The Duke in the Suburbs

"It shall be done," said Mr. Nape coldly and professionally. He said "good-bye," to his visitor on the doorstep and walked back to his "laboratory" slowly and importantly.

He found the scattered manuscript of his monologue and mechanically tidied it together. He missed the dummy newspaper "agony" and looked round for it. He saw a cutting on the floor, picked it up and put it away with the manuscript. Then he sat down to plan out his campaign.

He had a number of disguises in his room upstairs…

Two hours later a grimy workman with a heavy moustache and a bag of tools called, at 64 "to examine the gas fittings."

VII

The Duke looked at the workman tinkering awkwardly with a pendant. The "workman" in his inmost soul was fervently praying that this would be the last job. For an hour and a half he had sweated and toiled. The Duke had received him on his arrival, figuratively speaking, with open arms.

"You are just the man we want," he said enthusiastically, and had put him through a short catechism. Did he know anything about plumbing? Yes, said the workman doubtfully; and glazing and fixing water pipes, and gardening? added Hank.

The workman who was not quite sure whether all these accomplishments were comprehended in the profession of gas-fitter, thought however that it would be wisest to be on the safe side, and had answered "Yes."

So the Duke had led him to the little cellar, where he laboured hotly at a refractory electric battery, and Hank had pushed him up through a trap door out of the roof, where he, trembling, fixed a misplaced slate, and the Duke had insisted upon the ground being opened in the garden so that a defective drain-pipe might be repaired. After digging industriously, if unskilfully, for half an hour, it was discovered that the drain-pipe was in another part of the garden altogether.

Then he was taken into the common-room to fix the gas. Between the fear that his excessive exertions and their attendant perspiration, would melt the wax that affixed his noble moustache and the desire for information, Mr. Nape was more than ordinarily embarrassed. For there is little one may learn in a four-foot excavation, and the news whispered abroad on suburban housetops is scarcely worth remembering. Therefore he welcomed the adjournment to the common-room. Whilst he tinkered, the men talked, and at their first words Roderick pricked up his ears.

"Duke," said Hank, "I want to ask you something."

"Wait till the man is out of the room," said the Duke warningly.

Hank shrugged his broad shoulders.

"He's too interested in his work," he said, "and besides – "

He shrugged again.

"Well, what is it you want?"

"Isn't it time," asked Hank with sinister emphasis, "that you and I shared out the swag?"

The Duke rose and agitatedly paced up and down.

"Let us go into the next room," he said.

The front drawing-room, from the back was divided by a pair of light folding doors. Mr. Nape descended from the chair, and crept noiselessly towards the partition.

"Duke," said Hank's voice, "or 'Jim Duke,' to give you your right name – "

"Hush," said the Duke's voice appealingly.

"Jim Duke," continued the other callously, "as you are known in Pentonville and Sing Sing, it's time for a share out."

"How much do you want," sullenly.

"I don't know," said Hank's voice, "it ought to be considerable. There's the Countess of B – 's diamond necklace, the Princess of Saxony's tiara, and the proceeds of the Hoxton Bank robbery."

Mr. Nape could scarcely contain himself.

He heard the Duke's footfall as he strode up and down the room, then he heard him speak,

"I will give you twenty thousand pounds," he said shortly.

Mr. Nape heard a sharp laugh.

"Twenty thousand! why I'll get that for turning King's evidence – about the Lylham Hall affair!"

There was a pause.

"If I killed him, you were an accessory," said the Duke.

"I helped to bury him, if that's what you mean," said Hank coolly, "and that was against my wishes; you will remember that I suggested that he should be chucked into the river."

"True," said the Duke moodily, "it has always been my cursed failing, this burying business – you forget I was intended for the Church."

"You didn't bury the Earl," said Hank significantly, and they both laughed boisterously.

As for Mr. Nape, his blood froze and his teeth started chattering.

He was left in doubt as to the dreadful end of the unfortunate nobleman, for the Duke changed the subject.

"Look here, Hank, will you be content if I hand over the necklace, and the tiara, and a cheque for £5,000?"

"A crossed cheque?" asked the cautious Hank.

"A crossed cheque," said the Duke firmly, "on the London and South Western Bank."

There was another pause whilst Hank considered the proposition.

