“Do you know the address of either—where do they live?”
“In course I do. I’ve gone there to fetch away some pictures. It’s close by here—just the other side of the Fields. I can give it you on one of my bill-heads.”
“Do so,” said the General. “Here is the thirty shillings for the picture. You can send it round to Messrs Lawson and Son, Number —, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”
The woman took the money, praising the picture throughout the transaction, by characterising it as “dirt cheap,” and worth twice as much as she asked for it. Then scratching out with an indifferent pen upon a soiled scrap of paper the promised address, she handed it to her purchaser, who, folding it between his fingers, hurried off out of the passage, dragging Mr Lawson along with him. Instead of going on towards Downing Street, he turned sharply round, and re-traversed the court in the opposite direction.
“Where now, General?” inquired the solicitor.
“To see the painter,” was the reply. “He may throw some light on this strange, this mysterious affair. It still appears to me like a dream. Perhaps he can interpret it.”
He could have done so, had he been found. But he was not. The address, as given by the woman, was correct enough. The General and his companion easily found the place—a mean-looking lodging-house in one of the back streets of High Holborn. Three days before they would have found the artist in it—whose description answered to that given by the picture-dealer, and was recognised by the keeper of the lodging-house. Three days before he had gone off in a great hurry—altogether out of London, as his former landlady supposed. She came to this conclusion, from the fact that he had sold off all his pictures and things to a Jew dealer at a great sacrifice. She did not know his name, or where he had gone to. He had settled his account, and that was all she seemed to care about.
Had she ever had another lodger, and associate of the one she spoke of? Yes, there had been another—also a painter—a younger one. He was English; but she did not know his name either, as the foreigner paid the bill for both. The young one had gone off long ago—several months—and the foreigner had since kept the apartments himself. This was all the woman could tell, beyond giving a description of the younger artist.
“My son Henry!” said General Harding, as he stepped forth into the street. “He has been living in these wretched rooms, when I thought he was running riot on that thousand pounds! I fear, Mr Lawson, I have been outrageously wronging him.”
“It is not too late to make reparation, General.”