The Duke Decides/Chapter 17

by Headon Hill

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CHAPTER XVII

Where is the Duke?

The next day was that set for the arrival of Senator Sherman, though it would be quite late in the afternoon before he could reach Prior’s Tarrant from Liverpool. Mrs. Sherman had addressed a letter to him on board the Campania, explaining matters and passing on a cordial invitation from Beaumanoir that he would join the party on landing.

Latterly there had been an entire absence of the excursions and alarums which had marked the earlier days of the house-party. General Sadgrove and Alec Forsyth had relaxed none of their vigilance, and Azimoolah still ranged the glades of the park, but no more unauthorized artists had put in an appearance, nor had any member of the party suffered from headache, entailing the strange cure of a midnight journey.

On this eventful morning it so happened that the ladies were all assembled in the breakfast-room before any of the gentlemen were down. Sybil, presiding at the tea and coffee equipage, was evincing deep interest in Mrs. Talmage Eglinton’s narrative of her purchases in London the day before; Mrs. Sherman was wondering to Mrs. Sadgrove whether “Leonidas” would come straight to Prior’s Tarrant, or insist on depositing the bonds in the Bank of England first; and Leonie was looking dreamily through the open windows across the park—she was often dreaming nowadays; so was the Duke.

Presently General Sadgrove strode in and took his seat, making no apology, because breakfast was a come-as-you-please meal, and no one was expected to be punctual. But when he had said good-morning all round he glanced uneasily at the vacant places of Beaumanoir and Forsyth. The two young men were usually up and about before anyone.

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton had broken off in the middle of describing a new and ravishing hat to Sybil in order to smile a welcome to the grim old warrior. She was now following the direction of his glance, and commented on it in sprightly fashion.

“The naughty Duke and the naughty Mr. Forsyth!” she purred. “I believe you men keep most frightfully late hours in this house, General. What is it that you do—play cards or gamble with dominoes?”

“No, it’s chess,” jerked out the General, regarding her impassively. “Mate to the King and the Black Queen to move. All that sort of thing, don’t you know.”

The American widow trilled out a silvery laugh, and the veteran attacked his breakfast. But, looking singularly old this morning, he seemed to have but little appetite, and ate slowly, frowning at the two empty places; and when Alec Forsyth came in alone, and white as a sheet, he was on his legs in a moment.

“Where is the Duke?’’ the General flung at his nephew.

“I don’t know; he’s not in his room, and I can’t find him anywhere in the nearer gardens,” was the reply. “I should like to speak to you for a moment,” Forsyth added, with a significant glance at the ladies, who had so far failed to grasp that there was anything serious in a Duke being late for breakfast in his own house.

It needed no second request to bring the General out into the hall. “Now tell me shortly,” said the old man as soon as they were alone together.

What Forsyth had to tell did not amount to much. As was his custom, he had gone to Beaumanoir’s room as soon as he was dressed, and had found it vacant. As, however, the bed had been slept in, he apprehended nothing wrong, thinking merely that the Duke was smoking an early cigarette on the terrace. Seeing no sign of him there, he extended his search in the grounds, but again with no result. The next step was to question the servants, none of whom had seen their master since the previous day.

The General stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t believe that woman knows anything,” he said at length. “I was watching her when you came in. She seemed to be surprised, and even disconcerted, by your news.”

“Perhaps one of her colleagues has acted independently, or there may be divided counsels in the camp,” Forsyth suggested. “In that case———”

“In any case, what we have to do is to find Beaumanoir, dead or alive,” the General interrupted. “See here, Alec, you must get a grip on yourself and go in and eat your breakfast calmly—just to prevent a premature panic among the women. I’ll go and hunt up Azimoolah. If there has been any stir during the night he is sure to know of it.”

But as the General descended the terrace steps he was smitten with inward misgivings on that point. Had his faithful henchman detected anything unusual during the hours of darkness he would, long ere this, have been up to the house to report; besides which, if he had come across any lurking miscreants he would have seen to it that no harm befell the Duke. And here was the Duke missing. The hypothesis was that Azimoolah had either been eluded or had himself fallen a victim to foul play.

Influenced by this fear, the General quickened his pace, and as soon as he reached the wooded portion of the park uttered at frequent intervals his signal for the Pathan to appear. But glade after glade he traversed, scaring the rabbits with his cobra-like hiss, yet the lithe form of Azimoolah nowhere broke through the bushes. The General did not desist till he had thoroughly drawn the coverts, abandoning after a while his strange noises for a systematic scrutiny of the ground. He knew that had Azimoolah been in the park as a live man he would have answered the well-known call by now; whereas if he was lying cold and stark somewhere in the thicket, by patient search alone could he be found.

