He was familiar with desperate situations, and he had been too long an actor to permit himself now to be surprised into a betrayal of his true feelings. And so he remained outwardly as unmoved as if the thing before them were but of trifling import. Inwardly his soul sickened. Years of planning were overthrown thus at a blow. All was to do again, it seemed; and heaven alone knew whether he would live to be in at the ultimate victory which he was assured God must accord the right. Yet nothing of this showed in his countenance. If it was stern and singularly hard, it had all the calm that goes with hardness.
He took up one of the long-stemmed pipes, and began deliberately to fill it from the leaden jar.
“Firstly,” he said, his voice very quiet and even, “will you tell us, Mr O’Neill, how you come by your knowledge?”
“I have it,” answered O’Neill at once, leaning forward across the table, “from my cousin, Jocelyn Butler, who is my Lord Carteret’s private secretary. ’Twas his own hand prepared the warrants by my lord’s directions, and had not my own been among the names we should never have had this warning. As it was, Jocelyn came to me soon after six this evening, as I was on the point of setting out — in fact, ’tis what delayed me. At first he told me no more than there was a warrant out for my arrest on a charge of conspiring against the peace of the realm, and urged me to take horse and begone at once. But I swore I wouldn’t stir a foot until he had told me all there was to’t.
“He demurred awhile, but bethinking him that ‘twill be the talk of the town by morning, and that as most of the arrests were made already ’twas little he’ld be betrayin’, he spoke out, and told me all he knew, or leastways all that I asked him, and I asked him all that mattered. Thereupon I rode hither as fast as horse could bring me, for amongst other things my cousin told me that the messengers from Bow Street were on their way hither to surprise a meeting of plotters.”
There was a stir about the table.
“Ah!” said Captain Gaynor. “That, too, was known, then, eh?” He reached for the tinder-box as he spoke.
“Faith, yes. But glory be to heaven, I’ve arrived ahead of them.”
“‘Sblud! But ye’ve not,” roared Sir Thomas Leigh, and hubbub broke out afresh, through which O’Neill listened in increasing alarm to the announcement that one of the messengers was here already.
“And what’s to be done, then?” he cried.
“That we will now consider,” said the Captain, and by the very tone of his voice restored order about the table. He struck steel against flint, and having kindled a flame applied it to his pipe. Then “You did not learn,” he inquired, “whether Lord Pauncefort had been arrested?”
“I learnt that he had not.”
“But a warrant will have been issued for him, of course?”
“Not so. I asked that, too, and I was relieved to learn that he, at least, has been overlooked.”
“Overlooked? How very fortunate,” said Captain Gaynor, with the faintest note of irony. Sir John Kynaston’s warning was humming now in his mind. “This being so, can any here suggest why my Lord Pauncefort is not with us?”
A hush followed that significant question, broken at last by Harewood, who was Pauncefort’s friend.
“Now, sink me, Captain Gaynor, what is’t you mean by that?” And his swarthy face was flushed by sudden anger.
“Before I answer you, my lord,” said the soldier, maintaining his outward calm, “let me ask you all a question. Has anyone of you mentioned to a living soul that we were to assemble here tonight? If any has, I entreat him to speak frankly now in the interests of us all.”
Followed a little spell of silence; then from one and another broke firm and sturdy denials.
“I will remind you, then,” said the Captain, “that no living man knew of this meeting save those who were to assemble — ourselves present, and one other who is absent.”
“There is yet one other — Maclean,” Mr Partridge reminded the Captain.
“Ay!” roared Harewood. “What of Maclean?”
Gaynor’s smile and a little gesture with the fingers that held his pipe brushed aside the question as frivolous.
“Maclean did not know the names of those who were to assemble, and you will bear in mind that Mr O’Neill has told us that the warrants are out with those names set forth. Maclean could not have possessed such knowledge. Nor yet, had he possessed it, could he have betrayed it without running his own neck into a noose, and there is still the further trifling matter in his favour that ’twas he, himself, brought us word of the presence of the messenger.
