In such surroundings the visitor found it a little difficult to rehearse what he had determined to say to Lowndes, and it was no misfortune that kept him waiting the better part of an hour. The delay gave him time to gather his wits and to recollect his points. It prepared him for a new Gordon Lowndes. It steadied his feet when they sank into the rich carpet of a still more sumptuous apartment, in the middle of which stood the most magnificent desk he had ever seen; it kept his eye from being distracted from the resplendent gentleman who sat at the desk, the gentleman with the orchid in the silken lapel of his frock-coat, and with everything new upon him but the gold eye-glasses that bridged the twitching nose.
Before his mouth opened beneath his waxed moustache, Harry felt convinced that Lowndes had seen Scrafton, and was fully prepared for this visit.
“Well, Ringrose, what can I do for you?” he cried, as Harry advanced, and his tone was both cold and sharp.
“Ask your typist to step into another room,” replied Harry, glancing towards the young girl at the clicking Remington.
Lowndes opened his eyes. Indeed, Harry had begun better than he himself expected, and his confidence increased as the other turned to his typist.
“Be good enough to leave us for a minute, Miss Neilson; we shan’t be longer,” said Lowndes pointedly. “Now,” he added, “kindly take a seat, Ringrose.”
But Harry came and stood at the other side of the magnificent desk.
“I want to ask you two or three questions, Mr. Lowndes,” said he quietly.
“About the Company, eh?”
“No, not about the Company, Mr. Lowndes.”
“Then this is neither the time nor place, and it will have to be a very short minute. But blaze away.”
“What is there between you and that man Scrafton?” asked Harry, and for the life of him he could steady his voice no longer. His very lip was trembling now.
“Which man Scrafton?” asked Lowndes, beginning to smile.
“You know as well as I do!” Harry almost shouted. “The other master in the school at Teddington — the man whose existence you pretended not to know of when I met you that afternoon on Ham Common. I ask you what there is between you. I ask you why you pretended there was nothing that Saturday afternoon — that Monday morning when you came to intercept him and pretended you had come to see me. I ask you what there was between that ruffian and — my father!”
His voice was almost breaking in his passion and his agony, but he was no longer nervous and self-conscious. That agony of doubt and of suspicion — that passionate determination to know the truth — had already floated him beyond the shoals of self. Lowndes waved a soothing hand, and his tone altered instantly. It was as though he realised that he was dealing with a dangerous fellow.
“Steady, Ringrose, steady!” said he. “You must answer me one question if you want answers to all those.”
And there was a touch of the old kindness in his tone, a strange and disconcerting touch, for it sounded genuine.
“As many as you like — I have nothing to hide,” cried Harry. And he had the satisfaction of making Lowndes wince.
“What makes you think I am acquainted with the man you mention?”
“What makes me think it?” echoed Harry, with a hard laugh. “Why, I’ve seen you together!”
“When?” cried Lowndes.
“The very day I saw you last. I came over to tell you something I’d heard the fellow say. I wanted to consult you of all men! And there were the two of you walking up and down your garden path.”
“Was it the evening?”
“Yes, it was, and you walked up and down by the hour — like conspirators — like confederates!”
Lowndes had started up and was leaning across his desk. His hands gripped the edge of it. His face was ghastly.
“Spy!” he hissed. “You listened to what we were saying.”
“I didn’t,” retorted Harry. “You knew one gentleman even then.”
There were several sorts of folly in this speech: no sooner was it uttered than Harry saw one. Had he been less ready to deny the eavesdropping he might have learnt something now. By pretending to know much he might have learnt all. He had lost a chance.
And Gordon Lowndes — that arch-exponent of the game of bluff — was quick as lightning to appreciate his good fortune. The blood rushed back to his face, his hands came away from the mahogany (two little tell-tale dabs they left behind them), and he sank back into his luxurious chair — with a droop of the eyelids and ever so slight a shake of the head — an artist deploring the inartistic for art’s sake while he welcomed it for his own.
Harry was furious at his false move, and at this frank though tacit recognition of the lost advantage.
“I wish I had listened!” he cried. “God knows what I should have heard, but something you dare not tell me, that I can see. There! I have been fool enough to answer your questions; now it’s your turn to answer mine, and to tell me what there is between you and Scrafton.”
“Well, he’s a man I’ve had a slight acquaintance with for a year or two. He lodges — or he did lodge — in Richmond. I scraped acquaintance with him because his face interested me. But it isn’t more interesting than the man himself, who is the one genius I know — the one walking anachronism — —”
“I know all about that,” interrupted Harry. “Why did you pretend you knew nothing about him? That’s what I want to get at. You don’t deny you led me to think you had never heard of him?”
“No — I did my best to do so.”
“You admit it now! And why did you do your best? What was the meaning of it? What had you to gain?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“My good fellow, that’s my business.”
“Mine too,” said Harry thickly. “This man knows something of my father; you know something of this man; and first you pretend you don’t — and then you try to prepare him for meeting me. I suppose you admit it was Scrafton you came to see that morning?”
