In Friendship's Guise by Wm. Murray Graydon

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"I've made a beastly fool of myself, Jimmie."

"Not a bit of it, old chap. Brace up; some one is coming." He had heard
a cab stop in the street.

There were rapid steps on the stairs, and Nevill entered the studio. His
face was eloquent with sympathy, and he silently held out a hand. Jack
gripped it tightly.

"Thanks, Vic," he said, gratefully. "Where did--did you take her?"

"To her lodgings, off Regent street. And then I came straight on here.
I thought she was dead, Jack. I don't wonder you're upset."

"Upset? It's worse than that. If I were the only one to suffer--"

"Then there's another woman?"

"Yes!"

"That's bad! I didn't dream of such a thing. I can't tell you how sorry
I feel."

Nevill sat down and lighted a cigar; he thoughtfully watched the smoke
curl up.

"I suppose I could get a divorce?" Jack asked, savagely.

"No doubt of it, but--"

"But you wouldn't advise me to do it. No, you're right. I couldn't
stand the publicity and disgrace."

"I would like to choke her," muttered Jimmie.

"I had a talk with her on the way to town," said Nevill. "She has been
in London for a month, and knew your address all the time, but did not
wish to see you. Now she is hard up, and that is why she made herself
known to you to-night."

"What became of the scoundrel she ran away with? Did he desert her?"

"Yes," Nevill answered, after a brief hesitation.

"Do you know who he was?"

"She intimated that he was a French Count. I believe she has had several
others since, and the last one left her stranded."

"She wants money, then?"

"Rather. That's her game. She knows she has no legal claim on you, and
for a fixed sum I think she will agree to return to Paris and not molest
you in future."

"I don't care what becomes of her," Jack replied, bitterly, "but I am
determined not to see her again. Let her understand that, and tell her
that I will give her three hundred pounds on condition that she goes
abroad and never shows her face in England again. And another thing,
there must be no further appeals to me."

"Bind her tight, in writing," suggested Jimmie.

"It's asking a lot of you, Nevill," said Jack, "but if you don't mind--"

"My dear fellow, it is a mere trifle. I will gladly help you in the
matter to my utmost power, and I only wish I could do more."

"That's the way to talk," put in Jimmie. "Can I be of any assistance,
Nevill? I've a persuasive sort of way with women--"

"Thanks, but I can manage much better alone, I think." Nevill took a
memorandum book from his pocket, and turned over the pages. "Trust all
to me, Jack," he added. "I am free to-morrow after four o'clock. I will
see Diane--your wife--fix the terms with her, and come down in the
evening to report to you."

"What time?"

"That is uncertain. But you will be here?"

"Yes; I shall expect you," said Jack. "I can't thank you enough. It's a
blessing for a chap to have a couple of friends like you and Jimmie."

"You would do as much for me," replied Nevill. "I'm going to see you
through your trouble."

Jack walked abruptly to the open window, and looked out into the starry
night.

"What does it matter," he thought, "whether I am rid of Diane or not? I
have lost my darling. Madge is dead to me. I can't grasp it yet. How can
I tell her?--how can I live without her?"

"Are you going up to town, Jimmie?" Nevill asked. "My cab is waiting,
and you can share it."

"No; I shall stop with poor old Jack," Jimmie replied. "I don't like to
leave him alone."

"That's good of you. It's a terrible blow, isn't it?"

Nevill went away, and Jimmie remained to comfort his friend. But there
was no consolation for Jack, whose bitter mood had turned to dull
despair and grief that would be more poignant in the morning, when he
would be better able to comprehend the fell blow that had shattered his
happiness and crushed his ambitions and dreams. He refused pipe and
cigars. Until three o'clock he sat staring vacantly at the floor,
seemingly oblivious of Jimmie's presence, and occasionally helping
himself to brandy. At last he fell asleep in the chair, and Jimmie, who
had with difficulty kept his eyes open, dozed away on the couch.

Meanwhile, Victor Nevill had driven straight to his rooms in Jermyn
street and had gone to bed. He rose about ten o'clock, and after a light
breakfast he sat down and wrote a short letter, cleverly disguising his
own hand, and imitating the scrawly penmanship and bad spelling of an
illiterate woman.

"The last card in the game," he reflected, as he addressed and stamped
the envelope. "It may be superfluous, in case he sees or writes to her
to-day. But he won't do that--he will put off the ordeal as long as
possible. My beautiful Madge, for your sake I am steeping myself in
infamy! It is not the first time a man has sold himself to the devil for
a woman. Yet why should I feel any scruples? It would have been far
worse to let them go on living in their fool's paradise."

