Sallie saw how Jasper Slyne's face blanched at sight of that very untimely intruder, whose keen eyes seemed to take in the situation there at a glance.
Mr. Jobling had fallen backward into a convenient armchair and, with both hands clapped to his nose, was moaning most piteously. Captain Dove was standing over him, with features inflamed, in a very bellicose posture and glaring at the new-comer, toward whom Slyne had turned inquiringly.
"You're—looking for some one, M. Dubois?" Slyne asked, in a tone of polite surprise, which, Sallie knew, was assumed.
"A thousand pardons," returned that individual. "I am indeed looking for some one—whom I thought to find here. I had no intention, however, of intruding upon a lady—" He bowed profusely to Sallie. "It may be," he suggested, "that I have mistaken the number. Is not this the suite 161?"
"One hundred and sixty," Slyne told him, and evidently did not think it worth while to add that the next suite was his own.
"A thousand pardons," repeated M. Dubois, very penitently. "I am too stupid! But mademoiselle will perhaps be so gracious as to forgive me this time."
He bowed to Sallie again and to Slyne, and disappeared, sharply scanning the latter's face to the last.
"Who's that son of a sea-cook?" snapped Captain Dove, and Mr. Jobling looked wanly up out of one eye.
"A French detective," Slyne answered reflectively. But Sallie felt sure that he was afraid of M. Dubois, and wondered why.
"Well, he has nothing against me that I'm aware of," the old man declared. "And now—what about this wire? Does it mean that some other fellow has scooped the pool—and that I've had all my trouble for nothing, eh?" He clenched his fist again and shook it in the lawyer's face.
"No, no," gasped Mr. Jobling. "Don't be so hasty. It makes no difference at all, now that we have Lady Josceline with us. I told you that the American, Carthew, is of no account against her—and how he has ever cropped up again I can't conceive. In any case—"
"In any case, you'd better be off to your room and ring for a bit of beefsteak to doctor that eye with," Slyne interposed in a tone of intense annoyance.
"And I wish to goodness, Dove!" he added savagely, "that you would behave a little more like a reasonable human being and less—"
"Less of your lip, now!" snarled the old man. "Anddon'tkeep on saying that. Just take it from me again, both of you, that you'd better not be so slow again in telling me—"
"You didn't give me time," Mr. Jobling protested.
Slyne opened the door. "Come on," he urged. "You've got to get your kit packed, Jobling. We'll be leaving before very long now."
"Have you made up your mind to come with us, Dove?"
Captain Dove nodded, most emphatically. "I'll send word to Brasse and Da Costa at once," he remarked, "and then I'll be ready to start whenever you are."
He left the room after Mr. Jobling, and Slyne, in the doorway, looked back at Sallie, the reassuring smile on his lips belied by his cold, calculating eyes.
"And how about you, Sallie?" he asked. "Have you made up your mind? Are you satisfied—so far? Or—would you rather go back to theOlive Branch?
"If you would—I'll let you off your promise, even now! And don't forget that this will be your last chance to recall it."
"You know I can't go back to theOlive Branch, Jasper," she answered slowly. "But—"
He did not give her time to say more. "That's settled for good, then," he asserted. "Your promise stands, and I know you'll keep it when the time comes—after I've done my part.
"I'm only sorry I haven't been able to get rid of Captain Dove right away, but it won't be long now till—You needn't worry any more about him. I'll see that he behaves better.
"If there's anything else I can do for your comfort, you must let me know. And now, I'll leave you to your own devices until it's time to start on our travels. Better get a rest while you can, eh? We've a very busy week ahead of us."
She saw that he did not intend to tell her any more in the meantime, and was glad to see him go. Then she called Ambrizette in for company, and sat down by the window again, to try to sort out for herself the bewildering tangle that life had once more become within a few hours.
Gazing out across the familiar sea with wistful, far-away eyes, she mused for a time over what Captain Dove had told Mr. Jobling of her history, and strove to piece together with that all she herself could recall of that dim and always more mysterious past out of which she had come to be Captain Dove's property, bought and paid for, at a high price, as he had repeated several times.
Her own earliest vague, disconnected, ineffectual memories were all of some dark, savage mountain-country; of endless days of travel; of camp-fires in the cold, and hungry camels squealing for fodder; of the fragrant cinnamon-smell of the steam that came from the cooking-pots.
Before, or, it might have been, after that, she had surely lived on some seashore, in a shimmering white village with narrow, crooked lanes for streets and little flat-roofed houses huddled together among hot sandhills where thesuddragrew and lean goats bleated always for their kids.
Then, as if in a very vexing dream, she could almost but never quite see, through the thickening mist of the years, once-familiar faces—white men, with swords, in ragged uniforms, and big brown ones with wicked eyes and long, thin guns, glaring down at her over a high wall, through smoke and fire, and fighting, and the acrid reek of powder....
And there remembrance grew blank altogether, until it connected with Captain Dove, on the deck of a slaving-dhow far out of sight of any land. She had been only a little child when he had carried her up the side of his own ship in his arms, while she laughed gleefully in his face and pulled at his shaggy moustache, but she could still remember some of the incidents of that day.
She had lived on board his successive ships ever since. And ever since, until recently, he had always been very good to her, in his own queer, gruff way. He had always treated her as though she were a child of his own, shielding her, in so far as he could, from even the knowledge of all the evil which he had done up and down the world. She had grown up in the belief that his despotic guardianship was altogether for her good and not to be disputed.
But now—she was no longer a child. And all her old, unquestioning faith in his inherent good intentions, toward her at least, was finally shattered. She knew now that he really looked upon her as a mere chattel, with a cash value—just as if she had been one of the hapless cargo of human cattle confined in the pestiferous hold of the dhow on whose deck he had found her at play. She knew now that he had bought and paid for them as well as her, and sold them again at a fat profit, far across the seas—all but the dumb, deformed black woman whom he had picked from among them to act as her nurse.
And if it did not occur to her to question either his power or his perfect right to dispose of her future also as he might see fit, had not all her experience gone to prove that might is right everywhere, that law and justice are merely additional pretexts devised by the strong for oppressing the weak? She had had to choose between remaining on board theOlive Branch, or paying Jasper Slyne his price for the chance of escape he had offered her in pursuance of his own aims.
She disliked and distrusted Slyne scarcely less than before. But she did not see how she could have chosen otherwise. And, in any case,—it was too late now to revoke the promise she had made him.
She was still afraid to place any faith in the promises he had made her. She had no idea how he had come at his alleged discovery of her real identity. But Mr. Jobling's obvious belief in that recurred to her mind, and she fell to wondering timidly what life would be like as Lady Josceline Justice.
Her impressions on that point were very hazy, however, and she had still to puzzle out the problem added by Justin Carthew. But she finally gave up the attempt to solve that at the moment, contenting herself with the tremulous hope that she might soon be on her way toward that dear, unknown, dream-home for which her hungry heart had so often ached.
Of the exorbitant price so soon to be paid for the brief glimpse of happiness Slyne had agreed to allow her, she took no further thought at all. She had already made up her mind to meet that without complaint.
An hour or more later, when Slyne looked in to tell her that it was time to start, she was still seated at the window, gazing out over the steel-grey sea with wistful, far-away eyes.
