Part 52 (1/2)

”Now, my dear,” he added turning to Louisa whilst he dived into his breast-pocket, from which he extracted a note-book, ”go to your own room and read this through very quietly while I talk to your father.”

He gave her the book, which she took without a word.

”It won't,” he added, ”take you very long to read. When you have finished, bring me the notes back, I want them to-night.”

She kissed her father before she went out of the room. He and she had both guessed--by that unexplainable, subtle intuition born of sympathy--what the pages of that note-book contained.

CHAPTER XLI

WHICH TELLS OF THE CONTENTS OF THE NOTE BOOK

Louisa sat beside the fire and read. The notes were written in Sir Thomas's clear caligraphy, in short, jerky sentences, just as the sick man had spoken them, usually in reply to questions put to him.

As Louisa read on, she could almost hear Lord Radclyffe's whispered words, whilst she herself sang Tosti's melancholy song: ”Good-bye!”

”I was not altogether ignorant of my brother Arthur's marriage over in Martinique, but he had always given me to understand that the marriage was not a strictly legal one, and that his son Philip had no right whatever to claim any possible succession to our family t.i.tle and estates. Even on his deathbed Arthur a.s.sured me of this, and said to me most emphatically 'Luke is your heir! My son Philip has no legal claim!'

”I never made the slightest effort to communicate with Arthur's widow or with his child, for Arthur had a.s.sured me that they were well provided for and quite happy amongst their own kindred. After the catastrophe of St. Pierre I completely lost sight of them.

”Then came a letter addressed to me from St. Vincent, the first inkling which I had that not only did Arthur's son know of his father's position in life, but that he had full and justifiable reasons for believing that he himself was heir presumptive to the family t.i.tle and estates which would have been his father's, had the latter outlived the present holder.

”This letter was followed by several others about which neither Luke nor Mr. Warren knew anything, for I told them nothing. At last there came one from Brussels. By this time I had searched carefully through some letters which my brother Arthur had desired that I should destroy after his death, but which I had always kept by me, meaning one day to comply with his wish.

”I had more than a suspicion then that my brother's marriage was a perfectly legal one, and that his son was the only true heir-presumptive to the t.i.tle and estates which I had always fondly thought could only devolve upon Luke. I went over to Brussels determined to see this Philip before he set foot in England. The thought that he would supersede Luke was more than I could bear.

”I arrived in Brussels early one morning, having crossed over in the night. At once I drove to the mean hotel where he was lodging. He was sharing a room with a man with whom he had picked up a casual acquaintances.h.i.+p on the sea voyage between the West Indies and Antwerp. The two men had come over together in the Belgian boat. They looked a pair of young blackguards, but it did not take me very long to be convinced that for some reason best known to himself my brother Arthur had deceived me and that his son Philip was indeed the legitimate and rightful heir to the t.i.tle which I hold. The papers were authentic and undisputable. This much I knew and that Luke, whom I loved best in all the world, more than any father has ever loved his son, would never be Earl of Radclyffe so long as Philip de Mountford lived.

”Men will say that I am an abandoned criminal, and, indeed, it may be so. May G.o.d forgive me hereafter, for I killed my brother's son. I pretended to rejoice at his homecoming, and in half an hour had gained his confidence. In the afternoon we went out together and after a short walk we picked up a taxicab. Philip gave the driver the address of a restaurant at which I had asked him to dine with me. I kept carefully in the shadow, so that the man shouldn't see me. Then on the way in the cab, I killed him. When his head was turned away from me, I plunged an old Italian stiletto which I had carried about with me, ever since I had had letters from Philip, straight into his neck.

”He died instantly without a groan, and I was sick to death, but I managed to sit quietly beside him until the cab pulled up: then I jumped out and told the chauffeur to drive my friend on to some remote place on the boulevards.

”I watched the cab until it was out of sight, then I hailed another, and drove straight to the Gard du Nord, and crossed back to England that night. I threw the stiletto overboard into the sea. I had spent twelve hours in Brussels, and I had killed Philip de Mountford, and made sure that Luke would be Earl of Radclyffe after me.

”It was not likely that in their search for the missing criminal who had stabbed an unknown stranger in a cab, the Belgian police would suspect an English peer. The mystery of that crime has remained impenetrable, because nothing was ever known of the stranger who was murdered. At the mean hotel where he lodged no one knew anything about him. Only one person knew and he was silent for purposes of his own.

”Before the police searched the unknown stranger's room, the room which he shared with the chance friend whom he had picked up on the Belgian boat, the latter already had found and concealed the papers which would have revealed the ident.i.ty of the murdered man, if not that of his murderer.

”I, at home in England, wondered how it was that the Belgian police had never discovered that the murdered man was named Philip de Mountford and that he claimed to be the heir to the earldom of Radclyffe. I expected paragraphs in the paper, some unpleasantness even, but none came.

”I could not understand it, for I had forgotten the existence of the chance friend.

”And then one day last April I understood. Once more I had letters from abroad, from a man who claimed to be my brother's son. At first I thought the whole thing a silly imposture, until the day when a man confronted me in my own house, armed with every proof that I had killed Philip de Mountford in Brussels. He had the latter's pa.s.sports, his birth and marriage certificates, his letters of identification, all, all the papers that he had filched from among the dead man's things, and which he now flaunted before me, daring me to prove him an impostor. 'If I am not Philip de Mountford,' he said to me, 'then where is Philip de Mountford?' And from that hour, I was as wax in his hands. He held me and he knew it. I might have proved him an impostor, and he could prove me a murderer.

”Heaven alone knows how I did not lose my reason then. I floundered in a sea of wild conjectures, wild projects, wild hopes of escape. But my tyrant held me, and I dared not rebel.