The Duke Decides Part 23

"There were three others, sahib, but they are gone," he said simply. "At sight of thy servant fear seemed to fall upon them, so that they fled across the _maidan_ like deer flushed by a cheetah. But this one was already climbed nigh to the window, so I followed, and choking him a little, brought him in." And with his foot he slightly spurned the motionless form of his prisoner, whom the Duke and Forsyth recognized as the hero of the watch-spring saw who had been surprised cutting out the panel at Beaumanoir House a week before.

"Choked him a little!" said the General with a grim chuckle. "You don't seem to have left much life in him, but it was no case for standing on ceremony. And now, madam," continued the veteran, facing round to where Beaumanoir stood with his grip on Ziegler's collar, "your disguise need hamper you no longer-that is, if you prefer to finish this business in your own person. Get the pull of your s.e.x, you know."

"Yes, I guess that wig doesn't do justice to Cora Lestrade," interjected Senator Sherman, and with a dexterous twirl of his wrist he jerked off the elaborate head-gear which had effectually transformed the das.h.i.+ng lady known as Mrs. Talmage Eglinton into a repulsive old man. But it was only when feminine instinct had prompted her with a swift application of her handkerchief to remove the purple stain that had added the semblance of disease to old age that the Duke recognized his guest.

"I do not understand," he murmured, feebly.

And it seemed that Alec Forsyth, in spite of the part entrusted to him in the comedy of the crypt, had been ignorant of the ident.i.ty of his antagonist, for a cry of astonishment escaped him. On the other hand, the demure smile that played round Sybil Hanbury's pretty mouth betokened a closer intimacy with the foregoings of this wonderful development. Forsyth's sharp exclamation had the effect of rousing Azimoolah's captive from his swoon. The man raised himself on his elbow, and, grasping the situation, remained quietly watchful.

"And now, your Grace, before another word is said, let me shake you by the hand right here, and thank you for all the patient courage you have shown and all the danger you have incurred to baffle as waspish a gang as ever hailed from my side of the ditch," said the Senator, suiting the action to the word, greatly to the embarra.s.sment of the Duke, and provoking a scornful laugh from the fantastic figure in male attire.

"Why, he was one of us," she sneered. "It was only when he found he had something to lose that he backed out."

The Senator looked her up and down with a fine contempt.

"So much for a great reputation," he said. "My good Lestrade, the warders who told me you were the cleverest woman in Sing-Sing must have made a grievous error, for a really clever criminal would never have been cornered by a brave man pretending to join the confederacy. The Duke has not tripped once all through the affair, except that he has been a little too reckless in exposing his valuable life to peril. The result of his heroic conduct is that you are outwitted all along the line, and that the three millions are secure in that safe."

This misdescription of the case, so adroitly near the mark and yet differing from the truth in the all-important word "_pretending_," made the Duke catch his breath. Somehow the matter which he had believed himself to be working single-handed seemed to have been taken out of his shaky grasp, and, shamed by the unmerited praise, he waited for the rejoinder of the adventuress. It came crisp and sharp.

"Then what you have to do is to call in the police and hand us over to justice," she said defiantly. "The authorities will be puzzled to find a reason for all you worthy amateurs bottling up your knowledge of a crime that would have shaken two continents. I think I shall be able to instruct my counsel so that by the time he has done with him his Grace won't be much of a hero."

The Senator smiled superior.

"Ah!" he retorted, pleasantly; "you might have tried that if you had had the chance. But then, you see, you won't have it. I'm only a visitor here-like yourself, his Grace's guest-but I believe the intention is that you and your friend, who really need not scowl so, are not to face a judge this time. General Sadgrove has charge of what we may call the liberation department, and he will enlighten you."

The man Benzon, lying propped on his elbow, with Azimoolah standing over him statuesquely menacing, shot a sly glance of triumph at his confederate, but it met with only a sickly smile for a response.

Lestrade's eyes turned with shrinking expectancy to the General, her insolent demeanor having vanished, strangely enough, at the hint that she would not be detained.

"Yes, there will be no prosecution," the General said, sternly. "The Duke took the onus of defeating your aims upon him before he was called to his present high station, and his friends are unanimous that he ought not to pursue the matter now. You, Madame Lestrade, will be allowed to depart early to-morrow morning in the name you have chosen to a.s.sume; and you, sir, can go at once by the way you came-through the window."

The man Benzon rose to his feet with alacrity, trying vainly to catch the eye of his accomplice, and shooting furtive glances at the package which she still carried. There was evidently something that he did not understand, and wanted to before he availed himself of the unexpected permission. There came a curious gleam into the General's eyes as he noticed this perplexity, and when he took up his parable again there was a ring in his voice that chained his hearers' attention. Sybil, too, leaned forward, watching the two bond-robbers alternately, as though expecting a surprise for them.

