“I got a jolt when I saw the page. It was some sort of Canadian gold mine, so fishy that the letters had scales on ’em. But I says to myself, ‘That’s the Governor’s business,’ an’ I cut it out, put it into an envelope with the draft, and left it at the desk for her.”
He paused.
“The next morning I slid out. Eight months later the plague struck me. I crippled into England, asked her to hide me while I died, and she put me here.”
“And the gold stock,” I said, “I suppose it turned her out a fortune?”
The energy came back for an instant into his voice.
“It was so rotten,” he replied, “that the Governor General of Canada summoned all the victims to meet with him for a conference in Montreal.”
At this moment I caught the sound of a motor entering the gates at some distance through the park. The huge paralytic also heard it, and his attention was no longer toward me. It was on the great coach-colored limousine drawing up at the end of the avenue of ancient beech trees.
I looked with him.
A girl helped out by footmen stepped down into the avenue, carpeted now with the yellow autumn leaves. Even at the distance it was impossible to mistake her; her charm, her beauty were the wonder of England. And on the instant, as in a flash of the eye, I recalled the painted picture hanging in the great house in Berkeley Square, the picture from which this creature’s mutilated photograph had been taken, the picture of a young girl, in an ancient chair, with no ornament but a bit of jade on a cord about her neck.
“It’s the young Duchess of Hurlingham,” I said.