Part 18 (1/2)
”Good Lord!” Lord Hayle shouted out suddenly, in the high-pitched voice of almost uncontrollable excitement. ”You have found dear old John!
Where is John, Mr. Rose?”
There was something so spontaneous and sincere in the young man's voice that the Socialist turned with a certain brightness and pleasure to the young man.
”Oh, sir!” he said, ”the duke is lying at my house in Westminster. He has been kidnapped by criminal ruffians, and, I am sorry to say, has been tortured in order that large sums of money might be extorted from him. The doctors are with him now, and no serious injury has been done, but he is especially anxious to see you. I have a cab waiting, if you care to come at once.”
”I'll have my coat on in a moment,” Lord Hayle replied, and left the room.
The bishop went up to James Fabian Rose.
”Sir,” he said, ”our difference of opinion in social economics and political affairs shall not prevent me from gripping you very heartily by the hand.”
CHAPTER XIII
NEW FRIENDS: NEW IDEAS
It was three days after the strange and dramatic rescue of the Duke of Paddington, and he lay in a bright, cheerful bedroom in James Fabian Rose's house in Westminster. Providence had guided Rose and his companions to the underground cellar in the nick of time. The relentless ruffians who had captured the duke had been as good as their word. They had treated him with indescribable ferocity, though into the details of the horrors in the foundation of the old house it is not necessary to go.
When the police inspectors had brought him up from the deepest hole of all, he was unconscious, and had immediately been taken away to Rose's own house in a horse ambulance which had been summoned from the police headquarters of the district.
The actual discovery had been very simple. Directly the Inspector of Police recognised the man known as ”Sidney,” he had rushed after him, followed by the others. As it happened, for some time the police had been very anxious to discover the exact whereabouts of this particular ex-convict, to track him to his lair. It was obvious that when the man turned and bolted down the stairs there was something he wished to conceal, and, though there was no actual charge against him at the moment, the policeman had experience enough to know that something illegal was afoot. They had dashed into the kitchen to find it tenanted only by the old Jewish woman, but the door leading into the smaller kitchen was open, and Sidney was leaning over the trap-door in the floor pulling up another member of the gang who had been down in the pit with the victim.
The man's design had obviously been to get his comrade up, close the trap-door, and push the tub over it before the policemen could enter the kitchen. In all probability there would then have been no discovery at all, though the ruffian himself was by no means sure that the party were not in some way or other upon the track of the actual offence he had committed in kidnapping the duke. His guilty conscience had betrayed him.
When the scoundrel had been caught and handcuffed, and the duke had been discovered and carried up into the kitchen the man relapsed into a sullen silence. He had gathered at once from the remarks made by his captors that they were quite unaware of the ident.i.ty of the prisoner. It did not, in fact, occur to any of the party, even to the police, to connect this insensible figure, half-clothed--the face covered with grime and dirt--with the missing peer.
”We will get the poor fellow off to the hospital at once, sir,”
Inspector Green had said to Rose. ”These devils have been working some horrible thing upon him. I expect he is one of their pals who has given them away. I have seen some black things, but this is about as bad as any of them. I should not wonder”--he turned round with his face like a flint, and a voice that cut like a whip--”I should not wonder if this was a swinging job for you, Sidney O'Connor!”
”He certainly shall not go to the hospital,” said Rose. ”Not that they won't look after him thoroughly there; but I could not allow anybody whom I discovered myself in such a plight as this to do so. He must go to my house, and my wife and Miss Marriott will nurse him.”
”Well, sir,” said the officer, ”it is only a very little distance farther to your house from here than to Charing Cross Hospital, and I will send the ambulance there if you really wish it. It's very kind of you, Mr. Rose.”
”Certainly I do,” Rose answered. ”It is a duty, of course.”
”And I,” said Mary Marriott, ”will drive back at once if a cab can be found for me, to tell Mrs. Rose that they are bringing this poor man.”
”That will be very kind of you, Miss Marriott,” Rose answered. ”I am sorry that our expedition has come to so unpleasant and dramatic an end, for I do not suppose any of us would care to go on now?”
”No, indeed,” said both the clergyman and the journalist in answer, and in a few minutes Mary's first experience of the dark under-currents of London life was at an end.
When the duke was comfortably installed in Rose's house the doctor p.r.o.nounced him suffering from shocks and extreme weakness.
”He will be all right in a few days,” he said. ”He must now have absolute rest and nourishment. The actual harm inflicted upon him by the scoundrels with whom he was found is very slight. There are the merest superficial burns, and the cuts are trivial. It is the weakness and shock that are the most serious. The young man has a splendid const.i.tution. He's as strong as an ox.”
The doctor went away, leaving minute directions for the treatment of the patient.
The duke was in a semi-conscious condition. He realised dimly that he was out of the horrible place where he had lain for, so it seemed to him, an eternity. He knew that, somehow or other, he had been rescued, that he was now lying in a comfortable bed. A new life seemed slowly coming back into his veins as the meat jelly dissolved in his mouth. The horror was ended at last!