Kitabı oku: «Dorothy's Double. Volume 1 of 3», sayfa 5

'Well, Hampton, what have you been doing, and why have you not been to see me before? I heard you were in town – at least, I heard so ten days ago.'

'I should have come, sir, before, had I had anything to tell you. I have nothing much now, and in fact have to-day bungled matters considerably; still, I shall start on a fresh search to-morrow, and hope to be luckier than I have been so far.' He then gave a detailed account of his visits to racecourses, of his meeting with Truscott that morning, of the conversation he had overheard, and of the manner in which the man had eluded him.

'Well, Ned, you certainly have deserved success, and I am indeed obliged to you for the immense trouble you have taken over the matter. It is too bad your spending your time over this annoying affair, when you are only home on a year's leave. What you have learned is, of course, no direct proof that Truscott has a hand in this affair; at the same time, what he said confirms to some extent your suspicions of him. Would it not be as well to put the search for him into the hands of a detective, now that there is some one definite to search for? One of these men might be useful, and I really would vastly rather employ one than know that you are spending day after day searching for him yourself. These men are accustomed to the work; they know exactly the persons to whom to apply; they have agents under them, who know infinitely better the sort of place where such a fellow would be likely to take up his quarters than you can do.'

'No doubt that is so,' Captain Hampton admitted reluctantly. 'I should have liked to have run him down myself, now that I have hunted him so long. Still, that is a matter of no importance, the great thing is to lose no time. I will get Danvers to give me a note to the man he spoke to first.'

'On my behalf, remember, Ned; he must be engaged on my behalf.'

'Very well, sir, if you wish it so; but I would rather that you and I arrange with him direct, and that it is not done by your solicitors. Danvers told me that you were going to them this morning about that infamous paragraph in the "Liar."'

'Certainly they shall have nothing to do with it,' Mr. Hawtrey said hotly; 'I was a fool to go to them at all; I might as well have gone to two old women. They have been lawyers to our family for I don't know how many years, and are no doubt excellent men in their capacity of family lawyers, but this matter is altogether out of their line. They looked at each other like two helpless fools when I told them the story, and said at once that they would not undertake to advise me, but that I had better go to Levine, or one of the other men who are always engaged in these what they call delicate cases, that is to say, hideous scandals. However, I have made up my mind to keep clear of them all as far as I can; but, of course, I must be guided to some extent by Halliburn's opinion, or rather his wishes. As to his opinion, I have no confidence in it one way or the other. I'm glad you did not say anything about what you had been doing before my cousin; she is worrying herself almost into a fever about it, the more so because there is no one to whom she can talk about it. She means well, but were it not that just at present it is absolutely necessary that Dorothy should show herself everywhere with a perfectly unconcerned air, I would make some excuse to send Mrs. Daintree down to the country again; as it is, I must keep her as a chaperon, but she is very trying I assure you, and I believe would come into my study to cry over the affair half-a-dozen times a day, if I would but let her. Now, Ned, you must excuse me, the carriage will be round in a few minutes, and as, with one thing and another, I got back too late to dress for dinner, I have not another minute to spare. Shall I give you a note authorising you to arrange with the detective?'

'There is no occasion for that; I shall speak in your name, and as he will want to have an interview with you before long, you can then confirm any arrangement I have made as to his remuneration.'

Hampton called in on Danvers in the morning for the address of the detective, Slippen, and a card of introduction. The address was in Clifford's Inn, and on finding the number Hampton saw the name over a door on the ground floor. A sharp looking boy was sitting on a high stool swinging his legs. He evidently thought that amusement somewhat monotonous and was glad of a change, for he jumped down with alacrity.

'The governor is in, sir, but he has got a party in with him. I will take your card in. I expect he will be glad to get rid of her, for she has been sobbing and crying in there awful.'

'I am in no particular hurry,' Captain Hampton said, amused at the boy's confidential manner.

