"Well, I rather wish I were coming with you for a fortnight on Loch Lomond," said Lilla.
"No, my dear, you have no place in the picture at present. Much as I would like your companionship, you are far better here at home."
"Yes, I suppose you are right!" answered her friend, sighing. "But I long for Scotland in these warm summer days."
"Get Bernie to take you to the seaside for a bit. There's nothing urgent doing just now."
"Bernie is far too busy in Hammersmith, my dear," Lilla laughed. "He wouldn't miss his weekly round for worlds. Besides, he's got some important church work on helping the vicar in a series of mission meetings."
"Bernie is a good Churchman, I've heard," said Ena.
"Of course. That, too, is part of the big bluff. The man who carries round the bag every Sunday is always regarded as pious and upright. And Bernie never loses a chance to increase his halo of respectability."
Ena remained at Pont Street for about half an hour longer, and then, returning to her own flat, she set about sorting out the dresses she would require for Scotland, and assisted her elderly maid to pack them.
Afterwards she returned into her elegant little drawing-room and seated herself at the little writing-table, where she consulted a diary. Then she wrote telegrams to the hotels at Glasgow and at Ardlui, engaging rooms for dates which, after reflection, she decided upon.
Ena Pollen was a woman of determination and method. Her exterior was that of a butterfly of fashion, careless of everything save her dress and her hair, yet beneath the surface she was calm, clever, and unscrupulous, a woman who had never loved, and who, indeed, held the opposite sex in supreme contempt. The adventure in which she was at that moment engaged was the most daring she had ever undertaken. The unholy trio had dabbled in small affairs, each of which had brought them profit, but the present undertaking would, she knew, require all her tact and cunning.
The real Mrs. Augusta Morrison, the widow of Carsphairn, was one of Boyne's discoveries, and by judicious inquiry, combined with other investigations which Ena herself had made, they knew practically everything concerning her, her friends, and her movements. The preliminaries had taken fully three months, for prior to going to Llandudno, there to assume the widow's identity, Ena had been in secret to New Galloway, and while staying at the Lochinvar Arms, at Dairy, she had been able to gather many facts concerning the rich widow of Carsphairn, a copy of whose birth and marriage-certificate she had obtained from Somerset House.
After writing the telegrams, she took a sheet of notepaper and wrote to Mr. Emery in Manchester, telling him that she had passed both doctors, and asking him to hurry forward the policy.
"My movements during the next fortnight or so are a little uncertain," she wrote, "but please always address me as above, care of my friend, Mrs. Pollen. Please give my best regards to your dear wife, and accept the same yourself. Yours very sincerely,AUGUSTA MORRISON."
Three nights later, Ena left Euston in the sleeping-car for Glasgow, arriving early next morning, and for a couple of days idled away the time in the great hotel, the Central, eagerly awaiting a telegram.
At last it came.
The porter handed it to her as she returned from a walk. She tore it open, and when she read its contents, she went instantly pale.
The message was disconcerting, for instead of giving information regarding the movements of the woman she had been impersonating, it read:
"Remain in Glasgow. Am leaving to-night. Will be with you in morning. Urgent. BERNARD."
What could have happened? A hitch had apparently occurred in the arrangements, which had been so thoroughly discussed and every detail considered.
It was then six o'clock in the evening. Boyne could not be there until eight o'clock on the following morning. She glanced bewildered around the busy hall of the hotel, where men and women with piles of luggage were constantly arriving and departing.
"Why is he not more explicit?" she asked herself in apprehension.
What could have happened? she wondered. For yet another fourteen hours she must remain in suspense.
Suddenly, however, she recollected that she could telephone to Lilla, and she put through a call without delay.
Half an hour later she spoke to her friend over the wire, inquiring the reason of Boyne's journey north.
"My dear, I'm sorry," replied Lilla in her high-pitched voice, "but I really cannot tell you over the 'phone. It is some very important business he wants to see you about."
"But am I not to go to Ardlui?" asked Ena.
"I don't know. Bernie wants to see you without delay that's all."
"But has anything happened?" she demanded eagerly.
"Yes something but I can't tell you now. Bernie will explain. He'll be with you in Glasgow early to-morrow morning."
"Is it anything very serious?"
"I think it may be very!" was Lilla's reply; and at that moment the operator cut off communication with London, the six minutes allowed having expired.
CHAPTER V
CONTAINS A NOTE OF ALARM
Ena Pollen was on the platform when the dusty night express from London ran slowly into the Caledonian Station, at Glasgow.
