Under Lock and Key: A Story. Volume 3 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

"He interrupted me with a wave of his hand. 'I have seen it, Jasmin, I have seen it, and terribly shocked I was to have such news of my friend. So strangely sudden, too! I always suspected that he would do himself an injury with that beastly drug which he would persist in smoking, but I never dreamed of anything so terrible as this. I suppose it will be requisite for you to go down to Bon Repos for a time, Jasmin. There will be your wages, and your luggage and things to look after. What articles of mine were left behind I make you a present of. I hope to be sufficiently recovered in the course of three or four days to be able to spare you, and I will of course pay your fare back to Westmoreland, and remunerate you for the time you have been in my service. For myself, I intend spending the next few months somewhere on the Continent.'

"I replied that I was in no hurry to go down to Bon Repos; that, indeed, there was no particular necessity for me to go at all that the amount due to me for wages was very trifling, and that my clothes and other things would no doubt be forwarded by Cleon to any address I might choose to send him.

"But the captain would not hear of this. I must go down to Bon Repos and look after my interests on the spot, he said; and he would arrange to spare me in a few days. His motive for taking such a special interest in my affairs was not difficult to discover. He wanted thoroughly to break the link between himself and me. By sending me down to Bon Repos he would secure two or three clear days in which to complete whatever arrangements he might think necessary, and would, besides, insure himself from being watched or spied upon by me. Not that he doubted my fidelity in the least, but it seemed to me that of late he had grown suspicious of everybody; and, in any case, he was desirous of severing even the faintest tie that connected him in any way with M. Platzoff and Bon Repos. Such, at least, was the conclusion at which I arrived in my own mind. But it may have been an erroneous one.

"Although Captain Ducie was desirous of getting rid of me, I did not mean to lose sight of him quite so readily. Each day that passed over my head confirmed me more fully in my belief that he had the Great Mogul Diamond concealed somewhere about his person. I had no one strong positive bit of evidence on which to base such a belief. It was rather by the aggregation of a hundred minute points all tending one way that I was enabled to build up my suspicions into a certainty.

"If he had made himself master of the Diamond, he had done so illegally. He had stolen the gem, and I should have felt no more compunction in dispossessing him of it than I should have felt in picking a sovereign out of the gutter. But the prospect of making the gem my own seemed even more remote now, if that were possible, than when I was at Bon Repos. Nothing went farther towards confirming my belief that the captain had the Diamond by him than the fact of his taking so many and such unusual precautions to insure himself against a surprise from any one either by day or night. As already stated, I slept in the room that opened immediately out of his, so that no one could reach him except by passing through my room. Then, he always slept with the door of his bedroom double locked, and with his face turned to the window, the blind pertaining to which was drawn to the top, leaving the view clear and unobstructed. In addition, Captain Ducie always kept a loaded revolver under his pillow, and I had heard too much of his skill with that weapon to doubt that he would make an efficient use of it should such a need ever arise. What chance, then, did there seem for ce pauvre Jacques ever being able to coax the Diamond out of the hands of this man, who had no more right to it than had the Grand Turk? Still, I put a good face on the matter, and would not allow myself to despair.

"After the sixth day Captain Ducie improved rapidly. On the tenth day he said to me: 'This is the last day that I shall require your services. You had better arrange to start by the nine forty-five train to-morrow morning for Windermere.'

"The captain was not the sort of man to whom one could say that one did not want to go to Windermere, that one had no intention of going there. The slightest opposition from an inferior in position only confirmed him the more obstinately in his own views. All, therefore, that I said was: I am entirely at your service, sir, to go or stay as may suit you best.' All the same, I had no intention of going.

"What I intended was to bid farewell to Captain Ducie, take a cab to the station, go quietly in at one gate and out at another. But the captain spoiled this little plan next morning by announcing his intention of going with me to the station. He was evidently anxious to see with his own eyes that I really left London, and this of course only made me the not more determined to go. I had only a few minutes in which to make my arrangements. It was necessary that I should take some one at least partially into my confidence, and I could think of no one who would suit my purpose better than Dickson, the one-eyed night-porter at the hotel. He was fast asleep in bed at that hour of the morning, but I went up to his room and roused him. He was a quick-witted fellow enough where anything crooked was concerned, while in the simple straightforward matters of daily life he was often unaccountably stupid. His one eye gleamed brightly when I put half a sovereign into his hand, and told him what I wanted him to do for me. I left him fully satisfied that he would do it.

"A cab was ordered, my modest portmanteau was tossed on to the roof, Captain Ducie was shut up inside, and with myself on the box beside the driver, away we rattled to Euston-square. The captain went himself and took a ticket for me to Windermere. He had already given me a handsome douceur in return for my services from the date of our leaving Bon Repos. He now saw me safely into the carriage, gave me my ticket, and nodded a kindly farewell. He did not move from his post on the platform till he saw the train fairly under way. So parted Captain Ducie and your unworthy son.

"At Wolverton, which was the first station at which the train stopped, I got out and gave up my ticket, with a pretence to the railway people that I had unfortunately left some important papers in town and that I must go back by the first train. Back I went accordingly, and reached Euston station in less than five hours after I had left it.