That evening Mr. Slippen's boy presented himself at Captain Hampton's
lodgings with a note. It contained only the words 'Dear sir,--Our man
uses the "White Horse," Frogmore Street, Islington. I await your
instructions before moving further in the matter.'
'Well, youngster, what is your name?' Captain Hampton asked, as he put
the note on the table beside him.
'Jacob Wrigley,' the lad replied promptly.
'Here is half-a-crown for yourself, Jacob.'
'Thank you, sir,' the boy said, as he took it up with a duck of the head
and slipped it into his pocket.
'Your office hours seem to be long, Jacob; that is, if you have been
there since I saw you this morning.'
'No, sir, I ain't a-been there since one o'clock, not till an hour ago.
I have been down at Greenwich, keeping my eye on a party there. I got
done there at six o'clock, and as the governor had said "Come round and
tell me what you have found out, I shall be in up to nine o'clock,"
round I went in course. The governor and me don't have no regular hours.
Some chaps wouldn't like that, but it doesn't matter to me, 'cause I
sleeps there.'
'Sleep where, Jacob?'
'In where you see me. The things is stowed away in that cupboard in the
corner, and I get on first-rate. It is a good place, especially in
winter. I lays the blankits down in front of the fire, and keeps it
going all night sometimes.'
'But haven't you got any place of your own to go to, Jacob?'
The boy shook his head. 'I was brought up in a wan, I was,' the boy
said. 'I hooked it one day, two years ago, 'cause they knocked me about
so. I pretty nigh starved at first, but one day I saw a chap prigging an
old gent's ticker. The old one shouted just as he got off; I was on the
look-out and as the chap came along I chucked myself down in front of
him and down he came. I grabbed him, and afore he could shake me off a
lot of chaps got hold of him and held him till a peeler came up. They
did not find the watch on him, but I had seen him as he ran pass
something to a chap he ran close to and pretty nigh knocked down. I gave
my evidence at the police court. The governor happened to be there, and
arter it was over and the chaps had got six months, and the beak had
said I gave my evidence very well, and gave me five bob out of the poor
box, he came up to me and said, "You are a smart young fellow. Do you
want a job?" I said I just did, and so he took me on; that is how it
came about, you see. The only thing I don't like is, he makes me go to a
night school. He says I shan't never do no good unless I can get to read
and write; so I does it, but I hates it bitter.'
'He is quite right, Jacob. You stick to it; it will come easier as you
get on.'
'Yes, I know I wants it, for letters and that sort of thing, but it is
bitter hard. I would rather stand opposite a house all day in winter
than I would sit for an hour trying to make my pen go where I wants it
to. It allus will go the other way, and the drops of ink will come out
awful. Good night, sir.'
'Good night, lad. Tell Mr. Slippen when you see him that I shall
probably be round to-morrow or next day.'
On the following morning Captain Hampton called early at Chester Square.
Mr. Hawtrey and Dorothy had just finished breakfast. Mrs. Daintree, as
was her custom after being out late the night before, had taken hers in
bed.
'I have good news so far. I have discovered, or rather Slippen has,
where Truscott is to be found. He frequents a public-house called the
White Horse, Frogmore Street, Islington.'
'That is good news indeed, Ned,' Mr. Hawtrey said warmly, as he shook
hands with him. As he turned to Dorothy, he saw with surprise that she
had turned suddenly pale, and that her hands shook as she put down the
cup.
'You are pleased, are you not, Dorothy?' he asked in surprise.
The girl hesitated. 'Yes,' she said, 'of course, I am pleased in one
way, but not in another. It frightens me to think that the man may be
brought up, and that I may have to give evidence; it is horrid being
talked about, but it would be much worse to stand up to be stared at,
and to have it all put in the papers.'
'Pooh, pooh, my dear, your evidence will be very simple,' her father
said. 'You will only have to tell that you received the first of these
letters, that you know nothing of the man, and that his assertion that
he has letters of yours is utterly false.'
