“I attend here,” said our Reporter, “on behalf of my paper, in response to a letter sent to our editor by Mr. Frederick Holdfast.”
“I am Frederick Holdfast,” said the gentleman. “Antony Cowlrick was an assumed name; I could not use my own when I was falsely accused of the murder of my father.”
He turned aside with quivering lips, and our Reporter, holding his grief in respect, did not intrude upon it. The face of the lady who accompanied Frederick Holdfast appeared singularly familiar to our Reporter, and his curiosity was presently appeased by Mr. Goldberry, who informed him that she was the lady who, by the happiest of chances, met Mr. Frederick Holdfast in Leicester Square after his discharge.
“Were she willing to allow herself to be used in such a way,” observed the lawyer, “her photograph to-morrow could be sold in thousands all over England. But she does not belong to that class of woman. She is a heroine, in the truest sense of the word. Mrs. Holdfast, who supplied you with a Romance in Real Life fit for a novel instead of the columns of a newspaper, would not, in such circumstances as these, have withstood the temptation. But there are women and women.”
“I grant you,” said our Reporter, “that I was deceived in the character of Mrs. Holdfast. Am I the first who has been beguiled by the soft speeches of a fair woman? And, my dear sir, if you want novels and romances, take my word for it, you cannot do better than go to the columns of a newspaper for them. What has become of Mrs. Holdfast’s baby?”
“The child will be cared for,” replied Mr. Goldberry, “by Frederick Holdfast, and will be brought up in ignorance of her mother’s crimes.”
The proceedings at the inquest commenced languidly, but were soon brightened by the extraordinary revelations made by the witnesses. The bodies of the two persons burnt to death were identified, and then evidence was given, in dramatic sequence, in proof that, at the time of their death, the deceased were engaged in unlawful proceedings, and that the male deceased had formed a deliberate plan for setting fire to the house.
Mrs. Preedy, lodging-house keeper, deposed to the letting of a furnished attic to a man who gave the name of Richard Manx, and who spoke like a foreigner. The rent of this attic was three shillings a week, but she had never seen the colour of Richard Manx’s money; he “gave out” to her that he was very poor; she had no doubt he was the man who was found dead in the next house; neither had she any doubt that it was he who had spread the report that her house was haunted, and that he did it to ruin her. This witness rambled in her evidence, and caused great laughter by her irrelevant replies to questions.
Mrs. Whittaker, lodging-house keeper in Buckingham Palace Road, deposed to the letting of her first-floor to Mr. Pelham at a rental of three guineas per week. He paid his rent regularly, and she believed him to be a gentleman of considerable means. She recognised the body of the male deceased as Mr. Pelham.