Meanwhile Hamilton came back to his room with the Dictator. The Dictator looked fresh, bright, wide-awake, and ready for anything. He had grumbled a little on being roused, and was at first inclined rather peevishly to 'pooh-pooh' all suggestion of conspiracies and personal danger.
He even went so far as to say that, on the whole, he would rather prefer to be allowed to have his sleep out, even though it were to be concisely rounded off by his death. But he soon pulled himself together and got out of that perverse and sleepy mood, and by the time he and Hamilton had found Sarrasin, the Dictator was well up to all the duties of a commander-in-chief. He had a rapid review of the situation with Sarrasin.
'What I don't see,' he quietly said—he knew too well to try whispering—'is why I should not keep to my own room. If anything is going to happen I am well forewarned, and shall be well fore-armed, and I shall be pretty well able to take care of myself; and why should anyone else run any risk on my account?'
'It isn't on your account,' Sarrasin answered, a little bluntly.
'No? Well, I am glad to hear that. On whose account, then, may I ask?'
'On account of Gloria,' Sarrasin answered decisively. 'If Hamilton here is killed, orIam killed, it does not matter a straw so far as Gloria is concerned. But if you got killed, who, I want to know, is to go out to Gloria? Gloria would not rise for Hamilton or me.'
The Dictator could say nothing. He could only clasp in silence the hand of either man.
'They are putting out the lights downstairs,' Sarrasin said in a low tone. 'I had better get to my lair.'
'Have you got a revolver?' Hamilton asked.
'Never go without one, dear boy.' Then Sarrasin stole away with the noiseless tread of the Red Indian, whose comrade and whose enemy he had been so often.
Hamilton closed his door, but did not fasten it. The electric light still burned softly there.
'Will you smoke?' Hamilton asked. 'I smoke here every night, and Sarrasin too, mostly. It won't arouse any suspicion if the smoke gets about the corridor. I am often up much later than this. You need not answer, and then your voice can't be heard. Just take a cigar.'
The Dictator quietly nodded, and took two cigars, which he selected very carefully, and began to smoke.
'Do you know,' Ericson said, 'that to-morrow is my birthday? No—I mean it is already my birthday.'
'As if I didn't know,' Hamilton replied.
'Odd, if anything should happen.'
Then there was absolute silence in the room. Each man kept his thoughts to himself, and yet each knew well enough what the other was thinking of. Ericson was thinking, among other things, how, if there should really be some assassin-plot, what a trouble and a scandal and even a serious danger he should have brought upon the Langleys, who were so kind and sweet to him. He was thinking of Sarrasin, and of the danger the gallant veteran was running for a cause which, after all, was no cause of his. He could hardly as yet believe in the existence of the murder-plot; and still, with his own knowledge of the practices of former Governments in Gloria, he could not look upon the positive evidence of Sarrasin's telegram from across the Atlantic and the sudden suspicions of Dolores as insignificant. He knew well that one of the practices of former Governments in Gloria had been, when they wanted a dangerous enemy removed, to employ some educated and clever criminal already under conviction and sentence of death, and release him for the time with the promise that, if he should succeed in doing their work, means should be found to relieve him from his penalty altogether. When he became Dictator he had himself ordered the re-arrest of two such men who had had the audacity to return to the capital to claim their reward, under the impression that they should find their old friends still in power. He commuted the death punishment in their case, bad as they were, on the principle that they were the victims of a loathsome system, and that they were tempted into the new crime. But he left them to imprisonment for life. Ericson had a strong general objection to the infliction of capital punishment—to the punishment that is irreparable, that cannot be recalled. He was not actually an uncompromising opponent on moral grounds of the principle of capital punishment, but he would think long before sanctioning its infliction.
He was wondering, in an idle sort of way, whether he could remember the appearance or the name of either of these two men. He might perhaps remember the names; he did not believe he could recall the faces. Clearly the Dictator wanted that great gift which, according to popular tradition or belief, always belonged to the true leaders of men—the gift of remembering every face one ever has seen, and every name one has ever heard. Alexander had it, we are told, and Julius Cæsar, and Oliver Cromwell, and Claverhouse, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and Brigham Young. Napoleon, to be sure, worked it up, as we have lately come to know, by collusion with some of his officers; and it may be that Brigham Young was occasionally coached by devoted Elders at Salt Lake City. At all events, it would not appear that the Dictator either had the gift, or at present the means of being provided with any substitute for it. He could not remember the appearance of the men he had saved from execution. It is curious, however, how much of his time and his thoughts they had occupied or wasted while he was waiting for the first sound that might be expected to give the alarm.
Hamilton looked at his watch. The Dictator motioned to him, and Hamilton turned the face of the watch towards him. Half-past one o'clock Ericson saw. He looked tired. Hamilton made a motion towards his own bed which clearly signified, 'would you like to lie down for a little?' Ericson replied by a sign of assent, and presently he stretched himself half on the bed and half off—on the coverlet of the bed as to his head and shoulders, with his legs hanging over the side and his feet on the floor—and he thought again, about his birthday, and so he fell asleep.
Hamilton had often seen him fall asleep like this in the immediate presence of danger, but only when there was nothing that could immediately, and in the expected course of things, exact or even call for his personal attention or his immediate command. Now, however, Hamilton somewhat marvelled at the power of concentration which could enable his chief to give himself at once up to sleep with the knowledge that some sort of danger—purely personal danger—hung over him, the nature, the form, and the time of which were absolutely hidden in darkness. Very brave men, familiar with the perils and horrors of war, experienced duellists, intrepid explorers, seamen whose nerves are never shaken by the white squall of the Levant, or the storm in the Bay of Biscay, or the tempest round some of the most rugged coasts of Australia—such men are often turned white-livered by the threat of assassination—that terrible pestilence which walks abroad at night or in the dusk, and dogs remorselessly the footsteps of the victim. But Ericson slept composedly, and his deep, steady breathing seemed to tell pale-hearted fear it lied.
And other thoughts, too, came up into Hamilton's mind. He had long put away all wild hopes and dreams of Helena. He had utterly given her up; he had seen only too clearly which way her love was stretching its tentacula, and he had long since submitted himself to the knowledge that they did not stretch themselves out to grapple with the strings of his heart. He knew that Helena loved the Dictator. He bent to the knowledge; he was not sorrynowany more. But he wondered if the Dictator in his iron course was sleeping quietly in the front of danger for him which must mean misery forher, and was thinking nothing about her. Surely he must know, by this time, that she loved him! Surely he must love her—that bright, gifted, generous, devoted girl? Was she, then, misprized by Ericson? Was the Dictator's heart so full of his own political and patriotic schemes and enterprises that he could not spare a thought, even in his dreams, for the girl who so adored him, and whom Hamilton had at one time so much adored? Did this stately tree never give a thought to the beautiful and fresh flower that drank the dew at its feet?
Suddenly Ericson turned on the bed, and from his sleeping lips came a murmuring cry—a low-voiced plaint, instinct with infinite love and yearning and pathos—and the only words then spoken were the words 'Helena, Helena!' And then the question of Hamilton's mind was answered, and Ericson shook himself free of sleep, and turned on the bed, and sat up and looked at Hamilton, and was clearly master of the situation.
