THE SIGNAL

BY now it was past the half-hour; the arrivals dwindled to a few late stragglers, who were promptly turned away by the beadle; the crowd of onlookers dispersed with smiles, shrugs, and a whistle or two: only a group of reporters stood on the lowest step, talking to one another and glancing at Sir Paget, as though they would like to tackle him but were doubtful of their reception. One did quietly detach himself from the group and walked up to where my uncle stood on the top step. I saw Sir Paget raise his hat, bow slightly, and speak one sentence. The man bowed in return, and rejoined his fellows with a rueful smile; then all of them made off together down the street.

My uncle was a little below middle height, but very upright and spare, so that he looked taller than he was. He had large features—a big, high-peaked nose, wide, thin-lipped mouth, bushy eyebrows, and very keen blue eyes. He bore himself with marked dignity—even with some stiffness towards the world at large, although among intimates he was the most urbane and accessible of men. His long experience in affairs had given him imperturbable composure; even at this moment he did not look the least put out. His manner and speech were modeled on the old school of public men—formal and elaborate when the occasion demanded, but easy, offhand, and familiar in private: to hear him was sometimes like listening to behind-the-scenes utterances of, say, Lord Melbourne or the great Duke which have come down to us in memoirs of their period.

When we went up to him, he nodded to me and gave his hand to Valdez. He had not seen him for two years, but he only said, “Ah, you here, Arsenio?” and went on, “Well, boys, here’s a damned kettle of fish! The girl’s cut and run, by Gad, she has!”

Valdez muttered “Good Lord!” or “Good Heavens!” or something of that kind. I found nothing to say, but the face I had seen at the taxi window flashed before my eyes again.

“Went out at ten this morning—for a walk, she said, before dressing. And she never came back. Half an hour ago a boy-messenger left a note for her mother. ‘I can’t do it, Mother. So I’ve gone.’—That was all. Aunt Bertha had been called in to assist at the dressing-up, and she sent word to me. Mrs. Knyvett collapsed, of course.”

“And—and Waldo? Is he here?” asked Valdez. “I’d like to see him and—and say what I could.”

“I got him away by the back door—to avoid those press fellows: he consented to go back to the hotel and wait for me there.”

“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” said Valdez, who wore an air of embarrassment quite natural under the circumstances. He was—or had been—an intimate of the family; but this was an extremely intimate family affair. “I called in Mount Street three days ago,” he went on, “and she seemed quite—well, normal, you know; very bright and happy, and all that.”

Sir Paget did not speak. Valdez looked at his watch. “Well, you’ll want to be by yourselves, and I’ve got an appointment.”

“Good-by, my boy. You must come and see us presently. You’re looking very well, Arsenio. Good-by. Don’t you go, Julius, I want you.”

Arsenio walked down the steps very quickly—indeed, he nearly ran—and got into a taxi which was standing by the curb. He turned and waved his hand towards us as he got in. My uncle was frowning and pursing up his thin, supple lips. He took my arm and we came down the steps together.

“There’s the devil to pay with Waldo,” he said, pressing his hand on my sleeve. “It was all I could do to make him promise to wait till we’d talked it over.”

“What does he want to do?”

“He’s got one of his rages. You know ‘em? They don’t come often, but when they do—well, it’s damned squally weather! And he looks on her as as good as his wife, you see.” He glanced up at me—I am a good deal the taller—with a very unwonted look of distress and apprehension. “He’s not master of himself. It would never do for him to go after them in the state he’s in now.”

“After—them?”

“That’s his view; I incline to it myself, too.”

“She was alone in the taxi.” I blurted it out, more to myself than to him, and quite without thinking.

I told him of my encounter; it had seemed a delusion, but need not seem so now.

“Driving past Marlborough House into the Mall? Looks like Victoria, doesn’t it? Any luggage on the cab?”

“I didn’t notice, sir.”

“Then you’re an infernal fool, Julius,” said Sir Paget peevishly.

I was not annoyed, though I felt sure that my uncle himself would have thought no more about luggage than I had, if he had seen the face as I had seen it. But I felt shy about describing the flush on a girl’s face and the sparkle in her eyes; that was more Valdez’s line of country than mine. So I said nothing, and we fell into a dreary silence which lasted till we got to the hotel.

I went upstairs behind Sir Paget in some trepidation. I had, for years back, heard of Waldo’s “white rages”; I had seen only one, and I had not liked it. Waldo was not, to my thinking, a Rillington: we are a dark, spare race. He was a Fleming—stoutly built, florid and rather ruddy in the face. But the passion seemed to suck up his blood; it turned him white. It was rather curious and uncanny, while it lasted. The poor fellow used to be very much ashamed of himself when it was over; but while it was on—well, he did not seem to be ashamed of anything he did or said. He was dangerous—to himself and others. Really, that night at Cragsfoot, I had thought that he was going to knock Valdez’s head off, though the ostensible cause of quarrel was nothing more serious—or perhaps I should say nothing less abstract—than the Legitimist principle, of which Valdez, true to his paternal tradition, elected to pose as the champion and brought on himself a bitter personal attack, in which such words as hypocrites, parasites, flunkeys, toadeaters, etc., etc., figured vividly. And all this before the ladies, and in the presence of his father, whose absolute authority over him he was at all normal moments eager to acknowledge.

