“Hear, but be faithful to your interest still.Secure your heart, then fool with whom you will.”
Mrs. Vansittart walked to the gate of the malgamite works, thinking that Von Holzen was following her on the noiseless sand. At the gate, which the porter threw open on seeing her approach, she turned and found that she was alone. Von Holzen was walking quietly back towards the factory. He was so busy making his fortune that he could not give Mrs. Vansittart more than a few minutes. She bit her lip as she went towards her horse. Neglect is no balm to the wounds of the defeated.
She mounted her horse and looked at her watch. It was nearly five o'clock, and Percy Roden was doubtless waiting for her in Park Straat. It is a woman's business to know what is expected of her. Mrs. Vansittart recalled in a very matter-of-fact way the wording of her letter to Roden. She brushed some dust from her habit, and made sure that her hair was tidy. Then she fell into deep thought, and set her mind in a like order for the work that lay before her. A man's deepest schemes in love are child's play beside the woman's schemes that meet or frustrate his own. Mrs. Vansittart rode rapidly home to Park Straat.
Mr. Roden, the servant told her, was awaiting her return in the drawing-room. She walked slowly upstairs. Some victories are only to be won with arms that hurt the bearer. Mrs. Vansittart's mind was warped, or she must have known that she was going to pay too dearly for her revenge. She was sacrificing invaluable memories to a paltry hatred.
“Ah!” she said to Roden, whose manner betrayed the recollection of her invitation to him, “so I have kept you waiting—a minute, perhaps, for each day that you have stayed away from Park Straat.”
Roden laughed, with a shade of embarrassment, which she was quick to detect.
“Is it your sister,” she asked, “who has induced you to stay away?”
“Dorothy has nothing but good to say of you,” he answered.
“Then it is Herr von Holzen,” said Mrs. Vansittart, laying aside her gloves and turning towards the tea-table. She spoke quietly and rather indifferently, as one does of persons who are removed by a social grade. “I have never told you, I believe, that I happen to know something of your—what is he?—your foreman. He has probably warned you against me. My husband once employed this Von Holzen, and was, I believe, robbed by him. We never knew the man socially, and I have always suspected that he bore us some ill feeling on that account. You remember—in this room, when you brought him to call soon after your works were built—that he referred to having met my husband. Doubtless with a view to finding out how much I knew, or if I was in reality the wife of Charles Vansittart. But I did not choose to enlighten him.”
She had poured out tea while she spoke. Her hands were unsteady still, and she drew down the sleeve of her habit to hide the discoloration of her wrist. She turned rather suddenly, and saw on Roden's face the confession that it had been due to Von Holzen's influence that he had absented himself from her drawing-room.
“However,” she said, with a little laugh, and in a final voice, as if dismissing a subject of small importance—“however, I suppose Herr von Holzen is rising in the world, and has the sensitive vanity of persons in that trying condition.”
She sat down slowly, remembering her pretty figure in its smart habit. Roden's slow eyes noted the pretty figure also, which she observed, one may be sure.
“Tell me your news,” she said. “You look tired and ill. It is hard work making one's fortune. Be sure that you know what you want to buy before you make it, or afterwards you may find that it has not been worth while to have worked so hard.”
“Perhaps what I want is not to be bought,” he said, with his eyes on the carpet. For he was an awkward player at this light game.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “Then it must be either worthless or priceless.”
He looked at her, but he did not speak, and those who are quick to detect the fleeting shade of pathos might have seen it in the glance of the tired eyes. For Percy Roden was only clever as a financier, and women have no use for such cleverness, only for the results of it. Roden was conscious of making no progress with Mrs. Vansittart, who handled him as a cat handles a disabled mouse while watching another hole.
“You have been busier than ever, I suppose,” she said, “since you have had no time to remember your friends.”
“Yes,” answered Roden, brightening. He was so absorbed in the most absorbing and lasting employment of which the human understanding is capable that he could talk of little else, even to Mrs. Vansittart. “Yes, we have been very busy, and are turning out nearly ten tons a day now. And we have had trouble from a quarter in which we did not expect it. Von Holzen has been much worried, I know, though he never says anything. He may not be a gentleman, Mrs. Vansittart, but he is a wonderful man.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Vansittart, indifferently; and something in her manner made him all the more desirous of explaining his reasons for associating himself with a person who, as she had subtly and flatteringly hinted more than once, was far beneath him from a social point of view. This desire rendered him less guarded than it was perhaps wise to be under the circumstances.
“Yes, he is a very clever man—a genius, I think. He rises to each difficulty without any effort, and every day shows me new evidence of his foresight. He has done more than you think in the malgamite works. His share of the work has been greater than anybody knows. I am only the financier, you understand. I know about bookkeeping and about—money—how it should be handled—that is all.”
