The story he had just heard was still ringing in his ears. It might not be true in every detail, but it was circumstantial, there was the proof of the letter, and much of the rest bore the stamp of truth. Certain it was that a foul crime had been committed, and that one of these two men had been the other’s accomplice, if not in its commission then after the fact. And what was Lowndes doing here, and what was Scrafton doing upstairs, unless they were accomplices still?
A vague feeling that he had been tricked and trapped, to what end he could not conceive, made Harry put his back to the railings, clench his fists, and set his teeth; yet there was nothing in the other’s look to support such a theory.
“Come, Ringrose,” said he, “I think I know what’s the matter! I know whom you’ve got upstairs. I can guess what he’s been telling you.”
“You can?”
“Certainly I can. In point of fact, it’s not guesswork at all. He was good enough to warn me of his intention.”
“Well?”
“He’s been telling you that I did what he did himself.”
“Which of you am I to believe?” cried Harry in a frenzy. “You are villains both! I believe you did it between you!”
“Steady, Ringrose, steady. I have given you provocation in the past, but I am not provoking you now. That your father’s fate was different from what I led you to believe it would be idle to deny any longer, especially as I am here to clear up the mystery once and for all. Take me upstairs and you shall know the truth.”
“What! Trust myself to the two of you?”
Lowndes pointed to the shadowy figure across the road.
“And to the man who is with me.”
“Who is he?”
“The first detective in London,” whispered Lowndes, in his pat, decisive way. “Now, will you take me up to bowl out Scrafton, or shall I call to him to come down, and make a scene here in the street? My dear Ringrose, I may have my faults, but do you seriously mean to take his word before mine?”
“Come up if you like,” said Harry, shortly; and Lowndes turned to the man in the shadow.
“When I throw up a window,” Harry heard him say, and he led the way upstairs, feeling once more as though he were walking into a trap with his eyes open.
“Leave the key in the door,” whispered Lowndes again as they stood on the mat. “Then he will be able to come and help us if necessary.”
There was something strangely trustworthy in his face and his voice; something new in Harry’s knowledge of the man. He left the key in the door, and he felt next moment that he had done right. Scrafton had leapt to his feet with fear and ferocity in his face, and the empty spirit-bottle caught up in his hand.
“What do you want?” he roared. “What are you doing here? You fool, I’ve told him everything! Shut the door, you, young fellow; now he’s come we won’t let him slip.”
Harry humoured him by shutting it. He had only to look on their two faces to see which was the villain now.
“I’ve told him!” repeated Scrafton, in a loud, jeering voice. “I told you I’d round on you if ever you went back on me, and I’ve been as good as my word. He knows now who persuaded his father to go abroad, and he knows why. He knows who went with him. He knows who pushed him overboard and took the money.”
“It’s pretty plain, isn’t it?” said Lowndes to Harry. “Be prepared to close with him the moment he lifts that bottle higher than his shoulder, and I’ll tell you honestly what I did do. It will save time, however, if you first tell me what this fellow says I did.”
Harry did so in the fewest words, while they both stood watching Scrafton, grinning in their faces as he held the empty bottle in rest. His grin broadened as the tale proceeded. And so strange was the growing triumph in the fierce blue eyes, if it were all untrue, that at the end Harry turned to Lowndes and asked him point-blank whether there was any truth in it at all.
“Heaps,” was the reply. “It’s nothing but the truth up to a certain point. I am not here to exonerate myself from fault, Ringrose, and not even altogether from crime. It is perfectly true that it was at my instigation your father consented to go abroad and put his faith in this fellow’s system. It was a wild scheme, if you like, but it was either that or certain ruin, and I’d have risked it myself without the slightest hesitation. I firmly believe, too, that it would have come off if we’d kept cool and played well together — for make no mistake about the mere ability of our friend with the bottle — but it never came to that. Your father weakened on it halfway across the Channel, and vowed he’d go back by the next boat and fail like a man. That’s true enough, and it’s also true that after reasoning with him in vain I went to send Scrafton to reassure him about the system; and here’s where the lies begin. I didn’t go back with him to the empty cabin. I followed him in a few minutes, and there he was alone, and there and then he started accusing me of what he’d obviously done himself.”
