Whoso Findeth a Wife

“True!” I cried. “You apparently doubt me. A telegram to the police at Staines will confirm my statement.”

“Yes, I never disguise my doubts, Deedes,” the Earl snapped, fixing his grey eyes upon mine. “I suspect very strongly that you have sold the secret to our enemies; you have, to put it plainly, betrayed your country.”

“I deny it!” I replied, with fierce anger. “I care not for any of your alleged proofs. True, the man who was with me during the whole time I was absent is dead. Nevertheless I am prepared to meet and refute all the accusations you may bring against me.”

“Well, we shall see. We shall see,” he answered dryly, snapping his fingers, and again commencing to pace the great library from end to end with steps a trifle more hurried than before. “We have – nay, I, personally have been the victim of dastardly spies, but I will not rest until I clear up the mystery and bring upon the guilty one the punishment he deserves. Think,” he cried. “Think what this means! England’s prestige is ruined, her power is challenged; and ere long the great armies of Russia and France will be swarming upon our shores. In the fights at sea and the fights on land with modern armaments the results must be too terrible to contemplate. The disaster that we must face will, I fear, be crushing and complete. I am not, I have never been, one of those over-confident idiots who believe our island impregnable; but am old-fashioned enough to incline towards Napoleon’s opinion. We are apt to rely upon our naval strength, a strength that may, or may not, be up to the standard of power we believe. If it is a rotten reed, what remains? England must be trodden beneath the iron heel of the invader, and the Russian eagle will float beside the tricolour in Whitehall.”

“But can diplomacy do nothing to avert the catastrophe?” I suggested.

“Not when it is defeated by the devilish machinations of spies,” he replied meaningly, flashing a glance at me, the fierceness of which I did not fail to observe.

“But Russia dare not take the initiative,” I blurted forth.

“Permit me, sir, to express my own opinion upon our relations with St Petersburg,” he roared. “I tell you that for years Russia has held herself in readiness to attack us at the moment when she received sufficient provocation, and for that very object she contracted an alliance with France. The Tzar’s recent visit to England was a mere farce to disarm suspicion, a proceeding in which, thank Heaven! I refused to play any part whatever. The blow that I have long anticipated, and have sought to ward off all these long years of my administration as Premier and as Foreign Secretary, has fallen. To-day is the most sorry day that England has ever known. The death-knell of her power is ringing,” and he walked down the room towards me, pale-faced and bent, his countenance wearing an expression of unutterable gloominess. He was, I knew, a patriot who would have sacrificed his life for his country’s honour, and every word he had uttered came straight from his heart.

“How the secret agents of the Tzar obtained knowledge of the treaty surpasses comprehension,” I exclaimed.

“The catastrophe is due to you – to you alone!” he cried. “You knew of what vital importance to our honour it was that the contents of that document should be kept absolutely secret. I told you with my own lips. You have no excuse whatever – none. Your conduct is culpable in the highest degree, and you deserve, sir, instant dismissal and the publication in the Gazette of a statement that you have been discharged from Her Majesty’s service because you were a thief and a spy!”

“I am neither,” I shouted in a frenzy of rage, interrupting him. “If you were a younger man, I’d – by Heaven! I’d knock you down. But I respect your age, Lord Warnham, and I am not forgetful of the fact that to you I owe more than I can ever repay. My family have faithfully served their country through generations, and I will never allow a false accusation to be brought upon it, even though you, Her Majesty’s Foreign Secretary, may choose to make it.” He halted, glancing at me with an expression of unfeigned surprise.

“You forget yourself, sir,” he answered, with that calm, unruffled dignity that he could assume at will. “I repeat my accusation, and it is for you to refute it.”

“I can! I will!” I cried.

“Then explain the reason you handed me a sheet of blank paper in exchange for the instrument.”

“I cannot, I – ”

He laughed a hard, cynical laugh, and, turning upon his heel, paced towards the opposite window.

“All I know is that the envelope I gave you was the same that you handed to me,” I protested.

“It’s a deliberate lie,” he cried, as he turned in anger to face me again. “I opened the dispatch, read it through to ascertain there was no mistake, and, after sealing it with my own hands, gave it to you. Yet, in return, you hand me this!” and he took from the table the ingeniously-forged duplicate envelope and held it up.

Then, casting it down again passionately, he added, —

“The document I handed to you was exchanged for that dummy, and an hour later the whole thing was telegraphed in extenso to Russia. The original was in your possession, and even if you are not actually in the pay of our enemies, you were so negligent of your duty towards your Queen and country that you are undeserving the name of Englishman.”

“But does not London swarm with Russian agents?” I said. “Have we not had ample evidence of that lately?”

“I admit it,” he answered. “But what proof is there to show that you yourself did not hand the original document to one of these enterprising gentlemen who take such a keen interest in our affairs?”

“There is no proof that I am a spy,” I cried hotly. “There never will be; for I am entirely innocent of this disgraceful charge. You overlook the fact that after it had been deposited in the safe it may have been tampered with.”

