A Maker of History - E. Phillips Oppenheim (best books to read for students TXT) 📗

here with me because I had just this to say. I can answer no questions, offer no explanations. I have no particular liking for you, but I am afflicted with a cursedly sensitive disposition, and—there are things which I find it hard to watch with equanimity. There is a train for England at nine o'clock this evening, Sir George. Take it!"

Duncombe rose from his seat.

"I am very much obliged to you," he said. "I believe that you are giving me what you believe to be good advice. Whether I can follow it or not is a different matter."

The Vicomte sighed.

"You Englishmen," he said, "are so obstinate. It is the anxiety concerning your friends, I suppose, which keeps you here?"

"Yes!"

The Vicomte hesitated. He looked up and down the room, and especially at the man whom Duncombe had pointed out to him. He had edged nearer and nearer till he was almost within earshot. The Vicomte's voice, always low, became a whisper.

"I can tell you this much, at any rate," he said. "Whatever their present condition may be, it is more likely to be improved than made worse by your departure. You are a well-meaning person, Monsieur, but you do nobody any good here, and you risk—more than I dare tell you."

The Vicomte turned away to greet a little party of friends who had just entered. Duncombe strolled back to the hotel, and found Spencer walking restlessly up and down the hall waiting for him.

"At last!" he exclaimed, with a sigh of relief. "Come up into my room, Spencer. We can talk there."

He rang for the lift, and as they ascended he watched the other anxiously. Spencer was looking pale and disturbed. His eyes showed signs of sleeplessness, and he had not the air of a man who has good news to impart. As soon as they were inside the room he locked the door.

"Duncombe," he said, "there is a train which leaves Paris for London at four o'clock. You must catch it—if you are allowed to. Don't look like that, man. I tell you you've got to do it. If you are in Paris to-night you will be in prison."

"For what offence?" Duncombe asked.

"For the murder of Mademoiselle Flossie. They are training the witnesses now. The whole thing is as easy as A B C. They can prove you so guilty that not even your best friend would doubt it. Pack your clothes, man, or ring for the valet."

Duncombe hesitated, but he, too, was pale.

"Are you serious, Spencer?" he asked.

"I am so serious," Spencer answered, "that unless you obey me I will not move another finger in this matter. You lose nothing by going. All that a human being can do I will do! But you lose your life, or, at any rate, your liberty if you stay."

Duncombe bowed his head to fate.

"Very well!" he said. "I will go!"

CHAPTER XIII "HER VOICE."

"You have heard now," Duncombe said, finally, "the whole history of my wanderings. I feel like a man who has been beating the air, who has been at war with unseen and irresistible forces. I never seemed to have a chance. In plain words, I have failed utterly!"

The two men were sitting in a room impossible of classification. It might have been a study, smoking-room, or gun-room. The walls were adorned with stags' heads and various trophies of the chase. There were guns and rifles in plenty in a rack by the chimney-piece, a row of bookcases along the north wall, golf clubs, cricket bats, and foils everywhere. A pile of logs ready for burning stood in the open grate, and magnificent rugs were spread about the floor. Nowhere was there the slightest trace of a woman's presence, for Duncombe had no sisters, and his was entirely a bachelor household.

Duncombe himself and Andrew Pelham were seated in great easy-chairs in front of the open window. It was his first fine evening at home, and he was drinking in great draughts of the fresh pure air, fragrant with the perfume of roses and huge clusters of wallflowers. Paris had seemed to him like a great oven. All the time he had been half stifled, and yet he knew very well that at a word from Spencer he would have returned there at an hour's notice. He knew, too, that the home which he had loved all his days could never be quite the same place to him again.

Andrew roused himself from rather a prolonged silence.

"You were a brick to go, George," he said. "It is more than any one else in the world would have done for me."

Duncombe laughed a little uneasily. He knocked the ashes from his pipe and refilled it slowly.

"Andrew," he said, "I don't want to seem a fraud. I dare say that I might have gone for you alone—but I didn't."

His friend smiled faintly.

"Ah!" he remarked. "I had forgotten your little infatuation. It hasn't worn off yet, then?"

"No, nor any signs of it," Duncombe answered bluntly. "It's an odd position for a matter-of-fact person like myself, isn't it? I tell you, Andrew, I've really tried to care for some of the girls about here. The place wants a mistress, and I'm the tenth baronet in the direct line. One's got to think about these things, you know. I've tried hard, and I've never even come near it."

"It will wear off," Andrew said. "It is a very charming little fancy, a most delightful bit of sentiment, George, but with nothing behind it it can't last."

"Perhaps not," Duncombe answered quietly. "All that I know is that it has shown no signs of wearing off up to now. It was in Paris exactly as it is here. And I know very well that if I thought it would do her the least bit of good I would start back to Paris or to the end of the world to-night."

