LORD CHELSFORD'S DIPLOMACY
I dined alone with Lord and Lady Chelsford. From the moment of our
arrival at Chelsford House my host had encouraged nothing but the most
general conversation. It happened that they were alone, as a great
dinner party had been postponed at the last moment owing to some Royal
indisposition. Lord Chelsford in his wife's presence was careful to
treat me as an ordinary guest; but directly she had left the room and we
were alone he abandoned his reticence.
"Mr. Ducaine," he said, "from the time of our last conversation at the
War Office and our subsequent _tete-a-tete_ I have reposed in you the
most implicit confidence."
"I have done my best, sir," I answered, "to deserve it."
"I believe you," he declared. "I am going now to extend it. I am going
to tell you something which will probably surprise you very much. Since
the first time when you found your documents tampered with, every map
and every word of writing entrusted to the safe, either at Braster House
or Cavendish Square, has been got at. Exact copies of them are in Paris
to-day."
I looked at him in blank amazement. The thing seemed impossible.
"But in very many cases," I protested, "the code word for opening the
safe has been known only to Colonel Ray, the Duke, and myself."
"The fact remains as I have stated it," Lord Chelsford said slowly. "My
information is positive. When you came to me and suggested that you
should make two copies of everything, one correct, one a mass of
incorrectness, I must admit that I thought the idea farfetched and
unworkable. Events, however, have proved otherwise. I have safely
received everything which you sent me, and up to the present, with the
exception of that first plan of the Winchester forts, our secrets are
unknown. But now we have come to a deadlock."
"If you do not mind telling me, Lord Chelsford, I should very much like
to know why you did not explain the exact circumstances to Ray and the
Duke this afternoon."
Lord Chelsford nodded.
"I thought that you would ask that," he said. "It is not altogether an
easy question to answer. Remember this. The French War Office are
to-day in possession of an altogether false scheme of our proposed
defences--a scheme which, if they continue to regard it as genuine,
should prove nothing short of disastrous to them. Only you and I are in
the secret at present. Positively I did not feel that I cared to extend
that knowledge to a single other person."
"But you might have told Colonel Ray and the Duke separately," I
remarked. "The Duke has never been my friend, and Ray has other causes
for being angry with me just at present; but between them they rescued
me from something like starvation, and it is terrible for them to think
of me as they are doing now."
Lord Chelsford poured himself out a glass of wine, and held it up to the
light for a moment.
"Mr. Ducaine," he said, "a secret is a very subtle thing. Though the
people who handle it are men of the most unblemished honour and
reputation, still the fewer they are, the safer the life of that
secret."
"But the Duke and Colonel Ray!" I protested.
"I might remind you," Lord Chelsford said, smiling, "that those are
precisely the two persons who shared with you the knowledge of the word
which opened the safe."
I laughed.
"I presume that you do not suspect either of them?" I remarked.
"The absurdity is obvious," Lord Chelsford answered. "But the force of
my former remark remains. I like that secret better when it rests
between you and me. It means, I know, that for a time--I promise you
that it shall be only for a time--you must lose your friends, but the
cause is great enough, and it should be within our power to reward you
later on."
"Oh, I am willing enough," I answered. "But may I ask what you are
going to do with me?"
Lord Chelsford smoked in silence for several moments.
"Mr. Ducaine," he said, "who is there in the household of the Duke who
opens that safe and copies those papers? Who is the traitor?"
"God only knows!" I answered. "It is a hopeless mystery."
"Yet we must solve it," Lord Chelsford said, "and quickly. If a single
batch of genuine maps and plans were tampered with, disparities would
certainly appear, and the thing might be suspected. Besides, upon the
face of it, the thing is terribly serious."
"You have a plan," I said.
"I have," Lord Chelsford answered calmly. "You remember Grooton?"
"Certainly! He was a servant at Braster."
"And the very faithful servant of his country also," Lord Chelsford
remarked. "You know, I believe, that he was a secret service man. He
is entirely safe, and I have sent for him. Now I imagine that the Duke
will wish our new secretary to live still at the 'Brand'--he preferred
it in your case, as you will remember. Our new secretary is going to be
my nephew. He is very stolid and honest, and fortunately not a
chatterbox. He is going to be the nominal secretary, but I want you to
be the one who really does the work."
"I am afraid I don't understand!" I was forced to admit.
"It will mean," Lord Chelsford said, "some privation and a great deal of
inconvenience for you. But I am going to ask you to face it, for the
end to be gained is worth it. I want you also to be at the 'Brand,' but
to lie hidden all the day time. You can have one of the upstair rooms
fitted as a writing room. Then you and my nephew can do the
transposition. And beyond all that I want you to think--to think and to
watch."
My heart leaped with joy to think that after all I was not to go into
exile. Then the quiet significance of Lord Chelsford's last words were
further impressed upon me by the added gravity of his manner.
