CHAPTER XXV
Now there was upon the face of Mademoiselle Laure, as she followed Mr. Candover and Babs downstairs, with Pamela struggling to get free from the firm grasp of her lean fingers, an expression which betrayed the fact that she feared mischief.
And her alarm was well founded.
Scarcely had Mr. Candover reached the last stair, when a man rushed out from behind the door, where he had evidently been waiting, and barred his passage.
Babs uttered a shrill scream, and her father told her fiercely to hold her tongue.
“Where are you off to, Mr. Candover?” asked the man roughly.
Shaken as he was by the fall from the effects of which he was still suffering, Mr. Candover had been considerably startled by the unexpected appearance of this man; but after a pause of a few seconds he recovered himself, laughed, and leaning back against the wall, said:—
“Gossett! What are you doing here?”
The young man, frowning sullenly, looked for a moment somewhat confused by the question, which was put quite quietly and without apparent discomposure.
“Well, I—I want to have a talk with you. We all do,” he said sullenly, as Pamela, who had pressed forward behind her sister, recognised the man as one of the “friends” who had been waiting at her father’s flat in Victoria Street that morning.
“Certainly. But not here. Didn’t I tell you to be at my flat this morning?”
“Yes. You said twelve o’clock, and we’ve been waiting there ever so long, all of us,” returned Gossett, who appeared to have been drinking. “And then these young ladies came, and they waited. And when they came off after you, we thought we might as well follow them and see where they were coming to. And we’ve run you to earth right enough!”
“Run me to earth!” repeated Mr. Candover, in a tone of extreme astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we mean we want to speak to you—all by ourselves. We will come up.”
“No, you won’t,” answered Mr. Candover quietly, “You’ll meet me at my flat in an hour. I’m going to take these ladies to Charing Cross station to see them off first.”
At that moment Mademoiselle Laure, who had run past them into the street, reappeared, panting, and pointed to a four-wheeled cab which she had brought from the cab-rank which was not many yards away.
“Come, my dears,” said Mr. Candover to his daughters, who were hanging back, and looking up at Audrey, who, with her husband and the young Angmerings, all of whom had run out on hearing the girl’s cry, stood in a group at the head of the staircase, not liking to interfere, but uneasy and anxious.
“Hadn’t we better wait, papa, and come afterwards?” said Pamela. “We’re not ready to go yet.”
But for answer he seized his daughters, one with each hand, and forced them to accompany him as far as the door, where they suddenly found themselves free, and glancing round, saw that that was the result of the appearance, just outside, of two more men, one of whom was Johnson, while the other they recognised as their father’s secretary, Durley Diggs.
Both men looked angry and threatening, and it was undoubtedly the sight of them that made Mr. Candover relax his grasp of his daughters’ arms, and make a dash for the cab-door, which Mademoiselle Laure was holding open.
But just as he reached the step, Gossett, rushing out from the doorway where he had been lingering, caught Mr. Candover’s up-raised foot with his own, and tripping him up, flung him heavily backwards on the pavement.
Even before the usual crowd had gathered round the scene of this outrage, Mademoiselle Laure, with real alarm and concern in her face, was on her knees on the pavement beside her brother, while the two poor girls, shocked and distressed by this attack on their father, hung about him, and did their best to help their aunt to raise him from the ground, which was wet and slippery from recent rain.
While this was taking place, a cab which had been waiting a little way up the street came quickly up, and two gentlemen stepped out of it; while at the same moment three or four policemen in plain clothes ran out of the nearest shops, and arrested not only Gossett but Johnson and Diggs, all of whom appeared more indignant than surprised by this occurrence.
Gossett, indeed, was the only man who made any observation above his breath.
“Game’s up, eh?” he said, with an air of recklessness as the man who had him in charge ended his struggles by clapping a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.
The other two men suffered themselves to be arrested quietly, Diggs in particular laughing, and telling his captor that he had got the wrong man.
“That’s the fellow you should be looking after!” he added, pointing to Mr. Candover who, rendered completely unconscious by this second fall coming so soon after the first, was being placed inside the cab which he had been attempting to enter.