'I have been sleeping,' he said, in the craftily-qualified tone of the experienced one who thoroughly understands the difference in a time of danger between the carefully subdued tone and the penetrating, sibilant whisper. 'Nothing has happened?'
Hamilton made a gesture of negation.
'It must come soon—if it is to come at all,' Ericson said. 'And it will come—I know it—I have had a dream.'
'You don't believe in dreams?' Hamilton murmured gently.
'I don't believe in all dreams, boy; I do believe in that dream.'
'Hush!' said Hamilton, holding up his hand.
Some faint, vague sounds were heard in the corridor. The Dictator and Hamilton remained absolutely motionless and silent.
The Duchess had disappeared into her room for a while, and called together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after her packing and her dresses. She had honestly got under the impression of late years that a woman could not be well looked after who had not three maids to go about with her and see to her wants. When first she settled down at Seagate Hall with her three attendant Graces, Helena was almost inclined to resent such an invasion as an insult. It would not have mattered, the girl said to her father, if it were at King's Langley, where were rooms enough for a squadron of maids; but here, at Seagate Hall, the accommodation of which was limited, what an extraordinary thing to do! Who ever heard of a woman going about with three maids? Sir Rupert, however, would not have a breath of murmur against the three maids, and the Duchess made herself so thoroughly agreeable and sympathetic in every other way that Helena soon forgot the infliction of the three maids. 'I only hope they are made quite comfortable,' she said to the dignified housekeeper.
'A good deal more comfortable, Miss, than they had any right to expect,' was the reply, and so all was settled.
This night, then, the Duchess summoned her maids around her and had her hair 'fixed,' as she would herself have expressed it, and then made up her mind to pay a visit to Helena. She had become really quite fond of Helena—all the more because she felt sure that the girl had a love-secret—and wished very much that Helena would take her into confidence.
The Duchess appeared in Helena's room draped in a lovely dressing-gown and wearing slippers with be-diamonded buckles. The Duchess evidently was ready for a long dressing-gown talk. She liked to contemplate herself in one of her new Parisian dressing-gowns, and she was quite willing to give Helena her share in the gratification of the sight. But Helena's thoughts were hopelessly away from dressing-gowns, even from her own. She became aware after a while that the Duchess was giving her a history of some marvellous new dresses she had brought from Paris, and which were to be displayed lavishly during the short time left of the London season, and at Goodwood, and afterwards at various country-houses.
'You're sleepy, child,' the Duchess suddenly said, 'and I am keeping you up with my talk.'
'No, indeed, Duchess, I am not in the least sleepy, and it's very kind of you to come and talk to me.'
'Well, if you ain't sleepy you are sorrowful, or something like it. So your Dictatorisgoing to try his luck again! Well, clear, I just wish you and I could help some. By the way, don't you take my countrymen here as just our very best specimens of Americans.'
'I hadn't much noticed,' Helena said listlessly. 'They seemed very quiet men.'
'Meaning that American men in general are rather noisy and self-assertive?' the Duchess said with a smile.
'Oh, no, Duchess, I never meant anything of the kind. But theydoseem very quiet, don't they?'
'Stupid,Ishould say,' was the comment of the Duchess. 'I didn't talk much with Mr. Copping, but I had a little talk with Professor Flick. I am afraid, by the way,hethinks me very stupid, for I appear to have got him mixed up in my mind with somebody quite different, and you know it vexes anybody to be mistaken for anybody else. I meant to ask him what State he hailed from, but I quite forgot. His accent didn't seem quite familiar to me somehow. I wish I had thought of asking him.' The Duchess seemed so much in earnest about the matter that Helena felt inspired to say, by way of consoling her:
'Dear Duchess, you can ask him the important question to-morrow. I dare say he will not be offended.'
'Well, now that's just what I have been thinking about, dear child. You see, I have already put my foot in it.'
'Won't do much harm,' Helena said smiling—'foot is too small.'
'Come now, that's very prettily said;' and the gratified Duchess stretched out half-unconsciously a very small and pretty foot, cased in an exquisite shoe and stocking, and then drew it in again, as if thinking that she must not seem to be personally vindicating Helena's compliment. 'But he might be offended, perhaps, if I were to convey the idea that I knew nothing at all of him or his place of birth. Well—good night, child; we shall meet him anyhow to-morrow.' She kissed Helena and left the room.
When the Duchess had gone, Helena sat in her bedroom, broad awake. She had got her hair arranged and put on a dressing-gown, and sent her maid to bed long before, and now she took up a book and tried to read it, and now and then put it wearily down upon her lap, and then took it up again and read a page or two more, and then put it away again, and went back to think over things. What was she thinking about? Mostly, if not altogether, of the few words the Dictator had spoken to her—the words that told her he must cut short his visit to Seagate Hall. She knew quite well what that meant. It meant, of course, that he was going out to fling himself upon the shore of Gloria, and that he might never come back. He might have miscalculated the strength of his following in Gloria—and then it was all but certain that he must die for his mistake. Or he might have calculated wisely—and then he would be welcomed back to the Dictatorship of Gloria, and then he would—oh! she was sure he would—drive back the invaders from the frontier, and she would be proud, oh! so proud, of that! But then he would remain in Gloria, and devote himself to Gloria, and come back to England no more. How women have to suffer for a political cause! Not merely the mothers and wives and sisters who have to see their loved ones go to the prison or the scaffold for some political question which they regard, from their domestic point of view, as a pure nuisance and curse because it takes the loved one from them. Oh! but there is more than that, worse than that, when a woman is willing to be devoted to the cause, but finds her heart torn with agony by the thought that her lover cares more for the cause than he cares forher—that for the sake of the cause he could live without her, and even could forget her!
This was what Helena was thinking of this night, as she outwatched the stars, and knew by his tale half-told that the Dictator would soon be leaving her, in all probability for ever. He was not her lover in any sense. He had never made love to her. He had never even taken seriously her innocently bold advances towards him. He had taken them as the sweet and kindly advances of a girl who out of her generosity of heart was striving to make the course of life pleasant for a banished man with a ruined career. Helena saw all this with brave impartial eyes. She had judged rightly up to a certain point; but she did not see, she could not see, she could not be expected to see, how a time came about when the Dictator had begun to be afraid of the part he was playing—of the time when the Dictator grew acquainted with his heart, and searched what stirred it so—according to the tender and lovely words of Beaumont and Fletcher—and, alas! had found it love. Strange that these two hearts so thoroughly affined should be so misjudging each of the other! It was like the story told in Uhland's touching poem, which probably no one reads now, even in Uhland's own Germany, about the youth who is leaving his native town for ever, accompanied by thegeleit—the escort, the 'send-off'—of his companion-students, and who looks back to the window which the maiden has just opened and thinks, 'If she had but loved me!' and a tear comes into the girl's deep blue eye, and she closes her window, hopeless, and thinks, 'If he had but loved me!'
'And now he is going!' thought Helena. And at that hour Ericson was waking up, aroused from sleep by the sound of his own softly-breathed word 'Helena!'
'It is now his birthday,' she thought.
