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   :PG.Id: 37413
   :PG.Title: The Duke Decides
   :PG.Released: 2011-09-12
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
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   :DC.Creator: Headon Hill
   :MARCREL.ill:
   :DC.Title: The Duke Decides
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1903
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg

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   :class: small-caps


================
THE DUKE DECIDES
================

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   This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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      Title: The Duke Decides
      
      Author: Headon Hill
      
      Release Date: September 12, 2011 [EBook #37413]
      
      Language: English
      
      Character set encoding: UTF-8

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      \*\*\* START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUKE DECIDES \*\*\*

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      Produced by Darleen Dove, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

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.. figure:: images/cover.jpg
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.. class:: center x-large

    | THE DUKE DECIDES
    | By HEADON HILL

.. class:: center small

    | Author of *By a Hair's-Breadth*, etc.

.. image:: images/tpdeco.jpg
   :align: center

.. class:: center small

    | *New York*
    | A. WESSELS COMPANY
    | 1904

    | Copyright, 1903, by :small-caps:`A. Wessels Company`

    | Published, 1903

    | PRESS OF
    | BRAUNWORTH & CO.
    | BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
    | BROOKLYN, N. Y.


.. _`Leonie Sherman`:

.. figure:: images/illus1.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Leonie Sherman

   Leonie Sherman

----

.. contents:: CONTENTS
  :depth: 1
  :backlinks: entry




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  | `Leonie Sherman`_
  | `A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?`_
  | `The procession of three led by the stranger.`_
  | `I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton.`_


----




CHAPTER I—*The Man with the Mandate*
======================================


At six o'clock on a May evening, at an
uptown corner of Broadway, in New
York City, the bowels of the earth opened and
disgorged a crowd of weary-faced men and
women who scattered in all directions. They
were the employees of a huge "dry-goods
store," leaving work for the day. It was a
stringent rule of the firm that everyone drawing
wages, from the smart managers of departments
and well-dressed salesladies down to the
counting-house drudges and check-boys, should
descend into the basement, and there file past
the timekeeper and a private detective before
passing up a narrow staircase, and so out by a
sort of stage-door into the side street.

The great plate-glass portals on the main
thoroughfare were not for the working bees of
this hive of industry—only for the gay butterflies
of fashion by whom they lived.

The last to come out was a young man
dressed in a threadbare suit of tweeds, that
somehow hardly seemed American, either in cut
or fabric. There might have been a far-away
reminiscence of Perthshire moors clinging to
them, or earlier memories of a famous creator
in Bond Street; but suggestion of the reach-me-down
shops from which New York clerks
clothe themselves there was none. A flush of
anger was fading on their owner's face as he
came out into the sunlight, leaving a mild annoyance
that presently gave place to a grin.

The firm's detective, rendered suspicious by
a bulging pocket, had just searched him, and
had failed to apologize on finding the protuberance
to be nothing but a bundle of un-eatable
sandwiches that were being taken home
to confound the landlady of the young man's
cheap boarding-house.

The indignity did not rankle long. It was
only a detail in the topsy-turvydom that in one
short year had changed a subaltern in a crack
English cavalry regiment into an ill-paid
drudge in a dry-goods store. Twelve months
before Charles Hanbury had been playing
polo and riding gymkhana races in Upper India,
but extravagance beyond his means had
brought swift ruin in its train. Tired of helping him out of scrapes, his connections had refused
further assistance; and, leaving the
Army, he had come out to "the States" with
the idea of roughing it on the Western plains.
Still misfortune had dogged his steps. A fall
down a hatchway on the voyage out had hopelessly
lamed him, and he had been compelled
to ward off starvation by obtaining his present
inglorious berth.

His work—adding up columns of figures
entered from the sales-tickets—was quite irresponsible,
and he was paid accordingly. He
drew eight dollars a week, of which five went
to his boarding-house keeper.

Limping up —— Street, he turned into the
Bowery, intending to take his usual homeward
route across the big bridge into Brooklyn.
Unable to afford a street-car, he walked to and
from the store daily, and it was one of his few
amusements to study the cosmopolitan life of
the teeming and sordid thoroughfare through
which his way led.

He was still chuckling over the discomfiture
of the tame detective, when his eye was caught
by a label in a cheap boot-store. "Three dollars
the pair," ran the legend, which drew a
rueful sigh from one who had paid—and alas!
still owed—as many guineas for a pair of dancing-pumps.

"I don't suppose they'd sell me half a
pair, for that's all it runs to," he muttered,
turning regretfully away from the vamped-up
frauds, and in so doing jerking the elbow
of a passer-by. The victim of his sudden
move—a stout, fair man in a light frock-coat
and a Panama straw hat—stopped, and seemed
inclined to resent the awkwardness.

"I really beg your pardon," the culprit said
with easy politeness. "I was so absorbed in
my reflections that I forgot for the moment
that the Bowery requires cautious steering."

"You are an Englishman?" returned the
other, with a milder countenance. "So am I.
No need to apologize. As a fellow-countryman
in foreign parts, permit me to offer you
some liquid refreshment. In other words, come
into that dive next door and have a drink."

With an imperceptible shrug, Mr. Hanbury
allowed himself to be persuaded. He
would lose his supper at his boarding-house by
the irregularity, but dissipation seldom came
his way nowadays, and the prospect of whisky
at some one else's expense was tempting. Yes,
he had fallen low enough for that! The stout
Englishman somehow conveyed the impression
that he would not expect to be treated in return
by his new acquaintance, who was prepared
to take advantage of his liberality. To
do him justice, Hanbury's complacence was
not entirely due to spirituous longings, but to
a homesick instinct aroused by the Cockney
accent of the vulgar stranger.

The garish underground saloon into which
they descended was almost empty at that early
hour of the evening. Drinks having been set
before them at one of the circular tables, the
host subjected his guest to a scrutiny so
searching that its object broke into a laugh.

"You are sizing me up pretty closely," he
remarked, with a touch of annoyance.

"Exactly; but not so as to give offence, I
hope," was the reply. "I should like to know
your name, if you have no objection."

"Hanbury—Charles Hanbury. Perhaps
you will make the introduction mutual?" said
the younger man, appeased by the other's conciliatory
manner.

"Call me Jevons," the stout man answered.
"Now look here, Mr. Hanbury; it's not my
game to begin our acquaintance under false
pretences. The fact is, I contrived that you
should jostle me just now, and so give me a
chance to speak. I spotted you as an Englishman
and a gentleman a fortnight ago, and
I've noticed you pass along the Bowery every
day since. I am in need of an Englishman,
who is also a gentleman, to take on a job with
a fortune—a moderate fortune—at the back
of it."

"You can hardly have mistaken me for an
investor," said Hanbury, with a quizzical
glance at his threadbare seams and dilapidated
boots. "Believe me, I am a very broken-down
gentleman; but still, my gentility survives, I
suppose, and I am willing to treat it as a commercial
asset, if that is what you mean."

Mr. Jevons gulped down his liquor without
comment and did not utter another word till
the glasses had been replenished. Then, hitching
his chair closer, he produced a pocket-book
from which he extracted five one-hundred-dollar
notes.

"Before we leave this place I shall hand
these over to you for preliminary expenses—if
we come to terms," he said, watching the
effect of the display on his companion's face.
Satisfied with the eager glance in the tired
eyes, he proceeded more confidentially: "There
is a risk to be run, but it doesn't amount to
much; and if the scheme comes off it will set
you on your legs again. Part of this money
you will have to spend in a first-class passage
to England by the next steamer, and there'll
be plenty more for you on arrival."

"My dear friend, you seem to be a sort of
Aladdin. If you only knew the existence I
have been leading here, without the courage to
terminate it, you would be assured of my
answer," replied Hanbury, wondering but not
caring much what was expected of him. To
escape from his dry-goods drudgery and
return to England with money in his pocket
and the prospect of more—why, the ex-cavalry
officer felt that he would loot the Crown Jewels
for that! And he said so in so many words.

"Then you're the man for us," was the verdict
of Mr. Jevons. "It's a bit on the cross—not
burglary, but a little matter of planting
some beautifully imitated paper. Is that too
steep for you?"

Hanbury made a wry face, but answered
without hesitation:

"Aiding a forgery isn't quite the road to
fortune I should have chosen, but beggars—you
know the maxim. Society hasn't been too
kind to me, and I don't see why I should range
myself on its side. Yes, I'll do it; and if I'm
caught, stone-breaking at Portland won't be
any worse than adding up figures in a subterranean
counting-house. Let me have the particulars,
Mr. Jevons, and I'll see it through
to the best of an ability that hasn't much to
recommend it."

"You shall have the particulars," said the
other; then stopped, and laughed rather nervously.
"You must understand that I am but
a subordinate in this matter, and we have
reached the only unpleasant part of my task,"
he went on. "It is not congenial to have to
use a threat—even a confidential one; yet I
am instructed to do so, before I enlighten you
further."

The rascal's concern was unmistakably
genuine; and Hanbury, with the good-humored
tolerance of his class, hastened to
reassure him.

"Go on; I can guess what you have to disclose—the
pains and penalties for breach of
faith, eh?"

Jevons nodded, and bent his shiny, perspiring
face nearer. "It is a big thing, involving
enormous outlay and the interests of an organization commanding great resources," he
whispered. "Your life wouldn't be worth five
minutes' purchase if you deserted us after you
had been entrusted with the details. Now, will
you have them on those conditions, or shall we
say 'Good-night' to each other?"

Hanbury stretched out his hand impatiently
for the notes. "Pray satisfy my curiosity, and
let me have them on those conditions," he said.
"My life is of no earthly value to me. Besides,
with all my faults, I'm not one to turn back
after putting my hand to the plough. If I do,
by all means give me my quietus as mercifully
as may be."

"Then here goes," whispered Jevons, mouth
to ear. "The game is the planting of faked
United States Treasury Bonds on the Bank of
England to the tune of three million sterling—pounds,
not dollars, you know. You will proceed
to England by the *St. Paul*, sailing for
Southampton the day after to-morrow, and on
arrival in London you will at once call on Mr.
Clinton Ziegler, at the Hotel Cecil. He is our
chief, and will give you final instructions as to
your part in the campaign. You'll find him a
handsome paymaster."

"I look forward to making Mr. Ziegler's acquaintance with interest," replied Hanbury,
pocketing the notes which the other passed to
him. "Am I to have the pleasure of your company
on the voyage?"

"I'm afraid not; my work is here," said
Jevons. "And—well, it's not altogether
healthy for me on the other side." The confession
was accompanied by a wink which forcibly
brought it home to the recruit that he had
joined the criminal classes. His new friend—"pal,"
he supposed he ought to call him—evidently
thought him worthy of personal confidence.

They had another drink together at the bar,
and parted outside the saloon, Hanbury making
his belated way towards Brooklyn. Once
or twice he turned abruptly to see if he was
being followed, but the aggressive white
Panama hat was nowhere visible, the conclusion
being obvious that the astute Mr. Jevons
had ascertained his domicile, as well as his place
of employment, before broaching his delicate
business.

Tramping along the teeming Bowery and
across the footway of the mighty bridge, the
ex-hussar enjoyed to the full the exultation
of feeling money in his pocket once more. It
was not much, and it was as good as spent
already in the cost of a passage and an outfit;
but it was the earnest of more to come, and,
above all, it franked the exile home to England.
At the price of his honor, perhaps?
Well, yes; but what was honor to a dry-goods
clerk at eight dollars a week? He might have
taken a different view two years ago, when
honor stood for something in his creed; but not
now, with the world against him.

Entering the sordid boarding-house, he
mounted to his top-floor bedroom, aware that
he had forfeited his supper of beef-hash, and
that it was too late to go to the dining-room in
quest thereof. His eyrie under the roof,
flanked on one side by the apartment of a German
car-driver and on the other by that of an
Irish porter, was furnished with little else than
a bed and a toilet-table.

On the toilet-table lay a telegram addressed
to him—the first he had received since he had
been in America. The unwonted sight caused
his hands to tremble a little as he tore it open,
but they trembled a good deal more as he read
the fateful words:

"*Your uncle and cousin have been killed in
a railway accident. Come to England at once.
Have cabled a thousand pounds to Morgan's
to your credit.—Pattisons.*"

"Pattisons" were the family solicitors, and
he who a moment before had called himself
Charles Hanbury now knew that his true description
would appear in the next issue of
"Debrett" as "Charles Augustus Trevor Fitzroy
Hanbury, seventh Duke of Beaumanoir,"
with a rent-roll of two hundred thousand a
year.

And he stood committed, on pain of assassination,
to aid and abet in the palming off of
bogus bonds on the Bank of England!




CHAPTER II—*On Board the* St. Paul
====================================


The *St. Paul* sped eastwards across the
summer sea, and surely of all the human hopes
and fears carried by the great liner those
locked in the breast of the new Duke were the
most momentous. To gain a little breathing
time, he had booked his passage as plain
Charles Hanbury. In the brief interval before
sailing he had seen no more of Jevons, but
he guessed that that shrewd practitioner would
have watched him, or had him watched, on
board, even if there was not a spy upon him
among his fellow-passengers; and he wished
to let it be inferred that his voyage was undertaken
solely in observance of the compact
made in the Bowery dive.

For as yet he was by no means certain of
his attitude towards that compact. It was true
that the cast-off wastrel of two days ago was
now one of the premier peers of England,
hastening home to take possession of his fortune
and estates. But where was the good of
being a duke if you were to be a dead duke?
he argued with a cynicism bred of his misfortunes
rather than innate. There had been a
genuine ring about the proposal of Jevons that
left no doubt as to the reality of the menace
held out; the man's reluctance in broaching
the penalty of desertion carried conviction that
it was no mere flower of speech.

On the whole, the Duke was inclined to call
on the arch rogue at the Hotel Cecil before incurring
a risk that might render his dukedom
a transitory possession. Then, if the part he
was expected to play proved to be within his
powers and without much chance of detection,
he might still elect to play it, and so enjoy in
security his hereditary privileges.

It will be seen that the seventh Duke of
Beaumanoir was not troubled with moral scruples,
and that the principle of *noblesse oblige*
had no place as yet in his somewhat seared
philosophy. It was enough for the moment
that he had gained something worth having
and keeping, and he meant to have it and keep
it by the most efficacious method. Whether
that method would prove to be connivance in a
gigantic crime or the denouncement of the latter
to Scotland Yard could only be decided by
a personal interview with the mysterious Ziegler.
Yes, he would pay that visit to the Hotel
Cecil, at any rate, and be guided by what
passed there as to his future course of action.

"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Hanbury,"
said a gay voice at his elbow, as on the
third day of the voyage he leaned over the rail
of the promenade deck and ruminated on his
dilemma. Wheeling round he looked down
into the laughing eyes of a girl, a very dainty
and charming girl, who sat next him at the
saloon table. No formal introduction had
taken place between them, for lack of mutual
friends; but he had learned from the card
designating her place at table that she was
Miss Leonie Sherman, and it is to be presumed
that she had gathered his name in the same
way.

"I will earn that penny," he said with mock
gravity. "I was debating how far one might
legitimately carry the principle of doing evil
that good might come."

It was a strange answer to make to a shipboard
acquaintance of three days, and Miss
Sherman regarded him with a newly awakened
interest.

"It depends," she said, "whether the good
is to accrue to yourself or to other people."

"Oh, to myself," he replied, smiling. "I am
not a philanthropist—quite the other way
about."

"Then, whatever it is, you oughtn't to do it,"
said the girl, decidedly. "It will be horrid of
you to as much as contemplate anything of the
kind. You had much better do good lest evil
befall; and the opportunity occurs right here,
at this very moment."

"I shall be most happy—without prejudice
to my intentions as to the reverse of the
medal," said Beaumanoir, lightly.

"Then help me to avoid a lecture from my
mother by taking me for a promenade," proceeded
Leonie, indicating a portly lady who
had ascended from the lower deck and was
peering about in search. "She is the best and
dearest of mothers, but she has set her heart on
a vain thing, and it is becoming the least bit
tiresome. I can see that she is going to din it
into me again, if she catches me. Her idea
is that the sole duty of an American girl going
to England is to 'spread herself,' as they say
out West, to marry an English duke."

His Grace of Beaumanoir listened with an
unmoved countenance.

"Yes," he said, "to marry a duke might—probably
would—be an unmitigated evil. I
will help you to avoid it with pleasure. Let
us walk by all means, Miss Sherman, if you
don't mind my awkward limp."

So they joined the procession of promenaders,
and there and then cemented a friendship
which ripened quickly, as friendships between
the opposite sexes do at sea. The
haughty salesladies of the dry-goods store had
not deigned to notice the counting-house
drudge, and Leonie's piquant beauty made
instant captive of one who had been deprived
of the society of women for over a year. She
had all the frank *camaraderie* of the well-bred
American, and her eager anticipations of the
good time she was to have in Europe were infectious.
In her company Beaumanoir was
able to forget the dark shadow hanging over
him, and to give himself up to the enjoyment
of the hour. He began by being deeply grateful
to her for taking him out of himself; and
gratitude to a charming girl with a ravishing
figure and a complexion of tinted ivory is like
to have its heels trod by a warmer sentiment.

Leonie, in her turn, was interested in the
reserved young Englishman, who had so little
to say about his doings in America, and less
about his position and prospects in his native
land. As he paced with his slight limp at her
side or lounged with her at the rail, she tried
to draw him out; but she could get nothing
from him but that he had been in New York
on business, and that business was taking him
home. Yet, though reticent on his own affairs,
he talked freely about all that concerned herself,
and painted vivid word-pictures of the
delights that awaited her in London.

The girl, having nothing to conceal, told
him freely of herself and of her plans and
projects. She and her mother were going to
stay with English friends in London till the
end of the season, when perhaps they would
run over to Paris and Rome for a month before
returning to America in the autumn. Her
father, Senator Sherman, was to have accompanied
them; but he had been detained by public
business at Washington, and was to join
them a little later in London.

On the fifth day of the voyage, as the *St.
Paul* was approaching the Irish coast, Leonie
and Beaumanoir were sitting on deck after
dinner, chatting in the twilight, when she suddenly
laid her hand on his arm.

"I want you to notice that man who has just
gone by—the one smoking the fag-end of a
cigar in a holder," she whispered, with a gesture
towards the stream of passengers passing
and repassing between the rows of chairs.

Beaumanoir's gaze followed her indication
to an insignificant little figure in a brown
covert-coat and tweed cap.

"Yes. What of him?" he asked. He had
not spoken to this passenger, but now that
attention was called to him he had an idea that
the fellow had loomed largely during the last
few days.

"That man is watching you, Mr. Hanbury,"
replied Leonie with conviction. "I wonder
you haven't observed it yourself. Whenever
you are talking he hangs about trying to listen;
when you are on deck he is on deck; if you go
below, he goes below. If you were a fugitive
from justice, and he a detective, he couldn't
shadow you more closely."

The Duke winced inwardly.

"I am not a fugitive from justice," he said,
with the mental addition of "yet." He could
not tell this laughing maiden that the man was
probably spying on him in the interest, not of
justice, but of crime—to see that he was true to
a pledge to place forged bonds; for now that
he had been put on his guard he had no doubt
that his pretty informant was right. The
stranger occupied the cabin next to him, and
was always hovering near him in the smoking-room,
unobtrusively but persistently.

Thanking the girl for her warning in a careless
tone that implied that he had no reason
to be anxious, he changed the subject. But
before he turned in that night he made it his
business to ascertain from his bedroom steward
the name of his next-door neighbor, which
proved to be Marker.

"Probably Mr. Marker's functions are confined
to espionage. If that is a sample of the
sort of bravo to be employed should I kick
over the traces, I haven't much to fear," he
reflected, as he switched off the electric light
and composed himself to dream of Leonie
Sherman.




CHAPTER III—*A Task-master in Goggles*
========================================


The next morning the *St. Paul* arrived at
Southampton, but Beaumanoir contrived to
secure a seat in the same compartment of the
boat-train, and his parting with his new friends
was therefore deferred till they reached
Waterloo.

He was sorely tempted to enlist the elder
lady's favor by making known his proper style
and rank; though, to do her justice, Mrs. Sherman's
fondness for the peerage was largely a
humorous fiction on her daughter's part. The
Senator's wife was really a simple-minded
body, with an abiding admiration for the unattainable,
and the British aristocracy was naturally
included in that category.

But the sight of Mr. Marker's covert-coat
hovering near them on the arrival platform
checked the Duke's intention, which the next
moment was rendered unnecessary by Mrs.
Sherman herself.

"Come and see us, Mr. Hanbury," she
said, extending the tips of her fingers in farewell.
"We are to be the guests of some good
friends of ours at 140 Grosvenor Gardens, and
we know them well enough to make ourselves
at home. The Senator will be over in a week
or two, and he'll be glad to thank you for your
politeness."

"I will pay my respects without fail," Beaumanoir
responded; and a minute later, after a
warmer pressure of Leonie's well-gloved hand,
he stood watching their cab with its load of
"saratogas" drive down the incline. By the
void in his heart he knew that the girl in the
coquettish toque, who had just repeated her
mother's invitation with her eyes, was all the
world to him.

He turned to look after his scanty baggage
with a sigh. How different it would all have
been if he had chosen some other route to his
Brooklyn boarding-house on the eventful night
when the plausible Jevons had waylaid him!
All would have been plain sailing, and he could
have asked Leonie with a clear conscience to
share his new-found honors and wealth. As
it was he stood committed to a felonious enterprise
which would fill her with contempt and
loathing did she know of it; though, if he abandoned it, instinct told him he was a doomed
man.

The sight of the insignificant spy Marker
lurking behind a pile of luggage reminded him
that his peril might commence at any moment
if he showed any sign of inconstancy to his
pledge. Not that he anticipated trouble from
the covert-coated whippersnapper himself; but
the mere fact of it having been thought worth
while to shadow him across the Atlantic spelled
danger, and suggested an organization that
would stop at nothing to safeguard itself.

However, he had made up his mind to call
on the mysterious Ziegler, and by doing so at
once he might prove his fidelity and secure a
respite from this unpleasant espionage. Summoning
a hansom, he bade the driver take him
to the Hotel Cecil, and looking back he saw
Marker following in another cab.

In the few minutes that elapsed before he
was driven into the courtyard of the palatial
hotel he settled a problem that had been vexing
him not a little during the voyage. Should he
introduce himself to Ziegler as the Duke of
Beaumanoir or as plain Charles Hanbury, the
name by which he had been "engaged"? If he
was for a brief space to be the consort of professional thieves, he would prefer to lead a
double life—to perform his misdeeds as a
commoner, and to keep his dukedom spotless.
So it was that he gave his name as Hanbury to
the clerk in the bureau of the hotel.

While waiting the return of the bell-boy
who was sent to announce his arrival, Beaumanoir
looked about for Marker, but the spy
was nowhere visible in or from the entrance-hall.
Having shepherded him to the fold, it
was evidently no part of his duty to obtrude
himself till further orders.

A minute later the neophyte in crime was
limping up the grand staircase in wake of the
bell-boy, who conducted him to one of the best
private suites on the first floor overlooking the
Embankment. It was a moment charged with
electricity as the Duke of Beaumanoir found
himself face to face with the man who had
hired him in his poverty, and now held him
fetter-bound in his good fortune.

"Yet could this be he—this personification of
aged helplessness lying among the cushions of
an invalid chair, who, in a thin, piping treble,
requested his visitor to come closer? Beaumanoir
had pictured all sorts of ideals of the
master in crime, but Mr. Clinton Ziegler in the
flesh resembled none of them. A snowy beard
covered the lower half of his face, drooping
over his chest, but the puffy cheeks were visible,
and their full purple hue betokened some
cutaneous affection. The eyes were shaded by
blue glasses.

"You are the person sent by Jevons from
New York?" he began in his parrot-like tones.
"Good! What is your name? For the moment
I have forgotten it, and I cannot lay my
hand on the cablegram relating to you."

Encouraged by the feeble senility of one
whom he had expected to find a tower of
strength—a grim, inscrutable being with an
inscrutable manner—the Duke was confirmed
in his intention to preserve the secret of his
rank.

"My name is Charles Hanbury," he answered,
boldly.

But an awakening, instant and complete,
was in store for him. The words were hardly
out of his mouth when Mr. Ziegler coughed
a signal, and three masked men rushed upon
him from the adjoining bedroom, pinioning
his arms and stifling his sudden cry of alarm.

"What shall we do with him, sir?" asked one
of the men.

"Chloroform him first; then you must dispose
of him at leisure," came the monotonous
piping treble from the invalid chair.

One of the assailants made immediate
preparations for obeying the behest, but just
as he was about to saturate a handkerchief
Ziegler laughed shrilly:

"Let him alone, boys. He lied to me, and
I wanted to give him a lesson—that's all."

The men, at a sign from their chief, retired
into the bedroom.

"Now, perhaps you will recognize that I
am not to be played with, *your Grace*,"
squeaked Mr. Ziegler. "Also that my ears are
as long as my arms. I have known for some
days that the gentleman whom my good friend
Jevons was able to procure has had a sudden
change in his fortunes, and I congratulate
myself upon it. It doubles your value to us,
all the more since your early call upon me after
landing shows that you mean to abide by your
bargain. But there must be no more petty
reservations and concealments like that. If
you try them on, rest assured that they will be
detected and dealt with."

The Duke straightened his rumpled collar,
and looked, as he felt, a beaten man. The
mass of infirmity in the wheel-chair held, without
doubt, a power with which he could not
cope. On the face of it the notion that a man
could be violently made away with in a crowded
London hotel might seem melodramatic and
improbable, but the experience of the last few
minutes had shown him how readily it could be
done by a chief as well served as Ziegler appeared
to be. And if he was at the man's
mercy in a crowded hostelry like the Cecil,
where would he be safe? Yes, if he was to
enjoy his dukedom, he would have to go
through with his task.

"Well, give me my instructions. What am
I to do?" he said, stiffly.

"You have made a very good beginning already,"
replied Ziegler, watching him narrowly
through the tinted glasses. "A gentleman,
acting on behalf of the United States
Government, will shortly bring to this country
the three million pounds' worth of Treasury
bonds which we mean to have. It will be
your task to relieve him of the paper, substituting
bonds of our own make, which will be
deposited at the Bank of England as security
against a shipment of gold."

"I see," the Duke murmured, mechanically.
"But," he added with more animation, "how
have I made a beginning already?"

"By making yourself agreeable to Miss
Leonie Sherman. It is her father, Senator
Sherman, who is bringing the real bonds," was
the answer, which struck a chill to the Duke's
heart and kept him speechless with amazement.
This old scoundrel seemed to know
everything, to have arranged everything, irrespective
of time and space.

"You ought to be grateful for my foresight
in smoothing the way for you," Ziegler
croaked, in evident enjoyment of his perplexity.
"It was my agent who, by securing the
good offices of a steward, had you placed next
Miss Sherman at the saloon table on the *St.
Paul*, with the result that he was able to report
to me this morning from Southampton by telegraph
that you had made use of your opportunity."

"I see," was all the Duke could feebly repeat.

"You have been invited to call on the Shermans
in London? You know where they are
staying, 140 Grosvenor Gardens?"

"Yes," said Beaumanoir.

"Good! Then your Grace will go on as you
have begun. Gain the girl's confidence, and
that of her mother—the latter will be easy
under the auspices of your new dignity—and
come here again at twelve o'clock on Saturday
morning, three days hence. I may then have
further instructions for you."

And Mr. Clinton Ziegler waved a white,
well-formed hand in dismissal.




CHAPTER IV—*The Lady in the Landau*
=====================================


Beaumanoir passed into the corridor with
unsteady steps, dazed by the enormity of his
entanglement. He had been caught so easily,
yet he was held so firmly. His first impulse
was to rush off to Scotland Yard, expose the
white-bearded wire-puller in the invalid chair,
and claim protection. But that course would
entail confession of his engagement as a criminal
instrument, to the everlasting disgrace of
the great family of which he was now the head.
The alternatives were foul treachery to the girl
of his heart or almost certain death at the
hands of Ziegler's disciplined ruffians.

He had reached the top of the broad staircase
when a step, almost inaudible on the thick
pile carpet, sounded behind him and a hand
fell on his shoulder.

"Charley, old boy! Or is it 'your Grace' I
should be calling you? What the dickens are
you doing here?" said the young man who had
overtaken him.

Beaumanoir's harassed brows cleared as he
met Alec Forsyth's honest gaze and he felt the
grip of his honest hand. Their ways had lain
apart for the last few years, but a very real
friendship, begun in the Eton playing fields,
had survived separation. Of all his acquaintances,
Alec had been the only one to go down
to Liverpool twelve months before to bid
scapegrace Charles Hanbury farewell.

"I had a call to make, before going to Pattisons'
in Lincoln's Inn," said the Duke. And
then with quick apprehension he added, pointing
to the door he had just left: "Have you
come from there? Have you business with
Ziegler too?"

"Ziegler? Who's Ziegler?" asked Forsyth,
looking puzzled by his sudden confusion.
"No, I haven't been to those rooms, but to the
suite beyond. A duty call on a certain Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton, but, thank goodness, she
wasn't at home. Now about yourself, Charley.
Fortune smiles again, eh?"

"It's only a sickly grin at present," Beaumanoir
replied, dejectedly. "See here, Alec;
I've got my bag on a cab outside. I landed
at Southampton too early for lunch. Come
and talk to me while I get a snack before
going to the lawyers."

A few minutes later they were seated in a
Strand restaurant, and the young Scotsman
heard all about his friend's struggles with the
demon of poverty in New York, but never a
word of the trouble that was brooding. In
his turn Forsyth was able to fill in the blanks
of the family solicitor's cablegram, and enlightened
Beaumanoir as to the manner of his
succession to the title. The late Duke was
traveling to Newmarket in a racing "special,"
accompanied by his nephew and heir, George
Hanbury, when they had both met their deaths
in a collision.

The double funeral had taken place at
Prior's Tarrant, the ancestral seat of the
Dukes of Beaumanoir in Hertfordshire, three
days before, the arrangements having been
made by the solicitors, in the absence of the
next successor. The last Duke having been a
childless widower, and both his brothers, the
fathers respectively of George and Charles
Hanbury, having predeceased him, there had
been no near relatives to follow the late head
of the house to his last resting-place.

"Let me see, my cousin George had a sister,
Sybil, who used to live with my uncle," Beaumanoir
mused aloud. "I wonder what has
become of her."

"I believe that she is still at your town house
in Piccadilly," replied Forsyth with a constraint
which the other did not notice in his
self-absorption. But the next moment it
struck Beaumanoir as odd that the information
should have been so readily forthcoming,
for he had been unaware that his friend knew
his relatives.

"You have made Sybil Hanbury's acquaintance,
then?" he asked.

"Yes, since your departure for America,"
was the reply. "I had the pleasure of meeting
her first at my uncle's in Grosvenor Gardens—General
Sadgrove's, you know. I dare say
you remember him?"

"Oh, yes; I remember the General well—a
shrewd old party with eyes like gimlets," said
Beaumanoir. "But what's this about Grosvenor
Gardens?" he added quickly. "The
Sadgroves used to live in Bruton Street."

"Quite so; but they moved to 140 Grosvenor
Gardens, last Christmas."

"140!" exclaimed the Duke. "Why, that's
where the Shermans are going to stay. Some
friends of mine who—who came over in the
same ship," he went on to explain rather
lamely.

Forsyth shot an amused glance at his old
crony. "Yes, I know that Uncle Jem was expecting
some Americans to put up with him,
and he has been raving about the charms of
the young lady of the party for the last fortnight.
You are excited, Charley. Your manner
has struck me as strange since we met at
the hotel. Is it permitted to inquire if my
uncle is entertaining unawares—a future
Duchess?"

To the young Scotsman's surprise, the Duke
showed signs for a moment of taking the light-spoken
banter amiss. Beaumanoir flushed,
and muttered something inarticulate, but
pulled himself together and diverted their talk
into a fresh channel, clumsily enough.

"Don't gas about me, old chap," he said.
"Tell me of yourself. Is the world using you
better than formerly?"

"About the same," Forsyth replied with a
shrug. "They gave me a twenty-pound rise
last year, so my pay as a third-grade clerk in
the Foreign Office is now the princely sum of
£230 per annum. Not a brilliant prospect.
When I'm a worn-out old buffer of sixty I
shall be able to retire on a pension about equal
to my present pay."

"Then look here, Alec; chuck the public service
and come to me," said the Duke, eagerly.
"I'll give you eight hundred a year to begin
with, and rises up to two thousand; and you
can have the dower-house at Prior's Tarrant
to live in. Call yourself private secretary,
bailiff, anything you please—only come. The
fact is—well, I've been a bit shaken by—by
what I've gone through. I want someone near
me who's more than a mere hireling."

It was Forsyth's turn to flush now, but with
pleasure at the offer made to him. He accepted
it in a few simple words, and the Duke
rose and paid his score.

"Come with me to Pattisons'," he said.
"Then we'll go on to Piccadilly and take possession."

The business at the lawyers', which consisted
of little more than arranging future meetings,
was soon finished, and the Duke and his new
secretary took a fresh cab to the West End.
As they bowled along Beaumanoir inquired
further about his cousin Sybil, whom, owing
to his absence in India and more latterly to
his estrangement from his relations, he had
never met. Forsyth imparted the information
that for the last six months, since she "came
out," she had virtually ruled the late Duke's
household.

"But she can be little more than a child,"
Beaumanoir protested. "Anyhow, I can't
keep a cousin of eighteen on as *my* housekeeper
without setting Mrs. Grundy's tongue
wagging. The question arises what to do with
her. Old Pattison tells me she is well provided
for, but I don't like telling her to clear
out if it does not occur to her to go. What
sort is she, Alec?"