'Yes, father, but I have noticed that in all trials of this sort they
ask such numberless questions, and that they always manage somehow to
put the witnesses into a false light. They will say, "How do you know
that he has no letters of yours? Do you mean to tell this court that you
have never written any letters?" And when I have said I have never
written any letters that I should object to having read out in court
they will insinuate that I am telling a lie, and that I have done all
sorts of dreadful things; and though they will not be able to prove a
word of it, I shall know, as I go out, that half the people will believe
that I have. I shall hate it, and I am sure that Algernon will hate it
even more.'
'Well, Algernon has no one but himself to thank for its having come to
this pass,' Mr. Hawtrey said sharply. 'It was his interference, and his
going down to Scotland Yard, that caused that paragraph to appear in the
paper. If he had left the matter alone nothing whatever would have been
heard about it outside our circle. I like Halliburn, but I must say that
at present nothing would give me more satisfaction than to hear that he
had gone for a month upon the Continent, for he comes round here every
afternoon, and worries and fusses over the matter until he upsets you
and fills me with an almost irresistible desire to seize him by the
shoulders and turn him out of the room.'
'He is a little trying, father,' Dorothy admitted, 'but of course he
does not like it.'
'Nor do any of us. It is a hundred times worse for you than it is for
him, and yet--But there, let us change the subject. What is it you were
saying, Ned? Oh yes, you have heard where Truscott lives.'
'Not exactly where he lives, but the public-house where he is to be met
with, and in his case it comes to pretty well the same thing. I had
nothing to do with finding it out. The man Slippen took it in hand, and
in a few hours did more than I had done in three weeks. He sent a fellow
down to Windsor, to some betting men he knew, and sent me word in the
evening. It was rather mortifying, I must confess, and I feel as if I
had been taken down several pegs in my own estimation.'
'And what is to be done next, father?' Dorothy asked anxiously.
'Ah, that is the point we shall have to talk over, my dear. At present
we have not a thread of evidence to connect him with the affair. We
must, in the first place, bring it home to him. Afterwards, we will see
whether we must have him arrested and charged in court, or whether we
can frighten him into making a confession. I am very much afraid that,
after all that has been said about it, there will be nothing for it but
a public prosecution; however, there will be time to think of that
afterwards.' Captain Hampton saw Dorothy go pale again, and mentally
resolved that he would do all in his power to save her from the ordeal
from which she evidently shrank. He was a little surprised at her
nervousness, for as a child she had been absolutely fearless, but he
supposed that the worry, and perhaps the fidgeting of Halliburn had
shaken her somewhat, as, indeed, was natural enough. 'You are going
round to see this detective, I suppose?' Mr. Hawtrey asked.
'Yes, I came in on my way for instructions. Slippen will no doubt
propose that a sharp watch shall be kept over his movements, and I
suppose that there can be no doubt that is the right thing to be done.'
'I should say so, certainly.'
'That, at least, Miss Hawtrey, will commit us to nothing afterwards, and
I trust even yet we may find some way of avoiding the unpleasantness you
feared.'
'I may as well go with you, Ned,' Mr. Hawtrey said; 'I have nothing
particular to do this morning; a walk will do me good. I am getting
bilious and out of sorts with all this worry, and would give a good
round sum to be quietly down in Lincolnshire again. Dorothy evidently
feels it a good deal more than I should have thought she would,' he went
on as they left the house.
'It is a horribly annoying sort of thing to happen to anyone, Mr.
Hawtrey; because it is so desperately difficult to meet anonymous
slander of this sort, and of course her engagement makes it so much the
worse for her.'
'Yes, that is the rub, Ned. I am not at all pleased with the fellow; he
seems to think of nothing but the manner in which it affects himself. I
have had, once or twice, as much as I could do not to let out at him. I
had it on the tip of my tongue to say, "Confound it, sir! What the deuce
do I care for you or your family? The ancestors through whom you got
your title were doubtless respectable enough, and as far as I know, may,
two or three generations back, have been washer-women, when our people
had already held their estates hundreds of years." Of course, Dorothy
takes his part, but my own belief is that it is he who is worrying her,
quite as much as the scandal itself.
