The Under Secretary Part 39

"But how can she have learnt my secret?" demanded the melancholy man upon whom the all-reaching hand of justice had so heavily fallen.

"Ah, that is utterly impossible to tell," answered Cator. "All that is certain is that she, together with her husband and confederates, will quickly clear out of England now that you have so determinedly withstood their efforts and defied their threats."

Archibald Cator had turned away, and was making a pretence of examining the t.i.tles of the books in the bookcase on the opposite side of the room while Claudia and Dudley stood silently hand in hand. The captain had an appointment to see the Marquess of Stockbridge in company with the Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office at one o'clock, when the serious charges were to be privately investigated. The hour was drawing near, and the white-faced, tearful woman was taking leave of the guilty man, whom she had so fondly and so truly loved.

There was in her eyes an inexpressible sadness, and the quivering lips he had so often kissed with tender pa.s.sion showed plainly the agony she was suffering.

"Forgive me, Claudia, forgive me for the sake of the love of old!" he implored, whispering in her ear. "With your forgiveness I can face my fate unflinchingly, knowing that my punishment is just."

"Dudley," she answered in a voice broken by emotion, as she uttered what was to her the dearest of all names, "I forgive you everything. A cruel, an inexorable fate tears us apart, but I shall never forget you-- never. May G.o.d forgive you as I forgive you."

"Thank you, my heart, for those encouraging words," he cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing up her hand and imprinting upon it a lingering kiss of farewell.

As their eyes met for a single instant, in hers he saw a look of blank despair and mingled sympathy more expressive than any words could possibly be.

"Farewell, Dudley!" was all she said. "I shall pray to Him for you."

She turned slowly from him and walked across to the door, while Cator drew back the velvet _portiere_ and bowed in silence.

At this moment the door was thrown open by Parsons, who carried a rather bulky letter and a card upon his salver.

"The gentleman who called in the night has called again, sir," announced the old man. "I told him you were engaged, but he said he could not possibly wait, as he was sailing from London almost immediately. He regretted missing you, and left this letter."

His master glanced at the card, and saw that it bore the name "Ralph Brodie," with the word "Boodle's" in the corner.

With nervous fingers he quickly tore open the envelope and drew from it a note, together with a smaller envelope, rather soiled, sealed with black wax, and addressed to him in a woman's pointed hand.

Claudia, who had halted, stood watching him.

The note was a brief one, written by Brodie from his club, stating with regret that his wife had died of consumption a month ago. Among the papers which he found after her death was the enclosed, together with instructions that he should deliver it personally and unopened. This he did. As he had only been in London a few hours on urgent business, and was compelled to return to India by the _Caledonia_ that afternoon, he had written this note of explanation in case they could not meet.

He broke the brittle wax of the dead woman's letter, and drew forth a sheet of thin foreign note-paper, the ink on which was somewhat faded.

Swiftly he scanned the lines of brown ink; then, while looking for May Brodie's signature, he saw in addition to this another name at the bottom of of the doc.u.ment--"Muriel Mortimer."

"Impossible!" he gasped. "Surely this is not a dream! Look! Read this!" He handed the missive to Cator, who, together with the woman who had just bidden him a last farewell, read it through eagerly.

"It is the truth!" cried Claudia wildly, a moment later, rus.h.i.+ng towards him, throwing her clinging arms about his neck, kissing him pa.s.sionately, and shedding tears of joy. "You are innocent, Dudley!

innocent! Think, think! The truth is written there in the presence of a witness. _You are innocent_!"

Some time elapsed before Dudley could grasp the whole of the facts.

What he held in his trembling fingers was a statement written by May Lennox three years before. It began in a somewhat rambling manner, was dated from Kapurthala, and had been written after the doctors had p.r.o.nounced her to be suffering from incurable consumption. The important paragraph, however, penned in an unsteady hand and rather smeared, read as follows:

"And now, as I know that before very long I must die, I have resolved to confess to you the whole truth. I knew too well of my father's relations with the Turkish and Italian Governments, and I knew how he induced you to procure for him photographs of the Anglo-Russian agreement in the East, offering myself to you as a bribe. I was helpless in his hands; he used me as his decoy in the various capitals, and often accomplished important _coups_ of espionage with my a.s.sistance. But the photographs you furnished to him proved to be those of quite unimportant despatches, and utterly valueless. The photographs of the actual despatches wanted by Tewfik were procured by a person named Peynton in the employ of the Foreign Office, who has since died.

