THE MASTER SPIRIT

“‘Alexia—has the time come?’” (Page [163].)

THE MASTER
SPIRIT

By
SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY
Author of “The Red Chancellor,” “A Prince of Lovers,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN CAMERON

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1906

Copyright, 1906,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published October, 1906
Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

THE MASTER SPIRIT

CHAPTER I
A DWELLER IN DARKNESS

THE light on the Clock Tower, that cheerful beacon which assures Britons that good and picked men are kept from their beds to raise the standard of their liberties, and, incidentally, their taxes, had just gone out, sharply, as though glad to announce to yet-stirring London a respite from the babble of lawmaking; and the great workshop of Westminster where the artisans are so many and busy, and the results perhaps so meagre, discharged its crowd into the illuminated night. Out they came hurrying, for the hour was late: the sitting had been animated and prolonged, and even professional, to say nothing of casual, politicians are nowadays too busy in wasting the nation’s time not to set a high value on their own. Out they streamed, still chattering and arguing, as became the priests in that great Temple of the Tongue, those of them whose voices were seldom heard and never listened to in the House talking the loudest outside; a varied crew typifying the component parts of their country’s greatness. Ministers, bent, fine-drawn and unkempt, as men whose ceaseless rolling of Sisyphian stones gave no time to spare for the clothes-brush, superior Under-Secretaries, some dapper, others affecting a soul and a mission above the niceties of costume, all far more important than any Prime Minister who ever lived, and displaying a pretty contempt for those of the rank and file who took upon themselves to criticise the conduct of the debate; then the mob of hungry politicians, keen hustlers; here sharp-faced wood-cutters in the tangled forests of the Law, each with his axe to grind; there egotistical, opulent tradesmen, members by virtue of contributions to the Party coffers, and with a never-sleeping eye on the Birthday Honours list; now smart men of leisure gained by their fathers’ toil, merely adding the House of Commons to their clubs; and so on, with here and there a single-minded politician who imagined, misguided man, that he served his country by supporting his own shade of opinion, seeking nothing for himself, and getting nothing—but influenza and the privilege of leaving to his party the legacy of an inconvenient bye-election.

“Capital speech of yours, Herriard. Won’t do you any harm.” The speaker was a genial, middle-aged man of fashion who liked to be in the House as he liked to have the entrée everywhere, and to stand well with everybody from the Premier to the latest blatant labour member.

“Glad you liked it, Sir Henry. I was rather afraid I should be squeezed out after Darrell’s interminable effort,” answered Herriard, as he swung himself into a hansom. “Can I give you a lift?”

“Thanks. No. My man ought to be here. Many congratulations. Good-night.”

Herriard nodded and leaned back. “Park Lane,” he called out to the driver. As the cab turned out of the courtyard the more brilliant lights of Great George Street fell upon the face within it, that of a young man, interesting enough, handsome and not without character, which latter trait was perhaps just then more strongly accentuated than usual by the illuminating expression of the hour’s success. It was a face more interesting by its suggestion of possibilities than by any marked indication of actual, present power.

A short distance up Park Lane Herriard dismissed the cab and walked on. On his left, under a crescent moon, the Park lay slumbering still, and, save for a few nocturnal prowlers, lifeless: in vivid contrast to the still busy, if languid, roll of traffic on the other side of its railings. Herriard, walking briskly, turned up Hertford Street, and presently taking a little used thoroughfare, made his way deep into the intricacies of Mayfair, that curious maze of mansions and slums where Peers live next door to slop-shops, and the chorus from a footman’s Free-and-Easy at the public-house across the street may keep awake a dowager countess or weave melody into ducal dreams.

At the end of an out-of-the-way spur from what was half street, half mews, Herriard stopped before the old-fashioned portico of a house the frontage of which, at any rate, was squeezed up in a corner, giving at the same time a suggestion of greater expansion at the back. A curious eighteenth century residence, built on unconventional and, with regard to space, ingeniously utilitarian lines; a house that nineteen out of twenty passers-by would fail to notice and the twentieth would stop to wonder at, since the genuinely quaint has of late years in London given way to the hideously regular or the pretentiously unconventional. As he reached the projecting doorway, Herriard turned sharply and glanced back down the short street. He was alone there; obviously no one without special business would be likely to pass that way. Then he took out a latch-key and let himself in, passed through an octagon hall hung with rare tapestry, went up a broad staircase so heavily carpeted that no footfall could be heard, gave a slight knock at one of the doors on the square landing, and went in.

If the hall and stairway were marvels of costly decoration, the room Herriard had entered was, particularly in contrast to the house’s dingy exterior, a still greater revelation, and, in its bearing upon the character of the inmate, should have a short word of description. The walls were hung with dark crimson silk of which, however, little could be seen between the exquisitely toned frames of the multitudes of striking pictures, mostly or all of the French school, with which it was covered. But the whole tone and furniture of the room were French, and French at its most ingenious and its quaintest. The eye fed on a mass of art, simple and applied, never flamboyant, and subdued with such skill and taste that the sense of crowding and profusion was kept from obtruding itself. Everything was novel, unexpected, and yet logically fitted to its place, and the general toning-down effect was aided by the many exquisite bronzes which were placed with an artistic eye about the room. To make an end, the ceiling was a radiant specimen of Angelica Kaufmann’s brush-work, showing so little age that the newer glories below could not kill it, and the floor was covered with a rare Aubusson of a design that invited and yet defied analysis.

Projecting from one side of the room was a singular piece of furniture, half bed, half sofa, with a fantastic canopy arranged on carved supports, and with a coverlet of the finest silk. On this couch lay a man. The face that, with the exception of a long thin hand resting on the silken coverlet, was all that could be seen of him, showed a man of singular power and character. The impression which this vivid personality gave might be summed up in one word, concentration: intense concentration physical as well as mental. The dark eyes seemed to scintillate as under the high pressure of a fully charged brain. The black hair was clinched close to the head in tight, crisp curls, the thin lips were compressed, the whole being seemed to palpitate with concentrated vitality, and yet it was a wreck, or why was he lying there?

He welcomed Herriard with a smile which held more than mere greeting.

“You are late, Geof. A field-night of course. Well?”

Herriard took the hand that was raised towards him, then wheeled round a chair and sat down.

“I got on all right.”

“That’s well. So you did speak?”

Herriard nodded. “And, I think, made every point you gave me. They beat us by only thirty-three.”

The dark eyes lighted up with malicious triumph. “Good! That’s a nasty rap for Master Askew. We had the logic and they the numbers, eh?”

Herriard gave a short laugh. “Certainly we got in our hits every time.”

“That’s as it should be.”

“They were feeble, and not over-confident after the first hour. It was quite fun to watch them.”

“Weaklings! Fancy losing their nerve and half their majority. What are such sheep good for but to follow their leader through the hedge? I wish I had been there.”

A look of almost passionate regret crossed the man’s face as he spoke the last words.

“I wish you had, my dear Gastineau. We would have had more fun still, and they more funk.”

“Congreve?”

“Spoke for twenty minutes. An exhibition of the superior person in the throes of embarrassment. That point of yours about the repudiation of the Colonies hit them hard.”

“Ah, you made the most of that. Good! Congreve the Superior could not touch it?” He spoke eagerly.

“Touch it? He could not get near it. I wished afterwards, as I listened to his floundering, that I had elaborated it still more.”

Gastineau’s thoughts seemed to be far away; as though he were living in the scene his brain reconstructed. “I don’t doubt you did very well, my dear boy,” he murmured, still preoccupied. Suddenly he flashed out with a spiteful laugh, “The pattern Robert Congreve at a loss! His Baliol quibbles at a discount for once. Faugh! A brilliant party to depend for its allies upon the callow prigs of the Oxford Union! Ah, to be back again! to be back again!” His clenched hand rose and fell; he gave a great sigh of impotence.

“It is hard on you, old fellow,” Herriard said sympathetically; “cruelly hard. As it is, I only wish that, as your proxy, I could do you more justice.”

The look of almost savage impatience on Gastineau’s face had given place to a quiet smile as he replied. “I could not find a better man for my purpose, Geof. We must both of us have patience,” he gave a short bitter laugh, “a virtue that you should find easier to practise than I, since its exercise need last but a short time with you, while I must die of it. But the savoir attendre pays, Geof, both in the House and at the Bar.”

