CHAPTER XVIII.
ON THE RIGHT TRACK AT LAST.
The conclusion of the low and cautious knocking upon the office door of Mr. Atkins was lost in a wild burst of the gale which tore along the streets, shrieking and moaning like some maddened demon. Sir Harold Wynde and Mr. Atkins looked at each other, and then both glanced at the clock. It was upon the stroke of twelve.
“A late hour for a call,” said the baronet uneasily. “I have no wish to be seen, Atkins. I am in no mood to encounter a possible client of yours.”
The knock sounded again, in a lull of the storm, low, secret and imperative.
Atkins’ face brightened up with sudden relief and joy.
“I know that knock,” he said. “Please step into the inner office, Sir Harold. You shall see no one but friends to-night.”
He opened the door of the small, dark, inner office, and Sir Harold passed in and stood in the darkness, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Atkins hastened to open the outer door. A gust of wind swept fiercely in, and with it, and as if impelled by it, a man hurried into the office, and closed the door with both his hands.
He was slender, but so muffled in coat collar and cap that no one could have guessed his identity.
“Lord Towyn?” said Atkins doubtfully.
The new-comer took off his cap and turned down his collar. The lawyer’s instinct had not deceived him. The noble face, the bright blue eyes, so full of warmth and glow, the tawny mustache, and the golden hair above a grand forehead—all these, now displayed to the solicitor’s gaze, were the features of Neva’s favored lover. But the young earl looked pale and worn by anxieties, and although now there was a glow and brightness and eagerness in his face and manner, yet one could see in all his features the traces of great and recent suffering.
“Alone, Atkins?” he exclaimed, extending his hand, while he swept a quick glance about the room. “I am glad to have found you up, but had you gone to sleep, I must have awakened you. I have just received important news by messenger, who routed me up at my hotel. I came to you as soon as I could—”
“If the news is unpleasant, do not tell it just yet,” said Atkins nervously, with a glance at the inner room. “I have news too, Lord Towyn. Come to the fire. Bless us, how the wind howls!”
The young earl removed his greatcoat and advanced to the fire, and Atkins went into the inner office. The sound of whispering followed. Lord Towyn heard the sound and started, and at the same moment his glance fell upon Sir Harold Wynde’s cast-off greatcoat and hat. Presently Atkins returned, rubbing his hands together with excitement.
“You are not alone, I see,” said the young earl. “I will see you again, Atkins—”
“Stay, my lord,” said the solicitor. “I have news, great news, to impart to you. Let me communicate mine first. Can you bear a great surprise—a shock?”
“You have heard from Miss Wynde?” cried Lord Towyn. “You have later news even than mine? Speak, Atkins. Those villains have not succeeded in forcing her into a marriage with young Black? It is not that—say that it is not.”
“It is not that, my lord. How am I to tell you the startling news I have just learned? My lord, I have had a visit to-night from a gentleman who has just returned from India. He knew Sir Harold Wynde well, and came to give me all the particulars of Sir Harold’s supposed death!”
“Supposed death? How strangely you choose your words, Atkins. Supposed death?”
“Yes, my lord,” cried Atkins, trembling and eager. “We have all mourned Sir Harold as dead. And this gentleman says—prepare for a surprise, my lord—he says that Sir Harold Wynde still lives!”
The young earl started, and grew white.
“It is impossible!” he ejaculated. “He lives? It is preposterous! Atkins, you are the sport of some impostor!”
“No, no, my lord. I believe it; I believe that Sir Harold lives!”
“Have you forgotten the letter of Surgeon Graham, giving a circumstantial and minute account of Sir Harold’s death?” demanded Lord Towyn. “If Sir Harold had survived his encounter with the tiger, would he not have returned home over a year ago?”
“The—the gentleman who gave me the particulars of Sir Harold’s fate,” said Atkins, full of suppressed excitement, “says that the baronet was unfortunate enough to incur the enmity of his Hindoo servant, who secretly swore revenge. Sir Harold actually encountered the tiger, as was said, but a shot from the servant frightened the beast, and he fled back into the jungle. Sir Harold was wounded and bleeding and his horse was killed. The Hindoo servant picked up his disabled master, and, instead of taking him back to Major Archer’s bungalow, he carried him forward and gave him into the hands of some of his own friends and country people, and these friends of the Hindoo carried off Sir Harold further into the hill country, to their home, a sort of mountain fastness. They kept him there closely imprisoned, and while we mourned our friend as dead, he was chained in a cell but little better than a dungeon.”
Lord Towyn still looked incredulous.
“How did the bearer of this strange tale discover these strange facts, if facts they are?” he demanded. “I should like to see this gentleman from India? I should like to question him—”
He paused, as the door of the inner room opened, and Sir Harold Wynde, pale and haggard, came into the outer office.
