There seemed indeed but one chance for me: to secure the pardon of Ilga! It was only on her account that I felt remorse. I had realised that from the beginning. And I determined to seek her out that very day, unbosom myself of my passion, and confess the injury which I had done her.
It may be remembered that I was on the brink of the confession when Marston ascended the stairs at the apartment of the Countess, and interrupted me. Since then, though I had enjoyed opportunities enough, I had kept silence; for it was always my habit, due, I fancy, to a certain retiring timidity which I had not as yet thoroughly mastered, to wait somewhat slavishly upon circumstances, rather than to direct my wits to disposing the circumstances in the conjunction best suited to my end. Before I spoke or acted, I needed ever the “confederate season,” as Shakespeare has it. Now, however, I determined to take the matter into my own hands, and tarry no longer for the opportune accident. So, leaving orders with my servants that they should procure a locksmith and have the lock of the garden door repaired, I set out and walked to Pall Mall.
To my grief I discovered that I had tarried too long. Countess Lukstein, the servant told me—he was not Otto—had left London early that morning on a visit into the country. A letter, however, had been written to me. It was handed to me at the door, since the messenger had not yet started to deliver it. With the handwriting I was unfamiliar, and I turned at once to the signature. It was only natural, I assured myself, that Mademoiselle Durette should write; Ilga would no doubt be busy over the arrangements for her departure. But none the less I experienced a lively disappointment that she had not spared a moment to pen the missive herself. Mademoiselle Durette informed me that news had arrived from Lukstein which compelled them to return shortly to the Tyrol, and that consequently they had journeyed that morning into the country, in order to pay a visit which they had already put off too long. The Countess would be absent for the space of a fortnight, but would return to London without fail to take fitting leave of her friends.
The first three days of her absence lagged by with a most tedious monotony. It seems to me now that I spent them entirely in marching backwards and forwards on the pavement of Pall Mall. Only one thing, indeed, afforded me any interest—the door in my garden wall. For there was nothing whatever amiss with the lock, and on no subsequent night did it fly open. I closely examined my servants to ascertain whether any one of them had made use of it for egress, but they all strenuously denied that they had left the house that night, and I was driven to the conclusion that I had turned the key before closing the door, so that the lock had missed its socket in the post.
On the fourth day, however, an incident occurred which made the next week fly like a single hour, and brought me to long most ardently, not merely that the Countess might lengthen her visit, but that she would depart from England without so much as passing through London on her way. For as I waked that morning at a somewhat late hour, I perceived Marston sitting patiently on the edge of my bed. He was in riding-dress, with his boots and breeches much stained with mud, and he carried a switch in his hand. For a while I lay staring at him in silent surprise. He did not notice that I was awake, and sat absorbed in a moody reverie. At last I stirred, and he turned towards me. I noticed that his face was dirty and leaden, his eyes heavy and tired.
“You sleep very well,” said he.
“Have you waited long?”
“An hour. I was anxious to speak to you, so I came up to your room.”
“We can talk the matter over at breakfast,” said I cheerfully, though, to tell the truth, I felt exceedingly uneasy at the strangeness of his manner. And I made a movement as though I would rise; but he budged not so much as an inch.
“I don’t fancy we shall breakfast together,” said he, with a slow smile, and after a pause: “you sleep very well,” he repeated, “considering that you have a crime upon your conscience.”
I started up in my bed.
“Lie down!” he snarled, with a sudden fierceness, and with a queer sense of helplessness I obeyed him.
“That’s right,” he continued, with a patronising smile. “Keep quiet and listen!”
For the moment, however, there was nothing for me to listen to, since Marston sat silent, watching with evident enjoyment the concern which I betrayed. He had chosen the easiest way with me. The least hint of condescension in another’s voice always made me conscious in the extreme of my own shortcomings, and I felt that I lay help less in some new toils of his weaving.
At last he spoke.
“You killed Count Lukstein.”
I was prepared for the accusation by his previous words. “Well?” I asked, in as natural a tone as I could command.
“Well,” he returned, “I would not be too hard with you. What if you returned to Cumberland to-day, and stayed there? Your estates, I am sure, will thrive all the better for their master’s supervision.”
“My estates,” I replied, “have a steward to supervise them. Their master will return to them at no man’s bidding.”
