"But now with lights reverse the old hours retire,
And the last hour is shod with fire from hell.
This is the end of every man's desire."
During the four months which had elapsed since Faunce's first visit to
Kate Delmaine, alias Mrs. Randall, the detective had contrived to keep
an observant eye upon the lady; but he had not succeeded in arriving
on a more friendly footing with her, although he had obliged her on
several occasions with a small advance on account of the promised
reward.
He had called three or four times at the lodging-house in the dingy
street near the Thames, and she had received him civilly. He had
detected a lurking anxiety under the assumed lightness of her manner--a
carking care, that seemed to him of some deeper nature than the need
of money, or the sense of having fallen upon evil days. He would not
have been surprised to see her depressed and out of spirits; but he was
at a loss to understand that ever-present anxiety, and that nervous
irritability which seemed allied with fear.
He remarked to her, in a friendly way, on the state of her nerves, and
advised her to see a doctor. He urged her to live well, and to take
the utmost care of herself, to which end he was liberal with those
ten-pound notes on account.
"I want you to look your best when you appear in court," he said, "to
show that you are every bit as handsome a woman as Lady Perivale."
"He always said I was," she answered, with a sigh.
"Colonel Rannock? He knew and admired you before he ever saw Lady
Perivale, didn't he, now?" asked Faunce, who, for reasons of his own,
was very anxious to make her talk of Rannock; but she answered curtly--
"Whether he did or whether he didn't, it's no business of yours."
The gloomy look had come back to her face; and Faunce was more and more
convinced that, whatever her anxiety was, it was in some way connected
with Colonel Rannock.
He had brought Rannock's name into the conversation whenever he could,
and with an artful persistence, and the name had always a depressing
influence. She spoke of him reluctantly, and she seldom spoke of him
dry-eyed. Once she spoke of him in a past tense. It could be no common
fate that had left such aching memories.
Without actually "shadowing" the lady during this interval, he had
contrived to keep acquainted with her movements and associations, and
he had discovered that almost her only visitor was the man whom he had
seen on that first day--the man who had opened the door, glanced into
the room, and hurried away at sight of a stranger. Even this person
was not a frequent visitor, but he called at irregular hours, which
indicated a friendly footing.
It had not taken Faunce very long to identify this person as an
individual well-known to the patrons of the prize-ring--a pugilist
called Bolisco, who had been one of Sir Hubert Withernsea's _protégés_,
and had often sat at meat and drink in the very much mixed society in
the Abbey Road. Bolisco had been at the zenith of his renown ten years
ago, when Withernsea was burning that brief candle of his days which
had guttered into the grave before he was thirty; but the pugilist's
reputation had considerably declined since then. He had been beaten
ignominiously in three or four public encounters, had seen his star
go down before younger and steadier men, and was no longer good for
anything better than a glove-fight at a second-rate tavern. One of
those glove-fights had ended fatally for Bolisco's opponent; and
there had been some among the lookers-on who accused him of brutal
roughness towards a weaker man, which had resulted in death. No blame
had attached to Bolisco in the opinion of the coroner's jury; but the
patrons of the Fancy had given him the cold shoulder since that unlucky
accident, which had happened more than a year ago.
In the course of that semi-shadowing Faunce had found out some details
of Kate Delmaine's life during the last half-year. He found that she
had occupied the shabby first-floor in Selburne Street since the
beginning of March, that she had come there straight from "abroad,"
and that her trunks were covered with foreign labels--Ajaccio,
Algiers, Marseilles, Paris, Calais. She had arrived with a great load
of personal luggage, fine clothes, and other portable property, the
greater part of which had been gradually made away with. She would go
out in a cab with a large cardboard box, and come home half an hour
afterwards on foot, having left box and contents at a pawnbroker's in
the King's Road.
Betsy, the sixteen-year-old maid-of-all-work, from whom Faunce derived
most of his information, had been a close observer of the first-floor
lodger, and was pleased to impart her knowledge and her impressions to
the amiable Faunce.