"That's rather a stiff question to put to
*me*," Forsyth replied, as though to himself.
"I had better make my confession first as
last," he went on hurriedly. "You are her
nearest relative now, and the head of her family.
Ever since I first saw Sybil Hanbury the
dearest wish of my heart has been to make her
my wife, but without prospects of any kind
I couldn't very well ask her. There you have
it, my noble patron, in a nutshell."

Beaumanoir patted his friend's knee affectionately.

"My dear fellow, go in and win, so far as
I am concerned," he said. "While I am above
ground your prospects need stand in your way
no longer. But you haven't answered my
question, which I'll put in another way. How
is she likely to take my appearance on the
scene?"

"I'm afraid she's rather prejudiced. Her
brother George didn't love you much, you
know, and she is greatly cut up by his loss,"
Forsyth replied, with the dogged manner of
the honest man who has to say a disagreeable
thing. "I don't think that you need be under
any apprehension about her staying on at
Beaumanoir House when you show up. To
be candid, I saw her yesterday, and she said
she should begin packing as soon as she was
sure that you hadn't been drowned on the voyage
home."

"Good girl!" ejaculated the Duke. "The
unexpressed hope did her much honor, only
it's a pity it didn't come off. Now, Alec, if
you'll see her first—she needn't see me at all
if she doesn't wish to—and tell her from me
that she's not to hurry out of the house, because
I'm going to oscillate between Prior's Tarrant
and a hotel for the present, I shall be immensely
obliged to you."

"But you said just now that you were going
to take possession."

"I have changed my mind. There are reasons
which I cannot explain to you why my
immediate neighborhood is likely to be dangerous
for the present. I should be sorry to subject
my fair cousin to any unpleasantness.
Though not a word of this to her or anyone
else, please."

The cab was drawing up before the ducal
mansion, and Forsyth forbore to put into
words the astonishment which he looked. As
the two men were about to ascend the steps
to the entrance, a landau, which was being
driven slowly by, drew to the curb, and a lady
who, besides the servants, was the sole occupant,
called out:

"Surely you're not going to cut me, Mr.
Forsyth. Too proud to know poor little me,
eh, now that you've taken to calling on dukes?"

A murmur of annoyance escaped Forsyth,
but perforce he went to the carriage and shook
the daintily gloved hand held out to him.

"How do you do, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton?"
he said, adding the reproving whisper,
"That *is* the Duke."

The lady in the landau raised her lorgnettes
and calmly surveyed the waiting nobleman.

"How very interesting!" she purred, adding
aloud so that the subject of her request could
not fail to hear, "Why don't you introduce
him, instead of keeping him standing there?
We Americans are death on dukes, you know."

At a gesture from Forsyth, who tried to
convey his disgust by a look, Beaumanoir
limped forward, smiling. His misfortunes
had made him something of a democrat, and
he had always been ready to see the comic side
of things till tragedy that morning had
claimed him for its own. In meeting the advances
of the agent Jevons in the Bowery
saloon he had been largely influenced by the
humor of the situation—of the scion of a ducal
house consenting to "get a bit" by passing
forged bonds.

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, a handsome blonde
with an elegant figure and a childish voice, received
the Duke with effusion.

"I stopped my carriage to ask Mr. Forsyth
to tea on Saturday," she prattled. "I do hope
your Grace will come too. I am staying at
the Cecil, and shall be delighted to see you."

The unblushing effrontery of the invitation
failed to strike Beaumanoir in his sudden horror
at the associations called up by it. This
frivolous butterfly of a woman occupied the
next suite of rooms to those in which Ziegler
was spinning his villainous web—in which that
terrible old man had unfolded to him the details
of his treacherous task. Strange, too, that
he should be bidden to the mild dissipation of
an afternoon tea-table in that hotel, of all
others, on the very day when he was due to
go there on business so different, for Saturday
was the day appointed by Ziegler for his call
for "further instructions."

Conscious that the mocking eyes of the lady
in the landau were watching him with a curious
inquiry, he mastered his emotion, and at the
same time came to a decision on the vital issue
before him. Probably he would have arrived
at the same one without the incentive of avoiding
an unpalatable engagement, but Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton's invitation to tea was undoubtedly
the final influence in setting him on
the straight path.

"I am very sorry," he replied, and there was
a new dignity in his tone, "but I must ask you
to excuse me. I am going down to-morrow to
Prior's Tarrant, my place in Hertfordshire,
and I shall not be in town on Saturday."

For the fraction of a second the rebuffed
hostess seemed taken aback by the refusal.
She flushed slightly under her powder, and the
taper fingers twitched on the handle of her
sunshade. But without any appreciable pause
she answered gaily:

"That's most unkind of you. Well, what
must be must be. Good-bye, your Grace.
Good-bye, Mr. Forsyth; I shall expect you,
anyhow. Drive on, Bennett."

The carriage rolled away.

"I am glad you snubbed her," Forsyth exclaimed.
"She has been made a good deal of
in certain circles during the last month or two,
and presumes a lot on the strength of it."

"Did I snub her?" said the Duke carelessly.
"I am sure I didn't mean to, for she deserves
better things of me. You'd hardly believe it,
Alec, but that little episode has jerked me into
deciding a crucial point—no less than whether
to be a man or a cur. At the same time it has
put me quite outside the pale as a resident
under the same roof as my cousin. On second
thoughts, I will not go in at all, but I shall be
obliged if you will see her and convey the message I gave you—that Beaumanoir House is
at her disposal till she can quite conveniently
leave it."

"But what are you going to do yourself?"
said Forsyth in sheer bewilderment.

"First I shall go to Bond Street, to gladden
the hearts of some of my old creditors; then by
an evening train to Prior's Tarrant," was the
reply. "And, Alec," proceeded the Duke
earnestly, "if you can get leave from the Foreign
Office, pending retirement, and join me
there as soon as possible, you will place me
under a very deep obligation."




CHAPTER V—*Ziegler Begins to Move*
====================================


On the following Sunday morning the Duke
of Beaumanoir stood at one of the windows of
the long library at Prior's Tarrant, idly beating
a tattoo on the glass. The June sunshine
flooded the bosky leafage of the glorious expanse
of park, and nearer still the parterres of
the old Dutch garden were gay with summer
bloom; but the beauties of the landscape were
lost upon the watcher at the window.

Nearly four and twenty hours had elapsed
since he had failed to keep his appointment
with Mr. Ziegler, and he was wondering how
and when that autocrat of high-grade crime
would signalize his displeasure at the mutiny.
That sooner or later an edict would issue
against him from the invalid chair in the first-floor
suite he had not the slightest doubt. He
knew that he had to deal with men playing a
great game for a great stake in deadly earnest.

The Dukes of Beaumanoir had never been
famous for their virtues, any more than they
had been cowards, and it was rather a dawning
sense of responsibility than fear, either for his
reputation or his person, that filled him with
apprehension. If "anything happened" to
him, such a lot would happen to so many other
people. For instance, it had only occurred to
him since he came down to the country that if
Ziegler killed him his death would mean ruin
to Alec Forsyth, who had thrown up a sure
position to serve him. The next heir was an
elderly cousin with a large family to provide
for, and he would certainly not retain Forsyth
in his employment.

Then, again, Beaumanoir reflected with a
sigh, his new and sweet friendship with Leonie
Sherman—a friendship to which no blot on his
escutcheon need now put limits—would be
rudely snapped. The King of Terrors would
take away what his saved honor had restored,
and perhaps it was the bitterest drop in his
cup to feel that he might be giving his life to
lose what in another sense he would have given
his life to win. To ask Leonie to link her fate
to his, with that dark shadow hanging over
him, was out of the question.

Once he had taken up his pen to denounce
Ziegler to the police authorities anonymously,
but he had despondingly laid it down again.
That crafty practitioner had doubtless safeguarded
himself against such an obvious
course by being prepared with an unimpeachable
record which it would be impossible to
shake unless he came forward and avowed complicity.
There, again, dishonor waited for
him, and he had already made his choice that
a short shrift was preferable to that.

The gloom of his mood was enhanced by his
intense loneliness in the huge feudal monastery
that now called him master, for Forsyth had
been unable to join him, owing to difficulties in
obtaining release from his present duties.

Beaumanoir took out and read for the fifth
time a letter which had arrived that morning
from his friend and secretary:

    "My dear Duke (I mustn't use the irreverent
    'Charley' any more),—I am still having
    trouble with the F.O. people about my departure,
    but I think I may safely promise to get
    away to you on Tuesday. In fact, I shall
    make a point of doing so, even if I have to
    leave the public service in disgrace, for you
    must forgive my saying that I am rather uneasy about you. The other day you seemed
    like a man with a millstone round his neck,
    and I take it that one of the duties of a private
    secretary is to remove millstones from the person
    of his employer. I only wish you would
    confide fully in me, and command me in any
    way—but that is, of course, your affair.

    "I dined with my uncle, General Sadgrove,
    last night, and had the pleasure of meeting
    Mrs. and Miss Sherman there. The latter is
    indeed a charming girl. She was rather shy
    in talking about you, having heard from my
    uncle that the Mr. Hanbury she met on shipboard
    was probably the Duke of Beaumanoir
    on his way to enter into his kingdom. Mrs.
    Sherman waxed enthusiastic on your 'old-world
    courtesy' and the General, who chaffs
    the old lady, remarked that she had been
    equally laudatory before she discovered your
    rank.

    "They were all very kind and congratulatory
    on my announcing my engagement to
    Sybil, which, as I wrote you yesterday, was
    ratified within ten minutes of your leaving me
    at the door of Beaumanoir House.

    "You may be interested to hear that I did
    *not* go to tea with Mrs. Talmage Eglinton to-day.—Yours,

    ":small-caps:`Alec Forsyth`."

The Duke crushed the letter back into his
pocket, and came to a resolution.

"I'll run up to town to-morrow and call on
the Shermans," he said to himself. "And now
I'll do the proper thing, and go to church.
I'm not going to crouch in corners because of
that patriarchal old fiend at the Cecil."

The church at which generations of Hanburys
had worshiped was in the center of
Tarrant village, a mile from the lodge gates,
but there was a short cut to it across the park.
This was the route taken by the Duke, who
first crossed the greensward and then passed
out by a private wicket into the road after
traversing the belt of copse that fringed the
demesne. The villagers, who had waited for
his coming, standing bare-headed in the
churchyard, were a little disappointed that he
had not driven up in full state. But the solitary
gentleman limping up the path atoned
for the lack of ceremony and won their hearts
by his friendly smile; and a handshake to one
or two of the older inhabitants, whom he remembered
as a boy, clinched the matter.
The verdict went round that the new Duke
would "do."

The service that morning was, it is to be
feared, more ducal than devotional. From the
white-robed choir, ranged among the tombs
of dead-and-gone Hanburys in the chancel, to
the hard-breathing rustics on the back benches
every eye was turned and steadily kept on the
lonely figure in the family pew. While grateful
for the homage paid him, the Duke was
not sorry when the ordeal was over and he was
free to make his way homeward.

But he was not to get off so easily. As he
was about to let himself through the private
gate into the park, intending to go back, as he
had come, through the copse, footsteps sounded
behind him, and Mr. Bristow, the vicar, overtook
him. They had already met on the previous
day.

"Your Grace is alone still?" panted the
clergyman. "Ah, I thought your secretary
wouldn't find it so easy to cast his shackles.
I am commissioned by Mrs. Bristow to say—I
hope you won't think us presuming—that
we shall be delighted if you will give us your
company at our homely lunch."

A sudden impulse prompted Beaumanoir to
accept the invitation. He had taken a liking
for the hale, vigorous old vicar, who had the
archives of his family by rote, and an hour or
two in his society would take him out of himself.
So he turned back and accompanied his
host to the vicarage, where he made a good
impression on Mrs. Bristow by his cordial
praise of her training of the choir and by appreciation
of her strawberries and cream.

It was past four when he returned to Prior's
Tarrant, to be met in the entrance-hall by the
butler with a face eloquent of "something
wrong."

"What is it, Manson?" he asked. "Mr.
Bristow sent a boy, did he not, to say that I
was lunching at the vicarage?"

"Yes, your Grace. It isn't that," was the
agitated reply. "I have to report an outrage
that's been committed on one of the under-servants.
Jennings, the third gardener, was
coming back from church through the copse
in the park, when he was lassoed, your Grace,
same as they do buffalo, I've been told, in foreign
parts. A rope shot out of the bushes over
his shoulders, and then a man ran up as he
was struggling on the ground; but let him go,
saying it was a joke. Jennings hasn't got any
enemies that he knows of, and it was a wicked
thing to do, because he's a bit of a cripple and
walks lame. It's shook him a good deal."

"I am not surprised at that," said the Duke.
"Possibly it was only intended as a practical
joke, but you had better inform the constable
in the village, and instruct him to inquire into
the matter."

The butler retired, and the Duke smiled
grimly.

"Ziegler has begun to put in some of his
fine work," he muttered. "The initial blunder
of his agents in mistaking a servant's limp for
mine won't stop him long. I shall begin to like
the excitement soon, I expect."

But as the day wore to evening, and the
evening to night, the sensation of being *hunted*
vexed his nerves. He found himself prolonging
his solitary dinner for the sake of the company
of the butler and footman who waited
upon him, and afterwards he abstained from
the moonlit stroll on the terrace to which he
felt tempted. It was not till the mansion had
been barred and bolted for the night that he
ceased to fumble frequently for the revolver
which he had carried all day.

Before retiring he inquired of Manson if
the constable had traced the maltreaters of
Jennings, and he was not surprised to learn
that there had been no discoveries. Mr. Clinton
Ziegler was not the man to employ agents
incapable of baffling a village policeman.

The room which Beaumanoir occupied was
the great state bed-chamber that had been used
by his predecessors from time immemorial—a
gaunt apartment with a cavernous fireplace
and heavily curtained mullioned windows. He
did not like the room, but had consented to
sleep there on seeing that the old retainers
would be scandalized by his sleeping anywhere
but in the "Duke's Room."

After locking the door and seeing to the
window fastenings, he took the additional precaution
of examining the chimney. Bending
his head clear of the massive mantelpiece, he
looked up and saw that at the end of the broad
shaft quite a large circle of star-lit sky was
visible, while a cold blast struck downwards of
sufficient volume to purify the air of the room.

He lay awake for some time, but he must
have been slumbering fitfully for over an hour
when he felt himself gradually awakening—not
from any sudden start, but from a growing
sense of strange oppression in his lungs. As
his senses returned the choking sensation increased,
and finally he lay wide awake, wondering
what was the matter. Every minute
it became harder to breathe the stifling air, and
at last he flung the bedclothes off in the hope
of relief, and in doing so saw something so
unaccountable that his reeling senses were
stricken with amazement rather than fear.

There was a fire in the grate. Glowing
steadily in the recess of the ancient fireplace a
great red ball burned, without flicker and without
flame, but lurid with the unwavering light
that comes from fuel fused to intense heat.

Even without the terrible oppression at his
chest there would have been a weird horror in
this mysterious fire introduced into his room at
dead of night—into a room with locked door
and fastened windows. But what did this
ghastly struggle for breath portend?

"Charcoal! Ziegler!" were the two words
that buzzed in response through his fast-clouding
brain.




CHAPTER VI—*The General is Curious*
=====================================


On the following afternoon at tea-time four
ladies were seated in the pleasant drawing-room
of 140 Grosvenor Gardens, the residence
of General Sadgrove, late of the Indian Staff
Corps. Mrs. Sadgrove, a fair, plump, elderly
dame, needs no special description, and two of
the other tea-drinkers—Mrs. Senator Sherman,
as she preferred to be called, and her
daughter Leonie—we have met before.

The fourth occupant of the room—a girl
dressed in deep mourning—was Sybil Hanbury,
who had come to discuss her engagement
to Alec Forsyth with her motherly old friend,
Alec's aunt by marriage, Mrs. Sadgrove.
Owing to the recent deaths in her family the
engagement was not to be publicly announced
at present; but Sybil had no secrets from the
Sadgroves, who had known her from a baby,
long before she had been taken up, on the death
of her parents, by her grandfather, the late
Duke of Beaumanoir.

Miss Hanbury owed her attractiveness to
her essentially English type, not of beauty—she
would have disdained to lay claim to that—but
of fresh, healthy coloring, a suspicion of
tomboyishness, and a lithe, supple figure that
stood her in good stead in the hunting and
hockey fields. A trifle slangy on occasion, she
was a good hater and a staunch friend, with a
temper—as she had warned Alec already—that
would need a lot of humoring if they were
not to have "ructions."

"I've got the makings of a termagant, my
dear boy, but it will be all right if you rule me
with a velvet glove," she had remarked within
five minutes of their first kiss.

In fact, Miss Sybil Hanbury was a bit of a
hoyden; but a very capable little hoyden for
all that, and absolutely fearless.

The two girls had naturally paired off together,
and the subject of their talk was,
equally naturally, the new Duke—Alec's
friend, Sybil's cousin, and Leonie's chance acquaintance
on the *St. Paul*.

.. _`A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?`:

.. figure:: images/illus2.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?

   "A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?"

Sybil, after listening to Leonie's rather halting
description of the fellow passenger whom
she had known as "Mr. Hanbury," owned
frankly that she had never heard any good of
her cousin, but she hastened to add:

"He's given my prejudice a nasty knock,
though, in behaving so well to my young man.
Gave him a billet as private sec. that enabled
Alec to—you know. A man can't be much
of a wrong 'un who'll stick to old pals when
they have no claim on him."

Leonie tried not to show surprise at the vernacular.

"He seemed very kind and considerate. I
don't think he can ever have done anything
dishonorable," she replied.

"Nobody ever accused him of that," Sybil
assented. "It was only that he was extravagant,
and that my grandfather got tired of
paying his debts. You see, he wasn't the next
heir, and—well, perhaps they were a little hard
on him. I'm quite prepared to like him now."

The conversation was interrupted by the entrance
of a servant, who announced:

"Mrs. Talmage Eglinton."

"A fellow countrywoman of yours. I wonder
if you know her?" Sybil whispered, as a
radiant vision in pale pink under a large "picture"
hat sailed in, and was greeted with
somewhat frigid politeness by Mrs. Sadgrove.

"No; I am not acquainted with either
the name or the lady," Leonie replied, struck
with a strange antipathy to the bold eyes that
seemed to be mastering every detail in the
room, herself included. Indeed, Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton stared so markedly both at
Leonie and her mother that Mrs. Sadgrove
thought they must have met, and promptly
introduced them as American friends staying
in the house. The introduction was not a success,
for the Shermans knew everyone worth
knowing in American society, and the fact
that they had never so much as heard of Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton argued her outside the
pale.

The elegant vision received her snubbing
with cool unconcern, and after a few generalities
turned again to her hostess and engaged
in the trifling chatter of a "duty" call, making
one or two unsuccessful attempts to include
Sybil, to whom she had not been introduced,
in the conversation.

"That woman is a brute," Sybil said to
Leonie under her breath. "I'll tell you about
her when she's gone."

The door opened, and there entered an iron-gray
man of sixty, whose coming might almost
have been the cause of expediting the departure
of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, so quickly did
she rise and begin her good-byes.

"No, really I can't stay, dear Mrs. Sadgrove,
even to have the pleasure of a chat with
the General," she prattled. "I have half a
dozen other calls to pay, and you have beguiled
me into staying too long already. Good-bye.
Good-bye, General. Pray don't trouble to
come down." And with a half-impudent bow
of exaggerated respect to the Shermans, she
swept out, with the master of the house in attendance.

General Sadgrove returned at once to the
drawing-room after escorting the visitor to
her carriage. He was a man who bore his years
easily; singularly slow and scant of speech, but
alert of eye and almost jaunty in the erectness
of his bearing. He had gained his C.B. for
prominent services in the suppression of
Thuggee and Dacoity, and his name is still
held in wholesome dread by the criminals of
India whose method is violence. It had once
been said of him by a high official: "Jem Sadgrove
doesn't have to worry about *finding*
clues. He makes them for himself, and they
always yield a true scent. He's got the nose
of a fox-terrier, and the patience and speed of
a greyhound."

But that was long ago, and it might be supposed
that in such pleasant duties of retirement
as the ushering out of dainty visitors
from his wife's tea-table his faculties had become
blunted. Nor in the law-abiding precincts
of Belgravia could there be scope for
the old-time energy. Yet Mrs. Sadgrove, who
knew the signs and portents of her husband's
face, looked twice at him with just a shade of
anxiety as she asked whether he would take
some tea.

"Thanks," he said, and taking his cup he
went and stood on the rug before the empty
hearth. He stirred his tea slowly, with his eyes
wandering from one to the other of the four
women in the room.

"You good people seem singularly calm,
considering that you must just have been
listening to a very exciting story," he remarked.

"Indeed, no," replied Sybil, taking upon
herself to answer. "The lady to whom you
have just been doing the polite bored us intensely.
Leonie says, for all the dash she's
cutting in London, she's an *incognita* so far as
America is concerned."

The General continued to stir his tea impassively.

"Did she not inform you in the course of her
small talk," he inquired presently, "that on her
way here her carriage had knocked a man
down and gone near to killing him?"

The question evoked a chorus of interested
negatives.

"Neither did she say anything to me about
it," said the General gravely.

"Then how did you become aware of the accident?"
Mrs. Sadgrove ventured to ask.

"Saw it," returned the General. "It happened
in Buckingham Palace Road. I was
passing at the time, on my way home from the
club. Her coachman drove right over the fellow
as he was crossing the roadway at the corner.
He was knocked down, and it was the
merest shave that he wasn't trampled by the
horses and crushed by the wheels. As it was,
he escaped with a bit of a shaking and a dusty
coat. At any rate, he got up and walked into
the nearest barber's—for a wash and brush-up,
I suppose."

Further questioned, the General in his jerky
way informed his fair audience that he was
sure that it was Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's
jobbed landau that had wrought the mischief,
and that she herself was in it at the time. It
was the same vehicle which he had found at
his own door on reaching home ten minutes
ago, and to which he had just conducted her.

"Funny that she should be so secretive about
it," said Mrs. Sadgrove, reflectively. "It's the
sort of thing that most women, coming fresh
from the scene, would have been full of—especially
as it must have been the coachman's
fault, and not her own."

"Exactly," was the General's curt comment.

"She's a—a *creature*," Sybil Hanbury exclaimed,
viciously. "Thank goodness, I don't
know her; but I've heard all about her from
Alec. The poor boy can't abide her; she makes
eyes at him so unblushingly."

"Then we can appreciate your sentiments
about her," remarked the General with the
flicker of a smile. "How did we come to know
this lady?" he added to his wife.

Mrs. Sadgrove explained that she had been
asked as a favor to call on Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
by a mutual acquaintance, a certain
Lady Roseville, but had regretted it ever since.
Their intercourse had, however, been of the
slightest, being confined to the interchange of
a couple of formal visits, and to an invitation
by Mrs. Sadgrove to a musical "at home," at
which Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had endeavored
to embark on a flirtation with Alec Forsyth.

"She's a rich widow, I believe; and I don't
think she would ever have been heard of if the
Rosevilles hadn't taken her up," Mrs. Sadgrove
concluded.

The series of grunts with which the General
received this information had hardly ceased
when again the footman appeared in the doorway
and announced, with all due importance:

"His Grace the Duke of Beaumanoir."

The occupants of the drawing-room were all
accustomed to the "usages of polite society,"
either in Britannic or Transatlantic form; but
it was impossible for them to repress a flutter
of excitement as the visitor entered, his original
"cavalry swing" marred but not wholly
obliterated by his limp. Leonie tried hard not
to blush, and failed. Mrs. Sherman interlaced
her fingers nervously. Sybil Hanbury stared
hard at the cousin whose stately town house
she was occupying, and who had waved a
magic wand over her lover's prospects. Mrs.
Sadgrove was the graceful and interested hostess,
and the General—well, the General was
surprised for once into a start which was only
invisible because nobody was looking at him.

Beaumanoir's manner was perfectly easy
and self-possessed, but there was a harassed
look in his eyes which did not entirely fade
as he responded to his welcome. But it was
not that which had caused the General to start.

*The Duke was the man whom he had seen
knocked down by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's
carriage, to the imminent peril of his life.*

The "wash and brush-up" had been effectual
as regards the ducal garments, but they could
not hide the black silk sling in which he carried
his left arm. It was General Sadgrove's way
to allow events to shape themselves, and saying
nothing of the scene he had witnessed as
he welcomed the distinguished visitor, he
waited for the Duke to refer to his mishap
himself.

But no. The victim of the accident was
apparently as much inclined to reticence as
had been the fair cause of it. It was Mrs.
Sherman who unconsciously provoked the
mendacious statement which stimulated the
General's curiosity.

"I'm afraid that your Grace has hurt your
hand," said the Senator's wife, pointing to a
broad strip of diachylon plaster that ran from
the Duke's wrist to the ball of his thumb.

"Yes, I—I grazed it rather badly against
the wheel in getting out of a cab," Beaumanoir
replied with a momentary loss of his self-possession.
The discomposure passed at once,
and only the observer on the hearth-rug noticed
it. The same shrewd observer presently
perceived that the visitor was definitely leading
the conversation to the subject of the arrival in
England of Senator Sherman; and, more than
that, that he was waxing a shade more inquisitive
than good-breeding allowed as to the nature
of the senatorial journey.

"Ah! he's coming on political business, I
think you told me?" the Duke remarked in a
half-tone of interrogation on Leonie saying
that her father, according to advices received
that morning, was to sail in two days' time on
the *Campania*, and would be due at Liverpool
early in the following week.

"Well, it's political business in a way," Mrs.
Sherman struck in. "My husband is coming
over in charge of a large amount of Government
securities, which are to be deposited at
the Bank of England against a shipment of
English gold to the United States."

"He's got the opening he wanted. Now,
what on earth is he going to do with it?" said
the General to himself as he watched keenly.

"Rather a dangerous mission, I should say,"
was the Duke's comment on the information
imparted to him.

"Dangerous! How can that be?" Leonie
exclaimed, wondering. "United States Treasury
bonds are not explosive."

"No, but the world is full of sharps, Miss
Sherman, and some of them might fancy having
a shy for such a haul," said Beaumanoir
with a trace more of earnestness than the occasion
seemed to require. "If I had a relative
starting on such an errand, I should be inclined
to cable him to—ah—to look out for
himself," he added in direct appeal to Mrs.
Sherman.

But the good lady laughed the suggestion to
scorn, alleging playfully that "it would be as
much as her place was worth" to tackle the
Senator that way. It would be a hint that he
wasn't able to take care of himself or of his
charge, and would be resented accordingly.

The Duke abandoned the subject, but the
General noted the disappointment in the tired
eyes.

"His Grace knows something. Let's see—he
was on his beam-ends when he was unearthed
in New York," the old hunter of
Thugs and Dacoits muttered under his gray
mustache.

Beaumanoir made no long stay after his
ineffectual effort to sound a warning note.
There had been no opportunity for individual
talk; but in saying his adieus he had two words
with Sybil, who had been observing her cousin
quite as intently as, and a good deal more
openly than, the General.

"I'm going to look Alec up now, at his diggings
in John Street," he said. "Probably I
shall ask him to put me up to-night."

"It's a shame that you should have to do
so," Sybil blurted in her boyish fashion.
"You've been awfully good to us. I ought
to have cleared out of Beaumanoir House at
once, and I'll 'git' as soon as ever I can make
other arrangements."

"I beg you'll do nothing of the kind," Beaumanoir
made genial answer. "Alec is about
the only friend I have, and—and I need a
friend, Cousin Sybil. It has been a pleasure
to serve him and you—if it can be called serving
you," he added with a thoughtful gravity
that puzzled the girl.

She shook hands with a warmth that bespoke
the death of old prejudices, and General Sadgrove,
who had hardly exchanged two words
with his visitor, accompanied him to the hall-door.

"Are you walking, Duke? Or shall I
whistle a cab?" he asked.

Beaumanoir looked up the street and down
the street, and gave a queer little shrug.

"It won't make any difference whether I
walk or drive," he said. "Good-bye, General."

Having gazed the limping figure out of
sight, the General went back into the house and
made for his private den—a cozy apartment
crammed with Eastern spoils. There he leisurely
selected a cigar and seated himself in a
big saddle-bag chair.

"There is something brewing," he growled
gently. "I perceive a vibration in the moral
atmosphere which quite recalls old days. I
wonder what it means?"




CHAPTER VII—*The Men on the Stairs*
=====================================


The rooms—two in number—occupied by
Alec Forsyth in John Street, Adelphi, were
in a house let off in bachelor chambers, with
the exception of the ground floor, which was
used as an office by a firm of wholesale wine-merchants.
The young Scotsman's limited
income had precluded a more aristocratic locality;
and, at any rate, John Street offered
the advantage of being within a few minutes'
walk of his daily work in Downing Street.

In the daytime, when the tenants were out
at their various avocations, the upper part of
the dingy old building was deserted, save by
the housekeeper in the attics; while the counting-house
abutting on the street was all life
and bustle. At night the conditions were reversed,
the wine-merchant's premises being
locked up and silent, and the rooms above occupied.

On the evening of that Monday on which
the Duke of Beaumanoir called on the Shermans at the residence of General Sadgrove,
Alec was busy in his sitting-room, tearing up
papers and preparing generally for his departure
to Prior's Tarrant on the morrow. It
was past eight, and he had just lit the gas,
when the door suddenly opened and Beaumanoir
came in.

"Why, Charley—hang it! Duke, I mean—I
thought you were in the country!" Alec
exclaimed, more astonished by his friend's actions
than by his appearance there.

For, after slipping quietly in, Beaumanoir
had turned sharp round and loosed the catch
of the spring-lock. Not satisfied with that, he
also shot home the two old-fashioned bolts with
which the door was fitted, top and bottom, and
then flung himself into an easy chair, mopping
his brow with his handkerchief.

"I don't think I was spotted, but it's best
to be on the safe side," he muttered. Then
aloud: "I came to ask you to give me a shake-down
to-night, old chap, on a sofa or anything;
only I don't know if it's fair to you; my
proximity carries a pretty considerable risk.
But I've been—rather worried, and I seem to
want company."

Forsyth rose, and laid an affectionate hand
on the Duke's shoulder.

"Now, look here," he said, firmly. "I'm
going to forget that you're my employer at a
generous salary, and remember only that I'm
your friend. What does all this mean?
You've been hurt somehow, too. Just make a
clean breast of it, and let's see what can be
done."

Beaumanoir shook his head sadly.

"I can't make a clean breast of it," he began;
then pulled up short and went on. "At
least, I can't tell you causes, but I'll tell you
effects. My life has been attempted twice certainly,
possibly three times, since noon yesterday."

"How?" said Alec with Scotch brevity.

"A lame gardener was set upon at Prior's
Tarrant, and released on his assailants finding
that they had mistaken him for me. And at
night they got on the roof and tried to suffocate
me by letting a brazier of charcoal down
into the grate and plugging the chimney.
Luckily I awoke, and managed to crawl out of
the room in time."

"But surely you raised an alarm and caught
the fellows? They couldn't get off the roof
and escape so quickly as that," exclaimed Alec,
half incredulous.

Again the Duke shook his head.

"I raised no alarm, and they did get away,
after pulling up the brazier and leaving no
trace," he replied. "There are reasons, Alec,
why I could not have appeared against them
had they been caught—the same reasons why
I can't confide more fully in you."

"You must have done something very bad—murder
at least," said Forsyth, gravely.

"On the contrary, I have done nothing at
all," Beaumanoir retorted. "It is for not
doing something that I am being persecuted."

"Well, what about the third attempt?"

"It happened this afternoon, as I was on
my way to your uncle's. A carriage knocked
me down and very nearly crumpled me. But
that may have been an accident."

"Did you take stock of the driver and the
people in the carriage?"

Beaumanoir was obliged to admit that he
had not. In his disheveled state he had been
only anxious to be cleaned down and have his
wrist attended to, and it was not till after the
carriage had driven rapidly away that he had
connected the incident with the other attempts.

Forsyth said nothing for the moment, but
fetched some cigarettes from the mantelpiece;
and it was not until they had smoked in silence
for awhile that he blurted out suddenly:

"This can't be allowed to go on. It makes
everything impossible. Have you any reason
to think that the people who are pursuing you
will do so indefinitely—until they have settled
you?"

Beaumanoir considered before replying, as
though the point had not occurred to him before.

"No," he said, with a nervous laugh.
"Things have crowded so in the last few hours
that I haven't thought much about any sort of
future. I cannot be sure, but I believe if I
could pull through till the end of next week—say,
for another fortnight—that the danger
would pass."

Forsyth sat and ruminated, blowing blue
smoke-rings; and then, after two or three
minutes of silence, a faint noise sounded in the
room. The Duke, whose nerves were tuned to
concert pitch, heard it first, and turned a pair
of wide-open eyes on the door. Forsyth's gaze
followed, and they both saw the handle of the
door move. The door itself, being locked and
double bolted, of course refused to yield to the
gentle pressure from without.

Forsyth laid his finger to his lips for silence,
and motioned Beaumanoir to retire into the
bedroom, which communicated by means of
folding doors with the sitting-room. When
the Duke had noiselessly disappeared, Forsyth
stole to the outer door, and having first quietly
drawn the bolts he quickly unlocked it and
flung it open, to be confronted by an under-sized
little man, who shrank back from his
threatening attitude.

"Who the deuce are you—and what do you
want, disturbing me at this time of night?"
Forsyth demanded fiercely.

"These are Mr. Crofton's chambers, ain't
they, sir?" bleated the intruder.

"No; they are not. There's no one of that
name in the house that I know of," replied
Forsyth, partially mollified by his mild manner,
and wholly so when the little man proceeded
to apologize for his mistake, explaining
that he was from a chemist's in the Strand with
some medicine for the gentleman, but that he
must have come to the wrong house.

Holding up a bottle as evidence of his *bona
fides*, he retreated downstairs, excusing himself
to the last; but before going he had managed
to snatch a comprehensive glance round the
room. Forsyth waited on the landing until his
steps had died away, and then went back into
his room, barring the door as before.

