Beaumanoir passed into the corridor with unsteady steps, dazed by the
enormity of his entanglement. He had been caught so easily, yet he was
held so firmly. His first impulse was to rush off to Scotland Yard,
expose the white-bearded wire-puller in the invalid chair, and claim
protection. But that course would entail confession of his engagement as
a criminal instrument, to the everlasting disgrace of the great family
of which he was now the head. The alternatives were foul treachery to
the girl of his heart or almost certain death at the hands of Ziegler's
disciplined ruffians.
He had reached the top of the broad staircase when a step, almost
inaudible on the thick pile carpet, sounded behind him and a hand fell
on his shoulder.
"Charley, old boy! Or is it 'your Grace' I should be calling you? What
the dickens are you doing here?" said the young man who had overtaken
him.
Beaumanoir's harassed brows cleared as he met Alec Forsyth's honest gaze
and he felt the grip of his honest hand. Their ways had lain apart for
the last few years, but a very real friendship, begun in the Eton
playing fields, had survived separation. Of all his acquaintances, Alec
had been the only one to go down to Liverpool twelve months before to
bid scapegrace Charles Hanbury farewell.
"I had a call to make, before going to Pattisons' in Lincoln's Inn,"
said the Duke. And then with quick apprehension he added, pointing to
the door he had just left: "Have you come from there? Have you business
with Ziegler too?"
"Ziegler? Who's Ziegler?" asked Forsyth, looking puzzled by his sudden
confusion. "No, I haven't been to those rooms, but to the suite beyond.
A duty call on a certain Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, but, thank goodness, she
wasn't at home. Now about yourself, Charley. Fortune smiles again, eh?"
"It's only a sickly grin at present," Beaumanoir replied, dejectedly.
"See here, Alec; I've got my bag on a cab outside. I landed at
Southampton too early for lunch. Come and talk to me while I get a snack
before going to the lawyers."
A few minutes later they were seated in a Strand restaurant, and the
young Scotsman heard all about his friend's struggles with the demon of
poverty in New York, but never a word of the trouble that was brooding.
In his turn Forsyth was able to fill in the blanks of the family
solicitor's cablegram, and enlightened Beaumanoir as to the manner of
his succession to the title. The late Duke was traveling to Newmarket in
a racing "special," accompanied by his nephew and heir, George Hanbury,
when they had both met their deaths in a collision.
The double funeral had taken place at Prior's Tarrant, the ancestral
seat of the Dukes of Beaumanoir in Hertfordshire, three days before, the
arrangements having been made by the solicitors, in the absence of the
next successor. The last Duke having been a childless widower, and both
his brothers, the fathers respectively of George and Charles Hanbury,
having predeceased him, there had been no near relatives to follow the
late head of the house to his last resting-place.
"Let me see, my cousin George had a sister, Sybil, who used to live with
my uncle," Beaumanoir mused aloud. "I wonder what has become of her."
"I believe that she is still at your town house in Piccadilly," replied
Forsyth with a constraint which the other did not notice in his
self-absorption. But the next moment it struck Beaumanoir as odd that
the information should have been so readily forthcoming, for he had been
unaware that his friend knew his relatives.
"You have made Sybil Hanbury's acquaintance, then?" he asked.
"Yes, since your departure for America," was the reply. "I had the
pleasure of meeting her first at my uncle's in Grosvenor
Gardens--General Sadgrove's, you know. I dare say you remember him?"
"Oh, yes; I remember the General well--a shrewd old party with eyes like
gimlets," said Beaumanoir. "But what's this about Grosvenor Gardens?" he
added quickly. "The Sadgroves used to live in Bruton Street."
"Quite so; but they moved to 140 Grosvenor Gardens, last Christmas."
"140!" exclaimed the Duke. "Why, that's where the Shermans are going to
stay. Some friends of mine who--who came over in the same ship," he went
on to explain rather lamely.
