A Traitor's Wooing Part 6

Discussion as to the exact words of the cry from the train was cut short by a general adjournment to the tables, where for the next half-hour the guests did justice to their host's lavish hospitality. Mountains of sun-kissed peaches from the warm walls of the Manor gardens, gallons of fruit-salad and cakes in bewildering variety disappeared as by magic.

The little green oasis at the brink of the marshes rang with laughter, presently blended with the strains of a small but select string band from London, hidden in a secluded nook behind the sheltering elms.

But if the episode of the excited pa.s.senger was generally forgotten it only remained in abeyance so far at least as the memory of one of Mr.

Maynard's guests was concerned. It was not necessary for a man of Mr.

Vernon Mallory's age to plead an excuse for an early desertion of the "aids to indigestion," as he called them, and he lighted a cigar and went off for a solitary stroll. Travers Nugent paused for a moment in his entertainment of a cl.u.s.ter of ladies to send a thoughtful glance after the tall, spare figure of the retired civil servant, and a curious gleam flitted over his inscrutable features. It could not have been wholly caused by dissatisfaction, for he resumed his amusing persiflage with enhanced sparkle.

Mr. Mallory's sauntering steps took him to the side of the reclaimed ground nearest to the railway line immediately under the embankment. To the casual observer his movements might have seemed somewhat erratic, and based only on a desire to get away from the chatter of the tea-tables and enjoy his cigar in peace. To any one really interested in his sudden detachment, however, it would have become apparent that there was system, carefully cloaked, perhaps, but none the less thorough, in every step he took.

The place where, by Travers Nugent's advice, the picnic camp had been pitched lay some two hundred yards beyond the little glade at the side of the raised marshland path where Reggie Beauchamp and Enid Mallory had rested on the occasion of their prowl in the dark two evenings ago.

Here, for the purpose of raising the railway to the proper level, the bank of the old river bed had been destroyed for a short distance, and instead of the miniature red cliffs, with their leafy screen of brambles and dwarf oaks, the marsh was skirted by the ugly side of the embankment. This break in the beauties of nature caused by the exigencies of engineering was but a score or two of yards in length, and it was while the train had been in view on this short section that the third-cla.s.s pa.s.senger had played such strange antics.

At the foot of the embankment the ground was swampy, nowhere yielding firm foothold, and here and there deepening into pools formed by the brackish water that had drained in from the tidal d.y.k.es at the other side of the path. For the most part the pools were surrounded and studded with sedges, which concealed them from pa.s.sers-by.

It was among these offshoots of the marsh that, at the risk of getting bogged in the quagmires, Mr. Mallory pottered about by himself. Poking and prying everywhere, he, however, devoted most attention to the pools in the ground nearest the fence at the base of the embankment, which were furthest removed, and therefore less visible, from the path. Ten minutes must have been spent in this apparently unprofitable employment when he suddenly straightened himself, and, regaining the firmer ground, made his way slowly back to the gay gathering under the trees.

Many of the people had left the vicinity of the tables and were promenading the gra.s.sy strip while listening to the band. Montague Maynard, a.s.siduous in his care for his guests, was a difficult man to catch, but Mr. Mallory managed to pin him at last as he was leaving one group to join another. Poles apart in temperament and in their life's experience, the genial manufacturer and the reserved old diplomatist had nevertheless conceived a sincere regard for each other during the former's sojourn in the neighbourhood.

"Just a word with you," said Mr Mallory in a low voice, leading his host aside.

"My dear fellow, certainly; but what is it? You look as though you had seen a ghost," replied the other.

"You will have to get all these folk away quietly," said Mr. Mallory, after a.s.suring himself that they were out of earshot. "I have not seen a ghost, but the next thing to it. There is the dead body of a man in one of those pools close under the railway fence. Some of these youngsters will be sure to stumble on it if we remain here. Besides, we can't keep it to ourselves for a minute. The authorities must be notified at once."

Maynard emitted a low whistle, and his face clouded at a contretemps which, whatever else it might portend, bade fair to spoil Violet's party. But his brow cleared again as his eyes rested on the sombrely-clad diminutive form of Miss Sarah Dymmock, who, with a vivacity wonderful for her years, was holding court under one of the trees.

"Old Aunt Sally will manage it," he said. "You're quite right about clearing 'em off, and I'm deeply indebted to you, Mallory, for not raising a hullabaloo. It would never do to scare all these b.u.t.terflies with a discovery like that. And, as you say, the police must be informed and a doctor sent for without a moment's delay."

