FANNY DISCOVERS WHO RICHARD MANX IS.
MY DARLING--What has occurred to-day must be related with calmness,
although my mind is in a whirl of excitement. The presentiment I felt
last night that we were on the threshold of an important discovery has
come true. A discovery _has_ been made which neither you nor I could
ever have dreamt of, and we have to thank Fanny for it. How wonderfully
all the circumstances of life seem to be woven into one another! Little
did I think, when I first met the poor, hungry little girl, and was kind
to her, that she would repay me as she has repaid me, and that we should
owe to her, perhaps, the happiness of our lives. I may be mistaken; I
may be speaking more out of my heart than my head, more out of my hopes
than my reason. But surely what Fanny has discovered will lead to a
discovery of greater moment. It is, as yet, the most important link in
the chain. We must consider what is best to be done. At noon, Fanny said
to me:
"I want a holiday; I've got something to do."
She spoke abruptly, and with great earnestness.
"You don't intend to run away from me, Fanny," I said, and immediately
repented my words, for Fanny seized my hands, and kissed them, with
tears running down her face.
"Run away from you!" she cried. "Never--never--never! How could you
think it of me. I would die for you--indeed, indeed I would!"
I quieted her, trying to excuse myself by saying that it was only
because she was keeping something secret from me that the words escaped
me.
"But I'm doing it for you," she said. "To-night I'll tell you
everything."
Now, read how Fanny passed the day. I will relate it as nearly as
possible out of her lips.
"When I went into Mr. Pelham's room, yesterday," she said, "in
Buckingham Palace Road, I didn't suspect anything at first. I didn't
like his looks, but that was nothing. There are lots of people I don't
like the looks of. I remained there while he threw away the letter, and
while he drank and smoked. He was drinking wine, and he emptied three
glasses one after another. It wasn't till he got up and went to his desk
that I noticed something--a twitch of his left shoulder upwards, just as
a man does when he shrugs his shoulders. But Mr. Pelham did not shrug
his two shoulders, he shrugged one--the left one. I only knew one other
man who did with his left shoulder what Mr. Pelham did, and I thought it
funny. While he was writing his letter he threw away his cigar, and took
a cigarette, and the way he put it into his mouth and rolled it between
his lips was just the same as the other man who twitched his shoulder
as Mr. Pelham did. Well, as I walked back to Mrs. Holdfast's house, I
seemed to see the two men--Mr. Pelham and the other, shrugging their
left shoulders, and rolling their cigarettes in their mouths, and what
they did was as like as two peas, though they were two different men,
though one was poor and the other rich. I couldn't help calling myself a
little fool when the idea came to me that they were not different men
at all, and I said to myself, 'What do they mean by it? No good, that's
certain.' So I made up my mind to do something, and I did it to-day.
"First, there was Richard Manx. I watched him out of the house. He came
down from his garret a little after twelve; I stood in the dark passage,
and watched him coming downstairs; he seemed to be out of temper, and he
gave the wall a great blow with his hand. I think he would have liked to
hear it cry out, so that he might be sure he had hurt it. I thought I
shouldn't like him to strike _me_ in that way--but I don't suppose he
would if any one was looking. He would have hit me as he hit the wall,
if he had known what I was up to--that is, if nobody was near.
"He went out of the house, closing the street door, O, so quietly behind
him. Have you noticed how quietly he does everything? He walks like a
cat--well, so can other people. I waited a minute after he closed the
street door, and then I slipped out after him. I looked all ways, and I
saw him just turning out of the Square into Great King Street. I soon
turned the corner too, and there I was walking behind him on the other
side of the way, with my eyes glued to him. Well, as good as glued. I
can walk a long way behind a person, and never lose sight of him, my
eyes are so sharp, and I didn't lose sight of Mr. Richard Manx, as he
calls himself. He walked Lambeth way, and I noticed that he was looking
about in the funniest manner, as though he was afraid he was being
watched. The farther he got from Great Porter Square the more he looked
about him; but no one took any notice of him--only me. Well, he went
down a street where half the houses were shops and half not, and at the
corner of the street was a coffee-shop. There were two doors facing him,
one going into the shop where people are served, and the other going
into a passage, very narrow and very dark. A little way up this passage
was a door, which pushed open. Mr. Manx, after looking about him more
than ever, went into the narrow dark passage, and pushed open the door.
