“If you want to save your poor unhappy lover. Jennett, it is just time. There are suspicions awakened. Only to-day I had a visit from that stupid interfering ass, Balm of Lamb’s Agency, who came to enquire about things on behalf of the postman’s old mother.”
“It is hidden behind that picture on the wall.”
“Ah! My God! What a rash place! Valkenburg’s old father. Let me go, while I fetch it.”
“Tizzy!” The girl by her voice was crying hysterically. “Not for a moment. Think what I have done for your sake! Tizzy, I’m going to drop. Take me into the back room—there is a sofa there.”
Gilead, the skin of his scalp prickling, heard the two move slowly along the hall and enter the room beyond. His face was white and stern. The Providence which had brought him acquainted with the details of this infernal plot to ruin an innocent man would surely not stultify its own design at the last. The girl was still sobbing. Bracing every nerve to his task, he lost not an instant, but, treading like a cat, stole out into the hall, and reaching the picture, felt behind it unavailingly.
The sobs ceased suddenly. Desperate, he switched on his torch, saw a little white packet stuck between frame and canvas, seized his prize and made for the door. Even as he lifted the latch, there came a rush from the room behind him, a mad oath, a flash and slam, and a bullet splintered the panel close by his head. In another moment he was out and plunging for the steps. Something took his hat with a plop, and then the merciful fog received him, and he was running—running bareheaded for his life. A sense of uproar, of crackling fires seemed to goad him on and wing his steps; instinctively he had turned the corner out of the main road and was flying along Dorset Street; and then, all in a moment, he became conscious that his own racing heart was his sole company, and, recovering his reason, he slowed down and began to consider his bearings.
* * * * * * *
Mr Abel Hamlin ran straight into the arms of a contiguous police officer, who had been attracted by the sound of the shots. The revolver still being clutched in his hand, and his explanation failing to give satisfaction, he was incarcerated pending enquiries. These resulted—Gilead in the meantime having found his way by desperate courses to Scotland Yard—in his indefinite detention on the twin charges of conspiracy to defraud and attempted murder.
It was a heartless business, as it came to be revealed. Hamlin, Superintendent Ingram to the contrary, had really been in a ruinous financial fix; he was a creature all selfishness and sensuality, and the scheme, cleverly worked, seemed fairly safe from detection. The girl Jennett, his mistress and decoy, an actress and prestidigitateur by profession, had imposed herself as a servant upon Valkenburg to whom she was unknown. The Dutchman, though perfectly innocent of any share in the plot, was susceptible, the girl pretty and the bait took. Valkenburg, a traveller in diamonds, was led to expect the receipt of a parcel of stones from Hamlin, with whom he had had some past dealings; the parcel, as he was able to swear, was never delivered; Hamlin wrote to enquire as to the non-acknowledgment of its receipt, and so the conspiracy was launched. The decoy in the meantime had been plying the unhappy young postman with her coquetries; he took fire readily; on the morning of the delivery of the registered packet, she pretended to procure her master’s signature to the receipt, which, in the course of some playful passages under the mistletoe—it was Christmas time—she feigned to return with her own fair fingers to Baxter’s pocket-book, sending her victim on his way to doom and disgrace with a bounding heart and a mind wholly absorbed in its own amorous raptures. To the last the poor dupe had believed in her affection, and had hoped against hope, that she would exonerate him.
But Miss Jennett, when once he was disposed of, had discovered a more personal call upon her interests in the infidelity of her confederate, and the means he had taken to kill time during the weeks of their enforced separation. Promptly she had disappeared, and, from some unknown address, written to upbraid the delinquent with his treachery, and to inform him as to her precautionary preservation of the registered packet (it was found, when opened by Gilead in the presence of Superintendent Ingram, to contain a few fragments of coal, addressed, of course, to Valkenburg in Hamlin’s writing) and of her intention to use it for the purpose of revenging herself on him. The advertisement in the Agony Column had resulted, and finally, after a struggle with herself, she had telegraphed to her scoundrel to meet her outside the house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road—with what result here witnesseth.