“Well, I confess I wanted to put salt on the fellow; and, as he’d left Richmond, that was my only way.”
“Exactly!” cried Harry. “You wanted to put salt on him because there was some mystery between the two of you and my father, and you were frightened he’d let something out. By God, Lowndes, there’s some treachery too, if there isn’t crime! Sit still. I’m not going to stop. Ring your bell if you like, and I’ll tell every man in the office — I’ll tell every big-wig on the board. There’s treachery somewhere — there may be crime — and I’ve suspected it from the beginning. Yes, I suspected you the first time I set eyes upon you. I suspected you when we talked about my poor father in his own room and in the train. You looked a guilty man then — you look a guilty man now. Confess your guilt, or, by the living Lord, I’ll tell every director of this Company! Ah, you may laugh — that’s your dodge when you’re in a corner — you’ve told me so often enough — but you were white a minute ago!”
The laugh had stopped and the whiteness returned as Lowndes sprang up and walked quickly round the desk to where Harry stood. He laid a hand on Harry’s arm. The boy shook it off. And yet there was a kindness behind the other’s glasses — the old kindness that had disconcerted Harry once already.
“Consider what you are saying, Ringrose,” said Lowndes quietly. “You’re going on like a young madman. Pull yourself together and just consider. You talk of telling tales in a way that is neither nice nor wise. What do you know to tell?”
This simple question was like ice on the hot young head.
“Enough, at any rate,” he stammered presently, “to put me on the track of more.”
“Then I advise you to find out the more before you make use of threats.”
“I intend to do so. I’ll be at the bottom of your villainy yet!”
Lowndes darkened.
“Do you want to force me to have you turned out?” he asked fiercely. “Upon my word, Ringrose, you try the pa
tience of the best friend you ever had. Didn’t I stand by you when you landed? Didn’t I do the best I could for you when I was on the rocks myself? Now I’m afloat again I want to stand by you still, but you make it devilish difficult. I honestly meant to make you Secretary of this Company, but when the chap who helped me to pull it through asked for the billet, what could I do? Here’s an envelope that will show you I haven’t forgotten you; take it, Ringrose, and look at it at your convenience, and try to think more charitably of an old friend. Recollect that I was your father’s friend first.”
“So you say,” said Harry, taking the long thick envelope and looking straight through the gold-rimmed glasses. “I will believe you when you tell me where he is.”
“I know no more than the man in the moon.”
“You were at the bottom of his disappearance!”
“I give you my word that I was not.”
“You know whether he is dead or alive!”
“I do not, Ringrose.”
“Then tell me where you saw him last!”
“You sicken me,” cried Lowndes, losing his temper suddenly. “I told you the whole story six months ago, and now you want me to tell it you again so that you may challenge every point. I’ll answer no more of your insolent questions, and I’ll tell the commissionaire to mark you down and never to admit you again. You hold in your hand fifty shares in this Company. Next week they will be worth a hundred pounds — next month perhaps a thousand — next year very likely five. Take them for your mother’s sake, if not for your own, and for God’s sake let me never see your face again!”
“From the man who may be at the bottom of our disgrace? No, thank you — not until you tell me what you did with my father — you and Scrafton between you!”
“I have already answered you.”
“Then so much for your fifty shares.”
The long envelope spun into the fire. Lowndes darted to his desk, caught the electric bell that dangled over it, and pressed the button. Harry stalked to the door, turned round, and faced him for the last time.
“You will not tell me the truth; very well, I will find it out. I will find it out,” cried Harry Ringrose in a breaking voice, “if I have to spend my whole life in doing so. And if you have wronged my father I will have no mercy on you; and if you have not — all I ask is — that you — have no mercy on me!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE END OF THE BEGINNING.
Harry drifted through the fog, the sport of misery and rage. He was a beaten man, and slow as another to own it to himself. Now he swore that he and he alone would unravel the mystery of his father’s fate; now the sense of his own impotence appalled him; but at last the bitter fact of his defeat came home to him in all its nakedness.
Yes, he had been beaten by a readier and a keener wit, and the most plausible tongue a villain ever wagged. He had been at the mercy of that specious charlatan, that unscrupulous blackleg, that scoundrel self-confessed. He knew it now. Lowndes had put him in the wrong. He was no match for a man like that. Nevertheless, he was in the right, and one day it would be proved — and one day Lowndes would get his deserts.
And yet — and yet — there were words and looks and tones that had sounded genuine enough. The man was not wholly false or bad. His good side, his staunch side, had shown itself again and again, in good and staunch actions performed without ostentation, and in motive transparently pure. That side existed in him still, and Harry felt that he had spoken as though it did not. He was sorry for many things he had said. He wished he had said other things instead or as well. He wished he had not flung those shares into the fire, though they proved that Lowndes had expected him, and they must have been intended for a sop. Still he was sorry he had thrown them on the fire; and he wished he could unsay that boast about his being a gentleman because he had not listened; other considerations apart, it struck him now almost as a contradiction in terms.
