The Wicked Marquis Part 50

"Death's no punishment to any man, and the like of him's too brave to feel the fear of it. It's through her the blow must come, and you'll do my bidding, David, or you'll see me sitting waiting for you to-morrow, with a last message to you upon my dead lips."

David gripped the torch from his hand. After all, h.e.l.l might come to any man!

"I'll go," he said.

It was a nightmare that followed. Stooping only a little, flas.h.i.+ng his torch always in front, he half ran, half scrambled along a paved way, between paved walls which even the damp of centuries seemed scarcely to have entered. Soon the path descended steeply and then rose on the other side of the moat. Once a rat paused to look at him with eyes gleaming like diamonds, and bolted at the flash of the torch. More than once he fancied that he heard footsteps echoing behind him. He paused to listen. There was nothing. He lost sense of time or distance. He stole on, dreading the end--and the end came sooner even than he had feared. There was the door that yielded easily to his touch, the steep steps round and round the interior of the tower, the blank wall before him. The iron handle was there. His hands closed upon it. For a moment he stood in terrible silence. This was something worse than death! Then he set his teeth firmly, pressed the handle and stepped through the wall.

Afterwards it seemed to him that there must have been something mortally terrifying in his own appearance as he stood there with his back to the wall and his eyes fixed upon the solitary occupant of the room. Lady Let.i.tia, in a blue dressing gown, was lying upon a couch drawn up before a small log fire. There seemed to be no detail of the room which in those sickening moments of mental absorption was not photographed into his memory. The old four-poster bedstead, hung with chintz; the long, black dressing table, once a dresser, covered carelessly with tortoise-sh.e.l.l backed toilet articles, with a large mirror in the centre from which a chair had just been pushed back.

But, above all, that look in her face, from which every other expression seemed to have permanently fled. Her lips were parted, her eyes were round with horrified surprise. The book which she had been reading slipped from her fingers and fell noiselessly on to the hearth-rug. She sat up, supporting herself with her hands, one on either side, pressed into the sofa. She seemed denied the power of speech, almost as he was. And then a sudden wonderful change came to him. He spoke quite distinctly, although he kept his voice low.

"Lady Let.i.tia," he said, "let me explain. I shall never ask for your forgiveness. I shall never venture to approach you again. I have come here by the secret pa.s.sage from Vont's cottage. I have come here to keep an oath which I swore in America to Richard Vont, and I have come because, if I had broken my word, he would have killed himself."

He spoke with so little emotion, so reasonably, that she found herself answering him, notwithstanding her bewilderment, almost in the same key.

"But who are you?" she demanded. "Who are you to be the slave of that old man?"

"I am his nephew," David answered. "I am the little boy who played about the park when you were a girl, who picked you up on the ice once when you fell. All that I have I owe to Richard Vont. He sent me to college. He lent me the money upon which I built my fortune, but on the day he lent it to me he made me swear a terrible oath, and to-night he has forced me to keep it by setting foot within your chamber. Now I shall return the way I came, and may G.o.d grant that some day you will forgive me."

Almost as he spoke there was a little click behind. He started round and felt along the wall. There was a moment's silence. Then he turned once more towards Let.i.tia, his cheeks whiter than ever, his sunken eyes filled with a new horror. Even the composure which had enabled him to explain his coming with some show of reason, had deserted him. He seemed threatened with a sort of hysteria.

"He followed me! d.a.m.n him, he followed me!" he muttered. "I heard footsteps. He has fastened us in!"

He tore desperately at the tapestry, shook the concealed door and rattled it, in vain. Let.i.tia rose slowly to her feet.

"You see what has happened," she said. "Richard Vont was more cunning than you. He was not content that you should make your little speech and creep back amongst the rats. Tell me, what do you propose to do?"

He looked around him helplessly.

"There is the window," he muttered.

She shook her head.

"We are on the second story," she told him, "and there is nothing to break your fall upon the flags below. To be found with a broken neck beneath my window would be almost as bad as anything that could happen."

"I am not afraid to try," he declared.

He moved towards the window. She crossed the room swiftly and intercepted him.

"Don't be absurd," she admonished. "Come, let us think. There must be a way."

"Let me out of your room on to the landing," he begged eagerly. "If I can reach the hall it will be all right. I can find a window open, or hide somewhere. Only, for G.o.d's sake," he added, his voice breaking, "let me out of this room!"

A flash of her old manner came back to her.

"I am sorry you find it so unattractive," she said. "I thought it rather pretty myself. And blue, after all, is my colour, you know, although I don't often wear it."

