THE HAND OF DEATH WAS ON HIM TOO
A respectable looking butler opened the door in answer to Doctor
Newington's pull at the bell.
Luke had had time--on the day preceding the inquest--to put some
semblance of order in his uncle's household. The doctor had sent in
the nurses, and he had seen to a nice capable housekeeper being
installed in the house. She took the further management at once in her
own hands. She dismissed the drunken couple summarily and engaged a
couple of decent servants--a butler and a cook.
The house, though no less gloomy, looked certainly less lonely and
neglected.
Mr. Warren, who had been Lord Radclyffe's secretary for years, but who
had been speedily given his congé when the imposter took up his
permanent abode in the house, was installed once more in the library,
replying to the innumerable letters and telegrams of inquiry which
poured in with every post.
Louisa and Sir Thomas were shown into the room where the young man was
sitting. He rose at once, offering chairs and pushing his own work
aside. In the meanwhile the doctor had gone up stairs.
Several minutes elapsed. No one spoke. Mr. Warren, who had always
been deeply attached to Luke de Mountford, was longing to ask
questions, which, however, he was too shy to formulate. At last there
was a knock at the door and one of the nurses came in to say that Lord
Radclyffe would be pleased to see Sir Thomas Ryder up stairs.
Louisa rose at the same time as her uncle, but the latter detained her
with a gesture full of kind sympathy.
"Not just yet, my dear," he said. "I'll call you as soon as possible."
"But," she asked anxiously, "I shall be allowed to see him, shan't I?"
"I think so," he replied evasively. "But even if you do not see him,
you can trust to me. Oh, yes! you can," he added insistently, seeing
the deeply troubled look that had crept into her face at his words. "I
am going to do to-night what I often have to do in the course of my
work. I am going to borrow your soul and your mind and allow them to
speak through my lips. When I go up stairs, I shall only outwardly be
the police officer searching for proofs of a crime: inwardly I shall
be a noble-hearted woman trying to discover proofs of her fiancée's
innocence. That will be right, dear, won't it?"
She nodded acquiescence, trying to appear content. Then she pleaded
once again, dry-eyed and broken-voiced: "You will try and get
permission for me to see Lord Radclyffe, won't you?"
"I give you my word," he said solemnly.
Then he went up stairs.
Mr. Warren, quiet and sympathetic, persuaded Louisa to sit down again
by the hearth. He took her muff and fur stole from her, and threw a
log on the fire. The flames spurted off, giving a cheerful crackle.
But Louisa saw no pictures in this fire, her mind was up stairs in
Lord Radclyffe's room, wondering what was happening.
Mr. Warren spoke of the murdered man. He had not been present at the
inquest, and the news that the tyrant who had ruled over Lord
Radclyffe for so long was nothing but an impostor came as a fearful
shock to him.
There was the pitifulness of the whole thing! The utter
purposelessness of a hideous crime. So many lives wrecked, such awful
calamity, such appalling humiliation, such ignominy, and all just for
nothing! A very little trouble, almost superficial inquiry, would have
revealed the imposture, and saved all that sorrow, all the dire
humiliation, and prevented the crime for which the law of men decrees
that there shall be no pardon.
The man who lay ill up stairs--and he who was lying in the public
mortuary, surrounded by all the pomp and luxury which he had filched
by his lies--alone could tell the secret of the extraordinary success
of the imposture. Lord Radclyffe had accepted the bricklayer's son
almost as his own, with that same obstinate reserve with which he had
at first flouted the very thought of the man's pretensions. Who could
tell what persuasion was used? what arguments? what threats?
And the man was an impostor after all! And he had been murdered, when
one word perhaps would have effaced him from the world as completely
and less majestically than had been done by death.
Mr. Warren talked of it all, and Louisa listened with half an ear even
whilst every sense of hearing in her was concentrated on the floor
above, in a vain endeavour to get a faint inkling of what went on in
Lord Radclyffe's room. She had heard her uncle's step on the landing,
the few hurried sentences exchanged with the doctor before entering
the sick chamber, the opening and shutting of a door. Then again the
lighter footsteps of the nurses, who had evidently been sent out of
the room, when Sir Thomas went in. Louisa heard the faint hum of their
voices as they descended the stairs, even a suppressed giggle now and
then: they were happy no doubt at the few moments of respite from
constant watching, which had apparently been accorded them.
They ran quickly down the last flight of stairs, and across the hall
toward the servants' quarters. Their chattering was heard faintly
echoing through the baize doors. Then nothing more.
Less than a quarter of an hour went by, and again she heard the
opening and shutting of a door, and men's footsteps on the landing.
Louisa could not believe either her eyes which were gazing on the
clock, or her ears, which heard now quite distinctly the voice of Sir
Thomas descending the stairs, and Doctor Newington's more pompous
tones in reply.
