BACK TO LOVE AND LIFE.
Max fell into a chair. He stared at Dudley for a few moments before he
could speak. Dudley's father! The man supposed to have died years and
years ago in an asylum abroad, was the person who had passed as "Mrs.
Higgs!" Even before he had had time to learn any of the details of the
strange story, the outlines of it were at once apparent to the mind of
Max.
Here was, then, the explanation of the mysterious bond between Dudley
and Mrs. Higgs; here was the meaning of his visits to Limehouse.
Dudley repeated his question before Max had recovered from the shock of
his surprise.
"Yes," said he at last, "he has got away."
But Dudley detected some reserve in his manner, or perhaps his own
suspicions were aroused. He looked searchingly at Max, and asked
abruptly:
"Is he dead?"
Max looked at him askance.
"Yes," he said at last.
Dudley lay back in his pillows.
"Thank God!"
And Max knew by the look of intense relief on his friend's face that he
had done right in telling him the truth.
But, indeed, Max could not guess how intense the relief was from the
burden of the secret which Dudley had had to bear for so long; and
undoubtedly the discovery that it was a secret no longer, that the
necessity for concealment was now over, helped his recovery materially.
Max told him, as briefly as possible, the details of the occurrence; but
he neither asked nor invited any more questions.
It was not until some time afterward, when Dudley had left the
sick-room, that the whole of the story became known to the family. But,
in the meantime, the inquest on the body brought many facts to light.
Mrs. Edward Jacobs, the widow of the man who had been found drowned in
the Thames off Limehouse some weeks before, had been, so it was
discovered, the person to give information to the police against Dudley,
as the suspected murderer of her husband. She had traced to him the
weekly postal orders, which she looked upon as blood-money, and she had
then hung about his chambers, and on one occasion followed him to
Limehouse, without, however, penetrating farther than the entrance of
the wharf.
Upon the information given by her a warrant was issued against Dudley;
but in searching his chambers a number of letters were found, all
addressed to Dudley, which threw a new and lurid light upon the affair.
The letters were written by the father to the son, and contained the
whole story of his return to England a few months before; of his anxiety
to see his son; his morbid fear of being recognized and shut up as a
lunatic, and his equally morbid hankering after information concerning
Edward Jacobs, the man who had ruined him.
All these letters, which were directed in a feigned handwriting, seemed
sane and sensible enough, although they showed signs of eccentricity of
character.
The next batch were written after the disappearance of Edward Jacobs,
and in them the signs of morbid eccentricity were more apparent. The
writer owned to having "put Jacobs out of the way," upbraided Dudley for
interfering on behalf of such a wretch, and accused him of ingratitude
in refusing to leave England with his father, who had done mankind in
general and him in particular a service in killing a monster. The writer
went on to accuse Dudley of siding with his father's enemies, of wishing
to have him shut up, and told him that he should never succeed.
Some of these letters were directed to The Beeches, and some to Dudley's
chambers, showing an intimate knowledge of his whereabouts.
The latest letters were wilder, more bitter, showing how insanity which
had broken out into violence before was increasing in intensity, and how
the feelings of regard which he had seemed to entertain for his son had
given place to strong resentment against him.
After the reading of these letters, it was plain that the crime of
murder which Mrs. Jacobs had laid to Dudley's charge had been really the
work of his father; and Mrs. Jacobs herself, on being made acquainted
with these facts, agreed with this conclusion.
There remained only the question of Dudley's complicity in the crime to
be considered, and that was a matter which could be left until the sick
man's recovery.
It was on the first day of Dudley's appearance in the family circle that
the subject was broached, clumsily enough, by Mr. Wedmore, who was dying
to know a great deal more than anybody had been willing to tell him.
Dudley had come into the drawing-room, which had been well warmed for
the occasion with a roaring fire, and it was here that they found him
after luncheon, with the professional nurse beside him.
The girls greeted him rather shyly, especially Doreen, but Mrs. Wedmore
was motherly and gentle. Mr. Wedmore attacked him at once.
"I can't understand, Dudley, why you kept it all so dark. Couldn't you
see for yourself that it was better for your father to be under
restraint, as well as safer for other people?"
