The Yellow Crayon Part 59

"Mr. Brott, sir. A word with you, please."

Brott held out his hand. Nevertheless his tone when he spoke lacked heartiness.

"You, Hedley! Why, what brings you to London?"

The little man did not seem to see the hand. At any rate he made no motion to take it.

"A few minutes' chat with Mr. Brott. That's what I've come for."

Brott raised his eyebrows, and nodded in somewhat constrained fas.h.i.+on.

"Well," he said, "I am on my way to my rooms. We can talk as we go, if you like. I am afraid the good people up in your part of the world are not too well pleased with me."

The little man smiled rather queerly.

"That is quite true," he answered calmly. "They hate a liar and a turn-coat. So do I!"

Brott stopped short upon the pavement.

"If you are going to talk like that to me, Hedley," he said, "the less you have to say the better."

The man nodded.

"Very well," he said. "What I have to say won't take me very long. But as I've tramped most of the way up here to say it, you'll have to listen here or somewhere else. I thought you were always one who liked the truth."

"So I do!" Brott answered. "Go on!"

The man shuffled along by his side. They were an odd-looking pair, for Brott was rather a careful man as regards his toilet, and his companion looked little better than a tramp.

"All my life," he continued, "I've been called 'Mad Hedley,' or 'Hedley, the mad tailor.' Sometimes one and sometimes the other. It don't matter which. There's truth in, it. I am a bit mad. You, Mr. Brott, were one of those who understood me a little. I have brooded a good deal perhaps, and things have got muddled up in my brain. You know what has been at the bottom of it all.

"I began making speeches when I was a boy. People laughed at me, but I've set many a one a-thinking. I'm no anarchist, although people call me one. I'll admit that I admire the men who set the French Revolution going. If such a thing happened in this country I'd be one of the first to join in. But I've never had a taste for bloodshed. I'd rather the thing had been done without. From the first you seemed to be the man who might have brought it about. We listened to you, we watched your career, and we began to have hopes. Mr. Brott, the bodies and souls of millions of your fellow-creatures were in the hollow of your hand. It was you who might have set them free. It was you who might have made this the greatest, the freest, the happiest country in the world. Not so much for us perhaps as for our children, and our children's children. We didn't expect a huge social upheaval in a week, or even a decade of years. But we did expect to see the first blow struck. Oh, yes, we expected that."

"I have disappointed you, I know, you and many others," Brott said bitterly. "I wish I could explain. But I can't!"

"Oh, it doesn't matter," the man answered. "You have broken the hearts of thousands of suffering men and women--you who might have led them into the light, have forged another bolt in the bars which stand between them and liberty. So they must live on in the darkness, dull, dumb creatures with just spirit enough to spit and curse at the sound of your name. It was the greatest trust G.o.d ever placed in one man's hand--and you--you abused it. They were afraid of you--the aristocrats, and they bought you. Oh, we are not blind up there--there are newspapers in our public houses, and now and then one can afford a half-penny. We have read of you at their parties and their dances. Quite one of them you have become, haven't you? But, Mr. Brott, have you never been afraid?

Have you never said to yourself, there is justice in the earth? Suppose it finds me out?"

"Hedley, you are talking rubbish," Brott said. "Up here you would see things with different eyes. Letheringham is pledged."

"If any man ever earned h.e.l.l," Hedley continued, "it is you, Brott, you who came to us a deliverer, and turned out to be a lying prophet.

'h.e.l.l,'" he repeated fiercely, "and may you find it swiftly."

The man's right hand came out of his long pocket. They were in the thick of Piccadilly, but his action was too swift for any interference. Four reports rang suddenly out, and the muzzle of the revolver was held deliberately within an inch or so of Brett's heart. And before even the nearest of the bystanders could realise what had happened Brott lay across the pavement a dead man, and Hedley was calmly handing over the revolver to a policeman who had sprang across the street.

"Be careful, officer," he said, "there are still two chambers loaded.

I will come with you quite quietly. That is Mr. Reginald Brott, the Cabinet Minister, and I have killed him."

CHAPTER XL

"For once," Lady Carey said, with a faint smile, "your 'admirable Crichton' has failed you."

Lucille opened her eyes. She had been leaning back amongst the railway cus.h.i.+ons.

"I think not," she said. "Only I blame myself that I ever trusted the Prince even so far as to give him that message. For I know very well that if Victor had received it he would have been here."

Lady Carey took up a great pile of papers and looked them carelessly through.

"I am afraid," she said, "that I do not agree with you. I do not think that Saxe Leinitzer had any desire except to see you safely away. I believe that he will be quite as disappointed as you are that your husband is not here to aid you. Some one must see you safely on the steamer at Havre. Perhaps he will come himself."

"I shall wait in Paris," Lucille said quietly, "for my husband."

"You may wait," Lady Carey said, "for a very long time."

Lucille looked at her steadily. "What do you mean?"

"What a fool you are, Lucille. If to other people it seems almost certain on the face of it that you were responsible for that drop of poison in your husband's liqueur gla.s.s, why should it not seem so to himself?"

Lucille laughed, but there was a look of horror in her dark eyes.

"How absurd. I know Victor better than to believe him capable of such a suspicion. Just as he knows me better than to believe me capable of such an act."

"Really. But you were in his rooms secretly just before."

"I went to leave some roses for him," Lucille answered. "And if you would like to know it, I will tell you this. I left my card tied to them with a message for him."

Lady Carey yawned.

"A remarkably foolish thing to do," she said. "That may cause you trouble later on. Great heavens, what is this?"

She held the evening paper open in her hand. Lucille leaned over with blanched face.

"What has happened?" she cried. "Tell me, can't you!"

"Reginald Brott has been shot in Piccadilly," Lady Carey said.

"Is he hurt?" Lucille asked.

"He is dead!"

They read the brief announcement together. The deed had been committed by a man whose reputation for sanity had long been questioned, one of Brott's own const.i.tuents. He was in custody, and freely admitted his guilt. The two women looked at one another in horror. Even Lady Carey was affected.

"What a hateful thing," she said. "I am glad that we had no hand in it."

"Are you so sure that we hadn't?" Lucille asked bitterly. "You see what it says. The man killed him because of his political apostasy. We had something to do with that at least."

Lady Carey was recovering her sang froid.