The Duke Decides

by Headon Hill

Now this was exasperating in the present and intolerable for the future, for Beaumanoir had set his heart on that to which, conscience told him, a clear understanding with Senator Sherman was essential. But at last he abandoned direct efforts and sank back in his corner, hoping to obtain an opening by more diplomatic methods presently.

In the meanwhile, the General was satisfying the curiosity of the Senator, and incidentally that of the Duke, as to the identification of the self-styled Mrs. Talmage Eglinton with the mysterious Clinton Ziegler. He described the tangle of doubt and surmise he had got into when he had convinced himself that the occupants of the neighboring suites at the hotel were both concerned in the plot against the bonds, without being able to carry the matter further. And especially did he lay stress on the deadlock that had been reached when "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" artfully concocted anonymous warning against "Ziegler" had caused him to waver in his suspicions of her guilt.

"It took a woman to nose that out," said the General, with a whimsical grimace. "Miss Sybil heard me grumbling—unfortunate habit, talking to one's self—and put me right in a brace of shakes. 'Why,' she snaps out, after she'd pumped me about my difficulty, 'they must be one and the same person. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton is Ziegler, and her intention is that after they've finished the business the Eglinton part of her will remain and the Ziegler part will vanish—with the odium of anything that may happen, don't you see. I didn't see it at once, but consented to lay a trap, and blessed if the girl wasn't right. Soon as the Eglinton was posted up by Sybil that I was going up next day to call on Ziegler at the hotel, and that I was going to raise Cain if I wasn't admitted, she shammed sick and sneaked out of the house, with old Azimoolah at her heels, to keep the appointment."

He went on to tell how his call on "Ziegler," followed by "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" clandestine return to the house as witnessed by Alec Forsyth, had brushed all doubts aside and cleared the way for the final coup in the crypt, again suggested by Sybil, for obtaining the bogus bonds and so drawing the sting of the enemy.

"The girl has got grit," was the Senator's admiring comment. "The right sort of grit, because she trusted to her man having it too. And, thunder, but it was plucky of him to face that crew in ignorance of the saving clause in his favor."

"Yes, the boy behaved well," the General admitted. "But I think the Duke beat him for courage in going to meet you at Liverpool in ignorance that we had drawn off the cut-throats who he had reason to believe would dog him directly he left the house. Alec had to make up for a bad lapse. We never allowed laxity in our service, and Alec was lax, very lax, in giving them that chance on the railway."

Beaumanoir sat up at this, and, leaning forward, tapped the General on the knee.

"Oblige me by not drawing comparisons," he said—for him—quite fiercely. "If I have come out of the ordeal of the last few days unscathed, and with the honor of my house untarnished, it is in great part due to Alec's loyalty to a poor weak coward. Had I done my duty I should have gone to the police the moment Lestrade unfolded her plot, instead of embarking on a course of secrecy and moral cowardice which kept alive the danger to Senator Sherman and his charge. I did not see it at the time, but the gang would assuredly have matured some other plan for trying for the plunder, using some other wretched tool, perhaps, if they hadn't been gammoned into believing that I had caved in. It was gross moral cowardice of me to give them the chance."

The torrent of words flowed so quickly that neither of his hearers was able to check it, and it was so evidently the outcome of deep emotion that it was equally impossible to ignore it. The Senator, with a twinkle in his shrewd gray eyes, laid a warning hand on the General's shoulder and took it upon himself to answer—with a question which had the instant effect of soothing Beaumanoir, for it implied a concession of the position he desired to take up.

"What should you have done in the same circumstances, but with this difference—that you had landed in England a simple commoner instead of the representative of an ancient and noble family?" the Senator inquired.