The Man Who Changed His Plea E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In the courtroom of Lord Malladene, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Richard Lebur stands accused of murdering his lover’s lover. Lebur is convinced to change his plea to guilty to avoid a death sentence. At the last minute, as he is being taken to jail, he shouts out that he is innocent. Seven years later, Martin Campbell Brockenhurst, Viscount and ex-policeman, with Scotland Yard, pursues the case further, convinces that Lebur is innocent, motivated by his love for Lebur’s wife. Eventually, the case clears itself to everyone’s romantic satisfaction. This later novel by Oppenheim is a mixture of the modern sensibility and the Victorian. There is more violence, scenes of abuse, and psychological anguish than in most of his writings.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER I

The dignified-looking usher, holding his long black rod in one hand and dressed with the formality which his position demanded, after a few seconds of silent waiting leaned towards the Judge. The latter, wearing all the paraphernalia of his almost sacred office, had sunk a little forward in his chair and was watching through half-closed eyes the thickly packed crowd of men and women who had risen to their feet in anticipation of his departure. The echo of the prisoner’s shout which had rung through the court a few seconds before seemed to be still vibrating in the air.

“Your Lordship,” his attendant murmured.

The Judge seemed to wake from a moment’s silent reverie. At the sound of the usher’s voice, however, he was no longer distrait. He rose to his feet in dignified fashion, a fine figure of a man, bowed to the court, and with slow majesty followed his guardian angel down the steps and into his retiring-room. His valet, who was waiting there, and the junior ushers busied themselves in removing the emblems of his high office.

“An unusual case, Robinson,” he remarked to his clerk, who was standing by.

“Very unusual, my lord,” was the respectful answer.

“In my twenty years of office,” continued the Lord Chief Justice, whilst he submitted himself to the ministrations of his attendants, “I have never overcome my repugnance to wearing that ghastly signal of a human being’s approaching doom. Today I was particularly glad to be spared the ordeal of donning that hideous black cap and addressing the prisoner. I ask myself with some curiosity, Robinson,” he added, turning to the clerk, “whether Sir Frederick had any previous intimation that the prisoner was contemplating this action?”

“I have no idea, my lord,” Robinson replied. “It came as a great surprise to the court generally.”

“A changed plea during the course of a trial for murder,” the Judge continued, “is not an unheard-of event, although it is unusual. I remember it twice in my own career. Some previous intimation to the judge, though, should be obligatory. In this case, however, as there seemed to be no element of doubt as to the prisoner’s guilt, it did not make any difference. Otherwise, the official trying the case would naturally have liked a little further time for consideration before pronouncing his decision.”

“If your Lordship will excuse my saying so,” the clerk ventured, “the sentence pronounced by the court was the only one possible under the circumstances. I think perhaps a cup of tea–”

The Judge assented.

“Kindly see that all preparations are made for my departure. I will sign the necessary papers and return home as soon as possible.”

“Sir Frederick Leversen has sent in a message to know if he can have a word with your Lordship,” the chief usher announced. “His son, Mr. Samuel Leversen, is with him, too.”

“I will receive no visitors here this afternoon,” was the terse reply.

In his capacious leather armchair, Lord Malladene, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and without doubt a future Lord Chancellor, sipped his tea and looked thoughtfully into the embers. That he was a little disturbed in his mind became obvious to Robinson, who knew him well. The latter, who was a perfect reflex of his master’s moods, became uneasy.

“Your Lordship will forgive my remark, but bearing in mind your well-known aversion to applying the capital sentence, the ending of today’s trial has been most satisfactory,” he suggested.

Lord Malladene nodded slightly, but the frown remained upon his face.

“In a sense you are right, Robinson,” he admitted, “yet there was one, to me, jarring note. I disliked the prisoner’s sudden cry as he left the dock. He seemed to fling it back as a last hope. It made one wonder what was in his mind when he changed his plea. ‘I lied,’ he called out; ‘I am not guilty!’ That was very foolish of him, Robinson.”

“It was just an impulse, your Lordship,” the clerk replied. “I should forget it.”