At his instigation she veiled herself very closely. And he had brought with him a hooded cloak for Ambrizette. No one took any particular notice of the inconspicuous party which presently left the Hôtel de Paris in a hired car, as if for an excursion along the coast.
At a station fifty miles away they left the car and caught the night-mail for Paris. Slyne's baggage was on board it, in the care of a sullen chauffeur, and there were also berths reserved for them all.
"Did you see any more of Dubois?" Sallie heard Slyne ask the man, who shook his head indifferently in reply.
The long night-journey passed without other incident than a dispute between Captain Dove and the sleeping-car attendant, which raged until Slyne threatened to have the train stopped at the next station and send for the police. And the sun was shining brightly when they reached Paris.
Mr. Jobling went straight on to London, but Slyne took Sallie and Captain Dove to a quiet but expensive hotel, where they remained for a few days, which passed in a perfect whirl of novelty and excitement for her. And when they in their turn crossed the Channel, she had for baggage at least a dozen new trunks containing the choicest spoils of the Rue de la Paix. Slyne had pooh-poohed all her timid protests against his lavish expenditure on her account, and had also provided for Captain Dove and Ambrizette in their degree. He had evidently a fortune at his disposal, and was bent on showing her how generous he could be.
He was also unostentatiously displaying other good qualities which had all gone to make those days pass very pleasantly for her. She could not fail to appreciate the courtesy and consideration which he consistently showed her now. His patience with Captain Dove, a trying companion at the best of times and doubly troublesome idle, more than once made her wonder whether he could be the same Jasper Slyne she had known on theOlive Branch. Prosperity seemed to have improved him almost beyond recognition.
He had a cabin at her disposal on the Calais-Dover steamer but she stayed on deck throughout the brief passage, glad to breathe the salt sea-air again, while he entertained her with descriptions of London and she watched the twinkling lights that were guiding her home.
And then came London itself, at last, somewhat grey, and cold, and disconsolate-looking on a wet winter morning.
But after breakfast in a cosy suite at the Savoy, a blink of sunshine along the Embankment helped to better that first hasty impression. And then Slyne took Captain Dove and her in a taxicab along the thronged and bustling Strand to Mr. Jobling's office in Chancery Lane.
They got out in front of a dingy building not very far from Cursitor Street. It was raining again, and Sallie, looking up and down the narrow, turbid thoroughfare, felt glad that she did not need to live there.
Indoors, the atmosphere was scarcely less depressing. A dismal passage led toward a dark stairway, up which they had to climb flight after flight to reach at last a dusty, ill-smelling, gas-lighted room, inhabited only by a shabby, shock-headed hobbledehoy of uncertain age and unprepossessing appearance, perched on a preposterously high stool at a still higher desk, behind a cage-like partition.
"I want to see Mr. Jobling, at once," Slyne announced to him. And Mr. Jobling's "managing clerk" looked slowly round, with a snake-like and disconcerting effect due to a very long neck and a very low collar.
"Show Mr. Slyne in immediately, Mullins," ordered a pompous voice from within; and Mr. Jobling himself, a blackcoated, portly, important personage there, came bustling out from his private office to welcome his visitors.
"How d'ye do, how d'ye do, Lady Josceline!" he exclaimed, and cocked an arch eyebrow at Sallie's most becoming costume; although the effect he intended was somewhat impaired by the fact that he was still suffering from a black eye, painted over in haste—and by an incompetent artist.
"I can see now what's been keepingyouin Paris!" he added facetiously, and, having shaken hands with Slyne, who seemed to think that superfluous, turned to receive Captain Dove with the same politeness.
"Phew!" whistled Mr. Jobling and drew back and stared at the old man. "I'dneverhave recognised you in that rig-out."
Captain Dove pulled off a pair of smoked glasses he had been wearing, the better to look him, with offensive intent, in his injured eye. For Captain Dove was still enduring much mental as well as physical discomfort in a disguise which he had only been induced to adopt a couple of days before, and after an embittered quarrel with Slyne. The stiff white collar round his corded neck was still threatening to choke him and then cut his throat. He had been infinitely more at his ease in his scanty, short-tailed frock-coat and furry top-hat than he was in the somewhat baggy if more becoming black garb he had donned in its place, with a soft wide-awake always flapping about his ears.
"Come inside," Mr. Jobling begged hurriedly, and, looking round as he followed them into his sanctum, "Mullins!" he snapped, "don't stand there staring. Get on with your work, at once.
"You're later than I expected," he remarked to Slyne as he closed the door, "but just in time. The Court's closed, of course, for the Christmas vacation, but I've filed an application for a hearing in Chambers, and—"
He paused as a telephone-bell rang shrilly outside, and a moment later the shock head of his "managing clerk" protruded into the room, almost as if it did not belong to a body at all.
"Mr. Spettigrew says that our application in Chambers will be heard by Mr. Justice Gaunt, in 57B, at eleven-thirty sharp this forenoon," announced that youth and, with a final wriggle of his long neck, withdrew.
"Devil take him!" exclaimed Captain Dove, somewhat startled and much incensed. "I wouldn't keep a crested cobra like that about me for—"
"Let's see those accounts of yours, now," said Slyne, disregarding that interruption, and Mr. Jobling, having first looked at his watch, produced from another drawer a great sheaf of papers, all carefully docketed. He slipped off the top one and somewhat reluctantly handed that to his friend.
Slyne took it from him eagerly, and sat for a time gloating over it with eyes which presently began to glow.
But when Captain Dove, growing restless, would have glanced over his shoulder to see what was tickling his fancy so, he frowned and folded that document up and returned it to Mr. Jobling.
"Give it here, now!" growled Captain Dove, menacing Mr. Jobling with a clenched fist; and the lawyer, after an appealing, impotent glance at Slyne, had no recourse but to comply with that peremptory order.
"Are you quite sure of your figures?" Slyne asked, with a scowl. He seemed conscious that he, in his haste, had made a false step. And Mr. Jobling nodded with nervous assurance.
"I have inside sources of information as to the revenue of the estates," he replied, "and a note of all the investments. I've allowed a wide margin for all sorts of incidentals. I think you'll find, in fact, that Lady Josceline's inheritance will amount to even more than I've estimated."
Slyne smiled again, more contentedly. Nor was his complaisance overcome even when Mr. Jobling put to him a half-whispered petition for a further small cash advance to account of expenses.
"I wasn't even able to pay Mullins' wages with what you gave me in Paris," said the stout solicitor vexedly. "Fees and so on swallowed it all up, and—I'm actually short of cab-fares!"
"Why don't you fire Mullins, then?" demanded Slyne with a shade of impatience. "I've just got rid of my chauffeur because he was costing me more than he was worth."
"But I can't afford to get rid of Mullins. Just at the moment he's very useful to me. It would create a bad impression if I had to run my own errands. And—the fact is, he knows far too much. I'll pay him off and shut his mouth by and by, when I have more time to attend to such matters."
"How much do you want?" Slyne inquired with a frown evidently meant to warn his friend to be modest.
"Can you spare twenty pounds—to go on with?"
Slyne hesitated, but only for a few seconds. Then he pulled out a pocket-book and surreptitiously passed that sum to the penniless man of law, who accepted it with no more than a nod of thanks.
