But, although he had sent the policeman sprawling, he knew that he had almost shot his bolt; the next fence would bring him down. His breath was failing him; the world seemed spinning round; a few more steps and he would be able to go no farther; they would have him; all would be ended.
At the very moment when already his pace was getting slower something happened which, if he had had his wits sufficiently about him and time enough to use them, would have seemed to him very like a miracle. He was coming into the road which leads through the park from the Corner to the Marble Arch. He had still sense enough to see that a motorcar was coming along the road, slowing as it came. It came to a standstill just as it was abreast of him. The sole occupant of the body of the car was a woman, who all at once opened the door, stood up, and beckoned to him. He did not pause to think what the gesture might mean, who this fair owner of a motor-car might be who had fallen from the skies. There was not time, nor had he wit enough; his senses were fast leaving him.
He was so conscious that this was so that he made a last desperate effort, scrambled pantingly over the railing, got somehow to the side of the car. When he had got there, unless the woman inside had given him a helping hand, he would have been hard put to it to enter.
The moment he was in the door was slammed, the car was off. For Sydney that was the end of the chapter. He just managed to drop back on to the seat, but almost before he reached it his few remaining senses fled; he was as unconscious of what was happening as if he had not been there.
CHAPTER IV
The Good Samaritan
The thing was successful because so unexpected. The car was started, quickened its pace, and was out of the park before, probably, any of Beaton"s pursuers understood what was being done. It was a triumph of impudence. The car had joined the other traffic, and was running along Piccadilly, without anyone lifting so much as a finger in an attempt to stop it. It turned up Bond Street, crossed Oxford Street, and began to thread its way among the maze of streets which const.i.tute Marylebone.
The unexpected pa.s.senger continued unconscious throughout the entire run. The night and morning had completed the havoc wrought by the last few weeks; the works had run down at last. On his seat sat the chauffeur, a youngish man, clad in immaculate livery; he had apparently paid not the slightest heed to the incident of picking up in such strange fashion so singular a pa.s.senger. Although he had received no instructions as to the route he was to take, he drove steadily on without the slightest hesitation, as if carrying out a prearranged programme. By Sydney"s side sat the woman who had opened the door, beckoned to him, and a.s.sisted him to enter. In spite of its being an open car, she was scarcely dressed in what is generally known as a motoring costume, but was rather attired as a lady might be who is taking the air in the park, or paying a morning call. It was not easy, from her appearance, to determine her age. Where a woman is concerned it seldom is, but she was certainly not old; she might have been anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. Nor was she ill-looking.
At times, as she glanced at the man beside her, her face was lit by a smile which made it even more than pretty, then the smile went, and was succeeded by an expression which had in it something hard and cruel and even sinister; but even then, after some uncomfortable fashion, it was a handsome face, though scarcely one which one would have chosen for a friend. Her immobility was striking. Although she had been guilty of such a quixotic action as to rescue a man, a vagabond, who obviously was flying from the police, so soon as she was in the car her interest in him had seemed to cease. One might have supposed that this was a sentimental person, whose emotional nature was p.r.o.ne to lead her into what she supposed to be acts of kindness which afterwards she would have reason to regret, but there was nothing suggestive either of sentiment or emotion as she sat by Beaton. He presented such a pitiable spectacle, huddled there in the corner of the car, limp and lifeless, that the average woman would surely have shown some sign either of interest or sympathy. Not only did she do nothing to relieve his position, which was a more than sufficiently uneasy one, but she made no effort, even by speaking to him, to win him back to consciousness.
She regarded him almost continually, but rather as if he were a lay figure than a living man. One wondered if she proposed to use him as a model for a picture; she seemed to be studying him with so curious an air. She was observing him closely enough; one felt that nothing about him escaped her scrutiny--that she noted the well-cut clothes as well as the state that they were in; the hand which dangled helplessly by his side, that it was not that of a man who had done much manual labour; the face, which, unshaven and unwashed though it was, was not only a handsome one, but also the face of a man of breeding. Possibly she was putting these things together, and from them drawing her own conclusions.
Whatever her conclusions were, she kept them to herself. Clearly, instead of being the prey of her own emotions, this was a woman who kept her own feelings in the background; whose face was a mask; who was mistress of herself; who, to judge from her bearing, was as cool and calm and calculating as if she had been thrice her years. Which made this thing she had done seem all the stranger.
The car drew up in a short street of dull, old-fashioned houses, with stuccoed fronts, tall, narrow, dingy. The moment it stopped, before the lady had the chance to alight from the car, the door of the house flew open, and a tall, clean-shaven man appeared on the doorstep who might have been a servant. Crossing the pavement, he opened the door of the car; the lady got out. As she moved towards the house she made one remark, which seemed an odd one:
"I"ve got him."
That was all she said. Moving easily--one noticed as she did so what a charming figure she had--she pa.s.sed into the hall. The chauffeur sat still; he did not so much as glance round at the man who had come out of the house. That individual shared the general calmness of demeanour.