At the end of a fruitless hour the General went back to the house, realizing that not only the Duke, but the Duke’s most capable protector, was missing. The blow was a severe one, for, apart from the ominous mystery of this dual disappearance, a certain scheme that had come to very near maturity was rendered null and void—a scheme that before another day dawned was to have cut the claws of Ziegler and Co. for ever.

There was the bare chance that Beaumanoir might have turned up during his absence, and General Sadgrove covered the ground at his best pace; but he was destined to find no such pleasant surprise in store for him. Forsyth met him, as he mounted the terrace steps, with the significant inquiry whether he had discovered anything.

“Nothing, and Azimoolah has gone too,” was the reply. “Where are the women?”

“In the morning-room; they are not alarmed as yet, only a little uneasy—especially Leonie.”

“She would be, but we needn’t mind her,” the General rejoined, brusquely. “What do you make of Ziegler’s understudy?”

“I cannot make much of her,” replied Forsyth. “I am inclined to agree with you that she is as much in a fog as the rest of us.”

The General grunted, and proposed that they should at once go up and rummage Beaumanoir’s room for clues, a course which they instantly adopted. Since the charcoal episode their host had resolutely refused to occupy “the Duke’s room,” preferring to that grim state apartment a smaller chamber in the corridor where most of the guests were accommodated. Access was gained to it by two different doors, one leading to it through a dressing-room, the other directly opening into it. They chose the latter as being the nearest, and as they entered distinctly heard the swish of a silk skirt in the dressing-room, followed by the soft closing of the dressing-room door.

Alert and bristling like an angry terrier, the General stepped quickly back into the corridor—just in time to see another door gently shut a little farther on.

“You were right, laddie,” he said, rejoining Forsyth. “She has been here before us on the same errand. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton is as much bewildered as we are by the turn of events, and she has been trying to arrive at conclusions from an inspection of the Duke’s room.”

They began their “rummage,” which was made easier for them by the fact that the housemaids had not yet paid their morning visit to the room. The bed had certainly been slept in, and there were also indications that the occupant had made a perfunctory sort of toilet afterwards. There was fresh lather on a shaving-paper, and soapy water in the washbasin, to show that Beaumanoir had been able to attend to his person.

“Whatever has happened to him didn’t happen here,” said the General with decision. “He left this room a free agent, at all events. The question then arises, When and why did he leave it, and has he left the confines of the park?”

“He must have made a cold toilet,” said Forsyth. “See, here is the hot water which was brought up for him at eight o’clock this morning, and also the water for his tub.”

He stepped outside into the corridor and pointed to a small and a large can that had been placed close outside the door of the dressing-room. By the General’s advice the Duke had been in the habit of keeping both doors locked at night, and the cans were never brought in by the servant who called him. A valet had not yet been engaged.

“And there by the wash-stand is the empty can he used overnight,” said the General. “Yes, there is the dirty water, in which he washed his hands before going to bed, in the waste-pail. We fix him, then, to having slept for some hours, and to having got up early and left the house in the small hours before anyone was about.”

“It looks as if he were playing a lone hand at some game of his own,” said Forsyth, doubtfully.

But the General would have no vague conjectures. Having settled within approximate limits the time when Beaumanoir quitted his room, he desired to learn how he had left the house. He himself had been sitting up from two, at which hour he relieved Forsyth, till five o’clock, and he would stake his reputation that no one had been moving during the period of his vigilance. The Duke must have left the house between five and six, at which latter hour the servants began to be moving.

This view was strengthened by inquiry from the butler, who reported that on going his rounds to open up the house he had discovered one of the windows of the smoking-room unbolted, though he had himself seen to the fastenings the night before. He had not thought anything of it, supposing that one of the gentlemen had gone out for an early stroll.

The General led Forsyth aside. “Whatever has happened to Beaumanoir, he has courted his own fate by going outside unattended,” he said. “It almost looks as if he had been lured out by some trick of his enemies, in which case Azimoolah has probably been done to death while endeavoring to protect him. Come and help me search the park once more, and then if we find nothing we must call in the police.”

Making a detour by the stable-yard, so as to avoid meeting and being questioned by the ladies, they struck out for the leafy recesses of the broad belt of woodland that fringed the park. Allotting one section to Forsyth and taking the other himself, the General repeated the process of the morning, peering into the bushes, turning over heaps of leaves and probing the bracken with his stick, but all to no purpose. No gruesome corpse, either of English nobleman or of dark-skinned Asiatic, met their straining eyes.

“We must give it up,” said the General at last. “Now that we are down here we had better go out through the wicket-gate into the village and tell the constable to send for his superiors. We have reached the limit, and poor Beaumanoir’s secrets can belong to him no longer, I fear.”

