Anthony Hope - Lucinda

Waldo listened to me with a new look of alertness, but the story seemed to come to less than he had expected. His interest flickered out again, and he listened with an impatient frown to Sir Paget’s conjectures as to the fugitive’s destination. But he put two or three questions to me.

“Did she recognize you? See you, I mean – bow, or nod, or anything?”

“Nothing at all; I don’t think she saw me. She passed me in a second, of course.”

“It must have been Lucinda, of course. You couldn’t have been mistaken?”

“I thought I was at the time, because it seemed impossible. Of course, now – as things stand – there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been Lucinda, and no doubt it was.”

“How was she looking?”

I had to attempt that description, after all! “Very animated; very – well, eager, you know. She was flushed; she looked – well, excited.”

“You’re dead sure that she was alone?”

“Oh, yes, I’m positive as to that.”

“Well, it doesn’t help us much,” observed Sir Paget. “Even if anything could help us! For the present I think I shouldn’t mention it to any one else – except, of course, Mrs. Knyvett and Aunt Bertha. No more talk of any kind than we can help!”

“Besides you two, I’ve only mentioned it to Valdez; and, when I did that, I didn’t believe that the girl was Lucinda.”

“Monkey Valdez! Did he come to the – to the church?” Waldo asked quickly. “I didn’t know he was in London, or even in England.”

“He’s been in town about a fortnight, I gathered. He’d seen the Knyvetts, he said, and I suppose they asked him to the wedding.”

“You met him there – and told him about this – this seeing Lucinda?”

“I didn’t meet him at the church. He lunched with me before and we walked there together.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, only some half-joking remark that you couldn’t take any other girl for Lucinda. He didn’t seem to attach any importance to it.”

Waldo’s eyes were now set steadily on my face. “Did you tell him at lunch, or as you walked to the church, or at the church?”

“As a matter of fact, before lunch. I mentioned the matter – that was half in joke too – as soon as I met him in the street.”

Sir Paget was about to speak, but Waldo silenced him imperiously. “Half a minute, Father. I want to know about this. Where did you meet – and when?”

“As soon as the taxi – the one with the girl in it – had gone by. I had to wait for it to go by. I crossed over to St. James’s Street and stopped to light a cigarette. Just as I was getting out a match, he spoke to me.”

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know; I didn’t see him till he spoke to me.”

“He might have been standing at the corner there – or near it?”

“Yes, for all I know – or just have reached there, or just crossed from the other corner of St. James’s Street. I really don’t know. Why does it matter, Waldo?”

“You’re dense, man, you’re dense!”

“Gently, Waldo, old boy!” Sir Paget interposed softly. He was standing with his back to the fireplace, smoking cigarette after cigarette, but quite quietly, not in a fluster. It was plain that he had begun to follow the scent which Waldo was pursuing so keenly.

“I beg your pardon, Julius. But look here. If he was at either corner of the street, or on the refuge in the middle – there is one, I think – he may well have been there a moment before – standing there, waiting perhaps. The taxi that passed you would have passed him. He would have seen the girl just as you saw her.”

“By Jove, that’s true! But he’d have told me if he had.”

“He didn’t say he hadn’t?”

I searched my memory. “No, he didn’t say that. But if – well, if, as you seem to suggest, he was there in order to see her, and did see her – ”

“It was funny enough your happening to see her. It would be a lot funnier coincidence if he just happened to be there, and just happened to see her too! And just as funny if he was there and didn’t see her, eh?”

“But how could he carry it off as he did?”

“My dear chap, the Monkey would carry off a load of bricks that hit him on the head! There’s nothing in that.”

“What’s your theory, Waldo?” Sir Paget asked quietly.

Waldo sat silent for a full minute. He seemed by now to be over the first fit of his rage; there was color in his cheeks again. But his eyes were bright, intent, and hard. He seemed to be piecing together the theory for which his father asked him – piecing it together so as to give it to us in a complete form. Waldo was not quick-witted, but he had a good brain. If he got hold of a problem, he would worry it to a solution.

“I’ve written to her every day,” he began slowly. “And she’s answered, quite affectionately – she’s never offensive; she’s given me no hint that she meant to go back on me like this. The day before yesterday I wired to her to know if I might come up; she wired: ‘For pity’s sake don’t. I am too busy. Wait till the day.’”

“Nothing much in that,” said his father. “She’d put it that way – playfully.”

“Nothing much if it stood alone,” Waldo agreed. “But suppose she was struggling between two influences – mine and his.” For a moment his voice faltered. “He’s always been against me – always – ever since that time at Cragsfoot.” I heard a swallow in his throat, and he went on again steadily. “Never mind that. Look at it as a case, a problem, impersonally. A girl is due to marry a man; another is besieging her. She can’t make up her mind – can’t make it up even on the very day before the wedding; or, if you like, won’t admit to herself that she has really resolved to break her promise, to be false to the man to whom she is already – ” Again there was a falter in his voice – “already really a wife, so far as anything short of – short of the actual thing itself – can make her – ”

He came to a sudden stop; he was unable to finish; he had invited us to a dispassionate consideration of the case as a case, as a problem; in the end he was not equal to laying it before us dispassionately. “Oh, you see, Father!” he groaned.

“Yes,” said Sir Paget. “I see the thing – on your hypothesis. She couldn’t make up her mind – or wouldn’t admit that she had. So she told the other man – ”

“Valdez?”

“Yes, Julius. Arsenio Valdez. She told Arsenio to be at a certain spot at a certain time – a time when, if she were going to keep her promise, she would be getting ready for her wedding. ‘Be at the corner of St. James’s Street at one o’clock.’ That would be it, wouldn’t it? If I drive by in a taxi, alone, it means yes to you, no to him. If I don’t, it means the opposite.’ That’s what you mean, Waldo?”

Waldo nodded assent; but I could not readily accept the idea.

“You mean, when I saw her she’d just seen him, and when I saw him, he’d just seen her?”

“Wouldn’t that account for the animation and excitement you noticed in her face – for the flush that struck you? She had just given the signal; she’d just” – he smiled grimly – “crossed her Rubicon, Julius.”

“But why wasn’t he with her? Why didn’t he go with her? Why did he come to the wedding? Why did he go through that farce?”

Sir Paget shrugged his shoulders. “Some idea of throwing us off the scent and getting a clear start, probably.”

“Yes, it might have been that,” I admitted. “And it does account for – for the way she looked. But the idea never crossed my mind. There wasn’t a single thing in his manner to raise any suspicion of the sort. If you’re right, it was a wonderful bit of acting.”