Aurora Floyd

by M. E. Braddon

  He was returning to the inn at which he had taken up his abode, and where he was supposed to be a traveller in the Glenfield starch and sugar-plum line, tired and worn out with a day's useless work, when he was attracted by the appearance of some ready-made garments gracefully festooned about the door of a Doncaster pawnbroker, who exhibited silver teaspoons, oil paintings, boots and shoes, dropsical watches, doubtful rings, and remnants of silk and satin in his artistically-arranged window.

  Mr. Grimstone stopped short before the money-lender's portal.

  "I won't he beaten," he muttered between his teeth. "If this man has got any waistcoats, I'll have a look at 'em."

  He lounged into the shop in a leisurely manner, and asked the proprietor of the establishment if he had anything cheap in the way of fancy waistcoats.

  Of course the proprietor had everything desirable in that way, and from a kind of grove or arbor of all manner of dry goods at the back of the shop he brought out half a dozen brown-paper parcels, the contents of which he exhibited to Mr. Joseph Grimstone.

  The detective looked at a great many waistcoats, but with no satisfactory result.

  "You have n't got anything with brass buttons, I suppose?" he inquired at last.

  The proprietor shook his head reflectively.

  "Brass buttons a'n't much worn nowadays," he said; "but I'll lay I've got the very thing you want, now I come to think of it. I got 'em an uncommon bargain from a traveller for a Birmingham house, who was here at the September meeting three years ago, and lost a hatful of money upon Underhand, and left a lot of things with me, in order to make up what he wanted."

  Mr. Grimstone pricked up his ears at the sound of "Birmingham." The pawnbroker retired once more to the mysterious caverns at the back of his shop, and, after a considerable search, succeeded in finding what he wanted. He brought another brown-paper parcel to the counter, turned the flaming gas a little higher, and exhibited a heap of very gaudy and vulgar-looking waistcoats, evidently of that species of manufacture which is generally called slop-work.

  "These are the goods," he said; "and very tasty and lively things they are, too. I had a dozen of 'em; and I've only got these five left."

  Mr. Grimstone had taken up a waistcoat of a flaming check pattern, and was examining it by the light of the gas.

  Yes; the purpose of his day's work was accomplished at last. The back of the brass buttons bore the name of Crosby, Birmingham.

  "You've only got five left out of the dozen," said the detective; "then you've sold seven?"

  "I have."

  "Can you remember who you sold 'em to?"

  The pawnbroker scratched his head thoughtfully.

  "I think I must have sold 'em all to the men at the works," he said. "They take their wages once a fortnight; and there's some of 'em drop in here every other Saturday night to buy something or other, or to take something out of pledge. I know I sold four or five that way."

  "But can you remember selling one of them to anybody else?" asked the detective. "I'm not asking out of curiosity; and I don't mind standing something handsome by and by, if you can give me the information I want. Think it over, now, and take your time. You could n't have sold 'em all seven to the men from the works."

  "No, I did n't," answered the pawnbroker, after a pause. "I remember, now, I sold one of them—a fancy sprig on a purple ground—to Josephs, the baker in the next street; and I sold another—a yellow stripe on a brown ground—to the head gardener at Mellish Park."

  Mr. Joseph Grimstone's face flushed hot and red. His day's work had not been wasted. He was bringing the buttons by Crosby of Birmingham very near to where he wanted to bring them.

  "You can tell me the gardener's name, I suppose?" he said to the pawnbroker.

  "Yes; his name's Dawson. He belongs to Doncaster, and he and I were boys together. I should not have remembered selling him the waistcoat, perhaps—for it's nigh upon a year and a half ago—only he stopped and had a chat with me and my missis the night he bought it."

  Mr. Grimstone did not linger much longer in the shop. His interest in the waistcoats was evidently departed. He bought a couple of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, out of civility, no doubt, and then bade the pawnbroker good-night.

  It was nearly nine o'clock; but the detective only stopped at his inn long enough to eat about a pound and a quarter of beefsteak, and drink a pint of ale, after which brief refreshment he started for Mellish Park on foot. It was the principle of his life to avoid observation, and he preferred the fatigue of a long and lonely walk to the risks contingent upon hiring a vehicle to convey him to his destination.

