The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English

menaces. Besides, you would have the pleasure of seeing me locked up. My imprisonment for life would recompense you even for the loss of her grace's arm. And five hundred pounds is such a sum to have to pay--merely for a wife! Why not, therefore, act on Mr. Dacre's suggestion? Here comes the constable." The constable referred to was advancing toward them--he was not a dozen yards away. "Let me beckon to him--I will with pleasure." He took out his watch--a gold chronograph repeater. "There are scarcely ten minutes left during which it will be possible for me to send the communication which I spoke of, so that it may arrive in time. As it will then be too late, and the instruments are already prepared for the little operation which her grace is eagerly anticipating, it would, perhaps, be as well, after all, that you should give me into charge. You would have saved your five hundred pounds, and you would, at any rate, have something in exchange for her grace's mutilated limb. Ah, here is the constable! Officer!" The stranger spoke with such a pleasant little air of easy geniality that it was impossible to tell if he were in jest or in earnest. This fact impressed the duke much more than if he had gone in for a liberal indulgence of the--under the circumstances--orthodox melodramatic scowling. And, indeed, in the face of his own common sense, it impressed Mr. Ivor Dacre too. This well-bred, well-groomed youth was just the being to realize--_aux bouts des ongles_--a modern type of the devil, the type which depicts him as a perfect gentleman, who keeps smiling all the time. The constable whom this audacious rogue had signaled approached the little group. He addressed the stranger: "Do you want me, sir?" "No, I do not want you. I think it is the Duke of Datchet." The constable, who knew the duke very well by sight, saluted him as he turned to receive instructions. The duke looked white, even savage. There was not a pleasant look in his eyes and about his lips. He appeared to be endeavoring to put a great restraint upon himself. There was a momentary silence. Mr. Dacre made a movement as if to interpose. The duke caught him by the arm. He spoke: "No, constable, I do not want you. This person is mistaken." The constable looked as if he could not quite make out how such a mistake could have arisen, hesitated, then, with another salute, he moved away. The stranger was still holding his watch in his hand. "Only eight minutes," he said. The duke seemed to experience some difficulty in giving utterance to what he had to say. "If I give you this five hundred pounds, you--you--" As the duke paused, as if at a loss for language which was strong enough to convey his meaning, the stranger laughed. "Let us take the adjectives for granted. Besides, it is only boys who call each other names--men do things. If you give me the five hundred sovereigns, which you have in that bag, at once--in five minutes it will be too late--I will promise--I will not swear; if you do not credit my simple promise, you will not believe my solemn affirmation--I will promise that, possibly within an hour, certainly within an hour and a half, the Duchess of Datchet shall return to you absolutely uninjured--except, of course, as you are already aware, with regard to a few of the hairs of her head. I will promise this on the understanding that you do not yourself attempt to see where I go, and that you will allow no one else to do so." This with a glance at Ivor Dacre. "I shall know at once if I am followed. If you entertain such intentions, you had better, on all accounts, remain in possession of your five hundred pounds." The duke eyed him very grimly. "I entertain no such intentions--until the duchess returns." Again the stranger indulged in that musical laugh of his. "Ah, until the duchess returns! Of course, then the bargain's at an end. When you are once more in the enjoyment of her grace's society, you will be at liberty to set all the dogs in Europe at my heels. I assure you I fully expect that you will do so--why not?" The duke raised the canvas bag. "My dear duke, ten thousand thanks! You shall see her grace at Datchet House, 'pon my honor, probably within the hour." "Well," commented Ivor Dacre, when the stranger had vanished, with the bag, into Piccadilly, and as the duke and himself moved toward Burlington Gardens, "if a gentleman is to be robbed, it is as well that he should have another gentleman rob him." III Mr. Dacre eyed his companion covertly as they progressed. His Grace of Datchet appeared to have some fresh cause for uneasiness. All at once he gave it utterance, in a tone of voice which was extremely somber: "Ivor, do you think that scoundrel will dare to play me false?" "I think," murmured Mr. Dacre, "that he has dared to play you pretty false already." "I don't mean that. But I mean how am I to know, now that he has his money, that he will still not keep Mabel in his clutches?" There came an echo from Mr. Dacre. "Just so--how are you to know?" "I believe that something of this sort has been done in the States." "I thought that there they were content to kidnap them after they were dead. I was not aware that they had, as yet, got quite so far as the living." "I believe that I have heard of something just like this." "Possibly; they are giants over there." "And in that case the scoundrels, when their demands were met, refused to keep to the letter of their bargain and asked for more." The duke stood still. He clinched his fists, and swore: "Ivor, if that--villain doesn't keep his word, and Mabel isn't home within the hour, by--I shall go mad!" "My dear Datchet"--Mr. Dacre loved strong language as little as he loved a scene--"let us trust to time and, a little, to