The Secret of the Silver Car by Wyndham Martyn (snow like ashes series .TXT) 📖

he hesitated, “of adventures where I pitted myself against the world and won.”

She thought of that night in Dereham. Was that one of his adventures? Certainly he had given her the impression of great strength and resolution. Of all the men she met Rudolph Castoon and Anthony Trent most radiated this uncommon quality.

She looked across the big room to her father. Arthur was making a big break and the earl was not watching him; she knew he was not thinking of the game. He was thinking of that insuperable obstacle which barred him from the work he loved, the work in which he was needed. He looked a sad, broken man and reminded Trent of the portrait of Julius the second, by Raphael, which he had seen in Florence.

“I dare not tell,” she said. “It touches big things and would involve many names and would lead you into great peril.”

“It would not be the peril for me that you think,” he insisted. “I shall know when my hour is to strike. Darling, let me try to do something for the woman I love, for the family where I found such happiness and such sorrow. I have brought so much trouble on you that I want to feel I did something to atone.”

He felt for a fleeting moment the warm clasp of her hand.

“You have often been in danger?” she asked.

“It has been my life,” he said simply.

“I am afraid to tell my father,” she confessed.

“Must he know?” Trent asked.

“Yes. I know the whole hideous thing only in the barest outline.”

“I shall broach the subject,” he said confidently, “after all I have nothing to lose. I go tomorrow anyway.”

She hesitated a moment.

“My father may think you are doing it at a price.”

“Instead of which I am offering to help you as atonement.”

The light died from her eyes and the hope left her heart. Nothing could alter his decision, nothing apparently blot out the past that held them asunder.

The Earl of Rosecarrel heard Anthony Trent’s request for a private interview with a rather troubled mind. He had no doubt it had to do with his daughter. He told himself he had been very careless.

“By all means my dear fellow,” he said cordially, “come to my library where we shall be quite alone.”

Never had Trent been bidden to this great book lined chamber. It was open neither to those who came on visitors’ day nor to the casual guest. It was here the earl and the prime minister were closeted for several hours.

“My lord,” Trent began, “I am going to say something that will first of all astonish you and then probably make you angry at what seems presumption.”

“I hardly think you will do that,” the other said urbanely. He was sure now it had to do with Lady Daphne.

“You have said,” Trent went on, “that you are grateful to me for my help to your son, Arthur.”

“I am profoundly grateful,” the earl said quickly, “you have made a new man of him.”

“Then promise me you will not interrupt me by ringing for a servant to show me out.”

“I will promise that blindly,” smiled the nobleman.

“I owe a debt to your family. Arthur saved my life and I am still a debtor. Since I have been here I have found out a great deal about your life work. I found out also that at a moment when the Empire most needed you you retired. I know at the present moment your name is being mentioned everywhere as the most suitable for one of the highest offices under the crown. I know the prime minister made a golfing trip to Newquay the excuse to call on you personally. I know that in this very room you refused a request from your sovereign.”

There was no doubting the agitation this statement produced in the ex-ambassador. But he was mindful of his promise.

“I know,” the inexorable Trent went on, “that your refusal has something to do with what your son did when he was irresponsible. I saw you throw a terrible glance at him during the prime minister’s talk over the luncheon table. It told me plainly that remotely or not it was because of something he did that you remain here eating your heart out. Afterwards you were especially kind to him. It was as though you repented your momentary anger. My lord, am I right so far?”

“I do not pretend to understand how you have learned these facts,” the earl said slowly, “but you have made no error. What happened is over, dead and done with.”

“I’m not so sure,” Trent cried. “Perhaps because there was a day when I wrote stories of a rather lurid type I can think of half a hundred things that might seem final to you but which would yield to my type of mind. Nothing is final to us Americans.”

Lord Rosecarrel looked at him shrewdly.

“What you say is preposterous, Mr. Trent, but nevertheless it interests me. What causes could this fertile mind of yours suggest?”

“Blackmail first of all,” Trent said. Lord Rosecarrel did not give any indication whether the shot told or not. “Blackmail can be sub-divided into many heads.”

“And is there a remedy for blackmail, then?” the earl asked blandly.

“A remedy can always be found for things,” Trent said confidently.

“It amounts to this,” the diplomat continued calmly as though he were discussing an interesting phase in another man’s life, “that you suppose I am held inactive here because of the hold some man or government has on me. Admitting for a moment that this is true, do you not suppose that I should have strained every nerve, called upon my every resource to remove the obstacle which you admit has a remedy?”

