“You can carry out the business without marrying Elma,” Freda urged. “You have taken every precaution against accident, and the ruin of Sandys has made everything possible. What would Mr Sandys say if he knew that the amiable Mr Rex Rutherford was one of the men to whom Sir Charles Hornton lost that big sum at cards three nights before he killed himself?”
Gray drew a long breath.
“Well,” he said with a bitter smile, “I don’t suppose he’d feel very friendly towards me. But the driving of Sir Charles into a corner was, I foresaw, one of the chief points in our game. Sandys is ruined, and I’m the good Samaritan who comes forward at the opportune moment and brings salvation.”
“Clever,” declared the woman, “devilish clever! But you always are, Gordon. You are wonderful.”
“In combination with yourself, my dear Freda. I’m no good without you,” he declared. “So don’t exhibit these foolish fits of jealousy. I’ve made up my mind to marry Sandys’ daughter, for it will improve my prestige. When I’ve had enough of her, I shall simply leave her and we will rejoin forces again,” he added callously. And then together they went out to dine at the Ritz.
That same evening Elma sat in her room, with the hazy London sunset fading over the Park, confused and wondering.
Surely Roddy would not tell her a lie! She took out his scribbled note and re-read it, as she had done a dozen times before. It was a plain and straightforward assertion, and yet the man Rutherford had produced the concession granted to him, properly authenticated and officially sealed.
Where was Roddy? Was it really possible, as Rutherford had suggested, that he was in hiding, not daring to come forward now that his lie was proved? She could not bring herself to believe it. And yet why had he so suddenly gone to Farncombe for one night and then taken train to Guildford and disappeared?
On the previous day she had been down to Guildford by train from Waterloo, and had made inquiries of the porters and in the booking-office and elsewhere regarding Roddy, whom one or two of the railway servants—knew, but without avail. Roddy had been seen waiting out in the station yard by a clerk in the parcel office. That was all the information she could gather. Therefore, after a cup of coffee at the tea-shop in the old-fashioned High Street, she had returned to London.
That evening as she sat pondering, pale and nervous, her maid came into her room and she roused herself wearily. Then she put on a plain little black dinner-frock and went downstairs to the dining-room, where her father, pale-faced and rather morose, awaited her.