The Arbiter Part 20

"There is nothing," said Rendel, looking at her, "that I would not sacrifice to you--my career, my ambitions, anything you asked for."

"I am glad," she said, "that you like me so much, but I don't want you to make sacrifices," and she spoke in all unconsciousness of the number of small sacrifices, of an unheroic aspect perhaps, that Rendel was daily called upon to make for her sake.

At this moment Thacker came in with the morning papers, which he laid on the table at Rendel's elbow.

"Now then you are happy," said Rachel lightly. "Now you can bury yourself in the papers and not listen to anything I say."

"I wonder if there is anything about Stoke Newton and old Crawley's resignation," said Rendel, quite prepared to follow her advice. "I don't suppose he takes a very jovial view of life just now, poor old boy. Oh, how I should hate to be on the shelf!"

"I don't think you are likely to be, for the present," said Rachel.

And then Rendel, pus.h.i.+ng his chair a little away from the table, opened the papers wide, and began scanning them one after another, with the mild and pleasurable excitement of the man who feels confidently abreast of circ.u.mstances. Then, as he took up the _Arbiter_, his eye suddenly fell upon a heading that took his breath away. What was this? He dropped the paper with a cry.

"What is it, Frank?" said Rachel startled.

"Good Heavens! what have they done that for?" he said, springing to his feet in uncontrollable excitement.

"Done what?" said Rachel.

"Why, they have announced--they have put in something that Lord Stamfordham----" He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the paper again and looked at it eagerly. "It is incredible! and the map too, the very map, at this stage! Well, upon my word, he has made a mistake this time, I do believe." And he still gazed at the paper as though trying to fathom the whole hearing of what he saw.

At this moment the door opened, and Thacker came in.

"Sir William wished me to ask you for some foolscap paper, ma'am, please," he said, "with lines on it."

"Foolscap paper? What is he doing?" said Rachel anxiously.

"He is writing, ma'am," said Thacker. "He seems to be doing accounts."

"Oh, I wish he wouldn't!" Rachel said. "I must go and see. I'll bring the foolscap paper myself, Thacker. Frank, there is some in your study, isn't there?"

"What?" said Rendel, who, still absorbed in what he had just seen, had only dimly heard their colloquy.

"Some foolscap paper," she repeated. "There is some in your study?"

"Yes, yes, in my writing-table," he said absently.

Rachel went quickly out of the room. At that moment the hall door bell rang violently. Rendel started and went to the window. In the phase of acute tension in which he found himself, every unexpected sound carried an untold significance, but he was not prepared for what this one betokened: Lord Stamfordham in the street, dismounting from his horse.

Stamfordham was accustomed to ride every morning from eight till nine, alone and unattended. Thacker hurried out to hold the horse. Rendel followed him and met Stamfordham on the doorstep. He led the way quickly across the hall into his study and shut the door. They both felt instinctively that greetings were superfluous.

"Have you seen the _Arbiter_?" Stamfordham said.

"Yes," said Rendel, looking him straight in the face with eager expectation.

"So have I," said Stamfordham, "at the German Emba.s.sy. I had not seen it before leaving home, but I saw a poster at the corner, and I went straight to Bergowitz to ask him what it meant; he is as much in the dark as I am."

"In the dark!" said Rendel, looking at him amazed. "What! but--was it not you who published it?"

"_I_ publish it?" said Stamfordham. "Do you mean to say you thought I had?"

"Of course I did! who else?" said Rendel.

"Who else?" Stamfordham repeated. "I have come here to ask you that."

"To ask _me_?" said Rendel, bewildered. "How should I know? I have not seen those papers since I gave the packet sealed to Thacker to take it to you."

"And I received it," said Stamfordham, "sealed and untampered with, and opened it myself, and it has not been out of my keeping since."

"But at the German Emba.s.sy," said Rendel, "since it was telegraphed...?"

"The substance of the interview was telegraphed," said Stamfordham, "but not the map--_not the map_," he said emphatically. "That map no one has seen besides Bergowitz, you, and myself. Bergowitz it would be quite absurd to suspect, he is as genuinely taken back as I am--I know that it didn't get out through me, and therefore----" he paused and looked Rendel in the face.

"What!" said Rendel, with a sort of cry. A horrible light, an incredible interpretation was beginning to dawn upon him. "You can't think it was through _me_?"

"What else can I think?" said Stamfordham--Rendel still looked at him aghast--"since the papers after I gave them into your keeping were apparently not out of it until they pa.s.sed into mine again? I brought them to you here myself. Of course I see now I ought not to have done so, but how could I have imagined----"

Rendel hurriedly interrupted him.

"Lord Stamfordham, not a soul but myself can have had access to those papers. I went out of the room, it is true," and he went rapidly over in his mind the sequence of events the day before, "for a short half-hour perhaps, when you came back here and I went out with you, but before leaving the room I remember distinctly that I shut the cover of my writing-table down with the spring, and tried it to see that it was shut, and then unlocked it myself when I came back."

"Was any one else in the room?" said Stamfordham.

"Yes," said Rendel, and a sudden idea occurred to him, to be dismissed as soon as entertained, "Sir William Gore."

"Gore?" said Stamfordham, looking at Rendel, but forbearing any comment on his father-in-law.

"It was quite impossible," Rendel said decidedly, answering Stamfordham's unspoken words, "that he could have got at the papers; for, as I told you, when I came back again they were exactly where I had left them, and the thing locked with this very complicated key, and he showed it hanging on his chain."

"It is evident," Stamfordham repeated inflexibly, "that some one must have got hold of it with or without your knowledge. I warned you yesterday, you remember, about taking your--any one in your household into your confidence."

"And I did not," Rendel said, grasping his meaning. "My wife did not even know that I had the papers to transcribe. She does not know it now."

Stamfordham paused a moment. He could not in words accuse Rendel's wife, whatever his silence might imply. Then he spoke with emphatic sternness.

"Rendel," he said, "by whatever means the thing happened, we must know how. I must have an explanation."

Rendel was powerless to speak.

"For you must see," Stamfordham went on, "what a terrible catastrophe this might have been--the danger is not over yet, in fact, although I may be strong enough for my colleagues to condone the fact that the public has been told of this before themselves, and the country may be strong enough for foreign Powers to do the same. But, as a personal matter, I must know how it got out, and I repeat, I must have an explanation. For your own sake you must explain."

Rendel felt as if the ground were reeling under his feet.

"I will try," he said, still feeling as if he were in some wild dream.

"When you have made inquiries," Stamfordham said, still speaking in a brief tone of command, "you had better come and tell me the result. I shall be at the Foreign Office till twelve."

"Till twelve. Very well," said Rendel, feeling as if there was a dark chasm between himself and that moment. Mechanically he let Lord Stamfordham out, and stood as the latter mounted and rode away. Then he turned back into the house.