Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “It is possible, certainly. The evidence to come will no doubt determine whether it is a tenable opinion.”

  “Admitting this, then, the attitude in which Captain Tremayne was discovered would be a perfectly natural one? It would be natural that he should investigate the identity and hurt of the man he found there?”

  “Certainly.”

  “But it would hardly be natural that he should linger by the body of a man he had himself slain, thereby incurring the risk of being discovered?”

  “That is a question for the court rather than for me.”

  “Thank you, Sir Terence.” And, as no one else desired to question him, Sir Terence resumed his seat, and Lady O’Moy was called.

  She came in very white and trembling, accompanied by Miss Armytage, whose admittance was suffered by the court, since she would not be called upon to give evidence. One of the officers of the Fourteenth seated on the extreme right of the table made gallant haste to set a chair for her ladyship, which she accepted gratefully.

  The oath administered, she was invited gently by Major Swan to tell the court what she knew of the case before them.

  “But — but I know nothing,” she faltered in evident distress, and Sir Terence, his elbow leaning on the table, covered his mouth with his hand that its movements might not betray him. His eyes glowered upon her with a ferocity that was hardly dissembled.

  “If you will take the trouble to tell the court what you saw from your balcony,” the major insisted, “the court will be grateful.”

  Perceiving her agitation, and attributing it to nervousness, moved also by that delicate loveliness of hers, and by deference to the adjutant-generates lady, Sir Harry Stapleton intervened.

  “Is Lady O’Moy’s evidence really necessary?” he asked. “Does it contribute any fresh fact regarding the discovery of the body?”

  “No, sir,” Major Swan admitted. “It is merely a corroboration of what we have already heard from Mullins and Sir Terence.”

  “Then why unnecessarily distress this lady?”

  “Oh, for my own part, sir—” the prosecutor was submitting, when Sir Terence cut in:

  “I think that in the prisoner’s interest perhaps Lady O’Moy will not mind being distressed a little.” It was at her he looked, and for her and Tremayne alone that he intended the cutting lash of sarcasm concealed from the rest of the court by his smooth accent. “Mullins has said, I think, that her ladyship was on the balcony when he came into the quadrangle. Her evidence therefore, takes us further back in point of time than does Mullins’s.” Again the sarcastic double meaning was only for those two. “Considering that the prisoner is being tried for his life, I do not think we should miss anything that may, however slightly, affect our judgment.”

  “Sir Terence is right, I think, sir,” the judge-advocate supported.

  “Very well, then,” said the president. “Proceed, if you please.”

  “Will you be good enough to tell the court, Lady O’Moy, how you came to be upon the balcony?”

  Her pallor had deepened, and her eyes looked more than ordinarily large and child-like as they turned this way and that to survey the members of the court. Nervously she dabbed her lips with a handkerchief before answering mechanically as she had been schooled:

  “I heard a cry, and I ran out—”

  “You were in bed at the time, of course?” quoth her husband, interrupting.

  “What on earth has that to do with it, Sir Terence?” the president rebuked him, out of his earnest desire to cut this examination as short as possible.

  “The question, sir, does not seem to me to be without point,” replied O’Moy. He was judicially smooth and self-contained. “It is intended to enable us to form an opinion as to the lapse of time between her ladyship’s hearing the cry and reaching the balcony.”

  Grudgingly the president admitted the point, and the question was repeated.

  “Ye-es,” came Lady O’Moy’s tremulous, faltering answer, “I was in bed.”

  “But not asleep — or were you asleep?” rapped O’Moy again, and in answer to the president’s impatient glance again explained himself: “We should know whether perhaps the cry might not have been repeated several times before her ladyship heard it. That is of value.”

  “It would be more regular,” ventured the judge-advocate, “if Sir Terence would reserve his examination of the witness until she has given her evidence.”

  “Very well,” grumbled Sir Terence, and he sat back, foiled for the moment in his deliberate intent to torture her into admissions that must betray her if made.

