The Duke Decides Part 3

"But you said just now that you were going to take possession."

"I have changed my mind. There are reasons which I cannot explain to you why my immediate neighborhood is likely to be dangerous for the present.

I should be sorry to subject my fair cousin to any unpleasantness.

Though not a word of this to her or anyone else, please."

The cab was drawing up before the ducal mansion, and Forsyth forbore to put into words the astonishment which he looked. As the two men were about to ascend the steps to the entrance, a landau, which was being driven slowly by, drew to the curb, and a lady who, besides the servants, was the sole occupant, called out:

"Surely you're not going to cut me, Mr. Forsyth. Too proud to know poor little me, eh, now that you've taken to calling on dukes?"

A murmur of annoyance escaped Forsyth, but perforce he went to the carriage and shook the daintily gloved hand held out to him.

"How do you do, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton?" he said, adding the reproving whisper, "That _is_ the Duke."

The lady in the landau raised her lorgnettes and calmly surveyed the waiting n.o.bleman.

"How very interesting!" she purred, adding aloud so that the subject of her request could not fail to hear, "Why don't you introduce him, instead of keeping him standing there? We Americans are death on dukes, you know."

At a gesture from Forsyth, who tried to convey his disgust by a look, Beaumanoir limped forward, smiling. His misfortunes had made him something of a democrat, and he had always been ready to see the comic side of things till tragedy that morning had claimed him for its own. In meeting the advances of the agent Jevons in the Bowery saloon he had been largely influenced by the humor of the situation-of the scion of a ducal house consenting to "get a bit" by pa.s.sing forged bonds.

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, a handsome blonde with an elegant figure and a childish voice, received the Duke with effusion.

"I stopped my carriage to ask Mr. Forsyth to tea on Sat.u.r.day," she prattled. "I do hope your Grace will come too. I am staying at the Cecil, and shall be delighted to see you."

The unblushing effrontery of the invitation failed to strike Beaumanoir in his sudden horror at the a.s.sociations called up by it. This frivolous b.u.t.terfly of a woman occupied the next suite of rooms to those in which Ziegler was spinning his villainous web-in which that terrible old man had unfolded to him the details of his treacherous task. Strange, too, that he should be bidden to the mild dissipation of an afternoon tea-table in that hotel, of all others, on the very day when he was due to go there on business so different, for Sat.u.r.day was the day appointed by Ziegler for his call for "further instructions."

Conscious that the mocking eyes of the lady in the landau were watching him with a curious inquiry, he mastered his emotion, and at the same time came to a decision on the vital issue before him. Probably he would have arrived at the same one without the incentive of avoiding an unpalatable engagement, but Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's invitation to tea was undoubtedly the final influence in setting him on the straight path.

"I am very sorry," he replied, and there was a new dignity in his tone, "but I must ask you to excuse me. I am going down to-morrow to Prior's Tarrant, my place in Hertfordshire, and I shall not be in town on Sat.u.r.day."

For the fraction of a second the rebuffed hostess seemed taken aback by the refusal. She flushed slightly under her powder, and the taper fingers twitched on the handle of her sunshade. But without any appreciable pause she answered gaily:

"That's most unkind of you. Well, what must be must be. Good-bye, your Grace. Good-bye, Mr. Forsyth; I shall expect you, anyhow. Drive on, Bennett."

The carriage rolled away.

"I am glad you snubbed her," Forsyth exclaimed. "She has been made a good deal of in certain circles during the last month or two, and presumes a lot on the strength of it."

"Did I snub her?" said the Duke carelessly. "I am sure I didn't mean to, for she deserves better things of me. You'd hardly believe it, Alec, but that little episode has jerked me into deciding a crucial point-no less than whether to be a man or a cur. At the same time it has put me quite outside the pale as a resident under the same roof as my cousin. On second thoughts, I will not go in at all, but I shall be obliged if you will see her and convey the message I gave you-that Beaumanoir House is at her disposal till she can quite conveniently leave it."

"But what are you going to do yourself?" said Forsyth in sheer bewilderment.

"First I shall go to Bond Street, to gladden the hearts of some of my old creditors; then by an evening train to Prior's Tarrant," was the reply. "And, Alec," proceeded the Duke earnestly, "if you can get leave from the Foreign Office, pending retirement, and join me there as soon as possible, you will place me under a very deep obligation."

CHAPTER V-_Ziegler Begins to Move_

On the following Sunday morning the Duke of Beaumanoir stood at one of the windows of the long library at Prior's Tarrant, idly beating a tattoo on the gla.s.s. The June sunshine flooded the bosky leaf.a.ge of the glorious expanse of park, and nearer still the parterres of the old Dutch garden were gay with summer bloom; but the beauties of the landscape were lost upon the watcher at the window.

Nearly four and twenty hours had elapsed since he had failed to keep his appointment with Mr. Ziegler, and he was wondering how and when that autocrat of high-grade crime would signalize his displeasure at the mutiny. That sooner or later an edict would issue against him from the invalid chair in the first-floor suite he had not the slightest doubt.

He knew that he had to deal with men playing a great game for a great stake in deadly earnest.

The Dukes of Beaumanoir had never been famous for their virtues, any more than they had been cowards, and it was rather a dawning sense of responsibility than fear, either for his reputation or his person, that filled him with apprehension. If "anything happened" to him, such a lot would happen to so many other people. For instance, it had only occurred to him since he came down to the country that if Ziegler killed him his death would mean ruin to Alec Forsyth, who had thrown up a sure position to serve him. The next heir was an elderly cousin with a large family to provide for, and he would certainly not retain Forsyth in his employment.

