Part 24 (1/2)

But that plot failed: on presenting himself at the front of the mansion, he was sent round to the back, where he received payment, and was dismissed; and when he again started for the front, intending to force his way in, he decided upon something else, and walked back to Thring.

He reached the Sturgess cottage soon after six, ate, with a candle returned to the lean-to to resume his work, and was still intent upon it at seven, when Mrs. Sturgess ran out to tell him that ”the gentleman had come”. He said: ”Show him up to my room”.

The first thing which O'Hara noticed in that room was the goat-hair trunk, with the initials and cross, the initials his own.

After some minutes he furtively turned the key, dived into a ma.s.s of things, paused to remember the whereabouts of a spring, found it, and, lifting the upper bottom, peered beneath; saw a bundle of papers; and, without removing the band, ferreted among them, and was satisfied---Hogarth's ”birth-papers”.

He presently went to a back window, and saw ruddy streaks between the boarding of the shanty, while sounds of the hammer reached him.

He would go and meet Hogarth: no harm in that; but it was stealthily that he hurried down the stair and carried himself across the yard, grinning a grimace of self-conscious caution, to peep through a cranny.

Hogarth's back was toward him, the iron leg lying near a box in which was a sitting hen, on its top a candlestick, the calico bag, and a lot of the gems: at which the priest's palm covered his awed mouth, and with a fleet thievishness, like a cat on hot bricks, he trotted back to the cottage.

Ten minutes later Hogarth entered, nodding: ”Ah, O'Hara...”; and he called down: ”Mrs. Sturgess! pen, ink, and paper!”

When these came, he sat and wrote:

”I have escaped from prison, and come into great power. I summon you to meet me at the elm in the beech-wood to-night at nine. I beseech you, I entreat you. I burn to ashes. Rebekah! My flames of fire! I am dying.

”R. H.”

He enclosed, and handed it, without any address, to O'Hara.

”O'Hara”, said he, ”I want you to take that for me. Come--I will show you the place. You ask in the hall to see 'the young lady': her name does not concern you; but you can't mistake her: she is so-pretty.

Give the note to no one else, of course: it mentions my escape, for one thing. I know you will do it well”.

He conducted O'Hara, till the two towers of Westring were visible; pointed them out; then went back, and in an hour had finished his work on the diamonds.

O'Hara, meantime, going on his way alone, muttered: ”You go fast, Hogarth: prelates of the Church your errand boys? But there is a little fellow called Alf Harris...if he had seen what I have seen to-night, you would be a corpse now”.

In twenty minutes he was at Westring, which he knew well, for twenty-five years before he had lived in the Vale: but he supposed that Lord Westring de Broom was still the inmate.

He asked to see ”the young lady”, persisted, and after a time Rebekah came with eyebrows of inquiry.

The moment O'Hara saw her well, his visage acquired a ghastly ribbed fixity. Even before this, _she_, by one flashed glance, had known him.

But she took the envelope with easy coolness. And, instead of then returning upon her steps, went still beyond, and whispered to two men in the hall: ”Do not let that man pa.s.s out!”

As she again returned inward past O'Hara, she remarked: ”You might wait here a little”.

She travelled then, not hurrying, down the breadth of a great apartment to a side room where her father sat, capped and writing; and she said: ”Papa, the man who a.s.saulted me in the train is now in the hall. As his sentence was three years, he must have escaped--” She was gone at once, the unaddressed envelope, still unopened, s.h.i.+vering a little in her hand.

Frankl leapt up, rather pale, thinking that if the man had come _here_, he must mean mischief; but remembering that the man was a gentleman, a priest, he took heart, and went out.

O'Hara, meantime, stood at bay, guessing his exit blocked, while the terrors of death gat hold upon him, the flesh of his yellow jaw s.h.i.+vering. But he was a man of stern mind--stern as the rocky aspect of his face, and the moment he saw Frankl coming (he had seen him in the Court), he started to meet him--stooped to the Jew's ear, who shrank delicately from contact.

”There isn't any good in running me down, sir”, he whispered in sycophant haste. ”I pledge you my word I came here without knowing to whom. O do, now! I have already suffered for my crime; and if you attempt to capture me, I do a.s.sure you, I strangle you where you stand!