"Yes," he agreed, "on condition you give me a paper exonerating me from any knowledge of the scuttling of the Prideaux Castle."

"Oh, that," said the Duke carelessly, "that was a private matter entirely between the captain and myself, and I shall be very pleased to give you the paper."

"Very good," said Hank's voice, "when that paper is in my possession duly signed and witnessed and stamped at Somerset House, the partnership is dissolved."

Mr. Nape, almost fainting in his excitement, had time to get back to his chair, when the two men returned.

The Duke glanced at the pendant.

"Finished?" he asked politely.

"Yes, sir," muttered Mr. Nape unsteadily.

"Well, I don't think there is anything else we want done – do we?"

Hank shook his head.

Mr. Nape stole a glance at him and saw the gloomy frown. "It was the face" (I quote Mr. Nape's secret diary) "of a man haunted with the memory of his black past."

With great solemnity the Duke tipped the workman half a crown and led him to the door. When he returned he found Hank doubled up on the divan.

"Ill?" he asked anxiously, "poisoned, by any chance?"

But Hank continued to laugh till he subsided into helpless chuckles.

Curiously enough the Duke, whose sense of humour was of the keenest, did not share in his friend's amusement. He smiled once or twice as he paced the room. Then —

"Hank," he said seriously, "do you think young Sherlock Raffles came here entirely out of curiosity?"

"Sure," said the exhausted Hank.

The Duke shook his head doubtingly.

"There's some little game on that I do not quite fathom. Do you know that the concert has been postponed?"

"No."

"Well, it has – and who do you think is responsible? Sir Harry Tanneur."

Hank jerked his head inquiringly in the direction of 66.

"Yes," said the Duke seriously, "for some unaccountable reason he has prevailed upon the vicar to change the date. I've just had a note from the vicar to tell me this. Tanneur is paying all the expenses incidental to the change, the printing and the advertisements, and that is not like Sir Harry, from what I know of him."

"To-day is Tuesday," meditated, Hank, "and to-morrow is Wednesday."

"You're a devil of a chap for finding things out," said the Duke with amused irritation. "You'd put Jacko out of business in a week."

In their less serious moments, the tenants of 64 invariably referred to Roderick as "Jacko Napes."

"I can see no connexion between Jacko and the concert," said Hank, "can you?"

The Duke shook his head.

"It is an instinct," he said seriously, "a premonition of some sort of danger – the sort of thing that turns you creepy just before cattle stampede."

"Run away and play," said the unimaginative Hank, "go into the garden and lasso worms – you're losing your nerve."

The Duke stood undecided.

"I want something and yet I don't know exactly what I want. I need a moral tonic."

"You'll find the step ladder in the greenhouse," suggested Hank.

VIII

A few moments later the Duke from his accustomed elevation was conducting his erratic courtship.

It was not perhaps so much of a coincidence, that he seldom failed to discover Alicia in the mornings. She was an enthusiastic gardener. It was a hobby she had only recently taken up. It is said by the people of 70 – their back windows overlooked the garden and they were notoriously uncharitable – that the gardening craze, which rightly should come with the spring, did not show in her until after the Duke's arrival; that until then her visits to the garden had been few and far between, and her interest of a perfunctory character.

This morning she was not as self-possessed as usual. Indeed she appeared to be a little nervous, but she made no pretence of avoiding him.

"How is the cat?" he asked.

It was his gambit.

"Poor Tibs is as serviceable as the weather," she smiled.

She saw his eyes shift to the conservatory.

"Don't be afraid," she bantered, "Mr. Slewer is not there; he came in the other day without my knowledge," she hastened to add, "the servant showed him into the drawing-room and he took the unpardonable liberty of walking through into the garden."

"Bill has no drawing-room manners," he said regretfully, "he heard my voice and it lured him: you'd never suspect me of being syrenish, would you?"

She raised her grave eyes to his.

"You frightened me dreadfully," she said. "Were you men in earnest?"

"Not a bit," he lied cheerfully, "we were just rehearsing a little play."

"But you were," she persisted, "you looked dreadful and that wretched man's face was devilish."

"S-sh!" he reproved, "the poor chap was a bit upset, and very naturally. One cannot lose one's wife without – "

"Please don't be horrid," she begged, flushing. "I thought that you were not looking as happy as you are usually," she added with a touch of malice.

