The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
could draw a full inspiration and relieve the weight that lay upon my
bosom. Northmour and I exchanged a steady glance; and I suppose each made
his own reflections on the white and startled aspect of the other.
"You were right," I said. "All is over. Shake hands, old man, for the last
time."
"Yes," replied he, "I will shake hands; for, as sure as I am here, I bear
no malice. But, remember, if, by some impossible accident, we should give
the slip to these blackguards, I'll take the upper hand of you by fair or
foul."
"Oh," said I, "you weary me!"
He seemed hurt, and walked away in silence to the foot of the stairs,
where he paused.
"You do not understand," said he. "I am not a swindler, and I guard
myself; that is all. I may weary you or not, Mr. Cassilis, I do not care a
rush; I speak for my own satisfaction, and not for your amusement. You had
better go upstairs and court the girl; for my part, I stay here."
"And I stay with you," I returned. "Do you think I would steal a march,
even with your permission?"
"Frank," he said, smiling, "it's a pity you are an ass, for you have the
makings of a man. I think I must be _fey_ to-day; you cannot irritate me
even when you try. Do you know," he continued softly, "I think we are the
two most miserable men in England, you and I? we have got on to thirty
without wife or child, or so much as a shop to look after--poor, pitiful,
lost devils, both! And now we clash about a girl! As if there were not
several millions in the United Kingdom! Ah, Frank, Frank, the one who
loses his throw, be it you or me, he has my pity! It were better for
him--how does the Bible say?--that a millstone were hanged about his neck
and he were cast into the depth of the sea. Let us take a drink," he
concluded suddenly, but without any levity of tone.
I was touched by his words, and consented. He sat down on the table in the
dining-room, and held up the glass of sherry to his eye.
"If you beat me, Frank," he said, "I shall take to drink. What will you
do, if it goes the other way?"
"God knows," I returned.
"Well," said he, "here is a toast in the meantime: '_Italia irredenta_!'"
The remainder of the day was passed in the same dreadful tedium and
suspense. I laid the table for dinner, while Northmour and Clara prepared
the meal together in the kitchen. I could hear their talk as I went to and
fro, and was surprised to find it ran all the time upon myself. Northmour
again bracketed us together, and rallied Clara on a choice of husbands;
but he continued to speak of me with some feeling, and uttered nothing to
my prejudice unless he included himself in the condemnation. This awakened
a sense of gratitude in my heart, which combined with the immediateness of
our peril to fill my eyes with tears. After all, I thought--and perhaps
the thought was laughably vain--we were here three very noble human beings
to perish in defense of a thieving banker.
Before we sat down to table, I looked forth from an upstairs window. The
day was beginning to decline; the links were utterly deserted; the
dispatch box still lay untouched where we had left it hours before.
Mr. Huddlestone, in a long yellow dressing gown, took one end of the
table, Clara the other; while Northmour and I faced each other from the
sides. The lamp was brightly trimmed; the wine was good; the viands,
although mostly cold, excellent of their sort. We seemed to have agreed
tacitly; all reference to the impending catastrophe was carefully avoided;
and, considering our tragic circumstances, we made a merrier party than
could have been expected. From time to time, it is true, Northmour or I
would rise from table and make a round of the defenses; and, on each of
these occasions, Mr. Huddlestone was recalled to a sense of his tragic
predicament, glanced up with ghastly eyes, and bore for an instant on his
countenance the stamp of terror. But he hastened to empty his glass, wiped
his forehead with his handkerchief, and joined again in the conversation.
I was astonished at the wit and information he displayed. Mr.
Huddlestone's was certainly no ordinary character; he had read and
observed for himself; his gifts were sound; and, though I could never have
learned to love the man, I began to understand his success in business,
and the great respect in which he had been held before his failure. He
had, above all, the talent of society; and though I never heard him speak
but on this one and most unfavorable occasion, I set him down among the
most brilliant conversationalists I ever met.
He was relating with great gusto, and seemingly no feeling of shame, the
maneuvers of a scoundrelly commission merchant whom he had known and
studied in his youth, and we were all listening with an odd mixture of
mirth and embarrassment, when our little party was brought abruptly to an
end in the most startling manner.
A noise like that of a wet finger on the window pane interrupted Mr.
Huddlestone's tale; and in an instant we were all four as white as paper,
and sat tongue-tied and motionless round the table.
"A snail," I said at last; for I had heard that these animals make a noise
somewhat similar in character.
"Snail be d----d!" said Northmour. "Hush!"
The same sound was repeated twice at regular intervals; and then a
formidable voice shouted through the shutters the Italian word,
_"Traditore!"_
Mr. Huddlestone threw his head in the air; his eyelids quivered; next
moment he fell insensible below the table. Northmour and I had each run to
the armory and seized a gun. Clara was on her feet with her hand at her
throat.
So we stood waiting, for we thought the hour of attack was certainly come;
but second passed after second, and all but the surf remained silent in
the neighborhood of the pavilion.
"Quick," said Northmour; "upstairs with him before they come."
