THE DUKE DECIDES

By HEADON HILL

Author of By a Hair's-Breadth, etc.

New York

A. WESSELS COMPANY

1904

Copyright, 1903, by A. Wessels Company

Published, 1903

PRESS OF

BRAUNWORTH & CO.

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

Leonie Sherman

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CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Leonie Sherman]

[A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?]

[The procession of three led by the stranger.]

[I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton.]

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[CHAPTER I—The Man with the Mandate]

At six o'clock on a May evening, at an uptown corner of Broadway, in New York City, the bowels of the earth opened and disgorged a crowd of weary-faced men and women who scattered in all directions. They were the employees of a huge "dry-goods store," leaving work for the day. It was a stringent rule of the firm that everyone drawing wages, from the smart managers of departments and well-dressed salesladies down to the counting-house drudges and check-boys, should descend into the basement, and there file past the timekeeper and a private detective before passing up a narrow staircase, and so out by a sort of stage-door into the side street.

The great plate-glass portals on the main thoroughfare were not for the working bees of this hive of industry—only for the gay butterflies of fashion by whom they lived.

The last to come out was a young man dressed in a threadbare suit of tweeds, that somehow hardly seemed American, either in cut or fabric. There might have been a far-away reminiscence of Perthshire moors clinging to them, or earlier memories of a famous creator in Bond Street; but suggestion of the reach-me-down shops from which New York clerks clothe themselves there was none. A flush of anger was fading on their owner's face as he came out into the sunlight, leaving a mild annoyance that presently gave place to a grin.

The firm's detective, rendered suspicious by a bulging pocket, had just searched him, and had failed to apologize on finding the protuberance to be nothing but a bundle of un-eatable sandwiches that were being taken home to confound the landlady of the young man's cheap boarding-house.

The indignity did not rankle long. It was only a detail in the topsy-turvydom that in one short year had changed a subaltern in a crack English cavalry regiment into an ill-paid drudge in a dry-goods store. Twelve months before Charles Hanbury had been playing polo and riding gymkhana races in Upper India, but extravagance beyond his means had brought swift ruin in its train. Tired of helping him out of scrapes, his connections had refused further assistance; and, leaving the Army, he had come out to "the States" with the idea of roughing it on the Western plains. Still misfortune had dogged his steps. A fall down a hatchway on the voyage out had hopelessly lamed him, and he had been compelled to ward off starvation by obtaining his present inglorious berth.

His work—adding up columns of figures entered from the sales-tickets—was quite irresponsible, and he was paid accordingly. He drew eight dollars a week, of which five went to his boarding-house keeper.

Limping up —— Street, he turned into the Bowery, intending to take his usual homeward route across the big bridge into Brooklyn. Unable to afford a street-car, he walked to and from the store daily, and it was one of his few amusements to study the cosmopolitan life of the teeming and sordid thoroughfare through which his way led.

He was still chuckling over the discomfiture of the tame detective, when his eye was caught by a label in a cheap boot-store. "Three dollars the pair," ran the legend, which drew a rueful sigh from one who had paid—and alas! still owed—as many guineas for a pair of dancing-pumps.

"I don't suppose they'd sell me half a pair, for that's all it runs to," he muttered, turning regretfully away from the vamped-up frauds, and in so doing jerking the elbow of a passer-by. The victim of his sudden move—a stout, fair man in a light frock-coat and a Panama straw hat—stopped, and seemed inclined to resent the awkwardness.

"I really beg your pardon," the culprit said with easy politeness. "I was so absorbed in my reflections that I forgot for the moment that the Bowery requires cautious steering."

"You are an Englishman?" returned the other, with a milder countenance. "So am I. No need to apologize. As a fellow-countryman in foreign parts, permit me to offer you some liquid refreshment. In other words, come into that dive next door and have a drink."

With an imperceptible shrug, Mr. Hanbury allowed himself to be persuaded. He would lose his supper at his boarding-house by the irregularity, but dissipation seldom came his way nowadays, and the prospect of whisky at some one else's expense was tempting. Yes, he had fallen low enough for that! The stout Englishman somehow conveyed the impression that he would not expect to be treated in return by his new acquaintance, who was prepared to take advantage of his liberality. To do him justice, Hanbury's complacence was not entirely due to spirituous longings, but to a homesick instinct aroused by the Cockney accent of the vulgar stranger.

The garish underground saloon into which they descended was almost empty at that early hour of the evening. Drinks having been set before them at one of the circular tables, the host subjected his guest to a scrutiny so searching that its object broke into a laugh.

"You are sizing me up pretty closely," he remarked, with a touch of annoyance.

"Exactly; but not so as to give offence, I hope," was the reply. "I should like to know your name, if you have no objection."

"Hanbury—Charles Hanbury. Perhaps you will make the introduction mutual?" said the younger man, appeased by the other's conciliatory manner.

"Call me Jevons," the stout man answered. "Now look here, Mr. Hanbury; it's not my game to begin our acquaintance under false pretences. The fact is, I contrived that you should jostle me just now, and so give me a chance to speak. I spotted you as an Englishman and a gentleman a fortnight ago, and I've noticed you pass along the Bowery every day since. I am in need of an Englishman, who is also a gentleman, to take on a job with a fortune—a moderate fortune—at the back of it."

"You can hardly have mistaken me for an investor," said Hanbury, with a quizzical glance at his threadbare seams and dilapidated boots. "Believe me, I am a very broken-down gentleman; but still, my gentility survives, I suppose, and I am willing to treat it as a commercial asset, if that is what you mean."

Mr. Jevons gulped down his liquor without comment and did not utter another word till the glasses had been replenished. Then, hitching his chair closer, he produced a pocket-book from which he extracted five one-hundred-dollar notes.

"Before we leave this place I shall hand these over to you for preliminary expenses—if we come to terms," he said, watching the effect of the display on his companion's face. Satisfied with the eager glance in the tired eyes, he proceeded more confidentially: "There is a risk to be run, but it doesn't amount to much; and if the scheme comes off it will set you on your legs again. Part of this money you will have to spend in a first-class passage to England by the next steamer, and there'll be plenty more for you on arrival."

"My dear friend, you seem to be a sort of Aladdin. If you only knew the existence I have been leading here, without the courage to terminate it, you would be assured of my answer," replied Hanbury, wondering but not caring much what was expected of him. To escape from his dry-goods drudgery and return to England with money in his pocket and the prospect of more—why, the ex-cavalry officer felt that he would loot the Crown Jewels for that! And he said so in so many words.

"Then you're the man for us," was the verdict of Mr. Jevons. "It's a bit on the cross—not burglary, but a little matter of planting some beautifully imitated paper. Is that too steep for you?"

Hanbury made a wry face, but answered without hesitation:

"Aiding a forgery isn't quite the road to fortune I should have chosen, but beggars—you know the maxim. Society hasn't been too kind to me, and I don't see why I should range myself on its side. Yes, I'll do it; and if I'm caught, stone-breaking at Portland won't be any worse than adding up figures in a subterranean counting-house. Let me have the particulars, Mr. Jevons, and I'll see it through to the best of an ability that hasn't much to recommend it."

"You shall have the particulars," said the other; then stopped, and laughed rather nervously. "You must understand that I am but a subordinate in this matter, and we have reached the only unpleasant part of my task," he went on. "It is not congenial to have to use a threat—even a confidential one; yet I am instructed to do so, before I enlighten you further."

The rascal's concern was unmistakably genuine; and Hanbury, with the good-humored tolerance of his class, hastened to reassure him.

"Go on; I can guess what you have to disclose—the pains and penalties for breach of faith, eh?"

Jevons nodded, and bent his shiny, perspiring face nearer. "It is a big thing, involving enormous outlay and the interests of an organization commanding great resources," he whispered. "Your life wouldn't be worth five minutes' purchase if you deserted us after you had been entrusted with the details. Now, will you have them on those conditions, or shall we say 'Good-night' to each other?"