"Oh, bless you!" he exclaimed. "Bless you, Lady Let.i.tia, for speaking to me as though I were a human being. Now I am going to steal out of that door on tiptoe."

"Wait till I have listened there," she whispered.

She stole past him and stooped down with her ear to the keyhole. She frowned for a moment and held out her hand warningly. It seemed to him that he could feel his heart beating. Close to where he was standing, her silk stockings were hanging over the back of a chair.--He suddenly closed his eyes, covered them desperately with the palms of his hand.

Her warning finger was still extended.

"That was some one pa.s.sing," she said. "I don't understand why. They all came to bed some time ago. Stay where you are and don't move."

They both listened. David seemed in those few minutes to have lost all the composure which had become the habit of years. His heart was beating madly. He was shaking as though with intense cold. Lady Let.i.tia, on the other hand, seemed almost unruffled. Only he fancied that at the back of her eyes there was something to which as yet she had given no expression, something which terrified him. Then, as they stood there, neither of them daring to move, there came a sudden awful sound. It had seemed to him that the world could hold no greater horror than he was already suffering, but the sound to which they listened was paralysing, hideous, stupefying. With hoa.r.s.e, brazen note, rusty and wheezy, yet pulled as though with some desperate clutch, the great alarm bell which hung over the courtyard was tolling its dreadful summons.

Let.i.tia stood up, her cheeks ghastly pale. She, too, was struggling now for composure.

"Really," she exclaimed, "this is an evening full of incidents.--Don't touch me," she added. "I shall be all right directly."

For a single moment he knew that she had nearly fainted. She caught at the side of the wall. Then they heard a cry from outside. A spark flew past the window. A hoa.r.s.e voice from somewhere below shouted "Fire!" And then something more alarming still. All down the corridor, doors were thrown open. There was the sound of eager voices--finally a loud knocking at the door which they were guarding.

Let.i.tia shrugged her shoulders.

"This," she murmured, "is fate."

She opened the door. There was a little confused group outside. The Marquis, fully dressed, stood with his eyes fixed upon Thain at first in blank astonishment,--afterwards as one who looks upon some horrible thing. Grantham in a dressing gown, took a quick step forward.

"My G.o.d, it's Thain!" he exclaimed. "What in h.e.l.l's name--?"

Let.i.tia turned towards her father.

"Father," she began--

The Marquis made no movement, yet she was suddenly aware of something in his expression, something which shone more dimly in the face of her aunt, which throbbed in Grantham's incoherent words. Her brave little speech died away. She staggered. The Marquis still made no movement.

It was David who caught her in his arms and carried her to the couch.

He turned and faced them. In the background, Sylvia was clinging to Grantham's arm.

"You gibbering fools!" he cried. "What if an accursed chance has brought me here! Isn't she Lady Let.i.tia, your daughter, Marquis?

Isn't she your betrothed, Grantham? Your niece, d.u.c.h.ess? Do you think that anything but the rankest and most accursed accident could ever have brought me within reach even of her fingers?"

No one spoke. The faces into which he looked seemed to David like a hideous accusation. Suddenly Gossett's voice was heard from behind.

"The fire is nothing, your lords.h.i.+p. It is already extinguished. Some one seems to have brought some blazing brambles and thrown them into the courtyard."

"Get some water, you fools!" Thain shouted. "Can't you see that she is faint?"

The d.u.c.h.ess began to collect herself. She advanced further into the room in search of restoratives. The Marquis came a step nearer to Thain.

"Tell me how you found your way into this room, sir?" he demanded.

"By the foulest means on G.o.d's earth," Thain answered. "I came through the secret pa.s.sage from Vont's cottage."

"Without Lady Let.i.tia's knowledge, I presume?" Grantham interposed hoa.r.s.ely.

"No one but a cad would have asked such a question," David thundered.

"I broke into her room, meaning to deliver one brief message and to go back again. Vont followed me and fastened the door.--Can't you read the story?" he added, turning appealingly to the Marquis. "Don't you know who I am? I am Vont's nephew, the boy who played about here years ago. I lived with him in America. He paid for my education at Harvard; he lent me the money to make my first venture. He has been all the relative I ever had. Out there I pledged my word blindly to help him in his revenge upon you, Marquis, in whatever manner he might direct. To-night he sprung this upon me. I was face to face with my word of honour, and the certainty that if I refused to fulfil my pledge he would kill himself before morning. So I came. It was he who rang the alarm bell, he who planned the pretence of a fire to trap me here.

This was to be his vengeance.--Be reasonable. Don't take this miserable affair seriously. G.o.d knows what I have suffered, these last few minutes!"