'Divorce, I expect,' the lad went on, as Captain Hampton took a seat on the only chair in the dark little office. 'I allus notice that the first time they comes they usually goes on like that. After a time or two they takes it more business-like. They comes in brisk, and says, "Is Mr. Slippen in?" just the same as if they was asking for a cup of tea. When they goes out sometimes they look sour, and I knows then that he,' and he jerked his thumb towards the inner office, 'hasn't any news to tell 'em; sometimes they goes out looking red in the face and in a regular paddy, and you can see by the way they grips their umbrellas they would like to give it to some one.'

'You must find it dull sitting here all day. I suppose you haven't much writing to do?'

'I doesn't sit here much. I am mostly about. There ain't many as comes here of a day, and he can hear the knocker. Those as does come calls mostly in the morning, from ten to eleven. There, she is a-moving.'

The inner door opened, and a stout woman came out looking flushed and angry; the boy slid off his stool and opened the door for her, and then took Captain Hampton's card in. A moment later Mr. Slippen himself appeared at the door.

'Will you walk in, Captain Hampton? I am sorry to have kept you waiting. I rather expected,' he said, as he closed the door behind him, 'that I should have a call, either from Mr. Danvers or some one from him, when I saw that paragraph in the "Liar." I made sure it was the case he was speaking to me about, and I said to myself, "They are safe to be doing something now."'

'Yes, it is that case that I come about. I am here on the part of Mr. Hawtrey, the father of the young lady. I am an intimate friend of the family. Mr. Danvers gave you the heads of the matter.'

The detective nodded; he was a rather short, slightly-built man, with hair cut very short and standing up aggressively; his eyes were widely opened, with a sharp, quick movement as they glanced from one point to another, but the general expression of the face was pleasant and good-tempered.

'He told you my opinion so far as I could form it from the very slight data he gave me?'

'Yes, you thought at first that the writer of the threats really had possession of compromising letters; but upon hearing that she was engaged you thought it likely that the letters might be the work of some aggrieved or disappointed woman.'

'That is it, sir.'

'So far as we can see,' Captain Hampton went on, 'neither view was correct; certainly the first was not. We have, as we think, laid our fingers on the writer, who is a man who believes himself to have a personal grievance against Mr. Hawtrey himself.' He then related the whole story.

'He may be the man,' Mr. Slippen said, when he had finished. 'At any rate there is something to go on, which there was not before. There will be no great difficulty in laying one's hand on him, but at present we have not a shred of real evidence – nothing that a magistrate would listen to.'

'We quite see that. Still, it will be something to find him; then we can have him watched, and, if possible, caught in the act of posting the letters.'

'You will find that difficult – I do not mean the watching him nor seeing him post his letters, but bringing it home to him. I would rather have to deal with anything than with a matter where you have got the Post Office people to get round. Once a letter is in a box it is their property until it is handed over to the person it is directed to. Still, we may get over that, somehow. The first thing, I take it, is to find the man. You say his betting name is Marvel?'

'That is the name he had on his hat at Epsom on the Oaks day, but he may have a dozen others.'

'Ah, that is true enough. Still, no doubt he has used it often enough for others to know him by it; and now for his description.

'Thank you, that will be sufficient. I think I will send a man down to Windsor at once; the races are on again to-day. He will get his address out of one or other of his pals. It will cost a five-pound note at the outside. If you will give me your address, I shall most likely be able to let you have it this evening.'

'I wish to goodness I had come to you before,' Captain Hampton said. 'Here I have been wasting three weeks trying to find the man, and spending fifty or sixty pounds in railway fares, stand tickets and expenses, and you are able to undertake it at once.'

'It is a very simple matter, Captain Hampton. I have been engaged in two or three turf cases, and one of my men knows a lot of the hangers-on at racecourses. Watches and other valuables are constantly stolen there, and as often enough these things are gifts, and are valued beyond their mere cost in money, their owners come to us to try if we can get them back for them, which we are able to do three times out of four. Whoever may steal the things, they are likely to get into one of four or five hands, and as soon as we let it be known that we are ready to pay a fair price for their return and no questions asked, it is not long before they are brought here. I don't say I may be able to find out this man's exact address, but I can find out the public-house or other place where he is generally to be met with. I don't suppose the actual address of one in ten of these fellows is known to others. They are to be heard of in certain public-houses, but even their closest pals often don't know where they live. Sometimes, no doubt, it is in some miserable den where they would be ashamed to meet anyone. Sometimes there may be a wife and family in the case, and they don't want men coming there. Sometimes it may be just another way. Many of these fellows at home are quiet, respectable sort of chaps, living at some little place where none of their neighbours, and perhaps not even their wives, know that they have anything to do with racing, but take them for clerks or warehousemen, or something in the city. So I don't promise to find out the fellow's home, only the place where a letter will find him, or where he goes to meet his pals, and perhaps do a little quiet betting in the landlord's back parlour.'

