Ensign Knightley | Page 5

every heart like a blow on a door
behind which conspirators are plotting. The Major was the first to
recover his speech.
"Curse your tongue, Scrope!" he said angrily. "Let who will lie in your
grave when the evening falls. Before that time comes, we'll show these
Moors so fine a powder-play as shall glut some of them to all eternity.
_Bon chat, bon rat_; we are not made of jelly. Tessin, see to

Knightley."
The two men withdrew. Major Shackleton scribbled a note and
despatched it to Sir Palmes Fairborne, the Lieutenant-Governor. Scrope
took a turn or two across the room while the Major was writing the
news which Knightley had brought. Then--"What game is this he's
playing?" he said, with a jerk of his head to the door by which
Knightley had gone out. "I have no mind to be played with."
"But is he playing a game at all?" asked Wyley.
Scrope faced him quickly, looked him over for a second, and replied:
"You are a new-comer to Tangier, or you would not have asked that
question."
"I should," rejoined Wyley with complete confidence. "I know quite
enough to be sure of one thing. I know there lies some deep matter of
dispute between Ensign Knightley and Lieutenant Scrope, and I am
sure that there is one other person more in the dark than myself, and
that person is Ensign Knightley. For whereas I know there is a dispute,
he is unaware of even that."
"Unaware?" cried Scrope. "Why, man, the very good friend I fought
with was Ensign Knightley. The woman on whose account we fought
was Knightley's wife." He flung the words at the Surgeon with almost a
gesture of contempt. "Make the most of that!" And once again he began
to pace the room.
"I am not in the least surprised," returned Wyley with an easy smile.
"Though I admit that I am interested. A wife is sauce to any story." He
looked placidly round the company. He alone held the key to the puzzle,
and since he was now become the centre of attraction he was inclined
to play with his less acute brethren. With a wave of the hand he stilled
the requests for an explanation, and turned to Scrope.
"Will you answer me a question?"
"I think it most unlikely."
The curt reply in no way diminished the Surgeon's suavity.
"I chose my words ill. I should have asked, Will you confirm an
assertion? The assertion is this: Ensign Knightley had no suspicion
before he actually discovered the--well, the lamentable truth."
Scrope stopped his walk and came back to the table.
"Why, that is so," he agreed sullenly. "Knightley had no suspicions. It
angered me that he had not."

Wyley leaned back in his chair.
"Really, really," he said, and laughed a little to himself. "On the night
of January 6th Ensign Knightley discovers the lamentable truth. At
what hour?" he asked suddenly.
Scrope looked to the Major. "About midnight," he suggested.
"A little later, I should think," corrected Major Shackleton.
"A little after midnight," repeated Wyley. "Ensign Knightley and
Lieutenant Scrope, I understand, immediately fight a duel, which seems
to have been interrupted before any hurt was done."
The Major and Scrope agreed with a nod of their heads.
"In the morning," continued Wyley, "Ensign Knightley takes part in a
skirmish, and is clubbed on the head so fiercely that Major Shackleton
thought his skull must be broken in. At what hour was he struck?"
Again he put the question quickly.
"'Twixt seven and eight of the morning," replied the Major.
"Quite so," said Wyley. "The incidents fit to a nicety. Two years
afterwards Ensign Knightley comes home. He knows nothing of the
duel, or any cause for a duel. Lieutenant Scrope is still 'Harry' to him,
and his best of friends. It is all very clear."
He gazed about him. Perplexity sat on each face except one; that face
was Scrope's.
"I spoke to you all some half an hour since concerning the effects of a
concussion. I could not have hoped for so complete an example," said
Wyley.
Captain Tessin whistled; Major Shackleton bounced on to his feet.
"Then Knightley knows nothing," cried Tessin in a gust of excitement.
"And never will know," cried the Major.
"Except by hearsay," sharply interposed Scrope. "Gentlemen, you go
too fast, Except by hearsay. That, Mr. Wyley, was the phrase, I think.
By what spells, Major," he asked with irony, "will you bind Tangier to
silence when there's scandal to be talked? Let Knightley walk down to
the water-gate to-morrow; I'll warrant he'll have heard the story a
hundred times with a hundred new embellishments before he gets
there."
Major Shackleton resumed his seat moodily.
"And since that's the truth, why, he had best