CHAPTER

THE BUILDING WAS QUIVERING with the shuddering rumble of the great printing presses in the basement as Jimmie Silverdale quitted the Daily Wire office. He shivered as the cool fresh air of the early morning struck him and buttoned his thin raincoat tightly. Always it had seemed to him there was something unreal, unnatural, in the noisy activity of the streets of newspaperdom at that hour. Now, somehow, it jarred upon him more than ever.

      As he turned into Fleet Street, he glanced at his watch. It was two o'clock. Only by great luck could he hope to pick up a nocturnal taxicab. He quickened his stride and moved westward. After all, it was but a walk to Chelsea. Mrs. Grundy and the conventions might go hang. He would see Hilary. He felt chilled. The exercise would warm him.

      Now it would be doing Jimmie Silverdale an injustice to suppose that he had usually held any diffidence in pursuing a course he bad marked out. He considered difficulties as they arose. He set out on that journey with the fixed intention of rousing Hilary from bed—if she had gone to bed, which he doubted—and having the whole subject thrashed out. There was no time for finesse and it was no occasion for tact. She was suspected of a murderous crime and, if innocentl he must have her version of the story if he was to aid her. If guilty— He tried to put the thought away as black treason. Yet reason fought down sentiment. Why!—why!—why? The word hammered through his brain with every beat of his footsteps on the pavement.

      At Sloane Square he wavered. Neither morally nor physically was he a coward, yet he could not bring himself to face Hilary Sloane at that unwonted hour with the questiGn that, however he framed it, must be an accusation. No, he would wait until their appointment at seven o'clock.

      Smoking innumerable cigarettes, he paced the deserted streets till after dawn, pausing only once at a stall to drink some steaming decoction which, by sheer imagination, might be called coffee. At five minutes to seven, he pressed the bell at Hilary's flat.

      She answered the door herself, fully dressed, and his keen eyes sought her face for some sign of the tortured night he knew she must have passed. But there was no sign there. A pink flush was in her cheeks, her eyes were sparkling. She looked entirely at ease.

      "Come in Jimmie," she said buoyantly, "You're punctual. Been sitting up all night to make sure of being on time?"

      "Something of the sort," he agreed. And then dryly: "You seem brighter than when I saw you last night."

      "My dear Jimmie!" she laughed. "I had the mopes last night. I don't know what was wrong with me. But as soon as I placed matters in your competent hands, I knew that everything would be all right, of course. " She dragged him by the arm forward. "Here, get your coat off and come and have some breakfast. Nora is having hers in her room. She's a lazy creature. We'll be able to have a quiet talk. Don't look at me like that. What's the matter?"

      Her apparent light-heartedness took Jimmie unawares. Women were past all understanding. Was this chatter, this brightness—a pose? If so, she was a consummate actress.

      "Nothing wrong with me," he said slowly. "I've been thinking."

      "Fatal. Break yourself of it at once, or it'll get hold of you like the dope business. Laugh —that's the only thing—laugh."

      They had reached the little breakfast-room and she was busy with eggs and coffee. Her manner had to some extent relieved his mind, though why or how he might have been at a loss to explain. She seemed determined to carry things off in a matter-of-fact way. There was none of that strained embarrassment on her side which he had expected at their meeting.

      He ate and drank mechanically, silent and thoughtful, while she talked gayly on, never referring to the object of his visit even indirectly. He was trying to catch a serious note beneath her flippancy and not succeeding.

      "I'm damned if I can make it all out," he said in a sudden access of irritability, pushing his cup away and rising from the table.

      "What's the game, Hilary?"

      She looked up, startled, apprehensive.

      "Good heavens, Jimmie, you startled me. I thought you'd broken my pet breakfast set. I thought you were a man who never suffered from nerves." She crossed the room and laid a slim hand, light as a feather, on his arm. Her touch seemed to electrify him and he caught her other hand.

      "Let's have done with all this fencing. I want to know things. I want you to trust me."

