CHAPTER VIII.
Now the intention of the two conspirators, who were conspiring, without Clifford’s knowledge, to cure him of his infatuation, was to keep this luckless adventure from coming to his ears. But it leaked out in spite of them; and one evening, when they were enjoying their pipes in the rooms they shared together, they found themselves confronted with King himself, in a state of boiling indignation.
It was in vain they tried to prove to him how laudable their intentions had been, how much for the good of the young lady herself it would have been if they could have cleared up the ugly mystery.
“If you could have cleared it up, no one would have been more thankful, more grateful than I,” retorted Clifford, whose face had grown haggard with anxiety, with unhappiness on Nell’s account. “But to send a young fool, without tact, without delicacy, like Lowndes, spying about, and making a thundering idiot of himself—why, it was more what you would expect of a couple of schoolboys than of two full-grown men out of Hanwell!”
“As to that,” replied Conybeare, mildly, “I don’t know that Lowndes has less tact than anybody else. I must say that, in the circumstances, I should have acted very much as he did; at least as far as following the woman to the room and through the window was concerned. One doesn’t stand upon strict ceremony with a thief, even a female one.”
“Nell Claris is not a thief!” cried Clifford, with excitement. “I would not believe it if all the judges and magistrates in England told me so!”
“Ah, that’s it! You will not believe. But, my dear fellow, do you think Lowndes had anything to gain by telling a story which showed him in such a ridiculous and undignified light?”
“I think that if he had been a man of more judgment and tact, he would have found out something worth finding out, and not have made an ass of himself during the proceedings.”
“Now, my dear Clifford, you are unreasonable, as all persons suffering from your ailment are,” said Conybeare, rising, and standing in a judicial attitude in front of the fire. “Because you admire this young woman, you think she is incapable of a crime which has, in my opinion, been traced clearly home to her. If the woman whom Lowndes saw and followed was not Miss Claris, how was it that she made, when pursued, straight for Miss Claris’s room? Could Miss Claris have a bedfellow—there was only one bed in the room—without knowing it? If she had a bedfellow, would not some person in the house have been acquainted with the fact, and would not the sudden disappearance of this person arouse suspicion even in the innocent mind of Miss Claris?”
“But I don’t believe a word of the whole story. Lowndes had too much whisky before going to bed, and having his mind full of the tales you had told him, he dreamed that he saw a woman in the room, and started in pursuit of a wholly imaginary figure. You know he admits he had nothing stolen. The only part of the story which I do believe is his own idiotic flight through a door and a window, and the bath in the river which sobered him.”
“All right,” said Conybeare. “It’s no business of mine whether you believe Lowndes or not. Let us drop the subject.”
But to Clifford there was only one subject in the world, and as he could not talk about that, he would not talk about anything. He sat moodily silent for ten minutes, paying no heed to the conversation of the other two, and then abruptly took his leave.
As soon as he had gone, Conybeare showed great excitement.
“Look here,” said he, with determination, “that fellow’s being ruined by his infatuation for this little jade. If we don’t manage to bring matters to a climax, he’ll be beforehand with us by going down and marrying her, or some such folly. We’ve tried sending down an amateur detective, and it’s been a failure. Let’s try a professional one.”
But Willie hung back.
“I don’t quite like to do that,” objected he. “Supposing the girl didn’t do it, after all, you know? It would make us feel rather small, wouldn’t it? And then, of course, Clifford would be more madly infatuated than ever. He would rush down with a license in one pocket and a ring in the other, and she’d come back ‘Mrs. King’ in the twinkling of an eye.”
“Well, and why on earth shouldn’t he, if the girl’s all right?” said Conybeare, composedly. “I should have nothing to say against that.”
“But I should,” persisted Willie. “If you hadn’t persuaded me to think her a thief, I should have liked her to be ‘Mrs. Jordan.’ And if she does turn out to be innocent—”
“She won’t,” replied Conybeare, placidly. “I am not in love with the girl, and I can see with clear eyes. But she’s so preciously artful that it would take a clever chap to bring her to book. I shall call round at a Detective Agent’s to-morrow.”
Now although both the friends were careful to keep the fact of this determination from Clifford’s ears, the young barrister was shrewd enough to guess that, having gone so far unsuccessfully, they would feel bound to take some steps to vindicate their sagacity.
