It will be seen by-and-by how Honoria Eversleigh had become acquainted with the fact of this man’s existence.
She went alone to seek an interview with him. She had found herself compelled to confide in Jane Payland to a very considerable extent; but she did not tell that attendant more than she was obliged to tell of the dark business which had brought her to London.
She was fortunate enough to find Mr. Andrew Larkspur alone, and disengaged. He was a little, sandy-haired man, of some sixty years of age, spare and wizened, with a sharp nose, like a beak, and thin, long arms, ending in large, claw-like hands, that were like the talons of a bird of prey. Altogether, Mr. Lark spur had very much of the aspect of an elderly vulture which had undergone partial transformation into a human being.
Honoria was in no way repelled by the aspect of this man. She saw that he was clever; and fancied him the kind of person who would be likely to serve her faithfully.
“I have been informed that you are skilled in the prosecution of secret investigations,” she said; “and I wish to secure your services immediately. Are you at liberty to devote yourself to the task I wish to be performed by you?”
Mr. Larkspur was a man who rarely answered even the simplest question until he had turned the subject over in his mind, and carefully studied every word that had been said to him.
He was a man who made caution the ruling principle of his life, and he looked at every creature he encountered in the course of his career as an individual more or less likely to take him in.
The boast of Mr. Larkspur was, that he never had been taken in.
“I’ve been very near it more than once,” he said to his particular friends, when he unbent so far as to be confidential.
“I’ve had some very narrow escapes of being taken in and done for as neatly as you please. There are some artful dodgers, whose artful dodging the oldest hand can scarcely guard against; but I’m proud to say not one of those artful dodgers has ever yet been able to get the better of me. Perhaps my time is to come, and I shall be bamboozled in my old age.”
Before replying to Honoria’s inquiry, Andrew Larkspur studied her from head to foot, with eyes whose sharp scrutiny would have been very unpleasant to anyone who had occasion for concealment.
The result of the scrutiny seemed to be tolerably satisfactory, for Mr. Larkspur at last replied to his visitor’s question in a tone which for him was extremely gracious.
“You want to know whether you can engage my services,” he said; “that depends upon circumstances.”
“Upon what circumstances?”
“Whether you will be able to pay me. My hands are very full just now, and I’ve about as much business as I can possibly get through.”
“I shall want you to abandon all such business, and to devote yourself exclusively to my service,” said Honoria.
“The deuce you will!” exclaimed Mr. Larkspur. “Do you happen to know what my time is worth?”
Mr. Larkspur looked positively outraged by the idea that any one could suppose they could secure a monopoly of his valuable services.
“That is a question with which I have no concern,” answered Honoria, coolly. “The work which I require you to do will most likely occupy all your time, and entirely absorb your attention. I am quite prepared to pay you liberally for your services, and I shall leave you to name your own terms. I shall rely on your honour as a man of business that those terms will not be exorbitant, and I shall accede to them without further question.”
“Humph!” muttered the suspicious Andrew. “Do you know, ma’am, that sounds almost too liberal? I’m an old stager, ma’am, and have seen a good deal of life, and I have generally found that people who are ready to promise so much beforehand, are apt not to give anything when their work has been done.”
“The fact that you have been cheated by swindlers is no reason why should insult me,” answered Honoria. “I wished to secure your services; but I cannot continue an interview in which I find my offers met by insolent objections. There are, no doubt, other people in London who can assist me in the business I have in hand. I will wish you good morning.”
She rose, and was about to leave the room. Mr. Larkspur began to think that he had been rather too cautious; and that perhaps, this plainly-attired lady might be a very good customer.
“You must excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “if I’m rather a suspicious old chap. You see, it’s the nature of my business to make a man suspicious. If you can pay me for my time, I shall be willing to devote myself to your service; for I’d much rather give my whole mind to one business, than have ever so many odds and ends of affairs jostling each other in my brain. But the fact of it is, ladies very seldom have any idea what business is: however clever they may be in other matters — playing the piano, working bead-mats and worsted slippers, and such like. Now, I dare say you’ll open your eyes uncommon wide when I tell you that my business is worth nigh upon sixteen pound a week to me, taking good with bad; and though you mayn’t be aware of it, ma’am, having, no doubt, given your mind exclusive to Berlin wool, and such like, sixteen pound a week is eight hundred a year.”
