Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

“You are very punctual, Mr. Dunbar,” he said.

  “Yes, I am generally punctual.”

  The two men shook hands, and Mr. Balderby wheeled forward a morocco-covered arm-chair for his senior partner, and then took his seat opposite to him, with only the small office table between them.

  “It may seem late in the day to bid you welcome to the bank, Mr. Dunbar,” said the junior partner, “but I do so, nevertheless — most heartily!”

  There was a flatness in the accent in which these two last words were spoken, which was like the sound of a false coin when it falls dead upon a counter and proclaims itself spurious.

  Henry Dunbar did not return his partner’s greeting. He was looking round the room, and remembering the day upon which he had last seen it. There was very little alteration in the appearance of the dismal city chamber. There was the same wire-blind before the window, the same solitary tree, leafless, in the narrow courtyard without. The morocco-covered arm-chairs had been re-covered, perhaps, during that five-and-thirty years; but if so, the covering had grown shabby again. Even the Turkey carpet was in the very stage of dusky dinginess that had distinguished the carpet on which Henry Dunbar had stood five-and-thirty years before.

  “I received your letter announcing your journey to London, and your desire for a private interview, on Saturday afternoon,” Mr. Balderby said, after a pause. “I have made arrangements to assure our being undisturbed so long as you may remain here. If you wish to make any investigation of the affairs of the house, I — —”

  Mr. Dunbar waved his hand with a deprecatory air.

  “Nothing is farther from my thoughts than any such design,” he said. “No, Mr. Balderby, I have only been a man of business because all chance of another career, which I infinitely preferred, was closed upon me five-and-thirty years ago. I am quite content to be a sleeping-partner in the house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby. For ten years prior to my father’s death he took no active part in the business. The house got on very well without his aid; it will get on equally well without mine. The business that brings me to London is an entirely personal matter. I am a rich man, but I don’t exactly know how rich I am, and I want to realize rather a large sum of money.”

  Mr. Balderby bowed, but his eyebrows went up a little, as if he found it impossible to control some slight evidence of his surprise.

  “Previous to my daughter’s marriage I settled upon her the house in Portland Place and the Yorkshire property. She will have all my money when I die; and, as Sir Philip Jocelyn is a rich man, she will perhaps be one of the wealthiest women in England. So far so good. Neither Laura nor her husband will have any reason for dissatisfaction. But this is not quite enough, Mr. Balderby. I am not a demonstrative man, and I have never made any great fuss about my love for my daughter; but I do love her, nevertheless.”

  Mr. Dunbar spoke very slowly here, and stopped once or twice to pass his handkerchief across his forehead, as he had done in the hotel at Winchester.

  “We Anglo-Indians have rather a magnificent way of doing things, Mr. Balderby” he continued, “when we take it into our heads to do them at all. I want to give my daughter a diamond-necklace as a wedding present, and I want it to be such as an Eastern prince or a Rothschild might offer to his only child. You understand?”

  “Oh, perfectly,” answered Mr. Balderby; “I shall be most happy to be of any use to you in the matter.”

  “All I want is a large sum of money at my command. I may go rather recklessly to work and make a large investment in this necklace; it will be something for Lady Jocelyn to bequeath to her children. You and John Lovell, of Shorncliffe, were the executors to my father’s will. You signed an order for the transfer of my father’s money to my account some time in last September.”

  “I did, in concurrence with Mr. Lovell.”

  “Precisely; Lovell wrote me a letter to that effect. My father kept two accounts here, I believe — a deposit and a drawing account?”

  “He did.”

  “And those two accounts have gone on since my return in the same manner as during his lifetime?”

  “Precisely. The income which Mr. Percival Dunbar set aside for his own use was seven thousand a year. He rarely, spent as much as that; sometimes he spent less than half. The balance of this income, and his double share in the profits of the business, went to the credit of his deposit account, and various sums have been withdrawn from time to time, and duly invested under his order.”

  “Perhaps you can let me see the ledgers containing those two accounts?”

  “Most certainly.”

  Mr. Balderby touched the spring of a handbell upon his table.

