Kitabı oku: «The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood», sayfa 20

CHAPTER XII.
IN LINCOLN'S INN

Ledantec, alias Hobson, had at once reported progress to Mrs. Wilders. The day after his arrival in Paris she had heard from him. He wrote—

"Have no fears. The police are on his track. They have his exact description, and are watching at the Mairie. Directly he shows himself he will be arrested as Rupert Gascoigne, tried, condemned. They do these things well in France. You will never hear of him again."

There was much to quiet and console her in these words. After the dreadful surprise of Rupert's reappearance she had been a prey to the keenest anxiety. The whole edifice, built up with such patient, unscrupulous effort, had threatened to crumble away. Bitter disappointment seemed inevitable just when her highest hopes were nearest fulfilment.

But now, thanks to her unscrupulous confederate, the staunch friend who had stood by her so often before, the last and worst difficulty was removed, and everything would be well.

Another day passed without further intelligence from Paris, but Ledantec's silence aroused no fresh apprehensions. Doubtless there was nothing special to tell; matters were progressing favourably, of course; until her husband was actually arrested, she could expect to hear nothing more.

On the evening of the third day, however—that, in fact, following Gascoigne's visit to the Mairie—she had a short letter from Lincoln's Inn. Lord Essendine's lawyers wrote her, begging she would call on them early next day, as they had an important communication to make to her. His lordship himself would be present, and their noble client had suggested, if that would suit her, an appointment for twelve noon.

"At last! They mean to do the right thing at last," she said, exultingly. "The proud old man is humbled; he fears the extinction of his ancient line, and must make overtures now to me. My boy is the heir; they cannot resist his rights; his claim is undeniable. He shall be amply provided for; I shall insist on the most liberal terms."

Fully satisfied of the cause of her summons to Lincoln's Inn, Mrs. Wilders presented herself punctually at twelve. Although she still schooled her face to sorrowful commiseration with the old peer whom fate had so sorely stricken, the elation she felt was manifest in her proud, arrogant carriage, and the triumphant glitter of her bold brown eyes.

Lord Essendine was with the senior partner, Mr. Burt, when she was shown in; and although he arose stiffly, but courteously, from his seat, did not take her outstretched hand, while his greeting was cold and formal in the extreme.

There was a long pause, and, as neither of the gentlemen spoke, Mrs. Wilders began.

"You sent for me, my lord—"

His lordship waved his hand toward Mr. Burt, as though she must address herself to the old lawyer.

"Mrs. Wilders," said Mr. Burt, gravely and with great deliberation—"Mrs. Wilders, if that indeed be your correct appellation—"

And the doubt thus implied, reviving her worst fears, sent a cold shock to her heart.

But she was outwardly brave.

"How dare you!" she cried with indignant defiance in her tone. "Have you only brought me here to insult me? I appeal to your lordship. Is this the treatment I am to expect? I, your cousin's widow—"

"One moment, madam," interposed the lawyer. "To be a widow it is first necessary to have been a wife."

"Do you presume to say I was not General Wilders's wife?" she asked hotly.

"Not his lawful wife. Stay, madam," he said, seeing Mrs. Wilders half rise from her chair. "You must hear me out. We have evidence, the clearest seemingly; disprove it if you can."

"What evidence?"

"The certificate of your other marriage. It is here."

"How came you by it?" she inquired eagerly.

"No matter, it is all in proper form; you could not contest it, understand."

"Well? I never pretended when I gave my hand to Colonel Wilders that I had not been married before. He was well aware of it."

"But not that your first husband was alive at the time."

"It is false! He was dead—drowned; he drowned himself in the Seine."

"Your first husband is alive still, and you know it. You have seen him yourself within these last few days. He is ready to come forward at any time. It is he in fact who has furnished us with these proofs."

"I shall protest, dispute, contest this to the uttermost. It is a base, discreditable plot against a weak, helpless, defenceless woman," said Mrs. Wilders with effrontery; but despair was in her heart.

How Ledantec has deceived her!

