Mr Bazalgette’s Agent

by Leonard Merrick

  “And if I see his name how am I to act?”

  “You are not expecting him to travel as Jasper Vining, are you? The name will of course be an assumed one, but it must be amongst the recent arrivals you make investigations. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here,” and he drew out a capacious portfolio, “is the party’s photo; it was taken a year ago, and given by Vining to Mr. and Mrs. May. He is handsome, well-made, and about forty years of age. You will have this with you for purposes of identification, but be prepared for some alteration of appearance, the loss of the moustache, the growth of a beard, or such like! Every day you will send us a report of your movements; in no case will you leave a city without authority, unless upon sudden and most urgent occasion. Here is a cipher, and here the ‘key;’ in the event of wiring the cipher is to be used. See if you understand it!”

  “It looks perfectly intelligible,—yes!”

  “The telegraphic address is ‘Bazalgette, London;’ letters you will direct to ‘A. Bazalgette, Esquire, 7, Queen’s Row, High Holborn,’ don’t say ‘Detective!’ Write that down—here is a new note-book; and put the likeness, and the cipher, and the ‘key’ in the pocket of the cover. You had better call yourself a widow—Mrs. Lea; good name, ‘Lea,’ eh? nothing conspicuous about it?”

  Mr. Mendes signified approval.

  “As a lady you will travel with your own maid.”

  “Where shall I engage her, in London?”

  “She will be provided; one of our female agents will go with you in that capacity.”

  “I am to be under surveillance?”

  “There is no question of ‘surveillance’ about it. The conduct of the affair is in our charge, and the finer portion of the actual work in yours, but it is perfectly impossible that you could go alone, and this woman’s knowledge of the rougher part of the business you will doubtless find useful! Now, is there anything further you want to know?”

  “Yes;” I said, “to go to the best hotels as you instruct I shall require several different toilettes, which I don’t possess; walking costumes, dinner dresses, etc.”

  “Can you manage on fifty pounds?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “Very good, then; you shall have the money.”

  He wrote a cheque for the amount suggested, and passed it to Mr. Mendes, with the request that he would see it cashed at once.

  “I should like to know, too, what salary you propose to offer; also, if out of my salary I am to pay the bills and railway fares?”

  “All expenses we defray,” he responded; “your salary will be—a pound a day. Is that satisfactory?”

  “No,” I demurred calmly, “it isn’t! I am not prepared to quit my home and friends, to be, pardon the word, ostracized by society for a pound a-day.”

  “I think you exaggerate,” he remonstrated. “Because you enter our employ you would hardly be an ostracite!”

  “No, I am quite sure of that!” I answered, and I nearly laughed aloud at his mistake. “But you must admit I should be renouncing a good deal for a temporary occupation very poorly paid. When I was here before, Mr. Mendes asserted you seldom required the services of a lady; so that, on the termination of this undertaking, I should be without an engagement from you, probably find it extremely difficult to return to more ordinary occupations, and only have earned a trifling sum to make amends for the embarrassment. No, Mr. Bazalgette,” and I inspected the tips of the four-and-sixpenny gloves with gentle regret, “if that is your proposal, I am sorry, but I must decline!”

  “We might go so far as thirty shillings, I can’t offer more! Do you agree or not?”

  I dared not venture losing ten guineas a week by stipulating for still higher payment, so bowed assent as Mr. Mendes re-entered the room.

  “Then that is settled! Kindly affix your signature to this contract, Miss Lea, and to a receipt for that fifty pounds. To-day is Friday,—you will present yourself here to-morrow, be ready to leave London on Monday, and a hundred pounds for expenses will be placed in your hands on that morning. Now, good afternoon!”

  * * * * *

  July 25th.

  I can only make a brief note, but I feel this portentous day should not be allowed to pass without an entry of some sort. At twelve o’clock I was with Messrs. Bazalgette and Mendes in their office; at five my costumes came home, not bad considering they were ordered barely four days ago, and that yesterday was Sunday; at half past seven I bade adieu to the hoarding house, though I did not deem it essential to inform Mr. Claussen I had ever acted on his suggestion, and shortly after eight I met Emma Dunstan at Holborn Viaduct.

