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"Why should you be so especially sorry?" asked Nora in surprise.

The older man hesitated.

"Tell her why you should be sorry," said Arnold Long quietly.

"Because"— he lit the cigar, blew out the match and put it down with tantalizing deliberation—"because—"

The telephone bell rang at that moment. He took up the receiver and listened. Betcher Long saw a frown gather on his father's face.

"But that is extraordinary," said Sir Godley. Somebody at the other end spoke earnestly— afterward he learnt that it was the prison chaplain.

"Very good— I will come." He put down the instrument, and the eyes of father and son met. "She wishes to see me," he said shortly.

"You? Why on earth" began the girl, and saw something in his face which silenced her.

"I think I had better see her," he said, and went out of the room.

Chapter 45

IT WAS a fine afternoon, but it might have been thundering or snowing for all the baronet noticed as he drove through the outer circle of Regent's Park and came to the shabby dreariness of Camden Town.

The newspaper bills that gave the only colour to the streets said "Revelstoke Sentenced" or "Heavy Sentence on Terrible Woman," for such the reporters, with one accord, had christened her.

Sir Godley hunched back farther in his car and sighed. The Terrible Woman! It must be twenty-five— thirty years since they met face to face. The coming interview would be unpleasant— might even be fearful— but he had a strong sense of duty. He had the merchant's desire to rule a red line under her account in the place where "Finis" comes in a story-teller's tale.

And here was the end of high adventure and heartache and regretful memories such as middle-aged men have when they approach the sixties.

Holloway Prison has an appearance of mediaevalism. It has turrets, and frowning battlements, and a high central keep elongated into a tower where, it is popularly supposed, armed warders watch the walls, though this legend is not substantiated. A great forbidding gate blocks the central archway.

He found an entrance, and was admitted to the gate-keeper's lobby, and identified himself before he was handed to a bright-faced woman of thirty in the uniform of a wardress and by her conducted to a superior officer.

The acting chaplain was waiting for him, a nervous young man who had taken the place of the prison chaplain then on vacation.

Here, Sir Godley learnt for the first time that he was admitted to the prison by Home Office order, that the circumstances were unusual (with this he was in mental agreement), and that he must make no statement to the press. The last injunction seemed superfluous.

"She is in wonderful spirits," said the chaplain fervently (it was his first important prisoner, and he found Miss Revelstoke a fascinating object of interest), "and of course, ordinarily, I should not have applied to Whitehall. But she was so insistent— she has something to communicate, and as you are the president of the Bankers' Association..."

Godley Long had, to his surprise, been elected that week to fill the post rendered vacant by the death of Monkford. "I quite understand," he said.

It was queer that he should have come to Holloway Jail to soothe a fluttered chaplain.

"We will go. The interview will be private, though officially I shall be present."

He had a quick, nervous way of talking as he walked, and as they traversed the corridor he made other unnecessary explanations; unnecessary, because the banker knew exactly why he had been sent for.

They came to a hall that was garlanded with steel galleries and had little doors set at regular intervals in the distempered walls.

Miss Revelstoke occupied a roomy cell on the ground floor— he suspected, with some justification, that it was the cell usually occupied by women under sentence of death, but he made no inquiries.

The wardress snapped back the lock and pushed the door inward.

"The door will be left open," said the chaplain hurriedly. "I will remain outside."

It required now a conscious effort, and the banker made it. He was in the cell, light and airy and meagrely furnished.

The woman was standing with her back to the farther wall, very composed, her dark eyes smiling. Usually, a prisoner, on entering the jail, changes her clothing for prison garb, but she wore the dress she had on at the trial— a neat blue suit. He learnt afterward that she was to be transferred immediately to one of the women's convict establishments outside of London, for reasons which, to the authorities, seemed good and sufficient.

"Good afternoon, Godley— it was very nice of you to come."

He inclined his head slightly.

"That boy of yours is rather clever— he inherits that from his mother, I suppose?"

The studied insolence of the greeting did not surprise him. She had not altered in twenty years, was the same self-possessed, contemptuous creature he had known.

