The Great Impersonation

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “I would to Heaven,” the woman cried, “that you’d rotted to death in Africa!”

  “You carry your evil feelings far, Mrs. Unthank,” he replied. “Take my advice. Give up this foolish idea that the Black Wood is still the home of your son’s spirit. Go and live on your annuity in another part of the country and forget.”

  He moved across the room to throw open a window. Her eyes followed him wonderingly.

  “I have heard a rumour,” she said slowly; “there has been a word spoken here and there about you. I’ve had my doubts sometimes. I have them again every time you speak. Are you really Everard Dominey?”

  He swung around and faced her.

  “Who else?”

  “There’s one,” she went on, “has never believed it, and that’s her ladyship. I’ve heard strange talk from the people who’ve come under your masterful ways. You’re a harder man than the Everard Dominey I remember. What if you should be an impostor?”

  “You have only to prove that, Mrs. Unthank,” Dominey replied, “and a portion, at any rate, of the Black Wood may remain standing. You will find it a little difficult, though.—You must excuse my ringing the bell. I see no object in asking you to remain longer.”

  She rose unwillingly to her feet. Her manner was sullen and unyielding.

  “You are asking for the evil things,” she warned him.

  “Be assured,” Dominey answered, “that if they come I shall know how to deal with them.”

  ***

  Dominey found Rosamund and Doctor Harrison, who had walked over from the village, lingering on the terrace. He welcomed the latter warmly.

  “You are a godsend, Doctor,” he declared. “I have been obliged to leave my port untasted for want of a companion. You will excuse us for a moment, Rosamund?”

  She nodded pleasantly, and the doctor followed his host into the dining-room and took his seat at the table where the dessert still remained.

  “Old woman threatening mischief, eh?” the latter asked, with a keen glance from under his shaggy grey eyebrows.

  “I think she means it,” Dominey replied, as he filled his guest’s glass. “Personally,” he went on, after a moment’s pause, “the present situation is beginning to confirm an old suspicion of mine. I am a hard and fast materialist, you know, Doctor, in certain matters, and I have not the slightest faith in the vindictive mother, terrified to death lest the razing of a wood of unwholesome character should turn out into the cold world the spirit of her angel son.”

  “What do you believe?” the doctor asked bluntly.

  “I would rather not tell you at the present moment,” Dominey answered. “It would sound too fantastic.”

  “Your note this afternoon spoke of urgency,” the doctor observed.

  “The matter is urgent. I want you to do me a great favour—to remain here all night.”

  “You are expecting something to happen?”

  “I wish, at any rate, to be prepared.”

  “I’ll stay, with pleasure,” the doctor promised. “You can lend me some paraphernalia, I suppose? And give me a shake-down somewhere near Lady Dominey’s. By the by,” he began, and hesitated.

  “I have followed your advice, or rather your orders,” Dominey interrupted, a little harshly. “It has not always been easy, especially in London, where Rosamund is away from these associations.—I am hoping great things from what may happen tonight, or very soon.”

  The doctor nodded sympathetically.

  “I shouldn’t wonder if you weren’t on the right track,” he declared.

  Rosamund came in through the window to them and seated herself by Dominey’s side.

  “Why are you two whispering like conspirators?” she demanded.

  “Because we are conspirators,” he replied lightly. “I have persuaded Doctor Harrison to stay the night. He would like a room in our wing. Will you let the maids know, dear?”

  She nodded thoughtfully.

  “Of course! There are several rooms quite ready. Mrs. Midgeley thought that we might be bringing down some guests. I am quite sure that we can make Doctor Harrison comfortable.”

  “No doubt about that, Lady Dominey,” the doctor declared. “Let me be as near to your apartments as possible.”

  There was a shade of anxiety in her face.

  “You think that tonight something will happen?” she asked.

  “Tonight, or one night very soon,” Dominey assented. “It is just as well for you to be prepared. You will not be afraid, dear? You will have the doctor on one side of you and me on the other.”

