The Yellow Dove/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
RIZZIO TAKES CHARGE
RIZZIO was to arrive that night. Meanwhile, with the papers hidden about her and bright fires burning in all the living-rooms of the house in which they could in a moment be destroyed, Doris thought herself well placed upon the defensive. Cyril’s note had cheered her, and after removing the dust of her journey she went down into the library, where she joined the other members of the house party assembled. Black seemed to be the prevailing color, for, in addition to the weeds of Lady Constance, there was Wilfred Hammersley, Cyril’s uncle, who had lost an only son at La Bassée, and the Heatherington girls, who had lost a brother.
“Ugh!” Lady Betty was saying. “I came to Scotland to try and forget, but the war follows me. Dick Byfield a traitor! Who next? Let’s not even speak of it. Come, I’ve ordered the brake, Doris. We’re going out for a spin. You and I and Angeline. Constance of course has a headache, and Jack will be having another for sympathy.”
The air outside was life-giving, and when she returned later Doris felt that her brain had been swept clear of its cobwebs of perplexity. She found Wilson standing in her room gazing with a puzzled expression at the tray of her unpacked box, the contents of which were in a state of confusion.
“It’s strange, Miss Mather. Someone has been at your things while I was down in the servants’ hall at luncheon.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Miss Mather, sure. Quite positive, in fact. Those waists were lying flat when I left.”
“The window wasn’t open?” asked Doris with a glance around.
“Oh, no, Miss.” She looked about and lowered her voice. “It’s somebody inside.”
“Curious,” said Doris thoughtfully. “Nothing has been taken? Is the jewel box there?”
Together they examined the things and found that nothing was missing.
“Say nothing about this, Wilson,” said Doris thoughtfully. “Unless something is taken, I shouldn’t care to disturb Lady Heathcote.”
“It can’t be” Wilson paused, her voice hushed.
“The papers are safe, Wilson—as long as I am safe,” replied the girl, and told the maid of her place of concealment.
Wilson looked dubious. “I wish you’d give them to me, Miss Mather.”
But the girl shook her head—she was thoroughly alive now to the perils which hung about her, here within the very doors of Lady Heathcote’s house, but she had determined that if she could not find it possible to keep the papers until Cyril appeared she would destroy them. She was not frightened, for however clumsy John Rizzio’s agents might be she was in no danger from himself. Whatever the interests which made the possession of the yellow packet so vital, she knew the man well enough to be sure that if there came an issue between them, he would act with her as he had always acted—the part of a gentleman.
Instead of apprehension at his approaching visit she now felt only interest and a kind of suppressed exhilaration as at the prospect of a flight in a new plane or the trying out of a green hunter—excitement like that which preceded all her sportive ventures.
So that when she met John Rizzio in the drawing-room after dinner—he had not been able to manage a more opportune train—she gave him a warm hand-clasp of greeting and a smile which caused him some surprise and not a little regret—surprise that she was carrying off a difficult situation with consummate ease; regret that such self-possession and artistry were not to be added to the ornaments of his house in Berkeley Square. Perhaps still
“How agreeable,” she was saying charmingly. “The great man actually condescends to come to the land of Calvin, oatcake and sulphur, when there are truffles and old Madeira still to be had in London.”
He laughed, his dark eyes appraising her slender blond beauty eagerly.
“I have no quarrel with Calvin. Oatcake—by all means. Sulphur—er—I suppose the sulphur will come in time.”
“Not if you’re polite,” said the girl coolly, “and tell me what brought you so unexpectedly to Scotland.”
They were standing near the fire apart from the others, Doris with one slipper on the fender, which she was regarding approvingly, her head upon one side. He admired her careless tone. She was quite wonderful.
“Perhaps you will not believe me,” he said suavely, “if I were to tell you that I came to see you.”
“Me? I am flattered. I thought that great collectors were always deterred by fear of the spurious.”
She was carrying the war into his camp. He met the issue squarely. “They are only deterred by the spurious. Therefore I am here. The inference is obvious.”
He had always showed the slightest trace of his foreign accent. It went admirably with his shrug and mobile fingers.
“I am genuine in this,” she laughed, “that however much you know about pictures, about objets de vertu—women must remain for you and for all other men an unknown quantity.”
“Not when they are both,” he said gallantly.
“There are good and bad pictures—objects of virtue, excessively ugly”
“Objects of virtue are usually excessively ugly, especially if they are women.”
“Thanks,” said Doris. “You’re most flattering. There’s something in the air of Scotland that makes one tell the truth.”