  Talbot and John had been waiting hopefully all the day for the detective's coming, and welcomed him very heartily when he appeared, between ten and eleven. He was shown into John's own room this evening, for the two gentlemen were sitting there smoking and talking after Aurora and Lucy had gone to bed. Mrs. Mellish had good need of rest, and could sleep peacefully now; for the dark shadow between her and her husband had gone for ever, and she could not fear any peril, any sorrow, now that she knew herself to be secure of his love. John looked up eagerly as Mr. Grimstone followed the servant into the room; but a warning look from Talbot Bulstrode checked his impetuosity, and he waited till the door was shut before he spoke.

  "Now, then, Grimstone," he said, "what news?"

  "Well, sir, I've had a hard day's work," the detective answered, gravely, "and perhaps neither of you gentlemen—not being professional—would think much of what I've done. But, for all that, I believe I'm bringin' it home, sir; I believe I'm bringing of it home."

  "Thank God for that!" murmured Talbot Bulstrode, reverently.

  He had thrown away his cigar, and was standing by the fireplace, with his arm resting upon the angle of the mantle-piece.

  "You've got a gardener by the name of Dawson in your service, Mr. Mellish?" said the detective.

  "I have," answered John; "but, Lord have mercy upon us! you don't mean to say you think it's him. Dawson's as good a fellow as ever breathed."

  "I don't say I think it's any one as yet, sir," Mr. Grimstone answered, sententiously; "but when a man, as had two thousand pound upon him in bank-notes, is found in a wood shot through the heart, and the notes missin'—the wood bein' free to anybody as chose to walk in it—it's a pretty open case for suspicion. I should like to see this man Dawson, if it's convenient."

  "To-night?" asked John.

  "Yes; the sooner the better. The less delay there is in this sort of business, the more satisfactory for all parties—with the exception of the party that's wanted," added the detective.

  "I'll send for Dawson, then," answered Mr. Mellish; "but I expect he'll have gone to bed by this time."

  "Then he can but get up again, if he has, sir," Mr. Grimstone said, politely. "I've set my heart upon seeing him to-night, if it's all the same to you."

  It is not to be supposed that John Mellish was likely to object to any arrangement which might hasten, if by but a moment's time, the hour of the discovery for which he so ardently prayed. He went straight off to the servants' hall to make inquiries for the gardener, and left Talbot Bulstrode and the detective together.

  "There a'n't nothing turned up here, I suppose, sir," said Joseph Grimstone, addressing Mr. Bulstrode, "as will be of any help to us?"

  "Yes," Talbot answered; "we have got the numbers of the notes which Mrs. Mellish gave the murdered man. I telegraphed to Mr. Floyd's country-house, and he arrived here himself only an hour ago, bringing the list of the notes with him."

  "And an uncommon plucky thing of the old gentleman to do, beggin' your pardon, sir," exclaimed the detective, with enthusiasm.

  Five minutes afterward Mr. Mellish re-entered the room, bringing the gardener with him. The man had been into Doncaster to see his friends, and only returned about half an hour before; so the master of the house had caught him in the act of making havoc with a formidable cold joint, and a great jar of pickled cabbage, in the servants' hall.

/>   "Now, you're not to be frightened, Dawson," said the young squire, with friendly indiscretion; "of course nobody for a moment suspects you any more than they suspect me; but this gentleman here wants to see you, and of course you know there's no reason that he should n't see you, if he wishes it, though what he wants with you—"

  Mr. Mellish stopped abruptly, arrested by a frown from Talbot Bulstrode; and the gardener, who was innocent of the faintest comprehension of his master's meaning, pulled his hair respectfully, and shuffled nervously upon the slippery Indian matting.

  "I only want to ask you a question or two to decide a wager between these two gentlemen and me, Mr. Dawson," said the detective, with reassuring familiarity. "You bought a second-hand waistcoat of Gogram, in the market-place, did n't you, about a year and a half ago?"

  "Ay, sure, sir. I bought a weskit at Gogram's," answered the gardener; "but it were n't second-hand—it were bran new."

  "A yellow stripe upon a brown ground?"

  The man nodded, with his mouth wide open, in the extremity of his surprise at this London stranger's familiarity with the details of his toilet.

