CHAPTER XI--_On the Terrace_
The home park at Prior's Tarrant lay bathed in the gentle glow of awaning moon, but the hoary facade of the mansion itself, and the terracethat skirted it, were in shadow. Up and down in front of the long row ofwindows a red spark passed and repassed with monotonous regularity--thelight of General Sadgrove's cigar as he waited in growing impatience forthe coming of the Duke.
After his social duties of the afternoon he had paid a hurried visit toBeaumanoir House to arrange for the Duke's departure in company with hisnew secretary, and then, armed with credentials from the Duke andheralded by a preparatory telegram, he had proceeded to theHertfordshire seat by an earlier train. He had good reasons fortraveling separately. And now the carriage which he had sent to thelittle wayside station of Tarrant Road two miles off was overdue, andthe General was beginning to chafe.
"I hope I haven't been too cocksure," he muttered, under hisclose-trimmed gray mustache. "I pinned my faith to Alec's companysecuring the fellow's safety on the journey at least."
He took another turn, and then, striking a vesta, looked at his watch.It was twenty minutes to eleven, whereas if those he expected had caughtthe 8.45 from St. Pancras, the carriage should have been back half anhour ago. He had hardly finished this calculation when from behind agigantic vase on the plinth of the steps leading to the lower level ofthe gardens there sounded the hiss of a cobra, thrice repeated.
"Azimoolah?" said the General, softly.
His faithful servitor glided forward, almost invisible in the shabbyblue tunic which had replaced the spotless white garments of GrosvenorGardens.
"A queer orderly-room, sahib, but not more so than some we wot of in theby-ways of the Deccan," he whispered, glancing up at the loom of thegreat mansion. "Well, I have done thy bidding, and have secured alodging in the village as a poor vendor of Oriental trifles.Furthermore, I have already done some good police work."
"You have discovered that there are strangers dwelling in the place?"
"Not so, sahib; but they have been _seen_ in the village," was thereply. "The woman with whom I have hired shelter says that two men,professing to be painters, were in the park all day painting the treesand the deer, for which purpose they had obtained permission of thesteward. Whence the men came the woman did not know, but they drove inin a dog-cart on the St. Albans road."
"Your informant could not tell you if the picture was finished--whetherthe men were coming again?" the General asked quickly.
It was too dark to see the Pathan's face, but a ring in his carefullymanaged undertone told of pride in the answer:
"_She_ could not tell _me_, sahib, but _I_ can tell _you_. The picturemakes the trees look like cauliflowers and the deer like unto swine.Moreover, it is not finished, and the men are coming again--to-morrow,perchance."
General Sadgrove congratulated himself on his foresight. He would havepreferred having Azimoolah in the house with him, but he had detachedhim from personal service, and had sent him down separately to pick upunconsidered trifles in the character of a traveling huckster. And theold sleuth-hound had done well, after only a couple of hours in theplace, in bringing this news of painters who could not paint, yet werereturning on the morrow. The General had such absolute trust in hishenchman's methods that he did not trouble to inquire how the news hadbeen acquired, thereby sparing Azimoolah the needless narrative of adeal with the landlady of the "Hanbury Arms," where the strangers hadput up their cart and lunched.
"Very good, old jungle-wolf," was all the comment he vouchsafed, and,making a mental note to see that the park was barred in future to thelimners of "deer like unto swine," he was passing on to furtherinstructions when the sound of wheels was heard far away down theavenue, and a moment later carriage-lamps twinkled into view round acorner in the drive.
"Here they come," he said. "Better make yourself scarce now, but staywithin call in case I want you."
Azimoolah vanished in the darkness, and the General strolled on to theend of the terrace, where the descent of a flight of steps brought himto the main entrance of the mansion. Stationing himself under theportico, he waited the arrival of the brougham, which presently swung toa standstill, while the big hall door was opened wide by ready hands,and shed a blaze of light on--an empty carriage.
"What's this mean, Perrett?" asked the General, outwardly calm for allthe big lump in his throat, and cool enough to remember the name of thegray-haired coachman, learned on his own drive from the station. "Hasnot his Grace arrived?"