'Dorothy is not marrying for a title; she refused a higher one than his
last autumn. I don't say that his being a lord might not have influenced
her to some extent; I suppose all girls have vanity enough to like to
carry off a man whom scores of others will envy her for, but I don't
think that went very far with her. I believe that, as far as she knew of
him, she liked him for himself; not, I suppose, in any desperate sort of
way, but as a pleasant, gentlemanly sort of fellow of whom everyone
spoke well, and whom she esteemed and thought she could be very happy
with. She has no occasion to marry for money; of course my estate is, as
I dare say you know, entailed, and will go to my cousin, Jack Hawtrey,
who is a sporting parson down in Somersetshire--a good fellow, with a
large family; but there will be plenty for her from her mother, besides
my unentailed property.
'I cannot help thinking that Halliburn's worrying, and the very evident
fact that he thinks more of the scandal as affecting his future wife
than of her feelings in the matter, may have shown her that she had
over-estimated him, and that although he may be a very respectable and
well-behaved young nobleman, he is a selfish and shallow-minded fellow
after all. Dorothy may say nothing now, but she is not the sort of girl
to forgive that sort of thing, and I don't mind saying it to you, as an
old friend, Ned, that I should not be at all surprised if, when once
this affair is thoroughly cleared up, she throws Halliburn over
altogether.'
Captain Hampton made no reply, but had his companion turned to look at
him he could hardly have avoided noticing that the expression on his
face expressed anything but sympathy with the tone of irritation in
which he had himself spoken.
Mr. Slippen was in when they arrived at Clifford's Inn. The door was
opened by him when they knocked, a proof that the boy was not at his
post.
'Come in, Captain Hampton; I fancied that you would be down here.'
'This is Mr. Hawtrey, Mr. Slippen,' said Ned, as they followed him into
his room; 'he thought he would like to talk over with you the plan of
campaign.'
'I am glad you have come, sir; it is always more satisfactory to meet
one's principal in matters of this kind; there is less chance of any
mistake being made. It is surprising sometimes to find, after one is
half through one's work, that one has been proceeding under an entirely
false impression. One may think, for example, that one's client is bent
upon carrying a matter out to the bitter end, and will not hear of
anything of a compromise, and then one discovers that he is perfectly
ready to condone everything, and to make every sacrifice to avoid
publicity. Of course, if one had known that in the first place, it would
have immensely facilitated matters.'
'I should be very glad to avoid publicity myself,' Mr. Hawtrey said,
'but unfortunately the matter has gone so far that I do not see how it
can possibly be avoided.'
Mr. Slippen shook his head.
'I don't see, myself, at present,' he agreed, 'how the scandal is to be
set at rest, except by the prosecution of its author--that is to say, if
we can get evidence enough to prosecute him. Of course, if we had such
evidence it would be easy enough to force him into making a complete
retractation; but, if we did, such a retractation would hardly be
satisfactory, as, supposing it were published, people would say, "How
are we to know that this letter is written by the fellow who wrote the
others? If it is the man, how is it that he is not prosecuted for it?"
Certainly there would be a strong suspicion that he had been bought
off.'
'I see that myself,' Mr. Hawtrey agreed. 'I don't see any other way of
clearing the matter up except by putting him in the dock, though I would
give a great deal to avoid it. My daughter is extremely averse to the
idea of the publicity attending such an affair, and especially to having
to appear as a witness, which is not surprising when one knows the
outrageous licence given to counsel in our days to cross-examine
witnesses.'
Captain Hampton noticed the sudden keen glance shot at his client from
Mr. Slippen's eyes, followed by a series of almost imperceptible little
nods, and was seized with a sudden and fierce desire to make a violent
assault upon the unconscious detective.
'At any rate,' Mr. Hawtrey continued, 'I see nothing at present but to
let the matter go on, and for you to obtain, if possible, some decisive
proof of the man's connection with these letters. So far we have really
only the most shadowy grounds for our suspicion against him.'
Again Mr. Slippen nodded, this time more openly and decisively.
'Quite the most shadowy, Mr. Hawtrey. I am far from saying that he may
not be the man, but beyond his having, as I understand, a grievance of
very many years' duration against yourself there is really nothing
whatever to connect him with the affair.'
'Nothing, Mr. Slippen. It is, in fact, simply because there is no one
else against whom we have even such slight grounds as this to go upon,
that we suspect this fellow of being the author of these rascally
communications.'
