CHAPTER XVII.

EXPLANATION AND APOLOGY

“Mr. Kimball says he’s very busy, madam. But he’ll see you for a few moments. Will you please come up to his sitting-room?” said the small boy in uniform.

Etta Wyndcliffe, wearing her daintiest little hat and her sable coat, stepped into the lift, and, piloted by the page, at last stood before a door upon which the lad rapped.

“Come in!” cried a gruff voice from within. The page opened the door, and next second Etta and her arch-enemy, Rupert Kimball, stood face to face.

The man--tall, burly, and clean-shaven, a typical American business man, upright and shrewd--removed his cigar in amazement, and, after staring at her for a second, exclaimed:

“Etta! And pray what the hell brings you here?”

“I came to meet you,” the woman faltered in a low voice, still standing upon the threshold.

“H’m! Thought it best to come to me, did you?” he growled, while his expression instantly altered, and there was a gleam of hatred in his sharp, dark eyes.

A well-dressed man of about fifty with iron-grey hair, his sunken eyes told of some deep sorrow, illness, or perhaps business failure.

“I don’t want to see you, woman!” he flared up, speaking with a forced American accent. “The very sight of you is hateful to me. Get out!” he added roughly.

“But, Rupert!” she cried piteously, closing the door behind her and advancing into the room. “Don’t send me away before you give me a chance to tell you--to tell you the truth”; and she put out her hands imploringly.

“The truth!” he laughed with sarcasm. “The truth from a woman like you!”

And he turned from her in disgust and walked across to the window.

“Don’t you remember the past? Don’t you ever think of----”

“I think of the hell’s witch that you are, and how you played me false!” he snapped between his teeth. “I tell you frankly that I’m here in England to bring you to justice.”

“But, Rupert, for God’s sake hear me!” she implored. “Before you take action against me, listen to what I have to say. I’ve rushed back from Switzerland to see you. Maudie Ashley wrote to me saying that you had left St. Louis and were on your way to London. I rang up the Carlton yesterday, and they told me you were here. I--I wanted to see you--to----”

“And I don’t want to see you. That’s the difference,” he snarled. “You came up here on false pretences--Mrs. Wilcox.”

“Because I feared that you would refuse to see me,” declared the unhappy woman with truth.

“I should certainly have refused. The past is all too horrible. Your face brings back to me all your foul plots and the evil worked against me. All my misfortunes I owe to your damnable cunning.”

“Rupert!” she said in a changed, intense voice. “I have come to you to try and atone for what I did. I know I was a swine to you. But I stand before you, and--and I humbly ask your forgiveness!”

Then before the man was aware of it she had sunk upon her knees before him, grasped his hand, and was kissing it fervently.

He tried to snatch his hand from her, but she held his wrist tightly with both hands.

“No, Rupert, no!” she cried frantically. “Forgive me, I implore you. Let us talk it all over.”

“There’s nothing to talk over,” he replied savagely. “You wrecked my life because I foolishly listened to your wicked scheming. You formed the plot out of your own evil brain; I listened to you, and did what you suggested. Then, when you had secured your own ends, you secretly gave me away for the reward, and left me to face disgrace and punishment. But now I’m free again, woman, I mean to at least be even with you! Forgive you! Never!” And he snatched his hand from her so roughly that she rolled to the floor at his feet.

“I got no reward!” she protested angrily. “It’s a lie.”

“Then that man who was behind your evil schemes took it. They told me all afterwards!”

“I know nothing about it, Rupert,” she said. “I admit that I have been your enemy. I now, however, want to stand as your friend--to help you to a new life.”

“Because you’re in mortal fear of me!” he laughed triumphantly. “You don’t think I’m a lovesick fool any longer? You surely don’t think that I believe a single word you say?”

“I can’t help that. What I say now, I mean.”

“Become very honest all of a sudden, it seems!” he sneered. “You look prosperous enough--more than you did six years ago. What are you doing for a living just now? That coat of yours must have cost a tidy few dollars.”

“I’m living honestly, at any rate,” was her sharp reply.

“For the first time in your life,” he laughed. “When I first met you, you were Snakey Toulmin, the decoy of Bud Taylor and his precious gang of sharpers working the Atlantic ferry. And an infernally smart little rogue you were. Those who made your acquaintance were always thousands of dollars the poorer on the trip. I was one of your pigeons.”

