Mr. Dacre eyed his companion covertly as they progressed. His Grace of
Datchet appeared to have some fresh cause for uneasiness. All at once he
gave it utterance, in a tone of voice which was extremely somber:
"Ivor, do you think that scoundrel will dare to play me false?"
"I think," murmured Mr. Dacre, "that he has dared to play you pretty false
already."
"I don't mean that. But I mean how am I to know, now that he has his
money, that he will still not keep Mabel in his clutches?"
There came an echo from Mr. Dacre.
"Just so--how are you to know?"
"I believe that something of this sort has been done in the States."
"I thought that there they were content to kidnap them after they were
dead. I was not aware that they had, as yet, got quite so far as the
living."
"I believe that I have heard of something just like this."
"Possibly; they are giants over there."
"And in that case the scoundrels, when their demands were met, refused to
keep to the letter of their bargain and asked for more."
The duke stood still. He clinched his fists, and swore:
"Ivor, if that--villain doesn't keep his word, and Mabel isn't home within
the hour, by--I shall go mad!"
"My dear Datchet"--Mr. Dacre loved strong language as little as he loved a
scene--"let us trust to time and, a little, to your white-hatted and
gardenia-buttonholed friend's word of honor. You should have thought of
possible eventualities before you showed your confidence--really. Suppose,
instead of going mad, we first of all go home?"
A hansom stood waiting for a fare at the end of the Arcade. Mr. Dacre had
handed the duke into it before his grace had quite realized that the
vehicle was there.
"Tell the fellow to drive faster." That was what the duke said when the
cab had started.
"My dear Datchet, the man's already driving his geerage off its legs. If a
bobby catches sight of him he'll take his number."
A moment later, a murmur from the duke:
"I don't know if you're aware that the prince is coming to dinner?"
"I am perfectly aware of it."
"You take it uncommonly cool. How easy it is to bear our brother's
burdens! Ivor, if Mabel doesn't turn up I shall feel like murder."
"I sympathize with you, Datchet, with all my heart, though, I may observe,
parenthetically, that I very far from realize the situation even yet. Take
my advice. If the duchess does not show quite as soon as we both of us
desire, don't make a scene; just let me see what I can do."
Judging from the expression of his countenance, the duke was conscious of
no overwhelming desire to witness an exhibition of Mr. Dacre's prowess.
When the cab reached Datchet House his grace dashed up the steps three at
a time. The door flew open.
"Has the duchess returned?"
"Hereward!"
A voice floated downward from above. Some one came running down the
stairs. It was her Grace of Datchet.
"Mabel!"
She actually rushed into the duke's extended arms. And he kissed her, and
she kissed him--before the servants.
"So you're not quite dead?" she cried.
"I am almost," he said.
She drew herself a little away from him.
"Hereward, were you seriously hurt?"
"Do you suppose that I could have been otherwise than seriously hurt?"
"My darling! Was it a Pickford's van?"
The duke stared.
"A Pickford's van? I don't understand. But come in here. Come along, Ivor.
Mabel, you don't see Ivor."
"How do you do, Mr. Dacre?"
Then the trio withdrew into a little anteroom; it was really time. Even
then the pair conducted themselves as if Mr. Dacre had been nothing and no
one. The duke took the lady's two hands in his. He eyed her fondly.
"So you are uninjured, with the exception of that lock of hair. Where did
the villain take it from?"
The lady looked a little puzzled.
"What lock of hair?"
From an envelope which he took from his pocket the duke produced a shining
tress. It was the lock of hair which had arrived in the first
communication. "I will have it framed."
"You will have what framed?" The duchess glanced at what the duke was so
tenderly caressing, almost, as it seemed, a little dubiously. "Whatever is
it you have there?"
"It is the lock of hair which that scoundrel sent me." Something in the
lady's face caused him to ask a question; "Didn't he tell you he had sent
it to me?"
"Hereward!"
