HAND TO HAND
The necessity that was now strong upon David was to act, to fight for
it. To hunt for the still hidden photograph and letter was far too
slow a task in his present mood of turbulence and desperation. The
photograph, indeed, would furnish certain proof as to whether Strauss
and Van Hupfeldt were one. So might the letter. But of what use would
proof of anything whatever be, when he was all shut out from access to
the Mordaunts? He thought, however, that if he could come within earshot
and striking distance of Van Hupfeldt, then something might result, he
was not clear what. He put on his hat and went out, as grim a man as
any on the streets of London that afternoon. He did not know where Van
Hupfeldt lived, but he turned his steps toward the Constitutional Club.
He meant at least to discover if Van Hupfeldt was a member there, and he
might discover more. But he was spared the pains of inquiry, for he was
still at a distance of thirty yards from the club when he saw Van
Hupfeldt come out and step into a carriage.
David cringed half under a dray, till the carriage began to move, then
followed some way behind at his long trot. He thought now that perhaps
he was about to track Van Hupfeldt to his house.
The carriage drove straight to Baker-St. Station, into which Van
Hupfeldt went, and took a ticket. David, listening outside the outer
entrance to the small booking-office, could not catch the name of his
destination, but when Van Hupfeldt had gone down into the gloom and
fume, David, half-way down the flight of stairs, stood watching. He had
no little finesse in tracking, and ferreting, and remaining invisible,
and when Van Hupfeldt had taken his seat, David was in another
compartment of the same train.
The dusk of evening was thickening when their train stopped at the
townlet of Pangley, twenty-five miles from London, where Van Hupfeldt
alighted.
David saw him well out of the little station before he himself leaped,
as the train began to move. He then took the precaution to ascertain the
times of the next up-trains. There would be one at quarter past eight
and another at ten P.M. While he asked as to the trains, and paid the
fare of some excess charge, he kept his eye on the back of Van Hupfeldt,
walking down the rather steep street. And, when it was safe, he
followed.
At the bottom of the street they crossed a bridge, and thenceforward
walked up a road with heath on both sides. David was angry with his
luck, for the road was straight and long, and there was little cover
in the heath, where he walked some distance from the road. Once Van
Hupfeldt turned, and seemed to admire the last traces of color in the
western sky, whereat David, as if shot, dropped into gorse and bracken.
He hoped that Van Hupfeldt, being a man of cities and civilization, was
unconscious of him; but he felt that he in Van Hupfeldt's place would
have known all, and he had a fear. The light was fast failing, but he
could clearly see Van Hupfeldt, who swung a parcel in his hand; and he
thought that if he could see Van Hupfeldt well, then Van Hupfeldt might
have seen him dimly. Van Hupfeldt, however, gave no sign of it.
David saw him go into the gateway of a pretty dwelling, and a big hearty
countrywoman ran out to meet him, her face beaming with good cheer.
Carrying a child in her arms, she escorted Van Hupfeldt into the house
with, it was clear, no lack of welcome, and, when they had disappeared,
David, vaulting over a hedge into the orchard, crept nearer the house
and hid behind a shed in which he saw a white calf. He waited there for
a long time, how long he did not know, for once, when he peered at his
watch, he could see nothing. The night had come moonless and black. The
place where he lurked was in the shadow of trees.
Meantime, within the house, Van Hupfeldt sat with the child on his knee.
He was so pale that Mrs. Carter, the child's foster-mother, asked if he
was well. Some purpose, some fear or hope, agitated him. Once, when the
countrywoman left the room to fetch a glass of milk, the moment he was
alone he put down the child, sped like a thief to the grandfather's
clock ticking in its old nook by the settee, opened it, put the
minute-hand back twenty minutes, and was seated again when the milk came
in.
These visits of his to the child, of which he paid one every week,
always lasted half an hour. This time he stayed so much longer that Mrs.
Carter glanced at the clock, only to be taken aback by the earliness of
the hour.
"Bless us!" she cried. "I thought it was later 'n that. You still have
plenty of time to catch the quarter past eight, sir."
But Van Hupfeldt stood up, saying that he would go. Putting on his coat,
he added: "Mrs. Carter, I have been followed from London by a man who, I
fancy, will present himself here presently when I am gone. He wishes to
know more about my affairs than he has a right to know. If he comes, I
have a reason for wishing you to receive him politely, and to keep him
in talk as long as he will stay. But, of course, you won't satisfy his
curiosity in anything that concerns me. In particular, be very careful
not to give him any hint that my name was Strauss during my wife's
lifetime."
"You may rely on me," said Mrs. Carter, in the secret voice of an
accomplice.
"Now, little one, to bed," said Van Hupfeldt, a thin and lanky figure
in his long overcoat, as he bent with kisses over the boy in Mrs.
Carter's arms.
