Francis Eversleigh returned to the office in Lincoln's Inn next day, and
strove to take up his work again, but with indifferent success; the
shadow of his impending ruin never lifted itself from his mind. On the
other hand, Cooper Silwood, having determined to act alone, began to
make preparations for carrying out his scheme.
All that day Silwood was incessantly occupied with the ordinary business
of that department of the office which was his special care. No man
could have told from his aspect, or from the manner in which he did his
business, that anything pressed heavily upon him; he seemed in no way
different from the imperturbable, shrewd, capable lawyer people believed
him always to be. But what he purposed doing was never absent from his
thoughts.
According to custom, at six o'clock Williamson brought him the letters
for signature. This signing of the letters served as a sort of signal,
for shortly afterwards the clerks left and the office was closed, though
it was not an uncommon thing for Silwood to stay on by himself for
another hour or two. The Eversleighs went earlier in order to catch the
fast five-o'clock suburban train.
At six o'clock Williamson went into Silwood's room with the letters; he
placed them silently before his master, who read them over rapidly, and
then affixed the firm's signature in his careful, small handwriting.
Williamson stood waiting, while he tried to read his master's face, but
Silwood's air was perfectly inscrutable.
"I shall not go at once," said Silwood. "I have not quite finished; but
there is no need for any one to stay."
He gathered the letters together in a bunch, and passed them on to
Williamson.
"By the way," he asked, looking at the clerk with a sharp glance, "how
does Mr. Eversleigh strike you? I'm afraid he's not very well."
"I thought he seemed poorly--very poorly," replied Williamson. "I felt
very sorry for him, and I ventured to suggest--having been with the firm
so many years, sir--to him that he needed a holiday."
"You did! That was good. It's my own idea, too. And what did he say?"
"He said he was all right, or soon would be; there was nothing much the
matter with him. Said it was the heat."
"But about taking a holiday?"
"He said it was not at all necessary."
"Well, I agree with you, Mr. Williamson. It seems to me that he does
need a change. I told him that also. I urged him to take a month off,
but he won't hear of it. He keeps on saying he is not ill really--only a
bit out of sorts owing to the hot weather. And it is hot, isn't it? I
must confess I feel this frightful heat very much; the office is
horribly close. Unless the weather becomes cooler, I declare I shall
require a holiday myself. And if Mr. Eversleigh still persists in
refusing a holiday--well, I believe I shall take one. I haven't had a
real vacation for a very long time. But I had much rather he went."
"You certainly have had no holiday, Mr. Silwood, for a long time--three
or four years, it must be," said Williamson, immensely surprised at the
turn the conversation had taken. "When would you think of going, sir?"
"Oh, I haven't thought much about it all," replied Silwood; "my taking a
holiday is only a possibility. Still, if this heat does not moderate, I
should not wonder if I did go. But it's not settled."
"I understand, sir," said Williamson, who, as a matter of fact, was
completely mystified. "What's up now?" he asked himself. Still, on
reflection, he had to admit there was no reason why Silwood should not
take a holiday if he wished to do so.
"That's all, I think," said Silwood; and with a nod he dismissed the
head-clerk.
Silwood waited for half an hour, so as to allow plenty of time for all
the clerks to have left the office, and then he took a look into the
various rooms to see if there was any one still there; but they were all
empty. Satisfied on this point, he returned to his own room and shut
himself in.
Next he went to the large japanned box in the corner, touched the
concealed spring, and laid open the secret chamber, from which he took a
number of papers, including the sheet of figures against which were
placed initials. He pored over these papers, studying them with the
intentness of one who is committing a subject to memory. He made two or
three alterations in the figures, and then put all the documents back
in their hiding-place. He tried to close up the chamber, but the spring
would not work properly. He tried again and again, but he did not
succeed.
With each failure his manner showed a rapidly rising agitation, an
increasing apprehension, his usual impassivity dropping away from him
completely. He examined the mechanism of the arrangement, but he could
find nothing wrong with it; so far as he could see, it appeared to be in
perfect order. As he struggled with it, his pale face became
extraordinarily livid, his lips twitched convulsively, the perspiration
stood in beads on his forehead. For he knew that if the box would not
shut, then his scheme would tumble to pieces.
