I was fascinated by the greatness of time subject. However, I answered him as quickly as possible, and emphatically.
“The Board,” the Duke continued, “has been meeting in London. For the last few months we have had business of the utmost importance on hand. But on January 10, that is just six weeks ago, we came to a full stop. The Commander-in-Chief had no alternative but temporarily to dissolve the assembly. We found ourselves in a terrible and disastrous position. Lord Ronald Matheson had been acting as secretary for us. We met always with locked doors, and the names of the twelve members of the Board are the most honoured in England. Yet twenty-four hours after our meetings a verbatim report of them, with full particulars of all our schemes, was in the hands of the French Secret Service.”
“Good God!” I exclaimed, startled for the moment out of my respectful silence.
The Duke himself seemed affected by the revelation which he had made. He sat forward in his chair with puckered brows and bent head. His voice, which had been growing lower and lower, had sunk almost to a whisper. It seemed to me that he made a sign to Lord Chelsford to continue. Almost for the first time the man who had done little since his entrance save watch me, spoke.
“My own political career, Mr. Ducaine,” he said, “has been a long one, but I have never before found myself confronted with such a situation. Even you can doubtless realize its effect. The whole good of our work is undone. If we cannot recommence, and with different results, I am afraid, as an Englishman, to say what may happen. War between England and France to-day would be like a great game of chess between two masters of equal strength—one having a secret knowledge of his opponent’s each ensuing move. You can guess what the end of that would be. Our only hope is at once to reconstruct our plans. We are hard at it now by day and by night, but the time has arrived when we can go no further without a meeting, and the actual committal to paper and diagram of our new schemes. We have discussed the whole matter most carefully, and we have come to the following decision. We have reduced the number of the Board by half, those who have resigned, with certain exceptions, having done so by ballot. We have decided that instead of holding our meetings at the War Office they shall take place down here at the Duke’s house, and so far as possible secretly. Then, as regards the secretaryship. No shadow of suspicion rests upon Lord Ronald any more than upon his predecessors, but, as you may have read in the newspapers, he has temporarily lost his reason owing to the shock, and has been obliged to go to a private home. We have decided to engage some one absolutely without political connexions, and whose detachment from political life must be complete. You have had a warm advocate in Colonel Mostyn Ray, and, subject to some stringent and absolute conditions, I may say that we have decided to offer you the post.”
I looked from one to the other. I have no doubt that I looked as bewildered as I felt.
“I am a complete stranger to all of you,” I murmured. “I am not deserving in any way of such a position.”
Lord Chelsford smiled.
“You underrate yourself, young man,” he said drily, “or your college professors have wandered from the truth. Still, your surprise is natural, I admit. I will explain a little further. Our choice is more limited than you might think. At least fifty names were proposed, all of them of young men of the highest character. Each one, however, had some possibly doubtful relative or association or custom in life. It is evident that there is treachery somewhere in the very highest quarters. These young men were sure to be brought into contact with it. Now it was Ray’s idea to seek for some one wholly outside the diplomatic world, living in a spot remote from London, with as few friends as possible, who would have no sentimental objections to the surveillance of detectives. You appear to us to be suitable.”
“It is a wonderful offer!” I exclaimed.
“In a sense it is,” Lord Cheisford continued. “The remuneration, of course, will be high, but the post itself may not be a permanency, and you will live all the time at high pressure. The Duke will place a small house at your disposal, and it will be required that you form no new acquaintances without reference to him, nor must you leave this place on any account without permission. You will virtually be a prisoner, and if certain of my suspicions are correct you may even find the post one of great physical danger. On the other hand, you will have a thousand a year salary, and a sum of five thousand pounds in two years’ time if all is well.”
Excitement seemed to have steadied my nerves. I forgot all the minor tragedies which had been real enough things to face only a few hours ago. I spoke calmly and decisively.
“I accept, Lord Cheisford,” I said. “I shall count my life a small thing indeed against my fidelity.”
He drummed idly with his forefinger upon the table. His eyes were wandering around the room absently. His face was calm and expressionless.
“Very well, then,” he said, “my business here is settled. I shall leave it with the Duke to acquaint you with the practical details of your work, and our arrangement.”
He rose to his feet. The Duke glanced at his watch.
“You have only just time for the train,” he remarked. “The car shall take you there. I prefer to walk back, and I have something further to say to Mr. Ducaine.”
Lord Chelsford took leave of me briefly, and the Duke, after accompanying him outside, returned to his former seat. I ventured upon an incoherent attempt to express my gratitude, which he at once waved aside. He leaned over the table, and he fixed his eyes steadfastly upon me.
“I am able now,” he said, “to ask you a question postponed from the other day. It is concerning the man who was found dead in the creek.”