"No, sir," replied the old servant, leaning from the box. "There hasbeen an accident to the 8.45. No one hurt, sir. No need for alarm, forhis Grace can't have been in the train."
"How do you get at that?" the General asked, doubtfully.
"The train was derailed between St. Albans and Harpenden, sir. Some ofthe passengers were shaken, but none badly injured; so the fast trainthat followed was run on to the up metals and brought them on, stoppingat every station. But none got out at Tarrant Road. James here,"indicating the footman, "ran along the train and looked into everycarriage, but he could not see the Duke."
And Perrett won golden opinions from the General by adding that, notsatisfied with that, he got the station-master to wire up the line tothe point of the accident, and received in reply the positive assurancethat no injured persons had been left behind. All had been forwarded totheir destinations by the succeeding fast train, which had been made"slow" for the purpose.
The General had already mastered the time-table, and knew that only onemore train from London would stop at Tarrant Road that night--the last,due at a quarter past midnight. The coachman therefore received, as hehad expected, orders to return to the station in time to meet thattrain, and the General, lighting a fresh cigar, strolled back to theterrace, where, in response to his low whistle, Azimoolah glided to hisside.
"There is work afoot," he said, briefly. "Canst, as of yore, do withoutsleep at a pinch?"
"Ay, and without food if it is so willed by Allah and the sahib."
Whereupon the General gave him the best directions he could to the sceneof the railway accident fifteen miles away, and bade him hie thitherwith all speed and glean particulars on the spot, especially with regardto the life they were pledged to defend and the nature of the accident,which might be no accident at all, but a move of their mysteriousantagonists. It needed but few words to make Azimoolah understand, andhe was gone--even before his hand, raised in unconscious salute, haddropped to his side.
The General fell to pacing to and fro again, striving to penetrate thenew situation that had arisen, and, as was his wont when matters wentwrong, not sparing himself much scathing criticism. For what had seemedto him good reason, he had put all his eggs in one basket--"gonenap"--as he reflected, on the Duke and Forsyth catching the 8.45, andnow disaster had overtaken that very train. If the village post-officehad been open, he would have wired to know if the Duke was still atBeaumanoir House, for everything hinged on whether he had started, andSadgrove felt an ominous presentiment that he had. The people he wasplaying against were not the sort to wreck a train without prospect ofadequate result.
Presently the twin lamps went twinkling down the avenue again, and theGeneral tried to comfort himself with the hope that when they reappearedBeaumanoir would be in the carriage. After all, Alec Forsyth was withhim. What had befallen the one should have befallen the other, and hehad the greatest confidence in his nephew's readiness and resource. Itmight even be, the General told himself, that Alec had suspected foulplay to the 8.45, and had purposely delayed departure--although, inconflict with this theory, arose the conjecture that in that case therailway people would have been warned, and there would have been no"accident" at all.
But what was the use of following threads which, in the absence of asubstantial starting-point, led nowhere? The worried veteran gave up thefutile task in favor of more practical work, and occupied himself inlearning the route by which the miscreants who had tried to suffocatethe Duke had reached t
he chimney-stack over his chamber. He found that adecayed buttress had given them access to the top of the ancientrefectory, whence an easy climb along a slanting gutter-pipe formed aroyal road to the roof of the main building.
The discovery, interesting in itself, was doubly so from the deductionto be made therefrom. The men who had climbed the roof would have beencaught like rats in a trap if the Duke had raised the alarm, and theymust either have had complete confidence in their ability to kill him bythe charcoal fumes, or, in the event of a hitch, in the Duke'sunwillingness to rouse the household.
"Egad! but they must have a nasty grip on him, to trust to his notsquealing under such provocation," the General murmured, as the sound ofwheels drew him at last from the age-worn buttress back to the portico."If he's turned up all right I'll try and persuade him to confide thesecret before we go to bed."
