luigi rispani's quietly spoken words sent a simultaneous thrill through his three listeners.
it may be said to have been the very last answer to his question which sir gilbert had expected to receive. indeed, so disconcerted by it was he, that for a few moments he sat like a man mentally bewildered, who has been asked to accept a statement which his reason refuses to credit, but which he is utterly without the means of refuting. it will be remembered that lady pell had already told him of luigi's strange experience that night in the spinny, besides which, there were all those other occasions of late when the apparition was said to have been seen by different members of the household--a body of testimony to which, when considered in the aggregate, he could no longer refuse to accord a certain amount of credence. there were circumstances, however, connected with this last alleged appearance which put it on an entirely different plane from the others, and which could be explained away by no theory either of optics or of self-created illusions with which sir gilbert was acquainted.
"and do you mean deliberately to assert," he said at length, addressing himself to luigi, "that what you have just told us with regard to this so-called grey monk is the positive truth, and not an audacious attempt on your part to smother up the real facts of the case?"
"it is the absolute truth, sir gilbert, incredible though it may seem. i had heard no sound, but all at once some instinct told me that i was no longer alone. i turned, and by the light of my lantern saw the figure standing in the shadow a little way back in the other room. its face was towards me, but so hidden by its cowl, that hardly anything could be seen of it except its long grizzled beard. what followed, i hardly know, only that i heard the door shut and the key turned, and realised that i was a prisoner."
"i presume that neither of you spoke to the other?"
"not a word passed between us."
for a little while sir gilbert remained buried in thought. then he said: "you may go for the present and remain in your own room till i send for you. in what way i may ultimately determine to deal with you i have not yet made up my mind."
when luigi--glad enough, one may be sure, to get away--had crept out of the room with the air of a whipt cur, sir gilbert turned to lisle. "you must get through your work without me this morning. i need scarcely tell you that i am very much put about by this business. preserve the notes you have taken, and when you have an hour to spare you may write them out for me. perhaps i may never need them, but one cannot tell. come, louisa."
they went no farther than the morning-room. lady pell could not help seeing how shaken sir gilbert was, and at her persuasion he drank a glass of sherry.
"the shocking disclosures of this morning," he began after a few minutes given to silent cogitation, "require, as it seems to me, to be considered from two very opposite points of view. on the one hand, there is the audacious palming off upon me of a supposititious grandson and all the side issues resulting therefrom--as to which i shall have something to say later on. on the other hand, there is this mysterious affair of the grey monk, to whose most opportune interference we seem to owe it that captain verinder's vile scheme has suffered such a signal collapse. now there cannot, i think, be the slightest doubt that, let the origin of the previous appearances have been what it may, there was nothing in the least degree supernatural about last night's manifestation. that it was a being of flesh and blood as much as you or i, to my mind admits of no question."
"there i agree with you, gilbert," remarked lady pell. "it was no ghost that locked up luigi rispani in the strong room."
"and it was no ghostly hand that wrote the letter which has served so completely to unseal my eyes."
"but who can this mysterious personage be, and where can he have sprung from?"
"and whence and from whom did he obtain the information embodied in his letter to me, which we now know to be absolutely true. those are questions, louisa, which there seems little present probability of either you or i being able to answer."
"at any rate," said lady pell with a shrug, "it's far from pleasant to know that, after everybody is in bed, the house is perambulated by someone who, to answer some purpose of his own, chooses to disguise himself as the family spectre. what becomes of him in the daytime? who supplies him with food? he would seem to be able to come and go just as he likes, because he has mostly been seen out of doors in one part of the grounds or another."
sir gilbert shook his head. "mysteries all; more than that we cannot say. but stranger than all to me is the fact that, whoever he may be, he should have a knowledge of certain circumstances in the life of my son which only someone intimately acquainted with him during his brief american career would be at all likely to have. but from beginning to end the affair is altogether beyond my comprehension."
"the allegations conveyed in the letter affect mrs. clare most seriously."
