The Crime Club — Reading Companion

e and know everybody. Therefore I feel confident that you will be able to tell me the name of this girl. That is all I ask you—at present.”

Captain Melun laughed and then checked his laughter.

“The lady,” he said, “is Lady Kathleen Carfax, the only child of the Earl of Penshurst, who is, as even you are probably aware”—there was a covert sneer in his tones—“Prime Minister of England.”

“So!” murmured Westerham, and he nodded his head.

“Yes,” said Captain Melun, “and if it is of any interest to you to know it, I propose to marry Lady Kathleen.”

“Indeed,” said Westerham.

He folded the paper and placed it carefully in his breast-pocket.

“You must forgive my being rude,” he added, “but I should not now be on my way to England if I had not every intention of marrying the lady myself.”

SIR PAUL WESTERHAM BUYS THE CRIME SYNDICATE

Captain Melun was a man used to being hard hit. He was steeled against cunningly and swiftly-dealt blows, such as he himself administered, but this declaration of Sir Paul Westerham, that he intended to marry the Lady Kathleen, took him quite aback.

“Oh!” he exclaimed softly, and his voice had a certain note of puzzlement and anxiety in it. “Oh!” he repeated, and again he said “Oh!”

The baronet smiled a little grimly in his red beard, but his duck's-egg green eyes were as serene and as cold as ever.

The three gently ejaculated “Ohs” of the captain had told him much. His quick brain realised that he had dealt the captain an exceedingly well-landed blow. Then the baronet's smile died, for, following the train of his suspicious thoughts, he instinctively grasped and held on to the idea that just as Melun had been searching his kit-bag for the purpose of blackmail, so that individual purposed marriage with the Prime Minister's daughter to the same end.

This notion disquieted him greatly.

It disturbed him so much that the hard eyes hardened. Only the baronet's friends knew that they sometimes hardened because of the softness behind their gaze.

Westerham's heart, indeed, rose in revolt against the suggestion that this man, spurned of the Army, suspected of the clubs, distrusted by every honourable man, should for a moment presume to reach out and touch the hand of Kathleen Carfax. Not for such a man as Melun was the girl with the calm yet, at the same time, troubled face, that had looked out from the tattered picture and drawn him back to England.

Westerham's brain worked as swiftly as the brain of a woman, as do the brains of men who, cut off from the electric-lift side of civilisation, day by day face Nature in its true, maternal, and therefore its feminine aspect. It was a long guess, but a shrewd guess, and a true guess, that if Melun had his hopes set on Lady Kathleen, the girl with the dark hair and steadfast eyes stood in some peril.

The mere thought of it quickened Westerham's blood, and the quickening of his blood livened his brain still more, so that he watched, almost cat-like, the glance of Melun's eyes as they followed the placing of the Lady Kathleen's picture in his pocket.

For a couple of minutes nothing was said. Each man knew instinctively that he must move to the attack, but realised that a mistake at the opening of the game might possibly spell disaster.

It was the baronet who broke the silence—it is always the man who has least to fear that recovers first.

Westerham had pursued a train of thought as bold as it was unerring. It had come home to him that Melun was not merely a blackmailer, but a prince among blackmailers. With infinite speed of thought he followed out his idea, and came to a conclusion which at once suggested and vindicated his next remark.

“I have never realised before, Captain Melun,” he said, “what a pleasure it was to meet a perfectly-unqualified villain.”

Captain Melun raised his black eyebrows a shade more obliquely, and his eyelids flickered. He was, however, equal to the situation.

“Indeed?” he said coolly, though he passed his tongue along his upper lip beneath his carefully-trimmed moustache. “Indeed? I shall be glad if you will explain.”

Westerham took a deep breath and laughed almost gaily. “I shall be charmed,” he said.

He paused a little and then continued: “No man, except one with such a reputation as yours,” he said, “would dream of regarding Lady Kathleen Carfax as a possible wife unless he were so equipped with all the arts of blackmail that he had some reason to hope for his success.”

By this time Captain Melun had got back his composure.