THE QUEST OF THE REGISTERED PARCEL
The typical Agony Column of the _Daily Post_ was built up in courses
which varied in little but their diurnal degree of thickness. Starting
from a plinth, say, of Dancing and Gymnastics, it would rise by
successive stages, through Cast-off Clothes, Skin-beautifiers and
Superfluous-hair Removers, Patent-medicines and Special-cure
Treatments, Detective Agencies, Paying-Guest and Social Introduction
offers, to Personal Appeals, whence soaring through Club-fixtures and
Lost Property advertisements, it would flower at length into a capital
of the true ‘agonizings,’ crowned sometimes, at irregular intervals,
by an apocalyptic warning to the worldly and thoughtless to set their
houses in order.
Gilead, from mere force of habit, was wont to run his eye down these
successive courses from top to base--though his proper business lay
with the Personal Appeal section alone--which was the reason why the
following brief supplication momentarily arrested his attention on a
certain November day:--
“_Jennett. Return and all will be forgiven._”
It was just the commonplace cry, prescriptively uttered; yet, though
potential of any possible tragedy, and full in implication of sorrow
and significance, it lay off the track of his questing, and he would
hardly have given it a thought had it not been for the oddness of the
title-name. Janet, Jeannette, Jenny--these were familiar forms; but,
Jennett! Evidently anglicised from the Gallic, the confidence shown by
the advertiser in the exclusiveness of its appeal witnessed to the
unusualness of the spelling. If Jennett was the only Jennett in
England and Jennett saw, Jennett must understand. Then Gilead passed
on to other matters, and forgot all about it.
Now one of the penalties imposed upon the growing reputation of the
Agency consisted in the increasing number of unsolicited applications
for its help. Originally designed for the purpose of voluntarily
enquiring into the merits of advertised appeals, greed and hypocrisy
had quickly discovered the wideness of its operations and the
munificence displayed in its dealings, and were not slow in
endeavouring to take advantage of them. So complete by this time,
however, was the machinery of the Bureau that very little base coin
was permitted to pass it undetected; but the greater surveillance
rendered necessary thereby threw such an amount of additional work on
the staff that Gilead was obliged at length to rule that the cachet of
an advertisement was obligatory before a case could be considered; and
to that rule he rigidly adhered, allowing no exceptions.
One day Herbert Nestle, during his morning consultation with his
chief, ventured to draw his attention to an advertisement in the day’s
paper:--
“_Help earnestly solicited. Mrs B._”
“Did you notice it, sir?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Gilead, with a smile. “I noticed it and wondered. It
reminded me of an article on Dead Letters that I read years ago.
Specimen addresses were quoted, one of which ran, ‘Mrs’--I forget the
name--‘Behind the Church, England’.”
The secretary laughed.
“This advertisement was put in at my instance, sir. It was merely a
‘draw,’ inserted to comply with your rule. Mrs B., or Mrs Baxter,
applied to me personally, and thinking her case a reasonable one, I
advised her to approach us according to form.”
“You did very right, Nestle. Who is Mrs Baxter?”
“Her son, sir, was a postman in the South-West District. I don’t know
if you happened to notice the case. He was convicted of stealing a
registered letter, and was condemned at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions
last week to eighteen months hard labour.”
“No, I did not. Well?”
“There was nothing, I confess, very out-of-the-way about the affair,
unless it was the recklessness of the deed in the face of sure
detection.”
Gilead shook his head. “That is the commonest of criminologic
problems,” he said.
“But, pardon me, sir,” answered the secretary; “does its commonness
compel one to jump to the common conclusion? Say that A, a criminal,
is reckless, must B, therefore, who is reckless, equal A?”
“I stand corrected, Nestle. What was in the registered packet?”
“Diamonds, sir. They had been forwarded from a dealer in Hatton Garden
to an address in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and the parcel was
registered up to four hundred pounds.”
“And it was not delivered?”
“It was accounted for as far as Baxter, and Baxter could produce no
receipt for its delivery by him. Compensation was claimed by Mr
Hamlin, the dealer; the Post Office had to pay up, and Baxter went to
prison.”
“What was his defence?”
“O, innocence, complete and childlike! He swore he had been given the
receipt; the addressee swore he had not received the parcel--there was
virtually no defence.”
“Had he ever been in trouble before?”
