The Silent Shore

He could find no answer to these questions which he asked himself, and gradually his thoughts went off into another train.

"So, after all," he continued, "his name was not Cundall but Occleve, and he it was who was this lord, this Penlyn, though that other bears the name. And he, who inherited all that wealth from the old man, had no right to it, no not so much right as Juanna-poor Juanna! – and I had. And now he is gone, and it is with the living that I have to do. Well, it shall be done, and by my father's blood the reckoning shall be a heavy one if this lord does not clear himself!"

He rose from his seat, and, going to a cupboard, took from it a suit of clothes of good, dark material, and after brushing them carefully, laid them out upon the bed. From a shelf in it he took out a very good silk hat, which he also brushed, and a pair of nearly new gloves. Then he rang the bell, and bade the servant who answered it bring him sufficient hot water for shaving and washing.

As he went through his toilette, which he did very carefully, and putting on now linen of dazzling whiteness, with which the most scrupulous person could have found no fault, his thoughts still ran upon the subject that had occupied his mind entirely for many days.

"There is danger in it, of course," he muttered to himself; "but I am used to danger; there was danger when Gonzalez provoked me, though it was not as great as that I stand in now. These English are stupid, but they are crafty also, and it may be that a trap will be set for me, perhaps is set already. Well, I will escape from it as I have from others. And, after all, I have one damning proof in my favour, one card that, if I am forced to play, must save me! What I have to do, shall be done to-day. I am resolved!"

His toilette was finished now, he was clean-shaved and well dressed from head to foot, and the Señor Miguel Guffanta stood in his room a very different-looking man from the one who had sat, an hour ago, smoking cigarettes in the hotel passage. Before he left it, he unlocked a portmanteau, and took from it a pocket-book into which he looked for a moment, and then he locked his door and descended the stairs.

"Going out for the day, Señor?" Diaz asked, as he peered out of his box.

"Yes. I am going to make a call on an English friend. Adios."

"Adios, Señor."

"It is as hot as Honduras," Señor Guffanta said to himself as he crossed to the shady side of the street. "I must walk slowly to keep myself cool."

He did walk slowly, making his way through Leicester Square and down Piccadilly, and, at nearly the bottom of the latter, turned off to the right and passed through several streets. Then, when he had arrived at a house which stood at a corner he stopped. He evidently had been here before, for he had found his way without any difficulty through the labyrinth of streets between this house and Leicester Square, and now he paused for one moment previous to mounting the doorstep. But, before he did so, he turned away and went a short distance down a side-street. The big house outside which he was standing formed the angle of two streets, and ran down the side one that the Señor had now turned into. At the back of it was a garden, fairly filled with trees, that ran some distance farther down this street, and into which an open-worked iron gate led, a gate through which any passerby could look. It was not a well-kept garden, and in it there was some undergrowth; and it was at this undergrowth, on the farthest right hand side, that Señor Guffanta peered for some few moments through the iron gate.

"It seems the same," he muttered to himself; "nothing appears disturbed since I was last here." Then he returned to the front of the house, and mounting the steps knocked at the hall door.

The footman who opened it had no time to ask the tall, well-dressed foreigner with the handsome face, who was standing before him, what he required, before the Señor said, in good English:

"Is Lord Penlyn within?"

"Yes, sir," the man answered. "Do you wish to see him?"

"Yes. Be good enough to take him my card, if you please," and he produced one bearing the name of Señor Miguel Guffanta. "Give him that," he said, "and say that I wish to see him."

The footman motioned him to a seat, and had put the card upon a salver to take to his master, when the Señor said "Stay, I will put a word upon it," and, taking a pencil from his pocket, he wrote underneath his name, "From Honduras."

"He will see me, I think," he said, "when he sees that."

The man bowed and went away, returning a few minutes afterwards to say that Lord Penlyn would see him, and the Señor followed him into the room in which so many other interviews had taken place.

Lord Penlyn rose and bowed, and Señor Guffanta returned the bow gravely, while he fixed his dark eyes intently on the other's face.

