by J. R. Trtek
CHAPTER TWELVE :
Revelation and Pursuit
It was at eleven in the morning the following day, one blessed with a suddenly mild temperature following an overnight frost, that Mrs. Hudson entered the sitting room to announce that Diarmund Stephenson had arrived to pay another call. Irene Adler and I were about to leave 221 for our trip about town, but I bade my companion stay in the sitting room while I descended to receive our caller.
“A very good morning, Mr. Stephenson,” I said pleasantly, intending to be true to Holmes’s request that I cultivate Lord Monsbury’s secretary. “You are well, I trust?”
“I am; thank you, but what of you, Dr. Watson?” the young man asked with concern. “You appear to be limping, sir.”
“It is but an old war wound, one of many,” I said, thinking to myself that Stephenson would have been a child at the time of my military experience. “I was struck by a jezail bullet, you see. It’s mended in its own way, mind you, but the area throbs at times during the changing of the seasons. It is an ailment to which I’ve grown accustomed. Being a man in your prime, Mr. Stephenson, you’ve yet to experience the aches of old age. One becomes inured to such things; it is nothing, I assure you.”
“Still, perhaps we’d best sit down,” he said, attempting to lead me into the waiting room. I humorously rebuffed his well-intended desire to help and invited him to take the same chair he had enjoyed last time. I sat down opposite him.
“I do not mean to hurry you,” he said, “but it is not my wish to keep you long here, either.”
“No matter. May I offer you something to drink?”
“Thank you, no.”
Believing I knew his purpose in coming to Baker Street, I determined to get straight to the point. “I fear I cannot give you today any more information on the Hope Maldon investigation than I could yesterday. There can be—”
“Is Mr. Holmes about?” the man asked. “If you are presently engaged, Doctor, I can talk to him instead. To be quite honest, Mr. Holmes is, once again, the person I desperately require.”
“How so?”
“He is not in then?”
“He is out of the house at present,” I replied circumspectly, “on the trail of your good friend.”
“Can you tell me the hour of his return?”
“I fear I cannot.”
“Yes, of course,” Stephenson said thoughtfully. “The rugby and cricket business.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mr. Holmes likened detection to cricket rather than rugby when my employer asked a similar question of him the other day.”
“During our interview with Lord Monsbury?”
“Yes. It occurred just as I was entering the room. But that’s neither here nor there, Doctor. Tell me, what type of man is Mr. Holmes? Would you term him compassionate?”
“I will utter to you the same phrase I wrote to the whole world ten years ago. He is the best and wisest of men.”
The young man nodded as if to himself alone. “Dr. Watson, I hope I do not offend when I say that I would rather be addressing Mr. Holmes himself at this moment, but as he is absent and you are his associate, I beg you to hear the confession I am about to give.”
I shifted position in my chair. “Does this pertain to the disappearance of your friend?”
“It pertains not to his disappearance directly, no, but I suspect that it may affect Mr. Holmes’s investigation of Robert’s whereabouts.”
“Hum,” I said, edging forward. “You may rest assured of my discretion and understanding.”
“I believe you, Dr. Watson, and so I am willing to tell you this most terrible thing: two weeks ago, it was I who removed the shares from Lord Monsbury’s study.”
“What? Why?”
“I did so in order that they might serve as collateral for a debt I had incurred,” said Stephenson. “That debt has since been honestly paid without difficulty, and the shares have been returned to me. I shall restate that they were used as collateral only. I never sought to employ them to gain any material advantage for myself. I always intended to put them back as swiftly as events would allow. Pardon my demeanour, Dr. Watson. It is not easy—admitting to such a thing, that is.”
“Of course. You are certain you wish nothing to drink?” I asked.
“Quite certain, thank you.”
“Tell me more, please. Did you not fear your actions would soon be discovered?”
“I was well acquainted with Lord Monsbury’s ways, Doctor, as I told you before. He had taken inventory of his wall safe only two days previous, and by habit, he should not have looked again for another two months, by which time I knew I could return the shares. For some reason my employer broke with custom and examined the contents of the safe again too soon.”
“It was a foolish act on your part,” I declared.
“I know! I had convinced myself, however, that it was an innocent one that would harm no one. Of course, I knew at the time that I was violating the trust the earl had placed in me, but I had led myself to believe that lack of detection would render the act a trifle.”
“Why do you make this confession to me and not to the Earl of Monsbury?”
“I know I have transgressed, Dr. Watson. My hope—please do not tell me it is forlorn—is that Mr. Holmes might put things right without the earl discovering my error in judgment.”
“That is all you consider it to be, sir? An error in judgment? Lord Monsbury is your employer and—”
“In fact, he is more, sir,” said the young man. “Lord Monsbury is my natural uncle, Dr. Watson. My father was his brother, the late Sir Wyatt Hope Maldon.”
I paused to consider this revelation. “Your uncle?” I said at last. “You are his brother’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Yet your name is Stephenson.”
“My mother was not Sir Wyatt’s wife.”
“I see.”