“It is a pity, a very great pity,” said he thoughtfully, flicking his switch in the air. “For not only are you unwise in your own interests, but you drive me to a proceeding which I assure you is very repugnant and distasteful to my nature. Really, Mr Buckler, you should have more consideration for others.”
The smooth irony of his voice began to make my anger rise.
“And what is this proceeding?” I inquired.
“It would be my duty,” he began, and I interrupted him.
“I can quite understand, then, that it is repugnant to your nature.”
He smiled indulgently.
“It is a common fault of the very young to indulge in dialectics at inappropriate seasons. It would be my duty, unless you retired obediently to Cumberland, to share my knowledge with the lady you have widowed.”
“I shall save you that trouble,” said I, much relieved, “for I am in the mind to inform the Countess of the fact myself. Indeed, I called at her lodging the other day with that very object.”
“But the Countess had left, and you didn’t.” He turned on me sharply; the words were more a question than a statement. I remained silent, and he smiled again. “As it is, I shall inform her. That will make all the difference.”
I needed no arguments to convince me of the truth of what he said. The confession must come from me, else was I utterly undone. I sat up and looked at him defiantly.
“So be it, then I It is a race between us which shall reach her first.”
“Pardon me,” he explained, in the same unruffled, condescending tone; “there will be no race, for I happen to know where the Countess is a-visiting, and you, I fancy, do not. I have the advantage of you in that respect.”
I glanced at him doubtfully. Did he seek to bluff me into yielding, I wondered? But he sat on the bedside carelessly swinging a leg, with so easy a composure that I could not hesitate to credit his words. However, I feigned not to believe him, and telling him as much, fell back upon my pillow with a show of indifference, and turned my face from him to the wall, as though I would go to sleep.
“You do believe me,” he insisted suavely. “You do indeed. Besides, I can give you proof of my knowledge. I am so certain that I know the lady’s whereabouts, and that you do not, that I will grant you four days’ grace to think the matter over. As I say. I have no desire to press you hard, and to be frank with you, I am not quite satisfied as to how my information would be received.” I turned back towards him, and noticing the movement, he continued: “Oh, make no mistake, Mr Buckler! The disclosure will ruin your chance most surely. But will it benefit me? That is the point. However, I must take the risk, and will, if you persist in your unwisdom.”
I lay without answering him, turning over in my mind the only plan I could think of which offered me a chance of outwitting him.
“You might send word to me, four days from now, which alternative you prefer. Today is Monday. On Thursday I shall expect to hear from you.”
He uncrossed his legs as he spoke, and the scabbard of his sword rattled against the frame of the bed. The sound, chiming appositely to my thoughts, urged me to embrace my plan, and I did embrace it, though reluctantly. After all, I thought, ’twas a dishonourable wooing that Marston was about. So I said with a sneer,—“Men have been called snivelling curs for better conduct than yours.”
“By pedantic schoolboys,” he replied calmly. “But then the schoolboys have been whipped for their impertinence.”
With that he drew the bed-clothes from my chest, and raised his whip in the air. I clenched my fists, and did not stir a muscle. I could have asked for nothing that was more like to serve me. I made a mistake, however, in not feigning some slight resistance, and he suddenly flung back the clothes upon me.
“The ruse was ingenious,” he said, with a smile, “but I cannot gratify you to the extent you wish. In a week’s time I shall have the greatest pleasure in crossing swords with you. But until then we must be patient.”
My patience was exhausted already, and raising myself upon my elbow, I loaded him with every vile epithet I could lay my tongue to. He listened with extraordinary composure and indifference, stripping off his gloves the while, until I stopped from sheer lack of breath.
“It’s all very true,” he remarked quietly. “I have nothing to urge against the matter of your speech. Your voice is, I think, unnecessarily loud, but that is a small defect and easily reformed.”
The utter failure of my endeavour to provoke him to an encounter, combined with the contemptuous insolence of his manner, lifted me to the highest pitch of fury.
“You own your cowardice, then!” I cried, fairly beside myself with rage. “You have plotted against me from the outset like a common, rascally intriguer. No device was too mean for you to adopt. Why, the mere lie about the miniature—”
I stopped abruptly, seeing that he turned on me a sudden questioning look.
“Miniature?” he exclaimed. “What miniature?”
I remembered the pledge which I had given to Ilga, and continued hurriedly, seeking to cover up my slip,—“I could not have believed there was such underhand treachery in the world.”
