CHAPTER XXI.
When Amos Goodhare entered the little sitting-room, Deborah was sitting on a sofa, so far back in the black shadow that she knew it was impossible for him to see her. But Lord St. Austell was sitting so far forward in the arm-chair that the faint glow of the little fire shone upon him. Nevertheless, Amos behaved exactly as if he saw no one.
The window was to the left of the door, and only four or five steps from it. He crossed the narrow space with a very soft tread, and throwing open the window, which he did quickly, but without the least noise, descended on the stone flags outside, and, turning to the right, disappeared quickly in the darkness.
Lord St. Austell sprang up from his seat, ran to the window, and strained his eyes to follow him. He had his hand on the sill to jump out after him, when he felt Deborah’s touch upon his sleeve.
“Lord St. Austell,” she whispered, “don’t on any account follow that man alone. He is dangerous.”
The earl turned impatiently. He was at all times physically fearless.
“My dear girl, don’t be alarmed, these men have nothing to fear and everything to hope from me. By this time they must have found it practically impossible to dispose of the stolen property, and must be in hourly dread of the police. Now, I can hush up the whole affair if they will restore the jewels.”
Deborah was still holding his sleeve with no uncertain grip, and she spoke in a low but very decided tone:
“It is not that, but Amos Goodhare has a grudge against you, I am sure of it.”
“No reasonable one, I assure you.”
By this time the girl was clinging to both his arms, almost struggling with him to prevent his carrying out his purpose.
“What does that matter,” she cried, vehemently. “Was a prejudice ever the weaker for being unreasonable? I tell you he saw you and pretended not to, in order to lure you to follow him. You don’t know where he’s gone, and what accomplices he may have waiting in that nest of dirty courts and passages out there. Get police assistance before you try to find him.”
“Confound the girl!” muttered Lord St. Austell savagely, as at last, not without the exercise of something like violence, he got partially free from her clinging hands. “You’ve made me miss him!”
Deborah let him go at once, with an exclamation of relief.
“That’s all right!”
He had already got half out of the window, when suddenly he drew back and came to her. She was sitting by the table leaning her head on her hand.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Audaer,” said he, most contritely with the ring of sincere feeling in his voice, as he felt in the obscurity for her hand, which she gave him at once. It was cold and trembling. “My dear girl, I hope I have not hurt you—for heaven’s sake, tell me I have not!” he cried with much concern.
“No, you have not,” she answered in a hoarse and broken voice. “But I am beginning to feel what you feel—that some dreadful thing is going to happen—that that man’s presence brings harm.”
“Well, I choose to think that your presence counteracts it, for you are a good, brave girl. Now, child, I want you to wait here for me, and if Rees should come, use your influence with him. I am going to use mine with Amos.”
“You are—really?”
“Really. Good-bye for the present.”
Deborah was in so excited a state that even the haste with which he added those last three words, “for the present,” seemed to her portentous. She listened with straining ears to the last sound of his footsteps as he trod the uneven stones in the direction Amos had taken.
As in the case of most “presentiments,” Lord St. Austell’s vague foreboding was the result chiefly of very clear and distinct knowledge. He knew very well that his personator at the Tower on the previous day could be no other than Amos Goodhare, between whom and himself there had alway existed a dislike, all the stronger for having been most decently veiled. There was a likeness in the temperament and disposition of the two men as marked as their outward resemblance to each other, and this likeness accentuated their difference of social position, and so increased the mistrust of the one, and the hatred of the other. What treatment, then, could the earl hope to receive at the hands of a man who hated him, who had just proved himself to be an audacious and unprincipled scoundrel, and who held all the cards in his own hands. Lord St. Austell had not the least fear of personal violence; in his younger days he had proved a brave and a lucky soldier, and he would have felt reassured rather than alarmed if he had thought that the matter would be decided by any sort of physical encounter. What he feared was that Goodhare would absolutely refuse to come to terms, would stubbornly affect ignorance of the whole affair, in which case the career of his brother Charles, keeper of the regalia, would be ruined.
As he picked his way over the stones, under the eaves of the outer buildings which had grown up between the old houses, with the raindrops dripping down upon him, and his feet slipping from time to time, with a little splash, into the pools and rivulets in the uneven pavement, he debated which price he should have to pay for the information he wanted.
But he never came near the true one.
He was brought to a standstill, in the midst of his cogitations, by a low brick wall. He was a tall man and he could see over it. He saw the backs of the deserted houses on the left, and a passage running behind them. At the back door of the fourth house a man was standing, who came forward quickly, peering into the darkness. When he was close to the wall he said:
“I beg your pardon. Can you oblige me with a light?”
“Certainly, Amos.”
“Your lordship! Is it possible? What can you be doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“For me! You do me too much honor. But what am I to do? I feel at present rather under a cloud, and, to confess the whole truth, I am in hiding from the police. You know, your lordship, since you threw me over, I have always been an unlucky man.”
He spoke in his old tone of almost fawning respect, and his last words conveyed a reproach uttered with tender melancholy. Lord St. Austell’s hopes rose.