"Naturally, I never dreamt that he was a relation of Clay's," she said; "the name struck me as a coincidence. If I had known, it might have made a lot of difference to me— and to you."

If she hoped to provoke him to speech, she was to be disappointed. He nodded silently.

Age had brought changes to them both, but for all the lines and wrinkles, the sallowing of skin and hollowness of cheek, he would have recognized her.

"I want you to look after Alice and Henry," she went on calmly. "Alice doesn't interest me a great deal, and she can fend for herself. And Henry, I suppose, will be looked after. But it would make me happier to know that somebody outside— had him under his eye."

"I will do that for you," said the banker readily.

She was looking at him oddly.

"You have changed, but your voice is the same— I would know it anywhere. Life is queer, isn't it? Clay dead— and the others, and your boy brought it all about! Wherever he moved, death came."

She spoke without heat or bitterness. She might be reviewing the lives of people in whom she had no direct interest. Godley could only marvel at her self-possession.

"The police officers I have spoken to call him 'Lucky Long,' and I suppose chance played its part. Godley, why do you think I am taking this punishment so easily? Does that seem strange to you, knowing how clever a general Clay was?"

"That occurred to me," he said.

She was watching him with her dark eyes.

"He was so wonderful," she went on, "he provided for all contingencies. He would never have been hanged, only, in the struggle with your son, his coat was ripped down the back, and the dull fools at the police station provided him with another."

He could dimly understand her meaning.

"As I remember the case," he said, "nothing was found in the pockets of the coat but a few papers."

The reply seemed to amuse her.

"I want you to think about what I have said," she continued after a pause.

The chaplain's anxious face appeared at the open door. He had a watch in his hand. Obviously, her time was short.

"I want you to digest the facts. Clay would have been alive, Sonny Cravel— Jackson Crayley, all would have been living; Henry, that poor boy, would be sane and in the enjoyment of life; I should have been sewing in my room in Colville Gardens, if it had not been for your— son."

His stem eyes fixed hers.

"And Monkford— and the other people he killed. The judge and the lawyer and the wretched hangman," he said harshly. "I tell you this, Alicia, that I am thankful to God that Arnold caught this man, thankful for all he has done to bring your confederates to ruin. If you think you can deceive me, as you deceive yourself, and can arouse in my heart pity or remorse, you are wasting your time!"

She was not offended. The eyes were still smiling as she took a folded piece of paper from the little table-ledge and held it out to him.

"This will explain my point of view," she said, and as he reached out his hand to take the paper, she released her hold and it fluttered to the floor.

He took a step forward and stooped to pick it up...

It was the cry of the clergyman at the door that saved his life. The hand that she had held in the fold of her dress came up, something glittered for a space and fell, driven by all her strength. The warning cry of the chaplain made him fling himself to one side. The thin knife snicked his shoulders, and in a second the fury was struggling in his arms. She had the strength of a man. Twice the knife missed his face by a hair's-breadth and then, with a superhuman effort, she flung him back from her, tore at the lapel of her coat and put her hand to her mouth.

The cell was full of wardresses by now, but she offered no resistance, and the knife dropped with a clang to the hard floor— and then they saw that its handle had the shape of a shoe-heel. Clay had indeed been a good general, for throughout her trial that razor-sharp blade had been sheathed between the upper and lower sole of the shoe she wore.

Sir Godley, white and shaken, went back to the governor's office and was left there alone for a long time.

Presently the deputy came in. His face was black with trouble.

"Did you give the woman anything?" he asked.

Sir Godley looked at him in wonder.

"Give her anything— what do you mean?"

"Poison?"

The banker was aghast.

"Good God, no!" he said. "Is she—"

The deputy nodded.

"She is dead," he said simply; "one of the buttons of her coat is missing— I think the poison must have been in that."

And now the banker understood why the changing of Clay Shelton's coat had stopped him from cheating the gallows.