He hurried off, and Mr. Mallory watched from afar the result of the whispered communication which he made to the aged spinster. It did not transpire till afterwards how Aunt Sarah contrived it, but after one or two comprehending nods the old lady turned to the group of which she had been the centre, and almost at once an electric spark seemed to have been communicated to the whole festive a.s.sembly. In twos and threes and larger cl.u.s.ters the picnic party began to move off the ground back towards the Manor House.

Having a.s.sured himself that the main object was gained, Mr. Mallory was free to study the details of the _debacle_ he had caused. Travers Nugent, without a break in the lively conversation he was holding with a smart lady of local importance, had apparently accepted unquestionably the situation as propounded by Aunt Sarah, and was following the remainder of the flock with sheep-like docility. After Nugent, Mr.

Mallory's eyes sought and found Leslie Chermside, and in his case there was more food for reflection. Mr. Mallory was at once aware that Chermside was observing him with equal interest; in fact, their eyes actually met in a quick thrust and parry of unspoken question on one side, and something that was curiously akin to defiance on the other.

The ex-Lancer was for the moment standing alone, and Mr. Mallory moved towards him as if to speak. But he was forestalled by Violet, who came up and evidently claimed Leslie as escort on the homeward walk, for they started in the wake of the others before Mr. Mallory, if such had been his intention, could make any attempt to detain them.

He was more fortunate in the case of Reggie Beauchamp, and he had his daughter to thank for the capture. Enid, not having outgrown her schoolgirl devotion to sweets, had lingered round the tables for a final ice, and the young sailor was still in faithful attendance. Mr. Mallory pounced on the pair just as they had realized that a general stampede was in progress, and were preparing to follow.

"Beauchamp, I wish you would remain with Mr. Maynard and myself for a little," he said. "There is a point on which I want to fortify myself with your opinion. We can walk back to the Manor afterwards."

Enid began to pout and toss her head, but she knew every phase of her idolized father's moods, and one glance at the network of creases round the keen eyes was sufficient to quell her incipient mutiny. The appearance of those filaments on the stern, ascetic face was a sure danger-signal that her father was not to be trifled with--that the active brain was at work on some serious problem. She put her ice-plate down and, bidding the Lieutenant "make himself generally useful," ran away to overtake the fast-receding party.

She had hardly departed when Montague Maynard came bustling up, wiping his brow with a silk handkerchief. He stopped for an instant to order the wondering servants to pack up the crockery ready for the cart and to get home as quick as they could, and then he turned to Mr. Mallory, while Reggie, with instinctive modesty, fell back a pace or two.

"Aunt Sally is a masterpiece; I'll tell you how she did it later," he said, his eyebrows uplifted inquiringly in the direction of the young torpedo-boat commander.

"It is all right. He's wanted," interpolated Mr. Mallory shortly.

"Well, then this is what I have done," the screw magnate went on in a hoa.r.s.e undertone. "I have sent a footman into the town direct for the police-sergeant, and another to hurry up one of the local medicos. All these maids will have skedaddled before either the sergeant or the doctor can turn up. Now shall we go and have a look at the--the place?

You have no idea who the poor fellow is, I suppose?"

"I am not sure; it is on that point that I want Beauchamp to corroborate me," was the reply. And, calling Reggie forward, Mr. Mallory told him, as the three went towards the swamps under the embankment, of the gruesome discovery he had made, and how he wished to learn if his view of the dead man's ident.i.ty coincided with his own.

No more was said till they had picked their way over the firmest foothold they could find to the pool where the horrible sight awaited them. The body lay half in and half out of the water, the upturned face being afloat while the remains below the shoulders were embedded in the ooze at the brink and nearly concealed by the reeds.

"Miss Maynard was right, you see, as to what the pa.s.senger called out from the train--'the face in the pool,'" said Mr. Mallory. "The lower limbs were probably invisible up there. Now, Beauchamp; do you recognize the victim of this tragedy?"

Reggie looked blankly down at the features about which there lingered none of the majesty of death--mean, commonplace features, which nevertheless might have had their attraction for the unsophisticated by reason of a certain sensual fullness of lip and smoothness of the now marble-white skin. The wide-open eyes, staring skyward, conveyed the impression of sudden, awful fear.

"No, I can't put a name to him," said the lieutenant after a long scrutiny which he did not relax. "And yet there is a look about him that seems vaguely familiar. That, though, is not quite the word for it. I mean that I believe that I have seen him before."

