"You are inferring that the business, as you call it, was discreditable?" said Violet, mystified, and only half mollified.
"Not in the very least," rejoined Nugent glibly. "I do not know what the transaction was, but it is impossible to associate anything discreditable with Chermside. If I might make a suggestion it would be that you should yourself ask Chermside for enlightenment."
"Thank you, I shall certainly inform him of what has happened," said Violet coldly. "But it must rest with him whether he offers an explanation of his relations with Levison. I am content to trust the man who is to be my husband. In the meanwhile, Mr. Nugent, it is but fair that you should know that I have advised my maid to lose no further time in communicating with the police. It will be the shortest and most satisfactory way of getting this absurdity wiped out once for all."
Nugent bowed and stood looking after the graceful figure of the girl as she sailed away from him across the room. His long moustache hid the wicked curl at the corner of his mouth. "Ah, my lady," he murmured under his breath, "you will find that it is one thing to tender advice and quite another to get it acted on. The fair and flighty Louise is receiving her orders from your humble servant at present, and they will certainly not include an injunction to call at the police-station. But that bogey has been effectually set up, I think."
Leslie Chermside had been covertly watching from afar Violet's animated interview with Nugent, and seeing her coming towards him he hastened to meet her. That evening he grudged every moment not spent in her society, for on the morrow he would assuredly see her for the last time. Unless some miracle intervened there would be nothing for it, if he was to avoid arrest for murder and its consequent exposure, but to assent to Nugent's plan for flight on the Cobra. He had postponed giving his final decision, hoping against hope that something might turn up to save him, and also because at the back of his mind there still lurked the suspicion that Nugent's account of his danger might have been trumped up for some cunning purpose. But now he was to receive confirmation of the story of Louise Aubin's suspicions from a source there was no gainsaying.
"Take me into the orangery; I want to speak to you," said Violet, laying her hand on his sleeve.
The orangery at Ottermouth Manor was a huge glass structure in which oranges may have been grown in Georgian days after the prevailing fashion, but which in modern times sheltered a wealth of tropical shrubs. In the great aisles of luxuriant foliage it was possible to lose oneself, as Violet and Leslie, after passing through one of the long windows, proceeded to do now. They halted at last under the spreading fronds of a giant palm, from a branch of which depended one of the electric lamps which the millionaire had installed in the old mansion.
"Leslie," said the girl, looking up into her lover's face, "I have done a strange thing to-night, as proof of my trust in you. That French maid of mine tells me that you had a rendezvous with the man who was murdered the other day, and that it was at or near to the spot where the body was found. I have been blaming her for withholding her knowledge from the authorities, and have advised her to rectify the omission without delay. You mustn't be angry with me if I have been unduly interfering, but I knew that you could have nothing to fear really in the matter of Levison's death, and that it would be better to scotch this ridiculous suspicion before it grows unmanageable."
Chermside laughed, keeping the bitterness out of the sound of it as best he could. To call it the irony of fate was beside the mark. It was really almost supernatural, the way he was being tossed hither and thither by the consequences of the crime he had abjured. Here was the woman who was all in all to him calmly telling him that she had taken a step which would snatch the last straw from his drowning hands. All hope was gone. He must run for it now, if the traces of his disgraceful lapse were to be covered.
"It is quite true," he said. "I had an appointment to meet Levison. But," and he laughed again as he made the addition, "I really didn't murder him, Violet."