The sergeant considered for a moment, and Captain Tremayne became conscious for the first time that morning that his pulses were throbbing. At last his dreadful suspense came to an end.
“No, sir. Captain Tremayne turned the corner, and was out of my sight, seeing that I didn’t go beyond the guardroom doorway.”
Sir Terence’s lips parted with a snap of impatience. “But you must have heard,” he insisted. “You must have heard his steps — whether they went upstairs or straight on.”
“I am afraid I didn’t take notice, sir.”
“But even without taking notice it seems impossible that you should not have heard the direction of his steps. Steps going up stairs sound quite differently from steps walking along the level. Try to think.”
The sergeant considered again. But the president interposed. The testiness which Sir Terence had been at no pains to conceal annoyed Sir Harry, and this insistence offended his sense of fair play.
“The witness has already said that the didn’t take notice. I am afraid it can serve no good purpose to compel him to strain his memory. The court could hardly rely upon his answer after what he has said already.”
“Very well,” said Sir Terence curtly. “We will pass on. After the body of Count Samoval had been removed from the courtyard, did Mullins, my butler, come to you?”
“Yes, Sir Terence.”
“What was his message? Please tell the court.”
“He brought me a letter with instructions that it was to be forwarded first thing in the morning to the Commissary-General’s office.”
“Did he make any statement beyond that when he delivered that letter?”
The sergeant pondered a moment. “Only that he had been bringing it when he found Count Samoval’s body.”
“That is all I wish to ask, Sir Harry,” O’Moy intimated, and looked round at his fellow-members of that court as if to inquire whether they had drawn any inference from the sergeant’s statements.
“Have you any questions to ask the witness, Captain Tremayne?” the president inquired.
“None, sir,” replied the prisoner.
Came Private Bates next, and Sir Terence proceeded to question him..
“You said in your evidence that Captain Tremayne arrived at Monsanto between half-past eleven and twenty minutes to twelve?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You told us, I think, that you determined this by the fact that you came on duty at eleven o’clock, and that it would be half-an-hour or a little more after that when Captain Tremayne arrived?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That is quite in agreement with the evidence of your sergeant. Now tell the court where you were during the half-hour that followed — until you heard the guard being turned out by the sergeant.”
“Pacing in front of quarters, sir.”
“Did you notice the windows of the building at all during that time?”
“I can’t say that I did, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” echoed the private.
“Yes — why not? Don’t repeat my words. How did it happen that you didn’t notice the windows?”
“Because they were in darkness, sir.”
O’Moy’s eyes gleamed. “All of them?”
“Certainly, sir, all of them.”
“You are quite certain of that?”
“Oh, quite certain, sir. If a light had shown from one of them I couldn’t have failed to notice it.”
“That will do.”
“Captain Tremayne—” began the president.
“I have no questions for the witness, sir,” Tremayne announced.
Sir Harry’s face expressed surprise. “After the statement he has just made?” he exclaimed, and thereupon he again invited the prisoner, in a voice that was as grave as his countenance, to cross-examine he witness; he did more than invite — he seemed almost to plead. But Tremayne, preserving by a miracle his outward calm, for all that inwardly he was filled with despair and chagrin to see what a pit he had dug for himself by his falsehood, declined to ask any questions.
Private Bates retired, and Mullins was recalled. A gloom seemed to have settled now upon the court. A moment ago their way had seemed fairly clear to its members, and they had been inwardly congratulating themselves that they were relieved from the grim necessity of passing sentence upon a brother officer esteemed by all who knew him. But now a subtle change had crept in. The statement drawn by Sir Terence from the sentry appeared flatly to contradict Captain Tremayne’s own account of his movements on the night in question.
“You told the court,” O’Moy addressed the witness Mullins, consulting his notes as he did so, “that on the night on which Count Samoval met his death, I sent you at ten minutes past twelve to take a letter to the sergeant of the guard, an urgent letter which was to be forwarded to its destination first thing on the following morning. And it was in fact in the course of going upon this errand that you discovered the prisoner kneeling beside the body of Count Samoval. This is correct, is it not?”
“It is, sir.”
“Will you now inform the court to whom that letter was addressed?”
“It was addressed to the Commissary-General.”
“You read the superscription?”
“I am not sure whether I did that, but I clearly remember, sir, that you told me at the time that it was for the Commissary-General.”
Sir Terence signified that he had no more to ask, and again the president invited the prisoner to question the witness, to receive again the prisoner’s unvarying refusal.
And now O’Moy rose in his place to announce that he had himself a further statement to, make to the court, a statement which he had not conceived necessary until he had heard the prisoner’s account of his movements during the half-hour he had spent at Monsanto on the night of the duel.
“You have heard from Sergeant Flynn and my butler Mullins that the letter carried from me by the latter to the former on the night of the 28th was a letter for the Commissary-General of an urgent character, to be forwarded first thing in the morning. If the prisoner insists upon it, the Commissary-General himself may be brought before this court to confirm my assertion that that communication concerned a complaint from headquarters on the subject of the tents supplied to the third division Sir Thomas Picton’s — at Celorico. The documents concerning that complaint — that is to say, the documents upon which we are to presume that the prisoner was at work during tine half-hour in question — were at the time in my possession in my own private study and in another wing of the building altogether.”
