Philip had been listening to him with increasing anger.

  “Silence or I will look on you as a coward,” he sneered.

  “You miserable fool!” cried St. Ives. “En garde, then! Heaven will decide this conflict.”

  There was a loud clash of metal as their swords crossed and the combat began with an intensity, which only hate or love can bring to bear.

  The space on which the light of the lantern cast a gloomy and glimmering light was small. Where St. Ives needed room to maneuver and thrust, Philip wanted proximity to hew and slash at his opponent. This proved fatal to St. Ives and as he took a step backward, he stumbled on a tree root and Philip caught him on the shoulder. It cut through his artery.

  The unfortunate man threw up his arms above his head. His sword escaped from his fingers and his knees bended under him. He fell heavily backwards without a word escaping from his lips. He tried to stand up, but failed in his attempts. He tried to speak, but he could only utter a few unintelligible words, because his blood was suffocating him. A violent convulsion shook his body. There was a long, deep sigh and then silence. Thomas St. Ives was dead.

  Philip Swaffham stood over the dead man with a wild look of fear in his eyes. A chill of horror went through his body. For the first time that night he realized the horror of what he had done as he looked at the man, slain by his own hand. Slowly the horror of having killed a man subsided as his mind told him that justice was on his side and that he couldn’t have acted otherwise. Now came the fear of retribution. He almost vomited and the perspiration stood in thick beads on his forehead, as he realized that he had to pick up the still warm body and put it in its unhallowed grave.

  He bent down and extended his arms, but recoiled before his hands touched the body. His courage failed him and once more he stood erect and thought. At last he steeled his nerves, grasped the body and with an immense exertion of strength, hurled it in the gaping hole. It fell with a dull thud sound and Philip thought he heard a man’s cry. The disappearance of the body from view seemed to give him new energy. He took up the spade, which his opponent had used only a few minutes ago and shoveled the earth on the body. He flattened down the ground and then covered it with dead leaves.

  “This is how a man, who wrongs a Swaffham, ends,” he said.

  Suddenly, a few yards away, in the deep shadow of the trees, he thought that he saw the outline of a head with a pair of beaming eyes pointed at him. The shock was so violent that for a moment he stopped and nearly fainted. He quickly regained himself, though, and picking up his bloody sword, he rushed to the spot, where he thought he had seen the witness of his terrible deed.

  At his rapid approach, a figure stood up quickly and pointed a revolver at him. It was the soldier the lord had asked to guard his automobile.

  Philip raised his sword, but the solder coolly stepped forward into the light of the lantern.

  “Don’t move any further,” he cried, “or I will shoot!”

  The soldier was now dirty looking, pale and had sweat on his forehead. His hand seemed to shake. Philip looked earnestly at him, but couldn’t say for certain, who would win a fight.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  The other man swallowed, but didn’t otherwise reply.

  “Come,” he continued, throwing his sword away. “I won’t hurt you. Tell me, what you want.”

  “Nothing,” said the soldier.

  “Where’s the car?”

  “Where you parked it. It’s not my fault. You asked me to guard your car and I did, but then I saw you look at this house for an hour and it seemed strange to me and it occurred to me that you may be intending to burglarize it.”

  “How did you come into the garden?” asked Philip.

  “I followed you. I was waiting in the garden to see, if you would leave the house with any stolen goods, when I suddenly saw two men coming out of the house there.”

  “So how much did you see?”

  “I saw it all.”

  “All what?”

  “When I got here, you and the other were digging. I thought you were looking for treasure! I was wrong. Then the other man said something. I couldn’t catch a word. You fought and you won.”

  “That’s all you saw?”

  “Then,” he stammered, “you buried him and then...”

  “Do you know who the other man was?”

  “Yes, I have seen him in the papers.”

  Philip knew everything he needed to know. He looked at the face of the soldier. It was pale and anxious. He looked at the service revolver in the man’s hand. It was steady and pointing at his heart. He had lost.

  “Listen to me, my man. If you know how to hold your tongue and if you forget the things you have seen here tonight, meeting me tonight will be the best luck that has ever happened to you.”

  The soldier looked in the direction of the door in the wall. All he seemed interested in was to get out of this garden alive. The memory of the other man being cut to pieces weighed heavily on his mind.

  “I won’t tell this to a living soul. I swear, I won’t.”

  “Very well. Keep your mouth shut and your fortune is made. Tomorrow I will give you a fine sum of money and you can go back to your barracks and take the officer’s test.”

  “I accept,” said the soldier, eager to leave.

  “Now go to your barracks and go to bed, as if nothing happened. Come back here tomorrow and my man James will tell you what to do. Obey him as you would me.”

  “I accept,” said the young soldier again, sighing, unable to contain his anxiety and fear.

  Philip looked at the man and his gun. He knew that his name, his honor and life were in the hands of this soldier.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Private Irwin Kirwan,” responded the other.

