CHAPTER XVII
AND WHAT OF THE SECRET?
When Luke arrived at his uncle's house early the next morning, he was met in the hall by Doctor Newington, who was descending the stairs and who gravely beckoned to the young man to follow him into the library.
"They called me in last night," he said in reply to Luke's quick and anxious query. "The butler—or whatever he may be—told me that he was busy fastening up the front door preparatory to going to bed when he heard a heavy thud proceeding from the library. He found his master lying full length on the floor: the head had come in violent contact, as he fell, with the corner of this table; blood was trickling from a scalp wound, and Lord Radclyffe himself was apparently in a swoon. The man is a regular coward and a fool besides. He left his master lying just as he had fallen, but fortunately he knew me and knew where to find me, and within ten minutes I was on the spot, and had got Lord Radclyffe into bed."
"Is it," asked Luke, "anything serious?"
"Lord Radclyffe has not been over strong lately. He has had a great deal to put up with, and at his age the system is not sufficiently elastic or—how shall I put it?—sufficiently recuperative to stand either constant nerve strain or nagging worries."
"I don't know," interposed Luke stiffly, "that my uncle has had either nerve strain or worry to put up with."
"Oh," rejoined the doctor, whose gruff familiarity seemed to Luke's sensitive ear to be tainted with the least possible note of impertinence, "I am an old friend of your uncle, you know, and of all your family; there isn't much that has escaped my observation during the past year."
"You have not yet told me, doctor," said Luke, a shade more stiffly than before, "what is the matter with Lord Radclyffe."
There was distinct emphasis on the last two words.
Doctor Newington shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly.
"Your uncle has had something in the nature of a stroke," he said bluntly, and he fixed keen light-coloured eyes on those of Luke, watching the effect which the news—baldly and crudely put—would have on the young man's nerves. He was a man with what is known as a fashionable practice. He lived in Hertford Street and his rounds were encircled by the same boundaries as those of the rest of Mayfair. He had had plenty of opportunity of studying those men and women who compose the upper grades of English society. They and their perfect sang-froid, their well-drilled calm under the most dire calamities, or most unexpected blows had often caused him astonishment when he was a younger man, fresh from hospital work, and from the haunts of humbler folk, who had no cause or desire to hide the depth of their feelings. Now he was used to his fashionable patients and had ceased to wonder, and Luke's impassiveness on hearing of his uncle's sudden illness did not necessarily strike him as indifference.
"Serious. Of course," assented the doctor.
"Do you mean that Lord Radclyffe's life is in danger?"
"At sixty years of age, life is always in danger."
"I don't mean that," rejoined Luke with a slight show of impatience. "Is Lord Radclyffe in immediate danger?"
"No. With great care and constant nursing, he may soon rally, though I doubt if he will ever be as strong and hearty as he was this time last year."
"Then what about a nurse?"
"I'll send one down to-day, but——"
"Yes?"
"Lord Radclyffe's present household is—well, hardly adequate to the exigencies of a long and serious illness—he ought to have a day and a night nurse. I can send both, but they will want some waiting on and of course proper meals and ordinary comforts——"
"I can see to all that. Thank you for your advice."
"A good and reliable cook is also necessary—who understands invalid cooking—all that is most important."
"And shall be attended to at once. Is there anything else?"
"Perfect rest and quiet of course are the chief things."
"I shan't worry him, you may be sure, and no one else is likely to come near him."
"Except the police," remarked the doctor dryly.
"The police?"
The grave events of the night before, and those that were ready to follow one another in grim array for the next few days had almost fled from Luke's memory in face of the other—to him more serious—calamity—his uncle's illness.
"Oh! Ah, yes!" he said vaguely. "I had forgotten."
"The nurses," rejoined the doctor with a pompousness which somehow irritated Luke, "will have my authorization to forbid any one having access to Lord Radclyffe for the present. I will write out the certificate now, and this you can present to any one who may show a desire to exercise official authority in the matter of interviewing my patient."
"I daresay that I can do all that is necessary at the inquest and so on—Lord Radclyffe need not be worried."
"He mustn't be worried. To begin with he would not know any one, and he is wholly unable to answer questions."
"That settles the matter of course. So, if you will write the necessary certificate, I'll see the police authorities at once on the subject. Would Lord Radclyffe know me, do you think?" added the young man after a slight pause of hesitancy.
