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The Lighted Way, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 26. Arnold Becomes Inquisitive |
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_ CHAPTER XXVI. ARNOLD BECOMES INQUISITIVE For several moments Fenella sat quite still. She was suddenly an altered woman. All the natural gayety and vivacity seemed to have faded from her features. There were suggestions of another self, zealously kept concealed. It was a curious revelation. Even her tone, when she spoke, was altered. The words seemed to be dragged from her lips. "You have some reason for saying this," she murmured. "I have," Arnold admitted. Just then the waiter entered the room, bringing in a portion of the lunch which they had ordered. Fenella rose and walked to a mirror at the other end of the apartment. She stood there powdering her cheeks for a moment, with her back turned to Arnold. When the waiter had gone, she returned, humming a tune. Her effort at self-rehabilitation was obvious. "You gave me a shock, my friend," she declared, sitting down. "Please do not do it again. I am not accustomed to having things put to me quite so plainly." "I am sorry," Arnold said. "It was hideously clumsy of me." "It is of no consequence now," she continued. "Please to give me some of that red wine and go on with your story. Tell me exactly what you mean!" "It is simply this," Arnold explained. "A few days ago, I noticed that Mr. Weatherley was busy writing for several hours. It was evidently some private matter and nothing whatever to do with the business. When he had finished, he put some documents into a small safe, locked them up, and, very much to my surprise, gave me the key." "This was long ago?" "It was almost immediately after Mr. Rosario's murder," he replied. "When he gave me the key, he told me that if anything unexpected should happen to him, I was to open the safe and inspect the documents. He particularly used the words 'If anything unexpected should happen to me, or if I should disappear.'" "You really believe, then," she asked, "that he had some idea in his mind that something was likely to happen to him, or that he intended to disappear?" "His action proves it," Arnold reminded her. "So far as we know, there is no earthly reason for his not having turned up at the office this morning. This afternoon I shall open the safe." "You mean that you will open it if you do not find him in the office when you return?" "He will not be there," Arnold said, decidedly. Her eyes were filled with fear. He went on hastily. "Perhaps I ought not to say that. I have nothing in the world to go on. It is only just an idea of mine. It isn't that I am afraid anything has happened to him, but I feel convinced, somehow, that we shall not hear anything more of Mr. Weatherley for some time." "You will open the safe, then, this afternoon?" "I must," Arnold replied. For several minutes neither of them spoke a word. Fenella made a pretense at eating her luncheon. Arnold ate mechanically, his thoughts striving in vain to focus themselves upon the immediate question. It was she who ended the silence. "What do you think you will find in those documents?" "I have no idea," Arnold answered. "To tell you the truth," he went on earnestly, "I was going to ask you whether you knew of anything in his life or affairs which could explain this?" "I am not sure that I understand you," she said. "It seems a strange question," Arnold continued, "and yet it presents itself. I was going to ask you whether you knew of any reason whatsoever why Mr. Weatherley should voluntarily choose to go into hiding?" "You have something in your mind when you ask me a question like this!" she said. "What should I know about it at all? What makes you ask me?" Then Arnold took his courage into both hands. Her eyes seemed to be compelling him. "What I am going to say," he began, "may sound very foolish to you. I cannot help it. I only hope that you will not be angry with me." Her eyes met his steadily. "No," she murmured, "I will not be angry--I promise you that. It is better that I should know exactly what is in your mind. At present I do not understand." His manner acquired a new earnestness. He forgot his luncheon and leaned across the table towards her. "Fenella," he said, "try and consider how these things of which I am going to speak must have presented themselves to me. Try, if you can, and put yourself in my position for a few minutes. Before that evening on which Mr. Weatherley asked me to come to your house, nothing in the shape of an adventure had ever happened to me. I had had my troubles, but they were ordinary ones, such as the whole world knows of. From the day when I went to school to the day when I had to leave college hurriedly, lost my father, and came up to London a pauper, life with me was entirely an obvious affair. From the night I crossed the threshold of your house, things were different." There was a cloud upon her face. She began to drum with her slim forefingers upon the tablecloth. "I think that I would rather you did not go on," she said. He shook his head. "I must," he declared, fervently. "These things have been in my mind too long. It is not well for our friendship that I should have such thoughts and leave them unuttered. On that very first evening--the first time I ever saw you--you behaved, in a way, strangely. You took me into your little sitting-room and I could see that you were in trouble. Something was happening, or you were afraid that it was going to happen. You sent me to the window to look out and see if any one were watching the house. You remember all that?" "Yes," she murmured, "I remember." "There was some one watching it," Arnold went on. "I told you. I saw your lips quiver with fear. Then your husband came in and took you away. You left me there in the room alone. I was to wait for you. While I was there, one of the men, who had been watching, stole up through your garden to the very window. I saw his face. I saw his hand upon the window-sill with that strange ring upon his finger. You have not forgotten?" "Forgotten!" she repeated. "As though that were possible!" "Very well," Arnold continued. "Now let me ask you to remember another evening, only last week, the night I dined with your brother. I brought you home from the _Empire_ and we found that your sitting-room had been entered from that same window. The door was locked and we all thought that burglars must