"You state on your card, Señor Guffanta, that you are from Honduras. I imagine, therefore, that you have come about a matter that at the present moment is of the utmost importance to me?" Lord Penlyn said.

"You refer to the late Mr. Cundall?" the Señor asked. "Yes, I do. Pray be seated."

"I knew him intimately," Señor Guffanta said. "It is about him and his murder that I have come to talk."

CHAPTER XIV

Between the time when Lord Penlyn, Mr. Fordyce, and Stuart had consulted together as to the way in which some endeavours should be made to discover the murderer of Walter Cundall, and when the Señor Guffanta paid his visit to the former, a week had elapsed, a week in which a good many things had taken place.

The rewards offered both by the Government and by "the friends of the late Mr. Cundall," had been announced, and the magnitude of them, especially of the latter, had caused much excitement in the public mind, and had tended to keep the general interest in the tragedy alive. The Government reward of "five hundred pounds and a free pardon to some person, or persons, not the actual murderers," had been supplemented by another of one thousand pounds from the "friends and executors;" and the walls of every police-station were placarded with the notices. There was, moreover, attached to them a statement describing, as nearly as was possible from the meagre details known, the man who, in the garb of a labourer or mechanic, was last seen near the victim; and for his identification a reward was also offered.

But it was known in London, or, at least, very generally believed, that out of these rewards nothing whatever in the way of information had come; and, although the murder had not yet ceased to be a topic of conversation in all classes of society, it was generally spoken of as a case in which the murderer would never be brought to justice. Whoever had committed the crime had now had more than a week with which, either to escape from the neighbourhood or the country, or to entirely conceal his identity. It was not likely now, people said, that he would ever be found. And the world was also asking who were the friends, and, presumably, the heirs of the dead man, who were offering the large reward? To this question no one as yet had discovered the answer; all that was known, or told, being that two lawyers of standing, Mr. Bell, of Lincoln's Inn, and Mr. Fordyce, of Paper Buildings, were acting for these friends, and for Mr. Cundall's City representatives.

The detectives themselves, though they were careful not to say so, had really very little hope that they would ever succeed in tracing the assassin. Dobson (who, in spite of the stolidity of manner, and heaviness of appearance that had excited the contempt both of Señor Guffanta and of the landlord, Zarates, was not by any means lacking in shrewdness) plainly told Stuart, in one of their many interviews, that he did not think much would be done by finding the man called Corot, even if he were successful in doing so, which he very much doubted.

"You see, sir," he said, "it's this way. He evidently had some claim or other upon Mr. Cundall, or else it isn't likely that every time he wrote for money he would have got it, and that in good sums too. Then we've only seen the notes made by Mr. Cundall on the letters, saying that he sent this and that sum; but who's to know, when he sent them, if he didn't also send some friendly letter or other, acknowledging the justice of this man's demands? He evidently-I mean this Corot-did have some claim upon him; and supposing that he was-if we could find him-to prove that claim and show us the letters Mr. Cundall wrote him in return, where should we be then? The very fact of his being able to draw on him whenever he wanted money, would go a long way towards showing that he wouldn't be very likely to kill him."

"He threatens him in the last letter we have seen. Supposing that Mr. Cundall stopped the supplies after that, would not that probably excite his revengeful passions? These Spanish Americans do not stick at taking life when they fancy themselves injured."

"He evidently didn't stop them when he answered that letter, because he sent five hundred dollars. And it was written so soon before they both must have started-almost close together-from Honduras, that it wouldn't be likely any fresh demands would have been made," Dobson answered.

"They might have met in London, and quarrelled," Stuart replied; "and after the quarrel this Corot might have tracked him till he found a fitting opportunity, and then have killed him."

"Yes, he might," Dobson said, meditatively. "Anything might have happened."

"Only you don't think it likely?" the other asked.

"Well, frankly, Mr. Stuart, I don't. He had always got money out of him, and it wasn't likely the supplies would be stopped off altogether, so that to kill him would be killing the goose with the golden eggs."

