Works of Ellen Wood, page 928
Do not reproach Karl Andinnian with being an unstable or vacillating man. He was nothing of the kind. But he was living under exceptional circumstances, and there seemed to be risk to his unfortunate brother on the left hand and on the right. If discovery should chance to supervene through any rash step of his, Karl’s, remorse would never cease from racking him to the end of his bitter life.
CHAPTER VII.
At Lawyer St. Henry’s.
LAWYER ST. HENRY sat at his well-spread breakfast table. He was a little man with a bald head and good-natured face, who enjoyed his breakfast as well as all his other meals. Since his nieces had considered it necessary to their spiritual welfare to attend matins at St. Jerome’s, the lawyer had been condemned to breakfast alone. The sun shone on the street, and Mr. St. Henry sat in a room that faced it. Through the wire blinds he could see all the passings and repassings of his neighbours; which he very well liked to do; as well as the doings of Paradise Row opposite.
“Hallo!” he cried, catching sight of a face at Mrs. Jinks’s parlour window, “Cattacomb’s not gone out this morning! Puff must have come over early to officiate. Thinks he’ll take it easy, I suppose, now he’s got an underling: no blame to him, either. The girls will be dished for once. Nobody goes down with ’em like Cattacomb.”
Laughing a little at the thought, he helped himself to a portion of a tempting-looking cutlet surrounded with mushrooms. This being nearly despatched, he had leisure to look abroad again and make his mental comments.
“There goes the doctor: he’s out early this morning. Going to see old Etheredge, perhaps: wonder how the old fellow is. And there’s Mother Jinks taking in a sweetbread. Must be for the parson’s breakfast. Sweetbreads are uncommonly good, too: I’ll have one myself to-morrow morning if it can be got. Why, here comes Sir Karl Andinnian! He is out early, too. That young man looks to me as though he had some care upon him. It’s a nice countenance; very: and if — I declare he is coming here! What on earth can he want?”
Sir Karl Andinnian was ringing the door-bell. It has been already said that the lawyer’s offices were in Basham, for which place he generally started as soon as breakfast was over. Therefore, if any client wished to see him at Foxwood, it had to be early in the morning or late in the evening. This was known and understood.
Sir Karl was shown in, Mr. St. Henry glancing at his breakfast-table and the three or four dirty plates upon it He had finished now, and they sat down together at the window. Sir Karl, not to detain him unnecessarily, entered at once upon the question he had come to ask — Had he, or had he not, power to do anything with St. Jerome’s! And the lawyer laughed a little; for St. Jerome’s afforded him fun, rather than otherwise.
“Of course, Sir Karl, if Truefit choose to warn them off the land, he could do it,” was the lawyer’s reply. “Not without notice, though, I think: I don’t know what the agreement was. As to yourself — well I am not clear whether you could do anything: I should like to see Truefifs lease before giving an opinion. But, if they were shut out of St. Jerome’s to-day, they’d contrive to start another place tomorrow.”
“That is quite likely,” said Karl.
“My advice to you is this, Sir Karl: don’t bother yourself about it,” said the easy-going lawyer. “People expect you to interfere? Never mind that: let them expect. The thing will die away of itself when winter comes. Once the frost and snow set in, the girls, silly monkeys, won’t be trapesing to St. Jerome’s; neither will they come jinketing over by omnibusfuls from Basham. Wait and shut it up then. If you attempt to do it now, you will meet with wide opposition: by waiting, you may do it almost without any.”
“You really think so!”
“I am nearly sure so,” said the hearty lawyer. “There’s nothing like bad weather for stopping expeditions of chivalry. But for having had the continuous sunshine the summer has given us, St. Jerome’s would not have been the success it is.”
“They have dressed Tom Pepp in a conical cap, and put a red cross all down his back outside,” said Sir Karl.
The lawyer burst into a laugh. “I know,” he said. “I hear of the vagaries from my nieces. It’s fun for me. They go in for them wholesale, and come home with their heads full.”
“But it is not religion, Mr. St. Henry.”