So fully convinced was he that they would make some fresh attempt to fix the guilt of the robberies on Nell, that he went down to Courtstairs at the end of the week, and on the Sunday morning walked over to the Blue Lion, with the intention of warning her that she and her uncle would probably be subjected to more annoyance of the kind from which they had recently suffered.
His road lay past Shingle End, and as he approached Colonel Bostal’s house he overtook the old gentleman and his daughter on their way back from church.
The colonel, recognizing Clifford, as the latter merely raised his hat and would have passed, called him to stop.
“No, no,” said he, good-humoredly, “we don’t get so many visitors down from London at this time of year, that we can afford to let you go by like that.”
Miss Bostal, however, was less cordial. She did not offer to shake hands with him, and she eyed his tweed suit and low-crowned hat with open disfavor.
“I am afraid,” said Clifford, “that Miss Bostal thinks I haven’t brought enough of London down with me.”
The colonel laughed, and said they would overlook that. But the prim little lady said icily:
“I know that young men take things easily, nowadays. It is the fashion. But it used to be thought rather shocking to see a gentleman on Sundays without a frock coat and a tall hat. I am old-fashioned and prejudiced, I suppose, but—”
Her father interrupted her.
“Good gracious, Theodora, if you are old-fashioned, what ought I to be? And I should think Mr. King very foolish to walk along a country road in his Bond Street get-up on Sunday or any other day.”
“Oh, it is I who am foolish!” retorted Miss Theodora. “I suppose the clergyman didn’t mind; he gets too much used to that sort of thing nowadays. But in my young days, a vicar would have felt himself insulted if any member of the upper classes had appeared at service in such a costume.”
Even the colonel, who was presumably accustomed to his daughter’s vagaries, was astonished at her acrimonious tones. Clifford, who was hardly prepared with an answer, was much relieved when she made an excuse of preparing dinner to leave him with her father.
As the spare figure, with its curiously old-fashioned dress of fifteen years back, lifted up its skirts with both hands, in the ancient manner, and disappeared into the house, the colonel laughed silently.
“I need not apologize for my daughter, I suppose,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “Women fossilize more quickly than we do, you know.”
“I really began to feel rather frightened,” said Clifford. “I was speculating as to what would happen if I should let slip the fact that I hadn’t been to church at all this morning.”
“She knew that as well as we did, I imagine,” said the colonel. “The vicar gave us an hour and ten minutes of it this morning, so I suppose she felt bitter.”
“I don’t see why she should have vented her feelings on me,” murmured Clifford.
But the old gentleman suddenly stopped short. He had been walking on with Clifford in the direction of the Blue Lion.
“I have it!” he exclaimed with conviction. “It’s on account of Nell Claris, her little protégée. My daughter is very indignant about the way in which the girl has been persecuted lately, and I suppose she thinks that you have had something to do with it.”
“Then indeed she is wrong!” cried Clifford, hotly. “Nobody is more angry than I am about it. And you will believe me when I tell you that I have come down to-day on purpose to ask Nell, and for the second time, to be my wife.”
The old gentleman listened with vivid interest.
“Come back with me; do come inside the house with me for one minute,” he said, with as much excitement as the young man himself had shown. “Theodora will be ready to embrace you when she hears.”
But Clifford, who was in no hurry to be embraced by Theodora, excused himself. He had so little time, he said; he was afraid he should hardly be able to get back to Courtstairs before dark.
“Tell Miss Theodora,” said he, “that I am very grateful to her for believing in my darling girl. I call her mine, although she won’t give me the right to do so. But I haven’t given up hope, and I shall not do so, even if she refuses me again.”
Still it was with very little confidence in his immediate chances of success that Clifford, after taking leave of the colonel, walked briskly on to the little inn. He had written to Nell three or four times, without receiving a single line in answer. She had not returned his letters; she must have received and had probably read them. If there was anything to hope for in that fact, he might hug the thought to his heart; but, considering the terms in which he had written, the warmth with which he had begged her to let him come down and see her, there was very little encouragement in that.
He was luckier than he had ventured to expect. For as he came over the little bridge which spanned the river, he saw Nell herself approaching the house from the opposite direction. She had her prayer-book in her hand, and was evidently returning from Stroan, where she had been to church.
She saw him as soon as he saw her, stopped, turned pale, and ran a few steps to the left, evidently with the hope of escaping into the fields behind a group of cottages which stood between her and the inn. But Clifford was too quick for her. She saw by the pace by which he approached that it was useless to try to avoid him, so she gave up the attempt, and came steadily on with her eyes on the ground.
