He's in the grounds in any case, for I know that the gate closed behind him.'

'Why didn't you stop for half a minute, anyhow? 'asked Jervase, who was glad of a chance to recover a seeming of composure for himself under the shelter of a pretended anger. 'Why didn't you give somebody the word in place of leaving a valuable beast like that wandering about in a tempest?

'I don't know,' James answered, as feebly as ever. 'I was in a hurry to get in.'

At this his cousin's temper broke altogether, or he was willing to relieve the tension of his own mind by allowing it to seem as if it did so.

'Of all the funking, skunking, silly cowardly devils----'

The General took him by the arm with a commanding grip.

'You forget, my good Jervase, you forget--my daughter is present, and she is not accustomed to have her ears a.s.sailed by that sort of language.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Jervase, suddenly cooling down. 'I beg ten thousand pardons--I beg Miss Irene's pardon most of all. I forgot myself, and I apologise.'

He bowed to the girl and fell to pacing up and down the room, casting glances of wrath at the messenger of ill news.

The General, fearing a new outburst, turned to the old lady with his courtliest air.

'We are all a little agitated for the moment by the strange tidings Mr.

Jervoyce has brought us, and they involve some matters of business about which it will be better for us to hold a consultation between ourselves.

Will you be so very kind as to take Irene elsewhere for a little while?

'His voice and manner were perfectly composed, and his face lit up with one of his rare sweet smiles as he added: 'I do not believe, my dear Mrs. Jervase, that I have ever, in the whole course of my three-score years, so far transgressed as to drive a lady from her own parlour, until now.'

'We will go,' said Mrs. Jervase, and the General stepping to the door threw it open, and stood for his hostess and his daughter to go by.

Irene looked first at young Polson Jervase with a glance of fear and inquiry, and the young fellow responded to it only by a curt nod of the head, as much as to say 'Go! 'She looked into her father's face as she pa.s.sed through the doorway, and the old man smiled down on her rea.s.suringly.

'This will all be over in a few minutes, dear,' he said, 'and then I will send for you.' He closed the door gently, and tinned to face the trio in the room.

'I have apologised to the ladies,' said Jervase, 'already; but I owe an apology to you, General. I'm very sorry that my temper carried me back to my old seafaring manners; but,' with a savage look at his cousin, 'a coward's my loathing. I hate the sight of a coward worse than I hate the smell of a rotten egg.'

'Let us try to understand things,' said the General. 'Mr. James has brought his tidings in such a manner that they are evidently very serious to his mind. Had he brought them coolly I should have smiled at them. As it is, I think we must come to an explanation.'

'Certainly, General,' Jervase answered. 'Let us come to an explanation.

Get on, James. Who's this suborned rascal you have been telling us about?'

James began to pull off his dripping overcoat, which by this time had left a little pond of water on the carpet round about him, and to fumble in the inner breast pocket of it. 'There are three of them,' he answered, and for a while he said no more. The General looked from him to John Jervase, and back again, and if his face were at all an index to his mind, he saw something which did not please him. His stooping shoulders straightened, and one hand went up to stroke the grey moustache. His brows straightened, his mild grey-blue eye grew stern, and his mouth was ruled into a straight line. The fact was that the General had had an almost lifelong experience in the great art of reading men, and though he had preserved a child-like simplicity in his dealings with the world, the fact was due a thousand times more to the charity of his heart than to any want of penetration. He was one of those who suspect nothing until suspicion is actually shaken awake, and who then see with a piercing clearness signs which would escape many who pride themselves upon their shrewdness. And when James Jervoyce faltered out the words, 'There are three of them! 'John Jervase gave a start and a look which indicated an instant understanding.

'He knows those three,' said General Boswell to himself.

'De Blacquaire's lawyer gave me their names to-day,' said Jervoyce, who had by this time found what he had been fumbling for in the pocket of his overcoat. 'Here they are.'

He reached out a crumpled piece of paper to his cousin, who took it from him, and, after a single glance at it, started again, and, pale as he was already, grew still paler.

'He knows those three,' said the General, voicelessly, and without a spoken word reached forward and took the crumpled page from Jervase's unresisting hand.

CHAPTER III

There was what seemed like a long silence, though in reality it endured only for a few seconds, whilst General Boswell searched for his gold-rimmed reading gla.s.ses, and balanced them on the bridge of that high Quixote nose. By and by, he began to read with great slowness and deliberation, pausing at every other instant to direct a look of calm inspection from John to James, and back again. 'William Ford,' he read, Ninth Avenue, Freemans Town, Ontario.' He paused after the name of the man--he paused after the name of the street--he paused after the name of the town, and he paused again when he had completed the reading of the address. The last pause was longer than the others had been, and he resumed his reading like a man of ice. 'William Buckle, Lafayetteville, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. George Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in England.'