Forsyth assented that it would be no longer advisable, even if it were possible, to keep the Duke’s affairs out of the hands of the police, and the two made their way toward the private gate in the park wall through which Beaumanoir had gone to church on his first memorable Sunday at Prior’s Tarrant. They were approaching the gate, not by the path, but skirting the wall through the undergrowth, when a lissome body appeared suddenly at the top of the wall, poised there for a moment, and then dropped almost at their feet. It was Azimoolah Khan, dusty and out of breath, but very far from being a dead man.

“How is this, thou son of Sheitan?’’ exclaimed the General, affecting sternness to hide his pleasure. “It was not your wont in the jungle days to desert your post in times of danger. In your absence some evil thing has befallen him whom we are pledged to guard.”

“Nay, Sahib, but hear me. It is not thy servant who has deserted his post, but his post which has deserted him,” protested the Pathan, with dignified reproof. “The great Lord Duke ran away—oh so far and so fast—and thy servant ran after in his tracks to see that no harm befell him.”

“Well, where is the Duke now, man?” the General blurted out in great excitement. “Surely you haven’t come back to tell me that you have lost him?”

“The Duke is in the fire-carriage, Sahib; and thy servant having no sufficient money or orders from the Sahib, was not able to follow further than the station,” Azimoolah replied.

Pressed to be more explicit, this was the story he had to impart. He had been patrolling the park, ever with a watchful eye for the house, when between five and six he had seen the Duke come from one of the ground-floor windows and make at great speed for the coppices. Keeping himself concealed, Azimoolah had quickly perceived that it was the Duke’s intention to leave the park by the wicket gate, and, considering it his duty not to lose sight of him, he had climbed the wall and followed. Avoiding the village street, Beaumanoir had struck into a series of lanes which presently brought him back into the main road beyond the farthest habitation. Thenceforward, with Azimoolah shadowing him, he had commenced a tramp which lasted between two and three hours, and finally ended at a railway station in a fair-sized country town.

“You ascertained the name of the town?” asked the General.

Yes, after the train had steamed away Azimoolah had not omitted to inquire the name of the town. It was Tring. He had also inquired at the booking-office where the Duke had taken a ticket for, but the clerk had refused the information with a rude remark about the color of his skin—a remark which, east of Suez, might have brought him a taste of cold steel.

“And then, Sahib,” concluded the narrator, “without bite or sup I started to run back again, being sore afraid lest thy heart should be troubled by these things.”

The General patted his orderly’s lean shoulder. “You have done right, old sheep-dog,” he said. “And as the lamb has broken loose from the fold you can go and get food and take a few hours’ rest. Come, Alec! Let us get back and see what Bradshaw has to tell us.”

Azimoolah having vanished over the boundary wall for his lodging in the village, they returned to the house and repaired to the library. Forsyth found a Northwestern timetable and turned up Tring.

“Beaumanoir must have caught the 7.30 down,” he said, running his finger down the page. “It’s a slow train, stopping at every station, and doesn’t go beyond Bletchley.”

The General was growing querulous. “Bletchley!” he snorted. “What the deuce does he want at Bletchley? It’s a little one-horse town in North Bucks, isn’t it?”

“Hold on, it’s more than that,” said Forsyth, still with his finger on the column. “It’s a junction where fast trains stop, and—yes!—he could change there into the North of England express, which calls there at 8.10.”

The two men looked at each other in silence and with something of consternation.

“Liverpool is in the north of England,” said the General after a pause, “and Sherman is due to arrive there to-day.”

“I cannot and will not believe that Beaumanoir has gone wrong after all,” Forsyth angrily replied to his uncle’s significant remark. He spoke with such heat that neither of them noticed that the library door had been opened and that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton stood there, smiling at them.

“Who has gone wrong?” she purred sweetly. “For goodness’ sake, don’t tell me that the Duke has run away with a housemaid!”

She was looking at Forsyth with eyes that bored like gimlets, and he thought of the letter from Ziegler, addressed to the Duke, entrusted to him the day before. Was it something in that letter that made her stare so steadfastly and yet with something of mockery in her gaze? Having good reason to be aware of the contents of that letter, he thought it likely. Only in that case calculations had been all at sea, and Beaumanoir—alas, poor Beaumanoir!

It was the General who answered the lady’s banter, and that without any visible discomfiture. “No, it isn’t the Duke who has gone wrong,” he said calmly. “We were talking of someone not nearly so exalted. Our host is all right—gone away for a few hours by an early train on business. We have found out all about his movements, and I shall be obliged, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, if you will kindly reassure the other ladies that Beaumanoir’s absence is satisfactorily accounted for.”

“How delighted Miss Sherman will be. I will go and tell them all, at once,” cried the American gaily. And she swept out of the room with an exuberant triumph not lost on those who remained behind.

“Wherever the Duke has gone, and with whatever motive, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton is pleased,” the General mused aloud.

“She will find herself mistaken if she thinks he has gone to play her game,” said Alec Forsyth, staunch as ever to his friend.