"I hurried back to St. Pancras, and, just missing the fast train which afterwards picked up the 8.45 pa.s.sengers at the scene of the accident, had to kick my heels until the last train started. But it was no accident, Uncle Jem. A big baulk of timber had been placed across the rails, they told me at Harpenden."

The General knitted his brows and pondered the problem, presently suggesting tentatively that there was no proof that the Duke had after all gone in the 8.45. He might, on finding himself suddenly deprived of his companion, have got out before it started. But this theory was at once knocked on the head by Forsyth's a.s.sertion that the train had begun to move before he left the platform, and that Beaumanoir, still seated in the "engaged" compartment, had waved him farewell. If the Duke had not got out at an intermediate station, he must have disappeared at the place of derailment, the latter contingency being the more probable.

Also the most alarming, because the stranded pa.s.sengers had had to wait for three-quarters of an hour at the side of the line in the dark, at a remote spot surrounded by woods.

"Humph! It looks very much as if they'd got him this time," was the General's final comment. And he straightway walked over to the sideboard and poured himself out a gla.s.s of wine, motioning his nephew to join him. The action was significant of conclusiveness, and seemed to say that, doom having overtaken the Duke, there was nothing more to be done.

The old gentleman drank his wine slowly, then turned to Forsyth with the fierce exclamation:

"First time Jem Sadgrove was ever beaten by a woman. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, or whatever she may choose to call herself, has scored a record."

"Mrs. Talmage Eglinton! What on earth has she got to do with it?" was Forsyth's astounded rejoinder.

A good deal, it appeared, according to the view which the General had contrived to piece together, and which, leaning against the sideboard, he proceeded to propound in spasmodic jerks. Beginning with a description of how he had witnessed Beaumanoir's narrow escape of being run down by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's landau, he hinted at the dawn of suspicion in his own mind on finding her immediately afterwards calling at his house, yet strangely silent on having nearly killed a man in the streets. Then, when Forsyth had consulted him after the midnight episode at Beaumanoir House, and had told him of the Duke's visit on the day of his arrival from New York to someone occupying the next suite at the hotel to that of Mrs. Eglinton, he had been fairly certain of his clue.

Having satisfied himself by personal observation that the ducal mansion in Piccadilly was closely watched, he had set himself the task of establishing a connection between the _soi-disant_ widow and her neighbor at the hotel-a task which had been successful so far as convincing himself went.

Forsyth recognized that, for all the mischance of the evening, his uncle had put in some good detective work, and said so. "You must have been quick, too," he added. "Is it permitted to ask how you managed it?"

"It was very simple," the General replied, with a relish for the remembrance. "I carted all the women off to call on the lady, and while we were there Azimoolah, in the character of an Indian rajah, blundered into Mr. Clinton Ziegler's rooms, which I had in the meanwhile ascertained communicated with Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's. When the prearranged hubbub commenced she gave herself away by an unconscious movement to the communicating door, showing that she was in the habit of using it, unknown to the hotel people, who believe that they have divided one big suite into two smaller ones let separately. She's clever, and pulled herself together at once, but I had got what I wanted-the fact that she was anxious about the rumpus my good old Khan, tricked out in a suit from Nathan's and a stage diamond, was raising next door."

"That seems convincing, certainly," said Forsyth.

"Azimoolah's experiences were even more so. Mr. Clinton Ziegler has some a.s.sociates with a very pretty way with them when Asiatic princes stumble by chance into his rooms. Of course, it was Azimoolah's cue to be a bit boisterous and persistent, but they needn't have roused the tiger in him by giving him the congenial task of disarming them of two uncommonly murderous knives. Funny thing is, that when I went in as an interpreting peace-maker, I saw no sign of Ziegler, who, I gathered at the hotel bureau, is an invalid and never goes out. The two men in the room were able-bodied fellows, fashionably dressed, but with that in their faces which there is no mistaking. The 'crime-look' is an open sign to those who know."

The General paused and looked at his nephew curiously. "Then I made a false move," he went on-"a false move which may have wiped the seventh Duke of Beaumanoir out of the peerage. I told Mrs. Talmage Eglinton that the Duke was going down to Prior's Tarrant by the 8.45. Yes, you may well stare, but I had an object. I also told her that you were going down with him, believing that that would secure you both a peaceful journey; for, vulgarly speaking, the woman is glaringly sweet upon you, laddie. I ought to have given such a combination as she works with credit for the cunning which drew you from your post."

Forsyth flushed with annoyance. It was not pleasant to hear that his friend's life might have been sacrificed through his uncle's perception of a feminine weakness which had irked him throughout the London season-in fact, ever since Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had made her mysterious appearance on the fringe of society. The card, however, on which the General had staked and apparently lost had been distinctly "the game" if he, Forsyth, had only played up to it himself by sticking like wax to poor hunted Beaumanoir.

But _why_ was Beaumanoir being hunted? That easy-mannered unfortunate, who had exchanged a life of reckless irresponsibility for sordid penury, and the latter for the headship of a historic house, had performed all these _demivoltes_ without making a visible enemy save himself. Why should he have incurred a remorseless hatred which aimed at nothing less than his life?

