‘I am a relation.’
‘Exactly. Well, I’m sorry he’s gone, for I’ve got particular business with him. However, I daresay Mrs. Valaority will do.’
‘Mrs. Valaority went with her husband.’
‘What, at such short notice? That’s odd.’
‘I didn’t say they went at short notice.’
‘Oh, but they must have done so, you know, since Valaority had asked my friend to sup with him after the play.’
John Groman, who was closely watchful of the hag’s face, saw that her countenance changed at each mention of the friend invited to supper.
‘Do they often go abroad?’ asked Wormald.
‘As often as the fancy takes them.’
‘A very pleasant life. But Mr. Valaority has some trade or calling, I suppose.’
‘He cleans pictures.’
‘And occasionally manufactures old masters, no doubt. Now, if you’ve no objection, I should like to take a look round your house.’
‘I have a very strong objection,’ said the woman;’I couldn’t think of letting you into the house in Mr. Valaority’s absence.’
‘I’m sorry to be intrusive, but I’m a police constable, and I came prepared with a search warrant,’ said Mr. Wormald quietly.’ So the best thing you can do, old lady, is to take me and my friend round. The gentleman who was expected to supper last night is missing, and we want to make sure he isn’t playing hide and seek with us here.’
The man’s semi-jocose tone chilled John Groman. There was an atmosphere in the house that filled his soul with despair.
The woman scrutinized the warrant, and looked at the two men, as if weighing the possibility of effectual resistance.
‘Well, if you want to search the house, you’d better do it,’ she said at last;’but Mr. Valaority will have the law of you when he comes back, depend upon it.’
‘Come, take your candle, old lady, and lead the way,’ said the constable coolly.
She opened the door of a parlour at the back of the house, a good-sized room with a wide window down to the ground, opening on a wooden balcony that overhung the dingy tide. The stars were shining through the uncurtained window as the men went into the room.
Wormald’s eye took in everything; a table spread with the remains of a convivial meal, a large dish of oyster shells, a couple of empty champagne bottles, cigar ends flung here and there among fragments of bread, a pair of candles burned down to the sockets of the tarnished metal candlesticks, an all-pervading look of dissipation.
‘You see there was a supper last night,’ he said, with a peculiar look at the woman, ‘and Mr. Valaority sat very late for a man on the eve of a long journey.
Then he walked to the window, opened it, and stepped out upon the balcony, followed closely by John Groman.
The tide was out. and below them lay the slimy river mud, with the stars dimly reflected on its dark surface. The lights of the opposite shore were shining through the evening mist, but on this side all was dark. Impenetrable warehouses projected their dark bulwarks on the river. There was no token of human habitation near.
‘Do you think he was murdered here?’ whispered John Groman, grasping the constable’s arm.
‘I don’t like the look of the place,’ Mr. Wormald answered gravely. ‘And I don’t like the look of that woman.’
This inspection of the balcony did not occupy five minutes. The woman was standing waiting for them inside the room, candle in hand. They never lost sight of her.
She showed them another room on the ground floor, where Valaority pursued his calling. There was a deal table strewed with brushes and pots, and bottles of varnish, and lour. A couple of Windsor chairs and a pile of unframed canvases in a corner completed the contents of the room.
Mr. Wormald sounded the walls for hidden cupboards, opened one obvious cupboard, and with those sharp eyes of his scrutinized every inch of the room a had done in the parlour where the fragments of the feast had been left. Then he followed the woman upstairs. There were a couple of bedrooms, dirty and wretchedly furnished, on the first floor, and above that there was only emptiness. The people of the house were in the habit of letting these upper rooms unfurnished, the woman told Mr. Wormald, and had been sometime without a lodger.
‘I should like to see the people of the house,’ said Wormald. ‘ Are they in?’
The woman thought not, but after they had explored the upper part of the house the constable insisted upon descending to the basement, John Groman following at his heels.