  I found her on our introduction a hard-featured woman of modest demeanour, quietly dressed in black. I address her by her surname, and she calls me “ma’am.” I had wondered whether she would when we were off the stage, I mean when we were not acting; hut she did it as a matter of course, and I suppose there are degrees even among policemen. She occupies the second-class compartment behind me now, and I, in well-padded and uninterrupted privacy, am scribbling this in the train between London and Queenborough, en route for Hamburg.

  I am not sorry to be alone, though my thoughts are none of the pleasantest company. Mrs. Everett’s face appeared, or rather disappeared, like the countenance of a friend as I saw it last from the window of the four-wheeler; the dismal habitation where I have been bored so, assumed the proportions of a lost haven of refuge when once it was forsaken, and, oh, that sinking sensation of the heart as I rattled away through the gaslit streets to the station, and realised the nature of the mission on which I am engaged.

  The enormousness of the operation struck home to me then with full force. Deprived of Mr. Bazalgette’s reassuring presence, the magnitude of this pin-in-a-haystack search for a man I have never seen, frightened and appalled me. And all the while beating its chilling sense into my brain, till I dreaded to find myself unconsciously repeating it aloud, was one sentence, one paramount thought:—“I am a detective!”

  CHAPTER IV.

  HAMBURG, July 29th.

  I ARRIVED at ten o’clock at night three days ago, and am quartered with “my maid” at the Hamburger Hof. Opposite me as I write is the Alster Bassin, with ridiculously small steamers on it, like penny toys puffing up and down. It is four P.M., and the entire population appears to have chosen the Allée before my windows for their promenade.

  I explained to the portier that I had reason to believe a letter from my cousin had miscarried, and was anxious to ascertain if she had reached Hamburg without my knowledge. A two-mark piece, and a smile, made him my devoted slave, and yesterday morning he presented himself to ‘Madame Lea’ with a file of the ‘Hamburger Fremdenblatt’ of the past six weeks, containing a list of all the arrivals in the town.

  Deeming it just as well to prosecute my researches a short time further back, however, I called at Streitt’s Hôtel, as well as the hotels St. Petersburg and De l’Europe, and with the same excuse received permission in both instances to examine the ‘Strangers’ Book.’ Having done this, I feel that I have been brilliant but not successful! To personally inspect all the Müllers and the Schultzes, and the Blancs and the Greys, who since the eighteenth of May last have been deposited in this bustling German port is beyond me. I can only attentively study Jasper Vining’s photograph, and frequent the places of most public resort. I am going directly to the open-air concert at Uhlenhorst.

  The work is not so bad as I had feared; there is an excitement about it, and you live like a lady; the only objection is you feel such an impostor when a nice woman is friendly with you. I have decidedly thrown away any chances of advancement I might otherwise have had, but the chances were not distinguishable, and il faut vivre!

  How unevenly the world’s goods are divided; and how useless making an elaborate arithmetical demonstration to a socialist that he would only be something three-farthings better off if the division were to occur all over again! It is like arguing with a starving wretch on the
futility of craving for a single meal, because if it were given to him he would still be hungry in the morning.

  Here I am in a profession (is it a profession, I wonder?—I daresay; it is called a profession to murder innocent men, why then should it not be one to detect the guilty!) Here I am on a mission which if they knew it would cause people to shrink away from me, and yet my offence is, that, after struggling to obtain a livelihood for the best part of a year in the greatest capital of modern civilization, I was absolutely forced to make myself an object of general abhorrence by the discreditable fact that circumstances were stronger than I! What a crime! Britannia rules the waves! She would be better occupied in finding food for the Britons!

  But it was not to make cynical reflections in a diary that I was sent here by Messrs. Bazalgette and Mendes; I am going out!

  * * * * *

  August 9th.

