Gwen ascended the stairs quickly to the second floor, where the Captain opened the door with his key, and a moment later she found herself in a large, well-furnished bachelor's sitting-room where the electric lamps were shaded with yellow silk.
It was evidently the room of a man comfortably off, for the furniture had been chosen with taste, and the pretty knick-knacks and quaint curios upon the table showed the owner of the place to be a man of some refinement.
"Where is he?" inquired the girl, looking around blankly, her cheeks flushed with excitement.
The man turned upon her, and laughed roughly in her face.
She drew back in horror and alarm when, in an instant, she realised how utterly helpless she now was in the stranger's hands. He had closed the door behind him and pushed back the bolt concealed beneath the heavy portiere.
"He is not here!" she gasped. "You've--you've lied to me. This is a trick!" she gasped.
"Pray calm yourself, my dear little girl," he said, coolly lighting a cigarette. "Sit down. I want to have a quiet chat with you."
"I will not, sir!" she answered, with rising anger. "Allow me, please, to go. I shall tell your friend Mr Farquhar of this disgraceful ruse."
"You can tell him, my dear girl, whatever you please," the fellow laughed insolently. "As a matter of fact, your lover does not know me from Adam. So you see it's quite immaterial."
"It is not immaterial," she declared, with a fierce look of resentment: "You shall answer to him for this!"
"Possibly it will be you who will be compelled to answer to him, when he knows that you have accompanied me here alone to my rooms, at eleven at night--eh? What will your lover say to that, I wonder?"
"I have the telegram," she cried, opening the little bag she carried.
It was not there!
"See," he laughed. "I have the telegram!" And before her eyes he tossed it into the fire.
She bent to snatch it from the flame, but he seized her white wrist roughly and threw her backward upon the hearthrug. He had extracted the message from her bag as they had sat together in the darkness of the cab.
Struggling to her feet she screamed for help, and fought frantically with the man who had decoyed her there; fought with the fierce strength of a woman defending her dearest possession, her honour.
She saw how the man's countenance had changed. There was an evil expression there which held her terrified.
She begged mercy from him, begged wildly upon her knees, but he only laughed in her face in triumph. She saw, now that the telegram was destroyed, that this man who had posed as Frank's friend could make his vile story entirely complete.
She was helpless in the hands of a man whose very face betrayed his vile unscrupulousness.
In the struggle she felt his hot foetid breath upon her cheek. Her blouse of pale blue _crepe-de-chine_ was ripped right across the breast as she endeavoured to wrench herself from his grasp.
"Ah! Have mercy on me!" she screamed. "Let me go! Let me go! I'll give you anything--I--I--I'll be silent even--if you'll only let me go!
Ah! do--if you are a gentleman!"
But the fellow only laughed again, and held her more tightly.
Her bare chest heaved and fell quickly before him. Her breath came and went.
"You think," he said in a cruel hard voice, "you think your lover will not believe me. But I see upon your flesh a mark--a natural blemish that you cannot efface. Listen to me quietly. Hear me, or else I shall tell him of its existence, and urge him to discover whether or not I have spoken the truth. Perhaps he will then believe me!"
"You brute!" cried the girl in sudden and breathless horror. "You blackguard! you intend to ruin me in Frank's eyes. Let me go, I say!
Let me go." Again she struggled, trying to get to the window, but with his strong arms encircling her she was helpless as a child, for with a sudden effort he flung her backwards upon the couch, inert and senseless.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
REVEALS THE RIVALS.
Sir Felix Challas, Baronet the well-known financier and philanthropist, was seated in his cosy library in Berkeley Square, dictating letters to his secretary between the whiffs of his mild after-breakfast cigar. He was a man of middle age, with slight side whiskers, a reddish face, and opulent bearing. In his frock-coat, fancy vest, and striped trousers, and white spats over his boots, he presented the acme of style as far as dress was concerned. The whole world knew Sir Felix to be something of a dandy, for he had never, for the past ten years or so, been seen without a flower in his buttonhole. Like many another man in London he had amassed great wealth from small beginnings, until he was now a power in the world of finance, and as a philanthropist his name was a household word.
From a small leather shop somewhere in the Mile End Road he had risen to be the controlling factor of several of the greatest financial undertakings in the country; while the house of Challas and Bowen in Austin Friars was known in the City as one of the highest possible standing.
Though he owned that fine house in Berkeley Square, a beautiful domain in Yorkshire which he had purchased from a bankrupt earl, a villa at Cannes, racehorses, motors, and a splendid steam-yacht, he was still a bachelor, and a somewhat lonely man.
The papers mentioned his doings daily, gave his portrait frequently, and recorded with a flourish of trumpets his latest donation to this charity, or to that. Though he made enormous profits in his financial deals, yet he was a staunch churchman, his hand ever in his pocket for the various institutions which approached him. Indeed, if the truth were told, he, like others, had bought his birthday Baronetcy by making a princely donation to the Hospital Fund. This showed him to be a shrewd man, fully alive to the value of judicious advertisement.
In the years gone by he had mixed with many of the shady characters of the complex world of the City, but now, in his opulence, he had apparently cut himself adrift from them all, and prided himself upon his eminent respectability.
As he sat there that winter's morning, leaning back in his big leather armchair before the fire, he was dictating a letter to the governors of a great orphanage at Bristol, promising to defray the cost of building a much needed wing of the institution.
Then, having done so, he added to his secretary, a rather smug looking man in black:
"And you might also write a paragraph to-day, Stone, and send it to the Press Association. You know what to say--`magnificent gift,' and all that sort of thing. They'll send it out to the newspapers."
"Yes, Sir Felix," answered the man, making a note in shorthand.
"Let's see, what else is there? Ah! The Malms Syndicate! Write saying that I withdraw," he remarked.
His secretary hesitated.
"But that, Sir Felix, means ruin to all three. They are all poor men."
"That's just what I intend," he answered with a smile. "We shall do that business ourselves, as soon as they are out of it."
So Mr Stone scribbled rapidly a letter in shorthand, which meant the ruin of three honest men, who, believing in the great financier's promises, had taken upon themselves liabilities which they could not meet.
Such letters are not infrequent. The great philanthropist, whom the world looked up to as a model man, who did his utmost for the benefit of suffering humanity, and who had been rewarded by his Sovereign, collected his wealth by ways that would often not bear investigation.
But being a big man, he was able to do things which a little man would fear to do. For were not Challas and Bowen, with their huge operations and big bank balances, above suspicion?
While dictating another letter, the butler, an elderly and pompous person, entered announcing: "Mr Jannaway, Sir Felix."
"That will be enough for to-day, Stone," the red-faced man said to the secretary, who rose at once, and followed the servant out of the room.
Next moment the man who had posed on the previous evening as "Captain Wetherton" entered the room, looking smart and spruce in a well-cut suit of blue serge.
"Well, Jim?" exclaimed the financier anxiously, as he rose to meet his visitor. "I've been expecting you all the morning. What news--eh?"
"Oh! It's all right," answered the man cheerily, flinging himself into an armchair without invitation, apparently quite at home in Challas's house.
"Found out anything of interest?" inquired Sir Felix, pushing over the big silver cigar-box that stood upon the smoking-table.