“No; that is not mine; at least, I think not. Never made my R half a quarter so well in my life.”
“Many thanks, my lord,” said Baroni quietly. “One question more and we can substantiate the fact. Did your lordship indorse any bill on the 15th of last month?”
The Seraph looked surprised, and reflected a moment. “No, I didn’t,” he said after a pause. “I have done it for men, but not on that day; I was shooting at Hornsey Wood most of it, if I remember right. Why do you ask?”
“I will tell you, my lord, if you grant me a private interview.”
The Seraph moved away. “Never do that,” he said briefly; “private interviews,” thought he, acting on past experience, “with women always mean proposals, and with men always mean extortion.”
Baroni made a quick movement toward him.
“An instant, my lord! This intimately concerns yourself. The steps of an hotel are surely not the place in which to speak of it?”
“I wish to hear nothing about it,” replied Rock, putting him aside; while he thought to himself regretfully, “That is ‘stiff,’ that bit of paper; perhaps some poor wretch is in a scrape. I wish I hadn’t so wholly denied my signature. If the mischief’s done, there’s no good in bothering the fellow.”
The Seraph’s good nature was apt to overlook such trifles as the Law.
Baroni kept pace with him as he approached the hotel door, and spoke very low.
“My lord, if you do not listen, worse may befall the reputation both of your regiment and your friends.”
The Seraph swung round; his careless, handsome face set stern in an instant; his blue eyes grave, and gathering an ominous fire.
“Step yonder,” he said curtly, signing the Hebrew toward the grand staircase. “Show that person to my rooms, Alexis.”
But for the publicity of the entrance of the Badischer Hof the mighty right arm of the Guardsman might have terminated the interview then and there, in different fashion. Baroni had gained his point, and was ushered into the fine chambers set apart for the future Duke of Lyonnesse. The Seraph strode after him, and as the attendant closed the door and left them alone in the first of the great lofty suite, all glittering with gilding, and ormolu, and malachite, and rose velvet, and Parisian taste, stood like a tower above the Jew’s small, slight form; while his words came curtly, and only by a fierce effort through his lips.
“Substantiate what you dare to say, or my grooms shall throw you out of that window! Now!”
Baroni looked up, unmoved; the calm, steady, undisturbed glance sent a chill over the Seraph; he thought if this man came but for purposes of extortion, and were not fully sure that he could make good what he said, this was not the look he would give.
“I desire nothing better, my lord,” said Baroni quietly, “though I greatly regret to be the messenger of such an errand. This bill, which in a moment I will have the honor of showing you, was transacted by my house (I am one of the partners of a London discounting firm), indorsed thus by your celebrated name. Moneys were lent on it, the bill was made payable at two months’ date; it was understood that you accepted it; there could be no risk with such a signature as yours. The bill was negotiated; I was in Leyden, Lubeck, and other places at the period; I heard nothing of the matter. When I returned to London, a little less than a week ago, I saw the signature for the first time. I was at once aware that it was not yours, for I had some paid bills, signed by you, at hand, with which I compared it. Of course, my only remedy was to seek you out, although I was nearly certain, before your present denial, that the bill was a forgery.”
He spoke quite tranquilly still, with a perfectly respectful regret, but with the air of a man who has his title to be heard, and is acting simply in hie own clear right. The Seraph listened, restless, impatient, sorely tried to keep in the passion which had been awakened by the hint that this wretched matter could concern or attaint the honor of his corps.
“Well! speak out!” he said impatiently. “Details are nothing. Who drew it? Who forged my name, if it be forged? Quick! give me the paper.”
“With every trust and every deference, my lord, I cannot let the bill pass out of my own hands until this unfortunate matter be cleared up—if cleared up it can be. Your lordship shall see the bill, however, of course, spread here upon the table; but first, let me warn you, my Lord Marquis, that the sight will be intensely painful to you.
“Very painful, my lord,” added Baroni impressively. “Prepare yourself for—”
Rock dashed his hand down on the marble table with a force that made the lusters and statuettes on it ring and tremble.
“No more words! Lay the bill there.”
Baroni bowed and smoothed out upon the console the crumpled document, holding it with one hand, yet leaving visible with the counterfeited signature one other, the name of the forger in whose favor the bill was drawn; that other signature was—“Bertie Cecil.”
“I deeply regret to deal you such a blow from such a friend, my lord,” said the Jew softly. The Seraph stooped and gazed—one instant of horrified amazement kept him dumb there, staring at the written paper as at some ghastly thing; then all the hot blood rushed over his fair, bold face; he flung himself on the Hebrew, and, ere the other could have breath or warning, tossed him upward to the painted ceiling and hurled him down again upon the velvet carpet, as lightly as a retriever will catch up and let fall a wild duck or a grouse, and stood over Baroni where he lay.
“You hound!”
Baroni, lying passive and breathless with the violence of the shock and the surprise, yet kept, even amid the hurricane of wrath that had tossed him upward and downward as the winds toss leaves, his hold upon the document, and his clear, cool, ready self-possession.
“My lord,” he said faintly, “I do not wonder at your excitement, aggressive as it renders you; but I cannot admit that false which I know to be a for—”
“Silence! Say that word once more, and I shall forget myself and hurl you out into the street like the dog of a Jew you are!”
“Have patience an instant, my lord. Will it profit your friend and brother-in-arms if it be afterward said that when this charge was brought against him, you, my Lord Rockingham, had so little faith in his power to refute it that you bore down with all your mighty strength in a personal assault upon one so weakly as myself, and sought to put an end to the evidence against him by bodily threats against my safety, and by—what will look legally, my lord, like—an attempt to coerce me into silence and to obtain the paper from my hands by violence?”
Faint and hoarse the words were, but they were spoken with quiet confidence, with admirable acumen; they were the very words to lash the passions of his listener into unendurable fire, yet to chain them powerless down; the Guardsman stood above him, his features flushed and dark with rage, his eyes literally blazing with fury, his lips working under his tawny, leonine beard. At every syllable he could have thrown himself afresh upon the Jew and flung him out of his presence as so much carrion; yet the impotence that truth so often feels, caught and meshed in the coils of subtlety—the desperate disadvantage at which Right is so often placed, when met by the cunning science and sophistry of Wrong—held the Seraph in their net now. He saw his own rashness, he saw how his actions could be construed till they cast a slur even on the man he defended; he saw how legally he was in error, how legally the gallant vengeance of an indignant friendship might be construed into consciousness of guilt in the accused for whose sake the vengeance fell.
He stood silent, overwhelmed with the intensity of his own passion, baffled by the ingenuity of a serpent-wisdom he could not refute.
Ezra Baroni saw his advantage. He ventured to raise himself slightly.
“My lord, since your faith in your friend is so perfect, send for him. If he be innocent, and I a liar, with a look I shall be confounded.”
The tone was perfectly impassive,