CHAPTER XXXII

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A TRIVIAL INCIDENT.

Lady Levallion had been committed for trial at the assizes, and, as Houghton had foreseen, was refused bail.

In the county jail at Valehampton she must stay alone, comfortless--a girl of nineteen; must be a month away from liberty and free air before her trial. Of after that Houghton dared not think. He worked wonders for her comfort, though, and instead of a cell she had a room, plain and bare, but still a room. Yet it seemed prisonlike enough to Sir Thomas Annesley, when at last he had leave to go and see her.

Door after door was unlocked and locked behind him; corridor after corridor sickened him with its cold smell of carbolic acid, till at last he stood in the small room that was properly part of the jail infirmary, and heard its iron door click behind his heels.

“Tommy!” she cried, incredulous, rapturous, though she had known he was coming.

But the boy could not answer; could only cling to her, trying to choke back his pitiful sobbing against her shoulder. For he had seen her face, and knew a little, just a little, of what her days and nights must have been.

“Don’t cry, darling!” she whispered, as though it had been he and not she that was in peril of life. “Oh, Tommy, I thought I would die for want of you!”

“They wouldn’t let me come.” He lifted his head. “Who’s that?” he cried sharply. For a woman was sewing by the window.

“The matron,” softly. “Did you think they’d let you see me alone?”

The woman looked up.

“Don’t mind me, sir!” she cried, her hard face very gentle. “I’ll not heed anything you say.”

For Houghton, by good luck, was the prison doctor, and she believed in him as in the four Gospels.

“She’s been very good to me,” Ravenel said gratefully, and the matron smiled, but her eyes were wet. For, if Lady Levallion were innocent ten times over, she could not prove it. And the matron’s only daughter who died would have been just the age now of this girl, who presently would be tried for murder. She moved to the farthest limit of the room as the brother and sister sat down on the bed.

“Are you well, Tommy?” Ravenel whispered. “You look so thin!”

“Never mind me; I’m all right.” He grabbed at her hand. “I can only stay half an hour. Tell me, can’t you think of anything I don’t know?”

“Nothing,” deliberately. For once having perjured herself because she had seen a flying glimpse of a man she thought was Adrian, there was nothing to do but stick by it. If she had been certain he was in London, she could have told the truth; but yet it would have helped her very little in face of those two bottles.

“You’ve seen your lawyer?”

She nodded. There had been little enough in that clever man’s face to reassure her.

“Don’t fret,” she said slowly. “There are three weeks before I--my trial.”

“And so far we haven’t found out one thing,” he said, and hid his face again.

“I’ve thought of something, though it can’t help me,” she began, smoothing the boy’s rough hair. “The Umbrella, Tommy! She didn’t send for me to tell me about that old story of Sylvia. She sent for me to warn me about Levallion. I feel it, and he did, too; else why did he say, before he died: ‘We should have gone’?”

“But the Umbrella’s dead. We’ll never know.”

“No! But if she knew something, some one else may. It’s sure to come out.”

“But if it doesn’t?” he gasped.

A dreadful shudder took her. To die, with a rope around her neck, in a prison-yard!

“Pray it will!” she cried. “Oh, Tommy, I know you’d help me if you could! But if you can’t, pretend it’s all right. It’s the only thing you can do for me. I--I’ve got to be brave!”

The boy sat up, but he did not look at her.

“Look here,” he said; “what do you think about Gordon?”

“He didn’t do it!” quickly; for all her pains, joyfully.

“No! I don’t mean that. But if he wants to help you, why doesn’t he come back to Levallion Castle and watch those servants? He’s vanished, clean gone. Went to London the day of the funeral, and nobody knows where he is.”

“He couldn’t help me,” loyally. “Those servants know no more than they said.” But her heart sank in her. Was it possible that he did not care? And yet it had not been so much for Adrian’s sake as for Levallion’s that she had lied at the inquest. No one should be able to say that one of the dead man’s own blood had murdered him because he had loved his wife.

“Perhaps not! But Gordon ought to be there,” gruffly.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“Where can I go?” miserably. “I’ve no money. If I had I couldn’t leave you.”

“Adrian will look after you.” She hesitated, for she had a dim idea that if they hanged her the crown would take her jointure.

“I wouldn’t take his money. It was all his!” bitterly.

“It was all Sylvia.” For the first time she had color in her face. “Oh, don’t hark back to it, Tommy! Levallion was kind to us; and some one killed him for it.”

The door swung back heavily.

“Time’s up, sir,” said the warden.

It did not seem five minutes, but it was nearer forty than thirty.

“I’ll come,” said Sir Thomas Annesley, and he looked ten years older. “Ravenel, I nearly forgot. The duchess wrote to me. She’s coming here, to Valehampton, to be near you. She’ll come here as often as they’ll let her.”

“I’m glad,” simply. “But I think I only want you.” (And one other, whose hand she would never touch again in life!)

She sat down, tearless. One breath, of all the world she could have hidden her face against; one strong shoulder would have known her tears. But between Adrian Gordon and her was a deep gulf set: a gulf of blood that cried aloud.

But Tommy Annesley was blind with tears as he drove the long ten miles between Valehampton and Levallion Castle. It was bitter work to stay there eating Adrian’s bread; but he could not go away.

“Perhaps the duchess will take me with her,” he thought, “till----” But even to himself he could not finish. When the trial was over it was not likely that Tommy Annesley would have overmuch care for what happened. He would get away, he and Jacobs, from every soul who had known him--would work, somehow, for his living. A lump rose in his throat as he walked into the broad hall of Levallion Castle, all soft firelight and welcome, and thought of its mistress sitting on her pallet bed in Valehampton Jail.