The Judge rose to his feet. The frown remained.

“I would forget it if I could,” he said.

*     *

*

It was the height of the Season, and London was very full; the pavements were crowded, but the newspaper-sellers, although they were pushed off the kerb in many places, still held their own and sold their papers. They had sensational news to offer.

FAMOUS MURDER TRIAL: RESULT

was on the sheet they waved backwards and forwards, and men and women on every side, passers-by of every description, who were anxious to know the fate of Richard Lebur, produced their pennies and turned to the stop-press news. It was the first subject of conversation exchanged by men home from their day’s work, meeting at the club, or lingering over the cocktail bar.

“So they found Lebur guilty,” someone observed in the bar of the Sheridan.

“Don’t see how they could do anything else!”

“Read your paper, my dear fellow,” his companion enjoined. “There was no trial after all. He asked permission to change his plea.”

“You mean that he admitted his guilt? Foolish thing to do, it seems to me.”

“Did it to save his neck, I suppose,” the other remarked. “They have to show a little extra consideration to a man who saves his country the expense of a long trial. There could have been but one end to it if they’d fought it out to a finish.”

“And that?”

“He would have been found guilty and hanged.”

*     *

*

“I’m sorry for his wife,” a peeress acknowledged in reply to her host’s opening comment at a fashionable dinner party. “She is little more than a child, but she is making a name for herself as an artist. She is to have a small show of her own soon, I believe, at the Mona Gallery.”

“Can’t think what she married such a fellow for,” her companion muttered.

“I never met either of them,” the lady observed. “The girl is quite striking-looking, I’ve been told.”

“I’ve met her once,” a woman on the other side of the table interposed. “She has just that touch of the unusual that most of these artists affect.”

“She is a very beautiful picture herself,” declared an elderly lady, who was known as an art critic.

“It seems a ghastly pity that she should have married a man of Lebur’s type,” the host pronounced. “He and his father own picture-galleries, I know, and I daresay it was because of the son’s leanings towards art that they came together, but the man’s a rotter.”

“Well, he’s got it in the neck now,” another reflected. “Penal servitude for life! Just think what that means. Never a moment when you can walk about the earth a free man again, look into the shop windows, drop into your club for lunch, and pay a call on your best girl during the afternoon. I’m not sure that the other isn’t better.”

*     *

*

In a large, rather untidy studio, on the second floor of a block of Chelsea flats, a young woman was seated close to a high, bare window opposite an easel, upon which stood the unfinished study of an old man. All the appurtenances of her craft were laid out upon a small oak table within easy reach. She showed no inclination, however, towards work. Occasionally she gazed down to the river, now and then looking up to watch the drifting clouds. She was quite alone, and from her frequent glances into the street below it seemed as though she might be waiting for someone. In time her patience was rewarded, for the bell which rang from a landing entrance to the studio pealed softly. She rose to her feet, walked to the door, and opened it.

“I’m glad that you have come,” she said simply. “Please sit down. I am quite prepared to hear what you have to tell me.”

A small, fragile old gentleman, dressed in sober black and wearing an almost clerical-looking felt hat, sank into an easy-chair. With both hands upon his stick he leaned forward and watched her draw up a stool opposite to him.

“You have not heard?” he asked. “You did not send for a paper?”

“No,” she admitted. “I preferred to hear it from you, here, just like this.”

“Your husband, at the last moment, changed his plea, with permission from the Judge. He changed it to ‘guilty’–and instead of leaving this world, my dear, by a disgraceful death, he was sentenced to penal servitude for life.”

“Penal servitude for life.” She repeated the words almost mechanically. “That means that he will never be free again?”

“Never,” her visitor gasped. “Forgive me if I seem affected,” he added, for there were tears in his eyes, “but after all, you must remember that he was my son. He was an evil man, an unrighteous son, and an unfaithful husband–but he was my son, and when he was young I loved him.”

She held out her hand and took his.

“My dear,” she murmured, “I am so sorry for you. Believe me, I am sorry.”