Bernard Boyne, erect and smartly-dressed, stepped out quickly from the sleeping-car, to be greeted by her almost immediately.
"What's happened?" she demanded anxiously beneath her breath.
"I can't tell you here, Ena. Wait till we're in the hotel," he replied. She saw by his countenance that something was amiss.
Together they walked from the platform into the hotel, and having ascended in the lift to her private sitting-room, the man flung himself into a chair, and said:
"A very perilous situation has arisen regarding the Martin affair!"
"The Martin affair!" she gasped, instantly pale to the lips. "I always feared it. That girl, Céline Tènot, had some suspicion, I believe."
"Exactly. She was your maid, and you parted bad friends. It was injudicious."
"Where is she now, I wonder?"
"At her home in Melun, near Paris. You must go at once to Paris, and ask her to meet you," Boyne said.
"To Paris?" she cried in dismay.
"Yes; not a second must be lost. Inquiries are on foot. I discovered the situation yesterday, quite by accident."
"Inquiries!" she cried. "Who can be making inquiries?"
"Some friend of that girl a Frenchman. He has come over here to find me."
"To find you! But she only knew you under the name of Bennett!"
"Exactly. In that is our salvation," he said, with a grin. "But the affair is distinctly serious unless we can make peace with Céline, and at the same time make it worth her while to withdraw this inquiry. No doubt she's looking forward to a big reward for furnishing information."
"But why can't we give her the reward eh?" asked the shrewd, red-haired woman quickly.
"That's exactly my argument. That is why you must leave this present little matter, turn back to Céline, and make it right with her."
"How much do you think it will cost?"
Bernard Boyne shrugged his shoulders.
"Whatever it is, we must pay," he replied. "We can't afford for this girl to remain an enemy and yours especially."
"Of course not," Ena agreed. "What is her address?"
Boyne took a slip of paper from his pocket-book and handed it to the handsome woman.
"But what excuse can I possibly make for approaching her?" she asked bewildered.
"Pretend you've come to Paris to offer to take her into your service again," Boyne suggested. "She will then meet you, and you can express regret that you sent her away so suddenly, and offer to make reparation and all that."
"There was an object in sending her away so peremptorily. You know what it was, Bernie."
"I know, of course. She might have discovered something then. You adopted the only course but, unfortunately, it has turned out to have been a most injudicious one, which may, if we are not very careful and don't act at once, lead to the exposure of a very nasty circumstance the affair of old Martin."
"I quite see," she said. "I'll go to Paris without delay."
"You'll stay at the Bristol, as before, I suppose?"
"Yes. I will ask her to come and see me there."
Boyne hesitated.
"No. I don't know whether it would not be better for you to go out to Melun for the day and find her there," he queried. "Remember, you must handle the affair with the greatest delicacy. You've practically got to pay her for blackmail which she has not sought."
"That's the difficulty. And the sum must be equal, if not more, to that which she and her French friend who has come over here to seek and identify you hope to get out of it by their disclosures. Oh! yes," she said, "I quite see it all."
"I admit that the situation which has arisen is full of peril, Ena," remarked the man seated before her, "but you are a clever woman, and with the exercise of tact and cunning, in addition to the disbursement of funds, we shall undoubtedly be able to wriggle out as we always do."
"Let's hope so," she said, with a sigh. "But what about Ardlui and Mrs. Morrison?"
"Your visit to Paris is more important at the moment. You must lose no time in getting there. Before I left London, I instructed my bank to send five thousand pounds to you at the head office of the Credit Lyonnais. You will be able to draw at once when you get there, and it will give you time to get more money if you deem it wise to pay any bigger sum."
"Really, you leave nothing undone, Bernie.
"Not when danger arises, my dear Ena," he laughed. "In the meantime, I'll have to remain very low. That infernal Frenchman may be watching Lilla with the idea that I might visit Pont Street. But I shan't go near her again till the danger is past."
"Then I'd better get away as soon as possible," she said. "I can be in London this evening, and cross to Paris by the night mail."
"Yes," he replied. "Don't waste an instant in getting in touch with her. Have a rest in Paris, and then go to Melun. You can be there to-morrow afternoon."
"Shall you go back to London with me?"
"No. Better not be seen together," he said. "Let us be discreet. You can go by the ten o'clock express, which will just give you time to cross London to Victoria and catch the boat train, and I'll leave by the next express, which goes at one. The less we are together at present the better."
"I agree entirely," Ena said, with a sigh. "But this affair will, I see, be very difficult to adjust."
