Kitabı oku: «The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History», sayfa 7
Chapter Thirteen
The Leopard’s Eyes
For a few moments I stood dumbfounded.
I could scarcely believe my own eyes.
The figure before me was pale-faced and wan. She wore an old blue felt hat with wide brim which was most unbecoming, a faded jersey that had once been dark mauve, and an old black skirt, while her boots were cracked and bulging, and she was without gloves.
She smiled at me inanely, as she came across the room and Theed closed the door after her.
“Roseye!” I gasped. “Whatever does this mean?”
“Is it really you!” cried Teddy, equally amazed.
“It is,” she replied in a low, very weary voice.
I saw that she appeared exhausted, for she clutched at the edge of the table, so I led her gently to my chair wherein she sank inertly, with a deep sigh.
“Roseye,” I said. “Where have you been?”
She turned her gaze upon the fire. Her face remained hard-set. The expression upon her white countenance was one of tragedy.
Her chest heaved and fell, and I saw that her ungloved hands, grasping the arms of the chair, were trembling.
“You are cold!” I cried. And dashing to the cupboard I got out some brandy and a siphon.
She sipped a few drops from the glass I offered her, smiling in grateful acknowledgment.
Then, as I stood upon the hearthrug facing her, I repeated my question:
“Tell us, Roseye. Where have you been?”
In her great blue eyes I noticed a strange, vacant expression; a look such as I had never seen there before. She only shook her head mournfully.
“What has happened?” I inquired, bending and placing my hand tenderly upon her shoulder.
But, with a sudden movement, she buried her face in her small hands and burst into a torrent of tears.
“Don’t ask me!” she sobbed. “Don’t ask me, Claude!”
“Look here, old chap,” exclaimed Teddy, who was quite as mystified as myself. “I’ll come back later on. That Miss Lethmere is safe is, after all, the one great consolation.”
And, rising, my friend discreetly left the room.
When he had gone I fell upon my knees before my rediscovered love and, taking her cold hands in mine, covered them with hot, fervent kisses, saying:
“Never mind, darling. You are safe again – and with me!”
All my efforts to calm her, however, proved unavailing, for she still sobbed bitterly – the reaction, no doubt, of finding herself again beside me. With women, in circumstances of great strain, it is the feminine privilege to relieve themselves by emotion.
“Speak!” I urged of her. “Tell me where you’ve been, darling?”
But she only shook her head and, still convulsed by sobs, sat there inert and heedless of all about her.
As I knelt in silence, the quiet of my room remained unbroken save for the low ticking of the clock, and the soft sobs of the woman I so dearly loved.
Tenderly I took my own handkerchief and wiped those tears from her white, hard-set face. Then, for the first time, I saw that her left eyebrow showed a dark red scar. It had not been there on the last occasion when we had been together.
That mark upon her brow set me wondering.
Across her forehead she drew her hand wearily, as at last she sat forward in her chair, an action as though to clear her confused and troubled brain.
“Let me take off your hat,” I said and, with a man’s clumsiness, removed the old felt hat from her head.
As I did so her wealth of soft hair, which I saw had been sadly neglected, fell unkempt about her shoulders.
“That —that woman!” she suddenly ejaculated, half starting from her seat. “Ah! that woman!” she cried.
“What woman, dear?” I asked, much mystified at her words.
“That woman – that awful woman!” she shouted.
“Ah! send her away – save me from her – Oh! save me. Look!”
And she pointed straight before her at some phantom which she had conjured up in her imagination.
At once I realised that she was hysterical, and that some hideous ghost of her past adventure had arisen before her.
“Calm yourself, darling,” I urged softly, my arm around her waist. “There is no one here. You are alone – alone with me – Claude!”
“Claude!” she echoed, turning toward me and gazing blankly into my eyes with an expression which lacked recognition. “Oh – yes!” she added in a tone of surprise. “Why – yes – Claude! Is it you —really you?”
“Yes. I am Claude – and you are alone with me,” I said in great apprehension, for I feared lest she might be demented. No doubt she had been through some terrible experiences since last I had clasped her hand.