"What about the French window in the reading room at the Club?"

suggested Mr. Mallory. "Does that help your memory?"

"Of course!" came the quick rejoinder. "It is the chap who called for Chermside the other morning and walked away with him along the Parade. A c.o.c.kney visitor, I should judge by his clothes. And, by Jove, I expect he's the man who is missing from the _Plume Hotel_. The club steward knew him by sight as staying there."

A frosty gleam shone in the old diplomatist's eyes. "You are probably correct in the latter surmise," he said. "But in any case we are in agreement as to his being Chermside's acquaintance. That was what I wanted to get from you."

"Not a very reputable acquaintance, I should imagine," said the great manufacturer, looking thoughtfully down at the bedraggled tawdriness of the dead man's attire. "If our young friend from India hadn't been vouched for by Travers Nugent, I should have put this poor creature down as a dun or a money-lender's tout. His features are distinctly Hebraic.

I wonder how he got himself drowned in that shallow pool. A drop too much, eh, and a stumble in the dark?"

But Reggie Beauchamp, regardless of his immaculate flannels, had plunged knee-deep into the mire. His sailor's eye, used to note every detail, had perceived something that had escaped the two sh.o.r.e-going gentlemen with sight impaired by years of office work.

"He wasn't drowned!" he exclaimed, and then, moderating his voice so that it should not reach the maid-servants on the deserted picnic ground, he added: "His throat has been cut from ear to ear. By Jove----"

But Reggie pulled himself up all short, and had no more to say. He had remembered the cry, weird and long-drawn, which Enid and he had heard from their cosy retreat at the marsh-side two nights ago. And he had remembered something else of even graver and more personal import--a reminiscence of the prowl in the dusk which he discreetly forbore from disclosing till he should have had an opportunity for consulting his fair partner in that escapade.

CHAPTER VIII

INTERCEPTED

Mademoiselle Louise Aubin possessed all the attributes of her Gallic blood. She was vain of her voluptuous charms, susceptible to flattery, and p.r.o.ne to blurt out on the least provocation the scanty ideas in her empty little head as soon as and whenever they entered it. She was further endowed with a fiery temper and an eager impetuosity, which often led her to act without thought of consequences.

In the last-named characteristics was to be found the reason why in the cool of the evening she set out to walk from the Manor House to Ottermouth in order to lay information with the police against the man she believed to be the slayer of Levi Levison. For once in a way she had said nothing of her purpose in the servants' hall, expecting to score a greater dramatic effect by announcing on her return that she had been the means of causing the murderer's arrest.

Long before the afternoon party had dispersed the reason for the hurried adjournment from the marsh back to the house had become known--first among the guests, from whom there was no longer any necessity to keep secret what was bound to be noised abroad in an hour or two, and then among the members of the domestic staff, to whom the news spread like wildfire.

The earliest intelligence had been quickly supplemented by further details of description and identification which left no doubt in the mind of Louise that the dead man was the hero of her three weeks'

flirtation. Equally sure was she that he had come by his death at the hands of that older lover, the Breton peasant and sailor who had adored her in her native village long before she had dreamed of becoming _femme de chambre_ to the daughter of an English millionaire.

Yes, she told herself, a.s.suredly Pierre Legros, the French huckster of onions, had killed her latest admirer out of insensate jealousy, and he should suffer for it if there was any power in a woman's tongue. Mr.

Levison had held out glittering prospects, which it was galling to have destroyed by a persistent boor such as Pierre. Travers Nugent's human tool had described himself as "a financial agent"--a phrase which to the French girl's ears sounded the brazen tocsin of untold wealth, and which she could not know covered as many iniquities as that other comprehensive term--"a resting actress." Pierre Legros must certainly pay the penalty for shattering her dreams of riches and luxury, and to secure that laudable vengeance she started for Ottermouth as soon as she had dressed her young mistress for dinner.

The path skirting the marshes was her nearest way, but she dared not pa.s.s the spot where the crime had been committed, and where there would probably be a crowd of sightseers attracted to the scene. She chose the longer route along the high road, and by the time she had walked a mile between the leafy hedgerows she began to ask herself questions.

Coming of thrifty French parents, her first was: What was she to gain by making the disclosure and putting a noose round the neck of Pierre?

Nothing at all, and, on the other hand, there was the chance that she might lose a situation in which she was extremely comfortable. Miss Sarah Dymmock, who was her virtual if not nominal mistress, would not be likely to tolerate lightly the scandal which she would bring upon Mr.