  "I dunno how you come to know about that weskit, sir," he said, with a grin; "it were wore out full six months ago; for I took to wearin' of 't in t' garden, and garden-work soon spiles anything in the way of clothes; but him as I give it to was glad enough to have it, though it was awful shabby."

  "Him as you give it to?" repeated Mr. Grimstone, not pausing to amend the sentence in his eagerness. "You gave it away, then?"

  "Yees, I gave it to th' softy; and was n't the poor fond chap glad to get it, that's all!"

  "The softy!" exclaimed Mr. Grimstone. "Who's the softy?"

  "The man we spoke of last night," answered Talbot Bulstrode; "the man whom Mrs. Mellish found in this room upon the morning before the murder—the man called Stephen Hargraves."

  "Ay, ay, to be sure; I thought as much," murmured the detective. "That will do, Mr. Dawson," he added, addressing the gardener, who had shuffled a good deal nearer to the doorway in his uneasy state of mind. "Stay, though; I may as well ask you one more question. Were any of the buttons missing off that waistcoat when you gave it away?"

  "Not one on 'em," answered the gardener, decisively. "My missus is too particular for that. She's a reg'lar toidy one, she is; allers mendin' and patchin'; and if one of t' buttons got loose, she was sure to sew it on toight again before it was lost."

  "Thank you, Mr. Dawson," returned the detective, with the friendly condescension of a superior being. "Good-night."

  The gardener shuffled off, very glad to be released from the awful presence of his superiors, and to go back to the cold meat and pickles in the servants' hall.

  "I think I'm bringing the business into a nutshell, sir," said Mr. Grimstone, when the door had closed upon the gardener. "But the less said the better just yet a while. I'll take the list of the numbers of the notes, please, sir; and I believe I shall come upon you for that two hundred pound, Mr. Mellish, before either of us is many weeks older."

  So, with the list made by cautious Archibald Floyd bestowed safely in his waistcoat-pocket, Mr. Joseph Grimstone walked back to Doncaster through the still summer's night, intent upon the business he had undertaken.

  "It looked uncommon black against the lady about a week ago," he thought, as he walked meditatively across the dewy grass in Mellish Park; "and I fancy the information they got at the Yard would have put a fool upon the wrong scent, and kept him on it till the right one got worn out. But it's clearing up—it's clearing up beautiful; and I think it'll turn out one of the neatest cases I ever had the handling of."

  CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  OFF THE SCENT.

  It is scarcely necessary to say that, with the button by Crosby in his pocket, and with the information acquired from Dawson, the gardener, stowed away carefully in his mind, Mr. Joseph Grimstone looked with an eye of particular interest upon Steeve Hargraves, the softy.

  The detective had not come to Doncaster alone. He had brought with him an humble ally and follower in the shape of the little shabby-looking man who had encountered the softy at the railway station, having received orders to keep a close watch upon Mr. Stephen Hargraves. It was, of course, a very easy matter to identify the softy in the Town of Doncaster, where he had been pretty generally known since his childhood.

  Mr. Grimstone had called upon a medical practitioner, and had submitted the button to him for inspection. The stains upon it were indeed that which the detective had supposed, blood; and the surgeon detected a minute morsel of cartilage adhering to the jagged hasp of the button; but the same surgeon declared that this missile could not have been the only one used by the murderer of James Conyers. It had not been through the dead man's body; it had inflicted only a surface wound.

  The business which now lay before Mr. Grimstone was the tracing of one or other of the bank-notes; and for this purpose he and his ally set to work upon the track of the softy, with a view of discovering all the places which it was his habit to visit. The haunts affected by Mr. Hargraves turned out to be some half-dozen very obscure public-houses, and to each of these Joseph Grimstone went in person.

  But he could discover nothing. All his inquiries only elicited the fact that Stephen Hargraves had not been observed to change, or attempt to change, any bank-note whatever. He had paid for all he had had, and spent more than it was usual for him to spend, drinking a good deal harder than had been his habit theretofore; but he had paid in silver, except on one occasion, when he had changed a sovereign. The detective called at the bank; but no person answering the description of Stephen Hargraves had been observed there. The detective endeavored to discover any friends or companions of the softy; but here again he failed. The half-witted hanger-on of the Mellish stables had never made any friends, being entirely deficient in all social qualities.