Herriard smiled. “That’s just as well, since one has no option but to wait.”

Gastineau gave a quick shake of the head. “Many men won’t wait; they can’t play the game. The world thinks they are waiting, and they flatter themselves so too. But they are really out of it, Geof. They have shot their bolt and missed. Why? Because they were in a hurry. Then there are others, like this fellow Congreve, who get pushed up by the stupid party that mistakes academical show and froth for real power. They manage to keep balanced on their pedestals by the weights of self-advertisement and self-confidence. They act upon the well-known ethical principle that the majority of mankind, being fools too lazy to think for themselves, will appraise a man at his own value, if only he will take care to proclaim the precious figure in season and out. If I were a living instead of a dead man, Geoffrey, I’d blow that fellow out of the water in which he swims so complacently.”

Perhaps it was his glance at the malignant face beneath him that made Herriard remark, “You are a good hater, Gastineau.”

In an instant the sinister expression had relaxed. “Yes,” with a half-apologetic smile. “I hate prigs and, above all, the superior person, with his impudence in assuming a rank in the human category to which he is not in the least entitled. Ah, well, you shall smash him up for me one of these days, Geof. I’m going to make a real, a brilliant success of you. When you are perfect in your guard, I am going to teach you how to hit still harder.”

“It is very good of you.”

“Nonsense! If you knew how much of selfishness there is in my tuition you would not give me much credit. I shouldn’t expect you to let me use you as a mask for my battery were it not that the benefits of my marksmanship go to you. There, that’s enough of that. Now, about these briefs. I have looked through them.”

“They are all simple enough, eh?”

“Absolutely. In Slater v. Sudbury Tramway, though, I should make a strong point of the contributory negligence and, as a second shot, cross-examine closely as to the father’s actual income and financial position and prospects. I see they claim six thousand. A glorious British jury is pretty sure to find against you, and your best point will be to suggest a try-on and go for mitigation. There you are.”

He gave Herriard the parcel of briefs with an encouraging smile and nod of confidence. “Now you had better turn in,” he said, “or you won’t be fit for Court in the morning. Who tries the tramway case?”

“Gartree.”

“That old fool? He will probably misdirect, and give you a second chance. Good-night, my dear boy. So glad you scored to-night.”

They shook hands affectionately, and in another minute Herriard, in spite of a long, exciting day, was walking, with the brisk step of that elation which knows no fatigue, towards his rooms in Mount Street.

CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF A COMPACT

THREE years earlier there had been an appalling railway accident between Cordova and Seville. Two tightly packed trains had come into collision, with results that had prevented even the Spanish officials from hushing up the contretemps, and had sent an electric wave of shudders over the whole news-reading world. Among the second division of its victims, the dangerously, even mortally, wounded, there appeared one name at least which added, in England, at any rate, to the sensational interest which for nearly a week the affair induced. It was that of the most prominent coming man of the day, Paul Gastineau, K.C., M.P., a man who had indeed arrived and who was bound, in French phrase, to go far. Lay politicians were fond of quoting one another that a man of such marvellous brain-power and capability for hard work had the easy and certain reversion to the Woolsack: members of his own branch of the profession, if they did not agree with the forecast, let it pass unchallenged; while there were many grains of intentional truth in the chaff indulged in by the other branch when they would declare that the solicitor, who, having a fighting case on hand, failed to retain Paul Gastineau, laid himself open to an action for negligence.

For Gastineau was above all things a fighter, and one who fought with his brains as well as with his tongue; a distinction which they who know courts of law will readily appreciate. An awkward adversary, ever in deadly earnest, who always fenced with the button off; his enemies and defeated opponents, and they were many, said not too scrupulously; but he fought to win, and usually did win, leaving mere niceties and quibbles to the schoolmen; and to have the knack of winning means much, if not everything. It meant much for Paul Gastineau. He became the most talked about man at the Bar, and his enemies being too human to let his praises pass in silence, simply added their voices to the babble that made him known. Our forefathers were stupid enough to regard the envy, hatred and malice that attend on success as something of a drawback; a toll, they called it, paid for being eminent: we know better, and nowadays the wisely successful man regards his detractors as a valuable asset in the working capital on which he pursues the business of eminence.

Parties in the political world do not look far or seek beneath the surface for their allies. Perhaps they are too busy, or too lazy; not to suggest that they are too stupid. Anyhow they have a well-defined leaning towards ready-made reputations: the practice may be expensive and exacting, but it saves trouble. Once Gastineau had become an established success his Party found that they could not do without him, and to that success and to that discovery did a very worthy and somnolent brewer, whose legislative faculties appeared to be somewhat clouded by the fumes of his own ale, owe his more comfortable place of repose in that honourable, if shunted, wagon-lit called the House of Lords. Eminent forensic lawyers are often failures in Parliament, and Gastineau was clever enough at the Bar to make wiseacres pretty sure of his falling short in the House. But the short-sighted soothsayers who judge the individual from the aggregate had made no allowance for a certain quality which, beyond his grit, his talent, and his power of concentration, was to be an important factor in the success which he forthwith became. They forgot that he was not altogether an Englishman: there was Southern blood in his veins, a warmer tinge to his mind; he had the vivacity and intellectual chic of the Italian added to the determination of an Englishman. So he rose almost at a bound to a high position among the legal members of the House, and with that his position seemed assured.

Naturally when it was seen that this distinguished man was among the victims of the Spanish railway smash, something like a thrill ran through the country which was the stage of his career. Society speculated as to the extent of his injuries and his chance of recovery; his own profession believed, many of them hoped, that, even if he did recover, his flight would thenceforward be a drooping one, while our old friend, the man in the street, always ready with an obvious moral platitude, made much of the impending sword which Fate hangs over the heads of even the most brilliantly successful of poor humanity.

Meanwhile in a poor monastery near an obscure Spanish town Gastineau lay battling with characteristic determination to keep at bay Death who stood over him. When he had been extricated from the wreckage of the train he was placed aside on the ground to await means of removal to the improvised hospital; and he had lain there in what, to a man of his character and ambition, far exceeded the bitterness of death. His spine was injured, he felt no pain, was, indeed, scarcely conscious of the strange numbness and deprivation of all muscular power. But, after the first stunning shock, his mind had become, even for him, abnormally clear and alert, the change from lethargic dizziness had come like the clearing off of vapours from the sun. “Thank Heaven,” he muttered to himself, “this is the end, the lightning before death; if only it will come quickly, for all is over with me.”

So in a state of savage, resentful impatience he lay there, looking up at the stars, all unconcerned in their cold glitter, types of the all-enduring, which mocked that poor transient clay which had aspired to be a planet in a system so mundane as to admit of railway accidents; and as he looked with despairing eyes he cursed them as the unjust rulers of his fate. Then, for his mind was in too great a state of exaltation to dwell long on any one thought, before him rose and passed as in an extraordinarily vivid panorama the salient incidents of his career, to be succeeded by the principal stages he had been wont justifiably to picture in his future. Never to be. The past was all he could claim now; the present was mere impotence, and the future had vanished at the touch of a sleepy signalman’s hand on the wrong lever. He ground his teeth as he thought of it; he had a good deal of cynical philosophy in him, but it failed here, the stake had been too great, the certainty of winning too absolute for him to regard this startling reverse with equanimity. Then he came to review his triumphs, his mistakes, his sins: the last had been mostly pleasant, none the less so, perhaps, that his ambition had required their concealment; he felt he would rather have lived for sin, flagrant, even, and open, than died like this. If he had known how near the end was he would not have been so careful; the world’s opinion, bah! What was it worth now? Something came to his mind that since the jar of the accident he had strangely forgotten; something that had sent him there, sent him, as it turned out, to his death. Was there justice in that? Curiously his legally trained mind began to busy itself in weighing the equity of the penalty. It was at least strangely swift, fitting and thorough, but was it just? Summum jus, summa injuria. He smiled resentfully at the aptness of the adage, then became conscious that some one was speaking to him, was sympathetically asking as to his hurt. A young man knelt by his side and, with a cushion, tried to make his position more comfortable, talking cheerily to him the while. He was one of the uninjured passengers doing his best for his less fortunate fellow travellers. For the moment Gastineau hated his succourer in a wave of malicious envy; why had not this nobody, this worthy, common-place young Englishman, dull, probably, and mentally circumscribed, with the hallmark of Eton plainly showing, why had not this man been shattered, and he, the brilliant worker, with a name and a place in the world, have gone scatheless? So bitter was the selfish thought that for a while he could hardly bring himself to acknowledge the young stranger’s kindness; all he wanted was to be let alone, to die quickly. But the other was not to be easily rebuffed; perhaps he made allowance for a sufferer’s state of mind and temper; anyhow he soon won, by tactful assiduity, the wounded man’s gratitude, to such a degree, indeed, that when they came to bear Gastineau to the monastery he begged the young fellow not to leave him. There self came in again, since other sufferers might need the young Samaritan’s care; but the case seemed desperate, and he could not bear to refuse a manifestly dying man’s request.