"It's all right," he said, going to the folding
doors. "Only some chap who had mistaken
the address."

"Not much mistake there," replied the
Duke, outwardly calm, but gone very white.
"I caught a peep of him. He's a johnny who
shadowed me over from America, and never
left me till just before I met you at the Cecil.
He called himself Marker, and—and he's in
this business, Alec."

"He didn't look very formidable. Why,
you could lick the thread-paper little skimp
with one hand," said Forsyth, beginning to
wonder if his friend's mind were unhinged.
It was not like the once gay hussar Charley
Hanbury—intrepid horseman, champion boxer,
and good all-round athlete—to funk a miserable
wisp such as that!

"He is only the spy, I expect—sent to find
out if I was here," replied Beaumanoir, passing
a weary hand over his eyes.

Moved by a sudden impulse, Forsyth went
into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him
so as to be in the dark. The window commanded
a view of the street, and the blind had
not been drawn. Looking down, he saw a man
sauntering on the opposite pavement, who
presently coming under the rays of a street-lamp
was revealed as Marker. Forsyth waited
until the spy turned and slowly retraced his
steps, and then went back into the sitting-room.

"You have convinced me that there is something
in all this," he said. "That fellow is
mouching about outside."

"I'll go. I can't subject you to this sort of
thing," said Beaumanoir, reaching for the new
hat which he had purchased after his "accident."

But Forsyth pushed him back into his chair.

"A duke isn't necessarily a fool," he said,
roughly. "What you want most is a good
sleep, and you shall have it—here in these
rooms. Mr. Marker can't *know* that you are
here, or he wouldn't have come to the door with
that bogus yarn. Also, he is evidently not satisfied
that you are *not* here, or he would have
gone away. It remains to throw dust in his
eyes and fool him a bit. Lord! how I wish my
uncle, General Sadgrove, was with us!"

"He seemed to me a trifle dull," remarked
the Duke, inconsequently.

Forsyth made allowances, and did not answer.

"See here," he said, after a minute's reflection.
"This is the plan to throw the spy off
the scent. It's nine o'clock—just the hour
when it would be quite natural for a bachelor
to go to his club. I will stroll round to Northumberland
Avenue, and drop into the Constitutional
for an hour. In the meanwhile, do
you stay here and lie low behind locked doors,
and with gas turned down. That rascal will
almost certainly retire to his employers baffled,
for he would not think that I should go out and
leave you alone."

"That sounds promising," Beaumanoir assented.
"But don't stay a moment longer
than the hour, Alec. I don't think I could
stand it."

Forsyth reassured him, and having slipped
into evening clothes and donned a light overcoat,
he issued his final instructions. It was
beginning to be natural to him now to take the
lead, after that glimpse of the lurking figure
in the light of the street-lamp. Beaumanoir
was to lock and bolt himself in, and only open
on hearing the password "*Rat*."

These matters arranged, Forsyth departed,
and, after waiting until he heard the bolts shot,
went down into the street, where the spy was
still in evidence, prowling on the other side.
He made no attempt to follow Forsyth, who,
affecting not to notice him, walked rapidly the
short distance to his club. There he remained
in the smoking-room with what patience he
could muster for the full hour, determined not
to return till time enough had elapsed for Marker
to come to the desired conclusion and act
upon it.

It was half-past ten when Forsyth set out
to retrace his steps to John Street, and almost
as soon as he entered that deserted thoroughfare
he saw that the watcher was no longer at
his post. Eager to relieve Beaumanoir from
his solitary state of siege, he made all haste to
the house, and was passing quickly through the
entry when he heard footsteps on the landing
above. A gas-jet was kept burning over the
closed door of the wine-merchant's office, for
the benefit of the resident tenants on the upper
floors, so that he had a clear view of the
straight stone stairs. Before he reached the
latter two men came into view, hurriedly descending,
and talking together in muffled
undertones—one a gaunt, hungry-looking
individual in the garb of a clergyman; the
other, burly and bull-necked, dressed in shabby
tweeds and bowler hat.

Forsyth stood aside at the stair-foot for
them to pass, and then, moved by the furtive
glances they turned back at him, he ran upstairs
two steps at a time. He knew all his
fellow-lodgers by sight; but these men were
strangers, and he did not like the looks of the
curiously assorted pair. On coming to the
door of his rooms, he rapped and spoke the
agreed signal, but something prompted him
not to wait, and simultaneously he turned the
handle. The door swung open at once, without
any unbarring from within.

"Where have you got to?" cried Forsyth,
peering round the room, in which the gas
burned low, just as he had left it.

There was no response; and with a sinking
heart he turned on a full light and dashed into
the bedroom, only to find that also vacant. The
Duke of Beaumanoir had vanished from his
refuge.

There was no doubt that he was in neither
of the rooms. A hasty search put that beyond
question. Instinctively Forsyth ran to the
outer door and at once made the discovery—for
which he was already prepared—that his
chambers had been forcibly entered during his
absence. The door had been wrenched open
with a jemmy, and had simply been pulled to
on the departure of the intruders. The shattered
woodwork round the spring-lock told its
own tale, though the mystery was increased by
the fact that the old-fashioned bolts had been
withdrawn.

But what of Beaumanoir?




CHAPTER VIII—*The Cut Panel*
==============================


In the famous white drawing-room at Beaumanoir
House Sybil Hanbury was preparing
to end a solitary evening by the simple process
of going to bed. The butler, a martyr to punctilio,
had insisted on lighting every jet in the
chandeliers and in the sconces on the walls,
with the result that the vast apartment scintillated
like a ball-room, accentuating the loneliness
of the black-clad little figure of its sole
occupant.

Sybil laid aside her book, and surveyed the
splendid emptiness of the room with a smile of
amusement for her monopoly of so much gorgeously
upholstered space. But as she realized
that her monopoly of the white drawing-room
was only a detail in the much larger incongruity
of her monopoly of the Piccadilly mansion,
her face took a graver look.

"I trust that the Vincents will be ready to
take me in next week," she mused with a touch
of impatience. "The idea of a score of servants and an acre of ducal palace being run
for a simple body like me is too ridiculous,
especially with the rightful owner ready to
take possession."

She had been both puzzled and attracted by
her cousin at General Sadgrove's that afternoon.
As a child she had heard so much contemptuous
obloquy poured on the absent ne'er-do-well
that, in spite of his generosity to Alec
Forsyth and his consideration for herself, she
had been prepared to cling to the old prejudice.
It had, however, at once broken down
under the pathetic plea for friendship which
she had discerned in the Duke's troubled eyes,
for her womanly insight told her that the new
head of the family was under the influence of
a mental strain almost amounting to physical
distress.

"He looks like a man sitting on an infernal
machine, listening to the tick-tack of the clock-work,"
she reflected. "Yet I don't think he's
wicked, or the sort of person with a past likely
to fly up and hit him in the face. I wish I
knew what he is grizzling about, so that Alec
and I could do him a good turn in exchange
for his benevolence."

She had risen with the intention of retiring
to her own room, when the butler entered hurriedly,
and with traces of well-disciplined agitation
on his episcopal countenance. Mr.
Prince had grown gray in the ducal service;
but, beyond a slight fatherliness of manner, he
did not presume on the fact towards the orphan
scion of the great house.

"I really don't know, Miss, if I ought to disturb
you so late on such a matter," he said.
"Two men have called to see his Grace, and,
failing him, insisted on my ascertaining if you
would receive them."

"I know nothing of the Duke's affairs, and
I am just going up to bed," Sybil replied,
wondering at the usually correct retainer's excitement.
"Besides, Prince, 'insist' is rather a
curious word to use here," she added with a
trace of asperity.

"I should not have ventured to repeat such
an objectionable phrase, Miss, if it had not
been used with a sort of authority," the butler
hastened to put himself right. "I ought to
have mentioned that they are Scotland Yard
detectives, which accounts for my being a bit
flurried."

Sybil promptly sat down again and bade
Prince show the visitors in. She had no desire
to pry into her cousin's business, nor did her
reception of the police-officers imply any such
intention. But at that moment her preconceived
notion that the Duke was the center of
a mystery took definite shape, and she was
above all things loyal to the house. She decided
that in her cousin's interest it would be
wiser to see these men, and, if possible, fore-arm
herself with a knowledge of their designs.

But when Prince returned it was to usher in
not two men, but only one—a cadaverous,
middle-aged person in the garb of a clergyman,
who waited obsequiously near the door
while his card was presented by the butler.

"I found when I got back into the hall that
he'd sent the other man away, Miss—said there
was no need for two of them to intrude upon
you," explained Prince in an undertone.

Sybil nodded, but the furtive glances of the
clerically dressed visitor caused her to call
Prince back as he was retiring.

"I trust you didn't leave them alone in the
hall?" she whispered.

"Oh, dear, no, Miss; William, the second
footman, was on duty in the hall while I came
to you," was the reply, uttered in a slightly
injured tone.

Prince having taken a dignified departure,
Sybil beckoned forward the individual whom
his card proclaimed to be "Inspector Chantrey,
Criminal Investigation Department." He
advanced with a shambling walk and with
deprecating gestures in keeping with his disguise;
but Sybil formed the opinion that all
his nervousness was not simulated. It struck
her that he was listening intently as he
threaded his way through the priceless Louis
Seize garniture of the white drawing-room.

He stood before her at last, for all the world
like a half-famished wolf in the presence of a
very wide-awake and dainty lamb that had not
the least intention of being devoured. He
spoke hurriedly—almost perfunctorily, as
though he set no great store by his questions
or the answers to them; and all the time that
listening attitude was noticeable.

"I called in the hope of finding his Grace at
home," he began, with a half-note of interrogation.

"Well, the butler will have told you that he
is not at home," said Sybil sharply.

"True; but servants are not always reliable,
and I thought I had better see one of the
family. Might I ask if the Duke is expected
here to-night?"

"No, he isn't. What do you want him for?"
snapped Sybil.

The *aplomb* of the question seemed to take
the inquisitor back. He glanced curiously at
the girl in the high-backed arm-chair, first
scanning her tenacious little face, but quickly
dropping his shifty eyes to the carelessly
crossed shoes.

He began to "hem" and "ha."

"The fact of the matter is, we have had a
communication from the county police at
Prior's Tarrant, in respect of an assault on
one of the servants in the park yesterday. The
local people think the attack may have been
intended for the Duke, and they have wired us
to make inquiries."

The reason alleged for his visit sounded
plausible, and in some degree might account
for the hunted look she had surprised in the
Duke's eyes. Yet she was not altogether satisfied.
It was conceivable that the police should
want to question the Duke, but the excuse for
intruding on her at such an hour hardly seemed
adequate.

"I am still at a loss to see how I can be of
service to you in a matter of which I know
nothing," she said, not attempting to keep the
suspicion out of her voice.

"I only desired to make sure, madam, that
the Duke was not at home. Having obtained
that assurance from the fountain-head, pray
permit me to withdraw," was the nervously
spoken reply, punctuated by an awkward bow
and the commencement of a hurried retreat.
But the visitor had only taken three steps
down the long vista of the room when the door
was flung open, and Prince announced, with
the air of one who springs a surprise:

"His Grace the Duke!"

Beaumanoir was very pale, but he advanced
without hesitation, meeting Sibyl's interrogator
half-way up the room. Startled as she
was by her cousin's unexpected appearance,
the girl intuitively rose and went forward,
vaguely conscious of a desire to hear if the
man repeated the same tale.

"Well, sir?" said the Duke, curtly.

Sybil hardly knew whether or no she was
relieved when, word for word, the man repeated
the reason he had just given her for his
call. Watching her cousin's face, she saw the
pallor yield to a flush of evident annoyance.

"Oh, yes; something of the kind occurred in
the park at Prior's Tarrant," he angrily replied.
"But all this about the man being mistaken
for me is officious nonsense—too trivial
to warrant your pushing your way into this
young lady's presence at eleven o'clock at
night. I shall complain to your superiors of
this most impertinent intrusion."

"What could it mean?" Sybil asked herself.
The man's nervous air—his attitude of
listening—had disappeared. His sly face
grew sleekly impudent under Beaumanoir's
rebuke and it was quite jauntily that he answered:

"Then I'll bid your Grace good-night. Very
possibly you'll reconsider the advisability of
raising the question at Scotland Yard."

The clerical coat-tails went flapping down
the room, the Duke following them to the door,
where he handed their owner over to Prince,
who was hovering in the hall. Having given
a sharp order to "show the gentleman out,"
Beaumanoir returned to Sybil, humbly apologetic,
but with signs of haste in his manner.

"My dear cousin, I am more than annoyed
at Prince's laxity in admitting that fellow,"
he said, taking her hand. "It is fortunate that
I chanced to look in in the hope of finding you
up, and so was able to rid you of him. I came
to leave a message for Alec in case he calls
presently."

"But Alec is the pink of propriety," exclaimed
Sibyl, laughing in spite of herself.
"He doesn't call on an unprotected damsel,
even if he is engaged to her, at eleven o'clock
at night."

"Nevertheless, I believe that he will call here
very shortly; and I should like him to be told
that I am all right, and, in fact, that I am
going out of town for a few days to the sea-side.
I will communicate with him when I
want him to enter on his secretarial duties.
That is all, I think. I must really be off now."

But Sybil would not at once take his proffered
hand. She remembered that he had
mentioned that he was to spend the night at
Alec's chambers, and this sudden derangement
of plans, coupled with the lurking suggestion
in his message, was, to say the least of it, mysterious.
Looking into the tired eyes, she found
again that expression of sleepless worry that
had puzzled her. Why should it be necessary
for this young man, newly come to great
wealth and station, to notify his friend so
feverishly that he was "all right," and in the
same breath announce his retreat from London
to some vague destination—not to his own
country-seat?

"As you expect Alec here, wouldn't it be
better to wait for him?" she urged; adding
naïvely, "I could even offer you a bed, if you
would condescend to make yourself at home in
your own house."

But Beaumanoir was in no mood to perceive
the humor of the situation. He was clearly
fidgeting to be gone, and Sybil could only conclude
that he wanted to be gone before Alec
arrived. With a girl's faith in her lover's
power to surmount most difficulties, she decided
to try and detain her cousin as long as
possible; but her diplomacy was not called into
play. Prince, now wearing an air of mild
protest at all these excursions and alarums,
appeared in the doorway to announce:

"Mr. Forsyth."

Beaumanoir was evidently disconcerted at
not having made his exit in time; and Sybil,
recognizing that there was something between
the two men not for her ears, tactfully withdrew
to the other end of the room, after smiling
a greeting to her lover. She thought none
the worse of him because he was too preoccupied
to return it. She was beginning to discern
an undercurrent of serious import beneath the
happenings of the past half-hour.

"What made you break cover, old chap?
You've given me a pretty scare," said Forsyth
to the Duke. "When I found you'd gone, I
came on here on the off-chance."

"I didn't think it fair to subject you to the
sort of night you might have had with me as
an inmate, so I cleared out," Beaumanoir replied,
wearily. "I guessed you'd inquire here,
so I called in to leave word that I was all right—up
to date."

"You were not molested before quitting my
chambers?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Because the place has been visited; it must
have been after you left," said Forsyth,
gravely. And he went on to relate how he had
found the door broken open, and how he had
met two suspicious-looking men on the stairs,
one dressed as a clergyman and the other in
shabby tweeds.

"Dressed as a clergyman?" cried Beaumanoir,
startled into forgetfulness of Sybil's
presence in the room. "Then, Alec, I have
stood face to face with death in this house not
ten minutes ago. I found your sham parson
here, professing to be an official detective; but
I doubted him from the first."

His raised tones reached Sybil, who realized
that the house of Beaumanoir was confronted
by no ordinary emergency. What the peril
could be that threatened her noble relative she
had no means of knowing, or any wish to
know; but the Duke's description of himself
as standing "face to face with death" amid the
seeming security of his own white drawing-room
touched her with the icy hand of unknown
dread, and, moreever, filled her with a
sense of responsibility. The man who was not
safe under the dazzling lights of that splendid
apartment, with a host of servants within call,
was going forth into all the insecurity of the
London streets at midnight because, her instinct
told her, he would not expose her to the
same danger.

Her cousin's chivalry appealed not only to
her loyalty to the house, but to that protective
impulse which springs readily in every woman's
heart.

"I couldn't help overhearing you," she said,
coming forward. "I, too, doubted that man—very strongly. I am sure he meant no good.
But what I want to say, Cousin Charles, is
that you must remain here to-night. If you
go out of the house, I shall go also."

Forsyth shot a grateful look at her.

"The best possible plan," he said, quickly.
"Now, don't be obstinate, Duke. The man has
left the premises, I presume? Good! That
being so, we shall be a poor lot if we can't
prevent his getting in again, which he is hardly
likely to attempt. There is nothing to hinder
you from spending a quiet night here, without
the slightest risk of unpleasantness either to
Sybil or to yourself, and in the morning you
and I can talk over your future movements at
leisure."

"And I quite meant what I said," Sybil
added, firmly. "If you won't stay here, you
will put me to the inconvenience of turning out
and going to an hotel at twelve o'clock at
night. I have no intention of being forced into
the horrid feeling that I am keeping you from
the shelter of your own roof."

Under the pleading of the two pairs of
kindly eyes turned on him Beaumanoir wavered.
The chance of sleep and rest was
tempting. He stepped to the door, and found
Prince in the great entrance-hall.

"That man who called himself a detective
has gone?" he inquired. "You are sure there
is no mistake about it? You showed him to the
door yourself, and saw him out?"

"And secured the door immediately afterwards,
your Grace. Mr. Forsyth will bear me
out in that; I had to withdraw the bolts to
admit him."

Beaumanoir returned to the drawing-room.

"You are both very good, and I will stay
for to-night only," he assented. "I wish I
could make the explanation I owe you, but—well,
I am the victim of circumstances."

"The explanation will keep," said Forsyth,
bluntly. "May I stay too?"

The permission was, of course, accorded,
and Sybil bade them good-night and retired
to her room, giving orders on the way for two
adjoining bedrooms to be prepared for them.
The two men went into the smoking-room for
a whisky and cigarette while the rooms were
being got ready; but each with tacit consent
avoided the topic of the moment. The one
idea in Alec's mind was to let Beaumanoir
have a good sleep, and persuade him into a
serious discussion in the morning.

They parted at the door of their bedrooms
on the first floor, where the late Duke's valet,
who was still in the house, had done everything
possible to cope with the sudden emergency.
Pajamas had been routed out, and toilet requisites
provided. The windows of both rooms
looked out over the ceaseless traffic of Piccadilly,
so that no danger could be apprehended
from that quarter; yet Forsyth sat for a long
time before turning in to bed. In his ignorance
of what was the source of the Duke's
danger, he had been loath to excite remark
among the servants by fussing about the
proper locking up of the mansion; but the
stately tread of Prince going his rounds reassured
him on that point, and eventually he
slept.

In the meanwhile, Sybil, in her room at the
other end of the same corridor, was finding a
still greater difficulty in composing herself to
rest. The events of the evening, in such startling
contrast with the normal calm of the dignified
establishment that had been her home,
had unsettled—not to say alarmed—her, and
she felt no inclination to the lace-edged pillow
that usually wooed her to willing slumbers.
She was a sound, healthy girl, untroubled by
nerves; but she felt a singular need for alertness,
unreasonable perhaps, but imperative.

The Duke's anxiety to make sure that the
clerically dressed individual had really left the
house had impressed her; and now, too late for
inquiry, she remembered that she had omitted
to mention that *two* men had called, one of
them not having been shown into her presence.
The latter, Prince had said, had been dismissed
by his colleague; but his departure had only
been witnessed by William, the second footman—a
dreamy servant at the best of times,
and unreliable by reason of a hopeless attachment
to the senior housemaid. The thought
thrilled Sybil that the other man, having hoodwinked
the footman, might still be in the
house, concealed in one of the many unused
rooms.

The idea of a lurking prowler, biding his
time in the stillness of the sleeping household,
kept her wakeful. Once or twice she looked
out into the corridor; but the flicker of her
candle only showed two rows of closed doors,
without a sign of life, and each time she went
back and tried to fix her attention on a book.
So the night dragged into the small hours; and
about three o'clock, after a longer interval
than before, she determined to take one more
peep and then get into bed.

She had already grasped the door-handle,
when she withdrew her hand as though it had
been stung by an adder. A faint scrooping
sound told her that someone was doing something
in the corridor, and half a minute's
strained listening told her that, whatever that
something was, it was persistent and continuous.
It went on and on, like the drone of a
bee in a bottle.

Silently crossing the room, she turned down
her gas to a pin-point and blew out the candle
with which she had intended to investigate.
Then she returned to the door, and, opening it
noiselessly, tiptoed into the outer darkness.
Here the sound, though still faint, was more
distinctly audible, and she was able to locate it
at the door of the room occupied by the Duke.
The discovery left her no time for fear, or even
for conjecture. There was only one thing to
be done—to rouse Alec and the Duke, but
without, till that supreme moment, alarming
the unseen manipulator at her cousin's door.
Thus would she narrow the time at the disposal
of that mysterious person for revising his
plans and effecting his escape.

The thick pile carpet made for silence, and
she stole quietly along the broad passage,
touching and counting the doors till she
reached that of Forsyth's room—only a few
feet from the gentle buz-buz that had attracted
her attention, and only a few feet from someone
stealthily at work in the dark. A steady
snore from the interior of the Duke's chamber
explained his complacence under that uncanny
tampering with his approaches.

Again giving herself no time for fear, Sybil
beat a rat-tat on Forsyth's door, calling him
by name. The sound at the next door immediately
ceased, an instant of intense silence following,
and then almost simultaneously two
things happened. An iron grip settled on the
girl's wrist, just as Forsyth flung open the
door of his room, in which he had wisely turned
the gas full on as he leaped out of bed. The
light streamed into the corridor and shone
upon a man in shabby tweeds and bowler hat,
who was holding Sybil, but not so hampered
that he was prevented from drawing a revolver
and aiming straight at Forsyth's head.


.. _`The procession of three led by the stranger.`:

.. figure:: images/illus3.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The procession of three led by the stranger.

   "The procession of three led by the stranger."

Whether he intended to fire or offer an ultimatum was not demonstrated, for before he
could do either he was taken in the rear and
found himself a target. There stood the Duke
in his pajamas, with a handy little Smith and
Wesson not a foot from the intruder's temples,
and with his left hand significantly extended.

"Give me that pistol," he said, sternly.

Beaumanoir was dealing with a tangible foe
at last, and with a thrill of racial pride Sybil
noted the light of battle in her relative's eye.
It was, therefore, more than a shock to her
when the Duke, having relieved the tweed-coated
lurker of his weapon, calmly added:

"Now, sir, if you will be good enough to
march in front of me down to the front door,
I will let you out. You two," he continued,
addressing Sybil and Forsyth in the same
quiet tones, "will greatly oblige me by not raising
any alarm or disturbing the servants while
I am gone."

"I am coming downstairs with you," said
Forsyth, drily.

When the procession of three, led by the
stranger with a brace of pistols at his head,
had filed off to the grand staircase, Sybil ran
back to her room and fetched her candle. An
inspection of the Duke's door showed that a
panel had been partially cut out with a watch-spring
saw, which was still sticking in the
almost invisible fissure.




CHAPTER IX—*The Strategy of the General*
==========================================


Some five hours later General Sadgrove, at
his house in Grosvenor Gardens, was taking
his morning tub, when a servant tapped at the
door of the bathroom and informed him that
Mr. Alec Forsyth wanted to see him very
urgently. The General as speedily as possible
donned his dressing-gown and descended to
his sanctum. His keen eyes just glanced at
the troubled face of the young man standing
on the hearth-rug; then, in his laconic way, he
asked:

"What's wrong, laddie? Your chum Beaumanoir
been in the wars?"

Forsyth favored him with a startled stare,
and then broke into an uneasy laugh.

"You seem to have been exercising your
faculty of second-sight already, Uncle Jem,"
he said.

"The man was being *stalked*," said the General.
"Has anyone caught him?"

"Very nearly," replied Forsyth; and he proceeded to narrate the events of the night, and
also what Beaumanoir had told him of the previous
attempts on his life. At mention of the
Duke's absolute refusal to disclose the cause
of the vendetta and to invoke the protection
of the police, General Sadgrove drew a long
breath. On hearing that he had in the small
hours of that morning, thanks to the vigilance
of Sybil Hanbury, held one of his would-be
assassins at his mercy, but had quietly escorted
him to the door and let him go, the whilom
hunter of Dacoits uttered inarticulate grunts.

"And now, Uncle Jem, I have come to you
for help," Forsyth proceeded earnestly. "I
have persuaded the Duke to permit me to tell
you in strictest confidence as much as he has
told me, and I think if you can make any suggestions
for baffling these unknown malefactors
that he will adopt them—always provided
your advice does not entail going to the police.
He has given me his word of honor to remain
at Beaumanoir House until I return; but the
odds are they'll have another shy at him
directly he pokes his nose outside."

The General had been absently toying with
a tray of Indian curios, but he now looked
sharply up at his nephew.

"You are not exactly blind, Alec, and can
read between the lines," he said. "Reluctance
on the part of a man threatened with murder
to communicate with the authorities must
mean that he has got an ugly sort of secret
himself."

"You know his record, sir. Charles Hanbury
was never anyone's enemy but his own,
and I expect the Duke of Beaumanoir is much
the same," replied Forsyth with a warmth
which left the General quite unmoved. The
old warrior reverted to his curios and spent a
couple of minutes in balancing an Afghan
dagger on his finger, till, apparently inspired
by the performance, he laid the venomous
blade aside.

"I agree with you in one aspect of the case,"
he said. "An insurance company, knowing
what we know, would be ill-advised to take a
risk on his Grace's life. The chances are in
favor of his being a dead man within twenty-four
hours of his quitting his present shelter.
I presume that precautions have been taken
against any more bogus detectives, or bogus
anything else, gaining access to him during
your absence?"

Forsyth replied that the Duke had promised
to remain in his own room till he returned, and
that the butler had been instructed to admit no
one into the house on any pretence whatever.
Moreover, he added, with a proud note in his
voice, Sybil was co-operating, and was thoroughly
alive to the emergency.

"Then," said the General, briskly, "I will
finish dressing, and when we have had a mouthful
of breakfast I will go back with you to
Beaumanoir House. We must get your Duke
into the interior of a safer zariba than a Piccadilly
mansion before we can open parallel
trenches against such a persistent enemy."

General Sadgrove and Alec breakfasted
alone together, the former, indeed, hurrying
the meal purposely so as to get away before
the ladies appeared. He had seen enough the
previous day, when the Duke was calling on
the Shermans, to make him shy of explaining
to his guests that he was bound for Beaumanoir
House at nine o'clock in the morning,
both Mrs. Sherman and Leonie being aware
that his acquaintance with the Duke only dated
from yesterday. He shrewdly suspected that
the young people who had been fellow-passengers
on the *St. Paul* took more than a platonic
interest in each other, and he did not want to
stimulate that interest into anxiety until he was
better informed.

He pursued the subject apologetically as
soon as he was in the cab with his nephew.

"Sorry I made you bolt your food," he said.
"I hate lying to women if it can be avoided.
The Shermans, who are staying with me, know
Beaumanoir—traveled in the same ship with
him. It would have excited remark to mention
our destination."

Forsyth, who had experience of his uncle's
methods, perceived that he was being pumped,
and he had no objection. Having summoned
this wily man-hunter to his assistance, he was
not foolish enough to expect results without
full disclosure.

"I understand your reluctance to disturb the
Shermans," he replied. "Beaumanoir has
spoken several times about them—in fact, he
seemed rather unduly excited when he first
heard from me that they were at your house.
I have thought that he might be *épris* of
Leonie, though, as I have not seen them together,
I can form no opinion whether the
attraction is mutual."

The General, having acquired his information,
relapsed into silence, which was only
broken by Forsyth as the cab turned into Piccadilly.
The short drive was nearly over, but
before the cab stopped he contrived to describe
briefly his chance meeting with the Duke, on
the day of the latter's arrival in England, at
the Hotel Cecil, and with an effort of memory
he recalled the name of the man—Clinton Ziegler—whom
the Duke had been to see.

"I dare say it's not important, but it just
occurred to me that I had better mention it
while there was an opportunity," he concluded,
stealing a sidelong glance at his uncle's face,
which, as usual, was illegible. But a movement
of the General's well-gloved right hand
in the direction of his left shirt-cuff, coupled
with the gleam of a gold pencil-case, suggested
that the name of Mr. Clinton Ziegler had been
deemed worthy of record.

They were admitted to the ducal residence
by Prince, whose dignity barely enabled him
to stifle the inward curiosity with which he was
devoured. In common with the other servants,
he had not been told of the midnight alarm,
and his orders to put the house practically into
a state of siege had naturally mystified him.
The damage to the bedroom door was not visible
except under close examination, and Sybil
having swept up the sawdust, none of the
household had yet discovered it.

"No one has called, sir, except one or two
of the usuals to the tradesmen's entrance, and
they were kept outside," the butler remarked
as he relieved the two gentlemen of their hats
and canes.

At Forsyth's request they were shown into
the smoking-room—a cozy den, with only one
window overlooking Piccadilly, to which the
General immediately walked. His gaze roved
over the crowded thoroughfare, comprehending
pedestrians and passing vehicles in one
swift scrutiny, and, apparently satisfied, he
turned away just as Sybil entered, looking as
fresh and sprightly as though she had slept the
clock round. The General greeted her in the
curt manner he affected to all women impartially,
but an extra pressure of her hand may
have had reference to her vigilant gallantry.

"His Grace is sulking," she said, with a
smile. "At least, he refuses to leave his room
until he has seen you, General Sadgrove. I
tapped at his door and told him you were here,
but he said that if you want to see him you had
better go upstairs. Very rude of him, isn't
it?"

"Very sensible," replied the General. "I
would prefer to see him alone, if you will be so
good as to escort me, Miss Hanbury. Alec,"
he added, "while I am gone just sit on this ottoman
behind the window-curtain and keep
your eye on that apple-woman under the railings
of the Green Park. When I come back,
be prepared to tell me exactly what she has
done and how many customers she has had."

Forsyth nodded, and the General went
away with Sybil, who conducted him up the
grand staircase and left him at the door of the
Duke's room. It was characteristic of the
man that, having heard all there was to hear
of her proceedings from his nephew, he forbore
to waste words on what had occurred, but
dismissed her with an injunction.

"Now run away and help Alec, but don't let
the apple-woman know that those sharp eyes
are observing her," he said, unbending so far
as to give her a playful push.

His knock and mention of his name was followed
by the sound of footsteps as the occupant
of the room remembered that he had
turned the key and hastened to admit the visitor.
Beaumanoir was fully dressed, and had
just finished breakfast.

"Don't think me a coward for locking the
door, General," he said, as he shook hands.
"This is a pretty bad gang that I am dodging."

The General's comment was to turn and re-lock
the door himself, after a critical glance at
the sawn panel. "I have spent my life in
breaking up bad gangs," he said, when he had
taken the chair indicated. "I am a bit rusty
with disuse, but I should very much like to try
conclusions with this one. From what I hear,
they must be worthy of anyone's steel."

Beaumanoir indulged in a careworn smile.

"Three attempts in forty-eight hours speaks
to their zeal, at any rate," he replied. "But
seriously, General, you start badly handicapped,"
he went on. "I don't even know
that I want them broken up, as you call it, for
there must be no publicity. I can give you
no clues nor answer any questions. All I ask
of your great experience is how to thwart a
determined hankering after my poor life—a
hankering which may possibly cease if I survive
for another week."

"You positively decline to give me any assistance?"

"Positively; the honor of my house forbids
it."

The General tried to look pensive—a difficult
matter to a gentleman of iron visage and
bushy eyebrows.

"I am not going to ask questions," he said
almost plaintively, without mentioning that
there were some he had no need to ask and
others which he fully intended to answer himself.
"I am here to give advice, and it is to
get out of London into the open, so that your
friends can look after you. Professors of
crime find their art more difficult in the country,
where every gossiping woman in the village
street is a possible witness. I want your
Grace to go down to Prior's Tarrant, and
allow me the honor of accompanying you as a
guest."

The suggestion was met by a blank negative,
and caused the Duke to rise and pace the
room in more agitation than he had yet shown.

"Why, the very place is hateful to me since
last Sunday night," he exclaimed. "You
would realize that yourself, General, if you
had been introduced to those silent fumes stealing
down the chimney. I was thinking of
going to some hotel by the sea when Forsyth
and Sibyl induced me to remain here for the
night, with such lively consequences. Come
with me as my guest anywhere else, but not to
Prior's Tarrant."

"Nevertheless, I should feel surer of your
safety there than anywhere, and I do not speak
without reason," replied the General, with a
metallic snap in his voice. "I should wish at
least to be accorded the privilege of finishing
my proposition."

Beaumanoir promptly apologized very
gracefully for his discourteous interruption,
excusing it on the score of the strain on his
nerves. He would be delighted to listen to
any proposals, but nothing would shake his determination
not to go back to Prior's Tarrant.

"My dear sir, the tangled woodland of the
park there is the ideal spot for a lurking assassin.
Mediæval architecture provided the house
with nooks and corners which it would tax
even your foresight to patrol," he insisted.

"But," said the General, "there is safety in
numbers; and I was going to propose—rather
coolly, perhaps—that you should have a house-party
there. If I might bring Mrs. Sadgrove,
and Alec and Sybil Hanbury would also give
us their company, it would lend color to my
own presence. The last two-named, as you
have occasion to know, form a valuable body-guard."

The Duke stared at his visitor with something
like horrified amazement.

