



Produced by Al Haines.





                             *WHITE MOTLEY*

                               _A NOVEL_


                                   BY

                             MAX PEMBERTON



                 AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE HUGUENOT," "THE
                     GARDEN OF SWORDS," ETC., ETC.



                                New York
                        STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
                                  1911

                         _All rights reserved_




                             Copyright 1911
                      By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

             Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1911




                               *CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

PROLOGUE

I  THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA
II  A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN
III  CONCERNING A DISOBLIGING GHOST
IV  THE MAN WHO KNEW
V  THE GHOST TAKES WINGS
VI  A LESSON UPON SKIS
VII  AN ULTIMATUM
VIII  BENNY BECOMES AN OPTIMIST
IX  IN WHICH WE BAG A BRACE
X  A SPECIALIST IS CONSULTED
XI  THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY
XII  FLIGHT
XIII  AFTER THE STORM
XIV  THE GENDARME PHILIP
XV  THE CORTEGE
XVI  TWO OPINIONS
XVII  HERALDS OF GREAT TIDINGS
XVIII  THE EVE OF THE GREAT ATTEMPT
XIX  THE THIEF
XX  THE FLIGHT IS BEGUN
XXI  THE FLIGHT IS FINISHED
XXII  THE EMPTY HOUSE
XXIII  THE NIGHT MAIL
XXIV  THE DOCTOR INTERVENES
XXV  THE LIGHTS OF MAGADINO
XXVI  AT THE HOSPICE
XXVII  BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND




                             *WHITE MOTLEY*



                               *PROLOGUE*

                      *THE NEW HOUSE AT HOLMSWELL*


The New House at Holmswell lies, far back from the road, upon the great
highway to Norwich.  Local topographers delight to tell you that it is
just forty-five miles from that city and five from the Cesarewitch
course at Newmarket.  They are hardly less eloquent when they come to
speak of its late owner, Sir Luton Delayne, and of that unforgotten and
well-beloved woman, the wife he so little deserved.

To be sure, the house is not new at all, for it was built at the very
moment when the great Harry put his hands into the coffers of the
monasteries and called upon high Heaven to witness the justice of his
robberies.  They faced it with wonderful tiles some years ago, and
stamped the Tudor rose all over it; but the people who first called it
"new" have been dead these four hundred years, and it is only the local
antiquary who can tell you just where the monastery (which preceded it)
was built.

Here, the master of a village which knows more about the jockeys of the
day than about any Prime Minister, here lived Sir Luton Delayne and that
gentle woman who won so many hearts during her brief tenure of the
village kingdom.  Well the people knew her and well they knew him.  A
florid, freckled-faced man with red hair and the wisp of an auburn
moustache, the common folk said little about his principles and much
about his pugnacity.  Even these dull intellects knew that he had been
"no gentleman" and were not afraid to tell you so.  His fame, of a sort,
had culminated upon the day he thrashed the butcher from Mildenhall,
because the fellow would halt on the high road just when the pheasants
were being driven from the Little Barton spinneys.  That was no famous
day for the House of Delayne; for the butcher had been a great bruiser
in his time, and he knocked down the baronet in a twinkling without any
regard at all for his ancestry or its dignities.  Thereafter, Sir
Luton's violent speech troubled the vulgar but little, and when he rated
Johnny Drummond for wheeling a barrow over the tennis-court, the lad
fell back upon the price of mutton and took his week's notice like a
man.

To Lady Delayne local sympathy went out in generous measure.  If little
were known of the sorrows of her life, much was surmised.  The "county"
could tell you many tales and would tell them to intimates. These spoke
of a ruffian who had sworn at that gentle lady before a whole company at
the meet; who openly snubbed her at her own table; who had visited upon
her the whims and the temper of a disposition at once vicious and
uncontrollable.  Darker things were said and believed, but the sudden
end surprised no one; and when one day the village heard that she had
gone for good, when a little while afterwards the bailiffs came to the
New House and Sir Luton himself disappeared, it seemed but the sudden
revelation of a tragedy which all had expected.