Tea was waiting, but he could not swallow it. He flew out into the desolate, twilit garden, and rambled aimlessly, he hardly saw where. Jacobs, for once, was not with him; all alone, his hands in his pockets, his slow feet silent on the frozen grass, Sir Thomas walked mechanically, racking his brain to no purpose over that mysterious man and woman the detectives had been unable to trace.

He might have racked his brain still harder if he had known the reason of the silence that reigned concerning them. In Adrian’s theory about the absconding tenant of the bungalow, no one believed at all. Arlington’s man had been almost openly unbelieving about dragging a strange woman into the case, and the prosecution merely smiled at the idea of there being any mystery whatever, thanks to that hasty evidence of Sir Thomas Annesley’s. It was all very well for him to believe he had made a mistake; no one else did. In the eyes of the world, those two people who drank champagne in a wood had been Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion, since the only man who could have sworn to her whereabouts was dead!

“If I only could think of something!” the boy mused desperately, and stopped short at a queer sound.

He had wandered into the dark kitchen-garden, behind a row of deserted potting sheds; and from them came a sound exactly like the beating of carpets. It was no concern of Tommy’s, though the hour was a queer one, and he was moving on when a pitiful moaning like a dog being beaten to death made him jump. His thoughts flew to the absent Jacobs, and the cook who had a grudge against him.

Silent, with flying feet, Tommy ran to the back of the shed, full of fury. But as he paused by the latticed, glassless window at the back of it, he knew it was no dog which was concerned in the carpet-beating, but a boy.

“Don’t! don’t!” he was crying. “I won’t go away. I’ll stay with you. I’ll do whatever you say!”

The sound of blows ceased.

“That is a sensible, amiable boy!” said a voice, and it was the chef’s. “And you will say to the world that you love me--that there was never any one like me, eh?”

The boy groaned.

“Yes!”

Sir Thomas heard the whistle of a stick uplifted.

“Oh, yes! Don’t hit me.”

“It is for your good that I break the bones in your skin,” returned Carrousel. “We shall hear no more of this running away?”

“No,” in exhausted sobs. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever you tell me. I----”

Sir Thomas bounced round the corner of the shed.

“What the devil’s this?” he said fiercely, and a lighted match flickered in his hand.

There was Carrousel, his face like a devil’s, grasping a heavy stick, and on the mud floor the boot-boy, quivering with pain. The match went out.

“How dare you beat the boy like that?” cried Tommy. “I’ll have you up for assault.”

“He disobeyed me, refused to do his work.”

In the dark Carrousel’s boot grazed the boy’s ribs. “Did you not, eh?”

“Yes.” The answer was little better than a moan.

“I don’t see what a cook has to do with blacking boots!” angrily. “And if he disobeyed you a dozen times, you’ve no right to beat him like this.”

“He runs my errands,” said Carrousel sullenly. “He would not do his work; he played, idled.”

“You get out of this and let him alone,” authoritatively. “And if I catch you at this again I’ll have you arrested. Go now, sharp! My dog’ll be here in a minute,” significantly.

“You threaten me--intimidate?” In the dark Carrousel’s face was not pretty. But like lightning he changed his tone.

“I regret if you think the punishment too severe. The boy--earned it!” He spoke like oil, and in the dark stooped and whispered two words in the boot-boy’s ear.

“Clear out!” Tommy stamped his foot, unconscious of that whisper. “Get back to your pots and pans, or I’ll have you driven there. Jacobs! Hi, Jacobs!” he yelled.

But Monsieur Carrousel was gone.

Tommy stooped over the boot-boy.

“Why did you let him beat you like that?” he said. “Why didn’t you yell?”

But he got no answer. Another match flickered in the shed. Towers, the boot-boy, was lying on his face, shaking with sobs.

“See here,” said Tommy, “don’t! Here’s half a crown for you”--his last coin--“if you couldn’t fight that beast why didn’t you complain if he ill-treated you? Has he done it before?”

No answer.

“Well,” disgustedly, “if you won’t tell, I shall! I’ll have Carrousel hauled up.”

Towers said something; caught at Tommy in the dark, as if to stop him.

“Don’t!” he gasped. “Don’t sir! He’d kill me.”

“Rot! He couldn’t. What’s the matter with him? Has he got anything against you--why are you afraid of him?”

“I am not afraid. He is kind to me. I will go with him if he leaves this place.”

Tommy drew a long breath. The short sentences had come out in the singsong whine of the village school, exactly as if they had been learned by rote.

“Then you must be a fool!” he observed candidly. “Do you mean you don’t want me to complain of the beast?”

Towers said no, still in that unnatural voice.

“Go back to the house and wash your face!” the other boy, who was but four years older, advised. “And if he beats you again, you come to me, and I’ll settle him.”

Towers’ teeth chattered.

“I made him angry,” he said, shivering. “I won’t do it again. Don’t say anything, sir; oh, please!”

“All right,” disgustedly. “If you like being pounded, it’s no concern of mine!” and, being cold, he assisted the boot-boy to his feet and departed.

“Carrousel did look a devil!” he thought. “But the boy seems half-witted. Yet----”

He stopped short in the dark.

“Cooky looked as if he would kill him!” he gasped. “I wonder if--but it couldn’t be. But if I could think it, I--I’d make him swing.”

He ran to the house as hard as he could go. For the first time he had “thought of something.”

“Mr. Arlington,” he cried, bursting in on the lawyer where he sat toiling over bundles of Levallion’s neglected and unopened letters in the hope of finding some clue to some one who had a grudge against him. “Do you know Captain Gordon’s address?” For reasons of his own he said nothing about that trivial incident in the garden.

“No!” slowly. “Lord Levallion’s, you mean? I’ve never heard one word from him.”

The boy’s flushed face paled.

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