The Lost Heir

by G. A. Henty

"Ever since we parted I have gone on the same line, only I have worked carefully. I was not a bad-looking chap, and hadn't much difficulty in getting over servant girls and finding out where things were to be had, so I gradually got on. For years now I have only carried on big affairs, working the thing up and always employing other hands to carry the job out. None of them know me here. I meet them at quiet pubs and arrange things there, and I need hardly say that I am so disguised that none of the fellows who follow my orders would know me again if they met me in the street. I could retire if I liked, and live in a villa and keep my carriage. Why, I made five thousand pounds as my share of that bullion robbery between London and Brussels. But I know that I should be miserable without anything to do; as it is, I unite amusement with business. I sometimes take a stall at the Opera, and occasionally I find a diamond necklace in my pocket when I get home. I know well enough that it is foolish, but when I see a thing that I need only put out my hand to have, my old habit is too strong for me. Then I often walk into swell entertainments. You have only to be well got up, and to go rather late, so that the hostess has given up expecting arrivals and is occupied with her guests, and the flunky takes your hat without question, and you go upstairs and mix with the people. In that way you get to know as to the women who have the finest jewels, and have no difficulty in finding out their names. I have got hold of some very good things that way, but though there would have been no difficulty in taking some of them at the time, I never yielded to that temptation. In a crowded room one never can say whose eyes may happen to be looking in your direction.

"I wonder that you never turned your thoughts that way. From what you have told me of your doings abroad, I know that you are not squeamish in your ideas, and with your appearance you ought to be able to go anywhere without suspicion."

"I am certainly not squeamish," Simcoe said, "but I have not had the training. One wants a little practice and to begin young, as you did, to try that game on. However, just at present I have a matter in hand that will set me up for life if it turns out well, but I shall want a little assistance. In the first place I want to get hold of a man who could make one up well, and who, if I gave him a portrait, could turn me out so like the original that anyone who had only seen him casually would take me for him."

"There is a man down in Whitechapel who is the best hand in London at that sort of thing. He is a downright artist. Several times when I have had particular jobs in hand, inquiries I could not trust anyone else to make, I have been to him, and when he has done with me and I have looked in the glass there was not the slightest resemblance to my own face in it. I suppose the man you want to represent is somewhere about your own height?"

"Yes, I should say that he is as nearly as may be the same. He is an older man than I am."

"Oh, that is nothing! He could make you look eighty if you wanted it. Here is the man's address; his usual fee is a guinea, but, as you want to be got up to resemble someone else, he might charge you double."

"The fee is nothing," Simcoe said. "Then again, I may want to get hold of a man who is a good hand at imitating handwriting."

"That is easy enough. Here is the address of a man who does little jobs for me sometimes, and is, I think, the best hand at it in England. You see, sometimes there is in a house where you intend to operate some confoundedly active and officious fellow—a butler or a footman—who might interrupt proceedings. His master is in London, and he receives a note from him ordering him to come up to town with a dressing case, portmanteau, guns, or something of that kind, as may be suitable to the case. I got a countess out of the way once by a messenger arriving on horseback with a line from her husband, saying that he had met with an accident in the hunting-field, and begging her to come to him. Of course I have always previously managed to get specimens of handwriting, and my man imitates them so well that they have never once failed in their action. I will give you a line to him, saying that you are a friend of mine. He knows me under the name of Sinclair. As a stranger you would hardly get him to act."

"Of course, he is thoroughly trustworthy?" Simcoe asked.

"I should not employ him if he were not," the other said. "He was a writing-master at one time, but took to drink, and went altogether to the bad. He is always more or less drunk now, and you had better go to him before ten o'clock in the morning. I don't say that he will be quite sober, but he will be less drunk than he will be later. As soon as he begins to write he pulls himself together. He puts a watchmaker's glass in his eye and closely examines the writing that he has to imitate, writes a few lines to accustom himself to it, and then writes what he is told to do as quickly and as easily as if it were his own handwriting. He hands it over, takes his fee, which is two guineas, and then goes out to a public-house, and I don't believe that the next day he has the slightest remembrance of what he has written."