  “I am only afraid of one thing,” she answered a little enigmatically. “I have been so happy lately.”

  ***

  Dominey, changed into ordinary morning clothes, with a thick cord tied round his body, a revolver in his pocket, and a loaded stick in his hand, spent the remainder of that night and part of the early morning concealed behind a great clump of rhododendrons, his eyes fixed upon the shadowy stretch of park which lay between the house and the Black Wood. The night was moonless but clear, and when his eyes were once accustomed to the pale but sombre twilight, the whole landscape and the moving objects upon it were dimly visible. The habits of his years of bush life seemed instinctively, in those few hours of waiting, to have re-established themselves. Every sense was strained and active; every night sound—of which the hooting of some owls, disturbed from their lurking place in the Black Wood, was predominant—heard and accounted for. And then, just as he had glanced at his watch and found that it was close upon two o’clock, came the first real intimation that something was likely to happen. Moving across the park towards him he heard the sound of a faint patter, curious and irregular in rhythm, which came from behind a range of low hillocks. He raised himself on his hands and knees to watch. His eyes were fastened upon a certain spot,—a stretch of the open park between himself and the hillocks. The patter ceased and began again. Into the open there came a dark shape, the irregularity of its movements swiftly explained. It moved at first upon all fours, then on two legs, then on all fours again. It crept nearer and nearer, and Dominey, as he watched, laid aside his stick. It reached the terrace, paused underneath Rosamund’s window, now barely half a dozen yards from where he was crouching. Deliberately he waited, waited for what he knew must soon come. Then the deep silence of the breathless night was broken by that familiar, unearthly scream. Dominey waited till even its echoes had died away. Then he ran a few steps, bent double, and stretched out his hands. Once more, for the last time, that devil’s cry broke the deep stillness of the August morning, throbbing a little as though with a new fear, dying away as though the fingers which crushed it back down the straining throat had indeed crushed with it the last flicker of some unholy life.

  When Doctor Harrison made his hurried appearance, a few moments later, he found Dominey seated upon the terrace, furiously smoking a cigarette. On the ground, a few yards away, lay something black and motionless.

  “What is it?” the doctor gasped.

  For the first time Dominey showed some signs of a lack of self-control. His voice was choked and uneven.

  “Go and look at it, Doctor,” he said. “It’s tied up, hand and foot. You can see where the spirit of Roger Unthank has hidden itself.”

  “Bosh!” the doctor answered, with grim contempt. “It’s Roger Unthank himself. The beast!”

  A little stream of servants came running out. Dominey gave a few orders quickly.

  “Ring up the garage,” he directed, “and I shall want one of the men to go into Norwich to the hospital. Doctor, will you go up and see Lady Dominey?”

  The habits of a lifetime broke down: Parkins, the immaculate, the silent, the perfect automaton, asked an eager question.

  “What is it, sir?”

  There was the sound of a window opening overhead. At that moment Parkins would not hav
e asked in vain for an annuity. Dominey glanced at the little semicircle of servants and raised his voice.

  “It is the end, I trust, of these foolish superstitions about Roger Unthank’s ghost. There lies Roger Unthank, half beast, half man. For some reason or other—some lunatic’s reason, of course—he has chosen to hide himself in the Black Wood all these years. His mother, I presume, has been his accomplice and taken him food. He is still alive but in a disgusting state.”

  There was a little awed murmur. Dominey’s voice had become quite matter of fact.

  “I suppose,” he continued, “his first idea was to revenge himself upon us and this household, by whom he imagined himself badly treated. The man, however, was half a madman when he came to the neighbourhood and has behaved like one ever since.—Johnson,” Dominey continued, singling out a sturdy footman with sound common sense, “get ready to take this creature into Norwich Hospital. Say that if I do not come in during the day, a letter of explanation will follow from me. The rest of you, with the exception of Parkins, please go to bed.”

  With little exclamations of wonder they began to disperse. Then one of them paused and pointed across the park. Moving with incredible swiftness came the gaunt, black figure of Rachael Unthank, swaying sometimes on her feet, yet in their midst before they could realise it. She staggered to the prostrate body and threw herself upon her knees. Her hands rested upon the unseen face, her eyes glared across at Dominey.