"Mr. Ducaine," he said, "you must see for yourself that I am running a
very serious risk in making these plans with you behind the backs of the
Duke of Rowchester and Colonel Ray. The Duke is a man of the keenest
sense of honour, as his recent commercial transactions have shown. He
has parted with a hundred thousand pounds rather than that the shadow of
a stigma should rest upon his name. He is also my personal friend, and
very sensitive of any advice or criticism. Then Ray--a V.C., and one of
the most popular soldiers in England to-day--he also is quick tempered,
and he also is my friend. You can see for yourself that in acting as I
am, behind the backs of these men, I am laying myself open to very grave
trouble. Yet I see no alternative. There is a rank traitor either on
the Military Board or closely connected with the Duke's household. He
does not know it, nor do they know it, but everyone of his servants has
been vigorously and zealously watched without avail. The circle has
been drawn closer and closer, Mr. Ducaine. Down in Braster you may be
able to help me in narrowing it down till only one person is within it.
Listen!"
Lady Chelsford entered, gorgeous in white satin and a flaming tiara.
She looked at me, I thought, a little gravely.
"Morton," she said, "I want you to spare me a minute. Mr. Ducaine will
excuse you, I am sure."
Lord Chelsford and she left the room together. I, feeling the heat of
the apartment, walked to the window, and raising the sash looked out
into the cool dark evening. At the door, drawn up in front of Lord
Chelsford's brougham, was a carriage with a tall footman standing facing
me. I recognized him and the liveries in a moment. It was the
Rowchester carriage. Some one from Rowchester House was even now with
Lord and Lady Chelsford.
Fresh complications, then! Had the Duke come to see me off, or had his
suspicions been aroused? Was he even now insisting upon an explanation
with Lord Chelsford? The minutes passed, and I began to get restless
and anxious. Then the door opened, and Lord Chelsford entered alone.
He came over at once to my side. He was looking perplexed and a little
annoyed.
"Ducaine," he said, "Lady Angela Harberly is here."
I started, and I suppose my face betrayed me.
"Lady Angela--here?"
"And she wishes to see you," he continued. "Lady Chelsford is
chaperoning her to-night to Suffolk House, but she says that she should
have come here in any case. She believes that you are going to China."
"Did you tell her?" I asked.
"I have told her nothing," he answered. "The question is, what you are
to tell her. I understand, Ducaine, that Lady Angela was engaged to be
married to Colonel Ray."
"I believe that she is," I admitted.
"Then I do not understand her desire to see you," Lord Chelsford said.
"The Duke of Rowchester is my friend and relative, Ducaine, and I do not
see how I can permit this interview."
"And I," said a quiet thrilling voice behind his back, "do not know how
you are going to prevent it."
She closed the door behind her. She was so frail and so delicately
beautiful in her white gown, with the ropes of pearls around her neck,
the simply parted hair, and her dark eyes were so plaintive and yet so
tender, that the angry exclamation died away on Lord Chelsford's lips.
"Angela," he said, "Mr. Ducaine is here. You can speak with him if you
will, but it must be in my presence. You must not think that I do not
trust you--both of you. But I owe this condition to your father."
She came over to me very timidly. She seemed to me so beautiful, so
exquisitely childish, that I touched the fingers of the hand she gave me
with a feeling of positive reverence.
"You have come to wish me God-speed," I murmured. "I shall never forget
it."
"You are really going, then?"
"I am going for a little time out of your life, Lady Angela," I
answered. "It is necessary: Lord Chelsford knows that. But I am not
going in disgrace. I am very thankful to be able to tell you that."
"It was not necessary to tell me," she answered. "Am I not here?"
I bent low over her hand, which rested still in mine.
"Mine is not a purposeless exile--nor altogether an unhappy one--now," I
said. "I have work to do, Lady Angela, and I am going to it with a good
heart. When we meet again I hope that it may be differently. Your
coming--the memory of it will stand often between me and loneliness. It
will sweeten the very bitterest of my days."
"You are really going--to China?" she murmured.
I glanced towards Lord Chelsford. His back was turned to us. If he
understood the meaning of my pause he made no sign.
"I may not tell you where I am going or why," I answered. "But I will
tell you this, Lady Angela. I shall come back, and as you have come to
see me to-night, so shall I come to you before long. If you will trust
me I will prove myself worthy of it."
She did not answer me with any word at all, but with a sudden little
forward movement of both her hands, and I saw that her eyes were
swimming in tears. Yet they shone into mine like stars, and I saw
heaven there.
"I am sorry," Lord Chelsford said, gravely interposing, "but Lady
Chelsford will be waiting for you, Angela. And I think that I must ask
you to remember that I cannot sanction, or appear by my silence to
sanction, anything of this sort."
So he led her away, but what did I care? My heart was beating with the
rapture of her backward glance. I cared neither for Ray nor the Duke
nor any living person. For with me it was the one supreme moment of a
man's lifetime, come too at the very moment of my despair. I was no
longer at the bottom of the pit. The wonderful gates stood open.