I had made a promise to Kershaw Kirk, yet now that he had so grossly deceived me, why should I keep it? Why should I not tell the truth?
I reflected; there were, I saw, three reasons why I should still preserve silence. The first was because, after that lapse of time, I should be suspected, perhaps arrested, as an accomplice and dragged through a criminal court. The second was that Ethelwynn herself was, for some amazing reason, pretending that her father still lived; and the third was by reason of the strange threat of Mabel’s death uttered by the evil-faced Italian, and repeated by that Harley Street specialist who was Leonard Langton’s closest friend.
The assassins were actually holding my dear wife as hostage against any revelation I dared to make! That, in a word, was the true position.
I paced my room that night in the agony of despair. Of nothing did I think but the dear, sweet-faced woman so suddenly enticed away from my side by reason of her eagerness to meet me. She was a woman of high ideals and of lofty sentiments; a womanly woman who, though fond of a little gaiety and of the theatre, realised that her place was in her own home, where she reigned supreme.
Before my marriage my father, as fathers will, had looked upon her with considerable misgiving. She was a little too flighty, too fond of dress, of dinners, and dances, he had said. But after our wedding and our honeymoon spent in a car touring up in Scotland, she had settled down, and never for a single instant had I regretted my choice. Few men could say that.
Indeed, up to that day when Kershaw Kirk called to inspect the Eckhardt tyre, I was one of the happiest men in all London; prosperous in my business, and contented in my love.
Now, alas! all had changed. I was obsessed by the knowledge of a great and startling secret, and at the same time I had lost all that to me was most dear and cherished.
Next morning Gwen, fresh in her clean cotton blouse, and the big black bow in her hair, sat in her accustomed place at the breakfast table, but after greeting me lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
At last she asked: “Have you packed your things, Harry?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you!” I exclaimed. “I’m not going to-day. I’ve changed my mind.”