Rizzio halted. “Yes, other agencies——” he replied significantly. He bowed in the girl’s direction and sitting on the window-sill he threw his feet outside. “I bid you good night.” And carefully feeling for his footing he slowly descended.
Cyril Hammersley followed him to the window, and Doris took a step in his direction, when her thinly slippered foot touched something in the wooden floor—something which slid upon the polished surface from the shadow into the moonlight. Instinctively she glanced down and then started—scarcely restraining a gasp. There, unmistakable in the shape and color for so many hours graven on her mind, was a yellow packet of Riz-la-Croix cigarette papers. She glanced at Cyril, who was closing the casement window, then stooped and, picking up the packet, fled noiselessly into her room and quickly locked the door.
[CHAPTER VIII]
EVIDENCE
Inside her own room she stood for a moment tremulously in the dark, fingering the guilty thing in her hands as she had fingered the other one—the one she had destroyed. Or hadn’t she destroyed it? For a moment the thought came to her that Cyril had practiced some trick upon her when they had knelt before the fire, substituting other papers for the ones that were to be burned. But that was impossible. The papers had not touched his fingers. He it was who had made a hole for them in the fire, but her fingers had thrust the original papers into the glowing coals. She turned the packet over and over in her fingers, glancing at the closed door that separated her from Cyril. Another message! It must be.
She pulled the curtains at the window and then moving quietly to the bed, lit the candle on the night-stand. Another packet of Riz-la-Croix, new like the other, with its tiny thin rubber band. She opened it quickly and scanned its pages, finding what she sought without difficulty. The writing was not in the same hand. It was rounder and less minute, covering in all seven pages, and it was written carelessly as if the writer had been in a hurry. Cyril’s own handwriting it seemed. The purport of its message was the same.
No. She remembered the dates. These were somewhat different. The names of the regiments were the same, but the dates instead of days in April and May gave days in the months of June and July. And the numerals which at first had puzzled her were smaller. For instance, among “Highland Regiments Foot” the numerals of which she remembered particularly, instead of 120,000 she saw the numerals 42,000. It was the same under other headings in the remainder of the items. Under “shrapnel” there were changes, and under “artillery”——
She closed the packet in icy fingers, for the figures swam before her eyes. They were all true—all the horrible things that she had thought of Cyril! This was later and more accurate information—the exact reason for which she did not pretend to understand—and was intended to follow the previous message—perhaps to be used as a code in connection with it. Cyril was—— Oh, the dishonor of it! And she had gone to sleep almost ready to believe in him again—because he had let her burn the other papers. What did it matter to him whether she burned the papers when he had other messages to send and had committed to memory the facts he had let her destroy? He had lied to her. He was false as Judas and more dangerous, for now she knew that he was desperate as well as cunning, stooping to any means, no matter how ignoble, to gain his ends. She had been a mere bauble in his hands, a child upon whose credulity he had played without scruple. He had used her, the woman he had said he loved, for his own unworthy ends as he used Betty Heathcote and her house. She was filled with shame for him and for herself, who could love something shameful.
And John Rizzio! Rizzio, Cyril’s enemy, stood for England and right, and she had permitted herself to see through Cyril’s eyes just as Cyril had wanted her to see.