Again she sighed deeply. For the next few moments she gazed into my eyes in silence. Their stony stare thrilled and awed me. At last a very faint smile played about her lips, and she exclaimed: “Oh, yes! How awfully silly of me, Claude! How very foolish. Forgive me, won’t you?”
“Forgive you, darling! Why, of course,” I said, pressing her closely to me.
“But – but that terrible woman!” she cried, still terrified. “You won’t let her come near me again – will you?”
“No. She shan’t. I’m with you, and will protect you, darling. Trust in me.”
“Ah!” she sighed. “It was awful. How – how I’ve lived through it I don’t know.”
“Through what?” I asked, eager to induce her to tell her story.
“No,” she answered. “You – you would never believe me! – you would never understand! Oh! that woman! Look!” and in terror she raised her finger and pointed again straight before her. “Look! Don’t you see her! She’s fixed her eyes upon me —those awful leopard’s eyes!”
“There’s nobody here, Roseye,” I assured her. “You’re alone with me.”
“Alone! Why, no. She’s there – see straight over there!” cried my love, her face distorted by wild terror. “Ah! she’s coming nearer!” she shrieked, again covering her face with her hands, as though to shut out the imaginary face.
“Ugh!” she shuddered. “Don’t let her touch me! Don’t let her touch me! Don’t, Claude – for Heaven’s sake, I beg of you. That woman – that awful woman with the leopard’s eyes!”
“Come, come,” I said, rather severely. “You must not give way to these hallucinations, Roseye. There’s nobody here, I assure you. It’s all – ”
“But she is here!” she shrieked. “You can’t deceive me; she’s here – with us. Perhaps you can’t see her – but I can. Oh! those horrible eyes – the fiend! Ah! what I have suffered!”
I did not reply. I was at a loss how to act. Sight of my beloved betraying such abject terror unnerved me.
Too well did I recollect the story of the railway signalman near Welwyn, how, when the night-express came out of the tunnel tearing north from London, he had distinctly seen two women struggling. One was in the grasp of the other.
Was this the woman whom Roseye believed was present in my room – the mysterious Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes?
I crossed to the window, and standing at the spot where at my love declared she could see the mysterious female by which she seemed haunted, said:
“Now, look, dear! There is nobody here.”
“There is!” she persisted. “She’s there just behind you. Mind! She intends to do you harm! Yes,” she added. “I saw her at Hendon. I remember, most distinctly! She knows you – and she means to do you harm!”
I returned to her side, frantic at my inability to convince her that all was her imagination.
There was no doubt that, deeply impressed upon her memory, was some recollection of terrifying events in which a mysterious woman had played a leading part.
As I looked at that blank, yet horrified expression upon her pale, sweet face I became more than ever convinced that she had been held beneath the thraldom of some woman of evil intent – that woman whom she described as possessing the crafty eyes of a leopard.
For a full half-hour I argued with her, endeavouring to calm her but, unfortunately, to little avail. Presently, however, her expression altered, she grew less agitated, until at last, as I sat holding her in my arms, I kissed her fondly upon the lips, and again begged:
“Do tell me, my darling, where you have been all this long time? I’ve searched for you everywhere.”
“I – I don’t know,” was her blank reply. “I can’t tell you.”
“But surely you recollect something?” I urged eagerly. “Those are not your own clothes that you are wearing. Where did you get them from?”
She looked quickly down at her jersey and at her skirt, and then raised her eyes to me in dismay. Apparently, for the first time, she now realised that she was dressed in some one else’s clothes.
“That’s curious!” she exclaimed, as though speaking to herself. “That’s very curious. That hat is not mine, either!”
“No, it isn’t,” I said, handing it to her to examine, which she did critically.
Then, placing her hands idly upon her knees, she remained for a long time with brows knit in silence, apparently trying to recall the past.
“You lost your chatelaine – the one I gave you,” I said, hoping that the fact might, in some way, stir the chords of her blunted memory.
“My chatelaine!” she repeated, looking at me vacantly.
“Yes. You lost your purse and money, and other things,” I said. “I think you must have lost it from a train.”