An hour later, as he walked down Regent street, he posted the letter he
had written in the morning.

"It will be delivered at just about the right time," he thought.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LAST CARD.

It was nine o'clock in the evening, and darkness had fallen rather
earlier than usual, owing to a black, cloudy sky that threatened rain.
Jimmie Drexell had gone during the afternoon, and Jack was alone in the
big studio--alone with his misery and his anguish. He had scarcely
tasted food since morning, much to the distress of Alphonse. He looked
a mere wreck of his former self--haggard and unshaven, with hard lines
around his weary eyes. He had not changed his clothes, and they were
wrinkled and untidy. Across the polished floor was a perceptible track,
worn by hours of restless striding to and fro. Now, after waiting
impatiently for Victor Nevill, and wondering why he did not come, Jack
had tried to nerve himself to the task that he dreaded, that preyed
incessantly on his mind. He knew that the sooner it was over the better.
He must write to Madge and tell her the truth--deal her the terrible
blow that might break her innocent, loving heart.

"It's no use--I can't do it," he said hoarsely, when he had been sitting
at his desk for five minutes. "The words won't come. My brain is dry.
Would it be better to try to see her, and tell her all face to face?
No--anything but that!"

Thrusting pen and paper from him, he rose and went to the liquor-stand.
The cut-glass bottle containing brandy dropped from his shaking hand and
was shattered to fragments. The crash drowned the opening of the studio
door, and as he surveyed the wreck he heard footsteps, and turned
sharply around, expecting to see Nevill. Diane stood before him, in a
costume that would have better suited a court presentation; the shaded
gas-lamps softened the rouge and pearl-powder on her cheeks, and lent
her a beauty that could never have survived the test of daylight. Her
expression was one of half defiance, half mute entreaty.

The audacity of the woman staggered Jack, and for an instant he was
speechless with indignation. His dull, bloodshot eyes woke to a fiery
wrath.

"You!" he cried. "How dare you come here? Go at once!"

"Not until I am ready," she replied, looking at him unflinchingly. "One
would think that my presence was pollution."

"It is--you know that. Did Nevill permit you to come? Have you seen
him?"

"No; I kept out of his way. He is searching for me in town now, I
suppose. It was you I wanted to see."

"You are dead to all shame, or you would never have come to London. I
don't know what you want, and I don't care. I won't listen to you, and
unless you leave, by heavens, I will call the police and have you
dragged out!"

"I hardly think you will do that," said Diane. "I am going presently, if
you will be a little patient. I am your wife, Jack--"

He laughed bitterly.

"You were once--you are not now. If I thought it would be any punishment
to you, that disgrace could soil _you_, I would take advantage of the
law and procure a divorce."

"I am your wife," she repeated, "but I do not intend to claim my
rights. We were both to blame in the past--"

"That is false!" he cried. "You only were to blame--I have nothing to
reproach myself with, except that I was a mad fool when I married you
for your pretty face. You tried to pull me down to your own level--the
level of the Parisian kennels. You squandered my money, tempted me to
reckless extravagances, and when the shower of gold drew near its end,
you ran off with some scoundrel who no doubt proved as simple a victim
as myself. I trusted you, and my honor was betrayed. But you did me a
greater wrong when you allowed me to believe that you were dead. By
heavens, when I think of it all--"

"You forget that we drifted apart toward the last," Diane interrupted.
"Was that entirely my fault? I believed that you no longer cared for me,
and it made me reckless." There was a sudden ring of sincerity in her
voice, and the insolent look in her eyes was replaced by a softer
expression. "I did wrong," she added. "I am all that you say I am. I
have sinned and suffered. But is there no pity or mercy in your heart?
Remember the past--that first year when we loved each other and were
happy. Wait; I have nearly finished. I am going out of your life
forever--it is the only atonement I can make. But will you let me go
without a sign of forgiveness?--without a soft word?"

For a moment there was silence. Diane waited with rigid face. She had
forgotten the purpose that brought her to the studio--a womanly impulse,
started to life by the memories of the past, had softened her heart. But
Jack, blinded by passion and his great wrongs, little dreamed of the
chance that he was throwing away.

"You talk of forgiveness!" he cried. "Why, I only wonder that I can
keep my hands off your throat. I hate the sight of you--I curse the day
I first saw your face! Do you know what you have done, by letting me
believe that you were dead? You have probably broken the heart of one
who is as good and pure as you are vile and treacherous--the woman whom
I love and would have married."