"Who on earth could have killed him, then? Who would have had any reason to do so? You know everything connected with the case now, and with Mr. Cundall's life and strange, unknown, real position-do you suspect any one?"

"No," the detective said after a pause; "I can't say I do. Of course, at first, when I heard everything, the idea did strike me that Lord Penlyn, as the most interested person, might have done it."

"So it did me," Stuart said; "but after the interview Mr. Fordyce and I had with him the idea left my mind."

"Where does he say he was on the night of the murder-the night he was staying at that hotel?"

"He says he stayed at his club until twelve, and that then he walked about the streets till nearly two, thinking over the story his brother had told him, and then let himself into the hotel and went to bed."

"It is strange that he should have been about on that night alone. If he was going to be tried for the murder, it would tell badly against him; that is, unless he could prove that he was in the hotel before Mr. Cundall started to walk to Grosvenor Place from his club."

"He couldn't prove it, because all the servants were asleep; but, nevertheless, I am certain he did not do it."

"I don't think he did," Dobson replied, "and, at the same time, I can't believe Corot did it. But I wish I could find him, all the same."

"Do you think there is still a chance of your doing so?"

"There is always a chance," the other answered; "but I have exhausted nearly everything. You see, I have so little to go on, and I am obliged to say out openly, in every inquiry I make, that I am looking for a certain man of the name of Corot. And they all give me the same answer, that they never heard of such a name. Yet his name must have been Corot."

"I do not think so," Stuart said. "A Spaniard would sign an initial before his name just the same as an Englishman would, and no Englishman would sign himself simply 'Jones,' or 'Smith.'"

"It can't be a Christian name," Dobson said, "or they would have been sure to say so, and ask me 'What Corot?' or 'Corot who' is it that you are looking for?"

"Lord Penlyn thinks it is a nickname," Stuart remarked.

"Then I shall certainly never find him. A man when he is travelling in a strange country doesn't use his nickname, and, as far as I can learn, there isn't any one here from the Republic of Honduras who ever heard of him; and it isn't any good asking people from British Honduras."

"Well," Stuart said, "we must go on trying by every means, and in the hopes that the amount of the rewards will lead to something. But there seems little prospect of our ever finding the cowardly assassin who slew him. Perhaps, after all, that labourer killed him for his watch and chain, and any money he might have about him. Such things have been done before."

"I don't believe that," Dobson said. "There was a motive for his murder. But, what was that motive?"

Then they parted, Stuart to have an interview with Lord Penlyn, and Dobson to again continue his investigations in similar resorts to the Hôtel Lepanto.

Meanwhile, Penlyn had nerved himself for another interview with Ida Raughton, an interview in which he was to tell her everything, and he went down to Belmont to do so.

He found her alone in her pretty drawing-room, Sir Paul having gone to Windsor on some business matter, and Miss Norris being out for a walk. She was still looking very pale, and her lover noticed that a paper was lying beside her in which was a column headed, "The murder of Mr. Cundall." Had she been reading that, he wondered, at the very time when he was on his way to tell her of the relationship that had existed between him and that other man who had loved her so dearly? When he had kissed her, wondering, as he did so, if it was the last kiss she would ever let him press upon her lips after she knew of what he had kept back from her at their last interview, she said to him:

"And now tell me what you have done towards finding Mr. Cundall's murderer? What steps have you taken, whom have you employed to search for that man?"

"It is thought," he answered, "that there is some man, now in England, who may have done it. A man whose name is Corot, and who was continually obtaining money from him."

"How is this known?"

"By some letters that have been found amongst Cundall's papers. Letters asking for money, and, in one case, threatening him if some was not sent at once; and with notes in his handwriting saying that different sums had been sent when demanded."

"Corot," she said, repeating the name to herself in a whisper, "Corot." Then, after a pause, she said, "No! That man is not the assassin."

"Not the assassin, Ida!" Penlyn said. "Why do you think he is not?"

"Because I have never known him, because the form of the man who slew him in my dream was familiar to me, and this man's form cannot be so."