Whither had Lady Delayne gone, and what was the truth of the disaster?
Few could speak upon matters so uncertain, but amongst the few the name
of Redman Rolls, the bookmaker, stood high.  Report from Newmarket said
that Luton Delayne had lost twenty-seven thousand pounds upon the
Cambridgeshire and that this loss, following extensive and disastrous
speculation in American insecurities, had been the immediate instrument
of disaster.  As to Lady Delayne's hurried flight from the New House,
that was a delicate affair upon which no one could throw much light. She
had relatives in the North, and was believed to possess a small fortune
of her own; but no news of her came to Holmswell, and the far from
curious village had no particular interest in the whereabouts of a man
who had browbeaten and bullied it for more than ten years.  He had gone
to Somaliland to join his brother who was out after big game, the parson
said.  It meant little to the simple folk, who had not the remotest idea
where Somaliland was unless it lay somewhere beyond Norwich--a
conclusion to which they arrived in the kitchen of the ancient inn.

To be sure, there were many tales told of the final separation of these
unhappy people, and some of them were sad enough.  The servants at the
New House well remembered how Sir Luton had come home upon that unlucky
day; and what he had done and what he had said upon his arrival.  To
begin with, Martin, the motor-man, could speak of a savage, silent
figure, driving blindly through the twilight of an October afternoon, of
the narrow escape from accident at the lodge gate and of the oaths with
which his attentions were received.  Morris, the butler, would tell how
Sir Luton had almost knocked him down when he opened the door, and had
cursed her ladyship openly when he heard she had company.  There was the
maid Eva, to tell of her mistress half dressed for dinner and of a scene
which in some part she had witnessed.  Few believed her wholly when she
said that her master had attributed his misfortunes to the day when he
met his wife, and had told her that "he had done with her, by Heaven!"
And then upon that there would be Morris's further story of the table
laid for dinner, the candles lighted, the soup hot and steaming--and not
a soul in the great room where dinner was served. They waited a long
time, this faithful old gossip and the lean footman with the dull eyes;
but neither Sir Luton nor her ladyship came down.  And then, shortly
before nine, the old horse and the single brougham were ordered--and the
kindest lady they would ever know went from them and they heard of her
no more.

But the man remained, though he had become but a shadow in the house.
All night he drank in the little study behind the billiard room, and a
light still burned there at six o'clock next morning, as Jelf, the
under-gardener, could testify.  If he made any effort to recall the
wife, who would willingly have stood by him in the darkest hour, none
knew of it.  For a few days, Morris carried his meals to the study and
would discover him there, sitting at a table and staring blankly over
the drear park as though dim figures of his own life's story moved
beneath the stately trees. Then, following an outburst which surpassed
all the servants could remember, an outburst of passion and of obscenity
inconceivable, he was driven one morning to Mildenhall Station, and
Holmswell heard with a satisfaction it made no attempt to conceal that
this was the end.

The New House was the scene of a great sale shortly afterwards, and
brokers came from London to buy the porcelain and the pictures, while
many a country gentleman drove in to bid for the well-proved '63 port
and the fine bin of Steinberg Cabinet.  Few in the village could be more
than spectators at such a scene as that; but the old clergyman, Mr.
Deakins, bought Lady Delayne's mirror for three pounds fifteen
shillings, and when they asked him why, had a ready answer.

"An old man's fancy," he said; "and yet--who knows that some day it may
not show me again the face of the gentlest lady I have ever known?"




                              *CHAPTER I*

                       *THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA*


The sleigh climbed the heights laboriously, jolting heavily in the ruts
which last night's frost had hardened.  Minute by minute now new
pictures were revealed.  The Rhone valley appeared to be shaping itself
more clearly at every zigzag; so that