第183章

"Yes, I can," she said."Yes, I can; but I wish to make a statement for myself.Whether Jem Temple Barholm is alive or dead, Captain Palliser, T.Tembarom has done him no harm."The duke sat up delicately alert.He had evidently found her worth looking at and listening to from the outset.

"Hear! Hear!" he said pleasantly.

"What were the exact words?" suggested Palliser.

Miss Alicia who had been weeping on Little Ann's shoulder --almost on her lap--lifted her head to listen.Hutchinson set his jaw and grunted, and Mr.Palford cleared his throat mechanically.

"He said," and no one better than herself realized how ominously "cumulative" the words sounded, "that a man would know a face like that again--wherever he saw it.""Wherever he saw it!" ejaculated Mr.Grimby.

There ensued a moment of entire pause.It was inevitable.Having reached this point a taking of breath was necessary.Even the duke ceased to appear entirely detached.As Mr.Palford turned to his papers again there was perhaps a slight feeling of awkwardness in the air.Miss Alicia had dropped, terror smitten, into new tears.

The slight awkwardness was, on the whole, rather added to by T.

Tembarom--as if serenely introduced by the hand of drama itself--opening the door and walking into the room.He came in with a matter-of-fact, but rather obstinate, air, and stopped in their midst, looking round at them as if collectedly taking them all in.

Hutchinson sprang to his feet with a kind of roar, his big hands plunging deep into his trousers pockets.

"Here he is! Danged if he isn't!" he bellowed."Now, lad, tha let 'em have it!"What he was to let them have did not ensue, because his attitude was not one of assault.

"Say, you are all here, ain't you!" he remarked obviously."Good business!"Miss Alicia got up from the sofa and came trembling toward him as one approaches one risen from the dead, and he made a big stride toward her and took her in his arms, patting her shoulder in reproachful consolation.

"Say, you haven't done what I told you--have you?" he soothed."You've let yourself get rattled.""But I knew it wasn't true," she sobbed."I knew it wasn't.""Of course you did, but you got rattled all the same." And he patted her again.

The duke came forward with a delightfully easy and--could it be almost jocose?--air of bearing himself.Palford and Grimby remarked it with pained dismay.He was so unswerving in his readiness as he shook hands.

"How well done of you!" he said."How well arranged! But I'm afraid you didn't arrange it at all.It has merely happened.Where did you come from?""From America; got back yesterday." T.Tembarom's hand-shake was a robust hearty greeting."It's all right.""From America!" The united voices of the solicitors exclaimed it.

Joseph Hutchinson broke into a huge guffaw, and he stamped in exultation.

"I'm danged if be has na' been to America!" he cried out."To America!""Oh!" Miss Alicia gasped hysterically, "they go backward and forward to America like--like lightning!"Little Ann had not risen at his entrance, but sat still with her hands clasped tightly on her lap.Her face had somehow the effect of a flower gradually breaking into extraordinary bloom.Their eyes had once met and then she remained, her soul in hers which were upon him, as she drank in every word he uttered.Her time had not yet come.

Lady Joan had remained standing by the chair, which a few moments before her manner had seemed to transform into something like a witness stand in a court of justice.Her hungry eyes had grown hungrier each second, and her breath came and went quickly.The very face she had looked up at on her last talk with T.Tembarom--the oddly human face--turned on her as he came to her.It was just as it had been that night --just as commonly uncommon and believable.

"Say, Lady Joan! You didn't believe all that guff, did you--You didn't?" he said.

"No--no--no! I couldn't!" she cried fiercely.

He saw she was shaking with suspense, and he pushed her gently into a chair.

"You'd better sit down a minute.You're about all in," he said.

She might have been a woman with an ague as she caught his arm, shaking it because her hands themselves so shook.

"Is it true?" was her low cry."Is he alive--is he alive?""Yes, he's alive." And as he answered he drew close and so placed himself before her that he shielded her from the others in the room.

He seemed to manage to shut them out, so that when she dropped her face on her arms against the chair-back her shuddering, silent sobbing was hidden decently.It was not only his body which did it, but some protecting power which was almost physically visible.She felt it spread before her.

"Yes, he's alive," he said, "and he's all right--though it's been a long time coming, by gee!""He's alive." They all heard it.For a man of Palliser's make to stand silent in the midst of mysterious slowly accumulating convictions that some one--perilously of his own rarely inept type--was on the verge of feeling appallingly like a fool--was momentarily unendurable.And nothing had been explained, after all.

"Is this what you call `bluff' in New York?" he demanded."You've got a lot to explain.You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?" and realized his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.

The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with which T.Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they ran over him.

"Admit!" he said."Admit hell! He's up-stairs," with a slight jerk of his head in the direction of the ceiling.

The duke alone did not gasp.He laughed slightly.

"We've just got here.He came down from London with me, and Sir Ormsby Galloway." And he said it not to Palliser but to Palford and Grimby.

"The Sir Ormsby Galloway?" It was an ejaculation from Mr.Palford himself.

T.Tembarom stood square and gave his explanation to the lot of them, so to speak, without distinction.