Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “What will they do to him?” He looked at her. He was smiling. “They will shoot him, of course.”

  “And you wish it!” she denounced him in a whisper of horror.

  “Above all things,” he answered. “A more poetic justice never overtook a blackguard.”

  “Why do you call him that? What do you mean?”

  “I will tell you — afterwards, after they have shot him; unless the truth comes out before.”

  “What truth do you mean? The truth of how Samoval came by his death?”

  “Oh, no. That matter is quite clear, the evidence complete. I mean — oh, I will tell you afterwards what I mean. It may help you to bear your trouble, thankfully.”

  She approached him again. “Won’t you tell me now?” she begged him.

  “No,” he answered, rising, and speaking with finality. “Afterwards if necessary, afterwards. And now get back to bed, child, and forget the fellow. I swear to you that he isn’t worth a thought. Later I shall hope to prove it to you.”

  “That you never will,” she told him fiercely.

  He laughed, and again his laugh was harsh and terrible in its bitter mockery. “Yet another trusting fool,” he cried. “The world is full of them — it is made up of them, with just a sprinkling of knaves to batten on their folly. Go to bed, Sylvia, and pray for understanding of men. It is a possession beyond riches.”

  “I think you are more in need of it than I am,” she told him, standing by the door.

  “Of course you do. You trust, which is why you are a fool. Trust,” he said, speaking the very language of Polichinelle, “is the livery of fools.”

  She went without answering him and toiled upstairs with dragging feet. She paused a moment in the corridor above, outside Una’s door. She was in such need of communion with some one that for a moment she thought of going in. But she knew beforehand the greeting that would await her; the empty platitudes, the obvious small change of verbiage which her ladyship would dole out. The very thought of it restrained her, and so she passed on to her own room and a sleepless night in which to piece together the puzzle which the situation offered her, the amazing enigma of Sir Terence’s seeming access of insanity.

  And the only conclusion that she reached was that intertwined with the death of Samoval there was some other circumstance which had aroused in the adjutant an unreasoning hatred of his friend, converting him into Tremayne’s bitterest enemy, intent — as he had confessed — upon seeing him shot for that night’s work. And because she knew them both for men of honour above all, the enigma was immeasurably deepened.

  Had she but obeyed the transient impulse to seek Lady O’Moy she might have discovered all the truth at once. For she would have come upon her ladyship in a frame of mind almost as distraught as her own; and she might — had she penetrated to the dressing-room where her ladyship was — have come upon Richard Butler at the same time.

  Now, in view of what had happened, her ladyship, ever impulsive, was all for going there and then to her husband to confess the whole truth, without pausing to reflect upon the consequences to others than Ned Tremayne. As you know, it was beyond her to see a thing from two points of view at one and the same time. It was also beyond her brother — the failing, as I think I have told you, was a family one — and her brother saw this matter only from the point of view of his own safety.

  “A single word to Terence,” he had told her, putting his back to the door of the dressing-room to bar her intended egress, “and you realise that it will be a court-martial and a firing party for me.”

  That warning effectively checked her. Yet certain stirrings of conscience made her think of the man who had imperilled himself for her sake and her brother’s.

  “But, Dick, what is to become of Ned?” she had asked him.

  “Oh, Ned will be all right. What is the evidence against him after all? Men are not shot for things they haven’t done. Justice will out, you know. Leave Ned to shift for himself for the present. Anyhow his danger isn’t grave, nor is it immediate, and mine is.”

  Helplessly distraught, she sank to an ottoman. The night had been a very trying one for her ladyship. She gave way to tears.

  “It is all your fault, Dick,” she reproached him.

  “Naturally you would blame me,” he said with resignation — the complete martyr.

  “If only you had been ready at the time, as he told you to be, there would have been no delays, and you would have got away before any of this happened.”

  “Was it my fault that I should have reopened my wound — bad luck to it! — in attempting to get down that damned ladder?” he asked her. “Is it my fault that I am neither an ape nor an acrobat? Tremayne should have come up at once to assist me, instead of waiting until he had to come up to help me bandage my leg again. Then time would not have been lost, and very likely my life with it.” He came to a gloomy conclusion.

  “Your life? What do you mean, Dick?”

  “Just that. What are my chances of getting away now?” he asked her. “Was there ever such infernal luck as mine? The Telemachus will sail without me, and the only man who could and would have helped me to get out of this damned country is under arrest. It’s clear I shall have to shift for myself again, and I can’t even do that for a day or two with my leg in this state. I shall have to go back into that stuffy store-cupboard of yours till God knows when.” He lost all self-control at the prospect and broke into imprecations of his luck.

  She attempted to soothe him. But he wasn’t easy to soothe.

  “And then,” he grumbled on, “you have so little sense that you want to run straight off to Terence and explain to him what Tremayne was doing here. You might at least have the grace to wait until I am off the premises, and give me the mercy of a start before you set the dogs on my trail.”

  “Oh, Dick, Dick, you are so cruel!” she protested. “How can you say such things to me, whose only thought is for you, to save you.”

  “Then don’t talk any more about telling Terence,” he replied.

