E. Phillips Oppenheim - The Betrayal

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"Then why take any notice of the matter at all?" I said. "All that you
can disclose is that he came from the land and not from the sea, and
that he asked where I lived. Why trouble yourself or me about the
matter at all? There really isn't any necessity. Some one else
probably saw him besides you, and they will soon find their way to this
woman."

"It was only to me," she murmured, "that he spoke of you."

"Do you believe," I asked, "that I murdered him?"

She shuddered.

"No, of course I don't," she declared.

"Then why all this nervousness and mystery?" I asked. "I have no fear
of anything which might happen. Why should you be afraid?"

"I am not afraid," she said slowly, "but there is something about it
which I do not understand. Ever since that morning you have avoided
me."

"Nonsense!" I exclaimed.

"It is not nonsense," she answered. "It is the truth. You used to come
sometimes to see father--and now you never come near the place. It
is--too bad of you," she went on, with a little sob. "I thought that
after that morning, and my promising to do what you asked, that we
should be greater friends than ever. Instead of that you have never
been near us since. And I don't care who knows it. I am miserable."

She was leaning against the arm of my chair. It was clearly my duty to
administer the consolation which the situation demanded. I realized,
however, that the occasion was critical, and I ignored her proximity.

"Miss Moyat," I said, "I am sorry if asking you to tell that harmless
little fib has made you miserable. I simply desired--"

"It isn't altogether that," she interrupted. "You know it isn't."

"You give me credit for greater powers of divination than I possess," I
answered calmly. "Your father was always very kind to me, and I can
assure you that I have not forgotten it. But I have work to do now, and
I have scarcely an hour to spare. Mr. Moyat would understand it, I am
sure."

The door was suddenly opened. Mrs. Moyat, fat and comely, came in.
She surveyed us both with a friendly and meaning smile, which somehow
made my cheeks burn. It was no fault of mine that Blanche had been
hanging over my chair.

"Come," she said, "I'm sure I'm very glad to see you once more, Mr.
Ducaine. Such a stranger as you are too! But you don't mean to sit in
here without a fire all the afternoon, I suppose, Blanche. Tea is just
ready in the dining-room. Bring Mr. Ducaine along, Blanche."

I held out my hand.

"I am sorry that I cannot stop, Mrs. Moyat," I said. "Good-afternoon,
Miss Moyat."

She looked me in the eyes.

"You are not going," she murmured.

"I am afraid," I answered, "that it is imperative. I ought to have been
at Rowchester long ago. We are too near neighbours, though, not to see
something of one another again before long."

"Well, I'm sure there's no need to hurry so," Mrs. Moyat declared,
backing out of the room. "Blanche, you see if you can't persuade Mr.
Ducaine. Father'll be home early this evening, too."

"I think," Blanche said, "that Mr. Ducaine has made up his mind."

She walked with me to the hall door, but she declined to shake hands
with me. Her appearance was little short of tragic. I think that at
another time I might have been amused, for never in my life had I spoken
more than a few courteous words to the girl. But my nerves were all on
edge, and I took her seriously. I walked down the street, leaving her
standing in the threshold with the door open as though anxious to give
me a chance to return if I would. I looked back at the corner, and
waved my hand. There was something almost threatening in the grim
irresponsive figure, standing watching me, and making no pretence at
returning my farewell--watching me with steady eyes and close-drawn
brows.

CHAPTER XXIII

MOSTYN RAY EXPLAINS

I walked straight to the House, and locked up my papers in the great
safe. I had hoped to escape without seeing either Ray or Lady Angela,
but as I crossed the hall they issued from the billiard-room. Lady
Angela turned towards me eagerly.

"Mr. Ducaine," she exclaimed, "have you seen anything of Lord Blenavon
to-day?"

I shook my head.

"I have not seen him for several days, Lady Angela," I answered.

Ray said something to her which I could not hear. She nodded and left
us together.

"It seems," he said, "that this amiable young gentleman is more or less
in the clutches of our siren friend at Braster Grange. I think that you
and I had better go and dig him out."

"Thank you," I answered, "but I had all I wanted of Braster Grange last
night."

"Pooh!" he answered lightly, "you are not even scratched. They are
clumsy conspirators there. I think that you and I are a match for them.
Come along!"

"You must excuse me, Colonel Ray," I said, "but I have no desire to
visit Braster Grange, even with you."

Lady Angela, whose crossing the hall had been noiseless, suddenly
interposed.

"You are quite right, Mr. Ducaine," she said; "but this is no visit of
courtesy, is it? I am sure that my brother would never stay there
voluntarily. Something must have happened to him."

"We will go and see," Ray declared. "Come along, Ducaine."

