Rogues & Company/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
Nine o'clock struck. The Count and Countess sat on either side of the fire-place and simultaneously both glanced at the clock and then at each other; simultaneously their eyes returned to their books. After that ten minutes passed before either moved. Their respective novels must have provided ponderous reading, for the pages were left unturned, and when the Count ventured to look up again he found his wife was watching him surreptitiously from under cover of her eyeslashes.
"You are looking tired," she observed hastily, as though offering an explanation. "You are pale."
"I have a headache," he admitted. "It's the weather. You don't look very well either. Hadn't you better go to bed?"
"Oh no, thank you. But don't wait up for me."
Further silence. At intervals stolen glances at the clock. At last the Countess Theodora rose. Her face indeed justified her husband's statement that she was not looking well. It was deadly white and the hands that played nervously with the long gold chain were obviously trembling.
"I think—" she began with a little gulp—"I think I shall go to bed, Louis, I am feeling upset. It is the heat—or the cold or something. Good night."
He rose and approached her anxiously.
"Theodora—can I get you anything—shall I send for the doctor?"
"Oh, no, no." She held out her hands as though to ward him off and, instead, yielded them with a sudden impetuousness into his clasp. "I have been very horrid to you and you are very, very kind to me, Louis. But you must not bother about me—never, never!"
"Never?" he said with a whimsical sadness.
"No, never." She hesitated, toying with a kind of desperate playfulness with the buttons on his coat. "Really, I'm not worth bothering about, Louis."
"Isn't that for me to decide?"
"No, no, I know better than you. If—if I had known you were so—so good and chivalrous—and generous—I wouldn't have done it—I mean I wouldn't have consented to marrying you. It was wrong—"
"I'd do it all over again,—" he broke in impetuously
"Would you?"
He flushed.
"No,—I wouldn't—"
"Ah, you see!"
His lips parted with his one and only reason—then closed again. She laughed brokenly.
"Do not try to soften it. I have understood. How could it be otherwise. You have done what you felt was your duty and I have made you suffer." She drew back her head and for a moment looked him full and straight in the eyes. "I am sorry for everything I have done to hurt you," she said solemnly. "I want you to believe that—that I couldn't help myself. Had things been different—"
"Ah, had things been different!" he interrupted sighing.
"Who knows—then?" She shrugged her shoulders recklessly. "Why do we stand here talking of the might-have-beens? It is so foolish—so useless—and it is late. Bon soir, Monsieur, mon mari!"
"Theodora!"
She looked back at him from between the parted curtains.
"Bon soir, Monsieur, mon mari!" she repeated softly as though the phrase pleased her and the next minute she was gone.
The Count made a movement to follow her, then stood irresolutely staring at the spot where she had vanished until with alarming abruptness the clock struck the half hour. Then he started like a man awakening from a dream and, crossing to his writing desk, took pen and paper and began to write.
"My wife," he wrote clearly, "though my knowledge of the French language is limited I believe you have just called me husband for the first time as though you meant it. I call you 'wife' for the last time, though I think you will remain that to me always in spite of everything. Still—it is a title from which you have every right to free yourself. I am not the Count de Beaulieu and I do not know how you ever came to suppose I was. From my point of view I don't know who I am but the person whom I was forced to introduce to you as the Count de Bontemps declares that I am his brother. As he is a scoundrel, I presume I am a scoundrel also—I have certainly acted as one. A Lucky Pig, which is the one thing I brought with me out of my mysterious and unknown past, points to my being the notorious William Brown, alias Slippery Bill. George confirms this—so now you know what manner of man you have married. Have I any excuse to offer? Well, I think I can plead that I was driven into this false position. When I recovered consciousness after that accident—or whatever it was—I couldn't remember anything about myself. Inspector Smythe put two and two together, however, and apparently made five, but that wasn't altogether my fault, was it? I did not remember any of my past crimes, and for all I knew he was right—indeed if he had said I was the Emperor of China I should have believed him. Afterwards, of course—thanks to that unlucky Pig—I found out who I really was, but then it was too late. And now the game is up. The real Count—and he was a worse scoundrel than I was for deserting you for that fair-haired doll—has turned up, and it's only a question of hours before he proves his identity. In any case I should have to own up to you. I couldn't stand it any longer. Of course it was natural that you shouldn't care for me and I don't blame you. I deceived you and your feminine intuition found me out. You grew to care for someone else—and I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear to see you unhappy—or to see you caring for another man. This brings me up to the last point in my confession. I love you. That's why I'm off—why I am going to commit a last crime in order to make good my escape and why afterwards I shall try to live an honest life. It's the one atonement I can offer.
"Your devoted and unhappy husband
"The Rogue."
"Are you ready, old bird?"
William Brown, as he was to be from henceforth, started to his feet, and then, as he saw the grinning face in the doorway, nodded a curt assent.
