CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ACCUSATION

After lying in a state of coma in his darkened room for over two days, Don Mario slowly struggled back to consciousness.

When, on opening his eyes at last, he saw the pale, anxious face of his friend Ambrose bent over him, he started, glaring at him in horror, as though some hideous phantom of the past had risen against him.

“Well, my dear friend,” exclaimed Ambrose softly, “are you better?”

“Eh? What? Where am I?” asked the priest, staring around his own room. Then, a second later, he sank back, saying: “Ah! I see! Why--I’m at home! I--dreamt I was somewhere else.”

Then for hours he lay motionless in silence, tended by old Teresa and the snuffy old hunchback sacristan. For days he remained convalescent, seated in his chair and receiving visits from the villagers, men and women who came to offer their congratulations, and then went into the church to offer thanks for his recovery.

The priest’s story of his attack was that, in walking along at early morning, he had become suddenly seized by a curious pain in the head, had become dazed, and fallen. More than that he did not know.

For nearly three weeks he remained indisposed; then of a sudden he grew quite well. But none knew that during the whole period he was secretly flinging away the doctor’s medicines and daily injecting a certain antidote into his arm.

The truth was that he had half recovered while lying in his laboratory, and had managed to get out, shut the door, and walk nearly half a mile before sudden exhaustion overtook him and he fell where he was found.

One warm night towards the end of June, when the whole village was asleep, he crept forth again down to the cottage, and there secured the little bottle sealed with black wax--the phial containing the rediscovered poison of the Doge Dandolo. Then, noticing that the rabbits in their cage were dead, he set to work to destroy all his apparatus, and bury it in a hole he dug in the wood a little distance from the house.

Afterwards he reascended to his presbytery, and just before dawn returned again to bed.

Three days later Don Mario left Santa Lucia to spend a few weeks at his imaginary home in the North, taking with him the Signor Inglese, while the young priest, Don Lippo, from the Abruzzi had taken up his temporary abode at the little white presbytery in the piazza.

Nearly six months went by.

In the dark November days in London--and the November of 1908 was exceptionally dull--two men were occupying furnished lodgings in a rather dingy, drab house in Walpole Street, off King’s Road, Chelsea. One was Don Mario, the other his friend, John Ambrose.

A few evenings before a serious contretemps had occurred, for Ambrose, while entering Sloane Square station, had been recognised by Medland, who, in surprise, had accosted him.

They had walked side by side for a long distance, right from where they met to Scotland Yard, whence the inspector invited him in, and then closely questioned him.

When he emerged an hour later Ambrose’s expression was unusual. Perhaps the detective’s questions had been disconcerting; but, in any case, his manner had entirely changed. He seemed to have aged fully ten years, for he retraced his steps to the underground station at Westminster, bent, serious, and very thoughtful.

Next day he returned to Scotland Yard--at Medland’s request, be it said--and was there interrogated by the Director of Criminal Investigations himself, while his friend the priest remained at home, as he always did during the day.

Of late the old priest had become silent and reserved, for he had been seized by certain suspicions regarding his friend Ambrose, and was calmly plotting a terrible vengeance.

One damp, foggy evening, about nine o’clock, Lady Ravenscourt and Mrs. Beresford, being out to dinner with an old lady in Brook Street, Maidee and Gordon were together in the drawing-room, happy in each other’s love.

The girl, in a pretty gown of palest pink chiffon, was seated at the piano, singing sweetly the old popular song, “_Le Flâneur_,” the light, cheery chorus of which ran:

Moi, je flâne; Qu’on m’approuve ou me condamne! Moi, je flâne, Je vois tout, Je suis partout.

Suddenly she was interrupted by the entrance of a maid, bearing a card.

She took it, rose from the piano, and for a second stood rigid.

“There are two gentlemen, miss--one is a clergyman, I think,” the girl said.