Soame Rivers was not in his character very like Hamlet. But of course there is that one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin, and the touch of nature that made Hamlet and Soame Rivers kin to-night was found in the fact that on this night, as on a memorable night of Hamlet's career, in his heart there was 'a kind of fighting' that would not let him sleep. He sat up fully dressed. The one thing present to his mind was the thought that, if anything whatever should happen to the Dictator—and the more the night grew later, the more the possibility seemed to enlarge upon him—the ruin of all Soame Rivers's career seemed certain. Inquiry would assuredly be made into the exact hour when the telegram was sent from the Foreign Office and when it was received at Sir Rupert Langley's, and it would be known that Rivers had that telegram for hours in his hands without telling anyone about it. It was easy in the light and the talk of the dining-room and the billiard-room to tell one's self that there could be no possible danger threatening anyone in an English gentleman's country-house. But now, in the deep of the night, in the loneliness, with the knowledge of what Sarrasin had said, all looked so different. It was easy at that earlier and brighter and more self-confident hour to crumple up a telegram and make nothing of it; but now Soame Rivers could only curse himself for his levity and his folly. What would Helena Langley say to him?
Was there anything he could do to retrieve his position? Only one thing occurred to him. He could go and hide himself somewhere in shade or in darkness near the Dictator's door. If any attempt at assassination should be made, he might be in advance of Sarrasin and Hamilton. If nothing should happen, he at least would be found at his self-ordained post of watchfulness by Hamilton and Sarrasin, and they would report of him to Sir Rupert—and to Helena.
This seemed the best stroke of policy for him. He threw off his smoking-coat and put on a small, tight, closely-buttoned jacket, which in any kind of struggle, if such there were to be, would leave no flapping folds for an antagonist to cling to. Rivers was well-skilled in boxing and in all manner of manly exercises; he took care to be a master in his way of every art a smart young Englishman ought to possess, and he began to think with a sickening revulsion of horror that in keeping back the telegram he had been doing just the thing which would shut him out from the society of English gentlemen for ever. A powerful impulse was on him that he must redeem himself, not merely in the eyes of others—others, perhaps, might never know of his momentary lapse—but in his own eyes. At that moment he would have braved any danger, not merely to save the Dictator, but simply to show that he had striven to save the Dictator. It flashed across his mind that he might even still make himself a sort of second-best hero—in the eyes of Helena Langley.
He thought he heard a stirring somewhere in one of the corridors. He put on a pair of tight-fitting noiseless velvet slippers, and he glided out of his room and turned into the corridor where the Dictator slept. Yes, there surely was a sound in that direction. Rivers crept swiftly and stealthily on.
Soame Rivers belonged to his age and his society. He was born of Cynicism and of Introspection. It would have interested him quite as much to find out himself as to find out any other person. While he was moving along in the darkness it occurred to him to remember that he did not know in the least whither, to what rescue, to what danger, he was steering. He might, for aught he knew, have to grapple with assassins. The whole thing might prove to be a false alarm, an absurd scare, and then he, who based his whole life and his whole reputation on the theory that nothing ever could induce him to make himself ridiculous or to become bad form, might turn out to be the ludicrous hero of a country-house 'booby-trap.' To do him justice, he feared this result much more than the other. But he wanted to test himself—to find himself out. All this thinking had not as yet delayed his movements by a single step, but now he paused for one short second, and he felt his pulse. It beat steadily, regularly as the notes of Big Ben at Westminster. 'Come,' he breathed to himself, 'I am all right. Come what will, I know I am not a coward!'
For there had come into Rivers's somewhat emasculated mind now and again the doubt whether his father, Cynicism, and his mother, Introspection, might not, between them, have entailed some cowardice on him. He felt relieved, encouraged, satisfied, by the test of his pulse. 'Come,' he thought to himself, 'if there is anything really to be done, Helena shall praise me to-morrow.' So he stole his quiet way.
Sarrasin had made himself acquainted with the Dictator's habits—and he at once installed himself in bed. He took off his outer clothing, his coat and waistcoat, kicked off his dress-shoes, and keeping on his trousers he settled himself down among the bed-clothes. He left his coat and waistcoat and shoes ostentatiously lying about. If there was to be a murderous attack, his idea was to invite, not to discourage, that murderous attack, and certainly not by any means to scare it away. Any indication of preparedness or wakefulness or activity could only have the effect of giving warning to the assassin, and so putting off the attempt at the crime. The old soldier felt sure that the attempt could never be made under conditions so favourable to his side of the controversy as at the present moment. 'We have got it here,' he said to himself, 'we can't tell where it may break out next.'
He turned off the electric light. The button was so near his hand that it would not take him a second to turn the light on again whenever he should have need of it. His purpose was to get the assassin or assassins as far as possible into the room and close to the bed. He was determined not to admit that he had thrown off sleep until the very last moment, and then to flash the electric light at once. He would leave no chance whatever for any explanation or apology about a mistake in the room or anything of that kind. Before he would consent to open his eyes fully he must have indisputable evidence of the murderous plot. Once for all!
Sarrasin kept his watch under his pillow, safe within reach. He wanted to be sure of the exact minute when everything was to occur. He fancied he heard some faint moving in the corridor, and he turned on the electric light and gave one glance at his watch, and then summoned darkness again. He found that it was exactly two o'clock. Now, he thought, if anything is going to be done, it must be done very soon; we can't have long to wait. He was glad. The most practised and case-hardened soldier is not fond of having to wait for his enemy.
Sarrasin had left his door—Ericson's door—unlocked and unbarred. Everybody who knew the Dictator intimately knew that he had a sort ofticfor leaving his doors open. Sarrasin knew this; but, besides, he was anxious, as has been already said, to draw the assassin-plot, if such plot there were, into him, not to bar it out and keep it on the other side. Now the way was clear for the enemy. Sarrasin lay low and listened. Yes, there was undoubtedly the sound of feet in the corridor. It was the sound of one pair of feet, Sarrasin felt certain. He had not campaigned with Red Shirt and his Sioux for nothing; he could distinguish between two sounds and four sounds. 'Come, this is going to be an easy job,' he thought to himself. 'I am not much afraid of any one man who is likely to turn up. Bring along your bears.' The old soldier chuckled to himself; he was getting to be rather amused with the whole proceeding. He lay down, and even in the lightness of his plucky heart indulged in simulation of deep breathings intended to convey to the possibly coming assassin that the victim was fast asleep, and merely waiting to be killed off conveniently without trouble to anybody, even to himself. He was a little, just a little, sorry that Mrs. Sarrasin could not be present to see how well he could manage the job. But her presence would not be practicable, and she would be sure to believe that he had borne himself well under whatever difficulty and danger. So perhaps he breathed the name of his lady-love, as good knights did in the days to which he and his lady-love ought to have belonged; and then he committed his soul to his Creator.
The subtle sound came near the door. The door was gently tried—opened with a soft dexterity and suppleness of touch which much impressed the sham sleeper in the bed. 'No heavy British hand there,' Sarrasin thought, recalling his many memories of many lands and races. He lay with his right arm thrown carelessly over the coverlets, and his left arm hidden. Given any assassin who is not of superlative quality, he will be on his guard as to the disclosed right arm, and will not trouble himself about the hidden left. The door opened. Somebody came gliding in. The somebody was breathing too heavily. 'A poor show of an assassin,' Sarrasin could not help thinking. His nerves were now all abrace like the finest steel, and he could observe a dozen things in a second of time. 'If I couldn't do without puffing like that, I'd never join the assassin trade!' Then a crouching figure came to the bedside and looked over him, and took note, as he had expected, of the outstretched right arm, and stooped over it, and ranged beyond it and kept out of its reach, and then lifted a knife; and then Sarrasin let out a terrible left-hander just under the assassin's chin, and the assassin tumbled over like a heavy lump on the carpet of the floor, and Sarrasin quietly leaped out of bed and took the knife out of his palsied hand and gently turned on the light.
