CHAPTER I.

ON THE RACK

“Well! You! Here again! What do you want now, eh?”

The speaker, Sir Michael Evenden, crossed the pretty room which overlooked Lake Geneva, to confront his visitor, who just had been announced by a manservant as Dr. Laidlaw.

There was a great contrast between the two men as the latter entered. The baronet was tall, with an athletic, willowy frame, of classic profile, and his slightly upturned grey mustache and well-brushed grey hair added distinction to an already striking personality.

The man whom he confronted was a little, meager, gimlet-eyed fellow, who seemed meanness personified. His sandy hair and foxy features were as unpleasant as the grating tones of his voice.

“Only the usual, Sir Michael,” he replied after a short pause. At first, as the baronet spoke, an evil glint had shown in the little ferret eyes, but this was quickly replaced by a smile as he made his reply. The baronet thought he detected contempt in the smile, and frowned his intense exasperation. His right hand clenched and crumpled a newspaper he had been reading, as he determinedly spoke again.

“I will not be bled like this continually,” he said, as he took a step nearer to his unwelcome guest. “You had a thousand pounds three months ago, and you said then that you would not make another call upon me for at least twelve months. Only yesterday I was turning up our account. Do you realize that in the last seven years you’ve had over eighteen thousand pounds out of me--you--blackmailer!”

“Is it really worth while to rake all this up again, Sir Michael?” the little man asked with a provocative expression meant to convey extreme indulgence.

The baronet lost control of himself as he shouted:

“I refuse to give you another farthing.” Then, as the little man was about to speak, the baronet continued: “If you are not out of this villa and off the premises in two minutes I’ll have the local gendarme arrest you for blackmail. They’re giving men like you life now, you know.”

Dr. Laidlaw deliberately cleared his throat. Then, with an effort, he raised his voice to the level at which Sir Michael had been shouting.

“Right you are, my noble swindler. You want your servants to hear all my pedigree. Now let them hear yours. How did Sir Michael Evenden repair the family fortunes? Very simply. He----”

“Stop! Stop! You wretched little cur,” interrupted Sir Michael. “Do you realize what you are doing?”

It was pathetically evident that the little doctor had won. The baronet almost gasped as he put out a hand, then stepped--almost staggered--back into a chair, wiping the beads of perspiration from his brow with a large yellow silk handkerchief.

“It is my duty to warn you, Sir Michael, that you must not give way to these outbreaks of passion--your heart simply won’t stand them. One of these days----”

The little doctor moved forward, towards the baronet’s chair, but Sir Michael stopped him with a gesture and, interrupting him with rather a whimsical smile, said:

“I shall have a fatal attack, eh?--and then your source of income will have gone.”

“Sir Michael, why can’t you look at these things reasonably?”

Dr. Laidlaw, unasked, seated himself opposite the baronet, and his accents took on a tone of sweet reasonableness. “You know in all these years, on your own showing, what I have had? Eighteen thousand, you say. Well, what if I have?--I have not troubled to keep count. But if I have, look at the hundreds of thousands that you have had in the interim! You know it is an exceedingly hard thing for a poor country practitioner to make ends meet, unless, of course, he follows your example and----”

“We need not discuss that,” interrupted Sir Michael. “What is it you want to-day? Tell me--and then get out.”

“Well, Sir Michael, I must have a thousand, if you don’t mind. I----”

“But I do mind!” stormed the baronet. “I do mind very much. A thousand three months ago and another thousand to-day. You’ll be coming weekly next.”

“Well, I’m very sorry, Sir Michael,” returned the little man. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been having a small flutter on the Stock Exchange--and gone down.”

“Now, look here!”--Sir Michael, somewhat recovered, sat upright in his chair. “I want some sort of a guarantee that there is to be a limit to your encroachments. How do I know but that you will be back again in no time?”

“Well, Sir Michael--you have my word,” replied Dr. Laidlaw innocently enough.

