The Yellow Crayon
“I cannot pretend,” she answered, “to regret it.”
Saxe Leinitzer left the room. There was a peculiar smile upon his lips
as he crossed the hall. Brott was still awaiting for him.
“Mr. Brott,” he said, “the Countess is, as I feared, too agitated to see
you again for the present, or any one else. She sends you, however, this
message.”
He took the folded paper from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to the
other man. Brott read it through eagerly. His eyes shone.
“She accepts the situation, then?” he exclaimed.
“Precisely! Will you pardon me, my friend, if I venture upon one other
word. Lucille is not an ordinary woman. She is not in the least like the
majority of her sex, especially, I might add, amongst us. The fact that
her husband was living would seriously influence her consideration of
any other man--as her lover. The present crisis, however, has changed
everything. I do not think that you will have cause to complain of her
lack of gratitude.”
Brott walked out into the streets with the half sheet of note-paper
twisted up between his fingers. For the first time for months he was
conscious of a distinct and vivid sense of happiness. The terrible
period of indecision was past. He knew now where he stood. Nor was
his immediate departure from England altogether unpleasant to him. His
political career was shattered--friends and enemies were alike cold to
him. Such an act of cowardice as his, such pitiful shrinking back at the
last fateful moment, was inexplicable and revolting. Even Letheringham
was barely civil. It was certain that his place in the Cabinet would be
intolerable. He yearned for escape from it all, and the means of escape
were now at hand. In after years he knew very well that the shadow of
his broken trust, the torture of his misused opportunities, would stand
for ever between him and the light. But at that moment he was able
to clear his mind of all such disquieting thoughts. He had won
Lucille--never mind at what cost, at what peril! He had won Lucille!
He was deeply engrossed, and his name was spoken twice in his ear before
he turned round. A small, somewhat shabby-looking man, with tired eyes
and more than a day’s growth of beard upon his chin, had accosted him.
“Mr. Brott, sir. A word with you, please.”
Brott held out his hand. Nevertheless his tone when he spoke lacked
heartiness.
“You, Hedley! Why, what brings you to London?”
The little man did not seem to see the hand. At any rate he made no
motion to take it.
“A few minutes’ chat with Mr. Brott. That’s what I’ve come for.”
Brott raised his eyebrows, and nodded in somewhat constrained fashion.
“Well,” he said, “I am on my way to my rooms. We can talk as we go, if
you like. I am afraid the good people up in your part of the world are
not too well pleased with me.”
The little man smiled rather queerly.
“That is quite true,” he answered calmly. “They hate a liar and a
turn-coat. So do I!”
Brott stopped short upon the pavement.
“If you are going to talk like that to me, Hedley,” he said, “the less
you have to say the better.”
The man nodded.
“Very well,” he said. “What I have to say won’t take me very long. But
as I’ve tramped most of the way up here to say it, you’ll have to listen
here or somewhere else. I thought you were always one who liked the
truth.”
“So I do!” Brott answered. “Go on!”
The man shuffled along by his side. They were an odd-looking pair, for
Brott was rather a careful man as regards his toilet, and his companion
looked little better than a tramp.
“All my life,” he continued, “I’ve been called ‘Mad Hedley,’ or ‘Hedley,
the mad tailor.’ Sometimes one and sometimes the other. It don’t matter
which. There’s truth in, it. I am a bit mad. You, Mr. Brott, were one
of those who understood me a little. I have brooded a good deal perhaps,
and things have got muddled up in my brain. You know what has been at
the bottom of it all.
“I began making speeches when I was a boy. People laughed at me, but
I’ve set many a one a-thinking. I’m no anarchist, although people call
me one. I’ll admit that I admire the men who set the French Revolution
going. If such a thing happened in this country I’d be one of the first
to join in. But I’ve never had a taste for bloodshed. I’d rather the
thing had been done without. From the first you seemed to be the man who
might have brought it about. We listened to you, we watched your career,
and we began to have hopes. Mr. Brott, the bodies and souls of millions
of your fellow-creatures were in the hollow of your hand. It was you
who might have set them free. It was you who might have made this the
greatest, the freest, the happiest country in the world. Not so much for
us perhaps as for our children, and our children’s children. We didn’t
expect a huge social upheaval in a week, or even a decade of years. But
we did expect to see the first blow struck. Oh, yes, we expected that.”
“I have disappointed you, I know, you and many others,” Brott said
bitterly. “I wish I could explain. But I can’t!”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” the man answered. “You have broken the hearts
of thousands of suffering men and women--you who might have led them
into the light, have forged another bolt in the bars which stand between
them and liberty. So they must live on in the darkness, dull, dumb
creatures with just spirit enough to spit and curse at the sound of your
name. It was the greatest trust God ever placed in one man’s hand--and
you--you abused it. They were afraid of you--the aristocrats, and they
bought you. Oh, we are not blind up there--there are newspapers in our
public houses, and now and then one can afford a half-penny. We have
read of you at their parties and their dances. Quite one of them you
have become, haven’t you? But, Mr. Brott, have you never been afraid?
Have you never said to yourself, there is justice in the earth? Suppose
it finds me out?”
