EDWARD SHOOTS AN ARROW INTO THE AIR
In a state of the deepest dejection Edward Povey listened to the story.
At times during its recital he would raise his head and look at Gaspar
Mozara. The lieutenant, when Edward's head was bent again, eyed his
hearer narrowly.
He had told his tale well--circumstantially and yet with the feeling
that Anna Paluda, who, sitting rigidly in her chair, never once removed
her doubting eyes from his face, did not believe a word he was saying.
He found it increasingly difficult to marshal his facts under the fire
of those steady watching eyes. Hitherto, this grim lady in black had
held no importance for him, but now, as he looked at her and felt her
presence, she took on a new individuality. To Mozara it seemed as
though an unconsidered pawn belonging to an opponent had crept
unobserved up the chess-board of his plans and had become suddenly a
force to be reckoned with.
The lieutenant was between two stools. He had told his tale, and was
now anxious to be gone, but he felt that no sooner did he leave, so
surely some piece of evidence, some vital point in the scheme would
occur to him as having been left unsaid.
He had made his way to the little villa as soon as the third-rate
medical man, whom Dasso had pressed into the plot, had given the
lieutenant permission to get up, a sorrowful figure in deep mourning.
His right arm was suspended in a sling of black silk and was tightly
swathed in surgical bandages. He had sunk in well-simulated exhaustion
into the big chintz-covered arm-chair in the drawing-room facing the
sea, and had laid an ebony crutch beside him on the carpet. One leg
had been carefully stretched out stiffly before him.
Edward, all unsuspecting, had assisted him in his movements and had
opened the windows, letting in the bracing breeze that blew up from the
bay. Anna Paluda, however, had merely inclined her head. When the
lieutenant entered she had felt only a dull anger against the author of
her poor Galva's death. It was only as his story progressed that she
grew to doubt the truth of what she was listening to. Gaspar had begun
with well-acted expressions of sympathy and with carefully considered
phrases of self-condemnation. He told them that the blame of the
accident had been entirely his in agreeing to Miss Baxendale's demands
for increased speed. The road was one on which he had seldom travelled
and they had rounded the spur of the hillside before he was aware of
their danger. He had applied the brakes and turned the wheel to keep
in the middle of the narrow road but the impetus had been too great.
There had been a hideous skid as the car crashed almost broadside into
the old and crumbling wall.
The lieutenant had remembered no more until he had come to his senses
to find that he was being carried along on some kind of rough litter.
The pain and the jolting had caused him again to lose consciousness,
and when next he awoke he was in his uncle's house.
There had been no questions from his hearers. Anna had sat rigidly as
before, and Edward, his head between his hands, rocked himself gently
to and fro. From time to time he gave a little moan.
Gaspar had fixed his eyes on the centre of a rose pattern in the
carpet, and had resumed his tale in a low, hopeless voice.
"My first thoughts were of Miss Baxendale and of how she had fared.
For two days they would tell me nothing except that she was slightly
hurt. I only heard yesterday the true state of affairs, how her cloak
and hat had been found in the ravine near the Wrecked car. The river,
they tell me, is deep here and weed-grown and there are great rocky
holes. I----"
The lieutenant had risen with a choking sound in his throat as he
recited these details. He leant heavily on his crutch, standing before
Anna and Edward.
"This is as painful to me--as to you. I--I--can say no more." He
advanced to the little bowed figure before him and held out a
hesitating left hand.
"I would like to hear you say one word, sir. This affair will be with
me to the day of my death. I am beyond the reach of Miss Baxendale's
pardon, but not of yours. You will perhaps be leaving San Pietro and I
would like a word to remember and look back on. It would be one spot
of brightness in the darkness of my future."
Edward had taken the proffered hand and the lieutenant had bent low
over it, pressing it to his lips. Then he turned for the harder task
of facing Anna Paluda. But that lady had taken advantage of his back
being turned to slip unnoticed away. Gaspar's relief at being spared
the leave-taking was mixed with a disquieting feeling of a pending
misfortune. He told himself that it would be long before he could
forget the eyes of the lady in black.
Painfully, and with dragging step, Mozara left the house and made his
way down the path to the boulevard. The fiacre which had been waiting
for him was drawn up at the curb, and into it the wounded officer was
helped by the driver, who, mounting his box, turned his horse and drove
off in the direction of the Old Town.