“Sir Wyatt provided for my mother and me,” said the young man. “He saw to my education and, before his death, asked that his elder brother look after me. Lord Monsbury more than complied with my father’s request in allowing me to become his secretary.”
“And the earl is, of course, aware of your origin?”
“Oh, yes. He knew of me before I was born. The ties of blood are strong in him, you see, as they were with my father. If the earl were simply my employer, I suppose I might get up the courage to admit my mistake and accept my fate, but given that he is my uncle and given all he has done for me, I cannot. It would break his heart, I fear.”
“You may be angered by this remark, young man, but I found your uncle’s heart to be something much less than compassionate when his own son was discussed.”
“You refer to Robert?” Diarmund Stephenson shook his head slowly. “You misunderstand, Dr. Watson. The earl has no fatherly love for Robert, because Robert is not his son.”
Once more I sat in numb contemplation. “What do you say?”
“Lord Monsbury is not Robert’s father.”
“The earl knows this as well?”
“He suspected it from the moment that brown-eyed Robert was born. Robert’s mother, you see, had blue eyes.”
“Yes,” I said after a moment’s reflection, recalling the tinted photograph at Breton Mansions. “And the earl himself is blue-eyed as well,” I added, remembering the watery gaze that had transfixed me at Lennox Square. “And you just alluded to the fact that Robert Hope Maldon’s eyes—”
“Are brown,” completed the young man. “The earl became enraged at his first viewing of the babe, and I am told by the more senior servants of the household that Lady Monsbury confessed her sin the same day as the birth. Lord Monsbury essentially disowned Robert from that moment, in all the realms that matter. Oh, the child was raised in the household as a scion of the Hope Maldon family, for the sake of appearances, but the earl never showed him a whit of affection. Alienation occurred between Lord and Lady Monsbury as well, of course. I have been told that it
hastened her death, after which the earl lost all animosity toward his deceased wife and transferred it to Robert, somehow blaming him for her passing.”
We both sat in silence for a moment before I said, “You have placed great confidences in me, young man.”
“I have, sir. May I now ask that you place the same in me?”
“How so?”
“The investigation that Lord Monsbury has charged Mr. Holmes to pursue—does it concern the shares or Robert or both?”
I stared at the earnest face and rambling hair of the man before me for what seemed a very long time then cast discretion aside. “Formally, it concerns only Robert,” I told him. “Though in the mind of Lord Monsbury both are intimately entwined.”
Stephenson nodded, again as if for his own benefit. “I feared that would be the case. The earl blames Robert for the missing shares, yet he is completely innocent of their theft. Our situations within the household have such an odd asymmetry,” he added wistfully. “Robert has the family name but not the blood and affection, while my condition is just the reverse.”
“Were these familial relations common knowledge between the two of you? Did others know?” I asked.
“At the time that I entered service at Lennox Square, no one save the earl himself had knowledge that I was his nephew,” Stephenson answered. “Awhile after assuming my duties as Lord Monsbury’s secretary, I learned of Robert’s origin from the older servants. Moved by the similarities—and the differences—in our situations, as well as a genuine affection for him, I eventually revealed my true identity to Robert some time ago.”
“The knowledge did not affect his attitude toward you?”
“No,” said the man. “If anything, I believe it brought us closer together.”
“You said earlier you wished that Sherlock Holmes might put things right,” I continued. “Had you anything specific to suggest to my friend?”
“Nothing, I fear, other than to wish that perhaps he might be able to convince the earl that his inventory had been mistaken and that the shares had remained in the safe all this time. Would Mr. Holmes think that possible?”
“I cannot express his opinions for him, though we might expect that if your uncle has returned to the safe many times since his initial discovery, a fabrication such as you suggest would be rather unconvincing.”
“Oh,” said Stephenson, crestfallen.
“If it is some encouragement to you, however, I should relate that upon at least one occasion similar to this, Holmes orchestrated the very type of ruse you propose. You say you now have the shares back in your possession?”
“Yes. They are hidden in my quarters at Lennox Square.”
“I see. Well, I am uncertain when I shall be able to communicate with my friend in the next several days, but at the first opportunity to do so, I shall convey to him what you have revealed to me and offer your suggestion as a possible course of action.”
“I am very much in your debt, sir, far more than I can say.”
“We’ll see it through,” I told him, giving the young man an avuncular tap upon the knee. “Any debt you’ve incurred will have no collateral, I assure you.”
He smiled faintly at my weak jest, and then we both rose together from our chairs. “I know this must appear a non sequitur, but please tell me,” I suddenly said. “Did Robert Hope Maldon ever mention to you his intention to wed?”
“Robby? Oh, heavens, no. Not that he isn’t a quick one about the ladies. No one likes a fresh face more than he—but marriage? I have never heard the word upon his lips, Dr. Watson.”
“Even after his return from America?”
