The Message

“I have just discovered my lost vocation,” he said. “I am a buffoon, Miss Dane, an idle jester. The only difference between me and a music–hall comedian is that my humor is not remunerative.”

“Why, when I left you last night you were on the verge of proposing to Mrs. Laing, a most serious undertaking.”

“Jolly nice woman, Mrs. Laing. No nonsense about her. We’ve bin together the last half hour, an’ I’m under the starter’s orders, at any rate.”

“Why not go in and win?” demanded Evelyn, taking a kindly interest in the Honorable one’s matrimonial prospects. If he and Mrs. Laing made a match of it, that would provide a very agreeable close to a disquieting incident.

“I’m afraid it’ll only be to make the runnin’ for some other Johnny,” sighed he. “I was gettin’ along like a house a–fire, when all at once she remembered she hadn’t said what she wanted to say in a letter to a Captain somebody at Ostend, an’ off she waltzed to her room. She’s probably writin’ sweet nothings to him now. Same old story – Billy Thring left at the post. Gad, that’s funny! See it, eh, what?”

Thring was so amused by his own wit that he did not notice the expression of pain and fear that drove the brightness from Evelyn’s face. But she herself was conscious of it, and looked away lest he should peer into her eyes, and wonder. So Mrs. Laing was writing to Arthur! She knew his address! How strange, how unutterably strange, that he had not once mentioned her name! The girl, as in a dream, affected to be watching a boy, the son of the village post–mistress, coming up the avenue. For the sake of hearing her own voice in such commonplace words as she might dare to utter, she drew her companion’s attention.

“Here is our telegraph messenger,” she said.

Thring glanced at his watch.

“It’s for me,” he announced. “There’s a chap at Newmarket who is the champion loser–finder of the world, an’ I’m one of his victims. This is Leger day, an’ if you wait a moment I’ll put you onto a stiff ‘un, sure thing. Then you must turn bookmaker at lunch, and win gloves right and left – in pairs, in fact. I’ll stand your losses if my prophet has gone mad an’ sent a winner.”

The boy made straight for him, and commenced to unfasten the pouch slung to his belt.

“See? I told you,” laughed Billy, opening the message.

Evelyn hardly understood him. She was grateful for the high spirits that prevented him from paying any heed to the tears trembling under her drooping eyelashes. Despite her brave resolve to disregard Rosamund Laing’s unbelievable story, a whole legion of doubts and terrors now trooped in on her. She asked herself how she could endure to live in the same house as her rival, for five long days, until Arthur’s answer came. Would he receive the two letters by the same post? Could there be any real foundation for her rival’s boast? The thought made her sick at heart. Fighting down her dread, she turned to Thring hoping to find a momentary oblivion in listening to his cheerful nonsense.

She found oblivion, indeed, but not in the shape she anticipated. Shading his eyes with one hand and holding the telegram in the other, her companion was gazing at it in a dazed way. His cheeks were bloodless, the hand gripping the scrap of flimsy paper shook as though he were seized with ague, his whole attitude was that of a man who had received an overwhelming shock.

“Mr. Thring!” she cried, startled beyond measure, “what has happened?”

“My God!” he wailed, with the tingling note of agony in his voice that comes most clearly from one whose lips are formed for laughter. “My God! And I was jesting about them only last night!”

“Oh, what is it?” she cried again, catching his arm because he swayed like one about to faint.

“Read!” he murmured. “Fairholme an’ the two boys! May Heaven forgive me! To think that I should have said it last night of all nights!”

Evelyn took the telegram from his palsied fingers, and this is what she read:

“With deepest regret I have to inform you that the Earl of Fairholme and his two sons were killed in the collision at Beckminster Junction last evening. Their private saloon was being shunted when the down express crashed into it. Letters found on his lordship’s body gave me your address. Every one here joins in profound sympathy. Please wire instructions. James Thwaite.”

Scarce knowing what she said, and still clinging desperately to the stricken man at her side, Evelyn whispered:

“Are they your relatives?”

And the answer came brokenly.

“Don’t you know? That’s Ferdy and my nephews! And two such boys! Straight an’ tall an’ handsome. Good Lord! was that the only way?”