  “I won’t, Dick. I won’t.” She drew him down beside her on the ottoman and her fingers smoothed his rather tumbled red hair, just as her words attempted to smooth the ruffles in his spirit. “You know I didn’t realise, or I should not have thought of it even. I was so concerned for Ned for the moment.”

  “Don’t I tell you there’s not the need?” he assured her. “Ned will be safe enough, devil a doubt. It’s for you to keep to what you told them from the balcony; that you heard a cry, went out to see what was happening and saw Tremayne there bending over the body. Not a word more, and not a word less, or it will be all over with me.”

  CHAPTER XIV. THE CHAMPION

  With the possible exception of her ladyship, I do not think that there was much sleep that night at Monsanto for any of the four chief actors in this tragicomedy. Each had his own preoccupations. Sylvia’s we know. Mr. Butler found his leg troubling him again, and the pain of the reopened wound must have prevented him from sleeping even had his anxieties about his immediate future not sufficed to do so. As for Sir Terence, his was the most deplorable case of all. This man who had lived a life of simple and downright honesty in great things and in small, a man who had never stooped to the slightest prevarication, found himself suddenly launched upon the most horrible and infamous course of duplicity to encompass the ruin of another. The offence of that other against himself might be of the most foul and hideous, a piece of treachery that only treachery could adequately avenge; yet this consideration was not enough to appease the clamours of Sir Terence’s self-respect.

  In the end, however, the primary desire for vengeance and vengeance of the bitterest kind proved master of his mind. Captain Tremayne had been led by his villainy into a coil that should presently crush him, and Sir Terence promised himself an infinite balm for his outraged honour in the entertainment which the futile struggles of the victim should provide. With Captain Tremayne lay the cruel choice of submitting in tortured silence to his fat
e, or of turning craven and saving his miserable life by proclaiming himself a seducer and a betrayer. It should be interesting to observe how the captain would decide, and his punishment was certain whatever the decision that he took.

  Sir Terence came to breakfast in the open, grey-faced and haggard, but miraculously composed for a man who had so little studied the art of concealing his emotions. Voice and glance were calm as he gave a good-morning to his wife and to Miss Armytage.

  “What are you going to do about Ned?” was one of his wife’s first questions.

  It took him aback. He looked askance at her, marvelling at the steadiness with which she bore his glance, until it occurred to him that effrontery was an essential part of the equipment of all harlots.

  “What am I going to do?” he echoed. “Why, nothing. The matter is out of my hands. I may be asked to give evidence; I may even be called to sit upon the court-martial that will try him. My evidence can hardly assist him. My conclusions will naturally be based upon the evidence that is laid before the court.”

  Her teaspoon rattled in her saucer. “I don’t understand you, Terence. Ned has always been your best friend.”

  “He has certainly shared everything that was mine.”

  “And you know,” she went on, “that he did not kill Samoval.”

  “Indeed?” His glance quickened a little. “How should I know that?”

  “Well... I know it, anyway.”

  He seemed moved by that statement. He leaned forward with an odd eagerness, behind which there was something terrible that went unperceived by her.

  “Why did you not say so before? How do you know? What do you know?”

  “I am sure that he did not.”

  “Yes, yes. But what makes you so sure? Do you possess some knowledge that you have not revealed?”

  He saw the colour slowly shrinking from her cheeks under his burning gaze. So she was not quite shameless then, after all. There were limits to her effrontery.

  “What knowledge should I possess?” she filtered.

  “That is what I am asking.”

  She made a good recovery. “I possess the knowledge that you should possess yourself,” she told him. “I know Ned for a man incapable of such a thing. I am ready to swear that he could not have done it.”

  “I see: evidence as to character.” He sank back into his chair and thoughtfully stirred his chocolate. “It may weigh with the court. But I am not the court, and my mere opinions can do nothing for Ned Tremayne.”

  Her ladyship looked at him wildly. “The court?” she cried. “Do you mean that I shall have to give evidence?”

  “Naturally,” he answered. “You will have to say what you saw.”

  “But — but I saw nothing.”

  “Something, I think.”

  “Yes; but nothing that can matter.”

  “Still the court will wish to hear it and perhaps to examine you upon it.”

  “Oh no, no!” In her alarm she half rose, then sank again to her chair. “You must keep me out of this, Terence. I couldn’t — I really couldn’t.”

  He laughed with an affectation of indulgence, masking something else.

  “Why,” he said, “you would not deprive Tremayne of any of the advantages to be derived from your testimony? Are you not ready to bear witness as to his character? To swear that from your knowledge of the man you are sure he could not have done such a thing? That he is the very soul of honour, a man incapable of anything base or treacherous or sly?”

  And then at last Sylvia, who had been watching them, and seeking to apply to what she heard the wild expressions that Sir Terence had used to herself last night, broke into the conversation.

  “Why do you apply these words to Captain Tremayne?” she asked.

  He turned sharply to meet the opposition he detected in her. “I don’t apply them. On the contrary, I say that, as Una knows, they are not applicable.”