“Bless me, no. Religion? The girls may give it that name; and perhaps one or two among them may be earnest enough in thinking it so; the rest are only after Cattacomb.”
“There’s another one now, I hear. One Puff.”
“And a fine puff of wind he is. Got no more brains than a gander. I’ll see Truefit and inquire what agreement it was he made with them, if you like, Sir Karl; but I should certainly recommend you to leave the matter alone a little longer.”
Sir Karl thought he would accept the advice; and got up to leave. He often saw Truefit about the land, and could take an opportunity of questioning him himself. As he stood for a moment at the window, there passed down the middle of the street a stranger, walking slowly; that is, a stranger to Karl. It was Mr. Strange.
Now it happened that Karl had never yet seen this man — at least, he had never noticed him. For the detective, being warned by Grimley that Sir Karl had, or seemed to have, some reason for screening Salter — had kept out of Sir Karl’s way. He thought it would not conduce at all to his success to let Sir Karl know he was down there on the scent. Therefore, whenever he had observed Sir Karl coming along — and he had kept his eyes sharply open — he had popped into a shop, or drawn behind a hedge, or got over a style into another field. And Karl, in his mind’s abstraction — for it nearly always was abstracted, lost in its own fear and pain — had not thought of looking out gratuitously for strangers. But, standing up at the lawyer’s window, the street close before him, he could not fail to observe those who passed up and down: and his attention was at once drawn to this man.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“That! oh, that’s a Mr. Strange,” said the lawyer, laughing again — and in his laugh this time there was something significant. “At least, that’s his name here.”
“And not elsewhere?”
“I fancy not.”
“Is he staying at Foxwood? What is he doing here?”
“He is certainly staying at Foxwood. As to his business, I conclude it is something in the private detective line, Sir Karl.”
Mr. Strange, whose attention in passing had been directed to some matter on the other side of the way and not to the lawyer’s window, consequently he did not know that he was being watched, had halted a little lower down to speak to the landlord of the Red Lion. All in a moment, as Karl looked at him, the notion flashed into his mind that this man bore a strong resemblance to the description given by Ann Hopley of the man who had invaded the Maze. The notion came to him in the self-same moment that the words of the lawyer fell on his ears— “His business, I conclude, is something in the private detective line.” What with the notion, and what with the words, Karl Andinnian fell into a confused inward tumult, that caused his heart’s blood to stop, and then course wildly on. Business at Foxwood, connected with detectives, must have reference to his brother, and to him alone.
“A slight-made gentleman with a fair face and light curly hair, looking about thirty,” had been Ann Hopley’s description; it answered in every particular to the man Karl was gazing at; gazing until he watched him out of sight. Lawyer St. Henry, naturally observant, thought his guest stared after the man as though he held some peculiar interest in him.
“Do you know who that man really is, Mr. St. Henry?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Sir Karl. No reason why I should not, for I have not been told to keep it a secret. Some little time back, my nieces grew full of the new lodger at Mrs. Jinks’s; they were talking of him incessantly: A gentleman reading divinity—”
“Why, that’s Mr. Cattacomb,” interrupted Sir Karl. “He lodges at Mrs. Jinks’s.”
“Not that ladies’ idiot,” cried the lawyer, rather roughly. “I beg your pardon, Sir Karl, but the Reverend Guy sometimes puts me out of patience. This man has the upper rooms, Cattacomb the lower—”
“But I — I thought that was a boy: a lad at his studies,” reiterated Karl, in some perplexity. “I assumed him to be a pupil of Cattacomb’s.”
“It is the man you have just watched down the street, Sir Karl. Well, to go on. My nieces were always talking of this new gentleman, a Mr. Strange, who had come to Foxwood to get up his health, and to read up for some divinity examination. That was their account. They said so much about him that I got curious myself: it was a new face, you see, Sir Karl, and girls go wild over that. One morning when I was starting for the office, the gig at the door, Jane ran out to me. ‘Uncle,’ she said, ‘that’s Mr. Strange coming down Mrs. Jinks’s steps now: you can see him if you look.’ I did look, Sir Karl, and saw the gentleman you have just seen pass. His face struck me at once as one that I was familiar with, though at the moment I could not tell where I had seen him. Remembrance came to me while I looked — and I knew him for an officer connected with the detective force at Scotland Yard.”