"You forget, General, in your kind eagerness
to serve me, that you have guests staying
in your own house whom you cannot desert,"
he said, wondering how even an old man with
his years behind him could suffer such lapse of
memory when Leonie Sherman was one of the
guests. He was almost angry that his visitor,
being thus reminded, did not instantly abase
himself.

But instead of shame General Sadgrove
had only justification to offer—not profuse,
because that was not his way—but complete.

"I had not forgotten the Shermans," he replied,
in a tone of oddly contrasted reproof
and apology. "I had it in my mind that if
you entertained my view you would stretch a
point, and make matters easy for me by inviting
my guests as well." And the shrewd old
diplomatist succeeded in looking as though the
barefaced bait he was dangling was a piece of
effrontery he only dared moot under stress of
the emergency.

Beaumanoir, flushing scarlet, stopped short
in his restless pacing and swallowed the hook.

"I never thought of that," he said, looking
down at the General with more interest than
he had yet shown. "And," he added, with unaffected
modesty, "I very much doubt if they
would come."

This was virtual surrender, and the General
had an easy task to brush away objections obviously
raised in the hopes of their demolition.
Short notice? Well, perhaps; but Americans
were used to a less formal hospitality than
ours, and would take it as a compliment.
Brief shipboard acquaintance? Nonsense.
Five days' association on a "liner" was equivalent
to a friendship of years. The chance of
the Shermans being involved in a tragedy in
which they had no concern? The General
pledged his word that, whatever happened at
Prior's Tarrant, no harm should befall the
Senator's wife and daughter or breath of scandal
assail them.

Before he left the room the General had arranged
to return later in the day, possibly
bringing with him his Pathan servant, Azimoolah Khan, whose aid he meant to enlist in
securing the Duke's safety at his country-seat.
In the meanwhile, he would go home and prepare
the ladies for joining the party on the
morrow, Beaumanoir's formal invitations following
by post.

On his way down the broad staircase General
Sadgrove chuckled audibly to himself: "I
thought the prospect of entertaining Leonie
in his ancestral halls would fetch him.
Mustn't have her falling in love with him,
though, till he can show a clean sheet." A
little lower down he stopped and stared at a
huge canvas of the third Duke, but without
heeding the bewigged and lace-ruffled counterfeit
of the Georgian courtier. "Concentration!"
he muttered. "The first axiom in a
crime-problem is to concentrate the items. I
shall have two of 'em now, by George, right
under the same blanket—and with luck I'll
have three."

In the hall Prince was hovering fatuously,
assisted by a brace of tall flunkeys who fell
under the General's critical gaze. One of
them was the absent-minded William, all unconscious
that he had allowed "Inspector
Chantrey's" understudy to slip upstairs the
night before. Him Sadgrove severely rejected,
selecting his colleague.

"There's an apple-woman under the rails
opposite," he said, producing a sovereign.
"Run across and offer this for her basket and
its contents. If she refuses, the chances are
that she will almost immediately move away.
In that case, if you can follow her a little distance,
without letting her observe you, bring
me back word directly she stops and speaks to
anyone."

The well-trained servant, with scarcely the
blink of an eyelash for his extraordinary mission,
started to fulfil it, and the General hastened
on to the smoking-room, where Forsyth
and Sybil were still on guard at the window.

"Has the woman been doing any business?"
he asked as he entered.

"She has only had one customer, who got
off a Hammersmith 'bus and walked on," replied
Sybil, without removing her gaze. "And
now—why, it's one of our liveries—Steptoe,
the first footman, is going up to her. Oh, but
this is interesting. He is offering her a coin,
and she is shaking her head."

"Go on," said the General.

"Steptoe is recrossing the road towards the
house without buying anything, and—yes, the
woman has taken up her basket and is leaving
her pitch, don't you call it? She too is crossing
to this side of the road, but higher up. Steptoe
has turned and is looking after her, and—now
I can't see any more without putting my
head out of window."

Sybil stopped, breathless; and, without comment
on the episode she had just witnessed, the
General informed her and Forsyth of the proposed
move to Prior's Tarrant. As was to be
expected, neither of the engaged couple had
any objection to an arrangement which would
bring them together under the same roof,
Sybil remarking naïvely that it was one thing
to be allowed solitary house-room as a poor
relation, and quite another to stay with the
Duke as a guest. She promised to hold herself
in readiness to join Mrs. Sadgrove and
the Shermans on the morrow and go down
with them, while Forsyth was to wait for his
orders until the General returned in the afternoon.

"We may have a ticklish job in getting our
noble convoy from one laager to the other, and
I shall want you as an aide-de-camp, Alec, as
well as Azimoolah Khan for the more serious
work," the General explained.

"Azimoolah!" Forsyth exclaimed, remembering
certain blood-curdling stories of his
uncle's old orderly, who had exchanged the
fierce joys of Thug-hunting for the milder enjoyment
of valeting his beloved Sahib in Belgravia.
"Surely his methods smack too much
of the jungle and the nullah for this country."

"That's why I want to cart the whole bag
of tricks into the jungle," said the General,
grimly. "Well?" he added, as Steptoe entered
and tendered the sovereign on a salver.

"The woman wouldn't take it, sir," was the
reply. "She got up and went round the corner
into Air Street, where she was met by the
person who called here last night dressed as a
clergyman, only he was dressed as a working-man
to-day. They went away together in a
four-wheeler."

"Thank you—that simplifies things considerably,"
said the General, and, announcing his
intention of returning later, he bade the footman
call a cab and followed him out of the
room.

"I wonder what he has got up his sleeve,"
Forsyth mused aloud, as he and Sibyl watched
the wiry figure into the cab. "The spirit of
the chase has gripped him tight, and he's in
full cry already."




CHAPTER X—*A Duty Call*
=========================


General Sadgrove was not the man to
embark on an undertaking without clearing
the ground of doubtful points, and he drove
home by way of New Scotland Yard, where,
firmly refusing his reasons for wanting to
know, he extracted the information that there
was no such officer as "Inspector Chantrey"
on the police roster. On arrival at Grosvenor
Gardens he first sought and obtained a private
interview with his wife, and astonished her by
imparting the projected visit to Prior's Tarrant.

"You are at the old work, Jem; I can see it
in your eye," she said after one glance at her
husband's stern, introspective face. "Is there
danger?"

"To me possibly; to another certainly," the
General responded. "In fact, Madge, it is
touch and go whether I can save a man's life.
I do not know yet if he is a good man, but his
life is an important one."

"Then of course I will go with you," said
Mrs. Sadgrove, guessing whose that life was
from Alec Forsyth's early call. "The Shermans,
dear people, will be delighted to stay in
a duke's historic mansion, even if the invitation
is a little irregular, for are they not Americans?
I will go to the morning-room and
break it to them."

"Without a hint of what is brewing, mind,"
said the General, and vanished into his own
den. He sat for a while in thought, and presently
rang the bell. It was answered by a tall
Oriental in native costume and turban, who
made low obeisance, but listlessly, as though
bored to death. As he straightened himself,
however, his coal-black eyes, raised deferentially
to his master's, blazed into sudden fire.

"Allah be praised! The black tribe walks
again!" he cried in his vernacular, reading the
sign as easily as Mrs. Sadgrove had done.

"Yes, Azimoolah, the black tribe walks.
We go to pit cunning against cunning and
right against wrong, you and I, as in the days
when we rode the jungle-paths under the Indian
moon," the General replied in the same
tongue. "Art glib of speech and handy with
those iron arms of thine, as in the old times
when we earned our pensions beyond the black
water?"

"Try me, sahib—only try me," came the
quick answer. "I have feared that I was
growing fat and soft in this city of laziness,
where the tame *polis* use not the ways known
to you and me, O leader of midnight pursuits.
But that look in your eye brings back the old
heart-hunger. I want a quarry, sahib, fleet
of foot and strong of arm and wily of tongue,
to match with all those of thine and mine.
Show me such an one, sahib."

"So will I, Azimoolah—not one, but twenty
quarries, maybe, whom it will tax all our ancient
skill to defeat," said the General, with a
frosty smile for his follower's eagerness.
"Take heed while I give orders."

The conclave that ensued lasted until
luncheon, at which it was noticed, though not
remarked upon, by Mrs. Sadgrove that Azimoolah
Khan did not as usual station himself
behind his master's chair. The General, too,
made no reference to his retainer's absence,
but plunged at once into a totally unfounded
explanation of the wholesale invitation to
Prior's Tarrant. The Duke of Beaumanoir,
he averred, wished to be kind to his young
kinswoman, Sybil Hanbury, by asking her
down while Alec Forsyth was there, and as
that was impossible without a chaperon, he,
the General, had suggested a small house-party
with Mrs. Sadgrove and Mrs. Sherman
to play propriety.

Mrs. Sherman evinced unfeigned delight at
the prospect, her only anxiety being as to the
length of the visit. Her husband, the Senator,
with his precious charge of Treasury
Bonds, was due in a week, and she would wish
to be in London to receive him on arrival.
Leonie, too, who did not seem to share her
mother's enthusiasm for accepting the ducal
hospitality, pressed the point with some pertinacity.
The General, however, was equal to
the occasion.

"No dates were mentioned," he said, looking
his guests guilelessly in the face. "But as his
Grace alluded to the pleasure with which he
anticipated making the Senator's acquaintance,
I presume he takes it for granted that
your husband will go straight to Prior's Tarrant
from Liverpool."

Mrs. Sherman and Leonie exchanged
glances, as though to say that that settled the
matter, as indeed, from their point of view,
it did. Senator Leonidas Sherman was the
kindest of husbands and the most indulgent of
fathers; but if he had landed in England and
found that he had been deprived of the chance
of staying with a duke, he would have made
things hum for all concerned.

"Beaumanoir, having lived in your country,
has a warm corner in his heart for all Americans,"
said the General. "And talking of
Americans, my dear," he proceeded, addressing
his wife, "I shouldn't like to be uncivil to
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton. As we are all going
out of town, what do you say to returning her
call this afternoon? If you are not otherwise
engaged, I will order the carriage for four
o'clock."

When the General—who never in his life
had paid a duty call without grumbling—spoke
like that Mrs. Sadgrove knew what was
expected of her, and did it. She had not the
faintest inkling of his reasons for sudden politeness
to a pushing woman whom they all
disliked. In the old days, when she had gone
out into camp with her husband, and had sat
silent in the tent amid the coming and going
of troopers and mysterious spies, she had
always divined when a great *coup*, resulting
in the death or capture of some notorious malefactor,
was vexing his brain. She had watched
the spreading of the net without troubling him
with questions about the meshes. So now,
though inwardly disquieted by this recrudescence
of the professional instinct, she abstained
from worrying him, confident that the veteran
would achieve his purpose as ruthlessly as the
zealous young captain of thirty years ago.

Without demur the ordering of the carriage
was agreed to, and when it came round at the
appointed hour the Sadgroves were reinforced
by Mrs. Sherman and Leonie, who, at a hint
from the General, had been induced to accompany
them. During the drive the General
fidgeted a good deal about the pace at which
his fine pair of bays was being driven, and
once or twice checked the coachman; but his
wife, who had learned to notice trifles, observed
also that he frequently consulted his watch,
and concluded that his anxiety was not entirely
on the score of his cattle. Of this she was
assured when, as the equipage turned into the
courtyard of the hotel, he replaced his watch
with a scarcely audible sigh of relief. What
was it for which they were neither too late nor
too early, she wondered.

At the bureau they were informed that Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton was at home, and the
party, having been handed over to a bell-boy,
passed on—with the exception of the General,
who lagged behind for a moment.

"You have a gentleman staying in the hotel
of the name of Ziegler, have you not—Clinton
Ziegler?" he inquired of the clerk. "Ah, thank
you—I was not mistaken then. Do you happen
to know if he is in his rooms at present?"

The answer was that Mr. Ziegler was certain
to be in, as he was an invalid and never
went out. Oh yes; he saw people—a good
many, but always in his own apartments, and
he never frequented the public rooms. His
suite was in the same corridor as that of Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton—next to it, in fact. No;
the gentleman and lady were not friends, or
even acquainted, the clerk believed. At any
rate, they had arrived at different times, and
he had never heard of any connection between
them.

Thanking his informant, the General hurried
after the others and caught them up in
time to be ushered with them into Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton's luxurious reception-room.
The handsome widow, beautifully gowned,
and already apprised by speaking-tube that
visitors were coming up, received them with
effusion, and made no effort to conceal her
surprise when the General appeared in the
wake of the ladies. She rallied him on his
new-found politeness, and openly avowed that
he must have some secret object in seeking her
good-will.

The General, disclaiming anything unusual
in his conduct, bore the flow of badinage
meekly, but under his gray mustache he muttered:

"Confound the woman! She is clever, or
else Jem Sadgrove has blundered."

The conversation drifted into the usual
channels of small talk, and by the time the
General joined in he had assimilated one important
fact in connection with his surroundings.
The suite of apartments in which he
was doing the penance of a duty call was a
split suite. There was a door at the end of the
room, across which a fairly heavy writing-table
was placed, denoting that the door was not in
use, as naturally it would have been if the room
beyond had been one of those rented by Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton. The discovery and his
own deduction caused an odd little crease at
the corner of the General's mouth, and he
seized the earliest opportunity to put in his
word.

"I've got some news for you, Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton. You are about to be the recipient
of a very high honor."

"Really! But this is extremely interesting,"
was the reply, accompanied by a flash of
scrutiny, quickly changed to a charming smile.
"Pray don't keep me in suspense, General.
Am I to go for a cruise in the royal yacht, or
dine with the Lord Mayor?"

"The Duke of Beaumanoir is going to ask
you down to his country-place at Prior's Tarrant,"
said the General, imperturbably ignoring
her persiflage. "I was with him this morning,
and I gathered that you'll have your
invitation in the course of the day. We're all
going down. The Duke is Alec's new boss,
don't you know, and he has taken a liking to
the lot of us."

He carefully avoided his wife's eyes and
those of his guests as he burst this amazing
bombshell, thereby depriving himself of the
sight of a toss of Leonie's pretty head and of
the raising of two pairs of elderly eyebrows.
His hostess had his sole attention, and she repaid it fully. For the first time in his experience
of her Mrs. Talmage Eglinton changed
color and seemed at a loss for words. He
helped her out, and himself too, with the same
old lie, and his manner was perfect—just that
of the simple old soldier:

"The Duke dotes on Americans, don't you
know. Says he was introduced to you by my
nephew outside Beaumanoir House the day he
landed, and when it came out in conversation
that we knew you, he insisted on your being
asked. Thought it would please Alec, don't
you know."

The last sentence was spoken carelessly, as
though it was an afterthought, but it had an
effect that all the skill at Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's
disposal could not hide—an effect transient
only, but so marked that the three other
women in the room, coldly hostile as they were,
did not fail to note it. The flush which had
tinged her cheek on hearing of the invitation
deepened, and a softer light gleamed for a
moment in her fine eyes.

But whether the General's explanation was
deemed adequate, or whether she intended to
accept the invitation, there was no present
means of knowing. For the sedate calm of
the afternoon call was suddenly interrupted
by a tremendous uproar beyond the closed
door that was blocked by the writing-table—a
babel of confused voices and the shuffling of
feet. The ladies looked at one another in
alarm, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton fully sharing
the agitation of her visitors. Indeed, she rose
and glided swiftly towards the closed door,
and then, as though recollecting that it was not
available, made for the principal entrance of
her suite.

The General rose and followed her into the
corridor, the commotion being so great as to
excuse his doing so. In fact, the sounds from
the next room were so appalling as to suggest
that his protection might be necessary against
some broken-out lunatic, and out in the corridor
it was evident that some such idea prevailed
among the hotel attendants. A cluster
of them had already collected at the door of
the adjoining apartments, and more were arriving.

"What is all this disturbance?" Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton inquired of one of them, and
the General, close behind, discerned a tremulous
note in her indignation.

The man she accosted did not know, but
another, who had been inside the suite, at that
moment pushed his way out and overheard the
question.

"It's nothing really serious, madam," he
said. "An Indian Prince who had applied for
rooms was being shown round, when he took a
fancy to enter that suite—occupied by Mr.
Clinton Ziegler. The Prince is in there now,
and nothing will induce him to leave peaceably,
as he can't be made to understand that
the rooms are engaged. He doesn't appear to
know much English, but I am going for one
of the curry cooks, who will doubtless be able
to interpret for us."

"No need to waste time in fetching the
cook," interposed the General. "I speak most
of the Indian dialects, and I dare say I can
get him to quit."

"You'd better be careful, then, sir," said the
attendant. "He pretty nearly strangled Mr.
Ziegler's secretary when he tried to put him
out."

Disdaining the warning and accepting the
implied permission, the General elbowed his
way into the invaded territory, from which,
after a couple of minutes, he emerged with a
tall Asiatic who was wreathed in apologetic
smiles, and talking volubly in an unknown
tongue. The intruder was dressed in a gorgeously
embroidered purple vestment, and in
his snowy turban blazed a diamond the size
of a pigeon's egg. From the doorway of the
invaded suite a couple of pale, fierce faces
glared for an instant, and then the door was
shut.

"It's all right," the General announced to
the assembled spectators, who by this time included
Mrs. Sadgrove and the Shermans.
"This is his Highness the Thakore of Bhurtnagur,
and he didn't mean to be rude. Just
a little misunderstanding of his legal rights
outside his own jurisdiction. He says he'll
look for rooms at some other hotel, as he can't
have those he wants here."

A murmur of relief went up from the embarrassed
attendants, who with great deference
proceeded to escort the swarthy potentate
to the carriage which it was understood was
waiting for him. At the same time Mrs. Sadgrove
held out her hand to Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton, and, declining that lady's not too
pressing offer of tea, sailed away to the stair-head,
accompanied by Leonie and her mother.
The General was the last to make his adieus,
and he made them, oddly enough, much more
cordially than the women-folk.

"Pleasant thing, a short parting," he ejaculated,
as he bent over the fair American's
jeweled hand. "We shall meet in a day or two
at Prior's Tarrant, eh?"

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton smiled sweetly up
at the rugged face of the veteran man-hunter.

"Come, General, you can't expect me to give
myself away like that," she said. "I shan't
make up my mind until I get the invitation.
You might be a bad, bold dissembler, you
know, just taking a rise out of me; and then
what a fool I should look if I had said that I
was going to stay with the Duke."

"I might be a dissembler, but you couldn't
look a fool—under any circumstances," replied
the General gallantly, as he turned away.

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton stood watching the
erect figure march down the corridor, and suddenly
called after him:

"When does the Duke himself go into the
country, General?"

The erect figure wheeled as on a pivot, and
the answer came back without a second's pause.

"To-night, by the 8.45 from St. Pancras.
Alec Forsyth goes down with him."




CHAPTER XI—*On the Terrace*
=============================


The home park at Prior's Tarrant lay
bathed in the gentle glow of a waning moon,
but the hoary façade of the mansion itself, and
the terrace that skirted it, were in shadow. Up
and down in front of the long row of windows
a red spark passed and repassed with monotonous
regularity—the light of General Sadgrove's
cigar as he waited in growing impatience
for the coming of the Duke.

After his social duties of the afternoon he
had paid a hurried visit to Beaumanoir House
to arrange for the Duke's departure in company
with his new secretary, and then, armed
with credentials from the Duke and heralded
by a preparatory telegram, he had proceeded
to the Hertfordshire seat by an earlier train.
He had good reasons for traveling separately.
And now the carriage which he had sent to the
little wayside station of Tarrant Road two
miles off was overdue, and the General was
beginning to chafe.

"I hope I haven't been too cocksure," he
muttered, under his close-trimmed gray mustache.
"I pinned my faith to Alec's company
securing the fellow's safety on the journey at
least."

He took another turn, and then, striking a
vesta, looked at his watch. It was twenty
minutes to eleven, whereas if those he expected
had caught the 8.45 from St. Pancras, the carriage
should have been back half an hour ago.
He had hardly finished this calculation when
from behind a gigantic vase on the plinth of
the steps leading to the lower level of the gardens
there sounded the hiss of a cobra, thrice
repeated.

"Azimoolah?" said the General, softly.

His faithful servitor glided forward, almost
invisible in the shabby blue tunic which had
replaced the spotless white garments of Grosvenor
Gardens.

"A queer orderly-room, sahib, but not more
so than some we wot of in the by-ways of the
Deccan," he whispered, glancing up at the
loom of the great mansion. "Well, I have
done thy bidding, and have secured a lodging
in the village as a poor vendor of Oriental
trifles. Furthermore, I have already done
some good police work."

"You have discovered that there are
strangers dwelling in the place?"

"Not so, sahib; but they have been *seen* in
the village," was the reply. "The woman with
whom I have hired shelter says that two men,
professing to be painters, were in the park all
day painting the trees and the deer, for which
purpose they had obtained permission of the
steward. Whence the men came the woman
did not know, but they drove in in a dog-cart
on the St. Albans road."

"Your informant could not tell you if the
picture was finished—whether the men were
coming again?" the General asked quickly.

It was too dark to see the Pathan's face, but
a ring in his carefully managed undertone told
of pride in the answer:

"*She* could not tell *me*, sahib, but *I* can tell
*you*. The picture makes the trees look like
cauliflowers and the deer like unto swine.
Moreover, it is not finished, and the men are
coming again—to-morrow, perchance."

General Sadgrove congratulated himself
on his foresight. He would have preferred
having Azimoolah in the house with him, but
he had detached him from personal service,
and had sent him down separately to pick up
unconsidered trifles in the character of a traveling
huckster. And the old sleuth-hound
had done well, after only a couple of hours in
the place, in bringing this news of painters
who could not paint, yet were returning on the
morrow. The General had such absolute
trust in his henchman's methods that he did
not trouble to inquire how the news had been
acquired, thereby sparing Azimoolah the
needless narrative of a deal with the landlady
of the "Hanbury Arms," where the strangers
had put up their cart and lunched.

"Very good, old jungle-wolf," was all the
comment he vouchsafed, and, making a mental
note to see that the park was barred in future
to the limners of "deer like unto swine," he was
passing on to further instructions when the
sound of wheels was heard far away down the
avenue, and a moment later carriage-lamps
twinkled into view round a corner in the drive.

"Here they come," he said. "Better make
yourself scarce now, but stay within call in
case I want you."

Azimoolah vanished in the darkness, and the
General strolled on to the end of the terrace,
where the descent of a flight of steps brought
him to the main entrance of the mansion.
Stationing himself under the portico, he waited
the arrival of the brougham, which presently
swung to a standstill, while the big hall door
was opened wide by ready hands, and shed a
blaze of light on—an empty carriage.

"What's this mean, Perrett?" asked the
General, outwardly calm for all the big lump
in his throat, and cool enough to remember the
name of the gray-haired coachman, learned on
his own drive from the station. "Has not his
Grace arrived?"

"No, sir," replied the old servant, leaning
from the box. "There has been an accident
to the 8.45. No one hurt, sir. No need for
alarm, for his Grace can't have been in the
train."

"How do you get at that?" the General
asked, doubtfully.

"The train was derailed between St. Albans
and Harpenden, sir. Some of the passengers
were shaken, but none badly injured; so the
fast train that followed was run on to the up
metals and brought them on, stopping at every
station. But none got out at Tarrant Road.
James here," indicating the footman, "ran
along the train and looked into every carriage,
but he could not see the Duke."

And Perrett won golden opinions from the
General by adding that, not satisfied with that,
he got the station-master to wire up the line
to the point of the accident, and received in
reply the positive assurance that no injured
persons had been left behind. All had been
forwarded to their destinations by the succeeding
fast train, which had been made "slow"
for the purpose.

The General had already mastered the time-table,
and knew that only one more train from
London would stop at Tarrant Road that
night—the last, due at a quarter past midnight.
The coachman therefore received, as
he had expected, orders to return to the station
in time to meet that train, and the General,
lighting a fresh cigar, strolled back to the terrace,
where, in response to his low whistle,
Azimoolah glided to his side.

"There is work afoot," he said, briefly.
"Canst, as of yore, do without sleep at a
pinch?"

"Ay, and without food if it is so willed by
Allah and the sahib."

Whereupon the General gave him the best
directions he could to the scene of the railway
accident fifteen miles away, and bade him hie
thither with all speed and glean particulars on
the spot, especially with regard to the life they
were pledged to defend and the nature of the
accident, which might be no accident at all,
but a move of their mysterious antagonists.
It needed but few words to make Azimoolah
understand, and he was gone—even before his
hand, raised in unconscious salute, had
dropped to his side.

The General fell to pacing to and fro again,
striving to penetrate the new situation that
had arisen, and, as was his wont when matters
went wrong, not sparing himself much scathing
criticism. For what had seemed to him
good reason, he had put all his eggs in one
basket—"gone nap"—as he reflected, on the
Duke and Forsyth catching the 8.45, and now
disaster had overtaken that very train. If the
village post-office had been open, he would
have wired to know if the Duke was still at
Beaumanoir House, for everything hinged on
whether he had started, and Sadgrove felt an
ominous presentiment that he had. The people
he was playing against were not the sort to
wreck a train without prospect of adequate
result.

Presently the twin lamps went twinkling
down the avenue again, and the General tried
to comfort himself with the hope that when
they reappeared Beaumanoir would be in the
carriage. After all, Alec Forsyth was with
him. What had befallen the one should have
befallen the other, and he had the greatest
confidence in his nephew's readiness and resource.
It might even be, the General told
himself, that Alec had suspected foul play to
the 8.45, and had purposely delayed departure—although,
in conflict with this theory, arose
the conjecture that in that case the railway
people would have been warned, and there
would have been no "accident" at all.

But what was the use of following threads
which, in the absence of a substantial starting-point,
led nowhere? The worried veteran gave
up the futile task in favor of more practical
work, and occupied himself in learning the
route by which the miscreants who had tried to
suffocate the Duke had reached the chimney-stack
over his chamber. He found that a decayed
buttress had given them access to the
top of the ancient refectory, whence an easy
climb along a slanting gutter-pipe formed a
royal road to the roof of the main building.

The discovery, interesting in itself, was
doubly so from the deduction to be made therefrom.
The men who had climbed the roof
would have been caught like rats in a trap if
the Duke had raised the alarm, and they must
either have had complete confidence in their
ability to kill him by the charcoal fumes, or,
in the event of a hitch, in the Duke's unwillingness
to rouse the household.

"Egad! but they must have a nasty grip on
him, to trust to his not squealing under such
provocation," the General murmured, as the
sound of wheels drew him at last from the age-worn
buttress back to the portico. "If he's
turned up all right I'll try and persuade him
to confide the secret before we go to bed."

But when the brougham stopped, it disgorged
no Duke, but only Alec Forsyth, pale
of face, and for once in his life half afraid of
meeting his uncle's expectant eye. But he
kept his presence of mind sufficiently to control
his voice as he informed the General—the
information being really for the servants who
had appeared at the hall door—that his Grace
had not arrived. In silence the General led
the way to the dining-room, and it was not
until he had dismissed the butler with the assurance
that they would need nothing more
that night that he found speech in the curt
monosyllable, "Well?"

For answer Alec handed him a telegraph
form conveying the message:

    "*To A. Forsyth, passenger by 8.45, St.
    Pancras terminus.*

    "*Come back at once, urgent. Am in great
    distress. Persons threatening Duke detained
    here. He will be quite safe if he goes on,
    though not if he returns with you—Sybil
    Hanbury, Beaumanoir House.*"

The General glanced through it and
gripped the position.

"Beaumanoir was in the 8.45?" he snapped.
"That telegram is a forgery, and you show it
to me to explain your separation from him?"

Forsyth bowed his head in grieved assent to
both questions.

"I am, of course, to blame for trusting that
infernal thing," he said. "But I had better
put you in possession of the facts at once, for
until I reached Tarrant Road station and
learned of Beaumanoir's non-arrival from the
coachman I had hoped that he had come
through all right. I ascertained at Harpenden,
where I first heard of the smash, that no
one had suffered serious injury."

The facts as related by Forsyth were very
simple in themselves, though greatly enhancing
the perplexity of the Duke's disappearance.
The two friends had left Beaumanoir
House in a hansom, giving themselves, as had
been arranged, barely time enough to catch
the train at St. Pancras. They had already
taken their seats in an empty compartment on
which the guard had, at their request, placed
an "engaged" label, when a telegraph-boy
came along the line of carriages, inquiring for
Forsyth by name. On reading the message he
had acted on the impulse of the moment, and
asking the Duke to excuse him on the score of
urgent private business, had left the train and
driven back to Beaumanoir House, to find the
telegram repudiated by Sybil as not emanating
from her and its contents quite unfounded.

"I expect she let you have it," the General
remarked grimly.

"She was a little cross," admitted Forsyth,
flushing at the reminiscence. "I do not see,
though, that I could have ignored what purported
to be an appeal for assistance from a
woman in distress—leaving aside my personal
relations with her."

"Don't kick, laddie. I'm to blame for leaving
our precious vanishing nobleman in the
hands of a man in love. What next?"

"I hurried back to St. Pancras, and, just
missing the fast train which afterwards picked
up the 8.45 passengers at the scene of the accident,
had to kick my heels until the last train
started. But it was no accident, Uncle Jem.
A big baulk of timber had been placed across
the rails, they told me at Harpenden."

The General knitted his brows and pondered
the problem, presently suggesting tentatively
that there was no proof that the Duke
had after all gone in the 8.45. He might, on
finding himself suddenly deprived of his companion,
have got out before it started. But
this theory was at once knocked on the head
by Forsyth's assertion that the train had begun
to move before he left the platform, and that
Beaumanoir, still seated in the "engaged"
compartment, had waved him farewell. If
the Duke had not got out at an intermediate
station, he must have disappeared at the place
of derailment, the latter contingency being the
more probable. Also the most alarming, because
the stranded passengers had had to wait
for three-quarters of an hour at the side of the
line in the dark, at a remote spot surrounded
by woods.

"Humph! It looks very much as if they'd
got him this time," was the General's final
comment. And he straightway walked over
to the sideboard and poured himself out a glass
of wine, motioning his nephew to join him.
The action was significant of conclusiveness,
and seemed to say that, doom having overtaken
the Duke, there was nothing more to be
done. The old gentleman drank his wine
slowly, then turned to Forsyth with the fierce
exclamation:

"First time Jem Sadgrove was ever beaten
by a woman. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, or
whatever she may choose to call herself, has
scored a record."

"Mrs. Talmage Eglinton! What on earth
has she got to do with it?" was Forsyth's astounded
rejoinder.

A good deal, it appeared, according to the
view which the General had contrived to piece
together, and which, leaning against the sideboard, he proceeded to propound in spasmodic
jerks. Beginning with a description of how
he had witnessed Beaumanoir's narrow escape
of being run down by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's
landau, he hinted at the dawn of suspicion
in his own mind on finding her immediately
afterwards calling at his house, yet
strangely silent on having nearly killed a man
in the streets. Then, when Forsyth had consulted
him after the midnight episode at Beaumanoir
House, and had told him of the Duke's
visit on the day of his arrival from New York
to someone occupying the next suite at the
hotel to that of Mrs. Eglinton, he had been
fairly certain of his clue. Having satisfied
himself by personal observation that the ducal
mansion in Piccadilly was closely watched, he
had set himself the task of establishing a connection
between the *soi-disant* widow and her
neighbor at the hotel—a task which had been
successful so far as convincing himself went.

Forsyth recognized that, for all the mischance
of the evening, his uncle had put in
some good detective work, and said so. "You
must have been quick, too," he added. "Is it
permitted to ask how you managed it?"

"It was very simple," the General replied,
with a relish for the remembrance. "I carted
all the women off to call on the lady, and while
we were there Azimoolah, in the character of
an Indian rajah, blundered into Mr. Clinton
Ziegler's rooms, which I had in the meanwhile
ascertained communicated with Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton's. When the prearranged hubbub
commenced she gave herself away by an unconscious
movement to the communicating
door, showing that she was in the habit of using
it, unknown to the hotel people, who believe
that they have divided one big suite into two
smaller ones let separately. She's clever, and
pulled herself together at once, but I had got
what I wanted—the fact that she was anxious
about the rumpus my good old Khan, tricked
out in a suit from Nathan's and a stage diamond,
was raising next door."

"That seems convincing, certainly," said
Forsyth.

"Azimoolah's experiences were even more
so. Mr. Clinton Ziegler has some associates
with a very pretty way with them when Asiatic
princes stumble by chance into his rooms. Of
course, it was Azimoolah's cue to be a bit boisterous
and persistent, but they needn't have
roused the tiger in him by giving him the congenial task of disarming them of two uncommonly
murderous knives. Funny thing is,
that when I went in as an interpreting peace-maker,
I saw no sign of Ziegler, who, I gathered
at the hotel bureau, is an invalid and
never goes out. The two men in the room
were able-bodied fellows, fashionably dressed,
but with that in their faces which there is no
mistaking. The 'crime-look' is an open sign
to those who know."

The General paused and looked at his
nephew curiously. "Then I made a false
move," he went on—"a false move which may
have wiped the seventh Duke of Beaumanoir
out of the peerage. I told Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton that the Duke was going down to
Prior's Tarrant by the 8.45. Yes, you may
well stare, but I had an object. I also told
her that you were going down with him, believing
that that would secure you both a
peaceful journey; for, vulgarly speaking, the
woman is glaringly sweet upon you, laddie.
I ought to have given such a combination as
she works with credit for the cunning which
drew you from your post."

Forsyth flushed with annoyance. It was not
pleasant to hear that his friend's life might
have been sacrificed through his uncle's perception
of a feminine weakness which had
irked him throughout the London season—in
fact, ever since Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had
made her mysterious appearance on the fringe
of society. The card, however, on which the
General had staked and apparently lost had
been distinctly "the game" if he, Forsyth, had
only played up to it himself by sticking like
wax to poor hunted Beaumanoir.