“You must see, sirs, that there is but one person could have betrayed us to this extent; his absence more than confirms the suspicion — a suspicion which amounts to certainty with me. And I am not a man to form hasty judgments. I will further remind you that my Lord Pauncefort is a gamester, broken and desperate, and I do not suggest, I state, and I will maintain my statement wherever and whenever opportunity is afforded me — he has taken this dastardly course to mend his shattered fortunes. In a word, gentlemen, he has sold us; and I make no doubt that he has obtained a handsome price from the Secretary of State for his Judas services.”
Harewood got angrily to his feet. “By God!” he swore. “I’ll not hear a man thus abused in his absence!”
“You shall not find me slow to accuse him to his face,” said the Captain. “The opportunity of that, I think, is all that I can now ask of Fortune.”
Harewood looked round with glaring eyes, in appeal to the others to repudiate this hideous charge against his friend; but on every face he saw conviction written. The thing was all too plain. The viscount felt that conviction being borne in upon his very self, yet loyally he sought to hold it off.
“I’ll not believe it! Sink me, I’ll not believe it!” he exclaimed, although his voice almost broke on the words.
“The decision,” said the Captain, “does your heart more credit than your judgment. Yet, my lord, lest you or any here should think that I judge rashly, let me add something that is known to me — something that I confess has spurred me on to this conclusion.” And briefly he informed the company of the threat which Pauncefort had uttered to Sir John Kynaston. “Now,” he concluded, “I hold that in such a matter there is no ground for thinking that the man who is so lost to honour as to threaten will hesitate to perform.”
Convinced, Harewood sat down and took his head in his hands. “He was my friend,” he said in a dull voice.
Smoking quietly, Captain Gaynor turned again to O’Neill. “You have not said that there is a warrant out for me.”
“I was coming to’t,” was the answer, and the Irishman’s face quickened with excitement. “There is and there is not.”
“How?” Gaynor looked at him with knitting brows.
“There is a warrant issued for Captain Jenkyn,” was the explanation, “and it is expected that he will be taken here with the rest of us.”
The soldier stiffened visibly. Here was the last ounce of proof against Pauncefort. For but two men in England knew of his identity with the bearer of that sobriquet — his lordship and Sir John Kynaston. Not even these gentlemen gathered here together had hitherto suspected it. At the announcement now there was an outcry, dominated by Leigh’s outflung hand and thundered monosyllable —
“You!”
The Captain smiled at them, and slowly, deprecatingly, shook his head.
“Sirs,” he said, “you cannot really think that Captain Jenkyn is any particular individual. Rather, I think, is it a title conferred by the Government to fit any Jacobite agent who visits England. On this occasion, from what O’Neill tells us, it would seem they thrust the honour upon me. But,” and he turned again to the Irishman, “I am not specified by name in the warrant?”
“By no other name — no.”
“That is very odd.”
“Ay,” returned O’Neill, “until we have the explanation, which is still more odd, bedad. You were specifically accused to the Secretary of State.
But when he desired Mr Templeton to issue a warrant in due form, Mr Templeton urged that there was some mistake — that his lordship’s informer was perforce in error; that Captain Harry Gaynor was no Jacobite but a soldier of fortune whose entire record and whose credentials were in his hands, a man who had no sympathy with the Stuart Cause and who had been recommended to him by his own cousin, Tollemache Templeton, an old friend of your own.
“Lord Carteret, it seems, sought to combat Mr Templeton’s confidence; but the Second Secretary is an obstinate man who claims that he is never at fault. He laid Captain Gaynor’s credentials before Lord Carteret, and when his lordship suggested that such documents could be forged, Mr Templeton took coach and visited the embassies of two of the governments from which certain of those credentials proceeded.”
“What embassies?” quoth the Captain, his eyes preternaturally bright.
“The Austrian and the Turkish.”