Karl drew a long breath. He was listening greedily.
“About a year ago,” resumed the lawyer, “my agent in London, Mr. Blair, had occasion to employ a detective upon some matter he was engaged in. I was in London for a few days at that time, and saw the man twice at Blair’s — and knew him again now. It was this same Mr. Strange.”
“And you say Strange is not his right name!”
“No, it’s not.”
“What is the right one?”
“Well, I can’t tell you the right one, Sir Karl, for I cannot remember it I am sure of one thing — that it was not Strange. It was a longer name, and I think rather a peculiar name; but I can’t hit upon it.
He must be down here on some private business, and has no doubt his own reasons for keeping incog. I recollect Blair told me he was one of the astutest officers in the detective force.”
“Has he recognised you!”
“He could not recognise me,” said Mr. St. Henry, “I don’t suppose he ever saw me to notice me. Each time that he called on Blair, it happened that I was in the front office with the clerks when he passed through it. He was not likely to have observed me.”
“You have not spoken to him, then?”
“Not I.”
“And — you don’t know what his business here may be.”
“Not at all. Can’t guess at it. It concerns neither you nor me, Sir Karl, and therefore I have not scrupled to tell you so much. Of course you will not repeat it again. If he chooses to remain unknown here, and pass himself off for a student of divinity — doubtless for sufficient reasons — I should not be justified in proclaiming that he is a London detective, and so possibly ruin his game.”
Sir Karl made a motion of acquiescence. His brain was whirling in no measured degree. He connected the presence of this detective at Foxwood with the paragraph that had appeared in the newspaper touching the escaped convict from Portland Island.
“Would there — would there be any possibility of getting to know his business?” he dreamily asked.
“Not the slightest, I should say, unless he chooses directly to disclose it Why? You cannot have any interest in it, I presume, Sir Karl, whatever it may be.”
“No, no; certainly not,” replied Sir Karl, awaking to the fact that he was on dangerous ground. “One is apt to get curious on hearing of business connected with detectives,” he added, laughing; “as interested as one does in a good novel.”
“Ay, true,” said the lawyer, unsuspiciously.
“At Mrs. Jinks’s he is lodging, is he?” absently remarked Karl, turning to depart; and inwardly marvelling how he could have caught up the notion that the person there was only a lad, a pupil of Cattacomb’s.
“At Mrs. Jinks’s, Sir Karl; got her drawing-room. Wonder how the Rev. Guy would feel if he knew the man over his head was a cute detective officer?”
“I suppose the officer cannot be looking after him,” jested Sir Karl. “St. Jerome’s is the least sound thing we know at Foxwood.”
The lawyer laughed a hearty laugh as he attended Sir Karl to the door; at which Mr. St. Henry’s gig was now waiting to take him into Basham.
It was not a hot morning, but Karl Andinnian took off his hat repeatedly on the way home to wipe his brow. The dreadful catastrophe he had been fearing for his unfortunate brother seemed to be drawing ominously near.
“But for that confounded Smith, Adam might have been away before,” he groaned. “I know he might. Smith—”
And there Karl stopped; stopped as though his speech had been suddenly cut off. For a new idea had darted into his mind, and he stayed to ponder it Was this detective officer down here to look after Philip Salter? — and not after Adam at all?
A conviction, that it must be so, took possession of him; and in the first flush of it the relief was inexpressibly great. But he remembered again the midnight watcher of the Maze and the morning visit following it; and his hopes fell back to zero. That this was the same man who had watched there could remain no doubt whatever.
Passing into his own room, Karl sat down and strove to think the matter out He could arrive at no certain conclusion. One minute he felt sure the object was his brother; the next, that it was only Salter.
