Complete works of a e w.., p.701
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 701
“I understood, young gentleman, that His Grace of Richmond had honoured you with an invitation to stay to supper,” he said severely.
“I was restless,” Philip replied. “The rooms were crowded. It was insufferably tedious. I was not alone to find it tedious.”
“Indeed?” Monsieur Faubert asked.
“George Louis, Prince of Hanover,” Philip explained, “paced the rooms like a bear in a cage. He proposed, I understood, to marry the Princess Anne, but she would have none of him. Had Anthony been there, now, I would have stayed,” and he smiled across the room at Anthony for a moment, without, however, ceasing from his work of destruction.
Monsieur Faubert shook his head.
“To endure tedium, Count Philip, with a smile of high enjoyment, is amongst the most necessary of courtly accomplishments,” he said sententiously. He added, “Amongst which, by the by, the tearing of a costly handkerchief to shreds with the teeth is not included.
Philip, with a short laugh, dropped the handkerchief upon his knees and spread it out.
“It has as many holes as a sieve,” said Monsieur Faubert, who had a French economy and was shocked by such unthriftiness. “I must ask you to consider seriously the alternative of calico. It would certainly not go so well with silk stockings and a velvet coat, but it will give the teeth a longer occupation.”
“I beg your pardon for my ill manners,” Philip replied in a low and pleasant voice. “I was thinking.”
“Too violently,” said Monsieur Faubert.
Philip answered slowly and gravely.
“Violence is the way of my family in all things, Monsieur Faubert, whether it be thinking or doing. I pray that it may not be so again tonight.”
But he never finished the last word. Some sound for which he had been listening whilst he bit his lace handkerchief into tatters, reached his ears. So faint a sound that no one but he heard it. He sat up straight, his feet drawn back, his slender hands under the froth of ruffles clutched so tightly about the arms of his chair that the knuckles and fingers were white as ivory.
“Listen!” he said in a whisper; and now all three heard the sound. It was the sound of a cry, very faint but clear, such as one may hear at a great distance on a still winter’s night.
As the sound reached them, Philip shot one despairing appeal for help — it was as clear as a cry — from a haggard face to Anthony Craston across the room. Then he rushed to the window and flung it wide open. He knelt upon the window seat and, grasping the sill in his hands, leaned out.
In a moment Anthony was kneeling at his side, his arm flung about his shoulders.
“What is’t you fear, Philip?”
“Listen!”
In the darkness at the bottom of the Haymarket a hubbub was growing. Both boys were straining their eyes into the mirk at the bottom of the hill. But the lights were few and feeble, and that raw night of February black as the mouth of a cavern. They could see nothing, they could hear only a confusion of shouts, but Philip was shivering from head to foot as though he could distinguish every word that was shouted. As for Monsieur Faubert, he stood over against the fire, his face set in a dead man’s grin, which showed even the gums above his teeth.
Philip leaned a little closer to his friend.
“Anthony, did you hear?” he whispered.
“A cry, yes.”
“But before the cry?”
“Nothing.”
“A shot was fired.”
“Philip!”
“Listen!”
From the confused clamour a new and unmistakable sound emerged — the clatter of galloping horses. At the bottom of the slope, where the Haymarket makes a right angle with Pall Mall, the two boys’ young eyes distinguished not so much movements as a shifting of the darkness, a thinning of it here, an extra denseness there; and suddenly the beat of the horses’ hoofs grew clearer and louder.
“How many?” asked Philip.
“Two, certainly,” answered Anthony.
“Three,” said Philip suddenly.
He thrust his shoulders farther out beyond the window- sill.
“I can see them. Two in the middle of the street and a third on this side, close to the wall — a shadow. They are bawling out a word. Listen!”
The three voices indeed overtopped the clamour, and as the riders galloped up the hill, the words broke clear:
“A race! A race!”
A race it was. There were people on foot in that busy street of warehouses and shops and homes, and they scattered on this side and that before the charge. A race! Philip breathed the word and signed his deep relief. His hand sought Anthony’s and he laughed with a pleasure his friend had not heard in his voice this fortnight back.
Anthony pointed towards one of the few oil lamps, which made a little pool of yellow light.
“We shall see who they are,” he said eagerly.
They would be three young madcaps with a wager to settle. Very likely he or Philip would recognise one of them.
“They will keep to the middle of the road,” said Philip.
“One of them may swerve,” answered Anthony, and one of them did swerve.
Just before the lamp was reached, a big wagon with its country load was being unpacked. The horse nearest to it shied and bolted. It galloped directly under the lamp and the horseman’s hat fell off. For a moment his face stood out clear and small, like a miniature; and with a sob Philip drew sharply back. “Vratz!” he cried in a low voice, and he stared at his friend with eyes full of fear and a face as white as paper.
The horsemen passed beneath the window and, at the top of the Haymarket, scattered. Vratz rode away westwards into Piccadilly, the man nearest to them turned along Coventry Street, the third held on due north to Soho. A race? What sort of a race was this where the competitors went different ways?
