CHAPTER XIX
In the Crypt
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Late on the evening of Senator Sherman’s arrival at Prior’s Tarrant he was alone with General Sadgrove in the smoking-room, the Duke of Beaumanoir and Forsyth having avowedly gone up to bed. Under the influence of the genial American, and with the Duke himself in a more expansive mood, dinner and the subsequent reunion in the tapestry-room had been prolonged later than recently, and the chiming clock on the mantelpiece tinkled out the hour of midnight as the Senator put the question:
“Who the dickens is that Talmage Eglinton woman, Jem?”
The General started, but affected a carelessness which he was far from feeling in the trite reply that “Goodness only knew.” He proceeded, however, to temper the crudity of the remark with the information that the lady in question was staying in London for the season, professed to hail from Chicago, and was reputed wealthy.
“She is hardly the type of American one expects to meet in such a house as this—or wants to meet anywhere,” said the Senator. “And,” he added, poising the match with which he was about to light another of his own green Havanas, “she is the cause of prejudice in a usually unbiased mind. She has the misfortune to be fashioned in the likeness of one Cora Lestrade, a person of note in my country, whom I once saw in my capacity of Visiting Prison Commissioner. That was three years ago, but of course it can’t be the same woman.”
“It would be a curious coincidence,” was all the General would admit. “She was taken up by Lord and Lady Roseville, impecunious folk who would take up anyone for value received. What was this Cora Lestrade’s particular line of business?”
The Senator reflected for a moment.
“I don’t think she specialized herself,” he said. “Her forte was organization, and I heard that at the time she was taken she bossed a complete outfit, comprising forgers, confidence-men, train-robbers, and high-grade criminals of all sorts, who operated over the entire universe. They used to regard her as a queen. It was hinted at her trial that they were all fascinated by the spell of her charms, though she would never favor any of the crew in that way. Probably that was the secret of her power over them.”
“You don’t happen to know when her sentence expired?” the General asked, after a pause.
“It didn’t expire; she broke jail—an easy matter for one as well served as she was by a clever crowd with unlimited financial resources.”
The two old cronies relapsed into a thoughtful silence, neither of them showing a disposition to retire for the night, though the intense stillness prevailing in the great house implied that everyone else was asleep. Yet it was not so, for Alec Forsyth was at that moment uncommonly busy before the looking-glass in his bedroom. On the toilet-table there lay open a theatrical “make-up” box, from which he was putting the finishing touches to a very creditable transformation of himself into a semblance of the Duke. His deft usage of the various pigments revealed him as no tyro at the task, for which, indeed, his proficiency as an amateur actor had inspired the idea.
“That will do, I think,” he said to himself after a final survey. “It is a good thing that the scene is to be played without limelight effects; but it is my voice that will give me away if anything does.”
He rose and crossed the room once or twice, copying Beaumanoir’s slight limp to the life. Then, having consulted his watch, he took from his pocket-book a letter, addressed to the man he was about to personate, and refreshed his memory.
“I congratulate you on this return to your senses,” the writer began. “My agents inform me that the gentleman in whom we are interested is expected to stay at Prior’s Tarrant as your guest on arrival, being due on Tuesday. On Tuesday night you will leave unfastened the door leading into the crypt from the Dutch garden, so that I and my assistants may obtain access secretly. You will come down into the erypt an hour after midnight, when I will hand you the documents for substitution. Do not fail to make your arrangements so that the exchange may be effected without a hitch, and as rapidly as possible. As host you should have no difficulty in inspiring the necessary confidence to put the business through, and you will then be troubled no further by us.—C. Z.”
“Poor old Beau! He’s played up as well as if we had told him all about our plan,” Forsyth muttered as he replaced the letter and took another look at himself in the glass. “I trust they won’t call me ‘your Grace,’ and make me laugh.”
But it was in no laughing mood that he switched off the electric light, listened at the door for fully a minute, and then softly opened it. His room, as it had been in the London house, was next to that of the Duke, and, satisfied that there was no one in the corridor, he slid out softly and shut the door behind him. A few natural steps having brought him opposite the Duke’s room, he fell at once into Beaumanoir’s limp, and so continued his way to the head of a secondary staircase that led down to the service rooms on the ground floor.