“Obviously!” jeered Scrafton. “So obviously that he made no attempt to prove it at the time!”
“I stood no chance of doing so. It would have been oath against oath. And meanwhile, Ringrose, there were the two of us in a tight place together — and the French lights in sight! There was nothing for it but to pull together for the time being, and to avoid discovery of your father’s disappearance at all costs. What was done couldn’t be undone; and discovery would have meant destruction to us both, without anybody else being a bit the better. So Scrafton went ashore muffled up in your father’s ulster, as he has told you himself; and, indeed, the rest of his story is — only too true.”
“You consented to this?” cried Harry, recoiling from both men, as one stood shamefaced and the other took snuff with a triumphant flourish.
“Consented to it?” roared Scrafton. “He proposed it, bless you!”
“That’s not true, Lowndes?”
“I’m ashamed to say it is, Ringrose. We were in a frightful hole. Something had to be done right there and then.”
“So you went ashore together?”
“No; we arranged to meet.”
“To concoct the forgery I’ve been shown to-night? You had a hand in that, had you?”
“I had a voice.”
“Yet none of the guilt is yours!”
The tone cut like a knife. Lowndes had been hanging his head, but his spectacles flashed as he raised it now.
“I never said that!” cried he. “God knows I was guilty enough after the event; and God knows, also, that I did what I could to make it up to you and yours in every other way later on. You may smile in my face — I deserve it — but what would you have gained if I had blown the gaff? Nothing at all; whereas I should have been bowled out in getting your father abroad with the very money I’d raised to save the ship; and that alone would have been the very devil for me. No Crofter Fisheries! Very likely Wormwood Scrubs instead! I couldn’t face it; so I held my tongue, and I’ve been paying for it to this ruffian ever since.”
“Paying for it!” echoed Scrafton. “Paying me to hold my tongue; that’s what he means!”
“It is true enough,” said Lowndes quietly, in answer to a look from Harry.
“He admits it!” cried Scrafton, snuffing horribly in his exultation; “he might just as well admit the whole thing. Who but a guilty man pays another to hold his tongue?”
“I have confessed the full extent of my guilt,” said Lowndes, in the same quiet voice.
“Then why were you such a blockhead as to put yourself at my mercy to-night?” roared the other, his bloodshot eyes breaking into a sudden blaze of fury.
Lowndes stood a little without replying; and Harry Ringrose, still wavering between the two men, and as yet distrusting and condemning them equally in his heart, saw all at once a twinkle in the spectacled eyes which weighed more with him than words. A twitch of the sharp nose completed a characteristic look which Harry could neither forget nor misunderstand; it was not that of the losing side; and now, for the first time, the lad could believe it wa
s a real detective, and not a third accomplice, who was waiting in the street below.
“Do you think I am the man to put myself at your mercy?” asked Lowndes at length, and with increased serenity.
“You’ve done so, you blockhead! You’ve put the rope round your own neck!”
“On the contrary, my good Scrafton, I’ve simply waited until I was certain of slipping it round yours. You would see that for yourself if you hadn’t drunk your brain to a pulp. You would have seen it by the way I sent you to the devil this evening. However, I think you’re beginning to see it now!”
“I see nothing,” snarled Scrafton; “and you can prove nothing! But if I can’t hang you, I can tell enough to make you glad to go out and hang yourself. It doesn’t much matter what happens to me. I’m old and poor, and about done for in any case, or I might think more of my own skin. But you’re on the top of the wave — and I’ll have you back in the trough! You’re living on the fat of the land — you shall see how you like skilly! Never mind who did the trick; who took the money when it was done?”
