The Hero of Garside School Part 46

"Humbug! But listen to me--we're getting a little off the track. The gentleman I was introduced to in the visitors' room this afternoon was your father, Israel Zuker, you say?"

"Yes."

"Wearing a false beard, then?"

"Yes. But how did you know that? Have you met him before?" asked the boy wonderingly.

Paul now understood what it was in the voice of the visitor that had seemed familiar to him.

"I met somebody of that name during last vacation, so I suppose it must have been the same," he answered, with pretended indifference; "but he wasn't wearing a beard. It's a good disguise. What's he afraid of?"

"Well, he's obliged to. I'm telling you this as a secret, and I know I can trust you not to repeat it. My father's an agent of one of the foreign Governments, and he's obliged to put on a disguise sometimes to get information."

"But what information does he want to get that makes him wear disguises?"

"I never could quite make out, but I know it's to do with secret service. He once told me that every Government has secret service.

That's all I ever knew."

He seemed to have an uneasy suspicion that his father's profession was not a very honourable one, for his head sunk to his breast.

"Is your father a friend of the master's--Mr. Weevil, I mean?"

"Well, yes--more than a friend; but it's another secret I don't want to get about the school. Mr. Weevil would be very angry if it did, so you must promise me not to repeat it."

And Paul, scarcely knowing all his promise meant, promised him. Then the boy leant very close to him and whispered: "Mr. Weevil's my uncle."

This information was almost as startling and unexpected as the information that had preceded it. As it fell from Hibbert's lips, Paul almost feared that the door would open and Mr. Weevil would walk in, just as he had walked in before.

"Your uncle!" he repeated.

"Well, it's this way, you see. My mother was English. She was the only sister of Mr. Weevil. I know he was very fond of her, for I've heard mother say that he was a good brother, and that she was the only one for whom he had a greater love than he had for science. My father first met her when he used to give lessons in German and French--he knows three or four languages--at the school where Mr. Weevil was master before he came here. I think my father was then what they call a refugee. My mother died three years ago; then I went to Heidelberg again, and last of all I came here. You remember the day--at the opening of the term."

Remember the day! Paul was never likely to forget it. He remembered every incident in connection with it--Hibbert coming to him in the grounds, the insult put upon him by Newall, and the other incidents that followed.

"I remember," he said gravely.

The door opened as he spoke, and Mrs. Trounce entered.

"What, sitting up!" she cried, for Hibbert was still sitting, with the arm of Paul gently supporting him.

"Yes; I feel so much stronger and better," he answered brightly.

"I'm glad to hear it, but I think you'd better lie down now. If Mr.

Weevil came in now he would have a fit."

Paul thought it highly probable such a catastrophe would happen if the master had any suspicion of what Hibbert had told him. So he gently laid the patient down again.

"You'll come again, Percival?" he pleaded.

And Paul promised.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE

The revelation that Paul had heard in the sick-room overwhelmed him. It was not till he was in the open air that he realized what it all meant.

The foreign spy, for whom his father had sacrificed his life--the man who, in turn, had tried to steal from him the packet which had been entrusted to him by Mr. Moncrief--Hibbert's father! Was he standing on his head or his heels?

Again he could feel the night wind on his face as he galloped along the road to Redmead; again he saw himself confronted by Zuker and his confederate; again he felt himself rising in the saddle and bringing down his whip on the man's face; again he felt the thrill of joy that leapt through his veins as he escaped from the clutches of his pursuers, and bounded once more along the road; and then--then that feeling of despair when Falcon suddenly sank to the ground, and he found that the n.o.ble horse was dying. This man, the man for whom his father had died, the man who had so relentlessly pursued him on the road to Redmead, the man who had caused the death of Falcon--this man of all men Hibbert's father, the father of the boy whom he had watched over and protected ever since he came to Garside, the father of the boy he had loved as a brother, and whom he had risked his own life to save, even as his father had risked his life to save the life of Zuker so long ago!

It was indeed staggering. No wonder he hastened into the fresh air.

Spiders seemed spinning webs about his brain. He could neither see nor think clearly.

"Where am I standing?" he asked himself, and simple as the question was, it was not so simple to answer, for the world seemed suddenly topsy-turvy.

Gradually the night air swept away the cobwebs, and he began to see things in a clearer light. This man Zuker was a spy still; nothing had changed since the day he had been found in his father's cabin, except perhaps that he had grown more daring. A spy! What did that mean? It meant that he was a menace to honest people, a danger to England, a danger to the peace and weal of the country which had given Paul birth--the country for which so many of his relatives had given their lives, the country which he loved. There could be no quarter for such a man. The longer he was at large the greater the danger.

"He's in my power completely. A word from me will send him to prison,"

Paul said to himself. "To prison he shall go this very night."

Full of this determination, Paul turned to the gate. It was a couple of miles to the police-station, but what of that? He would soon cover the distance, and be back again at Garside. So he started on his journey with a run. He had not gone far, however, before a still, small voice began to whisper plaintively in his ear. It was the voice of Hibbert--the pleading, pathetic voice that had become so dear to him.

"Paul, Paul! Are you forgetting the promise you made to me so soon? Was it for this I told you my secret? Reveal my story to the police, and you will kill me--kill me, as surely as though you were to thrust a knife in my breast."

That was what the voice seemed saying to him. Paul pulled himself up with a jerk. What was he about to do? Betray Hibbert, the poor boy who had entrusted him with his secret! Betray Hibbert, who had clung to him and loved him through good report and evil, who had never shrunk from him when one by one the boys at Garside had shrunk from him as from a leper! G.o.d help him! What was he about to do?

He was about to turn back when that other voice whispered to him: "Your country first and foremost. You have a higher duty than the duty you owe to Hibbert--the duty to your country. Besides, this boy's father betrayed your father. Why should you shrink from betraying him? Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Pay back the debt that has been owing so long."

Paul hastened on again, but again he paused as another voice--a voice that was full of wondrous and sublime melody--sounded in his ear: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay."

It seemed to him as he stood there in the moonlight, the stillness so great and solemn that he could hear his heart throb, that G.o.d had spoken. The danger to his country was not so great that it called upon him to give up the secret which had been entrusted in confidence to his keeping.

He could not be true to himself or his country by being false to Hibbert!

He would wait. Hibbert would get better. If the danger became real, he would lay bare his breast to Hibbert as Hibbert had laid bare his breast to him. He would tell him, fairly and honestly, why he could no longer keep his secret; then Hibbert would be able to warn his father, and he would be able to flee from the country he had sought to betray.

Paul felt easier when he had come to this decision. It seemed to him that he had divided his secret with G.o.d, and that he was now acting as He would have counselled him.

And surely His hand had been in it from the first--from the hour when he, Paul, had been shielded from his pursuers in his ride to Redmead to the hour which had brought the son of his pursuer to a sick bed, and induced him to pour his strange confession in his ear. Nay, could not the hand of G.o.d be seen in it still farther back, from the very hour when, at the risk of his own life, Paul's father had sacrificed his own life for the life of his enemy? Even at that time the hand of Providence must have been at work weaving the strange events which were still unfolding themselves.

Paul was on the point of turning back as these thoughts flitted through his mind when the sound of a footstep caused him to draw back hastily into the shadow of the hedge. Scarcely had he done so than a tall, lean figure, with head thrust forward, pa.s.sed quickly by. It was Mr. Weevil.

"Where is he off to, I wonder?" thought Paul.

The master had been so concentrated in his thoughts that he had no suspicion as to who was in hiding by the roadside. Paul's memory at once went back to the last part of Hibbert's story--the part which he had almost lost sight of in the overwhelming interest of the first part. Mr.