I hesitated, but a glance from Lady Angela settled the matter. For
another such I would have walked into hell. Ray and I started off
together, and I was not long before I spoke of the things which were in
my mind.

"Colonel Ray," I said, "when I saw you this morning you made two
statements, both of which were false."

Ray brought out his pipe and began to fill it in leisurely fashion.

"Go on," he said. "What were they?"

"The first was that you had come down from London by the newspaper train
this morning, and the second was that you had received your injuries in
a hansom cab accident."

His pipe was started, and he puffed out dense volumes of smoke with an
air of keen enjoyment.

"Worst of having a woman for your hostess," he remarked, "one can't
smoke except a sickly cigarette or two. You should take to a pipe,
Ducaine."

"Will you be good enough to explain those two misstatements, Colonel
Ray?"

"Lies, both of them!" he answered, with grim cheerfulness. "Rotten
lies, and I hate telling 'em. The hansom cab accident must have sounded
a bit thin."

"It did," I assured him.

He removed his pipe from his teeth, and pushed down the tobacco with the
end of his finger.

"I came down from town by the same train that you did," he said, "and as
for my broken head and smashed arm, you did it yourself."

"I imagined so," I answered. "Perhaps you will admit that you owe me
some explanation." He laughed, a deep bass laugh, and looked down at me
with a gleam of humour in his black eyes.

"Come," he said, "I think that the boot is on the other leg. My head is
exceedingly painful and my leg is very stiff. For a young man of your
build you have a most surprising muscle."

"I am to understand, then, that it was you who committed an unprovoked
assault upon me--who planned to have me waylaid in that dastardly
fashion?"

"Do you think," Ray asked quietly, "that I should be such a damned
fool?"

"What am I to think, then, what am I to believe?" I asked, with a sudden
anger. "You found me starving, and you gave me employment, but ever
since I started my work life has become a huge ugly riddle. Are you my
friend or my enemy? I do not know. There is a drama being played out
before my very eyes. The figures in it move about me continually, yet I
alone am blindfolded. I am trusted to almost an incredible extent.
Great issues are confided to me. I have been given such a post as a man
might work for a lifetime to secure. Yet where a little confidence
would give me zest for my work--would take away this horrible sense of
moving always in the darkness--it is withheld from me."

Ray smoked on in silence for several moments.

"Well," he said, "I am not sure that you are altogether unreasonable.
But, on the other hand, you must not forget that there is method, and a
good deal of it, in the very things of which you complain. There are
certain positions in which a man may find himself where a measure of
ignorance is a blessed thing. Believe me, that if you understood, your
difficulties would increase instead of diminish."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"But between you and me at least, Colonel Ray," I said, "there is a
plain issue. You can explain the events of last night to me."

"I will do that," he answered, "since you have asked it. Briefly, then,
I parted from you on the steps of my club at a few minutes past nine
last night."

"Yes!"

"I saw from the moment we appeared that you were being watched. I saw
the man who was loitering on the pavement lean over to hear the address
you gave to the cabman, and you were scarcely away before he was
following you. But it was only just as he drove by, leaning a little
forward in his hansom, that I saw his face. I recognized him for one of
that woman's most dangerous confederates, and I knew then that some
villainy was on foot. To cut a long story short, I came down unobserved
in your train, followed you to Braster Grange, and was only a yard or
two behind when this fellow, who acts as the woman's _chauffeur_, sprang
out upon you. I was unfortunately a little two quick to the rescue, and
received a smash on the head from your stick. Then you bolted, and I
found myself engaged with a pair of them. On the whole I think that
they got the worst of it."

"The other one--was Lord Blenavon!" I exclaimed.

"It was."

"Then he is concerned in the plots which are going on against us," I
continued. "I felt certain of it. What a blackguard!"

"For his sister's sake," Colonel Ray said softly, "I want to keep him
out of it if I can. Therefore I hit him a little harder than was
necessary. He should be hors de combat for some time."

"But why didn't you cry out to me?" I said. "I should not have run if I
had known that I had an ally there."

"To run was exactly what I wanted you to do," Ray answered. "You had
the dispatch-box, and I wanted to see you safe away."

I glanced at his bandaged head and arm.

"I suppose that I ought to apologize to you," I said.

"Under the circumstances," he declared, "we will cry quits."

Then as we walked together in the glittering spring sunshine, this big
silent man and I, there came upon me a swift, poignant impulse, the
keener perhaps because of the loneliness of my days, to implore him to
unravel all the things which lay between us. I wanted the story of that
night, of my concern in it, stripped bare. Already my lips were opened,
when round the corner of the rough lane by which Braster Grange was
approached on this side came a doctor's gig. Ray shaded his eyes and
gazed at its occupant.

