Grant smiled darkly. “I have been piecing things together. The result is rather curious, and still very mystifying, still leaving a deal to be explained, and somehow this wallet doesn’t fit into the scheme at all.”
“You shall tell me about it as we ride into Lisbon. I want you to come with me. Lady O’Moy must forgive me if I take French leave, since she is nowhere to be found.”
The truth was, that her ladyship had purposely gone into hiding, after the fashion of suffering animals that are denied expression of their pain. She had gone off with her load of sorrow and anxiety into the thicket on the flank of Monsanto, and there Sylvia found her presently, dejectedly seated by a spring on a bank that was thick with flowering violets. Her ladyship was in tears, her mind swollen to bursting-point by the secret which it sought to contain but felt itself certainly unable to contain much longer.
“Why, Una dear,” cried Miss Armytage, kneeling beside her and putting a motherly arm about that full-grown child, “what is this?”
Her ladyship wept copiously, the springs of her grief gushing forth in response to that sympathetic touch.
“Oh, my dear, I am so distressed. I shall go mad, I think. I am sure I have never deserved all this trouble. I have always been considerate of others. You know I wouldn’t give pain to any one. And — and Dick has always been so thoughtless.”
“Dick?” said Miss Armytage, and there was less sympathy in her voice. “It is Dick you are thinking about at present?”
“Of course. All this trouble has come through Dick. I mean,” she recovered, “that all my troubles began with this affair of Dick’s. And now there is Ned under arrest and to be court-martialled.”
“But what has Captain Tremayne to do with Dick?”
“Nothing, of course,” her ladyship agreed, with more than usual self-restraint. “But it’s one trouble on another. Oh, it’s more than I can bear.”
“I know, my dear, I know,” Miss Armytage said soothingly, and her own voice was not so steady.
“You don’t know! How can you? It isn’t your brother or your friend. It isn’t as if you cared very much for either of them. If you did, if you loved Dick or Ned, you might realise what I am suffering.”
Miss Armytage’s eyes looked straight ahead into the thick green foliage, and there was an odd smile, half wistful, half scornful, on her lips.
“Yet I have done what I could,” she said presently. “I have spoken to Lord Wellington about them both.”
Lady O’Moy checked her tears to look at her companion, and there was dread in her eyes.
“You have spoken to Lord Wellington?”
“Yes. The opportunity came, and I took it.”
“And whatever did you tell him?” She was all a-tremble now, as she clutched Miss Armytage’s hand.
Miss Armytage related what had passed; how she had explained the true facts of Dick’s case to his lordship; how she had protested her faith that Tremayne was incapable of lying, and that if he said he had not killed Samoval it was certain that he had not done so; and, finally, how his lordship had promised to bear both cases in his mind.
“That doesn’t seem very much,” her ladyship complained.
“But he said that he would never allow a British officer to be made a scapegoat, and that if things proved to be as I stated them he would see that the worst that happened to Dick would be his dismissal from the army. He asked me to let him know immediately if Dick were found.”
More than ever was her ladyship on the very edge of confiding. A chance word might have broken down the last barrier of her will. But that word was not spoken, and so she was given the opportunity of first consulting her brother.
He laughed when he heard the story.
“A trap to take me, that’s all,” he pronounced it. “My dear girl, that stiff-necked martinet knows nothing of forgiveness for a military offence. Discipline is the god at whose shrine he worships.” And he afforded her anecdotes to illustrate and confirm his assertion of Lord Wellington’s ruthlessness. “I tell you,” he concluded, “it’s nothing but a trap to catch me. And if you had been fool enough to yield, and to have blabbed of my presence to Sylvia, you would have had it proved to you.”
She was terrified and of course convinced, for she was easy of conviction, believing always the last person to whom she spoke. She sat down on one of the boxes that furnished that cheerless refuge of Mr. Butler’s.
“Then what’s to become of Ned?” she cried. “Oh, I had hoped that we had found a way out at last.”
