You will think it strange, perhaps, that I should write to you after the events of last night, because the modesty of a woman is the last thing that forgives. My action is beyond apology and I offer none for fear that it may be construed into a hope—a selfish hope of an unimaginable forgiveness. Hope has passed—that with the others, but something else remains, something less selfish than hope and more vital than self-interest and that is a whole-hearted wish that your honor may be kept free from the taint of the dark and furtive things with which it has come into contact.
I am not a man, as you know, to boast of disinterestedness. I have lived a life in which my own affairs were always paramount, my own aims always most important. I am telling you this to warn you that my generosity to Hammersley is not actuated by any love of a man who has spoiled my dearest ambition, but by the continued esteem with which I still regard yourself. I do not love him; and my own wish, my duty, my own honor, my loyalty to England all acclaim that he should be delivered at once to those in authority. And yet I have refrained—for you, Doris. But I have learned that H—— is in communication with G—— and that Crenshaw of Scotland Yard is on the alert. I may not be able to save him.
This is an appeal to the one person who has the most influence with him and I ask that you use whatever power over him you possess to bring him to a sense of the impossibility of his mad plans. If you still have doubt as to the character of the work he has undertaken, I ask that you go to Ben-a-Chielt tonight and listen secretly to convincing proof of what he is. For tonight at one o’clock on the cliffs near the old Viking’s Tower, he will meet a personal messenger from G——.
I appeal to you for England—but more than for England, for—yourself.
Yours,
J. R.
Doris read the note through again and again, her thoughts blurring unpleasantly, like a photograph out of focus. It seemed impossible that she could do what he asked of her. Every instinct, wounded and sore from her last encounter, revolted at the thought of meeting Cyril again under the conditions presented. It was impossible that she should go. Cyril would only laugh at her or, what would be worse, show her the callousness and brutality that he had done this morning. Rizzio asked her to do what she could. Why should she save him? What had he done to merit such a sacrifice of pride on her part. The past? That was dead and Cyril buried with it. England? She put her head forward into her hands and pressed her fingers to her temples. England!
As the afternoon faded into night the conviction grew in Doris’s mind that the situation made personal considerations unimportant. After dinner she excused herself and, dressing warmly, toward twelve o’clock went downstairs past the library door and out to the stables. She found a sleepy groom and, giving him a liberal fee as the price of his silence, had a side-saddle put on a good horse and made her way in the direction of Ben-a-Chielt. She knew the road well, for she had traveled it many times with Cyril and Betty during the previous summer when all the world was gay and she and Cyril were lovers. She was a little nervous at being alone on the moor in the darkness, but not frightened. She gave herself greater hardihood by trying to remember that Cyril and Rizzio were gentlemen, one of whom she had thought she could have trusted with her life, the other a friend who wanted to be trusted with it—and now protested he held her honor dearer than his own. Not her enemies surely; and the thought of physical harm from either of them, the only thing that could have deterred her from this midnight venture, did not occur to her. But as she came to Saltham Rocks, the scene of Cyril’s last night’s encounter, she pressed forward more rapidly with a keen eye upon the gray blur of the road. She reached the cross-roads, her breath coming a little more rapidly, pulled her horse down to a walk and turned in upon Cyril’s property, going forward more slowly. Until the present moment she had formulated no plan of action, nor had counted upon the possibilities of discovery, so she rode cautiously, making a long detour across the moor to avoid the lights of one of the keepers’ houses which stood upon the road. She found that she had to choose her way among the rocks and whins, but her horse was sure-footed, and at a walk there was little danger of a cropper. She kept the road in sight and by the fitful light of the stars, between the rack of mist and clouds that were coming in from the sea, she made her way in the general direction of the Lodge. On her right she had glimpses of the sea beyond the cliffs and heard the pounding of the surf upon the rocks and shingle. The Viking’s Tower was up among the rocks near Beaufort Head, half a mile beyond the house. She had been there with Cyril many times, and from the ruined wall had sat with him and looked out over the North Sea, while he had told her in his sportive vernacular the story of the tower and of the “Johnnies” who had built it. It was difficult to identify that Cyril now with the man of mystery lurking out here somewhere in the dark, his mind set on the odious business of betraying his country.
The Lodge was set inland from the sea in a valley between two ridges which narrowed down to a fissure in the rocks that fell away to Beaufort Cove, a small harbor almost land-locked where Cyril kept his motor-boats and sloop. As the girl approached the Lodge, she turned far to the left and made a wide circle among the hills, so that there could be no chance of inquisitive eyes discovering the bold silhouette of her horse against the sky. Slowly she climbed the lower ridges of Ben-a-Chielt until she reached a level spot, high above the house, garage, stables and hangar, where she stopped for a moment to rest her winded horse.