The King's Stratagem, and Other Stories

"I am so glad you've lost your money," she sobs, hiding her face, as soon as she can, upon his shoulder. "I should not have done at all-for you-in London, Charley."

There let us leave her. But no, another is less merciful. Neither of them hears the door open or sees Agnes' face appear at it. But she both sees and hears, and says very distinctly and clearly:

"Well!"

But even Agnes is happy and satisfied. Something has happened.

THE FATAL LETTER

I have friends who tell me that they seldom walk the streets of London without wondering what is passing behind the house-fronts; without picturing a comedy here, a love-scene there, and behind the dingy cane blinds a something ill-defined, a something odd and bizarre. They experience-if you believe them-a sense of loneliness out in the street, an impatience of the sameness of all these many houses, their dull bricks and discreet windows, and a longing that someone would step out and ask them to enter and see the play.

Well, I have never felt any of these things; but as I was passing through Fitzhardinge Square about half-past ten o'clock one evening in last July, after dining, if I remember rightly, in Baker Street, something happened to me which I fancy may be of interest to such people.

I was passing through the square from north to south, and to avoid a small crowd, which some reception had drawn together, I left the pavement and struck across the road to the path around the oval garden; which, by the way, contains a few of the finest trees in London. This part was in deep shadow, so that when I presently emerged from it and recrossed the road to the pavement near the top of Fitzhardinge Street, I had an advantage over any persons on the pavement. They were under the lamps, while I, coming from beneath the trees, was almost invisible.

The door of the house immediately in front of me as I crossed was open, and an elderly man servant out of livery was standing at it, looking up and down the pavement by turns. It was his air of furtive anxiety that drew my attention to him. He was not like a man looking for a cab, or waiting for his sweetheart; and I had my eye upon him as I stepped upon the pavement before him. But my surprise was great when he uttered a low exclamation of dismay at sight of me, and made as if he would escape; while his face, in the full glare of the light, grew so pale and terror-stricken that he might before have been completely at his ease. I was astonished and instinctively stood still returning his gaze; for perhaps twenty seconds we remained so, he speechless, and his hands fallen by his side. Then, before I could move on, as I was in the act of doing, he cried, "Oh, Mr. George! Oh! Mr. George!" in a tone that rang out in the stillness rather as a wail than an ordinary cry.

My name, my surname, I mean, is George. For a moment I took the address to myself, forgetting that the man was a stranger, and my heart began to beat more quickly with fear of what might have happened. "What is it?" I exclaimed. "What is it?" and I shook back from the lower part of my face the silk muffler I was wearing. The evening was close, but I had been suffering from a sore throat.

He came nearer and peered more closely at me, and I dismissed my fear; for I thought that I could see the discovery of his mistake dawning upon him. His pallid face, on which the pallor was the more noticeable as his plump features were those of a man with whom the world as a rule went well, regained some of its lost color, and a sigh of relief passed his lips. But this feeling was only momentary. The joy of escape from whatever blow he had thought imminent gave place at once to his previous state of miserable expectancy of something or other.

"You took me for another person," I said, preparing to pass on. At that moment I could have sworn-I would have given one hundred to one twice over-that he was going to say yes. To my intense astonishment, he did not. With a very visible effort he said, "No."

"Eh! What?" I exclaimed. I had taken a step or two.

"No, sir."

"Then what is it?" I said. "What do you want, my good fellow?"

Watching his shuffling, indeterminate manner, I wondered if he were sane. His next answer reassured me on that point. There was an almost desperate deliberation about its manner. "My master wishes to see you, sir, if you will kindly walk in for five minutes," was what he said.

I should have replied, "Who is your master?" if I had been wise; or cried, "Nonsense!" and gone my way. But the mind, when it is spurred by a sudden emergency, often overruns the more obvious course to adopt a worse. It was possible that one of my intimates had taken the house, and said in his butler's presence that he wished to see me. Thinking of that I answered, "Are you sure of this? Have you not made a mistake, my man?"

With an obstinate sullenness that was new in him, he said, No he had not. Would I please to walk in? He stepped briskly forward as he spake, and induced me by a kind of gentle urgency to enter the house, taking from me, with the ease of a trained servant, my hat, coat, and muffler. Finding himself in the course of his duties he gained more composure; while I, being thus treated, lost my sense of the strangeness of the proceeding, and only awoke to a full consciousness of my position when he had softly shut the door behind us and was in the act of putting up the chain.

Then I confess I looked round, a little alarmed at my precipitancy. But I found the hall spacious, lofty, and dark-paneled, the ordinary hall of an old London house. The big fireplace was filled with plants in flower. There were rugs on the floor and a number of chairs with painted crests on the backs, and in a corner was an old sedan chair, its poles upright against the wall.

No other servants were visible, it is true. But apart from this all was in order, all was quiet, and any idea of violence was manifestly absurd.

