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Great Secret

<h2 id="id01203" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XVII</h2> <h5 id="id01204">NAGASKI'S INSTINCT</h5> I was busy all the morning sending and receiving telegrams, and making certain plans on my own account. Rust was with me a good deal of the time; but the visitor whose coming I was expecting every minute did not arrive till early in the afternoon. I sent out word to Mr. Stanley that I was exceedingly busy, and should be glad to be excused; but, as I had confidently expected, he was insistent. In about a quarter of an hour I received him in the library. He sank softly into the chair towards which I had pointed. For a moment he sat and blinked at me behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. "So our friend," he murmured, "has passed away! It is very sad—very sad indeed." I leaned back in my chair and regarded him steadfastly. "Mr. Stanley," I said, "you did not come here to express your sympathy with the man whom you have done your best, if not to kill, at least to frighten to death. Ask me all the questions you want to—say anything you think necessary. Only finish it up. When you leave this room, let me feel that circumstances will not require any further meeting between us." My words seemed to afford Mr. Stanley matter for thought. His brows were slightly puckered. I knew that from behind his glasses I was being subjected to a very keen examination. "I only trust, Mr. Courage,"' he said softly, "that the wish you have expressed may become a possibility. I myself have always regretted your intervention in this affair. You are, if you will forgive my saying so, in strange waters." "I don't know about that," I answered curtly. "I don't see now how I could have done other than I have done. But anyhow, I'm sick of it. I don't want to seem discourteous, but if you could manage to say to me, in the course of a quarter of an hour, all that you have to say, and ask all the questions you want to, I should be glad to have done with the whole business, once and for all!" My visitor nodded thoughtfully. "Very good, Mr. Courage," he said. "I will endeavor to imitate your frankness. Is there to be a post-mortem?" "There is not," I answered. "Dr. Rust does not consider it necessary, and I am forced to confess that I cannot see anything to be gained by it. You and your friends may have been responsible for his death. I cannot say! At any rate, I am sure that we should never be able to fix the guilt in the proper quarter." Mr. Stanley shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I must congratulate you upon your common sense, Mr. Courage," he said. "I pass on now to a more important question. Did our friend, before he died, impart to you any of the hallucinations under which he suffered? Are you his legatee?" "I am not," I answered. "I believe that he meant me to be; but his death, when it came, was quite sudden. All the secret information I had from him was his name, and the address of his lawyers." There was a short silence. I was able to bear with perfect calmness the keen scrutiny to which my visitor was subjecting me. "I congratulate you heartily, Mr. Courage," he said at last. "Mr. Guest's story, if he had told it to you, would have been a mixture of stolen facts and hallucinations, which might have influenced your life very forcibly for evil. I wished for his death! I admit it freely. But I wished it for this reason: because in all Europe yesterday, there did not breathe a more dangerous man than the man who called himself Leslie Guest." "Well, he has gone," I said, "and his life, so far as I know of it, has been a very sad one. I have already explained to you my wishes in the matter. I want to forget as speedily as possible the events of the last eight days." "I should like," Mr. Stanley said, "to see him." "I am sorry," I answered, "but that is impossible. The nurses are busy in the room now, and apart from that, the dead, at least, should have peace from their enemies. Of one thing I can assure you. Every scrap of paper he had with him is burnt. There is nothing about him or the room which could be of interest to you. I have sent for his lawyer, and am making arrangements for the funeral. There is nothing more to be said or done, except to say good afternoon to you, Mr. Stanley," He rose slowly up from his chair. "You are a little precipitate, Mr. Courage," he said, "but I do not know that I can blame you. Do you object to telling me when the funeral will be?" "I am not myself informed, at present," I answered. "I am waiting for the arrival of the lawyer." I had risen to my feet, and was standing with the handle of the door in my hand. Mr. Stanley took the hint, yet I fancied that he departed unwillingly. "I should like," he admitted, "to have seen—him, and also the lawyer." "Then you can find another opportunity," I answered stiffly. "Mr. Guest's friends would receive every consideration from me. His enemies, I must admit, I cannot, under the circumstances, see the back of too quickly." Mr. Stanley had no alternative but to depart, which he did with as good a grace as possible. I was glad to be alone for a few minutes. My ordinary share of the vices of life, both great and small, I was, without a doubt, possessed of. But I had never been a liar. I had never looked a man in the face and made statements which I had known at the time were absolutely and entirely false. This was my first essay in a new role. My next visitor was a very different sort of person, a fair, florid little man, with easy, courteous manners, and dressed in deep