"Did the brute tell you that he meant to cut off your little finger?"
A very curious look came into the lady's face. She glanced at the duke as
if she, all at once, was half afraid of him. She cast at Mr. Dacre what
really seemed to be a look of inquiry. Her voice was tremulously anxious.
"Hereward, did--did the accident affect you mentally?"
"How could it not have affected me mentally? Do you think that my mental
organization is of steel?"
"But you look so well."
"Of course I look well, now that I have you back again. Tell me, darling,
did that hound actually threaten you with cutting off your arm? If he did,
I shall feel half inclined to kill him yet."
The duchess seemed positively to shrink from her better half's near
neighborhood.
"Hereward, was it a Pickford's van?"
The duke seemed puzzled. Well he might be.
"Was what a Pickford's van?"
The lady turned to Mr. Dacre. In her voice there was a ring of anguish.
"Mr. Dacre, tell me, was it a Pickford's van?"
Ivor could only imitate his relative's repetition of her inquiry.
"I don't quite catch you--was what a Pickford's van?"
The duchess clasped her hands in front of her.
"What is it you are keeping from me? What is it you are trying to hide? I
implore you to tell me the worst, whatever it may be! Do not keep me any
longer in suspense; you do not know what I already have endured. Mr.
Dacre, is my husband mad?"
One need scarcely observe that the lady's amazing appeal to Mr. Dacre as
to her husband's sanity was received with something like surprise. As the
duke continued to stare at her, a dreadful fear began to loom in his
brain.
"My darling, your brain is unhinged!"
He advanced to take her two hands again in his; but, to his unmistakable
distress, she shrank away from him.
"Hereward--don't touch me. How is it that I missed you? Why did you not
wait until I came?"
"Wait until you came?"
The duke's bewilderment increased.
"Surely, if your injuries turned out, after all, to be slight, that was
all the more reason why you should have waited, after sending for me like
that."
"I sent for you--I?" The duke's tone was grave. "My darling, perhaps you
had better come upstairs."
"Not until we have had an explanation. You must have known that I should
come. Why did you not wait for me after you had sent me that?"
The duchess held out something to the duke. He took it. It was a card--his
own visiting card. Something was written on the back of it. He read aloud
what was written.
"Mabel, come to me at once with the bearer. They tell me that they cannot
take me home." It looks like my own writing."
"Looks like it! It is your writing."
"It looks like it--and written with a shaky pen."
"My dear child, one's hand would shake at such a moment as that."
"Mabel, where did you get this?"
"It was brought to me in Cane and Wilson's."
"Who brought it?"
"Who brought it? Why, the man you sent."
"The man I sent!" A light burst upon the duke's brain. He fell back a
pace. "It's the decoy!"
Her grace echoed the words:
"The decoy?"
"The scoundrel! To set a trap with such a bait! My poor innocent darling,
did you think it came from me? Tell me, Mabel, where did he cut off your
hair?"
"Cut off my hair?"
Her grace put her hand to her head as if to make sure that her hair was
there.
"Where did he take you to?"
"He took me to Draper's Buildings."
"Draper's Buildings?"
"I have never been in the City before, but he told me it was Draper's
Buildings. Isn't that near the Stock Exchange?"
"Near the Stock Exchange?"
It seemed rather a curious place to which to take a kidnaped victim. The
man's audacity!
"He told me that you were coming out of the Stock Exchange when a van
knocked you over. He said that he thought it was a Pickford's van--was it
a Pickford's van?"
"No, it was not a Pickford's van. Mabel, were you in Draper's Buildings
when you wrote that letter?"
"Wrote what letter?"
"Have you forgotten it already? I do not believe that there is a word in
it which will not be branded on my brain until I die."
"Hereward! What do you mean?"
"Surely you cannot have written me such a letter as that, and then have
forgotten it already?"
He handed her the letter which had arrived in the second communication.
She glanced at it, askance. Then she took it with a little gasp.
