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Updated: May 15, 2025
And then he turned to the paper, and saw to his horror this awful tale of a cold-blooded and cowardly murder, committed on a friend by one who, however little he might choose to acknowledge it, was after all his own eldest son, a Kelmscott of Tilgate, as much as Granville himself, in lawful wedlock duly begotten. The proud but broken man gazed at the deadly announcement in blank amaze and agony.
He was no true son in reality; his order disowned him. Base blood flowed in his veins, and made crimes like these conceivable. "I was right after all," the Colonel thought, "not to acknowledge these half low-born lads as the heirs of Tilgate. Bad blood will out in the end and THIS is the result of it." And then, with sudden revulsion he thought once more God help him!
The likeness, indeed, was so ridiculously close that Montague Nevitt smiled quietly to himself to observe it. If he'd been in the Tilgate district now, he'd have declared, without the slightest hesitation, that the man on the path WAS Gilbert Gildersleeve. One second later, he pulled himself up with a jerk in alarmed surprise.
Meanwhile, Guy and Cyril had gone to Charterhouse as nobody's wards, and been brought up in the expectation of earning their own livelihood, so no wrong, he said casuistically, had been done to THEM, at any rate. And Granville had been brought up as the heir of Tilgate. Lady Emily naturally expected her son to succeed his father. He had gone too far to turn back at last. And yet
He would make for the coast, if he staggered in like a skeleton, and would confront the robber with his own vile crime, be it at Angra Pequena, or Cape Town, or London, or Tilgate. In short, he would do much as Guy himself had done when he discovered Montague Nevitt's theft of the six thousand.
A well-known London dealer had written down to him at Tilgate making an excellent offer for the unfinished work, as soon as it should be ready, on behalf of a customer whose name he didn't happen to mention. And who could that customer be, Cyril thought to himself, but Colonel Kelmscott? But that wasn't all.
He had an uncomfortable suspicion in the back chambers of his mind, that whoever had commissioned the pictures might be more anxious to send him well away from Tilgate than to possess a series of picturesque sketches on the Meuse and its tributaries. And who could have an interest in keeping him far from Tilgate? That was the question.
Nobody would know he was a Kelmscott of Tilgate. The Colonel rose from his seat, and staggered across the floor. Half-way to the door, he reeled and stopped short. The veins of his forehead were black and swollen. He had the same strange feeling in his head as he experienced on the day when Granville left only a hundred times worse. The two halves of his brain were opening and shutting.
He had money to set all right his hard-earned money, got at the risk of his own life in the dreary deserts of Barolong land. All would yet be well, and Cyril would marry, and Elma Clifford would be the mistress of nearly half the Tilgate property.
Granville nodded comprehension again. He understood the signs. The white man had gone away, alone, on foot and seaward. At that instant, with a sudden cry of terror, the invalid's hands went down to his waist, where he wore the girdle that contained those precious diamonds the diamonds that were to be the ransom of some fraction of Tilgate. An awful sense of desertion broke over him all at once.
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