In such manner began the friendship between Paul Gastineau and Geoffrey Herriard.

Now, within the next few days, chance, that had brought Gastineau to this pass, continued a sequel which had a singular and important bearing upon the future of the two men it had thrown together. Gastineau, having been carried to the monastery and tended by the monks, ever ready for such an office of mercy, lay for days in a semi-comatose condition on the borderland between life and death. He was but one of some dozen victims under the care of these good brothers who, simple and practically dead to the world beyond their narrow sphere, took little heed of their patients’ identities; they were to them simply suffering men whose pain called forth their loving service. Presently, to their joy and Herriard’s satisfaction, Gastineau, who had seemed doomed, began to mend. He regained in a surprising degree his mental faculties; the doctor shook his head at any idea of complete recovery; he could never walk again, but, with care till the crisis was well past, he would live. It was wonderful, wonderful, he declared; not one man in a thousand would have survived such an injury, but the vitality of the Señor Inglese was the most marvellous he had ever known; it was a revelation; and, after all, though most of us die when we need not, there are some subjects whom it is absurdly difficult to kill. But then look at him. Did one ever see such unmistakable power in any one as this dark, resolute Englishman manifested? Were all mankind built of that steel-like fibre physicians would be few. But to give him the best chance it would be well to remove him to the air of the mountains, and the sooner it was done the better.

Accordingly, early one morning, the patient, accompanied by Herriard, was driven off on a journey of some half-dozen leagues to the restorative atmosphere the doctor had suggested.

Now it happened that, an hour after their departure, death, as though determined not to be twice baulked, struck his dart at one of the patients who remained at the monastery, an Englishman also, a stockbroker of travelling proclivities whose proposed itinerary had scarcely included the River Styx. During the morning the reporter of the local paper, who had, from the columns of a Madrid “contemporary,” discovered that an Englishman of note was among the wounded (a fact which he had totally failed to get wind of at first hand), bustled up to the monastery with an eye to “copy” and the unusual importance of a series of press telegrams to the capitals of Europe. Only to be told that the Englishman had died that morning. Too disgusted at a lost opportunity to enquire more closely as to the identity of the deceased, he jumped to the conclusion that it was of course the eminent advocate and distinguished member of the British Parliament who was dead, and hurried off in sorrow to his office, formulating his dispatch by the way. So it came to be flashed abroad that Paul Gastineau had, as expected, succumbed to his injuries.

Herriard reading the news some days after was hot on contradicting it, and greatly surprised when Gastineau forbade him to do so.

“Let it be,” he commanded. “It is scarcely a mistake. I am dead. Yes; considering what my life has been, as really dead as many a man who is in his grave. Let it be so, Herriard; give me your word that you will not set the mistake right. I will tell you why presently.”

He was so evidently in earnest, that Herriard could not refuse to pass his word, unaccountable as the request seemed. Yet, perhaps, to him who, being a humble member of the same profession, knew well his companion’s position and character therein, it was just conceivable that this brilliant and ambitious man could not bear to swallow fate’s nauseous dose in public. If we have to make a wry face we need not stand in the market-place to do it.

So it came to pass that the report of Gastineau’s death was never contradicted; he was supposed to have been buried in an obscure Spanish grave; obituary notices appeared in the papers, and the very fact that these were allowed to pass unchallenged practically confirmed their truth. This business of a supposititious death would, however, have been difficult to carry out successfully had it not been helped by the circumstance that Gastineau stood, so far as family ties were concerned, almost alone in the world. There was no near relative to go out to Spain and make enquiries, even as a pious duty. Such distant cousins as he had were poor, for he had raised himself; he had never encouraged any advances they had attempted, and they accepted the news of his death with little more interest than the rest of the world. So when presently it appeared that he had left to his friend Geoffrey Herriard a life interest in his property the relations had scarcely an excuse for a grievance.

But when once the deception had been decided on, the busy, acute brain, as keen as ever, set to work strenuously to perfect all the details of the business. And something more. The hidden light was to burn as brightly as ever behind its screen of lies; the dead hand was to strike as viciously as of old, the stilled voice to sting through other lips. Gastineau studied Herriard and came to the conclusion that he was fitted for the purpose he had in mind. He could have done with a little less honesty, but the scheme in its very character contained an element which would neutralize that. Paul Gastineau was not going to play the dead man in aught save in name. He was still a power. The sword with which he had fought and gained so many encounters had snapped in his hand, but he would do some savage execution yet with the jagged dagger it had become. He was not going to lie still and impotently watch the unchecked triumphs of the rivals and enemies he hated and despised. The sole sharer of his secret was clever, ambitious, sick of waiting for his chance, and, by Heaven, he should have it.

Accordingly he one day considerably startled Herriard by proposing to him a scheme, extraordinary enough, yet of obvious feasibility. It was simply this: That they should return to London secretly, and that he, Gastineau, out of gratitude for the services rendered him, should repay service for service by putting the whole of his great talents at his young friend’s disposal to the furtherance of his career. Herriard, in a word, was to be the mouthpiece of the stricken man’s brain. Gastineau should be the dramatist and stage-manager, Herriard the actor, the manifest form of the invisible spirit.

“I will make you, Geoffrey,” he protested, warming to kindle the necessary enthusiasm in his intended pupil. “Your fortune at the Bar, that will be child’s play; I will guarantee for you, if I live, something higher, a prize more glorious than mere money. Don’t think of that; leave money-grubbing to tradesmen; more than enough for everything a man can want will come of course, for you cannot march successfully through our profession without the accompaniment of the golden cymbals! But if I take you in hand as I propose, there is no saying where you will stop. Because I am at the end of my tether, which has pulled me up with an ugly jerk, because I can do no more for myself, is no reason why, so long as my brains are left me, I should not do something for another man. No, don’t begin to thank me; I am not even pretending that there is any virtue in my offer. If,” he laughed, “I had still the use of my legs I wouldn’t do it, that’s obvious. I should be too keen on my own career to trouble much about helping another man on. I should, if I had completely recovered, have probably given you a piece of jewellery in acknowledgment of your kindness, and always been your friend and glad to see you. I am selfish; all successful men are, although some contrive to disguise it from a stupid public by advertising the contrary; it has made me; I don’t say I could not have got on without practising selfishness, but it would have taken me much longer, and time, you know, is of the essence of our contract with Fate in these days of hustle, rush and scramble. And it is just that very instinct of self that now draws me to you; for selfishness by no means implies ingratitude. Within limits, they who make self their god are keenly grateful to those who serve in his temple. It is just as well to be honest in a matter of this kind, and for neither of us to enter upon a contract such as I am proposing with false impressions. For it must be a contract, my dear Geoffrey; binding by the very seal of our individual interests, and to be honourably kept in its spirit as well as on its material side. It will be necessary for us to believe in one another, to trust one another. Those are general stipulations: the only specific conditions I shall make are, absolute, inviolable secrecy, which you would hardly break, and, what you may find less easy to comply with, implicit obedience to my instructions. I am not surprised to see you look serious at that, but don’t misunderstand me. I am not going to put a knife in your hand and send you forth to murder one of my pet aversions. I have no intention of asking you to do anything, to use any weapon which an ordinary man of the world need in honour, our code of to-day, shrink from. But if I want a man hit hard you must hit him hard; you will be my soldier, and when I send you out to fight I don’t expect you to patch up a truce and arbitrate. I have always been a fighting man, and as my representative, my proxy, you would have to carry my banner, which bears the motto, ‘No compromise.’ The rewards would be great. If, as I hardly suppose, my affairs should turn out so that it became necessary for me to levy toll of your earnings, I would take care you were no loser by that. I will get you into the House, and what is more, I will make you master of the art of making your mark there when you are in. That is the real crux. That is where nine out of ten, even clever, men fail. There need be no limit to your ambition. Every day’s programme shall be sketched for you, every wrong turning marked with a red cross, every pitfall fenced, the right road clearly marked. You shall see your fellow travellers drop off, but you shall, if you follow my clue, go on triumphantly, each milestone marking a new success. The world is before you to conquer. The world consists mainly of fools, but even fools get in your way, it is all they can do, and there are clever spirits to oppose your progress. The conquest is easy enough, but unhappily men usually find that out too late, when they are too old for the fray. I doubt whether you could do it alone, Geoffrey, at least while the victory is worth having, but with me behind you, you may be irresistible. Is it a compact?”