Five minutes after he was gone David was at the farmhouse door. He, too,
would like a glass of milk.
"You're welcome, I'm sure," said Mrs. Carter. "Step inside."
His first glance was at the clock, for he did not wish to lose the
quarter past eight train, since that would mean the losing of his
present chance of tracking Van Hupfeldt to his address. But the clock
reassured him. He indolently took it for granted that it was more or
less near the mark, and it pointed to twenty minutes to eight. He
would thus have time to strike up an acquaintance with Mrs. Carter,
as a preliminary to closer relations in the future.
"And where is baby?" he asked.
"Oh, you know about him?" said Mrs. Carter. "He's in bed, to be sure."
"I saw him in your arms as I was passing up the road half an hour ago."
"What, you passed along here? I didn't notice you."
"I came up from the station. Now, this is something like good milk. You
have a nice little farm here, too. Do you manage it yourself?"
"Yes; my husband died a twelvemonth come May."
"It must be hard work with baby, too, as well, especially if you've got
any youngsters of your own."
"How can you know that this baby isn't my own?"
"Oh, as to that, I'm not quite so much in the dark about things. Why,
I'm living in the very flat which its poor mother occupied. I know its
aunt, I know its father--"
"Oh, well, you seem to know a lot. What more do you want?"
"I only know the father by sight--that is, if he was the father who was
in here just now. I take it he was."
"Ah, there, now, you're asking."
"Oh, there's no secret, Mrs. Carter. Mr. Johann Strauss is a well-known
man."
"Is that his name--Strauss? Well, well, live and learn."
"That's his name, and that's his writing, Mrs. Carter!"--words which
David uttered almost with a shout, as he caught an envelope out of the
coal scuttle, and laid it on the table, pointing fixedly at it.
Mrs. Carter was startled by his sudden vehemence. The envelope was one
directed to her in the same flourishing writing which Dibbin had long
since shown David as that of Strauss.
"You are bound to admit," said David, imperatively, "that this envelope
was directed to you by the gentleman who was just here."
"Well, so it was; what of that?" asked Mrs. Carter, in a maze as to what
the row was about.
"That's all right, then," said David, quieting down. "I only wanted to
be sure."
This, then, settled it. Van Hupfeldt was Strauss. David kept the
envelope, sipped his milk, and for some time talked with Mrs. Carter
about her cows, her fruit, and whether the white calf was to be sold or
kept. When it was ten minutes to eight by the big parlor clock he rose
to go, said that he hoped to see baby next time, if he might call again,
and shook hands. But in going out, from force of habit, he glanced at
his watch, and now saw that it was really ten minutes past eight.
"Great goodness!" he exclaimed, "your clock is all wrong!"
"No, sir--" began Mrs. Carter.
David was gone. He had five minutes in which to run a good deal over a
mile, and he ran with all his speed; but some distance from the station
he saw the train steaming out, and pulled up short.
At that moment Van Hupfeldt in the train was thinking: "It has worked
well. He is late, and there is no other train till ten--an hour and
three quarters. He has only a charwoman. She will not be in the flat at
this hour. No one will be there. Will it be my luck that the diary is
not under lock and key?"
As a matter of fact, the diary was lying openly on the dining-room table
in the flat, caution of that sort being hardly the uppermost quality in
David's character.
David strolled about Pangley, looked into the tiny shop-windows, dined
on fruit, wished that he had not been born some new variety of a fool,
and found that hour and three quarters as long as a week. Not much given
to suspicions of meanness and cunning, it did not even now come into his
head that he was where he was by a trick. He blamed only destiny for
imposing upon him such penal inactivity in the little town that night
when a thousand spurs were urging him to action. But at last ten o'clock
came, and when he stepped into the train he asked himself why he had
been so impatient, since probably nothing could be done that evening. He
reached London before eleven, and drove home weary of himself and of his
cares.
It was too late then, he thought, to go hunting after Van Hupfeldt. On
the morrow morning he would again try at the Constitutional. Meantime,
he lit himself a fire, and sat over it brooding, cudgeling his brains
for some plan of action. Then the diary drew him. He would re-read that
tragedy throughout. He put out his arm, half-turning from over the fire
to get the book.
It was no longer on the table.
He stood up and stared at the table. No diary was there. Yet he seemed
to remember--He set to work to search the flat.
Suddenly, in the midst of his work, a flood of light broke in upon him.
He thought that, if the letter which he had written to Violet, telling
her that he had the diary, had already fallen into Van Hupfeldt's
hands, then Van Hupfeldt knew that he had the diary; in which case, it
was Van Hupfeldt who had put back the clock's hand in the farmhouse at
Pangley! Van Hupfeldt knew all the time that David was shadowing him,
had put back the clock, and now held the diary, for which both he and
David would have given all that they were worth, and all is everything,
whether ten pounds or a million.