“I’m going to tell him that you think you saw her this morning,” said Sir Paget, pausing outside the door of the room. “He has a right to know; and it’s not enough really to give him any clew that might be—well, too easy!” My uncle gave me a very wry smile as he spoke.

Waldo was older now; perhaps he had greater self-control, perhaps the magnitude of his disaster forbade any fretful exhibition of fury. It was a white rage—indeed, he was pale as a ghost—but he was quiet; the lightning struck inwards. He received his father’s assurance that everything had been managed as smoothly as possible—with the minimum of publicity—without any show of interest; he was beyond caring about publicity or ridicule, I think. On the other hand, it may be that these things held too high a place in Sir Paget’s mind; he almost suggested that, if the thing could be successfully hushed up, it would be much the same as if it had never happened: perhaps the diplomatic instinct sets that way. Waldo’s concern stood rooted in the thing itself. This is not to say that his pride was not hit, as well as his love; but it was the blow that hurt him, not the noise that the blow might make.

Probably Sir Paget saw this for himself before many minutes had passed; for he turned to me, saying, “You’d better tell him your story, for what it’s worth, Julius.”

Waldo listened to me with a new look of alertness, but the story seemed to come to less than he had expected. His interest flickered out again, and he listened with an impatient frown to Sir Paget’s conjectures as to the fugitive’s destination. But he put two or three questions to me.

“Did she recognize you? See you, I mean—bow, or nod, or anything?”

“Nothing at all; I don’t think she saw me. She passed me in a second, of course.”

“It must have been Lucinda, of course. You couldn’t have been mistaken?”

“I thought I was at the time, because it seemed impossible. Of course, now—as things stand—there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been Lucinda, and no doubt it was.”

“How was she looking?”

I had to attempt that description, after all! “Very animated; very—well, eager, you know. She was flushed; she looked—well, excited.”

“You’re dead sure that she was alone?”

“Oh, yes, I’m positive as to that.”

“Well, it doesn’t help us much,” observed Sir Paget. “Even if anything could help us! For the present I think I shouldn’t mention it to any one else—except, of course, Mrs. Knyvett and Aunt Bertha. No more talk of any kind than we can help!”

“Besides you two, I’ve only mentioned it to Valdez; and, when I did that, I didn’t believe that the girl was Lucinda.”

“Monkey Valdez! Did he come to the—to the church?” Waldo asked quickly. “I didn’t know he was in London, or even in England.”

“He’s been in town about a fortnight, I gathered. He’d seen the Knyvetts, he said, and I suppose they asked him to the wedding.”

“You met him there—and told him about this—this seeing Lucinda?”

“I didn’t meet him at the church. He lunched with me before and we walked there together.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, only some half-joking remark that you couldn’t take any other girl for Lucinda. He didn’t seem to attach any importance to it.”

Waldo’s eyes were now set steadily on my face. “Did you tell him at lunch, or as you walked to the church, or at the church?”

“As a matter of fact, before lunch. I mentioned the matter—that was half in joke too—as soon as I met him in the street.”

Sir Paget was about to speak, but Waldo silenced him imperiously. “Half a minute, Father. I want to know about this. Where did you meet—and when?”

“As soon as the taxi—the one with the girl in it—had gone by. I had to wait for it to go by. I crossed over to St. James’s Street and stopped to light a cigarette. Just as I was getting out a match, he spoke to me.”

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know; I didn’t see him till he spoke to me.”

“He might have been standing at the corner there—or near it?”

“Yes, for all I know—or just have reached there, or just crossed from the other corner of St. James’s Street. I really don’t know. Why does it matter, Waldo?”

“You’re dense, man, you’re dense!”

“Gently, Waldo, old boy!” Sir Paget interposed softly. He was standing with his back to the fireplace, smoking cigarette after cigarette, but quite quietly, not in a fluster. It was plain that he had begun to follow the scent which Waldo was pursuing so keenly.

“I beg your pardon, Julius. But look here. If he was at either corner of the street, or on the refuge in the middle—there is one, I think—he may well have been there a moment before—standing there, waiting perhaps. The taxi that passed you would have passed him. He would have seen the girl just as you saw her.”

“By Jove, that’s true! But he’d have told me if he had.”

“He didn’t say he hadn’t?”

I searched my memory. “No, he didn’t say that. But if—well, if, as you seem to suggest, he was there in order to see her, and did see her——”

“It was funny enough your happening to see her. It would be a lot funnier coincidence if he just happened to be there, and just happened to see her too! And just as funny if he was there and didn’t see her, eh?”