At the foot of the stairs, never forgetting his limp, he traversed several passages in which at long intervals only had a light been left burning, and at length he came to a massive oak door. Opening this, he found himself at the top of a flight of straight stone steps, running down into the blackness of the great subterranean chamber, which had been used as a crypt in the old monastic days. The shutting of the door cut off the last ray of light, and there being no rails to the steps he struck a wax match in order to make the descent in safety. But the feeble flame had hardly flickered out when it was rendered useless by a dazzling beam of white effulgence that suddenly sprang into being and shone upon him from below.
“Hang it all, I didn’t allow for this!” he thought uneasily. “They have brought one of those wretched portable electric lamps, and I doubt if the disguise will stand. However, here goes.”
Nerving himself for the ordeal, he went slowly down the steps, and so limped across the stone floor towards a spot in the very center of the crypt where five figures were grouped under the groined roof. He had only time to observe that one figure—that of an old man with snow-white beard and puffed, purple cheeks—stood slightly in advance of the rest, when on his near approach an order was given in a queer, parrot-like squeak to switch out the lamp. The crypt was windowless, but it was conceivable that a light in the interior might be seen from outside under the door leading into the gardens. Hence, doubtless, the precaution.
“You have made all preparations above, Duke?” was queried in the same piping voice.
“The bonds are in my own safe, and I obtained the key of the Senator’s despatch-box by a trick—picked his pocket, in fact—after dinner,” Forsyth replied, in a perfect imitation of Beaumanoir’s tone. He was beginning to feel more confident in being able to sustain his part; he would not, he thought, have lived to reach this parley if his disguise had been penetrated.
“Then,” the unseen spokesman proceeded, “all you have to do is to take this bundle of papers and place them in the box, extracting the originals, and returning here at once with them. It will then give me pleasure to absolve you from further service.”
Forsyth felt a large packet pressed into his grasp, and he instantly turned with it to go towards the steps, expecting that the lamp would be switched on to guide him. This proved to be the case, and he was glad that those five scoundrels only had a back view of him as he limped across the floor and laboriously climbed the steps. Nor when he had passed through the door out of their sight was there any quickening of his halting gait to show that he was exulting in that he had so far successfully risked his life for his friend. And it was well that he kept up his part, for as he crossed under the well of the staircase to the servants’ bedrooms he caught a glimpse of Rosa, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton’s French maid, watching him over the banisters.
Mounting to his own room he locked the bundle of papers he had received away in one of his trunks, from which he first took a packet of similar dimensions, formidably sealed. Without wasting a moment he placed this packet under his arm, and, falling once more into Beaumanoir’s limp, retraced his steps to the crypt, where, as soon as he had passed through the door, a beam from the portable lamp shed a glare on his descent to the level of the floor. The five figures, with the white-bearded old man in advance, awaited him as before.
As Forsyth approached he hoped every moment to hear those parrot-like tones order the light to be cut off, but this time no such welcome sound fell upon his ears. He had to advance quite close with the full radiance of the lamp shining on him. The light, he soon perceived, had been retained for the purpose of examining the packet, which Ziegler snatched from him with impatient vehemence; and suddenly Forsyth was confronted with a situation not wholly unforeseen, but which he had hoped to avoid in the haste of the gang to make off with their plunder. Not content with a scrutiny of the carefully taped and sealed dummy package, Ziegler was about to undo the fastenings and look at the contents, which consisted of nothing more valuable than tissue paper.
It seemed an age while the lithe white fingers broke the seals and disarranged the tape, and Forsyth steadied himself for the inevitable discovery. He was not prepared to lose his life at the hands of this murderous crew without a fight for it, five to one though they were; and it occurred to him that at the first sign of violence his best plan would be to smash the electric lamp with a well-directed kick, and then try and elude them in the dark. Ziegler’s face was in shadow, the miscreant holding the lamp being behind him; but Forsyth saw at last, by the swift upward jerk of the arch-robber’s head, that the worthlessness of the bundle was known to him. It was probable, too, from the prolonged silent stare with which he gazed and gazed at the Duke’s counterfeit, that the latter’s identity was no longer a secret.
With quite a natural movement Forsyth edged a little nearer to the man with the lamp, and the movement seemed to break the spell which held Ziegler speechless. The chief turned abruptly to his followers.
“I must have a word with this gentleman—with the Duke—alone,” he squeaked. “Go out into the garden and await close outside—within call. Here, I will keep the lamp.” Forsyth noticed that the well-shaped hand with which he grasped the contrivance was shaking violently—so violently, that the ray with which he guided his four subordinates through the groined arches to the door wavered like a will-o’-the-wisp. He waited till the last one had filed out before he turned again to the man who had baffled him.