Harry turned once more to Lowndes, and, despite his late convictions, the question was reflected in his face.
“The notes went overboard with your father,” said Lowndes. “The gold we found in his bag in the cabin.”
“And what did you do with the gold?”
Scrafton echoed the question with his jeering laugh.
“Ringrose,” said Lowndes, “it didn’t amount to very much; what I consented to take I used for your mother and you, so help me God!”
“Your mother and my eye!” cried Scrafton. “A likely yarn!”
“I believe it,” said Harry, after a pause.
“You believe him?” screamed Scrafton.
“Certainly — before you.”
“After all the lies he’s owned up to?”
“After everything!”
Scrafton gnashed his teeth, and his bloodshot eyes blazed again.
“You had my version first, you blockhead!” he burst out. “You never would have had his otherwise. Can’t you see he’s only trying to turn the tables on me? I tell you he threw your father into the sea, so he turns round and says I did it! Let him prove a word of it. Do you hear, you lying devil? Prove it; prove it if you can!”
Lowndes stepped over to the window and threw up the centre sash very casually.
“It’s a warm night for this sort of thing,” he remarked. “Prove it, do you say? That’s exactly what I’m going to do, if you’ll give me time. Steady with that bottle, though — watch him, Ringrose — that’s better! So you still insist on having a proof, eh? Do you think I’d have refused your demands this evening if I hadn’t had one? My good fellow, there was a man in my house at the time who is in a position to convict you at last. He has been on your track for years — and here he is!”
As the door opened, Harry kept his eyes on Scrafton, and on the empty bottle he still gripped by the neck. Instead of being raised, it slipped through his slackened fingers and fell upon the hearthrug. A moment later Scrafton himself crashed in a heap where he stood.
Harry turned round; a bronzed gentleman with snow-white whiskers had entered the room and was holding out his arms to him, the tears standing thick in his eyes.
“My son — my son!”
The mist was clearing from Harry’s eyes; a trembling hand held each of his; trembling lips had touched his forehead.
“Father — father — is it really you?”
“By God’s mercy — only.”
“They said you were drowned!”
“I was saved by a miracle.”
“Yet you have kept away from us all these years!”
“It was the least I could do, Harry. The slur was on you and your mother. I had cast it on you; it was for me to remove it; or never to show my face again. God has been very good to me. I will tell you all. I am only sorry I consented to this scene.”
Lowndes was kneeling over the prostrate Scrafton, loosening the snuffy raiment, feeling the feeble heart, pouring more whisky into the fallen mouth that reeked of it already.
“Is there nothing we can do?” said Mr. Ringrose.
“He will be all right in a minute or two.”
“I am sorry I was a party to this business!”
“Not a bit of it, my dear sir! It was what he deserved. Sorry I told you your father was a detective, Ringrose. I wanted you to believe me for once before you saw him, that was all. You’ll never believe me again — and that’s what I deserve.”
He had looked round for a moment from the senseless man; now he bent over him once more; and father and son stepped forward anxiously. The high forehead, the dirty, iron-grey hair, and the long lean nose, were all that they could see; the glistening skin was of a leaden pallor.
“Is it more than a faint?” asked Mr. Ringrose. “Ah! I am thankful.”
The blue eyes had opened; the flowing beard was moving from side to side; a feeble hand feeling for a waistcoat pocket.
“My snuff-box,” he whined. “I want my snuff-box.”
Harry found it and gave it to him; and after the first pinch Scrafton was sitting upright; after the second he was struggling to his feet with their help, and scowling at them all in turn. He shook off their hands as soon as he felt his feet under him; and with a fine effort he tried to stalk, but could only totter, to the door. Harry was very loth to let him go, but it was his father who held the door open, while Lowndes nodded his approval of the course.
But in the doorway Scrafton turned and glared at the trio like a sick grey wolf, and shook an unclean fist in their faces before he went.
They heard him taking snuff upon the stairs.
