CHAPTER XXXIV

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“FALSE AS A PACK OF CARDS.”

Mrs. Murray and her story were a thunderbolt in society. It chanced that the only person who did not hear of it was Lady Annesley, whom fate had afflicted with a sharp attack of neuralgia in the eyes--real this time--and her doctor consigned to a rest-cure at Horrogate, where newspapers and the outside world did not exist.

The duchess sent for Tommy at Valehampton, and aired her views on the character of Mrs. Murray.

But the boy cared very little. The conversation turned soon enough to the topmost thing in both minds--Ravenel in jail, and the precious days that were flying by and bringing out nothing to help her.

“I’ll help her if I have to choke the home secretary,” the duchess cried, tearful and regardless. “Oh, Tommy, it breaks my heart to see her! She’s never cried, never broken down, they tell me. But I know she’s past all hoping. I think she’s just waiting to die.”

Sir Thomas opened his mouth and shut it again.

After all, he had nothing to tell the duchess: his thought that night in the garden had come to nothing. He had played secret police on the boot-boy in vain; had questioned him uselessly. Wide-eyed, frightened, almost idiotic, Towers had stared at him; what answers he did make were not what Tommy Annesley wanted.

“Will she talk to you?” he said.

The duchess could only nod. All that pitiful, childish story of Adrian Gordon’s letters and ring had Lady Levallion told her--and even the duchess could see that it would make Levallion’s death look black enough--to a jury.

“Captain Gordon has never been near her. I suppose he dare not,” she said heavily, as she wiped her eyes. “Where is he?”

“Nobody knows,” and Tommy could have killed the man who, instead of moving heaven and earth to set Ravenel free, had seen fit to vanish and leave her to her fate. The whole world, except the duchess and her lawyers, was doing that. Surely Gordon could not mean to do nothing at all!

“I must get home,” he said, and got up to go. Not all the duchess could say would keep him away from Levallion Castle. The clue was there, if it were anywhere on God’s earth. Night after night, while the house was asleep, the boy examined every inch of it, and looked and wondered and hoped in vain. If there had been any one in tweed clothes on the other side of Levallion’s door when Mr. Jacobs banged it--and was forced for his pains to run back through a passage and Lady Levallion’s suite of rooms before he could get out into the corridor again--that man would not have dared to go into any of the guests’ rooms, where the dog might keep him besieged. Nor would he have had time to gain the kitchen, where Jacobs had rushed. The only place he could have got to would be the housekeeper’s room, which was up two steps as you went to the kitchen. And that was out of the question, because the housekeeper had been in there, and Carrousel, too. No man bouncing into a quiet room to get away from a dog could do it without disturbing its occupants. The housekeeper had not heard a sound. And the theory of Carrousel having a hand in the poisoning did not hold water. A cook, dressed in white, could not tear tweed clothes on the latch of a door; nor if he had would have had time to change them.

Mr. Allington looked up as they were at dinner, a lovely pair in a desolate house. The new development anent Mrs. Murray had nearly driven the good man frantic, for he had little doubt that her story was true. Most of it was, to his own knowledge. And, as for Lady Levallion, he had never for one moment imagined her guilty. Perhaps Tommy’s watch on the servants was not the only one in that house that so far had been fruitless.

“Can you eat nothing, either?” he said precisely. “It seems to me our dinner is not so good as usual.”

“Carrousel is out, sir,” the butler put in respectfully. “The steward gave him leave to go at luncheon-time. He will be back to-night.”

“Ah!” said Allington, too much annoyed to utter. If any servant left the house he had been able, so far, to ascertain just where he or she went. This was unbearable! “Has he friends in the neighborhood?”

“He went to take Towers, the boot-boy, to a new place in London, sir! Towers was frightened to go alone.”

Sir Thomas nearly leaped off his chair. Not for one moment did he ever imagine Carrousel would be back to-night or any other night.

“Tommy!” said Allington quietly, and his eyes flashed warning, “let me advise you, at least, to drink your claret.” He knew nothing about the boot-boy, but he knew that Sir Thomas’ mind was running in the same channel as his own.

“I’ll have some beef,” said Tommy to the butler, waving away a proffered dish. It was quite right to keep up appearances, but every minute might be precious. And then it came over him with a flat, deadly sinking that he was imagining nonsense; because a cook chose to beat a boy and take a day’s outing.

Strung up, tense, he felt as if every trivial word might mean something to-night. As he cut up his beef he grew suddenly rigid in his chair. A footman was handing Allington a telegram, the pinky envelope seemed to swim on the silver tray to the boy’s excited eyes.

Was this something--at last--from the detectives?

Allington, with an impassive countenance, crumpled the sheet and put it in his pocket.

