“My dear Tollemache,” (his deep voice boomed like the note of an organ and was laden with a profound melancholy), “it is kind in you to respond so readily to my appeal; to seek me here in my — ah — tribulation.”
“I could not wait for you to come to me,” was the answer. “Your news was so wild and utterly beyond belief that I must come in person for its explanation ere I carry you back to Devonshire with me.”
“Wild and utterly beyond belief it may be, but it is true none the less.”
Sir Richard, still in his travelling clothes, flung himself into a chair.
“Tell me of it,” he said impatiently.
“What remains to tell? My letter—”
“Yes, yes, but your letter gave me no more than the broad fact. I want the details ere I can believe.”
“The details?” Mr Templeton paced the room with bowed head. He came at last to stand by the writing table where he could face his cousin. He looked through the window behind his cousin, and observed the grey sky and drizzle of rain under which the shrubs in his garden were drooping.
He told the tale with all that wealth of rhetoric that he used, thus rendering his cousin’s impatience almost frantic.
“Is that all?” quoth Sir Richard, when the tale was done.
“Is’t not enough?” demanded the sometime Second Secretary. “It has been enough to procure my ruin, Tollemache.”
“And yet, weighed against my own knowledge of the man, it is not enough to carry conviction.”
“Oh, he was deep — infernally, subtly deep,” boomed Mr Templeton. “He completely bubbled you.”
Sir Richard rose, and in his turn began to pace the chamber, whilst his cousin now let himself sink into a chair, and sat, knees on elbows and chin cupped in his palms.
“He was averse to coming to England,” Sir Richard reasoned, “and it was naught but my own insistence fetched him hither. Even when I had prepared the letter for you, he must still idle there at Naples, and I’ll swear he would be idling there yet but for the insistence which I employed.”
“Ay — he was deep,” was all that Mr Templeton could find to answer.
“But his credentials!” Sir Richard insisted. “His credentials! They were an almost complete record of his career, and not a year of it since he was nineteen but was employed in some service between here and the Far East.”
“Forgeries!” growled his cousin.
“Forgeries? Not so. Did not yourself test two of them at the proper embassies here in London?”
“Two — ay. But what of the others?”
“Ab uno disce omnes.”
Mr Templeton crashed fist into palm. “The very argument I used to my Lord Carteret — the very words I uttered! ‘Sdeath, how he has laughed at me since! Oh, blister me! you do not know what a butt for mockery I am become.”
“You say that he confessed?” Sir Richard’s voice was laden with ineffable incredulity.
“Abjectly.”
“Y’amaze me! How did he bear himself at the trial?”
“Well, I am told. He was one of your cool, calm villains.”
“Were ye not present?”
“Present?” cried Mr Templeton. “Do you not understand, man, that from the hour of his arrest I durst not show my face i’ the town? Do you think I would go to Court to be pointed at by every jackanapes as the man who was bubbled, the statesman who was this traitor’s sponsor? I may count myself fortunate that I was not, myself, impeached.”
And then Fate, that ironical stage manager, displayed its interest in this comedy.
There was a tap at the door, and a footman entered.
“Captain Gaynor is below, sir, and begs leave to wait upon you,” he announced.
The two men stared at him, as if they were both stricken into stone.
At length, in a croak, came Mr Templeton’s voice: “What the devil did ye say?”
The footman stolidly repeated his announcement.
“Captain Gaynor?” echoed Mr Templeton, with an accent on every syllable. “Cap-tain Gay-nor!” he repeated. “Are ye mad or drunk?”
“Neither, sir,” replied the footman, his manner as near pert as any underling’s manner dare be with the overawing Mr Templeton.
Mr Templeton screwed his face as he shot out the next question: “D’ye know Captain Gaynor? I mean — have ye ever seen him before?”
“Why, yes, sir; several times.”
“And d’ye say this is he?”
“Yes, sir. Leastways, I think so, sir.”
Sir Richard interposed. He was visibly as agitated as his cousin.
“Best desire him to step up, Ned,” he suggested. Mr Templeton gave the order, and the intrigued footman vanished.
