CHAPTER X.
Quitting the presence of Mr. Trackem and Lord Westray, Léonie has hurried to her bedroom, from which the former personage had so unceremoniously summoned her. The bedroom in question is small and plainly furnished. A scant, square piece of carpet covers the middle of the floor. There are two chairs in the room, a tiny iron bedstead, a washhand-stand, and a large wardrobe. This latter article takes up an ungenerous share of the space which the little room affords, but it is evidently an article of some importance, for Léonie goes straight to it and throws it open, displaying to view some half-a-dozen shelves, upon which a number of suits of clothes of varied and multifarious shapes, are neatly arranged.
After scrutinising them for a few minutes Léonie selects a strong dark-coloured pair of riding breeches, gaiters to match, and a loose jacket and waistcoat of the same material, which she lays on the bed. To these are quickly added a grey flannel shirt and a complete silk under riding suit. She then proceeds with her toilet, and when dressed looks every inch a comely lad of some seventeen summers, smart, neat, and natty.
Her next act is to pack a small saddle portmanteau with a change of underclothing, toilet and washing articles, which completes the outfit of Mr. Trackem’s youthful detective; for Léonie, though a slave, is not unmindful of her personal appearance. She knows she is pretty, and likes to look so, a vanity for which the looking-glass is largely responsible. A small oil lamp burns fitfully in one corner of the room. She fills a tiny kettle with water, and placing it on a miniature stand, sets it to heat above the flame. Then she makes her bed, and tidies up her room with business-like alacrity, and as the kettle begins to hiss, she takes from the chimney-piece a cup and saucer, a small tin of preserved coffee and milk, and a spoon. In a few minutes this Bohemian girl has mixed herself a steaming cupful of the beverage, and abstracting a couple of biscuits from a small paper parcel also on the chimney-piece, proceeds to enjoy her somewhat camp-like meal.
But she wastes no time over it. Léonie is essentially a business-like person. She has settled in her mind the exact hour at which she must set out, and she knows she has not many minutes to spare.
In effect, grey dawn is beginning to streak the murky sky with light. She can hear a distant tower clock chiming the hour of five, and she sets down her cup on a chair close by and takes up the little portmanteau. “Time I started,” she mutters to herself, as she cons in her mind Mr. Trackem’s instructions. Léonie is a most perfectly disciplined young lady; she has thoroughly learnt the lesson of obedience. It has never entered her head to disregard or evade her master’s commands. Mr. Trackem has certainly succeeded in teaching her to take a pride in her work, and in training her to a faithful discharge of duty. He has reason to congratulate himself, and to boast that this girl slave has never failed him yet.
She passes along the passage leading to the staircase, and descends this latter noiselessly. All is silent throughout the house as she lets herself out of the front door and closes it softly behind her. Then she sets off at a smart walk along the Crescent, and gaining a side street turns down it.
The street in question is more or less a mews, but as yet there are very few signs of life within it. Léonie, however, seems quite at home in this place, for she walks down it unhesitatingly, until at length she comes to a halt opposite a stable door.
Drawing a key from her pocket she unlocks this door and lets herself in. There are some half-a-dozen horses tied up in an equal number of stalls, and they greet her with neighs and a good deal of grunting and stamping about. A rough shaggy-looking dog, with the coat and body of a stag-hound, and the head and drooping ears of a bloodhound, rises from a bed of hay in the corner of the stable, and comes up to her with wagging tail and a doggy smile on his rough and shaggy face. She pats him kindly. “Come on, Nero,” she says at the same time; “I shall want you.” Then she goes to the corn bin and measures into the sieve a feed of oats, which she takes over to a bay horse at the far end of the stable. This produces a loud protest from the remaining five animals, which to any one acquainted with horse language is unmistakable.
Perhaps there is a kind corner in Léonie’s heart. Maybe it is only to secure quiet. Who knows? But she fills up the sieve brimful once more, and divides the oats amongst the five protesting animals. At any rate, it gives them contentment for a while, judging by the crunching and munching that goes on.
A little harness-room adjoins the stable, and Léonie dives into this, and unearths a neat light man’s saddle with grey girths and a pair of bright small steels. The saddle is quickly girthed on to the bay horse, and then a plain double snaffle is produced from the same quarter to be slipped in the animal’s mouth directly he has finished his meal. Léonie is anxious to be off before the stable men come in, which will be about six o’clock.
Consulting her watch, she sees it is nigh on half-past five. As the clock chimes that hour the girl leads the horse out into the mews, followed by Nero. Closing the stable door and locking it, she turns to her steed, and gathering the reins in her left hand puts her foot in the stirrup, and swings herself lightly on to his back.