'That will be enough for us, to begin with at any rate.'

'Of course, the private address is only a matter of a day or two longer,' Mr. Slippen went on. 'I have only to send that boy of mine up to the place, and the first time the fellow goes there he will follow him, if it is all over London, till he traces him to the place where he lives. If, as he said, he is going to give up attending the races for the present, he may not go there for a day or two. But he is sure to do so sooner or later for letters.'

'Thank you. It would be as well to know where he lives, but at any rate when we have what we may call his business address we shall have time to talk over our next move.'

'Yes, that is where the real difficulty will begin, Captain Hampton. I expect you have got to deal with a deep one, and I own that at present I do not see my way at all clear before me.'

CHAPTER V

That evening Mr. Slippen's boy presented himself at Captain Hampton's lodgings with a note. It contained only the words 'Dear sir, – Our man uses the "White Horse," Frogmore Street, Islington. I await your instructions before moving further in the matter.'

'Well, youngster, what is your name?' Captain Hampton asked, as he put the note on the table beside him.

'Jacob Wrigley,' the lad replied promptly.

'Here is half-a-crown for yourself, Jacob.'

'Thank you, sir,' the boy said, as he took it up with a duck of the head and slipped it into his pocket.

'Your office hours seem to be long, Jacob; that is, if you have been there since I saw you this morning.'

'No, sir, I ain't a-been there since one o'clock, not till an hour ago. I have been down at Greenwich, keeping my eye on a party there. I got done there at six o'clock, and as the governor had said "Come round and tell me what you have found out, I shall be in up to nine o'clock," round I went in course. The governor and me don't have no regular hours. Some chaps wouldn't like that, but it doesn't matter to me, 'cause I sleeps there.'

'Sleep where, Jacob?'

'In where you see me. The things is stowed away in that cupboard in the corner, and I get on first-rate. It is a good place, especially in winter. I lays the blankits down in front of the fire, and keeps it going all night sometimes.'

'But haven't you got any place of your own to go to, Jacob?'

The boy shook his head. 'I was brought up in a wan, I was,' the boy said. 'I hooked it one day, two years ago, 'cause they knocked me about so. I pretty nigh starved at first, but one day I saw a chap prigging an old gent's ticker. The old one shouted just as he got off; I was on the look-out and as the chap came along I chucked myself down in front of him and down he came. I grabbed him, and afore he could shake me off a lot of chaps got hold of him and held him till a peeler came up. They did not find the watch on him, but I had seen him as he ran pass something to a chap he ran close to and pretty nigh knocked down. I gave my evidence at the police court. The governor happened to be there, and arter it was over and the chaps had got six months, and the beak had said I gave my evidence very well, and gave me five bob out of the poor box, he came up to me and said, "You are a smart young fellow. Do you want a job?" I said I just did, and so he took me on; that is how it came about, you see. The only thing I don't like is, he makes me go to a night school. He says I shan't never do no good unless I can get to read and write; so I does it, but I hates it bitter.'

'He is quite right, Jacob. You stick to it; it will come easier as you get on.'

'Yes, I know I wants it, for letters and that sort of thing, but it is bitter hard. I would rather stand opposite a house all day in winter than I would sit for an hour trying to make my pen go where I wants it to. It allus will go the other way, and the drops of ink will come out awful. Good night, sir.'

'Good night, lad. Tell Mr. Slippen when you see him that I shall probably be round to-morrow or next day.'

On the following morning Captain Hampton called early at Chester Square. Mr. Hawtrey and Dorothy had just finished breakfast. Mrs. Daintree, as was her custom after being out late the night before, had taken hers in bed.

