The Heart of a Woman Part 22

"This," he said, "will make everything all right. And I'll call again in a couple of hours' time. You won't forget the cook?"

"No, I won't forget the cook."

When the doctor had taken his leave, Luke stood for a moment quietly in the library: he folded up the medical certificate which he had received at the hands of Doctor Newington, and carefully put it away in his pocket-book.

"You won't forget the cook?"

I don't think that ever in his life before had Luke realized the trivialities of life as he did at this moment. Remember that he was quite man of the world enough, quite sufficiently sensible and shrewd and English, to have noticed that the degree of familiarity in the doctor's manner had pa.s.sed the borderland of what was due to himself; the tone of contemptuous indifference savoured of impertinence. And there was something more than that.

Last night when Luke wandered up and down outside the brilliantly lighted windows of the Danish Legation, trying to catch a few m.u.f.fled sounds of the voice he so pa.s.sionately loved to hear, he heard the first rumours that an awful crime had been committed which, for good or ill, would have such far-reaching bearings on his own future; but he had also caught many hints, vague suggestions full of hidden allusions, of which the burden was: "Seek whom the crime benefits."

Luke de Mountford was no fool. Men of his stamp--we are accustomed to call them commonplace--take a very straight outlook on life. They are not hampered by the psychological problems which affect the moral balance of a certain cla.s.s of people of to-day; they have no s.e.xual problems to solve. Theirs is a steady, wholesome, and clean life, and the mirrors of nature have not been blurred by the breath of psychologists.

Luke had never troubled his head about his neighbour's wife, about his horse, or his a.s.s, or anything that is his; therefore his vision about the neighbour himself had remained acute.

Although I must admit that at this stage the thought that he might actually be accused of a low and sordid crime never seriously entered his head, he nevertheless felt that suspicion hovered round him, that some people at any rate held it possible that since he would benefit by the crime, he might quite well have contemplated it.

The man Travers thought so certainly; the doctor did not deem it impossible--and, of course, there would be others.

No wonder that he stood and mused. Once more the aspect of life had changed for him. He was back in that position from which the advent of the unknown cousin had ousted him so easily--the cousin who had come, had seen, and had conquered the one thing needful--the confidence and help of Uncle Rad.

By what means he had succeeded in doing that had been the great mystery which had racked Luke's mind ever since he felt his uncle's affection slipping away from him.

Uncle Rad who had loudly denounced the man as an impostor and a blackmailer before he set eyes on him, was ready to give him love and confidence the moment he saw him: and Luke was discarded like an old coat that no longer fitted. The affection of years was turned to indifference; and what meant more still the habits of a lifetime were changed. Lord Radclyffe, tyrannical and didactic, became a nonent.i.ty in his own household. The grand seigneur, imbued with every instinct of luxury and refinement, became a snuffy old hermit, uncared for, not properly waited on, feeding badly, and living in one room.

All this Philip de Mountford had accomplished entirely by his mere presence. The waving of a wand--a devil's wand--and the metamorphosis was complete! What magic was there in the man himself? What in the tale which he told? What subtle charm did he wield, that the news of his terrible death should strike the old man down as some withered old tree robbed of its support?

Now he lay dead, murdered, only G.o.d knew as yet by whom. People suspected Luke, because Fate had given a fresh turn to her wheel and reinstated him in the pleasing position from which the intruder had ousted him.

Luke de Mountford was once more heir presumptive to the earldom of Radclyffe, and the stranger had taken the secret of his success with him to the grave.

CHAPTER XVIII

IT WOULD NOT DO, YOU KNOW

Since Lord Radclyffe was too ill to attend to anything, or to see any one, it devolved upon Luke to make what arrangements he thought fitting for the lying in state and the subsequent obsequies of the murdered man. For the present, Philip de Mountford lay in the gloomy mortuary chamber of the Victoria police court. Luke had sent over ma.s.sive silver candelabra, flowers and palms and all the paraphernalia pertaining to luxurious death.