“That’s all of the past. Let’s wipe it out, Rupert.”

“H’m! You appear to think you can change your damned black soul as easily as you can change your frock,” he growled. “No, I have the past always with me. I had it for those years in a prison cell.”

“Forget it all,” urged the pretty but unhappy woman. “I know I’m utterly worthless, Rupert. But I’ve never had a single chance to be honest in my life till now. My father was a card-sharper, as you well know, and I was brought up from childhood to exercise my woman’s wiles upon men. I’m not wholly to blame.”

“You are wholly to blame for my ruin,” he answered. “You induced me to knock the bank-messenger on the head on that winter day in New York and steal his wallet. I very nearly committed murder at your instigation in order to provide you with a fine house and fine clothes, as I thought. But you in turn stole the money from me, gave me away to the police, and then escaped, leaving me to face prosecution and punishment. You didn’t think of me, Etta, did you? No, only of yourself and that swine who haunted you like a black shadow. I’ll hunt him out one day soon, never fear. I know he’s here in England, and then it will be my triumph when we meet,” he said savagely.

“My dear Rupert, I know all that you must feel, and how hostile and bitter you must be against me,” she said, assuming a softer attitude towards him. “I deserve it all. I don’t endeavor to excuse myself one iota for what I did. I only desire to atone for it all.”

“Atone!” exclaimed the man looking sternly into her face. “How?”

“By trying to help you, and perhaps to make you happy.”

“How can you help me? Got any money?” he asked.

“You can’t want money if you can afford to stay at the Carlton in London, and have a sitting-room here,” she ventured to remark.

“I’m doing some business up here,” he explained. “So I’ve had to have a sitting-room.”

“I hope it’s a profitable business.”

“Oh, it’s quite a square deal,” he said. “A bit of agency work for a New York wireless firm--component parts for amateurs’ sets. These English seem to have gone crazy on radio. It has taken America to show them the way.”

He smiled, and she instantly saw that his hostile attitude was slowly decreasing, though he naturally could not at once overlook her dastardly behavior in stealing from him those bundles of bank-notes and negotiable securities, which he had filched from the messenger whom he had knocked senseless at the street corner in Park Avenue.

“Yes,” she said. “The English are horribly slow to take up any innovation. Little old New York puts a polish on any new invention or labor-saving device before London can rub its eyes even to look at it. I hope you’ll do good business in radio, Rupert. And if I can be of any help, why, I’m right there at once.”

“Do you happen to know any radio firms?” he asked quickly.

“Well,” she replied, “I happen to know one of the B.B.C., and I daresay I could get you an introduction to several of the big retail houses, which might be of advantage to you.”

“Very well, Etta,” he said, “I’m open for business.”

“On one condition, Rupert,” she said, with a woman’s clever cunning. “That you make no inquiry as to my present position or mode of life. I live honestly, of that I assure you. And my reputation for honesty may serve you well in the near future. I’ll stir heaven and earth for you, in order to make atonement for my damnable behavior in the past, and to put you upon a proper and prosperous business footing in the future. Is that a bargain?”

For a few minutes he remained silent. Then he said: “You’re a clever little witch, Etta. You look prosperous, and you probably are. We swam on the same tide before, and if you can help me, then we’ll do so again--on the tide which must bring us both to fortune.”

“Ah, Rupert!” she cried wildly, looking into his eyes. “I knew that you would forgive me. All these years I’ve been filled with bitter remorse, and have shed many tears over--over you and how disgracefully I treated you”; and then, bowing her head over his hand, she burst into quick sobs.

“I--I’ll try and recover your good opinion of me,” she went on, her tears rolling down her cheeks. “I--I know I’m a worthless woman; a woman who has wrecked the life of a great, strong, self-willed man. But it was your overbearing attitude to the world that led me to it. I--I--was mad. I set out to allure you--to cheat you, to throw you into the melting-pot--and I succeeded. At first I was full of glee. I escaped to Valparaiso and then across to Australia. Afterwards I got back to London, and in the American papers I read the account of your trial and your condemnation. I prayed for you. I could not sleep at night for thinking of you in your prison cell, because I had treated you so, and it was all my fault, Rupert,” she cried, taking him by both shoulders and looking straight into his eyes. “I’m a woman. We women are mostly weird creatures. We can’t control ourselves. Sometimes we grow to hate those whom we really love, and sometimes we love those whom we hate the most. We are the weaker sex--and perhaps I am the weakest of them all.”