'I have good news so far. I have discovered, or rather Slippen has, where Truscott is to be found. He frequents a public-house called the White Horse, Frogmore Street, Islington.'

'That is good news indeed, Ned,' Mr. Hawtrey said warmly, as he shook hands with him. As he turned to Dorothy, he saw with surprise that she had turned suddenly pale, and that her hands shook as she put down the cup.

'You are pleased, are you not, Dorothy?' he asked in surprise.

The girl hesitated. 'Yes,' she said, 'of course, I am pleased in one way, but not in another. It frightens me to think that the man may be brought up, and that I may have to give evidence; it is horrid being talked about, but it would be much worse to stand up to be stared at, and to have it all put in the papers.'

'Pooh, pooh, my dear, your evidence will be very simple,' her father said. 'You will only have to tell that you received the first of these letters, that you know nothing of the man, and that his assertion that he has letters of yours is utterly false.'

'Yes, father, but I have noticed that in all trials of this sort they ask such numberless questions, and that they always manage somehow to put the witnesses into a false light. They will say, "How do you know that he has no letters of yours? Do you mean to tell this court that you have never written any letters?" And when I have said I have never written any letters that I should object to having read out in court they will insinuate that I am telling a lie, and that I have done all sorts of dreadful things; and though they will not be able to prove a word of it, I shall know, as I go out, that half the people will believe that I have. I shall hate it, and I am sure that Algernon will hate it even more.'

'Well, Algernon has no one but himself to thank for its having come to this pass,' Mr. Hawtrey said sharply. 'It was his interference, and his going down to Scotland Yard, that caused that paragraph to appear in the paper. If he had left the matter alone nothing whatever would have been heard about it outside our circle. I like Halliburn, but I must say that at present nothing would give me more satisfaction than to hear that he had gone for a month upon the Continent, for he comes round here every afternoon, and worries and fusses over the matter until he upsets you and fills me with an almost irresistible desire to seize him by the shoulders and turn him out of the room.'

'He is a little trying, father,' Dorothy admitted, 'but of course he does not like it.'

'Nor do any of us. It is a hundred times worse for you than it is for him, and yet – But there, let us change the subject. What is it you were saying, Ned? Oh yes, you have heard where Truscott lives.'

'Not exactly where he lives, but the public-house where he is to be met with, and in his case it comes to pretty well the same thing. I had nothing to do with finding it out. The man Slippen took it in hand, and in a few hours did more than I had done in three weeks. He sent a fellow down to Windsor, to some betting men he knew, and sent me word in the evening. It was rather mortifying, I must confess, and I feel as if I had been taken down several pegs in my own estimation.'

'And what is to be done next, father?' Dorothy asked anxiously.

'Ah, that is the point we shall have to talk over, my dear. At present we have not a thread of evidence to connect him with the affair. We must, in the first place, bring it home to him. Afterwards, we will see whether we must have him arrested and charged in court, or whether we can frighten him into making a confession. I am very much afraid that, after all that has been said about it, there will be nothing for it but a public prosecution; however, there will be time to think of that afterwards.' Captain Hampton saw Dorothy go pale again, and mentally resolved that he would do all in his power to save her from the ordeal from which she evidently shrank. He was a little surprised at her nervousness, for as a child she had been absolutely fearless, but he supposed that the worry, and perhaps the fidgeting of Halliburn had shaken her somewhat, as, indeed, was natural enough. 'You are going round to see this detective, I suppose?' Mr. Hawtrey asked.

'Yes, I came in on my way for instructions. Slippen will no doubt propose that a sharp watch shall be kept over his movements, and I suppose that there can be no doubt that is the right thing to be done.'

'I should say so, certainly.'

'That, at least, Miss Hawtrey, will commit us to nothing afterwards, and I trust even yet we may find some way of avoiding the unpleasantness you feared.'

'I may as well go with you, Ned,' Mr. Hawtrey said; 'I have nothing particular to do this morning; a walk will do me good. I am getting bilious and out of sorts with all this worry, and would give a good round sum to be quietly down in Lincolnshire again. Dorothy evidently feels it a good deal more than I should have thought she would,' he went on as they left the house.

