William Le Queux (continued 5)
Reading edition
“But the mode of your father’s death?” I said, amazed at this remarkable revelation of craft and deception.
“Ah!” she sighed, “my opinion has altered. He died from natural causes just at a moment when a secret attempt was to be made to assassinate him. By that same train up to Manchester, Herbert Hales—who was, of course, unknown to my father—and the man Dawson travelled in company, and I have no doubt that it was their intention if opportunity was afforded, to strike a blow with the same fatal knife with which the attempt was later made upon you. Death, however, cheated them of their victim.”
“But this villainous scoundrel who is your husband? What of him?”
“The judgment of Heaven has already fallen upon him,” was her low, almost mechanical answer. “What!” I gasped eagerly. “Is he dead?”
“He quarrelled here with Dawson on the night you left London, and again the one-eyed man exhibited that remarkable craft he possessed, for, in order to rid himself of Hales and the ugly facts of which he was in possession, he appears to have given confidential information to the police of a certain robbery committed about a year ago after Kempton Park races, in which the man from whom a large sum of money was stolen was so severely injured that he died. Two detectives went to Hales’ lodgings in Lower Seymour Street about two o’clock in the morning. They demanded admittance to his room, but he, realising that Dawson had carried out his threat and that the truth was out, barricaded himself in. When they at last forced the door, they found him stretched dead upon the floor with a revolver lying beside him.”
“Then you are free, Mabel—free to marry me!” I cried, almost beside myself with joy.
She hung her head, and answered in a tone so low that I could hardly catch the words—
“No, I am unworthy, Gilbert. I deceived you.”
“The past is past, and all forgotten,” I exclaimed, snatching up her hand, and bending until my hot, passionate lips touched hers. “You are mine, Mabel—mine alone!” I cried. “That is, of course, if you dare to trust your future in my hands.”
“Dare!” she echoed, smiling through the tears which filled her eyes. “Have I not trusted you these past five years? Have you not indeed been always my best friend, from that night when we first met until this moment?”
“But have you sufficient regard for me, dearest?” I asked, deeply touched by her words. “I mean, do you love me?”
“I do, Gilbert,” she faltered, with eyes downcast in modesty. “I have loved no man except yourself.”
Then I clasped her to me, and in those moments of my new-born ecstasy I repeated to my love the oft-told tale—the tale that every man the world over tells the woman before whom he bows in adoration.
And what more need I say? A delicious sense of possession thrilled my heart. She was mine! mine for ever! I was convinced that in those terrible sufferings through which she had passed, she had been always loyal and true to me. She had, poor girl, like her father, been the innocent victim of the ingenious adventurer, Dawson, and the unscrupulous young blackguard who was his tool, and who had inveigled her into marriage in order to subsequently possess themselves of the whole of Blair’s gigantic fortune.
The wheel of fortune, however, ran back upon them, and instead of success their own avarice and ingenuity resulted in their defeat, and at the same time placed me in the position they had intended to occupy.
Chapter Thirty One.
Conclusion.
Mabel and I are now man and wife, and surely no couple in London are as perfectly happy as we are.
To us, after the storms and stress of life, has come a calm and blissful peace. The faithful Ford is back as my secretary, while we frequently chaff Reggie, who has sold his lace business, about his profound admiration of Dolly Dawson, who, even though the daughter of an adventurer, is, I am compelled to admit, a modest and most charming girl, who would, I feel sure, make my old chum an excellent life-partner. Indeed, the other day he inquired in strict confidence of Mrs Percival, who has apartments with us at Mayvill, whether she thought Mabel would take it ill were he to propose. Therefore his ideas are evidently now running in the direction of matrimony. Old Hales still lives at the Crossway at Owston, and recently came with his wife to London to visit us.
As regards the Cardinal’s secret, no word of it has ever leaked out to the public, it being far too carefully guarded by us. Over the entrance to that great storehouse of wealth the grave, black-bearded monk in the frayed habit, Fra Antonio, the friend of the poor of Lucca, still lives, dividing his lonely life between solitary meditation and attending to the wants of the destitute in that crowded city away down the green valley.
The Church of Rome has a long memory. For years, it seems, active steps have been in progress to search and recover the great treasure given by Pius IX to his favourite Sannini. The presence in London of the well-known cleric, Monsignore Galli, of Rimini, and his clandestine interview with Dolly, was, according to her own avowal, in order to ascertain some facts regarding her father’s recent movements, it being known that he had a few months before sold to a dealer in Paris the historic jewelled crucifix worn by Clement VIII which was placed in the Vatican treasury after his death in 1605.
Many men in the City are aware of the great fortune that has come to me, and you yourself are perhaps acquainted with the white exterior of one house in Grosvenor Square, yet none assuredly know the strange facts which I have here for the first time put on record.
A month ago I was seated in that silent little cell which so cunningly conceals the vast wealth of which I am now possessor and which has placed me among the millionaires of England, and in relating to him in detail Mabel’s tragic story of how cruelly she was victimised, I was expressing my mind freely upon the dastardly action of that man who had been engulfed in the subterranean flood, when the kindly monk with the furrowed face raised his hand and, pointing to the great crucifix upon the wall, said in that calm voice of his—“No, no, Signor Greenwood. Hatred and malice should not rankle in the heart of the honest man. Rather let us remember those Divine words: ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ As we forgive them! Therefore let us forgive the ‘One-Eyed Englishman.’”
The End.
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Preface
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 6
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Chapter 7
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Chapter 8
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Chapter 9
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Chapter 10
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Chapter 11
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Chapter 12
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Chapter 13
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Chapter 14
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Chapter 15
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Chapter 16
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Chapter 17
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Chapter 18
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Chapter 19
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Chapter 20
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Chapter 21
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Chapter 22
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Chapter 23
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Chapter 24
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Chapter 25
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Chapter 26
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Chapter 27
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Chapter 28
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Chapter 29
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Chapter 30
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Chapter 31
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