For anyone to “consent” to see the great Sir Bertram Morgan was a novelty in that gentleman’s life. Yet, oddly enough, the phrase did not strike him as insolent, or even curious. One of the greatest powers in the world of finance, he accepted this mysterious summons.
CHAPTER
19
ROWAN HOUSE
Sir Bertram’s fawn and silver Rolls, familiar in many of the capitals of Europe, was brought up to the door of the club, and the courtly financier handed his beautiful companion to her seat.
“I warn you, Sir Bertram, we have some distance to go.”
“How far?”
“Fourteen or fifteen miles into Surrey.”
“The journey will pass very quickly with you.”
“If you will tell your man to go to Sutton By-pass I will direct him when we get there how to find Rowan House.”
“Rowan House? Is that where you are going?”
“It’s a very old house—a sort of survival. It came on the market some years ago. It was once the property of Sir Lionel Barton, the famous explorer.”
“Barton?” Sir Bertram got in beside Madame Ingomar, having given rapid instructions to the chauffeur. “I have met Barton—a madman, but brilliant. He nearly brought about a rising a year or two ago, in Afghanistan, or somewhere, by stealing the ornaments from a prophet’s tomb. Is that the man you mean?”
The car started smoothly on its way.
“Yes,” said Madame Ingomar, leaning back upon the cushions and glancing in the speaker’s direction. “It is the same man. The house was very cheap, but in many ways suitable.”
Madame Ingomar turned her head again, staring straight before her, and Sir Bertram, studying that cameo-like profile, groped for some dim memory which it conjured up. Bending forward he pulled down the front blind.
“The lights of approaching cars are so dazzling,” he said. “That is more restful.”
“Thank you, yes,” she murmured. . . .
The big Rolls, all but silently, quite effortlessly, was devouring mile after mile of London highway. The Flying Squad car, close behind, at times was fully extended by the driver to keep track of the quarry. Chief detective-inspector Gallaho had twice removed his hat since they had left Bond Street, on each occasion replacing it at a slightly different angle, which betokened intense excitement, Sterling was silent, as was Nayland Smith. . . .
Madame Ingomar touched Sir Bertram’s hand. He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them rapturously.
“Please, please,” she pleaded. “I will not allow you to make love to me, while you doubt me so much. If I did, I should feel like a courtesan.”
Sir Bertram drew back, watching her. She dropped her wrap and turned away from him, glancing back over her right shoulder.
“You are a man of honour,” she said, the gaze of those magnetic eyes fixed upon him suddenly, overpoweringly. “I need your assistance; but you will never understand me until you know something of the dangers of my life.”
She slipped her shoulders free of the green frock. Sir Bertram suppressed an exclamation.
That ivory back was wealed with the marks of a lash!
He stared fascinatedly, fists clenched. With a graceful, almost indolent movement of her slender arms Madame Ingomar readjusted her dress, pulled her fur wrap about her, and lay back in the corner, watching him under lowered lashes.
“What fiend did that to you?” he muttered. “What devil incarnate could deface that ivory skin?”
He was bending over her, one knee upon the floor of the car, a supplicant, literally at her feet. But she stared straight before her. When he seized her hands, they lay listless in his grasp.
“Tell me!”—the hoarseness of his own voice surprised him:
“I want to know—I must know.”
“It would be useless,” she replied, her tones so low that he could only just catch the words. “In this you cannot assist me. But—” she looked down at him, twining her fingers in his—”I wanted you to know that what I have told you of my life is not a lie.”
Sir Bertram kissed her hands, kissed her arms, and quite intoxicated by the beauty of this maddening, incomprehensible woman, would have kissed her lips, but a slender hand, two of the fingers jewelled, intervened between his lips and hers.
Gently, she thwarted him, for her half-closed eyes were not unkind.
“Please . . . not yet,” she said. “I have told you that you make me feel like a wanton.”
Sir Bertram recovered himself. Seated, staring straight ahead, his teeth very tightly clenched, he tried to analyse his emotions.
Was he in the toils of the most talented adventuress who had ever crossed his path? Did these waves of insane passion which from time to time swept him away, mean that where Madame Ingomar was concerned, self-control had gone? If she was what she claimed to be, what were his intentions about her?
He taxed himself—was he prepared to marry her?
Beside him, she remained silent. He was conscious of the strangest urges. Not since his Oxford days had he experienced anything resembling these. Undeterred by that gentle rebuff, he wanted to grasp Madame Ingomar in his arms and silence her protests with kisses. He wanted to demand, as a lover’s right, the real explanation of those marks upon her shoulders. He wanted to kill the man who had caused them, and it was his recognition of this homicidal desire which checked, in a measure, the tumult of his brain.
Was it possible, that he, at his age, holding his place in the world, could be driven quite mad by a woman? He wrenched his head aside and looked at her.
She lay back against the cushions. Through half-closed eyes she stared before her abstractedly, and Sir Bertram captured that fugitive memory.
It was the profile of Queen Nefertiti, that exquisite mystery whose portrait by an unknown artist has been the subject of so much dispute.
Deserted streets offered no obstacles to the chauffeur. The outskirts of London reached, the police car behind had greater difficulty in keeping Sir Bertram’s Rolls in sight.
“I can’t make this out at all,” growled Gallaho. “Where the devil is she going?”
“I haven’t been in this neighbourhood for some time,”
snapped Nayland Smith. “But it brings back curious memories. It was in an ancient house in a sort of back-water near Sutton, that I first met Sir Lionel Barton.”
“The explorer?”
“Yes. He inherited a queer old place somewhere in this neighbourhood. It was the scene of very strange happenings at the beginning of the Fu Manchu case. And ... by heaven, as I live, that is just the direction we are heading now!”
In the leading car, the blind having been raised again, Madame Ingomar was giving instructions to the chauffeur. And presently, so guided, the Rolls turned into a darkly shadowed avenue which in summer must have been a veritable tunnel. At the end of it, through the temporary clearness of the night, one saw Rowan House, a long, squat building, hemmed in by trees and shrubs.
When presently Sir Bertram found himself in the entrance hall, he recognized the hand of the brilliant, but eccentric explorer and archeologist who had been the former owner of Rowan House. The place was a miniature Assyrian hall, and the present occupier had not disturbed this scheme. Animal skins and one or two exotic rugs alone disturbed the expanse of polished floor; and in the opening hung curtains of some queerly figured material which resembled that represented in ancient wall paintings.
The exterior of the house, Sir Bertram had noted, presented an unpleasantly damp and clammy appearance. And now as he stood looking about him, but glancing from time to time at the Oriental servant who had opened the door, he became aware at once of a curious perfume, almost like that of incense, yet having an overpowering quality about it which gave him the impression that Rowan House was not exactly a healthy abode.