Extracted from Adventure magazine, 1919-05-03, pp. 4–32. Illustrated by John R. Neill
THE FOUR INVISIBLES
A Complete Novelette
By Egerton Castle
CHAPTER I
THE END OF THE THREE CHOUGHS
AS THE brown dusk began to rise in the vale of Winterbourne Stanton, one Mr. Daniells—a person of some consequence in that retired nook of “Dorset Dear,” no less an one indeed than butler to Sir Jasper Ferrars of Stanton Manor—was leaning against a stile, lost in disconsolate contemplation. With hands in his breeches pockets, smoking an elfin pipe, he contemplated the cold ruin of what but a week before had been that well-found, alluring halfway-house known on the road from Poole to Salisbury as the old Three Choughs.
The destruction was complete; the desertion of the spot absolute. The whilom cozy inn and its self-supplying dependencies were razed to the ground, mere heaps of charred stone and all but consumed timber. The blast of an Autumnal storm—and the equinoctial gales of that year, 1817, had been the fiercest in living man's memory—had seen to it that not a foot should be spared. The Three Choughs had been the only duelling on the margin of the bare silent downs within a mile around—a place of pleasant, quietly moving life. But now the great stillness had crept down from the heights and held the spot in its own solemnity.
For many years Mr. Daniells, in his off time, had been a patron of that cheery house of call. Of late, indeed, his office at the manor having sunk into sinecure, he had become something like a standing institution much valued and respected in the snuggery. Now this solatium of a monotonous existence was snatched from him. But the long habit of a leisurely evening walk across corn-fields and meadows to the site of the kindly hostelry had not yet been shaken off. Every sundown since the catastrophe had seen Mr. Daniells at the stile, musing, Marius like, upon the ruins and ready to deplore the new melancholy of the vale with the passer-by.
That evening of October the third the road seemed more than usually deserted. The companionable Mr. Daniells had not had one opportunity for a word with any creature capable of the least interesting gossip, the thinnest discussion. The last cart, thoroughly apathetic, had rumbled past half an hour since. Over the fur rowed stubble on this side of the road, across the bare down stretching yonder away, deep silence reigned, broken only now and again, indeed emphasized, by the melancholy cry of plover or gull, the parting croak of rooks winging off to their roost in the margin woods of Stanton.
The lonely man's pipe had burned down to its end. He straightened himself, reluctantly preparing to retrace his way home toward supper—and another dull evening. But he checked himself; a wayfarer had appeared at the southern bend of the road.
Mr. Daniells leaned back once more, awaiting the event. Had it not been for this impulse of indolent curiosity, more than one episode of a startling nature would never have occurred in parts quite singularly remote from Dorset, and the course of several lives, perfectly unknown to Sir Jasper's butler, would have flowed into strangely different channels.
As the newcomer approached, Mr. Daniells discerned that it was a young man, dressed—as an eye well-accustomed to note such matters promptly recognized—in clothes of well-fitting, gentlemanly cut, if perhaps somewhat outworn, and—what seemed certainly an eccentricity in one thus attired—carrying an obviously irksome portmanteau. The wayfarer's gait indicated weariness. Presently he stopped and cast puzzled looks right and left, as a man might who has lost his bearings. Then, catching sight of the ruined heap, he advanced with quickened step.
After gazing a while, lost in a muse, he slowly turned round and, apparently for the first time noticing the still figure by the stile, addressed it in a voice and manner of easy civility, which confirmed the majordomo's first impression of his social status.
“Can you tell me—surely I'm not mistaken? This was the old inn.”
“Yes—the Three Choughs, sir,” Mr. Daniells replied, with alacrity detaching himself from his resting position to cross over. “Burned down, a week tomorrow. A great loss to the countryside, sir,” he added, touching his cap as if to bring to the stranger's notice the fact that he knew a gentleman, dust, travel-stain and personally carried portmanteau notwithstanding.
“I have no doubt of it,” said the young man. “And a loss to me. I knew the place well. An excellent inn. A loss to me,” he repeated, bringing back his gaze to the scene of destruction, “this evening of all times! I particularly wished to stay here tonight. The Salisbury coach dropped me at the crossway. This is cursed luck. I meant to sleep here tonight. And I am dog tired.”
He wheeled round again, cast his portmanteau on the roadside and sat down on the step of the stile. Then, folding his hands over his tucked-up knees, he resumed for a spell his discontented frowning at the ruins.
“The nearest place, I believe,” he said at last, “is Keyning, and that is”
“A good hour's walk and a bit more. It's—hem—bad luck, as you said, sir,” affirmed Mr. Daniells sympathetically. “I see you know this part of the country. The Harvest Moon, at Keyning, is not a bad lace. But it's not the Choughs. No, not by a long chalk, as they say. I, for one, have regretted the Choughs every evening these seven days, as much, if I may say so, as you do this evening, sir. The only spot, for one thing, where one had a chance of talking, easy-like, to some one after a lonely day. This is a lonely place, sir. And I”
“Ah, well, thank you, my friend,” the young man cut in, wearily getting up again and seizing his bag once more. He was in no mood for chatting, but still spoke pleasantly enough. “No use sitting here, cursing Fate. Good evening to you. It's getting late and I had best get along—unless,” he stopped upon a new thought, unless you could tell me of some decent cottage hereabouts, where they would give me a shake-down and a morsel of supper—for the price I would have paid at the Three Choughs.”
“WHY, sir—” Mr. Daniells hesitated—“it comes to me—that is, if you cared to accept of it—I could supply you with the accommodation myself. Either free—and welcome, sir. Or,” he hastened to add, “or, if you should prefer it, I say—on the same terms. The Choughs were never the house to fleece the traveler. And it's very lonesome at the hall,” he went on, almost pleading. “Dreary, I call it. It's close by, too”
“At the hall? Close by, did you say? Surely, you never mean Stanton?”
“Stanton, to be sure, sir. I see you know the country—Stanton Manor. Maybe you know Sir Jasper himself—knew him, I should say, for Heaven only knows what's become of Sir Jasper!”
There was a pause. And at last:
“By George!” said the traveler, and that was all.
For a while he remained, gazing absently at the other's face without seeing—he was looking beyond. At length, recovering himself:
“I really beg your pardon, my man,” he said; “my thoughts were far away. Sir Jasper? Yes, I know of Sir Jasper. He is from home, say you? And whom am I speaking to, if you don't mind telling me?”
“I am the butler. Daniells is my name, sir. There is only me and my wife left at the hall. The other servants have been gone these months. But I'm in charge. I think, in a manner of speaking, I may use my discretion. And I wouldn't like to leave a gentleman—for I can see with half an eye when a gentleman is a gentleman, as the saying goes, stranded on our road. And the hall is empty—oh, empty it is, sir—and that lonesome! And it lies closer than any place—now the old Choughs is gone. And I make bold to say, if Sir Jasper were at home, he would approve of my bringing in a gentleman in such circumstances.
A smile hovered for a moment over the young man's lips.
“So you really think, Mr. Daniells, that if Sir Jasper were at home, he would welcome me at Stanton—in the circumstances? I must take your word for that. I would have thanked you for the offer, even if it had not saved me another hour's tramp with this infernal bag. As it is, I accept gratefully—on the condition, however, that we look upon the hall, for tonight, as mine inn by the roadside—you take my meaning? And on you as the cheery landlord of—what shall we call it? The Stanton Arms.”
A grin of satisfaction illumined Mr. Daniells' face.
“That's right, sir,” he said briskly. “The wife happens to have a good cut of mutton on the roasting jack today. 'Pièce de resistance', as Sir Jasper called the joint. And trimmings, of course. You will be just in the nick, as the saying goes. Meanwhile, sir, allow me.”
And herewith the butler took possession of the portmanteau.
“Three good miles it is, from the crossways,” he remarked feelingly. “A good three miles to carry your own bag. It's only a quarter of an hour's walk, by the short-cut, to the hall. Over the stile, sir.”
Hoisting the package on his shoulder, he stepped a pace aside and respectfully indidicated the way. The young man permitted the ministration with a nonchalance that raised him yet a point higher in the servant's estimation.
They took their road across the stubble fields, the traveler absorbed in thought, the butler, a pace or so behind, restrained, however regretfully, by long habits of deference from intruding upon the silence. But as they reached the crest of the hill and, at a turn round the copse, the hall came into view a furlong away—one of those wonderful graystone manor-houses which are like gems set in the greening casket of Old World Wessex—the young man gave a subdued exclamation.
He halted a moment, both hands resting on his stick, to gaze upon the scene. A frown was upon his brow, and yet there was a kind of tender smile trembling on his lips. The emotion that had forced out the cry was not one that Mr. Daniells could rightly interpret, but it gave the man a welcome opening for renewed speech.
“Beautiful from here, isn't it, sir? I have sometimes wondered myself why they did not make the entrance to the park this way. Beautiful, I call it. But the avenue up to the hall—there, you see it on the left—is fine, sir, very fine. People do say that Stanton is one of the most perfect manor-houses in all Dorset. I'm sure I think so myself. Pity, isn't it, when you have such a place, to stay so long away from it?”
“So long.”
The young man spoke the words evenly. There was no inquiry in the tone; he seemed rather to be thinking aloud. But the talkative Mr. Daniells found in it sufficient encouragement, and, as they resumed their walk, he delivered himself of information which he considered must in itself be of interest to the guest of chance, whilst it might to some extent justify the irregular behavior of a servant offering the hospitality of his absent master's house to a stranger picked up on the roadside.
“Oh yes, long! Seems long to me, sir.”
It was now the fourth month since Sir Jasper, who up to that time had been leading his usual life, interested in his land, in his sport; entertaining a good deal in a bachelor way—“a widower, you must know, sir”—both his own neighbors and friends from town, had returned from a short absence abroad, oddly changed in his manner.
“Anxious, restless-like, if you know what I mean, sir. One moment one would have thought he was furious; another, that he was afraid—the queerest change, sir, as I have often said to many who came to inquire when Sir Jasper would be back. For it was the very next morning after his return that he went off again. He had never gone to bed! I was kept awake half the night, listening to him moving about the house. And he rang for me two hours before the usual time. He looked poorly—dreadful poorly—wanted his shaving-water, his boots at once and something—anything—to eat in his room. He who was always so very particular about a good breakfast. Thoroughly upset, he was. The look, as the books say, of one haunted”
“Haunted!” echoed the listener, and this time there was a ring in his voice.
The butler drew up level with him and, looking sideways at him, marked the sudden excitement in the face, the new color that had mounted to the forehead, and felt flattered at having at last, as he considered, evoked interest.
“Haunted?” repeated the traveler. “Haunted, did you say?” Then, as if catching himself up, “this is curious, Mr. Daniells—I caught your name right, didn't I? Interesting. Any reason that you could think of?”
“NO, SIR. As I said, Sir Jasper was unlike himself. No one had ever seen him nervous before. Angry, if you like—oh, angry enough—but never nervous. It was extraordinary. We all said so, in the servants' room, when he was gone. For, half an hour afterward, down he comes without a word to any one, but looking black and scared. I helped him on with his greatcoat—it was a cold morning—and I felt something hard in his side pockets. I knew it was his pistols. And he selected his strongest stick. His face had a mighty odd grin on it. Then he went out—still without a word.
“I could not make anything of it all. And I stood at the front door, watching him go down the avenue quickly. And then I saw—I never would have believed it if I had not seen it myself—I saw him—him such a sportsman—give a jump at the sound of a gunshot! Swerve right across the road, he did, as if he had been shot himself—and yet it was only the keeper at the rabbits. Then he cut through the meadow into the copse. And that, sir, is the last I have seen of Sir Jasper—four months agone.”
“Very strange,” was the comment of the listener.
The Autumnal twilight was fast deepening. The house, as they drew near, loomed almost black against the faint sheen of the sky. A single yellow speck, lamp or candle flame, piercing through one ground-floor window emphasized the gloom of the place.
“And have you not heard from your master since?” he resumed, after a spell.
“Oh, we did get a letter. But that was as strange—to use your own word, sir—as the rest, considering he had gone away on a sudden idea, as one might say, without an ounce of luggage—with just his stick and his pistols. It came the next day, merely a bit of a note, from Salisbury. It's kept in my cash-box, but I can tell every word of it, having puzzled over it often and often. And it's short enough.
“'Daniells,' it says, 'I am kept away on business. I can not say when I shall re turn. When I am able to come back, I shall let you know in good time. Meanwhile you are in charge at Stanton. I know I can trust you to look after my interests.' That was all, except the signature. You may believe, sir, that I keep that letter carefully. My credentials, in a manner of speaking.”
The young man had a faint smile. The speaker certainly allowed himself some latitude in his interpretation of responsibility. Well, Mr. Daniells was in better luck than he deserved; he might have lighted upon a less eligible guest for promiscuous entertainment. Through the darkness the servant could not mark the smile; he went on, as they now emerged from the side path upon the avenue:
“Yes, sir, that is all I know. And many a time I have had to tell the same to gentlemen neighbors who came to ask if we had any news. All I can say to them is that Sir Jasper is to let me hear in time when he means to come back. And 'twas all I could say to the servants who became out of hand and obstrolopous—if you'll excuse the word—there being nothing to do. And they began saying in their opinion Sir Jasper never would come back.
