T. Tembarom Part 88

"How well done of you!" he said. "How well arranged! But I'm afraid you didn't arrange it at all. It has merely happened. Where did you come from?"

"From America; got back yesterday." T. Tembarom's hand-shake was a robust hearty greeting. "It's all right."

"From America!" The united voices of the solicitors exclaimed it.

Joseph Hutchinson broke into a huge guffaw, and he stamped in exultation.

"I'm danged if be has na' been to America!" he cried out. "To America!"

"Oh!" Miss Alicia gasped hysterically, "they go backward and forward to America like--like lightning!"

Little Ann had not risen at his entrance, but sat still with her hands clasped tightly on her lap. Her face had somehow the effect of a flower gradually breaking into extraordinary bloom. Their eyes had once met and then she remained, her soul in hers which were upon him, as she drank in every word he uttered. Her time had not yet come.

Lady Joan had remained standing by the chair, which a few moments before her manner had seemed to transform into something like a witness stand in a court of justice. Her hungry eyes had grown hungrier each second, and her breath came and went quickly. The very face she had looked up at on her last talk with T. Tembarom--the oddly human face--turned on her as he came to her. It was just as it had been that night --just as commonly uncommon and believable.

"Say, Lady Joan! You didn't believe all that guff, did you--You didn't?" he said.

"No--no--no! I couldn't!" she cried fiercely.

He saw she was shaking with suspense, and he pushed her gently into a chair.

"You'd better sit down a minute. You're about all in," he said.

She might have been a woman with an ague as she caught his arm, shaking it because her hands themselves so shook.

"Is it true?" was her low cry. "Is he alive--is he alive?"

"Yes, he's alive." And as he answered he drew close and so placed himself before her that he s.h.i.+elded her from the others in the room.

He seemed to manage to shut them out, so that when she dropped her face on her arms against the chair-back her shuddering, silent sobbing was hidden decently. It was not only his body which did it, but some protecting power which was almost physically visible. She felt it spread before her.

"Yes, he's alive," he said, "and he's all right--though it's been a long time coming, by gee!"

"He's alive." They all heard it. For a man of Palliser's make to stand silent in the midst of mysterious slowly acc.u.mulating convictions that some one--perilously of his own rarely inept type--was on the verge of feeling appallingly like a fool--was momentarily unendurable. And nothing had been explained, after all.

"Is this what you call `bluff' in New York?" he demanded. "You've got a lot to explain. You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?" and realized his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.

The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with which T. Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they ran over him.

"Admit!" he said. "Admit h.e.l.l! He's up-stairs," with a slight jerk of his head in the direction of the ceiling.

The duke alone did not gasp. He laughed slightly.

"We've just got here. He came down from London with me, and Sir Ormsby Galloway." And he said it not to Palliser but to Palford and Grimby.

"The Sir Ormsby Galloway?" It was an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n from Mr. Palford himself.

T. Tembarom stood square and gave his explanation to the lot of them, so to speak, without distinction.

"He's the big nerve specialist. I've had him looking after the case from the first--before I began to suspect anything. I took orders, and orders were to keep him quiet and not let any fool b.u.t.t in and excite him. That's what I've been giving my mind to. The great stunt was to get him to go and stay at Sir Ormsby's place." He stopped a moment and suddenly flared forth as if he had had about enough of it. He almost shouted at them in exasperation. "All I'm going to tell you is that for about six months I've been trying to prove that Jem Temple Barholm was Jem Temple Barholm, and the hardest thing I had to do was to get him so that he could prove it himself." He strode over to the hearth and rang a bell. "It's not my place to give orders here now," he said, "but Jem commissioned me to see this thing through. Sir Ormsby'll tell you all you want to hear."

He turned and spoke solely to the duke.

"This is what happened," he said. "I dare say you'll laugh when you hear it. I almost laughed myself. What does Jem do, when he thinks things over, but get some fool notion in his head about not coming back here and pus.h.i.+ng me out. And he lights out and leaves the country--leaves it--to get time to think it over some more."