“That was the damning part of it. He had once been convicted of
pledging unpaid-for goods, and had been bound over as a first
offender. There was a girl in the case then, I believe, and no doubt
he had wanted to pose before her as the monied gentleman.”
“Well, Nestle, well,” said Gilead after a short pause. “You have your
reasons, no doubt, for encouraging Mrs Baxter. You have given me none
so far for meddling with a case which appears to have been decided
equitably on its merits. It would be the grossest abuse of privilege,
as of course you are aware, for the Agency to interfere in the clear
processes of justice, save on some exceptionally plausible assumption
of their miscarriage.”
“I have my reasons certainly, Mr Balm, or I should not have ventured
to approach you on the matter. I do so now with extreme diffidence.
Your clear candour of soul--I am speaking purely officially--is
pre-eminent amongst us in the recognition of truth. There may be
miscarriage of justice here, or there may not be. I ask you only to
take the responsibility of deciding out of my hands, lest helpless
innocence should suffer. I am not going to prejudice the case by a
word; and I should take it as a great kindness, sir, if you would
yourself see and interrogate Mrs Baxter.”
“She is here--at this moment?”
“She is here, sir, awaiting your decision.”
“Very well; I will see her.”
He called softly after the secretary as the latter was leaving the
room.
“Nestle!”
“Yes, Mr Balm?”
“You are a good fellow, Nestle.”
The secretary bowed gravely and disappeared.
He returned in a few moments, ushering in a little worn woman, dressed
in decent black, and neither common nor pretentious in appearance. Her
age might have been fifty, but the wrinkles of a hundred years lined
her forehead, and the very tragedy of death in life haunted her dim
eyes. Gilead, always sensitive to sorrow, rose and, motioning Nestle
to leave them alone together, placed a chair for the visitor and
seated himself where he could best command without embarrassing her.
“Am I right, Mrs Baxter,” he said, “in assuming that you are a nurse?”
Something neatly formal in her habit may have suggested the
hypothesis. It was a correct one in any case.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, with a faint expression of surprise.
“Ah!” he said. “That is to establish at the outset a claim upon one’s
sympathies. Now I am acquainted with the bare facts of this unhappy
story, Mrs Baxter. What have you to say to qualify them? I ask you to
speak to me with perfect confidence and freedom.”
“Thank you, sir, from my heart. I know the value of conciseness, and I
will not say a word more than I must.”
“Very well. You are convinced of your son’s innocence?”
“Charlie is innocent, sir.”
“Just so. Now, as to the proofs?”
“If such there were, sir, I need not have troubled you.”
“To be sure you need not. Let us say, then, the admissible
likelihoods?”
“It would have been the act of a madman, would it not, knowing that he
must be found out?”
“Yes?--very well. I do not propose to comment for the moment.”
“Secure of such wealth, sir, and having yielded to the temptation, is
it likely he would have returned straight to the office, with the
property upon him, to risk discovery at the very beginning?”
“Now, Mrs Baxter, you must understand that what I say is said with the
view to make clear to myself the pros and cons of this business, and
is without prejudice to the real truth of the case. I do not know what
is the procedure of the Post Office in such matters; but in the event,
say, of your son not having been called upon, in the hurry of
business, to produce his receipt, until the complaints of the sender
of the packet made its production imperative, he would have had plenty
of time, would he not, to dispose of the goods?”
“He was never, sir, a penny the richer by it.”
“I am afraid that proves nothing; and no doubt all these assumptions
were taken into consideration at the trial.”
The visitor’s small face flushed, and for the first time she bit her
lip to keep back the tears.
“It was hard, sir,” she said, “that his very innocence should have
been used to witness against him, and that his sentence was made the
severer because he would not confess to the whereabouts of things he
had never stolen.”
She was staunch to her fine belief. Gilead felt very pitifully towards
the broken little soul.
“And then,” she cried, “to bring up that old affair against him, when
it had proved the very making of his character! The error of a boy,
sir, ignorant of what he was doing, though I don’t defend it; but he
had pledged things for his father when alive, and he knew nothing of
the law. It was a girl egged him on to it, and Charlie never could
resist a pretty face. But it was a lesson and a warning that he never
forgot--no not, as the dear God shall witness, when he walked on that
last round that ruined him.”
She blinked away the tears that would come.
“It is very sad,” said Gilead--“horribly sad indeed.”