Mrs. Randall was very down-hearted, Betsy told him, and would sit and
cry for the hour together. Did she drink? Well, only a brandy-and-soda
now and then, but she used to stick a needle into her arm that made her
sleepy, and she would lie on the sofa all the afternoon and evening
sometimes, like a dead thing. The girl had heard her moan and groan in
her sleep when she took her a cup of tea in the morning, and she would
wake with a frightened look, and stare about her "wild-like," as if she
didn't know where she was.
Had she many visitors?
None, except the dark gentleman with the broken nose; and he did not
come very often, or stay long. They had words sometimes--very high
words--and once, in one of their quarrels, she went into hysterics, and
was "regular bad," and screamed at him like a lunatic. The missus had
been obliged to go upstairs to her, and tell her she wouldn't stand
such goings-on any longer. She'd have to clear out if she couldn't
behave like a lady.
All this to hear did Mr. Faunce seriously incline; and he now began to
do a little shadowing on Mr. Bolisco's account.
He knew that in all probability he was wasting his time; but the old
hunter's instinct of the Scotland Yard days was upon him, and he wanted
to know what ailed Kate Delmaine over and above the natural depression
of a woman of her class out of luck.
He had provided for her comfort, had been to her as a guardian angel,
as the time for her appearance in Court drew near. He had advised her
how to dress the part, and had ascertained what Lady Perivale was going
to wear, in order that Mrs. Randall's costume should in some degree
resemble hers. He had gone to Regent Street on the day before the case
came on, and bought a fur toque, after the fashion of Lady Perivale's
sable.
"It is only a paltry bit of skunk," Mrs. Randall declared
contemptuously, after she had blown the fur about and examined it with
a depreciatory scrutiny; but when she put it on before the cloudy
looking-glass in her parlour she owned to being pleased with herself.
"I wonder if you believe I was once a handsome woman," she said to
Faunce.
"I know you are a handsome woman now, and that you've only to take a
little more care of yourself to be as handsome as ever you were," he
answered gravely, being a kind-hearted man and really sorry for her.
"That's skittles!" she answered. "I've come to the end of my tether.
I've nothing to live for, and I'm sick of wishing I was dead, for it
don't come off. And I don't want to kill myself; that's too cheap. I
hate the idea of an inquest, and 'The deceased was once known as this,'
and 'The deceased was once t'other.' I'm a lady, Mr. Faunce, and I
loathe being magged about in the newspapers."
* * * * *
Now that Lady Perivale's action had ceased to be a nine days' wonder,
and the lady herself was a happy wife, travelling by easy stages
towards the land of ancient monuments and modern amusements, pyramids
and golf links, Sphinxes and croquet, colossal sepulchres of unknown
Pharaohs, and monster hotels with unknown tariffs; now that he had
accomplished his task and had been handsomely rewarded, it might seem
that John Faunce's interest in Grace Perivale's double would cease and
determine. Strange to say that interest grew rather than diminished,
and he contrived to see his little friend, the lodging-house slavey,
once or twice a week, and so to be informed of all Mrs. Randall's
proceedings; indeed, his love of detail led him to ask Betsy for an
old blotting-book of the first-floor lodger's, which had been flung
upon the dustheap, and which the girl had retrieved from that foul
receptacle for the sake of its picture cover.
"Most people collect something," he told Betsy; "my fancy is old
blotting-paper."
"Well, I never did!" exclaimed the damsel. "I know many as collecks
postage-stamps, but I never heerd as blotting-paper was valuable!"
"It is, Betsy--sometimes," in token of which Mr. Faunce gave her
a crown piece for the ragged book, with its inky impress of Mrs.
Randall's sprawling penmanship.
Faunce had paid his witness the balance of the promised reward, £120,
in bank-notes, the evening after the trial, and he was prepared to hear
she had taken wing.
Surely with a sum of money in hand she would leave that dismal street,
and hurry away to some more attractive locality. To Paris, perhaps, to
buy fine clothes, and flaunt her recovered beauty in the Bois; or to
Monte Carlo, to try her luck at the tables. It was in the character of
such a woman to squander her last hundred pounds as freely as if she
had an unlimited capital behind it.