CHAPTER XXVII.
RESTITUTION.
Shortly after Scrafton’s departure, Gordon Lowndes also took his leave. It was not, however, until he had offered Harry his hand with much diffidence, and the younger man had grasped it without a moment’s hesitation. At this the other coloured and dropped his eyes, but stood for some moments returning Harry’s pressure twofold.
“Ringrose,” he faltered, “I would give all I’m worth to-night to have told the truth in the beginning. But how could I? I might as well have blown my brains out. I — I tried to be your friend instead. I suppose you’ll never let me be your friend any more?”
It is doubtful whether any man could have said these words to Harry Ringrose, in any conceivable circumstances, without receiving some such response as that which instantly burst from his lips. Want of generosity was not one of Harry’s faults; yet he had no sooner forgiven Lowndes, once and for all, and with a whole heart, than an inner voice reminded him that he had but served self-interest in doing so; and the reason, coming home to him like a bullet, gave a strange turn to his emotions.
The father was sitting in a deep reverie in his wife’s chair: his face was in his hands: he neither saw nor heard. Harry looked at him, hesitated, and in the end not only saw Lowndes to the door but accompanied him downstairs in the first leaden light of the September morning. He had something more to say.
He merely wanted to know whether Miss Lowndes was in town, and whether he might call. Yet he only got it out as they were shaking hands for the last time.
“You mean at Berkeley Square?” said Lowndes.
“Yes — if I may.”
“You’ll have to be quick about it, Ringrose. We leave there in a day or two. The men are already in the house. Still, I’ve no doubt she’ll be glad to see you.”
“Taking a country seat?” asked Harry, smiling.
“No, a suburban one: the sort of thing we had at Richmond, only rather better.”
“You don’t mean it!”
“A fact.”
“But the Crofters are paying such a dividend?”
Gordon Lowndes shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that reminded Harry of former days.
“A paltry fourteen per cent.!” said he. “I’m sick of it. I thought we should all be millionaires by this time. I’ve sold out
, and, of course, at a good enough figure; but we’ve been doing ourselves pretty well these last few years, and I haven’t got much change out of the Crofters after all. In point of fact, it would take a few thousands to clear me; but, on the other hand, the credit’s better than ever it was, and I’m simply chock-a-block with new plans. Loaded to the muzzle, Ringrose, and just spoiling for the fray! I know my nature better than ever I knew it before. I wasn’t built for sitting in a chair and drawing my salary and receiving my dividends. I’ve found that out. It’s worrying the thing through that I enjoy; there’s some sport in that. However, I’m as lively as an old cheese with schemes and ideas; and one of them, at least, should appeal to you. It’s a composite daily paper on absolutely new lines — that is, on all existing lines run parallel for a penny. My idea is to knock out the Times and the Guardian on one hand, and Punch and the Pink ‘Un on the other. What should you say to coming in as comic editor at a four-figure screw?”
“Where’s the capitalist?” was what Harry said.
“Where is he not?” cried Lowndes. “Every man Jack of them would jump at it! I made such a success of the Crofters that I could raise a million to-morrow for any crack-brained scheme I liked to put my name to. Yes, my boy, I’ll have my pick of the capitalists this time; have them coming to me with their hats in one hand and their cheque-books in the other; but, between ourselves, I don’t think we shall have far to seek for our man, Ringrose!”
“What do you mean?” cried Harry, his curiosity whetted by the other’s tone.
“Ask your father,” was the reply. “I may be mistaken, and he mayn’t have made such a pile as I imagine; but he’ll tell you as soon as he has you to himself; and meanwhile I’ll warn Fanny that you’re going to look her up.”
A hansom tinkled and twinkled across the jaws of Earl’s Court Road; and as the light-hearted rapscallion darted off in pursuit, few would have believed with what a deed he had been connected; fewer still with what emotion he had lamented his wickedness not five minutes ago.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 151