CHAPTER IX.

SOME CONFIDENCES

For fully a quarter of an hour Gordon Cunningham had sat immovable, heedless of the fact that he was peering out into the darkness, and that the grave-faced waiter had not lowered the blind because he sat facing the night.

Out in the rain and darkness the old priest stood motionless.

“Hulloa, Gordon! Good heavens! Why, what’s up? You look uncommonly glum, old chap!” cried a voice suddenly causing him to start and turn.

It was Price-Williams, a barrister well known at the Old Bailey for his able prosecutions on behalf of the Treasury. “This weather is certainly enough to make anyone glum,” the smooth, round-faced lawyer went on. “I’m off to Monte to-morrow for a fortnight. Why don’t you come with me? It would buck you up for the spring.”

“Can’t, old chap--the House.”

“Why don’t you pair? These past two days I’ve noticed you looking absolutely wretched. You politicians are always so full of the nation’s worries.”

“In my case it’s generally the worries of other nations,” Cunningham laughed faintly as he stretched out his legs.

“I suppose it is. But you’ve got a special knowledge of your friends the Turks. By the way,” added the lawyer, “I presume by your clothes you’ve been down to poor Ravenscourt’s funeral--eh?”

The young man nodded an affirmative.

“Sad affair--very sad,” remarked the other. “A queer bit of business altogether, that’s my opinion.”

“What do you mean?” asked the young man in a low, rather strained voice.

“Well, the fact is, I’m hardly convinced that it was suicide, notwithstanding the verdict of the coroner’s jury.”

“Why not?” inquired the other.

“Intuition, perhaps. I believe there was foul play.”

“But surely, there’s no getting away from the verdict at the inquest!”

“Not at present. But tell me, what does Miss Lambton say? Her opinion would be of interest.”

“Nothing. I’ve scarcely seen her since the sad affair. And the subject was, of course, far too painful for discussion.”

“Well, my dear fellow,” remarked the barrister, “you’ll find later that I’m not alone in my suspicions that Sir George was deliberately done to death. The police may have secured that verdict for their own purposes, you know.”

“What?” cried the young man, almost gasping. “Is that sometimes done?”

“Of course--in order to mislead. It was done in the Hammond case at Hornsey about a year ago, and again, more recently, in the affair of Ethel Burns down at Croydon. I afterwards appeared for the prosecution.”

“Then you think that--well that----”

“That he was murdered. There’s no doubt in my mind. Sir George wasn’t the man to take his own life--especially at such a moment when his party was so sore in need of him. My own opinion is that the police will discover something--that there will be a sensational development ere long. As Counsel for the Treasury, I happen to know some of their methods.”

“Do they suspect anyone?” asked Gordon eagerly.

“Ah! That I can’t tell you, my dear fellow. But depend upon it, Ravenscourt never died by his own hand.”

“Don’t let’s discuss it,” exclaimed the young man as he rose abruptly, and a few moments later he put on his hat and coat and took a taxi down to the House. Then, and only then, did the shabby priest move from the dark doorway in St. James’s Street.

Gordon had to meet a deputation of his constituents from Kingsbridge, and was engaged with them until the dinner hour. Then, after a hasty meal, he took part in an important division, and later on drove over to Carlton House Terrace, where Burgess admitted him to the house of mourning.

The widow was keeping her room, but very soon Maidee, dainty in her sombre black gown, entered the big blue-and-white drawing-room on the first floor and raised her sweet face to receive her lover’s fond caress.

“I’m awfully sorry I had to rush away yesterday, darling,” the young man exclaimed; “but I was due to speak at Highgate on the Macedonian Question and the Roumanian interference.”

“Yes. I saw the account of your splendid speech in the _Times_ this morning. It read most excellently,” she said with enthusiasm.

“I’m so glad you liked it,” he went on, still holding her in his arms. “The public and Parliament are, alas! very ignorant of the actual causes of the internal strife in the Balkans.”

“The _Times_, in a leader the other day, said that nobody, not even Gladstone, had ever obtained such a mastery over the intricate complications of the Near Eastern Question as you, Gordon,” the girl remarked.

“Mere flattery, dearest--just because I happen, I suppose, to be a man of the moment. But the man which the papers praise to-day will be condemned by them in six months’ time. The public are so very fickle. The Press nowadays, unfortunately, does not lead public opinion; it finds it more advantageous to follow it. Ah! if the public would only realise how men’s reputations are manufactured by photographs being sown broadcast in the daily pictorial Press, and how many men, struggling for notoriety, keep a Press agent specially to ‘boom’ them! To-day one’s reputation is all a matter of self-advertisement. Why, you can pay a fee to a certain telegraphic agency and, wherever you may be, in any city in the world, your doings will be chronicled throughout Europe almost as though you were a crowned head. Is it therefore any wonder that the public are unable to discriminate or value a man at his actual worth?”

“Poor uncle often said the very same thing, Gordon,” the girl exclaimed, her soft, white hand upon his arm as she looked up lovingly into his countenance. “But you, at least, are not one of those who have obtained a fictitious reputation.”

“Ah!” he said with a slight sigh. “Perhaps I have, Maidee. Perhaps, after all, I am not worth all the praise bestowed upon me.”