“Perhaps I can get you out of the police difficulty, Amos, and perhaps you can help me in return,” he said in the low voice in which their colloquy had been conducted from the beginning. “Can’t you take me somewhere where we can talk. I’m standing with my feet in a pool of water, and with more of the same exhilarating liquid meandering down my back from a broken waterspout over my head.”
“Well, I really don’t know what to do,” said Amos, in apparent confusion. “I’ve a wretched den on this side of the wall where I hide myself, but it’s not the sort of place I could take your lordship into.”
“But I give you my word my lordship would prefer anything to his present position.”
With a shamefaced effort, Amos apparently made up his mind.
“Come then, my lord, if you will. At any rate, you’ll see what straits I’m reduced to.”
Something in the man’s tone rang false, and Lord St. Austell noticed it. But he did not hesitate. There were notches in the wall which would have made the climbing an easy matter to a less athletic man than he still was, and although he remarked good-humoredly that he had hoped his climbing days were over, he got over without the least difficulty, and followed Amos up the passage.
“Dreary hole this,” he exclaimed, glancing up at the deserted houses with their blank, nailed-up windows, and at the cold reflection of a distant gaslamp on the wet pavement at the other end of the passage. Big drops of rain-water splashed down from the broken roofs, and little streams trickled into the passage from bent and rusty water-pipes. “But I should have thought these deserted houses would be just the sort of place the police would keep an eye on.”
“I believe they think they are too obviously suitable a hiding-place, and that the fear of a chance inspection would keep poor vagabonds away. I have had an occasional rattle at my shutters from a passing bobby when I have been keeping close, but I have never been disturbed in any other way.”
Amos was standing by the door of the fourth house. Bending down, he drew away the lower part of the boarding with which it was nailed up. “I’m afraid your lordship will have to stoop,” said he.
As Lord St. Austell instantly bent down to creep through the opening, the face of the other man underwent a sudden change. His features became convulsed with fury, and he drew up his right arm as if the impulse to take advantage of his companion’s stooping position was irresistible. The next moment he had controlled himself, and following the earl into the house, he drew up the boards behind them.
It was quite dark inside the passage of the house.
“You go first, Amos,” said Lord St. Austell; and he leaned back against the wall for Goodhare to pass him.
“You don’t mind going down a floor lower, do you, my lord? I daren’t strike a light till we get below the street level.”
“Do you take refuge in the cellar then?”
“Your lordship will allow that it is better than a police cell. This way. Shall I go first? Mind how you come. It’s only a ladder.”
Lord St. Austell followed without hesitation, but he was not so dull as to ignore the fact that his errand was becoming more dangerous than he had expected. He followed to the first cellar, to which a faint light penetrated through a grating below what had once been the shop window. Goodhare, after listening for a few moments to be sure that no tread of a passer-by was audible on the stone pavement outside, pushed open a door on the right and climbed down into a lower cellar which was as much overheated as the upper one was too cold. The ruddy glow of a fire was seen at once on floor and ceiling, and a gust of air hot as the breath of a furnace, seemed almost to sear the wet, cold faces of the two men as they entered.
“Good heavens! I shall never be able to stay down here,” exclaimed the earl, stepping back from the huge square iron grate, like the cage of an ancient beacon, which stood in the middle of the floor, and in which blazed an enormous fire.
“Oh, you will manage it as long as I want to keep you,” said Amos, quietly.
He drew the door close and made it fast with a rough bolt, while Lord St. Austell examined the cellar in which he found himself, which Amos not inaptly termed a den.
There was no boarding on the floor, nothing but the rough earth. The walls were only bricked in about half-way down, as if the cellar had been dug out after the house was built. A piece of sacking on the floor, two benches, a dirty sofa, and deal table covered with tools and lumber, formed all the furniture. The earl looked attentively at a huge melting-pot which stood before the fire.
“That,” said Goodhare, “was what the gold crowns from the Tower were melted in.”
The coolness with which he said this caused Lord St. Austell to look round at his companion. He was startled by the change in him. Instead of the stooping, lean librarian, with the shabby coat and cringing manner, he saw a well-dressed, dignified man, with trim grey beard—the counterpart of himself. One great difference there was between them, one only. The earl’s eyes looked out upon the world with the cynical and languid interest of a man who has tasted and tired of every human pleasure; those of his companion glowed with the ferocity of a wild beast interrupted in a meal of human flesh.
“Why, Amos, rascality seems to agree with you!” exclaimed St. Lord Austell.
Goodhare laughed harshly.
“Rascality is perhaps too strong a word, as your lordship will perhaps allow when I point out one particular feature of the transactions in which I have lately been engaged. I began, as perhaps you have not yet heard, by taking a little sum that was lying idle on your lordship’s property at Carstow. It was in old-fashioned gold, but I managed, with some difficulty, to get it converted into the current coin of to-day.”
The two men were standing one on either side of the blazing fire which shot up golden flames and threw a lurid brightness on both faces. There was no other light in the cellar.
