“You had better take your letter, George,” he said. “If there are originals in it, they will be more safe with you than with me. You can tell me all about it, now you are here. Gerald will leave us presently.”
He held the papers towards me. To take them was to take an active part in the imposture, and I hesitated, my hand half outstretched. But my eyes fell at the critical instant upon Master Gerald’s face, and my scruples took themselves off. He was eyeing the packet with an intense greed, with a trembling longing — a very itching of the fingers, to fall upon the prey — that put an end to my doubts. I took the papers. With a quiet, but I think a significant, look in his direction, I placed them in the breast-pocket of my coat. I had no safer receptacle about me, or into that they would have gone.
“Very well, sir,” I said. “There is no particular hurry. I think the matter will keep, as things now are, until to-morrow.”
“So much the better. You ought not to be out with such a cold, my boy,” he continued. “You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water and a lemon? The servants are all at the theatre — Gerald begged a holiday for them — but Barnes will get you the things in a minute.”
“Thank you; I won’t trouble him. I will take some with cold water,” I replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted — time to think; five minutes to myself, while they played.
But I was out in my reckoning. “I will have mine also now,” he said. “Will you mix it, Gerald?”
Gerald jumped up to do it with tolerable alacrity. I sat still, preferring to help myself, when he should have attended to his father — if his father it was. I felt more easy now that I had those papers in my pocket. The more I thought of it, the more certain I became that they were the object of whatever deviltry was on foot; and that possession of them gave me the whip-hand. My young gentleman might snarl and show his teeth, but the prize had escaped him.
Perhaps I was a little too confident; a little too contemptuous of my opponent; a little too proud of the firmness with which I had taken at one and the same time the responsibility and the whip-hand. A creak of the board behind the screen roused me from my thoughts. It fell upon my ear trumpet-tongued: it contained, I know not what note of warning. I glanced up with a conviction that I was napping, and looked instinctively towards the young man. He was busy at the tray, his back to me. Relieved of my fear of something — perhaps a desperate attack upon my pocket, I was removing my eyes, when I caught sight of his reflection in a small mirror beyond him.
What was he busy about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at the moment. He was standing motionless — I could fancy him breathless also — a listening expression on his face; which seemed to me to have faded to a greyish tinge. His left hand was clasping a half-filled tumbler; the other was at his waistcoat pocket. So he stood during perhaps a second, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome figure; then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the mirror. Swiftly as thought could pass from brain to limb, the hand which had been resting in the pocket flashed with a clatter among the glasses; and turning as quickly, he brought one of the latter to the chess-table, and set it down unsteadily.
What had I seen! Actually nothing. Just what Gerald had been doing. Yet my heart was going as many strokes to the minute as a losing crew. I rose abruptly.
“Wait a moment, sir,” I said, as the elder man laid his hand upon the glass, “I don’t think that Gerald has mixed this quite as you like it.”
He had already lifted it to his lips. I looked from him to Gerald. The young man’s colour, though he faced me hardily, shifted, and he seemed to be swallowing a succession of oversized fives-balls. But his eyes met mine in a vicious kind of smile that was not without its gleam of triumph. I was persuaded that all was right before his father said so.
“Perhaps you have mixed for me?” I suggested pleasantly.
“No!” he answered in sullen defiance. He filled a glass with something — perhaps it was water — and drank it, his back towards me. He had not spoken so much as a single word to me before.
The blind man’s ear recognized the tone. “I wish you boys would agree better,” he said wearily. “Gerald, go to bed. I would as soon play chess with an idiot from Earlswood. Generally you can play the game if you are good for nothing else; but since your brother came in, you have not made a move which any one save an imbecile would make. Go to bed, boy! Go to bed!”
I had stepped to the table while he spoke. One of the glasses was full. I lifted it with seeming unconcern to my nose. There was whisky in it as well as water. Then had Gerald mixed for me? At any rate, I put the tumbler aside, and helped myself afresh. When I set the glass down — and empty, my mind was made up.
“Gerald does not seem inclined to move, sir,” I said quietly, “so I will. I will call in the morning and discuss that matter, if it will suit you. To-night I feel inclined to get to bed early.”
“Quite right, my boy. I would ask you to take a bed here instead of turning out, but I suppose that Laura will be expecting you. Come in to-morrow morning. Shall Barnes call a cab for you?”
“I think I will walk,” I answered, shaking the proffered hand. “By the way, sir,” I added, “have you heard who is the new Home Secretary?”
“Yes, Henry Matthews,” he replied. “Gerald told me. He had heard it at the club.”
“It is to be hoped that he will have no womanish scruples about capital punishment,” I said as if I were incidentally considering the appointment. And with that last shot at Mr. Gerald — he turned green, I thought, a colour which does not go well with a black moustache — I walked out of the room, which looked so peaceful, so cosy, so softly lighted, I went downstairs. I hoped that I had paralysed the young fellow, and might leave the house without molestation.
