Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Catching up the letter, he paced the carpet for a moment or two in deep thought; halted by the window, and read it again. “Yes, I’ll see him; it will be safer,” said he, with decision.

  He wrote a rapid note, appointing eleven o’clock the next morning for the interview, at his own office. And then again paused as he was folding it; paused in deliberation.

  “Why not go to him?” spoke Bede Greatorex, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, as if he thought the map there could solve the query. “Yes, I will; I’ll go to-night. That’s safest of all.”

  Noting down the given address, he held Mr. Butterby’s letter and his own two answers, perfect and imperfect, over the grate, lighted a match, and burnt them to ashes. There was no fire; the weather was uncertain, warm to-day, cold to-morrow, and the fire was sometimes let go out in a morning as soon as lighted.

  Evening came. And at ten minutes past seven Bede Greatorex was on the search for Mr. Butterby. “Cuff Court, Off Fleet Street.” He did not know Cuff Court; and supposed that “Off Fleet Street” might indicate some turning or winding beginning in that well-known thoroughfare, and ending it was hard to say where. Bede, however, by dint of inquiry found Cuff Court at last. No. I had the appearance of a small private house; as in fact it was. The great Butterby generally lodged there when he came to town. The people residing in it were connections of his and accommodated him; it was, as he remarked, “convenient to places.”

  Bede was shown upstairs to a small sitting-room. At a square table, examining some papers taken from his open pocket-book, by the light of two gas-burners over head, sat Jonas Butterby; the same thin wiry man as ever, in apparently the same black coat, plaid trousers, and buttoned-up waistcoat; with the same green observant eyes, and generally silent lips. He pushed the papers and pocket-book away into a heap when his visitor appeared, and rose to receive him.

  “Take a seat, sir,” he said, handing a chair by the hearth opposite his own, and stirring the bit of fire in the grate. “You don’t object to this, I hope: it ain’t hardly fire-time yet, but a morsel looks cheery at night.”

  “I like it,” said Bede. He put his hat on a side-table, and unbuttoned a thin overcoat he wore, as he sat down, throwing it a little back from the fine white shirt front, but did not take off his lavender gloves. It had always struck Mr. Butterby that Bede Greatorex was one of the finest and most gentlemanly men he knew, invariably dressed well; it had struck him that far-off time at Helstonleigh, when they met over John Ollivera’s death chair, and it struck him still. But he was looking ill, worn, anxious; and the detective, full of observation by habit, could not fail to see it.

  “I’m uncommon glad you’ve come in, Mr. Bede Greatorex. From a fresh turn some business I’m engaged on has took to-day, I’m not sure but I shall have to go back to Helstonleigh the first thing in the morning. Shall know by late post to-night.”

  “Are you living in London?”

  “Not I. I come up to it only yesterday, expecting to stop a week or so. Now I find I may have to go back to-morrow: the chances is about equal one way and t’other. But if I do, I should not have got to see you this time, sir, and must have come up again for it.”

  “I felt very much inclined to say I’d not see you,” answered Bede, candidly. “We are busy just now, and I would a great deal rather let the whole affair relating to the cheque drop entirely, than be at the trouble of raking it up again. The loss of the money has been ours, and, of course, we must put up with it I began a note to you to this effect; but it struck me while I was writing that you might possibly be carrying your news to my father.”

  “No, I shouldn’t have done that. It concerns you, so to say, more than him. Been well lately, Mr. Bede Greatorex?”

  “As well as I usually am. Why?”

  “Well, sir, you are looking, if I might make bold to say it, something like a shadder. Might a’most see through you.”

  “I have been doing too much lately. Mrs. Bede Greatorex and myself were on the Continent for two months, rushing about from kingdom to kingdom, and from place to place, seeing the wonders, and taking what the world calls a holiday — which is more wearing than any hard work,” Bede condescended to explain, but in rather a haughty tone, for he thought it did not lie in the detective’s legitimate province to offer remarks upon him. “In regard to business, Mr. Butterby: unless you have anything very particular to communicate, I would really rather not hear it. Let the affair drop.”