Suddenly she raised her face again to mine, and asked in a half-dazed kind of way:
“Are you —are you Claude?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Surely you remember me!”
“Oh – yes! But – oh! my head – my poor head!” and she placed her hands to her temples and drew a long breath.
“Cannot you recollect – do try and tell me something. Try and describe to me what occurred after you left home. What happened to you?”
She shook her head sadly.
“I can’t tell you,” she said at last, speaking quite rationally. “I really can’t.”
“But you must recollect something, dear?” I asked. “Your chatelaine was found dropped from a train on the line near Welwyn station, on the Great Northern Railway.”
“On the railway?” she repeated slowly. “Ah!”
“That brings back something to your memory, dearest, does it not?” I inquired anxiously, for I now felt convinced that she remembered something regarding her loss.
“Yes – but – but – well, I can’t tell you about it, Claude.”
“You can’t, dearest – or do you mean that you decline to tell me! Which?”
For a few moments she was again silent. Her blank white face had become almost as its own self, with that sweet, calm smile I had known so well.
“I must decline to tell you,” she slowly answered at last. “I’m sorry – but I – I only ask your forgiveness, Claude.”
“What is there for me to forgive?” I cried dismayed. “You disappeared. Everybody feared foul play – and – ”
“There was foul play!” she interrupted in a hoarse voice.
“By whom?”
“By somebody.”
“You know who were your enemies?” I asked quickly. “You must know, indeed.”
She nodded in the affirmative, her eyes once more downcast, as though fearing to meet my gaze.
“Cannot you name them – cannot you denounce them, darling? It is your duty,” I said in a low, persuasive tone. “Reveal the truth to me, Claude.”
“No, never!” was her plain and instant reply.
“Why not?”
“There are reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“Reasons of my own. Strong reasons.”
“And may I not know them?” I asked with some resentment.
“No, Claude – I can never reveal the truth – not even to you.” She was now quite her old self.
“But I thought we trusted each other blindly and implicitly,” I protested. “You surely know how deeply and fondly I love you, my darling.”
“Exactly,” she exclaimed, with one of those sweet and winning smiles of hers. “That’s just my point. If you love me as you declare – and I believe you do – then you will trust me, and you will, when I assure you that I cannot tell you what has happened, refrain from further questioning me.”
Her argument was, certainly, one to which I could not very well reply. It was a curious argument, and aroused suspicion within me.
She had now grown quite calm, and I could plainly see that she had at last recalled the past, yet she did not intend to make any statement whatever regarding it.
Why? This disinclination to reveal to me the slightest fact was, in itself, most extraordinary. I then found myself reflecting upon the discovery of that secret memorandum in her card-case, and the allegation made against her by the red-tabbed Intelligence officer.
I was on the point of telling her what had been discovered – the purport of the cipher-message and the suspicion which rested upon her. Yet, would that induce her to be frank and tell me the truth? I decided that it would not, therefore I said nothing. Instead, I remarked in a low, sympathetic voice: “I really think, darling, that it is due to me – to your people also – that you should tell us the truth of what happened to you, and of the identity of your enemies.”
“I have already told you, Claude,” was her quiet response. “If you really love me, then you should at least trust me.”
“I do trust you, darling!” I protested quickly. “You surely know that! You are in possession of all the secrets of our invention, and – ”
“Ah! the invention —the invention!” she cried and, as she suddenly recollected it, her whole manner instantly changed.
She started from her chair crying: “Yes – yes! Now I remember! I remember! It was awful – terrible – ugh! Ah! my poor brain!” and again she drew her hand across her brow. “My poor head!”
She paused but, next second, she turned to me, exclaiming in a tone quite unusual to her:
“No! I shall tell you nothing – I shall say nothing! I do not want to remember – I pray only to forget – yes, to forget all – everything. It is too horrible! Too cruel!” and I saw that my reference to our secret apparatus had stirred another chord in her memory – one that caused her both fierce anger and bitter remorse.