So to existing tortures he must needs add that of savage self-criticism. It was the morbid wont of Harry Ringrose, the penalty of a temperament. In a little, however, sheer perplexity gripped his mind again, and wrenched it from himself. The old unanswered questions were upon him once more.
What had there been between Lowndes and Scrafton and his own poor father? Were these men in league with the fugitive? Had they planned the wrong which had ruined and disgraced his family? Lowndes had long ago confessed that the raising of the £20,000 was his idea, that the actual acquisition of the £10,000 was his deed. The chances were that his scheme had gone further and cut deeper, and that at least a part of the plunder was for himself. Then what had he done with his share — and what had Scrafton done with his?
How else could Scrafton come in?
Harry thought of that ghoulish face, of those cruel hands, and the blood ran cold in every vessel. If ever he had seen a man capable of any crime, a man without bowels, as Lowndes was without principle, that man was Jeremiah Scrafton. What if between them they had murdered the ironmaster for those ten thousand pounds? What if they had driven him out of his mind and clapped him into an asylum, or into some vile den of Scrafton’s? Ever quicker to imagine than to reason, the young fellow tasted all the horror of his theories before he realised their absurdity: where, again, were the proceeds of the crime? Lowndes was only now emerging from the very depths of poverty, while as for Scrafton, he was either an extremely poor man, or a stage miser come to life. Besides, there was the letter from Dieppe.
So he went from one blind alley of the brain to another; and of all the faces that passed him in the fog, there was none he knew — he had no friend to turn to in his sore dilemma. And he was trudging westward, going back to face his mother and to live with her in the little flat, with this miserable mystery unsolved, with these haunting suspicions unconfirmed, and therefore to be locked indefinitely in his own bosom. Vultures for his vitals, and yet he must face them, and alone.
No one to tell — no friend to consult. The words were a dirge in his heart. Suddenly they changed their tune and became a question. He stopped dead in the street. It was the Strand. He had just passed the gulf of fog which hid Waterloo Bridge.
He stood some minutes, ostensibly studying the engravings in the shop at the Adam Street corner, and looking again and again at his watch as though anxious to know the time, but too absent to bear it in mind. It was five minutes to one when he looked first; by five minutes past that shop-window and the Strand itself knew Harry Ringrose no more. He was deep in the yellow gulf, which was dimly bridged by the lights of the bridge.
The train took an hour to feel its way to Richmond: it was worse than the hour spent in the waiting-room of the Crofter Fisheries, Limited.
At Richmond the fog was white. To make an end of it, Harry took a cab, and kept the man waiting while he asked if Miss Lowndes was in. A smart parlour-maid told him that she was; otherwise there was no change.
Fanny rose hastily from a low chair in front of a blazing fire; her face was flushed but smiling, and she held up a paper in one hand while she gave Harry the other.
He took it mechanically. He had not meant to take it at all. It was the wretched Tiddler, of all papers, which disarmed him.
“I was just thinking about you,” said his friend. “I was trying to find out which is yours this week.”
“Yes?”
There was no life in his voice. His heart had leapt with pleasure, only to begin aching in a new place.
“We take it in every week on your account,” said Fanny Lowndes.
“You mean that you do,” said Harry, pointedly.
She coloured afresh.
“No; it is my father who brings it home from the City.”
“Then he never will again!”
For some seconds their eyes were locked.
“Mr. Ringrose, what do you mean? Your tone is so strange. Has anything happened?”
“Not to your father. He and I have quarrelled — that’s all.”
“When?”
“This m
orning.”
“And you have come to tell me about that!”
“I didn’t mean to do so. I came to speak to one of the only two friends I have in the world besides my mother. I came to speak to you while — while you would speak to me. And now I’ve gone and spoilt it all!”
“Of course you haven’t,” said the girl, with her kind smile. “Sit down and tell me all about it. I think all the more of you for saying the worst thing first.” Yet she looked alarmed, and her tone was only less agitated than his.
“It is not the worst,” groaned Harry Ringrose, “and I can’t sit down to say the sort of thing I’ve come to say. Oh, but I was a coward to come to you at all! It was because I had no one else to turn to; and you have always been my friend; but it was a cowardly thing to do! I will go away again without saying a word.”
She had sunk down upon her low chair, and was leaning forward so that he could not see her face, but only the red gold of her hair in the ruddy firelight.
“No; now you must go on,” she said, without raising her face.
“It is about your father — and mine.”
“I expected that.”
“I asked him some plain questions which he could not — or would not — answer. In desperation — in distraction — I have come to put those questions to you!”
“It is useless,” was the low reply. “I cannot answer them — either.”
“Wait until you hear what they are. They are very simple. What was there between Scrafton and your father and mine? What had your father and Scrafton to do with my father’s flight? That’s all I ask — that’s all I want to know.”
“I cannot tell you what you want to know.”
“Cannot,” he said gently, “or dare not?”
“Cannot!” she cried, and was on her feet with the word, her burning face flung back and her grey eyes flashing indignation.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 147
