The heat of a sulphurous afternoon--a curious parallel in its presage
of coming storm to the fast-approaching crisis in Dominey's own
affairs--had driven Dominey from his study on to the terrace. In a chair
by his side lounged Eddy Pelham, immaculate in a suit of white flannels.
It was the fifth day since the mystery of the Black Wood had been
solved.
“Ripping, old chap, of you to have me down here,” the young man remarked
amiably, his hand stretching out to a tumbler which stood by his side.
“The country, when you can get ice, is a paradise in this weather,
especially when London's so full of ghastly rumours and all that sort of
thing. What's the latest news of her ladyship?”
“Still unconscious,” Dominey replied. “The doctors, however, seem
perfectly satisfied. Everything depends on her waking moments.”
The young man abandoned the subject with a murmur of hopeful sympathy.
His eyes were fixed upon a little cloud of dust in the distance.
“Expecting visitors to-day?” he asked.
“Should not be surprised,” was the somewhat laconic answer.
The young man stood up, yawned and stretched himself.
“I'll make myself scarce,” he said. “Jove!” he added approvingly,
lingering for a moment. “Jolly well cut, the tunic of your uniform,
Dominey! If a country in peril ever decides to waive the matter of my
indifferent physique and send me out to the rescue, I shall go to your
man.”
Dominey smiled.
“Mine is only the local Yeomanry rig-out,” he replied. “They will nab
you for the Guards!”
Dominey stepped back through the open windows into his study as Pelham
strolled off. He was seated at his desk, poring over some letters,
when a few minutes later Seaman was ushered into the room. For a single
moment his muscles tightened, his frame became tense. Then he realised
his visitor's outstretched hands of welcome and he relaxed. Seaman was
perspiring, vociferous and excited.
“At last!” He exclaimed. “Donner und!--My God Dominey, what is this?”
“Thirteen years ago,” Dominey explained, “I resigned a commission in the
Norfolk Yeomanry. That little matter, however, has been adjusted. At a
crisis like this--”
“My friend, you are wonderful!” Seaman interrupted solemnly. “You are a
man after my own heart, you are thorough, you leave nothing undone. That
is why,” he added, lowering his voice a little, “we are the greatest
race in the world. Drink before everything, my friend,” he went on,
“drink I must have. What a day! The very clouds that hide the sun are
full of sulphurous heat.”
Dominey rang the bell, ordered hock and seltzer and ice. Seaman drank
and threw himself into an easy-chair.
“There is no fear of your being called out of the country because of
that, I hope?” he asked a little anxiously, nodding his head towards his
companion's uniform.
“Not at present,” Dominey answered. “I am a trifle over age to go with
the first batch or two. Where have you been?”
Seaman hitched his chair a little nearer.
“In Ireland,” he confided. “Sorry to desert you as I did, but you do not
begin to count for us just yet. There was just a faint doubt as to what
they were going to do about internment. That is why I had to get the
Irish trip off my mind.”
“What has been decided?”
“The Government has the matter under consideration,” Seaman replied,
with a chuckle. “I can certainly give myself six months before I need to
slip off. Now tell me, why do I find you down here?”
“After Terniloff left,” Dominey explained, “I felt I wanted to get away.
I have been asked to start some recruiting work down here.”
“Terniloff--left his little volume with you?”
“Yes!”
“Where is it?”
“Safe,” Dominey replied.
Seaman mopped his forehead.
“It needs to be,” he muttered. “I have orders to see it destroyed.
We can talk of that presently. Sometimes, when I am away from you, I
tremble. It may sound foolish, but you have in your possession just the
two things--that map and Von Terniloff's memoirs--which would wreck our
propaganda in every country of the world.”
“Both are safe,” Dominey assured him. “By the by, my friend,” he went
on, “do you know that you yourself are forgetting your usual caution?”
“In what respect?” Seaman demanded quickly.
“As you stooped to sit down just now, I distinctly saw the shape of your
revolver in your hip pocket. You know as well as I do that with your
name and the fact that you are only a naturalised Englishman, it is
inexcusably foolish to be carrying firearms about just now.”
