"I have already telegraphed to Farquhar at Horsford. He should be here before twelve."
"And when he comes, we shall decide what to do," remarked the Professor.
"I think he should go out at once to Palestine. Only one of us must go to purchase the land, otherwise suspicion might be excited. And if so, then good-bye to all our chances."
"Sir Felix, if he cannot obtain the secret, may endeavour to upset our plans out there," remarked Gwen. "He is a man of wealth and power, dad."
"But he does not possess the information which we possess. Professor Holmboe's secret is now ours--and ours alone!" he declared triumphantly.
"Could we not get Mr Mullet to assist us, dad?" suggested the girl puzzled to distraction as to how she should act. She was divided between her love and her duty.
"No. He will only help us in his own way," responded Doctor Diamond.
The girl walked back to the long window which led out upon the balcony-- the window which Jim Jannaway had been prepared to use as an emergency exit--and stood with her hands clasped behind her back, while the two men further discussed what they believed to be a most satisfactory situation.
The land on both sides of the mount must be purchased in secret, they agreed, and not a word must leak out regarding the discovery until actual operations had commenced. Then the Professor was to launch his startling statement upon the world in the form of an article in the _Contemporary_. After the purchase of the land, the Professor, the Doctor, and an engineer were to go out to Jerusalem and make secret investigation. The surveyor, whom Griffin proposed to send out with Farquhar to make secret survey upon the measurements contained in the cipher, was a young man in business at Richmond, a friend of his, to whom he proposed to give a small interest in the syndicate.
"We are agreed, I suppose, Doctor, that at all hazards the most sacred relics and the archives of the Kingdom of Israel which are no doubt preserved there, shall be restored to the Jews?" Griffin said.
"Most certainly," was Diamond's reply. "This man Challas intends, it seems, to revenge himself upon the Jews by desecrating the treasure."
"But, dad!" cried the girl, "surely he would never be allowed to desecrate sacred relics!"
"If he discovered them upon land he had purchased he might very easily destroy them before he could be prevented," her father pointed out.
"There lies the great danger. Fortunately, however, he will be unable to do that. Farquhar must go out to Jerusalem at the earliest possible moment. And I'll get young Pettit, the surveyor, up from Richmond this afternoon."
Gwen's face was blanched, she stood rooted there, still staring down into the street, inexpressibly gloomy that winter's morning. Lights were in the rooms of some of the houses opposite, while outside Notting Hill Gate Station, at the end of the road, the big electric globes were shedding their brilliance, as they did each night.
How should she act? She was calmly contemplating what might occur. Her head reeled, for she had not closed her eyes since she had last stood in that room face to face with her enemy--the man who had filched the secret from them and departed.
His threats rang in her ears. If she revealed the truth, then Mullet would be arrested, and in addition a foul lie, which alas! she could not refute, would be told both her lover and her father! She shuddered and held her breath. Had she not already promised secrecy to Mullet! Could she, after his self-sacrifice, deliberately bring ruin upon him?
No. She was hemmed in on every side by the impossible. And even if she told the truth, it was now too late, alas! Sir Felix Challas, great financier that he was, had agents in all the capitals, and possessed secret channels of information against which their little combination would be utterly powerless. Alas! they were now only tilting at the wind.
That red-faced blatant parvenu, that Jew-hating hypocrite who did his evil doings behind his moneybags, had triumphed!
Whatever she said, whatever allegation she made against the Baronet or Jim Jannaway--for she now for the first time had learnt his name--would make no difference. The bitterness of it all must fall upon her, and her alone.
Her young heart was crushed, stifled, broken.
If she spoke, or if she were silent, it was the same--she must play her lover false.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.
THE VICTIM OF SHAME.
The tall red-moustached man stood in the dining-room with Gwen Griffin.
She had seen his approach from the window, and dashing downstairs, had admitted him. Taking him at once into the room she had closed the door, and in a few brief hasty words had admitted him to her confidence.
"What!" he cried, staring at her in amazement. "Jim Jannaway has dared to come here, to read the documents, and then to threaten you with this!
Look here, Miss Griffin, the matter is much more serious for you than I had imagined. Those fellows, Felix and Jim, will stick at nothing, but they shall not ruin your reputation. Leave that to `Red Mullet'."
"But, Mr Mullet," she cried, "he threatens your arrest if I tell my father the truth. Besides, have I not promised secrecy to you?"
"My dear child," he said, "go at once and tell your father the truth.
Then leave the rest to me."
"But what will he think of me?" she asked, her face blanched to the lips.
"Let your father--indeed, let the world--think what it will of you, Miss Griffin. You are an innocent victim of the avarice of these men, just as I am. I stood your friend that day when I released you from bondage--and I will stand your friend still!"
"They possess our secret."
"That is a most unfortunate fact," he admitted. "Still we must try and defy them. I will do my best. But if I fail," he added in a low earnest voice, "it will not be for want of endeavour, I promise you. I tried to save you and your father once--and I will try again. We must win even if we make some sacrifice."
"But do not imperil yourself," she urged. "Do not, I beg of you, Mr Mullet."
"I shall act with both firmness and discretion, and if we but unmask these blackguards who have tried again to entrap you, we shall have done a service to society at large. Unfortunately," he added with a sigh, "my own hands are none too clean."
"You will see my father. The Doctor is upstairs with him," she urged.
"No--later!" he exclaimed hastily. "At the present moment not a second is to be lost. I must go to them, and see what we can do by firmness.
Tell your father of Jim's visit here, but do not say you have seen me, and say nothing regarding the past--remember, nothing. Promptness of action is now our only safeguard."
And leaving the girl standing there bewildered, he passed out of the room, and next second she heard the front door closed behind her.
Of his power to avert the natural flow of events she had but little confidence. He was beneath the thumb of Sir Felix Challas, therefore, how could he hope to wrest back the secret which Jim Jannaway had learned?
In any case, the good-looking scoundrel to whom a woman's honour was of no account, would carry out his threat, and Frank must, ere long, turn his back upon her, as he had done before.
Her heart beat fast, and she placed her hand upon her breast, as if to stay its anxious throbbing.
Mullet, though an adventurer himself, was right. It was her duty to tell her father the truth, and not allow him to continue further in that sense of false security.
Yet at what cost must her statement be made! At cost, alas! of her own honour.
Ere long she would not be able to look Frank in the face, for Jim Jannaway would lie so circumstantially that both her father and he would believe it to be the shameful truth. Mullet would not admit the past.
"Say nothing regarding the past," he had urged! He had some strong motive in this--a motive that must, of itself, prevent him revealing the truth, and clearing her of the blemish placed upon her good name.
Besides, would Frank ever accept the excuses made for her by a man of "Red Mullet's" stamp? The actual truth was an ugly one. She had been absent from home, and on returning, had refused to give an account of where she had been. And now it was to be revealed that she had lived in "Red Mullet's" chambers!
She burst into a flood of tears on recognising her own utter helplessness.
Circumstances were entirely against her. She could never hope to defend her own honour in the face of such dark facts.
Suddenly she dried her eyes with a great effort, and looked at herself in the big mirror at the back of the high, old-fashioned carved sideboard. She started to notice how pale she was, and how dark beneath the eyes.
Then slowly she went out of the room, and up the stairs, in obedience to her protector, "Red Mullet."