THE TENTH EARL
Carthew was feeling anything but fit to cope with all the cares and
responsibilities which had devolved upon him again, under circumstances
so shocking, no less suddenly than he had been relieved of them
all--along with that place in life to which they pertained--by the man
now lying dead on the floor before him. As he watched the Duchess of
Dawn leading Sallie gently out of the banquet-hall, he would have given
a very great deal to have been free to follow them, for Sallie had
looked back at him out of tear-dimmed eyes as she went, with an
expression he could not quite understand. And, now that she too knew the
very worst there was to be told, he was desperately anxious to find out
how she was going to deal with him, under such changed conditions.
But there were matters even more urgent to be disposed of, for her sake
too, before he could set himself right with her. He pulled himself
together, with a great effort.
It was clear that he must not permit Captain Dove and his two
confederates to decamp. He had heard enough already to justify him in
taking the law into his own hands for the nonce and detaining them
there. It was equally clear that he must not delay for a moment in
finding out as much more as he might from Farish M'Kissock, who looked
as if he could scarcely live for another hour.
He whispered to Herries to take such steps as would ensure that no one
whosoever should be allowed to leave the castle, and to shut the three
accomplices up together in the North Keep if that could be done quietly,
without any scandal. Then, having got rid of Captain Dove and the other
two, he was left in the banquet-hall with only the Marquis of Ingoldsby,
in a state of apparent coma, old Janet M'Kissock, grief-stricken to the
very verge of endurance, and her unfortunate brother, still standing
motionless, with bent head and hands clasped, staring down at the dead
man--so near in semblance and yet so far beyond reach of his animosity.
The grey-haired housekeeper was pleading with Farish M'Kissock to come
away, but he resisted all her attempts to get him to leave that spot.
"Let me bide where I am," he answered her querulously. "In a very
little, Janet, I'll be away off after his foolish lordship there, that
thinks he has slipped through my feckless fingers again--as he did once
before. But I'll soon be on his track again, for they'll have to streek
me on the same stretching-board that serves him. Let me bide beside him
till then."
Carthew looked anxiously across at the Marquis of Ingoldsby. There was
nobody who might better serve as a witness to whatever M'Kissock might
still be induced to tell concerning that nightmare past in which the
poor corpse on the floor and the girl who had gone away weeping and he
himself had all been involved.
"There's somethin' doosid fishy about all these goin's-on," Lord
Ingoldsby commented with a good deal more candour than tact, when
Carthew made that suggestion to him. "And I'm for Lady Josceline, right
through from start to finish. I don't believe a word of that
goat-bearded fellow's yarn. He's been and caught sunstroke
somewhere--that's what's the matter with him, eh? He's mad as a hatter.
"But, all the same, I'm willin' to listen to anything more he has to
say--and take a mental note of it, so to speak. I want to know who's who
and what's what myself."
Carthew turned to Farish M'Kissock then, and the latter looked him over
with a frown as of dim remembrance which gradually changed to a scowl of
hate.
"And so," said the ex-Emir in a rancorous voice, "_you_ have come to
your own at last amid it all. Is there no end to your ill race? My men
told me that you were safely buried and dead--they showed me the mound
that they said covered you. How--"
"Come away from here," said Carthew steadily, "and I'll tell you how I
escaped." And Farish M'Kissock, leaning heavily on his sister's
shoulder, at last allowed her to lead him to her own room.
Carthew told him then, in few words, while Lord Ingoldsby, listening
gloomily, scowled over it, the story of Sallie's daring and his own
escape from death, on the African coast.
The ex-Emir's heavy eyes lighted up a little.
"Ay," said Farish M'Kissock, musingly. "And so it was--her--that helped
you past your dug grave! I knew her for a mettlesome filly the first
time I ever clapped eyes on her. And now--to think that but for you and
me she'd be cosily settled, knowing nothing, in this old nest--that
should by rights have been my wife's and mine! It's a damned upside-down
world this, my fine doctor! But--you'll make it up to her, maybe, in
another way?"
He was gazing at Carthew with something of his old imperious,
indomitable spirit. "You owe--her--your very coronet, my new Lord Jura,"
said he.
"I'll pay all I owe," said Carthew, to humour him, "if she'll take any
payment from me." And at that the Marquis of Ingoldsby scowled still
more blackly.
The ex-Emir made a gruesome effort to laugh sardonically.
"She'll take it," said he, "if you're man enough, if you're man enough
to master her," said he and sank back on his couch.
"And now--about Captain Dove," Carthew suggested as he brought paper and
ink to the table from the desk in one corner. And the dying man sat up
again as if spurred to a final effort.
He looked round at his stricken sister. "Leave us for a little, Janet,
woman," said he in a more kindly tone. "There is that to be told now
which you would like ill to hear, and his lordship will call you back
when I'm through with it."
Carthew nodded hastily to the old housekeeper. "We'll be as quick as we
can," he promised: "and you can stay within call."
She went, however unwillingly, and then her brother began the story of
all his dealings with Captain Dove, speaking slowly, in a low voice,
husbanding his strength, while Carthew wrote down every word of it.
