A Lost Leader Part 40

"I don't understand you," he said, bewildered. "You know very well that the chances, so far as they can be reckoned up, are slightly in my favour."

"They were!" Fardell answered. "Heaven knows what they are now."

Mannering was a little annoyed. It seemed to him that Fardell must have been drinking.

"Do you mind explaining yourself?" he asked.

"I can do so," Fardell answered. "I must do so. But while I am about it I want you to put on your hat and come with me."

Mannering laughed shortly.

"What, to-night?" he exclaimed. "No, thank you. Be reasonable, Fardell.

I've had my day's work, and I think I've earned a little rest. To be frank with you, I don't like mysteries. If you've anything to say, out with it."

"Right!" Richard Fardell answered. "I am going to ask you a question, Mr. Mannering. Go back a good many years, as many years as you like.

Is there anything in your life as a younger man, say when you first entered Parliament, which--if it were brought up against you now--might be--embarra.s.sing?"

Mannering did not answer for several moments. He was already pale and tired, but he felt what little colour remained leave his face. Least of all he had expected this. Even now--what could the man mean? What could be known?

"I am not sure that I understand you," he said. "There is nothing that could be known! I am sure of that."

"There is a person," Fardell said, slowly, "who has made extraordinary statements. Our opponents have got hold of him. The substance of them is this: He says that many years ago you were the lover of a married woman, that you sold her husband worthless shares and ruined him, and that finally--in a quarrel--he declares that he was an eye-witness of this--that you killed him."

Mannering slowly subsided into his chair. His cheeks were blanched.

Richard Fardell watched him with feverish anxiety.

"It is a lie," Mannering declared. "There is no man living who can say this."

"The man says," Fardell continued, stonily, "that his name is Parkins, and that he was butler to Mr. Stephen Phillimore eleven years ago."

"Parkins is dead!" Mannering said, hoa.r.s.ely. "He has been dead for many years."

"He is living in Leeds to-day," Fardell answered. "A journalist from the _Yorks.h.i.+re Herald_ was with him for two hours this afternoon."

"Blanche--I was told that he was dead," Mannering said.

"Then the story is true?" Fardell asked.

"Not as you have told it," Mannering answered.

"There is truth in it?"

"Yes."

Richard Fardell was silent for several moments. He paced up and down the room, his hands behind his back, his eyebrows contracted into a heavy frown. For him it was a bitter moment. He was only a half-educated, illiterate man, possessed of st.u.r.dy common sense and a wonderful tenacity of purpose. He had permitted himself to indulge in a little silent but none the less absolute hero-wors.h.i.+p, and Mannering had been the hero.

"You must come with me at once and see this man," he said at last. "He has not yet signed his statement. We must do what we can to keep him quiet."

Mannering took up his coat and hat without a word. They left the hotel, and Fardell summoned a cab.

"It is a long way," he explained. "We will drive part of the distance and walk the rest. We may be watched already."

Mannering nodded. The last blow was so unexpected that he felt in a sense numbed. His speech only a few hours ago had made large inroads upon his powers of endurance. His partial recantation had cost him many hours of torture, from which he was still suffering. And now, without the slightest warning, he found himself face to face with a crisis far graver, far more acute. Never in his most gloomy moments had he felt any real fear of a resurrection of the past such as that with which he was now threatened. It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky. Even now he found it hard to persuade himself that he was not dreaming.

They were in the cab for nearly half an hour before Fardell stopped and dismissed it. Then they walked up and down and across streets of small houses, pitiless in their monotony, squalid and depressing in their ugliness.

Finally Fardell stopped, and without hesitation knocked at the door of one of them. It was opened by a man in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, holding a tallow candle in his hand.

"What yer want?" he inquired, suspiciously.

"Your lodger," Fardell answered, pus.h.i.+ng past him and drawing Mannering into the room. "Where is he?"

The man jerked his thumb upwards.

"Where he won't be long," he answered, shortly. "The likes of 'im having visitors, and one a toff, too. Say, are yer going to pay his rent?"

"We may do that," Fardell answered. "Is he upstairs?"

"Ay!" the man answered, shuffling away. "Pay 'is rent, and yer can chuck 'im out of the winder, if yer like!"

They climbed the crazy staircase. Fardell opened the door of the room above without even the formality of knocking. An old man sat there, bending over a table, half dressed. Before him were several sheets of paper.

"I believe we're in time," Fardell muttered, half to himself. "Parkins, is that you?" he asked, in a louder tone.

The old man looked up and blinked at them. He shaded his eyes with one hand. The other he laid flat upon the papers before him. He was old, blear-eyed, unkempt.

"Is that Master Ronaldson?" he asked, in a thin, quavering tone. "I've signed 'em, sir. Have yer brought the money? I'm a poor old man, and I need a drop of something now and then to keep the life in me. If yer'll just hand over a trifle I'll send out for--eh--eh, my landlord, he's a kindly man--he'll fetch it. Eh? Two of yer! I don't see so well as I did. Is that you, Mr. Ronaldson, sir?"

Fardell threw some silver coins upon the table. The old man s.n.a.t.c.hed them up eagerly.

"It's not Mr. Ronaldson," he said, "but I daresay we shall do as well. We want to talk to you about those papers there."

The old man nodded. He was gazing at the silver in his hand.

"I've writ it all out," he muttered. "I told 'un I would. A pound a week for ten years. That's what I 'ad! And then it stopped! Did she mean me to starve, eh? Not I! John Parkins knows better nor that. I've writ it all out, and there's my signature. It's gospel truth, too."

"We are going to buy the truth from you," Fardell said. "We have more money than Ronaldson. Don't be afraid. We have gold to spare where Ronaldson had silver."

The old man lifted the candle with shaking fingers. Then it dropped with a crash to the ground, and lay there for a moment spluttering. He shrank back.

"It's 'im!" he muttered. "Don't kill me, sir. I mean you no harm. It's Mr. Mannering!"

CHAPTER V

THE JOURNALIST INTERVENES