T. Tembarom Part 87

"It was good of you to come, Lady Joan."

"Did you think I would stay away?" was her answer. "But I will tell you that I don't believe it is true."

"You think that it is too good to be true?"

Her hot eyes had records in them it would have been impossible for him to read or understand. She had been so torn; she had pa.s.sed through such hours since she had been told this wild thing.

"Pardon my not telling you what I think," she said. "Nothing matters, after all, if he is alive!"

"Except that we must find him," said Palliser.

"If he is in the same world with me I shall find him," fiercely. Then she turned again to Ann. "You are the girl T. Tembarom loves?" she put it to her.

"Yes, my lady."

"If he was lost, and you knew he was on the earth with you, don't you know that you would find him?"

"I should know he'd come back to me," Little Ann answered her. "That's what--" her small face looked very fine as in her second of hesitation a spirited flush ran over it, "that's what your man will do," quite firmly.

It was amazing to see how the bitter face changed, as if one word had brought back a pa.s.sionate softening memory.

"My man!" Her voice mellowed until it was deep and low. "Did you call T. Tembarom that, too? Oh, I understand you! Keep near me while I talk to these people." She made her sit down by her.

"I know every detail of your letters." She addressed Palliser as well as Palford & Grimby, sweeping all details aside. "What is it you want to ask me?"

"This is our position, your ladyship," Mr. Palford fumbled a little with his papers in speaking. "Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and the person known as Mr. Strangeways have been searched for so far without result.

In the meantime we realize that the more evidence we obtain that Mr.

Temple Temple Barholm identified Strangeways and acted from motive, the more solid the foundation upon which Captain Palliser's conviction rests. Up to this point we have only his statement which he is prepared to make on oath. Fortunately, however, he on one occasion overheard something said to you which he believes will be corroborative evidence."

"What did you overhear?" she inquired of Palliser.

Her tone was not pacific considering that, logically, she must be on the side of the investigators. But it was her habit, as Captain Palliser remembered, to seem to put most people on the defensive. He meant to look as uninvolved as the duke, but it was not quite within his power. His manner was sufficiently deliberate.

"One evening, before you left for London, I was returning from the billiard-room, and heard you engaged in animated conversation with-- our host. My attention was arrested, first because--" a sketch of a smile ill-concealed itself, "you usually scarcely deigned to speak to him, and secondly because I heard Jem Temple Barholm's name."

"And you--?" neither eyes nor manner omitted the word listened.

But the slight lift of his shoulders was indifferent enough.

"I listened deliberately. I was convinced that the fellow was a criminal impostor, and I wanted evidence."

"Ah! come now," remarked the duke amiably. "Now we are getting on. Did you gain any?"

"I thought so. Merely of the c.u.mulative order, of course," Palliser answered with moderation. "Those were early days. He asked you,"

turning to Lady Joan again, "if you knew any one--any one--who had any sort of a photograph of Jem. You had one and you showed it to him!"

She was quite silent for a moment. The hour came back to her--the extraordinary hour when he had stood in his lounging fashion before her, and through some odd, uncivilized but absolutely human force of his own had made her listen to him --and had gone on talking in his nasal voice until with one common, crude, grotesque phrase he had turned her hideous world upside down--changed the whole face of it-- sent the stone wall rising before her crumbling into dust, and seemed somehow to set her free. For the moment he had lifted a load from her the nature of which she did not think he could understand--a load of hatred and silence. She had clutched his hand, she had pa.s.sionately wept on it, she could have kissed it. He had told her she could come back and not be afraid. As the strange episode rose before her detail by detail, she literally stared at Palliser.

"You did, didn't you?" he inquired.

"Yes," she answered.

Her mind was in a riot, because in the midst of things which must be true, something was false. But with the memory of a myriad subtle duplicities in her brain, she had never seen anything which could have approached a thing like that. He had made her feel more human than any one in the world had ever made her feel--but Jem. He had been able to do it because he was human himself--human. "I'm friendly," he had said with his boy's laugh--"just friendly."

"I saw him start, though you did not," Palliser continued. "He stood and studied the locket intently."

She remembered perfectly. He had examined it so closely that he had unconsciously knit his brows.

"He said something in a rather low voice," Palliser took it up. "I could not quite catch it all. It was something about `knowing the face again.' I can see you remember, Lady Joan. Can you repeat the exact words?"

He did not understand the struggle he saw in her face. It would have been impossible for him to understand it. What she felt was that if she lost hold on her strange belief in the honesty of this one decent thing she had seen and felt so close to her that it cleared the air she breathed, it would be as if she had fallen into a bottomless abyss. Without knowing why she did it, she got up from her chair as if she were a witness in a court.

"Yes, I can," she said. "Yes, I can; but I wish to make a statement for myself. Whether Jem Temple Barholm is alive or dead, Captain Palliser, T. Tembarom has done him no harm."

The duke sat up delicately alert. He had evidently found her worth looking at and listening to from the outset.

"Hear! Hear!" he said pleasantly.

"What were the exact words?" suggested Palliser.

Miss Alicia who had been weeping on Little Ann's shoulder --almost on her lap--lifted her head to listen. Hutchinson set his jaw and grunted, and Mr. Palford cleared his throat mechanically.

"He said," and no one better than herself realized how ominously "c.u.mulative" the words sounded, "that a man would know a face like that again--wherever he saw it."

"Wherever he saw it!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Grimby.

There ensued a moment of entire pause. It was inevitable. Having reached this point a taking of breath was necessary. Even the duke ceased to appear entirely detached. As Mr. Palford turned to his papers again there was perhaps a slight feeling of awkwardness in the air. Miss Alicia had dropped, terror smitten, into new tears.

The slight awkwardness was, on the whole, rather added to by T.

Tembarom--as if serenely introduced by the hand of drama itself-- opening the door and walking into the room. He came in with a matter- of-fact, but rather obstinate, air, and stopped in their midst, looking round at them as if collectedly taking them all in.

Hutchinson sprang to his feet with a kind of roar, his big hands plunging deep into his trousers pockets.

"Here he is! Danged if he isn't!" he bellowed. "Now, lad, tha let 'em have it!"

What he was to let them have did not ensue, because his att.i.tude was not one of a.s.sault.

"Say, you are all here, ain't you!" he remarked obviously. "Good business!"

Miss Alicia got up from the sofa and came trembling toward him as one approaches one risen from the dead, and he made a big stride toward her and took her in his arms, patting her shoulder in reproachful consolation.

"Say, you haven't done what I told you--have you?" he soothed. "You've let yourself get rattled."

"But I knew it wasn't true," she sobbed. "I knew it wasn't."

"Of course you did, but you got rattled all the same." And he patted her again.

The duke came forward with a delightfully easy and--could it be almost jocose?--air of bearing himself. Palford and Grimby remarked it with pained dismay. He was so unswerving in his readiness as he shook hands.