Part 17 (1/2)

Two hours later Azimoolah Khan, lying flattened out like a huge lizard on the parapet of the terrace, and thanking Allah that the rain had ceased, suddenly p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and thanked Allah again that the time for relieving his cramped limbs had come. At first his ears were the only part of his body affected by the slight sound he had heard, but some thirty seconds later, keeping the rest of him motionless, he goggled his eyes round to one of the ground-floor windows and saw-seeing in the dark was one of his accomplishments-a female figure turn from it and flit along the terrace towards the steps leading down to the park.

Waiting till the figure had gained the lower level, he slid from the parapet and gave noiseless chase.

The woman in front spared no precaution to guard against pursuit. She stopped many times and listened; she doubled on her tracks; and as soon as she reached the woodland belt she proved to be an expert in the art of taking cover. But she had to do with probably the most wily exponent of woodcraft at that moment in England, and her pursuer was never at fault. Dark as the night was, Azimoolah never lost her for an instant.

With sinuous movements that never caused a twig to crack, the lithe Pathan was always creeping, gliding, dodging close behind, till he stopped within ten paces of the park wall, and from the shelter of an oak trunk watched his quarry nimbly climb the obstacle. No sooner had she disappeared than he swung himself to the top of the wall, and peered over just as a horse broke into a trot on the other side.

Piercing the gloom, his keen sight distinguished the shape of a fast-receding rubber-tired dog-cart, in which three figures were seated; and, having fulfilled his mission, he dropped back to the ground. In a few minutes he was on the terrace again, hissing like a cobra outside the smoking-room. General Sadgrove opened the French cas.e.m.e.nt.

”The daughter of Sheitan came from the fifth window, and has gone away, even as the sahib predicted, in the cart with two men,” Azimoolah reported.

”Which road did they take?”

”To the left-the Senalban road, sahib.”

”St. Albans, eh? Then she's going to catch the 3.15 up night mail,”

muttered the General. ”Well, good-night, old _jungle-wallah_. You've got your orders,” he added, closing and bolting the window.

The next morning there were two absentees from the breakfast-table-General Sadgrove, who by overnight arrangement had breakfasted by himself, so as to be driven to Tarrant Road in time for the nine o'clock train to town, and Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, who was confined to her bed by a bad headache. The news of the indisposition was imparted to Sybil by the maid Rosa at her mistress's door, and was accompanied by a regretful but firm refusal of admission to the patient.

”Madame is so _desolee_ not to receive you, ma'amselle, but she 'ave ze malady too strr-rong for speak even with her dearest friend,” was the ultimatum which sent Miss Hanbury from the door with a doleful face, which somehow took quite a different expression when she had turned the corner.

For some mysterious reason her aloofness from her lover vanished that morning, and she and Forsyth were on the best of terms. They spent two hours together wandering in the park, where in one of the more remote glades Azimoolah flitted up to them from the bushes, and, regarding Sybil with awe-struck veneration, made a deep salaam and was gone. The Duke, who had given his word of honor to the General not to go beyond the park gates, pa.s.sed the time partly with his bailiff and partly strolling with Leonie in the gardens and gla.s.s-houses. The friends.h.i.+p between Beaumanoir and his beautiful guest, so promisingly begun on board the _St. Paul_, seemed to have lost ground. Though he was much in her society, he avoided intimate topics, and often puzzled her with a hastily averted look of wistful tenderness in strange contrast to his a.s.siduous but commonplace hospitality.

Half an hour before luncheon General Sadgrove, returning on foot from the station and looking five years older for his run up to London, met the two young couples, who had now joined forces, as they were entering the mansion. Forsyth gave his uncle an anxious glance of inquiry, but the old man pa.s.sed him by unheeding, and addressed the Duke in a tone of icy formality.

”I shall be obliged if your Grace will give me five minutes in the library on a very urgent matter,” he said, adding, with significant emphasis, ”_I have been with Mr. Ziegler this morning._”

Beaumanoir, gone all pale and tremulous, made a palpable effort at self-control as he replied:

”Come into the library by all means, General. But I am afraid you will find me quite as reticent as I am sure Ziegler was.”

The interview lasted till long after the luncheon gong had sounded, and when at length the Duke and the General entered the dining-room two pairs of watchful eyes observed that their relative att.i.tudes had been reversed. The General's usually impa.s.sive face was working so painfully that Mrs. Sadgrove half rose from her chair at sight of her husband, checking herself with difficulty; while the Duke bore himself almost jauntily, and began chaffing Sybil about her devotion to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, who was still, by latest bulletin from Rosa, ”suffering ze grand torments” and unable to leave her room.

The afternoon pa.s.sed without external signs that the house-party was living on the verge of an active volcano. But as it was growing dusk Forsyth, at the risk of being late for dinner, took a solitary walk in the direction of a certain stile, by which the Prior's Tarrant pastures were approached by a short cut across fields from Tarrant Road railway station. He arrived at the stile in the nick of time to give a helping hand to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, who had just reached the spot from the opposite direction. The hour was the one when the guests at the house might be expected to be dressing for dinner, and it also tallied with the arrival of a London train at the station; but neither alluded to these incidentals of such an obviously chance meeting.

”I trust that your headache is better,” said Forsyth, politely.

But the headache, he was a.s.sured, was rather worse than better. The sufferer averred that she had slipped out an hour before, to go for a quiet walk in the meadows in the hope of obtaining relief; but the remedy had been of no avail, and all that remained was to go back to bed.

”Won't you walk back with me?” Mrs. Talmage Eglinton added, devouring the young Scotsman's healthy, good-looking face with eyes of invitation.

”I don't seem ever to get you alone nowadays.”

”I am very sorry, but I have to go a little further,” replied Forsyth, and, raising his hat, he pa.s.sed on. But it was a very little way further that he had to go, for at the end of the first meadow he turned and followed in the lady's wake back to the mansion, catching, as he did so, a glimpse of Azimoolah moving stealthily in the bushes at the side of the path.

That night the post-bag which one of the Prior's Tarrant grooms conveyed to the office in the village contained a letter addressed to ”Clinton Ziegler, Esqre.,” at the Hotel Cecil, couched thus:

”_The gentleman interviewed in the Bowery, New York, by Mr.

Jevons on your behalf has reconsidered the matter, and is now prepared to carry out his commitment. He is so shaken by recent occurrences that he does not feel up to coming himself till he has received a.s.surances, but his secretary will call at the hotel on Monday for instructions, which please hand to the secretary in writing and carefully sealed._”