"they do indeed. you have heard what rispani said--that she was a consenting party to the fraud concocted by verinder. but her every action from the time of her introduction to me affords incontestable proof of the fact. oh, it is vile--vile i could not have believed it of her. no one could have appeared more open and straightforward than she. i had grown to like her, louisa--to like her very much. i shall feel the blow for many a day to come--no, not for many, because at the most my remaining days can be but few."
"according to the last note you had from her, mrs. clare may be here any day."
"almost at any hour, unless she should choose to break her journey at london instead of coming direct through to the chase."
"you will see her when she arrives?"
"it will be no more than just that i should do so. every opportunity shall be afforded her of refuting the charges which have been brought against her, but that she will succeed in doing so i greatly doubt."
again for two or three minutes he seemed lost in thought, then he went on: "i cannot deny that, in a certain sense, it is an immense relief to me to find that rispani is not my grandson. i have felt from the first, not merely that he would fail to be a credit to the family, but that he would be nearly sure to entail positive discredit on it, and that the unsullied name of the clares would be passed on by him fouled and dishonoured to whomsoever might succeed him. yes, i can afford to be very thankful that, being such as he is, he is proved to be no grandson of mine. better, far better, that the direct line should die with me than that it should be continued in one so utterly unworthy of the traditions of his race. but with alec's widow it is different. rispani the impostor we have done with; he will go and trouble us no more; but she--she will still remain my daughter-in-law; how vilely soever she may have acted, whatever she may have been guilty of, the tie is one which cannot be severed."
"with regard to rispani and that unscrupulous uncle of his, i suppose it is not your intention to take proceedings against them?"
"it would only be treating them after their deserts were i to do so. but the affair will be productive of talk and scandal enough without that."
at this juncture there came a tap at the door which was followed by the entrance of everard lisle.
"mr. luigi rispani has just left the house, sir," he said. "i thought it right that you should be told as soon as possible. this note, which he sent me by one of the servants, explains his reason for the step."
sir gilbert took the note, and having adjusted his glasses, he read aloud as follows:
"dear lisle--after what has come to light this morning i find i have not enough courage left to face sir gilbert a second time; consequently think it best to take my departure and so save all further bother.
"as i don't suppose anybody will think it worth while to confiscate my few traps, will you be good enough at your convenience to have them forwarded by rail to the address given below.
"with reference to what passed this morning, it seems to me that my wisest plan is to say nothing. qui s'excuse , they say, but, in my case, it would be hopeless to attempt the first, and i have surely done enough of the latter to satisfy anybody. at any rate, 'them's my sentiments.'
"yours truly
"l. r."
"what shocking flippancy in one so young!" said lady pell.
"let him go; it is perhaps as well," remarked the baronet as he gave the note back to lisle. "his doing so solves what otherwise might have proved a difficulty to me. i think we have already got from him all the information needful for our purpose, but should we require him at any future time, his note will furnish us with a clue to his whereabouts."
luigi had stolen out of the house almost like a thief in the night--never to cross its threshold again. so many things had happened and in so short a time, and there was mixed up in them such an element of the inexplicable, that he seemed to have lost control of his thoughts, which kept veering about from one point to another unable to fix themselves on anything for more than a few seconds at a time, and tormenting him now with one question and now with another, to which no answer was forthcoming. who, or what was the grey monk? were it merely a figment of the brain, an illusion of the senses, would it have had the power, not to speak of the will, to shut the door of the strong room upon him and turn the key? and yet to regard it as a being of flesh and blood was to confront himself with one enigma after another and all equally insoluble. then again, through what channel had sir gilbert made the fatal discovery that he, luigi rispani, was not his grandson? evidently no suspicion of the truth had been in his mind only a few hours before. at dinner on sunday sir gilbert had questioned him about his continental trip, and had seemed satisfied with his answers. the bubble had burst between ten o'clock on sunday night and half past ten on monday morning. whose was the hand that had wrought the mischief?
it was with a sad heart and reluctant feet that luigi took his way towards the hotel at mapleford where his uncle was awaiting him. the captain had scarcely expected him quite so soon, deeming it likely that he would not see his way to leave the chase till after luncheon. the door of the sitting-room was open and he heard his nephew asking for him below. "is it success, or failure?" he asked himself, not without a certain tingling at the nerves, while luigi was coming upstairs. one glance at the latter's face was enough as he halted on the threshold and met his uncle's gaze. failure complete and unmistakable was written on every line of it. the captain drew a long breath and set his teeth hard for a moment or two. "so," he said with a sort of venomous bitterness as luigi advanced, "you have come to tell me that you have made a mess of the affair! it is just what i have dreaded all along. i was a fool to let you undertake the job. i ought to have carried it through myself."
