“I took the poor little wet thing up in my arms. The young man had wrapped it in an old jacket, and it was a-cryin’ piteous, and lookin’, oh, so scared and miserable.
“Well, it may seem a queer whim, but I’m rather soft-hearted on the subject of babies, and often had a thought that I should like to try the power of cultivation in the way of business, and bring a child up from the very cradle to the police detective line, to see whether I couldn’t make that ’ere child a ornament to the force. I wasn’t a marryin’ man, and by no means likely ever to ’av a family of my own; so when I took up that ’ere baby in my arms, somehow or other the thought came into my ’ed of adoptin’ him, and bringin’ of him up. So I rolled him up in my greatcoat, and took him with me to Gardenford.”
“And a wonderful boy he is,” said Richard; “we’ll educate him, Peters, and make a gentleman of him.”
“Wait a bit,” said the fingers very quickly; “thank you kindly, sir; but if the police force of this ’ere country was robbed of that ’ere boy, it would be robbed of a gem as it couldn’t afford to lose.”
“Go on, Peters; tell them the rest of your story.”
“Well, though I felt in my own mind that by one of those strange chances which does happen in life, maybe as often as they happen in story-books, I had fallen across the man who had committed the murder, yet for all that I hadn’t evidence enough to get a hearin’. I got transferred from Gardenford to Slopperton, and every leisure minute I had I tried to come across the man I’d marked; but nowhere could I see him, or hear of any one answering his description. I went to the churches; for I thought him capable of anything, even to shammin’ pious. I went to the theayter, and I see a young woman accused of poisonin’ a fam’ly, and proved innocent by a police cove as didn’t know his business any more than a fly. I went anywhere and everywhere, but I never see that man; and it was gettin’ uncommon near the trial of this young gent, and nothin’ done. How was he to be saved? I thought of it by night and thought of it by day; but work it out I couldn’t nohow. One day I hears of an old friend of the pris’ner’s being sup-boned-aed11 as witness for the crown. This friend I determined to see; for two ’eds”—Mr. Peters looked round, as though he defied contradiction—“shall be better than one.”
“And this friend,” said Gus, “was your humble servant; who was only too glad to find that poor Dick had one sincere friend in the world who believed in his innocence, besides myself.”
“Well, Mr. Darley and me,” resumed Mr. Peters, “put our ’eds together, and we came to this conclusion, that if this young gent was mad when he committed the murder, they couldn’t hang him, but would shut him in a asylum for the rest of his nat’ral life—which mayn’t be pleasant in the habstract, but which is better than hangin’, any day.”
“So you determined on proving me mad,” said Richard.
“We hadn’t such very bad grounds to go upon, perhaps, old fellow,” replied Mr. Darley; “that brain-fever, which we thought such a misfortune when it laid you up for three dreary weeks, stood us in good stead; we had something to go upon, for we knew we could get you off by no other means. But to get you off this way we wanted your assistance, and we didn’t hit upon the plan till it was too late to get at you and tell you our scheme; we didn’t hit upon it till twelve o’clock on the night before your trial. We tried to see your counsel; but he had that morning left the town, and wasn’t to return till the trial came on. Peters hung about the court all the morning, but couldn’t see him; and nothing was done when the judge and jury took their seats. You know the rest; how Peters caught your eye—”
“Yes,” said Dick, “and how seven letters upon his fingers told me the whole scheme, and gave me my cue; those letters formed these two words, ‘Sham mad.’ ”
“And very well you did it at the short notice, Dick,” said Gus; “upon my word, for the moment I was almost staggered, and thought, suppose in getting up this dodge we are only hitting upon the truth, and the poor fellow really has been driven out of his wits by this frightful accusation?”
“A scrap of paper,” said Mr. Peters, on his active fingers, “gave the hint to your counsel—a sharp chap enough, though a young un.”
“I can afford to reward him now for his exertions,” said Richard, “and I must find him for that purpose. But Peters, for heaven’s sake tell us about this young man whom you suspect to be the murderer. If I go to the end of the world in search of him, I’ll find him, and drag him and his villany to light, that my name may be cleared from the foul stain it wears.”