"I'll pay Mullins now," he remarked, and immediately hurried out of the room. Captain Dove was gasping for breath and showed every other symptom of a forthcoming explosion.
As soon as the door shut behind him, the old man gave open vent to his wrath. And a most furious quarrel followed between Slyne and him. Sallie, too, learned then, for the first time, of the vast inheritance which would be hers, of Slyne's cunning plan to buy Captain Dove out for a mere pittance, and how he himself expected to profit through marrying her.
But she was not overwhelmed with surprise by that belated discovery. She had almost anticipated the final disclosure of some such latent motive behind all Slyne's professions to her. The only difference it might make would be to Captain Dove. Slyne and he were still snarling at each other when Mr. Jobling walked jauntily in again. But at sight of him Captain Dove began to subside.
"We mustn't be late. Mr. Spettigrew will be expecting us now. I've sent Mullins on ahead with my papers," observed Mr. Jobling breezily, and went on to explain that Mr. Justice Gaunt, by nature a somewhat cross-grained old limb of the law, had been very ill-pleased over being bothered again, and at a moment when most of his colleagues were enjoying a holiday, about any such apparently endless case as that of the Jura succession, which had been cropping up before him, at more or less lengthy intervals, for quite a number of years, and concerning which he had, only a few days before, made an order of court in favour of Justin Carthew.
Captain Dove clapped his soft felt hat on his head with a very devil-may-care expression.
"Come on, then," said he grimly, and Mr. Jobling was not slow to lead the way. So that they reached Mr. Justice Gaunt's chambers punctually at the hour appointed, and were ushered into his lordship's presence by Mr. Spettigrew, the learned counsel retained by Mr. Jobling on Sallie's behalf, a long, lifeless-looking gentleman in a wig and gown and spectacles. And his lordship smiled very pleasantly as Sallie raised her heavy veil at counsel's crafty request.
"Pray be seated, my dear young lady," his lordship begged with fatherly, old-fashioned kindness, and indicated a chair meant for counsel, much nearer his own than the rest. Nor did he often take his eyes from her face throughout the course of a long and convincing dissertation by Mr. Spettigrew, on her past history, present position in life, and claims on the future, with some reference to the rival claims of Mr. Justin Carthew.
"And I have full proof to place before you, at once, if you wish it, m'lud," concluded Mr. Spettigrew in his most professional drone, "in support of the fact that the lady before you is the lawful daughter of the late earl and the countess, his second wife, who died in the desert. Mr. Justin Carthew, on the other hand, is related to the family in a very different and distant degree, and there are, as y'r ludship has been good enough to agree, no other survivors.
"I beg leave now to request that y'r ludship will rescind the authority granted to Mr. Justin Carthew, and admit my client's petitionad referendum."
"Produce your proofs," ordered his lordship, and Mr. Spettigrew extracted from a capacious black bag a pile of papers at which Mr. Justice Gaunt looked with no little disgust.
"What are they, in chief?" asked Mr. Justice Gaunt, turning over page after page of closely written law-script, as gingerly as if he believed that one might perhaps explode and blow him to pieces. And Mr. Spettigrew launched forth again into a long list of certificates, records, researches, findings, orders of court, sworn statements and affidavits, by Captain Dove—"Then trading in his own ship, m'lud, now retired and devoting his time to mission-work among deep-sea sailors;" by Mr. Jasper Slyne, gentleman; by Mr. Jobling, whom he did not pause to describe; by a couple of dozen other people, living or dead, at home or abroad; all in due legal form and not to be controverted.
"I think you'll find them in perfect order, and absolutely conclusive, m'lud," counsel came to a finish triumphantly, and sat down, greatly to the relief of all present.
"H'm!" said his lordship, still gravely regarding Sallie: whose eyes had nothing to conceal from him. "And so this is the long-lost Lady Josceline!"
His searching glance travelled slowly to Captain Dove's face, and then to Slyne's; both of whom met it without winking, although Captain Dove was no doubt glad of the protection of his smoked glasses.
"I'll have to go through the proofs, of course," said his lordship reflectively and let his gaze rest on Sallie again. "But—if everything's as you say, I don't think it will be long before Lady Josceline finds herself in full enjoyment of all her rights and privileges. If everything's as you say, I'll do whatever lies in my power to expedite matters; I think I can promise you that the case will be called immediately the vacation is over. Meanwhile, however, and till I have looked through the proofs, I can make no further order."
He rose, and they also got up from their chairs as he came round from behind his desk and confronted Sallie, a tall, stooping old man with a wrinkled face and tired but kindly eyes.
She looked up into them frankly, and he laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Yours has been a very sad history so far, my dear young lady," he said, his head on one side, still studying her. "I hope it will be all the brighter henceforth. I knew—the last Earl of Jura—when we were both young men—before he married. You remind me of him, as he was then, in many respects. Good day to you now; my time here is not my own, you know. But some day, perhaps you will allow me to pay my respects to you—at Justicehall, since we're to be neighbours; my own home isn't very far from yours."
Outside in the corridor, Mr. Jobling shook hands rapturously with every one, even with Captain Dove.
"We've turned the trick already," he declared. "You heard what his lordship said. With him on our side, the whole thing's as good as settled. All we have to do now is to wait until the Courts take up again and confirm—"
"How long will that be?" Slyne inquired. He, too, was smiling ecstatically.
"Not much more than a fortnight," the lawyer informed him. "It will soon pass. We must just be patient."
"We must keep very quiet, too," said Slyne, "unless we want to give the whole show away to the enemy in advance. We must clear off out of London till then. I'll tell you what, Jobling! Why shouldn't we all go down to Scotland to-night?"
Mr. Jobling nodded agreement. "An excellent idea," he declared. "There's nothing to keep us here."
"That's settled, then," Slyne asserted. "And we'll all dine together at the Savoy before we start. I think we can afford to celebrate the occasion, eh! And I want to show Lady Josceline a few of her future friends."
The Duchess of Dawn was dining a number of notabilities at the Savoy, on her way to a command performance at the Gaiety; a fact of which the fashionable world was well aware, because the young duchess is a great lady in London as well as elsewhere, and all her doings are chronicled in advance. The fashionable world had promptly decided to dine there too, and telephoned in breathless haste for tables. It filled the restaurant at an unusually early hour, and a disappointed overflow displayed itself in thefoyer.
The Duchess of Dawn is one of the most beautiful women in England. The eyes of the fashionable world were focussed on her and her guests, among whom were a minor European prince and a famous field-marshal who had not been on show in London for long, until there appeared from the crowdedfoyer, upon the arm of an old-young man of distinguished appearance and faultlesstenue, a tall, slender girl, at whom, as she passed, every one turned to gaze, with undisguised admiration or envy, according to sex and temperament.
She was gowned to distraction, and by an artist in women's wear. Her beautiful bare arms and shoulders and bosom were free of superfluous ornament. Her pure, proud, sensitive features were faintly flushed,—as though, if that were conceivable, she was wearing evening dress for the first time, and found it trying,—but her curved crimson lips were slightly parted in a most bewitching smile, and, from under their drooping lashes, her radiant eyes looked a demure, amused, impersonal defiance at the frankly curious faces upturned toward her. The shaded lights made most enchanting lights and shadows among her hair, red-gold and heaped about her head in heavy coils, as she moved modestly through the thronged room toward a corner where, about a beautifully decorated table, four motionless waiters were standing guard over four empty chairs.