Seaman thrust his hand into his pocket and threw the revolver upon the
table.
“You are quite right,” he acknowledged. “Take care of it for me. I took
it with me to Ireland, because one never knows what may happen in that
amazing country.”
Dominey swept it carelessly into the drawer of the desk at which he was
sitting.
“Our weapons, from now on,” Seaman continued, “must be the weapons of
guile and craft. You and I will have, alas! to see less of one another,
Dominey. In many ways it is unfortunate that we have not been able to
keep England out of this for a few more months. However, the situation
must be dealt with as it exists. So far as you are concerned you
have practically secured yourself against suspicion. You will hold a
brilliant and isolated place amongst those who are serving the great
War Lord. When I do approach you, it will be for sympathy and assistance
against the suspicions of those far-seeing Englishmen!”
Dominey nodded.
“You will stay the night?” he asked.
“If I may,” Seaman assented. “It is the last time for many months when
it will be wise for us to meet on such intimate terms. Perhaps our dear
friend Parkins will take vinous note of the occasion.”
“In other words,” Dominey said, “you propose that we shall drink the
Dominey cabinet hock and the Dominey port to the glory of our country.”
“To the glory of our country,” Seaman echoed. “So be it, my
friend.--Listen.”
A car had passed along the avenue in front of the house. There was
the sound of voices in the hall, a knock at the door, the rustle of a
woman's clothes. Parkins, a little disturbed, announced the arrivals.
“The Princess of Eiderstrom and--a gentleman. The Princess said that
her errand with you was urgent, sir,” he added, turning apologetically
towards his master.
The Princess was already in the room, and following her a short man in
a suit of sombre black, wearing a white tie, and carrying a black bowler
hat. He blinked across the room through his thick glasses, and Dominey
knew that the end had come. The door was closed behind them. The
Princess came a little further into the room. Her hand was extended
towards Dominey, but not in greeting. Her white finger pointed straight
at him. She turned to her companion.
“Which is that, Doctor Schmidt?” she demanded.
“The Englishman, by God!” Schmidt answered.
The silence which reigned for several seconds was intense and profound.
The coolest of all four was perhaps Dominey. The Princess was pale with
a passion which seemed to sob behind her words.
“Everard Dominey,” she cried, “what have you done with my lover? What
have you done with Leopold Von Ragastein?”
“He met with the fate,” Dominey replied, “which he had prepared for me.
We fought and I conquered.”
“You killed him?”
“I killed him,” Dominey echoed. “It was a matter of necessity. His body
sleeps on the bed of the Blue River.”
“And your life here has been a lie!”
“On the contrary, it has been the truth,” Dominey objected. “I assured
you at the Carlton, when you first spoke to me, and I have assured you a
dozen times since, that I was Everard Dominey. That is my name. That is
who I am.”
Seaman's voice seemed to come from a long way off. For the moment the
man had neither courage nor initiative. He seemed as though he had
received some sort of stroke. His mind was travelling backwards.
“You came to me at Cape Town,” he muttered; “you had all Von Ragastein's
letters, you knew his history, you had the Imperial mandate.”
“Von Ragastein and I exchanged the most intimate confidences in his
camp,” Dominey said, “as Doctor Schmidt there knows. I told him my
history, and he told me his. The letters and papers I took from him.”
Schmidt had covered his face with his hands for a moment. His shoulders
were heaving.
“My beloved chief!” he sobbed. “My dear devoted master! Killed by that
drunken Englishman!”
“Not so drunk as you fancied him,” Dominey said coolly, “not so far gone
in his course of dissipation but that he was able to pull himself up
when the great incentive came.”
The Princess looked from one to the other of the two men. Seaman had
still the appearance of a man struggling to extricate himself from some
sort of nightmare.
“My first and only suspicion,” he faltered, “was that night when Wolff
disappeared!”
“Wolff's coming was rather a tragedy,” Dominey admitted. “Fortunately, I
had a secret service man in the house who was able to dispose of him.”
“It was you who planned his disappearance?” Seaman gasped.
“Naturally,” Dominey replied. “He knew the truth and was trying all the
time to communicate with you.”