“Stanton, to be sure, was terrible dull, they said. And, besides, they said, it looked queer. And, one by one at first, then the rest all together—except Mr. Withall, the coachman—asked for their wages and took themselves off. Yes, dull enough it was, I must confess, sir. For Sir Jasper used to keep pleasant company. And I found it duller, as you may fancy, when it came to be left my lee-lone at the hall with Mrs. D., for she has not much talk in her, if you see what I mean.
“A good soul and capable, but her Bible and Fox's 'Martyrs' and her cupboards—that is mostly what she cares about. And Mr. Withall keeps to himself over the stables. The Choughs, that was a resource, in a manner of saying. And now that it's gone, you'll understand, sir, I spoke truth when I said it was dreary at Stanton.”
They had arrived at the porch. Mr. Daniells dropped the bag and rang the bell.
“I have the doors always locked, you see, sir, as in duty bound. But she won't be long.”
As they waited on the steps, the young man asked carelessly—
“But did you never write to any of your master's relatives for news of him?”
“Why, sir, as a matter of fact, I didn't know of any one to apply to. I did consult the vicar, and he advised me to communicate with Sir Jasper's lawyer.”
“Ah,” said the guest, in the darkness. “Of course. And—well?”
“I sent him a copy of my master's note. I told him about the servants and. asked his advice. He sent me some money, for we were running short—I having paid the wages myself—and he told me to keep exact accounts and wait, since it was clear, he said, as how Sir Jasper had left me in charge. And that was all. It's all right, Mrs. D., my dear. It's me and a gentleman.” This, in a louder tone, to some one who could dimly be seen peering out of a side window.
“So, sir,” said Mr. Daniells, “if you will please step in, we shall see what we can do for your entertainment. A gentleman, Mrs. D., who has to spend the night here,” he went on, addressing an old lady of wrinkled and somewhat severe countenance, who had opened the door and stood in the hall, a large flat silver candlestick in her hand.
She raised her eyebrows.
“For the night, Daniells?”
“For the night, my dear,” her lord replied in a voice of placid command. “And that means a bed prepared—in the blue room, I think—and a fire. Then some supper on a corner of the dining-room table. You will understand, sir, that—fair is fair, as the saying goes—we can not at short notice have things done as if Sir Jasper were in residence. But it will be as good, I hope, as the Three Choughs. The poor Choughs,” sighed Mr. Daniells. “Now then, Mrs. D., bustle along,” he cried, peremptorily, as the housekeeper, with dismayed countenance, still stood hesitating. “The gentleman is tired and hungry. And, while that's being done, sir, there is a fire in my office, if you don't mind waiting there.”
He stopped, listening. The front door was still wide open; through the night air came the sound of hoofs and wheels on the hard ground of the avenue.
“Why, bless my wig,” he said in a lower tone, “if there isn't a carriage coming up!”
CHAPTER II
THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
THE stranger and the majordomo stared at each other; the same idea had struck them both. Mr. Daniells, with dropping jaw, was scratching his cheek in perplexity. The irregular guest, however, seemed the more perturbed of the two; a heavy frown of annoyance darkened his face. The housekeeper was the first to speak.
“A carriage, at this hour—why this'll be the master at last!” she said and advanced to the door, just as the vehicle with a fine curve drew up by the porch. “Save us, no! Who, in the Lord's name can it be, Daniells?” she whispered, in awestruck amazement, looking over her shoulder at her husband and screening the light in her hand from a puff of wind.
The traveler alighted and, oddly painted on the darkness by a ray from the carriage lamp, stood giving directions to a servant in a foreign-looking livery, for the lifting down of sundry articles of luggage. He then turned round briskly and, with a clanking of spurs, came up the stone steps. At sight of him, the butler, who had pushed his way past his wife, gave an exclamation of surprized recognition—in which might have been detected a certain ring of relief.
“Ha, this is pleasant!” cried the newcomer in a voice of great heartiness. “This hospitable Stanton—the door wide open at the very sound of a traveler's wheels!” He spoke fluently, though with a perceptible outlandish accent. “I hope good Sir Jasper is well?”
“Sir Jasper—Captain?” said the majordomo, faltering. “Sir Jasper? Have you come on a visit, sir?”
“Yes, surely; he expects me, does he not?”
“Why, Captain Hanstedt, sir, Sir Jasper has been away since the end of May.”
Blank dismay overspread the visitor's countenance.
“Away? Der Teufel!" he exclaimed. And when the servant had laid bare the state of resent affairs at Stanton, “Most singular,” e went on. “Singular, most singular! Inexplicable. I must say. It was all arranged when I was here last—you remember, in March last—that when I returned to England in the Autumn, my first visit was to be with him, for the shooting. I wrote two days ago, to announce my coming on the fourth. What has happened—nothing bad I hope?”
Daniells took the candle from his wife's hand and brought its light over a heap of unopened letters on the hall table. The visitor bent down to look and turned one over with the end of his switch.
“There's mine,” he said and pondered. Then straightening himself, “What's to be done, now? It's the deuce of a long drive back to Salisbury.”
Here the other traveler, who, during the colloquy, had remained in the shadow, came back into the circle of light and remarked quietly:
“Well, Mr. Daniells, it really seems decreed that you are to dispense the hospitality of Sir Jasper's house to stranded wayfarers tonight.”
The miltary gentleman looked up quickly, first at the speaker, who answered the look by a slight, very easy bow, and then inquiringly at the butler.
“Ah, hum—yes,” said the latter, betraying some confusion. “Rather funny, isn't it, Captain Hanstedt, sir? This gentleman, a friend of Sir Jasper—” and as he said this there was appeal in his side-flung glance—“this gentleman who—well, like yourself, sir, did not know—in fact, sir, he is going to spend the night here, too. I mean, like yourself, as we hope, sir, if you don't mind hasty accomodation. Yes sir, as I was saying, I am sure Sir Jasper would have wished it. Please to step this way, gentle men. I'll send your carriage round to the stables, Captain. And the wife will see to the rooms.”
The two strangers found themselves ushered into a morning room, the coldness of which was soon relieved by the lighting of a few candles and the crackling of a fire ready laid.
For a while there was a thoughtful silence. The captain stood before the hearth, legs apart in approved dragoon style. His companion sank into an armchair with equally self-possessed manner. And they took stock of each other.
They were much of an age; both in their middle twenties, perhaps twenty-eight; both men of good looks and of breeding, albeit in ways markedly contrasting. The captain's undress frogged coat and strapped trousers proclaimed the half-pay officer; his mustache heralded cavalry service. Brilliant, mobile, black eyes and white teeth which showed in flashes between very red smiling lips, gave a look of intense vital energy to a full-blooded countenance which otherwise was set in easy-going geniality, suggestive above all things of the hearty bon-vivant.
The other had the clear-cut, regular, rather impassive cast of features which belongs to the best type of English manhood—the gray eyes of the self-reliant, looking straight and direct, observant, without being searching; the set lips, firm, rather disdainful, the lips of one who thinks more than he talks, who at least had rather listen at any time than hear his own voice. It was the face of a man who is perhaps best satisfied with his surrounding when alone.
After a minute or two of mutual contemplation in a silence broken only by the crackling of the firewood, the military gentleman moved away from the hearth and, planting himself a pace in front of the armchair, clicking his spurred heels together in the true German style of ceremony, bowed.
“Sir,” he began, “since our mutual friend, Sir Jasper, is so unfortunately absent, I introduce myself. Baron von Hanstedt, formerly captain in the Hanoverian hussars—the Death Hussars, Black Brunswickers, as you call them in England. Not your countryman, of course, but next door to it; we owe allegiance to the same king. Since the close of the late campaign an independent person traveling for my pleasure.”
This was spoken roundly, and, though it had begun formally enough, it ended with an ingratiating look which obviously requested a similar confidence. The Englishman rose and returned the bow, if somewhat less elaborately.
“DELIGHTED, I am sure,” he made answer with a pleasant smile that altered his whole countenance; the odd foreign mixture of geniality and ceremoniousness in this chance acquaintance had taken his fancy. “And I, sir—” but here there was a second's hesitation—“my name is Alfred Fendall. Like yourself, as it seems, a traveler, but a traveling student; yes—that can be taken as a description of my pursuits in life. Just returned from what some people would call the grand tour—if it had not been prolonged for so many years and gone through without the wearisomeness of the usual bear-leader. I have had a very tiring day,” he added half-apologetically, sinking down again into his armchair.
The other eyed him a moment with his broad smile; then, drawing a chair to the hearth, he stretched out his legs to the blaze.
“Now, this is pleasant! Very pleasant. There is no one whose company, I think, is so enjoyable as that of a traveled Englishman. I am in luck. For, in this curious accident, I was like to spend a rather tiresome evening—either to return to Salisbury behind a pair of tired horses, or to remain solus and bored in a deserted house. I am grateful to fate—or I should rather say, if you will allow me, grateful to you, Mr.—Mr.?”
“Fendall.”
“Ah yes, Mr. Fendall. Instead, I say, of solitude, which I hate. A meeting of friends. For do not the French have it, les amis de nos amis sont nos amis? And when I find myself, so to speak, your guest. It was your amiable suggestion to the butler. A friend of my old friend, Sir Jasper—why, a relative perhaps?”
The captain turned his head to look, with an engaging curiosity, at his companion.
“Yes—you are right. I may call myself a kind of relative. But I must decline any claim to the honor of being host at Stanton Manor. We are both guests here tonight. A quaint situation—guests of Mr. Daniells, the butler.”
There was something in the tone with which this was said, courteous though it was, that discouraged further inquiry. The other, as a man of the world, forthwith accepted the hint.
“Quaint, as you say, my dear Mr. Fendall. A picturesque adventure: the soldier, the student, the deserted mansion—quite in the manner of our Musaeus. You know his work, no doubt. And it would be altogether delightful, were it not, in its way, alarming. What can be the mystery of Sir Jasper's absence, for mystery there seems to be? Have you any idea—do you know anything?”
“Nothing beyond what you heard yourself just now. Indeed, you would seem to have been more intimate with him, these last years at least, than I.”
“Intimate? Well hardly that. He has shown me kindness; given me charming hospitality. Our actual acquaintance is not of long date. I must tell you that my father and he had been great friends in their young days, though I was unaware of the fact. When Sir Jasper met me in the hunting field last season and heard my name, he with the greatest hospitality invited me to make Stanton my quarters during the rest of the season—for old times' sake, as you say here. And, I must declare, a better host I never knew. . It is quite impossible that he could have forgotten our arrangements for the Autumn.”
The young man in the armchair remained silent, gazing pensively at the ceiling.
“I really think,” resumed the ex-Brunswicker, after a musing pause, “that something ought to be done to find out what has happened to our friend—that good Sir Jasper!” He got up rather excitedly. “I wish—but I am myself hardly in a position to—but you, now, a relative; would you not think of making inquiries?”
“I certainly intend to do so,” came the quiet answer. “In the ordinary course of things I should scarcely feel entitled to meddle in Sir Jasper's affairs. But these strange circumstances seem to justify inquiries at least. I shall go on to London tomorrow.”
“Yes, that's right. His bankers, his man of affairs, any one you can think of—his doctor, perhaps, if you can find him. Of course, I would gladly devote some of my time to help. But—a stranger, a foreigner—they would send me about my business. Do you know, Mr. Fendall, it relieves my mind greatly, this decision of yours? I am sure you will not mind letting me know of anything you may find out. I shall leave you my address in town.
“Well, I am relieved! Yes, I feel I can do better justice, now, to whatever cheer the butler may have to place before us in the name of his missing master. He has been giving himself considerable exercise on our behalf, judging by the echoes which resound from every quarter of this empty house, up-stairs and down-stairs—Yoicks! Here he comes!”
The speaker's joviality was here in strong contrast with the air of gravity with which he had referred to Sir Jasper.
When Mr. Daniells, rather red in the face, threw open the door with professional pomp and announced that supper was on the table, the soldier affectionately linked his arm to that of the student and marched with him into the dining-room, remarking in his rich guttural tones:
“So, my dear Mr.Fendall, procul atra cura, as we used to sing at Göttingen, my alma mater. For the nonce let us dismiss dull care. No use in anticipating tragedy—which after all may be but our fancy—is there? 'Pon honor, here is a recomforting sight at the end of a long day!”
Indeed Mr. Daniells had performed wonders. It was no mere corner of the table laid out for a snack; silver gleamed on the mahogany under the light of candelabra. The promised joint, flanked by the “trimmings,” cunningly dished so as to pass muster in the eyes of good-will as separate courses, supported by such cold viands as a ruthless ransacking of Mrs. D.'s larder could produce—the knuckle end of a gammon, a Blue Vinney cheese and so forth—now covered the board with more than sufficiency. The tankards were filled from the servants' hall cask of home-brewed; but topaz of sherry and ruby of port, glinting on the dresser, promised a congruous conclusion to a repast for the quality.
The Hanoverian took in the scene with a glance of appreciation. Having suggested by a courteous gesture that his new friend should undertake the carving, he himself, on the latter's equally courteous refusal, took up the honor of the table and went right willingly through the task. And he proved a notable trencherman; his voracious performance, after the manner of so many of his countrymen, interfered in no wise with the flow of conversation.