  “But I should not be doing my duty either way, to you or to me, in letting it drop,” returned Butterby. “If anything worse turned up later, I might get called over the coals for it at head-quarters.”

  “Be so good as hasten over what you have to say, then,” said Bede, taking out his watch and looking at it with anything but marked courtesy.

  It produced no effect on Mr. Butterby. If his clients chose to be in a hurry, he rarely was. But in his wide experience, bringing, as he generally did, all keen observation to bear, he felt convinced of one thing — that the gentleman before him dreaded the communication he had to make, and, for that reason and, for that reason and no other, wished to shun it “When that cheque was lost in the summer, Mr. Bede Greatorex, you did me the honour to put a little matter into my hands, confiding to me your confident opinion that one of your clerks must have been the purloiner of it, if not on his own score, on somebody else’s that he was acting for. You asked me to give an eye privately to the four. Not having got any satisfactory news from me up to the present time, you have perhaps thought that I’ve been neglecting the charge, and let it fall through.”

  “Oh, if it concerns them, I’ll be glad to hear you!” briskly spoke Bede Greatorex; and to the acute ear listening, the tone seemed to express relief as well as satisfaction. “Have you found out that one of them did take it?”

  “Not exactly. What I have found out, though, tells me that it is not improbable.”

  “Go on, please,” said Bede, impatiently. “Was it Hurst?”

  “Now, don’t you jump to conclusions in haste, Mr. Bede Greatorex; and you must just pardon me for giving you the advice. It’s a good rule to be observed in all cases; and if you’d been in my part of the law as long as I have, you’d not need to be told it. My own opinion was, that young Hurst was not one to help himself to money, or anything else that wasn’t his; but of course when you—”

  “Stop an instant,” interrupted Bede Greatorex, starting up as a thought occurred to him, and looking round in alarm. “This house is small, the walls are no doubt thin; can we be overheard?”

  “You may sit down again in peace, sir,” was the phlegmatic answer. “It was a child of twelve, or so, that showed you up, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, except her, and her missis — who is as deaf as a stone post, poor thing, though she is my cousin — there’s not a living soul in the house. The husband and son never get home till ten. As to the walls, they are seven times thicker than some modern ones, for the old house was built in substantial days. And if not — trust me for being secure and safe, and my visitors too, wherever I may stop, Mr. Bede Greatorex.”

  “It was for Hurst’s sake I spoke,” said Bede, in the light of a rather lame apology. “It may suit me to hush it up, even though you tell me he is guilty.”

  “When you desired me to look after your clerks, and gave me your reasons — which I couldn’t at first make top nor tail of, and am free to confess have not got to the bottom of yet — my own judgment was that young Hurst was about the least likely of all to be guilty,” pursued the officer, in his calmest and coolest manner. “However, as you persisted in your opinion, I naturally gave in to it, and looked up Hurst effectually. Or got him looked up; which amounts to the same thing.”

  “Without imparting any hint of my reasons for it?” again anxiously and imperatively interrupted Bede Greatorex. And it nettled the detective.

  “I’d like to ask you a question, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and to have it answered, sir. Do you thin
k I should be fit for my post unless I had more ‘cute discretion about me than ordinary folks, such as — excuse me — you? Why, my whole work, pretty nigh, is made up of ruses and secresy, and pitching people off on wrong scents. Says I to my friend — him that I set about the job— ‘that young Mr. Hurst has been making a undesirable acquaintance, quite innocent, lately; he may get drawed into unpleasant consequences afore he knows it; and as I’ve a respect for his father, a most skilful doctor of physic, I should like to warn the young man in time, if there’s danger. You just turn him inside out; watch all he does and all he doesn’t do, and let me know it.’ Well, sir, Hurst was turned inside out, so to say; if we’d stripped his skin off him, we couldn’t have seen more completely into his in ‘ard self and his doings than we did see; and the result was (leastways, the opinion I came to), that I was right and you were wrong. He had no more hand in the taking of that there cheque, or in any other part of the matters you hinted at, than this pocket-book here of mine had. And when I tell you that, Mr. Bede Greatorex, you may believe it.”