"Hereward, if you don't mind, I think I'll take a chair." She took a
chair. "Whatever--whatever's this?" As she read the letter the varying
expressions which passed across her face were, in themselves, a study in
psychology. "Is it possible that you can imagine that, under any
conceivable circumstances, I could have written such a letter as this?"
"Mabel!"
She rose to her feet with emphasis.
"Hereward, don't say that you thought this came from me!"
"Not from you?" He remembered Knowles's diplomatic reception of the
epistle on its first appearance. "I suppose that you will say next that
this is not a lock of your hair?"
"My dear child, what bee have you got in your bonnet? This a lock of my
hair! Why, it's not in the least bit like my hair!"
Which was certainly inaccurate. As far as color was concerned it was an
almost perfect match. The duke turned to Mr. Dacre.
"Ivor, I've had to go through a good deal this afternoon. If I have to go
through much more, something will crack!" He touched his forehead. "I
think it's my turn to take a chair." Not the one which the duchess had
vacated, but one which faced it. He stretched out his legs in front of
him; he thrust his hands into his trousers pockets; he said, in a tone
which was not gloomy but absolutely grewsome:
"Might I ask, Mabel, if you have been kidnaped?"
"Kidnaped?"
"The word I used was 'kidnaped.' But I will spell it if you like. Or I
will get a dictionary, that you may see its meaning."
The duchess looked as if she was beginning to be not quite sure if she was
awake or sleeping. She turned to Ivor.
"Mr. Dacre, has the accident affected Hereward's brain?"
The duke took the words out of his cousin's mouth.
"On that point, my dear, let me ease your mind. I don't know if you are
under the impression that I should be the same shape after a Pickford's
van had run over me as I was before; but, in any case, I have not been run
over by a Pickford's van. So far as I am concerned there has been no
accident. Dismiss that delusion from your mind."
"Oh!"
"You appear surprised. One might even think that you were sorry. But may I
now ask what you did when you arrived at Draper's Buildings?"
"Did! I looked for you!"
"Indeed! And when you had looked in vain, what was the next item in your
programme?"
The lady shrank still farther from him.
"Hereward, have you been having a jest at my expense? Can you have been so
cruel?" Tears stood in her eyes.
Rising, the duke laid his hand upon her arm.
"Mabel, tell me--what did you do when you had looked for me in vain?"
"I looked for you upstairs and downstairs and everywhere. It was quite a
large place, it took me ever such a time. I thought that I should go
distracted. Nobody seemed to know anything about you, or even that there
had been an accident at all--it was all offices. I couldn't make it out in
the least, and the people didn't seem to be able to make me out either. So
when I couldn't find you anywhere I came straight home again."
The duke was silent for a moment. Then with funereal gravity he turned to
Mr. Dacre. He put to him this question:
"Ivor, what are you laughing at?"
Mr. Dacre drew his hand across his mouth with rather a suspicious gesture.
"My dear fellow, only a smile!"
The duchess looked from one to the other.
"What have you two been doing? What is the joke?"
With an air of preternatural solemnity the duke took two letters from the
breast pocket of his coat.
"Mabel, you have already seen your letter. You have already seen the lock
of your hair. Just look at this--and that."
He gave her the two very singular communications which had arrived in such
a mysterious manner, and so quickly one after the other. She read them
with wide-open eyes.
"Hereward! Wherever did these come from?"
The duke was standing with his legs apart, and his hands in his trousers
pockets. "I would give--I would give another five hundred pounds to know.
Shall I tell you, madam, what I have been doing? I have been presenting
five hundred golden sovereigns to a perfect stranger, with a top hat, and
a gardenia in his buttonhole."
"Whatever for?"
