Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 55

He would go back and face the worst. If he was to be ruined, he would pull the mask off himself, and not leave it to Armstrong or any one else to do it. Whatever befell, nothing could well be more wretched than the plight in which he now stood. He had no amends to make, but he could at least simplify the labours of those whose business it was to expose and punish him. With which poor spark of resolution he turned dismally to go back to Maxfield.

As he did so he became aware of footsteps close at hand on the cliff- path. Whoever the pa.s.senger might be--at such an hour and place it was not likely to be any one but a coastguard or a fisherman--Captain Oliphant was in no mood for company. He therefore stepped off the path and sat down on a seat on the edge of the cliff till the intruder had pa.s.sed.

It was not so dark but that the latter perceived the movement, and halting suddenly, said--

"Who's that?"

The voice was that of Mr Ratman. What brought him here at this moment, to extinguish, perhaps, the little gleam of courage that flickered in the breast of his wretched dupe?

For a moment the captain was tempted to run like a thief from a policeman; but his very desperation came to his rescue.

"What do you want here, Ratman?"

"Hullo, it's Oliphant! Here's a piece of luck. You're the very man I wanted to see. I've changed my mind since I said good-bye yesterday, my boy, and mean to remain here on the spot and see the end of this business. I was on my way to see you. Come along."

"You'd better say what you want to say here. You won't find any admirers of yours up at the house."

"Ah! then you've heard of last night's business? What on earth brings this Yankee idiot here at this time to spoil everything? Now, Teddy, the long and short of this business is, that you must stir yourself.

You've shuffled long enough. First of all you were going to marry the widow; you boggled that. Then you were going to succeed to the property; you've boggled that. Then you were to clear the tutor out of the way; you've boggled that. Then you were to raise the wind and pay me off, and you've boggled that. I've given you long enough rope, goodness knows. I mean to haul in now."

Captain Oliphant rose from his seat with a dismal laugh. "I'm tired of hearing you say that, Ratman. I wish you'd do it and be done with it."

Ratman peered through the gloom at the speaker in surprise. "Hullo!"

said he, "that's a new tune for you. Now look here; I suppose you've not forgotten our talk yesterday?"

"Well?"

"You've two things to do; you've to recognise me as Roger Ingleton when the time comes. There'll be proofs and witnesses. They must satisfy you, mind. Make no mistake of that. Then I must have Rosalind. I love her. On the day I'm your son-in-law you shall have back every bill I hold against you. Now, is it a bargain? It's a cheap one for you, I can tell you."

The blood rose to Captain Oliphant's brow. A few hours ago he would have faltered and evaded, half whined, half promised; now sheer desperation made him reckless.

He laughed bitterly.

"Recognise you--you shark! Never! And if you ever dare to speak of my daughter, I'll shake you like a cur. There now, do as you like; you've got my answer."

Ratman dropped his jaw in utter amazement. For a minute the words would not come. Then, with a face so livid that Oliphant could see its whiteness through the night, he hissed--

"You mean it? You defy me?--me, with these papers in my hand, and the whole story of your villainy in my keeping? You--"

As he held up the bills a wild impulse prompted the wretched captain to make a grab at them.

There was a short struggle. Oliphant, with his back to the cliff, kept his hold for a moment; then a fierce blow sent him reeling backwards to the edge, with the torn half of the doc.u.ments in his hand. There was a gasp, a half cry, and next moment only one man stood in the place, peering with ashen face into the black darkness below.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

THE BILLIARD-MARKER AT "L'HOTEL SOULT."

In the _salon_ of a small dilapidated hotel in one of the southern suburbs of Paris sat Roger, three weeks after the event recorded in the last chapter. He had the dull place, apparently, to himself. The billiard-room, visible through the folding-doors, was deserted. In the dining-room the waiter dozed undisturbed by a single guest. The landlady in her _bureau_ yawned and hummed, and had not even a bill to make out.

