CHAPTER XXXIX
MRS. HOLDFAST INSISTS UPON BECOMING AN ACTIVE PARTNER
THE following night – the night which Mr. Pelham had sworn should be the last of his search, and the last upon which he would continue his disguise as Richard Manx – this accomplished villain carried out his intention of coming home to his garret in Mrs. Preedy’s house much earlier than usual. In fact, it was not more than half-past eight as he turned one of the streets which branched into Great Porter Square. He was in good spirits, despite that the night was as wretched and gloomy as the most despondent mortal could maliciously – out of hatred for his species – have desired. All day long the rain had continued without intermission; the thoroughfares were in a deplorable condition of mud and slush, and those persons whose avocations did not compel them to be out in the streets, gladly availed themselves of the comforts of a fireside at home. These are not the occasions, especially in a city so crowded and selfish as London, when people are in the mood to be amiable and obliging, and it was therefore the more remarkable that Richard Manx, by no means a gracious being as a rule, should have walked to his lodgings in a glad and pleasant frame of mind. The fact was, good fortune had smiled upon him. He had had a long interview with Mrs. Holdfast, who on this very day had come into possession of a large sum of money, realised from certain of her late husband’s securities – shares in railway companies which had been delivered to her, as his sole heir and executrix. It was, indeed, no less a sum than twelve thousand pounds, and of this she had, in compliance with Mr. Pelham’s urgent demands, given him a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds, the exact sum, as he declared, necessary to clear himself from pressing debts and liabilities. This cheque he had forthwith converted into Bank of England notes, and they were safe in his pocket, with his other savings, with which he intended to make a large fortune at Monaco. Mrs. Holdfast had also consented to sell off her London house, and accompany him on a tour of pleasure. She, as well as he, was tired of the humdrum days; she sighed for excitement and adventure; the pleasure grounds of Europe were open to her, and now that she was a widow, and still young and beautiful, and now that the terrible anxieties of the past twelve months were at an end, she determined to enjoy her life as such a pretty woman should. There was another reason why she wished to get away from London, and indeed from England altogether, for a while. Since little Fanny had accosted her by the name of Grace, she did not feel herself safe. There was danger in the mere utterance of the name, and there was security in absence from spots in which other persons, more cunning than a simple child like Fanny, might by some chance recognise her. She thought it would be as well to take the child with her; Fanny was a bright, clever little creature, and might prove useful, and if she got tired of her, it would be easy to lose her on the Continent, or place her in a situation where her babbling, if she were inclined to babble, could do no harm.
Mr. Pelham had visited her at noon in a spirit the reverse of that in which he left her. She had been most amiable and vivacious, and fell in joyfully with his plans, when he had expected her to be obstinate and ill-tempered, and inclined to thwart him. Then, he had intended to ask her for a cheque for five hundred pounds, and improving the opportunity, had obtained fifteen hundred. No wonder that he sang a little song to himself as he turned into Great Porter Square. Had a beggar solicited charity from him he might have obtained a small piece of silver, but it is the misfortune of human affairs that fitting opposites are rarely brought into fortunate conjunction, and the beggar not being forthcoming, Richard Manx’s charitable spell had no opportunity of airing itself. He was within a few doors of his lodging-house when a woman, who had walked quickly after him, and was out of breath with the exertion, laid her hand on his arm, and wished him good evening.
CHAPTER XL
MRS. HOLDFAST INSISTS UPON BECOMING AN ACTIVE PARTNER – (CONTINUED)
RICHARD MANX, as a man of gallantry, was generally ready for any adventure with the fair sex which offered itself, but on the present occasion, despite his disposition to be amiable, he shrank within himself at being thus suddenly accosted. The intrusion of an unexpected voice – which at the moment he did not recognise – upon his thoughts awoke him to a sense of danger. He therefore walked on without replying, shaking the woman’s hand from his arm; but was almost immediately brought to a standstill by the sound of the woman’s steps hurrying after him.
She wore a cloak, with a hood to it, which was thrown over her head; in her haste the hood fell back, and her fair face, no longer hidden, shone out from masses of light hair, in the disorder of which was a certain picturesqueness which heightened the effect of her beauty. As her hood fell back, Richard Manx turned and recognised her.
