"Dear me," said Sir Reginald, looking up, "that is very strange! Why couldn"t he have written or telegraphed? It must be something very serious, I am afraid. Ah--yes, Ambrose, tell him to sit down in the hall, I"ll see him in a few minutes."
The door closed, and, as it did so, out of the black, long, buried past there came a pale flash of rising fear.
Sir Reginald was one of those men who have practically no thought or feeling outside the circle of their own desires and ambitions. He had lived on good terms with his fellow men, not out of any respect for them, but simply because it was more convenient and comfortable for himself. He had committed the worst of crimes against his friend, Sir Arthur Maxwell, in perfect callousness, simply because the woman Maxwell had married and inspired him with the only pa.s.sion, the only enthusiasm of which he was capable. He had never felt a single pang of remorse for it. The sinner who sins through absolute selfishness as he had done never does. In fact, his only uncomfortable feeling in connection with the whole affair had been the fear of discovery, and that, as the years had gone on, had died away until it had become only an evil memory to him. And yet, why did Koda Bux, the man who had so nearly discovered his infamy twenty-two years ago, come here alone to the Abbey to-day?
Ah, yes, to-day! A diary lay open on the writing-table before him. The 28th of June. The very day--but that of course was merely a coincidence.
Well, he would hear what Koda Bux had to say. He signed a letter, put it into an envelope, and addressed it. Then he touched the bell. Ambrose appeared, and he said:
"You can show the man in now."
"Very good, Sir Reginald," replied the man, and vanished.
A few moments later the door opened again and Koda Bux came in, looked at Sir Reginald for a few moments straight in the eyes, and then salaamed with subtle oriental humility.
"May my face be bright in your eyes, protector of the poor and husband of the widow!" he said, as he raised himself erect again. "I have brought a message from my master."
"Well, Koda Bux," said Sir Reginald, a trifle uneasily, for he didn"t quite like the extreme gravity with which the Pathan spoke.
"I suppose it must be something important and confidential, if he has sent you here instead of writing or telegraphing. Of course, you have a letter from him?"
"No, Sahib," replied Koda Bux, fingering at a blue silk handkerchief that was tucked into his waist-band. "The message was of too great importance to be trusted to a letter which might be lost, and so my master trusted it to the soul of his servant."
"That"s rather a strange way for one gentleman to send a message to another in this country and in these days, Koda Bux," said Sir Reginald, getting up from his chair at the writing-table and moving towards the bell.
Instantly, with a swift sinuous movement, Koda Bux had pa.s.sed before the fireplace and put himself between Sir Reginald and the bell.
"The Sahib will not call his servants until he has heard the message,"
he said, not in the cringing tone of the servant, but in the straight-spoken words of the soldier. Meanwhile, the fingers of his left hand were almost imperceptibly drawing the blue handkerchief out of his girdle.
Sir Reginald saw this, and a sudden fear streamed into his soul. His own Indian experience told him that this man might be a Thug, and that if so, a little roll of blue silk would be a swifter, deadlier, and more untraceable weapon than knife or poison, and his thoughts went back to the 28th of June, twenty-two years before.
"I am not going to be spoken to like that in my own house and by a n.i.g.g.e.r!" he exclaimed, seeking to cover his fear by a show of anger. "I don"t believe in you or your message. If you have a letter from your master, give it to me, if you haven"t, I shan"t listen to you. What right have you to come here into my library pretending to have a message from your master, when you haven"t even a letter, or his card, or one written word from him?"
"Ill.u.s.trious," said Koda Bux, with a sudden change of manner, salaaming low and moving backwards towards the door, "the slave of my master forgot himself in the urgency of his message, which my lord, his friend, has not yet heard."
There was an almost imperceptible emphasis on the word "friend" which sent a little shiver through such rudiments of soul as Sir Reginald possessed. He said roughly:
"Very well, then, if you have brought a message what is it? I can"t waste half the morning with you."
"The message is short, Sahib," replied Koda Bux, salaaming again, and moving a little nearer towards the door. "I am to ask you what you did at Simla two-and-twenty years ago this night--what you have done with the Mem Sahib who was faithful to my lord"s honour when you, dog and son of a dog, betrayed it--and what has become of her daughter and yours?
Oh, cursed of the G.o.ds, thou knowest these things as thou knowest the two marks of the African spear on thy left arm--but thou dost not know the depth of infamy which thy sin dug for thine own son to fall into."
As he was saying this Koda Bux backed close to the door, locked it behind him, and took the key out.
Bad as he was, the last words of Koda Bux hit Sir Reginald harder even than the others. His son, the heir to his name and fortune, what had he to do with that old sin of his committed before he was born?
"You must be mad or opium-drunk, Koda Bux," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "to talk like that. Yes, it is the 28th of June, and I have two spear marks on my arm--but I am rich, I can make you a prince in your own land.
Come, you know something about me. That is why you came here; but what has my son Reginald to do with it? If I have sinned, what is that to him?"
"In the book of the G.o.d of the Christians," said Koda Bux, very slowly, and approaching him with an almost hypnotic stare in his eyes, "in that book it is written that the chief G.o.d of the Christians will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. This woman bore you a daughter; your lawful wife bore you a son. The woman who was once the wife of Maxwell Sahib was a drunkard, and now she"s a mad-woman. Your own wife bore you a son, and in London your daughter and your son, not knowing each other, came together. Your daughter was what the good English call an outcast, and, knowing nothing of your sin, they lived--"
"G.o.d in heaven! can that be true?" murmured Sir Reginald, sinking back against the mantel-piece just as he was going-to pull the bell.
