CHAPTER XLVII.—UNDER-CURRENTS.
Shield had not been so perfectly frank with Philip as the latter believed him to be. For instance, he had not mentioned that when Coutts came to him with affected concern on account of the position in which his brother might be placed by the forged bill, he had not admitted to him that the signature was a forgery.
What he said to Coutts was: ‘Looks queer—but don’t know. Accustomed to sign things that come through regular channel without looking close into them. Will see what Hawkins and Jackson have to say about it and let you know.’
Then Coutts took from his pocket a note which had been written to his brother by Austin Shield and placed the two signatures side by side.
‘I do not think that any one looking at these would hesitate to say that they were not written by the same hand.’
‘Don’t know. My hand shakes at times. Don’t always sign in exactly the same way. Not always sure of my own signature—when it comes back to me. Will inquire and let you know.’
‘I am positive that the writing is not yours, Mr Shield; and I should never have touched the paper if there had been any signature of yours beside me at the time. Although the amount may not be of much consequence to you, it will be a heavy loss to me. But I could have no suspicion of there being anything wrong, when I saw Philip’s name to the bill.’
‘All right. Will inquire.—Good-day.’
When Coutts left the room, this big bearish man growled fiercely and the growl ended in this note—‘Skunk.’ He immediately telegraphed for his friend Mr Beecham; and that was why Beecham had so suddenly quitted Kingshope.
On the day on which Madge made her memorable visit to London, Mr Beecham’s conjuring friend, Bob Tuppit, called at Wrentham’s cottage and asked for Mrs Wrentham. She could not be seen for half an hour; but Tuppit was ready to wait an hour or more, if Mrs Wrentham’s convenience should require it. He was accordingly shown into the dining-room—the place where Wrentham spent the greater part of his evenings at home, smoking and concocting schemes for the realisation of that grand vision of his life—a comfortable income and a home somewhere in the sunny south.
Tuppit was a quick-eyed little man, or he could not have earned his living as a conjurer; and when he had turned himself round about twice, he had the character and position of every bit of furniture photographed on his mind’s eye. He looked longest at a heavy mahogany desk which was bound with unusually massive brass clasps.
‘What a duffer!’ he said under his breath. ‘He has got something in there that will do for him; and he puts on those big clasps like labels, every one saying as plain as plain can be: “Look here, if you want to find out my little game.” Well, having gone in for this sort of thing, he might have taken the trouble to learn the ABC of his business.’
Tuppit’s nimble fingers went round the desk and tried its fastenings.
‘Spring lock, too. So much the worse for him. Dier will pitch on it at once.’
The door burst open, and little Ada Wrentham bounced in, her pretty cheeks healthfully flushed, the hoop in her hand indicating how she had been engaged.
‘O dear!’ she exclaimed, drawing back when she saw that there was a stranger in the room.
‘Don’t go away—I’m a friend of yours,’ said Tuppit quickly.—‘Don’t you remember me? I saw you watching me when I was performing on the green in the summer-time, and you were with your nurse, and you sent me a penny.’
The child stopped, stared, then advanced a few paces timidly till she came to a sunbeam which crossed the room, dividing it in two. Then she put out her pretty hands, moving them to and fro as if laving them in the sunshine, whilst her eyes were full of wonder.
‘Was it you did all those funny things with the cards and the pigeons and the pennies, and the orange and the glass of water?’
‘That was me, Ada—you see I know your name—and if you like, I will show you some more funny things just now whilst I am waiting for your mamma.’
‘I’ll go and bring mamma. She would like to see them too.’
‘No, no; don’t go for her. She will be here as soon as she is ready. Besides, this is a trick I want to show you all to yourself. You are not afraid of the magician—are you?’
Little Ada peered at him through the sunbeam. He was such a little man; and although his cheeks were somewhat hollow and his complexion rather sallow, there was an expression of frank gentleness in his eyes which at once inspired confidence. A child might trust him, and a child is quick to detect untrustworthy persons.
‘I’m not afraid—why should I?’ said Ada laughing.
‘Because you do not know me—at least you do not know me enough to be quite sure that I am not the wicked magician who tried so hard to kill Aladdin because he got hold of the wonderful lamp.’
‘But that was a long time ago,’ she said with an air of thoughtfulness; ‘and papa says there are no magicians—no real magicians—and no ghosts now, and that anybody who pretends to tell fortunes or to do magic things is’——
The child instinctively paused and turned her face away.
‘Is an impostor, and ought to be taken up by the policeman,’ said Tuppit, cheerfully completing the sentence for her; ‘and he is quite right so far. All the same, Ada, there are great magicians always close by us. There is the Good Magician, Love, who makes you fond of your father and mother and ready to do kindly things for other people. Then there are the wicked magicians Anger and Envy, who make you hate everybody and everybody hate you. But you know I don’t pretend to be like them; I only make-believe—that is, I perform tricks and tell you how they are done.’
‘Is that all?’ she said, disappointed, allowing her hands to drop, and passing through the sunbeam, which had hitherto formed a golden bar between them.
‘That is all; but you have to work a great deal before you can do so much.—Now, here is this big desk—your papa opens it by magic; but do you know how it is done?’
‘O yes; he takes out a nail and pushes something in—but that’s telling. Could you do it? I have seen papa do it often, and he did not mind me; but he doesn’t like anybody else to see him, for he was angry one day when nurse Susan came in without knocking just as he was going to open it.’