The compact was made readily enough, the chances of the strange proposal being too dazzling to be rejected. If the purely ethical side of the arrangement lodged a feeble protest in Herriard’s mind, the material advantage with which it was weighted drove the monitor out of hearing. Success deferred is to the impatience of youth more galling, perhaps, than the settled disappointment of failure to a maturer mind. From Herriard success, the immediate success which a fairly clever and ambitious man expects to be his, had been withheld to a degree that had begun to gall him. Other men of his standing, no cleverer but more pushing, or more lucky, than he, were forging ahead. We are never so conscious of our slow progress as when we see ourselves left behind by others who started with us. Here, ready to Herriard’s hand, was a means of catching up and passing his rivals, indeed of astonishing his world. It seemed rather like making a compact with the devil, he would tell himself with a laugh; yet where, he argued, was the wrong? He was going to rob no one; it was merely a partnership that he was entering into, and the success of a partnership is gauged by its strongest rather than its weakest member. Why should a bed-ridden man of genius be debarred from the active exercise of his mental powers? Where was the dishonour in being his spokesman, any more than his amanuensis?

So the argument went all one way; the strange partnership began, and was not long in justifying its existence. Men who frequented the fruitful and thorny paths of the law began to speak of Geoffrey Herriard as one of the cleverest of rising counsel; some, speculating in “futures” out of the capital of their reputation for foresight, pointed at him as the coming man. He went far to justify them by the lucky capture of a seat at a bye-election, the victory being in some measure due to a series of particularly smart and telling speeches, which tore into shreds the platform of his opponent, a flabby soap-maker with a long purse and a short vocabulary. Herriard’s maiden speech was a success. “Best I’ve heard since poor Paul Gastineau,” Sir Henry Hartfield commented.

“Rather reminds me of him,” his companion remarked. “Something of the same fiery periods and tendency to antithesis. It just shows how easily a man’s place can be filled, even the cleverest.”

The resemblance in style was indeed remarkable both at the Bar, on the platform, and in the House, for in the early day of his pupildom Herriard had to keep tight and assiduous hold on his master’s hand. The work was hard, but the tutor was clever in imparting his knack, and, with a reputation increasing to a flattering degree, the incentive to industry on the pupil’s part was great.

Every night Herriard paid a visit to the secluded house in Mayfair, sometimes to stay far into the early hours of the morning, rehearsing a speech, analyzing the probable trends of a cross-examination, making notes from Gastineau’s quick observation of weak points or strong ones, spotting flaws, devising traps, in fact looking to every rivet in his own armour, speculating on every possible loose joint in his adversaries’ for the morrow’s tilt.

So the singular conjunction of rare master and apt pupil had continued in almost unbroken success for more than three years. Herriard had gained such a degree of confidence in playing his part as now almost to wear his instructor’s talent at second-hand. He promised to become a rich man, and Gastineau, with ample means of his own for his circumscribed luxury, was pleased that it should be so. In return for wealth and reputation he expected Herriard to mark down, to follow up and worry certain old-time rivals of his own. His pupil sometimes marvelled at the malignant viciousness of his “riding orders.” It was as though Gastineau had given him a rhetorical bottle of vitriol to fling over the smug face of some self-satisfied prig of an Under Secretary. Still he felt in honour bound to fling the corrosive denunciations with the most stinging effect, very much to the distortion of the Superior Being’s cultivated blandness. Then Gastineau was wont to declare himself well satisfied; and perfect friendship, founded on mutual service, existed between the two men.

But strange events, little dreamt of by either, were on their way to meet them; events which were to turn into disastrous twistings the paths that had run so easily side by side.

CHAPTER III
A SOCIETY SENSATION

“HAVE you heard the latest sensation, Lady Rotherfield?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Greetland. Do tell me. It’s not the scandal about Lord Barnoldby and Infanta Turnour? Of course every one knows all about that.”

“Hardly all, dear lady,” Greetland simpered. He was one of the cohort of smart diners-out; the social bagmen who all travel in the same commodity, for which there is universal demand—scandal. “The Barnoldby-Turnour affair is never-ending. Nobody ever will hear the last of that.”

“The Infanta is old enough to know better,” observed Mrs. Hargrave on the other side of him, scandalized but interested.

“She is big enough at any rate,” Greetland smirked.

“To be ashamed of herself,” supplemented Lady Rotherfield illogically.

“Perhaps she has out-grown the sense of shame,” suggested Greetland, whose stature matched his ambition. “But that wasn’t what I was referring to. Something much more thrilling.”

“Mr. Greetland!”

The society purveyor glanced round to see whether he had an audience worthy of the news. People on each side seemed to be pricking up their ears. There was evidently something of interest going forward; the spasmodic tea-table talk languished; Dormer Greetland was always interesting; even men who itched to kick him admitted that. “A curiously marked caterpillar” had once been Gastineau’s correction when some one spoke of Greetland as a worm. He was too sleek and foppish to be a human exemplar of the more coarse and naked invertebrate.

A pretty piece of scandal was evidently forthcoming, and he got an audience to his liking—almost every one of importance in the room, with one notable exception, the hostess, Countess Alexia von Rohnburg, who was listening to a prosy Russian diplomat.

“What is it? You have some news for us, Greetland?” cried the high-pitched voice of Baron de Daun, as he came across the floor and stood over the group. In his way the Baron was as great a scandal-monger and blagueur as the other man, but he tore reputations to shreds with greater violence than his English confrère, who was, after all, more of an artist. On the other hand, the Baron had greater justification in peeping through the chinks in society’s shutters, for was he not a diplomatist?

“A very extraordinary thing has come to light,” Greetland said, with an air befitting the communication. “It is really quite dramatic, and Heaven only knows what will be the end of it.”

“What? What?” Baron de Daun’s temper was impatient of preliminaries, a circumstance which, however, was not so great a drawback as it would seem in his profession, where due weight is given to considerations other than individual fitness.

“You remember,” Greetland proceeded, still deliberately—on his own ground it took more than the representative of a second-rate power to flurry him—“you remember the affair of poor Beauty Martindale?”

“Oh, yes; the poor fellow who died so tragically at the ball at—where was it? Yes?”

To Lady Rotherfield details were unimportant; but to Greetland they had their value. “Vaux House,” he supplied.

“Yes? yes?”

“Let’s see. He was supposed to have died of heart disease, but it was doubted——”

“There was no doubt about it,” de Daun asserted quickly. The subject was too interesting for more diplomatic contradiction.

“Of course,” corroborated Sir Perrott Aspall, who had been in Australia at the time and was consequently well qualified to give an authoritative dictum. “He was murdered, done to death by one of his partners, eh? That’s the idea.”

“I recollect,” put in Mrs. Hargrave breathlessly. “Half the smart women in town were suspected.”

“Many of whom were not at the dance,” de Daun laughed.

“It’s years ago,” Lady Rotherfield said, as an excuse for general vagueness.

“Well, what of it? What has come to light?” the Baron demanded. “Get on, my dear fellow, if you have anything to tell us.”