She sat down there, her back to the bulk of the company, and her escort took the seat opposite. A portly, prosperous-looking, elderly man, with something a little suspicious about one of his eyes, and a squat, queerly-shaped old fellow in semi-clerical garb and wearing smoked glasses, completed the party. Their waiters began to hover about them, and the fashionable world went on with its dinner.
"Who was thatlovelygirl?" the Duchess of Dawn demanded of hervis-à-vis, the veteran soldier, and he, reputed among women to have no heart at all, recalled himself with an evident start from the reverie into which he had fallen. He almost blushed, indeed, under the duchess's blandly discerning smile.
"I don't know, I'm sure, duchess," he returned, smiling also, in spite of himself, and beckoned to a servant behind him, whom he despatched on some errand.
"She's registered as Miss Harris, your lordship," the man announced in an undertone when he returned.
"Miss Harris!" echoed the prince, who was also a soldier. He had overheard. And, as he in turn caught the duchess's eyes, he lay back laughing, a little ruefully. But the man opposite him, the master of armies, was not amused.
"I'd like to know who and what those three fellows with Miss Harris may be," said he.
At their table in the corner, they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. The three men were toasting Sallie and each other with equal good-will. And even Sallie had dismissed from her mind the last of her lingering doubts as to the reality and endurance of her part in that most amazing new life, had put the past with all its horrors resolutely behind her, was too much interested in the entertaining present to trouble about the future at the moment.
Captain Dove had seemingly forgotten, for the time being at any rate, his grievance against Slyne, and was in his most lamb-like mood. While Slyne did not even demur against the quantities of expensive wine the old man consumed during dinner. Mr. Jobling, too, was displaying symptoms of convivial hilarity when they at length left the restaurant. But most of the other tables were empty by then.
Mr. Jobling and Captain Dove, arm in arm, affectionately maintained each other as far as their sitting-room, while Slyne accompanied Sallie to her own door. He had been making himself most agreeable to her, and had pointed out a number of the notorieties and one or two of the celebrities present; although it had somewhat startled her to be told that she would very soon be on familiar terms with them all.
"Aren't you glad now that you agreed to the bargain we made on theOlive Branch—and in Monte Carlo?" he asked by the way. He was smiling gaily.
She smiled back at him, and, "I'm not sorry—so far, Jasper," she answered, looking deep into his eyes.
He nodded, as if quite satisfied, and turned away to escape that embarrassing scrutiny.
"We'll be starting in half an hour or so," he informed her from a safe distance, and, "I'll be all ready," she called cheerfully after him.
A little before eleven he came in again and they all set out for the station to catch their train.
It was a cold, clear, frosty night, and the Strand was at its busiest as Sallie looked out at it from the taxi into which Slyne and Ambrizette had followed her at the hotel portico. Another, containing Captain Dove and their legal adviser, still on the most amicable terms, although Captain Dove as a rule could not stand anyone afflicted with hiccough, crawled close behind them through the turmoil until, at the Gaiety corner, a policeman delayed it to let the cross-traffic through.
A crowd had gathered there to gaze at the royalties who would presently be coming out of the theatre. Slyne drew Sallie back from the open window at sight of two men, one of whom seemed all shirt-front, looking down at the congested street from the empty steps of the principal entrance.
"That ass Ingoldsby!" he explained to Sallie, and was evidently a good deal disturbed. "And—Dubois, as well," he added. "I thought I had shaken him off in Paris. I'm sure he saw me, too."
A little farther on he stopped the taxi and beckoned to one of those street-arabs who make a living about the kerb.
"Go to the gentleman with the beard, on the steps of the Gaiety," he instructed that very alert messenger, "and say to him that a friend wants a word with him here."
Sallie observed the suppressed grimace of surprise on the face of the individual who almost at once arrived in the wake of his ragged Mercury: and Slyne, having tossed the latter a shilling, held out his hand to M. Dubois.
"Charmed to see you in London,mon confrère," said he. "Have you yet discovered your man?"
"I am hard at his heels," the detective answered, his eyes searching Slyne's as if, Sallie thought, for some sign that that shaft had hit home.
But Slyne's expression was one of ingenuous simplicity. He bowed, as if with deep respect.
"I caught a glimpse of some one most amazingly like myself, one day on the Faubourg St. Honoré, as I was passing through Paris," he mentioned reflectively.
"Thanks," returned Dubois. "It was he, no doubt. And—he's in London now."
Slyne did not wince, even at that.
"He was dining at the Savoy to-night," said Dubois indifferently. "How does your own affair progress?"
"Assez bien," Slyne answered in an even voice. "I have followed my quarry home and am awaiting developments."
"You will be in London for a little, then?"
"For the next week or ten days, I expect," Slyne lied with perfect aplomb.
"We shall meet again, in that case," declared the detective, glancing at Sallie; and, "Au plaisir de vous revoir, monsieur," Slyne returned deferentially.
"To Grosvenor Square now—and hurry along," he directed the driver in a voice his enemy could not fail to hear. And the taxicab swung into Drury Lane, on its way west.
For a few minutes he sat silent, with bent head, biting at his moustache. Then he looked round at Sallie.
"That fellow takes me for another man," he told her querulously. "He's been dogging me ever since he first saw me at Monte Carlo. You've no idea, Sallie, what a dangerous risk I had to run there—for your sake."
"You haven't told me much about—anything, Jasper," she reminded him. And he proceeded to describe in lurid detail the fate which would undoubtedly have befallen him had M. Dubois been able then to fasten on him responsibility for the misdeeds of that criminal whom he so unfortunately resembled.
Sallie listened in silence. She had been wondering whether M. Dubois could be in any way concerned with her affairs. She gathered that he was interested only in Slyne. The latter's story of grave risk run for her sake fell somewhat flat, since it seemed to rest on the mere possibility of his having been mistaken for somebody else. She could scarcely believe that his fear of M. Dubois had no other foundation. She even ventured to suggest that he could easily have proved the detective in the wrong.
"He wouldn't have paid the slightest attention to anything I could say," Slyne assured her tartly. "He wouldn't have asked any questions or listened to any statement of mine. You don't know anything about the outrages that are committed every day by fellows like that on men like myself who have no fixed residence, Sallie; and no powerful friends to whom to appeal against such infernal injustice. I can't tell you how thankful I'll be, on your account as well as my own, when we're married and safely settled down, with a home of our own to feel safe in!
"Look, there's where we'll live when we're in London."
Sallie looked out. They were whirling past one of the most imposing houses in Grosvenor Square. "Is it an hotel?" she asked, and observed that all but one or two of its topmost windows were dark.
"It's the Earl of Jura's town house," said Slyne, apparently somewhat piqued by her seeming indifference. "It's yours now—or will be as soon as the Chancery Court wakes up again."
Sallie glanced back and caught another glimpse of it as the taxicab slowed again to take the corner of the square. Slyne had picked up the speaking-tube.