“Miss Claris! Nell!” said he, in a low voice, as he came up to her.
She raised her eyes to his face for a moment only, and he saw that a great change had taken place in the girl since he had last seen her. There was in her face a sullen expression, as different as possible from the child-like openness of face and manner which had seemed to him her greatest charm. And his heart smote him as he thought that this change had been brought about, though unintentionally indeed, by him.
“You are not glad to see me, I can see that,” he went on, hurriedly, as he turned and kept pace with her. “Of course, I had no right to expect that you would be, but still I had hoped.”
She made no answer.
“You got my letters?”
“Yes,” answered Nell, in a tone in which he was surprised to detect a tremor.
“You know that I asked you to let me come down?”
“I—I did not write to say you might, though.”
But her tone was not angry, he thought.
“Well, I did wait as long as I could, but, Nell, I was too miserable to wait any longer. And now that I see you, and see that you look changed, and think that it is my fault, I feel as if I could hang myself.”
He hoped she would say something, but she did not. After a few moments’ silence, he saw that a tear was falling down her cheek.
“Oh, my darling!” broke out Clifford, unable to restrain himself any longer, “won’t you let me marry you and take you away? You have known me long enough now, haven’t you?”
But Nell shook her head.
“I would never marry any one till this affair of the robberies was cleared up,” answered she, firmly.
“And can’t you help us to find it out?”
At this her face changed. She looked up at him with an expression of angry defiance.
“That is what you came down for, then—to see whether I could tell you anything, and satisfy your curiosity without your having the trouble of sending any more detectives down!” she cried, uttering the words with breathless rapidity, while her frame shook from head to foot. “No, Mr. King, I don’t know anything, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You have begun by prying into this business your own way; you may finish it your own way, too!”
“Nell, surely you don’t think I had anything to do with that wretched business! You can’t think so—you can’t! Why, it is to warn you that I have come—to warn you that some one else may be sent. Mind, I don’t know this; I only guess it; but I thought it right that you should know.”
But instead of seeming grateful for the information, Nell evidently took it as a fresh offense.
“Why should you warn me?” she asked; and the pallor of her face gave place suddenly to a red blush of anger. “Is it that I may put a check to my larcenous propensities until he has gone away again?”
“Nell, Nell, how can you? You would not if you knew how horribly it makes me suffer!”
“Suffer! Ah, it does matter when you suffer, doesn’t it? But when it is only a country innkeeper’s niece who suffers, who cares? And yet one would have thought—one would have thought—”
She broke down completely and burst into tears. Clifford was at least as unhappy as she, and there was moisture in his own eyes as he tried in vain to comfort her. He did succeed at last, however, in making her confess that she had never believed that he had any share in the sending from town of the amateur detective, Jack Lowndes. As for the fresh arrival which Clifford told her to expect she shrugged her shoulders about it when she had grown a little calmer.
“Let them send him,” she said, recklessly. “I shall not even advise my uncle to refuse to let him stay, even if I guessed who he is. It must all be found out some day, and the harder they try, the sooner it will all be over.”
As she was now quite calm and dry-eyed, Clifford made one more attempt to get at her own real views of the mystery. She had grown kinder to him, and had acquitted him of all blame. For her own sake he must make use of the opportunity.
And again when he put his question, there came into the girl’s face that curious look, as if a vague, haunting memory had disturbed her mind.
“I tell you solemnly, I have no more idea than you have yourself,” said she. “I will confess now that I had a sort of horrible sort of half-idea before—”
“And you will not tell me what that sort of half-idea was?” interrupted Clifford, eagerly.
“No,” answered Nell, firmly.
“And now?” pursued Clifford.
“Now I have no more idea who did it than you have yourself. At first I tried to think that this Mr. Lowndes went to sleep with his head full of thoughts of robbery, and that he dreamed all that long story that he told us. But the more I thought about his manner of telling us, the more I could not help believing that it was not a dream, after all. And yet—”
“You saw no one go through your room but him?”
“No one,” answered Nell, emphatically.
“Could it have been—the—the servant, the woman I saw in the bar?” suggested Clifford, with lowered voice.
Nell smiled sadly.
