Part 10 (1/2)
The sound of the carving-knife dropping upon the platter as Leadbury started in some sudden spasm of pain, was drowned by the silvery laughter of Miss Bording, saying,
”Oh, don't make fun of the profession of your poor cousin, Captain,”
and the look of disquiet upon Leadbury's face was quickly relieved and he joined heartily and almost boisterously in the merriment. A moment later, Clarissa was alarmed to find him bending upon herself a look in which suspicion, distrust, fear, and hatred all were blended.
Judge Volney Bording, ornament to the legal profession, was a hearty eater, and it was not long before he sent his plate for a second helping, and again Clarissa heard from the closed lips of Leadbury, in a voice that seemed to float up from his very feet:
”Next. Next. You're next, Miss Bording. What'll it be?”
Leadbury half rose, looking toward Clarissa with a glance of most violent anger, but whatever he would have said, was again interrupted by the silvery laugh of Miss Bording, and again Leadbury joined heartily, almost boisterously. But though he regained his self-possession and his brow became serene, Clarissa saw in his eye that which told he had a reckoning in store for her when once the guests were out of the house, but that in the meantime he would dissemble the various unpleasant emotions with which his mind was filled. The rest of the dinner pa.s.sed without untoward event. The huge armchair by imperceptible degrees retired to its former position, and as Clarissa set down the dessert, she saw Asbury Fuller, with a grace unusual and not to be expected of one in such a posture, proceeding quickly and silently out of the room upon all-fours.
Mindful of her instructions, Clarissa accompanied the party when, rising from the table, they withdrew to the drawing-room. It was manifest that her presence caused Leadbury some uneasiness and he looked now at her and now at his guests with an inquiring and perturbed countenance, but in the calm faces of the judge and his daughter he could detect nothing to indicate that they thought the presence of the page at all strange, and little by little he recovered his good spirits and related some interesting anecdotes of a bulldog he once owned and of a colored person who stole a guitar from him. But though Miss Bording gave a courteous and interested attention and laughed at the anecdotes of the dog, she irked at the necessity of silence, which the garrulity of her host placed her under and was desirous of having the conversation become general and of a more entertaining, elevated and instructive character. As the narration of the episode of the colored person came to an end, she hastily exclaimed:
”Captain, you promised to show us your collection. It is nearing the time when we must go home, for father has had to-day to listen to an unparalleled amount of gabble and is very tired.”
”I will show the collection to you with great pleasure,” said Leadbury, and at this juncture, Clarissa, remembering her instructions, said:
”The collection of your former weapons, sir, has been placed in the first room at the left at the head of the stairs. The paperhangers and decorators have been busy.” And then she proceeded to lead the way into the hall and up the broad funereal staircase that led above.
Dimly burned the lights in the hall. Dimly burned a gas jet in the room whose door stood open at the left.
”Oh, yes,” said Leadbury, gaily, responding to a remark of Miss Bording, as they entered the room and saw the uncertain shape of a large chair vaguely looming in the gloom; ”I secured the fauteuil of Ab del Kader after we had stormed the last stronghold of that unfortunate prince. But interesting as this relic is, I put no value upon it in comparison with the weapons, for every bit of steel in the collection has been used by me in my trade.”
As he said these words, he turned on the gas at full head and the light blazed forth to be shot back from an array of polished steel festooned upon the wall, a glittering rosette, but not of sabres and scimetars, yataghans, rapiers, broadswords, dirks and poniards, pistols, fusils and rifles. No! _Razors and scissors!_ Before this array sat a great red velvet barber's chair, and near them on the wall was a board, bearing little bra.s.s hooks, upon each of which hung a green ticket.
In the unexpected revelation that had followed the flare of light, all eyes were turned upon William Leadbury, swaying back and forward with one hand clinging to the big chair, as if ready to swoon. A sickly, cringing grin played over his face, suddenly come all a-yellow, and his long tongue was flickering over his pale lips. But all at once his muscles sprang tense and a malignant anger tightened his quivering features and turning upon Clarissa, he hissed:
”You did this. You exposed me, you exposed me,” and he was about to leap at the terrified girl, when a ringing voice cried, ”Stop!” and there was Asbury Fuller standing in the doorway with the broad red cordon of a Commander of the Legion of Honor across his breast and a glittering rapier in his hand. Clarissa could have fallen at his feet, he looked so handsome and grand, and she could have scratched out the eyes of Eulalia Bording, whose gaze betrayed an admiration equal to her own. Asbury Fuller, yet not wearing quite his wonted appearance, for the luxuriant locks of auburn had gone and his head was covered with a short, though thick crop of chestnut.