Mr. Peters looked very grave. “You must go a little further than the end of this world to find him, I’m afraid, sir,” said the fingers. “What do you say to looking for him in the next? for that’s the station he’d started for when I last saw him; and I believe that on that line, with the exception of now and then a cock-and-a-bull-lane ghost, they don’t give no return tickets.”
“Dead?” said Richard. “Dead, and escaped from justice?”
“That’s about the size of it, sir,” replied Mr. Peters. “Whether he thought as how something was up, and he was blown, or whether he was riled past bearin’ at findin’ no money in that ’ere cabinet, I can’t take upon myself to say; but I found him six months after the murder out upon a heath, dead, with a laudanum-bottle a-lying by his side.”
“And did you ever find out who he was?” asked Gus.
“He was a usher, sir, at a ’cademy for young gents, and a very pious young man he was too, I’ve heard; but for all that he murdered this young gent’s uncle, or my name isn’t Peters.”
“Beyond the reach of justice,” said Richard; “then the truth can never be brought to light, and to the end of my days I must bear the stigma of a crime of which I am innocent.”
BOOK THE FIFTH
THE DUMB DETECTIVE
CHAPTER I
THE COUNT DE MAROLLES AT HOME
The denizens of Friar Street and such localities, being in the habit of waking in the morning to the odour of melted tallow1 and boiling soap, and of going to sleep at night with the smell of burning bones under their noses, can of course have nothing of an external nature in common with the inhabitants of Park Lane2 and its vicinity; for the gratification of whose olfactory nerves exotics live short and unnatural lives, on staircases, in boudoirs, and in conservatories of rich plate-glass and fairy architecture, where perfumed waters play in gilded fountains through the long summer days.
It might be imagined, then, that the common griefs and vulgar sorrows—such as hopeless love and torturing jealousy, sickness, or death, or madness, or despair—would be also banished from the regions of Park Lane, and entirely confined to the purlieus of Friar Street. Any person with a proper sense of the fitness of things would of course conclude this to be the case, and would as soon picture my lady the Duchess of Mayfair dining on red herrings and potatoes at the absurd hour of one o’clock p.m., or blackleading her own grate with her own alabaster fingers, as weeping over the death of her child, or breaking her heart for her faithless husband, just like Mrs. Stiggins, potato and coal merchant on a small scale, or Mrs. Higgins, whose sole revenues come from “Mangling3 done here.”
And it does seem hard, oh my brethren, that there should be any limit to the magic power of gold! It may exclude bad airs, foul scents, ugly sights, and jarring sounds; it may surround its possessors with beauty, grace, art, luxury, and so-called pleasure; but it cannot shut out death or care; for to these stern visitors Mayfair4 and St. Giles’s5 must alike open their reluctant doors whenever the dreaded guests may be pleased to call.
You do not send cards for your morning concerts, or fêtes champêtres,6 or thés dansantes,7 to Sorrow or Sadness, oh noble duchesses and countesses; but have you never seen their faces in the crowd when you least looked to meet them?
Through the foliage and rich blossoms in the conservatory, and through the white damask curtains of the long French window, the autumn sunshine comes with subdued light into a boudoir on the secon
d floor of a large house in Park Lane. The velvet-pile carpets in this room and the bedchamber and dressing-room adjoining, are made in imitation of a mossy ground on which autumn leaves have fallen; so exquisite, indeed, is the design, that it is difficult to think that the light breeze which enters at the open window cannot sweep away the fragile leaf, which seems to flutter in the sun. The walls are of the palest cream-colour, embellished with enamelled portraits of Louis the Sixteenth, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, and the unfortunate boy prisoner of the Temple,8 let into the oval panels on the four sides of the room. Everything in this apartment, though perfect in form and colour, is subdued and simple; there are none of the buhl and marqueterie cabinets, the artificial flowers, ormolu clocks, French prints, and musical boxes which might adorn the boudoir of an opera-dancer or the wife of a parvenu. The easy-chairs and luxurious sofas are made of a polished white wood, and are covered with white damask. On the marble mantelpiece there are two or three vases of the purest and most classical forms; and these, with Canovo’s9 bust of Napoleon, are the only ornaments in the room. Near the fireplace, in which burns a small fire, there is a table loaded with books, French, English, and German, the newest publications of the day; but they are tossed in a great heap, as if they had one by one been looked at and cast aside unread. By this table there is a lady seated, whose beautiful face is rendered still more striking by the simplicity of her black dress.