Hanbury stretched out his hand impatiently for the notes. "Pray satisfy my curiosity, and let me have them on those conditions," he said. "My life is of no earthly value to me. Besides, with all my faults, I'm not one to turn back after putting my hand to the plough. If I do, by all means give me my quietus as mercifully as may be."

"Then here goes," whispered Jevons, mouth to ear. "The game is the planting of faked United States Treasury Bonds on the Bank of England to the tune of three million sterling—pounds, not dollars, you know. You will proceed to England by the St. Paul, sailing for Southampton the day after to-morrow, and on arrival in London you will at once call on Mr. Clinton Ziegler, at the Hotel Cecil. He is our chief, and will give you final instructions as to your part in the campaign. You'll find him a handsome paymaster."

"I look forward to making Mr. Ziegler's acquaintance with interest," replied Hanbury, pocketing the notes which the other passed to him. "Am I to have the pleasure of your company on the voyage?"

"I'm afraid not; my work is here," said Jevons. "And—well, it's not altogether healthy for me on the other side." The confession was accompanied by a wink which forcibly brought it home to the recruit that he had joined the criminal classes. His new friend—"pal," he supposed he ought to call him—evidently thought him worthy of personal confidence.

They had another drink together at the bar, and parted outside the saloon, Hanbury making his belated way towards Brooklyn. Once or twice he turned abruptly to see if he was being followed, but the aggressive white Panama hat was nowhere visible, the conclusion being obvious that the astute Mr. Jevons had ascertained his domicile, as well as his place of employment, before broaching his delicate business.

Tramping along the teeming Bowery and across the footway of the mighty bridge, the ex-hussar enjoyed to the full the exultation of feeling money in his pocket once more. It was not much, and it was as good as spent already in the cost of a passage and an outfit; but it was the earnest of more to come, and, above all, it franked the exile home to England. At the price of his honor, perhaps? Well, yes; but what was honor to a dry-goods clerk at eight dollars a week? He might have taken a different view two years ago, when honor stood for something in his creed; but not now, with the world against him.

Entering the sordid boarding-house, he mounted to his top-floor bedroom, aware that he had forfeited his supper of beef-hash, and that it was too late to go to the dining-room in quest thereof. His eyrie under the roof, flanked on one side by the apartment of a German car-driver and on the other by that of an Irish porter, was furnished with little else than a bed and a toilet-table.

On the toilet-table lay a telegram addressed to him—the first he had received since he had been in America. The unwonted sight caused his hands to tremble a little as he tore it open, but they trembled a good deal more as he read the fateful words:

"Your uncle and cousin have been killed in a railway accident. Come to England at once. Have cabled a thousand pounds to Morgan's to your credit.—Pattisons."

"Pattisons" were the family solicitors, and he who a moment before had called himself Charles Hanbury now knew that his true description would appear in the next issue of "Debrett" as "Charles Augustus Trevor Fitzroy Hanbury, seventh Duke of Beaumanoir," with a rent-roll of two hundred thousand a year.

And he stood committed, on pain of assassination, to aid and abet in the palming off of bogus bonds on the Bank of England!

[CHAPTER II—On Board the St. Paul]

The St. Paul sped eastwards across the summer sea, and surely of all the human hopes and fears carried by the great liner those locked in the breast of the new Duke were the most momentous. To gain a little breathing time, he had booked his passage as plain Charles Hanbury. In the brief interval before sailing he had seen no more of Jevons, but he guessed that that shrewd practitioner would have watched him, or had him watched, on board, even if there was not a spy upon him among his fellow-passengers; and he wished to let it be inferred that his voyage was undertaken solely in observance of the compact made in the Bowery dive.

For as yet he was by no means certain of his attitude towards that compact. It was true that the cast-off wastrel of two days ago was now one of the premier peers of England, hastening home to take possession of his fortune and estates. But where was the good of being a duke if you were to be a dead duke? he argued with a cynicism bred of his misfortunes rather than innate. There had been a genuine ring about the proposal of Jevons that left no doubt as to the reality of the menace held out; the man's reluctance in broaching the penalty of desertion carried conviction that it was no mere flower of speech.

On the whole, the Duke was inclined to call on the arch rogue at the Hotel Cecil before incurring a risk that might render his dukedom a transitory possession. Then, if the part he was expected to play proved to be within his powers and without much chance of detection, he might still elect to play it, and so enjoy in security his hereditary privileges.

It will be seen that the seventh Duke of Beaumanoir was not troubled with moral scruples, and that the principle of noblesse oblige had no place as yet in his somewhat seared philosophy. It was enough for the moment that he had gained something worth having and keeping, and he meant to have it and keep it by the most efficacious method. Whether that method would prove to be connivance in a gigantic crime or the denouncement of the latter to Scotland Yard could only be decided by a personal interview with the mysterious Ziegler. Yes, he would pay that visit to the Hotel Cecil, at any rate, and be guided by what passed there as to his future course of action.

"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Hanbury," said a gay voice at his elbow, as on the third day of the voyage he leaned over the rail of the promenade deck and ruminated on his dilemma. Wheeling round he looked down into the laughing eyes of a girl, a very dainty and charming girl, who sat next him at the saloon table. No formal introduction had taken place between them, for lack of mutual friends; but he had learned from the card designating her place at table that she was Miss Leonie Sherman, and it is to be presumed that she had gathered his name in the same way.

"I will earn that penny," he said with mock gravity. "I was debating how far one might legitimately carry the principle of doing evil that good might come."

It was a strange answer to make to a shipboard acquaintance of three days, and Miss Sherman regarded him with a newly awakened interest.

"It depends," she said, "whether the good is to accrue to yourself or to other people."

"Oh, to myself," he replied, smiling. "I am not a philanthropist—quite the other way about."

"Then, whatever it is, you oughtn't to do it," said the girl, decidedly. "It will be horrid of you to as much as contemplate anything of the kind. You had much better do good lest evil befall; and the opportunity occurs right here, at this very moment."

"I shall be most happy—without prejudice to my intentions as to the reverse of the medal," said Beaumanoir, lightly.

"Then help me to avoid a lecture from my mother by taking me for a promenade," proceeded Leonie, indicating a portly lady who had ascended from the lower deck and was peering about in search. "She is the best and dearest of mothers, but she has set her heart on a vain thing, and it is becoming the least bit tiresome. I can see that she is going to din it into me again, if she catches me. Her idea is that the sole duty of an American girl going to England is to 'spread herself,' as they say out West, to marry an English duke."

His Grace of Beaumanoir listened with an unmoved countenance.

"Yes," he said, "to marry a duke might—probably would—be an unmitigated evil. I will help you to avoid it with pleasure. Let us walk by all means, Miss Sherman, if you don't mind my awkward limp."

So they joined the procession of promenaders, and there and then cemented a friendship which ripened quickly, as friendships between the opposite sexes do at sea. The haughty salesladies of the dry-goods store had not deigned to notice the counting-house drudge, and Leonie's piquant beauty made instant captive of one who had been deprived of the society of women for over a year. She had all the frank camaraderie of the well-bred American, and her eager anticipations of the good time she was to have in Europe were infectious. In her company Beaumanoir was able to forget the dark shadow hanging over him, and to give himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. He began by being deeply grateful to her for taking him out of himself; and gratitude to a charming girl with a ravishing figure and a complexion of tinted ivory is like to have its heels trod by a warmer sentiment.

Leonie, in her turn, was interested in the reserved young Englishman, who had so little to say about his doings in America, and less about his position and prospects in his native land. As he paced with his slight limp at her side or lounged with her at the rail, she tried to draw him out; but she could get nothing from him but that he had been in New York on business, and that business was taking him home. Yet, though reticent on his own affairs, he talked freely about all that concerned herself, and painted vivid word-pictures of the delights that awaited her in London.

