The Under Secretary Part 25

by the newspapers, and whose doings are chronicled daily with the same a.s.siduity as the movements of the Sovereign himself, yet in many cases these very men, as did Dudley Chisholm, shrink from the fierce light always beating upon them. They loathe the plaudits of the mult.i.tude, because of the inner voice of conscience that tells them they are charlatans and shams; and they are always promising themselves that one day, when they see a fitting opportunity, they will retire into private life.

In every public a.s.sembly, from the smallest parish council up to Westminster itself, there are prominent members who live in daily fear of exposure. Although looked upon by the world as self-denying, upright citizens, they are, nevertheless, leading a life of awful tension and constant anxiety, knowing that their enemies may at any moment reveal the truth.

Thus it was with Dudley Chisholm. That he was a man well fitted for the responsible post he occupied in the Government could not be denied, and that he had carefully and a.s.siduously carried out the duties of his office was patent to all. Yet the past--that dark, grim past which had caused him to travel in the unfrequented tracks of the Far East--had never ceased to haunt him, until now he could plainly see that the end was very near. Exposure could not be long delayed.

The turret-clock chimed the hour slowly, and its bells aroused him.

"No," he cried hoa.r.s.ely to himself, "no, it would not be just! Before taking the final step I must place things in order--I must go out of office with all the honour and dignity of the Chisholms," he added with a short and bitter laugh. "Out of office!" he repeated hoa.r.s.ely to himself, "out of office--and out of the world!"

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

SOWS SEEDS OF SUSPICION.

Chisholm with uneven steps walked back to the big writing-table, turned up the reading-lamp and, seating himself, began to put the many official papers quickly in order, signing some, destroying others, and now and then making marginal notes on those to be returned to the Foreign Office. Many of the more unimportant doc.u.ments he consigned to the waste-paper basket, but the others he arranged carefully, sorted them, and placed them in several of the large official envelopes upon which the address was printed, together with the bold words "On Her Majesty's Service."

The light of hope had died from his well-cut features. His countenance was changed, grey, anxious, with dark haggard eyes and trembling lips.

When, at last, he had finished, he rose again with a strange smile of bitterness. He crossed to the portion of the book-lined wall that was merely imitation, opened it, and with the key upon his chain took from the small safe concealed there the envelope secured by the black seal, and the small piece of folded paper which contained the lock of fair hair--his most cherished possession.

He opened the paper and stood with the golden curl in the palm of his hand, gazing upon it long and earnestly.

"Her's!" he moaned in a voice that sounded suspiciously like a sob. "If she were here I wonder what would be her advice? I might long ago have confided in her, told her all, and asked her help. She would have given it. Yes, she was my friend, and would have sacrificed her very life to save me. But it is all over. I am alone--utterly alone."

Tears stood in his eyes as he raised the love-token slowly and reverently to his lips. Then he spoke again:

"For me there only remains the punishment of Heaven. And yet in those days how childishly happy we were--how perfect was our love! Is it an actual reality that I'm standing here to-night for the last time, or is it a dream? No," he added, his teeth clenched in firmness, "it's no dream. The end has come!"

The stillness of the night remained unbroken for a long time, for he continued to stand beside the table with the fair curl in his nervous hand. Many times he had been sorely tempted to destroy it, and put an end to all the thoughts of the past that it conjured up. And yet he had grown to regard it as a talisman, and actually dare not cast it from him.

"Little lock of hair," he said at last in a choking voice, his eyes fixed upon it, "throughout these years you have formed the single link that has connected me with those blissful days of fervent love. You are the only souvenir I possess of her, and you, emblem of her, fragile, exquisite, tender, were my faithful companion through those long journeys in far-off lands. In days of peril you have rested near my heart; you have been my talisman; you have, sweet and silent friend, cheered me often, telling me that even though long absent I was not forgotten. Yes--yes!" he exclaimed wildly; "you are part of her-- actually part of her!" and again he kissed the lock of hair in a burst of uncontrollable feeling.

Suddenly he drew himself up. His manner instantly changed, as the stern reality again forced itself upon him.

"Ah!" he sighed, "those days are long spent, and to me happiness can never return--never. My sin has risen against me; my one false step debars me from the pleasures of the world." His chin was sunk upon his breast, and he stood staring at the little curl, deep in reverie. At last, without another word, he raised it again to his hot, parched lips, and then folded it carefully in its wrapping.

The envelope he broke open, took out the small piece of transparent paper, and spread it upon a piece of white foolscap in order to read it with greater ease. Slowly he pondered over every one of the almost microscopic words written there. As he read, his heavy brows were knit, as though some of the words puzzled him.

He took a pencil from the inkstand and with it traced a kind of geometrical diagram of several straight lines upon the blotting-pad.

These lines were similar to those he had traced with his stick in the dust when standing at the stile on that steep path in the lonely coppice near G.o.dalming.

Now and then he referred to the small doc.u.ment in the crabbed handwriting, and afterwards examined his diagram, as though to make certain of its correct proportions. Then, resting his chin upon his hands, he sat staring at the paper as it lay upon the blotting-pad within the zone of mellow lamplight.