'Let's have a look at you,' he said, and he turned the fallen man over. In the meanwhile he had thrust the knife under the pillow, and he held the revolver comfortably ready at the forehead of the reviving murderer. He studied his face. 'Hello,' he quietly said, 'so it isyou!'
Yes, it was the wretched Saffron Hill Sicilian of St. James's Park.
The Sicilian was opening his eyes and beginning vaguely to form a faint idea of how things had been going.
'Why, you poor pitiful trash!' Sarrasin murmured under his breath, 'is this the whole business? Are you and your ladies' slipper knife going to run this whole machine? I don't believe a bit of it. Look here; tell us your whole infernal plot, or I'll blow your brains out—at least as many as you have, which don't amount to much. Do you feel that?'
He pressed the barrel of his revolver hard on to the Sicilian's forehead. Under other conditions it might have felt cool and refreshing. The touchwascool and refreshing certainly. But the Sicilian, even in his bewildered condition, readily recognised the fact that the cool touch of the iron was evidently to be followed by a distressing explosion, and he could only whine feebly for mercy.
For a second or two Sarrasin was fairly puzzled what to do. It would be no trouble to him to drive or drag this wretched Sicilian into the room where Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at assassination—was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of Orizaba could do? 'Out of the question,' Sarrasin thought.
'I think I had better finish you off,' he said to the Sicilian, speaking in a low, bland tone, subdued as that of a gentle evening breeze. 'Nobody really wants you any more. I don't care to rouse the house by using my revolver for a creature like you. Just come this way,' and he dragged him with remorseless hand towards the bed. 'I want to get at your own knife. That will do the business nicely.'
Honest Sarrasin had not the faintest idea of becoming executioner in cold blood of the hired Sicilian stabber. It was important to him to see how far the Sicilian stabber's stabbing courage would hold out—whether there were stronger men behind him who could be grappled with in their turn. He still held to his conviction, 'We haven't got the whole plot out yet. Anybody could do this sort of thing.'
'Don't kill me!' faintly murmured the wretched assassin.
'Why not? Just tell me all, or I'll kill you in two seconds,' Sarrasin answered, in the same calm low voice, and, gripping the Sicilian solidly round the waist, he trailed him towards the bed, where the knife was.
Then there came a flare and splash and blaze of yellowish red light across the eyes of Sarrasin and his captive, and in a moment a noise as fierce as if all the artillery of Heaven—or the lower deep—were let loose at once. No words could describe the devastating influence of that explosion on the ears and the nerves and the hearts of those for whom it first broke. Utter silence—that is, the suspension of all faculty of hearing or feeling or thinking—succeeded for the moment. Sight and sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre, by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered and the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming light of the morning—the electric light had been driven out—that he was still gripping on to the body of the Sicilian, and that half the wretched Sicilian's head had been blown away. Then everything was once more extinguished for him.
But in that one moment of reviving consciousness he contrived to keep his wits well about him. 'It was not the Sicilian who didthat,' he said to himself doggedly.
The crash came on the ears of the Dictator and Hamilton. For a moment or two the senses of both were paralysed. It is not easy for most of us, who have not been through the cruel suffocation of a dynamite explosion, to realise completely how the crushed collapse of the nervous system leaves mind, thought, and feeling absolutely prostrate before the mere shrillness of sound. We are not speaking now of the cases in which serious harm is done—of course anyone can understandthat—but only of the cases, after all, and in even the best carried out and most brutally contrived dynamite attempt—the vast majority of cases in which the intended, or at least the probable, victims suffer no permanent harm whatever. The Dictator suddenly found his senses deserting him with the crash of the explosion. He knew in a moment what it was, and he knew also that for a certain moment or two his senses would utterly fail to take account of it. For one fearful second he knew he was going to be insensible, just as a passenger at sea knows he is going to be sick. Then it was all over with him and quiet, and he felt nothing.
How much time had passed when he was roused by the voice of Hamilton he did not know. Hamilton had had much the same experience, but Hamilton's main work in life was looking after the Dictator, and the Dictator's main work in life was not in looking after himself. Hamilton, too, was the younger man. Anyhow, he rallied the sooner.
'Are you hurt?' he cried. And he trembled lest he should hear the immortal words of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, 'I'm killed!'
'Eh—what? I say, is it you, Hamilton? I'm all right, boy; how about you?'
'Nothing the matter withme,' Hamilton said. 'Quite sure you are not hurt?'
'Not the least little bit—only dazzled and dazed a good deal, Hamilton.'
'Let's see what's going on outside,' Hamilton said. He sprang to open the door.
'Wait a moment,' Ericson said quietly. 'Let us see if that is all. There may be another. Don't rush, Hamilton, please. Take your time.' The Dictator was cool and composed.
'Gunpowder?' Hamilton asked.
'No, no—dynamite. You go and look after Sarrasin, Hamilton; I'll take charge of the house and see what this really comes to.'
And so, with the composure of a man to whom nothing in the way of action is quite new or disturbing, he opened the door and went out into the corridor. All the lights that were anywhere burning had been blown out. Servants, men and women, were rushing distractedly downstairs, those who slept above; those who slept below were rushing distractedly upstairs. It was a confused scene of night-shirts and night-dresses.
Ericson seized one stout footman, whom he knew well by sight and by name: 'Look here, Frederick,' he said quietly, 'don't spread any alarm—the worst is over. Turn on all the lights you can, and get someone to saddle a horse at once—no, to put a bridle on the horse—never mind the saddle—and in the meanwhile guard the house-doors and see that no one goes out, except me. I want to get the horse. Do you understand all this? Have you your senses about you?'
The man was plucky enough, and took his tone readily from Ericson's calm, subdued way. He recognised a leader. He had all the courage of Tommy Atkins, and all Tommy Atkins's daring, and only wanted leadership: only lead him and he was all right. He could follow.
'Yes, your Excellency, I think I do. Lights on; horse bridled; no one allowed out but you.'
'Right,' Ericson answered; 'you are a brave fellow.'
In a moment Helena came from her room, fully dressed—that is to say, fully robed, in the dressing-gown wherein the Duchess had seen her, with white cheeks but resolute face.
'Oh! thank Godyouare safe,' she exclaimed. 'What is it? Where is my father?'
Just at the moment Sir Rupert came out of his room, plunging, staggering, but undismayed, and even then not forgetful of his position as a Secretary of State.
'Here is your father, Heaven be praised!' Ericson exclaimed. 'Sir Rupert, I am an unlucky guest! I have brought all this on you!'
Helena threw herself on her father's neck. He clasped her tenderly, looking over her shoulder to Ericson as if he were putting her carefully for the moment out of the way. 'Itisdynamite, Ericson?'
