He went into the dining-room first--Rachel was still upstairs--and
picked up the _Arbiter_ again, looking at it with this new, terrible
interpretation of what he saw in it. There it was, as damning evidence
as ever a man was convicted upon, the map that no one but himself and
the two principals had seen, reproduced, roughly it is true, but still
unmistakably, from the paper that he alone in the house had had in his
possession. He turned hurriedly to the brief but guarded commentary
evolved at a venture by Pateley, but nevertheless very near the truth.
Pateley had played a bold game indeed, but he was playing it as
skilfully and watchfully as was his wont. Rendel threw down the paper
with a gesture of despair, then clenched his hands. If he had been a
woman he would have wept from sheer misery and agitation. But it was of
no good to clench his hands in despair; every moment that passed ought
to be used to find out the truth of what had happened, to clear himself
from that nightmare of suspicion.
He went hurriedly across the hall to his study with the instinct of one
who feels that on the spot itself there may be some suggestion to help
discovery. His writing-table was locked. He tried it, shook it. The key,
one of a peculiar make, hung always on his watch-chain. It was quite
impossible that, save by one who had the key, the table should have been
opened. What had he done yesterday? What had happened? And he sat down
and buried his face in his hands, concentrating his thoughts, trying to
recall every incident. The first time that Stamfordham had come in and
given him the rough notes and the map, he, Rendel, had been alone. There
was no doubt of that. After that who came in? Rachel? No, Rachel had not
been in the room with the papers except just at the end when Rendel was
sealing up the packet. Besides, if Rachel had had a hundred secrets in
her possession, they would have been as safe as in his own. Then he
caught himself up--in his own! after all, he was suspected--so the
impossible idea, apparently, could be entertained. Then the thought of
Sir William Gore came into his mind, but only to be instantly dismissed,
for since the papers were locked up in Rendel's writing-table they must
have been as inaccessible to Sir William as though they had been
separated from him by the walls of several apartments. And there was one
thing pretty certain: Gore, supposing him to be capable of using it, had
not got a duplicate key. "Even he," Rendel found himself thinking,
"would not do that." He heard Rachel's step swiftly descend the stairs
and go into the dining-room, then she came quickly across the hall to
the study.
"Oh, there you are, Frank," she said. "My father is----" then she broke
off as she saw that he was apparently buried in painful thought from
which he roused himself with a start as she spoke. "Is anything the
matter?"
"I will tell you," said Rendel, speaking with an effort.
"May I just ask you something first?" said Rachel hurriedly. "I want
some foolscap paper for my father. He is so restless this morning, so
impatient."
"It is in there--I told you, didn't I?" said Rendel, turning round and
pointing to one of the drawers at the side of his table.
"In that drawer!" said Rachel. "How very stupid of me! I didn't think of
that. I thought it was in the top part, and I could only get one sheet
out of there."
"The top? Wasn't the top locked?" said Rendel quickly, his whole thought
concentrated on the problem before him, and the part of the table must
have played in the drama that affected him so nearly.
"Yes, it was," said Rachel smiling, "and I couldn't open it, but there
was a little tiny corner of ruled paper sticking out, so I pulled it,
and out it came."
Rendel started and looked at her.
"It is sweetly simple," she added.
"Yes," said Rendel, with an energy that surprised her. "It would come
out quite easily, of course."
"Frank," she said, surprised, "what is it? You didn't mind my pulling it
out, did you?"
"Of course not; I don't mind your doing anything--only--I didn't realise
that things could be got out of my writing-table in that way."
"Well, you must be sure to poke them in further next time," Rachel said
lightly, shutting again the side drawer to which she had been directed,
and out of which she had got some sheets of foolscap. "I will be back
directly."
"Wait one moment," said Rendel. "Lord Stamfordham has been here."
"Lord Stamfordham! Since I went upstairs?" said Rachel, standing still
in sheer surprise.
"Yes," said Rendel. "Some secret information that--I knew about, has got
into the paper and is published this morning."
"Oh, Frank, how terrible!" said Rachel. "How did it happen? Do they
mind?"
"Yes, they mind," Rendel said.
"Was that what you saw in the paper," Rachel said, "that excited you so
much?"
"Yes," said Rendel.
"I don't wonder," Rachel said, standing with her hand on the handle of
the door, an attitude of all others least inviting of confidence. "Who
let it out?"
"That is what we want to know," said Rendel. "That is what Lord
Stamfordham came here to ask."
