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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57737 ***
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+Transcriber's Notes:
+     1. Page scan source: Google Books
+        "A Dead Reckoning" in CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL. (Sept 14. 1889.)
+        https://books.google.com/books?id=jCYZAAAAYAAJ
+        (Princeton University)
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
+
+OF
+
+POPULAR POPULAR LITERATURE
+
+_Science and Arts_
+
+
+
+
+
+1889
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+W. & R. CHAMBERS
+
+LONDON & EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+     Chapter I.
+     Chapter II.
+     Chapter III.
+     Chapter IV.
+     Chapter V.
+     Chapter VI.
+     Chapter VII.
+     Chapter VIII.
+     Chapter IX.
+     Chapter X.
+     Chapter XI.
+     Chapter XII.
+     Chapter XIII.
+     Chapter XIV.
+     Chapter XV.
+     Chapter XVI.
+     Chapter XVII.
+     Chapter XVIII.
+     Chapter XIX.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A DEAD RECKONING.
+
+A STORY IN NINETEEN CHAPTERS.
+
+By T. W. SPEIGHT,
+
+Author of The Mysteries of Heron Dyke, By Devious Ways, &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+"Aunty, dear, do you know what day this is?"
+
+"If the almanac may be believed, it is the 24th of April."
+
+"Six months ago to-day, Gerald and I were married. I feel as if I had
+been married for years."
+
+"How dreadful to feel that you are growing old so quickly! I hope all
+married people don't feel like that."
+
+"You misunderstand me, Aunt Jane. I have been so happy since that
+evening last year when Gerald whispered something to me in the
+summer-house, that all my life before I knew him seems as unreal as a
+dream."
+
+"Such short courtships are positively dreadful. Now, when I was
+engaged to Captain Singleton"----
+
+A third lady, who had been lounging on a sofa and making-believe to be
+intent on a novel, gave a loud sneeze and sat bolt upright. She had
+heard Captain Singleton's name introduced so often of late, that she
+might be excused for not caring to hear it mentioned again--at least
+for a little while.
+
+The first speaker, Clara Brooke, was a charming brunette of
+twenty-two, with sparkling black eyes, a pure olive complexion, and a
+manner that was at once vivacious and tender. Miss Primby, the second
+speaker, was a fresh-coloured, well-preserved spinster of---- But no;
+Miss Primby's age was a secret, which she guarded as a dragon might
+guard its young, and we have no right to divulge it. She had one of
+the best hearts in the world, and one of the weakest heads. Everybody
+smiled at her little foibles, yet everybody liked her. Just now she
+was busy over some species of delicate embroidery, in which she was an
+adept. Lady Fanny Dwyer, the third lady, whose inopportune sneeze had
+for a moment so disconcerted Miss Primby, was a very pretty,
+worldly-wise, self-possessed young matron, who in age was some six
+months older than Mrs. Brooke. She and Clara had been bosom friends in
+their school-days; and notwithstanding the many differences in their
+characters and dispositions, their liking for each other was still as
+fresh and unselfish as ever it had been.
+
+The ladies were sitting in a pleasant morning-room at Beechley Towers,
+Mr. Gerald Brooke's country-house, situated about fourteen miles from
+London. The room opened on to a veranda by means of long windows,
+which were wide open this balmy April afternoon. Beyond the veranda
+was a terrace, from which two flights of broad shallow steps led down
+to a flower-garden. Outside that lay a well-wooded park, with a wide
+sweep of sunny champaign enfolding the whole.
+
+Clara Brooke had scarcely heard her aunt's last remark. She was seated
+at a davenport, turning over some old letters. On the wall in front of
+her hung a portrait of her husband, painted on ivory. "'My own darling
+Clara,'" she read to herself from one of the letters; "'it seems an
+age since I saw you last, and it will seem like an age till I shall
+have the happiness of seeing you again.' What sweet, sweet letters he
+used to write to me! What other girl ever had such letters written to
+her?" She pressed the paper she had been reading to her lips, then
+refolded it, and put it away and took up another.
+
+"Ah, my dear," remarked Lady Fanny, turning to her friend, "as you
+remarked just now, you have only been a wife for six short months, and
+of course everything with you is still _couleur de rose_. But when you
+have been married as long as Algy and I have, when the commonplace and
+the prosaic begin to assert themselves, as they do in everything and
+everywhere, whether you like it or not, then I am sure you will agree
+that the scheme of married life my husband and I have planned for
+ourselves has really a good deal to recommend it to all sensible
+people."
+
+Miss Primby pricked up her ears. "You excite my curiosity, dear Lady
+Fanny," she said. "I hope you won't refuse to gratify it."
+
+"Why should I?" asked Lady Fan with her merry laugh. "We want
+converts, Algy and I; and who knows, my dear Miss Primby, but that
+some day--eh? Well, this is our _modus vivendi_--I believe that's the
+correct term, but won't be sure. About eighteen months ago--we had
+then been married a little over a year--Algy and I came to the
+conclusion that married people ought not to be too constantly together
+if they wish to keep on good terms with each other. Algy's contention
+is that half the quarrels and scandals which come out in the
+newspapers are simply the result of people seeing so much of each
+other that at last they are impelled by some feeling they can't resist
+to have what he calls 'a jolly row,' just to vary the monotony of
+existence. And then, as he says, one 'row' is sure to lead to another,
+and so on. When once the match is applied, no one can tell where the
+conflagration will stop. Now, although ours was a love-match, if ever
+there was one, we had not run together in harness very long before we
+made the discovery that in many things our likes and dislikes were
+opposed. For instance, next to me, I believe Algy loves his yacht;
+whereas I detest yachting: it seems to me a most stupid way of
+passing one's time. On the other hand, I delight in going from one
+country-house to another and visiting each of my friends in turn;
+while Algy, dear fellow, is always awfully bored in general society,
+especially wherever a number of our sex happen to be congregated.
+Thus, it has come to pass that at the present moment he is somewhere
+in the Mediterranean, while I--well, _je suis ici_. Algy and I never
+give ourselves time to grow tired of each other; and when we meet
+after being apart for a month or two, our meetings are 'real nice,' as
+my friend Miss Peckover from New York would say."
+
+Miss Primby shook her head. "I am afraid, dear Lady Fanny, that your
+opinions on such matters are very heterodox, and I can only say that I
+hope Clara will never see fit to adopt them."
+
+"Not much fear of that, Aunt Jane," answered the young wife. "Fancy
+Gerald and me being separated for a month or six weeks at a time! But
+it is quite out of the question to fancy anything so absurd."
+
+Lady Fan laughed. "Wait, my dear, wait," was all she said as she
+turned again to her novel.
+
+Clara Brooke shook her head; she was in nowise convinced.
+
+"Gracious goodness! whatever can that be?" ejaculated Miss Primby with
+a start.
+
+"Only Gerald and the Baron Von Rosenberg practising at the
+pistol-range. It is an amusement both of them are fond of."
+
+"An amusement do you call it! I wish they would practise their
+amusements farther from the house, then.--Heaven preserve us! there
+they go again. No wonder I have broken my needle."
+
+"It's nothing, Aunt Jane, when you are used to it," responded her
+niece with a smile.
+
+"Used to it, indeed! I should never get used to it as long as I lived.
+I have no doubt this is another of the objectionable practices your
+husband picked up while he was living in foreign parts."
+
+"Seeing that Gerald was brought up in Poland, and that he lived in
+that country and in Russia from the time he was five years old till he
+was close on twenty (I think I have told you before that his
+grandmother was a Polish lady of rank), I have no doubt it was while
+he was living in those foreign parts, as you call them, that he learnt
+to be so fond of pistol-practice."
+
+At this moment there came the sound of two pistol-shots in quick
+succession. Miss Primby started to her feet. "My dear Clara," she
+exclaimed, "if you don't want my poor nerves to be shattered for life,
+you won't object to my going to my own room. With plenty of cotton
+wool in my ears, and my Indian shawl wrapped round my head, I may
+perhaps---- Dear, dear! now my thimble's gone."
+
+"Why, there's your thimble, aunt, on your finger."
+
+"So it is--so it is, dear. That shows the state of my poor nerves."
+
+"Will you not stay and say good-bye to the Baron?"
+
+"No, my dear; I would rather not. You must make my excuses. Of course,
+you could not fail to notice how the Baron ogled me at luncheon. He
+puts me _so_ much in mind of poor dear Major Pondicherry. But I never
+cared greatly for foreigners; besides, he will smell horribly of
+gunpowder when he comes in.--There again! Not another moment will I
+stay."
+
+Clara Brooke's face rippled over with suppressed laughter as Miss
+Primby left the room. Then she turned to her letters again, and
+tied them up with ribbon. "I have heard that some people burn their
+love-letters when they get married," she mused. "What strange beings
+they must be! Nothing in the world would induce me to burn mine. Sweet
+silent messengers of love, what happy secrets lie hidden in your
+leaves!" She pressed the letters to her lips, put them away inside the
+davenport, and locked them up.
+
+Just as she had done this, the pompous tones of Bunce, who filled the
+joint positions of majordomo and butler at the Towers, became plainly
+audible. Apparently he was standing outside the side-door and
+addressing his remarks to someone on the terrace. "Now, the sooner you
+take your hook the better," the two ladies heard him say. "We don't
+want none of your kidney here. This ain't no place for mountebanks--I
+should think not indeed!" Mr. Bunce in his ire had evidently forgotten
+the proximity of his mistress.
+
+Clara crossed to one of the windows, and looking out saw, some little
+distance away, two strange figures slowly crossing the terrace. One
+was that of a man whose costume of a street tumbler was partly hidden
+by the long shabby overcoat he wore over it, which was closely
+buttoned to the chin. Over one shoulder a drum was slung, and in his
+left hand he carried a set of Pandean pipes. The second figure was
+that of a boy some eight or nine years old, who had hold of the man's
+right hand. Under one arm he carried a small roll of faded carpet. In
+point of dress he was a miniature copy of the elder mountebank, minus
+the overcoat. His throat was swathed in a dingy white muffler, while
+his profusion of yellow curls were kept from straying by a fillet
+round his forehead embroidered with silvered beads.
+
+"Poor creatures," said Clara to herself. "Bunce had no business to
+speak to them as he did. How dejected they look, and the child seems
+quite footsore."
+
+At this juncture the man happening to turn his head, caught sight of
+her. She at once beckoned him to approach.
+
+The mountebank's face lighted up and all signs of dejection vanished
+in a moment. He had some kind of old cap on his head. This he now
+removed, and bowed profoundly twice. It was a bow that might have
+graced a drawing-room. Then he and the boy crossed the terrace towards
+Mrs. Brooke.
+
+"Fan, I want you; come here," said Clara to her friend.
+
+Lady Fanny rose languidly and crossed to the window.
+
+What struck both the ladies first of all, as the vagrants drew near,
+was the remarkable beauty of the child. His face at the first glance
+seemed an almost perfect oval; his complexion, naturally fair and
+transparent, was now somewhat embrowned by exposure to the sun and
+wind. He had large eyes of the deepest and tenderest blue, shaded by
+long golden lashes; while his lips formed a delicate curve such as
+many a so-called professional beauty might have envied.
+
+"He looks more like a girl than a boy," whispered Lady Fan.
+
+"He looks more like a cherub than either," responded Clara, who was
+somewhat impulsive both in her likes and dislikes. "It is a face that
+Millais would love to paint."
+
+The appearance of the man was a great contrast to that of the child,
+and a casual observer would have said that there was no single point
+of resemblance between the two. Apparently the former was about forty
+to forty-five years of age. He had a sallow complexion and a thin
+aquiline nose; his black locks were long and tangled; while into his
+quick-glancing black eyes, which appeared to see half-a-dozen things
+at once, there would leap at times a strange fierce gleam, which
+seemed to indicate that although the volcano below might give forth
+few or no signs, its hidden fires were smouldering still. Only when
+his eyes rested on the boy they would soften and fill with a sort of
+wistful tenderness; and at such moments the whole expression of his
+face would change.
+
+"I am extremely sorry," said Mrs. Brooke, "that my servant should have
+spoken to you just now in the way he did. He had no right to do so,
+and I shall certainly ask my husband to reprimand him."
+
+"It was nothings, madame, nothings at all," responded the mountebank
+with a little bow and a smile and a deprecatory motion of his hands.
+"We are often spoken to like that--Henri and I--we think nothings of
+it."
+
+"Still, I cannot help feeling greatly annoyed.--Is this pretty boy
+your son?"
+
+"_Oui_, madame."
+
+"His mother"----
+
+"Alas, madame, she is dead. She die six long years ago. She was
+English, like madame. Henri has the eyes of _ma pauvre_ Marie; and his
+hair, too, is the same colour as hers."
+
+Although the man spoke with a pronounced foreign accent, his English
+was fluent, and he rarely seemed at a loss for a word to express his
+meaning.
+
+"Poor child!" said Mrs. Brooke. "This is a hard life to bring him up
+to. Surely some other way might be found"---- Then she paused.
+
+The mountebank's white teeth showed themselves in a smile. "Ah no,
+madame; pardon, but it is not a hard life by no means. Henri likes it,
+and I like it. In the winter we join some _cirque_, and then Henri has
+lessons every day. He is clevare, very clevare--everybody say so. One
+day Henri will be a great artiste. The world--_tout le monde_--will
+hear of him. It is I who say it--_moi_." He touched his chest proudly
+with the tips of his fingers as he ceased speaking. "Would mesdames
+like to behold?"---- he said a moment later as he brought his drum into
+position and raised the pipes to his lips.
+
+"Thank you, monsieur; not to-day," answered Clara gravely as she
+stepped back into the room and rang the bell.
+
+Monsieur looked disappointed. Henri, however, looked anything but
+disappointed when, two minutes later, the beautiful lady, from whose
+face he could scarcely take his eyes, heaped his little hands with
+cakes and fruit till they could hold no more.
+
+"Tell me your name, my pretty one," said Mrs. Brooke, as she stooped
+and helped him to secure his treasures.
+
+"Henri Picot, madame."
+
+"And have you any pockets, Henri?"
+
+"_Oui_, madame."
+
+A pocket was duly indicated, and into its recesses a certain coin of
+the realm presently found its way.
+
+Before either Picot or the boy had time to give utterance to a word of
+thanks, a servant entered the room, and addressing Lady Fan, said: "If
+you please, my lady, the carriage is waiting; and Miss Primby desires
+me to tell you that she is ready."
+
+"Good gracious, Clara," said Lady Fan, "I had forgotten all about my
+promise to accompany your aunt in her call on Mrs. Riversdale. I wish
+to goodness you could go with us. I dread the ordeal."
+
+"And leave the Baron Von Rosenberg without a word of apology! What
+would become of my reputation as a hostess? Gerald and he will be here
+in a few minutes, I don't doubt; and if you like to wait till he is
+gone"----
+
+"That would never do," interrupted her friend. "You know what a fidget
+your aunt is when she is kept waiting. You had better come and keep
+her in good-humour while I am getting my things on.--By-the-bye, where
+can our singular friends have vanished to?"
+
+Clara looked round. Picot and the boy had disappeared. Neither of the
+ladies had seen the start the mountebank gave at the mention of Von
+Rosenberg's name, nor how strangely the expression of his face
+changed. Clutching the boy by one wrist, he whispered: "It is time to
+go. Venez, mon p'tit--vite, vite! The ladies want us no more."
+
+"The man was French, and he seems to have taken the proverbial leave
+of his countrymen," said Lady Fan with a laugh.
+
+Mrs. Brooke was a little surprised, but said nothing. The two ladies
+left the room together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Five minutes might have passed when Gerald Brooke and the Baron Von
+Rosenberg came sauntering along the terrace, and entered the room
+through one of the long windows.
+
+In appearance the owner of Beechley Towers was a thoroughgoing
+Englishman, and no one would have suspected him of having a drop of
+foreign blood in his veins. He was six-and-twenty years old, tall,
+fair, and stalwart. His hair, beard, and moustache were of a light
+reddish brown; he had laughing eyes of the darkest blue, and a mouth
+that was rarely without a smile. His bearing was that of a well-born,
+chivalrous, young Englishman. As he came into the room, laughing and
+talking to the Baron, he looked like a man who had not a care in the
+world.
+
+The Baron Von Rosenberg was so carefully preserved and so elaborately
+got up, that one might guess his age at anything between forty and
+fifty-five. He was tall and thin, with a military uprightness and
+precision of bearing. He had close-cropped iron-gray hair, and a heavy
+moustache of the same colour. He spoke excellent English with only the
+faintest possible accent, but with a certain slowness and an
+elaboration of each word, which of themselves would have been enough
+to indicate that he was not "to the manner born."
+
+"I had no idea, my dear Brooke, that you were such a crack shot,"
+remarked the Baron. "I had made up my mind that I should have an easy
+victory."
+
+"I learned to shoot in Poland, when I was quite a youngster. It is an
+amusement that has served to while away many idle hours."
+
+"I have a tolerable range at Beaulieu; you must come over and try your
+skill there."
+
+"I shall be most pleased to do so."
+
+"I have also a small collection of _curios_, chiefly in the way of
+arms and armour, picked up in the course of my travels, which it may
+amuse you to look over."
+
+"Your telling me that," answered Gerald, "reminds me that I have in my
+possession one article which, as I believe you are a connoisseur in
+such matters, you may be interested in examining." As he spoke he
+crossed to a cabinet, and opening the glass doors, he brought out a
+pistol, the barrel and lock of which were chased and damascened in
+gold, and the stock ornamented with trophies and scrolls in silver
+inlay and repoussé work. "It was given me when I was in India by a
+certain Nawab to whom I had rendered some slight service," said Gerald
+as he handed the pistol to the Baron. "It doesn't seem much of a
+curiosity to look at; but I am told that in its way it is almost
+unique."
+
+"I can readily believe that," answered the Baron, as he examined the
+weapon minutely through his gold-rimmed glasses. "I have never seen
+anything quite like it, although I have seen many curious pistols in
+my time. I myself have two or three in my collection on which I set
+some little store. I call to mind, however, that a certain friend of
+mine in London, who is even more _entêté_ in such matters than I am,
+owns a weapon somewhat similar to this, inlaid with arabesque work in
+brass and silver, which he has always looked upon as being of Spanish,
+or at least of Moorish workmanship.--Now, my dear Mr. Brooke, I am
+going to ask you the favour of lending me this treasure for a few
+days. I go to London tomorrow, and while there, I should like to show
+it to my friend, so as to enable him to compare it with the one in his
+possession. He would be delighted, I know, and"----
+
+"My dear Baron, not another word," cried Gerald. "Take the thing, and
+keep it as long as you like. I value it only as a memento of some
+pleasant days spent many thousands of miles from here. My servant
+shall carry it across to Beaulieu in the course of the evening."
+
+"A thousand thanks; but I value the weapon too highly to trust it into
+the hands of a servant. I will return it personally in the course of a
+few days." So saying, the Baron, with a nod and a smile, dropped the
+pistol into the pocket of his loose morning coat.
+
+"But madame your wife," he said presently; "may I not hope to have the
+pleasure of seeing her again before I take my leave?"
+
+Gerald crossed the room, and was on the point of ringing the bell,
+when Mrs. Brooke entered.
+
+The Baron's heels came together as he bent his head. "I was just about
+to take my leave, madame," he said. "I am overjoyed to have the
+felicity of seeing you again before doing so."
+
+There was something too high-flown about this for Clara's simple
+tastes, and her cheek flushed a little as she answered: "I hope you
+have enjoyed your pistol-practice, Baron."
+
+"Greatly. I assure you that Mr. Brooke is an adept with the
+weapon--very much so indeed. I must really beg of him to give me a few
+lessons."
+
+Gerald laughed.
+
+"As a diplomatist by profession, Baron, you are doubtless a proficient
+in the art of flattery," said Mrs. Brooke.
+
+"A mere tyro, dear madame. Sincerity is the badge of all our tribe, as
+every one knows."
+
+At this they all laughed a little.
+
+"But now I must positively say adieu."
+
+"By which road do you return to Beaulieu, Baron?" inquired Gerald.
+
+"The afternoon is so fine and the distance so short, that I purpose
+walking back through the park."
+
+"Then, with your permission, I will walk with you as far as the corner
+of the wood."
+
+"Need I say that I shall be charmed?"
+
+Mrs. Brooke gave the Baron her hand. He bent low over it. For once the
+ramrod in his back found that it had a hinge in it.
+
+"You will not be gone long?" said Clara to her husband.
+
+"Not more than half an hour.--We will go this way, Baron, if you
+please."
+
+"Are all diplomatists like the Baron Von Rosenberg, I wonder?" mused
+Mrs. Brooke. "If so, I am glad Gerald is not one. His politeness is so
+excessive that it makes one doubt whether there is anything genuine at
+the back of it. And then the cold-blooded way in which he looks you
+through out of his frosty eyes! Could any woman ever learn to love a
+man like the Baron? I am quite sure that I could not."
+
+She seated herself at the piano, and had been playing for a few
+minutes when she was startled by the sound of footsteps on the gravel
+outside. She turned her head and next moment started to her feet
+"George! You!" she exclaimed; and as she did so, the colour fled from
+her cheeks and her hand went up quickly to her heart.
+
+At Mrs. Brooke's exclamation, a tall, thin, olive-complexioned young
+man, with black eyes and hair and a small silky moustache, advanced
+into the room. He was handsome as far as features went; just now,
+however, his expression was anything but a pleasant one. A something
+that was at once furtive and cruel lurked in the corners of his eyes,
+and although his thin lips were curved into a smile, it was a smile
+that had neither mirth nor good-nature in it. A small gash in his
+upper lip, the result of an accident in youth, through which one of
+his teeth gleamed sharp and white, did not add to the attractiveness
+of his appearance. In one hand he carried a riding-whip, and in the
+other a pair of buckskin gloves.
+
+"Good afternoon, Clara," he said with a careless nod as he deposited
+his hat, gloves, and whip on the side-table.
+
+"You quite startled me," said Mrs. Brooke as she went forward and gave
+him her hand.
+
+"You expected any one rather than me--of course. As I was riding along
+the old familiar road, I saw your husband, in company with some other
+man, walking down the avenue. In the hope that I might perhaps find
+you alone, I rode on to the _Beechley Arms_, left my horse there,
+entered the park by the side-entrance that you and I know so well, and
+here I am."
+
+"I am very glad to see you."--Mr. George Crofton shrugged his
+shoulders.--"Why have you not called before now? Gerald has often
+wondered why we have seen nothing of you since our return from
+abroad."
+
+"How kind, how thoughtful, of my dear cousin Gerald!" This was said
+with an unmistakable sneer.
+
+"George!"
+
+"You are not like yourself to-day."
+
+"Look you, Clara--if you expect me to come here like an everyday
+visitor, to congratulate you on your marriage, you are mistaken. How
+is it possible for me to congratulate you?--and if I were to say that
+I wished you much happiness, it would be--well--a lie!"
+
+"This from you!"
+
+He drew a step nearer, flinging out his clenched hand with a quick
+passionate gesture. "Listen, Clara. You and I have known each other
+from childhood. As boy and girl we played together; when we grew older
+we walked and rode out together; and after you left school we met at
+balls, at parties, at picnics, and if a week passed without our seeing
+each other we thought that something must have happened. During all
+those years I loved you--ay, as no other man will ever love you--and
+you, being of the sex you are, could not fail to see it. But your
+father was poor, while I was entirely dependent on my uncle; so time
+went on, and I hesitated to speak. But a day came when I could keep
+silence no longer; I told you everything, and--you rejected me. If I
+had been wild and reckless before, I became ten times more wild and
+reckless then. If before that day I had offended my uncle, I offended
+him beyond all hope of forgiveness afterwards. But before I spoke to
+you, my irresistible cousin had appeared on the scene and had made
+your acquaintance. Your woman's wit told you that his star was in the
+ascendant, while mine was sinking. Pshaw! what need for another word.
+It is barely eighteen months since you and he first met, and now you
+are the mistress of Beechley Towers, while I am--what I am!"
+
+It was with very varied emotions that Mrs. Brooke listened to this
+passionate outburst. When it came to an end she said in her iciest
+tones: "Was it to tell me this that you came here to-day?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"Then you had much better have stayed away. You do not know how deeply
+you have grieved me."
+
+"I have told you nothing but the bitter truth."
+
+"The truth, perhaps, as seen through your own distorted vision. From
+childhood you were to me as a dear playmate and friend, and as a
+friend I have regarded you till to-day."
+
+"A friend! Something more than friendship was needed by me."
+
+"That something would never have been yours."
+
+"I will not believe it. Had not a rival crossed my path--a rival who
+wormed his way into my uncle's affections, who ousted me from the
+position that ought to have been mine, who is master here to-day where
+I ought to be master--had he never appeared, a love so strong and deep
+as mine must have prevailed in the end!"
+
+"Never, George Crofton, as far as I am concerned! You deceive yourself
+utterly. You"---- She came to a sudden pause. A servant had entered,
+carrying a card on a salver. Mrs. Brooke took the card and read, "M.
+Paul Karovsky.--I never remember hearing the name before," she
+remarked to herself. Then aloud to the servant: "Where is the
+gentleman?"
+
+"In the small drawing-room, ma'am. He said that he wanted to see Mr.
+Brooke on particular business."
+
+"Your master is out at present; but I will see Monsieur Karovsky
+myself."
+
+Turning to Crofton as soon as the servant had left the room, she said:
+"You will excuse me for a few moments, will you not? Gerald will be
+back in a little while, and I do so wish you would stay and meet him.
+George"--offering him her hand with a sudden gracious impulse--"let
+this afternoon be blotted from the memory of both of us. You will
+never say such foolish things to me again, will you?"
+
+He took her proffered hand sullenly enough. "I have said my say," he
+muttered with averted eyes; with that he dropped her fingers and
+turned away.
+
+A pained expression flitted across her face as she looked at him. "You
+will wait here till I come back, will you not?" she said; and then,
+without waiting for an answer, she quitted the room.
+
+With his hands behind his back and his eyes bent on the ground, George
+Crofton paced the room once or twice in silence. Then he said,
+speaking aloud, as he had a trick of doing when alone: "It is a lie to
+say she would never have learned to love me! She may try to deceive
+herself by saying so; but she cannot deceive me. Had not my
+smooth-tongued cousin come between us, she would have been mine. I had
+no rival but him. Not only has he robbed me of the woman I loved, but
+of this old house and all this fair domain, which would all have been
+my own, had he not come between my uncle and me, and made the old
+man's bitterness against me bitterer still.
+
+"Oh," he exclaimed bitterly, "I have every reason for loving my dear
+cousin Gerald!"
+
+Presently he caught sight of the miniature of his cousin where it hung
+above the davenport. "His likeness!" he exclaimed. "The original is
+not enough for her; she must have this to gaze on when he is not by."
+He took the miniature off the nail on which it hung and scanned it
+frowningly. "To think that only this man's life stands between me and
+fortune--only this one life!" he said. "Were Gerald Brooke to die
+without heirs, I--even I, his graceless scamp of a cousin--would come
+into possession of Beechley Towers and six thousand a year! Only this
+one life!" He let the miniature drop on the hearth, and then ground it
+to fragments savagely under his heel. "If I could but serve the
+original as I serve this!" he muttered.
+
+The sound of the shutting of a distant door startled him. He pressed
+his hands to his forehead for a moment, as though awaking from a
+confused dream; then he sighed deeply and took up his hat, gloves, and
+whip. "Adieu, Clara; but we shall meet again," he said aloud. With
+that he put on his hat and buttoned his coat and walked slowly out by
+the way he had come.
+
+Two minutes later Mrs. Brooke re-entered the room. She looked round in
+surprise. "George gone?" she said to herself. "Why did he not wait and
+see Gerald?" She crossed to the window and looked out. "Yes; there he
+goes striding through the grass, and evidently not in the most amiable
+of humours. How strangely he has altered during the last three or four
+years; how different he is now from what he used to be when we were
+playmates together! If he had but some profession--something to occupy
+his mind--he would be far happier than he is. But George is not one to
+love work of any kind." With that Clara looked at her watch and
+dismissed Mr. Crofton from her thoughts. "I wish Gerald were back.
+What can that strange Monsieur Karovsky want with him? What can be the
+business of importance that has brought him here? I feel as if some
+misfortune were impending. Such happiness as mine is too perfect to
+last."
+
+She was crossing the room in search of a book, when her eye was
+attracted by the fragments of the miniature on the hearth. She was on
+her knees in a moment. "What is this?" she cried. "Gerald's likeness,
+and trodden under foot! This is George's doing. Oh, cruel, cruel! What
+a mean and paltry revenge! It is the portrait Gerald gave me before we
+were married. I could never like another as I liked this one. Oh, how
+mean! Gerald must not know--at least not for the present." Tears of
+mingled anger and sorrow stood in her eyes as she picked up the
+fragments and locked them away in her desk. She had scarcely
+accomplished this when she heard her husband's footsteps. She hastily
+brushed her tears away and turned to greet him with a smile. "And this
+is what you call being half-an-hour away!" she said as he drew her to
+him and kissed her.
+
+"Von Rosenberg and I were busy talking. We had got halfway through
+the wood before I called to mind where I was." He sat down and fanned
+himself with his soft felt hat. "He tells me," went on Gerald, "that
+he has taken Beaulieu for twelve months--furnished, of course--so that
+we are likely to be neighbours for some time to come."
+
+"He must find English country-life very tame and unexciting after
+being used to Berlin and St Petersburg."
+
+"You may add, to Paris also. Some years ago he was attached to the
+German Embassy there."
+
+"To live as he is now living must seem like exile to such a man."
+
+"I am afraid it is little better. But the whisper goes that he is
+really exiled for a time--that he has contrived in some way to incur
+the displeasure of the powers that be, and that leave has been given
+him to travel for the benefit of his health."
+
+"Poor Baron! Let us hope that his eclipse will only be a temporary
+one.--By-the-bye, there has been some one else to see you while you
+have been out."
+
+"And they call this the seclusion of the country!"
+
+"Some Russian or Polish acquaintance whom you probably met when
+abroad."
+
+"Ah! His name?"
+
+"Monsieur Karovsky."
+
+Gerald Brooke drew in his breath with a gasp. "Karovsky--and here!"
+
+"He says that he has important business to see you upon.
+
+"He is one of the few men whose faces I hoped never to see again.
+Where is he?" There was trouble in his eyes, trouble in his voice, as
+he asked the question.
+
+"When I told him that you were out, he said that, with my permission,
+he would smoke a cigarette in the grounds while awaiting your return.
+What a strange, almost sinister-looking man he is! How I wish he had
+stayed away!"
+
+Her husband did not reply; he looked as if he had not heard what she
+said.
