“I beg pardon, sir, but it’s about your daughter, a young lady called Miss Stella Cranstoun, I want to speak to you.”
“What about her?”
“Well, sir, I’m a Surrey man, and I know you and her by sight. I’m working in London now, and in the house in Whitechapel where I’m lodging a young lady was brought three days ago, in the care of two elderly women, who won’t let her put her head outside the door. And I’d take my oath, sir, she’s your daughter, Miss Stella Cranstoun. I can take you to the house, sir, in a cab, if you like. I was half a mind to write about it down to the Chase, but I thought how you’d think it a liberty; but as soon as I spotted you just now as I was going back to my work, thinks I, I must up and speak to him.”
The man’s manner was so genuine, and the affair of such pressing importance that Sir Philip, after a moment’s hesitation, decided to accompany him. A four-wheeled cab was crawling past, driven by a dark-faced, clean-shaven man, no longer young. The cabman pulled up as he saw Sir Philip looking for a conveyance, and the latter sprang in and ordered the man who had addressed him to take his place on the box and direct the driver.
This order was at once obeyed. Once on their way toward Whitechapel, the two men looked at each other. The Fates were against Sir Philip Cranstoun that day, for the driver was his brother-in-law, James Carewe, whom he had caused to serve five years in prison, and his companion was James’ younger brother Brian, who had helped Clare Lady Cranstoun to escape from her husband’s home.
It had been Brian’s business to “shadow” his family enemy, and this cab-driving plan was only one out of many plots woven by the moving and directing spirit of the Carewes, old Sarah, to get her prey into her hands. No suspicion of his danger crossed Sir Philip’s mind as he let himself be rapidly driven eastward. He was longing to revenge himself by extra harshness of treatment upon his daughter Stella for daring to escape from his control and send a substitute in her stead to be wedded to Lord Carthew.
Suddenly, while these malevolent thoughts filled his mind, a violent lurch of the cab hurled him upon his hands and knees; the next moment a blow in the chest from the shaft of a heavy van into which the cab had been deliberately driven, felled him, stunned and bleeding, as he attempted to rise. He heard the crash of glass, the noise of loud talking; then insensibility came to dull the exquisite pain he was suffering, and he knew no more until he opened his eyes in a mean and squalid room, and became conscious that several people were standing round his bed, and that the cracked and quavering voice of a very old woman was sounding close to his ear.
“Make him conscious—make him conscious for a bit, dear, good doctor, before he dies. You see, he’s a relation of mine; he married the daughter of my boy Hiram—oh, you needn’t look surprised! Sixty years ago I was pretty enough for a swell to have married me.”
“Doctor,” muttered the injured man, “where am I? And what has happened to me?”
“You have had a very serious accident—a heavy van ran into your cab in a street not far from here. This is Elizabeth Street, Whitechapel.”