It was on Sunday evening that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, after a pious
pilgrimage to the village church in company with her assiduous friend
Sybil Hanbury, sought the Duke and asked if she might have a carriage to
take her to the station for the up-train on the following morning. She
would return in the evening, she said, but imperative business with her
milliner and tailor demanded her presence in London for a few hours.
Beaumanoir, in courteously promising that her request should be attended
to, regarded her with a wan smile. "You will have a companion--that is,
if you do not mind Mr. Forsyth sharing the station brougham with you,"
he added. "Alec has to go to London to-morrow on my business--leases at
the solicitors', isn't it?"
He turned for confirmation to Forsyth, who, with General Sadgrove, had
been strolling with him on the terrace.
"Yes, leases at the solicitors'," replied the private secretary,
flushing slightly. The General looked indifferent.
"Really?" said the lady. "There must be a lot of that sort of thing to
see to just now, I suppose. Of course, I shall be delighted to have Mr.
Forsyth's escort, provided he drops me at Bond Street. I cannot have a
critical male person following me across my tailor's sacred threshold."
She shook a gay finger at the party and disappeared into one of the
French windows--a vision of dainty _chiffons_ and rustling silks.
"She's gone to put her prayer-book away," laughed Forsyth, in the
nervous manner of one wishing to cover an awkward situation.
"She needs one," muttered the General under his mustache, shooting a
furtive glance at his nephew.
Beaumanoir said nothing, and the three paced on, hardly speaking, till
it was time to dress for dinner. Since the General's return from town on
the day of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's headache, not exactly a coolness, but
a constraint, had sprung up between them. A suspicion of cross-purposes
was in the air, which kept them silent when all together, but
communicative enough when any two of them were alone in solitary places.
It was so now, for the General waited till the Duke had left them to go
up to his dressing-room before he remarked in a tone of grim humor:
"I told you that you would have her for a traveling companion."
"I don't anticipate much pleasure from the journey," Forsyth replied,
gloomily, and reddening under the searching gaze with which his uncle
raked him.
But with the exception of the short drive to the station, during which
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was unusually preoccupied, he was spared the
uncongenial _tete-a-tete_ he had expected. When the train came in the
fair American said chaffingly that she knew he was dying to smoke--that,
anyhow, she was in a mood for meditation herself, and intended to
indulge it in the seclusion of a "ladies' compartment." Forsyth
responded with the barest protest demanded by courtesy, and went away to
a smoking-carriage, much relieved.
He saw her again at St. Pancras; indeed, he contrived to be near enough
to overhear the direction to an address in Bond Street which she gave to
her cabman, but he noticed the not unexpected fact that here in London
she had no desire for his society. She had hurried into the vehicle
without looking round for him, and was driven away at a pace that
betokened special instructions to the driver.
Forsyth took another cab and bade his man keep the first cab in sight.
Before long he perceived that the lady was in truth going to Bond
Street, and presently he had the satisfaction of seeing her discharge
her cab and skip lightly into the shop of a fashionable _modiste_ in
that thoroughfare. His complacence was a little marred by uncertainty
whether she had observed him or not, but from the quick turn of her head
as she crossed the pavement he was rather inclined to think that she
had.
"It doesn't matter, really," he reflected. "She knows that we suspect
her complicity, or she wouldn't have tried to blind her trail to the
hotel by driving here first. Strange, though, that, suspecting that, she
should have taken so much trouble."
He ordered his driver to take him to the Hotel Cecil, and at the same
time to keep a lookout to see whether they in turn were being followed
by the lady whom they had just run to ground. But when he was set down
at the main entrance of the great twelve-storied palace he received the
assurance that nothing of the sort had occurred.
"Not so keen after you, sir, as you was after her," ejaculated the smart
cabman as he whipped up and wheeled round, dissatisfied, after the
manner of his kind, with the extra half-crown he had received for his
"shadowing job."
Forsyth shuddered. "_Keen_, by George!" he murmured ruefully. "If only
my devotion to poor old Charley could have led me into paths untrodden
by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton my task would have been a lighter one."
He went into the bureau and inquired if Mr. Clinton Ziegler was in,
receiving the stereotyped reply that Mr. Ziegler was _always_ in, being
an invalid. Whereupon he sent up his card, first penciling thereon the
words, "Private Secretary to the Duke of Beaumanoir."
The bell-boy who took up the card reappeared almost immediately, flying
down the grand staircase three steps at a time.
"Please to come up at _once_, sir, the gentleman said," was the boy's
urgent appeal.
Forsyth, with a feeling of having "burned his ships," obeyed with equal
alacrity, and was shown into the suite made memorable by the raid of his
Highness the Thakore of Bhurtnagur, otherwise General Sadgrove's
faithful orderly, Azimoolah Khan. He noticed in passing in that the door
of the next suite--that of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton--was slightly ajar, but
his attention was immediately claimed by the welcome he received in Mr.