  “I was not asleep,” she told the court, thus answering her husband’s last question. “I heard the cry, and ran to the balcony at once. That — that is all.”

  “But what did you see from the balcony?” asked Major Swan.

  “It was night, and of course — it — it was dark,” she answered.

  “Surely not dark, Lady O’Moy? There was a moon, I think — a full moon?”

  “Yes; but — but — there was a good deal of shadow in the garden, and — and I couldn’t see anything at first.”

  “But you did eventually?”

  “Oh, eventually! Yes, eventually.” Her fingers were twisting and untwisting the handkerchief they held, and her distressed loveliness was very piteous to see. Yet it seems to have occurred to none of them that this distress and the minor contradictions into which it led her were the result of her intent to conceal the truth, of her terror lest it should nevertheless be wrung from her. Only O’Moy, watching her and reading in her every word and glance and gesture the signs of her falsehood, knew the hideous thing she strove to hide, even, it seemed, at the cost of her lover’s life. To his lacerated soul her torture was a balm. Gloating, he watched her, then, and watched her lover, marvelling at the blackguard’s complete self-mastery and impassivity even now.

  Major Swan was urging her gently.

  “Eventually, then, what was it that you saw?”

  “I saw a man lying on the ground, and another kneeling over him, and then — almost at once — Mullins came out, and—”

  “I don’t think we need take this any further, Major Swan,” the president again interposed. “We have heard what happened after Mullins came out.”

  “Unless the prisoner wishes—” began the judge-advocate.

  “By no means,” said Tremayne composedly. Although outwardly impassive, he had been watching her intently, and it was his eyes that had perturbed her more than anything in that court. It was she who must determine for him how to proceed; how far to defend himself. He had hoped that by now Dick Butler might have been got away, so that it would have been safe to tell the whole truth, although he began to doubt how far that could avail him, how far, indeed, it would be believed in the absence of Dick Butler. Her evidence told him that such hopes as he may have entertained had been idle, and that he must depend for his life simply upon the court’s inability to bring the guilt home to him. In this he had some confidence, for, knowing himself innocent, it seemed to him incredible that he could be proven guilty. Failing that, nothing short of the discovery of the real slayer of Samoval could save him — and that was a matter wrapped in the profoundest mystery. The only man who could conceivably have fought Samoval in such a place was Sir Terence himself. But then it was utterly inconceivable that in that case Sir Terence, who was the very soul of honour, should not only keep silent and allow another man to suffer, but actually sit there in judgment upon that other; and, besides, there was no quarrel, nor ever had been, between Sir Terence and Samoval.

  “There is,” Major Swan was saying, “just one other matter upon which I should like to question Lady O’Moy.” And thereupon he proceeded to do so: “Your ladyship will remember that on the day before the event in which Count Samoval met his death he was one of a small luncheon party at your house here in Monsanto.”

  “Yes,” she replied, wondering fearfully what might be coming now.

  “Would your lady
ship be good enough to tell the court who were the other members of that party?”

  “It — it was hardly a party, sir,” she answered, with her unconquerable insistence upon trifles. “We were just Sir Terence and myself, Miss Armytage, Count Samoval, Colonel Grant, Major Carruthers and Captain Tremayne.”

  “Can your ladyship recall any words that passed between the deceased and Captain Tremayne on that occasion — words of disagreement, I mean?”

  She knew that there had been something, but in her benumbed state of mind she was incapable of remembering what it was. All that remained in her memory was Sylvia’s warning after she and her cousin had left the table, Sylvia’s insistence that she should call Captain Tremayne away to avoid trouble between himself and the Count. But, search as she would, the actual subject of disagreement eluded her. Moreover, it occurred to her suddenly, and sowed fresh terror in her soul, that, whatever it was, it would tell against Captain Tremayne.

  “I — I am afraid I don’t remember,” she faltered at last.

