Immediately on our arrival, Guy went up to Bruce's home in Scotland. He only learned that the latter had not been there for a long time; but that some months back, Allan Macbane, a sort of steward and old dependent of the family, had left suddenly, summoned, it was supposed, by his master. More the people could not or would not tell.
At his banker's it was discovered that, immediately after the Forresters' marriage, he had drawn out a very large sum—not in letters of credit, but in bank-notes—and had not been heard of since. After much trouble, we did find out that one of the large notes had been changed at Florence about the time of the murder, but the description of the person did not answer in the least to that of Bruce or the man who was supposed to be his attendant. All trace stopped there. So the months rolled away. I constantly saw Guy, and sometimes was with him both in town and at Kerton, where Isabel was staying with Lady Catharine. He still appeared to have no doubt of the ultimate result of the search, which, personally or by deputy, he never intermitted for a day.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
"He threw
His wrathful hand aloft, and cried 'Away!
Earth could not hold us both, nor can one heaven
Contain my deadliest enemy and me.'"
We were sitting in Livingstone's chambers one night in the following March, and dinner was just over, when the detective was announced who for months had been in Guy's pay and on Bruce's track.
He was a stout, hale man, rather past middle age, with a rosy face, a cheerful, moist eye, and full, sensual lips—just the proper person to return thanks for "The Successful Candidates" at an agricultural meeting. Originally of a kindly convivial nature, he had grown familiar with crime till he despised it. The reward set upon the criminal's capture was his only standard of guilt. He took a real pleasure in the chase, I imagine, but had no preference for any game in particular, and was quite indifferent whether the cover he had to draw was a saloon or a cellar. He would hunt a fraudulent bankrupt or a parricide with equal zeal, and, when he had caught him, be just as jocularly affable with the one as with the other. In a drama of life and death, the fierce passions of the actors were only so many gleams of light showing him where the right path lay, for which assistance he thanked them heartily. The foulest mysteries of the sinful human heart touched and shocked him no more than the evidences of disease do the dissecting surgeon: with both it was a simple question of defective organization. The possession of secrets, far less weighty than some that he never told, have made men look worn, and miserable, and gray; but he would pat his corpulent leather pocket-book with a self-sufficient satisfaction, scarcely hinting that the publication of its contents would have caused more devastation in some well-regulated families than the bursting of a ten-inch shell in their front drawing-room.