A SHORT PARTING.
The fluctuations of Mr. Arden's conviction continued. His new
acquaintance chatted gaily. They passed a transverse street, and he saw
him glance quickly right and left, with a shrewd eye that did not quite
accord with his careless demeanour.
Here for a moment the moon fell full upon them, and the effect of this
new light was, once more, to impair Mr. Arden's confidence in his last
conclusions about this person. Again he was at sea as to his identity.
There were the gabble and vociferation of two women quarrelling in the
street to the left, and three tipsy fellows, marching home, were singing
a trio some way up the street to the right.
They had encountered but one figure--a seedy scrivener, slipshod,
shuffling his way to his garret, with a baize bag of law-papers to copy
in his left hand, and a sheaf of quills in his right, and a pale,
careworn face turned up towards the sky. The streets were growing more
silent and deserted as they proceeded.
He was sauntering onward by the side of this urbane and garrulous
stranger, when, like a whisper, the thought came, "Take care!"
David Arden stopped short.
"Eh, bien?" said his polite companion, stopping simultaneously, and
staring in his face a little grimly.
"On reflection, Monsieur, it is so late, that I fear I should hardly
reach my hotel in time if I were to accept your agreeable invitation,
and letters probably await me, which I should, at least, _read_
to-night."
"Surely Monsieur will not disappoint me--surely Monsieur is not going to
treat me so oddly?" expostulated Monsieur St. Ange.
"Good-night, Sir. Farewell!" said David Arden, raising his hat as he
turned to go.
There intervened not two yards between them, and the polite Monsieur St.
Ange makes a stride after him, and extends his hand--whether there is a
weapon in it, I know not; but he exclaims fiercely,--
"Ha! robber! my purse!"
Fortunately, perhaps, at that moment, from a lane only a few yards away,
emerge two gendarmes, and Monsieur St. Ange exclaims, "Ah, Monsieur,
mille pardons! Here it is! All safe, Monsieur. Pray excuse my mistake as
frankly as I have excused yours. Adieu!"
Monsieur St. Ange raises his hat, shrugs, smiles, and withdrew.
Uncle David thought, on the whole, he was well rid of his ambiguous
acquaintance, and strode along beside the gendarmes, who civilly
directed him upon his way, which he had lost.
So, then, upon Mr. Longcluse's fortunes the sun shone; his star, it
would seem, was in the ascendant. If the evil genius who ruled his
destiny was contending, in a chess game, with the good angel of Alice
Arden, her game seemed pretty well lost, and the last move near.
When David Arden reached his hotel a note awaited him, in the hand of
the Baron Vanboeren. He read it under the gas in the hall. It said:--
"We must, in this world, forgive and reconsider many things. I
therefore pardon you, you me. So soon as you have slept upon our
conversation, you will accept an offer which I cannot modify. I
always proportion the burden to the back. The rich pay me
handsomely; for the poor I have prescribed and operated, sometimes,
for nothing! You have the good fortune, like myself, to be
childless, wifeless, and rich. When I take a fancy to a thing,
nothing stops me; you, no doubt, in like manner. The trouble is
something to me; the danger, which you count nothing, to me is
_much_. The compensation I name, estimated without the circumstances,
is large; compared with my wealth, trifling; compared with
your wealth, nothing; as the condition of a transaction between
you and me, therefore, not worth mentioning. The accident of last
night I can repair. The original matrix of each mask remains safe in
my hands: from this I can multiply casts _ad libitum_. Both these
matrices I will hammer into powder at twelve o'clock to-morrow
night, unless my liberal offer shall have been accepted before that
hour. I write to a man of honour. We understand each other.
"EMMANUEL VANBOEREN."
The ruin, then, was not irretrievable; and there was time to take
advice, and think it over. In the baron's brutal letter there was a
coarse logic, not without its weight.
In better spirits David Arden betook himself to bed. It vexed him to
think of submitting to the avarice of that wicked old extortioner; but
to that submission, reluctant as he is, it seems probable he will come.
