"If I'm making any mistake, I shall know how to apologise," said the Inspector. "If you don't open that cupboard, _I_ shall."
"Never!" exclaimed Leander. "I'll die first!" and he threw himself upon the handle.
The other caught him by the shoulders, and sent him twirling into the opposite corner; and then, taking a key from his own pocket, he opened the door himself.
"I--I never encouraged her!" whimpered Leander, as he saw that all was lost.
The officer had stepped back in silence from the cupboard; then he faced Leander, with a changed expression. "I suppose you think yourself devilish sharp?" he said savagely; and Leander discovered that the cupboard was as bare as Mother Hubbard's!
He was not precisely surprised, except at first. "She's keeping out of the way; she wouldn't be the goddess she is if she couldn't do a trifling thing like that!" was all he thought of the phenomenon. He forced himself to laugh a little.
"Excuse me," he said, "but you did seem so set on detecting something wrong, that I couldn't help humouring you!"
Inspector Bilbow was considerably out of humour, and gave Leander to understand that he would laugh in a certain obscure region, known as "the other side of his face," by-and-by. "You take care, that's my advice to you, young man. I've a deuced good mind to arrest you on suspicion as it is!" he said hotly.
"Lor', sir!" said Leander, "what for--for not having anything in that cupboard?"
"It's my belief you know more than you choose to tell. Be that as it may, I shall not take you into custody for the present; but you pay attention to what I'm going to tell you next. Don't you attempt to leave this house, or to remove anything from it, till you see me again, and that'll be some time to-morrow evening. If you do attempt it, you'll be apprehended at once, for you're being watched. I tell you that for your own sake, Tweddle; for I've no wish to get you into trouble if you act fairly by me. But mind you stay where you are for the next twenty-four hours."
"And what's to happen then?" said Leander.
"I mean to have the whole house thoroughly searched and you must be ready to give us every assistance--that's what's to happen. I might make a secret of it; but where's the use? If you're not a fool, you'll see that it won't do to play any tricks. You'd far better stand by me than Potter."
"I tell you I don't know Potter. _Blow_ Potter!" said Leander, warmly.
"We shall see," was all the detective deigned to reply; "and just be ready for my men to-morrow evening, or take the consequences. Those are my last words to you!"
And with this he took his leave. He was by no means the most brilliant officer in the Department, and he felt uncomfortably aware that he did not see his way clear as yet. He could not even make up his mind on so elementary a point as Leander's guilt or innocence.
But he meant to take the course he had announced, and his frankness in giving previous notice was not without calculation. He argued thus: If Tweddle was free from all complicity, nothing was lost by delaying the search for a day; if he were guilty, he would be more than mortal if he did not attempt, after such a warning, either to hide his booty more securely, and probably leave traces which would betray him, or else to escape when his guilt would be manifest.
Unfortunately, there were circumstances in the case which he could not be expected to know, and which made his logic inapplicable.
After he had gone, Leander thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and began to whistle forlornly. "A little while ago it was burglars--now it's police!" he reflected aloud. "I'm going it, I am! And then there's Matilda and that there Venus--one predickyment on top of another!" (But here a sudden hope lightened his burden.) "Suppose she's took herself off for good?" He was prevented from indulging this any further by a long, low laugh, which came from the closed cupboard.
"No such luck--she's back again!" he groaned. "Oh, _come_ out if you want to. Don't stay larfin' at me in there!"
The goddess stepped out, with a smile of subdued mirth upon her lips.
"Leander," she said, "did it surprise you just now that I had vanished?"
"Oh," he said wearily, "I don't know--yes, I suppose so. You found some way of getting through at the back, I dare say?"
"Do you think that even now I cannot break through the petty restraints of matter?"
"Well, however it was managed, it was cleverly done. I must say that. I didn't hardly expect it of you. But you must do the same to-morrow night, mind you!"
"Must I, indeed?" she said.
"Yes, unless you want to ruin me altogether, you must. They're going to search the premises _for you_!"
"I have heard all," she said. "But give yourself no anxiety: by that time you and I will be beyond human reach."
"Not me," he corrected. "If you think I'm going to let myself be wafted over to Cyprus (which is British soil now, let me tell you), you're under a entire delusion. I've never been wafted anywhere yet, and I don't mean to try it!"
All her pent-up wrath broke forth and descended upon him with crushing force.
"Meanest and most contemptible of mortal men, you shall recognize me as the goddess I am! I have borne with you too long; it shall end this night. Shallow fool that you have been, to match your puny intellect against a goddess famed for her wiles as for her beauty! You have thought me simple and guileless; you have never feared to treat me with disrespect; you have even dared to suppose that you could keep me--an immortal--pent within these wretched walls! I humoured you; I let you fool yourself with the notion that your will was free--your soul your own. Now that is over! Consider the perils which encircle you.