But when the brougham stopped, it disgorged no Duke, but only AlecForsyth, pale of face, and for once in his life half afraid of meetinghis uncle's expectant eye. But he kept his presence of mind sufficientlyto control his voice as he informed the General--the information beingreally for the servants who had appeared at the hall door--that hisGrace had not arrived. In silence the General led the way to thedining-room, and it was not until he had dismissed the butler with theassurance that they would need nothing more that night that he foundspeech in the curt monosyllable, "Well?"
For answer Alec handed him a telegraph form conveying the message:
"_To A. Forsyth, passenger by 8.45, St. Pancras terminus._
"_Come back at once, urgent. Am in great distress. Persons threatening Duke detained here. He will be quite safe if he goes on, though not if he returns with you--Sybil Hanbury, Beaumanoir House._"
The General glanced through it and gripped the position.
"Beaumanoir was in the 8.45?" he snapped. "That telegram is a forgery,and you show it to me to explain your separation from him?"
Forsyth bowed his head in grieved assent to both questions.
"I am, of course, to blame for trusting that infernal thing," he said."But I had better put you in possession of the facts at once, for untilI reached Tarrant Road station and learned of Beaumanoir's non-arrivalfrom the coachman I had hoped that he had come through all right. Iascertained at Harpenden, where I first heard of the smash, that no onehad suffered serious injury."
The facts as related by Forsyth were very simple in themselves, thoughgreatly enhancing the perplexity of the Duke's disappearance. The twofriends had left Beaumanoir House in a hansom, giving themselves, as hadbeen arranged, barely time enough to catch the train at St. Pancras.They had already taken their seats in an empty compartment on which theguard had, at their request, placed an "engaged" label, when atelegraph-boy came along the line of carriages, inquiring for Forsyth byname. On reading the message he had acted on the impulse of the moment,and asking the Duke to excuse him on the score of urgent privatebusiness, had left the train and driven back to Beaumanoir House, tofind the telegram repudiated by Sybil as not emanating from her and itscontents quite unfounded.
"I expect she let you have it," the General remarked grimly.
"She was a little cross," admitted Forsyth, flushing at thereminiscence. "I do not see, though, that I could have ignored whatpurported to be an appeal for assistance from a woman indistress--leaving aside my personal relations with her."
"Don't kick, laddie. I'm to blame for leaving our precious vanishingnobleman in the hands of a man in love. What next?"
"I hurried back to St. Pancras, and, just missing the fast train whichafterwards picked up the 8.45 passengers at the scene of the accident,had to kick my heels until the last train started. But it was noaccident, Uncle Jem. A big baulk of timber had been placed across therails, they told me at Harpenden."
The General knitted his brows and pondered the problem, presentlysuggesting tentatively that there was no proof that the Duke had afterall gone in the 8.45. He might, on finding himself suddenly deprived ofhis companion, have got out before it started. But this theory was atonce knocked on the head by Forsyth's assertion that the train had begunto move before he left the platform, and that Beaumanoir, still seatedin the "engaged" compartment, had waved him farewell. If the Duke hadnot got out at an intermediate station, he must have disappeared at theplace of derailment, the latter contingency being the more probable.Also the most alarming, because the stranded passengers had had to waitfor three-quarters of an hour at the side of the line in the dark, at aremote spot surrounded by woods.
"Humph! It looks very much as if they'd got him this time," was theGeneral's final comment. And he straightway walked over to the sideboardand poured himself out a glass of wine, motioning his nephew to joinhim. The action was significant of conclusiveness, and seemed to saythat, doom having overtaken the Duke, there was nothing more to be done.The old gentleman drank his wine slowly, then turned to Forsyth with thefierce exclamation:
"First time Jem Sadgrove was ever beaten by a woman. Mrs. TalmageEglinton, or whatever she may choose to call herself, has scored arecord."
"Mrs. Talmage Eglinton! What on earth has she got to do with it?" wasForsyth's astounded rejoinder.