In his eagerness to ensure the downfall of his surviving enemy, he had
no hesitation in incriminating himself. Lord Ingoldsby listened as if
stricken dumb and Carthew had hard work to contain himself as he heard,
among other infamies, of the bargain the ex-Emir had driven with
Captain Dove over Sallie. He would have thrown down his pen during
M'Kissock's laboured, self-compassionate account of how Captain Dove had
outwitted him, had not the man on the couch at the other side of the
table been almost across death's threshold already. M'Kissock's rabid
thirst for revenge, his obvious impenitence for all his own crimes and
misdeeds, excited repugnance in place of the pity his plight might
otherwise have inspired. Carthew was devoutly thankful when that most
distasteful task was at length completed, and Farish M'Kissock's feeble,
straggling signature attached to the document he had drawn up. Lord
Ingoldsby and he both added their names as witnesses, and then he called
the housekeeper in again. Her brother, having thus accomplished his
final object in life, was evidently sinking fast.
In the corridor outside, Lord Ingoldsby called a halt as Carthew would
have turned to leave him with a few hurried words of thanks for the
jealous service he had just rendered.
"Half a mo'," interposed his lordship, very morosely. "We might just as
well come to an understandin' now as later on. I want to tell you that,
whoever Lady Josceline is or is not, I've asked her to marry me--and, if
you're goin' to see her now--I don't know what your ideas are, but--we
might just as well start fair."
Carthew contemplated him for a moment in surprised silence, and then
nodded curtly. He was going to see Sallie at once, if he could, as his
rival had divined.
"All right," he assented. "Come on."
He looked into the banquet-hall in passing. Herries was there, with the
butler and all his assistants. The dinner-table had been cleared and
draped with a great black mort-cloth. And on it lay, recumbent, with
clasped hands, in the clear, mellow light of the tall, white tapers at
its head and feet, the unheeding shape of Carthew's predecessor in the
earldom of Jura, still dressed in its disreputable, greasy blue uniform
and burst boots, with a red smudge, as of iron-rust, on its forehead.
The fires had both been raked out and their hearth-stones strewn with
the ashes, not to be rekindled before that night on which the dead earl
should be carried away by the water-gate from his catafalque to the
great black burial-barge, with the pipes wailing a wild lament for the
mountains to echo, and the waves or the still sea-surface, as might
befall, crimson under the twinkling torches of those who would follow,
with muffled oars.
Herries came forward to speak to Carthew. "I'm seeing to everything here
now, my lord, and we'll soon have all as it should be," said he.
"Captain Dove and his friends are fast, in the North Keep. And your
other orders have all been observed."
"I'll see you again in a little, then," Carthew returned, and went on
his way, by no means inspirited.
It was the Duchess of Dawn, her blue eyes still blurred and showing
traces of tears, who came to the door of the boudoir in Sallie's suite
in the distant West Wing, in response to Carthew's knock.
"Have you not brought her back with you?" she asked, and looked
surprisedly past him at Lord Ingoldsby.
"Where is she?" Carthew asked, in sudden alarm. "I haven't seen her."
"She went along to the gun-room a little ago--a note came to say she was
wanted there. And--I supposed it would be from you."
"I'll find her there, then," declared Carthew, and turned and retraced
his steps very hurriedly. An instant dread of some unforeseen mischance
among his over-rapid plans for her welfare had filled his mind; and his
face grew dark as he hobbled back along that endless corridor and across
the deserted main hall again, with Lord Ingoldsby at his elbow.
Of the sleepy servants they passed by the way he asked no questions, for
only the butler and his immediate underlings knew anything as yet of
what had happened. It had been Carthew's own idea to prevent any garbled
report being spread about till he should have devised some means to save
Sallie from pain and scandal.
He found the gun-room empty, and stared about it in dire distress. Then
he sniffed the air, frowning. And then he noticed a half-smoked
cigarette smouldering in the fireplace. He picked it up hastily and saw
Jasper Slyne's monogram upon it.
"Must have been a long time burning," he thought, and a concrete
suspicion flashed through his mind. But that seemed so far-fetched at
first that he shook his head impatiently over it.
"They could scarcely escape from the North Keep," said he to himself.
"But--I may as well make sure that everything's safe here while I'm
about it," he muttered, and limped across to the panel that covered the
passage to the water-gate.
It was unlocked.
He pulled it open and looked down into the darkness, listening intently.
Then he swung round and, snatching up the lighted lamp on the table
beside the fire, made off down the steps, leaving Lord Ingoldsby in the
dark.
But his gaping lordship was not to be left behind. He followed hot-foot,
uttering foolish oaths as he barked an elbow on the rock wall.
Carthew stopped suddenly. He could hear voices not very far ahead and
the movement of some heavy weight. The tunnel curved a little there, and
he knew he must be near the bridge that crosses the oubliette. He went
on again, very cautiously, keeping close to one wall and shading the
lamp as well as he could, till he came to a point where further
precaution was idle. For, fifty yards away, straight ahead, he could see
Slyne holding a candle beside Captain Dove, who was stooping over the
roughly carpentered tree-trunk which still stretched from lip to lip of
the intervening chasm. Its former neighbour had disappeared.
Captain Dove looked up and caught sight of Carthew in his turn. He had
got his hands under the heavy trunk, and staggered sideways, straddling
it, till its butt-end was close to the brink. Carthew had all but
reached the opposite edge of the pit between them when he let it go with
a breathless grunt and it fell almost soundlessly into the void below.
Slyne blew out his candle then, with a bitter, mocking laugh, but not
before Carthew had observed Mr. Jobling and Ambrizette in the
background, with a drooping figure between them.