“A clergyman!” exclaimed Maidee, who, turning to Gordon, who had also risen and was standing beside her, added: “Uncle John has called! You will now have an opportunity of meeting him. Show the gentlemen up,” she added to the maid.

A few seconds later old Mr. Ambrose, well dressed and distinguished looking, entered the room.

“Why!” gasped Cunningham, staring at him aghast. “You, Tulloch! What does this mean?”

Maidee stood amazed as the two men faced each other.

“Yes,” replied Ambrose, “I am here to-night, Cunningham, to offer you an explanation; and this gentleman with me is Don Mario Mellini, who, like myself, knew your father very well.”

The priest, who had followed hat in hand, bowed low in his graceful Italian manner, expressing his great delight at meeting the son of an old friend.

“But, my dear Uncle John!” cried Maidee, “what does all this mean? Why did you pretend to Gordon to be Tulloch, an adventurer. You surely are not an adventurer!”

“Well, my child,” replied the old fellow, smiling upon her as he took her little hand, “I fear that the world would, if it knew the truth, condemn me as such. But I and my friend here have come to reveal to you certain curious facts, and to make one or two matters quite plain. Though it is much against my desire to disclose my real identity to your lover, yet I do so because I feel that I have acted wrongly--that I allowed my feelings of revenge to obtain the mastery. I regarded his father as one of my friends, yet, alas! he proved to be one of my worst enemies. Hence my brutal desire, first to raise his son to fame, and then slowly to crush him by blackmail and threats of exposure of a crime which I knew that he did not commit.”

“You refer to the mysterious death of his wife!” the girl cried. “Then he is innocent?”

“Certainly. I can vouch for his innocence, and I am here to seek his pardon--and yours, Maidee. When I formed my plot of vengeance I had no idea that he would meet you, and fall in love with you. Surely it was the irony of fate that my dear niece, to whom I have ever been devoted, should love the son of my worst enemy--one of the men responsible for my downfall.”

“What downfall?” inquired the girl. “Do tell us. You are always so very mysterious, Uncle John,” while at the same moment Gordon placed his arm about her slim, neat waist in protection as they stood together.

“Maidee, listen then,” said the old man in a strange, tremulous voice, after he had stood in silence for a few moments, looking into her dark eyes. “Have you ever heard of a man--a politician of some note--called the Earl of Ellersdale?”

“The Earl of Ellersdale!” cried Gordon Cunningham. “Why, he was Prime Minister, and died about eighteen years or so ago. He was an intimate friend of my father.”

“Yes, he was,” said Ambrose.

Maidee, staring straight at the old man at that moment, suddenly gave vent to a loud cry of dismay.

“The Earl of Ellersdale!” she gasped. “Why--why, Inspector Medland took me to see his statue in Westminster Abbey; and now--and now that I see you side face, I--I recognise the likeness! Are you--are you his brother?”

“No, Maidee,” was the low reply; “I am the dead Earl!”

The girl and her lover stood astounded. It was upon Cunningham’s lips to jeer at the man’s amazing statement.

Next instant, however, the priest exclaimed in his very good English:

“If any corroborative evidence is necessary, I am here to testify that my friend is actually the Earl of Ellersdale, with whom I was on terms of intimate acquaintanceship until three days before his death.”

“Ever since my death--a death connived at, nay, insisted upon--by the two persons into whose hands grave circumstances compelled me to place my future, my friend Don Mario has continued to be my friend. I lived in obscurity in Pimlico as Richard Goodrick.”

“Richard Goodrick! Are you, then, the man who died so mysteriously on the night when Sir George was assassinated?” cried Maidee, astounded.

“Yes, my child,” replied the old gentleman, fire showing in his dark eyes. “Let me explain.”

But Gordon Cunningham’s attitude was still antagonistic towards the old man. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven how, as Tulloch, he had bullied and blackmailed him.

“I do not see, dear, why we should be compelled to listen to all these explanations,” he said, addressing his well-beloved.

