CHAPTER XXXII.

DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN.

Pilgrims who journey through a stormy night, Observe, as nearer to the day you draw, Faint gleams that meet you from the coming light, See darkness lighten more, till, full of awe, You stand upon the sunlit mountain height. TRENCH.

On Monday the trial was to come on, and up to this day—Saturday—no witness could be found to prove an _alibi_ for the prisoner.

Desparde’s friends and his counsel were almost in despair; yet they concealed their gloomy misgivings from him.

Lord Beaudevere had left Vivienne Desparde at Castle Montjoie with Lady Arielle, and he himself had returned to Yockley and taken up his quarters at the White Bear Inn; not the best public house in the town by any means, but the nearest to the prison, and therefore the most convenient.

Early on this Saturday morning Lord Beaudevere went to the prison, and was at once admitted to the cell of his kinsman, where he had promised to meet Messrs. Stair and Turner, counsel for the prisoner.

These gentlemen had not yet, however, arrived.

He found Valdimir Desparde alone, seated at his little table and suffering under a deeper depression of spirits than he had yet exhibited.

He started up from his chair to meet the baron as the latter entered the cell.

“Any news?” was the question simultaneously, asked by the visitor and the prisoner as their hands met.

“None whatever,” was the simultaneous answer. “Are not Stair and Turner coming? They promised to meet me here at nine o’clock. It is nearly half-past—here they are now!” suddenly exclaimed the baron, as footsteps were heard coming down the corridor.

The next moment the door was opened and Messrs. Stair and Turner were ushered in.

“Any news?” was the question simultaneously uttered by the two men in the cell and the two men entering it.

“None,” was the answer in quartette.

They entered into a deep and earnest conference that lasted until two o’clock, when the “legal gentlemen” adjourned to the White Bear for luncheon, while Lord Beaudevere and Valdimir Desparde partook of refreshments sent from the same house.

At three o’clock the gentlemen met again in the cell of the prisoner, where the consultation was resumed.

They had been in deep conference for about an hour, when footsteps were heard coming down the corridor, the door was once more opened, and Adrian Fleming entered the cell with a vailed lady on his arm.

Exclamations of surprise from Lord Beaudevere, and of pleasure from Valdimir, arose in chorus as the two gentlemen left their seats and held out each a hand to welcome the new-comer.

“Glad to see you, my dear boy! Didn’t know you were in England. Thought you were abroad still,” exclaimed Lord Beaudevere, heartily shaking his hand.

“When did you arrive? You must have made up your mind suddenly, and followed me by an early steamer,” said Valdimir Desparde, speaking in the same moment.

“Thanks, Baron; I am equally happy to meet you. Yes, Desparde; that is just what I did—made up my mind suddenly and followed you by the next steamer. My rencontre with you, followed by your departure, made me so homesick that I hurried after you by the next ship,” exclaimed Fleming, answering right and left.

“And how very good of you to come and see me here so soon,” exclaimed Valdimir. Then, remembering the presence of others, he said: “You know Mr. Stair and Mr. Turner, I believe?”

“I have that pleasure,” said Fleming, bowing to the gentlemen indicated, who returned his salutation.

This passed in about two minutes, during which Net stood, vailed and silent.

“_And this lady?_” queried Lord Beaudevere, in a low voice; for his old-school courtesy was scandalized at the seeming neglect in which the lady stood.

The young gentleman smiled slightly as he took Net’s hand and presented her, saying:

“My wife, Mrs. Adrian Fleming. She has some evidence to offer in this case which I think you will consider very important for the defense.”

In the meantime Net had thrown aside her vail, and was shaking hands with her old friend, the baron.

“How did you leave your cousin, my dear?” he kindly inquired.

“She is better; yet I should not have left her but to bring you some evidence on this case which was too precious to be trusted to the mails,” said Net, as she dived into the folds of her sack and drew from an inner pocket a large, thick letter, which she handed to the baron.

“What is this, my dear?” he inquired, examining the packet earnestly, while Desparde and his counsel, at the words “evidence,” and “defense,” gathered around him.

“It is the same packet that was forwarded from Miston to Castle Montjoie, and from Castle Montjoie sent by you to me at Deloraine Park.”

“And it is—it is—what is it?” demanded the baron, beginning to unfold the many pages.

“It is a posthumous letter from the poor murdered girl, Kit Ken—” began Net.

“Read them, Stair,” replied the baron, passing the letters over.

The barrister read them first, silently while his companions watched him eagerly.

Then he looked up and said:

“These will do, Mr. Desparde. But now I must go out and get an officer sent to London at once to subpœna and bring down three witnesses from London—the cabman Nott, the landlady, and her maid-of-all-work. Mr. Desparde, I congratulate you. We can dispense with the _alibi_ now, since the murderer is identified,” said Stair, as he was about to leave the cell.

“Hi! Stop! You are not going to take those letters away without telling us their contents?” exclaimed Lord Beaudevere.

“My dear Baron, I have no time to wait. These witnesses must be got down here by Monday morning. I must see an officer start by the first train for London with the subpœna. Here, Turner, you can read these letters aloud for the benefit of all concerned. Begin with the landlady’s first. It is the best looking letter. You will know it by that. Desparde, I will see you again before the doors are closed. _Au revoir._”

And he hurried away.

Mr. Turner took up the letters to read them.

Before he could find the place to begin, Stair came hurrying back, put his head into the door, and exclaimed:

“I say, Turner! Don’t lose or mislay those letters! They are a thousand times more precious than their weight in diamonds!”

“Be easy; they are perfectly safe,” answered the younger counsel.