At the same time the affair seemed of the strangest. Why should the butler in charge of a well-arranged and handsome house-the house of an ordinary wealthy gentleman-why should he loiter about the open doorway as if anxious to feel the presence of his kind? Why should he show such nervous excitement and terror as I had witnessed? Why should he introduce a stranger?

I had reached this point when he led the way upstairs. The staircase was wide, the steps were low and broad. On either side at the head of the flight stood a beautiful Venus of white Parian marble. They were not common reproductions, and I paused. I could see beyond them a Hercules and a Meleager of bronze, and delicately tinted draperies and ottomans that under the light of a silver hanging lamp-a gem from Malta-changed a mere lobby to a fairies' nook. The sight filled me with a certain suspicion; which was dispelled, however, when my hand rested for an instant upon the reddish pedestal that supported one of the statues. The cold touch of the marble was enough for me. The pillars were not of composite; of which they certainly would have consisted in a gaming house, or worse.

Three steps carried me across the lobby to a curtained doorway by which the servant was waiting. I saw that the "shakes" were upon him again. His impatience was so ill concealed that I was not surprised-though I was taken aback-when he dropped the mask altogether, and as I passed him-it being now too late for me to retreat undiscovered, if the room were occupied-laid a trembling hand upon my arm and thrust his face close to mine. "Ask how he is! Say anything," he whispered, trembling, "no matter what, sir! Only, for the love of Heaven, stay five minutes!"

He gave me a gentle push forward as he spoke-pleasant, all this! – and announced in a loud, quavering voice, "Mr. George!" which was true enough. I found myself walking round a screen at the same time that something in the room, a long, dimly lighted room, fell with a brisk, rattling sound, and there was the scuffling noise of a person, still hidden from me by the screen, rising to his feet in haste.

Next moment I was face to face with two men. One, a handsome elderly gentleman, who wore gray mustaches and would have seemed in place at a service club, was still in his chair, regarding me with a perfectly calm, unmoved face, as if my entrance at that hour were the commonest incident of his life. The other had risen and stood looking at me askance. He was five-and-twenty years younger than his companion and as good-looking in a different way. But now his face was white and drawn, distorted by the same expression of terror-ay, and a darker and fiercer terror than that which I had already seen upon the servant's features; it was the face of one in a desperate strait. He looked as a man looks who has put all he has in the world upon an outsider-and done it twice. In that quiet drawing room by the side of his placid companion, with nothing whatever in their surroundings to account for his emotion, his panic-stricken face shocked me inexpressibly.

They were in evening dress; and between them was a chess table, its men in disorder: almost touching this was another small table bearing a tray of Apollinaris water and spirits. On this the young man was resting one hand as if, but for its support, he would have fallen.

To add one more fact, I had never seen either of them in my life.

Or wait; could that be true? If so, it must indeed have been a nightmare I was suffering. For the elder man broke the silence by addressing me in a quiet, ordinary tone that exactly matched his face. "Sit down, George," he said, "don't stand there. I did not expect you this evening." He held out his hand, without rising from his chair, and I advanced and shook it in silence. "I thought you were in Liverpool. How are you?" he continued.

"Very well, I thank you," I muttered mechanically.

"Not very well, I should say," he retorted. "You are as hoarse as a raven. You have a bad cold at best. It is nothing worse, my boy, is it?" with anxiety.

"No, a throat cough; nothing else," I murmured, resigning myself to this astonishing reception-this evident concern for my welfare on the part of a man whom I had never seen in my life.

"That is well!" he answered cheerily. Not only did my presence cause him no surprise. It gave him, without doubt, actual pleasure!

It was otherwise with his companion; grimly and painfully so indeed. He had made no advances to me, spoken no word, scarcely altered his position. His eyes he had never taken from me. Yet in him there was a change. He had discovered, exactly as had the butler before him, his mistake. The sickly terror was gone from his face, and a half-frightened malevolence, not much more pleasant to witness, had taken its place. Why this did not break out in any active form was part of the general mystery given to me to solve. I could only surmise from glances which he later cast from time to time toward the door, and from the occasional faint creaking of a board in that direction, that his self-restraint had to do with my friend the butler. The inconsequences of dreamland ran through it all: why the elder man remained in error; why the younger with that passion on his face was tongue-tied; why the great house was so still; why the servant should have mixed me up with this business at all-these were questions as unanswerable, one as the other.

And the fog in my mind grew denser when the old gentleman turned from me as if my presence were a usual thing, and rapped the table before him impatiently. "Now, Gerald!" cried he, in sharp tones, "have you put those pieces back? Good Heavens! I am glad that I have not nerves like yours! Don't you remember the squares, boy? Here, give them to me!" With a hasty gesture of his hand, something like a mesmeric pass over the board, he set down the half dozen pieces with a rapid tap! tap! tap! which made it abundantly clear that he, at any rate, had no doubt of their former positions.

