SOME CONFIDENCES
For fully a quarter of an hour Gordon Cunningham had sat immovable,
heedless of the fact that he was peering out into the darkness, and
that the grave-faced waiter had not lowered the blind because he sat
facing the night.
Out in the rain and darkness the old priest stood motionless.
“Hulloa, Gordon! Good heavens! Why, what’s up? You look uncommonly
glum, old chap!” cried a voice suddenly causing him to start and turn.
It was Price-Williams, a barrister well known at the Old Bailey for
his able prosecutions on behalf of the Treasury. “This weather is
certainly enough to make anyone glum,” the smooth, round-faced lawyer
went on. “I’m off to Monte to-morrow for a fortnight. Why don’t you
come with me? It would buck you up for the spring.”
“Can’t, old chap--the House.”
“Why don’t you pair? These past two days I’ve noticed you looking
absolutely wretched. You politicians are always so full of the
nation’s worries.”
“In my case it’s generally the worries of other nations,” Cunningham
laughed faintly as he stretched out his legs.
“I suppose it is. But you’ve got a special knowledge of your friends
the Turks. By the way,” added the lawyer, “I presume by your clothes
you’ve been down to poor Ravenscourt’s funeral--eh?”
The young man nodded an affirmative.
“Sad affair--very sad,” remarked the other. “A queer bit of business
altogether, that’s my opinion.”
“What do you mean?” asked the young man in a low, rather strained
voice.
“Well, the fact is, I’m hardly convinced that it was suicide,
notwithstanding the verdict of the coroner’s jury.”
“Why not?” inquired the other.
“Intuition, perhaps. I believe there was foul play.”
“But surely, there’s no getting away from the verdict at the inquest!”
“Not at present. But tell me, what does Miss Lambton say? Her opinion
would be of interest.”
“Nothing. I’ve scarcely seen her since the sad affair. And the subject
was, of course, far too painful for discussion.”
“Well, my dear fellow,” remarked the barrister, “you’ll find later
that I’m not alone in my suspicions that Sir George was deliberately
done to death. The police may have secured that verdict for their own
purposes, you know.”
“What?” cried the young man, almost gasping. “Is that sometimes done?”
“Of course--in order to mislead. It was done in the Hammond case at
Hornsey about a year ago, and again, more recently, in the affair of
Ethel Burns down at Croydon. I afterwards appeared for the
prosecution.”
“Then you think that--well that----”
“That he was murdered. There’s no doubt in my mind. Sir George wasn’t
the man to take his own life--especially at such a moment when his
party was so sore in need of him. My own opinion is that the police
will discover something--that there will be a sensational development
ere long. As Counsel for the Treasury, I happen to know some of their
methods.”
“Do they suspect anyone?” asked Gordon eagerly.
“Ah! That I can’t tell you, my dear fellow. But depend upon it,
Ravenscourt never died by his own hand.”
“Don’t let’s discuss it,” exclaimed the young man as he rose abruptly,
and a few moments later he put on his hat and coat and took a taxi
down to the House. Then, and only then, did the shabby priest move
from the dark doorway in St. James’s Street.
Gordon had to meet a deputation of his constituents from Kingsbridge,
and was engaged with them until the dinner hour. Then, after a hasty
meal, he took part in an important division, and later on drove over
to Carlton House Terrace, where Burgess admitted him to the house of
mourning.
The widow was keeping her room, but very soon Maidee, dainty in her
sombre black gown, entered the big blue-and-white drawing-room on the
first floor and raised her sweet face to receive her lover’s fond
caress.
“I’m awfully sorry I had to rush away yesterday, darling,” the young
man exclaimed; “but I was due to speak at Highgate on the Macedonian
Question and the Roumanian interference.”
“Yes. I saw the account of your splendid speech in the _Times_ this
morning. It read most excellently,” she said with enthusiasm.
“I’m so glad you liked it,” he went on, still holding her in his arms.
“The public and Parliament are, alas! very ignorant of the actual
causes of the internal strife in the Balkans.”
“The _Times_, in a leader the other day, said that nobody, not even
Gladstone, had ever obtained such a mastery over the intricate
complications of the Near Eastern Question as you, Gordon,” the girl
remarked.
“Mere flattery, dearest--just because I happen, I suppose, to be a man
of the moment. But the man which the papers praise to-day will be
condemned by them in six months’ time. The public are so very fickle.
The Press nowadays, unfortunately, does not lead public opinion; it
finds it more advantageous to follow it. Ah! if the public would only
realise how men’s reputations are manufactured by photographs being
sown broadcast in the daily pictorial Press, and how many men,
struggling for notoriety, keep a Press agent specially to ‘boom’ them!
To-day one’s reputation is all a matter of self-advertisement. Why,
you can pay a fee to a certain telegraphic agency and, wherever you
may be, in any city in the world, your doings will be chronicled
throughout Europe almost as though you were a crowned head. Is it
therefore any wonder that the public are unable to discriminate or
value a man at his actual worth?”
“Poor uncle often said the very same thing, Gordon,” the girl
exclaimed, her soft, white hand upon his arm as she looked up lovingly
into his countenance. “But you, at least, are not one of those who
have obtained a fictitious reputation.”
“Ah!” he said with a slight sigh. “Perhaps I have, Maidee. Perhaps,
after all, I am not worth all the praise bestowed upon me.”
She gazed at him full of admiration, for she was devoted to him.