“It is generous of you,” he confessed quietly. “I was a wicked man to let an innocent girl like you marry a man whom I knew to be evil; but you are so pure, so sweet in yourself, I thought the beauty you would pour into his life might change him. I was wrong. I was wicked ever to take the chance. Leaving all that out of consideration, dear Pamela, what has happened now is for the best. He is out of your way; he is where he can do no harm in the world. I pray God only that he may repent.”

“I am very, very sorry,” she said. “You are a good man, Simon Lebur; you should have had a good son to comfort you in your old age.”

“And you,” he groaned, his cold white fingers responding to the pressure of hers, “should have had a good husband who would have made your life a happy one. I thank God that his mother is dead, that there is no one to sorrow with us. I am on my way now down the short footpath that leads to the end of this world, and I am very glad that it should be so. You are left to suffer, my child, but I have come to beg you to cast this trouble from you and to stamp out the memory of it from your life. They say that I come of a stern race–perhaps I do–but my heart softens for those who deserve it. You deserve happiness and you will find it. You have a great gift and you will make use of it. You will become famous! Soon I shall show your work all by itself in my principal gallery.”

She said nothing, but the light was burning again in her eyes. She glanced towards the canvas.

“I will bring the great critics to you; they will take the word of Simon Lebur, and they will know genius when they see it. Never let this cloud hang over or darken your life. I am an old man,” he added, leaning over and smoothing her hand, “but I look upon you as my child. The allowance I made my son, when I forbade his presence at the galleries, will come to you, and when I die, all that would have been his will also come to you. Forget your misery, dear, and these terrible days–live amongst the immortals. I stand on the earth and I look upwards, but God has given me one gift and one gift only. I know those who will take their place amongst the great dead, the masters who poured joy upon the world, Michael Angelo, Fra Lippo Lippi, Raphael–you, too, have their genius, my child. God bless you. I have lost my son, but I am proud of my faraway daughter.”

CHAPTER II

Inspector Charlesworth held a card which his orderly had just presented to him between his thumb and first finger and eyed it disparagingly. There was nothing about it with which he could find fault, but he had an instinctive dislike of it.

“Who is this?” he asked gruffly. “What does he want?”

“Five minutes’ interview was all he asked for, sir,” the constable replied. “His face seems sort of familiar, but I have never seen him before that I know of. He said nothing about his business.”

“Show him up,” was the brief command. “I don’t want to see him really; I’m busy. Telephone me about anything you like in five minutes.”

“Very good, sir.”

The visitor was duly ushered in a few minutes later. He turned out to be a young man of medium height, slim build, excellent carriage, blue-grey eyes of good quality, clean-shaven, a few freckles, and a touch of sunburn. He was dressed quietly but with exceedingly good taste. The Inspector grudgingly motioned towards a chair. His visitor, he decided, was not a person to be ignored.

“Mr. Martin Campbell Brockenhurst,” he said. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“That’s quite a long story,” the other replied.

“Then you’d better go and tell it to someone else,” was the caustic answer. “This is the busiest department of Scotland Yard just now and I’ve no time to give to strangers.”

“I,” the visitor observed, “am not a stranger.”

The Inspector looked at him shrewdly.

“Have we ever met before?”

“Once. You are not likely to remember it. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I want a job and I can be very useful to you.”

“God bless my soul!” the Inspector exclaimed. “Are you crazy, man, to walk in here and ask an Inspector at Scotland Yard for a job? Do you know what a policeman, even, has to go through before he can commence regular work here? What sort of a job you might be wanting I can’t tell. We have a first-class Chief Commissioner at present,” he concluded, with a very obvious note of sarcasm.

“I wasn’t thinking of anything so important just for the moment,” the other replied with an unexpectedly humorous smile. “Have to work your way up here, as I know, Inspector–and you can work as hard as you damn well please sometimes, and you don’t get up.”

The Inspector stared at his visitor.

“What do you know about it?” he demanded. “You come here as a stranger.”

“Not I,” was the prompt retort.

“You said you came here looking for a job.”

“So I did, and I hope I’ll get it. I’ve more chance now that you say you don’t know me.”