ABRILLIANT raconteur, he entertained his rather silent fellow guest—not to speak of the majordomo, for whom here was an even more welcome change in the dullness of times than he had hoped—with anecdotes of camp and court worthy of the fluent Gronow himself. Tales of student life—the high deeds of Kneipe and Mensur, the potting and dueling of the Gottingen good days, the brief, glorious career of the seven hundred noble Brunswickers, volunteers all, raised in mourning memory of the dead Duke William Augustus, the death of the leader in the Waterloo campaign—sundry personal feats and escapes of his own, relieved now and again by piquant allusions to adventures of galanterie during the late occupation of Paris by the allies—poured out from a seemingly inexhaustible fount.
“But come, my dear Fendall,” he said at last, “what ails you? I can not help perceiving that you are not quite une bonne fourchetie as one might expect to find a man with such square shoulders. You shame my appetite—and my garrulity. Not one personal confidence of your own adventures! What ails you? You young Englishmen, traveled as you may be, are an oddly buttoned-up generation. Sir Jasper now, I'll warrant, would have capped every one of my tales with some thrilling experience of his own young days—aye, and, pardi, of his later ones! Sir Jasper was good at a story, was he not, Daniells? Your name is Daniells, if I remember right?”
The butler paused in the act of removing the cloth, preparatory to placing the wine and walnuts on the mahogany.
“I do hope, Captain Hanstedt, sir,” said he, as if brought back in the midst of his satisfaction to a sense of his present uncertainty, “that when you say 'was', it does not mean that you believe—it sounds dreadful, in a manner of speaking!”
“Nay, nay, my good Daniells, by 'was good' I only mean when we last met here. I have no doubt he is still as good and will be so when he does return. We have to thank you for a remarkably creditable feast, and I hope I may sometime or other have an opportunity to tell him how capitally you have acted in his name. And, while we drink his wine, the next best thing to hearing him talk would be to hear about him. It may help us on our quest. For this gentleman, like me, means to institute inquiries about the mysterious disappearance—inquiries which, I must say, might well have begun sooner.
“But nunc est bibendum, Fendall; in other words, fill and pass the bottle! And I further propose this,” went on the baron, growing perceptibly excited, “in which I am sure you will concur; namely, that Daniells here, being vice-host tonight, take a seat and have his wine with us. Informal, but picturesque and pleasant! And this evening's rencounter is nothing if not picturesque; don't you think so?”
The young Englishman, who had first received this suggestion with something of a patrician frown, checked himself and said, with a transient smile:
“No, Baron, not vice-host as you, an invited guest of Sir Jasper may call him, but to me host entire. Landlord, in fact; Mr. Daniells will remember the bargain I made with him. I am here a guest at what we agreed to call the Stanton Arms. But none the less indebted to him for service much appreciated,” he added, as confusion again showed itself on the butler's face. “So we'll drink with him a bottle or two of his no doubt remarkable port, for the good of the house. Bring your chair round, Mr. Landlord!”
The words, pronounced in half-jocular, half-serious, but wholly gracious, manner, put the retainer at his ease once more and loosened a tongue that only professional decorum had held in restraint. There can be no doubt that Mr. Daniells, the disconsolate contemplator of the roadside ruin a few hours before, spent an evening more agreeable to his gregarious tastes than he had ever known, even on the best days of the Three Choughs.
But, however cleverly lured on by the captain, nothing came out which could throw any fresh light on the mystery of the squire's disappearance. And, after an hour's conviviality to which he, however, contributed scarcely more than the cracking of nuts and the pushing of the decanters along the polished wood, the guest of the portmanteau pleaded fatigue to the guest of the chaise and requested mine host, as he insisted on calling him, to show him his room.
When he had been duly installed in his apartment, made cheery enough by a wood fire, the young man drew an armchair by the hearth and lost himself in deep reverie.
For a while he could hear talk renewed in the dining-room below him, where his companion was, no doubt, discussing a fresh bottle with Sir Jasper's hospitable butler. But in time profound stillness settled upon the house. Yet the young man dreamed on, wide-eyed, while the flaming logs passed into red embers and then into a mere heap of white ash.
At last he roused himself and wearily prepared to turn into bed. But, as he tossed his coat upon a chair, under the impulse of a new thought he took up the candelabrum, the candles of which were already burned well nigh to the socket, opened the door and sallied into the passage.
Noiselessly, but without stealth, with all the decision of one well-acquainted with the place, he made his way to another room in the opposite wing of the house; and there, raising the light aloft, he stood a while gazing wistfully at the surroundings. It was a boudoir, obviously that of the late lady of the house, but still apparently kept up as one of the reception rooms.
A harp, with disused, curling strings, glinted pale golden in a comer. The white-paneled walls were covered with watercolors and pastels. Over the mantelpiece, however, hung a picture to which, after a moment, the night intruder drew near. It was the portrait of a young woman, painted in the manner of Romney, with a sad, rather weak, piteously tender face, a child on her lap and another playing at her knee.
His candles still held aloft, he gazed darkly for a long while. Presently something—perhaps a faint noise, perhaps that unmistakable feeling in silence and solitude of another living presence near—made him turn round sharply. The light fell upon a black figure framed in the white doorway. It was the Hanoverian, who was looking in with a smile that revealed the white row of teeth under the dark mustache—with shining eyes of singular expression.
The Englishman could not repress a start of anger; both the broadness of the grin and the fire of the eyes were more than the situation justified. Nevertheless, it was in a subdued voice that he said—
“So, it is you, Baron.”
“And so it is you, Mr. Fendall,” returned the other, deliberately stepping forward. “I heard some one pass my door—my room is in this passage—at a time when I thought everything was asleep in the house. I myself, somehow, am wakeful as the devil tonight—wine has at times that effect, and I had a fine whack of it! But you, so tired and all that? Do you know, as I watched you first prowling round the room, then petrified before that lady's picture, I thought you were sleep-walking. All my care was not to startle you. Perhaps you were, after all. That was a mighty jump you gave! Charming picture that, of the late Lady Ferrars,” he went on, drawing nearer and peering knowingly at the portrait.
The other made no response for a moment. At last he said with an effort at airiness:
“Baron, let's leave it at that. I mean, that I was sleep-walking, you awoke me out of my trance, and thereafter we both wisely sought our beds. I do not know what time it is, but I shall have to depart somewhat early in the morning and therefore”
“Right, my dear sir. Quite right. Indeed you look rather overdone,” said the Brunswicker, thickly. And, before the parting at his own door, he insisted with effusion upon shaking hands.
CHAPTER III
A LEAP IN THE DARK
“NOW, Landlord, I believe this will cover my shot. I'll not trouble you for a reckoning,” said the young man, with a cheeriness perhaps a little forced, placing a guinea upon the table which Mr. Daniells was laying out for breakfast.
The majordomo pocketed the coin, smiling shamefacedly.
“Since you will have your little joke about landlords, sir. I am sure Sir Jasper”
“Mr. Daniells, that will be a point to settle between you and Sir Jasper. It was your hospitality I enjoyed, not his. No doubt you can oblige me further—in the matter of a conveyance. Surely you can find something that will carry me and my bag as far as Blandford or Salisbury—any place where I can get coach for London.”
“Salisbury?” The captain's voice rang hearty and guttural as he put in an appearance in the dining-room. “I am for Salisbury myself—London, too, for that matter, I hope—tonight. My dear sir, why not take your seat with me? Nay, nay, no ceremony! I have drawn blank at my old friend's; let me have in compensation a day in the company of my new one—if you will permit me so to call Mr. Fendall—of whom I have by no means seen as much as I would like. Yes? It must be yes. So—that is pleasant. Pray,” turning to the majordomo, “warn the post boy and my servant to be round at ten with the chaise. That is settled,” he went on, to bear down any remains of hesitation on the Englishman's part.
Thus it came to pass that, an hour later, the two guests of chance were bowling along the white road between the folds of the downs on their way to London together.
The last words of the captain to the majordomo, who, although generously tipped, bowed them disconsolately enough out of Stanton Manor, had been exuberantly optimistic:
“Tell Sir Jasper when he does return, as I trust he will soon, that I shall be in London till the fifteenth and that I hope to hear from him before that. I shall be at Long's Hotel, Bond Street.”
Not content, however,with verbal instructions, he had with Teutonic thoroughness taken the precaution to hand the servant a slip of paper with the address and the date clearly written.
Then he had settled himself down with great show of comfort in his seat and selected a cigar from his traveling-case.
“Well, my dear Mr. Fendall,” he began, between two puffs, “we are”
“One moment, Baron,” interrupted the young man. “Now that we are free of that excellent but rather foolish fellow's presence and that I am, as it seems, to pursue the pleasure of your acquaintance, it is necessary that I should clear myself at once of the discourtesy of sailing in your company under assumed colors.”
The Hanoverian paused in his puffing, the tinder-box still poised in the air, and shot at his companion a smiling, inquisitive glance.
“My name is not Fendall, but Ferrars. The house in which we have spent the night is that of my father.”
“So? Most interesting. Gad, this is indeed charming! Quite picturesque. Romantic—in the style of our Kotzebue's dramas. The wandering heir returning to the deserted ancestral mansion. Do you know, my dear sir, I had something of a vague idea, last night—some glimmering—as I saw you so pensive at the supper-table, gazing with a kind of melancholy abstraction at the old family pictures whilst I was rattling with my yarns. Yes, and again in front of that delicious portrait—but pray, pray go on,” he urged, as the other made a deprecating gesture.
“I have a rooted dislike to talking of myself and my own affairs,” the Englishman resumed gravely. “You will, I am sure, forgive me if I only say just as much as will explain my presence in a house which I thought I would never enter again. And you will, I hope, excuse the deception to which I deemed it advisable to have recourse. You knew, possibly, that Sir Jasper had a son.”
“I knew there was a son somewhere in the world. Yes. And I knew there was an estrangement, for, on making inquiries as to the heir of my friend's beautiful estate such as civility demanded, Sir Jasper gave me to understand it was a subject which he declined to enter upon. I gathered, however, that he knew absolutely nothing of your whereabouts and did not wish to know.”
“Estrangement!” murmured Mr. Ferrars with bitterness. “I will not enter into details; it was one of those horrible tragedies that are only known to the son who has had to protect his mother against the cold cruelty of his father. She died of it at last—that sweet creature you found me gazing at. But enough of that. When she died, there rose between my father and me one of those quarrels which might easily end in murder.
“It did not so end, thank God! But it ended in my leaving the home of my people for ever—aye, and even the land of my birth, until yesterday—disinherited, of course, to the last shilling. All this is common knowledge in the county, and I have no scruple in speaking of it.”
“Yes,” said the Brunswicker with deep sympathy. “And, I may tell you now, I had heard as much.”
“Then the subject is closed. Now, as to my return and my presence at Stanton under an assumed name. A letter reached me in France some days ago from the attorney who looks after my affairs over here—I mean the little money settled upon me from my mother's side, a modest pittance enough, on which, however, I am able to live—a letter telling me of the incomprehensible disappearance of my father.
“Stay—I may as well show it to you, though it throws little light upon the matter, because, oddly enough, there is in it a reference, perfectly mysterious to me, to that date which you mentioned just now to Daniells as that of your own departure. Here it is,” he added, pulling out a paper from his pocketbook.
THE captain laid down his cigar, unfolded the sheet and read out under his voice:
Wapshot & Jones
Gray's Inn Square
Sept. 22nd, 1817.
Dear Mr. Ferrars—
We hope this may reach you without undue delay, wherever you may be. We send it to the last address known. This morning we had a call from Mr. Johnstone, of Johnstone & Mesurier, your father's attorneys, to inquire whether we were in position to communicate immediately with you. He appeared to be in some anxiety concerning Sir Jasper, who has not been heard of for a considerable time.
We were not able, of course, to give him any information; nor do we surmise that you would be more likely, given the circumstances, to do so. Mr. Johnstone, then, though in an informal manner, suggested that we should be acting in your interest if we could induce you—though for what reason he was not at liberty to say—to make sure to be in London some time before the fifteenth of October; and, indeed, not to fail to call at our office early on the morning of that date, when, should your father's absence be prolonged, your own presence at Messrs. Johnstone & Mesurier's office would be a matter of vital importance to you.
We think that the suggestion concerning your attendance here on the day mentioned, even if it should not lead to anything definite, is of sufficient moment to merit all your serious attention. We shall be, in any case, pleased to consider the matter with you at any time.
We remain, etc., etc.
“Singular,” murmured the captain, after the perusal. Then, looking steadily into his traveling companion's eyes. “And you have no idea of the business to be transacted on the fifteenth?”
“Not the remotest,” answered Ferrars, taking back the letter. “But, so long as I am fully assured that I shall not be brought face to face with my father, I shall of course attend if called upon.”
The other fell back into his seat and resumed his cigar, musingly.
“That letter,” pursued Ferrars, “reached me three days ago in Normandy. I was near Cherbourg. On inquiring about any boat likely to sail for England, I heard of one bound for Poole. It gave me the idea of passing through Dorset on my way to Lon don and finding out discreetly, for myself, what was known of my father's movements. I meant to take my quarters last night at a certain little inn near Stanton, where the people and I had been on a friendly footing in the old days.
