“Then I went down to Brighton and personally called upon the local registrars and got them to overhaul their records. But the result was the same in all the cases. There was no record of the death of Gervase Hardcastle. Now what do you make of that?”
“Mighty little,” said Thorndyke. “Apparently, the notice in The Times was a false notice, but why it should have been inserted it is difficult to guess.”
“Unless,” I suggested, “he was living under an assumed name and that name was given to the registrar, the true name being published for the information of the family.”
Thorndyke shook his head. “I don’t think that will do, Jervis,” said he. “The person who sent the notice to The Times knew his proper name, age and description. There is no imaginable reason why a person having that knowledge should give a false name to the registrar, and there are the best of reasons why he should not.”
“Is it possible,” I suggested, “that he may have committed suicide and sent off the notice himself before completing the job?
“It is possible, of course,” replied Thorndyke, “but, in the absence of any positive fact indicating the probability of its having occurred, the mere possibility is not worth considering.”
“No,” agreed Brodribb, “it is of no use guessing. The important truth that emerges is that his death, which has been accepted all these years by the family as an established fact, has now become extremely doubtful. At any rate, there is no legal evidence that he is dead. No court would entertain a mere obituary notice unsupported by any corresponding entry in the register of deaths. Legally speaking, Gervase is presumably still living, and it is not at all improbable that he is actually alive.”
“Then, in that case,” said I, “why do you say that David has a good claim to be the heir?”
“Because he is here and visible—extremely visible; whereas the very existence of Gervase is problematical. David’s claim is good unless it is contested by Gervase. In Gervase’s absence, I think David would have no difficulty in taking possession. Who could oppose him? If I did, as executor (and I think I should have a try), the probability is that his claim would be admitted, subject to the chance that Gervase or his heir might come forward later and endeavour to oust him.”
“And meanwhile?” asked Thorndyke.
“Meanwhile, I propose setting on foot some enquiries by which I hope to be able to pick up some trace of Gervase on the Continent. It isn’t a very hopeful task, I must admit.”
“I can’t imagine any less hopeful task,” said I, “than searching for a man who has been lost to sight for over sixteen years, who was probably living under an assumed name and whose place of abode at any time is utterly unknown. I don’t see how you are going to start.”
“I am not very clear, myself,” Brodribb admitted; and with this, as it was now growing late, he rose, and, having gathered up his hat and stick, shook our hands despondently and took his departure.
CHAPTER V
Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds
(Jasper Gray’s Narrative)
The providence that doth shape our ends is apt to do so by methods so unobtrusive as entirely to escape our notice. Passively we float on the quiet stream of events with no suspicion as to whither we are being carried until at last we are thrown up high and dry on the shore of our destiny, the mere jetsam of unnoted circumstances.
When I drew up my truck at the shabby door of a studio in a mews near Fitzroy Square and pulled the bell-handle no intelligible message was borne to me by the tintinnabulation from within; nor, when the door was opened by a pleasant-faced grey-haired woman in a blue overall, did I recognise the chief arbiter—or shall I say arbitress?—of my fate. I merely pulled off my cap and said: “A roll of paper, madam, from Sturt and Wopsalls.”
“Oh, I’m glad you’ve come,” she said. “Shall I help you to carry it in?”
“Thank you, madam,” I replied, “but I think I can manage without troubling you.”
It was an unwieldy roll of cartoon paper, six feet long and uncommonly heavy. But I was used to handling ponderous and unshapely packages, and I got the roll on my shoulder without difficulty. The lady preceded me down a passage and into a great, bare studio, where, according to directions, I laid the roll down on the floor in a corner.
“You seem to be very strong,” the lady remarked.
“I’m pretty strong, thank you, madam,” I answered; adding that I got a good deal of exercise.
Here a second lady, rather younger than the first, turned from her easel to look at me.
“I wonder if he would help us to move that costume chest,” she said.
I expressed my willingness to do anything that would be of service to them; and being shown the chest, a huge box-settle with an upholstered top, I skilfully coaxed it along the bare floor to the place by the wall that had been cleared for it.
“Would you like a glass of lemonade?” the elder lady asked when she had thanked me.
I accepted gratefully, for it was a hot day; though, for that matter, I believe a healthy boy of seventeen would drink lemonade with pleasure at the North Pole. Accordingly a glass jug and a tumbler were placed on a little table by the settle and I was invited to sit down and refresh at my leisure; which I did, staring about me meanwhile with the lively curiosity proper to my age. It was a great barn of a place with rough, white washed walls, which were, however, mostly covered with large paper cartoons, on which life-size figure subjects were broadly sketched in charcoal. There were also a number of smaller studies of heads and limbs and some complete figures—complete, that is to say, excepting as to their clothing; and the strangely aboriginal state of these, even allowing for the heat of the weather, occasioned profound speculations on my part.
As I sat sipping the lemonade and gaping at the pictures with serene enjoyment, the two ladies conversed in low tones and disjointed scraps of their conversation reached my ears, though I tried not to listen.
“Yes” (this was the elder lady), “and not only so handsome but so exactly the correct type. And a rare type, too. Even the colouring is absolutely perfect.”
