William Le Queux

“ Whenever I come up against Cupid, experience has taught me to retire deferentially, and wait until the love-fever has abated. It often turns to jealousy or hatred, and then the victims fall as easily as off a log. A jealous woman will betray any secret, even though it may hurry her lover to his grave. To me, my dear Gustav, this fevered world of London is all very amusing."
"And your profession as doctor must serve as a most excellent mask. Who would suspect you—a lonely bachelor in such quarters as these?" exclaimed his visitor. ”

“ The fight had been a fierce one, but their true hearts had won, and, as they whispered each other's fond affection, Enid promised to be the wife of the honest, fearless man of whose magnificent work in the detection of crime the country had never dreamed. They read his books and were enthralled by them, but little did they think that he was one of the never-sleeping watch-dogs upon great criminals, or that the sweet-faced girl, who was now his affianced wife, had risked her life, her love, her honour, in order to assist him. ”

“ She drew back in terror of the man who held such an extraordinary influence over her. She had grasped Fetherston's hand convulsively, but at Weirmarsh's threat she had released her hold and was standing in the hall, pale, rigid and staring.
"Summers," exclaimed Fetherston, turning to his companion, "you know this person, eh?"
"Yes, sir, I should rather think I do," replied the man, with a grin.
"Well, detain him for the present, and take your instructions from London."
"You have no power or right to detain me," declared the grey-faced doctor in quick defiance. "You are not a police officer!" ”

“ When they entered Pietro became voluble, but the narrow-eyed doctor of Pimlico remained sullen and silent, biting his lips. He saw that he had been entrapped by the very man whom he had believed to be as clay in his hands.
The scene was surely exciting as well as impressive. The half-furnished, ill-lit dining-room was full of excited men, all talking at once.
Unnoticed, Walter drew Enid into the shadow, and in a few brief, passionate words reassured her of his great affection. ”

“ But his countenance still bore that sphinx-like expression which so often caused his friends to entertain vague suspicions.
Few men could read character better than Walter Fetherston. To him the minds of most men and women he met were as an open book. To a marvellous degree had he cultivated his power of reading the inner working of the mind by the expression in the eyes and on the faces of even those hard-headed diplomats and men of business whom, in his second character of Mr. Maltwood, he so frequently met. Few men or women could tell him a deliberate lie without its instant detection. ”

“ As he read he made scribbled notes on a piece of paper upon his blotting-pad, his thin, white hand, delicate as a woman's, bearing that splendid ruby ring, his one possession in which he took a pride.
"Ah!" he remarked to himself in a hard tone of sarcasm, "what fools the shrewdest of men are sometimes over a woman! So at last he's fallen—like the others—and the secret will be mine. Most excellent! After all, every man has one weak point in his armour, and I was not mistaken." ”

“ His countenance had, she saw, changed and become paler. His lips were pressed together, and, taking a cigar from his case, he asked her permission to smoke, and viciously bit off its end. Something had annoyed him. Was it possible that he held any suspicion of the ghastly truth?
The real fact, however, was that he was calmly and deliberately contemplating tearing her from his heart for ever as an object of suspicion and worthless. He, who had never yet fallen beneath a woman's thraldom, resolved not to enter blindly the net she had spread for him. ”

“ A silence fell between the two men, broken only by the low ticking of the little Sheraton clock upon the mantelshelf.
"Have you fully reflected upon what this refusal of yours may cost you, General?" asked the doctor in a slow, hard voice, his eyes fixed upon the other's countenance.
"It will cost me just as much as you decide it shall," was the response of the unhappy man, who found himself enmeshed by the crafty practitioner.
"You speak as though I were the principal, whereas I am but the agent," Weirmarsh protested. ”

“ Walter Fetherston was a writer of breathless mystery—but he was the essence of mystery himself. Once the reader took up a book of his he never laid it down until he had read the final chapter. You, my reader, have more than once found yourself beneath his strange spell. And what was the secret of his success? He had been asked by numberless interviewers, and to them all he had made the same stereotyped reply: "I live the mysteries I write." ”

“ But if he failed it would be he who would suffer—not I. As usual, I do not appear in the affair at all."
"That is just where you are so intensely clever and ingenious," declared Heureux. "In New York they speak of you as a perfect marvel of foresight and clever evasion."
"It is simply a matter of exercising one's wits," Weirmarsh laughed lightly. "I always complete my plans with great care before embarking upon them, and I make provision for every contretemps possible. It is the only way, if one desires success." ”

“ Hidden away from the sight of passers-by upon the roads, protected from sight by lines of sentries night and day, and unapproachable, save by those immediately connected with them, were the secret defences, huge forts with long-range ordnance, which rose, fired, and disappeared again, offering no mark for the enemy. Constructed in strictest secrecy, there were a dozen of such fortresses, the true details of which the Huns vainly endeavoured to learn while they were war-plotting. ”

