William Le Queux - The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance

At last, leaving Rayne there, I drove the old man on to Witham, where I left him at his own request at a point near the wireless telegraph station, and turning, went back to the thieves’ garage and there left the car.

I did not see Rudolph Rayne again for several days, but according to instructions I received from Madame Duperré, I went by train up to Yorkshire and awaited their arrival.

From Duperré, who arrived three days after I had got to Overstow, I gathered that Rayne had suddenly been called away to the Continent on one of his swift visits, “on a little matter of business,” added Vincent with a meaning grin.

We were smoking together in the great old library, when I told him of my narrow escape on Clifton Bridge.

“Yes,” he said. “Benton is always trying to get at us. It was sly of him to impersonate old Morley. I wonder how he got to know that you were meeting him? Someone must have betrayed Rayne. I have a suspicion who it may be. If he has, then woe betide him! Rudolph never forgives an enemy or a blunderer.”

I tried to get from Duperré the reason why the hunchback had met Rayne in such secrecy, but he would divulge nothing.

Next day his wife and Lola returned, and that same evening as I sat with the latter in the chintz-covered drawing-room – for though I had been engaged as chauffeur I was now treated as one of the family – I had a delightful chat with her.

That she was sorely puzzled at her father’s rapid journeys to and fro across Europe without any apparent reason, of the strange assortment of his friends and the secrecy in which he so often met them, I had long ago observed.

The truth was that I had fallen deeply in love with the sweet dainty girl whose father was the most audacious and cunning crook the modern world had produced. I believed, on account of the small confidence we had exchanged, that Lola, on her part, did not regard me with actual disfavor.

“When will your father be back, do you think?” I asked her as she lounged upon a settee with a big orange silk cushion behind her. She looked very sweet. She wore a pretty but very simple dance-frock of flame-colored ninon, in which I had seen her at the Carlton on the night when I set out to meet the man Tarrant and was so nearly caught.

I had given her a cigarette, and we were smoking together cosily – Duperré and his wife being somewhere in the great old house. I think Duperré was, after all, a sportsman, even though he was a practiced crook, for on that night he and his wife allowed me to be alone with Lola.

“Do you know a friend of your father, an old man named Tarrant?” I asked her suddenly.

“Tarrant – Morley Tarrant?” she asked. “Oh! yes. He’s such a funny old fellow. Three years ago he often used to visit us when we lived in Biarritz, but I haven’t seen him since.”

“Who is he?”

“He was the manager of the branch of the Crédit Foncier. He is French, though he bears an English name.”

“French! But he speaks English!” I remarked.

“Of course. His mother was English. He was once employed by Morgan’s in Paris, I believe, but I haven’t seen him lately. Father said one day at table that the old fellow had overstepped the mark and owing to some defalcations had gone to prison. I was sorry. What do you know of him?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “I’ve heard of him.”

She looked me very straight in the face from beneath her long dark lashes.

“Ah! you won’t tell me what you know,” she said mysteriously.

“Neither will you, Lola!” Then, after a pause, I added: “I want to know whether he is your father’s friend – or his enemy.”

“His friend, no doubt.”

“Why should your father have as friend a man who robs a bank, eh?” I asked very earnestly.

“Ah! That I don’t know!” replied the girl as she bent towards me earnestly. “I – I’m always so puzzled. Ever since my dear mother died, just after I came back from Roedene, I have wondered – and always wondered. I can discover nothing – absolutely nothing! Father is so secret, and neither Madame nor he will tell me anything. They only say that their business is no affair of mine. My father has business, no doubt, Mr. Hargreave. From his business he derives his income. But I cannot see why he should so constantly meet men and women in all sorts of social positions and give them orders, as it were. I am not blind, neither am I deaf.”

“You have listened in secret, eh?” I asked.

“I confess that I have.” Then, after a slight pause, she went on: “And I have overheard some very strange conversations. My father seems to direct the good fortunes of certain of his friends, while at the same time he plots against his enemies. But I suppose, after all, it is business.”

Business! Little did the girl dream of the real occupation of her unscrupulous father, or the desperate characters of his friends, both male and female.

Truly, she was very sweet and charming, and I hated to think that in her innocence she existed in that fevered world of plotting and desperate crime.

We walked along the broad terrace in the twilight. Beyond spread the wide park to a dark belt of trees, Sherman’s Copse, it was called, a delightfully shady place in summer where we had often strolled together.

As we chatted, I reflected. So old Morley Tarrant was a gaol-bird! Hence it was but natural that Rudolph Rayne, who preserved such a high degree of respectability, would hesitate to meet him providing he knew that the police were watching. He certainly knew that, hence the secrecy of their appointment.

As we walked Madame suddenly emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room and joined us.

“I’ve just had a wire from Rudolph,” she said. “He’s leaving Copenhagen to-night and will be back to-morrow night. I’d no idea that he had been over in Denmark. But there! he is such a bird of passage that one never knows where he may be to-morrow.” And she laughed.

Later we all four sat down to dinner, a decorous meal, well-cooked and well-served. But the character of the household was shown by the fact that none of the servants – discreetly chosen, of course, and in themselves members of the criminal organization – betrayed the least surprise that I, who acted as chauffeur, should be admitted to that curious family circle.

Rayne returned next night, tired and travel-worn, and I met him at Thirsk station.

“We go up to Edinburgh to-morrow. I shall want you to drive me,” he said as he sat at my side in the Rolls. “Lola will go also.”

His last words delighted me, and next day at noon we all three set forth on our journey north. It rained all day and the run was the reverse of pleasant, nevertheless, we arrived at the Caledonian Hotel quite safely, and were soon installed in one of the cosy private suites.

Father and daughter breakfasted in their sitting-room, while I had my meal alone in the coffee-room.

When later I went up for orders Rayne dismissed me abruptly, saying that he would not require me till after lunch.

Half an hour afterwards, while idling along Princes Street, I came across Lola, who was looking in one of the shop windows.

“Father has sent me out as he wants to talk business with Mr. Hugh Martyn, a rich American we met at the Grand, in Rome, last year. Father has come up here specially to meet him.”

What fresh crooked business could there be in progress? That Rayne had paid flying visits to Copenhagen and Edinburgh in such a short space of time was in itself highly suspicious.

After luncheon, on entering Rayne’s sitting-room, I found him busily fashioning from a sheet of thin cardboard a small square box which he was fitting over a large glass paper-weight, a cube about four inches square which was wrapped in tissue-paper, the corner of which happened to be torn and so revealed the glass.