When Amos Goodhare entered the little sitting-room, Deborah was
sitting on a sofa, so far back in the black shadow that she knew it
was impossible for him to see her. But Lord St. Austell was sitting so
far forward in the arm-chair that the faint glow of the little fire
shone upon him. Nevertheless, Amos behaved exactly as if he saw no
one.
The window was to the left of the door, and only four or five steps
from it. He crossed the narrow space with a very soft tread, and
throwing open the window, which he did quickly, but without the least
noise, descended on the stone flags outside, and, turning to the
right, disappeared quickly in the darkness.
Lord St. Austell sprang up from his seat, ran to the window, and
strained his eyes to follow him. He had his hand on the sill to jump
out after him, when he felt Deborah’s touch upon his sleeve.
“Lord St. Austell,” she whispered, “don’t on any account follow that
man alone. He is dangerous.”
The earl turned impatiently. He was at all times physically fearless.
“My dear girl, don’t be alarmed, these men have nothing to fear and
everything to hope from me. By this time they must have found it
practically impossible to dispose of the stolen property, and must be
in hourly dread of the police. Now, I can hush up the whole affair if
they will restore the jewels.”
Deborah was still holding his sleeve with no uncertain grip, and she
spoke in a low but very decided tone:
“It is not that, but Amos Goodhare has a grudge against you, I am sure
of it.”
“No reasonable one, I assure you.”
By this time the girl was clinging to both his arms, almost struggling
with him to prevent his carrying out his purpose.
“What does that matter,” she cried, vehemently. “Was a prejudice ever
the weaker for being unreasonable? I tell you he saw you and pretended
not to, in order to lure you to follow him. You don’t know where he’s
gone, and what accomplices he may have waiting in that nest of dirty
courts and passages out there. Get police assistance before you try to
find him.”
“Confound the girl!” muttered Lord St. Austell savagely, as at last,
not without the exercise of something like violence, he got partially
free from her clinging hands. “You’ve made me miss him!”
Deborah let him go at once, with an exclamation of relief.
“That’s all right!”
He had already got half out of the window, when suddenly he drew back
and came to her. She was sitting by the table leaning her head on her
hand.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Audaer,” said he, most contritely with the
ring of sincere feeling in his voice, as he felt in the obscurity for
her hand, which she gave him at once. It was cold and trembling. “My
dear girl, I hope I have not hurt you--for heaven’s sake, tell me I
have not!” he cried with much concern.
“No, you have not,” she answered in a hoarse and broken voice. “But I
am beginning to feel what you feel--that some dreadful thing is going
to happen--that that man’s presence brings harm.”
“Well, I choose to think that your presence counteracts it, for you
are a good, brave girl. Now, child, I want you to wait here for me,
and if Rees should come, use your influence with him. I am going to
use mine with Amos.”
“You are--really?”
“Really. Good-bye for the present.”
Deborah was in so excited a state that even the haste with which he
added those last three words, “for the present,” seemed to her
portentous. She listened with straining ears to the last sound of his
footsteps as he trod the uneven stones in the direction Amos had
taken.
As in the case of most “presentiments,” Lord St. Austell’s vague
foreboding was the result chiefly of very clear and distinct
knowledge. He knew very well that his personator at the Tower on the
previous day could be no other than Amos Goodhare, between whom and
himself there had alway existed a dislike, all the stronger for having
been most decently veiled. There was a likeness in the temperament and
disposition of the two men as marked as their outward resemblance to
each other, and this likeness accentuated their difference of social
position, and so increased the mistrust of the one, and the hatred of
the other. What treatment, then, could the earl hope to receive at the
hands of a man who hated him, who had just proved himself to be an
audacious and unprincipled scoundrel, and who held all the cards in
his own hands. Lord St. Austell had not the least fear of personal
violence; in his younger days he had proved a brave and a lucky
soldier, and he would have felt reassured rather than alarmed if he
had thought that the matter would be decided by any sort of physical
encounter. What he feared was that Goodhare would absolutely refuse to
come to terms, would stubbornly affect ignorance of the whole affair,
in which case the career of his brother Charles, keeper of the
regalia, would be ruined.
