“You don’t know who the gent is, then?” I said at last, suspiciously.
“No; I’ve tried hard to find out, and I’ve watched Peter all over the
town to no purpose. He’s too blessed fly for me.”
“Have you any idea what hold Peter has upon the gent?” I asked, after
a pause to think.
Dick bestowed upon me one of the most superlatively cunning winks
that humanity could create.
“I’ve an idea,” he curtly answered.
“Well, what is its nature?”
“Look here, M^cGovan, you’re a detective, and pretty fly, but you
don’t come it over me so easy,” he retorted sharply, but without any
anger. “I’ll swop secrets with you, there! Nothing could be fairer,
could it? You find out the gent’s name and address and gi’ me them,
and then I’ll tell you what hold Peter has on him.”
“Is it anything in connection with that hold which is to book Peter
for twenty years,” I quietly continued.
“Oh, no; that’s a different affair altogether—a job Peter did years
ago down in Sunderland. I was there at the time, and know all about
it, and I’m the only one who has the real tip in his hands.”
“Why are you so anxious to get rid of Peter?” I presently inquired.
“Have you quarrelled?”
“No, not exactly, but Peter cheated me out of half-a-crown months
ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, nor never will.”
Half-a-crown! fancy a man being threatened with twenty years’
entombment—probably the whole term of his life—through cheating a
companion out of a miserable half-crown! If Peter had only known that
a spider-devourer was on his track, would he not have hastened to
place a whole heap of half-crowns at his enemy’s disposal, and have
abjectly craved his pardon as well?
I took the proposal of Dick to _avizandum_; and shortly decided
to let him have the desired information. I had first paid a visit
to Mr Bannister, and found him not only willing but eager to pay
twenty pounds to any one who would give such information as would
lead to Peter’s incarceration, conditionally, of course, that his
name did not appear in the case. I made no conditions, but allowed
Dick to settle his own terms. Before I gave him Mr Bannister’s name
and address, I insisted on being told what hold Peter had on that
gentleman, when Dick readily answered—
“Do you know Bell Diamond—she who’s said to be Peter’s sister, though
her name’s different? Well, I don’t know all the outs and ins of it,
but Bell is said to be that gent’s real and lawful wife.”
“Never!”
“A fact, I believe. Peter’s got all the papers somewhere to prove it.
They were married quite young—twenty years ago, at least—when Bell
wasn’t such a harridan as she looks now.”
The moment this information was tendered I regretted my compact. What
though I sent Dick to Mr Bannister, and the money were cheerfully
paid, if the arrest and imprisonment of the gentleman himself on a
charge of bigamy followed? The very execution of my duty would then
look, in the eyes of those most interested, an act of the deepest
treachery. There was no going back, however, and I could only hope
that Dick had been misled or mistaken. The same afternoon Dick
appeared at the office, and gave minute details of a daring forgery
case in which Peter Hart had been engaged years before. The facts
were so striking that we were for a time doubtful of their reality,
and telegraphed south for information. The answer put at rest every
doubt. Two men had been tried and convicted in connection with the
affair, but they were mere tools, and the principal had escaped. That
man was said to be Peter Hart, changed only in name; and an officer
able to identify the real culprit was on his way to Edinburgh when
the reply had been despatched.
So far Dick’s information seemed valuable and accurate, and with the
greatest alacrity and delight I went for Peter Hart, whom I found
sitting at his ease in his inn—the same public-house in which the
former arrest had taken place.
He returned my salutation rather sternly and haughtily, and resumed
his game with the air of a man who was certain to be the last to be
“wanted” by me.
“I’m waiting on _you_, Peter,” I at length pointedly remarked.
“Oh, you are, are you?” he snappishly and defiantly answered, jumping
up with the greatest readiness. “Perhaps you’ll take me to the office
and lock me up as you did before, and risk me bringing an action
of damages against you and the rest of ’em? Perhaps you’ll be kind
enough to call in a policeman to hit me over the head and arms like
as he did the last time, eh?” and after this scathing and satirical
outburst he paused for breath, to pose grandly before his friends,
thinking doubtless that he had quite cowed and overawed me.
“There is a man at the door,” I quietly answered, bringing out my
bracelets, “but he won’t need to hit you over the head unless you act
as foolishly as you did the last time. You’re not afraid of these!”
“Afraid of them? Not me. I want them on—I want them on badly. See,
I’ll put them on myself. Now take me away, and abuse me, and lock me
up, and then take the consequences!”
Delighted to find that his facetious mood made him so pliant, I
obeyed him in every particular, and Peter’s exultant smile only
faded when the first two or three questions had been put to him at
the office. The moment “Sunderland” was mentioned his jaw fell,
and he fixed upon me a look of hatred most flattering and pleasing
to me. On searching the lining of Peter’s coat we came upon a flat
packet of papers. There were some six or seven letters, and a
properly authenticated certificate of marriage, all proving that
Isabella Diamond had been courted and married some twenty years
before by Matthew Bannister. Peter’s rage had been working up during
the search, and he now shouted out that he knew who had set that
“bloodhound,” as he was pleased to name myself, on his track, and
after a burst of the most awful language, he wound up by accusing Mr
Bannister of having two wives living, and commanding us to go and
arrest the gentleman as smartly as we had arrested the rogue.
When the papers had been discovered I fully expected to have that
disagreeable task to perform. The whole case seemed clear and the
proof positive to my mind, for I had seen the working of the hidden
springs from the first. But the law has certain forms of its own; and
I was sent first to Bell Diamond herself, who was the proper person
to make the charge. To my surprise, though she gave vent to rage and
vituperation over the capture of Peter, she most positively refused
to charge Mr Bannister with bigamy; nay in the very face of the
discovered papers she swore most positively that she had never been
married in her life, and had never spoken to Mr Bannister. My firm
conviction, upon hearing this extraordinary denial, was that Bell
had a spark of generosity in her breast, low as she had fallen, and
wished to save the man who had once loved her from the ignominy of a
prison; but in that I was very far mistaken. Bell was actuated by a
very different motive—a desire to get well out of an awkward plight
and a very threatening complication. The secret was partly laid bare
by referring to Mr Bannister, but it was not wholly made clear till
long after.
Mr Bannister had really married a girl named Isabella Diamond, who
drifted away from him and was lost sight of. That lost wife, after
sinking lower and lower, died in a lodging-house in Glasgow, in
which Peter Hart and his sister at that time lived. Nelly Hart was
in trouble and likely to be taken, and the name of the dead woman
was boldly given in as Helen Hart, while the living owner took the
name of Bell Diamond, as well as the papers left by her, and vanished
in the direction of Edinburgh. There they remained for some time,
till, by merest accident, they discovered that Mr Bannister was newly
married, and conceived the plan of frightening him into paying black
mail, under the idea that his lost wife was still alive.
Where there is real love there is always perfect trust, and Mr
Bannister had confided the whole story of his life to the devoted
girl who had laid her all at his feet; and it was that knowledge and
the idea that she was to be torn from him for ever which had caused
her terrible agitation and swoon on the occasion of my first visit to
the house.
Peter Hart duly received his sentence of twenty years, and Dick
M^cQueen, the spider-killer, as I may name him, was avenged of his
half-crown.