Miss Cayley's Adventures Part 31

He had uttered the word. I felt my character had not a leg left to stand upon before a British jury.

'I went there with my friend, Miss Petheridge----' I began.

'Oh, Miss Petheridge once more--you hunt in couples?'

'Accompanied and chaperoned by a married lady, the wife of a Major Balmossie, on the Bombay Staff Corps.'

'That was certainly prudent. One ought to be chaperoned. Can you produce the lady?'

'How is it possible?' I cried. 'Mrs. Balmossie is in India.'

'Yes; but the Maharajah, I understand, is in London?'

'That is true,' I answered.

'And he came to meet you on your arrival yesterday.'

'With Lady Georgina Fawley,' I cried, taken off my guard.

'Do you not consider it curious,' he asked, 'that these Higginsons and these Maharajahs should happen to follow you so closely round the world?--should happen to turn up wherever you do?'

'He came to be present at this trial,' I exclaimed.

'And so did you. I believe he met you at Euston last night, and drove you to your hotel in his private carriage.'

'With Lady Georgina Fawley,' I answered, once more.

'And Lady Georgina is on Mr. Tillington's side, I fancy? Ah, yes, I thought so. And Mr. Tillington also called to see you; and likewise Miss Petherick-- I beg your pardon, Petheridge. We must be strictly accurate--where Miss Petheridge is concerned. And, in fact, you had quite a little family party.'

'My friends were glad to see me back again,' I murmured.

He sprang a fresh innuendo. 'But Mr. Tillington did not resent your visit to this gallant Maharajah?'

'Certainly not,' I cried, bridling. 'Why should he?'

'Oh, we're getting to that too. Now answer me this carefully. We want to find out what interest you might have, supposing a will were forged, on either side, in arranging its terms. We want to find out just who would benefit by it. Please reply to this question, yes or no, without prevarication. Are you or are you not conditionally engaged to Mr.

Harold Tillington?'

'If I might explain----' I began, quivering.

He sneered. 'You have a genius for explaining, we are aware. Answer me first, yes or no; we will qualify afterward.'

I glanced appealingly at the judge. He was adamant. 'Answer as counsel directs you, witness,' he said, sternly.

'Yes, I am,' I faltered. 'But----'

'Excuse me one moment. You promised to marry him conditionally upon the result of Mr. Ashurst's testamentary dispositions?'

'I did,' I answered; 'but----'

My explanation was drowned in roars of laughter, in which the judge joined, in spite of himself. When the mirth in court had subsided a little, I went on: 'I told Mr. Tillington I would only marry him in case he was poor and without expectations. If he inherited Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst's money, I could never be his wife,' I said it proudly.

The cross-eyed Q.C. drew himself up and let his rotundity take care of itself. 'Do you take me,' he inquired, 'for one of Her Majesty's horse-marines?'

There was another roar of laughter--feebly suppressed by a judicial frown--and I slank away, annihilated.

'You can go,' my persecutor said. 'I think we have got--well, everything we wanted from you. You promised to marry him, if all went ill! That is a delicate feminine way of putting it. Women like these equivocations.

They relieve one from the onus of speaking frankly.'

I stood down from the box, feeling, for the first time in my life, conscious of having scored an ignominious failure.

Our counsel did not care to re-examine me; I recognised that it would be useless. The hateful Q.C. had put all my history in such an odious light that explanation could only make matters worse--it must savour of apology. The jury could never understand my point of view. It could never be made to see that there are adventuresses and adventuresses.

Then came the final speeches on either side. Harold's advocate said the best he could in favour of the will our party propounded; but his best was bad; and what galled me most was this-- I could see he himself did not believe in its genuineness. His speech amounted to little more than a perfunctory attempt to put the most favourable face on a probable forgery.

As for the cross-eyed Q.C., he rose to reply with humorous confidence.

Swaying his big body to and fro, he crumpled our will and our case in his fat fingers like so much flimsy tissue-paper. Mr. Ashurst had made a disposition of his property twenty years ago--the right disposition, the natural disposition; he had left the bulk of it as childless English gentlemen have ever been wont to leave their wealth--to the eldest son of the eldest son of his family. The Honourable Marmaduke Courtney Ashurst, the testator, was the scion of a great house, which recent agricultural changes, he regretted to say, had relatively impoverished; he had come to the succour of that great house, as such a scion should, with his property acquired by honest industry elsewhere. It was fitting and reasonable that Mr. Ashurst should wish to see the Kynaston peerage regain, in the person of the amiable and accomplished young n.o.bleman whom he had the honour to represent, some portion of its ancient dignity and splendour.

But jealousy and greed intervened. (Here he frowned at Harold.) Mr.

