



Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
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 THE WHITE
 LIE


 BY

 WILLIAM LE QUEUX

 _Author of "The Temptress," "In White Raiment,"
 "The Room of Secrets," etc._


 WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
 LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
 1915




 [Illustration: "He had taken her small, white hand in his, and for a
 moment he stood mute before her, overcome with gratitude." (Chapter
 XVIII.)                                             [_Frontispiece_]




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER                                                PAGE

      I.--IS MAINLY MYSTERIOUS                           7

     II.--CONCERNS A PRETTY STRANGER                    19

    III.--DESCRIBES TWO INQUIRIES                       34

     IV.--DESCRIBES A TORN CARD                         45

      V.--SECRETS OF STATE                              56

     VI.--THE SAFE BREAKERS                             67

    VII.--THE DOWNWARD PATH                             78

   VIII.--REVEALS THE GRIM TRUTH                        88

     IX.--IN THE NIGHT                                  99

      X.--HONOUR AMONG THIEVES                         108

     XI.--THE VOW                                      119

    XII.--THE FATE OF "THE AMERICAN"                   130

   XIII.--SISTERS IN SILENCE                           139

    XIV.--JEAN LEARNS THE TRUTH                        149

     XV.--HIS LORDSHIP'S VISITOR                       159

    XVI.--JEAN HAS A SURPRISE                          169

   XVII.--THE DARKENING HORIZON                        178

  XVIII.--LORD BRACONDALE'S CONFESSION                 188

    XIX.--THE GARDEN OF LOVE                           197

     XX.--CROOKED CONFIDENCES                          206

    XXI.--THE GREEN TABLE                              215

   XXII.--DISCLOSES A SCHEME                           224

  XXIII.--THE FALLING SHADOW                           235

   XXIV.--THE BLOW                                     244

    XXV.--TO PAY THE PRICE                             255

   XXVI.--A CHILD'S QUESTION                           265

  XXVII.--THE INTRUDER                                 275

 XXVIII.--THE CLOSED BOX                               284

   XXIX.--DEADLY PERIL                                 293

    XXX.--THE WHITE LIE                                299




THE WHITE LIE




CHAPTER I.

IS MAINLY MYSTERIOUS.


"A woman--perhaps?"

"Who knows! Poor Dick Harborne was certainly a man of secrets, and of
many adventures."

"Well, it certainly is a most mysterious affair. You, my dear Barclay,
appear to be the last person to have spoken to him."

"Apparently I was," replied Lieutenant Noel Barclay, of the Naval Flying
Corps, a tall, slim, good-looking, clean-shaven man in aviator's garb,
and wearing a thick woollen muffler and a brown leather cap with rolls
at the ears, as he walked one August afternoon up the village street of
Mundesley-on-Sea, in Norfolk, a quaint, old-world street swept by the
fresh breeze of the North Sea. "Yesterday I flew over here from Yarmouth
to see the cable-laying, and met Dick in the post-office. I hadn't seen
him for a couple of years. We were shipmates in the _Antrim_ before he
retired from the service and went abroad."

"Came into money, I suppose?" remarked his companion, Francis Goring, a
long-legged, middle-aged man, who, in a suit of well-worn tweeds,
presented the ideal type of the English landowner, as indeed he
was--owner of Keswick Hall, a fine place a few miles distant, and a
Justice of the Peace for the county of Norfolk.

"No," replied the aviator, unwinding his woollen scarf. "That's just it.
I don't think he came into money. He simply retired, and next we heard
was that he was living a wandering, adventurous life on the Continent. I
ran up against him in town once or twice, and he always seemed amazingly
prosperous. Yet there was some sort of a mystery about him--of that I
have always felt certain."

"That's interesting," declared the man at his side. "Anything
suspicious--eh?"

"Well, I hardly know. Only, one night as I was walking from the Empire
along to the Rag, I passed a man very seedy and down-at-heel. He
recognised me in an instant, and hurried on towards Piccadilly Circus.
It was Dick--of that I'm absolutely convinced. I had a cocktail with him
in the club next day, but he never referred to the incident."

"If he had retired from the Navy, then what was his business, do you
suppose?"

"Haven't the slightest idea," Barclay replied. "I met him here with
a motor-bike late yesterday afternoon. We had a drink together across
at the Grand, against the sea, and I left him just after five o'clock.
I had the hydroplane out and went up from opposite the coastguard
station," he said, pointing to the small, well-kept grass plot on
the left, where stood the flagstaff and the white cottages of the
coastguard. "He watched me get up, and then, I suppose, he started off
on his bike for Norwich. What happened afterwards is entirely shrouded
in mystery. He was seen to pass through the market-place of North
Walsham, five miles away, and an hour and a quarter later he was found,
only three miles farther on, at a lonely spot near the junction of the
Norwich road and that leading up to Worstead Station, between Westwick
and Fairstead. A carter found him lying in a ditch at the roadside,
stabbed in the throat, while his motor-cycle was missing!"