“Yes, sir,” she answered, “it is sad; but I did not come to urge the
feelings of a mother, or her love and faith in her boy. All that could
be said was said, as you concluded, at the trial; and, appearances
being what they were, no other verdict could have been expected. I
remember my promise to you, and I am not going to suppose that what
was argued in his defence, without avail, by a clever lawyer can be
put more convincingly by me. What I founded the only hope I possess on
is what brought me to pray Mr Nestle to procure me, if possible, this
interview with you. I want to know, sir, what part the girl Jennett
had in my son’s ruin.”
Gilead had been looking down. He raised his head with a start.
“Who did you say?” he asked quickly: “Jennett?”
The little visitor had been groping in her pocket, from which she now
produced a paper which she unfolded and brought across to him. It was
a front page of the _Daily Post_, dated some days back, and marked
round in red ink was the very advertisement which had excited the
young man’s curiosity. He looked up, in surprised enquiry.
“Is it not an uncommon name, sir?” she said.
“A most uncommon one, I should think,” he answered. “I saw and
remarked upon it at the time.”
“The person that advertised it must have been so sure of its
uncommonness,” she said, “that he felt nothing more was needed to
explain the who to and where from.”
Gilead nodded. The little shrewd well-spoken woman had echoed his own
thoughts. She bent, and touched his arm, softly, impressively.
“Jennett, sir,” she said, “was the name of the servant-girl that took
the packet from my son’s hand at the door, and went away and returned
with the signed receipt, and afterwards swore at the trial that she
had never taken the packet and never given a receipt.”
Gilead had risen, and was listening attentively, with a wondering look
on his face.
“Who’s advertising for her,” said the visitor, “and what has she done
to need forgiveness? That should be my son’s business, I think. Her
treachery was what cut him to the heart. He knew her and had often
exchanged jokes with her at the door during the short time she was in
the house. I told you, sir, that he loved a pretty face. This girl was
pretty, and in an impudent lively way, he told me--but indeed I was
able to see for myself; and though a mother’s eyes are prejudiced, I
am not going to deny her an attraction of a sort.”
“She gave the receipt to your son, you say--or he says?”
“He told me, sir, that he was never so shocked and horrified in his
life as when, returning from his round, he found it missing.”
“But if she gave it to him?”
“That is so, sir.” She put a hand momentarily to her eyes. “I must
speak the whole truth,” she said in a low troubled voice. “Charlie was
reticent about that morning. I felt that he was hiding something from
me--not his guilt; no, sir, no. But I believe that, as a fact, he was
courting the girl, and I can’t help thinking that his silence about
particulars was designed in some way to screen her.”
“What has become of her? Have you tried to see her since?”
“She has left her situation, sir; which makes me the more certain that
this advertisement refers to her.”
“Softly, Mrs Baxter! We mustn’t jump too surely to conclusions. There
may be other Jennetts in the world.”
“There may be, sir; or there may have been once. There’s a tombstone
in Hampshire, I’m told, with the name on it spelt that way. But not in
London. Local wants would be advertised in local papers.” She had
evidently considered the case in all its bearings. “I should like,”
she said, “to have a word with Jennett’s employer.”
“Well, why not?” asked Gilead.
“Because, sir, he too has shut up his house and gone,” she answered.
“Now, let me think out things a bit,” said Gilead. He paced the room
for some minutes, deeply absorbed. Presently, with a sigh, he stopped
before his visitor.
“You must kindly leave your address with my secretary, Mrs Baxter,” he
said. “I can promise you nothing but that I will look into this
business--with what result you shall be informed no later than
to-morrow morning. Any comments of mine on it at this stage would be
superfluous and cruel.”
She just gazed at him a moment with shining eyes. “Charlie is
innocent,” she said. “God bless you, sir”--and she went hurriedly from
the room.
A little later saw Gilead closeted with Chief Superintendent Ingram of
Scotland Yard.
“No, Mr Balm,” the officer was saying: “I’m afraid you’ll make nothing
of it. The case was as plain as the nose on your face, and as
well-shaped, if you’ll excuse my saying it, from a professional point
of view.” He laughed. “It seems you’re fated,” he said, “to be
involved in these Post Office affairs; but you won’t come out of this
one, I greatly fear, with such credit to yourself as you did out of
the last.”
“Very well, Ingram,” answered Gilead. “But it’s justice I desire, not
credit.”