As he picked his way over the stones, under the eaves of the outer
buildings which had grown up between the old houses, with the
raindrops dripping down upon him, and his feet slipping from time to
time, with a little splash, into the pools and rivulets in the uneven
pavement, he debated which price he should have to pay for the
information he wanted.
But he never came near the true one.
He was brought to a standstill, in the midst of his cogitations, by a
low brick wall. He was a tall man and he could see over it. He saw the
backs of the deserted houses on the left, and a passage running behind
them. At the back door of the fourth house a man was standing, who
came forward quickly, peering into the darkness. When he was close to
the wall he said:
“I beg your pardon. Can you oblige me with a light?”
“Certainly, Amos.”
“Your lordship! Is it possible? What can you be doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“For me! You do me too much honor. But what am I to do? I feel at
present rather under a cloud, and, to confess the whole truth, I am in
hiding from the police. You know, your lordship, since you threw me
over, I have always been an unlucky man.”
He spoke in his old tone of almost fawning respect, and his last words
conveyed a reproach uttered with tender melancholy. Lord St. Austell’s
hopes rose.
“Perhaps I can get you out of the police difficulty, Amos, and perhaps
you can help me in return,” he said in the low voice in which their
colloquy had been conducted from the beginning. “Can’t you take me
somewhere where we can talk. I’m standing with my feet in a pool of
water, and with more of the same exhilarating liquid meandering down
my back from a broken waterspout over my head.”
“Well, I really don’t know what to do,” said Amos, in apparent
confusion. “I’ve a wretched den on this side of the wall where I hide
myself, but it’s not the sort of place I could take your lordship
into.”
“But I give you my word my lordship would prefer anything to his
present position.”
With a shamefaced effort, Amos apparently made up his mind.
“Come then, my lord, if you will. At any rate, you’ll see what straits
I’m reduced to.”
Something in the man’s tone rang false, and Lord St. Austell noticed
it. But he did not hesitate. There were notches in the wall which
would have made the climbing an easy matter to a less athletic man
than he still was, and although he remarked good-humoredly that he had
hoped his climbing days were over, he got over without the least
difficulty, and followed Amos up the passage.
“Dreary hole this,” he exclaimed, glancing up at the deserted houses
with their blank, nailed-up windows, and at the cold reflection of a
distant gaslamp on the wet pavement at the other end of the passage.
Big drops of rain-water splashed down from the broken roofs, and
little streams trickled into the passage from bent and rusty
water-pipes. “But I should have thought these deserted houses would be
just the sort of place the police would keep an eye on.”
“I believe they think they are too obviously suitable a hiding-place,
and that the fear of a chance inspection would keep poor vagabonds
away. I have had an occasional rattle at my shutters from a passing
bobby when I have been keeping close, but I have never been disturbed
in any other way.”
Amos was standing by the door of the fourth house. Bending down, he
drew away the lower part of the boarding with which it was nailed up.
“I’m afraid your lordship will have to stoop,” said he.
As Lord St. Austell instantly bent down to creep through the opening,
the face of the other man underwent a sudden change. His features
became convulsed with fury, and he drew up his right arm as if the
impulse to take advantage of his companion’s stooping position was
irresistible. The next moment he had controlled himself, and following
the earl into the house, he drew up the boards behind them.
It was quite dark inside the passage of the house.
“You go first, Amos,” said Lord St. Austell; and he leaned back
against the wall for Goodhare to pass him.
“You don’t mind going down a floor lower, do you, my lord? I daren’t
strike a light till we get below the street level.”
“Do you take refuge in the cellar then?”
“Your lordship will allow that it is better than a police cell. This
way. Shall I go first? Mind how you come. It’s only a ladder.”