“You are too modest, I think,” said Mrs. Vansittart, gravely. “You forget that the scheme was yours; you forget all that you did in London.”
“Yes—while Von Holzen was doing more here. He had the more difficult task to perform. Of course I did my share in getting the thing up. It would be foolish to deny that. I suppose I have a head on my shoulders, like other people.” And Mr. Percy Roden, with his hand at his moustache, smiled a somewhat fatuous smile. He thought, perhaps, that a woman will love a man the more for being a good man of business.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vansittart, softly.
“But I should like Von Holzen to have his due,” said Roden, rather grandly. “He has done wonders, and no one quite realizes that except perhaps Cornish.”
“Indeed! Does Mr. Cornish give Herr von Holzen his due, then?”
“Cornish does his best to upset Von Holzen's plans at every turn. He does not understand business at all. When that sort of man goes into business he invariably gets into trouble. He has what I suppose he calls scruples. It comes, I imagine, from not having been brought up to it.” Roden spoke rather hotly. He was of a jealous disposition, and disliked Mrs. Vansittart's attitude towards Cornish. “But he is no match for Von Holzen,” he continued, “as he will find to his cost. Von Holzen is not the sort of man to stand any kind of interference.”
“Ah?” said Mrs. Vansittart again, in the slightly questioning and indifferent manner with which she received all defence of Otto von Holzen, and which had the effect of urging Roden to further explanation.
“He is not a man I should care to cross myself,” he said, determined to secure Mrs. Vansittart's full attention. “He has the whole of the malgamiters at his beck and call, and is pretty powerful, I can tell you. They are a desperate set of fellows; men engaged in a dangerous industry do not wear kid gloves.”
Mrs. Vansittart was watching him across the low tea-table; for Roden rarely looked at his interlocutor. He had more of her attention than he perhaps suspected.
“Ah,” she said, rather more indifferently than before, “I think you exaggerate Herr von Holzen's importance in the world.”
“I do not exaggerate the danger into which Cornish will run if he is not careful,” retorted Roden, half sullenly.
There was a ring of anxiety in his voice. Mrs. Vansittart glanced sharply at him. It was borne in upon her that Roden himself was afraid of Von Holzen. This was more serious than it had at first appeared. There are periods in every man's history when human affairs suddenly appear to become unmanageable and the course of events gets beyond any sort of control—when the hand at the helm falters, and even the managing female of the family hesitates to act. Roden seemed to have reached such a crisis now, and Mrs. Vansittart; charm she never so wisely, could not brush the frown of anxiety from his brow. He was in no mood for love-making, and men cannot call up this fleeting humour, as a woman can, when it is wanted. So they sat and talked of many things, both glancing at the clock with a surreptitious eye. They were not the first man and woman to go hunting Cupid with the best will in the world—only to draw a blank.
At length Roden rose from his chair with slow, lazy movements. Physically and morally he seemed to want tightening up.
“I must go back to the works,” he said. “We work late to-night.”
“Then do not tell Herr von Holzen where you have been,” replied Mrs. Vansittart, with a warning smile. Then, on the threshold, with a gravity and a glance that sent him away happy, she added, “I do not want you to discuss me with Otto von Holzen, you understand!”
She stood with her hand on the bell, looking at the clock, while he went downstairs. The moment she heard the street door closed behind him she rang sharply.
“The brougham,” she said to the servant, “at once.”
Ten minutes later she was rattling down Maurits Kade towards the Villa des Dunes. A deep bank of clouds had risen from the west, completely obscuring the sun, so that it seemed already to be twilight. Indeed, nature itself appeared to be deceived, and as the carriage left the town behind and emerged into the sandy quiet of the suburbs, the countless sparrows in the lime-trees were preparing for the night. The trees themselves were shedding an evening odour, while, from canal and dyke and ditch, there arose that subtle smell of damp weed and grass which hangs over the whole of Holland all night.
“The place smells of calamity,” said Mrs. Vansittart to herself, as she quitted the carriage and walked quickly along the sandy path to the Villa des Dunes.
Dorothy was in the garden, and, seeing her, came to the gate. Mrs. Vansittart had changed her riding-habit for one of the dark silks she usually wore, but she had forgotten to put on any gloves.
“Come,” she said rapidly, taking Dorothy's hand, and holding it—“come to the seat at the end of the garden where we sat one evening when we dined alone together. I do not want to go indoors. I am nervous, I suppose. I have allowed myself to give way to panic like a child in the dark. I felt lonely in Park Straat, with a house full of servants, so I came to you.”
“I think there is going to be a thunderstorm,” said Dorothy.