+
+Next moment Mrs. Brooke started to her feet. "There he is. There is
+Monsieur Karovsky," she cried.
+
+And there, indeed, he was, standing just outside the open window
+smoking a cigarette. Perceiving that he was seen, he flung away his
+cigarette, stepped slowly into the room, removed his hat, and bowed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+When George Crofton informed Mrs. Brooke that it was while riding
+along the road outside the park palings he had seen her husband
+leaving the house, he stated no more than the truth; but one little
+point he had not seen fit to mention--that he himself was not alone at
+the time. When he had recovered from his momentary surprise at seeing
+his cousin, he had said to his companion--an extremely handsome young
+person in a riding-habit that fitted her like a glove: "Let us put the
+pace on a bit, Steph. I've just remembered that there's a call I ought
+to make while I'm in this neighbourhood."
+
+A few minutes later they pulled up at the _Beechley Arms_, a country
+tavern only a few hundred yards distant from the back entrance to the
+park. Here Mr. Crofton had been well known in days gone by; and by the
+time he had dismounted and had assisted his companion to alight, the
+buxom landlady, all smiles and cap-ribbons, had come to the door to
+greet him.
+
+"Why, Master George, it's never you sure-ly," she said. "It seems like
+old times come back to see you come riding up just as you used to do."
+
+"Then you have not quite forgotten me, Mrs. Purvis," he said, as he
+shook hands with the landlady with that air of easy affability which
+he knew so well how to assume. "I don't wish to flatter you, but, on
+my honour, you look younger every time I see you."
+
+The landlady smirked and blushed, and said: "Get along with you, do,
+sir;" and then led the way to her best parlour, an old-fashioned,
+low-ceilinged room, with a diamond-paned window and a broad, cushioned
+window-seat.
+
+George ordered some sherry and biscuits to be brought; and as soon as
+the landlady had left the room, he said to his companion: "I shall
+have to leave you for half-an-hour, Steph, to make the call I spoke of
+just now; I shall be sure not to be gone longer. You won't mind, will
+you?"
+
+Mademoiselle Stephanie made a little _moue_. "I suppose you will go
+whether I mind or not;" she said.
+
+"I _must_ go," he replied. "It is a matter of extreme importance."
+
+"In that case there is nothing more to be said," she answered with a
+shrug. A moment later she added: "Only, remember, if you are away much
+longer than half-an-hour, Tartar and I will go back home by ourselves,
+and leave you to follow at your leisure."
+
+George Crofton laughed. "Never fear, _carissima_; I won't fail to be
+back to time. Besides, our dinner will be waiting for us three miles
+farther on. Did I tell you that I had ordered it by telegraph before
+leaving town?"
+
+"There's one thing neither you nor I must forget," she answered, "and
+that is, that I'm due at the _cirque_ at nine o'clock to the minute.
+Signor Ventelli never forgives any one who is not there to time."
+
+At this juncture Mrs. Purvis came in with the wine and biscuits.
+George hastily swallowed a couple of glasses of sherry; and then,
+after giving a few instructions with regard to the horses, and
+reiterating his promise not to be gone more than half an hour, he
+went.
+
+Mademoiselle Stephanie Lagrange was a very pretty woman--a fact of
+which she was perfectly cognisant, as most pretty women are. She had a
+profusion of light silky hair, and large steel-gray eyes that were
+lacking neither in fire nor audacity. Her lips were thin and rather
+finely curved; but her chin was almost too massive to be in proportion
+with the rest of her features. Her figure was well-nigh perfect; and
+as she was a splendid horsewoman, she never appeared in the Row
+without having a hundred pair of eyes focused on her, and a hundred
+tongues asking eagerly who she was. In case the reader should put the
+same question, it may be as well to state that Mademoiselle Lagrange
+was a prominent member of the celebrated Ventelli Circus troupe, on
+whose posters and placards she was designated in large letters as
+"Queen of the Haute Ecole." Whether Mademoiselle Lagrange was of
+French or English extraction was a moot-point with several of those
+who knew her best, seeing that she spoke both languages equally well.
+Some there were who averred that she spoke English with a slight
+French accent, and French with a slight English accent; but be that as
+it may, no one knew from her own lips where she was born or of what
+nationality her parents had been.
+
+As soon as she was left alone, Stephanie took off her hat and veil and
+seated herself on the window seat, from whence she could look into a
+strip of old-fashioned garden at the back of the tavern. As she
+nibbled at a biscuit and sipped her sherry--Steph was by no means
+averse to a glass of good wine--she soliloquised, half aloud: "Why has
+my good friend George left me and who is the person he has gone to
+see?--Eh bien, cher monsieur, there appear to be certain secrets in
+your life of which I know nothing. It must be my business to find out
+what they are. I like to have secrets of my own, but I don't like
+other people to have secrets from me."
+
+At this point, in came bustling Mrs. Purvis, ostensibly to inquire
+whether the lady was in need of anything, but in reality to satisfy in
+some measure the cravings of her curiosity. She found Mademoiselle
+Stephanie by no means disinclined for a little gossip; only, when she
+came to think over the interview afterwards, she discovered that it
+was she who had answered all the young lady's questions, but that the
+young lady had answered few or none of hers.
+
+Yes; she had known Master George from quite a boy, Mrs. Purvis went on
+to say, gratified at finding a listener so ready to her hand. He had
+been brought up at the Towers--the great house in the park there--and
+everybody thought he would be his uncle's heir. But as he grew up he
+fell into bad ways, and all sorts of tales were told about his
+extravagance and dissipation; and no doubt he was made out to be far
+worse than he really was. At length the old gentleman turned him out
+of doors, and made a fresh will in favour of his other nephew, Mr.
+Gerald Brooke--he who now lives at the Towers--while Master George had
+to content himself with a legacy of five thousand pounds. And then
+there was Miss Danby--the late vicar's daughter--whom everybody
+thought Master George would marry; but she, too, turned against him,
+and married his cousin, so that he lost both his inheritance and his
+wife.
+
+"And does this lady whom Mr. Crofton was to have married live at the
+place you call the Towers?" asked Stephanie.
+
+"Certainly, miss. She is mistress there; and a very beautiful lady she
+is."
+
+"It is her whom he has gone to see," said Stephanie to herself. "He
+pretends that he loves me, but he cannot forget her.--So this is your
+secret, _cher_ George! I shall know how to make use of it when the
+time conies."
+
+Suddenly she started and half rose from her seat. Her eyes had been
+caught by something outside the window. She turned quickly on Mrs.
+Purvis. "That child--where does he come from? Who is he?"
+
+The landlady's gaze followed hers through the window. "Do you mean
+that little fellow on the grass plat who is throwing crumbs to the
+birds? He's a mountebank's son, as you may see by his dress. His
+father is having some bread-and-cheese in the kitchen. What a shame it
+is that such a dear little mite should have to earn his living by
+turning head over heels in the streets."
+
+For several moments Stephanie stood motionless, her eyes fixed on the
+child. Then, without turning her head, she said: "Thank you. I require
+nothing more at present. When I do, I will ring." The tones in which
+the words were spoken conveyed more than the words themselves. Mrs.
+Purvis bridled like a peacock, shook her cap-ribbons, and marched out
+of the room, slamming the door behind her with unnecessary violence.
+
+There were two doors to the room, one by which the landlady had made
+her exit, and another which led into the garden. This second door
+Stephanie now opened, and at the sound the boy raised his eyes. She
+beckoned to him, and he came forward. It may be that he had visions of
+more fruit and sugared biscuits.
+
+Stephanie drew him a little way into the room, and going down on one
+knee, she passed an arm round his waist. It was evident that she was
+full of suppressed emotion. The conversation that ensued was carried
+on in French.
+
+"Tell me your name, _cheri_."
+
+"Henri Picot, mademoiselle."
+
+She had known what the answer would be; but for a moment or two her
+lips blanched, while she murmured something the boy could not hear.
+
+"And your father?" she said at last.
+
+"He is here, indoors. Poor papa was tired; he is resting himself."
+
+"Does your papa treat you kindly, Henri?"
+
+The boy stared at her. "Papa always treats me kindly.--Why should he
+not?"
+
+"And your mamma?" said Stephanie with bated breath.
+
+Henri shook his head. "I have no mamma," he answered with a ring of
+childish pathos in his voice. "She has gone a long, long journey, and
+no one knows when she will come back. Papa does not like me to talk
+about her--it makes him so sad. But sometimes I see her in my sleep,
+and then she looks beautiful, and smiles at me. Some day, perhaps, she
+will come back to papa and me."
+
+She kissed him passionately, to the boy's wonderment. Then with a
+half-sob in her voice, she said: "But you have a sister, have you not?"
+
+Henri's large eyes grew larger. "No; I have no sister," he answered
+with a shake of his head.
+
+"But you had one once, had you not? Does your papa never speak of
+her?"
+
+"No; never. I had a mamma, but I never had a sister."
+
+For a moment or two Stephanie buried her face on the child's shoulder.
+What thoughts, what memories of the past, rushed through her brain as
+she did so? "Cast off and forgotten!" was the mournful cry wrung from
+her heart.
+
+Suddenly a voice outside was heard calling, "Henri, Henri, où es tu?"
+followed by a note or two on the pipes and a tap on the drum.
+
+"Papa is calling me; I must go," said the boy.
+
+Stephanie started to her feet, and lifting him in her arms, kissed him
+wildly again and again. Then setting him down, she pressed some money
+into his hand and turned away without another word. Henri darted off.
+
+"He is gone--gone--and perhaps I shall never see him again!" She sank
+on her knees and buried her face in the cushions of the window-seat.
+Her whole frame shook with the sobs that would no longer be
+suppressed.
+
+Five minutes later George Crofton entered the room. For a few seconds
+he paused in utter amazement; then going forward, he laid a hand on
+the girl's shoulder. "Steph," he said, "Steph--why, what's amiss?" As
+he spoke his eyes rested for a moment on Picot and Henri, who were
+crossing the grass-plat hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+"Pardon. I hope I do not intrude?" said M. Karovsky, addressing
+himself to Mrs. Brooke with the suave assurance of a thorough man of
+the world. "I saw through the window that Mr. Brooke had returned, and
+as my time here is limited--_me voici_." Then advancing a few steps
+and holding out his hand to Gerald, he added: "It is five years, _mon
+ami_, since we last met. Confess now, I am one of the last men in the
+world whom you thought to see here?"
+
+"You are indeed, Karovsky," responded Gerald as he shook his visitor's
+proffered hand, but with no great show of cordiality.--"Have you been
+long in England?"
+
+"Not long. I am a bird of passage. I come and go, and obey the orders
+that are given me. That is all."
+
+"My wife, Mrs. Brooke. But you have seen her already.--Clara, Monsieur
+Karovsky is a gentleman whose acquaintance I had the honour of making
+during the time I was living abroad."
+
+"May we hope to have the pleasure of Monsieur Karovsky's company to
+dinner?" asked Clara in her most gracious manner, while at the same
+time hoping in her heart that the invitation would not be accepted.
+
+"_Merci_, madame," responded the Russian, for such he was. "I should be
+delighted, if the occasion admitted of it; but, as I said before, my
+time is limited. I must leave London by the night-mail. I am due in
+Paris at ten o'clock tomorrow."
+
+"For the present, then, I must ask you to excuse me," said Clara.
+
+Karovsky hastened to open the door for her, and bowed low as she swept
+out of the room.
+
+"That man is the bearer of ill news, and Gerald knows it," was the
+young wife's unspoken thought as she left the two together.
+
+M. Karovsky was a tall, well-built man, to all appearance some few
+years over thirty in point of age. His short black hair was parted
+carefully down the middle; his black eyes were at once piercing and
+brilliant; he had a long and rather thin face, a longish nose, a
+mobile and flexible mouth, and a particularly fine arrangement of
+teeth. He wore neither beard nor moustache, and his complexion had the
+faint yellow tint of antique ivory. He was not especially handsome;
+but there was something striking and out of the common in his
+appearance, so that people who were introduced to him casually in
+society wanted to know more about him. An enigma is not without its
+attractions for many people, and Karovsky had the air of being one
+whether he was so in reality or not. He was a born linguist, as so
+many of his countrymen are, and spoke the chief European languages
+with almost equal fluency and equal purity of accent.
+
+"Fortune has been kind to you, my friend, in finding for you so
+charming a wife," he said, as he lounged across the room with his
+hands in his pockets, after closing the door behind Mrs. Brooke. "But
+Fortune has been kind to you in more ways than one."
+
+"Karovsky, you have something to tell me," said Brooke a little grimly.
+"You did not come here to pay compliments, nor without a motive. But
+will you not be seated?"
+
+Karovsky drew up a chair. "As you say--I am not here without a
+motive," he remarked. Then, with a quick expressive gesture, which was
+altogether un-English, he added: "Ah, bah! I feel like a bird of
+ill-omen that has winged its way into Paradise with a message from the
+nether world."
+
+"Whatever your message may be, pray do not hesitate to deliver it."
+
+But apparently the Russian did hesitate. He got up, crossed the room
+to one of the windows, looked out for half a minute, then went back
+and resumed his seat. "Eight years have come and gone, Gerald Brooke,"
+he began in an impressive tone, "since you allied yourself by some of
+the most solemn oaths possible for a man to take to that Sacred Cause
+to which I also have the honour of being affiliated."
+
+"Do you think that I have forgotten! At that time I was an impetuous
+and enthusiastic boy of eighteen, with no knowledge of the world save
+what I had gathered from books, and with a head that was full of wild,
+vague dreams of Liberty and Universal Brotherhood."
+
+"The fact of your becoming one of Us is the best of all proofs that
+the cause of Liberty at that time was dear to your heart."
+
+"But when as a boy I joined the Cause, I was ignorant of much I have
+learned since that time."
+
+"The world does not stand still. One naturally knows more to-day than
+one did eight years ago."
+
+"Karovsky, I know this--that the Cause, which, when I joined it, I
+believed to be so pure in its aims, so lofty in its ideas, so
+all-embracing in its philanthropy, has, since that time, been stained
+by crimes which make me shudder when I think of them--has dragged its
+colours through shambles reeking with the blood of those who have
+fallen victims to its blind and ferocious notions of revenge."
+
+"Pardon. But can it be possible that I am listening to one who, only
+eight short years ago, was saturated with philanthropic ideas which
+seemed expansive enough to include the whole human race--one whose
+great longing was that every man should be free and happy?--Ah, yes,
+you are the same--only time and the world have contrived to spoil you,
+as they spoil so many others. In those days you were poor; now you are
+rich. Then you had no fixed home; you were a wanderer from city to
+city; your future was clouded and uncertain. Now, you are the wealthy
+Mr. Brooke--a pillar of your country: this grand old mansion and all
+the broad acres, for I know not how far around it, are yours. You are
+married to one whom you love, and who loves you in return. Away, then,
+with the wild notions of our hot youth!"
+
+"Karovsky, you wrong me. My love of my fellows is as ardent as ever it
+was. My---- But why prolong a discussion that could serve no good end?
+You have a message for me?"
+
+"I have." The man was evidently ill at ease. He rose, crossed to the
+chimney-piece, took up one or two curios and examined them through his
+eyeglass, then went back and resumed his seat. "Gerald Brooke," he
+continued, "eight years ago, on a certain winter evening, in a certain
+underground room in Warsaw, and before some half-dozen men whose faces
+you were not permitted to see, you, of your own free-will, took the
+solemn oaths which affiliated you to that great Cause for the
+furtherance of which thousands of others have given their fortunes,
+their lives, their all. From that day till this you have been a
+passive brother of the Society; nothing has been demanded at your
+hands; and you might almost be excused if the events of that winter
+night had come at length to seem to you little more than a
+half-remembered dream. That you have not been called upon before now
+is no proof that you have been overlooked or forgotten, but simply
+that your services have not been required. Other instruments were at
+hand to do the work that was needed to be done. But at length the day
+has come to you, Gerald Brooke, as it comes to most men who live and
+wait."
+
+Gerald had changed colour more than once during the foregoing speech.
+"What is it that I am called upon to do?" he asked in a voice that was
+scarcely raised above a whisper.
+
+"You are aware that when an individual is needed to carry out any of
+the secret decrees of the Supreme Tribunal, that individual is drawn
+for by lot?"
+
+"And my name"----
+
+"Has been so drawn."
+
+The light faded out of Gerald Brooke's eyes; a death-like pallor crept
+over his face; lie could scarcely command his voice as for the second
+time he asked: "What is it that I am called upon to do?"
+
+"The Supreme Tribunal have decreed that a certain individual shall
+suffer the penalty of death. You are the person drawn by lot to carry
+out the sentence."
+
+"They would make an assassin of me?--Never!"
+
+"You are bound by your oath to carry out the behests of the Tribunal,
+be they what they may."
+
+"No oath can bind a man to become a murderer."
+
+"One of the chief conditions attached to your oath is that of blind
+and unquestioning obedience."
+
+"Karovsky, this is monstrous."
+
+"I am sorry that things have fallen out as they have, _mon ami_; but
+such being the case, there is no help for it."
+
+"I--Gerald Brooke--whose ancestors fought at Cressy, to sink to the
+level of a common assassin? Never!"
+
+"Pardon. Might it not be as well, before you express your
+determination in such emphatic terms, to consider what would be the
+consequence of a refusal on your part to comply with the instructions
+of which I have the misfortune to be the bearer?--Mrs. Brooke is very
+young to be left a widow."
+
+"Karovsky!"
+
+"Pardon. But that is what it means. Any affiliated member who may be
+so ill-advised as to refuse to carry out the decrees of the Tribunal
+renders himself liable to the extreme penalty; and so surely as you,
+Gerald Brooke, are now a living man, so surely, in a few short weeks,
+should you persist in your refusal, will your wife be left a widow."
+
+"This is horrible--most horrible!"
+
+"Obedience, blind and unquestioning, the utter abnegation of your
+individuality to the will of your superiors, is the first great rule
+of the Propaganda to which you and I have the honour to belong. But
+all this you knew, or ought to have known, long ago."
+
+"Obedience carried to the verge of murder is obedience no longer--it
+becomes a crime. However you may put it, assassination remains
+assassination still."
+
+"Pardon. We recognise no such term in our vocabulary."
+
+"Karovsky, had you been called upon to do this deed"----
+
+"I should have done it. For if there be one man in the world, Brooke,
+whom I have cause to hate more than another, that man is Baron Otto
+von Rosenberg!"
+
+"Von Rosenberg!"
+
+"Pardon. Did I not mention the name before? But he is the man."
+
+For a moment or two Gerald could not speak. "It is but half an hour
+since I parted from him," he contrived to say at last.--"Karovsky, I
+feel as if I were entangled in some horrible nightmare--as if I were
+being suffocated in the folds of some monstrous Python."
+
+"It is a feeling that will wear itself out in the course of a little
+while. I remember---- But that matters not."
+
+"But Von Rosenberg is not a Russian; he is a German ex-diplomatist.
+What can such a man as he have done to incur so terrible a vengeance?"
+
+"Listen. Four years ago, when attached to the Embassy at St
+Petersburg, certain secrets were divulged to him, after he had pledged
+his sacred word of honour that no use whatever should be made of the
+information so acquired. Wretch that he was! Von Rosenberg turned,
+traitor, and revealed everything to those in power. In the dead of
+night, a certain house in which a secret printing press was at work
+was surrounded by the police. Two of the inmates were shot down while
+attempting to escape. The rest were made prisoners, among them being
+three women and a boy of seventeen--my brother. Two of those arrested
+died in prison, or were never heard of more; the rest were condemned
+to the mines. On the road, my brother and one of the women sank and
+died, killed by the dreadful hardships they had to undergo; the rest
+are now rotting away their lives in the silver mines, forgotten by all
+but the dear ones they left behind.--You now know the reason why the
+Baron Otto von Rosenberg has been sentenced to death. The vengeance of
+the Supreme Tribunal may be slow, but it is very sure."
+
+There was silence for a few moments, then Gerald said: "All this may
+be as you say; but I tell you again, Karovsky, that mine shall not be
+the hand to strike the blow."
+
+"Then you seal your own death-warrant"
+
+"So be it. Life at such a price would not be worth having. 'Death
+before Dishonour' is the motto of our house. Dishonour shall never
+come to it through me."
+
+Gerald rose and walked to the window. His face was pale, his eyes were
+full of trouble; what he had said had been lacking neither in dignity
+nor pathos.
+
+The Russian's cold glance followed him, not without admiration.
+"English to the backbone," he muttered under his breath. "It was a
+blunder ever to allow such a man to become one of Us." Then he looked
+at his watch, and started to find it was so late. "I can stay no
+longer--I must go," he said aloud. "But remember my last warning
+words." He took up his hat and moved slowly towards the window.
+
+"Karovsky, for the last time I solemnly declare that this man's death
+shall not lie at my door!" Gerald sank into a chair, let his elbows
+rest on the table, and buried his face between his hands.
+
+"I have nothing more to say," remarked the Russian. He stepped through
+the window, his hat in his hand, and then turned.
+
+At that moment the door opened, and Mrs. Brooke, on the point of
+entering the room, paused suddenly as her eyes took in the scene
+before her. "Gerald!" she exclaimed in a frightened voice, and then
+her gaze travelled from her husband to Karovsky. The latter, with his
+eyes still resting on the bowed figure at the table, pronounced in low
+clear accents the one word, "Remember!" Then he bowed low to Mrs.
+Brooke, and next moment was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Ten weeks, had come and gone since the memorable visit of M. Karovsky
+to the master of Beechley Towers. It was a pleasant evening towards
+the end of June. There had been a heavy shower a little while ago; but
+since then the clouds had broken, and the sun was now drawing westward
+in a blaze of glory. In the same pleasant morning-room in which we
+first made their acquaintance, Mrs. Brooke and her aunt, Miss Primby,
+were now sitting. The latter was dozing in an easy-chair with a novel
+on her lap, the former was seated at the piano playing some plaintive
+air in a minor key. The glad light, the light of a happiness that knew
+no cloud, which shone from her eyes when we saw her first, dwelt there
+no longer. She looked pale, anxious, and _distraits_, like one who is
+a prey to some hidden trouble. She had spoken no more than the truth
+when she said that her happiness was too perfect to last.
+
+As the last sad note died away under her fingers she turned from the
+instrument. "I cannot play--I cannot work--I cannot do anything," she
+murmured under her breath.
+
+At this juncture Miss Primby awoke. "My dear Clara, what a pity you
+did not keep on playing," she said. "I was in the midst of a most
+lovely dream. I thought I was about to be married; my wreath and veil
+had been sent home, and I was just about to try them on; when you
+stopped playing and I awoke."
+
+"If I were to go on playing, aunt, do you think that you could finish
+your dream?"
+
+"No, my dear, it's gone, and the chances are that it will never
+return," said the spinster with a sigh.
+
+Clara crossed the room, and sat down on a low chair near the window,
+whence she could catch the first glimpse of her husband as he came
+round the clump of evergreens at the corner of the terrace.
+
+"I wish you would not mope so much, and would try not to look quite so
+miserable," said her aunt presently.
+
+"How can I help feeling miserable, when I know that Gerald has some
+unhappy secret on his mind, of which he tells me nothing. He has been
+a changed man ever since the visit of M. Karovsky. He cannot eat, he
+cannot rest; night and day he wanders about the house and grounds,
+like a man walking in his sleep."
+
+"Bad signs, very, my dear. Married men have no right to have secrets
+from their wives."
+
+"If he would but confide in me! If he would but tell me what the
+secret trouble is that is slowly eating away his life!"
+
+"I remember that when the Dean of Rathdrum leaned over the back of my
+chair, and whispered 'My darling Jane, I'"----
+
+"Here comes Gerald!" cried Mrs. Brooke. She started to her feet, while a
+glad light leapt into her eyes, and ran out on the terrace to meet
+him. "What a time you have been away!" she said, as he stooped and
+kissed her. "And your hair and clothes are quite wet."
+
+"It is nothing," he answered. "I was caught in a shower in the wood."
+
+"Poor fellow! He certainly does look very haggard and dejected,"
+remarked Miss Primby to herself.
+
+"Have you been far?" asked Clara.
+
+"Only as far as Beaulieu."
+
+"You called on the baron, of course."
+
+"No. I changed my mind at the last moment."
+
+"The first bell will ring in a few minutes."
+
+"I have one important letter to write before I dress."
+
+"Then aunt and I will leave you. You will not be long? I am so afraid
+of your taking cold. Come, aunt."
+
+"Nothing brings on rheumatism sooner than damp clothes," remarked Miss
+Primby sententiously, as she folded down a leaf of her novel, and
+tucked the volume under her arm.
+
+Then the ladies went and Gerald was left alone. He looked a dozen
+years older than he had looked ten weeks previously. All the light and
+gladness had died out of his face; he had the air of a man who was
+weighed down by some trouble almost heavier than he could bear. "She
+is afraid of my taking cold," he said to himself, with a bitter smile
+as his wife closed the door. "Poor darling! if I were to take cold and
+have a fever and die, it would be the best thing that could happen
+either to her or me." He began to pace the room slowly, his hands
+behind him, and his eyes bent on the ground. "Nearly three months have
+passed since Karovsky's visit, and nothing has yet been done. Only two
+more weeks are left me. Coward that I am, to have kept putting off
+from day to day doing that which I ought to have done long ago. Even
+this very afternoon, when I reached Beaulieu, I had not the courage to
+go in and confront Von Rosenberg. My heart failed me, and I turned
+back. If I have begun one letter to him I have begun a dozen, only to
+burn or tear them up unfinished; but now there is no time for further
+delay. I will warn him that if he wishes to save his life he must
+leave here immediately, and seek some asylum where his enemies will be
+powerless to harm him. Shall I vaguely hint at some shadowy danger
+that impends over him? or shall I tell him in plain terms why and by
+whom the death sentence has been recorded against him? Shall I write
+to him anonymously, or shall I sign the letter with my name? Better
+tell him everything and put my name to the letter; he can then act on
+the information in whatever way he may deem best. In doing this, as
+Karovsky said, I shall be sealing my own doom. Well, better that,
+better anything than the only other alternative."
+
+He halted by one of the windows, and stood gazing out at all the
+pleasant features of the landscape he had learned to know and love so
+well. "It seems hard to die so young, and with so much about me to make
+life happy," he sadly mused. "I think I could meet my fate on the
+battle-field without a murmur--but to be murdered in cold blood--to be
+the mark for some stealthy assassin! Poor Clara! poor darling! what
+will you do when I am gone?" He sighed deeply as he turned from the
+window. His eyes were dim with tears.
+
+Presently he seated himself at the davenport, and drew pen and paper
+towards him. "No more delays; this very night the baron shall be told.
+But how shall I begin? in what terms shall I word my warning?" He sat
+and mused for a minute or two, biting the end of his pen as he did so.
+Then he dipped the pen into the inkstand and began to write: "My dear
+Baron, from information which has reached me, the accuracy of which I
+cannot doubt, I am grieved to have to inform you that your life is in
+great and immediate peril. You have been sentenced to death by the
+Chiefs of one of those Secret Societies of the existence of which you
+are doubtless aware. Your only chance of safety lies in immediate
+flight."
+
+"What shall I say next?" asked Gerald of himself. "Shall I tell him
+that"----
+
+But at this juncture the door was opened, and Mrs. Brooke came
+hurriedly into the room. "O Gerald, such terrible news!" she
+exclaimed, breathlessly.
+
+Gerald turned his letter face downward on the blotting-pad. "Terrible
+news, Clara?" he said in a tone of studied indifference. "Has your
+aunt's spaniel over-eaten itself and"----
+
+"Gerald, don't!" she cried in a pained voice. "Baron von Rosenberg is
+dead--murdered in his own house leas than an hour ago!"
+
+Gerald rose slowly from his chair as if drawn upward by some invisible
+force. The sudden pallor that blanched his face frightened his wife.
+She sprang forward and laid a hand on his arm. He shook it off almost
+roughly. "Tell me again what you told me just now," he said in a voice
+which Clara scarcely recognised as that of her husband.
+
+She told him again. "Murdered! Von Rosenberg! Impossible!"
+
+"Dixon brought the news; he has just ridden up from King's Harold."
+
+Gerald sank into his seat again. His eyes were fixed on vacancy. For a
+few moments he looked as if his brain had been paralysed.
+
+Miss Primby came bustling in. "Oh, my dear Clara, can it be possible
+that this dreadful--dreadful news is true?"
+
+"Only too true, I am afraid, aunt."
+
+"Poor Baron! Poor dear man! What a shocking end! I never knew a man
+with more charming manners. Cut off in the flower of his age, as one
+may say."
+
+"Perhaps, dear, you would like to see Dixon and question him," said
+Clara to her husband.
+
+He simply nodded. Mrs. Brooke rang the bell and Dixon the groom
+entered. "You had better tell your master all you know about this
+frightful tragedy."
+
+The man cleared his throat. Gerald stared at him with eyes that seemed
+to see far beyond him--far beyond the room in which they were. "I had
+been down to King's Harold, sir," began Dixon, "to see Thompson, the
+farrier, about the chestnut mare, and was riding back, when just as I
+got to the Beaulieu lodge-gates I see the dog-cart come out with Mr.
+Pringle the baron's man in it, along with Dr. King, and another gent
+as was a stranger to me. Seeing the doctor there, and that Mr. Pringle
+looked very white and scared like, I pulls up. 'Anything amiss, Mr.
+Pringle?' says I, with a jerk of my thumb towards the house, as the
+dog-cart passed me. But he only stared at me and shook his head solemn
+like and drove on without a word. Then I turns to the lodge-keeper's
+wife and sees that she has her apron over her head, and is crying.
+'Anything serous amiss, mum?' says I. 'I don't know what you calls
+serous, young man,' says she, 'but my poor master, the baron, was
+found murdered in the little shally in the garden only half an hour
+since--shot through the heart by some blood-thirsty villain.' I didn't
+wait to hear more, sir, but made all the haste I could home."
+
+No word spoke Gerald. The man looked at him curiously, almost doubting
+whether his master had heard a word of what he had said.
+
+"Thank you, Dixon; that will do," said Mrs. Brooke. The man carried a
+finger to his forehead and made his exit.
+
+"Poor dear baron!" remarked Miss Primby for the second time. "There
+was something very fascinating in his smile."
+
+"Clara, tell me," said Gerald presently. "Am I in truth awake, or have
+I only dreamt that Von Rosenberg is dead?"
+
+"How strangely you talk, dear. I am afraid you are ill."
+
+"There you are mistaken. I am well--excellently well. But tell me
+this: ought I to feel glad, or ought I to feel sorry? On my life, I
+don't know which I ought to feel!"
+
+"Glad? O Gerald!"
+
+"Ah; I had forgotten. You don't know."
+
+"You no longer confide in me as you used to do."