The rabble was in pursuit, gathering numbers and gathering voice as it ran. Already sentences could be heard in Monsieur Faubert’s common-room.
“They went towards Portugal Street.”
“Only one of them.”
“They dispersed, I tell you.”
“Where’s the watch?”
And then loud and clear rang out the dreadful cry. “A murder! A murder!”
As the word was uttered Philip Königsmark sprang back into the room. He stood with his mouth open, an image of consternation. Whatever trouble he had expected to come out of this secret visit of his brother and the two scoundrels in his service, it was not murder.
“Oh!”
He uttered a faint cry and covered his face with his hands. Monsieur Faubert stepped forward and put out the lamps. For already the crowd was massed beneath the window.
IX. MURDER IN PALL MALL
WITH THE EXTINCTION of the lamps everyone in the room seemed to hear with a greater sharpness. Amidst the general clamour a few voices began to assert an individual character, so that one at all events of those who listened in the darkened room fitted a mouth and a face to each. That one was not Anthony Craston. He sat in the window seat, indifferent to the uproar outside. His thoughts were with his friend who stood there, his hands pressed to his face and the firelight gleaming upon his slender figure in the white velvet dress. He yearned to comfort him in his distress and felt a great contempt for himself whose life ran with so easy a motion between banks so smooth. Nor was it Monsieur Faubert. He listened with a savage fear for a moment when the mob would turn in fury upon this house of his to which Vratz had come, into which Boroski had forced his way... which harboured this noticeable fine blossom of the Königsmark garden. Monsieur Faubert would have liked to throw him out of the window just as he stood, for the mob to wreak their anger on, if that way he could save himself from the disruption and the danger which threatened them.
Philip was listening to the voices, separating them, embodying them. His brother’s henchmen had committed murder that night. But why? But on whom? Surely that shrill, fanatical voice which overtopped the rest would tell him. It was raving now — against the Court and the King. Philip imagined the face which went with it — thin, convulsed with passion, the face of a partisan. It called upon Monmouth. What had the Duke of Monmouth to do with a sordid murder? And at last a name came clear — Thynne, Tom Thynne — Tom Thynne of Longleat — someone known then! From the “Tom,” someone popular and of Monmouth’s party.
To Philip the name was so much Hebrew. What mortal wrong had Tom Thynne done to Karl John Königsmark that Vratz and the Polander must be brought across the sea to murder him? Or had Vratz some private account with Tom Thynne of Longleat which he must settle in this barbarous fashion? Philip snatched up his cloak and slung it about his shoulders. Then he took his hat.
“I must go out,” he cried, but he found Monsieur Faubert between himself and the door.
“You?” Monsieur Faubert asked with a sneer. He looked the boy up from his white shoes to the lace at his throat. “Into the thick of that rabble?”
“I must know the truth of this murder.”
“Rest in ignorance whilst you may. Whenever you learn the truth, I have a fear it will be too soon.”
“I must know now.”
As Philip stepped towards the door, Monsieur Faubert locked it and dropped the key in his pocket.
“Before you had forced your way a yard’s depth into that crowd, you’d be held, robbed, stripped to the skin and questioned. For all any of us yet know, your name may hang you on the first lamp-post and burn this house to the ground. You’ll stay where you are.”
For a few moments Philip hesitated. But even if he broke through the door, the servants below would not let him out. He flung his cloak back on the table and himself into a chair. Anthony Craston drew up a chair beside him, as he sat glowering into the fire.
“You’d have learnt nothing except guesses and wild stories,” said Anthony, “even if nothing worse had happened.”
Thereafter they waited, with their senses alert and their nerves on edge. Hardly a word was spoken. Once Monsieur Faubert crept to the long window and drew the curtains across it, taking infinite care that the rings should not rattle on the pole. But even then he did not relight the lamps, but returned quietly to this chair; and the three of them sat with the great fire leaping and sinking on the hearth and flinging fantastic black shapes upon the walls. To Philip it was the grim parody of happy hours in the Craston Manor House, when Anthony and he, after a long day’s hunt, had between dusk and supper-time stretched out their legs to the blaze of the logs in the hall and rested in a companionable silence.
Gradually the uproar died down beyond the window, the mob dispersed, and only a rare footstep broke the silence of the street. But as a church clock struck the hour of eleven, the sound of someone running reached their ears and grew louder. Anthony Craston got up out of his chair and, pulling aside the curtain enough to let him through, looked out. The runner stopped at the door below and knocked cautiously. They could hear the bolts withdraw, the key turned. Still no one in the room spoke, but Monsieur Faubert unlocked the door of the common-room and peered out.
“It’s you,” he was heard to say in a note of relief.
“Yes! Let me in!”
It was the voice of Frederick Hanson, the tutor, speaking in a low and urgent voice. After he came into the room, Philip stood up and Monsieur Faubert closed the door.