"Yes."
"Coast clear?"
"Yes—wait a moment though till I have addressed this envelope."
"Parting love-letter, eh?"
"Hold your tongue!"
George grimaced rudely. William Brown finished his task in stern silence. Then, as he threw the pen down with a sigh of bitter satisfaction, he caught sight of a second envelope addressed to him, propped up against a vase, with the injunction "not to be opened till to-morrow morning." This letter he thrust into his pocket.
"Are you coming or are you waiting for your escort to take you to Buckingham Palace?"
"I'm coming—I'm coming!"
A moment later both men stood together in the quiet passage. Downstairs they heard the subdued strains of music and the hum of voices. George put his finger to his nose.
"Grand doings," he said briefly. "The road is as clear as it could be. Try and look innocent, dear boy, and come along. My little friend Susan has given me the key to No. 36—it will be as easy as flying—"
"—and about as safe," commented the Rogue gloomily.
George chuckled but made no answer, and in silence they proceeded down the corridor. Their progress was open and even ostentatious. The chamber-maid who bade them good-night did not even trouble to look after them and yawned her way back to her own quarters.
"Now!" said George quietly.
They had reached room No. 36. George stopped, took a key from his pocket and fitted it into the lock.
"Susan is to meet me outside the gates," he observed casually. "I hope the dear little thing won't catch cold."
But on this cynical hope his wretched partner made no comment. The key turned easily, and with a gracefully inviting gesture George motioned William Brown into the dark and silent room. Both darkness and silence oppressed the latter with an eerie prescience of danger, but he said nothing and clenched his chattering teeth, desperately intent on seeing the business through.
"The safe's over by the window," his companion whispered. "Take this electric torch and turn it on when I tell you. We mustn't be wasteful with the gas."
On tip-toe both men crossed the room to the spot which George had indicated. A small travelling safe of determined appearance had been set against the wall and, obeying a curt command, the Rogue switched on the torch. Its straight stream of light fell on the lock and there was a soft clink of steel instruments as George set to work. The business filled William Brown with indescribable and unnatural horror. It was insult added to injury that he couldn't even be dishonest with a good conscience. Whatever he had been in the past he was now a hopeless failure. "I'll have to go straight," he thought. "I can't stand this sort of thing any more—I simply can't." He was, in fact, suffering acutely. Every hoarse rasp of the file seemed to vibrate down his backbone and George's breathing magnified itself in his ears to the stentorian snorting of a bull. He looked nervously about him. A shadow moved. He attributed it at first to the light—then suddenly a fearful suspicion grew to a blood-curdling certainty.
"George!" he whispered. "There's somebody in the room—there—behind the wardrobe—"
The next instant the torch was dashed from his hand. He felt himself half dragged, half carried to the open window and before he had time to utter more than a gasp of protest he was flying through a horrible space which ended suddenly and uncomfortably in the mouldy moistness of a flower-bed. Choking, his mouth and eyes and nose full of the damp earth, the Rogue scrambled to his feet. The room which he had left thus unceremoniously was now brightly lit and excited shadows ran backwards and forwards against the yellow background. But he had no time to consider the situation. A figure rose up from the flower bed beside him and gripped him by the arm.
"We're mugged!" George spluttered. "That vixen—that blue-eyed cat has done me. Never trust a woman—never. There's nothing for it but to show a clean pair of heels. The gate's no good. Make for the wall. After that try for the station in time for the express. I'll keep to the woods. Off with you!"
His confederate waited for no more. The instinct of self-preservation lent him a speed and agility with which he would never have accredited himself. The five-foot wall might have been two feet—the two miles to the station thirty yards. No one intervened to check his wild progress though he swerved at every shadow, and at last the light of Bunmouth Station hove in sight. Breathless, gasping and hatless, he drew up at the booking-office. The instinct of self-preservation had forgotten to lend him a measure of common-sense, for his state would have aroused the suspicions of an angel. He realised this fact as he passed the barrier and faced the familiar station-master. Instinctively he pulled himself up to meet the worst. To his utter amazement the gentleman in dark blue merely touched his cap.
"Close shave, your lordship," he said pleasantly. "You seem to have had a run for it."
"I have," William Brown admitted truthfully.
"Another minute and you'd have missed," the station-master went on. "I've reserved a compartment higher up."
William Brown shook his head feebly as though protesting against the crazy vagaries of fortune, but followed unresisting. The express was already moving as the guard unlocked the door of a first-class compartment.
"There you are!" he said. "Just in time, sir!"
The door was slammed to and the fugitive heard no more. He broke down helplessly in a corner seat and did not move until the lights of the station had disappeared round a curve. Then for the first time he realised that he was not alone. He looked up and encountered the horrified, bewildered gaze of the Countess Theodora.