'It is a horribly annoying sort of thing to happen to anyone, Mr. Hawtrey; because it is so desperately difficult to meet anonymous slander of this sort, and of course her engagement makes it so much the worse for her.'

'Yes, that is the rub, Ned. I am not at all pleased with the fellow; he seems to think of nothing but the manner in which it affects himself. I have had, once or twice, as much as I could do not to let out at him. I had it on the tip of my tongue to say, "Confound it, sir! What the deuce do I care for you or your family? The ancestors through whom you got your title were doubtless respectable enough, and as far as I know, may, two or three generations back, have been washer-women, when our people had already held their estates hundreds of years." Of course, Dorothy takes his part, but my own belief is that it is he who is worrying her, quite as much as the scandal itself.

'Dorothy is not marrying for a title; she refused a higher one than his last autumn. I don't say that his being a lord might not have influenced her to some extent; I suppose all girls have vanity enough to like to carry off a man whom scores of others will envy her for, but I don't think that went very far with her. I believe that, as far as she knew of him, she liked him for himself; not, I suppose, in any desperate sort of way, but as a pleasant, gentlemanly sort of fellow of whom everyone spoke well, and whom she esteemed and thought she could be very happy with. She has no occasion to marry for money; of course my estate is, as I dare say you know, entailed, and will go to my cousin, Jack Hawtrey, who is a sporting parson down in Somersetshire – a good fellow, with a large family; but there will be plenty for her from her mother, besides my unentailed property.

'I cannot help thinking that Halliburn's worrying, and the very evident fact that he thinks more of the scandal as affecting his future wife than of her feelings in the matter, may have shown her that she had over-estimated him, and that although he may be a very respectable and well-behaved young nobleman, he is a selfish and shallow-minded fellow after all. Dorothy may say nothing now, but she is not the sort of girl to forgive that sort of thing, and I don't mind saying it to you, as an old friend, Ned, that I should not be at all surprised if, when once this affair is thoroughly cleared up, she throws Halliburn over altogether.'

Captain Hampton made no reply, but had his companion turned to look at him he could hardly have avoided noticing that the expression on his face expressed anything but sympathy with the tone of irritation in which he had himself spoken.

Mr. Slippen was in when they arrived at Clifford's Inn. The door was opened by him when they knocked, a proof that the boy was not at his post.

'Come in, Captain Hampton; I fancied that you would be down here.'

'This is Mr. Hawtrey, Mr. Slippen,' said Ned, as they followed him into his room; 'he thought he would like to talk over with you the plan of campaign.'

'I am glad you have come, sir; it is always more satisfactory to meet one's principal in matters of this kind; there is less chance of any mistake being made. It is surprising sometimes to find, after one is half through one's work, that one has been proceeding under an entirely false impression. One may think, for example, that one's client is bent upon carrying a matter out to the bitter end, and will not hear of anything of a compromise, and then one discovers that he is perfectly ready to condone everything, and to make every sacrifice to avoid publicity. Of course, if one had known that in the first place, it would have immensely facilitated matters.'

'I should be very glad to avoid publicity myself,' Mr. Hawtrey said, 'but unfortunately the matter has gone so far that I do not see how it can possibly be avoided.'

Mr. Slippen shook his head.

'I don't see, myself, at present,' he agreed, 'how the scandal is to be set at rest, except by the prosecution of its author – that is to say, if we can get evidence enough to prosecute him. Of course, if we had such evidence it would be easy enough to force him into making a complete retractation; but, if we did, such a retractation would hardly be satisfactory, as, supposing it were published, people would say, "How are we to know that this letter is written by the fellow who wrote the others? If it is the man, how is it that he is not prosecuted for it?" Certainly there would be a strong suspicion that he had been bought off.'

'I see that myself,' Mr. Hawtrey agreed. 'I don't see any other way of clearing the matter up except by putting him in the dock, though I would give a great deal to avoid it. My daughter is extremely averse to the idea of the publicity attending such an affair, and especially to having to appear as a witness, which is not surprising when one knows the outrageous licence given to counsel in our days to cross-examine witnesses.'