“Hear me!” cried the Earl. “You must hear! It is but right that you both should know the truth.”

“Yes, the truth!” interrupted the deep voice of a stranger, as at the same moment the form of Inspector Medland--whose visit had been arranged in secret with the Earl--entered the drawing-room. “Excellent; let us, at last, hear the truth!”

The girl, her lover, and Don Mario all started, staring at the intruder, who, bowing, smiled, merely explaining that he had called upon Miss Lambton, as he desired to have a chat with her.

“I’m considerably interested in this meeting,” he added. “There are one or two little matters which I am very anxious to clear up,” he added, casting a meaning look towards the Earl.

Don Mario, his face livid, stood as though transfixed to the spot. He was staggered by the turn of events.

“Well,” said the ex-Premier, drawing himself up proudly and clearing his throat. “Let me explain--let me relate the strange events which led to my supposed death and disappearance into obscurity,” and then in a few brief sentences he described the house party at Ellersdale, the mysterious death of Rollo, Maidee’s father, and the terrible accusation brought against himself. He told them of the cigar found to be poisoned, the second cigar lying in the box, and the phial discovered in the buhl cabinet, of which he alone held the key; how his friends Cunningham and Nesbitt had declared that all protest of innocence would be unavailing with a jury in face of his sister-in-law’s statement, and pointed out the scandal which must be brought upon the Party. Hence, with the clever connivance of the doctors and his friends, he had died, while those who had known the truth were now also dead--all save his friend Don Mario.

Maidee listened to the old Earl’s story in silence. At last she said:

“Then my mother could, if she had chosen, have cleared you of the terrible charge?”

“Yes, child,” was his slow reply. “Your mother, I fear, was fiercely antagonistic towards me, because I had been strongly against your father’s marriage. Hence she had made some statement that was false; and I could no longer remain Prime Minister unless I could prove my innocence. For that reason I went into obscurity, and am believed by the world to have died.”

“Ah! it was a wicked conspiracy! Who, then, killed my poor father?”

“That still remains a mystery,” was the Earl’s slow response, “an entire mystery.” He did not add that for some time he had suspected Gordon’s father of the crime.

“But, surely, my mother ought never to have made a statement that was deliberately false. It was shameful to have wrecked your life thus. She----”

“Hush, child,” said the old gentleman reproachfully; “remember she was your mother, and it pains me exceedingly to have related before you what I have been compelled to tell.”

The priest stood there, his sallow, clean-shaven countenance pale and drawn, his brow slightly knit, his sharp eyes fixed upon the speaker’s face.

“But what evidence can you show that you were not responsible for your brother’s tragic end?” asked Gordon Cunningham, still doubtful, and recollecting that the Earl’s disappearance from the political world had been accomplished mainly through his father.

“There is unfortunately no proof of my innocence,” replied the old Earl. “Only my own word that, though Rollo had quarrelled with me, I bore him no malice.”

Gordon smiled, but with a somewhat dissatisfied air. Whereupon Medland, who had stood with his hands in his pockets, at that moment stepped forward, saying:

“I think that this, which I found when searching the contents of the safe in Sir George Ravenscourt’s library at Carlton House Terrace after his death, may throw an interesting light upon the occurrence,” and he produced a letter written in a feminine hand upon black-edged notepaper, and addressed to Sir George from an hotel in Geneva.

The Earl took it with trembling fingers, read it through eagerly, and then turning swiftly and fiercely upon Don Mario, he pointed at him with his finger, saying:

“At last the truth is told! There stands the assassin of my brother Rollo--he, the man who for twenty years I have regarded as my faithful friend!”

Maidee and her lover stood aghast--dumbfounded.

Yet as they looked upon the priest they saw that his mouth was half open, and that he stood motionless as a statue, unable to utter a single word in self-defence.

His face had changed. Guilt was plainly written there. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

He had lowered his quick, penetrating eyes and drawn his pale lips tightly before his accuser.