Greetland, master of the situation, was content to wait till the chatter stopped. “The facts were these. Reggie Martindale, the handsomest man in town, was found dead at the Lancashires’ dance. You are quite right, dear lady, it was at first supposed and given out that it was heart disease. Then, almost by accident, and after the certificate had been given, a tiny wound, scarcely bigger than a pin-prick, was found in his left side near the heart. That was hushed up; luckily the Lancashires’ medico, who found it out, happened to be Martindale’s as well, and so had the matter in his own hands; and naturally the Duchess did not want a scandal. It was said that Dr. Blaydon handed the Duke three-eights of an inch of broken steel which he had found imbedded in poor Beauty’s heart, and received in return a cheque which established a record price for the metal. But old Blaydon knew himself to be a dying man at the time; an exposé could hardly hurt him, and he had a large family to provide for. As a matter of fact he died a few months afterwards, to the dear Duchess’s great content. It’s extraordinary how fussy some good people can be over the idea of a scandal.”

“You see,” observed Mrs. Hargrave, “the Duchess does not require advertisement for herself or her dances.”

“If it had been that terrible Oglander woman, now, she would have paid the doctor to call in the Coroner, and sent out invitations for the inquest, with reserved seats and champagne for the Press.” Lady Rotherfield never missed an opportunity, even when she was in a hurry, of girding at her especial abomination among the many parvenues who beset her path.

“Well? well?” Baron de Daun’s sharp voice split the air like the crack of a whip. “And now, after all, the affair has come out, eh?”

“Something more than that,” Greetland returned, with all the superiority of the man who knows. “A good many people knew that much already. You see, after Blaydon’s death, when she felt they were safe, the dear Duchess allowed herself to be a little indiscreet, of course only in her own set.” His tone included himself by implication in the select band who shared the ducal secret. De Daun saw it was no use trying to hurry him, and worked off his impatience by pulling viciously at his moustache.

“What I am going to tell you,” Greetland proceeded, “happened only a day or two ago. They were doing something to the little room where Beauty was found dead, just off the ball-room, putting up new cornices or something—not before they were wanted, they say the curtains at Vaux House were hung in Queen Anne’s time; probably the poles date from the Conquest—well, in pulling the old window trappings about, the men found a long jewelled hair-pin, a tiny sword, the hilt set in diamonds and with the point broken off.”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Sir Perrott.

“They found this in the cornice?” de Daun asked intently. It was important for him to get the story correctly.

“Somewhere stuck away in the curtains or behind the shutter; anyhow, hidden by the window.”

“And who found it? A workman, eh?”

“One of the Duke’s men.”

“And what is to be the upshot?” Mrs. Hargrave’s turn of mind was practical and anticipatory.

“Well, the whole thing will come out,” Greetland asserted.

“No? Be made public?” Lady Rotherfield was dead against the publicity of to-day. A scandal to which the mob had access lost all its piquancy and was not worth discussing. The world was becoming less interesting every hour.

“To-morrow,” Greetland confidently affirmed, “the man in the street will know as much of the affair as we do.”

Lady Rotherfield gave a shrug of despair. The world where the man in the street is as well posted as the Duchess in the Square was scarcely worth living in.

“Then the Duke can’t hush it up this time, eh?” de Daun demanded, showing his malicious teeth.

“No,” Greetland purred on. “He is in an awful way about it, and the Duchess is having a bad time.”

“Poor woman!” cried Mrs. Hargrave with cynical sympathy.

“Well, it is all her fault, so Lady Helen says,” the Society Newsman went on, as suavely as though he were referring to no greater tragedy than a failure on the Matrimonial Exchange. “The dear Duchess would dismiss one of her carriage footmen because he was three-quarters of an inch shorter than his fellow. Lady Helen’s maid tells her that the man wore cork wedges in his boots till he could hardly keep his balance, and was quite willing to meet her views and obliging, but the other day he had to go out unexpectedly, and in his hurry forgot the corks; the Duchess’s eagle eye caught the disparity, her artistic sense was outraged, and the poor Duke had to give the man notice. She said that so long as Nature continued occasionally to turn out human beings six feet two inches in height she would not put up with a trumped-up, inferior article, only six feet one, of which a quarter only was genuine flesh and blood and the rest cork, and who looked as though liable to fall on his nose. Men of her standard height were to be had, and she meant to have them, all through alike; the cork-tipped variety she would leave to Bishop’s wives, dowager Countesses, and other latitudinarians.”

“So like the dear Duchess,” Lady Rotherfield laughed. “Poor Duke, what could he say?”

“There was only one thing he could say to the man. Well, the fellow resented his dismissal, which was rather absurd of him.”

“He ought to have been thankful to get rid of the corks,” was Sir Perrott’s opinion.

“Instead of which he appears to have declared that the proper thing for the Duchess to have done was to have sacked his tall colleague and replaced him by a man to match himself, minus the corks. This was flat treason in the face of the fact that the standard height of the Lancashires’ carriage footmen was settled for all time in the second year of the reign of William and Mary. When the lèse-majesté was repeated to the Duchess she became livid. The sacredness of the Lancashire traditions to be scoffed at by a cork-mounted flunkey! Should the ducal glory be belittled by a creature whose only claim for notice rested upon a pair of false heels? The consequence was that the wretched man was told to go on the spot, and that happened just after the discovery of the compromising hair-pin.”

“Oh, I see,” said Sir Perrott.

“The man thought he would get what he could out of the ducal ménage, and went straight off with his secret to Hepplethwaite. Hepplethwaite gave him twenty pounds for it, and resold it within the hour to the Duke for a hundred and an invitation for his wife to the next reception at Vaux House.”

“I must remember not to go,” Lady Rotherfield murmured. “That odious pushing woman tries to work her way everywhere.”

“It would have been a grand coup for the Hepplethwaite group of papers,” Greetland said; “and would have set up their circulation phenomenally, but Hepplethwaite wants something more than money now. The Brailsfords of the Daily Comet somehow succeeded in dining at Montford House last week. Montford wants advertisement for that ass of a son of his, Darsingham, who is by way of taking up the New Hibernian question in the House to keep him out of mischief; and so the Hepplethwaites were bound to go one better.”

“They say,” observed Mrs. Hargrave, “that Hepplethwaite and Brailsford were office boys together in a tea warehouse.”

“And,” put in Sir Perrott, “they are now running it neck and neck for a Peerage.”

“Shocking!” Lady Rotherfield groaned.

“Then the Vaux House affair is not to be public property at all?” de Daun asked. So long as he could add it to his dossier the stock of public knowledge might just as well be the poorer by that pungent scandal.

“Won’t it come out, though?” Greetland returned. “I haven’t finished my story. The footman on finding that the news did not appear in the Hepplethwaite rags took it to Brailsford, got fifteen pounds for it this time; and it is going to burst upon a jaded reading public to-morrow morning. They were to have had it to-day, only special-sized type had to be cast, and they were not ready.”

“What is this thrilling announcement which is being prepared for us, Mr. Greetland?”

The tatler looked up with almost a start. The question had been put by Countess Alexia von Rohnburg, their young hostess, who had joined the group, unnoticed by Greetland or his listeners, intent as they were upon the new sensation. The Russian proser had come to a pause in that flow of shallow talk with which diplomatists are wont to disguise their thoughts and to cover the watchful observation of their fellows, and the Countess, who had caught above the suave murmur a word or two in de Daun’s high-pitched voice that had arrested her, had risen and crossed the room. There was nothing in her handsome, animated face, the index of a susceptive mind, that showed more than an almost languid curiosity, as of one who lived in an atmosphere filled with tales concerning the great names of the day, and whose appetite was slightly blunted by the familiar fare. Nevertheless Greetland, the most studiously composed man of his world, looked up with an expression of greater embarrassment than he often permitted himself. And it was de Daun, not he, who answered the question.

“Mr. Greetland was telling us of the discovery of a hair ornament, a small jewelled dagger with the point broken off, in the room at Vaux House where Captain Martindale met his death two years ago.”

“Ah! How thrilling!” If the speaker were really thrilled the mobile face must surely have indicated it more vividly. A wave of interest passed across it; the dark curves of the eyebrows rose and fell, that was all. Dormer Greetland, watching the face intently for a man in whose social balance-sheet manners stood as a notable asset, saw no more.

