The Duke Decides Part 13

He sat and eyed the motionless boot, and then an impulse, swift and irresistible, seized him.

"Come out of that, you beggar!" he cried; and, stooping down, he gripped the boot, wondering whether he was to be rewarded with a haul or whether he would have to laugh at himself for grabbing someone's discarded footgear. But the first touch told him that here was no empty boot, and, his fingers closing on it like a vise, he put forth all his strength and dragged its wearer, snarling and spluttering, out on to the open floor.

There was no sign of a pistol, but as a measure of precaution Beaumanoir pulled out his own Smith and Wesson.

"Get up and sit in that corner," he said sternly, eyeing the puny form of the invader with curiosity. Open violence at any rate was not to be apprehended from the stunted little figure of a man who coweringly obeyed his order.

But as his captive turned round and showed his sullen face the Duke knew that this was no mere impecunious vagabond, sneaking a cheap railway journey. His fellow pa.s.senger was part and parcel of the peril that menaced him-had, in fact, been a fellow-pa.s.senger of his before. For the wizened, mean-looking face was the face of the spy Marker, who had been pointed out to him by Leonie on board the _St. Paul_, and who had afterwards shadowed him to the Hotel Cecil on landing.

"So we meet again, Mr. Marker," said the Duke with pleasant irony. "I should have thought that your friend Mr. Ziegler could have provided you with a railway fare rather than let you travel like a broken racing sharp-under the seat."

The fellow blinked his ferret eyes viciously, but began a futile attempt at prevarication. "My name, I guess, ain't Marker, and I never heard of anyone called Ziegler," he whined.

"Very possibly your name may not be Marker, though you booked under it on the _St. Paul_; but you are undoubtedly acquainted with the old rascal at the Cecil who calls himself Ziegler," Beaumanoir retorted.

"You seem to know a powerful sight more about me than I know myself,"

was the sullen reply.

Beaumanoir made a long scrutiny of the weak but cunning countenance of the spy, and he came to the conclusion that this was one of the underlings of the combination, to be trusted only with minor tasks in the great game. His presence there under the seat of the compartment was the more unaccountable, since he was not the sort of creature with either nerve or physique to murder anything stronger than a fly.

"Look here, my good chap," said Beaumanoir with tolerant contempt, after, as he thought, gauging Mr. Marker's caliber. "You've got a bit out of your depth with the people you're trying to swim with. Why not chuck Ziegler and Co. and come over to me? I'll make it worth your while."

But the only response was a dull shake of the insignificant head and the sulky rejoinder: "I don't know what you're getting at, Mister. I'll chuck anybody you like and come over to you with pleasure if you will stand the price of a ticket to St. Albans."

The persistent denial was as absurd as the suggested reason for his presence under the seat, and Beaumanoir began to lose patience. "I suppose," he said, "that you will maintain that you did not go to Mr.

Forsyth's chambers in John Street last night under the pretence of being a chemist's messenger?"

"Never been in John Street in my life," came back the pat and obvious lie.

It seemed useless to argue further, and Beaumanoir preserved silence till the train ran into Radlett Station, when he put into practice the course he had decided upon. At least he would force the creature to disclosure and put him to some inconvenience, as it was possible that thereby he might disconcert his plans, whatever they might be. Lowering the window, he called to the guard, and informed the astonished official that he had found a man traveling under the seat without a ticket.

Then uprose the righteous wrath of the guard, who had Mr. Marker by the collar in a trice and twisted him out on to the platform with the sharp demand:

"Now, young man, your name and address, and quick about it."

"What for?" inquired Marker, openly insolent.

"Defrauding the Company by traveling without previously paying the fare, contrary to By-law 18."

The spy broke into a jeering cackle. "You've only got _his_ word for it that I haven't got a ticket," he replied. "I nipped under the seat because I thought he was a lunatic, and a gent can travel that way, I reckon, if he's paid his shot. Here's the ticket, Mister. I'll make tracks to another carriage."

With which he produced a first-cla.s.s ticket all in order and walked off along the platform, leaving the Duke and the guard looking after him, the former with a curious smile, the latter with dismayed perplexity.

"Well, of all the funny games!" exclaimed the official. "He must have got in at Elstree while I was attending to that there toff, and blessed if he ain't scooting into the same compartment with him now. Your Grace will understand that I couldn't interfere with him, seeing that he had a ticket and you didn't prefer no charge?"

