MARGARET'S LETTER.
Life seemed very blank to Clement Austin when he returned to London a
day or two after Margaret Wilmot's departure from the Reindeer. He told
his mother that he and his betrothed had parted; but he would tell no
more.
"I have been cruelly disappointed, mother, and the subject is very
bitter to me," he said; and Mrs. Austin had not the courage to ask any
further questions.
"I suppose I _must_ be satisfied, Clement," she said. "It seems to me
as if we had been living lately in an atmosphere of enigmas. But I can
afford to be contented, Clement, so long as I have you with me."
Clement went back to London. His life seemed to have altogether slipped
away from him, and he felt like an old man who has lost all the bright
chances of existence; the hope of domestic happiness and a pleasant
home; the opportunity of a useful career and an honoured name; and who
has nothing more to do but to wait patiently till the slow current of
his empty life drops into the sea of death.
"I feel so old, mother," he said, sometimes; "I feel so old."
To a man who has been accustomed to be busy there is no affliction so
intolerable as idleness.
Clement Austin felt this, and yet he had no heart to begin life again,
though tempting offers came to him from great commercial houses, whose
chiefs were eager to secure the well-known cashier of Messrs. Dunbar,
Dunbar, and Balderby's establishment.
Poor Clement could not go into the world yet. His disappointment had
been too bitter, and he had no heart to go out amongst hard men of
business, and begin life again. He wasted hour after hour, and day
after day, in gloomy thoughts about the past. What a dupe he had been!
what a shallow, miserable fool! for he had believed as firmly in
Margaret Wilmot's truth, as he had believed in the blue sky above his
head.
One day a new idea flashed into Clement Austin's mind; an idea which
placed Margaret Wilmot's character even in a worse light than that in
which she had revealed herself in her own confession.
There could be only one reason for the sudden change in her sentiments
about Henry Dunbar: the millionaire had bribed her to silence! This
girl, who seemed the very incarnation of purity and candour, had her
price, perhaps, as well as other people, and Henry Dunbar had bought
the silence of his victim's daughter.
"It was the knowledge of this business that made her shrink away from
me that night when she told me that she was a contaminated creature,
unfit to be the associate of an honest man Oh, Margaret, Margaret!
poverty must indeed be a bitter school if it has prepared you for such
degradation as this!"
The longer Clement thought of the subject, the more certainly he
arrived at the conclusion that Margaret Wilmot had been, either bribed
or frightened into silence by Henry Dunbar. It might be that the banker
had terrified this unhappy girl by some awful threat that had preyed
upon her mind, and driven her from the man who loved her, whom she
loved perhaps, in spite of those heartless words which she had spoken
in the bitter hour of their parting.
Clement could not thoroughly believe in the baseness of the woman he
had trusted. Again and again he went over the same ground, trying to
find some lurking circumstance, no matter how unlikely in its nature,
which should explain and justify Margaret's conduct.
Sometimes in his dreams he saw the familiar face looking at him with
pensive, half-reproachful glances; and then a dark figure that was
strange to him came between him and that gentle shadow, and thrust the
vision away with a ruthless hand. At last, by dint of going over the
ground again and again, always pleading Margaret's cause against the
stern witness of cruel facts, Clement came to look upon the girl's
innocence as a settled thing.
There was falsehood and treachery in the business, but Margaret Wilmot
was neither false nor treacherous. There was a mystery, and Henry
Dunbar was at the bottom of it.
"It seems as if the spirit of the murdered man troubled our lives, and
cried to us for vengeance," Clement thought. "There will be no peace
for us until the secret of the deed done in the grove near Winchester
has been brought to light."
This thought, working night and day in Clement Austin's brain, gave
rise to a fixed resolve. Before he went back to the quiet routine of
life, he set himself a task to accomplish, and that task was the
solution of the Winchester mystery.
On the very day after this resolution took a definite form, Clement
received a letter from Margaret Wilmot. The sight of the well-known
writing gave him a shock of mingled surprise and hope, and his fingers
were faintly tremulous as they tore open the envelope. The letter was
carefully worded, and very brief.
"_You are a good man, Mr. Austin_," Margaret wrote; "_and though you
have reason to despise me, I do not think you will refuse to receive my
testimony in favour of another who has been falsely suspected of a
terrible crime, and who has need of justification. Henry Dunbar was not
the murderer of my father. As Heaven is my witness, this is the truth,
and I know it to be the truth. Let this knowledge content you, and
allow the secret of the murder to remain for ever a mystery upon earth,
God knows the truth, and has doubtless punished the wretched sinner who
was guilty of that crime, as He punishes every other sinner, sooner or
later, in the course of His ineffable wisdom. Leave the sinner,
wherever he may be hidden, to the judgment of God, which penetrates
every hiding-place; and forget that you have ever known me, or my
miserable story._
"MARGARET WILMOT."
Even this letter did not shake Clement Austin's resolution.
"No, Margaret," he thought; "even your pleading shall not turn me from
my purpose. Besides, how can I tell in what manner this letter may have
been written? It may have been written at Henry Dunbar's dictation, and
under coercion. Be it as it may, the mystery of the Winchester murder
shall be set at rest, if patience or intelligence can solve the enigma.
No mystery shall separate me from the woman I love."
Clement put Margaret's letter in his pocket, and went straight to
Scotland Yard, where he obtained an introduction to a
businesslike-looking man, short and stoutly built, with close-cropped
hair, very little shirt-collar, a shabby black satin stock, and a coat
buttoned tightly across the chest. He was a man whose appearance was
something between the aspect of a shabby-genteel half-pay captain and
an unlucky stockbroker: but Clement liked the steady light of his small
grey eyes, and the decided expression of his thin lips and prominent
chin.
The detective business happened to be rather dull just now. There was
nothing stirring but a Bank-of-England forgery case; and Mr. Carter
informed Clement that there were more cats in Scotland Yard than could
find mice to kill. Under these circumstances, Mr. Carter was able to
enter into Clement's views, and sequestrate himself for a short period
for the more deliberate investigation of the Winchester business.
"I'll look up a file of newspapers, and run my eye over the details of
the case," said the detective. "I was away in Glasgow, hunting up the
particulars of the great Scotch-plaid robberies, all last summer, and I
can't say I remember much of what was done in the Wilmot business. Mr.
Dunbar himself offered a reward for the apprehension of the guilty
party, didn't he?"
"Yes; but that might be a blind."
"Oh, of course it might; but then, on the other hand, it mightn't. You
must always look at these sort of things from every point of view.
Start with a conviction of the man's guilt, and you'll go hunting up
evidence to bolster that conviction. My plan is to begin at the
beginning; learn the alphabet of the case, and work up into the syntax
and prosody."
"I should like to help you in this business," Clement Austin said, "for
I have a vital interest in the issue of the case."
"You're rather more likely to hinder than help, sir," Mr. Carter
answered, with a smile; "but you're welcome to have a finger in the pie
if you like, as long as you'll engage to hold your tongue when I tell
you."
Clement promised to be the very spirit of discretion. The detective
called upon him two days after the interview at Scotland Yard.
"I've read-up the Wilmot case, sir," Mr. Carter said; "and I think the
next best thing I can do is to see the scene of the murder. I shall
start for Winchester to-morrow morning."
"Then I'll go with you," Clement said, promptly.
"So be it, Mr. Austin. You may as well bring your cheque-book while
you're about it, for this sort of thing is apt to come rather
expensive."