“ Indeed, his whereabouts were seldom known save to his agent and his only brother, so elusive was he and so careful to establish a second self.
He had never married. It was whispered that he had once had a serious affair of the heart abroad. But that was a matter of long ago.
Shoals of invitations arrived at his London clubs each season, but they usually reached him in some out-of-the-world corner of Europe, and he would read them with a smile and cast them to the winds.
He took the keenest delight in evading the world that pressed him. ”

“ Enid's true, overburdened heart was only too ready to respond to his fervent appeal. She suffered her lover to draw her to himself, and [315] their lips met in a long, passionate caress that blotted out all the past. He spoke quick, rapid words of ardent affection. To Enid, after all the hideous events she had passed through, it seemed too happy to be true that so much bliss was in store for her, and she remained there, with Walter's arm around her, silently content, that fervid kiss being the first he had ever imprinted upon her full red lips. ”

“ She had warned Walter that the doctor was his enemy—this, surely, was sufficient!
"Try and discover, if you can, the reason of the doctor's power over my father, and why he is for ever directing his actions," urged the girl. "For myself I care little; it is for Sir Hugh's sake that I am trying to break the bonds, if possible."
"You have no suspicion of the reason?" he repeated, looking seriously into her face. "You do not think that he holds some secret of your stepfather's? Undue influence can frequently be traced to such a source." ”

“ Walter turned away full of chagrin. He had been foolish to lose sight of them. His only course was to return to Nice, pack his traps, and follow to Paris in the ordinary rapide at eight o'clock next morning. And this was the course he pursued.
But Paris is a big place, and though he searched for two whole weeks, going hither and thither to all places where the foreign visitors mostly congregate, he saw nothing of the interesting pair. Therefore, full of disappointment, he crossed one afternoon to Folkestone, and that night again found himself in his dingy chambers in Holles Street. ”

“ The man who takes his own life to avoid exposure is always despised by his friends.
So he had lived, and had come down there in response to the doctor's request over the telephone, resolved to face the music, if for the last time.
He sat in the shabby old arm-chair and firmly refused to carry out the doctor's suggestion. But Weirmarsh, with his innate cunning, presented to him a picture of exposure and degradation which held him horrified.
"I should have thought, Sir Hugh, that in face of what must inevitably result you would not risk exposure," he said. ”

“ Ah! how long will the British public be lulled to sleep by anonymous scribblers?"
"One day they'll have a rude awakening," declared Fetherston, still thinking, however, of that letter of the dead man to Enid. "I wonder," he added, "I wonder who inspires these denials? We know, of course, that each time anything against enemy interests appears in a certain section of the Press there arises a ready army of letter-writers who rush into print and append their names to assurances that the enemy is nowadays our best friend. Those 'patriotic Englishmen' are, many of them, in high positions. ”

“ Truth to tell, they were officials of various grades from Scotland Yard, surely the most welcome among the wedding guests.
Though Walter and Enid live in idyllic happiness in a charming old ivy-grown manor house in Sussex, with level lawns and shady rose arbours, they still retain that old cottage at Idsworth, where a plausible excuse has been given to the country folk for "Mr. Maltwood" having been compelled to change his name. No pair in the whole of England are happier to-day.
No man holds his wife more dear, or has a more loving and hopeful companion. ”

“ Then he paused, and, leaning his chin upon his hand, looked straight before him, deep in reflection.
[35] "I have few fears—very few," he remarked to himself, "but the greatest is of Walter Fetherston. What does he know?—that's the chief question. If he has discovered the truth—if he knows my real name and who I am—then the game's up, and my best course is to leave England. And yet there is another way," he went on, speaking slowly to himself—"to close his lips. Dead men tell no tales."
He sat for a long time, his narrow-set eyes staring into space, contemplating a crime. ”

“ The strain of such constant travel and continual excitement would have broken most men; but he possessed an iron constitution, and though he spent weeks on end in trains and steamboats, it never affected him in the least. He could snatch sleep at any time, and he could write anywhere.
Whether or not Enid had guessed the reason of his urgent appeal to her not to pass through France, she had nevertheless managed to excuse herself; but a week after Mrs. Caldwell's departure she had travelled alone by the Harwich-Antwerp route, evidently much to the annoyance of the alert doctor of Pimlico. ”

“ He had been first attracted by it as a possible plot for a novel, but, on investigation, had discovered, to his surprise, that Bellairs had been Sir Hugh's trusted secretary and the friend of Enid Orlebar.
The poor fellow had died in a manner both sudden and mysterious, as a good many persons die annually. To the outside world there was no suspicion whatever of foul play.
Yet, being in possession of certain secret knowledge, Fetherston had formed a theory—one that was amazing and startling—a theory [133] which he had, after long deliberation, made up his mind to investigate and prove. ”

“ I promised you I would provide you with an ample income, and——"
"And you've done so, Weirmarsh," cried the old general; "an income far greater than I expected. Yet what do I deserve?"
"My dear General," said the doctor quite calmly, "you're not yourself to-day; suffering from a slight attack of remorse, eh? It's a bad [50] complaint; I've had it, and I know. But it's like the measles—you're very nearly certain to contract it once in a lifetime."
"Have you no pity for me?" snarled Sir Hugh, glaring at the narrow-eyed man seated before him. ”