CHAPTER XXXVI.
ALAN BEGINS HIS GAME.
Baffled in this first attempt to obtain the desired information, Alan sets his lips firmly, and plans a new mode of attack. And in the morning he made a second effort.
Going down to his lately-deserted study, shuddering with a little fastidious chill as he made his way across the darkened room and noted the stale atmosphere; frowning, too, when he drew back a heavy curtain and observed that there was dust upon his cabinets, and that motes were swimming in the streak of light that came through the parted curtains he rang his bell and sent for Millie.
She came promptly, courtesying demurely, and seemingly keeping in her mind Leslie’s instructions, “to listen, to obey, and to keep silence.”
“Millie,” said Alan, with just a shade of patronage in his tone, “go to Mrs. Warburton, and ask her if she will receive me for a few moments this morning. Tell her that it is a matter of business.”
Millie dropped another courtesy, and silently departed with her message, proudly conscious that she had, on this occasion at least, deported herself like a proper servant. And Alan returned to the window, where the light streamed in, and the motes drifted lazily up and down in its rays.
This study was situated at the end of a wing, the front windows opening upon a well-kept lawn, but the side window, at which Alan stood, directly overlooking a by-street, quite narrow and lined with rows of shade trees.
For a few moments Alan stood looking down into this quiet street. Then with an impatient movement, he turned his gaze inward. It fell first upon a tall cabinet which stood near the window, and was partially lighted up by it.
Again he noted the dust upon its panels with a frown of discontent, and then he moved toward it, opening one of the doors with a sort of aimless restlessness peculiar to people who wait impatiently, yet delude themselves with the belief that they are models of calm deliberation.
It was a deep cabinet, richly lined with embossed velvet of a glowing crimson hue, and studded with hooks and brazen brackets, which supported a splendid collection of arms that gleamed at you in cold, cruel, brilliant relief from their gorgeous background.
There were highly polished, elegantly finished modern rifles, rare pieces of home and foreign workmanship; there were blood-thirsty duelling pistols; Damascus blades; light, jaunty French foils; Italian stillettoes; German student-swords; and a heavy, piratical-looking cutlass. In the midst of them all, a group of splendid Toledo swords, beautiful in design and workmanship, were suspended.
As his eye rested upon this group, Alan’s face lost its frown of annoyance and took on a look of profound sorrow, while a heavy sigh escaped his lips. They had been gifts from Archibald, years before, when the two had made a foreign tour—Alan’s first and Archibald’s last—together.
Gazing upon these souvenirs, his mind went back to the old days of his student-life, and his brother’s companionship. At the sound of approaching footsteps, he recalled himself with a start, pushed the door of the cabinet from him with a hasty movement which left it half unclosed, and turned toward Millie, who entered as demurely as before, closely followed by a footman, who presented to Alan an official-looking letter.
Taking the missive from the salver, Alan dismissed the man and then turned to the girl.
“Well, Millie?”
“Mrs. Warburton says, sir, that she can not leave her room this morning, but hopes to be able to do so this afternoon.”
“Very well, Millie;”—the frown returning to his face—“you may go.” And he muttered: “I suppose that means that she will condescend to receive me this afternoon. Well, I must bide my time.”
He returned to the window, and standing near it, looked curiously at the envelope in his hand. It was addressed in bold, scrawling characters that were, spite of their boldness, almost illegible. Slowly he opened it, and slowly removed the sheet it enclosed.
“What a wretched scrawl!” he muttered. And then, with a glance at the printed letter-head, “Office of the Chief of Police:” “That’s legible, at all events. It’s from—from—hum, strange that a man can’t write his own name—B—B—C— of course, it’s from the Chief of Police.”
Slowly and laboriously, he deciphered the letter.
A. Warburton. etc.
Dear Sir:—We have just secured, for your case, a very valuable man, Mr. Augustus Grip, late of Scotland Yards. He is an able and most successful detective; we hope much from him. Have already instructed him to extent of our ability, and he will wait upon you personally this P. M., between, say, three and four o’clock. You will do well to give Mr. G— full latitude in the case.
Very respectfully, etc.
This much Alan slowly deciphered, and this gave the key to the unreadable signature. It was from the Chief of Police, evidently.
Alan reperused the letter, and slowly returned it to its envelope.
“This comes at the right moment,” he soliloquized. “If this Grip is what he is said to be, he may save me in more ways than one.”
And once more he summoned a servant, and gave these instructions:
“See that this room is thoroughly aired and set in order before three o’clock;” adding, as the servant was turning away: “Show a person who will call here after that hour, into this room, and then bring me his name.”
In the arrival of such a message, at that precise moment, there was, to Alan Warburton, no occasion for surprise. From the first he had communicated with the officers of the law by letter, or by quiet interviews held in his own apartments.
He was fully alive to the fact that, in dealing with the police, he was himself in momentary danger. But having resolved, from the beginning, to make his own safety and welfare secondary to that of little Daisy, he had been strengthened and confirmed in this resolve by his recent interview with Leslie. And now, in his dogged determination to find the Francoises, he vowed to sacrifice, if need be, his entire fortune, and accept any attendant danger, in prosecuting a vigorous search for these old wretches, and the missing child.
His brother’s illness and death had furnished him with a sufficient reason for living secluded, and for receiving such business callers as he chose to admit, in his own apartments. Only this morning he had dispatched a missive to police headquarters, desiring the Chief to secure the services of the best detectives at any cost, and to send to him for instructions or consultation, representing himself as confined to the house by slight indisposition.
He hated a falsehood, but, as he penned this fabrication, he had thrown the moral responsibility of the act upon the already heavily burdened shoulders of his sister-in-law.
And now, as he went slowly from the study, he looked forward anxiously, but not apprehensively, to the two coming interviews: the first, with Leslie; the second, with Mr. Grip, of Scotland Yards.