But as I gained the foot of the stairs he tapped me on the shoulder. I saw then, looking at him, that I had mistaken my man. Every trace of the defiance which had marked his manner upstairs was gone. His face was still pale, but it wore a smile as we confronted one another under the hall lamp. “I have not the pleasure of knowing you, but let me thank you for your help,” he said in a low voice, yet with a kind of frank spontaneity. “Barnes’ idea of bringing you in was a splendid one, and I am greatly obliged to you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I answered, proceeding with my preparations for going out, as if he were not there. Although I must confess that this complete change in him exercised my mind no little.
“I feel so sure that we may rely upon your discretion,” he went on, ignoring my tone, “that I need say nothing about that. Of course, we owe you an explanation, but as the cold is yours and not my brother’s, you will not mind if I read you the riddle to-morrow instead of keeping you from your bed to-night?”
“It will do equally well — indeed better,” I said, putting on my overcoat, and buttoning it across my chest, while I affected to be looking with curiosity at the sedan chair.
He pointed to the place where the packet lay. “You are forgetting the papers,” he reminded me. His tone almost compelled the answer, “To be sure!”
But I had made up my mind, and I answered instead, “Not at all. They are quite safe, thank you!”
“But you don’t — I beg your pardon — —” He opened his eyes very wide as he spoke, as if some new light were beginning to shine upon his mind and he could scarcely believe its revelations. “You don’t mean that you are going to take those papers away with you?”
“Certainly.”
“My dear sir!” he remonstrated earnestly. “This is preposterous. Pray forgive me the reminder, but those papers, as my father gave you to understand, are private papers, which he supposed himself to be handing to my brother George.”
“Just so!” was all I said. And I took a step towards the door.
“You mean to take them?” he asked seriously.
“I do; unless you can explain the part I hav
e played this evening. And also make it clear to me that you have a right to the possession of the papers.”
“Confound it! If I must do so to-night, I must!” he said reluctantly. “I trust to your honour, sir, to keep the explanation secret.” I bowed, and he went on: “My elder brother and I are in business together. Lately we have had losses which have crippled us so severely that a day or two ago we decided to disclose them to Sir Charles and ask his help. George did so yesterday by letter, giving certain notes of our liabilities. You ask why he did not make such a statement by word of mouth? Because he had to go to Liverpool at a moment’s notice to make a last effort to arrange the matter. As for me,” with a curious grimace, “my father would as soon discuss business with his dog! Sooner!”
“Well?” I said. He had paused, and was nicking the blossoms off the geraniums in the fireplace with his pocket-handkerchief, looking moodily at his work the while. I cannot remember noticing the handkerchief, yet I can see it now. It had a red border, and was heavily scented with white rose. “Well?”
“Well,” he continued, with a visible effort, “my father has been ailing, and this morning his doctor made him see Bristowe. He is an authority on heart-disease, as you know; and his opinion is,” he added in a lower voice and with some emotion, “that even a slight shock may prove fatal.”
I began to feel hot and uncomfortable. What was I to think? The packet was becoming as lead in my pocket.
“Of course,” he resumed more briskly, “that threw our difficulties into the shade; and my first impulse was to get these papers from him. All day I have been trying in vain to effect it. I took Barnes, who is an old servant, into my confidence, but we could think of no plan. My father, like many people who have lost their sight, is jealous, and I was at my wits’ end when Barnes brought you up. Your likeness,” he added, looking at me reflectively, “to George put the idea into my head, I fancy. Yes, it must have been so. When I heard you announced — for a moment I thought that you were George.”
“And you called up a look of the warmest welcome,” I put in.
He coloured, but answered immediately, “I was afraid that he would assume that the governor had read his letter, and blurt out something. Good lord! if you knew the funk in which I have been all the evening lest my father should ask me to read the letter!” He gathered up his handkerchief with a sigh, and wiped his forehead.
“I could see it very plainly,” I answered, going slowly over what he had told me. To tell the truth, I was in no slight quandary what I should do, or what I should believe. Was this really the key to it all? Dared I doubt it? or that that which I had constructed was a mare’s nest — the mere framework of a mare’s nest? For the life of me I could not tell!
“Well, sir?” he said, looking up with an offended air. “Is there anything else I can explain? or will you have the kindness to return my property to me now?”
“There is one thing, about which I should like to ask a question,” I said.
“Ask on,” he replied; and I wondered whether there was not a little too much of bravado in the tone of sufferance he assumed.
“Why do you carry” — I went on, raising my eyes to his, and pausing on the word— “that little medicament — you know what I mean — in your waistcoat pocket?”
He flinched. “I don’t quite — quite understand,” he began to stammer. Then he changed his tone and went on rapidly, “No! I will be frank with you, Mr. Mr. — —”
“George,” I said.
“Ah, indeed?” a trifle surprised, “Mr. George! Well, it is something Bristowe gave me this morning to administer to my father — without his knowledge, if possible — should he grow excited. I did not think that you had seen it.”