+
+He took no notice of the remark. "Let the Dead Past bury its dead," he
+said aloud, but speaking exactly as he might have done had he been
+alone. "No need to send this now," he muttered in a lower tone as he
+took up his unfinished letter. "If I had but sent it a week ago, would
+Von Rosenberg be still alive? Who can say?" Crossing to the
+chimney-piece, he lighted a match and with it set fire to the letter,
+holding it by one corner as he did so. When it had burnt itself half
+away he began to whistle under his breath.
+
+"O Gerald!" said his wife in a grieved voice.
+
+"I had forgotten. Pardon--as Karovsky would say."
+
+"I am grieved to say so, dear, but his brain seems slightly affected;"
+whispered Miss Primby to her niece. "If I were you I would call in Dr.
+Preston."
+
+Before Clara could reply Bunce came in with a lighted lamp half turned
+down. He left the curtains undrawn, for a soft yellow glow still
+lingered over field and woodland.
+
+As soon as he had left the room Mrs. Brooke crossed to the couch on
+which her husband had seated himself, and taking one of his hands in
+hers, said: "Dearest, you must not let this affair, shocking though it
+be, prey too much on your mind. It is not as if you had lost an old
+and valued friend. Baron von Rosenberg was but an acquaintance--a man
+whose name even you had never heard six months ago."
+
+His only reply was to softly stroke the hand that was holding one of
+his.
+
+Clara waited a little and then she said: "Will you not come and dress
+for dinner?"
+
+He rose abruptly. "Dress for dinner!" he exclaimed with a strange
+discordant laugh. "How the comedy and tragedy of life jostle each
+other! Grim death claps on the mask of Momus and tries to persuade us
+that he is a merry gentleman. Here a white cravat, a dress coat, the
+pleasant jingle of knives and forks. There, a pool of blood, a cold
+and rigid form, a ghastly face with blank staring eyes that seem
+appealing to heaven for vengeance. Yes, let us go and dress for
+dinner; for, in truth, you and I ought to rejoice and make merry
+to-night--if you only knew why."
+
+"Gerald, you frighten me."
+
+"Nay, sweet one, I would not do that;" he answered as he drew her to
+him and kissed her. "I am in a strange humour to-night. I hardly know
+myself. I could laugh and I could sing, and yet--and yet--poor Von
+Rosenberg!" He turned away with a sigh.
+
+At this moment in came Mr. Bunce again. "If you please, ma'am," he
+said to Mrs. Brooke, "here's a strange young pusson come running to
+the Towers all in a hurry, who says she must see you without a
+minute's delay."
+
+The "strange young pusson" had followed close on his heels. "Yes, mum,
+without a minute's delay," she contrived to gasp out, and then she
+stood panting, unable to articulate another word. She was breathless
+with running.
+
+"Well, if ever!" exclaimed the scandalised Bunce, turning sharply on
+her. "Why, you ain't even wiped your shoes."
+
+"That will do, Bunce, thank you," said Mrs. Brooke with quiet dignity.
+
+Bunce sniffed and tried to screw up his nose further than nature had
+done already. "Sich muck!" was his comment to himself as he left the
+room.
+
+The person to whom this depreciatory epithet was applied was a girl of
+some sixteen or seventeen summers, Margery Shook by name, who was
+dressed in a coarse but clean bib and apron, a short cotton frock
+considerably the worse for wear, gray worsted stockings, thick shoes,
+and a quilted sun-bonnet, from under the flap of which her nut-brown
+hair made its escape in tangled elf-like locks. Her bright hazel eyes
+had in them more of the expression of some half-tamed animal than that
+of an ordinary human being. Her features, though by no means uncomely,
+were somewhat heavily moulded and did not respond readily to emotional
+expression. For the rest, she was a well-grown strongly-built girl,
+and when she laughed her teeth flashed upon you like a surprise.
+
+Margery's laugh, if laugh it could be called, was perhaps the most
+singular thing about her. It was witch-like, weird, uncanny; it never
+extended to her eyes; it broke out at the most inopportune moments; to
+have been awoke by it in the dead of night, and not to have known
+whence it emanated, might have shaken the nerves of the strongest man.
+
+Margery was an orphan, and until she was sixteen years old, had been
+brought up on a canal barge. It was her boast that she could drive a
+horse or steer a barge as well as any man between London and the
+Midlands. But there came a day when the girl could no longer either
+drive or handle the rudder. Ague had got her in its merciless grip.
+The barge-man for whom she worked landed her at King's Harold with
+instructions to a relative of his to pass her on to the workhouse. But
+before this could be done Mrs. Brooke had found out the sick girl. She
+was placed in a decent lodging, and the mistress of Beechley Towers
+paid all expenses till she was thoroughly restored to health. But not
+only did she do that: she went to see Margery three or four times a
+week, and eat with her, and talked with her, and read to her, and
+tried in various ways to let a few rays of light into the girl's
+darkened mind. Sometimes it happened that Mr. Brooke would call for
+his wife when she was on these expeditions, on which occasions he
+would always stay for a few minutes to have a chat with Margery, so
+that in a little while there was no such gentleman in existence as
+'Muster Geril.' But towards Mrs. Brooke her feeling was one of
+boundless gratitude and devotion; it was like the devotion of a dumb
+animal rather than that of a rational being. Willingly, gladly would
+she have laid down her life for her benefactress, had such a sacrifice
+been required at her hands.
+
+When the girl was thoroughly convalescent it became a question what
+should be done with her. Clara had extracted a promise from her never
+to go back to her old life on the canal. About this time it was that
+the Baron von Rosenberg set up his establishment at Beaulieu. An
+assistant was required in the laundry; Margery thought she should like
+the situation, so it was obtained for her.
+
+"Why, Margery, what can be the matter? Why do you want to see me so
+particularly?" asked Mrs. Brooke.
+
+"It's about him--about Muster Geril," she managed to gasp out. "O mum!
+the polis is coming, and I've run'd all the way from Bulloo to tell
+you."
+
+"The what is coming, Margery?"
+
+"The polis, mum," answered the girl with one of her uncanny laughs.
+Miss Primby, who had never heard anything like it before, gave a
+little jump and stared at Margery as if she were some strange animal
+escaped from a menagerie.
+
+"The police, I suppose you mean?" Margery nodded, and began to bite a
+corner of her apron.
+
+"You must be mistaken, child. What can the police be coming here for?"
+
+"To take Muster Geril."
+
+"To arrest my husband?" Margery nodded again. "What can they want to
+arrest him for?"
+
+"For murder."
+
+"For murder!" ejaculated both the ladies. There was a moment's
+breathless pause. Gerald, with one hand on the back of a chair, and
+one knee resting on the seat, had the impassive air of a man whom
+nothing more can surprise. He had gone through so much of late that
+for a time it seemed as if no fresh emotion had power to touch him.
+
+"Great heaven! Margery, what are you talking about?" said Mrs. Brooke
+with blanched lips.
+
+"They say as how Muster Geril shot the gentleman--the Baron--what was
+found dead about a hour ago. Not as I believes a word of it," she
+added with a touch of contempt in her voice. "A pistol set with gold
+and with funny figures scratched on it, was found not far from the
+corpus, and they say it belongs to Muster Geril."
+
+"My Indian pistol which I lent to Von Rosenberg ten weeks ago," said
+Gerald quietly.
+
+"And now the polis have gone for a warrin to take him up," added the
+girl.
+
+"A warrant to arrest my husband?"
+
+Again Margery nodded. She was a girl who, as a rule, was sparing of
+her words.
+
+"I, the murderer of Von Rosenberg!" said Gerald, with a bitter laugh.
+"Such an accusation would be ridiculous if it were not horrible."
+
+Mrs. Brooke wrung her hands and drew in her breath with a half moan.
+The blow was so overwhelming, that for a few moments words seemed
+frozen on her lips.
+
+Gerald turned to the window. "Can the irony of fate go further than
+this," he said to himself, "that I should be accused of a crime for
+refusing to commit which my own life was to have paid the penalty!"
+
+In came Bunce once more carrying a card on a salver which he presented
+to his master.
+
+Gerald took it and read, "Mr. Tom Starkie."
+
+"Says he wants to see you very perticler, sir."
+
+"Into which room have you shown Mr. Starkie?"
+
+"Into the blue room, sir."
+
+"Say that I will be with him in one moment. Come, Clara, come, aunt,"
+he said with a smile, as soon as Bunce had left the room; "let us go
+and hear what it is so 'perticler' that Mr. Tom has to say to me?"
+
+None of them noticed that Margery had stolen out on to the terrace,
+and was there waiting and watching with her gaze fixed on a distant
+point of the high-road where it suddenly curved, before dipping into
+the valley on its way to the little market town of King's Harold.
+Twilight still lingered in the west, and Margery's eyes were almost as
+keen as those of a hawk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The Blue Room into which Mr. Tom Starkie had been shown was at the
+back of the house, and its windows looked into a quaint old-fashioned
+garden with clipped hedges and shady alleys. In order to reach this
+room, visitors had to cross the entrance hall, then proceed along a
+wide corridor which intersected the house, with doors opening on
+either hand, after which they found themselves in a second hall almost
+as large as the first. An archway, from which depended a heavy
+_portièr_ divided this hall from the Blue Room. This second hall,
+which was lighted by a cupola, was hung with a few family portraits,
+some arms pertaining to various countries and various epochs, together
+with sundry trophies of the chase.
+
+A broad, shallow, oaken staircase, black with age, led to an upper
+floor, at the foot of which, on either hand, stood a man in armour
+with his visor down, grasping in his mailed right hand a lance half as
+tall again as himself. Tropical plants in tubs were disposed here and
+there.
+
+Gerald Brooke, pushing aside the _portière_, advanced and shook hands
+with his visitor. Mrs. Brooke and her aunt had remained behind. It was
+just possible that Mr. Starkie might have something of a private
+nature to communicate to Gerald. "Brooke, what's this confounded mess
+you seem to have got yourself into?" he began, without a word of
+preface. He was a red-haired, open-faced, good-natured-looking young
+fellow of three or four and twenty. "Have you heard that Von Rosenberg
+is dead, and that you are accused of having murdered him?"
+
+"Yes, I have heard," answered the other quietly. "Is that the affair
+about which you have come to see me?"
+
+Mr. Starkie looked thunderstruck. "As if by Jove! it wasn't enough!
+But, unfortunately, there's more behind."
+
+Gerald touched the bell. "There is no reason why my wife and her aunt
+should not hear anything you have to say," he remarked. "They know
+already of what I am accused."
+
+When the ladies came in, they shook hands with Mr. Starkie. Clara and
+he had known each other for years.
+
+Gerald having explained the nature of their visitor's errand as far as
+he knew it, turned to the young man and said: "And now for your
+narrative, dear boy; we won't interrupt you oftener than is absolutely
+necessary."
+
+"I'll cut what I've got to say as short as I can," rejoined the other,
+"because, don't you know, there's no time to lose." He cleared
+his voice and drew his chair a few inches nearer Gerald. "About
+three-quarters of an hour ago," he began, "I happened to be with my
+dad in his office talking over some private matters, when Drumley, our
+new superintendent of police, was ushered into the room. He horrified
+both my dad and me by telling us that the Baron von Rosenberg had been
+found murdered--shot through the heart in the little _châlet_ which
+stands in the grounds about a hundred yards from the house; and he
+shocked us still more by telling us that he had come to apply to my
+father, as the nearest J.P., for a warrant authorising the arrest of
+Mr. Gerald Brooke as being the supposed murderer. As soon as my father
+could command himself, he demanded to know the nature of the evidence
+which tended to implicate a gentleman like Mr. Brooke in a crime so
+heinous. Then Drumley, to whom every credit is due for the smart way
+in which he has done what he conceived to be his duty, adduced his
+evidence item by item. Item the first was the finding of a curious
+pistol, inlaid with gold and ivory, which was picked up a few yards
+from the _châlet_. It had been recently discharged, and was recognised
+by some one at Beaulieu as being, or having been, your property."
+
+"There can be no dispute on that point," said Gerald. "The pistol in
+question is mine. I lent it to the Baron the last time he was here,
+ten weeks ago. He wanted it for a certain purpose, and promised to
+return it in the course of four or five days. As it happened, he was
+summoned by telegram next day to Berlin, and, as you may or may not
+know, he only returned to Beaulieu yesterday. Hence the reason why my
+pistol was still in his possession."
+
+"How unfortunate!" answered Starkie. "But perhaps you had some
+witness, perhaps some one was there at the time who saw you give the
+pistol to the Baron?"
+
+Gerald considered for a moment. "No," he said; "we were alone--the
+Baron and I; no one else was in the room when I gave him the pistol.
+He would not let me send it over by a servant, but persisted in taking
+it himself."
+
+"That is more unfortunate still," said the young man. "The next item
+of evidence was that of two of the Baron's men, who deposed to having
+seen you making your way through the plantation in the direction of
+Beaulieu; and to having seen you returning by the same way some twenty
+minutes or half an hour later, and not many minutes after they had
+heard the sound of a gun or pistol shot."
+
+"That fact also will admit of no dispute," answered Gerald. "I left
+home with the intention of calling on the Baron on a matter of
+importance; but at the last moment I changed my mind and determined to
+write to him instead. I, too, heard a shot; but as the Baron has a
+range for pistol-practice in his grounds, I thought nothing of it."
+
+Very glum indeed looked Mr. Starkie. "And now we come to the last item
+of evidence, which is perhaps the most singular of all. Had you not, a
+little while ago, a groom in your service of the name of Pedley?"
+
+"I had. About two months ago, I had occasion to discharge him for
+insolence and insubordination."
+
+"And a few days later he came to you for a character, telling you
+that he had a chance of getting into the employ of the Baron von
+Rosenberg?"
+
+"He did; and as I thought he was sorry for his behaviour, I gave him a
+note to the Baron's man, whose name I don't just now remember."
+
+"The day Pedley came to see you, do you recollect whether you left him
+alone in the room where the interview between you took place?"
+
+"Now you mention it, I believe I did leave him alone for a couple of
+minutes while I went into the next room to write the note I had
+promised him."
+
+"He seems to be a dangerous sort of customer. According to his
+account, it would appear that during your absence from the room,
+observing a half-burnt piece of paper in the fender, he took it up and
+carefully opened it. He had only just time to glance at its contents
+before you returned; but what he saw was sufficient to induce him to
+take the paper away with him so as to enable him to decipher it at his
+leisure."
+
+"May I ask the nature of the contents of the paper in question?" said
+Gerald, who had turned a shade or two paler in spite of himself.
+
+"When Pedley heard that you were suspected, he spoke to Drumley, and
+came along with him to see my father. There he produced the half-burnt
+piece of paper, the contents of which he stated to be in your writing,
+though how he should be able to speak so positively on the point is
+more than I can understand. Anyhow, Brooke, if the document should
+prove to be in your handwriting, it seems a somewhat singular
+composition, to say the least of it. I had only time to glance
+hurriedly over it; but from what I could make out, it appears to be a
+sort of warning addressed to Von Rosenberg, telling him that his life
+is in great and imminent danger, and that he has been condemned to
+death; and then there was something about escaping while there was yet
+time; but the whole thing was so fragmentary, and here and there there
+were such gaps in the sequence of the sentences, that I may perhaps
+scarcely have gathered the right sense of what I read. As there seemed
+to be no time to lose, I did not wait to hear more, but had my mare
+saddled at once, and rode straight across country, taking everything
+as it came, in order that I might be the first to bring you the news,
+bad as it is, and so put you on your guard."
+
+Gerald grasped his hand. "You are a true friend, Starkie, and I thank
+you from my heart," he said. Then he added: "I trust you will take my
+word when I say that, however black the evidence may at present seem
+against me, I am as innocent of this man's death as you are."
+
+"I believe it, Brooke--with all my heart I believe it!"
+
+"Now for an explanation of the half-burnt letter. That it is in my
+writing I don't for one moment doubt." Mr. Starkie gave vent to a
+little whistle under his breath. "It is perfectly true that Von
+Rosenberg's life was in imminent danger. His enemies were powerful and
+implacable, and nothing short of his death would satisfy them. He was
+to be assassinated--murdered in cold blood. In what way I came to know
+all this I am not at liberty to say. The half-burnt paper picked up by
+Pedley was a letter of warning to the Baron which I never finished,
+and afterwards, as I thought, burnt to ashes. Von Rosenberg was at
+Berlin at the time, and I knew that the danger which menaced him lay
+here, and not there. Finally, I decided not to write to him, but to
+await his return and seek a personal interview. He reached Beaulieu
+last night, and this afternoon I made up my mind to call upon him. I
+had nearly reached the house, when, coward that I was, my heart failed
+me, and I came back determined that, after all, I would break my news
+by letter. And now it is too late!"
+
+"But," exclaimed the other, "don't you see that what you have just
+told me, if told in a court of justice, would only serve to make the
+case seem a hundredfold blacker against you?"
+
+"I can quite understand that," answered Gerald sadly. "Nevertheless,
+the truth is the truth, and nothing can alter it."
+
+Mr. Starkie looked at his watch. "I have not a moment to lose," he
+said. "The police may arrive at any minute, and it would never do for
+them to find that my father's son had been here before them and given
+you the 'tip.'"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Starkie, what would you advise Gerald to do? What a horrible
+accusation to have brought against him!" exclaimed Clara.
+
+"It is that, and no mistake; but it is scarcely in my province, Mrs.
+Brooke, to advise your husband what to do."
+
+"Supposing you were in his place, Mr. Starkie, what would _you_ do?"
+
+"Upon my word, I hardly know. On the face of it one must admit that
+the case looks very black against him, so many bits of circumstantial
+evidence being piled one on the top of another; but I have no doubt in
+my own mind that further inquiry will in the course of a few hours go
+far to substantiate his innocence. In fact, I think it most likely
+that before this time tomorrow the real murderer will have been
+arrested."
+
+"Then you would advise?"---- She paused, and looked at him with eyes
+full of entreaty.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Brooke, I think--mind you, I only say I think--that if I
+were in Brooke's place would make tracks for a little while.--I beg
+your pardon," he resumed in some confusion, "what I mean is, that I
+would be suddenly called from home on business, or pleasure, or what
+not, so that when the police arrived I should be _non est_. Only, if
+you decide to do as I suggest, it must be done without a minute's loss
+of time. In the course of a day or two or even earlier, the mystery
+will no doubt be cleared up, and in the meantime Brooke will escape
+the unpleasantness of being in quod.--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Brooke;
+I mean in prison."
+
+"You hear, Gerald--you hear!" cried his wife.
+
+Mr. Starkie took Gerald aside and said something to him rapidly in a
+low voice, to which the other replied by an emphatic shake of his
+head. "No--no," he said; "I cannot consent to anything of the kind."
+
+"Well, you know best, of course," replied Mr. Tom; "but I think I
+would if I were you. In any case, I'll not fail to be on the lookout;
+only, don't forget the directions." Two minutes later he had said his
+hurried adieus and had ridden rapidly away.
+
+No one spoke till the noise of his horse's hoofs was lost in the
+distance. A sort of stupor of dismay had settled on the little party.
+Gerald felt as if he were shut in by a net of steel, which was being
+slowly drawn round him closer and closer. The mental anguish he had
+undergone since Karovsky's visit, combined with all the varied and
+fluctuating emotions of the last few hours, were beginning to tell
+upon him. It seemed to him as if some hinge in his brain were being
+gradually loosened--as if the fine line which divides the real from
+the imaginary and fact front fantasy were in his case being strained
+to tenuity.
+
+Mrs. Brooke was the first to break the silence. She crossed and sat
+down by her husband and took one of his hands in hers. "Gerald,
+dearest, you must fly," she said with a sob in her voice. The eyes he
+turned on her caused passionate tears to surge from her heart, but
+with all her might she forced them back.
+
+"Why should an innocent man fly?" he asked.
+
+"You heard what Mr. Starkie said. For a little while it may not be
+possible for you to prove your innocence, and in the meantime you will
+escape the ignominy of a jail."
+
+"But if I do not stay and face this vile charge, all the world will
+believe me guilty."
+
+"No one who knows you can possibly believe that.--O
+Gerald--husband--my dearest and best--listen to me!"
+
+"Clara, you would make a coward of me."
+
+"Oh, no, no! But consider how strong the evidence is against you. Less
+than that has brought innocent men to the scaffold before now."
+
+"Come what may, I must stay and face this out."
+
+"Again I say no. A few days, perhaps a few hours even, may bring
+the real criminal to light. As Mr. Starkie said, you must go on a
+little journey--a journey where no one can trace you. For my sake,
+Gerald--for your wife's sake!"
+
+"Oh, my dear boy, do, pray, listen to her," put in Miss Primby, who up
+to the present had scarcely uttered a word.
+
+"To-morrow will prove my innocence."
+
+"How devoutly I hope so! But can we be sure of it? Days, weeks even,
+may elapse before the murderer is discovered, and meanwhile what will
+become of you! Gerald--dear one, think--think!"
+
+"I have thought, Clara. You are asking an impossibility."
+
+"I am asking you to save your life. You must fly--you must hide, but
+only for a little while, I trust. You must leave me here to help to
+hunt down the murderer--to fight for you while you are away."
+
+"She speaks the truth, Gerald. Oh, do listen to her!" pleaded Miss
+Primby with quivering lips.
+
+"Again I say, you would persuade me to act like a coward."
+
+"Let the world call you what it will. While you are in hiding, your
+life will be safe. Will it be safe if you stay here?"
+
+Before more could be said, Margery burst without ceremony into the
+room. "O mum, they're coming!" she cried; "the polis is coming!
+There's five or six of 'em in two gigs."
+
+"It is too late--we are lost!" cried Clara in anguished accents.
+
+"I ran down to the little hill in the park, 'cos it's getting too dark
+to see very fer,'" continued Margery; "and when I see 'em come round
+the corner of the road, a quarter of a mile away, I bolted like a
+hare, and got the old woman at the lodge to lock the gate, and told
+her not to open it to anybody for her life. It'll take 'em seven or
+eight minutes longer to drive round by the other gate," concluded
+Margery with a burst of witch-like laughter.
+
+"Good girl! brave girl!" ejaculated Miss Primby.
+
+"Then there may yet be time," said Clara. She dropped on one knee, and
+clasping one of her husband's hands, pressed it passionately to her
+lips. "O Gerald--if you love me--for my sake!" she cried again.
+
+"You are persuading me to this against my will and against my
+conscience."
+
+"I am persuading you to save your life, which to me is more than all
+the world besides."
+
+"Be it as you wish," he answered with a sigh. "I feel as if whatever
+may happen now cannot greatly matter."
+
+Clara rose, and as she did so, a strange eager light leapt into her
+eyes. "Come with me--quick, quick!" she exclaimed. "I have thought of
+a plan. Even now there may be time." Then turning to Miss Primby "You
+will stay here, aunt, will you not? I shall not be more than a few
+minutes away."
+
+The spinster nodded; her heart was too full for speech. Then Clara,
+passing an arm through her husband's, lifted the _portière_, and they
+went out together.
+
+Margery had already disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Left alone, Miss Primby mechanically reverted to her embroidery; but
+it is to be feared that her doing so was little better than a
+pretence. She bit her underlip very hard to help her in controlling
+the nervous emotion which she had much ado not to give way to.
+
+True to her promise, Clara was not more than a few minutes away. When
+she came back she looked paler than before, but her eyes were
+extraordinarily bright and luminous.
+
+"Is he safe, Clara? Oh, tell me that he is safe!"
+
+"I hope and trust so; more than that I cannot say. The police may
+arrive at any moment. You must try to look brave and unconcerned,
+aunty, dear. You need not speak unless you like, but leave everything
+to me."
+
+"Very well, dear. I know that I shall be too nervous to say a
+word.--But what are you going to tell the police?"
+
+"I am going to deceive them.--But oh, aunty, aunty, surely in such a
+cause I shall be forgiven!"
+
+Suddenly Margery's unkempt head was protruded through the archway.
+"They've come, mum," she said in a stage whisper.--"They've stuck
+three men in front of the house and two at the back."
+
+Mrs. Brooke nodded, and the head vanished.
+
+"Now, aunt," said Clara, "let us both try to look as if nothing was
+the matter." So saying she sat down to the piano and began to play a
+waltz in a minor key.
+
+Presently in came Bunce, looking very white and scared, carrying a
+salver with a card on it.
+
+Mrs. Brooke took the card and read aloud: "'Mr. J. Drumley,
+Superintendent of Police.'--What can he want here at this hour of the
+evening?" she said.--"You had better show him in, Bunce." And with
+that she resumed her playing.
+
+She ceased playing, however, when the _portière_ was pushed aside and
+two men came forward, one a little in advance of the other.
+
+As Mrs. Brooke rose and confronted them, the first man made a stiff
+military bow, while the second carried a couple of fingers to his
+forehead.
+
+"To what may I attribute the honour of this visit?" asked Clara in her
+most gracious tones.
+
+Both the men were evidently disconcerted. This pale beautiful
+apparition with its great shining eyes was something they had not
+expected to meet.
+
+"You are Mrs. Brooke, I suppose, ma'am?" said the first man after an
+awkward pause.
+
+Clara smiled assent.
+
+"I am Superintendent Drumley of the King's Harold police, and this is
+one of my sergeants. But our business is with Mr. Brooke, and not with
+you, ma'am."
+
+"Quite so. But I hope your errand is not an unpleasant one?"
+
+"I am sorry to say it is a very unpleasant one."
+
+"May I ask the nature of it?"
+
+"If you will excuse me, ma'am, I would rather not enter into
+particulars--at least not just now. As I said before, our business is
+with Mr. Brooke. May I ask whether he is at home?"
+
+"He is not at home," answered Clara. "It is a pity you did not arrive
+a little earlier." She consulted her watch. "My husband left home
+about five-and-twenty minutes ago. His intention was to walk across
+the fields to Woodberry Station and catch the up-train to London."
+
+The two men stared at each other for a moment or two and then began to
+talk in eager whispers. Clara, who was close by the piano, turned over
+a leaf of music and struck a chord or two in an absent-minded way.
+
+In rushed Margery, panting once more, and to all appearance
+breathless. She made-believe not to see the two constables. "O mum,"
+she cried, "what do you think? He let me carry his bag all the way
+through the park, and at the gate he gave me a bright new sixpence. I
+wanted to carry it to the station; but he wouldn't let me. I wish he
+had--he'd got more'n a mile to walk. But a new silver sixpence! O
+crumbs!" Margery ended with one of her most eldritch and uncanny
+laughs. The sergeant of police, who was rather a nervous man, jumped
+in his shoes; he had never heard anything like it before.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Brooke stared at the girl in blank astonishment;
+then a look flashed from Margery's eyes into hers and she understood.
+
+"Of whom are you speaking, girl?" asked Drumley sternly.
+
+"O lor! I didn't see you, sir.--Why, who should I be speaking of but
+Muster Geril?"
+
+"She refers to my husband, Mr. Gerald Brooke," remarked Clara.
+
+The two men retired down the room a little way and talked together in
+low tones. "I ain't so sure that this is anything more than a clever
+dodge," said Drumley, "and that the gent we want isn't still somewhere
+about. However, you had better take Tomlinson with you and drive as
+hard as you can to Woodberry Station. The London train will be gone
+before you get there; but you can set the telegraph to work and make
+whatever inquiries you may think necessary. You've got the
+description?"--The sergeant nodded.--"Of course you've got to bear in
+mind that he may be disguised. Do the best you can, and then hurry
+back.--Send Simcox to me. I'll have the house thoroughly searched
+while you are away."
+
+The man saluted and went; and presently Simcox appeared in his stead.
+
+Drumley drew a little nearer Mrs. Brooke. "Without wishing in the
+least, ma'am, to doubt what you have told me about Mr. Brooke's
+departure," he said, "I consider it my duty to search the premises."
+
+The piece of music Clara was holding fell to the ground. "To search
+the premises!" she exclaimed as she stooped to pick it up. She
+deliberately replaced the music on the piano before she spoke again.
+Then turning to Drumley with her most dignified air, she said: "You
+forget, sir, that you have not yet enlightened me as to the nature of
+your business at Beechley Towers."
+
+"It is my painful duty to inform you, ma'am, that the Baron von
+Rosenberg was murdered this afternoon in his own grounds at Beaulieu."
+
+"Murdered! The Baron von Rosenberg!" exclaimed both the ladies in a
+breath.
+
+"O aunty, that was a capital bit of make-believe on your part!" thought
+Clara to herself. Then, after a pause, to Drumley: "We are excessively
+shocked, sir, at your tidings. The Baron was a visitor at the Towers,
+and was highly esteemed both by my husband and myself. Still, you must
+excuse me for saying that I fail to see in what way this dreadful
+tragedy connects itself with Mr. Brooke."
+
+"It's a very disagreeable thing for me to have to break it to you,
+ma'am; but the fact is that Mr. Brooke is suspected of having shot the
+Baron. The evidence against him is very strong, and--and, in fact, I
+hold a warrant for his arrest."
+
+"A warrant--for--the arrest of--my husband! You must be
+dreaming--or--or"---
+
+"Not at all, ma'am. As I said before, the evidence against Mr.
+Brooke--circumstantial, of course--is very strong. If you would like
+to see the document"----
+
+"I will take your word for it.--My husband the murderer of the Baron
+von Rosenberg! Impossible! There is some incomprehensible mistake
+somewhere."
+
+"I hope so, with all my heart," answered the superintendent drily.
+"Still, I have my duty to perform."
+
+"Of course. I don't blame you for one moment; I only say there is a
+grievous mistake somewhere. You wish to go over the house--I think
+that is what I understood you to imply?"
+
+"By your leave, ma'am."
+
+Without another word Mrs. Brooke rang the bell; then, crossing the
+room, with her own hands she drew aside the _portière_ that shrouded
+the archway and fastened it back by means of a silver chain. The hall
+beyond was now lighted up by three or four lamps which shed a
+chastened radiance over the scene. More lamps lighted up the gallery.
+The portraits of the dead and gone Croftons, male and female, seemed
+to have retired further into the solitude of their frames, as though
+the lamplight were distasteful to them. The leaves of the tropical
+plants massed here and there shone glossy green; in that softened
+sheen the helmets and cuirasses of the men-at-arms who kept watch and
+ward at the foot of the staircase gleamed like burnished silver.
+
+"Bunce," said Mrs. Brooke, when that functionary responded to the
+summons, "you will be good enough to take a light and show these
+gentlemen over the whole of the house. You will allow them to enter
+every room without exception that they may wish to examine. Nothing
+must be kept back from them." She made a little bow to Mr. Drumley, as
+dismissing him and his companion, and then composedly re-entered the
+room.