“I have overlooked no detail,” he answered, with calmness. “Your suggestion is an admirable form of excuse, but, unfortunately for you, it will not hold water. First, because, as you must be aware, there is but one key to that safe, and that never leaves my person; secondly, no one but you and I are possessed of the secret whereby the safe may be opened or closed; thirdly, the packet you gave me did not remain in the safe. In order that you should believe that the document was deposited there, I put it in in your presence, but when you left my room I took it out again, and carried it home with me to Berkeley Square, intending to show it to Lord Maybury. The Premier did not call as he had promised, but I kept the document in my pocket the whole time, and at six o’clock returned to the Foreign Office and deposited it again in the safe. Almost next moment – I had not left the room, remember – some thought prompted me to reopen the envelope and reassure myself of the wording of one of the clauses. Walking to the safe, I took out the envelope and cut it open, only to discover that I had been tricked. The paper was blank!”

“It might have been stolen while in your possession just as easily as while in mine!” I exclaimed, experiencing some satisfaction at being thus able to turn his own arguments against himself.

“Knowing its vital importance, I took the most elaborate precautions that such circumstances were rendered absolutely impossible.”

“From your words, when Hammerton arrived from Berlin, it was plain that you suspected treachery. On what ground were your suspicions founded?”

Upon his sphinx-like face there rested a heavy frown of displeasure as he replied, —

“I refuse to submit to any cross-examination, sir. That I entertained certain suspicions is enough.”

“And you actually accuse me without the slightest foundation?” I cried with warmth.

“You are in error,” he retorted very calmly, returning to his writing-table and taking up some papers. “I have here the original of the telegram handed in at the branch post-office in the Strand yesterday afternoon.”

“Well?”

“It has been examined by the calligraphic expert employed by the police, and declared to be in your handwriting.”

“What?” I gasped, almost snatching the yellow telegraph form from his hand in my eagerness to examine the mysterious jumble of letters and figures composing the cypher. My heart sank within me when next instant I recognised they were in a hand so nearly resembling my own that I could scarcely detect any difference whatever.

As I stood gazing at this marvellous forgery, open-mouthed in abject dismay, there broke upon my ear a short, harsh laugh – a laugh of triumph.

Raising my head, the Earl’s penetrating gaze met mine. “Now,” he exclaimed, “come, acknowledge the truth. It is useless to prevaricate.”

“I have told the truth,” I answered. “I never wrote this.”

For an instant his steely eyes flashed as his blanched face assumed an expression of unutterable hatred and disgust. Then he shouted, —

“You are a thief, a spy and a liar, sir! Leave me instantly. Even in the face of such evidence as this you protest innocence with childish simplicity. You have betrayed your country into the hands of her enemies, and are, even now, seeking to throw blame and suspicion upon myself. You – ”

“I have not done so. I merely suggested that the document might have been exchanged while in your possession. Surely – ”

“And you actually come to me with a lame, absurd tale that the only man who can clear you is dead! The whole defence is too absurd,” he thundered. “You have sold your country’s honour and the lives of your fellow-men for Russian roubles. Go! Never let me see you again, except in a felon’s dock.”

“But surely I may be permitted to clear myself?” I cried.

“Your masters in St Petersburg will no doubt arrange for your future. In London we require your faithless services no longer,” the Earl answered, with intense bitterness. “Go!”

Chapter Six

The Veil

Leaving the Earl’s presence, I refused old Stanford’s invitation to take some refreshment, and, walking along the corridor on my way out, came face to face with Frayling, who was being conducted to the library.

“Going?” he inquired.

“Yes,” I answered, and passing on, engrossed in bitter thoughts that overwhelmed me, strode out into the park, wandering aimlessly across the grass to where a well-kept footpath wound away among the trees. Taking it, heedless of my destination, I walked on mechanically, regardless of the brilliant sunshine and the songs of the birds, thinking only of the unjust accusation against me, and of my inability to clear myself. I saw that the stigma upon me meant ruin, both social and financial. Branded as a spy, I should be spurned by Ella, sneered at by Mrs Laing, and avoided by Beck. Friends who had trusted me would no longer place any confidence in a man who had, according to their belief, sold his country into the hands of her enemies, while it was apparent from the Earl’s words that he had no further faith in my actions.

Yet the only man who could have cleared me, who could have corroborated my statement as to how I spent my time during my absence at lunch, and shown plainly that I had never entered the Strand nor visited the branch post-office next to Exeter Hall, was dead. His lips were for ever sealed.

I went forward, plunged deeply in thought, until passing a small gate I left the park, and found myself in Warnham Churchyard. For a moment I stood on the peaceful spot where I had often stood before, admiring the quaint old church, with its square, squat, ivy-covered tower, its gilded clock face, and its ancient doors that, standing open, admitted air and sunshine. Before me were the plain, white tombs of the departed earls, the most recent being that in memory of the Countess, one of the leaders of London society, who had died during her husband’s absence on his official duties; while across the well-kept lawn stood a quaint old sun-dial that had in silence marked the time for a century or so. From within the church the organ sounded softly, and I could see the Vicar’s daughter, a pretty girl still in her teens, seated at the instrument practising.