The Duke Decides

by Headon Hill

The General had already mastered the time-table, and knew that only one more train from London would stop at Tarrant Road that night—the last, due at a quarter past midnight. The coachman therefore received, as he had expected, orders to return to the station in time to meet that train, and the General, lighting a fresh cigar, strolled back to the terrace, where, in response to his low whistle, Azimoolah glided to his side.

"There is work afoot," he said, briefly. "Canst, as of yore, do without sleep at a pinch?"

"Ay, and without food if it is so willed by Allah and the sahib."

Whereupon the General gave him the best directions he could to the scene of the railway accident fifteen miles away, and bade him hie thither with all speed and glean particulars on the spot, especially with regard to the life they were pledged to defend and the nature of the accident, which might be no accident at all, but a move of their mysterious antagonists. It needed but few words to make Azimoolah understand, and he was gone—even before his hand, raised in unconscious salute, had dropped to his side.

The General fell to pacing to and fro again, striving to penetrate the new situation that had arisen, and, as was his wont when matters went wrong, not sparing himself much scathing criticism. For what had seemed to him good reason, he had put all his eggs in one basket—"gone nap"—as he reflected, on the Duke and Forsyth catching the 8.45, and now disaster had overtaken that very train. If the village post-office had been open, he would have wired to know if the Duke was still at Beaumanoir House, for everything hinged on whether he had started, and Sadgrove felt an ominous presentiment that he had. The people he was playing against were not the sort to wreck a train without prospect of adequate result.

Presently the twin lamps went twinkling down the avenue again, and the General tried to comfort himself with the hope that when they reappeared Beaumanoir would be in the carriage. After all, Alec Forsyth was with him. What had befallen the one should have befallen the other, and he had the greatest confidence in his nephew's readiness and resource. It might even be, the General told himself, that Alec had suspected foul play to the 8.45, and had purposely delayed departure—although, in conflict with this theory, arose the conjecture that in that case the railway people would have been warned, and there would have been no "accident" at all.

But what was the use of following threads which, in the absence of a substantial starting-point, led nowhere? The worried veteran gave up the futile task in favor of more practical work, and occupied himself in learning the route by which the miscreants who had tried to suffocate the Duke had reached the chimney-stack over his chamber. He found that a decayed buttress had given them access to the top of the ancient refectory, whence an easy climb along a slanting gutter-pipe formed a royal road to the roof of the main building.

The discovery, interesting in itself, was doubly so from the deduction to be made therefrom. The men who had climbed the roof would have been caught like rats in a trap if the Duke had raised the alarm, and they must either have had complete confidence in their ability to kill him by the charcoal fumes, or, in the event of a hitch, in the Duke's unwillingness to rouse the household.

"Egad! but they must have a nasty grip on him, to trust to his not squealing under such provocation," the General murmured, as the sound of wheels drew him at last from the age-worn buttress back to the portico. "If he's turned up all right I'll try and persuade him to confide the secret before we go to bed."

But when the brougham stopped, it disgorged no Duke, but only Alec Forsyth, pale of face, and for once in his life half afraid of meeting his uncle's expectant eye. But he kept his presence of mind sufficiently to control his voice as he informed the General—the information being really for the servants who had appeared at the hall door—that his Grace had not arrived. In silence the General led the way to the dining-room, and it was not until he had dismissed the butler with the assurance that they would need nothing more that night that he found speech in the curt monosyllable, "Well?"