“Your word!” sneered the baronet. “Now--seriously--if I give you a check to-day it must be the last for at least a year. Understand this. I have felt sometimes like chancing everything and having you prosecuted. Judges are very sympathetic towards men in my position who are being steadily bled until----”

“Judges are not always sympathetic,” interrupted Laidlaw, “towards baronets who suddenly emerge from being poor men of title into rich people. What would your family think--nay, what would every decent man and woman in England think--when they read of your perfidy towards the unfortunate people whom you got the Bolsheviks to send to their deaths? What----”

“Oh, for the love of heaven, stop!” almost pleaded Sir Michael; and it was pitiful to see the distress in his face. “You know I have always resented that interpretation----”

“Then why not have it tried in open court?” interrupted Dr. Laidlaw.

“Here!” The baronet rose and crossed to a small bureau, took from a drawer a check-book, and wrote a check. “Take this--your thousand--and go!”

“Good-day, Sir Michael, and thank you,” said the little man, but the baronet made no reply. He waited until the door closed behind the doctor, then he buried his face in his hands and remained silent.

Minutes went by, and still Sir Michael sat there. The door opened and a woman entered. She looked at the silent figure at the bureau, gave a little gasp, then hurried across the room.

“Mike, dear, Mike,” she said anxiously, and touched her husband lightly on the shoulder.

The baronet turned a strained face up to her, and she bent down and kissed him.

“Whatever is the matter, dear?” she asked. “Have you had one of those awful attacks, again?”

“Only a very slight one, Margaret?” he replied, patting her hand gently. “I’m all right again, now.”

“Dear, you look terrible! When is your appointment with Professor Gaspari?” Lady Evenden laid her cool hand on her husband’s brow.

“I am driving over to Lausanne to-morrow,” Sir Michael replied. “But I don’t want you to worry so much, Margaret. Gaspari is a very clever chap, by all accounts, and I have little doubt but that he’ll be able to fix me up all right.”

“Well, in the meantime, do take a rest,” she urged him. “Leave business or anything that distresses you. Will you?”

“Yes, yes,” he assured her. Then he rose and kissed her tenderly. “I just want to glance through an account of something in the paper, dear; then I’ll join you in the garden.”

“Do,” she smiled. “By the way, Frank is coming to-morrow, Mike--he’s just wired.”

“Splendid,” exclaimed Sir Michael. “Great news! The rest here will do him good.”

Lady Evenden smiled her acquiescence and left the room by the French windows. Sir Michael watched her progress through the beautiful rose-garden down the steps to the lawns, which, tier by tier, dropped down to the very shores of the lake, where the boathouses were. Sir Michael did not resume his perusal of the newspaper at once. But, with a quiet smile on his face, he watched his wife until she was joined by her present companion, a pretty girl, Jill Kilby, near the boathouses.

Lady Evenden was the baronet’s second wife, and their union was ideally happy. Each had one son. By his first marriage the baronet had a son--Jack--and by her first marriage his wife, Margaret, had a son--Frank Gough.

Jack, of course, was the heir; but, the baronet felt, sometimes, that it was difficult to tell which of the lads he liked best. Jack was a navigating lieutenant in the Navy; Frank was a law student, reading for the bar. Indeed his projected visit to the lakeside villa was to enable him to devote, in quietude, time to preparation for his final examinations.

The Evenden family was an exceedingly united and happy one. Only once had the two boys, Jack and Frank, met in any sense as rivals, and that was all forgotten now. Even at the time no quarrel had arisen, though the baronet and his wife, watching events, with at first amused, and later some alarmed, interest, never had found it necessary to intervene. The facts were that three years ago Lady Evenden had employed as companion a very pretty girl called Brenda Trenchard.

Jack and Frank had promptly fallen in love with her. Their parents, when attention was called to it, at first, looked on and laughed.