He raised himself on his elbow on the camp-bed they had fitted up for him.
“Be easy now,” he bade her impatiently. “They can’t do anything to Ned until they find him guilty; and how are they going to find him guilty when he’s innocent?”
“Yes; but the appearances!”
“Fiddlesticks!” he answered her — and the expression chosen was a mere concession to her sex, and not at all what Mr. Butler intended. “Appearances can’t establish guilt. Do be sensible, and remember that they will have to prove that he killed Samoval. And you can’t prove a thing to be what it isn’t. You can’t!”
“Are you sure?”
“Certain sure,” he replied with emphasis.
“Do you know that I shall have to give evidence before the court?” she announced resentfully.
It was an announcement that gave him pause. Thoughtfully he stroked his abominable tuft of red beard. Then he dismissed the matter with a shrug and a smile.
“Well, and what of it?” he cried. “They are not likely to bully you or cross-examine you. Just tell them what you saw from the balcony. Indeed you can’t very well say anything else, or they will see that you are lying, and then heaven alone knows what may happen to you, as well as to me.”
She got up in a pet. “You’re callous, Dick — callous!” she told him. “Oh, I wish you had never come to me for shelter.”
He looked at her and sneered. “That’s a matter you can soon mend,” he told her. “Call up Terence and the others and have me shot. I promise I shall make no resistance. You see, I’m not able to resist even if I would.”
“Oh, how can you think it?” She was indignant.
“Well, what is a poor devil to think? You blow hot and cold all in a breath. I’m sick and ill and feverish,” he continued with self-pity, “and now even you find me a trouble. I wish to God they’d shoot me and make an end. I’m sure it would be best for everybody.”
And now she was on her knees beside him, soothing him; protesting that he had misunderstood her; that she had meant — oh, she didn’t know what she had meant, she was so distressed on his account.
“And there’s never the need to be,” he assured her. “Surely you can be guided by me if you want to help me. As soon as ever my leg gets well again I’ll be after fending for myself, and trouble you no further. But if you want to shelter me until then, do it thoroughly, and don’t give way to fear at every shadow without substance that falls across your path.”
She promised it, and on that promise left him; and, believing him, she bore herself more cheerfully for the remainder of the day. But that evening after they had dined her fears and anxieties drove her at last to seek her natural and legal protector.
Sir Terence had sauntered off towards the house, gloomy and silent as he had been throughout the meal. She ran after him now, and came tripping lightly at his side up the steps. She put her arm through his.
“Terence dear, you are not going back to work again?” she pleaded.
He stopped, and from his fine height looked down upon her with a curious smile. Slowly he disengaged his arm from the clasp of her own. “I am afraid I must,” he answered coldly. “I have a great deal to do, and I am short of a secretary. When this inquiry is over I shall have more time to myself, perhaps.” There was something so repellent in his voice, in his manner of uttering those last words, that she stood rebuffed and watched him vanish into the building.
Then she stamped her foot and he
r pretty mouth trembled.
“Oaf!” she said aloud.
CHAPTER XVI. THE EVIDENCE
The board of officers convened by Marshal Beresford to form the court that was to try Captain Tremayne, was presided over by General Sir Harry Stapleton, who was in command of the British troops quartered in Lisbon. It included, amongst others, the adjutant-general, Sir Terence O’Moy; Colonel Fletcher of the Engineers, who had come in haste from Torres Vedras, having first desired to be included in the board chiefly on account of his friendship for Tremayne; and Major Carruthers. The judge-advocate’s task of conducting the case against the prisoner was deputed to the quartermaster of Tremayne’s own regiment, Major Swan.
The court sat in a long, cheerless hall, once the refectory of the Franciscans, who had been the first tenants of Monsanto. It was stone-flagged, the windows set at a height of some ten feet from the ground, the bare, whitewashed walls hung with very wooden portraits of long-departed kings and princes of Portugal who had been benefactors of the order.
