STRIKING THE TRAIL.
It was Sunday once more--a bright morning in June--and Caffyn was
sitting over his late breakfast and the 'Observer' in his rooms at
Bayswater. He was in a somewhat gloomy and despondent frame of mind,
for nothing seemed to have gone well with him since his disastrous
reception in Mabel's boudoir. His magnificent prospects in commerce
had suddenly melted away into thin air, for his confiding friend and
intending partner had very inconsiderately developed symptoms of a
premature insanity, and was now 'under restraint.' He himself was in
debt to a considerable extent; his father had firmly refused to
increase what in his opinion was a handsome allowance; and Caffyn had
been obliged to go to a theatrical agent with a view of returning to
the boards, while no opening he thought it worth his while to accept
had as yet presented itself.
Mabel had not relented in the least. He had met her once or twice at
the Featherstones' and, although she had not treated him with any open
coolness, he felt that henceforth there must be an impassable barrier
between them. Now and then, even while she forced herself in public to
listen to him, the invincible horror and repugnance she felt would be
suddenly revealed by a chance look or intonation--and he saw it and
writhed in secret. And yet he went everywhere that there was a
possibility of meeting her, with a restless impulse of self-torture,
while his hate grew more intense day by day.
And all this he owed to Mark Ashburn--a fact which Harold Caffyn was
not the man to forget. He had been careful to cultivate him, had found
out his address and paid him one or two visits, in which he had
managed to increase the intimacy between them.
Mark was now entirely at his ease with him. His air of superiority had
been finally dropped on the evening of Mr. Fladgate's dinner, and he
seemed flattered by the assiduity with which Caffyn courted his
society. Still, if he had a secret, it was his own still. Caffyn
watched in vain for the look of sudden terror which he had once
succeeded in surprising. At times he began to fear that it was some
involuntary nervous contraction from which his own hopes had led him
to infer the worst, for he was aware that countenances are not always
to be depended upon; that a nervous temperament will sometimes betray
all the signs of guilt from the mere consciousness that guilt is
suspected. If that was the case here, he felt himself powerless. It is
only in melodramas that a well-conducted person can be steeped in
crime, and he did not see his way very clearly to accomplishing that
difficult and dangerous feat with Mark Ashburn.
So he hated Mark more intensely at the thought that, after all, his
past might be a blameless one. But even if this were not so, and he
had a secret after all, it might be long enough before some fortunate
chance gave Caffyn the necessary clue to it. Well, he would wait and
watch as patiently as he might till then, and however long the
opportunity might be in coming, when it came at last it should not
find him too indifferent or reluctant to make use of it.
While he thought out his position somewhat to this effect, his
landlady appeared to clear away the breakfast things; she was a
landlady of the better class, a motherly old soul who prided herself
upon making her lodgers comfortable, and had higher views than many of
her kind on the subjects of cookery and attendance. She had come to
entertain a great respect for Caffyn, although at first, when she had
discovered that he was 'one of them play-actors,' she had not been
able to refrain from misgivings. Her notions of actors were chiefly
drawn from the ramping and roaring performers at minor theatres, and
the seedy blue-chinned individuals she had observed hanging about
their stage-doors; and the modern comedian was altogether beyond her
experience.
So when she found that her new lodger was 'quite the gentleman, and
that partickler about his linen, and always civil and pleasant-spoken,
and going about as neat as a new pin, and yet with a way about him as
you could see he wouldn't stand no nonsense,' her prejudices were
entirely conquered.
'Good morning, Mr. Caffyn, sir,' she began; 'I come up to clear away
your breakfast, if you're quite done. Sarah Ann she's gone to chapel,
which she's a Primitive Methodist, she _says_, though she can't never
tell me so much as the text when she come back, and I tell her, "My
good gal," I ses to her, "what _do_ you go to chapel for?" and it's my
belief that as often as not she don't go near it. But there, Mr.
Caffyn, if a gal does her work about the 'ouse of a week, as I will
say for Sarah Ann----'
Caffyn groaned. Good Mrs. Binney had a way of coming in to discourse
on things in general, and it was always extremely difficult to get rid
of her. She did not run down on this occasion until after an
exhaustive catalogue, _à la_ Mrs. Lirriper, of the manners and customs
of a whole dynasty of maids-of-all-work, when she began to clear his
breakfast-table. He was congratulating himself on her final departure,
when she returned with a bundle of papers in her hand. 'I've been
meanin' to speak to you about these, this ever such a time,' she said.
'Binney, he said as I'd better, seeing as you've got his very rooms,
and me not liking to burn 'em, and the maids that careless about
papers and that, and not a line from him since he left.'