There, in a miserable den, where the atmosphere was thick with the reek of strong tobacco and faintly odorous of gin, they found the landlady. She was cooking her supper at a scanty fire, while her husband slept on a press bed close by, half smothered under a dingy blanket and a tattered patchwork counterpane, and groaning heavily in his sleep every now and then.
The constable looked round the room. It offered little to his scrutiny: bare whitewashed walls, a few shelves garnished with a heterogeneous collection of crockery and hardware, a Dutch clock, and a heap of odd boots and shoes on a bench in a corner. The room, which appeared to be on a level with the bed of the river, was eminently suggestive of rats. Beyond it there was an cosy scullery, like a grotto, floor and walls alike covered with a slimy moisture. The constable penetrated this inner vault, candle in hand, saw nothing but cockroaches, and returned to the more congenial atmosphere of the kitchen.
‘Is that your husband?’
‘Yes, surr, glory be to God!’
‘What’s his trade?’
‘Ah, thin shure, it isn’t a thrade at all at all. Minding ould shoes is almost as bad as a purfession. Yer may as aisily starve at it!’
‘Is he ill?’
‘The rheumatiz in every blessed bone of um!’
‘How long have the Valaoritys been lodging with you?’
‘Ah, thin sure it’s as near tree months as it can be without bein’ the quarther.’
‘Do you find them decent people?’
‘As honest as the daylight.’
‘When did Mr. and Mrs. Valaority leave?’
‘Last night.’
‘At what time?’
‘Ah, sure thin, your honor, me husband and me was abed early. We didn’t take notice.’
‘And you heard no disturbance on the floor above last night?’
‘Was it disturbance? There’s not quieter sowls breathin’ the breath of heaven than Mr. and Mrs, Valority. Shure it’s mild as an angel she is. A sweeter cratur never walked the Lord’s earth.’
After this the constable gave a last searching glance round the kitchen and then departed, escorted to the threshold by Valaority’s kinswoman.
“Don’t you think it likely that — if any wrong has been done — that Irishwoman and her husband are in it?’ asked Groman, when they were in the street.
‘I’m sure of it,’ answered Wormald.
‘And you begin to think there has been foul play?’ said Groman tremulously.
‘I won’t go so far as that; but I think your brother was in that house last night after he left you. There had been a supper — a couple of bottles of champagne: that means business. Yes, your brother has been there, and those people have got the diamonds. The rest remains for us to unravel. Should you be afraid to go to Paris with me?’
‘I would go anywhere with you in the hope of finding my brother. But why Paris?’
‘Because that city is a magnet which draws men and women of the Valaority stamp, when they have plunder to dispose of. or money to spend. Paris and New York are the two grand centres of crime. The criminal who would escape the felon’s dock goes to New York; the happy go lucky thief, who only wants to enjoy himself, goes to Paris. Now, it seems to me that one of two things must have happened. Either your brother has gone off with. Mrs. Valaority, after giving her husband a share of his property, and sending him to keep out of the way —
‘Impossible!’
‘Then comes the darker fear. The V
alaoritys have made away with you brother. Now it seems to me that in this case — God grant it may not be so! — but, at the worst. it seems to me that if you can get hold of Mrs. Valaority, who, from your account, must be a weak piece of humanity, you may wring the truth from her.’
‘Yes,’ said John Groman, resolutely. ‘I believe that if Clara were involved in any crime against my brother, and I had her face to face with me, I could make her tell me all. She loved him passionately. That I know. Whatever good or noble feeling she was capably of was given to him. And if she could stand by and see him murdered — if she could fall to such a depth of iniquity — I think at the sound of my voice and the sight of my face, and the memory of years that are gone, she would cast herself in the dust at my feet and confess her crime.’
We’ll try it on, at any rate,’ said the constable;’when there’s a woman in the case I never despair of finding out all I want to know.’
CHAPTER V. HIS OLD LOVE.