"Not if you keep your wits about you, Ena," he assured her. "It isn't half so difficult as the arrangements you made with that pious old fellow Fleming. Don't you recollect how very near the wind we were all sailing, and yet you took him in hand and convinced him of your innocence."
"I was dealing with a man then," she remarked. "Now I have to deal with a shrewd girl. Besides, we don't know who this inquisitive Frenchman may be."
"You'll soon discover all about him, no doubt. Just put on your thinking-cap on the way over to Paris, and doubtless before you arrive, you'll hit upon some plan which will be just as successful as the attitude you adopted towards old Daniel Fleming." Then he added: "I wish you'd order breakfast to be served up here, for I'm ravenously hungry."
She rose, rang the bell, and ordered breakfast for two.
While it was being prepared, Boyne went along the corridor to wash, while Ena retired to her room, and packed her trunk ready for her departure south at ten o'clock.
Afterwards she saw the head porter and got him to secure her a place on the train, and also in the restaurant-car, which is usually crowded.
They breakfasted tête-à-tête, after which she paid her bill, and at ten o'clock left him standing upon the platform to idle away three hours wandering about the crowded Glasgow streets before his departure at one o'clock.
Next morning Ena Pollen took her déjeuner at half-past eleven in the elegant table d'hôte room of the aristocratic Hôtel Bristol, in Paris, a big white salon which overlooks the Place Vendôme. Afterwards she took a taxi to the Gare de Lyon, whence she travelled to Melun, thirty miles distant that town from which come the Brie cheeses. On arrival, she inquired for the Boulevard Victor Hugo, and an open cab drove her away across the little island in the Seine, past the old church of St. Aspais, to a point where, in the boulevard, stood a monument to the great savant, Pasteur. The cab pulled up opposite the monument, where, alighting, Ena found herself before a large four-storied house, the ground floor of which was occupied by a tobacconist and a shop which sold comestibles.
Of the old bespectacled concierge who was cobbling boots in the entrance she inquired for Madame Ténot, and his gruff reply was:
"Au troisième, à gauche."
So, mounting the stone steps, she found the left-hand door on the third floor, and rang the bell.
The door opened, and the good-looking young French girl, who had been her maid for six months at Brighton, confronted her.
"Well, Céline!" exclaimed Ena merrily in French. "You didn't expect to see me did you?"
The girl stood aghast and open-mouthed.
"Dieu! Madame!" she gasped. "I I certainly did not!"
"Well, I chanced to be passing through Melun, and I thought I would call upon you."
The girl stood in the doorway, apparently disinclined to invite her late mistress into the small flat which she and her mother, the widow of the local postmaster, occupied.
"I wrote to you, Madame, two months ago but you never replied!"
"I have never had any letter from you, Céline," Ena declared. "But may I not come in for a moment to have a chat with you? Ah! but perhaps you have visitors?"
"No, Madame," was her reply; "I am alone. My mother went to my aunt's, at Provins, this morning."
"Good! Then I may come in?"
"If Madame wishes," she said, still with some reluctance, and led the way to a small, rather sparsely-furnished salon, which overlooked the cobbled street below.
"I have been staying a few days at Marlotte, and am now on my way back to Paris," said her former mistress, seating herself in a chair. "Besides, I wanted particularly to see you, Céline, for several reasons. I feel somehow that well, that I have not treated you as I really ought to have done. I dismissed you abruptly after poor Mr. Martin's death. But I was so very upset I was not actually myself. I know I ought not to have done what I did. Please forgive me."
The dark-haired, good-looking young girl in well-cut black skirt and cotton blouse merely shrugged her well-shaped shoulders. She uttered no word. Indeed, she had not yet recovered from her surprise at the sudden appearance of her former mistress.
"I don't know what you must have thought of me, Céline," Ena added.
"I thought many things of Madame," the girl admitted.
"Naturally. You must have thought me most ungrateful, after all the services you had rendered me, often without reward," remarked the red-haired widow. "But I assure you that I am not ungrateful."
The girl only smiled. She recollected the manner in which she had been suddenly dismissed and sent out from the house at five minutes' notice and for no fault that she could discover.
She recollected how Madame had two friends, an old man named Martin, and a younger one named Bennett. Mr. Martin, who was a wealthy bachelor, living in Chiswick, had suddenly contracted typhoid and died. Madame, who had been most grief-stricken, received a visit from Bennett next day, and she had overheard the pair in conversation in the drawing-room. That conversation had been of a most curious character, but its true import had never occurred to her at the time. Next day her mistress had summarily dismissed her, giving her a month's wages, and requesting her to leave instantly. This she had done, and returned to her home in France.