But *why* was Beaumanoir being hunted?
That easy-mannered unfortunate, who had
exchanged a life of reckless irresponsibility
for sordid penury, and the latter for the headship
of a historic house, had performed all
these *demivoltes* without making a visible
enemy save himself. Why should he have incurred
a remorseless hatred which aimed at
nothing less than his life?

"The Star-spangled Banner looms largely
on the horizon of all this," the young man
mused aloud. "Can you explain that phase
of the mystery, Uncle Jem?"

"The hub of the wheel, I take it, is my old
friend Leonidas Sherman, or, rather, the three
millions sterling which he is on his way to this
country with," said the General briskly. "Big
American robbery, worked by a disciplined
gang, and somehow your pal Beaumanoir is
entangled. The day he was at our house he
tried vaguely to warn Leonie. Hinted that
Sherman should be warned to be careful."

Forsyth heard the amazing theory with an
inward qualm lest his shrewd old relative
should have hit on the solution of the puzzle,
and it filled him with greater apprehension
than even the physical peril of the Duke had
instilled. "Entanglement" in Beaumanoir's
case could only mean complicity, for if his
knowledge of the scheme was not a guilty
knowledge, if he had become possessed of the
secret accidentally, why did he not invoke the
aid of the police and expose the conspirators?
Forsyth saw that the General read what was
passing in his mind, and he clutched at the
only visible straw in defence of his friend.

"If Beaumanoir was culpably implicated
these scoundrels wouldn't want to kill him, any
more than he would want to queer their game
by having Senator Sherman warned," he said.

"There you put your finger on the *crux*,"
replied the General, who disliked the raising
of questions which he could not answer.

"And," proceeded Forsyth, pursuing his
slight advantage, "you would never have got
Beaumanoir to assent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
being asked here if he had known her to
be a professional criminal. The 'honor of the
house,' as he calls it, is undoubtedly the motive
of his inexplicable silence. He would hardly
compromise that august sentiment, for which
he is apparently willing to die, by desecrating
Prior's Tarrant with the presence of a woman
likely to figure in the police-courts—a woman,
too, who, if your theory is correct, has designs
against the father of the girl for whom I veritably
believe he has more than a passing
regard."

The General, secretly in danger of losing
his temper—a thing he never really did—concealed
his emotion by affecting to ruminate.
The thought of his invitation to the dashing
American, afterwards carelessly endorsed by
the Duke, restored his equanimity.

"That was a neat touch," he remarked meditatively
as he selected a cigar from his case.
"If his Grace is not cold meat, I'd give a good
deal to be living under the same roof with him
and Mrs. Talmage Eglinton for a few days,
with the prospect of Senator Sherman's arrival
at the end of them."

He held the cigar he had chosen poised between
finger and thumb, and suddenly gazed
round with a comical expression at the rich
appurtenances of the majestic dining-room.
The maze of this latter-day pursuit had led
him into unfamiliar paths. His ancient triumphs
had been won under the free sky, where
he could unravel a knotty point with the aid
of tobacco at will; but now he wanted to
smoke, and was confronted by sternly repressive
ducal splendor.

"Mustn't light up here, I suppose," he
grunted. "Let's get into the open and have
a whiff. Yes, I know it's two o'clock, but
we can't go to bed."

He moved to one of the French windows,
and, parting the heavy curtains, unfastened the
bolts and stepped out on to the terrace where
he had spent the earlier hours of the evening.
Instantly both he and Forsyth, who followed
close behind, became conscious of the sound of
heavy breathing. As the shaft of light shot
from the opened window they saw that at the
apex of the shaft, half way to the balustrade
of the terrace, two men were locked together
on the ground in a ferocious struggle, while
twenty paces off, in the shadow of the gray
pile, the dim shapes of two other men paused
irresolute, as if their advance had been checked
by the sudden opening of the window.

For two seconds General Sadgrove's eyes
blazed along the line of light; then with a
spring that would have done credit to one of
half his age, he hurled himself upon the combatants,
and selecting the topmost for his onslaught,
dragged him from the prone figure
below.

"Get back to the window! Watch those
other fellows!" he called to his nephew, who
was hurrying to his assistance. And Forsyth
did as he was bid, though he had hardly run
back and put himself on guard when the two
distant prowlers vanished into the deeper
shadows of the refectory wall.

With no gentle hand the General hauled his
struggling captive towards the window. Half
Forsyth's attention was diverted to the other
party to the fray, who was slowly rising from
the ground, and the other half to the dark end
of the terrace, where the remaining pair had
disappeared; and it was therefore not until the
General had arrived, hanging like a terrier to
his prisoner, that the obedient sentinel had eyes
for them. But at last he had to stand aside to
allow the veteran firebrand to drag the fighting,
kicking figure into the room, and then
only did he notice details.

"You've got the wrong one!" he exclaimed.
"Don't you see—that's your own man, Azimoolah?"




CHAPTER XII—*The Man Under the Seat*
======================================


When the Duke of Beaumanoir found himself
alone in the railway carriage after Alec
Forsyth's departure he sank back in his corner
with a certain sense of relief. The events of
the last twenty-four hours had filled him with
a very sincere regard for his cousin Sybil, and
he had not much faith in the assurance given
him by General Sadgrove that his journey
down to Prior's Tarrant would be free from
danger. His past experiences led him to expect
that the terrible Ziegler and his myrmidons
would be more than a match for the
shrewd but somewhat out-of-date Indian
officer, and if there was to be an "episode" on
the railway he would be glad to think that it
could not now plunge his plucky young cousin
into mourning for her lover.

"She is a girl in a thousand," he murmured,
as he lit a cigarette; "I should never forgive
myself if I were the means of making her a
widow before she is a wife. If, as I half suspect, Alec's detachment was effected by a ruse
on the part of the graybeard at the Cecil—well,
I take off my hat to that gentleman for
his consideration."

As the train gathered speed, rushing
through the twinkling suburban lights, the
Duke put his feet on the opposite cushions
and reviewed the situation—calmly, but
always with but slender faith in being able "to
worry through" with his life. That had really
become quite a secondary object with him, so
far as his personal safety was concerned; yet
his present attitude was to escape the attentions
of Ziegler long enough to convey a warning
to Senator Sherman of the plot against
him. Whether his nerves would be proof
against the strain till the Senator's arrival at
Liverpool was a phase of the case which he did
not care to contemplate too closely.

Ziegler, he felt sure, would have grasped
the position to a nicety, and would use every
device in his apparently limitless *repertoire* to
give him his quietus before Leonie's father
set foot on shore. It might well be that another
attempt would be made on him before
he reached the sheltering zone of Prior's Tarrant, wherein General Sadgrove had promised
him safety.

His reflections were cut short by the slowing
down of the train for the stoppage at Kentish
Town, and the Duke's sensations at that moment
hardly presaged a comfortable journey
for him, brief though it would be. The compartment
was labeled "reserved," it was true,
and the guard had been tipped to see that the
legend was respected, but that stood for little
when people of the Ziegler type were on the
move, and he looked forward with dread to the
future stoppages if his heart was to thump
like this.

Which is a study in the quality of *fear*, for
Beaumanoir was of the kind that leads cavalry
charges to visible and certain death with gay
recklessness.

The present trouble passed, however, for
the guard hovered round the carriage and gave
no chance to invaders, who in any case would
have had some difficulty in effecting an entrance,
as the door was locked. The train sped
on again, out into the country now, through
the balmy summer night, and Beaumanoir
breathed more freely. One of the dreaded
stoppages was notched off the list.

So, too, were Hendon and Mill Hill safely
negotiated, and Beaumanoir was able to contemplate
the slackened speed for Elstree with
greater equanimity. As before, the guard's
portly form loomed large outside the compartment
the moment the train stopped, and so
doubtless would have remained had not a loud,
imperious voice on the platform summoned
him to a divided duty.

"Here, guard! What are you about there?
Hurry up now, and open this door!" came the
choleric command.

With a deprecatory glance at the Duke's
carriage the guard perforce hurried off, and
Beaumanoir peered out of the window after
him. The official had gone to the assistance of
a tall, well-groomed gentleman, who, with an
air of irritable importance, was fumbling with
the door-handle of a first-class compartment
some way along the train. The traveler was
of the type that secures the immediate respect
of railway servants—dressed in brand new
creaseless clothes, every immaculate pocket of
which suggested the jingle of half-sovereigns.
A man carrying a yellow hatbox and a rug
lurked deferentially behind the magnate and
cast reproachful glances at the guard, who was
now thoroughly alive to his opportunities and
opened the door with a flourish. The tall man,
whom Beaumanoir took for a brother duke, or
at least a director of the line, stepped with dignity
into the compartment; the menial handed
in the hatbox and rugs, and sought a second-class
carriage; the guard waved his lamp, and
the train moved on.

Beaumanoir withdrew his head and sank
back in his corner, catching just a glimpse of
the guard preparing to spring into his van as
it neared him. The station lights flashed past,
and the long line of carriages swung into the
outer darkness, the little diversion of the important
passenger leaving Beaumanoir amused
and comforted. To the man who had tramped
his weary way along the Bowery to his five-dollar
boarding-house within the month this
exhibition of class privileges and distinctions
was breezily refreshing, seeing that he was
now in a position to claim them himself.

Immunity from danger through four suburban
stations had brought a delicious sense of
calm, and as he leaned back he thought how
nice it would be to live the life of an English
nobleman, free from all sordid cares and humiliations.
And if he could wake up at the
end of a week and find that his entanglement
was all a nightmare, or, at any rate, that Ziegler's
bark was worse than his bite, and that
Senator Sherman had safely deposited the
bonds at the Bank—well, in that improved
state of things what was to prevent his asking
Leonie to share his new-found privileges?

Then, suddenly, the icy finger touched his
heart again. As the blue wreaths of cigarette
smoke in which he had conjured up this alluring
vision rolled away he became conscious
that his gaze, hitherto absorbed and preoccupied
with day-dreams, was in reality riveted on
a material object under the opposite seat. A
very material object indeed—no less than the
heel of a man's boot.

At sight of this disturbing element Beaumanoir's
sensations were of a mixed order.
First of all, he could see so little of the boot
that he could not be sure that there was a man
attached to it, though the presumption was in
favor of that supposition, for he was quite certain
that it had not been there long, or he
would have noticed it before. He guessed, so
alert had his mind become under stress of
emergencies, that the wearer of the boot had
got into the compartment on the off side while
he himself had been looking out of the window
in Elstree station.

But if so, and the man had invaded his privacy
with sinister design, why should he have
plunged at once into a position of utter impotence?
No one flattened out under the low
seat of a first-class railway carriage is capable
of active violence without a preliminary struggle
to free himself, during which he would be
at the mercy of his intended victim. The only
design that Beaumanoir could attribute to him
was that he would presently wriggle to the
front and use a pistol.

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 passenger was
part and parcel of the peril that menaced him—had,
in fact, been a fellow-passenger 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-class 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 assign 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
passenger 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 bumping 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
passing 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, shielded 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 passengers 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 passengers 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
assurance 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 passengers
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 companionship,
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?'

"Yes, I am the Duke, Mayne, and a
very unfortunate one," Beaumanoir laughed.
"There has been a mild sort of smash-up on
the railway yonder, and I started to walk to
Prior's Tarrant rather than hang about for a
relief train. I was a bit hazy about my direction,
so I thought I'd inquire, and at the same
time reassure you that it wasn't a poacher who
was abroad in the woods. May I come in
while you give me my bearings?"

"Come in, your Grace, and welcome; but it
isn't in my house that I shall direct you. It's
not likely that I'm going to let you wander
about my woods on a dark night when I can
guide you out of them myself and think it an
honor," was the keeper's cordially respectful
reply.

Beaumanoir was conscious that standing in
a lighted doorway was hardly the place for
him just then, and he followed into a roomy
kitchen, professionally eloquent with its array
of guns and sporting prints. Mayne explained
that his wife had just gone up to bed,
and that all the youngsters, whom perhaps it
might please his Grace to remember, were out
in the world.

Beaumanoir dropped into a chair, and to
gratify his kindly host accepted a horn tankard
of home-brewed ale, which he sipped
while he satisfied Mayne's curiosity about the
"accident." He would have given much to
take the keeper into his confidence about the
personal element in the outrage, but that luxury
could not be indulged in without impossible
disclosures. Considering that he had
eliminated the most pertinent part of his narrative,
he was unable to account for the growing
gravity with which it was received till
Mayne disburdened himself.

"I wonder your Grace can take your narrow
escape so lightly," said the keeper.
"Providence must have been in two minds
about you to-night."

"How so?" asked the Duke, starting.
Surely General Sadgrove had not been
spreading indiscreet reports in the county already.
There had not been time.

"It isn't a fortnight since his Grace your
uncle and your cousin were killed on the railway,"
replied the keeper.

The coincidence had not occurred to Beaumanoir,
nor if it had would it have troubled
him; but he was relieved to find that Mayne's
solemnity was due to the traditional superstition
of a gamekeeper. To have his terrible
secret, or so much as a hint of it, suspected by
this cheery old associate of the happiest day
of his boyhood would have been a blow indeed.

"Yes," he admitted, though in a different
sense; "I have certainly had a narrow escape,
and it has shaken me a little, Mayne. On
second thoughts, if you would let me lie down
for a few hours on that very comfortable settle,
I would defer my departure for Prior's
Tarrant till the morning. I really don't feel
quite equal to trudging so far to-night."

This was true enough, for though he
was physically fit he dreaded leaving this
haven of rest and apparent security for the
darkling wood, in which his remorseless foes
were probably searching for him. The promised
escort of the unsuspecting keeper would
be of little value, for, unwarned of any peril,
the man would be simply an encumbrance,
equally liable with himself to swift death at
any moment at the hands of the enormous odds
against them. Apart from other considerations,
he could not subject the good fellow to
such a risk, though he would have preferred,
had it been possible to proceed alone, to have
got to Prior's Tarrant that night and so have
ended the suspense under which Forsyth and
the General must be laboring.

Of course the proposal was hailed with delight,
Mayne only insisting that he should
wake his wife and get her to prepare the spare
bedroom. Of this, however, Beaumanoir
would not hear, and he was trying to persuade
his host to retire for the night when a dog
barked furiously at the back of the house.

"That's old Tear'em; there'll be someone
moving," said Mayne, going out into the passage
and listening intently.

Beaumanoir remained in the kitchen, but
for all that it was he, with his highly strung
nerves, who was the first to catch the sound of
a footstep without—a stealthy footstep, not
approaching the cottage door boldly, but
creeping close to the window. The next instant,
however, before he could communicate
with Mayne, another and a brisker step, without
any attempt at secrecy, crunched on the
pebble path, and there came a tap at the cottage
door. Mayne immediately opened it.

"Sorry to disturb you, but there has been a
railway accident," a man said in tones that
struck Beaumanoir as vaguely familiar. "I'm
tired of waiting about at the side of the line.
Can you give me shelter for the night?"

"If you'll please to walk in, sir, I'll see what
can be done," came the reply of the hospitable
keeper. "I've got one of the passengers in
here already."

The next moment there appeared in the
doorway of the kitchen the tall man who had
hectored the guard at Elstree station and who
had afterwards been joined by the spy,
Marker, at Radlett. Whatever his purpose,
he was plainly not disposed to lay aside his air
of self-importance as yet. He glanced superciliously
at Beaumanoir, and promptly appropriated
the chair which the latter had risen
from at the first alarm. Loyal to his own
county, this was more than Mayne could
stand; he hastened to effect a one-sided introduction.

"Beg pardon, sir, but you've taken the
Duke's chair," he said. "This gentleman is
his Grace the Duke of Beaumanoir."

The newcomer rose with alacrity. "Sorry,
I'm sure," he said, taking another seat. "We
are companions in misfortune, Duke, if, as
I understand, you were traveling in that
wretched 8.45 from St. Pancras."

Beaumanoir's sense of humor, ever present,
but of late repressed by stress of circumstances,
broke out at the efforts of this man,
who spoke with a pronounced American accent,
and who, he was persuaded, was there
with murderous intent, to sustain the *rôle* of
an English gentleman. He had not forgotten
that other and more furtive footstep under
the window, but he could not resist the sport
of leading this rascal on. The mood had seized
him to avoid being killed if he could; but, if
that were not possible, to extract all available
fun out of the process. And it might serve
either of these contingencies to lead his adversary
into the belief that he was not being imposed
on by all this specious posing.

"Yes, I was in the 8.45," he replied, looking
the other squarely in the face. "You joined
it at Elstree, I think. I noticed you because a
man who was found under the seat of my compartment
got into yours at Radlett, and I saw
you leaving the train with him after the accident."

For the fraction of a second the man failed
to control the answering defiance of his eyes,
but he got a grip of himself soon enough to
prevent a premature explosion. "Really?" he
said, with affected carelessness. "He was under
the seat, eh? Funny sort of person to be
traveling first-class; but, of course, you will
understand that I am not acquainted with
him."

Beaumanoir made no comment. He had
got what he wanted. That sudden tell-tale
gleam of menace had discounted the subsequent
disclaimer, and he knew that this man
had been no chance fellow-passenger with
Marker, the spy. What was more, the man
knew that he knew it, and Beaumanoir
shrewdly guessed that the effort of control
was intended to deceive not him but the keeper.
The rascal was biding his time till he had
learned what dispositions were to be made for
the night, when doubtless he would shape his
actions accordingly; and, in the meanwhile, it
was necessary to his purpose that Sir Claude
Asprey's honest old retainer should regard
him as an innocent guest.

Again that persistent reliance on the Duke's
impotence to speak up and boldly claim protection.
All through the hot pursuit that
leaguered him so closely this was the bitterest
drop in Beaumanoir's cup, for it was he himself
who had placed the gag in his own mouth, he
himself who had forged the fetters that kept
him from running to Scotland Yard with an
exposure of the whole conspiracy. And it is
galling to be hampered by a past lapse from
virtue when you have abandoned evil courses
and are like to lose your life for doing so.

"Now that this gentleman has come in your
Grace will *have* to have the spare bedroom,"
said Mayne triumphantly, moving towards the
door. "The wife will have it ready for you in
a brace of shakes."

Beaumanoir detained him with a hasty gesture.
"One minute," he said, "I'm not at all
sure that I care about having the bedroom. I
had arranged to sleep downstairs on the settle,
you know. Why shouldn't we adhere to
that plan, and let this gentleman have the
room?"

He was moved to discover which of the two
sleeping-places his enemies would prefer him
to occupy, and also by the imperative need of
gaining time to gauge the altered circumstances.
Moreover, if Mayne went upstairs
to consult his wife he would be left alone with
this great strapping potential assassin, who as
like as not would promptly admit half a dozen
other assassins from outside. Strangely
enough, it was the potential assassin himself
who solved his dilemma—by tossing a visiting-card
on to the table.

"I shouldn't dream of sleeping in the bedroom
while you are roughing it down here,
your Grace," he said. "I shall certainly insist
on occupying the settle."

Beaumanoir picked up the card and read:

::

  Colonel Anstruther Walcot,
    14th Dragoon Guards.

The sight of that card, for all his imminent
danger, cheered him, as showing that his opponents
were not infallible. Not only had
they made the initial blunder of furnishing
this obvious Yankee with the outward semblance
and name of an English officer commanding
a distinguished regiment, relying on
the fact that the real owner of the name was
in India, but they had chanced to select the
name of the colonel of Beaumanoir's old regiment.

The impostor's card inspired him with an
idea. He would accept him at his own valuation.

"Very well," he said, rising from his chair.
"As I am the first comer, perhaps it is right
that I should be first served. I'll take the bedroom, Mayne; but there's no need to disturb
your wife. If you'll show me up we'll soon
put the room to rights. Good-night, sir, and
thank you for your courtesy."

With which he signed to the keeper to lead
the way and followed him out, casting a glance
at the American to see how he took the arrangement.
Diagnosis of the man's face was,
however, impossible, for he had already turned
to the window and was drawing aside the curtain—to
signal to his fellows, Beaumanoir had
no doubt.

Mayne mounted the steep cottage staircase,
Beaumanoir limping awkwardly in his wake
into one of two rooms on the tiny landing.
The moment they had crossed the threshold he
perceived that the chamber was little better
than a trap. The man downstairs would simply
have him at his mercy, after admitting his
companions and probably screwing up the
door of the keeper's sleeping apartment.
Locks and bolts to the primitive doors there
were none. He recognized all too late that it
would have been better to have insisted on the
Yankee occupying this room and on remaining
downstairs himself, when he would at least
have formed a wedge between the traitor in
the camp and his colleagues outside.

To stay the night in the room was out of the
question, and he determined to put in practice
the inspiration derived from "Colonel Walcot's"
card.

"Mayne," he said, laying his hand on the
astonished keeper's shoulder, "I must get out
of this at once, without the gentleman below
being aware of it, and you must help me."

"But, your Grace——" began Mayne.

"Don't withstand me," Beaumanoir cut
short the protest. "I cannot go into a long
explanation, but it's like this. That man is
the colonel of my former regiment—an old
brother officer, you understand. My name was
Hanbury then, and he either does not, or pretends
not to, recognize me. It is not a nice
thing to have to confess, but I borrowed money
in those days from Colonel Walcot, which
never till now have I had it in my power to
repay. It would distress me greatly to have
that money mentioned before I have repaid it,
as I shall do to-morrow, so if you can contrive
to let me out without his knowledge I'll make
for Prior's Tarrant and never forget your
assistance."

Mayne scratched his grizzled head in pained
perplexity. To his slow brain the incident of
a wealthy nobleman fleeing in the dead of
night from a creditor presented a startling incongruity,
but gradually it recurred to him
that he had heard that the new Duke had been
"a bit wild" when in the army; and, after all,
his reluctance to be recognized by the Colonel
till he had had time to liquidate the debt
seemed but natural.

"Yes, it can be done, your Grace," replied
the keeper, softly opening the lattice casement.
"The lean-to roof of the woodshed reaches
right up here, and there's a pile of faggots
against the shed. You can get down easy
enough, and as it's the back of the house, if
you are careful, he won't know anything about
it. But I'll come, too, and show your Grace
the way out of the wood."

"On no account, Mayne," said Beaumanoir
quickly. "You'll be much more useful here.
I'll find my way out of the wood all right, but
you must go back to the kitchen and tell
Colonel Walcot that I am going to bed. It's
only a white lie, and here's a five-pound note
on account of it. Stay with him as long as you
can—half an hour at least—and then go to
bed yourself."

"Very well, your Grace; I don't like it, but
I'll do it."

"And see here, Mayne: there's one thing
more. In the morning, or whenever Colonel
Walcot discovers that I have gone away, tell
him from me why I went, and that I intend
to repay him all I owe him. *All I owe him*,
don't forget that."

Directly he was alone Beaumanoir left himself
no time for weighing the chances, but took
the risk. Squeezing through the window, he
climbed down the sloping roof of the woodshed
and thence by way of the faggot-pile to
the ground. He was well aware that every
step, as he groped his way across the clearing
into the thicket, might be his last, for doubtless
he had been traced to the cottage and the
whole pack were somewhere about. His only
hope lay in the probability that they were in
front of the house, where they could hold themselves
ready to obey signals from the kitchen
window or a summons from the door.

It might have been that this was the case,
for Beaumanoir reached the trees without interference,
and at once shaped a course for the
edge of the wood. His progress was difficult
by reason of the darkness and the density of
the undergrowth, but fortune favored him in
so far that he presently hit upon a public foot-path,
and so came eventually to a stile giving
on a high road. At the next cross-ways was
a sign-post, which he read by the light of a
wax match, and thence onward limped steadily
forward for Prior's Tarrant, with growing
confidence that he had eluded pursuit.

Great, then, was his dismay when, on turning
into his own park, he became conscious
that he was being shadowed by someone whose
stealthy pid-pad sounded resolutely behind
him. As he mounted the terrace steps it grew
louder; the man who was following him was
close behind and gaining quickly. Something
in the Duke's tired brain seemed to snap, and
with just a glance at the lighted window of
the dining-room where General Sadgrove was
in the act of drawing up the blind, he turned
at the top of the steps and flung himself, half
mad with rage and terror, on the faithful Azimoolah,
who had picked him up near the sign-post
and shepherded him safely for the rest of
the journey.




CHAPTER XIV—*Too Many Women*
==============================


General Sadgrove relaxed his grip on
Azimoolah's lean neck, not as a consequence
of Alec Forsyth's exclamation, but because he
and his captive had crossed the threshold of
the French window—gone "off," in fact, from
the stage on which he had been playing a little
comedy for the benefit of an invisible audience.
Forsyth guessed at once that the pulley-hauley
business on the terrace had only been a sham,
from the half-playful push with which his
uncle released the now passive Indian, and
also from the more than half-contemptuous
glance flung at himself.

The next moment the other party to the
tussle on the terrace elucidated the matter by
walking up to the window instead of running
away. It was the Duke himself, outwardly
calm, but somewhat disheveled by the fray,
and looking very sleepy. Entering the room
he gave Forsyth's hand an affectionate
squeeze, and turned to secure the window.

"It's all right," he said, in the listless tone
that he always used nowadays. "When the
train got stuck up I smelt rats, and cleared out
from the locality—thought it better to cut
across country on foot than to stay about a
spot where I was probably being looked for.
But this beggar," pointing to Azimoolah,
standing at "attention," proudly erect, "must
have shadowed me, and caught me up just as
I was coming to tap at the window. You will
confer a great favor on me by letting him go."

This dogged determination to take no prisoners
strengthened the General's suspicions of
his host, and there was a harsh ring in the
laugh with which he explained that Azimoolah
was his own emissary, who, on returning from
the scene of the accident, had mistaken the
Duke for one of their unknown adversaries.
He did not mention that there were two genuine
prowlers outside who, but for Azimoolah's
intervention, would have fallen on their prey,
and who were probably intensely puzzled by
finding someone else playing the same game
as themselves.

"And now, if your Grace will go to bed, I
will guarantee you a good night's rest," added
the General. "You must not forget that you
will have ladies to entertain to-morrow."

Beaumanoir gave a tired shrug.

"Even without that inducement I'd take
your prescription, General," he replied. "This
hide-and-seek is rather wearing; but if you two
good fellows can keep me in the land of the
living for the next few days, I shan't worry
you further."

He left the room, dragging his lame foot
painfully, and the General, stricken with a
sudden sympathy, whispered Forsyth to accompany
him.

"The poor beggar is troubled," he said.
"Sleep on the sofa in his room, and don't be
afraid to close your eyes—as soon as *he* is
asleep. Azimoolah and I will see there's no
bother. But your friend mustn't be left alone.
Danger from his own pistol—see?"

Forsyth nodded with grieved comprehension,
and followed the Duke. On his departure
the General turned to Azimoolah, who had
stood like a statue since his release, and the
twain exchanged a twinkle of mutual congratulation.

"We managed that quite in the old style, O
taker of many thieves," said the General in
Hindustani. "'Twas well that you heard and
quickly obeyed my whisper to offer resistance,
for so we have deceived the malefactors who
beheld us into the belief that you also are an
enemy of the house."

"The sahib's praise is sweet as the honey of
Kashmir," responded Azimoolah, gravely.
"Is it the Heaven-born's will that I should go
out and slay these dealers in iniquity?"

The commission entrusted to him, however,
held promise of no such luxury. On the contrary,
Azimoolah received strict injunction to
avoid violence except in the last extremity—in
self-defence or to prevent entry into the
house. The duty laid down for him was to
patrol the grounds, and instantly apprise the
General of any action on the part of the two
trespassers that pointed to a renewal of aggressiveness
that night.

"I shall remain in this room till daybreak;
if anything occurs, make the signal outside,"
were the General's final instructions as he
loosed his human watch-dog on to the terrace,
after putting out the lights to conceal the
opening of the window. Then, having carefully
closed it, he sat himself down in the dark,
and presently slumbered, secure in the knowledge that none could approach the mansion
while Azimoolah was on guard. Also, he was
pretty sure that the siege would not be raised
till the two prowlers should have reported to
their superiors the doings and, as they would
believe, the capture of the strange rival who
had forestalled them.

The General's confidence was justified, for
the night passed without further alarms, and
the three gentlemen met at the breakfast-table
under ordinary country-house conditions. The
servants being in the room, no reference was
made to the abnormal circumstances that had
brought them together, though Beaumanoir,
in the course of reading letters that had come
by post, held up a gorgeously monogrammed
note, and remarked that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
had accepted his invitation and would be
with them on the morrow.

"She writes rather flippantly for a stranger,"
he added, eyeing the scented missive
doubtfully, but not offering to show it. "I
hope it's all right for her to meet my cousin
Sybil, and—er—the other ladies. She's coming
on your recommendation, you know, General,
so you must vouch for her good behavior."

Sadgrove growled unintelligibly, and was
at pains to conceal a sudden upheaval of his
facial muscles. For the Duke's reference to
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton in her relations to the
other guests had all at once opened up to his
mind a contingency which he had overlooked—a
terrible contingency, which demanded instant
consideration before the American
widow was admitted to the house. He made
an early excuse for quitting the table, and,
exacting a promise that Beaumanoir and Forsyth
would for the present remain indoors, he
went out into the park to face the position
alone, and thresh it out to a conclusion.

Walking under the trees in the historic elm
avenue, it was not till he had smoked a whole
cigar and lit another that he was able to
approach the problem with anything like
calmness. For he was suffering from the
humiliation of having to admit that he had
committed the grievous error of imperiling
the life of a woman—one, too, whom he held
in affectionate regard only second to his wife.
If his suspicion of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
was as well founded as instinct told him, she
ought never to have been asked to stay under
the same roof as Sybil Hanbury, her victorious
rival in the affections of a man who had repulsed her advances by stolidly ignoring them.

"Gad! but I'd cut my hand off rather than
harm should come to that girl, let alone never
being able to look Alec in the face again," he
muttered, as he gnawed his white mustache in
perplexity.

The situation was indeed serious from the
point of view that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
was head of a gang of international criminals,
and that she was, moreover, as he put it in his
simple soldier phrase, "sweet upon" his nephew
Alec. If, for her as yet unexplained ends, she
would not stick at assassinating the Duke of
Beaumanoir, she would be capable of wreaking
a deadly vengeance on the girl who had
won the heart she hungered for. Once installed
as a guest in the mansion, she would
have plenty of facilities of which she might
make venomous use. The General had engineered
her invitation with the laudable purpose
of keeping her under constant observation
and of making communication with her confederates
difficult; but in his zeal for check-mating
her predatory designs he had forgotten
her amatory ones.

It was true that Sybil's engagement had
not yet been published to the world, but the
Shermans, who were also to be the Duke's
guests, knew of it, and to enter into explanations
with Mrs. Sherman, the voluble and
unsophisticated, would be going far towards
defeating his cherished hope of protecting that
lady's husband from the gang without implicating
the Duke. As it was, the invitation of
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, of which he was
suspected of being the cause, had excited more
than curiosity among his American visitors,
who had nearly upset his arrangements by
canceling their own visit on learning that their
mysterious fellow countrywoman was to be of
the party. One crumb of comfort he derived
from the fact that in all things he could rely
on his wife's discretion. Though they had exchanged
no word on the subject, he knew that,
without penetrating or wishing to penetrate
his motive in trafficking with Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton, his wife guessed that he had one;
he knew that he could depend upon her unquestioning
aid if he asked for it.

"I guess I've bitten off more than I can
chew, as Sherman himself would put it," he
mused, with a sigh for the old days of jingling
bridle-chains and night rides, when he had
merrily run down his Thugs and Dacoits without female influence upsetting his calculations.
The female influence had been there, doubtless,
with all its jealousies and consequent treacheries;
but all that had been Azimoolah's department.
It had fallen to the silent-footed,
black-bearded Pathan to explore the under-currents
of social life in the native villages,
and he had not worried his chief with details
till the patient sapping of traitorous brains
was done, and all that remained was to sally
forth and hunt the faithless lover or erring
husband who was also a breaker of laws. Azimoolah's
knowledge in India of the eternal
feminine had been extensive and peculiar; but
the General felt that he could not with propriety
set him poking into love affairs which
included Sybil Hanbury in its scope.

Another point which harassed the General's
soul was the new light shed on the Duke's
attitude towards Mrs. Talmage Eglinton by
his mild displeasure at the style of her note.
The General was assured that the remark at
the breakfast-table had been the genuine expression
of an honest doubt as to the fitness
of the sparkling widow to mix with gentle-women;
whereas the Duke could have had no
doubt whatever if he had had relations with
the gang of whom he, the General, believed
this woman to be the moving spirit. It certainly
seemed that the Duke was ignorant that
she was a dangerous adventuress, for, though
he might have suspected her of designs
against himself and yet have consented to her
presence at Prior's Tarrant, he would never
have subjected Sybil to the peril of daily intercourse
with a potential murderess. All
along Beaumanoir had shown a chivalrous disposition
to protect his cousin from even minor
annoyances.

"Perhaps there are two distinct crowds
after Sherman's gold bonds, and Beaumanoir
is in with the Ziegler lot, and Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton is playing against them," the General
mused as he turned his steps back to the
house. "To think that the fellow holds the
key of it all, and won't speak, is what riles
me."

The immediate dilemma confronted him
whether or no to impart to his nephew the
cause for alarm that had arisen about Sybil.
He had been surprised at first that a man of
Alec Forsyth's shrewdness had not seen for
himself a danger threatening the girl he loved;
but closer examination disclosed a reason.
Forsyth was too modest, too little of a coxcomb,
for it to occur to him that violence could
result from a misplaced passion for himself.
On the whole, the General decided that, as
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was not due till the
next day, he would say nothing to Alec at
present.

"If I can make Beaumanoir disgorge his
secret, the trouble may not arise," he comforted
himself. Though the veteran's faith in
himself was shaken, and he wished he had resisted
the temptation to meddle with crime
outside his old Eastern sphere, he was not the
man to take his hand from the plough. He
would devote all his diplomacy to penetrating
the cause of the Duke's obstinate silence.

