THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE. Ethel Lina White
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the alternative. Your money will soon be spent. What will be your future, without friends, without work, without a reference? You are not attractive enough for night-life, and not clever enough for crime. You will be where you were before Miss Asprey befriended you—down and out."
"Yes," agreed Miss Mack.
"I'm glad you are sensible. In return, I will only ask for that draft of Miss Asprey's letter, together with your signature to this confession...Would you like to read it first?"
"Yes, please," replied Miss Mack.
She took the typewritten sheet, and scanned it with deliberation, before she returned it.
"You want something for nothing," she said. "No, thank you. I'm not going. I can show that draft to the Squire. I'm sure Miss Asprey would rather I stayed with her, instead. Wouldn't you, Miss Asprey?"
"Yes," was the low reply.
The Rector, who was ignorant of what cards were held, thought that Ignatius was beaten. But the little man had kept his trump for the end of the game.
"No," he said, "you will go tonight. There is still one point I have not mentioned. Miss Asprey, out of mistaken nobility, has concealed your past career. So you will be a discredited witness and a target for reproach. No one would believe your word, then, before Miss Asprey's."
Miss Asprey made a vehement gesture of dissent.
"No, Mr. Brown, I will not permit this. It is against my principles to trample on the fallen. That is my own secret—and hers."
"You can please yourself, so long as it was your secret, only," Ignatius reminded her. "But I made it my business to find out this interesting lady's past. For the sake of public morality I shall make it known, if Miss Mack doesn't listen to reason."
Miss Mack's china-blue eyes retained their tranquillity as she sat in thought. Presently she smiled at Ignatius.
"You asked me to go abroad," she said. "I would prefer to oblige you by joining those ladies."
Ignatius was so amused by her sheer impudence, that, for a moment, the Rector thought he would weaken. But such gestures were not part of his mental outfit.
"I remember," he said, turning the knife with conscious cruelty. "Easy motoring and excellent food. I'm sorry, Miss Mack, but Opportunity does not knock twice...Let it be a warning to you not to refuse my second offer."
"I'll sign," said Miss Mack calmly.
Ignatius produced his fountain-pen, and he stood over her, watching the firm, deliberate strokes, as she signed her name to the confession.
"Thank you," he said. "How long will it take for you to pack?"
"Twenty minutes."
"I have allowed you half an hour, when the car will be round."
"All right...Is your chauffeur married?"
Another flicker touched Ignatius' lips at this touch of ultra-respectability.
"No," he replied, "but he's very respectable. You can trust him...Please bring the draft with you when you come down."
He glanced at his watch, when Miss Mack had pattered obediently from the room.
"If you will put up with me, I should like to see her off the premises," he said. "I'm afraid the ethics of strict justice and morality are not satisfied by my compromise—but, in the circumstances, it is the best I can do."
"I am grateful," said Miss Asprey, "for your tact and forbearance."
"Then that's all right. Shall I open the windows?"
"Please do. Wide."
Ignatius waited for the Rector to unfasten the shutters. Miss Asprey drew a deep breath of relief as the night-air swept into the room, in a rainy gust of wind.
"Have you been to Palestine?" asked Ignatius, breaking an awkward pause.
Miss Asprey told him that she had visited the Holy Land, in her youth, and the period of waiting was bridged by mutual comparisons of travel. Presently, Miss Mack returned, buttoned into a tweed coat, and looking a pleasant, homely little woman.
"Here it is," she said, giving Ignatius a sealed envelope. "Good-bye, Miss Asprey. Thank you for all your kindness."
Before she could reach the door, Ignatius called her back.
"One minute, please, Miss Mack," he said smoothly, holding out the paper he had just ripped from the envelope. "There seems to be a little mistake. This is only a copy of the draft. A very creditable copy, I admit, only I seem to recognise certain slight characteristics, which I noticed, just now, in your signature...I want the original, please."
Still smiling, Miss Mack opened her large hand-bag, and gave him a second paper—dirty and creased—which, after a close scrutiny, he accepted.
"Your property," he said, as he handed it to Miss Asprey. Then he turned to Miss Mack.
"Allow me to see you to your car," he said, opening the door for her, and following her from the room.
When they were alone, the Rector spoke to Miss Asprey. "May I burn it?" he asked eagerly.
"Please do."
With shaking fingers, he stuffed the paper into the dying fire. As he watched it blaze up, and then crumble to ash, he heard a sigh tremble through the room.
A saint was secure on her pedestal.
CHAPTER XXXIII — IGNATIUS EXPLAINS
It was pouring when the two men returned from Spout Manor, and the study looked so cheerless that the Rector put a match to the fire. He was about to light the lamp, when Ignatius stopped him.
"No. I have a story to tell. All good stories should be told by firelight."
The little man was wrought up to a pitch of jubilant vanity, when he was alive to every dramatic effect. As he sat hunched up in his big chair, hugging his knees on which he rested his pointed chin, he looked like a gnome, peeping out from the roots of a hollow oak.
The glow from the fire flickered on his lined face, accentuating its hollows and exaggerating the malice of his grin. He clawed in the air, to demand silence.
"No questions, please, unless absolutely necessary to your understanding."
He paused, to create the necessary suspense, before he began.
"You remember the Squire's illness, and how the poison in his system was liberated by its unlucky combination with gelatine. At the time I remarked that there might be a parallel between his case and your little problem. And I was right.
"Miss Mack was our poison; yet, although she had been in the village for nearly two years, she had been a negative quantity. Her nature is cruel, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and treacherous; she has no moral sense and is dead to any feeling of shame.
"But, fortunately, she is stupid, so she did not know how to liberate—or shall we say, commercialise—her power for evil." Ignatius broke off his story to digress.
"That was why, later on, she did indulge in general blackmail. It would have been a dangerous policy, of course, and what I should have expected of Miss Brook, if she had chosen the wrong turning, instead of being an exceedingly nice girl. But she has the character which Miss Mack does not possess.
"To resume my tale, she remained—a dormant toxin—in the village system; yet, even in her turgid phase, she displayed her force. She has a will, which operates, not by pressure, but by suction. I believe that some of you had experience of her draining powers, although they were naturally attributed to Miss Asprey, as the mistress of Spout Manor. Who would dream of connecting healing—or morphine—properties, as the case might be, to the