Lord Towyn uttered a strange cry, and sprang backward, his face whitening to deathliness.
Sir Harold approached the young man, extending his hand.
“Behold ‘the gentleman from India,’” he said, faintly smiling. “My dear boy, ask me as many questions as you like. Don’t you know me, Arthur, that you stare at me so? I am no ghost, although our friend Atkins took me for one.”
Another cry, but this time a cry of rapture, broke from the young earl’s lips. He bounded forward and clasped Sir Harold’s hands in his, and both were silent with an emotion too mighty for speech.
Atkins turned aside to add fresh fuel to the blazing fire, his own features working.
“Sir Harold! O, Sir Harold!” cried Lord Towyn at last, in a very ecstasy of gladness. “What a joy this will be to my poor little Neva! She has mourned for you as dead, and I have thought that the shadow of your supposed fate would darken all her life. How glad she will be, my poor little girl!”
“Your little girl?” said Sir Harold.
Lord Towyn’s fair face flushed.
“I love Neva, and she loves me,” he said frankly. “She has promised to marry me, and I hope, Sir Harold, that you retain your former good opinion of me, and will sanction our union.”
“We will see,” said the baronet, pressing the young earl’s hand warmly. “It has always been my desire, as it was that of your father, to unite my family to yours. Your face tells me that you have fulfilled the glorious promise of your boyhood. If Neva consents to marry you, my dear Arthur, I shall not refuse my consent.”
Lord Towyn looked his delight, and then cast a quick, inquiring glance at Atkins.
“Does Sir Harold know?” he asked significantly.
“I have told him,” answered the solicitor, “that Miss Wynde has disappeared in the most mysterious manner and that she is in the power of a couple of adventurers—”
Sir Harold interrupted Atkins by a passionate gesture.
“Arthur,” exclaimed the baronet, his proud face drawn with pain. “Atkins tells me that I have been deceived in—in Lady Wynde, and that he has discovered her to be an adventuress, unscrupulous and unprincipled. Is this his prejudice? I cannot give utter credence to it.”
“It is God’s truth, Sir Harold,” said Lord Towyn solemnly, holding the baronet’s hand in a strong, firm pressure. “It is better that you should know the truth from us than to hear it from strangers, or be further deceived by the woman you made your wife. Lady Wynde is an adventuress, bold and false and wicked.”
“You forget that I knew her history even back to her childhood,” cried Sir Harold eagerly. “I did not marry her with my eyes blindfolded. She never attempted to impose herself upon me as other than she was. She made known her whole life to me. She was the daughter of a naval officer, and the niece of Mrs. Hyde, a lady of good family and position, who lives a very retired life in Bloomsbury Square, London. We ate our wedding breakfast in Mrs. Hyde’s house. Lady Wynde’s first husband was the Honorable Charles Hathaway, the younger son of a Viscount. Lady Wynde’s family connections both by birth and marriage are excellent. I knew all this beyond a peradventure before I married her. And yet you call her an adventuress!”
“And so she was, Sir Harold,” exclaimed Atkins. “Her past life, her family and her connections were all you say. Her record was all fair. Not a word had ever been whispered against her reputation, and she went in the best society, and had admirers and suitors. All this I grant. But she was none the less an adventuress at heart. She had an income of three hundred pounds a year and spent a thousand, sponged from relatives, or given her by Craven Black, from his winnings at the gaming table or at the races. She was engaged to marry Craven Black soon after Mr. Hathaway’s death, and before her marriage with you. Mrs. Hyde is not overfond of her niece, and told me this fact herself. This marriage, owing to the meagre fixed income of the pair, was deferred, and finally they conceived the idea that Mrs. Hathaway should contract a wealthy marriage, secure a comfortable jointure, become a widow, and then marry Craven Black. There can be no doubt that your marriage with Mrs. Hathaway was the result of a conspiracy against you by these two villains, male and female—that they had set a trap for you, Sir Harold, and that you fell into it!”
Sir Harold turned his haggard eyes upon Lord Towyn.
“It is true,” said the young earl, full of the tenderest sympathy. “You were imposed upon, Sir Harold. The woman you married, so fair and spotless in seeming, was like some fair fruit with a worm at its core. There are adventuresses in good society, of good birth and spotless reputations, as there are well-born adventurers. Mr. Atkins is right. Craven Black and Mrs. Hathaway have played a daring game, but they have not yet won. This is a terrible stroke to you, dear Sir Harold; but bear it bravely. You are not desolate because Lady Wynde feigned a love for you, and has proved false and wicked. You have the holy memories of your first wife to keep pure and steadfast your faith in woman. You have Neva to love you. You have your friends.”
But Sir Harold threw up his arms with a gesture of despair.