  “Try to think, Lady O’Moy.”

  “I — I have tried. But I — I can’t.” Her voice had fallen almost to a whisper.

  “Need we insist?” put in the president compassionately. “There are sufficient witnesses as to what passed on that occasion without further harassing her ladyship.”

  “Quite so, sir,” the major agreed in his dry voice. “It only remains for the prisoner to question the witness if he so wishes.”

  Tremayne shook his head. “It is quite unnecessary, sir,” he assured the president, and never saw the swift, grim smile that flashed across Sir Terence’s stern face.

  Of the court Sir Terence was the only member who could have desired to prolong the painful examination of her ladyship. But he perceived from the president’s attitude that he could not do so without betraying the vindictiveness actuating him; and so he remained silent for the present. He would have gone so far as to suggest that her ladyship should be invited to remain in court against the possibility of further evidence being presently required from her but that he perceived there was no necessity to do so. Her deadly anxiety concerning the prisoner must in itself be sufficient to determine her to remain, as indeed it proved. Accompanied and half supported by Miss Armytage, who was almost as pale as herself, but otherwise very steady in her bearing, Lady O’Moy made her way, with faltering steps to the benches ranged against the side wall, and sat there to hear the remainder of the proceedings.

  After the uninteresting and perfunctory evidence of the sergeant of the guard who had been present when the prisoner was ordered under arrest, the next witness called was Colonel Grant. His testimony was strictly in accordance with the facts which we know him to have witnessed, but when he was in the middle of his statement an interruption occurred.

  At the extreme right of the dais on which the table stood there was a small oaken door set in the wall and giving access to a small ante-room that was known, rightly or wrongly, as the abbot’s chamber. That anteroom communicated directly with what was now the guardroom, which accounts for the new-comer being ushered in that way by the corporal at the time.

  At the opening of that door the members of the court looked round in sharp annoyance, suspecting here some impertinent intrusion. The next moment, however, this was changed to respectful surprise. There was a scraping of chairs and they were all on their feet in token of respect for the slight man in the grey undress frock who entered. It was Lord Wellington.

  Saluting the members of the court with two fingers to his cocked hat, he immediately desired them to sit, peremptorily waving his hand, and requesting the president not to allow his entrance to interrupt or interfere with the course of the inquiry.

  “A chair here for me, if you please, sergeant,” he called and, when it was fetched, took his seat at the end of the table, with his back to the door through which he had come and immediately facing the prosecutor. He retained his hat, but placed his riding-crop on the table before him; and the only thing he would accept was an officer’s notes of the proceedings as far as they had gone, which that officer himself was prompt to offer. With a repeated injunction to the court to proceed, Lord Wellington became instantly absorbed in the study of these notes.

  Colonel Grant, standing very straight and stiff in the originally red coat which exposure to many weathers had faded to an autumnal brown, continued and concluded his statement of what he had seen and heard on the night of the 28th of May in the garden at Monsanto.

  The judge-advocate now invited him to turn his memory back to the luncheon-party at Sir Terence’s on the 27th, and to tell the court of the altercation that had passed on that occasion between Captain Tremayne and Count Samoval.

  “The conversation at table,” he replied, “turned, as was perhaps quite natural, upon the recently published general order prohibiting duelling and making it a capital offence for officers in his Majesty’s service in the Peninsula. Count Samoval stigmatised the order as a degrading and arbitrary one, and spoke in defence of single combat as the only honourable method of settling differences between gentlemen. Captain Tremayne dissented rather sharply, and appeared to resent the term ‘degrading’ applied by the Count to the enactment. Words followed, and then some one — Lady O’Moy, I think, and as I imagine with intent to soothe the feelings of Count Samoval, which appeared to be ruffled — appealed to his vanity by mentioning the fact that he was himself a famous swordsman. To this Captain Tremayne’s observation was a rather unfortunate one, although I must confess that I was fully in sympathy with it at the time. He said, as nearly as I remember, that at the moment Portugal was in urgent need of famous swords to defend her from invasion and not to increase the disorders at home.”

