The presence of Caroline Childers in the door brought the Duke of
Dorset forward into the room. He alone had some understanding of the
incident; but for the moment he said nothing. Cyrus Childers put his
hand on a bell. "Nonsense, Caroline," he said.
But the bell brought no response. He tried another. Then he turned to
the Duke.
"Pardon me a moment," he said, "these bells are evidently broken." He
crossed to the door, spoke to Caroline, and went with her out into the
corridor.
A moment later the Marchesa entered. The Duke had remained on his feet,
where he had arisen, a thin wisp of smoke clinging to the end of his
cigar, as it went slowly out.
The Marchesa Soderrelli crossed straight to him.
"There is something wrong here," she said; "the place is deserted."
The Duke of Dorset laid the cigar down gently on an ash tray, then he
smiled.
"My dear Marchesa," he said, "something has gone wrong with the bells;
that is all."
"That is not all," replied the woman; "I have been through the house to
my room; there is no servant anywhere."
The Duke continued to smile. "I would wager a hunter," he said, "that
every man and maid of them is at this moment in the servant's hall." He
advanced a step. "Look again, my dear Marchesa," he said, "I think
you will find the maids scurrying up at the end of the corridor." The
Marchesa Soderrelli looked steadily at him for a moment.
"My friend," she said, "there is evidently trouble here. Let us look
this situation in the face. We are in the center of an isolated Japanese
colony, and these Orientals have made some concerted, premeditated move.
Do you understand what it is?"
The calm, resolute bearing of the woman caused the Duke of Dorset to
change his plan. He determined to take her into his confidence.
"I would be glad if I knew that," he said; "I have only a conjecture."
The Marchesa continued to regard him with undisturbed composure.
"May I inquire," she said, "what your conjecture is!"
The Duke told her then of the idle Oriental, and what he had observed on
this evening at the foot of the park. He feared that the servants had,
in fact, gone; that the thing was a concerted act, planned and carried
out by the whole corps of servants. The Oriental would sometimes
slip away like that, leaving the very kettles on the fire. They were
doubtless displeased at something, and had determined to abandon the
château. This, the Duke feared, was the situation here--an awkward
one, but not a thing to be alarmed over. Still, among so many servants
setting off in a body, some one of them might attempt mischief; theft,
fire, anything that should suggest itself. However, the very concert of
their act indicated a certain order, and that of itself discouraged any
fear of violence. The Duke pointed out that this was merely a theory, a
conjecture, which he hoped would presently prove unfounded.
The big voice of Cyrus Childers now came to them from the corridor, and,
a moment later, he entered with Caroline. The muscles of the man's
face were distended with rage, he controlled that passion only with the
greatest effort. When he spoke, his voice came out slowly, as though
held and measured.
"We seem to be abandoned by the servants," he said; "I do not understand
it."
Then abruptly, as though the question had been for sometime considered,
Caroline Childers spoke to the Duke of Dorset.
"Have you noticed any indication of this thing?" she said; "any warning
incident?" The Duke saw instantly that he must say here what he had just
said to the Marchesa, and he told again of the Oriental, and especially
of what he had seen this evening at the bridge. But he forgot again
another more pointed incident of the same afternoon. He spoke with a
studied unconcern; he minimized the significance of the thing; it was
like Eastern servants to leave in a body; it meant no more than a going
without permission; the annoyance of it was the only feature to be
thought of; any alarm was obviously unfounded. But his manner and his
comment carried no visible effect. Caroline was evidently alarmed. Cyrus
Childers added now a word in support of the Duke's conclusion--his face
fallen into composure, or rather into control; there was no reason for
alarm; they could all get on somehow for tonight; to-morrow he would
adjust the thing. His massive jaw clamped on that closing sentence.
The Marchesa added also a further word. "They are both quite right," she
said; "we shall get on very well to-night."
Caroline Childers did not at once reply. She remained looking from one
person to the other.
"I wonder," she said, "why it is that we do not say what we are all
thinking. It is extraordinary that the servants should all suddenly
leave the house; it is more extraordinary that they should leave it at
the direction of this person who has been hanging about the grounds."
Then she turned to the Marchesa.
"Neither my uncle nor the Duke of Dorset are in the least misled,
neither are you, nor am I. Let us not pretend to one another; we do not
know what may happen. Nothing, or the very worst thing."
The Marchesa did not reply, and in the meantime Cyrus Childers answered
for her.
"Nonsense, Caroline," he said, "you are unduly excited."
"I am not excited at all," replied the girl.
Her eyes came back to the Duke of Dorset.
"Do you agree with my uncle--shall we wait until morning?"
The Duke met this situation with something approaching genius.
"By no means," he said; "the ground ought to be at once reconnoitered. I
will follow the deserters a little."
He was smiling, and his voice under the words laughed. But within, the
man did not smile, and he did not laugh. He was oppressed by certain
foreboding memories.
The host at once protested. The thing was absurd, unnecessary.
But the Duke continued to smile.
"I beg you to permit it," he said. "Here is a beautiful adventure. I
would not miss it for the world."
The old man understood then, and he laughed. "Very well," he said, "will
you have a horse and weapons?"