“It turned out the inn was no longer there. The rest you heard: how that fellow Daniells, my father's present butler—the old one whom I remembered from a child left when my mother died—so whimsically offered me hospitality in what had been and ought still to be my own home. And now you will understand how, being discovered there in such irregular circumstances by a friend of Sir Jasper, I thought it wiser, both for Daniells' sake and for my own, to give the first name that suggested itself as fitting the initials on my portmanteau. No further apology is needed, I trust?” he added, marking, with a slight frown, the abstraction into which his companion seemed to have fallen.
“Ah, non certes!” cried the other, starting from his reverie. “Forgive my French—I am apt to think in different languages, though by rights it ought always to be in German. No, no; the whole thing, about this bizarre meeting of ours, is quite clear. Clear as crystal. My dear Mr. Ferrars, I am a friend of your father's—I know you will not expect me to pass any judgment on him. But I trust you will allow me the pleasure of shaking hands, knowingly now, with his son.”
The ceremony being performed, with great cordiality on the foreigner's part and indulgent compliance on that of the Englishman, the subject of family affairs was by tacit accord dropped for the rest of the journey. Dinner at the Black Horse, Salisbury, a pint of Madeira at the Fleur-de-Lys, Winchester, a quart of old ale and biscuits at the White Hart, Bagshot, broke the ten hours of steady posting which brought them at last to town.
“Where, by the way, shall I deposit you?” had asked the captain, as a kind of conclusion to a prolonged spell of meditation, as they crossed Kingston Bridge. “I have my own quarters at Long's. But, unless you have bespoken a room there, I doubt”
Mr. Ferrars had thought to detect a hint and answered:
“I used to patronize the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden. If you don't mind going a trifle out of your way.”
“The Piazza, by all means, my dear sir.” And leaning out of the chaise the baron had given the order to the post-boy.
When they parted under the ancient dimly-lit arcades of Inigo Jones, at the door of the hostelry so dear to the wit and fashion of the late century, now wearing into respectable decadence, the Brunswicker remarked at his most genial:
“Let me hope, my dear Mr. Ferrars, that we are gens de revue, as the French have it. I, myself, have much to do, and, as for you, tomorrow will doubtless prove a busy day. But you conceive my interest. May I not come and—say, smoke a cigar with you in the evening and hear what fortune you have met with in your inquiries?”
Mr. Ferrars pondered a moment.
“If you will partake of a quiet dinner with me, I shall be delighted. I have no great hopes, being, as you know, so trammeled. But we may consult. And, meanwhile, I remain greatly obliged to you.”
AT SEVEN on the following day Baron von Hanstedt was ushered into the dining-room of the Piazza—a notable dandy, whose brilliant appearance and manner distinctly raised the modest visitor of the small valise in the manager's estimation.
“I will not conceal my anxiety,” he said, from the moment of unfolding his napkin as they sat down in a remote corner of the somber dining-room. “Any news of Sir Jasper?”
“None that would appear to bring us nearer a solution of the mystery,” said the son in a tone of some weariness. “The only satisfactory thing I was able to find out is that there is, after all, reason to believe that my father's prolonged absence is not necessarily the result of any fatal accident.”
“Aha—so?” The baron paused, with his glass half-way to his lips. There was a glint of intense interest in his eye. He added promptly, “Well, that is at least a comfort. A great comfort. But the reason, the welcome reason”
“I called at the bank. The manager, naturally enough, was disinclined to reveal anything concerning a customer's affairs. But, on my urging the anxiety I felt that there might be some sinister meaning to that total disappearance, he consented to reassure me by saying that the absence was presumably intentional. For it appears that in May last, the date mentioned by Daniells, Sir Jasper had hurriedly called at the bank and drawn a considerable sum. And this might well look, said the manager, as if he had contemplated a prolonged absence, a journey, perhaps. And then, as I still felt doubtful, he advised me to dismiss all serious anxiety at least until the fifteenth.”
“Ah, bah! The fifteenth again,” murmured the Brunswicker, sipping his wine with half-closed eyes.
“For,” went on the Englishman, “that was a date on which Sir Jasper's attendance at the bank would be a matter of importance. But, if he was not heard of by that time, there might indeed be cause for some alarm. Then, the manager said, advice might with propriety be sought from Bow Street. But he confidently trusted that would not be required.”
“Bow Street#Law? Gad, no, no; let us also trust there will be no need—and is that all?”
“That is all. For Mr. Wapshot, on whom I had called previously, had no more to tell than what was mentioned in his letter. Nor could I gather anything from Mr. Johnstone—my father's own lawyer—whom I thought it wiser also to visit. He seemed, it is true, rather concerned; but he pointed out, rightly enough, that, considering the peculiar relation in which I stood now with his client, he was not at liberty to discuss his affairs and movements with me. Nevertheless, when, after a very brief interview, I was taking my departure, he reminded me, though with some hesitation, of the advisability of my being within reach of summons on the morning of the fifteenth.”
“The fifteenth,” repeated von Hanstedt with an air of intense mystification. “A red-letter day, it would seem, in Sir Jasper's diary! Well, I see nothing for either you or me to do than to wait for that fifteenth.”
“There is, of course, the alternative of applying at once to Bow Street. In fact I had almost made up my mind to go there in the morning.”
The other looked up quickly with an air of grave concern.
“So? Well, you are the son. I am, at best, but a new friend. I would not take on myself to advise. But isn't there an old saw about thrusting fingers between the bark and the tree? The banker and this Mr. Johnstone, sound men of business, they both suggested waiting for a few days. I think—yes, I think their opinion is reassuring. Once set the Bow Street Red-breasts on the run and God knows where they may lead you!
“Perhaps face to face with a man full of ill-feeling against his son—a man furious, possibly, to find himself run down when his purpose, only known to himself, was to be left alone till a certain date. However, as I said, it is not for me to advise.”
And with his man-of-the-world air, the air of one who knows the right moment to drop a topic, the, baron led the talk into new channels. When he took his leave at a discreetly early hour, he remarked in a tone of affectionate interest:
“We shall, I fear, not meet again for some time. I am much engaged. But a note, should you have occasion, sent to Long's, will always reach me. Should you have any news, I need scarce say how interested I shall be.”
This might be interpreted as a polite farewell. Mr. Ferrars, at any rate, when he returned to his table, after escorting his guest to the door under the arcades, and, toying with a final glass of wine, gave himself up to doubtful meditations upon his future course, came to the conclusion that he had seen the last of Baron von Hanstedt.
THE next morning, however, brought a prompt denial to that rash conclusion. After a night of uneasy wakefulness he was aroused from a late slumber by the entrance of a waiter:
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said the man, “there is a gentleman here, who says he must see you at once. Most important he says. And though I told him”
A lusty voice was heard from the passage.
“Never mind; I will explain. May I come in, Mr. Ferrars?” And, without waiting for the permission, the baron strode in with the well-known click of spurs. “The matter is one of such moment, I know you will forgive this rude intrusion.”
He gave an imperious nod to the waiter, who, after leering curiously at the gentleman caught still abed, obediently departed—firmly convinced that here was a coming instance of pistols for two that day.
“The fact is, my dear sir,” went on the visitor, “I have the most extraordinary news.”
“For me?” said Ferrars, with no great display of interest.
In truth, in his still drowsy state what he chiefly felt was resentment. He sat up, bare legs dangling over the bedside, and perfunctorily indicated a chair. The baron, however, remained standing, his attitude manifesting an evident state of excitement.
“For you,” he said, pulling out some papers from his breast pocket. “This disappearance of your father”
“Ah, my father still.”
“Yes—there is after all a mystery about it. But I think we are near solving it.”
“We, Baron?”
“We, I said; but it will rather be you, or so I hope. And I am thankful I was able to find you in time, for the matter appears pressing. Very pressing. Now listen—or rather, read this first. It is from the butler at Stanton. I found it last night at my hotel.”
The young man took an ill-scrawled sheet and read:
Captain Hansted, honored sir—
I forward a letter which arrived here almost as soon as you had left. As it is marked urgent, I took it at once to the post-office, and I trust it will reach your hand in good time. It was luck, in a respectful manner of speaking, that you thought of leaving your address. Your obedient servant,
W. Daniells.
He handed back the note and took another that was held out to him. It was penned in a slender foreign hand. And this is what he read, in French:
My good friend—
I want help badly and soon and you are the only one of whom I can think in my extremity. I am ill, very ill. I am detained in some place unknown to me—all I do know is that it is somewhere near Versailles—sequestered by people also unknown to me. What their purpose may be, I can only guess—and that is to prevent me being in London on the fifteenth, a day of much importance to me; if indeed they mean to let me out of this place alive.
But I, somehow, am in fear they mean to do me to death after all. A natural death it may seem, but it will be murder. Murder, if some one does not come to my help! I have, through God's mercy, found a secret friend in my nurse—for they pretend to nurse me. But she also is helpless and terrorized. She writes this for me; I am too weak, and almost blind. It is horrible. I bethought myself of you and remembered you might be found at Stanton.
Pray God this may reach you, and, for the love of heaven, come at once to Versailles! Show yourself near the north confessional in the Church of Saint Louis any day at first mass; she will know you. And, at any rate, you will know her by her blue linen dress and the gray veil over her head. She will tell you the house. Then you must act, as best you may devise, to get me out of this living tomb. Come at once, and may you find me still alive.
The letter was signed in another hand, larger and trembling. The young man looked up in blank dismay.
“Yes,” he said in a low voice, “this is my father's signature. And, after examining it again for a spell, “He was indeed in a weak state when he signed this. What is to be done? What will you do”
“What would I do,” said the baron excitedly, “if I were free—but I am not. Why, post to Paris at once, obtain police aid, meet the messenger, find out the house—and the rest à la grāce de Dieu! My poor old friend! But it is quite impossible for me to leave England just now. I have business of too great importance. I was in despair. Then I thought of you. You, his son, singularly met by Providential chance. His son, for all your estrangement, you are here; you will—you must—act in my stead. You will have even more power than a stranger.
“There is no time to spare. Nay, listen to me—and let me urge you to dress, as quickly as you can. I shall, if you will allow me, even serve with a valet. Yes, I have thought the whole matter out. I called on my way here at the Golden Cross. The Dover coach had already left, but it can still be done by posting. I ascertained that the packet leaves harbor at six in the morning. Let me ring for your shaving-water. Yes, here is the bell. So. By posting, I say; I have ordered a chaise for eleven.
“With good luck you can be in Dover before midnight. Then for Calais—and without a stop to Paris. And my servant will see to everything for you; I have warned him, just as for myself—a clever fellow, a Frenchman and knows Paris. Within forty-eight hours you shall alight at the Bureau de la Sûreté, take chief of police's sanction—and act. Act without loss of an hour! Already a day has been wasted.
“As for expense—it will be a trifle to what I should lose by absenting myself—you will, of course, let me discharge that. You need not scruple; if, as I hope to God, we rescue Sir Jasper, he will repay the debt. Here are the traveling funds.”
He produced a bundle of bank-notes which he slapped upon the table.
“Should you require more, you can write to me. You see I have thought of everything. You have your passports?”
While the Brunswicker rattled on sanguine, voluble, Ferrars—awake now with a vengeance—flung the letter on the table and sprang out of bed; he submitted to his friend's ministrations, in non-committal silence.
“My father, in truth, was in dire state when he wrote his name after that mysterious message. Something must be done. I have no doubt,” he said, as he accepted the razor which the other had been stropping for him, “that Sir Jasper would rather remain indebted to you than to me for his rescue—if it is to prove a rescue. Did you not yourself advise me against intermeddling?”
“Nay, nay. This is an appeal, a piteous appeal. It must be answered. I am tied here, as I told you, and you are your own master. And, whatever has happened between you, in such a case as this, you, the son, can not refuse.”
“I will go,” said Ferrars quietly.
At which the baron gave a noisy sigh of relief.
The young man completed his toilet and packed his valise, listening without further comment to suggestions and advice about his journey. At last he took up the notes, counted them and consigned them, together with the letter, to his wallet.
“I will account for this on my return,” he said simply. “Without it I could scarce have left this day.”
“Ah, my dear fellow, never mind such details. The journey is for you a labor of duty. As for me, I can not tell you what a relief it is—a service for which, happen what may, I shall ever be grateful.”
CHAPTER IV
THE FOREST OF MONTMORENCY
“DOUBT indulged,” as one learned in life's philosophy has written, “soon becomes doubt realized.” It was during the last stage but one on the weary, bone shaking, paved route royale from Calais to Paris that lowering doubt first arose like a cloud on the fringe of Ferrars' meditation.
The mysterious nature of the errand upon which he had permitted himself to be jockeyed assumed suddenly a new color. It was an errand, whatever way he looked at it, the issue of which was bound to be painful. Whether he failed altogether and came too late to prevent the mischief, or he succeeded, only to be brought into renewed relations that were intolerable to him; whether his father proved grateful, and through gratitude inclined to reconciliation—or—which was quite as likely—sullen in suppressed resentment, the meeting could only bring renewed bitterness.
But now, from one moment to the other, a strange sense of distrust—as if it were the sudden coalescence of many vague, elusive suspicions—encompassed him like some kind of intangible net. The fifteenth—what was it that hinged on that date which loomed at all points of the compass in this tenebrous affair? All at once a conviction asserted itself that the transaction of that day, whatever it might be, was as well known to the plausible baron as to Johnstone the attorney—aye, as to Sir Jasper himself. Stay—from the advice he had received, it might be quite as important to Sir Jasper's son to be in London on that day. And yet he was flying on God knew what bootless chase.