Later, Frank, after playing with Brenda’s affections for a while, retired in favor of Jack. Nothing came of the affair at the time; and Jack, feeling his interests becoming too diversified, threw himself more deeply into his naval duties and--as he imagined--put Brenda forever from his mind, declaring himself to be a confirmed bachelor.

This little affair had not disturbed the great friendship of the two young men; but, as Lady Evenden met Jill Kilby, the incident recurred to her for a second, with inward amusement. Jill was an exceedingly pretty girl, rather diminutive, but with pretty ways and wonderfully expressive eyes. Lady Evenden knew that her son Frank, at any rate, was attracted very deeply to Jill; and, as she met her by the lake, she wondered what her attitude would have to be if the affair developed more seriously.

“Frank is coming to-morrow,” she announced, taking the girl by surprise.

The slightest suggestion of a frown crossed Jill’s face; but, it was quickly followed by a bright smile as she replied:

“Oh, really! Such a nice time to come, isn’t it, with all the roses out, and the lake banks so pretty?”

“Yes,” Lady Evenden rejoined. “But I think his holiday will be largely taken up with his studies.”

“Will you come out in the long canoe, your ladyship?” asked Jill. “I want to show you a perfectly sweet family of squirrels that have taken possession of the big pine tree, just beyond the point.”

Lady Evenden glanced at her watch.

“Not just now, my dear,” she replied. “I want to do something--and I expect Sir Michael out in a few minutes.”

With a little nod she left the girl. Again glancing at her watch, she cut across the lawn and entered a shrubbery. Then, with one glance over her shoulder, she hurried along a narrow walk until she came to an arbor set back from the path. The arbor was open in the front, disclosing a rustic seat all around.

From this seat arose the mean little figure of Dr. Laidlaw. Lady Evenden, her beautiful features dark and angry, stepped up to him. As a matter of fact, she towered above him, almost as much as her husband did.

“What on earth do you want with me here?” she asked. “Surely you know how stupidly dangerous this is.”

“Yes, but it is necessary, Lady Evenden,” replied the little man. “I want to see you----”

“You won’t get any money out of me to-day, Dr. Laidlaw,” interrupted Margaret Evenden.

“I don’t want any--to-day,” replied the little doctor. “I want to have a long talk with you when you get back to London, Lady Evenden. There are one or two things that will have to be put in order. Do you realize that Sir Michael----”

“Hush--there’s someone coming. Go,” she ordered in alarm, as she heard the crackling of twigs on the path behind.

“See you in London--quickly as possible,” the doctor whispered, and ran on tiptoe along the path to the main road. He was just in time; for, as Lady Evenden turned to retrace her steps, she came upon her husband at the first turn in the path.

“What on earth are you doing here, Margaret?” he asked in some amusement. “Got an assignation?”

She laughed merrily as she replied: “Yes, with a family of squirrels that Jill has found somewhere in one of these trees--but I can’t find them.”

“Oh! Suppose we try to find them together,” laughed Sir Michael. “I saw you turn into the shrubbery as I came down the garden.”

They spent a happy hour before dinner in the vain quest of squirrels. All the time Margaret Evenden felt her heart still beating irregularly as she thought of the narrow escape she had had. What if her husband knew that it was unavoidable that she must meet the little blackmailing doctor, from time to time? What could he wish to say to her so urgently that he took the unwarrantable risk of seeking a clandestine interview in the very grounds of her husband’s villa?

However, Lady Evenden betrayed in her manner nothing of the cares that burdened her. At dinner she was beautiful and scintillating as ever, presiding so ably at her end of the long table.

There were several guests--friends staying in the vicinity, and a Swiss professor of geology.

Only occasionally, Jill Kilby, who was keenly observant, saw a shadow flit across the lovely face of her mistress. Jill had long believed that some dark shadow rested in the background of Lady Evenden’s life. Occasionally she would have a faraway look in her eyes; and sometimes, as she took her letters, Jill thought she had seen positive terror there.