  Hamburg, with all due deference to its manifold attractions, is, so far as I am concerned, a failure. I have more than once braved the perils of a fifteen-minutes’ voyage to Uhlenhorst, where I was surprised at the excellence of the’ music, until I heard the conductor’s name; I have sipped coffee at the square wooden tables of the gardens, and, observing a faraway look in Dunstan’s eyes, decided it was occasioned by a recollection of ’appy ’ampstead. I have “worn out a pair of shoes on the Jungfernstieg, and cultivated a taste for Wagner, but, alas, I have not encountered Jasper Vining.

  By-the-bye, the capabilities of any coadjutrix do not tempt me into any gushing dissertations! Up to the present all the-luminous ideas have been mine, not hers. It is true I have not set the Thames on fire, or (to throw in a little local colour) I have not ignited the Elbe, but the ideas have been luminous all the same.

  You, my smudgy confidant, I admit have been neglected, but I have not the time nor the patience to keep a double diary, and my daily reports to London recording my bills, walks, talks, and thoughts, are detailed enough to satisfy a lady’s confessor. They even appear to satisfy my employers now I have grasped the style of thing desired. At first it was objected I digressed too much; the firm was not anxious to learn I had been sleepy when we arrived at Flushing, or to be favoured with my opinions on the German scenery; but now that I comprehend the sort of particulars expected, and couch them in the telegraphically brief sentences of the French feuilleton, amiability reigns supreme.

  In my last I communicated the unfavourable result of my investigations in this city, and by reply am bidden to depart for Spain and Portugal, visiting San Sebastian, Barcelona, Seville, Madrid, and Lisbon in turn. I leave at 10.5 to-morrow morning, and am due in Cologne at seven the same night. Dunstan does the packing. Fancy me with a maid!

  * * * * *

  PARIS, August 11th.

  What a journey! I am stopping here the day, as there is no express until twenty minutes past eight this evening. Dunstan’s fare from Cologne cost as much as mine, only first-class compartments being available unless we remained for the seven o’clock train next morning; as it was we had to wait three hours and a half!

  The waiter informing Madame it was but five minutes’ walk to the Cathedral, we went to see it, and Dunstan declared it was “’andsomer than the Brighton Pavilion!” After that I discarded conversation for Galignani, and read it in the waiting-room.

  Among petty trials is there one more odious than to view a sight which impresses you in unsympathetic company? The primary sensation is one of unmixed delight; the second, a feeling of dumb rage that is not reciprocated; and the third a keen annoyance that you have been moved yourself.

  If Dunstan had been a lady I should have quarrelled with her. If I had not been a lady I should have shaken her! As it was I dissembled with the newspaper, and chafed till half-past ten. Paris looked delicious in the early sunshine as we drove from the station to the Grand, and after my night’s sleep in the wagon-lit I was able to thoroughly enjoy my breakfast, for which, including vin ordinaire which I did not drink, I disbursed the comparatively modest sum of five francs.

  My ideas on the subject of expenditure I notice are becoming regal!

  I shall be glad when I have at length set foot in San Sebastian; as yet I have done nothing worthy to be mentioned, and, burning as I am to distinguish myself, it is aggravating to perceive my present entry closely resembling the absolute inanity of a guide-book!

  * * * * *

  SAN SEBASTIAN, August 14th.

  “I am here!” I believe that was somebody’s motto; if it was anybody victorious I apologise, for though I came and I saw two days ago, the important climax of the Latin quotation would be inappropriate. I am domiciled at the Hôtel de Londres (called ‘de Londres’ presumably because, being like an immense villa in the middle of a garden, it immediately suggests Claridge’s or the Langham), and under other conditions the place would amuse me. You have to grow accustomed, for instance, to only one woman in thirty wearing a bonnet, the majority of feminine head-gears being the mantilla; and it is a novelty to see fans esteemed an indispensable adjunct to walking costume in lieu of sunshades. How that the first shock which these departures occasioned is beginning to wear off, however, I am forced to admit a couple of yards of black lace may, put on a l’Espagnole, make a very efficient substitute for the creations of Louise, and to sorrowfully acknowledge the language of the fan has been as utterly unknown to me as the language of the land; more so, indeed, for I found a strong resemblance between the latter and Italian.