She had talked of leaving her lodgings, the little handmaiden Betsy
told him, but it hadn't come off. She had given a week's notice, and
then had cut up rough when the missus took a lady and gentleman to look
at the rooms. She wasn't going to be chucked out like a stray dog,
she'd go when she wanted, and not before.
"I don't believe she'll never go," Betsy said, with a wise air. "She
ain't got it in her to make up her mind about nothink. She sits in the
easy-chair all day, smokin' cigarettes and readin' a novel, or lays on
the sofa, and seems only half awake. And of a evening she gets dreadful
low. She says she hates the house, and won't sleep another night in it,
and yet when morning comes she don't offer to go. And then, she's that
under his thumb that if he say she's not to leave, go she won't."
"You mean the dark gentleman?" said Faunce.
"Of course I do. There ain't any other as I knows on."
"Do you think she is--attached--to the dark gentleman?"
"I know she's afraid of him. I've seen her turn white at his step on
the stairs, and she's always upset after he's been to our place, and
sits and cries as if her heart was breaking. There, I do feel sorry
for her! She's a real good sort. She give me this here hat," added the
slavey, tossing her beplumed and bejewelled head. "It was bought in
the Harcade, and it ain't been worn above half a dozen times, only the
sea-water damaged it a bit when she was travelling."
So sincere and deep-rooted was Faunce's interest in Mrs. Randall, that
he took considerable pains to follow the movements of her friend Mr.
Bolisco, whom he tracked to his lair in a sporting public-house at
Battersea--an old, tumble-down building in a shabby street close to the
river, a house that had once been a respectable roadside inn, and had
once been in the country.
Faunce took some note of the famous prize-fighter's habits, which
were idle and dissolute, and of his associates, who belonged to the
lowest order, the ragged fringe of rascality that hangs upon the edge
of the sporting world. It was sad to think that so disreputable an
acquaintance could dominate the life of a fine, high-spirited creature
like Kate Delmaine. But, much as he was interested in a beautiful
woman, who was travelling on that dismal journey which is called
"going to the dogs," Mr. Faunce felt that his evening walks with
Betsy, and his occasional look in at the Gamecock at Battersea--that
sporting rendezvous where Mr. Bolisco had his "diggings,"--were so
much dilettante trifling, and mere waste of time. His work in relation
to Kate Delmaine was finished; and whatever mystery there might be in
her life, mystery involving even a crime, it was no business of his to
investigate it.
Somewhat reluctantly, therefore, like a baffled hunter who turns
from the dubious trail of the beast he has been pursuing, Mr. Faunce
discontinued his visits to Chelsea, and went no more, in his character
of a well-to-do idler interested in the prize-ring, to the public-house
across Battersea Bridge.
"I must be getting a regular amateur," he told himself, "if I can't
have done with a case when my work is finished."
* * * * *
Christmas came as a pleasant diversion, and during that jovial season
Faunce deserted his rooms in Essex Street, forgot that he was a
detective, and remembered that he was a citizen and a husband. The
turkey and beef, the pudding and mince-pies did credit to Mrs. Faunce's
judgment, and the skill of an unpretentious cook, who did not scorn to
bare her robust arms to the elbow, and hearthstone the doorstep before
she fried the morning rasher.
The catering had been Mr. Faunce's own work. It was his falcon
glance that had detected the finest Norfolk turkey in a row of
eighteen-pounders, the ripest York ham out of a score of good ones.
The champagne which he bought for his guests, the ten-year-old Scotch
whisky which he drank himself, were all of the best, and the villa at
Putney had the air of plenteous comfort in a small space which pervades
a well-found ship.
With his wife sitting opposite to him, and an old friend on either
side, Faunce enjoyed the harmless pleasures of social intercourse,
and cleared his mind of crime and mystery, and did not go back to his
office in Essex Street until the general holiday was over, and the
flavour of Christmas had faded out of the atmosphere.
It was on the day after his return to everyday life that Faunce
received a message from Scotland Yard, bidding him go there immediately
on important business, a summons that he made haste to obey, since many
of those cases which had afforded him profitable occupation within the
last few years had come to him by the recommendation of his old chiefs
in the Criminal Investigation Department.