"Is that it?" thought David to himself. "Oh, is that it? All right, let
it be like that."
He lost not two minutes in thought, but with a lowering brow went out
into the streets, high-strung, his fingers cramped together.
An hour before this he had said to himself that the hour was too late
for action. Now, an hour later, such a thought did not occur to him in
the high pitch of his soul. That night, and not any other night or day,
he would have it out with Van Hupfeldt.
He jumped into a cab, and drove to the flat in King-St., Chelsea.
"But what on earth can the man mean," said Miss L'Estrange, peeping
through the slit of her slightly-opened door, "coming to a lady's flat
at this hour of the morning?"
In reality it was about half-past twelve.
"No, it's no use talking," said David, "you must let me in. I know you
have a right good heart, and I rely upon its action when I tell you that
it is a matter of life and death this time."
"But I'm alone."
"So much the better."
"Well, I like your cheek!"
"You like the whole of me; so you may as well own up to it, and be
done."
"Rats! You only come here when you want something done. It isn't me you
come to see."
"I'll come to see you some other time. Just throw something on, and let
me in."
"'Throw something on,' indeed! I'll throw something on you, and that'll
be hot water, the next time you come bothering about at this hour. Oh,
well, never mind; you're not a bad sort. Come in."
The door opened, Miss L'Estrange fled, and David went into the
drawing-room, where he waited some minutes till she reappeared, looking
fresh and washed from the night's stage-paint, with something voluminous
wrapped about her.
"Now, what is it?" said she. "Straight to the point--that's me."
"You must give me Strauss's address," said David.
"That I sha'n't," said she. "What do you take me for? I promised the man
that I wouldn't. I have told you once that he isn't a thousand miles
from Piccadilly, and that's about all you'll get from me."
"Good! I understand your position," said David. "But before you refuse
out and out, hear what I have to say. This man Strauss is a man who
induced Gwendoline Barnes, whom you know, to leave her home, married
her while his first wife was alive, and so caused her to make away with
herself. And now this same man, under the name of Van Hupfeldt, is about
to marry her sister, without telling her that he even knew the girl whom
he has murdered. I don't know what the sister's motive for marrying him
is--quite possibly there's some trick about it--but I know that the
motive is not love. Now, just think a moment, and tell me if this is
fair to your woman's mind."
"Oh, that's how it is!" exclaimed Ermyn L'Estrange.
"All the facts which I have mentioned I know for certain," said David.
"Then, that explains--"
"Explains what?"
"I'll tell you; but this is between us, mind. Some time ago Strauss
comes to me, and he says: 'I have given your address to a young lady--a
Miss Violet Mordaunt--who is about to write you a letter asking whether
you did or did not find any certificates in a picture in the Eddystone
Mansions flat; and I want you in answer to deny to her for my sake that
any certificates were ever found.'"
"And you did?" cried David with deep reproach.
"Now, no preaching, or I never tell you anything again," shrilled Miss
L'Estrange. "Here's gratitude in man! Of course I did! He said it was
only an innocent fib which could do no harm to anybody, and if you saw
the bracelet I got for it, my boy--"
"You wrote to say that no certificates were ever found!"
"I did."
"Then what can she think of me?" he cried with a face of pain. "I told
her--"
"Ah, you are after her, too? I see now how it is," said Miss L'Estrange.
"But she might at least have given me a chance of clearing myself!"
groaned David. "She might have written to me to say that she had found
me out in a lie."
Violet had, indeed, promised herself the luxury of writing one
"stinging, crushing, killing" note to David in the event of Miss
L'Estrange proving him false. And, in fact, not one but many such notes
had been written down at Dale Manor. But none of them had ever been
sent--her deep disdain had kept her silent.
"But," cried David, at the spur of a sudden glad thought, "since Miss
Mordaunt wrote to you, and you to her, you know her address, and can
give it me!"
"No, I don't know her address," answered Miss L'Estrange. "I believe now
that Strauss may have been afraid that if I knew it I might give it to
you, so he must have prevented her from putting it on her letter. There
was no address on it, I don't think, for when I wrote back to her I gave
my letter to Strauss to send."
"Ah, he's a cautious beast!" said David, bitterly. "Still--I'll have
him--not to-morrow, but to-night. Quick, now--his address."
"Well, I promised not to tell it to any one," vowed Miss L'Estrange in
her best soubrette manner, "and I'll be as good as my word, since I
never break a promise when my word is once passed. I'll just write it
down on a piece of paper, and drop it on the floor by accident, and then
if anybody should happen to notice it and pick it up without my seeing,
that will be no business of mine."
She rose, walked to a desk, and went through this pantomime in all
seriousness. The address was dropped on the carpet, and David
"happening" to notice it, picked it up behind Miss Ermyn L'Estrange's
unconscious back. It had on it the number of a house near Hanover
Square; and in another moment David had pressed the lady's hand, and was
gone, crying: "I'll come again!"