“Then now, said he, “you are better informed,” and on the instant his composure gave way. It seemed as though he could no longer endure the strain which his repression threw on him. Passion leaped into his face, and burned there like a flame; his voice vibrated and broke with the extremity of feeling: his very limbs trembled. “’Tis all old talk to me—ages old and hackneyed. You are only repeating my thoughts, the thoughts I have lived with through this damned night. But I have killed them. Understand that!” His voice shrilled to a wild laugh. “I have killed them. Do you think I don’t know it’s cowardly? But there’s a prize to be won, and I tell you”—he raised his hands above his head, and spoke with a sort of devilish exaltation—“I tell you, were my mother alive, and did she stand between Ilga and me, I would trample her as surely as I mean to trample you.”
“Damn you!” I cried, wrought to a very hysteria by his manner. “Don’t call her by that name!”
“And you!” he said, and with an effort he recovered his self-control. “And you, are your hands quite clean, my little parson? You kill the husband secretly, and then woo the wife with all the innocence and timidity in the world. Is there no treachery in that?”
I was completely staggered by his words and the contempt with which they were spoken. That any one should conceive my lack of assurance in paying my addresses to be a deliberate piece of deceit, had never so much as entered my head. I had always been too busy upbraiding myself upon that very score. Yet I could not but realise now how plausible the notion appeared. ’Twas plain that Marston believed I had been carefully playing a part; and I wondered: Would Ilga imagine that too, when I told her my story? Would she believe that my deference and hesitation had been assumed to beguile her? I gazed at Marston, horror-stricken by the conjecture.
“Ay!” said he, nodding an answer-to my look, “we have found each other out. Come, let us be frank! We are just a couple of dishonest scoundrels, and preaching befits neither of us.”
He moved away from the bedside, and picked up his whip which he had dropped on the floor. It lay close to the window, and as he raised himself again, he looked out across the garden.
“You overlook the Park,” he said in an altered tone. “It is very strange.”
At the time I was so overwhelmed by the construction which he had placed upon my behaviour, that I did not carefully consider what he meant. Thinking over the remark subsequently, however, I inferred from it, what indeed I had always suspected, that Marston had no knowledge his interviews and promenades with the Countess had taken place within sight of my windows.
He took up his hat, and opened the door.
“I told you fortune would give me my revenge,” he said.
“You are leaving your gloves,” said I, awakened to the necessity of action by his leave-taking.
The gloves were lying on the edge of the bed. Thanking me politely, he returned, and stooped forward to take them. I gathered them in my hand and tossed them into his face. His head went back as though I had struck him a blow; he flushed to a dark crimson, and I saw his fingers tighten about his whip. The next moment, however, he gave a little amused laugh.
“There is much of the child lingering in you, Mr Buckler,” he said. “’Tis a very amiable quality, and I wonder not that it gets you friends. Indeed, I should have rejoiced to have been reckoned among them myself, had such a consummation been possible.”
He spoke the last sentence with something of sincerity; but it only served to increase my rage.
“You cannot disregard the insult,” I cried.
“Why not? There are no witnesses.”
“There shall be witnesses and to spare on the next occasion,” I replied, baffled by his coolness. He shrugged his shoulders.
“You have four days to bring about that occasion. Afterwards I shall seek it myself.”
I had four days wherein to discover the whereabouts of Countess Lukstein, or to compel Marston to an encounter. The one alternative seemed impossible; the other, as I had evidence enough, little short of impossible.
Four days! The words beat into my brain like dull strokes of a hammer. I could not think for their pressing repetition. I was, moreover, bitterly sensible that I had myself placed the weapon for my destruction into Marston’s hand. For there was no doubting that he had obtained his knowledge from his sister. I had plumed myself somewhat upon my diplomacy in revealing my secret to her, and in using it as a means to force her to deny my acquaintance. Now, when it was all too late, I saw what a mistake my cleverness had been, For not only through Lady Tracy’s swoon had I missed my particular aim, but I had presented to my antagonist a veritable Excalibur, and kept not so much as a poniard for my own defence. Even then, however, I did not realise the entirety of the mistake, and had no inkling of the price I was to pay for it.
The first step which I took that morning was to make inquiries at the lodging of Countess Lukstein. The servants, however, whom she had left behind, knew—or rather pretended to know—nothing of their mistress’s journey, beyond what they had previously told me.