“Is it quite true, Mr. Greetland?” The tone implied an amount of incredulity which compelled a spirited justification.

“Absolutely, Countess. I was just saying that the discovery will be in the papers to-morrow.”

His questioner smiled. “Does that make it true?”

“It will at least bring the story to its proof. The Duchess won’t let it pass if it is a canard: she doesn’t need advertisement. But I happen to know it is quite true.”

“I am sure Mr. Greetland would rather be dull than unauthentic, as the lesser of the two crimes.” The sarcasm was none the less stinging from being shot through the sweetest of smiles.

“The Duke has been trying to hush it up,” Lady Rotherfield put in.

Countess Alexia laughed. “All the details complete. And of course the owner of the sword has been found.”

“I think not,” said Greetland.

“Probably the Duke knows, as he was so anxious to hush up the affair,” the Countess continued, in her fascinating banter. “Poor Duke, he had better be careful, or he will be arrested as what you call an accessory after the fact, which would be a sensation, if you like. Always supposing, that is, that poor Reggie Martindale did not die of heart disease.”

“That has been clearly proved, Countess,” Greetland said, glad of one firm foothold in stemming the increasing flow of increduilty.

Alexia gave a shrug. “I never heard it, and I’m afraid I hear most things.”

“The Duke hushed that up,” explained Sir Perrott.

“How clever of him! With that talent for hushing tiresome tongues what a perfect nursemaid he might have been if he hadn’t been born a Duke and a man. How lucky he has failed this time, or we should not be having the sensation of the jewelled dagger, the false lover and the fair assassin. What hard lines! What a warning to inconstant young men and fussy Dukes. And we are to see it all in print to-morrow?”

“Get the Daily Comet for choice, Countess,” de Daun grinned.

“I will, indeed. I am so sorry for the poor Duke.”

“And the lady, the owner of the tell-tale weapon?” Greetland suggested.

“Ah, yes. But it is so long ago. Our sympathy by this time is probably superfluous. Our tragedies to-day are almost as short-lived as our comedies.”

“And almost as amusing.”

“Much more, to the spectators. Having left the art of pure comedy behind us with the days of patches and powder and red heels, we have taken a lesson from our stage managers and learnt to turn a tiresome tragedy into a roaring farce. It is easy enough. Play with a light touch, and exaggerate the sentiment, that’s the way to get your laughs and your audience; the world must be amused at any cost. Oh, Prosper”; she broke off, and called to her brother, Count Prosper von Rohnburg, who had just come in with a scientific-looking man, “have you heard anything of the wonderful tale Mr. Greetland has been telling us, how they have found at Vaux House the weapon with which that poor Captain Martindale is supposed to have been killed? Isn’t it thrilling?”

“No,” he answered, speaking with a foreign accent far more pronounced than his sister’s. “I am behind the world to-day. There was no time to go to the Clubs, we have been absurdly busy at the Embassy. Here, Alix, let me present to you Doctor Hallamar who has come to spend a little time in England.”

Doctor Hallamar bent his leonine head with its mass of obstreperous hair low till his lips touched the Countess’s hand. Manifestly he was a man of power, the keen, resolute face was of the kind that makes one glad to think its indicative strength has taken up arms against our common enemy, disease.

“You are taking a holiday in England, Doctor,” Alexia enquired.

“Hardly.” The deep tones sounded in unison with the rest of the man’s heroic fibre. “My visit is professional primarily, but I hope to see something of England during my enforced stay; if not of its scenery, at least of its scientific side.”

“Doctor Hallamar means the hospitals,” the Count laughed. “He would rather see an interesting operation than the finest view in the world. You know the Doctor is the only man in Europe who can cure a certain form of disease.”

Hallamar smiled deprecatingly. “Let us say, treat it, Count. I fear I cannot often undertake to cure it.”

“Oh, you are modest, Doctor,” Alexia laughed. “And you have come over to attend a special case?”

Hallamar bowed assent. “A lady who has lost the use of her limbs through an accident. As a diplomatist’s sister, Countess, you will not expect me to say more.” He beamed inscrutably through his spectacles. “My mission may be a failure, and then the less we shall have said about it the better.”

“I can’t imagine you a failure, Doctor,” Alexia said, and truly, as her eyes rested with admiration on the strong, resourceful face.

Hallamar’s smile had a touch of regret now.

“I would, Countess, that your gracious words did not carry with them to me the sting of unintended satire.”

“What is all this about the discovery at Vaux House?” Count Prosper asked.

“Oh, we are to have the whole account to-morrow in the papers,” his sister replied. “We can scarcely trouble Mr. Greetland to go over the story again.”

The Mayfair newsman seemed not disinclined to repeat the recitation to a, perhaps, more appreciative listener; but the Count, accustomed to take his sister’s slightest hint, abandoned any further show of curiosity. But he said presently, “We were at that ball at Vaux House, weren’t we, Alix? Yes; I recollect poor Martindale. Good-looking fellow he was.”

“You remember the sensation his death caused,” Sir Perrott said. “Half the smart women in town, married and single, were supposed to be hit by it.”

Doctor Hallamar’s smile had faded. He was not interested and he showed it.

Baron de Daun and Dormer Greetland rose to go at the same time. Greetland’s adieux were the more lengthy; he had so many social loose ends to tie up. It seemed when he reached the hall that de Daun must have been waiting for him. They went out together.

“Serious thing this about Vaux House,” the Baron remarked, in quite a concerned voice. “I say, Greetland, between ourselves, was the Countess,” he gave a jerk of the head in the direction of the house they had just left, “one of the women talked of with Martindale?”

“I fancy she was,” the other answered, looking straight in front of him.

Tatler as he was, he knew de Daun, and did not care to be pumped to serve the thirst of that blatant young diplomat.

“It seemed rather curious, to say the least of it,” his companion persisted, “her affecting to doubt the truth of the story. I wonder if the sword hair-pin was hers.”

He looked round at Greetland with the quick turn of a bird of prey.

“Oh, that’s going too far,” Greetland cried, throwing up his hand half way in protest, then full length to hail a passing hansom.

CHAPTER IV
THE DUCAL POINT OF VIEW

THE Daily Comet came out next day with its threatened sensational blazon: the world of London and beyond greedily assimilated the startling tale, and their Graces the Duke and Duchess of Lancashire began to have an exceedingly unpleasant time of it. The Duke especially; since he had the Duchess, as well as the Press and the rest of the world, to encounter. He had done nothing wrong (with the exception of that bribe to the late Dr. Blaydon) or even foolish, he told himself, for his little arrangement with the doctor had been highly expedient; yet the affair had, by the merest chance, taken this unfortunate turn, and he suddenly found his ducal neck and wrists in a moral pillory, with a shower of rotten eggs unpleasantly imminent. Under the circumstances he judged it wise to confine his perambulations within the precincts of Vaux House; happily its grounds were extensive, and for the first time in his life as he dispiritedly paced them, he omitted to regret the waste they represented of colossally remunerative building sites. He simply dared not show his face in the streets—not even the streets that he owned—and as to going into one of his clubs, including the House of Lords, why, he would as soon have walked into the crater of Vesuvius. So he promenaded up and down and around the somewhat dingy gardens of which the sombre and blighted tone was in complete harmony with his feelings. He could hear passers-by talking on the other side of the high wall which secluded his august pleasure-ground from the vulgar world, and wondered if, nay, made sure, they were discussing him and his methods in a spirit of galling irreverence, if they took their tone from that of the more enterprising journals he had read. Yes; it was an uncomfortable position for any one, let alone an old-established Duke; he became sure certain people were watching him from such upper windows as commanded a view of the grounds, since the wall of even an exclusive Duke is subject to certain architectural limitations; and he went indoors. On his way he saw people looking curiously through the great iron gates at the house of mystery and crime. He fancied he heard a murmur as he crossed their sight, but that was probably a symptom of hypertrophied egoism. In his perturbation of mind he flung himself into a room which he had intended to avoid, and found himself alone with the Duchess.

There was something in her eye which forbade retreat.

“Well?” The monosyllable was a challenge: more, it was the first flick of a castigation.