"Is this Bouriggs, Ducaine?" he asked, "the man who shot with us?"

"It is Dr. Bouriggs," I answered.

Ray stopped the gig and exchanged greetings with the big sandy-haired
man, who held a rein in each hand as though he were driving a market
wagon. They chatted for a moment or two, idly enough, as it seemed to
me.

"Any one ill at the Grange, doctor?" Ray asked at length.

The doctor looked at him curiously.

"I have just come from there," he answered. "There is nothing very
seriously wrong."

"Can you tell me if Lord Blenavon is there?" Ray asked.

The doctor hesitated.

"It was hinted to me, Colonel Ray," he said, "that my visit to the
Grange was not to be spoken of. You will understand, of course, that
the etiquette of our profession--"

"Quite right," Ray interrupted. "The fact is, Lady Angela is very
anxious about her brother, who did not return to Rowchester last night,
and she has sent us out as a search party. Of course, if you were able
to help us she would be very gratified."

The doctor hesitated.

"The Duke and, in fact, all the family have always been exceedingly kind
to me," he remarked, looking straight between his horse's ears. "Under
the circumstances you mention, if you were to assert that Lord Blenavon
was at Braster Grange I do not think that I should contradict you."

Ray smiled.

"Thank you, doctor," he said. "Good morning."

The doctor drove on, and we pursued our way.

"It was a very dark night," Ray said, half to himself, "but if Blenavon
was the man I hit he ought to have a cracked skull."

After all, our interrogation of the doctor was quite unnecessary. We
were admitted at once to the Grange by a neatly-dressed parlour-maid.
Mrs. Smith-Lessing was at home, and the girl did not for a moment seem
to doubt her mistress's willingness to receive us. As she busied
herself poking the fire and opening wider the thick curtains, Ray asked
her another question.

"Do you know if Lord Blenavon is here?"

"Yes, sir," the girl answered promptly. "He was brought in last night
rather badly hurt, but he is much better this morning. I will let Mrs.
Smith-Lessing know that you are here, sir."

She hurried out, with the rustle of stiff starch and the quick
light-footedness of the well-trained servant. Ray and I exchanged
glances.

"After all, this is not such a home of mystery as we expected," I
remarked.

"Apparently not," he answered. "The little woman is playing a bold
game."

Then Mrs. Smith-Lessing came in.

CHAPTER XXIV

LORD BLENAVON'S SURRENDER

She came in very quietly, a little pale and wan in this cold evening
light. She held out her hand to me with a subdued but charming smile of
welcome.

"I am so glad that you have come to see me," she said softly. "You can
help me, too, about this unfortunate young man who has been thrown upon
my hands. I--"

Then she saw Ray, and the words seemed to die away upon her lips. I had
to steel my heart against her to shut out the pity which I could
scarcely help feeling. She was white to the lips. She stood as one
turned to stone, with her distended eyes fixed upon him. It was like a
trapped bird, watching its impending fate. She faltered a little on her
feet, and--I could not help it--I hurried to her side with a chair. As
she sank into it she thanked me with a very plaintive smile.

"Thank you," she said, simply. "I am not very strong, and I did not
know that man was with you."

Ray broke in. His voice sounded harsh, his manner, I thought, was
unnecessarily brutal.

"I can understand," he said, "that you find my presence a little
unwelcome. I need scarcely say that this is not a visit of courtesy.
You know very well that willingly I would never spend a moment under the
same roof as you. I am here to speak a few plain words, to which you
will do well to listen."

She raised her eyes to his. Her courage seemed to be returning at the
note of battle in his tone. Her small, well-shaped head was thrown
back. The hands which grasped the sides of her chair ceased to tremble.

"Go on," she said.

"We will not play at cheap diplomacy," he said, sneeringly. "I know you
by a dozen names, which you alter and adopt to suit the occasion. You
are a creature of the French police, one of those parasitical creatures
who live by sucking the honesty out of simpler persons. You are here
because the more private meetings of the English Council of Defence are
being held at Rowchester. It is your object by bribery, or theft, or
robbery, or the seductive use of those wonderful charms of yours, to
gain possession of copies of any particulars whatever about the English
autumn manoeuvres, which, curiously enough, have been arranged as a sort
of addendum to those on your side of the Channel. You have an ally, I
regret to say, in the Duke's son, you are seeking to gain for yourself a
far more valuable one in the person of this boy. You say to yourself,
no doubt, Like father, like son. You ruined and disgraced the one. You
think, perhaps, the other will be as easy."

"Stop!" she cried.

