Adventure stories; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
"Get back to the window! Watch those other fellows!" he called to his
nephew, who was hurrying to his assistance. And Forsyth did as he was
bid, though he had hardly run back and put himself on guard when the two
distant prowlers vanished into the deeper shadows of the refectory wall.
With no gentle hand the General hauled his struggling captive towards
the window. Half Forsyth’s attention was diverted to the other party to
the fray, who was slowly rising from the ground, and the other half to
the dark end of the terrace, where the remaining pair had disappeared;
and it was therefore not until the General had arrived, hanging like a
terrier to his prisoner, that the obedient sentinel had eyes for them.
But at last he had to stand aside to allow the veteran firebrand to drag
the fighting, kicking figure into the room, and then only did he notice
details.
"You’ve got the wrong one!" he exclaimed. "Don’t you see—that’s your own
man, Azimoolah?"
CHAPTER XII—_The Man Under the Seat_
When the Duke of Beaumanoir found himself alone in the railway carriage
after Alec Forsyth’s departure he sank back in his corner with a certain
sense of relief. The events of the last twenty-four hours had filled him
with a very sincere regard for his cousin Sybil, and he had not much
faith in the assurance given him by General Sadgrove that his journey
down to Prior’s Tarrant would be free from danger. His past experiences
led him to expect that the terrible Ziegler and his myrmidons would be
more than a match for the shrewd but somewhat out-of-date Indian
officer, and if there was to be an "episode" on the railway he would be
glad to think that it could not now plunge his plucky young cousin into
mourning for her lover.
"She is a girl in a thousand," he murmured, as he lit a cigarette; "I
should never forgive myself if I were the means of making her a widow
before she is a wife. If, as I half suspect, Alec’s detachment was
effected by a ruse on the part of the graybeard at the Cecil—well, I
take off my hat to that gentleman for his consideration."
As the train gathered speed, rushing through the twinkling suburban
lights, the Duke put his feet on the opposite cushions and reviewed the
situation—calmly, but always with but slender faith in being able "to
worry through" with his life. That had really become quite a secondary
object with him, so far as his personal safety was concerned; yet his
present attitude was to escape the attentions of Ziegler long enough to
convey a warning to Senator Sherman of the plot against him. Whether his
nerves would be proof against the strain till the Senator’s arrival at
Liverpool was a phase of the case which he did not care to contemplate
too closely.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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