“Oh, then I’m afraid I cannot help you there. I suppose he might have met his match on the other side of the water, but I do not know about it yet,” Stephenson admitted. “You see, I’ve not spoken to Robert since his departure for America. We had set up a dinner engagement by letter, but owing to his disappearance, it did not occur.” The young man smiled meekly. “One reason I was looking forward to seeing him was to hear firsthand of his experiences in the United States and Canada. My mother settled in Nova Scotia when she entrusted my upbringing to Lord Monsbury, and I hope to someday visit her—she lives in a village just outside Halifax.”
“It is pleasant country, and I am certain you shall someday have that joy. Let me bid you good-day then, and thank you for the information you have provided me. I assure you I shall make every effort to turn this matter in your favour.”
“Again, I thank you with all my heart, Doctor.”
We shook hands, and I saw him out the door. Then, after slowly ascending the stair, I opened the sitting room door and asked Miss Adler if she was ready to leave.
“Yes,” she replied from the window. “You were detained for some time by Mr. Stephenson. Is anything the matter?”
“No,” I said. “He wished merely to learn of any news of our investigation. I could, of course, tell him nothing.” I quickly surveyed the sitting room. “You are certain about this journey?” I asked, hoping that at the last moment her mind might change yet also remaining curious about the reason for her desire to roam beyond 221.
“I am certain for myself,” the woman said as she left the window to approach me. “But I still question your need to go with me. Though I do desire your company, your limp gives me cause to—”
“It will be fine,” I told her, as I had repeatedly throughout the morning. “If anything, I have found that a brisk walk helps loosen it. Trust an old veteran who has come to terms with his battle scars.”
“Very well. Let us go,” she said and then took my arm as we descended the stair and bade farewell to Mrs. Hudson. Leaving the house, we encountered our agent Mercer, who stood outside by the kerb, ready to follow. Although agreeing to a jaunt about London, I had held firm in my insistence that we not go alone, and reluctantly, my companion had agreed.
Once in Baker Street, Irene Adler puckishly suggested we board the bus, but in her company, I would have none of it and, instead, whistled for a hansom while Mercer signalled for his own. After pausing to discuss contingencies with the agent, I returned to the first hansom, in which I joined Miss Adler.
“To Holborn,” I called to the driver, who urged his horse on at a pace I immediately thought much too brisk. “I say, could you please slow the cab?” I asked him.
“You think I’m fast?” the cabby replied sharply. “You should have seen me go before the war, when I had Big Ramses. The army, they took all the good horses out of London when it was time to fight those Boers. It was then—”
“Please slow down!” I asked again, as the hansom made a precipitous turn. “I won’t have such reckless—”
“I’m doing just what the lady paid me to do!” protested the driver.
I looked in astonishment at Irene Adler, who turned away. Then, looking behind us, I saw that our dashing hansom had outrun Mercer’s cab, which was no longer in sight.
“Tell me now,” I said sternly to my companion. “Tell me the meaning of this.”
“I must have none of Mr. Holmes’s agents about me,” the woman said, facing me with her intense grey eyes.
Our hansom ran over a piece of debris, jostling us both in the cab. “And what am I, madam, other than my friend’s principal agent?”
“Unlike the others, you, I believe, can be your own man,” she replied. “You, Dr. Watson, can transcend the act of merely following orders.”
“Much to my discredit,” I said, now regretting my decision to allow this trip.
“I would have gone without you knowing, had you not agreed.”
“Oh?” I said angrily. “That is the extent of your gratitude?”
From outside the cab came the harsh cries of a cyclist, whom we had nearly run down.
“Well?” I continued. “Is this how you repay all we have tried to do for you?”
“You must believe me, Doctor, when I say this journey is most urgent.”
“How so?”
“I cannot d
ivulge that yet, not even to you.”
I sat silently, looking forward as our cab sped on. At first I felt only anger but no serious alarm, for I had informed Mercer that Holborn was to be our destination, but after a few minutes, I realized the hansom was not heading in that direction.
“I instructed the driver to take us to Trafalgar Square,” said the woman, perhaps sensing my realization. For a brief moment, she placed a hand on mine. “Doctor, please. I do not seek to disappoint.”
As she let go of my hand, I said, “I disappoint myself.”
“Because you believe in me?”
“No,” I replied as we rushed on. “Because I wish to believe in you when I do not.”
In time, our driver called out Trafalgar Square. Wordlessly, we departed the cab, and in continued silence, we took a slow walk round Nelson’s Column before entering the Strand.
“It is much as I remember it,” Miss Adler suddenly said with a light air, as if our conversation in the hansom had never occurred and no sense of betrayal separated us. As we were engulfed by the street’s world of shops, theatres, and restaurants, she proclaimed, with forced joy, “It has been so long.”
“I prefer the way it used to be,” I said curtly. “Before it was widened time and again.”
“Things change,” she told me, offering her arm, which I took stiffly in hand, so as not to create a spectacle of discord for those milling about to witness. “Cities change,” Miss Adler continued, “as well as people.”
“Am I to know where we are going from here?” I asked, looking back in hopes of seeing Mercer arrive in his cab.
“Oh, Doctor, please do not be angry. Can you not wish to believe in me a bit longer?”