Two days later John Groman and his companion were in Paris, where the constable found an old friend in the French police, a man who had left Bow Street to graduate under Vidocq. This gentleman was familiar with every mesh in the web of Parisian life, and was able, in less than three hours, to favour his friend Wormald with the following information: —
The Valaoritys had been seen by the Parisian police. Valaority was an old hand, and well known to the railles. He had been trying to dispose of diamonds at a shop in the Palais Royal, bat the shopman had refused to deal with him. It was not known at present where he was lodging, but Mr. Wormald’s friend gave him a list of about twenty probable places, lodging-houses, at which a man of Valaority’s type would be likely to seek accommodation.
‘It is a kind of blackbird that sings always in the same key,’ he said;’ one knows where to find this species
Two hours’ hunt in Paris resulted more successfully than an afternoon’s hunt in London. Before dark on the evening of their arrival in the dazzling city, the clown and the constable had stalked their game. They had found a tall, grimy-looking house near the Luxembourg, where Mr. and Mrs. Valaority were living. The porter told them that the Greek gentleman and his wife had gone out to dine at restaurant, and to take their pleasure afterwards.
‘Let us go and have a stroll on the Boulevards,’ said Mr. Wormald, who had done business in Park before;’we may meet them there. If not, we can return late in the evening.’
Had he been happy in his mind, John Groman would have been delighted with the Boulevards. It was his first visit to Paris. He had often promised his wife to take her often promised himself the pleasure of seeing what a French clown was life in his native air. He had seen the species once or twice attaches to a circus, and had though it a spurious article, while your dancing Pierrot, a poor creature in black and white, seemed to him beneath contempt.
But now he walked the glittering lamp-lit Boulevards without a thought either of business or pleasure. The crowd of faces, the dazzling shop windows, the everlasting cafes, the jingling omnibuses, passed him like objects seen in a dream. He was thinking of that lonely house by the Thames, the balcony overhanging the dark water, the mystery and sordid horror of the scene. The fact that the Valaoritys had been seen in Paris with diamonds in their possession seemed a conclusive proof of the worst. He had little hope now of ever seeing again upon earth the bright familiar face that had flashed upon him like a burst of sudden sunshine on the night of his birthday.
They walked the busy Boulevard to a point at which they seemed to reach the uttermost limit of civilization, and saw no trace of the Valaoritys, though the constable made John Groman look in every café on their way. Near the Porte Saint Martin they went into an unpretentious restaurant and dined, simply and briefly, neither being in the humour for the pleasures of the table.
‘I wonder we haven’t passed them,’ said Wormald; ‘everybody comes to the Boulevards. If it were finer weather I should look for them in the Champs Elysées, but it’s too cold and bleak for walking under trees tonight.’
They crossed the road, and made their way back on the opposite side to that by which they had ascended the Boulevard.
‘What ought I to do if I see them?’ asked Groman.
‘Get hold of her. I’ll settle with him.’
‘You can’t arrest him?’
‘No, worse luck. He’s safe here for the moment.’
John Groman looked at all the faces that passed him, but none recalled the fair young face he remembered fifteen years ago, when Clara Clews was in the bloom of her girlish beauty, a face of extreme delicacy, features finely chiselled as a Roman cameo, eyes of lustrous grey, darkened by long black lashes, a complexion like the carnation bloom on a peach. He looked and looked till his eyes ached, but in vain.
Suddenly the constable pulled him sharply by the arm at the door of a café, a gaudy, glittering place, all lamps, looking-glass, and gilding.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if that was your man,’ he said, directing Groman’s attention to a man and woman sitting at a table near the entrance, with a pair of tall glasses and a champagne bottle before them.
The man was old and ugly, with a mahogany skin and black eyes — sharp, small, and restless as a caged rat’s. If the woman at the house by the river had been a chimney ornament, this man would have made the pair. He bore the same relation to her that the cobbler in old Bristol delf does to his crockery wife.
The woman, sitting opposite him, was of a different type. Features finely chiselled as those in the face John Groman remembered of old; eyes as large and lustrous, but with what an altered radiance; complexion changed from peach-bloom to the dull, sickly hue of old ivory — faded beauty, relic of a life ill spent.