'You will understand, Mr. Hawtrey, that being employed by you I consider
it my duty to let you know exactly the light in which the matter strikes
me. Of course, I do not know the man as you do, but from what I have
learnt from Captain Hampton he seems to be an unprincipled blackguard; a
man who has been concerned in various shady transactions on the turf,
and who has come down to the rank of the lowest class of betting men; a
fellow who pays his bets when he has made a winning book on a race and
is a welsher when he loses.
'Of course, it may be that such a man is of so vindictive a nature that
he may have taken all this trouble simply to annoy you, but I cannot
help thinking that if he had embarked upon it he would have played his
hand so as not only to annoy but to extort money to cease that
annoyance. Now the writer of these letters has certainly not done that.
Had he had any idea of extorting money he would have sent some sort of
private intimation to you, by means of a cautiously worded letter, to
the effect that an arrangement could be made by which the thing could be
put a stop to. You have received no such missive; therefore, if this man
is the author he is simply a malicious scoundrel, and not, in this
instance at any rate, a clever rogue, as I should certainly have
expected to find him from his antecedents.'
'That is to say, you do not think he is the man?'
'Yes, I think it comes almost to that, Mr. Hawtrey. I do not know him,
and, of course, he may be the man, but I own that I shall be a good deal
surprised if I find that he is so. Still, in the absence of any other
clue whatever, I propose to follow this up. It will be something at
least to clear it out of the way and to have done with it. I shall
detail my boy to watch the public-house till the man comes to it, and
then to find out where he lives and what are his habits; to follow his
footsteps and take note of every place where he posts a letter. We shall
get, at any rate, negative evidence that way. If, for instance, a letter
is posted in the south of London, and we know that on that day the man
never went out of Islington, I think that it will be very strong proof
that he has nothing to do with the matter. Of course the reverse would
not be so convincing the other way; but if we had the coincidence, three
or four times repeated, of the letter bearing the mark of a district in
which he had dropped one into the post, we should feel that we were a
long way towards proving his connection with the affair.'
'Quite so,' Mr. Hawtrey agreed; 'that will, as you say, either go far to
confirm our suspicions, or will altogether clear the ground so far as he
is concerned, and we must then look for a clue in some other direction
altogether.'
That afternoon Captain Hampton, having nothing to do, made his way up to
Islington. The lad was not to be put on the watch until the next
morning, and he thought that he might see this man at the public-house
he frequented, and perhaps glean something from any conversation he
might have with the men he met there. After some inquiry as to the
direction of Frogmore Street, he turned up the Liverpool Road, and had
gone but a few hundred yards when his eye fell on a couple engaged in
earnest conversation on the raised walk, on the opposite side of the
street. He paused abruptly in his stride. One was unquestionably the man
for whom he was seeking. He was better dressed than when he had seen him
before, and had more the air of a gentleman, but there could be no
question as to his identity. The other was as unmistakably Dorothy
Hawtrey.
There was no question of an accidental likeness; it was the girl
herself, and he recognised the dress as one he had seen her wear.
Turning sharply on his heel he turned down a bye street, and came out
into Upper Street. There were too many people here for him to think; he
passed on, walking in the road at the edge of the pavement, to the
Angel, and then turned down the comparatively quiet pavement of
Pentonville Hill.
What could it mean? He could see but one solution, and yet he refused to
accept it. To believe it was to believe Dorothy Hawtrey to be guilty of
deception and lying. Was it possible that, after all, this man could
have possessed letters of hers, and that she had been driven at last to
meet him and redeem them? He remembered her pallor when she had heard
that morning that this fellow's whereabouts had been discovered, and how
she had urged that no steps should be taken against him. It had all
seemed natural then; it seemed equally natural now under this new
light--and yet he refused to believe it. So he told himself over and
over again. That he had seen her in conversation with Truscott was
undeniable; of that, at least, he was certain, but equally certain was
it to him that there must be some other explanation of the meeting than
that which had at first struck him. What could that explanation be? No
answer occurred to him; he could hit upon no hypothesis consistent with
her denial of any knowledge whatever of the writer of these letters.
