"Alive! In London!" Annabel moaned.
"Yes. Pull yourself together, Annabel! I must have the truth."
The girl on the lounge drew a long sobbing breath.
"You shall," she said. "Listen! There was a Meysey Hill in Paris, an
American railway millionaire. This man and he were alike, and about
the same age. Montague Hill was taken for the millionaire once or
twice, and I suppose it flattered his vanity. At any rate, he began to
deliberately personate him. He sent me flowers. Celeste introduced him
to me--oh, how Celeste hated me! She must have known. He--wanted to
marry me. Just then--I was nervous. I had gone further than I meant
to--with some Englishmen. I was afraid of being talked about. You
don't know, Anna, but when one is in danger one realizes that the--the
other side of the line is Hell. The man was mad to marry me. I heard
everywhere of his enormous riches and his generosity. I consented. We
went to the Embassy. There was--a service. Then he took me out to
Monteaux, on a motor. We were to have breakfast there and return in
the evening. On the way he confessed. He was a London man of business,
spending a small legacy in Paris. He had heard me sing--the fool
thought himself in love with me. Celeste he knew. She was chaffing him
about being taken for Meysey Hill, and suggested that he should be
presented to me as the millionaire. He told me with a coarse nervous
laugh. I was his wife. We were to live in some wretched London suburb.
His salary was a few paltry hundreds a year. Anna, I listened to all
that he had to say, and I called to him to let me get out. He laughed.
I tried to jump, but he increased the speed. We were going at a mad
pace. I struck him across the mouth, and across the eyes. He lost
control of the machine. I jumped then--I was not even shaken. I saw
the motor dashed to pieces against the wall, and I saw him pitched on
his head into the road. I leaned over and looked at him--he was quite
still. I could not hear his heart beat. I thought that he was dead. I
stole away and walked to the railway station. That night in Paris I
saw on the bills 'Fatal Motor Accidents.' _Le Petit Journal_ said that
the man was dead. I was afraid that I might be called upon as a
witness. That is why I was so anxious to leave Paris. The man who came
to our rooms, you know, that night was his friend."
"The good God!" Anna murmured, herself shaken with fear. "You were
married to him!"
"It could not be legal," Annabel moaned. "It couldn't be. I thought
that I was marrying Meysey Hill, not that creature. We stepped from
the Embassy into the motor--and oh! I thought that he was dead. Why
didn't he die?"