And Mrs. Vansittart broke into a sudden laugh. “I knew you would say that. Because you are modern and practical—or, at all events, you show a practical face to the world, which is better. Yes, one may say that much for the modern girl, at all events—she keeps her head. As to her heart—well, perhaps she has not got one.”
“Perhaps not,” admitted Dorothy.
They had reached the seat now, and sat down beneath the branches of a weeping-willow, trimly trained in the accurate Dutch fashion. Mrs. Vansittart glanced at her companion, and gave a little, low, wise laugh.
“I did well to come to you,” she said, “for you have not many words. You have a sense of humour—that saving sense which so few people possess—and I suspect you to be a person of action. I came in a panic, which is still there, but in a modified degree. One is always more nervous for one's friends than for one's self. Is it not so? It is for Tony Cornish that I fear.”
Dorothy looked steadily straight in front of her, and there was a short silence.
“I do not know why he stays in Holland, and I wish he would go home,” continued Mrs. Vansittart. “It is unreasoning, I know, and foolish, but I am convinced that he is running into danger.” She stopped suddenly, and laid her hand upon Dorothy's; for she had caught many foreign ways and gestures. “Listen,” she said, in a lower tone. “It is useless for you and me to mince matters. The Malgamite scheme is a terrible crime, and Tony Cornish means to stop it. Surely you and I have long suspected that. I know Otto von Holzen. He killed my husband. He is a most dangerous man. He is attempting to frighten Tony Cornish away from here, and he does not understand the sort of person he is dealing with. One does not frighten persons of the stamp of Tony Cornish, whether man or woman. I have made Tony promise not to leave his room to-day. For to-morrow I cannot answer. You understand?”
“Yes,” answered Dorothy, with a sudden light in her eyes, “I understand.”
“Your brother must take care of himself. I care nothing for Lord Ferriby, or any others concerned in this, but only for Tony Cornish, for whom I have an affection, for he was part of my past life—when I was happy. As for the malgamiters, they and their works may—go hang!” And Mrs. Vansittart snapped her fingers. “Do you know Major White?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes; I have seen him once.”
“So have I—only once. But for a woman once is often enough—is it not so?—to enable one to judge. I wish we had him here.”
“He is coming,” answered Dorothy. “I think he is coming to-morrow. When I saw Mr. Cornish yesterday, he told me that he expected him. I believe he wrote for him to come. He also wrote to Mr. Wade, the banker, asking him to come.”
“Then he found things worse than he expected. He has, in a sense, sent for reinforcements. When does Major White arrive—in the morning?”
“No; not till the evening.”
“Then he comes by Flushing,” said Mrs. Vansittart, practically. “You are thinking of something. What is it?”
“I was wondering how I could see some of the malgamite workersto-morrow. I know some of them, and it is from them that the danger maybe expected. They are easily led, and Herr von Holzen would not scrupleto make use of them.”“Ah!” said Mrs. Vansittart, “you have guessed that, too. I have morethan guessed it—I know it. You must see these men to-morrow.”
“I will,” answered Dorothy, simply.
Mrs. Vansittart rose and held out her hand. “Yes,” she said, “I came to the right person. You are calm, and keep your head; as to the other, perhaps that is in safe-keeping too. Good night and come to lunch with me to-morrow.”
“On se guérit de la bienfaisance par la connaissance de ceuxqu'on oblige.”
“Can you tell me if there is a moon to-night?” Mrs. Vansittart asked a porter in the railway station at The Hague.
The man stared at her for a moment, then realized that the question was a serious one.
“I will ask one of the engine-drivers, my lady,” he answered, with his hand at the peak of his cap.
It was past nine o'clock, and Mrs. Vansittart had been waiting nearly half an hour for the Flushing train. Her carriage was walking slowly up and down beneath the glass roof of the entrance to the railway station. She had taken a ticket in order to gain access to the platform, and was almost alone there with the porters. Her glance travelled backwards and forwards between the clock and the western sky, visible beneath the great arch of the station. The evening was a clear one, for the month of June still lingered, but the twilight was at hand. The Flushing train was late to-night of all nights; and Mrs. Vansittart stamped her foot with impatience. What was worse was Dorothy Roden's lateness. Dorothy and Mrs. Vansittart, like two generals on the eve of a battle, had been exchanging hurried notes all day; and Dorothy had promised to meet Mrs. Vansittart at the station on the arrival of the train.
“The moon is rising now, my lady—a half-moon,” said the porter approaching with that leisureliness which characterizes railway porters between trains.
“Why does your stupid train not come?” asked Mrs. Vansittart, with unreasoning anger.
“It has been signalled, my lady; a few minutes now.”
Mrs. Vansittart gave a quick sigh of relief, and turned on her heel. She had long been unable to remain quietly in one place. She saw Dorothy coming up the slope to the platform. At last matters were taking a turn for the better—except, indeed, Dorothy's face, which was set and white.