He exhibited no surprise at what the lady had said or at the sight of the figure which was huddled in the car. He said nothing. Leaning forward, he put his arms under Beaton and raised him as if he were a child, carried him into the house, up a flight of stairs, into a room at the back, and laying him on a couch which it contained, looked down at him with an air of detached curiosity without showing any sign of having turned a hair. Beaton had grown lighter of late, but he had nearly six feet of bone and muscle, and still weighed something. The man must have been possessed of unusual strength, as well as knack; it is something of a feat to lift a big and unconscious person out of a vehicle and carry him up a steep flight of stairs as if he were a baby.
Presently the woman entered. The man was still standing by the couch, with a watch and chain and sovereign purse held in his hand. He was examining the watch. He nodded towards it as the woman appeared.
"What does this mean?"
He spoke quietly in a not unmusical voice; his accent was that of an educated person; his tone, though respectful, was that of one who addresses an equal, not that of a servant who speaks to his mistress.
"What"s what?" She glanced at what he was holding. "It looks as if it were a watch and the usual appendages. Where were they?"
"In his jacket pocket. There"s a name on the watch--Charles Carter--and a crest, and there are a couple of sovereigns in the purse."
"So that"s why they wanted him."
"Who"s they?"
"I was coming through the park when I saw that something interesting was taking place on one side of me: one man was trying to get away from a number of others. When I saw the way he bowled over a policeman I said to myself, "That"s the gentleman I want," and here he is."
"I presume that watch and chain and sovereign purse explain the interest the crowd was taking in him. I imagine that they are articles that have only very recently come into his possession. He"s a gentleman."
"I felt sure he was from the way he handled that policeman."
"There"s his name on the jacket." He picked up the garment in question, of which he had relieved the still unconscious Sydney, and which was hanging over the back of a chair. "Here it is on the tab. The jacket was made in Savile Row, and here"s his name: Sydney Beaton."
"It might, of course, have been made for someone else and come into his possession; he alone knows how."
"No; it was made for him, it fits too well. His name is Sydney Beaton, and he"s a swell who"s down on his luck."
"That"s the kind of person we want, isn"t it?"
For the first time the man"s and woman"s eyes met. In hers there was a gleam as of laughter. In his there was no expression at all. His was one of those square faces whose blue cheeks and chin show how strong the beard would be which is not allowed to grow. He glanced from the woman to the unconscious figure on the couch before he spoke.
"Perhaps. When will he be wanted?"
"By to-morrow morning. I ought to write at once to say that he is coming; it will be safer."
"Safer!" The man"s thin lips were parted by what was rather a sneer than a grin, as if the word she had used had borne an odd significance.
He continued to survey the unconscious Sydney, as a surgeon might survey a body which he is about to dissect. "He"ll have to be ready."
"There"s time; and no one can do that sort of thing better than you."
Again the lips parted in that curious subst.i.tute for a smile, as if the woman"s words had conveyed a compliment.
"Oh, yes, there"s time; and, as you say, I dare say I"ll be able to make a decent job of him."
When the woman left him it was to remove her hat and coat. Then she went into a good-sized apartment, in which there was a blazing fire. In a corner was a bookshelf filled with books; she took one down, it was Burke"s "Landed Gentry." She took a case out of some receptacle in her bodice, and lit a cigarette. Settling herself in a big arm-chair before the fire, she put her feet upon a second chair, and set to studying Burke. She found what she wanted among the B"s.
"There it is: "Beaton, Sir George, seventh baronet," and all the rest of it. "Seat, Adisham, Wilts; unmarried; next heir, his brother, Sydney, D.S.O., the Guards, captain, twenty-eight years old." If that coat was built for him it looks as if that ought to be our man."
She closed the book and let it fall upon the floor. She inhaled the smoke of her cigarette, staring with a contemplative air at the flaming fire.
"I wonder what"s his record? One can, of course, find out, but there will be hardly time before he"s wanted. An heir to a baronetcy, a captain in the Guards, and a D.S.O. hardly comes to s.n.a.t.c.hing watches and chains without good and sufficient reasons. And yet, in spite of the state he"s in, he hardly looks it, and by this time I ought to be a judge of that kind of thing. He must have had some queer experiences, that young gentleman. I wonder if any of them have been queerer than the one he"ll have to-morrow. And what"ll become of him afterwards? It seems a pity, but so many things are pitiful which have to be."
As she indulged in the expression of that almost philosophical opinion she expelled the smoke of her cigarette from between her pretty lips, and she smiled. Then she sat up straighter in her chair, and threw her scarcely half-consumed cigarette into the fire.
"And there are those who pretend that this is a very good world that we live in!"
CHAPTER V
Dreaming
"Will you have all the apollinaris, Sir Jocelyn?"
Sydney Beaton looked up. He was vaguely conscious of having been roused from slumber by someone, possibly by the person who was standing by his side. He was still very far from being wide awake; his eyes, limbs, body, all were heavy. He had not a notion where he was. There was a real bed, in striking contrast to the makeshifts he had known of late; there were soft sheets, a soft pillow, and there were hangings. It was not really a large room, but, compared to the kind of accommodation with which he had recently been made familiar, it was palatial. There seemed to be some decent furniture, and a carpet on the floor. It was not well lighted; there was only one not over large window, on the other side of which was the November fog. What had happened to him?
Where could he be? He put his wondering into words.