“Let him go; it is perhaps as well,” remarked the Baronet as he gave the note back to Lisle. “His doing so solves what otherwise might have proved a difficulty to me. I think we have already got from him all the information needful for our purpose, but should we require him at any future time, his note will furnish us with a clue to his whereabouts.”
Luigi had stolen out of the house almost like a thief in the night—never to cross its threshold again. So many things had happened and in so short a time, and there was mixed up in them such an element of the inexplicable, that he seemed to have lost control of his thoughts, which kept veering about from one point to another unable to fix themselves on anything for more than a few seconds at a time, and tormenting him now with one question and now with another, to which no answer was forthcoming. Who, or what was the Grey Monk? Were it merely a figment of the brain, an illusion of the senses, would it have had the power, not to speak of the will, to shut the door of the strong room upon him and turn the key? And yet to regard it as a being of flesh and blood was to confront himself with one enigma after another and all equally insoluble. Then again, through what channel had Sir Gilbert made the fatal discovery that he, Luigi Rispani, was not his grandson? Evidently no suspicion of the truth had been in his mind only a few hours before. At dinner on Sunday Sir Gilbert had questioned him about his Continental trip, and had seemed satisfied with his answers. The bubble had burst between ten o’clock on Sunday night and half past ten on Monday morning. Whose was the hand that had wrought the mischief?
It was with a sad heart and reluctant feet that Luigi took his way towards the hotel at Mapleford where his uncle was awaiting him. The Captain had scarcely expected him quite so soon, deeming it likely that he would not see his way to leave the Chase till after luncheon. The door of the sitting-room was open and he heard his nephew asking for him below. “Is it success, or failure?” he asked himself, not without a certain tingling at the nerves, while Luigi was coming upstairs. One glance at the latter’s face was enough as he halted on the threshold and met his uncle’s gaze. Failure complete and unmistakable was written on every line of it. The Captain drew a long breath and set his teeth hard for a moment or two. “So,” he said with a sort of venomous bitterness as Luigi advanced, “you have come to tell me that you have made a mess of the affair! It is just what I have dreaded all along. I was a fool to let you undertake the job. I ought to have carried it through myself.”
“I wish with all my heart that you had. What I have come to tell you is that the game’s up!”
“What do you mean?” demanded Verinder, his lips fading to a blue-white.
“Just what I say. We’re ruined—there’s no other word for it. Everything is known to Sir Gilbert.”
“Everything is a big word.”
“Not bigger than the occasion warrants. But perhaps you would like to hear how it has all come about.”
“I should indeed. But before you begin pour yourself out a thimbleful of that brandy on the sideboard. You look as if the blood in your veins had turned to water.”
“Small wonder if it has, as you will say yourself by the time I have told you all.”