  All the peace and tranquility of his life were now forever gone. He was now an unhappy prisoner, who through the bars of his cell could see the gallows on which one day he would be hanged for murder. He was at Irwin’s mercy, because he knew that, though, that night he was flustered and scared, soon he would know and use his power over the rich man and the smallest wish of this soldier would become an imperial order that he could not dare to disobey. Soon the demands would be absurd and the whims of the soldier humiliating.

  “But what can I do?” he thought to himself. “There is a way to free myself from this odious state of servitude. The dead tell no tales. But I need time.”

  “You can leave, now,” said Philip.

  The young soldier first dared not move, but when he saw Philip look to the grave, feigning no interest in him, he moved slowly to the trees then he turned and ran as fast as he could through the garden and out of the small door in the wall.

  There were three people, who were in on Philip’s secret. First, there was the writer of the anonymous letter. Then there was the witness to the death, Private Irwin Kirwan and finally, James, to whom he had to tell all as he would need his help. He forgot his wife, who also knew with whom she had last seen Thomas St. Ives, but she could not be forced to testify against him in court. With these thoughts ringing through his head, Philip carefully erased the last traces of the duel and then went back to his wife’s room.

  He had expected to find her lying on the floor, where he had left her lying. Renee, however, was seated in an armchair by the fireplace. Her face was swollen from the many tears she had cried that night, but her eyes sparkled with a fire that seemed to consume her mind.

  “My honor has been vindicated, Lady Swaffham. I’ve killed your lover Baron Thomas St. Ives.”

  Renee remained frozen, to his surprise. She had evidently prepared herself for the worst. Her face assumed a haughty expression and the light in her beaming eyes grew brighter and brighter.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “Mr. St. Ives was not my lover.”

  “You don’t have to deny the truth, now. It’s over.”

  Renee’s frigid calmness jarred immensely on Philip’s exhausted mind. He wished her to be conquered and vanquished, destroyed completely and utterly both physically and mentally. In vain he said the crudest and cutting words to humiliate her and break her spirit.

  “You murdered an innocent man,” she answered coldly. “What should I gain by lying? I have nothing left to hope for in this world. You wish to learn the truth? Here it is. I loved Thomas with all my heart. It was with my permission that he was here tonight. He came here, because I had asked him to do so and I left the gate in the garden wall open, so he could enter the house unseen. We were not more than five minutes in the room together, when you arrived. He had never been here before. I could have left you, but as I have your name, now, I couldn’t dishonor it. When you came in, he was begging me to elope with him. He put his life and his honor in my hands. Ah, why did I hesitate? Had I gone with him, he would still have been alive and I might have learned that this world has more to offer than tears and unhappiness. Don’t interrupt me, sir. You will have it all. I loved him before I ever knew that you even existed. I have only my own frailty to blame, only my own cowardice and weakness to deplore. Why did I not refuse to become your wife? You say that you have killed Thomas. You can not kill Thomas, because as long as my heart beats, his memory will remain alive in there.”

  “I warn you, lady!” said Philip furiously.

  “Would you like to kill me too? Don’t fear me. My life is over without him. He’s dead. Let death come to me, too. It would be a welcome visitor to my door. The only good thing that you could now do for me is to raise your revolver and kill me too.”

  Philip didn’t move. She sprang up from her chair and grabbed a poker and offered it to him.

  “Strike then and end it all! In death he and I will be united at last. My Thomas and I will be together again. Why don’t you strike a mighty blow and give me what I want?”

  Philip listened to her, overwhelmed by the intensity of her. Was this Renee, the soft and gentle woman, who spoke with such vehemence and boldly braved his anger?

  “What is going on,” he thought to himself.

  He felt as if a rug had been pulled from under him. He was falling and he had not yet hit the bottom. First the soldier and now his wife.

  “How could I have so misunderstood her?”

  He forgot his anger and for the first time in their marriage he was scared of her. She seemed to him to have undergone a complete change. There was an unearthly beauty about her. Her eyes were lit with a determination he had not seen before. Her wealth of raven hair fell in disordered masses on her shoulders. His weakness allowed him to see and feel emotions he had never felt before. Renee loved the unhappy man with a love Jane Bletchley, the woman with her pretty face and cold blue eyes had never showed him. Her love was a cynical love. It was a lust of conquest and a desire to jeer at a suitor’s earnest feelings for her. Jane, he suddenly understood, was incapable of real love.

  “Ah, what a revelation,” he thought.

  He would have given everything he owned to have wiped out the past. He moved forward with outstretched arms.

  “Renee!” he said. “I love you, Renee!”

  “I forbid you to call me Renee!” she screamed angrily.

  He didn’t reply, but advanced towards her. Suddenly, with a terrible cry, she recoiled from him.

  “Blood!” she cried. “There is blood on your hands!”

  Philip glanced at his hands. On them there was the tell-tale crimson color.

  Renee raised her hand and pointed towards the door.

  “Leave,” she demanded, with an extraordinary burst of energy. “Leave me alone.”

  Rage and jealousy tore Philip’s soul apart. Thomas St. Ives was dead, yet he still had won the heart of his wife.