Mr. Larkspur, though not much given to surprise, was somewhat astonished to perceive that his lady-visitor did not open her eyes any wider on receiving this intelligence.
“If you have earned eight hundred a year by your profession,” she returned, quietly, “I will give you twenty pounds a week for your exclusive services, and that will be a thousand and forty pounds a year.”
This time, Andrew Larkspur was still more surprised, though he was so completely master of himself as to conceal the smallest evidence of his astonishment.
Here was a woman who had not devoted her mind to Berlin wool-work, and whose arithmetic was irreproachable!
“Humph!” he muttered, too cautious to betray any appearance of eagerness to accept an advantageous offer. “A thousand a year is very well in its way; but how long is it to last? If I turn my back upon this business here, it’ll all tumble to pieces, and then, where shall I be when you have done with me?”
“I will engage you for one year, certain.”
“That won’t do, ma’am; you must make it three years, certain.”
“Very well; I am willing to do that,” answered Honoria. “I shall, in all probability, require your services for three years.”
Mr. Larkspur regretted that he had not asked for an engagement of six years.
“Do you agree to those terms?” asked Honoria.
“Yes,” answered the detective, with well-assumed indifference; “I suppose I may as well accept those terms, though I dare say I might make more money by leaving myself free to give my attention to anything that might turn up. And now, how am I to be paid? You see, you’re quite a stranger to me.”
“I am aware of that, and I do not ask you to trust me,” replied
Honoria. “I will pay you eighty pounds a month.”
“Eighty pounds a month of four weeks,” interposed the cautious Larkspur; “eighty pounds for the lunar month. That makes a difference, you know, and it’s just as well to be particular.”
“Certainly!” answered Lady Eversleigh, with a half-contemptuous smile. “You shall not be cheated. You shall receive your payment monthly, in advance; and if you require security for the future, I can refer you to my bankers. My name is Mrs. Eden — Harriet Eden, and I bank with Messrs. Coutts.”
The detective rubbed his hands with a air of gratification.
“Nothing could be more straightforward and business-like,” he said.
“And when shall you require my services, Mrs. Eden?”
“Immediately. There is an apartment vacant in the house in which I lodge. I should wish you to occupy that apartment, as you would thus be always at hand when I had any communication to make to you. Would that be possible?”
“Well, yes, ma’am, it would certainly be possible,” replied Mr. Larkspur, after the usual pause for reflection; “but I’m afraid I should be oblige
d to make that an extra.”
“You shall be paid whatever you require.”
“Thank you, ma’am. You see, when a person of my age has been accustomed to live in one place for a long time, it goes against him to change his habits. However, to oblige you, I’ll get together my little traps, and shift my quarter to the lodging you speak of.”
“Good. The house in question is No. 90, Percy Street, Tottenham Court
Road.”
Mr. Larkspur was surprised to find that a lady who could afford to offer him more than a thousand a year, was nevertheless contented to live in such a middle-class situation as Percy Street.
“Can you go to the new lodging to-morrow?” asked Honoria.
“Well, no, ma’am; you must give me a week, if you please. I must wind up some of the affairs I have been working upon, you see, and hand over my clients to other people; and I must set my books in order. I’ve a few very profitable affairs in hand, I assure you. There’s one which might have turned out a great prize, if I had been only able to carry it through. But those sort of things all depend on time, you see, ma’am. They’re very slow. I have been about this one, off and on, for over three years; and very little has come of it yet.”
The detective was turning over one of his books mechanically as he said this. It was a large ledger, filled with entries, in a queer, cramped handwriting, dotted about, here and there, with mysterious marks in red and blue ink. Mr. Larkspur stopped suddenly, as he turned the leaves, his attention arrested by one particular page.
“Here it is,” he said; “the very business I was speaking of. Five hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderer, or murderers, of Valentine Jernam, captain and owner of the ‘Pizarro’, whose body was found in the river, below Wapping, on the third of April, 1836. That’s a very queer business, that is, and I’ve never had leisure to get very deep into the rights and wrongs of it yet.”