The Duke merely gave a shrug which was the most non-committal answer that occurred to him.

“What is the latest?” the Duchess demanded, in a tone which was not to be trifled with.

“I have heard nothing, dear. I have not been out.”

“I just saw you come in.”

“From the garden.”

“Why don’t you go out?”

The Duke made a stand. “I don’t care to, while this wretched business is in big letters at every corner.”

“What is that to us? You should be above taking notice of these halfpenny rags. If you are afraid of walking on the pavements, have a brougham and drive down to the Carlton. You ought to hear what people are saying.”

“I am,” returned the Duke, with infinite sense, “the last person in town to hear what people are really saying.”

“You can go and tell them what you think about the whole disgusting business,” said the Duchess.

“I’m hanged if I do,” the Duke returned. “If they have any sense they can guess that.”

“Pray what do you expect then I am going to do?” the Duchess demanded.

The Duke intimated by a shrug that he had formed no definite anticipations as to his consort’s line of conduct.

“If you were not a fool,” she said, “you would know that people haven’t any sense. They just accept any ideas that may be given them.”

“Well, I’m not going to run about town giving people ideas,” the Duke declared sullenly.

“You know best how far you are justified in coming to that decision,” the Duchess returned, with a world of meaning behind the mere inoffensive words. “Then you mean to let these abominable papers have it all their own way?”

“I don’t care.”

“But you ought to care.” Her Grace’s temper was rising. “You have no business to be a Duke. You are a disgrace to your order. You’ll get a wigging, my dear boy, when the King hears of it. Don’t expect me to come to the rescue, that’s all. If you don’t face it out, I shall have to leave town in the height of the season, and I won’t leave town, so there!”

“Leave town, Isabel? What in the name of common sense have we done that we should run away?” The Duke was getting exasperated.

“We?” screamed the Duchess. “What have you done? To take trouble and spend money in hushing a thing up, and then to allow it to come out, at a particularly awkward time, too, is the method of an imbecile.”

Like most stupid persons the Duke was sensitive on the subject of nous, and the Duchess knew it.

“Imbecile?” he echoed huskily. “I was clever enough for you to marry.”

“You were clever enough to marry me, if you like,” she returned, with a puff of scorn.

“Clever!” he repeated in turn, in as withering a voice as he could command. “The general opinion at the time, pretty freely expressed, was that I was a fool.”

“General opinion!” she returned with infinite contempt. “The opinion of a lot of women who were mad to be duchesses. What is your general opinion worth to-day in this tiresome affair? As worthless and wrong as usual. No, John, you did a good thing for yourself when you married me, and you know it.”

“I know it?”

“I have made you.”

This was too much. Here was the once Miss Isabel Grendon, a nobody with a pretty face and trim figure to whom he had, after much hesitation, played Cophetua, talking of having made a Duke of eight generations. “Made me!” he cried thickly, in his ducal indignation. “I had an idea that the Dukes of Lancashire were made, as you call it, some hundreds of years before your name appeared on the roll.”

“Made? Yes, I dare say; after a fashion. But you were not worth noticing, even when you had got your coronets on. Before I took you in hand you were nobodies.”

“Nobodies!” the Duke could only echo. In this rarified atmosphere of insult independent argument, and even utterance, were asphyxiated.

“Nobodies,” the Duchess maintained with exasperating insistence. “I’ve seen your mother waiting in Johnson and Maxtons to be served and none of the shop people would notice her. They knew well enough who she was, and that she had come in to spend half an hour in buying a few yards of sevenpence-halfpenny lace to furbish up an old gown which her own housekeeper wouldn’t have looked at except to sell to the dustman to dress his wife in for Hampstead Heath. J’ai changé tout cela.”

“Yes, you have,” assented the Duke, recovering his breath as his wife lost hers. “And if extravagance makes a man, you have made me.”

“One owes something to one’s position,” argued the lady.

“You owe a great deal, my dear, not to say everything,” retorted the Duke, in a happy flash.

“To be Duchess of Lancashire meant next to nothing before my day,” her Grace proceeded, ignoring the hit. “I saw the possibilities of the position.”

“No doubt,” agreed the Duke.

“And have raised it to its proper level in accordance with modern ideas. I found you thrown away in a dusthole, I have polished you up and brought you into the drawing-room.”

“Have you indeed? Very obliging of you,” was all the Duke could say.

“You think,” went on the Duchess, having got again out of the tanglewood into a straight run, “you think that a Duke can go about like an old-clothes man, and his Duchess like a laundress, and be respected. That shows what a fool you are, John. You imagine in your stupidity that people in our position can defy appearances and do just as we like. So we can; but the world very soon takes care to show us that if we like to drop out it won’t detain us. To-day the world thinks exactly as much of us as we show it we think of ourselves. It was all very well while the Feudal System lingered, and there was no moneyed mob to challenge us. In these days of shallow pretension and surface estimation a Duke in a bad hat is thought less of than a bookmaker in a good one; a dowdy Duchess cannot hold her own against a smart milliner. The world to-day does not bother itself to think who you are, and what your ancestors have been and done, in short what that bad hat really covers; it wants you to show unmistakably that you spend your money—or other peoples’—and add to the general amusement. Everything is theatrical nowadays, all glitter and show, and the crowd does not ask itself what the gorgeous scenery looks like from the back. It is as though people preferred a highly coloured landscape in the theatre, just canvas, distemper and limelight, to the real thing on one of our estates. Yes, John, you are a fool not to see what I’ve done for you and your House.”

The Duke accepted the long lecture, not because it convinced him or uprooted his belief in the infallibility of his family ways, but because he was given no chance of interrupting it. When it had come to an end, he said, not unnaturally, “I don’t quite see what all this has to do with the present business. What are we going to do?”

“I have told you,” insisted the Duchess. “Go down to the clubs and face it out.”

“I’m damned if I do,” said the Duke, exasperated to find his patience had gained him nothing.

“If you are going to be vulgar——” began the Duchess.

“I’m not going down to the clubs,” he maintained.

“You’ve got to go, John, and the sooner the better.”

“I tell you I won’t!”

“You prefer to skulk here?”

“If it hadn’t been for your unreasonable folly about that wretched footman——” he began.

“I’m not going to be seen with footmen that don’t match for you or anybody. You’ll be expecting me next to wear odd gloves or shoes or stockings.”

The Duke was relieved from trying for a reply to this unanswerable argument by a knock at the door.

“Mr. Playford is in the blue drawing-room, your Grace.”

The Duke glanced rather helplessly at his wife.

“Show Mr. Playford here,” she said to the man, with decision. “Now we shall hear something of what is being said in the world outside, which you haven’t the pluck to face. Aubrey Playford knows everything.”

Next moment the omniscient one was shaking hands with them, and wondering curiously what sort of a tête-á-tête he had interrupted. As the Duchess was so smiling and the Duke so obviously relieved, he concluded that he had broken up a row.

“Isn’t it too disgustingly provoking, this fuss about that tiresome affair!” the Duchess said, as soon as they had settled down. “These wretched cheap papers.”

“Oh, they must have a sensation,” Playford answered, politely sympathetic. “One comfort is that nobody believes half they read in them.”

No one could be better aware than Aubrey Playford of the falseness of that statement. No one knew better than he, a keen observer of his kind, that people are only too greedy to take in everything, without discount, that can be said or printed to their neighbour’s obloquy, or disadvantage, and more particularly when that neighbour happens to hold a high position. Under some conditions Playford would have been spiteful enough to say so, and indulge in a half-hour of moral vivisection; but that was not his cue nor his purpose to-day.

“It is altogether most provoking,” the Duchess declared. “What are they saying about it, Aubrey? I don’t mean the wretched papers, but at the clubs?”

Playford gave a shrug. “What do they ever say at the clubs beyond what some one tells them to say?” he replied, with a cynical contempt that, coming to him so easily, seemed a characteristic. “I haven’t heard much. Piersfield was full of it, as he would be, but more in the way of collecting than distributing, and, of course, little Roddy Arden was making the most of a new sensation. By the way, it was pretty well known yesterday among what I call the professionals, Dormer Greetland and his school, and they naturally made the most of their twenty-four hours’ start with the news.”