He looked at her curiously. Her face was drawn with pain. In her eyes
was the look of a being stricken to death.

"It is terrible!" she murmured, "that men so coarse and brutal as you
should have the gift of speech. I do not wish to ask for any mercy from
you, but if I am to stay here and listen, you will speak only of facts."

He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"You should be hardened by this time," he said, "but I forgot that we
had an audience. It is always worth while to play a little to the
gallery, isn't it? Well, facts, then. The boy is warned against you,
and from to-day this house is watched by picked detectives. Blenavon
can avail you nothing, for he knows nothing. Such clumsy schemes as
last night's are foredoomed to failure, and will only get you into
trouble. You will waste your time here. Take my advice, and go!"

She rose to her feet. Smaller and frailer than ever she seemed, as she
stood before Ray, dark and massive.

"Your story is plausible," she said coldly. "It may even be true. But,
apart from that, I had another and a greater reason for coming to
England, for coming to Braster. I came to seek my husband--the father
of this boy. I am even now in search of him."

I held my breath and gazed at Ray. For the moment it seemed as though
the tables were turned. No signs of emotion were present in his face,
but he seemed to have no words. He simply looked at her.

"He left me in January," she continued, "determined at least to have
speech with his son. He heard then for the first time of the absconding
trustee. He came to England, if not to implore his son's forgiveness,
at least to place him above want. And in this country he has never been
heard of. He has disappeared. I am here to find him. Perhaps," she
added, leaning a little over towards Ray, and in a slightly altered
tone, "perhaps you can help me?"

Again it seemed to me that Ray was troubled by a certain speechlessness.
When at last he found words, they and his tone were alike harsh, almost
violent.

"Do you think," he said, "that I would stretch out the little finger of
my hand to help you or him? You know very well that I would not. The
pair of you, in my opinion, were long since outside the pale of
consideration from any living being. If he is lost, so much the better.
If he is dead, so much the better still."

"It is because I know how you feel towards him," she said, slowly,
"that I wondered--yes, I wondered!"

"Well?"

"Whether you could not, if you chose, solve for me the mystery of his
disappearance."

There was as much as a dozen seconds or so of tense silence between
them. She never once flinched. The cold question of her eyes seemed to
burn its way into the man's composure. A fierce exclamation broke from
his lips.

"If he were dead," he said, "and if it were my hand which had removed
him, I should count it amongst the best actions of my life."

She looked at him curiously--as one might regard a wild beast.

"You can speak like this before his son?"

"I veil my words at no time and for no man," he answered. "The truth is
always best."

Then the door opened, and Blenavon entered. His arm and head were
bandaged, and he walked with a limp. He was deathly pale, and
apparently very nervous. He attempted a casual greeting with Ray, but
it was a poor pretence. Ray, for his part, had evidently no mind to
beat about the bush.

"Lord Blenavon," he said, "this house is no fit place for your father's
son. I have warned you before, but the time for advice is past. Your
hostess here is a creature of the French police, and her business here
is to suborn you and others whom she can buy or cajole into a
treasonable breach of confidence. It is very possible that you know all
this, and more. But I appeal to you as an Englishman and the
representative of a great English family. Are you willing to leave at
once with us and to depart altogether from this part of the country, or
will you face the consequences?"

Blenavon was a coward. He shook and stammered. He was not even master
of his voice.

"I do not understand you," he faltered. "You have no right to speak to
me like this."

"Right or no right, I do," Ray answered. "If you refuse I shall not
spare you. Last night was only one incident of many. I break my faith
as a soldier by giving you this opportunity. Will you come?"

"I am waiting now for a carriage," Blenavon answered. "I have sent to
the house for one."

"You will not return to the house," Ray said shortly. "You will leave
here for the station, the station for London, and London for the
Continent. You do this, and I hold my peace. You refuse, and I see
Lord Chelsford and your father to-night."

From the first I knew that he would yield, but he did it with an ill
grace.

"I don't see why I should go," he said, sulkily.

"Either you and I together, or I alone, are going to catch the six
o'clock train to London," Ray said. "If I go alone you will be an exile
from England for the rest of your life, your name will be removed from
every club to which you belong, and you will have brought irreparable
disgrace upon your family. The choice is yours."

Blenavon turned towards the woman as though for aid. But she stood with
her back to him, pale and with a thin scornful smile upon her lips.

"The choice," Ray repeated, glancing at his watch, "is yours, but the
time is short."

"I will go," Blenavon said. "I was off in a day or two, anyway. Of
what you suspect me I don't know, and I don't care. But I will go."

Ray put his watch into his pocket. He turned to Mrs. Smith-Lessing.

