The Great Impersonation

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  Von Ragastein shook his head.

  “I travel officially, and I must travel alone,” he replied. “As for yourself, they will be breaking up here tomorrow, but they will lend you an escort and put you in the direction you wish to take. This, alas, is as much as I can do for you. For us it must be farewell.”

  “Well, I can’t force myself upon you,” Dominey said a little wistfully. “It seems strange, though, to meet right out here, far away even from the by-ways of life, just to shake hands and pass on. I am sick to death of niggers and animals.”

  “It is Fate,” Von Ragastein decided. “Where I go, I must go alone. Farewell, dear friend! We will drink the toast we drank our last night in your rooms at Magdalen. That Sanscrit man translated it for us: ‘May each find what he seeks!’ We must follow our star.”

  Dominey laughed a little bitterly. He pointed to a light glowing fitfully in the bush.

  “My will-o’-the-wisp,” he muttered recklessly, “leading where I shall follow—into the swamps!”

  A few minutes later Dominey threw himself upon his couch, curiously and unaccountably drowsy. Von Ragastein, who had come in to wish him good night, stood looking down at him for several moments with significant intentness. Then, satisfied that his guest really slept, he turned and passed through the hanging curtain of dried grasses into the next banda, where the doctor, still fully dressed, was awaiting him. They spoke together in German and with lowered voices. Von Ragastein had lost something of his imperturbability.

  “Everything progresses according to my orders?” he demanded.

  “Everything, Excellency! The boys are being loaded, and a runner has gone on to Wadihuan for ponies to be prepared.”

  “They know that I wish to start at dawn?”

  “All will be prepared, Excellency.”

  Von Ragastein laid his hand upon the doctor’s shoulder.

  “Come outside, Schmidt,” he said. “I have something to tell you of my plans.”

  The two men seated themselves in the long, wicker chairs, the doctor in an attitude of strict attention. Von Ragastein turned his head and listened. From Dominey’s quarters came the sound of deep and regular breathing.

  “I have formed a great plan, Schmidt,” Von Ragastein proceeded. “You know what news has come to me from Berlin?”

  “Your Excellency has told me little,” the doctor reminded him.

  “The Day arrives,” Von Ragastein pronounced, his voice shaking with deep emotion. He paused a moment in thought and continued, “The time, even the month, is fixed. I am recalled from here to take the place for which I was destined. You know what that place is? You know why I was sent to an English public school and college?”

  “I can guess.”

  “I am to take up my residence in England. I am to have a special mission. I am to find a place for myself there as an Englishman. The means are left to my ingenuity. Listen, Schmidt. A great idea has come to me.”

  The doctor lit a cigar.

  “I listen, Excellency.”

  Von Ragastein rose to his feet. Not content with the sound of that regular breathing, he made his way to the opening of the banda and gazed in at Dominey’s slumbering form. Then he returned.

  “It is something which you do not wish the Englishman to hear?” the doctor asked.

  “It is.”

  “We speak in German.”

  “Languages,” was the cautious reply, “happen to be that man’s only accomplishment. He can speak German as fluently as you or I. That, however, is of no consequence. He sleeps and he will continue to sleep. I mixed him a sleeping draught with his whisky and soda.”

  “Ah!” the doctor grunted.

  “My principal need in England is an identity,” Von Ragastein pointed out. “I have made up my mind. I shall take this Englishman’s. I shall return to England as Sir Everard Dominey.”

  “So!”

  “There is a remarkable likeness between us, and Dominey has not seen an Englishman who knows him for eight or ten years. Any school or college friends whom I may encounter I shall be able to satisfy. I have stayed at Dominey. I know Dominey’s relatives. Tonight he has babbled for hours, telling me many things that it is well for me to know.”

  “What about his near relatives?”

  “He has none nearer than cousins.”

  “No wife?”

  Von Ragastein paused and turned his head. The deep breathing inside the banda had certainly ceased. He rose to his feet and, stealing uneasily to the opening, gazed down upon his guest’s outstretched form. To all appearance, Dominey still slept deeply. After a moment or two’s watch, Von Ragastein returned to his place.