"I was in the bluest of funks," he confessed, "especially when he pushed you back. You see Hank was covering him and Hank is a terribly short-tempered man. I was wondering how we could explain away Bill's dead body without creating a scandal."

In spite of his matter-of-fact tone, she knew he was offering a true explanation for his pallor – only she substituted his name for Hank's, and felt she was nearer the truth.

"You're a strange man" – her pretty forehead was wrinkled with perplexity – "suppose all this that happened here yesterday had occurred in – Texas."

"It could not have occurred in Texas," he said instantly. "You would have missed the light flow of talk and the interplay of pleasant compliments. There would be only one thing to do. Down in Texas they recognize that fact. Don't you know the story of the sheriff who tried to arrest Black Ike of Montana? The sheriff pulled a gun on Ike, but Ike got first shot. The sheriff was mightily popular, and the folks were grieved but philosophical. They lynched Black Ike and put a splendid monument over the sheriff. In one line they apostrophized his life, ambition and splendid failure – and the inevitability of it all. It ran —

"He did his damndest, angels could do no more."

She was shocked but she laughed —

"So in Texas – "

"I should have killed him," he said with confidence.

"Or else – ?" she shivered.

"Or else – exactly," he said cheerfully.

"It's very dreadful," she said with a troubled face. "Thank goodness, that that sort of thing cannot happen here."

"Thank goodness," he repeated without heartiness.

"Do you think it can?" She shot a suspicious glance at him.

"Good heavens, no!" he denied, his vigour a little overdone.

"You do!" she cried, "you believe he will try, please, please tell me."

The eyes of the man were very tender, there was a curious sadness in them when he looked at her; she dropped hers before them.

"You must not think of such things," he said gently, so unlike his usual self that she, for some unfathomable reason, was near to tears, "why, I scarcely deserve your thought. I who have vexed you so, and hurt you so, though God knows I only acted as I did in an impetuosity that was born of a great and an abiding love."

Her heart went racing, like the screw of a liner, and she felt choking. There were other sensations which she had no time to analyse. Her eyes sought the ground and her hands plucked idly at the flowers within her reach.

"Please remember that, Alicia." With an odd thrill she recognized the masterful touch in this calm appropriation of her name. "What may have seemed impertinence, was really sincerity. The world would say that I have not known you long enough, that the hideous formalities and conventional preliminaries were essential, and that to ask a girl to marry you for no other reason than because you had seen her and loved her, without balancing this virtue against that failing, was an outrageous and unprecedented thing."

She raised her eyes up shyly but did not speak.

The old look was coming back into his face. The old mocking was in his voice when he went on.

"Alicia, I was prepared to take you without a character – and do not forget that I am a suburban householder – without even so much as a line from your last place – did you ever have a last place?" he added suspiciously. She shook her head.

"You – you," she faltered, "are the only master I have ever had!"

Then she fled into the house, and Hank, looking through the back drawing-room window, saw the duke turning somersaults on the lawn – and drew his own conclusions.

IX

The postponement of a concert is a very serious matter. There are pretty certain to be amongst the audience, those who could come on Tuesday but find Wednesday impossible, or Wednesday agreeable and Thursday obnoxious. Similarly with artistes, some of whom cannot fix in the altered date, and some, the more amateurish, who have screwed their courage up for Tuesday's ordeal and find it a physical and mental impossibility to sustain the tension for another twenty-four hours. In this latter case we find Mr. Roderick Nape, who, with the added mental burden of his tremendous discovery, found no pleasure in the fictitious trials of the hero of "The Murder at Fairleigh Grange."

It was written in the book of fate that he should be relieved of one half of his care. On the day eventually fixed for the concert the duke was "at home."

I pass over the propriety of a bachelor being "at home." There was no precedent for the function, but then there was no precedent for a duke living in Kymott Crescent. What the response would have been in ordinary circumstances, need not be discussed. As it happened, the grave man-servant was kept busy the whole of the afternoon announcing new arrivals, and the two waiters, hired for the day from Whiteley's, distributed tea, thin bread and butter, and ladylike sandwiches from 4 till 6.30.

The neighbourhood accepted the invitation because it gave the neighbourhood an opportunity of meeting and abusing the vicar for postponing the soirée – and then of course there was the Duke.

