"Good Lord!" Lord Hayle shouted out suddenly, in the high-pitched voice of almost uncontrollable excitement. "You have found dear old John!

Where is John, Mr. Rose?"

There was something so spontaneous and sincere in the young man's voice that the Socialist turned with a certain brightness and pleasure to the young man.

"Oh, sir!" he said, "the duke is lying at my house in Westminster. He has been kidnapped by criminal ruffians, and, I am sorry to say, has been tortured in order that large sums of money might be extorted from him. The doctors are with him now, and no serious injury has been done, but he is especially anxious to see you. I have a cab waiting, if you care to come at once."

"I'll have my coat on in a moment," Lord Hayle replied, and left the room.

The bishop went up to James Fabian Rose.

"Sir," he said, "our difference of opinion in social economics and political affairs shall not prevent me from gripping you very heartily by the hand."

CHAPTER XIII

NEW FRIENDS: NEW IDEAS

It was three days after the strange and dramatic rescue of the Duke of Paddington, and he lay in a bright, cheerful bedroom in James Fabian Rose's house in Westminster. Providence had guided Rose and his companions to the underground cellar in the nick of time. The relentless ruffians who had captured the duke had been as good as their word. They had treated him with indescribable ferocity, though into the details of the horrors in the foundation of the old house it is not necessary to go.

When the police inspectors had brought him up from the deepest hole of all, he was unconscious, and had immediately been taken away to Rose's own house in a horse ambulance which had been summoned from the police headquarters of the district.

The actual discovery had been very simple. Directly the Inspector of Police recognised the man known as "Sidney," he had rushed after him, followed by the others. As it happened, for some time the police had been very anxious to discover the exact whereabouts of this particular ex-convict, to track him to his lair. It was obvious that when the man turned and bolted down the stairs there was something he wished to conceal, and, though there was no actual charge against him at the moment, the policeman had experience enough to know that something illegal was afoot. They had dashed into the kitchen to find it tenanted only by the old Jewish woman, but the door leading into the smaller kitchen was open, and Sidney was leaning over the trap-door in the floor pulling up another member of the gang who had been down in the pit with the victim.

The man's design had obviously been to get his comrade up, close the trap-door, and push the tub over it before the policemen could enter the kitchen. In all probability there would then have been no discovery at all, though the ruffian himself was by no means sure that the party were not in some way or other upon the track of the actual offence he had committed in kidnapping the duke. His guilty conscience had betrayed him.

When the scoundrel had been caught and handcuffed, and the duke had been discovered and carried up into the kitchen the man relapsed into a sullen silence. He had gathered at once from the remarks made by his captors that they were quite unaware of the ident.i.ty of the prisoner. It did not, in fact, occur to any of the party, even to the police, to connect this insensible figure, half-clothed--the face covered with grime and dirt--with the missing peer.

"We will get the poor fellow off to the hospital at once, sir,"

Inspector Green had said to Rose. "These devils have been working some horrible thing upon him. I expect he is one of their pals who has given them away. I have seen some black things, but this is about as bad as any of them. I should not wonder"--he turned round with his face like a flint, and a voice that cut like a whip--"I should not wonder if this was a swinging job for you, Sidney O'Connor!"

"He certainly shall not go to the hospital," said Rose. "Not that they won't look after him thoroughly there; but I could not allow anybody whom I discovered myself in such a plight as this to do so. He must go to my house, and my wife and Miss Marriott will nurse him."

"Well, sir," said the officer, "it is only a very little distance farther to your house from here than to Charing Cross Hospital, and I will send the ambulance there if you really wish it. It's very kind of you, Mr. Rose."

"Certainly I do," Rose answered. "It is a duty, of course."

"And I," said Mary Marriott, "will drive back at once if a cab can be found for me, to tell Mrs. Rose that they are bringing this poor man."

"That will be very kind of you, Miss Marriott," Rose answered. "I am sorry that our expedition has come to so unpleasant and dramatic an end, for I do not suppose any of us would care to go on now?"

"No, indeed," said both the clergyman and the journalist in answer, and in a few minutes Mary's first experience of the dark under-currents of London life was at an end.

When the duke was comfortably installed in Rose's house the doctor p.r.o.nounced him suffering from shocks and extreme weakness.

"He will be all right in a few days," he said. "He must now have absolute rest and nourishment. The actual harm inflicted upon him by the scoundrels with whom he was found is very slight. There are the merest superficial burns, and the cuts are trivial. It is the weakness and shock that are the most serious. The young man has a splendid const.i.tution. He's as strong as an ox."

The doctor went away, leaving minute directions for the treatment of the patient.

The duke was in a semi-conscious condition. He realised dimly that he was out of the horrible place where he had lain for, so it seemed to him, an eternity. He knew that, somehow or other, he had been rescued, that he was now lying in a comfortable bed. A new life seemed slowly coming back into his veins as the meat jelly dissolved in his mouth. The horror was ended at last!

He had fallen at length into a deep slumber.