“Justice, you may take my word for it, sir, was properly dealt.”
“Do you know anything about this Mr Hamlin?”
“Nothing to his harm certainly. He’s one of the ‘Garden’ lot, not
amongst the swells, but substantial so far as I know. Do you?”
“Nothing whatever. And the other--the addressee in the case?”
“Valkenburg? He is a Hollander by birth--a bona-fide dealer.”
“In diamonds?”
“In diamonds.”
“And known of course to Mr Hamlin?”
“Naturally. The enclosure in question was forwarded by Hamlin to him
in the ordinary course of business.”
“But why by post? Hatton Garden and the Vauxhall Bridge Road--it was
there this Valkenburg lived, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, number 41, B.”
“Well, they aren’t such leagues apart.”
The Superintendent shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s quite a common custom of the trade,” he said. “One can conceive
a dozen reasons for it in the press of business. Really, Mr Balm, such
an act affords no grounds whatever for suspicion.”
“Do you know that Valkenburg has shut up his house since the trial and
gone away?”
“Has he? To South Africa like enough. It’s quite probable.”
“And that the girl, his servant, who denied having received the
parcel, has gone too?”
“To South Africa?”
“No. I mean she has left her situation.”
“Well, now, he wouldn’t want to leave her shut up in the empty house,
would he?” He sniggered, his hairy face creasing all over. “No, Mr
Balm,” he said. “I see what you’re driving at; but it won’t wash, sir.
There was never a hint of collusion between the two. Of course if he
_had_ bolted and taken the girl with him, there might have been some
shadow of a reason for suspicion. But I believe, upon my word, sir,
that you’re taking away the man’s character. You must remember that if
anyone was to profit by such a fraud, it would not be Valkenburg but
Hamlin.”
Gilead rose.
“Well, yes, it would seem so,” he said.
“Seem so!” The Chief Superintendent rose too. “I don’t know what’s got
into your head about this business, Mr Balm,” he said; “but unless
you’ve something up your sleeve--” he paused, in sudden wonder. “Have
you?” he asked--“something unguessed at by us here?”
“Good morning, Ingram,” said Gilead. “I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve
got a vaccination mark up my sleeve. Don’t say anything about it.”
The Superintendent stood some moments frowning after he was left
alone.
“I wonder if he has,” he mused darkly. “It wouldn’t, in my opinion, be
quite playing the game; but, there, angels like him must claim their
privileges, I suppose.”
But, indeed, Gilead’s sleeve was innocent of the least suggestion of a
hidden trump, and he was playing the game squarely and with the
slightest of prospects of scoring anything out of it. He could not
honestly convince himself that any real significance was to be
extracted from the coincidence of the names, and what urged him alone
to persevere, perhaps, was the inspired conviction of the little
mother as to her son’s innocence. In any case he was pledged to her to
sift the matter to its grounds, and in truth to himself he would not
shirk that undertaking.
Calm and fearless in his sense of right, he bent his steps straightway
to Hatton Garden and sought the office of Mr Abel Hamlin. He was
fortunate in finding that gentleman at home in a tiny dark room on the
second floor of a pile of offices so mouldy and decrepit that it
seemed they must have fallen but for the sturdy support of the
warehouses on either side. There were a pedestal desk in this cabin, a
safe and some rows of littered shelves along the walls, and a table in
a corner at which a young woman sat type-writing. She turned as the
visitor entered, and revealed an extremely pretty face, but saucy in
suggestion and over-dressed as to its hair, which was golden and
plentiful. Mr Hamlin himself, rising from the desk, displayed the
figure of a neat youngish gentleman, olive-complexioned, and
dark-eyed, with thick brows and a little close moustache of strongest
black. He spoke with the suspicion of a foreign accent, challenging
the visitor with a “Yes, sir?”
Gilead accepted his surroundings with a glance of some surprise. Was
it from dens like this that priceless gems were to be unearthed.
“I must apologize for intruding, Mr Hamlin,” he said, “especially as
my motive is an unprofessional one. Permit me to introduce myself.”
The dealer glanced at the card offered him, started a little, smiled,
and bowed.
“It is possible,” said Gilead, “that you may know me by name?”
“It is very possible, sir.”
“And the character of the Agency I represent?”
“That, sir, is also not of the unlikeliest.”
