I scudded toward them, lugging at my sword as I ran, but while I was yet fifty yards away the door of the house opened and closed behind them. An instant, and the door reopened to let out one of the men, who slammed it behind him and entered the chaise. The postilion whipped up his horses and drove off. The door yielded nothing to my hand. Evidently it was locked and bolted. I cried out to open, and beat wildly upon the door with the hilt of my sword. Indeed, I quite lost my head, threatening, storming, and abusing. I might as well have called upon the marble busts at the Abbey to come forth, for inside there was the silence of the dead. Presently lights began to glimmer in windows along the dark street, and nightcapped heads were thrust out to learn what was ado. I called on them to join me in a rescue, but I found them not at all keen for the adventure. They took me for a drunken Mohawk or some madman escaped from custody.
“Here come the watch to take him away,” I heard one call across the street to another.
I began to realize that an attempt to force an entrance was futile. It would only end in an altercation with the approaching watch. Staid citizens were already pointing me out to them as a cause of the disturbance. For the moment I elected discretion and fled incontinent down the street from the guard.
But I was back before ten minutes were up, lurking in the shadows of opposite doorways, examining the house from front and rear, searching for some means of ingress to this mysterious dwelling. I do not know why the thing stuck in my mind. Perhaps some appealing quality of youth in the face and voice stirred in me the instinct for the championship of dames that is to be found in every man. At any rate I was grimly resolved not to depart without an explanation of the strange affair.
What no skill of mine could accomplish chance did for me. While I was inviting a crick in my neck from staring up at the row of unlighted windows above me, a man came out of the front door and stood looking up and down the street. Presently he spied me and beckoned. I was all dishevelled and one stain of mud from head to foot.
“D’ ye want to earn a shilling, fellow?” he called.
I grumbled that I was out of work and money. Was it likely I would refuse such a chance? And what was it he would have me do?
He led the way through the big, dimly-lighted hall to an up-stairs room near the back of the house. Two heavy boxes were lying there, packed and corded, to be taken down-stairs. I tossed aside my cloak and stooped to help him. He straightened with a jerk. I had been standing in the shadow with my soiled cloak wrapped about me, but now I stood revealed in silken hose, satin breeches, and laced doublet. If that were not enough to proclaim my rank a rapier dangled by my side.
“Rot me, you’re a gentleman,” he cried.
I affected to carry off my shame with bluster.
“What if I am!” I cried fiercely. “May not a gentleman be hungry, man? I am a ruined dicer, as poor as a church mouse. Do you grudge me my shilling?”
He shrugged his shoulders. Doubtless he had seen more than one broken gentleman cover poverty with a brave front of fine lawn and gilded splendour of array.
“All one to me, your Royal ’Ighness. Take ’old ’ere,” he said facetiously.
We carried the boxes into the hall. When we had finished I stood mopping my face with a handkerchief, but my eyes were glued to the label tacked on one of the boxes.
John Armitage, The Oaks, Epsom, Surrey.
“Wot yer waitin’ for?” asked the fellow sharply.
“The shilling,” I told him.
I left when he gave it me, and as I reached the door he bawled to be sure to shut it tight. An idea jumped to my mind on the instant, and though I slammed the door I took care to have my foot an inch or two within the portal. Next moment I was walking noisily down the steps and along the pavement.
Three minutes later I tiptoed back up the steps and tried the door. I opened it slowly and without noise till I could thrust in my head. The fellow was nowhere to be seen in the hall. I whipped in, and closed the door after me. Every board seemed to creak as I trod gingerly toward the stairway. In the empty house the least noise echoed greatly. The polished stairs cried out hollowly my presence. I was half way up when I came to a full stop. Some one was coming down round the bend of the stairway. Softly I slid down the balustrade and crouched behind the post at the bottom. The man—it was my friend of the shilling—passed within a foot of me, his hand almost brushing the hair of my head, and crossed the hall to a room opposite. Again I went up the stairs, still cautiously, but with a confidence born of the knowledge of his whereabouts.
The house was large, and I might have wandered long without guessing where lay the room I wanted had it not been for a slight sound that came to me—the low, soft sobbing of a woman. I groped my way along the dark passage, turned to the left, and presently came to the door from behind which issued the sound. The door was locked on the outside, and the key was in the lock. I knocked, and at once silence fell. To my second knock I got no answer. Then I turned the key and entered.
A girl was sitting at a table with her back to me, her averted head leaning wearily on her hand. Dejection spoke in every line of her figure. She did not even turn at my entrance, thinking me no doubt to be her guard. I stood waiting awkwardly, scarce knowing what to say.
“Madam,” I began, “may I—Is there——?” So far I got, then I came to an embarrassed pause, for I might as well have talked to the dead for all the answer I got. She did not honour me with the faintest sign of attention. I hemmed and hawed and bowed to her back with a growing confusion.
At last she asked over her shoulder in a strained, even voice,
“What is it you’re wanting now? You said I was to be left by my lane to-night.”
I murmured like a gawk that I was at her service, and presently as I shifted from one foot to the other she turned slowly. Her face was a dumb cry for help, though it was a proud face too—one not lacking in fire and courage. I have seen fairer faces, but never one more to my liking. It was her eyes that held me. The blue of her own Highland lochs, with all their changing and indescribably pathetic beauty, lurked deeply in them. Unconsciously they appealed to me, and the world was not wide enough to keep me from her when they called. Faith, my secret is out already, and I had resolved that it should keep till near the end of my story!
I had dropped my muddy cloak before I entered, and as she looked at me a change came over her. Despair gave way to a startled surprise. Her eyes dilated.
“Who are you, sir? And—what are you doing here?” she demanded.
I think some fear or presage of evil was knocking at her heart, for though she fronted me very steadily her eyes were full of alarm. What should a man of rank be doing in her room on the night she had been abducted from her lodgings unless his purpose were evil? She wore a long cloak stretching to the ground, and from under it slippered feet peeped out. The cloak was of the latest mode, very wide and open at the neck and shoulders, and beneath the mantle I caught more than a glimpse of the laced white nightrail and the fine sloping neck. ’Twas plain that her abductors had given her only time to fling the wrap about her before they snatched her from her bedchamber. Some wild instinct of defense stirred within her, and with one hand she clutched the cloak tightly to her throat. My heart went out to the child with a great rush of pity. The mad follies of my London life slipped from me like the muddy garment outside, and I swore by all I held most dear not to see her wronged.
“Madam,”