It was Mrs. Holdfast, the widow of the murdered man.
He uttered an exclamation of alarm, and with a frightened look around, pulled the hood over her head to hide her face.
“You mad woman!” he exclaimed; “do you want to ruin us? What brings you here?” Then a sudden thought drove all the blood from his face. “Has anything happened?” he asked, in a whisper.
She laughed at his agitation. “Nothing has happened,” she replied, “except that I am worn out with sameness.”
“Then what in the devil’s name brings you here?” he asked again.
“For shame, Pelham,” she said, lightly, “to be so rude to a lady! What brings me here? I have told you. I am worn out with sameness. Sitting down with nothing to do, without excitement, in a house as dull and quiet as a doll’s cradle, doesn’t suit me. I was not cut out for that sort of life!”
“You could have waited a little,” he grumbled, somewhat reconciled to find that they were not being observed; “you were sure of another sort of life presently.”
“I’ll have it, thought I to myself, without waiting,” she said, recklessly, “and I feel better already. Running away from my doll’s cradle without preparation, with an idea in my head I am going to carry out, has put new life into me. My blood isn’t creeping through my veins; it is dancing, and I am alive once more. Really now I feel as if I should like to waltz with you round the Square!”
“Are you quite mad?” he cried, holding her still by force, but unable to refrain from admiration of her wild flow of spirits. “We have but a few hours to wait. Can’t you content yourself for a little while? What is this insane idea of yours which you are going to carry out!”
“To spend the evening with you, my dear,” she replied gaily.
“Where?”
“In Great Porter Square. Where else?”
While this conversation was proceeding, he had led her in an opposite direction from the house in which he lodged, and they were now on the other side of the Square.
“Now I am sure you are mad,” he said. “Do you know what I have to do to-night?”
“No,” she replied, “and I am curious to know.”
“I keep it to myself; but you will hear of it, and when you do you will laugh. Shall I leave behind me a danger hanging over my head – and yours? A secret that one day may be discovered, and bring ruin and death to me – and you? No, no; they make a mistake in the mettle of Dick Pelham if they think he is going to leave a trap-door open for himself to fall into.”
“I should fall also, Pelham!” she said half-questioningly.
“Why, yes; you would come down with me. It couldn’t be helped, I fear. I have a kind of dog-in-the-manger feeling for you. If I can’t have you myself, I’ll not leave you to another man.”
“It can’t be helped, I suppose,” she said, shrugging her shoulders; “but it doesn’t matter to me so long as I am enjoying myself.”
“Very well, then,” said he, in a decided tone; “go home now, and get your trinkets and dresses in order, for by to-day week we’ll be out of this dull hole. We’ll live where the sun shines for the future. Hurry now, and off with you. I have a serious night’s work before me.”
“I will help you in it,” she said, in a tone as decided as his own. “It isn’t a bit of use bullying, Pelham. I’ve made up my mind. I haven’t seen your room in No. 118, and I intend to see it. I have a right to, haven’t I? The wonder is I have kept away so long; and this is the last night I shall have the chance. I was curious before, but I’m a thousand times more curious now, and if you were to talk all night you wouldn’t put me off. You are going to do something bold – all the better; I’ll be there to see, and I dare say I can be of assistance to you. We are in partnership, and I insist upon being an active partner. How do I know but that you have been deceiving me all this while?”
“In what way?” he demanded fiercely.
“I will make sure,” she said, “that you haven’t a pretty girl hidden in that garret of yours, and that you don’t want to run away with her instead of me?”
“Jealous!” he cried, with a gratified laugh; “after telling me a dozen times lately that you hated the sight of me!”
“That’s a woman’s privilege. If you don’t understand us by this time, it is too late for you to begin to learn. Pelham, I am coming up with you.”
“You are determined?”
“As ever a woman was in this world. If you run from me now, and enter the house without me, I’ll follow you, and knock at the door, and inquire for Mr. Richard Manx; and if they ask me who I am, I’ll say I am Mrs. Richard Manx.”