“I am interested in the case of the young man, Charles Baxter, Mr
Hamlin.”
“Indeed, Mr Balm?”
“In your opinion has this advertisement, which appeared recently in
the columns of the _Daily Post_, any connection with, or bearing upon,
the issues of that trial?”
He produced and handed over the extract given him by Mrs Baxter. The
dealer accepted it courteously.
“Miss Barnes,” he said, after a glance at the paper; “you can go to
your dinner if you will be so good.”
He turned away, shifting some letters on his desk, during the few
moments occupied by the girl in putting on her hat and jacket. She
passed Gilead with a stare of curiosity and a little pert jerk of her
chin. As the sound of her footsteps receded, Mr Hamlin came about
again, an engaging smile on his lips. He was a handsome, rather
swarthy young fellow, and his teeth looked glaringly white.
“I am quite at a loss for your meaning, sir,” he said. “For me I can
see no connection, not in the least.”
“You will recall,” said Gilead, “that Mr Valkenburg’s servant gave
evidence at the trial--evidence damning to the prisoner. Her name was
Jennett, and spelt in this peculiar way.”
“Yes?” Mr Hamlin’s voice and manner expressed some obvious
bewilderment.
“I may say,” continued Gilead, “in this _very_ peculiar, and perhaps
unique way.”
“Ah! That is so? And what then, Mr Balm?”
What then, in very truth? All in one amazed instant Gilead seemed to
recognize the preposterous character of his mission. Even supposing
the Jennett of the trial _were_ the Jennett of the advertisement,
_what then_? Exactly. A sudden consciousness of absurdity bubbled up
in him--an inclination to hysterical laughter.
“Upon my word I don’t know,” he said, with a little gasp.
A sense of reciprocal humour seemed to tickle the dealer. His cheeks
rounded, his teeth showed dazzlingly.
“O, this is too ridiculous!” said Gilead, steadying himself. “I don’t
know why I’m here; I don’t know what to say next. There’s nothing for
it now but unqualified frankness.”
He then explained to the dealer the rather forlorn promise which had
been extracted from him by his recent visitor, and the shadowy
justification it had seemed to possess in the advertisement.
“And that justification is gone somehow,” he said. “I don’t know
what’s become of it. There must be a hole in my mind, and it’s slipped
through; and now only a sense of empty impertinence remains.”
He was winningly apologetic. Mr Hamlin smiled and nodded at him,
staring in his face, but he hardly spoke a word in reply. Finally,
Gilead, turning to go, paused to put a question.
“I feel,” he said, “that I owe Mr Valkenburg a like explanation; but I
understand that he has left his house?”
“Yes, yes,” said the dealer. “He is gone, O, yes!--to Kimberley. He
would be much amused.”
“He is a friend of yours? And no doubt a gentleman of the highest
reputation. I don’t know how to excuse my visit; it was unpardonable.”
“I do not understand,” answered the other. “You have said nothing to
give offence. For Valkenburg, he would appreciate your excellent
intentions as I do, and, were he at home, would give you, I am sure,
all the information you desire. That Lamb’s Agency has the claim to
much privilege, Mr Balm.”
There seemed no conscious irony in his voice or in his fixed smile.
“It is good of you to put it in that way,” said Gilead. “I can only
repeat my apologies. Good morning, Mr Hamlin.”
“Good-morning,” answered the dealer, without moving from where he
stood.
As Gilead ran down the stairs he met a telegraph boy coming up. In his
hurry he collided with the youth and almost bowled him over.
“That illustrates my fatuity,” he thought, as he went on his way. “In
trying to put one Postal official on his legs I knock down another.”
He felt considerably depressed--a state of mind to which the weather
in its especial degree contributed. The day had opened with a brooding
menace of fog--a threat amply justified in the sequel. Hour by hour,
as the morning wore on, the squalid cloud had drooped and thickened,
until now, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the street lamps were all
alight and the shops blazing like dull furnaces. So motionless and so
heavy grew the atmosphere that to breathe became a physical
consciousness, and one almost felt the process going on in one’s lungs
of selection and rejection, with a gasp now and again over a mistaken
choice. If all the world, according to the poet, had been a stage,
nature could not have come more equal to the occasion with a
mise-en-scène of cloud-castles and a ‘make-up’ pencil better adapted
to paint every eye with a sooty rim.