Mademoiselle Laure, speaking English as fluently as any of them, laid a strong hand upon the policeman who was peering into her brother’s face:—
“What are you doing? You can’t touch him,” she said fiercely. “If he’s not dead, he is dying, as you must see.”
“We’ll take him to the hospital, ma’am,” said the policeman. “You can come too.”
A cry from Pamela, faint, miserable, made them both look round:—
“Papa!”
It revealed a world of shocked discovery, an agony of distress, and every man who heard it felt a lump in his throat.
As for Babs, the younger girl, she stood clinging to her sister, white, trembling, without even uttering a cry. But in her eyes there was a look which showed that, if anything, she understood the situation even better than did her elder sister.
Mademoiselle Laure waved her hand rapidly to the girls, and forcing a smile, told them he would be well soon, and that they must go back to Miss Willett and wait for her to write to them. But they did not answer. They stood close together, half inside the doorway they had just left, and looked disconsolately at the cab as it drove away to the hospital, while the policemen made the three men whom they had arrested enter the cab which had just been left vacant by the two strange gentlemen.
These two gentlemen now came across the road, looking sympathetically at the two forlorn young girls.
“Come in, Pamela,” whispered Babs, “come up to Mrs. Angmering. She’ll be kind to us.”
And they withdrew hurriedly through the doorway, and hurrying upstairs, fell upon Audrey, who was holding out her arms to them, and who led them with her, whispering soothing words of comfort, into the deserted showroom.
It was Babs who spoke first of the dreadful thing they had seen.
“Why did they want to kill papa, Mrs. Angmering?” she said in a low voice, nestling close to her, and looking up through her tears. “What has he done?”
“Oh, hush,” said Pamela, the elder and wiser. “Don’t let us ask. I don’t want to know.”
But the younger girl was more inquisitive.
“Do you think,” she said, “that the police only took up the other men for attacking papa?”
“I don’t know anything about it, dear,” said Audrey, “except what you’ve told me, that your father was knocked down and taken to the hospital, and that the other men, the three who wanted to speak to him, including the one who struck him, have been taken into custody.”
But Pamela looked intently into her face.
“Yes, you do know more than that. You know a great deal more,” she said, with depressed conviction. “I noticed the way you looked at him when he came in to take us away. Oh, Mrs. Angmering, what are we going to do? We seem to have neither father nor mother now!”
“We shall have to go back to Miss Willett’s,” sobbed Babs.
Audrey drew both the girls close to her.
“You shall be well taken care of, and you shall not have to go away with your aunt, at any rate,” said she.
And in the shuddering silence with which the girls received this assurance there was evidence enough that they understood vaguely that they had escaped some great danger.
In the meantime the two gentlemen who had got out of the waiting cab in time to witness the arrest of Mr. Candover’s three friends, had followed the two girls into the house and up the stairs, and had been received by Gerard and his cousins, who, standing back for the young girls to go up with Audrey, came forward again, to greet the gentlemen with intense astonishment.
“My father! By Jove!” cried Geoffrey, as Lord Clanfield came up, looking about him uneasily, as if he expected trap-doors to fly open under his feet and secret panels to slide back on each side of him.
“And Mr. Masson!” exclaimed Gerard, as he recognised, in the gentleman who was following close at his uncle’s heels, the solicitor whom Audrey had reported as having received her narrative so coldly.
The two gentlemen had by this time reached the little landing upon which opened the small room where so many exciting interviews had taken place that morning.
Lord Clanfield looked from his nephew to his sons.
“So you’ve been mixing yourselves up in this business! What mischief will you be up to next?” he asked, addressing Edgar, and speaking in a voice which betrayed the agitation which he felt at the unpleasant affair in which he was being forced to take part.
“Well, it’s more surprising still to find you mixed up in it!” retorted Geoffrey from behind his brother. “When there’s a scrape to be got into, you expect to see us on in that scene. And for once we’ve not been so much getting into a scrape ourselves as helping Gerard out of one.”
“Indeed! And what has been your share?” asked his father incredulously.
“Well, I knocked that Candover down when he was going to shoot Gerard,” replied Geoffrey coolly.
