Scremerston was in an attitude of deep dejection. Logan lit a cigarette
and waited.
'Logan, I am the most miserable beggar alive.'
'What is the matter? You seem rather in-and-out in your moods,' said
Logan.
'Why, you know, I am in a regular tight place. I don't know how to put
it. You see, I can't help thinking that--that--I have rather committed
myself--it seems a beastly conceited thing to say--that there's a girl
who likes me, I'm afraid.'
'I don't want to be inquisitive, but is she in this country?' asked
Logan.
'No; she's at Homburg.'
'Has it gone very far? Have you _said_ anything?' asked Logan.
'No; my father did not like it. I hoped to bring him round.'
'Have you _written_ anything? Do you correspond?'
'No, but I'm afraid I have _looked_ a lot.'
As the Viscount Scremerston's eyes were by no means fitted to express
with magnetic force the language of the affections, Logan had to command
his smile.
'But why have you changed your mind, if you liked her?' he asked.
'Oh, _you_ know very well! Can anybody see her and not love her?' said
Scremerston, with a vagueness in his pronouns, but referring to Miss
Willoughby.
Logan was inclined to reply that he could furnish, at first hand, an
exception to the rule, but this appeared tactless.
'No one, I daresay, whose affections were not already engaged, could see
her without loving her; but I thought yours had been engaged to a lady
now at Homburg?'
'So did I,' said the wretched Scremerston, 'but I was mistaken. Oh,
Logan, you don't know the difference! _This_ is genuine biz,' remarked
the afflicted nobleman with much simplicity. He went on: 'Then there's
my father--you know him. He was against the other affair, but, if he
thinks I have committed myself and then want to back out, why, with his
ideas, he'd rather see me dead. But I can't go on with the other thing
now: I simply can _not_. I've a good mind to go out after rabbits, and
pot myself crawling through a hedge.'
'Oh, nonsense!' said Logan; 'that is stale and superfluous. For all that
I can see, there is no harm done. The young lady, depend upon it, won't
break her heart. As a matter of fact, they don't--_we_ do. You have
only to sit tight. You are no more committed than I am. You would only
make both of you wretched if you went and committed yourself now, when
you don't want to do it. In your position I would certainly sit tight:
don't commit yourself--either here or there, so to speak; or, if you
can't sit tight, make a bolt for it. Go to Norway. I am very strongly
of opinion that the second plan is the best. But, anyhow, keep up your
pecker. You are all right--I give you my word that I think you are all
right.'
'Thanks, old cock,' said Scremerston. 'Sorry to have bored you, but I
_had_ to speak to somebody.'
* * * * * *
'Best thing you could do,' said Logan. 'You'll feel ever so much better.
That kind of worry comes of keeping things to oneself, till molehills
look mountains. If you like I'll go with you to Norway myself.'
'Thanks, awfully,' said Scremerston, but he did not seem very keen. Poor
little Scremerston!
Logan 'breasted the brae' from the riverside to the house. His wading-
boots were heavy, for he had twice got in over the tops thereof; heavy
was his basket that Fenwick carried behind him, but light was Logan's
heart, for the bustard had slain its dozens of good trout. He and the
keeper emerged from the wood on the level of the lawn. All the great
mass of the house lay dark before them. Logan was to let himself in by
the locked French window; for it was very late--about two in the morning.
He had the key of the window-door in his pocket. A light moved through
the long gallery: he saw it pass each window and vanish. There was dead
silence: not a leaf stirred. Then there rang out a pistol-shot, or was
it two pistol-shots? Logan ran for the window, his rod, which he had
taken down after fishing, in his hand.
