Saxe Leinitzer returned to the morning-room, and taking the key from his
pocket unlocked the door. Inside Lucille was pale with fury.
“What! I am a prisoner, then!” she exclaimed. “How dare you lock me
in? This is not your house. Let me pass! I am tired of all this stupid
espionage.”
The Prince stood with his back to the door.
“It is for your own sake, Lucille. The house is watched.”
She sank into a low chair, trembling. The Prince had all the appearance
of a man himself seriously disturbed.
“Lucille,” he said, “we will do what we can for you. The whole thing is
horribly unfortunate. You must leave England to-night. Muriel will go
with you. Her presence will help to divert suspicion. Once you can
reach Paris I can assure you of safety. But in this country I am almost
powerless.”
“I must see Victor,” she said in a low tone. “I will not go without.”
The Prince nodded.
“I have thought of that. There is no reason, Lucille, why he should not
be the one to lead you into safety.”
“You mean that?” she cried.
“I mean it,” the Prince answered. “After what has happened you are of
course of no further use to us. I am inclined to think, too, that we
have been somewhat exacting. I will send a messenger to Souspennier to
meet you at Charing Cross to-night.”
She sprang up.
“Let me write it myself.”
“Very well,” he agreed, with a shrug of the shoulders. “But do not
address or sign it. There is danger in any communication between you.”
She took a sheet of note-paper and hastily wrote a few words.
“I have need of your help. Will you be at Charing Cross at twelve
o’clock prepared for a journey.--Lucille.”
The Prince took the letter from her and hastily folded it up.
“I will deliver it myself,” he announced. “It will perhaps be safest.
Until I return, Lucille, do not stir from the house or see any one.
Muriel has given the servants orders to admit no one. All your life,” he
added, after a moment’s pause, “you have been a little cruel to me,
and this time also. I shall pray that you will relent before our next
meeting.”
She rose to her feet and looked him full in the face. She seemed to be
following out her own train of thought rather than taking note of his
words.
“Even now,” she said thoughtfully, “I am not sure that I can trust you.
I have a good mind to fight or scream my way out of this house, and go
myself to see Victor.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“The fighting or the screaming will not be necessary, dear Countess,” he
said. “The doors are open to you. But it is as clear as day that if
you go to the hotel or near it you will at once be recognised, and
recognition means arrest. There is a limit beyond which one cannot help
a wilful woman. Take your life in your hands and go your own way, or
trust in us who are doing our best to save you.”
“And what of Reginald Brott?” she asked.
“Brott?” the Prince repeated impatiently. “Who cares what becomes of
him? You have made him seem a fool, but, Lucille, to tell you the truth,
I am sorry that we did not leave this country altogether alone. There
is not the soil for intrigue here, or the possibility. Then, too, the
police service is too stolid, too inaccessible. And even our friends,
for whose aid we are here--well, you heard the Duke. The cast-iron Saxon
idiocy of the man. The aristocracy here are what they call bucolic. It
is their own fault. They have intermarried with parvenus and Americans
for generations. They are a race by themselves. We others may shake
ourselves free from them. I would work in any country of the globe for
the good of our cause, but never again in England.”
Lucille shivered a little.
“I am not in the humour for argument,” she declared. “If you would earn
my gratitude take that note to my husband. He is the only man I feel
sure of--whom I know can protect me.”
The Prince bowed low.
“It is our farewell, Countess,” he said.
“I cannot pretend,” she answered, “to regret it.”
Saxe Leinitzer left the room. There was a peculiar smile upon his lips
as he crossed the hall. Brott was still awaiting for him.
“Mr. Brott,” he said, “the Countess is, as I feared, too agitated to see
you again for the present, or any one else. She sends you, however, this
message.”
He took the folded paper from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to the
other man. Brott read it through eagerly. His eyes shone.
“She accepts the situation, then?” he exclaimed.
“Precisely! Will you pardon me, my friend, if I venture upon one other
word. Lucille is not an ordinary woman. She is not in the least like the
majority of her sex, especially, I might add, amongst us. The fact that
her husband was living would seriously influence her consideration of
any other man--as her lover. The present crisis, however, has changed
everything. I do not think that you will have cause to complain of her
lack of gratitude.”
Brott walked out into the streets with the half sheet of note-paper
twisted up between his fingers. For the first time for months he was
conscious of a distinct and vivid sense of happiness. The terrible
period of indecision was past. He knew now where he stood. Nor was
his immediate departure from England altogether unpleasant to him. His
political career was shattered--friends and enemies were alike cold to
him. Such an act of cowardice as his, such pitiful shrinking back at the
last fateful moment, was inexplicable and revolting. Even Letheringham
was barely civil. It was certain that his place in the Cabinet would be
intolerable. He yearned for escape from it all, and the means of escape
were now at hand. In after years he knew very well that the shadow of
his broken trust, the torture of his misused opportunities, would stand
for ever between him and the light. But at that moment he was able
to clear his mind of all such disquieting thoughts. He had won
Lucille--never mind at what cost, at what peril! He had won Lucille!