"i wish with all my heart that you had. what i have come to tell you is that the game's up!"
"what do you mean?" demanded verinder, his lips fading to a blue-white.
"just what i say. we're ruined--there's no other word for it. everything is known to sir gilbert."
"everything is a big word."
"not bigger than the occasion warrants. but perhaps you would like to hear how it has all come about."
"i should indeed. but before you begin pour yourself out a thimbleful of that brandy on the sideboard. you look as if the blood in your veins had turned to water."
"small wonder if it has, as you will say yourself by the time i have told you all."
we need not follow luigi in his narrative, nor record his uncle's comments thereon. there were several points about it which puzzled the captain, even as they had puzzled his nephew, and for which he could find no adequate explanation. but that in no wise affected the one overwhelming fact, that his edifice of fraud, notwithstanding all the pains he had been at in the building of it, had crumbled to pieces, struck down by some unseen hand, and he was far from certain yet that it might not involve him personally in the catastrophe.
for the first and all-important question which he asked himself was, as to the steps sir gilbert clare might decide upon taking now that the nefarious plot of which he had been made the victim was laid bare from beginning to end. would he, while the first flame of his resentment still burned fiercely, cause a warrant to be issued for the arrest of one augustus verinder? it was a possibility which might well cause even a man who prided himself on his nerve to shake in his shoes, and if the captain did not exactly do that, he was certainly rendered excessively uncomfortable thereby. his somewhat cynical philosophy notwithstanding, the prospect of two or three years' incarceration in a gaol, with all its concomitant pains and penalties, was no more alluring to him than it is to the majority of people.
but presently a thought came to him from which he did not fail to derive a certain measure of comfort. it would be next to impossible for sir gilbert to institute proceedings against him without including his daughter-in-law in the indictment as an accomplice, and one almost equally guilty with himself. now it seemed to him that the baronet would think twice before taking so extreme a step, seeing that whatever giovanna might have been guilty of nothing could alter the fact that she was a member of the clare family; and that sir gilbert would deliberately drag one of his own name through the mire of a prosecution for fraud, seemed, considering the kind of man he was, to be scarcely conceivable.
the captain had just arrived at this comfortable conclusion when the current of his thoughts was broken by an exclamation from luigi, who, with his hands deep in his pockets, had been staring disconsolately out of the window for some minutes past.
"if that's not aunt giovanna's trunk on the top of a fly which is crawling down the street, i'll eat my hat! of course it's hers! i can make out her initials on it."
"then run downstairs; stop the cab and bring your aunt up here," cried the captain as he started to his feet.
it was indeed giovanna, back from italy. she had picked up her maid on her way through london, and on arriving at mapleford station had hired a cab to convey her to maylings. but she never got as far as maylings. the fatal tidings were told her in that room of the crown and cushion hotel.
she bore the blow very well; but she would feel the effects of it later on far more than at the time. for the present she was simply stunned. she had had much more at stake than either verinder or her nephew. they had merely lost what had never been theirs to lose. she had forfeited that which, had she not allowed herself to be led away by verinder's sophistries, would have remained hers through life as an inalienable right--her position as daughter-in-law to the master of withington chase.
but whatever she felt all she said to the captain was: "i have to thank you for this, uncle verinder. if you had let me go to sir gilbert, as i wished to do, and tell him the truth--that my child died in infancy--he would not have repulsed me. no, he would have acknowledged me and have made much of me, and at his death i should not have been forgotten. but i listened to you and have lost everything. oh! i think we are all very rightly punished."
