The Snare Part 38

Her glance fell away, her lip trembled, and her smile at last took flight. He caught her hands, holding them in a grip that hurt her; he bent his head, and his eyes sought her own, but sought in vain.

"Have you considered--" he was beginning, when she interrupted him. Her face flushed upward, surrendering to that questing glance of his, and its expression was now between tears and laughter.

"You will be for ever considering, Ned. You consider too much, where the issues are plain and simple. For the last time--will you marry me?"

The subtlety he had employed had been greater than he knew, and it had achieved something beyond his utmost hopes.

He murmured incoherently and took her to his arms. I really do not see that he could have done anything else. It was a plain and simple issue, and she herself had protested that the issue was plain and simple.

And then the door opened abruptly and Sir Terence came in. Nor did he discreetly withdraw as a man of feeling should have done before the intimate and touching spectacle that met his eyes. On the contrary, he remained like the infernal marplot that he intended to be.

"Very proper," he sneered. "Very fit and proper that he should put right in the eyes of the world the reputation you have damaged for his sake, Sylvia. I suppose you're to be married."

They moved apart, and each stared at O'Moy--Sylvia in cold anger, Tremayne in chagrin.

"You see, Sylvia," the captain cried, at this voicing of the world's opinion he feared so much on her behalf.

"Does she?" said Sir Terence, misunderstanding. "I wonder? Unless you've made all plain."

The captain frowned.

"Made what plain?" he asked. "There is something here I don't understand, O'Moy. Your att.i.tude towards me ever since you ordered me under arrest has been entirely extraordinary. It has troubled me more than anything else in all this deplorable affair."

"I believe you," snorted O'Moy, as with his hands behind his back he strode forward into the room. He was pale, and there was a set, malignant sneer upon his lip, a malignant look in the blue eyes that were habitually so clear and honest.

"There have been moments," said Tremayne, "when I have almost felt you to be vindictive."

"D'ye wonder?" growled O'Moy. "Has no suspicion crossed your mind that I may know the whole truth?"

Tremayne was taken aback. "That startles you, eh?" cried O'Moy, and pointed a mocking finger at the captain's face, whose whole expression had changed to one of apprehension.

"What is it?" cried Sylvia. Instinctively she felt that under this troubled surface some evil thing was stirring, that the issues perhaps were not quite as simple as she had deemed them.

There was a pause. O'Moy, with his back to the window now, his hands still clasped behind him, looked mockingly at Tremayne and waited.

"Why don't you answer her?" he said at last. "You were confidential enough when I came in. Can it be that you are keeping something back, that you have secrets from the lady who has no doubt promised by now to become your wife as the shortest way to mending her recent folly?"

Tremayne was bewildered. His answer, apparently an irrelevance, was the mere enunciation of the thoughts O'Moy's announcement had provoked.

"Do you mean to say that you have known throughout that I did not kill Samoval?" he asked.

"Of course. How could I have supposed you killed him when I killed him myself?"

"You? You killed him!" cried Tremayne, more and more intrigued. And--

"You killed Count Samoval?" exclaimed Miss Armytage.

"To be sure I did," was the answer, cynically delivered, accompanied by a short, sharp laugh. "When I have settled other accounts, and put all my affairs in order, I shall save the provost-marshal the trouble of further seeking the slayer. And you didn't know then, Sylvia, when you lied so glibly to the court, that your future husband was innocent of that?"

"I was always sure of it," she answered, and looked at Tremayne for explanation.

O'Moy laughed again. "But he had not told you so. He preferred that you should think him guilty of bloodshed, of murder even, rather than tell you the real truth. Oh, I can understand. He is the very soul of honour, as you remarked yourself, I think, the other night. He knows how much to tell and how much to withhold. He is master of the art of discreet suppression. He will carry it to any lengths. You had an instance of that before the court this morning. You may come to regret, my dear, that you did not allow him to have his own obstinate way; that you should have dragged your own spotless purity in the mud to provide him with an alibi. But he had an alibi all the time, my child; an unanswerable alibi which he preferred to withhold. I wonder would you have been so ready to make a s.h.i.+eld of your honour could you have known what you were really s.h.i.+elding?"

