The next time Edward called at the Adrians’ he was forbidden the house, Ruth wrote him a noble, womanly letter, returned his presents, and declared that it broke her heart to give him up, but that her duty to herself and to those dearest to her demanded it. She should never love anyone else and never forget him. She would pray God that he might yet lead a better life, and some day call a pure and honest woman wife. The girl’s tears fell fast and thick as she wrote. She thought she was doing her duty. Reared in a school of morality deeply tinged with religious fervour, Ruth saw no other way out of the difficulty. It seemed to her almost a sin to have loved a bad man. The love she could not crush, but the man she would look upon no more.
This breaking down of the last barrier between himself and utter recklessness happened immediately after Ralph Egerton’s murder—for murder all concerned firmly believed it to be. Ruth Adrian was the last link that bound him to respectability. That link snapped and he was free—free to float out into the ocean of wickedness, and sink or swim as luck determined.
He went to America and led a life of adventure. He utilized his talents in a big field, but an overrun one. The ‘smart man’ is a type of American society, and a redundant type. Marston may have prospered at one period, but he must have come to an evil time at last, for certain it is that he returned to England almost penniless, and on the night he met Birnie outside the Blue Pigeons he was actually without a copper.
That meeting was the turning point in his career. It placed a little capital at his disposal, and capital is the one thing needed to make a fair start in anything in this country.
Marston had learned much in America, and he saw a way to utilize his experience.
High-art crime has been developed rapidly in these latter days. Edward Marston was one of its pioneers. He brought to the ‘business’ in which he embarked education, skill, ingenuity, and a knowledge of the world.
As he sits this morning in his newly furnished villa in the Camden Road his plans are formed, his capital is invested, he is at the head of an obedient and well-organized staff, and he is about to embark on the perilous and daring enterprise. His capital is the £500 Birnie had repaid him. He is under an obligation to no one for that. To his staff we shall in due time be introduced, and through the varying stages of his brilliant enterprise we shall accompany him.
He has finished his breakfast. He rings the bell, and cherry-ribbons enters and clears away. He has so much to see to and so much to think of this morning, that he will not want to be interrupted, and it is perfectly certain that he will have a strong objection to being overlooked.
Under these circumstances, having satisfied our curiosity as to his antecedents and present position, it will perhaps be as well if we take our departure and creep out of Eden Villa as quietly as we entered it.