  There was something almost miraculous in the manner in which Mr. Joseph Grimstone contrived to make himself master of any information which he wished to acquire; and before noon on the day after his interview with Mr. Dawson, the gardener, he had managed to eliminate all the facts set down above, and had also succeeded in ingratiating himself into the confidence of the dirty old proprietress of that humble lodging in which the softy had taken up his abode.

  It is scarcely necessary to this story to tell how the detective went to work; but while Stephen Hargraves sat soddening his stupid brain with medicated beer in a low tap-room not far off, and while Mr. Grimstone's ally kept close watch, holding himself in readiness to give warning of any movement on the part of the suspected individual, Mr. Grimstone himself went so cleverly to work in his manipulation of the softy's landlady, that in less than a quarter of an hour he had taken full possession of that weak point in the intellectual citadel which is commonly called the blind side, and was able to do what he pleased with the old woman and her wretched tenement.

  His peculiar pleasure was to make a very elaborate examination of the apartment rented by the softy, and any other apartments, cupboards, or hiding-places to which Mr. Hargraves had access. But he found nothing to reward him for his trouble. The old woman was in the habit of receiving casual lodgers, resting for a night or so at Doncaster before tramping further on their vagabond wanderings; and the six-roomed dwelling-place was only furnished with such meagre accommodation as may be expected for fourpence and sixpence a night. There were few hiding-places. No carpets, underneath which fat bundles of bank-notes might be hidden; no picture-frames, behind which the same species of property might be bestowed; no ponderous cornices or heavily-fringed valances shrouding the windows, and affording dusty recesses wherein the title-deeds of half a dozen fortunes might lie and rot. There were two or three cupboards, into which Mr. Grimstone penetrated with a tallow candle; but he discovered nothing of any more importance than crockery-ware, lucifer-matches, firewood, potatoes, bare ropes, on which an onion lingered here and there, and sprouted dismally in its dark loneliness, empty ginger-beer bottles, oyster
-shells, old boots and shoes, disabled mouse-traps, black beetles, and humid fungi rising ghost-like from the damp and darkness.

  Mr. Grimstone emerged, dirty and discomfited, from one of these dark recesses after a profitless search which had occupied a couple of weary hours.

  "Some other chap'll go in and cut the ground under my feet, if I waste my time this way," thought the detective. "I'm bless'd if I don't think I've been a fool for my pains. The man carries the money about him, that's clear as mud; and if I were to search Doncaster till my hair got gray, I should n't find what I want."

  Mr. Grimstone shut the door of the last cupboard which he had examined with an impatient slam, and then turned toward the window. There was no sign of his scout in the little alley before the house, and he had time, therefore, for further business.

  He had examined everything in the softy's apartment, and he had paid particular attention to the state of Mr. Hargraves' wardrobe, which consisted of a pile of garments, every one of which bore in its cut and fashion the stamp of a different individuality, and thereby proclaimed itself as having belonged to another master. There was a Newmarket coat of John Mellish's, and a pair of hunting-breeches, which could only have been built by the great Poole himself, split across the knees, but otherwise little the worse for wear. There was a linen jacket, and an old livery waistcoat that had belonged to one of the servants at the Park; odd tops of every shade known in the hunting-field, from the spotless white, or the delicate Champagne-cleaned color of the dandy, to the favorite vinegar hue of the hard-riding country squire; a groom's hat with a tarnished band and a battered crown; hobnailed boots, which might have belonged to Mr. Dawson; corduroy breeches, that could only have fitted a dropsical lodge-keeper long deceased; and there was one garment which bore upon it the ghastly impress of a dreadful deed, that had but lately been done. This was the velveteen shooting-coat worn by James Conyers, the trainer, which, pierced with the murderous bullet, and stiffened by the soaking torrent of blood, had been appropriated by Mr. Stephen Hargraves in the confusion of the catastrophe. All these things, with sundry rubbish in the way of odd spurs and whip-handles, scraps of broken harness, ends of rope, and such other scrapings as only a miser loves to accumulate, were packed in a lumbering trunk covered with mangy fur, and secured by about a dozen yards of knotted and jagged rope, tied about it in such a manner as the softy had considered sufficient to defy the most artful thief in Christendom.