“I believe you would,” he said, looking down into her face, and not knowing whether to feel angry or pleased.
“I would, as truly as I am a woman.”
“There’s no help for it, then,” he said; “but I don’t know how to get you into the house without being observed.”
“Nothing easier. All the time we’ve been talking I haven’t seen half-a-dozen people. Choose a moment when nobody’s about; open the door quickly, and I’ll slip in like an eel. Before you shut the door, I’ll be at the top of the house.”
“Let me warn you once more; there is danger.”
“All the better; there’s excitement in danger.”
“And if I don’t find what I’ve been hunting for these weeks past, I intend to carry out a desperate design, which if successful – and it must be; I’ll make it so – will place us in a position of perfect safety.”
“Bravo, Pelham; I never thought you had so much pluck. I will help you in everything you have to do. Now let us get into the house. I am drenched through. You can make a fire, I suppose.”
He cautioned and instructed her how to proceed, and they walked to No. 118, he leading, and she but a step or two behind. Seeing no person near, he opened the door with one turn of the key, and she glided rapidly past him, and was on the stairs, and really nearly at the top of the house, feeling her way along the balustrades, before he was up the first flight. Safely within the miserable room he had hired, he turned the key, and lighted a candle; then, pointing to wood and coals, he motioned her to make a fire. The stove was so small she could not help laughing at it, but he whispered to her savagely to stop her merriment, and not to utter a sound that could be heard outside the room. The fire lighted, she sat before it, and dried her clothes as well as she could, while he busied himself about the room. Then he sat down by her side, and explained his plans. As long as suspicion could be averted from them, and as long as they were sure that no document written by Mr. Holdfast between the date of his taking lodgings in No. 119 Great Porter Square, and the date of his death, could be produced against them – so long were they safe. Suspicion was averted from them, as they believed, and they had every reason to believe that the murder would take its place, nay, had already taken its place, upon the list of monstrous crimes, the mystery of which would never be brought to light. Their only danger, then, lay in the probable discovery of the supposed document for which Pelham, as Richard Manx, had so long been searching. From what had been made known by the press and the police of Mr. Holdfast’s movements after his taking up his residence in No. 119, and from what they themselves knew, it was almost impossible that such a document, if it had existence, could have been taken out of the house. Pelham had sought for it unsuccessfully. What then, remained to be done for safety? To set fire to the house in which it was hidden, to burn it to the ground, and thus blot out from existence all knowledge of their crime.
This was Pelham’s desperate plan, and this deed it was he intended to perpetrate to-night. For a few hours longer he would search the room in which Mr. Holdfast was murdered, and then, everything being prepared to prevent failure, he would fire the house, and in the confusion make his escape, and disappear for ever from the neighbourhood. Mrs. Holdfast’s unexpected appearance on the scene complicated matters – the chief difficulty being how to get her away, during the confusion produced by the fire, without being observed. But when, unwillingly, he had given an enforced consent to her wild whim of keeping in his company on this eventful night, he had thought of a way to overcome the difficulty. In her woman’s dress, and with her attractive face, he could scarcely hope that she would escape observation; but he had in his room a spare suit of his own clothes, in which she could disguise herself, and with her face and hands blackened, and her hair securely fastened and hidden beneath a soft felt wideawake hat which hung in his garret, he had no fear that she would be discovered.
She entered into his plans with eagerness, and the adventure in which she was engaged imparted a heightened colour to her face and a deeper brilliancy to her eyes. As she leant towards the fire, with the reflection of its ruddy glow in her features, an uninformed man, gazing at her only for a moment, would have carried away with him a picture of beauty and innocence so enduring that his thoughts would often have wandered to it.
“Here are your clothes,” said Pelham; “when we are ready I will mount to the roof, and wait till you are dressed. Then I will come and assist you up. I have two or three journeys to make to the next house before we re-commence the search. See what I have here.”
He unlocked the box in the corner which Becky had vainly tried to open, and took from it a tin can filled with pitch, two small cans of inflammable oil, and a packet of gunpowder.