He laughed. “If Scotland is as merciless as that, I shall be off in the morning. I could imagine no worse purgatory than a place in which one always tells the truth. Lying is one of the highest arts of a mature civilization. I haven’t the slightest notion, nor have you, that either of us means a thing he says. We were all born to deceive—some of us do it in one way, some in another, but we all do it to the very best of our bent. For instance, you said a while ago that it was agreeable for you to see me. But I’m quite sure, you know, that it wasn’t.”
“It isn’t agreeable if you’re going to be horrid and cynical. Why shouldn’t I be glad to see you? You always stimulate my intelligence even if you don’t flatter it.”
The others had moved on to the library and they had the room to themselves.
“I don’t see how I could flatter it more than I have already done,” he said in a low tone of voice.
She raised her chin a trifle and peered at him slantwise.
“Do you think that you flatter it now when you recall the mistakes of my past?”
He searched her face keenly but her blue eyes met his gaze steadily. She was smiling up at him guilelessly.
“A mistake—of course,” he said slowly. “You are young enough to afford to make mistakes. But I am old enough to wish that it hadn’t been made at my expense.”
“You still care?” she asked.
“I do.”
“If I hadn’t thought that you wanted me for your collection”
“You are cruel”
“No. I know. You wanted me for your portrait harem, and I should have been frightfully jealous of the Coningsby Venus. I couldn’t compete with that sort of thing, you know.”
He smiled at her admiringly and went on in a low tone.
“You know why I wanted you then, and why I want you now—because you’re the cleverest woman in England, and the most courageous.”
“It took courage to refuse the hand of John Rizzio.”
“It takes more courage in John Rizzio to hear those words from the lips that refused him.”
She laid her hand gently on his arm.
“I am sorry,” she said.
He bent his head and kissed her fingers.
“It is not the Coningsby Venus who is essential to my happiness,” he whispered. “It’s the Doris Diana.”
She laughed.
“That’s the disillusionment of possession.”
“No. The only disillusionments of life are its failures—I got the Venus by infinite patience. The Diana” He paused and drew in his breath.
“You think that you may get the Diana by patience also?” she asked quietly.
He looked at her with a gaze that seemed to pierce all her subterfuges.
“I waited for the Coningsby Venus,” he said in measured tones, “until the man who possessed her—was dead.”
She started, and the color left her cheeks.
“You mean—Cyril?” she stammered.
“I mean,” he replied urbanely, “precisely nothing—except that I will never give you up.”
She recovered her poise with an effort, and when she replied she was smiling gayly.
“I’m not at all sure that I want to be given up,” she said, with a laugh that was meant to relax the tension. “You are, after all, one of the best friends I have.”
“I hope that nothing may ever happen to make you think otherwise.”
Was this a threat? She glanced at him keenly as she quoted:
“‘Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love.’ May I trust you?”
“Try me.”
“No, I might put you to a test that would be difficult.”
“Try me.”
“Very well, I will. Go back to London in the morning.”
He looked at her and laughed.
“Why?”
“It will be easier for you to be patient there than here”
“When Hammersley comes?”
“Oh,” she said quickly, “then he is coming?”
“I don’t know why he shouldn’t,” he said slowly.
There was a pause.
“Shall you go?”
“To London? I’ll think about it.”
“There! You see? You refuse my first request.”
“I would like to know your purpose.”
“I think you know it already,” she put in quickly. “You want something that I cannot give you—something that is not mine to give.”
She had come out into the open defiantly and he met her challenge with a laugh.
“Because it is Hammersley’s?” he said. “You think so and Hammersley thinks so, and possession is nine points of the law. But I will contest.”
“Your visit is vain. Go back to London, my friend.”
“I find it pleasanter here.”
“Then you refuse?”
“I must.”
“Then it is war between us.”
“If you will have it so,” he said, with an inclination of the head. Doris put her foot on the fender and leaned with her hands upon her knee for a moment as though in deep thought. Then she turned toward the door.
“Come,” she said coolly. “Let us join the others.”
There was a relief in the thought that at least they had come to an understanding and that the matter of the possession of the papers had at last become a private contest between them. She had brought the interview to an end not because she was afraid to continue it but because she wanted to think of a plan to disarm him. She felt that she was moving in the dark but she trusted to her delicate woman’s sense of touch to stumble upon some chance, some slip of his tongue, which might lead her into the light.