Since, then, it was impossible to search the length and breadth of England within four days, I was thrown back upon my last resource. It was discreditable enough even to my fevered mind; but I could see no other way out of the difficulty, and at all costs I was resolved that Marston should not relate his story to the Countess until I had related mine. For even if he was minded to speak the truth, it would make all the difference, as he justly said, which of us twain spoke the first. I felt certain, moreover, that he would not speak the truth. For, to begin with, he would ascribe my timidity to a carefully-laid plan, since that was his genuine conviction; and again, remembering the story which I believed him to have invented concerning the miniature, I had no doubt that he would so embroider his actual knowledge that I should figure on the pattern as a common assassin. How much of the real history of Count Lukstein’s death he knew, of course I was not aware, nor did I trouble myself to consider.
My conclusion, accordingly, was to fix upon him within the next four days an affront so public and precise that he must needs put the business without delay to the arbitrament of swords; in which case, I was determined, one or the other of us should find his account.
To this end I spent the day amidst the favourite resorts of the town, passing from the Piazza to the Exchange in search of him; thence back to St Paul’s Church, thence to Hyde Park, from the Park across the water to the Spring Garden at Lambeth, and thence again to Barn Elms. By this time the afternoon was far advanced, and bethinking me that he might by chance be dining abroad, I sought out the taverns which he most frequented: Pontac’s in Abchurch Lane, Locket’s, and the “Rummer.” But this pursuit was as fruitless as the former, and without waiting to bite a morsel myself, I hurried to make the round of the chocolate-houses. Marston, however, was not to be discovered in any of them, nor had word been heard of him that day. At the “Spread Eagle,” in Covent Garden, however, I fell across Lord Culverton, and framing an excuse persuaded him to bear me company; which he did with great good-nature, for he was engaged at ombre, a game to which he was much addicted. At the “Cocoa Tree” in Pall Mall, I secured Elmscott by a like pretext, and asked him if he knew of another who was minded for a frolic, and would make the fourth. He presented me immediately to a Mr Aglionby, a country gentleman of the neighbouring county to my own, but newly come to town, and very boisterous and talkative. I thought him the very man for my purpose, since he would be like to spread the report of the quarrel, and joining him to my company, I summoned a hackney coach, and we drove to the Lincoln’s Inn Fields. A hundred yards from Marston’s house I dismissed the coach and sent Elmscott and the rest of the party forward, myself following a little way behind. I had previously instructed Elmscott in the part which I desired him to play. Briefly, he was to inquire whether Marston was within; and if, as I suspected, that was the case, to seek admittance on the plea that he wished to introduce a friend from the country, in the person of Mr Aglionby. Whereupon I was to join myself quietly to the party, and so secure an entrance into the house in company with sufficient witnesses to render a duel inevitable upon any insult.
Marston, however, was prepared against all contingencies, for four servants appeared in answer to my cousin’s knocking; and as they opened the door no farther than would allow one person to enter at a time, it was impossible even to carry the entrance by a rush. My friends, however, had no thought of doing that, since one of the servants came forward into the street and gravely in formed them that his master had fallen suddenly sick of an infectious fever, and lay abed in a frenzy of delirium. Even as the fellow spoke, a noise of shouts and wild laughter came through the open door. My companions shuddered at the sounds, and with a few hasty expressions of regret, hurried away from the neighbourhood. I ran after them, shouting out that it was all a lie; that Marston had not one-tenth of the fever which possessed me, and that his illness was a coward’s dissimulation to avoid a just chastisement. However, I had better have spared my breath; for my words had no effect but to alienate their good-will, and they presently parted from me with every appearance of relief.
I walked home falling from depth to depth of despondency. The summer evening, pleasant with delicate colours, came down upon the town; the air was charged and lucent with a cool dew; the sweet odours of the country—nowhere, I think, so haunting, so bewitching to the senses as when one catches them astray in the heart of a city—were fragrant in the nostrils, so that the passers-by walked with a new alertness in their limbs, and a renewed youth in their faces; and as I stood at the door of my lodging, a great home-sickness swept in upon my soul, a longing for the dark fields in the starshine and the silent hills about them. I was seized with a masterful impulse to saddle my horse and ride northwards through the night, while the lights grew blurred and misty behind me, and the fresh wind blew out of the heavens on my face. I doubt not, however, that the desire would have passed ere I had got far, and that I should have felt much the same desolate home-sickness for the cobbles and dust of London as I felt now for Cumberland.