  Lord Wellington looked up from the notes and thoughtfully stroked his high-bridged nose. His stern, handsome face was coldly impassive, his fine eyes resting upon the prisoner, but his attention all to what Colonel Grant was saying.

  “It was a remark of which Samoval betrayed the bitterest resentment. He demanded of Captain Tremayne that he should be more precise, and Tremayne replied that, whilst he had spoken generally, Samoval was welcome to the cap if he found it fitted him. To that he added a suggestion that, as the conversation appeared to be tiresome to the ladies, it would be better to change its topic. Count Samoval consented, but with the promise, rather threateningly delivered, that it should be continued at another time. That, sir, is all, I think.”

  “Have you any questions for the witness, Captain Tremayne?” inquired the judge-advocate.

  As before, Captain Tremayne’s answer was in the negative, coupled with the now usual admission that Colonel Grant’s statement accorded perfectly with his own recollection of the facts.

  The court, however, desired enlightenment on several subjects. Came first of all Carruthers’s inquiries as to the bearing of the prisoner when ordered under arrest, eliciting from Colonel Grant a variant of the usual reply.

  “It was not inconsistent with innocence,” he said.

  It was an answer which appeared to startle the court, and perhaps Carruthers would have acted best in Tremayne’s interest had he left the question there. But having obtained so much he eagerly sought for more.

  “Would you say that it was inconsistent with guilt?” he cried.

  Colonel Grant smiled slowly, and slowly shook his head. “I fear I could not go so far, as that,” he answered, thereby plunging poor Carruthers into despair.

  And now Colonel Fletcher voiced a question agitating the minds of several members of the count.

  “Colonel Grant,” he said, “you have told us that on the night in question you had Count Samoval under observation, and that upon word being brought to you of his movements by one of your agents you yourself followed him to Monsanto. Would you be good enough to tell the court why you were watching the deceased’s movements at the time?”

  Colonel Grant glanced at Lord Wellington. He smiled a little reflectively and shook his head.

  “I am
afraid that the public interest will not allow me to answer your question. Since, however, Lord Wellington himself is present, I would suggest that you ask his lordship whether I am to give you the information you require.”

  “Certainly not,” said his lordship crisply, without awaiting further question. “Indeed, one of my reasons for being present is to ensure that nothing on that score shall transpire.”

  There followed a moment’s silence. Then the president ventured a question. “May we ask, sir, at least whether Colonel Grant’s observation of Count Samoval resulted from any knowledge of, or expectation of, this duel that was impending?”

  “Certainly you may ask that,” Lord Wellington, consented.

  “It did not, sir,” said Colonel Grant in answer to the question.

  “What grounds had you, Colonel Grant, for assuming that Count Samoval was going to Monsanto?” the president asked.

  “Chiefly the direction taken.”

  “And nothing else?”

  “I think we are upon forbidden ground again,” said Colonel Grant, and again he looked at Lord Wellington for direction.

  “I do not see the point of the question,” said Lord Wellington, replying to that glance. “Colonel Grant has quite plainly informed the court that his observation of Count Samoval had no slightest connection with this duel, nor was inspired by any knowledge or suspicion on his part that any such duel was to be fought. With that I think the court should be content. It has been necessary for Colonel Grant to explain to the court his own presence at Monsanto at midnight on the 28th. It would have been better, perhaps, had he simply stated that it was fortuitous, although I can understand that the court might have hesitated to accept such a statement. That, however, is really all that concerns the matter. Colonel Grant happened to be there. That is all that the court need remember. Let me add the assurance that it would not in the least assist the court to know more, so far as the case under consideration is concerned.”

  In view of that the president notified that he had nothing further to ask the witness, and Colonel Grant saluted and withdrew to a seat near Lady O’Moy.