Mrs. Wedmore tried to interpose and to change the conversation to
another subject, but Dudley said:
"I would rather explain now, once and for all. I shall be going away
to-morrow, and there are several things which I should like to make
clear first." He paused, and Mrs. Wedmore, her daughters and the nurse
took the opportunity to leave the room. "Now, Mr. Wedmore, tell me what
you want to know."
"Well, you told us nothing about your father's being alive and back in
England, for one thing."
"It was by his wish that I kept it a secret. He persisted that he was
sane; he seemed to be sane. But he believed that if it were known that
he was in England he would be shut up."
"But the passing himself off as an old woman, this living in a sort of
underground way, didn't that look like madness?"
"I took it for eccentricity and nothing more, until--until he sent for
me one day, and brought me suddenly into a room--a little dark, bare
room--where there was a man lying on the ground asleep, as I thought. My
father told me to bring him into the next room, and--when I stooped to
touch him"--Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection--"my hands were
covered with blood."
"Good gracious! He had murdered him?"
"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was
mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put
under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum.
But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a
bitter feeling of hatred of myself."
"Why didn't you give information--to the police, if necessary?"
"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was
caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane,
except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who,
it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on
the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do.
Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends,
with such a burden as that on my mind?"
Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.
"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found
some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself
up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly
difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"
"No, though I more than once felt inclined to. But it was such a ghastly
business altogether that I thought I'd better hold my tongue, especially
as--I was afraid--it might filter through him to--to somebody
else--somebody who couldn't be told a beastly secret like that."
Mr. Wedmore nodded.
"And this girl--this Carrie?" said he.
Dudley's face lighted up.
"That's my one comfort in all this," said he, "that it has led to my
finding out the girl and doing something for her. I never heard of her
before. But my father told me she was my half-sister, and they say there
is something in our faces which confirms the story. Anyhow, she's a
grand girl, and I'm going to look after her. She's gone away--"
"Gone away!" repeated Mr. Wedmore, disconcerted.
There had been a lull in the quarrel between him and his son for the
last few days, during which Carrie had avoided Max and Max had avoided
his father.
"Yes," said Dudley. "She would go, and she thought it best to go without
any fuss, leaving me to say good-bye for her. She's all right. I'm going
to look after her; and she's going into training as a hospital nurse."
"Oh, well, I'm sure I hope she'll get on," said Mr. Wedmore, rather
vaguely.
He had been getting used, during the last few days, to the thought of
the pretty, blue-eyed girl as a daughter-in-law, and he found himself
now rather hoping than fearing that Max would stick to his choice.
"Well," said he at last, "I must send the ladies to have a look at you
now, I suppose. I wouldn't let them talk my head off on the first day,
if I were you."
Dudley sprang to his feet. He seemed restless and excited.
"I won't talk much. I won't let them talk much," said he, in an unsteady
voice. "But may I see--may I speak to Doreen?"
Mr. Wedmore nodded good-humoredly.
"Well, you may speak to her, if she'll let you," said he, cheerfully.
"But, really, she's a thorny young person. She's treated young Lindsay,
the curate, very cruelly, and I'm sure he's a much better looking fellow
than you. However, you can try your luck."
Dudley did not wait for any more encouragement. No sooner had Mr.
Wedmore left the room than the convalescent followed. He found Doreen in
the hall, putting a handful of letters on the table ready for the post.
She started when she turned and saw him, and, leaning back with her
hands upon the table, she asked him what he meant by leaving the nice,
warm, ox-roasting fire they had built up expressly for him upstairs.
"I hear you've been treating the curate very badly," said he. "I've come
to ask for an explanation."
Doreen looked down at the tip of her shoe, and, after a pause, said
demurely:
"Well, I suppose if you don't know the reason, nobody does."
"Why, was it anything connected with me, then?"
"So I have been informed," answered Doreen, more primly than ever.
And then he waited for her to look up; and when she did, he kissed her.
And they didn't exchange a word upon the subject of the long
misunderstanding, but just strolled into the dining-room and saw
pictures in the fire together.
