A BRIGHT PAIR.
_Letter from MR. STAVANGER to his SON._
(_Written in Cypher._)
“My Dear Boy,--For you are my dear boy still, although you have of late
caused me a great deal of anxiety. You hardly know how much I endured
until I received your letter from Malta, and even then I was tormented
by a dread of what it might have been found necessary to do. I allude to
the death of the steward, which, to say the least, was very lucky for
us. You wonder how I know this? I will tell you later on. There is so
much to relate that I must start at the beginning, or I shall get mixed
up. First and foremost, the business is steadily recovering from the
shock given to it by the abstraction of so much portable property.
Secondly, my brother has not the slightest suspicion that there is any
reason why Harley Riddell should not stay where he is, and I am
beginning to be of his opinion. This belief is inspired in me by a
strange sequence of circumstances, all of which seem to point to one
conclusion. He must really be a very wicked man, or Providence would not
work so persistently against him as it seems to do. Everything that
could help him and hurt you is almost miraculously rendered powerless,
and everybody whom we had cause to dread has been promptly removed. How,
therefore, can anyone doubt that Divine vengeance is exacting atonement
for some fearful crime which has not yet been brought to light? This
being so, we are nothing less than the instruments used by Providence
for its own ends, and I regard what you have done as the involuntary
outcome of an inexplicable and unconscious cerebral influence.
“But now that the aims of Providence are achieved, I beseech you to
assert your own identity and to fight against any impulse to repeat any
one of the dangerous proceedings of the past few months.
“And now for such news as I have. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned
sooner that your mother and sisters are quite well. Also that I am in
like case both mentally and bodily, now that I know you to be rid of
your enemies. It would have been an awful Damoclean sword hanging over
us if that inquisitive Wear had not been providentially removed from our
path. Then there was my poor old friend Mr. Edward Lyon. Did you see in
the papers anything about his sudden death while away on his business
mission to America? I had nothing but esteem for him. But I must say
that I felt immensely relieved when the news of his death reached us. He
had turned unpleasantly suspicious just before he sailed, and would most
assuredly have begun to make undesirable inquiries on his return. But
heaven has seen fit to remove him to a better world. That it has at the
same time removed one who might have been the means of proving Riddell
not guilty of the crime for which he suffers is only another proof to me
that he is, as I said before, being made to expiate some former sin.
“Nor is this by any means all the proof of my theory. You know Clement
Corney? And perhaps you feel uneasy at the mention of his name. If so,
you may set your fears at rest, for he also is numbered among those who
might have been a witness against you, but is not. A week ago he came to
me with a long tale about what he knew and about what he suspected. You
seem to have been imprudently confidential with him, and to have allowed
him to pry into your affairs far too much. From what he told me I judged
him to be a very formidable witness against you and deemed it advisable
to accede to his demands for money, but looked with anything but
equanimity upon the prospect of having to continue supplying him with
money as long as he chose to blackmail me. I should have been left no
choice in the matter, as exposure, after having gone so far, would mean
ruin. But here Providence once more interposed most strangely. Last
night, on opening my evening paper, I came upon the account of the
inquest on Clement Corney’s body. He had been jerked from the top step
of a ’bus and had broken his neck.
“This is all very strange and wonderful. But the strangest thing of all
has to be related yet. As you will see by the postmark of this letter,
we have come to St. Ives for our holiday. We arrived here on Monday, and
on Tuesday I was walking on the beach and wondering how you were going
on when I saw a group of children become considerably excited. Going up
to them I found that one of them was holding a bottle which had been
washed up by the tide. Seeing that the bottle was carefully sealed, and
appeared to contain papers, I offered the children a shilling for it.
They ran off with the shilling in high glee, while I secreted the bottle
in my dustcoat, and walked rapidly towards our lodgings with it. I
cannot account for the impulse which prompted these apparently
irrelevant actions, except upon the hypothesis of Providential
interference already mentioned. I do not usually take much interest in
the doings of children, and I am not naturally of a prying, inquisitive
disposition, and yet I was anxious to open that bottle in the privacy of
my own bedroom. And now mark the result.
“That bottle contained papers giving a detailed account of all that
Hilton Riddell, alias William Trace, had done, and was doing, to ruin
you and liberate his brother. What a sneak the fellow has been to
deceive people, and to do the tricky things he was doing. No wonder he
came to a bad end. And how vindictive he must have been to write down
all he wrote on the papers that have so wonderfully been put in my
possession. Why, only one half the details would have reversed the
relative positions of his brother and yourself, if anyone but me had
secured that bottle. It seems miraculous, doesn’t it, that, after
tossing about on the waters of the broad Atlantic, the fragile
receptacle of a deadly secret should have been guided to the only person
who knew how to make a proper use of it? I broke the bottle, and after
reading them destroyed the papers. And what do you to say to the strange
fact that I, who had never been in St. Ives before, should chance to be
there just when that bottle was washed ashore? Only picture what a
calamity it would have been had anyone but myself stumbled upon it.