“And the money?” Seaman continued, blinking rapidly. “One hundred
thousand pounds, and more?”
“I understood that was a gift,” Dominey replied. “If the German Secret
Service, however, cares to formulate a claim and sue me--”
The Princess suddenly interrupted. Her eyes seemed on fire.
“What are you, you two?” she cried, stretching out her hands towards
Schmidt and Seaman. “Are you lumps of earth--clods--creatures without
courage and intelligence? You can let him stand there--the Englishman
who has murdered my lover, who has befooled you? You let him stand there
and mock you, and you do and say nothing! Is his life a sacred thing?
Has he none of your secrets in his charge?”
“The great God above us!” Seaman groaned, with a sudden white horror in
his face. “He has the Prince's memoirs! He has the Kaiser's map!”
“On the contrary,” Dominey replied, “both are deposited at the Foreign
Office. We hope to find them very useful a little later on.”
Seaman sprang forward like a tiger and went down in a heap as he almost
threw himself upon Dominey's out-flung fist. Schmidt came stealing
across the room, and from underneath his cuff something gleamed.
“You are two to one!” the Princess cried passionately, as both
assailants hesitated. “I would to God that I had a weapon, or that I
were a man!”
“My dear Princess,” a good-humoured voice remarked from the window,
“four to two the other way, I think, what?”
Eddy Pelham, his hands in his pockets, but a very alert gleam in his
usually vacuous face, stood in the windowed doorway. From behind him,
two exceedingly formidable-looking men slipped into the room. There was
no fight, not even a struggle. Seaman, who had never recovered from the
shock of his surprise, and was now completely unnerved, was handcuffed
in a moment, and Schmidt disarmed. The latter was the first to break the
curious silence.
“What have I done?” he demanded. “Why am I treated like this?”
“Doctor Schmidt?” Eddy asked pleasantly.
“That is my name, sir,” was the fierce reply. “I have just landed from
East Africa. We knew nothing of the war when we started. I came to
expose that man. He is an impostor--a murderer! He has killed a German
nobleman.”
“He has committed _lese majeste_!” Seaman gasped. “He has deceived the
Kaiser! He has dared to sit in his presence as the Baron Von Ragastein!”
The young man in flannels glanced across at Dominey and smiled.
“I say, you two don't mean to be funny but you are,” he declared. “First
of all, there's Doctor Schmidt accuses Sir Everard here of being an
impostor because he assumed his own name; accuses him of murdering a man
who had planned in cold blood--you were in that, by the by, Schmidt--to
kill him; and then there's our friend here, the secretary of the society
for propagating better relations between the business men of England and
Germany, complaining because Sir Everard carried through in Germany, for
England, exactly what he believed the Baron Von Ragastein was carrying
out here--for Germany. You're a curious, thick-headed race, you
Germans.”
“I demand again,” Schmidt shouted, “to know by what right I am treated
as a criminal?”
“Because you are one,” Eddy answered coolly. “You and Von Ragastein
together planned the murder of Sir Everard Dominey in East Africa, and I
caught you creeping across the floor just now with a knife in your hand.
That'll do for you. Any questions to ask, Seaman?”
“None,” was the surly reply.
“You are well-advised,” the young man remarked coolly. “Within the last
two days, your house in Forest Hill and your offices in London Wall have
been searched.”
“You have said enough,” Seaman declared. “Fate has gone against me. I
thank God that our master has abler servants than I and the strength to
crush this island of popinjays and fools!”
“Popinjays seems severe,” Eddy murmured, in a hard tone. “However, to
get on with this little matter,” he added, turning to one of his two
subordinates. “You will find a military car outside. Take these men over
to the guardroom at the Norwich Barracks. I have arranged for an escort
to see them to town. Tell the colonel I'll be over later in the day.”
The Princess rose from the chair into which she had subsided a few
moments before. Dominey turned towards her.
“Princess,” he said, “there can be little conversation between us. Yet
I shall ask you to remember this. Von Ragastein planned my death in
cold blood. I could have slain him as an assassin, without the slightest
risk, but I preferred to meet him face to face with the truth upon my
lips. It was his life or mine. I fought for my country's sake, as he did
for his.”