“I loved her!” he said brokenly. “I have thought of her in my Indian dungeon, and on the lonely sea, and have planned how to break to her the news of my return tenderly and gently, that her reason might be spared a shock which I feared might destroy it. And, O God! all the while she never loved me! While I thought of her upon the deck, with longings for wings, that I might sooner reach her, she was the wife of another, and exulted in the thought that she was rid of me forever! Ah, this is a dreary coming home!”
“It is, Sir Harold,” said Lord Towyn sorrowfully; “but the wickedness of one person whom you have loved need not darken your life, nor paralyze your energies. Neva is in peril. Rouse yourself from this great grief for her sake. Think what joy your return will be to her. We must find her, and save her.”
The young earl had touched the right chord. Sir Harold aroused himself from his despair, and said:
“Yes; we must find her, and save her. But where are we to look for her? If the detectives have failed to find a clue to her whereabouts, how are we to succeed?”
“I have been upon the Continent,” said Lord Towyn, “and have traveled from one end of England to the other. I have been upon a score of false trails, and failed to find a trace of those I sought. I have now been three or four days in this town, consulting every day with Atkins or Sir John Freise, while the detectives continued the search. And to-night I have received news which for the first time gives me hope that we are nearing the end. A messenger, sent by one of my detectives, came to me by the last down train from London, with a report of discoveries.”
“They have been found?” cried Sir Harold eagerly.
“Not yet. The object of Craven Black and his wife—I hardly know how to call her, Sir Harold—was to marry Neva to Black’s son, and so obtain control over the Hawkhurst property,” said Lord Towyn. “It is to effect this marriage that Craven Black and his wife are engaged in persecuting Neva. When they left Hawkhurst, they left Rufus Black behind them. It occurred to me that when they should deem matters in a fair state of progress, or when Neva showed signs of relenting, they would send for Rufus to come and plead his cause, or to marry her, wherever they might be. I therefore hired a detective to watch Rufus, and it is from this detective, and not from those in search of Neva, that I have to-night heard.”
“And what does he say?” demanded Atkins breathlessly.
“Young Black has remained at Hawkhurst ever since the marriage—some five weeks. Two or three days ago he went up to London. The detective, who had been stopping at Wyndham as a commercial traveler in broken health, went up on the same train. It seemed at first, my messenger says, as if young Black had had no object beyond a day’s saunter in town. He visited picture shops and so on, but that night he went to the Great Northern railway station, and found the train gone. That movement of his, as the detective said, began to look like business. Black went to his hotel, the detective still on his track. The next morning young Black sold his watch and chain, and the next evening he was off again to the Great Northern railway station. He caught the night express, and went on it, the detective on the same train. The detective sent a note from Edinburgh to a fellow-officer, who brought it to me to-night. I am convinced that Rufus Black has gone to rejoin his father, and that if we follow him we shall find Neva.”
“To what place did he book himself?” asked Atkins.
“To Inverness. It is plain that while the Blacks tried to persuade us that they were upon the Continent, they were safely hidden with Neva in the Scottish Highlands. They may have gone there from some idea of bringing about an informal Scottish marriage between Neva and young Black. Neva can know nothing of the marriage laws of Scotland, where a declaration from a woman that a certain man is her husband, when he hears and does not contradict the assertion, and vice versa, constitutes a legal and binding marriage. The Blacks may calculate upon Neva’s ignorance, and hope to avail themselves of the facilities of Scottish law in marrying her to Rufus.”
“It is very probable,” said Atkins, knitting his brows.
“Young Black has the start of us. He must have arrived at Inverness to-day. I came here to propose, Atkins, that we start for the north by the earliest morning train. We are on the right track now,” said Lord Towyn. “Let us follow it up promptly.”
“We will go in the morning,” declared Atkins.
“I shall go also,” said Sir Harold. “Let the secret of my return be kept a secret still. I do not wish to warn this Craven Black, or put him on his guard. Call me Mr. Hunlow. It is the name I traveled home under. And be careful not to betray my secret until I myself declare it.”
The three sat together by the office fire all the remainder of the night and talked. In the morning Atkins wrote a note to his wife, and another to his clerks, and leaving the notes upon his desk, went out with his two guests before the family were astir. Sir Harold muffled his face beyond recognition, and conducted Lord Towyn and Atkins to his hotel. Here they were served with breakfast, and soon after they proceeded to the station, and took the train for London.
Sir Harold breathed more freely when they had left the Cathedral town behind them. He was well known in Canterbury, and with a strange nervous shrinking, he dreaded recognition before he should choose to make his return known.
On arriving in London, the three pursuers hastened to the Great Northern Railway station, and an hour later they were on their way to Scotland, upon the trail of Rufus Black.