Then, again, Beaumanoir reflected with a sigh, his new and sweet friendship with Leonie Sherman-a friendship to which no blot on his escutcheon need now put limits-would be rudely snapped. The King of Terrors would take away what his saved honor had restored, and perhaps it was the bitterest drop in his cup to feel that he might be giving his life to lose what in another sense he would have given his life to win.

To ask Leonie to link her fate to his, with that dark shadow hanging over him, was out of the question.

Once he had taken up his pen to denounce Ziegler to the police authorities anonymously, but he had despondingly laid it down again.

That crafty pract.i.tioner had doubtless safeguarded himself against such an obvious course by being prepared with an unimpeachable record which it would be impossible to shake unless he came forward and avowed complicity. There, again, dishonor waited for him, and he had already made his choice that a short shrift was preferable to that.

The gloom of his mood was enhanced by his intense loneliness in the huge feudal monastery that now called him master, for Forsyth had been unable to join him, owing to difficulties in obtaining release from his present duties.

Beaumanoir took out and read for the fifth time a letter which had arrived that morning from his friend and secretary:

"My dear Duke (I mustn't use the irreverent 'Charley' any more),-I am still having trouble with the F.O. people about my departure, but I think I may safely promise to get away to you on Tuesday. In fact, I shall make a point of doing so, even if I have to leave the public service in disgrace, for you must forgive my saying that I am rather uneasy about you. The other day you seemed like a man with a millstone round his neck, and I take it that one of the duties of a private secretary is to remove millstones from the person of his employer. I only wish you would confide fully in me, and command me in any way-but that is, of course, your affair.

"I dined with my uncle, General Sadgrove, last night, and had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. and Miss Sherman there. The latter is indeed a charming girl. She was rather shy in talking about you, having heard from my uncle that the Mr. Hanbury she met on shipboard was probably the Duke of Beaumanoir on his way to enter into his kingdom. Mrs. Sherman waxed enthusiastic on your 'old-world courtesy' and the General, who chaffs the old lady, remarked that she had been equally laudatory before she discovered your rank.

"They were all very kind and congratulatory on my announcing my engagement to Sybil, which, as I wrote you yesterday, was ratified within ten minutes of your leaving me at the door of Beaumanoir House.

"You may be interested to hear that I did _not_ go to tea with Mrs. Talmage Eglinton to-day.-Yours,

"_Alec Forsyth_."

The Duke crushed the letter back into his pocket, and came to a resolution.

"I'll run up to town to-morrow and call on the Shermans," he said to himself. "And now I'll do the proper thing, and go to church. I'm not going to crouch in corners because of that patriarchal old fiend at the Cecil."

The church at which generations of Hanburys had worshiped was in the center of Tarrant village, a mile from the lodge gates, but there was a short cut to it across the park. This was the route taken by the Duke, who first crossed the greensward and then pa.s.sed out by a private wicket into the road after traversing the belt of copse that fringed the demesne. The villagers, who had waited for his coming, standing bare-headed in the churchyard, were a little disappointed that he had not driven up in full state. But the solitary gentleman limping up the path atoned for the lack of ceremony and won their hearts by his friendly smile; and a handshake to one or two of the older inhabitants, whom he remembered as a boy, clinched the matter. The verdict went round that the new Duke would "do."

The service that morning was, it is to be feared, more ducal than devotional. From the white-robed choir, ranged among the tombs of dead-and-gone Hanburys in the chancel, to the hard-breathing rustics on the back benches every eye was turned and steadily kept on the lonely figure in the family pew. While grateful for the homage paid him, the Duke was not sorry when the ordeal was over and he was free to make his way homeward.

But he was not to get off so easily. As he was about to let himself through the private gate into the park, intending to go back, as he had come, through the copse, footsteps sounded behind him, and Mr. Bristow, the vicar, overtook him. They had already met on the previous day.

"Your Grace is alone still?" panted the clergyman. "Ah, I thought your secretary wouldn't find it so easy to cast his shackles. I am commissioned by Mrs. Bristow to say-I hope you won't think us presuming-that we shall be delighted if you will give us your company at our homely lunch."

A sudden impulse prompted Beaumanoir to accept the invitation. He had taken a liking for the hale, vigorous old vicar, who had the archives of his family by rote, and an hour or two in his society would take him out of himself. So he turned back and accompanied his host to the vicarage, where he made a good impression on Mrs. Bristow by his cordial praise of her training of the choir and by appreciation of her strawberries and cream.

It was past four when he returned to Prior's Tarrant, to be met in the entrance-hall by the butler with a face eloquent of "something wrong."

"What is it, Manson?" he asked. "Mr. Bristow sent a boy, did he not, to say that I was lunching at the vicarage?"

"Yes, your Grace. It isn't that," was the agitated reply. "I have to report an outrage that's been committed on one of the under-servants.

Jennings, the third gardener, was coming back from church through the copse in the park, when he was la.s.soed, your Grace, same as they do buffalo, I've been told, in foreign parts. A rope shot out of the bushes over his shoulders, and then a man ran up as he was struggling on the ground; but let him go, saying it was a joke. Jennings hasn't got any enemies that he knows of, and it was a wicked thing to do, because he's a bit of a cripple and walks lame. It's shook him a good deal."

"I am not surprised at that," said the Duke. "Possibly it was only intended as a practical joke, but you had better inform the constable in the village, and instruct him to inquire into the matter."