The Captain sighed his instant relief from that sudden tension. He even smiled as the Irishman continued: “Mr Templeton was assured at both that the documents presented were entirely genuine. The Turkish ambassador, indeed, claimed a personal acquaintance with Captain Gaynor made in Constantinople four years ago, and spoke, I am informed, in terms of high praise of you to the Second Secretary. With this information Mr Templeton returned to Lord Carteret, and boldly informed his lordship that he would resign his office ere he made himself the laughing-stock of the town by issuing a warrant against a gentleman so unimpeachable and accredited. This, sir, in my cousin’s own presence. My Lord Carteret was swayed by that assurance; he bowed before it to the extent of consenting that the warrant should be made out for ‘Captain Jenkyn’ — whose identity, he was informed, was one with your own. To this Mr Templeton made no objection, confident that the result must prove the correctness of his own and the error of his lordship’s information.”
“It is a confidence,” said the Captain, smiling, “in which we must see to’t that Mr Templeton is encouraged.” It gratified him to observe the good fruit borne by the thoroughness of his dispositions, and he was thankful for it in this extremity.
“And how is that to be accomplished now?” quoth Mr Dyke from the other end of the table.
The Captain smoked in silence an instant. Then he removed the pipe from his lips, and spoke.
“Let us for a moment consider our position. I do not think that it is one that need cause us any undue alarm.”
“Do you not, by God!” growled old Sir Thomas. “Then, you’re monstrous slow at taking alarm, sir.”
“When you have heard me perhaps you will abate your own,” the soldier answered him, and with that proceeded: “If, gentlemen, you have been properly cautious, you should not now stand in any grave peril.” He was thinking swiftly, speaking almost as he thought. “These arrests are premature. In a month’s time they might have occasioned concern. As it is, what can be proved against any man of you?
“Return then quietly to your homes, and pursue your avocations. Should you be arrested, suffer it in patience, and in the conviction that your liberty must very speedily be restored to you. It would not surprise me,” he continued, “if this prematureness were deliberate. It is Lord Carteret’s policy to stifle our work at its very source, and to strike terror into our leaders by a display of the Government’s omniscience rather than allow any treason to spread to punishable lengths. It is devilish shrewd of him, for he knows that martyrs to a cause beget sympathy for that cause, and ten emulators for every one that falls. Therefore, he does not desire martyrs. Should you be arrested the matter will probably end in a private admonition from Lord Carteret to each of you ere you are restored to liberty. That, sirs, I think, is the position.”
His calm, so admirably dissembling his own inward despair — fell like a balm upon those five disordered minds.
But Sir Thomas Leigh found an objection to his reasoning.
“You do not overlook, I trust, that our betrayal proceeds from within?”
“I do not, Sir Thomas. But it would be unreasonable to suppose that our ranks have yielded more than one traitor, and the word of one man alone — actuated, no doubt, from motives of self-interest — whilst serving the ends of Lord Carteret to damp us with terror of his omniscience, as I have said, is very far from sufficing to produce the conviction of any who does not betray himself.
“You are further to remember that it is in the last degree unlikely that our betrayer will come forward to accuse us. That, indeed, would be a foolish procedure on every count. Pauncefort must have made it a condition of his bargain with the Government that he shall remain in the background, and the Government itself must have desired this, for once the informer were proclaimed his value would be at an end — and a man in Pauncefort’s position is of very great value, so great that the Government may well desire to retain his services for the future — that is, assuming that Pauncefort is to live. But I think we owe it to ourselves in this case to make assurance doubly sure.”
His voice rang with so sinister a note that all eyes were turned to search his countenance. It was hard now to the point of cruelty.
“It should, I think, be a point of expediency and honour with any who is so fortunate as to escape the trap laid for us here tonight to seek out my Lord Pauncefort, and—” A swift, trenchant gesture with the pipe-stem completed his meaning.
There was a gasp from Mr Partridge; dismay was written, too, upon the face of Harewood.
“We are not children, sirs,” said the Captain in a rasping voice, “and our game is not a child’s game. When a man betrays us we have a duty to discharge to ourselves, to one another and to the Cause we serve. For a traitor there is but one punishment all the world over. That punishment Lord Pauncefort has incurred, and I, for one, pray heaven that I may be spared long enough from the clutches of the law to administer it myself. So would I have each of you think.”