“These will make the old place blaze,” he said, laughing. “It will be a good job done if all Great Porter Square is burnt down. The landlady of this house ought to pay me a per-centage upon her insurance. The fire will be the making of her.”
“When do we begin?” asked Grace.
“Sooner than usual,” he replied. “At about half-past ten. The night is so bad that the Square will be pretty well deserted; and there is no one in this house to disturb us.”
He did not neglect the precaution of going to the door occasionally and listening, but he saw and heard nothing to alarm him. Exactly at half-past ten he bade Grace dress as quickly as possible in the suit of his clothes, and to disguise herself to the best of her ability. Her own woman’s dress she was to tie up in a bundle and bring with her into the next house. He mounted to the roof, and she handed him the cans and the packet which were to ensure the destruction of No. 119. Then she proceeded to disguise herself.
It was a task exactly to her taste. She took the greatest pleasure in making herself look as much as possible like a young man, and as she gazed at herself in the broken bit of looking-glass fastened to the wall, she said aloud,
“Upon my word, Gracie, you make a very pretty boy!”
She wore a great many trinkets, which she wrapped in paper, and put into her pockets, but the novelty of her disguise, and the inconvenient space in which she effected it, caused her to drop two of these, a ring and an earring, and although she searched the floor carefully, she could not find them. Her hair she twisted into a tight knot at the top of her head, and the wideawake completely covered it. Richard Manx made his appearance at the trap-door above, and asked if she was ready. She answered that she was, and he assisted her up, lifting her, indeed, almost bodily from the chairs upon which she stood.
“What a little lump of weakness you are!” he exclaimed. “You can’t weigh above a hundred pounds.”
Carefully he led her over the roof, and down the trap-door, into the next house. Standing in the dark with him in the garret of this tenement, he felt that she trembled.
“If you are going to show the white feather,” he whispered, “you had better turn back. There is time even now.”
Little did she imagine how much hung upon the opportunity offered her. She refused it, saying that she had experienced a slight chill, and that she would go on; so he led her, white-faced now and shaking in every limb, down the stairs to the room in which her husband had been murdered.
Its appearance, while it bewildered, afforded her relief. Had it been in order, as she had seen it when her husband had occupied it, she could not have controlled her agitation; but it was so torn up, the work of destruction had been so wanton, that she could scarcely recognise it as the same room.
“Have you any brandy, Pelham?” she asked, careful, as he had directed her, not to raise her voice.
He had a bottle with him, and he gave her some in a glass, upon which her courage returned, and she shook her head defiantly, as much as to say, “Who cares?”
“I haven’t been idle, you see,” said Pelham, pointing around. “Amuse yourself while I do what is necessary.”
What was “necessary” was the villainous work of scattering the gunpowder about, disposing of the pitch, and pouring the oil upon the walls and flooring of the passage. At the conclusion of this part of his scheme there was still a great deal of inflammable material left, and these he placed aside, the pitch and the oil in the tins, and the gunpowder, loose, in its paper packet, in the room in which he was at work.
“Are you sure there is no one but ourselves in the house?” asked Grace.
“Listen for yourself,” replied Pelham. “If you like you can go downstairs and look. I’ll ensure you against anything but ghosts and fire.”
She shuddered, and, to divert her thoughts, endeavoured to take a practical interest in the search for the hidden document. It was difficult, in the state of the room, to move about, and she soon grew wearied. She threw herself upon the bed, and longed impatiently for the time when the crowning touch would be given to the wicked work in which she had insisted upon becoming an active partner.
CHAPTER XLI
FREDERICK HOLDFAST MAKES THE DISCOVERY
FREDERICK HOLDFAST slept until late in the morning. Awaking, he looked at his watch, which marked the hour of eleven. He did not begrudge the time spent in sleep. It had refreshed and strengthened him, and he knew it would not be prudent on his part to work during the day in any room in which he would run the risk of being observed by the neighbours. He had not been disturbed; when he awoke his revolver was in his hand, and perfect stillness reigned throughout the house.