"Is that all you have to say to me?" she went on at length after another pause. "You, Lord Essendine—my husband's relative and friend, one of the richest and proudest men in this purse-proud land—how chivalrous, how brave of you, to bring me here to load me with vile aspersions, to rob me of my character; my child, my little friendless orphan boy, of the inheritance which is his by right of birth!"

"Do not let us get into recriminations, madam," said Lord Essendine, speaking for the first time. "It is to speak of your boy, mainly, that I wished for this interview."

"Poor child!"

"Whatever blot may stain his birth, I cannot forget that he has Wilders's blood in his veins. He is Cousin Bill's son still."

"You admit so much? Many thanks," she sneered. "And since these heavy blows have struck us, blow after blow, he is the sole survivor of the house. I am willing—nay, anxious—to recognise him."

"Indeed! How truly generous of you!" There was no telling whether the speech was genuine, or another sneer.

"He cannot bear the title, but I can make him my heir. He may succeed to the position in due course—I hardly care how soon."

"Are you mocking me, Lord Essendine?"

"I am in sober earnest. I will do what I say, but only on one condition."

"And that is?"

"That you give up the child, absolutely, and forever."

"What! part with the only thing left me to love and cherish—"

"One moment, madam," interposed the lawyers "before your emotion overpowers you. We happen to be able to judge of the extent of your affection for your only son."

"How so?"

"We know you care so little for him that for month, you never see the child. It was left in England when you went to the Crimea—"

"With my husband. Besides, I could not have made a nursery of Lord Lydstone's yacht."

"And since you settled in London you have sent it to a nurse in the country."

"It was better for the child."

"No doubt you know best. However, this discussion is unnecessary. Will you comply with his lordship's conditions, and part with the child?"

"Never!"

"Remember, the offer will not be renewed."

"And what, pray, would become of me? You deprive me of everything—present joy in my offspring, his affection in coming years. I shall be alone, friendless—a beggar, perhaps."

"As to that, you must trust to his lordship's generosity."

"Little as you deserve it," added Lord Essendine, meaningfully.

She turned on him at once.

"Of what do you accuse me?"

"Of much that I forbear to repeat now. But I will spare you—I will leave you to your own conscience and—"

"What else, pray?"

"The law. It may seize you yet, madam, and it has a tight grip."

"I shall not remain here to be so grossly insulted. If you have anything more to say to me, my lord, you must write."

"And you refuse to give up the child?"

"You had better put your proposals on paper, Lord Essendine. I may consider them in my child's interests, although the separation would be almost too bitter to bear. I may add, however, that I will consent to nothing that does not include some settlement on myself—"

"As to that," said the lawyer, "his lordship declines to bind himself—is it not so, my lord?"

"Quite; I will make no promises. But she will not find me ungenerous if she will accept my terms."

And so the interview ended. There was no further reference made to the unpleasant facts now brought to light by the letter and documents sent over by Hyde. Mrs. Wilders, as we shall still call her, knew that she could not dispute them; that any protest in the shape of law proceedings would only make more public her own shame and discomfiture. But if she was beaten she would not confess it yet; and at least she was resolved that the enemy who had so ruthlessly betrayed her should not enjoy his triumph.

CHAPTER XIII.
HUSBAND AND WIFE

Mrs. Wilders's first and only idea after she left Lincoln's Inn was to get to Paris as soon as she could. She no longer counted on much assistance from Ledantec, nor, indeed, had she much belief in him now; but she yet hoped he might help her to obtain revenge. Whatever it cost her, Rupert Gascoigne must pay the penalty of thwarting her when she seemed on the very threshold of success.

Having desired her maid to pack a few things, she hastily realised all the money she had at command and started by the night-mail for Paris.

Paris! Like the husband she had wronged and deserted, she had not visited the gay city for years. Not since she had thrown in her lot with an unspeakable villain, joining and abetting him in a vile plot against the man to whom she was bound by the strongest ties in life—by loyalty, affection, honour, truth.

"I hate going back there," she told herself, as the Calais express whirled her through Abbeville, Amiens, Creil. "Hate it, dread it, more than I can say."

And this repugnance might be interpreted into some glimmering remnant of good feeling were it not due to vague fears of impending evil rather than to shame and remorse.