The girl, having nothing to conceal, told him freely of herself and of her plans and projects. She and her mother were going to stay with English friends in London till the end of the season, when perhaps they would run over to Paris and Rome for a month before returning to America in the autumn. Her father, Senator Sherman, was to have accompanied them; but he had been detained by public business at Washington, and was to join them a little later in London.

On the fifth day of the voyage, as the St. Paul was approaching the Irish coast, Leonie and Beaumanoir were sitting on deck after dinner, chatting in the twilight, when she suddenly laid her hand on his arm.

"I want you to notice that man who has just gone by—the one smoking the fag-end of a cigar in a holder," she whispered, with a gesture towards the stream of passengers passing and repassing between the rows of chairs.

Beaumanoir's gaze followed her indication to an insignificant little figure in a brown covert-coat and tweed cap.

"Yes. What of him?" he asked. He had not spoken to this passenger, but now that attention was called to him he had an idea that the fellow had loomed largely during the last few days.

"That man is watching you, Mr. Hanbury," replied Leonie with conviction. "I wonder you haven't observed it yourself. Whenever you are talking he hangs about trying to listen; when you are on deck he is on deck; if you go below, he goes below. If you were a fugitive from justice, and he a detective, he couldn't shadow you more closely."

The Duke winced inwardly.

"I am not a fugitive from justice," he said, with the mental addition of "yet." He could not tell this laughing maiden that the man was probably spying on him in the interest, not of justice, but of crime—to see that he was true to a pledge to place forged bonds; for now that he had been put on his guard he had no doubt that his pretty informant was right. The stranger occupied the cabin next to him, and was always hovering near him in the smoking-room, unobtrusively but persistently.

Thanking the girl for her warning in a careless tone that implied that he had no reason to be anxious, he changed the subject. But before he turned in that night he made it his business to ascertain from his bedroom steward the name of his next-door neighbor, which proved to be Marker.

"Probably Mr. Marker's functions are confined to espionage. If that is a sample of the sort of bravo to be employed should I kick over the traces, I haven't much to fear," he reflected, as he switched off the electric light and composed himself to dream of Leonie Sherman.

[CHAPTER III—A Task-master in Goggles]

The next morning the St. Paul arrived at Southampton, but Beaumanoir contrived to secure a seat in the same compartment of the boat-train, and his parting with his new friends was therefore deferred till they reached Waterloo.

He was sorely tempted to enlist the elder lady's favor by making known his proper style and rank; though, to do her justice, Mrs. Sherman's fondness for the peerage was largely a humorous fiction on her daughter's part. The Senator's wife was really a simple-minded body, with an abiding admiration for the unattainable, and the British aristocracy was naturally included in that category.

But the sight of Mr. Marker's covert-coat hovering near them on the arrival platform checked the Duke's intention, which the next moment was rendered unnecessary by Mrs. Sherman herself.

"Come and see us, Mr. Hanbury," she said, extending the tips of her fingers in farewell. "We are to be the guests of some good friends of ours at 140 Grosvenor Gardens, and we know them well enough to make ourselves at home. The Senator will be over in a week or two, and he'll be glad to thank you for your politeness."

"I will pay my respects without fail," Beaumanoir responded; and a minute later, after a warmer pressure of Leonie's well-gloved hand, he stood watching their cab with its load of "saratogas" drive down the incline. By the void in his heart he knew that the girl in the coquettish toque, who had just repeated her mother's invitation with her eyes, was all the world to him.

He turned to look after his scanty baggage with a sigh. How different it would all have been if he had chosen some other route to his Brooklyn boarding-house on the eventful night when the plausible Jevons had waylaid him! All would have been plain sailing, and he could have asked Leonie with a clear conscience to share his new-found honors and wealth. As it was he stood committed to a felonious enterprise which would fill her with contempt and loathing did she know of it; though, if he abandoned it, instinct told him he was a doomed man.

The sight of the insignificant spy Marker lurking behind a pile of luggage reminded him that his peril might commence at any moment if he showed any sign of inconstancy to his pledge. Not that he anticipated trouble from the covert-coated whippersnapper himself; but the mere fact of it having been thought worth while to shadow him across the Atlantic spelled danger, and suggested an organization that would stop at nothing to safeguard itself.

However, he had made up his mind to call on the mysterious Ziegler, and by doing so at once he might prove his fidelity and secure a respite from this unpleasant espionage. Summoning a hansom, he bade the driver take him to the Hotel Cecil, and looking back he saw Marker following in another cab.

In the few minutes that elapsed before he was driven into the courtyard of the palatial hotel he settled a problem that had been vexing him not a little during the voyage. Should he introduce himself to Ziegler as the Duke of Beaumanoir or as plain Charles Hanbury, the name by which he had been "engaged"? If he was for a brief space to be the consort of professional thieves, he would prefer to lead a double life—to perform his misdeeds as a commoner, and to keep his dukedom spotless. So it was that he gave his name as Hanbury to the clerk in the bureau of the hotel.

While waiting the return of the bell-boy who was sent to announce his arrival, Beaumanoir looked about for Marker, but the spy was nowhere visible in or from the entrance-hall. Having shepherded him to the fold, it was evidently no part of his duty to obtrude himself till further orders.

A minute later the neophyte in crime was limping up the grand staircase in wake of the bell-boy, who conducted him to one of the best private suites on the first floor overlooking the Embankment. It was a moment charged with electricity as the Duke of Beaumanoir found himself face to face with the man who had hired him in his poverty, and now held him fetter-bound in his good fortune.

"Yet could this be he—this personification of aged helplessness lying among the cushions of an invalid chair, who, in a thin, piping treble, requested his visitor to come closer? Beaumanoir had pictured all sorts of ideals of the master in crime, but Mr. Clinton Ziegler in the flesh resembled none of them. A snowy beard covered the lower half of his face, drooping over his chest, but the puffy cheeks were visible, and their full purple hue betokened some cutaneous affection. The eyes were shaded by blue glasses.

"You are the person sent by Jevons from New York?" he began in his parrot-like tones. "Good! What is your name? For the moment I have forgotten it, and I cannot lay my hand on the cablegram relating to you."

Encouraged by the feeble senility of one whom he had expected to find a tower of strength—a grim, inscrutable being with an inscrutable manner—the Duke was confirmed in his intention to preserve the secret of his rank.

"My name is Charles Hanbury," he answered, boldly.

But an awakening, instant and complete, was in store for him. The words were hardly out of his mouth when Mr. Ziegler coughed a signal, and three masked men rushed upon him from the adjoining bedroom, pinioning his arms and stifling his sudden cry of alarm.

"What shall we do with him, sir?" asked one of the men.

"Chloroform him first; then you must dispose of him at leisure," came the monotonous piping treble from the invalid chair.

One of the assailants made immediate preparations for obeying the behest, but just as he was about to saturate a handkerchief Ziegler laughed shrilly:

"Let him alone, boys. He lied to me, and I wanted to give him a lesson—that's all."

The men, at a sign from their chief, retired into the bedroom.

"Now, perhaps you will recognize that I am not to be played with, your Grace," squeaked Mr. Ziegler. "Also that my ears are as long as my arms. I have known for some days that the gentleman whom my good friend Jevons was able to procure has had a sudden change in his fortunes, and I congratulate myself upon it. It doubles your value to us, all the more since your early call upon me after landing shows that you mean to abide by your bargain. But there must be no more petty reservations and concealments like that. If you try them on, rest assured that they will be detected and dealt with."

The Duke straightened his rumpled collar, and looked, as he felt, a beaten man. The mass of infirmity in the wheel-chair held, without doubt, a power with which he could not cope. On the face of it the notion that a man could be violently made away with in a crowded London hotel might seem melodramatic and improbable, but the experience of the last few minutes had shown him how readily it could be done by a chief as well served as Ziegler appeared to be. And if he was at the man's mercy in a crowded hostelry like the Cecil, where would he be safe? Yes, if he was to enjoy his dukedom, he would have to go through with his task.