“I have found out something,” she said at once, and speaking quickly but steadily. “It is for to-night, between half-past nine and ten.”
She had her watch in her hand, and compared it quickly with the station clock as she spoke.
“I have secured Uncle Ben,” she said—all the ridicule of the name seemed to have vanished long ago. “He is drunk, and therefore cunning. It is only when he is sober that he is stupid. I have him in a cab downstairs, and have told your man to watch him. I have been to Mr. Cornish's rooms again, and he has not come in. He has not been in since morning, and they do not know where he is. No one knows where he is.”
Dorothy's lip quivered for a moment, and she held it with her teeth. Mrs. Vansittart touched her arm lightly with her gloved fingers—a strange, quick, woman's gesture.
“I went upstairs to his rooms,” continued Dorothy. “It is no good thinking of etiquette now or pretending——”
“No,” said Mrs. Vansittart, hurriedly, so that the sentence was never finished.
“I found nothing except two torn envelopes in the waste-paper basket. One in an uneducated hand—perhaps feigned. The other was Otto von Holzen's writing.”
“Ah! In Otto von Holzen's writing—addressed to Tony at the Zwaan at Scheveningen?”
“Yes.”
“Then Otto von Holzen knows where Tony is staying, at all events. We have learnt something. You have kept the envelopes?”
“Yes.”
They both turned at the rumble of the train outside the station. The great engine came clanking in over the points, its lamp glaring like the eye of some monster.
“Provided Major White is in the train,” muttered Mrs. Vansittart, tapping on the pavement with her foot. “If he is not in the train, Dorothy?”
“Then we must go alone.”
Mrs. Vansittart turned and looked her slowly up and down.
“You are a brave woman,” she said thoughtfully.
But Major White was in the train, being a man of his word in small things as well as in great. They saw him pushing his way patiently through the crowd of hotel porters and others who had advice or their services to offer him. Then he saw Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy, and recognized them.
“Give your luggage ticket to the hotel porter and let him take it straight to the hotel. You are wanted elsewhere.”
Still Major White was only in his normal condition of mild and patient surprise. He had only met Mrs. Vansittart once, and Dorothy as often. He did exactly as he was told without asking one of those hundred questions which would inevitably have been asked by many men and more women under such circumstances, and followed the ladies out of the crowd.
“We must talk here,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “One cannot do so in a carriage in the streets of The Hague.”
Major White bowed gravely, and looked from one to the other. He was rather travel-worn, and seemed to be feeling the heat.
“Tony Cornish has probably written to you about his discoveries as to the malgamite works. We have no time to go into that question, however,” said Mrs. Vansittart, who was already beginning to be impatient with this placid man. “He has earned the enmity of Otto von Holzen—a man who will stop at nothing—and the malgamiters are being raised against him by Von Holzen. Our information is very vague, but we are almost certain that an attempt is to be made on Tony's life to-night between half-past nine and ten. You understand?” Mrs. Vansittart almost stamped her foot.
“Oh yes,” answered White, looking at the station clock. “Twenty minutes' time.”
“We have the information from one of the malgamiters themselves, who knows the time and the place, but he is tipsy. He is in a carriage outside the station.”
“How tipsy?” asked Major White; and both his hearers shrugged their shoulders.
“How can we tell you that?” snapped Mrs. Vansittart; and Major White dropped his glass from his eye.
“Where is your brother?” he said, turning to Dorothy. He was evidently rather afraid of Mrs. Vansittart, as a quick-spoken person not likely to have patience with a slow man.
“He has gone to Utrecht,” answered Dorothy. “And Mr. von Holzen is not at the works, which are locked up. I have just come from there. By a lucky chance I met this man Ben, and have brought him here.”
White looked at Dorothy thoughtfully, and something in his gaze made her change colour.
“Let me see this man,” he said, moving towards the exit.
“He is in that carriage,” said Dorothy, when they had reached a quiet corner of the station yard. “You must be quick. We have only a quarter of an hour now. He is an Englishman.”
White got into the cab with Uncle Ben, who appeared to be sleeping, and closed the door after him. In a few moments he emerged again.
“Tell the man to drive to a chemist's,” he said to Mrs. Vansittart. “The fellow is not so bad. I have got something out of him, and will get more. Follow in your carriage—you and Miss Roden.”
It was Major White's turn now to take the lead, and Mrs. Vansittart meekly obeyed, though White's movements were so leisurely as to madden her.
At the chemist's shop, White descended from the carriage and appeared to have some language in common with the druggist, for he presently returned to the carriage, carrying a tumbler. After a moment he went to the window of Mrs. Vansittart's neat brougham.