The white hawk-face of Mr Dyke looked singularly vicious as he swore what he would do, given the opportunity, and he was followed instantly by O’Neill and old Sir Thomas.
“One risk, however, we do run, sirs, in spite of what I have said,” the Captain resumed, “and it is somewhat serious — the risk of my being taken in your company. If I am so taken the identity of Captain Jenkyn is established and attached to Harry Gaynor, and Mr Templeton is proven wrong in his assurance. Whatever happen to the rest, for Captain Jenkyn there will be no mercy; he will receive the very shortest shrift.
“If, then, I am taken in your company, I am destroyed by being found with you, as was promised by our betrayer; and similarly you may suffer grievously for being found with me. Our chief danger, then, lies there. If you are taken without me, your danger is reduced to insignificant proportions, as I have said. If I am taken anywhere but here, my own risk also is lessened to vanishing-point.”
Their agreement with this reasoning was immediate and unanimous.
“And therefore,” added Mr Dyke, “it is of the first importance that we should be rid of you and you of us.”
“Precisely,” the Captain agreed. “All that remains to be determined is how we shall achieve that most desirable consummation; and the means, I confess, do not seem quite ready to our hands. Can any of you propose a course?”
“Where the devil is that rascal Maclean?” roared Sir Thomas.
“’Tis what I’ve been wonderin’ myself,” said O’Neill, “for savin’ the brandy I’ve filched from you, Sir Thomas, ’tis devil a thought has been bestowed upon my thirst.”
“Is there no safe way of calling him?” quoth Partridge.
“No way that is not fraught with danger in a house that is watched,” said the thoughtful Mr Dyke. “If he has left us alone ’tis a sign he is convinced we are besieged and fears to come to us lest he should show the way to others.”
And then, at last, the door opened, and Maclean himself came in. He was rather breathless, and his broad face had lost much of its habitual florid tint.
Chapter 9. THE ALIBI
Twice before had Maclean attempted to repair to the conspirators, but each time prudence had compelled him to abandon the attempt. On the first occasion he was crossing the outer room when he heard the door open softly behind him, and, looking over his shoulder, found himself observed by the spy.
He betrayed no uneasiness, but affecting to continue on his way, reached the overmantel and took thence a couple of candle branches, with which he returned.
The face of the Bow Street messenger betrayed the extent to which he was intrigued. He had been on the watch, and observing Maclean’s cautious approach he had inferred from it that at last he was to be put upon the trail of his quarry. Instead he found the landlord seeking a pair of candle branches in an empty room. The spy felt naturally aggrieved.
“D’ye lack aught, sir?” Maclean had asked him, between landlordly solicitude and challenge.
“I do,” replied the spy, practically at bay. “I am seeking some friends o’ mine who are expecting me here. One is Sir Thomas Leigh; belike you’ll be acquainted with him?”
Maclean’s expression was that of one who innocently searches in his memory. He shook his head. “Not by name,” said he slowly. “Have ye looked in the room yonder?” And he indicated the room across the passage to which he had earlier directed the spy.
“I have. And he’s not there.”
“Perhaps he’ll be below stairs, then.”
“Neither is he below stairs.” The messenger’s tone was grim; his eyes intently watched the landlord’s baffling face.
“Then, sir, I’m afraid he’ll not be here.”
“Ah!” said the spy. “Very odd! Ve-ry odd!”
But the face of the dour Scot remained politely blank. Clearly, the spy considered, there was naught to be made of this fellow, and to push insistence further just then might be to give an alarm that must result in the flight of his game.
“I’ll wait,” he added shortly, and, turning, made his way back to the room which he had lately quitted. But he did not enter it. Maclean had bowed and passed on down the stairs. The spy stood watching him with a certain hope. This, however, was frustrated. He was completely baffled by the circumstance that never once did Maclean so much as turn his head. Such indifference argued a quiet conscience. Was it possible, he wondered, that Maclean might be in ignorance of the meeting that was taking placed under his roof? The fellow’s obvious unconcern scarcely admitted of any other conclusion.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 258