He was at the bottom of the hill now; disregarding the hails of various
cabmen, he crossed the road and made his way down through the squares.
It was better to be walking than sitting still. He scarcely noticed
where he was going, and was almost surprised when he found himself in
Jermyn Street. He went upstairs, lighted a cigar, and sat down.
'What is coming to me?' he said to himself. 'I am generally pretty good
at guessing riddles, and there must be some explanation of this mystery,
if I can but hit upon it.'
But after thinking for another hour, the only alternative to the first
idea that had occurred to him was that Dorothy, in her horror of the
idea of a public trial and of being forced to appear in the witness box,
had taken the desperate resolution to find this man herself, at the
address he had mentioned to her and her father, to bribe him to desist
from his persecution of her, and to warn him that unless he moved away
at once the police would be on his track.
It was all so unlike the high-spirited child he had known, and the girl
as he had believed her still to be, that it was difficult to credit that
she would allow herself to be driven to take such a step as this, in
order to escape what seemed to him a minor unpleasantness.
Still, as he told himself, there were men of tried bravery in many
respects who were moral cowards, and it might well be that, though
generally fearless, Dorothy might have a nervous shrinking from the
thought of standing up in a crowded court, exposed to an inquisition
that in many cases was almost a martyrdom. It was an awful mistake to
have made. If the scoundrel had been bribed into silence now, he would
be all the more certain to recommence his persecution later on, and
after having once met with and paid him for his silence how could she
refuse to do so when another demand was made?
One thing seemed to Ned Hampton unquestionable. He must maintain an
absolute silence as to what he had seen--the harm was done now and could
not be undone. He was certain that she had not noticed him, and could
never suspect that he had her secret. As for himself there was nothing
for him now but to stand aside altogether. Filled as he was with the
deepest pity for Dorothy, he was powerless to help her. When the next
trouble came it was her husband who would have to stand beside her, and
to whom, sooner or later, she would have to own the false step she had
taken.
He felt that at any rate it was out of the question that he should see
her again at present. It was fortunate that he had retired from the
investigation in favour of Mr. Slippen, and could therefore run away for
a bit without seeming to have deserted Mr. Hawtrey. He had thought about
hiring a yacht, and this would serve as a pretext for him to run down to
Ryde. He could easily put away a fortnight between that town, Cowes,
Southampton, and Portsmouth. As to the yacht he had no real intention
now of looking for one. He must wait for a while and see what happened
next. He was sure to meet men he knew at Southsea, and anything was
better than staying in London.
He accordingly at once wrote a note to Mr. Hawtrey, saying that it would
be some time before Slippen obtained such evidence against Truscott as
would put them in a position to bring it home to him, and that as he
could not be of any use for a time he had resolved to run down for a
week to Southsea, and look round the various yards in search of a yacht
of about the size he wanted, for a cruise of six weeks or two months,
with the option of taking her up the Mediterranean through the winter.
Then he wrote several letters of excuse to houses where he had
engagements, and started the next morning by the first train for
Portsmouth. He was a fortnight absent, and on his return called on Mr.
Hawtrey at an hour when he knew that he was not likely to meet Dorothy.
'So you are back again, Ned? Your note took me quite by surprise, for
you had said nothing as to your going away when I met you early in the
day.'
'No, sir, it was a sort of sudden inspiration. I was sick of London, and
had had a very dull time of it going about to races for three weeks
before; so I thought that I would have a complete change, made up my
mind at once, packed my portmanteau, and was off. Have you had any news
from Slippen?'
'None. He has written to me two or three times; his last note came this
morning, saying that his boy has been watching the public-house ever
since, and that the man has certainly not been there. The boy is a sharp
fellow and found that the fellow had called in there on the very day
before he began his watch, and he also discovered by bribing a postman
where he had lodged, but upon going there found he had given up his room
on the same day he had last been at the public-house, and had left no
address, nor had the people of the house the slightest idea where he had
gone. I suppose the fellow took fright at the publicity there had been
about the affair; at any rate, no more of those letters have come since.