"No, it can"t be! Koda Bux, you are lying; no such horrible thing as that could be."
"My G.o.ds are not thine, if thou hast any, oh, unsainted one!" said Koda Bux, "but, like the G.o.ds of the Christians, they can avenge when the cup of sin is full. Yes, it is true. Your son and your daughter--your son, who is now married to her who should have been the wife of Vane Sahib.
There is no doubt, and it can be proved. But that is only a part of your punishment, destroyer of happiness and afflictor of many lives. That is a thought which thou wilt take to h.e.l.l with thee, and it shall eat into thy soul for ever and ever, and when I have sent thee to h.e.l.l I will tell thy son and the woman he stole from Vane Sahib when he persuaded him to take strong drink that morning at the college of Oxford. Yes, I have heard it all. I, who am only a n.i.g.g.e.r! Dog and son of a dog, is not thy soul blacker than my skin? And now the hour has struck. Thy breath is already in thy mouth!"
Koda Bux s.n.a.t.c.hed the handkerchief from his waist-band and began to creep towards him, his Beard and moustache bristling like the back of a tiger, and his big, fierce eyes gleaming red. Sir Reginald knew that if he once got within throwing distance of that fatal strip of silk he would be dead in an instant without a sound. He made a despairing spring for the bell-rope, grasped it, and dragged it from its connection.
At the same moment there was a peal at the hall bell, followed by a thunderous knocking. Enid, who was in the morning-room with her husband, saw a two-horsed carriage come up the drive at a gallop, and the moment it had stopped Vane jumped out and rang and knocked. Then out of the carriage came Sir Arthur and a lady whom she had never seen before, but whom Garthorne, looking over her shoulder out of the window, recognised only too quickly.
"What on earth can Sir Arthur and Vane have come for in such a hurry as that!" she exclaimed. "Why, it might be a matter of life and death, and only such a short time after dear old Koda Bux, too. What can be the matter, Reginald?"
But Garthorne had already left the room, his heart shaking with apprehension. He ran up into the hall to open the door before one of the servants could do it.
"Ah, Sir Arthur, Vane--and Miss Russell--I believe it is----"
"Yes, Mr. Garthorne," said Sir Arthur coldly but quickly, as they entered the hall. "We have come to stop a murder if we can. I hope we are in time. Where is your father, and has Koda Bux been here?"
"Koda Bux has been in the library with my father for about half-an-hour, I believe," said Reginald. "What is the matter?"
"It is a matter of life or death," answered Vane, looking at him with burning eyes and speaking with twitching lips. "Perhaps something worse even than that. Where are they?--quick, or we shall be too late!"
"They are in the library," said Garthorne, as Enid came running out of the morning-room, saying:
"Oh, Sir Arthur and Vane, good morning! How are you? What a very sudden visit. I knew Sir Reginald asked you, but----"
"Never mind about that now, Enid," said Garthorne almost roughly. "Come along, Sir Arthur, this is the library."
He crossed the great hall, and went down one of the corridors leading from it, and the footman was already at one of the doors trying to open it. It was locked. Garthorne hammered on it with his fists and shouted, but there was no reply.
"I heard the library bell ring, sir," said Ambrose, "just as the front door bell went--after that Indian person had been with Sir Reginald some time."
"Never mind about that," said Garthorne; "run round to the windows, and if any of them are open get in and unlock the door."
But before he had reached the hall door the library door was thrown open. Koda Bux salaamed, and, pointing to the lifeless shape of Sir Reginald, lying on the hearth-rug, he said to Sir Arthur:
"Protector of the poor, justice has been done. The enemy of thy house is dead. Before he died he confessed his sin. Has not thy servant done rightly?"
"You have done murder, Koda Bux," said Sir Arthur sternly, pushing him aside and going to where Sir Reginald lay. He tried to lift him, but it was no use. There was the mark of the roomal round his neck, the staring eyes and the half-protruding tongue. Justice, from Koda Bux"s point of view, had been done. There was nothing more to do but to have him carried up to his room and send for the police. Garthorne gripped hold of Koda Bux, and called to one of the servants for a rope to tie him up until the police came, but the Pathan twisted himself free with scarcely an effort.
"There is no need for that, Sahib; I shall not run away," said Koda Bux, drawing himself up and saluting Sir Arthur for the last time. "I came here to give my life for the one I have taken, so that justice might be done, and I have done it. In the next worlds and in the next lives we may meet again, and then you will know that neither did I kill your father nor die myself without good cause. Of the rest the G.o.ds will judge."
He made a movement with his jaws and crunched something between his teeth. They saw a movement of swallowing in his throat. A swift spasm pa.s.sed over his features; his limbs stiffened into rigidity, and as he stood before them so he fell, as a wooden image might have done. And so died Koda Bux the Pathan, loyal avenger of his master"s honour.
For a few moments there was silence--every tongue chained, every eye fixed by the sudden horror of the situation. Garthorne, roused by fear and anger, for a swift instinct told him that Dora had not come to the Abbey for nothing, was able to speak first. He was Sir Reginald now--but why, and how? When a man of this nature is very frightened, he often takes refuge in rage, and that is what Garthorne did. He turned on Sir Arthur and Vane, his hands clenched, and his lips drawn back from his teeth, and said, in a voice which Enid had never heard from him before:
"What does all this mean, Sir Arthur? My father murdered in his own house; his murderer tells you that he has "done justice," and avenged your honour--then poisons himself. If any wrong has been done, how did that n.i.g.g.e.r servant of yours get to know of it? Why should he have been let loose to murder my father? If you had anything against him, why didn"t you charge him with it yourself, as a man and gentleman should?