Mysterious Mr. Sabin - E. Phillips Oppenheim (best free ebook reader for android .TXT) 📗

you think that I imagine any disrespect to the young lady, but don’t you see that either she and Mr. Sabin must stand towards one another in an equivocal position, or else they must be in altogether a different station of life to their assumed one, when they dismiss the subject of an alliance with you so peremptorily.”

Wolfenden flushed up to the temples, and his eyes were lit with fire.

“You may dismiss all idea of the former possibility,” he said, with ominous quietness. “If you wish me to discuss this matter with you further you will be particularly careful to avoid the faintest allusion to it.”

“I have never seriously entertained it,” Harcutt assented cheerfully; “I, too, believe in the girl. She looks at once too proud and too innocent for any association of such thoughts with her. She has the bearing and the manners of a queen. Granted, then, that we dismiss the first possibility.”

“Absolutely and for ever,” Wolfenden said firmly. “I may add that Mr. Sabin met me with a distinct reason for his refusal—he informed me his niece was already betrothed.”

“That may or may not be true,” Harcutt said. “It does not affect the question which we are considering at present. We must come to the conclusion that these are people of considerable importance. That is what I honestly believe. Now what do you suppose brings Mr. Sabin to such an out of the way hole as this?”

“The golf, very likely,” Wolfenden said. “He is a magnificent player.”

Harcutt frowned.

“If I thought so,” he said, “I should consider my journey here a wasted one. But I can’t. He is in the midst of delicate and important negotiations—I know as much as that. He would not come down here at such a time to play golf. It is an absurd idea!”

“I really don’t see how else you can explain it,” Wolfenden remarked; “the greatest men have had their hobbies, you know. I need not remind you of Nero’s fiddle, or Drake’s bowls.”

“Quite unnecessary,” Harcutt declared briskly. “Frankly, I don’t believe in Mr. Sabin’s golf. There is somebody or something down here connected with his schemes; the golf is a subterfuge. He plays well because he does everything well.”

“It will tax your ingenuity,” Wolfenden said, “to connect his visit here with anything in the shape of political schemes.”

“My ingenuity accepts the task, at any rate,” Harcutt said. “I am going to find out all about it, and you must help me. It will be for both our interests.”

“I am afraid,” Wolfenden answered, “that you are on a wild goose chase. Still I am quite willing to help you if I can.”

“Well, to begin then,” Harcutt said; “you have been with him some time to-day. Did he ask you any questions about the locality? Did he show any curiosity in any of the residents?”

Wolfenden shook his head.

“Absolutely none,” he answered. “The only conversation we had, in which he showed any interest at all, was concerning my own people. By the bye, that reminds me! I told him of an incident which occurred at Deringham Hall last night, and he was certainly interested and curious. I chanced to look at him at an unexpected moment, and his appearance astonished me. I have never seen him look so keen about anything before.”

“Will you tell me the incident at once, please?” Harcutt begged eagerly. “It may contain the very clue for which I am hunting. Anything which interests Mr. Sabin interests me.”

“There is no secrecy about the matter,” Wolfenden said. “I will tell you all about it. You may perhaps have heard that my father has been in very poor health ever since the great Solent disaster. It unfortunately affected his brain to a certain extent, and he has been the victim of delusions ever since. The most serious of these is, that he has been commissioned by the Government to prepare, upon a gigantic scale, a plan and description of our coast defences and navy. He has a secretary and typist, and works ten hours a day; but from their report and my own observations I am afraid the only result is an absolutely unintelligible chaos. Still, of course, we have to take him seriously, and be thankful that it is no worse. Now the incident which I told Mr. Sabin was this. Last night a man called and introduced himself as Dr. Wilmot, the great mind specialist. He represented that he had been staying in the neighbourhood, and was on friendly terms with the local medico here, Dr. Whitlett. My father’s case had been mentioned between them, and he had become much interested in it. He had a theory of his own for the investigation of such cases which consisted, briefly of a careful scrutiny of any work done by the patient. He brought a letter from Dr. Whitlett and said that if we would procure him a sight of my father’s most recent manuscripts he would give us an opinion on the case. We never had the slightest suspicion as to the truth of his statements, and I took him with me to the Admiral’s study. However, while we were there, and he was rattling through the manuscripts, up comes Dr. Whitlett, the local man, in hot haste. The letter was a forgery, and the man an impostor. He escaped through the window, and got clean away. That is the story just as I told it to Mr. Sabin. What do you make of it?”

Harcutt stood up, and laid his hand upon the other’s shoulder.

“Well, I’ve got my clue, that’s all,” he declared; “the thing’s as plain as sunlight!”

Wolfenden rose also to his feet.

“I must be a fool,” he said, “for I certainly can’t see it.”

Harcutt lowered his tone.

