MUTUAL INFORMATION
The girl was sitting in the middle of a hard horsehair sofa, her elbows
upon her knees, her head resting in her hands. She looked across the
dreary apartment and out of the ill-cleaned windows, with dull,
despairing eyes. This, then, was to be the end of her dreams. She must
go back to the life which she felt to be intolerable, or she must throw
herself headlong into the maelstrom.
There was one other occupant of the room, and, curiously enough, his
attitude appeared to be a somewhat similar one. He was a short,
thick-set young man, with brown moustache, flashily dressed, with a red
tie, an imitation diamond, and soiled linen to further disfigure an
appearance at no time particularly prepossessing. He was standing with
his legs a little apart, looking out into the uninspiring street. His
hands were thrust deep down into the pockets of his trousers. He had all
the appearance of a man who finds the burden of life an unwelcome thing.
Presently he began to whistle, not cheerfully, but some doleful air of
sentimental import. The girl upon the couch seemed irritated. She
herself was in the last stage of dejection, and the sound grew
maddening.
"Oh, don't do that, please!" she exclaimed at last.
He turned around in amazement, for the first time realizing that he was
not alone. "I beg your pardon," he said.
The girl remembered that he was a stranger to her, but after all, what
did it matter? "I asked you to stop whistling," she said.
He answered "Certainly!" and continued to look at her. She returned his
gaze with a disapprobation which she scarcely attempted to conceal.
"Sort of habit I get into," he explained, "when I'm in the dumps."
"Does it do you any good?" she asked. "If so, I'll learn how to whistle
myself."
"Meaning," he remarked, "that we are companions in--dumpiness?"
She shrugged her shoulders, but did not trouble to reply.
"I wish to God," he exclaimed, "I'd never left Cape Town!"
Then for the first time she looked at him with a gleam of interest, and
asked, "Do you come from South Africa?"
He nodded. "I did, and I only wish I were back there. I could always
keep my head above water there, but London is a rotten hole. I suppose
it's because I don't know the runs," he added meditatively. "Anyhow,
it's broke me."
She continued the conversation without feeling the slightest interest in
it, but simply because it was an escape--a temporary escape--from her
thoughts. "What did you come over for?" she asked.
"A fool's errand!" he answered. "I lent a man some money--a sort of
speculation it was--and I came over to see how he was getting on."
"And I suppose he'd lost it," she remarked.
"He's lost himself," answered the man, "which is about as bad. I wish I
could lay my hands upon him. I'd get a bit of my own back, one way or
another."
"London is a big place," she returned. "People are not easy to find
unless you know all about them."
"This man left South Africa only a month or so ago. He gave me an
address here where he said I should always hear of him. I've been there
nearly every day. He turned up there all right regularly after he first
landed. He hasn't been there at all for two months, and they haven't the
least idea where he is."
"You don't even know," she asked, "whether the speculation is successful
or not?"
He shook his head gloomily. "It don't make much odds, so far as I can
see," he said. "If it came off, he's bolted with the profits. If it
didn't, he's hiding for fear I shall want my money back again. It's a
rotten sort of show, anyway."
"What was his name?" she asked idly.
"His real name," the man answered, "was the same as your own,--that is,"
he added, "I think I heard old Mrs. Towsley call you Miss Sinclair,
didn't I?"
She looked at him steadily for several moments without speaking. He was
not a person of quick apprehensions, but even he could not fail to see
the change in her face. Her lips were parted, her eyes were suddenly lit
with an almost passionate fire. The change in her features was
illuminating. She was no longer a tired, depressed-looking young woman
of ill-tempered appearance. Her good looks had reasserted themselves.
Life seemed to have been breathed into her pulses.
"His real name was Sinclair," she repeated softly. "He came from South
Africa. Tell me some more about him?"
"Why?" he asked bluntly.
"Because," she told him, "my name is Ruby Sinclair, and I am here on
very much the same errand as you, only with this difference," she
added,--"I know where my uncle is. I know what has become of him. There
are other things for which I seek."
He came over from the window, and stood on the hearthrug by her side.
Some part of her excitement had become communicated to him. "I say," he
exclaimed, "this is a rum go, and no mistake! If it's the same man, we
may be able to help one another. It's Richard Sinclair I am looking for,
called over there Bully Sinclair. He was a man about fifty years old,
been in South Africa for the last twenty years, a mine prospector and
general adventurer. He'd had his fingers in a good many pies, had
Richard."
"What was he over in England for?" she asked.
The young man hesitated. "I don't know that there's any harm in telling
you," he said, "only remember its information for information. I'm
giving you the whole show away."
"I'll tell you all you want to know," she interrupted. "Go on."
"Well," the young man said, "he came over to lay claim to a gold-mine
that he considered he'd been done out of."
"A gold-mine!" the girl repeated breathlessly. "Was it a rich one--very
rich, I mean?"