VIII
Somehow or other, by hook and crook, and between the three of us, we got
Bernard Huddlestone bundled upstairs and laid upon the bed in My Uncle's
Room. During the whole process, which was rough enough, he gave no sign of
consciousness, and he remained, as we had thrown him, without changing the
position of a finger. His daughter opened his shirt and began to wet his
head and bosom; while Northmour and I ran to the window. The weather
continued clear; the moon, which was now about full, had risen and shed a
very clear light upon the links; yet, strain our eyes as we might, we
could distinguish nothing moving. A few dark spots, more or less, on the
uneven expanse were not to be identified; they might be crouching men,
they might be shadows; it was impossible to be sure.
"Thank God," said Northmour, "Aggie is not coming to-night."
Aggie was the name of the old nurse; he had not thought of her until now;
but that he should think of her at all was a trait that surprised me in
the man.
We were again reduced to waiting. Northmour went to the fireplace and
spread his hands before the red embers, as if he were cold. I followed him
mechanically with my eyes, and in so doing turned my back upon the window.
At that moment a very faint report was audible from without, and a ball
shivered a pane of glass, and buried itself in the shutter two inches from
my head. I heard Clara scream; and though I whipped instantly out of range
and into a corner, she was there, so to speak, before me, beseeching to
know if I were hurt. I felt that I could stand to be shot at every day and
all day long, with such remarks of solicitude for a reward; and I
continued to reassure her, with, the tenderest caresses and in complete
forgetfulness of our situation, till the voice of Northmour recalled me to
myself.
"An air gun," he said. "They wish to make no noise."
I put Clara aside, and looked at him. He was standing with his back to the
fire and his hands clasped behind him; and I knew by the black look on his
face, that passion was boiling within. I had seen just such a look before
he attacked me, that March night, in the adjoining chamber; and, though I
could make every allowance for his anger, I confess I trembled for the
consequences. He gazed straight before him; but he could see us with the
tail of his eye, and his temper kept rising like a gale of wind. With
regular battle awaiting us outside, this prospect of an internecine strife
within the walls began to daunt me.
Suddenly, as I was thus closely watching his expression and prepared
against the worst, I saw a change, a flash, a look of relief, upon his
face. He took up the lamp which stood beside him on the table, and turned
to us with an air of some excitement.
"There is one point that we must know," said he. "Are they going to
butcher the lot of us, or only Huddlestone? Did they take you for him, or
fire at you for your own _beaux yeux_?"
"They took me for him, for certain," I replied. "I am near as tall, and my
head is fair."
"I am going to make sure," returned Northmour; and he stepped up to the
window, holding the lamp above his head, and stood there, quietly
affronting death, for half a minute.
Clara sought to rush forward and pull him from the place of danger; but I
had the pardonable selfishness to hold her back by force.
"Yes," said Northmour, turning coolly from the window, "it's only
Huddlestone they want."
"Oh, Mr. Northmour!" cried Clara; but found no more to add; the temerity
she had just witnessed seeming beyond, the reach of words.
He, on his part, looked at me, cocking his head, with a fire of triumph in
his eyes; and I understood at once that he had thus hazarded his life,
merely to attract Clara's notice, and depose me from my position as the
hero of the hour. He snapped his fingers.
"The fire is only beginning," said he. "When they warm up to their work,
they won't be so particular."
A voice was now heard hailing us from the entrance. From the window we
could see the figure of a man in the moonlight; he stood motionless, his
face uplifted to ours, and a rag of something white on his extended arm;
and as we looked right down upon him, though he was a good many yards
distant on the links, we could see the moonlight glitter on his eyes.
He opened his lips again, and spoke for some minutes on end, in a key so
loud that he might have been heard in every corner of the pavilion, and as
far away as the borders of the wood. It was the same voice that had
already shouted, _"Traditore!"_ through the shutters of the dining-room;
this time it made a complete and clear statement. If the traitor
"Oddlestone" were given up, all others should be spared; if not, no one
should escape to tell the tale.
"Well, Huddlestone, what do you say to that?" asked Northmour, turning to
the bed.
Up to that moment the banker had given no sign of life, and I, at least,
had supposed him to be still lying in a faint; but he replied at once, and
in such tones as I have never heard elsewhere, save from a delirious
patient, adjured and besought us not to desert him. It was the most
hideous and abject performance that my imagination can conceive.
"Enough," cried Northmour; and then he threw open the window, leaned out
into the night, and in a tone of exultation, and with a total
forgetfulness of what was due to the presence of a lady, poured out upon
the ambassador a string of the most abominable raillery both in English
and Italian, and bade him be gone where he had come from. I believe that
nothing so delighted Northmour at that moment as the thought that we must
all infallibly perish before the night was out.
Meantime, the Italian put his flag of truce into his pocket, and
disappeared, at a leisurely pace, among the sand hills.
"They make honorable war," said Northmour. "They are all gentlemen and
soldiers. For the credit of the thing, I wish we could change sides--you