LEGAL ADVICE.
"It's nutty, but not what I call top hole straight!"
"Mr. Macandrew, I am consulting you professionally, so I must ask you
to use the King's English!"
"It can't explain my feelings, Jerry--it can't indeed. What am I to
say when you tell me that you have fallen in love in five minutes."
"You loved Charity when you first set eyes on her, Tod."
"That's different!" snapped the solicitor. "She's an angel! It's only
right to love an angel like winking when you spot her."
"I quite agree with you, and so I loved Mavis."
"Is this girl pretty?"
Haskins smiled to himself, as he had not yet informed Tod of the
marvelous resemblance between the dancer and the recluse. "Yes, she is
pretty!" he said calmly.
"Huh!" from Tod, "that doesn't sound enthusiastic."
"If you wish me to give details----"
"No! No!" Macandrew looked alarmed. "None of your beastly blank verse.
I understand that you wish to consult me professionally."
"Well," replied Haskins leisurely, "I have been trying to ram that
into your thick head for the last ten minutes."
"Clients," retorted Tod, with dignity, "do not call their legal
advisers silly cuckoo names!" He arranged his blotting-paper,
flattened out a sheet of paper, and seized a pencil. "You have my best
attention."
Gerald grinned. Tod's professional airs were too absurd. All the same
he knew that he could not come to a better man for advice. Also, Tod,
being in love himself, was likely to be more sympathetic than a
regular dry-as-dust lawyer.
"One moment, Toddy," said Haskins, taking out a silver case, "I want
to light a cigarette first. Have one?"
"These," said the outraged Tod significantly, "are business hours."
"So I should think from your ridiculously serious face. Nature
intended you for a chubby Bacchus without any clothes, Toddy; but
circumstance has stuffed you into a stupid little office to mislead
people on points of law."
"The office is capital," said Tod heatedly. "I pay a very high rent."
"You are being cheated then."
"I'll--I'll--I'll have a cigarette," ended Tod weakly. "It was too hot
to argue."
Haskins had come up on the previous day, and having slept on his
business had repaired to the grimy office in Chancery Lane to consult
his solicitor. Mr. James Ian Robert Roy Macandrew--which was the
lawyer's gorgeous name, usually shortened to Tod by his friends
because of his ruddy hair--possessed two rooms, sparsely furnished.
The outer room contained two lean clerks and an office boy, who
labored to increase a gradually growing business, while the inner room
was sacred to the master brain that was building up that same
business. There was a green-painted safe, an important-looking
escritoire with a sliding lid, three or four chairs, a battered
bookcase containing Tod's somewhat limited library, and piles of
japaned deed-boxes in iron frames. Everything looked very legal and
very dry and very dusty, with the exception of Tod himself, spick and
span, and far too fashionably dressed for Chancery Lane. Tod should
have been strolling in the Row--and if dead-and-gone Macandrews had
not squandered their money he probably would have been--beside Charity
Bird, if possible. As it was, Tod, looking fresh and well fed and well
groomed and alert, dwelt for many hours daily in a dull room, which
his ancestors would have scorned. But Tod had been compelled to lay
down the ancestral claymore and take up the pen, which was hard on
Tod, who much preferred a kilt to a lawyer's wig.
However, it was useless to be dignified with Jerry Haskins, as Tod
decided, so after a glance at the door to see that it was closed, he
unbent. He lighted a cigarette and produced a bottle of whisky and two
glasses and a syphon. Not wishing that his clerks should see him
unbend to this bacchanalian extent Mr. Macandrew cast a second look at
the door, and advised Gerald, in scarcely legal language, to "Fire
away." "You've been playing the high-kick-oh, houp-la, since I left
you," said Tod with a jolly grin.
"I've been doing nothing of the sort," cried Haskins indignantly.
"This is very serious."
"Is it now?" bantered the lawyer. "Well, when a man decides to marry a
girl whom he has only seen for five minutes I rather think it is
infernally serious. How did she manage to hook you?"
"What a beastly low mind you have, Tod. H'm! Shut up, and hold
yourself tight. I am going to startle you."
"Startle away." Tod gripped the arms of his sedate chair.
"Well then, this Mavis Durham is the living image of Charity Bird."
Macandrew stared and glared. "You're rotting, boy. There can only be
one angel in the world, and----"
"There are two of this especial make," insisted Gerald, leaning back.
"I say, Toddy, do be serious."
"But are you serious?"
"I am, confound you. Don't I look it?"
Macandrew stared and glared again. "There is a change in you," he
admitted--"love, I suppose. It's the same with myself."
"Tod, you don't know what love is."
"Oh, don't I? Hang your beastly conceit! Well then, I just do. I love
my heavenly Charity, no end. So there. But aren't you pulling my leg
when you say that Charity is the image of this Mavis girl?"
"Don't call her a Mavis girl. Miss Durham to you, Tod."