Forsyth shot an amused glance at his old crony. "Yes, I know that Uncle
Jem was expecting some Americans to put up with him, and he has been
raving about the charms of the young lady of the party for the last
fortnight. You are excited, Charley. Your manner has struck me as
strange since we met at the hotel. Is it permitted to inquire if my
uncle is entertaining unawares--a future Duchess?"
To the young Scotsman's surprise, the Duke showed signs for a moment of
taking the light-spoken banter amiss. Beaumanoir flushed, and muttered
something inarticulate, but pulled himself together and diverted their
talk into a fresh channel, clumsily enough.
"Don't gas about me, old chap," he said. "Tell me of yourself. Is the
world using you better than formerly?"
"About the same," Forsyth replied with a shrug. "They gave me a
twenty-pound rise last year, so my pay as a third-grade clerk in the
Foreign Office is now the princely sum of L230 per annum. Not a
brilliant prospect. When I'm a worn-out old buffer of sixty I shall be
able to retire on a pension about equal to my present pay."
"Then look here, Alec; chuck the public service and come to me," said
the Duke, eagerly. "I'll give you eight hundred a year to begin with,
and rises up to two thousand; and you can have the dower-house at
Prior's Tarrant to live in. Call yourself private secretary, bailiff,
anything you please--only come. The fact is--well, I've been a bit
shaken by--by what I've gone through. I want someone near me who's more
than a mere hireling."
It was Forsyth's turn to flush now, but with pleasure at the offer made
to him. He accepted it in a few simple words, and the Duke rose and paid
his score.
"Come with me to Pattisons'," he said. "Then we'll go on to Piccadilly
and take possession."
The business at the lawyers', which consisted of little more than
arranging future meetings, was soon finished, and the Duke and his new
secretary took a fresh cab to the West End. As they bowled along
Beaumanoir inquired further about his cousin Sybil, whom, owing to his
absence in India and more latterly to his estrangement from his
relations, he had never met. Forsyth imparted the information that for
the last six months, since she "came out," she had virtually ruled the
late Duke's household.
"But she can be little more than a child," Beaumanoir protested.
"Anyhow, I can't keep a cousin of eighteen on as _my_ housekeeper
without setting Mrs. Grundy's tongue wagging. The question arises what
to do with her. Old Pattison tells me she is well provided for, but I
don't like telling her to clear out if it does not occur to her to go.
What sort is she, Alec?"
"That's rather a stiff question to put to _me_," Forsyth replied, as
though to himself. "I had better make my confession first as last," he
went on hurriedly. "You are her nearest relative now, and the head of
her family. Ever since I first saw Sybil Hanbury the dearest wish of my
heart has been to make her my wife, but without prospects of any kind I
couldn't very well ask her. There you have it, my noble patron, in a
nutshell."
Beaumanoir patted his friend's knee affectionately.
"My dear fellow, go in and win, so far as I am concerned," he said.
"While I am above ground your prospects need stand in your way no
longer. But you haven't answered my question, which I'll put in another
way. How is she likely to take my appearance on the scene?"
"I'm afraid she's rather prejudiced. Her brother George didn't love you
much, you know, and she is greatly cut up by his loss," Forsyth replied,
with the dogged manner of the honest man who has to say a disagreeable
thing. "I don't think that you need be under any apprehension about her
staying on at Beaumanoir House when you show up. To be candid, I saw her
yesterday, and she said she should begin packing as soon as she was sure
that you hadn't been drowned on the voyage home."
"Good girl!" ejaculated the Duke. "The unexpressed hope did her much
honor, only it's a pity it didn't come off. Now, Alec, if you'll see her
first--she needn't see me at all if she doesn't wish to--and tell her
from me that she's not to hurry out of the house, because I'm going to
oscillate between Prior's Tarrant and a hotel for the present, I shall
be immensely obliged to you."
"But you said just now that you were going to take possession."
"I have changed my mind. There are reasons which I cannot explain to you
why my immediate neighborhood is likely to be dangerous for the present.
I should be sorry to subject my fair cousin to any unpleasantness.
Though not a word of this to her or anyone else, please."