“Yes,” agreed the other; “it is typical. So clean-cut, refined and symmetrical. A little severe, but all the better for that; and really quite distinguished—quite distinguished.”
Here I happened to glance at the ladies and was dismayed to find them both looking very attentively at me. I blushed furiously. Could they be talking about me? It seemed impossible. Sturt and Wopsall’s parcels-boy could hardly be described as a distinguished person. But it almost seemed as if they were, for the elder lady said with an engaging smile: “We want to see how you would look in a wig. Would you mind trying one on?”
This was a staggerer, but of course I didn’t mind. It was rather a “lark” in fact. And when the lady produced from a cupboard a golden wig with long ringlets, I sniggered shyly and allowed her to put it on my head. The two women looked at me with their heads on one side and then at one another.
“It’s the very thing, you know,” said the younger lady.
The other nodded, and, addressing me, said: “Would you just frown a little and put on a rather haughty expression?”
Needless to say, I grinned like a Cheshire cat, and, a heroic effort to control my features only ended in violent giggles. The two ladies smiled good-humouredly, and the elder said, in a wheedling tone:
“I wonder if you would do me a very great favour.”
“I would if I could,” was my prompt and natural reply.
“It is this,” she continued. “I am painting a picture of an incident in the French Revolution to be called ‘An Aristocrat at Bay.’ I suppose you have heard of the French Revolution?”
I had. In fact I had read Carlyle’s work on the subject—and didn’t think much of it—and the “Tale of Two Cities” which I had found greatly superior.
“Very well,” my new friend went on, “then I will show you the sketch for the picture;” and she led me to a great easel with a handle lik
e that of a barrel-organ, on which was a large canvas with a sheet of cartoon paper pinned on it. The sketch, which was roughly put in with charcoal and tinted in parts with an occasional smear of pastel or wash of water-colour, showed a lady standing in a doorway at the top of a flight of steps around the foot of which surged a crowd of revolutionaries.
“My difficulty,” the lady continued, “is this. I have got a model for the figure of the Aristocrat but I can’t get a suitable model for the head. Now you happen to suit perfectly and the question is, will you let me paint the head from you?”
“But it’s a woman!” I protested.
That lady knew something about boys. “I know,” she said; “but a man would do as well if he was clean-shaved and wore a wig. You will say yes, now, won’t you? Of course it is a business arrangement. You will be paid for your time.”
Eventually it was settled that I should sit from six to eight every morning—I wasn’t due at the warehouse until half-past eight—and breakfast in the studio afterwards. I didn’t much like this latter arrangement for Pontifex and I always breakfasted together and the old gentleman would miss me. My employer suggested that he should come to breakfast too; but this would not do. Poor old Ponty would have pawned my boots if the whisky had run short, but he took no favours from strangers. However, my salary was to be twelve shillings a week, Sunday sittings to be extra pro rata, and that would have to compensate. I agreed to the terms and the arrangement was fixed.
“Your hair is rather long,” said my employer. “Would you mind having it cut short, so as to let the wig set more closely?”
Would I mind! For, twelve shillings a week I would have had my head shaved and painted in green and red stripes. As a matter of fact I went that very evening to a barber and made him trim me until my head looked like a ball of brown plush. Which must have made Providence wink the eye that was fixed on my destiny.
The sittings—or rather standings—began two days later, when I took up my pose on the model’s throne, rigged out in the full costume of a royalist lady and an aristocrat; my first appearance in either character. After the sitting we all had breakfast in a corner of the studio, and the two ladies crammed me until I was ready to burst with nourishment and gratitude. They were dear women. I loved them both from the very beginning, with a slight preference, perhaps, for my employer, Miss Vernet; though, to be sure, the younger lady, Miss Brandon, was a lovable creature, too. But I must not linger on their perfections. Reluctantly I must leave them for a while to relate a most singular adventure that arose in part out of my employment by them.
It was, I think, on the day of my fourth sitting that I had a stroke of luck; a parcel—and not a very large one, either—to deliver to a bibliophile who kept a private press somewhere out Tottenham way and close to the river Lea. It was virtually a day’s holiday with a railway fare thrown in, and I set forth jubilantly with the parcel on my shoulder, whistling an operatic air as I went. The train bore me luxuriously to Black Horse Road Station, I found the house of the bibliophile, delivered my parcel, a then, free as air, struck out across the fields towards the river.
Along the shallow, winding stream that runs parallel to the ‘Lea Navigation’ I wandered with the ecstatic delight of the thoroughbred Londoner in rural scenes, be they never so homely. It was a day of wonders. I had hardly ever been in the country before and this mere suburb—though it was more rural then than now—gave to my urban eyes a veritable glimpse of Paradise. I looked into the few inches of running water and saw actual fish. I watched an angler and saw him land, with elaborate artifice, what looked like a piece of cheese. For the first time in my life I looked upon a living frog and chased it to its lair under the bank. And then I came on a group of urchins, disporting themselves, as naked as cherubim, in the shallows; and Providence closed its left eye firmly.