“I must bring him in here,” he said. “You have a pair of horses which look as if they could go. Tell your man to drive to the pumping-station on the Dunes, wherever that may be.”
Then he went and fetched Uncle Ben, whom he brought by one arm, in a dislocated condition, trotting feebly to keep pace with the major's long stride.
Mrs. Vansittart's coachman must have received very decided orders, for he skirted the town at a rattling trot, and soon emerged from the streets into the quiet of the Wood, which was dark and deserted. Here, in a sandy and lonely alley, he put the horses to a gallop. The carriage swayed and bumped. Those inside exchanged no words. From time to time Major White shook Uncle Ben, which seemed to be a part of his strenuous treatment.
At length the carriage stopped on the narrow road, paved with the little bricks they make at Gouda, that leads from Scheveningen to the pumping-station on the Dunes. Major White was the first to quit it, dragging Uncle Ben unceremoniously after him. Then, with his disengaged hand, he helped the ladies. He screwed his glass tightly into his eye, and looked round him with a measuring glance.
“This place will be as light as day,” he said, “when the moon rises from behind those trees.”
He drew Uncle Ben aside, and talked with him for some time in a low voice. The man was almost sober now, but so weak that he could not stand without assistance. Major White was an advocate, it seemed, of heroic measures. He appeared to be asking many questions, for Uncle Ben pointed from time to time with an unsteady hand into the darkness. When his mind, muddled with malgamite and drink, failed to rise to the occasion, Major White shook him like a sack. After a few minutes' conversation, Ben broke down completely, and sat against a sand-bank to weep. Major White left him there, and went towards the ladies.
“Will you tell your man,” he said to Mrs. Vansittart, “to drive back to the junction of the two roads and wait there under the trees?” He paused, looking dubiously from one to the other. “And you and Miss Roden had better go back with him and stay in the carriage.”
“No,” said Dorothy, quietly.
“Oh no!” added Mrs. Vansittart.
And Major White moistened his lips with an air of patient toleration for the ways of a sex which had ever been far beyond his comprehension.
“It seems,” he said, when the carriage had rolled away over the noisy stones, “that we are in good time. They do not expect him until nearly ten. He has been attempting for some time to get the men to refuse to work, and these same men have written to ask him to meet them at the works at ten o'clock, when Roden is at Utrecht, and Von Holzen is out. There is no question of reaching the works at all. They are going to lie in ambush in a hollow of the Dunes, and knock him on the head about half a mile from here north-east.” And Major White paused in this great conversational effort to consult a small gold compass attached to his watch-chain.
The two women waited patiently.
“Fine place, these Dunes,” said the major, after a pause. “Could conceal three thousand men between here and Scheveningen.”
“But it is not a question of hiding soldiers,” said Mrs. Vansittart, sharply, with a movement of the head indicative of supreme contempt.
“No,” admitted White. “Better hide ourselves, perhaps. No good standing here where everybody can see us. I'll fetch our friend. Think he'll sleep if we let him. Chemist gave him enough to kill a horse.”
“But haven't you any plans?” asked Mrs. Vansittart, in despair. “What are you going to do? You are not going to let these brutes kill Tony Cornish? Surely you, as a soldier, must know how to meet this crisis.”
“Oh yes. Not much of a soldier, you know,” answered White, soothingly, as he moved away towards Uncle Ben. “But I think I know how this business ought to be managed. Come along—hide ourselves.”
He led the way across the dunes, dragging Uncle Ben by one arm, and keeping in the hollows. The two women followed in silence on the silent sand.
Once Major White paused and looked back. “Don't talk,” he said, holding up a large fat hand in a ridiculous gesture of warning, which he must have learnt in the nursery. He looked like a large baby listening for a bogey in the chimney.
Once or twice he consulted Uncle Ben, and as often glanced at his compass. There was a certain skill in his attitude and demeanour, as if he knew exactly what he was about. Mrs. Vansittart had a hundred questions to ask him, but they died on her lips. The moon rose suddenly over the distant trees and flooded all the sand-hills with light. Major White halted his little party in a deep hollow, and consulted Uncle Ben in whispers. Then bidding him sit down, he left the three alone in their hiding-place, and went away by himself. He climbed almost to the summit of a neighbouring mound, and stopped suddenly, with his face uplifted, as if smelling something. Like many short-sighted persons, he had a keen scent. In a few minutes he came back again.
“I have found them,” he whispered to Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy. “Smelt 'em—like sealing-wax. Eleven of them—waiting there for Cornish.” And he smiled with a sort of boyish glee.
“What are you going to do?” whispered Mrs. Vansittart.
“Thump them,” he answered, and presently went back to his post of observation.