"Better come too," he said quietly. "You have no more chance here.
Every one knows now who and what you are."

She looked at him with white expressionless face.

"It does not suit me to leave the neighbourhood at present," she said
calmly.

If she had been a man Ray would have struck her. I could see his white
teeth clenched fiercely together.

"It does not suit me," he said, in a low tone vibrate with suppressed
passion, "to have you here. You are a plague spot upon the place. You
have been a plague spot all your life. Whatever you touch you corrupt."

She shrank away for a moment. After all, she was a woman, and I hated
Ray for his brutality.

"What a butcher you are!" she said, looking at him curiously. "If ever
you should marry--God help the woman."

"There are women and women," he answered roughly. "As for you, you do
not count in the sex at all."

She turned away from him with a little shudder, and for the first time
during the interview she hid her face in her hands. It was all I could
do to avoid speech.

"Come," he said, "do you agree? Will you leave this place? I promise
you that your schemes here at any rate are at an end."

She turned to me. Perhaps something in my face had spoken the sympathy
which I could not wholly suppress.

"Guy," she said, "I want to be rid of this man, because every word he
speaks--hurts. But I cannot even look at him any more. At this war of
words he has won. I am beaten. I admit it. I am crushed. I am not
going away. I spoke truthfully when I said that I came to England in
search of your father. We may both of us be the creatures that man
would have you believe, but we have been husband and wife for eighteen
years, and it is my duty to find out what has become of him. Therefore
I stay."

I could see Ray's black eyes flashing. He almost gripped my arm as he
drew me away. We three left the house together. At the bottom of the
drive we met a carriage sent down from Rowchester. Ray stopped it.

"Blenavon and I will take this carriage to the station," he said. "Will
you, Ducaine, return to Lady Angela and tell her exactly what has
happened?"

"Oh, come, I'm not going to have that," Blenavon exclaimed.

"It will not be unexpected news," Ray said sternly. "Your sister
suspects already."

"I'm not going to be bundled away and leave you to concoct any precious
story you think fit," Blenavon declared, doggedly. "I--"

Ray opened the carriage door and gripped Blenavon's arm. "Get in," he
said in a low, suppressed tone. There was something almost animal in
the fury of Ray's voice. I looked away with a shudder. Blenavon
stepped quietly into the carriage. Then Ray came over to me, and as he
looked searchingly into my face, he pointed up the carriage drive.

"Boy," he said, "you are young, and in hell itself there cannot be many
such as she. You think me brutal. It is because I remember--your
mother!"

He stepped into the carriage. I turned round and set out for
Rowchester.

CHAPTER XXV

MY SECRET

There followed for me another three days of unremitting work. Then
midway through one morning I threw my pen from me with a great sense of
relief. They might come or send for me when they chose. I had
finished. My eyes were hot and my brain weary. Instinctively I threw
open my front door, and it seemed to me that the sun and the wind and
the birds were calling.

So I walked northwards down on the beach, across the grass-sprinkled
sandhills and the mud-bottomed marshes. I walked with my cap stuffed in
my pocket, my head bared to the freshening wind, and all the way I met
no living creature. As I walked, my thoughts, which had been
concentrated for these last few days upon my work, went back to that
terrible half-hour at Braster Grange. I thought of Ray. I realized now
that for days past I had been striving not to think of him. The man's
sheer brutality appalled me. I believed in him now wholly, I believed
at least in his honesty, his vigorous and trenchant loyalty. But the
ways of the man were surely brutal to torture even vermin caught in the
trap, and that woman, adventuress though she might be, had flinched
before him in agony, as though her very nerves were being hacked out of
her body. And Blenavon, too! Surely he might have remembered that he
was her brother. He might have helped him to retain just a portion of
his self-respect. Was he as severe on every measure of wrong-doing? I
fancied to myself the meeting on that lonely road between the poor
white-faced creature who had looked in upon my window, and this strong
merciless man. Warmed with exercise as I was, I shivered. Ray reminded
me of those grim figures of the Old Testament. An eye for an eye, a
life for a life, were precepts with him indeed. He was as inexorable as
Fate itself. I feared him, and I knew why. I feared him when I
thought of Angela, almost over-sensitive, so delicate a flower to be
held in his strong, merciless grasp. I walked faster and faster, for
thoughts were crowding in upon me. Such a tangled web, such bitter
sweetness as they held for me. These were the thoughts which in those
days it was the struggle of my life to keep from coming to fruition. I
knew very well that, if once I gave way to them, flight alone could save
me. For the love of her was in my nerves, in every beat of my pulse, a
wild and beautiful dream, against which I was fighting always a hopeless
battle.

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