Diane's features hardened, and a sudden rage flashed in her half-veiled
eyes; her repentant impulse died as quickly.

"So that is your answer!" she exclaimed, harshly. "And there is another
woman! You shall never marry her--never!"

"You fiend!"

The threat goaded Jack to fury, and he might have lost his self-control.
But just then quick footsteps fell timely on his ear.

"Get behind that screen, or go into the next room," he muttered. "No; it
won't matter--it must be Nevill."

Diane held her ground.

"I don't care who it is," she said, shrilly. "I will tell the world that
I am your wife."

The next instant the door was thrown open, and a woman entered the
studio and came hesitatingly forward under the glare of the gas-jets.
With a rapid movement she partly tore off her long, hooded cloak, which
was dripping with rain. Jack quivered as though he had been struck a
blow.

"Madge!" he gasped, recognizing the lovely, agitated face.

The girl caught her breath, and looked from one to the other--from the
painted and powdered woman to the man who had won her love. Her bosom
heaved, and her flushed cheeks turned to the whiteness of marble.

"Jack, tell me--is it true?" she pleaded, struggling with each word. "I
should not have come, but--but I received this an hour ago." She flung a
crumpled letter at his feet, and he picked it up mechanically. "It said
that I would find you here with your--your--" She could not utter the
word. "I had to come," she added. "I could not rest. And now--who is
that woman? Speak!"

No answer. Jack's lips and throat were dry, and a red mist was before
his eyes.

"Is she your wife?"

"God help me, yes!" Jack cried, hoarsely. "I can explain. Believe me,
Madge, I was not false--I told you only the truth. If you will listen
to me for a moment--"

She shrank from him with horror, and the color surged back to her cheeks.

"Don't touch me!" she cried. "Let me go--this is no place for me! I pray
heaven to forgive you, Jack!"

The look that she gave him, so full of unspeakable agony and reproach,
cut him like a knife. She pressed one hand to her heart, and with the
other tried to draw her cloak around her. She swayed weakly, but
recovered herself in time. Jack, watching her as a man might watch the
gates of paradise close upon him, had failed to hear a cab stop in the
street. He suddenly saw Stephen Foster in the room.

"Is my daughter here?" he excitedly demanded.

Madge turned at the sound of her father's voice, and sank, half-fainting,
into his arms. Tears came to her relief, and she shook with the violence
of her sobs.

Stephen Foster looked from Diane to Jack. Madge had shown him the
anonymous letter, and he needed not to ask if the charge was true.

"You blackguard!" he cried, furiously. "You dastardly scoundrel!"

"I do not deserve those words!" Jack said, hoarsely, "but I cannot
resent them. From any other man, under other circumstances--"

"Coward and liar!"

With that Stephen Foster turned to the door, with Madge leaning heavily
on him. They passed down the stairs, and the rattle of wheels told that
they had gone. Jack was left alone with Diane.

"Are you satisfied with your devil's work?" he demanded, glaring at her
with burning, bloodshot eyes.

"It was not my fault."

"Not your fault? By heavens--"

He looked at the crumpled letter he held, and saw that it was apparently
written by a woman. A suspicion that as quickly became a certainty
flashed into his mind.

"_You_ sent this, and the other one as well," he exclaimed. "Don't deny
it! You planned the meeting here--"

"It is false, Jack! I swear to you that I know nothing of it--"

"Perjurer!" he snarled.

His face was like a madman's as he caught her arm in a cruel grip. She
cowered before him, dropping to her knees. She was pale with fear.

"Go, or I will kill you!" he cried, disregarding her protestations of
innocence. "I can't trust myself! Out of my sight--let me never see you
or hear of you again. I will give you money to leave London--to return
to Paris. Nevill will arrange it. Do you understand?"

He lifted her to her feet and pushed her from him. She staggered against
an easel on which was a completed picture in oils, and it fell with a
crash. Jack trampled over it ruthlessly, driving his feet through the
canvas.

"Go!" he cried.

And Diane, trembling with terror, went swiftly out into the black and
rainy night.

An hour later, when Victor Nevill came to say that his search had been
fruitless, he found Jack stretched full length on the couch, with his
face buried in a soft cushion.

CHAPTER XVII.

TWO PASSENGERS FROM CALAIS.

It was the 9th of November, Lord Mayor's Day, and in London the usual
clammy compound of fog and mist--was there ever a Lord Mayor's Day
without it?--hung like a shroud in the city streets, though it was
powerless to chill the ardor of the vast crowds who waited for the
procession to come by in all its pomp and pageantry.

