A woman's debt

by William Le Queux

Punctually at five o’clock on the appointed evening Lane and Simmons met. On the face of the valet was a triumphant expression.

“We needn’t try this new scheme of yours, Mr. Cox—Mr. Lane, I should say. I’ll come back to the flat with you; it’s all plain sailing. The drawer is unlocked. The bank-book isn’t there, and he’s taken the cheque-book with him; but he’s left the paying-in slips all right. You said these would do.”

Not by any means for the first time was Gideon Lane impressed by the inconsistencies of the human temperament. Here was a shrewd, clever man like Sir George Clayton-Brookes, one who counted his cigars and wine-bottles to prevent his valet helping himself to a surreptitious smoke or drink! Surely he would be equally meticulous in other and more important matters. And yet, he had gone away leaving that drawer unlocked, its contents open to the prying eyes of Simmons.

The detective himself would never have done such a thing, and he was quite sure he had less to conceal than this mysterious baronet who passed himself off as a wealthy man, while all the evidence that had been gathered pointed to the contrary. Perhaps Sir George, like many other persons of considerable mentality—for there was little doubt that he had brains of a certain order—entertained a great contempt for the intelligence of his inferiors, and thought that if Simmons did pry about in his absence he would not be much the wiser for his researches.

The baronet resided on the first floor of a block of service flats in the Victoria direction, finding this mode of living very suitable to him. Simmons slept out, coming early in the morning and leaving at all sorts of times dependent upon his master’s convenience. In the course of his communications to Lane, the detective had gathered that, in many respects, it was a very easy place. Sir George did a great deal for himself, so that the valet’s duties were not onerous, and he had a lot of spare time. If his master went out for the evening, and this happened on most evenings of the week, Simmons was never required to await his return. His meals he occasionally took in the restaurant attached to the flats, but more frequently he lunched and dined at his clubs or the private houses of his acquaintances. Breakfast, a Continental one of coffee and rolls, was served in his own apartments.

“As a matter of fact, he doesn’t want a valet at all,” was Simmons’s rather contemptuous comment on his master’s habits. “And if he consulted his own inclinations, I don’t believe he would keep one, for he’s that dirt mean that I know he begrudges me my wages every time he pays me. What can you expect of a man who sells all his old clothes to a second-hand dealer? Not a waistcoat or a pair of old boots have I had since I was in his service. He’s obliged to keep one to carry out his policy of ‘swank.’ He knows his friends would think it deuced queer for one in his position to be without a man.”

It formed a handsome suite of apartments, with its two elegantly furnished sitting-rooms, large airy bedroom and capacious bathroom. Still, one would only put it down as the abode of a man comfortably well-off, not one supposed to be actually wealthy.

“Here we are!” exclaimed Mr. Simmons, as he ushered the detective into the smaller of the two sitting-rooms, which was used as a smoking-room and study in which the owner wrote his letters and attended to his business, whatever it was.

“And here’s the writing-table, and that top one on the left is the drawer in which you want to look. I’m glad it’s turned out like this, Mr. Lane; I feel a good bit easier in my mind. Nobody can call this burglary, eh? No harm in taking a peep at things that be under your hand, is there?”

By which it will be seen that Mr. Simmons, though perhaps not a high authority on morals, had certain well-defined ethics of his own. It was not stealing to abstract a cigar from the store of a master who did not resort to the discreditable meanness of putting out a dozen in a box at a time so that he would easily miss one; it was not wrong to help yourself as often as you could to a glass of good wine; it was not against the moral code to listen outside doors, or to read letters and papers to which you could procure easy access through your employer’s carelessness. But in some matters the valet was a purist, more, it is to be feared, from terror of the legal consequences than from the revolt of a tender conscience. He did draw the line at picking locks or steaming open a letter.