As he had anticipated, there was a lull that
day in the activity of the enemy—at any rate
of overt attempts. No communication reached
him from Azimoolah, who would certainly
have been heard from if suspicious characters
had been on the move in the neighborhood of
the mansion; for, though unseen, that tireless
tracker might be trusted to be at his post,
which was anywhere and everywhere within
the radius of a mile. The denser thickets of
the park possibly concealed him, or it might be
that he hovered in the nearer precincts of the
gardens, unseen but ready. His presence relieved
the General from disturbing the routine
of the household by special instructions to the
servants, who were still fluttered by the lassooing
of the lame gardener on the previous Sunday.
So far, all the precaution that the
General had delegated to others than himself
and Forsyth was to give the bailiff a quiet
hint, as a message from the Duke, not to admit
the "artists" to the park, should they present
themselves again. But up to the hour of
luncheon the painters of "deer like unto swine"
had not renewed their application or put in an
appearance.

In the afternoon Beaumanoir, shaking off
some of his weary apathy, went down to the
portico with his male guests to receive the four
ladies, who arrived in time for tea, which, with
the General's acquiescence, was to be taken on
the terrace. No sooner were the first greetings
over than Mrs. Sadgrove caught her husband's
eye and telegraphed the information that she
had something for his private ear at the earliest
opportunity. He therefore contrived to lag
behind with her while Beaumanoir did the
honors to Leonie and her mother, and Forsyth
paired off with Sybil, as the party mounted
the marble steps to the terrace.

"Jem," said Mrs. Sadgrove, scanning the
rugged face of her spouse with a sidelong
scrutiny, "I received an anonymous letter this
morning. Let them get ahead a bit, and I'll
show it to you."

The screed which she put into his hand contained
but five words:

"*There is danger from Ziegler.*"

General Sadgrove's Eastern experiences
had not educated him into an expert in calligraphy,
but it needed no particular insight to
perceive that this was a lady's handwriting,
clumsily disguised. He transferred his attention
to the paper, half a sheet of "note";
and here he was rewarded with a startling discovery.
He had noticed that the letter of acceptance
from Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, which
the Duke had received at breakfast, had been
heavily charged with a peculiar perfume, and
this unsigned missive was simply reeking of
the same pungent fragrance. He had sat
next the Duke, and knew that there was no
mistake.

"You have no idea who sent this?" he asked.

"I seem to recognize the scent as having
come to me before in notes—proper, signed
notes," Mrs. Sadgrove replied, evasively. And
then she added, with gentle significance, not
from curiosity, but from a desire to help him
in case he did not know: "I heard the name
of Ziegler when we were calling at the Cecil
yesterday. It was mentioned, I think, by one
of the attendants as that of the gentleman
occupying the rooms where the disturbance
was."

The General looked hard at her, and saw
that his little drama had not deceived the companion
of his Indian days.

"Yes," he said, shortly. "Do not trouble
about this, Madge. It's all in the day's work."

But he himself was greatly troubled, inasmuch
as if that anonymous warning came
from Mrs. Talmage Eglinton all his "case"
was demolished, and a perfect maze of new
problems was presented. A warning from
her would be presumptive evidence that she
was an ally, and—sad blow to his *amour
propre*—would stultify all the theories he had
based on what he had fondly hoped was an
unerring intuition. He would have to begin
all over again, solacing himself—and it was
no small solace—with the reflection that he
had raised an unnecessary bogey in anticipating
danger to Sybil Hanbury from Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton's visit.

Yet by the time he reached the top of the
terrace steps reaction had set in, and he began
to think that his brain could not have lost all
its cunning. For, unless in the very improbable
event of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton having
found out something about the mysterious
Ziegler through occupying the next suite to
him since yesterday, she must still be the heart
and core of the evil influence he had to combat.
Without knowledge she would not have been
in a position to warn; and, like the Duke, how
could she have obtained knowledge without
complicity? Why, too, should she also be
unwilling to use her knowledge openly? No,
he came back to the opinion that there must
originally have been one gigantic plot against
Senator Sherman's precious charge, and that
there must have been a split in the camp; but
from which section, or whether by both sections,
the Duke was threatened was an irritating
conundrum. Anyhow, Sybil Hanbury's
peril assumed ugly shape again in the General's
mind.

"The woman must have sent it to mislead—to throw dust in my eyes," he murmured, not
knowing that he spoke aloud. And following
up that train of reasoning he found it grow
into conviction. The letter was not really
anonymous. That is to say, the writer had
been at particular pains to disclose her identity
by means of the scent if General Sadgrove
deemed the communication sent to his wife of
sufficient importance to investigate. The letter
had been despatched, he now felt assured,
with the express purpose of whitewashing the
sender in the event of any further "accident"
happening to the Duke. In short, he was of
opinion that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had suspected
his manoeuvre at the hotel, and had
devised this method of hoodwinking him, and
of diverting his vigilance from herself during
her forthcoming visit if her suspicions were
correct. The craftiness of the idea was obvious,
and the General was beginning to be
delighted with his perspicacity when, lo and
behold, the whole fabric crumbled again, from
a flaw at the very base of the structure. It
was inconceivable that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton,
if she was guilty of criminal intent, should
have directed his thoughts to Ziegler, who, if
not a confederate, was certainly part and
parcel of the mystery.

"Too many women in it," he growled, testily,
unaware, in the brown study into which
he had fallen, that he had seated himself in
one of the cane chairs round about the tea-table
at which Sybil Hanbury was already
presiding. He was also unconscious that he
had expressed himself audibly—at least, so
far as concerned Sybil, who at that moment
happened to be handing him his cup. Indeed,
he repeated the phrase, the sentiment of it
growing in vigor from the sight of Leonie
Sherman listening to Beaumanoir's description
of his ancestral home, and of Mrs. Sherman
and Mrs. Sadgrove talking to Alec
Forsyth.

Sybil gave the old man a queer look, more
affectionate than reproachful; and when she
had finished pouring out tea came and took a
vacant seat beside him. For a while she drank
her tea in silence, stealing a half-amused
glance now and then at the puckered face of
the checked hunter of men. The General was
gazing moodily across the green expanse of
park, wishing with all his heart that Azimoolah,
on guard out there in the leafy solitudes, was a fitting oracle to consult in a
matter touching the private feelings of *memsahibs*.

"No," he growled regretfully, and again
aloud; "this must be a white man's war."

Sybil leaned over and tapped his knee with
her gold tea-spoon. The General started,
smiled fatuously at the celebrated Beaumanoir
heirloom, as though he were expected to admire
it, and then suddenly came down from the
clouds, realizing that the young woman with
the bright eyes searching his face was something
more than a source of anxiety to him.
She was a factor to be reckoned with, and if
he was a judge of the human countenance she
was about to enforce that view.

"A white man's war with too many women
in it, General?" she asked, archly. "Isn't that
rather an anomaly?"

"It's gospel truth," the General replied,
with sturdy insistence. "Sign of senile decay,
though, thinking aloud."

"*You* are not decayed. You might as well
accuse *me* of being in my first childhood, and
I have really passed that," Sybil smiled back
at him. "But," she added, "I am childish
enough to be a little hurt that you don't appear
to think so."

"My dear girl, what have I done? 'Pon
honor, I don't know that I have done anything,"
the General protested piteously.

"That's just it. It's because you have done
nothing, or next to nothing, that your contemptuous
reference to 'too many women'
seems to me a trifle unkind," replied Sybil,
pretending to misunderstand him. "What
would have happened to my cousin, when the
panel was cut the other night at Beaumanoir
House, if it hadn't been for a woman?"

The General accepted the reproof in
thoughtful silence, forced to admit to himself
that it was not uncalled for. If it had not
been for Sybil Hanbury's nerve and courage
on the occasion when the bogus detective officer
had secreted himself in the Duke's town house,
the answer to her question might have had to
be written in blood. Her quick apprehension
of subtle danger, her determination to sit up
and watch, and her cool presence of mind in
face of the emergency when it arose, had saved
the situation and stamped her as of sterling
metal.

"I apologize," he jerked out presently. "I
still think there are too many women in the
business, but you ain't one of 'em."

"Thank you," Sybil returned, drily. "And,
that being so, wouldn't it be a good plan to ask
a woman to help you, on the principle of setting
a thief to catch a thief, you know?"

The General shot a rather shamefaced
glance at the firm mouth and steadfast eyes
of this plucky young enthusiast, and thereupon
he decided to enlist her as an adviser in
the more intricate questions that vexed him.
There was the chance that woman's wit would
fathom woman's guile, and tell him why Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton should want to point the
index of suspicion at Ziegler, who was probably
her *confrère* in crime. Woman's wit
might even tell him why his Grace the Duke
of Beaumanoir, engaged in such a simple
ducal pastime as making sheep's-eyes at a
pretty American girl, should yet recoil abashed
whenever Leonie turned her frankly responsive
but puzzled gaze on him. Above all,
the course proposed would enable this brave
English girl to do what he was beginning to
fear he could not do for her—to take care of
herself.

"Yes," he said, putting down his cup with
a grim smile, "I'll take you on, soon as you've
finished your tea. And," he added, fumbling
for his cigar-case, "I'll try and not frighten
you."

Sybil rose at once, and together they strolled
along the terrace to a distance from the chatter
round the tea-table, which had drowned their
incipient confidences. When they were quite
out of earshot Sybil turned and confronted the
General, and the lighter tone with which she
had "played" him was lacking now.

"Tell me," she said gravely, "why Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton is so anxious to kill my
poor cousin and spoil that charming idyll."

"Mrs. Talmage Eglinton!" stammered the
General. "How on earth did you know that?"

"How did I know!" his new coadjutor repeated
with scorn. "In the same way that she
must know herself that *you* know, you dear
silly old man. Because of the absolutely absurd
invitation to her to come and stay here at
Prior's Tarrant without rhyme or reason."

And then, when General Sadgrove had recovered
from the shock of finding that he was
not quite inscrutable, they talked, very seriously,
for upwards of half an hour.




CHAPTER XV—*A New Cure for Headache*
======================================


"I wonder if General Sadgrove and Mr.
Forsyth are lunatics?" Sybil Hanbury purred
softly, after joining in the chorus of thanks
which greeted a superb rendering of Strelezki's
"Arlequin" on the long disused grand
piano in the tapestry-room. This apartment
was more cozy and homelike than the vast
white drawing-room at Beaumanoir House, but
it was quite large enough for isolated conversations.

The uncomplimentary confidence was made
into the shell-like ear of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton,
who, faultlessly gowned by Worth, was
sitting apart with her nominal hostess in the
embrasure of an oriel window. The Duke was
hovering near the piano, and Forsyth was talking
to Mrs. Sadgrove and Mrs. Sherman. The
General was not present, having excused himself
from coming straight from the dining-room
on the plea of having a letter to write.

Sybil's disjointed remark—for it followed
a discussion on French cookery—caused a
sudden twist of the ivory shoulders towards
her, the swift eagerness of the movement being
discounted by the languorous stare of slowly
interested surprise. There was a hint of resentment,
perhaps also a trace of alarm, in the
wheeling of the décolletée shoulders; in the
stare these emotions were corrected into a mild
desire to hear more of such a sweeping surmise.

"Lunatics—those two!" Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
exclaimed, in well-modulated astonishment.
"That's what you English call rather
a large order, isn't it? What makes you say
so?"

"Hush! My cousin is trying to persuade
Miss Sherman to sing," replied Sybil. "Wait
till she has begun, and I'll tell you. It's too
funny to keep to one's self."

For two days now the house-party at Prior's
Tarrant had been increased by the elegant
addition of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, and on
the surface matters were pursuing their normal
course. The Duke had received his latest
guest with a democratic courtesy none the less
cordial because of her floridly expressed note,
which in the stress of other preoccupations he
had forgotten altogether. He had a vague
idea that the General had wished the vivacious
American to be included because she was a
fellow countrywoman of the Shermans, and
that was quite enough to ensure his good-will
towards her.

This view was so far from being the right
one that Mrs. Sherman and Leonie had only
succeeded in being coldly polite to the latest
arrival. Mrs. Sadgrove, with an inkling that
the beautifully dressed but too effusive American
was an important factor in her husband's
schemes, was more outwardly complacent, but
it was reserved for Sybil to shower upon Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton special civilities which had
ended, after two days only, in their becoming
constant companions, if not bosom friends.
If the handsome visitor wanted to walk in the
park or to be shown some object of interest in
the gardens, Sybil was always at hand to accompany
her; and if it rained, as it had done
all this day, she spent hours in entertaining her
in her own rooms.

As for Forsyth, Sybil deserted him entirely;
and as the other ladies abstained from discussing
personal topics before the unpopular
guest, there had been no making known beyond
the small circle who knew it already of
the new secretary's engagement to his employer's
cousin. Singularly enough, this was
one of the very few subjects which the girl did
not touch upon in her confidences to her new
friend.

Presently the importunities of the Duke,
backed by a general murmur of request, prevailed,
and Leonie began a quaint old melody
in a clear contralto that at any other time
would have held Sybil an enthralled listener.
As it was, she took instant advantage of the
rippling flood of sound that filled the room to
resume her talk, though for the moment the
continuity was not apparent.

"Beaumanoir House was burgled the other
night, and we caught a man trying to get into
my cousin's bedroom," she whispered.

"No. Really? I—I saw nothing in the
papers," replied Mrs. Talmage Eglinton in
even tones, but with another turn of the white
shoulders and a sudden shading of her eyes
the better to watch the fair narrator's face.

"That was because the Duke let the man go—didn't
want any fuss just after coming into
the title; and quite reasonable, I call it," Sybil
proceeded. "And that's where the fun comes
in. Mr. Forsyth insists that my cousin is the
proposed victim of some diabolical plot, anarchist
or otherwise, and he took General Sadgrove
into his confidence. The old gentleman,
as you may not be aware, was a sort of policeman
in India, and is cracked on finding out
things. Naturally, to one of that temperament,
the mystery Mr. Forsyth chose to make
out of a vulgar attempt at robbery was like a
spark on tinder, and the General caught on at
once. They're both fairly on the job—as
amateur detectives, you know—and they think
they've got a clue."

"How truly interesting! And the clue?"

"Of the most remote kind—not even arrived
at, *à la* Sherlock Holmes, by inspecting cigarette
ashes. It seems that Mr. Forsyth—who,
by the way, had been to leave a card on you—met
the Duke at the Cecil, coming away
from the suite of a Mr. Ziegler. He chose
to think that my cousin was looking agitated,
whereas he was only tired after his voyage.
Mr. Ziegler, therefore, if you please, has fallen
under the ban of suspicion from these wiseacres,
and is supposed to be murderously inclined
towards the poor Duke. Even the mischief
of some wretched boy in playing tricks
with the train he traveled by the other night
is attributed to this probably harmless Mr.
Ziegler."

"And his Grace—does he also attribute
these things to the same quarter?" asked Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton, scarcely with the breathless
interest due to such tremendous doings.
She had a way of opening her eyes wide when
putting a question—a mannerism which had
the effect of creating doubt whether she was
intensely eager or only bored.

"He thinks it all nonsense—same as I do,"
Sybil made answer. "He has told these over-clever
gentlemen to leave the thing alone, and
I expect if he finds out what the General is
up to that he'll turn them both out of the
house and give Mr. Forsyth his dismissal. Of
course, you won't say anything—will you?—because
I'm only a poor relation, and I can't
afford to offend people."

"I am discretion itself. What is General
Sadgrove up to, dear?" was the reply.

Sybil's pretty mouth bent close to confide
the startling fact that the General was going
to London in the morning with the intention
of bearding Mr. Ziegler in his den—otherwise,
in his rooms at the Cecil. If he should be refused
permission to see Ziegler, or, seeing
him, should be unable to satisfy himself of his
respectability, he was going straight on to
Scotland Yard to impart his suspicions to the
authorities. Sybil sketched the carrying out
of this amazing programme and its probable
consequences with much animation and ridicule,
but her hearer's interest tailed off into undisguised
indifference, ending in a deliberate
yawn.

"What a very stupid affair!" Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton murmured. "Do you know, it has
made me quite sleepy, and—and I think I'll
go to bed. I have started a real, clawing,
hammering headache. Shouldn't wonder if I
am not laid up to-morrow."

Nodding a good-night to the others, she rose
and swept from the room, followed by Sybil,
who, profusely sympathetic, insisted on accompanying
her to her own apartments. At the
door of the latter a dark-eyed, slender woman,
in a black dress with broad white collar and
cuffs, was standing. This was Rosa, the
French maid, on whose services Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton professed herself entirely dependent.

"One of my headaches, Rosa. The pink
draught—quickly!" cried the incipient invalid,
and pausing on the threshold she bade an affectionate good-night to her girlish admirer.
"I am not really ill—only a little run down,"
she assured her. "I do *hope* I shan't have to
keep my room to-morrow."

The brilliant vision of Parisian elegance
having vanished into the room, Sybil made her
way downstairs, and in the hall encountered
General Sadgrove, who wore a light overcoat
over his evening things and a gray felt hat.
He was engaged in wiping the wet from his
patent-leather shoes with his handkerchief, but
looked up on Sybil's approach, and, removing
his hat, went on with his occupation.

"Still raining?" said Sybil, carelessly.

"Like the very—I mean, like it used to in
the monsoon," the General checked himself.

No more passed, except a slight raising of
the old soldier's eyebrows and a corresponding
droop of one of the lady's eyelids. The General
having restored the gloss to his footgear
and doffed his overcoat, they went on with
linked arms to the tapestry-room, where, however,
the party shortly broke up, the ladies to
retire for the night, and the men to go to the
smoking-room. The Duke remained but a
short time, leaving the General and Forsyth
with the playful remark that he was growing
quite bold after two days' immunity, and
hoped they would not sit up all night—which
was exactly what one or other of them had
been doing ever since they came to Prior's
Tarrant, and, moreover, what they intended
to do for the present.

"Sybil has done her part," said the General,
as soon as he was alone with his nephew.
"And I have prepared Azimoolah to be on the
lookout for results. He tells me that the men
in the dog-cart were outside the park wall
again last night, and that there was the same
exhibition of a red lamp in that infernal
French maid's window."

"An abortive attempt at communication?"
asked Forsyth.

"That or something worse," replied the General.
"It may only be that the woman inside
wants to confer with her confederates without;
or it may be that the red lamp is a signal to
them not to approach any nearer or try to get
into the house. I incline to the latter being
the explanation, as on each occasion the men in
the cart have driven off immediately on seeing
the red lamp, and there has been no attempt at
short or long flashes, or any sort of code talk,
Azimoolah tells me. In either case, it points
to those beauties upstairs being aware that you
and I are on guard, and that any attempt on
their part to give admission to outsiders would
be frustrated."

"But if she knows that a watch is being
kept, surely madam will not dare to leave the
house?" suggested Forsyth, in the tentative
tone that was necessary to preserve his uncle's
good humor.

"If she does, it will show that she's cornered,
and that Sybil's guess has hit the bull's eye,"
said the General, adding, with a significant
grimace, "a preparatory headache has been
started already. You had better go to bed
and leave me to see to the commencement of
the cure."

Two hours later Azimoolah Khan, lying
flattened out like a huge lizard on the parapet
of the terrace, and thanking Allah that the
rain had ceased, suddenly pricked up his ears
and thanked Allah again that the time for relieving
his cramped limbs had come. At first
his ears were the only part of his body affected
by the slight sound he had heard, but some
thirty seconds later, keeping the rest of him
motionless, he goggled his eyes round to one
of the ground-floor windows and saw—seeing
in the dark was one of his accomplishments—a
female figure turn from it and flit along the
terrace towards the steps leading down to the
park. Waiting till the figure had gained the
lower level, he slid from the parapet and gave
noiseless chase.

The woman in front spared no precaution
to guard against pursuit. She stopped many
times and listened; she doubled on her tracks;
and as soon as she reached the woodland belt
she proved to be an expert in the art of taking
cover. But she had to do with probably the
most wily exponent of woodcraft at that moment
in England, and her pursuer was never
at fault. Dark as the night was, Azimoolah
never lost her for an instant. With sinuous
movements that never caused a twig to crack,
the lithe Pathan was always creeping, gliding,
dodging close behind, till he stopped within
ten paces of the park wall, and from the shelter
of an oak trunk watched his quarry nimbly
climb the obstacle. No sooner had she disappeared
than he swung himself to the top of
the wall, and peered over just as a horse broke
into a trot on the other side.

Piercing the gloom, his keen sight distinguished
the shape of a fast-receding rubber-tired dog-cart, in which three figures were
seated; and, having fulfilled his mission, he
dropped back to the ground. In a few minutes
he was on the terrace again, hissing like
a cobra outside the smoking-room. General
Sadgrove opened the French casement.

"The daughter of Sheitan came from the
fifth window, and has gone away, even as the
sahib predicted, in the cart with two men,"
Azimoolah reported.

"Which road did they take?"

"To the left—the Senalban road, sahib."

"St. Albans, eh? Then she's going to
catch the 3.15 up night mail," muttered the
General. "Well, good-night, old *jungle-wallah*.
You've got your orders," he added, closing
and bolting the window.

The next morning there were two absentees
from the breakfast-table—General Sadgrove,
who by overnight arrangement had breakfasted
by himself, so as to be driven to Tarrant
Road in time for the nine o'clock train to
town, and Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, who was
confined to her bed by a bad headache. The
news of the indisposition was imparted to
Sybil by the maid Rosa at her mistress's door,
and was accompanied by a regretful but firm
refusal of admission to the patient.

"Madame is so *désolée* not to receive you,
ma'amselle, but she 'ave ze malady too
strr-rong for speak even with her dearest
friend," was the ultimatum which sent Miss
Hanbury from the door with a doleful face,
which somehow took quite a different expression
when she had turned the corner.

For some mysterious reason her aloofness
from her lover vanished that morning, and she
and Forsyth were on the best of terms. They
spent two hours together wandering in the
park, where in one of the more remote glades
Azimoolah flitted up to them from the bushes,
and, regarding Sybil with awe-struck veneration,
made a deep salaam and was gone. The
Duke, who had given his word of honor to the
General not to go beyond the park gates,
passed the time partly with his bailiff and
partly strolling with Leonie in the gardens
and glass-houses. The friendship between
Beaumanoir and his beautiful guest, so promisingly
begun on board the *St. Paul*, seemed
to have lost ground. Though he was much in
her society, he avoided intimate topics, and
often puzzled her with a hastily averted look
of wistful tenderness in strange contrast to his
assiduous but commonplace hospitality.

Half an hour before luncheon General Sadgrove,
returning on foot from the station and
looking five years older for his run up to London,
met the two young couples, who had now
joined forces, as they were entering the mansion.
Forsyth gave his uncle an anxious
glance of inquiry, but the old man passed him
by unheeding, and addressed the Duke in a
tone of icy formality.

"I shall be obliged if your Grace will give
me five minutes in the library on a very urgent
matter," he said, adding, with significant emphasis,
"*I have been with Mr. Ziegler this
morning.*"

Beaumanoir, gone all pale and tremulous,
made a palpable effort at self-control as he
replied:

"Come into the library by all means, General.
But I am afraid you will find me quite
as reticent as I am sure Ziegler was."

The interview lasted till long after the
luncheon gong had sounded, and when at
length the Duke and the General entered the
dining-room two pairs of watchful eyes observed
that their relative attitudes had been
reversed. The General's usually impassive
face was working so painfully that Mrs. Sadgrove
half rose from her chair at sight of her
husband, checking herself with difficulty;
while the Duke bore himself almost jauntily,
and began chaffing Sybil about her devotion
to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, who was still, by
latest bulletin from Rosa, "suffering ze grand
torments" and unable to leave her room.

The afternoon passed without external signs
that the house-party was living on the verge
of an active volcano. But as it was growing
dusk Forsyth, at the risk of being late for dinner,
took a solitary walk in the direction of a
certain stile, by which the Prior's Tarrant pastures
were approached by a short cut across
fields from Tarrant Road railway station.
He arrived at the stile in the nick of time to
give a helping hand to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton,
who had just reached the spot from the
opposite direction. The hour was the one
when the guests at the house might be expected
to be dressing for dinner, and it also tallied
with the arrival of a London train at the station;
but neither alluded to these incidentals
of such an obviously chance meeting.

"I trust that your headache is better," said
Forsyth, politely.

But the headache, he was assured, was rather
worse than better. The sufferer averred that
she had slipped out an hour before, to go for
a quiet walk in the meadows in the hope of obtaining
relief; but the remedy had been of no
avail, and all that remained was to go back to
bed.

"Won't you walk back with me?" Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton added, devouring the
young Scotsman's healthy, good-looking face
with eyes of invitation. "I don't seem ever to
get you alone nowadays."

"I am very sorry, but I have to go a little
further," replied Forsyth, and, raising his hat,
he passed on. But it was a very little way
further that he had to go, for at the end of the
first meadow he turned and followed in the
lady's wake back to the mansion, catching, as
he did so, a glimpse of Azimoolah moving
stealthily in the bushes at the side of the path.

That night the post-bag which one of the
Prior's Tarrant grooms conveyed to the office
in the village contained a letter addressed to
"Clinton Ziegler, Esqre.," at the Hotel Cecil,
couched thus:

    "*The gentleman interviewed in the Bowery,
    New York, by Mr. Jevons on your behalf has
    reconsidered the matter, and is now prepared
    to carry out his commitment. He is so shaken
    by recent occurrences that he does not feel up
    to coming himself till he has received assurances,
    but his secretary will call at the hotel on
    Monday for instructions, which please hand to
    the secretary in writing and carefully sealed.*"




CHAPTER XVI—*A Delicate Mission*
==================================


It was on Sunday evening that Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton, after a pious pilgrimage to
the village church in company with her assiduous
friend Sybil Hanbury, sought the
Duke and asked if she might have a carriage
to take her to the station for the up-train on
the following morning. She would return in
the evening, she said, but imperative business
with her milliner and tailor demanded her
presence in London for a few hours.

Beaumanoir, in courteously promising that
her request should be attended to, regarded her
with a wan smile. "You will have a companion—that
is, if you do not mind Mr. Forsyth
sharing the station brougham with you," he
added. "Alec has to go to London to-morrow
on my business—leases at the solicitors',
isn't it?"

He turned for confirmation to Forsyth,
who, with General Sadgrove, had been strolling
with him on the terrace.

"Yes, leases at the solicitors'," replied the
private secretary, flushing slightly. The
General looked indifferent.

"Really?" said the lady. "There must be a
lot of that sort of thing to see to just now, I
suppose. Of course, I shall be delighted to
have Mr. Forsyth's escort, provided he drops
me at Bond Street. I cannot have a critical
male person following me across my tailor's
sacred threshold."

She shook a gay finger at the party and disappeared
into one of the French windows—a
vision of dainty *chiffons* and rustling silks.

"She's gone to put her prayer-book away,"
laughed Forsyth, in the nervous manner of
one wishing to cover an awkward situation.

"She needs one," muttered the General under
his mustache, shooting a furtive glance at
his nephew.

Beaumanoir said nothing, and the three
paced on, hardly speaking, till it was time to
dress for dinner. Since the General's return
from town on the day of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's
headache, not exactly a coolness, but a
constraint, had sprung up between them. A
suspicion of cross-purposes was in the air,
which kept them silent when all together, but
communicative enough when any two of them
were alone in solitary places.

It was so now, for the General waited till
the Duke had left them to go up to his dressing-room
before he remarked in a tone of grim
humor:

"I told you that you would have her for a
traveling companion."

"I don't anticipate much pleasure from the
journey," Forsyth replied, gloomily, and reddening
under the searching gaze with which
his uncle raked him.

But with the exception of the short drive to
the station, during which Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
was unusually preoccupied, he was spared
the uncongenial *tête-à-tête* he had expected.
When the train came in the fair American said
chaffingly that she knew he was dying to
smoke—that, anyhow, she was in a mood for
meditation herself, and intended to indulge it
in the seclusion of a "ladies' compartment."
Forsyth responded with the barest protest demanded
by courtesy, and went away to a
smoking-carriage, much relieved.

He saw her again at St. Pancras; indeed,
he contrived to be near enough to overhear
the direction to an address in Bond Street
which she gave to her cabman, but he noticed
the not unexpected fact that here in London
she had no desire for his society. She had
hurried into the vehicle without looking round
for him, and was driven away at a pace that
betokened special instructions to the driver.

Forsyth took another cab and bade his man
keep the first cab in sight. Before long he
perceived that the lady was in truth going to
Bond Street, and presently he had the satisfaction
of seeing her discharge her cab and
skip lightly into the shop of a fashionable
*modiste* in that thoroughfare. His complacence
was a little marred by uncertainty
whether she had observed him or not, but from
the quick turn of her head as she crossed the
pavement he was rather inclined to think that
she had.

"It doesn't matter, really," he reflected.
"She knows that we suspect her complicity, or
she wouldn't have tried to blind her trail to the
hotel by driving here first. Strange, though,
that, suspecting that, she should have taken so
much trouble."

He ordered his driver to take him to the
Hotel Cecil, and at the same time to keep a
lookout to see whether they in turn were being
followed by the lady whom they had just run
to ground. But when he was set down at the
main entrance of the great twelve-storied palace
he received the assurance that nothing of
the sort had occurred.

"Not so keen after you, sir, as you was after
her," ejaculated the smart cabman as he
whipped up and wheeled round, dissatisfied,
after the manner of his kind, with the extra
half-crown he had received for his "shadowing
job."

Forsyth shuddered. "*Keen*, by George!"
he murmured ruefully. "If only my devotion
to poor old Charley could have led me into
paths untrodden by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
my task would have been a lighter one."

He went into the bureau and inquired if
Mr. Clinton Ziegler was in, receiving the
stereotyped reply that Mr. Ziegler was *always*
in, being an invalid. Whereupon he sent up
his card, first penciling thereon the words,
"Private Secretary to the Duke of Beaumanoir."

The bell-boy who took up the card reappeared
almost immediately, flying down the
grand staircase three steps at a time.

"Please to come up at *once*, sir, the gentleman
said," was the boy's urgent appeal.

Forsyth, with a feeling of having "burned
his ships," obeyed with equal alacrity, and was
shown into the suite made memorable by the
raid of his Highness the Thakore of Bhurtnagur,
otherwise General Sadgrove's faithful
orderly, Azimoolah Khan. He noticed in
passing in that the door of the next suite—that
of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton—was slightly
ajar, but his attention was immediately
claimed by the welcome he received in Mr.
Ziegler's apartments. Just inside the door
he was met by a tall, bold-eyed man whom,
from Beaumanoir's description, he had no difficulty
in recognizing as the sham "Colonel
Anstruther Walcot," but who introduced himself
as Leopold Benzon, Mr. Ziegler's private
secretary.

The idea of a professional criminal being
served with such specious pomp tickled Forsyth's
sense of humor; but, restraining an impulse
to laugh in the fellow's face, he responded
gravely to the salutation and stated
his business. He had come, he said, after
mentioning his name, on behalf of the Duke
of Beaumanoir, to see Mr. Ziegler by appointment
on a matter of private business.

"Mr. Ziegler is expecting you," Benzon replied,
scrutinizing the visitor's face narrowly.
"Unfortunately he is not so well as usual this
morning, and is not yet dressed. I must ask
you to wait a little till he is ready to receive
you."

Forsyth bowed and took the chair offered
him, not without an inward chuckle at the discrepancy
between the haste of the bell-boy's
summons to the suite and the delay in receiving
him. To his mind the position was clear.
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton desired to keep up the
polite fiction of her innocence to the end, yet
Ziegler was apparently not prepared to go
forward with the business without an opportunity
of consulting her. She had come up to
town for the express purpose of advising,
perhaps supervising, her colleagues at an important
crisis, and was doubtless on her way
to the hotel after the diversion he had created,
so that it was necessary to get him out of the
entrance-hall before she passed up to her suite.

"I shouldn't wonder if she isn't the boss of
the show, with Ziegler, who is probably her
husband, as figure-head," Forsyth told himself.

Benzon, with a polite excuse, had retired
into an inner room; but his place had immediately
been taken by a well-dressed but
cadaverous individual whom Forsyth recognized
as the man in clerical attire whom he had
seen descending the stairs in John Street after
the forcible entry into his chambers, the miscreant
who later on the same eventful night
had called at Beaumanoir House in the character
of a disguised police-officer.

There was evidently no disposition to leave
him alone in the ante-room, and so give him a
chance to open the outer door and witness
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's arrival in the next
suite. So twenty minutes passed, and Forsyth
was speculating as to how communication
would be carried on with the female partner
during the forthcoming interview, when Benzon
returned and announced that Mr. Ziegler
was awaiting him. He could not help observing
how much better suited was this bowing
and smirking American swindler to the *rôle* of
a superior flunkey than to that of a British
cavalry officer.

The next moment he found himself in the
principal reception-room of the suite, face to
face with a frail old man of unpleasant appearance,
who, Forsyth noticed with quick intuition,
was reclining on a couch that had been
drawn across a closed door. There was another—open—door
leading into the bedroom,
but the closed one must be the same which
from the other side of it had confirmed the
General's suspicions of the occupant of the adjoining
suite. Forsyth could picture to himself
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's shell-like ear
glued to that door, its fair owner prepared to
tap gentle signals by the Morse code on the
panels if things did not go to her liking in the
audience-chamber.

His conjectures were brought down to the
bed-rock of fact by the croaking voice of the
invalid on the couch. Mr. Ziegler's repulsive
aspect, his purple cheeks, and green-shaded
eyes suggested some horrible cutaneous affection,
though Forsyth was not so ingenuous as
to accept the disfigurements as genuine.

"I am sorry to have detained you, sir,"
Ziegler began, and then paused abruptly.
Forsyth wondered if he had been brought up
with a round turn by a tap on the door close to
his ear. There seemed something tentative, as
though the speaker were trying his ground, in
that first disjointed utterance.