Captain Hampton noticed the sudden keen glance shot at his client from Mr. Slippen's eyes, followed by a series of almost imperceptible little nods, and was seized with a sudden and fierce desire to make a violent assault upon the unconscious detective.

'At any rate,' Mr. Hawtrey continued, 'I see nothing at present but to let the matter go on, and for you to obtain, if possible, some decisive proof of the man's connection with these letters. So far we have really only the most shadowy grounds for our suspicion against him.'

Again Mr. Slippen nodded, this time more openly and decisively.

'Quite the most shadowy, Mr. Hawtrey. I am far from saying that he may not be the man, but beyond his having, as I understand, a grievance of very many years' duration against yourself there is really nothing whatever to connect him with the affair.'

'Nothing, Mr. Slippen. It is, in fact, simply because there is no one else against whom we have even such slight grounds as this to go upon, that we suspect this fellow of being the author of these rascally communications.'

'You will understand, Mr. Hawtrey, that being employed by you I consider it my duty to let you know exactly the light in which the matter strikes me. Of course, I do not know the man as you do, but from what I have learnt from Captain Hampton he seems to be an unprincipled blackguard; a man who has been concerned in various shady transactions on the turf, and who has come down to the rank of the lowest class of betting men; a fellow who pays his bets when he has made a winning book on a race and is a welsher when he loses.

'Of course, it may be that such a man is of so vindictive a nature that he may have taken all this trouble simply to annoy you, but I cannot help thinking that if he had embarked upon it he would have played his hand so as not only to annoy but to extort money to cease that annoyance. Now the writer of these letters has certainly not done that. Had he had any idea of extorting money he would have sent some sort of private intimation to you, by means of a cautiously worded letter, to the effect that an arrangement could be made by which the thing could be put a stop to. You have received no such missive; therefore, if this man is the author he is simply a malicious scoundrel, and not, in this instance at any rate, a clever rogue, as I should certainly have expected to find him from his antecedents.'

'That is to say, you do not think he is the man?'

'Yes, I think it comes almost to that, Mr. Hawtrey. I do not know him, and, of course, he may be the man, but I own that I shall be a good deal surprised if I find that he is so. Still, in the absence of any other clue whatever, I propose to follow this up. It will be something at least to clear it out of the way and to have done with it. I shall detail my boy to watch the public-house till the man comes to it, and then to find out where he lives and what are his habits; to follow his footsteps and take note of every place where he posts a letter. We shall get, at any rate, negative evidence that way. If, for instance, a letter is posted in the south of London, and we know that on that day the man never went out of Islington, I think that it will be very strong proof that he has nothing to do with the matter. Of course the reverse would not be so convincing the other way; but if we had the coincidence, three or four times repeated, of the letter bearing the mark of a district in which he had dropped one into the post, we should feel that we were a long way towards proving his connection with the affair.'

'Quite so,' Mr. Hawtrey agreed; 'that will, as you say, either go far to confirm our suspicions, or will altogether clear the ground so far as he is concerned, and we must then look for a clue in some other direction altogether.'

That afternoon Captain Hampton, having nothing to do, made his way up to Islington. The lad was not to be put on the watch until the next morning, and he thought that he might see this man at the public-house he frequented, and perhaps glean something from any conversation he might have with the men he met there. After some inquiry as to the direction of Frogmore Street, he turned up the Liverpool Road, and had gone but a few hundred yards when his eye fell on a couple engaged in earnest conversation on the raised walk, on the opposite side of the street. He paused abruptly in his stride. One was unquestionably the man for whom he was seeking. He was better dressed than when he had seen him before, and had more the air of a gentleman, but there could be no question as to his identity. The other was as unmistakably Dorothy Hawtrey.

There was no question of an accidental likeness; it was the girl herself, and he recognised the dress as one he had seen her wear. Turning sharply on his heel he turned down a bye street, and came out into Upper Street. There were too many people here for him to think; he passed on, walking in the road at the edge of the pavement, to the Angel, and then turned down the comparatively quiet pavement of Pentonville Hill.