'Oh, yes, I think so. The sound seems to me beyond all mistake. I have heard it before.'
'Not an accident?'
'No—no accident. I don't think we need trouble aboutthat. Look here, Sir Rupert; you look after the house and the Duchess, and Sarrasin and everybody; Hamilton will help you—I say, Hamilton! Hamilton! where are you? I am going to have a ride round the grounds and see if anyone is lurking. I have ordered a horse to be bridled.'
'You take command, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said.
'Outside, yes,' Ericson assented. 'You look after things inside.'
'You must order a horse for me too,' Helena exclaimed, stiffening herself up from her father's protecting embrace. 'I can help you, I have the eyes of a lynx—I must do something. I must! Let me go, papa!' She turned appealingly to Sir Rupert.
'Go, child, if you won't be in the way.'
Ericson hesitated, just for a second; then he spoke.
'Come with me if you will, Miss Langley. You can pilot me over the grounds as nobody else can.'
'Oh!' she exclaimed, and they both rushed downstairs together. The servants were already lighting up such of the electric lamps as had been left uninjured after the explosion. The electric engineer was on the spot and at work, with his assistants, as fresh and active as if none of them had ever wanted a rest in his life. Ericson cast a glance over the whole scene, and had to acknowledge that the household had turned out with almost the promptitude of a fire-drill on the ocean. The women-servants, who were to be seen in their night-dresses scuttling wildly about when the crash of the explosion first shook them up had now altogether disappeared, and were in all probability steadily engaged in putting things to rights wherever they could, and no one yet knew the number of the dead.
Ericson and Helena got down to the hall. The girl was happy. Her father was safe; and she was with the man she loved. More than that, she had a sense of sharing a danger with the man she loved. That was a delight to be expressed by no words. She had not the remotest idea of what had happened. She had been sitting up late—unable to sleep. She had been thinking about the news the Dictator had told her—that he was going to leave her. Then came the tremendous crash of the explosion, and for a moment her senses and her thought were gone. Then she staggered to her feet, half blinded, half deafened, but alive, and she rushed to her door and dragged it open; and but for a blue foam of dawn all was darkness, and in another moment she knew that Ericson was alive, and she was able to welcome her father. What on earth did she want more? It might be that there was danger to Hamilton—to Sarrasin—to Mrs. Sarrasin—to the Duchess—to Miss Paulo—to some of the servants—to her own maid, a great friend and favourite of hers—to all sorts of persons. She had to acknowledge to her own heart that in such a moment she did not much care. She was conscious of a sense of joy in the knowledge of the fact that To-to had not yet got down from London. There all calculation ceased.
The hall-door was opened. The breath of the fresh morning came into their lungs. Helena drank it in, as if it were a draught of wine—in more correct words, as if it werenota draught of wine, for she was not much of a wine-drinker. The freshness of the air was a shuddering and a delight to her.
'Let nobody leave the house until we come back,' Ericson said to the man who opened the doors for Helena and him.
'Nobody, sir?' the man asked in astonishment.
'Nobody whatever.'
'Not Sir Rupert, sir?'
'Certainly not. Sir Rupert above all men! We can't have your father getting into danger, Miss Langley—can we?'
'Oh no,' she answered quickly.
'Which way to the stables?' Ericson asked the man.
'Come with me,' Helena said; 'I can show you.'
They hurried round to the stables, and found a wide-awake groom or two who had a lady's horse properly saddled, and a man's horse with no saddle, but only a bridle on. They had evidently taken the Dictator's command to the letter, and assumed that he had some particular motive for riding without a saddle.
Ericson lifted Helena into her seat. It has to be confessed that she was riding in her already-mentioned dressing-gown, and that she had nothing on her head, and that her bare feet were thrust into slippers. Mrs. Grundy was not on the premises, and, even if she were, Helena would not have cared two straws about Mrs. Grundy's reflections and criticisms.
'Oh, look here, you haven't a saddle!' she cried to Ericson.
'Saddle!—no matter—never mind the saddle,' he called. The horse was a little shy, and backed and edged, and went sideways, and plunged. One of the grooms rushed at him to hold his head.
The Dictator laid one hand upon his mane. 'Let him go!' he said, and he swung himself easily on to the unsaddled back and gripped the bridle. 'Now for it, Helena!' he exclaimed.
Now for it, Helena! She just caught the words in the wild flash of their flight. Never before had he used her name in that way. He rode his unsaddled horse with all the ease of another Mephistopheles; and what delighted the girl was that he seemed to count on her riding her course just as well.
'Look out everywhere you can,' he called to her; 'tell me if you see a squirrel stirring, or the eyes of an owl looking out of the ivy-bushes.'
Helena had marvellous sight—but she could descry no human figure, no human eyes, buthisanywhere amid the myriad eyes of the dark night. They rode on and round.
'We shall soon find out the whole story,' he said to her after a while, and he brought his horse so near to hers that it touched her saddle. 'There is no one in the grounds, and we shall soon know all, if we have only to deal with the people who were indoors. I think we have settled that already.'
'But whatisit all?' she breathlessly asked, as they galloped round the young plantation. The hour, the companionship, the gallop, the fresh breath of the morning air among the trees, seemed to make her feel as if she never had been young before.
'"Miching mallecho; it means mischief," as Hamlet says,' the Dictator replied, 'and very much mischief too,' and he checked himself, pulling up his horse so suddenly that the creature fell back upon his haunches, and then flinging himself off the horse as lightly as if he were performing some equestrian exercise to win a prize in a competition. Then he let his own horse run loose, and he stopped Helena's, and took her foot in his hand.
'Jump off!' he said, in a voice of quiet authority. They were now in front of the hall-door.
'What more is the matter?' she asked nervously, though she did not delay her descent. She was firm on the gravel already, picking up the dragging skirts of her dressing-gown. The dawn was lighting on her.
'The house is on fire at this side,' he said composedly. 'I must go and show them how to put it out.'
'The house on fire!' she exclaimed.
'Yes—for the moment. I shall put that all right.'
She was prepared for anything now. 'We have a fire-escape in the village,' she said, panting for breath. She had full faith in the Dictator's power to conquer any conflagration, but she did not want to give utterly away the resources of Seagate Hall.
'Yes, I am afraid of that sort of thing,' the Dictator replied. 'I have no time to lose. Tell your father to look after things indoors and to let nobody out.'
Then the hall-door was flung open, and both Ericson and Helena saw by the scared faces of the two men who stood in the hall that something had happened since the Dictator and she had gone out on their short wild night-ride.
'What has gone wrong, Frederick?' Helena asked eagerly.
'Oh please, Miss, Mr. Rivers—Miss——'
'Yes, Frederick, Mr. Rivers——'
'Please, Miss, poor Mr. Rivers—he is killed!'
Then for the first time the terrible reality of the situation was brought straight home to Helena—to her mind and to her heart. Up to this moment it was melodramatic, startling, shocking, bewildering; but there was no cold, grim, cruel, practical detail about it. It was like the fierce blinding flash of the lightning and the crash of the thunder, followed, when senses coldly recover, by the knowledge of the abiding blindness. It was like the raw conscript's first sight of the comrade shot down by his side. Helena was a brave girl, but she would have fallen in a faint were it not that a burst of stormy tears came to her relief.