"It does not matter," Forsyth replied, and
then in his turn came to a sudden stop. His
diplomatic training at the Foreign Office had
taught him the advantage of allowing the
other side to open the proceedings. He who
has the first word is seldom the one to have the
last.

But it appeared that Mr. Ziegler was also
alive to the value of reserving his fire. "I presume
that the Duke of Beaumanoir instructed
you on the nature of the business you were to
transact with me?" he said, and there was a
firmer ring in the curious metallic voice than
when he made his first brief apology.

"On the contrary, he left me quite in the
dark about it," Forsyth made answer. "All
I understood was that I was to fetch something
which you would hand me in person."

Ziegler took a leisurely survey of the young
Scotsman through his green glasses. "Then
you did not come here expecting to have to use
your own discretion in any way—to traffic
with me, in fact?" he presently asked.

"Certainly not," Forsyth replied. "I gathered
that the part I was to play was solely that
of a trusted messenger who could be relied on
to say nothing about his errand afterwards."

"Not even to General Sadgrove?" flashed
back the answering question so swiftly that
for an instant Forsyth was taken aback.

"I am not one to betray my employer's secrets—even
to my uncle, General Sadgrove,"
he said, recovering himself quickly.

"Very good!" was the croaking comment.
"I deemed it necessary to sound you because
we are aware of the foolish meddling—I might
also say muddling—of that mischievous old
man. We know also that you have aided and
abetted him in an attempt to swim against a
tide that is far too strong for both of you."

"I quite admit that," responded Forsyth,
boldly. "My uncle has been doing his best to
protect the Duke's life, and as in duty bound I
have used my efforts to assist him—up to a
certain point."

"What do you mean—up to a certain
point?"

"I mean that as the Duke seems now to
have taken matters actively into his own hands
by opening up communication with you, I am
naturally rather at the disposition of my employer
than of anyone else."

"Truly a faithful servant," said Ziegler,
with a strong suspicion of a sneer. "And
now, Mr. Forsyth, I have a question to ask
which you are at liberty to answer or not as
you please, but on which the future security of
his Grace will probably depend. I shall draw
my own deductions from a refusal to answer,
and take it as an affirmative. Has the Duke
disclosed to either you or General Sadgrove,
or, as far as you are aware, to anyone else, the
reason of his recent differences with us?"

Forsyth rejoiced that he was able to reply
in the negative. "No," he said promptly and
with evident truth; "he has always steadily refused
to enlighten my uncle and myself as to
the cause of his being so persecuted. We have
been kept absolutely in the dark."

He did not feel called upon to add, as he
might have done, that a good deal of that darkness
had been penetrated by General Sadgrove's
acumen, and that the design on Senator
Sherman's gold bonds was an open book
to them.

Ziegler, however, was satisfied with the reply.
Signing to the pretentious Benzon, who
throughout the interview had hovered close to
his master's couch, he conferred with him in a
whisper, and then addressed Forsyth again
with a request that he would wait for a few
minutes in the ante-room, when a letter for the
Duke would be handed to him and he would
be free to depart.

"Good-day to you, sir," added the arch-plotter.
"I regret that my infirmities preclude
me from offering you hospitality.
These little encounters become, I find, more
fatiguing with advancing years."

Bidding him a curt good-morning, Forsyth
returned to the ante-room, accompanied by the
cadaverous individual, who had also been
present at the interview. Benzon remained
behind, softly shutting the door on them, and
there was a distinct click of the key being
turned in the lock. His companion making
no overture for conversation, Forsyth sat
down and affected to read a newspaper,
though he was really straining his ears to
catch what passed in the inner room. Already
perplexed by having seen no signs of communication
between Ziegler and the next suite,
he was trying to ascertain if a conference was
now proceeding with the fair tenant next door.
No sound reached him, however, till after the
lapse of some twenty minutes Benzon came
swiftly out of the inner room with a heavily
sealed letter in his hand.

"This," said Ziegler's aide-de-camp, "is the
packet which my chief wishes you to deliver to
the Duke of Beaumanoir. You are alive to
the importance of seeing that it reaches its destination
without being lost or tampered with?"

"My dear sir, I should not, I imagine, have
been entrusted with this very uncongenial errand
unless I had been thought capable of carrying
it out," replied Forsyth, in a tone of
annoyance.

"Take it, then," Benzon proceeded. "And
you are, please, to inform his Grace that Mr.
Ziegler, though he would have preferred to
see him in person, is satisfied with the discretion
of his emissary."

"Thanks, but I don't think I need a testimonial
from Mr. Ziegler to recommend me to
the Duke," replied Forsyth, coolly, as he buttoned
the letter into the breast-pocket of his
frock coat and with a bow took his departure.

Out in the corridor he breathed more freely.
"I don't think that I overdid my exhibition of
temper," he told himself. "A little touchiness
was to be expected under the circumstances."

He had begun to descend the stairs into the
entrance-hall, when he saw—with something
of a shock—coming up, and therefore about
to meet him, the lady whom he believed to be
in the next suite to Ziegler's, advising her
partners through the communicating door.
He had got it firmly into his head that during
the twenty minutes he had been kept waiting
that door had been opened, and the terms of
the letter settled between the two principals;
and here was Mrs. Talmage Eglinton not in
her rooms at all, but apparently only just arrived.

"Ah, Mr. Forsyth!" she cried, coquettishly.
"You have been up to my suite to look for me,
with a view to standing me a luncheon somewhere.
Now don't deny that you were disappointed
when you found that I had not
reached the hotel and that the suite was locked
up."

Could he have been mistaken? Forsyth
asked himself. If so, the mistake was not
really his, but General Sadgrove's, and the entire
bottom was knocked out of the veteran's
theory as to this woman's complicity.

"But I have not been up to your rooms,"
was all he could reply on the spur of the moment. "I had business with the gentleman
who occupies the adjoining suite."

If it was not genuine, the look of disappointment
that stole into her face was a consummate
piece of acting. "Oh, was that all,"
she said, with a queer little laugh. "Well,
that doesn't absolve you from asking me to
lunch now that you have the chance."

"I shall be delighted," was the only answer
he could make without showing open hostility.

"Wait in the hall, then," said Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton. "I am only going up to see if some
jewelry I left locked up when I went down to
Prior's Tarrant is safe."

She hurried up the remaining stairs, and
Forsyth continued his way down to the hall, a
prey to conflicting emotions. Disgust at having
to lunch with a woman he abhorred was
the least of them. What worried him most at
that moment was the doubt, restored by this
meeting, whether Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was
not, after all, the victim of a chain of coincidences.

And then, suddenly, a flicker of light broke
on the situation through—of all places in the
world—a tiny flaw in the lady's defensive
armor. She had spoken of her suite as locked
up, but he remembered now that the outer door
of it had been slightly ajar when he went in
to his interview with Ziegler. He went up to
the big uniformed porter on duty at the swing
doors, and asked him if he knew Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton by sight.

"Oh yes, sir," the man replied. "You'll
catch her if you run up to her rooms sharp.
She's just going out."

"Going out?" exclaimed Forsyth, with well
simulated surprise. "I thought I caught a
glimpse of her going upstairs a moment ago.
She seemed to have only just arrived."

"Oh no, sir; she came in an hour ago, and
was on her way out just now when she found
she'd forgotten something."

Forsyth left the proximity of the porter
quickly, and went and waited at the foot of
the staircase. The horizon had cleared again,
and he smiled at the very thin trick which had
so nearly deceived him—would have deceived
him, in fact, if one of the gang, eagerly expecting
her, had not chanced to be at her door
when he went up. After concluding her business
with her accomplices she had contrived
the meeting on the stairs to throw dust in his
eyes, going, in her desire for realism, to the
length of explaining to the hall-porter why she
had gone upstairs again after coming down
into the hall. Well, he would hold her to the
lunch invitation; let her think that she had
hoodwinked him; and endeavor to ascertain
whether she was courting his society as a mere
bluff to lend color to her deception, or with
some other object as yet undefined.

He had not long to wait for her. Tripping
lightly down the stairs, she joined him with a
charming assumption that he would be interested
to hear that her jewels were "quite safe,"
and she supplemented the information with the
request that they should not lunch in the hotel.

"I am known here, and people stare so," she
said. "Take me somewhere where we can be
quiet. I have got something to say."

"Very well," he replied. "Come over to
Kettner's. There won't be much of a crowd
there at this time of day." And he strove hard
to be polite as he steered her across the Strand,
though he could have wished himself back at
the Foreign Office, with no prospects and no
Duke to serve, if Sybil's brave young face had
not been in his mind's eye.

At the restaurant Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
chose a table in a remote corner of the dining-room and devoted herself to a careful study
of the *menu*. It was not till she had selected
her dishes and quizzed the appearance of the
other customers that she developed her plan of
attack.

"You don't seem at all interested in the fact
that I have something to say to you," she
began, leaning back and scanning him critically.
Her voluptuous style of beauty had
never had any attraction for him; to-day it
positively repelled.

"My worst enemies have never accused me
of being curious," he answered lightly. "Nay,
I am not discourteous," he protested, seeing
the angry gleam in the fine eyes. "I only
mean that I cannot work myself into a fever
about a communication the subject of which
I am ignorant of."

"Tell me," she said abruptly, "what reason
you had for following me from St. Pancras
to Bond Street this morning?"

Whatever her motive she was pushing him
hard, and Forsyth's presence of mind failed
him. He flushed and began to stammer.

.. _`I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton.`:

.. figure:: images/illus4.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton.

   "I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton."

"It is useless to deny it," she cut him short.
"I saw you in the cab quite plainly as I entered
the shop, and my cabby had previously
told me that I was being shadowed. Now,
Mr. Forsyth, when a gentleman follows a lady
about the streets he either does it because he
means her some harm, or because—well, because
he is not quite indifferent to her.
Which was it in your case?"

This was a poser, and it had to be faced with
instant decision. Rapidly reflecting that unless
he was then and there prepared to accuse
his fair *vis-à-vis* with complicity with Ziegler
there was only one course open to him, he took
it promptly. He little thought that within
the next forty-eight hours his fate—to live or
to die—would depend on the demeanor he then
adopted.

"I certainly did not follow you with a bad
motive, and—there, a straight question deserves
a straight answer—I am very far from
being indifferent to you, Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton," he said.

After that the amenities flowed in the most
friendly channel, though Forsyth suffered
agonies, and it required all his skill as an amateur
actor of repute to sustain the part of a
diffident lover hovering on the brink of a
declaration.

In the afternoon they returned to Prior's
Tarrant together, outwardly on the best of
terms; but, needless to say, Forsyth was still
"hovering."




CHAPTER XVII—*Where is the Duke?*
===================================


The next day was that set for the arrival
of Senator Sherman, though it would be quite
late in the afternoon before he could reach
Prior's Tarrant from Liverpool. Mrs. Sherman
had addressed a letter to him on board the
*Campania*, explaining matters and passing on
a cordial invitation from Beaumanoir that he
would join the party on landing.

Latterly there had been an entire absence
of the excursions and alarums which had
marked the earlier days of the house-party.
General Sadgrove and Alec Forsyth had relaxed
none of their vigilance, and Azimoolah
still ranged the glades of the park, but no more
unauthorized artists had put in an appearance,
nor had any member of the party suffered
from headache, entailing the strange cure of a
midnight journey.

On this eventful morning it so happened
that the ladies were all assembled in the
breakfast-room before any of the gentlemen
were down. Sybil, presiding at the tea and
coffee equipage, was evincing deep interest in
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's narrative of her
purchases in London the day before; Mrs.
Sherman was wondering to Mrs. Sadgrove
whether "Leonidas" would come straight to
Prior's Tarrant, or insist on depositing the
bonds in the Bank of England first; and
Leonie was looking dreamily through the open
windows across the park—she was often
dreaming nowadays; so was the Duke.

Presently General Sadgrove strode in and
took his seat, making no apology, because
breakfast was a come-as-you-please meal, and
no one was expected to be punctual. But
when he had said good-morning all round he
glanced uneasily at the vacant places of Beaumanoir
and Forsyth. The two young men
were usually up and about before anyone.

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had broken off in
the middle of describing a new and ravishing
hat to Sybil in order to smile a welcome to the
grim old warrior. She was now following the
direction of his glance, and commented on it
in sprightly fashion.

"The naughty Duke and the naughty Mr.
Forsyth!" she purred. "I believe you men
keep most frightfully late hours in this house,
General. What is it that you do—play cards
or gamble with dominoes?"

"No, it's chess," jerked out the General, regarding
her impassively. "Mate to the King
and the Black Queen to move. All that sort
of thing, don't you know."

The American widow trilled out a silvery
laugh, and the veteran attacked his breakfast.
But, looking singularly old this morning, he
seemed to have but little appetite, and ate
slowly, frowning at the two empty places; and
when Alec Forsyth came in alone, and white
as a sheet, he was on his legs in a moment.

"Where is the Duke?" the General flung at
his nephew.

"I don't know; he's not in his room, and I
can't find him anywhere in the nearer gardens,"
was the reply. "I should like to speak
to you for a moment," Forsyth added, with a
significant glance at the ladies, who had so far
failed to grasp that there was anything serious
in a Duke being late for breakfast in his own
house.

It needed no second request to bring the
General out into the hall. "Now tell me
shortly," said the old man as soon as they were
alone together.

What Forsyth had to tell did not amount to
much. As was his custom, he had gone to
Beaumanoir's room as soon as he was dressed,
and had found it vacant. As, however, the
bed had been slept in, he apprehended nothing
wrong, thinking merely that the Duke was
smoking an early cigarette on the terrace.
Seeing no sign of him there, he extended his
search in the grounds, but again with no result.
The next step was to question the servants,
none of whom had seen their master
since the previous day.

The General stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"I don't believe that woman knows anything,"
he said at length. "I was watching her when
you came in. She seemed to be surprised, and
even disconcerted, by your news."

"Perhaps one of her colleagues has acted independently,
or there may be divided counsels
in the camp," Forsyth suggested. "In that
case——"

"In *any* case, what we have to do is to find
Beaumanoir, dead or alive," the General interrupted.
"See here, Alec, you must get a grip
on yourself and go in and eat your breakfast
calmly—just to prevent a premature panic
among the women. I'll go and hunt up Azimoolah.
If there has been any stir during the
night he is sure to know of it."

But as the General descended the terrace
steps he was smitten with inward misgivings
on that point. Had his faithful henchman
detected anything unusual during the hours of
darkness he would, long ere this, have been up
to the house to report; besides which, if he had
come across any lurking miscreants he would
have seen to it that no harm befell the Duke.
And here was the Duke missing. The hypothesis
was that Azimoolah had either been
eluded or had himself fallen a victim to foul
play.

Influenced by this fear, the General quickened
his pace, and as soon as he reached the
wooded portion of the park uttered at frequent
intervals his signal for the Pathan to appear.
But glade after glade he traversed, scaring
the rabbits with his cobra-like hiss, yet the lithe
form of Azimoolah nowhere broke through the
bushes. The General did not desist till he had
thoroughly drawn the coverts, abandoning
after a while his strange noises for a systematic
scrutiny of the ground. He knew that
had Azimoolah been in the park as a live man
he would have answered the well-known call
by now; whereas if he was lying cold and stark
somewhere in the thicket, by patient search
alone could he be found.

At the end of a fruitless hour the General
went back to the house, realizing that not only
the Duke, but the Duke's most capable protector,
was missing. The blow was a severe
one, for, apart from the ominous mystery of
this dual disappearance, a certain scheme that
had come to very near maturity was rendered
null and void—a scheme that before another
day dawned was to have cut the claws of Ziegler
and Co. for ever.

There was the bare chance that Beaumanoir
might have turned up during his absence, and
General Sadgrove covered the ground at his
best pace; but he was destined to find no such
pleasant surprise in store for him. Forsyth
met him, as he mounted the terrace steps, with
the significant inquiry whether he had discovered
anything.

"Nothing, and Azimoolah has gone too,"
was the reply. "Where are the women?"

"In the morning-room; they are not alarmed
as yet, only a little uneasy—especially Leonie."

"She would be, but we needn't mind her,"
the General rejoined, brusquely. "What do
you make of Ziegler's understudy?"

"I cannot make much of her," replied Forsyth.
"I am inclined to agree with you that
she is as much in a fog as the rest of us."

The General grunted, and proposed that
they should at once go up and rummage Beaumanoir's
room for clues, a course which they
instantly adopted. Since the charcoal episode
their host had resolutely refused to occupy
"the Duke's room," preferring to that grim
state apartment a smaller chamber in the corridor
where most of the guests were accommodated.
Access was gained to it by two
different doors, one leading to it through a
dressing-room, the other directly opening into
it. They chose the latter as being the nearest,
and as they entered distinctly heard the swish
of a silk skirt in the dressing-room, followed
by the soft closing of the dressing-room door.

Alert and bristling like an angry terrier, the
General stepped quickly back into the corridor—just
in time to see another door gently shut
a little farther on.

"You were right, laddie," he said, rejoining
Forsyth. "She has been here before us on the
same errand. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton is as
much bewildered as we are by the turn of
events, and she has been trying to arrive at
conclusions from an inspection of the Duke's
room."

They began their "rummage," which was
made easier for them by the fact that the
housemaids had not yet paid their morning
visit to the room. The bed had certainly been
slept in, and there were also indications that
the occupant had made a perfunctory sort of
toilet afterwards. There was fresh lather on
a shaving-paper, and soapy water in the wash-basin,
to show that Beaumanoir had been able
to attend to his person.

"Whatever has happened to him didn't happen
here," said the General with decision. "He
left this room a free agent, at all events. The
question then arises, When and why did he
leave it, and has he left the confines of the
park?"

"He must have made a cold toilet," said
Forsyth. "See, here is the hot water which
was brought up for him at eight o'clock this
morning, and also the water for his tub."

He stepped outside into the corridor and
pointed to a small and a large can that had
been placed close outside the door of the dressing-room.
By the General's advice the Duke
had been in the habit of keeping both doors
locked at night, and the cans were never
brought in by the servant who called him. A
valet had not yet been engaged.

"And there by the wash-stand is the empty
can he used overnight," said the General.
"Yes, there is the dirty water, in which he
washed his hands before going to bed, in the
waste-pail. We fix him, then, to having slept
for some hours, and to having got up early and
left the house in the small hours before anyone
was about."

"It looks as if he were playing a lone hand
at some game of his own," said Forsyth,
doubtfully.

But the General would have no vague conjectures.
Having settled within approximate
limits the time when Beaumanoir quitted his
room, he desired to learn how he had left the
house. He himself had been sitting up from
two, at which hour he relieved Forsyth, till five
o'clock, and he would stake his reputation that
no one had been moving during the period of
his vigilance. The Duke must have left the
house between five and six, at which latter hour
the servants began to be moving.

This view was strengthened by inquiry from
the butler, who reported that on going his
rounds to open up the house he had discovered
one of the windows of the smoking-room unbolted,
though he had himself seen to the
fastenings the night before. He had not
thought anything of it, supposing that one of
the gentlemen had gone out for an early stroll.

The General led Forsyth aside. "Whatever
has happened to Beaumanoir, he has courted
his own fate by going outside unattended," he
said. "It almost looks as if he had been lured
out by some trick of his enemies, in which case
Azimoolah has probably been done to death
while endeavoring to protect him. Come and
help me search the park once more, and then
if we find nothing we must call in the police."

Making a detour by the stable-yard, so as
to avoid meeting and being questioned by the
ladies, they struck out for the leafy recesses of
the broad belt of woodland that fringed the
park. Allotting one section to Forsyth and
taking the other himself, the General repeated
the process of the morning, peering into the
bushes, turning over heaps of leaves and probing the bracken with his stick, but all to no
purpose. No gruesome corpse, either of English
nobleman or of dark-skinned Asiatic, met
their straining eyes.

"We must give it up," said the General at
last. "Now that we are down here we had
better go out through the wicket-gate into the
village and tell the constable to send for his
superiors. We have reached the limit, and
poor Beaumanoir's secrets can belong to him
no longer, I fear."

Forsyth assented that it would be no longer
advisable, even if it were possible, to keep the
Duke's affairs out of the hands of the police,
and the two made their way toward the private
gate in the park wall through which Beaumanoir
had gone to church on his first memorable
Sunday at Prior's Tarrant. They were approaching
the gate, not by the path, but skirting
the wall through the undergrowth, when
a lissome body appeared suddenly at the top
of the wall, poised there for a moment, and
then dropped almost at their feet. It was
Azimoolah Khan, dusty and out of breath, but
very far from being a dead man.

"How is this, thou son of Sheitan?" exclaimed
the General, affecting sternness to
hide his pleasure. "It was not your wont in
the jungle days to desert your post in times
of danger. In your absence some evil thing
has befallen him whom we are pledged to
guard."

"Nay, Sahib, but hear me. It is not thy
servant who has deserted his post, but his post
which has deserted him," protested the Pathan,
with dignified reproof. "The great Lord
Duke ran away—oh so far and so fast—and
thy servant ran after in his tracks to see that
no harm befell him."

"Well, where is the Duke now, man?" the
General blurted out in great excitement.
"Surely you haven't come back to tell me that
you have lost him?"

"The Duke is in the fire-carriage, Sahib;
and thy servant having no sufficient money or
orders from the Sahib, was not able to follow
further than the station," Azimoolah replied.

Pressed to be more explicit, this was the
story he had to impart. He had been patrolling
the park, ever with a watchful eye for the
house, when between five and six he had seen
the Duke come from one of the ground-floor
windows and make at great speed for the coppices.
Keeping himself concealed, Azimoolah
had quickly perceived that it was the Duke's
intention to leave the park by the wicket gate,
and, considering it his duty not to lose sight of
him, he had climbed the wall and followed.
Avoiding the village street, Beaumanoir had
struck into a series of lanes which presently
brought him back into the main road beyond
the farthest habitation. Thenceforward, with
Azimoolah shadowing him, he had commenced
a tramp which lasted between two and three
hours, and finally ended at a railway station
in a fair-sized country town.

"You ascertained the name of the town?"
asked the General.

Yes, after the train had steamed away Azimoolah
had not omitted to inquire the name
of the town. It was Tring. He had also inquired
at the booking-office where the Duke
had taken a ticket for, but the clerk had refused
the information with a rude remark
about the color of his skin—a remark which,
east of Suez, might have brought him a taste
of cold steel.

"And then, Sahib," concluded the narrator,
"without bite or sup I started to run back
again, being sore afraid lest thy heart should
be troubled by these things."

The General patted his orderly's lean shoulder.
"You have done right, old sheep-dog,"
he said. "And as the lamb has broken loose
from the fold you can go and get food and
take a few hours' rest. Come, Alec! Let us
get back and see what Bradshaw has to tell
us."

Azimoolah having vanished over the boundary
wall for his lodging in the village, they
returned to the house and repaired to the library.
Forsyth found a Northwestern time-table
and turned up Tring.

"Beaumanoir must have caught the 7.30
down," he said, running his finger down the
page. "It's a slow train, stopping at every
station, and doesn't go beyond Bletchley."

The General was growing querulous.
"Bletchley!" he snorted. "What the deuce
does he want at Bletchley? It's a little one-horse
town in North Bucks, isn't it?"

"Hold on, it's more than that," said Forsyth,
still with his finger on the column. "It's
a junction where fast trains stop, and—yes!—he
could change there into the North of England
express, which calls there at 8.10."

The two men looked at each other in silence
and with something of consternation.

"Liverpool is in the north of England," said
the General after a pause, "and Sherman is
due to arrive there to-day."

"I cannot and will not believe that Beaumanoir
has gone wrong after all," Forsyth angrily
replied to his uncle's significant remark.
He spoke with such heat that neither of them
noticed that the library door had been opened
and that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton stood there,
smiling at them.

"Who has gone wrong?" she purred sweetly.
"For goodness' sake, don't tell me that the
Duke has run away with a housemaid!"

She was looking at Forsyth with eyes that
bored like gimlets, and he thought of the letter
from Ziegler, addressed to the Duke, entrusted
to him the day before. Was it something
in that letter that made her stare so
steadfastly and yet with something of mockery
in her gaze? Having good reason to be aware
of the contents of that letter, he thought it
likely. Only in that case calculations had been
all at sea, and Beaumanoir—alas, poor Beaumanoir!

It was the General who answered the lady's
banter, and that without any visible discomfiture.
"No, it isn't the Duke who has gone
wrong," he said calmly. "We were talking of
someone not nearly so exalted. Our host is all
right—gone away for a few hours by an early
train on business. We have found out all
about his movements, and I shall be obliged,
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, if you will kindly
reassure the other ladies that Beaumanoir's
absence is satisfactorily accounted for."

"How delighted Miss Sherman will be. I
will go and tell them all, at once," cried the
American gaily. And she swept out of the
room with an exuberant triumph not lost on
those who remained behind.

"Wherever the Duke has gone, and with
whatever motive, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton is
pleased," the General mused aloud.

"She will find herself mistaken if she thinks
he has gone to play her game," said Alec Forsyth,
staunch as ever to his friend.




CHAPTER XVIII—*The Senator and the Securities*
================================================


On the hurricane-deck of the *Campania*, as
the leviathan liner thrust her huge bulk towards
the landing-stage through the lesser fry of the
teeming Mersey traffic, a big man, wearing a
light-gray frock-coat and a broad-brimmed
soft white hat, stood talking to the purser.
Senator Leonidas Sherman was accounted the
handsomest man at Washington, and in his
broad, well-chiseled, clean-shaven face was reflected
that honesty and shrewd alertness which
had caused his selection for his present trust.

"I don't want the box out before the last
moment, Mr. Seaton, and if you can conveniently
keep the bullion-room locked till you
hand it over I should be obliged," the Senator
was saying.

The brass-buttoned official gave a ready assent
to the distinguished passenger's request.

"I'd rather you had your job than me, sir,"
he added, seriously. "The equivalent of three
million sterling in a little leather thing like
that, and to have to cart it up to London all
by your lone self—why, it's enough to make
one shudder."

"It doesn't me," the Senator replied simply,
with an unconscious gesture to his hip-pocket.
"I have a bit of a reputation to live up to, you
know. If it's to be shooting, my early training
has taught me to draw first; and if it's to be
confidence-men—well, it's some years since I
was born."

The purser nodded and went about his duties
while Sherman leaned over the forward
rail and watched the shore, looming larger now
every moment. The Senator was no back-woods
"hayseed." A man of culture and much
travel, he possessed far more than a guide-book
knowledge of every European capital,
and did not make the mistake of under-estimating
London as a hatching-ground for
crime. Till his precious charge was deposited
in the Bank of England and he had fingered
the receipt he was prepared for emergencies.
The gold shipment which his Government had
negotiated against the bonds he was bringing
had been buzzed about in Wall Street for two
months and more—ample time for the maturing
of predatory schemes.

Aided by the company's tug, the great
steamer sidled up to the landing-stage, and as
soon as the gangways were opened the usual
stream of passengers' friends began to push
their way on board. The hurricane-deck
towered high above the level of the quay, and
Senator Sherman, not expecting anyone to
meet him, retained his post of vantage at the
rail, looking down with amused interest at the
embracings and hand-shakings. He had no
need to hurry, for it was too late to catch a
train to London in time to reach the Bank before
it closed for the day, and he preferred to
let the ship clear before he claimed the box of
bonds from the purser.

Suddenly he heard his name spoken inquiringly
at his elbow, and wheeling smartly round
he found himself looking into the harassed eyes
of a well-dressed man whom he had seen, a few
minutes before, pass on board from the
landing-stage. He had specially noticed him
from a limp which impeded his progress across
the crowded gangway.

"Yes, my name is Sherman, but I haven't
the pleasure of knowing yours," said the Senator
shortly. There was a diffident air about
this tired-looking individual—a something
that might be shyness or might be guile—that
put him on his guard. Could it be that one
of the "confidence-men," about whom he had
just spoken so lightly, was going to practise
on him ere even the securities were out of the
purser's custody? He wondered what tale
would be unfolded for his entrapment.

"I am the Duke of Beaumanoir," the
stranger replied, after a nervous glance round.
"I don't suppose you ever heard of me. There
wouldn't have been time for a letter from your
people to reach you from this side before you
sailed."

"You know my wife and daughter?" the
Senator asked, sharply. The "tale" was developing
on the grand scale, he told himself.

"I have the privilege of knowing Mrs. and
Miss Sherman," replied the Duke, flushing
under the keen scrutiny to which he was being
subjected. "I have also the honor of being
their host. They are staying, together with
their friends the Sadgroves, at my place in
Hertfordshire. I—I came down to meet you
in the hope of inducing you to join them
there."

"Very good of you. May I ask how you
came to make their acquaintance?" asked the
Senator, in an arid tone.

"I traveled in the same ship with them from
New York, and General Sadgrove, with whom
they stayed on arrival, happened to be the uncle
of my friend and secretary, Alec Forsyth,"
Beaumanoir made answer.

An amused twinkle flashed into the Senator's
clear eyes. He was quite certain now that
the man was an impostor with designs on the
three millions. The only spice of truth in the
fellow's story, he told himself, probably was
that he had sailed in the *St. Paul*, which would
have given him the opportunity of gathering
from his wife or Leonie the particulars he was
now working on. The Senator had no doubt
that if he accompanied this rather poor specimen
of a criminal decoy an attempt would be
made to relieve him of the bonds—possibly
to murder him. It was all a little too thin—especially
the dangling of an exalted title as a
bait to catch an American. This part of the
scheme really annoyed him, as casting on a
foible of his fellow-countrymen a reflection
which he felt to be not wholly undeserved. The
Senator became dangerous.

"Very well, your Grace; if my family is
under your roof, it is the right place for me,"
he said more affably. "I accept your invitation
in the spirit in which it is given. I have
a matter of three million sterling in securities
to get from the bullion-room, and then I'm
your man. Kindly wait here."

A grim smile played round the Senator's
firm lips when, after going through the needful
formalities with the purser, he quitted the
steamer's stronghold, carrying the leather
despatch-box. He would lead the rascal on,
making his mouth water, gently titillate his
expectations, and then, having got him fairly
on the hooks, hand him over to the police. Delighted
with the prospect of thwarting a rogue,
he sought his state-room to collect his personal
baggage and have it conveyed ashore. The
first thing that met his eye on entering the
state-room was a letter in his wife's handwriting
that had just been delivered.

It bore date of the previous day, and informed
him that the writer and Leonie were
staying as the guests of the Duke of Beaumanoir
at his country seat, Prior's Tarrant. Mrs.
Sherman went on to explain the circumstances,
so far as she was aware of them, of the invitation,
and she wound up with the hope that the
Senator would join them immediately on landing.
The Duke, who was the embodiment of
affability, had cordially expressed that wish,
she wrote; without, however, mentioning the
Duke's intention of going to Liverpool to meet
the *Campania*.

Senator Sherman read the letter twice, assured
himself of the authenticity of the handwriting,
examined the postmark, and—made
a wry face. It looked as if he had been too
hasty in jumping to a conclusion about the
young man waiting for him on the hurricane-deck,
and he began to regret the curt demeanor
he had assumed. He was not quite convinced,
however, owing to the absence of any allusion
to the Duke meeting him—in itself an extraordinary
proceeding. Good republican as he
was, the Senator fully appreciated the cleavage
of English class distinctions, and he was aware
that great nobles do not, as a rule, wait at seaport
towns to welcome perfect strangers. It
was possible that the depressed individual on
deck might, after all, be a criminal who had
discovered Mrs. Sherman's visit to the Duke
of Beaumanoir and was turning his knowledge
to evil account. Still, though caution was
called for, his wife's letter invested the man's
story with a credibility which it had wholly
lacked, and when he rejoined him the Senator's
manner was altered accordingly. The Duke
having telegraphed for the carriage to meet
them at Tarrant Road, they took a cab together
to Lime Street station, and were fortunate
enough to find a train on the point of starting.
It was a corridor express, made up entirely of
vestibule cars, and the fact caused the Duke
an annoyance which partially revived the Senator's
suspicions.

"I don't like this," Beaumanoir said, glancing
with what looked very like dismay up and
down the well-filled car as they took their seats.
"I should have preferred an ordinary first-class
compartment that we could have had reserved."

"Ah! I suppose a duke is bound to be a bit
exclusive," said the Senator, guardedly.

Beaumanoir, who a month before had regarded
a ride in a Bowery street-car as an unattainable
luxury, was betrayed into disclaiming
any such snobbery.

"It isn't that——" he was beginning hotly,
when he pulled up short and feebly subsided,
without explaining why he should have desired
a *tête-à-tête* journey.

With the starting of the train a sustained
and confidential conversation became impracticable,
nor did either of the fellow travelers
seem inclined for one; but as they sped southward
the Senator found plenty of food for reflection
in his companion's behavior. To the
experienced American eye the outline of a pistol
was plainly apparent in the breast-pocket
of the Duke, whose fingers never strayed far
from that receptacle—an attitude which was
always more distinctly marked during the infrequent
stoppages. Except when it was distracted
into a swift and nervous glance round
by a movement of one of the other passengers,
the Duke's gaze was always focused on the
precious box which the Senator carried on his
lap.

"Either he means to rob me himself, or he
is scared lest someone else will," was the Senator's
conclusion.

But the journey came to an end without
either of these consummations being arrived at
or even attempted, and the sight of the coroneted
carriage and the ducal liveries at Tarrant
Road station removed the Senator's last lingering
doubt as to the Duke's identity. And,
twenty minutes later, when, still hugging his
despatch-box, he found his wife and daughter
waiting to welcome him under the portico at
Prior's Tarrant, he was ready to laugh at himself;
and what the Senator was ready to do
he usually did promptly—as now.