Sir Terence sat down amid a rustling stir that ran through the court, but was instantly summoned to his feet again by the president.
“A moment, Sir Terence. The prisoner will no doubt desire to question you on that statement.” And he looked with serious eyes at Captain Tremayne.
“I have no questions for Sir Terence, sir,” was his answer.
Indeed, what question could he have asked? The falsehoods he had uttered had woven themselves into a rope about his neck, and he stood before his brother officers now in an agony of shame, a man discredited, as he believed.
“But no doubt you will desire the presence of the Commissary-General?” This was from Colonel Fletcher his own colonel and a man who esteemed him — and it was asked in accents that were pleadingly insistent.
“What purpose could it serve, sir? Sir Terence’s words are partly confirmed by the evidence he has just elicited from Sergeant Flynn and his butler Mullins. Since he spent the night writing a letter to the Commissary, it is not to be doubted that the subject would be such as he states, since from my own knowledge it was the most urgent matter in our hands. And, naturally, he would not have written without having the documents at his side. To summon the Commissary-General would be unnecessarily to waste the time of the court. It follows that I must have been mistaken, and this I admit.”
“But how could you be mistaken?” broke from the pr
esident.
“I realise your difficulty in crediting, it. But there it is. Mistaken I was.”
“Very well, sir.” Sir Harry paused and then added “The court will be glad to hear you in answer to the further evidence adduced to refute your statement in your own defence.”
“I have nothing further to say, sir,” was Tremayne’s answer.
“Nothing further?” The president seemed aghast. “Nothing, sir.”
And now Colonel Fletcher leaned forward to exhort him. “Captain Tremayne,” he said, “let me beg you to realise the serious position in which you are placed.”
“I assure you, sir, that I realise it fully.”
“Do you realise that the statements you have made to account for your movements during the half-hour that you were at Monsanto have been disproved? You have heard Private Bates’s evidence to the effect that at the time when you say you were at work in the offices, those offices remained in darkness. And you have heard Sir Terence’s statement that the documents upon which you claim to have been at work were at the time in his own hands. Do you realise what inference the court will be compelled to draw from this?”
“The court must draw whatever inference it pleases,” answered the captain without heat.
Sir Terence stirred. “Captain Tremayne,” said he, “I wish to add my own exhortation to that of your colonel! Your position has become extremely perilous. If you are concealing anything that may extricate you from it, let me enjoin you to take the court frankly and fully into your confidence.”
The words in themselves were kindly, but through them ran a note of bitterness, of cruel derision, that was faintly perceptible to Tremayne and to one or two others.
Lord Wellington’s piercing eyes looked a moment at O’Moy, then turned upon the prisoner. Suddenly he spoke, his voice as calm and level as his glance.
“Captain Tremayne — if the president will permit me to address you in the interests of truth and justice — you bear, to my knowledge, the reputation of an upright, honourable man. You are a man so unaccustomed to falsehood that when you adventure upon it, as you have obviously just done, your performance is a clumsy one, its faults easily distinguished. That you are concealing something the court must have perceived. If you are not concealing something other than that Count Samoval fell by your hand, let me enjoin you to speak out. If you are shielding any one — perhaps the real perpetrator of this deed — let me assure you that your honour as a soldier demands, in the interests of truth and justice, that you should not continue silent.”
Tremayne looked into the stern face of the great soldier, and his glance fell away. He made a little gesture of helplessness, then drew himself stiffly up.
“I have nothing more to say.”
“Then, Captain Tremayne,” said the president, “the court will pass to the consideration of its finding. And if you cannot account for the half-hour that you spent at Monsanto while Count Samoval was meeting his death, I am afraid that, in view of all the other evidences against you, your position is likely to be one of extremest gravity.
“For the last time, sir, before I order your removal, let me add my own to the exhortations already addressed to you, that you should speak. If still you elect to remain silent, the court, I fear, will be unable to draw any conclusion but one from your attitude.”
For a long moment Captain Tremayne stood there in tense, expectant silence. Yet he was not considering; he was waiting. Lady O’Moy he knew to be in court, behind him. She had heard, even as he had heard, that his fate hung perhaps upon whether Richard Butler’s presence were to be betrayed or not. Not for him to break faith with her. Let her decide. And, awaiting that decision, he stood there, silent, like a man considering. And then, because no woman’s voice broke the silence to proclaim at once his innocence, and the alibi that must ensure his acquittal, he spoke at last.
“I thank you, sir. Indeed, I am very grateful to the court for the consideration it has shown me. I appreciate it deeply, but I have nothing more to say.”
And then, when all seemed lost, a woman’s voice rang out at last:
“But I have!”
Its sharp, almost strident note acted like an electric discharge upon the court; but no member of the assembly was more deeply stricken than Captain Tremayne. For though the voice was a woman’s, yet it was not the voice for which he had been waiting.