However, I did not test the strength of my impulse; for while I stood upon the steps debating whether I should go or stay, I perceived one of Marston’s servants coming towards me down the street. With a grave deference, under which, rightly or wrongly, I seemed to detect a certain irony, he gave me his master’s compliments, and handed me a little stick of wood. There was a single notch cut deep into the stick. I understood it to signify that one day out of the four had passed, and—so strangely is a man constituted—this gibing menace determined me to stay. It turned my rage, with its fitful alternatives of passion and despair, into a steady hate, just as one may stir together the scattered, spurting embers of a fire into one glowing fame.
Late that evening came Lord Elmscott to see me, and asked me with a concern which I little expected, after his curt desertion of a few hours agone, what dispute had arisen between Marston and myself. I told him as much as I could without revealing the ground of our quarrel; that Marston had certain knowledge concerning myself which he was minded to impart to Countess Lukstein; that I was fully sensible the Countess ought to be informed of the matter, but that I wished to carry the information myself; that I doubted Marston would not speak the truth, but would distort the story to suit his own ends. The rest of the events I related to him in the order in which they had occurred.
“But it may be,” he objected, “that Marston has really fallen sick.”
For reply, I handed him the stick of wood, and told him how it had been delivered.
“The fellow’s cunning,” he observed, “for not only is he out of your reach, but lie locks your mouth. You cannot urge that a man refuses to meet you when he lies abed with a fever, and you cannot prove that the sickness is feigned.”
For a while he sat silent, drumming with his fingers on the table. Then he asked,—“How comes it that Marston knows of this secret?”
“His sister must have told him,” I replied.
“His sister!” he repeated. “Why you never met her before this month.”
“I told her on the first occasion that I met her. She was in some measure concerned in it.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “She was engaged to Sir Julian Harnwood,” said he. I nodded assent. He brought his fist down on the table with a bang. “The trouble springs from that cursed journey of yours to Bristol. I warned you harm would come of it. Had Lady Tracy any reason to fear you?”
“None,” I replied promptly.
“Had she any reason to fear Countess Lukstein?”
“None,” I replied again; but after a moment’s thought I added: “But she did fear her. I am sure of it.”
He sprang to his feet.
“Three days!” he cried. “Three days! We may yet outwit him.”
“How?” I asked with the greatest eagerness.
“I’ll not tell you now. ’Tis no more than a fancy. Wait you here your three days. Keep a strict watch on Marston’s house. ’Tis unlikely that he will move before the time, since he would rather you spared him the telling of the story; but there’s no trusting him. On Thursday I will come to you here before midnight; so wait for me, unless, of course, Marston leaves before then. In that case, follow him, but send word here of your direction. You must be wary; the fellow’s cunning, and may get free from his house in some disguise.”
With that he clapped his hat on his head, and rushed out into the street. For the next three days I saw no more of him. About Marston’s house I kept strict watch as he enjoined. There were but two entrances: one in the façade of the building towards the Square, and the second in a little side-street which ran along a wall of the house. Few, however, either came in or out of these entrances, for the rumour of his sickness was spread abroad in the town, and even his tradesmen dreaded to catch the infection. I was, moreover, certain that he had not escaped, since each evening his servant came to my lodging and left a stick notched according to the number of days.
On the morning of the Thursday, being the fourth day and my last of grace, I doubled the sentinels about the house, hiring for the purpose some fellows of whom my people had cognisance. At the entrances, however, I planted my own men, and bidding them mark carefully the faces of such as passed out, in whatever dress they might be clothed, I retired to a coign of vantage at some distance whence I could keep an eye upon the house, and yet not obtrude myself upon the notice of those within it. In a little alley hard by I had stationed a groom with the swiftest horse that I possessed, so that I might be prepared to set off in pursuit of my antagonist the moment word of his departure was brought to me.
Thus, then, I waited, my heart throbbing faster and faster as the day wore on, and every nerve in my body a jerking pulse. At last my excitement mastered me; a clock in a neighbouring belfry chimed the hour of four, and I crept out of my corner and mingled with the gipsies and mountebanks who were encamped with their booths in the centre of the Square. Amongst this motley crowd I thought myself safe from detection, and moved, though still observing some caution, towards the front of Marston’s house. It wore almost an air of desertion; over many of the windows the curtains were drawn, and never a face showed through the panes of the rest. I could see that my men were still stationed at their posts, and I began to think that we must needs prolong our vigil into the night. Shortly after six, however, the hall-door was opened, and the same servant who brought me the sticks of an evening came out on to the steps. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, but without a moment’s hesitation stepped across the road, and threading the tenth and booths, came directly towards me. It was evident that I had been remarked from some quarter of the house, and so I made no effort at further concealment, but rather went forward to meet him. With the same grave politeness which had always characterised him, he offered me a letter.