Uncle Ben had fallen asleep, and the two women stood side by side waiting in the moonlight. It was chilly, and a keen wind swept in from the sea. Dorothy shivered. They could hear certain notes of certain instruments in the band of the Scheveningen Kurhaus, nearly two miles away. It was strange to be within sound of such evidences of civilization, and yet in such a lonely spot—strange to reflect that eleven men were waiting within a few yards of them to murder one. And yet they could safely have carried out their intention, and have scraped a hole in the sand to hide his body, in the certainty that it would never be found; for these dunes are a miniature desert of Sahara, where nothing bids men leave the beaten paths, where certain hollows have probably never been trodden by the foot of man, and where the ever-drifting sand slowly accumulates—a very abomination of desolation.
At length White rose to his feet agilely enough, and crept to the brow of the dune. The men were evidently moving. Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy ascended the bank to the spot just vacated by White.
Only a few dozen yards away they could see the black forms of the malgamiters grouped together under the covert of a low hillock. Hidden from their sight, Major White was slowly stalking them.
Dorothy touched Mrs. Vansittart's arm, and pointed silently in the direction of Scheveningen. A man was approaching, alone, across the silvery sand-hills. It was Tony Cornish, walking into the trap laid for him.
Major White saw him also, and thinking himself unobserved, or from mere habit acquired among his men, he moistened the tips of his fingers at his lips.
The malgamiters moved forward, and White followed them. They took up a position in a hollow a few yards away from the foot-path by which Cornish must pass. One of their number remained behind, crouching on a mound, and evidently reporting progress to his companions below. When Cornish was within a hundred yards of the ambush, White suddenly ran up the bank, and lifting this man bodily, threw him down among his comrades. He followed this vigorous attack by charging down into the confused mass. In a few moments the malgamiters streamed away across the sand-hills like a pack of hounds, though pursued and not pursuing. They left some of their number on the sand behind them, for White was a hard hitter.
“Give it to them, Tony!” White cried, with a ring of exultation in his voice. “Knock 'em down as they come!”
For there was only one path, and the malgamiters had to run the gauntlet of Tony Cornish, who knocked some of them over neatly enough as they passed, selecting the big ones, and letting the others go free. He knew them by the smell of their clothes, and guessed their intention readily enough.
It was a strange scene, and one that left the two women, watching it, breathless and eager.
“Oh, I wish I were a man!” exclaimed Mrs. Vansittart, with clenched fists.
They hurried toward Cornish and White, who were now alone on the path. White had rolled up his sleeve, and was tying his handkerchief round his arm with his other hand and his teeth.
“It is nothing,” he said. “One of the devils had a knife. Must get my sleeve mended to-morrow.”
“Prends moy telle que je suy.”
When Major White came down to breakfast at his hotel the next morning, he found the large room deserted and the windows thrown open to the sun and the garden. He was selecting a table, when a step on the verandah made him look up. Standing in the window, framed, as it were, by sunshine and trees, was Marguerite Wade, in a white dress, with demure lips, and the complexion of a wild rose. She was the incarnation of youth—of that spring-time of life of which the sight tugs at the strings of older hearts; for surely that is the only part of life which is really and honestly worth the living.
Marguerite came forward and shook hands gravely. Major White's left eyebrow quivered for a moment in indication of his usual mild surprise at life and its changing surface.
“Feeling pretty—bobbish?” inquired Marguerite, earnestly.
White's eyebrow went right up and his glass fell.
“Fairly bobbish, thank you,” he answered, looking at her with stupendous gravity.
“You look all right, you know.”
“You should never judge by appearances,” said White, with a fatherly severity.
Marguerite pursed up her lips, and looked his stalwart frame up and down in silence. Then she suddenly lapsed into her most confidential manner, like a schoolgirl telling her bosom friend, for the moment, all the truth and more than the truth.
“You are surprised to see me here; thought you would be, you know. I knew you were in the hotel; saw your boots outside your door last night; knew they must be yours. You went to bed very early.”
“I have two pairs of boots,” replied the major, darkly.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I have brought papa across. Tony wrote for him to come, and I knew papa would be no use by himself, so I came. I told you long ago that the Malgamite scheme was up a gum-tree, and that seems to be precisely where you are.”
“Precisely.”
“And so I have come over, and papa and I are going to put things straight.”
“I shouldn't if I were you.”
“Shouldn't what?” inquired Marguerite.
“Shouldn't put other people's affairs straight. It does not pay, especially if other people happen to be up a gum-tree—make yourself all sticky, you know.”
Marguerite looked at him doubtfully. “Ah!” she said. “That's what—is it?”
“That's what,” admitted Major White.
“That is the difference, I suppose, between a man and a woman,” said Marguerite, sitting down at a small table where breakfast had been laid for two. “A man looks on at things going—well, to the dogs—and smokes and thinks it isn't his business. A woman thinks the whole world is her business.”