"Before you go I will explain what is puzzling you," the General went on, addressing himself to Benzon, and pointing to the dummy package in Cora Lestrade's hand. "You are under the impression that those are the bonds, and you are half inclined to think that we are letting you go in ignorance of what you believe to be the case-that the genuine bonds were handed to that lady in the crypt by the Duke. Know, then, that the Duke wasn't in the crypt at all, nor were any bonds handed over. His Grace's place was taken by Mr. Forsyth there, who succeeded in getting from her the spurious bonds and handed her in return a lot of blank paper.

See-examine it for yourself."

And quickly possessing himself of the parcel, he held it for inspection.

A spasm crossed Benzon's sinister face, and there escaped him the involuntary cry:

"But you looked at the things, Cora, and p.r.o.nounced them correct. You said we were only coming here for the heirlooms in the safe; yet you must have known."

"Quite so," the General proceeded, disregarding a smothered remark from the female culprit. "She knew that she had been hoodwinked, because she recognized my nephew under his disguise, and so at once examined the parcel. Thereupon she deceived you and her other a.s.sociates for a private reason that had nothing to do with the interests of your precious combination. Like to hear what that reason was?"

Benzon flung a reproachful, half-imploring look at his strangely garbed chief, as though seeking for a denial from her, but failing to catch her downcast eye, he gave a sullen a.s.sent to the question.

"Very well," the General went on, inexorably. "She withheld her confidence from her colleagues because she desired to save the life of Mr. Forsyth from the murderous vengeance of you gentlemen who are so handy with charcoal braziers and railway accidents. So she made a last desperate effort to obtain the bonds by persuading you to break into the safe under a false pretext-used you as tools, do you understand?-to repair her own breach of faith to you without having to confess it. Her idea was doomed to failure, anyway, for, apart from his Grace's vigilance, she was effectually watched by Miss Hanbury from the moment of her readmission into the house by that Frenchwoman. When 'Mrs.

Talmage Eglinton',"-with a fine scorn on the name-"crept out dressed like that, we wanted to see whether she would go straight to her room when she came back, don't you know."

He paused, but not with an air of finality. No one had ever suspected Jem Sadgrove in the old days of an eye for dramatic effect. He must have been coached by somebody into leading up to the question now to be put with fierce insistence by the saturnine Benzon, and, to judge by the eager interest in Sybil's dilated eyes, that young lady had been the coach.

"Why should Cora Lestrade want to spare Mr. Forsyth?" asked the man, taking a step forward, to be instantly reminded of his position by the lean brown hand of Azimoolah falling like a vise on his shoulder. The Pathan evidently cherished a lingering hope that there might yet arise a pretext for treating "the black tribe" in the old way.

"Because, sir, a woman can't help herself in matters of the heart, and even the worst of 'em is capable of an unselfish attachment," the General replied, with slow emphasis. But he hastened to add, as if eager to disavow responsibility for the introduction of sentiment: "At least, so I was advised. The little scheme for obtaining the sham securities was based on the supposition that this woman had a liking for Mr.

Forsyth, and would do him no hurt if she recognized him. That forecast has turned out to be well founded."

"Uncle Jem!" Forsyth protested, flus.h.i.+ng hotly.

"Yes, laddie, I know you would not have taken the job on if I had informed you who Ziegler was," said the General. "There would have been less to fear, but there would have been a dash of the underhand about it that wouldn't have suited you. But I should never have allowed you to walk into such a death-trap as that crypt would have been without the safeguard we-that is, I-trusted to. It wasn't a case for being too nice.

There's no such thing as taking a mean advantage of people threatening life and property, they told me when I was taught my trade."

The man Benzon, who had kept his gaze fixed on the face of Cora Lestrade, removed it now, and, with a cool politeness that struck an unaccountable chill to most of his hearers, thanked the General for enlightening him on "a point of considerable importance," and begged permission to depart if he was really not to be detained. At a sign from his master Azimoolah stood aside, and the man swung himself out of the window, gained a foothold on the ivy stems, and was gone. When they had all turned away from the darkling face framed for a moment among the creepers, it was seen that she who had loomed so largely in their lives of late as "Mr. Clinton Ziegler" and "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton" was swaying and about to fall.

"Thank you," she said, recovering herself with a painful effort as Senator Sherman, who happened to be nearest, came to her a.s.sistance. "It was only a pa.s.sing weakness, but I shall be glad if I may go to my room."