mourning. He introduced himself as Mr. Raynes, of Raynes and Bishop, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn, and alluded to the telegram which I had sent him earlier in the morning. "May I inquire," he asked, after we had exchanged a few commonplaces, "if you are aware that Mr. Leslie Guest was an assumed name of the deceased?" "I was in his confidence towards the last," I answered. "He told me a good deal of his history." The lawyer nodded sympathetically. "A very sad one, I fear you found it," he remarked. "Very sad indeed," I assented. "I have here," he continued, "Lord Leslie's will, and instructions as to his burial. I presume you would like me to take entire charge of all the arrangements?" "Certainly," I answered. "His Lordship wished to be buried very quietly in the nearest churchyard to the place where he died," the lawyer continued. "I presume that can be arranged." "Quite easily," I answered. "The clergyman is waiting to see you now; if you like I will take you to him." In the hall we met Lady Dennisford. She was plainly dressed in black, and she carried a great bunch of white roses. I introduced Mr. Raynes to the vicar, and hurried back to her. "You would like to see him?" I asked. She nodded, and I led the way upstairs. I opened the door and closed it again softly, leaving them alone…. I descended into the hall, and there upon the steps, looking at me with black, beady eyes, deep set in his wrinkled face, was my friend, or rather my enemy, Nagaski. He eyed my approach with gloomy disfavor. He opened his mouth in a seeming yawn, a little, red tongue shot out from between his ivory teeth. Then I heard him called by a familiar voice, and passing out, I found his mistress leaning back in the corner of Lady Dennisford's victoria. She welcomed me with a slow, curious smile. "I will get out," she said. "There is something I should like to say to you." I handed her down. She led the way on to the terrace. A few paces behind, Nagaski, with drooping head and depressed mien, followed us. When we halted, he sat upon his haunches and watched me. "Nagaski," I remarked, "does not seem to be quite himself to-day." "It is your presence," she answered, "which affects him. He dislikes you." I looked at him thoughtfully. If Nagaski disliked me, I was very sure that I returned the sentiment to a most unreasonable extent. "I wonder why," I said. "I have always been decent to him." "Nagaski has antipathies," she said quietly. "It is a good thing that we are not in his own country. There his breed are supposed to have some of the qualities of seers, and his dislike would be a very ominous thing." "Are you superstitious?" I asked. "I am not sure," she answered gravely. "If I were, I should certainly avoid you. His attitude is a distinct warning." I drew a little nearer to her. It seemed to me that she was very pale, and there was trouble in her face. "Do you think it possible?" I asked, "that I could bring sorrow upon you?" "Very possible indeed," she murmured, avoiding my eyes, and looking steadily across the park. "Since when have you discovered this?" I asked. "Within the last hour," she answered. I laid my hand upon hers. She withdrew it at once. There was a distinct change in her manner towards me. "I suppose," she remarked, "that I ought to congratulate you. You are certainly cleverer than I gave you credit for. You have deceived Mr. Stanley, and he is not at all an easy person for a beginner to deceive." I kept silence. I began to see the trouble into which I was drifting. "But," she continued, "you did not attempt to deceive me. And in this matter, Mr. Stanley and I are one!" "You have told him!" I exclaimed. "Not yet," she answered, "but I am forced to do so, unless—" "Unless what?" She looked me in the face. "Unless you give me your word of honor that you make no attempt to carry on the task which Leslie Guest had assigned himself, that you do not regard yourself in any shape or form as his successor. Don't you see that it must be so? You plead that you must keep faith with the dead. I, at least, must keep faith with the living. I offer you a chance of safety, and I beg you to take it. I can do no more." There was a sharp, little yap from Nagaski. We looked around, Lady Dennisford had come out. We turned towards her. Nagaski trotted on ahead. His demeanor was generally more brisk, and his expression one of relief. A cloud of anxiety seemed to have rolled away from his small brain. Adèle pointed to him significantly. "You see," she said, "his instinct is right. There are evil things between you and me. If I speak, there is no hope for you, and if I keep silent, there is danger for me, and I am a woman forsworn. If only I had never gone to Lord's and seen you play cricket!" "Would that have helped us?" I asked. "Of course! I should never have counted upon you as a possible tool! I saw you strain every nerve in your body to catch a ball, and I judged you by your pursuits, and—all this has come of it. Nagaski was right. We go ill together, you and I, and one of us must suffer." "I can only pray then," I answered, as I handed her into the carriage, "that it may be I." Nagaski sprang upon his mistress' lap, and his was the only farewell I received as the carriage drove away. His upper lip was drawn back over his red gums; there was something fiendish and uncanny in his snarl, and the hatred which shone from his tiny black eyes. I watched the carriage until it disappeared. He had not moved. He was still looking back at me. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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