Ziegler's apartments. Just inside the door he was met by a tall,
bold-eyed man whom, from Beaumanoir's description, he had no difficulty
in recognizing as the sham "Colonel Anstruther Walcot," but who
introduced himself as Leopold Benzon, Mr. Ziegler's private secretary.
The idea of a professional criminal being served with such specious pomp
tickled Forsyth's sense of humor; but, restraining an impulse to laugh
in the fellow's face, he responded gravely to the salutation and stated
his business. He had come, he said, after mentioning his name, on behalf
of the Duke of Beaumanoir, to see Mr. Ziegler by appointment on a matter
of private business.
"Mr. Ziegler is expecting you," Benzon replied, scrutinizing the
visitor's face narrowly. "Unfortunately he is not so well as usual this
morning, and is not yet dressed. I must ask you to wait a little till he
is ready to receive you."
Forsyth bowed and took the chair offered him, not without an inward
chuckle at the discrepancy between the haste of the bell-boy's summons
to the suite and the delay in receiving him. To his mind the position
was clear. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton desired to keep up the polite fiction
of her innocence to the end, yet Ziegler was apparently not prepared to
go forward with the business without an opportunity of consulting her.
She had come up to town for the express purpose of advising, perhaps
supervising, her colleagues at an important crisis, and was doubtless on
her way to the hotel after the diversion he had created, so that it was
necessary to get him out of the entrance-hall before she passed up to
her suite.
"I shouldn't wonder if she isn't the boss of the show, with Ziegler, who
is probably her husband, as figure-head," Forsyth told himself.
Benzon, with a polite excuse, had retired into an inner room; but his
place had immediately been taken by a well-dressed but cadaverous
individual whom Forsyth recognized as the man in clerical attire whom he
had seen descending the stairs in John Street after the forcible entry
into his chambers, the miscreant who later on the same eventful night
had called at Beaumanoir House in the character of a disguised
police-officer.
There was evidently no disposition to leave him alone in the ante-room,
and so give him a chance to open the outer door and witness Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton's arrival in the next suite. So twenty minutes passed, and
Forsyth was speculating as to how communication would be carried on with
the female partner during the forthcoming interview, when Benzon
returned and announced that Mr. Ziegler was awaiting him. He could not
help observing how much better suited was this bowing and smirking
American swindler to the _role_ of a superior flunkey than to that of a
British cavalry officer.
The next moment he found himself in the principal reception-room of the
suite, face to face with a frail old man of unpleasant appearance, who,
Forsyth noticed with quick intuition, was reclining on a couch that had
been drawn across a closed door. There was another--open--door leading
into the bedroom, but the closed one must be the same which from the
other side of it had confirmed the General's suspicions of the occupant
of the adjoining suite. Forsyth could picture to himself Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton's shell-like ear glued to that door, its fair owner prepared to
tap gentle signals by the Morse code on the panels if things did not go
to her liking in the audience-chamber.
His conjectures were brought down to the bed-rock of fact by the
croaking voice of the invalid on the couch. Mr. Ziegler's repulsive
aspect, his purple cheeks, and green-shaded eyes suggested some horrible
cutaneous affection, though Forsyth was not so ingenuous as to accept
the disfigurements as genuine.
"I am sorry to have detained you, sir," Ziegler began, and then paused
abruptly. Forsyth wondered if he had been brought up with a round turn
by a tap on the door close to his ear. There seemed something tentative,
as though the speaker were trying his ground, in that first disjointed
utterance.
"It does not matter," Forsyth replied, and then in his turn came to a
sudden stop. His diplomatic training at the Foreign Office had taught
him the advantage of allowing the other side to open the proceedings. He
who has the first word is seldom the one to have the last.
But it appeared that Mr. Ziegler was also alive to the value of
reserving his fire. "I presume that the Duke of Beaumanoir instructed
you on the nature of the business you were to transact with me?" he
said, and there was a firmer ring in the curious metallic voice than
when he made his first brief apology.
"On the contrary, he left me quite in the dark about it," Forsyth made
answer. "All I understood was that I was to fetch something which you
would hand me in person."
Ziegler took a leisurely survey of the young Scotsman through his green
glasses. "Then you did not come here expecting to have to use your own
discretion in any way--to traffic with me, in fact?" he presently asked.
"Certainly not," Forsyth replied. "I gathered that the part I was to
play was solely that of a trusted messenger who could be relied on to
say nothing about his errand afterwards."
"Not even to General Sadgrove?" flashed back the answering question so
swiftly that for an instant Forsyth was taken aback.
"I am not one to betray my employer's secrets--even to my uncle, General
Sadgrove," he said, recovering himself quickly.