+
+"Hang me, if I ain't half inclined to think she's humbugging me, after
+all!" said Mr. Drumley to himself as he followed the majordomo.
+
+Oh, the slow exquisite torture of the half-hour that followed, which
+seemed, indeed, to lengthen itself out to several hours. To this day,
+Clara never thinks of it without a shudder. From where she was seated
+she could see straight across the hall to the staircase beyond; no one
+could go up or come down without her cognisance.
+
+"Clara, dear, I had no idea you had half so much nerve," said Miss
+Primby in a whisper.
+
+"Don't speak to me, aunty, please," she whispered back, "or I shall
+break down." Then to herself: "Will this torture never come to an
+end!"
+
+It did come to an end by-and-by. Mr. Drumley and his man, preceded by
+Bunce, came slowly down the staircase. They were met in the hall by
+two other men who had searched the ground-floor and cellars. It was
+evident that in both cases their perquisition had been unsuccessful.
+
+A minute or two later in marched the sergeant. His journey to the
+station had been equally fruitless of results, except in so far as
+setting the telegraph to work was concerned.
+
+Mrs. Brooke went forward to the group where they stood in the centre
+of the hall. "Well?" she said interrogatively and with a faint smile.
+"Have you succeeded in finding Mr. Brooke?"
+
+"No, ma'am; I am bound to say that we have not."
+
+"I hope you have not forgotten what I told you when you first asked
+for him," was the quiet reply. "But can I not offer you a little
+refreshment after your arduous duties?"
+
+Mr. Drumley laughed the laugh of discomfiture. "I think not, Mrs.
+Brooke--much obliged to you, all the same.--Come, lads; it's no use
+wasting our time here any longer.--Mrs. Brooke, ma'am, I had a very
+disagreeable duty to perform; I trust you will bear me out in saying
+that I have tried to carry it out with as little annoyance to you as
+possible."
+
+"You have been most considerate, Mr. Drumley, and my thanks are due to
+you."
+
+A minute later the men were gone. Then Mrs. Brooke rang the bell and
+ordered all the lamps in the hall except one to be extinguished: that
+one but served, as it were, to make the darkness visible. No sooner
+was this done and the servant gone, than Margery once more put in an
+appearance.
+
+"They're gone, mum, every man-jack of 'em; and ain't Muster Drummle
+in a rare wax 'cos he couldn't find Muster Geril!"
+
+Scarcely had the girl finished speaking, when one of the men in armour
+at the foot of the staircase stepped down from his pedestal and came
+slowly forward. Margery fell back with a cry of terror, for not even
+she had been in the secret.
+
+But Clara, rushing to her husband, pushed up his visor and clasped him
+in her arms. "Saved! saved!" she cried in a voice choked with the
+emotion she could no longer restrain.
+
+"For a little while, my darling, perchance only for a little while,"
+was the mournful response.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+We are at Linden Villa, a pretty little detached house, standing in
+its own grounds, in one of the north-western suburbs of London, and
+the time is the morning of the day after the murder of the Baron von
+Rosenberg. Two people are seated at breakfast--George Crofton and his
+wife Stephanie. For, Mr. Crofton's protestations and objurgations
+notwithstanding at the interview between himself and Clara Brooke, he
+had thought fit within a month after that date to make an offer of his
+hand and heart to Mademoiselle Stephanie Lagrange, an offer which had
+been duly accepted. And, in truth, the ex-queen of the _Haute Ecole_
+was a far more suitable wife for a man like George Crofton than Clara
+Brooke could possibly have been.
+
+Mr. Crofton presented a somewhat seedy appearance this morning;
+there was a worn look about his eyes, and his hand was scarcely as
+steady as it might have been. His breakfast consisted or a tumbler of
+brandy-and-soda and a rusk: it was his usual matutinal repast. Mrs.
+Crofton, who was one of those persons who are always blessed with a
+hearty appetite, having disposed of her cutlet and her egg, was now
+leaning back in an easy-chair, feeding a green and gold parakeet with
+tiny lumps of sugar, and sipping at her chocolate between times. She
+was attired in a loose morning wrapper of quilted pale blue satin,
+with a quantity of soft lace round her throat, and looked exceedingly
+handsome.
+
+"Steph, I think I have told you before," said Mr. Crofton in a
+grumbling tone, "that I don't care to have any of your old circus
+acquaintances calling upon you here. I thought you had broken off the
+connection for good when you became my wife."
+
+"Que voulez-vous, cher enfant?" answered Steph without the least trace
+of temper. "You introduce me to no society; you scarcely ever take me
+anywhere; four or five times a week you don't get home till past
+midnight--this morning it was three o'clock when you crept upstairs as
+quietly as a burglar. What would you have?"
+
+George Crofton moved uneasily in his chair, but did not reply.
+"Besides," resumed his wife, "it was only dear old Euphrosyne Smith
+who came to see me. She looks eighteen when she is on the _corde_, but
+she's thirty-four if she's a day. I've known her for five years, and
+many a little kindness she has done me. And then, although, of course,
+I shall never want to go back to the old life, I must say that I like
+to hear about it now and again and to know how everybody is getting
+on. Can you wonder at it, now that you leave me so much alone?"
+
+"For all that, Steph, I wish you would break off the connection."
+Then, after a pause: "I know that of late I have seemed to neglect you
+a little; but if I have done so, it has been as much for your sake as
+my own."
+
+"Ah, yes, I know: cards, cards, always cards."
+
+"What would you have?--as a certain person sometimes says. I know a
+little about cards; I know nothing about anything else that will bring
+grist to the mill. I bought my experience in the dearest of all
+schools, and if I try to profit by it, who shall blame me?"
+
+"Which means, that you are teaching others to buy their experience in
+the same way."
+
+"Why not?" he answered with a laugh. "It is a law of the universe that
+one set of creatures shall prey on another. _I_ was very nice picking
+for the kites once on a time; now I am a kite myself. The law of
+metempsychosis in such cases is a very curious one."
+
+"I don't know what you mean when you make use of such outlandish
+words," said Stephanie with a pout.
+
+"So much the better; learned women are an abomination."
+
+At this juncture a servant brought in the morning papers. Crofton
+seized one of them, a sporting journal, and pushed the other across
+the table. He was deep in the mysteries of the latest odds, when a low
+cry from his wife caused him to glance sharply at her. "What's up now,
+Steph?" he asked. "It would be a libel to say you had touched the
+rouge-pot this morning, because there isn't a bit of colour in your
+cheeks."
+
+"What is the name of that place in the country where your uncle used
+to live?" she asked.
+
+"Beechley Towers."
+
+"And the name of that cousin to whom your uncle left his property?"
+
+"Gerald Brooke--confound him!--But why do you ask?"
+
+For sole reply she handed him the newspaper, marking a certain passage
+with her finger as she did so. If Mrs. Crofton was startled by
+something which caught her eye in the paper, her feelings were as
+nothing in comparison with those of her husband as his keen glance
+took in the purport of the paragraph in question. It was, in fact,
+little more than a paragraph in the form of a brief telegram,
+forwarded at a late hour by a country correspondent.
+
+What the public were told in the telegram was that the Baron von
+Rosenberg had been found in his own grounds, shot through the heart,
+about seven o'clock in the evening; that strong circumstantial
+evidence pointed to the supposition that Mr. Gerald Brooke, a near
+neighbour of the Baron, was the murderer; that he had disappeared
+immediately after the perpetration of the crime, and that, although he
+was still at large, the police had little doubt they would succeed in
+arresting him in the course of the next few hours.
+
+For a little while, speech seemed powerless to express a tithe of what
+George Crofton felt when the words of the telegram had burned
+themselves into his brain. What a sea of conflicting emotions surged
+round his heart as his mind drank in the full purport of the message
+and all the possibilities therein implied! What a vista of the future
+it opened out!
+
+"A little rouge, _mon cher_, would improve _your_ complexion," said
+his wife at length, who had been watching him curiously out of her
+half-veiled eyes. "If one were to judge by your looks, you might have
+committed the crime yourself."
+
+Her words served to rouse him. "Stephanie, the day of my revenge is
+dawning at last!" He ground out the words between his set teeth. "This
+Gerald Brooke--this well-beloved cousin of mine--is the man who came
+between my uncle and me and defrauded me out of my inheritance."
+
+"And the man who robbed you of the woman you loved, whom you hoped one
+day to make your wife."
+
+"How do you know that?" he gasped. "I never said a syllable to you
+about it."
+
+"It matters not how I know it, so long as I do know it," she answered,
+looking him steadily in the face as she did so, and beginning to tap
+her teeth with her long pointed nails.
+
+"Well, whoever told you, told you no more than the truth. I did love
+Clara Danby, and I hoped to make her my wife. But all that was past
+and gone long; before I met you."
+
+She did not reply, but only went on tapping her teeth the more.
+
+"Putting aside my own feelings towards Brooke," went on Crofton
+presently, "who has done me all the harm that one man could possibly
+do to another, don't you see that if he should be arrested and found
+guilty of this crime, what a vast difference it would make in your
+fortunes and mine?"
+
+"Expliquez-vous, s'il vous plait."
+
+"Should Gerald Brooke die without issue, by the terms of my uncle's
+will Beechley Towers and all the estates pertaining to it, including a
+rent-roll of close on six thousand a year, come absolutely to me--to
+me--comprenez-vous? Ah, what a sweet revenge mine will be!"
+
+"Yes; I should think it would be rather nice to live at a grand place
+like Beechley Towers and have an income of six thousand a year,"
+answered Mrs. Crofton quietly. "So, if this cousin of yours is really
+guilty, let us hope for our own sakes that he will be duly caught and
+hanged."
+
+Crofton turned to the table, and having poured out nearly half a
+tumbler of brandy, he drank it off at a draught. Excitement had so far
+unnerved him that the glass rattled against his teeth as he drank.
+
+"But what could possibly induce a man in Mr. Brooke's position to
+commit such a crime?" asked Stephanie presently.
+
+"That's more than we know at present; we must wait for further
+particulars.--By the way, I wonder who and what the murdered man was?
+The Baron von Rosenberg they call him. I never heard the name before."
+
+"_I_ knew the Baron von Rosenberg some years ago--in Paris," answered
+Stephanie with just a trace of heightened colour in her cheeks. "He
+was a man between forty and fifty years old, and said to be very
+rich.--I never liked him. Indeed, I may say that I had every reason to
+hate him. And now he's dead! C'est bien--c'est très bien."
+
+Her husband was only half heeding her. "Stephanie," he said, "I never
+hated any one as I hate that man. Should the evidence at the inquest,
+which will no doubt be held in the course of to-day, go to prove, or
+go far to prove, that Brooke is the assassin, and should the police
+not succeed in arresting him in the course of the next forty-eight
+hours, do you know what I have made up my mind to do?"
+
+"How is it possible that I should know?"
+
+"I have made up my mind not to trust to what the regular police may or
+may not be able to do in this matter, but to employ a private
+detective on my own account. I happen to be acquainted with a man who
+is nothing less than a sleuth-hound in such a case as this. He has
+succeeded more than once when Scotland Yard has failed ignominiously.
+His services I shall secure; and if it cost me the last sovereign I
+have in the world, I will do all that man can do to bring Gerald
+Brooke to the bar of justice."
+
+He spoke with a concentrated malignity of purpose such as he had never
+exhibited in his wife's presence before. There was an eager, cruel
+gleam in his eyes, like that of some carnivorous animal which scents
+its prey from afar. He set his teeth hard when he had done speaking,
+so that the gash in his lip showed with startling distinctness, and
+lent to his features an unmistakably wolfish expression.
+
+Stephanie looked at him and wondered. She had flattered herself, as
+many wives do, that she had read and thoroughly understood her
+husband; but in this man there were evidently smouldering volcanic
+forces which might burst into activity at any moment, chained tempests
+of rage and ferocity which might not always be kept in check, the
+existence of which she had never suspected before. From that day
+forward, although her husband knew it not, she regarded him with
+somewhat different eyes.
+
+He rose abruptly and rang the bell. "Let a hansom be fetched at once,"
+he said to the servant.
+
+"For what purpose do you require a hansom?" asked his wife.
+
+"To drive me to the terminus. I shall go down to King's Harold by the
+first train. I want to hear for myself the evidence at the inquest on
+the Baron von Rosenberg."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Gerald Brooke bade farewell to his wife, and quitted Beechley Towers
+about an hour after midnight. There was no moon; but the clouds had
+dispersed after the rain, and the stars shone brightly. His object was
+to make his way to Penrhyn Court, the seat of Sir John Starkie, the
+justice of the peace who had signed the warrant for his arrest. It
+seemed like walking into the lion's den; but it was probably the
+wisest thing he could have done under the circumstances. Penrhyn
+Court was one of the last places in the world where anybody would
+think of looking for him. Mr. Tom Starkie had offered to find a secure
+hiding-place for him for the time being; and after he had once
+consented to yield to his wife's entreaties and keep out of the way
+for the present, while awaiting the course of events, it seemed to him
+that he could not do better than accept his friend's offer. For one
+thing, he would be on the spot, should anything turn up necessitating
+his immediate presence; for another, he would be able to communicate
+with his wife without risk, through the medium of kind-hearted Tom.
+
+Over the parting of husband and wife we need not linger; but it was
+with a sad heart that Gerald quitted the threshold of the pleasant
+home where, but such a little time ago, he had looked forward to
+spending many happy years.
+
+Skirting coppice and hedgerow, and keeping as much as possible in the
+black shade of the tree; he sped swiftly on his way. The distance from
+the Towers to the Court was about three miles as the crow flies; and
+almost as straight as the crow flies went Gerald, taking hedge and
+ditch and stone wall on his way, and allowing no obstacle to turn him
+from his course. Once, as he was on the point of emerging from a
+coppice of nut-trees, he came upon two keepers, armed with guns, who
+were crossing a meadow not many yards away, evidently on the lookout
+for poachers. He shrank back on his footsteps as silent as a shadow,
+and waited for fully ten minutes before he ventured to proceed. Again,
+at a point where it was necessary for him to cross the high-road, he
+had a narrow escape from coming face to face with a mounted constable
+who was riding leisurely along on his solitary round. He had just time
+to sink back into the hedge-bottom and lie there as motionless as a
+log till the danger was past.
+
+Mr. Tom Starkie had described the position of his rooms to Gerald, so
+that the latter had no difficulty in making his way to them. He was to
+be guided by a lighted window the blind of which showed a transverse
+bar of a darker shade. As soon as he found this window, Gerald gave
+utterance to a low whistle. The light was at once withdrawn, as a
+token that his signal had been heard; and two minutes later he found
+himself safely in his friend's rooms.
+
+So far all had gone well; but only the preliminary step had been taken
+as yet. Not a soul in Penrhyn Court but Tom himself must know or even
+suspect the presence there of Gerald Brooke. But Tom had thought of
+all this when he first urged his friend to come to the Court, and had
+in his mind's eye a certain safe hiding-place, known to him and his
+father alone, where Gerald could lie by and await the course of
+events. The hiding-place in question was known as "The Priest's Hole,"
+and was an integral part of the oldest portion of the house. A sliding
+panel in the library, held in its place by a concealed spring, gave
+admission to a narrow passage built in the thickness of one of the
+outer walls, down from which access was obtained, by means of a steep
+flight of steps, to two small chambers hollowed out of the very
+foundations of the house. These rooms were shut out from all daylight,
+the walls were unplastered, and the floors of hard dry earth. In the
+larger of the two was a small fireplace, but without any grate in it,
+the chimney of which opened into one of the main stacks of the Court.
+In one corner was a tressel bedstead of black worm-eaten oak, which
+would seem to indicate that the place had not been without an
+occasional occupant in days gone by.
+
+The first two hours after Gerald's arrival were spent by Tom in
+victualling and furnishing this place of refuge. Having encased his
+feet in a pair of list slippers, his first visit was to the larder,
+where he requisitioned bread, cheese, butter, tea, coffee, sardines,
+and sundry other comestibles, greatly to the perplexity of the worthy
+cook when she came to look over her stores next morning. His next raid
+had for its objects candles, matches, and crockery. Then came a
+folding-chair and a spirit-lamp from his own rooms; and so on till he
+possessed himself of as many articles as he required. Tom took immense
+delight in these stealthy raids during the small-hours of the morning;
+and more than once he was compelled to come to a stand with his arms
+full of things and indulge in a silent laugh, which shook him from
+head to foot, when he thought of worthy Sir John asleep, and of what
+his feelings would have been could he have seen how his first-born was
+just then occupied.
+
+The June sun was high above the horizon before Tom's preparations were
+completed. It was time for Gerald to vanish like a ghost at cockcrow.
+The two friends shook hands and parted for a little while; but when
+Gerald heard the click of the sliding panel as it was pushed back into
+its place, and when he had shut the door at the bottom of the stairs
+and had glanced once again round the dismal dungeon that was to be his
+home for he knew not how long a time to come, he felt as if he were
+buried alive and should never see daylight again. His heart sank
+lower, if that were possible, than it had sunk before, and for a few
+moments he felt as if his fortitude must give way. But this mood was
+not of long duration; he buoyed himself up with the thought that
+another day was already here, and that in a few hours more his
+innocence would doubtless be proved. Presently he lay down on his
+pallet, utterly worn out in body and mind, and five minutes later was
+fast asleep.
+
+Of Gerald Brooke's life during the next few weeks it is not needful to
+speak in detail; indeed, each day that came was so much a repetition
+of the one that had gone before it, that there would be but little to
+record. Tom rarely ventured to visit his friend till after his father
+and the rest of the household had retired for the night. It was a
+joyful sound to Gerald when he heard the click of the panel and knew
+that for two or three hours to come he should be a free man. Then
+through the silent shut-up house the two men would steal like burglars
+to Tom's room. Once there, they felt safe; for the rest of the family
+and the servants slept in different wings of the rambling old house.
+On nights when there was no moon, or when it was overcast, the two
+friends paced a certain pleached alley of the lower garden for an hour
+at a time; it was the only exercise Gerald was able to obtain. After
+that they sat and smoked and talked in Tom's room till the clock
+struck three, which was the signal for Gerald's return to his dungeon.
+Twice each week Mr. Starkie rode over to the Towers, acting the part
+of postman between husband and wife, in addition to that of general
+purveyor of news.
+
+So day after day passed without bringing the murderer of Von Rosenberg
+to light or tending in anyway to weaken the force of the
+circumstantial evidence accumulated against Gerald. It seemed, indeed,
+as if the police had made up their minds that Mr. Brooke, and he
+alone, must be the guilty man, directing all their efforts towards his
+capture, and listening with incredulous ears to such persons as
+suggested that, after all, it was just possible he might not be the
+individual they wanted.
+
+"If he isn't guilty, why don't he show up? Why has he gone and hid
+himself where nobody can find him?" was Mr. Drumley's invariable
+rejoinder, when any such suggestions happened to be ventilated in his
+presence. Such questions were difficult to answer.
+
+Many a time during those weeks of slow torture, as he sat brooding in
+his underground chamber by the dismal light of a couple of candles,
+did Gerald wish with all his heart that he had not yielded to his
+wife's entreaties, but had stayed, and braved the thing out to the
+bitter end.
+
+Clara, meanwhile, was doing all that it was possible for a woman,
+circumstanced as she was, to do. When a week had passed and nothing
+tending to prove her husband's innocence had been brought to light,
+she did that which Mr. George Crofton proposed doing, that is to say,
+she engaged the services of an experienced private detective. The man
+came, listened respectfully to all she had to say, and promised that
+his best endeavours should be at her service; but after his visit, day
+succeeded day without bringing any ray of comfort to the young wife's
+aching heart. Could it be possible, she sometimes asked herself, a
+little later on, that this astute individual, while to all appearance
+falling in with her views, really believed in her husband's guilt as
+strongly as Mr. Drumley did, and while quite willing to humour her and
+spend her money, was in his heart impressed with the futility of
+looking elsewhere for the criminal It was a weary time, full of
+heartache in the present, and with a future that began to loom more
+darkly as day followed day in slow and sad procession.
+
+By-and-by there came a certain night when Tom Starkie met his guest
+with a very long and gloomy visage. His news was quickly told. His
+father had suddenly made up his mind to start at once for one of the
+German spas, and insisted upon Tom's accompanying him. "And if I go,
+my dear Brooke--and I'm afraid I can't get out of it--what's to become
+of you?"
+
+"I must flit," answered Gerald with a shrug; "there's no help for it."
+He almost hailed the prospect as a relief, so unutterably weary was he
+becoming of the terrible monotony of his present mode of life; but the
+question of course was, Whither was he to go? At length, after the two
+men had smoked some half-dozen pipes each, a happy thought came to
+Gerald. He called to mind that he had another friend on whose secrecy
+and good faith he could rely, and who, he felt sure, would befriend
+him in his present strait, if it were in anyway possible for him to do
+so. The name of the friend in question was Roger Chamfrey.
+
+A few hours later, Tom Starkie set out for London in search of Mr.
+Chamfrey, whom he fortunately found at his club. The latter had of
+course read everything that had appeared in the newspapers respecting
+Von Rosenberg's mysterious death, and Tom found him to be as firm a
+believer in Gerald's innocence as he himself was.
+
+"I've got the very thing to suit poor Brooke," he said. "The situation
+of second-keeper is vacant on a certain moor which I rent in a wild
+and lonely part of Yorkshire and Brooke will be as safe there as he
+would be in the heart of Africa. I will give him a letter to Timley
+the head-keeper, who is a very decent sort of fellow, so worded that
+Brooke shall receive every possible consideration while yet ostensibly
+filling the part of assistant-keeper. What's more easy than to hint
+that our friend is a young gentleman of position who has quarrelled
+with his family, but that in the course of a little time he will come
+into a large property?" And Mr. Chamfrey laughed.
+
+So the letter in question was written and given to Mr. Starkie,
+together with many kind messages for Gerald.
+
+Four days later, Gerald reached his new refuge in safety. What means
+he adopted to escape recognition by the way, and by what circuitous
+routes he travelled, need not be specified here. It was indeed a wild
+and desolate tract of country in which he found himself; but in that
+fact lay his safety. Timley received him kindly; and when he had read
+and digested his employer's letter, he at once proceeded to turn
+himself and his wife out of the best bedroom in his cottage, and
+allotted the same to his new assistant, greatly to the surprise and
+disgust of his better-half, until he had pacified her by a few
+sentences whispered in her ear, after which she became all smiles and
+graciousness, and seemed as if she could not do enough to make Mr.
+Davis' comfortable. When they were alone, or when no one was within
+earshot, Timley invariably addressed Gerald as "Sir."
+
+The free open-air life he now led did much towards improving Gerald's
+health and spirits. Once a week he wrote to his wife, and once a week
+he received a long letter in return. His letters to her were addressed
+under an assumed name to be left till called for at the post-office of
+a little town some dozen miles from the Towers. From this place they
+were fetched by Margery, who made the journey by rail, and who at the
+same time dropped a return letter into the box addressed to "Mr.
+Davis" the keeper.
+
+So time went on till the 12th of August came round, about which date
+Timley had notice that in the course of the following week his master
+would arrive accompanied by a number of friends. At the last minute,
+however, Mr. Chamfrey was detained by important business, and his
+friends arrived without him. All was now bustle and excitement, and
+Gerald found quite enough to do. The first and second days' shooting
+passed off admirably. The weather was perfect, birds were plentiful,
+and everybody was in high good-humour. Gerald acted his part to
+perfection--at least Timley told him so. All fear of recognition by
+any of the visitors had passed away, and on the third morning after
+their arrival he caught himself humming an air from _Lucia_ while
+cleaning the barrel of his gun outside the cottage door. Hearing a
+footstep on the garden path, he turned his head quickly, and found
+himself confronted by a man who had been in his own service only some
+eight or nine months previously. The two stood staring at each other
+for a few moments in silence. It was at once evident to Gerald that,
+despite the change in his appearance, he was recognised. Before either
+had spoken a word Timley came out of the cottage. Then the man
+delivered his message, which was from one of the visitors at the Lodge
+in whose service he now was. Then, after another stare at Gerald, who
+still went on cleaning his gun, the man turned and went.
+
+Twelve hours later, Gerald Brooke--clean-shaven except for a small
+moustache which was dyed black, and with a black wig over his own
+closely cropped hair--was flying southward in the night express. Mr.
+Starkie, who had returned from the Continent by this time, and to whom
+he had telegraphed under an assumed name, previously agreed on, met
+him at the London terminus. The conference between the two friends was
+a long one. It resulted in Gerald coming to the decision that he would
+take up his abode in London itself, at least for some time to come, as
+being, all things considered, as safe a hiding-place as any for a man
+circumstanced as he was. It was, besides, becoming requisite that some
+decision should be arrived at with regard to matters at the Towers.
+Clara was still there; but although she had cut down the household
+expenses to the lowest possible limits, her supply of ready-money was
+dwindling away; and when that was gone, where was more to come from?
+With Gerald's disappearance his income had disappeared too. It was an
+impossibility for him to draw a cheque, or receive a shilling of rent
+from any of his tenants, while matters with him remained as they were.
+Then, again, Clara's long separation from her husband, and the many
+weeks of anxiety she had undergone, were wearing away both her health
+and her spirits. "Only let let us be together again, darling--that is
+all I crave," she wrote to her husband. "Two little rooms in some back
+street will seem like a palace if only you are with me."
+
+Thus it fell out that on a certain afternoon about a week after
+Gerald's arrival in London, two ladies, both of them closely veiled,
+who had been hunting for apartments all morning, and were utterly
+disheartened and tired out by their want of success, stood for a few
+moments gazing into a pastry-cook's window in Tottenham Court Road. As
+she did so, the younger lady raised her veil. Next instant she was
+startled by hearing some one say in French: "O papa, papa, here is the
+beautiful lady who gave me the cakes and fruit at that grand house in
+the country!"
+
+Clara dropped her veil and turned. She recognised the little speaker
+at once, although he no longer wore his mountebank's dress. There,
+too, was Picot himself, who had come to a stand a few yards away while
+he lighted a cigarette.
+
+Tired and anxious though she was, Clara would not go without speaking
+to the boy. "So you have not forgotten me, Henri," she said, "nor the
+cakes either? Would you not like some more cakes to-day?"
+
+For answer he lifted one of her hands to his lips and kissed it.
+
+When Mrs. Brooke and Henri came out of the shop they found Miss Primby
+and M. Picot deep in conversation. The mountebank was dressed quite
+smartly to-day, and had a flower in his button-hole. As Miss Primby
+said to her niece afterwards: "Although the poor man may be nothing
+but a tumbler, he is the essence of gallantry and politeness."
+
+After a few words had passed between Clara and Picot, some
+impulse--she could never afterwards have told whence it
+originated--prompted her to say to him: "My aunt and I are in London
+to-day on rather a peculiar errand. We are here to find apartments
+for--for some dear friends of ours who a little time ago were rich,
+but who are now very poor. We have been going about all morning, but
+cannot succeed in finding what we require. It is just possible,
+monsieur, that you with your knowledge of London may be able to assist
+us."
+
+"I am entirely at madame's service," answered Picot as he raised his
+hat for a moment. "Is it furnished apartments that madame requires?"
+
+"Yes--four or five furnished rooms at a moderate rent, and, if
+possible, not more than a mile from where we are now."
+
+Picot considered for a moment or two, then he said: "I remind myself
+of a place that will, I think, suit madame. The landlord is a
+compatriot of my own; he is honest man; he will not cheat his lodgers.
+If madame would like to see the apartments"----
+
+"By all means, if you recommend them, monsieur."
+
+"Then I will give madame the address." He tore a leaf out of his
+pocket-book, pencilled down a couple of lines, and handed the paper to
+Mrs. Brooke with an elaborate bow. At Clara's request he then hailed a
+passing cab; then both the ladies, having kissed Henri and shaken
+hands with Picot, were driven away.
+
+Henri, as he stood gazing after the cab, said to his father: "Are the
+angels as beautiful as that lady, papa?"
+
+"That is more than I can say, _mon p'tit_," replied the mountebank
+with a laugh. "When I have seen an angel, I shall be able to tell
+thee."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+In less than a week after her interview with Picot, Mrs. Brooke, her
+husband, and Miss Primby were settled in their new home. The rooms
+recommended by the Frenchman had proved more to Clara's liking than
+any she had seen elsewhere, and she at once engaged them. The
+furniture and fittings were to a great extent after the cheap
+and tawdry style so much affected by the inferior class of French
+lodging-house keepers; but as the whole place was pervaded by an air
+of cleanliness, such little _désagréments_ as existed in other
+respects Clara was prepared to overlook.
+
+No. 5 Pymm's Buildings was one of a row of half-a-dozen houses similar
+to itself in size and outward aspect, situated in a quiet court
+abutting on a main thoroughfare in the busy and populous district of
+Soho. All the houses in Pymm's Buildings accommodated a more or less
+numerous tribe of lodgers, the lower floors being generally arranged
+in suites of rooms for the convenience of families, while the top
+floors were usually divided into separate sleeping apartments. And it
+was in this place and amid such sordid surroundings that the whilom
+owner of Beechley Towers hoped to find for a little time a secure
+shelter from the hue and cry of the ten thousand hounds of policedom,
+each and all of whom were doing their utmost to run him to earth. His
+idea had been to bury himself in the heart of some densely populated
+district where one man is but as a grain of sand among ten thousand
+others, and in so far it may be surmised that he had been successful.
+
+When Mrs. Brooke quitted Beechley Towers secretly and by night to join
+her husband in London, Margery, faithful Margery, was the only one who
+was made aware of her departure. The girl pleaded so hard to be
+allowed to accompany her, that at last Clara was fain to make her a
+promise that she would send for her as soon as she was settled in her
+new home. Thus it fell out that Margery was now here, and her mistress
+found the value of her services in a score different ways. For
+instance, Margery did all the marketing, and did it for little more
+than half what it had cost before her arrival. Poor simple-minded
+Clara, who believed everybody to be as honest as herself, had been
+imposed upon at every turn; but the shopman or peripatetic vendor who
+succeeded in "besting" Margery, as she termed it, must have been very
+wide-awake indeed. The girl would haggle for half an hour over a
+penny, and her powers of vituperation always rose to the level of the
+occasion.
+
+What was Mrs. Brooke's surprise about the third day after her arrival
+at Pymm's Buildings, as she was on her way downstairs, to encounter M.
+Picot on his way up! Then it came out that the mountebank rented a
+room at the top of the house which he looked upon as a permanent home,
+and occupied as such when his avocations did not take him elsewhere.