'It would certainly be better not to burn the rooms, unless they're
insured, Mrs. Binney, and I should be inclined to prefer their not
being burnt while I'm in them, unless you make a point of it,' said
Caffyn mildly.
'Lor, Mr. Caffyn, who was talking of burnin' rooms? You do talk so
ridiklus. It's these loose papers of Mr. 'Olroyd's as I came to speak
to you about, you bein' a friend of his, and they lyin' a burden on my
mind for many a day, and litterin' up all the place, and so afraid I
am as Sarah Ann'll take and light the fire with 'em one of these
mornings, and who knows whether they're not of value, and if so what
should I say if he came and asked me for 'em back again?'
'Well, he won't do that, Mrs. Binney, if it's true that he was drowned
in the "Mangalore," will he?'
'Drowned! and me never to hear it till this day. It's quite took me
aback. Poor dear gentleman, what an end for him--to go out all that
way only to be drowned! I do seem to be told of nothing but deaths and
dying this morning, for Binney's just 'eard that poor old Mr. Tapling,
at No. 5 opposite, was took off at last quite sudden late last night,
and he'd had a dropsy for years, and swell up he would into all manner
o' shapes as I've seen him doin' of it myself!'
'Well, I'll look over the papers for you, Mrs. Binney,' interrupted
Caffyn. 'I don't suppose there's anything of much importance, but I
can tell you what ought to be kept.' He would have solved her
difficulties by advising her to burn the whole of them, but for some
vague idea that he might be able to discover something amongst all
these documents which would throw some light upon Holroyd's relations
with Mark.
So when Mrs. Binney was at last prevailed on to leave him in peace, he
sat down with the sheaf of miscellaneous papers she had left him, and
began to examine them without much hope of discovering anything to the
purpose.
They seemed to be the accumulations of some years. There were rough
drafts of Latin and Greek verses, outlines for essays, and hasty
jottings of University and Temple lectures--memorials of Holroyd's
undergraduate and law-student days. Then came notes scribbled down in
court with a blunt corroded quill on borrowed scraps of paper, and
elaborate analyses of leading cases and Acts of Parliament, which
belonged to the period of zeal which had followed his call to the Bar.
He turned all these over carelessly enough, until he came upon some
sheets fastened together with a metal clip. 'This does not look like
law,' he said half aloud. '"Glamour--romance by Vincent Beauchamp."
Beauchamp was his second name, I think. So he wrote romances, did he,
poor devil! This looks like the scaffolding for one, anyway; let's
have a look at it. List of characters: Beaumelle Marston; I've come
across that name somewhere lately, I know; Lieutenant-Colonel
Duncombe; why, I know that gentleman, too! Was this ever published?
Here's the argument.' He read and re-read it carefully, and then went
to a bookshelf and took down a book with the Grosvenor Library label;
it was a copy of 'Illusion,' by Cyril Ernstone.
With that by his side he turned over the rest of Holroyd's papers, and
found more traces of some projected literary work; skeleton scenes,
headings for chapters, and even a few of the opening pages, with some
marginal alterations in red ink, all of which he eagerly compared with
the printed work before him.
Then he rose and paced excitedly up and down his room. 'Is _this_ his
secret?' he thought. 'If I could only be sure of it! It seems too good
to be true ... they might have collaborated, or the other might have
made him a present of a plot, or even borrowed some notions from
him.... And yet there are some things that look uncommonly suspicious.
Why should he look so odd at the mere mention of Holroyd's name? Why
did he get the manuscript recopied? Was it modesty--or something else?
And why does one name only appear on the title-page, and our dear
friend take all the credit to himself? There's something fishy about
it all, and I mean to get at it. Job was perfectly correct. It _is_
rash for an enemy to put his name to a book--especially some other
fellow's book. Mr. Mark Ashburn and I must have a little private
conversation together, in which I shall see how much I remember of the
action of the common pump.'
He sat down and wrote a genial little note, asking Mark, if he had no
better engagement, to come round and dine quietly with him at the
house in Kremlin Road that evening, gave it to his landlord with
directions to take a cab to Mark's rooms, and if he could, bring back
an answer, after which he waited patiently for his messenger's return.
Binney returned in the course of an hour or so, having found Mark in,
and brought a note which Caffyn tore open impatiently. 'I have a
friend coming to dinner to-night, Mr. Binney,' he said, turning round
with his pleasant smile when he had read the answer. 'It's Sunday, I
know, but Mrs. Binney won't mind for once, and tell her she must do
her very best; I want to give my friend a little surprise.'