He laid the paper down upon the table with a firm hand, and with a slight shake of the head threw the gla.s.ses from their place. 'Do you know these men?' he asked, directing his inquiry to Jervoyce.

'No,' he said, 'I never heard of any one of 'em.' His shifty eye tried in vain to meet his questioner's, and he began to fumble nervously with other papers which he had drawn from his pocket in his search for the first.

'It needs no penetration to discover that this man is lying,' said the General to himself. He addressed his question to John Jervase, who made shift somehow to meet his look. 'Do you know these men?' he asked.

'No,' John answered, 'I never heard of one of them. It's a conspiracy,'

he cried, suddenly, 'that's what it is! It's a conspiracy! Quit shaking, you wretched coward! Stand up and fight this infernal libel like a man.

Ain't there two of us? If this wicked charge is brought against James Knock Jervoyce, ain't it brought as well against Jack Jervase, his cousin and his partner? Look at me! You don't see me shivering and shaking like a frightened rabbit with a weasel after him.'

'Ah! 'cried James, in a weak exasperation, 'it all very well for you.

It might mean loss of money to you at the worst; but I'm the man they're going for.'

'Oh,' said John, 'you are, are you? And why's that?'

'Stubbs told me this afternoon,' said James, c that he could smash me dead, but so far he has no particle of evidence against you.'

A light sprang into the burly scoundrel's eyes. He veiled it in an instant, but not before two of the quartette there present had read it.

The boy turned away, groaning, and the General looked after him with a face from which all sternness disappeared for a moment.

'Poor lad! 'he said, within doors. 'Poor lad!'

'Now, look here,' said John Jervase, 'they haven't got any evidence agen you any more than they have agen me. The whole thing's a put-up job. If it was De Blacquaire's doing, he'd have gone for me rather than for you, because he always hated me, and I've put him down more than once or twice at Petty Sessions, and taught him to know his place. But De Blacquaire's an officer and a gentleman'--he made a burly bow towards the General--' and I don't suppose for a minute that he'd be guilty even of dreaming of such a piece of rascality as this. It's much more likely to be some pettifogging lawyer's game--some sneaking rogue that's got these fellow-rascals round him, with an idea of doing a little bit of blackmail. Stubbs is a decent fellow--for a lawyer. I don't think Stubbs would have a finger in that sort of pie, any more than his master. But Stubbs has been got at; that's how it'll turn out, you bet. Keep your p.e.c.k.e.r up, James,' he added, in a tone which the patron and the bully spoke at once. 'Well take care of you. Just you trust to old Jack Jervase--that's your game, my lad. He'll fight the battle for the pair of us.'

Between his pretence of having thought the matter out impartially, and his other pretence of encouraging his timid relative, he had talked himself back into something like his common aspect, and his common manner; and there was a little of the nautical swagger in the few steps he took towards the table, where he applied himself again to the decanter.

Just then a knock sounded at the door, and the voice of the domestic from the kitchen was heard saying that Mr. James's change of clothes was ready for him in the master's bedroom.

'You know your way, James,' said Jervase. 'You'd better get into dry toggery at once. The missus will have a bedroom ready for you in half an hour. Meanwhile, you go and change; and when you come back we'll forget this nonsense over a bowl of punch. We've both had a drenching this wild night, and we shall neither of us be the worse for a good Captain's nip.'

James stole furtively away, making himself as small as possible, and the General's eye followed him to the door.

'Jervase,' said the General, with a suspicion of satire in his voice, 'your cousin seems to take this ridiculous matter rather seriously.'

'I don't know why he should, sir,' Jervase answered. 'He's had an honest reputation all his life. Now what is there in this,' he went on, taking up the sc.r.a.p of writing the General had laid upon the table, 'what is there in this to frighten anybody? Who's William Ford, of Ontario, for instance? William Buckle, U.S.A.--who's he? And what's this other fellow's name--George Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in England----'

'Why!' cried Polson, suddenly, 'that's the very blackguard I----'

He paused suddenly, and turned with a gesture of dismay. He had given himself no time to calculate the significance of the words he had used, and they were no sooner spoken than he knew intuitively that he had at least in part betrayed his father. A lad of a more honest impulse and conduct could not have been found in all England; but even if his father were a rogue--and the belief that he was nothing short of that had already shocked him to the heart--it was not a son's business to betray him. It was the son's concern to suffer his own share of shame, if shame should come, and to preserve a front of unshaken confidence. Polson was frozen at his own indiscretion.

'That is the blackguard,' said the General, with a certain silky quiet which had in his time grown to be very terrible to people who had come to understand its meaning, 'that is the blackguard, Polson? Be good enough to enlighten us a little further. You have some acquaintance with Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in England, though your father has no knowledge of him.'

'What do you know about any fellow of that name?' Jervase asked wrathfully. 'What bee have you got in your bonnet?'

'Let us see the bee, Polson, let us see the bee.'