+Had Mrs. Brooke been aware of this fact at the time, she might perhaps
+have hesitated before deciding to take the rooms. And yet, somehow,
+she had an instinctive feeling of trust in the mountebank--the same
+sort of trust, although in a lesser degree, that she had in Margery;
+and after the first tremor of alarm which shot through her when she
+encountered him on the staircase, she never felt a moment's doubt that
+her secret, or as much of it as he might know or suspect, was safe in
+his keeping. It became, of course, necessary to explain to him that it
+was she and her husband, and not any one else, whose fortunes had
+changed so woefully. But Picot was one of the most incurious of
+mortals outside the range of his own affairs. He only remembered Clara
+as "la belle madame" who had kissed his boy and spoken kindly to him
+and had laden him with gifts, and about whom Henri often spoke when
+his father and he were alone. He had never thought of asking any one
+what her name was; and even now, when he understood from Clara how
+terribly the circumstances of herself and her husband were changed, he
+expressed neither curiosity nor surprise in the matter. He was
+_vraiment désolé_--he was heart-broken to think that such should be
+the case; but that was all. He did indeed, a little later, ask the
+landlord the name of his new lodgers; and when he was told that they
+were known as Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, he repeated the name to himself
+two or three times over, so as to impress it on his memory, and then
+went contentedly on his way.
+
+The furnished lodgings rented by Mr. and Mrs. "Stewart" comprised
+three rooms on the first floor and two on the second. As it chanced,
+the rooms on the ground-floor were at present untenanted. The
+sitting-room had two windows and was a tolerably sized apartment In
+it, about eight o'clock on a certain autumn evening, were seated Miss
+Primby and Margery. The former, as usual, was engaged on some kind of
+delicate embroidery; while the latter was trying her hand at a little
+plain sewing, the result being that on an average she pricked her
+finger once every three or four minutes. But, indeed, the girl was
+somewhat nervous this evening, or what she herself would have termed
+"in a pucker." She had had the ill-fortune to break a cup while
+washing up the tea-things.
+
+"O mum, do you think Mrs. Stewart will let me stay when I tell her?
+She won't turn me away, will she?"
+
+"Why, of course not, Margery. It was an accident; it cannot be
+helped."
+
+"Oh, thank you for saying that, mum. Sometimes my fingers seem as if
+they were all thumbs, and I lets everything drop. But I wants no
+wages, mum, and I ain't a big eater--leastways, I think not; and I'll
+eat less than ever now, so as to help to pay for the cup. A crust o'
+bread and drippin', a few cold taters, and the teapot after everybody
+else has done with it--that'll do me."
+
+"You must not talk like that, Margery; your mistress would not like
+it."
+
+"Oh, but you don't know how sorry I am, mum. Mariar--her on the
+boat--always used to say as I was a great awk'ard lout of a girl; and
+she was about right there."
+
+The two went on with their work for a little while in silence, and
+then Margery said: "You'll excuse me, mum, for saying so, but I've
+often wondered why such a nice lady as you never got married."
+
+The spinster could not help bridling a little. "Married! How absurd of
+you, Margery," she exclaimed. "From what I have seen of married life,
+I'm sure I am far better off as I am." Then, as if by way of
+afterthought: "Not but what I have had several most eligible offers at
+various times."
+
+"Lor! mum, didn't it make you feel all-overish-like when they went
+flop on their knees and asked you to marry 'em?"
+
+"Gentlemen don't often go on their knees nowadays. Still, I have had
+them do that to me more than once. I remember that when Mr. Tubbins,
+the eminent brewer, did so, he was so very stout that he could not get
+up again without assistance."
+
+"My! I'd have stuck a pin into him; that would have made him jump,"
+cried the girl with her strange laugh.
+
+At this juncture the door opened and Mrs. Brooke came in. She was
+plainly dressed in black, and was closely veiled. Since Margery's
+arrival she rarely ventured out of doors till dusk, and then only when
+she wanted to do a little shopping such as the girl could not do for
+her. Any one who had not seen her since that April evening when M.
+Karovsky's ill-omened shadow first darkened the terrace at Beechley
+Towers, might have been excused for failing to recognise her again. It
+was not merely that she looked older by more years than the months
+which had elapsed since that day--anguish, anxiety, and the dread
+which never ceased to haunt her of what the next hour might bring
+forth, had marked their cruel lines on her features in a way that
+Time's gentle if inexorable graver never does when left to labour
+alone. The clear dancing light had died out of her eyes long ago; they
+looked larger and shone with a deeper and more intense lustre than in
+the days gone by; but a sudden knock at the door, an unusual footfall
+on the stairs, or the voices of strange men talking in the court
+below, would fill them on a sudden with a sort of startled terror,
+just as the eyes of a deer may fill when first it hears the baying of
+the far-away hounds.
+
+She took off her bonnet with an air of weariness and sat down. "Has
+not Gerald returned yet?" she said to her aunt "What can have become
+of him?"
+
+"The evening is so fine that he has probably gone for a longer walk
+than ordinary."
+
+"It makes me wretched when he stays out longer than usual. And yet,
+poor fellow! what a life is his. To be shut up in one miserable room
+from morning till night; never to venture out till after dark, and
+then only with the haunting dread, that he may be recognised and
+arrested at any moment! How will it all end?" She sighed and went into
+the other room. Presently she returned, and a few moments later a
+knock at the door made every one start. Margery hastened to open it.
+Outside stood Picot carrying a bunch of flowers. "Bon soir, madame,"
+he said, addressing himself to Clara with a low bow, and then
+favouring Miss Primby with another.
+
+"Bon soir, Monsieur Picot. Entrez, s'il vous plait."
+
+"Merci, madame," lie answered as he advanced into the room. "I have
+here a petit bouquet--a few flowers--which Henri has sent for madame,
+if she will have the bonté to accept them."
+
+"I shall be charmed to do so," answered Clara as she took the flowers.
+"How fresh and sweet they smell! I am much obliged to Henri, and to
+you also, monsieur."--The mountebank made another low sweeping
+bow.--"I hope that Henri is quite well?"
+
+"Parfaitement bien, madame."
+
+"The first time he has a holiday, he must come and take tea with me; I
+will not forget to have a nice cake for the occasion."
+
+"He will be enchanté, madame.--Ah! if madame could see him on the
+trapeze--could but see him jumpez from one bar to another--it is
+splendid, magnifique!"
+
+"I think I would rather not see Henri go through any of his
+performances, monsieur."
+
+"Mais, madame!" with an expressive shrug; "there is no danger,
+nothings to be afraid of. Oh, the grand artiste that Henri will be one
+day! He is twice so clevare as I was at his age. He will be what you
+call in England great man--big fellow."
+
+"I am very glad to hear it. Meanwhile, you will not forget that he is
+to come some afternoon and take tea with me."
+
+"Ah, madame, he talk about you every day.--But I go now. I hope that
+monsieur your husband finds himself quite well?"
+
+"Quite well, thank you, monsieur."
+
+With that the mountebank made his adieus and bowed himself out.
+
+It here becomes needful to explain that just then Henri was engaged at
+a certain hippodrome as one of a troupe of juvenile acrobats who,
+under the pseudonym of "les frères Donati," and under the tuition of a
+celebrated "Professor," were performing a number of well-nigh
+incredible feats before crowded and enthusiastic houses.
+
+"Ain't he polite!" said Margery as Picot closed the door. "But what a
+pity the poor man talks such a lot of gibberish."
+
+"What can have become of Gerald?" said Clara for the second time, as
+she went to the window and drawing aside the curtain peered into the
+darkness. "I never knew him to be so late before. I cannot help
+feeling dreadfully uneasy." Then turning to Margery, she said: "Here
+is a list of things I want you to fetch from the grocer's in Medwin
+Street. Do you think you can find your way in the dark?"
+
+"Why, of course, mum. I never gets lost, I don't." Half a minute later
+she ran downstairs, whistling as she went.
+
+The minutes dragged themselves slowly away, and Clara was working
+herself into a fever of apprehension, when a well-known footfall on
+the stairs caused a cry of gladness to burst from her lips. "At last!"
+she exclaimed as she started to her feet and hurried to the door. "How
+glad I am that you are safely back," she added, as her husband entered
+the room. "You were away so long that I grew quite frightened."
+
+"The evening was so pleasant, that I extended my walk farther than I
+intended. I must be a caged bird now for the next four-and-twenty
+hours. Heigh-ho!"
+
+"Will you not have something to eat?"
+
+"Thanks; nothing at present," he answered as he proceeded to lay aside
+his slouched hat, his overcoat, and the muffler which had shrouded the
+lower part of his face. Then he took up a book and sat down in an
+easy-chair near the fire.
+
+His wife's eyes brimmed with tears as they rested on him. "My poor
+boy!" she said softly to herself. "This life is killing him. When, oh,
+when will it end!" She sat down to her needlework.
+
+Miss Primby was the first to break the silence. "Do you know, my
+dear," she said to her niece, "that Monsieur Picot puts me greatly in
+mind of the Count de Bonnechose, a French nobleman who once made me an
+offer of marriage. He used to speak just the same delightful broken
+English--and then he had such great black eyes, which seemed to pierce
+right through you, and the loveliest waxed moustaches; so that when he
+clasped his hands and turned up his eyes till nothing but the whites
+of them were visible, and murmured 'Mon ange,' and called me his
+'beautiful Engleesh mees,' can you wonder that my heart used to thrill
+responsively?"
+
+Clara could not repress a smile. "I am by no means sure that I should
+have cared to call that count my uncle."
+
+"It was a mercy that I sent him about his business. He turned out to
+be no nobleman at all, but only a hairdresser's assistant whose father
+had left him a little money. But certainly he had remarkably fine
+eyes."
+
+Again there was a brief space of silence. This time it was broken by a
+knock which sounded all the more startling because no one had heard
+the faintest sound of footsteps on the stairs. All three started to
+their feet and looked at each other. Then, at a sign from Clara, Miss
+Primby crossed to the door and opened it.
+
+Framed by the doorway and shone upon by the lamplight from within,
+they beheld the black-clothed figure, the statuesque, colourless face
+and the inscrutable eyes of M. Karovsky.
+
+"Karovsky--you!" cried Gerald as he sprang forward.
+
+"Yes, I--why not?" said the Russian with a smile, as he raised his hat
+and came forward.--"Ladies, your servant." Then to Gerald: "You stare
+at me, mon ami, as if I had just come back from Hades. But this is
+scarcely the hand of a _revenant_, if I may be allowed an opinion in
+the matter."
+
+"It seems incredible that you should have found me out in this place,"
+answered Gerald as the two shook hands.
+
+"Incredible? Peuh! I had need to see you; and I am here."
+
+"Will you not be seated?"
+
+As Karovsky drew up a chair, Clara made a sign to her aunt, and the
+two ladies passed out through the folding-doors into the room beyond.
+
+"Pardon," said the Russian as he glanced around, "but this place seems
+scarcely a fit home either for madame or yourself."
+
+"You know that I am in hiding; you doubtless also know that a large
+reward is offered for my capture?"--The other nodded.--"While such is
+the case, it is impossible for me to touch a penny of my income. My
+wife's aunt has lost her property by a bank failure. We are very poor,
+Karovsky; but there are worse ills in life than poverty."
+
+"Part of my errand to-night is to tell you that I have instructions to
+place certain funds at your disposal. You can leave this place
+tomorrow, if it please you so to do."
+
+"Thanks, Karovsky; but I cannot accept a penny of the money you offer
+me."
+
+"How! Not accept! But this is folly."
+
+"It may seem so to you; but that does not alter the matter."
+
+"It is unaccountable," said the Russian with a lifting of his black
+eyebrows. "But why remain in these wretched apartments? Why not go
+abroad--on the Continent--to America--anywhere? The world is wide, and
+there are places where you would be far safer than here."
+
+"I doubt it One reason why I am here is because I believe this
+spot--in the heart of one of the most populous quarters of London--to
+be as safe a hiding-place as any I could find. My other reason is that
+were I to go abroad, I feel as if I should be throwing away my last
+faint hope of ever being able to prove my innocence to the world."
+
+Karovsky stared at him in wide-eyed amazement. "How! Your"----
+
+"My innocence of the murder of Baron von Rosenberg."
+
+"Pardon; I fail to comprehend."
+
+"When we parted last, I told you clearly and emphatically that, let
+the consequences to myself be whatever they might, mine should not be
+the hand to strike the fatal blow; but when you left me, you evidently
+did so in the belief that in a little while I should change my mind,
+and that of the two alternatives you had placed before me, I should
+choose the one which you yourself would in all probability have chosen
+had you been in my place. Time went on, and, within the period you had
+prescribed, Von Rosenberg was found dead, shot through the heart. Such
+being the case, it was perhaps a not unnatural conclusion for you to
+arrive at that it was I, Gerald Brooke, who was the assassin.--But I
+ask you, Karovsky, to believe in the truth of what I am now going to
+tell you. I had no more to do with the death of Von Rosenberg than you
+yourself had."
+
+"Est-il possible!" exclaimed the Russian in a voice scarcely raised
+above a whisper. For a few moments he sat staring silently at Gerald;
+then he went on: "Not often am I astonished at anything I hear; but
+you, Gerald Brooke, have astonished me to-night The evidence against
+you seemed so conclusive, that I never doubted Von Rosenberg fell by
+your hand. Yet more than once I said to myself:'What an imbecile
+Brook must have been to leave behind him such a condemnatory piece of
+evidence as the weapon with which he did the deed!'--But who, then,
+was the individual who so kindly spared you a necessity so painful?"
+
+"That I know no more than you do."
+
+"C'est un vrai mystère."
+
+"From day to day I live in hope that the real criminal will be
+discovered and brought to justice; but with each day that passes that
+hope grows fainter within me."
+
+"I know not what to say.--When I remember the past, and when I look
+round and think that this is now the home of you and madame"----He
+spread out his hands with a gesture more expressive than words.
+
+Before more could be said, there came a peculiar knock at the
+door--three taps in quick succession, followed by a fourth after a
+longer interval. At the sound, Clara and Miss Primby emerged from the
+other room.
+
+"That summons is intended for me," said Karovsky quickly as he rose
+and opened the door.
+
+Then those inside saw that a man, a stranger, was standing on the
+landing, who seemed to retire further into the shade the moment the
+light fell on him. He said something rapidly in a low voice to
+Karovsky, to which the latter replied in the same language. Then the
+Russian gave a nod as of dismissal, and closing the door, turned and
+confronted Gerald with a grave face and distended eyes. "That man is
+one of _us_," he said. "When I entered the house, I left him on watch
+outside. He now comes to tell me that a policeman in plain clothes is
+on guard outside the court, and that another is stationed inside, so
+that no one can pass in or out without being observed. He also tells
+me that there are two more constables in uniform patrolling the street
+close by; and that from what he can gather, they are waiting the
+arrival of some one, probably a superior officer. Is it possible,
+Brooke, that you can be the quarry on which they intend presently to
+swoop?"
+
+"There can be little doubt of it," answered Gerald, who had risen to
+his feet while Karovsky was speaking. He had turned very pale; but his
+lips were firm-set, and the expression which shone out of his eyes
+was something far removed from craven fear.
+
+Clara stood with one hand resting on the table, her frame trembling
+slightly. Was the blow she had dreaded so long about to fall at last?
+
+Miss Primby sat down with a gasp.
+
+"Well, let them come," went on Gerald after a moment's pause. "It will
+be better so. I am tired of this life of hide-and-seek. Why not end it
+here and now?"
+
+"No, no!" cried his wife. "Even at this, the eleventh hour, there must
+surely be some way of escape."
+
+"Even if I were eager to escape, which I am not, I know of none."
+
+"Madame is right," said the Russian in his impressive tones. "There is
+still one way of escape."
+
+"And that is?"----said Gerald interrogatively.
+
+But before Karovsky could reply, Margery, breathless and dishevelled,
+burst into the room. "O Muster Geril!--O mum," she exclaimed, "the
+polis is in the court--four or five of 'em, and I believe they're
+coming here. But I shut and bolted the door at the bottom of the
+stairs; and it'll take 'em some time to break that down," added the
+girl with a chuckle.
+
+Picot, who was on his way downstairs as Margery rushed up, had
+overheard her words, and he could now be seen dimly outlined on the
+landing, his eyes piercing the obscurity like two points of flame; but
+for the moment no one observed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+No one spoke for a moment or two after Margery had blurted out her
+news. Then for the second time Karovsky said: "There is still one way
+of escape open to you."
+
+And that is?"----said Gerald again.
+
+"For me to personate you."
+
+"O monsieur!" cried Clara, a flash of hope leaping suddenly into her
+eyes.
+
+"Karovsky, are you mad?"
+
+"Pardon; I think not; but one can never be quite sure. Listen! These
+men who are coming to arrest you are strangers to you, or rather, you
+are a stranger to them; they have never set eyes on you before. I will
+answer to your name; I will go with them; and before they have time to
+discover their mistake, you will be far away."
+
+"And the consequences to yourself?"
+
+"A few hours' detention--nothing more. Your English police know me
+not." Then he added with a shrug: "At St. Petersburg or Berlin, ma
+foi, it might be somewhat different."
+
+"Karovsky, your offer is a noble one, and the risk to yourself might be
+greater than you seem to think. In any case, I cannot accept it."
+
+"Gerald, for my sake!" implored his wife.
+
+"As I said before, I am tired of this life of perpetual hide-and-seek.
+Let it end; I am ready to face the worst."
+
+"No, no! Would you court a felon's doom, you whose innocence will one
+day be proved to the world?"
+
+"Vous avez raison, madame," said the Russian. Then placing his hands
+on Gerald's shoulders, he said: "Go, Brooke, my friend; hide yourself
+elsewhere for a little time, and leave me to face these bloodhounds."
+
+Picot, who had been listening and watching in the background, now came
+boldly forward. It was enough for the kind-hearted mountebank to know
+that his friends were in trouble. "I have une petite chambre en haut,"
+he said to Gerald. "Come with me, monsieur, and I will hide you."
+
+"Yes, yes; go, dearest, with Monsieur Picot," urged his wife, her
+beautiful eyes charged with anguished entreaty.
+
+"For your sake, let it be as you wish," answered Gerald sadly.
+
+At this juncture there came a loud knocking at some door below stairs.
+
+"Venez, monsieur--vite, vite!" said Picot.
+
+Gerald hastily kissed his wife, gripped the Russian's hand for a
+moment, and then followed the mountebank.
+
+"It will not be wise to keep our friends waiting," said Karovsky. Then
+turning to Miss Primby: "Madame, will you oblige me by taking charge
+of these trifles for a little while?" With that he handed her a
+card-case, a pocket-book stuffed with papers, and a bunch of keys.
+
+"They will be mighty clever if they get them out of here," muttered
+Miss Primby as the articles disappeared in the capacious depths of
+some hidden pocket.
+
+The knocking was repeated in louder and more imperative terms than
+before.
+
+"Let the door be opened," said Karovsky to Margery; then he addressed
+a few words hurriedly in a low tone to Mrs. Brooke.
+
+The door at the foot of the stairs, which Margery in her alarm had
+taken the precaution to fasten, had apparently been originally put
+there with the view of more effectually separating the upper part of
+the house from the lower, probably at a time when the domicile was
+divided between two families. This door Margery now unbolted without a
+word; and without a word, after flashing a bull's-eye in her face, a
+sergeant of police and two men pushed past her and tramped heavily
+upstairs.
+
+"Mr. Gerald Brooke, commonly known by the name of Stewart?" said the
+sergeant interrogatively as he advanced into the room, while his two
+men took up positions close to the door.
+
+The Russian turned--he had been in the act of lighting a cigarette at
+the fireplace. "Who are you, sir, and by what right do you intrude
+into this apartment?" he demanded haughtily.
+
+The sergeant went a step or two nearer and laying a hand on his
+shoulder, said: "Gerald Brook; you are charged on a warrant with the
+wilful murder of the Baron Otto von Rosenberg on the 28th of June last
+at Beaulieu, near King's Harold, and you will have to consider
+yourself as my prisoner."
+
+The Russian dropped his cigarette. "There is some strange mistake," he
+said. "I never either saw or spoke to the Baron von Rosenberg on the
+28th of last June."
+
+"All right, sir; you can explain about that somewhere else; but I
+should advise you to say as little as possible just now."
+
+One of the men had advanced into the room, and now drew the officer's
+attention. "I say, sergeant," he whispered, "the gent don't seem to
+answer much to the printed description, does he?"
+
+"Idiot!" whispered back the other; "as if a man couldn't dye his hair
+and make his beard and moustache grow any shape he liked! Besides, we
+knew beforehand that he was disguised, and this is the room where we
+were told we should find him."
+
+When the sergeant turned again, Clara was standing before Karovsky
+with a hand resting on each of his shoulders.
+
+"You see," whispered the sergeant to his subordinate. "We were told
+his wife was living here with him, as well as an elderly lady--the
+aunt. He's the gent we want, and no mistake."
+
+"I shall only be away for a little while, cara mia," said Karovsky, as
+he drew Clara to him. For a moment her head rested against his
+shoulder, then his lips lightly touched her forehead.
+
+She turned from him, and sinking on a couch, buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Karovsky drew himself up to his full height "Now, sir, I am at your
+service," he said to the sergeant.
+
+A moment later, and the three women were left alone.
+
+"They be clever uns, they be!" said Margery with a chuckle as the
+sound of the retreating footsteps died away.
+
+"How noble, how magnanimous of Monsieur Karovsky!" exclaimed Miss
+Primby. "I shall never think ill of the Russians again."
+
+"Now is the opportunity for Gerald to get away," said Clara. "The
+police may discover their mistake at any moment." Her hand was on the
+door, when suddenly there was a sound which caused all three to start
+and stare at each other with eyes full of terror. It was the sound of
+unfamiliar footsteps ascending the stairs. Mrs. Brooke shrank back as
+the door opened and George Crofton entered the room. "You!" she
+gasped.
+
+"Even so," he answered as he glanced round the room. "It is long since
+we met last."
+
+"Not since the day you crushed my husband's portrait under your heel."
+
+"As I have now crushed your husband himself."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Clara Brook; the hour of my revenge has struck. You slighted me once,
+but now my turn has come. It was through my efforts that your husband
+was tracked to this place. It was I who gave information to the
+police. Never could there be a sweeter revenge than mine."
+
+"Can such wickedness exist unsmitten by Heaven!"
+
+After that first glance round, he had never taken his eyes from
+Clara's blanched face. He spoke with a venomous intensity which lent
+to every word an added sting.
+
+"Don't I just wish I was a man, instead of a great hulking
+good-for-nothing girl!" muttered Margery, half to Miss Primby and half
+to herself, as she defiantly rolled up the sleeves of her cotton gown.
+
+For a little space, the two stood gazing at each other in silence.
+
+Clam's heart beat painfully, but her eyes blazed into his full of
+scorn and defiance. Then she said: "George Crofton, believe me or not,
+but my husband is as innocent of the crime laid to his charge as I am.
+It is not he who is a murderer, but you who are one after this night's
+work--in heart if not in deed."
+
+A sneering laugh broke from his lips. "I was quite prepared to hear
+that rigmarole," he said. "It was only to be expected that you should
+swear to his innocence. It is possible you may believe in it--wives
+will believe anything."
+
+But Clara's ears, of late ever on the alert, had heard a certain
+sound. With a low cry she sprang to the door; but before she could
+reach it, it was opened from without, and Gerald, accompanied by
+Picot, appeared on the threshold.
+
+Crofton fell back as if he had seen a face from the tomb. "By what
+fiend's trick have I been fooled?" he cried.
+
+"There stands the villain who betrayed you," exclaimed the young wife,
+pointing to Crofton with outstretched finger.
+
+"He! My cousin! Impossible."
+
+"It may not be too late yet," exclaimed Crofton as he sprang to one of
+the windows and tore aside the curtain. But next instant, with a bound
+like that of a tiger, Picot had flung himself on him and had gripped
+his neck as in a vice with both his sinewy hands. The other was no
+match in point of strength for the mountebank; and before he knew what
+had happened he found himself on his back on the floor, half-choked,
+with Picot kneeling on his chest and regarding him with a sardonic
+grin.
+
+Clara, with a natural impulse, had clung to her husband's arm. Miss
+Primby and Margery were too startled to utter a word.
+
+Picot's hand went to some inner pocket and drew from it a small
+revolver; then rising to his feet, he said to Crofton: "Oblige me by
+standing up, monsieur, and by taking a seat in that chair, or in one
+leetle minute you are a dead man."
+
+Crofton, with a snarl like that of some half-cowed wild animal, did as
+he was bidden.
+
+Gerald stepped quickly forward and laid a hand on Picot's arm. "What
+would you do?" he asked.
+
+"Shoot him like the dog he is, if he move but one finger. If he move
+not--tie him up--gag him--and leave him here till you, monsieur, have
+time to get away."
+
+Then addressing himself to Margery, but without taking his eyes for an
+instant off Crofton, he said: "My good Margot, in my room upstairs you
+will find one piece of rope. Bring him here. Dépêchez-vous--quick."
+
+Margery needed no second bidding.
+
+Then the mountebank said to Gerald: "You must not stop here any
+longer, monsieur; the police may come back at any moment."
+
+"Yes--come, come," urged Clara. "Another minute, and it may be too
+late."
+
+"George, I did not deserve this at your hands," said Gerald with grave
+sadness to his cousin. The only answer was a scowl and an execration
+muttered between his teeth.
+
+Gerald, his wife, and Miss Primby retired into the farther room and
+closed the folding-doors. Margery was back by this time, carrying a
+small coil of rope.
+
+"Good child.--Now hold this--so," said Picot, as he placed the
+revolver in Margery's hand and stationed her about a couple of yards
+from Crofton. "If you see that man stir from his chair, press your
+finger against this leetle thing, and--pouf--he will never stir again.
+Hold him steady--so. You have no fear--hein?"
+
+"Why, o' course not," laughed Margery. "It would do me good to shoot
+the likes o' him."
+
+With a dexterity that seemed as if it might have been derived from
+long practice, Picot now proceeded to bind Crofton securely in his
+chair.
+
+"You scoundrel! you shall suffer for this," muttered the latter between
+his teeth.
+
+"A la bonne heure, monsieur," responded the mountebank airily. Then
+perceiving a corner of a handkerchief protruding from his pocket, he
+drew it forth, and tearing a narrow strip off it, he proceeded to
+firmly bind the other's wrists; then making a bandage of the
+remainder, he covered his mouth with it and tied it in a double knot
+at the back of his neck. "Ah, ha! that do the trick," he laughed. "How
+found you yourself? Very comfortable--hein?"
+
+Margery, who had watched the operation with great glee gave back the
+revolver and retired to the inner room. Picot sat down a little way
+from his prisoner, but for the present took no further notice of him.
+He had heard a footstep on the stairs a minute or two previously, and
+rightly judged that Gerald was already gone.
+
+From the first day of taking up their abode at No. 5 Pymm's Buildings,
+Clara and her husband had prepared themselves for an emergency like
+the present one. They were always ready for immediate flight, and had
+arranged the means for communication in case of an enforced
+separation.
+
+At the end of a few minutes Margery returned, carrying a folded paper,
+which she gave to Picot, at the same time whispering a few hurried
+words in his ear. The mountebank nodded and smiled and kissed the tips
+of his fingers. Then the girl went back, and the two men were left
+alone. But presently both of them heard the footsteps of more persons
+than one descending the stairs. Picot listened intently till the sound
+had died away, and then proceeded to light a cigarette. Of Crofton,
+sitting there, bound and gagged, he took not the slightest apparent
+notice.
+
+A quarter of an hour passed thus, and with the exception of a footfall
+now and then in the court below no sound broke the silence. At the end
+of that time, Picot's cigarette being finished, he rose, pushed back
+his chair, clapped his hat on his head, and after a last examination
+of his prisoner's bonds, he marched out of the room without a word,
+and so downstairs and out of the house, first shutting behind him the
+door which divided the upper rooms from the ground floor.
+
+Left alone, George Crofton began at once to struggle desperately to
+free himself, but all to no purpose. After a little time, however, he
+discovered that the chair in which he was bound moved on casters, and
+this discovery put an idea into his head such as would not have
+entered it under other circumstances. The room was lighted by a lamp
+on a low table, and to this table he managed by degrees to slide his
+chair along the floor. Then setting his teeth hard, and stretching his
+arms to the fullest extent his bonds would allow of his doing, he held
+his wrists over the flame of the lamp, and kept them there
+unflinchingly till the outermost coil of the ligature which bound them
+was burnt through. When once his hands were at liberty, very few
+minutes sufficed to make him a free man.
+
+"My revenge is yet to come, Gerald Brooke," he said aloud as he paused
+at the door and took a last glance round. "It is but delayed for a
+little while, and every day's delay will serve but to make it sweeter
+at the last."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+We are back once more at Linden Villa. It is a March evening, and the
+clock has just struck nine. George Crofton is smoking a cigar, and
+gazing fixedly into the fire, seeing pictures in the glowing embers
+which are anything but pleasant ones, if one may judge by the lowering
+expression of his face. He looks haggard and careworn, and is no
+longer so fastidious with regard to his personal appearance as he used
+to be. Dissipation has set its unmistakable seal upon him; he has the
+air of a man who is going slowly but surely downhill.
+
+His wife is amusing herself somewhat listlessly at the piano. There is
+a slightly worn look about her eyes, and the line of her lips looks
+thinner and more hard set than it was wont to do. Married life had not
+brought Stephanie the happiness, or even the content, she had looked
+forward to. The awakening had come soon, and had not been a pleasant
+one. Not long had it taken her to discover that she had mated herself
+with an inveterate gambler, if not with something worse. So long as
+plump young pigeons were to be had for the plucking, matters had gone
+on swimmingly at Linden Villa. There had been no lack of money, and
+Stephanie had never cared to inquire too curiously how it had been
+come by. But after a time Crofton's wonderful luck at cards began to
+be commented upon; people began to be shy of playing at the same table
+with him; pigeons were warned to avoid him; and when, one unfortunate
+evening, he was detected cheating at the club, and unmasked by a
+member cleverer in that particular line than himself, his career in
+that sphere of life came to an end for ever. But his ambition had not
+been satisfied with the comparatively small gains of the card-table;
+he had bet heavily on the St. Leger and other races, and had been
+unfortunate in all. So far he had been able to meet his racing
+liabilities, but the doing so had exhausted the whole of his available
+resources, and matters at Linden Villa had now come to a pass that
+might almost be termed desperate.
+
+Stephanie brought her roulades to an end with a grand crash; then
+turning half round she said in her clear metallic tones: "Have you
+anything to talk about, mon ange? Have you nothing to say to me?" Her
+husband's back was towards her as he sat brooding sullenly in front of
+the fire. "It is not often that you stay at home of an evening, and
+when you do--chut! I might as well be alone."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. What would you have me talk about? Our
+debts--our difficulties--our"----
+
+"Why not?" she broke in quickly. "If you talked about them a little
+oftener, it might be all the better. You seem neither to know nor care
+anything about them. You are out from morning till night. It is I who
+have to promise, to cajole, to lie, first to one person and then to
+another who come here demanding money when I have none to give them.