  “Ask Mr. Austin to bring the daily balance and deposit accounts ledgers,” he said to the person who answered his summons.

  Clement Austin appeared five minutes afterwards, carrying two ponderous morocco-bound volumes.

  Mr. Balderby opened both ledgers, and placed them before his senior partner. Henry Dunbar looked at the deposit account. His eyes ran eagerly down the long row of figures before him until they came to the sum total. Then his chest heaved, and he drew a long breath, like a man who feels almost stifled by some internal oppression.

  The last figures in the page were these:

  137,926l. 17s. 2d.

  One hundred and thirty-seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-six pounds seventeen shillings and twopence. The twopence seemed a ridiculous anti-climax; but business-men are necessarily as exact in figures as calculating-machines.

  “How is this money invested?” asked Henry Dunbar, pointing to the page. His fingers trembled a little as he did so, and he dropped his hand suddenly upon the ledger.

  “There’s fifty thousand in India stock,” Mr. Balderby answered, as indifferently as if fifty thousand pounds more or less was scarcely worth speaking of; “and there’s five-and-twenty in railway debentures, Great Western. Most of the remainder is floating in Exchequer bills.”

  “Then you can realize the Exchequer bills?”

  Mr. Balderby winced as if some one had trodden upon one of his corns. He was a banker heart and soul, and he did not at all relish the idea of any withdrawal of the bank’s resources, however firm that establishment might stand.

  “It’s rather a large amount of capital to withdraw from the business,” he said, rubbing his chin, thoughtfully.

  “I suppose the bank can afford it!” Mr. Dunbar exclaimed, with a tone of surprise.

  “Oh, yes; the bank can afford it well enough. Our calls are sometimes heavy. Lord Yarsfield — a very old customer — talks of buying an estate in Wales; he may come down upon us at any moment for a very stiff sum of money. However, the capital is yours, Mr. Dunbar; and you’ve a right to dispose of it as you please. The Exchequer bills shall be realized immediately.”

  “Good; and if you can dispose of the railway bonds to advantage, you may do so.”

  “You think of spending — —”

  “I think of reinvesting the money. I have an offer of an estate north of the metropolis, which I think will realize cent per cent a few years hence: but that is an after consideration. At present we have only to do with the diamond-necklace for my daughter. I shall buy the diamonds myself, direct from the merchant-importers. You will hold yourself ready after Wednesday, we’ll say, to cash some very heavy cheques on my account?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Dunbar.”

  “Then I think that is really all I have to say. I shall be happy to see you at the Clarendon, if you will dine with me any evening that you are disengaged.”

  There was very little heartiness in the tone of this invitation; and Mr. Balderby perfectly understood that it was only a formula which Mr. Dunbar felt himself called upon to go through. The junior partner murmured his acknowledgment of Henry Dunbar’s politeness; and then the two men talked together for a few minutes on indifferent subjects.

  Five minutes afterwards Mr. Dunbar rose to leave the room. He went into the passage between Mr. Balderby’s parlour and the public o
ffices of the bank. This passage was very dark; but the offices were well lighted by lofty plate-glass windows. Between the end of the passage and the outer doors of the bank, Henry Dunbar saw the figure of a woman sitting near one of the desks and talking to Clement Austin.

  The banker stopped suddenly, and went back to the parlour.

  He looked about him a little absently as he re-entered the room.

  “I thought I brought a cane,” he said.

  “I think not,” replied Mr. Balderby, rising from before his desk. “I don’t remember seeing one in your hand.”

  “Ah, then, I suppose I was mistaken.”

  He still lingered in the parlour, putting on his gloves very slowly, and looking out of the window into the dismal backyard, where there was a dingy little wooden door set deep in the stone wall.

  While the banker loitered near the window, Clement Austin came into the room, to show some document to the junior partner. Henry Dunbar turned round as the cashier was about to leave the parlour.

  “I saw a woman just now talking to you in the office. That’s not very business-like, is it, Mr. Austin? Who is the woman?”

  “She is a young lady, sir.”

  “A young lady?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What brings her here?”

  The cashier hesitated for a moment before he replied, “She — wishes to see you, Mr. Dunbar,” he said, after that brief pause.