"Not even a word of thanks," said Miss L'Estrange to herself, as she
looked after his flying back: "'Blow, blow, thou winter's wind.'"
David leaped into his waiting cab, and was off across London.
Light was still in Van Hupfeldt's quarters, and Van Hupfeldt himself, at
the moment when David rang, was poring over the last words of the diary
of her who had been part of his life. He was livid with fear at the
knowledge just learned for certain from the written words, that there
were still hidden in the flat a photograph of him, and his last letter
to Gwendoline, when he heard an altercation between his man Neil and
another voice outside. A moment later he heard Neil cry out sharply,
and then he was aware of a hurried step coming in upon him. The
first thought of his secretive nature was the diary, and, with the
trepidations of a miser surprised in counting his gold, he hustled it
into a secret recess of the bureau near which he had been reading. He
had hardly done this when he stood face to face with David.
At that moment Van Hupfeldt's face seemed lit with a lunacy of affright,
surprise, and rage. David, with his hat rather drawn over his eyes, and
with a frowning severity, said: "I want four things of you--the diary,
the key of my flat which you have in your possession, those
certificates, and Mrs. Mordaunt's address."
A scream went out from Van Hupfeldt: "Neil! the police!"
"Quite so," said David; "but before the police come, do as I say, or I
shall kill you."
Van Hupfeldt could hardly catch his breath sufficiently to speak. A man
so wholly in the grip of terror it was painful to see. David understood
him to say: "Man, I warn you, my heart is weak."
"Heart weak?" growled David. "That's what you say? Well, then, keep
cool, and let me have my way. We must wrangle it out now somehow. You
have the police on your side for the moment, and I stand alone--"
Now the outer door was heard to slam; for Neil had run out to summon
help.
"I'm not acting on my own behalf," said David, "but for the sake of a
girl whose life, I feel sure, you are going to make bitter. She cares
nothing for you--"
"How dare you!" came in a hoarseness of concentrated passion from Van
Hupfeldt's bosom.
"No, she cares nothing for you--"
"You interloper!"
"And even if she did, she is sure to find out sooner or later that you
are Strauss--"
"Oh! had I but guessed!"
"Which would be the death of her--"
"I never dreamed of this."
"So, on her behalf, I'll just make a hurried search before the police
comes. The things are not yours. If your heart wasn't weak, I'd maul
you till you were willing to hand them over of your own accord."
With that David made a move toward the bureau, whereupon Van Hupfeldt
uttered a scream and flew upon him like a cat-o'-mountain, but David
flung him away to the other end of the room.
Scattered over the bureau were a number of letters in their envelopes
ready for the post, and the first of these upon which David's eye fell
was directed to "Miss Violet Mordaunt."
Here was luck! Even as his heart bounded, before even he had seen a word
of the address, he was in darkness--Van Hupfeldt had switched off the
light.
And now once again David felt himself outdone by the cunning of this
man. The room was large, crowded with objects of luxury, and the switch
a needle in a bundle of hay. In which direction to grope for it David
did not know. He ran to where he had flung Van Hupfeldt, to compel him
by main force to turn on the light. But Van Hupfeldt was no longer
there. The suddenness of the darkness made it black to the eyes. David
could not find the switch, and fearing lest Van Hupfeldt might snatch
away the letter to Violet in the dark, he flew back to the bureau,
over-setting first a chair, and then colliding upon Van Hupfeldt a
little distance from the bureau. Again he flung Van Hupfeldt far, and,
keeping near the bureau, groped along the beading of the wall, to see
if he could encounter another switch.
In the midst of this search, his ears detected the sound of a key in
the outer door, and understanding that help had arrived for the enemy,
instantly he took his decision, felt for the eight or ten envelopes on
the bureau, slipped them all into his pocket, and was gone. In the hall,
coming inward he met Neil and an officer, but, as if making a deep bow
to the majesty of the law, he slipped as easily as a wave under the
officer's hand, and disappeared through the wide-open door. The officer
ran after him. This was simple. From the moment when David pitched
through the house-door below the stairs, he was never more seen by that
particular officer to the day of his death.
Under a lamp in Oxford-St., when he stopped running, he took out
Strauss's letters from his pocket with a hand that shook, for in his
heart was the thought: "Suppose I have left hers behind!"
But no; that fifth one was hers: "Miss Violet Mordaunt, Dale Manor,
Rigsworth, near Kenilworth." Remembrance came to him with an ache of
rapture. Within twenty-four hours he would see her. He was so pleased
that he was at the pains to throw Strauss's other letters into the
first pillar-box. What did it matter now that the diary, certificates,
anything or everything, had been filched from him? To-morrow, no, that
day, he would see Violet.