"Get us to the station now, as fast as you can," he told the driver: and then, having glanced at his watch, lighted a cigarette. He seemed to have no more to say at the moment, and Sallie was busy with thoughts of her own. She was wondering whether Justin Carthew could be living in that great house. She could not understand.... But she did not dare to ask Jasper Slyne for any information, since he had shown her more than once already that he did not intend to tell her any more than he thought fit.
When they finally reached the station they found Mr. Jobling awaiting them there and very anxious over their late arrival.
"We drove round by Grosvenor Square," Slyne told the lawyer nonchalantly. "And—we're in lots of time."
Mr. Jobling looked cross. "Five minutes more would have lost you the train," he remarked somewhat sourly. "And where would Captain Dove and I have been then!"
As it was, however, they found Captain Dove in his berth, sound asleep, although still fully dressed. And, as Slyne ushered Sallie into the double compartment reserved for her and Ambrizette, "Don't go to bed just yet," he begged. "I want to show you something by and by. You'll have lots of time for a long sleep before we arrive."
"All right, Jasper," she agreed. "I'll wait up till you come for me."
When he at length knocked at her door again, Mr. Jobling was still with her. She came out between them into the narrow corridor. Slyne rubbed clear one steamy window to let her see the wintry landscape through which they were travelling at express speed. And Sallie looked out delighted, at the sleeping English countryside as its broad grass-lands and bare brown acres, coverts and coppices, hedgerows and lanes, with here and there a grange or a group of cottages, all still and silent, flashed into sight and so disappeared; until, overlooking them all from a knoll on the near bank of a broad, winding river, there loomed up a most magnificent mansion, embedded, in lordly seclusion, among many gnarled and age-old oaks, with gardens terrace on terrace about it, tall fountains among their empty flower-beds, a moss-grown sun-dial at the edge of a quiet, silver lake.
The moon was shining full on its innumerable windows, so that it seemed to be lighted up from within, although, in reality, all were shuttered and dark. Aloof and very stately it stood on that windless night, an empty palace which came and went in a few moments, wing after wing, with its stabling and courtyards, and still more gardens, all within an endless, ivy-clad encircling wall.
"What place is that?" asked Sallie in an awed tone as soon as the train had rumbled across the bridge.
"That's Justicehall, Lady Josceline,—your English country seat, and one of the finest properties in the Shires," Mr. Jobling informed her before Slyne could speak. "You'll be living there within a few weeks—and forgetting all your old friends!"
Sallie did not sleep much that night. Her brain was far too busy. She could scarcely believe that less than a week had elapsed since she had stepped ashore from theOlive Branch.
Nor could she yet reconcile herself to the fact that her new life must lie amid such scenes as those to which Jasper Slyne had so far introduced her. She had liked Monte Carlo, and Paris, and London as any girl might. The great house in Grosvenor Square she had mistaken for an hotel. But the calmly arrogant grandeur of Justicehall had merely oppressed her. And the idea that she might have to live there did not please her at all. For how could she, a creature of the free air, of sunshine and wind and sea and the world's waste places, be happy immured within that immense edifice, encircled by servants, hemmed in on every side by unaccustomed conventionalities, all as distasteful as new to her. She made up her mind, there and then, that, if she might have any say on that subject, Justicehall should stay empty.
But—would she have any say on that subject, or any other? She did not know. Jasper Slyne had so far told her only so much as he thought fit of what was before her. She lay quite still in her narrow berth, gazing out at the window whose blind she had bidden Ambrizette loose from the catch, a hundred puzzled, helpless questions thronging through her head, till the moon failed her and all was darkness but for the flashes of red or green or yellow light that swept past as the train sped through some wayside station or sleeping town.
Then she too fell asleep at last, and so forgot her difficulties till she awoke again in a new and most wonderful world; a world of gaunt, grey mountains and wide dark moors, white tumbling torrents on hillsides, in deep ravines, forests of stately fir and pine that looked like the masts of ships; a world, moreover, which seemed in some sense familiar and friendly to her.
Day was breaking and Ambrizette was already astir. She had come quietly in and closed the curtains during the night, and was now once more looping them back to let in the first of the sun. Sallie lay for a little longer watching the sunrise warm those enchanted solitudes into a golden semblance of fairy-land.
There was snow on the near mountain-tops that turned from the tint of pigeon-blood rubies to pink, from pink to amber, and so to the purest white. The train was travelling through an extensive plantation of silver birches, amid which a lordly stag, paralysed by its swift approach, stood starkly at bay with a timid hind at its heels. A myriad rabbits were diving madly into the bracken on every side. Above in the blue a belated wild-goose was winging its hasty way to some warmer clime; for there was something more than a hint of hard, black frost in the morning air.
Another station swept past, a trim little place with some picturesque cottages perched on the high ground about it. A marvellous vista of water, a long, winding lake in the midst of the mountains, was visible for a few moments, and then Ambrizette brought in tea.
Twenty minutes later, Sallie was up and dressed for the day, in a short-skirted shooting-suit of Harris tweed, heather-proof stockings and smart ankle-boots. When Slyne knocked and she went out to speak to him, he stood for a moment gazing at her with unbounded gratification, and then, "Gad! Sallie," said he, holding out his hand. "You're her ladyship to the life now. You'll certainly look your part at Loquhariot."
She smiled back at him. He was scarcely less trig than herself in his knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket.
"I hope—It isn't a place like Justicehall, is it, Jasper?" she asked anxiously.
He raised his eyebrows, and laughed, a little surprised.
"Why, scarcely," said he, "from what Jobling tells me. But—didn't you like the look of Justicehall? Well, I hope you won't actually despise Loquhariot, Sallie. 'Be it never so humble,' you know—"
"IsthatLoquhariot!" asked Sallie.
The weatherly little steamer on which she had been travelling along that wonderful coast since leaving the train had just rounded a high, bluff headland and all at once opened out the wide waters of Loch Jura, mirror-like in the still afternoon among the frowning mountains about them. Mr. Jobling and Slyne were with her on the bridge. Captain Dove strolled up at that moment, his hands in his pockets, his soft felt hat on the back of his head, a cigar cocked between his teeth at an equally rakish angle. Sallie was staring straight ahead, with wide, apprehensive eyes.
"IsthatLoquhariot!" she asked again, almost in a whisper, as she gazed helplessly at the high battlements of the ancient stronghold which looks from its lofty promontory down the whole length of the loch, unchanged in its seaward face since the date of its building. Even Captain Dove was impressed by the picture it made.
"That's your Castle of Loquhariot, Lady Josceline," Mr. Jobling at length replied, and went on to tell her its history, learned from the guide-book and locally when he had been there before.
The Castle of Loquhariot dates back to the sixteenth century. But for long ere that, a squat, four-square fortalice had occupied its site. Legend has it that the grim, grey keep which to-day covers the whole surface of what was then a high rocky island but is now a mere peninsula of the mainland, was first conceived in the mind of the then Lord Jura, a plain Scots baron of piratical tendencies, who had brought back from the Spanish Main—whither he had sailed in the company of another of the same kidney as himself, one Francis Drake—a veritable shipload of doubloons and pieces-of-eight; and that its ramparts had first been armed and manned, in haste, when the remains of the Great Armada came drifting southward from Cape Wrath on its hapless way home to Spain, after that same Francis Drake had done with it.