"Well, he doesn't think it was you, I suppose," said Rachel, smiling at
the absurd suggestion.
"It is quite possible," Rendel said, with a dim idea that he would lead
up to the statement, "that he might--that he does."
"What!" said Rachel, opening her eyes wide. "Frank! how absurd!"
"So it seems to me," said Rendel sombrely.
"Too ridiculous!--I'll come down in one moment," Rachel said
apologetically. "I don't want to keep my father waiting."
"Don't say anything to him," said Rendel, "of what I have just been
saying to you."
"Oh, no, I won't indeed," Rachel said. "He ought not to have anything to
excite him to-day," and she went rapidly upstairs.
Rendel, as the door closed behind her, felt for the moment like a man
who, shipwrecked alone, has seen a vessel draw near to him and then pass
gaily on its way without bringing him help. What was to be done? Again
he took hold of the situation and looked it in the face. But now a new
light had been thrown upon it by Rachel. If a paper could be taken out
in the way that she had shown him, it was possible that Gore might have
obtained the map in the same way, though it still seemed to Rendel
exceedingly unlikely that, granted he had done so, he would have been
able, given the condition he was in, to act upon it soon enough for it
to appear this morning. He hesitated a moment, then he made up his mind
to wait no longer. He took up the _Arbiter_ and went upstairs to Sir
William's room. He met Rachel coming out.
"Oh, thank you," she said, as she saw the paper. "I was just coming down
to fetch that. Father would like to see it."
"I thought I would bring it up," Rendel said. "I want to speak to him a
moment."
Rachel looked alarmed.
"Frank, you will be careful, won't you?" she said. "He really is not in
a fit state to discuss anything this morning."
"I am afraid what I have to say won't wait," Rendel said. "I think I had
better speak to him alone." And he quite unmistakably waited for Rachel
to go her way before he went into Sir William's room and shut the door.
Sir William, wrapped in his dressing-gown, was sitting up in an easy
chair. On the table near him were sheets of foolscap paper covered with
figures, and lying beside them a letter with a bold, splotchy writing,
which he quickly moved out of sight as Rendel came in, a letter that had
told him of certain successful financial operations undertaken in the
City on his behalf. His face was pale and haggard. He looked up, as he
saw Rendel come into the room, with an expression almost of terror,
dashed however with resentment. In his mind at that moment, his
son-in-law was the embodiment of the fate that, in some incredible way,
had, as it were, turned him, Sir William Gore, who had hitherto spent
his life in the sunshine of position, of dignity, of the deserved
respect of his fellow-creatures, out into a chill storm of
circumstances, absolutely alone, into some terrible world where, instead
of walking upright among his fellow-men, he was, by no fault of his own,
he kept repeating to himself, hurrying along with a burden on his back,
crouching, fearing observation, fearing detection. That burden was
almost intolerable. He had been trying to distract his thoughts and seek
some cold comfort by making calculations based upon the letter he had
received from Pateley, but all the time, behind it lay ice-cold and
immovable the thought of the price at which Pateley's co-operation had
been bought, of the moment of reckoning with Rendel that must come when
the sands should have run out their appointed time. So much had he
suffered, so much had he been dominated by this thought, that when the
door opened and Rendel finally came in, the moment brought a sort of
relief. Rendel, on the other hand, when he saw Sir William looking so
old, so white and feeble, suddenly felt his purpose arrested. It was
impossible, surely, that this old man, with the worn, handsome face and
pathetically anxious expression, could have had a hand in a diabolical
machination, and the thought that it was unlikely came to him with a
gleam of comfort. Then as quick as lightning came a reaction of
wonderment as to what hypothesis was to take the place of this one. At
any rate, there was only one thing to be done: to tell Gore the story
without a moment's further delay.
"Good morning, Sir William," he said. "I am sorry to hear you are not
well this morning."
"Not very," Gore said, trying to speak calmly, and involuntarily looking
at the newspaper in Rendel's hand.
"I hear you were asking for the _Arbiter_," Rendel said.
"Yes, I should like to see it," Gore replied, "when you have done with
it."
"I want you to see it," Rendel said. "There is something in it which
matters a great deal." Gore felt a sudden grip at his heart. He said
nothing. "Here it is," said Rendel, and he handed him the paper, folded
so as to show the startling headings in big letters and the rough
facsimile of the map. Gore looked at it. The whole thing swam before his
eyes; he held it for a moment, trying desperately to think what he had
better say, but he could find no anchorage anywhere.