The Inspector leaned a little forward in his chair.

He studied his visitor more carefully. The other met his scrutiny without flinching. The Inspector would have hated to admit it, but he was puzzled. There was something familiar about this young man, so debonair in appearance, with an air of such confidence, but beyond that his memory failed him. The telephone bell rang, according to orders. He lifted the receiver with an irritable gesture.

“Another five minutes, constable,” he said. “I shall be through by then.”

“Five minutes is a very short time,” the visitor said.

“Get on with it, please,” the Inspector begged. “I’ve seen you before somewhere. If you wanted to puzzle me, you’ve succeeded. I don’t remember where. Your card tells me that you are Mr. Martin Campbell Brockenhurst, of Albany, Piccadilly. The name of your club may, of course, mean nothing, but if it is genuine it is, I believe, a very good club. What have you come here for, what do you want from me, and where did I see you before?”

“I came to the Yard–not this department–seven years ago,” the young man replied. “I had one ambition only in life: I wanted to be a detective. I found that I could only arrive at that position by serving my time in the ordinary Force. I served it, but when I had finished I applied for a job as a detective. I was put on a waiting list–I stayed on it for two years–then I resigned. I came into a little money and changed my name according to the will of the relation who left it to me. I travelled, returned to London, watched some of your detectives at work, and I came to the conclusion that, however obstinate you and your colleagues may be down here, you are still clever enough not to refuse a good thing. I am a good thing. I speak four languages, I can make myself up in seventy different ways, and if I am not a gentleman I have learnt to look and behave like one. I can wear dinner clothes, which very few of your detectives can, or I can wear sports clothes, which none of them can. I want to remind you also, sir, that I have done five years’ service in the Force. You can look up my record and you will find it faultless. I am made up this morning so that not a soul here recognized me–and even you could not remember that I have sat in this room before. Put me on the staff.”

The Inspector smiled thoughtfully.

“Campbell–P. C. Campbell you used to be. Jove, you were a sergeant, weren’t you?”

“Could have been,” the young man replied, “but it wasn’t what I wanted.”

The Inspector nodded.

“I remember. You were a little hot-headed about this matter. I wonder, do you think you really have any gifts which would help you to compete with my trained men, beyond the fact that you can wear your clothes and have the tricks of better birth and education?”

“I am dead certain of it,” was the calm reply. “Put me on the staff, give me a somewhat roving commission, such as Nicky Grant used to have. Put me on a case when you want to, but if there is nothing doing, let me go and find a case of my own and work it up for you. I can’t do any harm and I shall probably denude the criminal world of at least one malefactor.”

“If you go looking for them and talking like that,” the Inspector commented, “you’ll probably end in the Thames with a stone tied round your ankle.”

Again the caller smiled.

“I know other languages besides those that are spoken amongst the criminals here or the dockside loiterers or any of those gallant strivers after a dishonest living,” he remarked. “Would you like a little Cockney slang? Here goes.”

The Inspector stood thirty seconds of it, then he banged his fist upon the desk.

“Shut up,” he implored. “Have you ever been on the stage?”

“No; but I could be any time I liked.”

“I believe it,” the Inspector observed.

The telephone rang again.

“Two minutes only,” the Inspector replied rather shamefacedly, hanging up at once.

“Does that mean that you’re not going to employ me?” the young man asked.

“Not at all,” the Inspector replied. “You’re hired.”

The visitor rose to his feet. A faint smile was his only sign of satisfaction. He gathered together his doeskin gloves, his malacca cane, and his obviously Scott’s hat. The Inspector, who was about the age of his visitor and had social ambitions, made up his mind that before long he would obtain from this young man the knowledge of where he purchased these sartorial accessories. That air of calm and easy assurance was an unpurchasable heritage which he knew he could never acquire.

“Be here at four o’clock this afternoon,” he directed his caller. “Ask for Inspector Mulliner, room 13 c. He will go through all your records and I shall also have looked you up properly by that time. I will have a talk with Mulliner and we will either put you on a job at once or let you do as you suggest–go off on your own. Before you do that I shall have a few words to say to you.”