The Duke groaned. “All through a wretched footman. It is terrible to think how mean an instrument it takes to set the world agog and to bring us into unpleasant notoriety.”

“Oh, it is nothing,” said his visitor in a tone between sympathy and indifference. “I certainly should not worry about it if I were you. It won’t be even a nine days’ wonder. The Rullington case comes on next Monday; there will be some pretty disclosures for the mob in that, and I hear that Lady Rullington has her trunks ready packed, and is prepared to skip.”

The Duchess raised her eyebrows. “As bad as that? It is a pity that a presumably sensible woman as Maud Rullington was at one time should have such a vague idea as to where to draw the line.”

The Duke breathed heavily through his set teeth. “These liftings of the curtain for the benefit of the mob are very damaging and regrettable.”

“They are,” Playford agreed. “And the man in the street is getting every day more eager for a peep.”

“The man in the street,” said the Duke, the phrase bringing to his mind an unpleasant reminiscence, “has been waiting outside my gates all day for a peep. I don’t know what we are coming to when our very privacy is invaded.”

“It is a sign of these times of undesirable publicity,” Playford answered, almost with a yawn. He had not come there to listen to his Grace’s platitudinous complaints, and was awaiting his opportunity for something else. As for the Lancashires, why, who can bring himself to sympathize with a Duke and Duchess in their social embarrassments? Are they not considered to stand too high on their pedestals for the sympathy of the crowd below to reach them, and to deserve any little exposure which their exalted position invites? At any rate, they were just now but the king and queen of Aubrey Playford’s chess-board.

“I don’t think you need fear any pointing of scandal’s finger at you,” he observed, with a confidence-imparting smile. “The question which will be agitating everybody’s mind, when once they have arrived at the real bearings of the business, will be, who was the lady?”

“Ah, yes,” exclaimed the Duke, somewhat relieved.

“But, Aubrey,” the Duchess protested, “we are as much in the dark there as anybody else.”

Playford’s dark eyes looked hungrily shrewd. “You have no idea, Duchess?” he asked, with a touch of incredulity.

“Not the remotest,” she replied.

“I wish we had,” chimed in the Duke, and then fell to wondering vaguely exactly what he would do with the information if he had it.

The Duchess had her eyes fixed on her visitor’s shrewd face. “You know, Aubrey?” she demanded, with a look of conviction.

Playford’s astute smile broadened as he shook his head. “Not I, Duchess. But I might perhaps give a guess for what it is worth.”

“Let’s have it,” cried the Duke, all attention.

Playford looked inscrutable. “It is dangerous work guessing,” he returned, “unless one has something to go upon. I was only suggesting it that the hounds of scandal may prefer to follow that fox to this if there should be a cross-scent.”

“Quite so,” the Duke agreed, none the less confidently that the idea had never occurred to him.

The Duchess was reflecting. “We have not much to go upon,” she said slowly. “It was so long ago.”

“You have,” suggested Playford, “the ornament, the diamond hair-pin, was it not, that the man found?”

“Ah, yes.” She turned to him with alert scrutiny.

“That won’t be claimed,” said the Duke, with a short laugh.

“Claimed! How stupid you are, John!” Her impatient exclamation scarcely took her eyes from Playford’s face.

“It will probably be claimed by Scotland Yard,” remarked that gentleman with easy premonition. “I am surprised they have not been here yet. I see, though, they say they have no knowledge of the affair. So like them. Perhaps they expected to be sent for. May I see the thing before it goes?”

“The ornament?” The Duke glanced at his wife in some hesitation. She had taken the tiresome thing and locked it up, being in no mood to pander to an already more than objectionable curiosity. He waited to see how she would refuse, but she rose, and saying, “I will get it,” left the room.

“The Duchess is not going to show it to everybody,” said the Duke, with a, possibly manneristic, touch of patronage.

“No, I shouldn’t,” Playford commented, with a shrewd smile. He thought he knew why he was made the exception, and was not going to take is as a favour.

His manner, with men at least, Dukes included, was rather more brusque than his present host liked, so no word further was spoken till the Duchess returned.

“Here it is,” she said, and unwrapped the tissue paper from the unhappy piece of evidence. There it was. A miniature sword, the blade tarnished gold, the hilt set with diamonds, and the point broken off.

Playford watched its uncovering eagerly. As it was disclosed he put out his hand to take it, and, as he did so, glanced up in the Duchess’s face. He did not mean to tell her anything, yet she saw in his eyes something that said a good deal. Next moment he had turned away to the light and was scrutinizing the little sword closely, eagerly, as a man will who wants to carry in his mind the exact image of an object he may not see again.

The Duke and Duchess stood behind him in expectant silence. But they both looked rather blank when he at length turned to them and affected to be studying a stain of rust on the blade.

“That looks as though it might have been blood,” he said, tapping it with his finger nail.

“Hah: do you think so?” returned the Duke in a non-committal tone.

“Shouldn’t be surprised,” Playford replied in an abominably disappointing way. “But I’m not an analyst.”

“Do you recognize the sword, Aubrey?” asked the Duchess, with manifestly restrained impatience.

Playford looked at her with a fine assumption of surprise. “No. Why? Ought I to?” he asked. “Do you know the owner?”

“I thought you did,” she returned pointedly.

He handed it back with a laugh. “Not I. It is not an uncommon device. I fancy even Scotland Yard will have some trouble in following up that clue. Thanks for letting me see it, Duchess. I’m afraid I have rather a taste for the morbid.”

She was evidently not going to get anything out of him that would pay for the trouble of fetching the corpus delicti, and so her Grace wrapped it up again in no very amiable mood. Her visitor’s reticence was the more exasperating in that her instinct told her he could, if he chose, give a shrewd guess at the owner. Except as a matter of feminine curiosity she did not care much to know what she was convinced Playford might have told her; but she did not consider it consistent with her dignity to be thus made use of, and she felt very much inclined to be rude to her departing guest. And it is given to Duchesses to be very rude when they like. Then a certain idea of the inexpediency of venting her spleen occurred to her just in time; perhaps she realized that Aubrey Playford was a dangerous man for even a Duchess to snub, and she let him go in peace.

But the Duke, who dared not go out, remained to her; and he went to bed that night feeling that the world may be made very unpleasant, even for a Duke.

CHAPTER V
THE MAN WHO GUESSED

COUNTESS ALEXIA of Rohnburg had had a few of her intimate friends to luncheon at the house in Green Street, and the last of them, Mary Riverdale, was still sitting with her in cosy chat when a note was brought in. That her hostess did not like the look of the handwriting on the envelope, Miss Riverdale was sure. But she forbore the comment to which her intimacy might have entitled her, and contented herself with running through a picture book while Alexia read the note.

“Is—any one waiting?” the Countess had asked.

“No, madame,” answered the man, unsatisfyingly laconic, as became his position.

Alexia read the note, restored it to its envelope and put it, address downwards, on the table. Her visitor threw aside the Graphic, and for a few moments there was a constrained silence, a pause of mental self-consciousness, almost awkward, considering how intimate the two were. But both of them, young though they might be, were too experienced players in that everyday game of social diplomacy to let an embarrassment become manifest. Yet there will assert itself, in spite of tact and artifice, a certain instinct which tells us our companions are reading our thoughts and gauging our dilemmas.

“I wonder what the next development of the Vaux House mystery will be,” Miss Riverdale observed, quoting the headline of the Daily Comet.

The affair had, as was natural, been the subject of animated discussion at luncheon, and it seemed scarcely worth while to reopen it.

The Countess gave a shrug. “We must wait and see,” she answered mechanically. “The poor Duchess! One almost feels one ought to leave cards of enquiry.”

“The poor Duke,” laughed her friend. “They will get more fun out of him than ever. Not but what this is a serious matter.”

“You really think so?” The talk was being sustained by an effort on both sides, and Alexia’s question sounded suspiciously like covering a yawn.

“Don’t you?” the other returned, in languid surprise.

“Oh, yes, I suppose so. If it is all true.”

“Of course if it isn’t true we shall have a disclaimer from the Lancashires to-morrow.”

“I mean the connection between the broken ornament, the little sword, or whatever it is, and poor Captain Martindale’s death. You knew him, Mary?”