"What I had to do now was to wait until he came out, and to dodge about
so that I shouldn't be seen or caught watching for something I didn't
know what. It was a hard job, as hard a job as ever I was at, and it was
all that I could do to keep people from watching me. I waited an hour,
and another hour, and another hour, and Mr. Manx never came out of the
coffee shop. I was regularly puzzled, and tired, and bothered. But I
didn't know what a little fool I was till after waiting for at least
four hours I found out that the coffee shop had two more doors on the
side facing the other street; doors just like the others, one going into
the shop, and the other into a narrow dark passage. When I found that
out I thought that Mr. Manx must have gone in at one door in one street
and come out at the other door in the other street, and I was regularly
vexed with myself. But that didn't help me, and I walked away from
Lambeth towards Buckingham Palace Road. I wanted to see with my own eyes
if Mr. Pelham was at home. He was; I saw him stand for a minute at the
window of his room on the front floor. Then I set to watching him. I
wanted to find out where he was going to, and what he was up to. I
suppose it was seven o'clock, and dark, before he came out. He walked
till he met a cab, and as he got in I heard him give the direction of
Mrs. Holdfast's house. That was enough for me; I followed him there, my
feet ready to drop off, I was that tired. But I wasn't going to give
up the job. No one came out of Mrs. Holdfast's house till nine o'clock
struck; then the street door was opened, and Mr. Pelham walked into the
street. He stood still a little, and I thought to myself he is thinking
whether he shall take a cab. He didn't take one till he was half-a-mile
from Mrs. Holdfast's house. I ran all the way after it. It was a good
job for me that the cab was a four-wheeler, and that it went along slow,
for running so hard set my heart beating to that extent that I thought
it would jump out of my body. I scarcely knew where we were going, the
night was that dark, but I knew it was not in the direction of
Buckingham Palace Road. Mr. Pelham rode about a mile, then called out to
the cabby, and jumped on to the pavement. He paid the man, and the cab
drove away, and then Mr. Pelham walked slowly towards Lambeth, looking
about him, although the night was so dark, in exactly the same way as
Mr. Manx had done when I followed him from Great Porter Square. I had
been on my feet all the day, and had walked miles and miles, and I
hadn't had a bit of bread in my mouth since breakfast--but when I was
certain that Mr. Pelham was walking to Lambeth I didn't feel hungry or
tired. I said to myself, 'Fanny, your idea was right; but what does it
all mean?' Well, I couldn't settle that; all I had to settle was that
the two men who shrugged their left shoulders, and who rolled their
cigarettes in their mouths in the way I had noticed, were not two men
at all, but the same man, living in one place as a gentleman and an
Englishman, and in another as a poor foreigner without a shilling. So I
was not at all surprised to see Mr. Pelham, dressed like a swell, stop
at the coffee shop at which Mr. Manx had stopped, and push through the
dark passage by the door I had not noticed when I was waiting in the
street this morning for Mr. Manx, and I wasn't at all surprised that Mr.
Pelham didn't come out again. The man who came was the man I wanted, and
I followed him home here to Great Porter Square, and he is in the house
now." And here Fanny concluded the account of her day's adventures by
asking, "Who came in five minutes before I did?"
"Richard Manx," I replied.
"It's all one," said Fanny, triumphantly; "Richard Manx is Mr. Pelham.
There's no difference between them, except that one wears a wig, and
paints his face, and talks like a foreigner, and that the other lives
in a fine house, and drinks wine, and dresses like a gentleman. That
was my idea last night. That was what I had to do when I asked you this
morning to let me go for the day. There's something in it; I don't know
what--that's for you to find out. Are you pleased with me?"
I pressed the faithful child in my arms, and she gave a sigh and
fainted. She was so eager to tell me of her discovery, and I was so
anxious to hear it, that we both forgot that for fifteen hours not a
morsel of food had passed her lips.