"All right, guard," replied Beaumanoir, with his weary smile. "It really doesn't matter. He seems to have taken me for a madman, while I took him for a dead-head, that's all. These little misunderstandings will arise, you know. We're behind time, eh?"

Taking the hint, the guard retired and started the train, Beaumanoir resuming his seat in a frame of mind only to be described as mixed. He stared out into the gloom of night, wondering what was to come next. His little stratagem had succeeded, in so far as it had revealed Marker as the possessor of a ticket, and therefore as presumably charged with some design against himself, though it had shed no light on the nature of that design. But the adroitness with which the wretched spy had extricated himself made him gnash his teeth because of the impudent reliance on his inability to a.s.sign a reason to the guard for fearing an intruder. That in itself was clear evidence that Mr. Marker was under the seat with a very real purpose.

Had that purpose been entirely thwarted by his discovery? was the question which buzzed through the Duke's brain to the tune of the rolling wheels. There had been an air of insolent confidence in the fellow as he showed his ticket and walked away which hardly tallied with total discomfiture. And then, mused Beaumanoir, was there not ground for further apprehension in his selection of a fresh compartment and a fresh traveling companion? Could it be that "the toff" who had entered the train at Elstree was an accomplice, and that Mr. Marker had gone to report to him and concert new measures? It might well be so, for, whether wittingly or no, the swaggering pa.s.senger had certainly caused the diversion which had enabled Marker to open the door on the off side and creep under the seat.

The reflection that the spy might have confederates on the train did not add to Beaumanoir's equanimity, and at the next stop he let down the window again and peered along the line of carriages. Sure enough, he caught a glimpse of a head protruding from the compartment into which Marker had disappeared-not the head of Marker himself, but of the imperious person who had played the magnate and distracted the guard.

The head was instantly withdrawn, but it had done a useful work in convincing Beaumanoir that he was really an object of interest in that quarter, and not to Marker alone.

"I wish they would _do_ something and end this beastly suspense," the hunted man muttered to himself as the train moved on once more; "though, for the matter of that, they can't do anything till I get out at Tarrant Road-unless they openly come to the door and shoot me at one of the few remaining stoppages."

But he was soon to learn that stations were not to be the only stopping-places for the 8.45 that night. It had come to a steep gradient, up which it was plodding laboriously, when suddenly there was a b.u.mping thud that hurled Beaumanoir on to the opposite seat; the wheels screeched on the metals as if in agony; a tremor as of impending dissolution quivered through the framework of the carriage, and the train jerked to a standstill.

Beaumanoir had the door open instantly with his own private key, and clambering down on to the side of the line nearly fell into the arms of the guard, hurrying from the rear van towards the engine.

"Run into an obstruction, I expect, your Grace-nothing very serious, I hope," panted the guard as he went scrunching over the ballast to the center of disaster.

People were swarming out of the carriages, all of them evidently more frightened than hurt, and Beaumanoir strained his eyes through the leaping, scuffling figures to the compartment occupied by his enemies.

Yes, there they were, and apparently the thing was to be done in character to the last. The tall, well-dressed man opened the door, called "Guard!" in the same old tone of importance, and, getting no response, began to leisurely descend on to the permanent way, followed by Marker, who feigned to hold no converse with him. At the same time there hastened up the man who had handed in the hatbox and rug, and then the three were swallowed up in the shadows beyond the radius of light from the carriage windows.

For the night had fallen inky dark, and outside that narrow band of artificial light all was as black as the nether pit. Shrieking women and agitated men appeared for a moment on the footboards and disappeared, directly they had traversed the short zone of light, into the outer gloom of the waste ground at the side of the railway.

Casting a comprehensive glance at his surroundings, the Duke saw that the accident had occurred at a lonely spot where the line was hemmed in on either hand by dense woods running right up to the rail-fence that bounded the track. Instinct prompted him to quit the dangerous proximity of his own compartment, and at the same time he desired to ascertain how long the delay was likely to last. This he could only do by proceeding to the front of the train, but to reach the engine would entail pa.s.sing the place where the mysterious three lurked in the shadows. In order to avoid them, therefore, he darted across the zone of light, hoping to escape observation, dived under the train, and made his way forward on the other side of the line, s.h.i.+elded from his foes by the carriages.