To-day, at any rate, may be seen in more than one of the embrasures on those ramparts, some culverin or falconet salved from the wreck of a great galleon which went to pieces on the Small Isles, at the mouth of the loch. And in a little graveyard on the smallest of the Small Isles stands a weather-beaten stone which says that round about it lie buried the bones of a great mort of Spaniards there interred by their sworn enemies in August, A. D. 1588.
It must undoubtedly have cost at least a shipload of doubloons to build the castle. But the then baron did not build it all, for there are towers and wings and bastions added, on the landward side, during the next two centuries; whose cost would seem to show that his piratical lordship did not leave his descendants quite penniless. The circular North Keep alone—where the billiard-room is nowadays—must undoubtedly have cost its imaginative progenitor a small fortune.
The whole edifice, as it now stands, is a monument, apparently imperishable, to the greatness and grandeur, past, present, and to come, of the Jura family. And Sallie, staring at it with wide, apprehensive eyes, from the bridge of the busy little coaster, listening to Mr. Jobling's descriptive quotations, with Captain Dove of theOlive Branch, and Jasper Slyne for company, felt infinitely dispirited by the knowledge that she and none other was the present representative of that proud race.
The steamer drew in toward the anchorage and a ferryboat put off from the shore to meet it. The kilted Highlandmen therein looked askance at Ambrizette and crossed themselves quite openly as she was handed down into it from the gangway. Slyne followed and held out his arms to Sallie, but she needed no such assistance. And the men in the boat seemed better content after a glance or two at her as she sat down and slipped a warm arm around Ambrizette, who was shivering in the winter afternoon.
The two remaining travellers jumped in, the baggage was transshipped, and the steamer swung about on her way to the farther north. The captain sounded his steam-whistle and waved his cap in parting salute as the ferry made its slow way ashore to the further accompaniment of a dirge-like chorus from the crew at its heavy sweeps; at which music Captain Dove snorted his disgust very audibly. He had awoke with a headache and had been in a bad temper all day.
By the way Slyne held a low-toned conversation with Mr. Jobling. And when the big boat was at length beached beside a rude pier, he paid the ferryman liberally, distributed some small change among the oarsmen, and bade them bring the baggage along to the little inn on the roadside at a short distance.
"Better send Ambrizette with me," he said to Sallie, and the black dwarf trotted off after him in obedience to a few words from her mistress, while Mr. Jobling turned the other way, toward the Castle.
"We'll just have time to see over the old place before it's dark, Lady Josceline," the lawyer explained, and Sallie followed him with Captain Dove.
Slyne rejoined them before they were half-way up the long hill on the road which leads from the shore-level to the plateau. Sallie was still staring with troubled eyes at the huge, picturesque, rambling pile which seemed to grow always more immense as they drew nearer to it. It dwarfed into proportions almost infinitesimal the cluster of white cottages nestling cosily at the base of the great rock which formed its foundation. It seemed to dominate the whole visible world, to challenge even the mighty mountains which shut it in with the sea.
"That's the water-gate," Mr. Jobling mentioned and pointed out a black, oblong opening in the cliff-face at some height above even high-water mark and protected against possible intrusion by a heavy iron grating whose bars must have been as thick as a grown man's wrist. "I suppose the sea would be right up to its sill when the place was built.
"There's an underground passage connecting it with the interior of the castle, and they'd no doubt use that a good deal in the old days.
"And this is the North Keep, as it's called; newer, you'll maybe notice, than the west frontage, although it looks just as ancient. We'll soon have the Jura house-flag afloat again from the Warder's Tower, Lady Josceline, and the beacon-fire alight after dark. It always burns at night, you know, when the head of the family's in residence—a custom dating back to the days when there were no other lights on the coast.
"You'll see the moat now. Long ago it was always full, even at low tide. But now it's as dry as—"
"As I am!" grumbled Captain Dove, spitting down into the deep fosse which had formerly cut the castle off from the mainland but is now no more than an empty ravine spanned by an ornate drawbridge of modern date.
They crossed that, their footsteps producing an eerie clank on the planking, and came to a halt before the main entrance, over whose heavy, iron-studded oak doors still hung, a mute reminder of more stormy times, a massive portcullis armed withchevaux-de-friseof long, pointed spikes.
Slyne rang the electric door-bell.
It was some time before that summons was answered, but no one of the waiting group seemed to have anything to say to the others during the interval. The mystery of time itself was in the atmosphere. Some brooding spirit of the past might have been peering out at them from the watchman's wicket in the bartizan above. They stood still and silent until, at last, the postern in the big double-doorway was unlatched from within and a grey-haired, elderly woman with a hard-featured face, much lined and seamed, in the stiffly rustling garb of a superior servant, appeared in the narrow opening and dropped them an old-fashioned curtsy after a quick, shrewd glance at them.
"If it isn't too late, we'd like to be allowed to look over the castle," Slyne said politely raising his cap.
The woman was gazing intently at Sallie. She started as Mr. Jobling coughed, with intention, after they had waited a second or two for an answer.
"You will be very welcome, sirs," she said hastily. "I have authority to admit visitors. Will you be pleased to step in."
She looked long and very closely at Sallie again as the girl crossed the threshold; and then at the others in turn as they entered, one at a time, by the narrow postern. She closed it behind them, and led the way through a low, arched passage into a dimly lighted but spacious hall.
"We've just passed through the walls," Mr. Jobling informed them patronisingly, of his superior knowledge. "They're twelve feet thick on this front. Loquhariot would still be a hard nut to crack, eh?"
"I'd sooner crack a bottle than a nut," commented Captain Dove aside to Slyne, who frowned reprovingly at him.
The great hall they entered next could almost have housed a regiment. But it, like the guard-room through which they had come, was peopled only in dusky corners by fearsomely lifelike suits of armour. Its empty fireplaces made it seem still more desolate and deserted. War-worn flags hung from the gallery overhead, to which a wide stairway with many shallow steps gave access. Dead and gone Justices and St. Justs and Juras looked coldly down, from out of dark, tarnished frames, at the whispering intruders.
"You're Mrs. M'Kissock, aren't you?" Mr. Jobling remarked with affable condescension as they followed that hard-featured personage into a seemingly endless passage lined and hung with heads and horns and other trophies of the chase from all parts of the world.
She glanced sharply round at him again and bowed in silent assent.
"I've been here before, you know," he mentioned as she ushered the little party into the first of an extensive suite of rooms at the far end of the corridor they had traversed. Sallie could scarcely repress the exclamation of pleasure that rose to her lips; for the rooms, all opening into each other and with the doors wide, stretched across the entire breadth of the building, so that their furthest windows looked straight out to sea. There was nothing between them and the wide Atlantic but a cluster of miniature islets, emerald-green, at the distant mouth of the loch.
"This was her late ladyship's favourite suite," said Mrs. M'Kissock precisely. "The outermost room was her boudoir once. But his lordship had that altered—afterwards."
Sallie listened like one in a dream. She could scarcely believe that these had once been her own mother's rooms, that this gaunt, austere serving-woman was stating matters of fact in that dry, lifeless voice of hers. She longed to get Mrs. M'Kissock alone and question her about—everything. But she had been warned by both Mr. Jobling and Jasper Slyne that she must contain every symptom of curiosity till they could grant her permission to speak for herself.