  A short silence ensued. Bede Greatorex’s left elbow rested on the table; his hand, the glove off now, was pressing his temple as if in reflective thought, the beautiful diamond ring on his little finger glittering in the gas-light. His mother had given the ring to him when she was dying, expressing a hope that he would wear it always in remembrance of her. It appeared to Bede almost as a religious duty to obey, though few men hated ornaments, in connection with himself, so much as he. His eyes were fixed on the fire; Mr. Butterby’s on him.

  “Well, Mr. Greatorex, Hurst being put out of the field, I naturally went on to the others. Jenner I never suspected at all, ’twas not him; and I felt morally sure, in spite of his impudence to me, that this time it was not Roland Yorke. Notwithstanding, I looked a little after both those gents; and I found that it was not either of ‘em.”

  “What do you mean by ‘this time’ in connection with Mr. Yorke?” inquired Bede, catching up the words, which, perhaps, had been an inadvertent slip.

  Butterby coughed. But he was not a bad man at heart, and had no intention of doing gratuitous damage even to impudent Roland.

  “Oh well, come, Mr. Bede Greatorex — a young fellow who has been out on the spec to Port Natal, seeing all sorts of life, is more likely, you know, to tumble into scrapes than steady-natured young fellows who have never been let go beyond their mothers’ apron-strings.”

  “True,” assented Bede Greatorex. “But in spite of his travelling experiences, Roland Yorke appears to me to be one of the most unsophisticated young men I know. In the ways of a bad world he is as a very boy.”

  “He is just one of them shallow-natured, simple-minded chaps that never will be bad,” pronounced Butterby, “except in the matter of impudence. He has got enough of that to set up trading on in Cheapside. What he’d have been, but for having got pulled up by a unpleasant check or two, I’m not prepared to say. Well, sir, them three being disposed of — Hurst, Jenner, and Yorke — there remained only Mr. Brown, your manager. And it is about him I’ve had the honour to solicit an interview with you.”

  Bede turned his eyes inquiringly from the fire to Mr. Butterby.

  “You said from the first you did not suspect Mr. Brown. No more did I. You thought it couldn’t be him; he had been some years with you, and his honesty and faithfulness had been sufficiently tested. I’m sure I had no reasons to think otherwise, except one. Which was this: I could not find out anything about Mr. Brown prior to some three or four years back; his appearance on the stage of life, so to say, seemed to date from then. However, sir, by your leave, we’ll put Brown aside for a minute, and go on to other people.”

  Mr. Butterby paused almost as though he expected his hearer to give the leave in words. Bede said nothing, only waited in evident curiosity, and the other resumed.

  “There was a long-established firm in Birmingham, Johnson and Teague. Accountants ostensibly, but did a little in bill-broking and what not; honest men, well thought of, very respectable. Johnson (who had succeeded his father) was a man under forty; Teague was old. Old Teague had never married, but he had a great-nephew in the office, Samuel Teague; had brought him up, and loved him as the apple of his eye. A nice young fellow in public, a wild spendthrift in private; that’s what Sam Teague was. His salary was two hundred a year, and he lived free at his uncle’s residence, outside Birmingham. His spendings were perhaps four hundred beyond the two. Naturally he came to grief. Do you take me, Mr. Bede Greatorex?”

  “Certainly.”

  “In the office, one of its clerks, was a young man named George Winter. A well-brought-up young fellow too, honest by nature, trusted, and thought much of. He and young Teague were uncommonly intimate. Now, how much blame was due to Winter I’m not prepared to say; but when Samuel Teague, to save himself from some bother, fogged a bill on the office, and got it paid by the office, Winter was implicated. He’d no doubt say, if you asked him, that he was drawed into it innocently, did say it in fact; but he had been the one to hand over the money, and the firm and the world looked upon him as the worse of the two. When the fraud was discovered, young Teague decamped. Winter, in self-defence and to avert consequences, went straight the same afternoon, which was a Saturday, to old Teague’s private residence, and there made a clean breast of young Teague’s long course of misdoings. It killed old Teague.”