  “Therein lies his tragedy,” he confided, dropping his voice a little lower. “She is insane—insane, it seems, through a shock for which he is responsible. She might have been the only stumbling block, and she is as though she did not exist.”

  “It is a great scheme,” the doctor murmured enthusiastically.

  “It is a wonderful one! That great and unrevealed Power, Schmidt, which watches over our country and which will make her mistress of the world, must have guided this man to us. My position in England will be unique. As Sir Everard Dominey I shall be able to penetrate into the inner circles of Society— perhaps, even, of political life. I shall be able, if necessary, to remain in England even after the storm bursts.”

  “Supposing,” the doctor suggested, “this man Dominey should return to England?”

  Von Ragastein turned his head and looked towards his questioner.

  “He must not,” he pronounced.

  “So!” the doctor murmured.

  ***

  Late in the afternoon of the following day, Dominey, with a couple of boys for escort and his rifle slung across his shoulder, rode into the bush along the way he had come. The little fat doctor stood and watched him, waving his hat until he was out of sight. Then he called to the orderly.

  “Heinrich,” he said, “you are sure that the Herr Englishman has the whisky?”

  “The water bottles are filled with nothing else, Herr Doctor,” the man replied.

  “There is no water or soda water in the pack?”

  “Not one drop, Herr Doctor.”

  “How much food?”

  “One day’s rations.”

  “The beef is salt?”

  “It is very salt, Herr Doctor.”

  “And the compass?”

  “It is ten degrees wrong.”

  “The boys have their orders?”

  “They understand perfectly, Herr Doctor. If the Englishman does not drink, they will take him at midnight to where His Excellency will be encamped at the bend of the Blue River.”

  The doctor sighed. He was not at heart an unkindly man.

  “I think,” he murmured, “it will be better for the Englishman that he drinks.”

  Chapter III

  Mr. John Lambert Mangan of Lincoln’s Inn gazed at the card which a junior clerk had just presented in blank astonishment, an astonishment which became speedily blended with dismay.

  “Good God, do you see this, Harrison?” he exclaimed, passing it over to his manager, with whom he had been in consultation. “Dominey—Sir Everard Dominey—back here in England!”

  The head clerk glanced at the narrow piece of pasteboard and sighed.

  “I’m afraid you will find him rather a troublesome client, sir,” he remarked.

  His employer frowned. “Of course I shall,” he answered testily. “There isn’t an extra penny to be had out of the estates—you know that, Harrison. The last two quarters’ allowance which we sent to Africa came out of the timber. Why the mischief didn’t he stay where he was!”

  “What shall I tell the gentleman, sir?” the boy enquired.

  “Oh, show him in!” Mr. Mangan directed ill-temperedly. “I
suppose I shall have to see him sooner or later. I’ll finish these affidavits after lunch, Harrison.”

  The solicitor composed his features to welcome a client who, however troublesome his affairs had become, still represented a family who had been valued patrons of the firm for several generations. He was prepared to greet a seedy-looking and degenerate individual, looking older than his years. Instead, he found himself extending his hand to one of the best turned out and handsomest men who had ever crossed the threshold of his not very inviting office. For a moment he stared at his visitor, speechless. Then certain points of familiarity—the well-shaped nose, the rather deep-set grey eyes—presented themselves. The surprise enabled him to infuse a little real heartiness into his welcome.

  “My dear Sir Everard!” he exclaimed. “This is a most unexpected pleasure—most unexpected! Such a pity, too, that we only posted a draft for your allowance a few days ago. Dear me—you’ll forgive my saying so—how well you look!”

  Dominey smiled as he accepted an easy chair.

  “Africa’s a wonderful country, Mangan,” he remarked, with just that faint note of patronage in his tone which took his listener back to the days of his present client’s father.

  “It—pardon my remarking it—has done wonderful things for you, Sir Everard. Let me see, it must be eleven years since we met.”

  Sir Everard tapped the toes of his carefully polished brown shoes with the end of his walking stick.

  “I left London,” he murmured reminiscently, “in April, nineteen hundred and two. Yes, eleven years, Mr. Mangan. It seems queer to find myself in London again, as I dare say you can understand.”