“Delighted to look in for a chat at any time, Inspector,” was the civil rejoinder.

The Inspector scowled.

“You will have to remember,” he pointed out, “that there is discipline to be observed–discipline and nothing else around here.”

The young man’s deportment seemed suddenly to stiffen.

“You will have no fault to find with me on that score, sir,” he declared as he prepared to take his leave.

At the last moment he hesitated. He turned back to confront once more the Inspector’s frown.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he confided, “but there is one thing I think I should tell you.”

“Be quick about it then.”

“During the short period that I spent in the Service as an ordinary P. C.,” he went on, “I had just a little to do with one case which interested me enormously. I have never forgotten it, and I shall always remember assisting at the arrest of the guilty man and being in court at the time of the trial. This is not gossip, sir; I am telling you for a reason.”

“Whose case was it?” the Inspector asked with faint curiosity.

“It was the case, rather famous in those days, of Simon Lebur’s son, Richard. He was tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of a man called David Culpepper.”

“Yes, that was quite a famous case,” the Inspector acknowledged. “I remember it perfectly. The criminal changed his plea at the last moment–a most unusual thing in an important case.”

“I felt a curiosity about certain points in that case,” Martin Brockenhurst confided, “which has kept me guessing all this time. Then it happens,” he went on, with a little less assurance than he had previously displayed, “that during my years of travel, after I came in for my money, I ran across one of the principal people concerned in it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” the Inspector asked.

“Because in my spare time,” Brockenhurst explained, “I should like, with your permission, to work on this case a little.”

“What earthly good could you do?” the Inspector asked. “Lebur has got penal servitude for life–and serve him jolly well right, I should think. The two men had the misfortune to share a mistress and the retreating lover shot his rival in the hallway of her house with his own revolver. The case was proved up to the hilt.”

“Yes, I know all about that,” Martin agreed. “The circumstantial evidence, of course, was irresistible. On the other hand, there are certain very curious points I should like to look into, and, if I didn’t allow it to interfere with any other case I might be working on, I thought you wouldn’t mind my trying to solve one problem in particular.”

“Waste of time, I should think,” the Inspector remarked. “But provided you aren’t too official about it and work in your own time, I don’t know that I should have any objection. I should require a report from you, though, to be completed and filed with the others. I can’t allow you to go working upon a case, even if it is one we’ve abandoned, entirely on your own.”

“That’s quite understood, sir,” Martin promised with a little sigh of relief. “I’ll start work next Monday, if you’re agreeable.”

“Whenever you like,” the Inspector agreed. “Of course, I shall look upon you to a certain extent as a free lance, and your pay will not be on a very large scale.”

“Whatever it is, sir,” Martin replied, “it will go to the Police Orphanage. I’m ashamed to say so, but I’m afraid I should be considered almost a wealthy man.”

“Get out, you rascal,” growled the Inspector, who had not paid his income tax.

CHAPTER III

It seemed rather a curious coincidence that Lady Diana Malladene should have chosen the same day to open the new premises of her famous night-club as that on which Martin Brockenhurst rejoined that mighty army of men who do their best to support law and order in the great city. It was some time before she recognized the solitary stranger to whom her maître d’hôtel had given one of the best tables in the room, and even then it was still longer before she could believe her eyes. She sought help from one of her old friends, Ronnie Foster, who was reputed to know every man and woman in town by name, reputation, or lack of reputation. The young man in question was seated on a stool at the American bar, engaged in the somewhat melancholy consumption of a whisky and soda.

“Ronnie,” she said, “don’t look just now, but who is that man seated by himself at Number Three table? He signed in as Martin Brockenhurst, but it can’t be the Martin Brockenhurst we used to know.”

“God, I should hope not,” was the scared reply. “I heard he’d joined the police and afterwards gone out to Kenya. That was a long time ago.”

“There are a good many of us,” Diana said, pulling a little viciously at the petals of a flower someone had left upon the counter, “who will wish that he had stayed there. But I can’t get away from it. I’m good at recognizing people, you know, and I believe that’s Martin Campbell Brockenhurst.”