“Hedley, you are talking rubbish,” Brott said. “Up here you would see
things with different eyes. Letheringham is pledged.”
“If any man ever earned hell,” Hedley continued, “it is you, Brott,
you who came to us a deliverer, and turned out to be a lying prophet.
‘Hell,’” he repeated fiercely, “and may you find it swiftly.”
The man’s right hand came out of his long pocket. They were in the thick
of Piccadilly, but his action was too swift for any interference. Four
reports rang suddenly out, and the muzzle of the revolver was held
deliberately within an inch or so of Brett’s heart. And before even
the nearest of the bystanders could realise what had happened Brott lay
across the pavement a dead man, and Hedley was calmly handing over the
revolver to a policeman who had sprang across the street.
“Be careful, officer,” he said, “there are still two chambers loaded.
I will come with you quite quietly. That is Mr. Reginald Brott, the
Cabinet Minister, and I have killed him.”
CHAPTER XL
“For once,” Lady Carey said, with a faint smile, “your ‘admirable
Crichton’ has failed you.”
Lucille opened her eyes. She had been leaning back amongst the railway
cushions.
“I think not,” she said. “Only I blame myself that I ever trusted the
Prince even so far as to give him that message. For I know very well
that if Victor had received it he would have been here.”
Lady Carey took up a great pile of papers and looked them carelessly
through.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that I do not agree with you. I do not think
that Saxe Leinitzer had any desire except to see you safely away. I
believe that he will be quite as disappointed as you are that your
husband is not here to aid you. Some one must see you safely on the
steamer at Havre. Perhaps he will come himself.”
“I shall wait in Paris,” Lucille said quietly, “for my husband.”
“You may wait,” Lady Carey said, “for a very long time.”
Lucille looked at her steadily. “What do you mean?”
“What a fool you are, Lucille. If to other people it seems almost
certain on the face of it that you were responsible for that drop of
poison in your husband’s liqueur glass, why should it not seem so to
himself?”
Lucille laughed, but there was a look of horror in her dark eyes.
“How absurd. I know Victor better than to believe him capable of such a
suspicion. Just as he knows me better than to believe me capable of such
an act.”
“Really. But you were in his rooms secretly just before.”
“I went to leave some roses for him,” Lucille answered. “And if you
would like to know it, I will tell you this. I left my card tied to them
with a message for him.”
Lady Carey yawned.
“A remarkably foolish thing to do,” she said. “That may cause you
trouble later on. Great heavens, what is this?”
She held the evening paper open in her hand. Lucille leaned over with
blanched face.
“What has happened?” she cried. “Tell me, can’t you!”
“Reginald Brott has been shot in Piccadilly,” Lady Carey said.
“Is he hurt?” Lucille asked.
“He is dead!”
They read the brief announcement together. The deed had been committed
by a man whose reputation for sanity had long been questioned, one of
Brott’s own constituents. He was in custody, and freely admitted his
guilt. The two women looked at one another in horror. Even Lady Carey
was affected.
“What a hateful thing,” she said. “I am glad that we had no hand in it.”
“Are you so sure that we hadn’t?” Lucille asked bitterly. “You see what
it says. The man killed him because of his political apostasy. We had
something to do with that at least.”
Lady Carey was recovering her sang froid.
“Oh, well,” she said, “indirect influences scarcely count, or one might
trace the causes of everything which happens back to an absurd extent.
If this man was mad he might just as well have shot Brott for anything.”
Lucille made no answer. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She did not
speak again till they reached Dover.
They embarked in the drizzling rain. Lady Carey drew a little breath of
relief as they reached their cabin, and felt the boat move beneath them.
“Thank goodness that we are really off. I have been horribly nervous all
the time. If they let you leave England they can have no suspicion as
yet.”
Lucille was putting on an ulster and cap to go out on deck.
“I am not at all sure,” she said, “that I shall not return to England.
At any rate, if Victor does not come to me in Paris I shall go to him.”
“What beautiful trust!” Lady Carey answered. “My dear Lucille, you are
more like a school-girl than a woman of the world.”
A steward entered with a telegram for Lucille. It was banded in at the
Haymarket, an hour before their departure. Lucille read it, and her face
blanched. “I thank you for your invitation, but I fear that it would not
be good for my health.--S.”
Lady Carey looked over her shoulder. She laughed hardly.
“How brutal!” she murmured. “But, then, Victor can be brutal sometimes,
can’t he?”
Lucille tore it into small pieces without a word. Lady Carey waited for
a remark from her in vain.
“I, too,” she said at last, “have had some telegrams. I have been
hesitating whether to show them to you or not. Perhaps you had better
see them.”
She produced them and spread them out. The first was dated about the
same time as the one Lucille had received.
“Have seen S. with message from Lucille. Fear quite useless, as he
believes worst.”
The second was a little longer.
“Have just heard S. has left for Liverpool, and has engaged berth in
Campania, sailing to-morrow. Break news to Lucille if you think well.
Have wired him begging return, and promising full explanation.”
“If these,” Lucille said calmly, “belonged to me I should treat them as
I have my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“I should tear them up.”
Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders with the air of one who finds further