"The day after you bolted I met old Talbot and his lawyer about a settlement. I talked rather big, and suggested fifty thousand. Then the brute of a lawyer said, after he had heard my name, 'How odd. Now there is a gentleman I have been wanting to find for the last two years nearly, and he is called Daniel Dolphin!' Like a fool, and forgetting the man he wanted must be years older than me, I lost my nerve, and the lawyer saw that I had. 'It's an odd name--perhaps a relative?' he said. 'The gentleman I mean used to live at Chislehurst. You will be doing me a kindness if you can tell me anything of him.' Instead of simply answering that I had never heard of the man, I replied that he was my uncle. 'How?' exclaimed the Squire, 'I thought you had no relations but your mother?' Then I tried to explain, and bungled it--I'm growing so damned young and silly now--and finally the matter dropped, but I could see that lawyer meant getting the truth out of me later on. I arranged the settlements and so on, and gave them a list of my imaginary investments, which, of course, I'd just picked out of the money columns in the papers. Then I wanted to marry at once, and get Mabel before they had time to find out my game. But the Squire said he wouldn't hear of it till the autumn. That wasn't good enough, so I saw Mabel and told her a yarn or two, and worked on her love for romance, and finally got her to run away with me. You needn't jump. The plot fell through. She weakly confided in a lady's maid. I saddled my horses myself, and rode out at midnight to abduct her in the good old style. I waited at a certain point by the Priory walls, and presently she arrived. But hardly had we galloped off--I meant to take her to Salisbury, and marry her before the registrar next morning--when we were confronted on the Plain by Squire Talbot and half-a-dozen mounted bounders he'd got to help him. The Squire collared his daughter, and left his friends to deal with me. They tried to take me prisoner, but I'm pretty fit just now, and pretty reckless too. I was mad to think they'd scored off me like this, and I hit out and knocked one chap off his horse, and nearly strangled another, and fired my revolver at a third. I missed him, and shot his mount. When they found I was armed, they cleared off. It was an exciting, old-fashioned scrimmage, and I enjoyed it while it lasted. But of course, there's the devil to pay. I rode into Salisbury, put up my horse at an inn, dodged around all night, and took the first train up this morning. The bobbies were prowling about at Salisbury station, but they didn't recognise me. I'd cut off my moustache in the night, and looked not more than eighteen in the morning. The lawyer, of course, wants me for Marie Rogers; and Talbot will want me; and the chap whose head I broke will want me; and the man whose horse I shot will want me. Let 'em want!"
"This is the beginning of the end, grandpapa," I said, sadly enough.
"Not it! You wait and see what the next six months bring! I shouldn't wonder if I was in a tight place six months hence. This is nothing. I'll make some of 'em squeak yet before they've done with me."
It was in this wicked and reckless frame of mind that he prepared to spend the remainder of his days. However, he rested from his labours for about six weeks, notwithstanding his boast to make people "squeak." He read the reports of his performance on Salisbury Plain with great delight, and he found, as the matter developed, that sundry unexpected names appeared in it. Daniel Dolphin was "wanted" by the representatives of one Mrs. Bangley-Brown, to whom he had promised marriage; a man of the same name had performed a similar action at Chislehurst, the victim in that case being Miss Marie Rogers. It also appeared that some impostor, calling himself Viscount Dolphin, and claiming Royalty for his kindred, had met and proposed to Princess Hopskipschoff in Paris. These were all different persons of different ages, the newspapers admitted, but they might have a connection with the vanished rascal of the Talbot Priory business near Salisbury. There was a mystery of some kind, and the police naturally had a clue.
Grandpapa gloated over this confusion. He had changed his name now to Abraham Whiting--"another prophet and another fish," as he put it--but he longed to go back to his true cognomen and "keep the pot boiling." This, with difficulty, I prevented him doing for a short time. His monetary affairs were much simplified now: he had about three thousand pounds in hand in notes and gold. All the furniture, and horses, and effects at Salisbury were sold, and what moneys were not claimed, under legal and other expenses, went, I believe, into Chancery. But grandpapa had about three thousand pounds left, which, as he said, would last his time with care.
His moustache did not grow again to any extent. He took to wearing a straw hat with a bright ribbon, a blue and red "blazer," white flannel trousers, and tan boots. Thus attired he spent much of his time in the Crystal Palace, choosing undesirable friends at the different stalls and "growing blue devils under glass," as he tersely put it.
CHAPTER XV.
SUSAN MARKS.
I may say at once that the police never found grandpapa. Neither Le Coq nor Edgar Allen Poe's amateur would have done so, for the simple reason that my grandparent was growing younger at the rate of one year every five weeks or so; and though there is not much difference between one year and the next in adult life, yet when we deal with the period of adolescence, great changes become visible in brief periods. He was about five-and-twenty when we went to Upper Norwood, and two-and-twenty when we left that desirable neighbourhood, after a residence of about three months.
"You look your age; there's no doubt about that, Martha," he said to me once, in a very uncalled-for way.