It was a roasting day. Those urchins were certainly naked and wet and probably cool. How delicious! And why not? There was no one about, and there was plenty of cover. Five minutes later I had shed my garments beside a willow bush and was lying on my stomach in four inches of water making frantic efforts to swim.
I waded joyfully up the stream, sometimes almost knee-deep, and impersonated characters suitable to the scenery. Now I was some sort of Indian and impaled fish—which weren’t there—with an imaginary barbed spear. There I discovered a curious lurking-place under a large pollard and between two clumps of willow-bush; and forthwith I tucked myself into it, becoming instantly—as I persuaded myself—invisible to mortal eyes. I was now an Indian no longer. My role had changed to that of some unclassified species of water-sprite; at least I think so, though I am not quite clear; for the fact is that, at this moment, a nursemaid with two children hove in sight on the bank facing me, and, having sauntered along with exasperating slowness, finally sat down exactly opposite my hiding-place and produced a novelette which she began to read with much composure and satisfaction.
I watched her balefully; and I watched the children. Especially, I watched the children. And meanwhile I sat up to my hips in water, finding it delightfully cool and shady beneath the pollard.
The minutes wore on. It was still cool. Surprisingly so, considering the heat of the sun outside. In fact my teeth presently began to chatter slightly and an urgent desire to sample the sunshine once more made itself felt. But there I was, and there I must stay until the young lady opposite moved on; for I was a modest youth with a rather exaggerated notion of the delicacy of young women. And, after all, the situation was of my own making.
At last, one of the children observed me and pointed me out with a yell of ecstasy. “Oh! Look, Nanny! What’s that hiding in the water over there?
“It’s nothing, dear,” replied Nanny, without raising her eyes from her novelette; “only a frog.”
“But it looks like a man,” the young viper protested.
“I know, dear. They do,” and Nanny went on serenely with her reading.
The child was evidently dissatisfied and continued to stare at me with large, devouring eyes, and was presently joined by his fellow demon. But now a new object appeared, to divert their attention and mine. A man came along the bank just behind them, walking quickly and breaking now and again, into a shambling trot. I watched him at first without special interest; but when he had passed, and a back view was presented, I found myself viewing him with suddenly-awakened curiosity. What first attracted my attention was a patch in the rear of his trousers. For my own trousers had a precisely similar patch: I had sewn it in myself, so I knew it thoroughly. It was an extraordinary coincidence. The two patches were identical in shape and colour, but more than this; the pattern of the man’s trousers was absolutely the same as the pattern of mine. There could be no doubt about it. They were made from the same piece; or else—Yes! The horrible conviction forced itself on me—they were my trousers!
But that was not all. A glance at the coat, Yea! and even the cap, revealed familiar traits. The fellow was walking off in my clothes!
For a brief space, modesty, anger and chilly horror struggled for mastery; and in that interval the man disappeared over a fence. Then modesty was “outed” and I stood up. The children howled with joy; the nursemaid bounced up and retreated, making audible references to a “disgusting creature,” and I ran splashing through the shallows towards the spot where I had undressed. For it was fairly certain that the man had not come to this place unclothed. He must have left some sort of exuvium in place of mine. But if the exchange had been worth his while—well! my expectations expressed themselves in a premonitory impulse to scratch myself, for whatever the clothes were like, I should have to put them on.
The reality turned out to be better and worse than my anticipations. The clothes were good enough; better than mine, in fact, though the colour—a dusty buff—was disagreeable. But it was the decoration that spoiled them. Some misguided person had covered them with a pattern that recalled the device on a bench mark. The broad arrow, to put it in a nutshell. My absent friend wa
s a run-away convict.
I huddled the wretched garments on as quickly as I could, for I was chilled to the marrow; and as I stood up in that livery of shame, I was sensible of a subtle influence that exhaled from it, impelling me to skulk in unfrequented places and to sneak from cover to cover. Of course the mistake could be explained if I was arrested; but I didn’t want to be arrested. I was safer at large. The better plan was to get home if possible, or make for Sturt and Wopsalls, where I was known. But how was I to get home? My return ticket was in the pocket of the vanished trousers in company with a clasp-knife and eighteen-pence, and miles of town lay between me and safety.
I crept stealthily round the meadows away from the river, keeping under the cover of hedges and fences and reviewing anxiously my chances of escape, which seemed hopelessly remote. Ahead of me, near the side of a meadow, were a couple of hayricks, like enormous loaves; and the narrow space between their ends looked a likely place in which to conceal myself while I thought over my plans. Accordingly I crept along under the hedge until I was opposite the ricks, when I dashed out across the open, darted into the space between the ricks, and nearly fell over a man who was lying there smoking a pipe.
“I beg your pardon,” I stammered. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Don’t mention it,” he replied suavely. “If I’d expected yer I’d ha’ told the footman to announce yer.” He sat up, and, regarding me attentively, asked: “And how goes it? Doin’ a bit of a skyboozle I guess?” I assented vaguely, not being perfectly clear as to the nature of a skyboozle, and he then enquired: “How did yer git out o’ the jug?”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 87