The party a.s.sembled in the drawing-room, discussing the extraordinary events of the morning, and Mrs. Rose was told every detail. The police and the County Council inspector were not there, but the chief inspector had promised to report later as to anything that should be learned of the truth of the mystery.

"Well," said Mr. Goodrick, with a little chuckle, "I went out this morning because I wanted to watch Miss Marriott, and because I am interested in the great experiment we are making with her. I had seen all that sort of thing before I knew Miss Marriott; in fact, I began my journalistic career by writing of such places as we have been among; but I never expected that I was going to get a journalistic scoop. This will make a fine column in to-morrow's paper. The junior members of my staff will be jealous of their editor-in-chief going out and bringing in copy!

They will regard it as an infringement of their rights!" He chuckled once more, and rubbed his hands together, all the true pressman's delight at exclusive news glowing in his eyes.

"Yes," he went on, "it will be quite a big thing, especially as you were present, Rose--a real sensation! The _Wire_ will solve the mystery that is agitating the mind of the public in a most startling fashion!"

A maid came into the room. "If you please, sir," she said to Rose, "Inspector Green is here, and wishes to see you immediately on a matter of great importance."

"Show him up, Annie," said the Socialist, and in a second or two more the inspector burst into the room, his usual calm and imperturbable manner strangely altered. He seemed to be labouring under some deep emotion.

"What is it, inspector?" Rose said, and instinctively all the people in the room rose up.

"The man," the inspector gasped, "the man we found in the cellar, ladies and gentlemen--it is--it is his Grace the Duke of Paddington himself!"

There was a dead silence. The faces of every one went pale with excitement.

"The Duke of Paddington?" Rose said in a startled and incredulous voice.

"His Grace himself, sir. As you know, his Grace's disappearance has been agitating the whole of Europe for the last day or two. It seems what happened was this. The duke was lying down on the side of the line after the railway accident. He was almost uninjured, but the doctor who rescued him ordered him to rest for half an hour. The gang of men in the slum hard by, attracted by the accident in the fog and the possibility of plunder, had come through a doorway in the wall which leads upon the line. They rifled the duke's pockets, and from their contents found out who he was.

"The leader of the gang, Sidney O'Connor, is one of the most dangerous and desperate criminals in the country, and, moreover, a man of great daring and resource. He it was who thought it would be an infinitely better stroke of business if he could kidnap the duke and hold him to ransom. Owing to the fog and the proximity of their den--it is one of the duke's own houses, by the way, you will remember--the kidnapping was easily affected, the duke being too weak and stunned by the accident to offer any resistance. It is by the mercy of Providence that we found him when we did. The old Jewish woman who keeps the den has confessed everything. How is his Grace, Mr. Rose?"

"Much better," said Mrs. Rose, "much better, inspector. The doctor has been here, and says he will be all right in a few days. He is suffering from extreme weakness and shock. He is now sleeping peacefully, and a nurse from the Westminster Hospital is with him."

Mr. Goodrick went up to the inspector. "Now look here, inspector," he said, "promise me one thing, that neither you nor your companions will give any of the details of this affair to the press. I shall see that it is well worth your while, all of you, to be silent until to-morrow morning. Can you answer for your colleague and the plain-clothes man who was with us?"

"Certainly I can, Mr. Goodrick," the inspector answered.

"Well, it will be worth five pounds each to them. And what about the County Council inspector?"

"He has gone back to Spring Gardens now, sir," Green replied, "but I can easily send a message up to him from Scotland Yard to that effect."

"I shall be most obliged if you will do so," said Mr. Goodrick, and then once more he gave a loud chuckle of triumph and rubbed his hands together. "Sensation!" he said in an ecstasy, "why, the _Wire_ will have one of the biggest scoops of recent years to-morrow. Oh, what luck! Oh, what splendid luck! No other paper will have anything except the mere statement of the fact that the duke has been discovered under mysterious circ.u.mstances. Mrs. Rose, I must say good-bye; I must hurry off. Don't forget, inspector! Absolute secrecy!"

He made a comprehensive bow, which included all of them, patted Fabian genially upon the back, and rushed away.

"What do you suppose we had better do, inspector?" Rose asked.

"Well, sir, I don't quite know what there is to be done, except, perhaps, to telegraph to the head of the young gentleman's college at Oxford, and to Colonel Simpson, his agent. You see, the duke has no very near relatives, though he is connected with half the peerage. I shall take care, also, that the news is at once conveyed to Buckingham Palace.

His Majesty has been most anxious during the last day or two, and inquiries are constantly reaching us. For the rest, I think it will be better that you should wait until his Grace regains consciousness and can say what he would like to be done."

The inspector had disappeared, and Rose, his wife, Mary, and Mr.

Conrad, were left alone, looking at each other in amazement. Then suddenly Rose sat down and burst into laughter. The old elfin, mocking expression had returned to his face. The keen eyes twinkled with sardonic humour, the mustard-coloured beard and moustache wagged up and down, as the great man leant back in an ecstasy of mirth.