“By George,” thought Ferrars, “sent out of the way! But that letter?”
He pulled the sheet out of the wallet. Many a time, pondering over the incomprehensible affair which had hurled him upon his travels, had he conned it impatiently, in despair of ever fitting an acceptable explanation to it. But never before had it occurred to him to note that the address flap had been tom off the sheet. What proof was there—and at the thought he sat up rigidly in the jolting chaise—that it really came from France?
“You will, of course, show it to the Chef de la Sûreté,” the baron had said, as he had closed the carriage door at the start of this hustled journey. Was that a blind? What proof that the letter really came from Sir Jasper? The handwriting of a long letter can scarce be forged—but a mere signature.…
He looked at it again by the waning light. Yes—it was Sir Jasper's characteristic way of signing. And the rather uncertain tracing of some letters might be accounted for by the feebleness of a sick man, his alleged impaired eyesight—unless both the message and the signature were alike a fraud. Why, how well might the whole affair be a fraud! A plot. A clever plot, boldly devised, to send out of the way some inconvenient witness. Witness of what? There was no clue to that. But he had literally been jockeyed out of England—hustled away with a plausible tale. Plausible?
Nay; a palpable cock-and-bull story, a manifest rigamarole, that ought not to have taken in the veriest tyro in life's arena! And Ferrars was no tyro. But he had been blinded by the appeal to filial sacrifice—and never allowed an hour to think, to weigh. Hustled—aye, and duly shepherded! That servant, too, provided so obligingly, so pat, by the unknown baron—that Jacques, that smiling, well-mannered Jacques, who had looked so attentively after his charge.…
Now, thinking of it from a new standpoint, Jacques' face and manner, his voice especially, were hardly convincing. But, if not a servant, what?
It came back to Ferrars' puzzled mind that at Beaumont, the last posting change they had left, Jacques had seemed to be on odd terms of acquaintance with one of the postilions in waiting. He had insisted upon this particular man undertaking the last stage. There might be nothing in that, and again there might be—what? The traveler leaned forward to have a look through the front port-hole of the chaise at the countenance of the driver.
But dusk had gathered. And in the shadow of the Montmorency Forest, which the road was then skirting, all that could be seen was the outline of the two men with heads drawn together, apparently engaged in close confabulation. Presently Jacques rose to his feet on the box and turned round, as if to survey the road in the rear.
There is no saying what trifling gesture or word in one already suspected may be sufficient to reveal a sinister purpose. Something in the nod which after a moment the man gave to his companion brought a conviction to Ferrars that mischief was afoot. Instinctively he groped for and seized his sword-stick, a weapon upon which in his continental travels he had learned to rely. And, indeed, almost on the instant the mischief he had so inexplicably anticipated was about him.
It came with such bewildering rapidity that it was only some considerable time later that he was able to connect in their proper sequence the things he saw, what befell him and what he himself did during the next few seconds.
Template:DIHE chaise was suddenly pulled up. Amid shouts and curses from the two men outside the horses fell to frantic plunging and kicking. He was thrown off his seat. Before, in the confined space, he could straighten himself again, the door was torn open, and Jacques was dragging him out with fierce, unsparing hands and wild words of abjuration:
“Quick, sir! Quick—come away! The horses are mad. Not a second! He can not hold them another moment!”
Recovering his feet on the roadway, having been wrenched rather than helped out of the rocking chaise, the traveler could indeed, through the gloom, see the post-boy—who, like the other, had escaped from the box—straining, almost doubled up, at the long reins.
“He's out!” cried Jacques from behind.
On the words the other let go the reins and then did an unimaginable thing; he picked up the whip and furiously lashed at the horses, which, now released, leaped forward, almost overturning the carriage, still pursued into the darkness by the relentless flogging.
Ferrars, though dazed, turned round, impelled by a sense that the danger was now behind him—only just in time to avoid, by a swift instinctive jerk aside, the full force of a blow the nature of which he could not realize. It might have been the clawing of a panther but for its extraordinary weight—such a weight that, had it taken him on the forehead, it would infallibly have felled him to the ground.
As it was, it only tore his cheek and mercifully fell short of his shoulder. Something loose and dangling was in his assailant's hand. As it was savagely raised for a new crash, the young man, not inexpert in the arts of fight, sprang a pace sideways; out flashed the blade from the stick and swift, unerring even in the murk, whipped clean through the neck of Jacques the unknown.
The stricken man stopped short, his arm still uplifted; the weapon fell from his hand with an odd clatter on the ground. He swayed once or twice where he stood; then, with a fumbling motion, he drew from his side pocket something which bright silver mountings revealed as a pistol. But before, painfully striving, he could raise the flint, he swayed again. Rigid, like a falling post, dropped on his face and remained still.
The sound of the horses' gallop, the rattling of the chaise on the paving-stones, had ceased. For a few moments there was profound silence on the deserted road, broken only by the soughing of the wind amid the topmost branches. Ferrars stood motionless, his blade still poised against attack, striving to put some order in his ideas. He had killed a man, and that was a sickening sensation.
Presently came the sound of hurried footsteps, and it recalled him to a sense of peril still at hand. On an impulse he knelt by the figure on the ground, took up the pistol from the inert hand and cocked it. He had just succeeded in withdrawing another from the dead man's pocket when the footsteps stopped a few paces behind him. From the darkness, a voice—one of those horrible voices, husky dull and trailing, so peculiar to the French of the lowest class—called out, halting from want of breath, yet exultant:
“All in order, mon Capitaine. A number-one success, thunder! Horses in the ditch, carriage smashed to cinnamon, la la! And our Angliche stiffened to rights. I see. Ah! Bah, what is it? Aren't you pleased? A well-conditioned, first-class carriage accident, I call it. My job, though, was sacredly the more difficult.”
The post-boy came a step nearer, bending down to peer.
“Got the pocketbook? Pity we must leave the flimsy. Well, well, the farce is played.”
He gave a contented gurgle, which suddenly passed into a cry of surprize. The Englishman had risen to his feet and thrust the muzzle of his pistol into the ruffian's throat.
“Farce, brigand? I'll have it out with you at least! What is the game? Come, speak out if you have no taste for lead!”
But the other, with an exclamation of furious disappointment—“Raté! Coup raté, nom de Dieu!”—lashed out a kick which all but broke his captor's leg, wrenched himself free and bolted into the darkness of the wood. Raging, Ferrars sent a ball after him. A yell of angry pain told that luck had guided the flying shot. But that the scoundrel had only been winged was made clear by the sound, continued for a while, of his retreat through the crackling dead wood.
The young man passed his hand over his face; it was streaming with blood. He tried to take a step, but his injured knee gave way under him. As he crawled upon the ground, seeking some place against which he might rest, he passed the body of his unknown enemy, and the something white and limp that had dealt him so fearsome a blow caught his eye. He picked it up: a napkin, tied into a bag, filled with broken sharp-edged flints.
And now he understood. Death from such a tool or death from a fall upon the jagged stones of the causeway—the wounds would be the same. To minds unsuspicious—and why should there be suspicion—here had been nought but a fatal leap from a runaway carriage. Valet and postillion, thrown and shaken, but mercifully preserved. He saw it all with mind now singularly lucid.
“A well-conditioned accident,” and—but for God's mercy, “a number-one success!” No murder, no robbery: “pity we must leave the flimsy.” But then, why seek for the pocketbook? Ah, of course! The decoy letter. Englishman traveling for private purposes, killed in an accident. The decoy letter abstracted, but passport and other identifying pieces left. Walter Ferrars safely out of the way.
Nevertheless the mystery remained as closely veiled as ever. And it mingled now with that of Sir Jasper's disappearance, with that of the fantastic meeting at Stanton. Why was he to be put out of the way?
FOR a long while, propped against a milestone by the roadside, his pistol at hand—against the quite conceivable event of an attempt to make good the coup raté, the botched job—he grappled with the riddle. His brain was quite clear, though his hurts ached cruelly. But he could find no solution; he could come to no fresh surmise, save the horrifying one that Sir Jasper might well have already met with some similar fate to that so cleverly devised for the elimination of his son. And now, there were his own present affairs to consider. He had killed a man, and, whatever the issue might prove, there was no doubt immediate trouble ahead.
The highroads of France, busy enough by day, are at night strangely deserted. Of foot-passengers there were none; the purlieus of the forest of Montmorency had no good reputation for security. And of vehicles, an hour passed before the first made its appearance: a roulier's wagon. Unable to rise, Ferrars called out. But the roulier, after the custom of his tribe, was fast asleep; the horses, sagacious beasts, kept to the right side from long habit. The heavy machine rumbled by, unheeding.
The next to pass, half an hour later, was a fast-trotting carriole, which, on being hailed, simply hurried along at a faster rate, suggestive of fright. A few minutes later, however, it could be heard coming back.
“Was that your carriage, capsized over there by the bridge?” the driver sang out, pulling up.
“Yes. Are you the man I hailed?”
“Ah—I thought it might be a night-bird's trick. They pretend to be hurt, and, when one comes near—a bludgeon on the head, like as not! One knows a thing or two in Montmorency. But that carriage—it's different. What can one do for you? A lift?”
Ferrars had settled on his course.
“No—thank you. I must keep watch here on a dead man.”
“Dead man? Cristi!”
“What you can do for me, is to fetch the gendarmes. A louis d'or for you, if you come back with them and with your carriole to take the body and me, for I can't walk. Here, my friend, six francs of earnest money.”
The heavy coin rang on the pavement. The man jumped down, groped for a moment and, having found the faintly gleaming six-piece:
“At your service, milor. I say that, you know, because you speak like an Englishman. Shall I tell them”
“Tell them,” interrupted Ferrars with impatience, “that an Englishman has killed a man and waits for them to come. That's all. ”
“Cristi!” said the peasant again, mounted and hurried away.
Another hour elapsed, in the silent solitary vigil; in the blackness of
the forest huge
Incult, robust and tall, by nature's hand
Planted of old,
before the carriole returned, escorted by two mounted gendarmes.
“It's here,” shouted Ferrars from his milestone.
One of the gendarmes dismounted, heavy-booted, rattling with spurs and saber; he took up a lantern from the carriage and threw its fight upon the blood-smeared face.
“That is the man—over there,” said Ferrars calmly. “These are his own pistols. The sword-stick is mine. My other belongings are in the carriage. Now, if you will be so good as to help me into the cart, I shall be glad to be brought to the authorities.”
CHAPTER V
THE SPANISH LADY AND THE BIBLIOPHILE
“WHATEVER poet or sage may say, old age is still old age.”
Such was the unexpectedly rueful conclusion of one who was both poet and sage himself, who had, indeed, many a winning thing to say upon the placid beauties of life's Autumn.
In the estimation of that genial bibliophile, M. Havart de Gournay however, Autumn was no symbol for “old age.” Winter, yes, of course; but Autumn, ah no. Autumn was only the hour of maturity, of fruition. For the serene, epicurean philosopher, in the words of one of his favorite authors—
"Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plains
Comes jovial on!
The Winter solstice in man—in a man of health and honored ease—might be said to occur at the passing of three score years and ten—perhaps. Now, M. Havart de Gournay, upon this eighth day of October, 1817, had only entered upon the sixty-first year of a life which, for all it had seen momentous upheavals, strange vicissitudes in his country's fortunes, had been evenly prosperous. Indeed, but for the looming of the Winter toward which Autumn undeniably drifts, this amiable gentleman could argue that the seventh decade was in many ways the most satisfactory of the whole span noted of the psalmist.
Unalloyed enjoyment is so rare in this world that it may without rashness be asserted that no one was more content with life than M. de Gournay as he sat by his balconied window, all in the glow of a fine sunset, examining a new bibliographic treasure just come into his possession.
His was one of those admirable houses, dating from the Grand Siècle, on the Quai Malaquais, overlooking across the silvery Seine the noble prospect of Louvre and Tuileries. Behind it, stretching as far as the Rue de Bourbon, spread the old mulberry-tree gardens of the whilom Théatins convent. The mansion, not inconveniently vast, but of perfect appointment, was ruled by a dame in her still handsome forties, reasonably plump, serene-tempered, withal witty—rare and delighting combination—who still thought the world of her old husband. She kept him in health and cheeriness with the help of an admirable chef and rejoiced in his bookish hobby, which left her free to enjoy the social intercourse for which he had but little taste.
The passion which had outlived all others in M. de Gournay's life was wholly bibliomaniac. And his collection of rare bindings—of volumes, incunabula and others, with fine printers' devices of livres à vignettes and armorial stamps—was a thing which no doubt when it came to the hammer—ultimate fate of all collections: Nunc mihi, mox aliis—would make the hearts of future bibliophiles leap with eagerness.
“Tell me whom thou consortest with; I will tell thee who thou art.” To say that his best appreciated correspondent was Thomas Frognall Dibden, Esq., a friend of exile days in England, then engaged upon the “Bibliographical Decameron;” to say that one of the most welcome presences at his dinner-table was that of M. Brillat-Savarin, the witty gourmet then meditating his immortal work on “La Physiologie du Gout;” that perhaps would be the quickest way of limning the mental man in M. de Gournay.