This lady is Valerie de Lancy, now Countess de Marolles; for Monsieur Marolles has expended some part of his wife’s fortune upon certain estates in the south of France which give him the title of Count de Marolles.
A lucky man, this Raymond Marolles. A beautiful wife, a title, and an immense fortune are no such poor prizes in the lottery of life. But this Raymond is a man who likes to extend his possessions; and in South America he has established himself as a banker on a large scale, and he has lately come over to England with his wife and son, for the purpose of establishing a branch of this bank in London. Of course, a man with his aristocratic connections and enormous fortune is respected and trusted throughout the continent of South America.
Eight years have taken nothing from the beauty of Valerie de Marolles. The dark eyes have the same fire, the proud head the same haughty grace; but alone and in repose the face has a shadow of deep and settled sadness that is painful to look upon, for it is the gloomy sadness of despair. The world in which this woman lives, which knows her only as the brilliant, witty, vivacious, and sparkling Parisian, little dreams that she talks because she dare not think; that she is restless and vivacious because she dare not be still; that she hurries from place to place in pursuit of pleasure and excitement because only in excitement, and in a life which is as false and hollow as the mirth she assumes, can she fly from the phantom which pursues her. O shadow that will not be driven away! O pale and pensive ghost, that rises before us in every hour and in every scene, to mock the noisy and tumultuous revelry which, by the rule of opposites, we call Pleasure!—which of us is free from your haunting presence, O phantom, whose name is The Past?
Valerie is not alone; a little boy, between seven and eight years of age, is standing at her knee, reading aloud to her from a book of fables.
“A frog beheld an ox——” he began. But as he read the first words the door of the boudoir opened, and a gentleman entered, whose pale fair face, blue eyes, light eyelashes, and dark hair and eyebrows proclaimed him to be the husband of Valerie.
“Ah,” he said, glancing with a sneer at the boy, who lifted his dark eyes for a moment, and then dropped them on his book with an indifference that bespoke little love for the new-comer, “you are teaching your child, madame. Teaching him to read? Is not that an innovation? The boy has a fine voice, and the ear of a maestro. Let him learn the solfeggi,10 and very likely one of these days he will be as great a man as——”
Valerie looks at him with the old contempt, the old icy coldness in her face. “Do you want anything of me this morning, monsieur?” she asked.
“No, madame. Having the entire command of your fortune, what can I ask? A smile? Nay, madame; you keep your smiles for your son; and again, they are so cheap in London, the smiles of beauty.”
“Then, monsieur, since you require nothing at my hands, may I ask why you insult me with your presence?”
“You teach your son to respect—his father, madame,” said Raymond with a sneer, throwing himself into an easy-chair opposite Valerie. “You set the future Count de Marolles a good example. He will be a model of filial piety, as you are of——”
“Do not fear, Monsieur de Marolles, but that one day I shall teach my son to respect his father; fear rather lest I teach him to avenge——”
“Nay, madame, it is for you to fear that.”
During the whole of this brief dialogue, the little boy has held his mother’s hand, looking with his serious eyes anxiously in her face. Young as he is, there is a courage in his glance and a look of firmness in his determined under-lip that promises well for the future. Valerie turns from the cynical face of her husband, and lays a caressing hand on the boy’s dark ringlets. Do those ringlets remind her of any other dark hair? Do any other eyes look out in the light of those she gazes at now?
“You were good enough to ask me just now, madame, the purport of my visit; your discrimination naturally suggesting to you that there is nothing so remarkably attractive in the society to be found in these apartments, infantine lectures in words of one syllable included”—he glances towards the boy as he speaks, and the cruel blue eyes are never so cruel as when they look that way—“as to induce me to enter them without some purpose or other.”