In his excitement he turned, to see Miss Armytage standing there, straight and stiff, her white face stamped with purpose; and beside her, still seated, clutching her arm in an agony of fear, Lady O’Moy, murmuring for all to hear her:
“No, no, Sylvia. Be silent, for God’s sake!”
But Sylvia had risen to speak, and speak she did, and though the words she uttered were such as a virgin might wish to whisper with veiled countenance and averted glance, yet her utterance of them was bold to the point of defiance.
“I can tell you why Captain Tremayne is silent. I can tell you whom he shields.”
“Oh God!” gasped Lady O’Moy, wondering through her anguish how Sylvia could have become possessed of her secret.
“Miss Armytage — I implore you!” cried Tremayne, forgetting where he stood, his voice shaking at last, his hand flung out to silence her.
And then the heavy voice of O’Moy crashed in:
“Let her speak. Let us have the truth — the truth!” And he smote the table with his clenched fist.
“And you shall have it,” answered Miss Armytage. “Captain Tremayne keeps silent to shield a woman — his mistress.”
Sir Terence sucked in his breath with a whistling sound. Lady O’Moy desisted from her attempts to check the speaker and fell to staring at her in stony astonishment, whilst Tremayne was too overcome by the same emotion to think of interrupting. The others preserved a watchful, unbroken silence.
“Captain Tremayne spent that half-hour at Monsanto in her room. He was with her when he heard the cry that took him to the window. Thence he saw the body in the courtyard, and in alarm went down at once — without considering the consequences to the woman. But because he has considered them since, he now keeps silent.”
“Sir, sir,” Captain Tremayne turned in wild appeal to the president, “this is not true.” He conceived at once the terrible mistake that Miss Armytage had made. She must have seen him climb down from Lady O’Moy’s balcony, and she had come to the only possible, horrible conclusion. “This lady is mistaken, I am ready to—”
“A moment, sir. You are interrupting,” the president rebuked.
And then the voice of O’Moy on the note of terrible triumph sounded again like a trumpet through the long room.
“Ah, but it is the truth at last. We have it now. Her name! Her name!” he shouted. “Who was this wanton?”
Miss Armytage’s answer was as a bludgeon-stroke to his ferocious exultation.
“Myself. Captain Tremayne was with me.”
CHAPTER XVIII FOOL’S MATE
Writing years afterwards of this event — in the rather tedious volume of reminiscences which he has left us — Major Carruthers ventures the opinion that the court should never have been deceived; that it should have perceived at once that Miss Armytage was lying. He argues this opinion upon psychological grounds, contending that the lady’s deportment in that moment of self-accusation was the very last that in the circumstances she alleged would have been natural to such a character as her own.
“Had she indeed,” he writes, “been Tremayne’s mistress, as she represented herself, it was not in her nature to have announced it after the manner in which she did so. She bore herself before us with all the effrontery of a harlot; and it was well known to most of us that a more pure, chaste, and modest lady did not live. There was here a contradiction so flagrant that it should have rendered her falsehood immediately apparent.”
Major Carruthers, of course, is writing in the light of later knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his psychological deduction. Just as a shy man
will so overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear herself with a boldness which was no more than a mask upon the shame and anguish of her mind.
And this, I think, was the view that was taken by those present. The court it was — being composed of honest gentlemen — that felt the shame which she dissembled. There were the eyes that fell away before the spurious effrontery of her own glance. They were disconcerted one and all by this turn of events, without precedent in the experience of any, and none more disconcerted — though not in the same sense — than Sir Terence. To him this was checkmate — fool’s mate indeed. An unexpected yet ridiculously simple move had utterly routed him at the very outset of the deadly game that he was playing. He had sat there determined to have either Tremayne’s life or the truth, publicly avowed, of Tremayne’s dastardly betrayal. He could not have told you which he preferred. But one or the other he was fiercely determined to have, and now the springs of the snare in which he had so cunningly taken Tremayne had been forced apart by utterly unexpected hands.
“It’s a lie!” he bellowed angrily. But he bellowed, it seemed, upon deaf ears. The court just sat and stared, utterly and hopelessly at a loss how to proceed. And then the dry voice of Wellington followed Sir Terence, cutting sharply upon the dismayed silence.
“How can you know that?” he asked the adjutant. “The matter is one upon which few would be qualified to contradict Miss Armytage. You will observe, Sir Harry, that even Captain Tremayne has not thought it worth his while to do so.”
Those words pulled the captain from the spell of sheer horrified amazement in which he had stood, stricken dumb, ever since Miss Armytage had spoken.
“I — I — am so overwhelmed by the amazing falsehood with which Miss Armytage has attempted to save me from the predicament in which I stand. For it is that, gentlemen. On my oath as a soldier and a gentleman, there is not a word of truth in what Miss Armytage has said.”
“But if there were,” said Lord Wellington, who seemed the only person present to retain a cool command of his wits, “your honour as a soldier and a gentleman — and this lady’s honour — must still demand of you the perjury.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 331
