He handed her the letter which had arrived in the second communication. She glanced at it, askance. Then she took it with a little gasp.
"Hereward, if you don"t mind, I think I"ll take a chair." She took a chair. "Whatever--whatever"s this?" As she read the letter the varying expressions which pa.s.sed across her face were, in themselves, a study in psychology. "Is it possible that you can imagine that, under any conceivable circ.u.mstances, I could have written such a letter as this?"
"Mabel!"
She rose to her feet, with emphasis:
"Hereward, don"t say that you thought this came from me!"
"Not come from you?" He remembered Knowles"s diplomatic reception of the epistle on its first appearance. "I suppose that you will say next that this is not a lock of your hair?"
"My dear child, what bee have you got in your bonnet? This a lock of my hair! Why, it"s not in the least like my hair!"
Which was certainly inaccurate. As far as color was concerned it was an almost perfect match. The Duke turned to Mr. Dacre.
"Ivor, I"ve had to go through a good deal this afternoon. If I have to go through much more, something will crack!" He touched his forehead.
"I think it"s my turn to take a chair." He also took a chair. Not the one which the d.u.c.h.ess had vacated, but one which faced it. He stretched out his legs in front of him; he thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets; he said, in a tone which was not only gloomy but absolutely gruesome:
"Might I ask, Mabel, if you have been kidnapped?"
"Kidnapped?"
"The word I used was "kidnapped." But I will spell it if you like. Or I will get a dictionary, that you may see its meaning."
The d.u.c.h.ess looked as if she was beginning to be not quite sure if she was awake or sleeping. She turned to Ivor:
"Mr. Dacre, has the accident affected Hereward"s brain?"
The Duke took the words out of his cousin"s mouth:
"On that point, my dear, let me ease your mind. I don"t know if you are under the impression that I should be the same shape after a Pickford"s van had run over me as I was before; but, in any case, I have not been run over by a Pickford"s van. So far as I am concerned there has been no accident. Dismiss that delusion from your mind."
"Oh!"
"You appear surprised. One might even think that you were sorry. But may I now ask what you did when you arrived at Draper"s Buildings?"
"Did! I looked for you!"
"Indeed! And when you had looked in vain, what was the next item in your programme?"
The lady shrank still further from him:
"Hereward, have you been having a jest at my expense? Can you have been so cruel?" Tears stood in her eyes.
Rising, the Duke laid his hand upon her arm:
"Mabel, tell me--what did you do when you had looked for me in vain?"
"I looked for you upstairs and downstairs, and everywhere. It was quite a large place, it took me ever such a time. I thought that I should go distracted. n.o.body seemed to know anything about you, or even that there had been an accident at all--it was all offices. I couldn"t make it out in the least, and the people didn"t seem to be able to make me out either. So when I couldn"t find you anywhere I came straight home again."
The Duke was silent for a moment. Then, with funereal gravity, he turned to Mr. Dacre. He put to him this question:
"Ivor, what are you laughing at?"
Mr. Dacre drew his hand across his mouth with rather a suspicious gesture:
"My dear fellow, only a smile!"
The d.u.c.h.ess looked from one to the other:
"What have you two been doing? What is the joke?"
With an air of preternatural solemnity the Duke took two letters from the breast-pocket of his coat.
"Mabel, you have already seen your letter. You have already seen the lock of your hair. Just look at this--and that."
He gave her the two very singular communications which had arrived in such a mysterious manner, and so quickly one after the other. She read them with wide-open eyes.
"Hereward! Wherever did these come from?"
The Duke was standing with his legs apart, and his hands in his trousers-pockets. "I would give--I would give another five hundred pounds to know. Shall I tell you, madam, what I have been doing? I have been presenting five hundred golden sovereigns to a perfect stranger, with a top-hat, and a gardenia in his b.u.t.ton-hole."
"Whatever for?"
"If you have perused those doc.u.ments which you have in your hand, you will have some faint idea. Ivor, when its your funeral _I"ll_ smile.
Mabel, d.u.c.h.ess of Dachet, it is beginning to dawn upon the vacuum which represents my brain that I"ve been the victim of one of the prettiest things in practical jokes that ever yet was planned. When that fellow brought you that card at Cane and Wilson"s--which, I need scarcely tell you, never came from me--some one walked out of the front entrance who was so exactly like you that both Barnes and Moysey took her for you. Moysey showed her into the carriage, and Barnes drove her home. But when the carriage reached home it was empty. Your double had got out upon the road."
The d.u.c.h.ess uttered a sound which was half a gasp, half sigh:
"Hereward!"
"Barnes and Moysey, with beautiful and childlike innocence, when they found that they had brought the thing home empty, came straightway and told me that you had jumped out of the brougham while it had been driving full pelt through the streets. While I was digesting that piece of information there came the first epistle, with the lock of your hair. Before I had time to digest that there came the second epistle, with yours inside, and, as a guarantee of the authenticity of your appeal, the same envelope held this."
The Duke handed the d.u.c.h.ess the half of the broken sixpence. She stared at it with the most unequivocal astonishment.
"Why, it looks just like my sixpence." She put her hand to her breast, feeling something that was there. "But it isn"t! What wickedness!"
"It is wickedness, isn"t it? Anyhow, that seemed good enough for me; so I posted off the five hundred pounds to save your arm--not to dwell upon your little finger."
"It seems incredible!"
"Its sounds incredible; but unfathomable is the folly of man, especially of a man who loves his wife." The Duke crossed to Mr.
Dacre. "I don"t want, Ivor, to suggest anything in the way of bribery and corruption, but if you could keep this matter to yourself, and not mention it to your friends, our white-hatted and gardenia-b.u.t.ton-holed acquaintance is welcome to his five hundred pounds, and----Mabel, what on earth are you laughing at?"
The d.u.c.h.ess appeared, all at once, to be seized with inextinguishable laughter.
"Hereward," she cried, "just think how that man must be laughing at you!"