Then, again, Jill had a great friend, Dr. Wilfred Barlow, a young surgeon in London to whom she just had become secretly engaged. The engagement had to be secret for the reason that Lady Evenden, who only had met him once, and had seemed quite charmed at the time, had taken a curious and inexplicable attitude towards him, afterwards. She would not hear his name mentioned, and forbade Jill to have anything to do with him, or, alternatively, to leave her service.

On all these things Jill pondered as she watched her mistress--watched the shadows occasionally descend upon her beautiful face, like threatening thunder-clouds obscuring the sun for a few minutes and then passing and leaving the sky again blue, the sun still bright.

Quite early the next morning, after he had attended to his correspondence and had eaten a light breakfast, the baronet entered his Rolls Royce car and drove over to Lausanne, where he soon was closeted with the great Professor Gaspari, the world-famous heart specialist.

Dr. Gaspari sat at a table. He wore the long white linen smock that nearly all continental doctors affect. His keen eyes twinkled behind strongly magnifying spectacles; his right hand stroked his full brown beard.

Soon, he had completed his examination, and he asked two or three questions.

“Would you like an attendant to assist you?” he asked, as Sir Michael began to put on his coat and vest, again.

“No--no! that’s all right, thanks,” Sir Michael answered, anxiously watching the sensitive face of the great man, which, however, betrayed nothing.

Not until the baronet had finished dressing and had reseated himself at the table did the specialist speak.

“Be extremely careful,” he began in French. “My régime, which you must follow, will do all that I can for you. Carry it out very carefully--very strictly. But I beg of you to put your affairs in order, my dear friend. You may live for another fifteen or twenty years. But I regret most deeply to tell you that you may collapse in as many hours.”

As he listened, Sir Michael’s face turned a shade paler, and the muscles of his right hand twitched. But he just bowed his head slightly, as if acknowledging a decree of fate that he was powerless to oppose. The great specialist saw the effect of the blow he had delivered--and admired the grit of the man who had received it. As he saw Sir Michael to his car, the specialist shook his hand warmly. Sir Michael entered his car, dropped his head back wearily upon the cushions, and closed his eyes.

On his arrival at the villa he was met by Lady Evenden. She was entertaining a party of friends, to meet Frank on his arrival, later in the day, but she left them a moment to learn from her husband the news.

He smiled bravely as he kissed her lightly.

“I’ll tell you all about it later, dear,” he said. “It’s all right.”

Reassured, she rejoined her friends, and Sir Michael went to his study alone, where he spent three hours reading papers, writing notes, and burning others.

At dinner that night all was gay--none gayer than the doomed man. Margaret Evenden thought how well he looked, and was glad. She could brave anything else so long as he remained, she thought. Frank had managed to get himself a place next to Jill Kilby, and the baronet, despite his inward misery, could not but be a little amused as he watched what he believed were Frank’s advances rebuffed.

Frank was a tall, clear-eyed young man, handsome in a slightly domineering way. He had all the presence of his mother, but she charmed to domineer--Frank domineered to charm.

Before retiring, Sir Michael called his wife into his dressing room.

“Now, my darling,” he said. “I know you won’t make it any harder for me, will you? I’m going to tell you exactly what Gaspari said.”

“Oh, my dear! my dear!” she exclaimed, instantly divining the worst, and flew to her husband, throwing her arms about his neck--passionately, but in some strange way protectingly also--as if she would hold him and protect him from anything that would tear him from her--even death itself.

“Margaret, my dear,” Sir Michael softly continued, “don’t--don’t distress yourself. It might be worse. The old chap said I might live twenty years if I follow his treatment. But--but--you see, my dear----” The baronet found it impossible to put into cold words the remainder of the tidings.

“You mean that it might--any--time?” she asked fearfully.

“H’m----” Sir Michael slowly inclined his head, and for a few moments both remained locked in each other’s arms, their emotion too strong for tears or words. They just cowered there, under the wing of the angel of death.

At last Sir Michael spoke.