“What’s he doing here?” the tired-looking young man, with crow’s-feet about his eyes, and at that moment a somewhat startled expression, asked nervously.

She shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “All I can tell you is that I shall go crazy in a few minutes if I don’t find out whether it’s he or not. Why, I was desperately in love with him for a week or so when we were children.”

“Go and ask him,” her companion suggested anxiously. “You’re hostess here. What the hell they let him in for I can’t imagine, if it’s he.”

She indulged in a little gesture of contempt.

“He’d get in wherever he wanted to,” she answered. “All the same, I’ll go. If I faint, come to my assistance.”

“Anything you like,” was the gloomy reply. “But unless he’s spotted me already, don’t tell him I’m here.”

There was a lull in the dancing. Diana glanced at herself for a moment in the mirror which she had drawn from her handbag, accepted and swallowed the aspirins which the barman handed to her in a silver spoon, took a long drink from her wineglass, and crossed the dance-floor. Brockenhurst watched her speculatively as she approached. He gave no sign that he expected her to pause at his table or address him; he just looked out at her with the bland, incurious regard of a polite stranger. But when she came to a standstill he rose slowly to his feet, knocked out his cigarette and deposited it in the ashtray.

“Lady Diana Malladene, I believe,” he said with a slight smile.

“Whatever are you doing here?” she gasped.

“No harm, I hope,” he answered. “Won’t you sit down?”

She sank into the place opposite to him and he resumed his seat.

“No harm,” she repeated, almost under her breath.

“Do I look like a destroying angel?” he asked. “There was a time, wasn’t there, when we had many mutual friends, and there was a time when we knew a good deal more of this side of London life, Diana, than anyone of your tender years–you were very young then, you know–ought to know.”

“You disappeared,” she muttered.

“I disappeared,” he echoed.

“Why? You were still going strong; you weren’t like most of us, half broke.”

“No,” he admitted thoughtfully, “it wasn’t that. I’d just had enough of the life. I wanted something–what shall I say?–cleaner.”

“There were a hundred different stories about you,” she went on, her voice gradually becoming a little steadier. “Most people declared that you had gone to the Colonies, then a lot of people said that you were working as a farmer on one of your own estates. Rumours–never anything came except rumours. You were the mystery of the London we used to fool about in; everyone asked for months and even for a year after, ‘What has become of Martin Brockenhurst?’”

“Most of the time I haven’t been so very far away,” he assured her pensively.

“Why did you disappear?” she asked. “Was it…?”

There was a queer but commanding flash in those steel-grey eyes. She hesitated.

“Not my business, of course,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, Martin, but I couldn’t help asking a question that all London asked itself for so long a time. It was in Ascot week, and your horse, Golden Lass, won the Gold Cup. You weren’t there; nobody knew where you were; the Gold Cup is still in the safe.”

He looked thoughtfully ahead of him, at the gaily painted walls and the crowd of well-dressed visitors. Perhaps he saw farther than just across that heated, fashionable dance-club.

“No,” he reflected after a moment or two, “I wasn’t so very far away. May I follow the custom of the place, Diana? Will you drink a glass of wine with me?”

“Will I–? Oh, Martin, I don’t think I can bear it. You know that this is my club–I am the hostess.”

“Isn’t it the correct thing to do to ask your hostess to drink a glass of wine? Antoine,” he went on, summoning the maître d’hôtel who was standing close by, “open my bottle of wine, please. A glass for Madame.”

The man was swift to obey. She glanced at his own glass.

“You have drunk no wine.”

“Not yet,” he replied; “but I am going to join you now and, believe me,” he went on with the merest touch of sarcasm, “I may be still a very good customer. I have ordered and paid for a case to be kept in my locker, also a few bottles of what Antoine has told me is your priceless brandy.”

“Don’t make fun of me, please,” she begged, and there was something very human in her quiet voice and drooped eyes.

“I didn’t come here to do that, Diana,” he assured her kindly. “Look up at me; you need not be afraid.”