“So it is, in a sense—it is her doing, at all events.”
Marguerite had turned to beckon to the waiter, and she paused to look back over her shoulder with shrewd, clear eyes.
“Ah!” she said mystically.
Then she addressed herself to the waiter, calling him “Kellner,” and speaking to him in German, in the full assurance that it would be his native tongue.
“I have told him,” she explained to White, “to bring your little coffee-pot and your little milk-jug and your little pat of butter to this table.”
“So I understood.”
“Ah! Then you know German?” inquired Marguerite, with another doubtful glance.
“I get two pence a day extra pay for knowing German.”
Marguerite paused in her selection, of a breakfast roll from a silver basket containing that Continental choice of breads which look so different and taste so much alike.
“Seems to me,” she said confidentially, “that you know more than you appear to know.”
“Not such a fool as I look, in fact.”
“That is about the size of it,” admitted Marguerite, gravely. “Tony always says that the world sees more than any one suspect. Perhaps he is right.”
And both happening to look up at this moment, their glances met across the little table.
“Tony often is right,” said Major White.
There was a pause, during which Marguerite attended to the two small coffee-pots for which she had such a youthful and outspoken contempt. The privileges of her sex were still new enough to her to afford a certain pleasure in pouring out beverages for other people to drink.
“Why is Tony so fond of The Hague? Who is Mrs. Vansittart?” she asked, without looking up.
Major White looked stolidly out of the open window for a few minutes before answering.
“Two questions don't make an answer.”
“Not these two questions?” asked Marguerite, with a sudden laugh.
“No; Mrs. Vansittart is a widow, young, and what they usually call 'charming,' I believe. She is clever, yes, very clever, and she was, I suppose, fond of Vansittart; and that is the whole story, I take it.”
“Not exactly a cheery story.”
“No true stories are,” returned the major, gravely.
But Marguerite shook her head. In her wisdom—that huge wisdom of life as seen from the threshold—she did not believe Mrs. Vansittart's story.
“Yes, but novelists and people take a true story and patch it up at the end. Perhaps most people do that with their lives, you know; perhaps Mrs. Vansittart—”
“Won't do that,” said the major, staring in a stupid way out of the window with vacant, short-sighted eyes. “Not even if Tony suggested it—which he won't do.”
“You mean that Tony is not a patch upon the late Mr. Vansittart—that is whatyoumean,” said Marguerite, condescendingly. “Then why does he stay in The Hague?”
Major White shrugged his shoulders and lapsed into a stolid silence, broken only by a demand made presently by Marguerite to the waiter for more bread and more butter. She looked at her companion once or twice, and it is perhaps not astonishing that she again concluded that he must be as dense as he looked. It is a mistake that many of her sex have made regarding men.
“Do you know Miss Roden?” she asked suddenly. “I have heard a good deal about her from Joan.”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Yes.”
“Very pretty?” persisted Marguerite.
“Yes,” replied the major.
And they continued their breakfast in silence.
Marguerite appeared to have something to think about. Major White was in the habit of stating that he never thought, and certainly appearances bore him out.
“Your father is late,” he said at length.
“Yes,” answered Marguerite, with a gay laugh. “Because he was afraid to ring the bell for hot water. Papa has a rooted British conviction that Continental chambermaids always burst into your room if you ring the bell, whether the door is locked or not. He is nothing if not respectable, poor old dear—would give points to any bishop in the land.”
As she spoke her father came into the room, looking, as his daughter had stated eminently British and respectable. He shook hands with Major White, and seemed pleased to see him. The major was, in truth, a man after his own heart, and one whom he looked upon as solid. For Mr. Wade belonged to a solid generation that liked the andante of life to be played in good heavy chords, and looked with suspicious eyes upon brilliancy of execution or lightness of touch.
“I have had a note from Cornish,” he said, “who suggests a meeting at this hotel this afternoon to discuss our future action. The other side has, it appears, written to Lord Ferriby to come over to The Hague.” There had in Mr. Wade's life usually been that “other side,” which he had treated with a good, honest respect so long as they proved themselves worthy of it; but which he crushed the moment they forgot themselves. For there was in this British banker a vast spirit of honest, open antagonism by which he and his likes have built up a scattered empire on this planet. “At three o'clock,” he concluded, lifting the cover of a silver dish which Marguerite had sent back to the kitchen awaiting her father's arrival. “And what will you do, my dear?” he said, turning to her.
“I?” replied Marguerite, who always knew her own mind. “I shall take a carriage and drive down to the Villa des Dunes to see Dorothy Roden. I have a note for her from Joan.”
And Mr. Wade turned to his breakfast with an appetite in no way diminished by the knowledge that the “other side” were about to take action.
