The Last Chapter

Summary

A bullet-shredded war correspondent, Gordon, is salvaged from equatorial torpor by James Egerton, rubber baron and amateur empire-polisher, whose freighter smells simultaneously of cash and contraband. Mid-Atlantic, Gordon’s heart slips anchor toward Alice, the heiress whose laugh flickers like gaslight on brass. London, however, is a colder coast: Lord Arbuthton, all ermine entitlement and ancestral mortgages, circles Alice with the patience of a taxidermist. Egerton, allergic to poverty in sons-in-law, dispatches Gordon to the Congo to audit a hemorrhaging plantation and, incidentally, to chase rumors of a cartographic phantom—the Lost River, whose waters promise either redemption or malaria. Jungle ledger-work reveals not marauders but the overseer’s midnight arithmetic: barrels smuggled, books cooked, blame laid on invented savages. Gunfire turns plantation to ember; Gordon, half-crisped, escapes clutching a blood-stained map that rewrites imperial geography. Rescued by a demoralized British survey team, he is mistaken for the late Tracy, presumed martyr to exploration. Simultaneously, back in Mayfair, Arbuthton’s rumor-mill pronounces Gordon defunct, clearing the aisle for a ducal wedding. Our scarred protagonist slips into London under the fog’s cloak, is fêted as the Living Columbus of the Thames, confronts mortality, title, and a fiancée who never believed the obituary. A carriage bolt of fate—Arbuthton’s fatal spill—restores equilibrium; Alice’s locket, still warm against Gordon’s charcoal skin, seals a mercantile marriage now equal in pounds and pulse.

Synopsis

Gordon, a young war correspondent, after being wounded in the jungles of Africa, is picked up and taken back to England by James Egerton, a wealthy rubber magnate, who has been investigating conditions on his plantation, where there has been a great shortage in the year's yield. On the voyage homeward the correspondent and Egerton's daughter Alice fall in love. In England Gordon, finds in Lord Arbuthton a formidable rival for the hand of the girl he loves. At this time an exploring expedition leaves England to find the Lost River, a stream supposed to exist in the interior of Africa. Gordon views with concern his titled rival's attention to Alice, and at the first opportunity asks her father's consent to their marriage. Egerton answers that he will never allow his daughter to marry a penniless man, but offers his daughter's hand and an interest in the business if he will go to Africa and successfully solve the mystery of the rubber shortage. Gordon leaves, and the farewell between himself and Alice is a promise that, come what may, she will wait for him, and this promise she seals by taking off a locket and chain, which she gives him as a pledge of her love. He arrives in Africa, and after a series of thrilling adventures discovers that the overseer of the plantation has been selling rubber to coast traders and covering his dishonesty by manufacturing false statements about raids by outlaw bands. A fight follows in which the overseer is killed and the plantation settlement destroyed by fire. Gordon is wounded and barely escapes from a burning hut alive. Outside he discovers a weather-stained map upon the body of a dead native showing that the Lost River has been discovered, but not by the exploring party. Gordon struggles through the jungle, is found unconscious by the returning explorers, who have given up the search. When they see the map they hail him as Tracy, the discoverer of the Lost River. Here he learns that his rival has circulated reports that he died in the jungle and that Alice is to become the nobleman's bride. Gordon returns to London in disguise and is applauded by the public as a great explorer, and is about to give up Alice forever when Fate steps in. Lord Arbuthton is killed in an accident. The returned lover hurries to the girl, divulges his identity and reminds her of her pledge. Egerton, true to his promise, makes Gordon a member of the firm, and shortly afterward the bells are ringing for the young people's wedding.