And as Stair’s footsteps again receded from the door, Turner opened the landlady’s letter and read it aloud, interrupted now and then, by the exclamations, comments or questions of his small audience.

After finishing it he took up Kit Ken’s letter, and read that from beginning to end, though with much more difficulty than had attended the perusal of the landlady’s epistle, because of poor Kit’s imperfect spelling, writing and pointing.

Many comments followed the reading of this piteous letter; some tears were shed by Net and Baron Beaudevere over the tragic fate of the poor victim.

In less time than was expected, Mr. Stair came back, and reported that he had got his officers armed with a subpœna for the witnesses wanted, and that he had started them off to London by the train that had left.

“We have done our mission here now,” said Net, “and we may go. Mr. Desparde, I am very glad to have brought you down these letters which are to be such powerful agents in your defense,” she added, turning kindly towards the young man.

“Mrs. Fleming, I shall hold you in grateful remembrance so long as I live,” earnestly replied Desparde.

“I don’t see any ground for gratitude in so simple an act,” replied Net.

Then turning to the baron, she said:

“Lord Beaudevere, I could not before bring my little personal interests into a discussion involving such solemn results, but now I would like to know how my babies are?”

“Plump and blooming as autumn apples! Appetites like little pigs! Petted by all the family, and toadied by all the servants like a little prince and princess They are spoiling them finely for you, my dear!” heartily responded the baron.

“Thanks. I am very glad to hear they are well,” replied Net, with a happy smile. “And now, I think, we must take leave. I wish to get the next train; for I promised my cousin to hurry back to her.”

“But, my child, you have been traveling incessantly for eighteen hours, now are you going to turn right back and travel eighteen more?”

“Yes, Baron, for so I promised my cousin, and she is ill,” gently replied Net.

“And _you_ will be ill if you do not take care. Mr. Fleming, are you going to allow your wife to do this willful deed?”

Adrian shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

Net took leave of her friends and went off to the train, escorted by her husband.

They were soon on their way back to Devonshire.

The baron and the counsel remained in the cell with the prisoner, not intending to leave him until they should be compelled to do so by the prison regulations for the closing of the doors at six o’clock.

It was scarcely five when Net went away.

They had conversed but a few minutes when other steps were heard approaching the door, and one of the clerks from Mr. Turner’s law office entered the cell with a telegram in his hand.

“This has just arrived, sir, and by your orders I bring it to you.”

“Very well, Kinch,” replied Mr. Turner breaking the seal of the envelope and examining its contents.

Then he sprang up, exclaiming:

“Hurrah for us! ‘It never rains but it pours?’ Listen to this:

“‘JOHN HARRIER, _Scotland Yard, London, to_ TOBIAS TURNER, ESQ., _Barrister, Yockley_.—We have dropped down upon an old party who came over on the _Colorado_ with Mr. Desparde, and afterwards rode on the same train with him from Southampton to Peterboro, and will be able to prove an _alibi_, since he knows that Mr. Desparde could not have been at Paddington on the day he was said to have engaged the reserved compartment of the railway train in which the poor girl was found murdered.’”

“Kinch!” exclaimed the lawyer, “go immediately and telegraph John Harrier to have that man subpœnaed and sent here to testify on Monday. Do you hear?”

“Yes, sir, certainly; but here is a letter that also came, post-marked Dunross, that I thought you might like to see,” added the clerk, putting in his principal’s hand a large white envelope with a staring red seal, and then leaving the room.

Mr. Turner asked permission of his companions and then broke the seal.

“I told you so!” he exclaimed, when he had run his eyes over this letter. “‘It never rains but it _pours_,’ quotha? I say it never rains but it turns to a Noah’s flood. Listen here:

“HETHERBY HALL, KILLCUTHIE. “December —, 18—.

“TO TOBIAS TURNER, ESQ.—_Sir_: I have just seen your advertisement for a gentleman who rode from Peterboro to the Grand Junction on the night of December the —— with a dark-complexioned young man, in an ulster great-coat and a railway cap, who had recently returned from America, and conversed about the relative advantages of that country and _this_, and so forth.

“Now, I am the man you want, though I do not see how it can be for my ‘advantage’ to be found, unless the young fellow, who seemed to take a great fancy to me, has died and left me all his money, and I don’t see how he could do that unless he knew my name, which he don’t.

“Anyway, I am willing to be found.

“Here I am, and this is my name and address:

“ALEXANDER MCQUILLIGAN, “Hetherby Hall, Killcuthie, “Lock Ronald, Sutherland.

“P. S.—Would have answered your advertisement before this if I had seen it sooner; but have been knocked up with bronchitis for the last week or ten days, during which I never glanced at a paper.

“Only just now got about and found your advertisement.”

“What do you think of that?” inquired Turner, with a triumphant smile.

“I think our case is all right now! We must subpœna this gentleman and let him know what we want with him! I hope he will not be greatly disappointed on finding out that it is not to give him a fortune that has been left him,” said Mr. Stair.

“Do you remember this man by his own letter, Valdimir?” inquired Lord Beaudevere.

“Yes, I do,” replied Desparde, with a droll air. “He is one of those poor and pompous old Highlandmen who would probably insist upon being called ‘The McQuilligan.’ I remember him perfectly.”

But the hour had now come for the visitors to take leave.

They all arose and bade a cordial good-night to the lonely but now hopeful prisoner.

“Well, Mr. Desparde,” said Mr. Turner on leaving him, “we most heartily congratulate you on this day’s developments. We may now go into court with the most confident anticipation of a triumphant victory.”