  “The secret of your crime is safe with me,” she continued, calmly, further enraging the man, who was now desperately in need of affection. “I will not betray you. I will not hand you to the police. But remember that an innocent, murdered man stands between you and me and that I despise you forever.”

  “You forget something,” he said in a voice hoarse with anger and defeat. “You’re my wife and as your husband I can make your life one long agony and misery. Remember that, lady!”

  He rushed out of the bedroom and out of the house. The clock was striking two as he hastened to the spot where he had left his car.

  An hour later he rapped on the door of the hotel room, behind which James was waiting for him.

  “Take care that no one sees you as you take the automobile to the garage,” said the lord hastily, “and then come to my room, because I need your help.”

  As long as Renee was in Philip’s presence, anger and hate had given her the strength she needed to stay on her feet. As soon as he left, her energy gave way and with an outburst of tears she sank on her bed. Her despair was not because of her fear for her future, but for the fact that she felt that had it not been for her, Thomas St. Ives would never have died at such a young age.

  “If I had not been weak and agreed to meet him here,” she sobbed, “he would be still alive. My weakness has killed him as surely as if I had held the gun in my hands!”

  She at first thought of running away to her father, but abandoned the idea almost immediately, because she knew her father loved the young lord more than he did her and he would blame any marital discord on her and not stop trying to persuade her to go back to her husband’s house.

  “No,” she cried, “I’m alone.”

  She spent the night in terrible anguish. The next morning, when her maids entered the room, they found her lying on the floor. The butler was summoned immediately and he gave orders to one of the footmen to call the family doctor, Dr. Banting.

  Philip’s return was eagerly welcomed by the terrified domestics. The lord had not slept that night. He had grown very anxious as to what was happening at his house during his absence. He feared to return home and to find the place surrounded by the police. To his great relief, the house was not in turmoil, because of the presence of the strong arm of the law, but by the anguished waiting for the doctor.

  After seeing his patient, the doctor didn’t hide his opinion that the case was very serious. He told Philip that it was possible that she might not survive this mysterious fainting spell. He impressed on Philip the necessity of peace and quiet as the only remedies to her speedy recovery. He then left, promising to call again later that day.

  His instructions were unnecessary, because Philip asked the servants to put a chair next to her bed and there he sat by his wife’s bedside, resolved not to leave her until she had regained her health or death had released her from her earthly bonds. She had fever and in her delusions she talked incoherently as far as the maids were concerned, but Philip alone knew the hidden meaning of her ravings and they filled his heart with dread and fear.

  This was the second time that Philip had been forced to watch over a sick-bed, trying to guard a terrible secret. At Swaffham Manor he had sat by his father’s side, who could have revealed the attempt against his life. Now it was his wife he was keeping a watch on, to make sure she did not reveal the terrible secret of how he had ended the life of Thomas St. Ives.

  Forced to stay immobile by his wife’s side, the memories of his past life forced themselves on him. He wished to rush out of the house and smash them to a thousand pieces by gambling or drinking or driving his race cars at top speed, but he could not for a moment leave his wife alone. At the age of twenty-five he had experienced only misery and crime. The rest of his days looked gloomy and horrible. He also had another source of anxiety and frequently rang the bell to ask for his trusted James.

  “Send him to me as soon as you see him,” he told the footmen.

  James made his appearance later that day and his master led him into the library and closed the door.

  “And?” he asked.

  “All is settled, Milord.”

  “And the soldier?”

  “I gave him ten thousand shilling. He told me he and his mates have been ordered to Ceylon to put down an uprising by the natives.”

  Philip heaved a deep sigh of relief.

  “Let us hope, he remains there, either dead or alive.”

  The thought of Private Irwin Kirwan had lain like a heavy burden on his mind.

  “And how about the other matter I asked you to investigate?” he continued.

  “I’ve got hold of a young English solicitor in Bombay, named Whittaker Johnson. He believes that I’m a London solicitor and wish him to act on my behalf in the purchase of several properties in that city. I have sent him the letter, written by the baron and he will post it back to England as soon as he receives it.”

  “When the letter arrives at its destination, I will be safe.”

  “Still any indiscretion on the solicitor’s part or a mere act of carelessness by us, will ruin us.”

  “Even so, what must be done must be done.”

  Renee’s situation remained precarious for several days. During these long and anxious hours Philip didn’t dare to close his eyes and it was with feelings of fear that he permitted the maids to be alone to perform some of their duties for their invalid mistress.

  On the fourth day the fever seemed to subside and Renee slipped into a peaceful sleep, giving Philip time to reflect.

  “How is it that Countess Bletchley, who was a daily visitor to our house, has not come to the house, since that awful night?”

  He was so surprised at her sudden absence that he wrote her a short note, informing her of the sudden illness of his wife. An hour later his footman handed him her reply.

  “I’m afraid that Mr. Bletchley has suddenly decided that we should spend the winter in Scotland? We leave this evening by train. Farewell.”

  And so she, too, had abandoned him, taking with her the last glimmers of sunshine he had left. His infatuation with her was not broken, though, and he forced himself to believe that she was just as miserable under the separation as he was.