The Lions Skin | Page 8

almost diabolical.

"But how - how do we destroy him?" quoth Justin, who suspected yet
dared not encourage his suspicions.
"How? Do you ask how? Is't not plain?" snapped Sir Richard, and what
he avoided putting into words, his eloquent glance made clear to his
companion.
Mr. Caryll rose a thought quickly, a faint flush stirring in his cheeks,
and he threw off Everard's grasp with a gesture that was almost of
repugnance. "You mean that I am to enmesh him . . . ."
Sir Richard smiled grimly. "As his majesty's accredited agent," he
explained. "I will equip you with papers. Word shall go ahead of you to
Ostermore by a safe hand to bid him look for the coming of a
messenger bearing his own family name. No more than that; nothing
that can betray us; yet enough to whet his lordship's appetite. You shall
be the ambassador to bear him the tempting offers from the king. You
will obtain his answers - accepting. Those you will deliver to me, and I
shall do the trifle that may still be needed to set the rope about his
neck."
A little while there was silence. Outside, the rain, driven by gusts,
smote the window as with a scourge. The thunder was grumbling in the
distance now. Mr. Caryll resumed his chair. He sat very thoughtful, but
with no emotion showing in his face. British stolidity was in the
ascendant with him then. He felt that he had the need of it.
"It is . . . ugly," he said at last slowly.
"It is God's own will," was the hot answer, and Sir Richard smote the
table.
"Has God taken you into His confidence?" wondered Mr. Caryll.
"I know that God is justice."
"Yet is it not written that `vengeance is His own'?"

"Aye, but He needs human instruments to execute it. Such instruments
are we. Can you - Oh, can you hesitate?"
Mr. Caryll clenched his hands hard. "Do it," he answered through set
teeth. "Do it! I shall approve it when 'tis done. But find other hands for
the work, Sir Richard. He is my father."
Sir Richard remained cool. "That is the argument I employ for insisting
upon the task being yours," he replied. Then, in a blaze of passion, he -
who had schooled his adoptive son so ably in self-control - marshalled
once more his arguments. "It is your duty to your mother to forget that
he is your father. Think of him only as the man who wronged your
mother; the man to whom her ruined life, her early death are due - her
murderer and worse. Consider that. Your father, you say!" He mocked
almost. "Your father! In what is he your father? You have never seen
him; he does not know that you exist, that you ever existed. Is that to be
a father? Father, you say! A word, a name - no more than that; a name
that gives rise to a sentiment, and a sentiment is to stand between you
and your clear duty; a sentiment is to set a protecting shield over the
man who killed your mother!
"I think I shall despise you, Justin, if you fail me in this. I have lived
for it," he ran on tempestuously. "I have reared you for it, and you shall
not fail me!"
Then his voice dropped again, and in quieter tones
"You hate the very name of John Caryll, Earl of Ostermore," said he,
"as must every decent man who knows the truth of what the life of that
satyr holds. If I have suffered you to bear his name, it is to the end that
it should remind you daily that you have no right to it, that you have no
right to any name."
When he said that he thrust his finger consciously into a raw wound.
He saw Justin wince, and with pitiless cunning he continued to prod
that tender place until he had aggravated the smart of it into a very
agony.

"That is what you owe your father; that is the full extent of what lies
between you - that you are of those at whom the world is given to sneer
and point scorn's ready finger."
"None has ever dared," said Mr. Caryll.
"Because none has ever known. We have kept the secret well. You
display no coat of arms that no bar sinister may be displayed. But the
time may come when the secret must out. You might, for instance,
think of marrying a lady of quality, a lady of your own supposed station.
What shall you tell her of yourself? That you have no name to offer her;
that the name you bear is yours by assumption only? Ah! That brings
home your