In the drawing-room by common consent all talk of war had been abolished. She sat in at a hand of auction, but playing badly, she was gladly relinquished by her partner at the end of the rubber. John Rizzio, who disliked the game, had gone off for a quiet smoke, but when she got up from the card table he was there waiting for her.
“Cyril shall know of this,” laughed Betty, as they went toward the door. “They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder—of the other fellow.”
Doris led the way to the gun-room, a place used by Algie Heathcote for his sporting implements and trophies of the chase. It was comfortably furnished in leather and oak and a cheerful fire was burning in the grate. Doris sank into the davenport and motioned to her companion to the place at her side. She was thoroughly alive to her danger, but the sportswoman in her made her keen to put it to the test.
“We are quite alone here,” she said coolly. “The others are not even within call. Now what do you want of me?”
Her audacity rather startled him, but he folded his arms and leaned back smiling.
“The papers of Riz-la-Croix, of course,” he said amiably.
“And how do you know they’re in my possession?”
He shrugged.
“Because they couldn’t possibly be anywhere else.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have exhausted every other resource.”
“You’re frank at least—including the burglary at Ashwater Park and the messing in my box upstairs?”
“And since you must know the full truth,” he continued politely, “the careful search of your room in your absence this evening—including the removal of the rugs and bedding. Oh, don’t be disturbed, I beg of you,” as she made a movement of alarm, “they have all been replaced with a nice care for detail.”
“And if I told Lady Heathcote of this”
“I am quite sure that the best interests of all,” he said politely, “are conserved—by silence.”
She meditated a moment, her gaze on the coals.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “you’re clever—more than ordinarily clever. I can’t understand how I could ever have refused you. But don’t you think your methods have been a little—er—unchivalrous?”
“The importance of my objects admitted of no delay. I hope you have not been inconvenienced”
“Not in the least,” calmly. “My recollection of your many civilities merely made me think that your agents were overzealous.”
“I am sorry,” he said genuinely. “It could not be helped. You and I are merely pawns in a game greater than anything the world has ever known.”
“I didn’t want you to apologize. I merely thought in order to avoid comment that you might have come to me yourself.”
“I thought I might save you the unpleasantness of a controversy which can only have one end.”
“You mean—that you will win.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“You will give me the papers—here, tonight.”
“And if I told you that I had destroyed them?”
“That would be manifestly untrue, since at the present moment in the position of your body their outline is quite clearly defined on the inside of your right knee.”
Doris put both slippers upon the ground, her feet together, her face flushing warmly.
“I hope you will forgive my frankness,” she heard him say gently, “but the method of your challenge—is—unusual.”
She clasped her hands around her knees and frowned into the fire.
“You mistake, I think, my friend. It is not a challenge. It is merely a method of defense—the safest, I am sure, against John Rizzio.”
He bowed low with deep ceremony.
“Of course, I am helpless.” And then, “I can only rely on your good sense and”—here his voice sunk a note lower—“and on your loyalty to the cause of England.”
This was the opening that she had been waiting for. She thrust quickly.
“And if the cause is England’s why didn’t Scotland Yard come to Ashwater Park?”
“Dunsinane to Burnam Wood!” he shrugged. “They would have made asinine mistakes as they always do—the chief of which would have been that of denouncing Miss Doris Mather as an agent of England’s enemies.”
The girl tapped her toe reflectively upon the rug.
“I won’t attempt subterfuge. Of course, I know the contents of that packet.”
“You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t.”
“And how it was passed from Captain Byfield to Cyril Hammersley.” This was a random shot but it hit the mark. Rizzio’s eyes dilated slightly, but she saw them.
“Byfield! Impossible.”
“Not at all. Cyril told me,” she lied.
“He told you?” he paused aghast, for now she was laughing at him.
“No—but you have.”
His brow tangled and he folded his arms again.
“Of course, you know the importance to Cyril and Captain Byfield of keeping such a matter secret.”
He had not heard! He did not know! She remembered that the subject of the dreadful news from London had not been reopened and Jack Sandys’ sources of information were probably semiofficial.
She controlled her voice with an effort.
“I would hardly be the one to mention names under the circumstances—since my own fortunes seem to be involved in the matter, but as for Captain Byfield, I’m afraid that further secrecy will hardly help him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Merely that he was arrested late yesterday afternoon as he was leaving the War Office.”
She had not counted on the effect she created. She knew that her last thrust had put him more carefully on guard, but he could not hide the sudden intake of breath and the quick searching glance his dark eyes shot at her.
“What is your source of information?”
“Jack Sandys. He came here directly from Downing Street.”