  “What is her name? — who — who is she?”

  “Her name is Wilmot — Margaret Wilmot.”

  “I know no such person!” answered the banker, haughtily, but looking nervously at the half-opened door as he spoke.

  “Shut that door, sir!” he said, impatiently, to the cashier; “the draught from the passage is strong enough to cut a man in two. Who is this Margaret Wilmot?”

  “The daughter of that unfortunate man, Joseph Wilmot, who was cruelly murdered at Winchester!” answered the cashier, very gravely.

  He looked Henry Dunbar full in the face as he spoke.

  The banker returned his look as unflinchingly as he had done before, and spoke in a hard, unfaltering voice as he answered: “Tell this person, Margaret Wilmot, that I refuse to see her to-day, as I refused to see her in Portland Place, and as I refused to see her at Winchester!” he said, deliberately. “Tell her that I shall always refuse to see her, whenever or wherever she makes an attack upon me. I have suffered enough already on account of that hideous business at Winchester, and I shall most resolutely defend myself from any further persecution. This young person can have no possible motive for wishing to see me. If she is poor and wants money of me, I am ready and willing to assist her. I have already offered to do so — I can do no more. But if she is in distress — —”

  “She is not in distress, Mr. Dunbar,” interrupted Clement Austin. “She has friends who love her well enough to shield her from that.”

  “Indeed; and you are one of those friends, I suppose, Mr. Austin?”

  “I am.”

  “Prove your friendship, then, by teaching Margaret Wilmot that she has a friend and not an enemy in me. If you are — as I suspect from your manner — something more than a friend: if you love her, and she returns your love, marry her, and she shall have a dowry that no gentleman’s wife need be ashamed to bring to her husband.”

  There was no anger, no impatience in the banker’s voice now, but a tone of deep feeling. Clement Austin locked at him, astonished by the change in his manner.

  Henry Dunbar saw the look, and it seemed as if he endeavoured to answer it.

  “You have no need to be surprised that I shrink from seeing Margaret Wilmot,” he said. “Cannot you understand that my nerves may be none of the strongest, and that I cannot endure the idea of an interview with this girl, who, no doubt, by her persistent pursuit of me, suspects me of her father’s murder? I am an old man, and I have been thirty-five years in India. My health is shattered, and I have a horror of all tragic scenes. I have not yet recovered from the shock of that horrible business at Winchester. Go and tell Margaret Wilmot this: tell her that I will be her true friend if she will accept that friendship, but that I will not see her until she has learned to think better of me.”

  There was something very straightforward, very simple, in all this. For a time, at least, Clement Austin’s mind wavered. Margaret was, perhaps, wrong, after all, and Henry Dunbar might be an innocent man.

  It was Clement who had informed Margaret of Mr. Dunbar’s expected presence here upon this day; and it was on the strength of that information that the girl had come to St. Gundolph Lane, with the determination of seeing the man whom she believed to be the murderer of her father.

  Clement returned to the office, where he had left Margaret, in order to repeat to her Mr. Dunbar’s message.

  No sooner had the door of the parlour closed upon the cashier than Henry Dunbar turned abruptly to his junior partner.

  “There is a door leading from the yard into a court that connects St. Gundolph Lane with another lane at the back,” he said, “is there not?”

  He pointed to the dark little yard outside the window as he spoke.

  “Yes, there is a door, I believe.”

  “Is it locked?”

  “No; it is seldom locked till four o’clock; the clerks use it sometimes, when they go in and out.”

  “Then I shall go out that way,” said Mr. Dunbar, who was almost breathless in his haste. “You can send the carriage back to the Clarendon by-and-by. I don’t want to see that girl. Good morning.”

  He hurried out of the parlour, and into a passage leading to the yard, followed by Mr. Balderby, who wondered at his senior partner’s excitement. The door in the yard was not locked. Henry Dunbar opened it, went out into the court, and closed the door behind him.

  So, for the third time, he escaped from an interview with Margaret Wilmot.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CLEMENT AUSTIN’S WOOING.