"That is very surprising," he said finally. "As far as I can see,
it's--it's a partition of Africa between England and Germany? Is that
it? I can't see very well this morning."
"That is it," said Rendel.
"Yes, that is very important," Gore said, leaning back and letting the
paper slide from his grasp. "Most important," and he was silent again,
waiting in an agony of suspense for what Rendel's next words would be.
Rendel, scarcely less agitated, was trying to choose them carefully.
"I am very sorry," he began, "to have to tire and worry you about this
when you are not well, but I have a particular reason for talking to you
about it."
"Pray go on," Gore managed to say under his breath.
"I have a special reason," said Rendel, "for wanting to remember what
happened in my study yesterday afternoon."
"Yesterday afternoon?" said Gore. "Did anything particular happen?"
"That is what I want to know," said Rendel, trying to speak calmly and
quietly. "You will oblige me very much if you will try to remember
exactly what happened all the time, from the moment you came into the
room until you left it."
Gore made an effort to pull himself together. There was no difficulty,
alas! for him in remembering every single thing that had taken
place--the difficulty was not to show that he remembered too well.
"When I came in," he said, endeavouring to speak in an ordinary tone,
"you were at your writing-table."
"I was," said Rendel, watching him.
"And then I sat down in an armchair and read the _Mayfair Gazette_----"
and he stopped.
"Yes. All that," Rendel said, "I remember, of course. Thacker came in
telling me Lord Stamfordham was there, and I rushed out, shutting the
roller top of my writing-table, which closes with a spring. I was
especially careful to shut it, as it had valuable papers in it."
"Indeed?" said Sir William, almost inaudibly.
"Yes, and among them," Rendel said, watching the effect of his words, "a
map--that map of Africa which is reproduced this morning in the
_Arbiter_."
"In your writing-table?" Gore said, with quivering lips.
"Yes, in my writing-table, out of which it must have been taken."
"That is very serious," Gore forced himself to say.
"It is very serious," said Rendel, "as you will see. When I came back
and had finished my work on the papers I did them up myself in a packet
and sent them to Lord Stamfordham."
"Your messenger was not trustworthy, apparently," said Gore, recovering
himself.
"My messenger was Thacker," Rendel said, "who is absolutely trustworthy.
Lord Stamfordham himself told me that he had received the packet with my
seal intact."
"Still," said Gore, "servants have been known to sell State secrets
before now."
"But not Thacker," said Rendel. "However, of course I shall ask him; I
must ask every one in the house, for it must have been by some one here
that the thing was done, that the map was got out."
"I thought you said the table was locked?"
"It was locked, yes," said Rendel, "but I have learnt this morning that
papers can be pulled out from under the lid. Rachel got a piece of
foolscap paper for you in that way."
"Did she?" said Gore, feeling that he had unwittingly supplied one link
in the chain of evidence.
"There was only one person, so far as I know," said Rendel, "in the room
while that paper was in my desk, who could have pulled it out and looked
at it, and apparently made an unwarrantable use of it." The question
that he expected to hear from Gore did not follow. Rendel waited, then
he went on, "That person was--you."
"What do you mean?" said Gore, sitting up, his colour going and coming
quickly.
"My words, I think, are quite plain," Rendel said. "I mean that all the
evidence, circumstantial, I grant, points--you must forgive me if I am
wronging you--to your having taken out the map."
"Will you please give me your reasons for this extraordinary
accusation?" said Gore.
"Yes," said Rendel, "I will." And he spoke more and more rapidly as, his
self-control at length utterly broken down, and his emotion having
gained entire possession of him, he felt the fierce joy of those who,
habitually watchful of their words, yield once or twice in their lives
to the impulse of letting them flow out unchecked in an overwhelming
flood. "You alone were in the room with the papers; your prepossessions
are all against us; you spoke yourself just now of the value of a State
secret sold in the proper quarter; things are looking ugly about the
'Equator.'"
"Do you mean to hint----" said Gore.
Rendel interrupted him quickly. "No, not to hint," he said; "hinting is
not in my line. I dare to say it out. I dare to say that in one of those
moments of aberration, of deviation, whatever you choose to call it,
that sometimes descend upon the most unlikely people, you pulled that
paper out, from idle curiosity, I daresay, and finding out what it was
you sent it to the _Arbiter_."
"You did well," said Gore bitterly, "to keep your wife out of the room
while you were accusing me. I am old and defenceless," he said, with
lips trembling, and again an immense self-pity rushing over him. "I
can't answer; I can't reply to a young man's violence."