"I will take the horse," replied the Duke, "but not the weapons, thank
you. In the meantime, I must dress for the part."
He went swiftly out of the library and up to his room. Here he got into
his riding clothes.
At the foot of the stairway, as he came down, he found Caroline Childers
waiting for him. The two walked from the château door along the turf
court to the stable. The place was lighted as the Duke had first
observed it on this evening, but it was now wholly deserted and silent.
Caroline Childers pointed out the way and the Duke found a horse, led
him out, and girted on a saddle. The horse was a big red sorrel, smooth
as silk, sixteen hands high, and supple as a leopard. The Duke measured
the stirrup leather on his arm, and let it out to the last buckle hole.
Then he turned to the girl beside him, his voice running on that amused,
mock-dramatic note.
"If I do not return in half an hour," he said, "you will know that I am
taken."
Then he gathered up the reins, swung into the saddle, and rode out of
the court eastward into the park.
Caroline Childers returned slowly across the court to the terrace above
the gardens. The night was soft and warm. From the gardens, one lying
below the other, came the trickling of water.
*****
Meanwhile the Duke of Dorset rode slowly among the trees down toward
the stone bridge over the river. But the facetious mood, which he had
assumed to cover the wisdom of this scouting, had departed from him, and
something of the sense of loss that used to await him at night, passing
the picture on the stairway, replaced it. This consuming mood entered
in and possessed the man, and signs which he should have seen, marking
events on the way, escaped him.
He came presently to the stone bridge over the river. The horse refused,
for a moment, to go on it. He struck it over the withers with his crop,
and forced it to go on. The horse swerved, plunged, and half over the
arch, tried to turn back. The Duke swung it around with a powerful
wrench of the bit. The horse went instantly on his hind legs into the
air, striking out with his fore feet.
That rearing saved the man's life. As the horse arose, some one fired
from the cover of the woods beyond the bridge--a dull heavy report like
that of an old-time musket. The horse, struck in the chest between the
shoulders, hung a moment in the air, then it fell forward stumbling to
its knees in the road. The Duke slipped out of the saddle and rolled to
the side of the bridge where the low wall hid him. The horse got slowly
up, and stood with its head down and its legs far apart, trembling, wet
with sweat; the blood poured out of the wound in its chest, in a stream
that flowed slowly into a big, claret-colored pool, and then broke and
trickled across the road in a thin line to where the Duke lay, soaking
his coat. The horse stood for some minutes unsteadily, thus, on its
feet; then it began to stagger, the breath whistling through its
distended nostrils. In this staggering it nearly trod on the man, and,
to escape that danger, he began to crawl along the bridge close to the
wall.
Presently he reached the abutment and slipped from the shelter of the
wall into the wood of the park. Here he ascended the long hill to the
château, keeping in the shadow of the trees, moving slowly and with
caution. When he came to the last tree, at the summit of the park, he
stopped and looked back.
No one followed that he could see. The horse still staggered, bleeding,
over the white floor of the bridge, now to one side of it and now to the
other; then, as he looked, the beast's knees struck violently against
the low wall where he had just been lying, it lurched forward, lost its
balance, toppled and fell with a scream, crashing through a tree top
into the river below.
The word is not accurate. A horse in the extremity of terror utters a
cry like no other sound heard upon this earth. It is a great, hideous
shudder, made vocal. Then, as though that cry had called them into
life, the Duke saw figures emerging from the wood beyond the bridge. He
stepped out into the light, walked swiftly along the court and into the
door of the château.
There, in the library out of which he had just gone, a strange scene
awaited him. The curtains had been pulled over the windows and the
lights were all out except a single one above the big table in the
center of the room. On this table lay a dozen different weapons, hunting
and target rifles, duck and bird guns, and a variety of pistols. The
Marchesa Soderrelli stood over this table, piles of cartridges in little
heaps before her on the polished mahogany board. The others were not
anywhere to be seen.
The Marchesa started when the door opened. "Thank God!" she said; "they
missed you. I heard the shot. I thought you were killed."
"They got the horse," said the Duke.
Then a memory seized him and he crossed to the table, took up one of
the rifles, threw open the breech, and passed his finger over the firing
pin. He tossed the weapon back onto the table and tried another, and
still another.
The Marchesa explained: "I have every gun in the house; two or three of
the rifles will do, and the pistols are all good."
The Duke took up one of the pistols, sprung the hammer, broke it and
felt the breech plate with his thumb. Then he laid it on the table.
"These weapons," he said, "are all quite useless."
The Marchesa Soderrelli did not understand.
"They may not be of the best," she said, "but they will shoot."
"I fear not," replied the Duke.
Then he told swiftly, in a few words, of his experience with the shotgun
on this afternoon; threw open the breech of the rifles and pointed out
the filed-off firing pin in each. Every weapon, to the last one, had
been made thus wholly useless.
The woman's face became the color of plaster, but it remained unmoving,
as though every nerve in it were cut.
"I could bear it," she said, "if we had any chance; if we could make a
fight of it."
"I think we can do that," replied the Duke; "I have a hunting rifle
among my luggage, packed with its ammunition in an ordinary box. That
box has not been opened, and I think its contents not suspected. I will
see."
And he went swiftly out of the room.