He had almost given it up in despair when the accidental pressure of his
knee against one of the sides of the box caused the spring to act, and
the opening suddenly closed up of itself.
Trembling and gasping, Silwood sat down and looked at the box as if it
were some hateful living thing.
"It ought to be seen to," he said to himself, "but I cannot permit any
one to touch it. No one but myself must know of the secret chamber--that
is vital. And yet--no, I must run the risk."
He went on looking darkly at the box.
"Oh, what a fright you gave me!" he said aloud to it, and then glanced
about fearfully at the sound of his own voice. "How absurd!" he said to
himself, reassuringly. "I must not let the thing get on my nerves like
this."
It was now not far from eight o'clock, which was the hour for Silwood's
dinner. In a few minutes more, therefore, he betook himself to the
restaurant in Holborn which he was in the habit of patronizing. A
little after nine he walked back to Lincoln's Inn, which he entered by
the small door at the side of the fine gateway opening into Lincoln's
Inn Fields. He spoke to the porter for some seconds, and then went on to
his private chambers in Stone Buildings, his rooms being on the top
floor of the north-east corner building overlooking Chancery Lane. He
had lived here for several years.
After he had let himself in he locked the door, filled a black clay pipe
and lit it, took an armchair and sat down. And there he sat for a long
while very still and quiet, save for the puff--puff--puffing of the
smoke from his lips. The pipe burnt itself out, and he looked at his
watch.
"It is too soon," he said to himself; and he filled a second black clay
pipe. And this too he smoked out.
With a leisurely movement he at length rose and went to the window,
threw up the sash, and peered out into the half-darkness of the street.
He ran his eye up and down Chancery Lane, and noted that all the lights
except the street-lamps were out, and that the pavements were bare of
human forms, save for one or two dark-flitting, shadowy beings.
"It will soon be time," he thought; and he closed the window.
He sat down again, and proceeded to smoke a third pipe. All the while he
had been going over the details of his scheme; now he was thinking
whether he had not been too abrupt in making the suggestion that he
might take a holiday to Williamson.
"What does it matter?" he concluded; "he knows nothing."
He smoked on until twelve boomed through the air--the strokes came in a
great volume of sound from the clocks in the Strand and from far and
near. When it had died away, he put down his pipe, and walked into his
bedroom.
But it was not to go to bed.
For, a few minutes later, a figure emerged from Cooper Silwood's
bedroom--the figure of a man of the height and general build of Cooper
Silwood, but otherwise not like him in the least. Yet it was he, though
changed beyond recognition.
His mien was that of a respectable workman in his everyday clothes. They
were such clothes as might be worn by men of half a dozen different
trades with equal appropriateness, so little distinctive of any one
trade were they, and yet they stamped themselves unmistakably as a
workman's clothes. Silwood wore them like one who was thoroughly at home
in them; he moved at ease in them. To all appearance he was a workman,
and from his bearing it might be guessed that the part he was playing
was no new one. To be in this disguise was no novelty to him.
That it was no new _rôle_ for him to assume was also manifest from the
skill and success with which his face was made up. To begin with, the
heavy brown wig he usually had on his head had disappeared, and he was
now quite bald, with the exception of a narrow fringe of dark-grey hair
round the base of the skull. He was no longer clean-shaven; an untidy
blackish moustache covered his upper lip. A dark line had been pencilled
on either side of his nose, these lines alone imparting to the face a
marvellous change in its expression. Besides, the skin of the face had
been slightly stained, as had also been that of the hands.
His disguise was absolute. His own mother, as the phrase goes, would not
have known him. He looked to the life the part he was playing. Mr.
Cooper Silwood, the eminent solicitor, had disappeared, and a sober,
respectable workman had taken his place.
Could Francis Eversleigh now have seen this partner of his he would have
had much food for thought; if he could have followed him he would have
had much more.