“Well, Mr. Forsyth?” he piped, and the high-pitched note quivered and trembled as the lamp-ray had done.
“Well, sir?” Forsyth repeated, in blank amazement at the sparing of his life, for unless some hidden treachery beyond his fathoming was afoot, he could not doubt that it was spared. He was more than a physical match for the aged evil-doer in front of him, and before the others could be recalled he could make good his retreat into the house by the way he had come. The quiet acceptance of defeat by the bloodthirsty old schemer was a puzzle beyond solution, if it was not a veil for some further villainy.
“You have beaten me, Mr. Forsyth—you and General Sadgrove,” Ziegler went on. “I don’t suppose it’s of any use my offering you a bribe to bring me back the package you have obtained so smartly? I would make it a very large one.”
“Not the slightest use,” Forsyth answered, almost laughing, yet more than ever puzzled by the naïveté of the question. “I have been at considerable pains to deprive you of your bogus bonds, and it is hardly likely, Mr. Ziegler, that I am going to restore your power over the Duke of Beaumanoir. He is a brave man, and doesn’t fear death. You can’t hurt him that way; but with these forgeries in your possession you might make some sort of a story good against him. Without them, anything you could say would be an idle tale.”
“That is not the point, believe me, Mr. Forsyth,” the shrill voice quavered almost pleadingly. “The contents of that package took three of my most skilled colleagues months to prepare. They are proud of their work—love those forged bonds as if they were their children. To their pride in their work I should owe my life, if you would give them back to me.”
Forsyth could hardly believe his ears. Could this tremulous dotard be the redoubtable master of crime whom he and his uncle had been fighting throughout the last crowded week? “I really don’t see how your not particularly valuable life can depend on your possession of a lot of bogus bonds,” he said, with genuine curiosity. The appeal to his pity filled him with vague uneasiness, the alleged reason for it being so utterly absurd. Yet Ziegler was ready with an explanation, more or less plausible.
“My associates will kill me for being duped out of their handiwork,” he answered, glancing fearfully to the garden entrance. “They would perhaps pardon the miscarriage of the main scheme, but to have parted with material which might yet have been turned to account will seal my doom—that, and having allowed you to survive your triumph over us.”
Forsyth saw now—or thought he saw—why the murderous crew had been ordered off in ignorance of the miscarriage. It was to enable Ziegler to make this desperate appeal for the restitution of the bogus bonds, so that he might “save his face” with his comrades. It would be ample excuse in their eyes—flatter their vanity, as their tottering chief had hinted—if he had himself been deceived by the fabricated securities. But they had seen him examine the parcel; they would know that he had made the discovery on the spot, and yet had not decreed instant death to their successful opponent. One flaw in this chain of reasoning Forsyth, himself no casuist, overlooked. It did not occur to him that the old practitioner with the white beard and the squeaky voice could have put himself right with his companions if he had hounded them on to him the moment he knew he was fingering tissue-paper and not United States Treasury bonds, good, bad, or indifferent.
“Well, Mr. Clinton Ziegler,” said Forsyth, eager now to have done with the matter in the only possible way, “your appeal is dismissed with costs—on the higher scale. What does it matter to me what happens to you? If you had had your way you would have earned a legal hanging four times in the last week. If your friends save the common hangman the trouble, so much the better for all concerned, especially as they would thereby get themselves hanged also.”
“Nothing will move you?”
“Absolutely nothing; and now I’ll trouble you to clear off the premises if you and your gentlemen outside don’t want to be treated as ordinary burglars.”
“What if I call them back and have you strangled?”
With the way of escape open behind him Forsyth laughed at the futile threat, and to the group outside in the Dutch garden it must have sounded like a friendly laugh of mutual satisfaction and farewell, for he gently pushed the old man before him to the garden door and shut it on him. Then, having carefully shot the heavy bolts, he groped his way back to the stone steps leading up into the house, triumphant, yet not wholly convinced. The ignominous collapse of Mr. Clinton Ziegler was almost too good to be true, and he was painfully conscious that such an astute antagonist was not likely to have thrown all his cards on to the table.
The fact, however, remained that the schemers had been deprived of their spurious bonds, without which their carefully planned design to obtain possession of the genuine ones fell to the ground.
“And their blood-feud against the poor chap will surely cease, now that there is no crime, past or contemplated, for which he can denounce them,” Forsyth comforted himself as he stepped from the door at the head of the stone stairs and hastened along the dimly lit corridor, limping no longer. His destination was the smoking-room, where he guessed that the General would be eagerly awaiting news.