"The interview," remarked Mr. Warren, "did not last very long."
But already she had risen from her chair, desperately anxious,
wondering what the meaning could be of the shortness of the interview.
She was not kept long in suspense, for a moment or two later Sir
Thomas Ryder came in followed by Doctor Newington. One glance at her
uncle's face told her the whole disappointing truth, even before he
spoke.
"It was useless, my dear," he said, "and Doctor Newington was quite
right. Lord Radclyffe, I am sorry to say, is hardly conscious. He is,
evidently, unable to understand what is said, and certainly quite
incapable of making any effort to reply."
"I was afraid so," added Doctor Newington in his usual conventional
tones, "the patient, you see, is hardly conscious. His mind is
dormant. He just knows me and his nurses, but he did not recognize Sir
Thomas."
Louisa said nothing: the blank, hopeless disappointment following on
the excitement of the past two hours was exceedingly difficult to
bear. The ruling passion--strong even in the midst of despair--the
pride that was in her, alone kept her from an utter breakdown. She was
grateful to her uncle, who very tactfully interposed his tall figure
between her and the indifferent eyes of the doctor. Mr. Warren looked
more sympathetic than ever, and that was just as trying to bear as the
pompousness of Doctor Newington.
As a matter of fact, Louisa had absolutely ceased to think. The whole
future from this moment appeared as an absolute blank. She had not
begun to envisage the possibility of going back to the hotel, having
utterly failed in accomplishing that which she had set mind and heart
to do: the throwing of the first feeble ray of light on the
impenetrable darkness of Luke's supposed guilt. She certainly had not
envisaged the going to bed to-night, the getting up to-morrow, the
beginning of another day with its thousand and one trivial tasks and
incidents, all the while that she had failed in doing that which alone
could prevent the awful catastrophe of to-morrow!
Luke standing in the dock, like a common criminal!
"I'll just see about getting a cab, dear," said her uncle kindly.
The first of those thousand and one trivialities which would go on and
on from now onward in endless monotony, whilst Luke prepared for his
trial, for his condemnation, perhaps for death.
It was indeed unthinkable. No wonder that her mind rebelled at the
task, refusing all thoughts, remaining like a gray, blank slate from
which every impression of past and future has been wiped out.
Sir Thomas Ryder went out of the room, and Mr. Warren went with him.
They left the door ajar, so she could hear them talking in the hall.
Mr. Warren said:
"Don't go out, Sir Thomas. It's a horrid night. Fletcher will get you
a cab."
And Sir Thomas replied: "Thank you."
"Won't you," said the younger man, "wait in the library?"
He had apparently rung a bell, for the man servant came into the hall
and was duly told off to whistle for a cab.
"I'd rather go into another room, for a moment, Mr. Warren, if I may,"
said Sir Thomas. "There are just one or two little questions I would
like to put to you."
"Certainly, Sir Thomas," replied Mr. Warren with alacrity.
The two men went together into the dining-room. Louisa by shutting her
eyes could almost see them sitting there in the stately and gloomy
room, which she knew so well. She could call to mind the last occasion
on which she had lunched there, with Lord Radclyffe and Luke, and
Edie, and Jim. It was the day on which the impostor first forced his
way into the house. Louisa had a clear vision of him even now, just as
she had seen him standing that day in the hall, before his interview
with Lord Radclyffe. Parker was helping him with his coat and Louisa
had seen his face: the bricklayer's son who had come forward with his
marvellous array of lies, and who had been so implicitly believed,
that he himself had to pay for his lies with a most horrible death.
For that death now--and because of the impenetrable mystery which the
impostor had taken with him to his humble grave--Luke stood in danger
of being punished with death that was even more horrible than that
caused by a stab in the neck under cover of darkness and of fog.
The one chance that there had been of finding a clue to the mystery
had been dissipated by the silence of the sick man up stairs. The hand
of death was upon him too. He also would take the secret of the
bricklayer's son, silently with him to the grave.
Louisa's eyes, vacant and tearless, wandered aimlessly round the room.
Doctor Newington was sitting at the desk, writing either a letter or a
prescription which apparently required a considerable amount of
thought. He seemed deeply absorbed in what he wrote and from time to
time referred to a small note-book which he took out of his pocket.
The scratching of his stylo against the paper was the only sound that
struck Louisa's ear, the rest of the house seemed lonely and still.
Only from far away came the shrill screeching of the cab-whistle.
Louisa rose and went to the door, peeping out into the hall. It was
deserted and the dining-room door was shut. She slipped out into the
hall. Doctor Newington apparently did not trouble himself about her.
Very softly she closed the library door behind her.
Then she ran swiftly up stairs.