+Oh, it is a charming life--mine! N'importe. It will end itself in a
+little while."
+
+"What do you mean? What new trick are you hatching now?" he demanded.
+
+"It is nothing new--it has been in my head for a long time. Shall I
+tell you what it is? Why not?" The fingers of one hand were still
+resting on the piano. She struck a note or two carelessly, and then
+went on speaking as quietly as though she were mentioning some
+trifling detail of everyday life. "One evening, cheri, when you come
+home you will not find me; I shall be gone. This life suits me no
+longer. I will change it all. I will go back to the life I used to
+love so well. I have had a letter. Signor Ventelli is at Brussels; he
+prays to me to return to him. I shall go. You and I my friend, can no
+longer live together. It will be better for both that we should part."
+Again her fingers struck a note or two carelessly.
+
+Crofton was roused at last. He started to his feet with an imprecation
+and faced his wife. "What confounded stuff and nonsense you are
+talking, Steph," he exclaimed. "As if I believed a word of it!"
+
+"Do I ever say that I will do a thing when I do not intend doing it?"
+she quietly asked.--In his own mind he was obliged to confess that she
+did not.--"We have made a mistake, you and I, and have found it out in
+time," she resumed. "We can be friends, always friends--why not! But
+you will go your way, and I mine; that is all."
+
+The cold indifference of her tone and manner stung him to the quick.
+Evidently she was minded to cast him off as carelessly as she would an
+old glove. The sullen fire in his heart blazed up in a moment. He
+loved this woman after a fashion of his own, and was in nowise
+inclined to let her go. "What you say is utter nonsense. I would have
+you remember that you are my wife, and that I can claim you as such
+anywhere and everywhere."
+
+"And do you imagine that if I were twenty times a wife I should allow
+you or any other man to claim me as such against my will!" demanded
+Steph with a contemptuous laugh. "Tza! tza! my friend, you talk like a
+child."
+
+They were standing face to face, and for a few moments they stared at
+each other without speaking; but the clear resolute light that shone
+out of Steph's eyes cowed, for a time at least, the fitful, dangerous
+gleam flickering redly in her husband's bloodshot orbs, as though it
+were a reflection from some Tophet below.
+
+George Crofton turned away, and crossing to the sideboard, poured
+himself out a quantity of brandy. "You would be a fool, Steph, to
+leave me as you talk of doing, were it only for one thing," he said
+dryly. He seemed to have quite recovered his equanimity, and was
+choosing a cigar as he spoke.
+
+"If it pleases me to be a fool, why not?"
+
+"Has it never occurred to you that any morning the newspapers may tell
+us that my cousin, Gerald Brooke, has been captured? Every day, that
+is the first news I look for."
+
+"Ah, bah! you mock yourself. Your cousin will never be arrested now;
+he has got safe away to some foreign country long ago."
+
+"You have no ground for saying that. Any hour may bring the tidings of
+his capture, and then---- But you know already what the result of his
+conviction would be to you and me. Beechley Towers and six thousand a
+year--nothing less."
+
+"You deceive yourself," resumed Steph. "You are waiting for what will
+never happen. Nine months have passed since the murder, and the crime
+is half forgotten. You let Gerald Brooke slip through your fingers
+once; but you will never have the chance of doing so again.--Let us
+come back to realities, to the things we can touch. Dreams never had
+any charms for me."
+
+He went back to the fireplace with his cigar, and took up a position
+on the hearthrug. "As you say--let us stick to realities; it may
+perhaps be the wisest," he went on. "What, then, would you think, what
+would you say, if I were to tell you as a fact that in less than six
+weeks from to-day I shall be in possession of ten thousand pounds?"
+
+"I should both think and say that it was not a fact, but a dream,
+a--what do you call it?--a Will-o'-the-wisp."
+
+"And yet it is not a dream, but a sober solid fact, as a very short
+time will prove."
+
+She raised her eyebrows; evidently, she was incredulous. "Yon made
+sure that you would win two thousand pounds at Doncaster, whereas you
+contrived to lose five hundred. You were just as certain that you
+would win"----
+
+"What I am referring to now has nothing to do with horseracing," he
+broke in impatiently.--"Listen!" he added; and with that he planted
+himself astride a chair and confronted her, resting his arms on the
+back of it and puffing occasionally at his cigar as he talked. "I am
+about to tell you something which it was my intention not to have
+spoken about till later on; but it matters little whether you are told
+now or a month hence." He moved his chair nearer to her, and when he
+next spoke it was in a lower voice: "The young Earl of Leamington, who
+is enormously rich, is to be married on the 27th of next month. On the
+14th of April one of the partners in a certain well-known firm of
+London jewellers, accompanied by an assistant, will start for the
+Earl's seat in the north carrying with him jewelry of the value of
+over twenty thousand pounds, for the purpose of enabling his lordship
+to select certain presents for his bride. That box of jewelry will
+never reach its destination."
+
+Stephanie was staring at him with wide-open eyes. "You would
+not"----she exclaimed, and then she paused.
+
+"Yes, I would, and will," he answered with a sinister smile. "I and
+certain friends of mine have planned to make that box our own. The
+whole scheme is cut and dried; all the arrangements in connection with
+the journey are known to us; and so carefully have our plans been
+worked out, that it is next to impossible that we should fail."
+
+"And you, George Crofton, my husband, have sunk to this--that you
+would become a common robber, a thief, a voleur!"
+
+His face darkened ominously, and the gash in his lip looked as large
+again as it usually did. "What would you have?" he asked with a snarl.
+"My cursed ill-luck has driven me to it. I cannot starve, neither will
+I."
+
+For a little while neither spoke.
+
+"I didn't think you would take my news like this, Steph," he said
+presently. "Think of the prize! How is it possible for a man fixed as
+I am to resist trying to make it his own? One half comes to me because
+the plan is mine, but of course I can't work without confederates. My
+share will be worth ten thousand at the very least; and then, hey
+presto for the New World and a fresh start in life with a clean
+slate!--What say you, Steph?"
+
+"At present, I say nothing more than I have said already," she
+answered coldly. "I must have time to think."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Cummerhays, in one of the most northerly of the northern counties of
+England, although it considers itself to be a place of no small
+importance, has not the good fortune to be situated on any of the
+great main lines of railway; consequently, to most people it has the
+air of being somewhat out of the world. Of late years, however, a
+branch line has found it out, and has thereby enabled it to emerge
+from the state of semi-torpor in which it seemed destined to languish
+for ever. The branch line in question, of which Cummerhays is the
+terminus, is about twenty miles in length, and leaves the main line at
+Greenholm Station. About halfway between the two places, but about a
+couple of miles distant from the line itself, are certain important
+collieries, to meet the requirements of which a secondary branch has
+been constructed, which turns abruptly from the main branch at a point
+dignified with the euphonious title of Cinder Pit Junction. Here a
+signalman's box has been fixed, a wooden erection, standing about six
+feet above the ground, with an arrangement of levers inside it, for
+working the points and signals in connection with the traffic to and
+from the collieries. At the time of which we write two men were
+stationed at the box in question, who came on duty turn and turn
+about, in each case a week of day-duty alternating with one of
+night-duty. The cottage of one of the signalmen was about half a mile
+from the box, on the road leading to the collieries; while that of his
+"mate" was about a quarter of a mile down the road in an opposite
+direction.
+
+Into this second cottage, which stood by itself in a lane a little
+removed from the high-road, and having no habitation near it, we will
+venture, Asmodeus-like, to take a peep on a certain April evening. It
+was already dusk in the valleys, although a soft rosy light still made
+beautiful the tops of the distant fells.
+
+In half an hour James Maynard, the signalman, would be due at his box
+to take his "spell" of night-duty. His thick blue overcoat was hanging
+behind the door ready to put on, his wife was washing up the crockery,
+and Maynard himself was smoking a last after-tea pipe before leaving
+home. He was a well-built stalwart man, with a jet-black beard and
+moustache, and close-cut hair of the same colour, to which his
+dark-blue eyes offered a somewhat striking contrast. He had been about
+three months in his present situation, and among the drivers and
+guards who worked the traffic between the junction and the collieries
+he had come to be known by the sobriquet of "Gentleman Jim." It was
+not that he ever set himself up as being in anyway superior to or
+different from his mates; indeed, he was universally popular; but
+these grimy-faced men, who in their way are often keen observers of
+character, had an instinctive feeling that, although necessity might
+have made him one of them to outward seeming, he was not so in
+reality, and that at some anterior time his position in life must have
+been widely different from that which he now occupied. But genial and
+good-natured though "Gentleman Jim" might be, he was a man who brooked
+no questioning, and no one thereabouts knew more about him than he
+chose to divulge of his own accord.
+
+Maynard and his wife had been chatting pleasantly together. Suddenly
+the latter laid a hand on her husband's arm to bespeak his attention.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "I heard nothing."
+
+"There was a noise of wheels a moment ago, and now it has ceased. It
+sounded as if some vehicle had stopped suddenly at the end of the
+lane. Do you remain in the background, dear, while I go and ascertain
+whether any one is there."
+
+She opened the door and went out quickly. There was still light enough
+in the valley to see objects a considerable distance away. One side of
+the lane in which the cottage was built was bounded by a high bank. Up
+this Mrs. Maynard now clambered, assisted by the branch of a tree; she
+knew that from the top of it she could see not only the lane, but a
+considerable stretch of high-road on either hand. After gazing for a
+moment or two, she leaped lightly down and ran back to the cottage. "A
+carriage with two horses is standing at the corner of the lane," she
+said to her husband. "A lady has got out of it, and is coming towards
+the cottage, and--oh, my dear--I'm nearly sure it's Lady Fanny Dwyer."
+
+"Lady Fan! Well, I shall be very glad to see her. No doubt she is
+visiting at Seaton Park; and as she knows we are living in the
+neighbourhood, she must have made inquiries and discovered our
+whereabouts."
+
+"I hope she has not made her inquiries in such a way as to arouse any
+suspicion that we are at all different from what we seem to be?"
+
+"I think you may trust Lady Fan for that. She generally knows pretty
+well what she is about.--But had you not better go and meet her?"
+
+Clara hurried to the door; but as she opened it, Lady Fan appeared on
+the threshold. She looked a little white and scared, adventures with a
+spice of risk or romance in them not being in her usual line. Making a
+step forward and grasping Clara's hand, she said in a whisper: "Is it
+safe to speak aloud? Is there any one but yourselves to hear me?"
+
+Reassured on this point, Lady Fan threw herself into her friend's arms
+and burst into tears, holding out a hand to Gerald as she did so. "I
+can't talk to either of you till I have had my cry," she said between
+her sobs. "What a wicked, wicked world this is!"
+
+She grew calmer in a little while, and sat down close to Clara,
+holding a hand of the latter while she talked.
+
+Here it may be remarked that it was through the influence of Lady
+Fan's husband that Gerald Brooke had obtained his present situation as
+signalman at Cinder Pit Junction. The mode of life was of his own
+choosing. He wanted something to do that would take him out of himself
+as much as possible, and while not entirely isolating him from his
+fellow-men, would not bring him into contact with too great a number
+of them. In this out-of-the-way valley among the fells and moors, if
+anywhere, shelter and safety might surely be found.
+
+"O my dear, my dear," cried Lady Fan as she dried her eyes and looked
+round her, "and has it really come to this, that this dreadful poky
+little hole of a place is your home--the only home that you have!"
+
+"It is not a dreadful little hole by any means, dear Lady Fanny,"
+answered Gerald with a smile. "It, is a substantial well-built cottage
+of four rooms--quite large enough for a family without encumbrances.
+You don't know how snug and comfortable we are in it. Economy of space
+is not half enough considered in a small world like ours."
+
+"I am glad you keep up your spirits," retorted her ladyship; "though
+how you contrive to do so under such circumstances is a mystery to
+me."
+
+"We have really and truly been very comfortable since we came here,"
+answered Clara. "I have conceived quite an affection for our little
+house, and somehow, I hardly know why, I feel as if we were safer here
+than elsewhere. Probably it is the loneliness of the place that gives
+one this feeling of security; and then the air that blows down from
+the moors is so pure and invigorating that both Gerald and I feel as
+if we were growing young again."
+
+"Oh, of course you try to make the best of everything--it's just your
+aggravating way," retorted Lady Fan. "But if I were in your place, I
+should fret and fume and worry, and make myself and everybody about me
+as miserable as possible. That would be my way."
+
+"I don't believe it," answered Gerald with a laugh. "You don't know
+how many unsuspected qualities you possess that go towards making a
+capital poor man's wife."
+
+Lady Fan shrugged her shoulders. "And so you, Gerald Brooke, the owner
+of Beechley Towers, are living here as a common railway signalman,"
+she said; "finding your companions among a lot of engine-drivers
+and--shunters, don't they call them?--and grimy people of that kind.
+What is the world coming to!"
+
+"My companions may be grimy, as you say; but I can assure your
+ladyship that they are a very hard-working, good-hearted, decently
+behaved set of fellows, and that among them is more than one of whose
+friendship any man might be proud. And I can further assure you, Lady
+Fanny, that I am quite satisfied with my mode of life--for the present
+and till brighter days return, if they ever will return. And that
+reminds me that I have had no opportunity of thanking Dwyer for the
+trouble he must have been put to in procuring me my present situation.
+Is he here with you?"
+
+"Oh dear, no. His last letter was dated from Cairo; where his next
+will be dated from, goodness only knows."
+
+"Well, I hope you won't forget to thank him for me when next you
+write."
+
+"By the way, how did you succeed in finding us out?" asked Clara.
+
+"To tell you the truth, my dear, one of my chief objects in accepting
+an invitation to Seaton Park was the hope of seeing you and your
+good-for-nothing signalman. I knew you were living close by, but not
+exactly where. I also knew that you were passing under the name of
+Maynard. Accordingly, I set my maid to work to make certain inquiries,
+telling her a white fib in order to stifle any curiosity she might
+feel in the matter; in fact, my dear Clara, I gave her to understand
+that before your marriage you had been in my service, and that I was
+desirous of ascertaining how you were getting on in life. It was the
+most likely tale I could think of, and I've no doubt it answered its
+purpose; anyhow, this morning Simpkins brought me your address, and
+here I am."
+
+"How it brings back the memory of old times to see you and hear your
+voice!" said Clara. "It seems years since I left the Towers, although
+it is only a few short months ago. I am often back there in my
+dreams."
+
+Lady Fan squeezed her friend's hand in silent sympathy. Then she said:
+"By-the-by, what has become of darling, quaint Miss Primby? I hope she
+is quite well?"
+
+"She has gone to stay for a time with some friends in Devon. This
+place was too bleak for her during the winter months; but now the
+spring is here, she will be back with us again before long."
+
+"You talk as if you were likely to remain here for ever and a day,"
+answered Lady Fan. "And that reminds me that I have done to-day as our
+sex are said to do habitually with their postscripts--that is, I have
+left mentioning till the last the most important of the reasons which
+brought me here. Algy, in the last letter I had from him, charged me
+to either see or communicate with you as early as possible, and tell
+you from him that his banker is at your service for any amount you
+choose to draw upon him. He has a lot of money lying idle, and would
+only be too glad if you would favour him by making use of it."
+
+"Dwyer is a noble-hearted fellow, I know, but"----
+
+"But me no buts," broke in her impetuous ladyship. "There is no reason
+why you should not end this mean and sordid way of life at once. There
+are plenty of charming nooks on the Continent where you and Clara
+might live with everything nice about you while waiting for better
+days; and really you would be doing Algy a great kindness at the same
+time."
+
+But this was a point on which Gerald was not to be moved. He combated
+Lady Fanny in almost the same terms that he had combated Karovsky when
+the Russian had made him an almost identical offer. He would never
+leave England, he said--on that he was determined--till the mystery
+that enshrouded Von Rosenberg's death should be cleared up and his own
+fair fame vindicated before the world. There was within him a hidden
+faith that, like an altar flame, sometimes burnt high and anon died
+down to a mere spark, but was never altogether extinguished, that one
+day his long waiting would be rewarded.
+
+Lady Fan fumed and lost her temper, and then recovered it again with
+equal facility, but in nowise shook Gerald from his purpose. The
+striking of the hour startled them both.
+
+"Eight o'clock and Sir William's horses waiting for me all this time!"
+exclaimed Lady Fan.
+
+"And I'm a quarter of an hour late," said Gerald to his wife. "Lucas
+will begin to think something has happened to me."
+
+Lady Fanny's last words to her friend were: "To-day is Tuesday. I'll
+come again on Thursday, when we will have a good long talk together,
+by which time I hope that obstinate and wrongheaded husband of yours
+will have come to his senses."
+
+Gerald Brooke had kissed his wife and had gone off to his duty at the
+signal-box, leaving her alone in the cottage. But not long would she
+be left in solitude. Margery, who had gone to Overbarrow, a village
+about two miles away, to purchase some groceries, would be back in a
+little while.
+
+But half an hour passed after her husband's departure without bringing
+Margery, and Clara began to grow seriously uneasy. Never had she been
+so late before. When the clock struck nine and still the girl had not
+come, Clara could contain herself no longer. Putting on her bonnet and
+shawl and locking the door, she hurried down the lane, and turning
+into the high-road in a direction opposite that which led to the
+railway, she went quickly forward along the way by which she knew
+Margery must come. The night was dark and moonless, but the stairs
+shone clearly, and by their faint light Clara could just discern the
+black outlines of the hedge which bounded the road, and thereby keep
+herself to the line of narrow turf-bordered footway which ran by its
+side. She had not gone more than a quarter of a mile when her heart
+gave a throb of relief. She heard footsteps advancing towards her, and
+her fine ear recognised them as those of Margery, even while the
+latter was some distance away. "Is that you, Margery?" she called, so
+that the girl might not be startled by coming suddenly upon her in the
+dark. A moment later they had met. Margery had been hurrying home at
+such a rate as to be nearly breathless.
+
+"O mum, he's here! I've seen him, and heard him speak," were the
+girl's first incoherent words.
+
+"Who is it that you have seen and heard?"
+
+"Muster Crofton, mum--Muster Geril's cousin--him as the Frenchy tied
+up in his chair."
+
+"George Crofton here!" murmured Clara, her heart seeming to turn to ice
+as she spoke. "Surely, surely, Margery, you must be mistaken."
+
+"I only wish I was, mistress," responded the girl fervently; "but he
+only need speak for me to pick him out of a thousand men in the dark.
+Besides, I saw his face with the cut in his lip and his teeth showing
+through."
+
+For a little while Clara was so dazed and overcome that she could
+neither speak nor act. In that first shock her mind had room for one
+thought and one only: George Crofton was on the track of her husband!
+No other purpose could have brought him to this out-of-the-world
+place. Gerald must be warned and at once; but first she must hear all
+that the girl had to tell. She had turned mechanically, and was now
+retracing her way to the cottage.
+
+"I suppose Mr. Crofton saw you at the same moment you saw him?" she
+said anxiously.
+
+"I saw him, but he never set eyes on me."
+
+"How could that happen?"
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, mum. I had got my groceries and had left
+the village and was coming along pretty fast, 'cos I was a bit late,
+when just as I was getting near the end of a lane I hears two men
+coming along it talking to one another. I was not a bit a-feared; but
+still I thought I might as well keep out of their sight; so just
+before they turned out of the lane, I slipped into the dry ditch that
+runs along the hedge-bottom and crouched down. They passed me without
+seeing me, still talking, and then I knowed at once that one of 'em
+was Muster Crofton. 'We are before our time,' says he to the other
+one; 'we shall have nearly an hour to wait.' Then says the other:
+'Better be afore our time than after it.' After going a bit up the
+road, they crossed it, and passing through a stile, got into the
+fields, I making bold to skulk after 'em, first taking off my shoes so
+as they shouldn't hear me. On they went, I following, till they came
+to a hollow where there's a lot of trees, and in the middle of the
+trees a little house that seems, as well as I could make out, as if
+somebody had pulled it half to bits and then left off. When they were
+well inside, I followed on tiptoe; and then I heard one of 'em strike
+a match, and then I saw a light through the broken shutter of a little
+window. Going up to the window, I peeped in. Two lanterns had been
+lighted, and by the light of one of 'em I could see Muster Crofton's
+face quite plain. I couldn't make out much of what they talked about,
+only that they were waiting for somebody, and once the other man said:
+'We shall be quite time enough if we leave here by half-past ten.'
+Then Muster Crofton, he swore, and said that he never could a-bear
+waiting."
+
+"Did you hear them mention your master's name?" asked Clara anxiously.
+
+"No, mum, not once."
+
+Clara was puzzled. To her wifely fears it seemed impossible that
+Crofton's presence should not bode danger to her husband. It was
+almost incredible that he should be there unless he were on the track
+of Gerald. Yet, on the other hand, what could be the nature of the
+business which took him at that late hour to a ruined cottage buried
+among trees? It almost looked as if he were concerned in some dark and
+nefarious scheme of his own. Suddenly a fresh thought struck her, and
+as it did so she came to an abrupt halt.
+
+"Margery," she said, "you shall show me the way back to the cottage
+among the trees. I will go and endeavour to find out for myself what
+it is that has brought Mr. Crofton so far away from home. Come."
+
+"O mistress!" said Margery with a gasp. It was her only protest: with
+her to hear was to obey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Varley's Cottage, which place George Crofton and his confederates had
+fixed upon as their rendezvous, was a spot of ill repute for miles
+around, and one which no inhabitant of the district would willingly go
+near by day, much less after dark. A grim tragedy centred round the
+spot. Some quarter of a century previously the cottage had been the
+home of a certain gamekeeper, Varley by name, who had made himself
+specially obnoxious to the poachers of the district. One night he was
+shot dead on his own threshold and his cottage fired in two places.
+The crime was never brought home to any one, neither was the cottage
+ever rebuilt. But of all this neither Clara Brooke nor Margery, being
+newcomers in the neighbourhood, knew anything.
+
+The elder woman hurried feverishly onward, the younger leading the
+way. Scarcely a word passed between them. Presently they reached the
+stile through which Margery had followed the two men, and crossing it,
+took a winding footway through the fields. They went swiftly and
+silently, walking not on the path itself but on the soft grass which
+bordered it. Not a creature did they see or hear, and before long the
+path began to dip to a hollow, then came some straggling patches of
+brushwood, and presently they were in the spinney itself, with trees
+and a thick undergrowth on both sides of them. Margery led the way as
+by a sort of instinct, only pausing for a second now and again to
+listen. To Clara, the adventure, with its darkness, its silence, and
+its mystery, had all the complexion of a nightmare. Again and again
+she had to ask herself whether it were indeed a reality.
+
+"We are nearly there now, mum," said Margery presently in a whisper.
+"Do you wait here among the trees, while I creep forward and try and
+find out what they be about." So saying, the girl stole forward, and
+was at once lost to view.
+
+The young wife waited with a heart that beat high and anxiously. The
+moments seemed terribly long till Margery returned, although in
+reality she was not more than three or four minutes away. Clara
+trembled so much that she could not speak.
+
+"There's four of 'em now, mum," said the girl. "I could see them quite
+plain through the crack in the shutter, and from what I could make
+out, there's more to come. O mistress, I wouldn't go near 'em if I was
+you; they're a desperate bad lot, and if they found you there, nobody
+can tell what might happen."
+
+Of a truth, Clara might well hesitate, and it was only the thought
+that some new and unforeseen danger might possibly at that very moment
+be closing like a net round the husband she loved so devotedly that
+nerved her to the task she had set herself to do. "Margery," she said
+after a brief silence, "where you can go with safety I can surely go.
+I must see and listen to these men for myself.--Now, attend to this.
+Should I be discovered by them, or should anything happen to me, you
+will fly as for your life and warn your master."
+
+"I understands, mum, never fear," was the girl's earnest response.
+
+Then the two crept together through the trees, almost as silent as the
+shadows of which they seemed to form a part, and presently Clara found
+herself under the walls of the ruined cottage. Margery guided her to
+where a rickety shutter still guarded a small square window, from
+which, however, the glass had long since disappeared. Through a chink
+in this, the interior of the room, such as it was, was plainly
+discernible. Two old-fashioned lanterns threw a dim weird light over
+the scene. Clara's eyes sought instinctively for the face of Crofton
+before taking any note of the others; it may be that some faint hope
+had all along lingered in her breast that Margery had been mistaken.
+But if that were so, the hope at once died out. George Crofton himself
+was before her. He was the only one of the party that was seated, and
+his seat consisted of nothing more than a pile of loose bricks, with
+part of the stone shelf of the mantel-piece laid across them. He was
+smoking, as were also two of the others, and seemed deep in thought.
+The rest of the party were utter strangers to Clara; they talked in
+low tones among themselves, and, much to her surprise, she saw that
+one of them was in the garb of a clergyman.
+
+Scarcely had Mrs. Brooke noted these things, when a low whistle
+sounded from somewhere outside. Crofton sprang to his feet, and all
+were instantly on the alert. The whistle was answered by another from
+within, and then one of the men left the cottage carrying a lantern.
+Clara and Margery sank noiselessly back into the undergrowth of bush
+and bramble by which the cottage on three sides was surrounded.
+
+When, two or three minutes later, Clara ventured to resume her post of
+observation at the window, she found that the party inside had been
+augmented by two fresh arrivals. The men had now grouped themselves
+round Crofton in various attitudes of attention, listening to the
+instructions he was evidently impressing upon them. Whatever the
+objects of this strange company might be, there could be little doubt
+that George Crofton was the leader of it. One man, who bent forward a
+little, had made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and it might be for his
+benefit that Crofton now pitched his voice in a higher key than he
+had previously done. Clara hardly breathed as she strained her senses
+to catch the words that fell from his lips.
+
+What she heard, gradually piecing the plot together in her own mind as
+Crofton issued his final orders to the men, was enough to blanch the
+heart of any woman with terror and dismay. The train to Cummerhays was
+to be attacked and robbed; some great treasure--Clara could not make
+out of what nature--was to travel by it to-night, which these
+desperadoes had determined on making their own. As a preliminary step,
+the signalman at Cinder Pit Junction was to be seized, bound, and
+gagged, his box taken possession of, and the telegraph wires cut. A
+member of the gang who answered to the name of Slinkey, and who
+understood the manipulation of points and signals, would install
+himself in the box. Then, when the train came up on its way to
+Cummerhays, passing the box at a speed of about twenty miles an hour,
+by a reversal of the points it was to be turned by Slinkey on to the
+branch leading to the collieries. As a matter of course, the driver
+would bring his train to a stand as speedily as possible, and then
+would come the opportunity of the gang. It was well known that, except
+at holiday times, passengers and officials together by this train
+rarely numbered half a score people. It would be strange if
+half-a-dozen desperate men, armed with revolvers, could not so far
+intimidate the driver, the guard, and a few sleepy passengers as to
+have the whole train at their mercy. Five minutes would suffice to
+successfully achieve the object they had in view, after which the
+train might go on its way again as if nothing had happened.
+
+Such were the chief features of this audacious scheme, as gathered by
+Clara from Crofton's instructions to the others. Of course, each man
+had known beforehand what he was expected to do, and what passed at
+the cottage was merely a sort of final rehearsal of the scene that was
+to follow.
+
+Crofton now looked at his watch and announced that it was time to
+start. The lanterns were extinguished, and the men filed silently out
+of the cottage, half of them taking one road and half another. Clara
+and Margery had but just time to draw their shawls over their heads
+and crouch on their knees amid the brushwood, when three of the men
+passed within as many yards of them. When all was silent again, they
+stood up. Never on any previous occasion when danger threatened her
+husband had Clara felt so utterly helpless as she did now. What could
+she, one weak woman, do to confound the machinations of six armed and
+desperate men?
+
+"O Margery," she cried, seizing both the girl's hands in the extremity
+of her distress, "there seems no help either in heaven or on earth. We
+are lost--lost!"
+
+The faithful girl could only kiss with a sob the hands that held her
+own. "What be they going to do, mistress?" she asked a moment or two
+later. She had not been able to see and hear what had passed in the
+cottage, as Clara had done.
+
+"They are going to seize and bind your master, and then they are going
+to stop and rob the train. O Margery, if there was but some way by
+which the train could be warned in time! Think, think; is there
+nothing we can do?"
+
+"Why, o' course there is, mum," answered the girl with one of her
+uncanny chuckles. "You just let me run home as fast as my legs'll
+carry me and get three or four singles--them things, you know, that
+Muster Geril used to fasten on the rails when the fog was bad in
+winter. I know how to fasten them, 'cos I watched Muster Geril do it
+one day when I took him some to the box. Then I'll take the short cut
+across the fields to where the line turns sharp round more'n half a
+mile away from the box, and I'll fix the singles there.--But what am
+I to tell the driver, mum, when he stops the train?"
+
+"Tell him there are half-a-dozen men with revolvers who are going to
+stop and rob the train, just beyond your master's box. After that, he
+will know what it will be best to do." She could have flung her arms
+round Margery's neck and kissed her, such a weight had the girl's
+words lifted off her heart.
+
+"But what about pore Muster Geril, mum?" urged Margery.
+
+Ah, what indeed! Clara shivered as though an icy wind had struck her.
+She had not failed to notice that her husband had never been mentioned
+by name by Crofton, who had spoken of him to the others as though he
+were an utter stranger. Could it be possible he was unaware that
+Gerald filled the position of signalman at Cinder Pit Junction. It was
+possible, but by no means probable; but in that faint chance lay her
+only hope of her husband's safety. In that case, should he and Crofton
+not encounter each other, the rest of the gang would merely regard
+Gerald in the light of an ordinary railway servant; and although he
+might chance to be assailed and maltreated by them, that would be but
+a minor evil in comparison with the other, and one which an hour or
+two at the most would set right. These thoughts passed through her
+mind far more rapidly than she could have given them utterance in
+words. The only question now was, had she time to warn her husband
+before the attack took place? The gang were on their way already:
+could she overtake them, pass them unseen, and reach the signal-box
+before they did? The chance was a desperate one, but she must attempt
+it--no other course was open to her.
+
+"Come!" she said, grasping Margery by the hand. "Let us hurry--let us
+hasten! While you go and fix the signals, I will go and warn your
+master, only pray heaven I may not be too late!"
+
+With scarcely a word more they sped swiftly back along the starlit
+fields; but when they reached the stile, Clara said: "Is there no
+nearer way to the signal-box than going round to it by the high-road?"
+
+"There's a way through the fields, that cuts off a big corner. I've
+walked it onst; but I dunno, mum, as you could find it in the dark."
+
+"I must try," answered Clara desperately. Every second was precious.