"If you have perused those documents which you have in your hand, you will
have some faint idea. Ivor, when it's your funeral, I'll smile. Mabel,
Duchess of Datchet, it is beginning to dawn upon the vacuum which
represents my brain that I've been the victim of one of the prettiest
things in practical jokes that ever yet was planned. When that fellow
brought you that card at Cane and Wilson's--which, I need scarcely tell
you, never came from me--some one walked out of the front entrance who was
so exactly like you that both Barnes and Moysey took her for you. Moysey
showed her into the carriage, and Barnes drove her home. But when the
carriage reached home it was empty. Your double had got out upon the
road."
The duchess uttered a sound which was half gasp, half sigh.
"Hereward!"
"Barnes and Moysey, with beautiful and childlike innocence, when they
found that they had brought the thing home empty, came straightway and
told me that you had jumped out of the brougham while it had been driving
full pelt through the streets. While I was digesting that piece of
information there came the first epistle, with the lock of your hair.
Before I had time to digest that there came the second epistle, with yours
inside."
"It seems incredible!"
"It sounds incredible; but unfathomable is the folly of man, especially of
a man who loves his wife." The duke crossed to Mr. Dacre. "I don't want,
Ivor, to suggest anything in the way of bribery and corruption, but if you
could keep this matter to yourself, and not mention it to your friends,
our white-hatted and gardenia-buttonholed acquaintance is welcome to his
five hundred pounds, and--Mabel, what on earth are you laughing at?"
The duchess appeared, all at once, to be seized with inextinguishable
laughter.
"Hereward," she cried, "just think how that man must be laughing at you!"
And the Duke of Datchet thought of it.
_The Minor Canon_
It was Monday, and in the afternoon, as I was walking along the High
Street of Marchbury, I was met by a distinguished-looking person whom I
had observed at the services in the cathedral on the previous day. Now it
chanced on that Sunday that I was singing the service. Properly speaking,
it was not my turn; but, as my brother minor canons were either away from
Marchbury or ill in bed, I was the only one left to perform the necessary
duty. The distinguished-looking person was a tall, big man with a round
fat face and small features. His eyes, his hair and mustache (his face was
bare but for a small mustache) were quite black, and he had a very
pleasant and genial expression. He wore a tall hat, set rather jauntily on
his head, and he was dressed in black with a long frock coat buttoned
across the chest and fitting him close to the body. As he came, with a
half saunter, half swagger, along the street, I knew him again at once by
his appearance; and, as he came nearer, I saw from his manner that he was
intending to stop and speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in
a soft, melodious voice with a colonial "twang" which was far from being
disagreeable, and which, indeed, to my ear gave a certain additional
interest to his remarks, he saluted me with "Good day, sir!"
"Good day," I answered, with just a little reserve in my tone.
"I hope, sir," he began, "you will excuse my stopping you in the street,
but I wish to tell you how very much I enjoyed the music at your cathedral
yesterday. I am an Australian, sir, and we have no such music in my
country."
"I suppose not," I said.
"No, sir," he went on, "nothing nearly so fine. I am very fond of music,
and as my business brought me in this direction, I thought I would stop at
your city and take the opportunity of paying a visit to your grand
cathedral. And I am delighted I came; so pleased, indeed, that I should
like to leave some memorial of my visit behind me. I should like, sir, to
do something for your choir."
"I am sure it is very kind of you," I replied.
"Yes, I should certainly be glad if you could suggest to me something I
might do in this way. As regards money, I may say that I have plenty of
it. I am the owner of a most valuable property. My business relations
extend throughout the world, and if I am as fortunate in the projects of
the future as I have been in the past, I shall probably one day achieve
the proud position of being the richest man in the world."
I did not like to undertake myself the responsibility of advising or
suggesting, so I simply said:
"I cannot venture to say, offhand, what would be the most acceptable way
of showing your great kindness and generosity, but I should certainly
recommend you to put yourself in communication with the dean."
"Thank you, sir," said my Australian friend, "I will do so. And now, sir,"
he continued, "let me say how much I admire your voice. It is, without
exception, the very finest and clearest voice I have ever heard."