"Ned!" she cried. "Why don't you speak? Is he to go on in this fas.h.i.+on?

Of what is he accusing you? If you were not with Samoval that night, where were you?"

"In a lady's room, as you correctly informed the court," came O'Moy's bitter mockery. "Your only mistake was in the ident.i.ty of the lady. You imagined that the lady was yourself. A delusion purely. But you and I may comfort each other, for we are fellow-sufferers at the hands of this man of honour. My wife was the lady who entertained this gallant in her room that night."

"My G.o.d, O'Moy!" It was a strangled cry from Tremayne. At last he saw light; he understood, and, understanding, there entered his heart a great compa.s.sion for O'Moy, a conception that he must have suffered all the agonies of the d.a.m.ned in these last few days. "My G.o.d, you don't believe that I--"

"Do you deny it?"

"The imputation? Utterly."

"And if I tell you that myself with these eyes I saw you at the window of her room with her; if I tell you that I saw the rope ladder dangling from her balcony; if I tell you that crouching there after I had killed Samoval--killed him, mark me, for saying that you and my wife betrayed me; killed him for telling me the filthy truth--if I tell you that I heard her attempting to restrain you from going down to see what had happened--if I tell you all this, will you still deny it, will you still lie?"

"I will still say that all that you imply is false as h.e.l.l and your own senseless jealousy can make it.

"All that I imply? But what I state--the facts themselves, are they true?"

"They are true. But--"

"True!" cried Miss Armytage in horror.

"Ah, wait," O'Moy bade her with his heavy sneer. "You interrupt him.

He is about to construe those facts so that they shall wear an innocent appearance. He is about to prove himself worthy of the great sacrifice you made to save his life. Well?" And he looked expectantly at Tremayne.

Miss Armytage looked at him too, with eyes from which the dread pa.s.sed almost at once. The captain was smiling, wistfully, tolerantly, confidently, almost scornfully. Had he been guilty of the thing imputed he could not have stood so in her presence.

"O'Moy," he said slowly, "I should tell you that you have played the knave in this were it not clear to me that you have played the fool." He spoke entirely without pa.s.sion. He saw his way quite clearly. Things had reached a pa.s.s in which for the sake of all concerned, and perhaps for the sake of Miss Armytage more than any one, the whole truth must be spoken without regard to its consequences to Richard Butler.

"You dare to take that tone?" began O'Moy in a voice of thunder.

"Yourself shall be the first to justify it presently. I should be angry with you, O'Moy, for what you have done. But I find my anger vanis.h.i.+ng in regret. I should scorn you for the lie you have acted, for your scant regard to your oath in the court-martial, for your attempt to combat an imagined villainy by a real villainy. But I realise what you have suffered, and in that suffering lies the punishment you fully deserve for not having taken the straight course, for not having taxed me there and then with the thing that you suspected."

"The gentleman is about to lecture me upon morals, Sylvia." But Tremayne let pa.s.s the interruption.

"It is quite true that I was in Una's room while you were killing Samoval. But I was not alone with her, as you have so rashly a.s.sumed.

Her brother Richard was there, and it was on his behalf that I was present. She had been hiding him for a fortnight. She begged me, as d.i.c.k's friend and her own, to save him; and I undertook to do so. I climbed to her room to a.s.sist him to descend by the rope ladder you saw, because he was wounded and could not climb without a.s.sistance. At the gates I had the curricle waiting in which I had driven up. In this I was to have taken him on board a s.h.i.+p that was leaving that night for England, having made arrangements with her captain. You should have seen, had you reflected, that--as I told the court--had I been coming to a clandestine meeting, I should hardly have driven up in so open a fas.h.i.+on, and left the curricle to wait for me at the gates.

"The death of Samoval and my own arrest thwarted our plans and prevented d.i.c.k's escape. That is the truth. Now that you have it I hope you like it, and I hope that you thoroughly relish your own behaviour in the matter."

There was a fluttering sigh of relief from Miss Armytage. Then silence followed, in which O'Moy stared at Tremayne, emotion after emotion sweeping across his mobile face.

"d.i.c.k Butler?" he said at last, and cried out: "I don't believe a word of it! Ye're lying, Tremayne."

"You have cause enough to hope so."

The captain was faintly scornful.