“Well!” he asked.
Hanson wiped the sweat from his forehead. He wore a dress of ceremony and his stockings and shoes were cluttered with mud from his running. He looked only at Philip.
“I wanted to see you tonight, Philip,” he said between deep breaths. And he took from his pocket a small package, which he handed to the boy.
Philip glanced at the superscription. It was in his brother’s hand.
“Open it,” said Mr Hanson, and Philip tore off the covering. Within he found a formal document set out with seals and signatures. He looked towards Hanson for an explanation.
“Read it,” said Hanson, and Monsieur Faubert lit a pair of wax candles on the mantelshelf.
Philip walked to the fireplace and by the light of the candles read the paper slowly through. When he had done he looked again at his tutor with a puzzled expression upon his face.
“Well?” said Mr Hanson impatiently. “What is it?”
“A Bill of Exchange for a thousand pistoles drawn by my brother on Messrs. Bucknall & Gowre, Merchants of London Wall.”
“But when was it drawn and where?”
Philip looked at the document again.
“It was drawn at Strasburg on the sixth day of December.”
“Very well,” said Mr Hanson, as though he were congratulating a child on the excellence of its pronunciation. “And when did you receive it from your brother?”
Philip stared at his tutor. Was he out of his wits? Was there some secret jest of which he, Philip, was to be the butt? But Mr Hanson, with his fierce, troubled face and his bespattered dress, had rather the look of a desperado than a jester.
“I received it tonight,” said Philip.
“You did not.”
Mr Hanson corrected him, watching him with steady eyes, and dwelling on each word with a curious finality.
“You received it, Philip, six weeks ago. It isn’t necessary for you to remember the actual date or the actual day of the week. It’s more reasonable, at your age, that you shouldn’t. You received it early in January.”
Philip made no answer. His tutor had no doubt some motive in this piece of mummery. The set urgency of his face and the remembered sound of his running feet, were evidence that the motive was serious. Philip waited, returning Mr Hanson’s look with no less steadiness.
“Why did your brother send you from Strasburg on the seventh of December a Bill of Exchange for nearly a thousand pounds?” Mr Hanson asked.
Philip experienced the discomfort which a student might feel at a viva-voce examination on an unprepared subject. He glanced doubtfully towards Monsieur Faubert.
“No,” said Hanson. “Monsieur Faubert’s charges are met directly by your brother. From the same source Monsieur Faubert supplies you with your pocket money.”
“That is so,” said Philip.
“Then, if you please, account to me your tutor for this Bill of Exchange.”
Philip began under this examination to feel that he had to defend himself against a charge of theft.
“But I can’t,” he broke out. “I know nothing about it. I haven’t an idea as to what I should do with it.”
Mr Hanson’s face relaxed from its sternness. It smoothed out into a smile, a friendly, insinuating, appealing smile.
“You have forgotten, that’s all, Philip. As boys will who have more interesting things like friendships, and games, and studies, to fill their lives. You have forgotten that this money was to be laid out under advice on the purchase of horses.”
“Horses?” Philip asked in a maze.
“Troop-horses,” answered Mr Hanson with a smile. “If an alliance were to be made between England and Holland and Sweden for a war upon Louis of France, you were to buy horses. Your brother Karl John meant to raise a troop. He would need horses for that troop — English horses. You were to wait for his word before you bought.”
“But — but—” Philip stammered, his forehead knitted in a frown, “Karl John never sent me word.”
“No indeed! How should he?” continued Mr Hanson, apparently quite at his ease now. So baffled, so entirely at his mercy did young Königsmark seem to be! “That alliance, so likely in December, was dead as a doornail in January. You had happily not bought any horses. You had the Bill of Exchange intact and at your brother’s disposition. A most honourable piece of behaviour — such as the whole world would expect of you, my dear boy, and no one more confidently than your tutor.”
Philip was still lost in a murk of conjecture and vague fears. In a hope to reach some sort of comprehension, he began to recapitulate the particulars of Mr Hanson’s discourse.
“This Bill of Exchange was sent to me by my brother at Strasburg on December 7th?”
“Yes.”
“It reached me during the first days of January? I was to cash it and buy troop-horses, as soon as my brother sent me a second message.”
“Continue,” said Mr Hanson.
“He would send that message as soon as England, Holland and Sweden had made an alliance against France.”
“Precisely.”
“But since no such alliance was made and the chance of war had passed, no second message was sent.”
“In proof of which...?” Mr Hanson prompted.
“I produce the Bill of Exchange,” Philip returned.
“Perfect!” said Mr Hanson. He was pleased with his pupil and he spoke in the kindliest tone. “You must remember that simple story and tell at as clearly, if the occasion comes.”
With a little wave of his hand he was for dismissing Philip. But Philip held his ground.
“I should remember the story better, sir, if I understood for what occasion I must remember it.”
Mr Hanson’s voice lost most of its kindliness. “For all occasions, Philip,” he said tartly.