"My darling," he said, "you place too much importance on this dream. Remember what fantasies of the brain they are, and how few of them have ever any bearing on the actual events of life."

"This was no fantasy," she answered, "no fantasy. When the murderer is discovered-if he ever is-it will be seen that I have known him. I am as sure of it as that I am sitting here. But who was he? Who was he? I have gone over and over again every man whom I have ever known, and yet I cannot bring to my mind which of all those men it is that that shrouded figure resembles." She paused again, and then she asked: "Has it been discovered yet whether he had any relations?"

"Yes, Ida," he said, rising from his seat and standing before her, while he knew that the time had come now when everything must be told. "Yes, he had one relation!"

"Who was he?" she asked, springing to her feet, while a strange lustre shone in her eyes. "Who was he? Tell me that."

"Oh, Ida," he said, "there is so much to tell! Will you hear me patiently while I tell you all?"

"Tell me everything," she replied. "I will listen."

Then he told her, standing there face to face with her. As he proceeded with his story, he could give no guess as to what effect it was having upon her, for she made no sign, but, from the seat into which she had sunk, gazed fixedly into his face. Once she shuddered slightly, and drew her dress nearer to her when he confessed that he had refused to part from him in peace; and, when she had read the letter that he had written on the night of his death, she wept silently for a few moments.

It had taken long in the telling, and the twilight of the summer night had come before he finished and she had learnt everything.

"That is what I came to tell you, Ida. Speak to me, and say that you forgive me for having kept it from your knowledge when last we met!"

"You said an hour ago," she replied, taking no heed of his prayer for forgiveness, "that dreams were idle fantasies of the brain. What if mine was such? What, if after all, I have seen the form of the man who murdered him, have spoken to him and let him kiss me, and have not recognised him?"

"Ida!" he said, "do you say this to me, to the man to whom you have plighted your love and faith? Do you mean that you suspect me of being my brother's murderer?"

"You did nothing," she answered, "to find out his murderer; you would have done nothing had that Will not been discovered."

"I obeyed his behest," he said, "and what I did was done also through my love of you."

Again she paused before she spoke, and then she said:

"It is time that you should go now, it is time that there should be no more love spoken of between us. But, if a time should ever come when it will be fitting for me to hear you speak of love to me once more-"

"Yes?"

"It will be when you can come to me and say that his murderer is brought to justice."

"And until that time shall come, you cast me off?"

"If you take it in that light, – yes."

"I have sworn," he said, and she could not but notice the deep intensity of his voice, "upon his grave that my life shall be devoted to avenging him, and no power on earth shall stop me if I can but see my way to find the man who killed him. Even though I had still another brother, whom I had loved all my life, and he had done this deed, I would track him and bring him to punishment. I swear it before God-swear that I would not spare him! And my earnest and heartfelt prayer is that the day may arrive when, as you and I desire, I may be able to come and tell you that he is brought to justice."

"Ah! yes."

"Only," he continued, still with a deep solemnity of voice that went to her heart, "when I do so come I shall come to tell you that alone-there will be with that news no pleadings of love upon my tongue. You have doubted, but just now, whether you have not seen my brother's murderer standing before you, whether the kiss of Cain has not been upon your lips. You have reproached me for my silence, you have cast me off, unless I can prove myself not an assassin. Well, so be it! By the blessing of heaven, I will prove it-but for the love which you have withdrawn from me I will ask no more. You say it is to be mine again conditionally. I will not take it back, either with or without conditions. It is restored to you; it would be best that henceforth you should keep it."

Then, with but the slightest inclination of his head, he left her, and went out from the house. And Ida, after once endeavouring to make her lips utter the name of Gervase, fell prostrate on the couch.

"He will never come back to me," she wailed; "he will never come back. I have thrown his love away for ever. God forgive and pity me."

CHAPTER XV

"I knew him intimately," Señor Guffanta said, "it is about him and his murder that I have come to talk."