The cab was drawing up before the ducal mansion, and Forsyth forbore to
put into words the astonishment which he looked. As the two men were
about to ascend the steps to the entrance, a landau, which was being
driven slowly by, drew to the curb, and a lady who, besides the
servants, was the sole occupant, called out:
"Surely you're not going to cut me, Mr. Forsyth. Too proud to know poor
little me, eh, now that you've taken to calling on dukes?"
A murmur of annoyance escaped Forsyth, but perforce he went to the
carriage and shook the daintily gloved hand held out to him.
"How do you do, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton?" he said, adding the reproving
whisper, "That _is_ the Duke."
The lady in the landau raised her lorgnettes and calmly surveyed the
waiting nobleman.
"How very interesting!" she purred, adding aloud so that the subject of
her request could not fail to hear, "Why don't you introduce him,
instead of keeping him standing there? We Americans are death on dukes,
you know."
At a gesture from Forsyth, who tried to convey his disgust by a look,
Beaumanoir limped forward, smiling. His misfortunes had made him
something of a democrat, and he had always been ready to see the comic
side of things till tragedy that morning had claimed him for its own. In
meeting the advances of the agent Jevons in the Bowery saloon he had
been largely influenced by the humor of the situation--of the scion of a
ducal house consenting to "get a bit" by passing forged bonds.
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, a handsome blonde with an elegant figure and a
childish voice, received the Duke with effusion.
"I stopped my carriage to ask Mr. Forsyth to tea on Saturday," she
prattled. "I do hope your Grace will come too. I am staying at the
Cecil, and shall be delighted to see you."
The unblushing effrontery of the invitation failed to strike Beaumanoir
in his sudden horror at the associations called up by it. This frivolous
butterfly of a woman occupied the next suite of rooms to those in which
Ziegler was spinning his villainous web--in which that terrible old man
had unfolded to him the details of his treacherous task. Strange, too,
that he should be bidden to the mild dissipation of an afternoon
tea-table in that hotel, of all others, on the very day when he was due
to go there on business so different, for Saturday was the day appointed
by Ziegler for his call for "further instructions."
Conscious that the mocking eyes of the lady in the landau were watching
him with a curious inquiry, he mastered his emotion, and at the same
time came to a decision on the vital issue before him. Probably he would
have arrived at the same one without the incentive of avoiding an
unpalatable engagement, but Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's invitation to tea
was undoubtedly the final influence in setting him on the straight path.
"I am very sorry," he replied, and there was a new dignity in his tone,
"but I must ask you to excuse me. I am going down to-morrow to Prior's
Tarrant, my place in Hertfordshire, and I shall not be in town on
Saturday."
For the fraction of a second the rebuffed hostess seemed taken aback by
the refusal. She flushed slightly under her powder, and the taper
fingers twitched on the handle of her sunshade. But without any
appreciable pause she answered gaily:
"That's most unkind of you. Well, what must be must be. Good-bye, your
Grace. Good-bye, Mr. Forsyth; I shall expect you, anyhow. Drive on,
Bennett."
The carriage rolled away.
"I am glad you snubbed her," Forsyth exclaimed. "She has been made a
good deal of in certain circles during the last month or two, and
presumes a lot on the strength of it."
"Did I snub her?" said the Duke carelessly. "I am sure I didn't mean to,
for she deserves better things of me. You'd hardly believe it, Alec, but
that little episode has jerked me into deciding a crucial point--no less
than whether to be a man or a cur. At the same time it has put me quite
outside the pale as a resident under the same roof as my cousin. On
second thoughts, I will not go in at all, but I shall be obliged if you
will see her and convey the message I gave you--that Beaumanoir House is
at her disposal till she can quite conveniently leave it."
"But what are you going to do yourself?" said Forsyth in sheer
bewilderment.
"First I shall go to Bond Street, to gladden the hearts of some of my
old creditors; then by an evening train to Prior's Tarrant," was the
reply. "And, Alec," proceeded the Duke earnestly, "if you can get leave
from the Foreign Office, pending retirement, and join me there as soon
as possible, you will place me under a very deep obligation."