William Le Queux - Whoso Findeth a Wife

Yea, I pitied her. Perhaps, if I waited, the time would come when her nature would recover from the blight that had fallen upon it; when the alien element that had grafted itself upon her true life would be expelled by those avenging powers that vex and plague the erring soul, not in mockery, but to save it from the death that cannot die.

The strangeness of her manner, and the tragic apprehension of her words would, I knew, never fade from my memory; yet half inclined to believe I had misjudged her, I at length, although feeling that the world could never again be quite the same for me, drew her slight form towards me, and imprinting a long, passionate kiss upon her ready lips, said, —

“I will try and think of you as a woman who has been wronged, Ella. I will wait until you can explain, but remember that until you relate to me truthfully the whole of the facts there can be no love between us.”

“No love!” she wailed in a voice of poignant grief. “Is your love for me so utterly dead, then, that you should say this?”

“No,” I answered, caressing her, stroking her wealth of gold-brown hair fondly as of old. “I love you still, Ella; yet, speaking candidly, I cannot trust you further until you explain the truth.”

“But you will be patient, will you not?” she urged. “Remember that I have before me a task so difficult that it may require all my woman’s tact and cunning to accomplish it. But I will – I must succeed; failure will mean that I lose you, my best beloved. Therefore wait, and ere long I will convince you that I have not lied.”

“Yes, I will wait,” I said, kissing her once again. “Until you have cleared yourself, however, remember that I cannot love you as I have done.”

“Very well,” she answered, her tear-stained face brightening. “If such is your decision, I am content. Before long I will explain all the facts, and then, I feel confident, you, noblest and dearest, will love me even better than before.”

“I trust I shall,” I answered with heartfelt earnestness, taking her small hand and pressing it softly; “for I love you, Ella.”

“I care for nothing else,” she answered, raising her face to mine and smiling through her tears. “I am happy in the knowledge that you still think of me. You have enemies; yes, many. But there was one that loved you always – ay, and loves you now, and ever shall love you.”

For a moment I gazed into the deep blue depths of her clear, trusting eyes, still grasping her tiny hand in mine, but almost at that instant the door opened and Mrs Laing, fussy, good-natured, and full of sympathy, entered, and seating herself, commenced to chat about the events of that memorable morning.

By the discovery of the duplicate of Lord Warnham’s private seal in the possession of my dead companion, it became impressed upon my mind that Dudley Ogle, the man in whom I had placed implicit trust, had not only abused my confidence by making love to Ella, but was a spy in the Russian secret service. Try how I would I could see no extenuating circumstances, and as next morning, when sitting alone in my London flat, moody and disconsolate, I calmly reflected upon the startling events of the past few days, I saw plainly, from Ella’s attitude when I had exhibited the brass stamp, that, notwithstanding her declaration to the contrary, she had seen it before.

It seemed placed beyond all doubt that Dudley had acted in conjunction with certain agents, who had by some means ascertained the very day and hour that the secret convention would arrive from Berlin. Then Dudley, armed with the forged duplicate, called upon me, and while we were together extracted the document from my pocket and substituted the envelope. Yet there was the registration mark upon it, so cleverly imitated as to defy detection. How that had been placed upon the dummy puzzled me, for the designation I had written could not be known until the envelope, with its precious contents, had been filched from my pocket.

The reason of Dudley’s visit to Warnham was now, to a certain extent, explained. More than probable it seemed that through bribery he had obtained from one of the servants an impression in wax of the Earl’s private seal, and from it the brass stamp had been cut. The theft of the document had been accomplished with a neatness that seemed almost miraculous; and if Dudley really had stolen it, he must have been a most adroit pickpocket. Nevertheless, even though his every action had now corroborated up to the hilt the suspicion that he was a spy, I could not, somehow, believe him capable of such crafty, nay devilish, deception. Friends that we were, I could have trusted him with any secret, or with any of my possessions; but these revelations startled and amazed me.

Still there was a more remarkable and puzzling phase of the mystery. If Ella’s fears were well grounded, why had he been murdered, and by whom?

The mysterious secret possessed by the woman I adored, the woman who held me under the spell of her marvellous beauty, was of a tragic and terrible nature, I felt assured. No doubt it had some connection with Dudley’s death, and that sinister circumstance, once elucidated, would, I knew, furnish a very valuable clue to the identity of the spy, if perchance the innocence of my companion should be established, as I hoped it might be.

There was still one fact, too, that required explanation, one that seemed to prove conclusively that Dudley was in the pay of our enemies. I had found, on looking over his possessions in our cottage at Shepperton, some pieces of crumpled foolscap. He had evidently intended to throw them away, but being unable to get rid of them at the moment, had placed them in a drawer and locked them up. On smoothing them out, I found another piece of paper inside. To my astonishment I saw it was a letter written by me, while the pieces of foolscap accompanying it were covered with words and sentences in ink and pencil, showing how carefully he had studied and copied all the characteristics of my handwriting. These papers were, in themselves, sufficient evidence that he had practised the forger’s art.

I had, after leaving Staines, returned straight to Shepperton, and in company with a detective carefully investigated all my friend’s belongings. We spent the afternoon and evening in reading through heaps of letters, but discovered nothing that would lead to any suspicion of foul play. The detective made notes of one or two of the addresses of the writers, and took charge of several letters relating to money matters. When, however, we had removed all the correspondence from the small wooden box in which it had been kept, the detective ascertained that there was a false bottom, and unable to find out the secret whereby it might be opened, we forced it with a chisel.

At first we were disappointed, only one insignificant-looking paper being therein concealed, but when the officer eagerly opened it I at once recognised its extreme importance, although I preserved silence. The paper was nothing less than a Russian passport of a special character signed by the Chief of Secret Police in St Petersburg, and countersigned by the Minister of the Interior himself. It was not a formally printed document, but written in Russian upon official paper stamped with the double-headed eagle. It was made out in the name of Dudley Ogle, and after explaining that he was an official engaged on secret service, gave him complete immunity from arrest within the Russian Empire.

“What’s this, I wonder?” the detective said, puzzled by the unfamiliar characters in the writing.

Taking it from him I glanced through it, and without betraying the slightest surprise, answered, “Merely a passport for Russia.”

“That doesn’t lead us to anything,” he replied, taking it from my form, glancing at it again for an instant, and tossing it back carelessly into the box.