Arnold stood quite still for several
moments. The shock seemed to have deprived him
even of the power of speech. Sabatini watched
him curiously.
“Is it my fancy,” he inquired,
“or is the name familiar to you?”
“The name is familiar,” Arnold confessed.
Sabatini, for a moment, appeared to be puzzled.
“Lalonde,” he repeated
to himself. “Why, Lalonde,” he added,
looking up quickly, “was the name of the young
lady whom you brought with you to Bourne End.
An uncommon name, too.”
“Her uncle,” Arnold declared;
“the same man, beyond a doubt. The police
tried to arrest him two days ago, and he escaped.
You might have read of it in the paper. It was
spoken of as an attempt to capture an anarchist.
Lalonde fired at them when he made his escape.”
Sabatini sighed.
“It is a small world,”
he admitted. “I know all about Isaac Lalonde,
but I am very sorry indeed to hear that the young lady
is connected with him. She seemed I
hope you will forgive me to speak as though
she lived in straitened circumstances. Do you
mind telling me whether this event is likely to prove
of inconvenience to her?”
Arnold shook his head.
“I am making arrangements to
find her another apartment,” he said. “We
have been through some very dark times together.
I feel that I have the right to do everything that
is necessary. I have no one else to support.”
Sabatini hesitated.
“If one might be permitted,”
he began, with what was, for him, a considerable amount
of diffidence,
Arnold interposed a little brusquely.
“The care of Ruth Lalonde is
upon my shoulders,” he insisted. “There
can be no question about that. From me it is not
charity, for she shared her meals with me when I was
practically starving. I am going to ask you more
questions.”
“Proceed, by all means,” Sabatini invited.
“Was Starling concerned at all in this Rosario
affair?”
“Not directly,” Sabatini admitted.
“Then why,” Arnold demanded,
“does he hide and behave like a frightened child?”
“A pertinent question,”
Sabatini agreed. “You have to take into
account the man’s constitutional cowardice.
It is a fact, however, that he was perfectly well
aware of what was going to happen, and there are circumstances
connected with the affair a document, for
instance, that we know to be in the hands of the police which
account for their suspicions and would certainly tend
to implicate our friend Starling. It would be
quite easy to make out a very strong case against
him.”
“I do not understand,”
Arnold said, after a moment’s silence, “what
interest Lalonde could have had in killing Rosario.”
Sabatini contemplated for a few moments
the tip of his patent shoe. Then he sighed gently
and lit a cigarette.
“For a young man,” he
remarked, “it is certain that you have a great
deal of curiosity. Still, you have also, I believe,
discretion. Listen, then. There is a certain
country in the south of Europe which all those who
are behind the scenes know to be on the brink of a
revolution. The capital is already filled with
newspaper correspondents, the thunder mutters day
by day. The army is unpaid and full of discontent.
For that reason, it is believed that their spirit
is entirely revolutionary. Every morning we who
know expect to read in the papers that the royal palace
has been stormed and the king become an exile.
This was the state of things until about a week ago.
Did you read the papers on Thursday morning last?”
Arnold shook his head.
“Perhaps,” he replied. “I saw
nothing that I can remember.”
“That morning,” Sabatini
continued, “the morning of Rosario’s death,
one read that the government of that country, which
had vainly applied for a loan to all the bankers of
Europe with a view to satisfying the claims of the
army and navy, had at last succeeded in arranging
one through the intervention of Rosario. The paragraph
was probably inspired, but it spoke plainly, going
so far, even, as to say that the loan had probably
averted a revolution. The man who had saved the
monarchy of an ancient nation was Rosario. One
of his rewards, I think, was to have been a title
and a distinguished order; it was understood among
us that this was the real bait. Rosario’s
actual reward you know of.”
“But where does Isaac Lalonde come in?”
demanded Arnold.
“Isaac Lalonde is the London
secretary of the revolutionary party of the country
of which I have been speaking. I think,”
he concluded, “that your intelligence will make
the rest clear.”
Arnold struck the table on the edge
of which he was sitting with the palm of his hand.
“Look here,” he asked
hoarsely, “if you knew all these things, if
you knew that Isaac Lalonde had committed this murder,
why do you go about with your lips closed? Why
haven’t you told the truth? An innocent
man might be arrested at any time.”