“Perhaps monsieur will be so good as to be brief in stating that purpose? He may imagine, that being entirely devoted to my son, I do not choose to have his studies, or even his amusements, interrupted.”
“You bring up young Count Almaviva like a prince, madame. It is something to have good blood in one’s veins, even on one side——”
If she could have killed him with a look of those bright dark eyes, he would have fallen dead as he spoke the words that struck one by one at her broken heart. He knew his power; he knew wherein it lay, and how to use it—and he loved to wound her; because, though he had won wealth and rank from her, he had never conquered her, and he felt that even in her despair she defied him.
“You are irrelevant, monsieur. Pray be so kind as to say what brought you here, where I would not insult your good sense by saying you are a welcome visitor.”
“Briefly then, madame. Our domestic arrangements do not please me. We are never known to quarrel, it is true; but we are rarely seen to address each other, and we are not often seen in public together. Very well this in South America, where we were king and queen of our circle—here it will not do. To say the least, it is mysterious. The fashionable world is scandalous. People draw inferences—monsieur does not love madame, and he married her for her money; or, on the other hand, madame does not love monsieur, but married him because she had some powerful motive for so doing. This will not do, countess. A banker must be respectable, or people may be afraid to trust him. I must be, what I am now called, ‘the eminent banker;’ and I must be universally trusted.”
“That you may the better betray, monsieur; that is the motive for winning people’s confidence, in your code of moral economy, is it not?”
“Madame is becoming a logician; her argument by induction does her credit.”
“But, your business, monsieur?”
“Was to signify my wish, madame, that we should be seen oftener together in public. The Italian Opera, now, madame, though you have so great a distaste for it—a distaste which, by-the-bye, you did not possess during the early period of your life—is a very popular resort. All the world will be there to-night, to witness the début of a singer of continental celebrity. Perhaps you will do me the honour to accompany me there?”
“I do not take any interest, monsieur——”
“In the fortunes of te
nor singers. Ah, how completely we outlive the foolish fancies of our youth! But you will occupy the box on the grand tier of her Majesty’s Theatre, which I have taken for the season. It is to your son’s—to Cherubino’s11 interest, for you to comply with my request.” He glances towards the boy once more, with a sneer on his thin lips, and then turns and bows to Valerie, as he says—
“Au revoir, madame. I shall order the carriage for eight o’clock.”
A horse, which at a sale at Tattersall’s had attracted the attention of all the votaries of the Corner, for the perfection of his points and the enormous price which he realized, caracoles before the door, under the skilful horsemanship of a well-trained and exquisitely-appointed groom. Another horse, equally high-bred, waits for his rider, the Count de Marolles. The groom dismounts, and holds the bridle, as the gentleman emerges from the door and springs into the saddle. A consummate horseman the Count de Marolles; a handsome man too, in spite of the restless and shifting blue eyes and the thin nervous lips. His dress is perfect, just keeping pace with the fashion sufficiently to denote high ton in the wearer, without outstripping it, so as to stamp him a parvenu. It has that elegant and studious grace which, to a casual observer, looks like carelessness, but which is in reality the perfection of the highest art of all—the art of concealing art.
It is only twelve o’clock, and there are not many people of any standing in Piccadilly this September morning; but of the few gentlemen on horseback who pass Monsieur de Marolles, the most aristocratic-looking bow to him. He is well known in the great world as the eminent banker, the owner of a superb house in Park Lane. He possesses a man cook of Parisian renown, who wears the cross of the Legion of Honour, given him by the first Napoleon on the occasion of a dinner at Talleyrand’s. He has estates in South America and in France; a fortune, said to be boundless; and a lovely wife. For the rest, if his own patent of nobility is of rather fresh date, and if, as impertinent people say, he never had a grandfather, or indeed anything in the way of a father to speak of, it must be remembered that great men, since the days of mythic history, have been celebrated for being born in rather an accidental manner.
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