‘Yes,’ whispered Groman, ‘ that’s Clara.’
While he was speaking Valaority rose, said something to his wife while he lighted his cigar, and came out of the café leaving her sitting at the table, with the half-empty bottle before her. Groman and the constable moved away from the door, and the Greek passed without noticing them.
‘Now’s your chance,’ said Wormald. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be long away. You’ve no time to lose.’
Groman scaled himself in Valaority’s empty chair.
‘Clara,’ he said, in a low voice, leaning across the table ‘Clara,’ to her, ‘what have you done with my brother?’
She had taken the champagne bottle in her hand to refill her glass. At the sound of John Groman’s voice she set it down hastily, striking the glass against the marble.
‘My God!’ she cried, ‘how like your voice is—”
‘Like my brother’s? That isn’t strange. There never were brothers nearer and dearer than Edward and I. But for you I should have had him for my companion and friend all my life. You brought dishonour and misery upon my good, honest father and mother. You blighted my brother’s youth, and robbed him of his good name. And when ho came back to me after fifteen years, you — his evil genius — lured him to your wicked den to plunder and murder him.’
‘Murder!’ she cried. ‘ No, no, no — not murder. It was not my doing. None of it was my doing. I stood up for him — I tried; but you don’t know what Valaority is a devil — a devil let loose to prey upon men. He is not made of the same sort of staff as men like you — he is not flesh and blood to sutler and feel and be sorry, as I suffer and am sorry, though I have been so wicked. My life has been all wickedness since I married him. I liked myself to incarnate sin. I am not his wife, but his slave. when I thwart him — see, this is what he does.’
All this had been spoken hurriedly, in a low, suppressed voice. With her last words she pushed back the lace from her wrist and showed John Groman two livid bruises on the fair skin — bruises that looked like the print of a man’s savage hand. Then she took up the bottle again and filled her glass, with a hand that shook like a leaf, and drank the wine eagerly to the last drop.
The constable had brought a chair to the table and seated himself by Groman’s side. He was
not inclined to trust altogether to his client’s discretion.
‘Come,’ he said, in a soothing tone, as if he had been speaking to a child. ‘Come, Mrs. Valaority, tell us all about it. Your husband will be back directly, and then it will be too late. Make a clean breast of it, and we’ll take care of you. You’ve got the diamonds. We know all about that.’
‘He has,’ said Mrs. Valaority, vindictively, filling her glass again. ‘I never get anything but fine clothes and hard usage.’
‘What have you done with Edward Groman? Come, you were too fond of him in days gone by to stand by and see him murdered.’
‘Murdered!’ cried Clara, with her eyes flashing. ‘If Valaority had laid a finger upon him I would have torn, his eyes out. I would have fought for him as a tigress would for her whelps, if his life had been in danger, weak and small and crooked as I am. Fond of him in days gone by,’ she echoed, with a hysterical laugh, ‘when have I ever ceased to be fond of him? I am fonder of him now than anything between heaven and earth.’
‘And yet you lured him to that vile den of yours,’ said John Groman. ‘You let your husband — —’
‘I thought my husband wanted only to borrow a few pounds from him. That was what he told me. Edward had come home flush of money. He called at a tavern kept by old friends of ours — people who were always kind to me — a place were I was always welcome. Edward came in while I was sitting in the bar. It was like seeing a ghost, and he was so pleased to see me, poor fellow, in spite of all the trouble I had brought upon him; and he told me his adventures and how he had made his fortune; and while he was talking Valaority came in, and pretended not to be angry at seeing us together, and wormed everything out of Edward. He told us that he was going to drop into the theatre in the evening to surprise you on your birthday. Valaority asked him to come to supper with us afterwards, but he said it was impossible, he must stick to dear old Jack, and then —— hush,’ she whispered with a look of awful fear, ‘here comes my husband.’
Wormald pulled John Groman away from the table.
‘I know all about it,’ he said. ‘There’s no use in talking to the Greek.’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1124