Lord St. Austell followed without hesitation, but he was not so dull
as to ignore the fact that his errand was becoming more dangerous than
he had expected. He followed to the first cellar, to which a faint
light penetrated through a grating below what had once been the shop
window. Goodhare, after listening for a few moments to be sure that no
tread of a passer-by was audible on the stone pavement outside, pushed
open a door on the right and climbed down into a lower cellar which
was as much overheated as the upper one was too cold. The ruddy glow
of a fire was seen at once on floor and ceiling, and a gust of air hot
as the breath of a furnace, seemed almost to sear the wet, cold faces
of the two men as they entered.
“Good heavens! I shall never be able to stay down here,” exclaimed the
earl, stepping back from the huge square iron grate, like the cage of
an ancient beacon, which stood in the middle of the floor, and in
which blazed an enormous fire.
“Oh, you will manage it as long as I want to keep you,” said Amos,
quietly.
He drew the door close and made it fast with a rough bolt, while Lord
St. Austell examined the cellar in which he found himself, which Amos
not inaptly termed a den.
There was no boarding on the floor, nothing but the rough earth. The
walls were only bricked in about half-way down, as if the cellar had
been dug out after the house was built. A piece of sacking on the
floor, two benches, a dirty sofa, and deal table covered with tools
and lumber, formed all the furniture. The earl looked attentively at a
huge melting-pot which stood before the fire.
“That,” said Goodhare, “was what the gold crowns from the Tower were
melted in.”
The coolness with which he said this caused Lord St. Austell to look
round at his companion. He was startled by the change in him. Instead
of the stooping, lean librarian, with the shabby coat and cringing
manner, he saw a well-dressed, dignified man, with trim grey
beard--the counterpart of himself. One great difference there was
between them, one only. The earl’s eyes looked out upon the world with
the cynical and languid interest of a man who has tasted and tired of
every human pleasure; those of his companion glowed with the ferocity
of a wild beast interrupted in a meal of human flesh.
“Why, Amos, rascality seems to agree with you!” exclaimed St. Lord
Austell.
Goodhare laughed harshly.
“Rascality is perhaps too strong a word, as your lordship will perhaps
allow when I point out one particular feature of the transactions in
which I have lately been engaged. I began, as perhaps you have not yet
heard, by taking a little sum that was lying idle on your lordship’s
property at Carstow. It was in old-fashioned gold, but I managed, with
some difficulty, to get it converted into the current coin of to-day.”
The two men were standing one on either side of the blazing fire which
shot up golden flames and threw a lurid brightness on both faces.
There was no other light in the cellar.
Lord St. Austell perceived now that he was in a trap, but no one could
have guessed his thoughts from the stolidly calm expression of his
face.
“Yes,” he said, very quietly. “It is the first I had heard of it. Go
on.”
“When that little provision was exhausted, I took to the calling of
gentlemanly footpad. Before you condemn me, if you look back on the
street robberies of the past winter, you will do me the justice to
remember that the first was committed on your own person and the rest
on those of your intimate friends.”
“I don’t see how that excuses you.”
“I will make it clear to your lordship by-and-bye. Last of all, when
my funds had sunk so low that it needed a bold stroke to restore them,
I helped myself, with the aid of my friends, to part of the jewels
kept in the tower, of which your brother is custodian. Do you see the
connection?”
“Of course I see that you seem to have had me always for choice as the
victim of your malpractices.”
“And you cannot yet see why, my lord?” asked Goodhare, with a panting
ferocity which he scarcely now took the trouble to veil.
“No. Except that you are a d----d ungrateful beast, biting by
preference the hand that fed you.”
“Could your lordship give me a list of your benefactions to me?” asked
Goodhare, glaring across at him over the smoke and flame of the fire.
“Well I gave you the post of librarian at Llancader, until I found you
taking advantage of the position to rob me of MSS., which, as I see,
you knew how to use.”
“And did I not earn my pay? Was I idle, drunken, dissolute?”
