The summer twilight was deepening into the summer dusk when Ailsa,
acting upon Cleek's advice, set forth with his little lordship the
following evening, and turned her steps in the direction of the Park;
but although, on her way there, she observed more than once that a
swarthy-skinned man in European dress who wore a scarlet flower in his
coat, and was so perfect a type of the Asiatic that he would have passed
muster for one even among a gathering of Cingalese, kept appearing and
disappearing at irregular intervals, it spoke well for the powers of
imitation and self-effacement possessed by Dollops, that she never once
thought of associating that young man with the dawdling messenger boy
who strolled leisurely along with a package under his arm and patronised
every bun-shop, winkle-stall, and pork-pie purveyor on the line of
march.
For upward of an hour this sort of thing went on without any
interruption or any solitary thing out of the ordinary, Ailsa strolling
along leisurely, with the boy's hands in hers and his innocent prattle
running on ceaselessly; then, of a sudden, whilst they were moving along
close to the Park railings and in the shadow of the overhanging trees,
the figure of an undersized man in semi-European costume, but wearing on
his head the twisted turban of a Cingalese, issued from one of the
gates, and well-nigh collided with them.
He drew back, murmuring an apology in pidgin-English, then, seeing the
child, he salaamed profoundly and murmured in a voice of deep reverence,
"Holy, most holy!" and prostrated himself, with his forehead touching
the ground, until Ailsa and the child had passed on. But barely had they
taken five steps before Cleek appeared upon the scene, and did exactly
the same thing as the Cingalese.
"All right. You may go home now. I've got my man," he whispered, as
Ailsa and the boy passed by. "Look for me at Chepstow House some time
to-night." Then rose, as she walked on, and went after the man who first
had prostrated himself before the child.
He had risen and gone on his way, but not before witnessing Cleek's
obeisance, and flashing upon him a sharp, searching look. Cleek
quickened his steps and shortened the distance between them. Now or
never was the time to put to the test that wild thought which last night
had hammered on his brain, for it was certain that this man was in very
truth a Cingalese, and, as such, must know! He stretched forth his hand
and touched the man, who drew back sharply, half indignantly, but
changed his attitude entirely when Cleek, who knew Hindustani more than
well, spoke to him in the native tongue.
"Unto thee, oh, brother!" Cleek said. "Thou, too, art of us, for thou,
too, dost acknowledge the sacred shrine. These eyes have beheld thee."
All his hopes rested on the slim pillar of that one word, "shrine," and
his heart almost ceased to beat as he watched to see how it was
received. It broke, however, into a very tumult of disturbance in the
next instant, for the man positively beamed as he gave reply.
"Sacred be the shrine!" he answered in Hindustani. "Clearly thou art of
us--not of those others."
"Others? What others? I am but newly come to this country."
"Walk with me, then, to my abode, sup with me, eat of my salt, and I
will tell thee then, oh, brother. But I forget: thou hast no knowledge
of me. Listen, then. I am Arjeeb Noosrut, father of the High Priest
Seydama, and it is among the people of my house that the gun is yet
preserved. Nor has the blood of Seydama been ever washed from the wood
of it. Come."
All in a moment a light seemed to break over Cleek's brain. The missing
link had been supplied--the one thing that could make possible the wild
thought which had come to him last night had been given into his hands,
and here at last was the key to the amazing mystery! He turned without a
word and went with Arjeeb Noosrut.
"What an ass!" he said to himself in the soundless words of thought
"What an ass never to have suspected it when it is all so clear!"
Meantime Ailsa and the boy, dismissed from any further need of service,
walked on through the deepening dusk and turned their faces homeward.
But they had not gone twenty yards from the spot where Cleek had seen
them last when his little lordship set up a joyful cry and pointed
excitedly to a claret-coloured limousine which at that moment swung in
from the middle of the roadway and slowed down as it neared the kerb.
