The Duke Decides Part 20

But the General would have no vague conjectures. Having settled within approximate limits the time when Beaumanoir quitted his room, he desired to learn how he had left the house. He himself had been sitting up from two, at which hour he relieved Forsyth, till five o'clock, and he would stake his reputation that no one had been moving during the period of his vigilance. The Duke must have left the house between five and six, at which latter hour the servants began to be moving.

This view was strengthened by inquiry from the butler, who reported that on going his rounds to open up the house he had discovered one of the windows of the smoking-room unbolted, though he had himself seen to the fastenings the night before. He had not thought anything of it, supposing that one of the gentlemen had gone out for an early stroll.

The General led Forsyth aside. "Whatever has happened to Beaumanoir, he has courted his own fate by going outside unattended," he said. "It almost looks as if he had been lured out by some trick of his enemies, in which case Azimoolah has probably been done to death while endeavoring to protect him. Come and help me search the park once more, and then if we find nothing we must call in the police."

Making a detour by the stable-yard, so as to avoid meeting and being questioned by the ladies, they struck out for the leafy recesses of the broad belt of woodland that fringed the park. Allotting one section to Forsyth and taking the other himself, the General repeated the process of the morning, peering into the bushes, turning over heaps of leaves and probing the bracken with his stick, but all to no purpose. No gruesome corpse, either of English n.o.bleman or of dark-skinned Asiatic, met their straining eyes.

"We must give it up," said the General at last. "Now that we are down here we had better go out through the wicket-gate into the village and tell the constable to send for his superiors. We have reached the limit, and poor Beaumanoir's secrets can belong to him no longer, I fear."

Forsyth a.s.sented that it would be no longer advisable, even if it were possible, to keep the Duke's affairs out of the hands of the police, and the two made their way toward the private gate in the park wall through which Beaumanoir had gone to church on his first memorable Sunday at Prior's Tarrant. They were approaching the gate, not by the path, but skirting the wall through the undergrowth, when a lissome body appeared suddenly at the top of the wall, poised there for a moment, and then dropped almost at their feet. It was Azimoolah Khan, dusty and out of breath, but very far from being a dead man.

"How is this, thou son of Sheitan?" exclaimed the General, affecting sternness to hide his pleasure. "It was not your wont in the jungle days to desert your post in times of danger. In your absence some evil thing has befallen him whom we are pledged to guard."

"Nay, Sahib, but hear me. It is not thy servant who has deserted his post, but his post which has deserted him," protested the Pathan, with dignified reproof. "The great Lord Duke ran away-oh so far and so fast-and thy servant ran after in his tracks to see that no harm befell him."

"Well, where is the Duke now, man?" the General blurted out in great excitement. "Surely you haven't come back to tell me that you have lost him?"

"The Duke is in the fire-carriage, Sahib; and thy servant having no sufficient money or orders from the Sahib, was not able to follow further than the station," Azimoolah replied.

Pressed to be more explicit, this was the story he had to impart. He had been patrolling the park, ever with a watchful eye for the house, when between five and six he had seen the Duke come from one of the ground-floor windows and make at great speed for the coppices. Keeping himself concealed, Azimoolah had quickly perceived that it was the Duke's intention to leave the park by the wicket gate, and, considering it his duty not to lose sight of him, he had climbed the wall and followed. Avoiding the village street, Beaumanoir had struck into a series of lanes which presently brought him back into the main road beyond the farthest habitation. Thenceforward, with Azimoolah shadowing him, he had commenced a tramp which lasted between two and three hours, and finally ended at a railway station in a fair-sized country town.

"You ascertained the name of the town?" asked the General.

Yes, after the train had steamed away Azimoolah had not omitted to inquire the name of the town. It was Tring. He had also inquired at the booking-office where the Duke had taken a ticket for, but the clerk had refused the information with a rude remark about the color of his skin-a remark which, east of Suez, might have brought him a taste of cold steel.

"And then, Sahib," concluded the narrator, "without bite or sup I started to run back again, being sore afraid lest thy heart should be troubled by these things."

The General patted his orderly's lean shoulder. "You have done right, old sheep-dog," he said. "And as the lamb has broken loose from the fold you can go and get food and take a few hours' rest. Come, Alec! Let us get back and see what Bradshaw has to tell us."

Azimoolah having vanished over the boundary wall for his lodging in the village, they returned to the house and repaired to the library. Forsyth found a Northwestern time-table and turned up Tring.

"Beaumanoir must have caught the 7.30 down," he said, running his finger down the page. "It's a slow train, stopping at every station, and doesn't go beyond Bletchley."

The General was growing querulous. "Bletchley!" he snorted. "What the deuce does he want at Bletchley? It's a little one-horse town in North Bucks, isn't it?"

"Hold on, it's more than that," said Forsyth, still with his finger on the column. "It's a junction where fast trains stop, and-yes!-he could change there into the North of England express, which calls there at 8.10."

The two men looked at each other in silence and with something of consternation.

"Liverpool is in the north of England," said the General after a pause, "and Sherman is due to arrive there to-day."

"I cannot and will not believe that Beaumanoir has gone wrong after all," Forsyth angrily replied to his uncle's significant remark. He spoke with such heat that neither of them noticed that the library door had been opened and that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton stood there, smiling at them.

"Who has gone wrong?" she purred sweetly. "For goodness' sake, don't tell me that the Duke has run away with a housemaid!"

She was looking at Forsyth with eyes that bored like gimlets, and he thought of the letter from Ziegler, addressed to the Duke, entrusted to him the day before. Was it something in that letter that made her stare so steadfastly and yet with something of mockery in her gaze? Having good reason to be aware of the contents of that letter, he thought it likely. Only in that case calculations had been all at sea, and Beaumanoir-alas, poor Beaumanoir!

