Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Lucy Bird quitted the warm fires and her kind friends, the Coneys, and followed us out—me and Mrs. Todhetley—she saw us turn in at our own gate, and then she picked her way through the snow to the station at South Crabb. It was a long walk for her in that inclement weather; but she had been away from home (if the poor lodgings they then occupied in Worcester could be called home) two days, and was anxious to get back again. During her brief absences from it, she was always haunted by the fear of some ill falling on that precious husband of hers, Captain Bird; but he was nothing but an ex-captain, as you know. All the way to the station she was thinking about the earrings, and of my description of Detective Eccles. The description was exactly that of her husband’s friend, Edwards, both as to person and dress; not that she supposed it could be he. When she left Worcester nearly two days before, Edwards had just arrived. She knew him to be an educated man, of superior manners, and full of anecdote, when he chose, about college life. Like her husband, he had, by recklessness and ill-conduct, sunk lower and lower in the world, until he had to depend on “luck” or “chance” for a living.

Barely had Lucy reached the station, walking slowly, when the train shot in. She took her seat; and, after a short halt the train moved on again. At that moment there strode into the station that self-same man, Edwards, who began shouting furiously for the train to stop, putting up his hands, running and gesticulating. The train declined to stop; trains generally do decline to stop for late passengers, however frantically adjured; and Edwards was left behind. His appearance astonished Lucy considerably. Had he, in truth, been passing himself off as a detective officer to Squire Todhetley? If so, with what motive? Lucy could not see any motive, and still thought it could not be; that Edwards must be over here on some business of his own. The matter passed from her mind as she drew near Worcester, and reached their lodgings, which were down Lowesmoor way.

Experience had taught Lucy not to ask questions. She was either not answered at all, or the answer would be sure to give her trouble. Captain Bird had grown tolerably careless as to whether his hazardous doings reached, or did not reach, the ears of his wife, but he did not willingly tell her of them. She said not a word of having seen Edwards, or of what she had heard about the loss of Mrs. Todhetley’s earring, or of the detective’s visit to Crabb Cot. Lucy’s whole life was one of dread and fear, and she never knew whether any remark of hers might not bear upon some dangerous subject. But while getting the tea, she did just inquire after Edwards.

“Has Edwards left?” she asked carelessly.

“No,” replied Captain Bird, who was stretched out before the fire in his slippers, smoking a long pipe, and drinking spirits. “He is out on the loose, though, somewhere, to-day.”

It was late at night when Edwards entered. He was in a rage. Trains did not run frequently on Sundays, and he had been kept all that time at South Crabb Junction, waiting for one. Lucy went upstairs to bed, leaving Edwards and her husband drinking brandy-and-water. Both of them had had quite enough already.

The matter of the earrings and the doubt whether Mr. Edwards had been playing at amateur detectiveship would have ended there, but for the accident of Lucy’s having to come downstairs again for the small travelling-bag in which she had carried her combs and brushes. She had put it just inside the little back parlour, where a bed on chairs had been extemporized for Edwards, their lodgings not being very extensive. Lucy was picking up the bag in the dark, when some words in the sitting-room caught her ear; the door between the two rooms being partly open. Before a minute elapsed she had heard too much. Edwards, in a loud, gleeful, boasting tone, was telling how he had been acting the detective, and done the old Squire and his wife out of the other earring. Lucy, looking in through the opening, saw him holding it up; she saw the colours of the long pink topaz, and the diamonds flash in the candle-light.

“I thought I could relieve them of it,” he said. “When I read that advertisement in the paper, it struck me there might be a field open to do a little stroke of business; and I’ve done it.”

“You are a fool for your pains,” growled Captain Bird. “There’s sure to be a row.”

“The row won’t touch me. I’m off to London to-morrow morning, and the earring with me. I wonder what the thing will turn us in? Twenty pounds. There, put it in the box, Bird, and get out the dice.”