an a.s.s with a capital A." Then the curious one-sided smile travelled up his cheek, and lingered there longer than usual.

Young Clavering's last remark had hurt the girl more than anything he had yet said; hurt her so deeply that she gave a little shuddering cry and, womanlike, broke into tears.

"That is the wickedest thing of all!" she said. "The very wickedest thing of all. I can't doubt any longer that you have made up your mind to bolster up this abominable thing by every possible insult to me!"

"Insult? What funny things are sometimes said by accident!" he flung back stridently. "I am likely to 'insult' you when I'm ready to stand by you through thick and thin, am I not? And to lie till I'm black in the face, so that I keep others from knowing what I know!"

"You don't know it--you can't know it! It never happened! I was not in that house last night, and you did not see me there!"

"Oh, well then, let us say I didn't," impatiently. "What does it matter one way or the other? Say I didn't, then! Say _I_ murdered him; but, for G.o.d's sake, don't say I insult you when I have come here merely to show you how much I love you--how ready I am to fight the whole world for you. Come back into my arms, and let me tell you what I want to tell, dear. Come back, and don't fear anything or anybody on earth. They shan't touch you! They shan't lift a finger to harm you, say one single word against you; and G.o.d help the first that tries it, that's all! A man doesn't cease to love a woman just because she does a desperate thing for his sake. No, not he! If he's worthy of the name of man, he loves her all the better for it. That's how I love you! Better to-day than I ever loved you in all the days that were; better than I shall ever love anything in all the days that are to be. I don't care if you are red with the blood of a hundred men, you're the girl I love, the girl I mean to marry, the girl I'm going to stand up and fight for as long as there's breath left in my body!"

"Marry--marry?" Her voice struck through his even before he had finished speaking, and there was a sting in it that bit. "Do you think for one instant that I would marry you when you make such a charge as that against me? Do you think I would? Do you? I'd no more marry you than I would cut off my right hand, Geoff Clavering, after you have slandered me and lied about me like this."