The court occupied the abbot’s table, which was set on a shallow dais at the end of the room — a table of stone with a covering of oak, over which a green cloth had been spread; the officers — twelve in number, besides the president — sat with their backs to the wall, immediately under the inevitable picture of the Last Supper.
The court being sworn, Captain Tremayne was brought in by the provost-marshal’s guard and given a stool placed immediately before and a few paces from the table. Perfectly calm and imperturbable, he saluted the court, and sat down, his guards remaining some paces behind him.
He had declined all offers of a friend to represent him, on the grounds that the court could not possibly afford him a case to answer.
The president, a florid, rather pompous man, who spoke with a faint lisp, cleared his throat and read the charge against the prisoner from the sheet with which he had been supplied — the charge of having violated the recent enactment against duelling made by the Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty’s forces in the Peninsula, in so far as he had fought: a duel with Count Jeronymo de Samoval, and of murder in so far as that duel, conducted in an irregular manner, and without any witnesses, had resulted in the death of the said Count Jeronymo de Samoval.
“How say you, then, Captain Tremayne?” the judge-advocate challenged him. “Are you guilty of these charges or not guilty?”
“Not guilty.”
The president sat back and observed the prisoner with an eye that was officially benign. Tremayne’s glance considered the court and met the concerned and grave regard of his colonel, of his friend Carruthers and of two other friends of his own regiment, the cold indifference of three officers of the Fourteenth — then stationed in Lisbon with whom he was unacquainted, and the utter inscrutability of O’Moy’s rather lowering glance, which profoundly intrigued him, and, lastly, the official hostility of Major Swan, who was on his feet setting forth the case against him. Of the remaining members of the court he took no heed.
From the opening address it did not seem to Captain Tremayne as if this case — which had been hurriedly prepared by Major Swan, chiefly that same morning would amount to very much. Briefly the major announced his intention of establishing to the satisfaction of the court how, on the night of the 28th of May, the prisoner, in flagrant violation of an enactment in a general order of the 26th of that same month, had engaged in a duel with Count Jeronymo de Samoval, a peer of the realm of Portugal.
Followed a short statement of the case from the point of view of the prosecution, an anticipation of the evidence to be called, upon which the major thought — rather sanguinely, opined Captain Tremayne — to convict the accused. He concluded with an assurance that the evidence of the prisoner’s guilt was as nearly direct as evidence could be in a case of murder.
The first witness called was the butler, Mullins. He was introduced by the sergeant-major stationed by the double doors at the end of the hall from the ante-room where the witnesses commanded to be present were in waiting.
Mullins, rather less venerable than usual, as a consequence of agitation and affliction on behalf of Captain Tremayne, to whom he was attached, stated nervously the facts within his knowledge. He was occupied with the silver in his pantry, having remained up in case Sir Terence, who was working late in his study, should require anything before going to bed. Sir Terence called him, and —
“At what time did Sir Terence call you?” asked the major.
“It was ten minutes past twelve, sir, by the clock in my pantry.”
“You are sure that the clock was right?”
“Quite sure, sir; I had put it right that same evening.”
“Very well, then. Sir Terence called you at ten minutes past twelve. Pray continue.”
“He gave me a letter addressed to the Commissary-general. ‘Take that,’ says he, ‘to the sergeant of the guard at once, and tell him to be sure that it is forwarded to the Commissary-General first thing in the morning.’ I went out at once, and on the lawn in the quadrangle I saw a man lying on his back on the grass and another man kneeling beside him. I ran across to them. It was a bright, moonlight night — bright as day it was, and you could see quite clear. The gentleman that was kneeling looks up, at me, and I sees it was Captain Tremayne, sir. ‘What’s this, Captain dear?’ says I. ‘It’s Count Samoval, and he’s kilt,’ says he, ‘for God’s sake, go and fetch somebody.’ So I ran back to tell Sir Terence, and Sir Terence he came out with me, and mighty startled he was at what he found there. ‘What’s happened?’says he, and the captain answers him just as he had answered me: ‘It’s Count Samoval, and he’s kilt. ‘But how did it happen?’ says Sir Terence. ‘Sure and that’s just what I want to know,’ says the captain; ‘I found him here.’ And then Sir Terence turns to me, and ‘Mullins,’ says he, ‘just fetch the guard,’ and of course, I went at once.”