"Very good!" was the croaking comment. "I deemed it necessary to sound
you because we are aware of the foolish meddling--I might also say
muddling--of that mischievous old man. We know also that you have aided
and abetted him in an attempt to swim against a tide that is far too
strong for both of you."
"I quite admit that," responded Forsyth, boldly. "My uncle has been
doing his best to protect the Duke's life, and as in duty bound I have
used my efforts to assist him--up to a certain point."
"What do you mean--up to a certain point?"
"I mean that as the Duke seems now to have taken matters actively into
his own hands by opening up communication with you, I am naturally
rather at the disposition of my employer than of anyone else."
"Truly a faithful servant," said Ziegler, with a strong suspicion of a
sneer. "And now, Mr. Forsyth, I have a question to ask which you are at
liberty to answer or not as you please, but on which the future security
of his Grace will probably depend. I shall draw my own deductions from a
refusal to answer, and take it as an affirmative. Has the Duke disclosed
to either you or General Sadgrove, or, as far as you are aware, to
anyone else, the reason of his recent differences with us?"
Forsyth rejoiced that he was able to reply in the negative. "No," he
said promptly and with evident truth; "he has always steadily refused to
enlighten my uncle and myself as to the cause of his being so
persecuted. We have been kept absolutely in the dark."
He did not feel called upon to add, as he might have done, that a good
deal of that darkness had been penetrated by General Sadgrove's acumen,
and that the design on Senator Sherman's gold bonds was an open book to
them.
Ziegler, however, was satisfied with the reply. Signing to the
pretentious Benzon, who throughout the interview had hovered close to
his master's couch, he conferred with him in a whisper, and then
addressed Forsyth again with a request that he would wait for a few
minutes in the ante-room, when a letter for the Duke would be handed to
him and he would be free to depart.
"Good-day to you, sir," added the arch-plotter. "I regret that my
infirmities preclude me from offering you hospitality. These little
encounters become, I find, more fatiguing with advancing years."
Bidding him a curt good-morning, Forsyth returned to the ante-room,
accompanied by the cadaverous individual, who had also been present at
the interview. Benzon remained behind, softly shutting the door on them,
and there was a distinct click of the key being turned in the lock. His
companion making no overture for conversation, Forsyth sat down and
affected to read a newspaper, though he was really straining his ears to
catch what passed in the inner room. Already perplexed by having seen no
signs of communication between Ziegler and the next suite, he was trying
to ascertain if a conference was now proceeding with the fair tenant
next door. No sound reached him, however, till after the lapse of some
twenty minutes Benzon came swiftly out of the inner room with a heavily
sealed letter in his hand.
"This," said Ziegler's aide-de-camp, "is the packet which my chief
wishes you to deliver to the Duke of Beaumanoir. You are alive to the
importance of seeing that it reaches its destination without being lost
or tampered with?"
"My dear sir, I should not, I imagine, have been entrusted with this
very uncongenial errand unless I had been thought capable of carrying it
out," replied Forsyth, in a tone of annoyance.
"Take it, then," Benzon proceeded. "And you are, please, to inform his
Grace that Mr. Ziegler, though he would have preferred to see him in
person, is satisfied with the discretion of his emissary."
"Thanks, but I don't think I need a testimonial from Mr. Ziegler to
recommend me to the Duke," replied Forsyth, coolly, as he buttoned the
letter into the breast-pocket of his frock coat and with a bow took his
departure.
Out in the corridor he breathed more freely. "I don't think that I
overdid my exhibition of temper," he told himself. "A little touchiness
was to be expected under the circumstances."
He had begun to descend the stairs into the entrance-hall, when he
saw--with something of a shock--coming up, and therefore about to meet
him, the lady whom he believed to be in the next suite to Ziegler's,
advising her partners through the communicating door. He had got it
firmly into his head that during the twenty minutes he had been kept
waiting that door had been opened, and the terms of the letter settled
between the two principals; and here was Mrs. Talmage Eglinton not in
her rooms at all, but apparently only just arrived.
"Ah, Mr. Forsyth!" she cried, coquettishly. "You have been up to my
suite to look for me, with a view to standing me a luncheon somewhere.
Now don't deny that you were disappointed when you found that I had not
reached the hotel and that the suite was locked up."
Could he have been mistaken? Forsyth asked himself. If so, the mistake
was not really his, but General Sadgrove's, and the entire bottom was
knocked out of the veteran's theory as to this woman's complicity.
"But I have not been up to your rooms," was all he could reply on the
spur of the moment. "I had business with the gentleman who occupies the
adjoining suite."
If it was not genuine, the look of disappointment that stole into her
face was a consummate piece of acting. "Oh, was that all," she said,
with a queer little laugh. "Well, that doesn't absolve you from asking
me to lunch now that you have the chance."