That fact, in itself, revealed to me quite plainly that her tragic experiences, whatever they might have been, had some curious connexion with our invention for the destruction of Zeppelins. Thus, arguing with myself further, I became more than ever convinced that she, in all her innocence, had fallen defenceless into the unscrupulous grip of the terrible but relentless Invisible Hand.
Why did she so persistently withhold from me the truth? What more natural than, knowing the identity of her enemies, she should seek to denounce and justly punish them? Now she was back at my side she surely could not fear them!
Certainly her demeanour was most mysterious, and I stood there, facing her, utterly bewildered. The expression in her dear face was quite uncanny.
Once again I begged her to tell me something – however slight – regarding what had occurred to her. I told her of our tireless search; of the eager hue and cry; of the publication of her portrait, and of the offered reward for any information.
“Ah!” she replied, with a strange, faint smile, as though of triumph almost. “All that was to no effect. The precautions taken were far too complete. Nobody could have found me – for I was in a living grave.”
“Yes,” I said, hoping that she would reveal to me something more, however vague. “Tell me about it, darling. Do, Roseye.”
“Tell you!” she echoed with angry resentment, putting me from her firmly and staring at me. “No, never!” Then a second later she turned towards the curtained window and shrieked:
“Ah! look! – that accursed woman again! Why do you allow her to come here – if you love me, Claude!”
“She is not here,” I declared firmly. “It is all your silly imagination!”
“She is!” cried my love wildly. “You are lying to me! She’s there! Over there! Kill her – Claude – or she will kill you – ah! that Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes!”
Chapter Fourteen
False or True?
One bright crisp afternoon in mid-December, Roseye, wrapped warmly in her furs, sat beside me in the car as we sped through Leatherhead on our way out to Burford Bridge, where we had decided to have tea.
In the grey wintry light the landscape had become gloomy and depressing. Yet my love chatted merrily as we sped along.
Since that well-remembered evening at my rooms when she had made her sudden reappearance on my threshold from nowhere, the days had been very dark and terribly anxious ones.
After her refusal to tell me anything, I had taken her home, where her sudden arrival had been as a thunderbolt to her parents. But alas! her overstrained brain had then given way, and for three weeks she had remained in bed under the care of Sir Charles Needham, one of the greatest mental specialists in Harley Street.
Thanks to his skill, she had slowly recovered – very slowly it seemed to me.
A dozen times I had chatted with Sir Charles, and he had admitted to me that the case was not only most unusual, but almost unique. He could not obtain from her any lucid account of what had occurred after she had left home on that fatal morning. She had contradicted herself so many times.
Any reference to inventions, to electricity, to trains, to Zeppelins, or to women, sent her into fierce paroxysms of anger. Her attitude was most mysterious. In fact her adventures during the time she had been missing were enveloped in a dark cloud of mystery which, even Barton himself, was unable to penetrate.
Captain Pollock, of course, had been informed and had repeated his red-taped suspicions. But, having no reliable or actual evidence upon which to base his assertions, Barton seemed inclined to disregard them.
I noticed this, putting it down to the usual disagreement which exists in officialdom the world over. No one official has ever been known to be in actual accord with another in another Department. That’s why the clock of State creaks on so rustily in every civilised community.
Arrived at that motoring rendezvous, the Burford Bridge Hotel, we took a stroll in its picturesque grounds on the slope of Box Hill, leafless and deserted on that December afternoon.
Having walked some distance along the gravelled paths, we sat together upon a seat, when her sudden silence caused me to ponder. Since we had been walking she had scarcely uttered a word, and had appeared utterly absorbed.
At last she exclaimed:
“I shall be so very glad when they let me fly again, Claude. I feel ever so much better now – quite my old self again.”
“I’m delighted to hear that,” was my reply. “But you must wait another week or two before you take out your machine. Your man is overhauling it thoroughly. When I was at Hendon yesterday I saw that he had taken down the engine.”
“Yes. I’m most anxious to help you, dear, with your great invention. How is it getting on?”
“Famously,” I replied. “Teddy and I have been working hard for the last four days, and have made progress in both lightening the weight of the outfit, and increasing its power. I’ve ordered a big new dynamo to be constructed on such lines that it can be placed on my machine with a second engine. This engine will either run the dynamo, or the propeller.”