A good deal, it appeared, according to the view which the General hadcontrived to piece together, and which, leaning against the sideboard,he proceeded to propound in spasmodic jerks. Beginning with adescription of how he had witnessed Beaumanoir's narrow escape of beingrun down by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's landau, he hinted at the dawn ofsuspicion in his own mind on finding her immediately afterwards callingat his house, yet strangely silent on having nearly killed a man in thestreets. Then, when Forsyth had consulted him after the midnight episodeat Beaumanoir House, and had told him of the Duke's visit on the day ofhis arrival from New York to someone occupying the next suite at thehotel to that of Mrs. Eglinton, he had been fairly certain of his clue.Having satisfied himself by personal observation that the ducal mansionin Piccadilly was closely watched, he had set himself the task ofestablishing a connection between the _soi-disant_ widow and herneighbor at the hotel--a task which had been successful so far asconvincing himself went.
Forsyth recognized that, for all the mischance of the evening, his unclehad put in some good detective work, and said so. "You must have beenquick, too," he added. "Is it permitted to ask how you managed it?"
"It was very simple," the General replied, with a relish for theremembrance. "I carted all the women off to call on the lady, and whilewe were there Azimoolah, in the character of an Indian rajah, blunderedinto Mr. Clinton Ziegler's rooms, which I had in the meanwhileascertained communicated with Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's. When theprearranged hubbub commenced she gave herself away by an unconsciousmovement to the communicating door, showing that she was in the habit ofusing it, unknown to the hotel people, who believe that they havedivided one big suite into two smaller ones let separately. She'sclever, and pulled herself together at once, but I had got what Iwanted--the fact that she was anxious about the rumpus my good old Khan,tricked out in a suit from Nathan's and a stage diamond, was raisingnext door."
"That seems convincing, certainly," said Forsyth.
"Azimoolah's experiences were even more so. Mr. Clinton Ziegler has someassociates with a very pretty way with them when Asiatic princes stumbleby chance into his rooms. Of course, it was Azimoolah's cue to be a bitboisterous and persistent, but they needn't have roused the tiger in himby giving him the congenial task of disarming them of two uncommonlymurderous knives. Funny thing is, that when I went in as an interpretingpeace-maker, I saw no sign of Ziegler, who, I gathered at the hotelbureau, is an invalid and never goes out. The two men in the room wereable-bodied fellows, fashionably dressed, but with that in their faceswhich there is no mistaking. The 'crime-look' is an open sign to thosewho know."
The General paused and looked at his nephew curiously. "Then I made afalse move," he went on--"a false move which may have wiped the seventhDuke of Beaumanoir out of the peerage. I told Mrs. Talmage Eglinton thatthe Du
ke was going down to Prior's Tarrant by the 8.45. Yes, you maywell stare, but I had an object. I also told her that you were goingdown with him, believing that that would secure you both a peacefuljourney; for, vulgarly speaking, the woman is glaringly sweet upon you,laddie. I ought to have given such a combination as she works withcredit for the cunning which drew you from your post."
Forsyth flushed with annoyance. It was not pleasant to hear that hisfriend's life might have been sacrificed through his uncle's perceptionof a feminine weakness which had irked him throughout the Londonseason--in fact, ever since Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had made hermysterious appearance on the fringe of society. The card, however, onwhich the General had staked and apparently lost had been distinctly"the game" if he, Forsyth, had only played up to it himself by stickinglike wax to poor hunted Beaumanoir.
But _why_ was Beaumanoir being hunted? That easy-mannered unfortunate,who had exchanged a life of reckless irresponsibility for sordid penury,and the latter for the headship of a historic house, had performed allthese _demivoltes_ without making a visible enemy save himself. Whyshould he have incurred a remorseless hatred which aimed at nothing lessthan his life?
"The Star-spangled Banner looms largely on the horizon of all this," theyoung man mused aloud. "Can you explain that phase of the mystery, UncleJem?"
"The hub of the wheel, I take it, is my old friend Leonidas Sherman, or,rather, the three millions sterling which he is on his way to thiscountry with," said the General briskly. "Big American robbery, workedby a disciplined gang, and somehow your pal Beaumanoir is entangled. Theday he was at our house he tried vaguely to warn Leonie. Hinted thatSherman should be warned to be careful."