"I shall be delighted," was the only answer he could make without
showing open hostility.
"Wait in the hall, then," said Mrs. Talmage Eglinton. "I am only going
up to see if some jewelry I left locked up when I went down to Prior's
Tarrant is safe."
She hurried up the remaining stairs, and Forsyth continued his way down
to the hall, a prey to conflicting emotions. Disgust at having to lunch
with a woman he abhorred was the least of them. What worried him most at
that moment was the doubt, restored by this meeting, whether Mrs.
Talmage Eglinton was not, after all, the victim of a chain of
coincidences.
And then, suddenly, a flicker of light broke on the situation
through--of all places in the world--a tiny flaw in the lady's defensive
armor. She had spoken of her suite as locked up, but he remembered now
that the outer door of it had been slightly ajar when he went in to his
interview with Ziegler. He went up to the big uniformed porter on duty
at the swing doors, and asked him if he knew Mrs. Talmage Eglinton by
sight.
"Oh yes, sir," the man replied. "You'll catch her if you run up to her
rooms sharp. She's just going out."
"Going out?" exclaimed Forsyth, with well simulated surprise. "I thought
I caught a glimpse of her going upstairs a moment ago. She seemed to
have only just arrived."
"Oh no, sir; she came in an hour ago, and was on her way out just now
when she found she'd forgotten something."
Forsyth left the proximity of the porter quickly, and went and waited at
the foot of the staircase. The horizon had cleared again, and he smiled
at the very thin trick which had so nearly deceived him--would have
deceived him, in fact, if one of the gang, eagerly expecting her, had
not chanced to be at her door when he went up. After concluding her
business with her accomplices she had contrived the meeting on the
stairs to throw dust in his eyes, going, in her desire for realism, to
the length of explaining to the hall-porter why she had gone upstairs
again after coming down into the hall. Well, he would hold her to the
lunch invitation; let her think that she had hoodwinked him; and
endeavor to ascertain whether she was courting his society as a mere
bluff to lend color to her deception, or with some other object as yet
undefined.
He had not long to wait for her. Tripping lightly down the stairs, she
joined him with a charming assumption that he would be interested to
hear that her jewels were "quite safe," and she supplemented the
information with the request that they should not lunch in the hotel.
"I am known here, and people stare so," she said. "Take me somewhere
where we can be quiet. I have got something to say."
"Very well," he replied. "Come over to Kettner's. There won't be much of
a crowd there at this time of day." And he strove hard to be polite as
he steered her across the Strand, though he could have wished himself
back at the Foreign Office, with no prospects and no Duke to serve, if
Sybil's brave young face had not been in his mind's eye.
At the restaurant Mrs. Talmage Eglinton chose a table in a remote corner
of the dining-room and devoted herself to a careful study of the _menu_.
It was not till she had selected her dishes and quizzed the appearance
of the other customers that she developed her plan of attack.
"You don't seem at all interested in the fact that I have something to
say to you," she began, leaning back and scanning him critically. Her
voluptuous style of beauty had never had any attraction for him; to-day
it positively repelled.
"My worst enemies have never accused me of being curious," he answered
lightly. "Nay, I am not discourteous," he protested, seeing the angry
gleam in the fine eyes. "I only mean that I cannot work myself into a
fever about a communication the subject of which I am ignorant of."
"Tell me," she said abruptly, "what reason you had for following me from
St. Pancras to Bond Street this morning?"
Whatever her motive she was pushing him hard, and Forsyth's presence of
mind failed him. He flushed and began to stammer.
[Illustration: _"I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage
Eglinton."_]
"It is useless to deny it," she cut him short. "I saw you in the cab
quite plainly as I entered the shop, and my cabby had previously told me
that I was being shadowed. Now, Mr. Forsyth, when a gentleman follows a
lady about the streets he either does it because he means her some harm,
or because--well, because he is not quite indifferent to her. Which was
it in your case?"
This was a poser, and it had to be faced with instant decision. Rapidly
reflecting that unless he was then and there prepared to accuse his fair
_vis-a-vis_ with complicity with Ziegler there was only one course open
to him, he took it promptly. He little thought that within the next
forty-eight hours his fate--to live or to die--would depend on the
demeanor he then adopted.
"I certainly did not follow you with a bad motive, and--there, a
straight question deserves a straight answer--I am very far from being
indifferent to you, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton," he said.
After that the amenities flowed in the most friendly channel, though
Forsyth suffered agonies, and it required all his skill as an amateur
actor of repute to sustain the part of a diffident lover hovering on the
brink of a declaration.
In the afternoon they returned to Prior's Tarrant together, outwardly on
the best of terms; but, needless to say, Forsyth was still "hovering."