But, in any case, allowing that it was Salter, there must be danger to Adam. If this cunning London detective were to get into the Maze premises again and see the prisoner there, all would be over. The probability was, that he was personally acquainted with the noted criminal Adam Andinnian: and it might be, that he had gained a suspicion that Adam Andinnian was alive.
One thing Karl could not conceal from himself — and it brought to him a rush of remorse. If the detective had come down after Salter, he — he, Karl — must have been the means of bringing him there.
But for that unpleasant consciousness he would have gone straight off to Smith the agent, and told him of the trouble that was threatening Adam, and said, “What shall we do in it; how screen him?” But he did not dare. He did not dare to make a move or stir a step that might bring Smith and the detective in contact. He could not quite understand why, if Smith were really Salter, the detective had not already pounced upon him: but he thought it quite likely that Smith might be keeping himself out of sight. In short, the thoughts and surmises that crossed and re crossed Karl’s brain, some probable enough, others quite improbable, were legion. Not for the world, if he could help it, would he aid — further than he had perhaps unhappily aided — in denouncing Salter; and knowing what he had done, he could not face the man. He had never intended to harm him.
So there Karl was, overwhelmed with this new perplexity, and not able to stir in it. He saw not what he could do. To address the detective himself, and say whom are you after, would be worse than folly; of all people he, Karl Andinnian, must keep aloof from him. It might be that there was only a suspicion about Adam’s being alive, that they were trying to find out whether it was so or not. For him, Karl, to interfere or show interest, would help it on.
But this suspense was well nigh intolerable. Karl could not live under it. Something he must do. If only he could set the question at rest, as to which of the two criminals the detective was after, it would be a good deal gained. And he could only do that by applying to Mr. Burtenshaw. It was not sure that he would, but there was a chance that he might.
Lady Andinnian was in her little sitting-room upstairs, when she heard Sir Karl’s footstep. He entered without knocking: which was very unusual. For they had grown ceremonious one with another since the estrangement and knocked at doors and asked permission to enter, as strangers. Lucy was adding up her housekeeping bills.
“I am going to London, Lucy. Some business has arisen that I am very anxious about, and I must go up at once.”
“Business with Plunkett and Plunkett?” she asked, a slight sarcasm in her tone, though Karl detected it not, as she remembered the plea he had urged for the journey once before.
“No, not with Plunkett and Plunkett. The business, though, is the same that has been troubling my peace all the summer. I think I shall be home tonight, Lucy: but if I cannot see the person I am going up to see, I may have to wait in town until to-morrow. Should the last train not bring me down, you will know the reason.”
“Of course your movements are your own, Sir Karl.”
He sighed a little, and stood looking from the window. The first train he could catch would not go by for nearly an hour, so he had ample time to spare. Lucy spoke.
“I was going to ask you for some money. I have scarcely enough, I think, for these bills.”
“Can you wait until I return, Lucy? I have not much more in the house than I shall want. Or shall I give you a cheque? Hewitt can go to the bank at Basham and cash it.”
“Oh! can wait quite well. There’s no hurry for a day or two.”
“You shall have it to-morrow in any case. If I stay away as long as that I shall be sure to return during banking hours, and will get out at Basham and draw some money.”
“Thank you.”
“Good-bye, Lucy.”
She held out her hand in answer to his, and wished him good-bye in return. He kept it for a minute in his, stooped and kissed her cheek.
It brought a rush of colour to her face, but she said nothing. Only drew away her hand, bent over her figures again, and began adding them up steadily. He passed round to his chamber, putting a few things in a hand-bag in case he had to stay away the night.
Then he went down to his room and penned a few lines to Adam, entreating him to be unusually cautious. The note was enclosed in an outer envelope, addressed to Mrs. Grey. He rang the bell for Hewitt, and proceeded to lock his desk.
“I want you to go over to the Maze, Hewitt,” he said in a low tone — and had got so far when, happening to raise his eyes, he saw it was Giles and not Hewitt who had entered. Karl had his wits about him, and Hewitt came in at the moment.