The dead man lay--not neglected--only unwatched and alone, surrounded by all the evidences of that wealth which he had come a very long way to seek, but which Fate and a murderer's hand had s.n.a.t.c.hed with appalling suddenness from him.

And in the private sitting room at the Langham, Louisa Harris sat opposite her father at breakfast, a pile of morning papers beside her plate, she herself silent and absorbed.

"That's a queer tale," Colonel Harris was saying, "the papers tell about that murder in Brussels a year ago--though I must say that to my mind there appears some truth in what they say. What do you think, Louisa?"

"I hardly know," she replied absently, "what to think."

"The details of that crime, which was committed about a year ago, are exactly the same as those which relate to this infernal business of last night."

"Are they really?"

No one could have said--and Louisa herself least of all--why she was unwilling to speak on that subject. She had never told her father, or any one for a matter of that, except----that she had been so near to the actual scene of that mysterious crime in Brussels, and that she had known its every detail.

"And I must say," reiterated Colonel Harris emphatically, "that I agree with the leading article in the _Times_. One crime begets another. If that hooligan--or whatever he was--in Brussels had not invented this new and dastardly way of murdering a man in a cab and then making himself scarce and sending the cab spinning on its way, no doubt Philip de Mountford would be alive now. Not that that would be a matter for great rejoicings. Still a crime is a crime, and if we were going to allow blackguards to be murdered all over the place by other blackguards, where would law and order be?"

He was talking more loudly and volubly than was his wont, and he took almost ostentatiously quant.i.ties of food on his plate, which it was quite obvious he never meant to eat. He also steadily avoided meeting his daughter's eyes. But at this juncture she put both elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands, and looked straight across at her father.

"It's no use, dear," she said simply.

"No use what?" he queried with ungrammatical directness.

"No use your pretending to talk at random and to be eating a hearty breakfast, when your thoughts are just as much absorbed as mine are."

"Hm!" he grunted evasively, but was glad enough to push aside the plateful of eggs and bacon which, indeed, he had no desire to eat.

"You have," she continued gently, "read all the papers, just as I have, and you know as well as I do what to read between the lines when they talk of 'clues' and of 'certain sensational developments.'"

"Of course I do," he retorted gruffly, "but it's all nonsense."

"Of course it is. But worrying nevertheless."

"I don't see how such rubbish can worry you."

"Not," she said, "for myself. But for Luke. He must have got an inkling by now of what is going on."

"Of course he has. And if he has a grain of sense he'll treat it with the contempt it deserves."

"It's all very well, father. But just think for a moment. Place yourself in Luke's position. The very idea that you might be suspected must in itself be terrible."

"Not when you are innocent," he rejoined with the absolute cert.i.tude of a man who has never been called upon to face any really serious problem in life. "I shouldn't care what the rabble said about me, if I had a clear conscience."

Louisa was silent for a moment or two, then she said:

"Luke is different somehow. He has been different lately."

"He has a lot to put up with, with old Radclyffe going off his head in that ridiculous way."

But Louisa did not reply to that suggestion. She knew well enough that it was neither Lord Radclyffe's unkindness, nor the arrogance of the new cousin that had changed and softened Luke's entire nature.

The day that he had sat beside her on the stain at Lady Ducies' ball, the completeness of the change had been fully borne in on her. When Luke said to her: "I would give all I have in the world to lie on the ground before you and to kiss the soles of your feet," she knew that Love had wrought its usual exquisite miracle, the absorption of self by another, the utter sinking of the ego before the high altar of the loved one. She knew all that, but dear old Colonel Harris had forgotten--perhaps he had never known.

That knowledge comes to so few nowadays. Life, psychology, and s.e.xual problems have taken the place of the divine lesson which has glorified the world since the birth of Lilith.

All that Louisa now remarked to her kind and sensible father was----

"You know, dear, suspicion has killed a man before now. It was but a very little while ago that a n.o.ble-hearted gentleman preferred death to such dishonour."