“You are a precious fool, Master Barnard, and you have paid for your folly, or you had been here before this.”
Such were his uttered thoughts, but it cost him little regret as he spoke them.
The steam-boat that left Constance for Lindau was just getting under weigh as he reached the lake, and he immediately embarked in her, and on the same evening, gained Austrian territory at Bregenz, to pass the night For a day or two, the quietness of this lone and little-visited spot suited him, and it was near enough to the Swiss frontier, at the Rhine, to get news from Switzerland. On the third day, a paragraph in the Basle Zeitung told him everything. It was, as such things usually are, totally misrepresented, but there was enough revealed for him to guess what had occurred. It was headed “Terrible Event,” and ran thus:
“At a meeting which took place with pistols, this morning,
between two English lords at the White Meadows, one fell so
fatally wounded that his death ensued in a few minutes. An
instantaneous cry of foul play amongst his friends led to a
fierce and angry altercation, which ended in a second
encounter between the first principal and the second of the
deceased. In this the former was shot through the throat,
the bullet injuring several large vessels, and lodging, it
is supposed, in the spine. He has been conveyed to the Hôtel
Royal, but no hopes of his recovery are entertained.”
“I suspected what would come of your discussion, Bob. Had you only been minded to slip away with me, you’d have been in the enjoyment of a whole skin by this time. I wonder which of them shot him. I’d take the odds it was the Frenchman; he handled the pistols like a fellow who envied us our pleasant chances. I suppose I ought to write to Barnard, or to his people; but it’s not an agreeable task, and I’ll think over it.”
He thought over it, and wrote as follows:
“Dear Bob,—I suspect, from a very confused paragraph in a
stupid newspaper, that you have fought somebody and got
wounded. Write and say if this be so what it was all about,
who did it, and what more can be done for you,
“By yours truly,
“H.C.
“Address, Como.”
To this he received no answer when he called at the post-office, and turned his steps next to Orta. He did not really know why, but it was, perhaps, with some of that strange instinct that makes the criminal haunt the homes of those he has once injured, and means to injure more. There was, however, one motive which he recognised himself; he wished to know something of those at the villa; when they had heard from Loyd, and what? whether, too, they had heard of his own doings, and in what way? A fatal duel, followed by another that was like to prove fatal, was an event sure to provoke newspaper notice. The names could not escape publicity, and he was eager to see in what terms they mentioned his own. He trusted much to the difficulty of getting at any true version of the affair, and he doubted greatly if anyone but Graham and himself could have told why they were to meet at all. Graham’s second, Rochefort, evidently knew very little of the affair. At all events, Graham was no longer there to give his version, while for the incidents of the duel, who was to speak? All, save Barnard, who was dying, if not dead, must have taken flight The Swiss authorities would soon have arrested them if within reach. He might therefore reassure himself that no statement that he could not at least impugn could get currency just yet “I will row over to the old Grainger”—so he called her—“and see what she has Heard of it all.”
It was nightfall as he reached the shore, and walked slowly and anxiously to the house. He had learned at Orta that they were to leave that part of the world in another fortnight, but whither for none knew. As he drew nigh, he determined to have a peep at the interior before he presented himself. He accordingly opened the little wicket noiselessly, and passed round through the flower-garden till he reached the windows of the drawing-room.