"Well," replied the doctor evasively, "I don't think I would worry him to-day. We'll see how he gets on."
"He'll probably ask for me."
"That is another matter, and if he does, you must of course see him. But unless there is a marked improvement during the day, he won't ask for any one."
Luke was silent a moment or two while the doctor sat down at the writing table and sought for pen and ink.
"Very well," he said after awhile, "we'll leave it at that. Lord Radclyffe—I can promise you this—shall on no account be disturbed without permission from you. How soon will the nurse arrive?"
"Within the hour. The night nurse will come after tea."
Doctor Newington wrote out and signed the usual medical certificate to the effect that Lord Radclyffe's state of health demanded perfect quietude and rest and that he was unable to see any one or to answer any questions. He read his own writing through very carefully, then folded the paper in half and handed it to Luke.
"This," he said, "will make everything all right. And I'll call again in a couple of hours' time. You won't forget the cook?"
"No, I won't forget the cook."
When the doctor had taken his leave, Luke stood for a moment quietly in the library: he folded up the medical certificate which he had received at the hands of Doctor Newington, and carefully put it away in his pocket-book.
"You won't forget the cook?"
I don't think that ever in his life before had Luke realized the trivialities of life as he did at this moment. Remember that he was quite man of the world enough, quite sufficiently sensible and shrewd and English, to have noticed that the degree of familiarity in the doctor's manner had passed the borderland of what was due to himself; the tone of contemptuous indifference savoured of impertinence. And there was something more than that.
Last night when Luke wandered up and down outside the brilliantly lighted windows of the Danish Legation, trying to catch a few muffled sounds of the voice he so passionately loved to hear, he heard the first rumours that an awful crime had been committed which, for good or ill, would have such far-reaching bearings on his own future; but he had also caught many hints, vague suggestions full of hidden allusions, of which the burden was: "Seek whom the crime benefits."
Luke de Mountford was no fool. Men of his stamp—we are accustomed to call them commonplace—take a very straight outlook on life. They are not hampered by the psychological problems which affect the moral balance of a certain class of people of to-day; they have no sexual problems to solve. Theirs is a steady, wholesome, and clean life, and the mirrors of nature have not been blurred by the breath of psychologists.
Luke had never troubled his head about his neighbour's wife, about his horse, or his ass, or anything that is his; therefore his vision about the neighbour himself had remained acute.
Although I must admit that at this stage the thought that he might actually be accused of a low and sordid crime never seriously entered his head, he nevertheless felt that suspicion hovered round him, that some people at any rate held it possible that since he would benefit by the crime, he might quite well have contemplated it.
The man Travers thought so certainly; the doctor did not deem it impossible—and, of course, there would be others.
No wonder that he stood and mused. Once more the aspect of life had changed for him. He was back in that position from which the advent of the unknown cousin had ousted him so easily—the cousin who had come, had seen, and had conquered the one thing needful—the confidence and help of Uncle Rad.
By what means he had succeeded in doing that had been the great mystery which had racked Luke's mind ever since he felt his uncle's affection slipping away from him.
Uncle Rad who had loudly denounced the man as an impostor and a blackmailer before he set eyes on him, was ready to give him love and confidence the moment he saw him: and Luke was discarded like an old coat that no longer fitted. The affection of years was turned to indifference; and what meant more still the habits of a lifetime were changed. Lord Radclyffe, tyrannical and didactic, became a nonentity in his own household. The grand seigneur, imbued with every instinct of luxury and refinement, became a snuffy old hermit, uncared for, not properly waited on, feeding badly, and living in one room.
All this Philip de Mountford had accomplished entirely by his mere presence. The waving of a wand—a devil's wand—and the metamorphosis was complete! What magic was there in the man himself? What in the tale which he told? What subtle charm did he wield, that the news of his terrible death should strike the old man down as some withered old tree robbed of its support?
Now he lay dead, murdered, only God knew as yet by whom. People suspected Luke, because Fate had given a fresh turn to her wheel and reinstated him in the pleasing position from which the intruder had ousted him.
Luke de Mountford was once more heir presumptive to the earldom of Radclyffe, and the stranger had taken the secret of his success with him to the grave.