He found one of those chiefs seated in his private room, engaged in
conversation with a short, stout gentleman of middle age and pleasing
countenance, who looked like a soldier--fair-haired, intelligent, and
fussy.
"This is Mr. Faunce, Major Towgood," said the chief.
"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Faunce!" exclaimed the Major, in
a breathless way, bouncing up from his chair, wanting to shake hands
with Faunce, and suppressing the desire with a backward jerk; "and if
Mr. Faunce," turning to the chief, "can do anything to set my poor
mother-in-law's mind at rest about that scapegrace of hers, I shall
be very grateful--on my wife's account, don't you know. Personally, I
shouldn't be sorry to know he had gone under for good."
"Major Towgood is interested in the fate of a Colonel Rannock, his
connection by marriage, who has not been heard of for some time."
"Not since last March, early in the month--sold his sticks--and started
for the Yukon River," interjected Major Towgood again breathlessly, and
with his eyes opened very wide.
"Colonel Rannock's disappearance--if it can be called a
disappearance--has caused considerable anxiety to his widowed
mother----"
"Women are such forgiving creatures, don't you know," interrupted the
Major. "Talk of seventy times seven! There ain't any combination of
figures that will express a mother's forgiveness of a prodigal son."
"And I have told Major Towgood," pursued the chief, with a shade of
weariness, "that I can highly recommend you for an inquiry of that
sort, and that if Colonel Rannock is to be found above ground--or under
ground--you will find him."
"I'll do my best, sir."
"And now, my dear Towgood, I don't think I can do any more for you."
Major Towgood jumped up and bustled towards the door. But he wasn't
gone yet. His gratitude was overpowering; and the chief had to back him
out of the room, politely, but decisively.
"You are just the man we want, Faunce," said the Major, as they walked
down a long corridor that led to the staircase. "Your Chief has told
me all about you--you were in the Bank of England case, he said, and
the Lady Kingsbury case--and--ever so many more sensation trials--and
now you're on your own hook--which just suits us. The Chief and I were
at Sandhurst together, don't you know, and he'd do anything for me.
But he's a busy man, a very busy man; and I always respect a man's
business, pull myself up short, don't you know, wouldn't waste his time
or bore him, on any account."
"They haven't much time to spare in this building, sir," assented
Faunce.
"Of course not. Magnificent building--splendid institution--fine body
of men the police--but there ought to be three times as many of 'em.
Eh, Faunce, that's your opinion, ain't it?"
"No doubt, sir, there ought to be more of them, if it would run to it."
"But it won't, no, of course it won't. Another penny on the income-tax
this year! We shall see it a shilling before we've done with it."
"We should see it half a crown, sir, if everything was done as it ought
to be done."
"True, true, Faunce. A social Utopia, and the taxpayer with hardly
bread to eat. Well, I want to take you straight to my mother-in-law,
who will tell you all about her worthless son--a bad egg, Faunce, a
bitter bad egg, and not worth a ha'porth of the anxiety that poor old
lady has been feeling about him. She lives at Buckingham Gate. Shall we
walk?"
"By all means, sir. May I ask what particular circumstances have caused
this uneasiness on Mrs. Rannock's part--and from what period her
anxiety dates?"
"Well, you see, Faunce, Rannock left England in March--late in
March--to go to Klondyke--a wild-cat scheme, like most of his
schemes--and from that day to this nobody who knows him--so far as we
can discover--has received any communication from him."
"Is that so strange, sir? I shouldn't think that when a man was digging
for gold among a few thousand other adventurers, at the risk of being
frozen to death, or murdered if he was lucky, he would be likely to
trouble himself much about family correspondence?"
"Well, no doubt it's a rough-and-tumble life, but still, I'm told they
do get the mails, and do keep somehow in touch with the civilized
world; and, blackguard as Rannock is, he has been in the habit of
writing to his mother three or four times a year, and oftener. I
believe there is a soft spot in his heart for her. But you'll see the
old lady, and she'll tell you her troubles," concluded Major Towgood,
"so I needn't say any more about it."
In spite of which remark he talked without intermission all the way to
Buckingham Gate.