  “Then you make an unnecessary statement, a statement that has nothing to do with the case. Captain Tremayne has been arrested for killing Count Samoval in a duel. A duel may be a violation of the law as recently enacted by Lord Wellington, but it is not an offence against honour; and to say that a man cannot have fought a duel because a man is incapable of anything base or treacherous or sly is just to say a very foolish and meaningless thing.”

  “Oh, quite so,” the adjutant, admitted. “But if Tremayne denies having fought, if he shelters himself behind a falsehood, and says that he has not killed Samoval, then I think the statement assumes some meaning.”

  “Does Captain Tremayne say that?” she asked him sharply.

  “It is what I understood him to say last night when I ordered him under arrest.”

  “Then,” said Sylvia, with full conviction, “Captain Tremayne did not do it.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t,” Sir Terence admitted. “The court will no doubt discover the truth. The truth, you know, must prevail,” and he looked at his wife again, marking the fresh signs of agitation she betrayed.

  Mullins coming to set fresh covers, the conversation was allowed to lapse. Nor was it ever resumed, for at that moment, with no other announcement save such as was afforded by his quick step and the click-click of his spurs, a short, slight man entered the quadrangle from the doorway of the official wing.

  The adjutant, turning to look, caught his breath suddenly in an exclamation of astonishment.

  “Lord Wellington!” he cried, and was immediately on his feet.

  At the exclamation the new-comer checked and turned. He wore a plain grey undress frock and white stock, buckskin breeches and lacquered boots, and he carried a riding-crop tucked under his left arm. His features were bold and sternly handsome; his fine eyes singularly piercing and keen in their glance; and the sweep of those eyes now took in not merely the adjutant, but the spread table and the ladies seated before it. He halted a moment, then advanced quickly, swept his cocked hat from a brown head that was but very slightly touched with grey, and bowed with a mixture of stiffness and courtliness to the ladies.

  “Since I have intruded so unwittingly, I had best remain to make my apologies,” he said. “I was on my way to your residential quarters, O’Moy, not imagining that I should break in upon your privacy in this fashion.”

  O’Moy with a great deference made haste to reassure him on the score of the intrusion, whilst the ladies themselves rose to greet him. He bore her ladyship’s hand to his lips with perfunctory courtesy, then insisted upon her resuming her chair. Then he bowed — ever with that mixture of stiffness and deference — to Miss Armytage upon her being presented to him by the adjutant.

  “Do not suffer me to disturb you,” he begged them. “Sit down, O’Moy. I am not pressed, and I shall be monstrous glad of a few moments’ rest. You are very pleasant here,” and he looked about the luxuriant garden with approving eyes.

  Sir Terence placed the hospitality of his table at his lordship’s disposal. But the latter declined graciously.

  “A glass of wine and water, if you will. No more. I breakfasted at Torres Vedras with Fletcher.” Then to the look of astonishment on the faces of the ladies he smiled. “Oh yes,” he assured them, “I was early astir, for time is very precious just at present, which is why I drop unannounced upon you from the skies, O’Moy.” He took the glass that Mullins proffered on a salver, sipped from it, and set it down. “There is so much vexation, so much hindrance from these pestilential intriguers here in Lisbon, that I have thought it as well to come in person and speak plainly to the gentlemen of the Council of Regency.” He was peeling off his stout riding-gloves as he spoke. “If this campaign is to go forward at all, it will go forward as I dispose. Then, too, I wanted to see Fletcher and the works. By gad, O’Moy, he has performed miracles, and I am very pleased with him — oh, and with you too. He told me how ably you have seconded him and counselled him where necessary. You must have worked night and day, O’Moy.” He sighed. “I wish that I were as well served in every direction.” And then
he broke off abruptly. “But this is monstrous tedious for your ladyship, and for you, Miss Armytage. Forgive me.”

  Her ladyship protested the contrary, professing a deep interest in military matters, and inviting his lordship to continue. Lord Wellington, however, ignoring the invitation, turned the conversation upon life in Lisbon, inquiring hopefully whether they found the place afforded them adequate entertainment.

  “Indeed yes,” Lady O’Moy assured him. “We are very gay at times. There are private theatricals and dances, occasionally an official ball, and we are promised picnics and water-parties now that the summer is here.”

  “And in the autumn, ma’am, we may find you a little hunting,” his lordship promised them. “Plenty of foxes; a rough country, though; but what’s that to an Irishwoman?” He caught the quickening of Miss Armytage’s eye. “The prospect interests you, I see.”

  Miss Armytage admitted it, and thus they made conversation for a while, what time the great soldier sipped his wine and water to wash the dust of his morning ride from his throat. When at last he set down an empty glass Sir Terence took this as the intimation of his readiness to deal with official matters, and, rising, he announced himself entirely at his lordship’s service.

  Lord Wellington claimed his attention for a full hour with the details of several matters that are not immediately concerned with this narrative. Having done, he rose at last from Sir Terence’s desk, at which he had been sitting, and took up his riding-crop and cocked hat from the chair where he had placed them.

  “And now,” he said, “I think I will ride into Lisbon and endeavour to come to an understanding with Count Redondo and Don Miguel Forjas.”

  Sir Terence advanced to open the door. But Wellington checked him with a sudden sharp inquiry.

  “You published my order against duelling, did you not?”