She was landed at an early hour at the hotel she resolved to patronise: a quiet, old-fashioned house in the best part of the Rue de Rivoli, overlooking the gardens of the Tuileries.

She was shown to a room, and proceeded at once to correct the ravages of the night journey. A handsome woman still, but vain, like all her sex, and anxious to look her best on every occasion.

Hastily swallowing a cup of coffee, as soon as her toilette was completed she issued forth and took the first cab she could find.

"To the Porte St. Martin," she said; "lose no time."

Arrived there, she alighted, dismissed the cab, and proceeded on foot to the Faubourg St. Martin, to the house we have visited already, and in which our friend Hyde was still a prisoner.

Simply mentioning her name, she passed by the porter with the air of one who knew her road, although it was probably the first time she had come there. On the sixth floor she knocked as Hyde had done, and was admitted much as he had been.

There was no disguise about her, however, and she sent in her name as "Mrs. Wilders, just arrived from England, and most anxious to see Mr. Hobson."

"You, Cyprienne!" said the man we know, who answered to the names of both Hobson and Ledantec. "In Paris! This was quite unnecessary. I am arranging everything. You had my letter?"

"Pshaw! Hippolyte, you can't befool me."

"Why this tone? I tell you I have done everything."

"You may think so, but in the meantime Rupert has stolen a march on me. He has got the papers—"

"Impossible!"

"It is so. Got them, and placed them, with a full statement, in Lord Essendine's hands."

"How do you know this?"

"From Lord Essendine's own lips?"

"How can he have done this? He—a prisoner."

"Are you sure of that?"

"He is fast by the leg. Come and see him. He is in the next room."

"Here? In our power?"

"Yes: let us go and see him at once."

There was a fierce gleam in her eyes, as though she wished to stab him, wherever she found him, to the heart.

Hyde was where we had left him, still bound hand and foot to the bedstead. He had spent a miserable night, he was stiff and sore from his strange position, and they had given him little or no food. But his manner was defiant, and his air exulting, as he saw Ledantec and Cyprienne approach.

"Have you come to release me? It's about time. You will gain nothing by keeping me here."

"Dog! I hate you!" cried Mrs. Wilders, as she struck him a cruel, cowardly blow on the face.

"A pleasant greeting from the woman I made my wife."

"Would that fate had never thrown us together; that I had never heard your name!"

"No one can wish it more sincerely than myself," replied Gascoigne. "It was you who wrecked and ruined my life."

"And what have you done to me, Rupert Gascoigne? Could you not leave me in peace? Why follow me to persecute me, to rob me and my son—"

"Of the proceeds of your infamy?" interrupted Gascoigne, or Hyde, as I prefer to call him; "I will tell you. Because you dared to plot against a man I esteem. Whatever has happened to Stanislas McKay, he owes it, I feel confident, to you. I may never see him again—"

"You never will, and for a double reason. Do not hope, Rupert Gascoigne, to leave this place again."

And she looked capable of taking his life then and there.

"Come, come! Cyprienne; you are going too far. Mr. Gascoigne has not behaved very well, perhaps, but it is not for us to call him to account. We will leave him to the myrmidons of the law. He is wanted, we know, by the police."

"Am I?" said Hyde, mockingly; "so are others, as you will find. At this moment the house is surrounded. The authorities have long had their eye on Hippolyte Ledantec, alias Hobson, the Russian spy."

The confederates looked at each other uneasily, and Ledantec said—

"It can hardly be so. But it will be well to ascertain and take precautions. Come! there is a way out of this house known only to me."

And, so saying, he went towards the door, followed by Mrs. Wilders. Suddenly he paused, surprised by a loud knocking outside.

They heard the old woman's voice angrily asking who was there; they heard the reply, spoken loudly and authoritatively.

"The police! Open, in the name of the law. Open! or we shall break the door down."

Next minute the apartment was invaded by a posse of police, all of whom were drawn to where Hyde was by his loud cries of "Here! Here!"

"Let no one move," said the chief of the police, briefly. "What is the meaning of this? Who are you?" This was to Ledantec.

"My name is Mr. Hobson, a British subject, and member of the press. I shall require you to explain this intrusion."