“My darling,” he said. “It is necessary to talk of things--of certain things that must, yes, must be discussed. There is the question of my will----”

“Oh, in heaven’s mercy, don’t,” cried Lady Evenden. “Don’t! How can I bear to hear of wills. What is money, or property, or anything, to me if you are gone? You mustn’t go, Mike. Let us try another doctor. Oh, Mike! Mike! I can’t bear it! If you go, I’ll come, too! Oh, Mike! my Mike!”

Her distress was terrible to witness, and for a few more minutes Sir Michael simply soothed her as best he could; then he managed to get her to listen as he outlined what his views were about certain things that would happen in the event of his early death. John, his son, would be the heir, of course; but, adequate settlements would be made for her; and something--he did not quite know yet--something would be arranged out of the estate to give Frank a good income.

Margaret Evenden listened in abject misery. Her devotion to her husband was quite unfeigned and would rise superior to anything else in her life. Anything that he thought right would be right, and she said so. Three hours elapsed before they parted. But for neither of them was there peaceful sleep that night. Each thought of the horrible shadow that had descended upon their lives, and each thought in terms of its effect upon the other.

The next day, a new and unpleasant matter cropped up. Sir Michael came down to his library to find that the London papers were embarking upon a terrific campaign against Soviet oil. Anything might happen. If the campaign was wholly successful he would be nearly a ruined man.

He decided at once, without saying anything to his wife, or to anyone else, about this new trouble, to get to London as quickly as possible. So, he merely told Lady Evenden that he felt he would like to be back at Evenden Priory, his family seat near Norwich; and, though a little surprised at the sudden change, Lady Evenden made arrangements to travel in two days.

Meanwhile Frank Gough had been meeting with quite unforseen resistence in his suit for Jill’s hand. She told him plainly that she did not care for him--that she did care for some one else. Frank was furious. He thought once of getting his mother to intercede and then changed his mind; for he was not at all sure what his mother would think of the affair. On the journey home, which he made with them at his stepfather’s request, he spent a good deal of time with Jill--but with no better success. Desperate, as the journey neared its end, Frank Gough conceived the most cattish thing of his career.

On the train Jill occupied a single compartment; and, in the night, Frank crept along the corridor to her compartment, knocked peremptorily, and, when she asked what was wanted, replied in a gruff voice that he wished to see her passport. After a little delay she opened her door--only to find the alleged passport officer none other than her importunate lover.

With a gasp of astonishment, the girl moved towards the alarm signal. But, Frank rushed in, caught her in his arms, partially closed the door with his foot, and passionately declared his love for her, though her composure did not entirely desert her. Vainly did she struggle. Presently she threatened to shout.

“Will anybody believe you?” Frank asked. “Can’t you see you’re hopelessly compromised already? Why not marry me, Jill darling?”

The girl replied with scorn, and renewed her struggles. What would have happened is difficult to say had not an assistant guard in passing, noticed the door ajar and heard the noise. He entered. And, immediately Frank desisted and left the compartment with the guard.

Evidently it was nothing in the official’s eyes which a little _pourboire_ and a pleasant laugh could not well settle; for, nothing more was heard of the incident.

Jill wondered whether or not to tell Lady Evenden, but decided that first of all she would tell Wilfred Barlow.

The family stopped the night in London upon arrival. So Jill sought an early interview with Wilfred, when she told him all that had happened. Wilfred’s first intention was to go at once and see Frank, but Jill persuaded him otherwise. Finally Wilfred insisted that, if she suffered any more persecution, Jill must consult Lady Evenden immediately.

Jill allowed him to accompany her only part of the way to the hotel, for fear Lady Evenden might see him.

They were just saying good-by, however, when suddenly Jill gave a startled exclamation, and pulled her lover back from the edge of the curb. At the same time, she indicated a taxicab which had stopped in the traffic block, just a yard or two from them.

There, seated side by side in the taxi, in earnest conversation, were Lady Evenden and the rat-faced Dr. Laidlaw.