The Red Symbol. Ironside John

said at his leisure ‘all men are fools,—when there’s a woman in the case’—he’d have been nearer the mark!”

      “What do you mean?” I demanded, hotly enough.

      “Well, I also dined at the Cecil to-night, though not with the ‘Savages,’ and I happened to hear that you and Cassavetti—we’ll call him that—were looking daggers at each other, and that the lady, who was remarkably handsome, appeared to enjoy the situation! Who is she, Wynn? Do I know her?”

      I watched him closely, but his face betrayed nothing.

      “I think your informant must have been a—journalist, Lord Southbourne,” I said very quietly. “And we seem to have strayed pretty considerably from the point. I came here to take your instructions, and if I’m to start at nine on Monday I shall not see you again.”

      He shrugged his shoulders.

      “All right; we’ll get to business. Here’s the new code; get it off by heart between now and Monday, and destroy the copy. It’s safer. Here’s your passport, duly viséd, and a cheque. That’s all, I think. I don’t need to teach you your work. But I don’t want you to meet with such a fate as Carson’s; so I expect you to be warned by his example. And you are not to make any attempt to unravel the mystery of his death. I tell you that for your own safety! The matter has been taken up from the Embassy, and everything possible will be done to hunt the assassin down. Good-bye, and good luck!”

      We shook hands and I went out into the night. It was now well past midnight, and the streets were even quieter than usual at that hour, for there had been a sharp storm while I was with Southbourne. I had heard the crash of thunder at intervals, and the patter of heavy rain all the time. Now the storm was over, the air was cool and fresh, the sky clear. The wet street gleamed silver in the moonlight, and was all but deserted. The traffic had thinned down to an occasional hansom or private carriage, and there were few foot-passengers abroad. I did not meet a soul along the whole of Whitehall except the policemen, their wet mackintoshes glistening in the moonlight.

      But, as I reached the corner of Parliament Square, I saw, just across the road, a man and woman walking rapidly in the direction of Westminster Bridge. I glanced at them casually, then looked again, more intently. The man looked like a sailor; he wore a pea-jacket and a peaked cap, while the woman was enveloped in a long dark cloak, and had a black scarf over her head. I saw a gleam of jewelled shoe-buckles as she picked her way daintily across the wet roadway to the further corner by the Houses of Parliament.

      My heart seemed to stand still as I watched her. At any other time or place I would have sworn that I knew the tall, slender figure, the imperial poise of the head, the peculiarly graceful gait, swift but not hurried. I inwardly jeered at myself for my idiocy. My mind was so full of Anne Pendennis that I must imagine every tall, graceful woman was she! This lady was doubtless a resident in the southern suburbs, detained by the storm, and now on her way to one of the all-night trams that start from the far side of Westminster Bridge. There was quite a suburban touch in a woman in evening dress being escorted by a man in a pea-jacket. She might be an artiste, too poor to afford a cab home.

      Nevertheless, while these thoughts ran through my mind, I was following the couple. They walked so swiftly that I did not decrease the distance between us. Half-way across the bridge I was intercepted by a beggar, who whined for “the price of a doss” and kept pace with me, till I got rid of him with the bestowal of a coin; but when I looked for the couple I was stalking they had disappeared.

      I quickened my pace to a run, and at the further end looked anxiously ahead, but could see no trace of them. There were more people stirring in the Westminster Bridge Road, even at this hour; street hawkers starting home with their sodden barrows, the usual disreputable knot of loungers gathered around a coffee-stall; but those whom I looked for had vanished. Swiftly as they were walking they could scarcely have traversed the distance between the bridge and the trams in so short a time.

      Had they gone down the steps to the river embankment? I paused and listened, thought I heard a faint patter, as of a woman’s high heels on the stone steps, and ran down the flight.

      The paved walk below St. Thomas’ Hospital was deserted; I could see far in the moonlight. But near at hand I heard the plash of oars. I looked around and saw that to the right there was a second flight of steps, almost under the shadow of the first arch of the bridge, and leading right down to the river.

      I vaulted the bar that guarded the top of the flight and ran down the steps. Yes, there was the boat, with the sailor and another man pulling at the oars, and the woman sitting in the stern. The scarf had slipped back a little, and I saw the glint of her bright hair.

      “Anne! Anne!” I cried desperately.

      She heard and turned her face.

      My God, it was Anne herself! For a second only I saw her face distinctly, then she pulled the scarf over it with a quick gesture; the boat shot under the dark shadow of the arches and disappeared.

      I stood dumbfounded for some minutes, staring at the river, and trying to convince myself that I was mad—that I had dreamt the whole incident.

      When at last I turned to retrace my steps I saw something dark lying at the top of the steps, stooped, and picked it up.

      It was a spray of scarlet geranium!

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

THE MYSTERY THICKENS

       Table of Contents

      When I regained the bridge I crossed to the further parapet and looked down at the river. I could see nothing of the boat; doubtless it had passed out of sight behind a string of barges that lay in the tideway. As I watched, the moon was veiled again by the clouds that rolled up from the west, heralding a second storm; and in another minute or so a fresh deluge had commenced.

      But I scarcely heeded it. I leaned against the parapet staring at the dark, mysterious river and the lights that fringed and spanned it like strings of blurred jewels, seen mistily through the driving rain.

      I was bareheaded, for the fierce gust of wind that came as harbinger of the squall had swept off my hat and whirled it into the water, where doubtless it would be carried down-stream, on the swiftly ebbing tide, in the wake of that boat which was hastening—whither? I don’t think I knew at the time that my hat was gone. I have lived through some strange and terrible experiences; but I have seldom suffered more mental agony than I did during those few minutes that I stood in the rain on Westminster Bridge.

      I was trembling from head to foot, my soul was sick, my mind distracted by the effort to find any plausible explanation of the scene I had just witnessed.

      What was this mystery that encompassed the girl I loved; that had closed around her now? A mystery that I had never even suspected till a few hours ago, though I had seen Anne every day for this month past,—ever since I first met her.

      But, after all, what did I know of her antecedents? Next to nothing; and that I had learned mainly from my cousin Mary.

      Now I came to think of it, Anne had told me very little about herself. I knew that her father, Anthony Pendennis, came of an old family, and possessed a house and estate in the west of England, which he had let on a long lease. Anne had never seen her ancestral home, for her father lived a nomadic existence on the Continent; one which she had shared, since she left the school at Neuilly, where she and Mary first became friends.

      I gathered that she and her father were devoted to each other; and that he had spared her unwillingly for this long-promised visit to her old school-fellow. Mary, I knew, would have welcomed Mr. Pendennis also; but by all accounts he was an eccentric person, who preferred to live anywhere