The Duke Decides Part 24

"If I have come out of the ordeal of the last few days unscathed, and with the honor of my house untarnished, it is in great part due to Alec's loyalty to a poor weak coward. Had I done my duty I should have gone to the police the moment Lestrade unfolded her plot, instead of embarking on a course of secrecy and moral cowardice which kept alive the danger to Senator Sherman and his charge. I did not see it at the time, but the gang would a.s.suredly have matured some other plan for trying for the plunder, using some other wretched tool, perhaps, if they hadn't been gammoned into believing that I had caved in. It was gross moral cowardice of me to give them the chance."

The torrent of words flowed so quickly that neither of his hearers was able to check it, and it was so evidently the outcome of deep emotion that it was equally impossible to ignore it. The Senator, with a twinkle in his shrewd gray eyes, laid a warning hand on the General's shoulder and took it upon himself to answer-with a question which had the instant effect of soothing Beaumanoir, for it implied a concession of the position he desired to take up.

"What should you have done in the same circ.u.mstances, but with this difference-that you had landed in England a simple commoner instead of the representative of an ancient and n.o.ble family?" the Senator inquired.

"Informed the authorities, of course," the Duke replied without hesitation.

"Good! Then a.s.suming for the sake of argument your charge against yourself to be correct, you incurred a mortal peril voluntarily, not from personal considerations affecting yourself, but for fear of involving other people-most of them dead, by the way-in disgrace. I don't see how you can make moral cowardice out of that."

"_I_ do," said Beaumanoir, bluntly.

"But," proceeded the Senator, with bland insistence, "you might have avoided the peril to your own life and the besmirching of the family name by the simple expedient of carrying out the behests of Ziegler and Company. You had every facility for pulling the job off without a breath of suspicion ever touching you."

The diplomatic opening, the psychological moment, for which poor, blundering Beaumanoir had been hoping, had arrived. It would be uncharitable to suggest that it was proffered to him, as a card is "forced," by an American gentleman with a taste for strawberry leaves; but be it as it may, Beaumanoir was not too dull to seize his chance.

"I might have done that-I was tempted to," he blurted out. "In fact, I believe I should have done it if-if I hadn't come over in the same s.h.i.+p with your-with Mrs. and Miss Sherman."

The General, sitting up stiffly with his chin on the k.n.o.b of his malacca cane, turned his head sharply to hear his old friend's judgment on this amazing confession. It was p.r.o.nounced with Trans-Atlantic briskness.

"Then, sir, by token of that frankness, your Grace is a straight man,"

the Senator said, decidedly, and with an air that invested his words with greater weight than was perhaps due to their moral perspective.

"And," he added in a lighter vein, "somehow, the honor of your house seems to have got inextricably mixed with that of mine."

"That's exactly the way I hoped you'd look at it," responded the Duke, earnestly. "I think you take my meaning. May I speak to Leonie?"

"It's what I should do in your place," was the Senator's reply-a reply which had the effect of relaxing General Sadgrove's ramrod-like att.i.tude, and of causing that grim man-hunter to subside into his corner, with a not unkindly chuckle.

On a winter afternoon, six months afterwards, Alec Forsyth entered the firelit dining-room of the Prior's Tarrant dower-house, which, as agent of the ducal estates, he had occupied since his marriage in September.

The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess were away in Egypt on their honeymoon, and Forsyth had been doing the honors of a big shoot in the home coverts to a party of neighboring country gentlemen. Sybil, who had been sitting in a low chair by the hearth, rose and drew him to the blaze, first relieving him of his gun.

"I won't light the lamp yet, dear," she said. "I am forced to refer to the forbidden subject, and you may want to blush."

"Forbidden subject?" said Forsyth, not for the moment comprehending.

"Well, of course you haven't taken to forbidding me anything yet; perhaps 'tacitly avoided' would be a better phrase," the young wife replied, perching herself on the arm of her husband's chair. "I refer to that poor creature whose one redeeming point was, as the dear General put it on that eventful night, an unselfish attachment to your n.o.ble self."

Forsyth had never been able to bring himself to talk of the reason of his uncle's confidence in his safety in the crypt that night, when he had lent himself to a ruse which he had believed meant death if he was recognized. He had loathed "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" obtrusive admiration long before he had entered the lists against her, and it was from a knowledge of his feelings that the General had abstained from informing him beforehand of the terrible Ziegler's ident.i.ty, guessing that his natural delicacy would have prevented him from turning to account a sentimental weakness so necessary to a successful issue, yet so revolting to his modesty.

"Must you really refer to that wretched woman?" he asked, as soon as he saw Sybil's meaning.

"Only to tell you that she is dead," was the reply. "It is in the _Standard_, which came after you had left for the coverts. There, I must light the lamp, after all, so that you may read it yourself."

When the lamp shone out on the pleasant, homelike room, this was the paragraph which Forsyth read:

"On the arrival at Vienna of the through mail train from Budapest on Thursday night a fas.h.i.+onably dressed female was found alone in a first-cla.s.s compartment, stabbed to the heart. The police inquiries have established her ident.i.ty as Cora Lestrade, a notorious American ex-convict, who is believed to have practised on the credulity of highly placed personages in nearly every European capital. At the time of her death she was traveling as the Countess Poniatowski. A man who was in another compartment of the train, dressed as a Roman priest, but who is supposed to be one of the band of professional criminals ruled by this extraordinary woman, has been arrested in connection with the occurrence."

Forsyth laid the paper down-Sybil told him a month later that it was "with a sigh of relief"-and said:

"She seemed to expect something of the sort when she spoke about her death sentence and showed such fear of the man Benzon. But isn't Uncle Jem's intuition marvelous? He has always held that the confederacy would come to loggerheads and be no longer dangerous after our victorious tussle with them."

"Yes, dear," Sybil a.s.sented, dutifully. "Your uncle is a very remarkable man, with very remarkable gifts." But she did not add, as she might have added had she so chosen, that it had required a woman's knowledge of woman's heart to inspire in the General the insight which had steered the Duke's storm-tossed bark to harbor.