Forsyth heard the amazing theory with an inward qualm lest his shrewdold relative should have hit on the solution of the puzzle, and itfilled him with greater apprehension than even the physical peril of theDuke had instilled. "Entanglement" in Beaumanoir's case could only meancomplicity, for if his knowledge of the scheme was not a guiltyknowledge, if he had become possessed of the secret accidentally, whydid he not invoke the aid of the police and expose the conspirators?Forsyth saw that the General read what was passing in his mind, and heclutched at the only visible straw in defence of his friend.
"If Beaumanoir was culpably implicated these scoundrels wouldn't want tokill him, any more than he would want to queer their game by havingSenator Sherman warned," he said.
"There you put your finger on the _crux_," replied the General, whodisliked the raising of questions which he could not answer.
"And," proceeded Forsyth, pursuing his slight advantage, "you wouldnever have got Beaumanoir to assent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton being askedhere if he had known her to be a professional criminal. The 'honor ofthe house,' as he calls it, is undoubtedly the motive of hisinexplicable silence. He would hardly compromise that august sentiment,for which he is apparently willing to die, by desecrating Prior'sTarrant with the presence of a woman likely to figure in thepolice-courts--a woman, too, who, if your theory is correct, has designsagainst the father of the girl for whom I veritably believe he has morethan a passing regard."
The General, secretly in danger of losing his temper--a thing he neverreally did--concealed his emotion by affecting to ruminate. The thoughtof his invitation to the dashing American, afterwards carelesslyendorsed by the Duke, restored his equanimity.
"That was a neat touch," he remarked meditatively as he selected a cigarfrom his case. "If his Grace is not cold meat, I'd give a good deal tobe living under the same roof with him and Mrs. Talmage Eglinton for afew days, with the prospect of Senator Sherman's arrival at the end ofthem."
He held the cigar he had chosen poised between finger and thumb, andsuddenly gazed round with a comical expression at the rich appurtenancesof the majestic dining-room. The maze of this latter-day pursuit had ledhim into unfamiliar paths. His ancient triumphs had been won under thefree sky, where he could unravel a knotty point with the aid of tobaccoat will; but now he wanted to smoke, and was confronted by sternlyrepressive ducal splendor.
"Mustn't light up here, I suppose," he grunted. "Let's get into the openand have a whiff. Yes, I know it's two o'clock, but we can't go to bed."
He moved to one of the French windows, and, parting the heavy curtains,unfastened the bolts and stepped out on to the terrace where he hadspent the earlier hours of the evening. Instantly both he and Forsyth,who followed close behind, became conscious of the sound of heavybreathing. As the shaft of light shot from the opened window they sawthat at the apex of the shaft, half way to the balustrade of theterrace, two men were locked together on the ground in a ferociousstruggle, while twenty paces off, in the shadow of the gray pile, thedim shapes of two other men paused irresolute, as if their advance hadbeen checked by the sudden opening of the window.
For two seconds General Sadgrove's eyes blazed along the line of light;then with a spring that would have done credit to one of half his age,he hurled himself upon the combatants, and selecting the topmost for hisonslaught, dragged him from the prone figure below.
"Get back to the window! Watch those other fellows!" he called to hisnephew, who was hurrying to his assistance. And Forsyth did as he wasbid, though he had hardly run back and put himself on guard when the twodistant prowlers vanished into the deeper shadows of the refectory wall.
With no gentle hand the General hauled his struggling captive towardsthe window. Half Forsyth's attention was diverted to the other party tothe fray, who was slowly rising from the ground, and the other half tothe dark end of the terrace, where the remaining pair had disappeared;and it was therefore not until the General had arrived, hanging like aterrier to his prisoner, that the obedient sentinel had eyes for them.But at last he had to stand aside to allow the veteran firebrand to dragthe fighting, kicking figure into the room, and then only did he noticedetails.
"You've got the wrong one!" he exclaimed. "Don't you see--that's yourown man, Azimoolah?"