The erect figure wheeled as on a pivot, and the answer came back without a second's pause.

"To-night, by the 8.45 from St. Pancras. Alec Forsyth goes down with him."

CHAPTER XI-_On the Terrace_

The home park at Prior's Tarrant lay bathed in the gentle glow of a waning moon, but the h.o.a.ry facade of the mansion itself, and the terrace that skirted it, were in shadow. Up and down in front of the long row of windows a red spark pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed with monotonous regularity-the light of General Sadgrove's cigar as he waited in growing impatience for the coming of the Duke.

After his social duties of the afternoon he had paid a hurried visit to Beaumanoir House to arrange for the Duke's departure in company with his new secretary, and then, armed with credentials from the Duke and heralded by a preparatory telegram, he had proceeded to the Hertfordshire seat by an earlier train. He had good reasons for traveling separately. And now the carriage which he had sent to the little wayside station of Tarrant Road two miles off was overdue, and the General was beginning to chafe.

"I hope I haven't been too c.o.c.ksure," he muttered, under his close-trimmed gray mustache. "I pinned my faith to Alec's company securing the fellow's safety on the journey at least."

He took another turn, and then, striking a vesta, looked at his watch.

It was twenty minutes to eleven, whereas if those he expected had caught the 8.45 from St. Pancras, the carriage should have been back half an hour ago. He had hardly finished this calculation when from behind a gigantic vase on the plinth of the steps leading to the lower level of the gardens there sounded the hiss of a cobra, thrice repeated.

"Azimoolah?" said the General, softly.

His faithful servitor glided forward, almost invisible in the shabby blue tunic which had replaced the spotless white garments of Grosvenor Gardens.

"A queer orderly-room, sahib, but not more so than some we wot of in the by-ways of the Deccan," he whispered, glancing up at the loom of the great mansion. "Well, I have done thy bidding, and have secured a lodging in the village as a poor vendor of Oriental trifles.

Furthermore, I have already done some good police work."

"You have discovered that there are strangers dwelling in the place?"

"Not so, sahib; but they have been _seen_ in the village," was the reply. "The woman with whom I have hired shelter says that two men, professing to be painters, were in the park all day painting the trees and the deer, for which purpose they had obtained permission of the steward. Whence the men came the woman did not know, but they drove in in a dog-cart on the St. Albans road."

"Your informant could not tell you if the picture was finished-whether the men were coming again?" the General asked quickly.

It was too dark to see the Pathan's face, but a ring in his carefully managed undertone told of pride in the answer:

"_She_ could not tell _me_, sahib, but _I_ can tell _you_. The picture makes the trees look like cauliflowers and the deer like unto swine.

Moreover, it is not finished, and the men are coming again-to-morrow, perchance."

General Sadgrove congratulated himself on his foresight. He would have preferred having Azimoolah in the house with him, but he had detached him from personal service, and had sent him down separately to pick up unconsidered trifles in the character of a traveling huckster. And the old sleuth-hound had done well, after only a couple of hours in the place, in bringing this news of painters who could not paint, yet were returning on the morrow. The General had such absolute trust in his henchman's methods that he did not trouble to inquire how the news had been acquired, thereby sparing Azimoolah the needless narrative of a deal with the landlady of the "Hanbury Arms," where the strangers had put up their cart and lunched.

"Very good, old jungle-wolf," was all the comment he vouchsafed, and, making a mental note to see that the park was barred in future to the limners of "deer like unto swine," he was pa.s.sing on to further instructions when the sound of wheels was heard far away down the avenue, and a moment later carriage-lamps twinkled into view round a corner in the drive.

"Here they come," he said. "Better make yourself scarce now, but stay within call in case I want you."

Azimoolah vanished in the darkness, and the General strolled on to the end of the terrace, where the descent of a flight of steps brought him to the main entrance of the mansion. Stationing himself under the portico, he waited the arrival of the brougham, which presently swung to a standstill, while the big hall door was opened wide by ready hands, and shed a blaze of light on-an empty carriage.

"What's this mean, Perrett?" asked the General, outwardly calm for all the big lump in his throat, and cool enough to remember the name of the gray-haired coachman, learned on his own drive from the station. "Has not his Grace arrived?"

"No, sir," replied the old servant, leaning from the box. "There has been an accident to the 8.45. No one hurt, sir. No need for alarm, for his Grace can't have been in the train."

"How do you get at that?" the General asked, doubtfully.

"The train was derailed between St. Albans and Harpenden, sir. Some of the pa.s.sengers were shaken, but none badly injured; so the fast train that followed was run on to the up metals and brought them on, stopping at every station. But none got out at Tarrant Road. James here,"

indicating the footman, "ran along the train and looked into every carriage, but he could not see the Duke."

And Perrett won golden opinions from the General by adding that, not satisfied with that, he got the station-master to wire up the line to the point of the accident, and received in reply the positive a.s.surance that no injured persons had been left behind. All had been forwarded to their destinations by the succeeding fast train, which had been made "slow" for the purpose.