* * * * *
There was no trial and no scandal; there were rumors, and that was all.
Max remained true to his fancy for Carrie, and gave proof of his
sincerity by settling down to work in a merchant's office, after the
manner so dear to his father's heart. And in return, Mr. Wedmore
consented to Carrie's being invited down to The Beeches in the spring,
to be present at Doreen's wedding.
And when Carrie came, several details concerning the life led by her and
the supposed Mrs. Higgs in the house by the docks came to light, and the
last remains of the mystery were cleared away.
She told how her father, passing himself off as Mrs. Higgs, an old
servant in the Horne family, of whom Carrie had heard in the lifetime of
Miss Aldridge, had found her out, had touched her heart by a kindness
evidently genuine, and had prevailed upon her to go and make her home in
the deserted house, which, Mrs. Higgs said, had been intended for her by
her late master.
In the empty house they found that an entrance had been made into the
adjoining warehouse, which had been used by a gang of thieves as a
hiding-place for stolen goods. In the little front shop these ingenious
persons had fashioned an ingenious hiding-place by hollowing out a
tunnel to the river. Into this tunnel the water flowed at high tide; but
when the tide was low an entrance could be effected from the river, by
which the thieves could pass in and out, and in which they could safely
deposit, in a chest in the slimy earth, property too valuable to be left
above ground.
Carrie explained how Mrs. Higgs fraternized with the thieves, before she
herself guessed who they were, and how she had got used to them before
she learned their character, though not before she had grown suspicious
about them. How she had seen Dudley with Mrs. Higgs, without knowing who
he was, and how she had set him down as a suspicious character from the
furtive manner of his visits. How she herself posted the two letters,
the one to Edward Jacobs and the other to Dudley, which brought them to
the place on the same day. How she herself was sent out of the way on
that occasion, and returned in time to witness, through the hole in the
floor above, the stooping over the body by Dudley, and his drawing back
covered with blood, which she took for the actual murder. How Mrs. Higgs
and Dudley had then left the house together, while she was too sick with
fright to move. How she had remained outside the house until she saw
Max; and how, when he was gone, and Mrs. Higgs had come back, she found
that the manner of the supposed old woman had changed toward her and
grown unbearably cruel and harsh. How she had been left for days and
nights by herself, until she resolved to bear it no longer. And how,
when Mrs. Higgs had sent her to Dudley's chambers with the message about
Dick Barker, she had told her never to come back again.
Carrie added that she herself had always been treated with kindness, not
only by the gang, of whom, indeed, they saw little, but by such of the
men and boys on the barges which came to the wharf as knew her, and
"winked" at her unauthorized tenancy of the deserted house.
In broad daylight, in the company of half a dozen policemen, Max and
Dudley revisited the house together. They found the holes in the wall
through which "Mrs. Higgs" took stock of Max on the occasion of his
first visit; they tested the ingenious device by means of which the
middle boards in the front shop could be made to fall and deposit
anything laid upon them in the tunnel beneath. They found the hole in
which Mrs. Higgs had stepped, and the pole which had been used to
underpin the middle boards. This hole extended under the floor of the
kitchen, so that by creeping under the flooring from the one room to the
other the pole could be withdrawn or replaced without the knowledge of a
person in the front room.
This final discovery explained to Max the manner in which the body of
Jacobs had been made to disappear while he himself was in the room with
it.
The gang, of which the illustrious Dick Barker had formed one, had
wisely disappeared, never to return.
But one day, when Carrie, in her nurse's dress, was walking along Oxford
Street, in the company of Max, to whom, with Mr. Wedmore's permission,
she was now engaged, she felt a hand in her pocket, and turning quickly,
found that she was having her purse stolen, "for auld lang syne," by
Dick Barker.
Max recognized in the well-dressed young man, with the low type of face,
the man whom he had once supposed to be his rival.
As Dick promptly disappeared, Carrie and Max looked at each other, and
the girl burst into tears.
"Oh, Max, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered she, as she dried her
eyes quickly and hurried on with him.
"And, oh, Carrie, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered Max back, as he
took her into the shop of the Hungarian Bread Company, and made her have
a cup of tea.