"Oh, look, Miss Lorne; here's mummie's motor car; and I do believe
that's Bimbi peeping out of it!" exclaimed the child--"Bimbi" being his
pet name for Captain Hawksley--then broke, in wild excitement, from
Ailsa's detaining hand and fled to a tall, military-looking man with a
fair beard and moustache who had just that moment alighted from the
vehicle. "It is Bimbi--it is!--it is!" he shouted as he ran. "Oh, Bimbi,
I _am_ glad!"
"Ceddie, dear, you mustn't be so boisterous!" chided Ailsa, coming up
with him at the kerb. "How fond he is of you to be sure, Captain
Hawksley. You've come for us, I suppose? Ceddie recognised the car at
once."
"Yes; jump in," he answered. "Lady Chepstow sent me after you. She's
nervous, poor soul, every moment the boy's away from her. Jump in, old
chap!"--catching up his little lordship and swinging him inside. "Better
take the back seat, Miss Lorne; it's more comfortable. Quite settled,
both of you? That's good. All right, chauffeur--Home!"
Then he jumped in after them, closed the door, dropped into a seat, and
the motor, making a wide curve out into the road, pelted away into the
fast-gathering darkness.
"Bimbi says maybe he's going to be my daddy one day--didn't you, Bimbi?"
said his little lordship, climbing up on to "Bimbi's" knee and snuggling
close to him.
"I say, you know, you mustn't tell secrets, old chap!" was the laughing
response. "Miss Lorne will hand you over to Nursie with orders to put
you to bed if you do, _I_ know--won't you, Miss Lorne?"
"He ought to be in bed, anyhow," responded Ailsa gaily; and then, this
giving the conversation a merry turn, they talked and laughed and kept
up such a chatter that three-quarters of an hour went like magic and
nobody seemed aware of it. But suddenly Ailsa thought, and then put her
thoughts into words.
"What a long time we are in getting home," she said, and bent forward so
that the light from the window might fall upon the dial of her wrist
watch, then gave a little startled cry and half rose from her seat. For
the darkness was now tempered by moonlight, and she could see that they
were no longer in the populous districts of the town, but were speeding
along past woodlands and open fields in the very depths of the country.
"Good gracious! Johnston must have lost his senses!" she exclaimed
agitatedly. "Look where we are, Captain Hawksley!--out in the country
with only a farmhouse or two in sight. Johnston! Johnston!" She bent
forward and rapped wildly on the glass panel. "Johnston, stop!--turn
round!--are you out of your head? Captain Hawksley, stop him--stop him
for pity's sake!"
"Sit down, Miss Lorne." He made reply in a low, level voice, a voice in
which there was something that made her pluck the child to her and hold
him right to her breast. "You are not going home to-night. You are going
for a ride with me; and if--Oh, that's your little game, is it?"
lurching forward as she made a frantic clutch at the handle of the door.
"Sit down, do you hear me?--or it will be worse for you! There!"--the
cold bore of a revolver barrel touched her temple and wrung a quaking
gasp of terror from her--"Do you feel that? Now you sit down and be
quiet! If you make a single move, utter a single cry, I'll blow your
brains out before you've half finished it. Look here, do you know who
you're dealing with now? See!"
His hand reached up and twitched away the fair beard and moustache; he
bent forward so that the moonlight through the glass could fall on his
face. It had changed as his voice had now changed, and she saw that she
was looking at the man who in those other days of stress and trial had
posed as "Gaston Merode," brother to the fictitious "Countess de la
Tour."
"You!" she said in a bleak voice of desolation and fright. "Dear heaven,
that horrible Margot's confederate, the King of the Apaches!"
"Yes!" he rapped out. "You and that fellow Cleek came between us in one
promising game, but I'm hanged if you shall do it in this one! I want
this boy, and--I've got him. Now, you call off Cleek and tell him to
drop this case--to make no effort to follow us or to come between us and
the kid--or I'll slit your throat after I've done with his little
lordship here. Lanisterre!"--to the chauffeur--"Lanisterre, do you
hear?"
"_Oui, monsieur_."
"Give her her head--full speed--and get to the mill as fast as you can.
Margot will be with us in another two hours' time."