“I think you have tried and failed,” Trent said.

“It is curious,” said the earl still impersonally, “how fiction of the type you used to write has taken possession of the public mind.”

“I should not fail,” Trent said steadily.

“You still persist in making the imaginary real,” the earl said good humouredly.

“Why do you fence with me at a time like this?” Trent said making a gesture of despair. “Can’t you see I am in earnest?”

“You rate your powers so highly then?”

“You employed amateurs, my lord, I am a professional adventurer.”

“What are you doing in my house?”

“Living honest hours and learning that a past can’t be undone. I know very well that you thought I wanted to see you because I love your daughter. It is true. I do love her. And it is because I love her that I am going. And it is because I want to prove that I am only truthful when I say that, I offer to undertake anything that may help you.”

“But the reward?”

“To have done something for her is the reward.”

The earl was silent for a minute. Then he paced the room. Trent watched his tall, bent form wondering what was to be the outcome.

“Mr. Trent,” said the earl pausing before him, “you are either a scoundrel or else the most chivalrous gentleman I have ever known. For the moment I hardly know what to think, or say, or do. If I give you my confidence and you abuse it the public will share the knowledge of a disgrace which now only my enemy knows. If you set me free from my bondage you put me under an obligation that I can never pay. If I let you make the attempt in which two men have given their lives and you fail I shall never forgive myself.”

“But my lord,” Trent reminded him, “I am a professional. I have never failed. I detest a brawl but I love danger, and life means less to me than you might suppose. If I fail you will never be compromised. I shall want no help nor send any plea for assistance. I work alone—always.”

The earl did not answer him directly.

“The hounds met at Michaelstowe this morning,” he said, “and I took the opportunity of sending off a wire in reply to this post card which came last night.”

Trent looked at it. It was in a language unknown to him.

“It is in Hungarian,” Lord Rosecarrel told him, “and it says, ‘Please let me know that the report in today’s Times that you have accepted office is incorrect.’ The telegram I sent to the writer said: ‘The report is wrong. I have refused.’ There you have my secret. The man who sent the post card, in effect, threatened me with exposure if I came out of retirement.”

“Then it is blackmail,” Trent breathed.

“I am going to trust you,” the earl said suddenly. “I am going to think of you as the chivalrous gentleman. The man who wrote the post card is a very big figure hi the politics of what used to be called mittel Europa. Our interests clashed. He was on one side and I on the other. It happened that I was usually able to out manoeuvre him because my training had been such that no man in public life knew the Balkans as I did, and do still, the wheels within wheels, the inner hidden things that make national sentiment so dangerous at times or so valuable as the case may be. In time he came to think me the one man who could comprehend his activities and check them. He set out to ruin me. He believed his ends justified other methods than I used. I was shot at on the Ferencz Jozsef rakpart for example and a companion killed.”

“Do you still seem a menace to him?” Trent asked.

“More than ever if I take the position offered me in the near East. You see the rumour in the Times brings instant recognition. I knew he was in London.”

Trent looked at the speaker and wondered what it could be which kept him from the work his country demanded of him. Assuredly it was not lack of courage.

“He was in London when he obtained the hold over me that keeps me buried here. Arthur was at the moment a secretary of Rudolph Castoon. One night he opened a strong box of mine and took some bank notes to pay a racing debt. It was a terrible blow to think he had fallen so low, but I was more alarmed to find a tentative draft of a treaty which was never made effective, a document in my own writing, had disappeared. At the time it might have incensed a country since allied with us almost to the point of a declaration of war. Arthur told me it was gibberish to him and he had thrown it on the fire. A month later I was summoned to a cabinet meeting. A friend told me I was to be asked to produce the treaty draft. I called Arthur to see me. I told him my honor was involved and that if he had not destroyed it or was holding it to sell another power I must know. He gave me his solemn word of honor, uttered in the most convincing manner, that he had thrown it into the open fire.

“When the prime minister asked for the draft I told him I had destroyed it thinking its value gone and fearful of the danger of having it at my house in Grosvenor Place. At the moment I was absolutely convinced that my son had been honest with me. It was obvious I could not tell the cabinet I had caught him stealing money or that he had torn up the draft. I gave the cabinet my word of honor that it was destroyed and I allowed them to assume that