”You exposed yourself. Harmless would all this have been, powerless to hurt you, if you had kept your self-possession and turned it off as a joke--your own. But your abashed mien, your complete confusion, your utter disconcertment, betrayed you, even if you had no longer left any question by crying out that you have been exposed. Yes, exposed, Anderson Walkley, by the sudden confronting of you with the implements of your craft, the weapons you had _used_ in _your_ trade, and the belief thus aroused in your guilty mind that your secret was known, that your ident.i.ty had been detected.”
”Asbury Fuller, what business is it of yours?” and Leadbury s.n.a.t.c.hed up a large pair of hair clippers and waved them with a menacing gesture.
”Everyman to the weapons of his trade,” exclaimed Asbury Fuller, and the hair clippers seemed suddenly enveloped in a ma.s.s of white flame, as the rapier played about them. Cling, clang, across the room flew the clippers, twisted from Leadbury's hand as neatly as you please.
”Asbury Fuller?” cried the Commander of the Legion of Honor. ”Asbury Fuller?” and he deftly fastened beneath his nose an elegant false moustache with waxed ends.
With his hands before his eyes as if to forefend his view from some dreadful apparition, the man in the corner sank upon his knees, gibbering, ”William Leadbury, come back from the dead!”
”William Leadbury, alive and well, here to claim his own from you, Anderson Walkley, outlaw and felon. Your plans were well-laid, but I am not dead. You signed the papers of the Ingar Gulbrandson in your proper person. Then as she was about to sail, I was brought aboard ostensibly drunk, but really drugged, under the name of Anderson Walkley. The Gulbrandson was found sunk. Her crew of four had utterly disappeared. Dead, of course. The records gave their names. I had become Anderson Walkley and was dead. You had seized my property and my ident.i.ty. I had been in Chicago but two days and no one had become familiar enough with my appearance to make any question when you with your clean-shaven face came down on the morning after my kidnaping and told the people at the hotel that you were William Leadbury and had shaved your moustache off over night. Whatever difference they might have thought they saw, was easily explained by the change occasioned by the removal of your moustache. Had your minions been as intelligent as they were villainous, your scheme would have succeeded. It was necessary to drug me anew on the voyage, as the effects were wearing off. They did not drug me enough, and when they scuttled the old hulk and rowed ash.o.r.e to flee with their blood money, the cold water rising in the sinking vessel awoke me, brought me to full consciousness, and I easily got ash.o.r.e on some planking. I saw at once what the plot had been. I realized I had a desperate man to deal with. I had no money and it would take me some time to get from northern Wisconsin to Chicago. In the meantime, every one would have come to believe you William Leadbury, and who would believe me, the ragged tramp, suddenly appearing from nowhere and claiming to be the heir? You would be coached by your lawyers, have time to concoct lies, to manufacture conditions that would color your claim, and in court you would be self-possessed and on your guard. Therefore I felt that I must await the psychological moment when you could be taken off your guard, when, surprised and in confusion, you would betray yourself. I secured employment as your butler, the psychological moment came, and you stand, self-convicted, thief and would-be murderer.”
”Send for the police at once,” said Judge Bording.
”No,” said the late captain in the Foreign Legion. ”He may reform. I wish him to have another chance. That he may have the wherewithal to earn a livelihood, I present him with the contents of this room, the means of his undoing. In my uncle's library are many excellent theological works of a controversial nature, and these, too, I present to him, as a means of turning his thoughts toward better things. I will not send for the police. I will send for a dray. Judge Bording, by the recent concatenation of events, I am become the host. Let us leave Walkley here to pack his effects, and return to the drawing-room.”
Clarissa preceded the others as they slowly descended, with all her ears open to hear whatsoever William Leadbury might say to Eulalia Bording, and it was so that she noted a strange little creaking above them, and looking up, saw poised upon the edge of the bal.u.s.trade in the upper hall, impending over the head of William Leadbury and ready to fall, the great barber chair! With a swift leap, she pushed him to the wall, causing him to just escape the chair as it fell with a dreadful crash. But she herself was not so fortunate, for with a wicked tunk the cus.h.i.+oned back of the chair struck her a glancing blow that felled her senseless upon the stairs.
Judge Bording flew after the dastardly barber, who swifter still, was down the backstairs and out of the house into the darkness before the Judge could lay hands upon him.
The judge, his daughter, and William Leadbury, bent over the unconscious form of the page.