And with a flicker of the old impudence she mimicked General Sadgrove:

"Even the worst of 'em is capable of feeling shaken on hearing sentence of death p.r.o.nounced," adding, with a swift change of manner, "and that is what I have heard in this room to-night."

But in the morning, when, with the Frenchwoman Rosa, she took her departure by a train leaving so early that none of the house-party were visible, it was observed by the servants that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was in the highest spirits, and, if possible, more stylishly appareled than usual. And Mr. Manson, the butler, looking regretfully after the station brougham as it drove away, murmured benedictions, having palmed the largest tip that had come his way in a quarter of a century.

"A thorough lady," he sighed, as he closed the hall door and went in to preside at the breakfast sideboard. "Pity she was called away unexpected."

CHAPTER XXI-_The Honor of the House_

The Treasury bonds had reached their goal in the vaults of the Bank of England, and Senator Sherman, having duly discharged his duty to his Republic, was speeding back to his wife and daughter at Prior's Tarrant, with, as he quaintly phrased it, "a considerable load off his chest." In the reserved compartment with him were the Duke of Beaumanoir and General Sadgrove, who had insisted on forming an escort.

The Duke, who had been buoyed up with excitement till the bonds were safe in the bank, had fallen into dejection on the return journey. His two companions persisted in treating him as a hero, whereas he guessed that they were both aware of the true state of the case. He knew that one of them was, for he had himself, under threat of information being given to the police, confessed everything to the General after the latter's visit to the hotel on the day of "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's"

supposed confinement to her room; and, at any rate, the Senator must have heard something of the truth, or he would not have been prepared the night before to confound Cora Lestrade's correct accusation with a generous but entirely erroneous construction of his complicity.

All this made Beaumanoir miserable and ill at ease, the more so that he had three times attempted, without success, to terminate his false position. The two gentlemen had evidently entered into a friendly conspiracy to maintain their own reading of his conduct; and whenever he began to make penitential allusions to it, one or other of them would, so to speak, jump down his throat with an encomium on the motive they chose to attribute to him for originally allying himself to the Lestrade combination. Nor did it add to his comfort on the last of these occasions to catch the Senator deliberately winking at the General.

Now this was exasperating in the present and intolerable for the future, for Beaumanoir had set his heart on that to which, conscience told him, a clear understanding with Senator Sherman was essential. But at last he abandoned direct efforts and sank back in his corner, hoping to obtain an opening by more diplomatic methods presently.

In the meanwhile, the General was satisfying the curiosity of the Senator, and incidentally that of the Duke, as to the identification of the self-styled Mrs. Talmage Eglinton with the mysterious Clinton Ziegler. He described the tangle of doubt and surmise he had got into when he had convinced himself that the occupants of the neighboring suites at the hotel were both concerned in the plot against the bonds, without being able to carry the matter further. And especially did he lay stress on the deadlock that had been reached when "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" artfully concocted anonymous warning against "Ziegler" had caused him to waver in his suspicions of her guilt.

"It took a woman to nose that out," said the General, with a whimsical grimace. "Miss Sybil heard me grumbling-unfortunate habit, talking to one's self-and put me right in a brace of shakes. 'Why,' she snaps out, after she'd pumped me about my difficulty, 'they must be one and the same person. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton _is_ Ziegler, and her intention is that after they've finished the business the Eglinton part of her will remain and the Ziegler part will vanish-with the odium of anything that may happen, don't you see. I didn't see it at once, but consented to lay a trap, and blessed if the girl wasn't right. Soon as the Eglinton was posted up by Sybil that I was going up next day to call on Ziegler at the hotel, and that I was going to raise Cain if I wasn't admitted, she shammed sick and sneaked out of the house, with old Azimoolah at her heels, to keep the appointment."

He went on to tell how his call on "Ziegler," followed by "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" clandestine return to the house as witnessed by Alec Forsyth, had brushed all doubts aside and cleared the way for the final _coup_ in the crypt, again suggested by Sybil, for obtaining the bogus bonds and so drawing the sting of the enemy.

"The girl has got grit," was the Senator's admiring comment. "The right sort of grit, because she trusted to her man having it too. And, thunder, but it was plucky of him to face that crew in ignorance of the saving clause in his favor."

"Yes, the boy behaved well," the General admitted. "But I think the Duke beat him for courage in going to meet you at Liverpool in ignorance that we had drawn off the cut-throats who he had reason to believe would dog him directly he left the house. Alec had to make up for a bad lapse. We never allowed laxity in our service, and Alec was lax, very lax, in giving them that chance on the railway."

Beaumanoir sat up at this, and, leaning forward, tapped the General on the knee.

"Oblige me by not drawing comparisons," he said-for him-quite fiercely.