No wonder that he stood and mused. Once more the aspect of life had changed for him. He was back in that position from which the advent of the unknown cousin had ousted him so easily—the cousin who had come, had seen, and had conquered the one thing needful—the confidence and help of Uncle Rad.
By what means he had succeeded in doing that had been the great mystery which had racked Luke's mind ever since he felt his uncle's affection slipping away from him.
Uncle Rad who had loudly denounced the man as an impostor and a blackmailer before he set eyes on him, was ready to give him love and confidence the moment he saw him: and Luke was discarded like an old coat that no longer fitted. The affection of years was turned to indifference; and what meant more still the habits of a lifetime were changed. Lord Radclyffe, tyrannical and didactic, became a nonentity in his own household. The grand seigneur, imbued with every instinct of luxury and refinement, became a snuffy old hermit, uncared for, not properly waited on, feeding badly, and living in one room.
All this Philip de Mountford had accomplished entirely by his mere presence. The waving of a wand—a devil's wand—and the metamorphosis was complete! What magic was there in the man himself? What in the tale which he told? What subtle charm did he wield, that the news of his terrible death should strike the old man down as some withered old tree robbed of its support?
Now he lay dead, murdered, only God knew as yet by whom. People suspected Luke, because Fate had given a fresh turn to her wheel and reinstated him in the pleasing position from which the intruder had ousted him.
Luke de Mountford was once more heir presumptive to the earldom of Radclyffe, and the stranger had taken the secret of his success with him to the grave.
CHAPTER XVIII
IT WOULD NOT DO, YOU KNOW
Since Lord Radclyffe was too ill to attend to anything, or to see any one, it devolved upon Luke to make what arrangements he thought fitting for the lying in state and the subsequent obsequies of the murdered man. For the present, Philip de Mountford lay in the gloomy mortuary chamber of the Victoria police court. Luke had sent over massive silver candelabra, flowers and palms and all the paraphernalia pertaining to luxurious death.
The dead man lay—not neglected—only unwatched and alone, surrounded by all the evidences of that wealth which he had come a very long way to seek, but which Fate and a murderer's hand had snatched with appalling suddenness from him.