"Well, give me my instructions. What am I to do?" he said, stiffly.

"You have made a very good beginning already," replied Ziegler, watching him narrowly through the tinted glasses. "A gentleman, acting on behalf of the United States Government, will shortly bring to this country the three million pounds' worth of Treasury bonds which we mean to have. It will be your task to relieve him of the paper, substituting bonds of our own make, which will be deposited at the Bank of England as security against a shipment of gold."

"I see," the Duke murmured, mechanically. "But," he added with more animation, "how have I made a beginning already?"

"By making yourself agreeable to Miss Leonie Sherman. It is her father, Senator Sherman, who is bringing the real bonds," was the answer, which struck a chill to the Duke's heart and kept him speechless with amazement. This old scoundrel seemed to know everything, to have arranged everything, irrespective of time and space.

"You ought to be grateful for my foresight in smoothing the way for you," Ziegler croaked, in evident enjoyment of his perplexity. "It was my agent who, by securing the good offices of a steward, had you placed next Miss Sherman at the saloon table on the St. Paul, with the result that he was able to report to me this morning from Southampton by telegraph that you had made use of your opportunity."

"I see," was all the Duke could feebly repeat.

"You have been invited to call on the Shermans in London? You know where they are staying, 140 Grosvenor Gardens?"

"Yes," said Beaumanoir.

"Good! Then your Grace will go on as you have begun. Gain the girl's confidence, and that of her mother—the latter will be easy under the auspices of your new dignity—and come here again at twelve o'clock on Saturday morning, three days hence. I may then have further instructions for you."

And Mr. Clinton Ziegler waved a white, well-formed hand in dismissal.

[CHAPTER IV—The Lady in the Landau]

Beaumanoir passed into the corridor with unsteady steps, dazed by the enormity of his entanglement. He had been caught so easily, yet he was held so firmly. His first impulse was to rush off to Scotland Yard, expose the white-bearded wire-puller in the invalid chair, and claim protection. But that course would entail confession of his engagement as a criminal instrument, to the everlasting disgrace of the great family of which he was now the head. The alternatives were foul treachery to the girl of his heart or almost certain death at the hands of Ziegler's disciplined ruffians.

He had reached the top of the broad staircase when a step, almost inaudible on the thick pile carpet, sounded behind him and a hand fell on his shoulder.

"Charley, old boy! Or is it 'your Grace' I should be calling you? What the dickens are you doing here?" said the young man who had overtaken him.

Beaumanoir's harassed brows cleared as he met Alec Forsyth's honest gaze and he felt the grip of his honest hand. Their ways had lain apart for the last few years, but a very real friendship, begun in the Eton playing fields, had survived separation. Of all his acquaintances, Alec had been the only one to go down to Liverpool twelve months before to bid scapegrace Charles Hanbury farewell.

"I had a call to make, before going to Pattisons' in Lincoln's Inn," said the Duke. And then with quick apprehension he added, pointing to the door he had just left: "Have you come from there? Have you business with Ziegler too?"

"Ziegler? Who's Ziegler?" asked Forsyth, looking puzzled by his sudden confusion. "No, I haven't been to those rooms, but to the suite beyond. A duty call on a certain Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, but, thank goodness, she wasn't at home. Now about yourself, Charley. Fortune smiles again, eh?"

"It's only a sickly grin at present," Beaumanoir replied, dejectedly. "See here, Alec; I've got my bag on a cab outside. I landed at Southampton too early for lunch. Come and talk to me while I get a snack before going to the lawyers."

A few minutes later they were seated in a Strand restaurant, and the young Scotsman heard all about his friend's struggles with the demon of poverty in New York, but never a word of the trouble that was brooding. In his turn Forsyth was able to fill in the blanks of the family solicitor's cablegram, and enlightened Beaumanoir as to the manner of his succession to the title. The late Duke was traveling to Newmarket in a racing "special," accompanied by his nephew and heir, George Hanbury, when they had both met their deaths in a collision.

The double funeral had taken place at Prior's Tarrant, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Beaumanoir in Hertfordshire, three days before, the arrangements having been made by the solicitors, in the absence of the next successor. The last Duke having been a childless widower, and both his brothers, the fathers respectively of George and Charles Hanbury, having predeceased him, there had been no near relatives to follow the late head of the house to his last resting-place.

"Let me see, my cousin George had a sister, Sybil, who used to live with my uncle," Beaumanoir mused aloud. "I wonder what has become of her."

"I believe that she is still at your town house in Piccadilly," replied Forsyth with a constraint which the other did not notice in his self-absorption. But the next moment it struck Beaumanoir as odd that the information should have been so readily forthcoming, for he had been unaware that his friend knew his relatives.

"You have made Sybil Hanbury's acquaintance, then?" he asked.

"Yes, since your departure for America," was the reply. "I had the pleasure of meeting her first at my uncle's in Grosvenor Gardens—General Sadgrove's, you know. I dare say you remember him?"

"Oh, yes; I remember the General well—a shrewd old party with eyes like gimlets," said Beaumanoir. "But what's this about Grosvenor Gardens?" he added quickly. "The Sadgroves used to live in Bruton Street."

"Quite so; but they moved to 140 Grosvenor Gardens, last Christmas."

"140!" exclaimed the Duke. "Why, that's where the Shermans are going to stay. Some friends of mine who—who came over in the same ship," he went on to explain rather lamely.

Forsyth shot an amused glance at his old crony. "Yes, I know that Uncle Jem was expecting some Americans to put up with him, and he has been raving about the charms of the young lady of the party for the last fortnight. You are excited, Charley. Your manner has struck me as strange since we met at the hotel. Is it permitted to inquire if my uncle is entertaining unawares—a future Duchess?"

To the young Scotsman's surprise, the Duke showed signs for a moment of taking the light-spoken banter amiss. Beaumanoir flushed, and muttered something inarticulate, but pulled himself together and diverted their talk into a fresh channel, clumsily enough.

"Don't gas about me, old chap," he said. "Tell me of yourself. Is the world using you better than formerly?"

"About the same," Forsyth replied with a shrug. "They gave me a twenty-pound rise last year, so my pay as a third-grade clerk in the Foreign Office is now the princely sum of £230 per annum. Not a brilliant prospect. When I'm a worn-out old buffer of sixty I shall be able to retire on a pension about equal to my present pay."

"Then look here, Alec; chuck the public service and come to me," said the Duke, eagerly. "I'll give you eight hundred a year to begin with, and rises up to two thousand; and you can have the dower-house at Prior's Tarrant to live in. Call yourself private secretary, bailiff, anything you please—only come. The fact is—well, I've been a bit shaken by—by what I've gone through. I want someone near me who's more than a mere hireling."

It was Forsyth's turn to flush now, but with pleasure at the offer made to him. He accepted it in a few simple words, and the Duke rose and paid his score.

"Come with me to Pattisons'," he said. "Then we'll go on to Piccadilly and take possession."

The business at the lawyers', which consisted of little more than arranging future meetings, was soon finished, and the Duke and his new secretary took a fresh cab to the West End. As they bowled along Beaumanoir inquired further about his cousin Sybil, whom, owing to his absence in India and more latterly to his estrangement from his relations, he had never met. Forsyth imparted the information that for the last six months, since she "came out," she had virtually ruled the late Duke's household.

"But she can be little more than a child," Beaumanoir protested. "Anyhow, I can't keep a cousin of eighteen on as my housekeeper without setting Mrs. Grundy's tongue wagging. The question arises what to do with her. Old Pattison tells me she is well provided for, but I don't like telling her to clear out if it does not occur to her to go. What sort is she, Alec?"

"That's rather a stiff question to put to me," Forsyth replied, as though to himself. "I had better make my confession first as last," he went on hurriedly. "You are her nearest relative now, and the head of her family. Ever since I first saw Sybil Hanbury the dearest wish of my heart has been to make her my wife, but without prospects of any kind I couldn't very well ask her. There you have it, my noble patron, in a nutshell."

