On the following Sunday morning the Duke of Beaumanoir stood at one of
the windows of the long library at Prior's Tarrant, idly beating a
tattoo on the glass. The June sunshine flooded the bosky leafage of the
glorious expanse of park, and nearer still the parterres of the old
Dutch garden were gay with summer bloom; but the beauties of the
landscape were lost upon the watcher at the window.
Nearly four and twenty hours had elapsed since he had failed to keep his
appointment with Mr. Ziegler, and he was wondering how and when that
autocrat of high-grade crime would signalize his displeasure at the
mutiny. That sooner or later an edict would issue against him from the
invalid chair in the first-floor suite he had not the slightest doubt.
He knew that he had to deal with men playing a great game for a great
stake in deadly earnest.
The Dukes of Beaumanoir had never been famous for their virtues, any
more than they had been cowards, and it was rather a dawning sense of
responsibility than fear, either for his reputation or his person, that
filled him with apprehension. If "anything happened" to him, such a lot
would happen to so many other people. For instance, it had only occurred
to him since he came down to the country that if Ziegler killed him his
death would mean ruin to Alec Forsyth, who had thrown up a sure position
to serve him. The next heir was an elderly cousin with a large family to
provide for, and he would certainly not retain Forsyth in his
employment.
Then, again, Beaumanoir reflected with a sigh, his new and sweet
friendship with Leonie Sherman--a friendship to which no blot on his
escutcheon need now put limits--would be rudely snapped. The King of
Terrors would take away what his saved honor had restored, and perhaps
it was the bitterest drop in his cup to feel that he might be giving his
life to lose what in another sense he would have given his life to win.
To ask Leonie to link her fate to his, with that dark shadow hanging
over him, was out of the question.
Once he had taken up his pen to denounce Ziegler to the police
authorities anonymously, but he had despondingly laid it down again.
That crafty practitioner had doubtless safeguarded himself against such
an obvious course by being prepared with an unimpeachable record which
it would be impossible to shake unless he came forward and avowed
complicity. There, again, dishonor waited for him, and he had already
made his choice that a short shrift was preferable to that.
The gloom of his mood was enhanced by his intense loneliness in the huge
feudal monastery that now called him master, for Forsyth had been unable
to join him, owing to difficulties in obtaining release from his present
duties.
Beaumanoir took out and read for the fifth time a letter which had
arrived that morning from his friend and secretary:
"My dear Duke (I mustn't use the irreverent 'Charley' any
more),--I am still having trouble with the F.O. people about my
departure, but I think I may safely promise to get away to you
on Tuesday. In fact, I shall make a point of doing so, even if I
have to leave the public service in disgrace, for you must
forgive my saying that I am rather uneasy about you. The other
day you seemed like a man with a millstone round his neck, and I
take it that one of the duties of a private secretary is to
remove millstones from the person of his employer. I only wish
you would confide fully in me, and command me in any way--but
that is, of course, your affair.
"I dined with my uncle, General Sadgrove, last night, and had
the pleasure of meeting Mrs. and Miss Sherman there. The latter
is indeed a charming girl. She was rather shy in talking about
you, having heard from my uncle that the Mr. Hanbury she met on
shipboard was probably the Duke of Beaumanoir on his way to
enter into his kingdom. Mrs. Sherman waxed enthusiastic on your
'old-world courtesy' and the General, who chaffs the old lady,
remarked that she had been equally laudatory before she
discovered your rank.
"They were all very kind and congratulatory on my announcing my
engagement to Sybil, which, as I wrote you yesterday, was
ratified within ten minutes of your leaving me at the door of
Beaumanoir House.
"You may be interested to hear that I did _not_ go to tea with
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton to-day.--Yours,
"_Alec Forsyth_."
The Duke crushed the letter back into his pocket, and came to a
resolution.
"I'll run up to town to-morrow and call on the Shermans," he said to
himself. "And now I'll do the proper thing, and go to church. I'm not
going to crouch in corners because of that patriarchal old fiend at the
Cecil."
The church at which generations of Hanburys had worshiped was in the
center of Tarrant village, a mile from the lodge gates, but there was a
short cut to it across the park. This was the route taken by the Duke,
who first crossed the greensward and then passed out by a private wicket
into the road after traversing the belt of copse that fringed the
demesne. The villagers, who had waited for his coming, standing
bare-headed in the churchyard, were a little disappointed that he had
not driven up in full state. But the solitary gentleman limping up the
path atoned for the lack of ceremony and won their hearts by his
friendly smile; and a handshake to one or two of the older inhabitants,
whom he remembered as a boy, clinched the matter. The verdict went round
that the new Duke would "do."
