Part 4 (1/2)
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 ma.s.sive 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_.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _”A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her?”_]
Sybil, after listening to Leonie's rather halting description of the fellow pa.s.senger 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.
”n.o.body ever accused him of that,” Sybil a.s.sented. ”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.”