“The Duchess of Avonmore would like to see you the first thing in the morning,” he said.

“What for----” Tommy stopped himself. “Why didn’t she wire me, I wonder?”

“That I don’t know,” said Allington. “If you don’t want any more of an inferior dinner, suppose we adjourn. It seems to me,” turning to the butler, “that the same sort of meal was served two days ago. Kindly give my compliments to the steward, and say I do not wish it to occur again.”

“Yes, sir. But Carrousel went out without leave last time. He is rather above himself, you know, sir,” the butler explained hastily.

Allington made no answer. But as soon as he and Tommy reached the morning-room he shut the door, and his face was that of a different man.

“Read that,” he said. “Tell me what you think of it.”

Tommy smoothed out the crumpled telegram and saw the duchess’ message was fiction.

“Wire to Atkinson, 14 Starr Street, Paddington,” he read, “who, if any, of the servants has been in town during the week.

A. GORDON.”

“What does it mean?” He shook like a leaf.

“I hope it means a clue. Why did you jump so about the boot-boy and the cook? I hear he takes a great interest in him.”

Sir Thomas agreed with hearsay, but his tale showed the interest Carrousel took was peculiar.

“I believe Carrousel did the poisoning,” he said, below his breath. “I think the boot-boy caught him at it! And we’ve lost them. I don’t think we’ll see either of them again.”

“Carrousel had a good alibi. It isn’t possible,” Allington returned. “Yet I don’t like this business of the boy. What sort of a place do you suppose----” thoughtfully.

“No place,” Tommy cut in short. “He’s going to put that boy out of the way. He knows something. Does this thing,” tapping the telegram, “mean Gordon’s in Starr Street? What would he be there for? And what made him think any of the servants were in London?”

“That I don’t know. But I might have guessed he was in Starr Street,” absently. “I’m afraid he’s wasting time. There’s no hope there.”

“So are we,” sharply. “Aren’t you going to answer that wire?”

“Yes! But I don’t want the servants to know there is an answer. Will you go out the back way, and send one?”

“What’ll I say?” breathless. For it seemed for the first time as if some one were doing something.

“Say, ‘The artist. Day before yesterday and to-day. Answer.’ Sign your name.”

He handed Sir Thomas some money and a stray cap from a table. He had never seemed so human before. But as Tommy disappeared through the French window the lawyer, closing the shutters behind him, gave a hopeless sigh.

Captain Gordon was in Starr Street because of Mrs. Murray--as if a woman with so much at stake would be so mad as to entangle herself in the death of the man whose widow she wished to prove herself.

“I don’t know what he means about the servants,” he thought. “If he’s trying to mix up one of them with Mrs. Murray, he’s in a mare’s nest. But if Monsieur Carrousel does not return I’ll get a warrant out for him, on the pretext of that boy.”

It was three miles to the telegraph-office; he allowed two hours for Tommy to come and go; but when three had gone, and four, he began to wonder if in this house of horror there was still more to come. The night was dark as a wolf’s mouth outside. After one glance without Mr. Allington opened the door into the deserted hall. The house was absolutely silent, for it was after twelve, and the servants had gone to bed.

The lawyer slipped off his boots, and vanished down the passage to the kitchen. When he returned there was a strange look on his face, though until to-night what he had discovered would have meant absolutely nothing to him. As he stood once more in the morning-room a light tap came on the window. With instinctive, reasonless caution, he extinguished the light before he opened the wooden shutters and let Sir Thomas in.

“What kept you?” he said.

“Hush!” said Tommy. “Carrousel’s going by outside.”

In the dark Allington, the imperturbable, started.

“He’s come back, then!” he whispered. “He’s cleverer than I thought--or innocent.”

“Why shouldn’t he be innocent?” cried Tommy hysterically. “Light a candle; it’s so beastly dark here. I waited for an answer, and I saw Carrousel get out of the train.”

“Was the boy with him?”

“It doesn’t matter whether he was or wasn’t. Read that,” as the candle burned blue and then yellow he flung a telegram to Allington, and hid his weary face on his arms. “We’re all wrong.”

“Not my man at all,” Allington read, and the badly written lines sickened him with disappointment. “I was mistaken. Am doing no good here. Will be down to-morrow to consult. Unless you know something, am worse than when I started.

A. G.”

Allington’s discovery of the evening dwindled away to nothing again. He had no heart to speak of it since Carrousel was evidently not concerned in it.

“Don’t despair till we find out what this means,” he said slowly. But in his soul he knew that they had been led away by a will-o’-the-wisp, made of suspicion, coincidence, and the ill treatment of a boot-boy. Their supposed clue was false as a pack of cards!

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