She saw Rizzio’s lips meet under his mustache in a thin line.
“So. It has come sooner—than I expected.”
He got up and paced the floor, his fingers twitching behind his back. She said nothing, waiting for him to rejoin her. When he did, it was with a serious expression.
“I suppose you know what this means to—to Hammersley,” he said in a low voice.
Doris sat without moving, but her brain was busy weighing Rizzio.
“No,” she replied calmly, “I don’t. Won’t you tell me?”
He leaned forward toward her along the back of their seat, his look and voice concentrated upon her.
“Is it possible,” he continued, “that you haven’t realized by this time exactly what Cyril Hammersley is?”
“No,” she said staunchly. “I will believe nothing of him unless he tells it to me himself.”
He waited a moment, watching her, and fancied that he saw her lips tremble slightly. Her loyalty to Hammersley inflamed him. He followed up his advantage quickly.
“There are reasons why I should dislike to give you pain, greater reasons why I should be generous with a successful rival, and I have done what I can to take this matter out of your hands. There is still time. Will you give me that packet?”
She shook her head.
“Then I must speak,” he went on. “My duty demands it, whatever happens to him—whatever happens to you. Don’t make me go to extremes with you. I cannot bear to do it. Hammersley is a German spy. Those papers were to be forwarded to Germany. You are saving them for him, that he may betray England.”
“That is not true,” she said chokingly. “I do not believe it.”
“You must. Isn’t there proof enough in what you have read?”
“There is some mistake.”
“No. There can’t be. Your sentiments are blinding you.”
“One moment, please.” Doris had risen and faced him across the hearth, a new fire of resolution in her eyes. To Rizzio, the lover of beauty, she was a mockery of lost happiness. She was Diana, not the huntress but the hunted.
“You have told me what Cyril Hammersley is. Now if you please I would like to know what you are!”
He paused a moment and then with a step toward her said gently:
“I think my interests should be fairly obvious. I am acting for the English Government.”
“I have only your word for it. Have you any papers that would prove it—in your card-case, for instance?”
He started back, his fingers instinctively reaching upward. Then he shrugged and laughed.
“You are surely the most amazing person. Un
"‘Not that,' he whispered hoarsely, 'for God's sake not that.’"
“But not a Briton. Neither am I. We meet on equal terms.”
“Then you refuse me—definitely, finally.”
“Yes, I must.”
“I beg that you will consider carefully the alternatives. If you give me the papers—silence on my part—safety for Hammersley. If you refuse to give them up” he paused.
“Then what will you do?” she defied him.
“It would be the most terrible moment of my life—but I will denounce him—here tonight—tomorrow in London. Those papers must not reach Germany—even if I have to denounce you, too.”
“And if I promise that the papers will not reach Germany?”
He hesitated a moment.
“There is too much at stake. I can’t take the risk. No woman can be trusted”
“Not even the woman John Rizzio would have made his wife?”
He moved his shoulders expressively. Her youth and cleverness were bewildering him.
“No, that will not do,” he said in desperation. “You must give me the papers.”
“I will not. You shall have to take them from me.”
He leaned toward her along the mantel aware of her dominant loveliness.
“You would not drive me to that!”
“Yes. It is a challenge. I offer it. I will fight you, and I am strong. I have a voice and I will raise an outcry. They will come and I will tell them. Then you can denounce me? Will you dare?”
He came toward her while she fled around the davenport, eluding him with ease. She was swifter of foot than he. He stopped a moment near the gun-rack to plead. She kept the huge oak lounge between them and listened by the fire. Something she saw in his eyes decided her, for as he came forward to leap over the davenport she threw something yellow toward him.
He gave a gasp of relief, picked the object up and made a cry of dismay.
“The cover! I must have the papers,” he cried, coming forward again.
By this time the girl was standing upright, a poker in one hand, the thin cigarette papers cramped in the fingers of the other, over the open fire.
Rizzio paused in the very act of leaping.
“Not that,” he whispered hoarsely, “for God’s sake—not that.”
“Stay where you are, then,” said the girl in a low resolute tone.
Rizzio straightened. Doris still bent over the fire.
“Give it to me,” he said again.
“No. England’s secrets shall be safe.”
“Don’t you understand?” he whispered wildly. “I’ve got to prove that they are.”
“I can prove that as well as you”
“But you won’t. Hammersley is”
He paused and both of them straightened, listening. Outside in the hall there was a commotion and a familiar voice as the Honorable Cyril, his face and fur coat spattered with mud, came into the room.