be there. I climbed in at the window from the garden. You know what I found." All the time she seemed to have been making an effort to listen to him unconcernedly. At this point, however, she broke down. She abandoned her attempt at continuing her luncheon. She looked up at him and he could see that she was trembling. "Don't go on!" she begged; "please don't!" "I must," he insisted. "These things have taken possession of me. I cannot sleep or rest for thinking of them." "For my sake," she implored, "try and forget!" He shook his head. "It isn't possible," he said simply. "I am not made like that. Even if you hate me for it, I must go on. You know what I found in your sitting-room that night." "But this is cruel!" she murmured. "I found a dead man, a man who, to all appearance, had been murdered in there. Not only that, but there must have been people close at hand who were connected with him in some way, or who were responsible for the crime. We left the room for five minutes, and when we came back he had disappeared. All that we can judge as to what became of him is that that same night a dead man was left in a taxicab, not far away, by an unknown man whom as yet the police have failed to find." "But this is all too horrible!" she murmured. "Why, do you remind me of it?" "Because I must," he went on. "Listen. There are other things. This man Starling, for instance, whom I met at your house, and who is suspected of the murder of Rosario--both your brother and you seem to be trying to shield him. I don't understand it; I can't understand it. Your brother talked to me strangely the night I dined with him, but half the time I felt that he was not serious. I do not for a moment believe that he would stoop to any undignified or criminal action. I believe in him as I do in you. Yet if Starling is guilty, why do you both protect him?" "Is there anything else?" she faltered. "There is the final thing," he reminded her; "the reason why I have mentioned these matters to you at all--I mean the disappearance of Mr. Weatherley. Supposing he does not come back, how am I to keep silent, knowing all that I know, knowing that he was living in a house surrounded by mysteries? I hate my suspicions. They are like ugly shadows which follow me about. I like and admire your brother, and you--you know--" He could not finish his sentence. She raised her eyes and he saw that they were full of tears. "Help me," he begged. "You can if you will. Give me your confidence and I will tell you something which I think that even you do not know." "Something concerned with these happenings?" "Something concerned with them," he assented. "I will tell you when and by whom the body of that man was removed from your sitting-room." She sat looking at him like a woman turned to stone. There was incredulity in her eyes, incredulity and horror. "You cannot know that!" she faltered. "I do know it," he asserted. "Why have you kept this a secret from me?" she asked. "I do not know," he answered. "Somehow or other, when I have been with you I have felt more anxious to talk of other things. Then there was another reason which made me anxious to forget the whole affair if I could. I had some knowledge of one of the men who were concerned in taking him away." The waiter was busy now with the removal of their luncheon. To Arnold, the necessary exchange of commonplaces was an immense relief. It was several minutes before they were alone again. Then she leaned across towards him. She had lit a cigarette now, and, although she was very thoughtful, she seemed more at her ease. "Listen," she began. "I do not ask you to tell me anything more about that night--I do not wish to hear anything. Tell me instead exactly what it is that you want from me!" "I want nothing more nor less," he answered gently, "than permission to be your friend and to possess a little more of your confidence. I want you to end this mystery which surrounds the things of which I have spoken." "And supposing," she said thoughtfully, "supposing I find that my obligations to other people forbid me to discuss these matters any more with you?" "I can only hope," he answered, "that you will not feel like that. Remember that these things must have some bearing upon the disappearance of Mr. Weatherley." She rose to her feet with a little shrug of the shoulders and walked up and down the room for several moments, smoking and humming a light tune to herself. Arnold watched her, struggling all the time against the reluctant admiration with which she always inspired him. She seemed to read in his eyes what was passing in his mind, for when at last she came to a standstill she stood by his side and laughed at him, with faintly upraised eyebrows, the cigarette smoke curling from her lips. "And it was for a luncheon such as this," she protested, "that I wore my new muslin gown and came all the way from the country. I expected compliments at least. Perhaps I even hoped," she whispered, leaning a little towards him, with a smile upon her lips,--half mirthful, half provocative,--"that I might have turned for a moment that wonderfully hard head of yours." Arnold rose abruptly to his feet. "You treat men as though they were puppets," he muttered. "And you speak of puppets," she murmured, "as though theirs was a most undesirable existence. Have you never tried to be a puppet, Arnold?" He stepped a little further back still and gripped the back of the chair, but she kept close to him. "I am to have no other answer from you, then, but this foolery?" he demanded, roughly. "Why, yes!" she replied, graciously. "I have an answer ready for you. You are so abrupt. Listen to what I propose. We will go together to your office and see whether it is true that Mr. Weatherley has not returned. If he has really disappeared, and I think that anything which I can tell you will help, perhaps then I will do as you ask. It depends a great deal upon what you find in those papers. Shall we go now, or would you like to stay here a little longer?" "We will go at once," he said firmly. She sighed, and passed out of the door which he had thrown open. "It is I who am a heroine," she declared. "I am coming down to Tooley Street with you. I am coming to brave the smells and the fog and the heat." He handed her into the car. He had sufficiently recovered his self-control to smile. "In other words," he remarked, "you mean to be there when I open the safe!" _ |
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