At Dover the weather was as bad, but in a different way. Leaden clouds
went scudding from horizon to horizon, accentuating the chalky whiteness
of the cliffs, and reflecting their sombre hue on the gray waters. A
cold, raw wind swept through the old town, lashing the sea to
milk-crested waves. It was an ugly day for cross-Channel passages, but
the expectant onlookers sighted the black smoke of the _Calais-Douvres_
fully twenty minutes before she was due. The steamer's outline grew more
distinct. On she came, pitching and rolling, until knots of people could
be seen on the fore-deck.

The majority of the passengers, excepting a few Frenchmen and other
foreigners, were heartily glad to be at home again, after sojourns of
various lengths on the Continent. Two, in particular, could scarcely
restrain their impatience as they looked eagerly landward, though the
social gulf that separated them was as wide as the Channel itself. On
the upper deck, exposed to the buffeting of the wind, stood a short,
portly gentleman in a dark-blue suit and cape-coat; he had a soldierly
carriage, a ruddy complexion, and an iron-gray mustache. Sir Lucius
Chesney was in robust health again, and his liver had ceased to trouble
him. Norway had pulled him together, and a few months of aimless roaming
on the Continent had done the rest. He was anxious to get back to Priory
Court, among his pictures and hot-houses, his horses and cattle, and he
intended to go there after a brief stop in London.

Down below, among the second-class passengers, Mr. Noah Hawker paced to
and fro, gazing meditatively toward the Shakespeare Cliff. Mr. Hawker,
to give him the name by which he was known in Scotland Yard circles, was
a man of fifty, five feet nine in height, and rather stockily built. He
was lantern-jawed and dark-haired, with a coarse, black mustache curled
up at the ends like a pair of buffalo horns, and so strong a beard that
his cheeks were the color of blue ink, though he had shaved only three
hours before. His long frieze overcoat, swinging open, disclosed beneath
a German-made suit of a bad cut and very loud pattern. His soft hat,
crushed in, was perched to one side; a big horseshoe pin and a scarlet
cravat reposed on a limited space of pink shirt-front.

There was about one chance in ten of guessing his calling. He looked
equally like a successful sporting man, an ex-prize fighter, a barman,
a racing tout, a book-maker, or a public house thrower-out. But the most
unprejudiced observer would never have taken him for a gentleman.

It was a thrilling moment when the _Calais-Douvres_, slipping between
the waves, ran close in to the granite pier. She accomplished the feat
safely, and was quickly made fast. The gangway was thrown across, and
there was a mad rush of passengers hurrying to get ashore. A babel of
shouting voices broke loose: "London train ready!" "Here you are, sir!"
"Luggage, sir?" "Extry! extry!"

Sir Lucius Chesney, who was rarely disturbed by anything, showed on
this occasion a fussy solicitude about his trunks and boxes; nor was
he appeased until he had seen them all on a truck, waiting for the
inspection of the customs officers. Mr. Hawker, slouching along the pier
with his ulster collar turned up and his hat well down over his eyes,
observed the military-looking gentleman and then the prominent
white-lettered name on the luggage. He passed on after an instant's
hesitation.

"Sir Lucius Chesney!" he muttered. "It's queer, but I'll swear I've
heard that name before. Now, where could it have been? The bloke's face
ain't familiar--I never ran across him. But the name? Ah, hang me if I
don't think I've got it!"

Mr. Hawker did not get into the London train, though his goal was
the metropolis. He left the pier, and as he walked with apparent
carelessness through the town--he had no luggage--he took an occasional
crafty survey over his shoulder, as a man might do who feared that he
was being shadowed. When the train rattled out of Dover he was in the
public bar of a tavern not far from the Lord Warden Hotel, fortifying
himself with a brandy-and-soda after the rough passage across the
Channel. Meanwhile, Sir Lucius Chesney, seated in a first-class
carriage, was regarding with an ecstatic expression the one piece of
luggage that he had refused to trust to the van. This was a flat leather
case, and it contained something of much greater importance than the
dress-suit for which it was intended.

Dover was honored by Mr. Hawker's presence until three o'clock in the
afternoon, and he took advantage of the intervening couple of hours to
eat a hearty meal and to count his scanty store of money, after which he
dozed on a bench in the restaurant until roused by a waiter. There are
two railway stations in the town, and he chose the inner one. He found
an empty third-class compartment, and his relief was manifest when the
train pulled out. He produced a short briar-root pipe, and stuffed it
with the last shreds of French Caporal tobacco that remained in his
pouch.

