CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

cab! Maud would never have permitted a stranger to take such a liberty in the old days.”

      Miss Brown smiled curiously.

      “Is that all?” she asked.

      Peter Ruff felt that he was in the confessional.

      “She certainly did seem,” he admitted, “to enjoy her champagne a great deal, and she talked about her dull life at home a little more, perhaps, than was discreet to one who was presumably a stranger. She was curious, too, about dining out. Poor little girl, though. Just fancy, John Dory has never taken her anywhere but to Lyons’ or an A B C, and the pit of a theatre!”

      “Which evening is it to be?” Miss Brown asked.

      “Something was said about Thursday,” Peter Ruff admitted.

      “And her husband?” Miss Brown enquired.

      “He happens to be in Glasgow for a few days,” Peter Ruff answered.

      Miss Brown looked at her employer steadily. She addressed him by his Christian name, which was a thing she very seldom did in office hours.

      “Peter,” she said, “are you going to let that woman make a fool of you?”

      He raised his eyebrows.

      “Go on,” he said; “say anything you want to—only, if you please, don’t speak disrespectfully of Maud.”

      “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you at all,” Miss Brown continued, rising to her feet, “that this Maud, or whatever you want to call her, may be playing a low-down game of her husband’s? He hates you, and he has vague suspicions. Can’t you see that he is probably making use of your infatuation for his common, middle-class little wife, to try and get you to give yourself away? Can’t you see it, Peter? You are not going to tell me that you are so blind as all that!”

      “I must admit,” he answered with a sigh, “that, although I think you go altogether too far, some suspicion of the sort has interfered with my perfect enjoyment of the morning.”

      Miss Brown drew a little breath of relief. After all, then, his folly was not so consummate as it had seemed!

      “What are you going to do about it, then?” she asked.

      Peter Ruff coughed—he seemed in an unusually amenable frame of mind, and submitted to cross-examination without murmur.

      “The subject of Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald,” he remarked, “seemed, somehow or other, to drop into the background during our luncheon. I propose, therefore, to continue to offer to Mrs. John Dory my most respectful admiration. If she accepts my friendship, and is satisfied with it, so much the better. I must admit that it would give me a great deal of pleasure to be her occasional companion—at such times when her husband happens to be in Glasgow!”

      “And supposing,” Miss Brown asked, “that this is not all she wants—supposing, for instance, that she persists in her desire for information concerning Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald?”

      “Then,” Peter Ruff admitted, “I’m afraid that I must conclude that her unchivalrous clod of a husband has indeed stooped to make a fool of her.”

      “And in that case,” Miss Brown demanded, “what shall you do?”

      “I was just thinking that out,” Peter Ruff said mildly, “when you spoke….”

      The friendship of Peter Ruff with the wife of his enemy certainly appeared to progress in most satisfactory fashion. The dinner and visit to the theatre duly took place. Mr. Ruff was afterwards permitted to offer a slight supper and to accompany his fair companion a portion of the way home in a taxicab. She made several half-hearted attempts to return to the subject of Spencer Fitzgerald, but her companion had been able on each occasion to avoid the subject. Whether or not she was the victim of her husband’s guile, there was no question about the reality of her enjoyment during the evening. Ruff, when he remembered the flash of her eyes across the table, the touch of her fingers in the taxi, was almost content to believe her false to her truant lover. If only she had not been married to John Dory, he realised, with a little sigh, that he might have taught her to forget that such a person existed as Spencer Fitzgerald, might have induced her to become Mrs. Peter Ruff!

      On their next meeting, however, Peter Ruff was forced to realise that his secretary’s instinct had not misled her. It was, alas, no personal and sentimental regrets for her former lover which had brought the fair Maud to his office. The pleasures of her evening—they dined at Romano’s and had a box at the Empire—were insufficient this time to keep her from recurring continually to the subject of her vanished lover. He tried strategy—jealousy amongst other things.

      “Supposing,” he said, as they sat quite close to one another in the box during the interval, “supposing I were to induce our friend to come to London—I imagine he would be fairly safe now if he kept out of your husband’s way—what would happen to me?”

      “You!” she murmured, glancing at him from behind her fan and then dropping her eyes.

      “Certainly—me!” he continued. “Don’t you think that I should be doing myself a very ill turn if I brought you two together? I have very few friends, and I cannot afford to lose one. I am quite sure that you still care for him.”

      She shook her head.

      “Not a scrap!” she declared.

      “Then why did you put that advertisement in the paper?” Ruff asked, with smooth but swift directness.

      She was not quick enough to parry his question. He read the truth in her disconcerted face. Knowing it now for a certainty, he hastened to her aid.

      “Forgive me,” he said, looking away. “I should not have asked that question—it is not my business. I will write to Fitzgerald. I will tell him that you want to see him, and that I think it would be safe for him to come to London.”

      Maud recovered herself quickly. She thanked him with her eyes as well as her words.

      “And you needn’t be jealous, really,” she whispered behind her fan. “I only want to see him once for a few minutes—to ask a question. After that, I don’t care what becomes of him.”

      A poor sort of Delilah, really, with her flushed face, her too elaborately coiffured hair with its ugly ornament, her ready-made evening dress with its cheap attempts at smartness, her cleaned gloves, indifferent shoes. But Peter Ruff thought otherwise.

      “You mean that, after I have found him for you, you will still come out with me again sometimes?” he asked wistfully.

      “Of course!” she answered. “Whenever I can without John knowing,” she added, with an unpleasant little laugh. “If you only knew how I loved the music and the theatres, and this sort of life! What a good time your wife would have, Mr. Ruff!” she added archly.

      It was no joking matter with him. He had to remember that he was, in effect, her tool, that she was making use of him, willing to betray her former lover at her husband’s bidding. It was enough to make him, on his side, burn for revenge! Yet he put the thought away from him with a shiver. She was still the woman he had loved—she was still sacred to him! That night he pleaded an engagement, and sent her home in a taxicab alone.

      John Dory, waiting patiently at home for his wife’s return, felt a certain uneasiness when she swept into their little sitting room in all her cheap splendour, with flushed cheeks—an obvious air of satisfaction with herself and disdain for her immediate surroundings. John Dory was a commonplace looking man—the absence of his collar, and his somewhat shabby carpet slippers, did not improve his appearance. He had neglected to shave, and he was drinking beer. At headquarters he was not considered quite the smart young officer which he had once shown signs of becoming. He looked at his wife with darkening face, and his wife, on her part, thought of Peter Ruff in his immaculate evening clothes.

      “Well,” he remarked, grumblingly, “you seem