The duke did not laugh. He merely smiled--a smile which had a shade of curious self-questioning in it.

"Romantic and emotional--and quite ridiculous," he commented slowly.

"He'd have awakened to that when he had thought it out `some more.'

The thing couldn't be done."

Burrill had presented himself in answer to the bell, and awaited orders. His Grace called Tembarom's attention to him, and Tembarom included Palliser with Palford and Grimby when he gave his gesture of instruction.

"Take these gentlemen to Sir Ormsby Galloway, and then ask Mr. Temple Barholm if he'll come down-stairs," he said.

It is possible that Captain Palliser felt himself more irritatingly infolded in the swathing realization that some one was in a ridiculous position, and it is certain that Mr. Palford felt it necessary to preserve an outwardly flawless dignity as the duke surprisingly left his chair and joined them.

"Let me go, too," he suggested; "I may be able to a.s.sist in throwing light." His including movement in Miss Alicia's direction was delightfully gracious and friendly. It was inclusive of Mr. Hutchinson also.

"Will you come with us, Miss Temple Barholm?" he said. "And you too, Mr. Hutchinson. We shall go over it all in its most interesting detail, and you must be eager about it. I am myself."

His happy and entirely correct idea was that the impending entrance of Mr. James Temple Barholm would "come off" better in the absence of audience.

Hutchinson almost bounced from his chair in his readiness. Miss Alicia looked at Tembarom.

"Yes, Miss Alicia," he answered her inquiring glance. "You go, too.

You'll get it all over quicker."

Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but the effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance.

Was it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held its own in a matter as serious as this? And could even the most cynical and light-minded of ducal personages have been involved in its unworthy frivolities? But no one looked jocular--Tembarom's jaw was set in its hard line, and the duke, taking up the broad ribbon of his rimless monocle to fix the gla.s.s in his eye, wore the expression of a man whose sense of humor was temporarily in abeyance.

"Are we to understand that your Grace--?"

"Yes," said his Grace a trifle curtly, "I have known about it for some time."

"But why was n.o.body told?" put in Palliser.

"Why should people be told? There was nothing sufficiently definite to tell. It was a waiting game." His Grace wasted no words. "I was told.

Mr. Temple Barholm did not know England or English methods. His idea-- perhaps a mistaken one--was that an English duke ought to be able to advise him. He came to me and made a clean breast of it. He goes straight at things, that young fellow. Makes what he calls a `bee line.' Oh! I've been in it--I 've been in it, I a.s.sure you."

It was as they crossed the hall that his Grace slightly laughed.

"It struck me as a sort of wild-goose chase at first. He had only a ghost of a clue--a mere resemblance to a portrait. But he believed in it, and he had an instinct." He laughed again. "The dullest and most unmelodramatic neighborhood in England has been taking part in a melodrama--but there has been no villain in it--only a matter-of-fact young man, working out a queer thing in his own queer, matter-of-fact way."

When the door closed behind them, Tembarom went to Lady Joan. She had risen and was standing before the window, her back to the room. She looked tall and straight and tensely braced when she turned round, but there was endurance, not fierceness in her eyes.

"Did he leave the country knowing I was here--waiting?" she asked. Her voice was low and fatigued. She had remembered that years had pa.s.sed, and that it was perhaps after all only human that long anguish should blot things out, and dull a hopeless man's memory.

"No," answered Tembarom sharply. "He didn't. You weren't in it then.

He believed you'd married that Duke of Merths.h.i.+re fellow. This is the way it was: Let me tell it to you quick. A letter that had been wandering round came to him the night before the cave-in, when they thought he was killed. It told him old Temple Barholm was dead. He started out before daylight, and you can bet he was strung up till he was near crazy with excitement. He believed that if he was in England with plenty of money he could track down that cardsharp lie. He believed you'd help him. Somewhere, while he was traveling he came across an old paper with a lot of dope about your being engaged."