"You will not mind sitting by until we have finished the game?" he continued, speaking to me, and in a voice I fancied more genial than that which he had used to Gerald. "You are anxious to talk to me about your letter, George?" he went on when I did not answer. "The fact is that I have not read the inclosure. Barnes, as usual, read the outer letter to me, in which you said the matter was private and of grave importance; and I intended to go to Laura to-morrow, as you suggested, and get her to read the news to me. Now you have returned so soon, I am glad that I did not trouble her."

"Just so, sir," I said, listening with all my ears; and wondering.

"Well, I hope there is nothing very bad the matter, my boy?" he replied. "However-Gerald! it is your move! ten minutes more of such play as your brother's, and I shall be at your service."

Gerald made a hurried move. The piece rattled upon the board as if he had been playing the castanets. His father made him take it back. I sat watching the two in wonder and silence. What did it all mean? Why should Barnes-doubtless behind the screen, listening-read the outer letter? Why must Laura be employed to read the inner? Why could not this cultivated and refined gentleman before me read his- Ah! that much was disclosed to me. A mere turn of the hand did it. He had made another of those passes over the board, and I learned from it what an ordinary examination would not have detected. He, the old soldier with the placid face and light-blue eyes, was blind! Quite blind!

I began to see more clearly now, and from this moment I took up, at any rate in my own mind, a different position. Possibly the servant who had impelled me into the middle of this had had his own good reasons for doing so, as I now began to discern. But with a clew to the labyrinth in my hand, I could no longer move passively at any other's impulse. I must act for myself. For a while I sat still and made no sign. My suspicions were presently confirmed. The elder man more than once scolded his opponent for playing slowly. In one of these intervals he took from an inside pocket of his dress waistcoat a small package.

"You had better take your letter, George," he said. "If there are, as you mentioned, originals in it, they will be more safe with you than with me. You can tell me all about it, viva voce, now you are here. Gerald will leave us alone presently."

He held the papers toward me. To take them would be to take an active part in the imposture, and I hesitated, my own hand half outstretched. But my eyes fell at the critical instant upon Master Gerald's face, and my scruples took themselves off. He was eying the packet with an intense greed and a trembling longing-a very itching of the fingers and toes to fall upon the prey-that put an end to my doubts. I rose and took the papers. With a quiet, but I think significant look in his direction, I placed them in the breast pocket of my evening coat. I had no safer receptacle about me, or into that they would have gone.

"Very well, sir," I said, "there is no particular hurry. I think the matter will keep, as things now are, until to-morrow."

"To be sure. You ought not to be out with such a cold at night, my boy," he answered. "You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water and a lemon, George? The servants are all at the theater-Gerald begged a holiday for them-but Barnes will get you the things in a minute."

"Thank you; I won't trouble him. I will take some with cold water," I replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted-time to think; five minutes to myself while they played.

But I was out of my reckoning. "I will have mine now, too," he said. "Will you mix it, Gerald?"

Gerald jumped up to do it, with tolerable alacrity. I sat still, preferring to help myself when he should have attended to his father, if his father it was. I felt more easy now that I had those papers in my pocket. The more I thought of it the more certain I became that they were the object aimed at by whatever deviltry was on foot, and that possession of them gave me the whip hand. My young gentleman might snarl and show his teeth, but the prize had escaped him.

Perhaps I was a little too confident, a little too contemptuous of my opponent; a little too proud of the firmness with which I had taken at one and the same time the responsibility and the post of vantage. A creak of the board behind the screen roused me from my thoughts. It fell upon my ear trumpet-tongued, a sudden note of warning. I glanced up with a start and a conviction that I was being caught napping, and looked instinctively toward the young man. He was busy at the tray, his back to me. Relieved of my fear of I did not know what, – perhaps a desperate attack upon my pocket, – I was removing my eyes, when, in doing so, I caught sight of his reflection in a small mirror beyond him. Ah!

What was he busy about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at the moment. He was standing motionless, – I could fancy him breathless also, – a strange, listening expression on his face, which seemed to me to have faded to a grayish tinge. His left hand was clasping a half-filled tumbler, the other was at his waistcoat pocket. So he stood during perhaps a second or two, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome figure; and then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the mirror. Swiftly as the thought itself could pass from brain to limb, the hand which had been resting in the pocket flashed with a clatter among the glasses; and, turning almost as quickly, he brought one of the latter to the chess table, and set it down unsteadily.

What had I seen? Nothing, actually nothing. Just what Gerald had been doing. Yet my heart was going as many strokes to the minute as a losing crew. I rose abruptly.

"Wait a moment, sir," I said, as the elder man laid his hand upon the glass. "I don't think that Gerald has mixed this quite as you like it."