your white-hatted and gardenia-buttonholed friend's word of honor. You should have thought of possible eventualities before you showed your confidence--really. Suppose, instead of going mad, we first of all go home?" A hansom stood waiting for a fare at the end of the Arcade. Mr. Dacre had handed the duke into it before his grace had quite realized that the vehicle was there. "Tell the fellow to drive faster." That was what the duke said when the cab had started. "My dear Datchet, the man's already driving his geerage off its legs. If a bobby catches sight of him he'll take his number." A moment later, a murmur from the duke: "I don't know if you're aware that the prince is coming to dinner?" "I am perfectly aware of it." "You take it uncommonly cool. How easy it is to bear our brother's burdens! Ivor, if Mabel doesn't turn up I shall feel like murder." "I sympathize with you, Datchet, with all my heart, though, I may observe, parenthetically, that I very far from realize the situation even yet. Take my advice. If the duchess does not show quite as soon as we both of us desire, don't make a scene; just let me see what I can do." Judging from the expression of his countenance, the duke was conscious of no overwhelming desire to witness an exhibition of Mr. Dacre's prowess. When the cab reached Datchet House his grace dashed up the steps three at a time. The door flew open. "Has the duchess returned?" "Hereward!" A voice floated downward from above. Some one came running down the stairs. It was her Grace of Datchet. "Mabel!" She actually rushed into the duke's extended arms. And he kissed her, and she kissed him--before the servants. "So you're not quite dead?" she cried. "I am almost," he said. She drew herself a little away from him. "Hereward, were you seriously hurt?" "Do you suppose that I could have been otherwise than seriously hurt?" "My darling! Was it a Pickford's van?" The duke stared. "A Pickford's van? I don't understand. But come in here. Come along, Ivor. Mabel, you don't see Ivor." "How do you do, Mr. Dacre?" Then the trio withdrew into a little anteroom; it was really time. Even then the pair conducted themselves as if Mr. Dacre had been nothing and no one. The duke took the lady's two hands in his. He eyed her fondly. "So you are uninjured, with the exception of that lock of hair. Where did the villain take it from?" The lady looked a little puzzled. "What lock of hair?" From an envelope which he took from his pocket the duke produced a shining tress. It was the lock of hair which had arrived in the first communication. "I will have it framed." "You will have what framed?" The duchess glanced at what the duke was so tenderly caressing, almost, as it seemed, a little dubiously. "Whatever is it you have there?" "It is the lock of hair which that scoundrel sent me." Something in the lady's face caused him to ask a question; "Didn't he tell you he had sent it to me?" "Hereward!" "Did the brute tell you that he meant to cut off your little finger?" A very curious look came into the lady's face. She glanced at the duke as if she, all at once, was half afraid of him. She cast at Mr. Dacre what really seemed to be a look of inquiry. Her voice was tremulously anxious. "Hereward, did--did the accident affect you mentally?" "How could it not have affected me mentally? Do you think that my mental organization is of steel?" "But you look so well." "Of course I look well, now that I have you back again. Tell me, darling, did that hound actually threaten you with cutting off your arm? If he did, I shall feel half inclined to kill him yet." The duchess seemed positively to shrink from her better half's near neighborhood. "Hereward, was it a Pickford's van?" The duke seemed puzzled. Well he might be. "Was what a Pickford's van?" The lady turned to Mr. Dacre. In her voice there was a ring of anguish. "Mr. Dacre, tell me, was it a Pickford's van?" Ivor could only imitate his relative's repetition of her inquiry. "I don't quite catch you--was what a Pickford's van?" The duchess clasped her hands in front of her. "What is it you are keeping from me? What is it you are trying to hide? I implore you to tell me the worst, whatever it may be! Do not keep me any longer in suspense; you do not know what I already have endured. Mr. Dacre, is my husband mad?" One need scarcely observe that the lady's amazing appeal to Mr. Dacre as to her husband's sanity was received with something like surprise. As the duke continued to stare at her, a dreadful fear began to loom in his brain. "My darling, your brain is unhinged!" He advanced to take her two hands again in his; but, to his unmistakable distress, she shrank away from him. "Hereward--don't touch me. How is it that I missed you? Why did you not wait until I came?" "Wait until you came?" The duke's bewilderment increased. "Surely, if your injuries turned out, after all, to be slight, that was all the more reason why you should have waited, after sending for me like that." "I sent for you--I?" The duke's tone was grave. "My darling, perhaps you had better come upstairs." "Not until we have had an explanation. You must have known that I should come. Why did you not wait for me after you had sent me that?" The duchess held out something to the duke. He took it. It was a card--his own visiting card. Something was written on the back of it. He read aloud what was written. "Mabel, come to me at once with the bearer. They tell me that they cannot take me home." It looks like my own writing." "Looks like it! It is your writing." "It looks like it--and written with a shaky pen." "My dear child, one's hand would shake at such a moment as that." "Mabel, where did you get this?" "It was brought to me in Cane and Wilson's." "Who brought it?" "Who brought it? Why, the man you sent."