"Give me the shag of old England," he said to himself, as he puffed away
with a poor relish and watched the flying sides of the deep railway
cutting. "This is no class--it's cabbage leaf soaked in juice. I wonder
if I ain't a fool to come back! But it can't be helped--there was
nothing to be picked up abroad, after that double stroke of hard luck.
And there's no place like London! I'll be all right if I dodge the
ferrets at Victoria. For the last ten years they've only known me
clean-shaven or with a heavy beard, and this mustache and the rig will
puzzle them a bit. Yes, I ought to pass for a foreign gent come across
to back horses."

The truth about Mr. Noah Hawkins, though it may shock the reader, must
be told in plain words. He was a professional burglar; none of your
petty, clumsy craftsmen that get lagged for smashing a shopkeeper's
till, but a follower to some extent in the footsteps of the masterful
Charles Peace. During the previous February he had come out of
Dartmoor--it was his third term of penal servitude--with a period of
police supervision to undergo. For the space of four months he regularly
reported himself, and then, in company with a pal of even higher
professional standing than himself, he suddenly disappeared from London.

A well-planned piece of work, cleverly performed, made it advantageous
to the couple to go abroad. It was a question of money, not dread of
discovery and arrest; they had covered their tracks well, and they
believed that no suspicion could fall upon them. They were not prepared
for the ill-luck that awaited them on the Continent. Their fruit of hope
turned to ashes of despair, or very nearly so. They realized but a
fraction of the sum they had expected, and Hawker lost his share of even
that through the treachery of his pal, who departed by night from the
German town where they were stopping. So Hawker started for home, and
he had landed at Dover with, two sovereigns and a few silver coins. He
still believed that the police were ignorant of the business that had
taken him abroad; the worst that he feared was getting into trouble for
failing to report himself.

"There isn't much danger if I'm sharp," he thought, as the Kentish
landscape, the Garden of England, sped by him in the gathering dusk;
"and I won't touch a crib of any sort till I've tried those other two
lays. It's more than doubtful about the papers--I forget what was in
them. And they may be gone by this time. But, leaving that out, I've got
a pretty sure thing up my sleeve. What happened in Germany put me on the
track--but for that I wouldn't have suspected. I'll make somebody fork
over to a stiff tune, and serve him d---- right. It's the first time I
was caught napping."

The endless chimney-pots and glowing lights of the great city gladdened
Hawker's heart, and a whiff from the murky Thames bade him welcome home.
He gave up his ticket at Grosvenor road, and when the train pulled into
Victoria he walked boldly through the immense station. He loved London
with a thoroughbred cockney's passion, and he exulted in the sights and
sounds around him.

Hawker spent his last coppers for a packet of tobacco, and broke one of
his sovereigns to get a drink. He speedily lost himself in the crowds of
Victoria street, satisfied that he had not been recognized or followed.
He went on foot to Charing Cross, and climbed to the top of a brown and
yellow bus. Three-quarters of an hour later he got off in Kentish Town
and made his way to a squalid and narrow thoroughfare in the vicinity of
Peckwater street. He stopped before a house in the middle of a dirty and
monotonous row, and looked at it reminiscently. He had lodged there five
years back, previous to his third conviction, and here he had been
arrested. He had not returned since, for on his release from Dartmoor he
went to live near his pal, who was then planning the lay that had ended
so disastrously.

He pulled the bell and waited anxiously. A stout, slatternly woman
appeared, and uttered a sharp exclamation at sight of her visitor. She
would have closed the door in his face, but Hawker quickly thrust a leg
inside.

"None o' that," he growled. "Don't you know me, missus?"

"It ain't likely I'd furgit _you_, Noah Hawker! What d'ye want?"

"A lodging, Mrs. Miggs," he replied. "Is my old room to let?" he added
eagerly.

"It's been empty a week, but what's that to you? I won't 'ave no
jail-bird in my 'ouse. I'm a respectable woman, an' I won't be disgraced
again by the likes of you."

"Come, stow that! Can't you see I'm a foreign gent from abroad? The
police ain't after me--take my word for it. I've come back here because
you always made me snug and comfortable. I'll have the room, and if you
want to see the color of my money--"

He produced a half-sovereign, and a relenting effect was immediately
visible. A brief parley ensued, which ended in Mrs. Miggs pocketing the
money and inviting Mr. Hawker to enter. A moment after the door had
closed a rather shabby man strolled by the house and made a mental note
of the number.

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