“Come on, Nero,” she calls again to the dog as she puts her horse into a trot and leaves the mews behind her.
Her course is taken for Waterloo Station. None whose gaze fall upon her as she rides through the awakening streets, followed by her shaggy companion, would take her for what she is, a female detective in the employ of Mr. Trackem. But then a well-got-up detective ought to be unrecognisable, and Léonie, the handsome, gentlemanly youth to all appearance, is well got up.
On reaching Waterloo, Léonie sees to the boxing of her horse and dog. She elects, too, to travel with them in the horse-box as far as Bracknell, which place is reached at nine o’clock. Here the horse-box is run into a siding.
Léonie loses no time, for she knows that every moment is precious. She sees to the unboxing of the horse, and before remounting him slips a shilling into the porter’s hand.
“How far is ‘The Hut’ from here?” she inquires as she does so.
“What, the Duke of Ravensdale’s Hut, sir? Oh, nigh on two miles. But there’s no one there, sir. It’s shut up; there’s only the forrester and his wife.”
“Just, the persons I want to see. You mean of course——, there now, the name has quite slipped me,” exclaimed Léonie, with well-feigned appearance of annoyance at the name having just that moment escaped her memory.
“Why, Miles Gripper, old Miles Gripper and his wife, sir,” puts in the porter, eager to supply the young gentleman’s defective memory. “They are well known to the country round, sir.”
“Of course, of course; how stupid of me to forget!” answers Léonie briskly. “Well, now, my man, just tell me how I must frame for ‘The Hut.’”
“Just cross that there bridge, sir,” explains the porter, pointing upwards, “and bear away down to the right. Keep straight on that road, sir, till you can’t go no further; there you’ll see a road going left and right. Take the right turn, sir, and after that the next right turn what ever is, and then stick to that road, and never mind any turns that you see, until you come to two cross-roads, the left one with a signboard directing to Aldershot. Don’t you go taking either of those two turns, sir, but ride on another fifty yards, and you’ll see a small wooden gate on the left. That leads to ‘The Hut’. It’s away in the forest.”
“Thank you, my man,” says Léonie politely. “I think I understand. I go up over that, bridge, bear to the right, keep straight on till I must turn right or left, then take the right turn, and the very next that is, ride straight on until I reach the cross-roads, then about fifty yards further, where a gate on the left leads up to ‘The Hut.’ Is that it?
“Exact, sir. You couldn’t have it more exact, sir. If you follow those directions you can’t mistake,” answers the porter glibly. The shilling and the young gentleman’s whole appearance has impressed him.
“Well, good-morning, my man, and many thanks,” says Léonie, as she begins to move her horse away. She is surprised when the next moment the porter comes up alongside her.
“Beg pardon, sir, no offence, sir, but be you a friend of the duke?”
Léonie is perplexed, but she answers evasively, “What do you want to know that for, my man?”
“Because,” answers the honest fellow with an eager look in his eyes, “because, sir, I’ve been reading all about how the Government is a-hunting of him and that great man Mr. Hector D’Estrange. Least they say Mr. D’Estrange is a woman. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I don’t see what it matters whether Mr. D’Estrange is a man or a woman, sir. He’s the people’s friend, sir; he wants to help us poor folk. There is no humbug about him, sir, and we love him for that, we do. If you know them, can you tell me if they are safe, sir? Forgive a poor fellow asking this, sir—but oh! I’d die for them, I would, sir!”
The blood rushes to Léonie’s face. What is it that brings it there? Perhaps a vague, undefined feeling of shame that she should be bent on an errand so degrading with the true words of the honest working man ringing in her ears.
“Yes, they are safe,” she says hurriedly. “Here, take this, my man.”
She throws him another shilling, and as he stoops to pick it up, she puts her horse into a quick trot, and widens the distance between herself and her interlocutor. What does Léonie know of goodness, gratitude, or any high and noble virtue? In that young, cold, calculating heart of hers, what room is there for devotion or love? She wonders, as she rides along, why that man’s words brought that flush to her face, and what that strange feeling was that made her heart beat and her pulse throb. She puts it down to a fear that her object and mission might be recognised.
“I’m getting nervous, I believe,” she laughs to herself. “That will never do. Mr. Trackem has always told me to be cool and self-possessed. What a fool I was to let that man see he had flustered me! Léonie, you are an idiot!”