"His real name is Ledantec!" cried Hyde, interposing. "Ex-gambler, and now spy in the pay of the Russians. This woman is his accomplice."

"And who may you be?" said the police-officer, turning to Hyde.

"I know this gentleman," put in the attaché whom Hyde had seen at the Embassy. "He is a British officer—Mr. Hyde."

"I know better!" cried Ledantec, with a scornful laugh. "I denounce him as Rupert Gascoigne, the perpetrator of the murder in Tinplate Street, fifteen years ago. The case cannot yet be forgotten at the Prefecture."

"Is it possible?" said the chief of the police, looking curiously at Hyde. "Surely I should recognise you. I was one of those from whom you escaped by jumping into the Seine."

"I do not deny that I am the man," replied Hyde, calmly. "But I am innocent, and only ask a fair trial."

"We must arrest you, anyway. Keep what you have to say for the judge. Come! bring them along; it's altogether a fine morning's work."

And within an hour Hyde found himself in his old quarters—a separate cell of the depôt of the Prefecture. The other prisoners were lodged there also, but apart from him and each other.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE SCALES REMOVED

The capture made by the police in the Faubourg St. Martin was kept secret. Under the Second Empire nothing was published except with the permission of the authorities, and they had their reasons for not talking too openly of Hyde's arrest. He was a British subject, a military officer moreover, and these were claims to the consideration of French justice that would not have been so readily recognised fifteen years before.

It was, of course, inevitable that the affair of Tinplate Street should be re-opened. But a new complexion was given to it by the recent arrests. Hyde had been interrogated at once by the magistrate who had examined him before; the same man, but so different; no longer insolently positive and threatening unjustly, but bland, considerate, obliging. The fact was he had had a hint from his superiors to treat the Englishman gently.

"The truth must come out now," Hyde had said, when asked if he remembered the circumstances of his former arrest. "You have the real culprit in custody."

"This Ledantec, I suppose?" asked the judge.

"It was he who struck the blow; I saw him with my own eyes, as I told you years ago. Then he escaped by the window into a back-street; I followed him, but he was too quick for me. A cab waited for him, picked him up, and he was driven away."

While Hyde was speaking the judge had turned over the pages of a voluminous document in front of him,—a detailed report of the previous interrogation.

"Your story does not vary. You have either an excellent memory, or—" and the stern magistrate smiled quite archly—"or you are really telling me the truth."

"The truth! I can swear to it."

"What is more, your story is in the main corroborated. Shortly after your escape we laid hands on the very cabman who had helped Ledantec away. He described the scene as you have, and through him we got upon the trace of his fare—Ledantec, as you call him."

"But you never arrested him?"

"Until now he carefully kept away from Paris."

"But you have him now on a double charge."

"Him and his accomplice. Justice will be satisfied, never fear."

"How long will you keep me here?"

"I regret that for the present it will be impossible to release you. We are compelled first to verify the facts before us. But in a few days at the latest I hope your trouble will be at an end. You have powerful friends, Monsieur."

"The British Embassy, I suppose?" said Hyde, complacently.

"Yes; and his Imperial Majesty has deigned to go personally into your case."

"Then I can wait events calmly and without fear."

Presently, when Hyde had been removed, Ledantec was introduced, and was received with the brutal harshness which was the judge's habitual manner towards prisoners.

"Your name, profession, address?" he asked abruptly.

"Silas Hobson, an English journalist, residing in Duke Street, St. James's, London."

"It is false! You have no right to the name of Hobson. You are not an Englishman. You may reside in London, but it is only temporarily."

"Who am I then?" asked Ledantec with a sneer.

"In Paris, at your last visit, you passed as Hippolyte Ledantec, but your real name is Serge Michaelovitch Vasilenikoff. You are a Russian by birth, by profession a gambler, a blackleg, a cheat."

Ledantec, as I shall still call him, merely shrugged his shoulders in sarcastic helplessness at this abuse.

"You are worse. You are a spy in the service of the enemies of the State; an unconvicted murderer—"

He bent his eyes upon the prisoner with a piercing gaze, to watch the effect of this accusation.