Then she realized the horror of it. The crushed society butterfly, who was like to fall to the ground but for her support, was now Earl of Fairholme. Calling Brown to her aid, they led him inside the house. The butler, impelled to disobey his master’s strict injunctions, knocked at the library door, and told Baumgartner what had happened.

Von Rippenbach heard. He was a callous person, to whom the death of three Englishmen was of very slight consideration.

“The very thing!” he murmured. “Now you have your excuse. You can empty the place in twenty–four hours.”

Rosamund Laing, whose white brows wore unseemly furrows, was writing and thinking in her own room when a maid brought her the news. Before her on the table was Evelyn’s letter, and the sharp–eyed Scotch lassie saw that the lady nearly upset the inkstand in her haste to cover something with the blotting–pad. Rosamund was shocked, of course. Finding that Thring was leaving for the south almost immediately, she then and there wrote a sweetly sympathetic note, and had it taken to him.

“By the way,” she said before the maid went out, “have you seen Mr. Figuero recently? I mean the dark–skinned man who came here yesterday.”

Yes, he had just left the library with the master and another gentleman. Rosamund rose at once. If she were not greatly mistaken, Evelyn’s harmless–looking postscript had given her a clue to the mystery of Figuero’s presence in Baumgartner’s house. She knew her West Africa, and the bad repute of Oku was one of her clearest memories. Yet she turned back at the door, took Evelyn’s letter from her pocket, copied a portion of it, and locked the original in her jewel case.

The luncheon–gong sounded as she descended the stairs, so perforce she postponed the interview she promised herself with the Portuguese. And, for the success of her deep–laid schemes, it was as well. Sometimes there comes to the aid of evil–doers a fiend who contrives opportunities where human forethought would fail. Rosamund, embarked on a well–nigh desperate enterprise, suddenly found the way smoothed by Baumgartner’s wholly unexpected announcement that business considerations compelled him to leave Lochmerig forthwith.

“My wife and I would have tried to arrange matters satisfactorily for our guests,” he said, “but the gloom cast on our pleasant party by the unhappy tidings received this morning by one of our number renders it almost impossible for any of us to enjoy the remainder of a most memorable and delightful sojourn in Scotland.”

He delivered himself of other platitudes, but Mrs. Baumgartner’s dejected air and Beryl’s sulky silence showed plainly enough that the millionaire’s fiat was unalterable. Polite murmurs of agreement veiled the chagrin of people who had a fortnight or more thrown on their hands without any prior arrangements. The meal was a solemn function. Everybody was glad when it ended.

Rosamund met Figuero in the hall.

“I am going to the village,” she said. “Will you walk there with me?”

He caught the veiled meaning of the glance, and agreed instantly. When they were clear of the house, she commenced the attack.

“Why are you and Count von Rippenbach and three men of Oku in England?” she asked.

She did not look at Figuero. There was no need. He waited a few seconds too long before he laughed.

“You make joke,” he said.

“Do I? It will be no joke for you when Captain Warden informs the Government, if he has not done that already.”

“Why you say dem t’ing?” he growled, and she was fully aware of the menace in his voice.

“You told me what you were pleased to consider a secret last night. Very well, I am willing to trade. Captain Warden knows what you are doing. He probably guesses every item of the business you and the Count were discussing so long and earnestly with Mr. Baumgartner in the library before lunch. Oh, please don’t interrupt” – for Figuero, driven beyond the bounds of self–control, was using words better left to the Portuguese tongue in which they were uttered – “I am not concerned with your plots. They never come to anything, you know. If either Count von Rippenbach or Mr. Baumgartner had your history at their finger’s ends as I have, they would drop you like a hot cinder. Yet, I am ready to bargain. Help me, and I will keep my information to myself.”

“What you want, den?”

She glanced at him, and was surprised to see that his face was livid, almost green with rage and perplexity. It must be a grave matter – this jumble of hints in Evelyn’s letter.

“Can you read English?” she asked, after a pause.

“Yes, leetle piece – better as I can make palaver.”

“Read that then.”

She handed him the copy of that part of the fateful letter that alluded to himself and his affairs. He puzzled it out, word by word.

“Where him lib for?” he demanded.

“That was written by Miss Dane and intended for Captain Warden. I came by it, no matter how, and I mean to make use of it in some way.”

With a rapid movement, he stuffed the sheet of note–paper into a pocket.