“My master,” said he, “bade me deliver this into your hand two hours after he had left.”
“Two hours after he had left!” I gasped, wellnigh stunned by his words.
“Two hours,” he replied. “But I have been a trifle remiss, I fear me, and for that I would crave your pardon. It is now two hours and a half since my master departed.”
He made a low bow and went back to the house, leaving me stupidly staring at the letter.
“My fever,” it ran, “is happily so abated that I am to be carried this instant into the country. There will be no danger, I am assured, providing that I am well wrapped up. Au revoir! Or is it adieu?—Hugh MARSTON.”
The sarcasm made my blood boil in my veins, and I ran to the sentinels I had posted before the entrances, rating them immeasurably for their negligence. They heard me with all the marks of surprise, and expostulated in some heat. No one, they maintained, who in any way resembled Mr Marston had left the house; they had watched most faithfully the day long, without a bite of food to stay their stomachs. Somewhat relieved by their words, I took no heed of their forward demeanour, but gave them to understand that if their words were true, they should eat themselves into a stupor an they were so disposed. For I began to fancy that the letter was a ruse to induce me to withdraw my watchmen from the neighbourhood, and thus open a free passage for my rival’s escape.
With the view of confirming the suspicion, I ordered them to give me a strict and particular account of all persons who had come from the house that day. For those who had kept guard before the front-door the task was simple enough. A few gentlemen had called; but of them only one, whom they imagined to be the physician, had entered the house. He had reappeared again within half an hour or so of his going in, and, with that exception, no person had departed by this way.
The side-door, however, had been more frequently used. Now and again a servant had come out, or a tradesman had delivered his wares. At one time a cart had driven up, a bale of carpets had been carried into the house, and a second bale fetched out.
“What!” I cried, interrupting the speaker, “A bale of carpets? At what time?”
He knew not exactly, but ’twas between three and four, for he heard a clock chime the latter hour some while afterwards.
“You dolt!” I cried. “He was in the carpets.”
“I know naught of that,” he answered sullenly. “You only bade me note faces, and I noted them that carried the carpets. You said nothing about noting carpets.”
The fellow was justly indignant, I felt; for, indeed, I doubt whether I should have suspected the bale myself but for Marston’s letter. So I dismissed the men from their work, and rode slowly back to my lodging. Marston had three hours’ start of me already; by midnight he would have nine, even supposing that Elmscott arrived with trustworthy intelligence. What chance had I of catching him?
I walked about the room consumed with a fire of impatience. I seemed to hear the beat of hoofs as Marston rode upon the way; and the farther he went into the distance, the louder and louder grew the sound, until I was forced to sit down and clasp my head between my hands in a mad fear lest it should burst with the racket. And then I saw him—saw him, as in a crystal, spurring along a white, winding road; and strangely enough the road was familiar to me, so that I knew each stretch that lay ahead of him, before it came in view and was mirrored in my imaginings. I followed him through village and wood; now a river would flash for a second beneath a bridge; now a hill lift in front, and I noticed the horse slacken speed and the rider lean forward in the saddle. Then for a moment he would stand outlined against the sky on the crest, then dip into a hollow, and out again across a heath. At last he came towards the gate of a town. How I prayed that the gate would be barred! We were too distant to ascertain that as yet. He drove his spurs deeper into the flanks of his horse. The gate was open! He dashed at full gallop down a street; turned into a broad lane at right angles; the beat of hoofs became louder and louder in my ears. Of a sudden he drew rein, and the sound stopped. He sprang from his horse, mounted a staircase, and burst into a room. I heard the door rattle as it was flung open. I knew the room. I recognised the clock in the corner. I gazed about me for the Countess—and Elmscott’s hand fell upon my shoulder.
“Why, lad, art all in the dark?”
“I have just reached the light,” I cried, springing up in a frenzy of excitement. “The Countess Lukstein lies at the Thatched House Tavern, in Bristol town.”
“Damn!” said Elmscott. “I have just ridden thither and back to find that out.”
And he fell swearing and cursing in a chair, whilst I rang for candles to be brought.