“What can it mean, Tollemache? What can it mean?”
“It seems to mean that I am right and that you and your Government are wrong. For if this is really Captain Gaynor, then, obviously, he is not Captain Jenkyn.”
“You mean that Lord Carteret is mistaken!” cried the other, a dazzling vista of reinstatement with the last and the best laugh on his side opening suddenly before him. He heaved himself, excited, from his chair, to collapse into it again an instant later. “But it is absurd!” he said, and sneered. “Impossible.”
On the word the door reopened and Captain Gaynor was ushered in. He wore his close-fitting military blue coat buttoned to the chin, canon boots and steel-hilted sword, and under his arm he carried his looped and feathered hat.
Undoubtedly this was the man himself. Yet, as the cousins stared at him, Edward Templeton disbelieved the evidence of his own eyes.
The soldier advanced easily into the room, then bowed formally, his heels together. “I trust, Mr Templeton, that I do not intrude. Why, ’tis you, Dick!” he cried, perceiving who it was that stood there. “I am indeed fortunate. I was considering a jaunt into Devonshire, unless by now your cousin’s efforts on my behalf have borne the fruit we hope for. But what’s amiss?” he cried on a sudden, different note, looking from one amazed face to the other.
“Will you tell me who the devil you are?” asked Mr Templeton.
The Captain stiffened slightly; perplexity crept into his face.
“Who the devil I am?” said he. “Why, who the devil should I be but Captain Harry Gaynor, your obedient servant. I trust,” he added, as if he suddenly suspected a possibility, “I trust, sir, that I have not unwittingly had the misfortune to offend you.”
Mr Templeton looked at his cousin. “By God!” said he. “’Tis the man himself.”
“So it is,” said Sir Richard, and on that he exploded into laughter.
Captain Gaynor looked from one to the other. His expression of perplexity changed to one of annoyance.
“Gentlemen,” said he, very distant, “you’ll forgive me if I say that I find you vastly odd. And you, Dick—”
Sir Richard sprang to him and wrung his hand. “Oh, my dear Harry,” he cried, “although my manner seem odd, I swear I never was more pleased to see you — or any man.”
“Nor I — oddslife! — no,” roared Mr Templeton, who savoured already in imagination the triumph that was in store for him, his complete vindication and the turning of those malicious shafts of satire upon the fatuous Lord Carteret — their proper butt. “But can ye explain it?” he demanded.
“Explain what, sir?” asked the apparently bewildered soldier.
Mr Templeton changed his tone. “Where the devil have ye been this fortnight past?”
“Where? Why, did I not announce to you my departure for Scotland when last I came to take my leave of you? I should have tarried longer in the north, but that I was unable to find any of the friends I went to visit. So, as the north of itself has little attraction for one who’s accustomed to softer climates, I came south again forthwith.” He lied glibly and smoothly, and with little hurt to his conscience. Again he observed that his audacity had conquered completely here. Would it conquer as completely elsewhere? He had little doubt of it now.
> “And you have had no news of London in your absence?”
“Who should send me news’ I have so few friends in England nowadays.”
“Then ye’ll not have heard that Captain Jenkyn was taken and hanged?”
“Captain Jenkyn’” echoed the soldier, after the manner of one who searches his memory “D’ye mean the Jacobite agent. Faith, then, the world’s well rid of a meddlesome fool. But—” He paused to stare at them, bewildered. “You tell me this, I see, with some purpose.”
It was Richard who interposed to tell him the story — suddenly become so monstrously comical — that upon Captain Jenkyn, whose real identity was unknown, had been thrust the identity of Captain Gaynor.
The Captain laughed a little at first. Then he checked himself, and grew very sober.
“But, ’tis a monstrous thing you tell me!” quoth he. “I cannot lie under so absurd an error. It must be corrected forthwith. I shall look to you, Mr Templeton, to do me justice.”