Lord St. Austell perceived now that he was in a trap, but no one could have guessed his thoughts from the stolidly calm expression of his face.
“Yes,” he said, very quietly. “It is the first I had heard of it. Go on.”
“When that little provision was exhausted, I took to the calling of gentlemanly footpad. Before you condemn me, if you look back on the street robberies of the past winter, you will do me the justice to remember that the first was committed on your own person and the rest on those of your intimate friends.”
“I don’t see how that excuses you.”
“I will make it clear to your lordship by-and-bye. Last of all, when my funds had sunk so low that it needed a bold stroke to restore them, I helped myself, with the aid of my friends, to part of the jewels kept in the tower, of which your brother is custodian. Do you see the connection?”
“Of course I see that you seem to have had me always for choice as the victim of your malpractices.”
“And you cannot yet see why, my lord?” asked Goodhare, with a panting ferocity which he scarcely now took the trouble to veil.
“No. Except that you are a d——d ungrateful beast, biting by preference the hand that fed you.”
“Could your lordship give me a list of your benefactions to me?” asked Goodhare, glaring across at him over the smoke and flame of the fire.
“Well I gave you the post of librarian at Llancader, until I found you taking advantage of the position to rob me of MSS., which, as I see, you knew how to use.”
“And did I not earn my pay? Was I idle, drunken, dissolute?”
“Certainly not. You were an ideal librarian, and I respected you for it.”
“Respected me for repressing every instinct of my nature, every passion which you were freely indulging! I should think so.”
“Our positions were not the same: I could not alter that fact.”
“Did you do all for me that my father—and yours—on his death-bed desired that you should do?”
The earl looked uneasy.
“I did all that a man is ever expected to for an illegitimate half-brother,” said he evasively. “If I had been a Quixote I couldn’t have given up my title to you. The law would not allow it.”
“But you could have given up Llancader, as my father, when he was dying, told me you would do.”
The earl flushed a little.
“He should have made that provision by will if he wished it attended to. I could not be expected to dismember the property. I am not a rich man, as you know. For my position I’m a poor one. I never have a thousand pounds to spend as I choose.”
“Not when your wines and women have all been paid for, I dare say.”
“Why sneer? I never knew you cared for those things. You were always for books, books. And a studious man is supposed to be virtuous.”
“Why? Is every thought holy that is printed and bound up in morocco? Through your father’s dishonesty to my mother and yours to me, I have had to pass the best years of my life in revelry of the imagination only. And so I whetted an appetite for pleasure which I have only just begun to satisfy as yours is exhausted.”
The earl felt for the first time in his life an impulse of fear; there was something scarcely human, something ghoulish, in the face before him. The eyes seemed to shoot flames through the fire-smoke.
“I am getting tedious, my lord,” continued Goodhare, with mock respect, after a short pause, during which the two men watched each other warily. “Let us sum up the situation. Your father and mine, an unmarried man, deceived my mother, a country lawyer’s daughter, by a mock marriage. He took her away to North Wales, and kept her there in privacy, on goodness knows what wretched plea. I was their son—his eldest son. She knew who he was; she thought I was his heir. I was fourteen before, in that out-of-the-way place, we learnt that he had married a woman of his own rank. Then the truth came out. My mother was broken-hearted, and did not live through the year. I was brought up a gentleman and left a beggar. Then, with stupendous generosity you gave me office as librarian—to close my mouth. And all your favors you gave to Rees Pennant, whom for that reason I have ruined. And so I lived near enough to hear the vices condoned in you which in me would have been condemned; to see a beautiful girl repulse my honorable advances with as much horror as she did your dishonorable ones. And yet my mother was a better woman than yours, and I am the eldest son.”
“But you are mad! Can I help the law?”
“Can I respect it? Let us be logical. You are the eldest son above ground, in the daylight, by right of the law. I am the eldest son down in the earth, from which I took my birthright. And so here, down in the earth, I take my revenge on the law and on you!”
With a spring he leapt over the iron grate, in which the fire now burnt with a steady red glow. Seizing Lord St. Austell by the throat before the earl had the least intimation of his purpose, Goodhare, with a growling noise like a wild beast, twisted him and flung him down on to the red-hot coals. Before his victim had time for more than one struggle, one shout for help, Amos had torn open his waistcoat, and plunging a large claspknife between his ribs, stabbed him to the heart.
With a sigh of fiendish satisfaction, he threw the body, the clothes of which were in a blaze, on to the floor, and wrapping it tightly in the matting, extinguished the flames. Then, unbolting the door, he dragged the ghastly burden across the rough floor, and lifting it, not without difficulty and with an exclamation of disgust, into the upper cellar, he rolled it into a corner with a series of sharp kicks. Striking a match, he cast one more look, full of a thirsty, savage delight, at the staring eyes and mouth distended with horror; then, turning lightly on his heel, he threw away the match, and taking a bottle carefully from a rough wine-bin which stood in one corner, he climbed down into the inner cellar, took a corkscrew from his pocket, opened the bottle lovingly, and, pouring himself out a tumblerful, drank it off with great enjoyment.