"Very well then--Miss Bird to you."
Haskins sighed resignedly. "We'll never get on at this rate. I am
really and truly in trouble, Macandrew. Do listen."
Tod nodded, and his face grew serious. Haskins seized the fortunate
moment and detailed everything from the finding of the sealed
message--which was scarcely necessary, since Tod had hooked the
cylinder--to the parting with Mavis on that enchanted night. "What do
you think of it, Toddy?" questioned Haskins anxiously.
"It's very rum," murmured Tod, making pencil marks on his
blotting-paper. "Why does Rebb keep this girl shut up?"
"That is what I wish to learn. You must help me."
"I'm only too glad: but how?"
"Don't you remember how Mrs. Geary said that if Mavis left the Pixy's
House the Major would not be able to dash about in his motor car?"
"Yes. What of that?"
"It hints at money belonging to Mavis, which the Major is using."
"Oh, I say," Tod fell back in his chair, "you go too far. I don't hold
a brief for Rebb, but he wouldn't be such a blackguard as that.
Besides, he has six thousand a year. I know that for a fact."
"Who told you?"
"Mrs. Berch."
"What! Mrs. Crosby's mother?"
"Yes. A grim old lady, ain't she? Rather like my grandmother. She is
not very fond of Rebb, as he is not very polite to her. Still, she
wants Mrs. Crosbie to marry him, because of the money. How she found
out, I can't say; but she certainly stated that Rebb had the income I
mentioned."
"But I thought that both Mrs. Berch and her daughter were well off?"
"They assume to be," answered Tod, with a shrug and a wink--"that is,
they have a slap-up flat, and go everywhere, and Mrs. Crosbie wears
expensive frocks, although the old woman looks like a rag-shop at
times."
"That may not be lack of money, but indifference to dress."
"Humph! As if any woman, old or young, could be indifferent to frocks.
Anyhow Mrs. Crosbie is supposed to be a wealthy widow in the market;
but if she wants to marry Major Rebb, who is not a nice man, and if
Mrs. Berch wants to be Rebb's mother-in-law, it strikes me that the
two may not be so rich as they pretend."
"Well! well! well!" cried Gerald impatiently, "we are wandering from
the subject. Rebb, you say, has six thousand a year?"
"On the authority of Mrs. Crosbie's mother--yes."
"Well then, Tod, I want you to know how Rebb comes to be possessed of
that six thousand a year. Can you find out?"
"Well, no. You might ask the Income Tax people."
"I can't help thinking," said Haskins, staring at the dusty carpet,
"that the money belongs to Mavis."
"If you think that on the few words let slip by Mrs. Geary," said Tod
scornfully, "you haven't got a leg to stand on."
"I go by my intuitions also, Toddy. They rarely deceive me. Witness my
distrust of Geary. I was right in thinking that he had to do with Rebb
and the Pixy's House."
Macandrew nodded. "Yes. You were right so far, but you assume too much
in accusing Major Rebb of taking Miss Durham's money."
"It is only a guess," said Gerald impatiently. "I may be wrong of
course, Tod. Still, you must see that there is something queer in Rebb
keeping Mavis shut up, and in putting about this rumor of her being
affected with a homicidal mania."
"You are sure that isn't true?" ventured Macandrew cautiously.
Haskins grew wrathful. "Good heavens, Toddy, do you take me for an
ass, you silly blighter! I tell you the girl is as sane as I am, and a
deal more sane than you are.
"Then why does Rebb shut her up?"
"I want to find that out, I tell you," snapped the other savagely.
Tod reflected. "Perhaps this girl is Rebb's daughter," he guessed.
Haskins started, as well he might. "I can't believe that," he declared
violently. "She hasn't a drop of Rebb's blood in her body. And even if
she were his daughter," he went on in a contradictory fashion, "that
is no reason that he should shut her in that gaol, and set a beastly
nigger to keep his eye on her."
"N----o," drawled Macandrew, his eye on the blotting-paper, "you say
that this girl is like Charity?"
"The very image of her. That is partly why I fell in love so rapidly,
Tod. Before you came along I did love Charity in a way; admired her
beauty and all that. But somehow she never made my heart beat. Now
Mavis is just as lovely as Charity, and more so."
"No! no! no!" growled Tod, striking the desk.
"Yes! yes! yes!" insisted Haskins, "besides, there is something in her
personality which Charity lacks. I feel my heart beat and my pulses
thrill and my whole being raised to heaven when Mavis looks at me."
"So do I when I look at Charity," retorted the lawyer, "but for
heaven's sake, Jerry, don't let us pit the girls against one another.
Mavis suits you and Charity suits me: there's no more to be said."
"Save that the girls might be twins."
"I never heard that Charity had a twin."
"Nor did I. But then we don't know Charity's history."