Beaumanoir patted his friend's knee affectionately.

"My dear fellow, go in and win, so far as I am concerned," he said. "While I am above ground your prospects need stand in your way no longer. But you haven't answered my question, which I'll put in another way. How is she likely to take my appearance on the scene?"

"I'm afraid she's rather prejudiced. Her brother George didn't love you much, you know, and she is greatly cut up by his loss," Forsyth replied, with the dogged manner of the honest man who has to say a disagreeable thing. "I don't think that you need be under any apprehension about her staying on at Beaumanoir House when you show up. To be candid, I saw her yesterday, and she said she should begin packing as soon as she was sure that you hadn't been drowned on the voyage home."

"Good girl!" ejaculated the Duke. "The unexpressed hope did her much honor, only it's a pity it didn't come off. Now, Alec, if you'll see her first—she needn't see me at all if she doesn't wish to—and tell her from me that she's not to hurry out of the house, because I'm going to oscillate between Prior's Tarrant and a hotel for the present, I shall be immensely obliged to you."

"But you said just now that you were going to take possession."

"I have changed my mind. There are reasons which I cannot explain to you why my immediate neighborhood is likely to be dangerous for the present. I should be sorry to subject my fair cousin to any unpleasantness. Though not a word of this to her or anyone else, please."

The cab was drawing up before the ducal mansion, and Forsyth forbore to put into words the astonishment which he looked. As the two men were about to ascend the steps to the entrance, a landau, which was being driven slowly by, drew to the curb, and a lady who, besides the servants, was the sole occupant, called out:

"Surely you're not going to cut me, Mr. Forsyth. Too proud to know poor little me, eh, now that you've taken to calling on dukes?"

A murmur of annoyance escaped Forsyth, but perforce he went to the carriage and shook the daintily gloved hand held out to him.

"How do you do, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton?" he said, adding the reproving whisper, "That is the Duke."

The lady in the landau raised her lorgnettes and calmly surveyed the waiting nobleman.

"How very interesting!" she purred, adding aloud so that the subject of her request could not fail to hear, "Why don't you introduce him, instead of keeping him standing there? We Americans are death on dukes, you know."

At a gesture from Forsyth, who tried to convey his disgust by a look, Beaumanoir limped forward, smiling. His misfortunes had made him something of a democrat, and he had always been ready to see the comic side of things till tragedy that morning had claimed him for its own. In meeting the advances of the agent Jevons in the Bowery saloon he had been largely influenced by the humor of the situation—of the scion of a ducal house consenting to "get a bit" by passing forged bonds.

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, a handsome blonde with an elegant figure and a childish voice, received the Duke with effusion.

"I stopped my carriage to ask Mr. Forsyth to tea on Saturday," she prattled. "I do hope your Grace will come too. I am staying at the Cecil, and shall be delighted to see you."

The unblushing effrontery of the invitation failed to strike Beaumanoir in his sudden horror at the associations called up by it. This frivolous butterfly of a woman occupied the next suite of rooms to those in which Ziegler was spinning his villainous web—in which that terrible old man had unfolded to him the details of his treacherous task. Strange, too, that he should be bidden to the mild dissipation of an afternoon tea-table in that hotel, of all others, on the very day when he was due to go there on business so different, for Saturday was the day appointed by Ziegler for his call for "further instructions."

Conscious that the mocking eyes of the lady in the landau were watching him with a curious inquiry, he mastered his emotion, and at the same time came to a decision on the vital issue before him. Probably he would have arrived at the same one without the incentive of avoiding an unpalatable engagement, but Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's invitation to tea was undoubtedly the final influence in setting him on the straight path.

"I am very sorry," he replied, and there was a new dignity in his tone, "but I must ask you to excuse me. I am going down to-morrow to Prior's Tarrant, my place in Hertfordshire, and I shall not be in town on Saturday."

For the fraction of a second the rebuffed hostess seemed taken aback by the refusal. She flushed slightly under her powder, and the taper fingers twitched on the handle of her sunshade. But without any appreciable pause she answered gaily:

"That's most unkind of you. Well, what must be must be. Good-bye, your Grace. Good-bye, Mr. Forsyth; I shall expect you, anyhow. Drive on, Bennett."

The carriage rolled away.

"I am glad you snubbed her," Forsyth exclaimed. "She has been made a good deal of in certain circles during the last month or two, and presumes a lot on the strength of it."

"Did I snub her?" said the Duke carelessly. "I am sure I didn't mean to, for she deserves better things of me. You'd hardly believe it, Alec, but that little episode has jerked me into deciding a crucial point—no less than whether to be a man or a cur. At the same time it has put me quite outside the pale as a resident under the same roof as my cousin. On second thoughts, I will not go in at all, but I shall be obliged if you will see her and convey the message I gave you—that Beaumanoir House is at her disposal till she can quite conveniently leave it."

"But what are you going to do yourself?" said Forsyth in sheer bewilderment.

"First I shall go to Bond Street, to gladden the hearts of some of my old creditors; then by an evening train to Prior's Tarrant," was the reply. "And, Alec," proceeded the Duke earnestly, "if you can get leave from the Foreign Office, pending retirement, and join me there as soon as possible, you will place me under a very deep obligation."

[CHAPTER V—Ziegler Begins to Move]

On the following Sunday morning the Duke of Beaumanoir stood at one of the windows of the long library at Prior's Tarrant, idly beating a tattoo on the glass. The June sunshine flooded the bosky leafage of the glorious expanse of park, and nearer still the parterres of the old Dutch garden were gay with summer bloom; but the beauties of the landscape were lost upon the watcher at the window.

Nearly four and twenty hours had elapsed since he had failed to keep his appointment with Mr. Ziegler, and he was wondering how and when that autocrat of high-grade crime would signalize his displeasure at the mutiny. That sooner or later an edict would issue against him from the invalid chair in the first-floor suite he had not the slightest doubt. He knew that he had to deal with men playing a great game for a great stake in deadly earnest.

The Dukes of Beaumanoir had never been famous for their virtues, any more than they had been cowards, and it was rather a dawning sense of responsibility than fear, either for his reputation or his person, that filled him with apprehension. If "anything happened" to him, such a lot would happen to so many other people. For instance, it had only occurred to him since he came down to the country that if Ziegler killed him his death would mean ruin to Alec Forsyth, who had thrown up a sure position to serve him. The next heir was an elderly cousin with a large family to provide for, and he would certainly not retain Forsyth in his employment.

Then, again, Beaumanoir reflected with a sigh, his new and sweet friendship with Leonie Sherman—a friendship to which no blot on his escutcheon need now put limits—would be rudely snapped. The King of Terrors would take away what his saved honor had restored, and perhaps it was the bitterest drop in his cup to feel that he might be giving his life to lose what in another sense he would have given his life to win. To ask Leonie to link her fate to his, with that dark shadow hanging over him, was out of the question.

Once he had taken up his pen to denounce Ziegler to the police authorities anonymously, but he had despondingly laid it down again. That crafty practitioner had doubtless safeguarded himself against such an obvious course by being prepared with an unimpeachable record which it would be impossible to shake unless he came forward and avowed complicity. There, again, dishonor waited for him, and he had already made his choice that a short shrift was preferable to that.

The gloom of his mood was enhanced by his intense loneliness in the huge feudal monastery that now called him master, for Forsyth had been unable to join him, owing to difficulties in obtaining release from his present duties.

Beaumanoir took out and read for the fifth time a letter which had arrived that morning from his friend and secretary:

"My dear Duke (I mustn't use the irreverent 'Charley' any more),—I am still having trouble with the F.O. people about my departure, but I think I may safely promise to get away to you on Tuesday. In fact, I shall make a point of doing so, even if I have to leave the public service in disgrace, for you must forgive my saying that I am rather uneasy about you. The other day you seemed like a man with a millstone round his neck, and I take it that one of the duties of a private secretary is to remove millstones from the person of his employer. I only wish you would confide fully in me, and command me in any way—but that is, of course, your affair.