In his state of mind inaction was a torture to him, and he could not content himself with sitting idly down. Imprisoned as it were, while daylight lasted, to the basement, into the rooms in which passers-by in the Square above could not peer, he resolved to examine carefully every inch of the floor and walls in the kitchen and passage. The shutters of the area-windows were closed, and darkness prevailed. His lantern, therefore, served him in as good stead by day as it had done by night; he trimmed the lamp carefully, and prepared for what he had no hope would be anything but a fruitless task. He only undertook it, indeed, for the purpose of occupying the time during which he was shut out from the upper part of the house, to the windows in which there were no shutters. It comforted him to think that his dear girl was within a short distance of him; a few inches of wall separated them, and they were thinking of each other, praying for each other.
He commenced in the passage, tracking the marks of his father’s dying steps upon the floor, and of his hands upon the walls. Inclined as he was to the closest examination, his attention was arrested by a slight scratch upon the wall, which he found repeated, both above and below, wherever his father had rested his hand for support in his descent to the kitchen. The scratch was very slight, and was not to be found upon any part of the wall which the dying man had not touched with his hand. The fading stains within which these scratches were observable appeared to have been made by a clenched hand; the marks of the knuckles could be traced. The inference Frederick Holdfast drew from these signs was that his father had a distinct motive in keeping his hand closed, and that the hand held something he wanted to deposit in safe keeping before life left his poor wounded body. It was for this reason, then, Frederick argued, following out the train of thought, as much as for any other, that the mortally-wounded man had, in his death-agony, made his way to the kitchen, where he believed the servant was asleep. In her hands he would place the treasure his clenched hand guarded, and, that supreme effort accomplished, he would then be content to die, comforted by the thought that he left behind him a clue by which the innocent might be saved and the guilty punished. What was this treasure which had been so carefully guarded by a man who had but a few moments to live? He had been unable to place it in the safe possession of a friend to justice. Had it been found by one whose interest it was to conceal it, or had it escaped all eyes, to be discovered by the son he had unwittingly wronged? This last surmise was scarcely needed by Frederick to prompt him to search in every unlikely nook and cranny in the passage and stairs; but when he raised the light to the kitchen door, and saw there the fatal hand-mark, and with it the almost imperceptible scratch repeated, he knew that he had wasted his time, and that whatever it was his father had held in his hand he had carried into the kitchen with him. To this room, therefore, he confined his search, and after being occupied in it for hours – until, indeed, he heard the church clock strike five – was about to give it up in despair, when his eyes fell upon what looked like a small piece of metal, firmly imbedded in a crevice of the floor. It had evidently been trodden into the crevice by heavy boots, and it was with difficulty Frederick dug it out. It proved to be a key, small enough for a drawer in a desk.
Frederick immediately went into the passage to ascertain whether he was right in his idea that the scratches had been produced by this key, and holding it between his knuckles, as his father might have done, and placing his hand upon the wall, he was satisfied of its probability. It was not strange that an object so small had escaped the notice of the police or the people in the house. As the dying man fell to the ground, the key may have been struck out of his hand by the shock, and being at some distance from the body, had been trodden down into the crevice by the policeman’s feet. After that, nothing but such a minute examination as Frederick had carried out could have brought it to light.
Quick as his eager thought would allow him, Frederick followed his train of argument in logical sequence. It was this key which his father wished to place in the servant’s hands before he died; it was this key which was to unravel the mystery of his life and death in No. 119 Great Porter Square. The drawer of the desk which the key would unlock contained the record which would make all things clear. It had been in the house; the furniture had not been removed; it was still in the house. But not in the room occupied by his father. If it were there, Pelham would have been certain to have found it. In that room every lock had been forced, every scrap of paper examined. No! – The document had been placed in another room for safety. The murdered man, acquainted with the character of the persons who had brought disgrace upon him, had taken the precaution to secure his written thoughts and wishes from their prying eyes. Mr. Pelham was working on a wrong scent; his labour had been thrown away. Frederick knew, from the inquiries of the detective in his employ, that the adjoining room to that his father had occupied – the room from which he had, on the previous night, watched the proceedings of his father’s murderer (for upon that point now Frederick was morally convinced) – had, during the last four days of his father’s tenancy, been vacant. What more likely than that this very room contained a drawer which the key would fit?