"I do, in part," said Tod quickly. "When Mrs. Pelham Odin was
traveling with her own comedy company in India, fifteen or sixteen
years ago, she found Charity at Calcutta. The child was then five
years of age, and belonged to a native woman of the juggler caste."
"Native? Do you mean to say that Charity has nigger blood?"
"No," snapped Tod sharply, "I don't. You have only to look at her to
see that she is purely European. The native woman confessed to Mrs.
Pelham Odin that she had picked up the child from an ayah at Simla for
a few rupees. The ayah had perhaps stolen the child from some English
people, or perhaps the mother was dead. At any rate the native woman
bought the child, and taught her to dance in the show she and her
husband went round with. Mrs. Pelham Odin took a fancy to the child's
beauty, and bought her from this native woman, and adopted her as her
daughter in a way. She called her Charity because of the way in which
she was found, and Bird because of her silvery voice."
"Ha!" Gerald started, "another point of resemblance. Mavis has a voice
like a nightingale. Tod, I must learn Mavis's past life; these two
girls must be connected in some way; the resemblance is too
wonderful."
"There are chance likenesses," hinted Tod slowly.
"I daresay, but Nature doesn't turn out two girls line for line the
same unless she sends them into the world as twins. Mavis was brought
to the Pixy's House when she was five years of age, but she doesn't
remember where she lived before that. She is twenty-one in ten
months."
"By Jupiter!" Tod hoisted himself up with a curious look, "that's odd,
for Charity told me that she would be twenty-one next year, and then
could run away with me. Perhaps there is something in what you say,
Jerry, after all. What's to be done?"
Haskins pinched his chin. "Let us leave the question of the
resemblance alone for the moment, Tod. What I want you to do is to go
to Somerset House and look up the wills."
"The wills? Whose will. What will?"
"Look up any will made by anyone called Durham. Go back fifteen or
twenty years. Of course," said Gerald apologetically, "it is only my
fancy based upon the few words let drop by Mrs. Geary, but I feel
somehow--in my bones, as the old women say--that Mavis is being kept a
prisoner on account of money."
Tod fidgeted. "It's such a wild idea," he protested.
"Wild or not, it is six and eightpence in your greedy, legal pocket."
"Rebb might not like my prying into his private affairs."
"I don't see that Rebb need know anything about it," said Gerald
impatiently. "In fact, I want to keep my doings dark in the Rebb
direction, for if there is anything in my belief the Major will do his
best to queer my pitch. If you look up the will of a man or of a woman
called Durham, Rebb cannot say anything, as neither you nor I are
supposed to know anything about the Pixy's House business. Well?"
Tod nodded, and made a note. "I'll search," he assented. "Any will by
someone called Durham, man or woman, and dated some fifteen or twenty
years ago. Suppose I find nothing?"
"And suppose you do," retorted his friend, rising; "we are searching
for a needle in a haystack, remember, Toddy, and must poke about in
every direction. We'll look into the money business first, and then we
can question Mrs. Pelham Odin and Bellaria as to the possibility of
there being any relationship between these two girls."
"See here," remarked Macandrew slowly, "all this talk is first rate if
you were writing a story and knew the end. But it seems to me that, as
we have to deal with real life, you are making circumstances to fit in
with your theories."
"Perhaps I am," replied Haskins, with a shrug, "but I am so much in
love with Mavis that I shall move heaven and earth to get her."
"Why not be bold and ask Rebb straight out? Then he could tell you the
story of the girl's birth, and perhaps may explain why she is so like
Charity. If Rebb dislikes this Mavis so much that he shuts her up he
won't mind your taking her off his hands."
"Oh, yes, he will, if money goes with her," said Gerald grimly. "I
don't want to make Rebb think that I am in love. The whole business is
shady."
"Do you mean your love-making?" asked Tod slyly.
"No, you rotter. My love-making is as straight as Rebb's ways are
crooked. Do what I say, and when we learn if there is a will----"
"Well?"
"We'll know how to move next. Meanwhile I intend to tell the story
that I have told you to Mrs. Crosbie."
"But, I say, she'll go straight and tell Rebb."
"No," said Haskins decisively. "I have known Mrs. Crosbie for years,
and she is as honest and good a little woman as ever lived. Mrs. Berch
is also a ripping sort, if somewhat funereal. If Major Rebb is a
villain--and I really believe that he is--I don't want Mrs. Crosbie's
life to be made miserable by marrying him--or Mrs. Berch's either: you
know how she adores her daughter."
"All the same, Mrs. Crosbie may tell Rebb," insisted Tod Macandrew.
"I don't think so. I shall enlist her sympathies on my behalf. Every
woman loves a love affair. Then my story will put her on her guard
against Major Rebb, and she'll probably contrive to find out the truth
of the business without his knowing. Good-day, Toddy boy."
Haskins shot out of the office rapidly, but Macandrew sat soberly at
the desk shaking his red poll. It appeared to him that Gerald was
about to climb the Hill Difficulty, and might not reach the top.