"I dined with my uncle, General Sadgrove, last night, and had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. and Miss Sherman there. The latter is indeed a charming girl. She was rather shy in talking about you, having heard from my uncle that the Mr. Hanbury she met on shipboard was probably the Duke of Beaumanoir on his way to enter into his kingdom. Mrs. Sherman waxed enthusiastic on your 'old-world courtesy' and the General, who chaffs the old lady, remarked that she had been equally laudatory before she discovered your rank.

"They were all very kind and congratulatory on my announcing my engagement to Sybil, which, as I wrote you yesterday, was ratified within ten minutes of your leaving me at the door of Beaumanoir House.

"You may be interested to hear that I did not go to tea with Mrs. Talmage Eglinton to-day.—Yours,

"Alec Forsyth."

The Duke crushed the letter back into his pocket, and came to a resolution.

"I'll run up to town to-morrow and call on the Shermans," he said to himself. "And now I'll do the proper thing, and go to church. I'm not going to crouch in corners because of that patriarchal old fiend at the Cecil."

The church at which generations of Hanburys had worshiped was in the center of Tarrant village, a mile from the lodge gates, but there was a short cut to it across the park. This was the route taken by the Duke, who first crossed the greensward and then passed out by a private wicket into the road after traversing the belt of copse that fringed the demesne. The villagers, who had waited for his coming, standing bare-headed in the churchyard, were a little disappointed that he had not driven up in full state. But the solitary gentleman limping up the path atoned for the lack of ceremony and won their hearts by his friendly smile; and a handshake to one or two of the older inhabitants, whom he remembered as a boy, clinched the matter. The verdict went round that the new Duke would "do."

The service that morning was, it is to be feared, more ducal than devotional. From the white-robed choir, ranged among the tombs of dead-and-gone Hanburys in the chancel, to the hard-breathing rustics on the back benches every eye was turned and steadily kept on the lonely figure in the family pew. While grateful for the homage paid him, the Duke was not sorry when the ordeal was over and he was free to make his way homeward.

But he was not to get off so easily. As he was about to let himself through the private gate into the park, intending to go back, as he had come, through the copse, footsteps sounded behind him, and Mr. Bristow, the vicar, overtook him. They had already met on the previous day.

"Your Grace is alone still?" panted the clergyman. "Ah, I thought your secretary wouldn't find it so easy to cast his shackles. I am commissioned by Mrs. Bristow to say—I hope you won't think us presuming—that we shall be delighted if you will give us your company at our homely lunch."

A sudden impulse prompted Beaumanoir to accept the invitation. He had taken a liking for the hale, vigorous old vicar, who had the archives of his family by rote, and an hour or two in his society would take him out of himself. So he turned back and accompanied his host to the vicarage, where he made a good impression on Mrs. Bristow by his cordial praise of her training of the choir and by appreciation of her strawberries and cream.

It was past four when he returned to Prior's Tarrant, to be met in the entrance-hall by the butler with a face eloquent of "something wrong."

"What is it, Manson?" he asked. "Mr. Bristow sent a boy, did he not, to say that I was lunching at the vicarage?"

"Yes, your Grace. It isn't that," was the agitated reply. "I have to report an outrage that's been committed on one of the under-servants. Jennings, the third gardener, was coming back from church through the copse in the park, when he was lassoed, your Grace, same as they do buffalo, I've been told, in foreign parts. A rope shot out of the bushes over his shoulders, and then a man ran up as he was struggling on the ground; but let him go, saying it was a joke. Jennings hasn't got any enemies that he knows of, and it was a wicked thing to do, because he's a bit of a cripple and walks lame. It's shook him a good deal."

"I am not surprised at that," said the Duke. "Possibly it was only intended as a practical joke, but you had better inform the constable in the village, and instruct him to inquire into the matter."

The butler retired, and the Duke smiled grimly.

"Ziegler has begun to put in some of his fine work," he muttered. "The initial blunder of his agents in mistaking a servant's limp for mine won't stop him long. I shall begin to like the excitement soon, I expect."

But as the day wore to evening, and the evening to night, the sensation of being hunted vexed his nerves. He found himself prolonging his solitary dinner for the sake of the company of the butler and footman who waited upon him, and afterwards he abstained from the moonlit stroll on the terrace to which he felt tempted. It was not till the mansion had been barred and bolted for the night that he ceased to fumble frequently for the revolver which he had carried all day.

Before retiring he inquired of Manson if the constable had traced the maltreaters of Jennings, and he was not surprised to learn that there had been no discoveries. Mr. Clinton Ziegler was not the man to employ agents incapable of baffling a village policeman.

The room which Beaumanoir occupied was the great state bed-chamber that had been used by his predecessors from time immemorial—a gaunt apartment with a cavernous fireplace and heavily curtained mullioned windows. He did not like the room, but had consented to sleep there on seeing that the old retainers would be scandalized by his sleeping anywhere but in the "Duke's Room."

After locking the door and seeing to the window fastenings, he took the additional precaution of examining the chimney. Bending his head clear of the massive mantelpiece, he looked up and saw that at the end of the broad shaft quite a large circle of star-lit sky was visible, while a cold blast struck downwards of sufficient volume to purify the air of the room.

He lay awake for some time, but he must have been slumbering fitfully for over an hour when he felt himself gradually awakening—not from any sudden start, but from a growing sense of strange oppression in his lungs. As his senses returned the choking sensation increased, and finally he lay wide awake, wondering what was the matter. Every minute it became harder to breathe the stifling air, and at last he flung the bedclothes off in the hope of relief, and in doing so saw something so unaccountable that his reeling senses were stricken with amazement rather than fear.

There was a fire in the grate. Glowing steadily in the recess of the ancient fireplace a great red ball burned, without flicker and without flame, but lurid with the unwavering light that comes from fuel fused to intense heat.

Even without the terrible oppression at his chest there would have been a weird horror in this mysterious fire introduced into his room at dead of night—into a room with locked door and fastened windows. But what did this ghastly struggle for breath portend?

"Charcoal! Ziegler!" were the two words that buzzed in response through his fast-clouding brain.

[CHAPTER VI—The General is Curious]

On the following afternoon at tea-time four ladies were seated in the pleasant drawing-room of 140 Grosvenor Gardens, the residence of General Sadgrove, late of the Indian Staff Corps. Mrs. Sadgrove, a fair, plump, elderly dame, needs no special description, and two of the other tea-drinkers—Mrs. Senator Sherman, as she preferred to be called, and her daughter Leonie—we have met before.

The fourth occupant of the room—a girl dressed in deep mourning—was Sybil Hanbury, who had come to discuss her engagement to Alec Forsyth with her motherly old friend, Alec's aunt by marriage, Mrs. Sadgrove. Owing to the recent deaths in her family the engagement was not to be publicly announced at present; but Sybil had no secrets from the Sadgroves, who had known her from a baby, long before she had been taken up, on the death of her parents, by her grandfather, the late Duke of Beaumanoir.

Miss Hanbury owed her attractiveness to her essentially English type, not of beauty—she would have disdained to lay claim to that—but of fresh, healthy coloring, a suspicion of tomboyishness, and a lithe, supple figure that stood her in good stead in the hunting and hockey fields. A trifle slangy on occasion, she was a good hater and a staunch friend, with a temper—as she had warned Alec already—that would need a lot of humoring if they were not to have "ructions."

"I've got the makings of a termagant, my dear boy, but it will be all right if you rule me with a velvet glove," she had remarked within five minutes of their first kiss.

In fact, Miss Sybil Hanbury was a bit of a hoyden; but a very capable little hoyden for all that, and absolutely fearless.

The two girls had naturally paired off together, and the subject of their talk was, equally naturally, the new Duke—Alec's friend, Sybil's cousin, and Leonie's chance acquaintance on the St. Paul.