"I should say so," the young man answered. "It was a complicated bit of
business--the mine's in other hands, you see--but Sinclair reckoned that
he'd got a claim to it, anyway, and he expected either to be squared for
a big amount, or to get a syndicate to take the thing up. He came to me
dead on his uppers. My name's Hefferom. He and I had been pretty thick
at odd times, and though we'd been in a good many deals together, we'd
kept friends in a way. He came to me, as I say, in Cape Town, and he
told me what the game was. He wanted a matter of two or three hundred
pounds to get over to this side, and to start things properly. Well, I
thought it out, and though it was about all I was worth in the world, I
let him have it. Over he comes. I got a letter from him to say he'd
landed, and never another line. I cabled--no answer. Over I came myself,
for he'd scarcely left Cape Town before a little affair that I was mixed
up in went plumb wrong, and I lost every penny I'd got left. So over
here I come, and I've been here a fortnight, and I tell you Sinclair
seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. The worst of it is,"
he continued, "I'm stoney-broke. I've got to leave this place to-day
because I can't pay my bill, and I've no idea where to raise a
sovereign."
The girl's sense of humor triumphed for a second over her excitement.
"There are your diamonds," she reminded him. "I heard you talking about
them at dinner the other night. One of them you said was worth a hundred
pounds."
"A bluff," he answered readily. "They are false, every one of them. I
talked like that to get old mother Towsley to let my account go on a
bit, but she wasn't having any. Now, I say, I've told you my story. Tell
me why you are so keen on knowing about it."
"Yes," she said, "I will tell you. My name is Ruby Sinclair, and I am
the niece of the man whom you have come to England to find."
He made use of an oath for which he forgot even to apologize. "You know
where he is!" he exclaimed. "Come, remember it was a fair bargain.
Information for information!"
"He is dead!"
The young man staggered back. His first emotion of shocked surprise
lasted only a few seconds. Anger and disappointment took its place.
"Dead?" he exclaimed. "And my money--what about that? What he left
belongs to me, anyway. It's got to be made up. I can show you his note
for it."
"You had better wait," she answered coldly, "Until I have told you
everything. I suppose you don't read the papers?"
"Never," he answered. "What good are they to me?"
"They might have been of some use on the present occasion," she
answered. "They might at any rate have saved you from wasting a good
deal of time. My uncle was murdered in the Hotel Universal by a man
named Rowan."
The young man swore again,--fluently, volubly,--swore until he had come
to the end of a varied and extensive vocabulary. When he had finished,
there was an excited flush in his cheeks and a bright light in his eyes.
"By Rowan--Basil Rowan?" he exclaimed. "He was one of us out there when
we were prospecting up the Newey Valley. Look here," he continued, "you
and I have got to have this out. Murdered, was he? Well, I'm the man
that may be able to throw some light upon that. What's happened to
Rowan? Had he anything to say?"
"I will tell you all that I know," the girl answered. "My uncle wrote me
directly he arrived in England. He told me that he had been fortunate in
Africa, that he had come to take possession of a large fortune, and that
he would be sending for me in a very short time to live with him, and
that, as he had no other relative, I should be rich all my days. I
replied, of course, asking whether I could not come at once. He wrote me
again to tell me to wait for a day or two, until his affairs were
settled. Then I heard no more. I waited. I wrote again. I waited, and
wrote again. There was no reply. I found afterwards that my letters had
never even been called for at the address where he told me to write.
Then one day a stranger who was staying at Rakney told my uncle there to
look at the papers. We found the story of his murder. He had been dead
some time."
"Rowan was tried, I suppose?" the man asked. "Did he say what his motive
was? Has he been hanged?"
"He insisted upon it that it was a quarrel," the girl said. "I do not
believe him. He was found guilty and reprieved. I saw in the papers last
night that he had been released. I believe that he has only a few days
to live."
"And you?" the young man asked.
"I came up," the girl said slowly, "to take possession of my uncle's
effects."
"Have you got them?" he asked breathlessly.
"Yes!" the girl answered.
"There were papers?" he demanded.
"Some," she answered, "but none of any importance."
He looked at her suspiciously. She shrugged her shoulders. "Look here,"
she said, "I am telling you the truth. Look at me, look at my
gloves--mended half-a-dozen times. Look at my clothes, just hanging on
my back and no more. If there had been a single thing amongst my uncle's
papers on which I could have raised even a five-pound note, do you think
that I should be sitting here like this, wondering which might be the
quickest way out of the world?"
The young man moistened his lips. He was obviously in a state of
excitement. "Listen," he said, "among these papers was there a sort of
deed on yellow parchment paper, roughly written, with a government stamp
in the left-hand corner, a paper which spoke of a gold-mine called the
Little Anna Gold-Mine?"
She shook her head decidedly. "There was nothing of the sort."
Then the young man swore again, and this time he seemed to surpass
himself. "Your uncle was robbed!" he exclaimed,--"robbed of that paper!
I tell you," he added, "he was murdered for it, and for no other
reason!"
"How do you know?" the girl cried.
"Why, it's as simple as A B C," he explained. "He had the paper in his
possession when he came to England. The mine has been claimed by a great
syndicate who are working it now. He came to see them, to make terms.
The next thing we hear is that he is murdered and the paper is gone.
They thought that no one else knew of it. Young lady," he exclaimed,
"you may thank your stars, as I do, that you and me have come together.
We'll have justice, and we'll have that fortune yet!"