And he related the story of that event, while Gerard himself, having heard the news of the arrest of the confederates, stood silently by, waiting for Mr. Masson to speak.
The solicitor’s keen face wore a look which told him that he knew a good deal more than Gerard himself did about the confederacy which had just been broken up.
“I’m afraid your wife thought me very unsympathetic this morning,” said he. “But I had to guard against the chance of any betrayal of my plans. As a matter of fact, I had no sooner heard her story of last night’s pretended arrest of herself than I telephoned to Scotland Yard, and when I made her repeat the tale, she did so in the hearing of one of our cleverest detectives, whose near neighbourhood she never suspected.”
“I suppose you had known something before?” suggested Gerard.
Mr. Masson smiled.
“There’s no harm in letting you know now that a note which was part of the cash given in exchange for one of the forged cheques was traced to—Mr. Candover.”
“Then why was I not told? Or at least my wife?” asked Gerard indignantly.
“I’ll tell you. Certain facts were discovered which seemed to point to the existence of a strong criminal confederacy, and it was thought wiser to wait and mature plans for seizing the whole of the participators, than, by hastening matters, to run the risk of losing some of our birds. Do you see?”
“But it was hard upon me, upon us! You must have found out that I was innocent.”
“Well, your uncle was consulted, and the authorities decided to make your illness a pretext for giving you your liberty, reserving the whole truth till a convenient season. In the meantime the police were hard at work in various ways, but it was not till this morning that they were able to get hold of the four principals at once.”
“Who are they?”
“The chief of the gang, Reynolds or Candover, and the three men who call themselves Diggs, Johnson and Gossett. It was your recognition of Gossett last night, when he came here disguised, not expecting to meet you, and knew that you suspected him, which upset all their plans, I think. At any rate, Candover, who was of course informed of the fact, seems to have made up his mind that the case was desperate, or he would never have attempted to shoot you. And his three accomplices must have made up their minds that the game was up, for they waited for him at his flat, and then came on here, evidently with the idea that he was going to leave them in the lurch.”
Gerard was silent for a few moments. Then he said suddenly, in a hoarse voice:—
“My wife! I must tell my wife!”
And he was running up the short flight of stairs towards the showroom, when he caught sight of the three pathetic figures, Audrey sitting on a large settee, with one of the girls on each side of her.
He stopped short, and turned hesitatingly to his uncle.
“Those two poor girls!” whispered he.
“Who are they?” asked Lord Clanfield, who had seen the two pretty young creatures, but in the excitement had failed to find out who they were.
“His daughters, Candover’s daughters!”
The viscount’s kind face softened sympathetically.
“Dear, dear! Poor things, poor things!” he muttered in reply. “Something must be done for them! Something must be done!”
Gerard went up to the showroom shyly, with a subdued manner, and his uncle followed. The girls looked down and reddened uncomfortably, feeling, poor lassies, all the awkwardness of their position, and unable to keep back their tears.
“Mrs. Angmering,” said Lord Clanfield, taking her hand, as she rose to greet him, and looking kindly into her face, “I’m afraid you’ve had a very hard time of trouble and distress of mind to go through, and I’m heartily sorry I didn’t know earlier what I feel sure of now. You must come back with me at once, with me and Gerard.”
Audrey, grateful, tearful, pressed his hand warmly, but shook her head:—
“You’re very, very kind. But I think I’d rather—now—take these girls with me somewhere, and arrange for their seeing their mother, who’s longing to have them with her again,” said she.
Lord Clanfield beamed upon the two poor lassies, and held out his hand to Pamela.
“Let them come with us too,” he said. “And write to their mother and tell them where they are. We shall be delighted to see her whenever she can come.”
“And we’ll come down with you too, to help to entertain the ladies,” suddenly cried Geoffrey from the rear.
The violently startled manner in which Lord Clanfield turned on hearing his son’s voice behind him made them all smile, and afforded a welcome relief to the tension of feeling from which they were suffering.
Five minutes later they were all trooping downstairs and out of the house on their way to the station; and at the same time a couple of police-officers came quietly up to take possession of the premises.