The Four Faces. Le Queux William

I'll invent some reason quick enough, but I want someone to be with me. Will you come? Will you or won't you?"

      I glanced up at the clock. It wanted twenty minutes to eleven.

      "Do you mean now? Do you intend to go at this time of the night?"

      "I intend to go at once—as fast as a taxi will take me there," he answered.

      I paused, undecided. It seemed such a strange thing to do, under the circumstances; but then, as I knew, Jack Osborne had always been fond of doing strange things. Though a member of Brooks's, he was unconventional in the extreme.

      "Yes, I will," I said, the originality of the idea suddenly appealing to me. In point of fact I, too, mistrusted this man Gastrell. Though he had looked me so straight in the eyes when, two hours before, he had calmly assured me that I was mistaken in believing him to be "his namesake in Geneva," as he put it; still, as I say, I felt convinced he was the same man.

      "Good," Osborne answered in a tone of satisfaction. "Come, we will start at once."

      A strange feeling of repressed excitement obsessed me as our taxi passed up Bond Street, turned into Oxford Street, then to the right into Orchard Street, and sped thence by way of Baker Street past Lord's cricket ground and up the Finchley Road. What would happen when we reached Maresfield Gardens? Would the door be opened by a stolid footman or by some frigid maidservant who would coldly inform us that "Mr. Gastrell was not at home"; or should we be shown in, and, if we were shown in, what excuse would Jack Osborne make for calling so late at night? I cannot say that I felt in the least anxious, however, for Osborne is a man who has knocked about the world and seen many queer sides of life, and who never, under any circumstances, is at a loss how to act.

      I glanced at my watch as our taxi turned into Maresfield Gardens. It was ten minutes past eleven. At the house indicated half-way up the hill the taxi suddenly pulled up.

      Osborne got out and pressed the electric bell-push. As I looked up at the windows, I noticed that nowhere was any light visible. Nor was there a light in the ground-floor windows.

      "I believe everybody is in bed," I said to him, when the bell remained unanswered. Without replying, he pressed the push again, and kept his finger on it.

      Still no one came.

      "We'd better call to-morrow," I suggested, when he had rung a third time with the same result.

      The words had hardly left my lips, when we heard the door-chain rattle. Then the bolts were pulled back, and a moment later the door was carefully drawn open to the length of its chain.

      Inside all was darkness, nor was anybody visible.

      "What do you want?" a woman's voice inquired.

      The voice had a most pleasant timbre; also the speaker was obviously a lady. She did not sound in the least alarmed, but there was a note of surprise in the tone.

      "Has Mr. Gastrell come home yet?" Osborne asked.

      "Not yet. Do you want to see him?"

      "Yes. He dined at Brooks's Club this evening with Lord Easterton. Soon after he had left, a purse was found, and, as nobody in the club claimed it, I concluded that it must be his, so I have brought it back."

      "That is really very good of you, Mr. Osborne," the hidden speaker answered. "If you will wait a moment I will let you in. Are you alone?"

      "No, I have a friend with me. But who are you? How do you know my name?"

      There was no answer. The door was shut quietly. Then we heard the sound of the chain being removed.

      By the time Jack Osborne had paid our driver, and dismissed the taxi, the door had been opened sufficiently wide to admit us. We entered, and at once the door was shut.

      We were now in inky blackness.

      "Won't you switch on the light?" Osborne asked, when a minute or so had elapsed, and we remained in total darkness.

      Nobody answered, and we waited, wondering. Fully another minute passed, and still we stood there.

      I felt Osborne touch me. Then, coming close to me, he whispered in my ear:

      "Strike a match, Mike; I haven't one."

      I felt in my pockets. I had not one either. I was about to tell him so when something clicked behind us, and the hall was flooded with light.

      Never before had I beheld, and I doubt if I shall ever behold again, a woman as lovely as the tall, graceful being upon whom our eyes rested at that instant. In height quite five foot nine, as she stood there beneath the glow of the electrolier in the luxurious hall, in her dinner dress, the snowy slope of the shoulders and the deep, curved breast, strong, yet all so softly, delicately rounded, gleamed like rosy alabaster in the reflection from the red-shaded light above her.

      Our eyes wandered from exquisite figure to exquisite face—and there was no sense of disappointment. For the face was as nearly perfect as a woman's may be upon this earth of imperfections. The uplift of the brow, the curve of the cheek to the rounded chin, the noble sweep of delicate, dark eyebrows were extraordinarily beautiful. Her hair was "a net for the sunlight," its colour that of a new chestnut in the spring when the sun shines hotly upon it, making it glow and shimmer and glisten with red and yellow and deepest browns. Now it was drawn about her head in shining twists, and across the front and rather low down on the brow was a slim and delicate wreath of roses and foliage in very small diamonds beautifully set in platinum. The gleam of the diamonds against the red-brown of the wonderful hair was an effect impossible to describe—yet one felt that the hair would have been the same miracle without it.

      "Mrs. Gastrell! Why, I didn't recognize your voice," I had heard Osborne exclaim in a tone of amazement just after the light had been turned on. but my attention had been so centred upon the Vision standing there before us that I had hardly noticed the remark, or the emphasis with which it was uttered. I suppose half a minute must have passed before anybody spoke again, and then it was the woman who broke the silence.

      "Will you show me the purse?" she asked, holding out her hand for it and addressing Osborne.

      On the instant he produced his own and gave it to her. She glanced at it, then handed it back.

      "It is not his," she said quietly. Her gaze rested steadily upon Osborne's face for some moments, then she said:

      "How exceedingly kind of you to come all this way, and in the middle of the night, just to find out if a purse picked up at your club happens to belong to the guest of a friend of yours."

      In her low, soft voice there was a touch of irony, almost of mockery. Looking at her now, I felt puzzled. Was she what she appeared to be, or was this amazing beauty of hers a cloak, a weapon if you will, perhaps the most dangerous weapon of a clever, scheming woman? Easterton had told us that Gastrell was a bachelor. Gastrell had declared that he had never before met either Jack Osborne or myself. Yet here at the address that Gastrell had given to the taxi-driver was the very woman the man calling himself Gastrell, with whom Osborne had returned from Africa, had passed off as his wife.

      "My husband isn't in at present," she said calmly, a moment later, "but I expect him back at any minute. Won't you come in and wait for him?"

      Before either of us could answer she had walked across the hall, unlocked and opened a door, and switched on the light in the room.

      Mechanically we followed her. As we entered, a strange, heavy perfume of some subtle Eastern scent struck my nostrils—I had noticed it in the hall, but in this room it was pungent, oppressive, even overpowering. The apartment, I noticed, was luxuriously furnished. What chiefly attracted my attention, however, were the pictures on the walls. Beautifully executed, the subjects were, to say the least, peculiar. The fire in the grate still burned brightly. Upon a table were two syphons in silver stands, also decanters containing spirits, and several tumblers. Some of the tumblers had been used. As I sank, some moments later, into an easy chair, I felt that its leather-covered arms were warm, as if someone had just vacated it.

      And yet the door of this room had been locked. Also, when we had arrived, no light had been visible in any of the windows of the house, and the front door had been chained and bolted.

      "Make