"The Star-spangled Banner looms largely on the horizon of all this," the young man mused aloud. "Can you explain that phase of the mystery, Uncle Jem?"

"The hub of the wheel, I take it, is my old friend Leonidas Sherman, or, rather, the three millions sterling which he is on his way to this country with," said the General briskly. "Big American robbery, worked by a disciplined gang, and somehow your pal Beaumanoir is entangled. The day he was at our house he tried vaguely to warn Leonie. Hinted that Sherman should be warned to be careful."

Forsyth heard the amazing theory with an inward qualm lest his shrewd old relative should have hit on the solution of the puzzle, and it filled him with greater apprehension than even the physical peril of the Duke had instilled. "Entanglement" in Beaumanoir's case could only mean complicity, for if his knowledge of the scheme was not a guilty knowledge, if he had become possessed of the secret accidentally, why did he not invoke the aid of the police and expose the conspirators?

Forsyth saw that the General read what was pa.s.sing in his mind, and he clutched at the only visible straw in defence of his friend.

"If Beaumanoir was culpably implicated these scoundrels wouldn't want to kill him, any more than he would want to queer their game by having Senator Sherman warned," he said.

"There you put your finger on the _crux_," replied the General, who disliked the raising of questions which he could not answer.

"And," proceeded Forsyth, pursuing his slight advantage, "you would never have got Beaumanoir to a.s.sent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton being asked here if he had known her to be a professional criminal. The 'honor of the house,' as he calls it, is undoubtedly the motive of his inexplicable silence. He would hardly compromise that august sentiment, for which he is apparently willing to die, by desecrating Prior's Tarrant with the presence of a woman likely to figure in the police-courts-a woman, too, who, if your theory is correct, has designs against the father of the girl for whom I veritably believe he has more than a pa.s.sing regard."

The General, secretly in danger of losing his temper-a thing he never really did-concealed his emotion by affecting to ruminate. The thought of his invitation to the dashing American, afterwards carelessly endorsed by the Duke, restored his equanimity.

"That was a neat touch," he remarked meditatively as he selected a cigar from his case. "If his Grace is not cold meat, I'd give a good deal to be living under the same roof with him and Mrs. Talmage Eglinton for a few days, with the prospect of Senator Sherman's arrival at the end of them."

He held the cigar he had chosen poised between finger and thumb, and suddenly gazed round with a comical expression at the rich appurtenances of the majestic dining-room. The maze of this latter-day pursuit had led him into unfamiliar paths. His ancient triumphs had been won under the free sky, where he could unravel a knotty point with the aid of tobacco at will; but now he wanted to smoke, and was confronted by sternly repressive ducal splendor.

"Mustn't light up here, I suppose," he grunted. "Let's get into the open and have a whiff. Yes, I know it's two o'clock, but we can't go to bed."

He moved to one of the French windows, and, parting the heavy curtains, unfastened the bolts and stepped out on to the terrace where he had spent the earlier hours of the evening. Instantly both he and Forsyth, who followed close behind, became conscious of the sound of heavy breathing. As the shaft of light shot from the opened window they saw that at the apex of the shaft, half way to the bal.u.s.trade of the terrace, two men were locked together on the ground in a ferocious struggle, while twenty paces off, in the shadow of the gray pile, the dim shapes of two other men paused irresolute, as if their advance had been checked by the sudden opening of the window.

For two seconds General Sadgrove's eyes blazed along the line of light; then with a spring that would have done credit to one of half his age, he hurled himself upon the combatants, and selecting the topmost for his onslaught, dragged him from the p.r.o.ne figure below.

"Get back to the window! Watch those other fellows!" he called to his nephew, who was hurrying to his a.s.sistance. And Forsyth did as he was bid, though he had hardly run back and put himself on guard when the two distant prowlers vanished into the deeper shadows of the refectory wall.

With no gentle hand the General hauled his struggling captive towards the window. Half Forsyth's attention was diverted to the other party to the fray, who was slowly rising from the ground, and the other half to the dark end of the terrace, where the remaining pair had disappeared; and it was therefore not until the General had arrived, hanging like a terrier to his prisoner, that the obedient sentinel had eyes for them.

But at last he had to stand aside to allow the veteran firebrand to drag the fighting, kicking figure into the room, and then only did he notice details.

"You've got the wrong one!" he exclaimed. "Don't you see-that's your own man, Azimoolah?"

CHAPTER XII-_The Man Under the Seat_

When the Duke of Beaumanoir found himself alone in the railway carriage after Alec Forsyth's departure he sank back in his corner with a certain sense of relief. The events of the last twenty-four hours had filled him with a very sincere regard for his cousin Sybil, and he had not much faith in the a.s.surance given him by General Sadgrove that his journey down to Prior's Tarrant would be free from danger. His past experiences led him to expect that the terrible Ziegler and his myrmidons would be more than a match for the shrewd but somewhat out-of-date Indian officer, and if there was to be an "episode" on the railway he would be glad to think that it could not now plunge his plucky young cousin into mourning for her lover.