My father, however, believed that you wilfully endeavoured to mislead him and intended to expose him; hence his fierce antagonism, which caused him to lay in wait for you in that lonely path near G.o.dalming.

As I had gained knowledge of his intention to harm you, I went down there and watched his movements. I was present, hidden in the shadow behind a rail only a few paces from the spot--at the point where, you will remember, the police found the weeds down-trodden and other signs of the presence of a third person. I overheard his suggestion to you, and your refusal; I saw him draw his knife with intent to strike you. I watched your struggle, and in the course of the fracas his revolver fell unnoticed from his pocket. As you were both close to me at that moment I was enabled to reach the weapon. Then I saw that your strength was failing, and you fired at him. You missed. I believe I know the very tree in which your bullet lodged. Seeing your imminent peril, I also fired--and he fell. I saved you, but I killed the man whom I was compelled to call father, though I had good reasons to hate his memory.

He killed my poor mother by sheer brutality and neglect, and made me his puppet and decoy in his nefarious schemes. When he fell, you rushed from the spot, believing that you had killed him, but if you will refer to the medical evidence you will find that he was struck by a single bullet beneath the left shoulder-blade. That shot was the one I fired, and could not possibly have been fired by you. In order to tell you the truth, and yet not commit myself, I sent you anonymously, a few weeks after the occurrence, a piece of tracing-paper with a diagram upon it, and a few words, which were purposely rather vague, hoping that the plan of the spot would show you that you were innocent, and that in case you were afterwards charged with the crime you would be able to use the plan in your defence. Confession I make calmly and of my own free will, in order that it may be signed by the woman who is my companion and my most intimate friend, and that it may be opened by your own hand when I am dead and beyond the reach of man's justice."

There was nothing else. Only the signature, "May Beatrice Brodie,"

together with that of Muriel Mortimer.

"This clearly explains how the woman Mortimer, or Biancheri, obtained possession of your secret," observed Cator in surprise, after he had read it through aloud. "My inquiries, I recollect, showed that she entered Mrs. Brodie's employ as companion and was in India for six months, but that she returned, owing to the climate, and again took up her abode with the Meldrums. The explanation given by the Meldrums to friends was that she had been out to India on a visit. Having obtained knowledge of your secret, she imparted it to Biancheri after her marriage, with the result that he and his a.s.sociates made the clever attempt to blackmail you. She, no doubt, felt herself safe as long as her late employer was living, and is, of course, in ignorance of her death and the pa.s.sing of this confession into your hands."

An hour later Dudley Chisholm was closeted alone with the Marquess of Stockbridge in the latter's private room at the Foreign Office, where he related the whole story. That any man enjoying the confidence of Her Majesty's Government in any capacity should have Endeavoured to betray its secrets was a most heinous and unpardonable offence in the eyes of the stern old politician who was Her Majesty's chief adviser.

Nevertheless, on carefully weighing all the facts, his lords.h.i.+p came to the conclusion that the man who had been his private secretary, and who now held responsible office, had proved himself deeply penitent, and had, during the intervening years, endeavoured to make every reparation in his power. The actual doc.u.ments Chisholm had photographed were quite unimportant. It was manifest that from first to last he had been the victim of a cleverly arranged conspiracy. The interview was a long one, and all that pa.s.sed between them will never be recorded. But at last the Marquess rose and generously extended to Dudley his thin, bony hand in forgiveness. He summed up the case as follows:

"It is true that you photographed the despatches with intent to hand them to the man Lennox, and it is true that the present complications in Europe are the outcome of the betrayal of our policy, but it is not true, Chisholm, that you are a traitor. Your career has encouraged me to prophesy (and the indiscretion of which I am to-day aware for the first time has not caused me to alter my opinion) that you are one of the men who will rise after me to safeguard your country's interests.

The question placed on the paper by the member for West Antrim must be expunged at once. I will see to that matter personally, for it is apparent that the member in question has either received information, or is himself a.s.sociated with the unscrupulous persons who endeavoured to profit by their knowledge of your secret. Leave it to me. That question will never be printed in the paper nor asked in the House.

Only a traitor in a.s.sociation with the representative of some foreign Power dare endeavour to create a political crisis at this moment by asking such a question."

"Then I am actually forgiven?" Dudley asked in a low voice, scarcely realising the truth.