These were the words with which he had responded to Lord Penlyn's reception of him; and, as he uttered them, a hope had sprung up into the young man's breast that, in the handsome Spaniard who stood before him, some one might have been found who, from his knowledge of his brother, would be able to throw some light upon, or clue to, his death.

"I cannot tell you," he said, "how welcome this information is to me. We have tried everything in our power to gather some knowledge that might lead towards finding-first, some one who would be likely to have a reason for his death; and, afterwards, the man who killed him. If you knew him intimately, it may be that you can assist us."

The Señor had taken the seat offered him by Penlyn, and from the time that he had first sat down, until now, he had not removed his dark piercing eyes from the other's face. But, as he continued to fix his glance upon Penlyn, there had come into his own face a look of surprise, a look that seemed to express a baffled feeling of consternation.

"Caramba," he said to himself while the other was speaking. "Caramba, what mystery is there here? I have made a mistake. I have erred in some way; how have I deceived myself? Yet I could have sworn by the blood of San Pedro that I was sure."

Then, when Lord Penlyn had ceased speaking, he said aloud:

"You will pardon me-but I am labouring under no mistake? You are Lord Penlyn?"

The other looked at him for a moment, wondering what such a question meant. Then he answered him:

"There is no mistake. I am Lord Penlyn."

The Spaniard passed his hand across his eyes as he heard this, but did not speak; and Lord Penlyn said:

"May I ask why you inquire?"

"Because-because I had thought-because I wished to be sure of whom I was speaking with."

"You may rest assured. And now, sir, let me ask you what you know about this unhappy Mr. Cundall and his life?"

"I know much about him. To begin with, I know that he was your brother-your elder brother-and that you have come to possess his fortune."

Lord Penlyn started and said: "You know that? May I ask how you know it?"

"It is not necessary for me to say. It is sufficient that I do know it. But it is not of that that I have come to talk."

"Of what have you come to talk then?"

"Of his murderer."

"Of his murderer!" the other repeated. "Oh! Señor Guffanta, is it possible that you can have any clue, is it possible that you think you will be able to find the man who killed him?"

"I am sure of it."

Lord Penlyn stared at him as he spoke, stared at him while in his mind there was a feeling of astonishment, mixed with something like awe, of his strange visitor. This dark, powerful-looking stranger, sat there before him perfectly calm and unmoved, looking straight at him as he spoke these words of import, "I am sure of it," and spoke them as though he was speaking of some ordinary incident. And in his calmness there was something that told the other that it was born of certainty.

"If you can do that, Señor Guffanta," he said, "there is nothing that you can ask from me, there is nothing that I can give that-"

"There is nothing I want of you," the Spaniard said, interrupting him, and making a disdainful motion with his long, brown hand. "I am not a paid police spy."

"I beg your pardon," the other answered. "I had no thought of offence. Only, sir, it is the wish of my life, and of some others who knew and loved him, to see him avenged.

"And it is the wish of my life also. Will you hear a short story?"

"I will hear anything you have to say."

"Then listen. I was born in Honduras, the child of a Spanish lady and of a friend of the old Englishman, Cundall, him from whom your brother's wealth was derived. That friend was a scoundrel, a man who tricked my mother into a marriage with him under a false name, who never was her husband at all. When they had been married, as she thought, for some few years, and when another child, my sister, had been born, she found out the deception, and-she killed him."

"Killed him!" Penlyn exclaimed.

"Yes, dead! We Spaniards brook no dishonour, we never allow a wrong to pass unavenged. She showed him the evidence of his falsehood in one hand, and with the other she shot him dead upon his own verandah. She was tried and instantly acquitted, and, in consideration of the wrong she had suffered, a law was made constituting her legally his wife, and making us children legitimate. But the disgrace was to her-a high-minded, noble woman-too much; she fell ill and died. Then the old man, Cundall, seeing that it was his friend's evil-doing that had led to our being orphans, said that henceforth we should be his care. So we grew up, and I had learnt to look upon myself and my sister as his heirs, when one day there came another who, it was easy to see, had supplanted us. It was the English lad, Walter Cundall."