'Hurry to the back door, Fenwick!' he said; and Fenwick, throwing down
the creel, but grasping the long landing-net, flew to the back way. Logan
opened the drawing-room window, took out his matchbox, with trembling
ringers lit a candle, and, with the candle in one hand, the rod in the
other, sped through the hall, and along a back passage leading to the
gunroom. He had caught a glimpse of the Earl running down the main
staircase, and had guessed that the trouble was on the ground floor. As
he reached the end of the long dark passage, Fenwick leaped in by the
back entrance, of which the door was open. What Logan saw was a writhing
group--the Prince of Scalastro struggling in the arms of three men: a
long white heap lay crumpled in a corner. Fenwick, at this moment, threw
the landing-net over the head of one of the Prince's assailants, and with
a twist, held the man half choked and powerless. Fenwick went on
twisting, and, with the leverage of the long shaft of the net, dragged
the wretch off the Prince, and threw him down. Another of the men turned
on Logan with a loud guttural oath, and was raising a pistol. Logan knew
the voice at last--knew the Jesuit now. '_Rien ne va plus_!' he cried,
and lunged, with all the force and speed of an expert fencer, at the
fellow's face with the point of the rod. The metal joints clicked and
crashed through the man's mouth, his pistol dropped, and he staggered,
cursing through his blood, against the wall. Logan picked up the
revolver as the Prince, whose hands were now free, floored the third of
his assailants with an upper cut. Logan thrust the revolver into the
Prince's hand. 'Keep them quiet with that,' he said, and ran to where
the Earl, who had entered unseen in the struggle, was kneeling above the
long, white, crumpled heap.
It was Scremerston, dead, in his night dress: poor plucky little
Scremerston.
* * * * * *
Afterwards, before the trial, the Prince told Logan how matters had
befallen. 'I was wakened,' he said--'you were very late, you know, and
we had all gone to bed--I was wakened by a banging door. If you
remember, I told you all, on the night of your arrival at Rookchester,
how I hated that sound. I tried not to think of it, and was falling
asleep when it banged again--a double knock. I was nearly asleep, when
it clashed again. There was no wind, my window was open and I looked
out: I only heard the river murmuring and the whistle of a passing train.
The stillness made the abominable recurrent noise more extraordinary. I
dressed in a moment in my smoking-clothes, lit a candle, and went out of
my room, listening. I walked along the gallery--'
'It was your candle that I saw as I crossed the lawn,' said Logan.
'When a door opened,' the Prince went on--'the door of one of the rooms
on the landing--and a figure, all in white,--it was Scremerston,--emerged
and disappeared down the stairs. I followed at the top of my speed. I
heard a shot, or rather two pistols that rang out together like one. I
ran through the hall into the long back passage at right-angles to it,
down the passage to the glimmer of light through the partly glazed door
at the end of it. Then my candle was blown out and three men set on me.
They had nearly pinioned me when you and Fenwick took them on both
flanks. You know the rest. They had the boat unmoored, a light cart
ready on the other side, and a steam-yacht lying off Warkworth. The
object, of course, was to kidnap me, and coerce or torture me into
renewing the lease of the tables at Scalastro. Poor Scremerston, who was
a few seconds ahead of me, not carrying a candle, had fired in the dark,
and missed. The answering fire, which was simultaneous, killed him. The
shots saved me, for they brought you and Fenwick to the rescue. Two of
the fellows whom we damaged were--'
'The Genoese pipers, of course,' said Logan.
'And you guessed, from the cry you gave, who my confessor (_he_ banged
the door, of course to draw me) turned out to be?'
'Yes, the head croupier at Scalastro years ago; but he wore a beard and
blue spectacles in the old time, when he raked in a good deal of my
patrimony,' said Logan. 'But how was he planted on _you_?'
'My old friend, Father Costa, had died, and it is too long a tale of
forgery and fraud to tell you how this wretch was forced on me. He _had_
been a Jesuit, but was unfrocked and expelled from Society for all sorts
of namable and unnamable offences. His community believed that he was
dead. So he fell to the profession in which you saw him, and, when the
gambling company saw that I was disinclined to let that hell burn any
longer on my rock, ingenious treachery did the rest.'
'By Jove!' said Logan.
* * * * *
The Prince of Scalastro, impoverished by his own generous impulse, now
holds high rank in the Japanese service. His beautiful wife is much
admired in Yokohama.
The Earl was nursed through the long and dangerous illness which followed
the shock of that dreadful July night, by the unwearying assiduity of his
kinswoman, Miss Willoughby. On his recovery, the bride (for the Earl won
her heart and hand) who stood by him at the altar looked fainter and more
ghostly than the bridegroom. But her dark hour of levity was passed and
over. There is no more affectionate pair than the Earl and Countess of
Embleton. Lady Mary, who lives with them, is once more an aunt, and
spoils, it is to be feared, the young Viscount Scremerston, a fine but
mischievous little boy. On the fate of the ex-Jesuit we do not dwell:
enough to say that his punishment was decreed by the laws of our country,
not of that which he had disgraced.
The manuscripts of the Earl have been edited by him and the Countess for
the Roxburghe Club.