She passed, with a little, impatient sigh, from one range of rooms to another, each with its own tag of story or history duly related by Mrs. M'Kissock, until they reached the great hall again from a further passage, and very glad of her expert guidance through such a maze.
From there the housekeeper took them, by way of the central staircase and gallery up a steep corkscrew stair in a turret to the top of what had been the main tower before the North Keep had been built, and out on to the battlements, where the Spanish guns still stand guard, among a multitude of other obsolete pieces, including a carronade or two from the ancient foundry at Falkirk, over the equally futile suits of mail in the halls below.
She offered to show them the dungeons and torture-chamber and oubliette, on the way to the water-gate, but Mr. Jobling declared that it was too late by then to go underground that day, and she led them instead along the north corridor, through the late earl's private study and library and smoking-room, through a dozen other equally superfluous apartments, till they regained the corridor at the end where an open doorway led through into the spacious circular hall at the base of the North Keep.
"This part of the castle is private, sir," Mrs. M'Kissock informed Mr. Jobling, who had already stepped in.
"I'd like my friends to see the sunset from the Warder's Tower," he returned, "if you don't mind. We won't disturb anyone on our way upstairs."
Mrs. M'Kissock still looked uncertain, but Slyne had already followed the lawyer's lead and Captain Dove was calmly pushing past her. She glanced at Sallie again, and then bowed her also in. And they all proceeded quietly up the carpeted winding staircase, past several landings, the doors of which were closed.
But the door at the turret-top was wide, and Mrs. M'Kissock was obviously a good deal disturbed in her mind as Mr. Jobling stepped to one side and politely gave Sallie precedence out into the open air.
Sallie smiled careless thanks for the courtesy and was still smiling when she emerged from the low doorway and stopped just beyond its threshold, so that Mr. Jobling and the others behind her had to wait patiently where they were while she gazed, enraptured and forgetful of all else, at the scene before her.
The sun was setting, blood-red, over the far sea-rim, and there was no least cloud in the radiant sky. The clear-cut mountains on either hand, the still loch and the broad Atlantic beyond it were all aglow with a marvellous, mystic light; the little cottages on the shore, three hundred sheer feet below her, were crimson instead of white; the very smoke which came from their chimneys seemed somehow ethereal and unreal.
She stood alone for a moment or two in a world transformed, till the quick, keen, exquisite pleasure of it brought a mist to her eyes that blurred it all, and, as she raised a hand to brush that away, she suddenly realized that she was not alone. There was a young man leaning over an embrasure at one corner of the battlements, who had been gazing, like her, at the sunset till she had come forth.
He was gazing at her now, and with even more admiration, however unconscious, than he had been bestowing on the beauties of nature inanimate; for the waning light had transfigured her sweet, sensitive features also, and into a semblance such as one might imagine an angel would wear.
Her eyes met his, and they two stood regarding each other so for the space of five fateful seconds. She had recognised him at once, but it was apparent that he did not yet know who she was.
He came forward then, limping a little, and bowed, bareheaded, to her; a sufficiently self-confident youth, straight and limber, good-looking enough, with smiling grey eyes and a mobile mouth, somewhat wistful at that moment in spite of his eyes.
"I'm sorry if I'm in the way," he said pleasantly. "Won't you come out and look round? The view all about is beyond any words of mine—and you're only seeing part of it there."
He hesitated slightly, regarding her with a very puzzled expression, before plunging further, and then, "I'm Justin Carthew," he continued, since she made no move at all, "although my lawyers would have me believe that I'm the ninth Earl of Jura now!" He laughed aloud, as if that idea were amusing. "In any case," he concluded naïvely, "the sunset doesn't belong to me."
She stepped out into the afterglow, still without a word, her mind full of vague misgivings. And, as Mr. Jobling followed her from the doorway, with Slyne and Captain Dove at his heels, and Mrs. M'Kissock, nervously fumbling with her chatelaine, last of all, Justin Carthew drew back a couple of paces.
"Your lawyers have misinformed you, Mr. Carthew," said Mr. Jobling in his most dogmatic manner. "You are no more the ninth Earl of Jura than I am, because—Let me introduce you—more formally!—to Lady Josceline Justice, the late earl's daughter, on whose property you are trespassing here."
Justin Carthew was standing as if thunderstruck by these extraordinary statements. His incredulous glance shifted from the stout stranger of the tinted eye and the inimical stare to the others of the little group regarding him, until it met Sallie's again, and they two looked blankly into each other's eyes while Mr. Jobling proceeded to introduce himself as her ladyship's legal adviser, and stated briefly the grounds on which his dogmatic assertion was based.
To Carthew, the lawyer's voice seemed to come from very far away, but none the less intelligibly, as he himself stood gazing at the girl to whom he owed his life, whom he had last seen late at night among the shadows on the deck of theOlive Branchin Genoa harbour. At first sight it had seemed so utterly impossible that it could be she who had stepped out on to the Warder's Tower of Loquhariot that he had supposed the sun in his eyes and a striking resemblance must have combined to delude him.
But—he knew now that it was really she. And as Mr. Jobling, concluding his homily, mentioned again who she claimed to be, he was dazedly thankful that he had not at once contradicted her lawyer; as he might have done—since he knew as a matter of fact that the real Lady Josceline Justice was dead.
Mr. Jobling had also repeated that Mr. Carthew was trespassing there. But at that Sallie turned on her legal adviser in generous indignation, and he shrank into the background again as she spoke.
"If this ismyproperty, as you say it is," she flashed, "what right haveyouto tell any visitor that he is trespassing here! And if Mr. Carthew has been misinformed—"
"He isn't a visitor, Sallie. He's the man in possession at present," whispered the smartly-dressed young-old man who had been studying Carthew with a most supercilious expression, "and you'd better leave Mr. Jobling to deal with him." He was obviously not at all pleased with her, and his whisper was perfectly audible.
The girl had stopped to listen to him. "We're evidently the trespassers, then," she finished. "Wehave no business here at all while he remains in possession."
The other man of the party, a white-haired old fellow in clerical garb and wearing a pair of smoked glasses, also turned angrily toward her. But at that moment Mrs. M'Kissock came stumbling forward between them, with a little broken cry, all her habitual self-restraint vanished, her harsh features working, very near tears; and, lifting a hand of the girl's in both of her own to her lips, fondled it foolishly, muttering disconnected phrases.
"I knew—Iknew it from the first," she mumbled, "and yet—I did not dare believe my own eyes. But now—God bless your bonny ladyship! And God be thanked for that you have at last come back to your own! Loquhariot has waited very long for this late day, and—
"Say ye now there's amanin possession!" she spoke up, glancing defiance at the individual in the Norfolk suit and then, though with less of disfavour, at Justin Carthew. "Say ye so?—and to me, who have kept the keys of the empty Castle of Loquhariot for her ladyship here, ever since the Red Earl her father laid that trust on me from his death-bed!
"You have been ill-informed. There isnoman in possession here."
Carthew was staring at her as if he were altogether at his wits' end. He almost doubted the evidence of his own ears. Had he not known as a matter of fact that Lady Josceline Justice wasdead, old Janet M'Kissock's spontaneous championship of this pretender would almost have convinced him to the contrary. He could feel sure of only one further fact, which was that Sallie herself had been tricked into her impostor's part.