She tightens her horse’s rein, and just touches him lightly with her heels as she speaks, and the animal breaks into a canter. Nero gallops happily by her side. The dog is enjoying his outing in the country. Two miles at this pace is quickly got over, but Léonie draws rein as she reaches the cross-roads. To the left stands a signboard, and “Aldershot” is written on it.
“Fifty yards further on,” mutters the girl as she trots forward. The porter’s directions are very exact; the wooden gate is before her.
She rides through it, and enters a narrow carriage drive, closed in on both sides by tall pine-trees. Thick rhododendron bushes fill up a few open spaces here and there. The little road is steep and precipitous, leading sharply upwards. Léonie throws the reins on her horse’s neck and gives him his head. She has no fear that her four-footed friend will stumble. Horse and rider know each other well.
Suddenly, however, she picks up the reins and urges him forward. A sudden thought has struck Léonie. She must not be caught napping. The time has come to employ her detective wiles, and she acts on the impulse that has seized her. Such a pace up such an incline is naturally trying to her steed. Thus, when rounding a sharp turn in the forest road she comes into full view of ‘The Hut,’ her animal’s sides are heaving pretty freely, and he is decidedly blowing.
She brings him up to the little front entrance at the same pace, and reins him up abruptly. In another moment she has pealed the bell.
She can hear a slight scuttling inside, and voices whispering, which causes a delay not at all in keeping with her plans, so she peals the bell again.
Then steps come rapidly forward, and an elderly man in a dark green cord suit and brass buttons opens the door.
“I have a message for the Duke of Ravensdale,” exclaims Léonie in a low, confidential voice. “You are Miles Gripper, are you not? Ask his Grace if I can see him. It is of the utmost importance, admitting of no delay.”
Miles Gripper scratches his silver head and looks perplexed. He is a faithful servant and an honest one. His instructions have keen most specific. He has been told to feign absolute ignorance of the duke’s movements or whereabouts, though he knows them well. But Léonie’s words have staggered him.
“Gracious!” he ejaculates. “But his Grace is not here, sir.”
“Not here!” gasps Léonie, with well-feigned dismay. “Good God! what is to be done?”
“Is his Grace in danger?” blurts out the forrester tremulously. “Oh, sir! what is it?”
“Danger!” echoes Léonie. “I should just think so. Look here, my man, I have come post-haste from London to see him. He must be warned, or both he and Gloria de Lara will be in custody before the day is down. Can I trust you to take his Grace a message? I was told you were a faithful and trustworthy servant of his.”
Miles Gripper is completely taken in. His honest heart bounds with loyalty at Léonie’s words.
“Ah, sir! and that’s just true. His Grace has no one more devoted than old Miles Gripper. I’d give my life for his Grace, I would. But, God forgive me, how can I take your message, sir, in time? He’s far from here by now.”
“What! far from here?” again gasps Léonie; “but not out of riding distance, surely? Tell me where he is, and, tired as my horse is, I’ll do all that is in human power to reach him. God grant I may not be too late!”
What does Léonie know of God? Still less does she care about Him. God, to Léonie, is an expression, a forcible expression, and no more. The expression serves her well on this occasion, however. Miles Gripper’s honest heart is no match for detective acting. Believing that he is serving the duke, he passes the secret, which he was bidden to keep, into the care of this apparently devoted and self-sacrificing adherent of his master.
“And drat ye for a big-headed fool, when his Grace express forbade ye say aught of his whereabouts save to the Lady Flora,” Léonie hears a sharp, angry woman’s voice exclaiming. But she waits to hear no more. She is on her horse, and trotting quickly down the hill with the secret she had been puzzling her brains how to win, safe in her keeping. Small wonder at Dame Gripper’s ire.
“Come on, Nero, laddie,” laughs the girl detective. “I thought I should want you, doggie, but I can do without you now. However, come along.”
She rides back to the cross-roads and the signboard. On one of this latter’s arms is printed “Marlow.”
“That’s it,” she mutters to herself, as she turns her horse’s head into the long straight road, which, girt on either side by tall dark trees, stretches far as the eye can reach. “I’m safe on the track now, I am.”
Léonie is happy. One of the most difficult obstacles in her path has been lightly cleared, and quite unexpectedly too. Yes, she is happy, if it be possible for one so hard and callous to be so. Perhaps the dawn of a better day is coming for this child of an unholy love. As she rides along in the bright spring morning however, with her rough dog galloping by her side, she has no higher aim in life than to carry out successfully the “little job” which Mr. Trackem has confided to her care.
END OF BOOK II.