“Look here, Wolfenden,” he said, “I have no doubt that you are right, and that your father’s work is of no value; but you may be very sure of one thing—Mr. Sabin does not think so!”

“I don’t see what Mr. Sabin has got to do with it,” Wolfenden said.

Harcutt laughed.

“Well, I will tell you one thing,” he said; “it is the contents of your father’s study which has brought Mr. Sabin to Deringham!”

CHAPTER XXII FROM THE BEGINNING

A woman stood, in the midst of a salt wilderness, gazing seaward. Around her was a long stretch of wet sand and of seaweed-stained rocks, rising from little pools of water left by the tide; and beyond, the flat, marshy country was broken only by that line of low cliffs, from which the little tufts of grass sprouted feebly. The waves which rolled almost to her feet were barely ripples, breaking with scarcely a visible effort upon the moist sand. Above, the sky was grey and threatening; only a few minutes before a cloud of white mist had drifted in from the sea and settled softly upon the land in the form of rain. The whole outlook was typical of intense desolation. The only sound breaking the silence, almost curiously devoid of all physical and animal noises, was the soft washing of the sand at her feet, and every now and then the jingling of silver harness, as the horses of her carriage, drawn up on the road above, tossed their heads and fidgeted. The carriage itself seemed grotesquely out of place. The coachman, with powdered hair and the dark blue Deringham livery, sat perfectly motionless, his head bent a little forward, and his eyes fixed upon his horses’ ears. The footman, by their side, stood with folded arms, and expression as wooden as though he were waiting upon a Bond Street pavement. Both were weary, and both would have liked to vary the monotony by a little conversation; but only a few yards away the woman was standing whose curious taste had led her to visit such a spot.

Her arms were hanging listlessly by her side, her whole expression, although her face was upturned towards the sky, was one of intense dejection. Something about her attitude bespoke a keen and intimate sympathy with the desolation of her surroundings. The woman was unhappy; the light in her dark eyes was inimitably sad. Her cheeks were pale and a little wan. Yet Lady Deringham was very handsome—as handsome as a woman approaching middle age could hope to be. Her figure was still slim and elegant, the streaks of grey in her raven black hair were few and far between. She might have lived hand in hand with sorrow, but it had done very little to age her. Only a few years ago, in the crowded ball-room of a palace, a prince had declared her to be the handsomest woman of her age, and the prince had the reputation of knowing. It was easy to believe it.

How long the woman might have lingered there it is hard to say, for evidently the spot possessed a peculiar fascination for her, and she had given herself up to a rare fit of abstraction. But some sound—was it the low wailing of that seagull, or the more distant cry of a hawk, motionless in mid-air and scarcely visible against the cloudy sky, which caused her to turn her head inland? And then she saw that the solitude was no longer unbroken. A dark object had rounded the sandy little headland, and was coming steadily towards her. She looked at it with a momentary interest, her skirt raised in her hand, already a few steps back on her return to the waiting carriage. Was it a man? It was something human, at any rate, although its progression was slow and ungraceful, and marked with a peculiar but uniform action. She stood perfectly still, a motionless figure against the background of wan, cloud-shadowed sea and gathering twilight, her eyes riveted upon this strange thing, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks as pale as death. Gradually it came nearer and nearer. Her skirt dropped from her nerveless fingers, her eyes, a moment before dull, with an infinite and pitiful emptiness, were lit now with a new light. She was not alone, nor was she unprotected, yet the woman was suffering from a spasm of terror—one could scarcely imagine any sight revolting enough to call up that expression of acute and trembling fear, which had suddenly transformed her appearance. It was as though the level sands had yielded up their dead—the shipwrecked mariners of generations, and they all, with white, sad faces and wailing voices, were closing in around her. Yet it was hard to account for a terror so abject. There was certainly nothing in the figure, now close at hand, which seemed capable of inspiring it.

It was a man with a club foot—nothing more nor less. In fact it was Mr. Sabin! There was nothing about his appearance, save that ungainly movement caused by his deformity, in any way singular or threatening. He came steadily nearer, and the woman who awaited him trembled. Perhaps his expression was a trifle sardonic, owing chiefly to the extreme pallor of his skin, and the black flannel clothes with invisible stripe, which he had been wearing for golf. Yet when he lifted his soft felt hat from his head and bowed with an ease and effect palpably acquired in other countries, his appearance was far from unpleasant. He stood there bare-headed in the twilight, a strangely winning smile upon his dark face, and his head courteously bent.

“The most delightful of unexpected meetings,” he murmured. “I am afraid that I have come upon you like an apparition, dear Lady Deringham! I must have startled you! Yes, I can see by your face that I did; I am so sorry. Doubtless you did not know until yesterday that I was in England.”

Lady Deringham was slowly recovering herself. She was white still, even to the lips, and there was a strange,