Mr. Larkspur looked up presently, and saw that his visitor’s face had grown white to the very lips.
“You knew Captain Jernam?” he said.
“No — yes, I knew him slightly; and the idea of his murder is very shocking to me,” answered Honoria, struggling with her agitation. “Do you expect to discover the secret of that dreadful crime?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Andrew Larkspur, with the careless and business-like tone of a man to whom a murder is an incident of trade. “You see, when these things have gone by for a long time, without anything being found out about them, the secret generally comes out by accident, if it ever comes out at all. There are cases in which the secret never does come out; but there are not many such cases. There’s a deal in accident; and a man of my profession must be always on the look-out for accident, or he’ll lose a great many chances. You see those red marks stuck here and there, among all that writing in blue ink. Those red marks are set against the facts that seem pretty clear and straightforward; the blue marks are set against facts that seem dark. You see, there’s more blue marks than red. That means that it’s a dark case.”
Honoria Eversleigh bent over the old man’s shoulder, and read a few fragmentary lines, here and there, in the page beneath her.
“Seen at the ‘Jolly Tar’, Ratcliff Highway, a low public-house frequented by sailors. Seen with two men, Dennis Wayman, landlord of the ‘Jolly Tar,’ and a man called Milson, or Milsom. The man Milson, or Milsom, has since disappeared. Is believed to have been transported, but is not to be heard of abroad.”
A little below these entries was another, which seemed to Honoria
Eversleigh to be inscribed in letters of fire: —
“Valentine Jernam was known to have fallen in love with a girl who sang at the ‘Jolly Tar’ public-house, and it is supposed that he was lured to his death by the agency of this girl. She is described as about seventeen years of age, very handsome, dark eyes, dark hair—”
Mr. Larkspur closed the volume before Lady Eversleigh could read further. She returned to her seat, still terribly pale, and with a sickening pain at her heart.
All the shame and anguish of her early life, the unspeakable horror of her girlhood, had been brought vividly back to her by the perusal of the memoranda in the detective’s ledger.
“I mean to try my luck yet at getting at the bottom of the mystery,” said Andrew Larkspur. “Five hundred pounds reward is worth working for. I — I’ve a notion that I shall lay my hands upon Valentine Jernam’s murderer sooner or later.”
“Who offers the reward?” asked Honoria.
“Government offers one hundred of it; George Jernam four hundred more.”
“Who is George Jernam?”
“The captain’s younger brother — a merchant-captain himself — the owner of several vessels, and, I believe, a rich man. He came here, accompanied by a queer-looking fellow, called Joyce Harker — a kind of clerk, I believe — who was very much attached to the murdered man.”
“Yes — yes, I know,” murmured Honoria.
She had been so terribly agitated by the mention of Valentine Jernam’s name, that her presence of mind had entirely abandoned her.
“You knew that humpbacked clerk!” exclaimed Mr. Larkspur.
“I have heard of him,” she faltered.
There was a pause, during which Lady Eversleigh recovered in some degree from the painful emotion caused by memories so unexpectedly evoked.
“I may as well give you some preliminary instructions to-day,” she said, re-assuming her business-like tone, “and I will write you a cheque for the first month of your service.”
Mr. Larkspur lost no time in providing his visitor with pen and ink. She took a cheque-book from her pocket, and filled in a cheque for eighty pounds in Andrew Larkspur’s favour.
The cheque was signed “Harriet Eden.”
“When you present that, you will be able to ascertain that your future payments will be secure,” she said.
She handed the cheque to Mr. Larkspur, who looked at it with an air of assumed indifference, and slipped it carelessly into his waistcoat pocket.
“And now, ma’am,” he said, “I am ready to receive your instructions.”
“In the first place,” said Honoria, “I must beg that you will on no occasion attempt to pry into my motives, whatever I may require of you.”
“That, ma’am, is understood. I have nothing to do with the motives of my employers, and I care nothing about them.”