  For the third time Margaret Wilmot was disappointed in the hope of seeing Henry Dunbar. Clement Austin had on the previous evening told her of the banker’s intended visit to the office in St. Gundolph Lane, and the young music-mistress had made hasty arrangements for the postponement of her usual duties, in order that she might go to the City to see Henry Dunbar.

  “He will not dare to refuse you,” Clement Austin said; “for he must know that such a refusal would excite suspicion in the minds of the people about him.”

  “He must have known that at Winchester, and yet he avoided me there,” answered Margaret Wilmot; “he must have known it when he refused to see me in Portland Place. He will refuse to see me to-day, if I ask for an interview with him. My only chance will be the chance of an accidental meeting with Him. Do you think that you can arrange this for me, Mr. Austin?”

  Clement Austin readily promised to bring about an apparently accidental meeting between Margaret and Mr. Dunbar, and this is how it was that Joseph Wilmot’s daughter had waited in the office in St. Gundolph Lane. She had arrived only five minutes after Mr. Dunbar entered the banking-house, and she waited very patiently, very resolutely, in the hope that when Henry Dunbar returned to his carriage she might snatch the opportunity of speaking to him, of seeing his face, and discovering whether he was guilty or not.

  She clung to the idea that some indefinable expression of his countenance would reveal the fact of his guilt or innocence. But she could not dispossess herself of the belief that he was guilty. What other reason could there be for his persistent avoidance of her?

  But, for the third time, she was baffled; and she went home very despondently, haunted by the image of her dead father; while Henry Dunbar went back to the Clarendon in a common hack cab, which he picked up in Cornhill.

  Margaret Wilmot found one of her pupils waiting in the pretty little parlour in the cottage at Clapham, and she was obliged to sit down to the piano and listen to a fantasia, very badly played, keeping sharp watch upon the pupil’s fingers, for an hour or so, before s
he was free to think her own thoughts.

  Margaret was very glad when the lesson was over. The pupil was a very vivacious young lady, who called her music-mistress “dear,” and would have been glad to waste half an hour or so in an animated conversation about the last new style in bonnets, or the shape of the fashionable winter mantle, or the popular novel of the month. But Margaret’s pale face seemed a mute appeal for compassion; so Miss Lamberton drew on her gloves, settled her bonnet before the glass over the mantel-piece, and tripped away.

  Margaret sat by the little round table, with an open book before her. But she could not read, though the volume was one that had been lent her by Clement, and though she took a peculiar pleasure in reading any book that was a favourite of his. She did not read; she only sat with her eyes fixed, and her face very pale, in the dim light of two candles that flickered in the draught from the window.

  She was aroused from her despondent reverie by a double knock at the door below, and presently the neat little maid-servant ushered Mr. Austin into the room.

  Margaret started up, a little confused at the advent of this unexpected visitor. It was the first time that Clement had ever called upon her alone. He had often been her guest; but, until to-night, he had always come under his mother’s wing to see the pretty music-mistress.

  “I am afraid I startled you, Miss Wilmot,” he said.

  “Oh, no; not at all,” answered Margaret; “I was sitting here, quite idle, thinking — —”

  “Thinking of your failure of to-day, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause, during which Margaret seated herself once more by the little table, while Clement Austin walked up and down the room thinking.

  Presently he stopped suddenly, with his elbow leaning upon the corner of the mantel-piece, opposite Margaret, and looked down at the girl’s thoughtful face. She had blushed when the cashier first entered the room; but she was very pale now.

  “Margaret,” said Clement Austin, — it was the first time he had called his mother’s protégée by her Christian name, and the girl looked up at him with a surprised expression,—”Margaret, that which happened to-day makes me think that your conviction is only the horrible truth, and that Henry Dunbar, the sole surviving kinsman of those two men whom I learnt to honour and revere long ago, when I was a mere boy, is indeed guilty of your father’s death. If so, the cause of justice demands that this man’s crime should be brought to light. I am something of Shakspeare’s opinion; I cannot but believe that ‘murder will out,’ somehow or other, sooner or later. But I think that, in this business, the police have been culpably supine. It seems as if they feared to handle the case to closely, lest the clue they followed should lead them to Henry Dunbar.”