"Ah, Jem!" he cried, as General Sadgrove
came forward to greet him. "You'll never believe
what an ass I've been making of myself.
Something in the British soil, I guess. It's
only this minute that I've been able to clear
my silly brain of a lurking suspicion that his
Grace's kindness in coming to meet me covered
a design on this little box. Took him for a sort
of bunco-steerer."

The General passed over the remark as a
careless jest without pursuing it, but shook
hands with his old friend warmly. The veteran
was looking careworn and aged, the Senator
thought, and he wondered, too, at the
queer searching glance which the General cast
upon their mutual host as the latter limped
from the brougham into the hall. The Duke
was engaged in making light of the thanks and
reproaches showered upon him for going to
Liverpool, wherefrom the Senator guessed
that that singular proceeding had been unknown
beforehand to the house-party.

They all went into the tapestry-room, where
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, now happily recovered
from her headache of three days ago,
was chatting to Sybil Hanbury and Alec Forsyth.
The necessary introductions were effected
by Beaumanoir, whose spirits had wonderfully
revived with his entry into the house—to
such an extent, indeed, that Leonie put
it down to a few hours in the company of her
breezy father, little thinking that they had
traveled two hundred miles together without
exchanging half as many words. Yet if there
was nothing forced about the Duke's sudden
gaiety it certainly suggested unnatural excitement,
and everyone present was impressed by
his changed demeanor. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton
was so affected by it that in narrowly
observing her host she failed to notice that for
some minutes after the introduction she herself
was the object of observation, not to say a
pretty sharp scrutiny, on the part of Senator
Sherman.

"Say, your Grace," exclaimed the Senator,
recovering from his abstraction and turning
with some abruptness to the Duke, "I can't
enjoy your hospitality with a whole heart till
I've got this treasure under lock and key.
Have you got any place where I can deposit
the box with tolerable confidence of finding it
when I want to take it to the Bank of England
to-morrow? It's a just retribution, I
guess, to have to make you its custodian after
suspecting you of wanting to lift it."

Beaumanoir, it seemed, was quite equal to
the occasion.

"I can guarantee the impregnability of the
fire-proof safe in my muniment room," he replied
with alacrity. "If you will come with
me, we will lock it up at once."

Sturdily disregarding the badinage of his
wife and Leonie for thinking robbery possible
at Prior's Tarrant, the Senator followed the
Duke, and was conducted by him along many
corridors to a stone-floored chamber lined with
shelves full of dusty archives, and furnished
only with a carved oak table and a few worm-eaten
chairs. But, what was more to the purpose,
a brand-new safe, resplendent in green
and gold, the very latest patent of the most
eminent manufacturers, occupied an imposing
position at the far end. Producing a key, the
Duke unlocked the safe, with no result till a
touch on a hidden spring caused the heavy steel
door to roll slowly outwards. The interior was
nearly filled with parchment-bound volumes
exactly like those on the shelves, but there was
plenty of room for the box.

The Senator promptly placed his precious
charge in the vacant space, and heaved a sigh
of relief.

"It ought to be all right there," he said.

"It ought to be," Beaumanoir echoed, as he
set the mechanism in motion. And when the
heavy door had slid noiselessly back into position,
he turned the key and pocketed it with an
air of achievement. "Come, Mr. Sherman," he
said lightly, "let us go and rejoin the ladies.
Now that we have got that safely housed we
shall both feel much—er—more comfortable,
shan't we?"




CHAPTER XIX—*In the Crypt*
============================


Late on the evening of Senator Sherman's
arrival at Prior's Tarrant he was alone with
General Sadgrove in the smoking-room, the
Duke of Beaumanoir and Forsyth having
avowedly gone up to bed. Under the influence
of the genial American, and with the Duke
himself in a more expansive mood, dinner and
the subsequent reunion in the tapestry-room
had been prolonged later than recently, and
the chiming clock on the mantelpiece tinkled
out the hour of midnight as the Senator put
the question:

"Who the dickens is that Talmage Eglinton
woman, Jem?"

The General started, but affected a carelessness
which he was far from feeling in the trite
reply that "Goodness only knew." He proceeded,
however, to temper the crudity of the
remark with the information that the lady in
question was staying in London for the season,
professed to hail from Chicago, and was reputed
wealthy.

"She is hardly the type of American one
expects to meet in such a house as this—or
wants to meet anywhere," said the Senator.
"And," he added, poising the match with which
he was about to light another of his own green
Havanas, "she is the cause of prejudice in
a usually unbiased mind. She has the misfortune
to be fashioned in the likeness of one Cora
Lestrade, a person of note in my country,
whom I once saw in my capacity of Visiting
Prison Commissioner. That was three years
ago, but of course it can't be the same woman."

"It would be a curious coincidence," was all
the General would admit. "She was taken up
by Lord and Lady Roseville, impecunious folk
who would take up anyone for value received.
What was this Cora Lestrade's particular line
of business?"

The Senator reflected for a moment.

"I don't think she specialized herself," he
said. "Her forte was organization, and I heard
that at the time she was taken she bossed a
complete outfit, comprising forgers, confidence-men,
train-robbers, and high-grade
criminals of all sorts, who operated over the
entire universe. They used to regard her as a
queen. It was hinted at her trial that they
were all fascinated by the spell of her charms,
though she would never favor any of the crew
in that way. Probably that was the secret of
her power over them."

"You don't happen to know when her sentence
expired?" the General asked, after a
pause.

"It didn't expire; she broke jail—an easy
matter for one as well served as she was by a
clever crowd with unlimited financial resources."

The two old cronies relapsed into a thoughtful
silence, neither of them showing a disposition
to retire for the night, though the intense
stillness prevailing in the great house implied
that everyone else was asleep. Yet it was not
so, for Alec Forsyth was at that moment uncommonly
busy before the looking-glass in his
bedroom. On the toilet-table there lay open a
theatrical "make-up" box, from which he was
putting the finishing touches to a very creditable
transformation of himself into a semblance
of the Duke. His deft usage of the
various pigments revealed him as no tyro at the
task, for which, indeed, his proficiency as an
amateur actor had inspired the idea.

"That will do, I think," he said to himself
after a final survey. "It is a good thing that
the scene is to be played without limelight effects;
but it is my voice that will give me away
if anything does."

He rose and crossed the room once or twice,
copying Beaumanoir's slight limp to the life.
Then, having consulted his watch, he took
from his pocket-book a letter, addressed to
the man he was about to personate, and refreshed
his memory.

"I congratulate you on this return to your
senses," the writer began. "My agents inform
me that the gentleman in whom we are interested
is expected to stay at Prior's Tarrant as
your guest on arrival, being due on Tuesday.
On Tuesday night you will leave unfastened
the door leading into the crypt from the Dutch
garden, so that I and my assistants may obtain
access secretly. You will come down into the
crypt an hour after midnight, when I will hand
you the documents for substitution. Do not
fail to make your arrangements so that the exchange
may be effected without a hitch, and
as rapidly as possible. As host you should
have no difficulty in inspiring the necessary
confidence to put the business through, and
you will then be troubled no further by us.—C.
Z."

"Poor old Beau! He's played up as well as
if we had told him all about our plan," Forsyth
muttered as he replaced the letter and took another
look at himself in the glass. "I trust
they won't call me 'your Grace,' and make
me laugh."

But it was in no laughing mood that he
switched off the electric light, listened at the
door for fully a minute, and then softly opened
it. His room, as it had been in the London
house, was next to that of the Duke, and, satisfied
that there was no one in the corridor, he
slid out softly and shut the door behind him.
A few natural steps having brought him opposite
the Duke's room, he fell at once into
Beaumanoir's limp, and so continued his way
to the head of a secondary staircase that led
down to the service rooms on the ground floor.

At the foot of the stairs, never forgetting
his limp, he traversed several passages in which
at long intervals only had a light been left
burning, and at length he came to a massive
oak door. Opening this, he found himself at
the top of a flight of straight stone steps, running
down into the blackness of the great subterranean
chamber, which had been used as a
crypt in the old monastic days. The shutting
of the door cut off the last ray of light, and
there being no rails to the steps he struck a
wax match in order to make the descent in
safety. But the feeble flame had hardly flickered
out when it was rendered useless by a
dazzling beam of white effulgence that suddenly
sprang into being and shone upon him
from below.

"Hang it all, I didn't allow for this!" he
thought uneasily. "They have brought one of
those wretched portable electric lamps, and I
doubt if the disguise will stand. However,
here goes."

Nerving himself for the ordeal, he went
slowly down the steps, and so limped across the
stone floor towards a spot in the very center of
the crypt where five figures were grouped under
the groined roof. He had only time to observe
that one figure—that of an old man with snow-white
beard and puffed, purple cheeks—stood
slightly in advance of the rest, when on his
near approach an order was given in a queer,
parrot-like squeak to switch out the lamp. The
crypt was windowless, but it was conceivable
that a light in the interior might be seen from
outside under the door leading into the gardens.
Hence, doubtless, the precaution.

"You have made all preparations above,
Duke?" was queried in the same piping voice.

"The bonds are in my own safe, and I obtained
the key of the Senator's despatch-box
by a trick—picked his pocket, in fact—after
dinner," Forsyth replied, in a perfect imitation
of Beaumanoir's tone. He was beginning
to feel more confident in being able to sustain
his part; he would not, he thought, have lived
to reach this parley if his disguise had been
penetrated.

"Then," the unseen spokesman proceeded,
"all you have to do is to take this bundle of
papers and place them in the box, extracting
the originals, and returning here at once with
them. It will then give me pleasure to absolve
you from further service."

Forsyth felt a large packet pressed into his
grasp, and he instantly turned with it to go
towards the steps, expecting that the lamp
would be switched on to guide him. This
proved to be the case, and he was glad that
those five scoundrels only had a back view of
him as he limped across the floor and laboriously
climbed the steps. Nor when he had
passed through the door out of their sight was
there any quickening of his halting gait to
show that he was exulting in that he had so far
successfully risked his life for his friend. And
it was well that he kept up his part, for as he
crossed under the well of the staircase to the
servants' bedrooms he caught a glimpse of
Rosa, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's French maid,
watching him over the banisters.

Mounting to his own room he locked the
bundle of papers he had received away in one
of his trunks, from which he first took a packet
of similar dimensions, formidably sealed.
Without wasting a moment he placed this
packet under his arm, and, falling once more
into Beaumanoir's limp, retraced his steps to
the crypt, where, as soon as he had passed
through the door, a beam from the portable
lamp shed a glare on his descent to the level of
the floor. The five figures, with the white-bearded
old man in advance, awaited him as
before.

As Forsyth approached he hoped every moment
to hear those parrot-like tones order the
light to be cut off, but this time no such welcome sound fell upon his ears. He had to
advance quite close with the full radiance of
the lamp shining on him. The light, he soon
perceived, had been retained for the purpose of
examining the packet, which Ziegler snatched
from him with impatient vehemence; and suddenly
Forsyth was confronted with a situation
not wholly unforeseen, but which he had hoped
to avoid in the haste of the gang to make off
with their plunder. Not content with a scrutiny
of the carefully taped and sealed dummy
package, Ziegler was about to undo the fastenings
and look at the contents, which consisted
of nothing more valuable than tissue paper.

It seemed an age while the lithe white fingers
broke the seals and disarranged the tape, and
Forsyth steadied himself for the inevitable discovery.
He was not prepared to lose his life
at the hands of this murderous crew without a
fight for it, five to one though they were; and
it occurred to him that at the first sign of
violence his best plan would be to smash the
electric lamp with a well-directed kick, and
then try and elude them in the dark. Ziegler's
face was in shadow, the miscreant holding the
lamp being behind him; but Forsyth saw at
last, by the swift upward jerk of the arch-robber's head, that the worthlessness of the bundle
was known to him. It was probable, too, from
the prolonged silent stare with which he gazed
and gazed at the Duke's counterfeit, that the
latter's identity was no longer a secret.

With quite a natural movement Forsyth
edged a little nearer to the man with the lamp,
and the movement seemed to break the spell
which held Ziegler speechless. The chief
turned abruptly to his followers.

"I must have a word with this gentleman—with
the Duke—alone," he squeaked. "Go out
into the garden and await close outside—within
call. Here, I will keep the lamp." Forsyth
noticed that the well-shaped hand with which
he grasped the contrivance was shaking violently—so
violently, that the ray with which
he guided his four subordinates through the
groined arches to the door wavered like a will-o'-the-wisp.
He waited till the last one had
filed out before he turned again to the man
who had baffled him.

"Well, Mr. Forsyth?" he piped, and the
high-pitched note quivered and trembled as the
lamp-ray had done.

"Well, sir?" Forsyth repeated, in blank
amazement at the sparing of his life, for unless
some hidden treachery beyond his fathoming
was afoot, he could not doubt that it was
spared. He was more than a physical match
for the aged evil-doer in front of him, and before
the others could be recalled he could make
good his retreat into the house by the way he
had come. The quiet acceptance of defeat by
the bloodthirsty old schemer was a puzzle beyond
solution, if it was not a veil for some
further villainy.

"You have beaten me, Mr. Forsyth—you
and General Sadgrove," Ziegler went on. "I
don't suppose it's of any use my offering you
a bribe to bring me back the package you have
obtained so smartly? I would make it a very
large one."

"Not the slightest use," Forsyth answered,
almost laughing, yet more than ever puzzled
by the *naïveté* of the question. "I have been
at considerable pains to deprive you of your
bogus bonds, and it is hardly likely, Mr. Ziegler,
that I am going to restore your power
over the Duke of Beaumanoir. He is a brave
man, and doesn't fear death. You can't hurt
him that way; but with these forgeries in your
possession you might make some sort of a story
good against him. Without them, anything
you could say would be an idle tale."

"That is not the point, believe me, Mr. Forsyth,"
the shrill voice quavered almost pleadingly.
"The contents of that package took
three of my most skilled colleagues months to
prepare. They are proud of their work—love
those forged bonds as if they were their children.
To their pride in their work I should
owe my life, if you would give them back to
me."

Forsyth could hardly believe his ears. Could
this tremulous dotard be the redoubtable master
of crime whom he and his uncle had been
fighting throughout the last crowded week?
"I really don't see how your not particularly
valuable life can depend on your possession of
a lot of bogus bonds," he said, with genuine
curiosity. The appeal to his pity filled him
with vague uneasiness, the alleged reason for
it being so utterly absurd. Yet Ziegler was
ready with an explanation, more or less plausible.

"My associates will kill me for being duped
out of their handiwork," he answered, glancing
fearfully to the garden entrance. "They would
perhaps pardon the miscarriage of the main
scheme, but to have parted with material which
might yet have been turned to account will seal
my doom—that, and having allowed you to
survive your triumph over us."

Forsyth saw now—or thought he saw—why
the murderous crew had been ordered off in
ignorance of the miscarriage. It was to enable
Ziegler to make this desperate appeal for the
restitution of the bogus bonds, so that he might
"save his face" with his comrades. It would
be ample excuse in their eyes—flatter their
vanity, as their tottering chief had hinted—if
he had himself been deceived by the fabricated
securities. But they had seen him examine the
parcel; they would know that he had made the
discovery on the spot, and yet had not decreed
instant death to their successful opponent. One
flaw in this chain of reasoning Forsyth, himself
no casuist, overlooked. It did not occur to him
that the old practitioner with the white beard
and the squeaky voice could have put himself
right with his companions if he had hounded
them on to him the moment he knew he was
fingering tissue-paper and not United States
Treasury bonds, good, bad, or indifferent.

"Well, Mr. Clinton Ziegler," said Forsyth,
eager now to have done with the matter in the
only possible way, "your appeal is dismissed
with costs—on the higher scale. What does it
matter to me what happens to you? If you
had had your way you would have earned a
legal hanging four times in the last week. If
your friends save the common hangman the
trouble, so much the better for all concerned,
especially as they would thereby get themselves
hanged also."

"Nothing will move you?"

"Absolutely nothing; and now I'll trouble
you to clear off the premises if you and your
gentlemen outside don't want to be treated as
ordinary burglars."

"What if I call them back and have you
strangled?"

With the way of escape open behind him
Forsyth laughed at the futile threat, and to
the group outside in the Dutch garden it must
have sounded like a friendly laugh of mutual
satisfaction and farewell, for he gently pushed
the old man before him to the garden door and
shut it on him. Then, having carefully shot
the heavy bolts, he groped his way back to the
stone steps leading up into the house, triumphant,
yet not wholly convinced. The ignominious
collapse of Mr. Clinton Ziegler was
almost too good to be true, and he was painfully
conscious that such an astute antagonist
was not likely to have thrown all his cards on
to the table.

The fact, however, remained that the
schemers had been deprived of their spurious
bonds, without which their carefully planned
design to obtain possession of the genuine ones
fell to the ground.

"And their blood-feud against the poor chap
will surely cease, now that there is no crime,
past or contemplated, for which he can denounce
them," Forsyth comforted himself as
he stepped from the door at the head of the
stone stairs and hastened along the dimly lit
corridor, limping no longer. His destination
was the smoking-room, where he guessed that
the General would be eagerly awaiting news.




CHAPTER XX—*In the Muniment Room*
===================================


While Alec Forsyth was engaged in showing
Ziegler out of the crypt, the Duke of
Beaumanoir, in happy ignorance of the perilous
effort his friend was making for him, sat
in the dark muniment room, still as a cat, with
his eyes on the door. He had drawn one of
the oak chairs close to the safe in which Senator
Sherman's genuine bonds reposed. He
had established himself on guard, in case,
trickery having failed, violent methods should
be adopted at the last moment to obtain the
huge plunder.

He thought it improbable that, with General
Sadgrove in the house and Azimoolah
somewhere loose around it, any of the gang
would break in unseen, still less that they
would reach the muniment room. He sincerely
hoped that the vigilance of those trained watch-dogs
would prevail, for, though he was prepared
to atone for his folly by defending the
safe at the cost of his life, if need be, he did
not see how that could be done without opening
up the scandal he had gone through so
much to avoid. He had bought the safe, had
met the Senator at Liverpool, and now, unknown
to anyone, was keeping his lonely vigil
in the firm determination that, at all hazards,
the bonds should reach the Bank of England
in safety; but there was a dread in his heart
lest the tell-tale emergency he was providing
against should arise.

For here it becomes necessary to say that the
letter sent to Ziegler in London five days before,
and purporting to convey the Duke's submission
and request for instructions, which
were called for by Alec Forsyth, was not written
by the Duke at all, or even with his cognizance.
It had been the joint production of
General Sadgrove and Forsyth, with an eye
to immediate immunity for the Duke from
further murderous attacks, and to the enactment
of some such dangerous comedy as had
just been played in the crypt. Though when
that deceptive missive was penned, its authors
expected, in varying degrees, as will presently
be seen, tragedy rather than comedy. And he
who by right of youth and friendship necessarily
took the greater risk was the one who,
not being fully informed by his uncle, had
most cause for apprehension from the masquerade.

But Beaumanoir, sitting in the dark with
his Smith and Wesson at full cock amid the
archives of the house he was concerned to preserve
stainless, was aware of none of these tortuous
dealings. Had his zeal allowed him to
indulge in the luxury of a light, he might have
whiled away the time by perusing some of the
musty chronicles around him, and have so
drawn comfort from the knowledge that if his
misdeed was published with the usual trimmings
in every paper in the kingdom, he would
still compare favorably with some of his race
who had gone before. So far he had never
stolen poor men's land under the protection of
the Commons Enclosure Act, or appropriated
tenants' improvements to his own enrichment.

True, it was a dirty trick he had put his
hand to—a dirty trick in dirty company—and
he hated himself for it to the full. But he had
been a denizen of another world when Ziegler's
emissary had annexed him, body and soul, as
plain Charles Hanbury, in the Bowery saloon.
He remembered that world now with a horror
and a loathing greater, if possible, than when
he had endured it—the sordid life in the five-dollar
boarding-house, the lunch of tough sandwiches
of Texas beef which had bulged his
pockets on the way to his duties in the big dry
goods store, the insolence of his Irish-American
and German fellow-workers because of his
English speech. And the haughty salesladies
who had drawn their skirts from him as they
squeezed past the tame detective at the time-keeper's
box—sitting there in the dark muniment
room, even his present trouble could not
check a smile at thinking what those damsels
would have done if told that he had been about
to become a duke within the month.

Yes, it had been a dirty trick that he had
undertaken to escape all this, but somehow
the thing had not seemed so bad when he was
unacquainted with the persons interested.
Just as old-time smugglers persuaded themselves
that there was no dishonesty in defrauding
the state, so in the same light he had regarded
the spoliation of a big corporation like
the Bank of England or the United States
Treasury, whichever would have been the ultimate
loser when the lawyers had settled the
matter. He would never have gone into the
business, even in his despairing exile, if he had
not looked upon it as a breach of honesty
which no single individual would be an appreciable
loser. He made no excuses for himself
on this score, but merely analyzed his state of
mind philosophically, by no means salving his
conscience because he had dropped the affair
the moment individualities had become involved,
or laying claim to any merit for a
repentance sustained at such imminent peril.

"Whatever is the upshot of it all I can never
be too thankful that I came over in the same
ship with the Shermans," he muttered, "and
for being brought up with a round turn by
the knowledge that the one to bear the brunt
of my iniquity would have been Leonie's
father. Why, the excellent Senator might
have been suspected of having stolen the bonds
himself. Funny that that view didn't occur to
me till I knew the people."

The same gratitude had filled his simple soul
twenty times during the last week, even when
his enemies had pressed him most sorely; but
it recurred with redoubled force now that he
was within sight of the end. By noon on the
morrow the Senator would have safely housed
the securities at the Bank, and then his own
responsibility would cease. Ziegler could kill
him then, and welcome, if he still thought it
worth while, though the chief of the organization
was not, he imagined, the sort of person
to waste time and energy on a purely sentimental
revenge. If Ziegler carried on the
feud after the bonds were safe from him it
would be, as before, to secure silence about the
attempt, and he could fling no stigma on the
family name without divulging details that
would incriminate his gang. And the family
name was all that mattered.

Beaumanoir had just rounded off his forecast
in this satisfactory manner when he was
suddenly startled back into the present by a
faint sound far down the corridor on which
the muniment room abutted. He knew perfectly
well what the sound was—the "scroop"
of the spring-driven swivel-roller that automatically
closed a baize door shutting off the
servants' premises. He had half risen from
his chair when another sound—the tinkle of a
pebble cast against the window from outside—distracted
his attention; but disregarding it in
favor of the more pressing emergency, he
made haste towards the door of the room.

The room was at the extreme end of the
corridor, looking along it lengthwise, and it
was not therefore necessary for the Duke to
disclose himself at the door, which he had purposely
left partially open, in order to reconnoiter.
Standing in the darkness a few feet
from the door, he was able to see who was
coming, and the sight sent a thrill of despair
to his heart. All his pleasant anticipations of
oblivion for his transgression were rudely shattered,
for the old man who, white-bearded and
with cat-like tread, came along the passage was
Ziegler himself. Another figure was dimly
discerned close behind, but of that the Duke
took no heed. His eyes were riveted on the
one in front—on the evil man who had the
power to change his destiny. There was something
curiously fantastic, something unreal, in
the aged miscreant gliding towards him,
framed in the gaping darkness of the doorway.

The opening into a branch passage, leading
to another part of the mansion, lay between
Ziegler and the muniment room, and there was
a bare chance that he might turn in that direction.
In reality he had to advance but a few
steps before the point could be settled, but it
seemed a whole æon to the Duke, and, to add
to the tension of his nerves, another pebble
struck the window. All hope of being able to
preserve his secret had fled now, and Beaumanoir
strove to concentrate his reeling brain on
how best to summon assistance and ward off
an attack on the safe. If only he knew who
that was throwing up stones from outside—whether
friend or foe—he could decide
whether to run to the window and open it or
leave it alone. He dared not act in ignorance,
possibly to admit a third adversary. The
window was ten feet from the ground, but the
wall was covered with gnarled ivy stems up
which an active man could readily climb.

While he was hesitating the matter was arranged
for him. There was no time to reach
the window, for Ziegler passed the branch
corridor without as much as looking at it, and
was coming straight on to the muniment room.
Beaumanoir raised his revolver, but lowered it
again, incapable of shooting a fellow-creature
in cold blood, and also fascinated by a horrible
curiosity to learn the intruder's intention. He
could not as yet be absolutely certain that Ziegler
knew that the bonds were in the safe. He
would wait till it was attacked before he made
a counter-move.

In this mind he slipped behind a huge oak
press laden with expired leases, and had hardly
ensconced himself when Ziegler entered the
room, followed, to Beaumanoir's surprise, by
a woman, whom he did not recognize, in the
faint light diffused from the corridor, as Rosa,
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's French maid. The
shadowy figures—that of the frail old man
and of the trim soubrette—stood motionless
and silent just within the doorway, evidently
mastering the landmarks of the room. Then,
at a whisper from Ziegler, the maid glided
with a nod of comprehension to the nearest
window, and was busy with the hasp when the
rattle of still another pebble on the glass accelerated
her movements. She swung the casement
outwards, and in a muffled voice called
down:

"'Tis ze right room. You are to come oop."

A rustling noise, as of foliage shaken, rising
from below warned the Duke that if he waited
longer he might be beset by a horde of assailants.
It spurred him to instant action. Set in
the wall close to his place of concealment was
the switch of the electric light, and stretching
out his left hand he turned it on, at the same
time stepping forward and covering Ziegler
with his pistol. The old man blinked at him in
the sudden glow, and then, quietly turning,
shut the door. His object must have been to
prevent his voice penetrating into the house,
for he croaked out to the Frenchwoman by the
window the petulant order:

"Tell Benzon to hurry."

The maid, relaxing the venomous glare with
which she was regarding Beaumanoir, put out
her head and obeyed. A renewal of the rustling
and the sound of heavy breathing told her
that her request had been heard, and drew a
harsh laugh from Ziegler. Fixing the Duke
with a cruel gaze, he remarked calmly, in his
thin falsetto:

"The champion safe-cracksman of America
will be here in a moment. Your Grace will
have the opportunity of seeing a very pretty
piece of work if you care to remain till I have
exchanged this package for the one inside.
You are not going to be fool enough to use
that pistol and give yourself away at this stage,
and if you were, my friend Benzon would be
equal to the occasion." And holding up the
parcel of tissue paper which he had received
from Forsyth in the crypt, he shook it mockingly
at the Duke.

But in so doing he reckoned literally without
his host. With a spring that wrenched his
lame foot painfully Beaumanoir leaped upon
him, and, crushing the white beard to a throat
that somehow seemed less scraggy than might
have been expected, dragged him to the door
and contrived to get it open with his left hand.
So struggling, the pair stumbled into the corridor,
and Beaumanoir was about to shout
lustily for help, when his voice dwindled into
a panting:

"Thank God you've come! I've got this
one, but there is a woman in there, and—and
others are coming in through the window."

For in the corridor, hurrying towards him,
were General Sadgrove, Senator Sherman, and
Alec Forsyth, each with revolvers in their
hands, while Sybil Hanbury brought up the
rear, looking as if she resented that position.
In the presence of this formidable phalanx
Beaumanoir felt his captive wilt in his grasp,
and indeed he himself was swept back by it, still
holding on, into the muniment room, where
the woman Rosa was in the act of retreating
from the window. The General took command
quite naturally, bidding Forsyth guard
the door, while he himself advanced to the
window, very stern and upright, and muttering
as he went:

"What can Azimoolah have been about? He
must be past his work."

But the words were hardly spoken when the
subject of his censure leaped in through the
window, drawing his breath quickly, but not
otherwise inconvenienced by a limp bundle of
humanity which he carried over his shoulder,
and now proceeded to dump like a sack on the
floor. After securing the window, the Pathan
turned and gravely saluted the General.

"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 sex, 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 dashing 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 identity
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 embarrassment 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 assume;
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
pronounced 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 associates 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 assent
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, flushing
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 assistance.
"It was only a passing 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 pronounced,"
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. "If I have
come out of the ordeal of the last few days
unscathed, and with the honor of my house
untarnished, it is in great part due to Alec's
loyalty to a poor weak coward. Had I done
my duty I should have gone to the police the
moment Lestrade unfolded her plot, instead of
embarking on a course of secrecy and moral
cowardice which kept alive the danger to Senator
Sherman and his charge. I did not see
it at the time, but the gang would assuredly
have matured some other plan for trying for
the plunder, using some other wretched tool,
perhaps, if they hadn't been gammoned into
believing that I had caved in. It was gross
moral cowardice of me to give them the
chance."

The torrent of words flowed so quickly that
neither of his hearers was able to check it, and
it was so evidently the outcome of deep emotion
that it was equally impossible to ignore it.
The Senator, with a twinkle in his shrewd gray
eyes, laid a warning hand on the General's
shoulder and took it upon himself to answer—with
a question which had the instant effect
of soothing Beaumanoir, for it implied a concession
of the position he desired to take up.

"What should you have done in the same circumstances,
but with this difference—that you
had landed in England a simple commoner instead
of the representative of an ancient and
noble family?" the Senator inquired.

"Informed the authorities, of course," the
Duke replied without hesitation.

"Good! Then assuming for the sake of argument
your charge against yourself to be
correct, you incurred a mortal peril voluntarily,
not from personal considerations affecting
yourself, but for fear of involving other people—most
of them dead, by the way—in disgrace.
I don't see how you can make moral cowardice
out of that."

"*I* do," said Beaumanoir, bluntly.

"But," proceeded the Senator, with bland
insistence, "you might have avoided the peril
to your own life and the besmirching of the
family name by the simple expedient of carrying
out the behests of Ziegler and Company.
You had every facility for pulling the job off
without a breath of suspicion ever touching
you."

The diplomatic opening, the psychological
moment, for which poor, blundering Beaumanoir
had been hoping, had arrived. It would
be uncharitable to suggest that it was proffered
to him, as a card is "forced," by an American
gentleman with a taste for strawberry leaves;
but be it as it may, Beaumanoir was not too
dull to seize his chance.

"I might have done that—I was tempted
to," he blurted out. "In fact, I believe I
should have done it if—if I hadn't come over
in the same ship with your—with Mrs. and
Miss Sherman."

The General, sitting up stiffly with his chin
on the knob of his malacca cane, turned his
head sharply to hear his old friend's judgment
on this amazing confession. It was pronounced
with Trans-Atlantic briskness.

"Then, sir, by token of that frankness, your
Grace is a straight man," the Senator said,
decidedly, and with an air that invested his
words with greater weight than was perhaps
due to their moral perspective. "And," he
added in a lighter vein, "somehow, the honor
of your house seems to have got inextricably
mixed with that of mine."

"That's exactly the way I hoped you'd look
at it," responded the Duke, earnestly. "I
think you take my meaning. May I speak to
Leonie?"

"It's what I should do in your place," was
the Senator's reply—a reply which had the
effect of relaxing General Sadgrove's ramrod-like
attitude, and of causing that grim
man-hunter to subside into his corner, with a
not unkindly chuckle.

----

On a winter afternoon, six months afterwards,
Alec Forsyth entered the firelit dining-room
of the Prior's Tarrant dower-house,
which, as agent of the ducal estates, he had
occupied since his marriage in September.
The Duke and Duchess were away in Egypt
on their honeymoon, and Forsyth had been
doing the honors of a big shoot in the home
coverts to a party of neighboring country gentlemen.
Sybil, who had been sitting in a low
chair by the hearth, rose and drew him to the
blaze, first relieving him of his gun.

"I won't light the lamp yet, dear," she said.
"I am forced to refer to the forbidden subject,
and you may want to blush."

"Forbidden subject?" said Forsyth, not for
the moment comprehending.

"Well, of course you haven't taken to forbidding
me anything yet; perhaps 'tacitly
avoided' would be a better phrase," the young
wife replied, perching herself on the arm of
her husband's chair. "I refer to that poor
creature whose one redeeming point was, as the
dear General put it on that eventful night, an
unselfish attachment to your noble self."

Forsyth had never been able to bring himself
to talk of the reason of his uncle's confidence
in his safety in the crypt that night, when
he had lent himself to a ruse which he had believed
meant death if he was recognized. He
had loathed "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" obtrusive
admiration long before he had entered
the lists against her, and it was from a knowledge
of his feelings that the General had
abstained from informing him beforehand of
the terrible Ziegler's identity, guessing that his
natural delicacy would have prevented him
from turning to account a sentimental weakness
so necessary to a successful issue, yet so
revolting to his modesty.

"Must you really refer to that wretched
woman?" he asked, as soon as he saw Sybil's
meaning.

"Only to tell you that she is dead," was the
reply. "It is in the *Standard*, which came
after you had left for the coverts. There, I
must light the lamp, after all, so that you may
read it yourself."

When the lamp shone out on the pleasant,
homelike room, this was the paragraph which
Forsyth read:

"On the arrival at Vienna of the through
mail train from Budapest on Thursday night
a fashionably dressed female was found alone
in a first-class compartment, stabbed to the
heart. The police inquiries have established
her identity as Cora Lestrade, a notorious
American ex-convict, who is believed to have
practised on the credulity of highly placed
personages in nearly every European capital.
At the time of her death she was traveling as
the Countess Poniatowski. A man who was in
another compartment of the train, dressed as
a Roman priest, but who is supposed to be one
of the band of professional criminals ruled by
this extraordinary woman, has been arrested in
connection with the occurrence."

Forsyth laid the paper down—Sybil told
him a month later that it was "with a sigh of
relief"—and said:

"She seemed to expect something of the sort
when she spoke about her death sentence and
showed such fear of the man Benzon. But
isn't Uncle Jem's intuition marvelous? He
has always held that the confederacy would
come to loggerheads and be no longer dangerous
after our victorious tussle with them."

"Yes, dear," Sybil assented, dutifully.
"Your uncle is a very remarkable man, with
very remarkable gifts." But she did not add, as
she might have added had she so chosen, that it
had required a woman's knowledge of woman's
heart to inspire in the General the insight
which had steered the Duke's storm-tossed
bark to harbor.

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