"It seems quite feasible," he said at last, speaking aloud. "Would that the suggestion were only true! But unfortunately it is merely a vague and ridiculous idea--a fantastic chimera of the imagination, after all.

No," he added resolutely, "the hope is utterly false and misleading. It will not bear a second thought."

With sad reluctance he refolded the piece of transparent paper, replaced it in the envelope, and put it back in the safe without resealing it.

But from the same unlocked drawer he took a formidable-looking blue envelope, together with a tiny paper folded oblong, and sealed securely with white wax. The paper contained a powdered substance.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary carried them both back to his writing-table, and laid them before him. Upon the envelope was written in a bold legal hand, doubly underlined: "The Last Will and Testament of Dudley Waldegrave Chisholm, Esquire (Copy)."

He smiled bitterly as he glanced at the superscription, then drew out the doc.u.ment and spread it before him, reading through clause after clause quite calmly.

There were four pages of foolscap, engrossed with the usual legal margin and bound together with green silk. By it the Castle of Wroxeter and his extensive property in Shrops.h.i.+re were disposed of in a dozen words.

The doc.u.ment was only lengthy by reason of the various bequests to old servants of the family and annuities to certain needy cousins. With the exception of the Castle and certain lands, the bulk of the great estate was, by that will, bequeathed to a well-known London hospital.

Some words escaped him when, after completing its examination, during which he found nothing he wished to be altered, he refolded it. He then sealed it in another envelope and wrote in a big, bold hand: "My Will-- Dudley Chisholm."

As the names of his solicitors, Messrs. Tarrant and Drew, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, were appended to the doc.u.ment, there was no necessity for him to superscribe them.

"All is entirely in order," he murmured hoa.r.s.ely. "And now I have to decide whether to await my doom, or take time by the forelock." As he spoke thus, his nervous hand toyed with the little paper packet before him.

The room was in semi-darkness, for the logs had burned down and their red glow threw no light. At that moment the turret-clock struck a deep note, which echoed far away across the silent Severn.

A strange look was in his eyes. The fire of insanity was burning there.

As he glanced around in a strained and peculiar manner, he noticed upon a side table the whiskey, some soda-water, and a gla.s.s, all of which Riggs, according to custom, had placed there ready to his hand.

Without hesitation he crossed to it, resolved on the last desperate step. He drew from the syphon until the gla.s.s was half-full. Then he added some whiskey, returned with it to his seat, and placed it upon the table.

With care he opened the little packet that had been h.o.a.rded since the days of his journey in Central Asia, disclosing a small quant.i.ty of some yellowish powder, which he emptied into the gla.s.s, stirring it with the ivory paper-knife until all became dissolved. Then he sank into his chair with the tumbler set before him.

He held it up to the light, examining it critically, with a sad smile playing about his thin white lips. Presently he put it down, and with both hands pushed the hair wearily from his fevered forehead.

"Shall I write to Claudia?" he asked himself in a hoa.r.s.e voice, scarcely louder than a whisper. "Shall I leave her a letter confessing all and asking forgiveness?"

For a long time he pondered over the suggestion that had thus come to him.

"No," he said at last, "it would be useless, and my sin would only cause my memory to be more hateful. Ah, no!" he murmured; "to leave the world in silence is far the best. The coroner's jury will return a verdict to the effect that I was of unsound mind. Juries don't return verdicts of _felo-de-se_ nowadays. The time of stakes and cross-roads has pa.s.sed."

And he laughed harshly again, for now that he had placed all his affairs in order a strange carelessness in regard to existence had come upon him.

"To-morrow, when I am found, the papers--those same papers that have boomed me, as they term it--will discover in my end a startling sensation. All sorts of ridiculous rumours will be afloat. Parliament will gossip when it meets; but in a week my very name will be forgotten.

One memorial alone will remain of me, my name engraved upon the tablet in the house of the Royal Geographical Society as its gold-medallist.

And nothing else--absolutely nothing."

Again he paused. After a few minutes had pa.s.sed he stretched out his trembling hand and took the gla.s.s.

"What will the world say of me, I wonder?" he exclaimed in a hoa.r.s.e tone. "Will they declare that I was a coward?"

"Yes," came an answering voice, low, but quite distinct within the old brown room, "the world will surely say that Dudley Chisholm was a coward--_a coward_!"

He sprang to his feet in alarm, das.h.i.+ng the gla.s.s down on the table, and, turning quickly to the spot whence the answer had come, found himself face to face with an intruder who had evidently been concealed behind the heavy curtains of dark red velvet before the window, and who had heard everything and witnessed all his agony.

The figure was lithe and of middle stature--the figure of a woman in a plain dark dress standing back in the deep shadow.

At the first moment he could not distinguish the features; but when he had rushed forward a few paces, fierce resentment in his heart because his actions had been overlooked, he suddenly became aware of the women's ident.i.ty.

It was Muriel Mortimer.

Since he had locked the door behind him as soon as he had entered the room, she must have been concealed behind the heavy curtains which were drawn across the deep recess of the old diamond-paned window.