“I am glad to hear that,” replied Honoria. “The business in which I require your aid is a very strange one; and the time may come when you will be half-inclined to believe me mad. But, whatever I do, however mysterious my actions may be, think always that a deeply rooted purpose lies beneath them; and that every thought of my brain — every trivial act of my life, will shape itself to one end.”
“I ask no questions, ma’am.”
“And you will serve me faithfully — blindly?”
“Yes, ma’am; both faithfully and blindly.”
“I think I may trust you,” replied Honoria, very earnestly “And now I will speak freely. There are two men upon whose lives I desire to place a spy. I want to know every act of their lives, every word they speak, every secret of their hearts — I wish to be an unseen witness of their lonely hours, an impalpable guest at every gathering in which they mingle. I want to be near them always in spirit, if not in bodily presence. I want to track them step by step, let their ways be never so dark and winding. This is the purpose of my life; but I am a woman — powerless to act freely — bound and fettered as women only are fettered. Do you begin to understand now what I require of you.”
“I think I do.”
“Mr. Larkspur,” continued Honoria, with energy. “I want you to be my second self. I want you to be the shadow of these two men. Wherever they go, you must follow — in some shape or other you must haunt them, by night and day. It is, of course, a difficult task which I demand of you. You have to decide whether it is impossible.”
“Impossible! ma’am
— not a bit of it. Nothing is impossible to a man who has served twenty years’ apprenticeship as a Bow Street runner. You don’t know what we old Bow Street hands can do when we’re on our mettle. I’ve heard a deal of talk about Fooshay, that was at the head of Bonaparty’s police — but bless your heart, ma’am, Fooshay was a fool to us. I’ve done as much and more than what you talk of before to-day. All you have to do is to give me the names and descriptions of the two men I am to watch, and leave all the rest to me.”
“One of these two men is Sir Reginald Eversleigh, Baronet, a man of small fortune — a bachelor, occupying lodgings in Villiers Street. I have reason to believe that he is dissipated, a gamester, and a reprobate.”
“Good,” said Mr. Larkspur, who jotted down an occasional note in a greasy little pocket-book.
“The second person is a medical practitioner, called Victor Carrington — a Frenchman, but a perfect master of the English language, and a man whose youth has been spent in England. The two men are firm friends and constant associates. In keeping watch upon the actions of one, you cannot fail to see much of the other.
“Very good, ma’am; you may make your mind easy,” answered the detective, as coolly as if he had just received the most common-place order.
He escorted Honoria to the door of his chambers, and left her to descend the dingy staircase as best as she might.
CHAPTER XVI.
WAITING AND WATCHING.
Valentine Jernam’s younger brother, George, had journeyed to and fro on the high seas five years since the murder of the brave and generous-hearted sea-captain.
Things had gone well with Captain George Jernam, and in the whole of the trading navy there were few richer men than the owner of the ‘Pizarro’, ‘Stormy Petrel’, and ‘Albatross’.
With these three vessels constantly afloat. George Jernam was on the high road to fortune.
His life had not been by any means uneventful since the death of his brother, though that mysterious calamity had taken away the zest from his success for many a day, and though he no longer cherished the same visions of a happy home in England, when his circumstances should have become so prosperous as to enable him to “settle down.” This same process of settling down was one by no means congenial to George Jernam’s disposition at any time; and he was far less likely to take to it kindly now, than when “dear old Val” — as he began to call his brother in his thoughts once more, when the horror of the murder had begun to wear off, and the lost friend seemed again familiar — had been the prospective sharer of the retirement which was to be so tranquil, so comfortable, and so well-earned. It had no attraction for George at all; for many a long day after Joyce Harker’s letter had reached him he never dwelt upon it; he set his face hard against his grief, and worked on, as men must work, fortunately for them, under all chances and changes of this mortal life, until the last change of all. At first, the thirst for revenge upon his brother’s murderers had been hot and strong upon George Jernam — almost as hot and strong as it had been, and continued to be, upon Joyce Harker; but the natures of the men differed materially. George Jernam had neither the dogged persistency nor the latent fierceness of his dead brother’s friend and protégé; and the long, slow, untiring watching to which Harker devoted himself would have been a task so uncongenial as to be indeed impossible to the more open, more congenial temperament of the merchant-captain.
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