The Duke Decides/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
On Board the St. Paul
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The St. Paul sped eastwards across the summer sea, and surely of all the human hopes and fears carried by the great liner those locked in the breast of the new Duke were the most momentous. To gain a little breathing time, he had booked his passage as plain Charles Hanbury. In the brief interval before sailing he had seen no more of Jevons, but he guessed that that shrewd practitioner would have watched him, or had him watched, on board, even if there was not a spy upon him among his fellow-passengers; and he wished to let it be inferred that his voyage was undertaken solely in observance of the compact made in the Bowery dive.
For as yet he was by no means certain of his attitude towards that compact. It was true that the cast-off wastrel of two days ago was now one of the premier peers of England, hastening home to take possession of his fortune and estates. But where was the good of being a duke if you were to be a dead duke? he argued with a cynicism bred of his misfortunes rather than innate. There had been a genuine ring about the proposal of Jevons that left no doubt as to the reality of the menace held out; the man’s reluctance in broaching the penalty of desertion carried conviction that it was no mere flower of speech.
On the whole, the Duke was inclined to call on the arch rogue at the Hotel Cecil before incurring a risk that might render his dukedom a transitory possession. Then, if the part he was expected to play proved to be within his powers and without much chance of detection, he might still elect to play it, and so enjoy in security his hereditary privileges.
It will be seen that the seventh Duke of Beaumanoir was not troubled with moral scruples, and that the principle of noblesse oblige had no place as yet in his somewhat seared philosophy. It was enough for the moment that he had gained something worth having and keeping, and he meant to have it and keep it by the most efficacious method. Whether that method would prove to be connivance in a gigantic crime or the denouncement of the latter to Scotland Yard could only be decided by a personal interview with the mysterious Ziegler. Yes, he would pay that visit to the Hotel Cecil, at any rate, and be guided by what passed there as to his future course of action.
“A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Hanbury,” said a gay voice at his elbow, as on the third day of the voyage he leaned over the rail of the promenade deck and ruminated on his dilemma. Wheeling round he looked down into the laughing eyes of a girl, a very dainty and charming girl, who sat next him at the saloon table. No formal introduction had taken place between them, for lack of mutual friends; but he had learned from the card designating her place at table that she was Miss Leonie Sherman, and it is to be presumed that she had gathered his name in the same way.
“I will earn that penny,” he said with mock gravity. “I was debating how far one might legitimately carry the principle of doing evil that good might come.”
It was a strange answer to make to a shipboard acquaintance of three days, and Miss Sherman regarded him with a newly awakened interest.
“It depends,” she said, “whether the good is to accrue to yourself or to other people.”
“Oh, to myself,” he replied, smiling. “I am not a philanthropist—quite the other way about.”
“Then, whatever it is, you oughtn’t to do it,” said the girl, decidedly. “It will be horrid of you to as much as contemplate anything of the kind. You had much better do good lest evil befall; and the opportunity occurs right here, at this very moment.”
“I shall be most happy—without prejudice to my intentions as to the reverse of the medal,” said Beaumanoir, lightly.
“Then help me to avoid a lecture from my mother by taking me for a promenade,” proceeded Leonie, indicating a portly lady who had ascended from the lower deck and was peering about in search. “She is the best and dearest of mothers, but she has set her heart on a vain thing, and it is becoming the least bit tiresome. I can see that she is going to din it into me again, if she catches me. Her idea is that the sole duty of an American girl going to England is to ‘spread herself,’ as they say out West, to marry an English duke.”
His Grace of Beaumanoir listened with an unmoved countenance.
“Yes,” he said, “to marry a duke might—probably would—be an unmitigated evil. I will help you to avoid it with pleasure. Let us walk by all means, Miss Sherman, if you don’t mind my awkward limp.”
So they joined the procession of promenaders, and there and then cemented a friendship which ripened quickly, as friendships between the opposite sexes do at sea. The haughty salesladies of the dry-goods store had not deigned to notice the counting-house drudge, and Leonie’s piquant beauty made instant captive of one who had been deprived of the society of women for over a year. She had all the frank camaraderie of the well-bred American, and her eager anticipations of the good time she was to have in Europe were infectious. In her company Beaumanoir was able to forget the dark shadow hanging over him, and to give himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. He began by being deeply grateful to her for taking him out of himself; and gratitude to a charming girl with a ravishing figure and a complexion of tinted ivory is like to have its heels trod by a warmer sentiment.
Leonie, in her turn, was interested in the reserved young Englishman, who had so little to say about his doings in America, and less about his position and prospects in his native land. As he paced with his slight limp at her side or lounged with her at the rail, she tried to draw him out; but she could get nothing from him but that he had been in New York on business, and that business was taking him home. Yet, though reticent on his own affairs, he talked freely about all that concerned herself, and painted vivid word-pictures of the delights that awaited her in London.
The girl, having nothing to conceal, told him freely of herself and of her plans and projects. She and her mother were going to stay with English friends in London till the end of the season, when perhaps they would run over to Paris and Rome for a month before returning to America in the autumn. Her father, Senator Sherman, was to have accompanied them; but he had been detained by public business at Washington, and was to join them a little later in London.
On the fifth day of the voyage, as the St. Paul was approaching the Irish coast, Leonie and Beaumanoir were sitting on deck after dinner, chatting in the twilight, when she suddenly laid her hand on his arm.
“I want you to notice that man who has just gone by—the one smoking the fag-end of a cigar in a holder,” she whispered, with a gesture towards the stream of passengers passing and repassing between the rows of chairs.
Beaumanoir’s gaze followed her indication to an insignificant little figure in a brown covert-coat and tweed cap.
“Yes. What of him?” he asked. He had not spoken to this passenger, but now that attention was called to him he had an idea that the fellow had loomed largely during the last few days.
“That man is watching you, Mr. Hanbury,” replied Leonie with conviction. “I wonder you haven’t observed it yourself. Whenever you are talking he hangs about trying to listen; when you are on deck he is on deck; if you go below, he goes below. If you were a fugitive from justice, and he a detective, he couldn’t shadow you more closely.”
The Duke winced inwardly.
“I am not a fugitive from justice,” he said, ‘with the mental addition of “yet.” He could not tell this laughing maiden that the man was 'probably spying on him in the interest, not of justice, but of crime—to see that he was true to a pledge to place forged bonds; for now that he had been put on his guard he had no doubt that his pretty informant was right. The stranger occupied the cabin next to him, and was always hovering near him in the smoking-room, unobtrusively but persistently.
Thanking the girl for her warning in a careless tone that implied that he had no reason to be anxious, he changed the subject. But before he turned in that night he made it his business to ascertain from his bedroom steward the name of his next-door neighbor, which proved to be Marker.
“Probably Mr. Marker’s functions are confined to espionage. If that is a sample of the sort of bravo to be employed should I kick over the traces, I haven’t much to fear,” he reflected, as he switched off the electric light and composed himself to dream of Leonie Sherman.