He trembled with eagerness, feeling that he was on the brink of discovery, and the shock of these mental revelations, which a few minutes would see verified, was so great that a faintness stole over his senses. Then he remembered that he had partaken of but little food during the day. He knew not what was before him in the night to come; he needed all his strength.
He sat down resolutely, curbing his impatience, and ate and drank his fill. When he had finished his meal, he felt that he had acted well and with prudence. He was ready now for any emergency, equal to any effort.
It was by this time dark, and he could move into the upper part of the house with comparative safety. All day long the rain had been plashing into the area with a dismal sound; the dreariness of the weather and the dreariness of the house would have daunted any man who had not a serious purpose to sustain him. Frederick had held no further communication with the detective; during the day it was impracticable. But it had been arranged between them that when night came, the detective, if he had anything of importance to communicate, should drop a letter into the area, of course at such time and in such a way as should afford no chance of detection. Before going upstairs with his precious key, Frederick cautiously opened the door which led into the area, and saw that a small packet of brown paper had been dropped during the day. He picked it up and opened it; there was a stone inside, and round the stone a sheet of note paper, on which was written, in the detective’s handwriting:
“Mrs. H. has received to-day a large sum of money. Her friend, Mr. P., was with her for nearly two hours. Upon leaving her house he drove to the City and cashed a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds. He was in high spirits. There is something in the wind; it looks as if they are making preparations to flit. Mrs. H. is getting together as much ready money as she can lay her hands on. I have no doubt she and Mr. P. have arranged to-day to go away together. Nothing further to say on that head. Your young lady friend in No. 118, Becky, is quite safe, but she looks anxious. On your account, I guess. Her little friend, Fanny, is a brick. We shall be on the watch all night in the Square. If you are in want of help, use your whistle.”
Not being in want of help at present, Frederick destroyed the letter, and went upstairs to the first floor. Opening the door of the room his father had occupied, he saw that no person had entered it during the day; everything was as Pelham had left it early in the morning. Frederick, by the light of his lantern, looked around for drawer or desk. A chest of drawers was there, unlocked and empty; a desk also, which had been broken open, and which the key he had found would not fit. As he left the room he saw, lying in a corner of the wall, a large key. It was the key of his father’s room. He put it in the lock, and it turned easily.
“Pelham would be astonished to-night,” he thought, “if, when he came, he found the door locked against him. But that would be putting him on his guard. I will open the trap for him instead of closing it. Murderer! Your hour is approaching!”
He unlocked the door, and put the key in his pocket, with no distinct intention, but with an idea that it might in some way prove useful. When in his thought the unspoken words came to his mind, “I will open the trap for him instead of closing it,” he had not the dimmest comprehension of their awful significance, or of the fearful manner in which they were to be verified.
He entered the adjoining room in which he had kept his long and painful watch on the previous night. In the room was a sideboard, and to this he first directed his attention. The key he had found in the kitchen was too small for either of the sideboards, and as they were locked, he forced them open. There was nothing inside but some mouldy biscuits and a couple of old-fashioned decanters, with dregs of wine in them. He felt about for secret drawers, but found none. A cupboard next attracted his attention, and he searched it carefully. It contained plates and wine glasses, a shell box and a shell caddy, with views of Margate on them. Both were open, and he discovered nothing on the shelves which was likely to bring his search to a successful issue. Before proceeding further he thought – in case Pelham should take it into his head to commence his work early on this which he declared should be his last night in No. 119 – it would be well to replace the table which had fallen over when he stepped from it. He raised it carefully and replaced it on its carved feet. It was a round table of Spanish mahogany, and was a contrast to the other furniture in the room, being old-fashioned and of ancient make. As he raised it, one of the lower surfaces upon which he placed his hand shifted slightly, and the thought flashed through his mind that there might be a drawer beneath. He stooped and looked upward, and saw that his impression was a correct one. A drawer was there, evidently intended as a secret drawer; it was locked. With trembling hands he tried the key. It fitted the lock, turned, and the drawer was open – and there, beneath his eyes, were some sheets of folio paper, upon which he recognised his dead father’s handwriting.