THE INEXPLICABLE CONDUCT OF MISS CLARA.
A younger and more pessimistically disposed man than I might
conceivably have been plunged into the depths of despair at being thus
told by the woman he loved that she hated him. But, on the whole, I
was not inclined to be altogether dissatisfied with the interview.
Never before--even though her words were sympathetic and her manner
not unkindly--had she failed to make me realise that I was kept at a
distance; that I was an unvouched-for stranger, between whom and her
the barriers of custom and convention still necessarily existed. But
her words and her acts of to-day--so it seemed to me--were a tacit
admission that the barrier had been removed. She had concerned herself
sufficiently in my career to express a wish in regard to it (though
here I fear she acted on her aunt's instigation rather than from any
impulse or inclination of her own); she had made the granting of that
wish a favour to herself, and had even suffered me to declare my love
unreproved. Her tears had, I admit, at the moment utterly dismayed me;
but remembering the subsequent by-play of the uneclipsed eye, I was
now disposed to think either that those tears were caused by pique at
the fact that I had not more promptly acceded to her request, or that
they were no more than the legitimate use of a woman's natural weapon
for the confounding and undoing of man. Possibly, too--so I tried to
persuade myself--the exclamation "I hate you--I hate you!" was less an
expression of personal dislike than a pretty woman's very pardonable
exhibition of captiousness at finding herself thwarted where she had
expected immediate submission and consent. With the assistance of Miss
Clara, I hoped soon to regain whatever ground I had lost in her niece's
favour, and as, after leaving us, the older lady had made straight for
the garden, and had (as I could see from the window) been pacing it
bareheaded, hands clasped behind her and deep in thought, I ventured to
lift the window, and to ask her to spare me a moment before I went.
She came in at once, looking, I thought, a trifle tired and pale, but
otherwise all trace of agitation was gone, and she spoke with all her
usual self-possession.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, coming to the point as usual, the instant the
door was closed; "what have you and Clara been talking about?"
"My work," I answered laconically. "I'm to throw up crime
investigation, and devote myself to something else."
"And you have promised?"
"Well, no, I haven't. I had the temerity to ask for some reason why
I should be called upon to take so extraordinary a course, with the
result that your niece first burst into tears, and then flung out of
the room in a passion. Do you know why?"
She did not condescend to answer.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, "give up this detective work at once. Devote
all your time to book-writing, and I'll stand your friend. Refuse, and
you do not enter the house or see Clara again."
"The devil is in it!" I exclaimed rudely and with exasperation. "I'll
do anything to please you, who have proved yourself so true and so
generous a friend. But surely I'm entitled to a reason. I admit
frankly that I'm less keen on this work than I was before I heard the
Dumpling's passionate plea for the poor--a plea which seemed to me a
sort of conscription, calling upon and compelling every able-bodied man
to enlist himself and to take up arms in so sacred a cause. I don't
say that I mightn't see my way, sooner or later, perhaps even at once,
to give up the detective business, if giving it up means pleasing you
and winning your niece--who, by the bye, has just done me the honour
to declare that she hates me, so there seems small enough occasion to
consider that aspect of the case. But when a man has devoted years of
his life to any particular career, and has even made some small success
at it, you can hardly expect him to throw up everything at a moment's
notice, and without any sort of reason being given for the request.
What is your reason? What is your niece's reason? For some reason the
two of you must surely have."
"It isn't respectable, for one thing," replied Aunt Clara doggedly.
"Respectable!" I said. "Is that it? Frankly, I have always felt that
there isn't very much difference, after all, between the man who uses
his brains to track down and to capture a criminal--as a detective
does--and the man who uses his brains to make out a case against the
criminal and get him convicted--as the barrister does--and the man
who, after he has listened to all that can be said about the case
by everybody concerned, sums it up, and, when a verdict has been
returned, passes sentence. They are all three--judge, barrister, and
detective--officers of the law and servants of the King and of the
public; and I'm not sure that the detective's isn't the most important
and useful work of the three. Anyhow, it is the most difficult."
"Bosh!" said Miss Clara shortly. "You'll be telling me next that you
might just as well be a hangman, for _he's_ as much an officer of the
law and a servant of the King and of the public as the other three; and
so, according to your showing, equally respectable. Bosh, Mr. Rissler!