The bodily presentment was equally engaging. Short, fresh and neat; always attired point-device in an old-fashioned style—slightly powdered hair in a queue; silver shoe-buckles and so forth, in men of his age quite de mise under the returned Bourbons; with a good appetite, sound teeth and clear eyes, M. de Gournay was the very image of one equipped for the enjoyment of fife, especially in its Autumn. When M. Brillat-Savarin rallied him on the coming of an appreciable rotundity, he would answer, with a kind of smiling ruefulness that had nothing bitter in it:
“Bah, my good friend, let that be! Shall we not all of us be thin enough—some day?”
And he would add a “dum vivimus, vivamus;” a “carpe diem,” or some such comforting tag dear to the bon-vivant.
If it be further mentioned that the heir to this fortunate house, a youth of attainments, idolized by his father, was rapidly making for himself a brilliant position without losing a loving devotion to his family—a characteristic very particularly French—it will have been made plain that M. Havart de Gournay had the right to be pleased with life.
At the sunset hour of this particular day the excellent gentleman was gloating over a vellum-bound volume, armoried in faded gold, that displayed—greatest of rarities—the printer's device of Valentin Fernandez. He was inhaling the fragrance of an undreamed prize and licking the chops of greedy anticipation at the thought of many more that might, it appeared, be in his grasp on the morrow.
Barely half an hour before an unknown visitor had secured a welcome by means of the most propitiatory of conceivable offerings—a little packet, under the strings of which was slipped a rather exotic glazed card, bearing beneath a slender Spanish coronet the name of Condesa Lucanor. A lady, the footman stated, requested the favor of a moment's interview with M. de Gournay. She would not detain him many minutes.
THE stranger's entrance had revealed a truly charming old lady, dressed in black silks of becoming—if undeniably foreign—elegance. Bandeaux of white hair, under a fall of black lace, framed a visage of gray, faded beauty, still lit up by eyes of marked brilliancy. She was enveloped in a delicate atmosphere of Parma violets. Her manner, which had withal the ease of une dame du monde, was self-assured, even to briskness.
“If M. de Gournay, the well-known connoisseur, will undo this parcel,” she had said as he led her to an armchair, “he will save me the difficulty of any preamble and will understand the object of my intrusion.”
She spoke the purest French, but with a vibrating, deep Castilian voice that was most attractive.
He had bowed and obeyed. Then, radiantly:
“A Fernandez! Of 1501! Why, madame, this is a treasure! To what do I owe”
“I will not waste your time,” she had answered, with a smile singularly flashing in so wan a face. “I see that the introduction is sufficient for the present. And I feel, now, confident that it will lead to a transaction that may be very pleasant to you—while it will extricate me out of a difficulty. I possess, at my villa in St. Mande—I have written the address on the card—a collection of books left me by my late husband. I have always understood, although these are not things I understand, that it is a remarkable one. This volume I took haphazard. The binding pleased me. It has, you see, the arms of Lucanor on the side”
“Are these Lucanor?” had exclaimed the greedy collector in ravishment.
“Yes,” had pursued the dame, in pleasant but businesslike tones. “And there are a good many others; the best houses of Castile. I am a lone woman; I have no use for all these vieilleries. But, to be frank, I have much use for their worth. I must leave France in something of a hurry, and I require money. I made inquiries. I heard that M. de Gournay collected such things; that he was a man of wealth. In fact—you see I am quite open—I thought that I could get a better price, leaving it to you, a gentilhomme, to fix it, than by going to the librarians. You can have the pick; the rest can then go to them. Ah, I see you will. I am fortunate. And so are you—permit me to say so.”
After a little more converse at a similar lively rate, the lady had taken her departure.
“Time,” she had urged, as he escorted her back to her fiacre, “is for me very pressing. I have a world of things to see to. But I shall be in between eleven and twelve for you and have the treasures,” she laughed charmingly; “these old bouquins, with not a line in them that any one can care to read, are jewels for your bibliophiles, it seems—I'll have all the treasures laid out for you. Yet, be punctual—eleven to twelve is all I can give you. Five minutes past eleven, and I shall conclude you have thought better of it. Then,” she threatened him with her fan, “the librarian of St. Genevieve will have first pick.”
“Be assured,” had said the jubilant collector, “I shall be there at the first stroke.”
“BY SAINT ALIPANTIN” the absurd asseveration the bibliomaniac favored in his moments of melting blandness—“by Saint Alipantin,” murmured M. de Gournay, as all in the sunset glow he collated the black-letter leaves, “no, I am scarce likely to be late!”
And, little conscious indeed of the direction in which the stream of his placid life had been diverted by this pleasant whirlwind, he counted the hours that still separated him from the fateful morrow.
AMONG the letters awaiting M. de Gournay upon his breakfast tray—madame took her early chocolate amid her own pillows—was one from London, which the gentleman, attired this morning not in slippers and quilted silk dressing-gown but already prepared to sally forth though it was scarce past eight o'clock, took up with some curiosity.
The contents proved of growing interest, for he read right through without thinking of lifting the coffee-pot which his fingers had mechanically sought. These words Mr. Johnstone had written from Bedford Row:
Dear M. de Gournay—
In view of the near approach of the fifteenth of October, when the tontine scheme of which the management is in our hands comes to maturity, I take upon myself to remind you of the vital importance of your, or your son's, presence in propria persona at our office upon that day and not later by any means than twelve o'clock, noon, Greenwich mean time.
The terms of the document, you will remember, are exacting; positively beyond evasion. Personal attendance, rigid punctuality, are essence of contract with reference to the distribution of assets. We should, therefore, be pleased to know of your or your son's being safely across, and indeed in London, as soon as possible. We take this opportunity of stating how matters now stand, hoping, without making any suggestion, that the statement may be of utility to you in framing your plans.
You will recollect that, when last we had occasion to communicate with you upon this subject, there remained, including yourself, only five claimants to a share in due time of the accumulated funds. The same fatality, which had by that time removed eight of the original thirteen depositors, seems to have overtaken, certainly two, possibly three, of the survivors.
M. le Comte de Bondy, we hear, was accidentally shot in the boar-hunt at Compiègne. Colonel Rocheville was massacred during the recent troubles of the South—under circumstances, we are informed, which pointed to a case of personal animosity. And now, as regards Sir Jasper Ferrars, we regret to say that nothing has been heard of him for several months, and his absence, at a time when he ought to be back in England, causes us anxiety.
We had this morning a call from Captain von Hanstedt, who, with you and—as we still hope—Sir Jasper, is a remaining beneficiary. His visit was, we understand, merely intended to be an act of presence. He remains in London, and, we repeat, we should be glad to see you here likewise. We can not refrain from suggesting to you, quite in a private manner, of course—the advisability, in presence of the ill-luck which seems in some mysterious way to follow the steps of the members of the association, to exercise an ever-suspecting vigilance; to keep secret, as far as possible, your intentions and your movements, at least until the fifteenth is past. And lastly, if it can be managed, to induce your son to accompany you on your journey here.
We remain, etc.
M. de Gournay poured out his coffee, drank it and ate his white loaf, lost in a painful muse. “Ever-suspecting vigilance.” To one of his bland habits the words bore a strangely unpleasant color. They even dimmed the rosy tints of the coming transaction with the delightful old lady. But he was afforded little time for the vexing speculation. The servant brought in another letter.
“Left by hand,” said he, “and the messenger waiting at the door.”
This was the communication:
M. Henri, Chef de la Sûreté, commands urgently the attendance of M. Havart de Gournay at the Bureau without the least retard. This, in the name of the Law. But M. Henri begs to add that, if M. de Gournay happens to be contemplating an immediate addition to his well-known collection of rare books, the matter at hand is of the highest personal importance to him. M. de Gournay will be good enough to follow the messenger without being seen to communicate with him.
“The great horned devil is in it!” muttered the excellent man. It was not Saint Alipantin now; M. de Gournay was seriously discomposed. He pocketed his letters, demanded his hat, and his gold-headed cane.
“I follow,” he said tartly to the nondescript individual waiting in the vestibule.
And, ten minutes later—it is but a short traject from the Quai Malaquais to the Isle of the Cité—he was introduced to the inner sanctum of the Bureau of Public Safety: a stuffy room, lined from floor to ceiling with green cardboard dossier boxes arranged by the thousand in pigeonholes.
M.HENRI, a youngish, tubby man of small size and no very remarkable appearance, save singularly wide, coldly observant eyes, rose from the table upon which was spread a letter he had been conning.
“You will forgive,” he began in quick precise words after a gesture toward his own chair, the only one in the room, “the pressing tone of my letter if it has inconvenienced you. Time is very short. I will ask you, first, if you are acquainted with one of the name of Ferrars, an Englishman?”
M. de Gournay started. Like a flash, the attorney's words “ever-suspecting vigilance” leaped out, as it were, to illumine the white hair and the bright eyes of last eve's visitor.
“One Sir Jasper Ferrars is an old friend of mine,” he answered quickly.
“Ah, we are on the road; my guess was happy.”
A smile flickered across M. Henri's face.
“You will now give me,” he went on, “the address, if you have it, of any one with whom you may lately have entered into communication concerning bibliographic treasures—that is the word.” He bent sideways over the table and laid a finger upon the letter. “Especially if it be a woman. One moment, you are a better-lettered man than I, but I believe I am right in presuming that the name Ashtoreth refers to a female devil?”
“Yes, certainly.” M. de Gournay sank deeper into wonder. “The Semitic Aphrodite, an evil spirit. And, as a fact, I have an appointment with a lady this morning, between eleven and twelve. Yes, and about treasures,” he said ruefully, as he saw in imagination these coveted prizes melting into thin air. “And this is the address.”
The Chef de la Sûreté took the card, glanced at it and rang his bell.
“Send in Vidocq,” he ordered to the plain-clothes attendant who appeared at the door. Then, to his visitor, “We will be in time. Parbleu, we are lucky! And so are you, M. de Gournay,” he added with much meaning, “as you will hear. Ah, Vidocq, I think we have that Montmorency affair well in hand. Here is the address. Take all your measures: the mouse-trap in this case. Have it all fixed up by ten o'clock. Not much time, but, for you—time enough.”
M. de Gournay looked with intense curiosity at the celebrated Vidocq, the wily, formidable sleuth-hound whose name was already a terror to whom it might concern: a broad-shouldered massive-headed man, whose appearance, out of service, was that of some sturdy, good-tempered sailor. On duty, there was none who could assume more convincingly the most unlikely disguises.
Vidocq studied the card, repressed a grin of satisfaction, saluted with the hand and disappeared.
“Now, my dear sir,” resumed M. Henri, “if you will give me half an hour of your attention, everything in this business, which must of course seem still mysterious, will, I think, be made as clear to you as it is already to us. Your help, besides, will be required to bring to a stop certain sinister machinations which closely concern you. Be good enough to read carefully this letter.”
He planted himself with his back to the window and watched M. de Gournay's face. The latter, mounting his spectacle, perused the cryptic document, which ran, in French, as follows:
Belphegor to Ashtoreth, salute and greeting in invisibility! Rejoice and be of firm heart; full success is at hand. You will be relieved to hear that the old fox, who had got such a start of us and had saved his brush so exasperatingly time after time, has at last been run down. We have his skin; he will vex us no more. And now, besides, an unlooked-for piece of luck has come our way. There was, as you know, the cub, still roaming somewhere. We gave no heed to him, for we knew that he had never been let into the secret of the pot-aux-roses by his outraged parent.
Now, what do you think we ran up against on the day we paid our polite visit to the parental hearth? Cub himself, if you please! Cub, trotting the covert incognito! I scented him on the spot. I made sure, took him securely in hand. Captivated by my engaging manner, he, of his own accord, dropped the incognito. These busybodies over here had warned him to remain within reach on the morning of our happy day.
In consequence he is now gone on a pretty chase—under the loving care of Abaddon. He will not trouble us, as Abaddon, who brings you this, beauteous Ashtoreth, will no doubt assure you.
And now the full crowning of our labors depends on your success. The rosy-gilled collector of bibliographic treasures is ready to give any price for armorial bindings, and the parcel I have had conveyed to you contains one which will prove killing bait. Make good use of it. Neglect no detail. By the way, since our friend is an accomplished gourmet, that little repast we have discussed for his consumption—get it at Chevet's or Perignon's. It should be irresistible.
Abaddon will bring you this letter on Monday at latest. Expect me on Tuesday morning. I have every confidence in your skill and nerve, but certain details will have to be adjusted according to Moloch's success. Prepare a room in which I can retire and yet be within call. At a quarter to eleven by the stroke of the church clock be ready to let me in the back way.
Should any necessity arise to explain my presence to any one, you will not forget that Doktor-Philosophe Goertz, Librarian at Leipzig, is hot upon the hunt for Spanish incunabula. But Lucifer keep off any such necessity!
And now, from eager Belphegor, to radiant Ashtoreth, valediction and invisibility!”
Beads of perspiration had appeared on M. de Gournay's face as he drew near the end of the lines, packed so full of hidden meaning. He looked up at last with dire perplexity in his eyes.
“What do you make of it?” asked M. Henri.
“Nothing that is clear—much that seems sinister.”