“Certainly not. You were an ideal librarian, and I respected you for
it.”
“Respected me for repressing every instinct of my nature, every
passion which you were freely indulging! I should think so.”
“Our positions were not the same: I could not alter that fact.”
“Did you do all for me that my father--and yours--on his death-bed
desired that you should do?”
The earl looked uneasy.
“I did all that a man is ever expected to for an illegitimate
half-brother,” said he evasively. “If I had been a Quixote I couldn’t
have given up my title to you. The law would not allow it.”
“But you could have given up Llancader, as my father, when he was
dying, told me you would do.”
The earl flushed a little.
“He should have made that provision by will if he wished it attended
to. I could not be expected to dismember the property. I am not a rich
man, as you know. For my position I’m a poor one. I never have a
thousand pounds to spend as I choose.”
“Not when your wines and women have all been paid for, I dare say.”
“Why sneer? I never knew you cared for those things. You were always
for books, books. And a studious man is supposed to be virtuous.”
“Why? Is every thought holy that is printed and bound up in morocco?
Through your father’s dishonesty to my mother and yours to me, I have
had to pass the best years of my life in revelry of the imagination
only. And so I whetted an appetite for pleasure which I have only just
begun to satisfy as yours is exhausted.”
The earl felt for the first time in his life an impulse of fear; there
was something scarcely human, something ghoulish, in the face before
him. The eyes seemed to shoot flames through the fire-smoke.
“I am getting tedious, my lord,” continued Goodhare, with mock
respect, after a short pause, during which the two men watched each
other warily. “Let us sum up the situation. Your father and mine, an
unmarried man, deceived my mother, a country lawyer’s daughter, by a
mock marriage. He took her away to North Wales, and kept her there in
privacy, on goodness knows what wretched plea. I was their son--his
eldest son. She knew who he was; she thought I was his heir. I was
fourteen before, in that out-of-the-way place, we learnt that he had
married a woman of his own rank. Then the truth came out. My mother
was broken-hearted, and did not live through the year. I was brought
up a gentleman and left a beggar. Then, with stupendous generosity you
gave me office as librarian--to close my mouth. And all your favors
you gave to Rees Pennant, whom for that reason I have ruined. And so I
lived near enough to hear the vices condoned in you which in me would
have been condemned; to see a beautiful girl repulse my honorable
advances with as much horror as she did your dishonorable ones. And
yet my mother was a better woman than yours, and _I_ am the eldest
son.”
“But you are mad! Can I help the law?”
“Can I respect it? Let us be logical. You are the eldest son above
ground, in the daylight, by right of the law. I am the eldest son down
in the earth, from which I took my birthright. And so here, down in
the earth, I take my revenge on the law and on you!”
With a spring he leapt over the iron grate, in which the fire now
burnt with a steady red glow. Seizing Lord St. Austell by the throat
before the earl had the least intimation of his purpose, Goodhare,
with a growling noise like a wild beast, twisted him and flung him
down on to the red-hot coals. Before his victim had time for more than
one struggle, one shout for help, Amos had torn open his waistcoat,
and plunging a large claspknife between his ribs, stabbed him to the
heart.
With a sigh of fiendish satisfaction, he threw the body, the clothes
of which were in a blaze, on to the floor, and wrapping it tightly in
the matting, extinguished the flames. Then, unbolting the door, he
dragged the ghastly burden across the rough floor, and lifting it, not
without difficulty and with an exclamation of disgust, into the upper
cellar, he rolled it into a corner with a series of sharp kicks.
Striking a match, he cast one more look, full of a thirsty, savage
delight, at the staring eyes and mouth distended with horror; then,
turning lightly on his heel, he threw away the match, and taking a
bottle carefully from a rough wine-bin which stood in one corner, he
climbed down into the inner cellar, took a corkscrew from his pocket,
opened the bottle lovingly, and, pouring himself out a tumblerful,
drank it off with great enjoyment.