A good general— but even the best of generals make their blunders

Chapter 46

A FORTNIGHT had passed— the inquest had been a day's wonder and had been forgotten. Betcher did not see his father, but Nora Sanders was his daily companion. She needed his advice, for she had decided not to apply for probate of the Monkford will.

"The signature may have been a forgery," she said, and Betcher, who had no doubt at all on the subject, agreed.

Sir Godley came back from Bournemouth a new man, though the attack on him had shaken him more than he cared to confess. That night, when dinner was finished and the servants had withdrawn, he rested his elbows on the table and turned to the girl.

"Did you read the account of the inquest?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Arnold wouldn't let me see the newspapers," she said, "and even if he had, I shouldn't have read the account. The only thing I saw was a big placard which said: 'Banker's Amazing Story'— was that you?"

"That was me!" said Sir Godley grimly, "and the amazing story was the one I was about to tell you when I was interrupted."

"Who was Miss Revelstoke?" she asked.

Sir Godley drew a long breath, reached out mechanically for a cigar, and cut it with a hand that was surprisingly steady.

"She was my wife," he said.

Chapter 47

"THE full story of the Terrible People did not come out in court, and thank Heaven it wasn't necessary that I should be in attendance. Clay Shelton was my brother— or rather, my half-brother. He was a wild, unscrupulous young man, who robbed my father and was afterward to rob me. At the time he bolted, as eventually he did when our father discovered the theft, I was engaged to a pretty Danish girl, a Miss Ostrander, who had come to England to act as governess to a neighbour of ours. I met her at a garden party, fell in love with her, and soon after my brother's departure, I married her. "

He knocked off the ash of his cigar with a grim little smile.

"I hope it will never be your experience to make the discovery which was mine. Outwardly, she was the sweetest, dearest girl you could imagine. On the day we married, she told me something that knocked me over— she was in love with my brother, and had only married me in order that the child she was expecting should not be nameless. Why she told me at all, I have never understood. I think she wanted to hurt me, or perhaps revolt me so that I should show her no marks of an affection which she confessed she loathed.

"I was a pretty good-natured fellow in those days, with a tremendously high opinion of women, and the discovery was the severest blow I have ever received. We had gone off to Copenhagen on our honeymoon, and it was on the boat crossing the North Sea that she dropped this bombshell. Three days after we reached the Danish capital, she left me. She had gone out to do some shopping, and I waited an hour for dinner, at the end of which time I received a note, delivered by hand, saying that she did not intend to return, and that she had gone where true happiness was to be found. I immediately filed a suit for divorce, citing a lover who I swore was unknown to me. The divorce was granted, and I believe they married—"

"On February 8, 1886," interrupted his son. "That was the third date carved on the cabin panel. The second was the date of his wife's birth. The fourth was the birth of Crayley, or in other words, Jackson Crayley Long."

"Crayley was the name of our family seat in Yorkshire, by the way," Sir Godley went on. "I never saw or heard of them until one day my manager came to me in a great state of mind and told me that we had paid out sixty thousand pounds on a forged bill of exchange. My first thought was, of course, to put the matter in the hands of the police. I sent for the bill, and on the back of it I saw pencilled two letters 'J. X.' They had escaped the attention of the cashier, but I knew from the peculiarity of the writing— John's X was different from any other X in the world— that the forger was my brother, and that he had put those initials there as a challenge. I paid sixty thousand pounds out of my own private fortune, and inserted an advertisement in the agony column of the Times beginning 'J. X.: This time I have honoured, but next time I will betray you.' He never attempted to catch me again, but very soon after this began the series of international forgeries which made the name of Clay Shelton infamous.

"There was one thing about Clay Shelton that I can admire— I use that name in preference to any other— his iron restraint. He was married, he had a growing family, yet he was never with them except for three weeks in the year, when they all met at a little Danish watering-place on the Baltic. The children were brought up in Denmark, and learned to speak the language as fluently as their own. And then, as they came of age, Clay had the courage to tell them of his profession. He knew that, if they were kept together, sooner or later he might be detected, and disgrace would fall upon every member of the family.