"She is a girl in a thousand," he murmured, as he lit a cigarette; "I should never forgive myself if I were the means of making her a widow before she is a wife. If, as I half suspect, Alec's detachment was effected by a ruse on the part of the graybeard at the Cecil-well, I take off my hat to that gentleman for his consideration."

As the train gathered speed, rushing through the twinkling suburban lights, the Duke put his feet on the opposite cushions and reviewed the situation-calmly, but always with but slender faith in being able "to worry through" with his life. That had really become quite a secondary object with him, so far as his personal safety was concerned; yet his present att.i.tude was to escape the attentions of Ziegler long enough to convey a warning to Senator Sherman of the plot against him. Whether his nerves would be proof against the strain till the Senator's arrival at Liverpool was a phase of the case which he did not care to contemplate too closely.

Ziegler, he felt sure, would have grasped the position to a nicety, and would use every device in his apparently limitless _repertoire_ to give him his quietus before Leonie's father set foot on sh.o.r.e. It might well be that another attempt would be made on him before he reached the sheltering zone of Prior's Tarrant, wherein General Sadgrove had promised him safety.

His reflections were cut short by the slowing down of the train for the stoppage at Kentish Town, and the Duke's sensations at that moment hardly presaged a comfortable journey for him, brief though it would be.

The compartment was labeled "reserved," it was true, and the guard had been tipped to see that the legend was respected, but that stood for little when people of the Ziegler type were on the move, and he looked forward with dread to the future stoppages if his heart was to thump like this.

Which is a study in the quality of _fear_, for Beaumanoir was of the kind that leads cavalry charges to visible and certain death with gay recklessness.

The present trouble pa.s.sed, however, for the guard hovered round the carriage and gave no chance to invaders, who in any case would have had some difficulty in effecting an entrance, as the door was locked. The train sped on again, out into the country now, through the balmy summer night, and Beaumanoir breathed more freely. One of the dreaded stoppages was notched off the list.

So, too, were Hendon and Mill Hill safely negotiated, and Beaumanoir was able to contemplate the slackened speed for Elstree with greater equanimity. As before, the guard's portly form loomed large outside the compartment the moment the train stopped, and so doubtless would have remained had not a loud, imperious voice on the platform summoned him to a divided duty.

"Here, guard! What are you about there? Hurry up now, and open this door!" came the choleric command.

With a deprecatory glance at the Duke's carriage the guard perforce hurried off, and Beaumanoir peered out of the window after him. The official had gone to the a.s.sistance of a tall, well-groomed gentleman, who, with an air of irritable importance, was fumbling with the door-handle of a first-cla.s.s compartment some way along the train. The traveler was of the type that secures the immediate respect of railway servants-dressed in brand new creaseless clothes, every immaculate pocket of which suggested the jingle of half-sovereigns. A man carrying a yellow hatbox and a rug lurked deferentially behind the magnate and cast reproachful glances at the guard, who was now thoroughly alive to his opportunities and opened the door with a flourish. The tall man, whom Beaumanoir took for a brother duke, or at least a director of the line, stepped with dignity into the compartment; the menial handed in the hatbox and rugs, and sought a second-cla.s.s carriage; the guard waved his lamp, and the train moved on.

Beaumanoir withdrew his head and sank back in his corner, catching just a glimpse of the guard preparing to spring into his van as it neared him. The station lights flashed past, and the long line of carriages swung into the outer darkness, the little diversion of the important pa.s.senger leaving Beaumanoir amused and comforted. To the man who had tramped his weary way along the Bowery to his five-dollar boarding-house within the month this exhibition of cla.s.s privileges and distinctions was breezily refreshing, seeing that he was now in a position to claim them himself.

Immunity from danger through four suburban stations had brought a delicious sense of calm, and as he leaned back he thought how nice it would be to live the life of an English n.o.bleman, free from all sordid cares and humiliations. And if he could wake up at the end of a week and find that his entanglement was all a nightmare, or, at any rate, that Ziegler's bark was worse than his bite, and that Senator Sherman had safely deposited the bonds at the Bank-well, in that improved state of things what was to prevent his asking Leonie to share his new-found privileges?

Then, suddenly, the icy finger touched his heart again. As the blue wreaths of cigarette smoke in which he had conjured up this alluring vision rolled away he became conscious that his gaze, hitherto absorbed and preoccupied with day-dreams, was in reality riveted on a material object under the opposite seat. A very material object indeed-no less than the heel of a man's boot.

At sight of this disturbing element Beaumanoir's sensations were of a mixed order. First of all, he could see so little of the boot that he could not be sure that there was a man attached to it, though the presumption was in favor of that supposition, for he was quite certain that it had not been there long, or he would have noticed it before. He guessed, so alert had his mind become under stress of emergencies, that the wearer of the boot had got into the compartment on the off side while he himself had been looking out of the window in Elstree station.

But if so, and the man had invaded his privacy with sinister design, why should he have plunged at once into a position of utter impotence? No one flattened out under the low seat of a first-cla.s.s railway carriage is capable of active violence without a preliminary struggle to free himself, during which he would be at the mercy of his intended victim.

The only design that Beaumanoir could attribute to him was that he would presently wriggle to the front and use a pistol.