CHAPTER XV.
FROM THE BEYOND
Gordon Cunningham sank upon the nearest divan, and for a few seconds covered his face with his hands.
“Go away!” he cried in dismay. “Spare me this, Tulloch! I thought--I always thought----”
“Yes; you thought that I was dead, my dear Gordon,” Ambrose said in a deep, meaning voice, and with an evil grin. “I see, however, that you have recognised me! Probably you guess the nature of my errand?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Leave me!”
“Not before I have had a serious talk with you, my dear fellow,” was his cold reply. “Come, sit up. Face me like a man,” he urged.
The young fellow, crushed and trembling, did not stir.
“Ah!” the elder man exclaimed with a sneer, his appearance entirely different from when he had sat huddled up in the train. “I see, you can’t do that, eh? Well--well, it is hardly surprising. And yet I am here in your own interests. Raise your head, and listen to me. First, you may love Maidee Lambton--but I happen to know that she suspects the truth!”
“Suspects!” gasped the young man, raising his white face, his eyes staring wildly as he rose and closed the door carefully. “Does Maidee suspect?” he inquired in a low, hoarse whisper. He seemed filled with horror at the very thought that Maidee might have guessed his secret.
“Yes,” replied the other quietly.
“How do you know?”
“I met her the other day--by pure chance. I did not let her know who I was, but from what she told me I am certain that a deep and terrible suspicion has entered her heart.”
“And what did you say? You did not give me away?”
“Why should I?” asked the elder dandified man who, having removed his overcoat, stood upon the centre of the fine Persian rug, a smart, well-groomed figure in his perfectly-cut evening clothes. “Is it to my own interests to reveal anything?”
“No, it isn’t. It would be bad for you--if you dared!” Gordon snapped with a scowl. “If--if you told her anything, I--I’d, by Gad, Tulloch!--I’d kill you!”
“My dear Gordon, I know very well you would,” laughed his visitor. “But that isn’t the point. She suspects--and you must at once remove the suspicion.”
“How? Give me your advice. You are always so far-seeing and clever. How shall I act?”
“Take up in Parliament the mystery of Sir George Ravenscourt’s death, declare that he died by the hand of an assassin,” he said, looking straight into the other’s eyes, “and demand that Scotland Yard shall investigate. By adopting such a course you will exhibit a bold front. She believes in you, and if you bring up the subject in the House it will remove from her mind all suspicion.”
“Curiously enough,” said the young man, “I had decided upon acting just as you have suggested--alleging that it was not a case of suicide, and that the police have hushed up the matter for either a political or some ulterior motive.”
“Yes,” said the man he had addressed as Tulloch. “It is the only way. You love Maidee, eh?”
“I do, most devotedly. Surely you must know that!”
“But you must not disguise from yourself the fact that you are sitting upon the edge of a volcano,” the elder man remarked, looking across at the other in the dim half-light of the Eastern room. “You are a coming man, welcomed everywhere as a Cabinet Minister in embryo; yet--well, I should think,” he added, lowering his voice to a low, soft whisper, “I should think you can have but little real peace of mind with that skeleton in your cupboard--with the constant fear that the affair may be found out.”
“But who knows--except yourself, Tulloch?” asked the young man in a hard broken voice. “Surely she does not know--I mean, hers are mere suspicions.”
The elder man’s face relaxed into a strange, sinister smile, but in the uncertain light Gordon Cunningham did not distinguish it. His visitor’s face was exultant, triumphant.
“Of course, she has not forgotten, there are suspicions--yes, strong suspicions, my dear fellow. You must act at once in order to allay them. Show a bold front.”
“That was already my intention.”
“Pursue your usual rôle of anxious inquirer in the interests of justice into the death of Sir George. Criticise Scotland Yard, and boldly condemn the whole police system. Create a scandal--it will increase your popularity and remove Maidee’s suspicions.”
“Very well, I will,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, I was only talking to Bridgman, the Home Secretary, to-night upon the subject, and he urged me not to put a question in the House.”
“Disregard him. Put down the question at once.”
And to this course the young man agreed, little knowing the abyss which the man Tulloch had opened before him, or the exquisite duplicity of the man whom he believed to be his friend.
Tulloch was a man who knew certain of his secrets, yet he had every confidence in him. He had met him under somewhat strange circumstances. Tulloch was a studious man and knew much concerning the complicated tangle of Balkan politics, therefore a friendship had sprung up between the pair. At one time, a year ago, they had been almost inseparable, for to Tulloch’s promptings and his clever diplomacy Gordon Cunningham had, in a great measure, owed his present “boom.”
Then suddenly he had awakened to the fact that Tulloch was not exactly the straightforward, honest person he had represented himself to be. Gradually the truth had become forced upon him that he had placed himself within the toils of an adventurer.
So Gordon then decided to act diplomatically. He picked a quarrel with Tulloch, and the latter, with that calm unconcern which was his most remarkable characteristic, had shrugged his shoulders and eleven months ago gone off to the Continent. A fortnight later came the news through a mutual friend that he had caught typhoid fever, and had died in an obscure hotel called the Tazzo d’Oro, in Ancona, on the Adriatic.
Gordon Cunningham had once again breathed freely. The man who had knowledge of the strange skeleton in his cupboard no longer lived; therefore he was free--free to love Maidee, free to rise to the high station which his friends everywhere predicted.
