He did run the risk, and though his identity was quite unsuspected by the dealer, he found himself compelled to accept half the value of the stone he offered for sale, or go without money. He was naturally a good bargainer, and it stung him to the quick to feel himself outdone. “But what can’t be cured must be endured” is an axiom which sometimes impresses itself painfully upon us all, and as Mr. Hugh Stavanger, alias Paul Torrens, was no exception to the general rule, he found animadversion useless.
That evening, after writing a long letter to his father apprising him of both his present and his intended whereabouts, he became a passenger on a steamer bound for Bombay, having booked his passage under the name of Harry Staley, as he considered “Paul Torrens” to be no longer a safe appellation.
CHAPTER X.
A BRIGHT PAIR.
Letter from Mr. Stavanger to his Son.
(Written in Cypher.)
“My Dear Boy,—For you are my dear boy still, although you have of late caused me a great deal of anxiety. You hardly know how much I endured until I received your letter from Malta, and even then I was tormented by a dread of what it might have been found necessary to do. I allude to the death of the steward, which, to say the least, was very lucky for us. You wonder how I know this? I will tell you later on. There is so much to relate that I must start at the beginning, or I shall get mixed up. First and foremost, the business is steadily recovering from the shock given to it by the abstraction of so much portable property. Secondly, my brother has not the slightest suspicion that there is any reason why Harley Riddell should not stay where he is, and I am beginning to be of his opinion. This belief is inspired in me by a strange sequence of circumstances, all of which seem to point to one conclusion. He must really be a very wicked man, or Providence would not work so persistently against him as it seems to do. Everything that could help him and hurt you is almost miraculously rendered powerless, and everybody whom we had cause to dread has been promptly removed. How, therefore, can anyone doubt that Divine vengeance is exacting atonement for some fearful crime which has not yet been brought to light? This being so, we are nothing less than the instruments used by Providence for its own ends, and I regard what you have done as the involuntary outcome of an inexplicable and unconscious cerebral influence.
“But now that the aims of Providence are achieved, I beseech you to assert your own identity and to fight against any impulse to repeat any one of the dangerous proceedings of the past few months.
“And now for such news as I have. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned sooner that your mother and sisters are quite well. Also that I am in like case both mentally and bodily, now that I know you to be rid of your enemies. It would have been an awful Damoclean sword hanging over us if that inquisitive Wear had not been providentially removed from our path. Then there was my poor old friend Mr. Edward Lyon. Did you see in the papers anything about his sudden death while away on his business mission to America? I had nothing but esteem for him. But I must say that I felt immensely relieved when the news of his death reached us. He had turned unpleasantly suspicious just before he sailed, and would most assuredly have begun to make undesirable inquiries on his return. But heaven has seen fit to remove him to a better world. That it has at the same time removed one who might have been the means of proving Riddell not guilty of the crime for which he suffers is only another proof to me that he is, as I said before, being made to expiate some former sin.
“Nor is this by any means all the proof of my theory. You know Clement Corney? And perhaps you feel uneasy at the mention of his name. If so, you may set your fears at rest, for he also is numbered among those who might have been a witness against you, but is not. A week ago he came to me with a long tale about what he knew and about what he suspected. You seem to have been imprudently confidential with him, and to have allowed him to pry into your affairs far too much. From what he told me I judged him to be a very formidable witness against you and deemed it advisable to accede to his demands for money, but looked with anything but equanimity upon the prospect of having to continue supplying him with money as long as he chose to blackmail me. I should have been left no choice in the matter, as exposure, after having gone so far, would mean ruin. But here Providence once more interposed most strangely. Last night, on opening my evening paper, I came upon the account of the inquest on Clement Corney’s body. He had been jerked from the top step of a ’bus and had broken his neck.
“This is all very strange and wonderful. But the strangest thing of all has to be related yet. As you will see by the postmark of this letter, we have come to St. Ives for our holiday. We arrived here on Monday, and on Tuesday I was walking on the beach and wondering how you were going on when I saw a group of children become considerably excited. Going up to them I found that one of them was holding a bottle which had been washed up by the tide. Seeing that the bottle was carefully sealed, and appeared to contain papers, I offered the children a shilling for it. They ran off with the shilling in high glee, while I secreted the bottle in my dustcoat, and walked rapidly towards our lodgings with it. I cannot account for the impulse which prompted these apparently irrelevant actions, except upon the hypothesis of Providential interference already mentioned. I do not usually take much interest in the doings of children, and I am not naturally of a prying, inquisitive disposition, and yet I was anxious to open that bottle in the privacy of my own bedroom. And now mark the result.