The Princess looked at him with glittering eyes.
“I shall hate you to the end of my days,” she declared, “because you
have killed the thing I love, but although I am a woman, I know justice.
You were chivalrous towards me. You treated Leopold perhaps better
than he would have treated you. I pray that I shall never see your
face again. Be so good as to suffer me to leave this house at once, and
unattended.”
Dominey threw open the windows which led on to the terrace and stood on
one side. She passed by without a glance at him and disappeared. Eddy
came strolling along the terrace a few moments later.
“Nice old ducks, those two, dear heart,” he confided. “Seaman has just
offered Forsyth, my burly ruffian in the blue serge suit, a hundred
pounds to shoot him on the pretence that he was escaping.”
“And what about Schmidt?”
“Insisted on his rights as an officer and demanded the front seat and a
cigar before the car started! A pretty job, Dominey, and neatly cleaned
up.”
Dominey was watching the dust from the two cars which were disappearing
down the avenue.
“Tell me, Eddy,” he asked, “there's one thing I have always been curious
about. How did you manage to keep that fellow Wolff when there wasn't a
war on, and he wasn't breaking the law?”
The young man grinned.
“We had to stretch a point there, old dear,” he admitted. “Plans of a
fortress, eh?”
“Do you mean to say that he had plans of a fortress upon him?” Dominey
asked.
“Picture post-card of Norwich Castle,” the young man confided, “but keep
it dark. Can I have a drink before I get the little car going?”
The turmoil of the day was over, and Dominey, after one silent but
passionate outburst of thankfulness at the passing from his life of this
unnatural restraint, found all his thoughts absorbed by the struggle
which was being fought out in the bedchamber above. The old doctor came
down and joined him at dinner time. He met Dominey's eager glance with a
little nod.
“She's doing all right,” he declared.
“No fever or anything?”
“Bless you, no! She's as near as possible in perfect health physically.
A different woman from what she was this time last year, I can tell
you. When she wakes up, she'll either be herself again, without a single
illusion of any sort, or--”
The doctor paused, sipped his wine, emptied his glass and set it down
approvingly.
“Or?” Dominey insisted.
“Or that part of her brain will be more or less permanently affected.
However, I am hoping for the best. Thank heavens you're on the spot!”
They finished their dinner almost in silence. Afterwards, they smoked
for a few minutes upon the terrace. Then they made their way softly
upstairs. The doctor parted with Dominey at the door of the latter's
room.
“I shall remain with her for an hour or so,” he said. “After that I
shall leave her entirely to herself. You'll be here in case there's a
change?”
“I shall be here,” Dominey promised.
The minutes passed into hours, uncounted, unnoticed. Dominey sat in
his easy-chair, stirred by a tumultuous wave of passionate emotion. The
memory of those earlier days of his return came back to him with
all their poignant longings. He felt again the same tearing at the
heart-strings, the same strange, unnerving tenderness. The great world's
drama, in which he knew that he, too, would surely continue to play his
part, seemed like a thing far off, the concern of another race of men.
Every fibre of his being seemed attuned to the magic and the music of
one wild hope. Yet when there came what he had listened for so long, the
hope seemed frozen into fear. He sat a little forward in his easy-chair,
his hands gripping its sides, his eyes fixed upon the slowly widening
crack in the panel. It was as it had been before. She stooped low, stood
up again and came towards him. From behind an unseen hand closed the
panel. She came to him with her arms outstretched and all the wonderful
things of life and love in her shining eyes. That faint touch of the
somnambulist had passed. She came to him as she had never come before.
She was a very real and a very live woman.
“Everard!” she cried.
He took her into his arms. At their first kiss she thrilled from head to
foot. For a moment she laid her head upon his shoulder.
“Oh, I have been so silly!” she confessed. “There were times when I
couldn't believe that you were my Everard--mine! And now I know.”
Her lips sought his again, his parched with the desire of years. Along
the corridor, the old doctor tiptoed his way to his room, with a pleased
smile upon his face.