“Poor Meg? No. She has been with my uncle for fifteen years; and, you know, they say it is only lately, since I have been here, in fact,” and again she grew crimson, “that the thefts have been committed. I am ashamed to say that that night, when Mr. Lowndes had told his story, I did go into poor Meg’s room, just to—just to see if she was there. And she was fast asleep; really fast asleep, not shamming. I tried her with a lighted candle before her eyes; you see I was desperate,” she added, in apology. “And then I even went downstairs and had a look at old Nannie!”
And Nell looked deeply ashamed of the fact she was confessing.
But Clifford, who had naturally less delicacy on the subject of Nannie and Meg, secretly cherished a hope that, in some inexplicable way, one or the other of these estimable persons might get them all out of their difficulty by eventually confessing to the thefts. But he was careful to give no hint of this hope to Nell.
Clifford did not want to see George Claris, but he felt bound to do so. The innkeeper was, as he had anticipated, very surly in manner toward him; and he frustrated Clifford’s intention of opening his heart to him on the subject of Nell by abruptly disappearing from the bar almost as soon as the young man entered it.
Clifford did not see Nell again; she had entered the house at the back, and he came in by the front, and although he lingered about until it was almost dark in the hope that she would relent and come out and bid him farewell, he was obliged to return to Courtstairs and thence to town without that consolation. Nell, on the alert for the expected visitor, was not long before she discovered him. He came, only a few days after Clifford’s visit, in the guise of a mild-looking man with sandy hair and pale eyes, one of those men whose age it is difficult to guess until you perceive by a close inspection of the wrinkles under the eyes that the apparent lad is well over forty.
George Claris had no suspicion of his visitor’s profession. In spite of the rumors about the house, there were travellers staying there about five nights in the seven. But then these were usually of a humble class, whose pockets might be considered not worth the picking.
The detective himself, for such he was, called himself a commercial traveller, and professed, during the four nights he spent under the roof of the Blue Lion, to do a round of business calls in the neighboring towns, returning to the inn toward evening, now from one direction, now from another, in a perfectly unostentatious and business-like manner. On the second day he announced that he should have money to receive on the fourth, and he made this announcement in the presence of as many people as he could. Jem Stickels, who still hung about the Blue Lion with malicious eyes on Nell, two or three other fishermen and a couple of farm laborers were in the bar at the time.
Jem nudged one of his companions, and winked knowingly. The detective, without appearing to do so, saw the wink and took note of Jem.
When the last lingerer had been turned out, and the Blue Lion had closed its doors for the night, the detective made a few notes in his own room before he went to bed.
On the fourth night, when he was supposed to be in possession of the collected money, the detective went upstairs as usual, but not to sleep. He had avoided such an accident by a nap in the afternoon. Fully dressed, he lay down under the bed coverings, and for three hours, listening intently to the slightest sound in the house, he waited.
And presently, about two hours before the dawn, the expected visitor came.
Very softly, with the rapid, light movements of an expert, the figure crept round by the wall, groping, searching. The man in bed sprang up, leaped out, and planted his back against the door.
Then for five minutes he waited in vain. Not a sound betrayed the presence of another person in the room. He took a box of matches from his pocket, and struck a light. He could see the greater part of the small room, but no trace of a human being besides himself.
After the lapse of a few minutes, it occurred to him that the intruder might have concealed himself in a cupboard which filled the recess between the wall and the fireplace on the other side of the bed. Trusting to his own nimbleness to prevent the escape of the thief, he climbed quickly over the bed, and had his hand on the cupboard door, when a sound behind him caused him to turn his head just in time to see the door of the room flung open by the shadowy figure, who must have been in hiding under the bed.
The detective sprang to the door, and caught the disappearing figure by the arm. Instantly it was as still as a statue.
“Now I have got you!” cried the detective, between his teeth. “Let’s have a look at you.”
Still holding the arm in a firm grip, he struck a fusee from a case he found in his handiest pocket. Before he could distinguish anything, however, the light was promptly blown out by his prisoner, who began to struggle violently. Still holding the glowing fusee, he tried, while holding his captive, to distinguish her features by the red glow. In her frantic efforts to free herself, she flung the back of one imprisoned hand right upon the fusee, and uttered a short cry of pain. The next moment, by a dexterous twist, she had wrenched herself away.
The next thing of which the detective was conscious was that there was a sound like a fall at the bottom of the stairs, and then the back door was opened and shut again with a bang.