FullReads

“Mr. Mackenzie,” said I, “you will consider yourself under arrest. Mr. Urquhart, you will hold yourself ready to give me a full explanation. Whichever of you may be in the right, this is a disgraceful business, and dishonouring to your regiment and the cloth you wear: so disgraceful, that I hesitate to call up the guard and expose it to more eyes than ours. If Mr. Mackenzie”–I turned to him again–“can behave himself like a gentleman, and accept the fact of his arrest without further trouble, the scandal can at least be postponed until I discover how much it is necessary to face. For the moment, sir, you are in charge of Captain Murray. Do you understand?”

He bent his head sullenly. “He shall fight me, whatever happens,” he muttered.

I found it wise to pay no heed to this. “It will be best,” I said to Murray, “to remain here with Mr. Mackenzie until I am ready for him. Mr. Urquhart may retire to his quarters, if he will–I advise it, indeed–but I shall require his attendance in a few minutes. You understand,” I added significantly, “that for the present this affair remains strictly between ourselves.” I knew well enough that, for all the King’s regulations, a meeting would inevitably follow sooner or later, and will own I looked upon it as the proper outcome, between gentlemen, of such a quarrel. But it was not for me, their Colonel, to betray this knowledge or my feelings, and by imposing secrecy I put off for the time all the business of a formal challenge with seconds. So I left them, and requesting my brother to follow me, mounted to my own room. The door was no sooner shut than I turned on him.

“Surely,” I said, “this is a bad mistake of Urquhart’s? It’s an incredible charge. From all I’ve seen of him, the lad would never be guilty …” I paused, expecting his assent. To my surprise he did not give it, but stood fingering his chin and looking serious.

“I don’t know,” he answered unwillingly. “There are stories against him.”

“What stories?”

“Nothing definite.” My brother hesitated. “It doesn’t seem fair to him to repeat mere whispers. But the others don’t like him.”

“Hence the whispers, perhaps. They have not reached me.”

“They would not. He is known to be a favourite of yours. But they don’t care to play with him.” My brother stopped, met my look, and answered it with a shrug of the shoulders, adding, “He wins pretty constantly.”

“Any definite charge before to-night’s?”

“No: at least, I think not. But Urquhart may have been put up to watch.”

“Fetch him up, please,” said I promptly; and seating myself at the writing-table I lit candles (for the lamp was dim), made ready the writing materials and prepared to take notes of the evidence.

Mr. Urquhart presently entered, and I wheeled round in my chair to confront him. He was still exceedingly pale–paler, I thought, than I had left him. He seemed decidedly ill at ease, though not on his own account. His answer to my first question made me fairly leap in my chair.

“I wish,” he said, “to qualify my accusation of Mr. Mackenzie. That he cheated I have the evidence of my own eyes; but I am not sure how far he knew he was cheating.”

“Good heavens, sir!” I cried. “Do you know you have accused that young man of a villainy which must damn him for life? And now you tell me–” I broke off in sheer indignation.

“I know,” he answered quietly. “The noise fetched you in upon us on the instant, and the mischief was done.”

“Indeed, sir,” I could not avoid sneering, “to most of us it would seem that the mischief was done when you accused a brother-officer of fraud to his face.”

He seemed to reflect. “Yes, sir,” he assented slowly; “it is done. I saw him cheat: that I must persist in; but I cannot say how far he was conscious of it. And since I cannot, I must take the consequences.”