“To me?” said Templeton. “Ye’ve further to learn that, as a consequence of my jeopardising myself by denying the possibility of your being Captain Jenkyn, I am no longer a member of the Government. I have resigned my office. But there are reprisals in store — egad! Reprisals!”
“Then I must see Lord Carteret at once,” cried the Captain.
“So you shall — and I’ll come with you.” Mr Templeton was recovering his habitual breadth of manner. “If ye’ll but stay for me till I am dressed, we will go together. And you had best come with us, Tollemache.”
“Faith! I ask no better entertainment,” laughed Sir Richard.
But Captain Gaynor had yet a question to ask ere he would allow Mr Templeton to withdraw. “But how came this mistake about, sir? Was the fellow — Did he resemble me?”
“’Tis more than I can say, and less than matters now. I think my Lord Carteret took too much upon assumption. It is all the work of that fellow Pauncefort.”
“Pauncefort!” cried the Captain, and alarm flashed into his face. “Pauncefort! By heaven, then, I suspect some villainy here! Gad! ’Twas no mistake this; ’twas deliberate! I’ll post to Priory Close and see Sir John Kynaston the moment I leave my Lord Carteret’s. Heaven send I am not too late. I curse the hour I ever thought of Scotland.”
“Sir John Kynaston!” exclaimed Mr Templeton very solemnly. “Why, what do you fear for him?”
“For him — nothing. ’Tis not himself I’m thinking of.”
“Then d’ye not know — But of course you do not. Sir John was arrested two days ago.”
Consternation spread on the face of that comedian. “Arrested? Sir John? Upon what charge?”
“Why, upon the charge of having harboured a traitor and spy — upon the charge of having harboured Captain Gaynor.”
The Captain smote his brow with his clenched hand. “I see it all, then!” he cried. “Let us waste no time, sir. Sir John must instantly be restored to liberty.”
“All things considered,” said Sir Richard dryly, “I think my Lord Carteret will be very pleased to see you.”
“He’ll be the laughing-stock o’ the town,” said Mr Templeton, and he went out, chuckling, to make ready for that momentous visit.
Chapter 21. LORD CARTERET UNDERSTANDS
The arrest of Sir John Kynaston had been brought about, of course — like all the others — by the agency of the renegade Pauncefort. It was the last desperate throw he made in the game of mending his fortunes, a game which had reduced him to the treacherous infamy which he had perpetrated. But he intended that it should be no more than the means to his end. It was no part of his purpose that Sir John should ultimately suffer. That is to say, it was no part of his present purpose.
He had pointed out to the Secretary of State the grounds upon which Sir John should be arrested, and he had further informed against him out of his own knowledge of Sir John’s association — however slight — with the Jacobite intriguers. But once the arrest was effected, he had come again to my Lord Carteret with the request that Sir John’s fate should be placed in his own (Lord Pauncefort’s) hands. He claimed this as part of the recompense due to him from the Government for the signal services he had rendered.
Lord Carteret had listened to his request with that frank contempt which the Secretary of State never failed to use towards this man who had turned informer. This contempt was rendered the more bitter on this occasion by the regard in which his lordship had ever held Sir John Kynaston, against whom, indeed, he had performed his duty most reluctantly — a feeling this which Lord Pauncefort had omitted from his calculations.
The statesman pursed his thin lips and considered the viscount in silence with that cold glance of his, which my Lord Pauncefort found it so difficult to endure with equanimity.
“I find your request more than extraordinary, sir,” said he.
Lord Pauncefort laughed. “If your lordship had my own unfortunate acquaintance with the requests of creditors, you’ld find little extraordinary in mine.”
“By which,” said the minister quietly, “you remind me, of course, that you are my creditor; or, rather, that I am your debtor for services rendered to the State. Ah!”
“I think, my lord, that I deserve some recompense beyond the small sums of money which the Treasury has paid me.”