"I have no intention," Rendel said, still speaking with a passion which
intoxicated him, "of being violent, but I must go on with this, for Lord
Stamfordham won't rest until it is sifted to the bottom, and he is not a
man to be trifled with. And as to your being defenceless, good God! your
best defence is Rachel's trust in you and devotion to you. It is because
of it that I wanted to spare her the knowledge of what we have been
saying. Her faith in your infallibility has always seemed to me so
touching that for her sake I have respected it. I have tried--Heaven
knows I have tried!--all this time to be to you what she wished me to
be." Gore stirred; he was quite incapable of speaking. "This is not the
moment," Rendel went on, almost unconscious of his words, which poured
out in a flood, "to keep up a hollow mockery of trust and friendship,
and it is more honest to tell you fairly that I have not entirely
shared her faith in you. I have always thought that, like the rest of us
after all, you were neither better nor worse than most other fallible
people in this world, and that you may be, as I daresay we all are,
fashioned by circumstances, or even by temptation. And I tell you
frankly that I believe that you did this thing that I accuse you of.
How, I demand to know. That, at any rate, is not more than one man may
ask of another."
Sir William winced and writhed helplessly under Rendel's words. The
intolerable discomfort and misery that he felt as the moment of
discovery drew near had given place gradually to a furious resentment at
what he was being made to endure at the hands of one who ought not to
have presumed to criticise him. As Rendel stood there, his clearly cut
face hard and stern, pouring out accusations and reproach, Gore felt as
if the younger man embodied all the adverse influences of his own life.
It was through Rendel that the fatal opportunity had come of his getting
himself into this terrible strait, Rendel: who, most unjustly in the
scheme of things, was daring to tax Gore with it. It was too horrible to
bear longer. He too felt that the time had come when that with which his
heart and soul were overflowing must find vent in speech. As he heard
Rendel's words of stern impeachment ringing in his ears, "I tell you
frankly that I believe that you did this thing," he rose desperately to
his feet.
"Well," he said, casting with a kind of horrible relief all restraints
and prudence to the winds, "what if I had?"
Rendel turned pale.
"If you had?" he said. "You did it, then?"
"If I had," Gore went on quickly, "it wouldn't have been a crime. You
can't know how easy it was for the thing to happen. I am not going to
tell you--I am not going to justify myself----" And he went on with a
passionate need of self-vindication, drawing from his own words the
conviction that he had hardly been at fault.
"Sir William," Rendel said hurriedly, "tell me----"
"It is easy enough," said Gore, "for you to talk of faith and trust. You
need not grudge my child's faith in me. I have nothing else left now."
And as the two men looked at each other each in his soul had a vision of
the gracious presence that had always been by Sir William's side: of one
who would have believed in him, justified him, if the whole world had
accused him. Rendel suddenly paused as he was going to speak.
"Life is very easy for you," Gore went on in a rapid, trembling voice.
Oh, the relief of saying it all!
"It is all quite plain sailing for you, you with whom everything
succeeds, you who are young and have your life before you. You have time
for the things that happen to you to be made right."
"Don't let us discuss all that now," said Rendel, with an effort. "We
are talking of something else that matters more than I can say. You
only can tell me----"
"I will tell you nothing," said Gore loudly, excited and breathless,
speaking in gasps. "One day when you are old and alone--and both of
these things may come to you as well as to other people--you will
understand what all this means to me."
"Father, dear father!" cried Rachel, coming in hurriedly. Anxious and
wretched at Rendel's interview with her father being so unduly
prolonged, she had wandered upstairs again, and when she heard the
excited and angry voices she could bear the suspense no longer. "What is
it?"
Gore sank back trembling into his chair as she came in, making signs to
her that for the moment he was unable to speak. A glance at him was
enough to show that it actually was so.
"Oh, Frank!" she cried, "what have you done? I asked you not to excite
him."
"Wait, Rachel, wait!" said Rendel, trying to speak calmly, feeling that
everything was at stake. "Sir William, can you not tell me----?"
Gore feebly shook his head.
"Frank!" cried Rachel, amazed at his persistence. "Oh, don't! Let me
implore you not to ask him anything more. Frank! do you mind leaving him
now? Oh, you must, you must, really. Look at him!"
Sir William, white and exhausted, was leaning back in his chair with his
eyes closed. Rendel looked at her face of quivering anxiety as it bent
over her father, then turned slowly and left the room.