For some reason--for which he neither accounted, nor troubled to
account to himself--the discomfited and vaguely uneasy young gentleman
turned his steps towards the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Perhaps he still
entertained a forlorn hope of somehow justifying himself, to himself
and to Mrs Baxter, in his venture; perhaps a mere morbid desire,
common enough in its attraction, to visit the spot of a murdered
delusion impelled him. He felt sore, and at the same time
unaccountably troubled. It seemed to him now that he had allowed
himself to be convinced over readily. In any case it was his instinct
to fulfil a promise to the letter, or to what his chivalrous
conscience chose to consider the letter.
At the corner of Dorset Street, after what appeared to him an
interminable groping down a murky sewer, he found the house he sought.
The fog was so thick, that, peering over the area railings, he could
distinguish few of its details; but he could just make out that it was
a corner house of a long row, and superficially in nowise superior to
its neighbours in general dullness and unattractiveness. Why should it
be indeed? And then suddenly he observed that a bill was pasted within
one of its shuttered windows.
He found the gate, opened it, and entered to read.
“_To be let. Furnished. Apply etc._”
The name of a local house-agent was given at the foot.
Now what prompted him to the act Gilead never knew; but in a moment he
had decided to procure the key of the house and enter to make an
examination. On his difficult way to the address given he ran across a
friend, who particularly desired a talk with him.
“One minute,” said Gilead, and, running in to the agent’s stated his
wishes. “I am in a hurry,” he said. “Would it trouble you to send the
key on to my office?”
His name asked and given, the agent was all smiles.
“Certainly, Mr Balm--O, most certainly, sir! Would you wish our
representative to accompany you?”
“No, no. Send the key, and I will choose my own time.”
He was bowed out, and the rest of the afternoon he spent over business
matters. It was not till nearly six o’clock that, set free, he
bethought himself of his purposed exploration and of his definite
promise to Mrs Baxter, and started a second time for the Vauxhall
Bridge Road.
The fog had so deepened during the interval that walking proved a
difficulty and in some ways a danger. However, Gilead was naturally
well acquainted with the locality, and the perils of no more than a
single crossing were there to beset him. He reached the house at last
after a calculated progress, and, mounting the shallow flight of steps
to the door, paused a moment before fitting in the latchkey.
He was feeling suddenly odd, and disenchanted with his quest,
conscious of a strong reluctance to leave even that turbid
street--with its running links, and flares of sudden omnibuses, and
boom of life however obscured--and enter into the darkness and
mysticism of the empty house. He had ascertained that its owner
desired to let it furnished during the period of his temporary absence
abroad; and what then? He himself did not want to take it; neither was
it possible for him in this murk and at this time of the evening to
conduct any investigation worth the name.
“What an ass I am,” he thought. “Haven’t I had enough of empty
houses?”
And at that, and the flush of sudden shame the memory evoked, he ran
the key resolutely in, opened the door, entered, and clicked to the
latch behind him.
Tingling in every vein, as he stood there in the numb, half paralyzing
darkness, he felt for his electric torch and switched on the little
friendly spark. It’s tiny light only seemed to make the gloom more
terrific. He advanced a step or two--and a host of shadows seemed to
scatter and fly noiselessly before him. They sped up the stairs, they
disappeared round open doors; things ticked and scuttled, stealing
into corners and squatting to whisper. Looking over his shoulder in a
panic, he saw a white face watching him, and almost dropped the torch
in the start he gave.
The rumble of a passing omnibus came like a rally to his nerves. He
turned resolutely, though his hands were wet--and saw that the face
was the pictured face of an old gentleman hanging upon the wall.
Again he turned, reassured--and felt that the painted eyes were
following him. He stopped.
“It’s no good,” he thought; “and worse than useless. I’ll just make a
cursory examination and come again to-morrow.”
Stepping on tiptoe, as though fearful of attracting secret attentions,
he turned from the hall into the first of the two rooms that opened
from it to his right, and flashed his little torch to and fro. So far
as he could gather, it was merely like the hall, commonplace. From the
usual oil-cloth, and the usual marbled paper, he had passed to the
usual lace curtains, cheap plush chairs, rickety tripod tables,
antimacassars, and an ebony over-mantel painted with birds and adorned
with tawdry glass vases from the sixpenny-halfpenny shop. Its
unimaginative philistinism was so utter as to convey a certain
comfort; no ghost of the past could possibly walk in such an
atmosphere of raw newness. Gilead breathed out a little easing sigh,
and turned to go.