  “Precisely,” the lawyer murmured. “I was just wondering— I think that last remittance we sent to you could be stopped. I have no doubt you will be glad of a little ready money,” he added, with a confident smile.

  “Thanks, I don’t think I need any just at present,” was the amazing answer. “We’ll talk about financial affairs a little later on.”

  Mr. Mangan metaphorically pinched himself. He had known his present client even during his school days, had received a great many visits from him at different times, and could not remember one in which the question of finance had been dismissed in so casual a manner.

  “I trust,” he observed, chiefly for the sake of saying something, “that you are thinking of settling down here for a time now?”

  “I have finished with Africa, if that is what you mean,” was the somewhat grave reply. “As to settling down here, well, that depends a little upon what you have to tell me.”

  The lawyer nodded.

  “I think,” he said, “that you may make yourself quite easy as regards the matter of Roger Unthank. Nothing has ever been heard of him since the day you left England.”

  “His—body has not been found?”

  “Nor any trace of it.”

  There was a brief silence. The lawyer looked hard at Dominey, and Dominey searchingly back again at the lawyer.

  “And Lady Dominey?” the former asked at length.

  “Her ladyship’s condition is, I believe, unchanged,” was the somewhat guarded reply.

  “If the circumstances are favourable,” Dominey continued, after another moment’s pause, “I think it very likely that I may decide to settle down at Dominey Hall.”

  The lawyer appeared doubtful.

  “I am afraid,” he said, “you will be very disappointed with the condition of the estate, Sir Everard. As I have repeatedly told you in our correspondence, the rent roll, after deducting your settlement upon Lady Dominey, has at no time reached the interest on the mortgages, and we have had to make up the difference and send you your allowance out of the proceeds of the outlying timber.”

  “That is a pity,” Dominey replied, with a frown. “I ought, perhaps, to have taken you more into my confidence. By the by,” he added, “when—er—about when did you receive my last letter?”

  “Your last letter?” Mr. Mangan repeated. “We have not had the privilege of hearing from you, Sir Everard, for over four years. The only intimation we had that our payments had reached you was the exceedingly prompt debit of the South African bank.”

  “I have certainly been to blame,” this unexpected visitor confessed. “On the other hand, I have been very much absorbed. If you haven’t happened to hear any South African gossip lately, Mangan, I suppose it will be a surprise to you to hear that I have been making a good deal of money.”

  “Making money?” the lawyer gasped. “You making money, Sir Everard?”

  “I thought you’d be surprised,” Dominey observed coolly. “However, that’s neither here nor there. The business object of my visit to you this morning is to ask you to make arrangements as quickly as possible for paying off the mortgages on the Dominey estates.”

  Mr. Mangan was a lawyer of the new-fashioned school,—Harrow and Cambridge, the Bath Club, racquets and fives, rather than gold and lawn tennis. Instead of saying “God bless my soul!” he exclaimed “Great Scott!” dropped a very modern-looking eyeglass from his left eye, and leaned back in his chair with his hands in his pockets.

  “I have had three or four years of good luck,” his client continued. “I have made money in gold mines, in diamond mines and in land. I am afraid that if I had stayed out another year, I should have descended altogether to the commonplace and come back a millionaire.”

  “My heartiest congratulations!” Mr. Mangan found breath to murmur. “You’ll forgive my being so astonished, but you are the first Dominey I ever knew who has ever made a penny of money in any sort of way, and from what I remember of you in England—I’m sure you’ll forgive my being so frank—I should never have expected you to have even attempted such a thing.”

  Dominey smiled good-humouredly.

  “Well,” he said, “if you enquire at the United Bank of Africa, you will find that I have a credit balance there of something over a hundred thousand pounds. Then I have also—well, let us say a trifle more, invested in first-class mines. Do me the favour of lunching with me, Mr. Mangan, and although Africa will never be a favourite topic of conversation with me, I will tell you about some of my speculations.”

  The solicitor groped around for his hat.

  “I will send the boy for a taxi,” he faltered.

  “I have a car outside,” this astonishing client told him. “Before we leave, could you instruct your clerk to have a list of the Dominey mortgages made out, with the terminable dates and redemption values?”

  “I will leave instructions,” Mr. Mangan promised. “I think that the total amount is under eighty thousand pounds.”