Nor had I. I had only inferred its presence. But having inferred rightly, I was inclined to trust my inference farther. Moreover, while he gave this explanation his breath came and went so quickly that my former suspicions returned. I was ready for him when he said —
“Now I will trouble you, if you please, for those papers?”
“I cannot give them to you,” I replied, point blank.
“You cannot give them to me?” he repeated.
“No. Moreover the packet is sealed. I do not see, on second thoughts, what harm I can do you — now that the packet is out of your father’s hands — by keeping it until to-morrow, when I will return it to your brother, from whom it came.”
“He will not be in London,” he answered doggedly. He stepped between me and the door with looks which I did not like. At the same time I felt that some allowance must be made for a man treated in this way.
“I am sorry,” I said, “but I cannot do what you ask. I will do this, however. If you think the delay of importance, and will give me your brother’s address in Liverpool, I will undertake to post the letters to him at once.”
He considered the offer, eyeing me the while with the same disfavour which he had exhibited in the drawing-room. At last he said slowly —
“If you will do that?”
“I will,” I repeated. “I will do it immediately.”
He gave me the direction— “George Ritherdon, at the London and North-Western Hotel, Liverpool,” and in return I gave him my own name and address. Then I parted from him, with a civil good night on either side — and little liking — the clocks striking midnight, and the servants coming in as I passed into the cool darkness of the square.
Late as it was, I went straight to my club, determined that, as I had assumed the responsibility, there should be no laches on my part. There I placed the packet, together with a short note explaining how it came into my possession, in an outer envelope, and dropped the whole, duly directed and stamped, into the nearest pillar-box. I could not register it at that hour, and rather than wait until next morning, I omitted the precaution, merely requesting Mr. Ritherdon to acknowledge its receipt.
Some days passed during which it may be imagined that I thought no little about my odd experience. It was the story of the Lady and the Tiger over again. I had the choice of two alternatives — at least. I might either believe the young fellow’s story, which certainly had the merit of explaining in a fairly probable manner an occurrence which did not lend itself freely to explanation. Or I might disbelieve his story, plausible in its very strangeness as it was, in favour of my own vague suspicions. Which was I to do?
I set out by preferring the former alternative. This, notwithstanding that I had to some extent committed myself by withholding the papers. But with each day that passed without bringing an answer from Liverpool, I leaned more and more to the other side. I began to pin my faith to the tiger, adding each morning a point to the odds in the animal’s favour. So it went on until ten days had passed.
Then a little out of curiosity, but more, I declare, because I thought it the right thing to do, I resolved to seek out George Ritherdon. I had no difficulty in learning where he could be found. I turned up the firm of Ritherdon Brothers (George and Gerald), cotton-spinners and India merchants, in the first directory I consulted. And about noon the next day I called at their place of business, and sent in my card to the senior partner. I waited five minutes — curiously scanned by the porter, who without doubt saw a likeness between me and his employer — and then I was admitted to the latter’s room.
He was a tall man with a fair beard, not a whit like Gerald, and yet tolerably good-looking; if I say more I shall seem to be describing myself. I fancied him to be balder about the temples, however, and greyer and more careworn than the man I am in the habit of seeing in my shaving-glass. His eyes, too, had a hard look, and he seemed to be in ill-health. All these things I took in later. At the time I only noticed his clothes. “So the old gentleman is dead,” I thought, “and the young one’s tale was true after all!” George Ritherdon was in deep mourning.
“I wrote to you,” I began, taking the seat to which he pointed, “about a fortnight ago.”
He looked at my card, which he held in his hand.
“I think not,” he said slowly.
“Yes,” I repeated. “You were then at the London and North-Western Hotel, at Liverpool.”
He was stepping to his writing-table, but he stopped. “I was in Liverpool,” he answered in a different tone, “but I was not at that hotel. You are thinking of my brother, are you not?”
“No,” I said. “It was your brother who told me you were there.”
“Perhaps you had better explain,” he suggested, speaking in the weary tone of one returning to a painful matter, “what was the subject of your letter. I have been through a great trouble lately, and this may well have been overlooked.”
I said I would, and as briefly as possible I told the story of my strange visit in Fitzhardinge Square. He was much moved, walking up and down the room as he listened, and giving vent to occasional exclamations, until I came to the arrangement I had made with his brother. Then he raised his hand as one might do in pain.
“Enough!” he said. “Barnes told me a rambling tale of some stranger. I understand it all now.”
“So do I, I think!” I replied dryly. “Your brother went to Liverpool, and received the papers in your name?”
He murmured what I took for “Yes.” But he did not utter a single word of acknowledgment to me, or of reprobation of his brother’s deceit. I thought some such word should have been spoken; and I let my feelings carry me away. “Let me tell you,” I said, warmly, “that your brother is a — —”
“Hush!” he said, holding up his hand. “He is dead.”
“Dead!” I repeated, shocked and amazed.
“Have you not seen it in the papers? It is in all the papers,” he said wearily. “He committed suicide — God forgive me for it! — at Liverpool, at the hotel you have named, and the day after you saw him.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 828