'Poor Soame Rivers!' she sobbed. 'I wish I could have liked him more than I did.' And she sobbed again, and Ericson understood her and sympathised with her.
'Poor Soame Rivers!' he said after her. 'I wish I too had liked him, and known him better!'
'What was he killed for?' Helena passionately asked.
'He was killed forme!' the Dictator answered calmly. 'All this trouble and tragedy have been brought on your house byme.'
'Let it come!' the girl sobbed, in a wild fresh outburst of new emotion.
'Come,' Ericson said gently and sympathetically, 'let us go in and learn what has happened. Let us have the full story of the whole tragedy. Nothing is now left but to punish the guilty.'
'Whoarethey?' Helena asked in passion.
'We shall find them,' he answered. 'Come with me, Helena. You are a brave girl, and you are not going to give way now. I may have to ask you to lend a helping hand yet.'
The Dictator said these words with a purpose. He knew that the best way to get a courageous woman to brace herself together for new effort and new endurance was to make her believe that her personal help would still be wanted.
'Oh, I—I am ready for anything,' she said fervently. 'Only tell me what I am to do, and you will see that I can do it.'
'I trust you,' he answered quietly. Meanwhile his keen eyes were wandering over the side of the house, where a light smoke told him of fire. Time enough yet, he thought.
Ericson and Helena hurried into the house and up to the corridor, which seemed to be the stage of the tragedy. Sir Rupert was there, and Mrs. Sarrasin, and Miss Paulo, and the Duchess and her three maids, who, with the instinct of discipline, had rallied round her when, like the three hares in the old German folk-song, they found that they were not killed.
'Who are killed?' the Dictator asked anxiously but withal composedly. He had seen men killed before.
'Poor Soame Rivers is killed,' Sir Rupert said sadly. 'The man who broke into Sarrasin's room—your room, Ericson—heis killed.'
'And Sarrasin himself?' Ericson asked, glancing away from Mrs. Sarrasin.
'Sarrasin is cut about on the shoulder—and of course he was stunned and deafened. But nothing dangerous we all hope.'
'I have seen my husband,' Mrs. Sarrasin stoutly said; 'he will be as well as ever before many days.'
'And one of the menservants is killed, I am sorry to say.'
'What about the American gentlemen?'
'I have sent to ask after them,' Sir Rupert innocently said. 'They are both uninjured.'
'My countrymen,' said the Duchess, 'are bound to get through, like myself. But they might come out and comfort us.'
'Well, I can do nothing here for the moment,' Ericson said; 'one end of the house is on fire.'
'Oh, no!' Sir Rupert exclaimed.
'Yes; the east wing is on fire. I shall easily get it under. Send me a lot of the grooms; they will be the readiest fellows. Let no one leave the place, Sir Rupert, except these grooms. You give the order, please, and let someone here see to it.'
'I'll see to it,' Mrs. Sarrasin promptly said. 'I will stand in the doorway.'
'Shall I go with you?' Helena asked pathetically of Ericson.
'No, no. It would be only danger, and no use.'
Poor Soame Rivers! No use to him certainly. If Helena could only have known! The one best and noblest impulse of his life had brought his life to a premature end. He had deeply repented his suppression of the warning telegram, although he had not for a moment believed that there was the slightest foundation for real alarm. But it was borne in upon him that, seeing what his hidden and ulterior views were, it was not acting quite like an English gentleman to run the slightest risk in such a case. His only conscience was to do as an English gentlemen ought to do. If he had not loved—as far as he was capable of loving—Helena Langley; if he had not hated—so far as he was capable of hating—the man whom it hurt him to hear called the Dictator, then he might not have judged his own conduct so harshly. But he had thought it over, and he knew that he had crushed and suppressed the telegram out of a feeling of spite, because he loved Helena, and for her sake hated the Dictator. He could not accuse himself of having consciously given over the Dictator to danger, for he did not believe at the time that there was any real danger; but he condemned himself for having done a thing which was not straightforward—which was not gentlemanly, and which was done out of personal spite. So he made himself a watch-dog in the corridor. He went to Hamilton's room, but he heard there the tones of Sarrasin's voice, and he did not choose to take Sarrasin into his confidence. He went back into his own room, and waited. Later on he crept out, having heard what seemed to him suspicious footfalls at Ericson's door, and he stole along, and just as he got to the door he became aware that a struggle was going on inside, and he flung the door open, and then came the explosion. He lived a few minutes, but Sarrasin saw him and knew him, and could bear ready witness to his pluck and to the tragedy of his fate.
'Come, Miss Paulo,' Helena said, 'we will go over the rooms and see what is to be done. Papa, where is poor—Mr. Rivers?'
'I have had him taken to his room, Helena, although I know that wasnotwhat was right. He ought to have been allowed to remain where he was found; but I couldn't leave him there—my poor dear friend! I had known him since he was a child. I could not leave his body there—disfigured and maimed, to lie in the open passage! Good heavens!'
'What brought him there, anyhow?' the Duchess asked sharply.
'He must have heard some noise, and was running to the rescue,' Helena softly said. She was remorseful in her heart because she had not thought more deeply about poor Soame Rivers. She had been too much charged with gladness over the safety of her hero and the safety of her father.
'Like the brave comrade that he was,' Sir Rupert said mournfully. That was Soame Rivers's epitaph.
Mrs. Sarrasin and Dolores had thoughts of their own. They knew that there was something further to come, of which Sir Rupert and Helena had no knowledge or even suspicion. They were content to wait until Ericson came back. Curiously enough, no one seemed to be alarmed about the fact that the house had caught fire in a wing quite near to them. The common feeling was that the Dictator had taken that business in hand and that he would put it through; and that in any case, if there were danger to them, he would be sure to come in good time and tell them.
'I wonder our American friends have not come to look after us,' Helena said.
'They are used to all sorts of accidents in their country,' Sir Rupert explained. 'They don't mind such things there.'
'Excuse me, Sir Rupert,' the Duchess said, 'it'smycountry—and gentlemendolook after ladies there, when there's any danger round.'
'Beg your pardon, Sir Rupert,' one of the footmen said, coming respectfully but rather flushed towards the group, 'but this gentleman wished to go out into the grounds, and his Excellency was very particular in his orders that nobody was to go out until he came back.'
Mr. Copping of Omaha, fully dressed, tall hat in hand, presented himself and joined the group.
'Pray excuse me, Sir Rupert—and you ladies,' Mr. Copping said; 'I just thought I should like to have a look round to see what was happening; but your hired men said it was against orders, and, as I suppose you give the orders here, I thought I should just like to come and talk to you.'
'I beg your pardon, Mr. Copping; I do in a general way give the orders here, but Mr. Ericson just now is in command; he understands this sort of thing much better than I do, and we have put it all into his hands for the moment. The police will soon be here, but then our village police——'
'Don't amount to much, I dare say.'
'You see there has been a terrible attempt made——'
'Oh, you allow it really was an attempt, then, and not an accident—gas explosion or anything of the kind?'
'There is no gas in Seagate Hall,' Sir Rupert replied.
'Then you really think it was an explosion? Now, my friend and I, we didn't quite figure it up that way.'
'Well, even a gas explosion, if there were any gas to explode, wouldn't quite explain the presence of a strange man in Captain Sarrasin's room.'