His merciless eyes noted my start.
“Ah!” he continued. “I can see that you know something. I have my suspicions about this man. You can now understand my interest when I hear of strangers in the neighbourhood. I do not believe that he was a derelict from the sea. Do you?”
“No,” I answered.
He nodded.
“Am I right,” he said, “in presuming that you know he was not?”
“I know that he was not,” I admitted.
His fingers ceased their beating upon the table. His face became white and masklike.
“Go on,” he said.
“I know that he came through Braster, and he asked for me. He looked in through the window of my cottage when Colonel Ray was with me. I saw him no more after that until I found him dead.”
“Ray left you after you had seen this man’s face at the window?”
“Yes.”
“The wounds about the man’s head and body. If he was not thrown up by the sea, can you explain them?”
“No,” I answered with a shudder.
“At the inquest it was not mentioned, I think, that he had been seen in the village?”
“It was not,” I admitted. “Most of the people were at Colonel Ray’s lecture. He spoke to one girl, a Miss Moyat.”
“She did not give evidence.”
“I thought,” I said in a low tone, “that she had better not.”
“Did you hear anything after Ray left?” he asked suddenly.
I could have cried out, but my tongue seemed dry in my throat.
“There was a sound,” I muttered, “I fancied that it was a cry. But I could not tell. The wind was blowing, and the sea and rain! No, I could not tell.”
He rose up.
“You appear,” he said drily, “to have discretion. Cultivate it! It is a great gift. I shall look for you at eleven o’clock in the morning. I am having a large house party this week, and amongst them will be our friends.”
He left me without any further farewell, and turned slowly homewards. When he reached the bend in the road he paused, and remained there for several moments motionless. His eyes were fixed upon the small creek. He seemed to be measuring the distance between it and the road. He was still lingering there when I closed the door.
IX. TREACHERY
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The sunlight was streaming through the window when at last my pen ceased to move. I rubbed my eyes and looked out in momentary amazement. Morning had already broken across the sea. My green-shaded lamp was burning with a sickly light. The moon had turned pale and colourless whilst I sat at my desk.
I stretched myself and, lighting a cigarette, commenced to collect my papers. Immediately a dark figure rose from a couch in the farther corner of the room and approached me.
“Can I get you anything, sir?”
I turned in my chair. The man-servant whom the Duke had put in charge of the “Brand,” my present habitation, and who remained with me always in the room while I worked, stood at my elbow.
“I would like some coffee, Grooton,” I said. “I am going to walk up to the house with these papers, and I shall want a bath and some breakfast directly I get back.”
“Very good, sir. It shall be ready.”
I folded up the sheets and maps, and placing them in an oilskin case, tied them round my body under my waistcoat. Then I withdrew all the cartridges save one from the revolver which had lain all night within easy reach of my right hand, and slipped it into my pocket.
“Coffee ready, Grooton?”
“In one moment, sir.”
I watched him bending over the stove, pale, dark-visaged, with the subdued manners and voice which mark the aristocracy of servitude. My employer’s confidence in him must be immense, for while he watched over me I was practically in his power.
“Have you been long with the Duke, Grooton?” I asked him.
“Twenty-one years, sir. I left his Grace to go to Lord Chelsford, who found me some work in London.”
“Secret service work, wasn’t it, Grooton?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Interesting?”
“Some parts of it very interesting, sir.”
I nodded and drank my coffee. Grooton was watching me with an air of respectful interest.
“You will pardon my remarking it, sir, but I hope you will try and get some sleep during the day. You are very pale this morning, sir.”
I looked at the glass, and was startled at my own reflection. This was only my third day, and the responsibilities of my work were heavy upon me. My cheeks were sunken and there were black rings around my eyes.
“I will lie down when I come back, Grooton,” I answered.
Outside, the fresh morning wind came like a sudden sweet tonic to my jaded nerves. I paused for a moment to face bareheaded the rush of it from the sea. As I stood there, drinking it in, I became suddenly aware of light approaching footsteps. Some one was coming towards the cottage from the Park.
I did not immediately turn my head, but every nerve in my body seemed to stiffen into quivering curiosity.
The pathway was a private one leading from the house only to the “Brand,” and down the cliff to Braster. It was barely seven o’clock, and the footsteps were no labouring man’s. I think that I knew very well who it was that came so softly down the cone-strewn path.
We faced one another with little of the mask of surprise. She came like a shadow, flitting between the slender tree trunks out into the sunshine, where for a moment she seemed wan and white. Her dark eyes flashed a greeting at me. I stood cap in hand before her. It was the first time we had met since I had taken up my abode at the “Brand.”