“Was there any one else present?” asked the prosecutor.
“Not in the quadrangle, sir. But Lady O’Moy was on the balcony of her room all the time.”
“Well, then, you fetched the guard. What happened when you returned?”
“Colonel Grant arrived, sir, and I understood him to say that he had been following Count Samoval...”
“Which way did Colonel Grant come?” put in the president.
“By the gate from the terrace.”
“Was it open?”
“No, sir. Sir Terence himself went to open the wicket when Colonel Grant knocked.”
Sir Harry nodded and Major Swan resumed the examination.
“What happened next?”
“Sir Terence ordered the captain under arrest.”
“Did Captain Tremayne submit at once?”
“Well, not quite at once, sir. He naturally made some bother. ‘Good God!’ he says, ‘ye’ll never be after thinking I kilt him? I tell you I just found him here like this.’ ‘What were ye doing here, then?’ says Sir Terence. ‘I was coming to see you,’ says the captain. ‘What about?’ says Sir Terence, and with that the captain got angry, said he refused to be cross-questioned and went off to report himself under arrest as he was bid.”
That closed the butler’s evidence, and the judge-advocate looked across at the prisoner.
“Have you any questions for the witness?” he inquired.
“None,” replied Captain Tremayne. “He has given his evidence very faithfully and accurately.”
Major Swan invited the court to question the witness in any manner it considered desirable. The only one to avail himself of the invitation was Carruthers, who, out of his friendship and concern for Tremayne — and a conviction of Tremayne’s innocence begotten chiefly by that friendship desired to bring out anything that might tell in his favour.
“What was Captain Tremayne’s bearing when he spoke to you and to Sir Terence?”
“Quite as usual, sir.”
“He was quite calm, not at all perturbed?”
“Devil a bit; not until Sir Terence ordered him under arr
est, and then he was a little hot.”
“Thank you, Mullins.”
Dismissed by the court, Mullins would have departed, but that upon being told by the sergeant-major that he was at liberty to remain if he chose he found a seat on one of the benches ranged against the wall.
The next witness was Sir Terence, who gave his evidence quietly from his place at the board immediately on the president’s right. He was pale, but otherwise composed, and the first part of his evidence was no more than a confirmation of what Mullins had said, an exact and strictly truthful statement of the circumstances as he had witnessed them from the moment when Mullins had summoned him.
“You were present, I believe, Sir Terence,” said Major Swan, “at an altercation that arose on the previous day between Captain Tremayne and the deceased?”
“Yes. It happened at lunch here at Monsanto.”
“What was the nature of it?”
“Count Samoval permitted himself to criticise adversely Lord Wellington’s enactment against duelling, and Captain Tremayne defended it. They became a little heated, and the fact was mentioned that Samoval himself was a famous swordsman. Captain Tremayne made the remark that famous swordsmen were required by Count Samoval’s country to, save it from invasion. The remark was offensive to the deceased, and although the subject was abandoned out of regard for the ladies present, it was abandoned on a threat from Count Samoval to continue it later.”
“Was it so continued?”
“Of that I have no knowledge.”
Invited to cross-examine the witness, Captain Tremayne again declined, admitting freely that all that Sir Terence had said was strictly true. Then Carruthers, who appeared to be intent to act as the prisoner’s friend, took up the examination of his chief.
“It is of course admitted that Captain Tremayne enjoyed free access to Monsanto practically at all hours in his capacity as your military secretary, Sir Terence?”
“Admitted,” said Sir Terence.
“And it is therefore possible that he might have come upon the body of the deceased just as Mullins came upon it?”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 328