She had already made out that of the young English gentleman, and a pretty one it was! A guest such as he was worth a season to the landlady of "L'Hotel Soult." Three weeks ago, half dead with cold and weariness, he had come and asked for a bed; and in that bed till yesterday he had remained, feverish, coughing, sometimes gasping for breath. Compared with the attack he had had in London in the winter, this was a mild one; but in this dreary place, with not a friend at hand, with a doctor who could not understand a word he said, with a voluble landlady who, when she visited him, never gave him a chance of getting in a word, and with a few servants who stared at him blankly whenever he attempted to lift his voice, it was the most miserable of all his illnesses.

He was as close a prisoner as if he had been in jail. The doctor, who took apartments at his expense in the hotel, would not allow him to move. No one to whom he appealed could be made to understand that he had friends in England with whom he desired to communicate. One letter to Armstrong which he had tried to write the landlady impounded and destroyed as waste-paper, perhaps not quite by accident. This well-to- do young guest was worth nursing. His friends would only come and fetch him away; whereas she, motherly soul! was prepared to take him in and do for him. The pocket of the coat which on the day of his arrival she had carried off to her kitchen to dry contained satisfactory proof that Monsieur was a young gentleman who could pay; and although she was too honest to recoup herself for her services in advance, she had kept the coat hanging up in her room for a week, as a pleasant reminder of the joys of hospitality.

Only yesterday the invalid had recovered sufficiently to rout the doctor and stagger down to the telegraph-office; and to-day, propped up with pillows on the uncomfortable stuff-sofa, he was expiating his rashness with a day of miserable coughing.

At the sound of his handbell, the landlady, a buxom dame of forty-five autumns, hastened to the couch of her profitable visitor.

Roger was too weak to oppose the flood of her congratulations and compliments on his recovery, and allowed her to talk herself breathless before he put in his word.

"Madame has not been many years in these parts?" he inquired in his best French.

Madame threw up her shoulders and protested she had lived in those parts from a child, when the dull suburb was once a festive little rustic village, and the great city now gobbling it up once loomed mysteriously in the north, with acres and miles of green fields and woods between.

"But this hotel," said Roger, "has not stood here so long?"

"_Ma foi_!" said she, "since I can remember, when I used to visit my good uncle here every Sunday, I remember 'L'Hotel Soult.' Why, when I married my cousin and became _Madame l'hotesse_, it was all fields between us and Paris. Yes, and little enough change about the house.

We cannot afford, Monsieur, to build and decorate. By a miracle we escaped the German sh.e.l.ls. Ah! a merry time was the year of the war!

France suffered, alas! but the 'L'Hotel Soult' prospered. 'Twas the year I was left a widow! I had ten waiters then, Monsieur, and two billiard-markers, a _chef_ from the best kitchen in Paris, and stables, and _chambrieres_, and--why, Monsieur, the wages of one week were twenty--twenty-five napoleons!"

"That was after the war?" asked Roger.

"Yes. Before that I had more. But, alas! they left me for the field, and came no more."

"Were all your waiters Frenchmen?" asked Roger.

Madame stared curiously at the questioner.

"Why do you ask? I have had many kinds. Some English, like Monsieur."

"A year or two after the war," said Roger, "there was an Englishman, a relation of mine, who was a waiter in an hotel in one of the suburbs south of Paris. I want to hear of him. I have hunted for weeks. I could hear nothing of him. I came here before I gave it up as a hopeless search, and, as you know, I've been laid up ever since. You have been kind to me, Madame; something makes me think I was not kept here for nothing. Can you help me to find my friend?"

The landlady began to have inward misgivings that she had not behaved to this pleasant-spoken young guest of hers as nicely as she might have done, and she secretly resolved to revise the bill in his favour before presenting it.

"Why, Monsieur, I had plenty English in my time. The year after the war I had--let me think--two or three. Your friend--was he the little lame one who waited beautiful at table, but that he cough, cough, till I must send him away?"

"No; that's not the one."

"Then it was the fat one?--John Bull, we call him, who eat more than he served, never used a fork when he had his fingers. Ah, he was a dirty one, was your friend!"

"No," said Roger; "that's not he. My friend was not much older than I am, and a gentleman."

"A gentleman--and a waiter!" laughed the landlady. "But tell me, what was his name?"

"He used to call himself Rogers."

She shook her head.