+
+The near cut in question was through a second stile somewhat farther
+on. At this point, after a few last words, the two parted, each going
+a separate way.
+
+Clara's way led her through more fields; but the track was so faint
+that she was utterly unable to distinguish it, and had to trust to her
+vague local knowledge that she was going in the right direction. In a
+little while she surmounted a rising ground, and then, to her utter
+dismay, she saw, from the position of the signal lamps in the valley
+below, that she had wandered a full quarter of a mile too far to the
+right of them. It was a thousand chances to one now that Crofton and
+his crew would be there before her.
+
+Anguish lent wings to her feet, and she flew down the slope like a
+creature pursued by the Furies. She could see the lighted window of
+the signal-box shining in the distance, a faint yellow disc. The next
+thing she knew was that she had reached the boundary of the line, but
+at a point still some distance from the box. It now became needful to
+exercise more caution than she had hitherto done, lest she should be
+seen by any of the gang, who were doubtless somewhere near at hand.
+The line at this point was bounded by a wooden fencing put up to
+prevent the straying of cattle, close to which, on the field-side,
+grew a thin straggling hedge. Under the shelter of this hedge Clara
+now stole softly and cautiously forward, with eyes and ears
+preternaturally on the alert. Step by step she drew nearer without
+being disturbed by a sight or a sound, till at length she faced the
+box with its lighted window where it stood on the opposite side of the
+line. Then with a heart, the pulsing of which sounded like a low
+drumming in her ears, she parted the bushes and peered through.
+
+For a moment or two a mist dimmed her eyes, and all she could discern
+was that there was some one inside the box. Then the mist cleared
+away, and she saw that the man standing there with one hand resting on
+a lever was not her husband, but the man Slinkey, whose sinister face
+she had seen through the broken shutter. Gerald was nowhere to be
+seen. She had come too late!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Gerald Brooke having relieved his "mate" Lucas at the signal-box, and
+having satisfied himself that his lamps were properly trimmed and set
+for the night, sat down in his box to read. The night duties at Cinder
+Pit Junction were not of a very onerous nature. The last passenger
+train from Cummerhays, which also carried the mail, passed at
+eight-thirty; and the last train to that place till the arrival of the
+morning mail, at a few minutes past ten o'clock. In the course of the
+night two or three trains of mixed merchandise and minerals passed
+through without stopping, and these, together with a train from the
+collieries bound for the South, comprised the whole of the nocturnal
+traffic. Thus it fell out that Gerald had plenty of spare time on his
+hands, and always brought a volume with him to help to while the long
+dark hours away.
+
+The signal-box, the entrance to which was reached by a flight of eight
+or nine steps, stood on a small space of cleared ground by the side of
+the line. A little way back was a low embankment crowned by a hedge,
+overshadowed here and there by an umbrageous beech or elm, beyond
+which the open fields stretched far and wide. Few places could be more
+solitary and deserted; not a house, not a habitation of any kind was
+within ken; but by day a haze of smoke in the distance told of life
+and labour not far away.
+
+The last train from Cummerhays had passed more than an hour ago, the
+next one would be the train going the reverse way. Gerald sat reading,
+but with his ear on the alert for the ting of the telegraph bell which
+should tell him when the coming train had passed Mellingfield, the
+nearest station south, five miles away. All at once he was startled by
+the sound of some one coughing, evidently just outside his box. It was
+a sound so unexpected and surprising in that lonely spot and at that
+hour of the night, that he sprang to his feet, while his nerves began
+to flutter strangely. Next moment there came a loud rapping at the
+door, as it might be with the handle of a walking-stick. Gerald opened
+the door at once; and then he saw a portly middle-aged man dressed in
+black, with a white cravat and spectacles--to all appearance a
+clergyman--standing at the foot of the steps and gazing blandly up at
+him.
+
+"My good man," said the stranger in unctuous but well-bred accents, "I
+am a stranger in these parts, and am sorry to say that I have lost my
+way. I want to get to a friend's house at Overbarrow; no doubt you can
+put me in the right road for doing so?"
+
+You must cross the line"--began Gerald.
+
+"My good man," interrupted the stranger, "I am somewhat deaf, and
+cannot hear what you say. I wish you would be good enough to come a
+little nearer. With my defective eyesight, I dare not trust myself up
+these steps of yours."
+
+Gerald stepped down without hesitation. "You must cross the line," he
+began again in a somewhat louder key, "and about twenty yards farther
+on you will find a gap in the hedge."
+
+"Yes, yes--a gap in the hedge; I understand," responded the other
+eagerly.
+
+"And after that you will find a footpath which will bring you to the
+high-road. Then"----
+
+Not a word more spoke Gerald. A soft heavy cloth of some kind was
+suddenly thrown over his head, while at the same instant his arms were
+pinioned firmly from behind, and a cord with a running noose was drawn
+tightly round his legs. The attack was so sudden that he was powerless
+to make the least resistance, and in less than half-a-dozen seconds he
+found himself as helpless as a babe. Then a corner of the cloth that
+enveloped his head was raised and the sham parson said in his most
+oily tones: "My friend, if you have any regard for your life you will
+neither cry out nor attempt to make the least disturbance. Be obedient
+and good, and no harm shall befall you." As if to add emphasis to the
+warning, Gerald was lightly rapped on the knuckles with what he could
+feel to be the chilly barrel of a pistol. Then with a man on each side
+of him holding him by an arm, he was conducted to the background; and
+having been planted with his back to a tree, he was bound firmly to it
+with several folds of thin cord. The cloth which still enveloped his
+head was fastened loosely round his throat, so as not greatly to
+impede his breathing; but his voice would have been smothered in it
+had he even been in a position to call for help.
+
+He had no means of ascertaining the number of his assailants, but as
+far as he could judge there must have been three or four of them. He
+was lost in a maze of the wildest conjectures as to what the object of
+the attack could possibly be. Apparently none of the gang had
+recognised him as Gerald Brooke, the man for whose capture so large a
+reward was still unclaimed. Yet why, then, had they made him a
+prisoner? What object was to be gained by his capture? Never in his
+life had he felt so utterly perplexed. He could hear an eager
+conversation going on a little distance away; but all sounds now came
+dull and muffled to his ears.
+
+As already stated, the gang had previously separated into two parties.
+Three of the men, at the head of whom was Crofton, had made their way
+down the branch to a point close to where, as nearly as they could
+judge, the driver of the train would be able to pull up as soon as he
+found himself on the wrong line of rails. The other three men, with
+the sham parson as their chief, had been detailed for the capture of
+the signalman, the result of which we have seen. After a little talk
+together, one of the three now started off down the branch to carry
+the news to Crofton and the others.
+
+Slinkey at once took possession of the box, and proceeded to test the
+working of the various levers, in order that there might be no hitch
+when the critical moment should arrive. He was an ex-railway servant
+and thoroughly understood what he was now about.
+
+The sham parson was known familiarly among the "profession" which his
+eminent talents adorned under the pseudonym of "Lardy Bill," a title
+conferred upon him in the first instance by reason of his fondness for
+swell clothes, flash jewelry, and scented pocket-handkerchiefs. He was
+one of the most clever and unscrupulous rogues of which the great
+Babylon could boast; but it is pleasant to be able to record that
+despite his cleverness, a considerable portion of his knavish
+existence had already been passed in an enforced seclusion where board
+and lodging had been provided him free of charge. His appearance was
+eminently in his favour. He was a well-built, ruddy-cheeked man, with
+a moist and humorous eye, and a sort of hail-fellow-well-met air. He
+had the suggestion of a man who could tell a good story and appreciate
+a good glass of wine. He looked equally at home when made up as a
+clergyman, a gentleman farmer, a staid City magnate, or a poor
+tradesman who had fallen upon evil days. He had always _les larmes
+dans le voix_ at command when the occasion needed them, and he could
+choke a sob in his throat as cleverly as any low comedian on the
+stage.
+
+As soon as the two men were left alone, with their prisoner in the
+background, Lardy Bill lighted a cigarette--he liked to follow the
+fashion in everything--and began to stroll up and down the narrow
+clearing on which the box was built. Slinkey was too nervous to follow
+his companion's example. "As I calkilate," he said, "we ought to have
+had the signal from Mellingfield three minutes afore now. Can anything
+have happened?"
+
+"Pooh, man--what is likely to have happened?" said the other coolly.
+"These beggarly branch trains are nearly always late."
+
+Half a minute later they heard the welcome ting-ting announcing that
+the train had just passed Melling field.
+
+"She'll be twelve minutes or more yet afore she's here," remarked
+Slinkey as he again ascended the steps and entered the box.
+
+Presently Lardy Bill tossed away the end of his cigarette, and
+crossing to his prisoner, examined his bonds and satisfied himself
+that they were still intact. On going back to the box he was rejoined
+by Slinkey, who now proceeded to go down on one knee and rest his ear
+on the rail. "She's coming; I can hear her quite plain," he said after
+a few moments. "Another five minutes and she ought to be here."
+
+"Then I'll hurry off to the others," said Lardy. "I shall be wanted
+there when the shindy comes off, and you'll manage here by yourself
+all right."
+
+"Right you are," responded the other. "As soon as ever the train's
+past, I shall cut the wires, and then make a bolt of it, and wait for
+you fellows at the cottage."
+
+Nothing more was said. Lardy Bill started at a quick pace down the
+branch, while Slinkey re-entered the box.
+
+Neither of them had the slightest suspicion that for the last ten
+minutes or more all their actions had been watched by an unseen
+witness; but such was the case. When Clara Brooke, to her intense
+dismay, discovered that not her husband, but a stranger, was the
+occupant of the box, she felt for a little while as if her heart must
+die within her. Then she became aware of two dusky figures standing a
+little distance away, whom she rightly concluded to be other members
+of the gang; but still her husband was nowhere to be seen. She had
+arrived on the spot almost immediately after Gerald had been bound to
+the tree; but the night was too dark to admit of her seeing him from
+that distance. She felt at once that she must get round to where the
+signal-box stood, on the opposite side of the line, and, if it were
+possible, approach near enough to the men to overhear their
+conversation, and by that means discover what had become of her
+husband. No sooner was the thought formulated in her mind than she
+began to put it into practice. Still keeping in the shelter of the
+hedge that ran parallel with the line, she sped as fast as her feet
+could carry her to a point some forty or fifty yards farther down the
+line, far enough, as she judged, to be out of the range of vision of
+any one who might be on the lookout at the box. Here, after drawing
+her shawl over her head--she had discarded her bonnet some time
+before--she broke through the hedge, was across the line in three
+seconds; and then, after pushing through the hedge on the opposite
+side, she turned back in the direction of the signal-box, she and it
+being both now on the same side of the line. Creeping forward foot by
+foot and yard by yard, she presently found herself a little way behind
+the box, and within a dozen yards of her husband, had she only been
+aware of it.
+
+While this was happening, one of the men had gone off to join the
+others down the line. Clara, peering through the interstices of the
+hedge, could see the two remaining men walking and talking together,
+but was too far away to distinguish what they said. Not long had she
+watched and waited when she heard the ting-ting of the telegraph bell.
+She knew that it was a signal of some kind, but not what its precise
+meaning might be. Then one of the men disappeared into the box, while
+the other--it was the one, she could now make out, who was dressed
+like a clergyman--turned, and seemed as if he were marching directly
+towards her. Terror-stricken, she dropped completely out of sight
+behind the hedge-bank, expecting every moment to feel a hand laid on
+her shoulder. But nothing coming, she breathed again; then her head
+went up till her eyes were on a level with the top of the bank; then,
+to her surprise, she saw that the man seemed to be carefully examining
+the trunk of a tree some little distance away. She strained her eyes
+in the endeavour to see what he could possibly be about, and then
+suddenly her heart gave a great bound. The trunk of the tree was
+defined like a faint silhouette against a background of starlit April
+sky, but it was a silhouette which in one portion of its outline bore
+a startling resemblance to a human figure. As by a flash of
+divination, Clara knew that it was her husband she was gazing upon.
+Her breath fluttered on her lips like a bird trying to escape, and she
+set her teeth hard in the flesh of her arm, to stifle the cry that
+broke involuntarily from her heart.
+
+After a few seconds the man went back; and after saying a few words to
+his confederate, he apparently took leave of him, and starting down
+the branch, was quickly lost to view; then the other at once went back
+into the box. Now was Clara's opportunity.
+
+Half a minute later she was by her husband's side. Laying a hand
+softly on his arm, she said in a low voice: "Gerald it is I--Clara."
+Some smothered sounds came back to her; and then she discovered, what
+the darkness had hitherto hidden, that her husband's head and face
+were closely muffled. Her trembling but skilful fingers quickly undid
+the knots and removed the covering. Gerald gave a great gasp of relief
+as he drew a deep inspiration of the cool night-air. Then he
+whispered: "You will find a knife in my outside pocket." In a minute
+from that time he was a free man.
+
+Slinkey, waiting alone in the signal-box, had tried the lever again
+and again by means of which the points were opened that would turn the
+train on to the branch, and had satisfied himself that everything was
+in working order. Both the distance and the home signal-lamps showed
+the white light, so that the train would speed on unsuspectingly with
+unslackened pace. Slinkey at the best of times was a nervous timid
+creature--a man who walked ever in trembling dread of the hand which
+he knew would some day be laid suddenly on his shoulder--but now that
+he was left alone, now that he had no longer Lardy Bill's audacious
+bulldog courage to help to animate his own, his craven heart sank
+lower and lower, and he would have given a year of his life to be well
+out of the adventure into which he had allowed himself to be seduced.
+
+The low deep hum of the oncoming train grew palpably on the ear.
+Instinctively, Slinkey's hand closed on lever No. 3, while his heart
+began to beat a sort of devil's tattoo after a fashion that was far
+from comfortable. Suddenly he gave a great start, and for a moment or
+more the tattoo came to a dead stop. He had heard a sound that he
+remembered full well: it was the noise caused by the explosion of a
+fog-signal. At the same instant the engine began to whistle its
+shrillest. Then came the explosion of a second signal, and then the
+whistle ceased as suddenly as it began. And now he could faintly hear
+the soft rhythmical pulsing of the engine, as it might be that of some
+antediluvian monster till it was scant of breath; and Slinkey knew that
+the train had slackened speed and was feeling its way forward slowly
+and cautiously. What could be the matter? What could have happened? By
+whom and with what intent had fog-signals been placed on the line on a
+night so clear and beautiful?
+
+Such were a few of the queries that flitted through Slinkey's puzzled
+brain. And now not even the faintest pulsing of the engine could be
+heard. Could it be possible that treachery was at work, and that the
+driver had been warned and the train brought to a stand? Slinkey ran
+lightly down the steps and, kneeling, laid an ear once more to the
+rails. Not a sound came to him; the train and those in charge of it
+might have vanished into space, so unbroken was the silence. He got on
+his feet again, his tongue and throat as dry and constricted as those
+of a man who had been athirst for days. Instinctively his eyes turned
+to the tree to which the captured signalman had been bound; but he was
+too far away to be able to discern whether the man was still there.
+With a heart that misgave him, he hurried up to the tree, only to find
+that the prisoner had escaped. The cords were there, but the man was
+gone. Evidently, treachery was at work somewhere. Would not the wisest
+thing he could do be to decamp while he had a chance of doing so? He
+was asking himself this question but had not answered it, when up came
+Crofton, Lardy Bill, and one of the other men, at double-quick time.
+They, too, had heard the fog-signals, and had been as much at a loss
+to account for them as Slinkey had been. But when the latter told them
+that by some mysterious means their prisoner had contrived to escape,
+it was evident both to Crofton and Lardy that their carefully planned
+scheme had met with some dire mishap. They had been betrayed, but by
+whom? A traitor had been at work, but who was he? Each of them stared
+suspiciously at his fellows.
+
+"If I only knew who it was that bad sold us," said Lardy Bill with a
+fierce imprecation, "I'd scatter his brains with a bullet, though I
+had to swing for it after!"
+
+"That's all very well," said Crofton; "but the question is, what are
+we to do now?"
+
+"Do!" exclaimed Lardy, whom danger always made reckless. "Why, do what
+we intended from the first. The train's waiting there, ain't it, not
+five hundred yards away? Instead of its coming to us, we must go to
+it--that's all. Is there any one here," he demanded fiercely, "who
+would rather not go?"
+
+Slinkey would fain have answered that he for one would very much
+prefer to keep in the background, only that Lardy Bill was a man of
+whom he stood in mortal fear.
+
+"Now, mates, come along," added Bill. "We are only fooling away our
+time standing here. One bold stroke and the prize is ours."
+
+Scarcely had the last word passed his lips, when some half-dozen
+dark-coated figures burst suddenly through the hedge and made a dash
+into the midst of the gang.
+
+"We are sold!" screamed Crofton with an oath. "Every man for himself;"
+and with that he fired his revolver at the nearest of his assailants
+and then turned to flee. But he was too late. He was tripped up,
+seized, and handcuffed all in a breath as it seemed. A like fate
+befell Slinkey and the other man; but Lardy Bill, slippery as an eel,
+after felling two of his assailants, vanished in the darkness. The
+remaining two men, who had been left behind when Crofton and the
+others hurried to the signal-box, also contrived to escape.
+
+Crofton's shot had taken effect. The man he fired at staggered forward
+a pace or two and then fell on one knee. Now that the scrimmage was
+over, his companions had time to attend to him. They helped him to his
+feet; he was evidently suffering great pain, but was perfectly cool
+and collected. As the light of the bull's-eye which one of the men
+produced fell upon his face, Crofton, who was close at hand, staggered
+back with a cry of amazement Next moment he had recovered himself.
+"I denounce this man as Gerald Brooke," he exclaimed, "the murderer of
+Baron von Rosenberg, for whose capture a reward of three hundred
+pounds is offered."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Never had the little town of Cummerhays been stirred to its depths as
+it was on a certain April morning, when it awoke to find that it had
+rendered itself famous after a fashion which would cause its existence
+to become known wherever an English newspaper penetrated. Its name
+would be in everybody's mouth for weeks to come. It felt that it could
+never again sink into utter obscurity.
+
+For the prisoners--about whose alleged attempt to rob the train all
+sorts of wild rumours were afloat--had after their capture been put
+into the train and brought on to Cummerhays, and were for the present
+lodged in the town jail. The magistrates would assemble at ten
+o'clock, when the preliminary inquiry would take place. But even a
+deeper interest, if that were possible, centred itself in the arrest
+of the alleged murderer of the Baron von Rosenberg, who was said to
+have actually been working as a signalman on the line for the past
+three or four months. It was dreadful to think that the lives of
+several hundreds of respectable people should have been at the mercy
+of such a miscreant!
+
+The town-hall was besieged by an excited crowd long before the opening
+of the doors, and had the justice-room been three times larger than it
+was, it might easily have been filled three times over. Among the
+foremost ranks of the surging crowd, and maintaining his position with
+passive tenacity, was a man on whom many curious eyes were bent. He
+was a foreigner--so much was evident at a glance--and that of itself
+was enough to excite the curiosity of the good folk of Cummerhays,
+many of whom had never been a score miles from home. He was very lean
+and very sallow, with drawn-in cheeks and sharply defined cheek-bones.
+He had deep-set eyes, black and burning, with something in them of the
+expression of a half-famished wild animal. He wore small gold circlets
+in his ears, and was dressed in a coat of frayed velveteen, with a
+soft felt hat; and a coloured silk handkerchief knotted loosely round
+his throat. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him; but now and
+then his lips worked strangely, as though he were holding a silent
+colloquy with some invisible companion. He was the one man in the
+crowd who was the least incommoded by the crowd. Those nearest to him
+shrank a little from him, involuntarily as it were. He was a being of
+a different world from theirs, and they knew not what to make of him.
+
+Jules Picot--for he it was--had arrived in Cummerhays at a late hour
+the preceding night, having walked there from another town about a
+dozen miles away. By what strange chance his wandering footsteps had
+brought him by many devious paths to this place of all others, and at
+this particular time, will be told a little later on. He had hired a
+bed for the night at the _Wheatsheaf Inn_, a cheap and unpretentious
+hostelry. He was up and had ordered his breakfast by eight o'clock
+next morning, and it was while waiting for that meal to be brought him
+that his attention was attracted by some conversation in the taproom
+which he could not help overhearing. The pallor of his face grew
+deeper as he listened; but whatever other emotion the change might
+arise from, it certainly had not its origin in fear.
+
+"Soh! It is for this that I have been brought here," he muttered, half
+to himself and half aloud, in French. "Now I understand."
+
+Going into the taproom, he put a few questions to the men to whose
+talk he had been listening. Having ascertained what he wanted to know,
+he left the house without waiting for his breakfast, and bent his
+steps in the direction of the town-hall. At a quarter to ten o'clock,
+when the doors were thrown open, Jules Picot was one of the first to
+push his way forward, or to be pushed forward by those behind him,
+into the small penned-up space allotted in the justice-room of
+Cummerhays to the general public. In three minutes the place was
+crannied to its utmost limits.
+
+A few minutes after ten, the magistrates entered one by one and took
+their seats, their clerk having preceded them by a few seconds. They
+were three in number, all venerable gentlemen. One was partially
+blind; one partially deaf; while the third, who had a very red face
+and took the lead in everything, was quick-tempered and aggressive in
+his manner. There were two cases of drunkenness and one of theft to be
+disposed of before the great sensation of the day would begin.
+
+Everybody seemed relieved when they were over; and presently a flutter
+of intense excitement ran through the court as three men, in charge of
+as many constables, filed in and were placed in the dock. Then, after
+a brief pause, a fourth man was ushered in whose left arm was
+supported by a sling, and a murmur ran round that this was the alleged
+murderer of the German Baron. A moment later another door opened, and
+there glided in a female in black, closely veiled, who sat down on a
+chair in the background which one of the officials handed her with a
+bow. The prisoner with his arm in a sling was also allowed to be
+seated a little way from the dock in which the other men had been
+placed.
+
+When the mountebank beheld Gerald Brooke, whom he still knew only by
+the name of "Mr. Stewart," marched in as a prisoner, and when he saw,
+and his quick eyes recognised, the veiled figure in black who entered
+immediately afterwards, he was seized with a vertigo, which caused the
+room, the magistrates, and the prisoners to surge up and down before
+his eyes as though they were being tempest-tossed at sea. "Mon Dieu!
+est-il possible?" he exclaimed half aloud. Then he buried his face in
+his hands for a time, while a cloud seemed to lift itself slowly from
+his brain, and much became clear to him that had been dark before.
+
+The charge against the first three prisoners was one of assault and
+attempted robbery; but against one of them there was a supplementary
+charge of attempted murder. That against the fourth prisoner was the
+much more serious charge of murder. But from what the magistrates
+could understand of the case at present, this fourth prisoner was so
+mixed up with the charge against the other three--he being the man who
+had been assaulted and bound and afterwards shot by one of them--that
+the poor gentlemen, who had never before had to investigate a case of
+such gravity, or one which presented so many peculiar features, were
+fairly at their wits' ends to know how to deal with it from a strictly
+legal point of view. Thus it fell out that the whole of the prisoners
+found themselves in court at the same time. It was now, however,
+suggested by the clerk that the prisoner on the capital charge should
+be put back while the examination of the others was being proceeded
+with. This suggestion was at once acted upon.
+
+After the remaining prisoners had answered to the names entered on the
+charge-sheet, the first witness was called, but not till the red-faced
+magistrate had intimated that he and his colleagues only intended to
+take sufficient evidence that day to justify a remand. The first
+witness proved to be Mr. Sturgess, a London jeweller. His evidence
+went to show that, accompanied by a trustworthy assistant, he had left
+home the previous day on his way to Lord Leamington's seat, a few
+miles beyond Cummerhays, having in his charge a box containing jewelry
+to the value of several thousands of pounds. All had gone well till he
+reached Greenholme, at which place he had to wait an hour and change
+to the branch line; but on his arrival there, he had found a telegram
+awaiting him from his partner in London in which he was told on no
+account to pursue his journey without first obtaining an escort of
+four or five constables. No reason was furnished by the telegram for
+taking such extraordinary precautions and he could only surmise that
+an attempt was about to be made to rob him of the box, and that by
+some means his partner at the last moment had obtained wind of the
+affair. Fortunately, through the courtesy of the police authorities at
+Greenholme he experienced no difficulty in obtaining the required
+escort, and under its protection he resumed his journey by the next
+train.
+
+The next witness to answer to his name was the driver of the train,
+who deposed to everything having gone right till he was just inside
+the distance signal of Cinder Pit Junction, which showed "line clear,"
+when he and his mate were startled by the explosion of a fog-signal.
+He at once whistled and put on all the brake-power at his command, and
+could not have gone more than forty or fifty yards farther before a
+second signal exploded; and then he could just make out the figure of
+a woman standing on the embankment and beating the air with both her
+arms as a sign for him to stop, which, as the brakes were on already,
+he was not long in doing. After that, the police took charge of the
+affair, and he did just as they told him.
+
+The next witness called was Margery Shook. She had been sitting out of
+sight behind a large screen which sheltered their worships from any
+possible draughts at the lower end of the room. As she entered the
+witness-box she shot a glance of venomous hatred towards Crofton,
+which would have killed him then and there if looks had power to slay.
+The nature of the evidence she had to give we know already. More than
+once her peculiar phraseology caused a titter to run through the
+court, which was, however, promptly suppresed.
+
+Clara Brooke was the next person called upon. As she raised her veil
+her eyes met those of Crofton for a moment, while a faint colour
+suffused her cheeks, only to die out as quickly as it had come. A low
+murmur of commiseration passed like a sigh through the court; and the
+eyes of many there filled with tears when they beheld her pale
+beautiful face, for it had been whispered about that this was the wife
+of the man who was accused of murder. The evidence she had to offer
+was given clearly and unhesitatingly; with the purport of it we are
+sufficiently acquainted already. When she had told all she had to
+tell, she let her veil drop and went back to the seat she had occupied
+before.
+
+The next and last witness whose evidence it was proposed to take at
+present was the Greenholme sergeant of police. He told how he had been
+instructed by his superintendent to take four men and accompany the
+gentleman from London as far as Cummerhays. Then he narrated how the
+train had come to a stand in consequence of the explosions of the
+fog-signals; and how, when he and his men alighted from it, they had
+found the witness Margery Shook, who gave them to understand that the
+train was about to be attacked a little way farther on. How the girl
+had scarcely finished telling them this when up ran the signalman, who
+had been released by his wife; and how, under his guidance, he,
+witness, and his men had succeeded in surprising the would-be thieves
+and in capturing three of their number; and finally, how the signalman
+had been severely wounded by Crofton, one of the prisoners, firing his
+revolver point-blank at him.
+
+"You have omitted one little episode," said Crofton in cold measured
+tones as the sergeant was about to step down from the witness-box;
+"you have forgotten to tell these worthy gentlemen that it was I who
+recognised the so-called signalman as Gerald Brooke, the man charged
+with the wilful murder of the Baron von Rosenberg, and that I
+denounced him as such then and there."
+
+"That is so, your worships," said the sergeant.
+
+"We quite understand that already," remarked the red-faced
+magistrate; "but it is a point on which we need not enter at present,
+more especially seeing that the prisoner in question has already
+admitted that his name is Gerald Brooke, and that he is in point of
+fact the man for whose apprehension a reward of three hundred pounds
+is still unclaimed." With that the magistrates laid their heads
+together and consulted for a little while among themselves.
+
+By Picot, sitting quietly among the general public and watching
+everything with restless burning eyes, all these proceedings were only
+imperfectly understood. Why Gerald Brooke had been brought in a
+prisoner and almost immediately taken out again without any charge
+being brought against hi, was a mystery to the mountebank. Neither
+could he understand how "la belle madame" and "Margot," as he termed
+them, came to be mixed up in such a strange fashion with the prisoners
+at the bar, in one of whom he had at once recognised the man he had
+gagged and bound to his chair in the house in Pymm's Buildings. He
+lacked the key to the situation, and wanting that, he could only look
+on and listen, and feel himself becoming more bewildered after each
+witness that appeared on the scene. Not that he troubled himself
+greatly about these things; something of much deeper import lay at the
+back of all his wandering thoughts about this matter or the other. He
+had been led to that place, his footsteps had been mysteriously guided
+thither--he could see it all now--for a certain purpose, and that
+purpose, as he sat there, was never for one moment out of his mind.
+
+The magistrates having brought their brief consultation to an end,
+intimated that the prisoners at the bar would be remanded till the
+following Monday. They were at once removed; and after a brief pause,
+Gerald Brooke took his stand in their place. Having answered to his
+name in the usual way, the red-faced magistrate leaned forward a
+little to address him. "Gerald Brooke," he began, "you stand charged
+on the verdict of a coroner's jury with the wilful murder of Otto von
+Rosenberg, commonly called the Baron von Rosenberg, at Beaulieu, in
+the county of ----, on Thursday, the 28th day of June last. The crime
+having been committed outside the jurisdiction of this court, all we
+have now to do is"---
+
+Suddenly a man with gold circlets in his ears and holding a soft felt
+hat in his hands stood up in the body of the court, and addressing
+himself directly to the magistrate, said in a voice which all there
+could hear "Pardonnez moi, s'il vous plaît, monsieur, but I--Jules
+Picot--and not the prisoner at the bar, am the man who killed Otto von
+Rosenberg."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+For the first few moments after Picot's startling confession had
+fallen like a thunderbolt among those assembled in the justice-room of
+Cummerhays, the silence was so intense that, to use a common phrase, a
+pin might have been heard to drop. Every eye was focused on the
+mountebank, who stood on the spot where he had risen, erect and very
+pale, his eyes glowing in their deep orbits like live coals, and
+pressing his soft felt hat with both hands to his breast. Suddenly
+there was a slight commotion close to where the magistrates were
+sitting; the strained silence was broken, and all eyes turned as with
+one accord. The lady in black, she who was said to be the wife of the
+accused man, had fainted. But Margery's strong arms had caught her ere
+she fell. Another woman in the body of the court at once hurried to
+her help, and between them the unconscious young wife was carried out.
+
+"Place that man in the dock," said the red-faced magistrate, "and allow
+the other prisoner to be seated."
+
+Picot stepped quietly forward of his own accord, the people near
+making way for him with wonderful alacrity, and placed himself on the
+spot the magistrate had indicated, a couple of constables stationing
+themselves behind him as he did so. Then the clerk put certain
+questions to him, which Picot answered without a moment's hesitation.
+When these came to an end the entry on the charge-sheet stood as
+follows: "Jules Picot. Age, forty-three. Native of France. Profession,
+acrobat. No fixed place of residence."