"A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?"

Sybil, after listening to Leonie's rather halting description of the fellow passenger whom she had known as "Mr. Hanbury," owned frankly that she had never heard any good of her cousin, but she hastened to add:

"He's given my prejudice a nasty knock, though, in behaving so well to my young man. Gave him a billet as private sec. that enabled Alec to—you know. A man can't be much of a wrong 'un who'll stick to old pals when they have no claim on him."

Leonie tried not to show surprise at the vernacular.

"He seemed very kind and considerate. I don't think he can ever have done anything dishonorable," she replied.

"Nobody ever accused him of that," Sybil assented. "It was only that he was extravagant, and that my grandfather got tired of paying his debts. You see, he wasn't the next heir, and—well, perhaps they were a little hard on him. I'm quite prepared to like him now."

The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of a servant, who announced:

"Mrs. Talmage Eglinton."

"A fellow countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?" Sybil whispered, as a radiant vision in pale pink under a large "picture" hat sailed in, and was greeted with somewhat frigid politeness by Mrs. Sadgrove.

"No; I am not acquainted with either the name or the lady," Leonie replied, struck with a strange antipathy to the bold eyes that seemed to be mastering every detail in the room, herself included. Indeed, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton stared so markedly both at Leonie and her mother that Mrs. Sadgrove thought they must have met, and promptly introduced them as American friends staying in the house. The introduction was not a success, for the Shermans knew everyone worth knowing in American society, and the fact that they had never so much as heard of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton argued her outside the pale.

The elegant vision received her snubbing with cool unconcern, and after a few generalities turned again to her hostess and engaged in the trifling chatter of a "duty" call, making one or two unsuccessful attempts to include Sybil, to whom she had not been introduced, in the conversation.

"That woman is a brute," Sybil said to Leonie under her breath. "I'll tell you about her when she's gone."

The door opened, and there entered an iron-gray man of sixty, whose coming might almost have been the cause of expediting the departure of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, so quickly did she rise and begin her good-byes.

"No, really I can't stay, dear Mrs. Sadgrove, even to have the pleasure of a chat with the General," she prattled. "I have half a dozen other calls to pay, and you have beguiled me into staying too long already. Good-bye. Good-bye, General. Pray don't trouble to come down." And with a half-impudent bow of exaggerated respect to the Shermans, she swept out, with the master of the house in attendance.

General Sadgrove returned at once to the drawing-room after escorting the visitor to her carriage. He was a man who bore his years easily; singularly slow and scant of speech, but alert of eye and almost jaunty in the erectness of his bearing. He had gained his C.B. for prominent services in the suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity, and his name is still held in wholesome dread by the criminals of India whose method is violence. It had once been said of him by a high official: "Jem Sadgrove doesn't have to worry about finding clues. He makes them for himself, and they always yield a true scent. He's got the nose of a fox-terrier, and the patience and speed of a greyhound."

But that was long ago, and it might be supposed that in such pleasant duties of retirement as the ushering out of dainty visitors from his wife's tea-table his faculties had become blunted. Nor in the law-abiding precincts of Belgravia could there be scope for the old-time energy. Yet Mrs. Sadgrove, who knew the signs and portents of her husband's face, looked twice at him with just a shade of anxiety as she asked whether he would take some tea.

"Thanks," he said, and taking his cup he went and stood on the rug before the empty hearth. He stirred his tea slowly, with his eyes wandering from one to the other of the four women in the room.

"You good people seem singularly calm, considering that you must just have been listening to a very exciting story," he remarked.

"Indeed, no," replied Sybil, taking upon herself to answer. "The lady to whom you have just been doing the polite bored us intensely. Leonie says, for all the dash she's cutting in London, she's an incognita so far as America is concerned."

The General continued to stir his tea impassively.

"Did she not inform you in the course of her small talk," he inquired presently, "that on her way here her carriage had knocked a man down and gone near to killing him?"

The question evoked a chorus of interested negatives.

"Neither did she say anything to me about it," said the General gravely.

"Then how did you become aware of the accident?" Mrs. Sadgrove ventured to ask.

"Saw it," returned the General. "It happened in Buckingham Palace Road. I was passing at the time, on my way home from the club. Her coachman drove right over the fellow as he was crossing the roadway at the corner. He was knocked down, and it was the merest shave that he wasn't trampled by the horses and crushed by the wheels. As it was, he escaped with a bit of a shaking and a dusty coat. At any rate, he got up and walked into the nearest barber's—for a wash and brush-up, I suppose."

Further questioned, the General in his jerky way informed his fair audience that he was sure that it was Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's jobbed landau that had wrought the mischief, and that she herself was in it at the time. It was the same vehicle which he had found at his own door on reaching home ten minutes ago, and to which he had just conducted her.

"Funny that she should be so secretive about it," said Mrs. Sadgrove, reflectively. "It's the sort of thing that most women, coming fresh from the scene, would have been full of—especially as it must have been the coachman's fault, and not her own."

"Exactly," was the General's curt comment.

"She's a—a creature," Sybil Hanbury exclaimed, viciously. "Thank goodness, I don't know her; but I've heard all about her from Alec. The poor boy can't abide her; she makes eyes at him so unblushingly."

"Then we can appreciate your sentiments about her," remarked the General with the flicker of a smile. "How did we come to know this lady?" he added to his wife.

Mrs. Sadgrove explained that she had been asked as a favor to call on Mrs. Talmage Eglinton by a mutual acquaintance, a certain Lady Roseville, but had regretted it ever since. Their intercourse had, however, been of the slightest, being confined to the interchange of a couple of formal visits, and to an invitation by Mrs. Sadgrove to a musical "at home," at which Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had endeavored to embark on a flirtation with Alec Forsyth.

"She's a rich widow, I believe; and I don't think she would ever have been heard of if the Rosevilles hadn't taken her up," Mrs. Sadgrove concluded.

The series of grunts with which the General received this information had hardly ceased when again the footman appeared in the doorway and announced, with all due importance:

"His Grace the Duke of Beaumanoir."

The occupants of the drawing-room were all accustomed to the "usages of polite society," either in Britannic or Transatlantic form; but it was impossible for them to repress a flutter of excitement as the visitor entered, his original "cavalry swing" marred but not wholly obliterated by his limp. Leonie tried hard not to blush, and failed. Mrs. Sherman interlaced her fingers nervously. Sybil Hanbury stared hard at the cousin whose stately town house she was occupying, and who had waved a magic wand over her lover's prospects. Mrs. Sadgrove was the graceful and interested hostess, and the General—well, the General was surprised for once into a start which was only invisible because nobody was looking at him.

Beaumanoir's manner was perfectly easy and self-possessed, but there was a harassed look in his eyes which did not entirely fade as he responded to his welcome. But it was not that which had caused the General to start.

The Duke was the man whom he had seen knocked down by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's carriage, to the imminent peril of his life.

The "wash and brush-up" had been effectual as regards the ducal garments, but they could not hide the black silk sling in which he carried his left arm. It was General Sadgrove's way to allow events to shape themselves, and saying nothing of the scene he had witnessed as he welcomed the distinguished visitor, he waited for the Duke to refer to his mishap himself.

But no. The victim of the accident was apparently as much inclined to reticence as had been the fair cause of it. It was Mrs. Sherman who unconsciously provoked the mendacious statement which stimulated the General's curiosity.

"I'm afraid that your Grace has hurt your hand," said the Senator's wife, pointing to a broad strip of diachylon plaster that ran from the Duke's wrist to the ball of his thumb.

"Yes, I—I grazed it rather badly against the wheel in getting out of a cab," Beaumanoir replied with a momentary loss of his self-possession. The discomposure passed at once, and only the observer on the hearth-rug noticed it. The same shrewd observer presently perceived that the visitor was definitely leading the conversation to the subject of the arrival in England of Senator Sherman; and, more than that, that he was waxing a shade more inquisitive than good-breeding allowed as to the nature of the senatorial journey.