However, he had no time just then to come to any further conclusion. He had to decide at once what he should do to safeguard her, and did so, recalling only the debt he owed her.
"Therehasevidently been some mistake," said he, looking levelly into her troubled eyes. "I hope you won't hold me to blame for that. And, believe me, I'm very glad that you have come to Loquhariot."
He could say no more than that at the moment. He bowed to her, and, turning into the turret doorway, limped off downstairs. He wanted to be alone for a little. He wanted time to think. He felt absolutely stunned.
Mrs. M'Kissock, no less perturbed, her cap all awry, followed him down the winding stairway as far as the door of the rooms he had only occupied for a day or two.
"I'm going to remove to the inn," he said, in answer to her agitated excuses and explanations. "It will be better so in the meantime. Will you tell one of the men to take my baggage there for me, please?"
He did not deem it advisable just then to ask her any question or make any comment at all. And within another minute or two he had passed out of the postern, surrendering the Castle of Loquhariot, for the time being, to one who had no claim or title to it.
But, as he stopped beyond the drawbridge to light the pipe he had mechanically pulled out, he pursed up his lips as though to whistle. And, "What proof canIproduce!" he exclaimed, moving on again with the cold pipe between his teeth, his head bent, perplexed to the last degree.
The walk through the darkling woods to the village and the cold, clean air cleared his wits a little. He found Ambrizette huddled over the fire in the best room at the Jura Arms, and, having bespoken supper and a bed for himself, went on along the shore road to think things out, if he could.
Only half an hour before, he had been congratulating himself on the fact that his troubles were nearing an end. And now—
"It's been nothing but trouble ever since I first saw that damned advertisement," he remarked to himself, recalling step after painful step of the way he had travelled to where he was.
A few months before he had seen and answered an anxious advertisement in an American paper for any surviving relative, no matter how distant, of the Jura family, he had invested all of his scarce capital in a cattle-run in Texas which seemed to promise to pay quick profits. And, in spite of all that the English lawyers who had replied to his letter could say to tempt him, he had remained quite firm in his wise resolution to stay there and reap those profits before crossing the Atlantic in pursuit of his further fortune; until a smart junior partner of theirs had paid him a flying visit at the ranch, and proved to him how foolishly he was acting against his own interests.
For it seemed, after due investigation and proof positive of his distant kinship with the family, that there could be only one life between him and the title of Earl of Jura, with all that pertained thereto—a life which even the very conservative English Court of Chancery was by then disposed to presume extinct.
The astute young lawyer had told Carthew all the facts which his firm had managed to ferret out concerning the late countess's disappearance and death. It seemed, humanly speaking, impossible that her child could have survived her. Justin Carthew had thought it all over and an accident had settled the question for him. His pony came down with him one day and he was badly trampled by the steers he had been heading. His doctor sentenced him to six months' rest—out of the saddle. As soon as he was able to move he raised a mortgage on the ranch and made for London. That mortgage was almost due by now, and his expected profit on the run had faded into a stiff loss during his absence.
Messrs. Bolder & Bolder, the lawyers aforesaid, had made it clear to him from the first that, while they had the utmost faith in the outcome of their exertions on his behalf, they could not see their way to place their services and special knowledge at his disposal except on a spot-cash basis; that, in short, he must provide in advance the money to foot their bill. He had done so, and they, in return, had not failed to implement all their promises. Even now he could not feel that they had dealt unfairly by him.
And the balance of his bank account had been eaten up by his expedition to Africa in search of more authentic record of the ex-dancer countess's death and as to the fate of her child. He had taken that somewhat rash step, too, of his own free will and for his own personal satisfaction. He was personally aware now that both the countess and her daughter were dead; but—he could bring forward no proof at all of that fact, and, as Bolder & Bolder had politely pointed out to him, his personal testimony alone was that of an interested party and worthless to them or anyone else.
He had suffered sorely, both body and mind, since he and his party had been betrayed into El Farish's hands by an Arab guide. And now—
He was a penniless peer of the United Kingdom, with every prospect of being unable to maintain those rights which he knew were his, an impecunious citizen of the United States, with a foreclosure threatening him there. The result of all his own efforts so far was failure.
And yet, he felt that he ought to be thankful that he had come through alive. "A living dog is better than a dead lion," he told himself. "And—I owe that girl my life. But for her, I'd be—" He shrugged his shoulders. It was not pleasant, there in the dark, to recall that hole in the sand on the African coast which he had only escaped by a hairbreadth, thanks to her.
"I wouldn't be here at all," he reflected. "And that fat lawyer of hers would see her settled into my place without any fuss. He said, in fact, that the Chancery Court had practically admitted her claim to it already.
"And now—howam I to get up and swear she's a fraud! How am I to repay all I owe her—by fighting her for another man's leavings!"
He halted, to fill his pipe, and found it full. He lighted it, and turned back toward the inn. It had just recurred to him that, even if he were disposed to fight her for his inheritance, there were very strong financial reasons as well as merely sentimental ones against that course. He was already in Bolder & Bolder's debt. He had had to apply to them by wire for his fare to London from Genoa. They had further defrayed the Court costs of that order of access to the archives of Loquhariot which Mr. Justice Gaunt had recently made in his favour, and had furnished him with a few pounds for subsequent expenses.
But they had taken the opportunity to mention, always politely, that they could go no farther than that beyond the terms of their original bargain: and that the next advance of cash must come from him to them.
In a word, he could not afford to fight either her or anyone else just then. And he had a very strong impression that the fat lawyer who had interposed between him and the girl would put up a protracted, expensive battle on her behalf.
"But some day I'll have a couple of rounds withhim," Carthew promised himself. "Just at the moment—my hands are tied. And, what's more, the Courts are closed."
He sighed.
"I can't hurt her, in any case," he declared conclusively to the night. "I'm not much of a judge of girls, but—she's—
"I must just wait and see," he said to himself. "I'm helpless. And—I'm hers, anyhow, as I told her in Genoa. A promise is a promise, no matter what its keeping costs."
He looked up at the black bulk of the castle in the distance. Its numberless narrow windows were all aglow, and in a cresset on one tower a fire was burning brightly.
"She's taken possession all right," he cogitated. "But probably she doesn't even know that the beacon's been kindled."
As he limped through the village again, he could not but notice the unusual stir in its long single street. At every cottage door there was a whispering group staring up at the Warder's Tower. The sound of oars in haste reached his ears from across the loch. And he was aware of many inquisitive glances directed at him as he passed.
His simple supper was awaiting him in the best room of the little inn. The black dwarf had been sent for from the castle, the outwardly stolid and incurious maid-of-all-work informed him. He sat down by the fire, content for the moment as he recalled the glamour of the afterglow from the west and Sallie's grave glance.
He thought of nothing else throughout his meal, and afterwards, puffing at a cigar in the lamp-lit porch with a plaid about him to keep the cold out, could scarcely bring himself to consider his own precarious situation again. When he at last applied his mind to that he was somewhat dispirited.
He had only a few shillings left in his purse, and could not afford to stay where he was for more than a day or two. He was a stranger in a strange land, a land in which, as he had learned already, men in their prime had to compete keenly for work which might bring them in no more than four or five dollars a week: a very unpromising land in which to be left with empty pockets.