The Yellow Snake (12 page)

    "It would be queer if you didn't," she said, adopting his attitude, and he laughed. "Have you committed your murder?"

    He started.

    "Murder? Oh, you mean Fing-Su? No, I fear that tonight I shall be too busy. I'm certainly going to kill Fing-Su," he said, and though his tone was matter-of-fact, she shivered, for he conveyed to her the impression of a man in very great earnest. "I've got to kill him. But tonight?" He shook his head. "A lot of things have got to happen before then. When can you marry me?"

    He was serious enough, and at the direct question she felt herself going red.

    "Is that necessary?" she asked, a little desperately, for now, brought face to face with the logical consequence of her undertaking, she had a moment of panic. There was something very definite about his question, and that gave her a certain fearful twinge of happiness. But it was also too businesslike, too free from the atmosphere of tenderness which conventionally surrounds such a proposal, and she was just a little bit annoyed with him. It brought the proposition back to its original commercial setting, extinguished the faint glitter of romance, a sickly flame at best, which the past few days had brought to life.

    "I suppose you will suit your own convenience," she said coldly. "You realize, of course, Mr Lynne, that I do not love you, any more than you love me?"

    "That goes without saying," he said brusquely. "But I will tell you something: I've never been in love; I've had my dreams and my ideals, as every man and every woman has, and you are the nearest approach to the mystery woman of my dreams that I shall ever hope to meet. When I tell you I like you, I mean it. I'm not in that ecstatic state of mind when I am prepared to kiss the ground on which you walk, but that is a form of delirium which may come later."

    All the time he was speaking there was that kind and friendly smile in his eyes which made it impossible for her to arouse her resentment to any high pitch. She was exasperated with him, and yet could admire his honesty, and had no piqued inclination to offer the obvious retort that her heart was at least as free as his.

    "Today is Monday," he said. "We will be married on Friday by special licence. Friday will be an unlucky day—for somebody."

    "You really mean Friday?" she asked, with a pang of dismay.

    "It's rather sudden, I know; but then, things are moving more quickly than I anticipated," he said.

    He took up his hat from the table where he had placed it when he came in.

    "I shall call for you at ten. Do you mind?"

    She shook her head.

    "And you're not afraid?" he bantered, and hurriedly added: "There's really no reason for fear—not yet."

    "Tell me when I must begin fearing you," she said, as she walked with him to the door.

    "You need never fear me," he said quietly. "I was thinking of somebody else."

    "Fing-Su?"

    He looked round at her quickly.

    "A thought-reader too, are you?" He put his hand about her arm and squeezed it gently. It was a very friendly, brotherly gesture, and it left her, for some reason, very near to tears.

    The two girls, who appeared from nowhere as the door closed on Clifford, followed her back to the drawing-room.

    "You didn't tell him anything, did you?" asked Mabel rapidly. "You wouldn't do anything so mean and underhand as that, Joan?"

    Joan looked at her in surprise.

    "What were we talking about?" she asked, and she was honest in her bewilderment, for she had forgotten the conversation in her room.

    "Letty had an awful feeling you'd tell him what we'd been discussing, but I said, 'Letty, Joan would never, never do anything so despicable.'"

    "About your marrying him?" asked Joan, suddenly understanding. "Oh, no, I had forgotten that—we were so busy fixing the date—Mr Lynne and I are to be married on Friday."

    "Good God!" said Mabel.

    Her profanity was pardonable, for in a moment of great self-sacrifice she had decided to be Mrs Clifford Lynne.

    The sisters went to town at six o'clock, and Joan from her window was heartily glad to see the limousine pass out of sight along the Egham road. She ate her dinner in solitude and waited impatiently for the coming of Clifford Lynne. She was a little baffled by his attitude. The marriage was still in the category of business arrangement; with the exception of that half-caress he had shown neither tenderness nor that sentimental regard for her charms which is to be expected even in the most self-possessed of men; and yet there was little that was austere or cold in his composition, she was sure. None the less, between them was a barrier which must be broken down, a gulf which only mutual affection could bridge. For one brief moment the prospect of this cold-blooded marriage terrified her.

    She was standing before the half-open front door of the house when she heard his quick step on the gravel, and, assuring herself that she had the key in her bag, she closed the door gently behind her and went to meet him.

    Suddenly she found herself in a circle of light.

    "Sorry!" said Clifford's voice. "I was pretty certain it was you, but I had to take one peep."

    "Who else might it be?" she asked as she fell in by his side.

    "I don't know," was the unsatisfactory reply.

    Her arm slipped into his in the most natural way.

    "I am by nature cautious and even suspicious, and there's something about the English countryside that is more sinister than the bad lands of Honan would be to a traveller with a camel-load of 'Mex' dollars! You see, there, you know where you are—you are either at peace or at war with your neighbours; but in England you may be at war all the time and never know it. Do you mind walking in the middle of the road—that doesn't scare you, does it?" he asked quickly, and she laughed.

    "I've an infinite faith in the police," she said demurely.

    She heard him chuckle.

    "The police? Yes, they're quite all right in most cases, especially when they are dealing with known criminals, and the printed categories of crime. But Fing-Su isn't a known criminal; he's a highly respectable person. How he has escaped the OBE I can't understand. We turn right here."

    There was no need for him to tell her that, for her eyes, accustomed to the darkness, saw the dark opening that led to the Slaters' Cottage. What had once been a rough wagon track was now a smoothly gravelled road. A few yards down the drive she saw the tall column of a light standard.

    "Yes, we're putting in all modern improvements," he said when she called his attention to this innovation. "Only the evil love the dark. I, who am of a virtuous disposition, use this thousand-candle-power arc to advertise my rectitude!"

    Suddenly he stopped, and she perforce must halt too.