  “Killed him!” repeated Bede, for the detective made a slight pause.

  “Yes, sir, killed him. He had looked upon his nephew up to that time as one of the saints of this here middle world; and the shock of finding him more like an angel of the lower one touched old Teague’s heart in some vital spot, and killed him. He had a sort of fit, and died that same night. The next day, Sunday, young Winter was missing. It was universally said that he had made his way to Liverpool, in the track of Samuel Teague — for that’s where folks thought he had gone — with a view of getting away to America. Both were advertised for; both looked upon as alike criminal. And it was for such a paltry sum they had perilled themselves — only a little over one hundred pounds! Time went on, and neither of ’em was ever traced; perhaps Mr. Johnson, when he had cooled down from his first anger, was willing to let Sam Teague be, for the old man’s sake, and so did not press the search. Any way Samuel Teague is now in open business in New York, and doing well.”

  “And the other — Winter?”

  “Ah, it’s him I’m coming to,” significantly resumed Mr. Butterby. “It seems that Winter never went after the other at all. In the panic of finding old Teague had died, and that no quarter was to be expected from Johnson (as it wasn’t then) he took a false name, put on false hair and whiskers, and stole quietly off by train on the Sunday afternoon, carrying a shirt or two in a blue bag. It was to Helstonleigh he went, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and he called himself Godfrey Pitman.”

  Bede Greatorex started from his seat. Up to that period he had been perfectly calm; interested of course, but as if in something that did not concern him.

  “Yes, sir, Godfrey Pitman. The same that was in Mrs. Jones’s house at the time of Mr. Ollivera’s death; the man that Helstonleigh made so much mystery of; who was, so to say, accused of the murder. And Godfrey Pitman, sir, or George Winter, whichever you may please to call him, is one and the same with your managing clerk, Mr. Brown!”

  “No!” shouted Bede Greatorex.

  “I say YES, sir. The very self-same man.”

  Bede Greatorex, looking forward in a kind of wild manner over Mr. Butterby’s head against the opposite wall, seemed to be revolving within him various speculations connected with the disclosure.

  “Why Brown has always—” — He brought the words to a sudden standstill. “Brown has always unpleasantly puzzled me,” had been on the tip of his tongue. But he let the words die away unspoken, and a sickly hue overspread his features. Taking his eyes from the wall and turning them on the fire, he sat as before, his brow pressed on his fingers, quite silent, after the manner of a man who
is dreaming.

  “I see the disagreeable doubt that is working within you, Mr. Bede Greatorex,” remarked the observant detective, upon whom not a sign was lost. “You are ready to say now it was Pitman did that there deed at Helstonleigh.”

  “How did you find out all this about him?” asked Bede Greatorex.

  “Well, I got a clue accidental. Don’t mind saying so. I was about some business lately for a gentleman in Birmingham, named Foster, and in a packet of letters he put into my hand to look over, I found a note from George Winter, written from your office this past summer. It was just one of them curious chances that don’t happen often; for Mr. Foster had no notion that the letter was there, thought he had destroyed it. It was but a line or two, and them of no moment, but it showed me that Mr. Brown and George Winter was the same man, and I soon wormed out his identity with Godfrey Pitman.”

  “Johnson and Co will be for prosecuting him, I suppose?” observed Bede, still as if he were dreaming.

  “No,” said Mr. Butterby. “I’ve seen Johnson and Co.: leastways Johnson. In regard to that past transaction of theirs, his opinion has changed, and he thinks that Winter, though culpably careless, and unpardonably blind as to the faith he reposed in Samuel Teague, had not himself any guilty knowledge. Anyway, Winter has been doing what he can since to repair mischief: been living on a crust and working night and day, to transmit sums periodically to Johnson in an anonymous manner — except that he just let it be known they came from him, by giving no clue to where he was, or how he gained them — with a view to wipe off the money Sam Teague robbed them of. Teague has been doing the same from this side the Atlantic,” added Mr. Butterby with a knowing laugh; “so that Johnson, as he says, is paid twice over.”