Everything has been aiding to drive you into these arms. My hour of triumph is at hand--yield, then! Cast yourself at my feet, and grovel for pardon--for mercy--or assuredly I will spare you not!"
Leander went down on all fours on the hearthrug. "Mercy!" he cried, feebly. "I've meant no offence. Only tell me what you want of me."
[Illustration: LEANDER WENT DOWN ON ALL FOURS ON THE HEARTH-RUG.]
"Why should I tell you again? I demand the words from you which place you within my power: speak them at once!"
("Ah," thought Leander, "I am not in her power as it is, then.") "If I was to tell you once more that I couldn't undertake to say any such words?" he asked aloud.
"Then," she said, "my patience would be at an end, and I would scatter your vile frame to the four winds of heaven!"
"Lady Venus," said Leander, getting up with a white and desperate face, "don't drive me into a corner. I can't go off, not at a moment's notice--in either way! I--I must have a day--only a day--to make my arrangements in. Give me a day, Lady Venus; I ask it as a partickler favour!"
"Be it so," she said. "One day I give you in which to take leave of such as may be dear to you; but, after that, I will listen to no further pleadings. You are mine, and, all unworthy as you are, I shall hold you to your pledge!"
Leander was left with this terrible warning ringing in his ears: the goddess would hold him to his involuntary pledge. Even he could see that it was pride, and not affection, which rendered her so determined; and he trembled at the thought of placing himself irrevocably in her power.
But what was he to do? The alternative was too awful; and then, in either case, he must lose Matilda. Here the recollection of how he had left her came over him with a vivid force. What must she be thinking of him at that moment? And who would ever tell her the truth, when he had been spirited away for ever?
"Oh, Matilda!" he cried, "if you only knew the hidgeous position I'm in--if you could only advise me what to do--I could bear it better!"
And then he resolved that he would ask that advice without delay, and decide nothing until she replied. There was no reason for any further concealment: she had seen the statue herself, and must know the worst.
What she could not know was his perfect innocence of any real unfaithfulness to her, and that he must explain.
He sat up all night composing a letter that should touch her to the heart, with the following result:--
"MY OWN DEAREST GIRL,
"If such you will still allow me to qualify you, I write to you in a state of mind that I really 'ardly know what I am about, but I cannot indure making no effort to clear up the gaping abiss which the events of the past fatal afternoon has raised betwixt us.
"In spite of all I could do, you have now seen, and been justly alarmed at, the Person with whom I allowed myself to become involved in such a unhappy and unprecedented manner, and having done so, you can think for yourself whether that Art of Stone was able for to supplant yours for a single moment, though the way in which such a hidgeous Event transpired I can not trust my pen to describe except in the remark that it was purely axidental. It all appened on that ill-ominous Saturday when we went down to those Gardens where my Doom was saving up to lay in wait for me, and I scorn to deny that Bella's sister Ada was one of the party. But as to anything serous in that quarter, oh Tilly the ole time I was contrasting you with her and thinking how truly superior, and never did I swerve not what could be termed a swerve for a instant. I did dance arf a walz with her--but why? Because she asked me to it and as a Gentleman I was bound to oblige! And that was afterwards too, when I had put that ring on which is the sauce of all my recent aggony. All the while I was dancing my thoughts were elsewhere--on how I could get the ring back again, for so I still hoped I could, though when I came to have a try, oh my dear girl no one couldn't persuade her she's that obstinate, and yet unless I do it is all over with me, and soon too!
"And now if it's the last time I shall ever write words with a mortal pen, I must request your support in this dilemmer which is sounding its dread orns at my very door!
"You know what she is and who she is, and you cannot doubt but what she's a _goddess_ loath as you must feel to admit such a thing, and I ask you if it would be downright wicked in me to do what she tells me I must do. Indeed I wont do it, being no less than flying with her immediate to a distant climb, and you know how repugnant I am to such a action--not if you advise me against it or even if you was but to assure me your affections were unchanged in spite of all! But you know we parted under pigulier circs, and I cannot disgise from myself that you may be thinking wuss of me than what Matilda I can honestly say I deserve!
"Now I tell you solimly that if this is the fact, and you've been thinking of your proper pride and your womanly dignity and things like that--there's _no time for to do it in_ Matilda, if you don't want to break with me for all Eternity!
"For she's pressing me to carry out the pledge, as she calls it, and I must decide before this time to-morrow, and I want to feel you are not lost to me before I can support my trial, and what with countless perplexities and burglars threatening, and giving false informations, and police searching, there's no saying what I may do nor what I mayn't do if I'm left to myself, for indeed I am very unappy Matilda, and if ever a man was made a Victim through acting without intentions, or if with, of the best--I am that Party! O Matilda don't, don't desert me, unless you have seased to care for me, and in that contingency I can look upon my Fate whatever it be with a apathy that will supply the courage which will not even winch at its approach, but if I am still of value, come, and come precious soon, or it will be too late to the Asistance of
"Your truly penitent and unfortunate