"Really," I answered, quite overcome with such unqualified praise, "really
it is very good of you to say so."
"Ah, but I feel it, my dear sir. I have been round the world, from Sydney
to Frisco, across the continent of America" (he called it Amerrker) "to
New York City, then on to England, and to-morrow I shall leave your city
to continue my travels. But in all my experience I have never heard so
grand a voice as your own."
This and a great deal more he said in the same strain, which modesty
forbids me to reproduce.
Now I am not without some knowledge of the world outside the close of
Marchbury Cathedral, and I could not listen to such a "flattering tale"
without having my suspicions aroused. Who and what is this man? thought I.
I looked at him narrowly. At first the thought flashed across me that he
might be a "swell mobsman." But no, his face was too good for that;
besides, no man with that huge frame, that personality so marked and so
easily recognizable, could be a swindler; he could not escape detection a
single hour. I dismissed the ungenerous thought. Perhaps he is rich, as he
says. We do hear of munificent donations by benevolent millionaires now
and then. What if this Australian, attracted by the glories of the old
cathedral, should now appear as a _deus ex machina_ to reëndow the choir,
or to found a musical professoriate in connection with the choir,
appointing me the first occupant of the professorial chair?
These thoughts flashed across my mind in the momentary pause of his fluent
tongue.
"As for yourself, sir," he began again, "I have something to propose which
I trust may not prove unwelcome. But the public street is hardly a
suitable place to discuss my proposal. May I call upon you this evening at
your house in the close? I know which it is, for I happened to see you go
into it yesterday after the morning service."
"I shall be very pleased to see you," I replied. "We are going out to
dinner this evening, but I shall be at home and disengaged till about
seven."
"Thank you very much. Then I shall do myself the pleasure of calling upon
you about six o'clock. Till then, farewell!" A graceful wave of the hand,
and my unknown friend had disappeared round the corner of the street.
Now at last, I thought, something is going to happen in my uneventful
life--something to break the monotony of existence. Of course, he must
have inquired my name--he could get that from any of the cathedral
vergers--and, as he said, he had observed whereabouts in the close I
lived. What is he coming to see me for? I wondered. I spent the rest of
the afternoon in making the wildest surmises. I was castle-building in
Spain at a furious rate. At one time I imagined that this faithful son of
the church--as he appeared to me--was going to build and endow a grand
cathedral in Australia on condition that I should be appointed dean at a
yearly stipend of, say, ten thousand pounds. Or perhaps, I said to myself,
he will beg me to accept a sum of money--I never thought of it as less
than a thousand pounds--as a slight recognition of and tribute to my
remarkable vocal ability.
I took a long, lonely walk into the country to correct these ridiculous
fancies and to steady my mind, and when I reached home and had refreshed
myself with a quiet cup of afternoon tea, I felt I was morally and
physically prepared for my interview with the opulent stranger.
Punctually as the cathedral clock struck six there was a ring at the
visitor's bell. In a moment or two my unknown friend was shown into the
drawing-room, which he entered with the easy air of a man of the world. I
noticed he was carrying a small black bag.
"How do you do again, Mr. Dale?" he said as though we were old
acquaintances; "you see I have come sharp to my time."
"Yes," I answered, "and I am pleased to see you; do sit down." He sank
into my best armchair, and placed his bag on the floor beside him.
"Since we met in the afternoon," he said, "I have written a letter to
your dean, expressing the great pleasure I felt in listening to your
choir, and at the same time I inclosed a five-pound note, which I begged
him to divide among the choir boys and men, from Alexander Poulter, Esq.,
of Poulter's Pills. You have of course heard of the world-renowned
Poulter's Pills. I am Poulter!"
Poulter of Poulter's Pills! My heart sank within me! A five-pound note! My
airy castles were tottering!
"I also sent him a couple of hundred of my pamphlets, which I said I
trusted he would be so kind as to distribute in the close."