He was deeply engrossed, and his name was spoken twice in his ear before
he turned round. A small, somewhat shabby-looking man, with tired eyes
and more than a day’s growth of beard upon his chin, had accosted him.
“Mr. Brott, sir. A word with you, please.”
Brott held out his hand. Nevertheless his tone when he spoke lacked
heartiness.
“You, Hedley! Why, what brings you to London?”
The little man did not seem to see the hand. At any rate he made no
motion to take it.
“A few minutes’ chat with Mr. Brott. That’s what I’ve come for.”
Brott raised his eyebrows, and nodded in somewhat constrained fashion.
“Well,” he said, “I am on my way to my rooms. We can talk as we go, if
you like. I am afraid the good people up in your part of the world are
not too well pleased with me.”
The little man smiled rather queerly.
“That is quite true,” he answered calmly. “They hate a liar and a
turn-coat. So do I!”
Brott stopped short upon the pavement.
“If you are going to talk like that to me, Hedley,” he said, “the less
you have to say the better.”
The man nodded.
“Very well,” he said. “What I have to say won’t take me very long. But
as I’ve tramped most of the way up here to say it, you’ll have to listen
here or somewhere else. I thought you were always one who liked the
truth.”
“So I do!” Brott answered. “Go on!”
The man shuffled along by his side. They were an odd-looking pair, for
Brott was rather a careful man as regards his toilet, and his companion
looked little better than a tramp.
“All my life,” he continued, “I’ve been called ‘Mad Hedley,’ or ‘Hedley,
the mad tailor.’ Sometimes one and sometimes the other. It don’t matter
which. There’s truth in, it. I am a bit mad. You, Mr. Brott, were one
of those who understood me a little. I have brooded a good deal perhaps,
and things have got muddled up in my brain. You know what has been at
the bottom of it all.
“I began making speeches when I was a boy. People laughed at me, but
I’ve set many a one a-thinking. I’m no anarchist, although people call
me one. I’ll admit that I admire the men who set the French Revolution
going. If such a thing happened in this country I’d be one of the first
to join in. But I’ve never had a taste for bloodshed. I’d rather the
thing had been done without. From the first you seemed to be the man who
might have brought it about. We listened to you, we watched your career,
and we began to have hopes. Mr. Brott, the bodies and souls of millions
of your fellow-creatures were in the hollow of your hand. It was you
who might have set them free. It was you who might have made this the
greatest, the freest, the happiest country in the world. Not so much for
us perhaps as for our children, and our children’s children. We didn’t
expect a huge social upheaval in a week, or even a decade of years. But
we did expect to see the first blow struck. Oh, yes, we expected that.”
“I have disappointed you, I know, you and many others,” Brott said
bitterly. “I wish I could explain. But I can’t!”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” the man answered. “You have broken the hearts
of thousands of suffering men and women--you who might have led them
into the light, have forged another bolt in the bars which stand between
them and liberty. So they must live on in the darkness, dull, dumb
creatures with just spirit enough to spit and curse at the sound of your
name. It was the greatest trust God ever placed in one man’s hand--and
you--you abused it. They were afraid of you--the aristocrats, and they
bought you. Oh, we are not blind up there--there are newspapers in our
public houses, and now and then one can afford a half-penny. We have
read of you at their parties and their dances. Quite one of them you
have become, haven’t you? But, Mr. Brott, have you never been afraid?
Have you never said to yourself, there is justice in the earth? Suppose
it finds me out?”
“Hedley, you are talking rubbish,” Brott said. “Up here you would see
things with different eyes. Letheringham is pledged.”
“If any man ever earned hell,” Hedley continued, “it is you, Brott,
you who came to us a deliverer, and turned out to be a lying prophet.
‘Hell,’” he repeated fiercely, “and may you find it swiftly.”
The man’s right hand came out of his long pocket. They were in the thick
of Piccadilly, but his action was too swift for any interference. Four
reports rang suddenly out, and the muzzle of the revolver was held
deliberately within an inch or so of Brett’s heart. And before even
the nearest of the bystanders could realise what had happened Brott lay
across the pavement a dead man, and Hedley was calmly handing over the
revolver to a policeman who had sprang across the street.
“Be careful, officer,” he said, “there are still two chambers loaded.
I will come with you quite quietly. That is Mr. Reginald Brott, the
Cabinet Minister, and I have killed him.”