It was the General who answered the lady's banter, and that without any visible discomfiture. "No, it isn't the Duke who has gone wrong," he said calmly. "We were talking of someone not nearly so exalted. Our host is all right-gone away for a few hours by an early train on business. We have found out all about his movements, and I shall be obliged, Mrs.

Talmage Eglinton, if you will kindly rea.s.sure the other ladies that Beaumanoir's absence is satisfactorily accounted for."

"How delighted Miss Sherman will be. I will go and tell them all, at once," cried the American gaily. And she swept out of the room with an exuberant triumph not lost on those who remained behind.

"Wherever the Duke has gone, and with whatever motive, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton is pleased," the General mused aloud.

"She will find herself mistaken if she thinks he has gone to play her game," said Alec Forsyth, staunch as ever to his friend.

CHAPTER XVIII-_The Senator and the Securities_

On the hurricane-deck of the _Campania_, as the leviathan liner thrust her huge bulk towards the landing-stage through the lesser fry of the teeming Mersey traffic, a big man, wearing a light-gray frock-coat and a broad-brimmed soft white hat, stood talking to the purser. Senator Leonidas Sherman was accounted the handsomest man at Washington, and in his broad, well-chiseled, clean-shaven face was reflected that honesty and shrewd alertness which had caused his selection for his present trust.

"I don't want the box out before the last moment, Mr. Seaton, and if you can conveniently keep the bullion-room locked till you hand it over I should be obliged," the Senator was saying.

The bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned official gave a ready a.s.sent to the distinguished pa.s.senger's request.

"I'd rather you had your job than me, sir," he added, seriously. "The equivalent of three million sterling in a little leather thing like that, and to have to cart it up to London all by your lone self-why, it's enough to make one shudder."

"It doesn't me," the Senator replied simply, with an unconscious gesture to his hip-pocket. "I have a bit of a reputation to live up to, you know. If it's to be shooting, my early training has taught me to draw first; and if it's to be confidence-men-well, it's some years since I was born."

The purser nodded and went about his duties while Sherman leaned over the forward rail and watched the sh.o.r.e, looming larger now every moment.

The Senator was no back-woods "hayseed." A man of culture and much travel, he possessed far more than a guide-book knowledge of every European capital, and did not make the mistake of under-estimating London as a hatching-ground for crime. Till his precious charge was deposited in the Bank of England and he had fingered the receipt he was prepared for emergencies. The gold shipment which his Government had negotiated against the bonds he was bringing had been buzzed about in Wall Street for two months and more-ample time for the maturing of predatory schemes.

Aided by the company's tug, the great steamer sidled up to the landing-stage, and as soon as the gangways were opened the usual stream of pa.s.sengers' friends began to push their way on board. The hurricane-deck towered high above the level of the quay, and Senator Sherman, not expecting anyone to meet him, retained his post of vantage at the rail, looking down with amused interest at the embracings and hand-shakings. He had no need to hurry, for it was too late to catch a train to London in time to reach the Bank before it closed for the day, and he preferred to let the ship clear before he claimed the box of bonds from the purser.

Suddenly he heard his name spoken inquiringly at his elbow, and wheeling smartly round he found himself looking into the hara.s.sed eyes of a well-dressed man whom he had seen, a few minutes before, pa.s.s on board from the landing-stage. He had specially noticed him from a limp which impeded his progress across the crowded gangway.

"Yes, my name is Sherman, but I haven't the pleasure of knowing yours,"

said the Senator shortly. There was a diffident air about this tired-looking individual-a something that might be shyness or might be guile-that put him on his guard. Could it be that one of the "confidence-men," about whom he had just spoken so lightly, was going to practise on him ere even the securities were out of the purser's custody? He wondered what tale would be unfolded for his entrapment.

"I am the Duke of Beaumanoir," the stranger replied, after a nervous glance round. "I don't suppose you ever heard of me. There wouldn't have been time for a letter from your people to reach you from this side before you sailed."

"You know my wife and daughter?" the Senator asked, sharply. The "tale"

was developing on the grand scale, he told himself.

"I have the privilege of knowing Mrs. and Miss Sherman," replied the Duke, flushing under the keen scrutiny to which he was being subjected.

"I have also the honor of being their host. They are staying, together with their friends the Sadgroves, at my place in Hertfordshire. I-I came down to meet you in the hope of inducing you to join them there."

"Very good of you. May I ask how you came to make their acquaintance?"

asked the Senator, in an arid tone.

"I traveled in the same ship with them from New York, and General Sadgrove, with whom they stayed on arrival, happened to be the uncle of my friend and secretary, Alec Forsyth," Beaumanoir made answer.

An amused twinkle flashed into the Senator's clear eyes. He was quite certain now that the man was an impostor with designs on the three millions. The only spice of truth in the fellow's story, he told himself, probably was that he had sailed in the _St. Paul_, which would have given him the opportunity of gathering from his wife or Leonie the particulars he was now working on. The Senator had no doubt that if he accompanied this rather poor specimen of a criminal decoy an attempt would be made to relieve him of the bonds-possibly to murder him. It was all a little too thin-especially the dangling of an exalted t.i.tle as a bait to catch an American. This part of the scheme really annoyed him, as casting on a foible of his fellow-countrymen a reflection which he felt to be not wholly undeserved. The Senator became dangerous.

"Very well, your Grace; if my family is under your roof, it is the right place for me," he said more affably. "I accept your invitation in the spirit in which it is given. I have a matter of three million sterling in securities to get from the bullion-room, and then I'm your man.