'Then you think that it was an attempt on the life of Captain Sarrasin?'
Mrs. Sarrasin contracted her eyebrows. Was Mr. Copping indulging in a sneer? Possibly some vague idea of the same kind grated on the nerves of Sir Rupert.
'I haven't had time to make any conjectures that are worth talking about as yet,' Sir Rupert said. 'Captain Sarrasin is not well enough yet to be able to give us any clear account of himself.'
'He will very soon be able to give a very clear account,' Mrs. Sarrasin said with emphasis.
'I have sent for doctors and police,' Sir Rupert observed.
'Before the house was put into a state of siege?'
'Before I had requested my friend Mr. Ericson to take command and do the best he could,' Sir Rupert said, displeased, he hardly knew why, at Mr. Copping's persistent questioning.
'The stranger who invaded Captain Sarrasin's room will have to explain himself, won't he—when your police come along?'
'The stranger will not explain himself,' Sir Rupert said emphatically; 'he is dead.'
Mr. Copping had much power of self-control, but he did seem to start at this news.
'Great Scott!' he exclaimed. 'Then I don't see how you are ever to get at the truth of this story, Sir Rupert.'
'We shall get at the whole truth—every word—never fear,' Mrs. Sarrasin said defiantly.
'We shall send for the local magistrates,' Sir Rupert said, 'of course.' He was anxious, for the moment, to allow no bickerings. 'I am a magistrate myself, but in such a case I should naturally rather leave it to others. I have lost a dear friend by this abominable crime, Mr. Copping.'
'So I hear, Sir Rupert—sorry to hear it, sir—so is my friend Professor Flick.'
'Thank you—thank you both—you can understand then how I feel about the matter, and how little I am likely to leave any stone unturned to bring the murderers of my friend to justice. After the death of my friend himself, I most deeply deplore the death of the man who made his way into Sarrasin's room——'
'Yes, quite right, Sir Rupert; spoils the track, don't it?'
'But when Captain Sarrasin comes to he will tell us something.'
'He will,' Mrs. Sarrasin added earnestly.
'Well, I say,' Mr. Copping exclaimed, 'Professor Flick, and where have you been all this time?'
The moony spectacles beamed not quite benevolently on the corridor.
'I don't quite understand, Sir Rupert Langley, sir,' the learned Professor declared, 'why one is to be treated as a prisoner in a house like this—a house like this, sir, in the truly hospitable home of an English gentleman, and a statesman, and a Minister of her Majesty's Crown of Great Britain——'
'If my esteemed and most learned friend,' Mr. Copping intervened, 'would allow me to direct his really gigantic intellect to the fact that very extraordinary events have occurred in this household, and that it is Sir Rupert Langley's duty as a Minister of the Crown to take care that every possible assistance is to be given to the proper authorities—and that at such a time some regulations may be necessary which would not be needed or imposed under other circumstances——'
'Precisely,' Sir Rupert said. 'Mr. Copping quite appreciates the extreme gravity of the situation.'
'Come, let us go round, let us do something,' Helena said impatiently, and she and the Duchess and Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo left the corridor.
Meanwhile Mr. Copping had been sending furtive glances at his learned friend, which, if they had only possessed the fabled power of the basilisk, would assuredly have made things uncomfortable for Professor Flick.
'Please, Sir Rupert,' a servant said, 'Mrs. Sarrasin wishes to ask could you speak to her one moment?'
'Certainly, certainly,' Sir Rupert said, and he hastened away, leaving the two distinguished friends together.
'Look here,' Copping exclaimed, with blazing eyes, 'if you are going to get into one of your damnation cowardly fits I shall just have to stick a knife into you.'
The learned Professor began with characteristic ineptitude to reply in South American Spanish.
'Confound you,' Copping said in a fierce low tone and between his teeth, 'why do you talk Spanish? Haven't you given us trouble enough already without that? Talk English—you don't know who may be listening to us. Now look here, we shall come out of this all right if you can only keep up your confounded courage. There's nothing against us if you don't give us away. But just understand this, I am not going to be taken alone. If I am to die, you are to die too—by my hand if it can't be done in any other way.'
'I am not going to stop here,' the shivering Professor murmured, 'to die like a poisoned rat in a hole. I'll get away—I must get away—out of this accursed place, where you brought me.'
'Where I brought you? Could I have done anything better for you? Were you or were you not under sentence of death? Was this or was it not your last chance to escape the garrotte?'
'Well, I don't care about all that. I tell you if I have no better chance left I shall appeal to the Dictator himself, and tell him the whole story, and ask him to show me some mercy.'
'That you never, never shall!' Copping whispered ferociously into his ear. 'You shall die by my hand before I leave this place if you don't act with me and leave the place with me. Keep that in your mind as fast as you can. You shall never leave this place alive unless you and I leave it free men together. Remember that!'
'You are always bullying me,' the big man whimpered.
'Hold your tongue!' Copping said savagely. 'Here is Sir Rupert coming back.'
Sir Rupert came back, and in a moment was followed by the Dictator.
'I have put out the fire, Sir Rupert,' Ericson said composedly, 'or, rather, I have shown your men how to do it. It was not a very difficult job after all, and they managed very well. They obeyed orders—that is the good point about all Englishmen.'
'Well, what's to be done now?' Sir Rupert asked.
'Now? I don't know that there is much to be done now by us. We shall be soon in the hands of the coroner, and the magistrates, and the police; is not that the regular sort of thing?'
'Yes, I suppose we must put up with the ordinary conventionalities of criminal administration. Our American friends, these two gentlemen here, Professor Flick and Mr. Copping, they are rather anxious to be allowed to go on their way. We have taken up some of their valuable time already by bringing them down to this out-of-the-way sort of place.'
'Oh, but, Sir Rupert, 'twas so great an honour to us,' Mr. Copping said, and a very keen observer might have fancied that he gave a glance to Professor Flick which admonished him to join in protest against the theory that any inconvenience could have come from the kindly acceptance of an invitation to Seagate Hall.
'Of course, of course,' Professor Flick murmured perfunctorily.
'I don't see how we can release our friends just yet,' Ericson replied quietly. 'There will be questions of evidence. These gentlemen may have seen something you and I did not see, they may have heard something we did not hear. But the delay will not be long in any case, I should think, and meanwhile this is not a very disagreeable place to stay in, now that we have succeeded in putting out the fire, and we don't expect any more dynamite explosions.'
'Then the fireisall out?' Sir Rupert asked, not hurriedly, but certainly somewhat anxiously, as anxiously as a somewhat self-conscious Minister of State could own up to.
'Yes, we have got it under completely,' the Dictator replied, as calmly as if the putting out of fires were the natural business of his daily life.
'Then perhaps we can let these gentlemen go,' Sir Rupert suggested, for he felt a sort of unwillingness, being the host, to keep anyone under his roof longer than the guest desired to tarry.
'No—no—I am afraid we can't do that just yet,' Ericson replied; 'we shall all have to give our evidence—to tell what each of us knows. Our American friends will not grudge remaining a little time longer with us in order to help us to explain to our police authorities what this whole thing is, and how it came about.'
'Delighted—delighted—I am sure—to stay here under any conditions,' Mr. Copping hastened to say.