Ledantec never blenched, and the judge presently continued—

"You are the real author of the crime in Tinplate Street."

"M. Rupert Gascoigne is your informant, I presume," said Ledantec sneering; "it is easy to rebut a charge by throwing it on another. But you are too clever, M. le Juge, to be imposed upon."

"You at least cannot hoodwink me. We have the fullest evidence, let me tell you, of the crime—all the crimes—laid to your charge. Your accomplice has confessed."

This was said to try the prisoner, and it succeeded, for he started slightly at the word "crimes."

"Accomplice! Of whom do you speak?"

"There is a woman in custody who has been associated with you for years. It was she who instigated you to the robbery and murder of the Baron d'Enot. She joined you when you fled from the gambling-den in Tinplate Street, and shared your flight from Paris. She was with you in St. Petersburg till you separated after a violent quarrel—"

"The blame was hers," interrupted Ledantec.

"Possibly, but you were equally to blame. In any case she left you to shift for herself. She entered a great English family by a false marriage, and, when next you met her, conspired with her to bring the wealth of that family within her grasp. You again became her guilty partner, and plotted to take the life of the heir to a noble English title and great estates."

He was referring now to McKay, but Ledantec, misled by a guilty conscience, was thinking of Lord Lydstone, and his mysteriously sudden death.

"That was her doing!" he cried remorsefully. "In removing Lord Lydstone—"

The judge caught quickly at the new name.

"You removed, or, more plainly, you murdered Lord Lydstone at the instigation of your accomplice—is that so?"

Ledantec would not confess to this, but the judge felt certain that he had come upon the track of another dreadful crime.

"There is enough against you," he went on slowly, "to convict you a dozen times over, enough to send you to the guillotine. Your only hope will be to make a clean breast of everything. By helping us to convict your accomplice you may save your forfeited life."

"But I shall be sent to the galleys; to Toulon or Brest. Life as a French galley-slave is worse than death."

"You will not think so when the alternative is put before you," said the judge, dryly; "and my advice to you is to make a full confession."

Ledantec shook his head, but it was with far less assurance than he had shown at the beginning of his examination. It was clear that he saw himself fast in the toils; that the law held him tight in its clutch; that unqualified submission was the only course to pursue.

He had spoken fully and unreservedly, confessing freely to every guilty deed in his long career of wickedness, possessing the judge with every detail of his own and his accomplice's crimes, when that accomplice was brought up for interrogation in her turn.

She was ghastly pale: the rough ordeal of imprisonment had robbed her dress and demeanour of all its coquetry; but she faced the magistrate with self-possessed, insolent effrontery, and met his stern look with cold, unflinching eyes.

"Why am I brought here?" she began, fiercely. "How dare you detain me? You and your masters shall answer for this ill-usage. I am an English lady, belonging to one of the proudest families in the country. The British Embassy, the British nation, will call you to the strictest account."

"Ta! ta! ta!" said the judge, with a gesture of the hand essentially French; "I think you are slightly mistaken; you are no more English than I am. I know you, and all about you, Cyprienne Vergette—otherwise Gascoigne, otherwise Wilders.

"Shall I tell you a little of your early history? How you eloped from Gibraltar, where your father was Vice-Consul; how you came to Paris with your lover; your marriage, your life, your desertion of your husband, your association with Ledantec, your second marriage, your plots against Milord Essendine and his family, your murder—"

"It is a lie!" she interrupted him, hastily. "I never committed murder."

"You compassed Lord Lydstone's death, although you did not strike the blow. You would have caused the death of another English officer, but, happily, he has escaped your murderous intrigues."

Only that morning the French journals had copied from the English an account of McKay's almost providential escape on the 18th of June.

"But your last attempt has failed utterly. Mr.—" he referred to his papers for the name—"McKay is safe within the British lines. The agent you employed to inveigle him into danger is dead, but with his last breath he confessed that he had had his orders from you. Now, Cyprienne Vergette, what have you to say?"

"I deny everything. I protest against your jurisdiction."

"The Assize Court will hear, but scarcely admit, your plea. That tribunal and its president will deal you as you deserve."