THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume). Charles Norris Williamson

did not hear.

      "Well, we began to think you'd tumbled over a precipice!" exclaimed Sir Samuel, with the jovial loudness that comes to men of his age from good champagne or the rich red wines of Southern France.

      Jack explained. The fair-haired young man let him finish in peace, and then said, slowly, "Isn't your name Dane?"

      "It is," replied my brother.

      "Thought I knew your face," went on the other. "So you've taken to chauffeuring as a last resort—what?"

      He was intended by Providence to be good looking, but so snobbish was his expression as he spoke, so cruelly sarcastic his voice, that he became hideous in my eyes. A bleached skull grinning over a tall collar could not have seemed more repulsive than the pink, healthy features of that young man with his single eye-glass and his sneer.

      Jack paid no more attention than if he had not heard, but the slight stiffening of his face and raising of his eyebrows as he turned to Sir Samuel, made him look supremely proud and distinguished, incomparably more a gentleman in his dusty leather livery, than Bertie in his well-cut evening clothes.

      "I called at the railway station, and the luggage will be here before eight to-morrow morning," he said, quietly.

      "All right, all right," replied Sir Samuel, slow to understand what was going on, but uncomfortable between the two young men. "I didn't know that you were acquainted with my stepson, Dane."

      "It was scarcely an acquaintance, sir," said the chauffeur. "And I wasn't aware that Mr. Stokes was your stepson."

      "If you had been, you jolly well wouldn't have taken the engagement—what?" remarked Bertie, with a hateful laugh.

      This time Jack condescended to look at him; from the head down, from the feet up. "Really," he said, after an instant's reflection, "it wouldn't have been fair to Sir Samuel to feel a prejudice on account of the relationship. If one of the servants would kindly show me the garage—"

Chapter XXVI

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      If it hadn't been for the hope of seeing Jack again, I should have said that I wanted nothing to eat, when I was asked; but I thought that he might come to the servants' dining-room, if only because he would expect to find me there; and I was right: he came.

      "What an imbroglio!" I whispered, as he joined me at the table, where hot soup and cold chicken were set forth.

      "Not at all," said he, cheerfully. "Things are better for me than I thought. Roquemartine didn't recognize me, I'm sure, for if he had, he would have said so. He isn't a snob. But I rather hoped he would have forgotten. I came as a stranger, brought by a friend of his and mine, was here only for a meal (we were motoring then, too)—and it's three years ago."

      "But the marquise?"

      "She's a bran new one. I fancied I'd heard that the wife died. This one has the air of a bride, and I should say she's an American."

      "Yes. She is. The maid who showed me my room told me. The other girl who came out of doors, is her sister. They're fearfully rich, it seems, and that young brute wants to marry her."

      "Thank you for the descriptive adjective, my little partizan, but you're troubling yourself for me more than you need. I don't mind, really. It's all in a life-time, and I knew when I went in for this business, that I should have to take the rough with the smooth. I was down on my luck, and glad to get anything. What I have got is honest, and something that I know I can do well—something I enjoy, too; and I'm not going to let a vulgar young snob like that make me ashamed of myself, when I've nothing to be ashamed of."

      "You ought to be proud of yourself, not ashamed!" I cried to him, trying to keep my eyes cold.

      "Heaven knows there's little enough to be proud of. You'd see that, if I bored you with my history—and perhaps I will some day. But anyhow, I've nothing which I need to hide."

      "As if I didn't know that! But Bertie hates you."

      "I don't much blame him for that. In a way, the position in which we stand to each other is a kind of poetical justice. I don't blame myself, either, for I always did loathe a cad and Stokes is a cad par excellence. He visited, more or less on suffrance, at two or three houses where I used to go a good deal, in my palmy days. How he got asked, originally, I don't exactly know, for the people weren't a bit his sort; but money does a lot for a man in these days; and once in, he wasn't easy to get rid of. He had a crawling way with any one he hoped to squeeze any advantage out of—"

      "I suppose he crawled to you then," I broke in.

      "He did try it on, a bit, because I knew people he wanted to know; but it didn't work. I rather put myself out to be rude to him, for I resented a fellow like that worming himself into places where he had no earthly right to be—no right of brains, or heart, or breeding. I must admit, now I think of it, that he has several scores to wipe off; and judging from the way he begins, he will wipe hard. Let him!"

      "No, no," I protested. "You mustn't let him. It's too much. You will have to tell Sir Samuel that he must find a new chauffeur at once. It hurts me like a blow to think of such a creature humiliating you. I couldn't see it done."

      He looked at me very kindly, with quite all a brother's tenderness. "My dear little pal," he said, "you won't have to see it."

      "You mean—you will go?" Of course, I wanted him to take my advice, or I wouldn't have offered it, yet it gave me a heartache to think he was ready to take it so easily.

      "I mean that I'm not the man to let myself be humiliated by a Bertie Stokes. Possibly he may persuade his stepfather to sack me, but I don't think he'll succeed in doing that, even if he tries. Sir Samuel, I suppose, has given him every thing he has; sent him to Oxford (I know he was there, and scraped through by the skin of his teeth), and allows him thousands enough to mix with a set where he doesn't belong; but though the old boy is weak in some ways, he has a strong sense of justice, and where he likes he is loyal. I think he does like me, and I don't believe he'd discharge me to please his stepson. Not only that, I should be surprised if the promising Bertie wanted me discharged. It would be more in his line to want me kept on, so that he might take it out of me."

      I shuddered; but Jack smiled, showing his white teeth almost merrily. "You may see some fun," he said, "but it shan't be death to the frogs; not so bad as that. And I shall have you to be kind to me."

      "Kind to you!" I echoed, rather tremulously. (If he only knew how kind I should like to be!) "Yes, I will be kind. But I can't do anything to make up for what you'll have to bear. You had better go."

      "Perhaps I would, if I could take you away with me, but that can't be. And, no, even in that case, I should prefer to stick it out. I shouldn't like to let that young bounder drive me from a place, whether I wanted to go or not. And do you think I would clear out, and leave him to worry you?"

      "He can't," I said.

      "I wish I were sure of that. When the beast sees you without your veil—oh, hang it, you mustn't let him come near you, you know."

      "He isn't likely to take the slightest notice of his stepfather's wife's maid," said I, "especially as he's dying to marry the American heiress here."

      "Anyhow, be careful."

      "I shan't look at him if I can help it. And we shall be gone before long. I believe the Turnours' invitation, which their Bertie was bribed to ask for, is only for two or three days. How you must have been feeling when you were told to drive here! But you showed nothing."

      "I had a qualm or two when I was sure of the place; but then it was over. It's far worse for you than for me. And I told you I've been learning from you a lesson of cheerfulness. I was merely a Stoic before."

      "It's nothing for me, comparatively," I said, and by this time, I was quite sincere; but I didn't know then what the next twenty-four