His foot was on the threshold, when he heard a sound that brought him
to a stop, instant and startled. Someone outside was softly fitting a
latchkey into the hall door!
He backed into the room, clicking off his light, and, half-closing the
door, stood motionless behind it. The act had been instinctive,
unreflecting, but, being done, must abide its own consequences.
In the meantime, hardly breathing, he was conscious that some human
presence was in the hall; and the next moment he heard the front door
softly closed.
“Ah!” said a voice, subdued but perfectly clear: “that is well done so
far. What a good luck that you had the thought to secure Valkenburg’s
key.”
Hamlin’s voice--the voice whose intonation still hung familiarly in
his ear! Gilead’s nerves, in this sudden stress of danger, felt but
undefined, tightened like bow-strings.
“I think of things. Perhaps you’ll get to understand that and do me
justice in time.” It was a girl who answered, low and distinct. “What
are you doing with that match-box?” she said.
“What does one generally do with a match-box?”
“Well, don’t do it. It might attract a neighbour or a policeman. I
know the place well enough to find my way about it in the dark.”
“You’re a clever girl, Jennett” (Gilead gave ever so slight a start).
“You can find your way to everything. I hardly expected you would turn
up to your appointment in this fog. How long had you been waiting?”
“I got here when I told you in my wire that I should.”
“And with the key and all? By why here? Why not in the old place?”
“What a cur you are, Tizzy. Don’t you understand? Because she’s
polluted it for me. If you want me back you must find me another place
than that. You might have got through that little time of separation,
I think, without filling it in with a fresh fancy.”
“Ah, there! You were the most unreasonably jealous, my darling.”
“Was I? You are lying, you know. What a d----d fool you must take me
for. Well, just assure me, please, that your answer to my wire was
God’s truth. You have got rid of her?”
“Yes, on my honour, Jennett, she is gone.”
“That’s well for you.”
“It is? You don’t mean to tell me you would really have gone those
lengths in revenge?”
“Wouldn’t I? And further.”
“After all that I’d trusted to you?”
“What did I trust to you? I played _my_ part faithfully, didn’t I--did
the housemaid proper; goosed the poor postman--his face is before me
now, with its sick, gone look, as I palmed the receipt that I
pretended to put with a kiss into his pouch. Why Valkenburg made
proposals to me, too, and handsome ones. I never told you that. But he
did; and I was true to you; and all the time you were filling my place
with that Barnes devil. I wonder I didn’t murder you both; but luckily
I had a safer and a surer means to pay you out--the dummy parcel
itself, which I hadn’t destroyed as you wanted me to, but had kept and
hidden against accidents. You know that now, don’t you, and are
willing to do anything to save your beastly skin?”
“Ah! You are very hard and cruel. What have you done with it?”
“All in good time. You thought you had got me safe enough, didn’t you,
when I perjured my soul, for your sake, to ruin that miserable young
fellow? I hadn’t found out about you then; but knowing you, I had had
the wit to keep my piece of evidence as a precaution. My word would
have gone for nothing by itself; but with that to back it you were
dished and done for, Tizzy. I got just a fragment of pleasure out of
the thought of your face when you received my letter, without an
address, telling you what I’d kept and had in my power to use.”
“Did you? That is very well. I tell you it almost breaks the heart
that loves you so much. Such cruel treachery!”
“Well, it was lucky for you I saw your advertisement. And now just
tell me what you meant by talking about forgiveness in it.”
“It seems so base of you, little girl. You had chosen to
misunderstand. My connection with Miss Barnes was one of sympathy and
mutual assistance in a difficulty. You were never once forgotten by
me--no, never; and I had to have a type-writer.”
“I’m a fool, Tizzy. I despise you and I mistrust you; but, God help
me, I love you. I shall know why someday, I daresay. I don’t now; but
I can’t help it. Do you know why I wired you to meet me here?”
“How can I?”
“It is hidden in this house, where I knew I could get it when I wanted
it, having Valkenburg’s key. I didn’t fancy the risk of keeping it
about me.”
“Where, Jennett, little darling?”
“Shall I tell you at last?”
“If you want to save your poor unhappy lover. Jennett, it is just
time. There are suspicions awakened. Only to-day I had a visit from
that stupid interfering ass, Balm of Lamb’s Agency, who came to
enquire about things on behalf of the postman’s old mother.”