  “So you’ve got him at last!” she gasped.

  “Mrs. Unthank,” Dominey said sternly, “you are in time to accompany your son to the hospital at Norwich. The car will be here in two minutes. I have nothing to say to you. Your own conscience should be sufficient punishment for keeping that poor creature alive in such a fashion and ministering during my absence to his accursed desires for vengeance.”

  “He would have died if I hadn’t brought him food,” she muttered. “I have wept all the tears a woman’s broken heart could wring out, beseeching him to come back to me.”

  “Yet,” Dominey insisted, “you shared his foul plot for vengeance against a harmless woman. You let him come and make his ghoulish noises, night by night, under these windows, without a word of remonstrance. You knew very well what their accursed object was—you, with a delicate woman in your charge who trusted you. You are an evil pair, but of the two you are worse than your half-witted son.”

  The woman made no reply. She was still on her knees, bending over the prostrate figure, from whose lips now came a faint moaning. Then the lights of the car flashed out as it left the garage, passed through the iron gates and drew up a few yards away.

  “Help him in,” Dominey ordered. “You can loosen his cords, Johnson, as soon as you have started. He has very little strength. Tell them at the hospital I shall probably be there during the day, or tomorrow.”

  With a little shiver the two men stooped to their task. Their prisoner muttered to himself all the time, but made no resistance. Rachael Unthank, as she stepped in to take her place by his side, turned once more to Dominey. She was a broken woman.

  “You’re rid of us,” she sobbed, “perhaps forever.—You’ve said harsh things of both of us. Roger isn’t always—so bad. Sometimes he’s more gentle than at others. You’d have thought then that he was just a baby, living there for love of the wind and the trees and the birds. If he comes to—”

  Her voice broke. Dominey’s reply was swift and not unkind. He pointed to the window above.

  “If Lady Dominey recovers, you and your son are forgiven. If she never recovers, I wish you both the blackest corner of hell.”

  The car drove off. Doctor Harrison met Dominey on the threshold as he turned towards the house.

  “Her ladyship is unconscious now,” he announced. “Perhaps that is a good sign. I never liked that unnatural calm. She’ll be unconscious, I think, for a great many hours. For God’s sake, come and get a whisky and soda and give me one!”

  The early morning sunshine lay upon the park when the two men at last separated. They stood for a moment looking out. From the Black Wood came the whirr of a saw. The little troop of men had left their tents. The crash of a fallen tree heralded their morning’s work.

  “You are still going on with that?” the doctor asked.

  “To the very last stump of a tree, to the last bush, to the last cluster of weeds,” Dominey replied, with a sudden passion in his tone. “I will have that place razed to the bare level of the earth, and I will have its poisonous swamps sucked dry. I have hated that foul spot,” he went on, “ever since I realised what suffering it meant to her. My reign here may not be long, Doctor—I have my own tragedy to deal with—but those who come after me will never feel the blight of that accursed place.”

  The doctor grunted. His inner thoughts he kept to himself.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he conceded.

  Chapter XXIX

  The heat of a sulphurous afternoon—a curious parallel in its presage of a coming storm to the fast-approaching crisis in Dominey’s own affairs—had driven Dominey from his study out onto the terrace. In a chair by his side lounged Eddy Pelham, immaculate in a suit of white flannels. It was the fifth day since the mystery of the Black Wood had been solved.

  “Ripping, old chap, of you to have me down here,” the young man remarked amiably, his hand stretching out to a tumbler which stood by his side. “The country, when you can get ice, is a paradise this weather, especially when London’s so full of ghastly rumours and all that sort of thing, eh? What’s the latest news of her ladyship?”

  “Still unconscious,” Dominey replied. “The doctors, however, seem perfectly satisfied. Everything depends on her waking moments.”

  The young man abandoned the subject with a murmur of hopeful sympathy. His eyes were fixed upon a little cloud of dust in the distance.