Rupert Kimball, the well-dressed American, whom none in England would dream to be a gaol-bird recently released from St. Louis convict prison, turned from the window slowly.

“I accept all you say, my dear girl,” he said hesitatingly. “But what I want to know is, how you are living so prosperously. That sable coat of yours intrigues me.”

“I do a little business in French model frocks and lingerie,” she said, with the first excuse which arose to her lying lips. “This coat isn’t mine. I only wear it as an advertisement.”

“Then you are on a commission basis?”

“Yes. We are both in business. So why not let us work together?”

“But you are very reticent regarding yourself, Etta,” he said.

“I have to be. After all, I don’t want my wretched past to be raked up, any more than you do, eh? So the least we say about each other the better. Let’s unite our forces instead of being enemies, and let’s make money. I’ll help you in your wireless business. I know I can.”

He walked back to her from the window.

“Now,” he said, suddenly halting in front of her, “are you playing the straight game, Etta? If you’re not, then, by God! I’ll send you to twenty years. You know what I mean--the proofs I have against you and your accursed hanger-on Belton, or Ashe, or whatever he now calls himself.”

“Oh! I haven’t seen him for years, my dear old bean,” laughed Etta. “He treated me rottenly, as all men of his low-down class treat women. When he saw the red light he turned tail and scooted. He left me in Valparaiso, and a jolly good job too. He was no good, anyway. He hadn’t the courage of a flea.”

“Exactly what I thought. But I believed he would have stuck to you,” said Kimball. “Tell me how you have fared while I’ve been all that time in the penitentiary”; and he stood before her, for the first time realizing that she looked not a year older than when he last saw her in their flat, before he went out on that snowy day with an iron bar as a walking-stick to waylay the unsuspecting messenger of the United States Allied Bank.

“Oh, I’ve managed to scrape along. I’ve formed a good many friendships with people with money, better-class people in London. Hence I’ve lots of influential friends, and will be able to help you in your new venture.”

“Not married yet, eh?”

“Married!” she laughed scornfully. “Take me for an idiot? No, I’ll never be a man’s domestic slave. Let other women have the worry of a home and children, but not for me.”

Then, seizing her opportunity, she held out her hand to him, asking: “Won’t you really forgive me, Rupert? I promise that in future I will stand your friend.”

“Do you actually mean that?” he demanded fiercely. “Can I trust you?”

The woman’s face relaxed into one of those sweet smiles that men had found, to their cost, so alluring.

“Yes, Rupert. You may now,” she said, and made a motion as though to put her lips to his.

“No. I don’t want your kisses, thank you,” he said in a hard, abrupt tone. “I’d rather be without them.” But, taking her hand, he added in a quieter tone: “We’ll be friends, as you wish it. But you’ll have to prove your friendship towards me before I wholly forgive you for the ruin you’ve brought upon me. You told me you’ve just come back from Switzerland. Do you live there nowadays?”

“Sometimes,” she answered. “Sometimes I live at a cottage on the Thames. But I’m always a wanderer--just as I’ve ever been.”

“And you call yourself Wilcox--a widow, I presume?” And he grinned.

“Yes,” she laughed, inwardly wondering what he would think and how he would act if he knew her true position in London Society, at the same time fearing lest he should discover her rank and title. She saw that at all hazards he must not know that she, the Snakey Toulmin of the cross-Atlantic gang, had married an English peer.

Nevertheless, much elated at the successful manner in which she had appeased the man who had come to England to expose and prosecute her, she took his hand, and in gratitude, kissed it again and again.

Yet it was only to gain time, she knew. His enemy, Albert Ashe, had sworn to be even with him if he ever dared to put foot on British soil.

She knew that the threats of the man whose strange career had included masquerading as her butler in West Halkin Street, were never idle ones.

So an hour later she went out to the railway station and sent him a telegram with two words only: “Forgiven--Etta.”