“But how could he carry it off as he did?”

“My dear chap, the Monkey would carry off a load of bricks that hit him on the head! There’s nothing in that.”

“What’s your theory, Waldo?” Sir Paget asked quietly.

Waldo sat silent for a full minute. He seemed by now to be over the first fit of his rage; there was color in his cheeks again. But his eyes were bright, intent, and hard. He seemed to be piecing together the theory for which his father asked him—piecing it together so as to give it to us in a complete form. Waldo was not quick-witted, but he had a good brain. If he got hold of a problem, he would worry it to a solution.

“I’ve written to her every day,” he began slowly. “And she’s answered, quite affectionately—she’s never offensive; she’s given me no hint that she meant to go back on me like this. The day before yesterday I wired to her to know if I might come up; she wired: ‘For pity’s sake don’t. I am too busy. Wait till the day.’”

“Nothing much in that,” said his father. “She’d put it that way—playfully.”

“Nothing much if it stood alone,” Waldo agreed. “But suppose she was struggling between two influences—mine and his.” For a moment his voice faltered. “He’s always been against me—always—ever since that time at Cragsfoot.” I heard a swallow in his throat, and he went on again steadily. “Never mind that. Look at it as a case, a problem, impersonally. A girl is due to marry a man; another is besieging her. She can’t make up her mind—can’t make it up even on the very day before the wedding; or, if you like, won’t admit to herself that she has really resolved to break her promise, to be false to the man to whom she is already——” Again there was a falter in his voice—“already really a wife, so far as anything short of—short of the actual thing itself—can make her——”

He came to a sudden stop; he was unable to finish; he had invited us to a dispassionate consideration of the case as a case, as a problem; in the end he was not equal to laying it before us dispassionately. “Oh, you see, Father!” he groaned.

“Yes,” said Sir Paget. “I see the thing—on your hypothesis. She couldn’t make up her mind—or wouldn’t admit that she had. So she told the other man——”

“Valdez?”

“Yes, Julius. Arsenio Valdez. She told Arsenio to be at a certain spot at a certain time—a time when, if she were going to keep her promise, she would be getting ready for her wedding. ‘Be at the corner of St. James’s Street at one o’clock.’ That would be it, wouldn’t it? If I drive by in a taxi, alone, it means yes to you, no to him. If I don’t, it means the opposite.’ That’s what you mean, Waldo?”

Waldo nodded assent; but I could not readily accept the idea.

“You mean, when I saw her she’d just seen him, and when I saw him, he’d just seen her?”

“Wouldn’t that account for the animation and excitement you noticed in her face—for the flush that struck you? She had just given the signal; she’d just”—he smiled grimly—“crossed her Rubicon, Julius.”

“But why wasn’t he with her? Why didn’t he go with her? Why did he come to the wedding? Why did he go through that farce?”

Sir Paget shrugged his shoulders. “Some idea of throwing us off the scent and getting a clear start, probably.”

“Yes, it might have been that,” I admitted. “And it does account for—for the way she looked. But the idea never crossed my mind. There wasn’t a single thing in his manner to raise any suspicion of the sort. If you’re right, it was a wonderful bit of acting.”

Waldo turned to me—he had been looking intently at his father while Sir Paget expounded the case—with a sharp movement. “Did Monkey ask for me when he came to the church?”

“Yes, I think he did. Yes, he did. He said he’d like to see you and—and say something, you know.”

“I thought so! That would have been his moment! He wanted to see how I took it, damn him! Coming to the church was his idea. He may have persuaded her that it was a good ruse, a clever trick. But really he wanted to see me—in the dirt. Monkey Valdez all over!”

I believe that I positively shivered at the bitterness of his anger and hatred. They had been chums, pals, bosom friends. And I loved—I had loved—them both. Sir Paget, too, had made almost a son of Arsenio Valdez.

“And for that—he shall pay,” said Waldo, rising to his feet. “Doesn’t he deserve to pay for that, Father?”

“What do you propose to do, Waldo?”

“Catch him and—give him his deserts.”

“He’ll have left the country before you can catch him.”

“I can follow him. And I shall. I can find him, never fear!”

“You must think of her,” I ventured to suggest.

“Afterwards. As much as you like—afterwards.”

“But by the time you find them, they’ll have—I mean, they’ll be——”

“Hold your tongue, for God’s sake, Julius!”

I turned to Sir Paget. “If he insists on going, let me go with him, sir,” I said.

“Yes, that would be—wise,” he assented, but, as I thought, rather absently.

Waldo gave a laugh. “All right, Julius. If you fancy the job, come along and pick up the pieces! There’ll be one of us to bury, at all events.” I suppose that I made some instinctive gesture of protest, for he added: “She was mine—mine.”

Sir Paget looked from him to me, and back again from me to him.

“You must neither of you leave the country,” he said.