+
+Then the magistrate, clasping the fingers of one hand in those of the
+other, and resting them on the table in front of him as he leaned
+forward a little, said: "Jules Picot, you have confessed openly and in
+public to the commission of a most heinous and terrible crime. Such
+being the case, we have no option but to detain you in custody while
+inquiries are being made as to the truth or falsehood of the
+extraordinary statement just volunteered by you. Any further
+statement you may choose to make we will of course listen to; but at
+the same time we must caution you that anything you may say will be
+taken down and used as evidence against you elsewhere. Is it your wish
+to make any further statement, or is it not?"
+
+"Ma foi, monsieur," answered Picot, with a slight shrug, "that is what
+I am here for--to make what you call statements, to tell the truth, to
+prove that this gentleman is innocent, and that I, Jules Picot, and I
+alone, killed Otto von Rosenberg." He paused, and in the hush that
+followed, the rapid scratching of the clerk's pen as it raced over the
+paper was clearly audible. The pencils of the two reporters who sat in
+a little box below the clerk moved at a more deliberate pace. One of
+them even found time to make a furtive sketch of Picot on a blank page
+of his note-book.
+
+It was so evident the prisoner had something more to say that no one
+broke the silence.
+
+"Eight years ago, monsieur," he began in a low clear voice, "I had a
+wife, a daughter, and a son. Now I am alone. I was living in Paris. No
+man could have been more happy than I was. Stephanie, my daughter, had
+an engagement at the Cirque de l'Hiver. She was beautiful, she was
+good. In an evil hour she attracted the attention of the Baron von
+Rosenberg. He followed her everywhere; he gave her rich presents; he
+even went so far as to promise to make her his wife--_scélérat_ that
+he was! Of all this I knew nothing till afterwards. One day Stephanie
+does not come home. I make inquiry for her. She has fled. Von
+Rosenberg, too, has disappeared. They have fled together. From that
+day I never saw Stephanie more." Again he paused, and although there
+was no trace of emotion in his voice, it may be that the hidden depths
+of his being were profoundly moved.
+
+"A little while later, ma pauvre Marie died. She had been ill a long
+time; but what killed her was the loss of Stephanie. Ah yes! After
+that, Henri and I set out, wandering from place to place, not caring
+much where we went, but always looking and asking for Von Rosenberg,
+because I want to demand of him what has he done with my child. All at
+once I discover him. It was at the house of this gentleman, Monsieur
+Brooke. Next day they tell me that he has gone away back to his own
+country, and they know not when he will return. But I wait and wait
+while one week go away after another, and at length he comes back. I
+hide myself in the wood. I climb into the thick branches of a tree,
+and stay there hour after hour till he shall be alone. At length I see
+him coming down the path that leads from the house to the châlet near
+the wood. He whistles as he comes, and he is alone. I wait a little
+while, then I come down from the tree and walk up to the châlet. The
+Baron is standing up, examining a pistol--a pistol with inlay of ivory
+and gold, and with strange figures marked on it. On the table close by
+is a heavy riding-whip. He has not heard my footsteps. I enter, and he
+starts and stares. I make him a profound bow, and say: 'Bonjour,
+Monsieur le Baron. My name is Jules Picot, and I come to demand from
+you what you have done with my daughter Stephanie.' He still stares,
+and seems to be thinking to himself how he shall answer me. At last he
+says: 'I know nothing whatever of your daughter; and if I did I should
+decline to tell you.' 'She left Paris in your company,' I reply.
+'Possibly so,' he answers with an evil sneer. 'Monsieur, I repeat that
+I am her father. I seek for her everywhere, but cannot find her. You,
+monsieur, if you choose, can give me some clue by which I may be able
+to trace her. Her mother is dead, and I have no other daughter. Think,
+monsieur--think.' He laughs a laugh that makes me long to spring at
+his throat and strangle him. 'I. altogether refuse to give you any
+information whatever about your daughter,' he says. 'How, monsieur,
+you refuse!' I say as I draw a step or two nearer. He has laid the
+pistol on the table by this time, and his fingers now shut on the
+handle of the riding-whip. 'Then you are a coward and a villain,' I
+continue; 'and I spit in your face, as I will do again and again
+whenever I meet you. I have found you now, and I will follow you
+wherever you go.' He replies only by seizing the whip, hissing it
+quickly through the air, and bringing it down with all his strength
+round my head and shoulders. Strange lights dance before my eyes;
+there is a noise in my ears as of falling waters. The pistol is close
+to my hand; I grasp it; I fire. Von Rosenberg falls without a cry or a
+word. I fling the pistol away and walk quietly back through the woods.
+As I reach the village, where my boy is awaiting me, the church clock
+strikes seven. The evening is that of the 28th of June."
+
+He ceased speaking as quietly and impassively as he had begun: he
+might have been reading something from a newspaper referring to some
+other man, so little apparent emotion did he display; yet his hearers
+felt instinctively that he was speaking the truth.
+
+"What you have just told us," said the magistrate, "will be taken down
+in writing; it will afterwards be read over to you, in order that you
+may make any additions or corrections that you may deem necessary; and
+you will then be asked to affix your name to the document. You will
+have no objection to do so, I presume?"
+
+"To write my name on the paper, is that what monsieur means?"
+
+"That is what I mean."
+
+"Certainement, monsieur, I will write my name. Why not?"
+
+"Then for the present you are remanded."
+
+Picot looked round with a puzzled air; but one of the constables
+touched him on the shoulder and whispered, "Come this way."
+
+He turned to obey, and as he passed Gerald the eyes of the two men
+met. Gerald's hand went out and gripped that of the mountebank. "O
+Picot!" was all his lips could utter. The mountebank stroked the back
+of Gerald's hand caressingly for a moment while a strangely soft smile
+flitted across his haggard features. "Ah, monsieur, you and la belle
+madame will be happy again," was all he said. Next moment he had
+passed out of sight.
+
+Gerald was now replaced in the dock; and one of the magistrates,
+addressing him, said that although, on the face of it there seemed
+little reason to doubt the truth of the singular narrative to which
+they had just listened, it would have to be confirmed by ample inquiry
+before it could be accepted and acted upon. Meanwhile, he regretted
+to say Mr. Brooke would have to remain in custody. But on the morrow,
+or next day at the latest, both prisoners would be transferred to
+King's Harold, when the amplest investigation would doubtless at once
+take place. With that the prisoner was removed.
+
+Before going back to his cell, Gerald was allowed to see his wife for
+a few minutes. The meeting was almost a silent one; words would come
+after a time; just now their hearts overflowed with a solemn
+thankfulness, the roots of which struck deeper than speech could
+fathom.
+
+As soon as Picot reached the cell allotted to him, he asked to be
+supplied with a cup of coffee, after which he lay down on his pallet
+with the air of a man thoroughly wearied out, and in a few
+minutes was fast asleep. He slept soundly till aroused some three
+hours later, when he was conducted to a room where he found one of the
+magistrates, the clerk, the governor of the jail, and two other
+officials. Here a paper, which had been drawn up from notes taken in
+the justice-room, was read over to him. After having caused it to be
+corrected in one or two minor particulars, he affixed his name to it;
+and his signature having been duly witnessed, he was reconducted to
+his cell.
+
+About eight o'clock, after the gas had been lighted, he asked for pen,
+ink, and paper, and a small table to write on. These having been
+supplied him, he sat and wrote, slowly and laboriously, for nearly a
+couple of hours, finally putting what he had written inside an
+envelope and sealing and directing it. Then, after having taken off
+his shoes and coat, he wrapped himself in the blanket which had been
+supplied him and lay down to sleep. The gas was lowered, and silence
+reigned throughout the prison. Once every hour during the night a
+warder went the round of the cells and peered into each of them that
+was occupied through a grating in the door. All through the night
+Picot apparently slept an unbroken sleep. When the warder visited him
+at one o'clock he found that he had turned over and was now lying with
+his face to the wall, after which he seemed never to have stirred
+between one visit and another. At seven o'clock another
+warder, who had just come on duty, went into his cell to rouse him. To
+his dismay, he could not succeed in doing so. He turned the
+unconscious man over on his back, and then the drawn, ghastly
+face told its own tale.
+
+"Ah," remarked the doctor, who was quickly on the spot, as he held up
+to the light a tiny phial only about half the size of a man's little
+finger and smelt at its contents, "five drops of this would kill the
+strongest man in three seconds."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Jules Picot had been carefully searched before being locked up in his
+cell, and it was an utter puzzle to the jail officials how he had
+contrived to conceal about him even so insignificant an article as the
+tiny phial of poison so as to evade detection. One of the warders,
+however, of a more inquiring turn of mind than his fellows succeeded,
+a day or two later, in solving the mystery. The mountebank wore very
+high-heeled shoes, as many of his countrymen make a practice of doing.
+The heel of one of his shoes had been so made that it could be
+unscrewed at will, while inside it was a cavity just large enough to
+hold the phial. Picot had evidently prepared himself beforehand for a
+contingency the like of that which had at length befallen him. The
+letter written a few hours before his death was in French, and was
+addressed to "Madame Brouke." The following is a translation of it:
+
+
+Madame--When these lines reach you, the hand that writes them will be
+cold in death. I am tired of life, and life is tired of me: this night
+we part company for ever. I take the liberty of addressing you because
+of your kindness to my little Henri (whom _le bon Dieu_ has seen fit
+to take from me for my sins), and because you were so much in his
+thoughts when he was dying. I also address you for another reason,
+which I will explain presently.
+
+It was in the first week of the new year that Henri met with the
+accident which proved fatal to him. He lingered for two weeks, and
+then died. He had but little pain; life faded out of him like a lamp
+that slowly expires for want of oil. As I said before, he often talked
+about his _belle madame_. He could not remember his mother, and it was
+your face that shone on him in his dreams, as it were the face of an
+angel.
+
+After he was gone and I was alone in the world, I, too, began to have
+dreams such as I had never had before. Every night Henri came and
+stood by my bed, but it was always with an averted face; never would
+he turn and look at me. I used to try to cry out, to seize his hand;
+but I was dumb and motionless as a corpse. Then, after a minute or
+two, he would slowly vanish, with bowed head and hands pressed to his
+face, as though he were weeping silently. Night after night it was
+ever the same. Then a great restlessness took possession of me. I
+seemed to be urged onward from place to place by some invisible power
+and without any will of my own. When I rose in a morning I knew not
+where I should sleep at night; onward, ever onward, I was compelled to
+go. Last night I reached this place, and this morning I rose thinking
+to resume my wanderings; but a conversation I chanced to overhear led
+me to seek the court of justice. You, madame, know what took place
+there.
+
+Even before I had spoken a word, I knew why my footsteps had been
+directed to this place, and that my wanderings were at an end. This
+afternoon, after all was over, I lay down on my pallet and fell
+asleep, and while I slumbered, Henri came to me; but this time his
+face was no longer averted; his eyes gazed into mine, and he smiled as
+he used to smile at me out of his mother's arms. Ah, how shining and
+beautiful he looked! Then a soft cool hand was laid on my brow, that
+had burned and burned for months, and all the pain went, and I knew
+nothing more till I awoke.
+
+A word more and I have done. Madame, pray believe me when I say that
+never could a man be more surprised and astounded than I, Jules Picot,
+was to-day when I found that it was your good husband who was accused
+of the death of the Baron von Rosenberg. When I made my way into the
+court after hearing that some one had been arrested for the murder, I
+thought to see only a stranger, one whom I had never seen before. But
+even in that case I should have done as I did to-day, and have
+confessed that it was by my hand and mine alone that Von Rosenberg met
+his death. Conceive, then, my astonishment when in the accused I
+recognised M. Brouke, whom I had known in London under the name of "M.
+Stewart!" I knew that when in London he was in trouble--in hiding--but
+never did I dream of the crime that was laid to his charge. Had I but
+known it, you and he would long ago have been made happy by the
+confession of him who now signs his name for the last time.
+
+     Jules Picot.
+
+
+With what a host of conflicting emotions this document was read by her
+to whom it was addressed may be more readily imagined than described.
+
+
+George Crofton sat alone in his cell, devouring his heart in a
+bitterness too deep for words. All was over; all the bright prospects
+of his youth and early manhood had ended in this; his home for years
+to come would be a felon's cell, his only companions the lowest of the
+low, the vilest of the vile. "Facilis est descensus Averno," he
+muttered with a sneer. "Yes, in my case the descent has been swift and
+easy enough in all conscience." One gleam of lurid joy, and one only,
+illumined the black cavernous depths in which his thoughts, like
+fallen spirits, winged their way aimlessly to and fro, finding no spot
+whereon to rest. Gerald Brooke, the man he hated with an intensity of
+hatred bred only in natures such as his, was a prisoner even as he
+was, and it was his, Crofton's, hand that had brought him there! He
+had but spoken the truth when he said that the hour of his revenge
+would come at last. It was here now, although it had come after a
+fashion altogether different from what he had expected. Thanks to his
+folly, his own outlook was a dreary one enough; but what was it in
+comparison with the grim prospect that stared his hated cousin so
+closely in the face! When he thought of this it was as the one sweet
+drop in the bitter cup which Fate had pressed with such unrelenting
+fingers to his lips.
+
+While he sat brooding over these and other matters, just as daylight
+was deepening into dusk, a warder unlocked the door of his cell.
+"You're wanted in the waiting-room," said the man. "Your uncle,
+Colonel Crofton, has called to see you. It's past the hour for
+visitors; but as he's brought a magistrate's order, and as he says
+he's obliged to go back to London to-night, the governor has agreed to
+relax the rules for once."
+
+Crofton stared at the man in stupefaction. To the best of his belief
+he had no such relative in the world as the one just named. "Ah, you
+didn't expect to see him, I daresay," continued the warder. "A nice
+affable gent as ever I see; but I wouldn't keep him waiting if I was
+you."
+
+Crofton followed the man without a word; and after being conducted
+through a couple of corridors, was ushered into a sparsely furnished
+whitewashed room, where a middle-aged, well-built man of military
+carriage, who had been perusing through his eyeglass the printed rules
+and regulations framed over the mantel-piece, turned to greet him. He
+had close-cut grizzled hair and a thick drooping grizzled moustache.
+He wore a lightly buttoned frockcoat, gray trousers and straps, and
+military boots highly polished. He carried his hat and a tasselled
+malacca in his hand, and one corner of a bandana handkerchief
+protruded from his pocket behind.
+
+"My dear nephew--my dear George!" he exclaimed with much effusion as
+he advanced a step or two and held out his hand. "This is indeed a
+dreadful predicament in which to find you. What, oh, what can you have
+been about that I should have to seek you in a place like this! Your
+poor aunt will be heart-broken when she hears of it. I must break the
+terrible news as gently as possible; but really, really, in her
+delicate state of health I dread the effect such a disclosure may have
+upon her." His voice trembled with emotion; he brushed away a tear, or
+seemed to do so.
+
+George Crofton had undergone many surprises in his time, but never one
+that left him more dumfounded than this, for in his soi-disant uncle
+his quick eyes recognised at a glance no less a personage than Lardy
+Bill. If at the moment his eyes fell on him he had been in the least
+doubt of the fact, that doubt would have been dispelled by the
+expressive wink with which his friend favoured him an instant later.
+The man's audacity fairly took Crofton's breath away.
+
+"The first question, my dear boy," resumed the sham colonel, so as to
+give the other time to recover himself, "of course is whether anything
+can be done for you, and if so, what. I need not say that my purse is
+at your service; for, shocked as I am to find you in this place, I
+cannot forget that you are my brother's son. I leave for London by the
+first train, and immediately on my arrival I will take the advice of
+my own lawyers in the matter, which will, I think, be the best thing
+that can be done under the painful circumstances of the case."
+
+"I suppose that's about the only thing that can be done," answered
+Crofton, who was still utterly at a loss to divine the motive of the
+other's visit.
+
+The warder who had conducted Crofton from his cell was present at the
+interview, ostensibly for the purpose of seeing that none of the jail
+regulations were infringed either by the prisoner or his visitor; but
+a sovereign having been pressed into his unreluctant palm at the
+moment he ushered the latter into the waiting-room, he now discreetly
+turned his back on the pair and stared persistently out of the window.
+
+A little further conversation passed between uncle and nephew, the
+chief part of it falling to the lot of the former, then the colonel
+looked at his watch and rose to take his leave. The warder turned at
+the same instant.
+
+"As I remarked before my dear George," said the uncle as he clasped
+both the nephew's hands in his, "however pained--most deeply pained--I
+may be, everything shall be done for you that can be done. I refrain
+from all reproaches--at present I can only grieve. But your poor aunt,
+George--your poor aunt! You are her godson and favourite nephew. Ah
+me--oh me!"
+
+He walked out of the room with both hands outspread and slowly shaking
+his head, like a man whose feelings were more than he could control.
+
+The jail officials at an early hour next morning, in addition to
+making the discovery that in the course of the night their French
+prisoner had taken leave of them after an altogether illegal and
+unjustifiable fashion, were further astounded by finding that the
+inmate of cell No. 5 had also relieved them of his presence, but in a
+mode altogether different from that which had found favour with the
+mountebank.
+
+Crofton, unheard by any one, had contrived to file through the middle
+bar of his cell window and then to squeeze himself through the
+aperture thus made, after which there was nothing but a high wall
+between himself and liberty. Beyond this wall were some market
+gardens, the jail being situated in the outskirts of the town, and
+then the open fields. Outside the wall, a coil of rope with a strong
+steel hook at each end was found; and the footsteps of two if not of
+three men were plainly traceable for some distance in the soft mould
+of the garden. As to how Crofton had become possessed of the file, and
+by whose connivance and help he had been able to climb the wall and
+descend safely on the other side, there was no evidence forthcoming.
+The only fact the jail officials could affirm with certainty was that
+their prisoner was nowhere to be found.
+
+At as early an hour as possible on the morning following his capture,
+Crofton had obtained permission to send a telegram to his wife, and
+before noon Stephanie was speeding northward by the express in
+response to his summons. When she reached Cummerhays, it was too late
+for her to visit her husband that night; so, carrying her little
+handbag, she walked from the station to the inn nearest to it and
+asked to be accommodated with supper and a bed. She had ascertained
+from a constable in the street that the earliest hour at which
+visitors were admitted to the jail was ten o'clock.
+
+Next morning, which was that of Saturday, Stephanie rose betimes.
+While she was eating her breakfast the landlady bustled in, carrying
+an open newspaper. "Here's the weekly paper, ma'am," she said. "The
+boy has just brought it; and as it contains a long account of the
+doings at the justice-room yesterday, about which you may have heard,
+I thought that perhaps you would like to read it over your breakfast."
+
+"Thank you very much; I shall be glad to do so," said Stephanie
+quietly. She had given no name at the inn, and the landlady had not
+the slightest suspicion that her guest had any reason for being more
+interested than any stranger might be supposed to be in the news
+contained in the paper. Nor, in fact, had Stephanie any knowledge of
+what had happened. Her husband's telegram had been of the briefest; it
+had merely said: "I am in trouble. Come at once. Bring money. Inquire
+for me at the jail." But from what she knew already, she guessed, and
+rightly, that the enterprise on which Crofton was bent when he left
+home had failed, and that by some mischance he himself had come to
+grief.
+
+The moment she was left alone Stephanie opened the paper with eager
+fingers. Her quick eyes were not long in finding the particular news
+of which they were in search. She read the story of the attempted
+robbery, as detailed in the evidence, with ever-growing wonder--a
+wonder that was intensified twenty-fold when she read how Gerald
+Brooke had been arrested at the same time as her husband, and by what
+strange chance the two cousins had once more been brought face to
+face. But when, a few lines lower down, her eyes caught sight of
+another well-known name, all the colour ebbed from her face, leaving
+it as white as the face of a dead woman. She read to the end, to the
+last word of Picot's strange confession before the magistrates, and
+then the paper dropped from her hands.
+
+"My father the murderer of Von Rosenberg, and I--I the cause of it!"
+she murmured in horror-stricken accents. For a little while she sat
+like a woman stunned, stupefied, her eyes staring into vacancy, her
+mind a whirling chaos in which thoughts and fancies the most bizarre
+and incongruous came and went, mixing and mingling with each other in
+a sort of mad Brocken dance, all the elements of which were lurid,
+vague, and elusive.
+
+How long she sat thus she never knew; but she was roused by the
+entrance of the landlady, who had come to reclaim the newspaper, there
+being three or four people in the taproom who were anxious to obtain a
+glimpse of it. Fortunately, the good woman was somewhat short-sighted,
+and perceived nothing out of the ordinary in her guest's appearance or
+demeanour. But her entrance broke the spell and served to recall
+Stephanie to the realities of her position.
+
+For a little while all thought of her husband had vanished from her
+mind. This second blow had smitten her so much more sharply than the
+first that the pain caused by the former seemed deadened thereby. But
+now that her waking trance was broken, the double nature of her
+calamity forced itself on her mind. "My father and my husband shut up
+in one prison!" she said to herself; and it was all she could do to
+refrain from bursting into laughter. For are there not some kinds of
+laughter the sources of which lie deeper than the deepest fountains of
+tears?
+
+Suddenly she started to her feet and pressed both hands to her
+forehead. "But why--why should my father have gone to Von Rosenberg to
+demand from him tidings of me, when I wrote to him from London telling
+him all that had happened to me and where I was? Can it be possible
+that my letter never reached him? Had he received it, there would have
+been no need for him to seek Von Rosenberg. Even after so long a time
+I could almost repeat my letter word for word. In it I told my father
+how I had left home with Von Rosenberg, but only after he had given me
+his solemn promise to make me his wife the moment we set foot in
+England. I told how, within an hour after our arrival in London, I had
+claimed the fulfilment of his promise, and how he had laughed me to
+scorn, thinking that he had now got me completely in his power. I told
+how I flung all Von Rosenberg's presents at his feet and left him
+there and then, and going out into the rainy streets of the great
+city, fled as for my life. I told how I hid for weeks in a garret,
+living on little more than bread and milk; and how at last, when my
+money was all gone, I found my way to the nearest cirque, and there
+obtained an engagement. All this I told my father in my letter, and
+then I prayed him to forgive me, and told him how I longed to go back
+to him and my mother. Weeks and months I waited with an aching heart
+for the answer which never came. Then I said to myself: 'My father
+will not forgive me. I shall never see him or my mother again.' But
+the letter never reached him. Had it done so he would not be where he
+is to-day." Tearless sobs shook her from head to foot.
+
+At this juncture in burst the landlady with an air of much importance.
+"As you have read the paper, I thought that maybe you would like to
+hear the news that one of the warders just off duty has brought us
+from the jail. Such times as we live in, to be sure!"
+
+"News--what news? asked Stephanie faintly.
+
+"John Myles has brought word--and he ought to know, if anybody
+does--that one of the prisoners--Crifton or Crofton by name--managed
+to break out of his cell in the night, and has got clear away. But
+that's not all by any means. The foreigner--him as accused himself in
+open court of the murder--was found dead this morning, poisoned by his
+own hand. The news will be all over England before nightfall--Gracious
+me, ma'am, whatever is the matter!--Mary, Eliza--quick, quick!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+Six weeks had elapsed since the events recorded in the last chapter.
+It was the evening of the return of Gerald Brooke and his wife to the
+home which they left under such tragic circumstances nearly a year
+before. Gerald's wound had proved a troublesome one; and after his
+release from custody, which was merely a matter of a couple of days,
+he had hurried up to London for the sake of obtaining the best medical
+advice, and there he had since remained; a few friends had met to
+welcome the home-comers; there was to be a grand reception by the
+tenants and others on the morrow.
+
+First and foremost there was our dear Miss Primby, not looking a day
+older than when we first made her acquaintance. She had been filling
+the post of mistress _pro tem_, at the Towers for the past month. She
+was of an anxious mind, and small responsibilities assumed a magnitude
+in her eyes they did not really possess, and thereby worried her not a
+little. She will be thankful when Clara resumes the reins of power,
+and she herself is allowed to subside into that life of tranquil
+obscurity in which she finds her only true happiness. There, too, deep
+in conversation, were Lady Fanny Dwyer and Mr. Tom Starkie. Her
+ladyship was husbandless as usual, but seemed in nowise put about
+thereby. She and Tom struck fire frequently in the arguments and
+disputations they were so fond of holding with each other; they
+agreed to differ and differed to agree, and perhaps were none the less
+good friends on that account.
+
+Flitting in and out and round about was Margery, spick and span in a
+new gown and gay ribbons, and a tiny apron all pockets and embroidery.
+For the first time in her life she had on a pair of French kid shoes,
+and she could not help stealing a glance at her feet now and again
+when no one was looking. She scarcely knew them for her own property,
+so changed an appearance did they present. This evening she was to
+enter on her new duties as "own maid" to her beloved mistress. Who so
+happy as Margery!
+
+The turret clock struck seven, but Mr. and Mrs. Brooke had not yet
+arrived. They were to drive down from London, and ought to have been
+here nearly an hour ago. Every minute Miss Primby grew more fidgety.
+Some accident must have happened, she felt sure. Perhaps the horses
+had run away; perhaps a wheel had come off the carriage; perhaps any
+of twenty possible mishaps had befallen the travellers. Fidgets are
+infectious, and before long Tom Starkie began to consult his watch
+every minute or two and to answer her ladyship at random. So many
+strange things had happened to Gerald during the last twelve months
+that anxiety on the part of his friends might be readily excused. The
+suspense was brought to an end by the sudden inroad of Margery, who
+had been down to the lodge, and now brought word that a carriage and
+pair had just turned the corner of the high-road half a mile away.
+This news sent every one trooping to the main entrance to the Towers.
+Not long had they to wait.
+
+Gerald still carried his arm in a sling, but his other hand was
+clasped tightly by his wife. Neither of them could speak as the
+carriage wheeled into the avenue and the old home they had at one time
+thought never to see again came into view. Nor was there much said for
+the first few moments after they alighted. A kiss, an embrace, a
+handgrip, told more than words: of tears the ladies shed not a few,
+but they were tears which had their source in the daysprings of
+happiness.
+
+Dinner was over and the company had returned to the drawing-room. The
+lamps had been lighted; but so soft and balmy was the evening that the
+long windows had been left wide open. Outside, terrace and garden and
+the miles of woodland stretching far beyond were bathed in a tender
+sheen of moonlight. Lady Fan was at the piano turning over some music.
+Mr. Tom Starkie was stooping over the canterbury, trying to find a
+certain piece of Schubert's he was desirous her ladyship should play.
+Clara and her aunt were talking together in a low voice on the sofa at
+the opposite side of the room. On the hearthrug, his back to the empty
+fireplace, stood Gerald. As he gazed on the pretty domestic scene
+before him, he could scarcely realise that all the strange events of
+the past year were anything more than the dream of a disordered brain.
+Could it be possible that only a few short weeks ago he who now stood
+there, so rich in all that makes life beautiful, had been a hunted
+felon on whose head a price had been set Incredible as it seemed, it
+was yet but too true. If proof positive were needed there was his arm
+still in a sling to furnish it. His eyes turned fondly to the sweet
+face of his wife, to which the sunshine and roses of other days were
+already beginning to come back. How brave, how loyal, how devoted she
+had been through all the dark days of his trouble! The care and love
+of a lifetime could scarcely repay her for all she had gone through
+for his sake. She had indeed been that crown of glory to her husband
+of which the sage made mention in days long ago.
+
+Clara, who while talking with her aunt had been absently gazing
+through the open window on to the terrace, suddenly gave utterance to
+a shriek, and springing to her feet, flung herself upon her husband's
+breast and clasped him round the neck with both arms. An instant later
+a pistol-shot rang through the dusk, and the bullet, passing within an
+inch or two of Gerald's head, crashed into the pier-glass behind. At
+the open window stood George Crofton, hatless and haggard, his white
+drawn features distorted by a scowl of fiendish malignity, the light
+of mingled hate and madness blazing in his eyes. Tom Starkie sprang
+forward as Crofton, with an imprecation on his lips, raised his
+revolver to fire again. But quicker even than Tom was a dark-cloaked
+figure which sprang suddenly into the range of vision framed by the
+window and dashed the uplifted weapon from Crofton's hand. For a
+second there was a cold gleam of steel in the moonlight and then the
+cloaked figure vanished us quickly as it had come. With a loud cry
+Crofton flung both arms above his head and staggered forward a pace or
+two into the room. "Gerald Brooke, you have won the game!" he
+exclaimed in hoarse accents; then making a clutch at his heart, he
+gave a great gasp and fell forward on his face. Gerald and Tom raised
+him. A tiny stream of blood trickled from his lips: he was stone-dead.
+
+The _portière_ was drawn aside, and all eyes turned on him who stepped
+into the room. It was the Russian, looking as cold, pale, and
+impassive as he always looked.
+
+"Karovsky, have you had any hand in this?" demanded Gerald sternly, as
+he pointed to the dead man.
+
+"I, my friend! what should I have to do with such _canaille?_"
+demanded the other with a shrug.
+
+Not more than half a minute had elapsed from the beginning to the end
+of the tragedy. Under the direction of Starkie, two or three of the
+servants who had hurried in now proceeded to remove the body to
+another room. While this was taking place the Russian drew Gerald
+aside. "Look here, Brooke," he said. "It is never wise to inquire too
+curiously into matters when no good end can be served thereby. This
+man had made up his mind to murder you. It was your life against his.
+It may be--mind you, I only say it may be--that that fact had come
+within the cognisance of the Brotherhood to which you and I have the
+honour to belong. If such were the case, they were bound by their laws
+to take his life rather than allow him to take yours. But this is
+nothing more than guesswork. In any case the scoundrel is dead
+and your life is safe; but it was touch-and-go with you, my
+friend--touch-and-go."
+
+The unexpected appearance of Karovsky following so closely on the grim
+scene just enacted before his eyes revived in Gerald's mind certain
+apprehensions that had slumbered almost undisturbed for many months.
+All his fears took flame at once as his memory travelled back to that
+April evening when Karovsky's ill-omened presence first crossed the
+threshold of Beechley Towers. What if, at some future day, when all
+the world seemed full of sunshine, he should suddenly appear again
+with a message of the same dire import!
+
+Gerald's heart seemed compressed as in a vice as this thought with all
+its dread significance forced itself on his mind. "Karovsky, he said
+in a dry hard voice, now that you are here, there is one question I
+would fain ask you."
+
+"I think I can guess the purport of it," answered the Russian with his
+imperturbable smile. "You need be under no fear, _mon ami_, that I or
+any other emissary of the Brotherhood will ever come to you again with
+evil tidings. The man who was condemned to die is dead, and although
+he did not meet his fate at your hands, that matters nothing. The
+sentence has been carried into effect, and such being the case, by the
+rules of the Supreme Tribunal you, Gerald Brooke, are absolved in full
+from ever being called upon again."
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Dead Reckoning, by T. W. Speight
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57737 ***