She gazed at him full of admiration, for she was devoted to him.

“You are, dear--why, you know you are!” she cried. “Why, you are one of the most popular men in London to-day, and my uncle said many times that some time you will be given a seat in the Cabinet.”

Gordon Cunningham slowly shook his head. “No, Maidee,” he said quietly. “But what shall we do now we’ve lost Sir George? There is no one to take his place.”

“Except you.”

“Me!” he echoed with a dry laugh. “Whoever has suggested such a thing?”

“I’ve heard a whisper of it to-day,” the girl replied, her dark eyes fixed upon her lover’s pale, serious face. They were perfectly happy in each other’s love.

“Never!” he said quickly. “I would rather resign--rather withdraw from politics altogether than take your uncle’s place.”

“Why?”

But he only pressed his pale lips together and turned away his face in order to hide its expression.

A silence fell between the young people in that big, well-lit, richly decorated room, the scene of so many brilliant political gatherings--a silence broken only by the low honk of a taxicab speeding along the Mall.

Gordon Cunningham gazed around. The delicate pale blue carpet, the gilt furniture, the dead white walls, the fine oval portraits of seventeenth-century beauties by Lely and other masters, and the old-fashioned china cabinets all brought back to him memories of smart gatherings held there when he had been lionised by the great ones of England.

But all that was now of the past. That day the quiet, good-natured master of the house had been laid to his last rest, and that room would no longer be one of the centres of political life in London.

Maidee, a frail little figure, looked up into her lover’s eyes, and reading his thoughts, sighed in silence.

He asked her how her ladyship was bearing the blow, while she, in return, inquired for details of the funeral down in Oxfordshire.

“Quite a number of people went down, including three Cabinet Ministers as well as the Leader of the Opposition and deputations from Sir George’s constituency and several public bodies. The day was the most dismal I have ever spent, Maidee.”

“Yes, I fully expected it would be,” she sighed. “It has been very wretched here, too. Telegrams have been arriving all day. The King sent a message of condolence to auntie yesterday.”

He released her and walked slowly across to the big fireplace. He seemed unusually pensive, and she thought she detected a look upon his face such as she had never hitherto seen there.

It had been on the tip of her tongue on both the brief occasions when they had seen each other since the tragic affair, to tell him the truth that her uncle had been assassinated after writing that strange record. On the first occasion she was plunged in grief, and on the second she had recollected the strict injunctions of the friend of her youth, old Mr. Ambrose.

And now again the queer old fellow’s words recurred to her as she crossed to a cosy arm-chair and sank into it wearily. Her beautiful face, usually so cheerful, wore an expression of profound and touching dejection. She raised her eyes to the man standing before her with mingled love and melancholy.

He seemed agitated, while upon his pale countenance was a look of intense anxiety as, suddenly, he asked:

“Tell me, Maidee, after the discovery downstairs in the library, were the police busy making inquiries? I mean did they appear suspicious that it was not a case of suicide?”

“Why?” she asked, opening her eyes widely. “Why do you ask such a question, Gordon?”

Again those injunctions of the strange old man who was her intimate friend flashed across her mind. He had told her most distinctly that her lover must know nothing save what appeared in the papers. She was now glad that she had told him nothing when he had called early in the morning after the tragedy.

“Well,” he said after some hesitation, “it has occurred to a good many people--men I’ve met at the clubs--that Sir George was not a man to end his own life. There were, it seems, strong motives that he should still live. Besides, no financial difficulties have been revealed, have they?”

“None. In the safe in the library the police found a huge bundle of bank-notes. I saw them counted. There were fifty thousand pounds.”

“Then he certainly was not in any pecuniary trouble,” Cunningham remarked. “There seems no reason whatever for him to have taken his life.”

“But the coroner’s jury, after hearing the evidence, decided that it was an unfortunate case of suicide.”

“Yes,” he said; “I should have attended the inquest, only, as you know, I had to speak in Glasgow that evening.”

“But who has put these suspicions into your head, Gordon?” the girl asked with a fixed and serious look. Although young, beautiful, and beloved, melancholy was now the characteristic of her features. An ardent soul dwelt within her, but the tragic and gloomy atmosphere of that house had made its mark of deep depression.

“A stranger, first--an old man whom I met in the train this afternoon. He declared himself most positive that Sir George was murdered.”

“An old man!” echoed Maidee. “What could he know? Describe him.”

But by the description the girl did not recognise the stranger. Then Gordon added:

“He was extremely well dressed, and evidently an intimate friend of your uncle’s. He wore in his old-fashioned black cravat a curious cameo scarf-pin--a genuine antique gem without a doubt--two girls in classic flowing drapery before a pagan altar.”

Maidee held her breath, her eyes fixed upon the man she loved so dearly.

She recognised in an instant that the scarf-pin was the same she had seen so often worn by Uncle John!

But she cleverly kept her own counsel, and expressed a blank surprise that a mere stranger should be so positive in his assurance that Sir George had fallen beneath the hand of an assassin.

“Who could have struck him down?” she asked. “My dear uncle never harmed anybody. What could possibly have been the motive for such a crime as the one this stranger suggested?”

Her lover made no response. He--hailed as the man of to-morrow--was standing pale and motionless, staring straight before him, rigid as a statue.