"Come?" said Hank answering that gentleman's doubts, "of course they'll come: you're a two headed donkey, an ancient ruin, a cause célèbre and the scene of a tragedy."

"I take you, sir," said the Duke gratefully; "in other words – "

"They will come out of morbid curiosity," said Hank. "They'll come to the concert to-night, but that's different. You'll be removed from most of 'em. Here they can get near you, prod you and guess what your weight is, look at your teeth an' tell your age; they'll come all right!"

Amongst those present, as the junior reporter hath it, was Mr. Roderick Nape in his private clothes, in other words without disguise. Yet in a sense he was there on business. He wanted to see how these men behaved in public.

He pushed his way through the crowded little room, little knowing that he stalked to his professional doom.

"How do you do?" asked the Duke in his most engaging manner, then he gave a dramatic start and stepped back.

He looked at Hank, then again at Mr. Nape.

"Why, Mr. Nape," stammered the Duke, "you quite startled me."

All eyes were riveted on Mr. Nape, and he enjoyed it.

"What have you been doing to your face!" asked the Duke. It was a rude question, but Mr. Nape saw nothing more significant in the query than a hint of smut, and searched for his handkerchief.

"What have you done with your moustache," asked the Duke reprovingly.

Mr. Nape looked his astonishment.

"I have never had a moustache," he said haughtily, for he had heard a little titter.

"Strange," mused the Duke, "and yet I could have sworn that the last time we met – forgive me, I must have been mistaken."

"By the way, Mr. Nape," drawled the tired voice of Hank, "that electric battery you repaired don't work worth a cent."

The great and appalling truth came to Mr. Nape slowly. In a dazed way he managed to reached the outskirts of the throng about his host and sank into a chair.

His moustache! the electric battery! he groaned in spirit.

"Say, Mr. Nape," – Hank was by his side – "you'll keep the matter dark – you know. What you heard this morning – we'll split the tiara or I'll toss you for the diamond necklace."

Roderick rose with dignity.

"Mr. Hankey, you are an American and you cannot understand my feelings, but I consider I have been treated most – "

"Mrs. and Miss Terrill," announced the grave man-servant, and Hank lost all interest in Mr. Roderick Nape.

He gave a quick glance at the Duke and grinned, for the scarlet-faced young man for the first and last time in his life lost his head and grew incoherent.

"Oh, yes, America is a lovely country – close to New York you know, beautiful sunsets every night at 10. I mean fireworks in Madison Square Gardens. Yes, I knew President Lincoln intimately. How do you do, Miss Terrill? this is very pluc – kind of you."

Mrs. Terrill has been treated with scant courtesy in these pages, but the part she played in this story is analogous to the part she played in life. She was one of those women who live in the everlasting background – none the worse for that, but no better. The Duke had looked forward to the meeting with a vague dread. When he saw her he experienced a great relief, when she spoke he was grateful. He found an opportunity to speak with her alone.

"My daughter has told me," she said simply. "I'm afraid I ought to be more prejudiced against you than I am, and I'm sure you were not looking forward with any eagerness to meet me."

His smiling denial she waved aside. She was a pretty woman of fifty. She looked no less, yet she was pretty. For beauty is not of any age, any more than it is of any colour. The Duke with his quick sympathies saw behind the laughter in her eyes the shadow of suffering. He had lived too near to sorrow to mistake its evidence. Secretly, he wondered why this woman with her ready wit and her unquestionable charm had played no greater part in life – for unerringly and instinctively he had estimated her place in the world.

She had an embarrassing way of reading one's thoughts.

"You are wondering why I am the Shadowy Lady," she asked with a glint of amusement in her eyes, "yet you must remember a time – did I not overhear you claiming acquaintance with Lincoln? – when it was woman's prerogative to retire: when her virtues were concomitant with her obscurity. Some women rebelled and reached fame by way of the law courts, some women rebelled and died, some acquiesced, waiting for the fashion to change. I was one of those, and when the fashion changed I was satisfied with the old order and remained behind the curtain, peaceably."

He looked at her and nodded.

"I understand," he said, for there was sufficient of the woman in his heart to understand sacrifice. She walked away and sent him Alicia.

They were exchanging banalities for the benefit of the surrounding audience when Hank came looking preternaturally solemn. "That custard, Duke."

His friend stared.

"What about it?"

