LITMIR.BIZ

      XIII

       CONFESSIONAL

       Table of Contents

      And then, when the girl made no response, but remained with troubled gaze focused on some remote abstraction, "You will have tea, won't you?" he urged.

      She recalled her thoughts, nodded with the faintest of smiles — "Yes, thank you!" — and dropped into a chair.

      He began at once to make talk in effort to dissipate that constraint which stood between them like an unseen alien presence: "You must be very hungry?"

      "I am."

      "Sorry I've nothing better to offer you. I'd have run out for something more substantial, only — "

      "Only — ?" she prompted, coolly helping herself to biscuit and potted ham.

      "I didn't think it wise to leave you alone."

      "Was that before or after you'd made up your mind about me — the latest phase, I mean?" she persisted with a trace of malice.

      "Before," he returned calmly — "likewise, afterwards. Either way you care to take it, it wouldn't have been wise to leave you here. Suppose you had waked up to find me gone, yourself alone in this strange house — "

      "I've been awake several hours," she interposed — "found myself locked in, and heard no sound to indicate that you were still here."

      "I'm sorry: I was overtired and slept like a log…. But assuming the case: you would have gone out, alone, penniless — "

      "Through a locked door, Mr. Lanyard?"

      "I shouldn't have left it locked," he explained patiently…. "You would have found yourself friendless and without resources in a city to which you are a stranger."

      She nodded: "True. But what of that?"

      "In desperation you might have been forced to go back — "

      "And report the outcome of my investigation!"

      "Pressure might have been brought to induce admissions damaging to me," Lanyard submitted pleasantly. "Whether or no, you'd have been obliged to renew associations you're well rid of."

      "You feel sure of that?"

      "But naturally."

      "How can you be?" she challenged. "You've yet to know me twenty-four hours."

      "But perhaps I know the associations better. In point of fact, I do.

       Even though you may have stooped to play the spy last night, Miss

       Bannon — you couldn't keep it up. You had to fly further contamination

       from that pack of jackals."

      "Not — you feel sure — merely to keep you under observation?"

      "I do feel sure of that. I have your word for it."

      The girl deliberately finished her tea, and sat back, regarding him steadily beneath level brows. Then she said with an odd laugh: "You have your own way of putting one on honour!"

      "I don't need to — with you."

      She analyzed this with gathering perplexity. "What do you mean by that?"

      "I mean, I don't need to put you on your honour — because I'm sure of you. Even were I not, still I'd refrain from exacting any pledge, or attempting to." He paused and shrugged before continuing: "If I thought you were still to be distrusted, Miss Bannon, I'd say: 'There's a free door; go when you like, back to the Pack, turn in your report, and let them act as they see fit.'… Do you think I care for them? Do you imagine for one instant that I fear any one — or all — of that gang?"

      "That rings suspiciously of egoism!"

      "Let it," he retorted. "It's pride of caste, if you must know. I hold myself a grade better than such cattle; I've intelligence, at least…. I can take care of myself!"

      If he might read her countenance, it expressed more than anything else distress and disappointment.

      "Why do you boast like this — to me?"

      "Less through self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of murderous mongrels — impatience that I have to consider such creatures as Popinot, Wertheimer, De Morbihan and — all their crew."

      "And Bannon," she corrected calmly — "you meant to say!"

      "Wel-l — " he stammered, discountenanced.

      "It doesn't matter," she assured him. "I quite understand, and strange as it may sound, I've very little feeling in the matter." And then she acknowledged his stupefied stare with a weary smile. "I know what I know," she added, with obscure significance….

      "I'd give a good deal to know how much you know," he muttered in his confusion.

      "But what do you know?" she caught him up — "against Mr. Bannon — against my father, that is — that makes you so ready to suspect both him and me?"

      "Nothing," he confessed — "I know nothing; but I suspect everything and everybody…. And the more I think of it, the more closely I examine that brutal business of last night, the more I seem to sense his will behind it all — as one might glimpse a face in darkness through a lighted lattice…. Oh, laugh if you like! It sounds high-flown, I know. But that's the effect I get…. What took you to my room, if not his orders? Why does he train with De Morbihan, if he's not blood-kin to that breed? Why are you running away from him if not because you've found out his part in that conspiracy?"

      His pause and questioning look evoked no answer; the girl sat moveless and intent, meeting his gaze inscrutably. And something in her impassive attitude worked a little exasperation into his temper.

      "Why," he declared hotly — "if I dare trust to intuition — forgive me if I pain you — "

      She interrupted with impatience: "I've already begged you not to consider my feelings, Mr. Lanyard! If you dared trust to your intuition — what then?"

      "Why, then, I could believe that Mr. Bannon, your father … I could believe it was his order that killed poor Roddy!"

      There could be no doubting her horrified and half-incredulous surprise.

      "Roddy?" she iterated in a whisper almost inaudible, with face fast blanching. "Roddy — !"

      "Inspector Roddy of Scotland Yard," he told her mercilessly, "was murdered in his sleep last night at Troyon's. The murderer broke into his room by way of mine — the two adjoin. He used my razor, wore my dressing-gown to shield his clothing, did everything he could think of to cast suspicion on me, and when I came in assaulted me, meaning to drug and leave me insensible to be found by the police. Fortunately — I was beforehand with him. I had just left him drugged, insensible in my place, when I met you in the corridor…. You didn't know?"

      "How can you ask?" the girl moaned.

      Bending forward, an elbow on the table, she worked her hands together until their knuckles shone white through the skin — but not as white as the face from which

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