“It is sinister. And it will soon be made clear. This letter,” said M. Henri, “was found on the body of a man—sewn in the lining of his coat—a man, not yet identified, but who is obviously the Abaddon mentioned, killed two nights ago by a young English traveler whom he had tried to murder, in the forest of Montmorency. The affair was cleverly planned—we have already, through examination of the young man, reconstituted the whole story—but the Englishman, though badly mauled, succeeded in suppressing Abaddon, instead of being suppressed himself. The English man's name is Ferrars, son of the Sir Jasper Ferrars you mentioned.”
M. de Gournay gave a start. The chief, pleased with the result of his methodically dramatic way of exposition, went on, intent upon the next effect:
“BELPHEGOR, who sent Mr. Ferrars to be disposed of abroad by his compeer, Abaddon, is beyond doubt a young fashionable, well-known—and, curiously enough, honorably so, under the present régime—as the Baron de Hanstedt.”
Here M. de Gournay as if shot by a spring leaped from his chair. He mopped Ins brow.
“Hanstedt! The son of my old friend, the friend of Sir Jasper, a murderer! What, in heaven's name—ah, I've got it—the tontine!”
“A tontine!” cried M. Henri, and his eyes flashed satisfaction. “A tontine, of course. We have puzzled a whole day over the thing, and never guessed. The nearest we could think of was a succession. A tontine; you have an interest in it?”
“I have, indeed,” gasped the bibliophile. “I—or my son. And so has” Then, with a sudden recollection of Mr. Johnstone's communication, “So had, I should say, sir Jasper.”
“And so has, I take it, M. de Hanstedt, Belphegor. Any others?”
“No. All the others are already gone. Already gone! This is terrible, M. Henri. And I,” he wailed, “I who looked forward, with interest, of course, but in calmness, to whatever share might fall to my lot, if I lived to see it—and to my son, if I did not!”
“Your son. Your possible substitute,” put in M. Henri, cruelly attentive; “just as Mr. Ferrars, failing his father.”
M. de Goumay turned white.
“My boy, too!” he exclaimed. But, checking the new emotion, he drew himself up resolutely. “You were right, sir; the machinations concern me, closely. But they have concerned others. We must work together, you and I. Now, this may help. You do not read English, probably; I will translate for you a communication I received this very morning.”
“One moment,” said the chief.
He rang his bell, wrote a few words on a slip of paper and handed it to the attendant. Then he turned back to his visitor.
“I am listening.”
“It is clear, M. de Gournay,” he said when the latter had concluded, “that the fate of M. de Bondy, of Colonel Rocheville, of Sir Jasper Ferrars and that which young Ferrars has by luck escaped were governed by the same purpose: elimination in due time. Elimination under plausible appearances, excluding all suggestion of concerted crime. Elimination at the hands of a clever gang of which this Hanstedt is a member. The case of M. de Bondy will be duly attended to. That of the colonel will be more difficult, disguised as it is as an accident of popular commotion; but we shall sift that also.
“This information of yours is of the highest value; we now know the motive of these crimes and can trace them to one association. The mode, I must tell you, is just now all for these secret companionships. 'Each for all, all for each.' I strongly suspect the fraternity which concerns us to be of good social standing—we have known others of the same kind—the most difficult to trace—educated, elegant even—in good circumstances, but on the lookout for great coups; meanwhile, above ordinary suspicion. What sort of a person is Ashtoreth, the soi-disant Spanish comtesse?”
“She would be at ease in any salon.”
“Ah, I thought so. And Belphegor, we know, is a dandy of the first water. These vampires masquerade among each other under demoniacal names, with a rallying phrase, 'the Invisibles,' for a wager in this case. I wonder,” went on M. Henri, peering again at the paper, “whether we have them all here? Abaddon is done with. Ashtoreth and Belphegor I look to have under my thumb before noon. Who may Moloch be? Bah! He'll come to the net, too! It was a weak thing of Belphegor to put anything down on paper, even without an address, even under fancy names and in tangling parables.
“True, there was scarce a chance in a million of its ever falling under the eye of one who had the end of the thread. But there was one. And it is going to cost him dear. Ah, and what is better, it has saved M. de Gournay, for what had been prepared would have been as plausible, and the result as final, as in the case of Mr. Ferrars, the Comte de Bondy and the colonel. It was a weak thing—certes—for instance, to mention a bibliophile—wealthy—old-world—rosy-gilled.” M. Henri smiled apologetically.
“Above all to speak of him as likely to give any price for armorial bindings. It took us the whole of the afternoon—the case only came for my examination yesterday morning—to become acquainted, by the help of the leading dealers in fine books, with all the noted collectors in Paris. Then, by elimination, we settled it that M. de Gournay was the distinguished person who was this day to be put out of the way.”
M. Henri looked at the clock.
“It will soon be time for you to act—I need not ask,” said he gravely, “whether you will play out your part in this drama. You will keep the appointment with Ashtoreth, and before twelve o'clock strikes, this invisible association of society brigands, I give you my word, will be a thing of the past. I can not believe,” he added earnestly, “that you can hesitate; Mr. Ferrars, wounded as he is, is lending his help.”
“But my son, my son!” cried M. de Gournay. “He is as gravely threatened as I am. I must first”
“I have already seen to that. He will be warned and well watched over.”
The old gentleman drew a grateful sigh and again wiped his forehead.
“I am ready,” he said simply.
“Your part,” said M. Henri, “will be to follow instructions. There is a fiacre wait ing for you at the door. Before you sit down to your next meal, the whole affair—as we say in our profession—will be in the sack.”
CHAPTER VI
THE DISCREET HOUSE AT ST. MANDÉ
IN A back room of the Villa Armande on the outskirts of Vincennes Woods, the charming old lady who had so briskly carried by assault M. de Goumay's book-loving mind was putting the finishing touch to her toilet.
The cosmetics on her table were of a kind that would have puzzled an Abigail, had Condesa Lucanor kept one. But in the solitary and discreet villa the only servant kept was an old woman of the general-utility order. The paint, the lip-salve, the pencils—which were now being applied with consummate skill—were of gray-white; subduing delicately the natural flush of cheek, the carmine of a small mouth fresh and firm; supplying the “crow's feet” which would not mark naturally, for many years to come, the corners of brilliant black eyes; tinging with ashes the natural brown of finely arched eyebrows. The lady brought the white bandeaux a little closer over temples and ears, shadowed this artistic sexagenarian tête under a fall of black lace, gazed at her glass critically and was satisfied.
A moment she stood in front of the window, deeply pensive. The church clock was striking the three-quarters. It meant nothing to her, except that soon now the guileless old man would make his appearance, and she was ready. A frown, however, suddenly hardened her face; she leaned forward, to make sure of what she saw.
A man was hurriedly coming up the path in the waste ground at the back of the discreet house. And, in spite of disguise—the long redingote closely buttoned up, the curly-winged Bolivar hat, the mustache, by nature so black and jaunty, now tinged with gray and drooping, all excellently suited to a person of official pursuits—she knew him.
“What an imprudence!” she said under her voice. “What an imprudence!”
Hastily she ran down and opened the door. He entered and without a word closed the door behind him:
“Has anything happened?” she asked rather breathlessly.
“Nothing but good,” he answered, taking her by the waist, about to kiss her lips. But he checked himself. “Your war-paint!” he said and instead kissed her on the nape of the neck. “Nothing but good,” he repeated, “nothing but what goes by program. Moloch's stroke is infallible. Properly spitted, the young bird. And the old bird?”
“The old bird,” she answered, “may alight any moment. But, Karl”
“Chut! Don't forget. Doktor Goertz.”
“Bah I” she went on impatiently “We are alone. I've sent the harridan to Paris on errands. But Karl, Karl, what brings you here? It seems to me absolute madness! You should be in England, mon cher. That's your part now. Any accident, any hitch to make you late on the day—and where should we be, all of us?”
She tapped her foot fretfully.
“Yes, I know. But still I felt bound to come. Too much depends on the last stroke. Do you know, ma toute belle, that this year's hunt after the millions has been a costly job. I am reduced to my last thousand francs or two. I felt I had to be here. You are clever, the cleverest of us all, perhaps. But still I am the one for the minute detail.”
He looked round the toilet-table.
“There!” he said, striding up to it. “These brushes and things—let them be discovered here after your vanishing today, and all the world knows that your age, like the youth of other women, was in the gallipot. And, instead of a nice feeble old lady, what has to be looked for is probably a young woman. Nay,” he added and his eyes kindled, “some fiery full-blooded, beautiful she-devil. But, no time for that now. You see how right I was to come. All that stuff should be burned. At any rate, in with it into your pockets. And now let me see your collation.” .
They went down again and into a front room. With the leader's eye he took in the display and approved. The napery, the glass, the silver, was of the right simplicity, tinged with elegance.”
“You have, I am glad to see, specially attended to the coffee. And this Liqueur des Iles, is it ready?” He looked at her smilingly.
“Not yet. Safer always to wait for the last moment—in case of contretemps.”
“So much the better,” he said. “I have had a new idea, a brilliant one. What more natural than that the old gentleman, so wrapped up in his son, should have a heart-attack when he learns—somewhere between one and two this day—what he will hear. Poison? Never! A heart-stroke—and natural enough, poor man! No, keep your stuff. This” he pulled out a small phial—“is chiefly digitalis, which M. Orfila vouches will stop a man's pulse within an hour or two.”
Coolly, carefully, he poured half the contents into the little decanter and corked the phial again.
“And the remainder,” he resumed, “to your own beautiful hands for the coffee! Two barrels, you see, lest one should miss fire; the old bird can't expect to escape both! And tonight, Ashtoreth, her own fair self once more, to Brussels. And Belphegor, for London. Moloch for the Hague, where Abaddon will meet him. By the way, at what time did Abaddon leave you?”
“ABADDON? Was he not with you?” She raised her brow, scenting danger.
“Has he not brought you my letter?”
She shook her head fiercely.
“Sacrament!” The baron stood a moment petrified. After a long pause, during which the brigand lovers looked fixedly into each other's eyes, “Laurette,” he said heavily, “something terrible has happened. What? I can't guess. But if Abaddon has not brought you my—that young cub was a deep one. And if so,” following his own thought, “if so, it may mean for us.”
The rumbling of wheels intruded into their cogitation. She made a bound to the window.
“There comes de Gournay,” she said and looked back at him. Then, with forced calmness, settling the laces round her young throat, “Are we going on with this?”
“Will you see it through?” he asked between his teeth.
“I will if you say yes, Karl,” she answered.
He gazed back at her, with widening eyes. Then the words exploded from him:
“Bei Gott, no. I'll not run your neck into it. If we are to come to grief, there's at least, as yet, nothing to connect you with the scheme, after all. Play this morning's game out. It has to be played out, were it but to avert suspicions. But no liqueur for that cursed ganache! Put it away! And nothing in the coffee. Send him off rejoicing with his books, that's all—I'll have you safe at any rate!”
The fiacre had stopped before the house.
“It is time for me to vanish the way I came. I can't help; I'm only a danger to you. Laurette, Laurette, play for your safety now! Put that liqueur away. Who knows? The game may not really be all lost. Even if we have to go halves with Gournay”
The bell rang. He leaped toward her, looked into her eyes a second and this time passionately kissed her on the lips. She listened pensively to the sound of his steps in the back passages. Then, upon a second summons of the bell, she went to open the front door. And from that moment the stream of Ashtoreth's life began to assume the ways of a torrent in spate.
The driver of the fiacre stood on the threshold, in his broad-brimmed white-glazed hat and his many-caped overcoat.
“This is the Villa Armande, hein, ma bourgeoise?” asked the man, in husky voice common to the profession.
“Yes.”
“It is here all right, bourgeois!” he cried over his shoulder.
The door of the fiacre opened. M. de Gournay came down; then he turned round to help out another passenger, whose face was half-hidden in bandages and who limped painfully.
“Good morning, Comtesse,” said the bibliophile with elaborate ease. “I am in good time, as you perceive. I trust you will not mind my bringing in this young gentleman, who, you see, has met with an accident. Allow me to enter,” he went on hastily, noticing the change that had swept over her face; “he is very feeble. I will explain. ”
She fell back a pace. He, still guiding his companion, brushed past her into the lobby. Instantly the driver closed the door, locked it and pocketed the key.
“You will explain, sir” she began haughtily, but with a panting breath.
“In a moment, madame. Is this the room?” pointing to a door through which could be seen the table, attractively spread with the awaiting déjeuner. “Sit down there—madame of course permits” he went on a little thickly. “Sit down, Mr. Ferrars.”
A cry rang into the room like the roar of a wounded panther.
“Ferrars! Did you say Ferrars?”
She had fallen back, almost crouching, against the wall, but the next instant she made a spring toward the bandaged man and was arrested, as it were, in midair by the driver's powerful arm.
“Holà!—Easy if you please, ma belle,” he said banteringly, holding her wrist in an inflexible grip. “Tout beau, Madame Ashtoreth!”
She had another gasp of rage. Swift and fierce in her movements as a fighting cat, with her free hand she lifted her skirt, revealing a vision of shapely young leg, and drew from her garter a small ivory-handled stiletto. The slender blue blade flashed a second loft—only to be seized in its flight by the man's bear-like paw and tossed into a corner of the room.
The fierce action had dragged aside the lace veil and, with it, the sedate white bandeaux. With complete deliberation he removed at one stroke the whole structure, baring thereby a head of short but vigorous brown hair, in strange contrast with the ghastly grayness of the face.