"She's gone."

The Duke waited.

"That custard," said Hank impressively, "we made her, boiled her, stuck eggs all over her, and put her outside on the window-ledge to cool off."

The Duke said nothing, but his lips quivered.

"That custard was surely great," Hank went on, growing melancholy, "we copied her out of an evenin' paper, and whisked her and frisked her till she sizzled – and she's gone."

There was a solemn pause; the spectators held their breath, out of respect for Hank's grief.

"Whilst there was a sound of revelry downstairs, there came a thief," said Hank oracularly, "she clomb up the rare-old-ivy-green and started in to sample that custard."

The Duke leant forward.

"Not Tibs?" he asked breathlessly.

"Oh, not Tibs?" pleaded the girl.

"Tibs, it was surely," said Hank bitterly, "I saw that kinky tail of hers goin' over the wall."

X

The Duke had secured a few minutes alone with the girl. The remainder of the guests had departed, and Hank was keeping Mrs. Terrill mildly amused with an exposition of his philosophy.

It was a memorable day in the Duke's life, for amongst other unique experiences, he felt a diffidence amounting to shyness.

Remarkably enough it was the girl who was cool and self-possessed. He tried to carry off the matter with a high hand, but, as Hank so expressively put it, "he wilted some."

"Alicia," he began huskily – his throat-clearing cough was a confession of weakness.

"Did you like mother?" she asked. He could see she had no fear of the verdict. As he spoke of her he gained courage and took her hand, inanely enough, and she laughed a low, happy, amused laugh.

He laughed too, but sheepishly.

"Courage, mon enfant," she said boldly.

"Alicia," he said earnestly, "don't you wonder at me – and aren't you sorry for me struck dumb by your nearness? There was a man in Texas City once, who told me my bumps; and he said my two principal characteristics were modesty and courage, and said that I suffered from having too poor an opinion of myself. I have tried to get over that latter fault," he said bravely. "People pointed out the difficulty of reducing the modesty bump owing to the mystery of its location. Hank said, he guessed it was like one of those disappearing islands, that bob up and down in the Western Pacific, and every time I hit Modesty Hill, he made a careful survey and found I'd struck into Mount Nerve or Vanity Point. In the end he guessed the phrenologist was pulling my leg, and that one of the fellows had put him up to it. But I rather thought he was genuine, and the modesty bump he had located, was one I got through being thrown from a bronco when showing off before some girls in Texas. Now my respect for the phrenologist has gone up points. I feel – I feel like a little tame cat."

She let him find his way out, as best he could.

"This is the first time you and I have been alone," he said desperately, "and – and – "

"Go on," she said calmly.

It was a terrible experience for the Duke. He felt his grasp upon the situation slipping: he summoned his courage. They were in the deserted conservatory, which was twelve feet by eight feet and open to the gaze of the world on three sides.

"Have you seen my Japanese ferns?" he asked recklessly.

Now here is a curious problem that I present to the reader, whose greater knowledge of worldly affairs may help him to a solution. As the Duke spoke he indicated the screened side of the conservatory, which was as innocent of Japanese ferns as indeed of any forms of growth vegetable or horticultural as the dome of St. Paul's. Unless she imagined that the ferns might be discoverable in a microscopic crack in the wall it is difficult to understand why she replied, "I should like to see them," and walked innocently towards the screened corner. Then suddenly the Duke's arms were about her and his lips laid on hers.

She freed herself gently and raised her shining eyes to his.

"I didn't know you were going to do that," she said, but she made no inquiries about the Japanese ferns.

XI

The room was crowded, there was a hum of talk, a scraping of chairs, a high nervous laugh or so, and in some adjoining room the clatter of coffee cups. The Rev. Arthur had arranged the hall on a new plan, he said, and everybody agreed that it was an excellent plan. At one end of the room was a draped platform; on the floor, in place of the phalanx of benches, were scattered little tables with seats for four. It was a unique arrangement, some went so far as to defy the grammarian and say it was "most unique," but as a matter of fact neither the enthusiast nor the vulgarian were correct, for the Rev. Arthur – a most excellent Christian, overflowing with worldly wisdom – had modelled his arrangements after those obtaining at the wicked Cafe Chantant. Tea and coffee were to be served between the items, and a pleasurable evening seemed assured.