“Good-morning, Mr. Ducaine,” she said. “You need not look at me as though I were a ghost. I always walk before breakfast in the country.”
“There is no better time,” I answered.
“You look as though you had been up all night,” she remarked.
“I had work to finish,” I told her.
She nodded.
“So you would have none of my advice, Mr. Secretary,” she said softly, coming a little nearer to me. “You are already installed.”
“Already at work,” I asserted.
She glanced towards the “Brand.”
“I hope that you are comfortable,” she said. “A couple of hours is short notice in which to make a place habitable.”
“Grooton is a magician,” I told her. “He has arranged everything.”
“He is a wonderful servant,” she said thoughtfully.
A white-winged bird floated over our heads and drifted away skywards. She followed it with her eyes.
“You wonder at seeing me so early,” she murmured. “Don’t you think that it is worth while? Nothing ever seems so sweet as this first morning breeze.”
I bowed gravely. She was standing bareheaded now at the edge of the cliff, watching the flight of the bird. It was delightful to see the faint pink come back to her cheeks with the sting of the salt wind. Nevertheless, I had an idea in my mind that it was not wholly for her health’s sake that Lady Angela walked abroad so early.
“Tell me,” she said presently, “have you had a visitor this morning?”
“What, at this hour?” I exclaimed.
“There are other early risers besides you and me,” she said. “The spinney gate was open, so some one has passed through.”
I shook my head.
“I have not seen or heard a soul,” I told her. “I have just finished some work, and I am on my way up to the house with it.”
“You really mean it?” she persisted.
“Of course I do,” I answered her. “Grooton is the only person I have spoken to for at least nine hours. Why do you ask?”
She hesitated.
“My window looks this way,” she said, “and I fancied that I saw some one cross the Park while I was dressing. The spinney gate was certainly open.”
“Then I fancy that it has been open all night,” I declared, “for to the best of my belief no one has passed through it save yourself. May I walk with you back to the house, Lady Angela? There is something which I should very much like to ask you.”
She replaced her hat, which she had been carrying in her hand. I stood watching her deft white fingers flashing amongst the thick silky coils of her hair. The extreme slimness of her figure seemed accentuated by her backward poise. Yet perhaps I had never before properly appreciated its perfect gracefulness.
“I was going farther along the cliffs,” she said, “but I will walk some of the way back with you. One minute.”
She stood on the extreme edge, and, shading her eyes with her hand, she looked up and down the broad expanse of sand—a great untenanted wilderness. I wondered for whom or what she was looking, but I asked no question. In a few moments she rejoined me, and we turned inland.
“Well,” she said, “what is it that you wish to say?”
“Lady Angela,” I began, “a few weeks ago there was no one whose prospects were less hopeful than mine. Thanks to your father and Colonel Ray all that is changed. To-day I have a position I am proud of, and important work. Yet I cannot help always remembering this: I am holding a post which you warned me against accepting.”
“Well?”
“I am very curious,” I said. “I have never understood your warning. I believe that you were in earnest. Was it that you believed me incapable or untrustworthy, or—”
“You appear to me,” she murmured, “to be rather a curious person.”
I bent forward and looked into her face. There was in her wonderful eyes a glint of laughter which became her well. She walked with slow graceful ease, her hands behind her, her head almost on a level with my own. I found myself studying her with a new pleasure. Then our eyes met, and I looked away, momentarily confused. Was it my fancy, or was there a certain measure of rebuke in her cool surprise, a faint indication of her desire that I should remember that she was the Lady Angela Harberly, and I her father’s secretary? I bit my lip. She should not catch me offending again, I determined.
“You must forgive me,” I said stiffly, “but your warning seemed a little singular. If you do not choose to gratify my curiosity, it is of no consequence.”
“Since you disregarded it,” she remarked, lifting her dress from the dew-laden grass
on to which we had emerged, “it does not matter, does it? Only you are very young, and you know little of the world. Lord Ronald was your predecessor, and he is in a lunatic asylum. No one knows what lies behind certain unfortunate things which have happened during the last months. There is a mystery which is as yet unsolved.”
I smiled.
“In your heart you are thinking,” I said, “that such an unsophisticated person as myself will be an easy prey to whatever snares may be laid for me. Is it not so?”
She looked at me with uplifted eyebrows.
“Others of more experience have been worsted,” she remarked calmly. “Why not you?”
“If that is a serious question,” I said, “I will answer it. Perhaps my very inexperience will be my best friend.”
“Yes?”
“Those before me,” I continued, “have thought that they knew whom to trust. I, knowing no one, shall trust no one.”
“Not even me?” she asked, half turning her head towards me.
“Not even you,” I answered firmly.
A man’s figure suddenly appeared on the left. I looked at him puzzled, wondering whence he had come.
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