'But still, if one has other work to do,' Professor Flick was beginning to articulate.
'My friend is very much occupied with his own special culture,' Mr. Copping said in gentle explanation, 'and he does not quite live in the ordinary world of men; but still, I think he will see how necessary it is that we should stay here just for the present and add our testimony, as impartial outsiders, to what the regular residents of the house may have to tell.'
'I can tell nothing,' Professor Flick said bluntly, and yet with curiously trembling lip.
'Oh, yes—youcan,' his colleague added blandly; and again he flashed a danger signal on the eyes that were alert enough when not actually observed under the moony spectacles.
The signalled eyes under the moony spectacles received the danger signal with something of impatience. The learned Professor seemed to be beginning to think that the time had come in this particular business for every man to drag his own corpse out of the fight. The influence of Mr. Copping of Omaha had kept him in due control for awhile, but the time was clearly coming when the Professor would kick over the traces and give his friend from Omaha the good-bye. It was curious—it might have been evident to anyone who was there and took notice—that the parts of the two friends had changed of late. When the pair set out on their London social expedition the Professor with his folk-lore was the man deliberately put in front and the leader of the whole enterprise. Now it seemed somehow as if the sceptre of the leadership had suddenly and altogether passed into the hands of the quiet Mr. Andrew Copping of Omaha. Ericson began to see something of this, and to be impressed by it. But he said nothing to Sir Rupert; his own suspicions were only suspicions as yet. He was trying to get two names back to his memory, and he felt sure he had much better let events discover and display themselves.
'Still, I don't quite know thatIcan stay,' Professor Flick began to argue. Mr. Copping struck impatiently in:
'Why, of course, Professor Flick, you have just got to stay. We are bound to stay, don't you see? We must throw all the light we can on this distressing business.'
'But I can't throw any light,' the hapless Professor said, 'upon anything. And I came to England about folk-lore, and not about cases of dynamite and fire and explosions.'
The dawn was now beginning to throw light on various things. It was flooding the corridor—there were splashes of red sunlight on the floors, which to the excited imagination of Helena seemed like little pools of blood. There was a stained window in the corridor which certainly caught the softest stream of the entering sunlight, and transfigured it there and then into a stream of blood. Helena and the Duchess had stolen back into the corridor; Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo were in attendance on Captain Sarrasin; the Duchess and Helena both felt in a vague manner that sense of being rather in the way which most women feel when some serious business concerning men is going on, and they have no particular mission to stanch a wound or smooth a pillow.
'I think, dear child,' the Duchess whispered, 'we had better go and leave these men to themselves.'
But Helena's eyes were fixed on the Dictator's face. She had heard about the easy way in which he had got the fire under, but just now she felt sure that he was thinking of something quite different and something very serious.
'Stay a moment, Duchess,' she entreated; 'they won't mind us—or my father will tell us to go if they want us away.'
Then there was a little commotion caused by the arrival of the coroner for that part of the county, two local doctors, and the local inspector of police. The coroner, Mr. St. John Raven, was very proud of being summoned to the house of so great a man as Sir Rupert Langley. Mysterious deaths and mysterious crimes in the home of a Minister of State are events that cannot happen in the lives of many coroners. The doctors and the police inspector were less swelled up with pride. The sore throat of a lady's maid would at any time bring a doctor to Seagate Hall; the most commonplace burglary, without any question of jewels, would summon the police inspector thither. After formal salutations, Mr. St. John Raven looked doubtfully adown the corridor.
'I think,' he suggested, 'we had better, Sir Rupert, request these ladies to withdraw—unless, of course, either is in a position to contribute by personal evidence to the elucidation of the case. Of course, if either can, or both——'
'I can't tell anything,' Helena said; 'I heard a crash, and that was all—I felt as if I were in an earthquake; I know nothing more about it.'
'I hardly know even so much,' the Duchess said, 'for I had not wits enough left in me even to think about the earthquake. Come, dear child, let us go.'
She made a sweeping bow to all the company. The coroner afterwards learned that she was a Duchess, and was glad to have caught her eyes.
'I have summoned a jury,' the coroner said blandly. Sir Rupert winced. The idea of having a coroner's jury in his home seemed a sort of degradation to him. But so, too, did the idea of a dynamite explosion. Even his genuine grief for poor Soame Rivers left room enough in his breast for a very considerable stowage of vexation that the whole confounded thing should have happened in his house. Grief is seldom so arbitrary as to exclude vexation. The giant comes attended by his dwarf.
'Well, we shall have a look at everything,' the coroner said cheerily. 'I suppose we need not think of the possibility of a mere accident?'
And now Ericson found himself involuntarily, and voluntarily too, working out that marvellous, never-to-be-explained problem about the revival of a vanished memory. It is like the effort to bring back to life a three-parts drowned creature. Or it is like the effort to get some servant far down beneath you who has gone to sleep to rouse up and obey your call and attend to his duty. You ring and ring and no answer comes, until at last, when you have all but given up hope, the summons tells upon the sleeper's ear and he wakes up and gives you his answer.
So it was with Ericson. Just as he thought the quest was hopeless, just as he thought the last opportunity was slipping by, his sluggish servant, Memory, woke up with a start, and fulfilled its duty.
And Ericson quietly put himself forward and said:
'I beg your pardon, Sir Rupert and Mr. Coroner, but I have to say something in this matter. I have to charge these two men, who say they are American citizens, with being escaped or released convicts from the State prison of the capital of Gloria, in South America. I charge them with being guilty of the plot for assassination and for dynamite in this house. I say that their names are José Cano and Manoel Silva. I say it was I who commuted the death sentence of these men to perpetual imprisonment, and I say that in my firm conviction they have been let loose to do these crimes.'
Sir Rupert seemed thunderstruck.
'My dear Ericson,' he pleaded. 'These gentleman are my guests.'
'I never remembered their names until this moment,' Ericson said. 'But they are the men—and they are the murderers.'
The face of Professor Flick was livid with fear. Great pearls of perspiration stood out on his forehead. Mr. Copping of Omaha stood composed and firm, like a man with his back to the wall who just turns up his sleeves and gets his sword and dagger ready and is prepared to try the last chance—the very last.
'We are American citizens,' he said stoutly; 'the flag of the Stars and Stripes defends us wherever we go.'
'God bless the flag of the Stars and Stripes,' Ericson exclaimed, 'and if it shelters you I shall have nothing more to say. But only just try if it will either claim you or shelter you. I remember now that you both of you did take refuge for a long time in Southern California, but if you prove yourselves American citizens, then you can be made to answer to American reading of international law, and the flag of the Great Republic will not shelter convicts from a prison in Gloria when they are accused of dynamite outrage in England. Sir Rupert, Mr. Coroner, I have only to ask you to do your duty.'
'This will be an international question,' Mr. Andrew Copping quietly said. 'There will be a row over this.'
'No there won't,' Professor Flick declared abruptly. 'Look here, we have made a muddle of this. My comrade in this business has been managing things pretty badly; he always wanted to boss the show too much. Now I am getting sick of all that, don't you see? I have had the dangerous part always, and he has had the pleasure of bullying me. Now I am tired of all that, and I have made up my mind, and I am just going to have the bulge on him by turning—what do you call it?—Queen's evidence.'