Edward had sat where his visitor had left him, the prey to the most
poignant sorrow and agony of mind. To his own rash and criminal act in
personating another man all this tragedy was due. Although he had, at
times, told himself that Miranda would not be seated upon a throne
without some opposition, he had never imagined that danger threatened
the girl herself. She was so beautiful and tender-hearted, so
delightfully modern, that the idea of her being the centre of a plot of
scheming scoundrels had barely occurred to him. That an accident
should have been the cause of her death was a stunning blow to the
little man who sat in the sunlit drawing-room, gazing blankly at the
wall before him.
He rose at last with a sigh, and passed out through the French windows
on to the balcony. Below him rolled the carriages and motors of the
fashionable world of Corbo; from the smart cafe a little up the
boulevard came the sound of strings of a gipsy orchestra and the
laughter and chatter of the crowd of loungers who were taking their
absinthe. Edward told himself that in the whole of San Pietro there
was no house afflicted as was Venta Villa. The flowering shrubs on the
balcony on which he stood, the gaudy red-striped awning over his head
seemed to mock him, and he turned from the gay scene with a little sob.
It was then that he saw Anna Paluda. She was sitting in a low wicker
chair, and like him had been gazing out upon the boulevard and on to
the blue of the bay beyond.
She beckoned Edward to come to her side, and standing there, one hand
resting on the little iron railing, he listened while the lady told him
of her disbelief in no undecided voice.
Edward's expression changed as he drank in her words, and the hand on
the railing tightened its hold till the knuckles showed white patches
of skin. The suggestion of doubt on what he had looked upon as an
accepted tragedy was acting as balm upon his spirits, and all the
hidden power of his brain was responding to the call and demanding
action--deeds.
"And you say you watched him?"
"Yes, from this balcony. As he was getting into the cab, the driver
who was helping him stumbled a little. I distinctly saw Senor Mozara
put out his _right_ hand and grasp the back of the hood. I had doubted
before in my own mind, but this is certain. The lieutenant's right arm
is as sound as his left, for all his surgical bandages. Again, why
should so important a personage as the nephew of Senor Luazo call in
the services of an unknown medical man, instead of the family
practitioner?"
The lady paused for a moment, then went on fiercely--
"Oh! I can see it all now. Dasso, the cursed regicide, is at the
bottom of this. I, who have suspected the man, have watched his
friends. I have seen meaning looks, glances pass from evil eye to evil
eye. Mr. Sydney--you will understand that I, too, have a quarrel with
Dasso. The hand that struck down Queen Elene struck down my child--the
baby at whose tomb I, her mother, have to sorrow in secret----"
Edward laid a hand lightly on the weeping woman's shoulder.
"And my sorrow, Anna, my anguish! Have you thought of that, of what it
means to me, who have indirectly brought Miranda to this?"
Anna took his hand between both of hers and looked up at him through
her tears.
"You have been kindness itself, Mr. Sydney. You had your duty to Mr.
Baxendale and you have done it nobly."
The man turned away and thought of Kyser. Anna's trust in his
integrity was almost too much for him to bear. Rapidly the little
devils of pro and con invaded his conscience. Then and there he
registered a silent vow that come what might he would go through with
it. There was no turning back now; he would not add cowardice to his
crime. If Miranda were still in the land of the living, his would be
the hand that would save her and deal vengeance where it was due. He
hoped that, if need be, he might die in the doing. He went into his
bedroom and took from his trunk a leather writing-case, and from one of
its pockets a letter. It had been handed to him as they left the hotel
in Paris, and was from the Duc de Choleaux Lasuer. He had laughed as
he read it and put it away in his case. Now he read it with all
seriousness. It was merely a short note, in which the writer had set
down boyishly his admiration for Miss Baxendale. He had heroically
demanded that should that lady ever be in trouble, he should be called
upon to come to her assistance. A letter addressed under cover to M.
de Brea, the manager of the hotel, would always find the duke.
It was a letter breathing the spirit of knight errantry, such a letter
as a love-sick boy of twenty would write. And yet, as Edward read the
words under the changed conditions, they seemed to hold a deal of truth
and manliness. The duke was a high-spirited young man, a little
addicted, as Edward had seen, to the vices of his class, but he had
liked and admired him in many ways.
There could be no harm, he told himself, in writing to him. Perhaps
his grace had already forgotten that he had written such a letter; but
Edward rather thought otherwise.
That evening after dinner he took a letter out and posted it himself.
The outer envelope was addressed to--
M. de Brea,
Manager,
Ruttez Hotel,
Rue Scribe, Paris;
the inner merely to--
His Grace le Duc de Choleaux Lasuer
(by the courtesy of M. de Brea).