Sabatini smiled tolerantly.
“My dear fellow,” he said,
“why should I? Be reasonable! When
you reach my age you will find that silence is often
best. As a matter of fact, in this ease my sympathies
are very much involved. It is in the mind of
many of those who hold the strings that when that
revolution does take place it will be I who shall lead
it.”
Arnold was again bewildered.
“But you,” he protested,
“are of the ancient nobility of Europe.
What place have you among a crowd of anarchists and
revolutionaries?”
“You jump at conclusions, my
young friend,” remarked Sabatini. “The
country of which we have spoken is my country, the
country from which, by an unjust decree I am exiled.
There are among those who desire a change of government,
many aristocrats. It is not only the democracy
whose hatred has been aroused by the selfish and brutal
methods of the reigning house.”
Arnold got down from his table and
walked to the window. The telephone rang with
some insignificant inquiry from a customer. The
incident somehow relieved him. It brought him
back to the world of every-day events. The reality
of life once more obtruded itself upon his conscience.
All the time Sabatini lounged at his ease and watched
him, always with the faint beginning of a smile upon
his lips.
“What I have told you,”
the latter continued, after a few moments’ pause,
“must not, during these days, pass beyond the
four walls of this singularly uninviting-looking apartment.
I have nothing to add or to take from what I have
said. The subject is closed. If you have
more questions on any other subject, I have still a
few minutes.”
“Very well, then,” Arnold
said, coming back to his place, “let us consider
the Rosario matter disposed of. Let us go back
for a moment to Starling. Tell me why you and
your sister saw danger to yourselves in Starling’s
nervous breakdown? Tell me why, when I returned
to Pelham Lodge with her that night, she found a dead
man in her room, a man whose body was afterwards mysteriously
removed?”
“Quite a spirited number of
questions,” Sabatini remarked. “Well,
to begin with, then, Rosario signed his death-warrant
the moment he wrote his name across the parchment
which guaranteed the loan. On the night when
you first visited Pelham Lodge we heard the news.
I believe that Lalonde and his friends would have
killed him that night if they could have got at him.
Lalonde, however, was a person of strange and inaccessible
habits. He hated all aristocrats, and he refused
even to communicate with me. Speaking for myself,
I was just as determined as Isaac Lalonde that Rosario
should never conclude that loan. I told him so
that night Starling and I together.
It was thought necessary, by those whose word I am
content to accept, that what I had to say to Rosario
should come through Starling. It was Starling,
therefore, who told him what his position would be
if he proceeded further. I must admit that the
fellow showed courage. He took a note of Starling’s
words, which he declared at the time should be deposited
in his safe, so that if anything should happen to
him, some evidence might be forthcoming. The police,
without a doubt, have been in possession of this document,
and, curiously enough, Starling was at the Milan
that day. You will perceive, therefore, that
in the absence, even, of a reasonable alibi it might
be difficult to prove his innocence. To our surprise,
however, for we had some faith in the fellow, instead
of taking this matter with the indifference of a brave
man, he has chosen to behave like a child. In
his present half maudlin state he would, I am afraid,
if in serious danger of conviction, make statements
likely to cause a good deal of inconvenience to myself,
my sister’s friends, and others.”
“Does he know himself who committed
the murder?” Arnold asked.
Sabatini smiled.
“Perfectly well,” he admitted,
“but the fact helps him very little. Isaac
Lalonde is rather a notable figure among European criminals.
He belongs to a company of anarchists, well-meaning
but bloodthirsty, who hold by one another to the death.
If Starling, to save himself, were to disclose the
name of the real murderer, he would simply make his
exit from this life with a knife through his heart
instead of the hangman’s rope about his neck.
These fellows, I believe, seldom commit crimes, but
they are very much in earnest and very dangerous.
If you ever happen to meet one of them with a red
signet-ring upon his fourth finger, you can look out
for trouble.”
Arnold shivered for a moment.
“I have seen that ring,” he murmured.
“You were a spectator of the
tragedy, I remember,” Sabatini agreed, pleasantly.
“Now are you quite satisfied about Starling?”
“I have heard all I want to about that,”
Arnold admitted.
“We come, then, to your last
question,” Sabatini said. “You demand
to know the meaning of the unfortunate incident which
occurred in my sister’s boudoir. Here I
think that I am really going to surprise you.”