The General had already mastered the time-table, and knew that only one more train from London would stop at Tarrant Road that night-the last, due at a quarter past midnight. The coachman therefore received, as he had expected, orders to return to the station in time to meet that train, and the General, lighting a fresh cigar, strolled back to the terrace, where, in response to his low whistle, Azimoolah glided to his side.

"There is work afoot," he said, briefly. "Canst, as of yore, do without sleep at a pinch?"

"Ay, and without food if it is so willed by Allah and the sahib."

Whereupon the General gave him the best directions he could to the scene of the railway accident fifteen miles away, and bade him hie thither with all speed and glean particulars on the spot, especially with regard to the life they were pledged to defend and the nature of the accident, which might be no accident at all, but a move of their mysterious antagonists. It needed but few words to make Azimoolah understand, and he was gone-even before his hand, raised in unconscious salute, had dropped to his side.

The General fell to pacing to and fro again, striving to penetrate the new situation that had arisen, and, as was his wont when matters went wrong, not sparing himself much scathing criticism. For what had seemed to him good reason, he had put all his eggs in one basket-"gone nap"-as he reflected, on the Duke and Forsyth catching the 8.45, and now disaster had overtaken that very train. If the village post-office had been open, he would have wired to know if the Duke was still at Beaumanoir House, for everything hinged on whether he had started, and Sadgrove felt an ominous presentiment that he had. The people he was playing against were not the sort to wreck a train without prospect of adequate result.

Presently the twin lamps went twinkling down the avenue again, and the General tried to comfort himself with the hope that when they reappeared Beaumanoir would be in the carriage. After all, Alec Forsyth was with him. What had befallen the one should have befallen the other, and he had the greatest confidence in his nephew's readiness and resource. It might even be, the General told himself, that Alec had suspected foul play to the 8.45, and had purposely delayed departure-although, in conflict with this theory, arose the conjecture that in that case the railway people would have been warned, and there would have been no "accident" at all.

But what was the use of following threads which, in the absence of a substantial starting-point, led nowhere? The worried veteran gave up the futile task in favor of more practical work, and occupied himself in learning the route by which the miscreants who had tried to suffocate the Duke had reached the chimney-stack over his chamber. He found that a decayed b.u.t.tress had given them access to the top of the ancient refectory, whence an easy climb along a slanting gutter-pipe formed a royal road to the roof of the main building.

The discovery, interesting in itself, was doubly so from the deduction to be made therefrom. The men who had climbed the roof would have been caught like rats in a trap if the Duke had raised the alarm, and they must either have had complete confidence in their ability to kill him by the charcoal fumes, or, in the event of a hitch, in the Duke's unwillingness to rouse the household.

"Egad! but they must have a nasty grip on him, to trust to his not squealing under such provocation," the General murmured, as the sound of wheels drew him at last from the age-worn b.u.t.tress back to the portico.

"If he's turned up all right I'll try and persuade him to confide the secret before we go to bed."

But when the brougham stopped, it disgorged no Duke, but only Alec Forsyth, pale of face, and for once in his life half afraid of meeting his uncle's expectant eye. But he kept his presence of mind sufficiently to control his voice as he informed the General-the information being really for the servants who had appeared at the hall door-that his Grace had not arrived. In silence the General led the way to the dining-room, and it was not until he had dismissed the butler with the a.s.surance that they would need nothing more that night that he found speech in the curt monosyllable, "Well?"

For answer Alec handed him a telegraph form conveying the message:

"_To A. Forsyth, pa.s.senger by 8.45, St. Pancras terminus._

"_Come back at once, urgent. Am in great distress. Persons threatening Duke detained here. He will be quite safe if he goes on, though not if he returns with you-Sybil Hanbury, Beaumanoir House._"

The General glanced through it and gripped the position.

"Beaumanoir was in the 8.45?" he snapped. "That telegram is a forgery, and you show it to me to explain your separation from him?"

Forsyth bowed his head in grieved a.s.sent to both questions.

"I am, of course, to blame for trusting that infernal thing," he said.

"But I had better put you in possession of the facts at once, for until I reached Tarrant Road station and learned of Beaumanoir's non-arrival from the coachman I had hoped that he had come through all right. I ascertained at Harpenden, where I first heard of the smash, that no one had suffered serious injury."

The facts as related by Forsyth were very simple in themselves, though greatly enhancing the perplexity of the Duke's disappearance. The two friends had left Beaumanoir House in a hansom, giving themselves, as had been arranged, barely time enough to catch the train at St. Pancras.

They had already taken their seats in an empty compartment on which the guard had, at their request, placed an "engaged" label, when a telegraph-boy came along the line of carriages, inquiring for Forsyth by name. On reading the message he had acted on the impulse of the moment, and asking the Duke to excuse him on the score of urgent private business, had left the train and driven back to Beaumanoir House, to find the telegram repudiated by Sybil as not emanating from her and its contents quite unfounded.

"I expect she let you have it," the General remarked grimly.

"She was a little cross," admitted Forsyth, flushing at the reminiscence. "I do not see, though, that I could have ignored what purported to be an appeal for a.s.sistance from a woman in distress-leaving aside my personal relations with her."

"Don't kick, laddie. I'm to blame for leaving our precious vanishing n.o.bleman in the hands of a man in love. What next?"