“Of course, I quite see,” she exclaimed. “You must have a second engine for night-flying. How long will it be, do you think, before you can make a trial flight?” she asked anxiously.
“Early in January I hope, darling.”
“And you will let me come with you – won’t you? Now promise me. Do,” she urged, placing her gloved hand upon my arm, and looking earnestly into my face.
“Yes. I promise,” I answered laughing. “Teddy will, no doubt, be very anxious to come, but you shall make the first flight, darling. It is your privilege.”
“May I come out to Gunnersbury and help you?” she asked. “I’m quite all right again, I assure you.”
“When Sir Charles gives his consent, then you may come,” I replied.
“I’ll ask him to-morrow,” she cried gladly. “I’m so horribly tired of leading an idle life at home. Lionel lunched with us yesterday, and took me out to a matinée. It was quite jolly to have such a change. We had tea at the Piccadilly afterwards.”
“Lionel!” I exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes. Why? Are you jealous – you dear old thing?”
I drew a deep breath, and she evidently noticed my displeasure.
“Jealous!” I cried with affected nonchalance. “Why should I be?”
“Well – I ought, of course, to have told you before,” she answered. “But he’s such a good friend of ours, you know.”
Good friend. All the suspicions I held regarding him flashed across my mind. Why had he pretended to be an invalid on that day I had sat at his bedside, and yet afterwards had dined at Hatchett’s? Why was he ever inquisitive regarding our secret experiments, and why did he appear to possess such unusual knowledge of coming events?
“Yes,” I remarked after a pause. “He is, no doubt, a good friend.”
I saw that I could learn more by disarming suspicion than by appearing ungenerous.
“You don’t mind me going to a matinée with him, do you, Claude?” she asked frankly. “Of course, if it has annoyed you, I won’t go again. But mother said she thought a theatre would be a pleasant relaxation for me, now that we can’t go out at night on account of the darkened streets and the bad winter weather.”
“The darkened streets seem to make no difference to pleasure-going,” I said bitterly, and purposely disregarding her first question. “Though we are at war – though thousands upon thousands of our poor brave fellows have been killed or maimed in the defence of their homes and their loved ones, yet the London public are still the same. Nothing seems to disturb them. Bond Street, with all its fripperies, is still in full swing: the drapers everywhere are paying big dividends – money is being squandered in luxuries by those who have never previously known such things; jewellers are flourishing, and extravagance runs riot through the land. Men and women go nightly to revues and join in rollicking choruses, even while the death-rattle sounds in the throats of Britain’s bravest sons. Ah! Roseye,” I said. “It is all too awful. What I fear is that we are riding gaily for a fall.”
“No,” she said. “I agree in a sense with all you say. But we are not riding for a fall, so long as we have brave men ready to sacrifice their lives in Britain’s cause. You, Claude, are one of those,” she added, looking straight into my face with an open, frank expression – that love-look which can never be feigned, either by man or by woman.
In that second I realised that at least my suspicion that she had any secret affection for Lionel Eastwell was groundless.
Yet I was, nevertheless, annoyed that he should still mislead her parents by expressions of friendship. True, when I came to examine and to analyse my doubts, I could discover no real and actual foundation for them. Perhaps it was an intuition that possessed me – a strange half-formed belief that Eastwell, though such a cheerful companion, such a real good fellow, and so popular with all the flying-boys, was not exactly of the truly patriotic type which he represented himself to be.
For that reason alone I inwardly objected to Roseye associating with him, yet as he was such a warmly welcomed friend of the family, it was extremely difficult for me to move in any antagonistic spirit.
Within myself I had a fierce and desperate struggle, yet long ago I had realised that if I intended to win I must not show the slightest sign of anger or of suspicion.
So, as we sat there together – gazing across the sloping lawn, so melancholy in that falling December twilight, yet so picturesque and gay on those summer evenings as I had often known it – I crushed down the apprehension that had arisen within me, and laughed gaily with my dainty well-beloved.