The service that morning was, it is to be feared, more ducal than
devotional. From the white-robed choir, ranged among the tombs of
dead-and-gone Hanburys in the chancel, to the hard-breathing rustics on
the back benches every eye was turned and steadily kept on the lonely
figure in the family pew. While grateful for the homage paid him, the
Duke was not sorry when the ordeal was over and he was free to make his
way homeward.
But he was not to get off so easily. As he was about to let himself
through the private gate into the park, intending to go back, as he had
come, through the copse, footsteps sounded behind him, and Mr. Bristow,
the vicar, overtook him. They had already met on the previous day.
"Your Grace is alone still?" panted the clergyman. "Ah, I thought your
secretary wouldn't find it so easy to cast his shackles. I am
commissioned by Mrs. Bristow to say--I hope you won't think us
presuming--that we shall be delighted if you will give us your company
at our homely lunch."
A sudden impulse prompted Beaumanoir to accept the invitation. He had
taken a liking for the hale, vigorous old vicar, who had the archives of
his family by rote, and an hour or two in his society would take him out
of himself. So he turned back and accompanied his host to the vicarage,
where he made a good impression on Mrs. Bristow by his cordial praise of
her training of the choir and by appreciation of her strawberries and
cream.
It was past four when he returned to Prior's Tarrant, to be met in the
entrance-hall by the butler with a face eloquent of "something wrong."
"What is it, Manson?" he asked. "Mr. Bristow sent a boy, did he not, to
say that I was lunching at the vicarage?"
"Yes, your Grace. It isn't that," was the agitated reply. "I have to
report an outrage that's been committed on one of the under-servants.
Jennings, the third gardener, was coming back from church through the
copse in the park, when he was lassoed, your Grace, same as they do
buffalo, I've been told, in foreign parts. A rope shot out of the bushes
over his shoulders, and then a man ran up as he was struggling on the
ground; but let him go, saying it was a joke. Jennings hasn't got any
enemies that he knows of, and it was a wicked thing to do, because he's
a bit of a cripple and walks lame. It's shook him a good deal."
"I am not surprised at that," said the Duke. "Possibly it was only
intended as a practical joke, but you had better inform the constable in
the village, and instruct him to inquire into the matter."
The butler retired, and the Duke smiled grimly.
"Ziegler has begun to put in some of his fine work," he muttered. "The
initial blunder of his agents in mistaking a servant's limp for mine
won't stop him long. I shall begin to like the excitement soon, I
expect."
But as the day wore to evening, and the evening to night, the sensation
of being _hunted_ vexed his nerves. He found himself prolonging his
solitary dinner for the sake of the company of the butler and footman
who waited upon him, and afterwards he abstained from the moonlit stroll
on the terrace to which he felt tempted. It was not till the mansion had
been barred and bolted for the night that he ceased to fumble frequently
for the revolver which he had carried all day.
Before retiring he inquired of Manson if the constable had traced the
maltreaters of Jennings, and he was not surprised to learn that there
had been no discoveries. Mr. Clinton Ziegler was not the man to employ
agents incapable of baffling a village policeman.
The room which Beaumanoir occupied was the great state bed-chamber that
had been used by his predecessors from time immemorial--a gaunt
apartment with a cavernous fireplace and heavily curtained mullioned
windows. He did not like the room, but had consented to sleep there on
seeing that the old retainers would be scandalized by his sleeping
anywhere but in the "Duke's Room."
After locking the door and seeing to the window fastenings, he took the
additional precaution of examining the chimney. Bending his head clear
of the massive mantelpiece, he looked up and saw that at the end of the
broad shaft quite a large circle of star-lit sky was visible, while a
cold blast struck downwards of sufficient volume to purify the air of
the room.
He lay awake for some time, but he must have been slumbering fitfully
for over an hour when he felt himself gradually awakening--not from any
sudden start, but from a growing sense of strange oppression in his
lungs. As his senses returned the choking sensation increased, and
finally he lay wide awake, wondering what was the matter. Every minute
it became harder to breathe the stifling air, and at last he flung the
bedclothes off in the hope of relief, and in doing so saw something so
unaccountable that his reeling senses were stricken with amazement
rather than fear.
There was a fire in the grate. Glowing steadily in the recess of the
ancient fireplace a great red ball burned, without flicker and without
flame, but lurid with the unwavering light that comes from fuel fused to
intense heat.
Even without the terrible oppression at his chest there would have been
a weird horror in this mysterious fire introduced into his room at dead
of night--into a room with locked door and fastened windows. But what
did this ghastly struggle for breath portend?
"Charcoal! Ziegler!" were the two words that buzzed in response through
his fast-clouding brain.