“Nothing,” Arnold declared,
fervently, “could surprise me. However,
go on.”
“Neither Fenella nor myself,”
Sabatini asserted, “have the slightest idea
as to how that man met with his death.”
“But you know who he was?”
Arnold asked. “You know why he was watching
your house, why he seems to have broken into it?”
“I can assure you,” Sabatini
repeated, “that not only am I ignorant as to
how the man met with his death, but I have no idea
what he was doing in the house at all. The night
Rosario was there it was different. They were
on his track then, without a doubt, and they meant
mischief. Since then, however, there has been
a pronounced difference of opinion between the two
branches of the revolutionary party the
one which I represent and the one which includes Lalonde
and his friends. The consequence is that although
we may be said to be working for the same ends, we
have drawn a little apart. We have had no communications
whatever with Lalonde and his friends since the murder
of Rosario. Therefore, I can only repeat that
I am entirely in the dark as to what that man was
doing in my sister’s rooms or how he met with
his death. You must remember that these fellows
are all more or less criminals. Lalonde, I believe,
is something of an exception, but the rest of them
are at war with Society to the extent of enriching
themselves at the expense of their wealthier neighbors
on every possible occasion. It is quite likely
that the night they were watching Rosario it may have
occurred to them that my sister’s room contained
a good many valuable trifles and was easily entered,
especially as they seem to have had a meeting place
close at hand. That, however, is pure surmise.
You follow me?”
Arnold sighed.
“In a way, I suppose I do,”
he admitted. “But it isn’t
easy, is it?”
“These matters are not easy,”
Sabatini agreed. “There are motives and
counter-motives to be taken note of with which at present
I do not weary you. I give you the clue.
It is enough.”
“But the mystery of the man’s
body being removed?” Arnold began.
Sabatini shrugged his shoulders.
“Our knowledge ends with what
I have told you,” he said. “We have
no idea who killed the man, and what we know about
his removal we know only from what you saw.”
Arnold sat thinking for several moments.
The telephone rang and some one inquired for Mr. Weatherley.
When he had answered it, he turned once more to his
visitor.
“Do you know,” he remarked,
“that nothing that you have yet told me throws
the slightest light upon the disappearance of Mr.
Weatherley?”
Sabatini smiled.
“Ah! well,” he said, “I
am afraid that as yet I have not fully appreciated
that incident. In France it is by no means unusual
that a man should take a hurried journey from his
family. I, perhaps, have not sufficiently taken
into account Mr. Weatherley’s exactness and
probity of life. His disappearance may, indeed,
have a more alarming significance than either my sister
or I have been inclined to give it, but let me assure
you of this, my dear Chetwode, that even if Mr. Weatherley
has come to serious grief, neither Fenella nor I can
suggest the slightest explanation for it. She
knows of no reason for his absence. Neither do
I. She is, however, just as convinced as I am that
he will turn up again, and before very long.”
Sabatini pushed away his chair and
prepared to leave. His hand fell carelessly and
yet almost affectionately upon the young man’s
shoulder.
“Perhaps,” he said, quietly,
“I am what you are doubtless thinking me something
of a poseur. Perhaps I do like making a
tax upon your sober British rectitude. I will
admit that the spirit of adventure is in my heart;
I will admit that there is in my blood the desire
to take from him who hath and give to him who hath
not; but, on the other hand, I have my standards,
and I seriously do not think that you would be risking
very much if you accepted my invitation to lunch to-day.”
Arnold held out his hand.
“If I hesitate for a single
moment,” he replied frankly, “it is because
of my work here. However, as you say that Mrs.
Weatherley will be there, I will come.”
“We shall look forward to the
pleasure, then,” Sabatini concluded. “Now
I will leave you to go on with your money-coining.
Au revoir!”
He strolled gracefully out, pausing
on his way through the clerk’s office to offer
a courteous farewell to Mr. Jarvis. The great
automobile glided away. Arnold came back from
the window and sat down in front of his desk.
Before his eyes was a pile of invoices, in his brain
a strange medley of facts and fancies.
Mr. Jarvis came bustling in.
“About those Canadian hams, Chetwode,”
he began,
Arnold recognized the voice of his saviour.
“We’ll go into the matter at once,”
he declared, briskly.