“You are, dear--why, you know you are!” she cried. “Why, you are one
of the most popular men in London to-day, and my uncle said many times
that some time you will be given a seat in the Cabinet.”
Gordon Cunningham slowly shook his head. “No, Maidee,” he said
quietly. “But what shall we do now we’ve lost Sir George? There is no
one to take his place.”
“Except you.”
“Me!” he echoed with a dry laugh. “Whoever has suggested such a
thing?”
“I’ve heard a whisper of it to-day,” the girl replied, her dark eyes
fixed upon her lover’s pale, serious face. They were perfectly happy
in each other’s love.
“Never!” he said quickly. “I would rather resign--rather withdraw from
politics altogether than take your uncle’s place.”
“Why?”
But he only pressed his pale lips together and turned away his face in
order to hide its expression.
A silence fell between the young people in that big, well-lit, richly
decorated room, the scene of so many brilliant political gatherings--a
silence broken only by the low honk of a taxicab speeding along the
Mall.
Gordon Cunningham gazed around. The delicate pale blue carpet, the
gilt furniture, the dead white walls, the fine oval portraits of
seventeenth-century beauties by Lely and other masters, and the
old-fashioned china cabinets all brought back to him memories of smart
gatherings held there when he had been lionised by the great ones of
England.
But all that was now of the past. That day the quiet, good-natured
master of the house had been laid to his last rest, and that room
would no longer be one of the centres of political life in London.
Maidee, a frail little figure, looked up into her lover’s eyes, and
reading his thoughts, sighed in silence.
He asked her how her ladyship was bearing the blow, while she, in
return, inquired for details of the funeral down in Oxfordshire.
“Quite a number of people went down, including three Cabinet Ministers
as well as the Leader of the Opposition and deputations from Sir
George’s constituency and several public bodies. The day was the most
dismal I have ever spent, Maidee.”
“Yes, I fully expected it would be,” she sighed. “It has been very
wretched here, too. Telegrams have been arriving all day. The King
sent a message of condolence to auntie yesterday.”
He released her and walked slowly across to the big fireplace. He
seemed unusually pensive, and she thought she detected a look upon his
face such as she had never hitherto seen there.
It had been on the tip of her tongue on both the brief occasions when
they had seen each other since the tragic affair, to tell him the
truth that her uncle had been assassinated after writing that strange
record. On the first occasion she was plunged in grief, and on the
second she had recollected the strict injunctions of the friend of her
youth, old Mr. Ambrose.
And now again the queer old fellow’s words recurred to her as she
crossed to a cosy arm-chair and sank into it wearily. Her beautiful
face, usually so cheerful, wore an expression of profound and touching
dejection. She raised her eyes to the man standing before her with
mingled love and melancholy.
He seemed agitated, while upon his pale countenance was a look of
intense anxiety as, suddenly, he asked:
“Tell me, Maidee, after the discovery downstairs in the library, were
the police busy making inquiries? I mean did they appear suspicious
that it was not a case of suicide?”
“Why?” she asked, opening her eyes widely. “Why do you ask such a
question, Gordon?”
Again those injunctions of the strange old man who was her intimate
friend flashed across her mind. He had told her most distinctly that
her lover must know nothing save what appeared in the papers. She was
now glad that she had told him nothing when he had called early in the
morning after the tragedy.
“Well,” he said after some hesitation, “it has occurred to a good many
people--men I’ve met at the clubs--that Sir George was not a man to
end his own life. There were, it seems, strong motives that he should
still live. Besides, no financial difficulties have been revealed,
have they?”
“None. In the safe in the library the police found a huge bundle of
bank-notes. I saw them counted. There were fifty thousand pounds.”
“Then he certainly was not in any pecuniary trouble,” Cunningham
remarked. “There seems no reason whatever for him to have taken his
life.”
“But the coroner’s jury, after hearing the evidence, decided that it
was an unfortunate case of suicide.”
“Yes,” he said; “I should have attended the inquest, only, as you
know, I had to speak in Glasgow that evening.”
“But who has put these suspicions into your head, Gordon?” the girl
asked with a fixed and serious look. Although young, beautiful, and
beloved, melancholy was now the characteristic of her features. An
ardent soul dwelt within her, but the tragic and gloomy atmosphere of
that house had made its mark of deep depression.
“A stranger, first--an old man whom I met in the train this afternoon.
He declared himself most positive that Sir George was murdered.”
“An old man!” echoed Maidee. “What could he know? Describe him.”
But by the description the girl did not recognise the stranger. Then
Gordon added:
“He was extremely well dressed, and evidently an intimate friend of
your uncle’s. He wore in his old-fashioned black cravat a curious
cameo scarf-pin--a genuine antique gem without a doubt--two girls in
classic flowing drapery before a pagan altar.”
Maidee held her breath, her eyes fixed upon the man she loved so
dearly.
She recognised in an instant that the scarf-pin was the same she had
seen so often worn by Uncle John!
But she cleverly kept her own counsel, and expressed a blank surprise
that a mere stranger should be so positive in his assurance that Sir
George had fallen beneath the hand of an assassin.
“Who could have struck him down?” she asked. “My dear uncle never
harmed anybody. What could possibly have been the motive for such a
crime as the one this stranger suggested?”
Her lover made no response. He--hailed as the man of to-morrow--was
standing pale and motionless, staring straight before him, rigid as a
statue.