Lord Carteret leaned back in his arm-chair, his finger-tips resting upon the edge of the writing-table before him. “These small sums, my lord, amount to close upon twelve thousand pounds. And in addition you are kept out of a debtor’s gaol by my warranty to your creditors that your debts will be liquidated on your marriage. I confess, sir, that you appear to me to have been more than well paid already for the services that you have rendered. Some, indeed,” continued the statesman, with the faintest note of scorn in his quiet voice, “would account that you have been paid far above the value of those services, although I am not of those. I recognise the position which you occupy, the estate to which you were born, and the fact, hence, that you require to be bribed upon a higher scale than does the ordinary — informer.”
The viscount swallowed that last insult as best he could. He had swallowed so many of Lord Carteret’s already, in the course of these very turbid transactions, that one more or less was of little account. He kept his head high, and preserved a smiling front.
“I will admit, my lord, that the payment has been generous, provided that it is completed. I mean, provided that I am enabled to redeem the warranty your lordship has given my creditors.”
“I am not sure,” said the minister slowly, “that ‘warranty’ is, after all, the proper word. But your creditors understand me, and so, I think, do you.”
“Perfectly, my lord. You have honoured me by giving your word as bail for me to Israel Suarez and the others.”
“And,” Lord Carteret added, “it is entirely as a result of this that you continue to elude imprisonment for debt.”
“And,” Lord Pauncefort added on his own side, “it is precisely that your lordship may be relieved of your pledge for me that I prefer my present request touching Sir John Kynaston.”
“You do not forget, I trust, that I retain the right of withdrawing my pledge at any moment, should it appear to me that you may no longer continue in the assurance of being ultimately able to satisfy your debts. But that is by the way. The thing you now propose is exceedingly distasteful to me. Indeed, I am not sure that I can honourably accede to such a request. I could do so only if I were satisfied that—” He broke off, and sat forward. “But we talk in the dark,” he said more briskly “Let me understand what ends you seek to serve by such a thing.”
“Reasonable ends, my lord,” replied Pauncefort easily “I have already had the honour of informing your lordship of the terms of the late Mr Hollinstone’s will, under which it is in Sir John Kynaston’s power to withhold his sanction to his ward’s marriage until she is of full age—”
“Yes, yes,” the statesman cut in. “You have already told me all that. Moreover,” he
added, with another of his quietly incisive manifestations of mistrust, “I have obtained independent confirmation of the fact. Pray, continue.”
“I have also had the honour of informing your lordship that my betrothal to Miss Hollinstone does not receive Sir John’s sanction.”
“Knowing and respecting Sir John as I do, I am not surprised,” was the withering comment. “Well, what then?”
“Sir John, my lord, is under arrest.”
“By your contriving — yes,” said his lordship. “It is a matter, let me tell you, concerning which your true motives have never intrigued me. I was aware that your betrothal to the lady was not sanctioned by her guardian” (his lordship was not, it seems, aware that the betrothal had been cancelled), “and I perceived clearly enough that his conviction as a rebel would disqualify him from exercising his rights under the will. What I do not perceive is the reason of your present intervention. I hope you are attempting no double dealings with me, sir.”
“Double dealings? I, my lord?”
“You don’t know what they are, I suppose? Pshaw, sir! These virtuous airs are unnecessary here. Who has betrayed once will betray again. But I have no desire to recriminate, my lord. All I desire is to warn you to be frank with me. What is your aim? — briefly now, and clearly.”
The viscount was forced to swallow this peremptoriness with the rest. He was a knave unmasked, dealing with a man of honour.
“My lord,” he answered, “I should have thought my aim would have been clear. I have no ill-will against Sir John. If I am to wed his niece I would not be the one to compass his ruin. I hope, sir, to be able to induce him to change his mind on the subject of my marriage with his niece either before or after the marriage has taken place. I conceive, sir, that if I can visit him in prison and offer to use my influence to procure his release and pardon, natural gratitude should inspire Sir John no longer to—”
“Fiddlesticks!” the statesman interrupted. “Natural gratitude, faith! Why can you not be frank and tell me it is your intent to drive a bargain with Sir John.”
Pauncefort permitted himself a wry smile. “It amounts to that, of course,” he confessed. “And if I had the pardon in my pocket it would perhaps strengthen my hand.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 271