His darling sin

by M. E. Braddon

"All we that are called women, know as well
As men, it were a far more noble thing
To grace where we are graced, and give respect
There, where we are respected: yet we practise
A wilder course, and never bend our eyes
On men with pleasure, till they find the way
To give us a neglect; then we, too late,
Perceive the loss of what we might have had,
And dote to death."

Mr. Faunce's profession, more especially since he left Scotland Yard, had lain for the most part among the upper classes. He had been employed in delicate investigations that had brought him in touch with some of the mightiest in the land, and he knew his peerage almost as well as if his own name had been recorded in that golden book. His aristocratic clients found him as kindly and sympathetic as he was shrewd and trustworthy. He never made the galled jade wince by a tactless allusion. He always took an indulgent view of the darkest case when he discussed it with the delinquent's family. He could turn a father's wrath to pity by his shrewd excuses for a son's misconduct, making forgery appear only a youthful ebullition, proceeding rather from want of thought than want of honesty. But he was always on the side of the angels, and always urged generous dealing when a woman was in question. If wrongs had to be righted, a breach of promise case quashed, Faunce was always the victim's advocate. His tactfulness soothed the offended parent's pride, the betrayed husband's self-respect. People liked him and trusted him; and the family skeleton was brought out of the cupboard, and submitted freely to his inspection.

He knew a good deal of the lives of men about town; and among the baser specimens of this trivial race he knew Richard Rannock, late of the Lanarkshire Regiment. When he left Grosvenor Square, with Lady Perivale's case neatly engraved upon the tablet of his brain, needing no shorthand note to assist his memory, he was prepared to find that the slander from which the lady suffered had been brought about by some deliberate perfidy on the part of her rejected suitor. He knew of cruel things, and dastardly things, that Rannock had done in the course of his chequered career, mostly in the relation of hawk to pigeon; he knew the man's financial affairs to have been desperate for the last ten years; and that although he had contrived to live among young men of means and position, with the reputation of being an open-hearted, wild kind of fellow, he had lived like the buzzard and the kite, and the cruel eye had been ever on the watch, and the hungry beak ever ready to pounce upon the unsuspecting quarry.

Faunce's first business was to find the woman. When he had marked her down, he would turn his attention to the man. He was in Algiers as soon as train and boat could take him there, and being as much at his ease in Africa as at Charing Cross, sauntered slowly under the meridian sun along the dazzling street from the steamer to the hotel, chose his room amidst the echoing emptiness of the corridors, where the hum of the mosquito was the only sound, made his expeditious toilet, and, with clean-shaved chin, spotless shirt, and well-brushed alpaca coat, lounged into the French manager's bureau.

The manager knew Mr. Faunce, who had spent a week at the hotel during the previous autumn, in the interests of a wronged husband, whose high-born wife had danced away from the marital mansion with a favourite partner, as gaily as if an elopement were only a new figure in the cotillon. Faunce had run the poor little lady to earth in this very hotel, hidden in an armoire, among perfumed silk petticoats and lace flounces. He had found her, and had taken her straight home to her husband, tearful and ashamed, but only guilty of such a girlish escapade as husbands can forgive.

She had parted with her lover at Marseilles. He was to cross in a different steamer, to throw pursuers off the scent. And his steamer had been delayed, and she was alone at the hotel in Algiers, frightened out of her wits, when Faunce retrieved her.

The manager was delighted to see the English detective, offered his cigar-case, proposed drinks. Faunce never refused a cigar, and rarely accepted a drink.

"Merci, mon ami, I had breakfast on the steamer half an hour ago," and then Faunce unfolded his business.

He affected no secrecy with M. Louis, the manager, who was bon zig, and the essence of discretion.

Such and such a man—here followed a graphic description of Colonel Rannock—had been at the hotel in the last tourist season—date unknown. It might have been before Christmas, or it might have been any time before April. He had come from Sardinia or Corsica, or he was going to one of those islands. He had a lady with him, young and handsome, and he was supposed to be travelling under an alias, and not under his own name—Rannock.