      A thin pucker showed in her forehead and she disengaged herself gently. "Don't be melodramatic," she murmured. "You're behaving a little bit like an idiot, Jimmie. Did you know it?"

      He choked back an expression used in moments of stress by the Army in Flanders. Her self-possession staggered him.

      "I am an idiot," he said bitterly. "No one but an idiot would have given you the promise I made last night."

      At last there was a change. All the light had gone from her face and she was grave. "You're not going back on that, Jimmie? You are going to help us out of town?"

      He saw relief in the gray eyes as he nodded. "Yes; I'll help," he said quietly.

      "Then you mean that you're sorry you promised to ask no questions," she went on. "Whatever you say or do, I'm going to hold you to that. That's why I've been talking about everything else under the sun. If you've made things all right for us to get away, I'm content. I want to know no more nor think any more about it. I'm content to leave everything in your hands. "

      He stood, one elbow on the mantelpiece, lookiirg down on her with calculating gaze. She had cleared a space on the table and sat idly swinging her feet to and fro. A dainty picture she made and there was no suggestion of drama in her attitude or tone.

      "That's rather clever," said Silverdale admiringly. "You want to put me on my honor not to know too much."

      She glanced down at her gray woolen stockings and nodded. A slight flush had crept into her cheek.

      "I'd do much for you, Hilary," he went on. "You know how I have felt, how I still feel, about you." She gave a slight shrug of impatience and he went on. "I'll leave that out then. When I gave you my promise, I felt whatever your reasons were for wishing to leave London in so extraordinary a manner, they were your own private affairs and I had no right to pry. Since I last saw you circumstances have changed. I don't believe you can carry this through on a lone hand. Let me come in."

      She swung herself impulsively from the table and seized both his hands, pulled him out into the room and danced half round him.

      "You're a bright boy, Jimmie, and a clever boy, but you're dazzled by your own cleverness sometimes. It wants a woman to run this show properly, and I'm going to be in command. Just for once, I'm going to run you in blinkers to see how it feels."

      "One moment, Hilary. Do you realize the danger?"

      "Danger?"

      "Yes. Perhaps I understand more easily than you credit. I know more than you think, Hilary. I tell you that you stand in the greatest peril that man or woman can stand in. What may happen—God knows what may happen! It turns my blood cold to contemplate. You have brains, you have courage, but you are a woman."

      "If I didn't know you, Jimmie Silverdale, I should say you had gone raving mad. This is getting curiouser and curiouser, as Alice in Wonderlandsaid. Can't you be plain?"

      "I'll be plain then, my dear. You have asked me to help you—in blinkers. Well, something—not my own will—has removed the blinkers. I have seen—I have heard—"

      "What?" she snapped the question out defiantly.

      He caught herby the wrist. "Have you ever heard of Harold Saxon?"

      "I don't know. I may have. I can't say. Let me go. You are hurting me!"

      He released her. "Harold Saxon was the head of the Saxon Aëroplane Works. He was killed yesterday before you sent that frantic note to me. He was stabbed with a woman's hatpin."

      She stood as though frozen to stone. Her eyes were fixed on his face, searching apprehensively. "What has that to do with me?" she asked and he could see her lips were dry.

      "It has everything to do with you. You have told me you didn't know Saxon. At any rate he knew you. There was a photograph of you in his possession at the time of his death. The detectives are linking up evidence, that will associate you with the crime. They are looking for you, Hilary. You are trying to leave London."

      "Oh!"

      The cry was so faint that he scarcely heard it. She hold her arms out towards him and then they dropped to her side. Slowly her feet seemed to fail under her. Hilary Sloane, whose nerve had never failed under the most terrible conditions in the blood-soaked hospitals in France, for the first time in her life had unobtrusively fainted.

      The door opened. A slim, yellow-haired girl with pale complexion and in traveling dress entered with outstretched band.

      "Good-morning, Mr. Silverdale. Why, what's the matter with Hilary?"

      "Fainted, I think, " said Jimmie. "She didn't seem quite herself when I came in."