One glance at the derailed engine sufficed to show him the nature of the accident, and to inform him of the reason for it. A barrier composed of baulks of timber, supplemented by heaped-up ballast, had been built across the six-foot way, and from the excited remarks of driver, stoker, and guard Beaumanoir gathered that the locomotive was so damaged that even when the obstruction was removed it would be unable to proceed under its own steam. The pa.s.sengers would have to wait till a relief train came along, unless they elected to trudge three miles to the next or the last station.

It was all too plain to Beaumanoir that here was no accident at all, but an outrage designed to strand him in that lonely place, where amid the darkness and the confusion murder would come easy. The choice of the locality, half-way up a steep gradient where the speed would be reduced to a minimum, pointed to no desire to injure the pa.s.sengers generally; indeed, there would have been an obvious intention to avoid a really perilous collision, seeing that some of the conspirators were on board.

He could pretty accurately gauge Marker's functions now. The spy was to have kept close to him after the "accident," so as to signal his whereabouts in the darkness to the more active members of the gang.

The emissaries of Ziegler would have to dispense with that aid now, but still Beaumanoir could not shut his eyes to his imminent peril. The three who had traveled in the train were on the other side of the line, but the contingent-there would be at least two of them-who had wrecked the engine were probably lurking somewhere near. He could have no a.s.surance that they were not at his very elbow, stealing on him through the dense undergrowth that fringed the fence.

A shout from the guard to the pa.s.sengers congregated behind the train told him that at least half an hour must elapse before they could be picked up and carried on, and he at once decided that to stay at the spot would be intolerable. He should go mad if he remained at the mercy of invisible adversaries whom he could not _hit back_. If they would only come out into the open, in a body if they liked, so that he could empty the six chambers of his revolver into them before he went down, he would take his risks gladly; but to stand still in the dark, not knowing how soon a stab in the back would be his fate, was the thing too much.

There and then he ended the situation by climbing the fence and plunging into the wood.

He had not taken six steps through the brambles when from the pitch darkness ahead a low, flute-like whistle sounded, to be instantly answered by the cracking of a twig a little to the right of him. His present intention to quit the scene and make his way to Prior's Tarrant on foot across country had evidently been foreseen and provided for.

Those bushes were _occupied_, and his retreat at that point was cut off.

He clambered back on to the railway, and, running as hard as his lameness would allow, close to the fence, he again essayed the wood two hundred yards ahead of the engine. This time he won free into the tangle of the copse without any sign of pursuit, and presently came to an open "ride" where progress was easier.

CHAPTER XIII-_At the Keeper's Cottage_

The Duke followed the ride for some distance, the clamor of voices around the wrecked train growing every moment less distinct till they died away altogether, and he guessed that he was in the heart of the wood, half a mile from the scene of the disaster. Whether or no he was pursued he had no means of knowing, with such diabolical cunning pitted against him; but, at any rate, no sound of pursuit reached his straining ears, and he began to hope that his break-away had been undetected.

Suddenly the ride turned abruptly to the right, and at the end of a glade, some hundred yards further on, he saw the lights of a dwelling.

Across the intervening years came a flash of remembrance. These must be the celebrated coverts of his neighbor, Sir Claude Asprey, and the house ahead must be the keeper's cottage where, when an Eton boy spending the holidays with his uncle at Prior's Tarrant, he had lunched as a member of Sir Claude's shooting-party ten years ago. The place was graven on his memory, because the day was a red-letter one by reason of his having shot his first pheasant thereon.

Without any definite plan in his head, but actuated by a longing for human companions.h.i.+p, however brief, he went up to the door of the cottage and knocked, his arrival being also heralded by the barking of dogs at the side of the house. The door was almost immediately thrown open by a stalwart, ruddy-faced man of sixty, who carried a candle and stared in open-mouthed wonder at a well-dressed visitor at such an hour and place. Beaumanoir looked at him closely, and smiled his first smile of pleasure since Forsyth's hand had gripped his on the day he landed.

"I can see you've forgotten me, Mayne," he said, "though I should have known you anywhere-time has touched you so slightly. Don't you recollect young Charley Hanbury, who came over with the Duke of Beaumanoir to a big shoot with Sir Claude in '91?"

A gleam shone in the honest keeper's keen eyes. "Of course I remember, sir," he replied, adding quickly: "Begging your Grace's pardon, for you'll be the Duke yourself now?'