The Betrayal - E. Phillips Oppenheim (the snowy day read aloud txt) 📗

that secret better when it rests between you and me. It means, I know, that for a time—I promise you that it shall be only for a time—you must lose your friends, but the cause is great enough, and it should be within our power to reward you later on."

"Oh, I am willing enough," I answered. "But may I ask what you are going to do with me?"

Lord Chelsford smoked in silence for several moments.

"Mr. Ducaine," he said, "who is there in the household of the Duke who opens that safe and copies those papers? Who is the traitor?"

"God only knows!" I answered. "It is a hopeless mystery."

"Yet we must solve it," Lord Chelsford said, "and quickly. If a single batch of genuine maps and plans were tampered with, disparities would certainly appear, and the thing might be suspected. Besides, upon the face of it, the thing is terribly serious."

"You have a plan," I said.

"I have," Lord Chelsford answered calmly. "You remember Grooton?"

"Certainly! He was a servant at Braster."

"And the very faithful servant of his country also," Lord Chelsford remarked. "You know, I believe, that he was a secret service man. He is entirely safe, and I have sent for him. Now I imagine that the Duke will wish our new secretary to live still at the 'Brand'—he preferred it in your case, as you will remember. Our new secretary is going to be my nephew. He is very stolid and honest, and fortunately not a chatterbox. He is going to be the nominal secretary, but I want you to be the one who really does the work."

"I am afraid I don't understand!" I was forced to admit.

"It will mean," Lord Chelsford said, "some privation and a great deal of inconvenience for you. But I am going to ask you to face it, for the end to be gained is worth it. I want you also to be at the 'Brand,' but to lie hidden all the day time. You can have one of the upstair rooms fitted as a writing room. Then you and my nephew can do the transposition. And beyond all that I want you to think—to think and to watch."

My heart leaped with joy to think that after all I was not to go into exile. Then the quiet significance of Lord Chelsford's last words were further impressed upon me by the added gravity of his manner.

"Mr. Ducaine," he said, "you must see for yourself that I am running a very serious risk in making these plans with you behind the backs of the Duke of Rowchester and Colonel Ray. The Duke is a man of the keenest sense of honour, as his recent commercial transactions have shown. He has parted with a hundred thousand pounds rather than that the shadow of a stigma should rest upon his name. He is also my personal friend, and very sensitive of any advice or criticism. Then Ray—a V.C., and one of the most popular soldiers in England to-day—he also is quick tempered, and he also is my friend. You can see for yourself that in acting as I am, behind the backs of these men, I am laying myself open to very grave trouble. Yet I see no alternative. There is a rank traitor either on the Military Board or closely connected with the Duke's household. He does not know it, nor do they know it, but everyone of his servants has been vigorously and zealously watched without avail. The circle has been drawn closer and closer, Mr. Ducaine. Down in Braster you may be able to help me in narrowing it down till only one person is within it. Listen!"

Lady Chelsford entered, gorgeous in white satin and a flaming tiara.
She looked at me, I thought, a little gravely.

"Morton," she said, "I want you to spare me a minute. Mr. Ducaine will excuse you, I am sure."

Lord Chelsford and she left the room together. I, feeling the heat of the apartment, walked to the window, and raising the sash looked out into the cool dark evening. At the door, drawn up in front of Lord Chelsford's brougham, was a carriage with a tall footman standing facing me. I recognized him and the liveries in a moment. It was the Rowchester carriage. Some one from Rowchester House was even now with Lord and Lady Chelsford.

Fresh complications, then! Had the Duke come to see me off, or had his suspicions been aroused? Was he even now insisting upon an explanation with Lord Chelsford? The minutes passed, and I began to get restless and anxious. Then the door opened, and Lord Chelsford entered alone. He came over at once to my side. He was looking perplexed and a little annoyed.

"Ducaine," he said, "Lady Angela Harberly is here."

I started, and I suppose my face betrayed me.

"Lady Angela—here?"

"And she wishes to see you," he continued. "Lady Chelsford is chaperoning her to-night to Suffolk House, but she says that she should have come here in any case. She believes that you are going to China."

"Did you tell her?" I asked.

"I have told her nothing," he answered. "The question is, what you are to tell her. I understand, Ducaine, that Lady Angela was engaged to be married to Colonel Ray."

"I believe that she is," I admitted.

"Then I do not understand her desire to see you," Lord Chelsford said. "The Duke of Rowchester is my friend and relative, Ducaine, and I do not see how I can permit this interview."

"And I," said a quiet thrilling voice behind his back, "do not know how you are going to prevent it."

She closed the door behind her. She was so frail and so delicately beautiful in her white gown, with the ropes of pearls around her neck, the simply parted hair, and her dark eyes were so plaintive and yet so tender, that the angry exclamation died away on Lord Chelsford's lips.

"Angela," he said, "Mr. Ducaine is here. You can speak with him if you will, but it must be in my presence. You must not think that I do not trust you—both of you. But I owe this condition to your father."

