The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

Everard Lisle stayed in Liverpool till Monday, on which day he took an early train up to town. His object in going to London was to endeavour by means of the address which Miss Matilda had given him to trace the present whereabouts—if he were still alive—of the man Kirby Griggs. Futile as the hope seemed that, even if he should succeed in finding him, Griggs would be able to supply him with any information that would further in the slightest degree the special purpose he had in view, he yet felt that he could not rest satisfied till he had interviewed him and heard from his own lips all that he had to tell.

The address supplied him was that of a firm of lawyers in Gray’s Inn Square, in whose employ Kirby Griggs had been at the date of his interview with Mr. Matthew Thursby.

Fortunately for Everard’s purpose, Griggs proved not only to be alive, but still in the service of the same firm—a third-rate clerk on a very limited salary. He was a thin, timid, nervous man, with an anxious, hungry sort of look, as though he rarely had as much to eat as he could have done with. When told the reason which had induced Everard to seek him out, he at once expressed his willingness to give him all the information that lay in his power; but as he was too busy to do so during office hours, he requested Everard to call upon him between seven and eight o’clock the same evening at an address in the suburbs which he gave him.

There Lisle found himself at half-past seven and was at once ushered into the clerk’s little parlour, in which sacred apartment—hardly ever entered between one Sunday and another—a fire had this evening been lighted in honour of his visit.

There proved to be no reticence on Griggs’ part in discussing in all its bearings that strange episode of twenty years before, in which his sister had played so inexplicable and, ultimately, so tragical a part.

It appeared that she had always been of a romantic and flighty turn of mind, and an insatiable devourer of impossible romances and outrageous love-stories of the very commonest type of penny fiction. She had gone out to the States as maid to a wealthy elderly lady who had died there shortly after her arrival. The next news from Martha had been to the effect that she was on the eve of returning to England by the clipper-ship Pandora, and her brother was requested to meet the vessel on its arrival in dock. Why she had booked herself under the fantastical name of Mrs. Montmorenci-Vane her brother could not imagine, unless it were a name she had picked up in the course of her reading, and had taken a fancy to. Just as little could he understand why, in the presumed state of her finances, she should have chosen to travel as a saloon passenger. As for whence and from whom his sister had obtained the child which she had passed off on board ship as her own, and what possible object she could have had in view in perpetrating such a hoax—if hoax it could be called—was to Kirby Griggs still as much an enigma as it had been at the time; nothing had occurred in the interim to throw even the faintest ray of light on the affair.

Everard’s heart sank within him. It was evident that the lawyer’s clerk had nothing of consequence to relate beyond what was known to him already.

After musing awhile, he said: “I presume that nothing was found among your sister’s luggage—no letters, or papers, or anything else which, if placed in the hands of anyone who was willing to devote both time and patience to following it up, might ultimately furnish a clue to the mystery we have just been discussing.”

“There was nothing—nothing whatever found of the kind you mention,” replied Griggs with a shake of the head. Then, after a pause, he gave a little deprecatory cough and added: “As I have no wish to hide anything in connection with the affair, it may perhaps be as well to mention that my sister’s boxes contained a quantity of wearing apparel such as seemed, both to me and my wife, far above her station in life, and the only conclusion we could come to was, that it had most likely been a present to her from the lady who had died. After keeping it for three or four years in case any inquiry should be made about it, my wife gradually used it up in the manufacture of garments for our numerous olive branches.”

Although Mrs. Griggs made a third at the interview, as yet she had not spoken more than a dozen words, but in the pause that now ensued she suddenly said: “The ring, Kirby—have you forgotten the ring? That might perhaps supply the gentleman with the clue he is looking for.”