Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service

by Charles James Lever

At last came this one line: “I have summoned up all my courage, and I will go with you this evening. Come up at eight, and I will be ready.” I ought to have mentioned before this that for nigh three weeks a vulgar-looking man, middle-aged and robust, had come to take the waters; and though he only spoke a few words of bad French, being English, had continued to put himself on terms of intimacy with all the subordinates of the household, and was constantly seen laughing with the boatmen and trying to converse with the gardeners.

Deechworth had conceived suspicion about him from the first; he connected him with the law proceedings that the company had instituted against me, and warned me to be cautious of the man. His opinion was that he belonged to the “Force.” “I know it, sir,” said he, “by his walk and his laugh.” The detectives, according to Deechworth, have a laugh quite peculiar to themselves; it never takes them off what they are saying or thinking about In fact, it is like the bassoon in a band; it serves just to mark the time while the air is being played by the other instruments.

“I don't like that Mr. Bracken, sir,” Deechworth would say; “he ain't here for no good, you'll see, sir;” and it is not improbable that I should have perfectly agreed with this opinion if I had ever troubled my head about him at all, but the fact was my mind was very differently occupied. All Scotland Yard and Sir Richard himself might have been domiciled at the establishment without their ever giving me a moment of uneasy reflection.

Whether Mrs. Dacre's scruples were those of prudery or cowardice, whether she dreaded me as a companion or feared me as a coachman, I cannot say; but she constantly put off our intended drive, and though occasionally the few words in which she made her apologies set my heart half wild with delight, simply because I pleased to read them in a sense of my own invention, yet I grew feverish and uneasy at these delays. At last there came the one line in pencil, “I have made up my mind I will go with you to-morrow evening.” It is in no extravagance or mock rapture I say it, but in plain homely truth, I would not have changed that scrap of paper for a check of ten thousand on Coutts.

It was my habit to lay all the little notes I received from her before me on my writing-table, and as I passed them under review, to weave out for myself a story of the progress of my love. The servants who waited on me, and who alone entered my study, were foreigners, and ignorant of English, so that I could permit myself this indulgence without fear. Now, on the afternoon on which I had received the latest of her despatches, I sauntered out into the wood to be alone with my own thoughts, unmolested and undisturbed. I wandered on for hours, too happy to count the time, and too deeply lost in my imaginings to remember anything but my own fancies. What was to come of this strange imbroglio in which I now stood; how was Fate about to deal with me? I had clearly arrived at a point where the roads led right and left Which was I to take, and which was the right one?

Thus canvassing and discussing with myself, it was very late ere I got back to the castle; but I carried the key of a small portal gate that admitted me to my own quarters unobserved, and I could enter or pass out unnoticed. As I found myself in my study and lit my lamp, I turned to my writing-table. I started with amazement on discovering that the little notes and scraps of paper which bore Mrs. Dacre's writing had disappeared. These, and a small notebook, a sort of diary of my own, had been taken away; and that the act was not that of a common thief was clear, from the fact that a valuable silver inkstand and an onyx seal mounted in gold, and some other small objects of value lay about untouched. A cold sweat broke over me as I stood there overwhelmed and panic-stricken by this discovery. The terrors of a vague and undefined danger loom over a man with an intensity far greater than the fears of a known and palpable peril. I examined the fastenings of the door and the windows to see whether force had been used, but there was no sign of such. And as I had locked the door when leaving and found it locked on my return, how had this thief found entrance except by a key? I rung the bell; but the servants were all in bed, and it was long before any one replied to my summons. Of course, servant-like, they had seen nothing, heard nothing. I sent for Deechworth; he was asleep, and came unwillingly and angry at being routed out of bed. He, too, knew nothing. He questioned me closely as to whether I had seen the papers on my table before I left home for my walk, and half vexed me by the pertinacity of his examination, and, finally, by the way in which he depreciated the value of my loss, and congratulated me on the circumstance that nothing of real worth had been abstracted. This was too much for my patience, and I declared that I had rather the thief had left me without a coat or without a shilling than taken these precious scraps of paper. “Oh,” said he, with a sort of sneer, “I had not the slightest suspicion of the value you attached to them.” “Well, sir,” said I, losing all control over my passion, “now that you see it, now that you hear it, now that you know it, will you tell me at what price you will restore them to me?”

“You mean that it was I who took them?” said he, quietly, and without any show of warmth.

“I don't suppose you will deny it,” was my answer.

“That will do, Mr. Gosslett,” said he; “that's quite enough. I hope to be able to teach you that it's one thing to defy a board of directors, and it's another to defame a respectable man. I'll make you smart for this, sir;” and with these words he turned away and left the room.

I don't know when or how the servants retired,—whether I dismissed them, or whether they went of their own accord. I was like a madman. My temper, excited to the last limits of reason, impelled me to this or that act of insanity. At one moment I thought of hastening after Deechworth, and, with a revolver in my hand, compelling him to give up the stolen papers; and I shuddered as to what I should do if he refused. At another, I determined to follow him, and offer him everything I had in the world for them; for, all this time, I had worked myself up to the conviction that he, and he alone, was the thief. Oh, thought I, if I had but the aid of one of those clever fellows of the detective order, whose skill wants but the faintest clew to trace out these mysteries! and, suddenly, I bethought me of Mr. Bracken, whom Deechworth himself had pronounced to be “one of the Force.”