Part 14 (2/2)
”Mr. Sabin interests you professionally?” he repeated slowly. ”Then you have learnt something. Mr. Sabin has an ident.i.ty other than his own.”
”I suspect him to be,” Harcutt said slowly, ”a most important and interesting personage. I have learnt a little concerning him. I am here to learn more; I am convinced that it is worth while.”
”Have you learnt anything,” Wolfenden asked, ”concerning his niece?”
”Absolutely nothing,” Harcutt answered decidedly. ”I may as well repeat that my interest is in the man alone. I am not a sentimental person at all. His niece is perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, but it is with no thought of her that I have taken up this investigation. Having a.s.sured you of that, I want to know if you will help me?”
”You must speak a little more plainly,” Wolfenden said; ”you are altogether too vague. What help do you want, and for what purpose?”
”Mr. Sabin,” Harcutt said; ”is engaged in great political schemes. He is in constant and anxious communication with the amba.s.sadors of two great Powers. He affects secrecy in all his movements, and the name by which he is known is without doubt an a.s.sumed one. This much I have learnt for certain. My own ideas are too vague yet for me to formulate. I cannot say any more, except that I believe him to be deep in some design which is certainly not for the welfare of this country. It is my a.s.surance of this which justifies me in exercising a certain espionage upon his movements--which justifies me also, Wolfenden, in asking for your a.s.sistance.”
”My position,” Wolfenden remarked, ”becomes a little difficult. Whoever this man Sabin may be, nothing would induce me to believe ill of his niece. I could take no part in anything likely to do her harm. You will understand this better, Harcutt, when I tell you that, a few hours ago, I asked her to be my wife.”
”You asked her--what?”
”To be my wife.”
”And she?”
”Refused me!”
Harcutt looked at him for a moment in blank amazement.
”Who refused you--Mr. Sabin or his niece?”
”Both!”
”Did she--did Mr. Sabin know your position, did he understand that you are the future Earl of Deringham?”
”Without a doubt,” Wolfenden answered drily; ”in fact Mr. Sabin seems to be pretty well up in my genealogy. He had met my father once, he told me.”
Harcutt, with the natural selfishness of a man engaged upon his favourite pursuit, quite forgot to sympathise with his friend. He thought only of the bearing of this strange happening upon his quest.
”This,” he remarked, ”disposes once and for all of the suggestion that these people are ordinary adventurers.”
”If any one,” Wolfenden said, ”was ever idiotic enough to entertain the possibility of such a thing. I may add that from the first I have had almost to thrust my acquaintance upon them, especially so far as Mr. Sabin is concerned. He has never asked me to call upon them here, or in London; and this morning when he found me with his niece he was quietly but furiously angry.”
”It is never worth while,” Harcutt said, ”to reject a possibility until you have tested and proved it. What you say, however, settles this one. They are not adventurers in any sense of the word. Now, will you answer me a few questions? It may be just as much to your advantage as to mine to go into this matter.”
Wolfenden nodded.
”You can ask the questions, at any rate,” he said; ”I will answer them if I can.”
”The young lady--did she refuse you from personal reasons? A man can always tell, you know. Hadn't you the impression, from her answer, that it was more the force of circ.u.mstances than any objection to you which prompted her negative? I've put it bluntly, but you know what I mean.”
Wolfenden did not answer for nearly a minute. He was gazing steadily seaward, recalling with a swift effort of his imagination every word which had pa.s.sed between them--he could even hear her voice, and see her face with the soft, dark eyes so close to his. It was a luxury of recollection.
”I will admit,” he said, quietly, ”that what you suggest has already occurred to me. If it had not, I should be much more unhappy than I am at this moment. To tell you the honest truth I was not content with her answer, or rather the manner of it. I should have had some hope of inducing her to, at any rate, modify it, but for Mr. Sabin's unexpected appearance. About him, at least, there was no hesitation; he said no, and he meant it.”
”That is what I imagined might be the case,” Harcutt said thoughtfully. ”I don't want to have you think that I imagine any disrespect to the young lady, but don't you see that either she and Mr. Sabin must stand towards one another in an equivocal position, or else they must be in altogether a different station of life to their a.s.sumed one, when they dismiss the subject of an alliance with you so peremptorily.”
Wolfenden flushed up to the temples, and his eyes were lit with fire.