She raised her eyes, but nevertheless she was afraid. It was a queer thing, but they drank to one another in silence and without any toast–it was rather difficult to find an appropriate one.

“Cheer up, my dear,” he enjoined, smiling. “You might be in the hands of a worse blackmailer. I want nothing from you; no word that I shall say will ever interfere with your complete and absolute freedom. You can continue with your bottle club, you can even crown your social success by marrying a duke, and my lips will always be closed. It’s not you, Diana, I’ve come back to see–although if you always look as well as you do tonight a man might be excused for that–it’s someone altogether different, and if you were to sit there till daylight, looking like an angel or a Delilah, you would never come any nearer to finding out who it is. If I ask you a few questions, they will be harmless ones.”

She drank more of her wine, pulled out her cigarette-case and lit a cigarette.

“You are Martin Brockenhurst,” she said, “but you are so far away. You’ve lost something, you’ve gained something, you’ve changed. I don’t recognize you, Martin.”

“I have been looking at a different kind of life from a new angle,” he told her.

Diana Malladene was what all her friends called her, a clever, far-seeing, and shrewd young woman. That faint note of mockery in his voice penetrated through her senses.

“Tell me what you have been doing,” she begged. “Have you been hiding in unpeopled deserts and filling your own mind with the ghosts and shadows of the people you have loved and hated? You have that look, somehow.”

He shook his head.

“It is years,” he said, “since we met, Diana, years since I have seen one of our old comrades, or enemies–what were they? One hardly knows. But during that time, I will tell you this much, I’ve lived amongst men and women; I’ve come closer to the real things in life than ever before.”

She edged her chair a little closer to his. She affected not to notice how the shapely brown fingers were slightly withdrawn as hers fell upon them.

“No, Diana,” he warned, “I am not going to tell you where I’ve been. If you find out it will be by accident, but I don’t think you will find out. There are a few questions I shall ask you, and then good-night.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“You may ask questions, then, and I may not?”

“Perhaps,” he rejoined, “on reflection you will admit that I have the better right.”

“As usual,” she sighed, “you make me feel like a squirming child at a board-school. Who gave you the rod of the master always, Martin?”

“The rod,” he answered, “exists only in the guilty mind of the listener. I have nothing to speak of against you, Diana. You are still, I should think, the most beautiful woman in London.”

She leaned back a little in her chair and looked at him steadily.

“I am trying to imagine that you are some famous portrait painter,” she said, “and I am myself. At any rate, I am glad I wore this particular frock tonight.”

“Oyster pink,” he murmured.

She bowed.

“I thank you for the memory.”

“It is a beautiful colour,” he went on, “and you are a beautiful woman. Quite as beautiful as you were when a certain picture of you was painted.”

“Have you come back to tell me that once more?” she asked, lifting her eyes.

“I am not that much of a fool,” he said quietly. “I can come back or go forth to gloat again on the beauty of the Fra Lippo Lippi Madonna, and I should find it as beautiful as it seemed to me twenty years ago. The eyes of every passer-by who knew what beauty was loved her, but she has not changed.”

“It appears to me,” Lady Diana said, opening her bag and taking out her mirror, “that this would be a very good place for a hiatus in our conversation. You have told me that I am still beautiful; that is all that matters. My skin I know is flawless, my eyes have that little glint of the violet in their blue, and the arts of the coiffeur would only be wasted on my yellow hair. I have survived time–one triumph at any rate, Martin. So have you, for that matter; but you didn’t come here to mix words with me.”

He shook his head.

“I came here,” he confided, “to learn something of the lives of a few of those who were our friends years ago.”

“To do them mischief?”

“Perhaps.”

“And why should you think that I would help you?”

“I thought you might,” he admitted, lighting a cigarette for himself, but also watching her. “There are reasons, you know, Diana, why, when I ask you in a pleasant and submissive manner, it would be almost better if you yielded to my simple request.”

“There’s one simple request,” she said, “I should love to make.”

“Well?”

“Dance with me for a few minutes.”

He smiled enigmatically but certainly without distaste, then he laid down his cigarette and bowed.

“Why not?”

*     *