"From the papers this morning it appears that your friend has been about
this neighbourhood a good deal of late. For what reason nobody knows.
He's been living sometimes at the Royal at Norwich and the King's Head
at Beccles for the past month or so, they say."

"He told me so himself. He promised to come over to me at the
air-station at Yarmouth to-morrow and lunch with me, poor fellow."

"I wonder what really happened?"

"Ah, I wonder!" remarked the slim, well-set-up, flying officer. "A mere
tramp doesn't kill a fellow of Dick Harborne's hard stamp in order to
rob him of his cycle."

"No. There's something much more behind the tragedy, without a doubt,"
declared the local Justice of the Peace. "Let's hope something will come
out at the inquest. Personally, I'm inclined to think that it's an act
of revenge. Most probably a woman is at the bottom of it."

Barclay shook his head. He did not incline to that opinion.

"I wonder with what motive he cycled so constantly over to this
neighbourhood from Norwich or Beccles?" exclaimed Goring. "What could
have been the attraction? There must have been one, for this is an
out-of-the-world place."

"Your theory is a woman. Mine isn't," declared the lieutenant, bluntly,
offering his friend a cigarette and lighting one himself. "No, depend
upon it, poor old Dick was a man of mystery. Many strange rumours were
afloat concerning him. Yet, after all, he was a real fine fellow, and
as smart an officer as ever trod a quarter-deck. He was a splendid
linguist, and had fine prospects, for he has an uncle an admiral on
the National Defence Committee. Yet he chucked it all and became a
cosmopolitan wanderer, and--if there be any truth in the gossip I've
heard--an adventurer."

"An outsider--eh?"

"Well--no, not exactly. Dick Harborne was a gentleman, therefore he
could never have been an outsider," replied the naval officer quickly.
"By adventurer I mean that he led a strange, unconventional life. He was
met by men who knew him in all sorts of out-of-the-world corners of
Europe, where he spent the greater part of his time idling at _cafes_
and in a section of society which was not altogether reputable."

"And you say he was not an adventurer?" remarked the staid British
landowner--one of a class perhaps the most conservative and
narrow-minded in all the world.

"My dear fellow, travel broadens a man's mind," exclaimed the naval
officer. "A man may be a cosmopolitan without being an adventurer. Dick
Harborne, though there were so many sinister whispers concerning him,
was a gentleman--a shrewd, deep-thinking, patriotic Englishman. And his
death is a mystery--one which I intend to solve. I've come over here
again to-day to find out what I can."

"Well," exclaimed Goring, "I for one am hardly satisfied with his recent
career. While he was in the Navy and afloat--gunnery-lieutenant of one
of His Majesty's first-class cruisers--there appears to have been
nothing against his personal character. Only after his retirement these
curious rumours arose."

"True, and nobody has fathomed the mystery of his late life," admitted
Barclay, drawing hard at his cigarette and examining the lighted end.
"I've heard of him being seen in Cairo, Assouan, Monte Carlo, Aix,
Berlin, Rome--all over the Continent, and in Egypt he seems to have
travelled, and with much more means at his disposal than ever he had in
the ward-room."

"There are strange mysteries in some men's lives, my dear Barclay.
Harborne was a man of secrets without a doubt. Some of those secrets may
come out at the inquest."

"I doubt it. Poor Dick!" he sighed. "He's dead--killed by an unknown
hand, and his secret, whatever it was, has, I believe, gone to the grave
with him. Perhaps, after all, it is best."

"The police are very busy, I understand."

"Oh, of course! The Norfolk Constabulary will be very active over it
all, but I somehow have an intuition that the crime was one of no
ordinary character. Dick must have dismounted to speak to his assailant.
If he had been overthrown his machine would most probably have been
damaged. The assassin wanted the motor-cycle intact to get away upon.
Besides," he added, "the victim took over an hour to cover the three
miles between North Walsham and the spot where he was found. Something
unusual must have occurred in that time."

"Well, it can only be left to the police to investigate," replied the
tall, country squire, thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets.

"They won't discover much--depend upon it," remarked the naval officer,
who, as he strolled at his friend's side, presented the ideal type of
the keen, British naval officer. "Dick has been the victim of a very
carefully-prepared plot. That is my firm belief. I've been making some
inquiries at the Grand Hotel, and learn that Dick came over from Norwich
on his motor-cycle at nine o'clock yesterday morning for some purpose,
and idled about Mundesley and the neighbourhood all the day. The
head-waiter at the hotel knew him, for he had often lunched there. But
yesterday he evidently came here with some fixed purpose, for he seemed
to be eagerly expecting somebody, and at last, a little before two
o'clock, a young lady arrived by the motor-bus from Cromer. They
describe her as a neat, dark-haired, good-looking young person