The night was now very still--the roar of London was hushed. Silwood
opened his door gently, and listened. The stairs were lit, but no sound
came from any of the chambers. Locking his door softly, he stole down
into the court of Stone Buildings; they, too, were wrapped in silence.
For a moment he stood still and strained his ears to catch the slightest
noise, but there was not a breath. Taking from his pocket a key, he
unlocked a small iron gate at the north-east corner of the court, and
passed through it and went along a short narrow footway closed on the
Chancery Lane side by another iron gate, which he opened, and so reached
Chancery Lane. All this he did without hurry or confusion. It was plain
that he had got out of Lincoln's Inn by this footway many times before.
Yet it was believed to be shut up every evening by the porter, who was
supposed to be the only person possessing the keys of the gates.
From this footway--which is not much used even in the day-time, and is
hardly to be noticed at all in the night-time--to Holborn is but a step.
Silwood found Chancery Lane deserted; no one saw him emerge from the
Inn. He was quickly in Holborn, and set out eastwards at a rapid pace.
And on he went, mile after mile, stepping out briskly, through the city
proper, and on, on beyond it until he reached one of the great districts
of East-End London, where in small humble houses, huddled together in a
wilderness of mean streets, thousands upon thousands live out their
obscure and uneventful lives.
Silwood went on like a man who knows his way well. Never once did he
pause until he reached the end of his journey. He halted at a door in
Douglas Street, Stepney, and knocked a peculiar knock. Two or three
minutes passed, and then a light was shown at the window, whereupon
Silwood knocked in the same way a second time.
"Is it you, James?" asked a woman's voice, as the door was partially
opened.
"Yes, Meg; let me in," said Silwood.
"I did not expect you," she said, while Silwood embraced her
affectionately. "Is anything the matter?"
The woman who put the question was a plump, personable woman of about
forty, with kindly brown eyes and a tender mouth. She loved but was
rather afraid of this man, who yet was always good and kind to her. But
he had told her very little about himself. She knew he was engaged in
some mysterious business which necessitated long absences from her, and
the wearing of a disguise; she had tried to guess the nature of his
business, and had come to the conclusion that it was some kind of secret
police work.
Any romance there was in Silwood's life was connected with this woman,
of whom he was sincerely fond, though he was still fonder of their
child. Some years before, an accident one evening in the street led to
his meeting her, and he took a fancy to her. The thing jumping well
with other things he followed her up and married her, though he was
careful not to let her know who he was.
When with her and the child Silwood was another man; he seemed to have
shed like a skin the cold formality which characterized him in Lincoln's
Inn; his very nature appeared changed.
"Is anything the matter?" she asked.
"No, Meg, though there's news. But how is Davy?"
"Poor lamb! He's as usual. He's asleep just now."
"Let me see him," said Silwood.
They went into a bedroom, and in a cot was their child. The boy was a
cripple--he had been born a cripple, and the parents were all the more
attached to him on that account. There is no explaining the workings of
human nature; Silwood, who had confessed himself a criminal to his
partner, Eversleigh, was deeply attached to the boy. He now gazed at the
sleeping child, and the love that shone in his eyes was as pure as an
angel's.
"Poor lad! dear lad!" he said, and there were tears in his voice.
Then the father and mother tip-toed out of the room.
"You said there was news, James," suggested the wife.
"Yes, I think you won't live here much longer. My business will take me
abroad, and I dare say I will by-and-by--it may be very soon--send for
you. I may be away from England for a long time."
"Away from England!" she murmured. "Oh, James! Where is it you are
going?"
"I don't know," he answered; "I am not quite sure yet. I'll let you know
in a few days, and meanwhile I want you to get ready, so that you can
travel at a minute's notice."
"Yes, James; it's rather sudden, but I'll do what you tell me."
"Now I must leave you," he said.
She was accustomed to these abrupt partings, but as he was going she
hung upon his neck while he kissed her repeatedly.
The following day he was at his office at half-past ten, looking as if
it were impossible for such a man as he to lead a double life.