”You may dismiss all idea of the former possibility,” he said, with ominous quietness. ”If you wish me to discuss this matter with you further you will be particularly careful to avoid the faintest allusion to it.”
”I have never seriously entertained it,” Harcutt a.s.sented cheerfully; ”I, too, believe in the girl. She looks at once too proud and too innocent for any a.s.sociation of such thoughts with her. She has the bearing and the manners of a queen. Granted, then, that we dismiss the first possibility.”
”Absolutely and for ever,” Wolfenden said firmly. ”I may add that Mr. Sabin met me with a distinct reason for his refusal--he informed me his niece was already betrothed.”
”That may or may not be true,” Harcutt said. ”It does not affect the question which we are considering at present. We must come to the conclusion that these are people of considerable importance. That is what I honestly believe. Now what do you suppose brings Mr. Sabin to such an out of the way hole as this?”
”The golf, very likely,” Wolfenden said. ”He is a magnificent player.”
Harcutt frowned.
”If I thought so,” he said, ”I should consider my journey here a wasted one. But I can't. He is in the midst of delicate and important negotiations--I know as much as that. He would not come down here at such a time to play golf. It is an absurd idea!”
”I really don't see how else you can explain it,” Wolfenden remarked; ”the greatest men have had their hobbies, you know. I need not remind you of Nero's fiddle, or Drake's bowls.”
”Quite unnecessary,” Harcutt declared briskly. ”Frankly, I don't believe in Mr. Sabin's golf. There is somebody or something down here connected with his schemes; the golf is a subterfuge. He plays well because he does everything well.”
”It will tax your ingenuity,” Wolfenden said, ”to connect his visit here with anything in the shape of political schemes.”
”My ingenuity accepts the task, at any rate,” Harcutt said. ”I am going to find out all about it, and you must help me. It will be for both our interests.”
”I am afraid,” Wolfenden answered, ”that you are on a wild goose chase. Still I am quite willing to help you if I can.”
”Well, to begin then,” Harcutt said; ”you have been with him some time to-day. Did he ask you any questions about the locality? Did he show any curiosity in any of the residents?”
Wolfenden shook his head.
”Absolutely none,” he answered. ”The only conversation we had, in which he showed any interest at all, was concerning my own people. By the bye, that reminds me! I told him of an incident which occurred at Deringham Hall last night, and he was certainly interested and curious. I chanced to look at him at an unexpected moment, and his appearance astonished me. I have never seen him look so keen about anything before.”
”Will you tell me the incident at once, please?” Harcutt begged eagerly. ”It may contain the very clue for which I am hunting. Anything which interests Mr. Sabin interests me.”
”There is no secrecy about the matter,” Wolfenden said. ”I will tell you all about it. You may perhaps have heard that my father has been in very poor health ever since the great Solent disaster. It unfortunately affected his brain to a certain extent, and he has been the victim of delusions ever since. The most serious of these is, that he has been commissioned by the Government to prepare, upon a gigantic scale, a plan and description of our coast defences and navy. He has a secretary and typist, and works ten hours a day; but from their report and my own observations I am afraid the only result is an absolutely unintelligible chaos. Still, of course, we have to take him seriously, and be thankful that it is no worse. Now the incident which I told Mr. Sabin was this. Last night a man called and introduced himself as Dr. Wilmot, the great mind specialist. He represented that he had been staying in the neighbourhood, and was on friendly terms with the local medico here, Dr. Whitlett. My father's case had been mentioned between them, and he had become much interested in it. He had a theory of his own for the investigation of such cases which consisted, briefly of a careful scrutiny of any work done by the patient. He brought a letter from Dr. Whitlett and said that if we would procure him a sight of my father's most recent ma.n.u.scripts he would give us an opinion on the case. We never had the slightest suspicion as to the truth of his statements, and I took him with me to the Admiral's study. However, while we were there, and he was rattling through the ma.n.u.scripts, up comes Dr. Whitlett, the local man, in hot haste. The letter was a forgery, and the man an impostor. He escaped through the window, and got clean away. That is the story just as I told it to Mr. Sabin. What do you make of it?”
Harcutt stood up, and laid his hand upon the other's shoulder.
”Well, I've got my clue, that's all,” he declared; ”the thing's as plain as sunlight!”
Wolfenden rose also to his feet.
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