Still the facts – the mysterious inexplicable facts – remained. Was it possible that my love desired again to assist in the completion of our experiments in order to know the result of them – and perhaps to betray them?
No. I could not – even in my inward anger at the knowledge that she had spent the previous afternoon with the man I suspected – bring myself to believe that she was really acting in contradiction to the interests of the country.
Somebody has truly said that love is blind. Well, I loved Roseye. And my blindness had been a very pleasant and delightful affliction up to that tragic day of her disappearance.
Through those weeks when her mind had remained unbalanced and unhinged, she had never once made any statement nor had she ever inadvertently admitted anything which might reveal the truth as to where she had been, or the identity of the person whom she held in greatest terror – that Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes.
With all the cunning I possessed I had sought to glean from her some fact, any fact however vague, concerning those weeks when she had been missing, but beyond what I have written in these pages, I could gather no single incident.
I was but an ordinary man – one whose father had risen in the medical profession to grasp one of its plums. From being a ne’er-do-well and idler, I had taken up aviation and, after much perseverance, had learned to fly. I suppose I was gifted with ordinary intelligence, and that intelligence had shown me that, now we were at war, the enemy had placed upon the whole country that secret Hand, eager and clutching, to effect and secure our undoing. Its finger-prints, indelible and unmistakable, remained wherever one sought them.
That Hand had been upon me when I had crashed to earth with a wooden bolt in my machine in place of one of steel.
But whether the Hand had really been placed upon Roseye was a problem which utterly defied solution.
That she had suffered had been vividly apparent, yet her absolute and fixed refusal to say anything, to admit anything, or to make any charge against anyone, was, in itself, an astounding feature of what was an extremely curious situation.
I remained that afternoon at Burford Bridge just as dumbfounded and mystified as I had been at that moment when Theed had opened the door of my sitting-room and she had returned from what, in her own words, had been a living tomb.
Why a living tomb? Who had prepared the trap – if trap there had been? Who was the unknown woman, the very mention of whom terrified her – the Woman with the Leopard’s Eyes?
Though we sat there and laughed together – for I had affected, I hope successfully, an utter disregard of any suspicion or jealousy of Eastwell – I gazed upon her, and I saw that she had grown nervous and anxious.
Why?
It seemed to me that, with her woman’s innate cleverness and cunning – which by the way is never outmatched by that of the mere man – she was reading my own innermost thoughts. She knew my suspicions, and her intention, at all hazards, was to conceal from me some bitter and perhaps disgraceful truth.
This thought aroused within me a relentless hatred of the fellow Eastwell. Nevertheless, once again when I came to examine the actual facts, I could discover really nothing tangible – nothing which ought to lead me, with any degree of right or justice, to an adverse decision.
I had revealed much to Inspector Barton before Roseye’s disappearance. I had told him of my suspicions of Eastwell, but I suppose he had – as natural to, an investigator of crime – regarded those suspicions as the natural outcome of a man’s jealousy. But they were not, because I had never been jealous of the man – not until we sat there on the lawn before the hotel, and she had told me how she had spent an afternoon at the theatre in his company.
As a matter of fact jealousy had never entered my head. Previously I had always regarded Eastwell as quite a good fellow, full of the true stamina of a patriot. He had been, I knew, full of schemes for the future of aviation in England ever since he had taken his first flap at the aerodrome. Once, indeed, he had serious thoughts, in the pre-war days, of putting up as Parliamentary candidate for a Yorkshire borough. But the matter fell through because the Opposition, on their part, ran a man whose chances were assured – an Anglo-Indian colonel who had passed through every local distinction, from being a member of the local Board of Guardians to becoming a DL. Against such odds Eastwell could not fight. In the great game of politics it has ever been that the local man who spends his money with the local butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, is usually returned with a thumping majority.
The man from afar, the man with a mission, the man who knows his job and will dare to raise his voice in the House to declaim his country’s shortcomings, will usually be jeered at as a “carpetbagger” and hopelessly outpaced and outvoted.
I knew this. I had seen it long ago.
As I sat there at Roseye’s side I fell to wondering – wondering whether she had actually played an open, straightforward game.
Or was she deceiving me!
Which?
