The Crimson Circle Read Online

"All that I know is that the moment I took up my serviette I had a sensation of profound and poignant sorrow. It is weird, isn't it?"

    "But how did you know about her mother?"

    "I traced it somehow," said the other almost brusquely; "it is a matter of deduction. Have you any news, Mr. Beardmore?"

    For answer Jim handed him the card he had received that morning. Yale read the message, then weighed the card on the palm of his white hand.

    "Posted by a sailor," he said, "a man who has been in prison and has recently lost a great deal of money."

    Jim Beardmore laughed.

    "Which I shall certainly not replace," he said, rising from the table. "Do you take these warnings seriously?"

    "I take them very seriously," said Derrick in his quiet way. "So seriously that I do not advise you to leave this house except in my company. The Crimson Circle," he went on, arresting Beardmore's indignant protest with a characteristic gesture, "is, I admit, vulgarly melodramatic in its operations, but it will be no solace to your heirs to learn that you have died theatrically."

    Jim Beardmore was silent for a time, and his son regarded him anxiously.

    "Why don't you go abroad, father?" he asked, and the old man snapped round on him.

    "Go abroad be damned!" he roared. "Run away from a cheap Black Hand gang? I'll see them—!"

    He did not mention their destination, but they could guess.

    A HEAVY weight lay on Jack Beardmore's mind as he walked slowly across the meadows that morning. His feet carried him instinctively in the direction of the little valley which lay a mile from the house, and in the exact centre of which ran the hedge which marked the division between the Beardmore and Froyant estates. It was a glorious morning. The storm of wind and rain which had swept the country the night before had blown itself out, and the world lay bathed in yellow sunlight. Far away, beyond the olive-green covens that crowned Penton Hill, he caught a glimpse of Harvey Froyant's big white mansion. Would she venture out with the ground so sodden and the grasses soaked with rain, he wondered?

    He stopped by a big elm tree on the lip of the valley and cast an anxious glance along the untidy hedge, until his eyes rested on a tiny summer house which the former owners of Tower House had erected—Harvey Froyant, who loathed solitude, would never have been guilty of such extravagance.

    There was nobody in sight, and his heart sank. Ten minutes' walking brought him to the gap he had made in the fence, and he stepped through. The girl who sat in the tiny house might have heard his sigh of relief.

    She looked round, then rose with some evidence of reluctance.

    She was remarkably pretty, with her fair hair and flawless skin, but there was no welcome in her eyes as she came slowly toward him. "Good morning," she said coolly.

    "Good morning, Thalia," he ventured, and her frown returned.

    "I wish you wouldn't," she said, and he knew that she meant what she said. Her attitude toward him puzzled and worried him. For she was a thing of laughter and bubbling life. He had once surprised her chasing a hare, and had watched, spellbound, the figure of this laughing Diana as her little feet flew across the field in pursuit of the scared beast. He had heard her singing, too, and the very joy of life was vibrant in her voice—but he had seen her so depressed and gloomy that he had feared she was ill.

    "Why are you always so stiff and formal with me?" he grumbled.

    For a second a ghost of a smile showed at the comer of her mouth.

    "Because I've read books," she said solemnly, "and poor girl secretaries who aren't stiff and formal with millionaire's sons usually come to a bad end!"

    She had a trick of directness which was very disconcerting.

    "Besides," she said, "there is no reason why I shouldn't be stiff and formal. It is the conventional attitude which people adopt toward their fellow creatures, unless they are very fond of them, and I'm not very fond of you."

    She said this calmly and deliberately, and the young man's face went red. He felt a fool, and cursed himself for provoking this act of cruelty.

    "I will tell you something, Mr. Beardmore," she went on in her even tone. "Something which you haven't realised. When a boy and girl are thrown together on a desert island, it is only natural that the boy gets the idea that the girl is the only girl in the world. All his wayward fancies are concentrated on one woman and as the days pass she grows more and more wonderful in his eyes. I've read a lot of these desert island stories, and I've seen a lot of pictures that deal with that interesting situation, and that is how it strikes me. You are on a desert island here—you spend too much time on your estate, and the only things you see are rabbits and birds and Thalia Drummond. You should go into the city and into the society of people of your own station."

    She turned from him with a nod, for she had seen her employer approaching, had watched him out of the corner of her eye as he stopped to survey them, and had guessed his annoyance.

    "I thought you were doing the house accounts, Miss Drummond," he said with asperity.

    He was a skinny man, in the early fifties, colourless, sharp-featured, prematurely bald.