And now his thoughts turn upon the hospitable Monsieur St. Ange, and he
begins, I must admit not altogether without reason, to reflect what a
fool he has been. He wonders whether that hospitable and polite
gentleman had intended to murder him, at the moment when the gendarmes
so luckily appeared. And in the midst of his speculations, overpowered
by fatigue, he fell asleep, and ate his breakfast next morning very
happily.
Uncle David had none of that small diplomatic genius that helps to make
a good attorney. That sort of knowledge of human nature would have
prompted a careless reception of the baron's note, and an entire absence
of that promptitude which seems to imply an anxiety to seize an offer.
Accordingly, it was at about eleven o'clock in the morning that he
presented himself at the house of the Baron Vanboeren.
He was not destined to conclude a reconciliation with that German noble,
nor to listen to his abrupt loquacity, nor ever more to discuss or
negotiate anything whatsoever with him, for the Baron Vanboeren had been
found that morning close to his hall door on the floor, shot with no
less than three bullets through his body, and his pipe in both hands
clenched to his blood-soaked breast like a crucifix. The baron is not
actually dead. He has been hours insensible. He cannot live; and the
doctor says that neither speech nor recollection can return before he
dies.
By whose hands, for what cause, in what manner the world had lost that
excellent man, no one could say. A great variety of theories prevail on
the subject. He had sent the old servant for Pierre la Roche, whom he
employed as a messenger, and he had given him at about a quarter to
eleven a note addressed to David Arden, Esquire, which was no doubt that
which Mr. Arden had received.
Had Heaven decreed that this investigation should come to naught? This
blow seemed irremediable.
David Arden, however, had, as I mentioned, official friends, and it
struck him that he might through them obtain access to the rooms in
which his interviews with the baron had taken place; and that an
ingenious and patient artist in plaster might be found who would search
out the matrices, or, at worst, piece the fragments of the mask
together, and so, in part, perhaps, restore the demolished evidence. It
turned out, however, that the destruction of these relics was too
complete for any such experiments; and all that now remained was, upon
the baron's letter of the evening before, to move in official quarters
for a search for those "matrices" from which it was alleged the masks
were taken.
This subject so engrossed his mind, that it was not until after his late
dinner that he began once more to think of Monsieur St. Ange, and his
resemblance to Mr. Longcluse; and a new suspicion began to envelope
those gentlemen in his imagination. A thought struck him, and up got
Uncle David, leaving his wine unfinished, and a few minutes more saw him
in the telegraph office, writing the following message:--
"From Monsieur David Arden, etc., to Monsieur Blount, 5 Manchester
Buildings, Westminster, London.
"Pray telegraph immediately to say whether Mr. Longcluse is at his
house, Bolton Street, Piccadilly."
No answer reached him that night; but in the morning he found a telegram
dated 11.30 of the previous night, which said--
"Mr. Longcluse is ill at his house at Richmond--better to-day."
To this promptly he replied--
"See him, if possible, immediately at Richmond, and say how he
looks. The surrender of the lease in Crown Alley will be an excuse.
See him if there. Ascertain with certainty where. Telegraph
immediately."
No answer had reached Uncle David at three o'clock P.M.; he had
despatched his message at nine. He was impatient, and walked to the
telegraph office to make inquiries, and to grumble. He sent another
message in querulous and peremptory laconics. But no answer came till
near twelve o'clock, when the following was delivered to him:--
"Yours came while out. Received at 6 P.M. Saw Longcluse at Richmond.
Looks seedy. Says he is all right now."
He read this twice or thrice, and lowered the hand whose fingers held it
by the corner, and looked up, taking a turn or two about the room; and
he thought what a precious fool he must have appeared to Monsieur St.
Ange, and then again, with another view of that gentleman's character,
what an escape he had possibly had.
So there was no distraction any longer; and he directed his mind now
exclusively upon the distinct object of securing possession of the
moulds from which the masks were taken; and for many reasons it is not
likely that very much will come of his search.