“It is hidden behind that picture on the wall.”
“Ah! My God! What a rash place! Valkenburg’s old father. Let me go,
while I fetch it.”
“Tizzy!” The girl by her voice was crying hysterically. “Not for a
moment. Think what I have done for your sake! Tizzy, I’m going to
drop. Take me into the back room--there is a sofa there.”
Gilead, the skin of his scalp prickling, heard the two move slowly
along the hall and enter the room beyond. His face was white and
stern. The Providence which had brought him acquainted with the
details of this infernal plot to ruin an innocent man would surely not
stultify its own design at the last. The girl was still sobbing.
Bracing every nerve to his task, he lost not an instant, but, treading
like a cat, stole out into the hall, and reaching the picture, felt
behind it unavailingly.
The sobs ceased suddenly. Desperate, he switched on his torch, saw a
little white packet stuck between frame and canvas, seized his prize
and made for the door. Even as he lifted the latch, there came a rush
from the room behind him, a mad oath, a flash and slam, and a bullet
splintered the panel close by his head. In another moment he was out
and plunging for the steps. Something took his hat with a plop, and
then the merciful fog received him, and he was running--running
bareheaded for his life. A sense of uproar, of crackling fires seemed
to goad him on and wing his steps; instinctively he had turned the
corner out of the main road and was flying along Dorset Street; and
then, all in a moment, he became conscious that his own racing heart
was his sole company, and, recovering his reason, he slowed down and
began to consider his bearings.
* * * * * * *
Mr Abel Hamlin ran straight into the arms of a contiguous police
officer, who had been attracted by the sound of the shots. The
revolver still being clutched in his hand, and his explanation failing
to give satisfaction, he was incarcerated pending enquiries. These
resulted--Gilead in the meantime having found his way by desperate
courses to Scotland Yard--in his indefinite detention on the twin
charges of conspiracy to defraud and attempted murder.
It was a heartless business, as it came to be revealed. Hamlin,
Superintendent Ingram to the contrary, had really been in a ruinous
financial fix; he was a creature all selfishness and sensuality, and
the scheme, cleverly worked, seemed fairly safe from detection. The
girl Jennett, his mistress and decoy, an actress and prestidigitateur
by profession, had imposed herself as a servant upon Valkenburg to
whom she was unknown. The Dutchman, though perfectly innocent of any
share in the plot, was susceptible, the girl pretty and the bait took.
Valkenburg, a traveller in diamonds, was led to expect the receipt of
a parcel of stones from Hamlin, with whom he had had some past
dealings; the parcel, as he was able to swear, was never delivered;
Hamlin wrote to enquire as to the non-acknowledgment of its receipt,
and so the conspiracy was launched. The decoy in the meantime had been
plying the unhappy young postman with her coquetries; he took fire
readily; on the morning of the delivery of the registered packet, she
pretended to procure her master’s signature to the receipt, which, in
the course of some playful passages under the mistletoe--it was
Christmas time--she feigned to return with her own fair fingers to
Baxter’s pocket-book, sending her victim on his way to doom and
disgrace with a bounding heart and a mind wholly absorbed in its own
amorous raptures. To the last the poor dupe had believed in her
affection, and had hoped against hope, that she would exonerate him.
But Miss Jennett, when once he was disposed of, had discovered a more
personal call upon her interests in the infidelity of her confederate,
and the means he had taken to kill time during the weeks of their
enforced separation. Promptly she had disappeared, and, from some
unknown address, written to upbraid the delinquent with his treachery,
and to inform him as to her precautionary preservation of the
registered packet (it was found, when opened by Gilead in the presence
of Superintendent Ingram, to contain a few fragments of coal,
addressed, of course, to Valkenburg in Hamlin’s writing) and of her
intention to use it for the purpose of revenging herself on him. The
advertisement in the Agony Column had resulted, and finally, after a
struggle with herself, she had telegraphed to her scoundrel to meet
her outside the house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road--with what result
here witnesseth.
The villain in chief received an exemplary sentence, and Baxter his
Majesty’s gracious pardon for being innocent. But the Post Office,
naturally enough, would not employ him again, and Gilead, great to the
end, found a situation for him. As to Miss Jennett, she simply
repeated her former tactics, and disappeared.