"Within the month."

"Did you observe anything singular in his manner? Did he appear--"

"His manner has always been more or less singular."

"Did he appear less rational than usual, I mean?" she persisted.

"He was quite rational. Quite so."

"Well, he isn't now," said Nina bluntly. "He's quite the reverse. It may be simply a nervous disorder--I sincerely trust so--but he appears to be mad."

Mr. Widdicombe rubbed together his lean hands.

"You sent me that message this morning," he reminded her. "His lordship was then in my office."

"Here--then?" Her surprise was manifest.

"In an inner room. The door was ajar, and I fancy he heard every word of your messenger's statement."

"Is that what you meant by 'within the month'?" She felt somehow that she had been trapped.

"This morning was within the month. I made a statement of fact, did I not?"

His skin was like yellow parchment, crisscrossed with incised lines.

Those at the sides of his mouth moved outward, which was as near as Lord Kneedrock's solicitor ever came to a smile.

Nina sprang to her feet in a rage. "You are quite impossible, Mr.

Widdicombe!" she flared. "There are none so blind as those that won't see. I came to you for a.s.sistance, and you treat the matter--the very grave matter--as though it were a joke."

"I treat all matters just as I find them, Mrs. Darling," was his calm retort.

"Viscount Kneedrock is mad," she affirmed, mincing the manifest fact no longer.

The solicitor bowed.

"If so, I deplore it," he said; "but he has had quite enough in his life to make him so."

Upon Nina the veiled allusion was not lost.

"That is neither here nor there," she rejoined sharply. "We are only losing time in discussion. He must be saved from himself, whatever the cost."

Again there appeared that makeshift for a smile.

"If you had only thought of that sooner, Mrs. Darling," he murmured.

"I did not come here for your recriminations. I came for your aid," was her reply. "Will you come to Regent's Park and use your influence?"

But Mr. Widdicombe shook his head with some emphasis.

"Certainly not. I have no influence to use. I am a solicitor--neither an alienist nor a wet-nurse." He bowed for the third time. "I have the honor to bid you a very good morning."

Nina, in a state between rage and despair, rejoined Gerald Andrews in the visitors' room.

"He is a beast!" she said with trembling voice. "An abominable old boor!

There is but one thing left for us to do. We must go alone, and pray G.o.d we are not too late to avert trouble."

They made all the haste possible, a.s.sisted and abetted by a well-driven taxicab with a fairly good engine. But they were too late to avert trouble, nevertheless.

There had been a disturbance in the tiger-house, and Lord Kneedrock had been seriously, perhaps mortally, injured.

CHAPTER XXIX

The Mantle of Heroism

It was generally conceded that the Earl of Dumphreys was eccentric. He was an ardent disciple of Tolstoy, and lived on his estate in the North in the simplest fashion, unshaven and unshorn, and affecting coa.r.s.e girdled robes and sandals.

Despite his t.i.tles and his lands, he was as much out of the world as though he rested with his sires beneath the gray stones of Dumphreys Abbey.

"Of course," said Nina, her face drawn, "we must wire at once for the earl."

They were gathered in Kneedrock's suite in St. James's Square--the duke and his d.u.c.h.ess, Lord and Lady Bellingdown--who had chanced to be in town--and Nina and Gerald Andrews, the latter a veritable tower of strength in emergency from the very first.

It was the morning following the episode at the Zoological Gardens, and the fate of poor Nibbetts hung, figuratively, on a cobweb.

"Much good it will do to send for the earl," returned the duke a little testily. "He wouldn't come to town for the king's funeral, and he won't come to stand at his only son's death-bed. Why, when Nibbetts went down to see him after his return from the South Seas the earl wouldn't admit him. I know that. Don't we know that, Doody?"

The d.u.c.h.ess wiped her eyes, and nodded.

"Unnatural old beggar!" added the duke.

"Still," persisted Nina, "I think we should wire him."

"Do as you please," he granted; "but he won't come. He never comes.

Hasn't put foot off his own lands in twenty years. If there was anything wrong with Nibbetts's brain it was hereditary."

"There wasn't anything wrong with it," Nina declared warmly. For eighteen hours she had been trying to convince herself there wasn't. "It was just his way."

"But it wasn't his way at all," contradicted his grace. "That's just the point. Nibbetts never did play the fool before, even for a purpose. He was too jolly indifferent."

"It's my opinion," put in Donty Down, "that he's been having trouble over that girl in Dundee."

"Nibbetts wouldn't let any girl make trouble for him," persisted the duke. "I say he's too indifferent."

"I am going to wire the earl," said Nina in an effort to quench the dispute.