Bosh!"
"All right. Bosh it is, then!" I replied amicably. "Anything for a
quiet life, and I admit I hadn't thought of your holding trumps all
the time, and playing the hangman card. Anyhow, I'm answered on that
score. What a wonderful woman you are! Judge, barrister, and detective
all rolled into one. A great lawyer was lost to the world when it was
decided that you should come into it wearing petticoats instead of a
wig and gown."
"You're a fool!" said Miss Clara, not ill-pleased, in spite of the
uncompromising plainness of her language.
"And now, what about the detective business?" she went on. "Are you
going to give it up, or are you not? For you have got to decide one way
or the other before you come here again. I wouldn't see my niece for
the present, if I were you. She'll come round in time, like the rest
of us, if she's left alone. There's nothing a woman hates so much as
being taken at her word, and left alone. There are many more women who
have gone back on what they'd said, and let a man have his own way,
after swearing they wouldn't--there are many more who have done that,
and been brought round to another way of thinking, just by being left
alone, than by any other way. Pestering a woman, pleading with her,
imploring her, is precious little use. You take the tip from me, young
man--I know."
"You're a wonder, Miss Carleton, as I said before," I answered. "And
I'll take a tip from you as eagerly as I'd take a kiss, if you'd give
me one."
"Oh, bosh! Don't bother me! You're a fool--as I told you before," she
retorted. "But think it over; take time, if you like, but think it
over, and if you are a wise man and decide to do as I wish, as both of
us wish, I'll stand your friend."
"Miss Carleton," I said, "I'll be frank with you. It doesn't want
much thinking over. I had thought it over before I came here, and
had practically decided for the present, at all events, to leave the
detective work alone. The singular and to me entirely inexplicable
attitude which you and your niece have chosen to take up, in giving
me, so to speak, an ultimatum either to drop the work or to consider
myself forbidden this house, aroused, just for a moment, an Irishman's
love of fight, an Irishman's cussedness and contradictoriness. But
I'll do as you say, and for the present, at all events, will leave
Dumpling-hunting and detective work alone. I don't make any great
sacrifice in doing so, as far as the Dumpling is concerned; for when he
went away he was in too much of a hurry to leave me his visiting card,
and I don't know where to find him if I wanted to. The only clue I have
to him is concerned with this house, the doors of which, unless I drop
detective work, must, you say, be closed to me. Moreover, whatever may
have been his purpose in coming here and in watching this place (and I
still suspect that he intends, or intended, to kidnap your brother), it
is likely that that purpose he has for the present dropped. In fact,
after so narrowly escaping capture here at the hands of the police,
this house--for some time, at least--he is likely carefully to avoid.
So even that clue is 'off.'"
"I'm very glad to hear it," was her reply. "Yes, what is it, Metcalfe?
Do you want me?"
"If you please, m'm," answered Metcalfe, who had opened the door while
Miss Clara was speaking, and was standing in an apologetic way with one
hand on the handle. "I knocked twice, but you were talking and didn't
hear me," he went on. "Miss Kate sent me. She'd like a word with you at
once, please, and before Mr. Rissler goes."
"All right--I'll come."
Then, Metcalfe having made his bow and gone, she turned to me:
"You'll find the _Times_ there on the table. I shan't be away long."
But she was away long--so long, indeed, that she did not return at all.
For almost an hour I was left alone, and then the door opened a few
inches, and instead of Miss Clara, Kate slipped quickly in.
Closing it, but with one hand still holding the handle, she faced me.
She looked deadly pale, and trembled violently.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, "my aunt tells me that you have promised her
what you refused to promise me--that you will in future abandon the
dangerous and not altogether creditable line of work you have taken up
in constituting yourself a detective. Is that so?"
"That is so," I answered hotly; "but in regard to its being a
discreditable occupation, and in regard to my having promised Miss
Carleton what I would not promise to you, I must protest----"
"Forgive me," she said coldly, "but I cannot argue the matter, or
listen to any explanation or protestation. I have come here to ask
you--to bid you--for my aunt, as well as for myself, to leave this
house instantly, and never, under any circumstances, to enter it
again."