    "I said the other day that Narth had a pull with you, and you didn't deny it," he said. "I discovered the pull a few days ago. Your brother was accidentally killed whilst leaving the country with money taken from Narth's office."

    "Yes," she said in a low voice.

    "That was it, eh?"

    She heard his sigh of relief. What else could he have imagined? she wondered.

    "I get it now," he went on as they resumed their walk. "It was that 'after all I've done for you' stuff? Otherwise, I should have been completely rejected. I'm glad."

    He said this so simply and sincerely that she felt the colour coming to her face.

    "Has your friend arrived?" she asked.

    "Yes," he answered shortly: "he came an hour ago, the——" He smothered an imprecation.

    "One would think——" she began, when suddenly he gripped her arm.

    "Don't speak," he whispered.

    Joan saw that he was looking back the way they had come, his head bent in a listening attitude, and her heart began to thump painfully. Then, without warning, he led her to the side of the road and to the cover of a great fir tree and pushed her behind it.

    "Stay there," he said in the same low tone.

    Almost immediately he disappeared, making his way noiselessly over a carpet of pine needles from tree to tree. She stared back after him; all she could see was the pale evening sky behind a belt of tall firs, and the sky's reflection of a puddle which had gathered at the side of the drive. She was not usually nervous, but now she felt her knees trembling under her, and her breath came shallowly. After a while she saw him emerge from the gloom near at hand.

    "It was nothing," he said, but she noticed that he still kept his voice down. "I thought I heard somebody following us. I'll have these trees down tomorrow; they make too good cover——"

    Something came past them with the sound of a hissing whip. There was a thud, and silence. He said something in a strange language, and then he stepped back and, reaching up, pulled something from the trunk of a fir.

    "A throwing knife," he whispered. "I tell you, these Yun Nan murderers are wonderful shots, and the devils can see in the dark! Where's the nearest policeman?"

    In spite of herself she was shivering.

    "The patrol won't be near here for another hour," she faltered. "Did somebody throw a knife?"

    "Not for another hour, eh?" he said, almost brightly. "Providence is on my side!"

    He took a thing from his pocket—in the half light it looked to be a fat silver cylinder; she saw he was fitting it to the end of a long, black pistol.

    "Mustn't alarm the neighbours," he said, and slipping from her side, again vanished into the darkness.

    She waited, her heart in her mouth, and suddenly:

    '
Plop!
'

    The squawk that followed came from somewhere surprisingly near. She heard on the gravel drive a patter of feet that grew fainter and fainter. When it had ceased, Clifford rejoined her, and he was unfixing the silver box.

    "Got him, but not seriously," he said. "I'm glad I didn't kill him. I should either have had to bury him in the wood and risk a scandal, or take him before a magistrate and make a newspaper sensation."

    "Did you shoot him?" she asked.

    "Oh, yes, I shot him all right," he said carelessly. "I think he was alone."

    Again he took her by the arm and led her along the drive, and they walked swiftly towards the Slaters' Cottage. There was no sign of life: the shuttered windows were dead, and even the sound of the muffled explosion had not roused the interest or curiosity of Clifford Lynne's guest.

    He waited for almost a minute on the step of the cottage, listening.

    "I think there was only one man," he said with a little sigh of relief, "and probably a watcher, who reckoned he'd improve the shining hour by a little target practice. You're not frightened?"

    "Yes, I am," she said; "I'm horribly frightened!"

    "So am I," he said. "I hate myself for taking this risk with you, but I had no idea there was any danger—yet."

    He put a key in the lock and opened the door. They were in a narrow passageway, from which, she saw as he switched on the light, two doors led left and right.

    "Here we are." He walked before her, turned the handle of the left-hand door and threw it open.

    The room was newly and well furnished. Two large bulkhead lights fixed to the ceiling threw a diffused light through opalescent globes upon the apartment and its contents.

    Sitting before the wood fire was a big man. She judged him to be sixty, and he was curiously attired. He wore, over a pair of neatly creased trousers, a huge red dressing-gown, behind which a stiff shirt shone whitely. He had on neither collar nor tie, and an immaculate morning coat hung over the back of a chair. As the door opened he looked up, took out the short clay pipe he had been smoking, and stared soberly at the visitor.

    "Meet Miss Joan Bray," said Lynne curtly.

    The big stranger got heavily to his feet, and the girl noticed that on his many-chinned face was the cowed look of a schoolboy detected in an unlawful act.

    "Now, Joan," said Lynne grimly, "I want you to know a relative of yours. Let me introduce you to the late Joe Bray, who was dead in China and is alive in England!"

    Joan Could only stare, speechless, at her relative. Joe Bray! If she had indeed seen a ghost she could not have been more staggered.

    He turned a sheepish face to Clifford.

    "Have a heart, Cliff!" he pleaded feebly. "Have a heart!"

    "I have a heart and I have a head too, and that's where I've the advantage, you foolish old conspirator!"

    Joe blinked from Clifford to the girl.

    "It's like this——" he began loudly.

    "Sit down." Clifford pointed to the chair. "I've had your version six times; I don't think I can stand it again. Joan," he said, "this is the veritable Joseph Bray, of the Yun Nan Concession. Any mourning which you may have ordered for him you can cancel."

    "It's like this——" began Joe again.

    "It isn't a bit like that," interrupted Lynne.

    There was a twinkle in his eye which she had seen once before.

    "This Joe Bray is romantic." He pointed an accusing finger at the humbled man. "He has just brains enough to dream. And one of his crazy dreams was that I should marry into his family. And in order to drive me to this desperate step he invented a fake story about his being on the point of death. To support which—he has confessed this now—he procured the assistance of a doping, boozing doctor from Canton, who would certify a man insane for the price of a double whisky."