Part 8 (2/2)

He stood and stared and stared. The curt speech, the almost fiercely contemptuous bearing, the absolute, unwavering a.s.surance of this man whom but a moment before he had so arrogantly trampled underfoot sent through him such a shock of amazement as nearly deprived him of the power to think. Perhaps for the first time in his life he was utterly and completely at a loss. Only as he gazed at the man before him, there came upon him, sudden as a blow, the memory of a certain hot day more than a year before when he and Everard Monck had wrestled together in the Club gymnasium for the benefit of a little crowd of subalterns who had eagerly betted upon the result. It had been sinew _versus_ weight, and after a tough struggle sinew had prevailed. He remembered the unpleasant sensation of defeat even now though he had had the grit to take it like a man and get up laughing. It was one of the very few occasions he could remember upon which he had been worsted.

But now--to-night--he was face to face with something of an infinitely more serious nature. This man with the stern, accusing eyes and wholly merciless att.i.tude--what had he come to say? An odd sensation stirred at Dacre's heart like an unsteady hand knocking for admittance. There was something wrong here--- something wrong.

”You--madman!” he said at length, and with the words pulled himself together with a giant effort. ”What in the name of wonder are you doing here?” He had bitten his cigar through in his astonishment, and he tossed it away as he spoke with a gesture of returning confidence. He silenced the uneasy foreboding within and met the hard eyes that confronted him without discomfiture. ”What's your game?” he said. ”You have come to tell me something, I suppose. But why on earth couldn't you write it?”

”The written word is not always effectual,” the other man said.

He put up a hand abruptly and stripped the ragged hair from his face, pus.h.i.+ng back the heavy folds of the _chuddah_ that enveloped his head as he did so. His features gleamed in the moonlight, lean and brown, unmistakably British.

”Monck!” said Dacre, in the tone of one verifying a suspicion.

”Yes--Monck.” Grimly the other repeated the name. ”I've had considerable trouble in following you here. I shouldn't have taken it if I hadn't had a very urgent reason.”

”Well, what the devil is it?” Dacre spoke with the exasperation of a man who knows himself to be at a disadvantage. ”If you want to know my opinion, I regard such conduct as d.a.m.ned intrusive at such a time. But if you've any decent excuse let's hear it!”

He had never adopted that tone to Monck before, but he had been rudely jolted out of his usually complacent att.i.tude, and he resented Monck's presence. Moreover, an unpleasant sense of inferiority had begun to make itself felt. There was something judicial about Monck--something inexorable and condemnatory--something that aroused in him every instinct of self-defence.

But Monck met his bl.u.s.tering demand with the utmost calm. It was as if he held him in a grip of iron intention from which no struggles, however desperate, could set him free.

He took an envelope from the folds of his ragged raiment. ”I believe you have heard me speak of my brother Bernard,” he said, ”chaplain of Charthurst Prison.”

Dacre nodded. ”The fellow who writes to you every month. Well? What of him?”

Monck's steady fingers detached and unfolded a letter. ”You had better read for yourself,” he said, and held it out.

But curiously Dacre hung back as if unwilling to touch it.

”Can't you tell me what all the fuss is about?” he said irritably.

Monck's hand remained inflexibly extended. He spoke, a jarring note in his voice. ”Oh yes, I can tell you. But you had better see for yourself too. It concerns you very nearly. It was written in Charthurst Prison nearly six weeks ago, where a woman who calls herself your wife is undergoing a term of imprisonment for forgery.”

”d.a.m.nation!” Ralph Dacre actually staggered as if he had received a blow between the eyes. But almost in the next moment he recovered himself, and uttered a quivering laugh. ”Man alive! You are not fool enough to believe such a c.o.c.k-and-bull story as that!” he said. ”And you have come all this way in this fancy get-up to tell me! You must be mad!”

Monck was still holding out the letter. ”You had better see for yourself,” he reiterated. ”It is d.a.m.nably circ.u.mstantial.”

”I tell you it's an infernal lie!” flung back Dacre furiously. ”There is no woman on this earth who has any claim on me--except Stella. Why should I read it? I tell you it's nothing but d.a.m.ned fabrication--a tissue of abominable falsehood!”

”You mean to deny that you have ever been through any form of marriage before?” said Monck slowly.

”Of course I do!” Dacre uttered another angry laugh. ”You must be a positive fool to imagine such a thing. It's preposterous, unheard of!

Of course I have never been married before. What are you thinking of?”

Monck remained unmoved. ”She has been a music-hall actress,” he said.

”Her name is--or was--Madelina Belleville. Do you tell me that you have never had any dealings whatever with her?”

Dacre laughed again fiercely, scoffingly. ”You don't imagine that I would marry a woman of that sort, do you?” he said.

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