That is certainly a comfort, but it looks as if we were never going to
get to the bottom of the mystery. Of course, it is extremely annoying,
but I suppose we shall live it down. Halliburn offered a reward of a
hundred pounds for the discovery of Truscott's, or as he calls him
Marvel's, address. That was a week ago, and he has received no answer as
yet, which is certainly a fresh proof that the fellow was the author of
the letters. If not, he himself would have turned up and claimed the
reward.'
'That is not quite certain, Mr. Hawtrey. He has doubtless been concerned
in many other shady transactions, and may think he is wanted for some
other affair altogether.'
'You are right, that may be so; I did not think of that. Still, it is
strange the offer of a reward has brought no news of him. He must be
well known to numbers of men who would sell their own father for a
hundred pounds.'
'If he is really alarmed he may have changed his name, and gone to some
part of the country where he is altogether unknown, or he may have
crossed the Channel to some of the French or Belgian ports. There is a
lot of betting carried on from that side, and he may manage to live
there as he has lived here--by fleecing fools.'
Two days later, Hampton met the Hawtreys at a dinner-party. Dorothy was
looking pale and languid, but at times she roused herself and talked
with almost feverish gaiety. Lord Halliburn was there; he was sitting
next to Dorothy, and seemed silent and preoccupied, and looked, Hampton
thought, vexed when she had one of her fits of talking. When they had
rejoined the ladies after dinner Hampton was chatting with the lady he
had taken down, and who was an old friend of his family.
'Is it not awfully sad, this affair of Miss Hawtrey's?' she said. 'It is
evidently preying on her health. I never saw anybody more changed in the
course of a few weeks. Of course, everyone who knows her is quite
certain that there is no foundation whatever for these wicked libels
about her. Still, naturally, people who don't know her think that there
must be something in it, and she must know, wherever she goes, that
people are talking about it. It is terrible! I do not know what I should
do were she a daughter of mine.'
'Yes, it is a most painful position; there does not seem any method by
which these anonymous libels can be met and answered. The most
scandalous part of the business is that any notice of a thing of this
sort should get into the papers. The form in which it was noticed
rendered it impossible to obtain redress of any kind; the statements
contained as to the annoyance caused by these letters, and as to the
nature of their contents, were accurate, and Mr. Hawtrey is therefore
unable to take any steps against them. I have known Miss Hawtrey from
the time that she was a little child; as you are aware they are my
greatest friends, and I assure you that one's powerlessness in these
days to take any step to right a wrong of this sort, makes me wish I had
lived at any time save in the middle of the nineteenth century. A
hundred years ago one would have called out the editor or proprietor, or
whatever he calls himself, of a paper that published this thing, and
shot him like a dog; four hundred years ago one would have sent him a
formal challenge to do battle in the lists; if one had lived in Italy a
couple of centuries back, and had adopted the customs of the country,
one would have had him removed by a stab in the back by a bravo--not a
manner that commends itself to me I own, but which, as against a man
whose journal exists by attacking reputations is, I should consider,
perfectly legitimate.'
'But he is not the chief offender in the case, Captain Hampton.'
'I don't know. The anonymous libeller could really have done no harm had
it not been that there were organs that were ready to inform the world
of his attacks upon this lady; the letters could have been burnt and
none been any the wiser, and in time the annoyance would have ceased.'
'Do you think the author of these things will ever be found out?'
'I should hardly think so. It is clearly the outcome of malice on the
part of some man or woman who has either a grudge against Mr. Hawtrey,
his daughter, or Lord Halliburn, or of some one interested in breaking
off Miss Hawtrey's engagement.'
'I don't think Lord Halliburn has behaved nicely in the matter,' Mrs.
Dean said. 'If he had shown himself perfectly indifferent to the affair
from the first, people would never have talked so much. It is his
palpable annoyance that has more than confirmed these gossiping
rumours.'
'Between ourselves, Mrs. Dean, although I should not at all mind his
knowing it, my opinion is, that Halliburn is a cad.'
Mrs. Dean laughed. 'It is next door to blasphemy to speak in society of
a peer as a cad, Captain Hampton; still, I am not at all sure that you
are wrong. But I must be going; my husband has been making signs to me
for the last ten minutes.'