She came over to me very timidly. She seemed to me so beautiful, so exquisitely childish, that I touched the fingers of the hand she gave me with a feeling of positive reverence.

"You have come to wish me God-speed," I murmured. "I shall never forget it."

"You are really going, then?"

"I am going for a little time out of your life, Lady Angela," I answered. "It is necessary: Lord Chelsford knows that. But I am not going in disgrace. I am very thankful to be able to tell you that."

"It was not necessary to tell me," she answered. "Am I not here?"

I bent low over her hand, which rested still in mine.

"Mine is not a purposeless exile—nor altogether an unhappy one—now," I said. "I have work to do, Lady Angela, and I am going to it with a good heart. When we meet again I hope that it may be differently. Your coming—the memory of it will stand often between me and loneliness. It will sweeten the very bitterest of my days."

"You are really going—to China?" she murmured.

I glanced towards Lord Chelsford. His back was turned to us. If he understood the meaning of my pause he made no sign.

"I may not tell you where I am going or why," I answered. "But I will tell you this, Lady Angela. I shall come back, and as you have come to see me to-night, so shall I come to you before long. If you will trust me I will prove myself worthy of it."

She did not answer me with any word at all, but with a sudden little forward movement of both her hands, and I saw that her eyes were swimming in tears. Yet they shone into mine like stars, and I saw heaven there.

"I am sorry," Lord Chelsford said, gravely interposing, "but Lady Chelsford will be waiting for you, Angela. And I think that I must ask you to remember that I cannot sanction, or appear by my silence to sanction, anything of this sort."

So he led her away, but what did I care? My heart was beating with the rapture of her backward glance. I cared neither for Ray nor the Duke nor any living person. For with me it was the one supreme moment of a man's lifetime, come too at the very moment of my despair. I was no longer at the bottom of the pit. The wonderful gates stood open.

CHAPTER XXXVIII A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY

I Called softly to Grooton from my room upstairs.

"Grooton!"

"Yes, sir."

"You are alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is Mr. Hill still up at the Court?"

"He will be there until midnight, sir."

A gust of wind came suddenly roaring through the wood, drowning even the muffled thunder of the sea below. The rain beat upon the window panes. The little house, strongly built though it was, seemed to quiver from its very foundations. I caught up my overcoat, and boldly descended the narrow staircase. Grooton stood at the bottom, holding a lamp in his hand.

"You are quite safe to-night, sir," he said. "There'll be no one about in such a storm."

I stood still for a moment. The raging and tearing of the sea below had momentarily triumphed over the north wind.

"The trees in the spinney are snapping like twigs, sir," Grooton remarked. "There's one lying right across the path outside. But you'll excuse me, sir—you're not going out!"

"I think so, Grooton," I answered, "for a few minutes. Remember that I have been a prisoner here for three days. I'm dying for some fresh air."

"I don't think it's hardly safe, sir," he protested, deprecatingly. "Not that there's any fear of your being seen: the wind's enough to carry you over the cliff."

"I shall risk it, Grooton," I answered. "I think that the wind is going down, and there won't be a soul about. It's too good a chance to miss."

I waited for a momentary lull, and then I opened the door and slipped out. The first breath of cold strong air was like wine to me after my confinement, but a moment later I felt my breath taken away, and I was lifted almost from my feet by a sudden gust. I linked my arm around the trunk of a swaying pine tree and hung there till the lull came. Up into the darkness from that unseen gulf below came showers of spray, white as snow, falling like rain all about me. It was a night to remember.

Presently I turned inland, and reached the park. I left the footpath so that I should avoid all risk of meeting any one, and followed the wire fencing which divided the park from the belt of fir trees bordering the road. I walked for a few hundred yards, and then stopped short.

I had reached the point where that long straight road from Braster turned sharply away inland for the second time. At a point about a quarter of a mile away, and rapidly approaching me, came a twin pair of flaring eyes. I knew at once what they were—the head lights of a motor car. Without a moment's hesitation I doubled back to the "Brand."

"Grooton!" I called sharply.

Grooton appeared.

"Is any one at Braster Grange?" I asked.

"Not that I have heard of, sir," he answered.

"You do not know whether Mrs. Smith-Lessing is expected back?"

"I have not heard, sir. They left no servants there—not even a caretaker."

I stepped back again into the night and took the shortest cut across the park to the house. As I neared the entrance gates I left the path and crept up close to the plantation which bordered the road. My heart gave a jump as I listened. I could hear the low level throbbing of a motor somewhere quite close at hand. The lights had been extinguished, but it was there waiting. I did not hesitate any longer. I kept on the turf by the side of the avenue and made my way up to the house.

The library alone and one small window on the ground floor were lit. I crept up on the terrace and tried to peer in, but across each of the library windows the curtains were too closely drawn. There remained the small window at the end of