"Ah! he's coming on political business, I think you told me?" the Duke remarked in a half-tone of interrogation on Leonie saying that her father, according to advices received that morning, was to sail in two days' time on the Campania, and would be due at Liverpool early in the following week.

"Well, it's political business in a way," Mrs. Sherman struck in. "My husband is coming over in charge of a large amount of Government securities, which are to be deposited at the Bank of England against a shipment of English gold to the United States."

"He's got the opening he wanted. Now, what on earth is he going to do with it?" said the General to himself as he watched keenly.

"Rather a dangerous mission, I should say," was the Duke's comment on the information imparted to him.

"Dangerous! How can that be?" Leonie exclaimed, wondering. "United States Treasury bonds are not explosive."

"No, but the world is full of sharps, Miss Sherman, and some of them might fancy having a shy for such a haul," said Beaumanoir with a trace more of earnestness than the occasion seemed to require. "If I had a relative starting on such an errand, I should be inclined to cable him to—ah—to look out for himself," he added in direct appeal to Mrs. Sherman.

But the good lady laughed the suggestion to scorn, alleging playfully that "it would be as much as her place was worth" to tackle the Senator that way. It would be a hint that he wasn't able to take care of himself or of his charge, and would be resented accordingly.

The Duke abandoned the subject, but the General noted the disappointment in the tired eyes.

"His Grace knows something. Let's see—he was on his beam-ends when he was unearthed in New York," the old hunter of Thugs and Dacoits muttered under his gray mustache.

Beaumanoir made no long stay after his ineffectual effort to sound a warning note. There had been no opportunity for individual talk; but in saying his adieus he had two words with Sybil, who had been observing her cousin quite as intently as, and a good deal more openly than, the General.

"I'm going to look Alec up now, at his diggings in John Street," he said. "Probably I shall ask him to put me up to-night."

"It's a shame that you should have to do so," Sybil blurted in her boyish fashion. "You've been awfully good to us. I ought to have cleared out of Beaumanoir House at once, and I'll 'git' as soon as ever I can make other arrangements."

"I beg you'll do nothing of the kind," Beaumanoir made genial answer. "Alec is about the only friend I have, and—and I need a friend, Cousin Sybil. It has been a pleasure to serve him and you—if it can be called serving you," he added with a thoughtful gravity that puzzled the girl.

She shook hands with a warmth that bespoke the death of old prejudices, and General Sadgrove, who had hardly exchanged two words with his visitor, accompanied him to the hall-door.

"Are you walking, Duke? Or shall I whistle a cab?" he asked.

Beaumanoir looked up the street and down the street, and gave a queer little shrug.

"It won't make any difference whether I walk or drive," he said. "Good-bye, General."

Having gazed the limping figure out of sight, the General went back into the house and made for his private den—a cozy apartment crammed with Eastern spoils. There he leisurely selected a cigar and seated himself in a big saddle-bag chair.

"There is something brewing," he growled gently. "I perceive a vibration in the moral atmosphere which quite recalls old days. I wonder what it means?"

[CHAPTER VII—The Men on the Stairs]

The rooms—two in number—occupied by Alec Forsyth in John Street, Adelphi, were in a house let off in bachelor chambers, with the exception of the ground floor, which was used as an office by a firm of wholesale wine-merchants. The young Scotsman's limited income had precluded a more aristocratic locality; and, at any rate, John Street offered the advantage of being within a few minutes' walk of his daily work in Downing Street.

In the daytime, when the tenants were out at their various avocations, the upper part of the dingy old building was deserted, save by the housekeeper in the attics; while the counting-house abutting on the street was all life and bustle. At night the conditions were reversed, the wine-merchant's premises being locked up and silent, and the rooms above occupied.

On the evening of that Monday on which the Duke of Beaumanoir called on the Shermans at the residence of General Sadgrove, Alec was busy in his sitting-room, tearing up papers and preparing generally for his departure to Prior's Tarrant on the morrow. It was past eight, and he had just lit the gas, when the door suddenly opened and Beaumanoir came in.

"Why, Charley—hang it! Duke, I mean—I thought you were in the country!" Alec exclaimed, more astonished by his friend's actions than by his appearance there.

For, after slipping quietly in, Beaumanoir had turned sharp round and loosed the catch of the spring-lock. Not satisfied with that, he also shot home the two old-fashioned bolts with which the door was fitted, top and bottom, and then flung himself into an easy chair, mopping his brow with his handkerchief.

"I don't think I was spotted, but it's best to be on the safe side," he muttered. Then aloud: "I came to ask you to give me a shake-down to-night, old chap, on a sofa or anything; only I don't know if it's fair to you; my proximity carries a pretty considerable risk. But I've been—rather worried, and I seem to want company."

Forsyth rose, and laid an affectionate hand on the Duke's shoulder.

"Now, look here," he said, firmly. "I'm going to forget that you're my employer at a generous salary, and remember only that I'm your friend. What does all this mean? You've been hurt somehow, too. Just make a clean breast of it, and let's see what can be done."

Beaumanoir shook his head sadly.

"I can't make a clean breast of it," he began; then pulled up short and went on. "At least, I can't tell you causes, but I'll tell you effects. My life has been attempted twice certainly, possibly three times, since noon yesterday."

"How?" said Alec with Scotch brevity.

"A lame gardener was set upon at Prior's Tarrant, and released on his assailants finding that they had mistaken him for me. And at night they got on the roof and tried to suffocate me by letting a brazier of charcoal down into the grate and plugging the chimney. Luckily I awoke, and managed to crawl out of the room in time."

"But surely you raised an alarm and caught the fellows? They couldn't get off the roof and escape so quickly as that," exclaimed Alec, half incredulous.

Again the Duke shook his head.

"I raised no alarm, and they did get away, after pulling up the brazier and leaving no trace," he replied. "There are reasons, Alec, why I could not have appeared against them had they been caught—the same reasons why I can't confide more fully in you."

"You must have done something very bad—murder at least," said Forsyth, gravely.

"On the contrary, I have done nothing at all," Beaumanoir retorted. "It is for not doing something that I am being persecuted."

"Well, what about the third attempt?"

"It happened this afternoon, as I was on my way to your uncle's. A carriage knocked me down and very nearly crumpled me. But that may have been an accident."

"Did you take stock of the driver and the people in the carriage?"

Beaumanoir was obliged to admit that he had not. In his disheveled state he had been only anxious to be cleaned down and have his wrist attended to, and it was not till after the carriage had driven rapidly away that he had connected the incident with the other attempts.

Forsyth said nothing for the moment, but fetched some cigarettes from the mantelpiece; and it was not until they had smoked in silence for awhile that he blurted out suddenly:

"This can't be allowed to go on. It makes everything impossible. Have you any reason to think that the people who are pursuing you will do so indefinitely—until they have settled you?"

Beaumanoir considered before replying, as though the point had not occurred to him before.

"No," he said, with a nervous laugh. "Things have crowded so in the last few hours that I haven't thought much about any sort of future. I cannot be sure, but I believe if I could pull through till the end of next week—say, for another fortnight—that the danger would pass."

Forsyth sat and ruminated, blowing blue smoke-rings; and then, after two or three minutes of silence, a faint noise sounded in the room. The Duke, whose nerves were tuned to concert pitch, heard it first, and turned a pair of wide-open eyes on the door. Forsyth's gaze followed, and they both saw the handle of the door move. The door itself, being locked and double bolted, of course refused to yield to the gentle pressure from without.

Forsyth laid his finger to his lips for silence, and motioned Beaumanoir to retire into the bedroom, which communicated by means of folding doors with the sitting-room. When the Duke had noiselessly disappeared, Forsyth stole to the outer door, and having first quietly drawn the bolts he quickly unlocked it and flung it open, to be confronted by an under-sized little man, who shrank back from his threatening attitude.