William Le Queux - The Lost Million

“Your father has been away in France since I met him?” I remarked, for want of something else to say.

“Yes,” she responded; “he has been moving rapidly from place to place for reasons to which I need not refer.”

“But why has he returned if there is still danger?” I queried.

“I scarcely think there is further danger – at least at present,” she answered. I was puzzled at her reply, but not for long, as I will relate.

The car slipped through Rockingham, and when about two miles farther on swung abruptly through a handsome pair of lodge-gates and into a broad, well-timbered park, at last pulled up before a long, old-fashioned Jacobean mansion which commanded from its grey stone terrace fine views of the green undulating hills and rich pastures around. The old ivy-clad place, with its pointed gables and mullioned windows, was a good type of the stately English home, and as the car drew up at the porch the great door was flung open by a neat man-servant, who bowed low as we entered the fine hall, where the stone slabs were, I noticed, worn hollow by the tread of generations.

The place was built in a quadrangle, two-storeyed, with handsome heraldic devices in the stained windows. There seemed to be roomy corridors, leading by stout oak doors to roomier apartments within, some oak-panelled, others with moulded ceilings and carved stone fireplaces. The whole place had a cloak and rapier look about it, built probably when the old Cavalier was poor and soured and had sheathed his sword, but nevertheless was counting the months when the King should come to his own again.

I followed Asta Seymour along the hall, and turning into a corridor on the left, suddenly found myself in a pleasant sitting-room wherein the man I knew as Dawnay stood, his hands behind his back, awaiting me.

As we entered she closed the door behind us. The room bore an old-world air, with chintz-covered furniture and filled with the perfume of pot-pourri.

“At last, Mr Kemball! At last?” cried the fugitive, crossing quickly to me and taking my hand in warm welcome. “So Asta found you all right, eh?”

“Her appearance was certainly a surprise,” I said. “I expected you to meet me yourself.”

“Well,” he laughed, his small narrow-set eyes filled with a merry twinkle. “It would hardly have been a judicious proceeding. So I sent Asta, to whom, I may as well tell you, I entrust all matters of strictest confidence. But sit down, Mr Kemball. Give me your hat and stick.”

And he drew forward for me a comfortable chair, while the girl, excusing herself, left us alone.

When she had gone, my friend looked me in the face, and burst out laughing, exclaiming —

“I suppose, Mr Kemball, this is rather a surprise to you to find that Harvey Shaw, the occupier of Lydford Hall, and Alfred Dawnay are one and the same person, eh?”

“It is,” I admitted. “I have passed the edge of your park many times in my car, but I never dreamed that you lived here.”

“Well,” he said, “I rely upon your secrecy. You were extremely good to me the other day, so I see no reason why I should not be just a little frank with you.”

“Your affairs are, of course, no business of mine,” I declared. “But whatever you may reveal to me I shall certainly treat with the strictest confidence.”

“Ah! I feel sure that you will. Melvill Arnold would never have taken you into his confidence if he had not been certain that he could trust you. He was one of the very shrewdest men in all England, or he would not have been so enormously successful.”

From the long windows, with their small leaded panes, I could see from where I sat far away across the park with its fine beech avenue. Over the wide fireplace were carved many heraldic devices in stone, while against the dark oak-panelling the bright chintzes showed clean and fresh. Taste was displayed everywhere – the taste of a refined man.

Mr Shaw, as he was apparently known there, was dressed very different from the occasion when we had met at Totnes. Then he had assumed the appearance of a racing man, but in his guise of country gentleman he was dressed in morning-coat of a rather old-fashioned cut, and pepper-and-salt trousers, an attire which gave him a quiet and somewhat distinguished appearance.

I sat before him, wondering at his remarkable dual personality – the man hunted by the police, and the wealthy occupier of that fine country mansion.

His small, shrewd eyes seemed to realise the trend of my thoughts as he lounged back in his chair near the window, regarding me lazily.

“I promised, Mr Kemball, that I would see you again as soon as opportunity offered,” he said; “and feeling assured of the spirit of good fellowship existing between us, I have this afternoon let you into the secret of my double life. That evening at Exeter I had a very narrow squeak of it – by Gad! one of the narrowest in all my life. An enemy – one whom I had believed to be my friend – gave me completely away. The police evidently expected to find me through you, for you were watched constantly. Everywhere you went you were followed.”

“You know that?”

“I do,” he said. “The fact is I have a personal guardian who constantly watches over me, and warns me of danger. You saw him on his cycle at Lathbury. He watched you while I was absent in France shaking off those bloodhounds of the law.”

“And you have now shaken them off, I presume?”

“I think so. Scotland Yard has, happily, never yet associated Harvey Shaw, Justice of the Peace for the County of Rutland, and one of the visiting justices of Oakham Gaol, with Alfred Dawnay, alias Day, whom they are so very eager to arrest,” and he laughed grimly. “Mine is an amusing situation, I assure you, to sit on the Bench and try prisoners, well knowing that each police-officer who appears as witness would, if he knew, be only too eager to execute the warrant outstanding.”

And his broad, good-humoured face again expanded into a smile.

“Certainly. I quite see the grim humour of the situation,” I said.

“And if you had not assisted me, Mr Kemball, I should, at this moment, have been under detention in His Majesty’s prison at Brixton,” he said. “By the way, I have to return the suit of clothes you so very kindly lent to me. My man has them upstairs ready packed. I shall send them to you by parcel-post. Gates was, I think, rather surprised to find another man’s clothes among my kit. But fortunately he’s used to my idiosyncrasies, and regards them as mere eccentricities on the part of his master. But he is always discreet. He’s been with me these ten years.”

“How long have you lived here, Mr – er – ”

“Shaw here,” he interrupted quickly.

“Mr Shaw. How long have you lived here? I thought the place belonged to Lord Wyville?”

“So it does – at least to the late lord’s executors. I’ve rented it for the past three years. So in the county I’m highly respectable, and I believe highly respected.”

“The situation is unusual – to say the least,” I declared.

“Perhaps I’m a rather unusual man, Mr Kemball,” he said, rising and crossing the room. I saw that in his dark green cravat he wore a fine diamond, and that his manner and bearing were those of a well-born country gentleman. Truly, he was an unusual person.

“I hope,” he went on, halting suddenly before me, “that as you have associated yourself with my very dear and intimate friend, Melvill Arnold, you will now become my friend also. It is for that reason I venture to approach you as I have done to-day.”

“Well,” I said, my natural sense of caution exerting itself as I recollected the dead man’s written injunction, “I must admit, Mr Shaw, that I am sorely puzzled to fathom the mystery of the situation. Ever since my meeting with poor Mr Arnold I seem to have been living in a perfect maze of inexplicable circumstances.”