  “Expecting visitors today?” he asked.

  “Should not be surprised,” was the somewhat laconic answer.

  The young man stood up, yawned and stretched himself.

  “I’ll make myself scarce,” he said. “Jove!” he added approvingly, lingering for a moment. “Jolly well cut, the tunic of your uniform, Dominey! If a country in peril ever decides to waive the matter of my indifferent physique and send me out to the rescue, I shall go to your man.”

  Dominey smiled.

  “Mine is only the local Yeomanry rig-out,” he replied. “They will nab you for the Guards!”

  Dominey stepped back through the open windows into his study as Pelham strolled off. He was seated at his desk, poring over some letters, when a few minutes later Seaman was ushered into the room. For a single moment his muscles tightened, his frame became tense. Then he realised his visitor’s outstretched hands of welcome and he relaxed. Seaman was perspiring, vociferous and excited.

  “At last!” he exclaimed. “Donner und!—My God, Dominey, what is this?”

  “Thirteen years ago,” Dominey explained, “I resigned a commission in the Norfolk Yeomanry. That little matter, however, has been adjusted. At a crisis like this—”

  “My friend, you are wonderful!” Seaman interrupted solemnly. “You are a man after my own heart, you are thorough, you leave nothing undone. That is why,” he added, lowering his voice a little, “we are the greatest race in the world. Drink before everything, my friend,” he went on, “drink I must have. What a day! The very clouds that hide the sun are full of sulphurous heat.”

  Dominey rang the bell, ordered hock and seltzer and ice. Seaman drank and threw himself into an easy-chair.

  “There is no fear of your being called out of the country because of that, I hope?” he asked a little anxiously, nodding his head towards his companion’s uniform.

  “Not at present,” Dominey answered. “I am a trifle over age to go with the first batch or two. Where have you been?”

  Seaman hitched his chair a little nearer.
>
  “In Ireland,” he confided. “Sorry to desert you as I did, but you do not begin to count for us just yet. There was just a faint doubt as to what they were going to do about internment. That is why I had to get the Irish trip off my mind.”

  “What has been decided?”

  “The Government has the matter under consideration,” Seaman replied, with a chuckle. “I can certainly give myself six months before I need to slip off. Now tell me, why do I find you down here?”

  “After Terniloff left,” Dominey explained, “I felt I wanted to get away. I have been asked to start some recruiting work down here.”

  “Terniloff—left his little volume with you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Where is it?”

  “Safe,” Dominey replied.

  Seaman mopped his forehead.

  “It needs to be,” he muttered. “I have orders to see it destroyed. We can talk of that presently. Sometimes, when I am away from you, I tremble. It may sound foolish, but you have in your possession just the two things—that map and Von Terniloff’s memoirs—which would wreck our propaganda in every country of the world.”

  “Both are safe,” Dominey assured him. “By the by, my friend,” he went on, “do you know that you yourself are forgetting your usual caution?”

  “In what respect?” Seaman demanded quickly.

  “As you stooped to sit down just now, I distinctly saw the shape of your revolver in your hip pocket. You know as well as I do that with your name and the fact that you are only a naturalised Englishman, it is inexcusably foolish to be carrying firearms about just now.”

  Seaman thrust his hand into his pocket and threw the revolver upon the table.

  “You are quite right,” he acknowledged. “Take care of it for me. I took it with me to Ireland, because one never knows what may happen in that amazing country.”

  Dominey swept it carelessly into the drawer of the desk at which he was sitting.

  “Our weapons, from now on,” Seaman continued, “must be weapons of guile and craft. You and I will have, alas! to see less of one another, Dominey. In many ways it is unfortunate that we have not been able to keep England out of this for a few more months. However, the situation must be dealt with as it exists. So far as you are concerned, you have practically secured yourself against suspicion. You will hold a brilliant and isolated place amongst those who are serving the great War Lord. When I do approach you, it will be for sympathy and assistance against the suspicions of these far-seeing Englishmen!”