At three o'clock the carriage was awaiting Marguerite at the door of the hotel, but for some reason Marguerite lingered in the porch, asking questions and absolutely refusing to drive all the way to Scheveningen by the side of the “Queen's Canal.” When at length she turned to get in, Tony Cornish was coming across the Toornoifeld under the trees; for The Hague is the shadiest city in the world, with forest trees growing amid its great houses.
“Ah!” said Marguerite, holding out her hand. “You see, I have come across to give you all a leg-up. Seems to me we are going to have rather a spree.”
“The spree,” replied Cornish, with his light laugh, “has already begun.”
Marguerite drove away towards The Hague Wood, and disappeared among the transparent green shadows of that wonderful forest. The man had been instructed to take her to the Villa des Dunes by way of the Leyden Road, making a round in the woods. It was at a point near the farthest outskirts of the forest that Marguerite suddenly turned at the sight of a man sitting upon a bench at the roadside reading a sheet of paper.
“That,” she said to herself, “is the Herr Professor—but I cannot remember his name.”
Marguerite was naturally a sociable person. Indeed, a woman usually stops an old and half-forgotten acquaintance, while men are accustomed to let such bygones go. She told the driver to turn round and drive back again. The man upon the bench had scarce looked up as she passed. He had the air of a German, which suggestion was accentuated by the solitude of his position and the poetic surroundings which he had selected. A German, be it recorded to his credit, has a keen sense of the beauties of nature, and would rather drink his beer before a fine outlook than in a comfortable chair indoors. When Marguerite returned, this man looked up again with the absorbed air of one repeating something in his mind. When he perceived that she was undoubtedly coming towards himself, he stood up and took off his hat. He was a small, square-built man, with upright hair turning to grey, and a quiet, thoughtful, clean-shaven face. His attitude, and indeed his person, dimly suggested some pictures that have been painted of the great Napoleon. His measuring glance—as if the eyes were weighing the face it looked upon—distinctly suggested his great prototype.
“You do not remember me, Herr Professor,” said Marguerite, holding out her hand with a frank laugh. “You have forgotten Dresden and the chemistry classes at Fräulein Weber's?”
“No, Fräulein; I remember those classes,” the professor answered, with a grave bow.
“And you remember the girl who dropped the sulphuric acid into the something of potassium? I nearly made a great discovery then, mein Herr.”
“You nearly made the greatest discovery of all, Fräulein. Yes, I remember now—Fräulein Wade.”
“Yes, I am Marguerite Wade,” she answered, looking at him with a little frown, “but I can't remember your name. You were always Herr Professor. And we never called anything by its right name in the chemistry classes, you know; that was part of the—er—trick. We called water H2 or something like that. We called you J.H.U, Herr Professor.”
“What does that mean, Fräulein?”
“Jolly hard up,” returned Marguerite, with a laugh which suddenly gave place, with a bewildering rapidity, to a confidential gravity. “You were poor then, mein Herr.”
“I have always been poor, Fräulein, until now.”
But Marguerite's mind had already flown to other things. She was looking at him again with a frown of concentration.
“I am beginning to remember your name,” she said.
“Is it not strange how a name comes back with a face? And I had quite forgotten both your face and your name, Herr ... Herr ... von Holz”—she broke off, and stepped back from him—“von Holzen,” she said slowly. “Then you are the malgamite man?”
“Yes, Fräulein,” he answered, with his grave smile; “I am the malgamite man.”
Marguerite looked at him with a sort of wonder, for she knew enough of the Malgamite scheme to realize that this was a man who ruled all that came near him, against whom her own father and Tony Cornish and Major White and Mrs. Vansittart had been able to do nothing—who in face of all opposition continued calmly to make malgamite, and sell it daily to the world at a preposterous profit, and at the cost only of men's lives.
“And you, Fräulein, are the daughter of Mr. Wade, the banker?”
“Yes,” she answered, feeling suddenly that she was a schoolgirl again, standing before her master.
“And why are you in The Hague?”
“Oh,” replied Marguerite, hesitating for perhaps the first time in her life, “to enlarge our minds, mein Herr.” She was looking at the paper he held in his hand, and he saw the direction of her glance. In response, he laughed quietly, and held it out towards her.
“Yes,” he said, “you have guessed right. It is the Vorschrift, the prescription for the manufacture of malgamite.”
She took the paper and turned it over curiously. Then, with her usual audacity, she opened it and began to read.
“Ah,” she said, “it is in Hebrew.”
Von Holzen nodded his head, and held out his hand for the paper, which she gave to him. She was not afraid of the man—but she was very near to fear.
“And I am sitting here, quietly under the trees, Fräulein,” he said, “learning it by heart.”