"Yes, Chisholm," replied the Marquess gravely, pressing the hand of the younger man, "you are forgiven, and what is more, my confidence in you is not shaken, for you have been proved a man of sterling worth, and the unfortunate victim of as vile and ingenious a conspiracy as ever was formed against us by dastardly spies from across the Channel. You come of an ancient and honourable race, Chisholm. Recollect, therefore, that throughout the remainder of your life your first duty is always to your G.o.d, and the second to your country and your Queen."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

CONTAINS THE CONCLUSION.

The greyness of the short winter's afternoon was steadily growing darker and darker, and the lights were already beginning to appear in the shops and the vehicles in busy Knightsbridge; but within the pretty boudoir, where an old punch-bowl full of flowers poured sweetness into the air, two hearts beat in unison, full of new-found joy, full of hope, full of perfect confidence and love.

Holding his queen in his strong arms, Dudley had asked her a question, to which she had made answer with all the fervour of her being:

"Yes, I will gladly be your wife, Dudley," she said, in a tender voice.

"As you well know, my heart has ever been yours, and ever will be--until the end."

In the dim light, which had now become so dark that he could scarcely distinguish her face, he pressed her closely to him in a wild ecstasy of love, and as he kissed her on the lips, his heart full of gladness inexpressible, she fancied that she felt a tear-drop upon his hollow cheek.

To recount facts already known to every reader of these pages would serve no purpose, but it will interest some to learn that Marucci subsequently confessed to Captain Cator that the plot against the Under-Secretary, devised by Biancheri and his wife, had long been in progress. It was certainly at the instigation of this woman that Marucci had succeeded in obtaining the incriminating doc.u.ments from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Constantinople, which he had pa.s.sed on to his employer, Archibald Cator; while she at the same time sent an anonymous letter to Mr. Gerald Oldfield, the Member for Antrim West, one of Dudley's bitterest political opponents, preferring against him a charge of murder. The Grand-Duke Stanislas knew the truth, of course, from what was told him at his own Emba.s.sy. The Meldrums, a worthy pair, had always remained in ignorance of the true character of the station-master's daughter, whom they had adopted out of charity. They were first told the truth by Claudia herself, and the blow was a terrible disillusion, for they had always treated her as their own child. To Colonel Murray-Kerr, while he was still attach in Rome, the secret of the marriage of Muriel Mortimer with Biancheri was imparted by Marucci, who explained that there was some deep and mysterious conspiracy on foot against Dudley Chisholm, that Biancheri had left the Italian army, and that he was undoubtedly a spy. For that reason the colonel had uttered his strange warning when shooting with Dudley, but he had unfortunately not taken Marucci's statement very seriously.

Quite recently Archibald Cator ascertained that the woman Biancheri, who had so cleverly plotted the grand _coup_, had been deserted by her scoundrelly husband, and had died alone and in penury in a bare room on the fifth storey of a rickety house in the Montmartre quarter of Paris.

Biancheri himself is at this moment languis.h.i.+ng in prison at Gren.o.ble, having been arrested by French gendarmes in the very act of making a plan of one of the Alpine frontier fortresses.

All London is well aware how Dudley Chisholm's marriage, so long expected, took place, not with the _eclat_ common to a fas.h.i.+onable wedding in town, but quietly in the quaint old village church at Wroxeter, where the mellow-toned bells pealed merrily, and the school children strewed the roses of July in their path.

And every one, both in society and out of it, knows that Lady Dudley Chisholm still retains her place as one of the smartest women in London; that all the scandals once whispered about her have been proved to be false inventions of her detractors; that as _chatelaine_ of Wroxeter she is one of the most popular among hostesses; and that her husband, whom she adores, and whose fame is of worldwide renown, will certainly have a seat in the next Cabinet.

You, my reader, whom curiosity or necessity takes into Mayfair or Belgravia, must often have seen a slim, sweet-faced woman, remarkable for the most wonderful eyes, driving in her neat Victoria, her servants in dark green liveries, and with the three water-bougets of the Chisholms upon the silver harness. Beside her there not infrequently nestles a child with an exquisite face, dark hair, and great, wide-open eyes that look in wonder on the vast world of London.

You are acquainted with their life-story. They are mother and daughter, the wife and child of one of the happiest of men, the Right Honourable Dudley Waldegrave Chisholm, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

The End.