"I must readjust my views of you, George," his friend said with mild satire. "I always looked upon you as fair game for the Norfolk dowagers with their broods of daughters, but I never contemplated your fixing your affections upon a little piece of paste-board."

"Rot! It is the girl herself," Duncombe declared.

"But you have never seen her."

Duncombe shrugged his shoulders. He said nothing. What was the use? Never seen her! Had she not found her way into every beautiful place his life had knowledge of?

"If you had," Andrew murmured—"ah, well, the picture is like her. I remember when she was a child. She was always fascinating, always delightful to watch."

Duncombe looked out upon the gardens which he loved, and sighed.

"If only Spencer would send for me to go back to Paris," he said with a sigh.

Andrew turned his head.

"You can imagine now," he said, "what I have been suffering. The desire for action sometimes is almost maddening. I think that the man who sits and waits has the hardest task."

They were silent for some time, smoking steadily. Then Duncombe reverted once more to his wanderings.

"You remember the story they told me at the Café, Andrew," he said. "It was a lie, of course, but was Miss Poynton anything of an artist?"

"To the best of my belief," Andrew answered, "she has never touched a brush or a pencil since she left school."

Duncombe looked out into the gathering twilight.

"It is a devil's riddle, this!" he said slowly. "Why did she go to that place at all?"

"God only knows!" Andrew murmured.

Duncombe's teeth were hard set. A paper-knife, which he had caught up from the table, snapped in his fingers. There was something in his throat which nearly choked him.

"Phyllis Poynton," Andrew continued, "was as sweet and pure a woman as ever breathed. She must have loathed that place. She could only have gone there to seek for her brother, or——"

"Or for whom?"

"For those who knew where he was."

Duncombe turned his head.

"Andrew!"

"Yes, old chap!"

"Let me look at her photograph again."

Andrew drew it from his pocket and passed it over. Duncombe studied it for several moments under the lamplight.

"You are right, Andrew," he said slowly. "For her the other things would not be possible. I wonder——"

His fingers clung to the photograph. He looked across at his friend. There was a slight flush in his face. He spoke nervously.

"Andrew," he said, "I'm afraid it sounds a bit brutal, but—this photograph is no use to you just now, is it, until your eyes get better. Will you lend it me?"

"I couldn't," Andrew answered quietly. "I can't see it now of course, but I like to feel it in my pocket, and it will be the first thing I shall look at when the doctor lets me take off these beastly glasses—if ever he does. Until then—well, I like to feel I've got it. That's all!"

They both smoked furiously for several moments without looking at one another. Duncombe spoke first.

"Andrew!"

"Well?"

"If she comes back—shall you ever ask her to marry you?"

"I don't know, George. I'm poor, and I'm twelve years older than she is. I don't know."

There was another silence. Then the conversation drifted back once more to the one subject which was monopolizing the thought of both of them.

"I tell you what seems to me to be the most extraordinary part of the whole business," Duncombe said. "First the brother disappears. Then without a word to any one the sister also rushes off to Paris, and vanishes from the face of the earth after a series of extraordinary proceedings. One supposes naturally that if they have come to harm anywhere—if there has been a crime—there must have been a motive. What is it? You say that their banking account has been undisturbed?"

"It was last week. I should hear if any cheques were presented."

"And the boy's letter of credit even has never been drawn upon!"

"No! Not since he left Vienna."

"Then the motive cannot be robbery. Thank Heaven," Duncombe added, with a little shudder, "that it was the boy who went first."

"Don't!"

A great winged insect came buzzing into the room. Duncombe struck viciously at it with the palm of his hand.

"Lord!" he muttered, "what a fool I am! I've never been away from home before, Andrew, without longing to get back, and here I am, just back from Paris in August, from turning night into day, from living just the sort of life I hate, and I'd give anything to be going back there to-morrow. I'm a haunted man, Andrew. I got up last night simply because I couldn't sleep, and walked down as far as the paddock. I seemed to see her face in all the shadowy corners, to see her moving towards me from amongst the trees. And I'm not an imaginative person, Andrew, and I've got no nerves. Look!"

He held out his hand, strong and firm and brown. It was as steady as a rock.

"I can't sleep," he continued, "I can't rest. Is there witchcraft in this thing, Andrew?"

Andrew Pelham laughed shortly. It was a laugh which had no kinship to mirth.

"And I," he said, "have seen her grow up. We were boy and girl together. I stole apples for her. I have watched her grow from girlhood into womanhood. I have known flesh and blood, and you a cardboard image. I too am a strong man, and I am helpless. I lie awake at night and I think. It is as though the red flames of hell were curling up around me. George, if she has come to any evil, whether I am blind or whether I can see, I'll grope my way from country to country till my hand is upon the throat of the beast who has harmed her."

The man's voice shook with passion. Duncombe was awed into silence. He had known Andrew Pelham always as a good-natured, good-hearted giant, beloved of children and animals, deeply religious, a man whose temper, if he possessed such a thing,