  But the fan, what do these women not make it say!

  In the first place they carry it differently to us; in the second the wariest chaperone in Belgravia would be baffled by its capabilities for speech in the grasp of a Southern beauty of sixteen. “I like you,” and “You bother me,” “You may follow me,” and “You are to wait here,” are, I learn, among the commonest forms of expression in this most mysterious of tongues.

  There are a mama and her two daughters staying in the Hôtel; I say “mama” because the term describes her so much better than “mother.” She is the typical British matron, and the condemnatory voice in which she talks about “these foreigners” is glorious. She scans them superciliously in the street through a pince-nez as if she were inspecting the serpents at the Zoo, and, I verily believe, regards their presence in their own country as an unwarrantable intrusion.

  I made her acquaintance this morning, the fact of being English, and travelling with a maid, probably recommending me to her favour. A maid is a great credential, almost as “tone-y” as a hyphen, and “Mrs. Shoddy-Johnston’s carriage blocks the way” sounds well, it is admitted, else why the connecting dash?

  “So theatrical,” she finds the attire, she informed me after entering into conversation as graciously as if I did not know she would cut me in Regent-street to-morrow if we met there, “so theatrical, isn’t it? The sort of thing one expects on the stage, or at a fancy ball!”

  I shivered in the most approved insular fashion, and agreed. Is it not my rôle to be on speaking terms with as many persons as possible wherever I may be?

  “Quite so,” I assented, “it is a terrible blow to one’s taste; only the chimney-pot hats of our compatriots in a measure relieve the eye!”

  Here the daughters, enthusiastic art-students, it transpired, flatly contradicted me with all the happy spontaneity of short skirts.

  “They couldn’t think that by any means,” they cried in a duet, “the introduction of those conventional hats into the picture seemed an anachronism, fortunately they were rare! What, now, could be more charming than the type of face? Had I noticed the colouring?”

  Conscious of the mendacity of my statement I temporized, and confessed the “colouring” had not been duly observed.

  “We are going to get some of the peasants to sit to us,” they continued, mollified. ‘Mama wouldn’t have come if it had not been for us, but one does so much better work where one can select one’s models, and sketch them from one’s own point of view! Of course you know Weatherley’s?”

 
No, I did not know Weatherley’s, and they said, “Ah, we forgot; yon see we are so used to the Art-world we take these matters quite for granted!”

  I converted a laugh into a cough, and attempted to direct the discourse to more personal channels, inquiring after the English tourists.

  “Oh, we see nobody, nobody at all; we are certain not to have met your friends (you did say ‘friends’?) unless they are artists!”

  “Well,” I returned, “they happen to be! The friends I am hoping to meet are mostly singers and musicians!”

  It was undeniably weak, for I was scarcely likely to derive any profitable information after this, but these children’s assumption of superiority was beginning to irritate me.

  “Musicians!” they echoed coldly. “Oh, but we meant artists, ‘painters’ perhaps you would call them, not,—not that sort of people!”

  “Indeed, I used the designation in its wider sense!” I responded humbly, and as the map of Europe had appeared under the eliminating influence of Mr. Bazalgette to be swiftly shrinking before my eyes, so, during the remainder of the interview with the ‘art students’ did the Art-world gradually resolve itself into a territory devoted solely to palette and brush, and bounded by Weatherley’s class-room and the ‘National.’

  Interesting as this little family group may be, it is plain its members will not advance me, so I drop them. The full difficulty of my undertaking grows upon me every hour, threatening at times the proportions of a Frankenstein till I quail before it in anticipation, and, analysing my emotions, I suppose I must have looked forward to my efforts being crowned with instantaneous results. Nevertheless I know it would be absurd to feel discouraged so soon, and, distant or near, success shall be mine yet. I will find Jasper Vining; I will find him, and when I do, if I fail to furnish a conclusive proof of my abilities in the shape of his arrest, may I——, may I end my days listening to Czerny’s hundred-and-one exercises for eighteenpenee an hour!