“The whole thing has only served to strengthen the belief expressed
nearer the beginning of this letter, and I no longer feel the slightest
qualms of conscience on his behalf. Nor do I feel much further
uneasiness about you. Wear is dead. Mr. Lyon is dead. Clement Corney is
dead. The carefully-prepared proofs against you which Hilton Riddell
consigned to the waves have perished in a more deadly element, and he
himself is powerless to do you further injury unless the sea gives up
its dead. All things taken together, therefore, you may consider
yourself perfectly safe, and I do not think there would be the slightest
risk in your returning to England, and resuming your duties at the shop.
Let me know as soon as possible whether you intend to do so or not. You
will have had sufficient holiday, and ought to try to make up for all
the worry you have caused me lately.
“One thing puzzles me a little. How did Hilton Riddell get to know that
you were sailing in the ‘Merry Maid,’ and what led him to pitch his
suspicions on you? It couldn’t be all chance, and, but for his timely
extinction things might have been very awkward for you by this time.
“But enough of this subject. You know all there is to know, and I know
as much as I want to know. Nor do I desire ever to open the subject
again.
“You will be interested to hear that Mr. Leonard Claridge is violently
in love with Ada, and is very anxious to marry her off-hand. I am just
as anxious that the marriage should take place as he is, for it would be
a great thing to have Ada so advantageously settled. She pretends to
turn her nose up at an offer from a grocer. But she is a very sensible
girl, after all, and will reflect that if Mr. Claridge is a grocer he is
not in the retail line, and will be able to provide her with an
establishment quite equal to her mother’s.
“Fanny is likely to be much more troublesome to us. She is very
passionate and intractable, and nobody seems able to manage her since
the night you left home. That night was also the one on which Wear came
to such a sudden and tragic end. It was also the night on which that
governess disappeared, who seemed to have such a genius for managing
Fanny. When I returned home, after seeing you safe on board the ‘Merry
Maid,’ the governess had gone out. It was odd that she never came back,
wasn’t it?”
Yes, it was certainly odd. Indeed, it was the one fly in Mr. Stavanger’s
ointment. Just now the fact did not trouble him, because he was not
aware of it.
At one of the principal hotels in Bombay a young man sat reading the
letter from which the above long extract is given. He would have been
fairly good-looking but for the unpleasant expression which his reckless
indulgence in vicious pleasures and his aggressively selfish temperament
had given him. In height and breadth he somewhat exceeded the average,
but his gait was seen to be clumsy when he walked, although his
proportions were regular enough. His hands and feet were small and well
shaped, his complexion of a clear, but healthy enough paleness when he
condescended to lead an abstemious life. Just now it was full of
tell-tale pimples. His features were regular; his teeth well-shaped, but
slightly discoloured; his hair, eyes, and expression all as black as
they can be found anywhere.
Such was Hugh Stavanger, known on the hotel books as Harry Staley. He
had been to the “poste restante” for his letter, and as his eyes
wandered from one page to another, rapidly deciphering the contents that
would have proved so baffling to anyone not initiated in the business of
Stavanger, Stavanger, and Co., the heavy scowl on his face gave way to a
look of evil triumph, not unmingled with astonishment.
“Well, of all the lucky accidents, these beat everything,” he murmured.
“To think of all those people being bowled over like that. But what a
caution the governor is, to be sure, with his talk about wickedness and
Providence. And he really writes as if he believes what he preaches.
There is one thing, though, in which he is quite right. The sea can’t
give up its dead, at any rate not in such a condition as to be able to
speak against me. Hullo! What’s this? Curse that girl. There is no
mistake about her now. She was a spy when pretending to be governess.
She disappeared from our house the night I sailed. This means that she
found out where I was going to, and set that scoundrel of a Riddell on
my trail. Her next manœuvre was to follow me out to Malta. These people
evidently know who really took the diamonds. And they are moving heaven
and earth to bring me to book. Ah! well! They mean to win. So do I, and
all the odds are now in my favour. They may suspect what they like, but
they haven’t a proof left. As the governor says, Providence is dead
against them. We all know that it’s no use flying in the face of
Providence, so my enemies are foredoomed to disappointment.
“So the governor thinks I had better go home again, and that I should be
quite safe. I don’t exactly agree with him, and I have an idea that I
can work a trick worth two of that. This interesting young lady, whom I
imagine to be Miss Cory, wants to discover my whereabouts. I have, very
foolishly, been running away from her. I think I will reverse my
tactics. It would be completing the good offices of Providence if I were
to permit my enemies to overtake me. Nay, I will go further than that. I
will give them indirect information of my whereabouts. Then, just when
they imagine the hour of their triumph has arrived, I will remove them
from my path with even less compunction than I felt over Hilton Riddell.
“Yes, the hunted shall turn hunter, and whether it is God or devil that
is helping me, I mean to win.”