Tuppit was already busy examining the brass screws. He found one the notch of which indicated that it was more frequently used than the others. A penknife served his purpose; he took out the screw, thrust a thin pencil into the hole; pressed it, and the desk opened.
‘Oh, how clever!—That was just the way papa used to do it, only he had a brass thing for sticking into the hole,’ said the child admiringly. ‘I’ve tried to do it.’
There was nothing in the desk; and Tuppit, with a long-drawn breath of relief, closed it, replacing the screw as before. But he had kept on chattering to the child all the time, and muttering parenthetically observations to himself.
‘You must show your papa that you know how it is done, Ada.... Nothing in it may tell for or against him.... And he will think it so funny that we should find it out.... It’s a sign that he knows the game is up and is making ready to bolt.... But you must tell him that it was only a little bit of Tuppit’s conjuring, and that he was glad to find nothing.’
Ada drew back towards the door, a little frightened by the change in his manner, which betrayed excitement in spite of his self-control.
‘I think—I am beginning to be afraid of you now. You are not like the good magician any more.’
‘That’s true, Ada,’ he said humbly, as he wiped his brow with that wonderful silk handkerchief which was of so much use to him in his professional exploits. Cold as the weather was, he seemed to be perspiring. ‘But you know the change is only one of my tricks. Now, I will come back. Hey, Presto, change.... There, am I not smiling the same as before?’
‘No; you are not. You are looking ugly.’
‘Ah, let me hide my head.’
He bent down with a would-be comical manner of astonishment and chagrin. The child laughed in a hesitating way, as if not quite reassured that it was all fun. As he stooped, his eye fell on a waste-paper basket under the table. He snatched it out, and found in it a ball of blotting-paper which had been crumpled into that shape by an impatient hand. This he smoothed out on the table and then held up so that the sunbeam fell full upon it.
‘This is the thing. Thank heaven, it is in my hands.’ He carefully folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Then with real heartiness he turned to the wondering child. ‘Now, Ada, I can laugh again; and if there was time enough, I would show you some beautiful things. Look here, for instance. Open your hand; I place that penny in it.—Close your hand. You are sure you have the penny?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Presto, change. The penny is gone.’
‘No, it isn’t!’ cried the child, laughing, and opening her hand, displayed the penny lying on the palm.
‘Keep it, keep it, my child; you deserve it; and take this shilling to keep it company,’ said poor Bob Tuppit, who in his agitation had failed in one of the simplest tricks of the prestidigitator, as his brethren in the craft delight to call themselves. At another time, the failure would have been humiliating to the last degree; but at present the conjurer was too much occupied with matters of grave importance to feel his discomfiture.
Mrs Wrentham entered.
‘I understand you bring a message from my husband, sir,’ she said in her timid way.
‘Not exactly, ma’am; but I want to speak to you about him. I am a friend of his, or I should not be here.’
He glanced towards Ada as he spoke, suggesting by the look that the child should be sent out of the room. But Mrs Wrentham was too simple to understand the hint, and Tuppit was obliged to take the matter into his own hand.
‘I’ll tell you what, Ada; you might be a good magician now, if you like. You could run out to the garden and pluck me a sprig of holly for my little girl. She is very fond of shrubs and flowers; will you send her some?’
‘O yes. There is such a nice sprig of holly up at the summer-house that I was keeping for Christmas; but your little girl shall have it.—Is she as old as me?’
‘Just about the same age; and now I look at you, she is rather like you.’
Ada flew out at the door; and Tuppit turned eagerly to Mrs Wrentham, his little form seeming to enlarge with the earnestness of his speech.
‘You are astonished, ma’am, at the liberty I am taking; but the fact is your husband has got into ... well, got into a scrape.—Please, don’t alarm yourself. I hope we shall pull him through all right. I only came to warn you, knowing that he might have forgotten it.’
‘Warn me about what?’ exclaimed the lady, trembling without knowing why.
‘That a gentleman will call here to-day and make inquiries about your husband. Answer him frankly, and, if you can manage it, do not look as if you were afraid of him. He is a good-natured chap, and will not press you very hard. But you must try to be quite calm and say nothing about my visit.’
The poor lady became pale immediately; and the first dreadful thought which occurred to her was that Wrentham had met with a serious accident of some sort—she had never approved of his horse-racing and horse-dealing proclivities. This good-natured friend was no doubt trying to break the horrible truth to her as gently as possible.
‘Oh, please tell me the worst at once. Is he much hurt—is he killed?’
Bob Tuppit stared; but quickly comprehended the mistake which the wife had made.
‘He is neither hurt nor killed, and is likely to live for a good many years to come,’ he said reassuringly. ‘He has got into a bother about some money matters. That is all.’
Tuppit felt ashamed of himself as he uttered the last words. What would a broken leg or arm, or even a broken neck, have been compared with the risk and disgrace of penal servitude? But Mrs Wrentham had no suspicion of such a danger, and was relieved as soon as she heard that her husband was physically unharmed. As for a difficulty about money, she was confident that he would easily arrange that; so she promised that she would answer any questions the gentleman who was coming might have to ask; for she knew nothing about her husband’s money affairs, and therefore had nothing to tell.
Bob Tuppit looked at her wistfully, as if inclined to tell her more of the real position; but just then Ada came bounding in with the holly and ivy—looking so happy and glad, that the man was unable to reveal the worst.
‘They’ll know soon enough,’ he said to himself, as he thankfully took the bundle of shrubs and went his way.