It was hardly surprising, therefore, that sudden sight of him, standing there alive in that dimly-lit room in Bruton Street, was the reverse of reassuring. His enemy, the only man who knew his secret, had risen, as if from the grave.
Yet Tulloch had made no threats. He made no reference even to certain discreditable facts of the past, save that which is recorded in these pages.
Nevertheless, in the brief silence that followed, the young man seated upon the divan, again staring and pensive, was wondering by what means Tulloch suspected the truth concerning the affair at Carlton House Terrace. Yet was he not a most remarkable man? No secret had ever seemed safe from him, however strictly it might be kept. He possessed some weird power by which he read the inner lives of men as others read a printed book.
Indeed, from the first moment they had met, Cunningham had held in a certain degree of awe this man whose remarkably wide political knowledge had been of such use to him, and whose interest in national defence was so full of keen enthusiasm. There was something decidedly uncanny about him--though what it was he could never describe.
That he was an adventurer--a calm, unscrupulous and clever adventurer--there could be no doubt. His friends were mostly vulgar undesirables, and he certainly was no better than his associates.
He had, without asking permission, selected a cigar from the box upon the table, and was engaged in lighting it.
The young legislator sat gazing upon him without a word. What were this man’s intentions? he was wondering. Had there been some motive in the pretence that he had died in Ancona? Assuredly so. He recollected how the false news had been conveyed to him by letter from one of the man’s friends.
Much the young man owed to this strange, unscrupulous person whose knowledge of men and things was so wide and remarkable. Tulloch could engineer anything, and gradually he had wound himself into his confidence and learnt his secrets almost unconsciously.
“Look here!” said Gordon, rising to his feet and facing his visitor boldly. “Why have you come back here, Tulloch? Heron wrote to me, telling me that you had died in Italy.”
“Well, he was a trifle mistaken,” laughed his friend. “I’m quite well aware that my presence here is not--well, not exactly pleasant, Gordon. I know just a little too much, eh?”
“Yes, you do!” cried the young man angrily. “You first misled me with news of your death, and now, I suppose, your intention is to blackmail me, eh? Well, how much do you want for your silence?” he asked, hoarsely.
“Nothing, my dear boy, nothing,” was Tulloch’s reply. “I never have blackmailed you, and do not intend to do so.”
“But you’ve sailed pretty near the wind, haven’t you?” asked Gordon, fiercely. “You remember how you made me back that bill for a thousand for Heron--and I had to pay?”
The man who was such a past-master in the art of disguise and subterfuge shrugged his shoulders, answering:
“Not a very great price for all I have done in your interests, Cunningham, eh? Reflect a moment. Where would you have been without my aid--without my silence?”
“I know. I quite admit all that,” he said impatiently. “But I want you to be straight and open with me. Why are you here?”
“Purely in your own interests. You are in a hole, and I’m assisting you out of it.”
“How do you know?”
“By the same means that I have discovered other things concerning your rather remarkable career,” replied the man with an evil grin. “Don’t you think you are a very lucky young fellow to have risen to become the most popular of the coming politicians, eh?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips. “Examine yourself, Cunningham, and ask yourself whether your actual worth and your extraordinary intelligence are really as great as that attributed to you. You are acclaimed a genius. Why? Because, by my influence, certain journalists declared that you were. The public read, and became convinced. To-day is not an age when merit is acknowledged. In the mad hurry of this modern world of ours there is no time to think, hence the self-advertiser is accepted at his own estimation, and the possession of an ample income is of far greater import to the man who wants to ‘get on’ than the possession of brains. Most honours are merely matters of money--and judicious advertising. And you’ve been advertised widely enough--in all conscience.”
“I admit it, Tulloch. But you are always so infernally blunt. You can lay a man out upon the dissecting-table and examine his conscience--nay, his very soul--just as you have often done mine.”
“I found very little honour in yours,” declared the elder man with a laugh.
“Yes!” cried the young fellow in a changed voice. “You tempted me to do what I did, and now you are here to taunt me!”
“That’s it,” laughed Tulloch, examining the end of his cigar. “Abuse me--your best friend. How strange it is that you are not more grateful!”
“Grateful to you for returning here when I had so foolishly believed that I had seen the last of you, and heard the last of your evil counsel for ever!” cried Gordon, fiercely.
“My dear fellow, I merely came here in order to make a suggestion entirely in your own interests,” declared the other.
“Yes, but tell me,” asked Gordon, “how do you know that Ravenscourt did not commit suicide? Answer me that question,” he demanded wildly, advancing towards him threateningly. “You, who possess a supernatural power to fathom men’s secrets and read their innermost hearts, shall tell me by what means you learnt the truth--or, by Gad!” and he clenched his fist, biting his thin white lip.
“Enough!” replied the other, standing quite calm in the centre of the room and laughing. “I think I know the truth, my dear Gordon. That is sufficient. Act as I have directed; demand an explanation of the action of Scotland Yard. Save yourself now, before it becomes too late, or----”
“Well! Why should I obey your orders, pray?”
“Because if you do not,” answered Tulloch, fixing his keen, crafty eyes upon the young man in the dim light--“because if you do not, Maidee herself shall know the truth!”
“You--you would do that, eh?” he gasped, his face showing white and haggard in the gloom. “You would betray me--you infernal fiend!”
“Yes,” was the cold, hard response of the weird man of mystery. “I am here for that purpose. Obey me, or she shall know the disgraceful truth!”