“This affair, you see,” he said, as now half-fainting she allowed herself to be pressed down into a seat, “has to be carried through roundly.”
So saying, he pulled the window open and from a boatswain's whistle threw into the air a piercing, undulating call. A moment later from the back of the house a door was heard, violently thrown open; then sounded footsteps, heavy, irregular, trampling, stumbling.
M. de Gournay, pale, trembling a little even—for men of generous temper are always affected to see violence dealt to a woman—stood mopping his forehead.
Mr. Ferrars, leaning forward in his seat, gazed on the scene with intense interest.
The soi-disant cab-driver had his back to the wall, facing the entrance, in a position to keep all present under his eye.
“In here,” he ordered.
THRUST forward by two men, who could be seen in the passage but remained outside, Baron von Hanstedt took a pace into the room. He was already manacled. His hair falling over his forehead, his coat torn and half-unbuttoned, testified to a furious struggle. His eyes, blood-rimmed like those of the vanquished wild boar, glared at the squat, broad-shouldered figure that now moved toward him. But he waited speechless. The driver removed his glazed hat.
“I am Vidocq,” he said, returning the glare steadily. “And I have got you safe, M. de Hanstedt.”
The baron made a dreadful attempt to smile.
“Are you indeed the great Vidocq of whom one hears so much these days? Well, M. Vidocq, you are making an ass of yourself for once. My name is Goertz.”
“Pretty name,” returned the policier, without an inflexion in his voice. “Perhaps not so pretty as others quite as handy—as Belphegor, for instance. But Hanstedt will do for me, today. Not to mention M. de Gournay here, no doubt Mr. Ferrars can identify”
From purple the baron grew livid. His wild eyes roamed the room, and fell upon the seated figure with the bandaged head.
“The cub!” he exclaimed in a toneless voice and brought his despairing look round upon the woman, who, with lids half-closed—Ups paler than their disguising salve—still lay where she had been thrown.
“Commend me to that for a fair giveaway!” said Vidocq. “We may say you've done for yourself—Belphegor. Your case is drawn clear.” Then, as if struck by a new idea, he cast his glance over the tempting array on the table and brought it meditatively to rest on the liqueur flagon. “I think,” he pursued, “you realize it yourself. You're not looking quite so well. Emotion—one understands that. You want a rouser. Try some of this.”
As he spoke he half-filled a tumbler with the amber liquid and sniffed at it. Then he handed the glass to the captive, who took it mechanically between his fettered hands.
“It smells delicious,” said Vidocq, keenly attentive to the man's face.
For a spell the baron remained stock-still, his eyes on the glass, lost in some dreadful musing. He raised them slowly and rested them in turns, with a renewal of their first fierceness, on each of the three men. But when they came upon the woman, all their hardness vanished; there was nought left in them but a passionate, immeasureable regret.
“I see,” went on Vidocq in his matter-of-fact voice. “I quite understand. You have your doubts about the quality of Madame Ashtoreth's liqueurs. Well, well, M. Le Professeur Orfila, who is a savant, must look into it.”
He stretched an arm to take back the glass. But before the deed could be prevented, Belphegor had raised his joined hands to his mouth, and in quick gulps had swallowed the draft.
“Karl—Karl!” Ashtoreth sprang to her feet, but her scream ended in a wail. She swayed and fell back, covering her face with her hands.
Whatever length of time a glass or two of liqueur might have required for action, the effect of this outrageous dose was fulgurating. The baron, dropping the tumbler, gave a gasp. Frantically endeavoring to press his fettered hands to his temples, he suddenly collapsed—a huddled heap, shaken now and again by a writhing convulsion.
Ferrars had jumped up. M. de Gournay, leaning forward over the back of a chair, stared, frozen with horror.
“There,” he murmured to himself, “but for the mercy of God, is the case that was meant to be mine.”
Vidocq, with his great bushy brows knitted, was pursing his Ups. His whole air was one of overwhelming vexation:
“You've made a slip there, Vidocq, my friend,” he muttered at last. “Yes, a bad slip! Yet who the devil would ever have believed that he—well, Belphegor has but cheated the galleys, if not the scaffold.”
The dying man's sterterous breathing had ceased. A heavy stillness reigned in the room. After a few seconds a new sound from outside broke the spell—the sound of hurried wheels abruptly checked—of hurried footsteps. Then the bell again and instantly, as the door opened, an eager voice:
“M. Gournay! Is M. de Gournay here?”
A man in groom's livery darted into the room, stumbling over the body on the floor.
“Ah, monsieur, monsieur! Quick! Our poor young master”
He paused, casting a scared look at the scene; then, dumbly he held out a slip of paper. M. de Gournay had grown ashen white.
“What is it? Ah, God! It is André—it's my son! What is it?”
He snatched the paper from the messenger, tried to read, passed his hand over his' dazed eyes and read again. A sighing groan, heart-rending, rose from his throat. He threw his arms above his head and Vidocq was only just in time to catch him as he fell forward.
“A fit—that's what it is. A coup de sang, poor gentleman,” said the policier, with more feeling than might be expected from one of that kidney. “I can guess. Well, what has happened?” he went on, turning half-round to look up at the groom.
“A duel—this morning—with one of those bandits of demi-solde Bonapartists. Ah, my poor young master!”
Vidocq drew the note from the unconscious man's fingers and read out—
“Come quickly, if you would find our André still alive.”
There was a moment's silence, and then he said:
“So—that was the scheme, a duel with a bretteur! We were just in time, here—but too late for the son.” Then, resuming command, “Mr. Ferrars, there is still work for me here, and then I must devote myself to this pretended half-pay, the spadassin. You, my boy,” he said to the groom, “must stop here. Mr. Ferrars will take this worthy gentleman back to his home. It's a stroke, a bad stroke, I fear,” he added, after looking at M. de Gournay's face. “You may congratulate yourself, sir, on a rather miraculous escape from the crew of Invisibles.”
CHAPTER VII
DEAD MEN'S SHOES
“AND the last piece of evidence in this long-laid plot, at least as far as I am personally concerned,” said Mr. Ferrars to Mr. Wapshot, “came last night. A letter from the butler at Stanton, which I found at the Piazza. An answer to an inquiry I had sent, in my own name by the way, from Paris the day before my departure.”
They were passing under the great plane-trees of Gray's Inn Gardens, that swayed and roared in the gusts of a tempestuous wind, on the morning of the fifteenth of October.
Mr. Ferrars, still rather lame, his face badly scarred, but now free from its bandages, was leaning on the arm of his friend and legal counselor on the way from the latter's offices in Gray's Inn Square to those of Messrs. Johnstone & Mesurier in Bedford Row.
“The man states that he knows nothing of any letter for Captain Hanstedt and that he certainly forwarded none. He adds, unfortunately,” said Mr. Ferrars, “that he has no news from his master. It bodes ill.”
Mr. Wapshot had listened that morning to a detailed account of his client's experiences, but without committing himself to an opinion. After a span of thoughtful silence, he dryly remarked:
“All this, my dear sir, if it does bode ill for Sir Jasper, may mean a singular change in the state of your own affairs. Well, in less than an hour, we shall know where we stand.”
“I am still much in the dark. Will you not explain?”
“I really have no knowledge of the matter. It is all in Johnstone and Mesurier's keeping—and, no doubt, they will explain it—if the occasion arises. I have been asked to have you within call. And I am thankful—for, if I don't actually know, I think, I guess—that I have brought you here in time.”
They were ringing at the attorney's office. The clerk who opened the door requested them, with Mr. Johnstone's compliments, to step up-stairs and wait in a private room.
Ferrars sat at a bare table and, leaning his head on his hands, lost himself in brooding cogitation.
Mr. Wapshot, however, in the midst of his professional reticence, showed distinct signs of nervousness; pacing the room; consulting his watch at ever shorter intervals; peering with unmistakable anxiety into the broad coldness of Bedford Row, whenever wheels or footsteps were heard approaching the front door. A great clock outside in the passage struck the half-hour; then the three-quarters. Within the room the silence between the two men remained unbroken. At last, the deeper strokes of the hour began to fall.
“Twelve o'clock,” said Mr. Wapshot, with attempted indifference consulting his own watch for confirmation. “Twelve by Greenwich.”
The last vibration had scarce vanished, when the door was opened:
“Mr. Johnstone's compliments,” said the clerk, “and will Mr. Ferrars and Mr. Wapshot be so good as to step down to his room.”
Mr. Wapshot heaved a sigh of satisfaction and smilingly motioned his client on.
Four gentlemen, seated round the great mahogany table, rose on their entrance. Every countenance behind the mask of official decorum betrayed an expectant agitation, tinged, in the case of the head of the firm, with a noticeable look of concern. This personage was a pompous man with a large handsome face.
“Mr. Ferrars,” he began in a rich unctuous voice and a self-conscious precision of speech, “allow me to offer you welcome—although your presence in this room today betokens the possibility—nay, I fear, the probability—of some tragic occurrence. I am glad, I say, to see you, at least, in attendance on this occasion. I will explain presently. Let me introduce my partner, Mr. Mesurier, also Mr. Parker and Mr. Willis, who represent Tellson's Bank.”
The young man bowed; then in silence he took the seat that was offered.
“Mr. Ferrars,” went on the attorney, in his methodical, ore rotondo, board-room manner, “these gentlemen and ourselves have met for the purpose of bearing testimony to the actual attendance in propria persona, before the hour of twelve noon—in accordance with a stringent clause of the document which you see on the table and which you will presently have an opportunity to examine—of certain persons, beneficiaries under the provision of a scheme which, for want of another name, we must call a tontine. The scheme in question, however, differs in many ways from the usual device of annuity which goes under that appellation.
“Your interest in the funds involved—and I may as well say at once, the sum is an important one—was only contingent. By your father's absence, it has become capital. Further, by the inexplicable absence of two others, who, unlike yourself, were fully aware of every clause in this deed, your interest has become total.
“On some other occasion, if you care, I shall tell you the full history of this extraordinary scheme which, started eight and twenty years ago, has reached maturity on this day. Now, however, not to trespass unduly upon the time of these gentlemen, I will only deal with the salient points.
“During the Summer of the year 1789—at a time when all who had eyes to see the swiftly approaching upheaval in France gave anxious thought to the future—a number of gentlemen, most of them French, but with them some of other nationalities—one of these being Sir Jasper Ferrars—organized among themselves—there were, to be precise, thirteen of them—a tontine of unusual character, regulated with meticulous care and with the stringent insistence upon the letter as well as the spirit of the agreement.
“The essence of the scheme was that a sum of one million French livres, or in sterling money forty thousand pounds, subscribed by the thirteen original members, was to be deposited outside Revolutionary France—in fact, with an English bank of repute. It was to be left at compound interest for the space of twenty-eight years—after which the accumulated capital would be distributed, each in the proportion of his original subscription, among the survivors, or, in default of any of them, their surviving eldest sons.
“You are aware, no doubt, Mr. Ferrars, that a capital sum placed at five per cent. compound interest doubles itself in fourteen years. Twenty-eight have elapsed since this contract was made—or rather since the money was lodged in its entirety at the bank—and that was on October 14, 1789. The original capital has therefore quadrupled itself. In other words, it now amounts to a little over one hundred and sixty thousand pounds.”
The attorney paused a moment, looking, no doubt, for signs of overwhelming emotion in the young man's face. But to his great astonishment finding nothing of the kind, he resumed in the same orating style:
“The point which, as I hinted before, touches you closely and brings you, Mr. Ferrars, into a position which it was your father's intention—for reasons best known to himself; I will not enter into that painful family matter here—which it was your father's intention, I say, to keep you from if he could, is that by your actual presence here at this moment, of which we take due cognizance, you become beneficiary, beyond the reach of dispute, of the whole of this accruing fund.”
Ferrars had grown pale. He was a little giddy, and he had to clear his voice as he said:
“This accession of fortune is very strange, singularly unexpected. But not stranger than the experiences I have met with during this last week.”
“To say the truth,” went on Mr. Johnstone, considerably surprized at this laconic attitude, “we had reason to fear that something untoward might have happened to Sir Jasper. But we had every reason to expect the appearance of the young Baron Hanstedt and that of M. de Gournay, or, in his default, of his son. There is,” said Mr. Johnstone, solemnly, “something sinister attaching to a tontine of this kind, which at best is only a gamble of death and hazard, not an insurance.”
“Well may you think so, sir,” said Ferrars gravely. “Of the last five survivors, my father would seem to have been hunted—hunted relentlessly by some unknown enemies, invisible, but suspected everywhere in everything, till they appear to have driven him wellnigh out of his mind—by now no doubt to an unknown death, or he would be here in my stead at this moment.
“As for M. de Gournay: he died, as I heard, just before I left Paris; died of the death of his son, who was murdered by a duelling bravo. I myself only escaped assassination by a hair's breadth. And Baron von Hanstedt, the organizer for a certainty, of all these 'suppressions,' as he called it, if not indeed of many others among the members of the tontine, has made away with himself in the hour of detection.”
Here Mr. Wapshot, who, unable to repress his not unpleasurable emotion, had been almost dancing in his chair, broke all professional decorum and sprang to his feet.
“Mr. Ferrars,” he exclaimed. Then, snapped his fingers, “No—Sir Adrian! I congratulate you!”
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