Harold Tillington, the son of one of Mr. Ashurst's married sisters, cast longing eyes, as he had tried to suggest to them, on his cousin Lord Southminster's natural heritage. The result, he feared, was an unnatural intrigue. Mr. Harold Tillington formed the acquaintance of a young lady--should we say young lady?--(he withered me with his glance)--well, yes, a lady, indeed, by birth and education, but an adventuress by choice--a lady who, brought up in a respectable, though not (he must admit) a distinguished sphere, had lowered herself by accepting the position of a lady's maid, and had trafficked in patent American cycles on the public high-roads of Germany and Switzerland. This clever and designing woman (he would grant her ability--he would grant her good looks) had fascinated Mr. Tillington--that was the theory he ventured to lay before the jury to-day; and the jury would see for themselves that whatever else the young lady might be, she had distinctly a certain outer gift of fascination. It was for them to decide whether Miss Lois Cayley had or had not suggested to Mr. Harold Tillington the design of subst.i.tuting a forged will for Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst's undeniable testament. He would point out to them her singular connection with the missing man Higginson, whom the young lady herself described as a rogue, and from whom she had done her very best to dissociate herself in this court--but ineffectually. Wherever Miss Cayley went, the man Higginson went independently. Such frequent recurrences, such apt juxtapositions could hardly be set down to mere accidental coincidence.

He went on to insinuate that Higginson and I had concocted the disputed will between us; that we had pa.s.sed it on to our fellow-conspirator, Harold; and that Harold had forged his uncle's signature to it, and had appended those of the two supposed witnesses. But who, now, were these witnesses? One, Franz Markheim, was dead or missing; dead men tell no tales: the other was obviously suggested by Higginson. It was his own sister. Perhaps he forged her name to the doc.u.ment. Doubtless he thought that family feeling would induce her, when it came to the pinch, to accept and endorse her brother's lie; nay, he might even have been foolish enough to suppose that this c.o.c.k-and-bull will would not be disputed. If so, he and his master had reckoned without Lord Southminster, a gentleman who concealed beneath the careless exterior of a man of fas.h.i.+on the solid intelligence of a man of affairs, and the hard head of a man not to be lightly cheated in matters of business.

The alleged will had thus not a leg to stand upon. It was 'typewritten'

(save the mark!) 'from dictation' at Florence, by whom? By the lady who had most to gain from its success--the lady who was to be transformed from a shady adventuress, tossed about between Irish doctors and Hindu Maharajahs, into the lawful wife of a wealthy diplomatist of n.o.ble family, on one condition only--if this pretended will could be satisfactorily established. The signatures were forgeries, as shown by the expert evidence, and also by the oath of the one surviving witness.

The will left all the estate--practically--to Mr. Harold Tillington, and five hundred pounds to whom?--why, to the accomplice Higginson. The minor bequests the Q.C. regarded as ingenious inventions, pure play of fancy, 'intended to give artistic verisimilitude,' as Pooh-Bah says in the opera, 'to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.' The fads, it was true, were known fads of Mr. Ashurst's: but what sort of fads?

Bimetallism? Anglo-Israel? No, braces and shoe-horns--clearly the kind that would best be known to a courier like Higginson, the sole begetter, he believed, of this nefarious conspiracy.

The cross-eyed Q.C., lifting his fat right hand in solemn adjuration, called upon the jury confidently to set aside this ridiculous fabrication, and declare for a will of undoubted genuineness, a will drawn up in London by a firm of eminent solicitors, and preserved ever since by the testator's bankers. It would then be for his lords.h.i.+p to decide whether in the public interest he should recommend the Crown to prosecute on a charge of forgery the clumsy fabricator of this preposterous doc.u.ment.

The judge summed up--strongly in favour of Lord Southminster's will. If the jury believed the experts and Miss Higginson, one verdict alone was possible. The jury retired for three minutes only. It was a foregone conclusion. They found for Lord Southminster. The judge, looking grave, concurred in their finding. A most proper verdict. And he considered it would be the duty of the Public Prosecutor to pursue Mr. Harold Tillington on the charge of forgery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I REELED WHERE I SAT.]

I reeled where I sat. Then I looked round for Harold.

He had slipped from the court, unseen, during counsel's address, some minutes earlier!

That distressed me more than anything else on that dreadful day. I wished he had stood up in his place like a man to face this vile and cruel conspiracy.

I walked out slowly, supported by Lady Georgina, who was as white as a ghost herself, but very straight and scornful. 'I always knew Southminster was a fool,' she said aloud; 'I always knew he was a sneak; but I did not know till now he was also a particularly bad type of criminal.'

On the steps of the court, the pea-green young man met us. His air was jaunty. 'Well, I was right, yah see,' he said, smiling and withdrawing his cigarette. 'You backed the wrong fellah! I told you I'd win. I won't say moah now; this is not the time or place to recur to that subject; but, by-and-by, you'll come round; you'll think bettah of it still; you'll back the winnah!'

I wished I were a man, that I might have the pleasure of kicking him.

We drove back to my hotel and waited for Harold. To my horror and alarm, he never came near us. I might almost have doubted him--if he had not been Harold.