  Dominey sauntered through the office, an object of much interest to the little staff of clerks. The lawyer joined him on the pavement in a few minutes.

  “Where shall we lunch?” Dominey asked. “I’m afraid my clubs are a little out of date. I am staying at the Carlton.”

  “The Carlton grill room is quite excellent,” Mr. Mangan suggested.

  “They are keeping me a table until half-past one,” Dominey replied. “We will lunch there, by all means.”

  They drove off together, the returned traveller gazing all the time out of the window into the crowded streets, the lawyer a little thoughtful.

  “While I think of it, Sir Everard,” the latter said, as they drew near their destination, “I should be glad of a short conversation with you before you go down to Dominey.”

  “With regard to anything in particular?”

  “With regard to Lady Dominey,” the lawyer told him a little gravely.

  A shadow rested on his companion’s face.

  “Is her ladyship very much changed?”

  “Physically, she is in excellent health, I believe. Mentally I believe that there is no change. She has unfortunately the same rather violent prejudice which I am afraid influenced your departure from England.�
��

  “In plain words,” Dominey said bitterly, “she has sworn to take my life if ever I sleep under the same roof.”

  “She will need, I am afraid, to be strictly watched,” the lawyer answered evasively. “Still, I think you ought to be told that time does not seem to have lessened her tragical antipathy.”

  “She regards me still as the murderer of Roger Unthank?” Dominey asked, in a measured tone.

  “I am afraid she does.”

  “And I suppose that every one else has the same idea?”

  “The mystery,” Mr. Mangan admitted, “has never been cleared up. It is well known, you see, that you fought in the park and that you staggered home almost senseless. Roger Unthank has never been seen from that day to this.”

  “If I had killed him,” Dominey pointed out, “why was his body not found?”

  The lawyer shook his head.

  “There are all sorts of theories, of course,” he said, “but for one superstition you may as well be prepared. There is scarcely a man or a woman for miles around Dominey who doesn’t believe that the ghost of Roger Unthank still haunts the Black Wood near where you fought.”

  “Let us be quite clear about this,” Dominey insisted. “If the body should ever be found, am I liable, after all these years, to be indicted for manslaughter?”

  “I think you may make your mind quite at ease,” the lawyer assured him. “In the first place, I don’t think you would ever be indicted.”

  “And in the second?”

  “There isn’t a human being in that part of Norfolk would ever believe that the body of man or beast, left within the shadow of the Black Wood, would ever be seen or heard of again!”

  Chapter IV

  Mr. Mangan, on their way into the grill room, loitered for a few minutes in the small reception room, chatting with some acquaintances, whilst his host, having spoken to the maître d’hôtel and ordered a cocktail from a passing waiter, stood with his hands behind his back, watching the inflow of men and women with all that interest which one might be supposed to feel in one’s fellows after a prolonged absence. He had moved a little on one side to allow a party of young people to make their way through the crowded chamber, when he was conscious of a woman standing alone on the topmost of the three thickly carpeted stairs. Their eyes met, and hers, which had been wandering around the room as though in search of some acquaintance, seemed instantly and fervently held. To the few loungers about the room, ignorant of any special significance in that studied contemplation of the man on the part of the woman, their two personalities presented an agreeable, almost a fascinating study. Dominey was six feet two in height and had to its fullest extent the natural distinction of his class, together with the half military, half athletic bearing which seemed to have been so marvellously restored to him. His complexion was no more than becomingly tanned; his slight moustache, trimmed very close to the upper lip, was of the same ruddy brown shade as his sleekly brushed hair. The woman, who had commenced now to move slowly towards him, save that her cheeks, at that moment, at any rate, were almost unnaturally pale, was of the same colouring. Her red-gold hair gleamed beneath her black hat. She was tall, a Grecian type of figure, large without being coarse, majestic though still young. She carried a little dog under one arm and a plain black silk bag, on which was a coronet in platinum and diamonds, in the other hand. The major-domo who presided over the room, watching her approach, bowed with more than his usual urbanity. Her eyes, however, were still fixed upon the person who had engaged so large a share of her attention. She came towards him, her lips a little parted.