CHAPTER
I [THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA]
II [A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN]
III [CONCERNING A DISOBLIGING GHOST]
IV [THE MAN WHO KNEW]
V [THE GHOST TAKES WINGS]
VI [A LESSON UPON SKIS]
VII [AN ULTIMATUM]
VIII [BENNY BECOMES AN OPTIMIST]
IX [IN WHICH WE BAG A BRACE]
X [A SPECIALIST IS CONSULTED]
XI [THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY]
XII [FLIGHT]
XIII [AFTER THE STORM]
XIV [THE GENDARME PHILIP]
XV [THE CORTÈGE]
XVI [TWO OPINIONS]
XVII [HERALDS OF GREAT TIDINGS]
XVIII [THE EVE OF THE GREAT ATTEMPT]
XIX [THE THIEF]
XX [THE FLIGHT IS BEGUN]
XXI [THE FLIGHT IS FINISHED]
XXII [THE EMPTY HOUSE]
XXIII [THE NIGHT MAIL]
XXIV [THE DOCTOR INTERVENES]
XXV [THE LIGHTS OF MAGADINO]
XXVI [AT THE HOSPICE]
XXVII [BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND]
WHITE MOTLEY
PROLOGUE
THE NEW HOUSE AT HOLMSWELL
The New House at Holmswell lies, far back from the road, upon the great highway to Norwich. Local topographers delight to tell you that it is just forty-five miles from that city and five from the Cesarewitch course at Newmarket. They are hardly less eloquent when they come to speak of its late owner, Sir Luton Delayne, and of that unforgotten and well-beloved woman, the wife he so little deserved.
To be sure, the house is not new at all, for it was built at the very moment when the great Harry put his hands into the coffers of the monasteries and called upon high Heaven to witness the justice of his robberies. They faced it with wonderful tiles some years ago, and stamped the Tudor rose all over it; but the people who first called it "new" have been dead these four hundred years, and it is only the local antiquary who can tell you just where the monastery (which preceded it) was built.
Here, the master of a village which knows more about the jockeys of the day than about any Prime Minister, here lived Sir Luton Delayne and that gentle woman who won so many hearts during her brief tenure of the village kingdom. Well the people knew her and well they knew him. A florid, freckled-faced man with red hair and the wisp of an auburn moustache, the common folk said little about his principles and much about his pugnacity. Even these dull intellects knew that he had been "no gentleman" and were not afraid to tell you so. His fame, of a sort, had culminated upon the day he thrashed the butcher from Mildenhall, because the fellow would halt on the high road just when the pheasants were being driven from the Little Barton spinneys. That was no famous day for the House of Delayne; for the butcher had been a great bruiser in his time, and he knocked down the baronet in a twinkling without any regard at all for his ancestry or its dignities. Thereafter, Sir Luton's violent speech troubled the vulgar but little, and when he rated Johnny Drummond for wheeling a barrow over the tennis-court, the lad fell back upon the price of mutton and took his week's notice like a man.
To Lady Delayne local sympathy went out in generous measure. If little were known of the sorrows of her life, much was surmised. The "county" could tell you many tales and would tell them to intimates. These spoke of a ruffian who had sworn at that gentle lady before a whole company at the meet; who openly snubbed her at her own table; who had visited upon her the whims and the temper of a disposition at once vicious and uncontrollable. Darker things were said and believed, but the sudden end surprised no one; and when one day the village heard that she had gone for good, when a little while afterwards the bailiffs came to the New House and Sir Luton himself disappeared, it seemed but the sudden revelation of a tragedy which all had expected.